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Title: The Catholic World, Vol. 25, April 1877 to September 1877
Author: Various
Language: English
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*** Start of this LibraryBlog Digital Book "The Catholic World, Vol. 25, April 1877 to September 1877" ***
The Catholic World, Vol. XXV
The Catholic World.
A Monthly Magazine Of General Literature And Science
Vol. XXV.
April, 1877, To September, 1877.
New York:
The Catholic Publication Society Company,
9 Barclay Street.
1877.
CONTENTS
Alba’s Dream, 443, 621, 735
Along the Foot of the Pyrenees, 651
Among the Translators, 721
Ancient Music, Prose and Poetry of, 395
Anglicanism in 1877, 131
Catacombs, Testimony of the, 205
Christendom, The Iron Age of, 459
Cluny, The Congregation of, 691
College Education, 814
Colonization and Future Emigration, 677
Congregation of Cluny, The, 691
Copernican Theory, Evolution and the, 90
Count Frederick Leopold Stolberg, 535
Destiny of Man, Doubts of a Contemporary on the, 494
De Vere’s “Mary Tudor,” 261
Divorce and Divorce Laws, 340
Doubts of a Contemporary on the Destiny of Man, 494
Echternach, The Dancing Procession of, 826
Emigration, Colonization and Future, 677
English Rule in Ireland, 103
Eros, The Unknown, 702
European Exodus, The, 433
Evolution and the Copernican Theory, 90
France, The Political Crisis in, and its Bearings, 577
French Clergy during the late War in France, The, 247
Gothic Revival, The Story of the, 639
How Percy Bingham Caught his Trout, 77
Ireland, English Rule in, 103
Irish Revolution, The True, 551
Iron Age of Christendom, The, 459
Jane’s Vocation, 525
Job and Egypt, 764
Judaism in America, The Present State of, 365
Juliette, 667
Lavedan, The Seven Valleys of the, 748
Lepers of Tracadie, The, 191
Letters of a Young Irishwoman to her Sister, 56, 218, 377
Madonna-and-Child, The, a Test-Symbol, 804
Marshal MacMahon and the French Revolutionists, 558
“Mary Tudor,” De Vere’s, 261
Millicent, 777
Nagualism, Voodooism, etc., in the United States, 1
Nanette, 270
Natalie Narischkin, 32
Nile, Up the, 45, 236
Pan-Presbyterians, The, 843
Phil Redmond of Ballymacreedy, 591
Political Crisis in France and its Bearings, The, 577
Pope Pius the Ninth, 291
Pope’s Temporal Principality, The Beginning of the, 609
Presbyterian Infidelity in Scotland, 69
Present State of Judaism in America, The, 365
Prose and Poetry of Ancient Music, 395
Prussian Chancellor, The, 145
Pyrenees, Along the Foot of the, 651
Revolutionists, Marshal MacMahon and the French, 558
Romance of a Portmanteau, The, 403
Sannazzaro, 511
Scotland, Presbyterian Infidelity in, 69
Seven Valleys of the Lavedan, The, 748
Shakspere, from an American Point of View, 422
Six Sunny Months, 15, 175, 354, 478
Stolberg, Count Frederick Leopold, 535
Story of the Gothic Revival, The, 639
Tennyson as a Dramatist, 118
Testimony of the Catacombs, 205
The Beginning of the Pope’s Temporal Principality, 609
The Dancing Procession of Echternach, 826
The Doom of the Bell, 324
The European Exodus, 433
The Romance of a Portmanteau, 403
The True Irish Revolution, 551
The Unknown Eros, 702
Tracadie, The Lepers of, 191
Up the Nile, 45, 236
Veronica, 161
Voodooism, Nagualism, etc, in the United States, 1
POETRY.
A Thrush’s Song, 689
A Vision of the Colosseum, 318
A Waif from the Great Exhibition, 101
Ashes of the Palms, The, 142
Aubrey de Vere, To, 676
Birthday Song, A, 523
Brides of Christ, The, 420, 556, 701
Cathedral Woods, 665
Colosseum, A Vision of the, 318
Dante’s Purgatorio, 171
From the Hecuba of Euripides, 353, 550
From the Medea of Euripides, 638
Higher, 456
Italy, 745
Magdalen at the Tomb, 637
May, 246
May Carols, Two, 217
May Flowers, 189
Papal Jubilee, The, 289
Pope Pius IX., To, 363
Purgatorio, Dante’s, 171
St. Francis of Assisi, 11
The Ashes of the Palms, 142
To Aubrey de Vere, 676
Translation from Horace, 854
Wild Roses by the Sea, 338
NEW PUBLICATIONS.
A Question of Honor, 716
An Old World as seen through Young Eyes, 143
Beside the Western Sea, 718
Bessy, 720
Biographical Sketches, 717
Biographical Sketches of Distinguished Marylanders, 573
Carte Ecclésiastique des Etats-Unis de l’Amérique, 288
Childhood of the English Nation, The, 284
Christ, The Cradle of the, 281
Christopher Columbus, The Life of, 572
Classic Literature, 280
Code Poetical Reader, The, 287
Complete Office of Holy Week, The, 144
Comprehensive Geography, The, 144
Consolation of the Devout Soul, The, 286
Cradle of the Christ, The, 281
Discipline of Drink, The, 575
Dora, Bessie, Silvia, 720
Dr. Joseph Salzmann’s Leben und Wirken, 285
Ecclesiastical Law, Elements of, 860
Edmondo, 720
English Nation, Childhood of the, 284
Essays and Reviews, 429
Geometry, Elements of, 860
God the Teacher of Mankind, 720
Golden Sands, 430
Heroic Women of the Bible and the Church, 288
Hofbauer, Ven. Clement Mary, Life of, 432, 572
Known Too Late, 576
Lady of Neville Court, The, 432
Legends of the B. Sacrament, 574
Libraries, Public, in the United States of America, 855
Life of the Ven. Clement Mary Hofbauer, 432, 572
Magister Choralis, 430
Marylanders, Distinguished, Biographical Sketches of, 573
Musica Ecclesiastica, 144
Paradise of the Christian Soul, The, 576
Philip Nolan’s Friends, 719
Priesthood in the Light of the New Testament, 713
Problem of Problems, The, 282
Reply to the Hon. R. W. Thompson, 719
Report of the Board of Education of the City and County of New York, 715
Roman Legends, 718
Salzmann’s Leben und Wirken, 285
Sidonie, 574
Songs of the Land and Sea, 720
Spirit Invocations, 576
Summa Summæ, 288
The Catholic Keepsake, 720
The Little Pearls, 718
The Pearl among the Virtues, 720
The Story of Felice, 720
The Wonders of Prayer, 718
Why are We Roman Catholics? 288
THE CATHOLIC WORLD.
VOL. XXV., No. 145.—APRIL, 1877.
NAGUALISM, VOODOOISM, AND OTHER FORMS OF CRYPTO-PAGANISM IN THE UNITED
STATES.
When the Almighty introduced the children of Israel into the Promised
Land he enjoined the utter extirpation of the heathen races, and the
destruction of all belonging to them. But the tribes grew weary of war;
they spared, and their subsequent history shows us the result. The
Chanaanites became in time the conquerors and made the Hebrews their
subjects politically and in religion. The paganism learned on the banks
of the Nile had become but a faint reminiscence in the minds of the
descendants of those who marched out under Moses and Aaron; but the
worship of Baal and of Moloch and of Astaroth overran the land. A long
series of disasters ending with the overthrow of their national
existence, and a seventy years’ captivity, were required to purge the
Hebrew mind of the poison imbibed from the heathen remnant. Then all the
power of the Alexandrian sovereigns failed to compel them to worship the
gods of Greece. _Omnes dii gentium dæmonia_ is a statement, clear,
plain, and definite, that we Catholics cannot refuse to accept. Modern
indifferentism may regard all the pagan worships as expressions of
truth, and the worship of their deities as something merely symbolical
of the operations of nature, not the actual rendering of divine honors.
But to us there can be no such theory. The worship was real and the
objects were demons, blinding and misleading men through their passions
and ignorance. The very vitality of paganism in regaining lost ground,
and in rising against the truth, shows its satanic character.
The experience of the Jewish people is reproduced elsewhere. When
Christianity, beginning the conquest of Europe with Greece and Italy,
closed its victorious career by reducing to the cross the Scandinavians
and the German tribes of Prussia, later even than the conversion of the
Tartaric Russians, there was left in all lands a pagan element, on which
the arch-enemy based his new schemes of revolt and war upon the truth.
We of the Gentiles, whether from the sunny south or the colder north,
bear to this day, in our terms for the divisions of the week and year,
the names of the deities whom our heathen ancestors worshipped—the
demons who blinded them to the truth. The Italian, Frenchman, and
Spaniard thus keep alive the memory of Jupiter, Mercury, Mars, Venus,
and Saturn; the German and Scandinavian tribes of Tuisco, Woden, Thor,
Freya, and Sator. Janus opens the year, followed by Februata, Juno, and
Mars; Maia claims a month we dedicate to Mary, and which the Irish in
his own language still calls the Fire of Baal—Baal-tinne.
Earth and time even seem not enough; we go, so to speak, to the very
footstool of God, and name the glorious orbs that move in celestial
harmony through the realms of space, from the very demons who for ages
received from men the honors due to God—from Jupiter and Saturn, Venus
and Mars, Juno and Ceres, Castor and Pollux, and the whole array of gods
and demi-gods.
And it is a strange fact that the only attempt made to do away with
these pagan relics was that of the infidel and bloodthirsty
Revolutionists of France, pagan in all but this.
We bear, as it were, badges of our heathen origin—tokens, perhaps, of
the general apostasy which, as some interpreters hold, will one day
behold the Gentile nations renounce Christianity, when the number of the
elect is to be completed from the remnant of the Jews.
In the heresies, schisms, and revolts against the church the pagan
element appears as an uprising, an attempt to retrieve a defeat by
causing an overthrow of the victorious church even where a restoration
of the old demonic gods seems in itself hopeless. The German tribes and
those of Scandinavia, receiving the faith later than the Latin and
Celtic races, revolted from the church while the remembrance of pagan
rites and license was still fresh. The so-called Reformation was
essentially gross and sensual, and none the less so because the
Christian influence made the absolute rejection of God for a time
impossible, and compelled it to borrow tone, and expression, and the
outer garb of Christianity. Vice, in its open and undisguised form,
would have shocked communities that had tasted of Christian truth. The
arch-enemy was subtle enough to meet the wants of the case, and to
present what would appear to the sixteenth century as true, as shrewdly
as he presented the grosser forms to earlier minds gross enough to
accept them. But, it may be said, it is going too far to make all
heresies diabolical; yet the church so speaks. If, in the prayer for the
Jews on Good Friday, it asks that God would remove the veil from their
hearts, that light might shine in upon the darkness, we cannot but
observe that when the petitions arise for those misled by heresy, the
church speaks of them as souls deceived by the fraud of the devil. The
New Testament is full of allusions to this war of the arch-enemy: he is
held up as one who will come to some as a roaring lion, terrifying and
alarming; while to others he comes as an angel of light, plausible and
Heaven-sent, as it were, raising up false teachers whose reasonings
would, were that possible, deceive even the elect. And St. Paul tells us
that our struggle is not with flesh and blood—not with the men who are
but instruments—but with the spirits of darkness who are the prime
movers.
The war waged took different forms. In the north sensualism and the
grosser forms of self-indulgence were the revolt against the spirit of
mortification, of self-conquest and control. It required and had no
aid from the imagination, art, poetry, music. But at the south the old
pagan classics, imbued with the religion of Greece and Rome, became
the literature of the new Christian world and exercised a
steadily-increasing pagan influence. In the French Revolution, and in
the modern less bloody but as deadly Masonic war, we see the old pagan
ideas and thoughts come as if spontaneously to the surface. From the
reverence for all connected with the old pagan worship down to pagan
cremation we see the revival, less gross, less sensual than in the
north, idealized by the conception of beauty in form and color, with
all the allurement of symmetry to win the eye, the ear, the
imagination. That ancient art and the ancient classics have been a
potent instrument in weakening the Christian spirit, and in paganizing
the learned and the young whom they train, is admitted, and attempts
are made to counteract the influence.
Our country was settled by communities more or less imbued with all the
Old-World paganisms, some of which shot out into new and strange forms,
generally of the northern type, hiding sensualism under a cloak of
religion, as in the Oneida community and the Mormons, the latter going
directly into the ancient pagan channel in their anthropomorphic
conception of God.
But besides this pagan element—the more insidious because scarcely
suspected by most, and which many even now would treat as absolutely
null for evil—the country was, in its aboriginal inhabitants, utterly
pagan; and within our limits the remnant of those nations and tribes
which now represent the original occupants are to a very great extent as
pagan as they were three centuries ago. Even where tribes have been
converted to Christianity, and been for a long series of years under
Christian teachers, a pagan element often remains, nurtured in secret,
and heathen rites are practised with the utmost fidelity by many who
keep up the semblance of being faithful worshippers of the true God.
This crypto-paganism is termed by the Spanish writers in Mexico
nagualism, and, from its secret character, formed one of the greatest
afflictions of the missionaries, eating out the very heart of the
apparently flourishing tree planted by the toil and watered by the blood
of the earlier heralds of the Gospel.
Another pagan element came with the negro slaves—barbarous men torn from
Africa, without culture, imbued with the most degrading superstitions of
fetichism, and believers in the power of intercourse with the evil
spirits whom they dreaded and invoked. In the utter disregard of their
moral welfare which prevailed in the English colonies, no attempt was
made in colonial days to eradicate their pagan ideas and to instil
Christian principles; on the contrary, efforts were actually made to
prevent their instruction and baptism, from an idea that Christianity
was incompatible with a condition of slavery.
In time the negro slaves and their descendants imitated externally the
religious manner of their white masters, but their old fetichism was
maintained, with the invocation of evil spirits and attempted
intercourse with them. The more Christianity in any form penetrated
among these people, the more this pagan element assumed a secret
character, until it became, as it is in our day in the West Indies and
the South, under the name of vaudoux or voodoo worship, the secret pagan
religion of the negro and mixed races.
Another pagan element—which cannot be called cryptic, because it meets
the full meridian blaze of day, as though it were a thing entitled to
existence and protection without limit or check—is the Buddhic worship
of the Chinese, with perhaps the less debasing ancient paganism of that
nation. Temples arise and pagan worship is carried on before hundreds of
altars, chiefly on the Pacific slope. This, with the degraded morals of
the heathenism it represents, forms a question difficult to solve, and
exciting grave attention not only in California, but in other parts of
the country.
The facility with which Mormonism has gained hundreds of thousands of
votaries to its monstrous doctrines, and the difficulty under our system
of laws of counteracting its influence, leaving its suppression simply
to the general condemnation it receives from the public opinion of the
country, convince all thinking men that it is a great and serious danger
to the well-being of our country in the future. It lies between the
unchecked, uncensured paganism of the Chinese in California and the
heathenism of the wild Indian tribes, the nagualism of the New Mexican
Pueblos, and, still further east, the voodooism of the negro. Who can
foresee the fearful creation of evil that the Prince of Darkness may
form out of this material ready to his hand? Buddhism overran nations of
various origin, civilization, and mode of life—the lettered Chinese, the
nobler Japanese, the wild Tartar; it has adaptability, as seen in its
assuming external Christian dress and ideas, taken from early envoys of
the faith. Mormonism shows a vitality and a power of extension that none
who remember its origin could, at the time it arose, have believed
within the limits of possibility. The voodoo mysteries permeate through
a population numbered by millions. If nagualism and Indian paganism
exist only among tribes rapidly hurrying to extinction, these tribes
have shown in some cases recuperative power, and, fostered by the
stronger heathen elements, may revive sufficiently to be a source of
mischief. It may be said that, except in the case of the Mormons, this
element is confined to inferior races—the Mongolian, negro, and
Indian—and cannot affect the mass of the American people; but this is
really not the fact, as in almost every case whites living near the
inferior races do actually imbibe some of these pagan superstitions and
become believers in them and in their power, while the spread of the
so-called spiritualism through all classes in this country shows at once
a vehicle for the propagation of any form of diabolism that may rise up
with dazzling powers of attraction.
The influence of crypto-paganism on the whites can be seen in our
history. The New England settlers made comparatively short work of the
native tribes, who were in their eyes Chanaanites not to be spared.
But though they slaughtered the men, women were saved, and not always
from motives that will stand too close a scrutiny. Indian women became
slaves in the houses of the New England colonists. If there was any
outward conformity to Christian usage, most of them remained at heart
as heathen as ever. The Indians of almost every known tribe avowedly
worshipped the Spirit of Evil. North and South missionaries found the
natives acknowledge and justify this practice. As a rule they admitted
a Spirit of Good, but, as they argued, being inherently good, he could
do only good to them, and need not be propitiated; whereas the Spirit
of Evil continually sought to injure men, and must necessarily be
propitiated to ward off the intended scourge. This adoration of the
Evil One, and the attempt to propitiate him, win his favor, and do his
will, the Indian slaves bore with them in their bondage. What New
England witchcraft really was—diabolic, delusion, or imposture—has
never been settled. No sound Catholic divine versed in mystic theology
has ever, to our knowledge, marshalled and sifted the facts, and the
evidence cited to support them, in order to come to any reasonable
theory in the matter. New England of the seventeenth century firmly
believed it diabolical; New England of the nineteenth century as
dogmatically decides that it was delusion or imposture; but,
unfortunately, neither seventeenth-century nor nineteenth-century New
Englandism can be deemed a very safe guide, and each is condemned by
the other and admits its liability to err, although both had the same
energy for forcing their opinions for the time being on all mankind.
But, whatever the real character of New England witchcraft was, one
thing is certain: Indian crypto-paganism was at the root of it. Tituba,
the Indian servant of Samuel Parris, the minister of Salem, practised
wild incantations and imbued the daughter and niece of her master with
her whole system of diabolism. The strange actions of the children
excited alarm. Tituba was arraigned as a witch and confessed her
incantations; but the devil protects his own. Witchcraft trials began,
and Tituba and her fellow Indian slaves, who must have quaked for the
moment, saw themselves, not punished, but used as witnesses, until more
than a hundred women were apprehended and most of them committed to
prison. It did not end there. The gallows was to play its part. Nineteen
were hanged, and one Giles Corey was pressed to death. If Tituba invoked
her demon to avenge his fallen votaries in her tribe, she was gratified
by beholding the victorious whites murder each other at her instance.
Neither Tituba nor any other of the Indians, though they avowed their
intercourse with the fallen spirits, was tried or condemned for
witchcraft. What took place in the Parris household took place in
hundreds of others where Indian slaves were kept, as in our time in the
South. Thousands of children have there been imbued by their negro
nurses with the pagan obeah and voodoo superstitions, as doubtless on
the Pacific slope many a mother is horrified to find her child’s mind
filled with the grossest heathenism by the Chinese servant, and fondly
hopes she has disabused her little one, when, in reality, the faith and
the terror then implanted in the child’s susceptible mind will last
through life, burned into the very soul by the vivid impression
produced.
A Catholic may say that the grace of baptism will protect many from this
evil; but, alas! to how many thousands of families in this land is
baptism a stranger! In them there is nothing to check the insidious
progress of evil.
The Huron nation was converted to Christianity by the early Catholic
missionaries, and the Iroquois were induced by them to abandon the
worship of their evil spirit Tharonhyawagon, or Agreskoue, whose name
even seems to be unknown to the present so-called pagan bands, who
worship the God of the Christians, but with strange heathenish rites.
The vices prevalent among the Hurons of Ohio, nominal Catholics in the
last century, show that secret worship of evil spirits still prevailed.
All know how the medicine-men have maintained their ground among the
Chippewas, Ottawas, and other Algonquin tribes on the borders of the
great lakes, although Catholic missionaries began their labors among
them two centuries ago. Whenever for a time Catholicity has seemed to
gain a tribe, any interruption of the mission for a brief period seems
to revive the old diabolism. There are medicine-men now with votaries as
earnest as any whom Dablon, Marquette, and Allouez tried to convert in
the seventeenth century. But data are wanting for a full consideration
of the subject as to these and other northern tribes.
Of the nagualism in the Texas tribes after their conversion by the
Franciscan missionaries we have evidence in the life of Father Margil, a
holy and illustrious laborer in that field. The tribes among whom he and
his compeers labored have vanished, but the Pueblo Indians of New Mexico
still remain. The succession of missionaries became irregular; no bishop
visited those parts to confirm the converts; the revolutions following
that which separated Mexico from Spain almost utterly destroyed the
Indian missions of New Mexico. Then the nagualism which had been
evidently maintained from the first by a few adepts and in great secrecy
became bolder; and these tribes, whose conversion dates back nearly
three centuries, revived the old paganism of their ancestry, mingled
with dreams of Montezuma’s future coming, taught them by the Mexican
Indians who accompanied the first Spanish settlers.
Father Margil once asked some Indians: “How is it that you are so
heathenish after having been Christians so long?” The answer was: “What
would you do, father, if enemies of your faith entered your land? Would
you not take all your books and vestments and signs of religion, and
retire to the most secret caves and mountains? This is just what our
priests, and prophets, and sooth-sayers, and nagualists have done to
this time and are still doing.” Experience showed, too, that this
worship of the evil spirit assumed the form of various sects, some
imitating the Catholic Church in having bishops, priests, and
sacraments, which they secretly administered to consecrate their victims
to Satan before they received the real ones from the hands of the
missionaries.
All those who have studied at all the pueblos of New Mexico describe to
some extent the nagual rites, some of which are indeed hidden under the
veil of secrecy in their estufas, but others are more open and avowed.
Colonel Meline, after noting the execution of two men accused of
witchcraft and sacrificing children, says of the Pueblos generally “that
they are more than suspected of clinging to and practising many of their
ancient heathen rites. The estufa is frequently spoken of as their
heathen temple.”[1]
Footnote 1:
Meline, _Two Thousand Miles on Horseback_, pp. 225-226.
A report addressed to the Cortes in Spain by Don Pedro Bautista Pino in
1812 says: “All the pueblos have their estufas—so the natives call
subterranean rooms with only a single door, where they assemble to
perform their dances, to celebrate feasts, and hold meetings; these are
impenetrable temples where they gather to discuss mysteriously their
good or evil fortunes, and the doors are always closed on the Spaniards.
“All these pueblos, in spite of the sway which religion has had over
them, cannot forget a part of the beliefs which have been transmitted to
them, and which they are careful to transmit to their descendants. Hence
come the adoration they render the sun and moon, and other heavenly
bodies, the respect they entertain for fire, etc.”[2]
Footnote 2:
_Noticias._, pp. 15, 16.
“The Pueblo chiefs seem to be at the same time priests; they perform
various simple rites by which the power of the sun and of Montezuma is
recognized, as well as the power (according to some accounts) of the
Great Snake, to whom, by order of Montezuma, they are to look for life.
They also officiate in certain ceremonies with which they pray for rain.
There are painted representations of the Great Snake, together with that
of a misshapen, red-haired man declared to stand for Montezuma. Of this
last there was also in the year 1845, in the pueblo of Laguna, a rude
effigy or idol, intended, apparently, to represent only the head of the
deity.”[3]
Footnote 3:
Bancroft, _Native Races_, iii. 173, 174.
Others portray their setting up of idols or mementos of their national
deities, and surrounding them with circles of stones, repairing to the
spot regularly to pray.
The Pueblos thus show, after nearly three centuries of Catholic
instruction, almost ineradicable elements of heathenism.
Of the real interior life of other tribes we know comparatively little:
but by the example of so-called prophets who arise from time to time in
one part or another, giving new life to the old heathenism, borrowing
some idea from Christianity, and using their new creed as a means to
excite a great national feeling, we see clearly that in the Indian mind
the old worship, though dormant and concealed, has still a power and
mastery.
To this deep-rooted feeling the Mormons have appealed, and succeeded in
drawing large numbers within the circle of their influence. Almost all
the Indian wars are stimulated by some prophet promising victory and the
triumph of the old Indian beliefs.
The Cherokees have embraced many usages of civilization, and the
Choctaws approach them. The Chickasaws, the other great tribe in Indian
Territory, retain more of their old manners. In all these tribes
Protestantism has gained a hearing and has a few church members; but
there are strong pagan parties, and even among the Christian part there
is undoubtedly a strong old heathen element beneath an outward
conformity to Christianity. It was strongly urged on Congress a few
years since to erect this tract into a recognized territory of Oklahoma,
with a government like that of other Territories, preparatory to its
admission as a State. The outbursts of savage fury between factions in
the tribes, however, made men hesitate to give autonomy to them.
Investigation will, we think, show that crypto-paganism largely controls
this mass of native Indians, and is the great obstacle to their
improvement. It is, however, confined to themselves, and we do not find
that even in New Mexico the whites of Spanish origin have, during their
long residence near the pueblos, adopted to any extent the heathenish
usages of those tribes. The isolation of the nations in Indian Territory
has also prevented any great external influence. Thus this Indian
crypto-paganism, though wide-spread and unbroken, seems doomed, unless
taken in hand by some master-spirit.
The voodoo worship of the negroes shows greater vitality and
diffusiveness. The slaves taken in early times to St. Domingo came from
all parts of Africa, some from the fiercest tribes addicted to human
sacrifices and cannibalism. They brought over their demonic worship, and
by their force of character propagated it among the negroes generally.
It became the great religion of the slaves, was secretly practised, and
exercised a very powerful influence. As a secret society, with terrible
forms of initiation and bloody rites, it became a power in Hayti, and
has caused more than one revolution. Cases of the offering up of infants
in sacrifice, and devouring the victims, were exposed a few years since,
and numbers were arrested. Some were put to death, but the power of the
organization was unbroken, and Soulouque, if we are not mistaken, was
said to have owed his power to the voudoux.
St. Domingo was part French and part Spanish, and in time voodooism
spread from the French portion of the island, where it seems to have
originated, to the Spanish division, and thence to Cuba.
In this latter island it exists to this day, and has found votaries
among the whites. A recent French traveller—Piron—describes a fearful
scene which he witnessed in the house of a lady whom he never would have
suspected of any connection with so monstrous a sect. A naked white girl
acted as a voodoo priestess, wrought up to frenzy by dances and
incantations that followed the sacrifice of a white and a black hen. A
serpent, trained to its part, and acted on by the music, coiled round
the limbs of the girl, its motions studied by the votaries dancing
around or standing to watch its contortions. The spectator fled at last
in horror when the poor girl fell writhing in an epileptic fit.[4]
Footnote 4:
Piron, _L’Ile de Cuba_, pp. 48-52.
While France held St. Domingo and Louisiana the intercourse between the
two colonies was constant, and voodooism took root on the banks of the
Mississippi soon after its settlement. The early historian of Louisiana,
Le Page du Pratz, says: “The negroes are very superstitious and attached
to their prejudices and to charms which they call grisgris. These should
not be taken from them or spoken about; for they would think themselves
ruined, were they deprived of them. The old negro slaves soon disabuse
them.”[5] These old negroes were scarcely, it will be confessed,
apostles to convert idolaters. In fact, their influence extended only to
inducing the new-comers to practise their rites and use the symbols in
secrecy.
Footnote 5:
_Hist. de la Louisiane_, i. p. 335.
Le Page du Pratz himself, in defeating a negro plot to massacre the
colonists at New Orleans as the Indians had done at Natchez, found that
they attributed their defeat to his being a devil—that is, possessing
one more powerful than their own. The voodoo rites have been kept up in
Louisiana from the commencement, and the power exercised by the priests
and priestesses of this horrible creed is very great. Working in secret,
with all the terrors of mystery and threats of bodily harm, it is just
suited to the negro mind, and has spread over much of the South. As in
Cuba and St. Domingo, the white children in many cases learn of it from
their negro nurses, and the weak, as they grow up, never shake off its
hold on their imagination. Human sacrifices are certainly offered in
their infamous rites, and the escape of an old negro doomed to the
sacrificial altar drew down upon the voodoos the police of New Orleans
only a few years ago.
The Abbé Domenech[6]—whom we should hesitate to cite, were not his
accounts here in conformity with numerous others—represents voodooism as
having not only spread through Texas, but into Mexico where, in a
depraved border community, its horrid rites and secret poisonings are
carried on. His details as to the mode of worship in New Orleans—the
nudity, the use of serpents, the dances—correspond with the accounts
given from Cuba. Reports from Mobile attest its existence there with
similar features.
Footnote 6:
_Missionary Adventures in Texas and Mexico._
Where voodooism prevails it has not only its adepts and votaries, but a
large class who, full of terror, buy at exorbitant prices from voodoo
priests charms against its spells.
The late war has given the negroes opportunities for education and a
future, but the new prosperity has not broken the power of voodooism. Of
a thing kept secret and hidden, which many will deny and more be ashamed
of, it is not easy to get precise data or details. Yet from time to time
revelations are made attesting its vitality. A negro member of the
Louisiana Legislature, and a minister in one of the Protestant
denominations, was reported within a few years as undergoing certain
rites to free himself from the spell of a voodoo priestess. We may
therefore easily infer that the negroes, being not only self-governing,
but governing the whites in many parts by force of numbers, are not
likely to be influenced so much by whites as by the crafty and aspiring
among themselves. They will concentrate, and in their concentration this
voodoo power cannot but increase and all vestiges of Christianity
disappear. The field upon which it can work—the vast colored population
of the South—is ready for it. Some may think the whole matter a shallow
imposture that will soon die out before the effulgence of newspapers;
but it really shows no signs of decline, and, if no cases have been
unearthed which show such frightful enormities as those in Hayti, it is
certainly attended with ceremonies which, for their very indecency and
pampering of the worst vices, should cause it to be rooted out, even by
those who would regard the direct worship of the devil as something with
which the state cannot interfere.
Open the map of the United States, and see how a band of country from
the Atlantic to the Pacific is thus permeated by heathenism. In the
Southern States the voodoo worship; New Mexico and Indian Territory with
nagualism; Utah with Mormonism; California with Buddhism. Throughout
this tract the church planted there from one to three centuries is still
weak, and, except in California, is not gaining ground with any
rapidity. Everywhere Catholic influence is less potent than others. The
very climate, enervating and disposing to ease and indulgence, seems to
lend power to systems that gratify the passions which the church teaches
her children to mortify and control.
It looks as though the Prince of Evil were seeking to form a kingdom for
himself, combining all the elements for his evil spirits to carry on the
war of conquest. St. Jude represents Satan as endeavoring to secure the
body of Moses, doubtless to lead the Jews into idolatry and make them
worship him. If he tried to induce even our Lord to fall down and
worship him, we cannot wonder that he should try to induce weak men to
do so. St. Paul constantly represents to us our struggle in life as a
war against the evil spirits. St. Ignatius, in the “Exercise of the Two
Standards,” pictures Satan as arrayed against our Lord with all his
hosts. The battle seems to take actual form, and we should be prepared
for it. In this battle we have powerful auxiliaries placed at our
command, in the persons of the angelic powers, and though the church,
through her whole liturgy and offices, reminds us of their ministry and
invokes their aid,[7] we seem to be forgetful of their existence, and go
into the fight unaided by forces at our command—forces never defeated,
and ready to meet our call. What wonder that we are often worsted? Our
books of devotion give a single prayer to our guardian angel. Few think
beyond this. The angel guardians of the country, of our city, of our
church, our home, of our family, of those committed to our charge, are
all fighting for us, earnestly if we seek their aid. St. Michael, the
guardian angel of the Jewish nation, defeated Satan’s attempt to use the
body of Moses for his wicked designs. So in our day the greater
manifestation of diabolical agencies should lead us to ask God to send
his angels to our aid. The parents, in training and protecting from evil
the children given to them, have mighty coadjutors in the angels of
these very children, the teacher in those of his scholars, the pastor in
those of his flock. There may be saints to whom we have a special
devotion; but in the angels we have powerful spirits directly deputed by
God to aid us, and whose duty it is, as it were, to combat by our side
against the enemies of salvation.
Footnote 7:
Thus in the Mass she asks that the offerings be carried on high by the
angels; in the Asperges, and Complin she begs God to send down his
angels to cherish, guard, and protect all within the building; in the
Itinerary she calls St. Raphael especially to protect all who travel;
in the baptismal service she asks God to send an angel to guard the
catechumen and lead him to the grace of baptism; in Extreme Unction,
to give all dwelling, in the house a good angel guardian; the
Commendation of the Departing Soul is a constant appeal to the holy
angels; and the prayer after death asks that the departed soul may be
received by the holy angels and brought to Paradise, her real country.
She even asks that an angel be deputed to guard the grave.
But we are not giving a devotional treatise: or attempting to propose
any new form. Our country is dear to us, and, although it were too
sanguine to hope that in the days of any now living the true faith will
reach such a point that its influence will be marked on the public mind
and heart, we cannot be insensible to the apparently formidable
gathering of heathen elements in a section of country where the very
climate seems to lend them new force in building up a great empire of
paganism.
A new impulse has been given to our Indian missions, which, owing,
doubtless, to causes easy of explanation, have never received from the
Catholic body at large in the United States the moral and temporal aid
they so richly deserved. In fact, the missionaries labored on, almost
ignored and forgotten, so that an attempt was made through the
instrumentality of the federal government to crush them out altogether.
This has roused Catholics to an interest in them, and this interest
should be kept up. By prayer, by alms, by direct aid, we must help the
missionaries and their coadjutors, the devoted religious women in the
missions, to fight the good fight, and root out, so far as lies in us,
the paganism of the Indian tribes, where still avowed or cloaked under
an external show of Christianity.
On another paganism, that of the Chinese, and on that of the Mormons, we
cannot apparently act yet directly, but we can meet them by prayer, and
in the regions infected Catholics should exercise the utmost vigilance
that this pagan influence should never enter their households, lest
their children, if not themselves, may at last imitate the wisest of
kings, not in his wisdom, but in his idolatry.
The great and festering sore of voodooism afflicting the negroes calls
for all our zeal, as Catholics, to help the bishops and clergy in the
South, and the English society which has entered this field, by prayer,
by material aid, by earnest and sustained efforts to preserve the purity
of faith among colored Catholics. The Church in the Southern States,
crippled by the disasters of the late war, is entirely unable to cope
single-handed with the new duty imposed upon it by the altered condition
of affairs. She appeals to us, and as Catholics we cannot remain deaf to
her call.
ST. FRANCIS OF ASSISI.
O love! you lay the volume by
That held you like a holy chime—
_Life of St. Francis_—with a sigh
Which says: “That was a pleasant time
In old Perugia’s mountain-town
On the Umbrian valley looking down—
Flushed like an Eden in sublime
Environment of mountains vast;
And do not you, as I, recall
What, morn and even, and first and last,
Attracted most of all?
“The peaks of Apennine we knew
By heart—the many-citied land
Where-through the infant Tiber drew
A thousand streams in silver band,
Filled with the murmur of the pines
That told the olives and the vines
They heard the sea on either hand.
But, kindled on its lofty cape,
A light-tower to that inland coast
O’er waves of greenwood, corn, and grape,
What object charmed us most?
“Assisi seated in the sun!
All round from Monte Sole’s height
The insistent fascination
Of its white walls enthralled our sight.
And moon and starlight on its slope
Showed but a dimmer heliotrope.
We watched it many a mellow night:
Once when a warrior comet came,
And flashed, in high heaven opposite,
A sheathless sword of pallid flame.
Drawn from out the infinite.
“To sweet St. Francis’ native town,
Alas! we made no pilgrimage;
Nor to St. Mary’s, lower down,
His Portiuncula hermitage.
We knew but by its star-like shine
The splendors of Assisi’s shrine,
In mystic triple stage on stage.
It only asked one summer’s day—
How strange it seems in you and me!—
That narrow vale of Umbria
Made severance like the sea.”
O gentle wife! I cannot tell
To wistful eyes of retrospect
What _dolce far niente’s_ spell,
In that midsummer, caused neglect;
What imp, procrastination hight,
Seduced us when we meant no slight.
In life, all paradox and defect,
Easy is difficult—the friend
Next door to visit—duties small,
To be done any day, that end
In not being done at all.
“How can this trite philosophy
Console me in my great regret?”
Nay, love, look not so tearfully,
And we will find some comfort yet.
What figure, think you, in those streets
The gentle, loving youth repeats,
Singing his gay French canzonet?
Doth either temple’s sumptuous pride
Suit stone and crust for bed and board,
And bridegroom joyful in his bride—
The poverty of our Lord?
O brown serge holier than the cope!
Was mystery veiled in long-sleeved gown?
And awful was his girdle-rope?
Were skirts that swept his ankles brown?
Bore he, in hands and feet and side,
The five wounds of the Crucified?
Did high God send his seraph down,
On the lone mount, to imprint such sign?
His brethren wondered, overawed;
Yet not even this made more divine
That sweet-souled man of God!
O happy swallows! circling skim
And twitter o’er the gray church-towers.
He called you sisters; ye with him
Chirped sweetly when he sang the Hours.
And ye, his brothers innocent,
With whom he talked where’er he went,
Play, lamb and leveret, in the flowers!
Wise foolishness and melting ruth—
That move deep chords, O love! in you—
Born of child-instincts, or a truth
He and the angels knew!
“O Sun, my brother above all!
Stars, Sister Moon, in praise accord.
Chaste, humble, useful, precious, full,
O Sister Water, freely poured!
Robust and jocund, strong and bright,
O Brother Fire! illume the night.
Live tongues of beauty, praise the Lord!
O Brother Wind! thy wonders weave
In clouds and the blue sky above,
Wherefrom all creatures life receive,
And weave them all of love.
“Confess the Lord, O Mother Earth!
Through whom so beautiful thou art.
To herb, fruit, flower, he giveth birth
And color from Love’s eyes and heart.
Serve God!” he sang. His sermons good,
Dear to shy creatures of the wood,
Could even to bole and branch impart
Their glowing sense: a conscious soul
Kin to his own in all things moved.
His monument is grand—the whole
Creation that he loved.
O Life, that sought to imitate
The one pure type, its perfect Chief,
By its own purity separate
As is the dew-drop on a leaf,
Which yet doth from its luminous veil
A glory to the flower exhale!
Close sympathy with no touch of grief!
Let fair Assisi on its slope,
An unremote yet reachless star,
Lend to our hearts another trope,
So near and yet so far.
O Poet, who in faltering rhyme
First wove the Tuscan into song!
O poem and miracle sublime,
Thyself, in Dante sweet and strong!
To his fourth circle of Paradise,
To the King-splendor of the skies,
Dost thou, the elder seer, belong.
Thee “Sister Death” hath glorified;
And what an image we have won:
Through kindled mists of mountain-side,
Assisi in the sun!
SIX SUNNY MONTHS.
BY THE AUTHOR OF “THE HOUSE OF YORKE,” “GRAPES AND THORNS,” ETC.
CHAPTER XI.
A MORNING WITH ST. PETER.
As the day approached for their visit to the crypt of St. Peter, Mr.
Vane absented himself very much from the house, and the last day was
spent entirely away, from early in the morning till late in the evening.
They understood that he was to make his First Communion with them, but
asked no questions, leaving him entirely free, and he gave no
explanation. The Signora and the two daughters made a Triduum for him in
the mornings; and so deeply did they feel the event for him that they
looked forward to their own Communion almost as if it were to be their
first, and lived as though in retreat for two or three days.
“I feel,” Bianca said, “as if I had been having clandestine interviews
with some one outside the house, and that now papa were going to invite
him home, and make a feast in his honor. Dear papa! how very good he is;
how much better than his daughters!”
She would have been quite shocked and alarmed had any one told her that
she entertained such a sentiment, but there was, in fact, in her heart
an undercurrent of pride in her father’s piety, and a feeling that the
Lord would certainly be particularly pleased with him.
At length the day dawned, the sweet bells of Santa Maria Maggiore, the
slipshod bells of Sant’ Antonino, all the bells in hearing, ringing
their three, four, five, and one out of the white silence of the aurora.
The Signora smiled to hear, through the open doors, Isabel start awake
at the sound, and exclaim in her clear voice: “The angel of the Lord
declared unto Mary.”
“I really must not have such a preference for Bianca,” she said to
herself, “especially now when Bianca has a lover. Isabel is very honest
and earnest.”
The Alba turned to a rosy silver, the silver deepened to gold, the north
and west were Tyrian purple, and the sun was on the eastern horizon,
painting the long lines of the aqueducts, and the billows of the
Campagna, and the towers, high roofs, and cupolas of the city with a
fiery pencil. A flock of goats pattered by in the street, to be milked
at the doors; hand-carts piled with fruit were dragged slowly in from
some garden near the walls; three men walked slowly past, in single
file, with large baskets on their heads piled with rich flowers. The
perfume of them came up to the window as the Signora leaned out. A
wine-cart came slowly down from the Esquiline piazza, laden high with
small barrels and half and quarter barrels, brought in by night to the
Roman shops from cool grottoes in the Castelli Romani, set here or there
on the beautiful mountains that were now a velvety blue under the
eastern sky. At the back of this cart was perched high the little white
dog, with his nose on his paws, and his eyes half shut, but all ready to
start up with a sharp bark if any one but looked hard at his precious
load. In front, under the side awning, slept the driver. The horse
dreamed along through the morning, and the little bunch of bells slung
to the cart jingled softly as they went.
“It is certainly earth, but a most beautiful earth,” the Signora
thought, sighing with content, as she went out to fasten the girls’
veils on for them.
“There is no need of putting on gloves,” she said, seeing Isabel drawing
hers on. “Didn’t you know, child, that one should not wear gloves when
going to Communion?”
“Live and learn,” said Isabel, and took her gloves off again. “I have
had a doubt on the subject, but I never knew.”
“Another little item you may not know,” the Signora said. “The
_canonico_ being a bishop, you have to kiss his ring before receiving.
He will himself touch it to your lips after he has taken the Host in his
finger and thumb to give you. When I first came here, I was embarrassed
by many of these customs, which everybody here takes for granted, you
know.”
Nothing could be pleasanter than Mr. Vane’s manner that morning—serious
and quiet, but less grave, even, than usual. Seeing Isabel’s eyes fixed
anxiously on him while the Signora spoke, he smiled and said: “I am glad
your education is not quite finished, my dear. I am still more ignorant,
and you must all teach me. I wish, Signora, that you would be so good as
to stay by me this morning, so that, if I should be in doubt, I may look
at you. I think you would be more correct and prompt than the children
here.”
“Certainly,” she said, “I will be near you.”
The porter had sprinkled and swept the stairs just before they went
down, and the place was shaded, fresh, and cool. Carlin was whistling to
his baby while his wife prepared breakfast—a whistling as soft and clear
as the song of a bobolink. The other birds adopted him, and answered him
back from the garden, a little surprised, it may be, at the length and
smoothness of his carol. The air was so richly scented with
orange-flowers that one might almost have thought worth while to bottle
it, and there was a rustling sound, exquisitely cool and pervading, of
falling water. In a shady corner near the door of the porter’s room was
a tiny brazier with a handful of glowing coals in it, and over this
Augusto was making his early cup of coffee. Out doors everything shone
with a golden color—the light, the houses, the streets—and in that frame
the sky was set like a gem, so blue that it could be compared to
nothing, and nothing could approach it.
They did not look about as they drove slowly through the city, but,
leaning back silent, had a mingled sense of Rome and heaven. It was
impossible for any of them to imagine anything more perfect, or to ask
for any addition to their happiness. Earth and heaven had united to
bless them, and every gift of earth worth the taking was theirs. To have
been sovereigns would have oppressed them; to have had millions at their
disposal would have been a care and annoyance. They had enough, and
their cup was running over.
The narrow streets were beginning to stir as they passed, and some were
dim, and all were in shade. Not a ray of sunshine touched them, except
in the piazzas, till they reached the bridge of Sant’ Angelo. Then all
was light, for the sun shot straight on through the Borgo, and all the
piazza of St. Peter’s was in a blaze. They were almost faint with the
heat as they walked up the ascent; but in a few minutes they were inside
the sacred door, where, before entering, summer and winter meet to give
the kiss of peace on the threshold, and the one quenches her fiery
arrows, and the other warms his frosty breath.
Not a person was in sight as they went in, but they heard, faintly and
far away, the mingled voices of the choir coming and going. The circle
of ever-burning lamps twinkled like a constellation before them, and
invited their steps. Half way up they paused before the chapel of the
Blessed Sacrament, which is an exception to the cheerful grandeur of St.
Peter’s. For this dim chapel gives a sense of remoteness and mystery,
and the inner chamber, from which the eyes can see no outlet, seems to
lead to some edifice still more vast; as though St. Peter’s were life
and day, but here was the way to death and night, yet a way not gloomy
and dreadful, but only solemn and mysterious. The Baptistery is merely
dark, and produces no such impression.
When they reached the bronze statue, the ladies kissed the foot and
passed on, but Mr. Vane stood thoughtfully there for some time before
following. And even then he did not pay the accustomed homage to the
venerable image. His soul had saluted it, may be; but he was of a
different sort from those who have the act of reverence always ready,
whether the heart move or not; who will kiss the relic between the
kisses of the shameless, and touch what is holy with lips that have just
lied, and which are prompt to lie again. This man’s outward devotion was
ever the blossom of a plant that grew in his heart, and filled it so
that the act was an overflowing.
Marion was already waiting for them at the grand altar. They recognized
each other silently, and seated themselves on the steps to wait, being
early. The Signora placed herself beside Mr. Vane, and, noticing that he
drew a deep breath, and looked about with a glance that took in their
position there in the centre of that immense cross, she pointed upward
where the dome, glorious with light and color, rested on the legend that
had turned the face of the world: “_Thou art Peter, and on this rock I
will build my church. And I will give thee the keys of the kingdom of
heaven._” The legend ran in a circle of gigantic letters rimmed with
gold, and the circle and the dome were as the ring and mitre of the
church let down from heaven, and hovering in air over the ashes of the
first pontiff.
A Mass was being said at the altar directly before them, at the end of
the south transept, but not a sound of it reached them. They saw
indistinctly the priest, and the mosaic crucifixion of St. Peter over
the altar. They heard the _coro_, now swelling loudly in a brave, manly
chant as the whole chapter joined, now sinking in a cadence, now fine
with a boy’s clear treble. The bronze canopy above them glittered in
every gilded point, the twisted columns that supported it soaring like
flame and smoke entwined. The wreath of lamps about the confession was
as bright as the ever-burning flames within them, and the polished
marble answered them back, blaze for blaze. Below—a frozen prayer—knelt
the guardian statue, its face turned to the screen behind which rest the
relics of St. Peter. Two or three persons, entering the church, looked
small as mice down the nave, and intensified the sense of magnificent
solitude about them. All this light and splendor seemed so independent
of, so superior to, human presence that human beings appeared to be only
permitted, not invited, to come. It was a temple for the invisible God.
“There is no outward difference,” the Signora said to Mr. Vane, “between
Catholicity and Protestantism which strikes me more than our ways of
going to church, and the reasons for going. Protestants go to hear a man
talk, and the man goes to talk to them. The affair is a failure if
either is missing; for the minister needs the people, and the people
need him. On the contrary, one person alone in a Catholic church may
accomplish a perfect act of worship. When the priest has offered up a
Mass, though no one assist, the world is better for it; and when a
worshipper has prayed all alone in the presence of the Blessed
Sacrament, he has performed a supreme act of piety. There is all the
difference between the dwelling-house of God and the house where people
go to talk about God.”
“I always felt as if there were too much wind in Protestantism,” Mr.
Vane said.
Presently a little company appeared coming out of the sacristy—two boys
in white _cotte_, the _canonico’s_ chaplain and another priest, also in
_cotte_, and, lastly, monsignor the _canonico_ himself, in a purple silk
soutane of a color so bright that it was almost red. They passed across
the basilica toward the pier of Veronica, and paused there at the
altar-rail till the Signora and her friends joined them. A pleasant
salutation was exchanged, and the Signora managed to whisper to the
_canonico_ that Mr. Vane was to make his First Communion that morning.
The beautiful face of the prelate brightened with a pleased surprise,
and he turned again and cordially offered his hand to the new convert,
who, to the delight of the ladies, bent and kissed the ring on it.
Then the boys lighted their wax tapers, and the party went in behind the
altar, down the narrow stair, and through the circling corridor, and
found themselves in the heart of St. Peter’s.
This chapel is a tiny place in comparison to the church above, but
capable of accommodating many more than the five who are permitted to
visit it at a time. Two persons could kneel abreast at each side of the
central passage, and four or five ranks, may be, might find room. The
end next the screen, visible in the confession from above, is open, the
altar being at the upper end, and the whole has not a ray of daylight.
From this chapel one can look back and see through the screen Canova’s
marble pontiff, and the ring of golden lamps on the railing of the
confession, and, perhaps, some worshippers kneeling outside the
sanctuary which one has had the privilege of entering. Directly overhead
are the grand altar and the dome.
The Signora took a _prie-dieu_ near the altar, motioning Mr. Vane to a
place beside her; the sisters knelt behind them at either side the
chapel; and Marion, quite apart, and behind the rest, leaned in a chair
and hid his face in his hands. He had been surprised into the situation,
and, though he had tried sincerely to do his best, was still a little
alarmed by it. Shaken out of his usual artistic mood, which regarded
first what appeared, and then peeped inside from without, he found
himself suddenly whirled into the centre, where, either from darkness or
from too much light—he knew not which—he could not see. It was one of
those moments of fear in persons who communicate seldom but sincerely,
which presently give place to the most perfect reassurance and peace.
The Mass was over. Monsignor laid aside his vestments, and knelt at a
_prie-dieu_ reserved for him; his chaplain placed a book on the desk
before him, and withdrew, and there was silence.
The church could do no more for them. She had brought them to St.
Peter’s tomb, and given them the Bread of angels.
It was impossible that the mind should not shake off the present and go
back to the time when the dust in the shrine before them lived, and
moved, and spoke, and when the invisible Lord in their breasts was the
visible Lord in the flesh, teaching, persuading, and suffering. The Lord
in their hearts said to the apostle in the shrine: “Wilt thou also go
away?” And the apostle answered him: “Lord, to whom shall we go?” And
again Peter said: “Lord, thou shalt never wash my feet.” And Jesus
answered him: “If I wash thee not, thou hast no part with me.” The Lord
in their hearts was he who stood in the palace of the high-priest, bound
and smitten upon the cheek, and Peter, standing by, denied that he knew
him. The pallid lamps shone on the face of the Master turned for one
reproachful look, and the red light of the coals burned up, as if the
very fire blushed, in the face of the cowardly follower. They saw the
seaside, where the risen Lord stood and called, and Peter, no longer a
coward, but on fire with love and joy, flung himself into the sea to go
to him. And yet again, in this memory which had become a presence and a
voice, the Lord spoke to Peter: “Lovest thou me?” And Peter answered him
once, and again, and, grieving, yet again: “Thou knowest that I love
thee.” And Jesus said to him: “Feed my lambs. Feed my sheep.”
O perfection of power and of obedience; for within this hour, which
memory, unrolling again her shrunken scroll, showed to be eighteen
centuries distant—within this hour both the sheep and the lambs had been
fed!
“I feel as though I had a garden in my heart,” Marion said to the
_canonico_ as they went up into the church again.
The two were walking slowly and last, and in speaking Marion bent and
kissed the prelate’s hand.
The hand held his a moment closely, and the _canonico_ replied: “Where
the Tree of Life is, there is always a garden.”
This conversation they had listened to between the Master and Peter
followed them down the church, whose splendors seemed rather like
virtues made visible than like any work of the hands of man. If they
should ever be so lost and ungrateful as to leave this fold, to whom,
indeed, should they go? And unless the Lord washed them from their sins,
surely they could have no part with him. They still saw the lessening
vision of the high-priest’s dim and solemn house as they passed down the
church and out through the first portal; then the second fell behind
them, and an Italian summer day caught them to its glowing breast.
“It seems to me,” the Signora said, “as if we had just been ordained,
and were being sent out as missionaries. Of course you go home to
breakfast with us, Marion,” she added.
“I was thinking of Fra Egidio this morning,” said Bianca softly, as they
drove home through the hot sunshine. “He used to say, instead of 'I
believe in God,’ 'I _know_ God.’”
“That blessed Fra Egidio!” struck in Isabel, who had lately been reading
about him. “He used to go into ecstasies, papa, whenever he heard the
names of God or of heaven. And when he went into the street, sometimes
people would call out, 'Fra Egidio, paradiso! paradiso!’ and instantly
he would be rapt into an ecstasy, and perhaps be lifted up into the air.
Why doesn’t some one go into ecstasies now at the thought of heaven?”
“Nobody prevents you, my dear,” her father said. “If you will be so lost
to the world and so given to God that the mere hearing his name will
lift you from the earth, so much the better.”
“You are quite right, papa,” she answered gently. “I had better look to
myself.”
He smiled and laid his hand tenderly on hers.
“I was particularly pleased with the account of the interview between
Fra Egidio and St. Louis,” the Signora said. “The king came incognito to
visit the ecstatic, and went to the convent in Perugia where he was
living. Fra Egidio, knowing supernaturally that he was there, and who he
was, went out to meet him. They fell on their knees on the threshold,
and embraced each other, and, after remaining for some time in that
silent embrace, rose and separated, without having uttered a word. That
was truly a heavenly meeting.”
Their attention was here attracted to a clergyman who walked slowly
along the shady side of their street, accompanied by his chaplain. This
prelate, the patriarch of Antioch, was of a venerable age, and wore a
long beard. He alone, perhaps, of all the prelates in Rome, appeared in
the street with the distinguishing marks of his rank—the chain and
cross, the red-purple stockings, sash, and buttons, and the green tassel
on his hat.
A little boy on the sidewalk caught sight of him, and instantly snatched
his cap off and ran to kiss the patriarch’s hand. The action was
perfectly natural and simple, and performed with a charming mixture of
reverence and confidence.
“How pretty it is!” exclaimed Isabel. “And there is another.”
A little girl had left her mother’s side, and run also to kiss the
patriarch’s hand as he passed. No idea seemed to have entered her curly
head that she was approaching too nearly a grand personage, or that he
would be annoyed or interrupted by her homage, any more than a crucifix
or a picture of Maria Santissima would have been.
“The Roman clergy have the sweetest manners with the poor,” the Signora
said; “and the highest dignitaries, when they are in public, are
approached with a facility which I found, at first, astonishing. I
recollect going to St. Agatha’s, the church of the Irish College, to the
Forty Hours, shortly after I came here. It is in a populous
neighborhood, as you know, and the streets swarm with children. A
clergyman came into the church and knelt at a _prie-dieu_ just in front
of me. There were a dozen or so children wandering about, and presently
they collected at this _prie-dieu_, and, sitting on the step or standing
at the desk, almost leaning on the priest’s shoulder, they stared at the
people and whispered to each other. I expected to see him send them away
or go away himself; but he only put his hands over his face and remained
immovable. I had almost a mind, for a minute, to go and speak to the
children, but, fortunately, did not. After a while, nervous, impatient
Yankee though I am, with a passion for an orderliness which strikes the
eyes, I began to see the beauty and true piety of this gentle behavior,
and to find something more edifying in that priest who suffered the
little ones to come near him, and near the Lord, than I should have
found if he had gone into an ecstasy before the Blessed Sacrament. It
was the sweetest charity. Indeed, much of that which seems to us to be
cowardice in the Romans is nothing but a spirit of gentleness fostered
by religion. They are non-combatants. The church found them a fiery and
warlike people, constantly committing deeds of violence, fond of
conquest, and impatient of control, and she has subdued them to
children. If they are too submissive to usurpation, that is better than
the other extreme. The lion has become the lamb, and the lamb is ever
the victim. And now here we are at home.”
Annunciata and Adriano had conspired to make the breakfast as festal as
possible, and had succeeded perfectly. But for the light west wind that
fluttered in at the still open windows, the air of the rooms would have
been too fragrant; and but for the long morning fast and drive, the
breakfast would have been too profuse. It was, in fact, both breakfast
and dinner, it being nearly noon when they sat down; and they sat two
hours talking before they separated. Just before they rose from the
table Annunciata came in, bearing a large dish covered with green
leaves, a smile of triumph on her face. She placed the dish in the
centre of the table, and looked at her mistress.
“_Brava!_” exclaimed the Signora. “Now, children, do you recognize that
leaf?” lifting one from the dish, and holding it up between a thumb and
finger. “Do you know what tree grows a hand for a leaf? Do you see the
shape?”
“'In the name of the prophet, figs!’” quoted Isabel.
“Yes, the first figs of the season, and perfect; just soft enough to
flatten on the plate and against each other, yet firm; and, withal,
sweeter than honey. You should see the woman who brings them to me—a
rosy, russet creature, with eyes as black as sloes, and pounds of gold
on her neck and hands. That gold she wears always. It is their way. She
has four gold chains, one hanging below the other, and each bearing a
medallion. Through these shines a large gold brooch. Her earrings are
immense hoops, and she wears gold rings on every finger, piled up to the
joints. She was once so ill that they thought best to give her Extreme
Unction, and, when the priest came to administer the sacrament, he found
her lying, pale and speechless, but with all her rings and lockets on.
These people do not value stones, but they glory in pure, solid gold.”
“Might it not be their dowry?” Mr. Vane asked.
“Very likely; sometimes it certainly is. Sometimes the dowry is in
pearls, and a _contadina_ will have strings and strings of them. I am
told, however, that the common people in Rome have a saying that pearls
are for butchers’ wives. I don’t know why, and one has been pointed out
to me as owning half a dozen strings of them. They are not a good
investment, however, for they are easy to spoil and easy to steal. A
very safe and sensible way for providing a girl’s dowry exists in one of
the towns near Rome. All along the river-bank is level land divided into
small lots. When a girl is born, the father buys one of these, if he is
able, and plants it full of a sort of tree that grows rapidly, and is
much used for certain kinds of wood-work. While the girl grows her dowry
grows; and when she marries, the trees are cut down and sold. I have
often wished that American fathers of families would make some provision
for their children when they are born, setting aside a sum, if it should
be ever so small, to increase with their years, and be a help in giving
them a start in the world. It seems a sin that parents should bring a
family of children into the world, all dependent on one life, and, if
that life be cut off, be thrown out helpless and unprovided for. How
often we see, by the death of a father whose labor or salary maintained
his family in comfort, the whole family plunged in distress and left
homeless! How would Bianca, here, like to have her dowry in pearls?”
“She has a mouth full of them,” said Marion hastily. He could not bear
that his lady should be thought in want of a dowry, when she was a
fortune in herself. “And those are not her only jewels.” He reached,
and, taking her hand, gathered together the little pink finger-tips like
a bunch of rosebuds. “She has ten rubies fit for a crown,” he said, and
touched his lips to the clustered fingers, while the girl laughed and
blushed.
Mr. Vane seemed to be struck with a sudden recollection. He put his hand
to his forehead and considered, then rose from his chair. “Wait a
minute,” he said, and went into his own room, where they heard him
opening his trunk, and searching about in it. Presently he returned with
a tiny morocco case. “It is the merest chance in the world that I did
not leave this in America,” he said. “I did not dream of bringing it.
Bianca’s mother left a pair of ear-rings for the girl who should marry
first.”
He opened the case and took them out—two large, pear-shaped pearls, of
exquisite lustre, hanging from a gold leaf, on which a small, pure
diamond glistened like a speck of water.
“And you could have such a treasure with you, and never say anything
about it!” the Signora exclaimed. “O the insensibility of men! And these
girls never saw the pearls before!”
She fastened the jewels in the pretty ears they were destined for.
“These are two gems you forgot in your enumeration, Marion,” she said.
“And, by the way, how fitting it is that, when the ears are shells,
there should be pearls hung in them!”
“I’m glad you think them so pretty,” Mr. Vane said with compunction. “I
really never did think of them before. Perhaps it was very stupid of
me.”
“On the contrary, it was very wise of you, papa,” Isabel said. “They are
a great pleasure to us all now; but if we had known of them, I should
now feel as if they had been taken away from me.”
“When you are engaged, you shall have a pair as pretty, if they are to
be found,” her father said.
They drank Bianca’s health; and, the talk still running on gems, Marion
told an incident of a ring which a friend of his had lost in the snow,
in some part of Germany, as he stood looking down on the town from a
hill outside. Several months afterward, going to the same spot, he saw
the ring at the top of a little plant. The first sprout had come up
inside it as it lay on the ground, and, growing, had lifted it, till it
stood almost a foot high, glistening round the green stem.
“What a disappointed little plant it must have been when its gold crown
was taken off!” the Signora said regretfully.
“It no doubt grew better without it,” Mr. Vane replied. “Besides, the
ring did not belong to it.”
It was the tiniest little intimation of a correction, and the Signora
was highly pleased. He saw the smile with which she received it, and was
content. Nothing can express more kindness than a gentle reproof, and
nothing can show more affection than to take pleasure in such a reproof.
When they had separated, the Signora went into the kitchen to give a
private and special commendation to Annunciata for her well-doing that
morning, and to glance at that part of her domain. She never omitted
this word of praise, and the faithful servant counted herself well paid
for any pains she could take when she had been assured that what she had
done had given pleasure.
This Roman kitchen was as little as possible like the New England
kitchen. Closets and pantries there were none; the single stone walls
did not admit of them. Two large cases of covered shelves took their
place. Instead of the trim range with its one fire-place, was a row of
five little furnaces, over each of which a dish could be set. A
sheet-iron screen extended out over these, like the hood of a chaise.
All the side of the chimney, where it extended into the room, shone with
bright copper and tin cooking vessels, hanging in rows. Underneath were
two baskets, one with charcoal, another with _carbonella_—the charred
little twigs from the baker’s furnaces, that can be kindled at a lamp.
One of the furnaces still had a glow of coals within it, and near by was
the feather fan that had been used to kindle and keep it bright. The
brick floor was as clean as sprinkling and sweeping could make it. They
never wash a floor in Rome, and only the fine marbles and mosaics ever
get anything better than that sprinkling and sweeping. The one window
looked across the court to the Agostinian convent attached to Sant’
Antonino, and to the little belfry with the two bells that never could
be made to strike the right number of times, and into the garden of the
_frati_, where rows of well-kept vegetables were drinking in the sun as
if it were wine.
This kitchen was quite deserted, except for the cat, who was standing,
with a very mild and innocent expression of countenance, close to the
closed door of a cupboard where meat was kept. She glanced calmly at the
Signora, and walked away slowly and with dignity.
“Where is Annunciata, Signor Abate?” inquired the Signora.
The cat turned and mewed with great politeness, but in an interrogative
tone, as who should say, “I beg your pardon?”
And then a splashing and bubbling of water from without reminded the
_padrona_ that her handmaiden was washing that day—was “at the
fountain,” as they express it.
“Why should I not go down for once and see how it seems there?” she
thought. “After all, this girl is dependent on me, lives with me, serves
me in everything, is at my call night and day, and I do not touch her
life except at certain points—the table, the cleanliness and order of
the house, and the errands she does for me outside. I don’t know much
about her, after all.”
She opened a door that she had never passed in the years she had lived
in that apartment, and descended a narrow stone stair that wound in a
steep spiral, lighted at each turn by a small hole pierced in the outer
wall. Down and down—it seemed interminable, but was, in reality, two
stories and a half. The landing was in a dim store-room a little below
the ground level, and used as a cellar. From this a passage and door led
into a small court enclosed between an angle of the house and a high
wall, like a room with the ceiling taken off. Here a spout of water
flowed into a double fountain-basin, where the girl stood washing and
beating linen on the stone border. As she worked, steadily, and too much
absorbed to see her mistress standing near her, tears rolled down her
face, and dropped one by one on the clothes in her hands.
The Signora looked a moment, astonished and shocked. Was this the girl
who had come and gone from early morning cheerfully at her bidding, and
who had smiled as she served the table within half an hour? She stood
awhile looking at her, then quietly withdrew, and, going up-stairs
again, rang a hand-bell from the window. Annunciata came up immediately,
quite as usual, with no sign of tears in her face, except a slight flush
of the eyelids, and made her usual inquiry: “_Che vuole?_”—What does she
wish for?
“I have several things to say,” her mistress replied. “I came out first
to thank you for having given us such a beautiful breakfast. Everything
was well done. I forgot you were at the fountain.”
The smile came readily, and with it the ready word: “It pleased
her?”—always the ceremonious third person.
“And now I want to ask you something,” the Signora went on kindly. “Sit
down. If you do not like to tell me, you need not. But I should be very
sorry if you had any trouble, especially anything in which I could help
you, and did not let me know. You have been crying. Are you willing to
tell me what is the matter?”
The girl looked as startled as if she had been caught in a crime, and
began to stammer.
“If it is something you do not want to tell me, I will not say any more
about it,” her mistress went on. “You have a right to your privacy, as I
have to mine. But if there is anything I can do for you, tell me
freely.”
There was a momentary struggle, then the tears started again, and all
the story came out. Annunciata had received, three days before, news of
the death of her only brother, who had died of fever in some little town
a day’s journey from Rome, and was already buried when she learned first
that he was sick.
The Signora listened with astonishment and compunction. For three days
this girl had gone about with a bitter grief hidden in her heart,
missing no duty, submitting, perhaps, to a little fault-finding now and
then, and weeping only when she believed herself unobserved, and all the
time, while she suffered, ministering to and witnessing the pleasures of
others.
“My poor girl, why did you not tell me at first?” she asked gently.
“Oh! why should I?” was the reply. “You were all so happy and you could
not bring the dead back.”
“I could have sympathized with you, and given you a few days’ rest,” the
Signora said. “I would not have allowed you to work.”
“It was better for me to work,” the girl replied, wiping her eyes. “I
should only have cried and worried the more, if I had been idle.”
There seemed nothing that could be done. That class of poor do not adorn
the resting-places of their dead, or the Signora would have paid the
cost; they do not wear mourning, or, again, she would have paid for it;
and this girl had no family to visit and mourn with. In her brother she
had lost all. The only service possible—and that she accepted
gratefully—was to have Masses said for the dead. That settled, the
Signora dismissed her to her work again, and shut herself into her
chamber, but not to sleep.
“O the unconscious, pathetic heroism of the suffering poor!” she
thought. “Where in the world have I a friend who would cover such a
grief with smiles rather than disturb my pleasure? Where in the world
does one see such patience under pain and hardship as is shown by the
poor? They sigh, but they seldom cry out in rebellion. They accept the
cross as their birthright, and both they and we grow to think that it
does not hurt them as it would hurt us. How clearly it comes upon me now
and then, why our Lord lived and sympathized with the poor, and why he
said it would be so hard for the rich to enter heaven!”
She was looking so serious and unrefreshed when the family gathered
again that they at once inquired the cause, and she told them.
“I feel as though I must have been lacking in some way,” she concluded,
“or a servant who has been with me so long, and who has no nearer friend
in the world than I am, would have come to me at once with her troubles.
If the relations between servants and employers are what they should be,
the servants should go to the master or mistress with all their joys and
sorrows, just as children go to their parents. I have been thinking that
there is one reason why, the world over, people are complaining of their
servants. They have contented themselves with simply paying their wages
and exacting their labor. There has been no sympathy. The association
has been simply like that of fish and fowl, instead of that of the same
creatures in different circumstances.”
“I have always thought that in America,” Mr. Vane said. “There is not a
country in the world, probably, where families have been, as a rule,
more disagreeable toward their servants, and servants so troublesome, in
consequence, to their employers. But I believe it is very seldom that a
good mistress or master does not make a good servant, so far as the will
goes.”
Seeing her still look downcast and troubled, he added: “You should not
reproach yourself. It is rather your kindness toward this girl which has
won such a devotion from her. If you had lacked in kindness and sympathy
toward her, she would have been far more likely to have shown her
trouble, and made it an excuse for not attending to her work as usual.”
“Do you think so?” she asked, brightening; and thought in her own mind,
“How very pleasant it is to be reassured when one is distressed about
things!”
And then later, when they heard Annunciata in the kitchen, the sisters
went out and spoke each a kind and pitying word to her, touching her
hard hand softly with their delicate ones; and when she came in later to
perform some service, Mr. Vane had also a word of sympathy. But,
greatest comfort of all, the Signora and Bianca went up to the Basilica
and arranged that a Mass should be said the next morning for the dead,
and Annunciata was told that she should go with them to hear it.
That evening the servants were instructed to deny the family to every
one but Marion, and, when the sun was low, they all went out on the
_loggia_ to see the night come in, and breathe the sweet freshness that
still came with it. For it is only in dog-days that the Italian nights
are too warm for comfort, and not always then. The great heat comes and
goes with the sun.
As they went into the _loggia_, there was a rustling noise in the garden
underneath, and out from the trees leaning against the wall flew clouds
of sparrows, and dispersed themselves in every direction. It would
appear that every twig must have held a bird.
“I am sorry we have disturbed their nap,” Mr. Vane remarked. “How
disgusted they must be with our curious nocturnal habits!”
They did not wish to talk, but only to think and see, and speak a word
as the mood took them. The miraculous shadow of St. Peter still hovered
above their spirits. They sat in silence, receiving any impression that
the scene might make.
Flocks of birds flew in from the seaward, all hastening to some nest or
tree-home, their bodies clear and dark, their swift wings twinkling
against the topaz sky. The evening star, at first softly visible, like a
diamond against another gem, began to grow splendid, while the glowing
west changed by imperceptible degrees to a silvery whiteness, and took
on an exquisite hint of violet, as if it thought, rather than was, the
color. The flowers disappeared in masses of dark green, the gray towers
and roofs deepened to black, the pure air was delicious and beaded with
coolness, like a summer drift sprinkled with snow. The _Ave Maria_ began
to sound here and there, echoed from one church to another. Now and then
some bell, besides the Angelus, rang out with a festal clangor for five
minutes, a musical chorus coming in from the southward.
“What a grand procession of saints walk for ever through the Roman
days!” the Signora exclaimed. “It would be something dazzling to the
mind, if one could live on a central height, and hear the bells announce
the different _festas_ as they come, singly or in groups, and know who
and what each saint is. For example, this evening we hear from the
Aventine the rejoicing announcement that to-morrow is the _festa_ of St.
Alexis in his church, and from another church is called out the name of
St. Leo IV., and from another St. Marcellina, the sister of St. Ambrose,
and twelve martyrs will be celebrated in another church. If we should go
to-morrow to either of those, we should find them adorned, sprinkled
with green out into the very street, High Mass or Vespers going on, and
the relics exposed on the altars. To-morrow night other bells will ring
in other saints and martyrs. The night after, from a church in Monte
Citorio will come the call, _Ecco_ St. Vincent of Paul! and the secular
missions and the Sisters of Charity will be doing their best in his
honor, and there will be cardinals, and pontifical vespers, and a
panegyric. Four or five churches will celebrate their special saints the
next day, and the next will be St. Praxides, on the Esquiline here; and
the day after we shall be invited to pay our respects to St. Mary
Magdalen. And then on to St. James the Great, which will be a great day;
and the day after comes St. Anna, the mother of the Blessed Virgin; and,
a little later, St. Ignatius marches by. What it would be to set the
world aside, sit aloft on some tower there, listen to the announcements
rung out from belfry after belfry, meditate, and look with the eyes of
faith on what comes! What faces of young maidens, delicate spouses of
Christ, bent like clusters of living flowers to listen to the voices
that praise them, turned again heavenward to ask for blessings on their
clients! What queenly women incline their crowned heads, when the
Sacrifice goes up in their name, to see who of those who offer it is
worthy and sincere! What glorious men, strong and shining, gaze down
into the battle-field where their triumph was won, to read in the
upturned faces of the combatants how the fight goes, and who needs their
aid! I sometimes think that the saints look only when they are called by
name, but that the Blessed Mother looks always. It is the mother who
goes after the child who forgets, and watches over it while it sleeps.”
The flocks of sparrows that had fled at their approach, weary of waiting
for them to go away, after peeping and reconnoitring the situation,
began to come back and flutter in under the foliage again. For a few
minutes the trees stirred all through with them, as if with a breeze;
then the little heads were tucked under the tired wings, and they all
went to sleep, and, perhaps, dreamed.
The family smiled and hushed themselves, not to disturb their rest. Each
heart was softly touched by the nearness of so many tiny sleepers. Peace
seemed to float silently out from under the thronged branches and laden
twigs of those motionless trees, in which no passer-by would have
detected a sign of life.
“I think,” the Signora said softly after a while, “that when the priest
comes next Holy Saturday to bless my house, I would like to have him
bless these trees too, that no net or trap may be thrown over them by
night, and no rifle be fired into them by day. The trees and their
tenants belong to my household.”
“Your house is blessed every year?” Mr. Vane asked.
“Yes. On Holy Saturday the priest goes round through every parish, a
little boy with him bearing holy water, and blesses all the houses, if
the people desire it. The custom is, too, to have ready on a table a
dish of boiled eggs, an ornamented loaf of cake, and a plate of
sausages. These are blessed, to be eaten Easter Sunday. I am not sure,
but I fancy that the custom is a remnant of times when the Lenten fast
was, perhaps, more strictly and universally observed than now. Now,
whether from a deterioration of health or of faith, very few persons
consider themselves strong enough to observe the regulations perfectly.
Modern civilization seems to be very weakening in every way.”
“I am inclined to think that good comes, or will come, out of all these
changes and seeming failures,” Mr. Vane observed. “If the races have
become weaker physically, their passions have also become weaker; and it
may be that, in order to tame them, it was necessary to reduce their
physical strength. We do so sometimes with wild animals. Perhaps when we
shall have learned better how to live, and, after running the circle of
follies, grown soberer and wiser, the increasing vitality will go more
in the intellectual and spiritual ways than it did before. I am hopeful
of the human race, from the very fact that it is so uneasy about itself.
The audacious boldness of some nations seems to me to spring from
desperation rather than confidence. There is no confidence anywhere.
Fear rules the world. Everywhere strong, or even desperate, remedies are
proposed, and philanthropic doctors abound.
“Malgré les tyrans,
Tout réussira,”
sing the communists; and I believe that things will come out right in
spite of every difficulty, and be more secure because of the
difficulties past. When we shall have looked about in vain in every
other direction, we shall at last learn to look upward for the solution.
But excuse me for talking so long in this beautiful silence. Your Easter
eggs were not meant to hatch such a sermon, Signora.“
They rose, presently, to go into the house, and, as they loitered slowly
along the passages, Mr. Vane remarked to the Signora: “I observe that
the natural direction of your eyes is upward.”
“Is it?” she asked. “Come to think of it, I believe you are right. It is
always cramping for me to look down. I recollect that, when I was a
child, if I dropped my eyes on being a little embarrassed, it was almost
an impossibility for me to raise them again.”
Going in past the kitchen, they found Adriano in chase of a cockroach
that had dared to show itself there, and they stopped to learn the
result, feeling that it interested them. It was not successful, and the
man rose from his knees very much vexed.
“These _bagarozzi_ don’t know what Ascension day is nowadays, or they
would hide themselves,” he said.
Mr. Vane asked what connection there was between _bagarozzi_ and
Ascension day, and the servant-man, albeit a little ashamed of having
committed himself to tell a story, explained:
“When I was young, it was a custom among the Roman boys, on the vigil of
the Ascension, to go down into our cellars, or those of our neighbors,
and catch as many _bagarozzi_ as we could. When evening came, we fixed
to the back of each one a bit of wax taper, melting the end to make it
stick. Half an hour or so after _Ave Maria_ we marshalled our bugs,
lighted the tapers on their backs, and sent them off in a procession.
While they went we sang a song we had. It was a pretty sight to see the
little tapers scampering off through the dark.”
“Why! I should think it would have scorched them!” Bianca exclaimed with
surprise.
The man laughed at her simplicity. “Who knows?” he said, with a shrug.
“They never came back to tell us.”
Isabel inquired what the song was to which this novel procession
marched.
The man laughed again and repeated the doggerel:
“'Corri, corri, bagarone;
Che dimane è l’Ascensione;
L’Ascension delle pagnotte:
Corri, corri, bagarozzi.’”
Which might be rendered: “Run, run, my noble roach; for to-morrow is
Ascension day—Ascension day of the little loaves. Run, roach, run.”
“What demons of cruelty children can be!” remarked Isabel as the family
went on.
Adriano laughed as he looked after them. “How queer these _forestieri_
are!” he said. “They want to see everything and know the name of
everything. The signorine here ask me the name of every tree and flower
in the garden, and every bird and bug that moves. How should I know? My
niece, Giovannina, says there’s an English-woman going about getting the
poor old women to tell her fables, and ghost-stories, and all sorts of
nonsense; and they say that she prints it in a book. They must be in
great need of books to read. Then the _padrona_ will stand and look at
the moon as if she never saw nor heard of it before, and expected it to
drop down into the garden and break into golden _scudi_. I saw her one
day this spring, on _Monte Cavallo_, stand half an hour and stare at the
sky, just because it was red where the sun went down. The sky is always
red when the sun sets in clouds. Two or three _signori_ thought she was
stopping to be noticed, and they walked about her, and one of them
leaned on the railing close to her, staring at her all the time, and by
and by spoke to her. I went up behind her, but she didn’t know I was
there. She hadn’t seen any one till she heard the man say good-evening
to her. You should have seen the way she looked at him. Then she caught
sight of me. 'Adriano,’ she said, 'I’ll give you a hundred lire to fling
that fellow over the terrace head first.’ I told her that it would cost
me more than a hundred lire to do it. She put out her lips—I suppose she
thought I was a coward—and muttered a word in English. Then she said to
me, as she turned her back on the man, loud enough for him to hear: 'How
dare such rascals come up when the sun shines!’ But she wouldn’t let me
walk beside her, but made me follow her all the way home. And she was so
mad that, when I started to say something as we reached the door, she
stopped me. 'When I want you to speak, I shall ask you a question,’ she
said.”
“The Signora is very kind,” Annunciata said.
“I didn’t say she wasn’t,” the man replied dogmatically. “But it doesn’t
become ladies to go into the street alone, nor to stop to look at
anything, nor to glance about them.”
The girl did not reply. She had been trained in the same opinions, and
did not know how to combat them. But sometimes it seemed to her that the
streets and the public places were for women as well as for men to see,
and that a woman should not be a prisoner because she had not a carriage
or a servant to attend her. Moreover, she sympathized, in her simple
way, with many of the Signora’s tastes. To her the song of the birds
they fed with crumbs from the windows was a sort of thanks, and she
regarded them as little Christians; and now and then, when she looked at
the sky, something stirred in her for which she had not words—a pleasure
and a pain, and a sense of being cramped into a place too small for her.
She could not express it all, and did not quite understand it. But there
was just enough consciousness to make Adriano’s _pronunciamiento_ rankle
a little. The inner ferment lasted while she polished the knives and her
companion blacked carefully a pair of boots; then she burst forth with
an expression of opinion which astonished even herself, for it sprang
into speech before she had well seen its meaning—an involuntary
assertion of nature. “I believe that women should settle their own
business, and men settle theirs,” she said. “I haven’t seen the man yet
that knows enough to teach the Signora how she ought to behave nor what
she ought to do; and many’s the man she could teach. Men are poor
creatures. Women can’t do anything with them without lying to ’em.
That’s what gives them such a great opinion of themselves, because most
women flatter them when they want to get anything out of them.”
“_Ma, che!_—well, to be sure!” exclaimed Adriano. It wasn’t worth
arguing about. He merely laughed.
Meantime, gathered in the _sala_, the family made plans for the coming
days while they waited for supper. Bianca, seated at the piano, was
trying to recall a fragment of melody she had heard a soprano of the
papal choir sing at a _festa_ not long before. “The cadence was so
sweet,” she said. “It was common—a slow falling from five and sharp four
to four natural—but the singer put in two grace-notes that I never heard
there before. He touched the four natural lightly, then sharped it, then
touched the third and slid to the fourth. It was exquisite, and very
gracefully done. His voice was pure and true, and the intervals quite
distinct.”
“I asked his name,” Isabel said, “and was disgusted to hear a very
common one, which I have forgotten. A beautiful singer ought to have a
beautiful, birdy-sounding name.”
“He can make his own name sound 'birdy,’ if you give him time,” Mr. Vane
said. “Take Longfellow as an example. There couldn’t be a more absurd
name. Yet the poetry and fame of the man have flowed around it so that
to pronounce the name, Longfellow, now is as though you should say
hexameter.”
And then what were they to do, and where were they to go to-morrow, and
the day after, and the day after? They ran over their life like a
picture-book which was so full of beauties they knew not which to look
at first. All felt that they were laying up sunny memories for the years
to come—memories to be talked over by winter evening fires in their
country across the sea; memories to amuse and instruct young and old,
and to enrich their own minds. And not only were they furnishing for
themselves and their friends this immense picture-gallery and library of
interesting facts and experiences, but they were expanding and vivifying
their faith. They were making the personal acquaintance, as it were, of
the saints, and seeing as live human beings those of whom they had read
in stories so dry as to make them seem rather skeletons than men and
women. To enter the chamber where a saint had prayed, had slept, had
eaten, had yielded up his last breath; to stand in some spot and think:
“Here he stood, on these very stones, and saw faces of heaven lean over
him, and heard mouths of heaven speak to him; or here, when such
temptations came as we weakly yield to or weakly resist, he fought with
prayer, and lash, and fasting”; to look at a hedge of rose-bushes, and
be told: “Here, when he was tempted, a man, weak as other men, flung
himself headlong among the thorns”—this was to waken faith and courage,
and make their religion, not an affair of holidays and spectacles, and
communions of once a year, but of every day, and of private hours as
well as of public.
“Half our Roman holiday is gone,” Mr. Vane said, “and for at least four
weeks of the other half the heat will allow us to do little or nothing.
I recommend you girls to treasure all your little pleasures, and keep an
exact account of them. The more fully you write everything out, the
better. These diaries of yours will probably be the most interesting
books you could have after a few years.”
“I am trying to forget all about America,” Isabel said, “to fancy that I
have always lived here, and always shall live here, and to steep myself
as much as possible in Italian life, so that, when I go back, I may see
my own country as others see it, but more wisely. It seems to me that a
country could be best judged so by one who knows it well, yet has been
so long withdrawn from it, and so familiar with other modes of life, as
to see its outlines and features clearly.“
“You are right,” Marion said.
“I never knew how beautiful, how more than beautiful, American nature is
till I had seen the famous scenes of Europe. One-half the superiority is
association, and half the other half is because attention has been
called to them by voices to which people listened. Our very climate is
richer. Here nobody knows how beautiful the skies can be. They like
sunshine, and rainy weather is for them always _brutto tempo_. The
grandeur of a storm, the exquisite beauty of showery summer weather and
of falling and fallen snow, they know nothing about. They endure the
rainy season for the sake of the crops, scolding and shivering all the
time. To watch with pleasure a direct, pelting, powerful rain would
never enter their minds; and if they see you gazing at the most glorious
clouds imaginable, it would be to them nothing but _curioso_. We do not
need to go abroad for natural beauty.”
It was getting late and time to say good-night. A silence fell on them,
and a sense of waiting. Then Mr. Vane said: “We have made a Novena
together for the communion of this morning. May we not once more say our
prayers together in thanksgiving?”
No one replied in words; but the Signora brought a prayer-book and
arranged the lamp beside Mr. Vane. He obeyed her mute request, and for
the first time, as head of the family, led the family devotions. Then
they took a silent leave of each other.
NATALIE NARISCHKIN.[8]
Footnote 8:
_La Sœur Natalie Narischkin_, _Fille de la Charité de S. Vincent de
Paul_. Par Mme. Augustus Craven. Paris: Didier et Cie., 35 Quai des
Augustins.
The name of Narischkin is in Russia like the name of Bourbon in France,
Plantagenet or Stuart in Great Britain. The mother of Peter the Great
was a Narischkin, and her baptismal name was Natalie. The family have
always esteemed themselves too noble to accept even the highest titles,
regarding their patronymic as a designation more honorable than that of
prince. Madame Craven has just added to the list of her charming and
extremely popular works a new one, which is a companion to the _Sister’s
Story_, by writing the biography of a lady of the Narischkin family who
was a Catholic and a Sister of Charity. Natalie was a friend of
Alexandrine and Olga de la Ferronays. The narrative of her early life
retraces the ground, familiar to so many, over which we have
delightfully wandered in company with the fascinating group of elect
souls, whose passage over the drear desert of our age has been like the
waving of angels’ wings in a troubled atmosphere.
It seems scarcely correct to call Natalie Narischkin a convert. Her
parents belonged to the Russian Church, and of course she was taught to
regard herself as a member of the same. They resided, however, always in
Italy, and Natalie was accustomed, in her childhood and youth, to
associate freely with Catholic children and young people, and to
accompany them to the churches and convents where they were wont to
resort. Russian children receive infant communion, beginning with the
day of their baptism, several times a year until they attain a proper
age for confession, when there is a careful preparation and a solemn
ceremony for the first adult communion, as with us. They are confirmed
immediately after baptism. We are not told anything about Natalie’s
receiving either infant or adult communion, but it is to be presumed
that she was made to follow the usual practice, since there are Greek
churches in Venice and other Italian cities. Her early associations were
much more numerous, strong, and tender with the church of Italy and
France than with the estranged church of her own nation. There was no
difference in faith between herself and her Italian and French
companions to make her sensible that the religion in which she was bred
was different from the one in whose sacred rites she was continually
taking part, at whose altars and shrines she frequently and devoutly
worshipped. Even the peculiar ceremonies and forms of the Sclavonic and
Greek rites were less familiar to her than those of the Latin rite. The
only barrier between herself and her Catholic companions which could
make Natalie sensibly feel a separation between them was her exclusion
from participating in the sacraments administered by Catholic priests.
This separation between priests and people professing the same faith,
offering the same Sacrifice, administering and receiving the same
sacraments, could only puzzle and surprise the mind of a child; but it
requires a more mature understanding and complete knowledge to
appreciate the obligation of renouncing all communion with a
schismatical sect, however similar it may be to the true church. While
Natalie was a child some of the little boys and girls with whom she
played, particularly one little boy who became afterwards a martyr in
China, used to assail her with controversy. Her older friends were more
judicious, and waited patiently until her ripening intelligence and
expanding spiritual life should prepare her for a more complete work of
grace and a more perfect understanding of Catholic doctrine. In the
instance of Madame Swetchine we see how much study and thought are
necessary to produce in the mind of one who has grown up to maturity
under the influences of the Russian Church a firm intellectual
conviction that organic unity under the supremacy of the Roman See is
essential to the being of the Catholic Church, and not merely the
condition of its well-being and perfection. In Madame Elizabeth
Gallitzin we discern how, in another way, national prejudice, and
traditional hostility to what is regarded as anti-Russian, caused in her
bosom a violent struggle against reason and conscience, even though the
Catholic religion was that of her own mother. The case was wholly
different with Natalie Narischkin. She did not think about the question
of controversy at all, and was free from the national prejudices of a
Russian. Her mother took no pains to instil them into her mind, or to
place any obstacle in the way of the Catholic influences around her. She
grew up, therefore, a Catholic, with only an external barrier between
her inward sentiments and their full outward profession. The interior
cravings of her spiritual life were the chief and real motive prompting
her to pass over this barrier and find in the true church that which the
broken, withered branch could not give. The requisite theological
instruction in the grounds of the sentence of excision by which the
Russian hierarchy is cut off from Catholic communion was a subsequent
matter, and not at all difficult to one who was, like Natalie,
intelligent, candid, and full of the spirit of the purest Catholic
piety. There was really nothing in the way except the authority of her
mother, whose chief motive of opposition was the fear of the emperor’s
displeasure. When this obstacle was removed, Natalie easily and without
an effort leaped over what was left of the external barrier.
We have anticipated, however, what belongs to a later period of her
history. And going back to the time of her childhood, we will let Madame
Craven herself describe the situation in which she was placed while she
was growing up into womanhood. It will be noticed that Madame Craven
speaks in the plural number, indicating that Natalie is not the only
young Russian to whom her remarks apply. This will be understood when we
explain that her sister Catharine sympathized with her in all her
religious feelings, though she delayed, on account of her dread to
encounter the opposition of her family, until a much later period her
own formal abjuration.
“The entire childhood of these young girls had been passed at
Naples, and they had been there environed by impressions which
nothing in their Greek faith, no matter how lively it might have
been, could counteract. The adoration of Jesus Christ, the
veneration of the Holy Virgin and the saints, faith in the power of
absolution and the real presence in the Blessed Sacrament, were the
grand and fundamental doctrines which they had imbibed with their
mother’s milk. Brought up at a distance from their own country, they
might almost have believed themselves to be in the centre of their
own religion, living as they were within the bounds of that great
church which possesses all the gifts claimed by their own, with the
added power of distributing and communicating them to all, without
distinction of place, language, nation, or race. It is difficult to
comprehend how any Russian whose soul is imbued with piety, on
returning to his own country after having been brought up abroad,
can find himself at ease in the bosom of Greek orthodoxy. In truth,
it appears to us that the limits of a national church must seem very
suffocating to any one who has felt, even for an instant, the
pulsation of that universal life in the heart of the Catholic Church
which is unconfined by mountains, rivers, or seas, which is
contained within no barriers of any kind whatever, and bears the
name of no particular nation, because it is the mother of all
nations collectively. Therefore no one ever has been or ever will be
able to fasten any denomination of this sort upon the only church
who dares affirm that she alone possesses the truth in all its
completeness. At the first view one would say that every church
ought to make this claim under the penalty of being deprived of any
reason for its existence. It is nevertheless true that only one
loudly proclaims it; and those who hate as well as those who love
the Catholic Church alike declare that she is a church in this
respect singular among all others. Thus has she preserved through
all ages a designation expressive of the idea realized in herself,
and will preserve the same for all coming time! A multitude of her
children have separated themselves from her, yet none of them have
succeeded in despoiling her of the glorious title which suffices to
make her recognized everywhere and by all. As for other churches or
sects, when it is not the name of some man or nation which they
substitute for her name, it is some kind of term or epithet which,
even when it aims at giving a semblance of antiquity, betrays
novelty in the very fact that it is necessary to employ it in order
to be understood; and this is true in our own day just as much as it
was in the time of St. Augustine. The overwhelming force of good
sense and all the laws of human language determine _that words
express what they designate_! At this day, as well as at that
earlier period, neither friends nor enemies will ever give this
grand name of CATHOLICS to any except those to whom it really
belongs, and the same good sense proclaims as an indubitable fact
which is that church whose children these are.
“Natalie had remained a long time without paying any attention to
this controversy. She belonged all the while to the Catholic Church
by all her pious habitudes, by all her childlike affections, finally
and chiefly by the bond of the true sacraments which the Greek
Church has had the infinite privilege of preserving, and which form
a tie between ourselves and the Greeks whose value cannot be too
highly estimated—a tie so powerful that even in one case where it is
only imagined to have a real existence (_i.e._, with those Anglicans
who persuade themselves that a chain wanting a multitude of links
has not been broken) it has served in our days more than ever before
to awaken in their hearts a sentiment inclining them to a nearer
sympathy with our own. Belief in the truth of the words of Jesus
Christ and in his real presence on the altar, the adoration and love
of our Lord, the search after those who have possessed in the
highest degree this faith and love, have opened the way by which a
great number of souls have come to prostrate themselves before the
tabernacles of the Catholic Church who had been previously outside
of her visible fold, and had belonged to her only by virtue of their
good faith and love of truth.
“With how much greater reason must one who belonged to the Greek
Church have felt herself closely united to those whose faith was
professed and whose practices were approved in respect to such a
great number of points by her own church, which has even ventured to
adopt the counsels of perfection and to speak of the '_spiritual
life_’ and of '_Christian perfection_,’ after the manner of
Catholics!
“But it is just here that she betrays her weakness; for when it is a
practical question of undertaking and nourishing this spiritual
life, where can she go to seek the living words, the sermons, the
books, the apostolic men whom she requires? Where and from what
source can one draw the vital force of this true and daily life, of
this _living_ life, if I may hazard the expression, always similar
to itself, yet unceasingly renovated like the seasons of the year?
Where can this vivifying influence be found, except in that same
Catholic Church which, although it makes the mind bend under the
necessary and salutary yoke of authority, never permits uniformity
to engender tediousness, and possesses in its completeness that
deposit a part of which the Greek Church suffered to escape on the
day when it broke the bond of unity? Since then, although apparently
rich, she has remained empty-handed; and while the Basils, the
Athanasiuses, the Gregories, the Chrysostoms, and the numerous other
holy and immortal doctors have had immortal successors in the
Occident, the church of the Orient, once queen of eloquence and
science, has become mute; and her children know not to-day whether
she can speak or even write, since it is not given to them to hear
her any more break silence; and, if they would warm up their piety
by holy reading, and give their minds the sustenance they require,
they are forced to have recourse to the Catholic Church, since it is
there alone they can find their necessary aliment. Truly, we cannot
help thinking that if the barrier which separates Greeks from
Catholics were not upheld by hatred, it must fall down in an
instant. This hatred is something which has no argument whatever in
its justification, and which accepts, in behalf of the church which
it covers as a shield of defence, the very conditions of death,
immobility and silence, in lieu of a living existence.
“However this may be, and whatever more might be said on this vast
and interesting subject, it cannot in any case be disputed that the
divergences existing between us and the great Greek Church have
nothing in common with those which separate us from Protestantism.
Protestantism has tampered with and altered all our articles of
faith, demolished the Christian mysteries most sacred to belief and
dear to affection. It has retained neither the intercession of the
saints, the worship of the Blessed Virgin, the sacraments of penance
and the Holy Eucharist, nor the veneration of holy images. In fine,
apart from the belief in the merits of our Saviour, of which every
manifestation is severely restrained, there is nothing in common
between Protestants and ourselves.[9] On the contrary, we may say,
in respect to the Greeks, that for the simple faithful the
difference between them and ourselves is invisible, because they
have retained so many things which assimilate their religion to
ours, as affecting the mind, the heart, and even the senses.
Therefore, for many among them, the barrier does not become sensible
until they find themselves disposed to pass over it in order to
satisfy the inward need which they experience of participating in
the riches of that other church, which seems so like their own, yet
differs from it in possessing really what the other offers in a vain
semblance.
Footnote 9:
Our Protestant readers will excuse, we trust, a want of precise
accuracy in some of these expressions, very easily accounted for
by the fact that Madame Craven is a Catholic Frenchwoman, to whom
all the various phases of Protestantism are confused in one vague
and indistinct form.
“What, then, must be the sentiments of a sincere, fervent, simple,
and upright soul, already bathed in the light which radiates from
the great mysteries of the faith, and touched by the infinite love
of Jesus Christ revealed in them, when it discovers the nature of
the obstacles which lie in her path?
“She finds all the articles of her faith more solemnly affirmed; all
the practices which her piety demands more numerous and accessible;
confession, absolution, communion—all is there; and must she refrain
from satisfying her thirst for them?
“Is it credible that a soul thus thirsty for truth, faith, and love
should be much disposed to recoil from the difficulty of accepting
one word more in the confession of faith,[10] or of recognizing the
head of the _universal_ church as the head of the church in the East
as well as of that in the West? Again, is it credible that she will
shrink back from the political obstacle, the greatest and most
formidable of all—the only one, in fact, which she will find pain in
overcoming and need courage to surmount?
Footnote 10:
Filioque.
“Such were the thoughts which importuned the mind of Natalie when
she left Brussels, at the end of February, 1843, in order to return
with her sisters to Paris, having resolved to ask the consent of her
mother to her becoming a Catholic, and fully expecting that this
permission would not be withheld.“
Natalie’s father died when she was fifteen years old. Evidently he had
not felt any hostility to the Catholic Church, for he was a great
admirer of the Jesuits. Madame Narischkin was not prejudiced, as is
shown by the fact that she never at any time was averse to the perpetual
intercourse kept up by her family, and especially by Natalie, with the
most cultivated and devoted Catholics of Europe, such as the La
Ferronays family, and never hindered her daughters from attending all
kinds of services in Catholic churches. She undoubtedly looked on the
Greek and Catholic churches as essentially identical with each other,
and therefore could not see any reason for passing from the communion of
the one to that of the other. She supposed that her daughter’s reasons
were rather sentimental than conscientious. She naturally felt unwilling
to have her take a step which would prevent her from ever again
receiving communion at the same altar with the other members of the
family. And she was, moreover, decidedly opposed to any act which would
expose the family to the emperor’s displeasure. It is not to be wondered
at, then, that she positively refused permission to Natalie to be
received into the Catholic Church. Natalie was at this time twenty-three
years of age, perfectly well educated, and fully instructed in the
grounds of the distinctive, exclusive claim which is made by the Roman
Church upon the obedience and submission of all baptized Christians. She
was competent to decide for herself, and in possession of a complete
right to act according to her conscience. It was thought proper,
therefore, by the priest who was her spiritual director, and by her
friends of the La Ferronays family, that she should be privately
received into the church at Paris. An accident frustrated their plan,
and Natalie was obliged to leave Paris with her mother without having
accomplished her intention. The nuncio and other priests of high
position at Paris, when they were informed about the matter, disapproved
of the course which M. Aladel had advised, and reproved severely the
ladies who had been concerned in the unsuccessful attempt to put it in
execution.
Natalie accompanied her mother and sisters to Stuttgart, and a few
months afterward to Venice. At her mother’s desire she had several
conferences with a Greek priest, which served only to strengthen her in
her well-formed and solid convictions. Nevertheless, she delayed her
formal reception into the Catholic Church, waiting for a more favorable
opportunity to accomplish this great desire of her heart. This
opportunity came very soon, but in a way which was unexpected and, to
her affectionate heart, most painful. During the summer of 1844 her
mother was suddenly taken ill and died. The marriage of her two sisters,
Mary and Elizabeth—both of whom had been some time before betrothed, the
first to M. de Valois, the second to the Baron de Petz—was delayed for a
year on account of this sad event, and the whole family was invited by
M. Narischkin’s elder brother Alexis to return to Moscow and reside
during the year of mourning in his house. Under these circumstances,
Natalie resolved to act for herself, and she was accordingly received
into the Catholic Church on the 15th of August, although none of her
family were made acquainted with the fact. She accompanied her brother
and sisters to Moscow, where they met with the most affectionate
reception from their uncle and their other relatives. Nothing occurred
to make any disclosure on her part necessary, until the time came for
all the members of the family to make their Easter communion. In Russia
this religious act, and all the preparations for it, are performed with
so much publicity that it was impossible for Natalie to escape from it
without observation. All the members of the family received the
communion together at the same Mass, with the single exception of
Natalie, who was nevertheless, as usual, present with the others, and
observed the sad and serious look with which her uncle regarded her, as
she remained in her place while all the rest of his family approached
the altar to receive the sacrament. She now felt that the time had come
when concealment was no longer possible, and naturally feared that a
severe trial awaited her. It turned out, however, quite differently from
what she had expected.
After their return from Mass her uncle sent for her, and in a most kind
and paternal manner remonstrated with her on her omission of so grave
and sacred a duty as the fulfilment of the precept of Paschal communion,
which he attributed to indifference and tepidity, demanding of her, in a
most affectionate manner, the reason which had induced her to abstain
from communion. He added, at the same time, that he would much rather
see her a Roman Catholic than indifferent to the obligations of
religion. Natalie had listened to him with downcast eyes, in silence and
trepidation. At these last words—prompted, perhaps, by some secret
suspicion that her residence abroad had actually been the occasion of a
change in her religion, and spoken with evident emotion and sadness—she
opened her heart, and gave her venerable uncle a full and unreserved
account of her conversion and of all the motives which led her to leave
the communion of the Greek Church. When she looked up timidly, at the
close of her recital to await her uncle’s answer, she saw his eyes
filled with tears and fixed upon her with an expression of tenderness
which banished all fear from her heart, and left upon it an indelible
impression of love and gratitude. He opened his arms to embrace her
affectionately, and assured her of his protection and unalterable
kindness. Her maternal uncle, Count Strogonoff, a man whose religious
character was both ardent and severe, and who was a thorough Russian of
the old type in all his principles and sentiments, when he was informed
of the truth, acted towards her in precisely the same manner, and even
took pains to distinguish her from her sisters by special marks of
affection. All her nearest relatives were informed of what had occurred,
but the strictest secrecy was enjoined in respect to all others, for
reasons which are obvious without any explanation. The only great trial
which Natalie had to encounter, now that she was relieved of the pain
and anxiety of keeping her secret from her nearest relatives, was the
privation of all opportunity of going to Catholic churches and receiving
the sacraments. Under the circumstances this was a privation she was
compelled to endure patiently, and during the year she passed at Moscow
she was only able to make one short visit, in company with some young
friends, to the French chapel, on Holy Thursday, which was three days
after the memorable interview with her uncle.
At the expiration of the year of mourning the young Narischkins returned
to Italy for the nuptials of Mary and Elizabeth, and Natalie’s uncle
arranged for her permanent residence with the latter, in order that she
might be free to practise her religion without any embarrassment to
herself or her family. She accordingly bade a final farewell to Russia,
and with her temporary sojourn in her native country the great trial of
her life was also terminated. We can easily imagine with what joy she
again revisited Italy, which had been the home of her childhood; and on
the occasion of this return Madame Craven’s genius has inspired her to
write one of her happiest and most beautiful passages, which we cannot
refrain from translating, although without any hope of preserving the
delicate aroma of the original.
“We do not believe there is a person in the world who has once lived
in Italy who does not cherish in his inmost soul the desire of
returning there once more, or feel, when he again looks upon its
beautiful sky, that wherever his native land may be, he has really
come back to his own true country. For its beauty belongs to us as
much as to those whose eyes behold it from the day when they are
first opened to the light in infancy. It is no more their peculiar
possession than it is our own; for to both alike it is only an
irradiation from that supreme and essential beauty which is our
common heritage and assured patrimony. This is doubtless the reason
why we can never see the faintest reflection of this splendor of the
eternal beauty without experiencing a sensation which causes the
heart to dilate with joy and at the same time to repose in the
tranquil security of possession. It seems to us that attentive
reflection on what passes within us will show that, whatever degree
of admiration any object of this world may awaken in our minds, even
if it approaches to _ecstasy_, it is very rarely the case that we
feel a positive _surprise_. Even if one who had never seen the
glorious light and splendor of a happy clime were suddenly
transported from the icy regions of the polar circle to the charming
shores of the Bay of Naples, there is a latent image in the depths
of the human heart, the original of which external things are the
copy, whose presence makes one feel, even at the first glance on the
sublime spectacle of the outward world, that all belongs to him and
exists within his soul.
“This reflection suggests another. We shall doubtless experience
something similar to this when we escape from this sphere of shadows
and images and emerge into the region of eternal reality. Certainly
our hearts will then be opened to receive those unknown enjoyments
'which eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, nor hath it entered into
the heart of man to conceive.’ Nevertheless, I think it is allowable
to suppose that, as we shall see the poor human form clothed in
Jesus Christ with all the glory of the divinity, so we shall also
find the reality of all those shadows which in this lower world
charm our eyes and fascinate our hearts. Happy will it then be for
those who have not suffered themselves to be captivated by these
shadows, when they are able to exclaim in a transport of ineffable
happiness: 'Behold at last those objects too beautiful and too
transitory to be loved on the earth by our souls, because they must
either suffer the loss of these or be lost themselves! Here they
are—real, substantial, enduring, transfigured, unfading! We have
found all those things which we desired and sought for, and amid all
these possessions is our eternal abode!’”
Natalie found a very pleasant home with her brother-in-law, the Baron de
Petz, during the next three years. It does not appear from the narrative
whether he was a Catholic or a Greek in religion. He was certainly a
most kind and affectionate brother, and her sisters were always loving
and considerate, so that no alienation ever separated the hearts of her
near relatives from her own so long as they lived. We shall see
presently how noble and tender was the conduct of her brother Alexander.
And we anticipate the regular order of events in order to mention in
this connection another near relative, Prince Demidoff, whose affection
for Natalie was extraordinary, and who acted with singular and admirable
generosity not only toward herself, after she had become a Sister of
Charity, but also to other members of the same congregation. While he
was residing in Italy he established a spacious hospital at his own
expense, which he confided to the care of these religious. At Paris he
authorized Sister Natalie to draw on him without limit, at her own
discretion, for charitable purposes. It is extremely delightful to
witness and record actions of this kind, so honorable to human nature,
and showing what a high degree of intellectual and moral refinement, as
well as how much of a truly Christian and Catholic spirit, is to be
found among a certain class of the ancient Russian nobility. And what a
contrast do they present to the ignoble persecutions, the mean and petty
defamations, to which so many even of those who attempt to assume the
guise of Catholics have descended in respect to converts in England and
the United States. We do not forget, however, that there are many
instances among ourselves of a similar conduct to that of the
Narischkins, as there are doubtless others of an opposite kind in
Russian families under similar circumstances.
Natalie Narischkin, in the midst of the splendors, gayeties, and most
refined enjoyments of the world, during the period of her peaceful,
happy youth, ere the severe trials of life had cast their shadow upon
her spirit, had been pious, reserved, pearl-like in her purity of
character, always aspiring after Christian perfection. After she had
begun to participate in all the spiritual advantages thrown open to her
by her Catholic profession, her distaste for the world and attraction
for the spiritual life increased rapidly, and an inclination toward the
religious state gradually matured into a certain and settled vocation.
Her friends made some opposition for a time, though not so much as is
frequently encountered in the bosom of pious Catholic families. Her
brother Alexander examined carefully her reasons and motives, and, being
convinced that she was acting with prudence and deliberation, gave his
free consent and the promise of his assistance in carrying out her
intention, accompanied by the singular request that she would leave the
choice of an order to his decision. She had made no choice herself, and
when her brother selected the Congregation of the Daughters of Charity
of St. Vincent de Paul, she was quite satisfied. In fact, she had a
predilection for the Convent of the Rue de Bac in Paris, which had been
one of her places of favorite resort in former years. Her brother
discussed the whole matter with M. Aladel, a Lazarist priest of Paris,
and Natalie conferred not only with him but with several other
experienced directors, who concurred in approving her vocation as a
Sister of Charity. Here, accordingly, she entered, in her twenty-eighth
year, and here she worked and suffered, as one saint among a thousand
others, in an institute where heroism is as common as the ordinary
virtues are elsewhere, and sanctity is the universal rule. During her
religious life, which had twenty-six years of duration, she was first
the secretary of the superior-general, and afterwards the superior of a
small community in the Faubourg St. Germain. She died in 1874.
The narrative of Natalie’s religious life, enriched as it is with
copious extracts from her letters and numerous personal anecdotes, is
interesting and edifying as it is presented in the pages of Madame
Craven’s biography. No doubt an English translation will soon place it
within the reach of all our readers; and as it is precisely just one of
those histories which is spoiled by condensation, we will not attempt to
give it in an abridged form. Leaving aside, therefore, all further
personal details, we shall confine our attention to that one aspect of
our subject which has the most general interest and importance—viz., the
position and attitude of the members of the national church of Russia in
reference to the Catholic Church. As an illustration of this topic we
have presented the history of the conversion of a Russian lady of high
birth and education—one specimen of a number of equally choice souls
whom the Russian Church has produced but has not been able to retain,
and who are, we trust, the precursors of all the people of their nation
in returning to the bosom of Catholic unity. Although Natalie Narischkin
had lived so very little in her own country, she was nevertheless an
ardent and patriotic Russian in her sentiments, and of course, as a
well-instructed and devout Catholic, had very much at heart the
religious welfare of her own nation. Among all the illustrious Russian
converts, Count Schouvaloff, who became a Barnabite monk, was the most
zealous in promoting the great work of the reconciliation of the Russian
Church to the Holy See. Madame Craven tells us how enthusiastic Natalie
was in her interest in the cause which this good man consecrated by the
oblation of his own life as a sacrifice for its success—a sacrifice
which he offered in obedience to the counsel of Pius IX., and which was
accepted by God.
“When Father Schouvaloff—who, like herself, was a Russian, a
convert, and devoted to the religious life—had given a definite form
to this desire, and had founded an association of prayers in aid of
this object which all Catholics were invited to join, there was not
a single person in the world who responded more fervently to this
appeal than Sister Natalie. The desire of propagating the truth,
natural in the case of all who have embraced it, is particularly
strong in those who have come from the Greek Church. To see the
fatal barrier which separates the Eastern from the Western Church
fall down, and to hear henceforth these two communions designated
only by one common name: _The Church!_—no one else can comprehend
the ardor of this desire in the hearts of those Russians who are
animated both by the love of the truth and the love of their
country.
“While we are on this topic we cannot help remarking how surprising
are the tentative advances toward union between the Greek Church and
Protestantism which we have recently witnessed. Such an alliance the
clear mind of Natalie, even before her conversion, rejected with
repugnance as impossible and absurd. Does not, in fact, the most
simple reflection suffice to demonstrate that by uniting herself to
the Catholic Church the Greek Church would preserve the traditions
of her venerable antiquity together with the august dogmas which she
holds, and would, at the same time, in ceasing to be local and
becoming universal, recover the power of expansion and
evangelization which she has lost by her schismatical isolation? In
this case she might be compared to a princess of high lineage
regaining, by a return to the bosom of the family to which she
belonged, the royal rank from which she had fallen. But, in truth,
to make a union with Protestantism would be for her the worst of
misalliances, for she would then resemble a princess marrying a
_parvenu_ and with the utmost levity renouncing all the rights of
her high birth and illustrious descent.”
Some of our readers may find it difficult to understand the anomalous
position in which the Russian Church stands, so completely different
from that of any of our Western sects, and requiring only the one act
necessary for its corporate reunion to the Catholic body for its
rectification, and yet so completely severed from the true church in its
actual state that it is not a branch, a limb, or any kind of part or
member of the same, but only a sect, completely outside of the universal
church. Some Catholics may suppose the Russian Church in a worse
condition than it is in reality. They may not understand that its
priesthood and sacraments are any better than those of the English or
Scandinavian churches, which have an outward form of episcopal
constitution. Or, if better informed on this head, they may ascribe to
it heresy, and regard some of its differences of rite and discipline as
vitiating essentially the Catholic order. On the other hand, these
misapprehensions being set aside, and the likeness of the Russian Church
to the Catholic Church clearly understood, they might find it difficult
to perceive that essential difference which, as Madame Craven remarks
with truth, is to most of the Russian laity invisible. Still more will a
Protestant having a tincture of Catholic opinions and sentiments fail to
see why a member of the Russian Church should be convinced of the
imperative obligation of abjuring the Greek schism and passing over to
the communion of the Roman Church.
The question of heresy is easily settled by the way of authority. We
have only to inquire, therefore, whether the Holy See has ever condemned
the adherents of the schism begun by Photius and renewed by Michael
Cerularius, of heresy as well as schism, and whether the standard
authors in theology consider them as heretics in view of their
ecclesiastical position and in virtue of general principles, although no
formal judgment has been pronounced by the Holy See. It is certain that
no such formal sentence has ever been pronounced by the Holy See. The
Nestorian and Monophysite sects of the East have been formally condemned
as heretical. But the _soi-disant_ Orthodox Church likewise condemns
these and all other heretical sects condemned by the Roman Church before
the time of the schism. At the Council of Florence the Greeks were not
judged to have professed any heresy, the Council of Trent was specially
careful to abstain from any such condemnation, and the Council of the
Vatican equally refrained from it. The same is true of all the official
pronouncements of the popes. In the exercise of practical discipline,
when it is a question of reconciling Greeks, whether they are in holy
orders or laymen, they are treated as schismatics, but not as heretics.
Theologians also, in treating of the doctrine of the several national
churches in communion with the schismatical patriarchate of
Constantinople, which they hold in common as their profession of faith,
regard it as orthodox, conformed to the doctrine of the Catholic Church,
and consequently free from any mixture of heresy. The only doctrines in
regard to which any one could suppose the Greek Church to be heretical
are the procession of the Holy Spirit from the Son, and the supreme,
infallible authority of the Pope. The Greek Church has never, by any
solemn, synodical act, denied the procession of the Holy Spirit from the
Son. The omission of the _Filio-que_ from the Creed is not in itself
equivalent to such a denial, and the Roman Church has never required the
Orientals to insert it as a condition of communion. Neither has the
Greek Church ever by any solemn act denied the supremacy and
infallibility of the Pope. The liturgical books, and specifically those
of the Russian Church, contain abundant testimonies to the Catholic
doctrine on this head. The heretical doctrines of individuals, whether
prelates, priests, or laymen, are therefore their own personal heresies,
and not the doctrine of the public formularies of faith, which remain
just what they were at the time of the separation. The only conciliar
decrees of a dogmatic character which have been enacted since that time
by a synod which could be regarded as representing the so-called
Orthodox Church are those of the Synod of Bethlehem, in which the
principal heresies of Protestantism are condemned. There is only one
essential vice, therefore, in the constitution of the Russo-Greek Church
which needs to be healed, and that is its state of rebellion against the
See of Peter. The one act of abjuring the schism implies and involves in
it the recognition of all the decrees of the Holy See and of œcumenical
councils during the period which has elapsed since the rebellion of
Photius, by virtue of the doctrine of the infallibility of the Catholic
Church which the Greek Church professes.
Any Catholic can understand from this explanation how completely
different is the position of the people of Russia who belong to their
national church from that of the Protestants of Western Europe and the
United States. They have the Catholic faith explicitly taught to them,
and believed as firmly as it is by ourselves in all those things which
relate to the great mysteries of religion and its practical duties and
devotions. They hold implicitly, so long as they are in good faith, all
that the Catholic Church believes and teaches, although they are
ignorant of the full and complete doctrine of the centre of unity and
chief source of authority in the church. They have bishops and priests
whose ordination is valid, the sacrifice of the Mass, the seven
sacraments, the fasts, feasts, ceremonies, and outward forms of worship
which they had before the schism. In fact, as Mrs. Craven remarks, the
difference between their church and the Catholic is invisible to the
eyes of the majority, and, if they were to-day to be restored to their
ancient union with the universal church, there would be no perceptible
change in their customs. There are differences in discipline and ritual
between the Latin and the various Oriental rites, but it is a fixed
maxim of the Roman Church not to require the Eastern Christians to adopt
the discipline and ritual of the Western church in matters which are not
essential, when they are received into her communion.
These things being as they are, it becomes naturally somewhat difficult
to those who have not carefully studied the question to understand why
it is a strict obligation, and necessary to salvation, for a member of
the Greek Church who discovers that it is in a state of schism to abjure
its communion. We can see, in the case of Anglicans believing in nearly
all Catholic doctrine so far as even to acknowledge the primacy of the
pope and desire a corporate reunion with the Catholic Church, that, so
long as they believe in the validity of their own orders and other
sacraments, it is very hard for them to realize that they are not in the
communion of the true church. They generally find their ground of
security give way under their feet by their loss of confidence in the
validity of their ordinations. But it is not easy to convince them that,
apart from this essential defect in their church, and apart even from
the question of its heretical doctrine, the mere fact of schism makes an
ecclesiastical society, no matter how much it resembles a church in
outward appearance, as really a mere sect as amputation makes the most
perfect and beautiful hand a mere piece of dead matter. A mere
collection of bishops, priests, and baptized persons, professing the
true faith, administering and receiving the true sacraments, is not a
portion of the Catholic Church, if the organic, constitutive principle
of lawful mission and jurisdiction is wanting, which gives pastoral
authority to the persons who possess the episcopal and sacerdotal
character, and thus makes the collection of people under their rule a
_lawful_ society, under _lawful_ pastors, and under the supreme rule of
the _Chief Pastor_, who is the Vicar of Christ. It is not enough,
therefore, for a person to profess the faith and receive the sacraments
in order to keep fully the law of Christ. It is necessary to profess the
faith in the external communion of the lawful pastors, and to receive
from them, or priests whom they have authorized to minister within their
jurisdiction, the sacraments. Bishops and priests who exercise their
functions in a manner contrary to the law sin by doing so, and those who
communicate in their unlawful acts also sin, and thus both parties
profane the sacraments and incur the censures of the church.
Nevertheless, if they act in invincible ignorance and good faith, they
are excused from sin and escape the censure. And, in case of necessity,
the church even dispenses from her ordinary laws. Any priest is
authorized to administer sacraments in any place, to any person not
manifestly unworthy, in case of necessity. So, also, one may receive the
sacraments in a similar case from any priest, if there is nothing in the
act which implies a direct or tacit participation in heresy, schism, or
manifest profanation of sacred things.
The Russian clergy and people, we must suppose, are generally in good
faith, and therefore innocent of any sin in respect to the schism of the
national church. There is, therefore, no reason why they should not
administer and receive the sacraments worthily, so as to receive their
full spiritual benefit, and thus sustain and increase the living
communion with the soul of the church and with Christ which was begun in
them by baptism. The external irregularity of their ecclesiastical
position cannot injure them spiritually when there is no sin in the
inward disposition or intention. Moreover, it is morally and physically
impossible for the Russian clergy and people, generally, to alter their
position. They are, therefore, really placed in a necessity of
administering and receiving the sacraments without any further and more
direct authority from the Holy See than that which is virtually conceded
to them on account of the necessities of their position. Since the
church always exercises her power, even in inflicting censures and
punishments, for edification and not for destruction, we may suppose
that she tolerates the irregular and disorderly state into which they
have been brought by the fault of their chief rulers, so long as it is
out of their power to escape from it, and are not even aware that the
irregularity exists.
It is plain, however, that every one who knows that the Russian
hierarchy is destitute of ordinary and legitimate authority, and has the
opportunity of resorting to the ministry of lawful Catholic pastors, is
bound, under pain of incurring mortal sin and excommunication, to comply
with this obligation. The excuse of ignorance and good faith is no more
available after the law is made known. The reason of necessity ceases as
soon as recourse is open to the authority which has a claim on
obedience. The censures pronounced on the authors and wilful adherents
of schism take effect as soon as one knowingly and wilfully participates
in and sustains or countenances rebellion against the supreme authority
of the Catholic Church.
The position of the Russian Church is utterly self-contradictory and
untenable. By a special mercy of divine Providence it has been kept from
coming to a general and clear consciousness of the fundamental heresy,
which lies latent in the Byzantine pretence of equality to the Roman
Church, from which the schism took its rise. The immobility which has
characterized it, and to which the privation of all authority
independent of the state has greatly contributed, has kept it from
committing itself to any formal heresy. It has broken its connection,
but it has not run off the track or fallen through a bridge. We cannot
suppose that it will long remain stationary on the great road along
which the march of events, the progress of history, is proceeding. It
seems to be awaiting the propitious moment when, reunited to the source
of spiritual power, it shall again move on in the line of true progress.
When this event takes place, we may safely predict that the name of
Natalie Narischkin will be honored in Russia together with that of
Alexander Newski, the special patron of the imperial family; and that
the empire will be filled with convents of the Daughters of Charity, the
countrywomen and imitators of her who, more illustrious by her virtue
than by her descent, was appropriately named “The Pearl of the Order.”
UP THE NILE.
III.
We had a letter of introduction to the Governor of Assouan from a person
we had never seen. It came about in this way: Ali Murad, our consul at
Thebes, sent by Ahmud a letter to his friend, the governor of Edfoo,
asking him to give us a letter to his excellency at Assouan. This
letter, worded in the usual extravagant style of the Orient, stated that
the dahabeeáh _Sitta Mariam_ contained a party of distinguished
travellers who were in high favor at Cairo, and should everywhere be
received with the greatest kindness and attention. His excellency was a
fine-looking negro, well dressed in European style, patent-leather
boots, fancy cane. I looked at first for eye-glasses, but on second
thought concluded that this was too much to expect from him. He came on
board to visit us, accompanied by his secretaries and servants, very
pompous and haughty in his bearing towards the crew, polite—nay, almost
obsequious—to us. Head sheik of the cataracts is on board; a deal of
talking by every one at the same time; no one listening; a lull;
governor lights a fresh cigar; secretaries, servants, and crew roll
cigarettes; Reis Mohammed appears with the certificate of tonnage. There
is no fear of obliteration or erasure in this; no danger of wearing out
or the characters fading by lapse of time. It might have belonged to the
pleasure barge of antiquity-hidden Menes or one of the corn-boats of the
Hyksos. It was a bar of solid iron three inches wide, four long, and
half an inch in thickness. Deeply-cut figures showed the boat to be of
380 ardebs burden. An agreement was finally entered into: Ahmud was to
pay the sheik nine pounds and ten shillings to take the boat up and down
the cataracts, exclusive of backsheesh. Out of this the governor
received two pounds and ten shillings as his commission. This making
arrangements for ascending the cataracts is the most serious drawback to
the pleasure of a Nile voyage. True, the dragoman undertakes this, but
the howadjii are present and witnesses of the altercations, the loud
talking, and the great noise and confusion attendant upon it. We being
such distinguished travellers on paper, and the governor being impressed
with that fact, our contract was entered into with less confusion than
is usually incident to this arrangement. Four sheiks or chiefs of the
cataract control the proceedings. This office is hereditary, and
formerly they were despotic in the exercise of their power. Twenty
English or American sailors could take a boat up the cataract in
one-third the time it took nearly two hundred natives to perform that
office for us. But no dragoman would dare incur the enmity of these
powerful sheiks by attempting the ascent without their permission. Their
power is somewhat curtailed now by orders from the viceroy, so that
instead of, as heretofore, extorting as much as possible from the
frightened dragoman, their prices are regulated by a fixed tariff—so
much for every hundred ardebs.
We are now fairly started on the ascent; it is early in the morning, and
a light breeze is blowing from the north. The head sheik is on board.
What an appropriate name he has! Surely his father was a prophet and
foresaw the future life of his son—Mohammed Nogood! Not the slightest
particle of good did he do. He squatted on a mat, smoked his pipe, and
took no heed of what passed around him. Old Nogood, as we called him,
was with us for three days, and during that time he never opened his
mouth unless to grumble, and never raised his hand except to remove the
pipe from his mouth, being too lazy even to light it; a sailor performed
that onerous duty for him.
We sailed through narrow, tortuous channels against a rapid stream to
the island of Sheyál at the foot of the first bab or gate. The first
cataract, as it is termed, is a series of five short rapids on the
eastern shore, where the ascent is made, and one long and one short one
on the western shore. These rapids are called gates. We stopped at the
foot of the first. Three finely-built Nubians, _in puris naturalibus_,
save turbans on their heads, came sailing down the turbulent and surging
waters astride of logs. Borne on with great velocity, they seize hold of
our boat as they reach it, in a moment are on deck, their heads bare,
the turbans girded around their loins. “Backsheesh, howadjii!” They
deserve it for this feat. It made the howadjii shudder to see them in
these raging waters. An impromptu row now springs up between our pilot
and old Nogood. The boat is aground, and more help is needed to push it
off. Here is the dialogue, as translated by Ahmud:
Pilot (old man with gray whiskers, costume soiled and tattered
coffee-bag): “O Mohammed Nogood! send some of your people to move the
boat.”
Old Nogood: “O pilot, you jack-ass! why do you not attend to the helm
and mind your business?”
Intense excitement on board, during which the pilot swears by Allah and
the Prophet that he will not stay on the boat after such an insult, and
goes off in high dudgeon. The howadjii, having locked up everything
portable below stairs, are seated on the quarter-deck enjoying the scene
in a mild manner, and waiting to see what will come next. The prospects
of being kept here for an indefinite time are delightful. The head sheik
is angry and the pilot has disappeared. But the silver lining of the
dark cloud soon shines out. The second sheik takes command, and Nogood’s
son comes aboard as pilot—very unlike his father, a hard worker and a
quiet sort of man. We are ready to start now, but where are the men to
pull us up? None can be seen. The river is here filled with broken and
disjointed rocks—small islets. A great fall was here once, no doubt;
hence the rapids now. The sheik throws two handfuls of sand in the air.
Immediately from all sides, like the warriors of Roderick Dhu, rise the
Shellallee. From behind every rock come forth a score or more. Three
long ropes are made fast to the boat. A hundred men take hold of two;
the third is turned two or three times around a rock, the end being held
by a dozen men. This rope is gradually tightened as the boat moves up,
to hold it in case the others should break. By the united help of the
wind and this struggling mass of naked humanity we move slowly up the
first gate, not ten yards long. In the same manner we pass the second
and third gates. Our friends the log-riders are useful to us now.
Plunging into the boiling, seething waters, that rush with such force it
seems impossible for man to struggle against them, they make ropes fast
to this rock; now they detach them, and, taking the end between their
teeth, swim to another and make fast again. Picture to yourself such a
scene, if you can. I cannot describe it satisfactorily to myself. Hear,
if you can, nearly two hundred men all shouting at the same time, giving
orders, suggesting means, no one listening, no one obeying, each acting
for himself—Old Nogood alone seated quietly on the deck smoking his
pipe; our boat possessed by four score of these black Shellallee,
half-naked, running to and fro, shouting and yelling, but doing nothing
to help us. Pandemonium itself could scarce furnish such a scene of
confusion. Babel was a tower of silence compared with this discord.
After passing the third gate we sailed into a quiet haven and moored
there for the night. It was only three P.M. But they are five-hour men
here, commencing work at ten and stopping at three. We were kept waiting
all the next day, as two other boats were ahead of us, and they took
them up first. On the third morning we left our moorings and sailed
under a fresh breeze about one hundred yards up the stream to the fourth
gate. The fourth and fifth are in reality but one continuous rapid; but
as a stoppage is made when half-way up to readjust the ropes, the
natives divide it into two gates. The water rushes here with great
rapidity—more so than in the other gates, as these are narrower. A stout
rope was made fast to the cross-beams of the deck on the starboard bow,
and the other end carried around a rock some distance off. Owing to some
mistake there was no rope on the port side. The men were pulling on a
rope carried directly ahead, when it suddenly parted; the boat swung
around to starboard and struck a rock with great force, knocking off
several planks six inches thick and seven feet long. They were picked up
by the felluka, which floated around promiscuously, manned by five small
boys. These planks were carved in scroll-work, and painted in bright
colors. Reis Mohammed had carefully bound straw around them before
starting, so that they might not even be scratched. He clenched his
teeth and swore like a trooper; the only words intelligible to us were
“Allah,” “Merkeb,” “Mohammed.” Reis Mohammed Hassan, Nogood’s successor,
was standing on the awning piled up on the front of the quarter-deck.
Every one else began to shout, gesticulate, and run around to no
purpose; but he, shouting while he undressed, threw off his gown and
turban, and, with his drawers on, jumped overboard, swam to a rock on
the port side, and made fast a rope. A Nubian, attired in a girdle, now
waded out into the rapid as far as he was able, and a rope was thrown
him from the rock against which the boat rested. After three attempts he
caught it and made it fast some distance ahead. A fourth rope was
carried ashore and seized hold of by sixty men. We were then pulled into
a narrow pass, through which the water dashed like a mill-race, and so
narrow that the boat grazed the rocks on either side. For a moment we
remained stationary; the next the strong wind and the efforts of the men
overcame the force of the current, and we moved slowly on. Shortly after
we reached the head of the rapids, the ropes were withdrawn, the Nubians
left us, and we sailed gallantly up to Philæ the beautiful.
We are now in Nubia, among a different race of people. We have passed
the cataract. Hear the concise account given by the father of travellers
concerning this ascent: “I went as far as Elephantine,” he says, “and
beyond that obtained information from hearsay. As one ascends the river
above the city of Elephantine the country is steep; here, therefore, it
is necessary to attach a rope on both sides of a boat as one does with
an ox in a plough, and so proceed; but if the rope should happen to
break, the boat is carried away by the force of the stream.” This land
of Cosh is very different in appearance from the one we have just left.
The hills are mostly of granite and sandstone, and they approach nearer
the river. In some parts the mere sloping bank, not more than ten feet,
can be cultivated in a perfectly straight line; on its top the golden
sands meet the growing crops. The river is filled with sunken rocks. Had
we struck here, it might have been serious, unlike running on the
sand-banks in the lower country. Reis Dab, our new pilot, knew the river
well and kept a sharp lookout; so on we sailed day after day without
stopping. There are no printed newspapers along the Nile, but the
natives have a cheap, primitive method of journalism. They need no
expensive press, no reporters to search far and wide for news. As soon
as another boat appears in sight all is excitement on board. When we
come within hailing distance the journals are exchanged as follows: Far
away over the waters comes a voice from the approaching boat: “How are
you all? Who are you? All well?”
“We are dahabeeáh _Sitta Mariam_, Father H—— and party on board. Who are
you?”
“How is Mohammed? Fatima has a sore foot. Ali has gone up the river on a
corn-boat.” And thus they go on telling all the news. “How many boats up
the river? What is going on further down?” The shouting is kept up until
the boat passes out of hearing. When we reached Syria, in April, our
dragoman there, who had never been in Egypt, knew all about our
movements on the Nile. They were communicated from one to another simply
by word of mouth, and finally reached his ears.
It is a bright, beautiful moonlight evening. The glittering
constellations are reflected deep down in the calm waters beneath us, so
distinctly that they seem to have fallen there. Not a ripple disturbs
the surface of the water, scarce a breath the stillness of the air. It
is a gala night. Ahmud has distributed candles and hasheesh to the crew.
They have illuminated the deck and are playing, singing, and dancing.
Reis Ahmud, with a sober face, beats the drum, his whole soul seemingly
concerned in his occupation. Abiad has the tamborine, a pretty one,
inlaid with mother-of-pearl. He has been smoking hasheesh—his favorite
pastime. His eyes are closed, his head sways backwards and forwards as
he sings; he seems to pour out his very life’s spirit in the song. The
rest of the crew group around, squatted on the deck, joining in the
chorus. Reis Mohammed sits apart; he is fishing. Ahmud, Ali, Ibrahim,
and the Nubian pilot look on. Now they become excited; the hasheesh is
working on them. Louder, still louder the singing. Abiad surely will not
live long; he must be in Paradise now. His soul is going out piece by
piece from his lips. The funny little old cook jumps up, puts a wooden
spoon in his belt for a pistol, some sugar-cane stalks for swords and
daggers. He is a Bedouin. More uproarious the shouting, intermingled
with catcalls. He dances the war-dance of the nomadic sons of the
desert. The howadjii have come out now; they are interested in this
strange, picturesque scene. The excitement is at its height. A lighted
candle is placed upon a small stick and put in the river; the current
carries it down still burning. There is not wind enough to blow out the
flame, and as it floats onward it looks like some will-o’-the-wisp or
fairy spirit of the waters reposing serenely on their bosom. The second
stage of the hasheesh now comes on; one by one they quiet down. Soon
Abiad falls asleep; some of the others follow; a strange stillness
succeeds this hilarious uproar. To-morrow will come the reaction, and
for a few days they will do but little work.
We have had great trouble to keep our birds. We have now preserved some
seventy specimens, from the small black chat to the large crane. The
rats will carry them off. So now we suspend them from the centre of the
ceiling. The same rat never carries away two birds. I cannot identify
each particular rat, and yet I am morally certain of the truth of the
above proposition. The skin, when taken off the bird, is covered on the
inside with a heavy coating of arsenical soap containing a large amount
of arsenic, enough to cut short the career of at least one rat. So if
they did carry off our birds, we had the satisfaction of knowing that
the birds carried them off in turn. We have been very anxious to kill a
crocodile; they are very scarce below the first cataract, but as soon as
we passed Philæ we promulgated the following general offer: To the first
man who points out a crocodile to any of the howadjii we will give a
half-sovereign. If the pilot, or any one in his stead, brings us within
reasonable shooting distance, we will present him with one pound; if we
kill and secure the crocodile, we will make presents all around. This
offer kept them on the alert. Every eye was strained to see the first
crocodile—and it takes a practised eye to discern one; for to the
uninitiated they appear to be logs of wood lying on the sand. Early on
the morning of January 15 the pilot came to us with eyes aglow and
pointed out a timsah (crocodile). We were tied up on the west bank, and
the reptile was lying on a sand-bank near the eastern shore. There was
considerable difference of opinion among the crew, many of them
insisting that it was not a timsah. “But,” asks the pilot, “what is it,
then? There are no rocks on the sand-banks; it can scarcely be a log,
for these are rarely met with in this part of the river.” A council of
war was held, and a plan of attack was determined on. Mr. S—— and I,
with Ali, the pilot, and four sailors, crossed the river to the
sand-bank about half a mile below the spot where slept the timsah in
blissful unconsciousness of the fate awaiting him. Bent almost to the
ground, we crawled cautiously along. When we had proceeded about a
quarter of a mile we found, to our disgust, that the bank upon which we
were was separated from the bank on which lay the timsah by twenty yards
of water of some depth. The pilot now asked us to fire, but the distance
was too great, and we began to be suspicious. The timsah did not move;
it was almost too quiet to be real. Mr. S—— and I placed ourselves in
the bow of the boat, covered the object with our double-barrelled guns,
and ordered the sailors to pull directly towards it. For a few moments
the excitement was intense. At the first movement of the timsah four
bullets would have shot forth on their death-errand. Nearer and nearer
we came. A moment more, and Abiad jumps from the boat, and with a loud
shout rushes up the bank and catches hold of the supposed timsah. “Come
here, O Reis Dab!” cried he, “and skin your timsah. Stop, I will do it
for you.” And he holds up to our astonished eyes a sheepskin. How
crestfallen was the pilot, and how the others joked him! It was a
chicken-coop covered with a sheepskin, containing three putrid chickens,
which had fallen from some dahabeeáh, and, carried by the current on the
bank, became embedded there, and was left high and dry when the waters
receded.
We have a number of pets on board: a live turtle, a soft-shelled fellow,
in color like the mud of its own Nile; a hawk who does not reciprocate
our friendship, and snaps at us when we go near him; six chameleons—what
strange creatures these are! We have had some twenty of them at
different times. As far as we could observe, they ate nothing, and yet
throve well as long as we were in their own latitudes. As we returned
towards the north they died one after the other. The chameleon is formed
somewhat like a lizard, about eight inches in length. Their feet look
like a mittened hand—that is to say, a large toe corresponds to the
thumb, and the rest of the foot, being solid, appears like the hand
enclosed in a mitten. They have very large heads compared with their
bodies, and eyes like a frog. They change their color, and, under my own
observation, made the changes from light green to yellow, black, brown,
blue, and dark green. We would tease them sometimes, and, when
irritated, yellow spots would appear over their bodies, and they would
try to bite us as we placed our fingers in their large mouths. Their
favorite pastime was to climb to the top of a palm branch fastened in
the deck; here the first one would remain. The second would hang from
the tail of the first, and the third support himself from the second in
the same manner. In this position they would remain for hours. If
another one wanted to reach the top of the branch, he would crawl
deliberately up the backs of the others, who regarded this conversion of
themselves into public highways with perfect indifference. Sometimes one
of them would roam away and be lost for a day or two, and then be
accidentally found in the centre of a basket of tomatoes or on the
summit of the main-yard.
On January 17 I strolled into a small village. The houses consisted of
four walls of sun-dried clay with a small opening for a doorway; some
few had palm branches stretched from wall to wall—apologies for roofs.
As I walked on I met a group of young girls; one was reclining on the
ground, while the others were dressing her hair. This operation is a
very tedious one, and is not repeated oftener than once a month. The
hair, which falls to the shoulders, is twisted into numerous braids, the
ends of which are fastened with small balls of mud; and to complete the
toilet oil is poured over the head. The hair being black and coarse, and
the oil giving it a glossy appearance, it presents the effect of braided
black tape. Although many of these girls had beautiful eyes and handsome
features, yet the howadjii never cared to approach too near them; for
the oil runs down in little streams from the crown of their heads to
their feet, and their faces appear as if polished with the best French
varnish. Our young Nubian cook left us here. This is his home, and he
will remain here until we return. He is only twenty years of age, and
has not seen his wife for three years. So he takes out of the hold some
bracelets, a dozen or two made of buffalo horn, all for his wife, and
she will wear them all at the same time, half on each arm. How her eyes
will brighten when she sees those bright tin pots and those robes,
green, yellow, blue! Surely Suleymán must love his dark-eyed, oily-faced
wife. From Assouan to Wady Sabooa, about one hundred miles, no Arabic is
spoken. Thence to Wady Halfa it is spoken in many towns. When we pass
through a town the whole population turn out _en masse_, preceded by a
leader, who carries on his shoulder the town gun, an old flint-lock
musket, generally marked Dublin Castle, carried, mayhap, at Yorktown or
Brandywine. A barrel of great length is secured to the stock by six or
seven brass bands. Powder is scarce, and the first demand—the gun being
put forward to show the need—is always the same: “Barood ta howadjii”
(Powder, O howadjii!) We used cartridges altogether, and sometimes, when
they were particularly green, we imposed upon them in this way:
Scene, the river-bank. Howadjii has just fired and brought down a bird.
Large numbers of Nubians surround him. Gunman comes forward: “Barood ta
howadjii.” “Mafish barood ta Wallud” (I have no powder, O boy!) “See
these green boxes” (showing cartridges). Wallud looks attentively at
them. “Inside each is an afreet [spirit or devil]; we put this in the
end of the gun, point it at the bird, 'Imshee y afreet’ (Go, O spirit!),
then off he flies and kills the bird.” This ruse was successful two or
three times; they looked with awe upon the green boxes, and made no
further demands. Often, however, a shout of derision followed this
recital. They knew what cartridges were as well as we did. Reis Ahmud
pointed out the first real timsah, and received the promised
half-sovereign.
On January 19, 1874, at three P.M., we made fast beneath the ever-open
eyes of the giant guardians of rock-hewn Ipsamboul. To my mind
Ipsamboul, or Aboo-Simbel, is the most interesting temple on the Nile,
not even excepting majestic Karnak; for most of the other temples are
built in the same manner in which the edifices of the world have been
constructed from the earliest ages down to the present time, by stones
cut and squared, placed one upon another and held together by clamps,
cement, or other means. True, the style and shape in which these stones
are cut and arranged differ very much in Egypt and in Greece, in ancient
and in modern times; but the taking of numbers of small pieces, and, by
joining them together, forming a whole, is common to them all.
Aboo-Simbel is not constructed in this way. The side of the mountain
facing the river was cut to form a right angle with the surface of the
plain, and made smooth and even as a wall, save some projections
purposely left at regular distances, and which afterwards were shaped
into gigantic figures of victorious Rameses; a small hole was pierced
into this surface a few feet above the ground; it was made larger, and
carried in further and further full two hundred feet, its roof seemingly
upheld by Osiride columns. A similar gallery was cut on either side of
this main one. Transverse galleries crossed these, leading to rooms ten
in number, and all this cut out of the solid rock, no cement, no clamps,
not a joint anywhere—a huge monolithic temple. The inside of the roof is
perfectly regular in its lines, with a smooth, even surface; the outside
is the rugged mountain top. Surely this was the way to build for
immortality.
This style of building, although rare, is not confined to Egypt alone,
but was most probably copied from it. I have since seen it in the
Brahmin caves of Elephanta in Bombay harbor, and on a small scale in the
tombs of the Valley of Josaphat. The temple faces the river and stands
close to the bank. As we approach we are struck by the magnitude of the
four colossal figures of Rameses II. They are seated on thrones, and the
faces that remain are quite expressive. The height without the pedestal
is sixty-six feet; the forefinger is three feet in length. Father H——,
Madam, and I seated ourselves comfortably on the big toe, and, as I
looked upwards into that gigantic face, I thought of the myriads of
events, marking epochs of time, that had happened in the great world
outside since first the sculptor’s hand had changed the rugged mountain
side into these semblances of their warrior-king. The overturner of his
dynasty, the illustrious Sesac, had led the victorious Egyptians into
the very heart of the Holy City, and carried off from the Temple the
golden shields which Solomon had there hung up. Cambyses had marched
with thundering tread, laying waste on every hand with fire and sword
from Pelusium to Thebes, making this once mighty kingdom a province of
far-off Persia. Greece rose from a handful of half-savage shepherds to
be the focus of intellect, art, and science, around which clustered the
shining lights of the world. Alexander overran the whole of Western
Asia, and established in the Delta his mighty race of Macedonian
emperors. Rome was founded, sat on her seven hills the proud mistress of
the world, fell, and was swallowed up in the rush of succeeding
generations. Christianity, starting from its humble Judean home, spread
from sea to sea, from the peasant’s hut to the royal palace,
revolutionized the world, civilized nations, and, encircling the globe,
led back its proselytes to unfold its sacred truths to the descendants
of its apostles. Mohammedanism carried its bloody and relentless arms
over the vast plains of Asia, through the fruitful valley of the Nile,
to the centre of Continental Europe, and was driven back, tottering and
gradually receding, to its Eastern cradle. The great republics of the
middle ages lived their short span of power, and were lost in the mighty
empires that absorbed them. A new world was discovered, and new
governments founded therein. And during all this, unshaken by war or
tempest, unmoved by change or revolution, these giant figures gazed with
never-closing eye upon the swift-flowing river at their feet. Those who
give themselves the trouble to inform the world that a perfectly unknown
person has visited a monument, and that that unknown person has
mutilated it by inscribing his name thereon—a reprehensible practice
unfortunately so common in Egypt—may study here the earliest known
inscription of this kind. On the leg of one of the figures is cut in
rude characters the following inscription in Greek: “King Psamatichus
having come to Elephantine, those that were with Psamatichus, the son of
Theocles, wrote this. They sailed and came to above Kerkis, to where the
river rises ... the Egyptian Amasis. The writer was Damearchon, the son
of Amoebichus, and Pelephus, the son of Udamus.” This was written at
least six hundred and fifty years before Christ, and the scribblers,
desirous of cheap notoriety, are as unknown as their numerous followers
who now disfigure the monuments of the world.
Over the entrance is a statue of the god Ra (Sun), to whom Rameses
offers a figure of truth. We enter a grand hall supported by eight
Osiride pillars, pass through it to a second of four square pillars
which leads to the _adytum_. A number of small chambers are found on
both sides of the main hall, and the interior of the walls is covered
with intaglio figures and hieroglyphics. At the end of the _adytum_ are
four figures in high relief. There is but one opening to the temple—the
entrance door—through which alone light can enter. As the first rays of
the morning sun were peeping over the Arabian hills, we climbed the
steep bank and entered the temple. A flood of golden light poured in,
searching every corner, lighting up the figures at the end of the
_adytum_ full two hundred feet from the entrance. It seemed as though
mighty Ra, as each morn he rose to shower his beneficence upon the
world, looked first with soul-melting tenderness upon the home where he
would love to linger; slowly he moves on, and with a last fond, longing
look he leaves it in darkness till he return next morn. Bats swarm now
in its gloomy chambers, and dispute the right of entrance with the
howadjii. Alongside the large temple is a smaller one of the same
description. A night or two after this we had an altercation on board
wherein Reis Mohammed met his match. It was about nine o’clock on a
beautiful moonlight night. We were sailing before a light breeze, when
suddenly the boat struck a rock. Reis Mohammed winced as though it were
himself grating on the rock, and, rushing up to the Nubian pilot who was
at the helm, swore by Allah that he would beat him with a stick. The
pilot was not at all intimidated. He said in a quiet way that he was
sorry, but reminded the irate captain that he was now in his—the
pilot’s—country, and that if he struck him he would call out to his
people on the bank, who would come aboard and kill the captain. This
ended the affair. On January 22 Ahmud brought a beautiful little gazelle
on board, for Madam to play with, as he said. She named it Saiida, and
it soon became a great favorite with us all. At four P.M. of the same
day we reached our destination and tied up at Wady Halfa, a
long-stretched-out line of mud-built houses on the east bank. We had
travelled seven hundred and ninety-eight miles in forty-one days,
including stoppages. A two hours’ donkey-ride over the sands of the
desert, and we reached the Ultima Thule of Nile travellers—the rock of
Abooseer, overlooking the second cataract. This is much more wild,
rapid, and turbulent than the first, and, excepting when the Nile is at
its greatest height, is impassable. Almost every traveller who has been
here has left his mark upon this rock—a custom which is to be approved
here; for no beauty is defaced, but a register of travellers is kept
which possesses interest to their friends who may subsequently visit
this place. There were six dahabeeáhs there on our arrival, four of them
flying the United States flag. We made our presents to the men. They
brought us in safety up the Nile; will they do the same going down? So
we gave Reis Mohammed one pound, Reis Ahmud ten shillings, one pound
each to Ali, Ibrahim, and the cook; and two pounds and ten shillings to
be divided among the crew. While we were lying at Wady Halfa the crew
prepared the boat for the downward voyage. They took down the trinkeet
or large yard from the foremast, and placed in its stead the smaller one
from the stern. There are three modes of progression in descending. If
there be no wind at all, the men row, five oars on each side; but when
the surface of the stream is ruffled by the slightest breath of wind,
the men immediately stop rowing, and the boat drifts down with the
current. If the wind blow from the south—which is very unusual during
the winter—we sail, using, however, only the small balakoom, swung, as I
have said, from the mainmast. Some of the planks of the deck are taken
up, and an inclined plane made by resting one end of a plank against the
cross-beams on a level with the floor of the deck, and the other
touching the bottom of the hold. In rowing the men start from the top of
this inclined plane, and, walking backwards down it, make five distinct
movements in each stroke. As their feet touch the hold they sit down and
pull out the stroke.
On January 25, at one in the morning, we left Wady Halfa on the homeward
voyage. Ahmud requested us to permit him to bring a slave on the boat.
He told us that he had no children, and that he had seen a very fine
little boy of nine years whom he could purchase for seventy dollars. His
request was refused. We spent an hour or more one beautiful moonlight
night seated on the sand beneath the colossi of Aboo-Simbel. We engaged
a celebrated hunter to assist us in crocodile-hunting—Abd-el-Kerim,
slave of the god, a Nubian with a huge flat nose. The dress of this man
of prowess was not elaborate, consisting of a skull-cap and a pair of
drawers. He carried the flint-lock musket which I have before described.
The lock was carefully bound up in a piece of cloth. We moored the
dahabeeáh on the west bank about four miles below Aboo-Simbel. We then
rowed about a mile up the river in the small boat, and landed on a
sand-bank. Abd-el-Kerim constructed a crocodile of sand—head, tail,
legs, and all. We had laid a systematic plan of attack. At sunrise the
next morning we were to conceal ourselves behind the sand timsah and
wait the coming of the natural ones, thinking that they would take our
sand-constructed reptile for one of the family, and go quietly asleep
alongside of it. I rose before the sun the next morning, but Kerim did
not make his appearance until eight o’clock—he called it sunrise—when
the sun was pretty well up in the heavens, and the day began to grow
warm. As I stood on the forecastle waiting for him, two Polish
dahabeeáhs hove in sight. I knew the party on board; they were
distinguished naturalists who were collecting specimens for the museum
at Warsaw. They hunted in the most thoroughly systematic manner. The
young count, who was not as deeply engaged in the study of natural
history as the others, spent an evening with us a week or two afterward,
and told us a very amusing story about the rest of the party. They were
anxious to secure a certain species of bird. After consulting their
books and putting together the general knowledge they possessed
concerning the habits of this bird, they established as a positive fact
that the said bird would appear on the banks of the Nile at ten o’clock
to perform his morning ablutions. So at half-past nine they went out to
meet him, but, to their intense astonishment, he did not appear until
half-past eleven—overslept himself, no doubt, not being aware of the
distinguished company awaiting him. They have been in a great state of
excitement ever since, said our young friend, endeavoring to study out
the cause of this strange proceeding, as they termed it, of the bird
being one hour and a half behind time. As I watched the boats came on,
and our sand timsah caught the eye of their dragoman. He rushed
down-stairs, woke up the howadjii, who soon appeared on deck. Telescopes
were levelled, and, having satisfied themselves that it was a crocodile,
they jumped into the small boat and made straight for it. Two of them
were in the bow with their rifles cocked covering the timsah. The
greatest care and caution were observed. Only a small portion of the
heads of the men were visible above the gunwale, and occasionally I
could see the dragoman wave his hand as a signal of caution. Finally
they stepped on the bank, cautiously approached, saw the deception, and
in quick haste retired in evident disgust. I enjoyed this scene all the
more as it partially recompensed me for the failure of my first attempt
at shooting a crocodile.
About half-past eight Kerim and I concealed ourselves behind the sand
timsah, lying flat on our backs. Besides his old flint-lock, which would
do good service, we had two double-barrelled guns loaded with heavy
balls, and a six-barrelled revolver. I lay in this position for two
hours, not even daring to indulge in a cough, which I was sorely tried
to repress, and even breathing as quietly as possible. Kerim touched me
and told me to peep over the back of the timsah; I did so, and saw ten
crocodiles, some swimming in the water and others on the banks, but none
near enough to shoot at. I then turned on my face and lay down again.
Almost immediately an enormous crocodile stepped out of the water on the
bank where we were, within ten feet of us, but seemed to be frightened
at something and immediately plunged in again. About two o’clock Kerim
turned over, and in so doing spied a flask protruding from my pocket. He
took it out, offered it to me, and said, “Take a drink!”—a delicate hint
that he wanted some himself. He did not refuse when I offered it, but,
filling the cup with twice as much as an ordinary drink, he swallowed it
down, rolled his eyes, and ejaculated, “Taib” (good). We found it would
be of no avail to wait longer here, so we called the felluka and rowed
very quietly a short distance down the stream to a bank upon which two
timsahs were lying asleep; at the other end were some rocks. We crept
over the rocks until we reached the one nearest the reptiles. At least
one hundred yards still separated us from them. Resting my gun on a
rock, I took careful aim, fired, and saw the ball strike the side of one
of the crocodiles; but its only effect was to hurry him into the river,
otherwise he paid no attention to it. We concluded to give up
crocodile-hunting now, so we sailed on. At one point a little below this
I counted thirty-eight sawagi in sight at one time. These sawagi
(singular sagéar) are to Nubia what the shawadeefs are to Egypt. They
are of Persian origin, and consist of an endless chain, to which are
attached buckets made of burnt clay. The chain passes over a wheel at
the top, which is made to revolve by another wheel driven around by
buffaloes. These wheels are of wood and never greased. Their creaking
and straining are music to the owner’s ears, who in some instances will
travel many thousand miles riding the buffaloes round the well-worn
circle of their own loved sagéar.
LETTERS OF A YOUNG IRISHWOMAN TO HER SISTER.
FROM THE FRENCH.
JULY 28, 1869.
Lord William is in England, and baby Emmanuel in vain asks for “papa.”
What a beautiful child he is! My Guy is very handsome also, and I am
proud of him. Johanna yields up to me all her prerogatives, and, were it
not that he resembles Paul, I could persuade myself that he is quite my
own, my dear godson.
Berthe intends to go to Lourdes, to obtain from Mary Immaculate the cure
of her daughter. Poor mother! she deceives herself; the child cannot
remain in this world, and the day approaches when we shall say,
Yesterday the bird was in the cage, but is now flown hence! This morning
Anna and the sick girl were leaning over my balcony, looking at the blue
sky, over which light clouds were flying. “How beautiful the sky is!”
said Anna. “Very sweet, very beautiful, very good,” answered Picciola,
joining her hands. “The beauties of nature are admirable, but—” “Kiss
me, dear, and don’t look up to heaven in that way; one would think you
were going there!” “The truth is that I shall go soon; dear Anna, pray
God to comfort my mother!” Anna flew into the room: “Madame, O madame!
is this true that Madeleine is telling me?” And she was sobbing.
Picciola covered her with kisses, saying: “Why will no one listen when I
speak of my happiness?” When Anna was more calm I sent her to her
mother, and said to my darling: “Then let us talk about heaven
together.” “But, aunt, it grieves you also. Yet I, although the pain of
those I love goes to my heart—I feel in myself an indescribable
gladness. Oh! if you knew how I thirst for heaven.” “And who tells you
that you are going to leave us, dear child? Our Lady of Lourdes will
cure you.” “If you love me, do not ask me this; I must not be cured,”
she murmured, with a sort of prayerful expression. What do you think
about this child, dear Kate?
Our thoughts are much taken up, as you may imagine, with the Council and
with Ireland. Adrien has read to us from a goodly folio, come from the
Thebaid of our _saint_, the most sinister predictions with reference to
the present time.
Good-by for a little while; I slip this note into Margaret’s envelope.
AUGUST 1, 1869.
St. Francis of Sales used to say: “People ask for secrets that they may
advance in perfection; for my own part, I know of only one: to love God
above all things, and my neighbor as myself.” And Bossuet, that other
great master of the spiritual life, said: “Give all to God, search to
the very depths, empty your heart for God; he will know very well how to
employ and to fill it.” This is what Gertrude has done, who just now
quoted these two thoughts to console me. Alas! yes, I cannot resign
myself to see her depart, this enchanting soul, so worthy of love.
“Remember,” Gertrude said to me, “that God undertakes to give back
everything to those who have given him all. I perceive many sacrifices
for you, dear Georgina; be worthy of God’s favors, for suffering is one
of these.” And she quitted me. She lives so near to God that every word
she utters seems to me an oracle, and now I am afraid. O poor soul!—a
reed bending to every wind.
“Turn thee to Him who comforts and who heals.” Help me, dear Kate! René,
Margaret, and Marcella agree in diverting my attention, but the blow has
been given! O my God! If a whole family might but enter heaven all at
the same time! if there were no tears of departure! I communicated this
morning, and promised our adorable Jesus in the Blessed Eucharist to
sacrifice my heart to him.
Berthe, Raoul, and Picciola set out to-morrow for Lourdes; we have not
ventured to dissuade the poor mother from this idea. I had a foolish
longing to follow them, but I saw in this a first sacrifice, and offered
it to obtain courage. If, however, Mary would be pleased to cure her!
They will make a novena there, and not return until the 16th. What a
long time without seeing her!
Our country neighbor has installed himself, and yesterday paid us his
first visit. My mother gave him a more than amiable reception. We all
thanked him for the care with which he had attended Anna, who threw her
arms round his neck with the greatest simplicity. Marcella replied
gracefully to the civilities of the good doctor, who accepted an
invitation to dinner. My mother finds him very well bred. He is fifty
years of age, very tall, with an open and expressive countenance, most
extensive learning, skill, wit, fortune, and above all _faith_; he is
thus in every way worthy of my friend. René has explained this to me,
and has ended by requesting me to favor this marriage.
Margaret, on leaving me this evening, whispered in my ear: “Dear, will
our fair Roman be insensible? The aspirant belongs _to the very first
quality of nature’s noblemen_.”
Good-by, dear Kate; pray much!
AUGUST 6, 1869.
Picciola is at this moment at the miraculous Grotto. Impossible to turn
my thoughts away from this child; I see her everywhere. Nevertheless, I
cannot complain of any want of distractions; we are out continually.
Three days ago M. de Verlhiac (the doctor) gave us a princely reception
in his _divor_. What life! what gayety! Marcella is very pensive and
seeks to be alone. Margaret raves about the doctor, and will have him at
all our parties; Anna can no longer do without him, my mother likes his
conversation, the gentlemen seize upon the slightest pretext for going
to the _Blue Nest_—the name given by Margaret to the dismantled manor of
M. de V. You see, dear Kate, all is for the best. Your advice is not,
however, useless to me. Oh! how well you have realized what Marcella is
to me. But I am not so selfish as to place my affection in the way of
her happiness, and I shall know how to make the sacrifice. M. de V.
requested an interview with me yesterday. I had remained alone with my
mother, who feared to take so long a drive, and it was in her presence
that I received our new neighbor. He appeared greatly embarrassed—he,
who is so fearless! At last, after a great deal of circumlocution, he
related how he had become acquainted with our dear Italians; how much he
felt interested in the pretty invalid, whom he had attended with truly
paternal solicitude; how the desire had arisen in his heart to become
the father of this attractive young creature; and how we had unknowingly
destroyed the fragile edifice of his dreams by carrying away from him
Mme. de Clissey and her daughter. Their sojourn of last winter had
convinced him that without this union he could not be happy. Marcella
had answered his proposal by a refusal, which he does not know how to
explain.
My mother looked at me, and M. de V. continued: “I know not, madame,
whether I am mistaken, but I am persuaded that you have some influence
on this determination which crushes my life. Madame de C. does not wish
to separate from you.” I was much moved by this confidence, and so much
the more because my mother, who had formerly been acquainted with the
mother of the good doctor, had told me that morning that she looked
forward to this union with pleasure. I promised to do _my duty_. This
conversation lasted three hours. M. de V. is really a remarkable man,
and I cannot understand Marcella’s singular behavior. Margaret advises
me to speak to her about it; but I think it more prudent to wait. The
pretty little Anna unconsciously enlightened me somewhat. This morning,
in my room, she was caressing her mother and saying: “Why, then, are you
so cold to this good doctor, who likes you so much and who is so like
papa? If you knew how affectionately he kisses me!” Marcella blushed and
spoke of something else.
Dear Kate, my heart is full; M. de V. has only one dream after that of
marrying my friend, which is to settle at Naples. It would then be a
permanent separation! “You are in your spring-time, my daughter,” my
mother said to me; “beware of the autumn! The lightest breath then
carries away by degrees our happiness and our hopes.”
God guard you, dearest!
AUGUST 9, 1869.
The doctor has become our habitual companion. He loves poetry, “this
choice language, dear to youth and to those whose hearts have remained
young”—another connecting link with Marcella. “But they are made for
each other,” says Margaret. This southerner shivers at the most delicate
breeze of the north. “Good friend, what will you do in winter?” exclaims
Anna on seeing him hermetically enfolded in a mantle lined with fur when
he arrives of an evening. “Dear, I shall do as the swallows do.” “Bah!
you will not go to Athens.” “And why not, if you will go with me?” “Oh!
I do not travel without my mother.”
This fragment of conversation shows you that M. de V. is always driving
at the same point. Every one rivals the other in extolling the loyalty,
the learning, the distinction of the doctor. He must be immensely rich,
for he throws gold with open hands among our poor, builds up cottages,
gives work to all. Gertrude says: “There is in this man an apostle and a
Sister of Charity.” Marcella never utters a word about our dear
neighbor, but appears to suffer when others speak of him. Yesterday
Margaret wanted to get my mother to promise that we should spend the
summer of 1870 in England. “Will you not come also, monsieur?” The
handsome countenance of the doctor darkened, and he answered briefly:
“Who can promise?” “Oh! _do_ promise, good friend,” exclaimed Anna; “you
told me you wished not to leave me!” “Anna, will you water my verbenas?”
tranquilly asked Marcella. The child bounded into the garden.
Berthe writes to me every day. The horizon is dark there; the poor
mother perceives the full truth.
_A Dieu_, Kate; may he alone be all to us!
AUGUST 16, 1869.
René has written to you, dear sister; thus you know how my time has been
occupied. Oh! what a beautiful procession. What singing! What
decorations! A corner of Italy in Brittany, to believe the good doctor,
who has valiantly paid with his person.
Picciola is here. I have just been to kiss her under her curtains. This
pilgrimage has produced a double benefit: it gave the poor parents a few
days of hope, and the Immaculate Virgin has caused them to understand
all. “She belongs to God before she belongs to us.” Are not these truly
Christian words the acceptance of the sacrifice? And Picciola: “How
sweet it would have been to die there, dear aunt! But I am very happy to
see you again.” O my God!
Margaret is expecting Lord William. Can you picture to yourself the
aspect of our colony—our numbers, the noise and movement, the joyous
voices calling and answering each other, the animation, the eagerness,
of this human hive? Our Bretons say they wish we were here always.
Edith writes often. Lizzy is somewhat silent; the saintly Isa is too
much detached from earth to think of us in any way except in her
prayers. My letters to Betsy have produced an unexpected effect, thanks
to your prayers; this good and charming friend assures me that going to
holy Mass and visiting the poor help her marvellously, and that now the
days appear too short.
Yesterday we were talking on the terrace—talking about all sorts of
things. The word _ideal_ was pronounced. “Who, then, can attain his
ideal?” exclaimed M. de Verlhiac. “Life almost always passes away in its
pursuit; an intangible phantom, it escapes us precisely at the moment
when it seems within our grasp.” “It is, perhaps, because the ideal does
not in reality exist on earth,” said Gertrude. “The Christian’s ideal is
in heaven!” Whereupon the meditative Anna cried out: “Oh! if only the
good God would make haste to put us into his beautiful heaven all
together, the _south_ and the _north_! You would not feel cold up there,
good friend!” “Then will the angels place us thus by families?” asked
Alix timidly. “Hem! hem! the house is large,” said the doctor; “and, for
my part, I see no inconvenience that this 'corner of Italy in Brittany’
would suffer by arranging itself commodiously there on high.”
At this moment Adrien took up a newspaper and read us a fulmination in
verse against the centenary of Napoleon, by a writer whose independent
pen “is unequalled in freedom and boldness,” according to the ideas of
some. M. de V. disapproves strongly: “Cannot a man be of one party
without throwing mud at the other? May not the sufferings on St. Helena,
the torture more terrible than that of the Prometheus of antiquity, have
been accepted by God as an expiation? How far preferable would a little
Christian moderation be to all this gall so uselessly poured out into
the public prints! And what do they attain, republicans or royalists,
after so many words and so much trouble? Great social revolutions arrive
only at the hour marked by Providence.” “At all events,” said Johanna,
“it is this much-boasted printing which enables us to read so much that
is good and so much that is hurtful.” “O madame! Writing, printing! What
favors granted to man! What feasts for the understanding and the heart!
The genius of evil has known how to draw from these admirable sources
the means of perdition; what is it that man has not turned against God?
But the divine mercy is greater than our offences, and the Christian’s
life ought to be a perpetual _Te Deum_. Providence pours out in floods
before us joys, favors, enjoyments without number, as he scatters
flowers in the meadows, birds in the air, angels in space; he has given
us poetry, this eternal charm of the earth:
“'Langue qui vient du Ciel, toute limpide et belle,
Et que le monde entend, mais qu’il ne parle pas.’”[11]
Footnote 11:
Language which comes from heaven, limpid and beautiful, And which the
world understands, but does not speak.
You perceive, dear Kate, that I want to make you acquainted with the
doctor. But good-night.
AUGUST 22, 1869.
Well, dearest, the marriage is arranged. Let me, however, first speak to
you about Picciola. She is an angel! She invariably forgets herself, and
thinks only of the happiness of others. It is she who organizes our
festivities. Dear, delicious child! Thérèse and Anna know not how to
show her tenderness enough. I forget what day it was that Marcella said
to me: “I think that now I need not be any longer uneasy about my
child’s health; there has been no change since that beneficial winter.”
Picciola was by me. I looked at her; her eyes shone with a singular
brightness, and she said almost involuntarily, and so low that I alone
heard her: “Oh! she will be no longer ill.“ Marianne was right: there is
a mystery in this, and I want to know what it is. I shall question Mad;
she will not resist me. I have entreated the doctor to cure her, and his
answer was: “Who can arrest the flight of the bird?“ Thus all is in
vain; and yet, in spite of myself, I have moments of wild hope. What a
large place this child has taken possession of in my heart!
M. de V. had placed his interests in my hands; it was therefore your
Georgina herself who renewed his _proposal_. At the first word Marcella,
much moved, formally refused, begging me to speak to her of something
else. Then we had a long explanation. This dear and excellent friend did
not want to separate herself from us, out of gratitude! And she was
sacrificing her heart; for the devotedness and high character of M. de
V. inspire her with as much sympathy as respect. It needed all my
eloquence to convince her. In accepting she secures her daughter a
protector; the increase of her fortune will allow her still more
latitude for the exercise of her benevolence. I know that she loves
Italy, and dreams of seeing it again, which would be impossible were she
to remain with us; by refusing she crushes out the life of M. de V.,
etc., etc.
By way of conclusion I drew her into my mother’s room, where we also
found René and Edouard, and all four of us together succeeded in
obtaining her _consent_. All, then, is well as regards this matter. Anna
is in a state of incomparable joy, as the old books say. We are all
happy at the turn affairs have taken, but each in our different degrees.
And you, dear Kate? Ah! news of Ireland and again of Edith: Mary is not
well. Poor Edith! Good-by, dearest; René calls me, and I must send to
the post.
AUGUST 25, 1869.
Yesterday’s _fête_ was admirable, according to the doctor, who is a good
judge. How impatient he is to carry off Marcella from us! The wedding is
fixed for the 20th of September, and the same day the happy couple are
to start for Italy. Thus I have not even a month in which to enjoy the
society of this delightful friend, so truly the sister of my soul, whom
God gave me almost on the grave of Ellen. I busy myself with her about
the preparations. Gertrude, the austere Gertrude, sets out to-morrow for
Paris with Adrien and M. de V., whom she will direct in the choice of
the _corbeille_. Don’t you admire that? Marcella is calm, serious, but
also, she owns to me, profoundly happy.
There will be no more meeting again, I foresee plainly; they will _cast
anchor_ down there, but our spirits will be always united before God.
Margaret greatly rejoices in the happiness of our dear Roman. Lord
William arrived yesterday, and joyous parties are going on. The _little_
angel of the good God is always on the point of taking her flight.
_Ah! mon âme voudrait se suspendre à ses ailes
Et la garder encore!_[12]
Footnote 12:
Ah! my soul would fain cling to her wings, and keep her still!
René procures me the most agreeable surprises. There has never yet been
the least shadow of a cloud between us. You say well, dearest, that with
him I shall have happiness everywhere; why, then, should I have
hesitated to procure a like happiness for Marcella? I did not tell you
that about a year ago this dear friend lost nearly the whole of her
fortune, which was in the hands of a banker? Happily, we were the first
to hear of it, and have concealed the disaster. Gertrude desired to join
us in this hidden good work, and I have with all my heart paid the half
of the amount. I am still more glad now to have done so. Hitherto the
interest has been sufficient, but, lest the secret should be discovered,
Gertrude undertook to arrange the matter with her banker. As it is a
considerable sum, we are selling our carriages and one of René’s farms,
lest it should make too much difference to our poor; my mother is
surprised, but asks no questions. We shall try to live without
carriages—so many people live happily, and yet always go on foot! I am
certain that you will approve of this, dear Kate. Marcella is too proud
to consent to marry M. de V. without any fortune of her own. René is
delighted with this arrangement; I believe that he also is in love with
the poverty of St. Francis. Oh! how good God is to us! All my kisses to
you.
AUGUST 28, 1869.
Read yesterday some pretty things on Montaigne. The author of the
_Essays_ loved “with a particular affection” poetry, “in which it is not
allowable to play the simpleton.” Marcella presented me with a charming
poem on Friendship. Oh! I know very well that her warm affection is
mine. Listen to this passage taken from a dramatic story which has come
into Brittany: “There are redeeming souls, born for salvation. In the
path of the divine Crucified One walk silent groups whose mission is to
suffer for those who enjoy all the good things of life, to weep for
those who sing at feasts, to pray for those who never open their lips in
prayer. A large number of these mysterious flowers which perfume the
King’s House are even unconscious of their destiny. They follow it,
without asking what end is answered by their solitude, and to what
purpose are their tears.”
You write to me too deliciously, dear Kate! It is very kind of you to
ask after the two _adopted_ little girls. They have been claimed by a
relation, and left us after having remained a week. This fresh eclogue
could not have had a better ending. The dear children write to Picciola.
They are happy; their relative gave us a most favorable impression.
Yesterday a long walk with Margaret, who loves our heaths, our fields of
broom, our reedy places, our customs, and who is always ready when there
is a good work to be done. My mother is not well—“The effect of old
age,” she says. Would that I could keep away all pain from that dear
head! Mme. Swetchine says: “All the joys of earth would not assuage our
thirst for happiness, and one single sorrow suffices to fold life in a
sombre veil, to strike it throughout with nothingness.” How true this
is!
St. Augustine is one of René’s patrons; you may imagine whether we have
not prayed to him very much. Gertrude writes to me: “Here are some lines
which I commend to your meditations: 'All passes, all vanishes away, all
is carried away by the river of Eternity. The most sacred and sweet
affections we see broken, some by absence—that sleep of the heart—others
by a culpable inconstancy; many, alas! by death. The days of our
childhood, the years of our youth, the friendships begun in the cradle,
the more serious attachments of riper age, the affections of home, the
bonds formed at the altar—all are touched, withered, annihilated by the
inexorable hand of time.’ Dear Georgina,” continues Gertrude, “all lives
again, all arises from its tomb, all becomes again resplendent with God!
Hope, then! _Excelsior._”
Lord William has brought us a most interesting book—_Our Life in the
Highlands_, by Queen Victoria. What soul! What heart! Why is she not a
Catholic? My poor Ireland, when wilt thou recover thy freedom? O
Ireland! _patria mia!_
Thérèse regrets Anna’s approaching departure, but she is courageous. The
_babies_ do not take it in the same way, and Marguérite told Anna
plainly: “All that you may say to me is of no use. I know Italian,
mademoiselle: _Chi sta bene, non si muove._”[13] I had to preach for an
hour before I could persuade Marguérite to consent to apologize to the
dear little Italian, who cried so much at being accused of inconstancy.
These little people!
Footnote 13:
“He who is well off stays where he is.”
Good-by, dear Kate; Picciola sends you a kiss.
AUGUST 30, 1869.
I have just been telling the children the beautiful story of St. Felix
and St. Adauctus, as the charming imagination of Margaret had arranged
it at the convent. How they listened to me. On turning round I was taken
by surprise: René was there! You know that I like to be alone when
fulfilling the functions of _professor_—a title which I usurp from the
good _abbé_, whose charity frequently takes him from home. “Are you
displeased?” asked _my brother_. _Displeased!_ But he and I are
altogether one—one and the same soul. Picciola makes profound
observations thereupon. Margaret tells me that she said to her: “The
soul ought in this world to be with God as Uncle René is with Aunt
Georgina, and as you and Lord William.” Margaret was delighted with this
comparison.
Letter from the saintly Isa; one might call it a song of heaven. “O
charming felicities which I find in this paradise of intelligence and
friendship, incomparable joys of the religious affections, delights of
the sensible presence of Him who is my all, how dear are you to me!”
Picciola is sleeping in an easy-chair two steps from me. She seems to
have scarcely a breath of life left. I questioned her as discreetly as
possible; she understood immediately: “Later, aunt, I will tell you.”
What! have I not told you about my six children? The eldest has been
taken as _femme de chambre_ by Margaret, the second occupies the same
post for Anna, and Thérèse claims the third. The youngest go to school.
Johanna wished to take charge of them, but I said, “No, thank you”; she
has a family and I am free. René wants to talk business to you. I give
up my sheet of paper to him. May God be with us!
SEPTEMBER 5.
Only a fortnight more to enjoy the presence of Marcella! The
_travellers_ are home again. The _corbeille_ is splendid; but the pious
projects of M. de V. are still more so. Did I tell you that he had been
connected with M. de Clissey, in a journey the latter took to Naples? M.
de C. loved Marcella then, and spoke only of her. He was on the eve of a
dangerous expedition. “Promise me,” he said to M. de V., “that in case
of my death you will marry her!” M. de V. promised. This is like the
tales of knight-errantry. M. de Verlhiac was unable to be present at his
friend’s marriage, and, as he was at that time of an adventurous turn of
mind, he went away to New York and had no news of the De Clisseys. It
was only on Marcella’s account that he settled temporarily at Hyères.
You see, this is altogether a romance, but in the best taste possible.
M. de V. told us all this after his proposal had been accepted.
All France is interested in the Council; we are praying for this
intention. What times we live in, dear Kate! The church is on the eve of
terrible trials, say the _seers_.
Picciola wishes to write to you; but will her poor little hand have the
strength to do so? Oh! how touching she is in her serenity. She
communicates with great fervor twice a week.
Lizzy, the happy Lizzy! has a son! _Gaudete et lætare!_ I rejoice in her
joy! Edith is ill; Mistress Annah says seriously so. Always a shadow!
Farewell, dearest. I have quantities of things to attend to. A thousand
kisses.
SEPTEMBER 10, 1869.
M. de Verlhiac overwhelms us with presents—no means of refusing them.
Marcella appears very happy, although as the time of departure
approaches there is an occasional shade upon her brow. The health of M.
de V. cannot accommodate itself to Brittany, and the _Blue Nest_ was
only a pretext. My mother is purchasing this well-named habitation, to
sell it when an opportunity offers. Since we have launched out so
strongly in good works, no one allows superfluities.
Gertrude saw Karl, who sighs for the day when he shall offer up at the
altar the true and spotless Victim. I love what you tell me of your
thoughts on seeing our sister. Ah! dearest, all that God does he does
well; great sacrifices suit great souls.
My mother gives _fêtes_—to us, you understand. But what _fêtes_! What a
large share is left for the poor! What a still larger part given to God!
Lucy, the amiable Lucy, gives herself unheard-of trouble for our
pleasures. Gertrude gracefully lends herself to our passing follies, to
which her dark toilet makes a contrast. I asked her two days ago if she
did not sometimes regret the luxuries to which she was accustomed.
“Regret, Georgina! Listen to Ludolph the Chartreux: 'The Christian is
happy, for, whatever may be his poverty, he has always in himself
wherewith to buy the pearl and the treasure; no other price is asked but
himself.'”
Sarah is in Spain, whence she sends me magnificent descriptions of the
Pyrenees. “When will you come and gather roses on the banks of the
Mancanares?” asks my lively friend.
Picciola is asking for me. You would be uneasy. May God have you in his
keeping!
SEPTEMBER 18, 1869.
René has replaced me in my assiduous correspondence—I have so much to
do! Will these words make you smile? Nothing, however, is more true; in
our hive every bee has its share of work. M. de V. can no longer keep
himself quiet; Marcella weeps at the thought of going away for ever.
René mentions the possibility of our again visiting Hyères, and I want
to persuade the future couple to give their solemn promise to go
thither. It seems as if a part of my heart were going to leave me.
The Bishop of —— will bless the marriage. Oh! would that I could put off
this date. It is so sweet to have them here, these dear friends and the
charming little Anna! Good-by, Homer! Good-by, our studious hours, our
intimate conversations, our so perfect friendship! _Her_ room will
remain furnished just as it now is; I shall make it a museum of
souvenirs. You know that I have taken the portraits of all three. They
wished for copies; so you see why I was too busy to write to you. Only
two days more—two days: what is that?
My mother is very thoughtful on my account. For my sake she dreads this
departure, this great void; but René is at hand, so ingeniously good and
devoted, so attentive, so fraternal! Dearest, pray that _they_ may be
happy!
SEPTEMBER 21, 1869.
_She_ is gone! These two days have passed away like a dream. I cannot
bring myself to realize this idea. Oh! what difference there is between
the apprehension and the reality, from the expectation of sorrow to
sorrow itself! But _she_ will be happy! How beautiful she was; Anna so
graceful, and all three so affectionate! I am now counting the hours
until I receive a letter. I am going to occupy myself—study with René,
pray with Picciola, meditate with Gertrude. And Margaret—oh! I must make
up to her all the time given to Marcella, whom she regrets almost as
much as I do.
Picciola occupies me, and very much. She has felt this separation
exceedingly, being very fond of Anna. Good-by till to-morrow, dear Kate;
I feel myself incapable of writing.
22d.—A word from Mme. de Verlhiac—a greeting written yesterday morning
in the carriage. They go farther and farther away. How could I flatter
myself that I should be able to keep for myself alone these two Italian
flowers? Gertrude has asked me to aid her in a singular operation: the
accounts of all her farmers have to be clearly arranged. Adrien does not
like these commonplace details. He found yesterday in the woods a little
fellow of six years old, roguish as an elf, his hair a tangled bush, his
face, hands, and feet alarmingly dirty. “Will you take charge of this
child for an hour?” René asked me, as he had letters to write to his
brother. What trouble I had to make the little savage clean! Margaret
acted as currier; I was quite alone, dreaming of the past. This awoke
me, I can assure you. When he was _white_, I went to find Johanna, who
gave me a whole suit of clothes. This little wilding was the torment of
his mother; we are going to tame him. As a beginning I have put him to
school. He is enchanted to see himself so _fine_, and looks at himself
as if he were a relic. At the same time he is greedy, untruthful,
obstinate, lazy—all vices in miniature.
We are going to-morrow to the town; this always amuses the _babies_.
Happy age, when every little change is a festivity! If you knew what a
strange sensation I experienced this morning on entering the
drawing-room and not finding the two dear faces so long visible there! I
thought I should have wept or cried out—it would have done me good—but
Gertrude began to converse with me, and the feeling passed away.
I never talk to you now either about my godson or the beautiful
Emmanuel; it is very remiss. Both are charming and do not make much
noise. Dear little beings! And the day will come when they will be our
protectors, these two little nestlings whose warblings are so charming a
harmony to our ears. I wish you could hear Margaret say, “My son!” This
word has in her mouth such a penetrating sweetness!
Dear Kate, may God be with us!
SEPTEMBER 28, 1869.
Can it possibly be true? Père Hyacinthe quits his convent and in some
sort separates himself from the Roman Catholic Church. The bad
newspapers vie with each other in their applauses, while the good ones
groan. Louis Veuillot energetically blames. Pride has much to do with
this great fall. Let us pray that he may come back, this apostle who has
lost his way! Another star fallen!
Picciola daily grows weaker, and I now know, alas! why she is dying. I
would fain give the account with her touching simplicity, but this charm
belongs to her alone.
This morning I was in her room; she has not got up since the 22d. “Are
you alone, aunt?” “Yes, dearest.” “Because I have something to say to
you. I have to ask your pardon.” Poor angel! “My life was my own, was it
not, aunt? I could give it away?” “And why, then, did you give it away,
my child?” “Aunt, do not be so distressed. You love Mme. Marcella very
much, and Anna also. Well! last year, at Orleans, during the winter,
Anna had the fever. The doctor came; he examined her a long time, and it
was I who conducted him to the door. I asked him if my little friend was
very ill. 'She is consumptive, this beautiful child, and will not be
cured without a miracle.’ I was very much struck, but did not show it in
any way, and from that day I offered all my prayers for her recovery.
The day of my First Communion, O aunt! I was so happy. The good God had
given me everything. I tried to find a sacrifice to offer to him, and I
had nothing but my life; so I asked him to take this in exchange for
that of Anna. I felt at the same moment that I was heard, that my prayer
would be fully granted. Oh! how happy I was. But, my poor dear aunt, I
see you so sad that I am almost sorry; but then you have other nieces,
and Mme. Marcella has only one daughter. Do you forgive me?”
My God! my God! Can you understand, Kate, what I felt? “My mother must
not know of this,” continued the gentle victim, after a long effort.
“You will comfort her, dear aunt! Oh! it is so consoling to die for
others. I have a confidence that I shall go to heaven. Monsieur le Curé
has told me not to be afraid. I have always suffered ever since my First
Communion; but my cross was not heavy like that of our Lord! Oh! I long
so for heaven. On earth it is so difficult to keep one’s self always in
the presence of God; we shall see him on high. Aunt, what joy it is to
die!”
Berthe came into the room, from which I hastened precipitately to hide
my tears. I felt thoroughly overcome. What self-devotion! What angelic
desires! I told all to René, who had already his suspicions: Anna had so
delicate a chest, while our Mad’s constitution was so strong. God has
accepted the exchange. Poor Berthe! When she received Marcella with so
sisterly a welcome, how little she imagined that with her death entered
our dwelling! I am proud of Picciola—but I weep!
Ah! dear Kate, let us bless God for all.
SEPTEMBER 30, 1869.
I live as in another world since this revelation. “The holy angels will
come and take me,” said Picciola. Margaret, Berthe, Thérèse, Gertrude,
and I succeed each other in watching by her. “All my body is broken!”
she exclaimed in her delirium; otherwise, never a complaint. She prays,
and likes to hear singing; she is full of tenderness. I have no news of
Edith. Anna has written from Lyons.
Pray for those who remain, dear Kate!
OCTOBER 1, 1869.
She has received the last sacraments; her room exhales the perfume of
incense. We are all there, whispering prayers.
_2d October._—She is in heaven! “Dear angels, thanks, I come!” And her
soul fled away. Oh! how I suffer. I loved her too much! I write to you
near to _her_—near to _her_ who is no longer there. I could have wished
to follow her when the _abbé_ said: “Go forth from this world, Christian
soul!”
Did you know her well, this flower of heaven whose fragrance was so
sweet; this soul, open to every noble sentiment; this exceptional
understanding, which assimilated everything and was ever advancing?
My mother is well-nigh broken down; Berthe is kneeling, and still
kissing this brow so pure, these eyes whose gaze we shall behold no
more.
Raoul and Thérèse weep together; Gertrude occupies herself in attending
to the sad details; and as for me, I would pour upon this paper all the
desolation of my heart.
Shall I have the courage to paint her thus—inanimate—dead? O my God! it
is, then, true? That caressing arm will never again pass itself round my
neck. That beloved voice will no longer resound in my ears. That aërial
footstep will no more reveal her presence. She is gone! She was full of
life, and freely, voluntarily she has accepted death and has left us
alone.
Kate, how shall I pray, how shall I bless God? If you knew how I loved
her!
OCTOBER 12, 1869.
I am beginning to rise up. For ten days I have been in a state of
delirium. I saw Madeleine constantly by me, spoke to her, told her to
wait for me—that I did not wish to live without her. René was in
despair; but his prayers and yours have been heard. A strange calm has
succeeded to the disorder of my thoughts; I have the certainty that
Picciola and Edith have entered into everlasting rest. Yes, Edith! How
did I learn that she was dead? I do not know, but René saw that I knew
it and no longer sought to hide it from me. Adrien leaves us to-day to
go and bring hither Mary and Ellen, and also Mistress Annah, who is
wanted by Margaret. They compel me to stop. I love you.
OCTOBER 20, 1869.
I am still weak, dear Kate, but my soul is strengthened. Let us love
God, let us love God! I went at noon to the cemetery, to the beloved
grave. René accompanied me. Oh! how he also loved her. How sweet she was
when she spoke of him! Raoul has taken Berthe and Thérèse into Normandy
for a fortnight; their intense grief made him anxious. It is all like a
dream; but, alas! _she_ is no longer here. Let us so live that we may
rejoin her!
A friend of René’s gave Edith the comfort of embracing her son; our dear
friend’s will is addressed to me. René is utterly opposed to the young
girls being brought up with us, and we shall no doubt place them at the
Sacred Heart. René is right: no one could ever take the place of
Picciola in my heart.
Margaret and Gertrude have been angels of consolation to me. How shall I
ever repay their tenderness! Ah! it is good to be so loved. Let us
always love each other in Jesus, dear Kate!
OCTOBER 25.
The orphans are come, very touching in their mourning garments. The good
Mistress Annah has grown ten years older. Edith died the death of a
saint! How painfully this word death sounds in my heart!
My mother does not wish that Berthe should see _them_ here; the generous
Adrien offers to accompany them, but Margaret solicits this privilege,
with the secret intention, we believe, of paying the first year’s
expenses. Kind Margaret! I should like to have kept these children, but
in every point of view it is impossible. René fears that I may love them
too much—and you also, dear Kate. Thus it is decided that they are to
leave us on the 5th.
I send you the _journal_ of the last days of Edith; Mistress Annah
wished to give me this consolation, sweet and bitter at the same time.
Dear old friend! what good care we are going to take of her. I should
like to have her here. Karl will be made a priest on Christmas Eve; we
shall therefore be in Paris towards the 10th of December. For how long?
I do not yet know. My mother has changed very much since our _angel_ is
no longer here. O Christ! O Saviour! O Sovereign Friend of our souls!
take compassion on our sorrows.
Johanna is here, by me, with my beautiful godson on her knees, smiling
and playing with him in a thousand ways. Oh! how sweet was Picciola in
this same place. Alix and Marguérite come every minute to talk to me, to
amuse me. Margaret occupies herself in reading to me serious and
absorbing things; but—I constantly see _her_, my little dove that is
flown away.
Marcella is at Naples; the letter of mourning reached her there. She
does not know what her daughter’s life has cost us, nor will she ever
know it. Ah my God! who would have believed that?
Send me your good angel, dear, beloved sister!
TO BE CONTINUED.
PRESBYTERIAN INFIDELITY IN SCOTLAND.
The people of England, as his Eminence Cardinal Manning is fond of
saying, never abandoned the Catholic faith; it was torn from them by
violence. The people of Ireland were made of sterner stuff; they clung
to the faith, successfully resisting the pitiless persecutions to which
they were subjected. But the people of Scotland joyfully received the
new gospel and took it into their hearts with zealous ardor. In England
the sovereign imposed the new religion upon the people, and they
submitted to it; in Ireland the whole authority of the civil power,
exercised in the most cruel forms, was exhausted in vain attempts to
compel the apostasy of the people. In Scotland the people apostatized by
their own motion and the Reformation there was essentially a popular
movement. The late Archbishop Spalding, in his _History of the
Protestant Reformation_, says that the Reformation in Scotland spread
from low to high; that it “worked its way up from the people, through
the aid of the nobles, through political combinations and civil
commotions, to the foot of the throne itself, and, after having gained
the supreme civil power and deposed first the queen-regent and then the
queen, it dictated its own terms to the new regent and the new
sovereign; and thus, by the strong arm, it firmly established itself on
the ruins of the old religion of the country.” The true explanation of
the fact that the Reformation in Scotland was a popular movement is to
be found in the words of a Protestant writer[14] quoted by Archbishop
Spalding: “Scotland, from her local situation, had been less exposed to
disturbance from the encroaching ambition, vexatious exactions, and
fulminating anathemas of the Vatican court” than other countries; that
is to say, the authority of the Holy See for a long time prior to the
Reformation had been scarcely felt in Scotland; the wise and wholesome
provisions of the canon law had fallen into disuse; the civil power had
thrust its own creatures into benefices and bishoprics; and the people
had become disgusted by “the scandalous lives, ostentatious pomp, and
occasional exactions of the unworthy men who had been thus unlawfully
foisted into the bishoprics and abbeys.”
Footnote 14:
Thomas McCrie, minister of the Gospel, Edinburgh.
In England and Ireland the influence and authority of the popes had
not been thus disregarded; the church there had been kept tolerably
pure, and the affection of the people had not been alienated by the
faults and crimes of prelates and priests. In Ireland to-day, after
three hundred and thirty-six years of Protestant assaults upon the
faith, Catholic truth remains as firmly as ever rooted in the hearts
and exemplified in the lives of the people. In England the effects of
the retention of Catholic tradition are still to be seen: some of the
great fasts and festivals of the church are observed as legal
holidays; marriages are not solemnized at a later hour than that which
formerly was fixed for the celebration of the nuptial Mass; and
respectable Protestants, belonging to the Nonconformist societies as
well as to the Established Church, abstain from marrying or giving in
marriage during Lent.[15] But in Scotland the “blessed Reformation”
swept away all these “rags of Popery”; it had full course to run and
be glorified; and it made such thorough work that, for example, only
within the past few years has even the most modest recognition of
Christmas day as a festival been permitted. The Scottish Reformers,
having burned the religious houses, stripped and disfigured the
churches, and driven the priests from the land, set up the Bible as
their fetich, and ordained that it should be worshipped in conformity
with the precepts embodied in certain creeds and confessions of faith
which they framed to suit themselves. For three hundred years the
Scottish Presbyterians have been the most ardent Protestants in the
world, and have boasted most loudly of their devotion to, and their
implicit faith in, the written Word of God. This, and this alone,
contained in itself all that was necessary for salvation; and it were
better that a man should never have been born rather than that he
should take away from, or add one word to, what was written in this
book. God had not on the day of Pentecost called into being, by the
power of the Holy Spirit, a body commissioned “to teach all whatsoever
he had commanded until the consummation of the world”; he had simply
caused a book to be written. “In the books of the Old and New
Testaments,” they declared in their “Standards,” “the revelation of
God and the declaration of his will are committed wholly unto writing
... and they are all given by inspiration of God to be the only rule
of faith and life.” This has been the nominal faith of the Scotch
Presbyterians ever since the dawn of the Reformation, and it is their
nominal faith to-day. It has long been difficult, however, for the
admirers of Scotch Presbyterianism to reconcile the fact that they
were at once “the most Bible-loving and whiskey-loving people on the
face of the earth”; that their sexual immorality was threefold that of
the English, and tenfold that of the Catholic Irish; and that marriage
among them had become divested of every form of religious sanction.
Close observers of what was going on in Scotland had, indeed, from
time to time perceived evidences of the existence and extension of a
curious phase of scepticism among the people—a hypocritical and
speculative scepticism. The leading journal of the country had for
many years, with great skill and with the evident approbation of its
constantly-increasing circle of readers, devoted itself to the
stealthy inculcation of rationalism and of secularism in education. In
private, and sometimes in public, leading members of the various
branches of the Presbyterian Church had indulged in covert sneers at
this or that article of faith, and every attempt to reprove or punish
these heresies by the discipline of the church resulted in failure.
Events have now occurred which reveal in a startling manner the extent
to which infidelity has made conquest of the Scotch Presbyterian
ministers, and which show that those among them who still care to
profess their adherence to their standards of faith are unwilling or
afraid to attempt either the correction or the expulsion of their
atheistic brethren.
Footnote 15:
Moreover, the favor with which that parody of Catholic ceremony and
Catholic truths known as ritualism has been received in England,
especially among the common people, is an evidence of the imperfect
manner in which the Reformation there has done its work.
A new edition of the _Encyclopædia Britannica_ has lately been
published, the article “Angels” and the article “Bible” in which work
were written by Professor W. R. Smith, of the Free Church College of
Aberdeen. Both these articles contained statements which, in the
moderate language of the official report before us, and from which we
shall quote, “awakened anxiety in the minds of ministers and members of
the church.” The affairs of this college are managed by a committee, who
are authorized to “originate and prosecute before the church courts
processes against any of the professors for heresy or immorality,
according to the present laws of the church.” On the 17th of May last
this committee “had their attention called” to these writings of
Professor Smith; on the 19th of September they appointed seven of their
number—Mr. Laughton, Principal Rainy, Principal Douglas, Sir Henry
Moncreiff, Professor Smeaton, Dr. Gould, and Professor Candlish—to
consider the two articles, and to report to the committee what action,
if any, should be taken upon them. On the 17th of October the
sub-committee, two members dissenting, reported that they did not find
it necessary to say anything about Professor Smith’s views concerning
“angels,” but that it would be advisable in the first instance to ask
the professor if he had any explanation or apology to offer respecting
his article upon the Bible. On the 14th of November the committee
received a communication from Professor Smith not at all in the nature
of an apology; and on the 17th of January—eight months having been taken
for consideration of the matter from the commencement—the committee made
their report, which is addressed to the General Assembly of the church.
They state that “after carefully examining the article 'Bible,’ and
considering with attention the explanations which Professor Smith has
been good enough to furnish,” they have not found in the article
sufficient ground “to support a process for heresy”—a conclusion from
which one member of the committee, Dr. Smeaton, dissents, as will
appear, with good reason. It is true, the committee go on to say, that
Professor Smith’s statements relating to “the date, authorship, and
literary history” of certain books and portions of books in the Bible
not only “differ from the opinions which have been most usually
maintained in our churches,” but are “such as have been maintained by
writers who treat the Scriptures as merely human compositions.” But the
committee magnanimously decline to “assume that this circumstance is of
itself a ground either of suspicion or complaint,” inasmuch as “much
liberty of judgment should be maintained.” They confess, again, that
they “have observed with regret that the article does not adequately
indicate that the professor holds the divine inspiration” of the Bible,
and that he does not “adequately state the view of the Bible taken by
the Christian church as a whole.” “A clear note on this point” was much
needed, but the professor would not give it, and “the committee are
compelled to regard this feature of the case with disapprobation,” since
it would have been so easy for the professor, by “a single sentence or
clause of a sentence, at successive stages of his argument,” to have
“prevented the injurious effect which the committee deprecate.” The
professor gave “decided opinions in favor of some of the critical
positions maintained by theologians of the destructive school,” and he
consistently refrained from blowing hot and cold, as the committee
wished him to do, “by showing decisively that he did not agree with
their destructive inferences.” But since, in his communication to the
committee, Professor Smith “admits direct prediction of the Messias in
the Old Testament,” and receives three of the four gospels as “authentic
and inspired,” the committee—Professor Smeaton again dissenting—did not
think it wise to prosecute him for heresy on these points. They stumbled
sadly, however, in their attempts to explain why they resolved to acquit
him of flagrant heresy in the expressions of his views “with respect to
portions of the Pentateuch, and more particularly to the Book of
Deuteronomy.” It would be bad enough, they say, had Professor Smith
contented himself with maintaining that the Book of Deuteronomy in its
present form could not have been written, for philological reasons,
until eight hundred years after the death of Moses. But this would not
necessarily prove that the author of the book was not inspired and did
not faithfully record the history as it occurred. Professor Smith did
worse than this; for he affirmed “that instructions and laws which, in
the Book of Deuteronomy, appear as uttered by Moses, are certainly
post-Mosaic, and so could not, as a matter of fact, have been uttered by
him.” Professor Smith, say the committee, holds:
“1. That various portions of the Levitical institutions, to which a
Mosaic authorship is assigned in the Pentateuch, are of later date,
having come into the form in which they are exhibited only by
degrees, and in days long subsequent to the age of Moses. This is
held to be established by discrepancies between different parts of
Scripture, which are held to arise when the Mosaic origin is
assumed.
“2. In particular, the Book of Deuteronomy, in portions of it which,
_ex facie_, bear to be the record of utterances by Moses, makes
reference to institutions and arrangements much later than his time.
“3. This is to be accounted for by assuming that some prophetic
person, in later times, threw into this form a series of oracles,
embracing at once Mosaic revelations, and modifications, or
adaptations which were of later development; all together being
thrown into the form of a declaration and testimony of Moses.
“4. That, viewed especially with reference to the literary
conceptions and habits of that time and people, the method thus
employed was legitimate, and was such as the divine Spirit might
sanction and employ. It was designed to teach that the whole body of
laws delivered were the fruit of the same seed, had received the
same sanction, and were alike inspired by the Spirit which spake by
Moses.
“5. The sub-committee do not understand the professor to mean that
this involved any fraud upon those to whom the book was delivered.
It was given and taken for what it was; however, it may subsequently
have been misunderstood, in the professor’s view, in so far as it
came to be believed to be an ordinary historical record of actual
Mosaic utterances.”
The committee found themselves “obliged to regard this position with
grave concern.” They did not feel willing to admit the force of the
evidence which Professor Smith relied upon as establishing the
non-Mosaic character of some of the Deuteronomic laws; and “the
hypothesis of inspired personation applied to such a book as
Deuteronomy” appeared to them “highly questionable in itself and in its
consequences.” This is stating the case very mildly, especially as they
go on to say that the so-called “explanations produced by Professor
Smith in his statement have not relieved the apprehensions of the
committee,” but, on the contrary, have rather served “to make more
evident the stumbling-block for readers of the Bible arising from a
theory which represents a book of Scripture as putting into the mouth of
Moses regulations that are at variance with institutions which the same
theory supposes him to have actually sanctioned.” This theory is “liable
to objection and is fitted to create apprehension.” It ascribes to the
author of the book “the use of a device which appears unworthy and
inadmissible in connection with the divine inspiration and divine
authority of such a book as Deuteronomy.”... “The admissions that the
statements of the book regarding Moses are not true in the obvious sense
will operate in the way of unsettling belief.” The committee are
compelled to admit that the article is “of a dangerous and unsettling
tendency.” Nevertheless, they declare that they cannot and will not
exercise the rights and discharge the duties of their office by
instituting a process against Professor Smith for heresy. He has written
a most heretical, dangerous, and really blasphemous article, and has
caused it to be published in a book of the highest character and of the
most extensive circulation. But they have “a cordial sense of his great
learning,” and he has been good enough to say that although he has
proved that the Holy Spirit lied in certain portions of Deuteronomy, and
lent himself to the perpetration of a fraud in other portions, still he
can accept the book “as part of the inspired record of revelation, on
the witness of our Lord and the _testimonium Spiritus Sancti_”—the
testimony of the same Holy Spirit to whom he has imputed the crimes of
falsehood and of fraud! Therefore they declare that they find no fault
in Professor Smith other than that of being a little too free in the
utterance of his opinions, and, accordingly, they decide to let him go.
From this free and easy deliverance four members of the committee
dissented, but on different grounds. One of them thought that Professor
Smith’s views respecting angels were as “destructive” and as full of
“negations” as were his statements concerning the Bible, and that he
should have been arraigned for heresy on this ground. Another—Professor
Candlish—was of the opinion that there was no “ground in the articles
for concern about Professor Smith’s views”; and a third—Mr.
Whyte—insisted that, instead of indulging in “timid and cautious” blame,
the committee should have expressed their real feelings of approbation,
and given utterance to “a hearty and grateful acknowledgment of the
goodness of God to their church in the succession of eminent theologians
and teachers he was raising up among them,” and of whom Professor Smith
was the chief! The fourth dissentient was Dr. Smeaton, of whom we have
already spoken, and who, save the member who was distressed about
Professor Smith’s opinions respecting angels, seems to have been the
only orthodox person upon the committee. An appendix to the report sets
forth the reasons for his dissent at great length, but their purport may
be given in a few words. The finding of the committee was “wholly
inadequate to the gravity of the offence”; Professor Smith had offered
no retractation of his heresies, and he should have been arraigned at
the bar of the church. It is absurd for the committee to avow “regret
and grave concern” at the expression of heresy by a luminary of the
church, and then to “accept a mere profession of loyalty as a sufficient
reason for abstaining from further action.” He exposes the inconsistency
of the committee’s statement that the professor’s views, while
“injurious,” “destructive,” and “naturalistic,” are still compatible
with the belief that the book which he declares to be a forgery was
inspired by the Holy Ghost.
“I hold,” says Dr. Smeaton, “that the doctrine of inspiration and
Professor Smith’s views are irreconcilable, and that this will be
evident if, for example, we take account of his theory of
Deuteronomy or of his conception of the Song of Solomon. The view
which he propounds as to the origin of Deuteronomy is that it is a
fictitious personation of Moses by another man, in the unspeakably
solemn position of professing to receive and communicate a divine
revelation, and that the book was not composed until many centuries
after Moses’ death. The point at issue is not alone the age and
Mosaic authorship of Deuteronomy, but whether this book of Scripture
is supposititious, and whether it was after a great interval of time
composed and put into the mouth of Moses by another. This fraudulent
personation-theory is the lowest depth of criticism; for, as has
often been said, the mythical criticism had still this redeeming
point, that it did not impute to the writers conscious fabrication.
The supposititious or personation-theory, on the contrary, is not in
keeping with the character of an honest man, and wholly inconsistent
with that of an ambassador from God; and the attempt to exculpate
the writer who is said to have put his words into the mouth of
Moses, on the supposition that it was well known at the time, only
widens the sphere of the fraudulent deception, and makes the
receivers of the book act in collusion with the writer in his crime.
This theory, which I never expected to encounter in Scotland,
overlooks the important fact that, in the very book to which such an
origin is ascribed, we find the repeated condemnation of false
prophets, of false testimony, and of adding to, or diminishing from,
the Word of God; and we must therefore suppose the writer practising
deception while exposing falsehood in every form. Professor Smith
must make his choice between the reception of the book as an
inspired revelation, with all that it purports to be, as written in
the time of Moses, and as the work of Moses, or reject it altogether
as a fraud and entitled to no respect. There is no middle way. He
cannot maintain its fictitious origin, and yet assert its
inspiration. However convenient it may be for a speculative
theologian to oscillate between the two ideas, as the necessities of
a daring criticism may suggest, the notion of a fabricated prophetic
programme or of an inspired forgery will be regarded by the general
community, as it has always been regarded by me, as no better than
the very quintessence of absurdity. The robust common sense of
mankind scouts the possibility of the combination. For my part, I
could not stultify myself before the church and the world by
allowing such an incoherent and self-contradictory juxtaposition of
terms. But such a theory, if it could be endured for a moment,
would, it is evident, render inspiration incapable of vindication or
defence. And the enemies of revelation, I believe, could desire no
more effective weapon in their warfare than the power to proclaim
that a Christian church permitted a theological teacher to represent
any one book of Scripture as an inspired fabrication. But the
question forces itself on our minds: If one book may be so
described, what is to be the limit of this license, and how far is
the concession to be extended in the way of giving a chartered right
to similar caricatures of the sacred oracles? I am obliged to add
that, in my judgment, Professor Smith’s treatment of the Book of
Deuteronomy is tantamount to dropping it from the inspired canon.
And the same thing may be said of his mode of representing the scope
and purport of the Song of Solomon, to which he denies the spiritual
sense, and all that allusion to the communion between the Bridegroom
and the Bride which the church of all ages—notwithstanding the
wayward tendencies of a few individual writers—has always regarded
as immediately connected with its divine origin; for no reason can
be shown for its inspiration and canonical rank if it is to be
interpreted on the low exegetical conception that it is an earthly
love-poem. It will not do to say that this is a dispute about the
authorship of a book, and that the authorship of a book is of small
moment. I have already stated how much more is involved. But the
references to the Mosaic authorship of Deuteronomy, not only by
Peter and Paul (Acts iii. 22; Rom x. 6; x. 19), but by the Lord
Jesus Christ himself (Matt. xix. 8), are so express and definite
that the denial of that one accredited fact tends to shake the
inspiration of many other books of Scripture which explicitly assert
or imply it. In conclusion, I regret that the committee, fettered by
the interpretation which they have put upon their functions, have
not sent up with their report a strong recommendation to the
Assembly to deal effectually with the negative and destructive
opinions brought to light in Professor Smith’s articles as wholly
inconsistent with our recognized doctrines, and contrary to the
genius of every Reformed Presbyterian church. This is the first
instance that has occurred in any Scottish church of an attack on
the genuineness of any book of Scripture on the part of an
office-bearer within the church. And the question now raised, and
which must be decided one way or other, is whether the negative
criticism, with the rationalistic theology which uniformly goes
along with it, is to claim a legitimate position within the pale of
the Free Church of Scotland? To that I cannot consent. The
Continental churches, having neither our spiritual independence nor
our Scriptural discipline, can be no guide to us in this matter.
Under the control of the state, they are obliged to allow all manner
of latitudinarian opinions, and have ceased to put forth any
ecclesiastical testimony on great questions. We have what they want,
and are bound to call the spiritual independence and Scriptural
discipline, which are our distinctive privilege, into active
exercise or the side of the divine authority of Scripture.
Unfaithfulness or weak concession at this juncture would allow two
classes of professors, students, and preachers antagonistic to each
other, and end in the long run, as all such false alliances must
end, in an ultimate separation between the rationalistic and
evangelical elements, as incapable of existing together. Any man of
long views, or who has looked into the history of the church, must
see this; and, therefore, in the exercise of that inherent authority
which we possess, the church must at once nip these opinions in the
bud, and do so effectually. On one point I have not the shadow of a
doubt. An attack on the genuineness and authority of Scripture,
whether dignified by the title of the higher criticism or prompted
by the lower scepticism, ought never to be permitted within the
church on the part of any office-bearer. We can keep criticism
within its proper limits, and this occasion may have been permitted
to occur that we may show to other churches how we can act in the
exercise of our independent jurisdiction.”
These bold and true words of Dr. Smeaton had no effect upon the decision
of the committee; and, so far as that decision goes, it must now be
taken for granted that it is _not_ heresy for a minister of the
Presbyterian Church to teach that portions of the Holy Scriptures are
fictitious, supposititious, fraudulent, and deceptive. By the same
decision the Free Church of Scotland has “rendered inspiration incapable
of vindication or defence,” and has placed it within the power of the
enemies of revelation to say that a Christian church permits a
theological teacher to represent Scripture as an inspired fabrication.
It might have been expected, however, that this decision would have been
received with horror and consternation by the Bible-loving laity of
Scotland. The very contrary has proved to be the case, and the only
reproof which the committee seems to have received is in the nature of a
reproach for their weak affectation of disapproval of Professor Smith’s
heresies while really sympathizing with them. The ministers of the Free
Church of Scotland are wholly dependent upon the laity for their
support, and the control of the laity over them is far-reaching, if it
be not absolute. The decision in the case of Professor Smith would have
been different had not the laity of the church long since ceased, in a
great measure, to cherish that reverence for the written Word which
distinguished their ancestors. The Edinburgh _Scotsman_ expresses its
belief that there will be “very extensive satisfaction” at the decision
of the committee, and confidently assumes that “it will ultimately
become the collective judgment of the Free Church.” Dr. Smeaton, it
says, is the one member of the committee belonging to the old orthodox
party in the church—“a party whose diminishing numbers entirely preclude
the possibility of any view springing out of their turn of mind
successfully asserting itself against the influence of the majority that
has enjoyed so long and mollifying an experience in turning closed into
open questions.” Open questions! The inspiration and authenticity of the
Bible have become an open question among the Scotch Presbyterians, with
the probability that it will soon be decided by a verdict against the
book. The _Scotsman_ ridicules the committee for pretending to regard
Professor Smith’s position with “grave concern” while they themselves
“substantially sympathize with him,” or else know that so many of the
people agree with him that to prosecute him for heresy would be
dangerous.
Nor is it the Free Church of Scotland alone which has thus, to all
appearance, lost its faith in the Scriptures and in the “Standards.” The
Rev. David Macrae, of Gourock, one of the most talented and popular
ministers of the United Presbyterian Church of Scotland, declared
recently in the presbytery of that body that he and very many—almost
all—of his fellow-ministers had ceased to believe, and in some cases to
preach, the traditional creed of the church. He, for one, was henceforth
resolved to be honest, and was determined no longer to profess what he
had ceased to believe, but the majority of his brethren, he thought,
would continue for some time to be hypocrites. “The relation of the
clergy to the Standards was not an honest one,” he said; “the professed
was not the actual creed of the church; our church is professing one
creed while holding, and to a large extent preaching, another. I am
determined to strike a blow, even though it should be my last, to
liberate the church I love from the tyranny of a narrow creed and the
hypocrisy of a professed adherence to it.”
The lapse of the Scotch Presbyterians into infidelity may seem to be a
startling event, but it was inevitable. If the Bible could have saved
them, they would have been safe; but the Bible in itself never yet saved
any one, for God did not ordain that it should be written and preserved
for that purpose. The Bible, indeed, points out the way to salvation; it
is a finger-post directing men to the gate of heaven, but it is not that
gate itself, nor even the key which opens it. All non-Catholic sects are
certain, sooner or later, to lead their adherents to that pit of
perdition on the brink of which the Scotch Presbyterians now seem to be
standing—the blind lead the blind, and both fall into the ditch. The
Catholic Church in Scotland is small and weak; it is only within a very
few years that her growth there has been at all perceptible, and the
hierarchy has not been re-established there since it was swept away by
the Reformation. But the rapid decline of Scotch Protestantism into
practical infidelity may have a favorable effect upon the interests of
the church. The really pious of the people—and there are many such—may
now begin to turn their eyes towards the living Teacher of God’s word,
and listen to her unerring voice; and when they enter her fold they can
say that they have abandoned the church of their fathers in order to
return to the church of their forefathers.
HOW PERCY BINGHAM CAUGHT HIS TROUT.
One lovely evening towards the end of the month of June, 187-, an
outside car jingled into the picturesque little village of
Ballynacushla. The sun had set in a flood of golden glory; purple
shadows wooed midsummer-night dreams on crested hill and in hooded
hollow; a perfumed stillness slept upon the tranquil waters of the
Killeries, that wild but beauteous child of the Atlantic, broken only by
the shrill note of the curlew seeking its billow-rocked nest, or the
tinkle of the sheep-bell on the heather-clad heights of
Carrignagolliogue. Lights like truant stars commenced to twinkle in
lonely dwellings perched like eyries in the mountain clefts, and night
prepared to don her lightest mourning in memory of the departed day.
The rickety vehicle which broke upon the stillness was occupied by two
persons—a handsome, aristocratic-looking young man attired in
fashionable tourist costume, and the driver, whose general “get-up”
would have won the heart of Mr. Boucicault at a single glance.
“That’s a nate finish, yer honner,” he exclaimed, as, bringing a wheel
into collision with a huge boulder which lay in the roadway, he decanted
the traveller upon the steps of the “Bodkin Arms” at the imminent risk
of breaking his neck.
The “Bodkin Arms,” conscious of its whitewash and glowing amber thatch,
stood proudly isolated. Its proprietor had been “own man” to Lord
Clanricarde, and scandal whispered that a portion of the contents of
“the lord’s” cellar was to be found in Tom Burke’s snuggery behind the
bottle-bristling bar.
The occupant of the car was flung into the arms of an expectant waiter,
who, true to the instincts of that remarkable race, had scented his prey
from afar, and calmly awaited its approach. This Ganymede was attired in
a cast-off evening dress-coat frescoed in grease; a shirt bearing traces
of the despairing grasp of a frantic washerwoman; a necktie of the
dimensions of a window-curtain, of faded brocade; and waistcoat with
continuations of new corduroy, which wheezed and chirruped with every
motion of his lanky frame. His nose and hair vied in richness of ruby,
and his eyes mutely implored every object upon which they rested for a
sleep—or a drink.
“You got my note?” said the traveller interrogatively.
“Yes, sir, _of_ course, sir.” Of course they had it. The post in the
west of Ireland is an eccentric institution, which disgorges letters
just as it suits itself, and without any particular scruple as to dates.
“Have you a _table d’hôte_ here?”
This was a strange sound, but the waiter was a bold man.
“Yes, sir, _of_ course, sir! Would you like it hot, sir?”
“Hot! Certainly.”
“Yes, sir, _of_ course, sir! With a taste of lemon in it?”
“I said—Pshaw! Is dinner ready?” said the traveller impatiently.
“Yes, sir, _of_ course, sir; it’s on the fire, sir,” joyously responded
the relieved servitor, although the fowls which were to furnish it were
engaged in picking up a precarious subsistence at his very feet, and the
cabbage to “poultice” the bacon flabbily flourishing in the adjoining
garden.
“Get in my traps and rods”—the car was laden with fishing-tackle of the
most elaborate description. “Have you good fishing here?”
“Yes, sir, _of_ course, sir—the finest in Ireland. Trouts lepping into
the fryin’-pan out of the lake foreninst ye. The marquis took twoscore
between where yer standing and Fin Ma Coole’s Rock last Thursday; and
Mr. Blake, of Town Hill—more power to him!—hooked six elegant salmon in
the pool over, under Kilgobbin Head.”
“I want change of a sovereign.”
“Yes, sir, _of_ course, sir—change for a hundred pound, sir. This way,
sir. Mind yer head in regard of that flitch of bacon. It gave Captain
Burke a black eye on Friday, and the county inspector got a wallop in
the jaw that made his teeth ring like the bell in the middle o’ Mass.”
And he led the way into the hotel.
The charioteer, after a prolonged and exciting chase through several
interstices in his outer garment, succeeded in fishing up a
weather-beaten black pipe, which he proceeded to “ready” with a care and
gravity befitting the operation.
“Have ye got a taste o’ fire, Lanty Kerrigan?” addressing a diminutive
personage, the remains of whose swallow-tailed frieze coat were
connected with his frame through the medium of a hay-rope, and whose
general appearance bore a stronger resemblance to that of a scarecrow
than a man and a brother. “I’m lost intirely for a _shough_. The
forriner [the stranger] wudn’t stand smokin’, as he sed the tobaccy was
infayrior, but never an offer he med me av betther.”
“Howld a minnit, an’ I’ll get ye a hot sod.” And in less than the time
specified Lanty returned with a glowing sod of turf snatched from a
neighboring fire.
“More power, Lanty!” exclaimed the car-driver, proceeding to utilize the
burning brand. “Don’t stan’ too nigh the baste, _avic_, or she’ll be
afther aiting yer waistband and lavin’ ye in yer buff.”
“What soart av a fare have ye, Misther Malone?” asked Lanty, now at a
respectful distance from the mare.
“Wan av th’ army—curse o’ Crummle an thim!—from the barrack beyant at
Westpoort.”
“Is it a good tack?”
“I’ve me doubts,” shaking his head gravely and taking several wicked
whiffs of his _dhudheen_. “He’s afther axin’ for change, an’ that luks
like a naygur.”
“Thrue for ye, Misther Malone! Did ye rouse him at all?” asked the other
in an anxious tone. He expected the return of the “forriner” and was
taking soundings.
“Rouse him! Begorra, ye might as well be endayvorin’ to rouse a griddle.
I’m heart scalded wud him. I soothered him wud stories av the good
people, leprechauns, an’ banshees until I was as dhry as a cuckoo.”
“Musha, thin, he must be only fit for wakin’ whin _you_ cudn’t rouse
him, Mickey Malone.”
“I’d as lieve have a sack o’ pitaties on me car as—” He stopped short
and plunged the pipe into his pocket, as the object of the discussion
suddenly appeared upon the steps.
“Here is a sovereign for the car and half a sovereign for yourself,”
exclaimed the young officer, tossing the coins to the expectant Malone.
“Shure you won’t forget the little mare, Captain?”
“Forget her? Not likely, or you either, Patsey.”
“Ye’ll throw her a half a crown for to dhrink yer helth, Major?”
“Drink my health? What do you mean?”
“Begorra, she’d take a glass o’ sperrits wud a gauger, Curnil; an’ if
she wudn’t I wud. Me an’ her is wan, an’ I’ve dacent manners on my side,
so I’ll drink yer honner’s helth an’ that ye may never die till yer
fit.”
“That sentiment is worth the money,” laughed the traveller, tossing the
half-crown in the air and disappearing into the hotel.
“Well, be the mortial frost, Misther Malone,” cried Lanty Kerrigan in an
enthusiastic burst of admiration, “but yer the shupayriorest man in
Connemara.”
Percy Bingham, of the —th Regiment of the Line, found Westport even more
dreary than the Curragh of Kildare. From the latter he could run up to
Dublin in the evening, and return next morning for parade, even if he
had to turn into bed afterwards; from Westport there was nothing to be
done but the summit of Croagh Patrick or a risky cruise amongst the
three hundred little islands dotting Clew Bay. “_Lasciate ogni speranza
voi ch’entrate_” was written upon the entrance to the town. All was
dreariness, dulness, and desolation, empty quays, ruined warehouses, and
squalid misery. The gentry, with few exceptions, were absentees, and
those whom interest or necessity detained in the country spent “the
season” in London or Dublin, returning, with weary hearts and empty
pockets, to the _exile_ of their _homes_, there to vegetate until spring
and the March rents, wrung from an oppressed tenantry, would enable them
to flit citywards once more. To Bingham, to whom London was the capital
of the world, and the United Service Club the capital of London, this
phase in his military career was a horrid nightmare. Born and bred an
Englishman, he had been educated to regard Ireland as little better than
a Fiji island, and considerably worse than a West African station; and,
filled to the brim with Saxon prejudice, he took up his Irish quarters
with mingled feelings of disgust and despair. An ardent disciple of
Izaak Walton, he clung to the safety-valve of rod and reel, avenging his
exclusion from May Fair and Belgravia by a wicked raid upon every
trout-stream within a ten-mile radius of the barracks, and, having
obtained a few days’ leave of absence, arrived at Ballynacushla for the
purpose of “wetting his line” in the saucy little rivers that joyously
leap into the placid bosom of the land-locked Killeries.
“So my dinner is ready _at last_,” exclaimed Bingham pettishly. A good
digestion had waited two mortal hours on appetite.
“Yes, sir, _of_ course, sir!” replied the waiter. “A little derangement
of the cabbage, sir, lost a few minutes, but” cheerily “we’re safe and
snug now anyway. There’s darling chickens, sir! Look at the lovely
bacon, sir! Survey the proportions of the cabbage, sir!” And rubbing his
napkin across his perspiring brow, he gazed at the viands, and from the
viands to the guest, in alternate glances of admiration and respect.
“Have you a _carte_?”
“Yes, sir, _of_ course, sir—two of them; likewise a shay and a covered
car.”
“A wine carte, I mean.”
“No, sir; we get the wine from Dublin in hampers.”
Percy Bingham forgot that he was not in an English inn where the waiters
discuss vintages and prescribe peculiar brands of dry champagne.
“What wines have you?”
“We’ve port wine, sir, and sherry wine, sir, and claret wine, sir, and
Mayderial wine, sir,” was the reply, run off with the utmost rapidity.
“Get me a bottle of sherry!”
“Yes, sir, _of_ course, sir.”
In a few minutes the gory-headed factotum returned with the wine, and,
uncorking it with a tremendous flourish of arm, napkin, head, and hair,
deliberately poured out an overflowing glassful of the amber-colored
fluid, and drained it off.
“What the mischief do you mean?” demanded the young officer angrily. “I
wanted for to make _certain_ that your honner was getting the right
wine.” And placing the bottle at Percy Bingham’s elbow, he somewhat
hastily withdrew.
The gallant warrior enjoyed his chicken and bacon and “wisp of cabbage.”
The waiter had made his peace by concocting with cunning hand a tumbler
of whiskey-punch, hot, strong, and sweet, which Bingham proceeded to sip
between the whiffs of a Sabean-odored Lopez. Who fails to build castles
upon the creamy smoke, as it fades imperceptibly into space, wafting
upwards aspirations, wishes, hopes, dreams—rare and roseate shadows,
begotten of bright-eyed fancy? Not Percy Bingham, surely, seated by the
open casement, lulled by the murmuring plash of the toying tide, gazing
forth into the silent sadness of the gray-hooded summer night. He had
lived a butterfly life, and his thoughts were of gay parterres and
brilliant flowers. “Of hair-breadth 'scapes i’ the imminent deadly
breach” he knew nothing. His game of war was played in the boudoir and
drawing-room; his castle was built in May Fair, his châtelaine an ideal.
The chain of his meditation was somewhat rudely snapped asunder by an
animated dialogue which had commenced in some remote region of the
hotel, and which was now being continued beneath the window whereat he
reclined. The waiter had evidently been engaged in expostulating with
Lanty Kerrigan.
“Don’t run yer head against a stone wall, Lanty _avic_. Be off to
Knockshin, and don’t let the grass grow under yer feet!”
“Faix, it’s little ould Joyce wud think av me feet; it’s me back he’d be
lukkin for, an’ a slip av a stick. Sorra a step I’ll go.”
“Miss Mary must get her parcel anyhow.”
“Let her sind for it, thin, av she’s in sich a hurry.”
“An’ so she did. Get a lind av a horse, Lanty.”
“Sorra a horse there’s in the place, barrin’ an ass.”
“Wirra! wirra! She’ll take the tatch off the roof; the blood of the
Joyces is cruel hot.”
“Hot or cowld, I’m not goin’ three mile acrass the bogs—-”
“_You_ could coax it into two be manes av a sup, Lanty.”
“Sorra a coax, thin. Coax it yerself, sence yer so onaisy.”
“What’s the row?” asked Percy Bingham from the window.
“It’s in regard to a parcel for Miss Joyce, yer honner,” replied Lanty,
stepping forward.
“And who is Miss Joyce?” said Percy, intensely amused.
“O mother o’ Moses! he doesn’t know the beautifullest craythur in the
intire cunthry,” exclaimed Lanty, hastily adding: “She’s the faymale
daughther av ould Miles Joyce, of Knockshin beyant, wan av the rale owld
anshient families that kep’ up Connemara sence the times av Julius
Saysar.”
“And you have a parcel for her?”
“Troth, thin, I have, bad cess to it! It kem up Lough Corrib, an’ round
be Cong, insted of takin’ the car to Clifden, all the ways from Dublin,
in a box as big as a turf creel. It’s a gownd—no less—for a grate party
to-night; an’, begorra, while _it’s_ lyin’ here they’re goin’ to stay at
Frinchpark.”
“It’s too bad,” thought Bingham, “to have the poor girl sold on account
of the laziness of this idle rascal. Her heart may be set upon this
dress. A new ball-dress is an epoch in a young girl’s existence, and a
ball dress in this out-of-the way place is a fairy gift. _Hinc illæ
lachrymæ!_ How many hopes cruelly blasted, how many anticipated
victories turned into humiliating defeat. If it were not so late—By
Jove! it shall _not_ be.” And yielding to a sudden impulse, Percy
Bingham ordered Kerrigan to start for Knockshin.
“It’s five mile, yer honner, an’—”
“There is sixpence a mile for you. Go!” And in another instant the
parcel-laden Lanty had taken to the bog like a snipe.
Percy Bingham attacked his breakfast upon the following morning with a
gusto hitherto unknown to him. “I wonder did that girl”—he had forgotten
her name—“get the dress in time? I hope so. How fresh these eggs are! I
wonder if she’s as pretty as that ragamuffin described her? These salmon
cutlets are perfection. I must have a look at her, at all events. 'Pon
my life! those kidneys are devilled to a grain of pepper. This ought to
be a good trout day. One more rasher. By George! if the colonel saw me
perform this breakfast, he’d make me exchange into the heavies.”
Lighting a cigar and seating himself upon a granite boulder by the edge
of the inlet, the purple mountains shutting him in from the world, he
proceeded to assort his flies and to “put up” his casts.
“Musha, but yer honor has the hoighth av decoys!” observed Lanty
Kerrigan, touching the dilapidated brim of his caubeen, and seating
himself beside him. There is a masonry amongst the gentle craft which
levels rank, and “a big fish” will bring peer and peasant cheek by jowl
on terms of the most familiar intercourse.
“Yes, that’s a good book,” said Percy, with a justifiable pride in his
tone. The colors of the rainbow, the ornithology of the habitable globe,
were represented within its parchment folds. “This ought to be a good
day, Lanty.”
“Shure enough,” looking up at the sky. “More betoken, I seen Finnegan’s
throut as I come acrass the steppin’-stones there below.”
“Finnegan’s trout! What sort of a trout is that?” asked the officer.
“Pether Finnegan was a great fisher in these parts, yer honor. Nothin’
cud bate him. He’d ketch a fish as shure as he wetted a line, an’ no
matther how cute or cunnin’, he’d hav thim out av the wather before they
cud cry murther. But there was wan ould throut of shupayrior knowledge
that was well fed on the hoighth av wurrums an’ flies, an’ he knew
Pether Finnegan, an’, begorra, Pether knew _him_. They used for to stand
foreninst wan another for days an’ days, Pether flappin’ the wather, an’
th’ ould throut flappin’ his tail. 'I’ll hav ye, me man,’ sez Pether.
'I’ll have ye, av I was to ketch ye in me arms like a new born babe',
sez he. 'I never was bet be a man yet,’ sez he, 'an’ be the mortial I’m
not goin’ for to be bet be a fish.’ So he ups, yer honor, an’, puttin’ a
cupple o’ quarts o’ whiskey in his pockets for to keep up his heart, he
ups an’ begins for to fish in airnest an’ for the bare life. First he
thried flies, an’ thin he thried wurrums, an’ thin he thried all soarts
av combusticles; but th’ ould throut turned up his nose at the entirety,
an’ Pether seen him colloguerin’ wud the other throuts, an’ puttin’ his
comether on thim for to take it aisy an’ lave Pether’s decoys alone.
Well, sir, Pether Finnegan was a hot man an’ aisy riz—the heavens be his
bed!—an’ whin he seen the conspiracy for to defraud him, an’ the young
throuts laffin’ at him, he boiled over like a kittle, an’ shoutin’,
'I’ll spile yer divarshin,’ med a dart into the river. His body was got,
the bottles was safe in his pockets, but, be the mortial frost, th’ ould
throut got at the whiskey an’ dhrank it every dhrop.”
“I must endeavor to catch him,” laughed Percy Bingham.
“Ketch him!” exclaimed Lanty indignantly. “Wisha, _you_ wudn’t ketch
him, nor all the fusileers an’ bombardiers in th’ army wudn’t ketch him,
nor th’ ould boy himself—the Lord be betune us an’ harm!—wudn’t ketch
him. He’s as cute as the say-sarpint or the whale that swallied Juno.”
“What do the trout take best here?” asked Bingham, whose preparations
were nearly completed, his rod being set up and festoons of
casting-lines encircling his white felt hat.
“Wurrums is choice afther a flood; dough is shupayrior whin they’re
leppin’ lively; but av all the baits that ever consaled a hook there’s
non aiquail to corbait—it’s the choicest decoy goin’. A throut wud make
a grab at a corbait av the rattles was in his troath an’ a pike grippin’
him be the tail.”
Lanty Kerrigan was told off as cicerone, guide, philosopher, and friend.
“I suppose I am safe in fishing these rivers. No bailiff or hinderance?”
asked Percy Bingham of the landlord of the “Bodkin Arms.”
“There’s no wan to hinder you, sir; so a good take to you,” was the
reply. “I hope ye won’t come across old Miles Joyce, for if ye do
there’ll be wigs on the green,” he added under his breath as he turned
into the bar.
A cook it was her station,
The first in the Irish nation.
Wud carvin’ blade she’d slash away to the company’s admiration,
sang Lanty Kerrigan, prolonging the last syllable—a custom with his
class—into a kind of wail, as he merrily led the way through a narrow
mountain pass, inaccessible save to pedestrians, in the direction of the
fishing-ground. It was a sombre morning. Nature was in a meditative
mood, and forbade the prying glances of the sun. The white mists hung
like bridal veils over hill and dale, mellowing the dark green of the
pine-trees and the blue of the distant Atlantic, occasionally visible as
they pursued their zigzag, upward course. A light breeze—“the angler’s
luck”—gently fanned the cheek, and the sprouting gorse and tender ferns
were telling their rosaries on glittering beads of diamond dew.
“This is Lough Cruagh, yer honor, an’ there’s the boat; av ye don’t
ketch the full av her, it’s a quare thing.” The lake, a pool of
dark-brown water, lay in the lap of an amphitheatre of verdureless,
grim, gaunt-looking mountains. It was a desolate place. No living thing
broke upon the solitude, and the silence was as complete as if the
barren crags had whispered the single word “hush” and awaited the awful
approach of thunder. A road ran by the edge of the lake, but it was
grass-grown and showed no sign of traffic, not even the imprint of a
horse’s foot.
“Now she’s aff,” cried Lanty, seizing the oars. “Out wud yer flies, an’
more power to yer elbow.”
The sport was splendid. No sooner had his tail-fly touched the water
than an enormous trout plunged at it with a splash like that of a small
boy taking a header, and away went the line off the reel as though it
were being uncoiled by machinery—up the lake, down the lake, across the
lake; now winding in, now giving the rod until it bent like a whip; now
catching a glimpse of the fish, now fearing for the line on the bottom
rocks.
“If the gut howlds ye’ll bate him, brave as he is,” exclaimed Lanty
Kerrigan in an ecstasy of apprehension.
The fish was taking it quietly—_il faut reculer pour mieux
sauter_—preparing for another effort. Percy Bingham wiped the
perspiration from his brow; his work was cut out for him.
“Now’s the time for a dart o’ sperrits,” said Kerrigan, dexterously
shipping his oars and unfastening the lid of the hamper. “Ye won’t, yer
honner?”—Bingham had expressed dissent. “Well, begorra, here’s luck, an’
that it may be good,” pouring out a dropsied glassful and tossing it
off. “That’s shupayrior,” with a smack; “its warmin’ me stomick like a
bonfire! Whisht!” he added in an alarmed whisper, “who the dickens is
this is comin’ along the road?”
A mail phaeton, attached to a pair of spanking grays, came swiftly
and silently along the grass-grown causeway. An elderly,
aristocratic-looking man was driving, and beside him sat a young and
beautiful girl. “Be the hokey! we’re bet; it’s ould Miles Joyce
himself,” cried Lanty Kerrigan.
“Is that Miss Joyce, the young lady to whom you took the box last
night?” asked Percy somewhat eagerly.
“Och wirra! wirra! to be shure it is, an’ that same box is our only
chance now.”
“Pull nearer shore, Lanty,” said the young officer, who was very anxious
for a stare. “Good style,” he muttered. “Tight head, delicious plaits,
Regent Street hat—_ma foi!_ who would think of meeting anything like
this in a devil’s punchbowl? Pull _into_ shore, man,” he testily cried.
“Shure I’m pullin’ me level best.”
“Not _that_ shore, you idiot. Pull for the carriage.” Lanty was
straining in the opposite direction.
“Are ye mad, sir?” whispered Kerrigan. “I wudn’t face ould Joyce this
blessed minit for a crock o’ goold.”
The carriage drew up, and the driver in an authoritative voice shouted:
“Bring that boat here.”
“We’re bet; I tould you so,” gasped Lanty, reluctantly heading the boat
in the direction of the carriage. A few strokes brought them to the
beach.
Percy Bingham raked up his eye-glass and gazed ardently at Mary Joyce,
who returned the stare with compound interest. Irish gray eyes with
black, sweeping lashes, hawthorn-blossoms on her brow, apple-blossoms on
her cheeks, rose-buds on her lips, purple blood in her veins, youth and
grace and modesty hovering about her like a delicious perfume.
“May I ask by whose authority you are fishing here?” Mr. Joyce was pale,
and suppressed anger scintillated in his eyes. There are a great many
things to be done with impunity in Connemara, but poaching is the seven
deadly sins rolled into one. “Thou shalt not fish” is the eleventh
commandment. Bingham felt the awkwardness of his position at a glance,
and met it like a gentleman.
“I cannot say that I am here by any person’s authority. I am stopping at
the 'Bodkin Arms’—”
“Och murther! murther! howld your whisht,” interposed Lanty in a hoarse
whisper.
“Silence, fellow!” cried Bingham. “I am stopping at the 'Bodkin Arms,’
and, upon asking the proprietor if there was any hinderance to my
fishing, he replied that there was none. I ought, perhaps, to have been
more explicit with him.”
“Av coorse ye shud,” interrupted Lanty.
“And I can only say”—here he stared very hard at Mary Joyce—“that it
mortifies me more than I can possibly express to you to be placed in
this extremely painful position.”
“Do not say one word about it,” said Mr. Joyce in a courteous tone.
“With the proprietor of the 'Bodkin Arms’ I know how to deal, and with
you too, Lanty Kerrigan.” Lanty wriggled in the boat till it rocked
again. “But as for you, sir, all I can say is that I regret to have
disturbed your fishing, and I wish you very good sport.” And he bowed
with haughty politeness.
“I thank you very much for your courtesy,” bowed Bingham, who had by
this time landed from the boat, “but I shall no longer continue an
intruder.” And seizing his rod, he snapped it thrice across his knee and
flung it into the lake.
It was Mary Joyce’s bright eyes that led him to this folly—he wanted to
be set right with her.
“Oh! how stupid,” she exclaimed, starting to her feet.
“Thrue for ye, miss,” added Lanty—“two-pound tin gone like a dhrink, an’
an illigant throut into the bargain.”
“A wilful man must have his way,” said Mr. Joyce; “but I hope, sir, that
you will afford me an opportunity of enabling you to enjoy a day’s sport
in better waters than these.” And lifting his hat, he waved an adieu as
the fiery grays plunged onwards and out of sight.
And Mary Joyce! Yes, that charming little head bent to him, those
sweeping lashes lifted themselves that the glory of her gray eyes might
be revealed to him, the rose-bud lips had dropped three perfumed petals,
three insignificant little words, “Oh! how stupid”; and these were the
first words in the first chapter of Percy Bingham’s first love.
He found the following note awaiting him at the hotel:
“KNOCKSHIN, June 28.
“Mr. Joyce will be happy if Mr. Bingham will take a day on
Shauraunthurga—Monday, if possible—as Mr. J. intends fishing upon
that day. A salmon rod and flies are at Mr. Bingham’s disposal.
“—— BINGHAM, ESQ.”
Percy Bingham sent a polite acknowledgment and acceptance, and wished
for the Monday. It was very late that night when the warrior returned to
his quarters. He had been mooning around Mary Joyce’s bower at
Knockshin.
“What Masses have you here, Foxey?” asked Bingham of the waiter, whose
real name was Redmond, but to whom this appellation was given on account
of the color of his hair.
“The last Mass is first Mass now, sir. Father James is sick, and Father
Luke, a missioner, is doing duty for the whole barony.”
“Is Mr. Joyce, of Knockshin, a Catholic?” This in some trepidation.
“Yes, sir, _of_ course, sir—wan of the ould stock, sir; and Miss Mary,
his daughter, sir, plays the harmonicum, sir, elegant.”
“What hour does Mass commence?”
“That’s the first bell, sir, but they ring two first bells always.”
Percy Bingham belonged to a family that had held to the faith when the
tide of the Reformation was sweeping lands, titles, and honors before
it. He fought for the Catholic cause when it became necessary to strike
a blow; and as he was the only “popish” officer in the regiment, his
good example developed into a duty.
Just as he arrived at the church door the Joyce carriage drew up. Mr.
Joyce handed out his daughter. The gray eyes encountered those of the
young officer, who lifted his hat. Such a smile!—a sunbeam on the first
primrose of spring.
“I was glad to get your note, Mr. Bingham. Could you manage to come over
to breakfast? Military men don’t mind a short march.” And Mr. Joyce
shook hands with him.
“Am I to have the pleasure of hearing Miss Joyce’s harmonium to-day?”
asked Percy.
“No; Miss Joyce’s harmonium has a sore throat.”
Poor Bingham struggled hard to say his prayers, to collect his wandering
thoughts. He was badly hit; the ruddy archer had sent his arrow home to
the very feathers. He humbly waited for a glance as Miss Joyce drove
away after Mass, and he got it. He was supremely happy and supremely
miserable.
The “missioner,” a young Dominican, very tall and very
distinguished-looking, crossed the chapel yard, followed by exclamations
of praise and admiration from _voteens_ who still knelt about in
picturesque attitudes: “God be good to him!” “The heavens open to him!”
“May the saints warm him to glory!” while one old woman, who succeeded
in catching the hem of his robe, exclaimed enthusiastically:
“Och, thin, but it’s yerself that knows how to spake the word o’ God;
it’s yerself that’s the darlint fine man. Shure we never knew what sin
was till ye come amongst us.”
Percy Bingham found Knockshin a square-built, stone mansion, with a
“disinheriting countenance” of many windows, surrounded by huge elms
containing an unusually uproarious rookery. A huge “free classic” porch
surmounted a set of massive steps, supported by granite griffins
grasping shields with the Joyce arms quartered thereon. A lily-laden
pond, encircled by closely-shaven grass sacred to croquet, stood
opposite the house, and a pretentious conservatory of modern
construction ran along the greater portion of one wing.
The gallant warrior, regretting certain London-built garments reposing
at Westport, arrayed himself in his “Sunday best,” and, being somewhat
vain of his calves, appeared in all the woollen bravery of
Knickerbockers and Highland stockings.
Miss Joyce did the honors of the breakfast-table in white muslin and
sunny smiles. Possessing the air of a high-born dame, there was an Irish
softness, like the mist on the mountains, that imparted an indescribable
charm to all her movements, whilst a slight touch of the brogue only
added to the music of a voice ever soft, gentle, and low.
Percy, who could have talked like a sewing-machine to Lady Clara Vere de
Vere, found his ideas dry up, and, when violently spurred, merely
develop themselves in monosyllables. He had rehearsed several bright
little nothings which were to have been laid like _bonbons_ at her feet.
Where were they now?
She knew some men in the service—Mr. Poynter in the Rifles. Did he know
Mr. Poynter, who danced so well, talked so charmingly, and was _so_
handsome? Yes, he knew Poynter, and hated him from that moment. Did he
know Captain Wyberts of the Bays, the Victoria Cross man whom she had
met at the Galway Hunt Ball? He knew Wyberts, and cursed the luck that
placed no decoration upon _his_ tunic but a silken sash.
“By the way, you _must_ be the gentleman who interested himself in my
toilet on Friday night. Lanty Kerrigan spoke burning words in your
favor, if _you_ are the _preux chevalier_. Are you?”
“I assure you, Miss Joyce, I didn’t know who you were at the time, when
the blackguards seemed lazy about your parcel.”
“If you had known me, would that have made any difference, Mr. Bingham?”
she asked laughingly.
“It would.”
“In what way?”
“I would have thrashed Lanty Kerrigan and have brought the parcel
myself.” He threw so much earnestness into this that the red blood
flushed up to the roots of Mary Joyce’s rich brown hair. “I must see to
my tackle,” she said in a confused way.
“Are you an angler, Miss Joyce?”
“Look at my boots”—a pair of dainty, dumpy little things such as
Cinderella must have worn on sloppy days when walking with the prince,
with roguish little nails all over the soles crying, “Stamp on us; we
like it,” and creamy laces fit for tying up bride-cake.
“By Jove!” exclaimed Percy Bingham, and that was all he was able to
reach at that particular moment. He thought afterwards of all he could
have said and—didn’t.
A walk of half a mile brought them to the Shauraunthurga, or “Boiling
Caldron,” whose seething waters dashed from rock to rock, and boiled in
many whirlpools as it rushed madly onwards to the wild Atlantic.
What did Bingham care about the fishing? Not a dump. He stood by _her_
side, set up _her_ cast, sorted _her_ flies, spliced the top joint of
_her_ rod, and watched with feverish anxiety the eccentric movement of
_her_ gorgeous decoy, as it whirled hither and thither, now on the
peat-brown waters, now in the soap-suds-like foam.
“_Bravissima!_ Splendidly struck!” he cried with enthusiastic delight—he
felt inclined to pat her on the back—as the young Galway girl, with
“sweet and cunning” hand, hooked her fish with the _aplomb_ and
dexterity of a Highland gillie. “Give him line, plenty of rope, and mind
your footing!”
“A long hour by Shrewsbury clock” did Mary Joyce play that salmon. Her
gloves were torn to shreds, her hat became a victim to the
Shauraunthurga, her sheeny hair fell down her shoulders long below her
waist, her boasted boots indicated eruptive tendencies, but the plucky
girl still held on. “Let me alone, please,” she would cry as her father
or Bingham tendered their services; “I’m not half-tired yet.” The color
in her cheeks, the fire in her eye, the delicate nostril expanded, the
undulating form—the British subaltern saw all this, and almost envied
the fish, inasmuch as it was her centre point of interest.
“The landing-net! Quickly! I have him now!”
Percy Bingham darted forward, caught his foot in the gnarled root of a
tree, and plunged headforemost into the boiling waters. An expert
swimmer, he soon reappeared and swam towards the bank, still grasping
the net. Finding his right arm powerless, and having succeeded in
gaining footing, he placed the net beneath the fish, which with a bound
sprang clear, and, breaking the line that Miss Joyce had slackened in
her anxiety for the safety of her guest, was, in an exhausted condition,
floundering down the stream, when Percy, by a supreme effort, clasped it
fiercely in his left arm and flung himself on to the bank.
“_Your_ fish after all. But you look ill, Mr. Bingham—dreadfully ill,”
cried the agitated girl. “Your arm—”
“Is broken,” he said.
Assisted by Mr. Joyce and his daughter, and with the fractured limb in a
sling constructed of handkerchiefs and fishing-line, poor Bingham
returned to the house. He fought bravely against the pain, and attempted
one or two mournful jokes upon the subject of his mishap; but every step
was mortal anguish, and he expected to feel the serrated edges of the
bones sawing out through his coat-sleeve.
“I must insist upon being permitted to return to my hotel, Mr. Joyce,”
said Percy Bingham when they had arrived.
“If you want _every_ bone in your body broken, you’ll repeat that again,
Bingham. Here is a room ready for you, and here, in the nick of time, is
Doctor Fogarty.”
“I cotch him at the crass-roads,” panted the breathless messenger whom
Mr. Joyce had despatched in quest of the bone-setter.
“A broken arm, pooh hoo! And so it is—an elegant fracture, pooh hoo! You
did it well when you went about it. Lend me your scissors, Miss Mary,
and tear up a sheet into bandages. I’ll soon set it for him, pooh hoo!
Ay, wince away, _ma bouchal_; roar murdher, and it will do you good,
pooh hoo! Some splints now. Fell into the river, pooh hoo! After a
salmon. You landed him like a child in arms. I forgive you, pooh hoo!
I’ve room for the fish in me gig, and broiled salmon is—pooh hoo! That’s
it; the arm this way, as if ye were goin’ to hit me. Well done, pooh
hoo! _Ars longa est_; so is your arm—an elegant biceps, pooh hoo! Now,
sir, tell me if there’s a surgeon-major in the whole British army,
horse, foot, and dragoon, that could set your arm in less time, pooh
hoo?” and the doctor regarded the swathed and bandaged limb with looks
of the profoundest admiration.
“I shall want to get to barracks—”
“Ne’er a barracks will ye see this side of Lady Day; so make your mind
easy on that score, pooh hoo! Keep in bed till I see you again, pooh
hoo! I’ll order you something to take about bed-time, but it _won’t_ be
whiskey-punch, pooh hoo!” And the genial practitioner pooh-hoo’d out of
the apartment.
How delightful is convalescence—that dreamy condition in which the
thoughts float upwards and the earthly tenement is all but etherealized!
Percy Bingham, as he reclined upon a sofa at an open window, through
which the perfume of flowers, the hum of summer, with the murmur of the
rolling Shauraunthurga, stole like strains of melody, lay like one
entranced, languidly sipping the intoxicating sweets of the hour,
forgetful of the past, unmindful of the future. The events of the last
few days seemed like a vision. Could it be possible that he would
suddenly awake and find himself in the dismal walls of his quarters at
Westport, far, far away from chintz and lace and from _her_? No; this
was _her_ book which lay upon his lap; that bouquet was culled by _her_
fair hands; the spirited sketch of a man taking a header spread-eagle
fashion was from _her_ pencil and must be sent to _Punch_. She was in
everything, everywhere, and, most of all, in the inner sanctuary of his
heart.
He had not seen much of her—a visit in the morning like a gleam of
sunlight; a chat in the gloaming, sweet as vesper-bell; occasional
badinage from the garden to his window, and that was all. How could he
hope to win her, this peerless girl, this heiress of the “Joyce
country,” whose gray eyes rested upon mead and mountain, lake and
valley, her rightful dower? He sickened at the thought. Had she been
poor, he would woo, and perhaps—It was not to be. He had tarried till it
was too late; he had cut down the bridge behind him, burned his boats,
and he must now ford the river of his lost peace of mind as best he
might.
Days flew by, and still the young officer lingered at Knockshin. Like
the fairy prince in the enchanted wood, he could discover no exit.
Croquet had developed into short strolls, short strolls into long walks,
long walks into excursions. His arm was getting strong again. Mr. Joyce
talked “soldier” with him. He had been in the Connaught Rangers, and
went through pipe-clay and the orderly book with the freshness of a
“sub” of six weeks’ standing. Mary—what did she speak about? Anything,
everything, nothing. Latterly she had been eloquently silent, while
Percy Bingham, if he did not actually, might have fairly, counted the
beatings of his heart as it bumped against his ribs. They spoke more at
than to each other, and when their eyes met the glance was withdrawn by
both with electrical rapidity. It was the old, old story. Why repeat it
here?
“Mary, Jack Bodkin, your old sweetheart, is coming over for a few days’
fishing,” exclaimed Mr. Joyce one morning upon the arrival of the
letter-bag.
Miss Joyce blushed scarlet—a blush that will not be put off; a blush
that plunges into the hair, comes out on the eyelids, and sets the ears
upon fire—and Percy Bingham, as she grew red, became deadly white. The
knell had rung, the hour had come.
“This is from the colonel,” extending a letter as he spoke, the words
choking him, “and—and I must say good-by.”
“Sorry for it, Bingham, but duty is duty. No chance of an extension?”
asked Joyce.
“None, sir.”
And _she_ said not a word. There was crushing bitterness in this. Mr.
Bodkin’s arrival blotted out _his_ departure. Would that he had never
seen Knockshin or Mary! No, he could not think that, and, now that he
was about to leave her, he felt what that severance would cost him.
The car was waiting with his _impedimenta_, and he sought her to say
farewell. She was not in the conservatory or drawing-room, and as a last
chance he tried the library. Entering noiselessly, he found Mary Joyce
leaning her head upon her hands, her hands upon the mantel-piece and
sobbing as if her heart would break.
“I beg your pardon!” he stammered. “Is—is—anything the—”
“A bad toothache,” she burst in passionately, without looking up.
What could he do? What could he say?
“I—I—do not know how to apologize for—for—intruding upon your
anguish”—the words came very slowly, swelling, too, in his throat—“but I
cannot, _cannot_ leave without wishing you good-by and thanking _you_
for the sunniest hours of my life.”
“You—you are g-going, then?” without looking round.
“I go to—to make room for Mr. Bodkin.”
She faced him. Her eyes were red and swollen, but down, down in their
liquid depths he beheld—something that young men find once in a
lifetime. He never remembered what he did, he never recollected what he
said, but the truth came out as such truths will come out.
“And to think that you first learned of my existence through the medium
of a pitiful ball-dress!” she said, glowing with beautiful happiness.
* * * * *
“I shall not require the car,” said Percy Bingham an hour later,
throwing Lanty Kerrigan a sovereign.
“Bedad, ye needn’t have tould me,” exclaimed Lanty with a broad grin. “I
seen yez coortin’ through the windy.”
PROF. YOUMANS _v._ DR. W. M. TAYLOR ON EVOLUTION AND THE COPERNICAN
THEORY.
The _Popular Science Monthly_, conducted by Mr. E. L. Youmans, labors
hard (December, 1876) to support the assertion made by Professor Huxley
that evolution is already as well demonstrated as the Copernican theory.
This assertion had been refuted by the Rev. Dr. William M. Taylor in a
letter to the New York _Tribune_, and it is against a portion of this
letter that Mr. Youmans strives to defend Mr. Huxley’s evolutionary
views. We ourselves have given a short refutation of Professor Huxley’s
lectures on evolution,[16] and we had no intention to revert to the same
subject; but since opposite writers are unwilling to acknowledge defeat,
but pretend, on the contrary, that their opponents do not make a right
use of logic, it may be both instructive and interesting to inquire what
kind of logic is actually used in this controversy by the evolutionists
themselves.
Footnote 16:
See THE CATHOLIC WORLD for February, 1877, page 616.
“It is significant,” says Mr. Youmans, “that nearly all the divines who
have spoken in reply to Prof. Huxley commit themselves to some form of
the doctrine of evolution.” This statement is not correct. Divines
admit, as they have ever admitted, the development of varieties within
the same species; but the pretended evolution of one species from
another they have never admitted, and they do not look upon it as
admissible, even now. There may be some exception, for divines are still
human and may be imposed upon by false science; but the truth is that
those among them who have replied to Prof. Huxley never meant to “commit
themselves” to any form of the doctrine of evolution as presented by
him. They admit, as Mr. Youmans remarks, “that there is _some_ truth in
it”—which is by no means strange, as false theories have often been
evolved from undeniable facts; but they raise “a common protest against
the idea that it contains _much_ truth,” which shows that these divines
were quite unwilling to commit themselves to the doctrine. Hence it is
plain that, if the conduct of these divines is “significant,” it does
not signify a yielding disposition, but the contrary.
Prof. Huxley had said that the evidence for the theory of evolution is
demonstrative, and that it is as well based in its proofs as the
Copernican theory of astronomy. “This,” says Mr. Youmans, “is thought to
be quite absurd. It is said that Huxley may know a great deal about
animals and fossils, but that obviously he knows very little about
logic. His facts being admitted, a great deal of effort has been
expended to show that he does not understand how to reason from them.”
We agree with the critics here alluded to, that Prof. Huxley’s assertion
concerning the demonstrative character of his proofs is “quite absurd.”
As to his knowledge of logic, there might perhaps be two opinions; for a
man may know logic, and make a wilful abuse of it; but it is more
charitable to assume that his illogical conclusions proceed from
ignorance rather than malice. After all, we are not concerned with the
person of the professor, but with his lectures; and, whatever logic he
may know, his lectures are certainly not a model of logical reasoning.
The passage which Mr. Youmans extracts from Dr. Taylor’s letter, and
which he vainly endeavors to refute, is as follows:
“Indeed, to affirm, as he [Prof. Huxley] did, that evolution stands
exactly on the same basis as the Copernican theory of the motions of
the heavenly bodies, is an assertion so astounding that we can only
'stand by and admire’ the marvellous effrontery with which it was
made. That theory rests on facts presently occurring before our
eyes, and treated in the manner of mathematical precision. It is not
an inference made by somebody from a record of facts existing in
far-off and pre-historic, possibly also pre-human, ages. It is
verified every day by occurrences which happen according to its
laws. But where do we see evolution going on to-day? If evolution
rests upon a basis as sure as astronomy, why do we not see one
species passing into another now, even as we see the motions of the
planets through the heavens?... We know that astronomy is true,
because we are verifying its conclusions every day of our lives on
land and on sea. We set our clocks according to its conclusions, and
navigate our ships in accordance with its predictions; but where
have we anything approaching even infinitesimally to this, with
evolution?”
Mr. Youmans remarks that the author of this passage is said to be a man
of eminence and ability. “That may be,” he adds, “but he certainly has
not won his distinction either in the fields of logic, astronomy, or
biology.” To prove this, he makes the following argument:
“When a man undertakes to state the evidence of a theory, and gives
us proofs that equally sustain an opposite theory, we naturally
conclude that he does not know what he is talking about. This is
very much Dr. Taylor’s predicament. In trying to contrast the
evidence for evolution with the demonstrative proofs of the
Copernican theory, he cites facts that are not only as good, but far
better, to prove the truth of its antagonist, the Ptolemaic theory.”
Our readers will probably ask how it is possible to prove that a thing
is black by the very facts which prove, even better, that the thing is
white? That certain facts may be insufficient to prove either the one or
the other of two opposite theories every one will admit; but that facts
which are good to prove the movement of the earth are even better to
prove its immobility, is what Mr. Youmans alone has the privilege of
understanding.
Dr. Taylor, in his argument against Prof. Huxley, assumed the truth of
the modern astronomical theory, and said that this theory was proved by
facts presently occurring before our eyes; which is not the case with
the hypothesis of evolution. But, as he did not mention in particular
those facts which are considered to constitute the most irrefragable
proof of the theory, his silence about them is interpreted by Mr.
Youmans as an effect of ignorance. It is not our affair to defend Dr.
Taylor; but we think that this interpretation is unfair. The reverend
doctor was not writing a treatise of astronomy; he was simply stating a
known doctrine, of which it was not his duty to make the demonstration.
On the other hand, even if we admitted that the reverend doctor knows
but little of astronomy, we do not see that this would weaken his
argument; for, whether he knows much or nothing in this branch of
science, it remains true that the Copernican theory is proved “by facts
presently occurring before our eyes”—which is not the case with the
hypothesis of evolution. It is to this truth that Mr. Youmans should
have given his attention, if he desired “to win any distinction in the
field of logic”; but his peculiar logic shrank from this duty, and
prompted him to prefer a gratuitous denunciation of his opponent.
Mr. Youmans pretends that Dr. Taylor “talks as if the Copernican theory
is something that anybody can see by looking up in the sky.” Dr.
Taylor’s words do not admit of such a nonsensical construction. The
Copernican theory, he says, “rests on facts presently occurring before
our eyes, and treated in the manner of mathematical precision.” This
obviously means that the Copernican theory is based on both observation
and calculation. Now, surely Mr. Youmans will not maintain that we can
find mathematical formulas and make astronomical calculations by simply
“looking up in the sky.”
He goes on to say that the Ptolemaic theory was the fundamental
conception of astronomy; that it guided its scientific development for
two thousand years; that it was based on extensive, prolonged, and
accurate observations; that it was elucidated and confirmed by
mathematics; that it was _verified_ by confirming the power of
astronomical prevision; and that the planetary motions were traced and
resolved on this theory with great skill and correctness, elaborate
tables being constructed, which represented their irregularities and
inequalities, so that their future positions could be foretold, and
conjunctions, oppositions, and eclipses predicted.
These and similar remarks of the scientific editor would tend to prove
that the Congregation of the Holy Office had very good and substantial
grounds for condemning the heliocentric theory, and that Galileo was a
visionary; for the theory which he impugned was “confirmed by
mathematics,” and “verified by confirming the power of astronomical
prevision.” We are quite sure, however, that this is not what Mr.
Youmans intended to prove; and yet it does not appear why he should fill
a column of his magazine with such a panegyric of a defunct theory. We
concede—and the fact has never been disputed—that astronomy owes an
immense debt to the ante-Copernican investigators for their careful
observations and laborious calculations; but we do not see how this has
anything to do with Dr. Taylor’s criticism. Had the reverend doctor
denied that there was any real knowledge of astronomy before Copernicus,
his critic might have been justified in trying to enlighten him about
the merits of the Ptolemaic astronomers; but Dr. Taylor had not
committed himself on this point, and therefore had no apparent need of
being enlightened on the subject. The information, consequently, which
Mr. Youmans volunteers to offer him is superfluous, not to say
impertinent, and, inasmuch as it professes to be an argument, is a
complete failure; for it aims at proving what no one has ever denied.
But the scientific editor in giving his needless information commits
another blunder, which we could hardly expect from a man of science, by
affirming that the Ptolemaic theory “was elucidated and confirmed by
mathematics.” Mathematics confirmed nothing but the order and quality of
the phenomena, and the law of their succession. Before Kepler and Newton
no mathematics could decide whether the sun revolved around the earth or
the earth around the sun. Astronomical phenomena were known, but this
knowledge was a knowledge of facts, not of their explanation. The
Ptolemaic hypothesis was not inconsistent with the facts then observed,
but it was _assumed_, not _verified_. If such a theory had been
verified, its truth would be still recognized, and the Copernican theory
would have had no chance of admission. But evidently it is not the
theory that has been verified, but only the apparent movements of
celestial bodies. Thus “the elaborate tables” by which the future
positions of the planets could be foretold prove indeed the accuracy of
ancient astronomical observations and calculations, but they are no
evidence that the geocentric theory was correct.
Mr. Youmans informs us, also, that “Copernicus did not abolish, but
rather revised, the old astronomy.” If the words “old astronomy” are
taken to express merely the knowledge of celestial phenomena, we have
nothing to reply; but if those words be understood to mean the Ptolemaic
theory, the assertion is ridiculous. Indeed, Copernicus, as Mr. Youmans
says, “simply recentred the solar system”; that is, he simply put the
sun, instead of the earth, in the centre of the planetary orbits.
Nothing but that. But who does not see that to give a new centre to the
solar system was to suppress the old centre, and therefore to _abolish_
the geocentric theory? Why Mr. Youmans should labor to insinuate the
contrary we cannot really understand. Dr. Taylor, against whom he
writes, had said nothing concerning either the personal views of
Copernicus or the old system of astronomy, but had simply maintained
that the so-called Copernican theory, as mentioned by Prof. Huxley, and
as understood by all—that is, as perfected by Kepler, Newton, and
others—stands to-day on such a basis of undeniable facts that we can no
longer hesitate about its truth. This statement might have been
contradicted two centuries ago; but we fancy that it ought not to give
rise to the least controversy on the part of a modern cultivator of
science, however much determined to find fault with his opponent.
Dr. Taylor had said, as we have noticed, that the Copernican theory
“rests on facts presently occurring before our eyes.” Mr. Youmans
answers: “So does the Ptolemaic theory; and not only that, but, if the
test is what occurs before our eyes, then the Ptolemaic theory is a
thousand times stronger than the Copernican.” If this answer expresses
the real opinion of Mr. Youmans, we must conclude that he alone, among
physicists, is ignorant of the fact that terrestrial gravitation is
modified by the centrifugal force due to the rotation of the earth, and
that this fact is established by experiments which “occur before our
eyes” when we make use of the pendulum in different latitudes. What
shall we say of the aberration of light? Is not this phenomenon a proof
of the movement of the earth? Or does it not “occur before our eyes”?
Mr. Youmans may say that these facts do not occur before all eyes, but
only before the eyes of scientific men. But Dr. Taylor had not
maintained that all the facts connected with the Copernican theory occur
before all eyes; and, on the other hand, Foucault’s pendulum, even
though oscillating before unscientific eyes, makes visible to the
dullest observer the shifting of the horizontal plane from its position
at a rate proportional to the sine of the latitude of the place, thus
showing to the eye the actual movement of our planet. It is true,
therefore, that the Copernican theory “rests on facts presently
occurring before our eyes.”
But, if the Copernican theory is so obvious, “why,” asks Mr. Youmans,
“did the astronomers of twenty centuries fail to discern it? Why could
not the divines of Copernicus’ time see it when it was pointed out to
them? And why could not Lord Bacon admit it a hundred years after
Copernicus?” The _why_ is well known. The Copernican theory was at first
nothing more than a hypothesis; and its truth, even after Kepler and
Newton, was still in need of experimental confirmation. Had Lord Bacon
or the divines of Copernicus’ time seen what we see with our eyes in
Foucault’s experiment, there is little doubt that they would have
recognized at last the truth of the new theory. But let this suffice
about the certitude of the Copernican theory.
The second part of Mr. Youmans’ article regards the theory of evolution.
This theory assumes that the immense diversity of living forms now
scattered over the earth has arisen from gelatinous matter through a
long process of gradual unfolding and derivation within the order of
nature (that is, without supernatural interference) and by the operation
of natural laws. Mr. Youmans says that this theory “is built upon a
series of demonstrated truths.” This assertion would have some weight,
if such a building had not been raised in defiance of logic; but we have
already shown that Prof. Huxley’s _Three Lectures on Evolution_ teem
with fallacies most fatal to the cause he desired to uphold. Hence,
while we admit that “demonstrated truth” is a very solid ground to build
upon, we maintain that not a single demonstrated truth can be logically
alleged in support of the theory of evolution. But let Mr. Youmans speak
for himself:
“It is a fact accordant with all observation, and to which there
never has been known a solitary exception, that the succession of
generations of living things upon earth is by reproduction and
genetic connection in the regular order of nature. The stream of
generations flows on by this process, which is as much a part of the
settled, continuous economy of the world as the steady action of
gravity or heat. It is demonstrated that living forms are liable to
variations which accumulate through inheritance; that the ratio of
multiplication in the living world is out of all proportion to the
means of subsistence, so that only comparatively few germs mature,
while myriads are destroyed; that, in the struggles of life, the
fittest to the conditions survive, and those least adapted perish.
It is a demonstrated fact that life has existed on the globe during
periods of time so vast as to be incalculable; that there has been
an order in its succession by which the lowest appeared first, and
the highest have come last, while the intermediate forms disclose a
rising gradation. It is a demonstrated truth of nature that matter
is indestructible, and that, therefore, all the material changes and
transformations of the world consist in using over and over the same
stock of materials, new forms being perpetually derived from old
ones; and it is a fact now also held to be established that force
obeys the same laws. All these great truths harmonize with each
other; they agree with all we know of the constitution of nature;
and they demonstrate evolution as a fact, and go far toward opening
to us the secondary question of its method.”
These are, according to Mr. Youmans, the “demonstrated truths” on which
the theory of evolution has been built, and which, according to the same
writer, “demonstrate evolution as a fact.” We think, on the contrary,
that the only fact demonstrated by this passage is the blindness
(voluntary or not) of a certain class of scientists. A cursory
examination of it will suffice to convince all unprejudiced men that
such is the case.
That the stream of generations flows on “by reproduction and genetic
connection in the regular order of nature” is indeed a fact accordant
with all observation, and to which there never has been known a solitary
exception; but all observation proves that the regular order of nature
in generation is confined within the limits of the species to which
parents belong. This precludes the possibility of drawing from this fact
any conclusion in favor of evolution.
That living forms “are liable to variations, which accumulate through
inheritance,” is _not_ a demonstrated fact. We see, on the contrary,
that all such accidental variations, instead of accumulating, tend to
disappear within a few generations, whenever they cease to be under the
influence of the agencies to which they owe their origin. But let us
admit, for the sake of argument, that all living forms are liable to
variations which accumulate through inheritance; then we ask whether all
such variations are confined within the limit of each species, or some
of them overstep that limit. If they are confined within that limit, the
fact proves nothing in favor of the evolution of species. If, on the
contrary, any one says that they overstep that limit, then the fact
itself needs demonstration; for it has never been observed. Therefore to
argue from this fact in favor of evolution is to beg the question. We
have no need of dwelling on Mr. Youmans’ statement that the ratio of
multiplication in the living world is out of all proportion to the means
of subsistence, so that only comparatively few germs mature, while
myriads are destroyed. The statement is true; but it has nothing to do
with the theory of evolution. That, in the struggles of life, the
fittest to the conditions survive, is another fact which does not in the
least bear out the theory. For the fittest among animals are those which
enjoy the plenitude of their specific properties, and which, therefore,
are best apt to transfuse them into their offspring whole, unmixed, and
unimpaired.
We are told, also, that life has existed during periods of time so vast
as to be incalculable. This we admit. But then, in the succession of
life, there has been an order, “by which the lowest appeared first, and
the highest have come last, while intermediate forms disclose a rising
gradation.” This, too, we may admit, though not without reservations;
for Prof. Huxley himself confesses that numerous intermediate forms do
not occur in the order in which they ought to occur if they really had
formed steps in the progression from one species to another; for we find
these intermediate forms mixed up with the higher and the lower ones “in
contemporaneous deposits.” But, even supposing that the lowest forms
precede the highest, what evidence would this be in favor of evolution?
The order of succession may indeed prove that the lower forms existed
before the higher forms were created; but it does not show that the
lower forms are the parents of the higher. This is merely assumed by the
evolutionists as a convenient substitute for proof; that is, they first
assume that evolution is a fact, and then conclude that the fact of
evolution is established.
Lastly, that matter is indestructible, and that therefore all the
material changes and transformations of the world consist in using over
and over the same stock of materials, is a doctrine which has no special
bearing on the question. When a new individual of any living species is
generated, its organism is indeed formed out of old matter; but this had
no need of demonstration. What our evolutionists ought to show is that
new individuals of a certain species have been generated by individuals
of some other species; and this surely cannot be shown by a recourse to
the indestructibility of matter. That matter is indestructible is,
however, a groundless assertion. For though natural forces cannot
destroy it, God, who has created it, and who keeps it in existence, can
always withdraw his action, and let it fall into its primitive
nothingness. And as to the so-called “fact” now also held to be
established, that “force obeys the same laws”—that is, that force is
indestructible, and that new forms of force are perpetually derived from
old ones—we need only remark that the theory of transformation of
forces, as held and explained by our advanced scientists, is but a
travesty of truth, and an impotent effort to upset the principle of
causality. Neither statical nor dynamical forces are ever transformed.
Indeed, they have no form attached to them. What our modern physicists
call “transformation of force” is nothing but the change of one kinetic
phenomenon into another—that is, a succession of modes of movement of
various kinds. Now, modes of movement are modes of being, not of force,
though they are the measure of the dynamical forces by which they have
been produced. The force with which any element of matter is endowed is
constantly the same, both as to quality and as to quantity. Its exertion
alone, owing to a difference of conditions, admits of a higher and a
lower degree of intensity. As we do not intend at present to write a
treatise on forces, we will only add that the forces of matter are
exercised on other matter by transient action, but cannot perform
immanent acts calculated to modify their own matter. If they could do
this, matter would not be inert. Hence animal life, which requires
immanent acts, cannot be accounted for by the forces of matter. And
therefore, whatever our scientists may say about the conservation of
energy and the transformation of forces, they have no right to infer
that animal life can be evolved out of matter alone; and they have still
less right to pretend that such is “the fact.”
What shall we say, then, of Mr. Youmans’ assertion that the alleged
reasons “demonstrate evolution as a fact”? We must say, applying Dr.
Taylor’s words to the case, that the assertion is “so astounding that we
can only 'stand by and admire’ the marvellous effrontery with which it
has been made.” A man of Mr. Youmans’ ability can scarcely be so
ignorant of logic as not to see that his reasons demonstrate evolution
neither as a fact nor as a probability, and not even as a possibility;
but when a man succeeds in blinding himself to the existence of a
personal God, and substitutes nature in the place of her Creator, we
need not be surprised if his logic turns out to be a clumsy attempt at
imposition.
Dr. Taylor had asked why we do not see one species passing into another,
even as we see the motions of the planets through the heavens. The
question was pertinent; for Prof. Huxley had maintained that “evolution
rests on a basis as sure as astronomy.” Mr. Youmans answers: “To this
foolish question, which has nevertheless been asked a dozen times by
clerical critics of Huxley, the obvious answer is that what requires a
very long time to produce cannot be seen in a very short time.” We think
that the question was not _foolish_, and that the answer of Mr. Youmans
is a mere evasion. For, if evolution is a fact, we must find numerous
traces of it not only in the fossil remains, but also in the actual
economy of nature. If the bird is evolved from the lizard, there must be
actually among living creatures a numerous class of intermediate forms,
some more, others less developed, exhibiting all the stages of
transformation through which the lizard is gradually developed into a
bird. Thus, because the acorn develops into the stately oak, we find in
nature oaks of all the intermediate sizes; and because babyhood develops
into manhood, we find in nature individuals of all intermediate ages. In
like manner, if the evolution of one species from another is not a
fable, we must find in nature specimens of all the intermediate forms.
Dr. Taylor’s question was, therefore, most judicious. That Mr. Youmans’
reply to it is a mere evasion a little reflection will show; for the
length of time required for the process of transformation would only
prove that the intermediate forms must remain longer in existence;
whilst the fact is that such forms do not exist at all.
“There has been much complaint,” says Mr. Youmans, “that Prof. Huxley
undertook to put the demonstrative evidence of evolution on so narrow a
basis as the establishment of the genealogy of the horse; but this
rather enhances than detracts from his merit as a scientific thinker.”
Here the case is misstated. Had Prof. Huxley really demonstrated
evolution by the genealogy of the horse, no one would have complained
that the basis was too narrow; but as it became manifest that the basis
was not only narrow but questionable, and that it afforded no evidence
whatever of evolution, it was thought that it required a “marvellous
effrontery” on the part of Prof. Huxley to maintain before the American
public that the genealogy of the horse gave “demonstrative evidence” of
evolution. This is the reason why there has been so much complaint.
Prof. Huxley simply insulted his audience when he asked them to believe
that evolution was a demonstrated fact.
Mr. Youmans tells us that the vital point between Prof. Huxley and his
antagonists is the question of the validity of the conception of order
and uniformity in nature. “Prof. Huxley holds to it as a first
principle, a truth demonstrated by all science, and just as fixed in
biology as in astronomy. His antagonists hold that the inflexible order
of nature may be asserted perhaps in astronomy, but they deny it in
biology. They here invoke supernatural intervention.” This statement is
utterly false. There is no question about the order and uniformity of
nature; and it is not to Prof. Huxley or to modern science that we are
indebted for the knowledge of this uniformity either in astronomy or in
biology; the world has ever been in possession of this indisputable
truth. The real question between Prof. Huxley and his antagonists is
that nature, according to the professor, is independent in its being and
in its working, and has an inherent power of fostering into existence a
series of beings of higher and higher specific perfection, from the
speck of gelatinous matter even to man; whereas nature, according to the
professor’s antagonists, and according to science, revelation, and
common sense, is not independent either in its being or in its working,
and has no inherent power of forming either a plant without a seed or an
animal without an ovum of the same species. If Prof. Huxley had had any
knowledge of that part of philosophy which we call metaphysics, and
which our advanced scientists affect so much to despise because they
cannot cope with it, he would have seen the absurdity of his assumption;
and if Mr. Youmans had consulted the rules of logic, he would not have
said that the “uniformity of nature” was with Prof. Huxley a “first
principle”; it being evident that uniformity clashes with evolution,
which is a change of forms.
The last argument of the editor of the _Popular Science Monthly_ in
behalf of evolution is as follows:
“Obviously there are but two hypotheses upon the subject—that of
genetic derivation of existing species through the operation of
natural law, and that of creation by miraculous interference with
the course of nature. If we assume the orderly course of nature,
development is inevitable: it is evolution or nothing. If the order
of nature is put aside and special creation appealed to, we have a
right to ask, On what evidence?... There is no evidence. There is
not a scintilla of proof that can have a feather’s weight with any
scientific mind.... Has anybody ever seen a special creation?”
We answer, first, that even if it were true that “there is no evidence”
in support of the _creation_, it would not follow that there is any
evidence, either scientific or of any other kind, in support of the
_evolution_ of one species from another. Indeed, in spite of all the
efforts of “advanced” thinkers, we have not yet been furnished with “a
scintilla of proof that can have a feather’s weight” with a
philosophical mind; on the contrary, we have been informed by no less an
authority than Mr. Huxley that “no connecting link between the crocodile
and the lizard, or between the lizard and the snake, or between the
snake and the crocodile, or between any two of these groups,” has yet
been found—a fact which, if not destroyed by further discoveries, is “a
strong and weighty argument against evolution,” as the professor
confesses. Hence it is evident that the existing palæontological
specimens, far from proving the theory, form a strong and weighty
objection against it. The consequence is that, even if we had no
evidence of the creation of species, it would yet be more reasonable to
accept creation, against which no objection can be found, than to accept
evolution.
But we are far from conceding that the creation of species is
unsupported by evidence of a proper kind. Mr. Youmans may laugh at the
Bible; but we maintain that the Biblical record constitutes historical
evidence. He may also laugh at philosophical reasoning, for his mind is
too “scientific” to care for philosophy; but we believe that
philosophical evidence is as good, at least, as any which can be met
with in the _Popular Science Monthly_. Animals have a soul, which
elicits immanent acts; they know, they feel, they have passions; and, if
we listen to some modern thinkers, they have even intelligence and
reason. Now, matter is essentially inert, and therefore cannot elicit
immanent acts. Hence animals are not mere organized matter; and
accordingly they cannot be evolved from matter alone. Their soul must
come from a higher source; it must be created. Science has nothing to
say against this; it can only state its ignorance by asking: “Has
anybody ever seen a special creation?” Of course nobody has; but there
are things which are seen by reason with as great a clearness as
anything visible to the eye; and this is just the case with creation. On
the other hand, why should Mr. Youmans pretend that creation must be
seen to be admitted, when he admits evolution, though he has never seen
it? If seeing is a condition for believing, why did he treat as
_foolish_ Dr. Taylor’s question concerning the passing of one species
into another? Why did he ask: “Has the writer ever seen the production
of a geological formation?” Surely, if evolution were proved to be a
fact, we would admit it, without having seen it; but, since it is
creation, not evolution, that has been shown to be a fact, we are
compelled to admit it, even though nobody has had the privilege of
seeing the event.
When Mr. Youmans declares that “there is not a scintilla of proof” (in
favor of special creations) “that can have a feather’s weight with any
scientific mind,” he evidently assumes that no scientific mind has
existed before our time; which is more than even Huxley or Darwin would
maintain. But infidel science is equally blind to the scientific merit
of its antagonists, and to the blunders which it is itself daily
committing. Thus Mr. Youmans, no doubt to show that he has a “scientific
mind,” speaks of the derivation of species “through the operation of
natural law”—a phrase which has no meaning; for law is an abstraction,
and abstractions do not operate. Nor is it more “scientific” to assume
that the creation of species was “a miraculous interference with the
course of nature”; for the course of nature required the creation of
species, just as it now requires the creation of human souls for the
continuance of humanity; and God cannot be said to have interfered with
the course of nature by doing what nature required but could not do. Is
it any more “scientific” to write _Nature_ with a capital letter? Of
course, if there is no God, nature is all, and atheists may write it
_Nature_. Mr. Youmans does not tell us clearly that there is no God; but
he shows clearly enough that to his mind _Nature_ is everything; which
is, in fact, a virtual denial of a personal God. If we were to inform
him that nature is only a servant of God, he would perhaps ask, “On what
evidence?” And because we would be unable to point out a chemical
residuum or a geologic formation wherein God could be made visible to
him, he would conclude that “there is no scintilla of proof that can
have a feather’s weight with a scientific mind.” He then assumes that in
the orderly course of nature the evolution of species is “inevitable.”
It did not occur to his scientific mind that before making such an
assertion, it was necessary to examine how far the powers of nature
extend; for he might have discovered that matter is inert, and that it
was a great blunder to assume that inert matter produced animal life.
He further supposes that when special creations are appealed to, “the
order of nature is put aside.” He therefore pretends that the order of
nature would not allow of the creation of plants and animals, evidently
because it was nature’s duty to perform without extrinsic intervention
all those wonderful works which we attribute to the wisdom and
omnipotence of the Creator. We maybe unscientific; but we defy Mr.
Youmans to show, either scientifically or otherwise, the truth of his
assumption. To tell us that the evolution of life from dead matter was
within the order of nature, without even attempting to prove that nature
had a power adequate to the task, is just as plausible as to tell us
that Prof. Huxley has created the Niagara Falls or that Mr. Darwin has
painted the moon. And yet the author of such loose statements airs his
scientific pretensions and speaks of “scientific minds”!
We have no need to follow Mr. Youmans any further; for what he adds
consists of assumptions cognate to those we have already refuted.
“Genetic derivation,” he says, “is in the field as a real and undeniable
cause”—which is an open untruth. “Has anybody seen a special creation?”
This is irrelevant. “Do those who believe in a special creation
represent to themselves any possibility of how it could have occurred?”
Probably they do, if they have read the first chapter of Genesis.
“Milton attempted to form an image of the way the thing was done, and
says that the animals burst up full-formed and perfect like plants out
of the ground—'the grassy clods now calved.’ But clods can only calve
miraculously.” Quite so; but we must not be afraid of miracles, when we
cannot deny them without falling into absurdities. “Nature does not
bring animals into the world now by this method, and science certainly
can know nothing of it.” Yes; but there are many other things of which
infidel science is ignorant. And yet we fancy that, when animals have
been once created, even infidel science might have discerned that their
procreation no longer required “the grassy clods to calve.”
But enough. We conclude that, so far from being possible, so far from
being probable, so far from being proved, the hypothesis of the origin
of animal forms by evolution is simply unthinkable; it is a violation
not only of the order of nature, but of the very condition of thought
and of the first principle of science, which is the principle of
causality. When will our scientific men understand that there is no
science without philosophy?
A WAIF FROM THE GREAT EXHIBITION, PHILADELPHIA, 1876
“Their store-houses full, flowing out of this into that.
“They have called the people happy that hath these things: but happy
is that people whose God is
the Lord.”—Ps. cxliii.
I.
With face storm-lined and bronzed, no longer young,
That seemed as if its soul’s dim life had grown
On lonely farm, in rugged inland town
Lying, a narrow world, bleak hills among,
A stranger gazed amid the wealth and glare
Of all the nations’ gathered industry
Where rose the light, symmetric tracery
Of Munich’s altars worked in colors fair;
Where good St. Joseph with the lilies stood;
And soft-eyed martyr with her branch of palm,
And full, sweet lips smiling with happy calm,
Seemed beaming witness 'mid the multitude
Of glittering toys and earth’s huge, unworked store,
Of nobler purpose man’s life resting o’er.
II.
Here stretched its naked arms the blessèd Rood,
Whose desolation eloquent below
God’s Mother sat in soundless deeps of woe,
Her sad knees holding all her earthly good.
Here stood the stranger with a look intent
Wherein no light of recognition woke,
As if he read in some strange-lettered book.
Then, asking what these unguessed figures meant,
An answer came: “Our Lord, dead 'neath the Cross.”
“Ah! yes, and that is Mary, I suppose—
The Mother.” Ah! what wondering thoughts uprose
To die in silence, winning so some loss,
Perchance, unto two lives. Sweet Mother, pray
That soul accuse not mine on judgment day!
III.
So strange and sad the simple question seemed;
As if on those far hills God’s voice had built,
Upon those souls for whom his blood was spilt
Some shadow rested, amid which scarce gleamed
The mournful splendor by his dark Cross thrown:
As if stern life grew but more hard and bare,
Missing the presence of the Maiden rare
Whose God made her unstained flesh his own;
Who held him on her arms a helpless child,
With love no mother ever knew before;
Holding, when Calvary’s dread hours were o’er,
The Man of Sorrows where her Babe had smiled—
Her arms the cradle of the Almighty One,
Her arms His spotless shroud, life’s labor done.
IV.
Alas! such faith to men denied who grope
Half in a fear begotten not of love,
Half in cold doubt, seeking all things to prove,
To none hold fast, with whom divinest hope
Holds naught more excellent than earth’s to-days;
For whom in vain doth Israel’s lily bloom,
With its white sunshine lighting hours of gloom,
Shining 'mid thorns that seek to crush its grace—
So dimming the broad rays of love divine
With earthly shadow cast on earthly things
That folded keep their gift of heavenly wings,
Lest, soaring, they lose sight of lesser shrine
Lest, heart so kindling with the Spirit’s fire,
Feet lowly tread that eyes be lifted higher.
V.
Slow turning through the glimmering aisles to range,
Amid the hum the loitering footsteps wrought
I lost the questioning face, but not the thought
Of that dim life, to which the night seemed strange
Of Calvary’s God, to whom all life is owed—
That clouded life wherein Faith’s pure sunshine
Casts faintest gleam of its strong light divine
That strengthens soul, makes fair the daily load.
Far down the hall full notes of organ poured,
And broke in song strong voices manifold;
Glad alleluias all exultant rolled,
As if proclaiming on each soaring chord:
“Happy the people of this wealth possessed!”
Nay, Happy they whom God the Lord hath blessed.
ENGLISH RULE IN IRELAND.
II.
The present condition of a people is the latest phase of a life that has
run through centuries, in all the events of which there may be traced
the relation of cause and effect, and whose continuity has never been
interrupted, though at times the current may seem to leave its channel,
or even to disappear. The past never dies, but with each succeeding
moment receives a fuller existence, survives as a curse or a blessing.
The passion which urges the human mind back to ages more and more
remote, until the gathering darkness shuts out even the faintest glimmer
of light, is not mere curiosity, nor even the inborn craving for
knowledge; rather is it the consciousness that those ancient times and
far-off deeds still live in us, mould us, and shape our ends. We were
with Adam when he plucked and ate the forbidden fruit, and that his act
should work in us yet, like a taint in the blood, seems to be a
postulate of reason not less than a truth of tradition or revelation.
The cherishing of great names, the clinging to noble memories, the use
of poetry, music, sculpture, painting, architecture, or any art, to give
form and vividness to glories, heroisms, martyrdoms, are but the
expression of this consciousness that the present is only the fuller and
more living past. No vanity, much less scorn or hate, should prompt any
one to lift into the light the glory or the shame of a people’s history.
As we tread reverently on the ground where human passions have contended
for the mastery, we should approach with religious awe the facts which
have made the world what it is.
There are many persons, who certainly have no prejudices against the
Irish people, many true and loyal Irishmen even, who strongly object to
the prominence given to the sorrows and sufferings of Ireland. They
would have us forget the past and turn, with a countenance fresh and
hopeful as that of youth, to the future. Sydney Smith, full of English
prepossessions but an honest lover of liberty, who labored as earnestly
and fearlessly as any man of his generation in behalf of the wronged and
defenceless, could not restrain his impatience when he thought of the
fondness with which Irishmen cling to old memories and sacred
associations. In his opinion the object of all government is roast
mutton, potatoes, claret, a stout constable, an honest justice, a clear
highway, and a free chapel. “What trash,” he exclaimed, “to be bawling
in the streets about the Green Isle, the Isle of the Ocean, the bold
anthem of _Erin go bragh_! A far better anthem would be, Erin go bread
and cheese, Erin go cabins that will keep out the rain, Erin go
pantaloons without holes in them.”
This may be very well, but we are persuaded that there is not an abuse
or an evil in Ireland to-day which has not its roots in the remote past,
or which can be understood or remedied without a knowledge of Irish
history.
The bold anthem of _Erin go bragh_, which so provoked Sidney Smith, is
the thread that leads us through the labyrinth. It is because the Irish
are not English that England is neither able nor willing to treat them
justly; and if she has rendered herself guilty of the greatest social
crime in all history, it is because she has clung for centuries with
terrible obstinacy to a policy which left the people of Ireland no
alternative between denationalization and extermination. When in England
the national spirit dominated and absorbed the religious spirit, the
Irish, who had so long maintained their separate nationality, adhered
with invincible firmness to the old faith. This was imputed to them as a
crime, and became the pretext for still more grievous persecutions. If
they were resolved to be Irish and Catholic, England was not less
resolved that they should be outlaws and beggars. They were to have no
bread or potatoes, or cabins that would keep out the rain, so long as
they persisted in singing the bold anthem and acknowledging the
supremacy of the pope. The history of Ireland is in great part the
history of her wrongs; for a long time to come, doubtless, it will be a
history of suffering; and if those who write of her find that they are
placing before their readers pictures of death, exile, persecution,
beggary, famine, desolation, violence, oppression, and of every form of
human misery, they are but describing the state to which her conquerors
have reduced her.
But there are special reasons for dwelling upon the wrongs of Ireland.
For three hundred years the Irish people themselves and their faith have
been held responsible, wherever the English language is spoken, for the
crimes of England. The backwardness of Irish industry, and the seeming
want of energy of the people in improving their condition, are
habitually imputed by statesmen and public instructors to a peculiar
indolence and recklessness in the Celtic race, fostered and encouraged
by what is supposed to be the necessary influence of the Catholic
religion.
The Irish are probably not more Celtic than the French, who assuredly
are not excelled in thrift and industry by any other people. There is no
country more Catholic than Belgium, nor is there anywhere a more
prosperous or laborious people. Irishmen themselves, it is universally
admitted, are hard workers in England, in the United States, in Canada,
in Australia—wherever, in a word, the motives which incite men to labor
are not taken from them; and yet the popular prejudice on this subject
is so flattering to Anglo-Saxon and Protestant pride that it remains in
the public mind like a superstition, which no amount of evidence can
affect. In a former article we have attempted to trace some of the
causes to which the poverty and misery of Ireland must be attributed,
and we shall now continue the investigation. During the three centuries
immediately following the Conquest the country was wasted by wars,
massacres, and feuds, carried on by the two armed nations, which
fiercely contended for the possession of the soil. The Anglo-Norman
colony, entrenched within the Pale, and receiving constant supplies of
men and money from the mother-country, formed a kind of standing army,
ever ready to invade and lay waste the territories still held by the
native population. The Irish people, in self-defence, and also with the
hope of driving the invader from their shores, turned their whole
attention to war. All the pursuits of peace were forgotten, and the
island became a camp of soldiers, who, when not battling with the common
enemy, turned their swords against one another. In such a state of
society no progress was possible. Then came three centuries of religious
wars to add more savage fierceness to the war of races. Under Elizabeth,
James I., Cromwell, and William of Orange the whole country was
confiscated. The Catholics were driven from their lands, hunted down,
their churches and monasteries were burned or turned over to
Protestants, their priests were martyred or exiled, their schools
closed, their teachers banished, their nobles impoverished; and to make
this state of things perpetual the Penal Code was enacted. To this point
there was complete harmony between the home government and the English
colony in Ireland. But England has rarely poured out her treasure or her
blood for other than selfish and mercenary motives. She therefore
demanded, as the price of her assistance in crushing the Irish
Catholics, that the commerce and industry of Ireland should be
sacrificed to her own interests. The House of Commons declared the
importation of Irish cattle a public nuisance. They were then
slaughtered and salted, but the government refused to permit the sale of
the meat. The hides were tanned. The importation of leather was
forbidden. The Irish Protestants began to export their wool; England
refused to buy it. They began to manufacture it; an export duty,
equivalent to prohibition, was put on all Irish woollen goods. They grew
flax and made linens; England put a bounty on Scotch and English linens,
and levied a duty on Irish linens. Ireland was not allowed to build or
own a ship—her forests were felled and the timber sent to England. The
English colonies were forbidden to trade with her; even the fisheries
were carried on with English boats manned by Englishmen. By these and
similar measures Irish commerce and industry were destroyed. Nothing
remained for the people to do but to till the soil. In this lay the only
hope of escaping starvation. But they no longer owned the land; it was
in the hands of an alien aristocracy, English in origin and sympathy,
Protestant in religion. The Catholic people, without civil existence,
were at the mercy of an oligarchy by whom they were both hated and
despised. These nobles owed their titles, wealth, and power to the
violence of conquest, and, instead of seeking to heal the wounds, they
were resolved to keep them open. In France and in England the Northmen
were gradually fused with the original population. They lost their
language, customs, almost the memory of their cradle-land. Even in
Ireland a considerable portion of the Norman conquerors became
Irish—_Hibernis hiberniores_. But this partial assimilation of the two
races was effected in spite of England, who made use of strong measures
both to prevent and punish this degeneracy, as it was termed. Had the
union between the Irish and the Normans not been prevented by this
violent and interested policy, a homogeneous people would have been
formed in Ireland as in England, and the frightful wrongs and crimes of
the last seven hundred years would not have been committed.
But the interests of England demanded that Ireland should be kept weak
and helpless by internal discord; and she therefore used every means to
prevent the fusion of the two races. The “Irish enemy,” ever ready to
break in upon the settlements of the Pale, was the surest warrant of the
loyalty of the English colony to the mother-country, whose assistance
might at any moment become essential to its very existence. The native
population, on the other hand, was held in check by the foreigner
encamped in the land. Had the Irish and the English in Ireland united,
they would have had little trouble in throwing off the yoke of England.
It was all-important, therefore, that they should remain, distinct and
inimical races. All intercourse between them was forbidden. Their
inter-marriage was made high treason. It was a crime for an Englishman
to speak Irish, or for an Irishman to speak English. The ancient laws
and customs of the Irish were destroyed, and they were denied the
benefits of English law. As yet the English and the Irish professed the
same religious faith; but now even this powerful bond of union was
broken. Enemies on earth, they looked to no common hope beyond this
life. Three centuries of persecution and outrage followed, during which
the Catholic Irish were reduced to such a state of misery and beggary
that the only thing which remained in common between them and their
tyrants was hate.
Here we have come upon the well-spring of all the bitter waters that
have deluged Ireland. The country is owned and governed by a few men who
have never loved the country and have always hated the people.
Throughout the rest of Europe, even in the worst times, the interests of
the lords and the peasants were to some extent identical. They were one
in race and religion, rendered mutual services, gloried in a common
country, and shared their miseries. The noble spent at least a part of
the year on his estates, surrounded by his dependants. Kind offices were
interchanged. The great lady visited the peasant woman in her sickness,
and the humanities of life were not ignored. Elsewhere in Europe the
great land-owners, whether lay or ecclesiastical, were, with rare
exceptions, kind to the poor, indulgent to their debtors, willing to
encourage industry, to advance capital for the improvement of the land,
and thus to promote their own interests by promoting those of their
tenants. The privileged classes were not wholly independent of the
people. If they were not restrained from wrong-doing by love, they were
often held in check by a salutary fear.
But nothing of all this was found in Ireland, where the landlords were
in the unfortunate position of having nothing to fear and nothing to
hope from the people. They lacked all the essential conditions of a
native aristocracy. Their titles were Irish, but all their interests and
sympathies were English. They were the hired servants of England, and
they were not paid to work for the good of Ireland. They drew their
revenues from a country to which they rendered no service; they were
supported by the labors of the people whom they oppressed and hated; and
they rarely saw the land from which they derived their wealth and
titles, but lived in England, where they found a more congenial society,
and were not afflicted by the sight of sufferings and miseries of which
they knew themselves to be the authors. If the people, maddened by
oppression or hunger, revolted, the Irish landlords were not disturbed;
for an English army was at hand to crush the rebellion, which was never
attributed to its true cause, but to the supposed insubordination and
lawlessness of the Irish character. In England there existed a middle
class, which bridged over the chasm that separated the nobles from the
peasants, and which rendered the aristocracy liberal and progressive by
opening its ranks to superior merit wherever found; but in Ireland there
were only two classes of society, divided the one from the other as by a
wall of brass. The authority of the Protestant oligarchy over the
Catholic population was absolute, and they contracted the vices by which
the exercise of uncontrolled power is always punished. To the narrowness
and ignorance of a rural gentry were added the brutality and coarseness
of tyrants. The social organization prevented the infusion of new blood
which had saved the English aristocracy from decay and impotence, and
the general stagnation of political and commercial life in Ireland had
the effect of helping on the degeneracy of the ruling caste. Everything,
in a word, tended to make the Irish landlords the worst aristocracy with
which a nation was ever cursed; and, by the most cruel of fates, this
worst of all aristocracies was made the sole arbiter of the destinies of
the Irish people, of whose pitiable condition under this rule we have
already given some account.
We turn now to consider the causes which have brought a certain measure
of relief to the people of Ireland; and we must seek for them, not in
the good-will or sense of justice of Irish or English Protestants, but
in circumstances which took from them the power of continuing without
some mitigation a policy which, if ruinous to the Irish people, was also
full of peril to England.
It is pleasant to us, as Americans, to know that the voice which
proclaimed our freedom and independence was heard in Ireland, as it has
since been heard throughout the earth, rousing the nations to high
thoughts of liberty, ringing as the loud battle-cry of wronged and
oppressed peoples. The great discussions which the struggle of the
American colonies awoke in the British Parliament, and in which the very
spirit of liberty spoke from the lips of the sublimest orators, sent a
thrill of hope through Irish hearts, while the Declaration of
Independence filled their oppressors with dismay. In 1776 we declared
our separate existence, and in 1778 already some of the most odious
features of the Penal Code were abolished. “A voice from America,” said
Flood, “shouted to Liberty.” Henceforward Catholics were permitted to
take long leases, though not to possess in fee simple; the son, by
turning Protestant, was no longer permitted to rob his father, and the
laws of inheritance which prevented the accumulation of property in the
hands of Catholics were abrogated. This was little enough, indeed, but
it was of inestimable value, for it marked the turning-point in the
history of Ireland. A beginning had been made, a breach had been opened
in the enemy’s citadel. But this was not all that the American
Revolution did for Ireland.
The sympathies of the Presbyterians of the North went out to their
brethren who were struggling on the other side of the Atlantic. They
also had grievances compared with which those of the colonies were
slight; their cause was identical, and the success of the Americans
would be a victory for Ireland; if England triumphed beyond the seas,
there would be no hope for those who, being nearer, were held with a
more certain grasp. Hence, in spite of the bitter hate which in Ireland
separated the Protestants from the Catholics, they were drawn together
by a common interest and sympathy in the cause of American independence.
England’s wars, both in Europe and in her transatlantic colonies, were a
constant drain upon her resources, and it became necessary to supply the
armies in America with the troops which were kept in Ireland to hold
that country in subjection. General Howe asked that Irish papists should
not be sent as recruits to him, for they would desert to the enemy. The
best men were therefore picked from the English regiments and sent to
America; Ireland was denuded of troops; the defences of her harbors were
in ruins; and she was exposed to the attacks of privateers. Something
had to be done, and Parliament agreed to allow the Irish militia to be
called out. As an inducement to Catholics to enlist, they were promised
indulgences in the exercise of their religion, but this promise aroused
Protestant bigotry, ever ready to break forth. The plan was abandoned,
and the defence of the country was committed to the Volunteers.
In the meanwhile Burgoyne had surrendered to the Americans at Saratoga,
France had entered into alliance with the colonies, and French and
American privateers began to swarm in the Irish Channel. The English
Parliament, now thoroughly alarmed, and eager to make peace with the
rebels, passed an act renouncing the right of taxing the colonies, and
even offered seats in the House of Commons to their representatives.
These concessions, which came too late to propitiate the Americans,
served only to embolden the Irish in their demands for the redress of
their grievances. The Americans were rebels, and were treated with the
greatest indulgence; the Irish were loyal, and were still held in the
vilest bondage. This was intolerable. To add to the distress, one of the
periodical visitations of famine which have marked English rule in
Ireland fell upon the country, and the highways were filled with crowds
of half-naked and starving people.
Thirty thousand merchants and mechanics in Dublin were living on alms;
the taxes could not be collected, and in the general collapse of trade
the customs yielded almost nothing. The country was unprotected, and
there was no money in the treasury with which to raise an army. Nothing
remained in this extremity but to allow the Volunteers to assemble; for
the summer was at hand, and every day the privateers might be expected
to appear in the Channel. Company after company was organized, and in a
very short time large bodies of men were in arms. The Catholics also
took advantage of the general excitement. If the Protestants were in
arms, why should they remain defenceless?
Never before had there been such an opportunity of extorting from
England the measures of relief which she would never willingly consent
to grant. The threatening danger, however, had no effect upon the
British Parliament.
The Irish Parliament met in 1779, and the patriots, strong in the
support of the Volunteers who lined the streets of Dublin, demanded free
trade. The city was in an uproar; a mob paraded before the Parliament
House, and with threats called upon the members to redress the wrongs of
Ireland. Cannon were trailed round the statue of King William, with the
inscription,“Free trade or this,” and on the flags were emblazoned
menacing mottoes—“The Volunteers of Ireland,” “Fifty thousand of us
ready to die for our country.”
“Talk not to me of peace,” exclaimed Hussey Burgh, one of the leading
patriots. “Ireland is not at peace; it is smothered war. England has
sown her laws as dragon’s teeth, and they have sprung up as armed men.”
All Ireland was aroused. The Irish, said Burke in the English House of
Commons, had learned that justice was to be had from England only when
demanded at the point of the sword. They were now in arms; their cause
was just; and they would have redress or end the connection between the
two countries. The obnoxious laws restricting trade were repealed and in
the greatest haste sent over to Ireland to calm the tempest that was
brewing there.
The effect went even beyond expectation. Dublin was illuminated,
congratulatory addresses were sent over to England, and people imagined
that Ireland’s millennium had arrived. But the consequences of centuries
of crime and oppression do not disappear as by the enchanter’s wand; and
one of the evils of tyranny is the curse it leaves after it has ceased
to exist. In the wildness of their joy the people exaggerated the boon
which they had wrenched from England; the sober second thought turned
their attention to what still remained to be done.
In 1780 Grattan brought forward the famous resolution which declared
that “the king, with the consent of the Parliament of Ireland, was alone
competent to enact laws to bind Ireland.” The time could not have been
more opportune. The American colonies were in full revolt; Spain and
France were assisting them; England had been forced into war with
Holland, and her Indian Empire was threatening to take advantage of her
distress to rebel. In the midst of so many wars and dangers it would
have been madness to have provoked Ireland to armed resistance, and
Grattan felt that the hour had come when the Irish people should stand
forth as one of the nations of the earth; when all differences of race
and creed might be merged into a common patriotism, and Celt and Saxon,
Catholic and Protestant, present an unbroken front to the English
tyrant. “The Penal Code,” he said, “is the shell in which the Protestant
power has been hatched. It has become a bird. It must burst the shell or
perish in it. Indulgence to Catholics cannot injure the Protestant
religion.”
The Volunteers were, with few exceptions, Protestants, and their
attitude of defiance made the English government willing to place the
Catholics against them as a counterpoise; and it therefore offered no
opposition to measures tending to relieve them of their disabilities.
But, under Grattan’s influence, the Volunteers themselves pronounced in
favor of the Catholics by passing the famous Dungannon resolution: “That
we, [the Volunteers] hold the right of private judgment in matters of
religion to be equally sacred in others as in ourselves; that we rejoice
in the relaxation of the penal laws against our Roman Catholic
fellow-subjects; and that we conceive these measures to be fraught with
the happiest consequences to the union and prosperity of the inhabitants
of Ireland.”
In February, 1782, Grattan again brought forward a motion to declare the
independence of the Irish Legislature, and again it was thrown out. The
Dungannon resolution was then introduced, and it was proposed to abolish
all distinctions between Protestants and Catholics. But to this the most
serious objections were raised, and it was found necessary to make
concessions to Protestant bigotry. The Catholics were permitted to
acquire freehold property, to buy and sell, bequeath and inherit; but
the penal laws which bore upon their religion, and their right to
educate their children at home or abroad, as well as those which
excluded them from political life, were left on the statute-book.
Fanaticism was stronger than patriotism, and the enthusiastic love of
liberty was again found to be compatible with the love of persecution
and oppression. But this injustice in no way dampened the ardor of the
Catholics for the national independence; and when, on the 16th of April,
1782, Grattan moved a Declaration of Rights, inspired probably by our
own Declaration of Independence, he was greeted with as wild a tumult of
applause by the Catholics as by his Protestant countrymen. “I found
Ireland,” he said, “on her knees. I watched over her with an eternal
solicitude. I have traced her progress from injuries to arms, and from
arms to liberty. Spirit of Swift, spirit of Molyneux, your genius has
prevailed. Ireland is now a nation. In that new character I hail her,
and, bowing to her august presence, I say, _Esto Perpetua_!”
The overwhelming popular enthusiasm bore everything with it, and
opposition was useless. “It is no longer,” wrote the Duke of Portland,
the viceroy, “the Parliament of Ireland that is to be managed or
attended to; it is the whole of this country.”
In England the Whigs, who were in power, felt how hopeless would be any
efforts to stem the torrent, and they therefore yielded with grace. Fox
admitted that Ireland had a right to distrust British legislation
“because it had hitherto been employed only to oppress and distress
her.” Ireland had been wronged, and it was but just that concessions
should now be made to her. The day of deliverance had come, and, amidst
an outburst of universal enthusiasm, Ireland’s independence was
proclaimed.
The Catholics were the first to feel the benefits of this victory. The
two Relief Bills, introduced into Parliament in their favor, were
carried. They were permitted to open schools and educate their own
children; their stables were no longer subject to inspection, or their
horses above the value of five pounds liable to be seized by the
government or taken from them by Protestant informers; and their right
to freedom of religious worship was fully recognized. They recovered, in
a word, their civil rights; but the law still excluded them from any
participation in the political life of the country, and they were still
forbidden to possess arms. Nevertheless, another step towards Catholic
emancipation had been taken. Two other laws, beneficial to all classes
of citizens, but especially favorable to the poor and oppressed
Catholics, date from this time: the Habeas Corpus Act was granted to
Ireland, and the tenure of judges was placed on the English level.
Unfortunately, the social condition of the country was so deplorable
that this improvement in the laws conferred few or no benefits upon the
impoverished and downtrodden people. But at least there was some gain;
for if good laws do not necessarily make a people prosperous, bad laws
necessarily keep them in misery. The landed gentry and Protestant clergy
continued without shame to neglect all the duties which they owed to
their tenants, whose wretchedness increased as the fortunes of Ireland
seemed to rise. To maintain the Volunteers the rents were raised, and
the poor peasants, already sinking beneath an intolerable burden, were
yet more heavily laden. The proprietors of the soil spent their time in
riot and debauch while the people were starving. They were the
magistrates and at the same time the most notorious violators of the
law. “The justices of the peace,” says Arthur Young, “are the very worst
class in the kingdom.”
The clergy of the Established Church were little better. Like the
landlords, they were generally absentees, and employed agents to raise
their tithes, in the North from the Presbyterians, and in other parts of
the island from the Catholics. “As the absentee landlord,” says Froude,
“had his middleman, the absentee incumbent had his tithe farmer and
tithe proctor—perhaps of all the carrion who were preying on the carcase
of the Irish peasantry the vilest and most accursed. As the century
waned and life grew more extravagant, the tithe proctor, like his
neighbors, grew more grasping and avaricious. He exacted from the
peasants the full pound of flesh. His trade was dangerous, and therefore
he required to be highly paid. He handed to his employer perhaps half
what he collected. He fleeced the flock and he fleeced their shepherd.”
“The use of the tithe farmer,” said Grattan, “is to get from the
parishioners what the clergyman would be ashamed to demand, and to
enable the clergyman to absent himself from duty. His livelihood is
extortion. He is a wolf left by the shepherd to take care of the flock
in his absence.”[17]
Footnote 17:
_The English in Ireland_, vol. ii. p. 453.
In the midst of the general excitement the Catholic peasants grew
restless under this horrible system of organized plunder and extortion.
They banded together and took an oath to pay only a specified sum to the
clergyman or his agent. The movement spread, and occasional acts of
violence were committed. All Munster was organized, and a regular war
with the tithe proctors was begun. In the popular fury crimes were
perpetrated and the innocent were often made to suffer with the guilty.
Yet so glaring were the wrongs and so frightful the abuses from which
the peasants were suffering that they everywhere met with sympathy. The
true cause of these disorders was social and not political. Misery, and
not partisan zeal, had driven the Catholics to take up arms. The cry of
hungry women and children for bread resounded louder in their ears than
the shouts of the patriots. They were without food or raiment, and in
despair they sought to wreak vengeance upon the inhuman tyrants who had
reduced them to starvation. Even Fitzgibbon, afterwards Lord Clare, was
forced to admit that the Munster peasants were in a state of oppression,
abject poverty, and misery not to be equalled in the world, and that the
landlords and their agents were responsible for the degradation of these
unfortunate beings.
Ireland was still a prey to agitations, hopes, and sufferings when the
French Revolution of 1789 burst upon Europe. The cry of Liberty,
equality, fraternity sounded as revelation to the struggling patriots.
Hitherto they had contended for freedom, in the English and feudal
sense, as a privilege and a concession; they now demanded it as an
imprescriptible right of man. The American Declaration had indeed
proclaimed that all men were free and equal, or of right ought to be;
but this was merely a pretty phrase, a graceful preamble, in a charter
which consecrated slavery and inequality. In America there were no
privileged classes, and the people had not groaned beneath the tyranny
of heartless and effete aristocracies; the evils of which their leaders
complained, compared with those which weighed down the European
populations, were slight, almost imaginary. But in France Liberty and
Equality was the fierce and savage yell of men who hated the whole
social order as it existed around them, and who, indeed, had no reason
to love it. The spirit of feudalism was dead, and its lifeless form
remained to impest the earth. The nobles, sunk in debauch and sloth,
continued their exactions, upheld their privileges, and yet rendered no
service to the state. Corruption, extravagance, maladministration,
infidelity, and licentiousness pervaded the whole social system. France
was prostrate with the foot of a harlot on her neck, and the people were
starving. Little wonder, when the torch was applied, that the lurid
glare of burning thrones and altars, the crash of falling palaces and
cathedrals, should affright and strike dumb the nations of the earth—for
God’s judgment was there; little wonder that Ireland, sitting by the
melancholy sea, chained and weeping, should lift her head when the God
of the patient and the humble was shattering the whitened sepulchres
which enshrined the world’s rottenness.
In Belfast the taking of the Bastile was celebrated by processions and
banquets amid the wildest enthusiasm, and the name of Mirabeau called
forth the most deafening applause. The eyes of Ireland were fastened on
France; the cause of the Revolution was believed to be that of all
oppressed peoples who seek to break the bonds of slavery. “Right or
wrong,” wrote an Irish patriot, “success to the French! They are
fighting our battles, and, if they fail, adieu to liberty in Ireland for
one century.”[18] Even the manners and phraseology of the Revolution
became popular in Ireland. The Dublin Volunteers were called the
National Guard, the liberty-cap was substituted for the harp, and
Irishmen saluted one another with the title of citizen.
Footnote 18:
Tone’s _Memoirs_, vol. i. p 205.
Out of this French enthusiasm grew the Society of “United Irishmen,”
which soon superseded the Volunteers. The United Irishmen made no
concealment of their revolutionary principles. They demanded a radical
reform in the administration of Ireland, and threatened, if this was
denied, to break the bond which held them united with England. They
openly proclaimed their intention of stamping out “the vile and odious
aristocracy,” which was an insuperable obstacle to the progress of the
Irish people; and to accomplish this they invited the French to invade
Ireland. The landlords, they said, show no mercy; they deserve to
receive none.
However little sympathy the Catholics might feel with men who
entertained such violent opinions, they were their natural allies; and
the English government, following its old policy of doing what is right
only under compulsion, hastened to make concessions. From June, 1792,
Catholics were admitted as barristers; they were allowed to keep more
than two apprentices; and the prohibition of their marriage with
Protestants was withdrawn. In 1793, when France had declared war against
England, still further concessions were made. The penalties for
non-attendance at Protestant worship were abolished. “On the eve of a
desperate war,” said Sir Lawrence Parsons in the House of Commons, “it
was unsafe to maintain any longer the principles of entire exclusion.”
The Catholics were admitted to the franchise, but were not made eligible
to Parliament; they were at the same time declared capable of holding
offices, civil and military, and places of trust, without taking the
oath or receiving the sacrament. This is the third emancipation of the
Catholics of Ireland. The American Revolution brought about the first,
and the independence of the Irish Parliament the second.
In the meantime the crimes and excesses of the French Republicans had
cooled the zeal of the Irish patriots. The Catholics grew suspicious of
leaders who applauded the assassins of priests and the profaners of all
sacred things. A reaction had set in, and the English government seized
the opportunity to order the people to lay down their arms; and this
order was intentionally executed with such cruelty as to provoke
insurrections, which, in the lack of leaders and of any plan of action,
were easily suppressed. The agents of the United Irishmen had, however,
succeeded in interesting the French Republic in the cause of Ireland,
and in December, 1796, General Hoche set sail for Bantry Bay with
fifteen thousand men; but the fleet, scattered by a storm, was unable to
effect a landing. In August, 1798, General Humbert disembarked in
Killala Bay at the head of fifteen hundred men who had been drawn from
the armies of Italy and the Rhine, but he found the Irish people
completely disarmed, and the country in the possession of a powerful
English army. He nevertheless pushed forward into the interior of the
island, routed an army of four thousand men, and finally, when his force
had been reduced to eight hundred, capitulated to Lord Cornwallis at the
head of thirty thousand. A third expedition, sent out in the month of
September of the same year, met with no better success. The Rebellion of
'98 had blazed forth and had been quenched in blood. That it was not
unprovoked even Mr. Froude confesses.
“The long era of misgovernment,” he says, “had ripened at last for the
harvest. Rarely since the inhabitants of the earth have formed
themselves into civilized communities had any country suffered from such
a complication of neglect and ill-usage. The Irish people clamored
against Government, and their real wrong, from first to last, had been
that there was no government over them; that, under changing forms, the
universal rule among them for four centuries had been the tyranny of the
strong over the weak; that from the catalogue of virtues demanded of
those who exercised authority over their fellow-men the word justice had
been blotted out. Anarchy had borne its fruits.”[19]
Footnote 19:
_The English in Ireland_, vol. iii. p. 348.
During the violence of the conflict, and in the heat of passion, both
the rebels and the British soldiers committed crimes for which no excuse
can be offered; but the horrible and deliberate brutality of the English
after the suppression of the outbreak has never been surpassed by them
even in Ireland. When at length the appetite for torture, mutilation,
and hanging palled, the British ministry resolved to suppress the Irish
Parliament. Nothing was to be feared from the people, for their spirit
had been crushed; the lavish expenditure of money in open and shameless
bribery overcame the scruples of their Protestant representatives; and
thus, after a struggle of six hundred and thirty-one years (1169-1800),
corruption triumphed where every other means had failed. The _Union_ was
declared to exist; but Ireland was permitted to retain its name, its
institutions, laws, and customs, subject, however, to the pleasure of
the imperial Parliament.
The Rebellion of 1803, which accomplished nothing, and that of 1848,
which met with no better fate, close the fateful list of Ireland’s wars.
Men have never fought in a juster cause, and, had they triumphed, their
names would live for ever in the scroll of the world’s heroes. They have
not bled in vain, if Irishmen will but learn the lesson which their
failures teach. Not by arms, but by the force of the holiest of causes,
is Ireland to obtain the full redress of her wrongs. They only who are
her enemies or who are ignorant of her history would wish to excite her
people to rebellion. That England will grant nothing which she thinks
herself able to withhold we know; but these periodical outbreaks have
invariably given her an opportunity of strengthening the grasp which
political agitation had forced her to relax. Wars which lead only to
butcheries are criminal, and they destroy the faith of patriots in their
country’s triumph; while defeat brings divisions and feuds among those
who had stood shoulder to shoulder on the field of battle.
After the Union Ireland relapsed into a period of lethargic indifference
which might have been mistaken for healthful repose. The Protestant
ascendency entered again upon the beaten paths of tyranny and
oppression, and the Catholics suffered in silence.
The obstinate bigotry of George III. had prevented Pitt from fulfilling
the promise, made at the time of the union of the two kingdoms, to
relieve them of their civil disabilities, and the prime minister, whose
intentions were honest, withdrew from the cabinet. But this step,
however it might exonerate him from further responsibility in the
matter, brought no relief to the Catholics; and as the sad experience of
the past had taught them the hopelessness of resorting to violent
measures, they entered upon the course of peaceful agitation which,
under the wise and skilful direction of O’Connell, compelled the British
Parliament, in April, 1829, to concede to them the rights which had been
so long and so cruelly withheld.
“The Duke of Wellington,” said Lord Palmerston, “found that he could not
carry on the government of the country without yielding the Catholic
question, and he immediately surrendered that point”; and George IV.
signed the act of Catholic Emancipation with a shudder.
This great victory, important in itself and its immediate results, was
yet more important as an evidence of a radical change in the policy
henceforward to be followed in seeking redress of Irish grievances.
For seven hundred years England had been busy in efforts to form a
government for Ireland, and the result was the most disgraceful failure
known in history. For seven hundred years Ireland had rebelled, plotted,
invoked foreign aid, in the hope of throwing off the galling yoke; and
after centuries of bloodshed she found herself more strongly bound to
England. In the presence of this great historical teaching both nations
seemed prepared to pause and deliberately to examine their mutual
relations, and both seemed to feel that the special objects at which
each had been aiming were unattainable. The geographical position of the
two countries renders their union inevitable so long as either is able
to subjugate and hold the other in the bonds of a common government. Had
Ireland been in condition to maintain her independence, England,
surrounded by enemies, could never have risen to the position which she
has held for centuries. The national aspirations for power and dominion
could not be realized while Ireland was permitted to retain her separate
existence, and her conquest was therefore inevitable the moment England
felt herself strong enough to undertake it; nor can the wildest
visionary seriously believe that there is the faintest hope that the
connection between them will ever be dissolved except in their common
ruin. So long as England’s power remains, so long will she hold Ireland
with the unerring instinct with which a vigorous people clings to its
national life; and should England’s downfall come, there is no good
reason for thinking that it would not be the knell of Ireland’s doom.
They have the same language, the same fundamental principles of
government, the same commercial and political interests; and under these
common influences the differences and antagonisms which still exist are
likely to become more and more inactive. The English people are not
without their own grievances, which, in some respects, are more serious
than those of the Irish—the consequences of feudalism, which in England
has been able to resist more successfully than elsewhere the social
movements of modern times. Henceforward Ireland is the natural and
necessary ally of the more liberal and fair-minded portion of the
English people, and she will co-operate most efficiently in helping them
to bring about the reforms which are so much needed.
For the perfect religious liberty which can exist only after the
disestablishment of the Anglican Church England will be indebted to
Ireland, whose people have already compelled the British Parliament to
admit principles and adopt measures which will inevitably lead to the
dissolution of the union between church and state throughout the whole
extent of the empire. The Irish land system must be sacrificed as the
Irish Church has been sacrificed; and this will be the first step
towards a complete revolution in the system of land tenure throughout
Great Britain. The growing influence and increasing number of English
Catholics will help greatly to create a more cordial and genuine
religious sympathy between the two races of these sister islands; and
this sympathy will be still further strengthened when the church in
England, through the disestablishment and disintegration of Anglicanism,
shall have gained a position and power which will give to her special
weight in forming public opinion. As the community of interests of the
two countries becomes more manifest, political parties will cease to be
influenced by national or religious prejudice, and will be constituted
upon principles which relate to the social interests of the people.
England has already confessed the radical error of her Irish policy, and
her leading statesmen have admitted that the cause of its failure lay in
its viciousness—in the fact that it wantonly violated the rights and
interests of the people because they belonged to a different race and
held a different religious faith. Her legislation was unjust because it
was narrow and exclusive—favored a class and a creed, and, in order to
favor these, repressed and crushed the national energies. The government
believed, whether truly or falsely, that it could rule Ireland only by
fostering divisions and feuds among her people; and to do this it sought
by every means to intensify and embitter the prejudice which separated
the English from the Irish, the Protestant from the Catholic. With this
view Scotch and English colonies of Protestants were planted in Ireland,
and, lest the intercourse and amenities of life should soften the
asperity of religious bigotry, the government took special care to
encourage the hatred which kept them aloof from the natives, first by
local separations, and afterwards by the social distinctions which arose
from the enforced poverty and ignorance of the Catholic population. The
American Revolution taught England, if not the iniquity, the folly of
this conduct; and from 1778 to the present day she has been slowly
receding from a course in which she had grown old. She has receded
unwillingly, too, and with hesitation, and has thus often increased the
discontent which she sought to allay. Nations, like individuals, find
that it is hard to recover from inveterate habits of wrong-doing. The
wages of sin must be paid; repentance can save from death, but not from
humiliation and punishment. Nor has England repented, but she has
entered in the way of penitence; she has made some reparation, but has
not by any means done all that must be done before Ireland can be
content. For nearly half a century now—that is, since 1829—there has
been, we believe, a sincere desire to govern Ireland fairly, chiefly, no
doubt, because English statesmen had come to see that it was not
possible to govern her in any other way; but these good intentions have
been thwarted by the constitutional repugnance of the English people to
apply strong and efficacious remedies to social disorders. Nowhere else
among civilized nations are ancient abuses guarded and protected with
such superstitious veneration. Hence the government thought to satisfy
Ireland by half-measures of redress, and these it took so ungraciously
that they seemed to be wrung from it, and not conceded with good-will.
Men are not grateful for favors which are granted because they can no
longer be withheld.
Englishmen still forget that Ireland has the right to be treated by them
not merely with justice, but with generous indulgence. So long as the
root of the evil is left untouched little will be accomplished by
pruning the branches. Ireland’s curse is the system of land tenure,
founded on confiscation and organized to perpetuate a fatal antagonism
between the proprietors and the tillers of the soil. Irishmen will be
disaffected and rebellious so long as the national prosperity is
blighted by a state of things which leaves their country in the hands of
men who are happy only when they are away from it.
Parliament has passed several land acts, but it would seem that they had
been purposely so framed as to produce no good results. That it is
possible to change the land system of Ireland radically, without doing
injustice to any one, is admitted, and various projects by which this
might be done have been laid before Parliament. This is not a question
of tenant-rights; it lies far deeper. Nor is there any parity in this
respect between England and Ireland. In England the land is owned by the
people’s natural leaders; in Ireland it is owned by the people’s natural
enemies. This land question is far more important than any question of
Home Rule; and if Parliament will but give a proper solution to this
problem, Home Rule will no longer be seriously thought of.
When landlordism vanishes from Ireland, the day of final reconciliation
will be at hand. With it will disappear the filibusters, revolutionists,
and Fenians, whose disturbing influence in Irish politics is made
possible by the wrongs which the English government has not the will or
the courage to redress. There are other grievances than the land system,
but it will not be difficult to do away with them when the country shall
have been given back to the people. With a free press, free speech, and
an organized public agitation sustained and increased by the sympathies
and interests of the masses of the people of England, it will be found
impossible to withhold much longer from Ireland full and complete
justice; and nothing less will satisfy her people.
TENNYSON AS A DRAMATIST.[20]
Footnote 20:
_Harold_: A Drama. By Alfred Tennyson. Boston: James R. Osgood & Co.
1877.
_Queen Mary_: A Drama. By Alfred Tennyson. Boston: James R. Osgood &
Co. 1875.
Alfred Tennyson is to-day one of the household gods of English-speaking
peoples. He has a place in every library, a niche in every memory, an
echo in every heart. He has unquestionably added a new and brilliant
page to the great book of English literature. He has set there something
that was not there before, and that is not likely to fade away with
time. Doubtless there are men who would deny this. There are literary
Gorgons who would, if they could, stare every man into stone. There are
critics whose nature seems to distil venom, and who find no sweetness
save in their own gall. To men of this class the very fact of a man
being praised is in itself sufficient cause for condemnation. Over and
above these there are probably some who honestly dislike or do not care
for Tennyson. For such we do not speak, but for the great mass of
English readers in whose estimation Tennyson occupies a very
conspicuous, if somewhat undefinable, position. By them he is liked, and
liked better than any living poet; and, indeed, he has given excellent
reasons for being so liked.
That there have been greater English poets, even his most enthusiastic
admirers must allow; that there have been few sweeter, all who have read
him and others will admit. Indeed, sweetness, with its twin-sister
purity, is one of the marked characteristics of Tennyson’s verse. No man
ever mistook Tennyson for a Pythoness, a Cassandra, a Jeremiah. He is
not heroic like Homer. Much of the idyllic grace, but little of the real
massiveness, of Virgil he has. He cannot scoff like Horace, or Byron, or
Shelley. He cannot scourge like Dante, observe with the luminous
philosophy, the high inspiration of Shakspere, or build up a mighty
edifice like Milton. He can do none of these things. In some respects he
is perhaps less than the least of these poets. He is a sweet singer,
made for sunshine and peace and harmony; the poet of the happy household
over whose threshold passes from time to time the sad shadow of a quiet
sorrow; not the poet of despair, of wrath, of agony, of the fiercer
passions or tumultuous joys, whose very excess is pain.
True it is that, as he sang in his earlier days,
“The poet in a golden clime was born,
With golden stars above;
Dower’d with the hate of hate, the scorn of scorn,
The love of love.”
But he is not such a poet. Never has he given voice to the hate of hate,
the scorn of scorn, or to that of which both of these are born—the love
of love. Whenever he has attempted it he has failed. He is too retiring,
too domestic. “With an _inner_ voice” his river runs, and we have to
listen with ears nicely attuned to catch its whisper and its meaning. So
inner is it, indeed, that it is often obscure and quite escapes the dull
hearing of ordinary men. His first volume, published in 1830, is almost
fulsomely dedicated to Queen Victoria, who is certainly not a heroic
figure, whatever else she may be. It is a picture gallery filled with
Claribels and Lilians, and Isabels and Madelines, and Marianas and
Adelines—all very sweet and delicate and dainty, but not inspiring. He
sings to “the owl,” he dedicates odes “to memory,” he lingers by “the
deserted house,” chants the dirge of “the dying swan,” and so on. In
1832 he enlarges his gallery by the addition of the lovely “Lady of
Shalott,” “Mariana in the South,” “Eleänore,” and we come nearer to the
poet’s heart in “The Miller’s Daughter,” whom he evidently prefers to
the haughty and much-abused “Lady Clara Vere de Vere.” Something, too,
of his more marked peculiarities show here in the “Palace of Art” and
that dreamy, delicious poem, “The Lotos-Eaters.” He is intensely
English—an admirable quality, be it remarked _sotto voce_, in an English
poet laureate. He closes the volume with some strong verses:
“You ask me, why, tho’ ill at ease,
Within this region I subsist,
Whose spirits falter in the mist,
And languish for the purple seas?
“It is the land that freemen till,
That sober-suited Freedom chose,
The land, where girt with friends or foes
A man may speak the thing he will;
“A land of settled government,
A land of just and old renown,
Where Freedom broadens slowly down
From precedent to precedent....”
The intense difference between the spirit here expressed and that of his
more immediate and brilliant predecessors and countrymen, Byron and
Shelley and Keats, may possibly account in some degree for the hold
which Tennyson has taken on the English heart. He was a man, too, who
felt the throbbings of the age and touched with skilful fingers the
pulse of Time. Though anxious for the future, he was troubled with no
“Dreams of Darkness,” or hollow-eyed despair, or morbid imaginings. He
realizes change; he has hopes for a world over which he sees a God
ruling. He sings boldly of “immortal souls,” and knows no “first dark
day of nothingness.” He warns the intelligence of his countrymen to—
“... pamper not a hasty time,
Nor feed with crude imaginings
The herd, wild hearts and feeble wings,
That every sophister can lime.
“Deliver not the tasks of might
To weakness, neither hide the ray
From those, not blind, who wait for day
Tho’ sitting girt with doubtful light.
“Make knowledge circle with the winds;
But let her herald, Reverence, fly
Before her to whatever sky
Bear seed of men and growth of minds.”
These lines are noble, true, and Christian; and again:
“Meet is it changes should control
Our being, lest we rust in ease.
We all are changed by still degrees,
_All but the basis of the soul_.
“So let the change which comes be free
To ingroove itself with that which flies,
And work, a joint of state, that plies
Its office, moved with sympathy.
“A saying, hard to shape in act;
_For all the past of Time reveals
A bridal dawn of thunder-peals,
Wherever Thought hath wedded Fact_.
“Ev’n now we hear with inward strife
_A motion toiling in the gloom—
The Spirit of the years to come
Yearning to mix himself with Life_.
“A slow-develop’d strength awaits
Completion in a painful school;
Phantoms of other forms of rule,
New Majesties of mighty States—
“The warders of the growing hour,
But vague in vapor, hard to mark;
And round them sea and air are dark
With great contrivances of Power.”
This was published in 1832, a period when agitations about the suffrage,
and the Corn Laws, and Catholic Emancipation—questions that shook
England to its foundations, only to fix them deeper than before—were
rife or looming up like awful spectres in the dim mist of the future.
Tennyson did not dread them, though he realized their vastness and
importance. Most certainly the verses just quoted stamp him as a close
observer of events in those days and a man of right moral balance, to
whom might with some measure of truth be applied his own words:
“He saw thro’ life and death, thro’ good and ill,
He saw thro’ his own soul.
The marvel of the everlasting will,
An open scroll,
Before him lay....”
Still, these nobler passages are only fragments. He prefers his quiet
mood. In 1842 appeared the first of his idyls, the “Morte d’Arthur.”
Here again the better nature of the poet—a nature that we are grieved to
see apparently soured and crossed, not softened and made more venerable,
by the hand of Time—breaks forth in the grand prayer of the dying king:
“If thou shouldst never see my face again,
Pray for my soul. More things are wrought by prayer
Than this world dreams of. Wherefore, let thy voice
Rise like a fountain for me night and day.
For what are men better than sheep or goats
That nourish a blind life within the brain,
If, knowing God, they lift not hands of prayer,
Both for themselves and those who call them friend?
For so the whole round earth is every way
Bound by gold chains about the feet of God.”
It was the Catholic instinct breaking through the wall of prejudice and
false teaching which, in centuries of separation from the truth, have
grown up around the English heart, that gave voice to this beautiful
conception. Many are the instances where non-Catholic poets have leaped
up to truths of this kind which the whole force of their training and
education ran counter to. It is, as it were, the flash of inspiration
coming on them in spite of themselves and issuing in music. The divinity
of their art has lifted them above all prejudice into the sun-bright
heaven. Thus Byron sings to the Blessed Virgin in strains that a saint
might envy. Unfortunately, the instances are many also where men lifted
up on the heights of inspiration, or by the deep yearnings of their own
soul, have, as it were, glanced into heaven and seen the face of Truth,
only to fall back again to their lower level, dazed and blinded by the
very glimpse that was revealed to them. And we find them deny with their
own lips and actions what their greater selves had announced.
It is not our purpose to enter into an elaborate criticism of Tennyson.
That task has been done time and again, and by pens infinitely better
fitted for it than ours. We are only taking touches here and there to
bring out the poet in his truest colors, in his best and his worst
lights, in order to add point to the main purport of this article, which
is to show that Tennyson has mistaken himself and his powers in the
_rôle_ which he has thought fit to assume in his later years. In his
earlier dreams he is full of high thoughts and large aspirations. “My
faith is large in Time, and that which shapes it to some perfect end,”
he tells us. He looks forward longingly to “the golden year.” He is
possessed with the spirit of Christian purity, and gives constant
expression to it, notably in “St. Agnes” and “Sir Galahad.” In “The Two
Voices” he argues down atheism. He lays bare the grinning savagery of a
wasted intellect and debauched life, only to punish it with the power of
a man who knows what virtue is and feels it in his soul. He sometimes
catches those inarticulate murmurs of the heart which breathe in
feelings rather than in words, where feeling is too deep for words, and
they well out in song, as in the
“Break, break, break,
On thy cold gray stones, O sea!”
while in the “In Memoriam” the poet, stricken to the heart, has given
voice to that sorrow, and the effect it has on our life, which most of
us have felt when some bright intelligence has been taken from our side,
whose young years were blossoming fair with promise of a great and good
future.
In all this he is excellent, perhaps unsurpassed; in all that is sad, or
sweet, or picturesque, or naïvely joyous our hearts are with him. He
stands alone in his dainty pictures of scenery, of women, of certain
men. He touches the commonplaces of the time with a magic pencil. He
beguiled the hard and stubborn Saxon, which yielded reluctantly even to
the greatest masters of English verse, into a music it had never known
before. He built up fairy castles, and galleries and cities of old time,
and peopled them with a fair array of Arthurs and Launcelots, of
Guineveres and Elaines, of Merlins and Gawains, whose very names were
music, and whose deeds were just such as befitted scenes of witchery. He
is, moreover, a man of marked personality and nationality in his
writings. He is an Englishman and nothing else. He does not care to be
anything else or more; for he can see nothing greater. All his scenery
is English; his characters are English; his thoughts, feelings, and
aspirations English. Byron’s corsairs and giaours and Childe Harolds
would fight as fiercely, frown as darkly, sin as deeply, in any
civilized language as in English—in warmer languages even better,
perhaps; Shakspere’s profound observations and reading of character
would have reached the world through any other channel as surely as,
perhaps more readily than, through the English; some would doubt whether
Milton ever wrote English at all. But all Tennyson is English or
nothing. His dawns, his gloamings, his sunrises, his sunsets, his
landscapes, his fens, his fogs, his smoke, his moonlight and moonlight
effects, his winds, his birds, his flowers, his reeds and rushes, his
trees, his brooklets, his seas, his cliffs, his coloring, his ruins, his
graveyards, his walks and rides, his love of good cheer, his hums of
great cities, his profound respect for the respectable, are all English.
He has the sturdy English common sense and no small share, as will be
seen, of English prejudice; and, though he feels something of the
movements of the outer world, he has all the English narrowness of
vision. So that, while his works will probably never become a part of
any other literature than the English—for they would not be understood
elsewhere—they have won their way into the English heart for their very
_homeliness_, if for no higher reason. So long as this English poet was
content to sing to us, we were content to listen, were his lay sad or
gay. He had been singing all our life, and we were not weary of his
music, even though the music was all pitched in much the same key. We
never tire of a familiar voice that we love. But when we would be roused
and wrought up by some martial strain, by some great event, by one of
those movements that catch the heart of a people and sway it and hold it
captive, by the “thoughts that breathe and words that burn,” Tennyson
fails. Surely, for such an Englishman as he, the death of the Duke of
Wellington ought to have proved an inspiring theme. It is true that as
the years went on, and the memory of Waterloo faded, and the hero of
Waterloo moved about and took his part in civic affairs, people (and
people are ever ready to weary of their gods, if their gods are too near
them and live too long) began to clip and cut down the gigantic
proportions of the Iron Duke’s colossal figure. Indeed, before he died
it is safe to say that half England regarded England’s hero as rather an
ordinary sort of person and a worthy but extremely fortunate soldier.
Still, death generally brings back the liveliest memories of deeds that
are, or are thought to be, great and good, and a true poet’s song who
believed all of Wellington that Tennyson’s poem expresses might well
have been tipped with fire when Wellington died. Yet Tennyson’s funeral
ode is poor, tame; where not tame, forced; and, like all such
compositions, indefinitely strung out. All his readers know the opening:
“Bury the Great Duke
With an empire’s lamentation,
Let us bury the Great Duke,
To the noise of the mourning of a mighty nation,
Mourning when their leaders fall,
Warriors carry the warrior’s pall
And sorrow darkens hamlet and hall!”
It is plain from the start that he is writing for a public. This great
duke needs a capital G and a capital D to impress duly that public, the
British (which is always ready to be awed by capitals attached to
titles), with the great duke’s immensity. There is something of the
heavy English undertaker about this—a display, a forced solemnity, a
measured tread, a sense of sham. The great duke is lost sight of in the
funereal trappings, the crowd, and accompaniment. See how Byron seizes
on the very heart of an event, and in a few lines pictures for us the
whole, the before and after. He is describing the greater man by whose
fall the great duke rose to fame:
“Tis done—but yesterday a king!
And arm’d with kings to strive—
And now thou art a nameless thing:
So abject—yet alive!
Is this the man of thousand thrones,
Who strew’d our earth with hostile bones,
And can he thus survive?
Since he, miscall’d the Morning Star,
Nor man nor fiend has fallen so far.”
This indeed is “the scorn of scorn,” and the entire ode is replete with
it. Byron, who had been a great admirer of Napoleon, could not consent
to his idol lowering himself so far as to receive his life from England.
He could not forgive himself for yielding to
“That spell upon the minds of men
* * * * *
That led them to adore
Those Pagod things of sabre-sway,
With fronts of brass, and feet of clay.”
“O civic muse,” cries Tennyson,
“To such a name,
To such a name for ages long,
To such a name
Preserve a broad approach of fame,
And ever-ringing avenues of song.”
Here lies the whole secret of the ode’s comparative poverty. Tennyson is
by position, if not by profession, “a civic muse,” and the civic muse is
never heroic or great. It is more apt, like Turveydrop, to be “a model
of deportment,” especially when it follows the advice of Mrs. Chick and
“makes an effort.” This, for instance, is eminently civic:
“Where shall we lay the man whom we deplore?
Here, in streaming London’s central roar.
Let the sound of those he wrought for,
And the feet of those he fought for,
Echo round his bones for evermore.
“Lead out the pageant: sad and slow,
As fits an universal woe,
Let the long procession go,
And let the sorrowing crowd about it grow,
And let the mournful martial music blow;
The last great Englishman is low.”
We hope that Wellington was not “the last great Englishman.” If so,
English greatness must indeed be “low.” But the thought is irresistible:
Is not the undertaker’s hand again visible in all this? How different is
it from the sad, simple, manly beauty of the lament of a poet, whose
name scarcely stands in the list of English authors, for one of those
soldiers who gloriously failed! Here is how Wolfe sings of the burial of
Sir John Moore:
“Not a drum was heard, not a funeral note,
As his corse to the rampart we hurried;
Not a soldier discharged his farewell shot
O’er the grave where our hero we buried.
“We buried him darkly at dead of night,
The sods with our bayonets turning,
By the glimmering moonbeam’s fitful light
And the camp-fires dimly burning.”
Again, is this a worthy echo of “a people’s voice”?
“And thro’ the centuries let a people’s voice
In full acclaim,
A people’s voice,
The proof and echo of all human fame,
A people’s voice, when they rejoice
At civic revel and pomp and game,
Attest their great commander’s claim
With honor, honor, honor to him,
Eternal honor to his name.”
What wearisome and forced repetition, what commonplace allusions! This
is not Tennyson. The very verse is burdened with its vulgar prose, and
halts and stumbles in clumsy confusion meant for art. And here is his
description in the same poem of the battle of Waterloo:
“Dash’d on every rocky square
Their surging chargers foam’d themselves away;
Last, the Prussian trumpet blew;
Thro’ the long-tormented air
Heaven flash’d a sudden jubilant ray,
And down we swept and charged and overthrew.
So great a soldier taught us there,
What long-enduring hearts could do
In that world’s earthquake, Waterloo!”
The best expression in it, the last, is borrowed from Byron’s wonderful
description of the same battle:
“Stop! for thy tread is on an Empire’s dust!
_An Earthquake’s spoil_ is sepulchred below!”
Again in Byron these two lines tell the whole story, as does that other,
“The grave of France, the deadly Waterloo!”
So with Tennyson’s “War Songs” and “National Songs,” published in the
edition of 1830 and wisely omitted in later editions. They are not much
above the level of many fledglings’ performances in a like strain. They
fall dull on the heart:
“There standeth our ancient enemy,
Hark! he shouteth—the ancient enemy!
On the ridge of the hill his banners rise;
They stream like fire in the skies;
Hold up the Lion of England on high
Till it dazzle and blind his eyes.
_Chorus_: Shout for England!
Ho! for England!
George for England!
Merry England!
England for aye!”
Here are the chorus and full chorus of his “National Song”:
“For the French, the Pope may shrive ’em.
For the devil a whit we heed ’em:
As for the French, God speed ’em
Unto their heart’s desire,
And the merry devil drive ’em
Through the water and fire.
Our glory is our freedom,
We lord it o’er the sea;
We are the sons of freedom.
We are free.”
As Mr. Tennyson has been wise enough—for shame’s sake, presumably—to
omit these and similar sorry pieces from his later editions, it may seem
unfair to quote them against him now. We quote them, however,
intentionally, to show that there is a strong streak of English
narrowness and Protestant bigotry in his nature which we were happy to
think dead, until within the last few years it has cropped out again. In
1852 there were probabilities of war between England and France, then
under Louis Napoleon. Tennyson thought to rouse his countrymen, and the
strongest appeal he can make is to religious bigotry:
“Rise, Britons, rise, if manhood be not dead;
The world’s last tempest darkens overhead;
The Pope has bless’d him;
The Church caress’d him;
He triumphs; may be we shall stand alone.
Britons, guard your own.
“His ruthless host is bought with plunder’d gold,
By lying priests the peasants’ votes controll’d.
All freedom vanish’d,
The true men banish’d, etc.
“Rome’s dearest daughter now is captive France,
The Jesuit laughs, and reckoning on his chance,
_Would unrelenting,
Kill all dissenting_,
Till we were left to fight for truth alone.
Britons, guard your own.”
And this is the gentle Tennyson! But we forbear from comment other than
the verses themselves suggest, and turn at last to our more immediate
object.
Whatever fault may be found here and there with Tennyson, one thing is
certain: his renown was great and his fame established chiefly by his
earlier and better works and by the peculiar characteristics which we
have attempted to point out. The poet, however, seems not to have been
satisfied. He was weary of the graceful path by which he ambled gently
up to fame, and would seek by a new and rugged road a higher place than
he already occupied in that temple where are gathered the mighty men who
have wrought with the pen monuments more enduring than marble. In an
evil hour he tempted fate, and fate gave him a severe warning. Weary of
the minstrel's lute which had charmed the world, he would be what the
poets of old were thought to be—a _vates_, an inspired prophet-and his
vaticination was _Queen Mary_.
As that drama has been dealt with in these pages by another pen, we
shall not touch on it here more than to say that never were the minds of
Tennyson’s countrymen better prepared to receive and applaud a work
intended, as this plainly was, to be an outcry against Rome and a
picture of one of the fierce struggles between England and Rome. Mr.
Gladstone had prepared the way and set all the world warring on
“Vaticanism.” Tennyson could not have chosen a better time for the
publication of his drama, and, were it a work of power and passion, it
could not have failed to catch the heart of the people. Never, on the
other hand, could he have chosen a better time for a higher duty: that
of, in the words of his great master, still in his right hand carrying
gentle peace “to silence envious tongues.” If the drama failed, it
failed in the face of every incentive to success.
Fail it did. It was plain, even to friendly critics, that the author of
_Queen Mary_ was not a dramatist, and so it was hinted generally in the
mildest possible terms. What was the reason of the failure?
We have shown, we believe sufficiently, that Tennyson failed wherever he
attempted to yoke the passions. His hand was too weak to curb them. His
genius is reflective, introspective, descriptive. It has not the flash,
the white heat of inspiration. It is always Tennyson who is singing,
talking to, arguing with us, describing for us. He is a person, not a
voice—a very pleasing, scholarly, refined, and in the main right-minded
person—but he is for ever giving utterance to his own peculiar thoughts
in his own peculiar style. The highest form of poetry, as of oratory, is
not this. It is that undefinable and truest expression of feeling, of
hope, of agony, of despair, of wrath, of courage, of any of the passions
that lie dormant in the human breast, which at once elicits a responsive
echo from the heart of humanity, so that we do not say, How sweet, how
tender, how strong is this man, but, How true to nature is this thought!
Thus it is that the greatest poets are the voices of all the world;
their works the inheritance of all the world. In their highest heights
they belong to humanity, and to no nation.
The dramatic we believe to be the highest form of poetry, because it
alone attempts to portray life itself, life in action; it is not a
description, however magnificently done, of life. There lies between it
and all other forms of poetry the difference that exists between the
painting of a hero and the hero himself. The one is the man, thinking,
living, moving, breathing, speaking his thoughts, doing his deeds; the
other after all is only an image, more or less vivid, of him on canvas.
It may catch the color of the eye, the expression of the countenance,
the texture of the dress, the shape, the form; but at the very best it
is a picture, no more, infinitely removed from the reality.
If this be a right conception of the difference between dramatic and all
other kinds of poetry—and it seems to us to be, although it might need
more elaboration to impress it upon the reader’s mind—it will be plain
that the dramatic poet needs nothing short of the highest inspiration in
order to make him catch the very breathings of men’s souls and throw
them into living forms, as truly as the master actor loses his own
personality and lets it sink or become absorbed utterly in the various
characters he portrays. No mere change of costume will effect the
metamorphosis needed to impress the spectator with the reality of the
change in character. In the same way no clipping of a poem into acts and
scenes, and no allotting of certain lines to certain different names,
will convert a descriptive poem into a drama. All the world will at once
detect the fraud or the inherent defect.
A not uncommon phase of an exasperated mind is to refuse to recognize
failure. Tennyson tried again, rather hastily, and in the same
direction, with the satisfactory result of making a more disastrous
failure than before. The blunder of _Queen Mary_ has been emphasized in
_Harold_. The first named may have left some minds in doubt whether or
not its author could construct a drama; the production of the second has
effectually set all such doubts at rest. The critics who in the first
instance were kind are in the second cruel. We have rarely seen a more
general and resolutely contemptuous dealing with the pretensions of any
writer at all than in the treatment which _Harold_ has received at the
hands of critics of every shade of opinion, English as well as American.
_Harold_ is simply narrative throughout—spoken narrative, indeed. A
drama must be _act_. Scenes prior to and leading up to the Norman
Conquest of England are depicted with more or less beauty of limning,
but they are loose, shifting, independent of each other. There is no
secret thread to link the whole and give it a unity of purpose and of
plan, without which there is no drama. There are five acts. There might
have been fifty, or only two, or only one, so far as the slow working of
the whole up to the catastrophe at the conclusion goes. The first act
opens in London at King Edward’s palace. Almost the first twenty pages
are occupied by various characters in discussing the appearance,
meaning, and portent of a comet. This is, of course, the old stage trick
used to knit the coming horror with troubles in the air. Shakspere uses
it often, notably in _Julius Cæsar_, but with him the troubled elements
obey the magic wand of Prospero and minister to man, and are but the
accompaniment of great events. Tennyson’s comet is too much for his
characters. They puzzle themselves about it until we grow tired of it
and its three tails.
After the comet has run its course, the characters being brought
together to discuss it, Harold intimates to the king his intention to go
to Normandy; the king warns him not to go; then follows a lively
discussion on personal matters between the queen, Harold, and his
brothers, which almost ends in a fight; the comet or “grisly star” is
introduced again, and the scene ends apropos of nothing in particular,
unless a hint of a coming plot on the part of Aldwyth. The second scene,
the best in the drama, is a very sweet piece of love-making between
Harold and Edith, upon which Aldwyth again throws her shadow, and the
act ends. The second act wrecks Harold at Ponthieu, whence his
transition to the power of Count William of Normandy—or Duke William, as
we are more in the habit of calling him—is easy. Indeed, to a dramatist
there was no reason whatever for the first scene of this act, as the
story of Harold’s capture might, if it were necessary, have been told in
a line or two while Harold was actually in the power of William. The
rest of this long act is taken up with William’s compelling Harold to
swear, on the relics of the saints, to help him to the crown of England.
The third act presents the death of King Edward, who wills the crown to
Harold. The second scene gives another piece of love-making between
Harold and Edith, not so happy as the first, and announces the invasion
of Northumbria by Tostig and Harold Hardrada. The fourth act opens in
Northumbria. In the first scene of it the factions of the rival
chieftains are put an end to by the marriage of Harold with Aldwyth, and
thus the only attempt at a shadow even of a plot is summarily disposed
of. The other scenes are before and after the battle of Stamford Bridge,
and the act closes with news of the landing of the Normans. The fifth
act opens on the field of Senlac. Harold has a dream in his tent, too
like that of Richard III. in conception. Stigand describes the battle of
Hastings to Edith, and the death of Harold. Here the drama should have
closed. Anything after it on the stage would certainly come tamely. But
Tennyson cannot resist the temptation to search for the body of Harold,
and with the finding of it, the death of Edith on it, and what in
ordinary parlance would be called William’s directions for the funeral
arrangements, the play closes.
Such is _Harold_—narrative, narrative, narrative throughout; very
excellent narrative some of it, but no drama, no centre of interest
around which the whole is made to turn. The misfortune about all
historical plays is that the reader begins with a full knowledge of all
the circumstances, and to make them dramatically interesting needs a
most skilful adaptation of plot and counterplot, a slow unfolding of
events from some necessary cause, a development of character, a silent
Fate, so to say, moving in and out, and, in spite of all things, shaping
events to one great end, so that, while we feel the consummation
impending, we yet know not how, or when, or where, or by what
instrumentality it will come. There is nothing of this in _Harold_.
It has been seen that Tennyson has no great love for the Pope. Indeed,
if some of the lines quoted represent the man, he has, of late years at
least, the heartiest hatred for the Catholic Church. We cannot help
that, however much we may regret it. We must take men as they are, and,
if Tennyson hates the Pope, why let him hate him and be happy. The Pope
can exist and rule the Catholic Church, and be obeyed, revered, loved,
and honored by intellects as bright at least as Mr. Tennyson’s, for all
that gentleman’s hate. A true dramatist, however, sinks, or at least
disguises, all his private personal feelings in depicting known
characters or types of character. This is only to be true to nature, to
art, and to history. Where there is question regarding the right reading
of a character or a period, a writer is of course at liberty, after
having consulted respectable authorities, to form his own estimate. Men
who lived in the eleventh century must be true to their time. To make
such men think, argue, reflect, question, doubt on most matters,
particularly on matters of faith, just as do men of the nineteenth
century, is a gross solecism. It is absurd and self-condemnatory on the
face of it. To make eleventh-century Catholics speak of the Catholic
faith, and Rome, and the pope after the fashion of the average
Protestant or infidel journalist in these days, is absurd, not to
characterize such practice by a harsher expression. This is what
Tennyson has gone out of his way to do in _Harold_; and the only
impression with which we rise from its perusal is that the writer
detests Normans and Catholics. Between the Vere de Veres and the Pope
Tennyson has lost his temper and his right hand has forgotten its
cunning.
The drama presents no character of any special interest. Harold, Edward
the Confessor, and William of Normandy, the three principal personages,
are much the same first as last. In stage terms, William may be set down
as the “heavy villain” of the piece, and a very heavy villain he is;
Edward the Confessor as the “first old man”; and Harold as the “walking
gentleman.” Edward is made—unintentionally too, it would seem—one of the
silliest old men that ever walked the boards. As for his sanctity,
imagine a saint speaking of himself in this style:
“And I say it
For the last time, perchance, before I go
To find the sweet refreshment of the Saints.”
Saints, in the Catholic Church at least, are not, as a rule, quite so
sure about finding “the sweet refreshment of the saints.” Indeed, they
have far graver doubts on this point often than sinners. But lest some
of his courtiers might feel tempted to doubt the rapid transit to heaven
of a man so thoroughly sure of his place beforehand, the king informs
them:
“I have lived a life of utter purity:
I have builded the great church of holy Peter:
I have wrought miracles.”
True, every word of it. But it might have occurred to Mr. Tennyson that
Edward the Confessor was mindful, at least, of that admonition: “Let not
thine own mouth, but another’s, praise thee.” There never was a saint,
to our knowledge, so fond of talking about himself, his miracles, his
good deeds, his place here and hereafter. Listen to this again:
“And miracles will in my name be wrought
Hereafter. I have fought the fight and go—
I see the flashing of the gates of pearl—
And it is well with me, tho’ some of you
Have scorn’d me—ay—but after I am gone
Woe, woe to England! I have had a vision:
The seven sleepers in the cave at Ephesus
Have turn’d from right to left.”
The whole thing is incongruous. It smacks rather of a converted
“brother” giving his “experiences” and how he “got religion” before a
highly-wrought meeting of “Christian workers.” Had the “devil’s
advocate” only caught scent of any such expressions in the life of the
real Edward, it is to be feared he would never have been canonized.
Saints are not in the habit of canonizing themselves. The only thing
that occurs to us as on a par with Mr. Tennyson’s picture of a saint is
one by Mr. William Cullen Bryant in a short and remarkably silly poem
recently published by him. It is entitled “A Legend of St. Martin,” and
the saint, while still in the flesh, speaks as follows:
“Thus spake the saint: 'We part to-night;
_I am St. Martin_, and I give you here
The means to make your fortunes.’”
The author’s favorite churchman is Stigand, who, whether Catholic or
heretic, no man who had read the history of the time carefully and
honestly could by any possibility hold up for admiration. Mr. Tennyson,
however, may consider himself excused on points of historical accuracy,
inasmuch as he informs us in his dedication that “after Old-World
records—such as the Bayeux tapestry and the Roman de Rou—Edward
Freeman’s _History of the Norman Conquest_,” and Bulwer Lytton’s
historical romance treating of the same times, “have been mainly
helpful” to him “in writing this drama.” But he cannot be excused for
such culpable negligence in searching out authorities when attempting to
depict in a truthful manner a most important historical epoch. Had he
taken the easy pains of going a little deeper into history and
authorities, it would probably have been better for himself and his
drama, or perhaps, with his evident bias, he would not have written it
at all. He loves Stigand, a thoroughly bad prelate, simply because
Stigand was against the pope. If Tennyson selects his Catholic heroes
from all men who have been against the pope, he will find his hands full
of very queer characters, some of them worse than Stigand. Imagine even
Stigand saying, in the exact tone of a modern unbeliever:
“... In our windy world
What’s up is faith, what’s down is heresy.”
Certain modern Anglican prelates and ministers, or any man who
acknowledges no unchangeable deposit of divine truth, might speak in
just such a strain. The words, if they mean anything, mean simply that
there is no such thing at all as real faith or doctrine. Stigand knew
better than that. His peculiar vice was a very English one—an overdue
and unscrupulous regard for this world’s goods. This Catholic prelate
tells Harold of a sum of money which he keeps concealed at the other’s
service, to be asked for at his “most need,” in the following eloquent
style:
“Red gold—a hundred purses—yea, and more!
If thou canst make a wholesome use of these
To chink against the Norman, I do believe
_My old crook’d spine would bud out two young wings
To fly to heaven straight with_.”
Tennyson doubtless considers this very English and spirited. Stigand may
have disliked the Normans, and doubtless did. With all our hearts! But
this mode of expressing his dislike is, in the mouth of a Catholic and a
prelate, surely not in character.
Again he asks:
“... Be there no saints of England
To help us from their brethren yonder?”
As though a Catholic or Christian could dream of the saints warring in
heaven or of affixing nationality to sanctity! Tennyson’s Edward, with a
solitary gleam of intelligence, rebukes him thus:
“Prelate,
The Saints are one, ...”
yet immediately falls into the absurd blunder he rebukes by adding:
“But those (Saints) of Normanland
Are mightier than our own.”
While witnessing the battle of Hastings Stigand cries out in an ecstasy
of admiration at Harold’s prowess: “War-woodman of old Woden!” Could any
Christian man, Catholic or non-Catholic, couple a Christian warrior’s
name with the detestable deity of the pagan North?
The character of Harold, too, is incongruous. He is represented as a
most brave, wise, and honorable man, incapable of fear or falsehood:
“broad and honest, breathing an easy gladness.” He weakens in many
places. We cannot here go into a historical inquiry respecting the
alleged oath of Harold on the relics of saints to help William to the
crown of England. Much is made of it by Tennyson; so let us take all the
facts for granted. A man such as Harold is here represented to be would
rather have died than taken the oath, if he never meant to keep it. On
the other hand, once taken, and knowing it to be false, we doubt whether
the resolute Saxon soldier would have troubled himself much about the
matter. He acts as a coward throughout while in William’s power. A
strong man would not rail in secret at William for forcing him to take
an oath which the swearer knew to be a lie. He would take it or not take
it with the best grace possible. “Horrible!” exclaims Harold when the
relics on which he has sworn are exposed. Harold was sufficiently man of
the world—a man who had passed his life in camp and court—to have
uttered no such weak cry. In the first place, if he swore falsely, such
an exclamation showed at once that he never intended to keep his
promise. In the second place, it would have been perfectly plain to
William that he could place no reliance on the oath of such a poltroon.
The same failure to apprehend the character of the man is apparent in
the womanish tirade into which Harold breaks after William has left him:
“Juggler and bastard—bastard: he hates that most—William the tanner’s
bastard! Would he heard me!” A moment before he might have heard him,
but Harold dared not speak his thoughts. Certainly the man who never
lost a battle save the one in which he lost all—the man who conquered
Wales, crushed the terrible invasion of Harold Hardrada and Tostig,
braved his own sovereign, seized on the English throne with a grasp that
only death could shake off, and died so gloriously on Hastings—never
“played the woman with his eyes and the braggart with his tongue” in
this poor fashion. Here again speaks the reader of modern infidel
literature in the mouth of the unspeculative soldier of the eleventh
century:
“I cannot help it, but at times
They seem to me too narrow, _all the faiths_
Of this grown world of ours, whose baby eye
Saw them sufficient.”
“_All_ the faiths!” We wonder how many “faiths” Harold knew of or
contemplated. Indeed, it seems to us that Mr. Tennyson here speaks for
himself, and in a manner that causes some suspicion of his having lost
something of his own earlier and more robust belief. Harold continues:
“But a little light!—
And on it falls the shadow of the priest;
Heaven yield us more! _for better Woden, all
Our cancell’d warrior-gods, our grim Walhalla,
Eternal war, than that the Saints at peace;
The Holiest of our Holiest one should be
This William’s fellow-tricksters_; better die
Than credit this, for death is death, or else
Lifts us beyond the lie.”
Which is heathenism and atheism beautifully combined. He goes on, still
in his atheistic vein, when Edith bids him listen to the nightingales:
“Their anthems of no church, how sweet they are!
Nor kingly priest, nor priestly king to cross
Their billings ere they nest.”
And again, when Gurth brings news of the pope’s favoring William’s
cause, Harold laughs and says of it:
“This was old human laughter in old Rome
Before a Pope was born, when that which reign’d
Call’d itself God—a kingly rendering
Of 'Render unto Cæsar.’”
Harold must have lately risen from a perusal of Mr. Gladstone’s pamphlet
on _Vaticanism_ when he spoke thus, so we pardon his aberration. That
pamphlet is too strong for weak intellects.
“The Lord was God and came as man—the Pope
Is man and comes as God,”
he continues, still in the Gladstonian vein. He reminds Edith that love
“remains beyond all chances and all churches”—a dictum and doctrine that
would be strange even in a Protestant Harold. “I ever hated monks,” he
says in another place, which may account for his having founded Waltham
Abbey. He grows more and more Protestant towards the end, and the
saintly relics over which he was so terrified at having sworn a false
oath he terms the “gilded ark of mummy-saints.” And here is his final
legacy to England:
“... And this to England,
My legacy of war against the Pope
From child to child, from Pope to Pope, from age to age,
Till the sea wash her level with her shores,
Or till the Pope be Christ’s.”
This is Tennyson’s legacy, not Harold’s. It seems strange that it should
have fallen into careless hands; not ours, but those of the poet’s
coreligionists. The fact is that the world is growing weary of little
anti-papal tooters. Great enemies of the papacy it applauds and tries to
excuse; but at the mouthings of the little people it yawns. If Tennyson
has shown anything in this as in his other anti-Catholic effusions, it
is that when moved by rancor he can descend to all the small bitterness
of a common and weak order of mind. We cannot go further into an
examination of _Harold_, and, indeed, the task is not worth while. He
has failed in the one character which, to a true dramatic genius,
offered magnificent opportunities—William of Normandy, who was perhaps
the greatest and the wisest sovereign that England has as yet known. A
gallant soldier; a wary yet bold and successful general; an astute
statesman; a lover of learning; a resolute if severe ruler; a man who
could bide his opportunity, then move on it with the flash and fatality
of the lightning, yet withal a man of almost ungovernable passions, with
the old taint running in his blood and through all his successful
life—this was a character that it is as great a pity Shakspere did not
draw as that Tennyson should have been rash enough to attempt to draw.
In what ought to be the chief scene of the play, the battle of Hastings,
there is no battle at all. The weak device is resorted to of setting a
description of it as it proceeds in the mouth of Stigand, who watches
the field from “a tent on a mound.” Norman and Saxon, Harold and
William, are not brought together for the final death-grip. Shakspere's
battle-scenes are more vivid than those of any painter. They illuminate
history and print themselves indelibly on the mind. Cut the
battle-scenes out of _King John_, _Henry IV._, _Henry V._, _Macbeth_,
_Julius Cæsar_, _Henry VI._, and you mutilate the plays. Stigand’s
description of the battle of Hastings might be dropped from _Harold_ and
not missed. Why should not Harold die as Hotspur dies, or as Macbeth, or
Brutus, or any of the others—his face to the victorious foe, the fitting
ending of the tragedy? Mr. Tennyson was not equal to the task, either in
this scene or at Stamford Bridge. The last clash and conflict of human
passion he can only look at from afar off and reflect upon when it is
over. He cannot take it in hand and present it. He would do well to
retire from the field where empires, and men and events that make or
unmake empires, are the subjects of song, and go back to the pretty
scenery, the calm truth, and the graceful verse that have made his name
dearly loved and justly honored.
ANGLICANISM IN 1877,
AS AFFECTED BY THE PUBLIC WORSHIP REGULATION ACT.
We should feel inclined to apologize to our readers for again
introducing the English Establishment to their notice, were it not that
since, a year ago, we considered Anglicanism in connection with the “Old
Catholic” conference at Bonn, the increasing agitation within the state
church cannot but have continued to attract the thoughtful attention of
those who, from the bark of Peter, watch the weary tossing of the
Anglican craft and the mutinous condition of a portion of her crew.
Since the period to which we allude, the fact that the whole tendency of
the Alt-Catholic movement is rationalistic and anti-Christian is
beginning to be understood by all really religious Protestants, and we
now see the better part of them holding aloof from the movement, and
even the Ritualist journals condemning whatever advances were made
towards it. The cause is now advocated only by the Broad-Church party,
which distinguished itself by its emphatic encouragement of the apostate
Loyson, one of the apostles of the new sect, who went last summer to
London to enlighten the English public on ecclesiastical questions. On
the other hand, the High-Church movement is, if anything, in the
direction of the Catholic Church, while Alt-Catholicism is a distinct
counter-agitation, and thus anything like a cordial fraternization
between the two is impossible. The attempts of the High-Church party to
obtain at least as much as a recognition of the validity of their orders
from the Orientals—attempts which were renewed at the Bonn
conference—have again signally failed. One of the “Unionist” leaders
himself laments that “the Oriental Church stands entirely aloof from the
Church of England, sweepingly and roundly condemns all its members,
denies the validity of their baptisms and ordinations, and practically
refuses to aid them in any shape or form.”
There is no doubt that at the present moment a tremendous struggle has
arisen in the Establishment between the would-be Catholic and the
Protestant elements; the latter not only pleading its three centuries’
possession, but also, and truly, declaring itself to be the very basis
and _raison d’être_ of the schism. This claim is urged at the present
time with a vehemence and jealous irritation aimed ostensibly at the
“Romanizing practices” of their brethren, but the venom of which betrays
itself to be especially called forth by the ceaseless, active,
self-denying energy of these incorrigible early risers—an irritation not
difficult to comprehend on the part of those who, with all their
professions of Evangelical piety, have, generally speaking, an exceeding
shyness of hard work, detest the Counsels of Perfection in general and
the practice of self-denial in particular, take up the pen much more
readily than the cross, and prefer bridling their neighbor’s tongue
rather than their own. Nevertheless, with regard to a certain class
among the Evangelicals, and these the more earnest, it is only just to
say that their condemnation of Ritualists and their practices is
sincerely a matter of principle. They regard the one as the guides and
the other as the direct means to “idolatry”—a term which they have all
their lives been taught to consider as synonymous with the Catholic
religion.
When St. Edward the Confessor lay on his death-bed in the palace of
Westminster, he foretold to his queen, St. Edith, and to Stigand that,
in punishment for the sins of the land, God would permit the enemy of
mankind to send a mission of wicked spirits into it, who should sever
the Green Tree of Old England from its root, and lay it apart for the
space of three furlongs; but that the tree should after a due time
return to its root and revive, without the help of any man’s hand. The
traditional interpretation of this prophecy has been that the English
Church would be cut off for the space of three centuries from its parent
stem, but that, after that time, the severed church should return to its
ancient allegiance.
And what do we now see? Movement, awakening, and life where for three
centuries have reigned the gloom and chillness of the tomb.
From the time of Elizabeth downwards not only the teaching but the
general aspect of what is called the Church of England was intensely
anti-Catholic. A brighter day first dawned for England when she
hospitably received and succored the exiled priests of France. The
precious leaven of their holy teaching and example never has been lost.
Later, in 1829, the emancipation of the Catholics of the British Empire,
under George IV., marked a fresh epoch in the history of the Catholic
Church in England. The discussions which attended the passing of this
act helped to increase a knowledge of her tenets, and prepared the way
for their better appreciation; besides which, the restoration of some of
the most illustrious families of the realm to their ancient and
hereditary seats in the House of Lords, together with the admission of
Catholics into the Lower House, tended further to the removal of many
prejudices. Since Newman and Pusey, in 1833, recalled their brethren to
the study of the Fathers of the church, many steps have been taken in
the Establishment in the direction of the ancient paths—steps which
Catholics have noted with interest and hope, though they perceive that
but too often men who have been attracted towards the truth rest
apparently contented with a bad imitation of its external manifestations
and a garbled or “adapted” representation of its doctrines, forgetting
that truth distorted ceases to be truth, and often is a lie. They marvel
also that the invariable opposition of the pseudo-episcopate does not
help these men, who are the present life of their system, to see that
their imaginary “Catholicity” is wholly unauthorized and unrecognized by
their ecclesiastical superiors, and that the hierarchy of their church
is as consistently and persistently anti-Catholic as the constitution of
that body itself. They are resisted and condemned by their bishops, and
from their bishops they have no appeal except to a lay tribunal whose
interference _in sacris_ they repudiate.
By the terms of a new Appellate Jurisdiction Act, recently passed in
both Houses of Parliament, the jurisdiction of the Privy Council has
been transferred to a new Court of Appeal. It was then provided that
episcopal assessors should in future sit on the bench with the lay
judges; and though it is by the latter that the judgment is pronounced,
the bishops are allowed to make remarks on what is passing. They are to
sit in rotation in the new court. The two archbishops and the Bishop of
London are also to sit in turn, _ex officio_, and the rest in
quarternions, beginning with the junior four (Chichester, St. Asaph,
Ely, and St. David’s). It is impossible to say what may be the results
of this equivocal assessorship, with regard to which the London _Morning
Post_ disrespectfully observes that “the plan offers no security
whatever that the assessors shall be fit for their office beyond the
fact that they are bishops”; calmly adding that “since the purpose for
which their presence is required is the imparting to the judges of a
certain kind and quality of information when desired, it is a serious
defect to the scheme that it provides no guarantee that the prelates who
sit shall possess any proper aptitude for their position.”[21]
Footnote 21:
The following from the London _Weekly Register_ may tend to show
whether this doubt is reasonable or otherwise: “The vicar of St.
Barnabas, Leeds, is fatigued with parochial work and wishes to take a
little rest. He asks his Lordship of Ripon to let him name a clergyman
who shall take his duties for a few weeks or months. His lordship
replies that he cannot do so, because—but the language is too
episcopal to be misquoted: 'If there is truth in the reports which,
from time to time, appear in the public papers, you are in the habit
of breaking what you must know to be the law.’ His Lordship of Ripon
reads the papers, and, finding it inconvenient to leave his palace at
Ripon and make a call upon a clergyman in Leeds, he refuses leave of
absence to that clergyman, on account of newspaper reports.” The
church-wardens take up their vicar’s cause, and, in a very proper
“memorial,” represent the needs of his case to his paternal diocesan.
But all is useless. “The law, the law,” says the bishop, and remains
comfortably in his palace, while he forbids his hard-working vicar to
take a holiday, though he does not even condescend to specify his
offence. And yet the Anglican bishops do not apparently object to a
due amount of repose for themselves, if we may judge from the fact
that at the very time we write there are no fewer than fifteen of the
“missionary bishops” of the Establishment who, after a few years of
absence, and even these years agreeably diversified with visits to
their friends in England, have returned thither “for good,” and are
now settled with their wives and families in comfortable rectories at
home—an arrangement more convenient for croquet-parties than
“conversions.”
Upon this another journal asks: If it be true that Anglican bishops are
corporately incompetent as advisers of lay judges, even on the doctrines
of their own particular communion, of what use are they at all? If they
cannot, without the aid of civilians, interpret the Articles, why not
make bishops of the lay judges, instead of paying thousands a year to
each of these gentlemen, who do not apparently know their own business?
In any case, how Ritualists can remain, with satisfaction to their
consciences, in a communion whose highest arbiter is not even a
sub-deacon, is perplexing to any one who regards the church as a
divinely-instituted system. We have been reminded by _Presbyter
Anglicanus_ that it is a necessary ingredient in any system of
discipline that the superior should not be judged by the inferior, the
teacher by the taught; and that the twelfth canon of the African Code
ordains that, “if a bishop fall under the imputation of any crime, he
shall have a second hearing before twelve bishops, if more cannot be
had; a priest before six, with his own bishop; a deacon before
three—_according to the statutes of the ancient canons_.” Again: “It was
a recognized principle in the primitive church that the deposition of an
ecclesiastic required the intervention of more bishops than were needed
for his ordination. The Anglican bishops notwithstanding their
professions of regard for the primitive church, are content that a
presbyter, ordained and instituted by a 'bishop,’ should be deprived by
a layman. And they talk of apostolic order!”
The writer just quoted, who is now safe in the Catholic Church,
described, just before his conversion, the present condition of
ecclesiastical discipline in the Anglican Church as follows: “The
ecclesiastical courts which survived the Reformation and the great
rebellion have been ... abolished; the bishop of each diocese has ceased
to be the ordinary of that diocese, and the whole clergy of the Church
of England are rendered amenable to, and are even directed in their
conduct of public worship by, a layman, whose office has been created in
the year of grace 1874 by the imperial Parliament, and who, besides
playing the part of a pseudo-dean of the Arches and principal of the
Provincial Court of York, is also to be the national ordinary, the
Parliamentary vicar-general of the Establishment, exercising
jurisdiction in every parish from Berwick-on-Tweed to the Channel
Islands.” And this is the system to which unquestioning, unrepining,
absolute submission is required of the clergy by the bishops of the
Anglican communion.
Nor is this all; not only is it now the case that secular law courts
decide what may or may not be taught and practised in the Anglican
Church, but they also claim to decide who shall and who shall not be
admitted to its rites and sacraments. Lawyers are thus not only the
doctors and _ceremoniarii_ of Anglicanism, suspending or depriving
ecclesiastics at pleasure, but they are also to be, in the last resort,
the stewards of Anglican sacraments.
A case was lately pending before the Judicial Committee in which the
action of a “priest” in refusing communion was reviewed and judged by
the court. A parishioner of a Ritualist pastor having declared that he
did not find in the Bible sufficient evidence for the existence of evil
spirits to incline him to believe in the devil, the clergyman prohibited
his coming for communion until he did believe in the devil. The
parishioner wrote a complaint to the bishop, and the latter took his
part against his parish “priest” and for the devil. The matter being
referred to the Judicial Committee, the bishop’s verdict was confirmed
in favor of the sceptical parishioner and of his Infernal Majesty.
Nor can any individual cases of this kind be matter of surprise when we
reflect to what the doctrinal decisions of the supreme courts of the
Anglican Establishment have, with the consent of her entire episcopate,
as expressed in their famous “allocution” on the Public Worship Act,
pledged her clergy. According to the final and irreversible authority
acknowledged by that episcopate, the Church of England holds, 1, that
the doctrine of baptismal regeneration is an open question; 2, that it
is an open question whether every part of every book of Scripture is
inspired; 3, that there is no “distinct declaration” in the formularies
of that church on the subject of everlasting punishment, and that the
words “everlasting death” in the exposition of the Lord’s Prayer given
in the catechism “cannot be taken as necessarily declaring anything
touching the eternity of punishment after the resurrection”; 4, that
Anglican bishops are the creatures of English law and dependent on that
law for their existence, rights, and attributes.[22]
Footnote 22:
See _Christianity in Erastianism_. A letter to Cardinal Manning. By
_Presbyter Anglicanus_.
“The Church of England,” said Dr. Stanley, the Protestant Dean of
Westminster, in a sermon recently preached at Battersea, “is what she is
by the goodness of Almighty God and of his servant Queen Elizabeth.” If
he had said, “of Henry VIII. and his daughter, Queen Elizabeth,” we
could have agreed with him, particularly as the riper years of the
Establishment continue so suitably to fulfil the promise of such
parentage; but to Catholics there is a revolting profanity in classing
together the goodness of God with that of one of the most implacable
persecutors of his church—a persecutor, not from conviction of the
justice, but the iniquity, of her cause, and from a persistent
determination to extinguish in her realm the ancient faith, whose very
existence was a condemnation of the state religion arranged by her
father and Cranmer, improved by her brother and his Genevese assistants,
and re-fashioned to her own liking by herself. The sentence pronounced
by the Protestant historian Chalmers upon this powerful and unprincipled
queen is that “she was a woman without chastity, a princess without
honor, and a sovereign without faith”; and, as if by way of a satanic
parody on the vision of the Immaculate Virgin in the Book of
Revelations, we see Elizabeth, the offspring of an adulterous union,
trampling under her despotic foot the Bride of Christ.
“The Church of England,” continued the dean, “was, it is true, a
compromise,” and “he was not a true son thereof who used it as a weapon
for promoting this or that doctrine, but, _after the example of
Elizabeth_, and for the interests of the nation, used it as a broad
shield under which he might work for good,”[23] etc., etc. The sense of
which, in plain English, appears to be that the said church prefers
general indifference to doctrinal truth, the “interests of the nation”
to the glory of God, and the “example of Elizabeth” to purity of faith
and life.
Footnote 23:
Hentzner furnishes us, by the way, with a singular testimony to
Elizabeth’s “goodness” when, among other things of the same nature, he
tells us that, in the latter years of her reign, executions for high
treason (this being the term applied to denial of the royal supremacy
in the church fully as much as in the state) were so frequent that he
counted at one time on London Bridge no fewer than 300 heads. She
herself on one occasion pointed out to the French ambassador the same
ghastly trophies adorning the gates of her own palace.
But Dean Stanley represents one only of the four principal sections into
which the Church of England has divided itself; and however complacently
the “Broad” and even “Moderate High” Churchmen may regard the marshy
nature of the ground in which the foundations of their faith, if faith
it can be called, are laid, and congratulate themselves on the fact that
it is neither land nor water, but something of both, there are earnest
men who have no fancy for being amphibious, and who spare no pains and
toil to drain away the stagnant waters from their morass, in the sincere
conviction that beneath the miasma-breeding mosses there lies, for those
who dig deep enough to find it, the imperishable rock.
Of this number seems to be the Rev. Arthur Tooth, vicar of St. James’,
Hatcham, who is now in prison because he chooses to act upon the
principle of “no compromise.” We honor a man who is willing to suffer
for conscience’ sake, and to uphold the right of the church to decide in
ecclesiastical causes, but at the same time we cannot but feel that Mr.
Tooth is more conscientious than logical, and that by his present
opposition he is breaking the solemn promise and oath which, as a
clergyman of the state church, he took, at his ordination, to a
state-church bishop.
Mr. Tooth, on account of certain ritualistic practices—_i.e._, the use
of “Catholic” vestments, conducting the communion service so as to make
it resemble as much as possible Holy Mass, having “a crucifix in the
chancel, little winged figures on the communion-table, lighted candles
on a ledge where he had been ordered not to place them, etc., etc.—was,
by order of Lord Penzance and with the approval of his own bishop, Dr.
Claughton of Rochester, interdicted from officiating again in the
diocese. The writ of inhibition was served him on a Sunday morning
before the commencement of the service; he not only took no notice of
the writ, but also on the following (Christmas) day publicly resisted
his substitute. Canon Gee had been appointed by the bishop to read the
service in the place of Mr. Tooth, but, on his arriving at the church,
the latter gentleman, backed by about forty of his male parishioners,
met him at the door and refused to allow him to enter, upon which Canon
Gee, after protesting against this insubordinate proceeding on the part
of his refractory brother, was forced to retire. Having thus disposed of
the episcopal delegate, the vicar proceeded to display an unusual pomp
in the ceremonial. Six splendid banners were carried in procession, on
one of which was embroidered the monogram of Our Blessed Lady,
surrounded by the words, _Sancta Dei Genitrix_.” The church was crowded
to suffocation, partly with worshippers, and also very largely by people
who had come from curiosity, as was evident by their behavior no less
than by their murmured expressions of ridicule or indignation; a crowd,
not only of “roughs,” but numbering many well-dressed people, had
assembled outside. On one occasion, the 14th of January, in particular,
the scenes both within and without were disgraceful. “Inside,” we are
told, “there was a good deal of fighting and scuffling, especially at
the lower end,” while outside the crowd, besides breaking down the
fences, shouting “No popery,” yelling, and in various ways demonstrating
their inclination to break the laws as well as the parson did, had they
not been kept in some abeyance by a strong body of three hundred police,
joined in singing loudly the national anthem, vociferating with especial
emphasis and vigor the line “Confound their knavish tricks”—improved by
some to “popish tricks” in honor of the occasion. Some time after the
service was over, so as to give the mob time to thin, the sight of Mr.
Tooth issuing from the church under the protection of “twenty stout
policemen of the F Division” had in it something almost ludicrous to
those who reflected that all this commotion arose from the fact of his
having spurned the “secular arm.”
When, on the 20th of January, the Rev. R. Chambers, who has been
appointed curate in charge of the parish of Hatcham by the Bishop of
Rochester, went, accompanied by the bishop’s apparitor, and, producing
his license, requested Mr. Tooth to hand over to him through the
church-wardens the possession of the church, the vicar replied that he
refused to take any notice of the document or the application. He was
therefore committed for contempt of court, and is now lodged in
Horsemonger Lane jail.
It is not necessary to give more than two portions of the very temperate
explanations with which Lord Penzance has accompanied his
judgment—namely, those portions which are aimed at the delusions
supposed to be most important in the controversy. These delusions are,
in brief, 1st, that the new Public Worship Act was an innovation upon
Anglican custom, and an invasion of its rights; 2d, that obedience
should be rendered to an ecclesiastical and not to a lay superior. The
answers of Lord Penzance to these assumptions are, substantially, as
follows:
“1. It would be well if those who maintain these propositions were to
read the statutes by which the ritual of the Church of England at the
time of the Reformation was enforced—I mean the statutes establishing
the two successive prayer-books of King Edward VI. and the prayer-book
of Queen Elizabeth, which regulated the ritual of the reformed church
for the first hundred years after its establishment. They would there
find that a clergyman departing in the performance of divine service
from the ritual prescribed in the prayer-book was liable to be _tried at
the assizes by a judge and jury_ (the bishop, _if he pleased_, assisting
the judges), and, if convicted three times, was liable to be _imprisoned
for life_. The intervention, therefore, of a temporal court to enforce
obedience in matters of ritual is at least no novelty; the novelty, as
far as the Church of England is concerned, is rather in the claim to be
exempt from it.
“2. But suppose this claim, for the sake of argument, to be admitted;
what, then, are the ecclesiastical courts to whose judgment the
Ritualists would be willing to defer? Unless every clergyman is to
settle the form of worship for himself, and there are to be as many
forms of worship as there are parishes in the land, who is it that, in
his opinion, is to determine what the rubrics of the prayer-book
enjoin?—for we suppose him to consider himself bound by the directions
of the prayer-book. What is the court to which he is willing to render
obedience? Is it the court of his bishop? If so, he must surely be aware
that by the ecclesiastical law of this country, as well before the
Reformation as since, an appeal from the bishop’s court lies, and has
always lain, to the court of the archbishop, this Court of Arches, whose
jurisdiction he now denies. What question, therefore, is there of a
secular court, or an invasion of the rights of the Church of
England?[24]” And the judgment passed by Lord Penzance was contained in
the following words: “Applying these powers as I am bound to do, I have
no hesitation in pronouncing Mr. Tooth to be contumacious, and in
contempt for disobeying the inhibition pronounced by this court, and I
direct the same to be signified to the queen in chancery, with a view to
his imprisonment.”
Footnote 24:
A writer in the London _Times_ gives the following answer to the
ecclesiastical assumptions of Mr. Tooth: “I will enumerate some of the
acts on ecclesiastical matters which have become law without the
consent of the priesthood, and which therefore the present agitators
bind themselves to disallow and disobey: The act of Edward VI. on the
Sacrament, on Chantries, on Images, on Fasting; the Acts of
Uniformity, both of Edward VI. and Elizabeth; the Act of Toleration;
the act abolishing the burning of heretics, under William III.; the
acts, both of Charles II. and William III., for the observance of
Sunday; the various Marriage Acts of William III., George II., and
Queen Victoria; the various acts both for the repression and the
relief of Roman Catholics during the same range of time; the acts
during the late and present reigns against pluralities and against
non-residence; the acts suppressing the Irish bishoprics, suppressing
half the cathedral dignitaries in England, and, finally,
revolutionizing the Irish Church; the act for abolishing the services
drawn up by Convocation for the political anniversaries of the
seventeenth century. These and many other laws, many of them of
unquestioned beneficence, most of them of unquestioned obligation, all
of them passed by Parliament, and by it alone, must be set aside by
those who make it a point of conscience to disobey any law which has
been imposed on the church by secular authority.”
And now the strife of tongues which preceded this climax was comparative
calm to that which at present rages. All the winds of Æolus, each trying
which can blow the hardest, seem let loose at once in the distracted
Establishment. By the Ritualist party the confessor for disobedience in
Horsemonger Lane jail is already dubbed “the martyr, Tooth”; while
another party rejoices that, by the contumacy of this “parson in
revolt,” the state church is “forced into a clear, practical assertion
of her old and hitherto unquestioned right to restrain and punish
disobedient and delinquent 'clerks.’” Further, the London _Times_,
dilating after its own infallible fashion upon Mr. Tooth and “his
pranks,” dares to aver that “to parade a banner calling the Virgin Mary
the 'Mother of God’ is little less than sheer blasphemy.”
At a large meeting of the “English Church Union” it became evident that
the changes in law procedure produced by the Public Worship Regulation
Act are producing a murmur in favor of “disestablishment” within the
Church of England herself. One of the reverend speakers at this meeting
said that “the issue had now merged from one about the color of a stole
to a question of church and state,” and the honorable chairman agreed
that “establishment might cost too dear.” Archdeacon Denison declared
that this case of “dear Arthur Tooth” would prove to be “a
life-and-death struggle with Protestantism,” thus making the old mistake
of putting mere ritualism in the place of the Catholic Church. Canon
Carter moved that “the Church Union denies that the secular power has
authority in matters purely spiritual,” upon which a journal reminds him
that, from the days of the Reformation, it has been one of the
conditions on which the state church enjoyed the emoluments and
privileges of establishment that her clergy should perform certain
duties in a way laid down by law. Whether, as in the case of Mr. Tooth,
they have or have not done so is a matter which the law leaves a
particular court to decide. If Mr. Tooth does not relish the action of
these tribunals, two courses are open to him, and only two. Either he
may give up those practices which they declare obnoxious within the pale
of the Established Church, or he may leave the Establishment and
continue them elsewhere. The latter step would entail the sacrifice of
the endowment, or, as the Ritualists would say, it would involve the
guilt of schism; in which case the whole matter resolves itself into a
choice of sins: the clergyman must either commit the sin of obeying Lord
Penzance, and so retain the endowment, or he must commit the sin of
“schism” and fling the endowment away. Thus the Church Unionists are by
no means logical in comparing their present position to that of
Chalmers, Buchanan, Guthrie, Cunningham, and other leaders of the Free
Kirk of Scotland previously to 1843; for these men gave up all thought
of state endowment, or even of ministering in buildings dependent on the
state, and purchased the independence of their ministrations at the cost
of all state temporalities. This is a very different matter from
attempting to have the temporalities and the independence together.[25]
Footnote 25:
Certain evicted Ritualists, however, do not appear to be much affected
by the measures taken to repress them, if it be true that the Rev. R.
P. Dale, who has been suspended for three years, and his former parish
merged into another, takes the matter very philosophically, and, in
default of his own parish, finds every Sunday in one place or another
a complaisant brother-clergyman, who lends him his church and his
pulpit, from which he braves the pseudo-episcopal thunders.
Another observation made by Canon Carter was, though not in itself more
true, yet, for him, much more to the point—namely, that “the only
persecution now carried on in England is against the High-Church party.”
It is on this fact that the Ritualists stand triumphant. They can
honestly plead that they, the High-Church party, have done more than all
the other parties put together for the revival of faith and devotion in
England. They can also plead that they are men of education, of courage
and energy and self-denying zeal, and that to them is due whatever
residuum is left of Catholic sentiment and tradition in the
Establishment. The marvel is that any of these really earnest men should
continue so blind to their anomalous position.
On the same day that the English Church Union held its assembly a
meeting of the ultra-Protestant school took place at the Wellington
Hall, Islington, where about one hundred and twenty clergymen and laymen
partook of breakfast, after which they proceeded to deliver themselves
of a large amount of the peculiar and incoherent insipidities with which
the readers of the _Rock_ must be painfully familiar. One specimen will
suffice, which, as our readers will perceive, is not lacking in the
unctuous accusations in which the “Evangelicals” are apt to excel: “As
in Germany,” they said, “the Jesuits devoted all their self-denying
energies to opposing the spread of the true doctrines, so here in
England there was an able and resolute body of men who opposed
themselves to the true principles of religion, and who, by services
rendered attractive to the eye and ear, appealed by the senses to the
understanding. Many of these men were no doubt sincere, and were thus
unconsciously doing the work of Satan. This was the powerful opposing
force with which the Evangelical body of the Church of England had to
contend.”
Now, we must beg leave to observe that for these “Evangelical” gentlemen
to talk of Ritualists as unconsciously doing the work of Satan is simply
absurd. Did not the “beam in their own eye” blind them, we would ask
them to take a glance backward and think of forty years ago, when,
through the length and breadth of the land, they locked up their
churches from Sunday afternoon to the following Sunday morning, and
sometimes even longer; for the writer can recall three villages (there
may or may not have been many more) in Leicestershire alone where, less
than forty years ago, there was only one service on the Sunday, and that
alternately in the morning and afternoon. We have heard of the wag who
chalked on the church door of an Evangelical rector, “_Le Bon Dieu est
sorti: Il ne reviendra que dimanche prochain_.” And truly, if the good
God _did_ come back, it would not be, in many instances, to find his
house “swept and garnished.”
Forty years ago! Sitting in the old family pew in the chancel of A ...
stone church, through the long, monotonous sermons of the worthy rector,
whose favorite subjects were “saving faith” and abuse of popery, what a
help it was to patient endurance to watch the merry, loud-voiced
sparrows fluttering in and out of the broken diamond panes of the
chancel windows, through which long sprays of ivy crept and clung
lovingly up the poor old walls, bare of everything but whitewash, of the
once Catholic church—walls that the damp of many an autumn and winter
had dyed with streaks of green, deeper and brighter in hue than the
faded, ink-stained rag of moth-eaten green baize that covered the
rickety wooden table standing where, in old days, the most holy
Sacrifice had been offered upon a Catholic altar. Childhood, before
opportunities for comparison have been afforded, is not hard to please,
and we used to think that that verdant chancel might have been in the
mind of the sweet Psalmist of Israel when he sang, “The sparrow hath
found her a house, and the swallow a nest, where she may lay her young:
even thine altars, O Lord of Hosts!” And yet our worthy rector (a rich
pluralist with a large family) was a kind-hearted, easy, amiable man,
and not in any way addicted to the hunting and drinking practices of
certain of his clerical neighbors; his house was the perfection of
refined not overloaded luxury, and the well-kept gardens of that most
pleasant of rectories were a paradise of smooth lawns, gay parterres,
and shady shrubberies sloping down to the banks of the winding Soar. The
rector led a mildly studious life when in the country (for half his year
was spent in London), visited much among the “county families,” and
shyly and rarely entered the cottages of the village; but religion in
that village was well-nigh dead. If amiable clergymen of this stamp are
not “unconsciously doing the work of Satan” themselves, they at any rate
give Satan plenty of time and opportunity to do his own work himself
among their flock, and to do it very effectually, too.
Yet it is the descendants of men like these who are foremost in groaning
down and persecuting the self-denying, hard-working clergy who are
always at their posts! The preachers of sentiment are furious against
the upholders of the necessity of dogmatic truth. The idlers in family
and social circles are desperate against enthusiasts who at least _try_
to hear confessions and to be priests. We cannot admire the consistency
of the Ritualists—for unhappily it does not exist—but the inconsistency
of their “Evangelical” accusers is simply “the impeachment of energy by
twaddle.”
A correspondent of the London _Times_ calls attention to the fact that
while Mr. Tooth, who is perfectly orthodox as regards the creeds of the
church, is prosecuted for extremes in ritual, a brother clergyman is
allowed to preach open infidelity from the pulpit unmolested. “The
Public Worship Bill,” he writes, “has been passed to repress crimes so
grave as over-magnificence in the services, but does not deign to meddle
in so small a matter as that of vindicating the Divinity of our Saviour,
which is fearlessly impugned in a pulpit which the Bishop of London
himself has condescended to occupy.”
It is much to be doubted whether the Anglican bishops, when they
obtained from Parliament the Public Worship Regulation Act, had the
remotest idea of the tempest which, Prospero-like, they were summoning
around them, but which, unlike Shakspere’s magician, they would be
powerless to allay. And if this is the result obtained by the act just
mentioned, a still more recent one, the “Scotch Church Patronage Act,”
another measure intended by Lord Beaconsfield as an additional buttress
to ecclesiastical establishments, has produced similar storms in the
North. It has led to proceedings in connection with the “settlement” of
a parish clergyman at New Deer in Aberdeenshire which recall the furious
battles between the “intrusion” and non-intrusion parties that split the
Established Church of Scotland into fragments thirty-four years ago, and
has besides almost succeeded in uniting three-fourths of Scotland into a
solid disestablishment phalanx. The Presbyterian Kirk, moreover, in
addition to subjects of contention presented from without, has certain
characteristic squabbles of its own. A question having recently arisen
on the subject of unfermented wines in the celebration of what is called
communion, the session has maintained that it “has a right to change the
elements of communion, and in so doing is discharging its proper
functions.” Why not? If local churches can make their own doctrines,
what, we should like to know, is to hinder them from making their own
sacraments as well?
Our object in this article has been merely to sketch the present
condition of affairs in the English Establishment; but as we have in
concluding taken a momentary glance at Scotland also, we cannot leave
unnamed the Green Isle of the West, whose centuries of suffering and
oppression have at last, we earnestly trust, given place to times of
peace and long prosperity.
Should the reviving hopes of many hearts be realized, and the Green Tree
of England’s ancient church again spread its vigorous branches over the
land that was once “Our Lady’s Dowry”; and should the grand old northern
abbeys, Melrose, Jedburgh, Paisley, and even, it may be, Iona, receive
again as in past ages their cowled and consecrated sons, still England
and Scotland will have but returned to the faith which Ireland has never
lost, and which no human or Satanic power has been able to wrench from
her. No! For, rather than let the cross be torn from her bleeding
embrace, she suffered herself to be nailed upon it.
THE ASHES OF THE PALMS.
THE DISCIPLE.
“Are ashes scarce that palms must burn,
Those sweet memorials of the only day
Of triumph that thou hadst, my Prince,
Upon this woeful earth?”
THE MASTER.
“All glory unto ashes, child, must turn,
Of which this deathly world can make display.
These ashes on proud heads convince
Proud hearts of glory’s worth.”
THE DISCIPLE.
“If palms to ashes must,
So be 't. _I_ still will live to praise,
Though glory’s gage should burn.”
THE MASTER.
“E’en thou art naught but dust.
The mark thy forehead bears betrays
To what thou shalt return.”
ASH WEDNESDAY
NEW PUBLICATIONS.
AN OLD WORLD AS SEEN THROUGH YOUNG EYES; OR, TRAVELS AROUND THE
WORLD. By Ellen H. Walworth. New York: Sadlier & Co. 1877.
Every school-girl who reads this book will wish that she had an uncle
who would send for her one day, while she is dreaming over her
lesson-book, and invite her to accompany him around the world. This is
what happened to Miss Ellen Walworth in June, 1873, and the volume
before us is composed of the letters which she wrote home during her
tour, and which were published as they were received in an Albany
newspaper, attracting at the time considerable attention. They are the
production of a school-girl of fifteen, but slightly altered from their
original form, and this makes their peculiarity and their special
interest. The course of her travels was through Scotland, Ireland,
England, Belgium, the country of the Rhine, Switzerland, Italy, Egypt,
China, Japan, and home by way of San Francisco. The letters are just
what they should be—natural, lively, juvenile descriptions of the little
incidents of travel and the scenes witnessed, with the freshness and
vividness of letters written at the time and on the spot to which each
one successively belongs. Two extremely interesting letters of Father
Walworth, written with his well-known charm of style and minute accuracy
of statement, are included in the collection. One of these contains a
description of the Coptic rite, the other an account of the present
state of the mission in Japan, with many interesting historical
particulars. Our young folk will find this a very entertaining volume,
and older people may read it with pleasure. It is a book very creditable
to the young author, and also an evidence of the kind of culture which
is given to young girls by the accomplished ladies at Kenwood. We
subjoin one specimen of the style in which the letters are written, not
at all childish, although suffused with a childlike gayety:
“I remember what dispute arose among the passengers the day we went
down Lake Zurich. There were mountains all around us, but from the
end of the lake towards which we were steering rose quite a high
range. Over their summits the clouds extended up some distance, and,
strange to say, a succession of peaks were to be seen above the
clouds, suspended, as it were, in the sky, and having no connection
with the peaks below, except a close resemblance in form. Their
outlines were distinctly marked against the clear blue sky, but they
had a strange, chalky, light appearance, as if they could be blown
away by a breath. Some of the passengers said they were merely
unusual forms taken by the clouds; others insisted that they were a
reflection of the peaks below—a species of _Fata Morgana_. A few old
Alp frequenters, among them our friend of the gravel acquaintance,
ventured to assert that they were real mountains, but their idea was
laughed down as ridiculous. While the dispute was the hottest, the
wind, by a strange freak, dispersed the clouds almost in an instant,
and we had before us one of the mighty ranges of Switzerland, beside
which our mountains of the lake shore were mere hillocks.
“From the foot of Lake Zurich we took the railroad carriages for
Ragatz and Chur. This journey is among my most vivid recollections
of Switzerland: for we were following the courses of the valleys and
streams through that wonderful range of mountains that we had seen
from the lake. We twisted ourselves into every possible position to
see the snow-capped summits directly above us, and our
fellow-travellers—English, French, and Germans—became so excited
over the scenery that they would call out to each other—for, though
the language might not be understood, the gestures were
unmistakable—and they would rush from one side of the cars to the
other, even dropping down on the floor, to get a sight from the
car-windows of the very tip-top of the mountains. The enthusiasm
seemed contagious; there were haughty Englishmen, stolid Germans,
fashionable young ladies, and confirmed dandies equally forgetful of
appearances. Indeed, as we passed peak after peak, now clustered
together, now opening and showing beautiful valleys between, or
dark, shaded chasms, the jagged rocks taking new shapes and hues
every instant, it was like watching a grand and ever-varying
kaleidoscope.”
MUSICA ECCLESIASTICA. A collection of Masses, Vespers, Hymns,
Motets, etc., for the service of the Catholic Church. New York: J.
Fischer & Bro.
Of this publication the Part 16 sent us, containing motets for singing
at the Benediction of the Blessed Sacrament, is a collection well suited
for use at that function. But we must object to the title of the general
work, as neither this nor any figured _music_ can be sung by
ecclesiastics, as such, officiating in any service of the Catholic
Church. The only melody properly styled _musica ecclesiastica_ is the
Gregorian chant. Definitions are always of grave moment. Suppose that
some one of our enterprising publishers should present the public with a
manual of prayers such as the _St. John’s Manual_, the _Key of Heaven_,
or the _Mission Book_ under the title of “Manual for the Clergy,
consisting of prayers, litanies, hymns, and other devotions _for the
service of the Catholic Church_”; it is plain that it would not receive
the imprimatur of a Catholic school-boy.
Under a proper title we give our hearty encouragement to the work which
our German Catholic brethren abroad and here in the United States have
within the last few years pursued with such praiseworthy zeal in the
composition of music for the use of our choirs, which, if we do not
think it to be the most suitable and most consistent in tone with the
letter and spirit of the Catholic ritual, is decidedly a vast
improvement upon the sensual, operatic style of music whose melodies and
harmonies have emasculated the devotion and vitiated the taste of, we
regret to say, almost the majority of Catholics in modern times.
THE COMPREHENSIVE GEOGRAPHY. Nos. 1, 2, and 3. New York: P. O’Shea,
37 Barclay St. 1876.
We are inclined to think that this series is the best of the many which
have of late years been presented to the public, and certainly do not
know of any which are superior to it in any respect except in the
department of physical geography; and it is as complete even in this as
it could well be without an additional volume specially devoted to that
subject.
The feature which should particularly recommend it to Catholics is the
prominence which it gives to facts connected with religion. There is no
branch of study for the young in which it is so important that religion
should be prominent as geography, with the exception, of course, of
history. Even the best text-books hitherto published are perhaps a
little too reticent in this respect. The desire to accomplish this
object has in the present work led to the introduction of some rather
unnecessary details; but this is a fault on the right side.
We hope that this series will become popular, as it deserves to be, in
Catholic schools.
THE COMPLETE OFFICE OF HOLY WEEK ACCORDING TO THE ROMAN MISSAL AND
BREVIARY. In Latin and English. New edition. Revised and enlarged.
18mo, pp. 563. New York: The Catholic Publication Society. 1877.
This edition of _Holy Week_ is a new and corrected one; it is printed
from large type on good paper, and is well and substantially bound.
Moreover, it is complete, containing all the offices of the church from
Palm Sunday to Easter Tuesday, inclusive. This edition is the only
correct one now published in this country. It has been carefully read by
persons competent to guarantee against the gross blunders that are apt
to disfigure Catholic works of the greatest importance. The price is so
low that the book is within the reach of every one, thus enabling them
to follow easily the services of the church during Holy Week.
THE CATHOLIC WORLD.
VOL. XXV., No. 146.—MAY, 1877.
THE PRUSSIAN CHANCELLOR.[26]
Footnote 26:
_Two Chancellors, etc._ By Julian Klaczko. Translated by Frank P.
Ward. New York: Hurd & Houghton.
_Pro Nihilo_ and other pamphlets on the Arnim question.
M. Julian Klaczko is by birth a Polish Jew and is a convert to the
Catholic Christian faith. He was for a time employed in the office of
the Austrian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and was afterwards a member of
the imperial parliament. He has, however, generally been a resident in
France, where his numerous essays on political topics have been
published, all of which have attracted much attention and won for their
author a high reputation. We have already, in our number for last March,
made some observations on the career and policy of one of the two
chancellors, whose lives and public actions, so far as they had
progressed at the time of its publication, were sketched in the work
whose title is given below. This work is one of the most interesting
political _brochures_ of our time, and we propose to continue in the
present article the review of it commenced in our previous one,
confining our attention chiefly to the chancellor of the German Empire.
Prince Bismarck has been characterized by M. Thiers as “a savage full of
genius.” He is one of Carlyle’s “heroes”—an expression synonymous with
that of the clever French statesman, and denoting a giant in whom is
embodied intellectual and physical force, irrespective of any moral
direction. To this native strength, which has remained through life to a
great extent rude and uncultivated, and not in any way to a regular and
careful education, Otto von Bismarck is indebted for the success he has
achieved. His studies were finished on his entrance at the university,
and never resumed. It is doubtful whether he ever passed the legal
examination required before entering the civil service in Prussia.
Nevertheless, such a man is always a sort of extraordinary professor to
himself. He has read literature and studied men and events. It is absurd
to call such a man uneducated; and, although he does not possess the art
of speaking or writing according to rule, he is able to use both his
tongue and pen with an original power which sometimes rises to the
highest level of eloquence, and to coin expressions which, once uttered,
can never be forgotten. We have quoted one in our former article, about
the “iron dice of destiny,” and we will give one more, which we think is
unsurpassed in the annals of modern speech:
“One of his most happy, most memorable inspirations he suddenly drew
one day from the libretto of the _Freischütz_.
“In this opera of Weber, Max, the good and unfortunate hunter,
borrows a cartridge from Robin, the evil spirit, and immediately
kills an eagle, one of whose feathers he proudly sticks in his cap.
He then asks for some more cartridges, but Robin tells him that they
are 'enchanted balls,’ and that, in order to obtain them, he must
surrender himself to the infernal spirits and deliver his soul to
them. Max draws back, and then Robin, sneering, tells him that he
hesitates in vain, that the bargain is made, and that he has already
committed himself by the ball he made use of: 'Do you think, then,
that this eagle was a free gift?’ Well! when in 1849 the young
orator of the Mark of Brandenburg had to implore the Prussian
chamber not to accept for the King of Prussia the imperial crown
which the parliament of Frankfort offered him, he ended by crying
out: 'It is radicalism which offers this gift to the king. Sooner or
later this radicalism will stand upright before the king, will
demand of him its recompense, and, pointing to the emblem of the
eagle on that new imperial flag, it will say: _Did you think, then,
that this eagle was a free gift?_’”
The suggestion will doubtless present itself immediately to the minds of
many of our readers that the poetic myth of the _Freischütz_ is likely
to be fulfilled in sober, actual reality when the German imperial drama
is played out, and that Bismarck will prove to have been the Robin of
William I. But this is an anticipation, and we return to our sheep and
our young wolf. An equally marked and well-known trait of Bismarck’s
style in speech and writing is a cold, biting, ironical humor, which
often assumes the outward guise of frankness, sometimes ferocious,
sometimes farcical, but always dangerous and often deadly when the
master of the weapon is wielding it in a real fight. The general tone of
his disposition is contemptuous and misanthropical, as of one who
alternately sneers and laughs at mankind in general, on the whole
despising the game of life, yet going in for deep play with all his soul
when the chance presents itself, for mere occupation and amusement; just
as he plunged into the Burschen-life in his youth and hunted bears at a
later period in Russia. There is no trace of philanthropy in his
character; as an enemy he is relentless, and no gentle or noble
sentiments hamper his progress in the way of his policy of “blood and
iron.” Yet there is a most tender and devoted affection manifested in
his letters to his sister, Malvina von Arnim—“Maldewinchen”; so far as
we know he has been a kind husband and father; there seems really to be
something genuine in his long friendship for Prince Gortchakoff; and all
the world knows that he risked his life to rescue a servant from
drowning. The impression we have received from all we have ever read or
heard about him is, that his natural disposition, like that of Napoleon,
is generous and noble, but, like his, has been perverted by ambition.
His early life did not promise any great achievements. He went by the
name of “Mad Bismarck,” and was always restless, unsettled, without
steady application to any definite aim. What his real inward convictions
are or have been, in religion, philosophy, and the higher sphere of
political ethics, is very difficult to determine, at least for us who
are at a distance; or even to decide how far he has ever formed and
cherished any deep and settled convictions at all. Practically, he has
been a Pyrrhonist and Epicurean, a heathen and a materialist, using all
things and all ideas as so many counters of no value except for his own
game. The opinions which he professed at the outset of his political
career were those of “the party of the cross,” that old-Prussian,
religious, monarchical, conservative party represented by the
illustrious Baron von Gerlach, which has been in opposition to the
administration of the chancellor, and is now in a quasi-alliance with
the Catholic party.
“'I belong—' such was the defiant declaration of Herr von Bismarck
in one of his first speeches in the chamber—'I belong to an opinion
which glories in the reproaches of obscurantism and of tendencies of
the middle age; I belong to that great multitude which is compared
with disdain to the most intelligent party of the nation.’ He wanted
a _Christian state_. 'Without a religious basis,’ said he, 'a state
is nothing but _a fortuitous aggregation of interests, a sort of
bastion in a war of all against all; without this religious basis,
all legislation, instead of regenerating itself at the living
sources of eternal truth, is only tossed about by human ideas as
vague as changeable_.’”
What can be finer or truer than this statement, in which the whole of
his own policy as chancellor of the German Empire is condemned in
advance out of his own mouth? In every important respect his avowed
opinions and political action were diametrically opposite to those of a
later date. In fact, his bold and even extravagant advocacy of the cause
of the house of Hapsburg, at a moment when (1850) the attitude of
Prussia towards Austria was most humiliating, was the first occasion of
launching him into the career of foreign affairs. He was sent, with much
misgiving on the part of the king and his minister, as Prussian
plenipotentiary to the Diet of Frankfort; and here he began to go to
school to Prince Gortchakoff, now commenced that world-renowned
friendship between these two statesmen which has altered the course of
history and for whose _dénoûement_ we are at this moment intently
watching.
It would be idle to suppose that these two men traced out beforehand the
common policy which they have since pursued in concert. It was
impossible for any human sagacity to foresee the conjunctures which have
since arisen, and have furnished to Bismarck the opportunities of which
his genius has availed itself to destroy and to upbuild great political
fabrics. They could only plan, in general, the aggrandizement of Russia
and Prussia, by the breaking down of the traditional policy of coalition
and balance among the European powers. All that we can see clearly
respecting the incipient working of Bismarck’s mind at this period is,
that he contracted an aversion for Austria, a contempt for the German
confederation, and a mean opinion in general of the diplomats who had
the management of the European state-craft. The idea of a new era of
absolutism in a few great, conquering nations—an absolutism “tinged with
popular passions,” or, according to his favorite expression,“spotted
with red”—dawned on his mind and became gradually more distinct. Some
extravagant projects were at times bubbling in his restless brain, and
he often threatened to abandon the career of regular diplomatic service
and go into politics “in his swimming-drawers.” But when the Prussian
administration proposed to him to go to Russia as resident ambassador,
with a view, as he expressed it, of “putting him on ice” to cool him
down, he consented to don a “bear-skin” instead of the aforesaid
habiliments of a _sans-culottes_.
On the 1st of April, _his birth-day_, 1859, Herr von Bismarck arrived in
the capital of the Russian Empire, of which his former colleague at
Frankfort was already the chancellor. Among the Russians he was
extremely popular; for he took extraordinary pains to make himself
agreeable to them, and seemed to have turned himself into a Russian, for
the time being, in donning the bear-skin. Notwithstanding his outward
hilariousness, he was inwardly morose, dissatisfied with the course
which Prussian and European politics were following, and feeling himself
condemned to honorable exile and inaction. He was once so severely ill
through chagrin that his life was in danger. He said on his recovery
that he had gone “half-way to a better world,” and expressed regret that
he had not completed the journey. He thought of abandoning politics
altogether, and with difficulty overcame his impatience sufficiently to
bide his time a little longer. Gortchakoff said that Russia “did not
sulk, but meditated.” Bismarck sulked and meditated. But meanwhile the
course of events was preparing for him his opportunity. The strange and
mixed drama in which Napoleon III., destined to be its principal victim,
was the chief actor—whose critical moments were Sebastopol, Solferino,
Sadowa, Sedan—was going on. This great actor, once regarded as a sphinx
of political wisdom, but now designated by no more honorable title than
the “dreamer of Ham,” holds a conspicuous place in the group of those
apparently and temporarily great men to whom belongs the epitaph sadly
composed for himself by the expiring Joseph II., Emperor of Austria:
“Here lies the man who failed in all his undertakings.” More than this,
he is a signal instance of that blind fatuity by which those men who set
themselves to counteract the order of divine Providence are seduced, as
the King of Israel was by the “lying spirit” in the mouth of his
prophets, to ruin themselves and become the executioners of divine
vengeance on their own persons.
If Louis Napoleon had had good sense and moral principle enough to
imitate Charlemagne, he might have confirmed his dynasty, established
France in solid power and prosperity, and earned true glory as a
benefactor of Christendom. But he was not “of the seed of those men by
whom salvation was brought to Israel.” He aspired to imitate Cæsar and
Napoleon without possessing their genius. He imitated the profligacy of
Cæsar in his youth, the perfidy of Napoleon in his old age. His early
vices avenged themselves in the pain and disease which unmanned and
incapacitated him for action in the last eventful crisis of his career.
His criminal alliance with Carbonari and conspirators in his youth
entangled him afterwards in a mesh which he had not courage, even if he
had the wish, to break. By his alliance with the Turk he prepared an
enemy in Russia, who became one principal cause of his final downfall
and the humiliation of France, while he gained nothing beyond a
momentary prestige of glory for his army. By his Italian campaign, and
his subsequent support of Prussia against Austria, he weakened the power
which would otherwise have befriended France in her dire distress; and
he built up a kingdom which abandoned and betrayed him, at the cost of
incurring the malediction which falls on all betrayers and oppressors of
the Holy See.
By his greed of territory in annexing Savoy he alienated for ever his
former ally, England. By the war above alluded to and his miserable
Mexican _fiasco_ he used up the splendid army of France, and was found
_minus habens_ when the day of destiny came on him unprepared. He
deliberately fostered the military and political increase of Prussia,
and then madly dragged down upon France that terrible power which,
having first outwitted, in the second place crushed him.
We have read of some one who drew an enigmatical figure, in which a
crowned serpent is represented twining from his tail upward through a
combination of four letters S, and strangled by the upper crook of the
topmost letter. In this figure is strikingly symbolized the course of
events in Europe from the Crimean war to the Prussian conquest. During
Bismarck’s residence in Russia, which followed Sebastopol, came the day
of Solferino. The immediate effect of this battle was an attempt to
mobilize the Prussian army, which disclosed to the crown-prince, now
Emperor of Germany, its miserable condition, and suggested to him the
plan of its entire reformation. This plan he afterwards carried out,
accomplishing it with unprecedented rapidity and skill by the aid of Von
Moltke and Von Roon, against the violent opposition of the parliament
and the whole people. Thus was Bismarck’s great instrument of making
force bring right under subjection prepared for him in advance, without
his concurrence. The connivance and concurrence of Russia were already
secured, most cordially so far as further designs on Austria were
concerned, and at least conditionally and passively in respect to
ulterior projects of improving Prussia’s position.
The “Iron Count” is now about to try the strength of his Thor’s hammer
on the head of the sphinx. Bismarck is about to become the head of the
Prussian state, and try his craft and strength in a contest for
supremacy with Louis Napoleon. He was called home toward the end of 1861
for consultation and to assist at the coronation of King William, and
returned to St. Petersburg only to close up the affairs of his mission
and take farewell. In May, 1862, he was at Berlin, and evidently
destined for the post of Chief Minister. He was, however, _ad interim_
sent on the mission to Paris, _to take the measure of Louis Napoleon_
and study more nearly the position of European affairs, which all
centred at that time in the Tuileries. We should rather say that he went
to Paris to _complete_ these studies and observations. Already, in 1858,
he had sounded the French emperor in respect to his sentiments towards
Prussia, and found them most encouraging. During the same year Louis
Napoleon had sent this singular message by Count Pepoli to the court of
Berlin: “In Germany Austria represents the past, Prussia represents the
future; in linking itself to Austria Prussia condemns itself to
immobility; it cannot be thus contented; it is called to a higher
fortune; _it should accomplish in Germany the great destinies which
await it, and which Germany awaits from it_.” Consider this language,
and then think of the prison of Wilhelmshöhe and of the reflections
which must have passed through the mind of the unfortunate dreamer so
rudely awakened by the thunder of Von Moltke’s guns! King William had
had an interview with Louis Napoleon at Compiègne, for which Bismarck
had aided him in preparing, and it was partly the result of this
interview which had determined him to call the bold cavalier of the Mark
to his side. The dreamer’s vague and scheming mind revolved vast
projects of Pan-Latin, Pan-German, Pan-Sclavonian combinations, uniting
the three great races and the three great churches, with their
respective centres at Paris, Berlin, and St. Petersburg, in a triple
alliance of universal monarchies, to dominate the world, to inaugurate a
new era, to bring on the millennium of civilization, and to place the
name of Louis Napoleon at least on a par with those of Moses, Alexander,
Julius Cæsar, Constantine, and Charlemagne.
We have read in the autobiography of some German philosopher that in his
youth he was ravished with ecstasy in thinking of “_the wheels of the
eternal essences_”! The visionary projects of this unfortunate imperial
seer remind us forcibly of this boyish philosopher. While he was letting
France drift on towards the _Où allons nous?_ of Mgr. Dupanloup, he was
driving his imaginary chariot, on the “wheels of the eternal essences,”
through airy regions, casting an occasional undecided glance on Belgium
and the frontiers of the Rhine. Bismarck was not long in taking his
measure, and it appears that Prince Gortchakoff had long since learned
the passes by which he could magnetize him at pleasure. With his own
peculiar, knavish frankness, Bismarck avowed his own objective aim—the
rectification of the Prussian frontiers—and found it easy to amuse the
decaying emperor with vague hints of compensation to France by allowing
the annexation of Belgium and the territory on the left bank of the
Rhine. As for the opinion which was formed respecting Bismarck himself,
at this time and during the first period of his administration, by the
emperor and the diplomats, it appears now strangely comical. They could
not bring themselves to regard him as serious, and were thrown
completely off their guard by his consummate acting. As late as 1865,
when he visited the French emperor at Biarritz, the latter, while
listening to his harangues during the promenades which they took
together on the beach, would slyly press the arm of Prosper Merimée, and
even whispered once in his ear: “He is crazy.” M. Benedetti in the
following year told General Govone that he considered Bismarck to be “a
maniacal diplomat,” adding that he had _long known his man_, and had
_followed him up_ for fifteen years. There is something grimly amusing
in this play of the cat and the mice, notwithstanding its tragical
results and the pity we must feel for the victims who thought themselves
so extremely astute, but were lured on by one deeper in craft than they
were, as easily as the meditative, solemn bruin was enticed by Reynard
the fox to go after honey.
Bismarck left Paris, convinced of three things as the result of his
studies: First, that Louis Napoleon was a “great unrecognized
_incapacity_.” Second, that “liberalism is only nonsense which it is
easy to bring to reason; but revolution is a force which it is necessary
to know how to use.” Third, “that England need not enter into his
calculations.” He returned to Berlin to assume the office of Minister of
Foreign Affairs and commence the work of rounding off Prussia. Austria
was the one decided antagonist whom he had to meet in the critical
struggle for supremacy in Germany. He was not afraid of her single power
unaided by allies, but he was anxious to make doubly sure of the
neutrality of France and Russia. Circumstances favored him most
remarkably in producing an alienation between these two powers, which
was an efficacious preventive of any amicable concord between the two to
check his plans, and in persuading each one more decisively to connive
at them. The Polish insurrection, encouraged by France and Austria,
embroiled Alexander II. with Louis Napoleon, and renewed all the former
rancor of St. Petersburg against Vienna. Bismarck was cunning enough to
make secret preparations for taking advantage of the insurrection, if it
proved too strong for Russia to quell, by occupying Poland with Prussian
troops, and securing the final disposition of the whole Polish question
for himself. At the same time he so managed as to strengthen the bond
between himself and Gortchakoff, and, in the actual event, to bind
Russia and Prussia closely together by an open common policy in respect
to Poland. Favored by fortunate circumstances, by the co-operation of
military chiefs who showed a genius in organizing and leading the
Prussian army which astonished the world, by a fatuity in Louis Napoleon
and a complaisance in the Russian chancellor beyond his most sanguine
expectations, he played during the next four years, like a Paul Morphy
of politics, four or five games at once with masterly skill. King
William of Prussia and all the other rulers and statesmen of Europe were
but pieces or pawns to be played with, taken, or checkmated; and on the
day after the battle of Sadowa he was really master of the situation.
The objective point at which Bismarck aimed in the year 1862 was to make
Prussia the most powerful state in Europe and completely independent of
every other state or coalition of states. For this end it was necessary
to destroy the German _Bund_, to deprive Austria of all power in
Germany, to increase the Prussian territory, and to establish its
hegemony in Germany. All this was accomplished, before the close of the
year 1866, by means of the imbroglio of the Schleswig-Holstein
succession. When Christian IX. succeeded to the throne of Denmark, his
right to the succession in the duchies was disputed, because it came
through a female line debarred from inheriting by the ancient law of
Schleswig and Holstein. The designs of Prussia upon these duchies were,
however, of a much earlier origin, and had their birth from the liberal
party and its revolutionary movements in 1848. In a speech delivered in
the Prussian chambers, April 21, 1849, Herr von Bismarck declared that
the war provoked in the duchies of the Elbe was “an undertaking
eminently iniquitous, frivolous, disastrous, and revolutionary.” We will
not pretend to determine the question of the validity of King
Christian’s title, as between himself and the people of the duchies. It
is evident enough, however, that the matter was one which interested all
Europe, and ought to have been calmly, justly determined, in a manner
consonant with the interests of the kingdom of Denmark, of the people of
the duchies, of the confederated states of the German _Bund_, and of
Europe. In fact, the doubt respecting Christian’s title was seized upon
by Bismarck as a mere pretext for absorbing the disputed territory,
_with its fine Baltic sea-port of Kiel_, into Prussia. The Prince of
Augustenberg, the chief claimant against Christian, had been induced, a
short time before the accession of the latter to the Danish throne, by
the influence of Bismarck himself, to sell his claim on Holstein to the
government of Copenhagen. No sooner was the old king dead than Bismarck
declared that this same prince was the rightful duke. At a later period
he brought forward several other claimants, that these rival claims
might neutralize each other. How he cheated Lord John Russell; how he
used the German _Bund_ as a tool for his own purposes and then
scornfully pushed it aside; how he drew Austria into a war against
Denmark, followed by a joint occupation of the duchies, and then
commenced a quarrel against her for their sole possession; and how
England, the declared protector of Denmark, looked tamely on while it
was despoiled and maimed, we have not time to relate in detail. It was a
great blunder in France, England, and Russia to permit what they could
easily have prevented. On the part of Austria it was a stupendous and
suicidal folly to make itself an accomplice in a conspiracy for
destroying the bulwarks of its own power. This was soon made manifest,
but too late to escape the consequences of a fatal blunder. Prussia
being ready for action, the _Bund_ and the claimants of the duchies were
summarily shoved aside. The question of the right of succession in the
duchies was referred to a high Prussian court for adjudication. It was
decided that _the King of Denmark alone_ had possessed the right of
sovereignty in Schleswig and Holstein, and that, by the cession which he
had been forced to make after being conquered in war, this right was now
vested in Prussia and Austria. Austria was politely requested to sell
her share to Prussia, which she declined to do, and the next step was to
wrest it from her by force.
The dark intrigues—at the time so hidden from sight and so almost
desperate, even in the view of the “maniacal diplomat” who held their
threads in his hand and wove them into a mesh around his victim—by which
Bismarck planned the ruin of Austria, have since been fully disclosed.
With the government of Victor Emanuel a strict and secret treaty was
contracted. At the same time, and for several years after, a
correspondence was kept up with Mazzini, looking to the overthrow of
Victor Emanuel in case of any action on his part unfavorable to the
schemes of the arch-conspirators. Arrangements were made for fomenting
an insurrection in Hungary under the leadership of Garibaldi. The
neutrality and connivance of Louis Napoleon were secured by playing upon
his Italian sympathies and holding before him vague expectations of
compensation for France.
Prince Gortchakoff lent an underhand but most valuable help to his
friend all through, beginning with the attack on Denmark. It was Louis
Napoleon, whose incapacity and weakness were not yet fully revealed even
to Bismarck’s keen eye, who was most feared and distrusted. Enfeebled as
he was in respect to whatever capacity he had really possessed in his
prime, and weakened as was the power of France, yet, with the help of
the statesmen and soldiers who were at his disposal, he still retained
the power of determining the main issue in the politics of Europe, and
Bismarck knew it. He would not stir in any decisive action until well
assured that he had mastered the French emperor by his superior craft.
He had less difficulty in this than he anticipated. Louis Napoleon, like
most other European observers, overrated the military strength of
Austria, and underrated the new Prussian army with its almost untried
leaders, Von Roon and Von Moltke; which even Bismarck himself somewhat
distrusted up to the last moment. The French emperor desired and hoped
for the liberation of Venetia. But he expected the defeat of the
Prussian army in Germany, and for himself the _rôle_ of a mediator, an
umpire, a general referee for settling all things on the basis of a new
treaty of peace. He let Bismarck play his game out, with what result is
known to the world. Although victorious in Italy, Austria nevertheless
ceded Venetia to Louis Napoleon, who handed it over to Victor Emanuel.
The victory of Sadowa agreeably surprised the victor, brought despair to
the vanquished, and astonished the world. If all the other great powers
had not been alienated from each other, and under a fatal spell of the
arch-fiend, Robin’s master, whose enchanted balls had brought down the
Austrian eagle, they might have intervened to prevent the grave ulterior
consequences of this fatal day of Sadowa. If Louis Napoleon had not been
paralyzed and demoralized to the extent of utter imbecility, he might
have interfered alone, and successfully, in this his last opportunity
for saving his dynasty and saving France. Nobody interfered. There was a
weak show of negotiations, but Bismarck had his own way in everything.
Before the end of the year 1866 his spoils were all gathered in and
safely garnered, and the centre was shifted from Paris to Berlin.
The area of Prussia had been increased, by the annexation of Hanover,
Hesse-Cassel, Nassau, Frankfort, and the duchies of the Elbe, from
108,000 to 135,000 English square miles, and its population from
19,000,000 to 23,000,000. It was, moreover, the head of a North German
Confederation, and practically had control of the South German States,
with the certainty of having all Germany outside of Austria to
co-operate with it and follow its lead in case of hostilities with
France. These were the “moral conquests of Prussia in Germany” which the
king, as prince-regent, had announced to the nation when he assumed the
reins of government. This was the fulfilment of “the federal obligations
toward the Emperor Francis Joseph,” so much talked of at Potsdam, while
the future chancellor was hunting bears in Russia. Such was the sequel
of the protest of Berlin against the Piedmontese annexation. The
prophecy of Cavour was fulfilled: that “Prussia would one day, thanks to
Piedmont, profit by the example which had been given to it.”
The “Piedmontese mission of Prussia,” vaunted by the French democratic
press, was well inaugurated and pretty near fulfilment. Louis Napoleon’s
oracular sayings about the “great destinies of Prussia” proved to have
something else in them than “the stuff which dreams are made of.” He had
no longer to utter the philanthropic complaint: “_The geographical
position of Prussia is badly defined._” It was perhaps not quite perfect
in the opinion of Bismarck, but it was certainly vastly improved, and
destined to a still further rectification which had probably not been
revealed to the imperial dreamer.
Having disposed of his _first_ accomplice in the great scheme, gradually
matured during his sulky meditations at Frankfort and St. Petersburg
under the tuition of his master in diplomacy, Prince Gortchakoff—namely,
having put down Austria—Bismarck proceeded with his next plot: against
his accomplice in the one just successfully carried into execution.
Austria had been lured on by the expectation of sharing in the
spoliation of Denmark, defrauded of her portion of the spoils, and
stripped of a great part of her original possessions, to the advantage
of Prussia. In like manner Louis Napoleon was disappointed of the
acquisitions he hoped to receive as a reward for conniving at the
spoliation of Austria; he and his dynasty were overthrown completely,
and we trust finally; France was humiliated to the dust and compelled to
ransom herself from captivity by the price of her treasure and her
territory. The disruption of the European bond left France, as Austria
had been left, at the mercy of her perfidious ally, converted into an
open and relentless enemy.
During the preliminaries of peace at Nikolsburg, afterwards ratified by
the treaty of Prague, by which the German hegemony of Prussia was
established, Bismarck persuaded the French emperor through his envoy,
the unfortunate M. Benedetti—the same one who knew his man and followed
him up so skilfully—that “the reverses of Austria allowed _France and
Prussia to modify their territorial situation_.” Hints were thrown out
about the Rhine provinces and Belgium. After Prussia had completed her
own modification of her territorial situation for the time being,
Bismarck continued, while Prussia was taking a rest and making all her
political and military arrangements perfect, what he called his
“dilatory negotiations” with Louis Napoleon. The latter was asking for
compensations, for which he had not stipulated when he placed his
services at the disposal of his employer. Mephistopheles qualified this
demand as a “policy of _pour boire_.” You engage a _fiacre_ in Paris,
you pay the stipulated price to the driver, and he presents his hand
again, unless you anticipate him by a voluntary gratuity, with the
familiar phrase: “Pour boire, monsieur, s’il vous plaît!” If you are a
good-humored gentleman, you hand over a few sous and he departs
contented. If you are gruff and parsimonious, and show unwillingness to
comply with his polite request, he will reiterate it with less deference
and civility. Whereupon, if you are violent and profane, and have
sufficient command of the French language to speak after the manner of
the _gamins de Paris_, you refer him to a person beyond the “_Porte de
l’Enfer_.” The history of the secret treaty of offensive and defensive
alliance between France and Prussia, giving the aid of France to carry
out the further programme of Prussian ascendency in Germany, and the aid
of Prussia to secure Luxembourg and Belgium to France, signed by France,
though not signed, _only laid up in her archives_, by Prussia, is well
known. A previous project of a treaty ceding the Rhine provinces to
France was shown to the South German plenipotentiaries and drove them
into a secret and strict alliance with Prussia. The work of Nikolsburg
and Prague was completed, the whole military force of North and South
Germany was at the disposal of King William, and nothing was wanting but
a war with France to make him emperor of Germany, with Alsace and
Lorraine as additional provinces of his kingdom, and all expenses paid
by the French treasury. Bismarck could now drop the mask whenever he
pleased, and bully the unfortunate emperor into the folly of trying to
expiate his past misconduct by _baptizing himself in the fire_ of
Prussian artillery and _mitraille_. This dark and tragic act in the
drama of the Downfall of Europe is summed up with consummate truth and
terseness in that little masterpiece entitled _The Fight in Dame
Europa’s School: showing how the German boy thrashed the French boy, and
how the English boy looked on_:
“Only one boy—his favorite fag—did William take into his confidence
in the matter. This was a sharp, shrewd lad named Mark, not
over-scrupulous in what he did, full of deep tricks and dodges, and
so cunning that the old dame herself, though she had the eyes of a
hawk, could never catch him out in anything absolutely wrong. To
this smart youth William one day whispered his desires [of annexing
part of Louis’ garden] as they sat together in the summer house
smoking and drinking beer. 'There is only one way to do it,’ said
Mark. 'If you want the flower-beds, you must fight Louis for them,
and I believe you will lick him all to smash. You see, old fellow,
you have grown so much lately, and filled out so wonderfully, that
you are really getting quite formidable. Why, I recollect the time
when you were quite a little chap!’ 'Yes,’ said William, turning up
his eyes devoutly, 'it has pleased Providence that I should be
stout. Then, my dear Mark, what do you advise me to do?’ 'Ah! that
is not so easy to say. Give me time to think, and when I have an
idea I will let you know. Only, whatever you do, take care to put
Master Louis in the wrong. Don’t pick a quarrel with _him_, but
force him, by quietly provoking him, to pick a quarrel with _you_.
Give out that you are still peaceably disposed, and carry your
Testament about as usual. That will put old Dame Europa off her
guard, and she will believe in you as much as ever. The rest you may
leave to me.’ An opportunity of putting their little plot into
execution soon occurred. A garden became vacant on the other side of
Louis’ little territory [Spain], which none of the boys seemed much
inclined to accept. It was a troublesome piece of ground, exposed to
constant attacks from the town-cads, who used to overrun it in the
night and pull up the newly-planted flowers. 'Don’t you think,’ said
Mark one day to his friend and patron, 'that your little cousin, the
new boy [Prince Hohenzollern], might as well have that garden?’ 'I
don’t see why he should not, if he wants it,’ replied William, by no
means deep enough to understand what his faithful fag was driving
at. 'It will be so nice for Louis, don’t you see, to have William to
keep him in check on one side, and William’s little cousin to watch
him on the other side,’ observed Mark innocently. 'Ah! to be sure,’
exclaimed William, beginning to wake up, 'so it will; very nice
indeed. Mark, you are a sly dog.’ 'I should say, if you paid Louis
the compliment to propose it, that it is such a delicate little
attention as he would never forget—even if you withdrew the proposal
afterwards.’ 'Just so, my boy; and then we shall have to fight.’
'But look here, won’t the other chaps say that I provoked the
quarrel?’ 'Not if we manage properly,’ was the reply. 'They are sure
to fix the cause of dispute on Louis rather than on you. You are
such a peaceable boy, you know; and he has always been fond of a
shindy.’ So Dame Europa was asked to assign the vacant garden to
William’s little cousin. 'Well,’ said she, 'if Louis does not
object, who will be his nearest neighbor, he may have it.’ 'But I do
object, ma’am,’ cried Louis. 'I very particularly object. I don’t
want to be hemmed in on all sides by William and his cousins. They
will be walking through my garden to pay each other visits, and
perhaps throwing balls to one another right across my lawn.’ 'Oh!
but you might be sure that I should do nothing unfair,’ said William
reproachfully. 'I have never attacked anybody.’ 'That’s all my eye,’
said Louis. 'I don’t believe in your piety. Come, take your dear
little relation off, and give him one of the snug corners that you
bagged the other day from poor Christian.’ 'Come, come,’ interposed
the Dame, 'I can’t listen to such angry words. You five monitors
must settle the matter quietly among yourselves; but no fighting,
mind. The day for that sort of thing is quite gone by.’ _And the old
lady toddled off_ and left the boys alone. 'I wouldn’t press it,
Bill, if I were you,’ said John, in his deep, gruff voice, looking
out of his shop-window on the other side of the water. 'I think it’s
rather hard lines for Louis—I do indeed.’ 'Always ready to oblige
you, my dear John,’ said William; and so the new boy’s claim to the
garden was withdrawn. 'What shall I do now, Mark?’ asked William,
turning to his friend. 'It seems to me that there is an end of it
all.’ 'Not a bit,’ was the reply. 'Louis is still as savage as a
bear. He’ll break out directly; you see if he don’t.’ 'I have been
grossly insulted,’ began Louis at last, in a towering passion, 'and
I shall not be satisfied unless William promises me never to make
any such underhand attempts to get the better of me again.’ 'Tell
him to be hanged,’ whispered Mark. 'You be—no,’ said William,
recollecting himself, 'I never use bad language. My friend,’ he
continued, 'I cannot promise you anything of the kind.’ 'Then I
shall lick you till you do, you psalm-singing humbug!’ shouted
Louis. 'Come on!’ said William, lifting up his hand as if to commend
his cause to Heaven, and looking sanctimoniously out of the whites
of his eyes. 'Come on!’ shouted William, thirsting for more blood.
'_Vive la guerre!_’ cried poor Louis, rushing blindly at his foe.
Well and nobly he fought, but he could not stand his ground. Foot by
foot and yard by yard he gave way, till at last he was forced to
take refuge in his arbor, from the window of which he threw stones
at his enemy to keep him back from following. And when William, who
talked so big about his peaceable disposition, and declared that he
only wanted to defend his 'fatherland,’ chased him right across the
garden, trampled over beds and borders on his way, and then swore
that he would break down his beautiful summer-house and bring Louis
on his knees, everybody felt that the other monitors ought to
interfere. But not a foot would they stir. Aleck looked on from a
safe distance, wondering which of the combatants would be tired
first. Joseph stood shaking in his shoes, not daring to say a word
for fear William should turn round upon him and punch his head
again; and John sat in his shop, grinding away at a new rudder and a
pair of oars. 'Come and help a fellow, John,’ cried Louis in despair
from his arbor. 'I don’t ask you to remember the days we have spent
in here together when you have been sick of your own shop. But you
might do something for me, now that I am in such a desperate fix and
don’t know which way to turn.’ 'I am very sorry, Louis,’ said John,
'but what can I do? It is no pleasure to me to see you thrashed. On
the contrary, it would pay me much better to have a near neighbor
well off and cheerful than crushed and miserable. Why don’t you give
in, Louis? It is of no mortal use to go on. He will make friends
directly, if you will give back the two little strips of garden; and
if you don’t, he will only smash your arbor to pieces, or keep you
shut up there all dinner-time and starve you out. Give in, old
fellow; there’s no disgrace in it. Everybody says how pluckily you
have fought.’”
The ingenious author has made a mistake about Aleck and Joseph. Aleck
was in league with William, and his threats alarmed Joseph and kept him
from interfering. Bismarck had succeeded in reconciling Gortchakoff to
the sacrifice of all the old friends and family connections of Russia in
Germany. Moreover, he had in some way convinced him so completely that
it was for the interest and future advantage of Russia to ally itself
closely with Prussia, that he turned a deaf ear to the advances of
France and Austria in reference to the Oriental question, and gave a
strong moral support, which in case of need he was ready to transform
into active military co-operation, to his most iniquitous and oppressive
measures against France. M. Thiers was convinced of this when Prince
Bismarck handed to him his Russian portfolio and allowed him to read at
leisure thirty letters which it contained, while he sat by quietly
smoking a cigar and enjoying the chagrin and discomfiture of the aged
statesman. Besides this, we must consider that England had a reason for
coolness towards France in the unprincipled negotiations of the French
government respecting England’s _protegée_, Belgium. And at last, when
England did wish to interfere to obtain for France more favorable
conditions of peace, and made propositions for concerted action to St.
Petersburg, it was Russia which threw cold water upon the plan and kept
all Europe back while William was finishing up his quarrel with Louis.
It cannot be doubted that Bismarck had given Gortchakoff to understand
that, when the proper time came, Prussia would secure for Russia a fair
field and no interference for a decisive and final effort to destroy the
European empire of the Turk. Fuad-Pasha, said to have been one of the
greatest statesmen of Turkey, while lying on his death-bed at Nice
dictated a political testament, which was sent, after his mortal career
had closed, to his sovereign, the sultan. In this document he had said:
“When this writing is placed before the eyes of your majesty, I will no
longer be in this world. You can, therefore, listen to me without
distrust, and you should imbue yourself with this great and grievous
truth: that _the empire of the Osmanlis is in danger_. An intestine
dissension in Europe, and _a Bismarck in Russia_, and the face of the
world will be changed.” The date of this document is January 3, 1869.
The conflict between Prince Bismarck and the Catholic Church has been
treated of repeatedly in former articles in this magazine. We will,
therefore, abstain from going over that ground again. It has been
surmised that the policy of the Prussian chancellor in respect to the
church has been dictated to him by the necessity of satisfying the
demands of the radical-liberal party. We cannot think that it is to be
accounted for simply on this ground. The general idea and fundamental
principle of Bismarck has been to destroy the community of nations which
was the remnant of ancient Christendom, and raise up an independent,
self-subsisting, absolute, and dominating German Empire. It is an
essential part of this plan to destroy the principle of unity and
community centred in the Holy See, and to make the emperor absolute head
of all churches within the boundaries of his state. The idea is wholly
pagan and despotic, and includes the subversion of all right except that
which is a conceded privilege derived from the sovereign will of the
state. Not only, therefore, is all international right ignored by it,
but every right of municipalities, of orders, of legislative and
judicial bodies, of subordinate members of the government, of
associations and individuals, is suppressed and merged in one paramount
right of force, of physical power—in a word, of tyranny, the worst, as
Plato long ago taught, of all possible political organisms.
In perfect harmony with the oppressive, persecuting policy of Prince
Bismarck toward the church has been his conduct toward the Prussian
nobility, the legislative chambers, and all those who have in any way
asserted their rights against his despotic might. This is illustrated in
the case of the Count Harry von Arnim.
We had intended to go more deeply into the merits of this affair than we
now find our remaining space will permit. Catholics have little reason
for cherishing amicable sentiments toward this unfortunate victim of a
relentless persecution under the forms of law. He has been one of the
most artful and persistent enemies of the Holy See among the statesmen
of Europe. The pamphlet _Pro Nihilo_, on account of which, in great
part, he was condemned of treason by a Prussian court, is sufficient, by
itself, to show that if he had been in power he would have been more
dangerous than even Bismarck. His cold contempt is more offensive to
Catholic feelings than the violence of his successful rival.
Nevertheless, there is in him more of honor, probity, veracity, and the
courtesy of a gentleman than is at this day very common among
diplomatists of the “new era.” Besides, he has been tricked, insulted,
ill-used, and all but crushed in pieces by a cruel enemy, and therefore
we cannot help sympathizing with him. There is something deeply tragic
in his story. The gist of it lies in this: that he would not be a blind,
subservient tool in the hands of the chief of the administration, that
he dared to think for himself, and that the old Prussian nobility had
fixed their hopes on him as a desirable successor to the chancellorship,
in case anything happened to Prince Bismarck. Hence the long,
perfidious, and in the end brutal warfare waged against him by his
unscrupulous and relentless enemy, who has for the time being triumphed,
according to his own maxim, _La force prime le droit_. The Count von
Arnim is still, however, a formidable antagonist. With the pen, on the
field of legal argument, in the subtle tactics of diplomatic writing, he
is superior to his persecutor, and master of a force dangerous even to
the man who can command armies. He has a host of friends and
sympathizers in Prussia, of allies throughout Europe. M. Benedetti was
not mistaken when he applied the epithet “maniacal” to the man who was
called “mad” by the friends and boon companions of his youth. His
madness is not without method, and, like that of Charles XII. of Sweden,
has given him a certain prestige of heroism and success. On the day of
Solferino that prestige sat on the helmet of Napoleon III. Sedan,
Wilhelmshöhe, and Chiselhurst were still invisible in the future. The
career of Bismarck is not yet finished, nor can the destiny which awaits
the empire he created be foretold. It is reported that he has recently
replied to those who asked him whether there would be war in Europe over
the Eastern question: “_The devil only knows!_” He appears to regard his
Satanic Majesty as the god of modern Europe and the supreme controlling
power in modern politics. Formerly the name of God was frequently on his
lips, and his thoughts spontaneously referred all things to him. It was
God who decided battles and controlled the destinies of nations. Men of
great genius cannot escape from their clear and vivid intuitions of the
supersensible. One who has had the insight and the sentiment of the
meanness of the world, and the sole grandeur of eternal principles of
truth and morality, belonging to a mind naturally great, cannot be a
complete dupe of the illusions by which he deceives and subdues the
multitude. We can see this deep melancholy of a mind which cannot be
satisfied with the trivialities of life, and is restlessly yearning
after something greater, in all the wild conviviality, restless
scheming, audacious enterprise, ironical sporting in word and deed with
all persons and things held in awe and regarded as sacred in the common
sentiments of humanity, in the whole career of this Carlylean hero.
Satan, we have no doubt, has had a great control over the rulers and the
politics of modern Europe. Bismarck can see this, and has assuredly not
forgotten his own prophecy of the results of the policy of adorning
one’s self with the feathers of eagles which have been brought down by
the devil’s bullets. When he says that “the devil only knows whether
there will be war in Europe,” we hear Robin telling Max that he has
concluded an infernal compact and must stand by it. We know, however,
that although the devil knows his own plans, and tries to guess at those
of God, he cannot fathom or thwart these plans of one who is infinitely
stronger and wiser than he is, and has often before made him catch
himself in his own mouse-trap. Bismarck is like the legendary giant
Christopher, while he was in the service of the demon, thinking him to
be the strongest master he could serve. He has acted as if he supposed
that God had given up Europe to the devil’s dominion, yet he betrays his
conviction in a hundred ways that there is a stronger power than the
revolution or the anti-Christian despotism “spotted with red,” which is
only biding its time. He despises and sneers at his own master, because
he sees him wince at the crucifix on the cross-road. We think it quite
probable that in his secret soul he venerates Pius IX., as did Mazzini,
and is convinced that if anything on earth is great, true, and as
enduring in the future as it has been in the past, it is the Catholic
Church. His fear of it, and his war _à l’outrance_ against it, show an
estimate of its power which can have no rational foundation except in an
unwilling, hostile apprehension of its divine origin. The shallow,
clever Count von Arnim is a cool, quiet sceptic. So, we conjecture, is
Prince Gortchakoff. Bismarck is too deep for that sort of smooth, placid
incredulity. He fears an ultramontane as children are afraid of a bear
under the bed. He is afraid of Jesuits, afraid of nuns, afraid of
children singing hymns in honor of the Sacred Heart.
We think he has some reason to be afraid. The waters are rising around
him, and it is likely that he will yet have to plunge into them “in his
swimming-drawers.” “Sooner or later radicalism will stand upright before
the king, will demand of him its recompense, and, _pointing to the
emblem of the eagle on that new imperial flag, it will say: Did you
think, then, that this eagle was a free gift?_”
“Without a religious basis a state is nothing but _a fortuitous
aggregation of interests_, a sort of bastion in a war of all against
all; without this religious basis all legislation, instead of
_regenerating itself at the living sources of eternal truth_, is only
tossed about by human ideas as vague as changeable.” This is the great
case of Bismarck _versus_ Bismarck. His renunciation of his own
principles, and maniacal following of passion against reason, is but a
type of the conduct of Europe. The modern Germany has renounced and made
war upon the principles which were the foundation of its old imperial
greatness. France has done the same; Italy has done the same, with a
worse and more parricidal impiety. Europe has done it, and the natural
consequence is “war of all against all.” “La force,” says Lacordaire,
“tôt ou tard, rencontre la force.” “_A house divided against itself
cannot stand_”; and such a house is the one which Bismarck has built.
The Napoleonic fabric was overwhelmed by the volcanic fires of Sedan. We
believe that there will be a Sedan for the similar fabrics of Cavour and
Bismarck, for the whole structure of modern European politics. And where
can be found these “living sources of eternal truth” at which
“legislation can regenerate itself”? Let us remind our readers that the
Encyclical and Syllabus of Pius IX. were proclaimed in 1864, between the
epochs of Solferino and Sadowa. We think they will easily understand why
the Holy See condemned the principles of “accomplished facts” and
“non-intervention,” and perceive to what an abyss these principles have
conducted Europe. They will remember that the date of the Council of the
Vatican is 1870, between Sadowa and Sedan, and perceive the import and
reason of our conclusion, that the source of regeneration for Europe is
the same source from which European Christendom received its birth and
the life of its youth and manhood. To quote again from Lacordaire: “On
n’emprissonne pas la raison, on ne brûle pas les faits, on ne déshonore
pas la vertu, on n’assassine pas la logique.” That policy of which
Prince Bismarck is the great master is the policy of fraudulence,
perfidy, violence, and tyranny. The whole European apostasy and
conspiracy against the Holy See—the centre of religious unity and
political equilibrium for Europe and the world—is a revolt against
reason, history, morality, and the logic by which the sequences of
principles and events are demonstrated and applied to the concrete
matter of human destiny. These are indestructible powers, and no
artillery can overthrow them or fraud pervert their decisions. “_There
is no kingdom of hell upon earth_,” but only a continuous resistance of
the infernal powers to the kingdom of Jesus Christ, which from time to
time breaks out into a revolution. And the same calm, historic record,
in which past Catholic historians have narrated the successive defeats
of these revolutionary enterprises will, in each new chapter added by
succeeding centuries, continue the chronicle of similar failures;
placing the impartial mark of indelible dishonor against the names of
all those who have sought for greatness by fraud and violence.
VERONICA
A LEGEND OF MÉDOC
_In fines terræ_
_Verba corum._
Descending the river from Bordeaux amid verdant isles, and between
shores that produce some of the choicest wines of France, we soon come,
on the right, to Blaye, with its chivalric memories of Orlando and the
fortress that makes it the Key of Aquitaine, as it was in the days of
Ausonius, who says:
“Aut iteratarum qua glarea trita viarum
Fert militarem ad Blaviam.”
At the left we pass Pauillac, the ancient villa of St. Paulinus of Nola.
The Gironde soon becomes a sea. The shore lowers and is on a level with
the waves. The poor hills of Saintonge escape to the north, and the
white houses of Royan become visible on the far-off shore. The sea-gull
flies over our head, tireless as the ceaseless waves that feed him. We
see the white tower of Cordouan at a distance framed in a dazzling sea
of blue and gold, out of which it rises two hundred feet above low tide,
full of grace and majesty, like an enchanted castle. It is said to stand
on the remains of the ancient isle of Antros, which Pomponius Mela, in
the first century, places at the mouth of the Gironde. We cannot resist
the temptation to climb its three hundred steps for the sake of the
wonderful view over fell and flood. The foundation of this tower is lost
in obscurity. Even its very name is a mystery. Some think it of Moorish
derivation, and that the first light-house here was built by the
Saracens—a most ridiculous supposition; for the Moors, though they
destroyed a great deal in Aquitaine, certainly had no time for building,
whatever their taste for architecture. Others say it was due to Louis le
Débonnaire, and that he appointed a keeper to light a beacon-fire and
sound a _cor_, or horn, night and day, to warn the sailor of the perils
of the coast; but any one who ever heard the noise of the tumultuous
waves breaking high against the cliff of Cordouan can imagine the
inefficiency of the most vigorous lungs in such violent storms as are
proverbial on the Bay of Biscay. The poor keeper would have needed the
Horn of Thunder of the Armorican legend, given St. Florentius by a
Norman chief to summon aid when attacked by his piratical horde, or the
magic oliphant of Orlando, then kept hard by at Blaye, wherewith its
owner once blew so terrible a blast that all the birds dropped dead in
the forests of Roncesvalles and it was heard for twenty miles around.
The earliest historical knowledge we have of a light-house here is from
a charter of the fourteenth century, by which we learn that the Black
Prince built a tower on the cliff of Cordouan, with a chapel dedicated
to the Blessed Virgin, kept by a hermit. In 1409 the hermit’s name was
Geoffroy de Lesparre, who subsisted by levying two _grossos
sterlingorum_ on every vessel from Bordeaux laden with wine—a toll that
Henry IV. of England authorized him to double.
As for the modern tower of Cordouan, Louis de Foix was
“Le gentil ingénieur de ce superbe ouvrage.”
He was one of the architects employed by Philip II. of Spain in building
the Escorial, and the inventor of the mechanism by which the waters of
the Tagus were carried to the highest part of the city of Toledo. Some
curious things are related of this ingenious architect while in Philip’s
service. The ill-conditioned prince, Don Carlos, seems to have placed
confidence in him; for he commissioned De Foix to furnish him with a
book heavy enough to kill a man with a single blow. The architect made
one of twelve tablets of stone, six inches long and four broad, bound in
steel covers embossed with gold, which weighed over fourteen pounds, and
might have had for its motto the excellent _mot_ of Callimachus on the
danger of weighty books. De Thou relates the account of this momentous
tome, which is also referred to in the list of Don Carlos’ expenses, and
says De Foix told him the idea was by no means an original one of the
prince’s, but suggested by a similar volume improvised in his
grandfather’s time by Don Antonio de Acuña, Bishop of Zamora, who,
confined in the castle of Simancas for taking part in the rebellion of
the Comuneros, covered a brick of the size of his breviary with leather,
and with this volume of decisive theology killed his keeper and made his
escape. Perhaps Don Carlos overlooked the fate of the bishop, who was
overtaken by the keeper’s son and hanged on the battlements of the
castle of Simancas. All who have visited the Armeria Real at Madrid will
remember the armor of this belligerent prelate.
De Foix also invented several curious clocks for Don Carlos, who seems
to have inherited Charles V.’s taste for chronometrical instruments.
Every one knows the anecdote of the servant who, suddenly entering the
emperor’s room one day, overthrew the table and broke to pieces the
thirty watches on it. The emperor laughed and said: “You are more
successful than I, for you have discovered the only means of making them
all go alike.” Among these clocks of complicated mechanism made for the
prince by De Foix was one in the shape of an antique temple adorned with
columns, that indicated the hours, days, months, and other things.
Don Carlos, as if conscious of the insecurity of his life, also ordered
De Foix to construct a machine with pulleys and weights by which he
could himself open and shut his chamber door while in bed, and yet no
one could enter the room against his will. De Foix seems to have been
faithless to the prince; for on the 18th of January, 1568—by the king’s
order, to be sure—he stopped the movement of the pulleys, unknown to Don
Carlos, whose chamber was thus opened and he conveyed to prison. De
Thou’s account of this is confirmed by the letter of an Italian at
Madrid written eight days after, in which the door with its pulleys is
mentioned.
Louis de Foix (or _sans foi_) is said to lie beneath the tower he
erected; so we could not say: “Light be the turf above thee!” even had
we been disposed.
Six or eight miles south of Cordouan we came to Soulac, amid the
sand-dunes and salt marshes, with its antique church of Notre Dame de la
Fin des Terres, held in great veneration by the sailors of the middle
ages, and recently dug out of the sands in which it had been buried for
one hundred and twenty years. In fact, it had been partly buried since
the fourteenth century. Few churches have so strange a history as this.
Tradition attributes its original foundation to the pious Veronica, on
whose linen veil the weary Saviour, on his way to Calvary, left the
impress of his sacred face. It was strange to come upon her traces on
this distant shore, and we took great interest in hunting up all the
local traditions respecting her. Lady Eastlake considers her _de trop_,
both morally and pictorially, and regards her very existence as
problematical; but we who have so often met her in the sorrowful _Via
Crucis_, and pondered on the touching lesson she has left us, feel how
utterly that somewhat stringent author is mistaken. Seraphia, Bernice,
Beronica, or Veronica—no matter by what name she is called—is a being
full of reality to us. As to her identity with the Syro-Phœnician woman
of the Gospel, we are disposed to say with Padre Ventura: “It is not
certain the _hémorroïsse_ was the same as Veronica, but it is probable
that she who had the wonderful favor of wiping the sweat and blood from
the divine face of our Saviour was the same matron who touched the hem
of his garment with so much courage and faith, and gave such a testimony
to his divinity.” Even if the contrary were proved, this would not
affect the ancient tradition respecting her apostolate in France, which
modern research is far from shaking. Holy chroniclers of the middle ages
assert that Veronica was not only an intimate friend of the Blessed
Virgin, but one of the women whom Jesus healed of their infirmities and
who consecrated themselves to his service, following him in his round of
mercy, and aiding him with their substance. The learned Lucas of Bruges
declares her positively the Syro-Phœnician woman healed by our Saviour,
who, says Julian in his chronicles, lived part of the time at Jerusalem
and part at Cæsarea of Philippi. Eusebius says he saw with his own eyes
the monument she erected at Cæsarea in memory of her cure, on which she
was represented at the feet of her divine Benefactor—a memorial
destroyed by Julian the Apostate.
A Polish poet, Bohdan Zaleski, thus alludes to the traditional intimacy
of Veronica with the Holy Family in lines full of graceful simplicity in
the original:
“Joseph and Mary have lost the child Jesus at Jerusalem. Elizabeth comes
to tell them he has been found. 'It must be either in the Temple, then,
or at Veronica’s,’ replies Mary.
“The Holy Family go to visit Elizabeth. Jesus, afar off, joyfully hails
the aged matron, as well as Veronica, Martha, and Salome.
“Joseph makes the accustomed prayer to thank God for his gifts. Jesus
breaks the bread and blesses it. Veronica passes around the basket and
distributes the bread among the guests.”
Pilgrims for centuries have mentioned Veronica’s house as at the corner
of a street near the spot where Jesus fell for the second time under the
weight of his cross. She is said to have been the wife of St.
Amadour—the Zaccheus of the Scriptures, who in early life, says the
legend, was in the service of the Blessed Virgin. He had watched over
the childhood of Jesus, and this was why he was so joyful to receive him
in his house. After the Crucifixion he and Veronica attached themselves
anew to the service of Mary, with whom they remained till her glorious
Assumption. According to a lesson in the breviary of Cahors—founded on
an old MS. of the tenth century by Hugo, Bishop of Angoulême, which Père
Odo de Gissey, who collected all the traditions respecting St. Amadour,
declares he had seen—Saul, the persecutor of the church, wished to force
Amadour and Veronica to return to the old law. They were condemned to
die of hunger, but an angel of the Lord mercifully delivered them from
the power of their persecutors and conducted them to a bark, ordering
them to abandon themselves to the mercy of the waves and land wherever
their boat should come to shore, there faithfully to serve Christ and
his holy Mother.
One old chronicle says the demon invoked the winds, swelled the waves,
and unchained the very furies against the frail bark. Death at every
moment seemed at hand in its most frightful form. But the venerable
matron, in the height of danger, seized the sacred relics she brought
with her, and, raising them to heaven, invoked the assistance of God.
Wonderful to relate, the storm at once ceased, a favorable breeze sprang
up and brought the boat safely to the western coast of France to a place
called Solac, in face of the setting sun. Here she built, as best she
could, a church in honor of the blessed and glorious Virgin Mary, and
deposited therein with due honor the holy relics of Our Lady she brought
with her.
Bernard de la Guionie, a Dominican of the thirteenth century, says that,
by a particular providence of God, they brought with them many precious
relics of the Blessed Virgin, such as her hair and shoes, and even some
of the _Sanctum Lac_ that nourished the divine Word. It is generally
believed this relic gave the name of Solac, or Soulac, to the
place—_Solum Lac_, because the other relics of the Virgin were
distributed among various churches. This relic was not once considered
so extraordinary. It was not only venerated in many parts of Christendom
as the symbol of the divine Motherhood, but it became a symbol of the
supernatural eloquence and sweet doctrine of several doctors of the
church. Every one who has visited the magnificent gallery at Madrid will
remember Murillo’s beautiful painting representing St. Bernard deriving
the food that lent to his lips such sweet, persuasive eloquence from the
pure breast of the gentle Deipara. The dignity and grace of the Virgin
in this painting are something marvellous, and take away everything that
might seem human from the subject.
We have all heard of the Grotto of Milk at Bethlehem, with its rock of
offence to so many scoffing tourists. It is only those who have a
profound faith in the Incarnation that venerate everything associated
with the divine Infancy. St. Louis of France built the beautiful
Chapelle du Saint Lait in the Cathedral of Rheims to receive the relic
that gave it its name. A like relic was venerated in the church of Mans
in the time of Clovis. And a vial was borne before the army at the
battle of Askalon, in 1224, which reminds one of Rubens’s painting at
Brussels in which the Madonna bares her breast before the awful Judge,
as if he could refuse nothing at the sight of the bosom on which he had
so often been pillowed, and where he had been nourished. There is an old
legend of a similar vial of this sacred _laict_ being brought from the
Holy Land by a pilgrim, who, weary, stopped one day to repose by a
fountain near Evron, and hung the reliquary on the hawthorn bush that
overshadowed him, and went to sleep. When he awoke, the bush had grown
into a tree and the relic was far beyond his reach. He tried to cut the
tree down with a hatchet, but could make no impression on the wood.
Feeling an inward assurance this was the spot where Providence wished
the relic to be honored, he gave it to the bishop, who built thereon a
church, which became known as Notre Dame de l’Epine Sainte. The high
altar enclosed the hawthorn tree. François de Châteaubriand, abbot of
Evron in the sixteenth century, gave this church a beautiful reliquary
of silver gilt, in the form of a church, beneath the dome of which was a
tube for the relic. Devotion to this relic still exists at Evron.
But to return to Soulac. It is not surprising the Syro-Phœnician woman
should come to this distant shore. We know by Strabo that the ancient
Phœnicians and Carthaginians came to traffic on this coast, and even
went to Great Britain. Soulac was probably the ancient Noviomagos spoken
of by Ptolemy. The old legend of Cénebrun speaks of Veronica as _la Dame
Marie la Phénicienne_, who came from the East under marvellous
circumstances, learned the language of Médoc, and built a church beside
which God caused a fountain of fresh, soft water to spring up out of the
salt shore for the cure of tertian fevers so common in this region.
Moreover, it appears she was in such constant relations with the
governor of Bordeaux, appointed by Vespasian, that, to facilitate the
intercourse between Soulac and the capital, a Roman road was
constructed, “very level and as straight as a line—_rectissimum sicut
corda_.” If Vespasian had anything to do with it, we may be sure it was
straight; for we know how, to rectify a bend in the Flaminian Way, he
bored a tunnel through a rock a thousand feet long.
It was at Bordeaux that Veronica converted Benedicta, a woman of
distinguished birth, and the wife of Sigebert, a priest of the false
gods, who, attacked by a cruel malady, and hearing of the marvels
wrought by St. Martial, said to Benedicta: “Go and bring the man of God;
perhaps he will take pity on me.” St. Martial gave her the miraculous
staff of St. Peter, at the touch of which Sigebert recovered the use of
his limbs. He at once proceeded to Mortagne, accompanied by a great
number of soldiers and other followers, all of whom were baptized by St.
Martial. At his return to Bordeaux he overthrew all the pagan altars,
with the exception of one, which St. Martial purified as a memorial of
the triumph of the true faith. The inscription graven thereon is still
to be seen in the museum at Bordeaux: _Jovi Augusto Arula donavit. SS.
Martialis cum templo et ostio sacravit_—Arula gave this altar to Jupiter
Augustus. Martial consecrated it with the temple and vestibule.
Benedicta continued to work miracles with St. Peter’s staff, and greatly
contributed to the propagation of the faith in the province. She died in
the odor of sanctity, and was buried in the oratory of St. Seurin at
Bordeaux, where her remains are still honored on the 8th of June.
Sigebert, whose name signifies the powerful or courageous, became the
first bishop of Bordeaux, where he is honored as a martyr under the name
of St. Fort. To his _sanctum feretrum_ at St. Seurin’s people formerly
went to take solemn oaths.
The foregoing reference of the old chronicler to Vespasian reminds us of
the part Veronica is said to have had in the destruction of Jerusalem. A
curious old play of the middle ages tells us Vespasian was afflicted
with the extraordinary inconvenience of a wasp’s nest in his nose, and,
after trying every known means of dislodging it, sent for the great
Physician of the Jews. Finding he had been put to death by his own
nation, he demanded some of his followers, whereupon Nicodemus, Joseph
of Arimathea, and Veronica are said to have gone to Rome. The emperor
expressing a desire to see a portrait of Christ, Veronica held up the
_Volto Santo_ before him, at the sight of which he was instantaneously
healed. In his gratitude he vowed to take vengeance on the murderers of
Jesus, which led to the destruction of Jerusalem. The connection between
this legend and the traditional respect in which Veronica was held by
Vespasian’s representative at Bordeaux is curious.
Some say it was Tiberius who was cured of the leprosy by the holy veil,
which accounts for his leniency to the Christians and his placing a
statue of Christ among the gods. These legends, confused by time, may be
regarded as traces left by Veronica at Rome, where a constant tradition
asserts she herself brought the _Volto Santo_.
This precious relic must have been in great repute to have been placed
at St. Peter’s in 707 by Pope John VII. When removed to the Santo
Spirito, it was confided to six Roman noblemen, each of whom had one of
the keys that gave access to it. For this service they annually received
two cows at Whitsuntide, which were eaten with great festivities. In
1440 it was restored to St. Peter’s, where it is preserved in a chamber
within one of the immense piers that sustain the wondrous dome. None but
a canon of the church can enter this chamber, but the Vera Iconica is
annually exposed from the balcony. It seems to have all the solemn
gravity traditional in the Greek representations of our Saviour.
Petrarch respectfully speaks of it as the _verendam populis Salvatoris
Imaginem_.
Veronica’s statue is beneath—one of the guardians that stand around the
tomb of the apostles. Perhaps she came to Rome with St. Martial; for
there are traces of her wherever he announced the Gospel. Else remembers
their visit, and says, when they left its walls, they directed their
course towards Gaul. Mende and Cahors carefully treasure the shoes of
the Virgin she brought, and Puy has some of her hair. St. Antoninus,
Archbishop of Florence, says that, according to the ancient traditions
of the churches of Italy and France, Amadour and his wife Veronica
accompanied St. Martial to Gaul. And St. Bonaventure, the great
Franciscan, in the thirteenth century, in one of his homilies,
represents St. Veronica in a humble cabin at Pas-de-Grave visited by St.
Martial.
St. Amadour embraced the solitary life, and is believed to have been the
first hermit of Aquitaine. His whole life is painted on the walls of the
subterranean chapel at Roc Amadour, where he died. The inscriptions
attached to these frescoes thus sum up the legend respecting him:
1. Zaccheus, because he is small and unable to see Jesus in the crowd,
climbs up into a sycamore-tree. Jesus, perceiving him, says: Zaccheus,
make haste and come down; for to-day I must abide at thy house.
2. Zaccheus is Jesus’ disciple. Veronica, his wife, becomes one of
Mary’s attendants. They are persecuted for the faith, but an angel comes
to deliver them from the prison in which they are confined.
3. An angel orders Zaccheus and Veronica to put to sea and land at
whatever port the vessel shall enter, there to serve Christ, and Mary
his holy Mother.
4. The vessel arrives on the coast of Médoc at a place called Soulac,
where they live in fasting and prayer. St. Martial visits them and
blesses an oratory they have erected in honor of St. Stephen.
5. Zaccheus, at the order of St. Martial, goes to Rome to see St. Peter.
St. Veronica remains in the Bordelais country, where she dies. Zaccheus
returns to Soulac, where he erects two monasteries and retires from the
world.
6. St. Amadour, in the year of our Lord 70, chooses as his hermitage and
place of retreat a cliff inhabited by wild beasts, since known as Roc
Amadour.
7. The inhabitants of the country are almost savages. St. Amadour
catechises them and makes known the religion of our Lord Jesus Christ.
8. St. Amadour erects an altar on the cliff in honor of Mary. This
humble altar, now so glorious, is consecrated by the blessed apostle
Martial, who visits our saint several times in his retreat.
9. St. Amadour, at the approach of death, is transported before the
altar of Mary, where he expires.
Veronica herself is said to have carried in her apron the turf or clay
which served to build the chapel of Soulac. It was a mere cabin, which,
with the spring, was enclosed in the church built at a later period.
This was probably destroyed by the Normans when they ravaged the coast
of France to the terror of the people, who doubtless joined heartily in
the verse then added to the liturgy, beginning:
Auferte gentem perfidam
Credentium de finibus, etc.
According to the traditions of Aquitaine, Veronica lived to a great age,
and, if already in the Temple at the Presentation of the Virgin, she
must have been about a century old at her death. She is believed to have
died about the year 70. She was, at first buried with great honor at
Soulac in the oratory she had so signally endowed. It was Sigebert, or
St. Fort, who, says tradition, went to Soulac to pay her the last
honors. It was long the custom of the bishops of the diocese, before
taking possession of their see, to visit her tomb, and render homage to
the venerable traditions of the place. Her remains were afterwards
carried for safety to Bordeaux, where her tomb, of the Roman style, is
still to be seen in the crypt of St. Seurin. She is said to have been of
uncommon stature, and this has been confirmed by the recent examination
of her remains, so wonderfully preserved amid the storms of so many
ages. Placed under the seal of the archbishops of Bordeaux, and watched
over with religious care, a source of miraculous grace, and the object
of popular veneration, they have escaped the perils of wars and civil
commotions. Cardinal de Sourdis, who opened her tomb in 1616, said her
festival had been celebrated in his diocese from time immemorial on the
4th of February.
Her remains were carefully examined a few years since by a learned
anatomist, who not only declared them of great antiquity, but said the
articulation of certain bones showed the advanced age at which she died.
Thus science comes to the aid of tradition. The popular belief as to her
majestic stature was likewise confirmed by this examination.
Veronica’s oratory, probably destroyed by the Normans, as we have said,
was afterwards rebuilt by the Benedictines, but at what precise time is
doubtful. We only know there was a monastery at Soulac in 1022, which
became dependent on that of Sainte Croix at Bordeaux. In 1043 Ama,
Countess of Périgord, gave the lands of Médrin to the monastery of
_Sancta Maria de Finibus Terræ, ob remedium animæ suæ necnon parentum
suorum_, to relieve the poverty of the monks who there served God and
worthily fulfilled their duty. An old Benedictine chronicle says the
devotion of the faithful towards this holy spot increased to such a
degree that the monks were soon enabled to build a larger church, which
they enriched with much silver and many relics. This was in the twelfth
century. This church, of the Roman style, to which the Benedictines were
partial, enclosed the miraculous fountain of St. Veronica, which had
always been in great repute, and had an altar to her memory where solemn
oaths were administered as at the tomb of St. Fort. Her statue stood
over the fountain, and, before leaving the church, the devout, after
drinking of the water and bathing their eyes, used to cross themselves
and make a reverence to “Madame Saincte Véronique.”
This church was no sooner completed than it began to be invaded by the
sands, which every year grew higher and higher. The lateral doors had to
be walled up, and the pavement raised three times to be on a level with
the sands without. Veronica’s fountain was kept open, but soon became a
well. The monastery and town finally disappeared under the dunes in the
latter part of the thirteenth century. The monks returned when the sands
were stayed. They found the church filled to the chancel arch and the
capitals of the pillared nave. They removed part of the roof, raised the
Avails, and so arranged the church that it continued to be used till
devastated by the Calvinists of the sixteenth century. It was hardly
repaired before the sands besieged it anew and soon buried it utterly,
with the exception of the top of the belfry, which a boy could easily
scale, presenting a curious and picturesque appearance on the lone
shore. Under Louis XV. the open arches of this steeple became a kind of
light-house, and the pines sown by Brémontier soon took root among the
arches of the church totally hidden in the sands.
Tradition says Soulac was once important as a port, and alive with
commercial activity. Henry III. of England embarked at old Soulac for
Portsmouth about the middle of the thirteenth century, which shows how
extensive have been the sand deposits since. Once the church was so near
the water that in great storms the foundations were washed by the waves,
though built on a slight acclivity. It appears by documents still
preserved at Bordeaux that the sands in 1748 covered the greater part of
Soulac, causing the loss of many salt marshes and other sources of
revenue. Many other parishes on the shores of Médoc have wholly
disappeared. The church of La Canau was rebuilt three times before the
moving sands. Sainte Hélène has transported hers ten kilometres, leaving
behind what is now an islet with a few trees to mark the spot where it
once stood, still called by the people Senta Lénotte, or Ste.
Hélenotte—that is, little St. Helen.
St. Pierre de Lignan, or, as called in old titles, Sanctus Petrus in
Ligno—St. Peter on the Wood, or Cross—said to have been originally built
by Zaccheus, or St. Amadour, in memory of the martyrdom of the apostle,
which he had witnessed at Rome, has been abandoned two hundred years,
and now lies under the waves of the ocean.
Pauillac, sung by Ausonius in his epistle to Théon:
“_Pauliacus tanti non mihi villa foret_,”
is likewise half-buried in the sands.
But to return to Soulac. The thirteenth century was the most glorious
era in the history of Notre Dame de la Fin des Terres. Its popularity
was at that time increased by a terrible pestilence that visited Médoc.
The people had recourse to prayer, and went in crowds to the sanctuary
of Soulac, vowing to renew their pilgrimage annually. The most noted of
these pilgrimages was that of Lesparre, a small town which excited our
interest by its reminiscences of the English occupation of the country.
Its ruined fortifications; the square tower, sole remnant of the ancient
castle, and the church with its Saxon arches and coarse sculpture—all
bespeak great antiquity. In the twelfth century the castle and village
around it were held by Baron Eyquem, a contentious lord, who liked
nothing better than a brush with his neighbors. Perhaps it was this
quarrelsome turn of mind that recommended the lords of Lesparre so
strongly to the favor of the English sovereigns. Henry III. of England
summoned Baron Eyquem to his aid at Paris. The baron’s son also served
the same king with all the forces he could muster, and Henry so counted
on his devotedness that, in 1244, after promising to reward his
services, he commissioned him to aid by his sword and counsel in
repelling the King of Navarre, who had invaded Guienne. During the
entire contest between England and France the Sires of Lesparre remained
faithful to the English; and when the last hour of English rule in the
country sounded, the Baron de Lesparre took the lead in an effort to
replace Guienne under its dominion. He went secretly to England with the
lord of Candale and several notable citizens of Bordeaux to assure the
king that the whole country would rise in his favor as soon as the
banner of St. George should be once more seen on the Gironde. The
English eagerly responded by sending the valiant Earl of Shrewsbury,
“The Frenchman’s only scourge,
Their kingdom’s terror, and black Nemesis,”
to Bordeaux, but their last chance was lost by the defeat at Castillon
in 1453, in which the gallant old earl, immortalized by Shakspere—doubly
immortalized—was slain. The Baron de Lesparre was banished, and the
following year beheaded at Poitiers for breaking his bounds. Charles
VII. of France then gave the Seigneurie de Lesparre to the Sire
d’Albret, to whom in part he owed the triumph of his arms.
Lesparre having lost two-thirds of its inhabitants by a pestilence, the
remainder, in their terror, went to prostrate themselves before the
altar of Notre Dame de la Fin des Terres, and made a solemn vow to
return every year, if spared. The account of this annual pilgrimage
reminds one of the caravans of the desert. The pilgrims were divided
into two bands. A part were mounted on horseback, preceded by the
cross-bearer and the _curé_; the rest followed on foot with baskets and
sacks of provisions. The four bells of Notre Dame de Lesparre pealed
joyfully out over the marshes to announce their departure. They stopped
at every chapel they came to, to salute its tutelar saint by some hymn
in his honor, and then kept on their way, chanting the litanies. Most of
these chapels were dedicated to saints specially invoked in time of
pestilence; for every grief of the middle ages left its record in the
churches. There was St. Catharine, always popular in this region. Then
came St. Sebastian, now destroyed, but which gave the name of La Capère
(the chapel) to a little village we passed, and St. Roch still standing
at Escarpon. As soon as the caravan came in sight of the belfry of
Soulac, on a height between St. Vivian and Talais, the pilgrims
descended from their horses to salute the Virgin on their knees. Arrived
at the holy sanctuary, each one offered his candle streaming with
ribbons—a necessary adjunct in all religious offerings in Médoc. An
enormous mass of these old ribbons have been preserved at new Soulac.
After their devotions the pilgrims went out on the seashore to take
their lunch. The next day they returned to Lesparre in the same order.
This annual pilgrimage was continued for five centuries, which accounts
for the vivid recollections of it among the people. Near the manor-house
of the Baron d’Arès, now buried in an immense dune, flowed a fountain as
late as 1830, but since filled up, where the pilgrims stopped to quench
their thirst, with the pious belief that St. Veronica had brought here a
vein of the sacred spring that flowed for the healing of the people in
her sanctuary.
Lesparre, once the capital of Médoc, has now only about a thousand
inhabitants. From the tower there is an extensive view over the broad
moor with its patches of yellow sand, here and there an oasis with a few
vegetables, and perhaps an acre or two of oats, barley, or maize, which
grow as they can. In winter this vast heath becomes a marsh. The water
stands in pools among the sand-hills. The peasant shuts himself up with
his beasts, and warms himself by the peat-fire, while the pools freeze
and the sands grow white under the icy breath of the sea-winds.
St. Veronica’s Church, so venerated in the middle ages, has within a few
years been dug out of the sands and repaired. The miraculous statue of
Notre Dame de la Fin des Terres has been restored to its place on her
altar, and, after a silence of one hundred and twenty years, the bell
once more awakens the echoes of the sand-hills, thanks to the interest
taken by Cardinal Donnet in reviving a devotion to this ancient place of
pilgrimage. Veronica is once more honored in the place where she died—a
devotion that seems significant in these times. Perhaps she comes to
hold up anew the bleeding face of Christ for the healing of the nations.
The _Volto Santo_ is said to have turned pale a few years since when
exhibited at Rome. We may well believe it, in view of all the wounds
since inflicted on Christ’s Bride—the church. “O Veronica!” cries Padre
Verruchino, a Capuchin friar, “suffer us, we pray thee, to gaze awhile
at thy holy veil for the healing of our sin-sick souls!”
An old MS. of the thirteenth or fourteenth century at Auch contains the
following sequence: _De Sancta Veronica Memoria_, showing how well our
fathers in the faith, even in those dark ages, knew how to rise above
every type and shadow to the substance of things hoped for. It is good
to echo the prayers of those earnest times.
Salve, sancta facies
Nostri Redemptoris
In qua nitet species
Divini splendoris,
Impressa panniculo
Nivei coloris,
Dataque Veronicæ
Signum ob amoris.
Salve, decus seculi,
Speculum sanctorum
Quod videre cupiunt
Spiritus cœlorum.
Nos ab omni macula
Purga vitiorum,
Inque nos consortium
Junge Beatorum.
Ave, nostra gloria,
In hac vita dura,
Labili et fragili,
Cito transitura.
Nos perduc ad patriam,
O felix figura,
Ad videndam faciem
Christi, mente pura.
Esto nobis, Domine,
Tutum adjuvamen,
Dulce refrigerium,
Atque consolamen,
Ut nobis non noceat
Hostile conamen,
Sed fruamur requie.
Nos dicamus: Amen.[27]
Footnote 27:
Hail, holy face of our Redeemer, in which shines the image of the
divine Splendor, imprinted on a veil white as snow, and given to
Veronica in token of his love!
Hail, glory of the world, mirror of the saints, whom the celestial
spirits long to behold. Purify us from the stain of every vice and
bring us to the society of the Blessed!
Hail, our glory, in this rough, uncertain life, so soon to pass away!
Lead us to our true country, O blessed symbol! that with a pure heart
we may behold the face of Christ.
Be to us, O Lord! a sure help, the sweet refreshment and consolation
of our woes, that the efforts of the enemy may not injure us, but that
we may enter into the fruition of true rest. Let us say: Amen.
DANTE’S PURGATORIO.
_CANTO FIFTEENTH._
TRANSLATED BY T. W. PARSONS.
Between the third hour’s close and dawn of day,
Much as appears of the celestial sphere
Ever in motion, like a child at play,
So much appeared now of the sun’s career
To be remaining towards his western way.
There it was evening; here the middle night;
And on our front, the rays directly beat,
For we had circled so the hill that right
On towards the sunset we inclined our feet;
When on my brows I felt a load of light,
Greater in splendor than before had been,
And o’er my sense, as ’twere from things unknown,
A stupor stole; and of my palms a screen
I made against the excess of light that shone.
As when from water or a mirror’s face
The ray leaps upward to the opponent side,
Mounting in like mode as through equal space
The ray descendeth, and with line as wide
From the direct line of a falling stone
(As science shows, and art hath verified),
So did I seem, by some reflected light
Before me there, to be so struck that fain
I would have suddenly withdrawn my sight.
“What is it, gentle Father, that in vain
I shield my visage from, and still towards us
Seems as in motion?” He made this reply:
“Marvel not if, as yet, the splendor thus
Of heaven’s bright household overpowers thine eye.
This one is sent to ask men up the height;
Soon it shall be that to behold these things
Will cause thee no dismay, but bring delight,
Even as thy soul due disposition brings.”
Soon as we reached the blessèd angel’s side
He said, with glad voice: “Here you enter in
By steps more easy than you yet have tried.”
We thence departed, and, ascending now,
Heard _Beati Misericordes_ chanted
Below, behind us, and, “Be joyful thou
To whom to conquer in this pass is granted!”
My Master and myself in lonely mood
Still mounting, I considered as I went
How I might gather from his word some good,
And turned to him inquiringly: “What meant
That spirit of Romagna speaking so
_Of partnership forbid_?” He made reply:
“Of his own worst defect he now doth know
The torment; therefore, do not wonder why
Others he chides to make their penance less.
Because you point your wishes at a prize
Where part is lost if it permit largesse,
Envy’s bad bellows move your selfish sighs.
But if the love of the supernal sphere
Heavenward exalted every wish of yours,
Your bosom would not harbor that low fear;
For so much more as there they speak of Ours,
More love in that celestial cloister glows,
And so much more of good each soul secures.”
“Now to be satisfied my hunger grows,”
I answered, “and my mind is more in doubt
Than if no question I had asked of thee.
How comes it, that a blessing parcelled out
More rich its many owners makes to be
Than if a few possessed it?” He replied:
“Because thy mind its reasoning cannot stretch
Beyond those things of earth to which ’tis tied;
Thou from true light dost only darkness fetch.
That Good ineffable and infinite
Who dwells above there, runs to love as fleet
As to a lucid body a ray of light,
And so much giveth as it finds of heat.
Broad as the flame of charity may burn,
The eternal flame above it grows more great:
And more their number is who heavenward yearn.
More for his love there are, and they love more,
Like mirrors that each other’s light return.
Now, if thou hunger still, despite my lore,
Thou shalt see Beatris, and sure, she will
Give unto this and every wish repose;
Only may those five wounds remaining still,
That heal in aching, like the twain soon close.”
Whiles I was musing, and would fain have said,
“Thou hast contented me,” I looked, and, lo!
To the next cornice we had come; here fled
All power of speech, mine eyes were ravished so!
For, seized with ecstasy, I seemed to be
Rapt in a sudden vision of a crowd
Met in a temple. I could also see
That entering, 'mid those men, a woman stood
With sweet mien of a mother, saying: “Why
Hast thou so dealt with us, my darling son?
Behold, in every place thy sire and I
Have sought thee sorrowing.” Soon as she had done
This vision vanished, and I next beheld
Another lady, with such drops besprent
As down the cheeks flow from a bosom swelled
With scorn of some one and by anguish rent;
Saying: “If thou be ruler of the town,
About whose name the gods had such a strife
And whence all knowledge gleams to give renown,
Pisistratus! avenge thee on his life
Whose bold embrace hath brought our daughter down!”
And her lord seemed to me benign and mild,
Answering with aspect that her fury stemmed:
“What should we do to one that harmed our child,
If one caressing her be so condemned?”
Next I saw people raging hot in ire,
Slaying a youth with stones, and shouting loud:
“Martyr him! martyr him!” in tumult dire;
And I saw him drop down before the crowd
Dying, but lifting, ere he did expire,
Looks that might win compassion for his foes;
And with such eyes,—they seemed the doors of heaven!
Praying the most high Father that, for those
Who wrought such wrong, their sin might be forgiven.
Soon as my mind that from itself had swerved
Came back to true things that outside it lie,
I knew my dreams false, but their truth observed.
My leader then, who could perceive that I
Walked like a man by somnolence unnerved,
Said: “Come! what ails thee that thou canst not keep
Thy footing straight, but more than half a league
Hast moved, with faltering steps, as if by sleep
Or wine o’ercome, and eyes that show fatigue?”
I answered: “O sweet Father! I will tell,
If thou wilt hear me, all that I have seen,
While my limbs failed me and my strength so fell.”
And he replied: “Shouldst thou thy visage screen
Beneath an hundred masks, I still could spell
Each slightest thought of thine, and read thy dreams.
This vision came lest thou be self-excused
Thy heart from opening to the peace that streams
From love’s eternal fount o’er all diffused.
I did not ask 'what ails thee,’ as men speak,
Who look with mortal eye that cannot see
The soul without its body. Thou wast weak,
And I, to strengthen, reprehended thee.
So men are wont dull servants to reprove
That when their watch comes round are slow to stir.”
During these words we did not cease to move
On through the evening, and attentive were
To look beyond us, far as vision might,
Against the level sun’s o’erpowering rays;
And towards us, lo! a vapor, dun as night,
Little by little growing on our gaze,
Deprived us of pure air and dimmed our sight,
Nor was there shelter from the blinding haze.
SIX SUNNY MONTHS.
BY THE AUTHOR OF “THE HOUSE OF YORKE,” “GRAPES AND THORNS,” ETC.
CHAPTER XII.
“TO BE, OR NOT TO BE.’
The Signora’s life in these days was disturbed by a doubt that was all
the more troublesome because she was obliged to solve it unaided, and
that without delay. What should she do with Mr. Vane?
Advice could be of no use, even if she had been willing to ask it. He
satisfied perfectly all the conditions concerning which outward
influence could have weight with a woman of character and refinement. It
is always possible to tell a woman that she should not marry a man, the
reasons given being good ones; but it is never possible to tell her that
she should marry him, if she does not wish, however excellent he may be.
The question with the Signora was, Should she marry at all? She
certainly did not wish to marry. Was she willing? Here came up a host of
arguments for and against, till she was as tormented and uncertain as
Hamlet. If Mr. Vane would have consented to spend his life in Rome and
remain her friend, without asking for more, she would have been
satisfied, and have thought that her life had gained by him a sweetness
she had never known, nor even thought of. For she had not been conscious
of anything wanting, till his companionship had taught her that one
niche in her house was vacant. She contemplated the possibility of
marrying him only in order to keep him near her, not because she wished
to change their relations. But the choice was forced upon her to lose
him or to marry him.
It was a choice between two evils. Her life had been so exquisite, so
nearer perfect than any one but herself could know, that to introduce
new and important interests there was a dangerous experiment. How much
more likely they would be to disturb than to complete the harmony! And
yet, how pleasant was that masculine presence, like a shady tree in the
midst of a sunny garden of flowers! How pleasant the sense of a superior
physical strength and manly sympathy ever near! How pleasant the
consciousness of constantly pleasing one worth pleasing by the thousand
little feminine ways and words, and by the very being what she was, like
a fragrant rose set in a chamber, silent and gracious. How many little
pleasures he gave her which a man gives only to the woman he prefers to
all others! It seemed to her she had never been well listened to before.
Then to see her do a favor to any one, perform some graceful little act
that might pass unregarded by others, even go about her ordinary duties,
gave him a vivid pleasure. He appreciated the very rose in her hair, the
ribbon at her throat, the bow on her slipper. Little things: but it is
the little pleasures which make life sweet, as the little displeasures
may do more than afflictions can to make it bitter.
She watched to see what danger there might be of certain small
annoyances which she had seen fretting the course of many a married
life, and he came out triumphantly from the ordeal. He did not hang for
ever about the house till the women grew tired of him, any more than he
went to the opposite extreme of staying away too much. He preserved a
respectful ignorance of household affairs, in which he held that women
should be autocrats, and at the same time listened with interest to any
details that might be vouchsafed him, as to curious particulars of a
country he had never visited, but which sent him important supplies. He
was habitually polite to women, but never gallant, and he would have
given a civil reply to a civil question proffered him even by an
infamous person; and in the most private life, he dropped only ceremony,
never respect. As far as personal habits went, he was a man who might
have been a hero, even to his _valet-de-chambre_.
Point by point the Signora tried him, and still found no defect which
could seem to indicate a disagreeable habit or an intolerable opinion.
She could but laugh—a little nervously, indeed—at her own perplexity.
“You dear soul!” she thought, “why will you not do something hateful and
set my mind at rest?”
He would not. He was not even guilty of the one fault that might
naturally have been expected of him under the circumstances: he had no
appearance of hanging upon her words and looks, as if for some
indication of a change of intentions regarding him. She was free to act
herself perfectly, without fear of misinterpretation. And yet, in spite
of his forbearance, she felt that time was committing her, and that she
must soon either decidedly prevent or decidedly receive a renewal of his
offer.
The Signora might easily be accused by persons of little refinement of
being one who did not know her own mind. On the contrary, she was rather
exceptionally prompt and clear as to her requirements. But she was past
the age when women usually marry in haste to repent afterward at
leisure; and was, moreover, one of the comparatively few women who are
fitted by their character to be friends to men without marrying them.
The insidious sisterhood which ends in wifehood or in mischief she saw
through and reprobated. “No man can have a sister,” she was wont to say,
“other than the daughters of his mother. But he may have a friend. And
no man has a right to expect sisterly service and familiarity from a
woman not born his sister. It is a snare.” As a friend, she would never
have charged herself with the care of Mr. Vane’s collars and cravats,
advised him regarding the most becoming cut of his beard, nor performed
the sentimental service of “bathing his fevered brow” when he had a
headache, though she might have done all these things as a sister or a
wife.
It was, altogether, a perplexing and even painful situation, and the
Signora found all her pleasure disturbed by that ever-present fear of
either throwing away a good which she might afterward regret, or
committing herself to a state of life which she might regret still more.
The weather added to her annoyance. Summer had reached its meridian heat
rather prematurely, the sun poured his rays down in a torrent, and at
noon the city was like a martyr at the stake. The nights began to lose
their freshness and be scorched about the edges; the early stars,
instead of shedding dews, were like the coals left in a half-swept oven;
and the mornings languished on the horizon. It was a time for not only
_dolce far niente_, but _dolce pensar niente_. Besides, people, being at
this season so shut up together, need to be at ease with each other.
There was very little to call them out, few friends left in town, and
but few _festas_.
On one of these days came the _festa_ of the Nativity of St. John the
Baptist, the vigil of which is unique in Rome, being a real witch’s
holiday, according to popular superstition. It is an ancient belief
among the people that on this vigil the witches have liberty to go about
where they will; and, since the world all goes to St. John Lateran, the
witches go there too. In order to detect them it was the custom to
procure a stick with a natural fork at the end. This fork was placed
under the chin, the two prongs coming up over the jaws. Looking at a
person over it in this wise, it could be known if he or she were a
witch. Moreover, since it was believed that the witches would take
advantage of the absence of the heads of the family to enter the houses
and do harm to the children, the little ones being their favorite prey,
a new broom was bought, and set, broom-end upward, outside the door.
Before entering, the witch was obliged to count every spill of the
broom. As a further precaution, some salt was sprinkled on the
threshold, and, in case that should not prevent their entering, these
words were repeated while sprinkling it: “Come tomorrow to borrow salt
of me.” The witch who entered was constrained to come and knock at the
door the next day, and ask the loan of a little salt. For the further
safe-keeping of the children during the night, the mothers hang some
object of devotion about their necks or bind it around their bodies,
and, when they are about going to sleep, whisper the _Credo_ in their
ear, repeating every word twice, thus: “I believe, I believe, in God, in
God,” etc.
“What do they think a witch would do to the children, if she should
enter?” we asked our Roman informant.
“Take off the object of devotion and touch them, or do something to them
so that they would die,” was the reply. “A child that has been touched
by a witch pines away to a skeleton, and dies, without any one being
able to find out what ails it. I believe, and I do not believe,” she
said with a shrug. “Who knows? The Scriptures tell of evil spirits
having power. Who knows how it may be? My sister, however, lived and
died persuaded that her only child was touched by a witch, though it was
not on St John’s eve. She had been getting her baby to sleep one day,
when a neighbor came and called her to the door for some reason. She
went out, leaving the door open and the baby in its cradle. When she
returned, there was an old woman bending over the cradle and talking to
the child—an ugly, dirty old creature, that she had never seen before.
My sister took fright at once, and called out to her to go away. 'I saw
the door open and heard the baby crying, and I came in to soothe it,’
the old woman said. My sister told her she had no right to come in, and
chased her away. On the threshold the woman turned and shook her finger.
'You will repent this,’ she said. In fact, the babe, which had been
healthy, and was just dropping peacefully asleep, began to moan and cry,
and nothing could pacify it. My sister examined and found that the
little devotion it wore had been taken away. From that day the child
pined. She got nurses for it, she tried everything possible, but nothing
helped it. Finally, she carried it to the church of St. Theodore, in the
Roman Forum, where all the mothers carry their sick babies. The priest
blessed it, but told her that it was too late: the child would die. And
it did die. She tried then one proof more. She took all its clothes that
it died in, and that it had on when the witch touched it, put them in a
grate, and kindled a fire under them. They burned as if there had been
gunpowder among them. That was a sure proof, they said. But for me,”
continued the story-teller, with another shrug, “I believe, and I don’t
believe. _Chi lo sa?_”
It is curious to find how this witch-idea is embodied in every nation,
and always with very nearly the same features: old, ugly, child-hating,
powerful for petty malice, but a slave to the most trivial spells,
repelling, disgusting—a fair representation of the utter despicableness
and feebleness of evil.
At the first soft fall of twilight the family of _Casa Ottant’Otto_
stepped into a carriage and drove out to the Lateran by the roundabout
way of the Roman Forum. From the Colosseum up to the church, all about
the church and palace, in a part of the piazza, and the ends of the
streets leading to it, every nook and door-way and every rod of ground
had its table or booth, some lighted by a soft olive-oil lamp, others
clear and bright with petroleum, others flaring with the red light of a
torch. Piles of cakes of every shape and size, wine in bottles, flasks,
and jars, cones of the delicious Roman lemons, that are so juicy and
fragrant, trinkets, scarfs, knick-knacks of various sorts, covered the
tables and counters. Here and there a more ambitious salesman, probably
a Jew, had erected a little shop. Everywhere were pinks and lavender.
Each table and counter held sprigs and bunches, and men, women, and
children went about with their arms full of it. A little crowd of these
noisy venders surrounded the carriage the moment it stopped, and the
ladies supplied themselves with lavender for their drawers, and bought
large bunches of red pinks, and each of them a St. John’s bouquet. This
bouquet consists of a little white flower surrounded by pinks, and
outside four sprigs of lavender. The lavender for drawers is ingeniously
done up. A bunch is gathered with long stems to the sweet gray seeds and
blue flowers, and a string is tied close under their little chins. The
stems are then turned back to make a cage for the cluster, and tied
again at the other end; and yet again turned back and tied a third time,
so that only glimpses can be had of the caged bloom; and all is
lavender.
“We should have come to first Vespers, if we wished to think of the
austere St. John,” the Signora said. “The scene is simply picturesque
and beautiful at this hour, and will be bacchanalian later. The world
doesn’t begin to come till twelve o’clock, and at that time it will be
almost impossible to move for the crowd, which does not disappear
entirely till daylight.”
They drove off toward Santa Croce, and, turning there, stayed awhile
under the soft dusk of the trees, looking back on the twinkling lights
and crowding figures, and talking a little. The fiery half-ring of the
three days’ moon touched the tip of a pine-tree in the west and kindled
it; the stars overhead seemed to be melting out of their orbits in a
glowing rain; the air was full of a sweet fragrance and delicately
fresh. Sounds of laughter and mingled voices reached them now and then.
But all—the wafts of air, the sounds, the radiating lights, the
motions—were so soft that the whole might be a great picture which they
half imagined to be alive.
The Signora leaned back in her seat and gave herself up to the scene,
mingling with it the ever-present thought: What should she do with this
man who sat opposite her? His face was turned to look back, so that she
saw the profile, a fine one. She felt very feminine and weak just
then—not at all like taking care of herself all her life long, being
both mistress and master of her house, and her own adviser and support.
The spirit of strength, of an enthusiastic liberty of effort and labor,
faded and fainted within her. They could not live in such a scene. She
wanted to be taken care of. All the insidious arguments of the sluggard
began to whisper themselves to her. Of what use was this constant toil
and strain, which was but a daily rolling up hill of a burden that every
night rolled down again? Of what use the study, the thought, the
self-denial? All had seemed pleasant; but, come to think of it, where
had been the repose? Had she ever looked at a flower without, after the
first glance, studying how she should present its beauties in words to
other eyes? Had she ever drunk a sunset with all its color down into her
own soul, and left its glory there, but speedily her pen must dip the
light of it up to shine on a page for others to see? Whither had fled
the long, tranquil sleep, the calm folding of the hands, the deep and
steady thought for thought’s sake? There was no one in the world, it
seemed to her, who thought so much of others as she did. She analyzed
her pains, her religious emotions, her very temptations, for them, and
studied her own breathing that she should be able to tell them how they
breathed. And what was the return? Bread, and not too much of that. She
had studied her art as the painter, the sculptor, and the musician
study, making a science of it, and not one in a hundred looked on it as
any more than an idle and facile play. She had felt her way, by a
natural gift and an acquired power, into the depths of souls, and had
led them out alive into the light; yet how many an ignorant critic and
shallow moralist had set up his wooden or card-paper model for her to
follow!
How odd she had not known before how tiresome it was! She had at times
felt tired, but to know that all was tiresome, and vanity of
vanities—that had but just broken on her. This soft and joyous scene,
usurping the hours of sleep, making the work of the day to follow an
impossible thing to be done, and finding its playground under the
stars—this was what had opened her eyes. A careless laugh had done it.
She looked at Mr. Vane and thought: “I hope he won’t ask me to-night,
for if he should I shall certainly promise to marry him; and I do not
like cutting Gordian knots with sudden resolutions. I would rather untie
this a little more leisurely,” she considered, still looking at him. “If
I want honors and favors, I could win more by giving good dinners than
by writing good books. A dinner is more powerful than an epic; for
anybody can take in a dinner, but everybody cannot take in an epic. If I
want friends and the reputation of being amiable, the good-natured
complacency of prosperous ease will go a great deal further than the
somewhat over-earnestness of a serious life.”
She snatched her eyes and her thoughts quickly away from the subjects
that occupied both, and began to talk; for Mr. Vane turned, as if aware
of being observed, and looked at her.
“I must have a little longer to think,” she said to herself, with a
fluttering heart. “It will never do to decide to-night.”
“If we are going to keep up our character of a sober and orderly
household, we must soon be on our way home,” she said. “The witches are
certainly abroad—I almost see them—and we have no spell to prevent their
getting into our carriage.”
Mr. Vane had been holding his breath for the last few moments. He knew,
without looking, what eyes were on him, and almost knew what thoughts
were passing in the Signora’s mind. He felt that his fate was in the
balance. The prize seemed to be within his grasp; for to hesitate, even,
seemed to give consent. At the first word he felt that hope grow dim.
Consent would have lingered in that enchanted scene, would have given
itself up to some ideal dream, forgetting the flight of time. She was
evidently resisting, if not refusing.
“Let us take one turn round by the wall and Santa Croce,” he said. “Then
we will go. I don’t think I shall ever have another drive just like
this, and I would like to prolong it a little.”
“Prolong it as much as you please!” the Signora exclaimed, with quick
compunction. “I only made a suggestion, which came from habit. If you
like to stay, I shall be pleased.”
His voice, a little quickened and a little deepened, had seemed to have
a touch of reproach in it, as though he should say: “Think, at least, a
little of me!” But his answer to her was quite friendly: “You were
right. We had better not stay long. One turn will be enough.”
They went on, the Signora fighting now two forces instead of one—for
pity for him was added to pity for herself. What a beautiful and noble
patience his life had shown, and with what a sweet dignity he had
covered that painful thought that he had never been first to anybody!
As they passed round near the wall, approaching Santa Croce, the trees
hid all the lights from them. The two daughters, one at either hand of
the father, leaned on his arm and sighed with delight; Marion, seated
beside the Signora, leaned forward to touch Bianca’s hand, unable in
that shadow to see her. The darkness touched their faces like a down, so
thick and moist was it, and so full of fragrance.
They came out before Santa Croce, and, turning, went back as they had
come. More than one of the company would have liked to propose walking
back along the avenue, but did not venture to do so. A few minutes
brought them to the piazza of St. John’s again, and into the midst of a
crowd of eager buyers and sellers. Here and there out of some dim corner
a face shone red in the flare of a half-shaded torch, small figures ran
and danced across the lights, black as _silhouettes_; the whole coloring
was Rembrandt.
Then home through the quiet streets, where occasionally they met a
couple or a party, all going toward St. John’s.
“It seems to me a kind of Santa Claus time, except that it is hot
weather,” Bianca said when they reached home. “I feel as though somebody
ought to come down the chimney to-night.”
“By the way,” the Signora exclaimed, “I have never introduced you to my
Santa Claus. How ungrateful I am! I am going to tell you my little
story; for I am almost sure that you four good people are as ignorant of
the genealogy of the Santa Claus of Christmas fame as I was when I came
to Rome. If you are wiser, then you can at least hear how I was
enlightened. When I had been in Rome but a little while, I made the
acquaintance of an elderly prelate, who was so kind as to do for me many
of those little services which a stranger needs, and was of the greatest
use to me in many ways. I seldom, almost never, asked anything of him,
but it was constantly happening that he offered some kindness at the
very moment it was needed. I never went to visit a city new to me but he
introduced me to some influential friend there, and I never heard of a
new old sight to see but he could tell me how to gain the best view of
it. His kindness was so pleasant and opportune that after a while,
without the least intention of being disrespectful however, I came to
call him in my own mind Santa Claus. His Christian name is Nicholas. One
day, while talking with me, he asked if I had any of the manna of St.
Nicholas of Bari. I replied that I did not even know what it was. He
looked at me in astonishment, and explained that it was a limpid
substance like water which had oozed from the bones of St. Nicholas the
Great, without ceasing, for more than fifteen hundred years, the saint
having been born somewhere late in the third century; that every morning
the sacristan gathers it with a sponge and preserves it in bottles; and
that the people of Bari and all that region have so great a faith in the
saint and his miraculous 'manna’ that they use it for every malady. He
ended by promising to send to his brother, an archbishop somewhere in
the south of Italy, to procure a bottle of this precious liquor for me.
In a few days he brought it. Here it is!” The Signora brought from a
little shrine that closed with a door in the wall, and displayed, a
bottle filled with what appeared to be the brightest and most limpid
water. “Monsignor showed me a similar bottle that he has had forty
years,” she continued, “and it was as pure and bright as this—perfectly
unchanged. He had opened it, now and then, to take out a few drops. Some
years ago he gave a bottle also to the Holy Father, who keeps it beside
his bed on a little shelf. Here is the picture of my saint.”
It was a quaint old print, copied, doubtless, from a picture in the
church of St. Nicholas, in Bari, and represented the sainted archbishop
standing on the shore, with the sea and ships behind him. At his right
knelt a youth on the sands; at his left three infants were rising out of
a tub, commemorative of two of his miracles.
“After having given me this relic of his great patron, Monsignor, full
of zeal for his honor and of pity for my ignorance, began to tell me
something of his life, and how knowing of an impoverished noble family,
driven to desperation by need, and almost deciding to sell the daughters
to a life of vice, since they had no money to marry them, this young
saint went slily by night, and dropped a bag of gold in at the window
sufficient for a _dot_ for the eldest; and, after a while, in the same
manner, provided for the others, the family rejoicing over their escape
and repenting of their evil resolution. When Monsignor had got so far
with his story, I broke out, 'Why, it is Santa Claus!’ And, sure enough,
it was. The great saint was no longer a stranger to me. I had known,
without knowing, him all my life, from the time when I had first read
the wonderful illustrated story-books of Christmas, and seen my mother
hang my stocking in the chimney-corner before taking me off to bed on
Christmas eve.”
The Signora was very glad to have this little story to tell by way of
making an inclined plane to the saying of good-night. Undercover of it
she escaped to her own room without being entrapped into a private
interview, which she almost suspected Mr. Vane of plotting.
Then they had a little expedition for the morning to see the making of
tapestry in the great hospice of St. Michael.
“If the weather and the time of day were not so hot,” the Signora said,
“we would go a little further on, to the scene of a miracle of Santa
Francesca Romana; but I don’t believe we shall be able to do so. A
little way from the hospital is the Porta Portese, and outside that is
the vineyard where that beloved saint and her companions worked one
January day from dawn till noon, without having anything to eat or
drink. They had forgotten to bring provisions; and Francesca, when she
saw her companions suffering from thirst, accused herself of having
neglected to provide for them. She was then, you know, a
mother-superior, and these were her oblates. Well, the youngest of them,
almost crying with thirst, begged to be allowed to go to a fountain out
on the public road. The saint told her to be patient, and, withdrawing
herself, began to pray: 'Lord Jesus, help us in our need; for I have
been thoughtless in neglecting to provide food for my sisters.’ 'She’d
much better take us home at once,' said the poor little nun to herself.
And then Francesca, rising from her knees, pointed to a tree around
which twined a vine loaded with large clusters of grapes—just as many
clusters as there were poor nuns to eat them. They had passed this very
tree again and again, and seen the vine dead and withered that very day.
That same Santa Francesca is one of the dearest saints in the calender,”
the Signora said. “Though, to be sure,” she added, “when we think over
their lives, each one seems to be the dearest.”
“My idea of saintliness is always associated with asceticism,” said
Isabel.
“If only the asceticism be not sour, as it never is with the saints,”
responded the Signora with a sigh. “About the most uncomfortable company
one can have is that of a person who, we cannot doubt, is virtuous in
many ways, but who looks upon one with an expression full of suspicion
and condemnation, without seeming aware that in so doing he has
committed a sin against charity which, according to St. Paul, renders
his other virtues nothing. To my mind, one of the first requisites of a
Christian character is to mind one’s own business.”
“Oh! I don’t mean asceticism that goes only far enough to stir up the
bile,” Isabel said, “but that which clears the heart, so that the light
of charity shines quite through it and brightens every object it looks
upon.”
They were already on their way to the asylum of St. Michael—that immense
establishment, which contains a little world within itself, where beauty
and charity dwell together; where the young find protection and
instruction, and the old a refuge, under the same roof; where music,
sculpture, painting, and kindred arts have made their home. Here the
poor, instead of being swept away like dead leaves from a garden, to
decay in obscure disgrace, slip, consoled and unashamed, into the grave,
like fallen leaves that die in peace between the embracing roots of the
green tree they once helped to adorn. The long, arched corridors were
fresh and cool, the brilliant day entering only in a tender light, or,
here and there, in some splash of gold that burned only the spot it fell
upon. Fountains murmured in the courts, and all the business of the
place moved with a subdued and leisurely action which made work seem a
pleasure. It was not toil, but occupation—that wise and healthy degree
of work which makes work possible for many years, instead of crowding
the force of a whole life into a few feverish days. There was not a face
which showed anxious and nervous hurry. All were calm and cheerful.
Our friends did not attempt to see anything more than the
tapestry-making and mending, the first in the men’s department, the last
done entirely by women and girls. The two immense halls devoted to these
works, with the ante-chambers, were completely hung with old tapestries,
making a softly and richly-colored picture-gallery of the whole place.
In the manufacturing hall upright frames held the great squares of the
warp, with the design drawn or stamped carefully on the
closely-stretched threads. Behind these sat the weaver, working in the
figures with long spools of colored wools, pressing down closely each
stitch with a little instrument he held in the left hand. A score or
more of these bobbins hung at the back of the tapestry, each to be
caught up and woven in in its turn. Across the lower part of the carpet
already a yard was splendidly woven of solid and brilliant color. In
another part of the hall hung a large picture for a future weaving—a
balcony with a vine and figures—and on a table under it were arranged
the myriad selected shades and colors that composed it. Here all in the
work was brightly colored; but when they went to the other part of the
building, where the women were occupied in restoring, it was like
passing from dazzling midsummer to a late October day. The very light
and atmosphere of the place seemed different. Stretched on large frames
laid out like country quilting-frames were dim old tapestries with
figures of gods and goddesses, of mythical heroes and heroines, or of
historical persons and events, the fabrics all more or less ragged, but
inestimably precious. Girls were grouped around these, mending, directed
by an artist. Hanging on the walls were other tapestries that had been
repaired, and so perfectly that it was impossible to distinguish what
part had been restored without looking at the wrong side of the work.
Lying in bunches and snarls on the work, or hanging in long rows of
varied hues on the wall, were skeins of wool, of every shade and color,
dim, dark, soft, or pallid, like colors seen by night, by the stars, or
by the moon, or colors guessed at by eyes half-blind or by eyes that are
dying. There was a suggestion of tragedy in those old new colors, as in
sad or blighted faces of children. And how much more of interest and
tragedy in the old tapestries for which they had lost all their
brightness! Nothing else is so interwoven with romantic possibilities as
old tapestry. Luxury, which may have been regal, clings to it, but it is
the luxury of olden times, when the beggar touched the prince. Mystery
and terror are its companions; for who knows who or what may sometimes
have been hidden behind that splendid curtain? Lifting its fold on some
day of an age gone by, what white, cold face might have been found there
between it and the wall, what sliding figure of a hiding spy, what
twinkle of a dagger-point in the dusky corner! And then what pageants
does it not suggest of the times when life was a picture!
“It really takes one out of the nineteenth century,” Mr. Vane said.
“The weaving of this tapestry,” the Signora told her friends, “was first
taught here by a monk—I have forgotten in the time of what pope. This
monk was a backslider and ran away from his convent; after being absent
ten years he repented, and came back to throw himself at the feet of the
Holy Father. 'Give me any penance, Holy Father,’ he said, 'and I will do
it gladly.’ The pope, rejoiced to receive this prodigal, asked him where
and how he had passed the ten years of his absence, and was told that
they had been spent in the tapestry-works of Coblentz, where he had
learned all the art of tapestry-making. 'Go, then, to St. Michael’s,’
said the pope, 'and teach them to make tapestry. That shall be your
penance.’ And so it was done; and that is the origin of the work in
Rome. The story was told me by a prelate who was formerly director of
St. Michael’s.”
It was too near noon when the inspection was over for them to go to
Santa Francesca’s vineyard. They could only hide themselves in the large
covered carriage, and drive slowly home through the almost silent
streets. They sighed with contentment when they reached the doorway,
where, through the half-open valves, the floor showed freshly sprinkled
and all the place cool and softly lighted.
Isabel glanced back into the street. A sick beggar, who was at his post
on a doorstep of the opposite convent so constantly that one might well
believe he had no other home, leaned back and seemed to sleep, his
pallid face whiter than the white stone it lay against. A poor man slept
in the shadow of the garden wall above, lying flat on his face on the
pavement. Further up, a woman, with two little children clinging to her,
sat on the ground in the shadow, and ate her dinner of a piece of bread.
“It seems to me,” the girl said thoughtfully, as she followed the others
up-stairs, “that there should be a perpetual thanksgiving society which
every one who has a home or a roof to cover them should join.”
The Signora touched Isabel’s arm affectionately and smiled in her
pretty, sober face. She found this girl changing, or, rather, developing
into something nobler and more serious than she had expected.
“There is a Perpetual Thanksgiving Society in Rome, my dear,” she said.
“I am so glad you have had the thought without having heard of it. It is
one of the most beautiful societies in the world. It has its meetings
the third Thursday of every month, at the Caravita, a little church that
used to belong to the Jesuits. There is an instruction, Benediction of
the Blessed Sacrament, and afterward the _Magnificat_ is sung. The
special objects of the association are to thank God constantly for the
good we receive through the Blessed Sacrament of the altar, the Sacred
Heart, and by the intercession of the Virgin Mary; and the special
festas of the society are Epiphany, Pentecost, Corpus Domini, Sacred
Heart, Annunciation, Visitation, Seven Dolors of the Blessed Virgin, St.
John the Evangelist, St. Gertrude, St. Felix de Cantalice, and Our Lady
of Grace. The loveliest thing of all is the practice enjoined on the
members of making constantly the aspiration, 'Thanks be to God.’ I wish
this society were in every town in the world. We beg, we are always
begging, and the showers are always coming down. How beautiful is the
idea of a society which asks nothing, but sends up a perpetual _Deo
gratias_, as the earth sends up mists in return for the rain!”
“I shall join that society at once,” Isabel said with decision.
The Signora laughed. “You had better take off your bonnet and have some
dinner now,” she said.
“Your society pleases me very much,” Mr. Vane remarked. “But the most
perfect act of thanksgiving I know is that in the _Gloria_: 'We give
thee thanks for thy great glory.’”
There was a little moonlight reception and tea-party that evening out on
the _loggia_. Clive Bailey came to take leave before going away for a
few weeks into the country. Mr. Coleman also had been unexpectedly
called to England on business, and was so afflicted about going that the
Signora was vexed.
“I cannot bear to have a man about who cannot get along without me,” she
said privately to Isabel, “especially when I can get along perfectly
well without him. When a man falls into that dependent and moony state,
he loses all his character and becomes despicable. It disgusts me the
more, besides, because it is usually the strong-willed, driving women
who have such masculine appendages. I do hope I’m not getting into that
way. For pity’s sake, tell me if I show signs of it. I have seen
ladies—I recollect at this moment a lady, clever, pretty, prompt, and
circumscribed in character, who makes all her familiar gentlemen
acquaintances either hate her or serve her like dogs. I’ve seen her take
a man whom I thought a very respectable sort of person, with a mind of
his own, and, by dint of smiling and scolding, rewarding him promptly
when he was good, and punishing him promptly when he didn’t obey, end by
making a perfect ninny of him. He couldn’t brush his boots or tie his
cravat except just as she directed him; if she was vexed with a person,
he didn’t dare be civil to them; if she was reconciled to the same, he
immediately beamed upon them with the most unconscious and imbecile
servility. Yet the two were not lovers, and never dreamed of being so, I
presume, and both of them would have been astonished, or would have
pretended to be astonished and indignant, if one had hinted that his
firmness had been nothing but starch, and she had washed that out of
him. I wouldn’t be such a woman for the world. I wouldn’t be a driving,
positive woman for anything. I wouldn’t be a woman persistent in small
things for my eyes. Mr. Coleman makes me feel as if I were growing so.”
“Nonsense!” Isabel laughed. “It isn’t in you to be so. Mr. Coleman needs
change of scene, that is all. He has been circling round you so long
that he has got dizzy.”
“Well, I’m glad he’s going off at a tangent,” the Signora replied, only
half-reassured. “He certainly would provoke me dreadfully, if he were to
go on in this way under my eyes. Don’t let him come near me this
evening, and don’t give him a chance to say good-by to me. Take him
quite off my hands—that’s a dear girl.”
Isabel promised, and kept her promise so well as to make of the poor
bewildered gentleman as nearly an enemy as he was capable of being to
any one. He had another source of disquiet, too, and that was the
exceeding politeness and cordiality with which the Signora treated the
very cruel relative who had come to take him away, and whom he had
brought up with him that evening in the vain hope that she would help
him to escape. On the contrary, she merely sealed the compact.
“You are quite right, sir,” she said. “These affairs of property can so
much better be attended to in person than by proxy.”
“Besides,” replied the cousin, “a man who has property in the country
has really some duties there. He should spend a little of his money for
the benefit of the state, his neighbors, and the church.”
He privately despised this city of Rome, which he now visited for the
first time. Its dinginess, its dirt, and its religion disgusted him.
“Church!” echoed the Signora with calm inquiry. “I was not aware that
Mr. Coleman belonged to any church.”
“He has certainly deteriorated very much since he left England,” was the
rather sharp response, “but our family are all Catholic.”
“Indeed!” she exclaimed, in real surprise. “I have always understood
from Mr. Coleman that his family belonged to the English Episcopal
Church.”
“We claim that to be the Catholic Church, madam,” the gentleman
responded proudly. “Or, rather, we claim the title for that older branch
of it which now restores the ceremonies and beliefs it laid aside for a
while.”
“Oh! the family are Ritualists,” said the Signora.
The gentleman drew himself up. “The term does not describe us,” he said.
“We have a ritual, of course; but that is not all. I consider the title
trivial and disrespectful.”
“I did not intend the least disrespect in the world,” the Signora made
haste to say. “I merely repeat the name I have heard. I have always
considered Ritualism very—refined—and”—she seemed to be laboriously
seeking some words of suitable praise—“and—delicate. It has many
beauties—and—in short, is, it seems to me, an—eminently—lady-like
religion.”
Mr. Vane took pity on the Englishman, who looked confounded, as if not
knowing whether to believe his ears, which had heard, or his eyes, which
beheld, the perfectly simple and courteous expression of his
entertainer. Mr. Vane, without seeming to have heard a word, introduced
the subject of property, on which men can always talk unflaggingly for
any length of time.
The Signora gave her attention to an enthusiastic Catholic lady, who was
making a pilgrimage of her visit to Italy. This lady was one of those
charming Christians who sometimes puzzle us a little. Her whole life was
given up to what may be called religious pursuits. She attended
functions unceasingly, and on every day was to be found in the church
dedicated to the saint whose day it was. She visited relics, shrines,
and scenes of religious events, and she did all with an enthusiasm which
expressed itself in the most gushing manner. In short, she luxuriated in
religion. She knew all about the lives of the saints, and spoke of them
with the ease and familiarity of an intimate friend. One could perceive
by her conversation that she believed them to be particularly watchful
over her, and rather more ready to do her favors than to attend to the
wishes of most others. She exhorted people a little now and then,
gently, with the air of one who knows. The whole manner of the woman, in
things religious, was that of a favorite daughter in her own father’s
house, to which the world at large was welcomed with a smiling charity
and hospitality. But that others were there also in their own father’s
house, and equally beloved by him, did not seem to occur to her. The
clergy and all religious she admitted and gave precedence to, seeking
and admiring them almost as she did the saints. But, after them, she
seemed to walk alone; or rather, she entered with them, and others
waited a permission. People in the laity, like herself, were, in some
mysterious manner, assumed to be unlike her. The silence of deep
religious feeling in others she treated as indifference, and sometimes
strove, with seeming good intention, to stir up the souls of those
already more deeply moved than herself. She abounded in little
devotions, little pictures, little lamps and candles, a multiplicity of
pious knick-knacks, enough to bewilder a person of simpler tastes. She
wore every scapular, and all the medals she could get, and her girdle
was laden with rosaries. By most people she was called a very pious
woman; by many she was believed to be a saintly woman. She certainly was
a fairly good woman and a nice lady of religious tastes. But, looked at
by clear eyes, she was a little puzzling, like some others of her kind.
One missed there a central virtue, the sweet humility that makes little
of its own goodness, and the charity which rejoices to see others
beloved and preferred. With such assumption, one would have expected
these virtues. Looking so, moreover, one suspected the existence of a
deep and pernicious pride. How did she receive a word of exhortation
from an equal? Not as she expected her own exhortations to be received,
certainly, but with an expression of astonishment, mortification, and
even displeasure. When did she sacrifice herself for others, and say
nothing about it? when did she do an act of charity, and conceal that
she had done it? when did she hesitate to obtain for herself an
advantage because it was to be at the cost of another, unless that other
were a person in orders or in religion?
The Signora looked at this lady, and liked her, and admired her in many
ways, but she could not help wishing that there were a little less
self-complacency in spiritual matters, and a little more willingness to
sacrifice her own wishes and aims at times. The thought would intrude
itself into her mind that it was less a real, working Christian that she
beheld than a religious sybarite. She could not say of her, as a famous
author has said of some characters rather similar, that “their celestial
intimacies did not seem to have improved their earthly manners, and
their high motives were not needed to account for their conduct”; but
she was frequently pained to perceive a striking discrepancy between the
profession and the practice.
“I have been to-day for the first time to see Santa Maria degli Angeli,”
the lady said, in the gay and pleasant way habitual to her. “There seems
to be no one left there but a few old, old men. They were in choir when
I went to the church, but I should never have suspected it. I asked the
sacristan if there would be a Mass soon. 'After _coro_,’ he said. I
asked when _coro_ would be, and he replied, looking at me with some
surprise, that it was going on then. I had heard a sound like a little
company of bumble-bees among the clover, but that it had anything in
common with the great, ringing chorus of St. Peter’s or the other great
churches I never dreamed. By and by choir and Mass were over, and they
all came out. Such a group of dear old Rip Van Winkles! They were all
tall, had long hair and long beards of white, or streaked black and
white; they drooped in walking, and their black and white robes, not
very fresh, gave me a strange impression of antiquity and decay. It must
have been the color and oldness of their clothes that made me think of
Rip Van Winkle. I was quite ashamed of the thought. More than one head
among them would have answered for a St. Jerome. That dear St. Jerome!”
she added, drooping into pensiveness, as if, in uttering the name, she
had been rapt away.
She recovered herself after an instant, and came back smilingly to the
present. “You have no idea what a devotion I have for St. Jerome,” she
said.
“I can quite understand it,” the Signora replied. “His character is one
to inspire a great admiration and reverence. Here in Rome one becomes
more familiar, in a certain way, with the saints. One is so much nearer
their earthly lives, their relics and their _festas_ abound so, and one
comes so constantly upon places which they have inhabited or visited,
that one has a sense of shame and humiliation at coming no nearer their
virtues.”
The lady smiled. “I had not thought of that,” she said. “I approach the
saints with all confidence and simplicity.”
“That is a very pleasant feeling,” the Signora said calmly, “and, to an
extent, may be a virtue. But do you not think that we should have also a
feeling of awe in view of that splendid faith of theirs, and of that
sublime constancy and ardent charity, which led them to face torments
and death without flinching, while our lives seem but a series of
compromises, and dispensations from everything that does not agree with
our delicate and pampered natures? It seems to me that, if we remember
the difference between our lives and theirs, we shall almost expect that
when we approach their shrines they will perform one miracle more, and
speak an audible reproof to us.”
The lady looked disconcerted and a little displeased. But, some one
interrupting them, the subject was dropped.
After they were gone Mr. Vane displayed a letter he had received that
day from the prior of Monte Cassino, inviting him and his family to
visit their monastery. This clergyman had been on very friendly terms
with Mr. Vane in America, where he had spent a good many years, and now,
hearing of his conversion, was anxious to renew a friendship which would
have a charm it had not before possessed, and to welcome to a
brotherhood of faith one who had always been kin to him by a community
of generous nature.
“He writes that we can stay a few days on the mountain and see
everything there at our leisure,” Mr. Vane said. “There is a house
outside the gate where you ladies can stop, and I can have a bed inside.
What do you say to it?”
The invitation was accepted by acclamation. Monte Cassino was one of the
places to see in Italy—a gem of nature, religion, and art. Before
sleeping that night their plans were made. They would put off the visit
a little, hoping for cooler days, as the journey was one of five or six
hours. Meantime they had a little trip to Genzano in view, to see the
_festa_ of the Santissimo Salvatore. And close upon them was Santa Maria
delle Neve.
To Be Continued.
“MAY-FLOWERS.”
Dear Mother, on our country’s breast—
Our country that is thine—
Our poets place as scutcheon flower
Small argent stars that shine
With pallid light when scarcely wake
The leaf-buds from their sleep,
When, nursing summer’s waiting bloom,
The storm-stained leaves lie deep.
Fair, little stars that faintly gleam
Like planets sunset-dimmed,
The dearer for their glory scant
On barren heavens limned.
Pale May-flowers, whose stainless cheek
Seems born of winter snow—
One rosy drop of living blood
Flushing the veins below.
Whose faint-breathed perfume seems to rise
Like prayer of anchorite,
The heart that pours its incense forth
Low hidden from our sight;
Whose sweetness seems like nimbus pale
Crowning some saintly head,
The light of self-forgotten life
In holy odor shed.
Kind Mother, see, these little flowers
Our land is given to wear,
When still the forest arches stand
Of leafy tracery bare;
When still the heavens’ softened blue
Grows dim with wind-swept snow,
And lonely-seeming Phœbe chants
Disconsolate and low.
This precious bloom bears thy dear name—
Though given unaware—
And in its gentle life we trace
The gleam of thine more fair.
In France’s thoughtful land they give
Bright flowers to be thine eyes,
Within their blue forget-me-nots
Thy glance’s calmness lies.
Upon our matin blossom rests
No depth of peaceful blue,
Yet breaks the rosy dawn of love
Its cheek’s pure whiteness through.
Amid the darkened leaves it lies
In blest humility,
A lowly handmaid of the Lord,
Unstained of earth, like thee—
A hidden life e’er pouring forth
An offering pure of prayer;
The sweet unconsciousness of grace
Soft’ning the rude, bleak air.
The blood-stained heart the sword hath pierced
The spotless breast within,
The quiet shining on a world
Bitter and drear with sin.
A crown of stars that perfects all
With heaven-won aureole—
Let France’s blossom claim thine eyes,
Claim ours thy spotless soul;
Whose gracious blessing ever rest
On this broad land of ours,
That not in vain her poets’ shield
Be quartered with May-flowers.
THE LEPERS OF TRACADIE.[28]
Footnote 28:
This article is condensed from one which appeared in the _Revue
Canadienne_, by M. de Bellefeuille.
“Ah! little think the gay, licentious crowd,
Whom pleasure, power, and affluence surround—
Ah! little think they, while they dance along,
How many pine! how many drink the cup
Of baleful grief! how many shake
With all the fiercer tortures of the mind!”
—THOMSON’S _Seasons_.
“In a rage, I returned to my dwelling-place, crying aloud: 'Woe unto
thee, leper! Woe unto thee!' And as if the whole world united
against me, I heard the echo through the ruins of the Château de
Bramafan repeat distinctly: 'Woe unto thee!' I stood motionless with
horror on the threshold of the tower, listening to the faint tones
again and again repeated from the overhanging mountains: 'Woe unto
thee!'”
—XAVIER DE MAISTRE.
On the low and miry land forming the borders of the county of Gloucester
in New Brunswick, fifty miles from Miramichi and twenty-five south of
Caraquet, between a narrow river and the waters of the Gulf of St.
Lawrence, stands a little village. The situation it occupies is dreary
and sad to a degree. On one side moans the gray sea, on whose dull and
turbid waters rarely is seen a sail. On the other stretches a long, low
line of coast, dotted at intervals by the huts of the fishermen. The
whole landscape is painfully monotonous, desolate, and mournful. The
cottages are mean in the extreme, while the simple church is without
architectural merit. Afar off frowns forbiddingly a large building shut
in by high walls. In this melancholy spot the passing traveller says to
himself: “Is this place accursed alike by God and man?”
Accursed, alas! it has indeed been by despairing lips and hearts; for
the building is the lazaretto of Tracadie. Before the year 1798 no
register was kept of baptisms, marriages, or burials in the parish.
Since that date, however, and up to 1842, Tracadie was under the care of
the _curés_ of Caraquet, a neighboring parish.
On the 24th of October, 1842, arrived the first resident priest, M.
François Xavier Stanislas Lafrance, who remained there until January,
1852. M. Lafrance has since died. At Tracadie he was succeeded by the
present _curé_, M. l’Abbé Ferdinand Gauvreau,[29] with whose name the
history of these poor lepers must always be interwoven.
Footnote 29:
The author writes: From this excellent and faithful priest I have
obtained the greater part of my information on this subject. In
addition, M. Gauvreau has allowed me free use of his notes and
documents.
Probably the most terrible chastisement inflicted on a guilty people is
that known as leprosy. In ancient times it was only too well known, for
it was then more frequent than in our day. It made such fearful ravages
in certain parts of the world that its very name was whispered in
accents of horror and dread.
From time immemorial has this scourge been looked upon as utterly
distinct from all other diseases; more virulent in its effects; more
insidious in its approaches, and above all by reason of the frightful
manner in which it distorts and disfigures its victims.
Leprosy has probably been known from the creation of the world. Nothing
in history leads us to reject this idea, and, indeed, many interpreters
who have exercised their talent on certain obscure passages of Holy Writ
have found no better way of defining the terrible sign with which God
marked the fratricide Cain than by supposing it to be leprosy. The alarm
that has always been felt in regard to this most loathsome disease
arises not alone from its hideous results, but also from the conviction
that has always existed as to the absolute hopelessness of cure.
Before the time of Moses leprosy was well known. The first mention made
of it in Holy Writ is in the fourth chapter of Exodus. God, having
chosen Moses to deliver the Hebrews from the tyranny of the Egyptians,
orders him to present himself before his afflicted people and to
announce himself to them as their deliverer. Moses objected, saying:
“They will not believe me, nor hearken unto my voice; for they will say,
The Lord hath not appeared unto thee!” Then the Lord, to convince Moses
of his divine mission, said unto him, “Put now thine hand into thy
bosom,” and he put his hand into his bosom; and when he took it out,
behold his hand full of leprosy, white as snow—“_instar nevis_.”
Here, then, was leprosy easy to recognize, since it had the whiteness of
snow. Let us not forget this peculiar feature, for we shall see it again
later.
From this incident we see clearly that the disease was by no means
unknown to Moses, because on seeing his hand he said: “_Leprosam instar
nevis._” Therefore we have a right to believe that the disease existed
before Moses. To the support of this opinion Dom Calmet, in his
_Biblical Dictionary_, cites Manetho the Egyptian, Lysimarchus, Appian,
Tacitus, and Justin, who have advanced the idea that the Jews went out
from Egypt on account of the leprosy. Each one of these historians
narrates the events in his own fashion, but all agree that the Hebrews
who left Egypt were attacked by leprosy.
Not only does leprosy fasten on mankind, but it clings to clothing and
to the stone walls of houses. It is to be presumed, however, that the
leprosy brought by the Israelites out of Egypt was not of this malignant
type; for Moses, by the order of God, takes pains to mention another and
more virulent kind known in the land of Chanaan, the promised land of
the Israelites.
In Leviticus, chapter xiii., we find the following: “If there be a spot,
greenish or reddish, in the garment, of wool or of skin, the garment
must be shown to the priest; and the priest shall look on the plague,
and shut it up for seven days; and if at the end of the time the spots
have spread, the priest will burn the garment, for it is a fretting
leprosy. If the priest find, however, that the spots have not spread, he
shall order the garment to be washed; and, behold, if the plague have
not changed his color, and be not spread, it is unclean: thou shalt burn
it in the fire.”
As to the suspected taint of leprosy in their houses, let us see their
method of proceeding: “When you be come into the land of Chanaan, if you
think there be leprosy in the house, he that owneth the house shall go
to the priest, who shall order the house to be emptied. If the priest
finds in the walls hollow streaks, greenish or reddish, he shall shut
the house for seven days. The priest shall come again the seventh day,
and shall look; and if the plague be spread, the stones shall be taken
away, and cast into an unclean place without the city. Then the rest of
the house shall be scraped within and without, and they shall pour the
dust without the city, and they shall take other stones and put them in
the place of these, and other mortar to plaster the house.
“And if the plague come again, and break out in the house, it is a
fretting leprosy, and the house is unclean and shall be destroyed.”
Thus it is seen that the leprosy known to the ancients—this lamentable
scourge, “this eldest daughter of death”—attacked in its fury not man
alone, but his clothing and the very walls of his house. The primary
cause of an evil so malignant and so wide-spread must for ever remain a
mystery. The learned Dom Calmet, as commentator of the Bible rather than
as a physician, offers a theory in his notes on Leviticus. He maintains
that the disease is caused by a multitude of minute worms. These
parasites glide between skin and flesh, gnawing the epidermis and the
cuticle, and then the nerves, producing, in short, all the symptoms that
are remarked in the beginning, the progress, and the end of leprosy. Dom
Calmet concludes by saying that “venereal diseases are but forms of
leprosy which were only too well known to the ancients.” In this century
leprosy still exists in some portions of Italy and in Norway to a very
considerable extent, according to the reports of Drs. Danielson and
Boëk. It is still to be met with in Turkey in the village of
Looschori—the ancient Mytilene of the Ægean Sea—in the Indian
Archipelago, on the coast of Africa, and in the West Indies. I myself
have seen it in Jerusalem and at Naplouse, ancient Samaria; at Damascus
also, where there is a lazaretto very poorly supported by public
charity. To Mr. Charles A. Dana, one of the editors of the _New American
Cyclopædia_, the _maladie de Tracadie_ is not unknown; for he says that
leprosy exists in Canada and in other portions of America.
But to return to the Scriptures: Moses is not the only one of the
inspired writers who speaks of leprosy, and more than once our blessed
Lord, on his journeys through Judea, exercised his charity and showed
his goodness by curing lepers who threw themselves at his feet,
entreating mercy. Job was struck by the hand of God with this scourge,
and has described it with marvellous beauty and pathos. He was forsaken
by his wife and his friends in his humiliation and suffering; they
shrank from him, saying that he must have committed some fearful crime
to have drawn upon himself so heavy a chastisement. A similar horror of
this disease existed among all nations. In Pérsia no citizen infected by
it could enter a village or have any intercourse with his
fellow-creatures, while a stranger was driven pitilessly forth into the
desert (Herod., _Clio_).
Æschines, giving an account of his sea voyage, states that, the ship
putting into Delos, they found the inhabitants suffering from leprosy,
and the travellers hurried away in fear and trembling, lest they
themselves should fall victims.
In Egypt Pliny[30] says that when this evil attacked kings, it was most
unfortunate for their people; for to cure them baths of warm human blood
were believed to be efficacious.
Footnote 30:
_Hist. Nat._, l. xxvi. c. i. proem.
In later days we find that lepers have been the victims of most unjust
and cruel laws among almost all nations. Thus, among the Lombards, in
643, one law ordered not only that lepers should be confined to isolated
localities, but declared them also civilly dead, deprived them of their
property, and confided them to the charity of the public. Several
provinces in France adopted this law with some qualifications. In
certain localities even the posterity of lepers were excluded—as at
Calais—from all rights of citizenship, and in 757 an ordinance of Pepin
le Bref permitted divorce between a healthy wife and leprous husband, or
a healthy husband and leprous wife. Charlemagne augmented the severity
of laws already so hard. He ordered lepers to live apart, permitted them
no social intercourse whatever, and finally, as their crowning misery,
these unfortunates saw themselves thrust on one side by the church
itself from communion with the faithful.
At the time of the separation of the lepers from family, home, and
friends, the church pronounced over them the prayers for the dead.
Masses were said for the repose of their souls, and, to complete the
mournful illusion, a handful of earth was thrown upon their bodies. They
were forbidden to enter any church or any place where food was prepared,
nor could they dip their hands in a running stream, nor accept food or
anything handed them, save with a fork or the end of a stick. They were
compelled, moreover, to wear a particular costume that could be seen and
recognized from afar off, and, under threats of severe penalties for
disobedience, were ordered to ring a little bell to announce their
coming. More recently, in France, lepers herded together, in secluded
places, which were called _léproseries_. In the year 1244 there were
throughout all Christendom 19,000 of these léproseries, and in France
alone 2,000.
There these poor wretched creatures passed their desolate lives,
separated from the outside world, without occupation or interest, save
that of watching the slow but sure progress of their companions toward
the inevitable and horrible death that was impending.
In the eleventh, twelfth, and thirteenth centuries, says Mgr. Gaume,
leprosy extended its ravages over a large part of the world. The
pestilence attacked suddenly all parts of the body at once, drying it
up, as it were; and, like the plague, leprosy was unquestionably most
contagious. To receive the infection it was but necessary to touch the
clothes or the furniture, or even to breathe the tainted air;
consequently, every one fled in dismay at the sight of a leper. They
were driven from the vicinity of towns, and they were seen from afar
wandering over the fields and hillsides like living corpses, while at a
distance they were compelled to signal their approach by a rattle or
bell. Abandoned by the whole world, and a prey to horrible sufferings,
they called on death to deliver them.
The King of France, anxious to protect his subjects from exposure to
this disease, formed a complete code of laws for lepers. “Every person,”
said M. Deseimeris in his _Medical Dictionary_, “who is suspected of
leprosy must submit to a thorough examination by a surgeon. The
suspicion confirmed, a magistrate takes possession of the individual to
dispose of him according to law. If he be a stranger, he must be sent at
once to the place of his birth, bestowing first upon him, however, the
poor gifts of a hat, a gray mantle, a beggar’s wallet, and a small keg.
The poor creature, on arriving at his native village, must carefully
avoid all contact with his fellow-creatures.” Even the church rejects
him. Each town or village was compelled to build for his reception a
small wooden house on four piles, and, after the death of its inmate,
the house, with all that was in it, was consigned to the flames.
As the number of lepers was constantly increasing, the erection of so
many of these small tenements became a source of great expense. It was
therefore finally decided to unite them under one roof, and give them
the name of a léproserie. In this way their support became less onerous,
while their seclusion was far greater, and their diet and medical
treatment was easier of regulation.
Louis VIII. published in 1226 a code of special laws for the government
of léproseries. These laws were intolerably severe. A leper once
incarcerated within the walls of a lazaretto incurred the penalty of
death if he passed over the threshold again; scaffolds were erected
where they could be seen from the hospital, thus keeping this fact ever
in the remembrance and before the eyes of the miserable inmates.
I have recounted these details to demonstrate the utter horror with
which leprosy was regarded. It must not be supposed that only the
ignorant and superstitious were overwhelmed by foolish dread, or that it
was an idle prejudice, a relic of barbarism; for in the nineteenth
century we witness the same horror, and here on our own shores encounter
the same rigorous legislation. We should also find the lepers as uncared
for, as shunned and neglected, as they were of old, were it not for the
Catholic Church, which, with its customary zeal in all labors of charity
and mercy, aroused in the hearts of a humble priest and a few weak nuns
the wish and determination to consecrate their lives to the service of
this most miserable class of their fellow-creatures.
The first settlements on the Miramichi River were made after the treaty
of Utrecht in 1718 by the subjects of France—Basques, Bretons, and
Normans. Under the administration of Cardinal Fleury stringent measures
were taken to encourage and protect these colonies. After a time, when
their prosperity seemed secure, a certain Pierre Beauhair was sent from
France as intendant to rule and arrange matters for the French
government. He erected a small villa on a point of land that since his
death bears his name, at the mouth of the northwestern branch of the
Miramichi River. The island opposite l’Ile Beauhair was strongly
defended, and tradition states that the intendant built within the walls
of the fort a foundry for cannon, and other buildings for the
manufacture of munitions of war.
During the summer of 1757 the colony on the Miramichi suffered much from
the war between France and England, which sadly interrupted their
traffic in fish and furs. Consequently, the following winter was one of
great suffering, and many of the colonists died of hunger. Two transport
ships, laden with provision and supplies of all kinds, were sent out by
the French government in 1758, but both vessels were captured by the
English fleet then assisting at the siege of Louisburg.
While these colonies were enduring suspense and starvation a French
vessel, called the _Indienne_, from Morlaix, was wrecked at the mouth of
the Miramichi near the “Baie des Vents”—a name now corrupted into “Baie
du Vin.” Tradition states that this ship, before coming to America, had
traded in the Levant, and that a large number of bales of old clothes
had been taken on board at Smyrna. The clothes were strewn upon the
beach after the vessel went to pieces, were seized by the inhabitants,
dried, and afterwards worn. However this may be, it is certain that from
that date arose a most terrible pestilence among the Canadians, who were
already decimated by famine. The first victim of this malady was M. de
Beauhair, and he, with eight hundred others, it is said, were buried at
Point Beauhair. The survivors abandoned Miramichi and fled, some to
l’Ile Saint-Jean—now Prince Edward’s Island—and the greater number
settled along the western coast of the Gulf of St. Lawrence, where they
formed scattered hamlets under the names of Niguaweck, Tracadie, and
Pokemouche, combined in one parish—that of Caraquet.
For eighty years, although it was known that isolated instances of
leprosy existed in the different colonies, they attracted little or no
public attention up to 1817, when a woman named Ursule Laudry died of
the disease.
An account written by one of the nuns of l’Hôtel Dieu attributes a
somewhat different origin to this scourge. This good sister writes that
the disease was carried to New Brunswick in 1758 by a ship from the
Levant; the vessel having made the port late in the autumn, the crew
were paid off and dispersed, many seeking a temporary home in Caraquet.
Unfortunately, this crew was afflicted by a malady that was unsuspected
by any one. The colonists were kind to the sailors; the women washed
their clothes and in this way contracted the disease, which was
transmitted from one to another and from father to son, and in time
acquired its peculiar features. Hamilton Gordon, the Lieutenant-Governor
of New Brunswick in 1862, has assigned a similar origin to the malady in
an interesting pamphlet entitled _Wilderness Journeys in New Brunswick
in 1862-3_.
“A vague and uncertain tradition exists,” he says, “that somewhere
about a hundred years ago a French vessel was wrecked on the coast
of Gloucester or Northumberland, and that among the crew were some
sailors from Marseilles, who in the Levant had contracted the
hideous leprosy of the East, the veritable elephantiasis Græcorum;
however this may be, it is beyond all question that for many years a
part of the French population of these two counties has been sorely
afflicted by this mysterious disease, or by one that closely
resembles it, and which may be, indeed, the form of leprosy so well
known on the coast of Norway.”
“It is difficult,” says in his turn M. Gauvreau, _curé_ of Tracadie
and chaplain of the lazaretto, in a letter published in the _Journal
de Montreal_, November 30, 1859—“it is difficult to persuade one’s
self that this malady could be the spontaneous generation of the
locality where it now exists. The geographical position of Tracadie
is on the sea-coast, with the fresh currents of a river close at
hand, the waters of which are salt for eight or nine miles above the
mouth. The soil in some portions is sandy, in others clayey; in the
vicinity are no marshes, no stagnant water, consequently no
injurious malaria. These facts seem to justify the opinion which I
have long held, and which as yet I see no reason to change, that the
poisonous virus was not the growth of this spot, but was brought
here by some traveller.”
These traditions are, in the main, probably correct as to the origin of
the scourge in this Canadian village. The inhabitants of other villages
than Tracadie subsist almost entirely on fish, are equally poor, equally
ill-fed and insufficiently clothed, living in the same damp and foggy
atmosphere; but it is only in Tracadie or its vicinity that a leper is
to be seen. The inhabitants of Labrador and Newfoundland eat fish almost
exclusively, and live amid similar climatic conditions, paying no more
enlightened attention to hygienic laws, and yet the “maladie de
Tracadie” does not attack or decimate them.
From the date of the introduction of this disease into the village it
increased slowly but steadily until 1817, when certain precautions began
to be taken; but not until 1844 did the authorities try any active
precautions. In that year a medical board was organized, who made a
report of their investigations to the government, and later in the same
year an act of the Provincial Legislature was passed, renewed and
amended in 1850. It authorized the lieutenant-governor to establish a
health committee. This committee recommended the erection of a lazaretto
on l’Ile de Sheldrake, an isolated spot in the middle of the Miramichi
River eighteen miles above Chatham. “Whoever was found to be
unquestionably tainted by the disease,” says the article, “must be torn
from his family, using force if needful. The husband must be taken from
his wife, the mother from her children, the child from its parents,
whenever the first symptom of leprosy declares itself. An eternal
farewell to all they hold most dear must be said, and the poor creature
is sent to the lazaretto. It often happens that a leper refuses to go
quietly; he is then dragged by ropes like a beast to the shambles—for
none is willing to lay a finger upon him. Often the unhappy beings are
driven with blows to the very door of the lazaretto.” Things, of course,
could not long remain in this brutal condition. The lepers, driven to
desperation by their physical and mental sufferings, by a wild longing
for the liberty denied them, and for the sight of their loved ones,
sometimes effected their escape.
An attempt was finally made to ameliorate their condition, and in 1847
the lazaretto was removed to the spot where it now stands, about half a
mile from the parish church of Tracadie. A large tract of land was here
purchased by the government, and the present building was erected,
surrounded by a wooden wall twenty feet high, set thick with nails to
hinder the escape of the lepers. The windows of the lazaretto were
barred heavily with iron, and thus added to the melancholy aspect of the
building. The lepers, weary of the revolting resemblance to a prison,
themselves tore most of the bars away, and, when the nuns arrived there
they at once ordered the remainder to be removed.
In 1868 the nuns from the Hôtel Dieu of Montreal took possession of the
lazaretto of Tracadie. For some few years a strong necessity had been
felt for the reorganization of this institution. A wish was expressed
that it could be placed under the care of the Hospital Nuns. I have now
before me a letter from the Rt. Rev. James Rogers, Bishop of Chatham, in
which is given an account, for the _Conseil Central de la Propagation de
la Foi_ at Paris, of the steps that had been taken up to December, 1866:
“Since my first visit to the establishment,” says the bishop, “I
have always thought that it would be most desirable to place it
under the care of the Sisters of the Hôtel Dieu, who would watch
over the souls and the bodies of these sufferers, whose number
varies from twenty to thirty. But so many great and pressing needs
claimed my attention—while my resources were insufficient even for
the alleviation of physical suffering, and also, perhaps, for the
spiritual wants of certain souls—I was compelled to postpone my
plans in regard to the lazaretto, until my diocese could satisfy the
religious needs of its inhabitants by an increase of the number of
priests, and by the erection of chapels in places where they had
long and earnestly been demanded, and also by the establishment of
schools for the Christian education of youth. Another obstacle to
the immediate execution of my intention was the lukewarm approbation
and co-operation of the government. The total lack of suitable
lodging for the nuns, as well as the uncertainty whether the
Protestant element which pervades our government and our legislature
would be willing to grant us funds or permit us to make needful
preparations for the sisters to take charge of the lazaretto—all
conspired as hindrances to my desires.
“Last spring I petitioned the government, but political changes
interfered, and no steps were taken until now. This is the reason
why the worthy _curé_ of Tracadie continues to be the only priest
who administers the consolations of religion to that portion of his
flock so bitterly afflicted.”
The steps taken by Bishop Rogers seem to have been singularly
felicitous. He obtained from Bishop Bourget the assistance of the nuns
of the Hôtel Dieu of Montreal, and the government appears to have
regarded with favorable eyes this regeneration of the lazaretto, which
produced in a very brief period of time the best possible results upon
the patients. Abbé Gauvreau draws a sad picture of the state in which
these poor creatures lived before the nuns went to their assistance. In
a letter dated April 28, 1869, addressed to the mother-superior of the
Hôtel Dieu of Montreal, he says:
“I am absolutely incapable of describing the state of abject misery
in which our poor lepers passed their lives before the coming of the
sisters. I can only say that from the hour of their transfer from
l’Ile aux Bec-scies (Sheldrake) at the entrance of the river
Miramichi, discord, revolt, and insubordination toward the
government, divisions and quarrels among themselves, made the
history of their daily lives. The walls rang with horrible
blasphemies, and the hospital seemed like a den of thieves.”
The Board of Health spared nothing to make the lepers comfortable. Good
food, and abundance of it, appropriate clothing, and careful medical
attendance were liberally provided; but, in spite of these efforts, the
hearts of these poor creatures were as diseased as their bodies. Some of
them revolted against the summons of death, notwithstanding the constant
exhortations of the chaplain, and even after their last communion clung
strongly to the futile hope of life. Of this number was one who had been
warned by the physician that his hours were numbered and that a priest
should be summoned. His friends, and those of his relatives who were
within the walls of the lazaretto, implored him to prepare for death.
“Let me be!” he cried. “I know what I am about!”
About nine o’clock in the evening he begged his companions in misery not
to watch at his bedside, and, believing himself able to drive away
Death, who was hurrying toward him with rapid strides, insisted on
playing a game of cards. The game had hardly begun, however, when the
cards dropped from his hands and he fell back on his bed. Before
assistance could reach him all was over.
With the arrival of the nuns a new order of things began. Without
entering into a detailed account of all the labors performed by the
sisters since their arrival, it is enough to state that cleanliness and
order prevail and true charity shows itself everywhere. The poor
creatures, who formerly revelled in filth and disorder, now see about
them decency and cleanliness. They are induced to be submissive and
obedient by the hourly example of the sisters; their modesty and
reserve, their virtue and careful speech, their watchful care and
devotion, their tender attention to the sick, teach the inmates of the
hospital the best of lessons. It is easy to imagine with what joy the
poor lepers welcomed the nuns who came to consecrate their lives to this
service, and also to understand with what affection and respect these
holy women are regarded.
“The enclosed grounds of the lazaretto,” says Governor Gordon in his
_Wilderness Journeys_, “consist of a green meadow three or four
acres in extent. Within these limits the lepers are permitted to
wander at their will. Until recently they were confined to the
narrowest limits—a mere yard about the lazaretto. I entered these
dreary walls, accompanied by the Roman Catholic Bishop of Chatham,
by the secretary of the Board of Health, by the resident physician,
and by the Catholic priest of the village, who is also the chaplain
of the institution.
“Within the enclosure are several small wooden buildings, separated
from each other, consisting of the kitchen, laundry, etc. A
bath-house has recently been added to these, which will be a source
of infinite comfort to the patients. The hospital contains two
larger halls—one devoted to the men, the other to the women. Each
room has a stove and a table with chairs about it, while the beds
are ranged against the wall. These halls are both well lighted and
ventilated, and at the time of my inspection were perfectly clean
and fresh. At the end of these halls is a small chapel arranged in
such a way that the patients of both sexes are able to hear Mass
without meeting each other. Through certain openings they also
confess to the priest and receive the holy communion.”
Many changes in the interior arrangements of the lazaretto followed the
arrival of the sisters. The patients and the nuns now hear Mass at the
same time. The male patients occupy two rooms twenty-five feet square,
while similar apartments above are reserved for the females. The grounds
of the lazaretto have also been enlarged.
“Before giving the characteristics of this appalling disease,” says
Mr. Gordon, “I wish to reply to a question which you undoubtedly
wish to ask: How is this malady propagated? No one knows. It seems
not to be hereditary, since in one family the father or mother may
be attacked, while the children entirely escape. In others the
children are leprous and the parents healthy. In 1856 or '57 a woman
named Domitile Brideau, wife of François Robichaud, was so covered
with leprosy that her body was one mass of corruption. While in this
state she gave birth to a daughter, whom she nursed—the mother
shortly afterward dying in the hospital. Meanwhile, the child was
absolutely healthy, and remained until she was three years of age in
the hospital without any unfavorable symptoms being developed. The
girl grew to womanhood and married, and to-day she and her children
are perfectly healthy. Many similar examples might be cited.”
This malady, then, can hardly be contagious, since in one family husband
or wife may be attacked, while the other goes unscathed. There is now at
Tracadie a man, François Robichaud by name, who has had three wives; the
two first perished of leprosy, the third is now under treatment at the
lazaretto—the husband in the meanwhile enjoying perfect health. In one
family two or more children are lepers, while the others are untainted.
One servant-woman resided for eight years in the hospital, ate and drank
with the patients, yet has never shown any symptoms of the disease. The
laundress of the institution lives under its roof, and has done so for
two years; she is a widow, her husband having died of the scourge, she
being his sole nurse during his illness. She is in perfect health. It
has also happened more than once that persons suspected of leprosy, and
placed in the hospital, after remaining there several years and
developing no further symptoms, are discharged as “whole.”
All the patients now in the hospital agree that the disease is
communicated by touch, and each has his own theory as to where he was
exposed to it—either by sleeping with some one who had it, or by eating
and drinking with such.
I am strongly persuaded that this disease, whatever may be its origin,
is greatly aggravated by the kind of life led by the natives of
Tracadie, who are all fishermen or sailors. Their food is fish,
generally herring, and their only vegetables turnips and potatoes. Such
is their extreme poverty that there are not ten families in Tracadie who
ever touch bread.
Let us follow Governor Gordon into the lazaretto.
“At the time of my visit,” he says, “there were twenty-three
patients, thirteen men and ten women. They were all French and all
Catholics, belonging to the lower class. They were of all ages, and
had reached various stages of the disease. One old man, whose
features were distorted out of all semblance to humanity, and who
had apparently entered his second childhood, could hardly be
sufficiently aroused from his apathy to receive the benediction of
the bishop, before whom all the others sank on their knees.
“There were also young people who, to a casual observer, seemed
vigorous and in health; while, saddest of all sights was that of the
young children condemned to spend their lives in this terrible
place. Above all was I touched by the sight of three small boys from
eleven to fifteen years of age. To an inexperienced observer they
had much the look of other children of their own age and class.
Their eyes were bright and intelligent, but the fatal symptoms that
had sufficed to separate them from home and kindred were written on
their persons, and they were immured for life in the lazaretto.
“The greatest sympathy must naturally be felt for these younger
victims when one thinks of the possible length of years that
stretches before them, hopeless and cheerless; to grow to manhood
with the capacities, passions, and desires of manhood, and condemned
to live from youth to middle age, from middle age to decrepitude
possibly, with no other society than that of their companions in
misery. Utterly without occupations, amusements, or interests, shut
off from all outside resources, their only excitement is found in
the arrival of a new disease-stricken patient, their only occupation
that of watching their companions dying before their eyes by inches!
“But few of the patients could read, and those who could were
without books. There was evident need of some organization that
might furnish the patients with employment. Both mind and body
required occupation. Under these circumstances I was by no means
surprised to learn that in the last stages of the disease the mind
was generally much weakened.
“The suffering of the majority of the patients was by no means
severe, and I was informed that one of the characteristic features
of the malady was profound insensibility to pain. One individual was
pointed out to me, who by mistake had laid his arm and open hand on
a red-hot stove, and who knew nothing of it until the odor of
burning flesh aroused his attention.”
After Governor Gordon’s visit the condition of the lepers was much
improved. The sisters taught the young to read and employed them in
making shoes and other articles.
The investigations of Governor Gordon, although made during a brief
inspection of the lazaretto, are correct as far as they go, but are far
from complete. The Abbé Gauvreau has been for eighteen years chaplain of
the hospital. He has watched keenly the progress of the disease in over
a hundred cases. He has noted every symptom of its slow and fatal march.
He has been present at the deathbeds of many of the lepers, and he
recounts with horror the terrible scenes he has witnessed.
“Without wishing to impose my opinions on you,” he says, “I cannot
resist the conviction that, apart from divine will, this scourge of
fallen man is a most subtle poison introduced into the human body by
transmission or by direct contact, or even, perhaps, by prolonged
cohabitation.
“But whichever of these suppositions is the more nearly correct,
when once the poison is fairly within the system its action is so
latent and insidious that for some years—two, four, or even more—the
unfortunate Naaman or Giezi perceives in himself no change either in
constitution or sensations. His sleep is as refreshing and his
respiration as free as before. In a word, the vital organs perform
all their functions and the various members are unshorn of their
vigor and energy.
“At this period of the disease the skin loses its natural color, its
healthy appearance, and is replaced by a deadly whiteness from head
to foot. This whiteness looks as if the malady had taken possession
of the mucous membrane and had displaced the fluids necessary to its
functions. Without knowing if the leper of the Orient possesses
other external indications, it is certain that in this stage the
malady of Tracadie is precisely similar to the leprosy of the
ancients—I mean in the whiteness of the skin. In the second stage
the skin becomes yellow. In the third and last it turns to a deep
red; it is often purple, and sometimes greenish, in hue. In fact,
the people of Tracadie, like myself, are so familiar with the early
symptoms of the disease that they rarely fall into a mistake.
“Only one death has ever occurred in the first stage—that of Cyrille
Austin. All the other cases have passed on to the second or third
stages before death; and, strangely enough, it has been remarked by
the patients themselves that the treatment of Dr. La Bellois had
always a much better chance of success during the third period than
during the second.
“At first the victim feels devouring thirst, great feverish action,
and a singular trembling in every limb; stiffness and a certain
weakness in the joints; a great weight on the chest like that caused
by sorrow; a rush of blood to the brain; fatigue and drowsiness, and
other disagreeable symptoms which now escape my memory. The entire
nervous system is then struck, as it were, with insensibility to
such a degree that a sharp instrument or a needle, or even the blade
of a knife, buried in the fleshy parts or thrust through the tendons
and cartilage, causes the leper little or no pain. Some poor
creature, with calm indifference, will place his arm or leg on a
mass of burning wood and tar, and let it remain there until the
entire limb, bones and all, is consumed; yet the leper feels no
pain, and may sleep through it all as quietly as if in his bed.”
In another letter the abbé gives the following example of this
astonishing insensibility:
“One of these afflicted beings who died at the lazaretto, and to
whom I administered the last sacraments, lay down to sleep near a
hot fire; in his slumbers he thrust one arm and hand into the
flames, but continued to sleep. The overpowering smell of burning
flesh awakened one of his companions, who succeeded in saving his
life.”
One of the nuns says: “Since we reached Tracadie two of the patients
have burned their hands severely, and were totally unconscious of having
done so until I dressed the wounds myself.” In regard to this torpidity
of the system, M. Gauvreau remarks that it is but temporary, but he
knows not its duration; and the nun adds that the torpidity is not
invariable with all the patients, and with some only in a portion of the
body. In certain individuals it is only in the legs; in others, in the
hands alone; but all complain of numbness like that of paralysis.
“By degrees,” says M. Gauvreau, “the unnatural whiteness of the skin
disappears, and spots of a light yellow are to be seen. These spots
in some cases are small and about the size of a dollar-piece. When
of this character, they appear at first with a certain regularity of
arrangement, and in places corresponding with each other, as on the
two arms and shoulders—more generally, however, on the breast. They
are distinct, but by degrees the poison makes its way throughout the
vitals; the spots enlarge, approach each other, and, when at last
united, the body of the sick man becomes a mass of corruption. Then
the limbs swell, afterward portions of the body, the hands, and the
feet; and when the skin can bear no further tension it breaks, and
running sores cover the patient, who is repulsive and disgusting to
the last degree.
“The entire skin of the body becomes extremely tender, and is
covered with an oily substance that exudes from the pores and looks
like varnish. The skin and flesh between the thumb and forefinger
dry away, the ends of the fingers, the feet, and hands dwindle to
nothingness, and sometimes the joints separate, and the members drop
off without pain and often without the knowledge of the patient.
“The most noble part of the being created in the image of God—the
face—is marred as much as the body by this fell disease. It is
generally excessively swollen. The chin, cheeks, and ears are
usually covered by tubercles the size of peas. The eyes seem to
start from their sockets, and are glazed by a sort of cataract that
often produces complete blindness. The skin of the forehead thickens
and swells, acquiring a leaden hue, which sometimes extends over the
entire countenance, while in other cases the whole face is suffused
with scarlet. The explanation of these different symptoms may be
found, of course, in the variety of temperaments—sanguine, bilious,
or lymphatic. This face, once so smooth and fair, has become seamed
and furrowed. The lips are two appalling ulcers—the upper lip much
swollen and raised to the base of the nose, which has entirely
disappeared; while the under lip hangs over the chin, which shines
from the tension of the skin. Can a more frightful sight be
imagined? In some cases the lips are parched and drawn up like a
purse puckered on strings. This deformity is the more to be
regretted is it precludes the afflicted from participation in the
holy communion. Leprosy—that of Tracadie, at least—completes its
ravages on the internal organs of its victims. It attacks now the
larynx and all the bronchial ramifications; they become obstructed
and filled with tubercles, so that the unhappy patient can find no
relief in any position. His respiration becomes gradually more and
more impeded, until he is threatened with suffocation. I have been
present at the last struggles of most of these afflicted mortals. I
hope that I may never be called upon to witness similar scenes.
Excuse me from the details. If I undertook them my courage would
give out; for I assure you that many of you would have fainted. Let
me simply add that these lepers generally die in convulsions,
panting for air; frequently rushing to the door to breathe; and,
returning, they fling themselves on their pallets in despair. The
thought of their sighs and sobs, the remembrance of their tears,
almost breaks my heart, and their prayers for succor ring constantly
in my ears: 'O my God! have mercy on me! have mercy on me!’
“At last comes the supreme moment of this lingering torture, and the
patient dies of exhaustion and suffocation. All is over, and another
Lazarus lies in Abraham’s bosom!”
After the above vivid picture of this loathsome disease we naturally ask
if the evil be such that no medical skill can combat it with success.
The Hospital Nun in the infirmary of the lazaretto tells us all that she
has yet learned upon this point.
In 1849 and 1850 Dr. La Bellois, a celebrated French physician residing
at Dalhousie, treated the lepers for six months and claimed to have
cured ten of them: T. Goutheau, Charles Comeau, T. Brideau, A. Benoit,
L. Sonier, Ed. Vienneau, Mme. A. Sonier, M. Sonier, Mme. Ferguson,
Melina Lavoie. “All the above cases are now quite well, and the
treatment I adopted was entirely for syphilitic disease, thus
establishing without any doubt the nature of the disease” (extract from
La Bellois’ report, Feb. 12, 1850).
Meanwhile, from the report of the secretary of the Board of Health—Mr.
James Davidson—we gather that all the sick above mentioned returned
after a time to the hospital; that they died there, with the exception
of three, of whom two died in their own houses and the third still
lives. Of this one Dr. Gordon, of Bathurst, says: “The disease is slow
in its progress, but it is sure, and the fatal termination cannot be far
off.”
Dr. Nicholson undertook the treatment at the lazaretto. By a certain
course of medicine, the details of which he kept a profound secret, and
with the aid of vapors, he wonderfully improved the physical condition
of the lepers, who in many instances indulged sanguine hopes of
recovery. Unfortunately, however, this physician suddenly abandoned his
profession, and, to the sorrow of his former patients, died three years
later. The lepers soon relapsed into their former hopeless state, and
since then no change has taken place.
“On our arrival at Tracadie,” said the sister, “we found twenty
inmates of the hospital, and since three more have been admitted.
These poor creatures, being firmly persuaded that we could cure
them, besieged us with entreaties for medicine, and were satisfied
with whatever we gave. At first I selected three who had undergone
no medical treatment; these three were also the only ones who
suffered from contraction of the extremities. The first, twenty-two
years of age, had been at the hospital four years, and as yet showed
the disease only in the contraction above mentioned, and in a
certain insensibility of the feet and hands. The second, fifteen
years old, had been in the hospital for two years, his hands and
feet were drawn up, and he suffered from a large swelling on the
left foot. This young fellow is very delicate, and suffers intensely
at times from spasms of the stomach. The third case is a lad of
eleven, who for two years has suffered from the disease. His hands
are twisted out of shape, and his body is covered with spots, red
and white; these spots are totally without sensibility. I have
administered to these patients the remedies as prescribed by Mr.
Fowle—_Fowle’s Humor Cure_, an American patent medicine. The first
and second patient experienced no other benefit from this remedy
than a certain vigor previously unfelt. To the third the sensibility
of the cuticle returned, but the spots remained the same. This in
itself is very remarkable, because in no previous case have these
benumbed or paralyzed parts regained their sensation. To another, a
patient of twenty-two, I gave the same remedy. For eight years he
had been a martyr to the virulence of the disease. When we arrived
at the lazaretto, we found his case to be one of the worst there.
His nose had fallen in; the lips were enormously puffed and swollen;
his hands equally so, and looked more like the paws of a bear than
like the hands of a human being. The saliva was profuse, but the
effort of swallowing almost futile. Soon after taking this same
medicine the saliva ceased to flow and he swallowed with comparative
ease.
“On the 23d of January he was, by the mercy of God, able to partake
of the holy communion, of which he had been deprived for four years.
His lips are now of their natural size, and he is stronger than he
has been for years. But the pains in his limbs are far worse than
they have ever before been. I have also given Fowle’s cure to all
the patients who had been under no previous medical treatment, and
invariably with beneficial results. In some the tint of the skin is
more natural; in others the swelling of the extremities is much
abated; but the remedy seems always to occasion an increase of pains
in the limbs, although it unquestionably acts as a tonic upon the
poor creatures. In all of them the mouth and throat improve with the
use of Fowle’s cure. And here let me say that this disease
throughout bears a strong resemblance to syphilis. In both diseases
the throat, the tongue, and the whole inside of the mouth are
ulcerated. In both diseases the voice is affected to such a degree
that it can hardly make itself heard. They cough frightfully, and
some time after our coming a leper presented himself for admission
at our hospital doors. The poor creature was covered with ulcers and
every night was bathed in a cold perspiration. After he had rested
for a few days, I gave him a powerful dose of _la liqueur
arsenicale_, which has since been repeated. The night-sweats have
disappeared, and the ulcers are healed, with the exception of one on
the foot. His lips are still unhealthy, but he is much stronger, and
the spots on his person are gradually disappearing.
“Two others, later arrivals have taken _la liqueur arsenicale_ and
have improved under its use. Suspecting that the origin of this
malady may be traced to another source, and remembering the opinion
of Dr. La Bellois, I gave the bichloride of mercury, in doses of the
thirty-second part of a grain, to the worst case in the hospital. It
is too soon, however, to judge of its effects. The improvement in no
one of these cases is rapid, but we trust that it is certain. We
look to God alone for the success for which we venture to hope. I
can find no statistics which will enable me to give you the number
of victims that have fallen under this dread malady of Tracadie. I
find, however, a letter from M. Gauvreau, bearing the date of
November 30, 1859, that sixty persons perished from its ravages in
the previous fifteen years, and that twenty-five of both sexes, and
of all ages, were then inmates of the lazaretto, awaiting there the
end of their torments.”
In 1862 Mr. Gordon said that he saw twenty-three patients at the
hospital, and the Sisters of the Hôtel Dieu found twenty there when they
reached the lazaretto, and have since admitted three in addition; it
does not seem, therefore, as if the “eldest sister of Death” had relaxed
her hold on this unhappy village. Yet if the disease can but be confined
to this locality, wonders will be achieved. Good care, regular medical
attendance, incessant vigilance, with intelligent adherence to hygienic
laws, may eventually cause its entire disappearance from our soil. Let
us hope that the faithful sisters will succeed in their good work; for
we ourselves, every one of us, have a personal interest in it.
Unfortunately, this good result is far from certain, as the Abbé
Gauvreau desires us to understand.
“One or more of these unfortunates,” he says, “feeling the insidious
approaches of the disease, and shrinking from the idea of the
lazaretto, have at times secretly escaped from Tracadie. They leave
Miramichi on the steamer, intending to land at Rivière-du-Loup, at
Kamouraska, perhaps at Quebec or at Montreal. As yet no ulcers are
visible, nor, indeed, any external symptoms which could excite the
smallest suspicion. On landing at some one of the places mentioned
they procure situations in different houses, and remain in them for
a month or two, perhaps, saying nothing all this time of their
symptoms to any one, not even to a physician. They eat with their
master’s family, and, even if they take the greatest precaution,
they convey this poisonous virus to their masters. When they have
reason to fear that suspicion is about being aroused, they depart,
but it is too late, and they go to scatter the contagion still
further.
“The following instance came under my own observation: A youth
suffering from this disease, and dreading the lazaretto, went to
Boston, where he secured a position on a fishing vessel, hoping that
the sea air, with the medicines that he would take, would effect his
cure. He soon found that these hopes were groundless, and was
obliged to enter the hospital in Boston, where, in spite of the care
and attention bestowed upon him by the physicians of the medical
school at Cambridge, he died, far from friends and home.”
One naturally asks, with a thrill of horror, whether, before the
admission of this poor creature to the hospital, he did not transmit to
his shipmates the poisonous virus that filled his own blood.
The total disappearance of this disease—if such disappearance may be
hoped for—will be due exclusively to the noble and untiring exertions of
the sisters. Tracadie and its afflicted population would not alone owe a
debt of eternal gratitude to these Hospital Nuns. America itself would
share this feeling. With an example like this of charity and
self-abnegation before us, we cannot cease to wonder at, and to deplore,
the narrow minds of those persons who condemn the monastic institutions
of the church. Let us compassionate all such; for to them light is
lacking, and they have yet to learn the great truth that the duty most
inculcated by the church, after the love of God, is the love of our
neighbors.
TESTIMONY OF THE CATACOMBS TO SOME OF THE SACRAMENTS.
In a former article,[31] whilst following Mr. Withrow and other
Protestant controversialists through their evasions and
misinterpretations of the evidence to be found in the Catacombs on
behalf of certain points of Catholic doctrine and practice, we pointed
out that prayers either _for_ the dead or _to_ them were the only two
articles on which it would be reasonable to look for information from
the inscriptions on the gravestones. We said that these prayers were
likely to find expression, if anywhere, by the side of the grave. As
they took their last look on the loved remains of their deceased friend
or relative, the affectionate devotion of the survivors would naturally
give utterance either to a hearty prayer for the everlasting happiness
of him they had lost, or to a piteous cry for help, an earnest petition
that he would continue to exercise, in whatever way might be possible
under the conditions of his new mode of existence, that same loving care
and protection which had been their joy and support during his life; or
sometimes both these prayers might be poured forth together, according
as the strictness of God’s justice, or the Christian faith and virtues
of the deceased, happened to occupy the foremost place in the
petitioner’s thoughts.
Footnote 31:
THE CATHOLIC WORLD, Dec., 1876, p. 371 Jan., 1877, p. 523.
When, therefore, we proceeded in a second paper to question the same
subterranean sanctuaries on another subject of Christian doctrine—the
supremacy of St. Peter—we called into court another set of witnesses
altogether: to wit, the paintings of their tombs and chapels. Exception
has been taken against the competency of these witnesses, on the plea
that they are not old enough; they were not contemporary, it is said,
with those first ages of the church whose faith is called in question.
To this we answer that the objection is entirely out of date; it might
have been raised twenty or thirty years ago, and it might have been
difficult at that time satisfactorily to dispose of it. Those were days
in which writers like M. Perrot in France could affect to pronounce
dogmatically on the age of this or that painting, solely on the evidence
of its style, without having first established any standard by which
that style could be securely judged. There are still a few writers of
the same school even at the present day, such as Mr. Parker in England,
who assigns precise years as the dates of these subterranean monuments
with as much confidence as if he had been personally present when they
were executed, and (we may add) with as wide a departure from the truth
as if he had never seen the pictures at all. Such writers, however, have
but few disciples nowadays. Their foolish presumption is only laughed
at; and it is not thought worth while seriously to refute their
assertions. Men of intelligence and critical habits of thought are slow
to accept the _ipse dixit_ of a professor, however eminent, upon any
subject; and all who have studied this particular subject—the paintings
in the Catacombs—are well aware that the question of their antiquity has
now been carried beyond the range of mere conjecture and assumption; it
has been placed on a solid basis of fact through the indefatigable
labors of De Rossi. Those labors have been directed in a very special
way towards establishing the true chronology of the several parts of the
Catacombs; and when this had been done, it was manifest to all that the
most ancient _areæ_ were also those which were most abundantly decorated
with painting, whilst the areæ that had been used more recently—_i.e._,
in the latter half of the fourth or beginning of the fifth century—were
hardly decorated at all. This gradual decline of the use of pictorial
decoration has been traced with the utmost exactness through the
successive _areæ_ of a single Catacomb; six or seven tombs being found
thus decorated in the first _area_, two in the second, one in the third,
none at all in the fourth; and the same thing has been seen, with more
or less distinctness, throughout the whole range of subterranean Rome.
Then, again, every casual visitor to them can see for himself that
before the abandonment of burial here—_i.e._, before the year 410—many
of the paintings were already considered old enough to be sacrificed
without scruple to the wishes of those who would fain excavate new tombs
in desirable sites. Men do not usually destroy to-day the paintings
which they executed yesterday; certainly they do not allow the
ornamentation which they have just lavished on the tombs of their
fathers to be soon effaced with impunity. We may be sure, then, that
those innumerable paintings which we see broken through in order to make
more modern graves must have been of considerable antiquity at the time
of their destruction. Then, again, it must not be forgotten that some of
these paintings were actually appealed to as ancient testimony in the
days of St. Jerome, on occasion of a dispute between that doctor and St.
Augustine as to the correct rendering of a particular word in his Latin
translation of the Scriptures. Finally, it is notorious that the fine
arts had rapidly decayed and the number of their professors diminished
before the days of Constantine—in fact, before the end of the third
century.
We cannot, however, pretend to give in these pages even a brief summary
of De Rossi’s arguments and observations whereby he establishes the
primitive antiquity of Christian art in the Catacombs. We can only
mention a few of the more popular and palpable proofs which can be
appreciated by all without difficulty; and we will only add that it is
now possible, under the sure chronological guidance of De Rossi, to
distinguish three successive stages in the development of painting in
the Christian cemeteries, the latest of which was complete when the
Constantinian era began, and the first falls hardly, if at all, short of
even apostolic times. This is no longer denied by the best instructed
even among Protestant controversialists; they acknowledge that painting
was used by the earliest Christians for the ornamenting of their places
of burial; only they contend that it was done “not because it was
congenial to the mind of Christianity so to illustrate the faith, but
because it was the heathen custom so to honor the dead.” The author of
this remark, however, has omitted to explain whence it comes to pass
that the great majority of the paintings which survive in the cemeteries
are more engaged in illustrating the mysteries of the faith than in
doing honor to the dead.
But we must not pursue this subject any further. We have said enough, we
think, to establish the competency of these paintings as witnesses to
the ancient faith, and we will now proceed to question them concerning
one or two principal mysteries of the faith—those that are called its
mysteries _par excellence_: its sacraments. We do not doubt that, if
duly interrogated, they will have some evidence to give. We say, if duly
interrogated, because it is the characteristic of ancient Christian art
to be eminently symbolical; it suggested rather than declared religious
doctrines and ideas, and it suggested them by means of artistic symbols
or historical types, which must be inquired into and meditated upon
before they can be made fully to express their meaning. This is of the
very essence of a symbol: that it should partly veil and partly manifest
the truth. It does not manifest the truth with the fulness and accuracy
of a written historical description, or it would cease to be a symbol;
on the other hand, it must not be so obscure as to demand a sibyl for
its interpretation; it must have a tendency to produce in the mind of
the beholder some leading feature of the object it is intended to
represent. And where should symbols of this kind be more abundantly
found for the Christian preacher or artist than in the histories of the
Old Testament? Ancient Christian art, says Lord Lindsay, “veiled the
faith and hope of the church under the parallel and typical events of
the patriarchal and the Jewish dispensations.”
We need not remind our readers that the principle of this method of
interpreting Holy Scripture has express apostolic sanction; but few who
have not studied the subject closely will have any adequate idea of the
extent to which it was followed in the ancient church. We will give a
single example, selected because it closely concerns the first mystery
of which we propose to speak—the Sacrament of Baptism.
Tertullian, who lived at the end of the second and beginning of the
third century, wrote a short treatise on this sacrament. This treatise
he begins by bringing together all that Holy Scripture contains about
water, with such minuteness of detail that he is presently obliged to
check himself, saying that, if he were to pursue the subject through all
Holy Scripture with the same fulness with which he had begun, men would
say he was writing a treatise in praise of water rather than of baptism.
From the first chapter of the Book of Genesis to the last of the
Evangelists, and even of the Apocalypse, he finds continual testimony to
the high dignity and sacramental life-giving power of this element. The
Spirit of God, he says, moved over it at the first; whilst as yet the
earth was void and empty, and darkness was upon the face of the deep,
and the heaven was as yet unformed, water alone, already pure, simple,
and perfect, supplied a worthy resting-place on which God could be
borne. The division of the waters was the regulating power by which the
world was constituted; and when at length the world was set in order,
ready to receive inhabitants, the waters were the first to hear and obey
the command and to bring forth creatures having life. Then, again, man
was not made out of the dry earth, but out of slime, after a spring had
risen out of the earth, watering all its surface. All this is out of the
first two chapters of Genesis; and here he makes a pause, breaking into
that apology which has been already mentioned. Then he resumes the
thread of his discourse, but passing much more briefly over the
remainder of the Old Testament. He notes how the wickedness of the old
world was purged by the waters of the Deluge, which was the world’s
baptism; how the waters of the Red Sea drowned the enemies of God’s
people and delivered them from a cruel bondage; and how the children of
Israel were refreshed during their wanderings through the wilderness by
the water which flowed continuously from the rock which followed them,
“which rock was Christ.” Then he comes to the New Testament, and briefly
but eloquently exclaims: Nowhere is Christ found without water. He is
himself baptized with it; he inaugurates in it the first manifestation
of his divine power at the wedding-feast in Cana; when he preaches the
Gospel, on the last and great day of the feast, he stands and cries,
saying, “If any man thirst, let him come to me and drink.” He sums up
his whole gift to man under the image of a fountain of water, telling
the Samaritan woman that he has living water to give, which shall become
in him that receives it a fountain of water springing up unto life
everlasting. When he gives instruction upon charity, he instances a cup
of cold water given to a disciple; he sits down weary at a well and asks
for water to refresh himself; he walks on the waves of the sea, and
washes his disciples’ feet; finally (Tertullian concludes), “this
testimony of Jesus to the Sacrament of Baptism continues even to the
end, to his very Passion; for, when he is condemned to the cross, water
is not absent—witness the hands of Pilate; nay, when wounded after death
upon the cross, water bursts forth from his side—witness the soldier’s
spear.”
There may be something in this symbolism that sounds strange to modern
ears; but we are not here criticising it; we have nothing to do with its
merits or demerits, but only with the fact of its general use—so general
that it was the one principle of exegesis which every commentator on
Holy Scripture in those days followed, and we have every right to
suppose that Christian artists would have followed it also. When,
therefore, we find in the Roman Catacombs (as, for example, the other
day in the cemetery of San Callisto) a glass vessel, very artistically
wrought, with fishes in _alto rilievo_ swimming round it in such a way
that, when full of water, it would have represented a miniature image,
as it were, of the sea, is it a mere fanciful imagination which bids us
recognize in such ornamentation a reference to holy baptism, and
conjectures that the vessel was perhaps even made for the administration
of that sacrament? It may be so; but we cannot ourselves think so; we
cannot at once reject the explanation as fanciful; the work of the
artist corresponds too exactly with the words of the theologian to allow
us to treat the coincidence as altogether undesigned. “We little fish
are born,” says Tertullian, “after the likeness of our great Fish in
water, and we cannot otherwise be safe than by remaining in the water.”
And we seem to ourselves to read these same words, written in another
language, in the beautiful vessel before us. We read it also in another
similar vessel, which looks as though it had come out of the same
workshop, yet was found in an ancient cemetery at Cologne; and in
another of bronze, dug up in the vineyard over the cemetery of
Pretextatus, that used to be shown by Father Marchi in the Kircherian
Museum at the Roman College. In all these instances we believe that this
is the best account that can be given, both of the original design of
the vessel and also of its preservation in Christian subterranean
cemeteries. However, if any one thinks otherwise, we do not care to
insist upon our explanation as infallibly certain. We will descend into
the Catacombs themselves, and look about upon the paintings on their
walls or the carving on their gravestones, and see whether baptism finds
any place there also.
And, first, we come across the baptism of our Lord himself. We are not
now thinking of the subterranean baptistery in the cemetery of Ponziano,
with the highly-decorated cross standing up out of the middle of it, and
Christ’s baptism painted at the side. For this is one of the latest
artistic productions in the Catacombs—a work of the eighth or ninth
century possibly. We are thinking, on the contrary, of one of the
earliest paintings in a most ancient part of the excavations, in the
crypt of Lucina, near the cemetery of Callixtus, with which, in fact, it
is now united. We shall have occasion to return to this same chamber
presently for the sake of other paintings on its walls having reference
to the Holy Eucharist; just here we only call attention to the baptism
of our Lord, which is represented in the space over the doorway. We do
not know of any other instance of this subject having been painted in
the Catacombs besides the two that we have mentioned, but it is quite
possible that others may be hereafter discovered; but of baptism as a
Christian rite, veiled, however, under its types and symbols, we have
innumerable examples.
Few figures recur more frequently among the paintings in the Catacombs,
and none are more ancient, than that of a man standing in an open box or
chest, often with a dove, bearing an olive-branch in its mouth, flying
towards him. When this was first seen after the rediscovery of the
Catacombs in the sixteenth century, men set it down to be the picture of
some ancient bishop preaching in a pulpit, and the Holy Ghost, under the
form of a dove, inspiring him as to what he should say, according to the
legend told of St. Gregory the Great and some others. Nobody now doubts
that it was intended for Noe in the ark; not, however, the historical
Noe and the historical ark—for nothing could be more ludicrously false
to the original—but those whom that history foreshadowed: Christians
saved by the waters of baptism and securely housed in the ark of the
church. Some persons, who seem to take a perverse delight in assigning a
pagan rather than a Christian origin to everything in the early church,
account for the difference between the Biblical and the artistic
representation of the ark by saying that the Christian artist did but
copy a pagan coin or medal which he found ready to his hands. It is
quite true that certain coins which were struck at Apamea in Phrygia
during the reigns of Septimius Severus, Macrinus, and Philip the
elder—_i.e._, at different periods in the first half of the third
century—exhibit on one side of them a chest, with a man and a woman
standing within it, and the letters ΝΩ, or ΝΩΕ, written on the outside;
and that these figures were intended to be a souvenir of the Deluge,
which held a prominent place in the legends of Phrygia. It is said that
the town of Apamea claimed to derive its secondary name of κιβωτός, or
ark, from the fact that it was here that the ark rested; and it is quite
possible that the spread of Christian ideas, gradually penetrating the
Roman world, and filtering into the spirit even of those who remained
attached to paganism, may have suggested the making of the coins we have
described; but it is certain, on the other hand, that we can claim
priority in point of time for the work of the Christian artists in the
Catacombs. The coins were struck, as we have said, in the beginning of
the third century; the earliest Christian painting of the same subject
is assigned to the beginning of the second.
But whatever may be the history of the forms under which Noe and the ark
are represented, there can be no question as to their meaning. We have
the authority of St. Peter himself (1 iii. 20, 21) to instruct us upon
this point; and Tertullian does but unfold what is virtually contained
in the apostle’s words when he says that the ark prefigures the church,
and that the dove sent out of the ark and returning with an olive-branch
was a figure of the dove of the Holy Spirit, sent forth from heaven to
our flesh, as it emerges from the bath of regeneration. And if we quote
Tertullian again as our authority, this is not because he differs in
these matters from other Christian writers who preceded or followed him,
but because he has written at greater length and specially on that
particular subject with which we are now engaged. St. Augustine, writing
two hundred years later, gives the same explanation, and says that “no
Catholic doubts it; but that it might perhaps have seemed to be a merely
human imagination, had not the Apostle Peter expressly declared it.” It
is, then, from no private fancy of our own, but simply in conformity
with the teaching of all the ancient doctors of the church, that we
interpret this scene of a man standing in an ark, and receiving an
olive-branch from the mouth of a dove, as expressing this Christian
doctrine: that the faithful obtain remission of their sins through
baptism, receive from the Holy Spirit the gift of divine peace—that
peace which, being given by faith in this world, is the gage of
everlasting peace and happiness in the next—and are saved in the
mystical ark of the church from the destruction which awaits the world.
And if the same scene be rudely scratched on a single tomb, as it often
was, and sometimes with the name of the deceased inscribed upon the
chest, we can only understand it as denoting a sure and certain hope on
the part of the survivors that their departed friend, having been a
faithful member of the church, had died in the peace of God and had now
entered into his rest.
We pass on to another of the Biblical stories mentioned by several of
the Fathers as typical of baptism; and we will select as our specimen of
it a painting that was executed about the very time that Tertullian was
writing his treatise on that sacrament. It is to be seen more than once
on the walls of a series of chambers which open out of a gallery in the
Catacomb of San Callisto, not far from the papal crypt. The first figure
that greets us from the wall on the left-hand side as we enter these
chambers is Moses striking the rock and the water gushing forth. Are we
to look upon this as a mere historic souvenir of the Jewish legislator,
or are we to see in it a reference to Christian baptism? The artist in
the present instance does not allow us to doubt. Side by side with it he
has painted a fisherman, and we need not be reminded who it was that
compared the work of the Christian apostle to that of fishermen; and
immediately he adds, with still greater plainness of speech, a youth
standing in the water, whilst a man pours water over his head. Finally,
he fills the very little space that remains on the wall with the picture
of a paralytic carrying his bed, and it would be easy to show that the
Fathers recognized in the pool of Bethsaida, to which place this history
belongs, a type of the healing waters of baptism. Was it possible for
the Christian artist to set forth the sacrament more unequivocally?
There is no legend to interpret the painting, but surely this is not
needed. The mystery is veiled, indeed, from all who were uninstructed;
but it was perfectly intelligible to all the baptized; it was veiled
under types and symbols taken partly from the Old Law and partly from
common life.
We need hardly say that this same figure of Moses striking the rock
occurs in scores of other places throughout the Catacombs; but we have
selected this particular specimen, both because it appears with a more
copious _entourage_ of other symbols determining its sense beyond all
dispute, and also because it is here brought, as we shall presently see,
into immediate proximity with the other sacrament, to which it is a
necessary gate of introduction—the Sacrament of the Holy Eucharist. But
before we pass on to examine the symbols of the Holy Eucharist, let us
first inquire whether there is anything further about baptism to be
gleaned from the Catacombs—not now from their paintings, but from their
inscriptions.
We must remember that the most ancient inscriptions were very brief—very
often the mere name of the deceased and nothing more, or a short
ejaculatory prayer was added for his everlasting happiness. It is clear
that we should search here in vain for any mention of the sacraments. By
and by, when it became usual to say something more about the deceased,
to mention his age and the date of his death or burial, or other similar
particulars, perhaps room might be found also for saying something about
his baptism. Accordingly, there are not wanting monuments of the fourth
or fifth centuries which tell us that the deceased was a neophyte, or
newly illuminated—which means the same thing: viz., that he had been
lately baptized—or that he had lived so many months or years after he
had received the initiatory sacrament of the Christian covenant.
Occasionally, also, a faint reference may be found to another
sacrament—the Sacrament of Confirmation. This was often, or even
generally, administered in olden times immediately after baptism, of
which it was considered the complement and perfection. “From time
immemorial,” says Tertullian (_ab immemorabili_), “as soon as we have
emerged from the bath [of regeneration] we are anointed with the holy
unction.” Hence it is sometimes doubtful which sacrament is intended, or
rather it is probable that it was intended to include both under the
words inscribed on the epitaphs—the verbs _accepit_, _percepit_,
_consecutus est_ (the same as we find in the fathers of the same or an
earlier age), used for the most part absolutely, without any object
whatever following them; but in one or two cases _fidem_ or _gratiam
sanctum_ are used. An epitaph of a child three years old adds:
_Consecuta est D. vi. Deposita viii. Kal. Aug._ Another says simply:
_Pascasius percepit xi. Kal. Maias_; and a third: _Crescentia q. v. a.
xxxiii. Accepit iii. Kal. Jul._ A fourth records of a lady that she died
at the age of thirty-five: _Ex die acceptionis suæ vixit dies lvii._; to
which we append another: _Consecutus est ii. Non. Decemb. ex die
consecutionis in sæculo fuit ad usque vii. Idas Decemb._ This last
inscription is taken from a Christian cemetery in Africa, not in Rome;
but it was worth quoting for its exact conformity with the one which
precedes it. In both alike there is the same distinction between the
natural and the spiritual age of the deceased—_i.e._, between his first
and his second birth. After stating the number of years he had lived in
the world, his age is computed afresh from the day of his regeneration,
thus marking off the length of his spiritual from that of his merely
animal life.
A Greek inscription was found a few years since on the Via Latina,
recording of a lady who had belonged to one of the Gnostic sects in the
third century, that she had been “anointed in the baths of Christ with
his pure and incorruptible ointment”—an inscription which probably
refers to two separate rites in use among the Gnostics, in imitation of
the two Christian sacraments. Of a Christian lady buried in Spoleto, her
epitaph records that she had been confirmed (_consignata_) by Pope
Liberius; this, of course, belongs to the middle of the fourth century.
And we read of a boy who died when he was a little more than five years
old: _Bimus trimus consecutus est_—words which were a veritable enigma
to all antiquarians, until the learned Marini compared with them the
phrases of Roman law, _bima trima die dos reddita_, _bima trima die
legatum solutum_, and pointed out that as these phrases undoubtedly
signified that such a portion of the dowry or legacy was paid in the
second year, and such another portion in the third, so the corresponding
words in the Christian epitaph could only mean that the deceased had
received something when he was two years old, and something else when he
was three; and although the particular gifts received are not mentioned
because of the _disciplina arcani_, we can have no difficulty in
supplying baptism and confirmation. De Rossi adopts this interpretation;
indeed, it does not seem possible to suggest any other.
It seems, then, that there is not much evidence to be derived from the
Catacombs as to the Sacrament of Confirmation; that, on the contrary,
which has reference to the Holy Eucharist is most precious and abundant,
and it is generally to be found in juxtaposition with monuments which
bear testimony to the Sacrament of Baptism. The chamber in the crypt of
Lucina which gives us the oldest painting of the baptism of our Lord
gives us also what are probably the oldest symbolical representations of
the Holy Eucharist; and certainly the chambers in the cemetery of San
Callisto, in which we have just seen so many and such clear
manifestations of the Sacrament of Baptism, contain also the most
numerous and the most perfect specimens of the symbolic representations
of the Holy Eucharist carried to their highest degree of development,
yet still combined with mysterious secrecy. Before enumerating these in
detail it will be best to make two or three preliminary remarks helping
to clear the way before us. First, then, we may assume as known to all
our readers, both that the doctrine about the Blessed Sacrament belonged
in a very special way to the discipline of the secret, and also that
from the very earliest times one of the most common names under which
our Blessed Lord was spoken of was the _fish_, because the letters which
go to make up that word in Greek were also the initials of the words
Jesus Christ, Son of God, Saviour. And, secondly, we must say a few
words about the different circumstances under which a fish appears in
the artistic decorations of the Catacombs; at least, of the different
kinds of feasts or entertainments in which it seems to be presented as
an article of food. These feasts may be divided into three classes:
First, the fish merely lies upon a table—a sacred table or tripod—with
one or more loaves of bread by its side, and not unfrequently with
several baskets full of bread on the ground around it; secondly, bread
and fish are seen on a table, at which seven men are seated partaking of
a meal; and, thirdly, they are seen, perhaps with other viands also, at
a feast of which men and women are partaking indiscriminately, and
perhaps attendants also are there, waiting on the guests, pouring out
wine and water, hot or cold. Paintings of this latter class have not
uncommonly been taken as representing the _agapæ_, or love-feasts, of
the early church. But this seems to be too literal an interpretation,
too much out of harmony with the symbolical character of early Christian
art. More probably it was meant as a representation of that
wedding-feast under which image the joys of heaven are so often set
forth in Holy Scripture; and in this case it is not necessary to suppose
that there was any special meaning in the choice of fish as part of the
food provided, unless, indeed (which is not at all improbable), it was
desired to direct attention to that mystical food a participation in
which was the surest pledge of admission to that heavenly banquet,
according to our Lord’s own words: “He that eateth this bread shall live
for ever.” However, it is not necessary, as we have said, to suppose
this; it is quite possible that in these instances the fish may have
been used accidentally, as it were, and indifferently, or for the same
reason as it sometimes appears on pagan monuments—viz., to denote the
abundance and excellence of the entertainment.
Paintings of the first class, however, are much too peculiar to be thus
explained, neither is there anything resembling them in the works of
pagan artists which could have suggested them; and those of the second
class, we hope presently to show, can only have been intended to
represent a particular scene in the Gospel history. It is only with
paintings belonging to one or other of these two classes that we need
concern ourselves to-day. And, first, of the bread and fish when placed
alone, without any guests at all. In the crypt of Lucina it appears
twice on the wall opposite our Lord’s baptism, and in a very remarkable
form indeed. The fish is alive and apparently swimming, and he carries
on his back a basket full of loaves, in the middle of which is a vessel
of glass containing some red liquid. What can this mean? Nobody ever saw
anything like it in nature. We know of nothing in pagan art or mythology
which could have suggested it. Yet here it finds a place in the chamber
of a Christian cemetery, and as part of a system of decoration, other
parts of which were undoubtedly of a sacred character. Is this alone
profane or meaningless, or does not rather its hidden sense shine forth
distinctly as soon as we call to mind the use of the fish as a Christian
symbol on the one hand, and the Christian doctrine about the Holy
Eucharist on the other? The fish was Christ. And he once took bread and
broke it, and said, This is my body; and he took wine and blessed it,
saying, This is my blood; and he appointed this to be an everlasting
ordinance in his church, and promised that whosoever should eat of that
bread and drink of that chalice should inherit everlasting life. Here
are the bread and the wine and the mystical fish. And was it possible
for Christian eyes to attach any other meaning to the combination than
that it was intended to bring before them the remembrance of the
Christian mysteries, whereby death and the grave were robbed of all
their gloom, being only the appointed means of entrance to a
never-ending life? If anybody is tempted to object that the vessels here
represented as containing the bread and wine are too mean ever to have
been used for such a purpose, we must remind him that it had already
been put on record by archæologists, before the discovery of this
monument, that the early Christians in the days of poverty and
persecution continued to use vessels of the same humble materials as had
been used in the sacrificial rites of Jews and Gentiles before them, and
that these were precisely such as are here represented. Nay, further
still, that even when vessels of gold and silver had come into use in
the church, still there were exceptional times and circumstances when it
was lawful, and even praiseworthy, to return to the more simple and
ancient practice. St. Jerome praises St. Exuperius, Bishop of Toulouse
in his day, because, having sold the church-plate to relieve the
pressing necessities of the poor, he was content to carry the body of
Christ in a basket made of wicker-work, and the blood of Christ in a
chalice of glass. Most assuredly St. Jerome would have been at no loss
to interpret the painting before us.
But let us now pass on into the cemetery of San Callisto, and enter
again the chamber in which we saw Moses, and the fishermen, and the
ministration of baptism, and the paralytic. Let us pursue our walk round
the chamber, and immediately after the paralytic, on the wall facing the
doorway, we come to the painting of a three-legged table with bread and
fish upon it, a woman standing on one side in the ancient attitude of
Christian prayer, and a man on the other stretching out his hands over
the fish and the bread, as though he were blessing them. Can it be that
we have here the act of consecration of the Holy Eucharist, as in the
adjacent wall we had the act of baptizing, only in a somewhat more
hidden manner, as became the surpassing dignity of the greater mystery?
Nobody, we think, would ever have disputed it, had the dress of the
consecrator been somewhat more suited to such an action. But his breast
and arm and one side of his body are considerably exposed, as he
stretches out his arm from underneath his cloak; and modern taste takes
exception to the exposure as unseemly in such a time and place. We have
no wish to put a weapon into the hands of the anti-ritualistic party.
Nevertheless, we believe that it is pretty well ascertained that at
first no vestment was exclusively appropriated to the celebration of
Mass. We are not sure that Dean Stanley was in error when he wrote the
other day that St. Martin, the Apostle of Gaul and first Bishop of
Tours, wore a sheepskin when he officiated, and that “he consecrated the
Eucharistic elements with his bare arms coming through the sheepskin.”
And at any rate it is certain that in the days of Tertullian, to which
the picture before us belongs, many ministers of Christ’s word and
sacraments used the pallium as the dress most suitable to their own
profession. The writer we have named published a short treatise on the
subject, in which, with his usual wit and subtlety, he commends its use,
and he concludes with these words: “Rejoice, O Pallium! and exult; a
better philosophy claims thee now, since thou hast become the vestment
of a Christian.” Forty years later a fellow-countryman of this writer,
St. Cyprian, expressed a strong objection to the dress, both as immodest
in itself and vainglorious in its signification. Thus everything
conspires to support the interpretation which the picture itself
suggests and the age to which it has been assigned; and we conclude with
confidence that those who first saw it never doubted that it was meant
to set before them the most solemn mystery of their religion.
They would have recognized the same mystery again without hesitation,
under another form, in the painting which follows immediately
afterwards, in which seven men are seen seated at a table, partaking of
bread and fish. Our own thoughts, as we look at it, fly naturally to the
last chapter of the Gospel according to St. John, where such an incident
as this is minutely described after the miraculous draught of fishes
which was the occasion of it. But unless we are very familiar with the
writings of the Fathers, our thoughts would probably go no further; they
would rest in the mere letter of the narrative; we should not penetrate
beneath the surface, and see (as all the Fathers saw), in every
circumstance related, a prophetic figure of the whole history of the
church: first, the immense number of souls caught in her net, then the
union of those souls with Christ, “the fish that was already laid on the
hot coals” (_Piscis assus, Christus passus_), their incorporation with
him through partaking of that living Bread which came down from heaven,
and consequently their sure hope of abiding with him for ever in the
world to come. This is no private or modern interpretation; it is drawn
out at greatest length by St. Augustine; but it is to be found also in
all other patristic commentaries on Holy Scripture; and the marvellous
unity, not only in dogmatic teaching, but even in the use of allegories
and artistic symbols, which reached from east to west in the ancient
church, warrants us in assuming that it was not unknown to him who
selected this scene as the central piece of decoration for the principal
wall of this chamber.
Next after it he painted Abraham with his son Isaac, the ram, and the
faggot for the sacrifice—a type both of the sacrifice on Mount Calvary
and (in a yet more lively manner) of the unbloody sacrifice still
perpetually renewed on Christian altars.
Thus there is the most exact similitude between the illustrations used
to set forth the Holy Eucharist on the one wall and those of holy
baptism on the other. Both sacraments are at the same time veiled from
unbelievers, yet indicated to the faithful, by types taken from the
history of the Old Law, by incidents belonging to the life of Christ,
and by representations, sufficiently simple yet obscure, of the actual
manner of their administration. And then the last wall was reserved for
the setting forth of our resurrection, in the example of Lazarus, which
was, in truth, the natural end and completion of all that the sacraments
led to.
We have not left ourselves space to speak at length of the miracles of
changing water into wine, or the multiplication of the loaves and
fishes, as other figures of the Holy Eucharist often to be seen in the
Catacombs. That they were painted there in this sense we cannot doubt,
when we consider how they were connected with that sacrament in the
sermons and catechetical instructions of the early church. In the first
miracle the substance of water was changed into the substance of wine;
in the second a limited substance was, by Christ’s power, so multiplied
as to be made present in a thousand places at once, capable of feeding a
thousand persons, whereas a minute before it had been only present in
one place and was sufficient only to satisfy the appetite of one. The
analogy is obvious; but these miracles do not seem to have entered so
early into the system of decoration of the Catacombs (except in a very
fragmentary and indirect manner), neither do they anywhere enter into so
long and beautiful a series of mystical figures, as those others which
we have been just now examining. Those form a series of rare and very
special interest. They are repeated, as we have already said, in several
successive chambers, whose date can be determined, by a number of
concurrent indications, as not later than the first quarter of the third
century. In these chambers the same histories and the same symbols are
repeated in the same style, freely changed in their arrangement and in
some accessories of the composition, yet constant in their hidden
meaning and theological sense; and that sense is briefly this: the idea
of a new life imparted to the Christian soul by baptism, fed by the Holy
Eucharist, and continued uninterruptedly throughout eternity.
TWO MAY CAROLS.
BY AUBREY DE VERE.
DARKNESS.
The authentic Thought of God at last
Wanes, dimly seen, through Error’s mist:
Upon that mist, man’s image cast
Becomes the new God-Mechanist.
The vast _Idea_ shrivels up:
Truth narrows with the narrowing soul:
Men sip it from the acorn’s cup:
Their fathers drained the golden bowl.
Shrink, spelled and dwarfed, their earth, their skies;
Shrinks in their hand their measuring-rod;
With dim, yet microscopic eyes
They chase a daily-dwindling God.
His temple thus to crypt reduced,
For ancient faith is space no more,
Or her, its Queen.[32] To hearts abused
By sense, prime truths are true no more.
Footnote 32:
Father Newman has, I think, remarked that in the Protestant scheme
there is _not room_ for Mary.
LIGHT.
The spirit intricately wise
That bends above his ciphered scroll
Only to probe, and analyze,
The self-involved and sunless soul,
_Has_ not the truth he holds—though plain;
For truth divine is gift, not debt:—
Her living waters wouldst thou drain?
Let down the pitcher, not the net!
But they, the spirits frank and meek,
Nor housed in self, nor science-blind,
Who welcome truths they did not seek;—
Truth comes to them in every wind.
Beside his tent’s still open door,
With open heart, and open eye,
The patriarch sat, when they who wore
That triad type of God drew nigh.
The world of faith around us lies
Like nature’s world of life and growth:
Seeing, to see it needeth eyes
And heart, profound and simple both.
LETTERS OF A YOUNG IRISHWOMAN TO HER SISTER.
FROM THE FRENCH.
NOVEMBER 16, 1869.
Thérèse has followed her sister.... At the last moment reason returned;
she looked at her mother and said: “Here is Mad; give me your blessing!”
O my God! it is, then, true—the nest is empty.
Kate, how are Berthe and Raoul to be consoled?
NOVEMBER 22, 1869.
Margaret is here again—a ray of sunshine after the storm, in this
dwelling, twice visited by death. Oh! how we wept in embracing her. And
with what affection she hastened to Berthe, this devastated,
disinherited, wounded, and bleeding heart! “How shall we leave this
cemetery now?” said my mother to Gertrude. Oh! I would wish to remain
here with her. To return to Orleans, to find their traces everywhere,
would be too much grief. What a crushing blow! What incredible,
unforeseen suddenness! It is enough to take away one’s reason. Raoul
speaks no more, hears no more, sees no more; Berthe is in tears: we have
to console and support them. Help us with your prayers, happy Kate, who
witness no death! In the middle of the park are two trees which Raoul
planted on the day his daughters were born. They are to be transplanted
to their tombs. Dear children, so united, so beautiful, and inseparable,
even in death! O the mother! what sorrow is hers. Ought children to die
before their mother?
Mme. de T—— is heroic in self-denial, and yet these deaths revive all
her troubles. Ah! who could have foretold that my happiness would so
soon have declined, and that God would so quickly have claimed his
portion of our treasure! See, here are Gertrude and Berthe—two mothers
without children: Ellen and Edith in eternity; Marcella at Naples. I now
experience an indescribable apprehension, and count the beloved heads by
which I am still surrounded.... I remember the L—— family, carried off
in one year.
A radiant letter from Marcella, who does not yet know of our mourning.
_Beati qui lugent!_ Let us love God, let us love God!
It is in him that I cherish you, my Kate.
NOVEMBER 28, 1869.
All our Ireland in letters of fraternal condolence. The saintly Isa
speaks to me sweetly of the happiness of the souls thus called away, and
exhorts me to perfect love. Lizzy invites me to cross the Channel to
receive the consolations of those whom I consoled formerly. Sarah and
the others comfort me in our beloved tongue. O Kate! it was so
beautiful, our peaceful home, with its assembly of children and
grandchildren, forming, as it were, a glorious crown around my venerated
mother; and now a void has been made, the birds have spread their wings,
and, like the dove from the ark, return no more.
O charming towers, silent witnesses of our happiness! O vast sea, coming
to murmur at our feet! O flowers they loved! O thickets where their
voices, fresh and pure, resounded! O lawn whereon they tried their
earliest steps; dear abode which witnessed their growth! O forests
through which they sped along, lively and swift of foot, in chase of
butterflies or of their favorite dog! O solitary paths which they so
often traversed to go and lavish on the poor their gold and their
love!—speak to us of _them_, and of _them_ always.
Dear Kate, pray for the desolate parents. “All my future has vanished,”
says Berthe. May God be with her! Everything else is very small in
trials so great as these. My mother begs you to ask for fifty Masses at
Fourvières; we have not the strength to write.
Life, the sunshine, and blue sky—all have disappeared. Adieu, dear
sister.
DECEMBER 5, 1869.
Adrien is reading to us _Herminie de la Bassemoûturie_, a true narrative
of a life of suffering and humiliation, borne with a courage so heroic
and supernatural that one’s heart kindles at it. Margaret is going away,
perhaps to-morrow. On the 30th Heaven sent Lucy a dear little daughter,
who was baptized yesterday without any pomp. Gertrude was godmother, and
the godfather is a brother of my pretty sister’s. They have called this
little daughter of Brittany _Anne_—a good name.
_Dec. 6._—I have just returned from accompanying our friends as far as
to D——. Emmanuel continued to send me kisses while the carriage went
slowly away.... Dear Margaret! how much I regret her. Everybody loves
her, wherever she goes. Now we are alone.... Johanna, Paul, and their
children leave us this evening to spend some months at Paris. I never
tell you about Arthur and Edward, whose vacation is over, and who are
very good friends together. The _abbé_ remains with us, that we may not
be deprived of daily Mass. From henceforth follow me in thought into the
great drawing-room, once so bright with the dear young creatures whom I
so loved, and there you will see, in her large easy-chair, my mother,
whom grief has aged, with your Georgina on a low chair at her feet.
Gertrude, with needlework in her hands, occupies the other side of the
fire-place, Berthe is near her, then Adrien, René, Raoul, Edouard, and
the _abbé_ round the table, near which is seated also the charming Lucy.
But a ray from on high pierces the sombre veils: our dear ones see God;
they contemplate him in eternal ecstasy. I had bought at Orleans a
poetic little picture—a lily broken on earth, which flowered again in
heaven—and underneath it a verse of the beautiful lines by Mlle.
Fleuriot on the death of _Alix_. How this lily recalls Picciola to my
mind! René is working at a miniature which he intends to give to Berthe:
in the foreground the twins are embracing a poor old man; in the
distance are two lilies on a tomb and two doves taking flight. I am
continuing the _History of the Popes_; it will be for Marguerite and
Alix.
How I wish you were here! My heart aches for Berthe, formerly so happy,
and so lonely now. Ah! what burning tears are those that spring from the
hearts of mothers when God takes back from them the precious ones lent
them for a day. O remediless grief, deep void, unfathomable abyss!
Yes, we shall remain in Brittany. The noise of the festivities of this
world would be to us a martyrdom; but I am athirst for my Kate, and it
seems as if I shall be stronger when her gentle hand has laid balm upon
my wounds. René and I will be in Paris on the 23d for a few days.
Mistress Annah shed many tears at the moment of leave-taking. Margaret
was pale and greatly moved; why should there be any separations, sister?
Ah! doubtless because earth would be too delightful. May God be always
with you!
DECEMBER 12, 1869.
Do you know that Overbeck is dead? Edith MacMoor sends me long and
interesting details from Rome. Edith has taken up her abode in the city
which is the fatherland of Catholics, and her old sympathy with me, she
says, has reawakened before the _Sibyls_. Dear, ardent soul, always so
amiable! O our artist, so beloved, so admired! The world is no more
anything to me but a _Campo Santo_.
Have you heard of the _Pearl of Antioch_? I am reading this Christian
romance with René.
On the 8th we observed as a special festival the opening of the great
sittings of this Council which will crown with a new glory the reign of
Pius IX. Our life is quite monastic: no more joyous laughter rings along
the corridors; silence—the “first power in the world,” as the Père
Lacordaire called it—dwells with us. We are in mourning for our beloved
children, and these dark dresses are of a solemn sadness which strikes
our visitors. Every day, no matter what the weather may be, René
accompanies me to the cemetery. In spite of the cold, there are flowers,
and this marble is almost _joyous_. The _Revue_ gives an interesting
story—“Laurence,” an account of a young girl who wished to die because
her sister, on whom she lavished all her love, had departed to heaven. I
do not think that Thérèse wished for death, but think rather that
Picciola asked of God that she might share her felicity.
Lucy is well, and thanks you for your sisterly prayers. We are expecting
news from Margaret and Marcella. Mary and Ellen write regularly to
Berthe and to me. Good and kind hearts, full of gentleness and
affection!
Kate dearest, what do you say to my idea?—the adoption of these children
would console my sister. Would it be well to propose it to her?
I find René changed. Pray for us.
DECEMBER 15, 1869.
Margaret sends me her Journal since the departure, every line of which
is redolent of poetry and affection. Emmanuel is hourly asking for us.
Marcella sends me pages bathed with tears: “Why did you allow me to go
away, dear and generous friend? I feel that your soul would have taken
refuge with mine in these sad days.”
Kate, what, then, is happiness, since it lasts so short a time?
Marcella is going to spend the winter at Rome; Anna continues to grow
both taller and stronger, “but the departure of her friends makes her
wish for heaven, and everything gives me the presentiment that in a few
years my beloved one will enter a convent. You will scold me for
thinking this so long beforehand, but you will agree with me that her
piety is beyond what is ordinary. I have so unlearnt happiness that I
live always in uncertainty.” A friend of Adrien’s tells him of the
reception given at Naples to the happy family party: Mme. de V—— is
allied to the Princess of X——. How fair a future has opened before my
friend! “To return to Rome, where so many of my memories linger, was my
earnest desire; blessed be God, who permits it to be realized!”
René is writing to you. Good-by for to-day, dearest sister!
DECEMBER 18, 1869.
Read an admirable pastoral letter by Mgr. Berthaud. “It is a fountain of
living water, a springing fountain,” writes Louis Veuillot, who has the
happiness to be in Rome.
Berthe yields to the entreaties of her mother, who begs her to go to her
in her old castle on the banks of the Rhine. Lucy is going away at the
same time to show her sisters the beautiful little Anna, her rosebud. I
look forward with fear to the feeling of solitude which will seize upon
us after they are gone. O my God! these will all return, but thou
keepest thine angels.
The happy Karl sends the most fraternal letters that he has ever yet
addressed to me. He is now in retreat, almost ready to mount the steps
of the altar and accomplish Ellen’s last desire. “I am never lonely,” he
writes. What ardor consumes him! How he burns to shed his blood for
Christ! “My whole soul springs forth towards those disinherited souls
who know not God! If you still take an interest in your unworthy
brother, wish for him crosses, trials, sorrows, and persecutions. But I
am not worthy to participate in the Passion of my Redeemer, and it may
be that my cross may be the burden of a useless life.” Saintly friend!
noble heart! His director, who is a relative of our good _abbé_, never
wearies in his praises of Karl. According to all probability, he will
set out for Marseilles the day after his ordination, where the first
ship that sails will take him on board. What am I, my God, by the side
of this brother left me by Ellen?
I am coming to see you, dear Kate, to refresh myself with you—a too
rapid apparition, too fleeting a happiness, and one in which I scarcely
can believe.
DECEMBER 22, 1869.
Dear Kate, this sacrifice must also be made. Yesterday a frightful
accident threw us all into the greatest agitation. My mother’s horses
ran away. The footman, losing all presence of mind with terror, leaped
down and was killed by the fall. He was taken up quite mutilated....
Horrible! horrible! My mother has fever; we remain. The unfortunate
Antoine will be buried to-morrow morning. He leaves three children. He
was an excellent Christian, and was preparing to make his Christmas
communion.... I am writing to Karl, and at the same time to the
venerable superior to obtain permission for our friend to give us one or
two days previous to quitting France and Europe.
My mother was coming back from the town, whither we had all gone to take
those of our party who were leaving. René and I were to have taken our
departure this evening. All in this world is nothingness, except the
pure and holy love of God. I had so set my mind on this journey that I
can only give it up by doing violence to my heart. But if the shock my
mother has undergone should bring on an illness, I should never forgive
myself for having gone away.
Pray, dear Kate!
DECEMBER 25, 1869.
My mother is better, dear sister, although the doctor condemns her still
to repose. The good _curé_ is very unwell, and, since my mother would
not have been able to attend the midnight Mass, the _abbé_ offered to
say it at the parish church. Ah! if the twins had been here. We left the
house at ten. What a night! What impressions! In a clear and calm night,
with the sky spangled with thousands of stars, to go through
hedge-bordered paths to this old Breton church, so vast and so full; the
singing, the sounds of the organ played by René, the _Gloria in
Excelsis_, so sweet and grand, the numerous communions, the
dimly-lighted sanctuary—all these things had about them an indescribable
old-world poetry, a certain interior and heavenly charm, which made me
ask if we were not at Bethlehem, and if we were not suddenly about to
behold with our bodily eyes, like the shepherds, the adorable new-born
Saviour in the manger. “The Cedar of Lebanon is gone forth from the
hyssop in our valley.” Lord Jesus, grant thy blessing upon France!
It is two years to-day since Ellen entered into glory. With what ecstasy
_she_ must behold Karl at the altar! Dear Kate, I know not what
atmosphere is surrounding me, but it seems to me that every sorrow
brings me nearer to God.
My mother was visibly affected on reading your kind lines; how she loves
us! Gertrude is more saintly than ever; her self-denial is increasing.
She has owned to me that she never loses the presence of God. We five
form a severe group, in which the highest questions are discussed.
Gertrude is on fire when she speaks of charity. There is no sort of
mortification in which she does not take delight; how I startled her
yesterday by coming suddenly upon her as she was exchanging her shoes
for those of a beggar! She fasted on bread and water the three last days
of Advent, and has asked me if I would go with her barefoot to the
crucifix on the mountain, the path to which is covered with brambles.
You see she is a worthy imitator of the _Acta Sanctorum_.
_A Dieu_, best beloved!
DECEMBER 28, 1869.
Karl arrives on the 31st. Dear Kate, his letter showed me heaven. Good
news of everybody, and my mother is in the drawing-room. So the year is
about to end—this year, so eventful, and so plentiful in tears! O my
God! how many loving looks follow me no more. In my meditation this
morning I asked myself whether I am yet submissive and resigned. Alas! I
truly wish whatever God wills, but I am weak.
Just now two little birds came and perched on my window, fluttering as
if wanting to come in. I opened it gently and crumbled a cake for them,
and the pretty little hungry creatures pecked up the crumbs gladly. Then
they flew away, and I began to think of the two sweet birds which,
almost before we were aware, have flown away also. I was so proud of
this beautiful family, so happy to belong to it! Oh! you know well,
Kate, that it is above all for the sake of the poor father, the
sorrowing mother, that I regret these two attractive creatures! Raoul
writes that Berthe is more calm, and he thinks she will remain some time
where she is. What an image of death is this silence and the solitude
that now surrounds us! I work hard, take long walks, teach two little
boys their catechism, and yet, in spite of everything, as soon as René
is no longer there, as soon as I recall the past, my heart is ready to
break.
“Take care, my dear daughter,” my mother says to me. “Strengthen your
soul; throw yourself upon God.” And Gertrude: “The thought of God
softens everything. He has permitted it—let us submit; let us live in
heaven.”
Would that we could go thither together, dear sister!
Accept all my best wishes for the New Year—wishes for every day and
every hour, for your earthly and eternal happiness.
JANUARY 5, 1870.
Dear Kate, how good God is! This is the cry of my heart, crushed beneath
the weight of its gratitude. Karl has been our Good Samaritan. If Berthe
and Raoul could only hear him! What unction in his words!
He made his appearance like the angel of Providence amongst us. It was
in the evening. René had gone to wait for him; we had heard no noise,
when the door opened.... It was he! There was a moment of emotion and
tears, and when he consented to bless us, and I saw him in the light, I
understood the words of Gertrude: “He has found true happiness.” Then
his Mass the next day, the Communion, and Thanksgiving said aloud, the
chanting of the _Magnificat_ and of the _Lætatus_—it was heaven. This
impression still remains; thanks to a concurrence of circumstances in
which I perceive the intervention of our good angels, the newly elect of
the priesthood remains with us until the 20th—an unhoped-for and most
precious favor. Alas! shall we see him again?
He has given me a little book which he had kept by permission of his
superior; you are aware that this generous Karl despoiled himself of
everything before giving _himself_ also to God. This _Basket of
Eucharistic Flowers_ is full of sweetness to my heart. I find in it some
verses on Picciola—not mine, but the flower—and the heavenly utterances
of the pious Marie Jenna, my favorite poetess. Listen to this:
“Oui, cette vie en larmes est féconde;
J’ai peu vécu, j’ai déjà bien souffert.
Mon Dieu, j’ai soif, et les routes du monde
Ne me sont rien qu’une aride désert.
Mais à tes pieds mon âme se repose.
O tendre Ami, Divin Consolateur,
Qu’importe à moi de perdre toute chose,
Si je te garde, amour de mon Sauveur!”[33]
Footnote 33:
Yes, this our life is plentiful in tears.
Though I am young, still I have suffered much.
My God, I thirst! and this world’s weary ways
Are but an arid desert unto me.
But at thy feet my soul finds her repose,
O tender Friend and Comforter Divine!
What matters it to me if I lose all,
But still keep thee, my dearest Saviour’s love!
And this cry of the soul:
“Jesus, pour seul bonheur, ah! donnez-moi des larmes
Que vous consolerez.”[34]
Footnote 34:
Jesus, for my sole happiness, oh! give me tears
Which thou wilt wipe away.
JANUARY 10, 1870.
Karl has spoken to me much of you, dear sister. He wishes that his last
sculpture in Europe should be for our chapel: René and his brothers have
for some time past been working at a pulpit; the principal figure will
be our missionary’s work. He has consented to let me prepare his
baggage. Kate, I was complaining of our solitude, and now it has become
sweet to me, because I love God more. Oh! what a blessing to the soul it
is to love.
I am slipping these few words in with René’s, and send you a thousand
loving messages.
JANUARY 14, 1870.
Impossible not to give you the history of our day, although it is very
late. I wished to go to Auray with Karl, and my mother felt strong
enough to go with us. On the way we met with a German, poor as Job, a
true disciple of Luther, his Bible in his hand. His gentle and
melancholy air interested us. We entered into conversation with him,
Karl preached to him, he came with us to Auray, and when we came out of
the church he told us that his mother was a Catholic, that the sight of
our fervor had touched him, etc., etc. In short, we brought him back
with us to the château, and Karl is going to catechise him and finish
his conversion. You see the good Saint Anne has indeed had a hand in
this. Is it not a charming episode?
15th.—Letters: 1st, Margaret, who sends you her heartful of good wishes;
2d, Marcella, with the chronicle of the Council and the account of an
audience with the Holy Father; 3d, Lizzy, who wants to make me admire
her Daniel; 4th, Lucy, who is impatient to come back, because her pretty
Anne cannot be happy without us, says our amiable sister; 5th, my Kate.
I mention all in chronological order; you know very well that you are
first in order of affection. But how short it is, dearest! Tell me soon
the reason of this brevity; you must have so much to say!
_A Dieu_, my dearest Kate. All and each of the happy inhabitants of my
Brittany offer you their homage and respect.
JANUARY 19, 1870.
Well, dearest, he leaves us to-morrow—this friend, this good brother and
generous priest. Our German is converted, but for reasons of prudence
the baptism is deferred. The worthy man does not wish to quit us, and
does his utmost to render himself useful. He is passionately fond of
music, and teaches it to our pastors, who in return _strengthen_ him (as
he says) in the catechism. How sadly we shall miss Karl! But then,
souls, souls! Ah! I would not keep him back, even if I could.
I have had a strange dream. I was with you in your cell. You seemed to
be asleep; I spoke to you, but you did not answer me. I went to kiss
you, and in this kiss I felt so strange a thrill, as if your beautiful
face had been of marble, that I woke, crying out in a manner which
alarmed René. It is in vain that I say to myself again and again that it
is but a dream; the impression remains—a profound terror, and an anguish
which oppresses my heart. Write to me; reassure me, dear Kate. I have
lost faith in happiness. What am I saying? So long as I belong to God,
and nothing can separate me from him, shall I not have the only
happiness worthy of the name?
Karl promises to write to us. He is going to China, that literary
country, where barbarism and civilization are so strangely mingled. My
mother, _the Adriens_, and we are putting together our savings to give
them to the dear missionary, that with them he may have more facilities
in his work of gaining souls. How I bless fortune on these occasions!
A thousand lovingnesses, dear sister—the dearest of sisters.
JANUARY 26, 1870.
We accompanied Karl to his ship, which I visited, and which we saw start
on her voyage. Thus he is now between sea and sky, exposed to tempests.
Oh! “how beautiful are the feet of those” who have left all—family,
friends, country, repose, comforts, enjoyments—to go in search of the
lost sheep. It seems to me that the angels of faith and love must spread
their wings over the vessel and keep far away all contrary winds.... We
seem as if impregnated with sanctity. Grief is a powerful lever to raise
one to God and to transform souls!
You do not write. René is uneasy and tries in vain to conceal his
anxiety from me. Did you receive his letter of the 24th? Dear Kate, if
you are ill, send one word and we will hasten to you. O my God! Ill!
You! Could it be possible? That terrible dream is always before my eyes.
You will scold me, dearest.... Remember that for some months past I have
suffered so much that even the thought of a misfortune overwhelms me.
Oh! may God guard you, darling Kate, my sister, my soul. Take care of
yourself for the love of me.
My mother entreats you to write; she suffers on account of my anxiety.
My God! grant that that may have been only a dream.
JANUARY 29, 1870.
Still nothing; perhaps your letter is lost.... May God protect you! The
_Univers_ pleases me. Mgr. Berthaud has had a triumph at Sant’ Andrea
della Valle—the dear church where we have prayed. “His imagery is rich
and abundant,” writes Louis Veuillot, “because his faith keeps alive in
him a perpetual enthusiasm for the works, the mercies, and the love of
God. His thoughts are an endless song. What he says he sees; what he
sees he admires and adores. External things, enveloped and, as it were,
transpierced by the rays of the divine Sun, appear to him as magnificent
as he describes them to be. Things are the works of God; men are the
children of God, divinities in flower, called by their adoption to the
ineffable glory of the divine union. As soon as they are in their way,
their vocation, their order, their accidental defects are effaced; there
is no more ugliness, there are no more rags, no more miseries—all is
already transfigured, already at the attainment of its end, and the
lyre, vibrating to the touch of a sacred enthusiasm, gives forth sounds
at once vehement and sublime.”
What eulogy! What style!
Mgr. Mermillod made a magnificent discourse at Saint Louis des Français,
on the perpetuation in the church of the Gospel scene of the Magi. “The
action of God in the world, the redemption of souls, the perpetuity and
definition of the truth, all repose upon these three great weaknesses: a
Child at Bethlehem, a Host in the tabernacle, an aged man at the
Vatican.”
Kate dearest, I admire, but nothing dispels my preoccupation, the
dominant note of my thoughts—you! yourself! Why this silence? I must
know it! Write to me; I am suffering....
JANUARY 31, 1870.
It is here, on my writing-table, this white page on which you have
traced but one word.... “It was not a dream!” We start at once; this
note will precede us by a few hours. Oh! live for me, my beloved sister;
ask God to cure you.
My God, I have so often prayed thee to preserve her to me—to let her
live as long as I!
* * * * *
JOURNAL OF GEORGINA AFTER HER SISTER’S DEATH.
FEBRUARY 15, 1870.
O amare! O perire tibi!
O advenire ad Deum!
Still would I write to you, beloved sister who have left me! Oh! can
this be possible? You, my Guardian Angel! It is in heaven that I now
look for you, that I now behold you—in heaven, your true home—in heaven,
where you have found again our mother. O my God! my God! Always shall I
remember this last journey, of which you were the object; the anguish on
the way, the haste to arrive, the chill that fell on my heart at the
gate of the convent. Oh! you knew that I could not bear to see you
suffer; and then, perhaps, you might think you would recover, for I
cannot believe that you desired to die.... Ah! to see you dying; to
embrace you, watch by you, hear the last effusions of that tenderness to
which my mother had bequeathed me; to see this flame, which was my life,
die out, and yet not die myself—Kate, Kate, I can think only, speak
only, of you!
I have been very ill. I feel weak, very weak—almost discouraged to live.
Tell me that you are not gone away; soul of my sister, speak to my soul!
Oh! how it seems to me as if I had lost everything. You it was who gave
so great an interest to my life, animating everything with your
affection. And now....
FEBRUARY 28.
Dear Kate, obtain strength for me. I desire to live for René. Why did
you not stay with us, my beloved? I have bitter regrets.... I should
have wished to nurse you, to keep you here. O foolishness of love! what
right have I to wish to keep you from your own country? Dear sister, the
correspondence which was my daily delight must not end: I will write my
journal for _you_. God, who is so good, even when he separates two
hearts which were one, could not refuse anything to his elect. Ask him,
then, my sister, that you may every day come to me, if even only for an
instant. Oh! would that I could see you. It seems to me that with you
all died; that nothing more will ever in this world smile on me, that
the eternal mourning of my soul can never more be comforted. Our friends
write to me. Margaret and Marcella weep with me. My mother, Adrien,
Gertrude, and René are full of unspeakable tenderness and solicitude
towards me; and yet I have scarcely any response to make them but my
tears. All is night around me: the Sun has set.
Oh! speak to me, Kate—only one word, one vibration of your dear voice,
one of your smiles. Is it true, my God, that for twenty-five days past
this face so dearly loved has been covered with a shroud?
Is it true? Has death indeed come between us? Had we not enough of
absence and of separation, that other mourning of the soul? I still hear
her last word.... Oh! who will give me back my past joys, fled away, and
the affection which enfolded all?
Adrien is reading me the _Beatitudes_, by Mgr. Landriot. There are some
admirable conferences on the divine words, _Beati qui lugent_. “There
are,” says the Père Lacordaire, “tears in all the universe; and they are
so natural to us that even if they had no cause, they would flow
_without_ cause, solely from the charm of that ineffable sadness of
which our soul is the deep and mysterious well.” Again: “Melancholy is
the great queen of highly sensitive souls; she touches them without
their knowing how or why, in a secret and unexpected moment. The ray of
light which gladdens others brings veils to them; the festive rejoicing
which moves and delights others pierces them with an arrow. It is with
much difficulty that God and our Lord can scatter from the heart which
loves them these vain and chilling clouds; the suffering is so much the
more difficult to vanquish from having a less real cause.”
Oh! the cause of my sorrow, can I forget it? Kate, obtain strength for
me. How truly I feel you present!
MARCH 5.
We are come back to Brittany. They say that I have become a mere shadow.
Kate dearest, I wish to be courageous, but my poor human nature gives
way on this Calvary. O my memories! They are a golden book in which I
read every hour, in which every leaflet recalls my other self, her
devotedness and love. Your papers have been given to me—the private
pages which God alone has read with me. How you have loved me! Dearest,
I weep no more, except over myself. You were hungering for heaven, as
were Mad and Thérèse, Ellen and Edith. Oh! gone—you also, you my
guardian angel!
I wanted to write, to relieve myself a little; my heart swelled, and I
could do nothing but sob. I have fearful moments. Oh! speak to me, Kate.
Last night I seemed to witness your death again. Oh! those eyes, those
eyes which I almost worshipped—I had to close them. Kate, what is
happiness? Mine has fled away like a cloud, and I seek after it in vain.
I know that you are happy, and yet my selfishness grieves. Pray for your
Georgina!
MARCH 8.
Strange blindness of heart! You were to me so sweet, so infinitely
precious, that the thought of an _adieu_ without ever meeting here again
had never occurred to me.
You were six years old when you imprinted your first kiss on the brow of
your Georgina. Our most distant memories show me your beloved image. You
never left me; the sight of you was a talisman that stopped my tears;
your voice taught me my first baby-words. Oh! this union of ours from
the very cradle was my mother’s pride—this mother, so beloved and so
beautiful, who saw herself over again in you. You did not know that you
were fair; you early disdained earthly frivolities; and how much it must
have cost you, later, to remain in the world for me!
Everywhere you were surrounded by sympathy and respect; your sisterly
devotion made you an aureole. Kate, who was like you?
Tell me that you hear me, that you see me every day. How shall I live
without you? A great void has been made in me; my heart is like a
desert. Ah! I loved you too well, and our God is a jealous God.
I adore his will, and, in spite of my inexpressible desolation, I kiss
his divine hand beneath the blow which overwhelms me. I desire to become
truly your sister by sacrifice and love.
Help me! I know not how to climb up Calvary!
MARCH 10.
No, I cannot believe that it is at an end; that I have no more a sister.
At times I believe myself to be under the influence of a nightmare. My
black dress—this sombre vestment which made me afraid—is become dear to
me since I wear it for you; but ... what faintings of heart! In what an
ocean of grief my soul is plunged!
To-day I wished to go out and visit my poor; my strength failed. Kate,
sorrow is killing me.
MARCH 12.
An unexpected consolation—a visit from the Père de G—-. His touching,
penetrating words roused me. Pardon me, Kate! I was cowardly. God
forbids not tears, but he forbids despair. Alas! formerly I comforted
others, and now I am unwilling to accept any solace in my trouble; I
wish for no truce to my regret. Oh! be happy, soul of my sister. Obtain
for me grace to love much, more than ever, all who suffer, all the elect
of misfortune. The gentle Abbé Perreyve used to say: “The greater part
of souls would remain closed to other souls, if they had not suffered;
trial bruises them, and compels them to shed around them floods of
love.”
I loved them already—these dear poor of the good God! But I feel that my
time belongs to them, that I owe myself also to those who love me, and
that it remains to me to pray and suffer while I love.
Help me, dear Kate, help me!
MARCH 15.
How kind René is, dear Kate, and how fraternal! He understands my wish
to write to you still, to continue my life so violently cut in twain,
and unceasingly to speak to you. I am stronger, but not yet resigned.
Can one be resigned to such a loss?
I saw yesterday a young girl whom Gertrude knows, and who has opened her
heart to me as to a friend. With what ardor of desire she dreams of the
religious life! God permits her to be cruelly tried: her mother is
utterly opposed to her departure. There are several other sisters, one
of whom shares the aspirations of my new acquaintance. How they both
suffer! Would that a heavenly light might illuminate the heart of their
mother, who little comprehends the martyrdom of her children! How
everything is at cross-purposes in this poor world! People are saddened
by things at which they ought to rejoice, and _vice versâ_. Mothers, who
have had experience of the cares and pains of marriage and the
world—mothers, who know too well the sum of happiness that may be
expected from even the best-assorted unions—make themselves miserable at
the mere thought of their daughters’ union with God, as if he were not
the Supreme Good, the Spouse _par excellence_, the faithful Friend, the
plenitude of every virtue and of love! Ah! it is because everything in
this world has its shades and its defects, and because few souls know
truly how to love.
Thus is it that there is a mixture and alloy in my affection for you
when I weep for you so bitterly, dear sister of my life!
Nothing can separate our souls. I am yours in life and death!
MARCH 18.
Berthe’s brother has just sunk under a malignant fever. The poor widow
is ill of grief. Three such beautiful children, whom he loved so much—so
many powerful bonds which bound him to this world so suddenly broken—all
this makes the grief immense. Gertrude said to me: “Why, then, are those
mourned for who enter the port—those who go hence to rest in God? They
only who remain behind are really to be pitied.” Ah! what deadly
affliction must not our friend feel, widowed of her happiness, which
nothing can restore to her—nothing, until that hour when, delivered in
her turn from this life sown with crosses, she too shall see God, and,
with God, him whom she weeps!
Kate, would that I could see you and embrace you again as in that last
hour! Everywhere death, everywhere mourning!
MARCH 21.
Count de Montalembert died on the 13th of March. It is a great funereal
date. May God receive him into his glory! I was just now hearing some
beautiful pages by Alfred Nettement, dead also the 14th of November—dead
in the breach, in those combats of pen and thought so worthy of
admiration and of enthusiasm when their object is the defence of the
church. Our dear M. de Riancey is also dead, faithful, to his last
moment, to this proscribed monarchy, which sees its best defenders
falling one by one. O my God! what losses. Kate, if I could forget you
for a single instant, would not these deaths lead me back to the thought
of you?
Adrien has given me _The Book of All who Suffer_, by M. Gautier. How
well this good brother was inspired!
Marcella, Margaret, Lizzy, Isa, and so many other kind hearts write to
me frequently, but nothing can replace my Kate!
APRIL 1.
Dear sister, I have suffered fearful pains for ten days past. My good
René has been to me like a Sister of Charity. I am like Thérèse, I
cannot live without my other _self_. Oh! to see you, to hear you, to
kneel by you, and kiss your beloved hands.
Until now I did not know what separation meant. I remember with a sort
of remorse how joyous my first letters were after that first farewell
which was to be so soon followed by a farewell that seems eternal. I saw
you as having attained the object of your dreams. I entered with glad
heart into this new life where all was golden. Kate, I am ungrateful!
God has permitted me to know no other troubles than those which should
not be such to the Christian—death, the beginning of true life for those
who love God. Help me, that I may be strong; my sadness clouds so many
brows!
APRIL 8.
Nelly, who flattered herself that she would recover, has bid adieu to
this poor world, in which she suffered so terribly, although possessing
numerous certainties of happiness, if it be true that anything can be
certain here below, even when one is only twenty years old.
My new young friend visits me often; her fervent piety and the ardor of
her desires find an echo in my heart. You were thus, O sister of my
soul! at her age, in that spring-time of life thrice happy and thrice
blessed when one belongs to God.
APRIL 15.
The Duchess de Berry died on the 10th, at her castle in Upper Styria,
far from Naples, far from France, far from her son. Yet another grand
figure disappeared! Kate, do you remember our presentation to this
heroine? But she is now with you, in the true fatherland of souls, far
from agitations and sufferings. Call us, call us, all together—all our
_corner of Brittany_; I, too, am athirst for heaven.
What a day was this Good Friday! Made four times the _Way of the Cross_
for the souls in purgatory. Is there any possibility that you are in
that place of expiation, dear Kate? Oh! tell me, or rather assure me,
that you are in heaven. Gaston yesterday asked his mother to show him
Mme. Kate up in the sky; he believes that you have become a star.
Charming belief!
APRIL 16.
A year ago, and I was full of joy and hope. O my happy days with my
sister! you have for ever fled away.
APRIL 17.
God be praised! I saw you this morning.... Oh! do not let me be told
that it is a dream. I _saw_ you, dear Kate; your beautiful hair falling
over your shoulders, and you were smiling. Happiness enough for one
whole day!
Christ is risen! The weather is splendid; we are in the full bloom of
spring; bright sunshine, songs of birds, verdure everywhere; joy in our
souls. Kate, I weep no more; you are in heaven!
APRIL 19.
Walk with Amélie, the future _religieuse_ of whom I spoke to you. She
relieves herself a little to me of some of the desolation that fills her
heart. She is not allowed to depart, and yet the delay requested is
expired. Her grief makes my heart ache, and I would that it were given
me to smooth for her the way to the cloister. For that I should be
obliged to go out, to visit the mother; and as soon as I see any one I
burst into tears. Do you blame me for the fidelity of my regrets? In
listening to Amélie I understand what you must have undergone when once
the Lord’s choice was clearly manifested. Pardon me for having wished
still to hold you back!
Gertrude, our saint _par excellence_, speaks admirably of heaven. Lucy
weeps with me, and makes her pretty Anne wipe away my tears. Kate, will
you read this?
APRIL 26.
Minds are much occupied respecting the _plébiscite_. My politics are not
of this world; I hear what others say, and that is all. Sister, what is
earth? I fear and pity it.
Berthe is at Paris, somewhat preoccupied by present agitations. My poor
soul passes through the most varying states: nameless anguish,
indescribable discouragement, sweet and pure joys; one thing comes as a
repose to the other, and life slips away.... Amélie came to me
yesterday; she talked long of _her crosses_, glad to be understood,
compassionated, and loved; she would willingly have remained with us for
the night. Her home, where she was formerly so happy, appears to her now
an insupportable place of abode, and her life, with all its struggles
and contradictions, is a real martyrdom.
I read her, from the _Pilgrimages of Switzerland_, a beautiful page on
Christian resignation. Oh! how I would wish to console others—I, who
cannot be consoled, alas!
APRIL 30.
Kate, I have been dreaming of you. Why did you go away so soon, sweet
sister, so beloved?
A cousin of Amélie’s died the day before yesterday, after two years of
marriage. See how short a time human felicity lasts! Every terrestrial
happiness reunited on this charming head for so short a time! Her poor
mother had buried all her other treasures one by one, and concentrated
her affections and her hopes on this idolized daughter, the only one
spared to her, and who was to be stricken down after two years of so
happy a union! Were these two souls truly religious? I know not. Ah! who
will comfort the mother, if God is not her comforter? Alas! these rapid
destinies, these human fragilities, these futures broken, these deaths,
this mourning—will they not open the eyes of those who persist in not
seeing? Amélie is always breathlessly eager to attain her object, and
distressed at the hindrances which hold her back. How pitiful that
difficulties so contemptible and vulgar should be raised in order to
turn aside the flight of this poor soul from the heavenly Bridegroom! I
can only conceive a mother with an absolute devotion, a complete
self-forgetfulness, a perpetual _sursum corda_. But these miserable
obstacles, these calculated delays, to enchain this dear Amélie in spite
of her tears and ardent longings—how they make me suffer! It appears
that for three years she has been soliciting her mother’s consent. My
God, where are the hearts which see but thee in all things? Mme. de
Vals[35] is overwhelmed by this catastrophe. All the family is in a
state that breaks one’s heart. Oh! if these distressing scenes had only
shown Mme. de Vals the vanity of earthly illusions; if she had only
understood that we must cling to God above all!
Footnote 35:
The mother of the young wife who died.
Kate, my sister in heaven, pray for this friend of your Georgina, and
pray also for me, who cannot live without my sister!
MAY 5.
The month of flowers, the month of songs, the month of the ever-blessed
Virgin, comes to me with bright memories. My own Ireland, mother,
sister, where are you? What cowardice is mine!
Brittany is smiling, rosy under a beautiful sun; the sea is calm and
magnificent. I have just been leaning over my balcony and looking long
at this grand spectacle: the blue sky, the green sea, in the grand and
majestic silence of immensity. Was there not a Christian meaning in the
words of the philosopher of antiquity who said: “God does all in
silence”? How fine is this expression!
Dear Kate, bless me! I go out, move about, wish to be useful; I work
with Gertrude, with my mother, with René. But I drag heavily the cross
of your absence. I complain to God without ceasing. Love makes
everything sweet and light: I have, then, no love?
From this month of May will date for your Georgina the adoption of a
prayer, sweet among all others—the Office of the Blessed Virgin. Oh!
these psalms, these hymns, these harmonious supplications—how sweet they
are to my poor soul! I love especially the _Lætatus_. Lucy and René sing
it with an expression which charms me. You, dearest Kate, have entered
there, into the house of the Lord!
MAY 12.
I am reading the _Interior of Jesus and Mary_, by the Père Grou, the
_Conferences_ of Père de Ravignan, and our dear _Review_. The letters on
the Council interest me particularly. I try to imagine that I am reading
them with you; that your dear head is resting on my shoulder.... Oh! the
fair and happy times which return to my memory. We so loved the
_Chansons de Gestes_, those pretty French ballads which my mother
translated with so peculiar a charm! M. Léon Gautier has published a
thoughtful and exquisite study on France under Philip Augustus; he
brings on the scene the fair Aude, the _fiancée_ of Roland, who died on
hearing of the death of her Paladin—I can understand love like this!—and
the charming little Aelis, and Sibylle de Lusignan, and the Duchess
Parise, and Aye d’Avignon, and the courageous Ameline, and Berthe, the
wife of Duke Girart, and Guiboure, that magnificent type of the
Christian woman! Do you remember, sister, Count Robert of Flanders
refusing a crown because he was in haste to see his son again? the
little Garnier nursing his father, stricken with leprosy? the mother of
the sons of Aimon—Belissende and Heustace? How we had learnt to love
those middle ages!
Pray for Amélie, dear Kate; she is so unhappy! O inestimable favor,
priceless benefit, incomparable fidelity of the religious vocation! how
little are you understood in this world.
It seems as if I heard you saying to me: _Speranza! Pazienza! Coraggio!_
MAY 16.
My soul is fallen again into an abyss of desolation. It is strange, and
at the same time painful, these struggles between myself and myself;
between nature which revolts and grace which submits. On this day four
years ago where were we? Kate, help me!
MAY 28.
I have been travelling a little, and my moments have all been employed.
René wants to give me change and distraction; but I cannot drag my
thoughts away from these images of death. Hélène has written me a
letter, saintly and sweet. Alas! who does not suffer here below?
JUNE 5.
I have just quitted Amélie, who is keeping her room from indisposition.
Her mother is kind, I believe, but how severe in aspect! Berthe and
Raoul arrived yesterday. Kate, I dreaded this meeting again, our hearts
were all so sad! Berthe is more tranquil than I had expected; she has
seen Mary and Ellen, the dear exiles! who showed her that they greatly
desire to see us. Inspire me, dear Kate. Lucy is going away again; the
house without children is like a heaven without angels. Johanna will not
return for two months.
JUNE 12.
René would like to bring the two orphans himself. My mother approves.
They will occupy the apartments of the twins. Kate, who will replace
you?
More funereal letters: two friends of our dear ones who have flown away
have also been summoned to their Father’s house. Happy souls! if they
were prepared; but poor mothers whose joy they were!
JUNE 17.
Dear Kate, I thought I saw you yesterday evening.... A young and amiable
religious, collecting for her poor, caused me a thrill. I calmed myself
and conversed with her. Her life is admirable. But what emotion
afterwards, and poignant grief!
Sister dearest, let me hope that you read these lines; that there exists
a means of communication between heaven and earth; that you have not
wholly quitted me! It was so sweet to write to you, to confide
everything to you. I should like to write your life; to relate to myself
the story of our childhood—that golden morn when so many smiles and joys
surrounded us; but these souvenirs are so distressing!
JUNE 24.
Mary and Ellen are sleeping beneath those curtains of gauze which I have
so often parted.
They are grown, and prettier than ever. With what grace they presented
themselves yesterday! And already I am anxious; have they not been taken
sufficient care of? I know not, but their almost constant cough
oppresses me like a remorse; and to replace their mother....
JUNE 29.
Berthe loves our orphans, who rarely quit her. Gertrude draws me with
her in her walks, in her life of devotedness and labor, and I let it be
so. I am no more _myself_; my better part is wanting. Oh! you were my
strength, my counsel, my happiness.
Feast of SS. Peter and Paul—a glad festival for the Christian. Louis
Veuillot, who has the happiness of being at Rome, writes there charming,
sublime incomparable pages; he counted on the _desired dogma_ being
proclaimed to-day, but all is not so easy, even in the things of God.
Anniversary of the death of _Albert_.
JULY 1.
Mary and Ellen are very attractive. Decidedly we shall keep them with
us. Berthe sees in them a resemblance to her doves; my mother likes
their smiles for the poor, for flowers, for every living thing, their
precocious reason, and their already remarkable piety. Lucy is gone.
What voids! and how different to '67, the happy year, at least during
its first months! Trial, you used to tell me, is a grace; that those
favored with the good things of this world ought to expiate their
enjoyments. Kate, I submit!
JULY 4.
The letters of Marcella and Margaret are frequent. My friend beyond seas
speaks of returning soon; she knows what a balm the sight, the beloved
sight, of her brings. Marcella quits Naples and its blue sky no more;
Anna writes to me of her joys, without suspecting what a price the
health of which she is so proud cost us.
The _abbé_ takes in the _Univers_, rendered so attractive by the truly
magic pen of the author of the _Parfum de Rome_. Finished _La Marquise
de Montagu_, an interesting book, the style of a great lady of the
seventeenth century. Reading is worth less than prayer, but both
ameliorate exile.
René is carving an altar for the parish church. He and Adrien are making
curious studies in the precious MSS. of the _Saint of the Sea-shore_.
What splendid gifts God has bestowed upon this friend of my soul!
JULY 8.
The pious and learned editor of _Eugénie de Guérin_, who also revealed
to the world the treasures of Cayla—M. Trebutien—is just dead. René
assures us that _Eugénie_ must have opened to him the gate of Eden. Oh!
I love to believe this. Amélie is at the height of her wishes: her
mother has suffered herself to be vanquished by our united entreaties,
and her entry into Carmel is fixed for the 6th of August. Another
separation. God wills it thus.
JULY 14.
Marie Jenna, the sweet poetess, has written some noble pages on the
regretted M. Trebutien. “It is the hand of a friend still trembling with
emotion that has written this”; it is the first cry of affection and of
grief, but of pure and holy affection, and of grief resigned and
Christian in the highest acceptation of the word. “If this were a
learned man, an antiquary, an artist, above all he was a soul—a soul,
that masterpiece of God, that thing so fair that he himself delights in
it, that he has profoundly loved, even when, having lost the attraction
of innocence, she had no other attraction than misfortune. He was an
ardent Catholic, he prayed, he loved God. He, who so hungered after
justice, love, and beauty, could not but love God! The gifts of the
understanding exercised over him an irresistible magic; but if he lived
by intelligence, he lived still more by the heart. His friendship was
full of strength and tenderness; he gave himself without measure.”
Ah! dearest Kate, I forget that you are no longer here. Ellen is
extremely sympathetic towards me; she listens to me, speaking of you,
for hours together. This morning, after a long account, in which her
mother’s name and yours recurred a hundred times, she said to me with
feeling: “I am going to pray God to put me soon where they are.”
O Blessed Virgin! may she stay with us.
JULY 18.
Arthur is ill. Johanna writes agitated and sorrowful pages. My saintly
Kate, pray for us!
The rumors of war which have for some days been circulating are taking
consistency. What is about to become of this poor country? Will the hour
of vengeance strike, or will mercy again carry the day? Epidemic
maladies and drought have already spread desolation everywhere.
Kate, I would fain penetrate into the future. O folly! What would it be,
when I cannot even support my present grief?
René has had three attacks of fever. O this dear invalid, this son of
liberty and space, restless as a lion! in repose. Dear, good friend!
Come, then, and see him, dear Kate, when three times a day he attends to
an unfortunate child whose wounds horrify everybody. “The hand of M.
René passes over my sores like the wing of an angel!” What charming
praise, and especially in Breton, in the mouth of this frightful little
lad, who is distressed at his own ugliness! Gertrude is teaching him the
catechism; Mary and Ellen prepare his meals with their little white
hands. Ellen has lovely eyes of sea-blue, very dark.
JULY 24.
The _Univers_ of Wednesday, the 20th, is splendid: “The Infallibility is
proclaimed! _Ubi Petrus, ibi Ecclesia!_ The times are hard; war,
pestilence, famine; but the year 1870 will be none the less immortal.
This will be called the Century of Pius IX., the Pope of the Immaculate
Conception and of the Infallibility.” Great joy in the Catholic world.
Here is war with Prussia—that power which, whatever may be said, is
truly redoubtable. Happy the people whose history is wearisome!
Misfortune to those who depart from the path traced for them by
Providence! What a magnificent page might France have added to her
history had she so willed! “Archimedes asked but a lever and a fulcrum
to move the world,” said the Père Lacordaire at Notre Dame; “but in his
time this lever and this fulcrum were unknown. They are known now: faith
is the lever; and the point of support, the Breast of the Lord Jesus.”
Who, then, will lift this lever? My God! may they who seek thee find
gladness and joy in thee. _Tristis es, anima mea!_
Arthur is better; our dear Parisians are returning to us; the horizon is
so dark to those who see things rightly! Berthe is gone to the town for
the funeral of a friend of her childhood who passed through the greatest
trials in the world. She made a most edifying death, preserving the
fulness of her faculties to the last, blessing her children, and putting
all her soul into her last directions. And when she had said all, and
was asked if she desired nothing, she answered with her failing voice:
“I desire nothing but God!” The long agony of her heart, the suffering
which has killed her, this painful martyrdom—all is over, and the
Blessed Virgin, whom she so loved, must have welcomed her into glory.
_Amen!_ The two little children, alarmingly pale, followed the coffin.
How one would pity them, if God were not the Father of orphans!
Spain in a state of revolution. Queen Isabella has abdicated in favor of
Prince Alphonso. Poor Spain! Where is Isabella the Great, the Catholic?
Adrien is reading to us the tenth volume of the _Histoire du Monde_, by
De Riancey. The illustrious and lamented author wrote from Rome, after
receiving from the Pope and the Comte de Chambord precious tokens of
affection: “Now I am almost ready to sing my _Nunc Dimittis_, and there
remain only the joys of heaven to be added.“ Dearest Kate, I said
something like this when I still possessed you....
[TO BE CONCLUDED NEXT MONTH.]
UP THE NILE.
CONCLUSION.
The dignity of some of these half-clad Nubians is almost beyond
conception. As we walked through the town of Korosko we saw numbers of
elephants’ tusks, ostrich feathers and eggs, and great piles of
gum-arabic. We told Ali to pick up a handful of the gum, and then
demanded the price. With a shrug of the shoulders, the owner answered in
the most indifferent manner: “Whatever you please.” Ali offered him one
piastre. The merchant took out his purse and coolly handed a piece of
the same value, saying: “If you cannot pay more than that for the gum,
you must be very poor; take this for backsheesh.” “Well,” broke in Mr.
S——, unable to restrain his indignation, “would you like us to give you
two pounds for that handful of gum?” “Oh! no,” he replied quietly;
“whatever you please.” He was finally satisfied with the amount first
offered.
This Korosko is an important town; for from here the direct road lies
across the desert to Aboo-Hamed, Shendy, Sennaar, and Khartoom. The bend
in the river between this place and Derr is so great that the river
flows south-southeast. Going up, we were detained some time. The north
wind, which carried us up thus far, was now almost dead ahead, and we
were obliged to wait till it died out. The temple at Wady Sabooah a few
miles below is of the time of Rameses II. His favorite amusement, to
judge from the figures on the temple walls, was to catch hold of a few
score of his enemies by the hair of the head, all at once, and in one
hand too, while with the other he knocked them about with a club. The
old temple was afterwards used as a Christian church. In the time of the
great temple-builder a figure of some god stood in the adytum; the
Christians covered it with plaster (it was a bas-relief), and then
painted on it a picture of St. Peter. The other figures are not altered,
and the result is that the great Rameses is now making offerings to a
Christian saint.
I was anxious to obtain a dress—a full dress—of a Nubian young lady. I
did not propose to introduce this style at home—it would scarcely be
suited to our winters, although it might answer in summer—but it would
be a pleasant thing to show it, and, when some fair one should ask what
it was, to reply: “Oh! that is a dress that belonged to a lady friend of
mine in Nubia; she gave it to me to remember her by.” Just think how
jealous all the men would be! Frank carefully treasures up a ribbon, and
Charley considers priceless a lock of hair which his fair one has
worn—small trinkets compared with mine, even if I cannot put mine in a
locket. So I am bound to have one by fair means or foul.
The reader will probably be anxious to know what this dress is. Well, he
must not be shocked; he must remember the climate is warm, and the
immediate descendants of Eve set the fashion here. The full costume
consists of a leather girdle, from which hangs fringe of the same
material, about six inches long, ornamented with shells. I have one. It
belonged to a very pretty, dark-eyed young lady of thirteen, from whom I
purchased it as a curiosity. The girl’s wardrobe being unusually well
stocked, she sold me her best for the small sum of six piastres.
The people are very much afraid of the evil eye, more dangerous on this
account: that no one can tell who possesses it. Even some of the
innocent howadjii may have it; if they look at any one who is near, he
or she is instantly possessed by some spirit and becomes sick. But they
have medicine; for they immediately send to some priest and inform him
in what way the sufferer is afflicted. For a small fee he writes out a
portion of the Koran which will cure the disease. This is enclosed in a
leather bag and worn on the arm or around the neck. The disease is not
only cured, if the extract be the right one, but all future danger from
the evil eye is averted.
We have been visiting temples and tombs almost every day for the past
week, and have been very much annoyed by the crowds that followed us and
in many cases prevented us from properly inspecting. On Feb. 6 we
visited the little temple of Baybel Welly. I put into operation a plan I
had thought out last night. I wanted to try the effect of sarcasm on
these half-civilized Nubians. The temple was very small and the crowd
pushed in after us. We withdrew, and I then spoke in a quiet, dignified
manner to the one who appeared to be the leader. “This temple is not
large enough for both of us to visit at the same time. We will wait
outside until you and your friends finish your examination, and then we
will look at it. If you find anything particularly interesting, you will
be kind enough to inform us.” At first he did not take the point; after
a time a light broke upon him, and he replied: “You go in; I will keep
these walluds out.” And he did so.
I have told of the presents we gave the crew. They made a common pool, a
sort of joint-stock company on the mutual-benefit plan. Reis Mohammed
was treasurer. They held a meeting and resolved to declare a dividend,
after the manner of many modern railway dividends—for it was paid out of
the capital. A very noisy confab prevailed for an hour or more; then
votes were cast, and it was resolved “that the treasurer be instructed
and empowered to purchase a calf at a price not exceeding seven dollars,
said calf to be served up immediately for the use of the stockholders.”
This should furnish a hint to antiquarians; perhaps they may be able to
trace back the origin of our modern corporations to the old Egyptians.
The similarity of management should afford some clue.
On the 10th of February we reached Philæ. On the mainland opposite is
the small town of Belal. Here is an old mosque; from its minaret the
first Moslem call to prayer in Nubia was made. It is February 12, and we
are still lying at Mahatta, waiting for the Shellallee, to take us down
the cataract. They will not come to-day, so we go to visit the quarries
of syenite granite from which the obelisks were taken. Two of the party
mount the diminutive donkeys; I want to oversee them, so I climb on a
camel. He kneels for me to mount, and then rises at command. The camel
rises with three distinct motions. I have said that he kneels for one to
mount; this will hardly convey the proper idea. His legs are doubled
underneath and his belly touches the ground. With the first motion he
raises himself on his fore-knees, then straightens up his hind-legs, and
then his fore-legs. The effect of this motion upon the rider is very
curious. He is first pitched violently backwards, but before he has time
to fall off is thrown forwards again; and just as he feels certain that
he is about to dive into the sand, he regains his equilibrium, and off
goes the camel. When he walks, the rider sways back and forth; his run
is not unlike the trot of a horse.
An unfinished obelisk—one that has never been entirely detached from the
rock—shows us the means employed by the Pharaos for cutting out these
immense masses. Holes were cut along the whole line of the block a few
feet apart. Into these wooden wedges, saturated with water, were firmly
driven. The swelling of the wood, causing an equal pressure, split the
rock in a straight line. Just above where we are moored is the body of a
man lying in the water. His hands are tied behind his back—probably a
slave from away up country, beaten to insensibility and then thrown into
the river. Perhaps he stole a few piastres, or was not sufficiently
quick in obeying his master’s commands. It is a sickening sight, this
putrid, bloated corpse, so we ask Ahmud to have it taken out and buried.
It was carried by the current into this little cove some four days ago;
hundreds of people pass it daily, yet no one will remove it. Ahmud says
it is the duty of the governor to bury it, and, unless he does so, the
natives will let it remain until the fish and vultures eat it up. “If I
see the governor,” continues Ahmud in the most unconcerned way, “I will
speak to him about it.”
Early next morning the Shellallee assembled and preparations were begun.
To make the descent it is requisite that the water should be smooth and
not a breath of wind stir the air. The day was all that could be
desired; so at six A.M. began the charge of the black brigade. On they
come from every quarter; every rock sends forth two or three. We have
sixty or seventy on board. Ali says that most of them come to get a
place to sit down and smoke their chibouks. There is the usual amount of
talking, and at a quarter to seven we cast loose from our moorings and
stood out into the stream. God’s flag was tied to a post on the port
side of the quarter-deck—a red flag with two yellow stars and a diamond,
the latter representing the sword of Mohammed, and over all the sacred
name “Allah.” This was placing the dahabeeáh under the divine protection
to ensure a prosperous descent. Our old friend Nogood was with us,
seated by the flag, smoking a long pipe and reading the Koran. Another
sheik was seated on the opposite side telling his beads. Four men stood
at the helm, and two at each oar. To judge from the noise and
excitement, you would be led to think that no boat had ever descended
the cataracts before. Ahmud was so nervous that tears came into his
eyes. The balance of the Shellallee squatted on the deck, lit their
chibouks, and never moved until we hustled them off at Assouan. The
current carried us swiftly on to the west bank, and we neared the great
gate. A piece of wood was thrown overboard; it was a guide to the
steersmen. Now all was quiet; not a word was uttered on board. The
rowers stopped, the howadjii held their breath; a moment more we rounded
the corner almost at a right angle, and shot into the great rapid. The
boat grazed the rocks on the port side. The waves dashed over the bow.
Directly ahead the rocks rise perpendicularly to the height of twenty
feet. The howadjii shudder; surely we will be dashed to pieces. Before
we have scarce time to think, before we are at the bottom of the rapid,
the rudder is jammed hard to starboard, the boat swings round at a right
angle; we are in smooth water—we have descended the cataract in safety.
This rapid is two hundred feet long between the rocks, about seventy
feet broad, and falls from six to seven feet. Old Nogood springs up now
with astonishing activity, and snatches the turban from Reis Mohammed’s
head. This is his perquisite. It is the custom for the head sheik to
take both tarbosh and turban from the captain’s head when the descent is
safely accomplished. This was all very well when these descents were
first made, there being then some doubt as to their safe accomplishment.
Now numbers of boats are taken down every year and an accident rarely
happens. This custom should be done away with—at least, so thought Reis
Mohammed; for he put on the oldest tarbosh he had, and it was so bad
that Nogood would not take it. Every one shook hands all around. One of
the Shellallee cut his foot very badly; I put court-plaster upon it, and
then bound it up with my own handkerchief. He smiled and asked for
backsheesh.
About nine we reached Assouan. Every one wanted backsheesh, even those I
told about who sat on the decks smoking chibouks, and had never raised a
finger to help us. Finally we got rid of them all. What a relief it was
to be alone again with our little family!—for we are coming to love our
sailors; they have been with us so long, and, in spite of their few
faults, they are a good set and we have had no serious trouble with
them. There is a modern temple at Kom Ombos, about thirty miles below
Assouan, built by one of the Ptolemies about one hundred and fifty years
before Christ. It is interesting, and, notwithstanding its recent
construction, we examined it with care. There is another of these
Ptolemaic temples at Edfoo, one of the most interesting temples on the
Nile. True, it is far younger than Karnak, but then it is the
best-preserved temple in Egypt. As a perfect specimen of an Egyptian
temple, complete in all its parts, it stands unrivalled. Let me go into
details here and describe this temple. It will give an idea of all the
others; for the temples of ancient Egypt were all constructed on the
same plan, except rock-hewn Ipsamboul, which has been described before.
The Egyptian temple was not a place of public worship, like a Greek or
Roman temple, or a Christian church. It was an edifice erected by a king
in honor of some triad of divinities to whom he wished to pay special
homage in return for benefits conferred or in hope of future favors. A
rude brick wall surrounded the whole enclosure and shut out from the
vulgar gaze all that took place inside. This wall is almost entire at
Edfoo, but a small portion of it having been destroyed. A gateway admits
us into the enclosure, and we pass through an avenue of sphinxes to a
second gateway with its propyla, or immense pyramidal tower, on either
side. Over the gateway is a winged scarabæus in high relief. The
pyramidal towers are covered with intaglio sculptures representing the
king holding a brace of his enemies by the hair, and about to knock off
their heads with a club. Flag-staffs were attached to the outside of
these towers, rising many feet above their summit. Entering a large
hypæthral hall through this second gateway, we see before us the portico
of the temple itself. We enter this between two columns; from these to
the side walls are screens reaching about half-way to the roof. A little
further on we reach the sanctum sanctorum—a magnificent monolithic
chamber of polished gray granite, in which was kept the hawk, the emblem
of the god Horhat, who was the principal divinity of this temple. The
rest of the naos, or portion of the temple behind the portico, and in
which this sanctuary was placed, was cut up into a number of small
chambers used for religious purposes. Within the enclosure was the
temenos, or grove, thickly planted with trees, and near at hand was a
lake. The whole length of this temple, including the gateway and wall of
circuit, is four hundred and fifty feet. The breadth of the propylon—the
inner gateway with its pyramidal towers—is two hundred and fifty feet
and its height one hundred and fifteen feet. The sculptures all over the
walls are extremely interesting. Some give the names of the several
chambers of the temple, and their dimensions in cubits and parts of
cubits, so that the modern measurements can be compared with the ancient
ones. Others give valuable information respecting the ancient geography
of Egypt.
During the reign of Psammenitus, son of Amasis, a most remarkable
prodigy befell the Egyptians, says Herodotus; for rain fell at Egyptian
Thebes, which had never happened before nor since, to my time, as the
Thebans themselves affirm. For no rain ever falls in the upper regions
of Egypt, but at that time rain fell in drops at Thebes. In the year of
grace one thousand eight hundred and seventy-four the same remarkable
prodigy befell the Egyptians, say I; for rain fell at Egyptian Thebes.
If we did not know the dignity and sober character of that ancient
traveller, we might suppose a sarcastic witticism lay hid in the closing
part of the above story. See how cautious he is: the rain fell in drops.
Well, that is precisely the way it fell when we were there. And the
drops could be counted. There was no shower. The dust was not even laid.
But it rained. I saw it—perhaps the first time in three thousand years.
It is no small affair for a man to be able to say to his grandchildren
in years to come: “It rained when I was at Egyptian Thebes—in drops, you
know.”
Ten days tied up at Luxor, measuring the columns of Karnak, looking at
the endless procession of gods and warriors, and going far into the
mountain-side to search for the sarcophagi of Egypt’s long-departed
rulers. The ruins of Thebes are familiar—at least to every one who has
read any of the numerous works on Egypt; so I will not describe them.
There is one place, however, not mentioned in the guide-books about
which I will say something. Behind the temple of Dayr el Medeeneh, on
the western shore, there are several mummy-pits. Mr. S—— and I
determined to visit them. We descended a well about ten feet deep, at
the bottom of which we found a narrow passage, so low that we were
obliged to crawl. This led into a large chamber filled with bodies. Ali
begged to accompany us, but, when he caught sight of the first body, he
beat a hasty retreat to the upper air. Truly, it was a solemn, ghastly
sight. The mummies were piled up to what depth no one knows; as they
then were they had filled up the room to a level with the narrow
passage, forming a floor over which we walked. The Arabs had been there
hunting for scarabæi and other antiques to sell to travellers, and in so
doing had handled the corpses without care or ceremony. Here was a man
standing on his head with his feet resting against the wall; there a
woman broken in two, the legs placed astride the neck; corpses all
around in every conceivable position—grinning, staring corpses, enough
to give one the nightmare for weeks to come. Beneath this top row they
were placed in layers. I found the body of a young woman well preserved,
and with hair banged across the forehead, like the French style of a few
years ago. I carried the body out to show it to the rest of the party,
thinking somewhat of bringing it home. “Desecrating graves,” “robbing
sepulchres,” and words of like import met my ears, and, feeling somewhat
abashed, I took the body back, but detached the hair and brought it with
me. In this pit we found numbers of the small clay figures of Osiris.
They were rudely made—for these were the fellaheen, or lower class, who
were thrown into a common pit. They were embalmed in the cheapest way,
which was done, according to Herodotus, by thoroughly rinsing the
abdomen in syrmæa, and then steeping it with natron for seventy days.
The boy who owned my donkey was sick, so Fatma, his little black-eyed
sister, attended for him. She was a pretty, bewitching little creature,
yet of a marriageable age—thirteen, I think. Day after day she ran
behind my donkey, urging it on, and occasionally coming up alongside to
make some pleasant remark and disclose teeth like Oriental pearls. When
we were parting I gave her a small present and asked her if she would go
with me to America. “Certainly.” And the little one jumped and clapped
her hands with joy. “Do you know where America is situated?” I asked.
“Not exactly, but down the river, somewhere near Alexandria, is it not?”
Here we are at Keneh, and when we see a fine large house, in appearance
not unlike a provincial theatre, we naturally ask who inhabits it. The
consuls of France and Prussia—the lion and the lamb lying down together.
Here they live together in the same house on the best of terms, just as
if King William had never marched into Paris or Napoleon III. had not
surrendered at Sedan. We did not meet them, but very probably they were
like Ali Murad—natives, with a faint idea that there had been some
misunderstanding between France and Prussia; but then they were not
concerned with that, so they smoke their pipes together and let the
outside world take care of itself. Passing Sheik Selim’s place on March
9, we stopped and sent some of the sailors with presents. We arrived at
Bellianeh, whence we proposed to visit the interesting temple of Abydos.
We rode for six miles through rich fields of grain, principally wheat,
and reached the modern village of Arabat, called by the Arabs Madfuné
(the buried), from the ancient buildings that until recently lay all
around covered with desert sand. On entering the town we saw a gang of
men working at excavations under the charge of an overseer, who
quickened their movements with a bamboo. We saw pictures of this on the
tombs four thousand years old. A fine-looking man, with an immense red
turban on his head, broke from the gang, rushed up to us, threw himself
on the ground, embraced our feet, and piteously implored us to take him
away. He was a sheik of a neighboring village, he said, and had been
torn from his family and pressed into service. In proof of this he
produced a long document, about as intelligible to us as the
hieroglyphics on the temple wall. It was done by order of the viceroy,
so we could not interfere, and he went reluctantly back to his work. His
appeal to us angered the overseer, who struck him a fearful blow with
the bamboo that felled him to the ground. Said—good-hearted Said—took
the man’s part, and for a time it looked as though we were going to have
a lively row. But it all evaporated in talk; the overseer promised not
to beat him any more, and then he and Said became the best of friends.
These workmen are not paid very much—five cents a day; but their work is
not very heavy—at least, as they do it. One man fills a small basket
with earth, then sits down and smokes a cigarette. The basket is dragged
about twenty feet, emptied out, then he has a little talk with some of
his friends. We were looking for the celebrated tablet of Abydos, but
the passage-way was so filled up with sand that we could not approach
it. This tablet is called the new one, although M. Mariette supposes it
to be the original of the fragmentary one found in the temple of Rameses
II. at this place and now in the British Museum. It contains figures of
Sethi and Rameses offering homage to seventy-six kings, their
predecessors, beginning with Menes and ending with Sethi I., and has
been of incalculable benefit to the historian. But we are going farther
back than Menes, for there is the Kóm es Sultan, the Holy Sepulchre of
the ancient Egyptians—the tomb of Osiris. It is not a natural tumulus,
but is formed by the heaping up of tombs during many ages one upon
another. Are they not the tombs of those rich Egyptians that Plutarch
tells of who came from all parts of the country to Abydos to be buried
near Osiris?
A few days after we were strolling along the east bank when we came upon
a Coptic church. Entering, we saw a novel rendering of the legend of St.
George and the dragon. I have said before that St. George is the patron
saint of the Copts, and here they turn the dragon into a Turk,
substituting a real enemy for a mythical one. St. George, on a spirited
steed, is frantically endeavoring to pin a Turk to the earth. He has his
lance run through the neck, but the Turk is a tough fellow and is
fighting so hard, while the horse is balancing himself in the most
incredible manner on one leg, that it is a question which will get the
upper hand.
As we run close to the bank scores of urchins salute us with that now
familiar cry, “Backsheesh, howadji”—“Alms, O shopkeeper”—not that they
took us for shopkeepers, but then these were the first to travel for
purposes of trade; and when others, travelling for pleasure alone,
came after them, no distinction was made by the natives, but all were
classed in the same category. Everywhere in the East, from the poorest
beggar to the sultan himself, is heard the same demand, “Backsheesh,
howadji”—from the great ones couched in hidden terms and well-set
phrases, but as well understood as the outspoken clamor of the rabble.
After careful study and deliberation I have classified the different
uses of this phrase. I have divided them into eleven different
demands, expressing the following ideas: First, the distant or dubious
demand. This is made by small urchins from the bank as we sail by. The
tone of voice indicates that they doubt very much whether they will
receive anything, but deem it worth while to make the attempt,
although sometimes a quarter of a mile of water separates us from
them. Second, the salutative demand from older ones. As we ride or
walk through the country we meet an Arab. “Naharak Saiid” (May the day
be good to you), say we. “Backsheesh, howadji,” he replies in the same
salutative tone, and moves on. Surely he cannot expect anything; he
does not even stop. Third, the imperative demand, growled out in a
fierce tone by half-grown boys—your-money-or-your-life demand of
highwaymen. This is always unsuccessful. Fourth, the curtailed demand
from over-lazy ones, as this: “Backshee, howadj”—a very indifferent
one. Fifth, the plaintive demand—the fourteen-children and
seven-year-widow story listened to by tender-hearted people. Sixth,
the non-expective demand, a mere matter of form, and surprise
exhibited if complied with. Seventh, the interrogative demand—to wit:
“Did it ever occur to you, O howadji! that a small present would be
acceptable to your petitioner?” An idea similar to this frequently
crossed the howadji’s mind. Eighth, the confidential demand from the
donkey-boy when near the end of a trip. In a low whisper, and with a
knowing look: “Howadji and I understand one another; it is all right;
about two piastres will do.” Ninth, the future demand: the praises of
the donkey are sounded when starting out; professions of fidelity and
attachment on the part of the attendant are loud and constant; he will
show you everything, and—“Backsheesh kabeér dahabeeáh” (Much
backsheesh on the return to boat), in a matter-of-course tone. Tenth,
the infantile demand, from imps scarce able to talk: “Backtheeth,
howath”—most successful of any. Eleventh, the fraudulent demand,
practised principally in Nubia. A mother holding an infant in her
arms: “Backsheesh for the baby, O howadji!” and when the kind-hearted
traveller places a coin in the little dimpled hand held out to receive
it, the mother takes possession of it for her own use. When the
traveller approaches a town, every child is snatched up into some
one’s arms—it is immaterial whether the mother gets her own child or
some one belonging to another—and presented to him.
Little Saida, our gazelle, broke her leg at Thebes; we sent for the
barber, who is doctor also, to bind it up. He performed the operation in
a bungling way, and mortification set in a few days after. She had
become a great pet, and was beginning to know us and eat from our hands.
So we concluded it was best to kill her, as she was suffering very much.
Wishing to preserve the skin, she was hit on the head with an axe, so as
not to injure it. After the skin had been removed we offered the body to
the crew for a meal. Reis Mohammed threw it overboard, saying that it
was not killed in the proper way for them to eat: it should have been
shot, or else the throat cut, after repeating certain passages from the
Koran. It is strange to see how obedient these Arabs are to the sacred
writ. They are fond of meat, but do not have it very often. On one
occasion we were lunching in a temple. When we had finished, some fine
slices of ham were left. I gave them to Ali for himself and the two
sailors who were with us, and whose lunch had consisted of dry bread.
Without a moment’s hesitation he threw them to a dog who was near us,
saying that it was good food for dogs and Christians, but not for Arabs.
On the summit of the rocks of Gebel Aboofayda, near their southern end,
are the caverns of Moabdeh, commonly called the crocodile mummy pits. We
stopped and procured some fine specimens—small crocodiles which had been
treated as gods five thousand years ago. Every one in this country seems
to know every one else. It seemed to me that, when our crew wanted to
see any one, they simply called out the name—Ali, Mohammed, or whatever
it was—and he soon appeared. When purchasing goods it makes no
difference whom you pay, whether owner or not, provided you pay some
one. Many people marvel how the old Egyptians transported their obelisks
and colossi from the quarries at Syene to their destination several
hundred miles down the river. Back of the Christian village called Ed
Dayr en Nakhl, on the east bank nearly opposite Rhoda, are a number of
grottoes cut into the mountain-side. In one of them is one of the most
interesting paintings found in any of the Egyptian tombs, which will
enable us to understand how these immense masses of stone were conveyed
from one place to another. We had great difficulty in finding this
grotto; for, although it is mentioned in the guide-book, the natives
seemed unaware of its existence. At last we found it, away up on the
mountain-top, the entrance so filled up with débris that we were obliged
to crawl in. But we were well paid; for we saw the famous painting of “A
Colossus on a Sledge,” which, as far as I am informed, is the only one
of the kind in Egypt. The person represented by the colossus was called
Thoth-ôtp, and was of high distinction in the military caste. He is
styled the king’s friend, and one of his children was named Ositarsens,
after the king. This grotto was his tomb. The figure is seated and
placed upon a sledge, being firmly secured to it by ropes. One hundred
and seventy-two men, in four rows of forty-three each, pull the ropes,
attached to a ring in front of the sledge, and a liquid—most probably
oil—is poured from a vase by a person standing on the pedestal of the
statue, in order to facilitate its progress as it slides on the
ground—or more probably on a tramway made for the occasion, though that
is not indicated in the picture. Some of the persons engaged in this
laborious duty appear to be Egyptians; others are foreign slaves who are
clad in the costume of their country. Behind the statue are four rows of
men, three in a row, representing either the architects and masons or
those who had employment about the place where the statue was to be
conveyed. Below are others carrying vases filled with water, and some
rude machinery connected with the transportation of the colossi,
followed by taskmasters with their wands of office. On the knee of the
figure stands a man, who claps his hands to the measured cadence of a
song to mark the time, and to ensure a long pull, a strong pull, and a
pull all together. Before the statue a priest is presenting incense in
honor of the person it represents. At the top are seven companies of
men—a guard of honor, or perhaps reliefs for dragging the sledge. Beyond
are men slaying an ox and bringing the joints of meat to the door of the
building to which the statue was to be transported. From this we may
judge with tolerable certainty how the great obelisks were conveyed to
the temples before which they were set up, and how the great stones of
the Pyramids were transported from their mountain-beds.
We are now rapidly sailing down stream and nearing civilization. In a
few days we reached the lofty cliffs of Gebel et Tayr, which rise
abruptly from the river to a height of several hundred feet. On its
summit stands the Coptic convent of Sitta Mariam el Adra (Our Lady Mary
the Virgin). As we approached several of the monks jumped into the
stream—not from the top of the cliff, however—and swam out towards us.
They seized hold, jumped aboard, entirely naked, and saluted us with
“Ana Christian, ya howadjii” (I am a Christian, O howadjii!) Of course
we could not resist this appeal, but a few paras satisfied them, and,
putting the coins in their mouths, they swam back to shore, to sit like
birds of prey waiting for their next victims—for they never miss a
dahabeeáh that passes. This Gebel et Tayr—“The Mountain of the Bird”—has
a strange legend attached to it. It is said that all the birds of the
country assemble annually on this mountain, and, having selected one of
their number to remain there till the following year, they fly away into
Africa, and only return the next year to release their comrade and
substitute another in his place.
A funny accident happened to Reis Ahmud. We had grounded on a sand-bank,
where we remained sixteen hours, and the usual means were being employed
to pull the boat off. An anchor was thrown out some seventy feet ahead
in the direction of the channel. A rope was attached to this, and the
other end carried through a pulley on the deck. The entire crew pulled
upon this rope, when it became entangled in a block on the starboard
side. Reis Ahmud went forward to release it, and, without slackening the
rope, he began to pry it with a long pole. The strain on the rope was of
course very severe. He succeeded in raising it over the block, but it
acted like the string of a bow, and Ahmud, being in the place where the
arrow usually is, was struck by it. He was shot directly over the top of
the kitchen, and plunged headlong into the water on the other side of
the boat as though he had been shot out of a catapult. The expression of
fear, terror, and uncertainty as to what struck him, shown plainly in
his face as he went flying over the boat, pole in hand, was most
ludicrous. Fortunately, he was not hurt. A bad fright and thorough
ducking will teach him to avoid strained ropes in future. Some statues,
a few fragments of granite, and some substructions are all that can be
seen of the ruins of a city which, if there is any truth in the
descriptions given of it, must have exceeded any modern city as much as
the Pyramids exceed any mausoleum which has been erected since those
days (Curzon). So one day was enough at Memphis, and still on to the
south we sailed. Now the great Pyramids loom up in the distance, and at
ten of the morning of March 30 we reach the iron bridge at Cairo, our
long Nile journey over. That night we left our dahabeeáh, and bade
farewell to our crew. I have travelled far and wide throughout this
world of ours, but I know of no trip that has afforded me more real
satisfaction and pleasure than these four months on the Nile. The
expense is not very great; a party of four can contract with a good
dragoman to supply boat, crew, provisions, and everything necessary for
the voyage for from five to six pounds sterling a day. The winter of
1873-'74 was cold for Egypt. The superintendent of the viceroy’s
sugar-works at Rhoda informed us that it was the coldest winter known in
Egypt for seventeen years. See what a cold winter is in the Orient—for
these observations I took myself: Average thermometer from December 20,
1873, to March 28, 1874, sixty-nine degrees. Highest thermometer during
same period, eighty-two degrees on February 21, 1874; lowest, February
8, 1874, sixty degrees. The observations were taken in the cabin—in the
shade, of course—at noon of each day.
MAY.
The month of Maia—Cybele’s Roman name[36]—
Ere Rome was Christ’s. And ’twas for Vulcan’s priest
To kindle at her shrine the rosy flame
On sweet May-day. Womb’d in the fruitful East,
Not vainly Westward, as the myths increased,
This purer rite, nor unprophetic, came:
A flower that should be gather’d for the feast
Of Truth—with more that erst deck’d Pagan shame.
Not now the mother of vain gods[37] we pray,
But Her, the God-Man’s Mother, ever a maid:
And still to her this fairest month of May
Assign—our hearts upon her altar laid,
That her chaste love, descending with its fire,
May purge them from the dross of base desire
B. D. H.
Footnote 36:
Maia, or Majesta: not to be confounded with Maia, the mother of
Hercules.
Footnote 37:
Cybele was the “Mater Deûm” of the Greeks and Romans.
THE FRENCH CLERGY DURING THE LATE WAR IN FRANCE.
The war of 1870 between France and Germany has taken the place, in the
minds of the French, of those other, not more glorious, but more
successful, wars with which the very word “war” was formerly associated.
They were used to think of nothing but triumphs; individual losses were
swallowed up in national exultation; and they connected with the
memories of the two Napoleons the peculiarly French axiom that there
existed no such word in their language as “impossible.” _That_ is still
true to-day, notwithstanding the reverses through which they have
passed; for moral heroism stands upright on a lost battle-field as well
as on a triumphant one, and the nation can say with its chivalrous
monarch of old: “All is lost, save honor.” If the discipline was faulty,
if the management was indiscreet, if the government was weak, if
circumstances were contrary, there was still individual courage, and not
only among the soldiers, but among all classes. The very misfortunes of
the country roused the spirit of women, priests, students, exiles, of
the weak and the poor, the secluded and the helpless; never was there
such spontaneous truce to all differences, such generous sacrifice of
personal comforts and, what is more, of personal antipathies; all good
men and true shook hands across the barriers of politics, religion, and
caste, and, with one mind and heart, did each his best in his own way
for his suffering country. Of course there were cowards, time-servers,
and place-seekers, making profit out of their fatherland’s necessities,
getting into safe, so-called official, berths, and generally skulking;
but they were not the majority, and it is superfluous to ask here if
every nation has not its scum.
The part which the French clergy took in the war of 1870 exceeds that
taken by them in any previous war, when some few members of their body
acted as salaried chaplains to the troops. Even during the “wars of
religion” under Henry IV. of France few priests accompanied the troops;
the _abbés_ of Turenne and Condé’s times were officers and gentlemen
rather than pastors and nurses; during the wars of the great Napoleon
public opinion would have frowned down their services; and the
successful wars of the Crimea and of Italy under the late emperor,
though they stirred the clergy more, were yet _too_ successful to vie as
a field of action with the ever-present needs of city and country
parishes. But the last disastrous conflict was emphatically a _home_
war; each family in the quiet hamlet where his cure of souls lay came to
the parish priest, asking blessings for its departing members and
prayers for its dead ones; each wife and mother claimed his comforting
words and poured her sorrows and fears into his ears; soldiers on the
march made his presbytery their natural home, slept and ate there, asked
him for common little necessaries, and made sure of getting no denial
had they asked for anything he possessed; boys whom he had christened
came home to die, and it was he who gave them the last sacraments and
read the burial service over their graves; in a word, he lived on the
battle-field even while still cooped up in his village. It was not
strange, then, that he should easily take one step further, and go
himself to share abroad the same danger whose face was so familiar to
him at home. A German historian, writing of the late war, says that
there was more patriotism found among the French clergy as a class than
in any other class in the whole nation. General Ambert, a soldier and a
civil servant, has gathered together[38] many interesting episodes of
the war relating to the heroic behavior of the priests, who from the
beginning came eagerly to ask leave to act as chaplains for the love of
God and their neighbor only; for when war was declared there were but
forty-six accredited chaplains in the whole army. Not only parish
priests presented themselves, but also hundreds of monks, brothers, and
confraternity-men; every order was represented—Jesuits, Capuchins,
Dominicans, Benedictines, Carmelites (the most distinguished of whom was
Père Hermann, who died at Spandau), Trappists (of whom one convent alone
furnished thirty-five), Cistercians, Oratorians, Lazarists,
Redemptorists, Christian Brothers (of whom nineteen died during the war,
besides those who were the victims of the Commune), and other
brotherhoods, old orders and new, their members drawn from all classes,
from the Legitimist nobleman to the peasant and the artisan, from the
doctor of laws or of theology to the brother-scullerer or porter. One
day in mid-winter, during the armistice, the Christian Brothers had been
for more than twelve hours unceasingly at work digging in the snow for
the bodies of the French dead of Petit-Bry, Champigny, and Croisy. Two
Prussian officers, at the head of a detachment of their men, were doing
the same for the bodies of the Germans. It was a bitterly cold night,
the wind blew the flames of the torches about, and nothing was heard but
short, business-like sentences, the sound of pickaxes breaking the ice,
and that of the carriers’ feet as they bore the dead away on rough
litters. The Prussian officers looked admiringly at the silent brothers,
and one said to the other: “We have seen nothing so fine as this in
France.” “Except the Sisters of Charity,” answered the other.
Footnote 38:
_L’Héroïsme en Soutane._ By General Ambert. Paris: E. Dentu, Palais
Royal. 1876.
One day Brother Nethelmus, of St. Nicholas’ School, Paris, was wounded
by a ball, which proved his death-blow two days later, and hardly was he
buried before a young man asked to see the superior, and said to him
very simply: “I am the younger brother of Nethelmus, and have come to
take his place.” “Have you your parents’ consent?” asked the superior.
“My father and mother blessed me before I left, and bade me come,” said
the youth, as if nothing was more commonplace.
The service of the wounded was the priests’ favorite field of work, and
it was in this that they most frequently met death themselves. The Abbé
Géraud, after the defeat of Mans, being chaplain of the Vendean
_francs-tireurs_, was seeking out the most dangerously placed among the
wounded. The latter had in many cases been abandoned by the drivers of
their ambulances, who, in the general rout and panic, had unharnessed
the horses and run away. On one of these carts were two soldiers and two
officers of “Mobiles”—one of whom tells the story—all badly wounded and
trembling with cold and ague. Many a man ran past them, intent on his
own safety and heedless of their piteous appeals, and the men despaired
of help, when they saw a priest running quickly towards them with cheery
looks and words, telling them he was looking for them. The first thing
he did was to take off all his available clothing to cover the men and
warm them a little; then, stopping some of the runaways, he begged,
promised, and reproached so effectually as to induce several to help
him. “Push the wheels, my fine fellows,” he cried, as he harnessed
himself to the shafts, and from the battle-field he drew the cart to a
village, where he never rested till he had begged for his charges food,
coverings, and straw, and at last a horse, with which he drove them to
the nearest hospital. He continued his labors throughout the war. The
Abbé de Beuvron, who has lived with the soldiers for fifteen years in
various times and climates, tells us of the priests at Fröschwiller,
who, after confessing and anointing the dying placed in the village
church, saved the wounded while the building was in flames, and
persuaded the Prussians who guarded the wells to let them have a few
drops of water for the sick; this blockade lasted for four days, after
which fifteen Alsatian peasants were condemned to be shot for having
mutilated the bodies of some Prussian soldiers. This system of shooting
the first-comer for a crime committed by an unknown person was one of
the most cruel features of the late war. These poor wretches, taken at
random—some mere boys, some old, infirm men—were tied with their hands
behind their backs to one thick rope which kept them all on a level. The
Protestant clergyman, who had himself gone to the general and asked the
lives of these men, came to beg M. de Beuvron to intercede for them; he
was equally unsuccessful, and, when he begged as a Catholic priest to be
allowed to see the condemned, the general smiled and said: “You are
welcome; I will give you an escort.” But on addressing the poor men the
priest found that they understood no French, and he could not speak
German. He pointed to heaven, and spread his hands while he gave them
absolution, and they, with one accord, fell on their knees, sobbed and
prayed, and bowed their heads. This solemn, silent service seems to us
as noble as the most magnificent of triumphant processions, with chants
and rejoicings, and imperial _cortége_ following—this, the last moment
between time and eternity, between faith and vision.
It is M. de Beuvron who has said with truth: “It is the country parish
priest who makes Catholic France.” And Prince Frederick Charles of
Prussia echoed this sentiment when he said at an official dinner in
1872, at the table of the Bavarian ambassador: “There is in France but
one class that is noble and patriotic, earnest, courageous, worthy of
respect, and really influential, and that is the clergy. Impossible not
to admire it as it appeared on the recent battle-fields.” Some of these
heroic men preserved their incognito; one is mentioned by the London
_Times’_ correspondent who followed the Saxon regiments. “There is a
man,” he writes, “whom I have noticed, since Sedan until the struggles
before the walls of Paris, constantly following the wounded. He has
neither horse nor conveyance, but, stick in hand, he follows the track
of the army, and, with the consummate finish of the man of the world and
the tenderness of a woman, he attends and comforts the dying. He is a
French priest, a Benedictine.... The other day I met him suddenly on a
field of battle, and he asked me to direct him to where the wounded
were. He had walked twenty miles that day. No government pays him; he is
a volunteer in the best sense of the word.... He is in the prime of
manhood, of handsome build, distinguished-looking, and with no less than
courtly manners.” Another unknown volunteer, but a layman, was found
dead at Forbach. No one had seen him till the day of the battle, and he
wore a dark dress and cap and a fancy rifle. At the moment when the
battle began he suddenly joined a brigade and fought like a hero. His
purse held a large sum of money in gold, and his linen, unmarked, was
remarkably fine, while round his neck was a medal hanging by a silken
ribbon. There was nothing to identify him.
But to return to our parish priests, of whom many refused rich rewards
and promotion after the war, as M. du Marhallach, who, though he
accepted the Legion of Honor, declined the bishopric of Quimper, and,
when his townsmen forced him to represent them in the National Assembly,
managed to resign before long and return to humbler scenes of usefulness
in his country parish. If a book were to be filled with incidents of the
devotedness of the country priests, there would yet be ten times as many
unknown and unrecorded. As the Prussians entered the village of Verrey,
slaying all in their way—men, women, and children—the _curé_, M. Frérot,
was almost ubiquitous among the dying. He was wounded twice with
bayonets, and, as he retreated into his garden, the soldiers fired and
wounded him twice more. He dragged himself to the doctor’s, where some
wounded were being attended to, and got his wounds dressed, when the
doctor, taking the flag of the Geneva Association with him, undertook to
get him safe into his own (the doctor’s) house, where some of the
wounded had been carried for safety. The enemy, heedless of the flag,
fell upon him again with ball, bayonet, and gun-stocks till he fell down
insensible. He died a few days after, glad, as he said, if his death
could be in any way useful to his country. Useful! Yes, as an example;
but how many precious lives are lost thus, while vile, worthless ones
preserve themselves! One can only compare the pouring out of such blood
to the “waste” of the precious ointment which our Lord so highly
commended.
The Abbé Miroy, of Cuchery, near Rheims, died another kind of death: he
was judicially murdered for having allowed arms to be hidden in the barn
of his house. When asked for this permission, he was in the first agony
of grief at the news of the death of his parents at a hamlet burnt by
the Prussians. However, whether responsible or not—and probably as a
Frenchman he saw no harm in passively helping in the defence of his
country—he was shot at Rheims, at daybreak, on a bleak February morning
and a Sunday. It was during the armistice. His people put this
inscription on his tomb-cross: “Here lies the Abbé Charles Miroy, who
died a victim to his love of country.”
M. Muller, parish priest of Sarreguemines, when asked for the keys of
his church, flatly refused to give them up, and, on being threatened,
answered:
“How many shots do you fire on a condemned man?”
“Eight and the '_coup-de-grâce_.’”
“Very well, then, before you cross the threshold of my church to
desecrate it fire these eight shots and the _coup-de-grâce_ at me; for
you shall only step in over my dead body.” There were many like
instances; for the priests knew well that the enemy delighted in
wantonly outraging the most sacred feelings of the people by profaning
and robbing their churches. A barbarous story is told (General Ambert
vouches for it) of the treatment undergone by the aged Abbé Cor, of
Neuville in the Ardennes, who had considerably delayed the march of the
Prussians by certain information given to the French, and who,
notwithstanding his age (he was more than eighty), was tied to a horse’s
tail and dragged along for a good distance, with another rope tied to
his leg, with which a soldier pulled him up whenever he fell. At last
the soldiers got tired, and threw him into a ditch, and, marvellous to
relate, he recovered. One of his parishioners cried out in pity: “O
father! what a state you are in.”
“Oh!” he answered cheerfully, with a twinkle in his eye, “it is only my
_old_ cassock!”
The parish priest of Gunstatt was brought before an improvised council
of war just after the battle of Forbach; what was requested of him the
book does not say, but his answer just before he was shot points to
something evidently against his country’s interests: “I prefer death to
the crime of betraying France.”
If these facts, which speak for themselves, allow us to make any
commentary, we can think of none so appropriate as this: how does this
France contrast with the feverish, theatrical, rationalistic, immoral
France presented to us by a certain wide-spread form of French
literature? No country is so libelled by its own writers as France.
Granted that many novels represent “life as it is,” yet it is not the
undercurrent of life, not the life of the majority. It is the
artificial, sensational, exceptional life of large cities and of
reckless cliques; and, besides this, novels have a trick of magnifying
this diseased life into illusive dimensions. It fills the eye of the
foreigner, it shapes his judgment, it draws his curiosity, till the
sober, prosaic, quiet, respectable, and vital life of the country fades
out of his memory. He forgets the _vie de province_, the impoverished
gentlemen living in dignified retirement, like Lamartine and his mother
at Milly, like the family in one part of a _Sister’s Story_, like
Eugénie de Guérin with her homely, housekeeping cares; the cosey homes
of the middle classes, their precise, thrifty, cheerful ways; the family
bond that enables different families to live patriarchally in a
fellowship which few Anglo-Saxons would or could imitate; the
peasant-proprietors with their gardens and little farms; the healthy
rural, natural life that is everywhere, and even _in_ cities; the
kindliness, the simplicity, and the innate refinement which ought to
make many a traveller of the Anglo-Saxon race blush for his surliness
and brutal, superficial, haughty way of setting down every foreigner as
a monkey or a barbarian.
Among the country priests there were not only heroes, but strategists.
Towards the beginning of the war a French column was on its way to join
the main body, and had to retreat through a hilly, wooded, and unknown
tract to avoid being surprised by the enemy. No one knew just what to do
or advise, and the little maps were very unsatisfactory. The general
stopped at a Lorraine village and sent for the authorities. The mayor
and most of the inhabitants had fled in anticipation of danger; only the
_curé_ was left, with a few sick and old people. He was over seventy
himself, tall and large, his hands and face swollen and his feet
protected by huge wooden shoes. The general did not hope for much advice
from him, but the old man sat down and explained that he was gouty and
unable to get about, but knew the country. When the general had joked
about this impromptu council of war, and the priest in return had
reminded him how often the church had had occasion to help the army
before, they examined the map together, and the _curé_ took a pencil and
quickly drew certain lines in a most business-like manner, calculating
how long such a road would take to traverse, how much headway would be
gained over the enemy, what points would be a safe resting-place for a
few hours for the tired troops, the route which, believing the bridge to
be destroyed, the Prussians would probably follow, the houses where the
general would find willing and able contributors to the necessities of
his men—in a word, every chance and every detail that an accomplished
commander would have thought of. Then he asked for four soldiers, two to
be placed in the steeple to look out for the Prussians and toll the bell
the moment they came in sight, and thus give the understood signal to
the column at its masked resting-place; and two to watch with him at the
entrance of the village.
“_Monsieur le curé_,” cried the general, “you are a hero!”
The old man sneezed violently—he took snuff—and laughed as well, as he
said: “_Mon général_, the seminaries are full of such heroes as _I_ am.
It is no heroism to love one’s country. Now, when you have given your
orders, I shall carry you off to the presbytery and give you a roast
chicken and some good omelet; and I think Turenne would have been glad
sometimes to barter a few of his laurel branches for an omelet.”
The priest and the two soldiers had a long and cold watch through the
night. At three o’clock in the morning the latter were getting tired,
but the old man said: “Hist! do you see something over there?” The men
peered through the dark and saw nothing; there was a wide circle of old
trees and a road across—a well-known spot, the Fontaine wood. But the
priest both saw and heard, or else he guessed by instinct. “See, they
are creeping nearly on all fours behind the trees; now they stop to
listen, they are gathering together. There is an officer speaking to
them in whispers. It is time to ring the bell. Go now, children.”
“But how can we leave you alone?” said the soldiers.
“Never mind me; God will take care of me. Your general’s orders were to
leave the moment the bell rang.” And as his companions withdrew he rang
his little bell and the church tocsin immediately answered. Its sound
was nearly drowned by the discharge of the Prussian rifles. The old man
knelt down and began the Lord’s Prayer; he had not said the second line
before a ball hit him and he fell. The French column escaped without the
loss of one man; and when the general reported to his superior in
command, the latter, lighting a cigar, said: “That priest was a brave
fellow.” But the general was to meet him once more. The _curé_ was not
killed, but was afterwards condemned to be shot, which sentence was
commuted to exile on account of his great age; and when he met his old
friend, who believed him dead, he greeted him with the cheerful
question: “Well, how did you like my omelet?” The other caught him in
his arms and repeated with as much tenderness as admiration: “You are a
hero!”
The next story we choose from the many related by Ambert is one of pure
Christian self-sacrifice, and one that has its daily counterpart in
hospitals and plague-stricken cities, even in peaceful times. Small-pox
in an aggravated form had broken out among the French troops, and, on
the approach of an infected battalion of Mobiles to a village not far
from Beaune, a _gendarme_ was sent on to bid the inhabitants lock their
doors and keep out of the way, while the sick were taken through to an
isolated camp-hospital at some distance. There were hardly any
able-bodied men left in the village, as they were off harassing the
Prussians and watching their movements, and the women, in their
loneliness, felt a double fear. The patients came. A death-like silence
prevailed; no face was seen at door or window. The sick men dragged
themselves slowly and painfully along, asking for nothing, touchingly
resigned to their lot of lepers and outcasts, though many of them were
raw recruits of a few weeks only, whose homes were in just such villages
as the familiar-looking one they were crossing now. They had passed the
last houses, but at the door of one a little apart from the rest one
soldier fell, and, seeing how hopeless it was to urge him further, a
sergeant placed him on the doorstep and knocked at the door for help. No
answer; and the battalion resumed its march, while the sergeant went
back to tell the mayor. When he was out of sight a man and two women
came hastily and furtively out of the house, carried the unconscious
soldier some distance to the foot of a tree, and there left him. The
sergeant had found the parish priest on his way back from a sick-call,
and asked him to tell the mayor, as he was in a hurry to join his
regiment. They came to the house, and, not finding the sick man, asked
the owner where he was; the man half opened the shutter and pointed in
silence to the tree. Without even seeking help, the priest, finding the
soldier still alive, carried him home in his arms and laid him on his
own bed. The hubbub was great in the parish; the old housekeeper
indignantly remonstrated, but the priest gave her a few clear and severe
orders as to her own liberty of staying away, and the substitute whom he
had the means of sending for to replace him in church, also the manner
of bringing him his food once a day, and then went out to speak to his
excited parishioners. “There,” he said, pointing to a placard on the
wall of the mayoralty, “you read 'Liberty, fraternity, equality.’ Am _I_
to be deprived of the _liberty_ of helping my neighbor? Is he not our
_equal_, and does not _fraternity_ require that we should give him every
chance for his life? I cannot forget that the good shepherd lays down
his life for his sheep.”
“But he does not even belong to the parish!” murmured the crowd.
“In such times as these,” said M. Cloti with enthusiasm, “all France is
my parish, and every brave fellow who dies for you is my parishioner.”
And for sixty-five days and nights he watched the stranger, Jean
Dauphin, made his bed every night, cooked his food, mixed his medicines,
swept the rooms, and scarcely slept or ate himself. The doctor had
insisted on the utmost cleanliness, but said that, with all precautions
possible, only a miracle could save the soldier’s life. Charity wrought
the miracle, and by the fortieth day the patient was sitting up
listening to the priest reading to him. Only one person in the village
caught the disease—the daughter of the man who had spurned the soldier
from his door; and, though she did not die of it, she lost her beauty
for ever. Some months after the doctor asked the priest if he knew at
the time that he was risking his life, and that there was but the barest
chance of escape for him. “Yes,” said M. Cloti simply, “I knew it.”
A terrible barbarity was the occasional punishment of the _bastonnade_—a
kind of “running the gauntlet.” This occurred once at the village of
Saint-Calais, where the enemy found some guns hidden in the belfry, and
one hundred and forty-five male inhabitants, including the mayor, Baron
Jaubert, and the priest, were seized. They were compelled to walk slowly
between a double row of Prussian soldiers armed with clubs and sticks,
and received merciless blows on their bare heads, their shoulders, back,
arms, and legs. The number being odd, the priest was placed last and
alone, so that both rows were able to reach and torture him. He fainted,
and was given a glass of water, after which the torture began again; and
when he fell the second time, his head was found to be split in five
places, and his body was thrown aside for dead. He recovered, however,
after a long and severe illness, but the baron died of his wounds. One
priest, at Ardenay, was maltreated and imprisoned and finally carried
away to Germany for having kept on his steeple a tricolor flag which had
been there since 1830. Some priests whom one can forgive for their
patriotism, but who were perhaps too forward, as ministers of peace, to
foment war, used to go on the battle-fields and search the bodies of the
dead for cartridges for the living; but these instances of enthusiasm
were exceptional, and it should be remembered that some among the clergy
were old soldiers.
Among the prisoners of war the priests found ample room for their
ministry. Some of the clergy were themselves prisoners, while some left
their country and volunteered for this special service. There was much
to do. Besides saying Mass and administering the sacraments, there were
the ignorant to instruct, the scoffers to convert, the young to protect,
and the intemperate to reclaim. In that forced idleness many gave
themselves up to drunkenness and grew reckless and desperate. This sin,
which in our time seems to have sprung into new life and strength,
showed itself lamentably strong among the captives, and the priests, to
counteract it, had to attend not only to the spiritual needs of their
charges, but to invent amusements and occupations to wean the soldiers
from gross self-indulgence. Father Joseph, a missionary and military
chaplain, published an interesting work on the prisoners, their
behavior, pastimes, etc., the statistics of their captivity, their
treatment, and such little things. During the war, more than 400,000
were taken prisoners. Letters with contributions came constantly through
and from the country _curés_. Father Joseph, who was stationed at Ulm,
quotes many of these letters, of which the following is a specimen: “I
venture to recommend to your care one of my parishioners, made prisoner
at Strasbourg. I recommend his soul to you—for it is his most precious
possession—but also his bodily wants; I am afraid he is in need of
clothes. If your circumstances allow it, be kind enough to give him what
is needful; if not, set the whole to my account, and I will reimburse
you. Our country will bless you for your charity.... May our soldiers,
whom so many have labored to demoralize, be led to understand these
truths; for then only will they be worthy of victory.” This dignified
attitude of resignation to the hard lesson God allowed the unsuccessful
war to teach France specially characterized the clergy of all ranks, but
it did not take one jot from their eager and hot patriotism. Another
country priest, over eighty years of age and nearly blind, begins by
excusing himself on that score for his bad handwriting, and, mentioning
one of his flock among the prisoners, says: “The poor boy must suffer
terribly. Help him and comfort him; I shall look upon all that you do to
him as done to me. It is long ago since it has been dinned into the
people’s ears that we are their foes, while in truth they have no better
friends; we are accused of not loving our country, while, on the
contrary, we are her most devoted sons.... I fear that my age will
prevent me seeing the end of her troubles, but it will be a comfort to
me in death that to my latest breath I shall have labored in her
service.” Charitable committees abroad and at home, mostly under church
superintendence, sent food, money, and clothing, books, papers, games,
etc., to the prisoners. Mgr. Mermillod’s committee at Geneva, and those
of Lausanne and Bordeaux, chiefly distinguished themselves; but in this
work religious fellowship overcame national prejudice, and the clergy
and sisters of the Catholic Rhineland cordially helped their so-called
enemies. They vied with the French in ministering to the prisoners in
the several cities where the latter were confined; but not only they,
for there were numberless Germans, both civil and military, who behaved
generously, kindly, and delicately towards the prisoners.
We have already mentioned the terrible custom of choosing at random
hostages or victims in reprisal for the acts of some unknown men. This
took place once at Les Horties, a village where, despite the Prussian
sentries, two hot-headed youths succeeded in picking off three German
soldiers. The shots were returned, but the agile youths got away
unscathed. A detachment was sent forthwith into the village, with orders
to seize the first six men they happened to meet. This was done, the
hostages guarded by the Prussians, and the mayor given till eleven
o’clock the next morning to give up the real offenders, under penalty,
if it proved impossible, of seeing the six men shot. Those who had fired
on the Prussians were strangers, who hovered constantly on the outskirts
of the enemy, accomplishing, most likely, some vow of vengeance for a
wrong done by soldiers to some near and dear to them. There were many
such. Heaven forgive them! for they brought untold sorrow on the heads
of families like their own, whose death they were so blindly trying to
revenge. It was out of the mayor’s power to give up the culprits, and no
prayers or tears made any impression on the Prussian officer in command.
The women’s lamentations were terrible; the men’s despair appalling. One
of them, a widower of forty with five children, was all but out of his
mind, blaspheming horribly and crying out: “Yes, yes, it was my
three-year-old Bernard who fired on the wretches. Let them take me and
my five boys, and let the rest go!” The priest, M. Gerd, was unable to
comfort him, and slowly left the school-room where the poor victims
waited their fate. Going to the headquarters of the German captain, he
said: “I believe you only wish to shoot these men as an example;
therefore the more prominent the victim, the greater the lesson. It
cannot matter to you individually _who_ is shot; therefore I have come
to beg of you as a favor to be allowed to take the place of one of these
men, whose death will leave five young children fatherless and homeless.
Both he and I are innocent, but my death will be more profitable to you
than even his.” “Very well,” said the officer, and the _curé_ was bound
with the rest of the men, and the man he had saved left him in tears.
The night passed, and, like the martyrs of Sébaste, whose fortitude was
strengthened by the young heathen who joined them in the stead of one of
themselves who had faltered, these unhappy men were transformed by the
priest’s words and examples into unflinching heroes. The hour came, and
he walked at their head, saying aloud the Office of the Dead, the people
kneeling and sobbing as he passed, when the condemned met a Prussian
major who was passing by chance with some orders from the general. He
was struck by the sight of the priest—an unusual one, even during this
“feast of horrors”—and inquired into the matter, which seemed less a
thing of course to him than it had to the captain. He countermanded the
order and referred the whole thing to the general, who called the _curé_
before him. It ended in the former saying that he was unable to make an
exception in any one’s favor, but that for _his_ sake he would pardon
every one of the hostages, and, when the priest had left, he turned to
his officers and said energetically: “If all Frenchmen were like that
plain parish priest, we should not have long to stay on this side of the
Rhine.”
But here is another story, very like this one and more tragic, which has
not come within Ambert’s knowledge, and to which we are indebted to an
English novelist, who, vouching for its truth, has worked it into a
recent tale. Neither name nor place is given, but it runs thus: The same
thing happened as at Les Horties, and a certain number—I forget how
many—male inhabitants were condemned, all fathers of families. After
vain appeals for mercy from the priest, the mayor, the old men, and the
women, the former called all his people into the church, which had been
pillaged and half burnt some time before. He went into the pulpit and
held up a common black cross; it was the only ornament or symbol left of
the simple village church treasury.
“My children,” he said in a voice trembling with sobs, “you know what
has happened, and how many hearths are going to be left desolate. Here,
in God, in Christ, is our only comfort and our only strength. I have no
ties but such as bind me to each one of you equally. I have but one life
to give, but I will gladly take the place of one of these fathers of
families, and trust to God to protect you when I am gone. Now, if any of
you feel that God will give you grace to die in the stead of any other
of your brethren, say so, and God bless you!” He knelt and bent his head
on his clasped hands in prayer; silence, only broken by suppressed
sobbing, filled the church. The women were in agonies of weeping; the
men’s faces worked as if in some mighty struggle. Presently one young
man rose up and said: “Father, I will follow you; I have neither wife
nor children. I will take such a one’s place.” And then rose another
youth, giving up all his hopes of the future for the sake of another of
the victims; and the women crowded round them, blessing them, crying
over them, pressing their hands, and calling them heroes and deliverers.
Those for whom no substitutes had appeared caught the high spirit of the
occasion, and bore their fate like Christians and men. No Providence
interposed in this case, and the priest was allowed to consummate his
sacrifice. Such courage was more than human.
The part taken by the sisters of various orders in the scenes of the war
and the Commune was one which neither France nor Germany will ever
forget. They shared every danger to which the soldiers themselves were
liable, even that of being shot in cold blood, which was the fate of
four sisters at Soultz, near Colmar, on the Rhine. They were found
nursing the wounded, and the Prussians accused them of advising and
encouraging the inhabitants to resist. There was no inquiry, no form,
but a few of the scum of the invading army dragged the women away at
once, set them against a wall, and shot them. During the retreat after
the battle of Reischoffen a Sister of Charity made her way among the
disorganized troops, seeking some one to help. Balls and shells were
whizzing past, and frightened horses wildly galloping by. A cry was
heard as a man fell mortally wounded, and the sister stopped, knelt
down, and began her work; but hardly a minute after a ball struck her
and carried off both her legs. She fell in a swoon by the soldier’s
side. M. Blandeau, who tells the story, did not know her name; he only
says pointedly: “She was a Sister of Charity.” An officer of the French
Army of the Rhine gives an account of a Trinitarian nun, Sister Clara,
who the night of the 16th of August, 1870, after a bloody battle, was
tending the wounded in a barn; they were in such pain as not to be able
to bear being carried to a safer place, and all they cried for was
“Water, water!” Every five minutes the nun went quietly in and out,
under the fire of the enemy, to fetch as much water as her scanty number
of vessels would hold; you would have thought she was armor-plated, to
judge by her calm and smiling demeanor. The next day began the dreary
retreat towards Metz; the wounded were heaped on carts and wagons, and
there again was Sister Clara, comforting, helping, encouraging the men,
giving water to one, changing the position of another. She left on the
last cart, holding against her breast the head of the nearest wounded
man; but not half a mile further the column was made prisoner by a
detachment of Uhlans, the ambulances cut off, and in the _mêlée_ a shot
struck and killed the sister, who was probably buried by and among
strangers. At Forbach the superior of the Sisters of Providence, whose
house was a hospital and asylum at all times, was killed by a shell, and
at Metz no less than twenty-two Sisters of Charity died either from
wounds, disease, or exhaustion in the service of the soldiers. At
Bicêtre, during the siege of Paris, eleven died of small-pox in one day,
and a request having been made for the same number to supply their
place, thirty-two presented themselves at once. At Pau, at Orleans, at
Mans, at Nevers, and in numberless other cities, as well as in impromptu
hospitals, canvas towns, villages, and battle-fields, the Little Sisters
of the Poor, the Sisters of Charity, the Visitation Nuns, and other
orders too many to mention distinguished themselves. Many sisters were
forced later on to accept the Legion of Honor, but a far greater number
of those who deserved it did not live to have it offered. At the siege
of Paris their courage seemed absolutely superhuman. An officer once met
near Châlons, on the road to Paris, a blind and wounded soldier led by a
Sister of Charity. He was an old veteran from Africa, without relations,
of a terrible temper, and with not much religion. The Prussians had left
him on the road, finding him an encumbrance among the prisoners. The
sister found him and undertook to lead him to the _Invalides_, where,
she said, he had every right to claim a home. In all weathers this
strange couple plodded along. She begged food and shelter for him, and
always gave him the best; but he was fractious and not very grateful.
One day the weather was a little finer, and he heard a lark sing; he
seemed quite touched and happy. The sister asked him to kneel down and
repeat the “Our Father” after her, and he did not refuse. This was the
beginning of his conversion. But the Sister now grew ambitious, and
wanted to restore his physical sight to him as well as his spiritual; so
she said: “We will not go to the _Invalides_ after all, but I will take
you to the best surgeons and the most famous oculists in Paris, and beg
them, for the love of God and their country, to do their utmost to cure
you; and if God sees fit to let them succeed, you will promise me to be
a good Christian as long as you live, will you not?” Three months later
the soldier was as hearty as ever and had recovered his sight, while the
sister had long been at work in a country school; but at Notre Dame des
Victoires may be often seen a veteran praying on his knees before the
grated door of the shrine—praying for his deliverer.
The Pontifical Zouaves formed a volunteer regiment of their own during
the war, and fought like lions; most of their members were the
descendants of old French families whose sympathies are with the last of
the exiled Bourbons, and who, while they reject the empire and the
republic equally, and keep out of the way of office or active employment
of any kind, even to the prejudice of their career and to the point that
many of their young men are forced to make a life for themselves in
foreign service or by emigration, yet are full of real love of their
country. The virtues of such enthusiasts always come out in adversity,
while in prosperity their attitude of aloofness may seem rather
childish. In the last war they fought nobly. Plenty of Breton peasants
joined them; they have nearly the same traditions and fully the same
faith; in fact, they have long been natural allies.
The incidents of the Commune—a period so much more terrible and shameful
than that of the war—have been so often and fully described that we will
not add much to this sketch by going over the fearfully familiar
subject. Every one knows the phase of rabid feeling which came uppermost
among the Communists: the hatred of God, religion, and priests—even a
more rabid feeling than that entertained towards owners of property. The
clergy were thus forced to be prominent in that national delirium: the
chief victims were ecclesiastics. In Paris and other places it has been
noticed that a certain class of lazy, good-for-nothing men live from
hand to mouth around the barracks and the churches, living on the alms
of soldiers and priests, inventing excuses to account for their
indolence, cheating and lying and taking ravenously all they can get.
When a revolution comes, these men become denunciators, assassins, and
leaders. It is they who cry the loudest against the army and the
priesthood—the “butchers” of Versailles and the “hypocrites” in
cassocks. Raoul Rigault spoke their sentiments when he said to the
porter of M. Duguerry’s house (the famous parish priest of La Madeleine,
shot with Archbishop Darboy at La Roquette): “God! you fool!” (the man
had exclaimed, as is the custom, innocently meant, in France, '_O mon
Dieu!_') “Hold your tongue; how dare you speak of God! Our revolution is
against your God, your religion, and your priests. We will sweep all
that rubbish away!” And, by way of contrast to this plain confession of
faith, here are the words of M. Duguerry in prison to his biographer,
the Baron de Saint-Amand: “My dear friend, if I knew that my death would
be of any use to the cause of religion, I should kneel down and beg them
to shoot me.” But it is not necessary to multiply quotations to show the
intense hatred of the Commune towards religion and its ministers. Holy
Week in 1871 was indeed the _Passion_ Week of many of the latter. The
devilish conduct of many women recalled the worst excesses of the Reign
of Terror. A woman with a military cap on rode at the head of the escort
of the hostages, three of them Jesuit Fathers, who were taken from La
Roquette to Belleville to be shot. She swore and yelled and gave orders,
insulting the priests especially. On the Boulevards, as the condemned
passed, riots took place, and disorderly crowds nearly killed the
prisoners in their impatience. Women again were prominent, brandishing
guns, knives, and pistols, throwing bloody mud on the priests, and
blaspheming as badly as any man; it would have been safer to run the
gauntlet of a crowd of maniacs let loose from the asylum. Mgr. Surat was
killed in the streets on another occasion by a young girl of sixteen,
who deliberately put a pistol to his forehead. “Mercy, mademoiselle!”
cried the priest quickly; but with an untranslatable slang play on his
words[39]—equivalent, say, to “You shall have it hot and peppery,” or
some such phrase—she drew the trigger and stretched him dead at her
feet. The Abbé Perny, in his evidence before the council of war, says:
“I have lived among the savages for twenty-five years, but I never saw
among them anything to equal the hatred on those faces of men and women
as we passed them on our way from Mazas to La Roquette.”[40] Father
Anatole de Bengy, a Jesuit, was a remarkable man who had been military
chaplain in the Crimea, and was volunteer chaplain of the troops during
the last war till the siege, when he attached himself to the Eighth
Ambulance. He had a singular power of commanding the love, obedience,
and confidence of others; he was brave and good-tempered, and such a
thorough soldier that Marshal Bosquet said of him: “Upon my word, if
there are many Jesuits of that kind, _I_ say hurrah for the Jesuits!”
His letters are full of pleasantry and life. He tells his friends how he
helps “our poor soldiers,” and jokes about his tramps with “his bundle
on his back,” which phrase, he says, “always rouses a certain pity in
the listener; but indeed, my dear Aymard, the bundle (_le sac_) does not
deserve its bad name: it urges the body forward, and its inconveniences
are fully made up for by the advantages it gives rise to. Some thinker
should undertake the Praise of the Bundle, and rehabilitate it in the
eyes of pilgrims.” The words of this manly and brave priest at the
funeral of Commander de Dampierre would serve as his own eulogy: “The
fountain-head of duty is in the three world-famous words, _God wills
it_.” When his name was called at La Roquette, on the list of condemned,
the Communist official stumbled over it, and Père de Bengy stepped
briskly forward, saying: “I know my name is on the list—Bengy; here I
am.” M. Crépin, a shoe-maker, who was condemned, but saved by the
entrance of the troops, saw the butchery of Belleville, and in his
evidence said: “Let no one speak ill of the clergy before me again! I
have seen them at home now; I know them by experience; I have witnessed
their courage and been comforted by their words.”
Footnote 39:
_Tu l’auras maigre et non pas gras_ (_grasse—grâce_).
Footnote 40:
At Ménilmontant a woman named Lefêvre proposed, amid cheers and
bravos, to undermine the Cathedral of Notre Dame, fill it as full as
it would hold with priests and nuns, and blow it up. At a club-meeting
another woman—Leblanc—cried: “We must flay the priests alive and make
barricades with their carcasses”; and at Trinity Church a woman argued
thus on the existence of God: “Religion is a farce got up by men, and
there is no God; ... if there were, he would not let me speak so.
Therefore he is a coward, and no God....” And there were other and
even more revolting things said and done.
The Dominicans of Arcueil transformed their school into an ambulance
during the siege, and Père Bengy happened to be chosen chaplain. But the
Commune was to elicit greater sacrifices. The monks might have left, but
did not, and reopened their hospital for the wounded wild beasts, whose
curses sounded upon their watchers even from their sick-beds. The Geneva
flag was hoisted, and the Sisters of St. Martha acted as domestic
servants, besides many other women and girls. There were twenty wounded
in the hospital on the 19th of May, 1871, when the Commune arrested the
inmates of the house, thirty-eight persons—priests, lay brothers,
tradesmen and servants in their employment, some of them foreigners,
nuns, married women and widows, two young girls, and a child of eight
years old, daughter of the tailor, who was afterwards shot with the
priests. The latter were, with a devilish show of mercy, offered their
liberty if they would take arms against the Versailles troops, and, when
they refused, they were condemned. Their death took place a few days
later, and the shooting was not done with military precision, but
bunglingly, so that the victims were rather butchered than shot. After
the bodies had ceased to breathe they were savagely mutilated, the heads
and larger bones hacked with axes, and the flesh pierced with bayonets.
Some of the priests managed to escape in the crowd and smoke, all of
them wounded, however; and one was saved by a woman who hurriedly threw
her husband’s clothes to him. According to the saying of a National
Guard who escorted the Belleville victims to their death, and who, on
being asked by a passer-by, “Where are they taking those men to?”
answered gravely, “To heaven,” the road these priests walked was truly
the “narrow road that leadeth to salvation.”
Surely, if any class of French citizens did their duty in troublous
times and deserve well of their country, it is the clergy.
DE VERE’S “MARY TUDOR.”
PART II.
We said, in our last article,[41] that the Catholic reader would find
this second play much more painful than the first. We are sure, too,
that the non-Catholic reader will deem it inferior in point of interest.
Yet we do not agree with the London _Spectator_ that there is an
“artistic chasm” between the two plays. At any rate, whatever
constructive defects are to be found in the present performance, there
is no falling off in dramatic power.
Footnote 41:
THE CATHOLIC WORLD, March, 1877, p. 777. We regret to be informed by
the publisher that this really great drama is now out of print.
The play is preluded by an “Introductory Scene,” in which Mary is
discovered prostrate on the tomb of Jane Grey. This does not at all
surprise us after the remorse we have witnessed in the last scene of the
preceding play. Holding herself criminally responsible for the execution
of her cousin, it was natural for her to perform “penances severer than
the Church prescribes.” The gentle Fakenham—now Abbot of Westminster—may
well express anxiety for his penitent.
“Pray God
Her mind give way not: sorely is it shaken.
These tearful macerations of the spirit,
These fasts that chain all natural appetites,
Nor mortify the sinful flesh alone,
Must be restrained: or death will close the scene.”
While he is soliloquizing Gardiner enters with Elizabeth. Fakenham has
requested the latter’s presence.
“Whate’er hath passed,
Be sure her Grace hath ever truly loved you.
Therefore we trust your coming may dispel
The baleful visions that enthrall her spirit;
Dispersed, as fiends before rebuking Saints.”
Elizabeth answers:
“You hope too much. Awakened jealousy
Preys on her, like the Egyptian’s asp.”
But she is mistaken; for presently the queen, on recognizing the “veiled
mourner,” says tenderly:
“I part
The tresses on thy brow; and gaze upon thee
_With the strong yearning of a blighted love_.
I know thee, sister! Take me to thine arms—
And let me weep.”
The weeping revives Mary’s energy, but that energy takes a shape in
which we see the old despair combined with a new fanaticism.
“ELIZABETH. These mingling tears wash out
All venom from past sorrow—”
QUEEN. “Not from mine!
Immedicable evil hath infected
The fount of life within me. I shall die
In premature decay; and fall aside
As withered fruit falls from a blasted branch.
I, like a mother by her dying babe,
Have closed the eyes of hope; and o’er my heart
Torpid despair fans with his vampire wings.”
Then, suddenly apostrophizing the “Eternal Majesty,” she appeals, as one
“hemmed in by dark conspiracies” and “baited by schismatics,” for
“prescience to detect” and “strength to control them”; deeming herself,
once more, “the Lord’s Vicegerent,” to execute his judgments.
“Fly, brood of darkness! for my prayer hath risen:
And God will hear, and smite, as once he smote
The sin of Korah: and the earth shall ope
And swallow blasphemy; and plagues leap forth
Consuming impious men: even _till the Church,
Swinging her holy censer in the midst,
Shall stay the pestilence_, God’s wrath appeased!”
This is a fine allusion to the destruction of the three schismatical
upstarts in the wilderness; and it is surprising to see a Protestant
author attribute to Catholics so much knowledge of the Bible.
Nevertheless, poor sinful mortals never make a greater mistake than when
they fancy themselves ministers of what they call the “justice” of Him
“whose thoughts are not as our thoughts.”
Perhaps Fakenham was about to make some such reply; for this
poet-created Mary Tudor—after pausing, we suppose, to take
breath—continues:
“Answer me not. I rise from this cold grave,
My penitential couch, with heart as frozen
As the dead limbs beneath, and will unbending
As this hard stone that shuts her from the world.”
Thus we are fully prepared for anything she may do; yet, in fact, she
proves singularly innocuous.
The play opens with a discussion between Gardiner and Fakenham on the
subject of the queen’s marriage. Both are agreed that she ought to
marry, for the good of State and Church; but either has his eye on a
very different candidate for her hand. The abbot’s candidate is Reginald
Cardinal Pole—a character to whom our author does full justice as among
the loftiest of his time. Fakenham thus describes him as a “student at
Padua”:
“A nobler presence
Never embodied a more gracious soul:
Ardent, yet thoughtful; in the search of knowledge
Unwearied, yet most temperate in its use.
_Whate’er he learned he wore with such an ease,
It seemed incorporated with his substance;
And beamed forth, like the light that emanates
From a saint’s brow._”
And again:
“Oft have I watched him sitting
For hours, on some rude promontory’s edge,
Wrapt in his mantle, his broad brow, sustained
With outspread palm, o’ershadowing his eyes.
And there, as one of Titan birth, he lingered
In strange community with nature; mingling
With all around—the boundless sky, the ocean,
The rock, the forest—looking back defiance
Unto the elements: _as some lone column
Beneath the shadow of a thunder-cloud_.”
For the thought in these last six lines Sir Aubrey seems indebted to
Lord Byron, that poet “of Titan birth”—who, indeed, would have sat for
the picture far better, we imagine, than Pole; except that, instead of
“looking defiance at the elements” (an attitude for which we see no
reason in Pole’s case either), his face would have shown ecstatic joy at
“mingling with all around.”
“Ye elements, in whose ennobling stir
I feel myself exalted!”
(_Childe Harold_, canto iv.)
The way Gardiner sneers at Fakenham’s candidate, and then introduces his
own, affords us an opportunity of correcting the author’s misconceptions
of this prelate. First, then, there is no proof whatever that Gardiner
was blood-thirsty, or even severe. Had he been the relentless persecutor
he is popularly represented, his own diocese of Winchester would have
become the scene of numerous executions for heresy; whereas, in fact,
not one such execution can be shown to have taken place there. Neither,
again, is there any more evidence that he egged on Mary to acts of
cruelty. If he did make the attempt, he failed signally; for the real
Mary Tudor was personally guiltless of a single act of intolerance even.
The only authentic instance in which Gardiner played the part of evil
genius to the queen was when he urged her to retain the Royal Supremacy
established by her father—her title and authority as head of the English
Church—a counsel which elicited the witty reply: “Women, I have read in
Scripture, are forbidden to speak in the church. Is it, then, fitting
that _your_ church should have a dumb head?” At the time of giving this
bad advice Gardiner belonged to the anti-papal party—which, of course,
was therefore schismatical, though nominally Catholic. And this
time-serving adhesion was the one great sin of his life. He repented of
it some time before his death, and publicly lamented it in a sermon at
St. Paul’s Cross, preached on occasion of the reconciliation of the
kingdom with the Holy See; nevertheless, the memory of it so weighed
upon his conscience when he lay on his death-bed that he asked to have
the Passion of Our Saviour read to him, and, when the reader came to the
denial of Peter, said: “Stop! I, too, have denied my Lord with Peter;
but I have not learned to weep bitterly with Peter.”
We may here remark that, had our author been acquainted with the above
facts of Gardiner’s history, he would not have sacrificed truth to
poetic effect by making him die suddenly after the burning of Cranmer;
nor, again, have put into his mouth such an un-English argument as this
against Pole’s fitness to share the throne with Mary:
“He is _but an Englishman_:
And ’tis an adage older than the hills
That prophets are not honored in their land.”
One so anxious, as Gardiner must have been at that time, to keep
_foreign domination_ out of England could never have advocated the
marriage of his sovereign with “Spanish Philip,” nor, indeed, have been
likely to call the latter’s father
“That wisest monarch, most devout of Christians,
Potent of captains, fortunate of men.”
But, of course, the poet stands to his colors. Having selected Gardiner
for the villain _par excellence_, he makes him welcome even foreign
domination in the person of a bigoted prince, who, he knows, will imbrue
his hands in the blood of heretics.
Philip does not come upon the scene till the third Act; but the
intervening scenes form a prelude to his advent.
First we have the queen in council on the question of her marriage, and
particularly of the Spanish prince’s suit. While asking Gardiner’s
advice she betrays her love for Reginald, and is quickly crushed into
abandoning that hope by the chancellor’s daring assurance that her
cousin is certainly Pope. Accordingly, she yields reluctant assent to
the prayer of Philip’s ambassador. Then, in the same scene, follows a
“patient hearing” of Ridley and Latimer, whose contumacious spirit is
well shown by the dramatist. Mary treats them with great forbearance,
and leaves them to ponder what she has said. The closing passage of this
scene is noteworthy. Latimer boasts:
“O queen! that day is past
When spiritual knowledge was confined to priests.
Our very babes drink knowledge as they suck.
Each stripling, as he runs, plucks from each bough
The fruit of knowledge.”
Mary’s reply is of surprising force and beauty:
“Ah, sirs, have a care!
The tree of knowledge was an evil thing,
_With root in hell, and fruitage unto death_.
But in the self-same garden likewise grew
Another mystery, the tree of life.
This too bore fruit, unseen till after-time:
And this was Christ. Children of Adam, we,
_Condemned to cultivate what first we stole,
Must tend the second tree with watchful love,
Or perish by the poison of the first_.”
The remaining scene of this Act and the opening scene of the next are
taken up chiefly with the disturbance occasioned by the approaching
nuptials. Underhill, the “Hot-Gospeller,” is introduced, together with
riotous citizens and the antagonists Sandys and Weston. Underhill is an
honest fellow, and loyal to his queen, whose panegyrist he becomes at
the play’s close. Though the rioters are in the minority, the rebellion
becomes strong enough to attack Whitehall Palace, where Mary is seen at
the opening of the second Act. Her masculine valor is here displayed.
First she leans from the window to encourage her soldiers, then actually
sallies forth to head them in person, and wins the day by thus risking
her life. In the second scene Underhill excites the indignation of
Sandys by his chivalrous defence of the queen not only as the one
“Whom the Lord gives to rule o’er Israel,”
but for her clemency.
“UNDERHILL. _The queen is not well served_.
You heard yourself
How, leaning from the Holbein gallery,
Where she so long stood target to your shafts,
She bade her furious knights to spare, and spake
Peace to the suppliant throng.”
“SANDYS. Yet your fierce captains
Do ramp along the streets with bloody staves,
Hunting the white-faced citizens like rats;
Or at their own doors summarily hang them.”
* * * * *
“UNDERHILL. Not fifty thus have died: a sorrowful sum
If measured by domestic pangs, yet _small
If balanced by the evil of their plots_:
Small if contrasted with the precedents
Of former feuds. In Henry’s time, they say,
Full seventy thousand their viaticum
Had from the hangman.”
But our author does more than make Underhill her apologist. He seems
anxious, every now and then, to remind us that he privately thinks much
better of his heroine than the history he has read allows him to
represent. He sets off the gentler side of her nature in strong contrast
to the vindictive, and, indeed, attributes the latter to inherited
qualities for which she is not responsible. Accordingly, in the third
and fourth scenes of the second Act Mary’s generous forgivingness, and
especially to Elizabeth, shines out gloriously.
Count Egmont, Philip’s envoy, has placed upon her finger his master’s
betrothal ring, when Renaud, the Spanish ambassador, strikes in with:
“Permit me
To be so bold as to suggest ’twere prudent
His Grace delayed till treason be put down.
_Too many prisoners your Grace releases_.
QUEEN. It was the custom of my forefathers
To pardon criminals upon Good Friday.
* * * * *
RENAUD. Pardon me: there may be
Some guiltier. Our prince must be kept back
Should your Grace yield to mistimed clemency.
* * * * *
Forgive my plainness. Can King Philip come
While criminals remain unjustified?
_Your sister waits her trial._
GARDINER. Let me speak.
While she, the princess, lives, there is no safety
For England, for the Church.”
Here Bridges, Lieutenant of the Tower, enters with a sealed warrant.
“BRIDGES. Your Grace will pardon, if, in a case like this,
Your servant feels misgiving. This sealed warrant
Commands me yield the princess—to be dealt with
As sentence shall direct.
QUEEN. O thou good servant!
Thy queen, on her heart’s knees, thanks and rewards thee.
Whose is this deed? By God’s death, answer me!
Ay, Gardiner, thou shalt answer for this thing,
If thou hast done it.
GARDINER. Let me see the paper.
A sorry trick to fright the princess! Trust me,
I had no hand in it. [_He tears the warrant._
QUEEN. _Inhuman hounds!
That worry your poor victim ere you slay it._
But I shall balk your malice. Silence, Gardiner!
Too much already hath been said: your tongues
Are deadlier than poison. Bridges, through you,
Who pitied poor Jane Grey, I shall henceforth
Secure my sister. You have known and loved her.
You are my servant now. Receive your knighthood.”
Thus foiled in their design, Renaud and Gardiner pretend, of course,
that they did not for a moment mean the death of the princess, but only
her removal; and the Spaniard goes on to explain that this “removal” was
to be effected “by a bridegroom’s sweet compulsion”—mentioning Philibert
of Savoy as a suitor—and then, finding that offer contemptuously
rejected, suggests “the kind keeping of the Hungarian queen.”
“QUEEN. Be content, sir.
_My sister hath but one friend in this council—
Myself_, companion of her youth. _It may be
She hath compassed ill against me: yet will not I,
Who fostered her lone childhood, now destroy her
By death or exile._ You are malcontent.
Conform ye to my will: I shall not swerve.”
In the following scene, where Mary and Elizabeth have it all to
themselves, the generosity of the former is the more touching by reason
of her reproaches, which Elizabeth can only answer by acting a part
which such a dissembler could very easily feign. Mary shows strong
grounds for suspecting her loyalty, but nobly acquits her and replaces
on her finger the ring which was the pledge of love between them,
saying:
“Or innocent or guilty, I forgive you.”
We regret that space does not allow us to transcribe this scene in full.
We pass to the third Act, which introduces the two best-drawn characters
of the play—Philip and Reginald Pole.
In these two men the author has illustrated—perhaps unconsciously—the
antipodal extremes of the moral results of the Catholic religion. In
Pole we see a character perfectly Christlike in its mixture of majesty
with gentleness; in Philip one who has degraded faith into superstition,
and made doctrines and means of grace the instruments of selfishness and
passion. The greater the good in a system, the greater the evil into
which it may be perverted. The amiable Fakenham tells Gardiner, in the
previous scene, his mind about the Spaniard’s portrait:
“A moody man,
Whose countenance is ghastly, bearing dismal:
For ever wrangling, rude. His glance is sinister,
Stealthy: his laughter a sardonic sneer.
_I would rather face a vulture o’er a corpse,
Than such a man, whose hell is in himself._
He is a tree of death.”
Gardiner may well wince as he replies:
“You have a caustic brush:
The canvas burns beneath it.”
Yet poor Queen Mary fondly looks forward to the coming of her affianced
as (to borrow Byron’s exquisite metaphor)
“the rainbow of her future years—
Before whose heavenly hues all sorrow disappears.”
Neither does she betray any foreboding in consequence of the storm that
ushers in her wedding-day. The bridegroom, on the contrary, peevishly
exclaims:
“A sorry day for our solemnities!
I kiss this crucifix. Avert the omen,
Most holy James of Compostella!”
_He_ does not see in this conjugal union
“The cloud-compelling harbinger of love.”
The “omen” is not unfelt, though, by some of the spectators,
particularly when Doctor Sandys gives tongue about it. The wedding-scene
is simple enough. The queen says, very prettily, when Philip offers a
diamond ring:
“Nay, my lord:
I would be wed, like any other maiden,
With the plain hoop of gold.”
It is the remaining half of the play which makes the whole so inferior
to the first play. Not that, as we have said, there is any deficiency of
dramatic power. Philip and the cardinal are masterfully handled. Full
justice, too, is done—from the author’s stand-point—to the characters of
Gardiner, Cranmer, and the rest. But a thick gloom overhangs the entire
picture; and the glaring historical untruth of much of it is no relief
to Catholic eyes.
Philip and Pole clash instantly. The Spaniard has a presentiment of this
at the moment when Sir John Gage announces
“The cardinal legate’s boat hath touched the beach.
QUEEN. The cardinal arrived! My dear, dear cousin!
Go, my lord chamberlain—go, Sir John Gage,
And bear our greetings to his Eminence.
Let his legantine cross be borne before him;
And all appliances of holy state
Attend his blessed footsteps. This our king,
And we, shall welcome him on Whitehall stairs.
PHILIP. You are right gracious to the cardinal.
In Spain we condescend less.
QUEEN. Ah! you’ll love him,
As I do, when familiarly you know him.
PHILIP. I somewhat doubt it.”
In the next scene, when the cardinal has congratulated the queen on the
return of England to the faith—telling the nation:
“Be sure
The light devolving from great Gregory
Still shines from Peter’s chair. Who turns from it
Renounces hope. Peace ripens in its beams”—
and Mary has joyfully responded:
“Here stand we without question, king and queen;
And, with our Parliament, implore the pope
For reconciliation. Take this missive:
It is sincere. Kneeling we crave your blessing!”—
Philip interjects:
“Your Eminence shall pardon my stiff knees—
Stiff, Spanish manners. Ha! I cannot kneel.”
No wonder the queen faints as the cardinal blesses her.
Philip, having thus early begun with insolence, loses no time in showing
the mixture of brute and devil that he is. He threatens to leave England
because his sanguinary counsels are not taken; whereupon we are rejoiced
to see the author make Mary as well as Pole defend the policy of “free
discussion.” Of course Gardiner supports Philip eagerly. Presently—so
outrageous is Philip’s conduct to his wife—the cardinal’s indignation
can contain itself no longer, and his dignified remonstrance stings the
king into exclaiming:
“Were I a basilisk, I’d look thee dead!”
Gardiner urges Pole to retire; but the hero answers:
“Not so. My heart is strong:
And like some stalwart wrestler, who hath need
Of exercise, and doubts nor heart nor limb,
I shrink not from the combat. _He who carries
His cross, a daily burden, well may stand
In front of any giant of the ring
Who boasts he can move spheres._”
And again he warns the monster:
“Ay: you are great
Above us by your station, as the vulture
Upon his mountain pinnacle. What then?
The arrow makes a pathway in the air:
_The peasant’s hands can reach the feathered tyrant_,
_And from the vale quench his despotic eye_.”
—“Vulture,” mark: not eagle.
We find a profound study in Mary’s love for Philip, and particularly in
its persistence. How she could feel toward such a man anything beyond
wife-like duty—she, too, who had loved Reginald Pole from her
childhood—is mysterious indeed. It will doubtless be said that the poet
intends this new love for a part of her madness—like her passion for the
worthless Courtenaye: her craving for love being such as to invest any
spouse with “Cytherea’s zone.” Then, again, the treatment Pole receives
at Philip’s hands, and his sublime bearing under it, ought to have the
result of alienating her affections from the Spaniard even more than the
latter’s behavior to herself. Hear her cry, one moment:
“Poor heart!
Thou wilt not break! Insult unmitigated!
Witnessed—by him!—by Pole! O Reginald!
Avenged!”
And the next, see her so overjoyed by an usher announcing “the king”
that she springs up from the suppliant posture in which she has just
been praying
“that even as the thief
On the third cross I may have peace in heaven”—
springs up, and exclaims wildly:
“The king! King Philip!
O speed him hither! Stay: here’s for thy news—
A jewel from my finger. Haste thee, friend.”
And again, though his Majesty enters “moodily,” she can actually greet
him thus:
“O Philip. Philip! art thou come to me?
_And shall there not now be an end of weeping?_
I was thinking of thee—whom else think I of?
I talked of thee—of whom is all my talking?
But thou art here again: _and my poor heart,
Like a caged bird, is beating at its bars,
To fly forth to the comfort of thy bosom_.
Speak—speak—_my soul_! and give me peace.”
Verily, this _is_ madness! Who has ever seen so extraordinary a picture
of woman before? Has not the poet drawn something impossible? Not at
all. He simply displays, we think, an unusual knowledge of the feminine
heart. A much less acquaintance with that organ should prevent surprise
at any phenomena it may exhibit—particularly in the shape of undeserved
love or unreasoning constancy.
Of course the poor woman’s fondness only irritates her lord, instead of
appeasing him; so he tells her bluntly what he has come for—to deliver
his ultimatum; which is, first, the removal of the legate; and,
secondly, the death of the heretical prelates. Of his feeling towards
the cardinal he says:
“Call it not hatred, but antipathy:
Such as the callow chicken feels for hawks,
Or wild horse for the wolf. Aversion call it:
That wraps me in a cold and clammy horror
When we approach. I know he cannot harm me;
_And have small doubt he would not if he could_.
But still, my flesh creeps if I do but touch him,
As when one strokes a cat’s hair ’gainst the grain.
* * * * *
Odious is his garb
Of ostentatious purple; jewelled hands;
_That beard down-streaming like the chisel’d locks
Of Moses from the hand of Angelo_.”
Like a gleam of sunshine, for a moment, comes a happy description of a
visit from Elizabeth to the queen. Underhill is the narrator. It is in
the ninth scene of this too long third Act.
“Her royal barge
Was garlanded with flowers, festooned around
An awning of green satin, richly broidered
With eglantine and buds of gold. The bright one
Beneath this canopy reclined in state,
Fairer than Cleopatra with her Roman.
Her royal sister on the bowery shore
Of Richmond met her, kissing her 'tween whiles;
Her wan cheek flushing to a healthier glow.
With hospitable care, and love, she led
Elizabeth to where, shrined in green leaves
And flowers, a tent, curtained with cloth of gold
And purple samite, stood; whose folds were wrought
With silver fleur-de-lys and gold pomegranates.
The music they so love breathed in their ears
Like amorous blandishment: and when the morn
Rippled along the wave with soberer ray,
The princess stept once more into her barge,
And floated down the current like a swan.”
Yet one more quotation from this Act; for we shall have but little to
cite from Acts fourth and fifth. The cardinal, after arguing with
Gardiner against the severe measures that are being taken under his and
Bonner’s supervision, and defending the queen from the charge of
approval—her consent having been forced, and things of which she was
ignorant done in her name—finds relief in conversing with Fakenham,
whose virtues he thoroughly appreciates. The latter speaks of his
friend’s failing strength; and Pole, at a loss to account for it, says
he has “heard of vampire poisons,” but instantly suppresses the
suspicion. They have been up all night, apparently.
“CARDINAL. A sudden sunburst!—Lo!
God’s Image in our heart is as yon orb
Unto the universe; _the eye of nature,
Dispersing rays more eloquent than tongues_;
Beams that give life as well as light; whose absence
Wraps in cold shadow all that moves and breathes.
At times that Image walks through spheres remote;
Unobvious to the largely wandering eye:
Then nightmare darkness sits upon the soul:
Then, by its own shade mantled, waits the soul,
Like some dark mourner, lonely in his house.
_But the harmonious hours fulfil themselves;
And sunrise comes unlooked for, peak to peak
Answering in spiritual radiance. This is indeed
So palpably to meet Divinity,
That hence the Pagan erred, not knowing God._”
In the fourth Act we have, first, the recall of Pole to Rome, contrived
by Philip and Gardiner. The queen refuses to let him go; but while, in
obedience to her, he remains in England, he resigns his legateship in
submission to the interdict. Then comes the picture-scene, which is
admirably contrived. The poor queen stops before Philip’s picture and
talks to it as if it were a shrine. The original enters and brutally
disenchants his worshipper. After a bitter interview, in which Mary
accuses him of conjugal infidelity, the Spaniard takes his departure,
answering her “Begone!” with a sudden “For ever!”
“QUEEN (_alone_). I submit to God’s decree.
Was it for this my maiden liberty
Was yielded?—to be spurned, despised, and still
Bear on without redress? O grief! O shame!
[_She approaches the picture of Philip._
Back, silken folds, that hide what was my joy,
And is my torture! Back!—See, I have rent you,
False, senseless idol, from thy tinselled frame!
I wrench thee forth—I look on thee no more!
And thus—and thus— [_she tears up the picture_]
I scatter thee from out
The desecrated temple of my heart! [_A pause._
My brain is hot—this swoln heart chokes my throat
Yet I am better thus than self-deceived.
Die, wretched queen! O die, dishonored wife!
_I pant for the cold blessing of the grave!_”
Next follows the trial of Ridley and Latimer. Cranmer, too, is present,
and disputes, but is not on trial. The contrast between Gardiner and
Pole is admirable. Mary, too, is represented as sedulously just. Ridley
and Latimer speak, of course, as if perfectly conscientious and worthy
of martyrdom, but make no attempt to disprove the principle of
submission to authority, insisting solely on their own infallibility.
The cardinal is at last compelled to say of them:
“This is very grievous!
Madam, so please you, these be heated men,
Who may not be convinced, and will not bend.”
He has better hopes of Cranmer; but his gentle earnestness is lost upon
him no less.
Here be it remembered that it was the secular, and not the
ecclesiastical, arm which inflicted the death-penalty for obdurate
heresy. This penalty was the law in those days—days when every kind of
felony was more severely punished than now. Whatever we moderns may
think of this law, we must not forget that heresy is the greatest and
most pernicious of crimes; and, again, that it was only formal and
aggressive heresy that got itself arraigned and condemned. Moreover,
what made the civil power so severe upon it was the fact that it was
always coupled with sedition and treason.
But before we close our remarks upon the executions in Mary’s reign, let
us look for a moment on the beautiful scene which intervenes between the
one we have been examining and the prison-scene at Oxford—the last of
the fourth Act.
Mary and Reginald are closeted together. The holy priest seeks to
comfort his cousin.
“Poor soul!
Be to yourself more charitable. Think
That One there is who answers for your faults
And multiplies your merits.
QUEEN. Hope rests there:
Or I were mad.
CARDINAL. All men are born to suffer.
What are the consolations of the Scripture,
The fruit of exhortation and of prayer,
If now you quail? No, you shall quail no more.
QUEEN. _My web of life was woven with the nettle._
My very triumphs were bedewed with tears.
What now is left?
CARDINAL. Religion. _As the sunbow
Shines in the showery gloom and makes the cloud
A shape of glory_, in thy path she stands
A herald of high promise. Blessed emblem!
Religion bids thee hope. This gloomy life
Must be amended. We must draw thee hence.
QUEEN. Thanks be to God! time works while
we grieve on.
_Deprive not sorrow of the shade she needs,
The sad quiescence of desponding thought_.
Job also raised his voice, and wailed aloud,
And so was comforted. Remember, also,
In weeping I can pray. Should I not?
CARDINAL. Yea.
Pray with thanksgiving: ’tis the sum of duty.”
The sublimity of this passage needs no comment. The rest of the scene is
equally touching. Mary speaks for an instant of Philip. She is still
obliged to say:
“Whene’er I turn my thoughts to God, one image
Stands between me and heaven. Instead of prayer
A sigh for Philip trembles on my lips.
CARDINAL. To pine thus for the absent, as men mourn
The dead, is sinful.
QUEEN. Speak no more of him.
Thoughts holier be my guide.”
Then Reginald teaches her what it is
“To stablish thrones on bounty; reign through love.”
* * * * *
_The chief of greatness is surpassing goodness_:
And that outsoars the ken of mortal eyes—
Hidden with God.”
She offers him the archbishopric of Canterbury. He answers musingly:
“He who hath stood
Upon the first step of the papal throne,
And vacant left the Vatican, may look
With eye undazzled on the chair of Lambeth.”
Then he accepts, and presently the queen observes:
“I have long thought it strange that you refused
The greater honor though the heavier burden:
The proffered crown of Rome.
CARDINAL [_after much agitation_]. Look not alarmed. [_A pause._
You touch the mind’s immedicable wound.
O God! that I had died before I knew thee!
Pardon me—pardon me!
QUEEN. We both need pardon.
Let us forget the past. God strengthen us!
CARDINAL. Fear not. _Henceforth we gaze upon each other,
As the two Cherubim upon the Ark—
The living God between._
QUEEN. Then take my hand.
It will be colder soon. May God be with you!”
This “immedicable wound” is the poet’s Protestant fancy, yet the pathos
of the scene is exquisite.
The prison-scene at Oxford gives us, first, Masters Ridley and Latimer
taking leave of Cranmer; then Cranmer watching their execution from the
window, and Gardiner, unobserved, watching him. The famous recantation
number one takes place; and the subsequent despair of the wretch closes
the fourth Act.
The fifth Act we do not care to analyze minutely, so much of it is
sickeningly untrue. Mary has become fanatical again. Pole tells her that
“the poor, by thousands, perish in the flames.” This is utterly false.
All the executions under Mary’s government did not amount to more than
two hundred and seventy-seven, and “from this list of 'martyrs for the
Gospel’ must be excluded,” says a learned writer, “the names of those
who suffered for political offences or other crimes.” Dr. Maitland, the
celebrated librarian of Lambeth, in his _Essays on Subjects connected
with the Reformation in England_, speaks of “the bitter and provoking
spirit of some of those who were very active and forward in promoting
the progress of the Reformation; the political opinions which they held,
and the language in which they disseminated them; the fierce personal
attacks which they made on those whom they considered as enemies; and,
to say the least, the little care which was taken by those who were
really actuated by religious motives, and seeking a true reformation of
the Church, to shake off _a lewd, ungodly, profane rabble_, who joined
in the cause of Protestantism, thinking it, in their depraved
imaginations, or hoping to make it by their wicked devices, the cause of
liberty against law, of the poor against the rich, of the laity against
the clergy, of the people against their rulers.” From this rabble, then,
came the “poor” who “perished in the flames.”
As to Oxford’s pretended “martyrs,” Ridley and Latimer were inciters of
sedition and brought upon themselves the vengeance of the law; while
Thomas Cranmer was, without exception, the most unmitigated miscreant in
the whole disgraceful business of what is called the Reformation. Who
will question that he richly deserved the stake after bringing to it so
many victims, in Henry’s reign, for denying doctrines which he himself
was secretly denying at the time? There are living Anglican writers who
rejoice in calling all these boasted reformers a set of “unredeemed
villains.”
Of course, as we said in our review of the first play, we acquit the
author of all conscious prejudice. The last words he puts into his
heroine’s mouth—“Time unveils Truth”—are an appeal to “the avenger,” who
will not fail to do her justice yet. It was a noble thought to make
Underhill, the Hot-Gospeller, her panegyrist. Oxford vaticinates:
“Awful queen!
Hardly of thee Posterity shall judge:
For they shall measure thee—
UNDERHILL. Let me speak, sir:
For I have known, and been protected by her,
When fierce men thirsted for my blood. I say not
That she was innocent of grave offence;
Nor aught done in her name extenuate.
But I insist upon her maiden mercies,
_In proof that cruelty was not her nature_.
She abrogated the tyrannic laws
Made by her father. She restored her subjects
To personal liberty; to judge and jury;
Inculcating impartiality.
Good laws, made or revived, attest her fitness
Like Deborah to judge. She loved the poor:
And fed the destitute: and they loved her.
_A worthy queen she had been if as little
Of cruelty had been done under her
As by her._ To equivocate she hated:
And was just what she seemed. In fine, she was
_In all things excellent while she pursued
Her own free inclination without fear_.”
NANETTE.
_A LEGEND OF THE DAYS OF LOUIS XV._
I.
A police report is scarcely the place where one would look to find an
idyl—least of all a French police report. But just as one comes at times
upon a shy violet nestling in the dusty city ways, even in such an
unpromising quarter, and in the records of a still more unpromising
time, did the present writer stumble upon a veritable romance—
“Silly sooth
That dallies with the innocence of love
Like the old age.”
Let the reader judge if it be not a genuine violet.
Of the many strange functions of the Parisian police in the days of the
well-beloved Louis XV.—and altogether most worthless of his name—one of
the strangest appears to have been that of furnishing for the amusement
of the royal circle regular reports, or rather novelettes, of all
episodes, striking or romantic, that came under their notice. The French
have always had a taste for the dramatic aspect of the law, and to this
day a _procès-verbal_ reads often like a _feuilleton_ of Ponson du
Terrail. It may be supposed that, in the narratives which thus tickled
the languid leisure of Louis, a rigid adherence to truth was not deemed
essential where a slight embellishment enhanced the interest. But all
had probably a basis in fact, which one is fain to hope was more than
usually broad in so innocent and touching a history as that of Nanette
Lollier, the Flower-Girl of the Palais Royal.
In the year 1740 there dwelt in the parish of St. Leu, at Paris, an
honest, hard-working couple named André Lollier and Marie Jeanne Ladure,
his wife; the former of whom held a subordinate position in the Bureau
of Markets, while the latter attended to their fish-stand. Between them
they earned ample to keep the pot boiling comfortably, had it not been
for the prodigious number of small mouths that daily watered around that
savory and capacious vessel; and when there came a sixteenth, it is to
be feared that honest André received it rather ruefully and altogether
as a discord in the harmony of existence—a blessing very much in
disguise. So despite the new-comer’s beauty and precocity and countless
pretty baby ways, her aggrieved parents were only too glad to accept her
godmother’s offer to take her off their hands and to bring her up. By
that good lady—who seems to have been really a most kind-hearted person,
although she _was_ a beadle’s widow—the little Nanette (so the child had
been named) was carefully instructed in such branches of learning as a
young person of her station was at that time expected to know, and
which, in truth, were not very many. There is little doubt that one
young lady of Vassar would have put the entire faculty of St. Cyr to
rout.
But Nanette was soon found to possess a fine voice, and pains were taken
to cultivate it—so successfully that when, at the mature age of twelve,
the youthful chorister made her _début_ in a Christmas anthem at the
parish church, everybody was delighted. And when during the following
Holy Week she sang a _Stabat_ better than many persons four times her
age, everybody said at once she was a prodigy.
Now, we all know what comes to prodigies. The praises, pettings, and
presents this prodigy received turned her small and not very wise head.
Good Mère Lollier wished to make a fish-mongress of her; mademoiselle
spurned the proposal. What! she, a genius, a beauty, a divine voice,
waste her life on horrid, ill-smelling fish? (She made no objection, you
will observe, to dining on them when her mother cooked them for her, but
that was quite a different matter.) She soil her pretty fingers with
scales, haggle over herrings, or dicker about dace? Perish the thought!
Her mother did it, to be sure, but then—her mother was not a genius. (Do
young ladies nowadays ever reason thus?) No; she would be a flower-girl
and sing her nosegays into every buttonhole—or wherever else they then
wore their nosegays—in Paris. The manners of the fish-market even then
lacked something of the repose of Vere de Vere, and Mère Lollier’s only
answer to this astounding proposal was a slap and—we regret to say—a
kick. She was not aware that genius is not to be kicked with impunity.
She soon discovered it to her sorrow; for in her way she loved Nanette,
and kicked her, we may be sure, only in kindness.
Shortly after this affront Nanette disappeared, and from that moment all
trace of her was lost. Word came to her parents from time to time that
she was well, but of her whereabouts their most persistent efforts could
gain no tidings. Her absence lasted three years; how or where passed no
one—we sniff the touch of the embellisher here—could ever discover, nor
would she herself divulge. At last one fine morning comes a message to
Mère Lollier that her daughter is at the convent of the Carmelites, and
will be handed over to them in person, or to any priest who comes with
an order from them.
Beside herself with joy, Mère Lollier, with just a hasty touch to her
cap—even a _Dame de la Halle_ is, outside of business, a woman—rushes
off to M. le Curé with the great news. In those days M. le Curé was the
first applied to in every emergency of joy or grief: perhaps it would
have been better for Paris if the custom had not been survived by others
less wholesome. The good priest lent a sympathetic ear; for the piety
and industry of the Lolliers had made them prime favorites with him, and
he had, besides, taken a lively interest in the fate of his little
chorister. A _fiacre_ is called at once, and the _curé_ and Mère
Lollier, with her eldest son, a strapping sergeant in the French
guards—not then such pigmies as absinthe has left them now—fly to the
convent at such a pace as only the promise of a fabulous _pourboire_ can
extract from a Parisian cab-horse. The lady-superior greets them in the
convent parlor and presently ushers in a lovely young girl—what! a
girl?—a princess, to whom Mère Lollier with difficulty represses an
inclination to courtesy, while M. le Curé wipes his spectacles and the
gaping sergeant at once comes to a salute. But the princess speedily
puts an end to their doubts by embracing them all in turn with the
liveliest emotion. It is indeed Nanette, but Nanette developed into such
beauty and grace and sprightliness as many a princess might envy. Nor is
her moral nature less improved. She is now as modest and docile as
before she was vain and headstrong; only—she will still be a
flower-girl. And yet women are sometimes called weak!
Before the young lady’s appearance in the parlor the superior had
explained to her wondering auditors how a strange lady the evening
before had brought Nanette to the convent—“Hum!” says M. le Curé
dubiously, taking snuff—and on leaving her had left at the same time
20,000 francs for her dowry, if she wished to become a religious—“Ha!”
says M. le Curé thoughtfully, brushing away the snuff that has fallen on
his band. Then he beams upon Nanette, rubbing his hands encouragingly,
while Mère Lollier nods acquiescence and the sergeant shifts to the
other leg and gapes. But Nanette, in spite of these diverse
blandishments, respectfully but firmly declined to be a religious. Her
vocation was to be a flower-girl, and a flower-girl she would be.
“’Tis the devil’s trade,” cries the _curé_, quite out of patience.
“All roads lead to heaven, my father,” answers Nanette mildly.
So a flower-girl she becomes; and it must be confessed that, in spite of
Undine, beauty seems more at home with the flowers than with the fishes.
II.
One bright morning in the summer of 1756 the loungers under the
chestnuts which then adorned the garden of the Palais Royal—that
forehanded and long-headed (though, long as his head was, he could not
keep it long) personage, Philippe Égalité, thought shops would be more
ornamental as well as more useful, so he put the chestnuts in his pocket
and built that splendid colonnade which is the wonder and delight of the
wandering American—the loungers in the shade of the Palais Royal
chestnuts were conscious of a new sensation. Not that sensations were
just then going begging. By no means. One or two royal gentlemen, by
laying their crowned heads together, had already contrived that famous
misunderstanding which was to turn a large part of three continents into
a shambles for the next seven years; to cost the “well-beloved,” in
Canada and India, the brightest jewels of his crown, and to make of
Montcalm, for losing one and his life with it, a hero, and of
Lally-Tollendal, for having the bad taste to survive the loss of the
other, a traitor or a martyr as you were for him or against him. So
often is it that for precisely the same services a grateful and
discriminating country decrees to one of her sons a monument, to another
a halter. Perhaps there is not so much difference between the two—to the
dead men, at least—as some folks imagine.
But the heroes we are to deal with are by no means of the stuff of
martyrs, and fighting, beyond an ornamental pass or two in the Bois de
Boulogne, they vote vulgar and _bourgeois_. Here under the chestnut
blossoms is a sensation much more to their taste. It is a new
flower-girl. But what a flower-girl! Figure to yourself, then, Mme. la
Duchesse, a flower-girl arrayed in silks and laces and jewels a
marchioness would give her head for (marchionesses’ heads were rated
higher then than they came to be before the century was over), with a
golden shell for her flower-basket, lined with blue satin and suspended
by an embroidered scarf from the daintiest waist in the world—a
flower-girl with the face of a seraph and the figure of a sylph, with
eyes of liquid light and hair of woven sunshine, with the foot of
Cinderella and a hand—a hand only less perfect than that of Madame,
which your humble servant most respectfully salutes.
News so important must be sent post-haste to Versailles. A score of
noblemen sprang to the saddle and rushed to lay their hearts and their
diamonds at the feet of this strange paragon. But Nanette, young as she
was, could tell base metal from good. The jewels she took from her
adorers with smiling impartiality; the other sort of trinkets—sadly
battered by use, it must be confessed, and not worth much at any
time—she rejected with equally smiling disdain. Always gracious, gay,
and self-possessed, sparkling with raillery and wit, she yet maintained
a maidenly reserve that abashed the boldest license, and her reputation
grew even faster than her fortune.
And the latter grew apace. She became the rage. Her appearance on the
Palais Royal, followed at a little distance by footmen in livery and her
maid, gathered about her straightway all the gallants and wits in Paris.
Her basket was emptied in a trice, and emptied again as often as
refilled by her servants. It was deemed an honor to receive a nosegay
from her pretty fingers, and more louis than half-franc pieces repaid
them.
Great ladies came to her _levées_—for such they really were—and even
deigned to accept from the beautiful flower-girl the gift of a rose or a
violet—gifts always sure to be recompensed in noble fashion with jewels
or costly laces, rich silks or pieces of plate. Within two years Nanette
had thus accumulated in houses, lands, and rents an annual income of
forty thousand francs, besides loading her kindred with presents.
Naturally, this circumstance did not cool the ardor of the followers
whom her beauty had attracted. One of these was particularly noticeable
for his assiduity. He was a young man about twenty-two years old, of
distinguished air and handsome features, tinged with that shadow of
melancholy thought to be so irresistible to the feminine imagination.
His clothes, too, were in his favor; for though irreproachably neat and
faultlessly cut, they had plainly seen their best days. We all know what
a sly rogue Pity is, and how untiringly he panders for a certain
nameless kinsman. Every afternoon found the melancholy young man at the
garden awaiting the flower-girl’s coming. On her arrival he would
advance, select a flower, pay a dozen sous, exchange a word, perhaps,
and disappear till the following day. Once he was absent, and the fair
florist’s brow was clouded. In other words, Nanette was extremely cross,
and many an unlucky _petit-maître_ was that day unmercifully snubbed for
presuming on previous condescension. The garden trembled and was
immersed in gloom. But presently the laggard made his appearance,
Nanette’s lovely face was again wreathed in smiles, the garden breathed
freely once more, and the _petit-maîtres_ were astonished to find their
vapid pleasantries received more graciously than ever. From this
remarkable circumstance the sagacious reader will doubtless form his own
conclusion; and we do not say that the sagacious reader will be wrong.
In point of fact, we may as well admit at once that Nanette, without
knowing it, was already in love with this handsome, melancholy stranger,
of whom she knew nothing, except that he was noble, since he wore a
sword. She would have given half she was worth to know even his name,
but she dared not ask it. As often as the question trembled on her
tongue she felt herself blushing violently and unable, for the life of
her, to open her lips. Her modesty had not been educated away by a
season in the civilizing atmosphere of the court.
Chance at last befriended her. One evening the brilliant Marquis de
Louvois, after talking awhile with the unknown, came up to the Count de
la Châtre, who was seated beside her, and said to him:
“This ass of a De Courtenaye puts me out of all patience. The king has
asked why he does not come to Versailles. I repeat to him his majesty’s
flattering question. Well! it goes in one ear and out the other. Can one
so bury one’s self in Paris?”
Think of that, good Americans, before you die! In the year of grace 1756
Paris was only a burying place for Versailles! So that 1870 had a
precedent.
“What else is he to do?” asks the count. “It takes money to live as we
do, and his father, poor fellow, left him nothing but a name, which,
although one of the first in France, is rather a drawback than
otherwise, since it won’t permit him even to marry for money anything
less than a princess; and rich princesses like to get as well as to
give.”
“True, true,” murmurs the compassionate marquis. “I had forgotten.
More’s the pity; such a good-looking fellow as he is—”
“And a connection of the royal family.”
“Faith, the king is not over and above kind to his cousins.” And the
gentlemen dismiss the royal poor relation from their noble minds as they
would brush a grain of snuff from their ruffles, and stroll off, humming
an aria from the latest opera of the famous Favart, the little Offenbach
of his little day. Forgotten art thou now, O famous Favart! and thy
immortal airs are as dead as Julius Cæsar.
But not so easily did M. de Courtenaye’s tribulations pass from the mind
of Nanette, who had lost not a word of this conversation. She thought of
him all through a wakeful night; she was still thinking of him the next
morning—having arisen for that fond purpose long before the household
was stirring—when she was startled by feeling a kiss upon her arm. She
sprang up with a little cry of anger and alarm; but her frown changed to
a smile when she recognized the offender. It was Marcel, the handsome
Marcel, her favorite brother, a year her senior, but so like her they
were often mistaken for twins.
“O Marcel!” she cried, “how you frightened me. How was one to look for
such gallantry from one’s brother?”
“But if one is the brother of Nanette?” says Marcel still more
gallantly.
Marcel has been in good company and flatters himself he has quite the
_bel air_. As an apprentice to M. Panckoucke to learn the bookseller’s
trade, wherein his sister, when he got old enough, was to set him up for
himself, he had many opportunities of seeing and hearing the wits of the
capital, not without profit to mind and manners. Indeed, he fairly
considered himself one of them already.
“Yes, my dear little sister,” he added with a patronizing air, “you are
positively the talk of the town. Go where I will—and you know I go into
the best circles,” he says pompously, adjusting his ruffles as he has
seen the dandies do—“I hear of nothing but the beautiful, the witty
Nanette. Why, it was only the other day I was at M. de Marmontel’s”—the
ingenuous youth did not deem it essential to state that he had been sent
in the honorable though humble capacity of “printer’s devil” with a
bundle of proofs for correction (the proofs, indeed, of the _Contes
Moraux_: the dullest, surely—always excepting the delightful,
interminable romances of the incomparable Mlle. de Scudéry—ever penned
in the tongue of Montaigne and Molière,) but his sister understood his
harmless vanity and did not so much as smile—“at M. de Marmontel’s with
the Duke de Nivernais, the Count de Lauraguais, M. de Voltaire, and the
Prince de Courtenaye.”
Nanette started slightly, but her brother did not perceive it. It is the
way of brothers, and this brother, besides, was for the moment rapt in
contemplation of the greatness reflected upon him by association with
these great names. He fairly grew an inch in stature as he rolled them
out, dwelling fondly on the titles. It is something to have a king speak
to you, if only to ask you to get out of the way. Marcel continued:
“The talk was all of you. M. de Lauraguais, not knowing me to be your
near relation, presumed to deny your wit and to question your virtue.”
Nanette’s beautiful eyes flashed in a way that would have made the
slanderer uncomfortable had he seen it.
“Insolent!” she murmured, clenching her little fists.
“You may imagine how my blood boiled,” went on Marcel. “I was on the
point of doing something rash when M. de Courtenaye took up the cudgels
in your behalf. 'M. de Lauraguais,’ he said with grave severity, 'is it
possible that you, a gentleman, can give currency to the lies set afloat
by baffled libertines or malicious fools against the reputation of a
defenceless girl? My life upon it, Nanette is as pure as she is lovely;
and were proof of her innocence needed, I should ask none better than
these stories of lovers whom no one has seen, or can even name. Why, had
Nanette a lover, all Paris would ring with it in an hour.’ The
impassioned earnestness of the prince made the company smile; but M.
Diderot, siding with him, said he was sure you were better than the best
that was said of you.”
Nanette’s eyes filled with tears. Had the youthful pedant been less
intent on showing his familiarity with fashionable life, he must have
had his suspicions aroused by her agitation. As it was, he was not even
enlightened when Nanette, suddenly flinging her arms about his neck in a
tender fury, kissed him twice or thrice passionately. He took the kisses
complacently as a guerdon for his story. Fraternal obtuseness in such
cases is simply limitless. “By the way, Nanette,” he added, “why
wouldn’t it be a good idea to thank the prince by sending him some of
your prettiest flowers? I can take them to-morrow with some books I am
to convey to him.”
“Nonsense!” says Nanette incredulously. “I don’t believe you even know
where he lives.”
“Don’t know where he lives?” cries Marcel indignantly. “Perhaps you will
tell me next I don’t know where the Hôtel Carnavalet is, or how to find
the Rue Culture Ste. Catherine? Don’t know where he lives, indeed!” And
Marcel flings out of the room in a state of high dudgeon that his
acquaintance with a great man should be doubted, and, worst of all, by
Nanette. We are sorry to say he slammed the door after him. The best of
brothers will do such things under strong provocation. But Nanette only
smiled—the wily Nanette!
III.
The next morning, at his frugal breakfast in a rather lofty apartment of
the Hôtel Carnavalet, the Prince de Courtenaye read with much amazement
the following letter:
“MY DEAR COUSIN: I am an old woman and your near relation. I have
long observed with pain the poverty which keeps you from assuming
your proper station. I have wealth, and not many years to keep it.
What is a burden to me will be a help to you. Suffer me, then, from
my superfluity to relieve your necessity—I claim it as the twofold
privilege of age and love—and accept as frankly as I tender it the
25,000 francs which I enclose to procure you an establishment suited
to your rank. On the first of every month 4,000 francs will be
forwarded to you in addition.”
Some commonplaces of civility ended this remarkable but not unpleasant
epistle—would that such a one some celestial postman might leave at the
door of the present writer, to whom documents of a far different
nature—but this is a painful and unnecessary digression. Let us
continue. The prince read the queer communication with conflicting
emotions, in which wonder predominated. He was not aware of any wealthy
aunt or female relative particularly prone to this sort of furtive
benevolence; but his connections were legion, and women were odd fish.
Still, his honor seemed to him to forbid his accepting a fortune so
acquired. But older and wiser heads stifled, or at least silenced, his
scruples; and secretly resolving to leave no stone unturned to discover
his mysterious benefactress, and to return to her or to her heirs every
sou of the money, which in his heart he accepted only as a loan, he
resigned himself to his good-luck with tolerable cheerfulness.
Henceforth no more elegant equipage was to be seen than the Prince de
Courtenaye’s. He became the fashion; he was the life and talk of every
_salon_—as we should say, the success of the season. Nevertheless, he
failed not to go every afternoon to the garden of the Palais Royal for
his nosegay, with this difference only: that he now paid francs instead
of sous.
A year sped away, spent by the prince in buying nosegays and in sharing
the gayeties, though not the dissipations, of the court; by Nanette in
continuing to perfect herself secretly in all the feminine
accomplishments of her time, so that now, at the age of nineteen, she
was not only peerless in beauty, but as cultivated as Mme. de Sévigné
and as learned as Mme. Dacier—no, not as Mme. Dacier—no mere mortal was
ever so learned as Mme. Dacier; but let us say as Mme. de La Fayette,
who could set Father Rapin right in his Latin and silence Ménage. Was it
for herself she underwent these prodigious labors? It is not known that
she ever mentioned. But she still sold nosegays and still reaped a
golden harvest.
One evening the Count de la Châtre was again sitting beside her when the
Marquis de Louvois once more accosted him.
“My dear fellow,” said he, “what the mischief ails Pierre?” (he spoke of
De Courtenaye). “He must be going mad. Have you heard his latest freak?
Mlle. de Craon, one of our wealthiest heiresses, with a royal dowry and
a princely income, is proposed to him, and what do you think? He refuses
her—positively refuses. What bee is in his bonnet?”
“Love.”
“Love! Is it one of the Royal Princesses, then?”
“I imagine not.”
“Who then? Some divinity of the _coulisses_, I’ll wager.”
“Louvois,” said the count gravely, “you wrong our friend. De Courtenaye,
as you know, abhors vice, and I am much mistaken if she whom he loves is
not a virtuous woman.”
Louvois shrugged his shoulders as only a certain kind of Frenchman can.
Virtue was a word not in his dictionary.
The next day the prince received this note, the second from his unknown
relative:
“MY NEPHEW: Why do you decline to marry Mlle. de Craon, who unites
all that is illustrious in birth and splendid in fortune? I will
provide you with the capital of the income I now allow you. Accept
also as a wedding-gift for your intended the jewels I send herewith.
“If you consent, wear for eight days in your buttonhole a carnation;
if you refuse, a rose.”
With the letter came a handsome jewel-case containing a million of
francs in bills—it is well for the romancer to be liberal in these
matters—and a magnificent parure of diamonds of the purest water, valued
by the Tiffany of the time at 100,000 more.
That afternoon it was noticed in the garden that Nanette was unusually
pale and silent. The Prince de Courtenaye entered at his usual hour; the
nosegay in his buttonhole bore neither pink nor rose. He drew near the
flower-girl, who offered him a posy with a hand she vainly tried to make
steady. Like his own, it had neither pink nor rose.
The prince examined Nanette’s offering attentively, smiled sadly, stood
for an instant in a musing attitude twirling the bouquet in his fingers,
and then suddenly, as one whose mind is made up:
“My child,” he said, “will you make me the present of a rose?”
Nanette fainted.
IV.
When the flower-girl recovered she found herself in her own room, her
family around her. But her eyes sought in vain the one face she most
wished to see. Her mother and sisters told her with prodigious clamor
and excitement, all talking at once at the tops of their voices, how she
had fainted—“from the heat,” the gentleman said. “Yes, from the heat,”
murmured Nanette softly, closing her eyes—how a great nobleman, the
Prince de Courtenaye, had raised her, and how, without waiting for a
carriage, and rejecting all aid, he had borne her in his arms to her
house near by.
Nanette listened with closed eyes and a happy smile. All this was balm
to her poor, sorely-tried heart. She even ventured to ask what had
become of the kind gentleman. He had waited, they told her, to hear the
doctor’s report giving assurance of her safety, and had then gone away,
invoking for her their most zealous care. Presently the prince’s valet
came to inquire after her health; but he himself did not come. Nanette
was wounded, but she said nothing. Even pain in such a cause was too
sacred a thing to be shared with another. Woman-like, she hugged her
grief as though it were a treasure, and smiled, without knowing why, at
the empty compliments of a crowd of _petits-maîtres_, who, after the
fashion of the time, had rushed to pay her their condolences, and who
ransacked Dorat for their vapid homage. Each took the smile to himself
and redoubled his insipid gallantries. But Nanette was too much in love,
if she had not been too clever, to heed them. So she contented herself
and them by smiling.
At heart she was happy, in spite of the prince’s neglect. At least he
would not marry; so much was secure. But the future: might he not have
surprised her secret—she blushed as she thought it—and would he seek to
abuse his power? No, she felt he was too noble for that, and, come what
might, she would enjoy the present hour, the happiest she had known. So
in vague, delicious hopes, and doubts not less delicious; in fluttering
fears and half-formed, undefined resolves; in pain that seemed to be
pleasure and pleasure whose sweetest element was pain—all the exquisite
_mélange_ of confused and dreamy emotions which take possession of a
young and innocent heart so soon as it has fairly admitted to itself it
loves—Nanette awaited her prince. She knew he would come; her heart told
her so. And she was not deceived.
Early the next day he was announced. She essayed to rise as he entered,
but sank back into her chair, half from weakness, half from agitation,
murmuring incoherent excuses for her awkwardness. In an instant the
prince was at her feet.
“Ah!” he cried, “I have found you out at last, my good cousin. But I am
not come to return you your benefactions; only to beseech you to make it
possible for me to keep them by adding to them a still more precious
boon.”
“And that is—?”
“This fair, kind hand. Ah darling! you cannot refuse it me when you have
already given me your heart.”
In sacrificing his name to this obscure young girl the prince was no
doubt conscious of doing a noble and magnanimous act. And so it was—how
noble, can only be realized by those who know the measureless distance
which, in the days of Louis XV., divided the nobility from the people,
or the insolent disdain with which the former looked down on the
latter—a disdain commemorated to this day in the use of the word
_peuple_ to indicate a vulgar fellow. But if he thought to conquer
Nanette in generosity, he was mistaken. The flower-girl, after a
moment’s reflection, begged her lover to give her till to-morrow to
answer. He consented reluctantly, but not doubting the result. Who could
have looked in the eighteenth century to see a fish-monger's daughter
refuse the hand of a French prince?
De Courtenaye arose the next morning satisfied with himself and with the
world, and more in love than ever. He longed impatiently for the message
which should summon him to the feet of his adored mistress to receive
the seal of his happiness. At last, after, it seemed to his eagerness,
an age of waiting, his servant brought him a letter. He glanced at the
superscription; it was in the well-known hand. He pressed the dear
characters to his lips and tore the missive open with trembling fingers.
This is what he read:
“Love blinds you. A marriage with me would dishonor you. You love me
too well for me to refuse you the most convincing proof of my love.
I give you up, and I give up life for you. When you read this the
flower-girl Nanette will have quitted the world for ever. Do not
scruple to keep the money you have received, in your aunt’s name; it
is yours by right. A kinsman, who accomplished your father’s ruin,
simply made me the instrument of his tardy atonement. I leave to my
family a fortune ample for their wants. Adieu! Think of me sometimes
in the cloister, wherein I take refuge from my heart, and where I
shall never cease to pray for you.”
So ends the history of Nanette Lollier. The Archbishop of Paris in
person, it is said, conducted her to the convent of her choice, and the
Palais Royal went into mourning. The prince was almost wild with grief;
but his prayers, his supplications, his almost frenzied entreaties,
could not shake Nanette’s resolve. He never married. The allusion in the
flower-girl’s letter recalled to him certain rumors current at the time
of his father’s death; but, as our chronicler shrewdly surmises, the
story of the kinsman was simply a device of Nanette’s affection to
disarm her lover’s pride.
This is the romance of Nanette, the flower-girl of the Palais Royal, as
it is recorded in a chronicle of the time. In the foul and fetid annals
of that most polluted reign, barren alike of manly honor and womanly
virtue, it comes to us like a jewel we lift from the mire, or a
fresh-blown rose we rescue from the kennel. Let us not ask if it be
true. Stories of disinterested love, of magnanimity and devotion, let us
rather accept as always true, saving our incredulity for narratives of
another sort. For our own part we had rather believe Tiberius to be a
myth than that Cordelia is a fiction; that Nero never fiddled in his
life than that Henry Esmond never put his birthright in the fire to
spare his benefactress pain.
NEW PUBLICATIONS.
CLASSIC LITERATURE, PRINCIPALLY SANSKRIT, GREEK, AND ROMAN. With
some account of the Persian, Chinese, and Japanese in the Form of
Sketches of the Authors and Specimens from Translations of their
Works. By C. A. White, author of _The Student’s Mythology_. New
York: Henry Holt & Co. 1877.
We find on p. 12 of this new _Hand-book of Classic Literature_, as it is
entitled on the back, among the “most commendable maxims” of the
_Pancha-Trantra_—a work on morals composed by Hindoo sages—the
following: “As long as a person remains silent he is honored; but as
soon as he opens his mouth men sit in judgment upon his capacity.” The
young people who will make use of this book, which is principally
intended for their benefit and pleasure, must be the final judges of the
capacity of its author to make classic literature intelligible and
interesting to their minds. The author appears to understand them, and
to have acquired that experience and skill in adapting instruction to
the juvenile mind, by practical familiarity with young students in the
class-room, which is almost necessary to ensure success in preparing a
good text-book. The _Hand-book of Classic Literature_ is not intended as
a manual for lessons and recitations. It is not exclusively intended for
those who study Latin or Greek; and we are not aware of any considerable
number of young people who are studying Sanskrit, Persian, or Chinese,
so that evidently no such class of pupils could have been in the eye of
the author. In fact, the aim of the author is to give some general
notion of the ancient authors and their principal works, and some fine
specimens of the best translations which have been made into English, to
those who do not study the ancient languages at all, or at most learn
only the rudiments of one or two of them. Three-fourths of the volume
are devoted to the Greek and Latin classics. The remaining eighty pages
are divided between the Sanskrit, Persian, and Chinese, with a brief
notice of the Japanese. The most elaborate and valuable portion of the
work is that devoted to Greek literature. The author has made use of the
best critical works and selected a large number of the most excellent
translations. So much learning, pains, skill in faithful and idiomatic
rendering, and even poetic genius, have been expended by English
scholars in translating the Greek classics that any reader of
intelligence and taste may understand and enjoy to a very great extent
these ancient masterpieces without learning a word of Greek. We notice
as particularly discriminating and just the criticisms of the author on
the three great tragedians. Specimens of several different authors who
have translated Homer are presented, and a number of extracts from
Aristophanes and others of the generally less known poets. There must be
many whose curiosity will be excited by these choice morsels to read the
entire translated works themselves. Next in interest to the sketches and
translations from the Greek are those from the Sanskrit and Persian, on
account both of the novelty of the subject-matter to the generality of
readers, and also the intrinsic beauty of the selected passages. The
author writes enthusiastically about Zoroaster, and we think with great
justice. The song of the tea-pickers, from the Chinese, pleases us
extremely, and is one of the prettiest and most touching of the minor
pieces in the volume. The author has shown remarkable judgment and good
taste in making this compilation, and writes in all that part of it
which is of original composition in a style of peculiar accuracy and
felicity of diction. The strict and conscientious regard in which the
old saying _Maxima reverentia debetur pueris_ has been kept throughout
is an example for all those who write for the young. There is nothing
which can endanger the faith or damage the moral delicacy of the young
Christian pupil in all this volume filled up with the literature of
heathen nations. On the contrary, its effect is salutary, and shows
beautifully not only the great obscurity in which those gifted pagans
lay from the want of a clear revelation of truth, but also that the
human mind everywhere, in all times, naturally Christian, longs for the
light.
The mechanical execution of the _Classical Hand-book_ is remarkable for
beauty and accuracy. We have noticed only two or three typographical
faults in the whole volume. It is a most attractive book to take up and
read. We have said that it is not properly a class-book. It is a
reading-book for higher pupils, and a companion for lectures, suitable
for reference or use in class-readings. We recommend it most cordially
to all higher schools, especially academies for young ladies, and others
where classical studies are not made one of the chief branches of
instruction. The great number of choice and elegant extracts from the
best writers, many of which are unfamiliar, as well as the historical
notices and criticisms, make this book equally suitable for use in
families and literary circles, especially for reading aloud, as for
schools. We wish for the author the best reward which can be bestowed on
one who is devoted to the culture of young pupils—the love and gratitude
of their generous, affectionate hearts.
THE CRADLE OF THE CHRIST: a Study in Primitive Christianity. By
Octavius Brooks Frothingham. New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons. 1877.
The author of this volume is one of the representative men of the left
section of Unitarianism in this country. He is distinguished by a clear
style, a finely-cultivated imagination, and his writings are
characterized by a pervading placidity which is only occasionally
ruffled by a mocking scepticism that suggests the too close proximity of
Dr. Faust’s intimate friend.
The volume abounds in sweeping assertions, slovenly-expressed ideas, and
lacks throughout the cement of a sound logic. It fosters on Cardinal
Wiseman and Dr. Newman opinions which can only be accounted for on the
supposition of the author’s inaccurate scholarship or his contempt for
the intelligence of his readers. (See preface, page 5.) Among other
things, he informs his readers that “it has been customary with
Christians to widen as much as possible the gulf between the Old and the
New Testaments, in order that Christianity might appear in the light of
a fresh and transcendent revelation, supplementing the ancient, but
supplanting it” (page 10). The custom of St. Augustine, St. Thomas, and
Catholic theologians generally is precisely the contrary. There is a
remarkable book by a Catholic on this very point, published in our own
day, entitled _De l’Harmonie entre l’Eglise et la Synagogue_, par Le
Chevalier P. L. B. Drach, a converted rabbi. The rabbi, in his two
volumes, aims at showing that a Jew, in becoming a Catholic, does not
deny or change his religion, but follows out, completes, and perfects
it. The Jewish Church and the Catholic Church are identically one, and
the former is to the latter as the bud to the full-blown flower.
With a criticism that kills beforehand the life it would dissect, Mr. O.
B. Frothingham ends by coolly telling his readers that Christianity is
extinct. And with a self-satisfied air he naïvely exhorts them, by the
efforts of their imagination, to build up a new and superior religion to
Christianity. His readers will, we opine, politely decline this task,
and leave to him who had the genius to conceive the idea its
accomplishment. What a pity he did not tell them what he means by the
imaginative faculty! For if in this, as in other things, he follows his
foreign masters, we have no reason to expect as the result of its
exercise in this direction, other than an additional illusion to the
long list of religious vagaries given to the world, from Simon Magus
down to Joe Smith and the Fox girls.
A scholar who has read the volume describes its contents as
“theological, philosophical, and speculative old shreds picked up in
German and French tailor-shops and cunningly sewed together in the shape
of a cloak by a 'cute’ Yankee apprentice, in order to cover the nudity
of the latest form of the unbelief of New England.”
The book before us shows no mean literary skill, but contains nothing
original in the way of thought or erudition, not even an original error,
though its errors are many more than the number of its pages.
THE PROBLEM OF PROBLEMS, AND ITS VARIOUS SOLUTIONS; OR, ATHEISM,
DARWINISM, AND THEISM. By Clark Braden, President of Abingdon
College, Ill. 8vo. pp. 480. Cincinnati: Chase & Hall. 1877.
Recent scientific research has at last put the orthodox world on its
mettle and elicited expressions of opinion from all shades of believers.
Coquetting with dangerous premises, even in the guise of science,
toleration of views implicitly or indirectly infidel, and a general
disposition to compromise, are not indicative of a healthy tone in any
organization avowedly Christian. Yet such tendencies have for a long
time characterized the relation of the various Protestant sects towards
scientism, and one of the greatest outcries raised against the Syllabus
proceeded from its alleged intolerance of, and general hostility to,
unhampered scientific inquiry. But coaxing and cajoling, and a
concurrent cry against the stupidity of Catholics, had no weight with
Messrs. Spencer, Huxley, Tyndall, and Draper, who went on just as ever
dealing their blows against revelation and all positive forms of belief,
as though his Lordship of Canterbury were a myth and his faith a sham.
At length consistency compelled the representative men of the various
denominations to resist the further encroachments of an irreligious
philosophy, and they are beginning to do so with the bitter
consciousness that they were the very ones who most ridiculed the
sagacity of the Holy Father when he censured the tone and tendency of
modern scientism. But it is better late than never; and if the gentlemen
who, from Princeton to Abingdon, feel themselves called upon to do the
work will only graciously allow that they are eleventh-hour workers, we
will find no fault with their intention, but confine ourselves to a
criticism of its execution.
The _Problem of Problems_ is the latest addition to the
religio-scientific controversy, and it is entitled to serious
consideration because of the earnestness of the author and the elaborate
character of the work. This elaborateness is, however, more apparent
than real, and consists in a measure of diluted thought and diffuse
expression. Whether it is unfortunately a peculiarity of Western authors
to strip a thought entirely bare and leave nothing to suggestion, as the
charge is made, we are not prepared to say, but certain it is that Mr.
Clark Braden has gone far towards justifying such a suspicion. He is not
satisfied with a placid presentment of his own views, nor with a brief
arraignment of what he deems to be the errors of others, but he must
reiterate, emphasize, and in general lash himself into a state of
incandescence not at all needful for his purpose. Dignified opposition,
even if a little tame, is somewhat more congenial to the frigid tastes
of persons living east of the Alleghenies than those fervid utterances
which mistake sound for sense. This, however, is an error of form which
does not necessarily militate against the intrinsic value of the work,
nor do we think that an allusion to it is likely to discompose the
learned author; for in a little prologue, addressed to “Reviewers and
Critics,” he courts and solicits dispassionate and impartial criticism.
In addition he requests that all publishers send him a copy of what
their _imprimatur_ has allowed critics to say concerning his book. We
presume this is right; but when the request comes coupled with the
condition that every one undertaking to comment on his work must not do
so before having read it from cover to cover, we fear that it will not
always be faithfully complied with, or that he will have to read some
pages in which gall and wormwood abound more than the milk of human
kindness. The reason of this we have hinted at. The book is prolix and
repeats to a fault. Many excellent thoughts are covered up in a mass of
verbiage which emasculates and obscures them. We wish the author had the
academic fitness to cope with his antagonists—whose culture has made
their productions marvels of composition and terribly enhanced their
influence for evil. We are sorry that this charge should be the main one
to prefer against a book which was prompted by the best of motives and
which really exhibits rare evidences of argumentative power. Take even
the opening sentence, and we find ourselves face to face with a flagrant
grammatical inaccuracy: “One of the wise utterances of one whom his
contemporaries declared spoke as never man spoke was, that no wise man,
etc.” Here, apart from the slovenly repetition of “one” we find no
subject for the first “spoke,” unless it be “whom,” and that is in the
objective case. Similar mistakes occur throughout, and give painful
evidence that Mr. Braden began his scientific investigations before he
had made himself familiar with Blair or Lord Kames. We would, in
connection with this same matter of style, suggest that the too frequent
use of interrogation not only mars the beauty of a page, but has an
inevitable tendency to wearisome diffuseness. Lest, however, we may be
suspected of harshness towards the author, we select a passage at
random, that the reader may judge for himself how little Mr. Braden is
acquainted with the quality of a good style. On page 171 he says: “We
have no horses on the pampas of the New World, _although they existed as
the most adapted to horses of any portion of the globe for ages_, and
there were _equine types in the New World for several geologic epochs_.
Multitudes of cases might be given where man has carried animals into
places where they did not exist and they flourished, and even improved,
thus showing that the conditions were especially fitted for them, yet
had not produced them, although they had existed for vast ages. Hence
conditions have failed to evolve what was especially fitted to them, and
just what they would produce, did they produce anything.” We submit that
these sentences are not only clumsy in construction, but are positively
ungrammatical, and no one who undertakes the guidance of others along
the thorny paths of scientific research has a right to tax the general
patience with slipshod composition of this kind. Such examples as those
given are not isolated, but disfigure nearly every page. On page 87 we
find the following; “There was at first use of bodily organs in
appropriating food and slaying for food animals, and the use of
spontaneous productions of the earth, like animals.”
So much for the form of the book. The matter is indeed better, though
necessarily much impaired by the many faults of style. In consideration
of fair play towards the author we will not accept his own standard of
judgment while passing an opinion on his book; for we would then have
either to mistrust our own intelligence entirely or to utter unqualified
censure of all that he has written. In his appeal to “Reviewers and
Critics” he says: “If there is censure or condemnation of what is
written, let it be only after the critic understands what he condemns,
and _because he understands it_.” Now, we do not propose to condemn any
portion of the book _because we understand it_; for we freely confess
that there is much valuable thought to be found in its pages, and the
author gives proof of having a good logical mind, not hampered, indeed,
by the subtleties of _Port Royal_ or the _Grammar of Assent_, but sturdy
and vigorous, with a Western breadth and freedom. We have not space to
give even an outline of the plan Mr. Braden has mapped out for himself.
Method is an important feature of a scientific and argumentative work,
and, when judiciously adopted, goes far to promote the purpose of the
author.
Clearness, natural development, logical sequence of thought, and ready
conviction are the results of a suitable method, while confusion,
weariness, and dissatisfaction follow from a neglect thereof. Mr.
Braden’s lack of method will do much in the way of injuriously
interfering with the effect of his book. Divisions and subdivisions
without number, irrespective of reason, may swell the dimensions of a
work, but do not certainly contribute to the satisfaction of the reader.
If all Mr. Braden has written in the present volume were presented in a
more orderly and attractive manner his book would be a valuable
contribution to polemics, but the faults we have indicated will
constantly militate against its usefulness.
In the Appendix both Draper and Huxley come in for a share of censure,
but while the author utterly fails to make a point against Draper, he so
overloads with irrelevant matter his review of Huxley’s three lectures,
delivered in this city, that the reader rises from the perusal of it
with a tired memory and a dissatisfied mind.
THE CHILDHOOD OF THE ENGLISH NATION; or, The Beginnings of English
History. By Ella S. Armitage. New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons. 1877.
The authoress of this “little” book tells us, in her preface, that when
she began to write it “no _short and simple_ history of England had
appeared _which made any attempt to give unlearned people an insight
below the surface of bare facts_,” but that “since then numerous works
of the kind have appeared.” Yes, indeed, too numerous; yet, as far as we
know, not one of them so pretentious as this. With a very readable style
and a great show of erudition (an appalling “list of authorities” is
appended to her volume) she sets up for “an interpreter to those who
have no knowledge of history,” taking for her theme what she is pleased
to call the “childhood of the English nation”—by which she means the
history of England “till the end of the twelfth century.” Of course,
therefore, she has to deal largely with the work and influence of the
Catholic Church. Now, when those who are not Catholic undertake to
expound a philosophy to which they have not the key—to wit, the
philosophy of any part of history with which Catholic faith has been
concerned—we can pardon their mistakes, provided they evince that
humility which is the mark of fair-mindedness. But, if this condition be
wanting, we can only regard their attempt as a piece of insufferable
impertinence; their very concessions to our cause—a trick quite
fashionable of late—but making them the less excusable.
Here, then, lies our quarrel with the writer of this book. She goes out
of her way to theorize on matters she does not understand, instead of
confining herself to “bare facts.” For example, after acknowledging (p.
19) that “there is no saying how long the English might not have
remained heathen if Pope Gregory I., in the year 597, had not sent
missionaries to bring them to the faith of Christ,” she must needs
endeavor to account for the Papacy as follows:
“Gregory was Pope or Bishop of Rome from 590 to 604. In his time the
popes of Rome had not yet risen to the position of universal bishops and
supreme heads of the church, though they were tending towards it. All
men were agreed that there must be one, and only one, visible, united
church, but all had not yet made up their minds that the Bishop of Rome
was to be the head of that church. The church of the Welsh, for example,
and that of Ireland (!), owed no obedience to Rome. The pope himself did
not dare to call himself universal bishop: 'Whosoever calls himself so
is Antichrist,’ said Gregory I. Still, it was natural that Rome, which
had been the ruling city of the one universal empire, the queen of the
West, should be the chief centre of the one universal church, and that
the Bishop of Rome should become the head of the church, and all other
bishops should bow to his authority. This was what did come to pass in
time, but at the time of which I am now speaking it seemed very
uncertain; for things had sadly changed with Rome. She had no emperor
now; the emperor was at Constantinople; Italy was invaded by barbarians,
Rome herself was scourged by plague and famine. The Bishop of
Constantinople tried to set himself up as Universal Bishop and Head of
the Church; and that the popes afterwards won the day in this struggle
was largely due to the great influence which Pope Gregory I. gained by
his wisdom and his powerful character.”
The cluster of absurdities contained in this passage would be “matter
for a flying smile,” were it not that the ignorance displayed looks too
much like perverted knowledge. Can the lady have really failed to
perceive the transparent nonsense of supposing that such a power as the
Papacy originated in people making up their minds that the church ought
to have a visible head, and that the Bishop of Rome was the right man
because, forsooth, Rome _had been_ the seat of empire? If, again, she
knows what St. Gregory said to the ambitious John of Constantinople, why
does she not quote a few more of his remarks? “_The care of the whole
church_,” said he, “_was committed to Peter; yet he is not called
'Universal Apostle_.’” “_Who does not know that his see_ (of
Constantinople) _is subject to the Apostolic See_ (of Rome)?” St.
Gregory, like his predecessor St. Pelagius, refused the title of
Œcumenical Patriarch, or Universal Bishop, for himself out of humility;
how, then, could he tolerate the assumption of it by a bishop who did
_not_ sit in Peter’s chair?
But we need not cite this book further to show that it is valueless in
Catholic eyes.
DR. JOSEPH SALZMANN’S LEBEN UND WIRKEN DARGESTELLT VON JOSEPH
RAINER, PRIESTER DER ERZDIÖCESE MILWAUKEE, PROFESSOR AM
PRIESTERSEMINAR SALESIANUM. St. Louis: Herder.
The Salesianum is an ecclesiastical seminary near Milwaukee which enjoys
a very high reputation for the learning of its professors, the solidity
of its course of studies, and the strictness of its discipline. Near it
there is a Normal College for the training of school-teachers, and
another college for the intermediate education of boys. The man who was
the principal founder of these excellent institutions was the Very Rev.
Joseph Salzmann, D.D., an Austrian priest, who came to Wisconsin as a
missionary thirty years ago and finished his earthly course in January,
1874, honored and regretted throughout the United States. The venerable
Archbishop of Milwaukee first conceived the idea of founding a seminary
to educate priests for the Northwest more than thirty years ago, while
praying at the tomb of St. Francis de Sales, and this is the reason of
the name Salesianum by which the seminary was christened. The first
rector was the present learned Bishop of La Crosse, Dr. Heiss. Dr.
Salzmann succeeded him in office in 1868. The Rev. Professor Rainer, in
the little volume before us, gives an interesting account of the whole
life of Dr. Salzmann, but especially of his great and arduous work of
founding and establishing the Salesianum, which we may truly call a
heroic achievement. He was a thoroughly learned and accomplished
scholar, a man of sacerdotal dignity and personal attractiveness, an
eloquent preacher, with fair and seductive prospects before him in his
own beautiful Catholic land. He was well fitted to adorn those positions
in the church which are surrounded with the most outward _éclat_, and
give the opportunity of enjoying all the ease, comfort, and pleasure in
literary pursuits and quiet seclusion which are lawful and honorable in
the priesthood. Nevertheless, he chose the life of a Western missionary,
and devoted the greater part of his time and energies, not to the
intellectual and attractive employments of preaching and instruction in
the sciences, but to that most repugnant and arduous work of collecting
money and looking after the drudgery of building, providing, caring for
the material wants of new, poor, struggling institutions. It is not
possible for any who have not been brought up in some one of the old
Catholic countries of Europe to estimate the sacrifice made by young men
of refined character and education, and strong love of home and country,
when they devote themselves to missionary labor in a new country, and to
its hardest, most repulsive departments. There are special difficulties
and hardships to be encountered by those who work among our German
population. When they are bad or indifferent Catholics, they are the
most obstinate and unmanageable people with whom a priest can have to
deal, and very difficult to reclaim. Apostate and infidel Germans have a
brutality in their hatred to the Catholic Church and all religion which
is extremely odious and cannot be fully appreciated by one who has not
come into personal contact with that class, whose only god is beer and
whose church is the lager-beer saloon. _Zur Hölle_ is the appropriate
motto we have seen over one of these dens in New York. When thoroughly
imbued with the Catholic spirit, the German people are admirable. The
wonderful work of Christian civilization wrought out among them in past
ages is known to all readers of true history. Dr. Salzmann, and others
like him, are worthy successors of the apostolic men whose names are
recorded in the history of the church. They are the men who carry on the
true Cultur-Kampf in the vast realms of our Western territory. Their
acts are worthy to be classed with those so charmingly related in _The
Monks of the West_ and _Christian Schools and Scholars_. A keen Western
speculator said that “a bishop was worth as much as a railroad to a
Western town.” All that is wanted to repeat in the immense regions of
our new States and Territories the creation and development of great
civilized and Christian communities is the virile force, the manhood, of
those early times. Land and material resources exist in prodigal
abundance. It is men that are wanted—masses of people with strength and
spirit to abandon our crowded cities and old States and colonize new
domains, and men with the ability and virtue of leaders, guides,
founders, instructors, legislators, rulers, and benefactors. We trust
that the modest recital of the life of one generous young priest who
left his charming Austrian home to engage in this work may find its way
among the educated young men and young ecclesiastics of Germany. There
is work here for some among the hundreds of such young men, full of
vigorous health, full of intellectual vigor, full of sound learning, who
are at a loss to find a sufficient sphere for their activity in their
own country.
The greatest and noblest project of Dr. Salzmann was one which he could
not even begin to carry into execution—that of founding a university, a
new _Fulda_, for the Germans of America. We do not think that such an
institution could or should remain permanently an exclusively German
university. We desire, nevertheless, to see this grand idea carried out,
as a special work of our Catholics of German origin and language, under
the direction of a _corps_ of learned German professors, and with
special reference to the education of youth who are of the same descent
or who wish to study the language and literature of Germany. Time and
the course of nature will eventually blend all our heterogeneous
elements together, but we do not believe in violent efforts to hurry on
the process. All that we can borrow from any European language or
literature, all the recruits we can gain from the nurseries of scholars
or population in the Old World, is so much added to our intellectual,
social, and political strength and breadth. Of course the English
language and literature, American history and institutions, ought to be
assiduously studied by the learned foreigners who are domesticated among
us, and taught to their pupils of a different mother-tongue. This may be
done without abdicating the advantage which they possess, and which
others must acquire at the cost of great labor, by being born heirs to
the inheritance of their own immediate ancestors.
The great practical question of the moment is that of Catholic
education. The advocates of compulsory secular education are the enemies
of religion, of their country, and of true culture. The seminaries,
colleges, and schools where Catholic priests, youths, and children are
trained in sound religious knowledge, morality, and science are the
fortresses and the centres of real civilization. Whoever does a great
work in the cause of Catholic education is a benefactor to the church
and the country. Such a noble and meritorious man was Dr. Salzmann, a
priest powerful in word and work, a model for the young ecclesiastics of
the Salesianum to imitate, an encouraging example for all who are
laboring to found and perfect similar institutions. The diocese of
Milwaukee was a poor and feeble little bishopric when the venerable Dr.
Henni was consecrated in 1844. Now it is a metropolitan see, with above
190,000 Catholics in its diocesan limits, above 180 priests, several
flourishing institutions for the higher education of both sexes, and
schools in almost every parish. The Salesianum, where the first rector,
Dr. Heiss, was professor of Greek, mathematics, physics, philosophy, and
moral theology, numbers thirteen professors and two hundred and fifty
students. Surely, the prayers and labors of a good bishop, seconded by
those of able and zealous priests, can work wonders now as well as in
the best ages of the past. Indeed, works which a St. Francis of Sales
was unable to accomplish are now successfully performed within a short
time and with comparatively little difficulty. Assuredly, we cannot fail
to recognize a special benediction of God upon the church of the United
States.
THE CONSOLATION OF THE DEVOUT SOUL. By the Very Rev. Joseph
Frassinetti, Prior of Santa Sabina, in Genoa. Translated by
Georgiana Lady Chatterton. London: Burns & Oates. 1876. (For sale by
The Catholic Publication Society.)
The worth of a book ought to be estimated chiefly from its intrinsic
merits, yet, even without being acquainted with these, we may often
obtain a fair idea of its character by knowing something about the
author.
Father Frassinetti was an extraordinary man. He was born in the city of
Genoa on Dec. 15, 1803, and died there on the 3d of January, 1868.
Thirty-nine years of his life were spent in the priesthood, with an
unsullied reputation for piety and zeal, and a wide-spread fame as a
preacher, director of consciences, and writer on spiritual matters. A
uniform edition of his works, which are all in Italian, was published
shortly before his death in ten volumes, and dedicated to the late
Cardinal Patrizi, Vicar of Rome.
The first volume of his collected works contains _Il conforto dell’
Anima Divota_, of which we have the excellent translation before us. Its
author was not only a remarkably learned man, but also a singularly
pious man—one whom our Holy Father Pope Pius IX. called, in a certain
brief, a priest _spectatæ doctrinæ et virtutis_—and distinguished by the
rare faculty of being able to communicate his knowledge to others, and
of knowing how to lead others on to personal holiness. Nearly forty
years of his life were passed in leaching his fellow-men by word and
example how to love, serve, and honor God and save their souls. That
such a one should have written this little book on _The Consolation of
the Devout Soul_ is a sufficient guarantee of its usefulness and
doctrine. The work is divided into five chapters and an appendix, in
which the author successively defines what is meant by Christian
perfection, shows that it is not a thing too difficult to be acquired,
solves certain objections against facility of sanctification, explains
the beauty and utility of Christian perfection, points out the means of
arriving at this much-desired end, and concludes with a short treatise
on the holy fear of God. Several notes are added.
This translation bears the _imprimatur_ of the devout and learned Bishop
of Birmingham. We earnestly recommend it to the members of religious
orders, and to people who serve God in the world.
THE CODE POETICAL READER, for school and home use. With marginal
notes, and biographical notices of authors. By a Teacher. London:
Burns & Oates. 1877. (For sale by The Catholic Publication Society.)
This Reader is made up of eighty short poems from British and American
authors. Each selection is accompanied by marginal notes and is headed
by a short biographical notice. The plan is excellent, the publishers’
work is well done, but the biographical notices are so brief as to be of
little value, and the marginal notes are nothing more than commonplace
definitions of difficult words. Perhaps it is hardly just to call the
words referred to difficult, since the majority of the poems are as
simple in diction as _Lord Ullin’s Daughter_. The fault may be
attributed partly to the marginal-note plan, since an absence of notes
would leave an unsightly page. Still, this is no excuse for careless
definitions: _unfriended_ is a poor substitute for _forlorn_;
_California_ is not _a mountainous country of North America on the
Pacific coast_; _Indian_ is a name given to the _aboriginal_ inhabitants
of America, not to the _ancient_ inhabitants; _pollution_ does not mean
_to corrupt_; concealing can hardly mean at once _hiding_ and _to keep
secret_. In the lines from _The Village Blacksmith_,
“Each morning sees some task begun,
Each evening sees its close,”
the word _close_ is defined _finished_. These are a few inaccuracies out
of many. The selections comprise some of the most exquisite short poems
in the language, there being few extracts and but one translation. Were
it not for the absence of selections from Catholic sources, this would
be a desirable class-book. Why Adelaide Procter, Aubrey de Vere, Gerald
Griffin, Davis, McGee, are excluded, and Bret Harte honored in two
places, is a mystery. Nor do other poets fare better. Caswall is not
mentioned; in truth, there is not one poem from a Catholic author.
Catholics are not the only persons who suffer from the editor’s
discrimination. Tennyson is excluded, while Rev. Charles Kingsley
contributes two pieces. Six selections come from Longfellow. These facts
show that it was not for want of space that Catholic poems find no room
in a text-book published by a Catholic firm. Nor was it merit alone that
prompted the editor in his selection. The book seems to have been
prepared for schools in which neither the name nor the sentiment of a
Catholic writer might enter. The system that excludes the grace and
purity of Adelaide Procter, the sweetness and vigor of De Vere, and the
perfect rhythm of Tennyson will bring forth bitter fruit, and those who
assist the projectors in their plans may expect to reap the usual
harvest of ingratitude, together with the unpleasant memory of having
closed their eyes to the merits of Catholic poets because of the
hostility of some so-called non sectarian school-board.
SUMMA SUMMÆ. Pars Prima—De Deo. Confecit ac edidit T. J. O’Mahony,
S.T.D., Philos. in Collegio OO.SS., Dublinii, Professor. Dublinii:
apud M. H. Gill et Fil.; Lond.: Burns et Oates; Paris: J. Lecoffre
et Soc. 1877.
This summary of the _Summa Theologica_ of St. Thomas is chiefly intended
as an aid to ecclesiastical students in the study of the great work of
the Angelic Doctor. The first part only is yet published. Dr. O’Mahony,
of All-Hallow’s College, its author, with great skill and painstaking,
has endeavored to make the order and arrangement of topics and divisions
in the _Summa_ more intelligible by means of a convenient
type-arrangement and distinctive headings, and to facilitate the
understanding of the text by an analytical abstract which contains many
literal quotations, followed by a synthetic synopsis of subjects. The
work seems to have been done intelligently and well, and its utility is
obvious to every student who has attempted to read even one page of the
_Summa_. It is neatly printed, and we trust may soon be completed.
WHY ARE WE ROMAN CATHOLICS? BECAUSE WE ARE REASONABLE MEN. By
Hermann Joseph Graf Fugger Glött, Priest of the Society of Jesus.
From the German. London: Burns & Oates. 1877. (For sale by The
Catholic Publication Society.)
A clear, solid, and short exposition of the Catholic faith, in view of
actual objections against its reasonableness. It would be well if there
were more works of this kind. The rational side of revealed truth needs
a various development to meet the many intellectual demands of our age.
Besides, there are many sincere persons in Protestant communities who
are disposed to be Christians, but are in suspense because of the
inconsistency of Protestantism with reason. These need only the
obstacles to faith to be removed for them to become Catholics. For such
this short treatise will be of special service. It should be also read
by Catholics, as they ought to be prepared when asked to know how “to
give a reason for the hope that is in them.” The author shows a familiar
knowledge of the anti-Christian writers of our day, is free from all
bitterness, and we hope to hear from his pen in this field again. The
translation reads as if written in English.
CARTE ECCLESIASTIQUE DES ETATS-UNIS DE L’AMERIQUE. LYONS. 1877.
A few copies of this chart have been sent to this country, and we have
received one through the courtesy of Father Perron, of Woodstock
College. It is a handsome, well-executed, and, so far as we have
discovered, correct map of the provinces and bishoprics of the United
States. Such a map is convenient and valuable. We think it would be
improved by making each of the provinces of one distinct color, and
marking the dioceses by broad colored lines, and the States by similar
black lines. The titles of the provinces and dioceses might also be
printed in large letters, and the sees receive more conspicuous signs.
The chart is published by the Society of Catholic Missions, 6 Rue
d’Auvergne, à Lyon. Directeur, M. l’Abbé Stanislas Laverrière. All the
profits are given to the missions. We suggest to our Catholic publishers
to send for copies and keep them on hand for sale.
HEROIC WOMEN OF THE BIBLE AND THE CHURCH. By the Rev. Bernard
O’Reilly, D.D. With art illustrations. New York: J. B. Ford & Co.
1877.
We can do no more now than call the attention of our readers to this
most beautiful work—beautiful in every sense—of which we have received
advance sheets. The author’s name needs no introduction to Catholic
readers. We reserve for a future date a fuller notice of a
well-conceived and admirably executed work, one too of great practical
utility. Father O’Reilly’s statement in the preface, that “the
publishers have spared neither labor nor expense to make this book most
beautiful in form,” is obviously true at the first glance.
THE CATHOLIC WORLD.
VOL. XXV., No. 147.—JUNE, 1877.
THE PAPAL JUBILEE.
SONNETS BY AUBREY DE VERE.
I.
THE GREAT PILGRIMAGE.
What beam is that, guiding once more from far
Earth’s Elders Rome-ward over sea and land?
What Sanctity, serene as Bethlehem’s star,
From East and West leads on each pilgrim band?
God’s light it is—on an unsceptred Hand!
God’s promise, shining without let or bar,
O’er sleeping realms that yet may wake in war,
Forth from that Brow Discrowned whose high command
Freshens in splendor with the advancing night
Missioned to blot all godless crowns with gloom:—
Like fruits untimely from a tree in blight
Such crowns shall fall. Even now they know their doom!
Advance, pure hearts! Your instinct guides you right
The Bethlehem Crib, this day, is by Saint Peter’s tomb.
II.
THE JERUSALEM OF THE NEW LAW.
“The Tribes ascend.” Ten centuries and nine
Have well-nigh passed since first the earth’s green breast
Confessed, deep-graved, those feet that Christ confessed,—
Those feet which, then when earth was Palestine,
Circled her Salem new. Mankind was thine,
O Rome, that time. All nations sent their best
To waft thee offerings, and their faith attest:—
They love thee most who love thee in decline.
The noble seek thy courts. What gibbering crew
Snarls at their heels? The brood that fears and hates;—
Prescient Defeat in bonds, that jeers the brave:
Ascend, true hearts! Such tribute is your due!
In Rome’s old triumphs thus the car-bound slave
Scoffed, as he passed, of Fortune’s spite, and Fate’s.[42]
Footnote 42:
In the Roman triumphs a captive slave was bound to the car of the
conqueror, into whose ear his office was to whisper of fortune’s
instability.
III.
THE CONFESSOR PONTIFF.
Full fifty years are past since first that weight
Descended on his head which made more strong
His heart, his hands more swift to war with wrong—
His martyred Master’s dread Episcopate:
Full thirty years beside the Apostles’ Gate
He reigned, and reigns: he roamed, an exile, long:
Restored, he faced once more the apostate throng,
Unbowed in woes, in greatness unelate.
New Hierarchies he sped to realms remote:
Central, by Peter’s Tomb he raised his hands
Blessing his thousand bishops from all lands;
Confirmed their great decree. False kings he smote:—
How long, just God, shall Treason’s banner float
O’er faith’s chief shrine profaned by rebel bands?
POPE PIUS THE NINTH.[43]
Footnote 43:
_Pie IX.: sa vie, son Histoire, son Siècle._ Par J. M. Villefranche.
Lyons. 1876.
_Rome: its Ruler and its Institutions._ By John Francis Maguire, M.P.
New York. 1858.
_Italy in 1848._ By L. Mariotti. London. 1851.
_The Secret Societies of the European Revolution, 1776-1876._ By
Thomas Frost. 2 vols. 8vo. London. 1876.
The whole Catholic world prepares to celebrate on the 3d of June of this
year the fiftieth anniversary of an episcopate which has no parallel in
the history of the church. Our Holy Father Pius IX. has surpassed most
of his predecessors in the importance of his labors, and has far
exceeded them all in the length of his pontificate. He was young when he
reached the dignity of bishop, but Leo XII., to whom he owed his
promotion, had already discerned the beauty of his character.
Sinigaglia, where he was born, on the 13th of May, 1792; Volterra, where
he passed six years at college; Rome, where he studied theology, abound
with stories of the sweet and sunny disposition, the fervent piety, and
the burning zeal which illustrated even his tenderest years. He was six
years of age when the venerable Pius VI. was dragged away into
captivity, and the biographers of Pius IX. speak of the excitement which
stirred his boyish heart, and the prayers which he poured out night and
morning at his mother’s knee for the outraged church. His earliest
recollections of the Papacy were a fit preparation for what he was to
undergo in after-life. The Holy Father appeared to his young eyes, not
as the crowned pontiff, but as the suffering and heroic confessor. He
saw Pius VII. following Pius VI. into banishment. He saw the last inch
of territory taken from the Holy See. One of his uncles, a canon of St.
Peter’s, was driven from Rome on account of his fidelity to the pope;
and another uncle, who was Bishop of Pesaro, was thrown into prison for
the same cause. He had finished his course at college and was living at
home when Pius VII. returned from exile, and he was presented to the
pontiff as he passed through Sinigaglia on the road to Rome. The Mastai
family were distantly related to Pius VII., and the pope took an
interest in his kinsman. But there was an obstacle which seemed likely
to defeat the young Mastai’s desire to enter holy orders. He was subject
to fits of epilepsy. The physicians gave him no hope of a cure. About
the time of the pope’s return, however, the violence of the disorder
began to abate, and his health was soon so far restored that he was
encouraged to continue his studies for the church. He always ascribed
his relief to the protection of the Blessed Virgin. In 1819 he was
ordained priest by special dispensation, and appointed to the humble
duty of serving the asylum for poor children established in the Via
Giulia in Rome by a pious mason named Giovanni Borgi. It was called the
Asylum Tata Giovanni, because “Tata Giovanni”—or Papa John—was the name
which the lads used to give their protector. The Abbate Mastai had been
a good friend and helper of Papa John, and was glad of the privilege of
continuing his work now that the benevolent old man had gone to his
reward. He occupied a little chamber in the asylum. He ate at the table
with the boys. He spent all his income in their service. He kept his
regard for them long after they had grown up, and even as Pope he
remembered the names of his pupils and followed their fortunes with a
tender interest. It has often been said that Pius IX. never forgot
anybody.
The first employment which brought him into public notice was a mission
to the New World. Some of the clergy of the South American states had
petitioned the Holy See to fill their long-vacant bishoprics. Many years
had passed since the close of their war of independence with Spain, but
the mother-country still asserted the authority which she no longer
attempted to enforce, and claimed the right of presentation to sees long
withdrawn from her jurisdiction. The church in South America remained,
consequently, in lamentable confusion until the Sovereign Pontiff
resolved to re-establish order by the exercise of his prerogative,
without government interference from either side; and the embassy of
which we speak was despatched in consequence. Monsignore Muzi, with the
title of vicar-apostolic, was at the head of it, and the Abbate Mastai
was appointed adjunct.[44] Before the expedition sailed Pope Pius VII.
died, but Leo XII. confirmed the selections made by his predecessor;
and, indeed, the choice of the Abbate Mastai had been made originally by
his advice. On the voyage the ship was driven by stress of weather into
the Spanish port of Palma, in the island of Majorca. The governor threw
the embassy into prison and kept them for some days in seclusion, on the
ground that the country to which they were bound was in rebellion
against the Spanish crown. “Then,” said the Pope, in telling this
adventure nearly half a century afterward, “I realized the necessity of
the papal independence. They sent me a ration of food every day from the
ship, but I was allowed neither letters nor papers. I was initiated on
this occasion, however, into the little stratagems of solitary
prisoners; for we hid our correspondence in loaves of bread.” The
embassy got away at last and spent two years of fatigue and danger in
South America, visiting the missions of Chili, Peru, and Colombia,
traversing the awful passes of the Cordilleras, and crossing the
continent in bullock-carts—a journey which took them nearly two months.
Once, in going by sea from Valparaiso to Callao, their vessel, caught
near the coast in a gale, was driving upon the rocks when a fisherman
put off in his boat, boarded them in the midst of the storm, and brought
them through intricate passages into the harbor of Arica. The next day
the Abbate Mastai visited the hut of this daring pilot, and left with
him a purse containing about four hundred dollars. After becoming Pope
he sent the man a second purse of equal value and his picture. The
fisherman was overwhelmed with gratitude. The first four hundred dollars
had proved the making of his fortune. He gave the second to the poor,
and placed the picture of the Pope in a little chapel which he had built
on a spot overlooking the sea.
Footnote 44:
For a full account of this mission see THE CATHOLIC WORLD for January,
1876.
The embassy returned to Rome in 1825, and the Abbate Mastai was
appointed canon of Santa Maria in Via Lata, a little church on the
Corso, with an oratory in which pious tradition relates that St. Paul
and St. Luke used to teach the faith to the first Christians of Rome. He
was also promoted to the prelacy and placed at the head of the great
Hospital of St. Michael. “The Hospital of St. Michael,” says one of the
latest of the biographers of Pius IX., “is a city in itself, and its
administration is a real government.” Founded two centuries ago by
Innocent X., it grew, by the additions of later pontiffs, to be one of
the greatest and grandest asylums in existence—a house of refuge for the
young, a retreat for the aged and infirm, a hospital for the sick, a
reformatory for Magdalens, a home for virtuous girls, and, besides all
that, a school of arts and industries. When Monsignore Mastai assumed
the presidency of this vast and complicated institution, every
department of it was in a deplorable state of disorganization. Nearly
all the earnings of the boys and girls in the industrial schools went
towards the support of the establishment, and yet there was an enormous
deficit in the revenues. Bankruptcy seemed at hand. The new president
took up his task with magnificent ardor and equally magnificent
discretion, with the enthusiasm of a reformer and the practical sagacity
of a man of business. In two years the disorder was at an end. The
expenses of the institution were brought within its income, yet its
charity was enlarged rather than restricted, and a large share of the
earnings of the boys was paid into a savings’ fund, to be returned to
them when they went out into the world. Monsignore Mastai had obtained
this remarkable result in part by his talent for business; but not
wholly by that, for when the work was done his own patrimony had
disappeared. “Of what use is money to a priest,” said he, “except to be
spent in the cause of charity?” So it happened that when Leo XII. called
him to the archbishopric of Spoleto in 1827 he had not money enough to
pay for his bulls. The last acre of his estate was sold for the
customary fees, and he entered Spoleto as penniless as the apostle whom
our Lord commanded to take the tax-money from the mouth of a fish.
The first years of his episcopate were passed as any one who had watched
the labors of his priesthood might have predicted that they would be. He
was rarely seen by the courtiers of the papal palace, but his people
knew him as the friend and father of the poor, and loved him for a
tenderness and generosity almost without bounds. He filled his diocese
with good works, founding seminaries and asylums, introducing charitable
orders, always setting a practical example of beneficence by attending
personally to the wants of the unfortunate. He spent in alms the last
copper in his purse, and sold the ornaments from his parlor for the poor
when his purse was empty. It was the golden time of his life—a time of
peace and consolation. The church in Italy just then was at rest. A long
period of political disturbance had been followed by comparative quiet.
Convents and pious schools were multiplied, and the saintly Archbishop
of Spoleto found himself in the midst of a devout clergy and a grateful
people. There was a short outbreak in the Romagna in 1831, premature and
easily suppressed, and it was then that the archbishop was brought for
the first time into contact with the spirit of revolution destined to
make such a bitter and memorable war upon him in later years. Among the
adventurers implicated in the movement were two scions of the Bonaparte
family. The elder brother died during the enterprise; the younger lived
to become emperor. There is a story that when Louis Napoleon fled from
the ruin of the revolt in the Romagna, he knocked one night at the door
of the Archbishop of Spoleto, and owed his safety to the charity of that
most charitable of men. It is a story which rests upon no very firm
authority, and yet, though often published, it stands uncontradicted. It
is certain, however, that in the last days of the insurrection the
archbishop did show his tenderness for the unfortunate in a signal
manner. Four thousand revolutionists, pursued by Austrian troops,
presented themselves before Spoleto. The archbishop went out to meet
them. He persuaded them, since their cause was lost, to lay down their
arms. He gave them several thousand crowns for their immediate needs. He
pledged his word that they should not be molested. Then he performed the
still more difficult task of inducing the Austrian commander to ratify
the promise. The pursuit was abandoned; the insurgents retired quietly
to their homes. Pope Gregory XVI., however, was not pleased with this
transaction, and the archbishop was called to Rome to defend himself. We
must presume that his explanation was satisfactory; for the next year he
was advanced to the see of Imola. This is only a suffragan see, but it
is more important in itself than the archbishopric of Spoleto, and is,
moreover, what is called a cardinalitial post—under ordinary
circumstances a step towards the higher dignity of the scarlet hat. It
was held by Pius VII. when he was Cardinal Chiaramonti. The promotion of
Bishop Mastai came in due course. His creation as cardinal was announced
in December, 1840, having been reserved _in petto_ since the previous
year, and he took his title from the church of SS. Peter and
Marcellinus. With his new dignity he adopted no new mode of life. Works
of charity and devotion still filled his days. The love and respect of
all classes of men still encompassed him. It is the best proof of the
tranquil and happy course of his episcopate that of the nineteen years
which he passed at Spoleto and Imola there is hardly an incident to be
related.
His whole life thus far seems to have been a providential preparation
for the two great works for which he was destined by Almighty God. On
the spiritual side of the church he was to bring about the consolidation
of Catholic dogma and the complete definition and development of the
authority of the church over the minds and hearts of her children. On
the secular side, after showing the perfect compatibility of the
temporal power with the needs of modern society, he was to guide the
church with fortitude and prudence, and give the Christian world a
shining example of constancy during the trying days that were to see
that power destroyed. What better training could he have had for this
double destiny than so many years of charitable labor and close
intercourse with God? He issued at last from his pious retirement with a
character enriched by the daily practice of virtue, a disposition
sweetened by the habit of self-sacrifice, a resolution strengthened by
reliance upon God, and a heavenly courage that was proof against the
threats and buffets of the world.
I.
We have spoken of the brief season of repose in Italian politics about
the time of our Holy Father’s elevation to the episcopate. It was,
indeed, only a transient gleam of sunlight in the midst of a tempestuous
era. We come now to a period of universal disturbance. This is not the
place to discuss the causes of the great revulsions of 1848. Probably
they were more complex and reached further back than the world generally
supposes. But whatever may have been the local provocations for revolt
in particular states, it is clear that, for more than a quarter of a
century before the date with which we are now occupied, the
revolutionary tendencies of all Europe had shown a unity of direction
which implied a single guiding impulse. It is not credible that a few
clubs of political enthusiasts, visionary young students, hare-brained
apothecaries, and metaphysical breeches-makers should be able by the
fire of their own genius to set a continent in flames. The revolutionary
propaganda of 1830-1848 found in every country of Europe a combustible
population only waiting for the spark. Some states were rotten with
social and moral disorders of long standing; some, like Poland, were
writhing under an oppression which moved the sympathies of the whole
world; some fretted under the restrictions of antiquated forms of
government, unsuited to the wants of an expanding society. Thus the
generous and patriotic were easily hurried into enterprises whose true
purpose they were far from suspecting. The central influence which
vitalized and directed all the scattered tendencies towards revolt was
the conspiracy of the secret societies. “In the attempt to conduct the
government of the world,” said the British prime minister last autumn,
in his address at Aylesbury, “there are new elements to be considered
which our predecessors had not to deal with. We have not only to deal
with emperors, princes, and ministers, but there are the secret
societies—an element which we must take into consideration, which at the
last moment may baffle all our arrangements, which have their agents
everywhere, which countenance assassination, and which, if necessary,
could produce a massacre.” Lord Beaconsfield’s statement was a very mild
one. The secret societies had become, at the time of which we write, the
most formidable force in European politics. There was not a corner of
the Continent in which their power was not felt. Intimately allied with
Freemasonry, their origin dates back to a remote, unknown time. They
were already strong in the eighteenth century, and their share in the
great French Revolution is well understood. They became formidable in
the Illuminism of Weishaupt in Germany a hundred years ago. They
appeared in the Tugendbund, which had so large a share in the overthrow
of the governments imposed upon the German states by Napoleon I. They
were busy in Russia, in Greece, in Ireland, in Spain, and even in the
Swiss Republic; in Italy they have never been idle since the first
appearance of the Carbonari at the beginning of the century; in France
they are the only power which seems to be permanent. As early as 1821
the Italian revolutionist, Pepe, gave Carbonarism an international
character by establishing in Spain a secret association of the “advanced
political reformers of all the European states”; and in 1834 Mazzini
made a much more effective union of the revolutionary elements when,
with the aid of Italian, Polish, and German refugees, he founded at
Berne the society of Young Europe. The organization of Young Germany,
Young Poland, and Young Switzerland dates from the same time and place,
and Switzerland became the centre of all the agitations of the
Continent. Young Italy had been grafted upon Carbonarism by Mazzini as
early as 1831.
Many of these associations, as we have already intimated, professed an
excellent object. They would have been comparatively harmless, if they
had not attracted and deceived the good. The Tugendbund, for instance,
originally aimed at the deliverance of Germany from a foreign yoke;
Young Poland captivated the noble and the ardent; even the Carbonari had
an alluring watchword in the Unity and Independence of Italy. But there
was always an ulterior purpose, revealed only to the initiated. That
purpose was one and unchanging, and it was the bond which united all the
leaders of the vast conspiracy from the Irish Sea to the Grecian
Archipelago, from Gibraltar to Nova Zembla. It was the establishment
everywhere of an atheistic democracy; or rather the destruction
simultaneously of all religion, all government, and all social bonds.
Kings and priests were equally hateful to the “Illuminated.” There was
to be no recognition of God in their republic. It was hostile not only
to the Catholic Church as an organization, but to Christianity as a
moral influence. The Illuminati were founded in the midst of the Masonic
lodges of Bavaria; they passed thence into Austria, Saxony, Holland,
Italy, and Switzerland; they were carried to Paris by Mirabeau, who was
initiated in Germany; they were united with the Freemasons all over
France. Recognized as the parents of the later societies, they sounded
as early as 1777 the key-note of the whole complex movement. Findel, the
Masonic historian of Freemasonry, declares that “the most decisive
agent” in giving the order a political and anti-religious character was
“that intellectual movement known under the name of English deism, which
boldly rejected all revelation and all religious dogmas, and under the
victorious banner of reason and criticism broke down all barriers in its
path.” But Weishaupt found still too much “political and religious
prejudice” remaining in the Freemasons, and consequently devised a
system which, as he expressed it, would “attract Christians of every
communion and gradually free them from all religious prejudices.” The
“illumination” of the brethren was to be accomplished by a course of
gradual education in which Christianity was carefully ignored. It was
only in the higher degrees that the initiated were taught that the fall
of man meant nothing but the subjection of the individual to civil
society; that “illumination” consisted in getting rid of all
governments; and that “the secret associations were gradually and
silently to possess themselves of the government of the states, making
use for this purpose of the means which the wicked use for attaining
their base ends.” We quote this from the discourse read at initiation
into one of the higher degrees, and discovered when the papers of the
fraternity were seized by the Elector of Bavaria in 1785. The same
document continues: “Princes and priests are in particular the wicked
whose hands we must tie up by means of these associations, if we cannot
wipe them out altogether.” Patriotism was defined as a narrow-minded
prejudice; and, finally, the illuminated man was taught that everything
is material, that religion has no foundation, that all nations must be
brought back, either by peaceable means or by force, to their pristine
condition of unrestricted liberty, for “all subordination must vanish
from the face of the earth.” The ceremonies of initiation into the
lodges of the Carbonari remind us so strongly of this explanation of the
principles of Illuminism that it is impossible to resist the conclusion
that the two associations are closely connected. The neophyte was taught
the same doctrine in both: that man had everywhere fallen into the hands
of oppressors, whose authority it was the mission of the enlightened to
cast off. Here, however, as in the earlier society, the pagan character
of the proposed new life was only revealed by degrees to those who were
prepared for it. The conspirators seem to have accommodated their system
of education to the peculiarities of national training and disposition.
For example, they humored the religious tendencies of the Italians by
retaining the name of God and the image of the crucifix in the
ceremonial of the lower degrees, and even published a forged bull, in
the name of Pope Pius VII., approving the Carbonari; while in the
training of Young Germany just a contrary course was adopted. “We are
obliged to treat new-comers very cautiously,” says a report from a
propagandist committee established among the Germans in Switzerland, “to
bring them step by step into the right road, and the principal thing in
this respect is to show them that religion is nothing but a pile of
rubbish.” Indeed, the rampant atheism of the secret societies of
Germany, and also of France, has always been notorious. Of the still
more horrible manifestations of impiety to which they were carried in
Italy we hesitate to speak, lest we be suspected of sensational
exaggerations. All that we have said thus far of the principles and
practices of the Masons, Illuminati, and Carbonari is quoted from their
own books and papers, and may be found in the work of their admirer and
apologist, Thomas Frost, the title of which we have placed at the head
of this article. For a more startling picture of their inner mysteries
we refer the reader to Father Bresciani,[45] who lived in Rome in 1848
and had direct testimony of horrors which almost defy belief. Mr. Frost,
however, gives a glimpse of the worse than pagan spirit of Carbonarism
when he describes the initiation into the second degree—a ceremony
wherein the candidate, crowned with thorns and bearing a cross,
personated our divine Lord, and knelt to ask pardon of Pilate, Caiphas,
and Herod, represented by the grand master and two assistants, the
pardon being granted at the intercession of the assembled Carbonari! In
all the societies an abstract morality was taught which was not the
morality of Jesus Christ, and laws were laid down at variance with the
laws of the state. Assassination was one of the chief duties which the
fraternity enjoined upon its votaries. The initiated fancied that they
emancipated themselves from all subordination; but they bound themselves
by the most awful penalties to murder any one, even friend or brother,
who might be pointed out for death by some unseen, unknown, and shadowy
authority.
Footnote 45:
_The Jew of Verona._ English translation, 2 vols. 12mo. Baltimore.
1854.
When Pope Gregory XVI. came to the throne the conspiracies of ten years
were just ripening. He was assailed in the very first month of his
pontificate by the rising in the Romagna, and he spent the fifteen years
of his reign in a struggle to keep down the evil spirit whose apparition
then alarmed him. All Europe during these fifteen years was a volcano
sending forth the deep mutterings and sulphurous vapors which presage an
eruption. France was never at peace from the overthrow of Charles X. in
1830 till after the re-establishment of the empire—if even she is at
peace yet. Every capital in Germany was in nightly danger of the dagger,
the torch, and the barricade. Switzerland, though a free republic, was
no less severely tormented by conspiracies than the monarchical
countries, and after several years of contention her secret societies
took arms in 1844 to compel the Catholic cantons, against the
constitution of the confederation, to expel the Jesuits. In Poland, at
the very moment when the nobles were preparing a revolt against the
Austrian yoke, a socialistic and agrarian rising of the peasants against
the nobles filled Galicia with massacres of incredible barbarity. In
Italy the Carbonari negotiated for a while with the Duke of Modena, by
whose aid they proposed to expel the Austrians from Lombardy and Venice,
and unite the states of the north and centre under one sovereign—of
course with the further object, held in reserve, of getting rid of the
Duke of Modena as soon as they had no further use for him: a scheme
almost exactly like that which Young Italy tried a few years later with
Charles Albert of Sardinia. Defeated in this project and crushed in
attempts at insurrection, they worked for some time in secret, but they
worked with furious energy. The doctrines of Illumination were carried
into every corner of the peninsula. A score of local secret associations
came into existence, adding to the wickedness of the parent society some
peculiar brutality of their own. Ancona had its “Society of Death,”
Sinigaglia its “Infernal Association,” Leghorn its “Society of Slayers,”
Faenza its “Band of Stabbers.”
Between 1831 and 1840, however, the policy of the Italian revolutionists
was greatly modified. Mazzini established Young Italy under the
conviction that the old methods of conspiracy must fail. Instead of
wasting their strength in vain efforts to overturn the Italian princes
singly, he urged the brethren to concentrate their energies upon a
movement for the expulsion of the Austrians and a consolidation of all
the Italian states. The fate of pope, and kings, and princes could be
settled afterwards. “All questions as to forms of internal policy,” he
wrote, “can be put off till the close of the war of independence.” Italy
and independence! This was a programme, not for the secret societies
alone, but for the whole peninsula. It captivated the generous, the
impulsive, the ardent, the ambitious. It brought to the same work
poetry, patriotism, and religion, the pistol, the dagger, and the
poisoned cup. What was to be done with Italy, when it was united and rid
of the Austrians, was one of the secrets of the initiated never
explained to the common people; but remarkable illustrations of the
inner character of this movement were found in 1844 among certain papers
seized by the police in Rome. “Our watchword,” wrote one of the leaders,
“must be Religion, Union, Independence. As for the King of Sardinia, we
should seek some favorable opportunity to poignard him. I recommend the
same course to be pursued in regard to the King of Naples. The Lombards
may second our efforts by poison, or by insurrection, under the form of
little 'Sicilian Vespers’ against the Germans. Functionaries or private
citizens who show a hostile spirit must be put to death. Let them be
arrested quietly during the night, and the report be circulated that
they have been exiled or sent to prison, or have absconded.” Mazzini
himself a little later, in an address to Young Italy, gave a significant
explanation of his idea. “In your country,” said he, “regeneration must
come through the princes. Get them on your side. Attack their vanity.
Let them march at the head, if they will, so long as they march your
way. Few will go to the end. If they make concessions, praise them and
insist upon something further. The essential thing is not to let them
know what the goal of the revolution is. They must never see more than
one step at a time.” And he urged also the importance of “managing” the
clergy. “Its habits and hierarchy make it the imp of authority—that is
to say, of despotism”; but the people believe in it, and we must make
its influence of use. With the Jesuits, however, he proclaimed war to
the knife. None of the socialists and infidels were willing to make any
terms with the sons of St. Ignatius.
In the prosecution of this new scheme of revolution the conspirators
obtained invaluable help from a most unexpected ally. The erring genius
of the unfortunate Abbate Gioberti did more for them than the
machinations of the lodges. Carried away by visions of a new Italy and a
new Catholicism, he forgot the divine mission of the church in
speculations as to what she might accomplish in purely secular
enterprises. His great error was in thinking of religion as an agent of
civilization rather than an instrumentality for saving souls, and thus
he was led into the blunder of attempting to unite God and the world in
an equal partnership. He conceived the idea of an Italian federation
with the King of Sardinia as military head and the Pope as spiritual
president—a sort of dual empire like that of Japan, with a tycoon at
Turin, a mikado at the Vatican. But the clergy were to abdicate their
dominion over the minds of men, and bend their energies to effecting an
alliance of religion with a material progress that in his theory had
outstripped the church and become for ever incompatible with
ecclesiastical tutelage. He wished the priests to put themselves at the
head of the new social movements, and, hand in hand with the political
agitators, to lead Italy to a material glory such as no nation on earth
had ever seen. His book, _Del Primato_, was welcomed with unparalleled
enthusiasm. The charm of a brilliant style, the force of an original,
cultivated, and poetic mind, the glamour of a philosophy which seemed to
meet all the wants of an exciting and uneasy time, turned the heads of
the whole nation. Gioberti, Cesare Balbo, Massimo d’Azeglio, were the
creators of a new literature, and all Italy read them with flashing eyes
and quickening pulse. Theirs was a reform which seized upon the fancy of
good and bad alike, and hurried into a common delusion the heedless
Christian and the veteran Carbonaro, the young, the imaginative, the
adventurous, and the artful. Mazzini, who afterwards became one of
Gioberti’s bitterest enemies, was too shrewd to undervalue this
influence. He sought an interview with Gioberti in Paris; he offered
terms of co-operation; he even went through the form of renouncing what
he styled his own “more narrow views,” and proposed a National
Association which, adjourning all questions of forms and spirit of
government, faith or scepticism, God or the devil, should unite Italy in
the single purpose of creating an Italian nation. Different as the aims
of the two men were—for Gioberti included even the Austrian government
of Lombardy and Venice in his union—they embraced each other for the
moment. Together they swept the peninsula. Every city from Palermo to
Milan was aflame with the new ideas. The soberest patriots lost their
composure, and many of the clergy began to dream wild dreams of
political change, and to see visions of reformed conspirators kneeling
at the feet of a democratic pope. We look back upon those days from the
vantage-ground of experience, and we wonder that men should have been so
deceived. But 1848 had not then given the lie to the professions of
1846. Devout Italians at that time did not see, as we do, that the
secret societies which assailed the church on one side of the Alps with
fire and sword could not be sincere in offering to place it in a new
position of power and glory on the other, nor did they realize the
extent of the conspiracy to overwhelm religion, government, and social
order throughout Europe in one general ruin.
That conspiracy was more formidable in Italy than anywhere else, and it
was more formidable not only because it was better organized, but
because it involved so many men of blameless character and offered to
satisfy a lofty national aspiration. During the last years of Pope
Gregory XVI. an explosion seemed inevitable. Probably nothing kept it
back except the age and infirmities of the venerable pontiff; the
leaders preferred to wait for his death. He died on the 1st of June,
1846. The whole peninsula was instantly in commotion, and the symptoms
of violence in Rome were so alarming that people doubted the possibility
of an election. Austria, as the power most directly interested in the
secular politics of the Holy See, was understood to demand a continuance
of the restrictive policy of Gregory; France, on the contrary, was said
to desire a moderately liberal pope. To avoid pressure upon the
conclave, as well as to forestall an outbreak, the Italian cardinals
resolved to begin their deliberations at once and finish them quickly.
Without waiting for their distant colleagues, they entered the Quirinal
on the 14th, the doors were closed, the guards were set, and the
balloting began. Two ballots are taken in the conclave every day. The
persons whom public opinion selected as most likely to command the
necessary thirty-four votes were Cardinals Gizzi and Lambruschini. The
modest and retiring Cardinal Mastai seems to have been little known by
the outside world, though his merit was no secret to the Sacred College.
He was appointed scrutator, to open and read the ballots. At the first
session of the conclave his name was proposed by Cardinal Altieri,
Prince-Bishop of Albano, and the first scrutiny showed that he united a
large party of the cardinals. On the second ballot he gained a little.
On the third his vote was twenty-seven—only seven less than a majority.
He retired to his cell and spent the whole time in prayer till the
evening meeting. He came to the performance of his functions pale and
agitated. When the ballots were taken from the chalice in which they had
been collected, he read his own name on the first, on the second, on the
third, on every paper up to the eighteenth. He could not go on; he
begged the conclave to commit the rest of the task to another. But to
change the scrutator in the midst of the vote would invalidate the
election. The cardinals gathered around him; for some time he sat
terrified and almost insensible, while streams of tears flowed down his
cheeks. On the completion of the count it was found that he had the
suffrages of thirty-six out of the fifty-four cardinals present. As the
whole assembly rose to confirm the choice by unanimous acclamation, the
Pope-elect fell upon his knees, and profound silence reigned in the
Pauline Chapel while he communed with Almighty God.
It was on the following day, June 18, that, according to custom, the
bricked-up window in the front of the Quirinal Palace was broken open,
and the cardinals came out upon the balcony to announce to the waiting
multitude the choice of a new pope. It is said that men turned to one
another in surprise when they heard the name, and asked who this
Cardinal Mastai could be. But when his beautiful and benignant face
appeared among the throng, and his hand was raised in that gesture of
benediction which all who have seen him will for ever associate with his
memory, he won the love and admiration of the Roman people; and the true
Romans have loved him ever since.
The story of his first days in the pontificate reads like a charming
romance. He called the steward of the palace and said to him: “When I
was bishop I spent for my personal expenses a crown a day; when I was
cardinal I spent a crown and a half; and now that I am Pope you must not
go beyond two crowns.” He went about the city alone to search out abuses
and to look into the condition of the poor. He presented himself without
warning at public institutions. He knocked at the doors of religious
houses at night. He startled the congregation at St. Andrea del Valle by
appearing unannounced in the pulpit to preach against blasphemy. He
delighted children by visiting the schools. He talked freely with the
humble whom he met in the streets and on the country roads. He gave
lavishly to the needy. A poor market-gardener lost his horse and walked
boldly into the palace to ask the Pope if he could not spare an old one
from the Quirinal stables. A secretary found the man on the stairs and
took his message to the Holy Father. “Yes,” was the Pope’s reply; “and
give him this money, too. He must be very poor, or he never would come
to the Quirinal to get a horse.”
But Pius IX. was not ignorant of the dangers which surrounded his
throne. He chose his course promptly. It may be doubted whether stern
measures of repression could have accomplished any good in the
excitement of that time, but at any rate he had no taste for them. He
favored the idea of a national confederation under the presidency of the
Pope, wishing to accomplish it by a friendly alliance of the existing
governments, not by war and revolution. For the rest, he looked forward
to a reform in the administration of his states, and the introduction of
liberal and popular institutions as fast as the old forms could be
safely changed, and he purposed to rule by kindness, generosity, and
confidence. Yet, as we shall see, he did not lack firmness when firmness
was needed. One of his first acts was to declare an amnesty for
political offences, and a characteristic anecdote is told of him in
connection with it. He called a council of his principal advisers and
asked their votes upon the proposed measure of mercy. To his chagrin, a
majority of the balls voted were black. He took off his white cap and
placed it over them; “Now,” said he, “they are all white.” The prisons
were opened. The exiles returned. One thousand six hundred persons were
restored to freedom and friends. Rome was in a tumult of joy. The
populace thronged about the pontiff whenever he went abroad, and waited
long hours before the palace windows to get his blessing. On the feast
of St. Peter’s Chains a great number of the pardoned received communion
from the Holy Father's hands, and the occasion was celebrated with
lively demonstrations. Nor was the Pope satisfied with an easy act of
clemency. He made a close personal study of the administration. A
multitude of petty abuses were swept away. The taxes were reduced. The
liberty of the press was enlarged. Industries were fostered; railways
were planned. The Jews were relieved of burdensome and humiliating
restrictions. Then the old municipal privileges of Rome were restored,
and a long stride ahead was made by the formation of a lay consulta of
state and the popular representation of the provinces in the central
government.
Nothing could surpass the enthusiasm of the people at this dawn of a new
political era. It was almost a continuous holiday in Rome, with gay
processions by day and torch-light parades by night, public banquets in
the vineyards and gardens, triumphal arches spanning the streets, the
papal colors fluttering from every window and decorating every breast.
Because those colors were white and yellow, it became a point of honor
with delighted Romans to breakfast every morning on boiled eggs. Nor was
it only Italy which raised the chorus of applause. All over the world
the Papacy shone with a glory which it had hardly displayed since Leo
XII. The Protestants of New York held a monster meeting of felicitation
at the Broadway Tabernacle, where cordial letters were read from
ex-President Van Buren and Vice-President Dallas, and an enthusiastic
address to the Pope, prepared by Horace Greeley, was adopted by
acclamation. The British government offered its congratulations. The
French ministry, led by M. Guizot, rivalled the French opposition, led
by M. Thiers, in resolutions and speeches of encouragement. Mazzini,
true to the policy already explained, addressed to the Holy Father a
letter of ostensible sympathy and praise. Such halcyon days might well
have filled the most wary with a dangerous confidence.
The Pope was not deceived. He knew that under this outward show of peace
the conspiracy was active. The first attempt of the revolutionary party
was to separate him from the cardinals. Three weeks after the amnesty,
as he drove under one of the arches erected in his honor, the mob
stopped some of the prelates of his suite and refused to let them pass.
Certain demonstrations at the popular out-of-door repasts became so
significant that the gatherings had to be forbidden. Before the end of
the year the cry of “Viva Pio Nono!” changed to “Viva Pio Nono Solo!”
and mingled with shouts of “Down with the Jesuits!” and “Death to the
retrograders!” The next summer Rome was thrown into a fever of rage by
an invention so outrageous and yet so ridiculous that one reads of it
with amazement. It was alleged that Cardinal Lambruschini, the Austrian
government, and the General of the Jesuits had organized a plot to fall
upon the populace on the anniversary of the amnesty, and in the midst of
the massacre to get possession of the Pope and put a stop to his
liberalism. The _fête_ appointed for the anniversary was given up, and
the excitement enabled the revolutionists to depose the old police and
throw the city into the arms of the civic guard, of which they were
really the directing force. On New Year’s day, 1848, the Pope was
molested in the street by a disorderly mob, shouting menaces against
“reactionists” and “Jesuits.” The violence of the radical faction
increased; their demeanor became more and more insulting; the danger of
riot grew imminent; the civil guard showed plain symptoms of disloyalty.
Yet all this while the Holy Father persevered in his reforms. He took no
step backward. He withdrew no concession. The measure of popular liberty
was constantly enlarging, the administration becoming more thoroughly
representative. If it was “progress” that the agitators wanted, what was
this?
We cannot understand the history of this strange time without bearing
in mind that the danger arose, not from anything the Pope had done or
failed to do, but from the steady and stealthy advance of the pagan
conspiracy. Rome, under the mild rule of Pius IX., became the resort
of all the chief revolutionists of the Continent, and it is hardly too
much to say that the particular house in Rome where they met and
plotted with the most comfort was the British embassy. Palmerston’s
policy was always to encourage radical movements on the Continent.
When he sent Lord Minto, therefore, as a special envoy to Italy, the
parlors of that nobleman were instantly thronged by the Carbonari. In
this diplomatic sanctuary gathered a strange company of princes and
demagogues—Ciceruacchio, the orator of the rabble; Prince Charles
Bonaparte, the radical in purple; Sterbini, the poet, physician, and
journalist; Tofanelli, the tavern-keeper; Materazzi, patriot and
joiner; Galetti, the grocer, who became Minister of Police in one of
the later democratic cabinets.
A letter of Mazzini’s, written in 1847, taught Young Italy that the time
for action was close at hand; it was useless to count upon the Pope;
their best policy was to inflame the popular hatred of Austria; then
provoke Austria to attack them; and in the heat of war to accomplish the
rest. But at this critical time Austria herself committed an act which
hastened the explosion. Alarmed at the aspect of affairs in Central
Italy, she marched a body of troops into the papal territory. The treaty
of 1815 gave her the right to place a garrison in the citadel of
Ferrara; she went further and occupied the town; and although the
spirited protest of the Pope caused her to withdraw after some delay,
the occasion which the secret societies desired had been given, and a
cry for war and independence resounded from the Gulf of Genoa to the Bay
of Naples. We know but imperfectly the hidden springs of action of that
year of revolutions; but, as if by concert, the insurrection flashed up
almost simultaneously all over the Continent. The Milanese flew to arms.
The revolt broke out in Vienna. Barricades arose at Berlin. The Republic
was proclaimed in Paris. Naples and Tuscany were menaced. The
municipality of Rome waited upon the Pope and demanded a constitution.
He consented to give it. “I would have preferred,” said he, “to watch
for a while the result of the reforms already instituted; but other
Italian princes have granted constitutions, and I will not show less
confidence in my subjects than they have had in theirs.” At the same
time the ministry was changed. Cardinal Antonelli, whose management of
the finances had made him very popular, became Secretary of State, and
three of the most moderate of the liberals—Minghetti, Galetti, and
Sturbinetti—entered the cabinet. It is characteristic of the spirit of
the revolution that the first effect of these concessions was to
stimulate a fresh attack upon the church, disorders in Rome, and an
assault upon the Gesù. The Jesuits were forced to close their
establishment, some taking flight, others finding shelter in private
houses. The constitution was proclaimed in March. It provided for a
Senate and a House of Deputies—the senators to be appointed for life,
the deputies to be elected by the taxpayers of Rome and the provinces.
This parliament was not to meddle with ecclesiastical affairs, but in
other matters it had the usual powers of legislation.
Meantime, the war of independence in the north of Italy was in the full
tide of success. Young Italy believed it had found a leader in Charles
Albert of Sardinia. The Austrians were driven from Milan. The republic
lived again in Venice. The Pope sent 17,000 men to protect his
frontiers, with strict orders not to cross them. At once the
conspirators spread the report that he had declared war against Austria.
They called the people together in the Colosseum to ratify the new
crusade, and there the Barnabite monk, Gavazzi, masquerading in the
character of a new Peter the Hermit and brandishing a tricolored cross,
made his first bid for notoriety. There were only 7,000 regular troops
in the papal expedition; the rest were motley volunteers—the flower of
the nobility and the dregs of the wine-shop, the most gallant lads of
Rome and the scum of all the political clubs of the Continent. They
hurried through the Romagna, gutting taverns and hunting Jesuits by the
way, and when they reached Bologna their general (the Piedmontese,
Durando) announced that the Austrians were making war upon our Lord, and
that the soldiers of the Pope would give them battle with the cry, “God
wills it!” It was afterwards discovered that this direct defiance of the
Pope’s commands, this open act of hostility against a power with which
the states of the church were at peace, was in accordance with secret
instructions from the Pope’s radical Minister of War. While the
sovereign ordered his troops to remain strictly on the defensive within
their own boundaries, the ministers told Durando to cross over into
Lombardy and place himself at the disposal of Charles Albert; and
Durando prepared to obey them. It was impossible for the Holy Father to
remain silent under such an outrage. He repudiated Durando’s order of
the day in the official press, and he spoke more fully in an allocution:
“We shall not make war upon Austria; we embrace all countries, all
nations, with an equal paternal love.” And he took occasion at the same
time to denounce the project of destroying all the governments of the
peninsula in order to build out of their ruins one Italian republic with
the Pope at the head of it. He was no doubt prepared for the explosion
of wrath which followed. But the revolution was not to be ignored any
longer. For some time ministers had been in the habit of counterfeiting
his assent to measures of which he disapproved; if the army was to make
war without his consent, his reign was at an end. Rome was in a tempest.
The cry of “Treason!” rang through the streets. Ciceruacchio proposed to
kill all the priests. The civic guards flew to arms, posted soldiers at
the doors of the cardinals, and refused to recognize the Pope’s orders.
A new and more radical ministry, led by Count Mamiani, came into office
on the 3d of May, and on the same day the Holy Father wrote a touching
letter to the Emperor of Austria—a plea for peace and Italian
independence: “We exhort your majesty with the most paternal affection
to withdraw from a contest which cannot reconquer for the empire the
hearts of the Lombards and Venetians. There is no grandeur in a
domination which rests only on the sword.”
The new ministry insisted at once upon war, but here it found the
determination of the Pope unalterable. There seems to have been an
attempt, of which the ministers themselves were possibly innocent, to
precipitate hostilities by rousing an uncontrollable popular impulse.
One day a courier, breathless and dusty, rode through the Corso
announcing a great victory of Charles Albert over the Austrians. The
city was illuminated; there was talk of forcing the clergy to chant _Te
Deum_ in the churches. But the next day it was discovered that the
messenger, who entered Rome as if from Lombardy by the Porta del Popolo,
had left the city only an hour before by the Porta Angelica, gathering
all the stains of travel in an easy ride along the walls, and had been
paid three dollars for the performance. Charles Albert had been signally
defeated.
Whatever fitness for self-government might be latent in the Roman
people, it was certain that, in the existing condition of the Pontifical
States, a government by the people was out of the question. Every
attempt to satisfy the popular aspirations, every scheme for the
introduction of parliamentary and representative institutions, was
baffled by the Mazzinian clubs, whose rule, supported by conspiracy and
assassination, was the most cruel and absolute of despotisms, yet
destitute of that stability and force which make some despotisms
respectable. They threatened the church with spoliation, the clergy with
death, the young with atheism. They undermined the authority of all
government, not merely of this or that particular form, but of all
forms. Italy appeared to be rushing towards anarchy. It was time to cry,
Halt! Pius resolved to yield not another inch, but, without withdrawing
any reasonable concession, to put what remained of his authority upon a
firm basis. He invited Count Pellegrino Rossi to form a cabinet.
Count Rossi was an Italian by birth, a Swiss by adoption, a Frenchman by
subsequent choice, an old Carbonaro, an old conspirator, an old
political exile. He was an ardent partisan of Italian unity, but he had
seen the emptiness of some of his early illusions, and he had abandoned
the secret societies. He had come to Rome in the time of Gregory XVI. as
ambassador of Louis Philippe, charged with a negotiation for the removal
of the Jesuits from France; in his diplomatic capacity he had been one
of the most moderate advisers of Pius IX.; and after the fall of Louis
Philippe he had remained in Rome as a private citizen. He accepted the
task of restoring order; he reorganized the administration, negotiated
with Naples, Turin, and Florence for the formation of an Italian
confederation under the presidency of the Pope, arrested Gavazzi, who
was preaching rebellion, and brought back some of the troops which his
predecessors had sent away from Rome. The radical press speedily opened
an attack upon him. The clubs began to prepare for his downfall. The
15th of November, two months after his accession to power, was the date
fixed for the opening of the Chambers. He received more than one warning
that the same day had been appointed for his death. The wife of the
Minister of War wrote him that his life was to be attempted as he
entered the Chamber. A Frenchman sent him a note to the same effect. A
priest stopped him at the Quirinal and repeated the warning. The Pope
had also learned of the plans of the conspirators and begged Rossi to
beware. “They are cowards,” replied the count; “they will not dare to
strike.” “The cause of the Pope,” said the intrepid minister to one of
his colleagues, “is the cause of God. I must go where my duty calls me.”
On the night before the opening of the parliament a corpse was taken
from one of the hospitals and carried secretly to the little Capranica
theatre. There a select band of conspirators rehearsed the
assassination, and the chosen instrument of the vengeance of the
societies, a young sculptor named Costantini, learned by repeated
practice where to strike. They were waiting for the count at the
entrance to the hall of Deputies. As he placed his foot upon the steps
they gathered around him. One struck him on the side. He turned his
head, and Costantini plunged a dagger into the carotid artery. The
nearest priest was called, and Rossi lived just long enough to receive
absolution. He had yielded to the fears of his friends so far as to post
extra guards about the court and staircase; _sed quis custodiet
custodes?_ The assassin and his accomplices walked away unmolested and
passed the night promenading the city with songs of triumph. The streets
were hung with flags. The bloody dagger, decked with flowers, was
exposed to the veneration of their party on the top of a tricolored
standard, and held up before the windows of the weeping family of the
victim. When the news of the awful crime committed on the stairs was
carried into the Chamber, the deputies manifested no concern. “It is
nothing, gentlemen,” said Sterbini; “let us to business.” When it was
made known to the Pope he fell upon his knees and remained some time in
silent prayer. “Count Rossi has died a martyr,” said he; “God will
receive his soul in peace.”
The next day the Quirinal was surrounded by a menacing crowd demanding
an immediate declaration of war against Austria, the convocation of a
Constituent Assembly to devise a new form of government, and the
surrender of all power in the meantime to a ministry headed by Sterbini.
The Pope would not listen to them. Then they tried to burn the palace. A
single volley from the Swiss Guard, fired over the heads of the mob,
drove them back. But they returned in force, with an ultimatum, backed
by cannon and the whole civic guard. Sharp-shooters occupied the
house-tops or sheltered themselves behind the famous equestrian groups
in the centre of the piazza, and poured a shower of balls into the
palace windows. One of the papal secretaries was killed. A bullet
entered the Pope’s chamber. The Holy Father called the diplomatic corps
together and told them that he must yield. “But let Europe know that I
am a prisoner here; I have no part in the government; they shall rule in
their own name, not mine.”
His chief thought now was flight. But he was closely watched and the
guards invaded even his private apartments. On the 22d of November, six
days after the attack upon the Quirinal, he received from the Bishop of
Valence in France a silver pyx in which Pope Pius VI. used to carry the
Blessed Sacrament suspended from his neck during his painful exile.
“Heir to the name, the see, the virtues, the courage, and many of the
tribulations of this great pontiff,” wrote the bishop, “you will perhaps
attach some value to this interesting little relic, which I trust may
not serve the same destiny in your Holiness’s hands as in those of its
former possessor.” The Pope looked upon this as a providential provision
for his journey. The ingenuity of the Duke d’Harcourt, ambassador of
France, and the boldness of the Bavarian minister, Count Spaur, aided by
the quick wit of his pious French wife, finally arranged the escape. The
Pope’s faithful gentleman-in-waiting, Filippani, collected the little
articles absolutely needed on the route, and at night carried them under
his cloak, one by one, to the residence of Count Spaur. Meanwhile, it
was announced in Rome that the count, accompanied by his family, was
going to Naples on a diplomatic errand. The countess started first in
her travelling carriage with her son and his tutor, giving out that her
husband, detained a few hours in Rome by important business, would
overtake her at Albano. Towards evening on the same day (November 24,
1848) the Duke d’Harcourt visited the Quirinal in state, and, being
admitted to a private official interview with the Holy Father, began to
read to him a series of long despatches. He read in a loud tone, so that
his voice could be heard by the guards in the ante-room. If they could
have seen what passed as well as they heard, they would have been very
much astonished. For no sooner had the duke begun than the Pope retired
to an inner chamber and transformed himself into a simple priest. He put
on a black robe, an ample cloak, and a low, round hat, and, accompanied
by Filippani, he reached the grand staircase by a private door, passed
the guards unsuspected, and found himself in the street. Filippani had a
carriage in readiness, and drove with his august master to the church of
SS. Peter and Marcellinus, beyond the Colosseum, where Count Spaur was
waiting with another conveyance. The Pope entered it; the count took the
reins; they passed out by the gate of St. Giovanni, near the Lateran,
the sentries being satisfied with the count’s declaration of his name
and quality; and late in the night they reached a certain fountain on
the Appian Way, where the countess was to meet them with the coach and
four. When she drove up a few minutes later she was terrified at finding
the fugitive surrounded by an armed patrol. Count Spaur was answering
the questions of the soldiers, and the Pope and a trooper stood side by
side against the fence. The countess did not lose her presence of mind.
“Come, doctor,” she exclaimed, “jump in; you have kept us waiting”; and
bidding good-night to the patrol, the party drove off at full speed. The
Pope was the first to speak. “Courage!” said he; “I carry the Blessed
Sacrament in the same pyx in which it was borne by Pius VI.” They
crossed the Neapolitan frontier at daylight, and as soon as they were
safe beyond the Pontifical States they all recited the _Te Deum_. They
reached Gaeta in the afternoon. There Cardinal Antonelli joined them in
disguise, and Count Spaur, posting on to Naples, with a letter from the
Pope to King Ferdinand, resigned the care of the Holy Father to the
secretary of the Spanish embassy. Refused admission to the bishop’s
palace because the bishop was absent, the Pope and his companions took
up their quarters at a poor inn, and there they were placed under
surveillance by the military commander, Gen. Gross, who suspected them
as spies. The general was questioning the countess and the cardinal next
day, when he was astounded by the arrival of the king and queen with
three vessels of war and a guard of honor. Count Spaur had reached
Naples and delivered his letter to the king in person about midnight,
and his majesty, after spending the rest of the night in preparations,
embarked in the early morning to do honor to his illustrious guest. And
during the year and a half spent by the Pope in the Neapolitan
dominions, either at Gaeta or Portici, there was no possible mark of
respect which King Ferdinand failed to show him. His purpose had been to
embark in a Spanish frigate for the Balearic Islands, the scene of his
brief and absurd imprisonment in 1823, but Ferdinand persuaded him to
remain in Gaeta, where the royal palace was prepared for his occupation.
There the diplomatic body gathered around him, and the cardinals
assembled after escaping from Rome by various stratagems and disguises.
And how was it in Rome? The ministry of Sterbini, the parliament, and
the authorities left by the Pope disappeared with equal suddenness, and
the government passed into the hands, not by any means of the Roman
people, but of Mazzini with the secret clubs, and of Garibaldi with two
or three thousand soldiers of fortune, brought into the city from other
parts of Italy. They pronounced the deposition of the Pope, and declared
a republic with an executive triumvirate. Nominally the triumvirs were
Mazzini, Armellini, and Saffi; in reality the head of the administration
was Mazzini alone. Wherever the pagan democracy triumphed, even for a
few days, the result was the same. Religion, the rights of property, and
common morality suffered together and personal liberty vanished. Private
estates in Rome were confiscated to the uses of the triumvirate under
the guise of forced loans. The goods of the church were seized. The
shrines and altars were stripped bare. Confessionals were burned in the
Piazza del Popolo. The houses of the cardinals were sacked, convents
were assaulted. Profane rites were celebrated in St. Peter’s at Easter
and Corpus Christi; the papal benediction _urbi et orbi_ was travestied
by a suspended priest; the canons of St. Peter’s were fined for refusing
to take part in the impious ceremonies; the provost of the cathedral of
Sinigaglia was put to death for a similar cause. The clergy were hunted
like vermin, cut down in the public roads, dragged from hiding-places.
The convent of St. Callisto was turned into a slaughter-house, where one
of the Roman priest-catchers used to shut up his victims, and kill them
at pleasure without the formality of trial or sentence. He killed
fourteen there in one day. Two vine-dressers, accused of being Jesuits
in disguise, were torn to pieces on the bridge of St. Angelo. Murder and
pillage stalked hand in hand through the city. There soon ceased to be
any real government at all in Rome, until on the 2d of July, 1849, the
French army restored the papal authority after the horrors of a severe
siege, in which foreigners, not Romans, manned the defences. Anywhere
else in the world the quelling of such a revolt would have been followed
by wholesale condemnations to the galleys and the scaffold. But nothing
could conquer the kindness of Pius IX. His restoration, like his
accession, was followed by an act of amnesty. It left in exile the
guiltiest of the leaders; and care was taken to give the re-established
government as much strength as the situation demanded. Some restrictions
were certainly necessary; several priests had been assassinated since
the surrender of the city; two attempts had been made to burn the
Quirinal; and placards menaced with the vengeance of the societies all
Romans who should welcome the Pope on his return.
Nevertheless, the Holy Father’s journey home in April was a continuous
triumph, and his entrance into Rome was celebrated with frantic
demonstrations of delight. He confirmed many of the most valuable of his
political reforms, and resumed his old life of charity and devotion. The
next ten years of his reign are commonly described as a period of severe
reaction. Nothing could be further from the truth. Pius IX. has never
been an absolutist, never ceased to favor all true liberty, never
believed that nations can be governed in the nineteenth century by the
methods which prevailed in the ninth. From his accession down to the
present day he has not only been the kindest ruler known to history, but
he has invariably granted his people the most liberal institutions and
the fullest measure of personal freedom which the incessant activity of
the secret conspirators would allow. The enemies of Italian liberty are
the dagger and the bayonet. It is mere cant and bigotry to assume that
everything calling itself a republic, whatever its true character, is
entitled to the sympathy of a free people.
When Charles Albert was defeated by the Austrians, Mazzini declared that
the war of the kings had ended and the war of the peoples was about to
begin. The war of the peoples had failed in its turn, and now the secret
societies went back to a conspiracy of the kings. They found Victor
Emanuel a more useful instrument than his father, and with him they made
a compact whose terms we can gather plainly enough from the event. As
the destruction of Christianity was the avowed purpose of the secret
societies from the very beginning, so the first service which Sardinia
must render them in payment for the crown of Italy was a systematic
attack upon the church in the Sardinian territory. The method of these
attacks is always the same. They begin by silencing the clergy,
dispersing the religious orders, and giving an anti-religious character
to public education. In Sardinia the government went so far as to found
a state school of heretical theology, and to impose it upon the
episcopate by force. In the university of Turin it was taught that the
state is omnipotent over the church, that the temporal power of the Pope
is incompatible with the spiritual, that marriage cannot be proved a
sacrament; and the government prohibited the appointment of any
clergyman to a benefice who had not followed the condemned theological
course at this university. For warning their clergy against such
heresies the bishops were imprisoned and their revenues were seized.
Priests were arrested for preaching “insubordination.” Convents were
suppressed without warning, and even without law. Nuns were turned into
the streets in the middle of the night. Clerics were pressed into the
army. Religious communities engaged in teaching were treated with
especial rigor. Church property was confiscated and priests were reduced
to beggary. Thus so early as 1849 did the Sardinian government join the
pagan conspiracy, and lend itself for a price to the work of
emancipating the people from all religious belief.
It was not until 1859 that the plot was ripe, and then, to the dismay of
the great Catholic party in France, an accomplice of Victor Emanuel
presented himself in the person of Napoleon III. There was no reason to
wonder at such an unnatural alliance. Napoleon, whose empire was built
upon revolution, and who held despotic power by the double and doubly
false titles of massacre and counterfeit suffrage, was always
treacherous to the Pope. After the fall of the Mazzinian republic in
1848 he attempted to impose upon the Holy Father a policy in the
interest of the revolutionists, and that was the cause of the Pope’s
long delay at Portici; Pius IX. would not return to Rome until he could
return without conditions. He declared that he “would sooner go to
America; he knew the way thither already: or he would take refuge in
Austria.”[46] Napoleon was compelled to yield. Then came the
demonstration of Count Cavour at the Congress of 1856, made,
undoubtedly, with Napoleon’s connivance. Cavour hurled “the Roman
question” into the midst of European politics by his proposal for the
separation of the Legations from the Pontifical States, and their
government by a lay vicar; and although the subject was postponed, the
mere discussion of it served a practical purpose. “It is the first
spark,” said Count Cavour’s own newspaper, “of an irresistible
conflagration.” Count Rayneval, the French representative at Rome,
refuted the charges brought by Cavour against the papal administration,
but his able report to the Minister of Foreign Affairs was suppressed in
Paris, and only saw the light through the pages of a London daily paper.
Two years later (January 14, 1858) Orsini made his attempt upon
Napoleon’s life, and from his prison he warned the emperor that the
Carbonari held him to his ancient engagements. “So long as Italy shall
not be independent the tranquillity of Europe _and that of your majesty_
will be but a chimera.” From this time there was no more mystery about
Napoleon’s purposes. He had a long private conference with Cavour at
Plombières, and on the 1st of January, 1859, he made the famous
unfriendly remark to the Austrian ambassador at the Tuileries which
proved the signal for the Franco-Italian war. A month later appeared his
pamphlet, _Napoleon III. and Italy_, in which he denounced the civil
government of the Pope as incompatible with modern civilization, and
proposed anew the double-headed confederation of Gioberti, with the King
of Sardinia as military chief and the Sovereign Pontiff as honorary
president. And Piedmont, in the meantime, played her part astutely. For
a long time her agents had been busy among the Italian states. A
circular signed by Garibaldi, who was now a general in the Piedmontese
service, gave instructions to the conspirators:
Footnote 46:
Villefranche.
“1. Before hostilities have commenced between Piedmont and Austria you
are to rise with the cry of 'Italy for ever! Victor Emanuel for ever!’
2. Wherever the insurrection triumphs, he among you who enjoys most
public esteem and confidence is to take the military and civil command,
with the title of provisional commissioner, acting for King Victor
Emanuel, and to retain it until the arrival of a commissioner sent by
the Sardinian government.” But it is unnecessary to quote proofs of the
plot; Mazzini himself laid it bare when he attacked the government on
account of its prosecution of the authors of the abortive revolt at
Genoa, in 1857: “Monarchico-Piedmontese committees exist at Rome,
Bologna, Florence, and several cities of the Lombardo-Venetian kingdom;
and there are secondary centres in several other towns. I could name to
you the persons, several of them deputies, who are the agents between
the poor dupes and the personages of the government.” In Florence the
plot against the Grand Duke of Tuscany, which resulted in his abdication
after his troops had been bribed to desert him, was matured in the very
house of the Sardinian ambassador. In Parma the Sardinian agents
instigated the expulsion of the Duchess Regent, who was yet so popular
that her subjects spontaneously recalled her, and Victor Emanuel had to
drive her out a second time. In the Papal States the Sardinians stood
upon no ceremony, but, when the insurrection took place, they boldly
marched in troops to sustain it.
Before the peace of Villafranca all Central Italy was in the hands of
the Piedmontese commissioners. By the terms of that treaty these
commissioners were to be withdrawn. The amazement of Europe, therefore,
was profound when, even before the signatures to the convention were
dry, Victor Emanuel was found to be setting up provisional governments
in Parma, Modena, Tuscany, and the Romagna, and getting ready to play
the favorite French farce of the plebiscitum. As it was managed in one
state it was managed in all. The Romagna has a million of inhabitants.
The Sardinian agents prepared voting lists, restricted to the large
towns where the revolutionary party was strong and bold, and put on
these lists only eighteen thousand names. Of these not more than a third
voted. The total vote for and against annexation represented, therefore,
only three-fifths of one per cent. of the population. And this is called
a plebiscitum! Nevertheless, on the 18th of March, 1860, the Legations
Parma, Modena, and Tuscany were declared annexed, like Lombardy, to the
Sardinian monarchy, and the king, assured of the countenance of the
emperor, made preparations for the invasion of Umbria and the
Marches.[47] It was a comparatively simple process; in this case
Sardinia frankly took the coveted provinces by force of arms. The
expedition was concerted at Chambery between Napoleon and the
Piedmontese general Cialdini, and in closing the interview the emperor
is reported to have said, _Faites, mais faites vite!_—almost the very
words which our Lord spoke to Judas: “What thou doest, do quickly.” On
the tenth anniversary of this interview Napoleon, a prisoner in the
power of the great German Empire which he had done more than any other
one man to create, ceased to reign.
Footnote 47:
When the Pope launched a bull of excommunication against the
spoliators of his territory, Napoleon forbade its publication in
France. He allowed the official and radical journals, however, to
publish a forged bull, and to ridicule and denounce at pleasure the
extravagant language which it imputed to the Holy Father. The bishops
tried to expose the forgery, but the press was closed to them.
We are near the end. A fortnight after Sedan the Piedmontese army,
60,000 strong, appeared before the walls of Rome to seize the last of
the temporal possessions of the Holy See. Defence was impossible. The
pontiff instructed his little army to resist only until a breach had
been made in the walls. Then he went to pray in the venerable Lateran
basilica, the mother-church of Christendom. He visited the neighboring
chapel of the Scala Santa, and made on his knees the painful ascent of
the twenty-eight marble steps from the judgment-hall of Pilate which our
Saviour’s blessed feet had pressed. In the little chapel at the top he
implored the pity and protection of Almighty God for the afflicted
church. Then, followed by the acclamations of a crowd of affectionate
subjects, and blessing them as he went, he entered the Vatican, and Rome
has never seen him since.
The troops of Victor Emanuel made themselves masters of Rome the next
day, September 20, 1870. The king followed them in time and established
his court in the Quirinal. And since then, in Rome as in the rest of
Italy, the pagan revolution has gone steadily forward to the suppression
of Christian education, of monastic and charitable orders, and, as far
as possible, of all divine worship. When Garibaldi rode on horseback
into the church of Monte Rotondo and ordered his prisoners to cover
their heads, which they had bared out of respect to the sacred place, he
only gave emphasis to the sentiment which pervades the whole movement.
The convents are empty; the churches are desolate; libraries are
scattered; great seminaries of theology are broken up; Christian
education has been driven from the school-room; there are hundreds of
priests who go hungry and in rags; there are nuns in Rome whose whole
income is three cents a day; the bishops have been robbed of everything
and live on the charity of the Pope; pious processions are prohibited;
members of religious orders who survive the suppression of their houses
are forbidden to receive novices; the father-general of the Jesuits is
an exile from Rome, and his nearest representative lives as a private
lay person in hired lodgings. Today a bill is pending in the Italian
parliament, and has already passed one branch of it, to punish bishops,
priests, religious writers, and journalists for what is styled
“disturbing the public conscience” and the “peace of families.” The
Italian government has pretended to guarantee the freedom and
independence of the Sovereign Pontiff in the exercise of all his
spiritual functions, but now it proposes to prevent the publication of
his encyclicals and allocutions; to condemn him not only to perpetual
imprisonment, but to perpetual silence; to prosecute the bishops if they
transmit his instructions to the faithful, and the priests if they
preach against any heresy sanctioned by the state. To censure, by speech
or writing, any law or institution approved by the civil authority is to
be treated as a felony calculated to “disturb consciences.” Our divine
Lord passed the whole period of his ministry on earth in disturbing
consciences; the history of Christianity, the labors of missionaries and
reformers, are nothing else than a record of the disturbance of
consciences. But the pagan revolution has no toleration for
Christianity. Close the confessionals, tear down the pulpits, burn the
Bibles, break the tables of the law; the sleeping conscience of Italy
must not be disturbed.
Thus the conspiracy of the kings has moved on towards the subjugation of
the church. The secret societies are only using the kingdom of Italy and
the despotic empire of Germany for the accomplishment of their
anti-religious purpose, and when that is done the kings, in their turn,
will be the victims of the deep-laid and long-cherished plot for the
abolition of “subordination” and worship. Let nobody imagine that they
are inactive or that they are satisfied with national unity. Mazzini
never pretended that their work was done when a king was set up in the
Pope’s palace. He died conspiring against Victor Emanuel and urging
Italy to press on to “the goal of the revolution.” Nor did his projects
die with him. The anniversary of his death was celebrated last March by
democratic demonstrations all over Italy which the government was
helpless to suppress. “A funeral march, a national hymn, and a few
short, earnest words from some well-known and esteemed local republicans
and _capi-popolo_,” says an English liberal journal, “declaring the
commemorative ceremony to be not merely a token of remembrance, but 'a
_promise_,’ was all that took place; but the fact that these things did
take place on the same day throughout the whole of Italy is one of great
significance. In many instances the authorities did their best
previously, by warnings and even by threats, to prevent these
demonstrations, but we have heard of no case in which they ventured upon
any attempt to put them down by force.”[48] The flags which the
associations carried were “free from the stain,” to use the popular
phrase—that is to say, they did not show the arms of Savoy; and the
letters read and addresses delivered spoke openly of a “time for action”
which was yet to come. And while the clubs were thus parading and
declaiming the following circular was distributed among the rank and
file of the Italian army:
Footnote 48:
_The Examiner_ (London), March 31, 1877.
“Free citizens! Brother Carbonari! Every sect, every family, every
individual is free to investigate, as best he may, the road which
leads to heaven; but it belongs to the Carboneria to indicate and
open up the way to the kingdom of liberty, to the triumph of
justice, to social amelioration upon earth. The Carboneria, in its
principles, in its development, and in the means which it proposes
to employ for its purpose—_i.e._, for the amelioration, economic and
moral, of mankind, for the diffusion of liberty, and for the perfect
equalization of society—is the one association which can boast of
the right of nature and the most perfect justice. All other
associations, because based on privilege and ambition, either miss
their aim or become useless. Persuaded of this, the apostles of our
principle have devoted themselves to propagating and defending it
with ardor, defying dangers, condemnations, and calumnies of the
most deadly kind. Many were the acquisitions which our association
made in a short time in every branch of social science, in the arts,
and in commerce, and now all our aspirations are turned towards you
who compose the army—the material force of nations. Soldiers!
remember that you are sons of the people, free citizens, and at the
same time the obstacle to the common weal and the hope of all. Do
you wish to serve tyranny, privilege—in a word, the oppressors?
Remember that you are sons of the people; that force alone dragged
you from the bosom of your desolated families; that, slaves of a
stern discipline, you are forced to shoot down the oppressed, to
protect the oppressors; and do not forget that to-morrow, wounded
and crippled, you will return to the ranks of the people whom you
charged with the bayonet, and that in your turn you will then be
charged and oppressed. Remember that before being slaves you were
free, and that before serving the despot you were citizens. The
Carboneria expects you among its ranks; come and range yourselves by
the side of thousands of other brave ones, officers and graduates,
who do not disdain to stake everything to preserve themselves true
sons of the people, generous citizens of our common country.”
II.
We have endeavored to follow thus far the progress of that general
revolt of the world against the divine authority which has marked the
pontificate of Pius IX. and embraces the Holy Father’s heroic life of
constancy and suffering. But simultaneously there has gone on a contrary
movement—a clearer development and consolidation of the authority of
God’s church over the minds of the faithful; and herein we trace his
glorious life of triumphant action. For his attitude towards the
revolution has not been one of mere passive resistance. He has fought a
stout fight for the imperilled truth. It is a time of corruption and
unbelief, when the world is lifted up with satanic pride to defy Heaven,
and society is sacrificing all the guarantees of order, and even the
elect are sorely tempted. History will record that the great mission of
Pope Pius IX. was to expose the fallacies and illusions of these evil
days, to stamp every error as it arose with the reprobation of the
infallible judge, and, after empires, and kingdoms, and republics have
been racked by a century of the pagan revolt, to prepare again the
foundations of Christian civilization. “God has laid on me,” said he to
the great assembly of bishops in 1867, “the duty to declare the truths
on which Christian society is based, and to condemn the errors which
undermine its foundations. And I have not been silent. In the Encyclical
of 1864, and in that which is called the Syllabus, I declared to the
world the dangers which threaten society and I condemned the falsehoods
which assail its life. To you, venerable brethren, I now appeal to
assist me in this conflict with error. On you I rely for support. I am
aged and alone, praying on the mountain, and you, the bishops of the
church, are come to hold up my arms.” “There is perhaps hardly any
pontiff,” says Cardinal Manning, “who has governed the church with more
frequent exercises of supreme authority than Pius IX.”; and surely there
is something magnificent in the courage with which he has met every
attack of the world by a new and bolder assertion of the everlasting
truths against which the world is in arms. There is not a characteristic
heresy of the time for which we Catholics cannot find in the utterances
of this great pontiff a complete antidote; there is not a loss inflicted
upon the church by her enemies for which we cannot trace a compensation
in some clearer recognition of her spiritual power, some sublime
restatement of her sovereign authority. Our Holy Father has healed
divisions, abolished national and doctrinal parties within the pale of
the church, and displayed to the universe the household of Christ one
not only in the bonds of faith, but in unity of sympathies. Four times
he has summoned the bishops to meet him at the tomb of the apostle. In
1854 more than two hundred bishops and cardinals assembled for the
definition of the dogma of the Immaculate Conception—an act which,
besides its importance in a doctrinal sense, had a special significance
as illustrating the supreme authority of the see of Peter. In 1862, just
after the first spoliation of the temporalities of the Papacy by Victor
Emanuel, two hundred and sixty-five bishops assembled in Rome for the
canonization of the martyrs of Japan, and their meeting, both for the
circumstances under which it was summoned and the strong terms in which
the prelates expressed their union with the Holy See and their absolute
submission to its teachings, made a profound impression throughout
Christendom. Five years later the revolution had made immense progress;
yet in the midst of political disturbance the world not only saw five
hundred bishops gather at Rome to celebrate the centenary of St. Peter’s
martyrdom, and again to testify their devotion to Peter’s successor, but
it heard the announcement of a general council, the first in three
hundred years, called at a time when to the unaided human eye the papal
throne seemed tottering to its fall. Here was an inspiring example of
faith and Christian courage!
Cardinal Manning’s admirable sketch of the history of the Vatican
Council,[49] now in course of publication, shows the reasons for calling
that grand assembly, and the reasons especially for the definition of
infallibility, its supreme and most glorious achievement; and it brings
out in clear light the fact that it was with Pius himself that the idea
of the council originated. If it could ever be said that a general
council was the work of one man, the Council of the Vatican might be
called the crowning work of the long life of Pius IX.—one which alone
would place him among the most illustrious of all the Roman pontiffs,
and make his reign a remarkable era in the history of the Catholic
Church. The circumstances of the time which give such immense importance
to the convocation of this council are summarized in the opinions of the
cardinals to whom the Pope submitted the question as early as 1864, and
we find an excellent synopsis of them in the papers by Cardinal Manning
already cited. “The special character of the age,” say their eminences,
“is the tendency of a dominant party of men to destroy all the ancient
Christian institutions, the life of which consists in a supernatural
principle, and to erect upon their ruins and with their remains a new
order founded on natural reason alone.... From these principles follows
the exclusion of the church and of revelation from the sphere of civil
society and of science; and, further, from this withdrawal of civil
society and of science from the authority of revelation spring the
naturalism, rationalism, pantheism, socialism, communism of these times.
From these speculative errors flows in practice the modern revolutionary
liberalism which consists in the supremacy of the state over the
spiritual jurisdiction of the church, over education, marriage,
consecrated property, and the temporal power of the head of the church.”
These and a multitude of other prevalent errors Pius IX. had condemned
in the Syllabus and Encyclical which Cardinal Manning elsewhere refers
to as “among the greatest acts of this pontificate,” summing up the
declarations of many years, and giving them “a new promulgation and a
sensible accession of power over the minds not only of the faithful, but
even of opponents, by the concentrated force and weight of their
application.”[50] But it was expedient that the declaration should be
published again with the united voice of the whole episcopate joined to
its head. Thus the council was almost unanimously approved as a
sovereign remedy for the disorders of the time, an encouragement for the
faithful, a cure for dissensions, an antidote for evil tendencies within
the church, an impulse to the new and nobler life which even amid the
political and social confusion had already begun to spring up among the
Catholic peoples. And so, even while the pagan revolution was preparing
its last assault upon the pontifical throne, an astonished world
witnessed this most majestic demonstration of the authority, the unity,
and the power of the church, and the whole body of the faithful were
filled with courage and fresh enthusiasm. Driven from his capital,
robbed, and insulted, the captive of the Vatican, whose voice rings out
clear and firm above the din of the century, whose strong arm sustains,
whose saintly example inspires, is yet victor over the world in the
council and the Syllabus.
Footnote 49:
_The Nineteenth Century_ (London), March and April, 1877.
Footnote 50:
_Petri Privilegium._ London. 1871.
It would be pleasant, if space allowed, to follow the course of his
beautiful private life. It is a model of devotion and simplicity. In his
great palace he occupies only a plain bed-chamber with a bare stone
floor, and a working-cabinet with little furniture except a table and
two chairs. He rises, summer and winter, at half-past five. He says
Mass, and hears a second Mass of thanksgiving; or if sickness prevents
him from celebrating the Holy Sacrifice, he does not fail to receive
communion. His hours of work are long and regular. His fare is plain,
even to meagreness. Every day he takes exercise in the Vatican gardens,
and one of his favorite resorts is a beautiful alley of orange-trees,
where the pigeons come to feed from his hand. One day he was discovered
with three cardinals, playing “hide and seek” in the gardens with a
little boy. Yet with all his gentleness he has a keen and caustic wit.
The author of a pious biography sent his book to the Pope for approval.
The pontiff read till he came to these words: “Our saint triumphed over
all temptations, but there was one snare which he could not escape: he
married”; and then he threw the book from him. “What!” said he, “shall
it be written that the church has six sacraments and one snare?” Of a
Catholic diplomatist whose conduct and professions were at variance he
said: “I do not like these accommodating consciences. If that man’s
master should order him to put me in jail, he would come on his knees to
tell me I must go, and his wife would work me a pair of slippers.”
During the French occupation of Rome a certain French colonel was guilty
of so gross an offence to the Pope’s authority that the Holy Father
demanded his recall. Before his departure he had the effrontery to
present himself at the Vatican and ask for a number of small favors,
ending with a request for the Pope’s autograph. The Pontiff wrote on a
card the words which our Lord addressed to Judas in the garden, “_Amice,
ad quid venisti?_” (“Friend, wherefore hast thou come hither?”), and the
colonel, who did not understand Latin, showed it to all his friends as a
testimonial of the Pope’s regard, until somebody unkindly supplied him
with the translation. It is the etiquette of the Vatican that carriages
with only one horse must not enter the inner court. This rule was
enforced one day in 1867 against the Prussian ambassador, Count von
Arnim, and Bismarck, for purposes of his own, endeavored to make a
diplomatic scandal of the transaction, instructing the ambassador to
close the legation and quit Rome instantly unless he was allowed to
drive with one horse to the very foot of the papal staircase. But
Bismarck was no match for Pius IX. The Pope caused Cardinal Antonelli to
write that “His Holiness, taking compassion on the difficulties of the
diplomatic body, would in future allow the representatives of the great
powers to approach his presence with one quadruped _of any sort_”—avec
_un quadrupède quelconque_. It is believed that the Prussian minister
never availed himself of this permission in its full extent.
The newspapers bring us bad news from time to time of the Pope’s health.
Let us not be alarmed. He comes of a long-lived family. His grandfather
died at ninety-three, his father at eighty-three, his mother at
eighty-eight, his eldest brother at ninety. “I am in the hands of God,”
he said to an English gentleman; “I shall bless my hour when it comes.
But, my son, when I take up certain newspapers nowadays, and do not find
in them an account of my last illness and my end, it always seems to me
as if the editors had forgotten something.”
A VISION OF THE COLOSSEUM, A.D. 1873
O God, the heathens are come into thy inheritance, they have defiled
thy holy temple: they have made Jerusalem as a place to keep
fruit.—_Ps._ lxxviii.
I had been idly reading, through the quiet afternoon,
A poet’s passionate verses, falling softly into tune
Of even, measured rhythm, and of fine, melodious words,
Rippling along with easy grace like careless song of birds;
Now warblings, half unconscious, like the happy songster’s trill
Poured from some wind-swayed bough when all the woods are still;
Now shriller notes that rose above harsh, grating sounds of war,
Loud clarion-notes, above the drums, proclaiming peace afar—
Loud pæan sounds triumphant that Italy was free,
United, and one mighty realm from smiling sea to sea;
From Sicily’s smoke-crowned peak to Savoy’s Alpine chain
One flag met every rambling breeze that breathed o’er hill and
plain;
And haughty Rome, in truth, the Cæsar’s city now once more,
The perilous reign of Peter passed for ever safely o’er.
“_Io!_ _triumphe!_ onward! All ye guarding eagles, come!
And with its ancient glory fill your old imperial home.”
I, sighing, closed the volume. Ah! for me how sadly dim
The poet’s glowing setting of pale Freedom’s Roman hymn,
Whose music, as I heard it, only direst discord made.
The martial beat of rattling drum, the trumpet’s mellowing shade,
Hid all the sweeter utterance of a happy people’s voice
Or sound of pealing church-bells bidding kindly skies rejoice.
I heard above the loudest note the dull, persistent sound
Of forging iron fetters—even riveted while crowned,
Sweet Freedom saw, indignant, built her frail and crumbling throne
Of consecrated marble newly stolen, stone by stone.
“_Io!_ _triumphe!_ onward! But the shouting could not drown
The psalm of homeless friars, weary exiles, marching down,
Chapel and cell denied them; for of these the state has need.
And from the cross’s folly must St. Francis’ sons be freed!
I heard in plaintive chorus nuns sad _Miserere_ sing,
As ceased for them for ever their old convent’s sheltering—
Let them seek aid from Him on high whose faithful sheep they are;
The horses of the hero-king seek not their help so far!
I heard, above th’ exultant fife, the loud-voiced auctioneer
Strike down the church’s garment 'mid the idle jest and jeer
Of souls that trembled not to see the sacred chalice borne
By hands that would have helped of old to press the twisted thorn,
Who would for thirty pieces once their loving Lord have sold—
Why not his spouse’s raiment for twice that, glittering gold?
I heard the heavy rustle of quaint, figured tapestry
By pious fingers cunning wrought in days of chivalry.
Loud chimed the strangers’ clanking coin that paid the moneyed
worth,
But faint the modern anthem’s notes proclaiming Freedom’s birth!
Of wandering peoples, too, I heard the tired and restless tread,
Their little harvest grown too scant for even daily bread,
Fair Freedom’s added burden grown too heavy to be borne;
While Italy, sad-hearted, watched her children sail forlorn
To seek across the western sea the life she could not give;
For her cannon must be cast, and a nation she must live.
A nation crowned! Ah! royal state is very heavy dole;
All too quick the world’s pulse beats to heed plaint of weary soul.
Still with triumphant pæans did the poet’s verses ring:
“Shout, Italy, our Italy! all-joyous anthems sing!
Clang out, sad-voiced Roman bells! hail Piedmont’s Victor,—king!”
“_Miserere, miserere_,”
Sounded church and convent steeple;
“In thy mercy spare us, Saviour,
Leading back thy erring people.”
And as the clanging belfries trembled strangely with the sound,
The _Miserere_ drifting to the peoples gathered round,
Methought the quiet afternoon had faded from my sight,
And I, beneath a Roman sky, alone with deepening night,
Stood in the Colosseum’s shade, with many a wondering thought,
No touch of moonlight falling on the walls the Romans wrought;
The calm stars, gazing earthward, seemed to give nor light nor
shade;
No torches’ fitful splendor through the lonely arches played;
And, even as the shade was deep, so deep the silence fell,
So calm the night it scarce could wake the wind-harp’s sighing
swell;
No beaded _aves_ drifted from cowled pilgrims of the cross,
No murmur of atoning prayers pleading the nations’ loss;
No tourists’ idle laughter broke the silence of the scene,
While the shrouding arches sheltered my thoughts of what had been.
Years, centuries had vanished as my wingèd thoughts flew fast
To days when Rome imperial o’er the world her robe had cast;
O’er the wild, barbarian legions I saw her eagles shine,
While her nobles quaffed Greek learning in draughts of Grecian wine—
Expounding, too, with easy art, the Christians’ foolish faith:
How traitorous to Cæsar’s state was every Christian breath.
And then I saw the glitter of their perfumed robes no more,
As gleaming wings of seraphs stroked my eyelids softly o’er.
Then I heard the sweet intoning of the Christians’ matin psalm,
And I saw them lowly kneeling before the mystic Lamb:
Maid patrician bent in prayer with the dark slave of the East,
Egypt’s sage, Juda’s captive, meeting at the angels’ feast.
Before that holy altar all one sacred likeness wear—
His who, on the cross outstretched, all our sin and weakness bare:
Subtle Greek before the cross laying down his pride of art;
Falling meekly peace divine on some savage Scythian heart;
Hapless Jew, haughty Northman, Roman proud, and cowering slave,
Bound together by the blood of Him who died all men to save;
One by the bond of suffering, one in the voice of prayer
That rose with solemn sweetness through the catacombs’ dull air:
“_Miserere, miserere_,”
Rose the sad and earnest pleading;
“In thy mercy spare us, Saviour,
Unto thee the nations leading.”
Lo! as entranced I listened, there mingled with the song
A sound as if of many steps passing the streets along,
And the ancient Roman arches 'neath which I dreaming stood
Grew peopled with the city’s fierce and restless multitude.
What noble game should fitly while the idle hours away,
What gracious pastime fill with joy the Roman holiday?
Should some strong-limbed barbarian lay his life down in its
strength,
That the day for Roman matrons should have less of weary length?
Nay, daintier sight the maiden tells, binding her mistress’ zone:
To-day, by Cæsar’s lions, Christian maid shall be o’erthrown!
Within the dread arena pale and firm the martyr stood—
A strange and dazzling sight she seemed amid the soldiers rude;
So slight the little, childish form, so young the radiant face,
Whence streams of holy glory flooded all the pagan place;
The happy lips half-parted with a love that fain would speak,
And the eyes to heaven uplifted beneath the forehead meek—
The eyes whence earth had vanished, heaven’s shadow resting there,
The glimmer of its shining falling softly on her hair.
Ah! happy maid, that, listening, heard above the tumult wild
The loved voice of the Father calling home his little child;
The voice of the Belovèd bidding sweet his loved one come:
“Arise, my Dove, my Beautiful”—it sounded o’er the hum
Of wondering crowds who could not guess whence came the martyr’s
strength,
Her heart with joy nigh breaking that it should rest at length
On His whose love had bought it with a price exceeding far
The spoils of all the nations gracing Cæsar’s triumph-car.
One little grain of incense still might save the martyr’s life,
But one little breath for Cæsar still win release from strife—
Unto Cæsar what is Cæsar’s, to God the life he gave;
Less duty could she offer Him who died that life to save?
And then the vision faded, and once more I stood alone
Where thought of sainted martyrs seemed to consecrate each stone,
And stars as calmly watching o’er as once in days bygone
When Cæsar’s dearest pastime won his slaves a deathless crown.
“_Miserere, miserere_,”
Seemed the night-wind lowly sighing;
“Call thy erring sheep, O Saviour,
Dearest Lord of love undying!”
Soft then I saw advancing through the darkness’ mighty shade
A tall and stately figure in wide, trailing robes arrayed,
The fair, white arms in longing stretched, as if in woe to seek
The comfort of the broken heart, the strength of all the weak—
Christ’s blessèd cross with arms outspread, as if to mutely plead
For mercy for the sinner, from tender hearts love’s meed;
Of mightiest love the symbol true, the link ’twixt heaven and earth,
The sign by which earth’s frailest one is cleansed for heavenly
birth.
In vain! No craving hand can touch that sacred symbol now,
Its holy vision bring no rest to world-tossed, aching brow;
The modern Cæsar has no need to mark where martyrs fell:
“Unto Cæsar what is Cæsar’s”—that word they kept too well.
And murmuring monks but echo, their chaplets telling o’er,
The words these stones repeated in the Roman days of yore;
To earthly science dearer far the walls the pagans built
Than the precious blood of martyrs for love of Jesus spilt.
Perchance beneath these stones might lie rare treasures of old Rome—
The cross in Christian kingdom must not wander from its home!
“_Miserere, miserere_,”
Seemed the very stones outcrying;
“In thy mercy spare the nations.
Heed, O God! the prisoners’ sighing.”
A sound of low lamenting then filled all the silent place,
Whose darkness won unearthly light from out the stranger’s face—
A face so fair not Paphos’ queen could claim a grace so rare;
Ah! only she, the much-desired, such peerless mien could wear.
And low I heard her murmuring: “Ah! me, woe, woe is me!
So weary are my ears with sound of shouts that speak me free.
Free! Am I free? Upon my head rests weight of royal crown,
And Piedmont’s soldiers guard me, fearing lest I lay it down.
Italy! Am I Italy? That name indeed I bear;
And among the nations standing a nation’s crown I wear—
Proud empires that salute me fair, green lands beyond the sea,
Crying aloud: 'Shout, Italy! Thank Victor thou art free;
Thy peoples shall no longer 'neath the tyrant’s scourge bend low,
And, too, thy seemly garment no unseemly rent shall show;
Among thy peers come thou once more to take thy place and name,
Fair Southern queen, King Victor has ta’en away thy shame.’
“O gold-haired northern peoples! know ye not the sound of chains?
Ne’er heard ye clink of German spur along my Lombard plains?
O rosy-cheeked barbarians! do ye deem that I am free
Because my rulers speed you when ye prate of liberty!’
When ye the wide arms shorten of the world-redeeming cross
Since too far its shadow falls, and ye deem that shade your loss!
Far, far across the western seas I hear their poets sing,
While Freedom’s joy-bells pealing, loud, exulting anthems ring:
'Rise up, dear Italy unchained; thank Victor thou art free,
And bend, oppressed, at Peter’s throne no more thy trembling knee.
Thy sons shall waste in convent cell no more their manhood’s
strength;
See! open wide, their prison-doors: free men they are at length!
Dark tyranny and priestcraft prostrate fall before thy king;
Thy children freemen rise once more beneath his sheltering.’
“O strong-armed western people! in your home beyond the sea,
Bearing even as your birthright the grace of liberty,
List not the songs such poets sing: they know not me or mine;
Studded with cruel thorns for me each laurel wreath they twine.
A mournful queen I am, alas! crowned in another’s place—
The mighty One from whom my face hath won its look of grace.
I sit as a usurper where I fain would kneel and pray,
Crowned with Rome’s earthly circlet from her forehead stol’n away!
The world’s imperial mistress once, now queen of love and peace,
Holds she her life and liberty but as earth’s monarchs please?
Fain would they on her gracious brow my coronet have set,
Its lustre dimmed with Savoy’s loss, with Naples’ tears all wet!
The handmaid of her Maker, fair with lustre not of earth.
Should she to Piedmont’s Victor bend her brow of heavenly birth?
The mother of all peoples where the cross’s light is shed,
Was my dull, narrow diadem fit crown to grace her head?
In her old palace I sit throned, crowned with her earthly crown,
With jealous care watched ever, lest I cast the honor down.
I see my children wander wide in exile from their own,
And, when they ask for living bread, my masters give them stone.
I sit beside St. Peter’s chair; like his, my hands are bound;
My eyes weep bitter sorrow at your pæans’ wild, glad sound;
Beneath the heavy cuirass that is girded on my breast
I bear the wreath mysterious St. Peter’s hand hath blessed.
Upon the cannon rests my hand craving to lift the cross,
And 'neath Sardinian colors I bewail the blind world’s loss.
“_Miserere, miserere_,”
Seemed the weary voice outcrying,
“Spare thy heritage, O Saviour!
Hearken thou the prisoners’ sighing.
“O credulous Western people! cease shouting I am free.
My masters have no knowledge of the truth of liberty,
Who murmur with ignoble lips my old and honored name,
And seek to rebaptize me with unholy rites of shame.
Are ye drunk with Freedom’s dregs that ye have forgot her face,
And bend before th’ unworthy thing men show you in her place?
Stretch not your hands, God-fearing race, to welcome such as these:
God, who your shepherd is, and judge, gives not to such his peace.
“_Miserere, miserere_,
Mighty Lord of all the living,
In thy mercy spare the erring,
Sacred Heart of love forgiving!”
“The great arched walls sent echoing back the sad, indignant plaint,
The light from that fair, mournful face grew evermore more faint,
Till, fading in the darkness, light and shadow both were gone,
And I sat where crimson sunset with southern splendor shone,
Lighting the western city with a flood of harmless fire,
With a glory, quickly fading, enwreathing mast and spire;
Whence no mellow bells pealed earthward, sounding the angel’s call,
Nor _Miserere_ drifted from roof and tower tall;
The busy craft went sailing up and down the crowded stream—
Upon my lap the poet’s book, the conjurer of my dream.
Vision and sound had vanished, only still dim echoes fell
Of pleading voices rising on the night-wind’s scarce-felt swell:
“_Miserere, miserere_,
Hear, O God! the prisoners’ sighing;
Spare thy heritage, O Saviour!
Dearest Lord of love undying.”
THE DOOM OF THE BELL.
Two men were sitting in a garret at the very top of one of the craziest
old houses in Bruges—_not_ a house dating from the fifteenth century,
such as those we admire to this day, but a house that was already two
hundred years old when those were built. It stood on the brink of the
canal beyond which are now the public gardens that have displaced the
ramparts of the once turbulent and independent city. _Then_ the houses
crowded into the wide fosse of not too fragrant water, and leaned their
balconied gables over it. This was not in the busy or the splendid
quarter; it was far from the cathedral and the Guildhall. And in those
prosperous times of the Hanseatic League, of the Venetian and Genoese
merchant-princes visiting and marrying among their full peers of the
city of Bruges—the times of the grand palaces built by those royal and
learned traders—these two men I speak of were poor, obscure, and with
little prospect of ever being anything else. Yet one of them had it in
him to do as great things as the Van Eycks, and to take the art-loving
city by storm, if he could only get “a chance.” It was the same in the
year 1425 as it is now, and men in picturesque short-hose and flat caps
were marvellously like those we see in ugly chimney-pots and tight
trousers. The rivalry of other artists—none _very_ eminent—and the
ungetable patronage of rich men stood in this young painter’s way, and
he got disheartened and disgusted. This garret was his studio, his
bedroom, and his kitchen. It was cheap, and the light could be managed
easily and properly to suit his painting; but it was not one of those
elaborately artistic studios, a picture in itself, which we associate
with the idea of the “old masters.” The things that were there had
evidently drifted there and got heaped up by accident—homely things most
of them, and disposed with the carelessness natural to a man who had
little belief or hope in his future. There was an air about the whole
place as well as its owner that seemed to say as plainly as any words,
“What is the use?” But the other man was a contrast to him. He was much
older; a wiry form, and eager, small eyes, and an air of resistance to
outward circumstances, “as if he could not help it,” but not in the
sense of what is popularly called an “iron will,” were his chief
distinguishing marks. He was neither artist nor merchant, and he lived
“by his wits.” In those days, just the same as now, that meant something
bordering on dishonesty; and such men were known as useful, but scarcely
reputable. This individual was seated on a low trunk or chest of
polished wood, but not carved, nor even adorned with curious hinges or
iron-work; the other stood opposite, leaning on the high sill of a
window in the gable, looking down into the canal.
“Peter,” said the latter after a pause, “have you heard of any one dying
lately in the great houses, or, for that matter, in the rookeries?”
“No, not _dying_—at least, not lately,” said the other slowly.
“Not _dying?_” said the first, laying the same emphasis on the word as
his friend had done, and not showing any lack of understanding or sign
of surprise.
“Well, I mean she recovered; but she was pretty near death, and of
course will be again as soon as it is safe. It put some of his
lordship’s plans out a little when he heard how badly Simon had done his
work. But you know it was not at his house, but in a kind of prison, and
she was put there on a charge of stealing her mistress’ Genoese
pearl-embroidered robe, and _it was said_ the lady begged as a favor she
might not be publicly executed for the attempt, but allowed some time to
repent and prepare; and when she was ready, she was to be told that one
day, within the week, she would be poisoned by something in her food,
which she could not taste and which would give her no pain, but put her
to sleep—_for ever_. But no one believed that this was her mistress’
request, nor that she ever stole anything, of course. Every one knows
that poor Dame Margaret is a cipher in her husband’s house—a worse
victim of my Lord Conrad’s than any one there, many as they are; and he
is just now out of reach of punishment, being, by the Count of Flanders’
influence, a member of the government, a councillor, and I know not what
besides. But it seems Simon did not do his work aright, and the poor
girl is still there, and no doubt, in a week or two, the experiment will
be quietly tried again and with success. Jan, are you listening?”
“Yes,” said the artist as he turned round with absent look and a
gesture, as if he had unconsciously been picking off some buttons from
his sleeve and dropping them in the canal below.
“Well, what do you think of it?”
“Peter,” said the other abruptly, “is Simon your friend?”
“Well, we have had dealings together sometimes. He sells me clothes now
and then; you know he has a good deal of such stuff on his hands.”
“If I could pay him,” said the artist bitterly, “I should not need any
go-between; but I have nothing. I want something he could give me, and,
if I had it, I should not need any patron, and would take none, short of
the Count of Flanders himself.”
“Riddles again,” said Peter quietly; “poverty makes you mysterious.”
“I’ll tell you plainly what the riddle is, if you’ll help me.”
“For friendship’s sake?”
“Oh! no, indeed. Is there one in all Bruges would do it, or I expect it
of him?”
“Well, well, do not croak; but _you_ know by experience that it is hard
to live.”
“If you will get me what I want of Simon, you shall have one-fourth of
my future reward and Simon one-fourth.”
“Too mean terms, those, Jan,” said Peter quietly, but intently watching
his friend’s face.
“Very well, each a third, then; I knew you would want no less. But, look
you,” he added, brightening up, “no one can share the fame, and I shall
be known all over Flanders and Brabant, and France—ay, even Italy and
Germany; and who knows if the Greek merchants will not carry my name to
the court of Constantinople itself?—and you two poor wretches will have
nothing but a pitiful handful of gold.”
“Quite enough for me, at any rate,” said Peter composedly; “it will be
more than I ever had before. But do not let us 'count our chickens
before they are hatched.’ What is it, though, that you want to work this
miracle with?”
“Only a vial of her blood after the girl has been dead four hours.”
Peter betrayed no emotion.
“Rather an unusual request,” he said meditatively, “and one that savors
strongly of witchcraft, which you know is scarcely less dangerous than
heresy. You remember what happened at Constance scarcely more than ten
years ago?”
“Nonsense! What has heresy to do with the mixing of my colors? And who
but a leech will find out the mixture? And after all, if a fool were to
use this potion just mixed as I shall mix it, and paint a picture with
it, his picture would be only fit for a tavern-sign, and no one could
tell the difference. If you need the ingredients, you need the skill
more.”
“Why, Jan, you are getting enthusiastic—a miracle, that, in itself. I
thought you had made up your mind that you would never do anything that
would get known.”
“Well, I have a feeling, since you mentioned this case, that I _shall_
be known before I die, and known by _this_ means too. Can you get me
what I want?”
“I dare say I can. But shall I tell the old sinner Simon that I want it
for you, or say it is for a leech?”
“Why lie about it?” said the young man fiercely.
“Prudence, you know,” said the other, perfectly unabashed.
“No; tell him the bare truth, but swear him to secrecy. If he tells it,
he shall forfeit his share.”
“He could get twice as much for denouncing you.”
“Let him! Where is his interest to denounce me? He is not a fiend, and
_he_ knows it is hard to live.”
“He _did_, but may be he has forgotten it in his present position. All
the grandees know him now.”
“But you forget, Peter, that his own business is more dangerous than my
undertaking could be, even taking it for granted I should be suspected
of witchcraft, and he would scarcely like to draw attention on his own
delicate doings.”
“So far true,” said Peter. “I respect your shrewdness; you _can_ talk
sense sometimes. I will get that vial for you some time this week or
next.”
“Do not forget the _exact_ time after death—four hours. The perfection
of the mixture would be gone if you did not attend to that. I shall come
with you to the door, and wait for you and the vial, any night and any
hour you mention.”
“Very well,” said Peter, as he got up and stretched himself. “I suppose
your larder is empty?”
“Oh! I forgot. You can have what there is—cheese three days old, and
some fresh brown bread, and two eggs, new-laid yesterday morning, which
my friend the washerwoman gave me for sitting up at night with her sick
boy. She _would_ make me take them, and I am glad now _I_ need not eat
them myself. I should feel mean, if I did; and yet, if they stayed there
till to-morrow, hunger would drive me to it. You are welcome to them.”
Meanwhile, Peter had silently helped himself to all the articles
mentioned except one “hunch” of bread, and left the garret with a cool
“Thank you.” Jan turned back to the window, and stayed nearly an hour
looking down into the drowsy canal with its fringe of dark, huddled
houses, each, as he thought, a frame for a picture full of the same
agony of hopeless aspirations and submission to grim and sordid
circumstances as his own. But he saw through glasses of his own
staining; for many of those wretched, crazy, but beautiful houses held
pictures of a bright home life and love that looked no higher or farther
for happiness, and was, in truth, the outcome of a mind more
philosophical than the future glory of Flemish art, staring into the
flood from his garret window, could boast of possessing.
Three months went by, and no one saw the young artist, save the man who
sold him his meagre provisions, Peter, and his friend of the eggs. Five
days after the conversation we have recorded Peter and he were walking
home at two o’clock in the morning through the streets, where no one but
the watchman had leave and license to be, calling out the hour when the
chimes struck it. It was bright moonlight, and the two men would gladly
have dispensed with the beauty of the night, much as it enhanced the
charm of the great mansions they passed, the carved doorways, the
delicate balconies, the ponderous, magnificent iron bell-pulls, the
lions’ and griffins’ heads on the many bridges over the narrow canals.
Even Jan passed hurriedly by, standing nervously back in a doorway if he
heard the clear cry of a watchman, starting as a loose stone rattled
under his feet in the pavement, and even when his companion
ill-naturedly put his hand in a fountain and noisily disturbed the water
with a “swish” that made the other turn pale and look around in horror
of being pursued.
As the weeks went by and the young man worked on alone, feverishly and
battling with his own superstitions as well as the fear of being
denounced by his two associates, an odd change came over him. Peter
noticed it about one month after the day they had procured the vial of
blood. Jan was taken with a pious fit that day, and insisted on spending
some miserable pence he had on candles offered for the soul of the
poisoned girl, and which he, with genuine devoutness, put on the iron
spikes provided for the purpose in the church of Notre Dame. That day,
having spent all in this way, he fasted altogether and nearly fainted at
his easel; but when he left off work Peter saw that a startled,
expectant look was in his eyes, which he directed furtively every now
and then to one particular corner of his room. When questioned he
hurriedly turned the conversation; but the scared look grew more and
more intense as time went on. At last, one night, the young man asked
Peter seriously and with great trepidation to stay and sleep with him.
“I believe I am getting nervous,” he said, with a laugh that was
anything but genuine. Peter made no objection, but in the middle of the
night he was awakened by Jan. The poor fellow was in a violent cold
perspiration, and, pointing excitedly to the same corner, cried:
“There she is; and she never says a word, but only looks at me
reproachfully! She has been there every night since the first Month’s
Mind!”
“Pshaw!” said Peter, “I see nothing there, Jan; you should be bled—that
is all. You have been overworking yourself.”
But nothing would persuade the artist that the ghost of the poisoned
girl was not there, silent and reproachful; and there, day after day and
night after night, he saw her, and, though he longed to speak to her, he
never dared.
Three months were over and his picture was done; but he was only the
skeleton of his former self, and he looked, as Peter said, like what the
Florentine woman had said of Dante—“the man who had gone down to hell
and come back again.” His bitterness was gone, so was his hopelessness,
but there was no healthy joy or youthful enthusiasm in their place; he
seemed to have grown old all at once, except for the feverish, eager
haste to show his picture and win the name that should darken that of
the national pets and the popular favorites. Where to show it? was a
question Peter put more than once, but Jan waived it as not worth any
anxiety. He should write a notice, and post it on the church doors and
those of the Guildhall and the Exchange, to the effect that a new and
unknown painter had a picture for sale and exhibition at such and such a
place; and if the public did not care to come there to see it, they
might see it once on next market-day in the Grande Place, where the
artist would show it himself, free to all.
The subject was “Judith and Holofernes”—a common subject enough in those
days, but the artist thought that no one had ever treated it in the same
way before. When we see it in the market-place and hear the comments of
the people, we shall understand in what lay the difference.
The day appointed by the artist came. All the rich and learned men had
noticed the placard on the church doors, and the connoisseurs and
critics were on the alert. This unpatroned and self-confident painter
stung their curiosity, and the merchants, native and foreign, were also
eager to see and, if they liked it, “buy up” the new sensation. The
people, too, had heard of the exhibition, and many crowded earlier than
usual to the market-place to get a glimpse of the mysterious picture
being set up by the artist.
No one did see it, however. A good many stalls, booths, and awnings were
up long before daylight, and no one noticed the stand of the new-comer,
put up in a corner, and screened all round with the commonest
tent-cloth. As soon as dawn made it possible to see things a little, the
stand was found to be open, and a picture, unframed, was seen set up on
trestles, and some coarse crimson drapery skilfully arranged round it,
so as to take the place of the frame which the artist was too poor to
buy. A few loungers came up, and, fancying this was the screen to some
mystery-play to be acted later in the day, sauntered away again, like
uncritical creatures as they were. Presently a priest and a merchant
came up, evidently searching for some particular booth, and soon stopped
before the picture.
“Here it is,” shortly said one of them.
“So _that_ is the picture?” said the other; and for a while they both
stood in silence, examining it in detail.
“Wonderful!” said the merchant presently. “It beats the hospital 'St.
John.’”
“There _is_ a strange power about the drawing,” said the other.
“But the coloring!” retorted the merchant. “See the depth, the
life-likeness, the intensity; and yet there is nothing violent or merely
sense-appealing. It is horror, but rather mental than physical horror.”
“True,” said the priest. “I wonder if he had a model.”
“Most likely, but there is more than he ever saw in any common model;
the merit rests with himself alone, I should judge.”
“Well, do you think of buying it?”
“I am inclined to do so, but want to examine it more closely first.
Besides, I see no one here to represent the painter, or even guard the
picture.”
“Oh! I have no doubt there is some one hovering about—perhaps that
countryman who looks so vacant. You know the professional tricks of our
worthy artists!”
And with this he called the person in question, who surely looked vacant
enough to be in disguise.
“Can you tell me what you think of this picture, friend?” he asked.
“Very fine, messire.”
“You do not think it like one of Hendrick Corlaens, do you?”
“I never saw that, messire,” bashfully said the countryman.
“But you think _this_ is fine?”
“Very, very.”
“Why do you like it?”
“It seems like life.”
“Like death too?”
“Yes, messire.”
“How far did you come this morning?” asked the merchant, fancying his
companion’s shrewdness had overshot the mark this time.
“Forty-three miles. I started before midnight from Stundsen.”
“I think,” said the merchant to his brother-critic, “we shall make
nothing of this man. He must be one of my brother-in-law’s men at
Stundsen. He is quite genuine in his stupidity.”
And the pair moved nearer the picture, while others came up and stopped,
till there was soon a little knot of admirers talking in whispers. The
crowd grew as the day went on. In the side street leading into the Place
the doors of Notre Dame opened to let out the flood of worshippers that
had flowed in since dawn from the country, and who now rushed from their
devotions to their business. Noise was uppermost, trade was brisk; the
sun got hot and men got thirsty. It was soon a riotous as well as a
picturesque scene, and a spectator on that balcony of the
curiously-carved corner window on the same side of the Place as the
Guildhall could scarcely have told which stalls the hurrying masses most
besieged, so tangled was the web of human beings jostling and jolting
each other along the uneven pavement. A good many had stared and gazed
at the picture. It was the subject of many comments and disputes that
day; men quarrelled over its merits as they drank their sour wine, and
women talked of it in whispers over their bargains. Some children had
screamed and kicked at first sight of it; altogether it had not failed
to be known, seen, and talked about. Our two friends of early morning
had hung about it all day and overheard most of the remarks of the
crowd. Some people had been disappointed in finding that it was not the
sign of a play representing the slaying of Holofernes, but only a
picture; a Venetian and a Greek, daintily dressed and speaking some
soft, foreign tongue—a wonder to the sturdy Flemish peasants from the
dykes and canals by the sea—lounged near the unpainted railing that
protected the picture from the crowd. No one could see behind the
picture, but many thought the artist was hidden within the closely
_sewn_ curtains, that never flapped in the breeze like the rest of the
market awnings. These two and the first critics listened in eager
silence to the judgment of the crowd, put forth in short sentences at
long intervals. On coming up one woman said to her companion:
“Why, I thought they always painted Judith with black hair; this one has
hair the color of mine.”
“Perhaps it was his betrothed he painted,” said the other, “and in
compliment to her he made it a portrait.”
“Then I should not like to be he. A ghostly bride he would have.”
“But look at her eyes; they seem like a corpse’s just come back to
life.”
“Pshaw! how could a _corpse_ come back to life? You mean a ghost.”
“No—Lazarus, you know. I can fancy how frightened and reproachful he
might have looked when he woke up and found himself in his shroud.”
“_I_ think he would look glad and thankful. But come away. It seems as
if I should dream of that face.”
“Yes; it makes me feel very strange the more I look at it.”
And the two women moved off.
Presently another voice was heard in a muffled tone.
“See the blood in Holofernes’ throat. It looks as if it were moving.”
“Judith looks too weak and small to kill him,” said another.
“So she does,” said a third, and he added, in a lower tone: “I once had
a cousin very like that picture.”
“Is she dead?” asked a woman, a stranger to the speaker.
“Yes,” said the man, with some surprise.
“I thought no live person could remind you of _this_ face,” answered the
woman, as if in explanation.
The two couples of critics glanced appreciatively and with a smile at
each other, and the Greek said to his friend:
“Your _boors_ are no bad critics, after all. I think the barbarians
rather beat us in painting.”
“Beat _you_!” laughed the Venetian. “Speak for yourself. But it is your
religion that has fossilized your art; otherwise you would have been—”
“No,” said the other thoughtfully, “I think you mistake; I doubt if we
have the gift you, and the Flemings also, have for painting. Our
literature is as far above that of this northern people as heaven is
above the earth, and our sculpture, of course, is unrivalled; but they
have the gift of music, and of architecture, and of painting—the two
last marvellously developed. And in the first I think your people—I do
not mean Venetians, but some of your other Italian neighbors—have just
now reached a good climax. At Milan I heard some chanting that would put
us to shame, and even here I have heard something not unlike it. Yes, I
cede the palm to the barbarians in the arts of Euterpe and—”
“But in architecture yours is the peer of any northern style,” said the
Venetian.
“I doubt it,” said the Greek. “There is a strange impression comes over
me in these vast, sky-high, delicately-carved cathedrals, dim and
resonant, that comes nowhere else—not in our gold-colored, mosaic-paved,
dome-crowned churches, nor your St. Mark, the daughter of our St.
Sophia.”
“Every one knows how liberal are your views,” said the other, with a
smile.
“Yes?” asked the Greek, evidently in innocence. “But I am only fair to
others. I would rather be a Greek than a barbarian, as the adage of one
of our old heathen philosophers has it; but I can see that God has not
rained every blessing on one spot, and that my native land, as he did on
the Garden of Eden before Adam fell.”
“Hush!” said the Venetian, interrupting him. “Some girl has fainted.”
Some little stir was taking place in the crowd; it _was_ a girl who had
fainted, and an old woman, strong and powerful, was holding her.
Among the many questions tossed to and fro and never answered, our four
friends all managed to hear the words of the old woman to her nearest
neighbors.
“Yes, that is the portrait of her sister and my granddaughter, just as
if the poor lost girl had sat for it herself. But then this must have
been painted since she lost her rosy color. And I believe the painter
knows what became of her, and where she is, if she is alive; and, God
forgive me! I always accused the Lord Conrad of Schön of her ruin and
disappearance. I _will_ know, too, if this painter is to be found
anywhere in Flanders. Oh! yes, Agnes is very well; she will be herself
again directly, nervous little thing!” And the old woman, with a kind of
savage tenderness, shielded the face of her granddaughter in her bosom,
while the girl slowly revived.
Some people hinted that the painter was hidden in the closed tent behind
the picture, and others brought out shears to cut the curtains; but the
priest here interposed.
“I think, my friends,” he said in a clear, authoritative voice, “that
you had better leave this matter to the proper authorities. Messire Van
Simler and I will see that this good woman is heard, and, if need be,
helped to find her granddaughter, or any news of her death and fate. It
would be an unwarrantable act to cut these curtains open: if there is no
one there, you will feel like fools, the dupes of the childish trick of
an unknown painter; if you find the person you are looking for, you may
do him a mischief and come yourselves under the eye of the law. I advise
you to let the matter rest. And you, my good friend, here is an address
you may find useful whenever you wish to make further inquiries. It
would be best to take your charge home.”
The manner rather than the words of the speaker took effect at once, and
the group dissolved to make room for other sight-seers, all gaping, all
admiring, and all ending by feeling uncomfortable and leaving the stand
with muttered words of equal wonder and fear. But it is impossible to
follow each comment, and we have yet other scenes to look at before we
close the history of this picture.
Among the crowd that day had been Peter and Simon, and the former,
familiar as he was with the painting, had ceased to feel impressed by
the weird, indescribable beauty and awe that were its very essence. But
he had been, in a business-like way, alive to everything connected with
what was to him the instrument of future success, and the fainting scene
and its close were especially observed. He noticed the drift of all the
remarks made on the picture; he had foretold it himself—for he was
nothing if not worldly-wise—and he carefully scanned the faces of the
four critics who had so pertinaciously lingered round the stand all day.
He knew them all for enlightened men, above the nonsense of the age,
good art-critics, and men born to be masters of their kind. Even the
young Venetian had the making of a statesman in him; the Greek was as
simple-minded as he was generous, and, though his countrymen had a bad
name at Bruges for conventional sins of which not half of them were
really guilty, he was, even with the most ignorant, a signal exception.
The other two were trusted native citizens, bosom friends, patrons of
all that was good, learned, and improving, and, what was more, powerful
in the council and civic government. The first, by the way, was a canon
of the cathedral, by private inheritance a rich man, and, by dint of
charity to the starving and liberality to men of letters, raised above
the scandal that attended on rich ecclesiastics. These four were
representative men, and though each a representative of the best type of
his own class and nation, still no less entitled to be called
representative men.
Peter noted the way Messire Van Simler went that evening; the canon he
knew well by reputation. Then he came back to the Place and helped a
young peasant to lift and pack the picture, leaving on the planks in
front of the booth the address of the artist and a notice that
purchasers were asked to meet the painter at his own studio any time
each day before dark. The peasant seemed slim and tall for a Flemish
countryman, but his cap concealed his face, and his loose vest was well
calculated to increase his seeming bulk; still, when he got to the
studio in the old garret over the canal, and threw off his cap, he
proved to be the person you must have suspected—the painter himself. He
said nothing, and Peter did not offer to speak; but the former, as soon
as he came in, glanced hurriedly into one corner and then back at the
picture. Over their scanty supper the two exchanged a few monosyllables
as to the result of the show, but each was uneasy and spoke as if
compelled by the suspicion of the other. Next morning Peter went to Van
Simler’s house before the latter was out of bed, and was received during
the merchant’s ample breakfast. No one came to Jan’s garret the first
day, and he stayed at home alone with his work, now and then retouching
it, as if drawn to it by a spell he could not master; but each time he
worked at it he seemed more ill and nervous. Towards dusk he heard a
footstep on the stair, and opened the door to let in some light on the
break-neck place, full of corners and broken steps, where some stranger
was evidently groping his way. It was the Greek. He greeted the painter
with grave earnestness and more interest than is usual with a purchaser.
“I have come,” he said after the first civilities, “to buy both your
pictures and _you_, and pack both at once, as my ships will be in port
by the night after to-morrow night, and it needs time to meet them. They
cannot wait—at least, _that_ one cannot which happens to be most
convenient for you to go in. Have you any objection to go with me to
Greece?—any tie to detain you here?”
Jan looked into the corner before he answered, and shuddered. “I fear I
have,” he said unwillingly. The Greek looked fixedly at him.
“I will not keep you any longer than you like, and you probably like
travelling? There are scenes in Greece and the East that will delight
you, if you have a liking for Scriptural subjects; and the journey need
not be longer than the interval between this cargo _from_ here and the
next cargo back.”
Jan said nothing.
“You see I am bent on having _you_ as well as your picture,” the
merchant went on; “but if you insist on refusing me your company, I will
take the picture at once. I have men below ready to carry it away, and I
will give you your own price at once, in gold coin.”
And Jan still gazed into the furthest—and empty—corner.
“I have reasons for my haste,” said the Greek, slowly, at last. Jan
turned inquiringly.
“Good reasons,” said his visitor gravely and gently, “which I will tell
you when we are at sea, if you will trust me till then; if not, I will
even tell you now, though the proverb says that 'walls have ears.’”
Jan seemed to need no immediate explanation, but said:
“Take the picture, and welcome, and believe in my gratitude, though I
cannot put it into words; but I can take no gold for the picture.”
“Why, you invited purchasers to come here to you!”
“I have learned to-day that I cannot sell it.”
“Well,” said the Greek, with a look of intelligence, “I think you and I
understand each other, then, and I may as well take you and the picture
too.”
“No,” said Jan, “you do not understand _me_, but I understand you and am
grateful. If I am in danger, it matters little; I prefer meeting such a
danger as you fear for me to seeing what I should see always, on the
ship, in the East, as well as here—or at the stake.”
“Your mind is—preoccupied, my young friend,” said the merchant. “But let
me take the picture; at least, it is better to have the evidence put out
of the way in time. Let me call to my men.”
“Yes, but no gold for it,” said Jan without emotion, as he pushed away
the purse on the table. “Take the picture; there will be only _one_ face
then, and I shall not be torturing myself as to whether the likeness is
faithful enough or not.”
The Greek bent out of the window and whistled to two men sitting on the
narrow stone-work of the canal; one of them struck a flint, lit a pine
torch, and, beckoning the other to follow him, came up the winding
stairs. Jan said not a word, and the picture was packed and carried
away, while the merchant lingered yet, pressing gold, protection, and
future patronage upon the benumbed artist. Even the hint of fame could
not stir the young man.
“I have done my life’s work,” he said gloomily. “I shall never paint the
equal of that picture again, and I do not wish to,” he added with a
shudder; “and for the sake of my reputation I must not paint anything
below that standard.”
“But why should not you do even better?” said the Greek.
“I thought you knew,” said the young man, in puzzled uncertainty.
“I _know_ nothing, and my suspicions are too vague to shape my judgment
on the merits of this particular work of yours. I gathered all I _do_
know, or even suspect, from the remarks of the people to-day. I am used
to watching indications of men’s fancies, prejudices, passions, say even
superstitions, and I thought it a pity that such people as we heard
to-day should have it in their power to end or mar the career of an
artist of your genius. We want some young, rising painter—one who can
rival the Italians; one who can show that there is a future for art,
that it is progressive and improvable; one especially who will defy
conventionalities—for I own that your independent treatment of a
'Judith’ fascinated me. But if I cannot prevail upon you to accept my
services at present, you will not refuse to take this address; it will
find me, no matter where I may be, and it will be even a personal
safeguard for you in my absence and during the interval that may elapse
before I hear of your appeal.”
“Thank you a thousand times for your unprovoked and generous interest!”
said Jan more warmly than he had spoken before. “I shall never forget
it. God grant my life or death may be guided and determined by the
highest Power! I should not trust myself to decide wisely, if I had the
choice offered me; but if it is ordained that I should live long, I
prefer _your_ being the instrument of my salvation.”
The merchant left, and Jan stayed alone all night; he was stonily calm,
watching, thinking, waiting as if for an expected event, and never
breaking his fast through the long, dark hours. When early morning came,
two men in gray cloaks opened his door and respectfully _ordered_ him to
come with them to Van Simler’s house, which he did without surprise and
without remonstrance. Here he found the canon, who with Van Simler told
him briefly that they thought it for his good to be taken into the
country to the castle of Stundsen, belonging to the merchant’s
brother-in-law. They did not tell him why, and it did not even occur to
him to ask. As he passed from the large dining-hall where this short
interview took place to a room furnished with Spanish leather and carved
oak—_his_ room, he was told, for a few hours—he thought he recognized
the Greek anxiously and quickly open a door that led to the passage, as
if to assure himself of the presence of some expected person.
Van Simler and his friend, meanwhile, had a short and significant talk,
a few words of which are here set down to explain facts that may look to
the undiscerning reader like the conventional tricks of modern
mediævalists, to whom plots and kidnapping are “daily bread.” “Now,”
said the merchant, “if that scoundrel Peter goes no further, there is
every hope of getting this obstinate young genius out of the city in
safety; but he may try to get _two_ prices and hint the matter to Conrad
Schön.”
The canon shrugged his shoulders. “Of course, in that case,” he said,
“all would be in vain, for Count Conrad has the sovereign’s ear; and you
know the hobby the Count of Flanders has lately bestridden.”
“The youth ought to have gone with the Greek; but the latter says he
believes him half-mad, which accounts for his staying in the jaws of the
lion.”
“I have heard of Jan the painter before,” said the priest, “and, had he
been a different person, I should have gone to him myself; but, from my
general knowledge of his character, any one would do better than one of
us, and I am glad the Greek forestalled me. Why did not you keep Peter
under lock and key when he came here?”
“It was a mistake, I own,” said the other; “but still, if I had, there
was Simon in the secret.”
“Simon is a fool, and nothing of this would have occurred to him.”
“I doubt about his being a fool; at any rate, he is a dangerous one.
“He _is_ a fool in such matters as these, though dangerous enough in his
way, as you say. Now, our Greek friend has just left the house, I see,
and there is nothing to detain _me_ here just now. You take the
transport business in your hands? Well and good; while I attend to any
foolish charge made in the city. I expect I shall see old Mother Colette
before dark to-night.”
There is no need to go through the details of the few days that
followed. In one word, Peter was more powerful than Jan’s four
protectors put together, but only because he had Conrad Schön at his
back, and behind him a greater “presence” yet—no less a person than the
Count of Flanders, who had lately taken a mania about witchcraft. It was
easy to play upon his vanity and tickle his supposed superior sense of
discovery, and Conrad had reasons for diverting to the young artist the
opprobrium which even he, with all his power, could not fail to have
brought upon himself in such an independent and proud burgher-city as
Bruges for the wrong done to the orphan daughter of one of her citizens
and an attendant of his wife; for there was still a lingering in
Flanders of the old knightly feeling of the earlier days of chivalry,
which made it the duty of a knight to consider every house-maiden within
his walls as his own daughter or sister, and protect, and even defend,
her as such.
The dark accusations of Conrad and his informant against the defenceless
painter were but too readily listened to, and, before his friends could
conceal him, the sovereign had already sent to demand his person. We
will pass over the mock examination which the count held, more with a
view to satisfy his own curiosity than to assure himself of the
prisoner’s guilt; over the honest but bitter malignity with which old
Mother Colette, an unconscious tool sought out by Jan’s enemies,
testified against the man who, to make such a startling and mysterious
likeness of her lost granddaughter, must have been intimately acquainted
with her; and, lastly, over Jan’s strange apathy and silence, his
refusal to deny the charges brought against him, and his seeming relief
at being condemned to die.
He never told any one the reason of all this, and the secret would have
died with him, if Peter, years afterwards, when the picture again came
to light and became famous, had not made known the hallucination of the
painter, to which was really due the success others had stupidly
attributed to forbidden practices. The last thing that concerns us is
the strange sentence and fanciful doom pronounced by the Count of
Flanders, the carrying out of which will take us up into the belfry of
the Guildhall, just above the market-place where the unlucky picture had
first roused the ignorant suspicions of the mob.
Here, where swings the largest bell of the famous carillon, we find the
artist once more. The great dark mass hangs dumb beside him; very little
light is here, but enough to see by dimly, and make out some of the maze
of beams and iron-braced stays that uphold the old bell. Even some of
the inscription is visible; its gilt letters in relief gleam out of the
dimness and naturally fix the eye in that kind of magnetic gaze which
some say is favorable to sleep. Jan was half crouched in one corner,
wondering why he was there and how long it was intended he should stay;
the two men who had brought him had simply told him that the count had
sent him up there to see if he could rival the penance of St. Simeon
Stylites, for a few hours at least. Presently the bell began to stir and
sway softly, slowly; one dull, muffled tone came out as the tongue
touched the outbent lips of the mighty bell; the next stroke came
louder, the next swing was wider, and Jan’s head already throbbed with
the unwelcome noise. Now the monster was alive in earnest. Warming to
its work, it swung further and further; it tossed its base upwards, till
the beams groaned and creaked, and all kinds of hideous minor noises
seemed to be embroidered on the constant dull echo between each stroke.
A strange wind blew in Jan’s face; it was the breath of the bell, whose
relentless beat grew more and more regular, more and more monotonous, as
it went on. The artist dared not move; one hair’s breadth nearer the
terrific engine would be his death, one blow of its lips would be more
effectual than any stroke of axe or pile of faggots. He shrank close to
the wall, but, as his body just cleared the bell in its mad flingings
and tossings, his mind seemed to be struck by it at every toll, almost
absorbed in it, drawn to it with fatal curiosity. Was that the bell
whose sound had been so majestic, so solemn, so beautiful in his ears as
a child, so grand when it rang out above the others—eighty of them—that
chimed on the great church holidays and welcomed the victorious
sovereign when he came back from war? Was this the heart of the great
angel that poetry and popular belief had endowed the belfry with—this
terrible, maddening, brazen-tongued, relentless engine? It only just
missed touching him each time it flung itself on his side of the
beam-chamber; if it were to swing only a little more fiercely, as it
seemed easy for it to do, one blow would crush him. Already the air
seemed to suck him in under the bell, into some dark vault, no
doubt—some bottomless pit; had his conductors known, when they put him
there, that it was time for the bell to toll, or had they forgotten him?
How long would this go on? His brain could not stand it much longer, he
felt, but to scream was useless; the great, dread voice hushed all other
sound. It seemed presently as if the gilt lettering got brighter; it
took the shape of a glaring yellow eye; now redder, like fire, now
alive, now like the eyes in his “Judith,” that the woman had said were
the “eyes of a corpse just come back to life.” But had bells eyes as
well as tongues? he asked himself helplessly. He remembered learning
about the Cyclops and their single eyes in the middle of their
foreheads; now he really saw a worse monster, with an eye of flame set
in its huge, black, bulging lip. Was that the gold the Greek had offered
him? Surely it was that, and no eye. Of course his fancy had betrayed
him. But how could the gold have got there and got stuck to the rim of
the accursed bell? How long had he been there, and when were they coming
to fetch him? But they could not get in while that fiend was tossing and
bellowing in these narrow walls. What was that other noise now?—a
whirring of a thousand wheels! Where? It seemed all round; and now the
bell appeared to him in a network of wheels, all going round faster than
the eye could follow—a mass of moving air formed of many hazy circles
intertwined; he _knew_ they were wheels, but could not actually see
them. He dared not hold his ears and head with his hands, for between
each fling of the bell there was not time to lift his hands; and if they
were caught—Some one was there now—come to bring him away. How did he
get in? But it was not a man; it had long, fair hair and a misty sort of
covering. He knew the face. Was there an angel of the bell, after all,
who was going to stop the great tongue and deliver him? No; that face
was a dead face—Judith just as he had painted her, just as he saw her in
the corner of his room; and _this_ was his room, and he had been
dreaming of the bell. Scarcely—he could not dream of such a noise; then
the devil must have got into his room and changed everything. But the
clangor never stopped, and never spoke either louder or softer—one
eternal, dreary, vexing, maddening ring. He would go mad, no doubt, if
he stayed there another quarter of an hour; how long had he been there?
Now he was fascinated by the unerring accuracy of the strokes, and, in a
trance, expected feverishly the next dull boom, and mechanically counted
on his fingers till the next was due again, and so on for five minutes.
Suppose he should hang on to the tongue; would it make a feather’s
weight of difference in the time or the sound of the stroke? He wondered
how the bell sounded to those in the Place; they did not heed it at all,
most likely, or some thought it must be getting near their time for
dinner, while pious women were reminded to say a prayer, and some
gleeful child would clap its hands and count the strokes. He could count
the beats of his heart and the throbs in his head. He was not mad yet,
he hoped, and his thoughts came regularly, and he saw pictures burned
into the air one minute and gone the next; if he could have put them on
canvas, they would have made his name and fortune. He was sure he could
catch their shading; they looked as if fire had been made liquid and
colored. It was better than any of the windows in the cathedral, famous
as they were through the art-world for their undiscoverable secret of
vivid, jewel-like coloring. But one picture followed the other so soon
that, had he painted them all, it would have taken him twice the
threescore years and ten of an ordinary life, and they would have filled
every Church in Flanders fuller than twenty chapels in each could
require. What was the coloring of “Judith,” with the pitiful chemical
combination for which he had risked so much, to these rich, mellow,
miraculous tones, with a thousand new, unnamable shades, and shadows
that looked more like the depths of a dark-blue Italian lake than the
darkness of common air? But through all these meditations of a second’s
length, though they seemed like the reveries of hours, the boom of the
pitiless bell went on, crashing through the brain of the prisoner,
shattering each new picture which the last interval had stamped on his
fancy, sounding to him now like a roaring fall of water, now a ploughing
avalanche, now a thunder-clap, now the fall of a burning house, now the
thud of earth upon a coffin, now the blow of a massive cudgel on his own
head. Instinctively he cowered lower, and a beam struck him on the back
with a sudden violent blow that made him stand upright and remember that
the bell was there, but no cudgel; but as he rose he had stretched out
his hand, blindly feeling for support, and touched the great rocking
monster. A thrill went through his frame; he looked upward and vaguely
wondered if this was the end, and he saw his “Judith” again, a shadowy
form among the rafters. The next feeling of consciousness was that of
lying flat on his back and a strong, cold wind wafting across his feet;
he put up his hand to lift his head a little and press his left temple,
and then— The bell had only tolled for a quarter of an hour. As soon as
it stopped the same men who had taken Jan up came again and found him
dead, lying in a cramped position on his side, and one leg still
stretched out beneath the now silent bell.[51]
Footnote 51:
If any one cares to know what became of the picture, he may be
interested to hear that it hangs now over the altar of a private
oratory in the same city where it was painted. The Greek merchant took
it to Constantinople, where it remained in his family till the siege,
twenty-eight years later. It was then given by him for safe keeping to
his Venetian friend and transferred to Venice, whence the Greek
himself, having become a resident of that place, took it back to
Bruges and offered it to the canon, on condition of no further mention
being made of the circumstances connected with it. The offer was
gratefully accepted, and it remained till the priest’s death in his
private collection, the Greek having declared that, what with having
paid no price for it and its being a Scriptural subject, he preferred
that it should in some way belong to the church rather than to the
world. At the canon’s death it was sold to a dealer, who sold it again
for a high price to an Italian collector, whose descendants, in “hard
times,” parted with it to a rich Englishman. It happened, strangely
enough, that it returned to the native city of its unlucky author by
an intermarriage between the family of the English connoisseur and
that of a passionate lover of art in Bruges, and this time it was
transferred as a _gift_. It has been freely shown to any and every one
who asked to see it, and the story attached to it made it one of the
“sights” of the old city.
WILD ROSES BY THE SEA.
Untrimmed, uncared for, filling all the ways
That stretch between the shadow of the pine
And sea-washed rock where in the soft sunshine
The sea breaks white through all the long June days,
The fair wild roses, flushed like Eastern skies
When sinks the sun to rest in radiance calm,
Their pink bloom lift amid the sweet-bay’s balm
And shine a welcome true to loving eyes.
Sweet June’s rich gladness in the rosy flush,
As if rejoicing with our human souls,
While solemn melody from wave-beat rolls,
Whose endless anthem knows not any hush:
And ever answering from the pines sweep down
The wailing chords the wandering wind doth wake—
Sad undertones that through June’s singing break,
But cannot dim her roses’ radiant crown,
Beyond whose jewelled zone spreads on and on
The long, low level of the endless sea,
Blue with the shadow of infinity
From cloudless skies, in sparkling light, dropped down;
With here and there a sail, in shade and light,
Wind-seeking, bearing careless o’er the crest
Of summer waves the whiteness of its breast—
A moment’s dazzling vision on our sight:
Earth, air, and sea, with mirth unsullied filled,
With happy sunshine from June’s roses flushed.
We hold our rose-leaves all to-day uncrushed,
Our cup of spring-time joyousness unspilled.
But spring-time passes, rosy petals all
Drop down and mingle with earth’s earlier dead,
Though faithful sweet-bay still breathes balm o’erhead,
And ocean’s anthem e’er doth rise and fall.
Almost unfelt the summer hours die,
Green leaves grow russet on the salty shore,
The crimson vines droop rocky crevice o’er,
And wild ducks’ marshalled columns southward fly.
Low asters gleam with delicate light amid
The massive sunshine of the golden-rod;
A stray Houstonia shines above the sod
And lifts to gold-spun skies its pale blue lid.
The autumn’s glory lavishly is spread,
But summer dieth, loving sung to sleep
By western wind and murmur of the deep,
The softened sunshine on her gently shed.
Where are our roses?—that rare gift of June
That filled to perfectness our human life,
That hushed with silent touch all earthly strife,
That voiceless sang to keep our hearts in tune.
Lo! crowning each rich, sun-browned stem
Where once its rose the summer’s sunrise flushed,
Where shone our coronal of joy, now crushed,
Stands, round and firm, a deeper-tinted gem.
Rich summer faileth, and true-hearted June,
For whom birds sang, and perfect blessedness
Filled every grass-blade with a sense of bliss,
Tells o’er her beads for one to die so soon.
Her rosary strung around the rose-crowned shore,
Our pure June gladness, gathered into prayers,
The sweet-bay’s incense ever upward bears,
While we, 'mid loss, seem richer than before!
DIVORCE, AND DIVORCE LAWS.
Of the many evils now arrayed against society, none is greater than that
threatened by the frequency and facility with which divorces are
obtained. This bane of our day, if not plucked up by the roots, will
inevitably bring on the country disasters tenfold greater than the
bitterest political strifes. Already its incursions into our midst have
cast a blight on our morals, have infected all classes of society, have
rudely shaken our best institutions, and, if not checked, will prove a
greater scourge than in our apathy we dream of. Yet it continues to grow
among us day by day; it rears its head higher and higher each moment; it
strikes deeper root on all sides; its hideous mien is ever becoming more
familiar to us; some even smile over its attendant disclosures of
depravity as pleasant tidbits of scandal with which the morning papers
agreeably enliven the breakfast-table, while few reflect over the awful
magnitude of the danger with which it is fraught. So dulled, indeed, has
become the public conscience in this respect, so slow its apprehension
of the mighty evil pressing on us, that scarcely has a warning voice
been lifted against this social hydra, which goes on tightening its
coils more closely around us every moment. It is not alone our crowded
cities that are poisoned by its breath, but it has invaded the stillness
of hillside and hamlet, and no part of the land is a stranger to its
presence.
In olden times a special act of Parliament was required in England to
legalize a remarriage during the life-time of husbands and wives, but so
tedious and expensive was the proceeding that few cared to avail
themselves of the privilege; whereas of late days and in our land so
simple and easy has become the severance of the marriage-knot that the
mechanic as well as the millionaire figures before courts and referees,
and multitudes now throng this new high-road to social ruin.
Chief among the evils resulting from the laxity of our divorce laws is
their active warfare against society. The family, as known among us, is
a creation of the church wrought out through the indissolubility and
sacredness of marriage. It is the nursery of society, the hope of the
state, and the cradle of its destinies. While it remains pure and
intact, so long will our sound social institutions flourish, so long
will a healthy public sentiment live among us, ready to rebuke the
shortcomings of the powerful and to lighten the burdens of the poor, to
frown upon official corruption and to encourage disinterested public
action. Indeed, this is a point we need scarcely insist upon. All
moralists and sociologists allow that the family is the parent of
society, as the seed is of the crop and the acorn of the oak. They agree
that with its extinction we are at once driven on the breakers of
socialism, communism, and free-love—in a word, that society ceases to
exist. Now, divorce is the entering-wedge which the law supplies for the
ruin of the family; it is as the priming to a loaded gun. Once give the
world to understand that marriage is but a simple compact by which two
persons of opposite sexes agree to live together conditionally for a
time, and the permanency of the family is destroyed; the sacredness of
conjugal love is degraded before the law into mere sexual desire; that
institution which Christ blessed and declared to symbolize his own union
with the church becomes at the best a system of stirpiculture, and
nuptial altars are converted into shambles of licentiousness. Let the
cause be what it may bestowing on either party to the marriage contract
the right to annul it, and the cohesion of family ties is fatally
weakened. This fact our court records ominously demonstrate every day.
Applications for divorce, based on the special enactments of each State,
are constantly filed, in which release from marriage is sought in
accordance with the provisions of the law. In Indiana, for instance,
mere incompatibility of temper is made the ground of petition; and in
only very few cases do we find adultery or grossly cruel treatment
alleged as a reason. The easier conditions of the State law are
naturally enough invoked, whatever may be the true inner grounds of
disagreement. The law of the State offers a means of escape from an
onerous condition, and, either through the perverse temper of the
litigants or the legal skill of counsel, the circumstances of the case
are readily adapted to the requirements of the law. Thus the law in
reality supplies to those who are weary of wedlock the means of escaping
from it, while apparently striving to hedge in its interests. This fact
will for ever and essentially stultify divorce laws. No matter how
ingeniously framed they may be, how buttressed with conditions and
exactions of proof, such are the peculiar relations of married life
that, given on the side of the law the possibility, and on the side of
the husband or wife the desire of escaping from a yoke that has become
galling, and mere legal restrictions melt as wax before the sun.
As has just been said, the court records constantly prove this. Let us
examine the facts in New York State, where adultery is the only
recognized ground on which absolute divorce can be procured. A husband
desires to free himself from married thraldom. He consults a convenient
friend or an accommodating lawyer. (Happily, there are not many such,
but we all know that one can work an infinity of mischief.) A conspiracy
is entered into against the wife; detectives are set on her track; her
incomings and outgoings are narrowly watched; her innocent visits are
painted over with the color of criminality; her letters are intercepted;
she is lured into the paths of temptation; and such proof, devised with
devilish cunning, is soon obtained as brands that woman with the most
infamous of crimes. The picture is not of the imagination; the
revelations of the law attest its terrible reality every day, and so
defiant of public opinion have some discreditable practitioners become
that they take no pains to cover up the tracks of their infamy. Indeed,
it was with something like surprise that a short time ago a lawyer in
New York City listened to the scathing words which debarred him from
future practice in our courts, because of his participation in a
conspiracy to prove an innocent woman an adulteress.
Circumstantial evidence is all that the law requires in these cases. As
a rule, indeed, none other can be furnished. Now, this evidence,
proposing to establish what is after all but the semblance of crime,
since the facts necessarily elude ocular proof, is such that by asking
for it the law seems to invite those who are desirous of so doing to
weave around innocence itself a web of circumstances calculated to
immesh it in the appearance of guilt. Thus the law defeats its own
intent and places a premium on sin. It aggravates the evil it endeavors
to estop. Like the smitten eagle, it is forced to—
“View its own feathers on the fatal dart
Which winged the shaft that quivers in its heart.
Keen are its pangs, but keener far to feel
_It nursed the pinion that impelled the steel_.”
Two hundred divorces _a vinculo_, obtained in the State of New York in
the course of a single year, give point to these remarks. And in most of
these cases, it must be remembered, the defendants denied the charge and
were convicted only by such evidence as, though necessarily deemed
sufficient by the court or referee, is essentially and of its nature
such that it might have been manufactured. But if these attempts on the
part of husbands to take advantage of the laxity of our divorce laws by
blasting the character of their wives excite our honest indignation and
disgust, infinitely more heinous must appear the conduct of some wives
in their efforts to procure evidence against their husbands. Our readers
must here pardon a few details which the cause of truth compels us to
set down, but which we will couch in as few and modest words as
possible. What we are about to state proves the truth of the holy
proverb that when woman falls “her feet go down into death, and her
steps go in as far as hell” (Prov. v. 5). There is a fashionable
physiology which denies the physical possibility of absolute continence
without serious impairment of health. The easy votaries of sensuality do
not hesitate to uphold this odious doctrine in so-called scientific
treatises, and to proclaim with Dr. Draper that “public celibacy is
private wickedness.” We call this fashionable physiology; for the mass
of intelligent non-Catholics make open avowal of it. Indeed, the
doctrine is essentially non-Catholic, and has been acted upon by all
rebels against the church from Luther to Loyson. Swedenborg condemns
celibacy as a crime against nature. From being a purely religious
doctrine, however, it has recently come to be regarded as a scientific
tenet. Pseudo-science now shelters it under its ægis, and it is as much
the vogue to believe in it as it is to accept the other views of
so-called advanced modern scientists. It is this very notion which
supplies to many a recalcitrant wife the weapon with which she has
succeeded in breaking down the law and bringing irretrievable ruin on
her family. If, as the writer has taken pains to assure himself, the
inner history of our most notorious and disgraceful divorce cases could
be read in the light of broad day, the facts would appears as follows:
A faithless wife, impressed with the doctrine just stated, takes such
steps as will, in her belief, compel her husband to compromise himself.
He then is watched, snares are set about his feet, he is encompassed by
enemies, and, alas! sharing as he does the views entertained by his
wife, he soon furnishes such evidences of wrong-doing as justify a
recourse to legal proceedings. We have stated the case briefly, but at
sufficient length to indicate the lowness of the depths to which human
nature, deprived of grace, can sink, and how ingeniously the law has
constructed a pitfall for itself. One author says that “such stratagems
are of frequent occurrence,” and the mournful testimony of our tribunals
is overwhelming in proof of the appalling frequency with which this
repulsive drama is enacted. But to wade through the putrescent mass of
evidence were to make the cheek grow crimson and burn, so that a scant
allusion to it is all that decency can permit. What we especially desire
to impress upon our readers is the fact that the imagination is here
powerless to compete with the reality, and that human ingenuity has
exhausted itself in the contrivance of the most abominable devices in
its successful efforts to overreach a stupid law. But it is not alone in
thus inviting infraction of its provisions that the law of New York
State is weak and faulty; it is, in addition, guilty of contradicting
itself in a matter of vital importance. Marriage is either a contract
for life or can be limited by previous mutual consent. Now, the law
denounces such limitation as immoral and strictly forbids it. But does
it therefore recognize marriage as in reality a contract for life? We
emphatically answer in the negative, and for the following reason: It is
of the nature of a contract that all its essential terms and conditions
be such as to come within the jurisdiction of the authority appointed
for the purpose of directing its fulfilment. But if the authority be so
crippled as not to be able to take cognizance of conditions admitted to
be essential to the proper fulfilment of the contract, the latter must
be regarded as null and void, or binding only _in foro interno_. All
outside authority, all outside jurisdiction over it, is at an end. This
is precisely what happens in civil marriage. Ostensibly the law
recognizes it as a contract for life; indeed, openly proclaims it to be
so; even provides a penalty for its violation as such; and yet, by
admitting its dissolubility on certain conditions, leaves it in reality
as much the subject-matter of temporary stipulation as a lease or a
business copartnership, and, in addition, baits it with the temptation
to commit an enormous crime. What is there to prevent two persons from
entering into a civil marriage with the understanding that they should
live together for a certain time, be as other married persons before the
law, sharing its protection and enjoying its privileges, and then
separate by complying with the conditions on which the law allows a
separation? The case is entirely possible—has, indeed, occurred time and
again—so that we are forced to admit that among us the law virtually
treats marriage as a temporary partnership, however much it may insist
upon its being regarded as a life-long contract, and is thus guilty of
the inconsistency of declaring a certain thing to be what it in reality
treats as quite another.
Nor can it be contended, as against this argument, that the law will not
grant a divorce where connivance is attempted; for the case, typical of
thousands, supposes that neither party desires to reveal such
connivance. Nor is it of any avail to affirm that the party proved to be
guilty is debarred the right of contracting a new marriage. Technically
the law so reads, but practically it is powerless to enforce its
provision. In such a case, indeed, it may be said that love laughs law
to scorn. Its hope to punish a transgressor of the sort is as futile as
the
“Desire of the moth for the star.”
It is proper to assume that the purpose of the law is to punish the
criminal partner and to restore to the injured one privileges which
ought not to be forfeited because of another’s guilt. These two objects
represent the policy and expediency of the law; and in view of its
entire failure to work them out wisely and effectually, we will show
that the law is neither politic nor expedient. We will grant, indeed,
that the law is competent, in all cases coming under its notice, both to
punish the wrong-doer and partially to redress the wrong; but what is
the use, if, instead of effectually repressing the wrong, it tends
rather to encourage its commission? And such is indeed the anomalous
condition of the law, both as it reads and as it works. The easier and
more numerous the terms on which the marriage contract can be dissolved,
the greater, of course, will be the number of divorces sought; but
whether it be for one reason or many, once given a gateway from marriage
bonds, and none who are desirous of escape will find much trouble in
passing through the portals which the law has flung open. The facts, as
attested by the courts of Connecticut and Indiana, prove the truth of
the first part of this proposition; for nowhere are cases looking to the
absolute severance of the marriage tie more frequently argued, and in no
other States are so many divorces granted. The reason obviously is
because the conditions for obtaining such concessions are there easiest
of all. Where the conditions for procuring divorce are more onerous
fewer applications are made; and the facts, as occurring in New York
State, verify this sum in proportion and thus prove the second part of
our proposition.
In the State of New York adultery is the sole condition of divorce, and
just in proportion as such a crime is less frequent than mere family
jars and broils, so are divorces less frequently sought. The proposition
is therefore true that the permission to dissolve marriage begets a
demand to that effect in proportion to the ease with which it may be
obtained. The corollary of this proposition is that, the more easily
divorce may be obtained, the less regard is had to the obstacles which
may stand in the way of its coming at our beck. Should marriage be
declared to be absolutely indissoluble, and come to be viewed as such by
the masses, few would dream of assuming its responsibilities in the hope
that, should time render it irksome, they could slip the noose and again
soar “in maiden meditation fancy free.” On the other hand, they would be
disposed rather to approach the matter with deliberation, to take to
heart the conditions of the contract, and seriously to study the
surroundings of a state which is to endure till death. It is for this
reason that the church advises her children to ponder long and deeply
the consequences of the step they are about to take when proposing to
cross this moral Rubicon. If Cæsar felt that, the traditionary river
once crossed, fate had marked him for her own, or Cortez that, his ships
ablaze, all hope of return was gone, more still does the church insist
that sacramental marriage is a step that cannot be retraced. Divorce
laws ignore these considerations, and make light thereby of that social
institution on which all others depend for their perpetuity. They forget
that—
“Marriage is a matter of more worth
Than to be dealt in by attorneyship.”
With siren voice they lure the unwary and unreflecting to a fate fraught
with untold possibilities of unhappiness. The result is that persons
take less account of the solemn nature of the contract. It suits their
humor at the moment to get married, and little they reck of the future.
_Carpe diem._ The rosy present bounds the view, and there is no thought
of to-morrow. Time enough for the disillusioned groom to wail:
_Miseri quibus intentata nites_—
when “marriage vows have proved as false as dicers’ oaths,” and bitter
hate succeeded the short-lived joys of the honeymoon. And why should it
be otherwise? Is not the potent panacea of matrimonial ills ever within
ken and reach? What need is there to cloud the golden prospect with
thoughts of possible future wrangles and rancor, and in advance study to
avert or mitigate them, since, should they come along, a benignant law
is at hand to end them? We are convinced on the best of grounds that the
frequency of divorce suits has its root in the neglect of duly
considering the conditions essential to the happiness of married life.
Were Dante’s words written over marriage portals:
_Lasciate ogni speranza voi ch’intrate,_
a deal of curious prying, at least, would precede the decisive steps and
few would rashly fly to a “bourn whence no traveller returns.” But when
the law points to an easy escape from the consequences of a heedless
step, what necessity can there be for heeding? Plenty of prior
deliberation and a close scrutiny of its obligations would not have
failed to render marriage tolerable, at least, for many who now fret and
fume 'neath its galling yoke because they had flown to it in a wanton
hour as to a flower to gather sweets from. _Festina lente_—or, as Sir
Thomas Browne quaintly translates it, “Celerity should be contempered
with cunctation”—would be a valuable maxim to hold up to the giddy gaze
of our modern youth who woo and wed with more sentimental sighs than
sober sense; better, by all means, than the cynical “Don’t” of Douglas
Jerrold. The knowledge that what God hath joined together no human
authority must put asunder, alone can stop those unhallowed unions which
curse society by the filthy disclosures they occasion, and blast the
happiness, both temporal and eternal, of so many.
At the time when this question was widely discussed in England, and so
many eminent authorities opposed the project of law which now rules in
the British realms, and which is in the main identical with our own
State law, Lord Stowell held the following language, which goes at once
to the kernel of the matter and shows a keen appreciation of the worst
results of easy divorce. He says: “The general happiness of the married
life is secured by its indissolubility. When people understand that they
must live together, except for a very few reasons known to the law, they
learn to soften, by mutual accommodation, that yoke which they know they
cannot shake off; they become good husbands and good wives; for
necessity is a powerful master in teaching the duties it imposes.” The
church in surrounding marriage with that solemnity which it possesses in
the eyes of Catholics, and thus giving greater prominence to its
indissoluble character, has thereby supplied to her children the means
of softening a union so binding, and from the crucible of suffering
offers to both husband and wife a purer gold. In the schedule of
conditions essential to the procurement of the best results from
marriage she holds to our gaze a larger and deeper culture than current
philosophy dreams of—a culture that appeals to the intellect through
moral sense, unlike that modern culture which is addressed to the
intellect alone. It has almost passed into an axiom in political economy
that self must sink out of sight where the interests of many are
concerned; and so the church teaches that men and women, having reached
that period when the duties of married life ought to be assumed, should
thenceforth devote to the service of society those labors they had
hitherto bestowed on the prosecution of their individual aims. The
culture proceeds from this. Tolerance of each other’s shortcomings on
the part of husband and wife is strongly inculcated. A gentle
forbearance of mutual peculiarities is enjoined, whereby the noble
disposition to forgive the countless trifles of manner, thought, and
action which might offend a morbid or fastidious idiosyncrasy is
fostered. Thus the Catholic wife or husband, in view of the indissoluble
nature of marriage, is taught to round off angularities, to tolerate
oddities, to adapt individual views and feelings to special
requirements, and to hold all subject to that higher and holier law
which tells us that self should not be consulted where duty is
concerned.
How many bickerings and misunderstandings, how many of the
heart-burnings, how much of all the unhappiness that now mars and
disfigures married life, might be avoided if these large and liberal
views more generally prevailed! Petty jealousies, the offspring of our
baser nature; furtive suspicions, exaggeration of faults, imputation of
wrong motives, misinterpretation of harmless actions—in a word, the
hundred-and-one incentives to disagreement which beset each day’s
path—could find no room in a household harboring this pure and
enlightened conception of marriage. We know that the will is as much the
subject of discipline as the intellect, and we likewise know that as it
is tried, as temptations beset it and are repelled, as suffering is
endured without repining, as petty torments, numerous in proportion to
their smallness, are patiently borne, the whole character comes forth
from the ordeal smoother, sweeter, more spiritual, and stronger, with a
life that is not likely to die. Marriage, rightly conceived, is a
training-school where many salutary lessons are taught. Its tendency is
to strengthen the will, to soften the heart, to remove asperities of
character, to evoke the tender and gentle in our nature, and to beget a
happiness all its own. Wrongly understood and blindly sought, it is full
of perils, not, indeed, imaginary, but real with that terrible reality
which court calendars daily reveal in sickening colors.
Thus the standard by which the Catholic Church measures marriage makes
it yield a higher culture, more generous, large, and abiding, than can
flow from the gross conception which represents it as a contract to be
rescinded at will. The Catholic view promotes among the married that
freedom of action which loves to borrow the consciousness of doing right
from the conviction that the right is freely courted and the wrong
freely spurned, and thus paves the way for a nobler plane of conduct.
That irritability which inheres so deeply in our nature is what unfits
most of us for companionship. It seeks to fasten on others the blame
which is our own, or holds them responsible for grievances which are the
necessary outcome of human life. If not controlled, it either causes
entire estrangement and forfeiture of affection, or leads those towards
whom it is manifested to deceptiveness and the employment of crooked
ways to reach legitimate ends. A narrow and illiberal life is the
result. Darkness and trickery prevail where all should be light and
freedom. Evil accumulates on evil, till both parties seek through
divorce to free themselves from a yoke that has become intolerable. The
shrew will nag and the tyrant husband domineer because a narrow
selfishness, bred of this unrestrained irritability, has usurped the
place of a large-hearted and gentle forbearance. The knowledge of these
possibilities is the most effective armor against their actual
occurrence; for it demonstrates in advance the necessity of patience and
a tolerant spirit; it hints at a delicate regard for the feelings of
others; it leads to a vivid introspection of self, and inclines to a
mezzotint view of actions not our own; it discriminates between true
love, which is self-sacrificing, gentle, and forgiving, and the
counterfeit presentment of love, which is lurid passion, fire without
light. And this knowledge is best guaranteed by the conviction that
marriage is indissoluble. Urging this view of marriage and the study of
these things, the church implicitly holds that a liberal toleration of
individual action is essential to the happiness of married life, and
that the ignorance which accompanies intolerance must be dispelled ere
the ideal picture of married bliss can meet the gaze. Thus Christian
freedom goes by the golden mean, on one side of which is domestic
tyranny and on the other the rampant license of immorality. Unlike the
generality of guides, however the church possesses the means of
enforcing her enlightened views, of imparting wise counsel, and offering
helpful advice in concrete cases through the Sacrament of Penance. Those
who have derived their notion of the confessional from the scurrilous
writings of Michelet, the senseless diatribes of Gavazzi, or the
eminently vulgar flings of some sensational preachers will be a little
startled by this proposition. But let those whose knowledge of the
tribunal of penance has been fashioned in the school of bigotry and
ignorance consult any intelligent Catholic, husband or wife, and they
will find that the web of falsehood in which they have been caught is
such that they should blush at their own simplicity for having become
entangled in it and held “faster than gnats in cobwebs.” They will find
that all those virtues which, even to the commonest understanding, shine
clearly forth as the basis of contentment in married life, are here
inculcated; that here on the heat and flame of distemper cool patience
is sprinkled; that chafes are healed and rankling barbs plucked out; and
that magnanimity, self-sacrifice, and love brighten afresh at the
latticed crate of the confessional.
But notwithstanding that the church has exhausted prudence and employed
every means which common sense could suggest in compassing the integrity
of marriage, she seeks not in these the _ultima ratio_ of her action. To
her marriage is a sacrament, bestowing grace on those who approach it
worthily, and sealing married life with a supernatural impress. This
sacramental notion of marriage it is which elevates, purifies, and
sanctifies the relation, enables the church to mitigate the evils with
which human perversity leavens it, and gives her control where the most
restless plotters for the regeneration of society have acknowledged
their utter powerlessness to act.
During the controversy which marked the adoption of the Divorce Bill in
England its opponents, when twitted with their inconsistency in
rejecting the Catholic notion of marriage as a sacrament and still
insisting upon its inherent indissolubility, fell, through their reply,
into an error which, in proportion to its prevalence, has led to a
wide-spread misconception of the grounds on which the Catholic Church
claims marriage to be indissoluble. A prominent writer at the time said:
“The opinion of the Roman Church itself does not found the
indissolubility of marriage on its character as a sacrament, but only
conceives the obligation to be enhanced by that circumstance”; and in
confirmation of the assertion he quotes the words of the Council of
Trent, which are to this effect: _Matrimonium, ut naturæ officium
consideratur et maxime ut sacramentum, dissolvi non potest._ Now, if the
words _ut maxime_ be allowed to bear their proper meaning, they
certainly prove that the Tridentine fathers intended that the
indissolubility of marriage should, before all and above all, rest upon
and grow out of the sacramental character of the contract. _Ut maxime_,
if meaning anything, means _as far as it is possible, pre-eminently_;
and so the church regards marriage as naturally indissoluble, but
especially so when viewed as a sacrament. The fact proves that the
opponents of the bill had little else to fall back on than the
falsely-advanced statement that the Catholic Church, the most strenuous
advocate of indissolubility, sought the reason of her opinion in the
nature of the contract rather than in the character of the sacrament.
But, apart from the declaration of the Council of Trent, the whole
history of the church exhibits beyond peradventure her higher estimate
of marriage as a sacrament rather than as a contract. She holds it to
be, in a mystical sense, the symbol of our Lord’s union with the church,
and surely no higher character could attach to it. But this symbolic
meaning of marriage rests altogether on its sacramental phase, so that
the church views it as a sacrament supernaturally, as a contract
naturally, her higher regard for it being in the former sense. The
English indissolubilists, therefore, could in no manner object to the
proposed Divorce Bill; for, denying marriage to be a sacrament, they
surrendered the strongest reason for proclaiming it to be indissoluble.
If, as even Gibbon admits, the church has lifted woman from the lowest
degradation into which she could be plunged, in which she was the mere
slave of man and the toy of his passions, to her present position of
respect and independence by investing matrimony with the holiness of a
sacrament; and if the church has by the same means purified home-life
and cemented its affections, is there not danger that, by dragging down
marriage from its high estate, woman may again come to be regarded “not
as a _person_,” as Gibbon says, “but as a _thing_, so that, if the
original title were deficient, she might be claimed, like other
valuables, by the use and possession of an entire year”? Such was the
law in pagan times, and such it may be again if we list too readily to
those modern renovators of society who call marriage tyranny and a
“system of legalized prostitution.” Not in vain did St. Simon, Fourier,
Le Roux, Fanny Wright, and their co-workers inveigh against Christian
marriage. We are now reaping the fruits of their unholy crusade against
it. Their labors are to-day blossoming in Oneida County as well as in
Utah, in the general rush all round to snap uncongenial ties, and in the
woful spread of an evil too base to be mentioned. These form the goal to
which such pestilent agitations tend; and if some well-meaning advocates
of innovation have not kept step with the leaders, it is not because
their principles restrained them, but rather because they have not quite
broken away from the influence of early teachings. Marriage, once
stripped of its supernatural character, and reduced to the level of a
contract, becomes as much the subject-matter of speculation as political
systems. Reformers object to this feature of it or to that, and suggest
endless modifications. Plato contended that there should be no such
thing as marriage proper, and that all children should be surrendered to
the state. To-day, in the light which the Gospel has shed on the
question, civilized states tolerate a condition akin to that which the
Athenian philosopher advocated. And just as Plato, by the sheer force of
his commanding intellect, imposed his views on many both in his own time
and subsequently, so, it is to be regretted, the skill and eloquence of
some modern opponents of marriage are such that they have succeeded in
winning hundreds to their standard.
It is a law of our nature that great intellectual force is never
unproductive; that it triumphs over many obstacles; and, no matter what
may be the cause on the side of which its influence is cast, it is
always attended with at least partial success in the achievement of its
aims. Now, we have witnessed the most strenuous efforts of powerful
minds enlisted in the attempt to abolish marriage. We have had eloquent
pleas for socialism, phalansterianism, etc., and it could not but be
that these labors were destined to bear issue of some sort. That issue
we are contemplating at the present moment; for these assaults on
marriage have lowered the general conception of its obligations, its
sanctity, and its importance to society. They have lured to a mere
mockery hundreds who, when scarce the marriage-kiss has impressed their
lips, besiege our courts with petitions for divorce. The influence of
pernicious doctrines is deeper and wider than their authors imagine. It
does not consist alone in the fact that they draw disciples and beget
neophytes; but they weaken faith in what they assail, and thus engender
the most pitiful lot of man—scepticism. This is precisely what we now
complain of. Our neighbors round about us emphatically eschew the
doctrines of the _illuminati_, of Heine and of Prudhomme, yet they more
or less admit that there is some reason in what has been so well said,
so forcibly and so eloquently urged. The consequence is that their faith
in the true order of things is shaken; they are dissatisfied; they
declare the doctrine of indissolubility to be rigoristic; and,
provocation given, qualms are brushed aside and they hesitate not to fly
to the ready remedy of the law. We may thus set down to the erratic
speculations of a few self-appointed social reconstructionists many of
the matrimonial miseries and scandals we now deplore. And the leaven is
working not alone in the United States, but in every country where the
same low estimate of marriage prevails, and where the law is the ready
tool of those who desire escape from shackles of their own forging.
In England, where law machinery is more cumbersome than among us and its
processes more tedious, not quite so many divorces are obtained, but
still the number is on the increase. The English law is much the same as
that which rules in New York State, and it is interesting to inquire
what reason there can be for the greater percentage of divorces in New
York than in England. We hinted that the administration of English law
is slower, but that fact is not sufficient to account for a difference
so marked. All the influences already enumerated as tending to favor the
multiplicity of divorces are as actively at work over there as among
ourselves, and hence we must strive to find the explanation of the
difference in the different character of the social systems of the two
countries. In England society is stratified with such extreme nicety
that seldom, if ever, a waif is borne from one stratum to another. Lines
are sharply drawn between classes, and the fact is well recognized; for
the lowly do not seek to soar, nor do the higher ever entirely lose
their social grade. Hence marriages are contracted only between those
whose tastes by birth and education agree, whose general views are more
apt to harmonize, and whose sympathies mainly run in the same channels.
They come to the altar (we employ the word in its current sense) with a
better understanding of what each expects from the other, with fewer
doubts to frighten them and stronger hopes to sustain them, and hence
subsequent collisions and estrangements are less frequent. In our
country society has not quite passed out of its formative stage, the
elements have not settled into their allotted planes. It still is like
an estuary in which the conflict of opposing tides brings to the surface
what had just lain at the bottom, and drives to the bottom the bead that
had glistened for a moment on the brimming top; in a word, social
stratification is not yet complete among us. The result is a tendency to
the intermingling of incongruous forces. In the social ferment which is
going on some rise suddenly from a lower depth and crystallize in their
new plane by marriage, some fall and remain below on the same condition.
Here wealth is a potent escort to lead its possessors higher up than
they could hope to reach without the aid of this glittering talisman. A
little veneer and a resolute lack of shamefacedness often enable those
whom suddenly-acquired riches have lifted above their former level to
hold their new station till marriage has assured it to them and given
them a title to their position. But rapidly as wealth lifts in the
social scale, more rapidly still does poverty drag down, and we have not
yet fully developed, though happily we are fast coming to it, that
public sentiment which refuses to behold loss of caste in loss of
wealth. Till then a lower social level is the certain bourn of those who
have fallen from opulence, just as a niche higher up in the social
temple awaits the _nouveau riche_.
We are not sticklers for the social classification of aristocratic
countries, but simply for that which is founded on cultivated taste,
refinement, and general intelligence; and we contend that where the
social condition is such as to permit the barriers between vulgarity and
refinement to be broken down, no matter though the former may vie with
Crœsus or the latter appear in the tattered garb of Lazarus, matrimonial
misalliances will be the result. December and May are no more fitly
mated than platinum and lead—_i.e._, sixteen and fifty make no more
suitable alliance than refinement and its opposite.
“For in companions
That do converse and waste the time together,
Whose lives do bear an equal yoke of love,
There must be needs a like proportion
Of lineaments, of manners and of spirit.”
—_Merchant of Venice._
Till, therefore, this social ferment has settled and all the elements
have reached their allotted planes, there to remain, misalliances will
continue to occur, and misalliances, we know, are a fruitful source of
separation. There may be more satisfactory and truthful explanations of
the fact we are endeavoring to account for, but of this we are
convinced: that, for whatever cause, antagonistic social conditions
operate more frequently against happiness in married life in this
country than in Europe.
Space will not allow us to pursue the discussion of this question much
farther, so we will devote the few remaining lines to the consideration
of the leading objection which is constantly urged against absolute
indissolubility, and which may consequently be taken as a strong
argument in favor of divorce. Divorce, it is contended, favors morality;
for, whether law intervenes or not, passion will assert its supremacy,
and it is better to let those depart in peace and with the sanction of
the law who cannot live together than have them burst their bonds
illegally and contract new relations in despite of the law. By so
permitting, the advocates of divorce hope to stem the torrent of evil
which they say deluges some European continental nations where the
proportion of illegitimate births is wofully excessive. The same thing,
they maintain, is especially true of Spain, Italy, and, in a word, of
all Catholic countries. Wherever divorce is not sanctioned by law
dissoluteness, they affirm, is far greater than where divorces are
granted. So the statistics seem to prove; and, in a spasm of virtue,
believers in mere statistical figures denounce indissolubility as a
stepping-stone to lust. We will grant the reliability of statistical
reports for the nonce, and prove by them that, so far from immorality
abounding in those countries where divorces are prohibited, a greater
amount of immorality really exists in divorce countries, with the added
immorality of a law which cloaks it. We know that passion, blind and
impetuous, is the reigning force which orders the actions of those who
contemplate emancipation from marriage bonds. Certainly they do not act
under the inspiration of grace. When, therefore, they break loose from
their unsuiting partners, it matters little to them whether the law
approves or disapproves of their action, provided they can act with
impunity. This impunity is guaranteed in most cases in countries where
divorce is permitted, and new marriages, having all the seemingness of
virtue, are contracted with the sanction of the law. In Catholic
countries this is not permitted; new post-marital relations are branded
as adulterous and their issue illegitimate. Is it any wonder, then, that
illegitimacy is more prevalent in those countries where divorce is
unknown than where caprice or crime can sever old bonds and weld new
ones, all with the countenance of the law?
The only difference is that adultery and its consequences are called by
their proper names in the former case, whereas in the latter an
anti-Scriptural law retrieves them from stigma. And as there is in the
human heart a disposition to do more frequently and more extensively
what the law allows than what it prohibits, we may be sure that there
are many more pseudo-marriages contracted in countries where divorce is
permitted than there are adulteries where it is prohibited. Were, then,
the mask of the law removed, we should find in the former more infamy
and crime than even in those Catholic countries where the record of
morality is lowest. There is one Catholic country in which divorce is a
thing known only in name, and yet where even the illegitimacy which
affects not to seek shelter behind the law is very much less than in the
adjoining country, where divorces are frequently obtained. In Ireland
the courts are most rarely troubled with such applications, and yet
illicit relations on the part of married persons are fewer than in any
country of Europe. Does not this fact evidently disprove the claim that
absolute indissolubility is unfavorable to morality? While the Catholic
Church holds to view on the one hand the indissolubility of marriage,
and on the other the precept of conjugal chastity, and while even in one
country she has established a higher rate of morality under those rigid
conditions, it is evident her wisdom in this trying matter has been
attested by the facts.
But the attempt to bolster up divorce morality by an appeal to
statistics is radically wrong. It is based on the supposition that the
end justifies the means; that it is better, for the sake of avoiding the
scandals incident to adulterous cohabitation, to legalize it, and thus
exhibit to the eyes of society a whitened sepulchre rather than hold to
view the rottenness of “an enseamed bed.” It is the duty of moralists
and teachers of religion rather to stem the torrent of vice and pluck
the brand from the burning than attempt to cloak over and extenuate by
legal devices what is essentially and for ever wrong. There are times,
indeed, when separation is the only hope for two unfortunates whom an
unlucky fate had thrown in each other’s way; but separation does not
imply remarriage, and theirs it is, while reaping the fruits of an
enforced singleness, to reflect that they are answerable for the
consequences of their own deliberate action, while their case may serve
as an example to others. Let the beautiful conception of Christian
marriage more abound; let men and women learn to view marriage as
something holy, in which the husband is the protector, the wife the
comforter, and we may meet with more marriages in which, while the
husband faithfully performs his allotted _rôle_, the wife embodies the
beautiful picture of her drawn by Washington Irving: “As the vine which
has long twined its graceful foliage about the oak, and has been lifted
by it in sunshine, will, when the hardy plant is rifted by the
thunderbolt, cling round it with its caressing tendrils and bind up its
shattered boughs, so it is beautifully ordered by Providence that woman,
who is the mere dependant and ornament of man in his happier hours,
should be his stay and solace when smitten with sudden calamity; winding
herself into the rugged recesses of his nature, tenderly supporting the
drooping head, and binding up the broken heart.”
FROM THE HECUBA OF EURIPIDES.
_A free translation._
BY AUBREY DE VERE.
[_The Chorus laments the Judgment of Paris._]
STROPHE.
My doom was sealed, my lot decided,
Not now, not now, but long ago,
When first the all-beauteous Dardan boy,
By that pernicious goddess guided,
Laid Ida’s stateliest pinewood low,
And built his ships, and sailed from Troy,
To seek her gift—the richest, rarest—
That wife most fatal; yet the fairest.
ANTISTROPHE.
A netted deer our country lies:
One sinned; and all partook his ruin!
O fatal, fatal was the hour,
Fatal the contest and the prize
How ill adjudged for my undoing,
When in green Ida’s mountain bower
That awful Three—my bane—contended:
Even then our golden reign was ended.
EPODE.
And haply some Achaian bride
Even now, by far Eurotas’ wave,
Widowed like me, like me is mourning!
Perhaps some mother by her side
Laments for those she could not save,
The early lost, and unreturning;
Raising her withered hand to tear
Her last thin locks of whitening hair.
SIX SUNNY MONTHS.
BY THE AUTHOR OF “THE HOUSE OF YORKE,” “GRAPES AND THORNS,” ETC.
CHAPTER XIII.
“OUR LADY OF SNOW.”
“To-morrow comes the flower of the festivals,” the Signora said on the
morning of the 4th of August. “It is our beautiful basilica’s birthday,
and the loveliest of birthdays, too—just a sweet little poem.”
“Let us give ourselves up to it entirely,” Isabel proposed, “and see if
we cannot imagine ourselves back in the middle of the fourth century. I
really do not like to look at all these things as an outsider.”
“We must, then, shut the world out for two days,” the Signora replied.
“I would like it, if you are agreed. I have found, indeed, that it is
impossible to enter into the spirit of these beautiful beliefs of the
old time while one is having much social intercourse with people about,
even goodish people. It reminds me of seed scattered on good but shallow
ground, which the fowls come and pick up. You think, you meditate, you
pray, you begin to find yourself impressed; glimmers of light steal in,
and your soul is on the point of being enriched; when in comes some
friend, who means no harm, who has, perhaps, a faith like a dry branch
with one green leaf at the end, and immediately all is discord. If you
utter what is in your mind, it is like pearls before swine; if you
listen in silence, and with sufficient attention to enable you to answer
intelligently, it is more than likely that the religious impression you
have received will be much weakened, if not entirely effaced. One
understands, in such a case, the profound wisdom of the philosophy of
silence, which even the pagans knew, and recollects the admonition of
our Lord: “Let your speech be yea, yea; no, no.”
“Still, I should think,” Bianca observed dreamily, “that one might be so
settled in that way of feeling and thinking as to influence others,
instead of being influenced by them.”
“Very true, you dear little visionary!” replied the Signora, pinching
the pretty ear so near her, from which hung a pink coral fuchsia. “If
one were a great saint, and never touched earthly things except with
conspicuous recollection; or a great egotist, constantly impressing on
everybody that one is a very exceptional being and cannot possibly be
approached in the ordinary manner; or some one, like a clergyman or a
nun, who by their very profession impress those who approach them with
the consciousness of different and loftier interests. But we common
mortals are overrun by the many. You have seen the breakwater of a
bridge, have you not, built of stone, and thrusting a sharp point up the
stream to part the waters, that they may not rush against the broad side
of the piers and sweep them away? Well, for one person to keep a firm
stand against the influence of many, it is necessary to put forward, and
keep forward, a very hard angle of the character. However, I will not
preach any more about it, my dear friends. I will simply say that till
the day after to-morrow we are in retreat. We will go up now to the
church, and refresh our minds in relation to the legend, and look at
some of the treasures there, if you like. Then we can read the whole
over here at our leisure. I have a kind friend there—my patron with St.
Nicholas—who has a superb illustrated description of the church, which
he has offered me any time I may wish for it. I will ask for it to-day.
By this means we shall be ready to assist intelligently to-morrow at the
_festa_ of Our Lady of Snow. And, by the way, what a charmingly fresh
thought for the season is that of snow! I call for the yeas and nays.”
An unanimous yea was the reply, and they prepared themselves immediately
to go to the church.
They had, of course, seen already all its more evident beauties; but
such a temple can be studied for years without exhausting its
attractions, and there were several of its more celebrated gems which
they had quite passed over. After having heard Mass, then, they went
first into the Sistine Chapel to see the Tamar. This beautiful figure is
painted in one of the pendentives of the cupola—a space shaped like an
inverted pear. She sits with her twin boys standing on the seat at
either side of her, their lovely heads filling the rounded-out space.
The most exquisite charm of the figure is the transparent veil which
floats about the head and shoulders, and through which her face, with
its large, drooping eyelids, is perfectly visible.
From there they visited the grand _loggia_ to look once more at the
mosaic story of the miraculous snow. This grand mosaic, made in the
fourteenth century by the order of two Colonna cardinals, was once on
the open façade of the church; but Benedict XIV., in the eighteenth
century, building the new façade, enclosed them in the grand _loggia_
from which the popes gave benediction, and of which they form the lower
side. In the centre of the upper half of the picture the Saviour sits
enthroned, the right hand giving benediction, the left holding a book
open at the words, “I am the light of the world.” At either hand above
an angel swings a censer, at either side below an angel adores. Four
figures—the Blessed Virgin and saints—stand at right and left, the
symbols of the four evangelists over their heads. The lower half,
separated by the large, round window that lights the eastern end of the
church, has, on the left, two pictures—one the sleeping Pope Liberius,
the other the sleeping Giovanni—over both of whom hovers the same vision
of the Madonna directing them to build her a church where the snow shall
fall the next day. On the right side is Giovanni telling his dream to
the pope in one picture, and beside it the pope, in grand procession,
coming to the hill-top where, from above, the Saviour and Virgin send
down the snow. So quaint, so full of faith, so exquisite in meaning,
this visible story is one of the most eloquent sermons ever preached.
Opposite the mosaic picture, and seen through the graceful arches of the
portico, was that living picture of St. John Lateran looking down the
long street, the blue mountains melting far away, the nearer palm-tree,
and the piazza with its beautiful column and statue.
“I have a little special treat for you this morning,” the Signora said
as they went down into the church again. “It has no special connection
with the Madonna delle Neve, but it will not disturb your visions of
her. Here, however,” pointing to an altar near the sacristy door, “is
the story again, and here is buried that Giovanni Patrizio who was found
buried under, or in front of, the grand altar.”
It was the chapel of Santa Maria delle Neve, with a painting over the
altar where the Virgin appears to Giovanni and his wife, and points them
to a snow-capped hill.
Then they went into the sacristy, where one of the canons joined them,
and had some precious vestments brought out for them to see; among them
a cope of stuff such as one does not find any more, thick, rich, and
dim, and threaded with gold, with the short fringe of mingled crimson
and gold so thick as to round up almost like a cord—the cope given and
worn by St. Pius V. Almost more precious, if one could choose, was the
chasuble given and worn by St. Charles Borromeo—long, and with a slight,
graceful point in the back. It had been proposed, the sacristan told
them, to have this made a model for chasubles now on account of its
graceful form, but no change had yet been made.
“This is worn on the _festa_ of San Carlo, though it is crimson,” he
added, “because it was his. Sometimes strangers exclaim, when they see
it, that San Carlo was not a martyr.”
They touched reverently the sacred relics, and kissed the fastenings
that those saintly hands had touched; then, with a more human
admiration, examined a marvellous flounce of lace given the church three
hundred years ago by the Prince Colonna of that time—a web of such
fineness that the spiders might have woven the thread, and of such
beauty of design that only an artist could have imagined it.
Before leaving the church they paused in front of the closed _cancella_
of the Borghese Chapel to look at the bas-relief over the altar, wherein
Our Lady of Snow again repeats her story. All was still in the church.
Choir and High Mass were over, and only here and there lingered some
_custode_, or assistant, putting the finishing touches to the
preparations for the _festa_ which would begin with first Vespers that
afternoon. The pavements shone newly polished, the candlesticks were
like gold, the gilt bronze angels that hold the great painted candles
stood on the marble rail of the confession, the draperies were all up.
In the chapel itself the benches of the choir were prepared, the altar
glittering with its most precious ornaments, the two great hanging lamps
at either side swinging faintly, as if impatient for the music to begin.
All was peaceful; and a tender shade and coolness in the air veiled the
glittering richness of the place.
“I cannot tell you how mysterious that picture seems to me,” Bianca
whispered, pointing to the square veiled case bordered with jewels, and
supported by gilt angels in the middle space over the altar. “The two
veils that are to be removed in order to see it, and then the depth at
which it is set, and the mere dark outline that is all one can see
inside the golden border—it all impresses me with a sense of mystery and
awfulness. I wonder what the face really looks like, and if any one has
seen it.”
“Why, you have seen my engraving of it, my dear,” the Signora said; “and
I presume that is a faithful copy, taken when the features were more
distinguishable. That has a noble, serious look which impresses me. And
no wonder you look with awe at this. If it were not painted by St. Luke
even, it is embalmed by memories not less sacred. Twelve hundred years
ago St. Gregory the Great carried this very picture in procession
through the city, in a time of terrible pestilence, and set it on the
altar of St. Peter’s. It was on the open façade of this church till Paul
V. built this chapel to contain it. Ampère says that angels have been
heard chanting litanies about it. It is held by all here in the most
tender veneration. I have never heard any one describe it, and do not
know who has seen it near. I have heard somewhere that only the chapter
of the basilica and the Borghese family have the privilege of going up
to it. _Madonna mia_, what a privilege it would be!” she sighed, looking
up at the closed jasper gates.
They stayed a little longer, then started to go home; but as they were
going out a boy came to tell the Signora that Monsignore M—— begged to
speak with her. The others went on, but she turned back, well content;
for a call from Monsignore M—— always meant something pleasant. This
prelate was no less distinguished for position than for his virtues;
and, finding the Signora a stranger and somewhat lonely when she first
came to Rome, he had done her many kindnesses—was, in fact, her Santa
Claus.
“Do you guess what little devotion I want you to make on the eve of our
_festa_?” he asked, meeting her with the confident smile of one who
knows he is going to confer a great pleasure.
“I know it is something delightful, _Monsignore mio_,” she replied, “but
I cannot say just what.”
“Well, I want you to visit the antique Madonna,” he said.
She looked at him, uncomprehending.
He pointed to the veiled shrine in the Borghese Chapel, near which they
stood. “Don Francesco will be here in a moment with a candle,” he said.
“I prepared all, because I knew you would want to go. I could not invite
a party, you know; but you belong to the church and have a special
devotion to our Madonna.”
The Signora could not reply. Such a swift fulfilment of her wish moved
her too deeply for words. She kissed the hand of her kind friend, and
looked across the church to the tabernacle of the Blessed Sacrament with
the almost spoken thought: “I am going to see your Mother.” To visit
that sacred shrine was to her as near to seeing the Mother of God face
to face as one could come on earth, without a miracle.
Presently appeared the custodian, bearing a lighted candle and a bunch
of keys; he opened a small door beside the chapel. They ascended a
narrow, winding stair, without any light except the one they carried,
and passed a long, arched corridor where the walls almost touched their
elbows at either side, and the vault just cleared their heads above.
This corridor was between the side wall of the chapel and the wall of
the adjoining sacristy. Another door opened, and they entered a cross
corridor leading to one of the balconies of the chapel—one of those
beautiful gilded balconies the Signora had so many times wished to get
into. She stepped into this now, and looked down through the chapel, out
into the church, and across to the Sistine Chapel, the columns,
pictures, and gilded arches of the basilica set like a picture in the
great arched entrance of the Borghese.
Going on then, Don Francesco opened a strong, locked door, that showed
another door immediately within, closing the same wall. These led into
another of those narrow white corridors running between the walls of the
chapel behind the altar. Turning then into a third short corridor
leading toward the chapel, they faced still another door, over which
were painted the arms and tiara of Pope Paul V., who built the chapel.
This door unlocked, they found themselves in a little chamber directly
behind the grand altar, with the miraculous picture, set in a box cased
in metal, right before them. It stands a little back from the screens
that cover it in the chapel, and there is space enough at either side
for a person to slip in in front and see the picture face to face. Two
iron hooks that barred the passage were taken down, and the Signora went
in and found herself in front of this most venerable image.
The picture is painted on panel, and, though dim, is still distinct on
so near a view, the rich, soft colors coming out as one gazes—a long,
oval face full of serious majesty, with large eyes, and a mantle
dropping over the forehead. But this mantle is now almost hid; for the
head of the Mother, and of the Babe that looks up into her face, and the
outline of their shoulders, are closely filled in with gold and gems.
But for this nothing but a dark square would be distinguishable from the
chapel. The outline is so clearly made, however, as to give a perfect
idea, when looked at from below, of a crowned woman with a crowned child
in her arms.
If, in the presence of the picture, one can think of jewels, these are
worth looking at. They are the gems of a cardinal and of a pope—stones
of immense value set in pure gold. Besides rubies and amethysts, in the
centre of the Virgin’s crown is a large emerald surrounded by diamonds,
and from the jewelled chain at her neck hangs a cross made entirely of
large sapphires.
The Signora took the candle in her hand and held it before those faces,
and the clergymen with her knelt, one at either side of her.
After a little while they rose, the Signora kissed the floor before the
picture, and the case that held it, and they turned away. On leaving she
observed that this little chamber behind the altar was quite covered
with frescoes. Then came the low corridors again, and the narrow stairs;
one more peep from the gilded balcony, and at length she stepped out
into the church again, bewildered and enchanted.
“I will tell them nothing about it,” was her conclusion as she went
home. “They might feel hurt at being left out. It shall be a little
secret of my own.”
They went to first Vespers and to the High Mass next morning, but the
finest part was the Vespers of the day, to which they went early, and
were so fortunate as to have chairs in the chapel near the altar. The
chapter came in in procession from the basilica, singing as they came,
and the place was soon crowded.
Nothing was wanting to make the scene perfect; the magnificent chapel,
the beautiful dress of the canons, who all wore purple silk soutanes,
with rich lace on those picturesque little _cotte_ of theirs, and the
music—each was in harmony with all the rest. Then, as the music went up,
down through the cupola, glowing with the colors of Cavaliere d’Arpino,
and faintly veiling the frescoes of Guido Reni, came the soft and
loitering snow of blossoms, flowery flake by flake. They were lost one
instant against the white band of Carrara marble—cornice, capitals,
figures, and flowers—under the arches, then green of verd-antique, and
red of jasper, or the colored mantle of one of Guido’s saints threw them
into relief again. Little by little the mosaic of the pavement grew dim
under that exquisite snow-fall, which seemed, as it came down, to toss
on the music in mid-air.
The light up in the cupola grew red with sunset, and the chapel below
began to show softest shades and pale gold lights from the candles, and
the pageant slowly dissolved like a bouquet that parts into flowers,
each flower showing more beautiful separated than when massed together.
Going out into the basilica, where it seemed almost evening, so strongly
contrasted were the lights and shades, the Signora silently pointed out
to her friends the long, red-gold bar of sunshine that came in at a
window of the tribune and lay the whole length of the nave, looking so
solid one felt like stepping over or stooping to go under it, as if it
were an obstacle. It was her very idea of the bars of the tabernacle
which the Jews bore with them.
“If only the church should be lifted and borne to Paradise now, when it
is all bathed in flowers and full of incense and music!”
They lingered yet, unwilling to go. Monsignore M—— came out of the
sacristy and brought them all some of the blessed blossom-snow. People
were gathering it up from the floor of the chapel, and, it having fallen
also in the tribune, little boys were slyly vaulting over the railings,
snatching it up unseen by the _custodi_, and scampering out again. The
lights went out, the _cancelle_ were closed, and finally our friends
were forced to go home.
They stood a moment outside the church door before descending the steps,
the two girls expressing their delight with feminine enthusiasm. Mr.
Vane had but one word: “There is a certain Protestant hymn that used to
make me feel, when I was a boy, very loath to go to heaven,” he said.
“But, remembering it now by the light of this _festa_, I think heaven
couldn’t be better described than as a place——
“'Where congregations ne’er break up,
And Sabbaths have no end.’”
A few days later they made their little visit to Genzano, stopping one
day in Albano on the way. It was the feast of the Holy Saviour, in which
again an antique and venerated picture had a prominent part. They
reached the town just in time to see the procession go from the Duomo
bearing the picture up to the little church of Santissimo Salvatore on
the hill.
“What are those military bands playing for?” Mr. Vane asked, as they sat
in the loggia of their apartment, after having rested a half-hour.
“They are playing for the Lord,” said the Signora.
He stared a little, but, finding her perfectly serious, said after a
moment: “Well, I don’t know why they shouldn’t; only I am not used, you
know, to hearing fifes and drums on any but military and civil
occasions.”
“This is a military occasion,” the Signora replied gravely. “It
celebrates Him who is the God of battles and the Lord of hosts. It is a
civil occasion, too, in honor of the King of kings, the Lawgiver of the
universe, the Prince of peace.”
“You are right!” he said emphatically; “and I need not ask now why they
are firing cannon.”
They went out just at sunset and took their places on the steps of the
little church to which the procession was to come, catching glimpses of
it in the distance as it appeared in some turn of the ascending way.
The slope of the street just in front of them had been swept, and two
men were sprinkling it in a very primitive fashion. One trundled along a
cart with a little barrel of water on it, and the other dipped in a
small wooden bucket and scattered the water from side to side. He did it
very dexterously, however, showing practice. Nearer the steps the street
was paved with a mosaic of flowers, and all the houses by which the
procession was to pass were decorated in some way, with flowers,
pictures, and lamps to light later, some already lighted and showing
faintly through the gloaming. All the windows and little balconies and
elevated door-steps near the church were filled with women and children,
every face turned toward the winding street up which a cross was
glittering and a sound of music coming. A banner came in sight after the
cross, and then a crucifix with its canopy, and then banner after
banner, and crucifix after crucifix, showing in air over the wall that
wound with the street. At one turn were visible the tops of the tallest
heads; then, a little farther on, the whole heads of men, and the
flowing locks of the boys of the choirs; and, lastly, they came into
full sight near by, the inferior persons marching in lines at each side
of the street, leaving hollow spaces where there was no banner or
crucifix to be carried, the clergy walking in the centre. As the picture
of the Holy Redeemer came along, borne on the shoulders of four men, all
the crowd about sank on their knees. The picture was carried up the
steps and placed on a table set there to receive it, and there were
prayers and hymns before dropping the curtain over it and taking it into
the church.
The sun went down and one large star burned in the west. It was easy to
imagine an angel hand and wings above, and golden chains dropping down
to a lamp of which that star was the flame. All the lamps, many-colored
as the rainbow, were lighted in the windows, throwing their light, as
the twilight deepened, in a strong splash, here and there, on a leaning
face intent and praying, on a mantle of vines, on a bit of carving, a
rough stone balcony, or a stair climbing up into the dark. One little
arched window, with a vine over it, held a single beautiful face of a
young woman, and a single lamp that shone on her black hair and eyes and
perfect features, motionless there in prayer, till she looked like a
cameo cut in pink carnelian.
The prayers ended, and some one drew the curtain before the lovely face
of the picture. As he did so a chorus of exclamations burst from the
kneeling crowd, and several women burst into tears.
“What do they say?” Mr. Vane asked in surprise. “What is the matter?”
“They say, '_Grazie, Santissimo Salvatore!_'—Thanks, most holy Saviour,”
she replied.
He smiled faintly and repeated after them, “_Grazie, Santissimo
Salvatore!_” and it seemed that his eyes glistened in the candle-light.
“I am glad it touches you,” the Signora said as they went to their
lodgings. “Some, even Catholics, think it superstitious; but it is no
more so than it is a superstition for us to kiss and weep over the
pictures of our friends.”
The next morning they went up to early Mass in the pretty Capuchin
church, at the head of its long avenue of overarching trees, loitering
slowly home again when the Mass was over.
“Now,” said the Signora suddenly, spying a man with a large basket—“now
I will show you what figs are. You have not known before.”
She beckoned the man and asked how many he would sell for a _soldo_. He
replied, “Twelve.”
“You may give me eight dozen,” she said. “Each of you dear people are to
have two dozen and to carry them yourselves. Out with your
handkerchiefs! That is the fashion. Don’t be scrupulous.”
“They don’t look as if I should wish to eat two dozen,” Bianca remarked
doubtfully. “They look to me like little bits of green apples.”
“Please to defer your judgment,” remarked her friend; “and what you do
not wish to eat I will take.”
When they had reached home and were seated at the breakfast-table, the
Signora took one of the little figs, with some ceremony and much
anticipated triumph, and, lacking a fruit-knife, peeled its green skin
off with the handle of a tea-spoon. All their eyes were watching the
process; and when it was ended, and she pushed out the little
teaspoonful of delicious fruit for Mr. Vane to have the first, the
others were convinced by only seeing. It was a rich, deep red, of the
consistency of solid old preserved strawberries, but with the fig
flavor.
After breakfast was over they went out to visit the gardens of the
Cesarini palace, for which they had a permit. These are laid out and
kept by a Swiss gardener, and are a wilderness of flowers and trees and
fountains on the level and down the hill-side. After wandering about the
upper part for a while they descended a slowly-winding path, bordered by
hydrangeas in full flower, that stood shoulder-high and dropped their
great balls of amethyst bloom toward the earth, and came out into a
little terrace where the trees and shrubs left an open front. A long
bench at the back, and a richly-carved antique capital of a column near
the wild-vine parapet, gave them seats, and before them was the whole
verdant amphitheatre, with Lake Nemi at the bottom, and the town of Nemi
half up the opposite bank, like a little white flower painted half way
up the inside of a green cup. And down from the flower, like its white
stem, dropped a white stream, cascade after cascade, to the lake, its
motion petrified in the distance.
Tall white cloud-shapes marched round the hill-tops and looked
over—shining shapes that seemed to hold Olympian deities within their
folds, “impenetrable to every ray but that of fancy.” The amphitheatre
sloped steeply in a green cone rich with orchards and vineyards, and
pressed in a waving line around the water. Opposite the little terrace
in which they sat, as in a box at the opera, the shore made a green
heart in the water, and from behind one curve of it a boat, tiny in the
distance as a black swan, slipped out and moved across the view. The
lake lay like an emerald half-fused, its shaded greens touched in places
with a soft purple bloom or a silvery lustre, and catching now and then
a melting image of some cloud-cap higher than the rest. There was a
sound of mellow thunder from some direction—Jupiter Tonans driving
through those driving clouds.
They sat there silently drinking in the beauty of the scene, speaking
only a word or two now and then, waiting till it should be noon and they
should hear the Angelus from Nemi. When it came, a dream of a sound,
touching with the outermost wave of its song the party of strangers
across the lake, they stood up and said the prayers together. Then,
bidding adieu to Nemi and its lake and the beautiful garden, they went
slowly away.
That afternoon they went back to Albano, and the next evening returned
to Rome. They had only one other excursion to make—that to Monte
Cassino. Certain affairs were calling Mr. Vane to America, either for a
longer or shorter stay, to go with only his daughters, or to have a
nearer companion yet, and the end of their visit was approaching. It
would soon be September, and in October they must start. Besides, it was
found that, subject to her father’s approval, Bianca had promised to
marry early in the spring, and some preparations must be made for the
wedding.
TO BE CONCLUDED NEXT MONTH.
TO POPE PIUS IX.
A JUBILEE OFFERING, JUNE 3, 1877.
I.
To-day the scattered peoples of the earth—
Haply the monarchs may not all forget—
Pay unto thee, great Pope, their willing debt
Of love sincere—blest debt of heavenly birth!
We kneel afar, a people of to-day,
Whose life but doubles in its hundred years
Thy long episcopate of many tears;
But none the less we love, nor ceaseless pray
That He who leadeth Joseph like a sheep
May bless thee with fair length of glorious days,
May give thee yet triumphant voice to raise
When men, with happy tears, shall vigil keep
Of that great feast when Christian Rome no more
In chains shall stand a world’s awed gaze before.
II.
Eudoxia’s church—where Michael Angelo
Hath Moses wrought in terrible array—
With faith’s most loving rites keeps holiday
In holy thought of those long years ago
When, 'neath its roof, the throng devout drew near
To see thee made a shepherd of the sheep,
Thy crook receive, that thou shouldst bravely keep,
Thy flock e’er leading by the waters clear.
“St. Peter of the Chains”—prophetic name!
Beneath this title was thy charge begun;
As Peter’s self thy hands his chains have won,
With these, his years. When shall God’s angel claim
Thy liberty, the prison gates fling wide?
Christ in his vicar no more crucified!
III.
O happy senses of the Virgin Blessed
Standing the cross of Calvary beneath—
So winning martyrdom without its death—
Queen of all martyrs evermore confessed!
O happy Pontiff! wear’st thou not to-day
Beneath the triple crown one wrought of thorn?
So crowned for love thou hast unfailing borne
To thy pure spouse the faithless would betray?
Art thou not martyr, too, by that deep woe
Thou sharest with our Queen Immaculate?
About thee rise the cries of blinded hate,
Thou seest afresh the wounds of Jesus flow;
His cross thy palm, his words sublime thine too—
“Father, forgive; they know not what they do.”
IV.
As said Lacordaire, of the rosary,
That love must ever its own speech repeat
That, ever murmured, groweth e’er more sweet,
So, seeking long some gift to bring to thee
On this high day that keeps thy years of gold—
Some thought that shall heart’s dearest service prove—
Find I but one e’er-echoing word of love
That doth all else I seek most fair enfold.
Too great thy deeds for my poor verse to tell
That need the Tuscan’s speech of Paradise;
Even to think them, tears are in my eyes
And sorrow stifles the _Te Deum’s_ swell—
Tears for so dear a feast seem gift unkind,
But love in every falling bead is shrined.
V.
As, when our Lord doth rest in solemn state
On altar for his worship set apart,
And from the fulness of each faithful heart
The fairest flowers to him are consecrate—
Pure lilies, that with fragrant breath pour forth
The speechless worship human love must give;
Red roses, in whose flush love seems to live—
As, 'mid this wealth, some gift of little worth,
Some penance-hued, frail-blooming violet,
Is brought by humble soul with love as great
As lies within the lilies’ lordlier state—
Each cancelling so little of love’s debt—
So I, my father, 'mid thy lilies place
My rue, thy blessing shall make herb-of-grace.
THE PRESENT STATE OF JUDAISM IN AMERICA.
Judaism, in its purity, is not a false religion. It was revealed and
established by God, and nothing which comes from him can be untrue.
Judaism, as it now exists here and in Europe and Asia, is, on the one
hand, overladen and almost smothered by the inventions and additions of
men, until the original deposit of the truth is with difficulty
discerned; on the other hand, it is refined and explained away until it
has become little better than a system of worldly morals. To-day, in
Europe, Jews, and the descendants of Jews who have lost their ancestral
faith without becoming Christians, are powerful in the cabinets of
kings, in parliaments, in the money exchanges, and in the world of
journalism. In America, while they have as yet, perhaps with a single
exception, taken no leading part in the political affairs of the
country, they have become a power in finance, and are beginning in a
quiet way to influence, and to some extent to control, journalism. The
ability of the race is unquestionable, and their virtues, as a race, are
many. They are prudent and thrifty; they are charitable to each other,
and their charities are not always confined to their own people; they
are seldom guilty of crime, although when a Jew does become a criminal
his offences are apt to leave little to be desired in the matter of
completeness, audacity, and cruelty; they are excellent parents, and the
domestic virtues among them are cultivated to a high degree; their women
are for the most part chaste; their men are seldom cruel creditors, even
when their defaulting debtors are Gentiles. They have their faults and
objectionable peculiarities; among certain classes of them these
imperfections are especially noticeable; but, as we shall show, the
rising generation of Jews in America will probably become tolerably well
Americanized, and will, to some extent at least, cease to be an
unpleasantly peculiar people.
To Catholics the study of the changes which have taken place and are now
occurring among the Jews should be invested with peculiar interest. We
cannot forget that the Holy Scriptures of the Jews are a portion of our
Holy Scriptures; that Our Blessed Lady was a Jewess, and that our Divine
Lord willed to be born a Jew according to the flesh; that he made
himself subject to the ceremonies and rites of the Jewish law, which was
then the divine law, and consequently his own law; that the first drops
of his precious blood were shed in the Jewish rite of circumcision; that
his chosen apostles, and among them the first pope, were all Jews; that
the Catholic Church at its first organization was wholly composed of
Jews; and that the first Christian martyr was a Jew.
When Jesus Christ had finished his work on earth and had ascended into
heaven, the Jewish law was fulfilled but not destroyed; it remained in
full force and effect, subject only to such modifications as God
himself, speaking through the infallible mouth of the church which he
had established, should ordain in matters of ritual, sacrifice, and
outward observances. The code of laws given by God to Moses on Mount
Sinai, and engraved by the divine hand upon tables of stone, is as
binding to-day upon all of us as it was binding upon the Jews on the day
when Moses came down from the mount bearing the sacred tablets in his
hands. The devout Jew who to-day, with reverently covered head and
contrite heart, stands in his synagogue and listens to the reading of
the law, hears the same words that Jesus of Nazareth read when, as was
his custom, “he went into the synagogue and stood up for to read.” True,
hearing, he does not hear the full meaning of the divine words; seeing,
he does not see how they have been fulfilled; his understanding has not
been opened to know that the Messias for whom he still yearns was the
Jesus whom his ancestors crucified on Calvary, and that, on the altar of
the church which, perhaps, stands next door to his synagogue, this same
Jesus, risen, glorified, and descended again from heaven, stands ready
to receive and bless him.
But the Jew, ignorant of this and still clinging fast to the faith of
his fathers, has an infinite advantage over all the other non-Catholics
in the world. His religion, as we have said, was revealed by God, and
therefore is not false in its essence, however much it may be overlaid
and hidden by the innumerable superstitions and additions with which
successive generations of rabbis and doctors have encumbered it. It is
not a revolt against the Catholic faith nor a contradiction of it; for
not only did it exist before the Catholic Church was established, but it
was revealed by God, and he cannot contradict himself. The Jew errs only
because he cannot or will not see that the Catholic Church is the lineal
heir and rightful possessor of the church of which Adam was the first,
and Caiphas the last, high-priest; and as for his sin in this hardness
of heart and blindness of eye, God will judge him. Outside of this, and
outside of the human additions which have been made to his creed, he
believes what God spake unto Abraham, Moses, and the prophets, and his
religion is entitled to respect because it is of divine origin. But the
origin of all the other non-Catholic religions in the world is human or
diabolical. They are revolts against the authority and teaching of the
church which Jesus Christ established in the world; to the earthly and
visible head of which he gave the keys of the kingdom of heaven; to the
words of which he enjoined all men to render obedience; on which he has
bestowed the inestimable grace of perfect unity; and which the Holy
Spirit keeps ever in the truth. The Jew can say with truth, “God founded
my church”; but the Protestant can only say, “Martin Luther, or King
Henry VIII., or Queen Elizabeth, or John Knox, or John Wesley, or
Alexander Campbell, or Jo Smith, or the devil founded _my_ church.”
Judaism, however, although divine in its origin, ceased to possess the
divine sanction from the moment when our Lord had completed his work on
earth and ascended into heaven, and the Holy Ghost descended to preside
over the organization of the church from which he has never since
departed. The Jewish religion, thus deprived for ever of the divine
sanction, was at once deprived of its divine authority and became a
merely human organization, subject, like all other human things, to
corruption, change, decay, and disintegration. These processes have been
going on within it for eighteen hundred years, and they have now reached
a most advanced stage.
Prior to the crucifixion and ascension of our Lord the essential unity
in faith of the Jewish people had been preserved. The lawyers, the
doctors, and the Pharisees had added much to the law of Moses in the way
of laying heavy burdens on the people; they took tithes of annise and
cummin; they made broad the edges of their phylacteries, and they were
famous for making long extempore prayers, in which latter respect they
resembled too closely some of our esteemed Protestant brethren. But the
essential and divinely-given articles of the Jewish faith remained
unimpaired, and in these essentials the unity of the people was
complete. The process of change and disintegration commenced immediately
after the establishment of the Christian Church and what may be called
the formal transfer to her of the guiding and enlightening influence of
the Holy Spirit. But for many centuries this process was slow and its
progress excited little or no attention. The Jews, until a very recent
period in their history, were a persecuted people; and persecution tends
to make men cling closer to that which is the cause of the persecution.
There were times in the history of the Jews when their only city of
refuge was Rome; when the popes, alone of all the sovereigns of the
earth, stretched forth over them a protecting arm and permitted them to
dwell in peace and security. Within the last century, or less, all this
has been changed: nowhere in all Europe now, save in Bulgaria and one or
two other provinces, are the Jews persecuted; they have obtained equal
political and social rights; they are cabinet ministers, premiers,
members of parliament, eminent journalists, and autocratic bankers. With
this prosperity have come the marked evidences of that disintegration in
matters of faith to which allusion has been made. And here in America,
where the Jews have been always free, these changes have now become more
signal and wide-spread than in any other country.
To show how this has come about, it will be necessary, in the first
place, to explain briefly the nature of the additions which have been
made by the Jewish doctors to the divine law; the effect of these human
edicts and precepts upon the minds of those Jews who retain their faith;
and their contrary effect, upon other minds, in promoting and
disseminating the spirit of infidelity which is now so widely prevalent
among the Hebrews. The strictly “orthodox” Jew to-day is more burdened
than were ever any of his ancestors by practically endless rules,
observances, rites, and ceremonies, while his “reformed” or
“ultra-reformed” brother has not only shaken himself free from all, or
nearly all, of these human inventions, but has emancipated himself also
from the letter and spirit of the law of Moses and from the bonds of the
faith.
The books of the Jewish law as they now exist are the Old Testament, as
we call it; the “Mishna,” or Second Law; and the “Gemara,” or supplement
to the “Mishna.” These two latter books, taken together, form the
“Talmud.” But the “Mishna” is the explanation of the Old Testament; the
“Gemara” is the explanation of the “Mishna”; and there remains behind or
above all these the mystical and mysterious “Cabala,” which contains
within itself the sum and essence of all human wisdom, and of such
portions of divine wisdom as men are permitted to know. The “Cabala,”
properly speaking, is not a book, and has never been wholly committed to
writing. The “Cabala”—and the meaning of the word is the “tradition”—is
a divine, sublime, secret, and infinite science, treating of the
creation of the universe, of the esoteric meaning and significance of
the Mosaic laws, and of the secrets of God. No trace of its origin is to
be found. Moses, David, Solomon, and the prophets are said to have been
masters of it. It was taught to successive generations, but with the
utmost secrecy and only to a select few, who were deemed worthy to
receive this priceless knowledge. Those portions of it which are written
are brief, obscure, and full of abbreviations and initials, to be
understood only by the initiated. They resemble the manuals of
Freemasonry—pregnant with meaning to the members of the craft, but
unintelligible to all who have not the key of the cipher. He who is a
perfect master of the “Cabala” is so wise and potent that he not only
can work wonders, but may exercise almost creative powers. Nay, even an
imperfect and surreptitiously-obtained knowledge of its mysteries
enables one to perform miracles. He who can place certain letters in a
certain way, and pronounce them in a certain manner, may suspend the
operation of the laws of nature and command the angels of God to do his
will. The Cabalists, however, claim that seldom, if ever, has their
divine science been used by unworthy men or prostituted to selfish
purposes. The penalty for such a sin is eternal death; it is written in
one of their books that “he who abuses the crown perisheth,” and this is
understood to refer to those who possess themselves of this knowledge
and then use it for selfish purposes. The true Cabalists study their
science not for gain, but for the sake of obtaining profound knowledge.
They apply their rules to the letters and words of the Mosaic law, and
ascertain thereby its hidden significance, drawing from every word or
sentence an esoteric meaning, often full of sublime intelligence, and as
often pregnant only with absurdity.
Emanuel Swedenborg seems to have been an unfledged Cabalist; it is
probable that he became in some manner acquainted with a few of the
outward formulas of the Cabala, and that he based on these his wearisome
treatises upon the secret meaning of the Scriptures. Certain it is that
nothing which Swedenborg imagined is not to be found in the Cabala.
Fortunately, a knowledge of the Cabala is not necessary for salvation;
on the contrary, knowledge of it is a special perfection which every one
is not able to attain, and for the want of which no one is to be blamed.
The “Mishna” contains the oral or traditional laws transmitted from
Moses, through a line of which the personality of every member is known,
to the Rabbi Jochanan, who lived at Jerusalem at the time of the
destruction of the second Temple. It was compiled by Rabbi Jehuda Hanasi
in the latter half of the second century. The “Gemara,” or supplement to
the “Mishna,” is a wonderful book, containing thirty-six treatises upon
history, biography, astronomy, medicine, and ethics, interspersed with
legends, aphorisms, parables, sermons, and rules of practical wisdom.
The oral or traditional laws in the “Mishna” are claimed to be of divine
authority; and the passages in both these books which seem to be absurd
in the letter have a secret meaning understood best, if not exclusively,
by the Cabalists. The morality taught in these writings is not to be
despised. For example, it is laid down that men should not use flattery
or deceit in business affairs; they should not be boisterous in their
mirth nor permit themselves to sink into abject melancholy, but should
be reasonably and gratefully cheerful; they should be neither greedy of
gain, nor slothful in business, nor over-righteous in fasting and
penance; all that they do they should do for the glory of God; they
should love every Israelite as themselves, and they should be kind and
charitable to the stranger; they must abstain from inward and silent
hate, and if aggrieved by a neighbor they should make it known to him,
affectionately asking him to redress the wrong; they should be
especially solicitous to comfort, aid, and protect the widow and the
orphan, not merely if these be poor, but because they have suffered and
their hearts are laden with grief. There are three mortal sins—idolatry,
fornication, and bloodshed; but calumny is equal to all three. Every one
who professes the true faith must believe that there is a Being whose
existence is inherent, absolute, and unconditional within himself; who
has no cause or origin, and like whom there is no other; who is the
first producer of all things; in whom all creatures find the support of
their existence, while he derives no support from them; and that “this
Being is by men called God—blessed be he!” There are six fundamental
principles of the faith—the creation of all things by God out of
nothing; the pre-eminence of Moses as a prophet and lawgiver—a
pre-eminence so great that there never has been and never can be another
equal to him; the unalterableness of the law which he gave; the dogma
that the proper observance of any one of the commandments of the law
will lead to perfection; the resurrection of the dead; and the coming of
the Messias. But upon this excellent foundation has been built up that
structure of ceremony, ritual, observance, and false and narrow
philosophy which has become unbearable to so many of the Jews in this
country and in Europe, and from the yoke of which too many have escaped
by throwing aside all faith, while others have contented themselves with
taking refuge in the half-way houses of “reform.”
It is difficult to estimate with accuracy the number of Jews in the
United States. But the census of 1870 affords us some valuable data upon
which a calculation may be based. In 1850 there were 36 Jewish
synagogues in the United States, with sittings for 18,371 persons, and
having a value of $418,600. In 1860 there were 77 synagogues, with
sittings for 34,412 persons and a value of $1,135,300. In 1870 no less
than 189 Jewish “organizations” were reported; there were 152
synagogues, seating 73,265 persons and valued at $5,155,234. Now in the
city of New York there are 26 synagogues, and the Jewish population of
the metropolis is not less than 75,000. This would give an average of
some three thousand souls to each synagogue; and if we took this average
as a basis of calculation, we should have a Jewish population in the
whole of the United States amounting to 456,000 souls. But we have
reason to believe that this is much less than the actual number. We have
received from two high authorities estimates of the Jewish population in
the republic; both are avowedly only estimates, but they have been made
with care. One of them places the number of Jews in the United States at
“one in thirty of the whole population,” which would give a total of
1,600,000 souls; the other reports the number to be “almost exactly
1,000,000 souls.”
According to the census of 1870, there were no Jewish synagogues or
other Hebrew organizations in Arizona, Dakota, Delaware, Florida, Idaho,
Minnesota, Mississippi, Montana, Nebraska, Nevada, New Hampshire, New
Mexico, Oregon, Utah, Vermont, Washington Territory, or Wyoming. But, in
point of fact, there are many Jews in all, or nearly all, these States
and Territories. The following table will show the number of Jewish
organizations in the United States, the number of their synagogues, with
their sittings and their value, according to the census of 1870:
Organizations. Synagogues. Sittings. Value.
Alabama 2 2 1,650 $30,000
Arkansas 1 1 300 6,500
California 7 7 3,600 314,600
Colorado 1 — — —
Connecticut 5 3 1,850 105,000
Dist. of Columbia 2 1 800 18,000
Georgia 6 5 1,400 52,700
Illinois 10 9 3,950 271,500
Indiana 5 4 1,900 113,000
Iowa 5 1 150 1,900
Kansas 2 1 300 1,500
Kentucky 3 3 1,500 134,000
Louisiana 5 5 2,200 75,000
Maine 23 23 7,315 36,400
Maryland 5 4 2,750 650,000
Massachusetts 5 2 1,500 33,000
Michigan 5 3 1,300 51,000
Missouri 4 4 2,100 217,100
New Jersey 1 1 300 8,000
New York 47 33 21,400 1,831,950
North Carolina 1 1 200 500
Ohio 7 7 4,000 360,584
Pennsylvania 15 14 7,750 681,000
Rhode Island 1 — — —
South Carolina 3 3 900 91,200
Tennessee 4 4 1,100 21,000
Texas 1 1 400 6,000
Vermont 8 7 1,890 35,300
West Virginia 1 — — —
Wisconsin 4 3 750 8,500
Totals 189 152 73,265 $5,155,234
A careful examination of this table discloses some remarkable contrasts
which are not without their significance. While the synagogues in North
Carolina, Iowa, Kansas, Wisconsin, and some other States are small and
cheap structures, costing only from $500 to $2,800 or $3,000 each, those
in Georgia have cost, or are valued at, an average of $10,500; in
Alabama and Maine, $15,000; in Illinois, $30,000; in Connecticut,
$35,000; in California, $45,000; in Pennsylvania, $49,000; in Ohio,
$51,500; in Missouri, $54,000; in New York, $60,000; and in Maryland,
$162,000. These instances exemplify to some extent the comparative
wealth and religious zeal of the children of Israel in the different
States named, and many of our readers, we suppose, will learn with
surprise that there are far more Jews in Maine than in all the other New
England States put together; and that the Jews of Maryland are
apparently very much more wealthy and zealous than their co-religionists
in any other part of the republic. But we must now trace the history of
the settlement and progress of the Jews in this country, and set forth
the outer as well as inner causes which have tended to work changes in
them: to Americanize them to a great extent; to remove or soften the
prejudices formerly cherished against them; and to weaken, modify, or
destroy, in a degree which cannot yet be accurately determined, their
own religious faith.
Jewish emigration to this country began at a very early period in its
history, but only within the last thirty years has this emigration
assumed perceptible dimensions. The Jews who came to the United States
prior to 1848 were for the most part members of a low class; they were
chiefly of Polish, Russian, Portuguese, or Spanish birth; they were
either poor or pretended to be poor; they were peddlers, dealers in old
clothes, pawnbrokers, money-changers in a small way, and petty
merchants. From all social intercourse with the rest of the community
they were cut off; they did not seek that which probably would have been
denied them had they asked for it; the traditional prejudice against the
Jews which exists so generally among the Gentiles was not diminished by
the appearance, the actions, and the general reputation of these
children of Israel. They were supposed to be exclusively devoted to
trade and to money-making, and to be quite devoid of any scruples as to
the means by which they might get the better of the person to whom they
sold or of whom they bought. A Hebrew writer of some note many years ago
remarked that the Jews, as a race of people, were more widely and
generally known and less generally appreciated than any other class upon
the earth; that the peculiarities which have marked them as objects of
dislike were by no means original in their character, but were the
fruits of centuries of oppression and degradation; and that they needed
only a few years of existence in a free country, where equal rights
would be accorded to them, and where they might in peace and security
manifest the virtues which were in them, in order to win for themselves
not only the toleration but the active esteem and respect of their
fellow-citizens. The truth of this remark has been amply substantiated
by what has occurred in England, France, Germany, and other portions of
Europe; while in this country the Jews have succeeded in Americanizing
themselves to a very great extent, and in obliterating in a marked
degree the peculiarities which formerly served to point them out as a
wholly separate and foreign people. That this process has been
accompanied by the partial loss of their religious faith is
unquestionably true, but it is not clear whether they have become
Americanized because they have to this extent lost their faith, or
whether they have lost their faith because they have become
Americanized.
The Jews in America at the present moment are divided into five
classes—the “Radical Orthodox,” the “Orthodox,” the “Conservative
Reformed,” the “Reformed,” and the “Radical Reformed.” There is a wide
gulf between the first and the last of these classes; but the shades of
difference between a Radical Orthodox Jew and an Orthodox Jew, or
between a Conservative Reformed Jew and a Reformed Jew, are somewhat
difficult to define. The Radical Orthodox Jews are few in number, and
are said by their co-religionists to be daily growing less. They are
chiefly of Polish, Austrian, or Hungarian birth; they for the most part
are in humble and obscure walks of life; they form no associations with
Gentiles; they accept as the rule of their life the Mosaic law
interpreted by the “Talmud” and the “Cabala”; they do not welcome
Gentiles, or even Jews of later views, to their synagogues. We believe
there is but one synagogue in New York belonging to this school of Jews,
and in which one may witness Jewish worship as it was performed a
thousand years ago. The children of the Radical Orthodox Jews—especially
the male children—do not adhere closely to the faith and ritual of their
fathers; and some of the fathers themselves, as they become rich in this
world’s goods, manifest a disposition to affiliate themselves with one
or other of the less rigorous sects. Some of them are content to join
the ranks of the Orthodox Jews, who hold most firmly to all matters of
dogma, and to all the essential rules of life laid down by the law of
Moses, but who at the same time dispense themselves from the strict
observance of a certain number of the more onerous observances and
regulations enjoined by the rabbinical writers.
The line of demarcation between the Orthodox Jews and the Conservative
Reformed Jews is vague and undetermined; but the Reformed Jews are very
much advanced. They hold themselves bound no longer to obey the
ceremonial and dietary laws laid down by Moses and his successors, and
their faith in the predictions of the prophets has almost wholly faded
away. The higher class of the Hebrew community for the most part belong
to the Reformed sect; but these congregations are also largely composed
of the well-to-do middle-class Jews. Nearly all of the Jews of American
birth are found in the ranks of this sect or in the one of which we have
yet to speak; and very many of the German and English Jews resident here
are also members of the Reformed synagogues. They openly avow their
desire and ambition to become thoroughly Americanized, and to cease in
all respects to be regarded as an alien and foreign people. They still
retain their belief in God, but this belief is in too many cases vague
and ill-defined. The expectation of the coming of the Messias in any
literal sense has, with rare exceptions, ceased to be entertained among
them. They will not confess that the prophecies of his coming were
fulfilled in Jesus Christ, and their philosophy has led them to the
conclusion that these prophecies do not now remain to be fulfilled, save
in a metaphorical sense. The Messias is indeed to come—but not as an
individual. Humanity as a race, elevated, happy, prosperous, blessed
with long life, health, and earthly comfort, is the Messias; the
prophets saw him and were glad, but it was reserved for the children of
this generation to discover what was the hidden and real meaning of
their predictions concerning him.
A learned Jewish scholar has thus expressed this phase of Jewish
thought: “The majority of intelligent Israelites have long since
abandoned the wish of building up an independent national existence of
their own. The achievement of higher conditions of human life they are
disposed to regard as the fulfilment of Messianic prophecy, and the
furthering of this end, in intimate union with their fellow-men, as the
highest dictate of their religion.” These are weighty words; and there
is abundant reason to believe that they truthfully represent the
dominant tone of thought among the American Jews. The latest sect among
them—the Radical Reformed Jews—go to the root of the matter and have the
full courage of their opinions. They have the goodness to admit that
there is, or may be, a God, but they deny that he has ever revealed
himself to man save by the law of nature, and that God is himself
nature. In other words, these Jews have become Pantheists. Benedict de
Spinoza was excommunicated and denounced by the forefathers of those who
now revere and extol him. The most eloquent and gifted, if not the most
learned, of the Jewish rabbis in America has become the leader of this
sect, and has left the magnificent synagogue which was built for him,
only to draw after him into new paths a large proportion of his former
congregation. They are extremely wise in their own conceit; they prate
of the necessity of doubting all things; they deride the rites and
practices of external religion; they say they worship God, but inasmuch
as God, as they insist, is only nature, and nature is part of
themselves, in worshipping God they worship themselves. We are told that
many of those Jews who still maintain their connection with the
Conservative Reformed or Reformed congregations are by conviction in
full sympathy with the Radical Reformers. The laity are far in advance
of the rabbis of each sect. The rabbis are for the most part men of
foreign birth and foreign education; there are, we believe, not a dozen
rabbis of American birth in the whole Union. The almost universal
tendency of thought and practice among the younger Jews is in the
direction of that phase of infidelity of which we have spoken; and the
elder members of the race take little care to counteract in any
effectual manner this apostasy. The education of Jewish children in this
country is left pretty much to take care of itself. There are few, if
any, Jewish schools, and none at all of a high character. The Jewish
children for the most part attend the public schools, where they either
are taught no religion at all or listen to such vague and disjointed
utterances concerning the truths of Christianity as the caprice or the
prejudices of the teacher may lead him to pronounce. In some instances
the children of well-to-do Hebrews among us are sent to receive their
education in Unitarian academies; in others the sons of wealthy American
Jews are educated in the German universities, from whence they return
full-blown infidels. Intermarriages between Jews and nominal Christians
are not rare; and the children of these unions are, as a rule, educated
in the religion of the mother—if she happens to possess any.
We have said that the Jewish laity is in advance of the rabbis in the
matter of what is called “reform,” but which is too generally nothing
but destruction. The position of the rabbis is a peculiar one. They are
not priests, for they no longer offer sacrifice. They are not even the
sons of priests; the hereditary character of their office has long since
been lost; they are rabbis, or, in other phrase, teachers, not by
hereditary descent nor by divine selection or consecration, but merely
by their own choice and the good-will of their neighbors or friends. The
last high-priest of the Jewish Church who had any divine sanction for
the title which he bore was Caiphas, and his office was taken away from
him, in the sight of God and in truth, on the day of Pentecost, when the
Holy Ghost descended to dwell until the end of time with the Christian
Church. Since that day there have been no priests of God upon the earth,
save the priests of the Catholic Church; and consequently since that day
there have been no true Jewish priests. The altars of the Jews have
crumbled away; their sacrifices have ceased; the sons of the tribes of
Aaron and Levi have abandoned even the pretence of belonging to a
priestly order. In the place of the priests have come the rabbis, who
are mere ministers or teachers. They are to the Jews what the Baptist,
Methodist, Presbyterian, and other Protestant ministers are to the
respective Protestant sects. They are a little less than some of the
Protestant ministers claim to be; for some of these do set up in an
uncertain way a vague and altogether fallacious pretence to the
possession of “orders” and to having been empowered to perform priestly
functions. The rabbis make no such pretence, and their position, such as
it is, is confessedly invested with only purely human sanction. They are
teachers, but do not claim that they have a divine authority to teach.
They are subject to the will and caprice of the congregation to which
they are attached; they are like school-teachers, whose tenure of office
depends upon the pleasure of the school commissioners. Some of them have
sought to put themselves at the head of the reform movement, and have
succeeded, but only on the condition that they should keep pace with the
advance of the laity. The younger German rabbis have been most prominent
in this respect. They have effected an organization among themselves, as
well here as in Germany, and have managed to act together with something
approaching to unanimity. Destitute, however, of any rule of faith and
practice higher than their own will and whim, and having no central or
supreme authority to which they can appeal, they lack the essential bond
of unity, and some of them are constantly wandering off in one direction
or the other. They began their work of reform by modernizing the ritual
of the synagogue, and eliminating from it, little by little, those
portions of it which, directly or indirectly, assert the dogmas that are
inconveniently opposed to the new ideas whereof they are enamored. Among
the regular prayers of the synagogue, for instance, were supplications
for the bringing back of the chosen people to the land of their fathers,
the restoration of the throne of David, and the coming of the Messias.
The new philosophy, as we have shown, teaches that the Messias is not to
come in any literal sense; that inasmuch as modern progress is best
subserved by democratic or republican institutions, the establishment of
a monarchy of any kind is not to be desired or prayed for; and that the
return of the Jews as a nation to Palestine is not to be wished, even if
it were feasible.
It became advisable, therefore, to reconcile theory with practice, and
to cease pretending to pray for that which was either impossible or
undesirable. If it were absurd to believe any longer that the Messias
was to come as a personal king and redeemer, to lead back his people to
the Promised Land, and to elevate them as the rulers and princes of the
earth, then it was something worse than absurd to continue the
repetition of the prayers imploring the hastening of his coming. If the
Books of the Law and of the Prophets are not the veritable word of God;
if they contain merely ingenious and beautiful myths, symbolical poetry,
and a code of moral and dietary rules which, in some respects at least,
are no longer either necessary or advisable to be obeyed, it is
dishonest to pretend to regard these writings with devout reverence, and
to insist upon any one governing himself by them. By this course of
reasoning the German rabbis, often pushed further than they cared to go
by the laity who were behind them, sapped the foundations of faith among
the common people of the Jews, and prepared them for the downward path
which so many of them are now treading.
Having thus reviewed the present state of Judaism in America, we may ask
ourselves what is likely to be the future of what was once the church of
God, but has now fallen to the level of a mere sect. It is clear that
the Jews, here as in the Old World, and more rapidly here than in the
Old World, are losing the faith of their fathers. Judaism, divine in its
origin, but no longer invested with the divine sanction nor inspired or
guided by the Holy Ghost, is undergoing the same process of
disintegration and decay which the Protestant sects are suffering.
Judaism, now wholly human, like Protestantism, is leading its adherents
to infidelity. Every day, as Protestants see this, the devout and pious
among them turn to the one church which Jesus Christ established in the
world, and in her bosom find refuge, peace, and salvation. The number of
conversions from Protestantism to the holy Roman Catholic Church, here
and in Great Britain, is continually on the increase. But nothing is
more rare than the conversion of a Jew. They are rapidly parting with
their own faith, but very seldom do they embrace any form of
Christianity in its stead. In a few years the great majority of Jews in
the United States will probably have ceased to be Jews, save only in
name. But how many of them will become Catholics? All roads lead to
Rome; but very few Jews have made that journey. A Jew who becomes a
Catholic is a most excellent Catholic; he seems to desire, by the fervor
of his faith and the burning zeal of his charity, to make some
reparation for the sins of his people. Jews should be the best Catholics
in the world; and God has told us, through the mouths of Jewish
prophets, that the time will come when they will be all that they should
be. The word of God is sure and cannot fail. He has told us that the day
is coming when the Jews shall ask him, “What are those wounds in the
midst of thy hands?” and when he shall reply, “With these was I wounded
in the house of them that I love.” In that day he “will pour out upon
the house of David the spirit of grace and the spirit of prayers; and
they shall look upon him whom they have pierced, and they shall mourn
for him as one mourneth for an only son, and shall grieve over him as
the manner is to grieve for the death of the first-born.” In that
glorious day God has promised that he will destroy the names of idols
out of the earth, so that they shall be remembered no more; and that he
will take away the false prophets and the unclean spirit out of the
earth. He will bring back the captivity of Juda and the captivity of
Jerusalem, and “will build them as from the beginning”; he will cleanse
them from all their iniquities, whereby they have sinned against him and
despised him; and he will so crown them with blessings that all the
world shall be amazed thereby. “It shall be to me a name, and a joy, and
a praise, and a gladness before all the nations of the earth that shall
hear of all the good things which I will do to them.” “Behold, the days
come, saith the Lord, that I will perform the good word that I have
spoken to the house of Israel and to the house of Juda.” When the Jews
become Catholic Christians, Jerusalem shall “be called by a new name,
which the mouth of the Lord shall name,” and the Jews shall become “a
crown of glory in the hand of the Lord and a royal diadem in the hand of
God.” Then they shall no more be called forsaken, and their land shall
be no more called desolate; “but thou shalt be called 'my pleasure in
her,’ and thy land inhabited.” Then shall the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass
be celebrated by Jewish hands in the Holy City where Jesus Christ first
offered up the ever-living Sacrifice, and then shall the Jews eat the
heavenly Bread and drink the sacred Blood which have so long been given
to us Gentiles and rejected by them. “The Lord has sworn by his right
hand and by the arm of his strength: Surely I will no longer give thy
corn to be meat for thy enemies, and the sons of the stranger shall not
drink thy wine for which thou hast labored; for they that gather it
shall eat it, and they that have brought it together shall drink it in
my holy courts.” Wonderful are these words; full are they of a meaning
at once mystical and clear. The Jews, in God’s own time, will become
Catholic Christians, and, united with the whole body of the faithful on
earth, they shall eat the divine Bread which is the life of the world.
The abandonment of their traditional faith will continue to lead them
more and more to the abandonment of all their distinctive national
peculiarities and practices, and they will become merged in the great
body of the children of men. Then such of them as God may choose will
have given to them the grace of faith, and as individuals, and not as a
nation, will they become Catholic Christians. We know that in the vision
of St. John the Apostle he saw one hundred and forty-four thousand of
the children of Israel, of every tribe twelve thousand, who had come out
of great tribulation, and washed their robes and made them white in the
blood of the Lamb. We are certain, then, that before the end of the
world at least this number of Jews will have been converted. It may be
that the number represents only those who belonged to the church while
it was yet mainly composed of Jews. If so, let us hope that those of the
once chosen people who yet remain may be found, or at least many of
them, in that great multitude which no man can number, of all nations,
and tribes, and peoples, and tongues, which St. John also saw, standing
before the throne and in the sight of the Lamb, clothed with white robes
and palms in their hands, crying with a loud voice “Salvation to our God
who sitteth upon the throne, and to the Lamb.”
LETTERS OF A YOUNG IRISHWOMAN TO HER SISTER.
FROM THE FRENCH.
CONCLUSION.
JULY 30.
This morning I was in a sort of mortal sadness. I opened the “Book of
those who suffer” at these words: “You have willed, O my God! to
separate me from her to whom I have so often said that I should wish to
die the same day as she. This desire has not been granted, and thou hast
condemned me to survive.
“_She_ is at rest; and never have I more fully realized than in this my
exceeding grief the meaning of that beautiful Christian word,
_quies_—rest.”
I said this with all my heart, and I have comprehended.... O Kate! I
loved you too much for this world. Bless me from on high, and visit me
with Picciola. It seems to me that the divine Goodness must permit that.
AUGUST 2.
“The present war is the natural and necessary consequence of the great
apostasy of the sixteenth century and the principles of the Revolution!”
O my God! if this might be a holy war! But I fear; for France is so
guilty! Prayers are being offered in all the dioceses; the emperor has
put himself at the head of the army. May God save us! We needed a St.
Louis, if we were to deserve victory. Do you remember, Kate, how much we
admired these words of Bossuet? “War is often a salutary bath, in which
nations bathe and are regenerated.” Oh! how you must pray, all our kind
friends in heaven.
AUGUST 4.
Amélie has bidden us adieu; she is a charming creature. Her mother will
not accompany her. She fears her own weakness; and she is a veritable
Spartan.
On the 2d of August took place a first engagement at Saarbrück; our
troops were victorious. May this success augur well! They say that there
is a terrible effervescence in minds. Our Bretonnes are praying that
their sons may soon return.
Arrival of our Parisians! Alix and Margaret have all the grace of the
twins; my godson is magnificent. I like to feel that we are together in
these troubled times. How I pity mothers!
AUGUST 7.
Terror, anguish, defeat—these are the synonyms of this date. Two days
ago we were beaten at Wissembourg; yesterday at Forbach. We are waiting
for news. Our reverses are a chastisement; the French government is
withdrawing its troops from Rome. Is it, then, to secure success that
France abandons the Pope? Oh! it is not France which acts thus; she is
too profoundly Catholic for that; but she will be none the less certain
to undergo the penalty for this cowardice. Kate, pray for France! The
Prussians are upon our soil, and civil war is also feared.
AUGUST 13.
Horrible details are received of the battle of Reichshoffen. Marshal
MacMahon behaved with admirable heroism. He would not quit the field of
battle after witnessing this odious butchery—40,000 against 150,000!
Lord, O Lord! have pity. There must have been some treason there. The
cuirassiers and chasseurs of MacMahon sacrificed themselves to
facilitate the retreat. The newspapers make one weep. Kate, what is said
in heaven?
My Guy is charmingly beautiful; and when he is twenty years old an
enemy’s cannon-ball will have the right to carry him off!
AUGUST 21.
Dear Kate, I bless God for having placed you in the peace of eternity
before these murderous struggles, in which your heart would so often
have been wounded! Ah! it seems to me that it is a great favor to be
taken from this earth before the calamities which are impending.
A subscription has been set on foot, in order that all France shall
offer a sword of honor to MacMahon. Marshal Lebœuf, General-in-Chief, is
replaced by Marshal Bazaine; the army is falling back on Chalons. There
were brilliant affairs on the 14th, 15th, and 16th. But what agitation
in the country! The republicans consider the moment favorably for their
triumph, and René declares that the Prussians of France are still more
to be dreaded than the Prussians of Germany. Montaigne said: “There are
triumphant defeats which equal the finest victories.” Our troops are
sublime. Fresh levies are being made, companies of _francs-tireurs_ are
organized; will France be saved? Catholic La Vendée is rising _en
masse_.
AUGUST 24.
The Prussians are at Saint-Dizier. It is said that in the partial
engagements the losses are considerable on both sides. The enemy is
bombarding Strasbourg. Read heart-rending details. _Povera Francia!_
They say that two sons of Count Bismarck are dead; it is the justice of
God passing by! Oh! when we think of so many families who are suffering
from the disasters of invasion, who see their homes invaded and their
days in peril, how ardent are our prayers!
That which I dreaded is come upon us. René and his brothers are going! O
my God! guard them from danger. I love France too well to hinder René
from defending her. The fear of afflicting me held him back. God aid us
and have at the English! as our Breton ancestors used to say. The
English of to-day are the Prussians.
They leave us, five brothers, all valiant and strong, courageous as
lions. Ah! if they should not return. I believe in presentiments, and
something tells me that all hope of happiness is at an end for me. “Give
all to God,” a saintly priest wrote to me. _Fiat!_ Take all, my God, but
leave me thy love!
Do you remember, Kate, my mother’s stories of the heroism of our
grandfather? Do you remember that Georgina whose name I received, who
said to her brother, “Go and fight without thinking of me. God and his
angels will guard me; think of your country!”
Could I be less courageous than she? Pray for me, holy soul in heaven!
What shall I do without him?
AUGUST 26.
Levies are being raised _en masse_. Men will not be wanting, but
soldiers cannot be made at a moment’s notice, especially in our days. It
is said that Bazaine is blockaded in Metz with 70,000 men, and that he
has before him 200,000 Prussians. MacMahon is going to his relief with
an equal number of heroes. The French have burnt the camp at Chalons.
What will be the issue of this frightful struggle? The ministry which
has caused all our misfortunes has resigned; a clear understanding is
most important, and time passes away in useless discussions. General
Trochu, a Breton, is Governor of Paris.
To-day we shall be left alone....
AUGUST 29.
It is over. René has taken with him all my heart, and I feel a strange
sense of suffering. My mother has been sublime. O these adieux, these
last embraces! Who would have said that we should come to this?
Protect them, ye holy angels! Bring them back to us soon with the return
of peace! There are wounded everywhere; my mother has asked for ten, to
whom we shall attend ourselves. It is terrible to see these mutilations.
O war! how I hate it.
The army of Prince Frederick Charles is marching upon Paris; there are
no official tidings of our soldiers. Phalsbourg, Toul, Metz, Strasbourg
are all undergoing the horrors of bombardment. Where shall we go? Prayer
alone will save us. There is much patriotic eagerness in the
populations; the loan of 750,000,000 has been covered with astonishing
rapidity. What will become of the capital? What chastisement will visit
it for having erected a statue to Voltaire?
A visit—the Comtesse de G—— and her two daughters, friends of Lucy. What
a difference between the two sisters! The younger calm, gentle, and
placid, like a beautiful lake, seraphic and tender; the elder ardent and
enthusiastic to exaggeration, impassioned for the cause of good, peace,
and right, but like a volcano.
Kate, tell me that you pray for us, and that God will have pity upon his
people!
AUGUST 31.
A letter from René! Alas! his presence was so sweet to me. Gertrude and
I do not quit the chapel, except for the wounded. Mary and Ellen,
Marguerite and Alix, multiply their prayers. Arthur has made his mother
give him a Zouave’s uniform; thus equipped, he drills the children at
the school. You should hear him say how he wants to join his father and
fight with him. Our savage enemies commit revolting atrocities. How
truly are they the sons of the Teutons!
Berthe’s family is in Switzerland.
SEPTEMBER 4.
Lord, save us; we perish!
The public journals speak in an ambiguous manner of triumphs with
respect to which a terrible silence had been observed in official
quarters; a great battle was imminent.... The day is come, and its
events are brought to light. _Povera Francia!_ The emperor and 40,000
French prisoners, MacMahon grievously wounded, and a capitulation—it is
horrible! My God! hast thou abandoned France? The public consternation
cannot be described. It was said yesterday that, owing to a crypt whose
existence was generally unknown, the women and children had been able to
quit Strasbourg, so valiantly defended by General Uhrich. The enemy aims
his murderous projectiles especially at the cathedral—that unequalled
marvel in stone. Horrible! horrible! It seems as if hell had vomited
innumerable legions of monsters upon France. There were 550,000 in this
last three days’ battle. How will all this end? “Arise, O Lord! and
deliver thy people, for the time to show mercy is come!”[52]
Footnote 52:
Ps. ci.
SEPTEMBER 6.
The republic is proclaimed. Paris is in a state of delirium. Did not
Joseph de Maistre say: “The French Revolution has been satanic; if the
counter-revolution is not divine, it will be a nullity”? Read the
_Univers_ yesterday—so Christian, so right-thinking. Louis Veuillot
calls Prussia the _Sin of Europe_. Will the republic save us? The enemy
is at Soissons. We see now the result of twenty years of despotism....
“MacMahon is dead!” said a workman on the boulevards with a journal in
his hand. At these words arose a general cry: “Honor to MacMahon!” This
report is contradicted, and Mme. la Maréchale set out yesterday to join
her husband. O this wound! What Frenchman would not give his life to
heal it? No army left! Bazaine is still blockaded in Metz, bombarded by
the Prussians. MacMahon had done wonders, but was unable to effect his
junction with Bazaine. He was thrown back by the enemy upon Sedan, and a
bridge not having been destroyed, notwithstanding his orders, he was
surrounded by a network of the enemy; grievously wounded, he placed the
command in the hands of General Wimpffen, who capitulated. MacMahon
would never have done this—never! Without a miracle, France is lost. It
seems as if one were suffering a bad dream in reading that, owing to our
woods, the enemy slaughter us without mercy, whilst our blows fall on
emptiness, and that on the fatal day which annihilated our army our
artillery was for a quarter of an hour playing upon a regiment of French
cuirassiers.... The _Angelus_ is ringing. O Angelic Salutation! with
what anguish Christian hearts yesterday repeated you, on this beginning
of a new era of which no one can tell the form or the duration.
SEPTEMBER 7.
A line from Adrien to reassure us all. Alas! who does not tremble at
this hour? Kate, protect us! Some members of the Left have, themselves
alone, made the republic and seized the reins of government. Can the
enemies of God regenerate a people? “The Keeper of Israel neither
slumbers nor sleeps.” Napoleon I. (Louis Veuillot, the valiant heart,
tells us) used to say that the general who dared speak of capitulation
ought to be shot; what, then, would be the deserts of him who
surrenders? Poor France, humiliated, vanquished, deprived of her noblest
children!
SEPTEMBER 8.
On this festival of your nativity, O Our Lady of Victories! succor us.
No courier from Paris, which must be invested. The _Garde Nationale_ is
being organized; the scheme is to oppose the whole of France to these
Vandals of the nineteenth century—barbarous hordes who seem to be
impelled by some irresistible force into the heart of our unhappy
country. How French I feel myself in these days of sorrow! Dear Kate, is
it true, as we believe, that all our saints of France, headed by St.
Remi, Charlemagne, St. Louis, and Joan of Arc, are prostrate at the feet
of the Eternal to obtain the pardon which would save us?
SEPTEMBER 11.
In the frightful catastrophe of Sedan our soldiers were in want of
munitions and had not eaten for four days.
I send daily a long bulletin of news to my devoted Margaret. Has not
Marcella also something to fear? Poor Italy! Poor France! We can but
have either a shameful peace or a pitiless war.... Laon is threatened
with the fate of Strasbourg. Alas! these poor cities, besieged and
heroic. “Country of my brethren and of my friends, may the words of God
for thee be words of peace: 'May peace be within thy walls, and
plenteousness within thy towers!’ O my God! save thy servants who put
their trust in thee!”[53]
Footnote 53:
Ps. cxxi.
Every man under arms, every woman at prayer! This decree makes me bless
the republic. And René—where is he?
SEPTEMBER 13.
Laon must have ceased to exist; the commander has had the citadel blown
up. They say that Garibaldi, the insulter of Pius IX. and the king of
vagabonds and bandits, is coming to succor France; is not this the depth
of humiliation? “How long, O Lord! wilt thou delay to succor us? O God!
be thou our judge, and defend our cause against this pitiless nation;
deliver us from these men, who are full of injustice and deceit!”
The enemy is six leagues from Paris. M. Thiers has set out for Vienna,
St. Petersburg, and London. The United States have offered their
mediation. We are assured that the foreign powers desire peace, but what
proofs do they give? Russia is preparing formidable armaments, doubtless
finding the present moment opportune for taking possession of
Constantinople. The excommunicated king is adding to his crimes in
annexing to his own the last remaining States of the church.
We are told that the republican world boasts greatly of the circular of
Jules Favre and the letter of Victor Hugo.
I do not know from whence there comes to us a copy of a revelation
announcing that from the 20th to the 29th all will be over, and that
France will be delivered by a stranger. O feast of St. Michael the
Archangel! be to us a day of salvation. But, Lord, does France deserve
it? Ah! she is no longer the eldest daughter of the church, since she
consents to the odious spoliation of Italy, and since every sort of
hatred is let loose against religion. Do they not say that at Lyons the
Visitandines have been driven from their convent? We deserve every
misfortune and disgrace. Louis Veuillot, calm in the midst of so many
storms, gave yesterday a beautiful article, in which he predicted the
near approach of the triumph of the church; and today, the splendid
history of Judas Machabeus. Save us, O Lord! we who are thy people. “God
gives to his church the flotsam of every wreck, as he gives her, sooner
or later, the laurel of every triumph.”
It is said that Paris will be destroyed. “Unless the Lord keep the city,
he that keepeth it watcheth in vain!”[54] Hope! hope! Prayer will save
us!
Footnote 54:
Ps. cxxvi.
I knew yesterday that Réne was alive. O Kate! pray for us.
SEPTEMBER 17.
O surprise! O joy!—if I dared to say so.... Margaret here! Kind, dear,
and perfect friend! she could not remain away from us during these
troubles. Lord William and Emmanuel have come with her. What an
exquisite proof of affection! How we have wept together! O dear Kate,
dear flower transplanted to heaven! your native soil, how much we have
spoken of you. How René will be touched at hearing of this arrival! My
mother and sisters give a festive welcome to my _belle Anglaise_, who is
English only in name, being as Catholic, as Irish, and as French as we
are.
Communications are interrupted, or are on the point of being so. The
line of Orleans is cut. The Paris _Journal_ is here, however, with
frightful accounts of the barbarity of the Prussians. Save us, my God;
have pity on those who are fighting _pro aris et focis_!
Margaret has brought me a bit of the soil of Ireland, and some flowers
gathered from our mother’s grave.
SEPTEMBER 19.
What is happening to-day, twenty-four years after the Apparition of La
Salette? We are melting away in prayers. My mother has obtained from the
bishop the most liberal permissions for benedictions. Our good _curé_ is
dying ... of old age and grief. The love of their country is a robust
plant among the Bretons.
Dear Kate, we speak of you with Margaret. I told her that I continue to
write to you; she was touched at hearing it. How kind it is of her to
have quitted her home to share our anguish and our dangers! The province
will be invaded—that is certain. No news of René; but who does not feel
courageous at this time? Ah! assuredly, in face of the extent of our
disasters, selfish anxieties disappear, and the soul grows, in her
prodigious faculty of suffering, to compassionate all the present
miseries, all the crushing misfortunes, all the deaths. How long, O
Lord! will thy hand be heavy upon us? O mysterious depths of the designs
of God! O militant church! O venerated Pontiff, the purest glory of our
age! O Rome, invaded like France! I have just read an admirable pastoral
letter of Mgr. Freppel, the illustrious successor of Mgr. Angebault in
the see of Angers. He sees a reason for hope in this community of
sorrows between the mother and the _eldest daughter_. O Pontiff!—is not
this title become a bitter derision? The gates of hell shall not prevail
against the church, and we are surely not far distant from her signal
triumph; but how many tears, it may be, and how many martyrdoms, before
that hour! Italy, France, Ireland—the three countries of my heart, lands
that are mingled in one in my enthusiasm and love, daughters of God, and
the privileged ones of his heart—you cannot perish; God will fight for
you, and we shall bless him for ever!
Kate, beloved sister, tell me that you hear me, that your soul touches
mine. Be René’s guardian angel!
SEPTEMBER 21.
Our life is strange. Beneath all it has a wonderful serenity, a
confidence in God which defies everything; on the surface it is a sort
of fever, passing from the wildest hope to the most complete
discouragement. Gertrude has appointed us her _aides-de-camp_—Margaret
and myself. There is much to do around us. Our Bretonnes have need to be
consoled, and there are sick and dying. The good _abbé_ multiplies
himself with admirable self-forgetfulness; our pastor is dying, happy to
be called away at the present crisis.
I have a letter from René—a kind, long, sweet letter, from which I
cannot take away my eyes. He only speaks to me vaguely of the war, so as
not to increase my alarm. Every ring of the bell makes us start; the
gallop of a horse makes us run to the windows. My mother never quits her
psalter and rosary; Mistress Annah faithfully keeps her company when we
are not there; Mary and Ellen, with the other dear young ones in the
house, are our sunshine. The courageous Margaret talks politics with
Lucy, the _abbé_, and the doctor, organizes plans of defence, creates
fortresses, and finally expels the enemy. Lord William was just now
reading to us in the Paris _Journal_ of the 18th details of deep
interest relating to the affair of Sedan—“the Waterloo of the Second
Empire, and the greatest disaster of modern times.”
SEPTEMBER 25.
Jules Favre has made an appeal to William and Bismarck. France is very
low. The result has been the affirmation of the exorbitant demands of
the conquerors. The struggle is to be pushed to extremities. Regiments
are to be formed of National Guards. Here none are left but old men. No
official news. It is said that the enemy has been repulsed at
Versailles, that Nantes is burnt, that headquarters are at Meaux; they
said yesterday at Rheims: “O Clovis! why are you not there with your
Franks?” The Prussians are burning Rouen. When, then, will the terrible
work of these executioners of Heaven be ended? William wants Alsace and
Lorraine, Metz, Strasbourg, Toul, Verdun, and Mont Valérien. Ah! we
also, we shall say with the Bishop of Orleans that which was said by
Louisa of Prussia—a magnanimous soul, to whom the life of her four sons
was less dear than the honor of her country; a believing and valiant
woman, who beheld so violent and devastating a storm pass over her
kingdom that Prussia was on the point of being erased from the map of
nations: “I believe in God; I do not believe in force. Justice alone is
stable. God prunes the spoiled tree. We shall see better times, if only
each day find us better and more prepared.” The son has not inherited
the sentiments of the mother. It is said that it was Prince Albert who
commanded the burning of Bazeilles; this fearful barbarity would suffice
for his reprobation in the memory of men. “The Hebrew people saw Deborah
and Judith arise in the day of its affliction; Gaul, St. Geneviève; and
France of the middle ages, Joan of Arc.”[55] Who shall save modern
France? Whose arm shall God raise up to avenge her? “But now thou hast
cast us off, and put us to shame: and thou, O God! wilt not go out with
our armies.... Arise, O Lord! Why sleepest thou?”[56]
Footnote 55:
Gabourd.
Footnote 56:
Ps. xliii.
Rome is invaded by the republican troops; they leave the Pope the castle
of Sant’ Angelo and the Leonine city, with _magnificent_ assurances of
security. O the time of deliverance, the hour of salvation!—soon,
doubtless, soon. The church cannot perish. Gentle Pontiff, Pius IX.,
Vicar of Christ and his representative, like him crucified in heart,
given gall to drink, overwhelmed with insults, your powerless children
join their supplications to your own, and God will arise, mighty and
terrible, to confound your enemies—you who have loved justice and hated
iniquity!
Letter from René, hastily written in a cottage. Our Blessed Lady protect
his devotion! “Our help is in the name of the Lord!” O church of Jesus
Christ! how happy are thy children in the midst of their distress. What
ineffable consolations in thy sacred prayers! I live in the Psalms, I
nourish my soul with them; every feeling of the heart is there so
marvellously expressed, and in incomparable language.
SEPTEMBER 27.
Louis Veuillot, the intrepid defender of the Catholic faith, a few weeks
ago wrote as follows: “God will have pity on us. Justice will not exceed
mercy. We shall not be scourged beyond the needs of our future
well-being; we shall find in the cup of chastisement a healthful
beverage. The love of their country raises hearts above vulgar
vexations. They are willing to be ruined; they are willing to die. But
these abject and senseless things mingled with our tragedies, these
intoxicating songs when the earth is being watered with generous blood,
these statesmen who ask for prayers and authorize blasphemy, these
blasphemies beneath the falling thunderbolt, these assassins of the
pavement and these orators in the tribune—all this revelation of the
stupid crowd which will not be saved—it is these things which keep souls
under the millstone, which suffocate and grind them down.” How well this
great mind describes the deepest sufferings of all that is still
Christian in this nation of crusaders and martyrs! The admirable
demonstrations of the Bretons and Vendéans console one for the
irreligion of the greater number. Why has not all Europe risen to defend
in the Pope the cause of outraged sovereignty? The sacrilege of Victor
Emanuel has met with no resistance.
“Be to us, Lord, a place of defence against the enemy!” We are on a
volcano—the volcano of popular passions; if the hand of God does not
arrest them, what will become of us? Confidence! confidence! “Infidel
France is abased and humiliated, and is not yet willing to repent;
eucharistic France will pray, will arise, and increase in
greatness!”[57]
Footnote 57:
Louis Veuillot.
O beloved soul gone hence before _me_, and who art _myself!_ offer to
God our prayers.
OCTOBER 2.
Toul has surrendered, after a splendid resistance worthy of a better
fate. The 29th—the looked-for 29th, the feast of the glorious Protector
of France—has brought us another sorrow more: the capitulation of
Strasbourg! O dear and beautiful cathedral, which I loved so well!
“There is nothing left but ruins,” writes one of Berthe’s cousins. Why
does the Lord delay to help us? Will not our other fortresses be also
forced to give themselves up into the enemy’s hands? What will become of
France? William is at Versailles; he lay down, booted and spurred, in
the bed of the great king who so imperiously dictated laws to all
Europe. Who will redeem us from all our humiliations?
Margaret and Lord William have apprehensions which will only too soon,
alas! be verified. La Vendée is rising at the call of Cathelineau and of
Stofflet—two illustrious names. Ah! who will merit for us that we shall
be saved, when the public papers lavish outrage and abuse against
everything that is holiest in the world—against the church of God, his
priests, his pontiff, the glorious Pius IX.? Who shall restrain thine
arm, O Lord! when scarcely a voice is raised to recall to conquered
France that thou art the Salvation of the nations?
OCTOBER 7.
The gentle Bishop of Geneva used to say: “Alas! we shall soon be in
eternity, and then shall we see of how small account were the affairs of
this world, and how little it mattered whether they were accomplished or
not.” Adrien sends us long details. My soul is in anguish. O Kate! pray
for us. I went yesterday with Margaret to the cemetery; we stayed there
long. A splendid moonlight illumined the golden crosses surmounting the
marble columns beneath which our doves repose. A feeling of profound
peace took possession of my soul in the midst of this striking
contrast—the calm and tranquillity of this field of death with the
tumult and agitation of actual life in our poor France.
OCTOBER 8.
The journals give accounts, only too faithful in their details, of the
battle of Sedan, the catastrophe of Laon and of Strasbourg. It is
horrible—this destruction, these savage attacks! Of how many valiant
defenders are we not deprived, while the enemy’s forces are going to
strengthen the army now besieging Paris! William is at St. Germain; he
desires to be present at the bombardment of the brilliant capital which
gave him so splendid a reception three years ago. To the shame of
humanity, Europe remains unmoved in presence of our misfortunes. America
sends an insignificant number of volunteers. O divine Justice! wilt thou
not avenge us? Who shall tell the story of this sanguinary epic? Who
shall recount this unheard-of intermingling of shameful cowardice and
prodigies of courage, of base treason and sublime devotion, of reverses
and successes equally impossible? Who shall tell posterity that the most
loyal and generous of nations, the people which has been eager in its
succors to every misfortune, has found no defender in the day of its
calamities? And who shall make known to France that her success is a
consequence of her repentance, that there is something greater than
victory, more decisive and more powerful than the most formidable
engines of war—the protection of Him who holds in his hands the
destinies of nations? _Deus, Deus, quid reliquisti nos?_
OCTOBER 10.
Two melancholy, dark, and rainy days, such as always depress my soul.
Garibaldi has arrived at Marseilles with a thousand volunteers—doubtless
the scum of Italy. Mgr. de Saint-Brieuc summons all Bretons to the
defence of their country. “No, France will not die! This cry from the
heart of forty millions will pierce heaven and awaken all the echoes of
the earth!” Paris has provisions for two months; but after? Surely all
France will rise, and, as soon as she feels herself strong enough, she
will meet these barbarians, to whom all has been successful hitherto!
What bloodshed! What ruins! What opprobrium! Will not God raise up some
hero from this soil which has given so much to the world? Anna Maria
Taigi predicted that the Council would last eighteen months, that Pius
IX. would die towards its close, and the gentle and venerated Pontiff
would see the dawn of a new time. Does not this mean that soon the
trials of the Papacy will cease? “The church cannot perish; but God has
not made to nations the same promises of immortality.”
O Kate and Mad, my two idols! I think of you. To-morrow we go to Auray,
all together; the _abbé_ will say Mass for us there, if we can arrive
before noon.
OCTOBER 14.
I have prayed much, thought much, suffered much, hoped much, loved much,
during these four days!
A prediction, said to be from Blois, assures us of definitive success.
Alas! we were in need of saints; this republic of lawyers makes me
afraid. My mother quoted to us yesterday an old prophecy from the works
of Hugues de Saint-Cher, Cardinal-Dominican of the thirteenth century:
“There will be four sorts of persecutions in the church of God: the
first, tyrants against the martyrs; the second, heretics against the
doctors; the third, lawyers against simple people; and, lastly,
Antichrist against all.” We are in the third. There is no _unity_; there
is impotence, and therefore nothing succeeds.
A terrible rumor which will only too soon be confirmed—Orleans is
invaded. M. de Bismarck’s plan is to ruin France in detail, in order
that it may for a long time be impossible to her to avenge herself. But
vengeance belongs to God, and he will take it! The journals gave us so
much hope! What a spectacle—two nations slaughtering each other, and a
land which God created so fair covered with blood and ruins! Send us, O
Lord! legions of angels; fight for the cause of civilization and right;
save France, and may there no longer be amongst us a single soul which
does not by its worship glorify thee!
The news from Metz is reassuring in that direction—Metz, which has been
our ruin! The inhabitants are admirable in their patriotism, and engage
to defend the city if Bazaine and the one hundred thousand men can make
themselves an opening. Without a miracle, however, can the aspect of
events undergo a change? Bitche continues to resist. O my France! must
thou, like Ireland, also be crucified?
_Evening._—An enigmatic despatch, in _negro language_, announces that
the army of the Loire has been compelled to retire before superior
forces, and that St. Quentin has repulsed fifteen thousand of the enemy.
Garibaldi declares that fifteen thousand Italians will march at the
first signal. The six thousand Pontifical Zouaves will form a splendid
regiment, under the leadership of a hero, M. de Charette. Oh! how these
words rend my soul: _Garibaldi, Pontifical Zouaves_. What an assemblage!
May God pardon France! How will all this end? Phalsbourg holds out, and
other towns; but to see the enemy always in imposing numbers, to know
that everywhere they make crushing requisitions, that each day brings
fresh mourning, is a deadly sorrow! What part of our soil will remain
unpolluted by the passage of these emissaries of death?
Orleans is in the enemy’s power—Orleans, the key and the heart of
France—Orleans, the Queen of the Loire, the faithful city, the town
saved from Attila by St. Aignan, from the English by Joan of Arc! A
great battle is imminent.
Our venerated pastor suffers no more. This morning, at three o’clock,
one of our farmers, who, with Mistress Annah, was sitting up with him,
came to let us know that he was sinking, and we reached him in time to
receive his last blessing. O Kate! draw us also. The words of the divine
Office for to-day are admirably suitable to our distress: “I am the
Salvation of my people, saith the Lord; in whatsoever affliction they
shall be, I will hear them when they shall call upon me, and I will be
their God for ever.” “If I am in trouble, thou, O Lord! shalt preserve
my life; thou shalt stretch forth thy hand against the fury of mine
enemies, and thy right hand shall save me!”
OCTOBER 20.
O my God! if it were declared that these avenging hordes are to carry
fire and sword through the whole of France, if our sanctuaries and our
relics protected us not, still would we hope in thee, whose love is
greater than our misdeeds, and we would bless thee for ever.
No news from Rheims.
OCTOBER 22.
Twenty thousand Prussians have invaded Chartres, the city of Mary,
famous for its pilgrimage and for its splendid memories. Will they not
defile its cathedral? Horror! The churches of Nancy are changed into
stables. O my God! so many profanations, and still always triumph.
OCTOBER 26.
Read the circular of M. Jules Favre to the French diplomatic agents. O
statesman! your eyes, then, are not opened, and you perceive not that,
chastised for our crimes, we cannot be saved but by the help of God.
They write to us from Orleans: it is lamentable! Poor, dear city! who
shall restore it to us? O misguided France! what firm and Christian hand
shall take thy helm and steer thee into port? At the beginning of this
century, and up to the close of its first half, what noble characters,
what ardent Catholics defended the cause of liberty! And now, alas! how
this oracle of the Holy Scriptures makes me fear: “A kingdom is given
over from one people to another, because of its injustice, violence, and
crimes.”
Kate, what is said in heaven? O dearest sister, my other mother! protect
René and pray for France.
OCTOBER 30.
Bazaine has surrendered; 120,000 troops, 20,000 wounded, cannon, flags,
and Metz, the strongest of our citadels, the heroic city—all is
Prussian! It is, then, finished. It seemed as if all French hearts had
there their hope—not the last, which can be only God. The circular of
Gambetta begins by a _sursum corda_: “Lift up your hearts! lift up your
souls!” It is well, but _whither_? You say not, “Up to God,” nor do you
pronounce that saving name.
Ah! France has deserved this shame of being again vanquished, of seeing
all her citadels fall one after another, until the day when, repentant
and humbled, she will implore the divine aid. Schélestadt has also
capitulated.... Gertrude is ill and keeps her room. The blade has worn
out the scabbard, the body has been broken down by the soul. O my God!
wilt thou take from me also this elder sister—this admirable saint, my
model and consolation? “Weep for France, dear sister,” she said, “not
for me. I have given all to God; I do not fear. I offer for my country
my last sorrow—that of not seeing Adrien once more....”
This unexpected blow crushes me. Pray for us, Kate!
NOVEMBER 1.
“Heaven is opening. O Jesus! have pity upon France.” And thus she
died.... It is, then, true! Henceforth I must seek her in heaven with
you, dear Kate, and all our dear ones who have taken wing from hence.
What an example she leaves us! Not a complaint: she owned to me that she
had long been suffering. What austerity of life! What renunciation of
her own tastes! What love of poverty! “She was too near heaven to remain
below,” my mother says. Margaret is very unwell, because of so many
emotions. O this life and this death; these adieux, this generosity of
heart, these last lines traced for Adrien, for her brothers! A few
minutes before her departure she said to me: “_You will come soon._”
I scarcely know where I am; my soul is in a chaos of sorrows, but the
love of God prevails over all. I am writing this by her funeral couch.
Three days ago she went out with us. She fatigued herself too
unsparingly; she never shrank from trouble. Kate, welcome her and bless
your sister! Gain strength for me, and, if I must die without once more
seeing René, obtain that I may know how to say, _Fiat!_
Mourning in the family, mourning for the country—for everything,
mourning!
NOVEMBER 7.
I feel ill.... Anxiety is killing me. O Kate! O Gertrude! remember us on
high. The day before her death Gertrude said: “Prayers, prayers! Oh! the
_Lætatus_ of the angels must be so beautiful.... I hear it!...” Mary and
Ellen at her request sang her an Irish melody on the love of one’s
country. “Georgina, to pray, to suffer—this is everything!”
What words! And how well I understood her at that moment, when all was
passing away from this valiant and strong soul who had fought the good
fight! Poor Adrien!
Troops have been levied _en masse_, from twenty to forty years of age.
The Lamentations of Jeremias apply to us in our calamities! Who shall
number the widows and the orphans? May God protect us! The sadnesses of
the present life complete my detachment from this world by discovering
to me its nothingness. The details respecting Metz throw me into
stupefaction. My mother has heroically borne the great trial; she
herself closed the eyes, so bright, so beautiful, of her eldest
daughter. She insists that Lord William shall take Margaret away,
because the enemy is certain to come upon us also. “Well, then,” says my
friend, “we will defend you!”
NOVEMBER 10.
The _Univers_ is here, edited at Nantes. Yesterday it contained a
magnificent page, vibrating with Catholic faith, addressed by Louis
Veuillot to General Trochu. The illustrious convert of Rome has, then,
quitted the country of his heart and is present at the agony of that
Paris whose corruptions he has so energetically denounced. I have been
glad (if one may use the word) to find, in this believing journal, an
expression of the indignation of my soul against those who have dared to
give to that gouty fetich, Garibaldi, the rank of a French general at
the moment when Piedmont was consummating its sacrilegious attacks
against Pius IX. There is fighting at Orleans. O Joan of Arc!
Kate dearest, we all suffer. What has become of all our hopes? No, they
are not destroyed; they had heaven for their object.
NOVEMBER 13.
I dare not make a complete narrative of our disasters, and I know not
how to speak of anything else. “Revolutionary France is no longer the
France of Christ. She has kept the name, but repudiated the heart. O
France, France! nation of so many centuries, of such men, and of so much
glory, crouched beneath the boot of Flourens, before the sword of the
Prussian.” These are the words of Louis Veuillot. Paris is wrought upon
by rioters, the dregs of the Revolution. Bismarck is said to have
uttered the pride-inflated words that “there is nothing but Prussia in
the world: there is no more Europe!”
“Let us,” cries Louis Veuillot—“let us examine the inexorable logic
which rolls us in the mire, and see by what hands it has been possible
to lay prostrate a nation which is proud of having no more thought of
God! O mockery! O derision! And this is France!”
We know nothing of the absent.... Uncertainty—the cross of crosses!
NOVEMBER 16.
Orleans is delivered. Cathelineau, the morning of his solemn entry, went
with his Vendéans to hear a Mass of thanksgiving. _In hoc Signo vinces._
Marseilles and Lyons, the Queen of the Mediterranean and the city of
Notre Dame de Fourvières, are agitated by violent intestine struggles.
_Pazienza! Speranza!_ Oh! what need has my soul of these two sources of
strength to bear up beneath this hour of unutterable anguish! René and
Adrien are wounded! “Remember, my daughter, the sacrifice is short and
the crown eternal,” my poor mother says to me, wounded to the heart like
myself. Where are they? The date is torn off the letter, which has been
brought us by an unfortunate soldier with an amputated limb, who has
faced a thousand dangers to come and die in his own part of the country.
I wish to go—but whither? Kate, inspire me!
NOVEMBER 22.
My anxiety has brought on fever.... Yesterday was a great day in the
religious history of France. Mgr. de la Tour d’Auvergne convoked the
whole church of France to a solemn act of faith. At one and the same
hour, in all the sanctuaries of this nation, bent beneath the strokes of
the divine Justice, Mass was said to obtain pardon. O Lord! if only so
many prayers and tears might obtain peace. “All for God and our
country!” cried Cathelineau, before that altar[58] where joys so pure
were granted me. “Let official France make her act of penitence!” says
the Univers. Alas! it does not appear that this thought occurs to her. O
these dates, these memories, my whole life in my remembrance! I examined
myself this morning and had to acknowledge my own weakness. My God! wilt
thou require of me this sacrifice? I would desire to submit, but my
heart!... Dear and sweet friend, chosen for me by the best-beloved and
most devoted of sisters, return, return! O fatal war! I comprehend the
words of Rousseau: “The man who has lived longest is not he who can
reckon up the greatest number of years, but he who has felt most what is
life.”
Footnote 58:
In the cathedral of Orleans.
There are presentiments.... My soul is crushed. Ah! these hours, these
days which are passing by—what are they for France?
The Duke of Aosta, son of Victor Emanuel, is named King of Spain by the
Cortes. Into what hands is Europe yet to fall? The diadem of Charles V.
and of St. Ferdinand in the family of the excommunicated King of Italy;
these two countries of noble memories thus fallen, and France defended
by Garibaldi; the insulter of sanctity, the blasphemer of Jesus Christ,
made a French general! O blindness, O impiety of a government which
pretends to be a regenerator! And this, too, in the age in which we
live, in the century of Pius IX. and of the Immaculate Conception!...
Deluges of rain for weeks past. Our unfortunate youth of France
decimated by misery and cold!
Wrote to Marcella and Lizzy—two lovely, beloved, and poetic souls.[59]
Footnote 59:
A few hours after tracing these lines Georgina learnt of the death of
René. Of the five brothers, two had given their lives for France.
Adrien and Gertrude rejoined each other in heaven.
NOVEMBER 26.
The Lord gave him to me; the Lord hath taken him away! Thou hast willed
it, my God; thou hast taken back this life which was so dear to me. I
adore thy will!
NOVEMBER 29.
Is this _dying life_ deserving of a single regret? And yet I weep! My
God! thou pardonest these tears—thou who didst weep over us. Oh! if I
had at least had his last look.
It is a week ago this evening since I knew of my misfortune. O my God!
that unusual stir, those sinister noises, and the entrance of Raoul,
Edouard, and Paul. Dead—both dead! I would see that dear face once
again, to try and restore its warmth by my kisses!
DECEMBER 1.
Kate, I can write no more.... A _widow_! Can you comprehend this word
and the desolation which freezes my heart? All my soul was devoted to
him, placed in him. _Miserere mei, Deus!_ Friend so dear, so loving, so
heroic, so kind, obtain for me that I may follow you to the home where
separation is no more. O you who stood on Calvary, Our Blessed Lady!
pray for us. Have pity upon my distress!
He is dead! The heart which loved me has ceased to beat! And if only
France were saved, and my mourning might win her salvation!
And still I must live, move about, spend myself in attendance on the
sick, when I feel as if the heavy stone which hides him from me were
weighing down my soul. O the destruction wrought by death! Thus one
single year has taken all from me!
Prayed for two hours yesterday by this newly-closed tomb. O Lord! I
spoke to him, I understood him, I comprehended that thou requirest holy
victims to disarm thy justice.
O France! which I loved so much.
DECEMBER 25.
Margaret leaves us suddenly. Her father-in-law is dying. God be praised
for having left her with us during these days of trouble!
I am still weak in the inferior part of my soul, feeling every hour an
increase of bitterness and depression. “You will come soon!” This
farewell of Gertrude’s resounds continually in my ears. Nevertheless, if
the pain of a long life should be in store for me, if her words were
symbolic only, if I must grow old, I pray the Author of all good to
permit that the unending mourning of my heart may overflow in tenderness
towards all who suffer, that I may wipe away or comfort tears—I, who
henceforth can only live in tears.
Christmas, feast of gladness, of the birth of Jesus, and of love; the
anniversary of Edith’s death!
JANUARY 1, 1871.
Spent this day in the church and cemetery. O René! how I hear you still.
I seek you now in heaven. Pray for France, and also for me, who cannot
accustom myself to widowhood.
O ye almost infinite delights enjoyed in the intimacy of that noble
heart! can I think upon you and not die?
Dear René, dear Kate, it is before God that I weep; it is on these pages
concealed from all that I write my regrets. Does God permit this, or is
it cowardice?
JANUARY 4.
Edouard has this morning put René’s pocket-book into my hands. My name
is on every page. Observed these words, which I have read a hundred
times over: “If I die, comfort her, ye good angels who guided me to
her!”... Oh! it is more than I can bear—emotion and regrets so deep.
JANUARY 6.
_He is at rest._ Eternal felicity of rest in God, thou art become his
inheritance. I loved him so much, and, alas! I could not secure his
happiness! Just now I opened my book of _Hours_ at this Psalm: “_Cantate
Domino canticum novum, quia mirabilia fecit._” I seemed to obtain a
glance into heaven, and this friend, so ardently and faithfully loved,
was smiling upon me.... Rapid flashes of light, after which the darkness
thickens and the loneliness grows more oppressive!
JANUARY 13.
May God console the mothers, the widows, and the orphans!
If I had time to think of self in this chaos of nameless events, I
should feel myself unfortunate beyond all expression. O Lord! the
happiness of loving thee, of possessing thee in heaven, is well worth
some years of Calvary; and although mine appears to me at times so
difficult to climb, thou knowest that it is no more for myself that I
weep, but that the sufferings of René’s country alone fill my heart. My
poor France, so glorious whilst she still served thee, wilt thou efface
her for ever from the book of nations, or wilt thou restore her power?
_Fiat voluntas tua!_ Turn us to thee, O Christ! who didst die to save
the world, and, for the sake of so many hearts that turn to thee,
shorten our woes!
JANUARY 18.
Heard for the first time the complete account of _his death_.... My
brothers are on the point of setting out again; they are of a race in
which self-devotion is hereditary.
O René! how proud I am of you—dead on the field of honor, after
receiving your God that morning; and dying in defence of France! Ah! I
would fain be a Sister of Charity, to have a right to receive the last
sigh of our courageous defenders.
Often had you said to me: “It seems to me that I should have strength to
love God even to suffering martyrdom!” And the hour came when it would
have been permitted you to remain quietly at home; but your country was
in mourning, and you went forth, a soldier for right, a soldier of God!
Ah! then I felt indeed something which broke within me....
Do you, on high, remember her who loved you better than herself? Do you
call to mind those delightful days when heavenly love shed a ray from on
high upon our love? Do you remember our conversations, in which the
thought of eternity was always present? Ah! we both knew well that our
happiness was not of this world.
Yesterday I dressed the wounds of an unhappy victim of this war, which
posterity will call inexplicable. What a horrible wound! The man was a
Vendéan and a Catholic. He saw tears in my eyes, and thanked me with a
hearty and naïve simplicity. He regrets his wife, whom he wants to see.
Poor woman!—or rather, happy woman; for she will see him!
JANUARY 25.
A letter from Karl, addressed to René. O my God!
The enemy is approaching; France is agonizing. René, Kate, Mad, pray for
us!
FEBRUARY 2.
_Miserere nostri, Domine!_
I return to these pages on a day of cruel disappointment. Paris has
capitulated! The Prussians occupy the forts; the army has been made
prisoners of war. There is an armistice of twenty-two days. There were
elections on the 8th for a constituency. How many sorrowful events have
taken place!—the bombardment of Paris, the defeat of Chanzy at Mans, the
civil discords.... One must despair, were it not that God overrules all,
and that if he punishes he is ready to pardon. The question is whether
France is to be or not to be!
Edouard writes. He hopes that the Prussians will not advance so far as
to the sea. Margaret and Marcella—what do they think at this time, at
this Gethsemani of France?
“O my God! I am as thou wert, falling prostrate from weakness, when
another had to carry thy cross!”[60]
Footnote 60:
The Abbé Perreyve.
Si vous pouviez comprendre et le peu qu’est la vie,
Et de quelle douceur cette morte est suivie![61]
Footnote 61:
“Could you but know how small a thing is life, and also by what
sweetness death is followed!”
FEBRUARY 12.
Prayer and charity fill up our time. Alas! there is still room for
regrets. Everything revives them; to-day it is a passage from Montaigne:
“We were seeking one another, and our names were intermingled before we
had made acquaintance. It was a festival when I saw him for the first
time; we found each other all at once so bound together, so united, so
well-known, so obliged, that nothing was so dear to each of us as the
other. And when I ask myself whence comes this joy, this ease, this
repose that I feel when I see him, it is because it is _he_ and because
it is _I_; this is all I can say.”
O René! it was thus that we loved, and thus our love will be eternal.
FEBRUARY 18.
The fatherland of our soul is God! Trial is not sent only as an
expiation to purify us, but also to detach us from earth and raise us
near to God. “_Jubilate Domino, omnis terra; servite Domino in
lætitia!_” O my soul! do thou serve the Lord with gladness. Lift the
veil; behind your troubles and sorrows God is there, who counts them
all, and whose love will change them into an unknown weight of glory!
_Beati qui lugent!_ Heaven! heaven!
I was thinking this evening of the motto of Valentine of Milan: _Plus ne
m’est rien, Rien ne m’est plus[62]_. Is this sufficiently Christian?
From this world’s point of view, from the frivolities of life and of all
that charms the senses, oh! nothing is anything to me. But one’s
country, the church, the poor, one’s family!
Footnote 62:
More is naught to me; naught is aught to me more.
O Jesus, who seest my tears! remember that thou hast said: “All that you
shall ask the Father in my name, he will give you.” May thy adorable
will be done! He who believes, hopes, and loves—has he the right to
complain? Can the soul whom thou dost protect call herself abandoned?
Will the heart that is rich in thy love feel despoiled and desolate?
Draw me to loftier heights, O Christ, my King!
FEBRUARY 21.
Belfort has capitulated! _Tristis est anima mea usque ad mortem._ Must
we say with Dante: _Lasciate ogni speranza_? How empty and desolate
earth appears to me! My God, show thyself; let thy power shine forth in
our behalf! I will hope in thee against all hope. “Every soul is the
vicar of Jesus Christ, to labor, by the sacrifice of himself, at the
redemption of humanity. In the plan of this great work each one has a
place marked out from eternity, which he is free to accept or to
refuse.” René, Kate, Gertrude, you all understood this! O my God! have
pity upon France. I offer myself as a holocaust to thee. I accept every
sacrifice; I give myself up; take with me all who have in like manner
devoted themselves: let not France undergo the fate of Ireland; let her
not be crushed by Protestantism, but leave her her faith and love.
MARCH 1.
Peace is declared, but at what a price!—five milliards, Alsace, and
Metz; the occupation of Champagne until the payment of the indemnity,
the entry into Paris of thirty thousand men on this very day. O the
Alsatians! To think that henceforth they belong to the Vandals who have
ruined their territory, made a desert everywhere, brought mourning into
every home—what infinite grief! No! the Prussian will not be their
master; the heart of Alsace is too French; the yoke of the enemy may
weigh down bodies but not souls. We have here a friend of Berthe’s, a
young wife and mother, who ever since this morning has been in the
chapel, weeping in despair. Poor Alsace! Terrible alternative—the
mother-country sacrificing her more unfortunate sons to purchase the
others!... Where is Joan of Arc? Where are even the women of Carthage!
Lord, save us!
MADAME DE T—— TO LADY MARGARET.
MARCH 20, 1871.
God be with us!
Dear Lady Margaret, our so dear, beautiful, and perfect Georgina has
departed from us for ever!
I cannot leave to any one else the sorrow of acquainting you with this
fresh bereavement.... Shall I have strength for it? I feel as if my
heart were enclosed in the tomb where my children rest.
A pernicious fever has carried from us this most lovable creature, who
has been amongst us like an apparition from heaven. She is now reunited
to him whom she so loved and mourned, and she who had “_unlearnt
happiness_” is happy now! This thought is necessary to sustain those who
remain. You know what she was to me—the most loving, devoted, and
piously amiable of daughters; you know what she was to all—an adviser, a
comforter, and a light. And all this in a few hours has vanished from
us. Who shall console us for the loss of this angelic child, the very
sight of whom was a consolation?
Dear friend, she thought of you; she murmured your name in her last
prayer. God, the church, France, Ireland, and all those who loved her,
by turns were on her lips; the voluntary victim of charity, she accepted
death with gladness. You who were her sister, kind Lady Margaret, would
that you had been with us at that time which was at once both sweet and
cruel! Ah! tears are not permitted to me; the place of angels is in
heaven.
Do not think of returning to us until peace is definitely established.
Alas! only a few days since we were forming a project to go and take you
by surprise. Henceforth I quit Brittany no more—my _Campo Santo_, as my
beloved daughter called it.
Oh! how she must pray for our sorrows on high.
On the morning of the last day she twice repeated to me these beautiful
words of the Père Lacordaire: “However hard may be the separations of
this world, there always remains to us Him who is its author, who has
given and who removes us, who never fails, in whom we shall all be one
day reunited by the faith and charity which he has given us.”
And a few minutes before breathing the last sigh she said: “Mother, I
asked that I might die for France; it was a sacrifice, because of
leaving you. Now all regret has disappeared from my heart; I am going to
see Mad, Gertrude, Kate, René—and God!”
May she call me soon also!
Dear and kind friend, I would comfort you, but I am powerless. Let us
love and pray.
My remembrances to Lord William; kisses to Emmanuel, the treasure whom
she so much loved, and to yourself, the expression of the maternal
affection of my desolate heart.
COMTESSE DE T——.
* * * * *
Madame de T—— survived this last affliction only a few months, and the
_Campo Santo_ received yet another tomb. May these delineations of love
so pure and Christian, and of resignation so sublime, benefit at least
some souls! This is the editor’s sole aim.
The premature end of Lady Margaret has unfortunately only too soon
facilitated the sorrowful task of the friend who has been desirous of
revealing to loving hearts the private life of her dear Georgina, this
poetic flower of Ireland, transplanted to the soil of this our France,
which became the second country of her heart, and which she loved even
to death.
PROSE AND POETRY OF ANCIENT MUSIC.
The man that hath no music in himself,
Nor is not moved with concord of sweet sounds
Is fit for treasons, stratagems, and spoils:
The motions of his spirit are dull as night,
And his affections dark as Erebus.
Let no such man be trusted.
_—Merchant of Venice._
Music, in its most general sense, is the art of producing melodious
sounds, and, from its power over the passions, it is called the
sentimental art. In the mythology of Greece it was cultivated chiefly by
the Muses, from whom the term _music_ is derived; but, although dear to
all of them, it was presided over by Euterpe, who is always represented
with a flute in her hand. The great divinity of song and instrumental
music, however, was Apollo, who is mentioned in the _Iliad_ as
delighting the immortal gods with the sweetness of his notes; for he was
the inventor of the lyre and leader of the Pierian nine, whence he is
called sometimes _Citharœdus_ and sometimes _Musagetes_, in both which
characters very fine statues of him have come down to us from antiquity.
The worship of the Muses began early in Greece, and the favorite resort
of these divinities of intellectual pleasure was the flowery border of
the rills that murmured down the sides of Mount Parnassus, while their
chaste grove and sacred fountain of Castalia was on that part of the
Parnassan range called Helicon. Here their statues were seen and
described by Pausanias, and afterwards removed by Constantine to his new
capital on the Bosporus.
Pagan authors ascribed the origin of music to fanciful occurrences, or,
at best, to chance and natural operations. Thus, according to some, it
was a gift to man of this one or that of their national divinities; but,
according to others, the babble of running waters, the warbling notes of
birds, mountains that echoed, winds that sighed through the forest trees
and
Fill the shade with a religious awe,—
in a word, the general song of nature inspired Apollo and the Muses, who
were no more than shepherds of Arcadia, to please the world with music;
for
The birds instructed man,
And taught him songs before his art began;
And while soft evening gales blew o’er the plains,
And shook the sounding reeds, they taught the swains;
And thus the pipe was framed and tuneful reed.
—_Lucretius._
But Christian writers believe that Adam, the first man, being endowed by
the Creator with every sort of knowledge, excelled in music as well as
in the other arts and sciences. With his fall this knowledge was
weakened, while in his descendants many things were lost and all things
became obscured. That music has in some way a heavenly origin all are
agreed—even the Hindoos, who say that its effects are produced in us by
recalling to memory the airs of Paradise, which we heard in our state of
pre-existence; even the Greeks, whose fables are founded on the
corruption of primeval traditions, and whose invocation to music is:
O art divine! exalted blessing!
Each celestial charm expressing!
Kindest gift the gods bestow!
Sweetest good that mortals know!
But the writer in the English or, perhaps, in any other language who has
most poetically stated the case of music, and given us a Christian view
of it, is Newman, in the last of his Oxford University sermons. “Can it
be,” he asks, “that those mysterious stirrings of heart, and keen
emotions, and strange yearnings after we know not what, and awful
impressions from we know not whence, should be wrought in us by what is
unsubstantial, and comes and goes, and begins and ends, in itself? It is
not so; it cannot be. No; they have escaped from some higher sphere;
they are the outpourings of eternal harmony in the medium of created
sound; they are echoes from our Home; they are the voice of angels, or
the _Magnificat_ of saints, or the living laws of divine Governance, or
the divine Attributes; something are they besides themselves which we
cannot compass, which we cannot utter, though mortal man—and he,
perhaps, not otherwise distinguished above his fellows—has the gift of
eliciting them.”
The ancients urged in favor of music three principal benefits to
mankind: its effects in softening the manners of men, thereby promoting
civilization and raising a people out of the barbarous and savage state;
its effects in exciting or repressing the passions; and its effects as a
medicinal power to cure diseases. Thus Polybius ascribes to the
cultivation of this art the refinement of the inhabitants of Arcadia,
and to the absence of such a discipline the roughness which
characterized the citizens of Cynæthæ; thus Homer places a musician near
the person of Clytemnestra as a guard upon her chastity, and, until he
was away, Ægistus, who then wronged her, had no power over her
affections. The subduing influence of music was again tried with success
many ages after by the Jesuit missionaries in Paraguay, who used to play
upon guitars and flutes to attract the melody-loving Indians from their
forest haunts towards the village communities which they had established
on the banks of the Parana.[63] Lycurgus regulated the music of Sparta,
and his laws were set to measure by the celebrated musician Terpander;
while Plato not only attributed an instructive virtue to music, but
maintained that a people’s music could not be interfered with without
altering their form of government. This civilizing influence of music is
beautifully illustrated by the old legend of the Greeks, that when the
workmen toiled on the walls of Thebes, Amphion played so sweetly on a
lyre borrowed from Mercury that the stones did move of themselves. This,
of course, is an allegory, to signify that by his musical talents,
poetical numbers, and the wisdom of his counsel Amphion prevailed with a
rude people to submit to law, live in society, and raise a defence
against their neighbors.
Footnote 63:
After religion there is certainly no greater means of civilization
than commerce; and commerce in the middle ages began with fairs, at
which merchants employed the seductions of minstrelsy and music to
draw numbers together, and thus be able to display and sell their
goods.
Since two things greatly contribute to the effects of music, its powers
of imitation and of association, the ancients gave it a large measure of
influence over the passions. Thus Plutarch relates that Terpander
appeased a violent sedition among the Lacedæmonians by the aid of his
lyre, and that Empedocles prevented a murder by the soothing sound of
his flute; and the painter Theon, having brought one of his works, which
represented a soldier attacking an enemy, to be exhibited on the public
square, would allow the veil to be withdrawn only after his attendant
musicians had wrought up with military airs the crowds that gathered
before it. Hence Plato wrote that a warlike air inspires courage,
because it imitates the sounds and accents of a brave man, and that a
calm air produces tranquillity in the soul on the same principle; or, as
Burke says, “The passions may be considerably operated upon, without
presenting any image at all, by certain sounds adapted to that purpose,
of which we have a sufficient proof in the acknowledged and powerful
effects of instrumental music”; for it counterfeits by sound some
quality or state of the mind. Thus, rage is loud, anger harsh, but love
and pity are gentle; consequently, loud and clangorous music stirs up
the stronger passions, while a smooth measure imitates the gentler
emotions of the mind. The wonderful influence of martial music on the
ardor of soldiers in battle has been remarked by many writers on
military affairs, and opera-goers must confess the bad tendency of
sensuous music. Shakspere knew it well when he wrote of the fellow
Who capers nimbly in a lady’s chamber
To the lascivious pleasing of a lute.
The effects of music on the heads and hearts of men were so strongly
perceived by Plato that he banished from his model republic the Lydian
and Ionian modes, because they excited the lower instincts, but retained
the severe Doric and Phrygian measures on account of their manliness and
decency; and some of our best English poets have recorded their
testimony to these same effects. We subjoin a few examples, taken almost
at random:
And ever against eating cares.
Lap me in soft Lydian airs.
—_Milton._
Music alone with sudden charms can bind
The wand’ring sense, and calm the troubled mind.
—_Congreve._
Chiron with pleasing harp Achilles tamed,
And his rough manners with soft music framed.
—_King._
Timotheus to his breathing flute and sounding lyre
Could swell the soul to rage, or kindle soft desire.
—_Dryden._
Now wild with fierce desire,
My breast is all on fire!
In soften’d raptures now I die!
Can empty sound such joys impart?
Can music thus transport the heart
With melting ecstasy?
—_Cunningham._
Music! the greatest good that mortals know,
And all of heav’n we have below.
Music can noble hints impart,
Engender fury, kindle love,
With unsuspected eloquence can move,
And manage all the man with secret art.
—_Addison._
When Music, heavenly maid, was young,
While yet in early Greece she sung,
The Passions oft, to hear her spell,
Thronged around her magic cell,
Exulting, trembling, raging, fainting,
Possessed beyond the Muse’s painting:
By turns they felt the glowing mind
Disturbed, delighted, raised, refined.
—_Collins._
Music the fiercest grief can charm,
And Fate’s severest rage disarm;
Music can soften pain to ease,
And make despair and madness please;
Our joys below it can improve,
And antedate the bliss above.
—_Pope._
Association of ideas, which has so large a share in the operations of
the human mind, often contributes much to the effects of music; for, as
Shakspere says:
How many things by season seasoned are
To their right praise, and true perfection!
Thus, music that has been heard in an agreeable place or that was played
by some one near and dear to us, or music that is connected with the
trials and triumphs of our native land, will awaken sentiments of love
or melancholy, or sympathy or ardor, on the principle of associated
ideas. This is feelingly expressed in the 136th Psalm in the persons of
the captive Hebrews, in whom the sound of music which they had listened
to in happy days would have awakened too keen an anguish.[64] In more
modern times we have had public illustrations of the same principle in
those simple melodies called _ranz des vaches_, which are such favorites
with the mountaineers of Switzerland, and are played upon a long trumpet
or Alpine horn. The sound of these tunes, and the rude words set to
them, which are expressive of scenes of pastoral life—the shingled
cottage, the dashing waterfall, the bleating of sheep, the lowing of
herds, and the tinkling cow-bells—sometimes recalled so vividly to the
native in a foreign clime the memories of his own land as to produce a
disease called _nostalgia_, that often showed itself among the Swiss
soldiers in the Neapolitan service;[65] for
Footnote 64:
This plaintive Psalm was turned into most musical English verse by
Donne, who makes it touchingly suggestive; and later, and better
still, by Aubrey de Vere in his beautiful drama, _Alexander the
Great_.
Footnote 65:
A person who was present has feelingly described the deep effect
produced on some of our poor wounded soldiers who had been brought to
a church in Fredericksburg on their way North, after one of the
battles in the Wilderness, when some person sat down at the organ and
played “Home, sweet Home.”
There is in souls a sympathy with sounds;
And as the mind is pitched, the ear is pleased
With melting airs, or martial, brisk, or grave;
Some chord in unison with what we hear
Is touched within us, and the heart replies.
—_Cowper._
The belief of the ancients that music was auxiliary to medicine is
attested by a great number of writers. Chiron the Centaur, who educated
Achilles, was careful to unite instructions in the healing art to those
which he gave on music. Plutarch tells us that Thales of Crete delivered
the Spartans from a plague by the aid of his lyre; Athenæus quotes
Theophrastus as authority that the Thebans cured epilepsy by the notes
of a flute; Aulus Gellius says that music will rid a man of the gout;
Xenocrates employed music in the cure of maniacs; while the judicious
Galen gravely speaks of playing the flute over the suffering parts of
the body; and the idea that music is the sovereign and only remedy for
the bite of the tarantula still lingers in Southern Italy. The Tyrrhenes
always hired a flute-player to perform while they flogged their slaves,
to give them some relief under the lash; and there was usually an
arch-musician on board of the triremes—in which the rowers’ strength and
endurance were more severely taxed than in smaller vessels—not only to
mark the time or cadence for each stroke of the oar, but principally to
cheer the men by the sweetness of the melody; whence Quintilian takes
occasion to remark that music is a gift of nature, to make us the more
patiently to support labor and fatigue.[66]
Footnote 66:
Blessed Peter Claver, Apostle of the Negroes, used to contrive that
the sufferers in the hospitals at Cartagena, in South America, should
be solaced with music; and for centuries it has been a custom at Santo
Spirito, in Rome, to have the magnificent organ which is set up in the
main ward play three times a week for the patients.
Among the nations of antiquity Egypt was long thought to be the mother
of ancient civilization; and the Egyptians were well acquainted with
music, for representations of musical instruments have been discovered
on some of their oldest monuments, such as obelisks and tombs. But they
never popularized music, because they thought that it had the effect of
making youth effeminate; yet Strabo says that their children were
instructed in one, and only one, special kind of music, of which the
government approved. Like every other profession, that of musician was
hereditary. Egyptian music was originally grave and in solemn accord
with the stiffness of the kindred arts, which were hampered by strict
hieratic rules, and almost exclusively devoted to the service of
religion. When the country fell under the sway of the Greeks, music
became of a gayer and less moral sort, being as much or more employed at
banquets and on other profane occasions as in the temples and beside the
bier. The Ptolemies encouraged Greek music, and the musical contests
introduced into Egypt by this race of splendid princes were all of
Hellenic origin. Athenæus relates that at a grand Bacchic entertainment
given by Ptolemy Philadelphus over six hundred musicians formed the
orchestra. Musical talent was hereditary in the Ptolemaic dynasty, and
the father of Cleopatra was surnamed _Auletes_, or the flute-player,
from his excessive attachment to this instrument.
We have little knowledge of music as a science among the Hebrews, but
there is abundant proof of its practice. They had music on their
festival days, whether domestic, civil, or religious, and professional
musicians were attached to the royal court; but the art was
systematically studied in the schools of the prophets, and received its
highest application in the Temple, where it entered largely into divine
worship.
The music of the Greeks has engaged the attention of many learned men,
but is so difficult a subject that no one understands it; and it is as
easy to imagine how the Pyramids were raised as to conceive what Greek
music was like.
Music enters largely into the mythology of Greece, and strange
legends—some of which are pure myths, others the exaggeration of
facts—have been made up about it. The Muses were extremely jealous of
their musical talents, and whoever ventured to compete with them was
punished. Thus the impudent Sirens or sea-nymphs lost their wings, and
the lovely daughters of King Pierus were changed into birds.[67] Two of
Apollo’s contests are famous for their mournful ending. One was with
Marsyas, a ranger of the woods, who, having found the flute which
Minerva threw away because it distorted her handsome features, rashly
challenged the divine Apollo to a contest between this instrument and
the lyre, the condition of which was that the victor might do what he
wished with the vanquished. The Muses decided in favor of their leader,
and the miserable mortal was tied to a tree and flayed alive. A statue
of Marsyas, bound and suffering, was generally placed by the Greeks, and
afterwards by the Romans also, in the vestibule of their halls of
justice, as a warning not to go into litigation hastily, and, above all,
not to dispute with the gods—_i.e._, bring religion into court.[68]
Footnote 67:
The adventure of Ulysses and the melodious Sirens was a subject early
seized upon by Christian art within the Discipline of the Secret to
convey an idea of the cross (Ulysses attached to the mast of his
vessel), the church (under the figure of a ship), and the seductions
of the world (of the flesh particularly) in this voyage of life. See
De Rossi's _Bulletin of Christian Archæology for 1863_, page 35, in
which a curious monument bearing on this strange _rapprochement_ is
described.
Footnote 68:
One of these old statues having come to light in good condition while
the palace of Monte Citorio, designed by Pope Innocent XII. for the
seat of the higher tribunals of law at Rome, was being built, it was
appropriately placed on the landing at the head of the great stairway.
The Italian Deputies have doubtless removed it, as too significant of
_divine vengeance_.
Another triumph of Apollo was over Pan, a _dilettante_ of music and
inventor of the reed-pipes, which he called _syrinx_ after the beautiful
Arcadian nymph whose adventure with her tuneful lover is well known from
Ovid. Midas, King of Phrygia, was chosen umpire, and, deciding in favor
of Pan, was disgraced by having his ears changed into those of a donkey.
Poor Midas contrived for a time to conceal his mishap by wearing day and
night a cap of a peculiar form;[69] but as no man is long a hero to his
valet, his body-servant, while trimming his hair one day, pushed up the
bonnet a little and discovered the deformity. The secret so embarrassed
him that, fearing he might unwittingly divulge it, he dug a hole in the
ground beside a meandering brook and whispered therein: “Midas has ass’s
ears!” He then filled it up and thought himself secure against himself;
but, alas! on the very spot a tell-tale reed grew up, which, as the
breezes rocked it to and fro, murmured the fatal secret, “Midas has
ass’s ears.” While this fable may signify one of the ways by which the
ancients believed nature to have drawn man’s attention to instrumental
music—for travellers tell us that in some parts of the world there are
plants called vocal or singing reeds, which emit a sweet strain when
moved by the wind—it may also be a myth to insinuate that music is a
sort of language; and as such, says Metastasio, it has the advantage
over poetry which a universal language would have over a particular one,
for music can touch all hearts in every age and country, but poetry
speaks only to the people of its own age and country. One of the Greek
stories of sublimest significance, and which mysteriously enters into
early Christian art under the discipline of the secret, is the Orphic
legend. Orpheus, presented by Apollo with a lyre and instructed in its
use by the Muses, was able to tame with his sweet notes the wild beasts
that gathered around him, and to enchant even the trees and rocks of
Olympus, which started from their places and followed the sounds that
charmed them:
Since naught so stockish, hard, and full of rage
But music for the time doth change his nature,
Footnote 69:
We find in this story the origin of the _Phrygian cap_ which came to
be a symbol of slavery and degradation among the Romans, by whom the
Phrygians were considered a stupid people—whose rulers even had
asinine qualities; and it never quite lost this character, but was
used in France up to the time of the Revolution by galley-prisoners,
and it is well known that an irruption of escaped convicts into Paris
during the Reign of Terror, carrying one of their caps at the end of a
pole and singing the _Marseillaise_, gave rise to the absurd custom of
the liberty-pole and cap now so common.
as Shakspere remarks. That some animals are amenable to the influence of
harmony is certain—hence the success of the Hindoos with their deadly
cobras; and some recent botanists are of opinion that the growth of
flowers, and especially roses, is stimulated by music. But whatever
slight foundation of fact there may be in the wonders of the
_historical_ Orpheus, it fades into obscurity beside the noble
conception of the _mythical_ Orpheus, whose history seems based on a
traditional knowledge of the happy state of man in Paradise when all
things of earth were subject to him:
Till disproportioned Sin
Jarred against Nature’s clime, and with harsh din
Broke the fair music that all creatures made
To their great Lord, whose love their motion swayed
In perfect diapason, whilst they stood
In first obedience, and their state of good.
—_Milton._
Music is mentioned with a degree of rapture in more than fifty places of
the _Iliad_ and the _Odyssey_. The Lacedæmonians had a flute blazoned on
their standards, and the military airs composed by Tyrtæus continued to
be played in the Spartan army until the end of the republic.
The Pythagoreans and Platonists not only supposed the soul of man to be
a substance very like a disembodied musical instrument of some sort, but
believed the universe itself and all its parts to be formed on the
principles of harmony; hence their not altogether imaginary music of the
spheres which enters into their systems of philosophy:
Look how the floor of heaven
Is thick inlaid with patines of bright gold:
_There’s not the smallest orb which thou behold’st
But in his motion like an angel sings,
Still quiring to the young-eyed cherubins_:
Such harmony is in immortal souls;
But whilst this muddy vesture of decay
Doth grossly close it in, we cannot hear it.
—_Merchant of Venice._
And this idea of a close connection between music and the heavenly
bodies was still lingering in the minds of some philosophers as late as
the eleventh century of our era, when Psellus the younger, treating of
music and astronomy, describes the former as symmetry and proportion
itself, which reminds one of Hegel’s profound and intelligible
definition that “music is architecture in time”! Pythagoras especially
is said to have regarded music as something celestial and profound, and
to have had such an opinion of its powers over the human affections that
he ordered his disciples to be waked every morning, and lulled to sleep
at night, by the dulcet notes of the lyre or the flute.[70]
Footnote 70:
Dr. Burney, _History of Music_, vol. i. p. 436, has a note which bears
too quaintly on this part of the subject not to be reproduced. He
says: “Master Thomas Mace, author of a most delectable book called
_Musick’s Monument_, would have been an excellent Pythagorean, for he
maintains that the mystery of the Trinity is perspicuously made plain
by the connection of the three harmonical concords 1, 3, 5; that music
and divinity are nearly allied; and that the contemplation of concord
and discord, of the nature of the octave and unison, will so
strengthen a man’s faith 'that he shall never after degenerate into
that _gross subbeastiacal sin_ of Atheism.’”
The love and cultivation of music formed so much a part of the
discipline of the illustrious men who sprang from the school of
Pythagoras that almost every one of them left behind him a treatise on
the subject. Plato, in the seventh book of his work on laws, says that
children in a well-ordered commonwealth should be instructed for three
years in music, which reminds us of the commendable efforts made of late
years in Great Britain and the United States to make music a necessary
part of popular education, in which connection the late Cardinal Wiseman
wrote an interesting letter to the Catholic Poor-School Committee of
London in 1849 about “the importance of introducing music more
effectually into our system of education.”
In the third book of Plato’s _Republic_ music is treated of at
considerable length with reference to education; “for whatever is
concerned with the art of music ought somehow to terminate with the love
of the beautiful.” But to seize the full meaning of this passage we must
remember that, in the doctrine of the Academy, _the Good, the True, and
the Beautiful_ are reciprocal terms, and consequently that music should
elevate to the contemplation of the great Godhead—Goodness itself, Truth
itself, Beauty itself.
Eloquence was thought by the ancients to be so intimately connected with
music that the orators of Greece and Rome had a flute-player standing at
a proper distance behind them while they spoke, who kept up an undertone
of musical sound, now swelling as the speaker rose with his theme, now
gently falling when, as in panegyrics on the dead or in pleadings for
mercy, he sought the chords of sorrow or sympathy in the human heart.
Musical contests of flutes, trumpets, and other instruments were among
the attractions at the public games of Greece; and the profession of
music was so highly honored, and often so remunerative, that many
musicians lived in splendor. There was Dorion the flute-player, who
lived like a Sybarite and was a frequent guest at the table of King
Philip of Macedon; there was Ismenias of Thebes, who was sent on an
embassy to Persia, and (like the late Duke of Brunswick) had a passion
for collecting jewels which his enormous wealth enabled him to gratify
to the utmost. He once reproved a smart agent for not having paid as
much for a pearl as it was worth, saying that it belittled him in the
jeweller’s eyes not to have given, and the gem in his own eyes not to
have cost, its full value, and sent him back with the surplus money. The
flute which he bought at Corinth for three talents (about $4,000) must
have been encrusted with precious stones. Amœbeus, the harper, received
an Attic talent (about $1,000) for every appearance on the stage. But
although proficients in music were highly honored and rewarded, the mere
makers of musical instruments enjoyed no greater esteem than did other
artisans, and we know that the comic poets of the time often ridiculed
the celebrated orator Isocrates because his father had been able to give
him a liberal education with money made by manufacturing flutes. Not
only men but women also publicly exhibited their musical
accomplishments; they belonged, however, mostly, if not exclusively, to
the class of _Hetairai_. Such was the famous Lamia, whose skill as a
flute-player, hardly less than her personal charms, won the heart of
King Demetrius.
Passing over to Italy, we can only mention the Sabines and Etruscans,
who early cultivated music, and from whom the Romans derived their
knowledge of the art; the former giving them their profane, and the
latter their sacred, music. At a later period the genius of Greece
banished her ruder rivals and monopolized the art in Rome. It was a
general custom among people of rank, towards the end of the republic and
under the empire, to keep a private band of musicians; but in the
earlier days of Rome music, being almost exclusively devoted to
religion, either in the temples or at burial rites, was under government
control; hence it was forbidden in the Twelve Tables to have more than
ten flute-players at funerals, and the _Salii_, who were priests of
Mars, were obliged, in their annual procession through the city, to
accompany their stately tread by a sort of music made by striking their
rods of gold on the metal shields which they carried in the hand. The
most important body of musicians at Rome, and the recognized officials
of the art, were the _tibicines_, or pipers, who formed a college, and
on one occasion brought the religious affairs of the city to a
stand-still by seceding in a body, after some real or fancied grievance,
to the neighboring town of _Tibur_ (Tivoli).
The “ambubajarum collegia” of Horace, and the Syrian musicians satirized
by Juvenal, were held in contempt by the Romans as not delighting the
soul with exalted harmony, so much as exciting the instincts to sensual
gratification.
THE ROMANCE OF A PORTMANTEAU.
“We shall be happy to see you at Rathdangan Castle, sir,” said Sir
Geoffry Didcote. “If—aw—you come down on Saturday and—aw—stop till
Monday, we shall—aw—be pleased”; stroking his finely-shaven chin at each
“aw.”
I accepted with a gratified alacrity. We had won the rubber trick by
trick, and, although the honors were against us, I had somehow or other
managed to establish a long suit commencing with the king, and had ended
by lugging in all the poor relations, including a miserable deuce of
diamonds, for which I contrived to secure as good a berth as that held
by any member of its illustrious family. Flushed with victory, Sir
Geoffry’s hospitality spread forth its arms and enfolded me within its
embrace. This _was_ a chance for a briefless barrister during the long
vacation. Briefless! Why, I could not even command a nod from an
attorney, much less that magic roll of paper whose cabalistic
inscriptions are so readily deciphered by—the pocket. The Hall of the
Four Courts was a most delightful club-room, where all the news of the
day was freely discussed, from Mr. Justice Keogh’s latest witticism to
the new street-ballad by Doctor Huttle; from Baron Dowse’s joke to
Sergeant Armstrong’s wig. And as for Circuit, it was nothing more or
less than a charming country excursion, where the wit and wine of the
bar mess amply compensated for any little _ennui_ the hours occupied in
doing nothing during the day might have reasonably engendered. In vain I
strutted across “The Hall” with a bagful of old French novels,
endeavoring to appear as though absorbed in some pending case in which
my dormant talent would be strained to the utmost limits of its
capacity; in vain I caused myself to be called forth from the library as
often as it pleased the porter to summon me for the sum of five
shillings, with which I had retained his eminent services; in vain I
buttonholed country friends. But why continue? The word “briefless”
speaks for itself; and were it not for sundry remittances from a maiden
aunt, my sole surviving relative, I should, _bon gré mal gré_, have been
compelled to take the queen’s shilling or to seek employment from the
Corporation of Dublin in the capacity of a street scavenger.
As yet I had made but little way in society. I could not talk Wagner or
fall foul of Tennyson. I had not brass enough for a ballad or talent for
a _scena_. Too nervous for anecdote, my modesty muffled me even in
conversation. I was not a man’s man, nor yet a _cavaliere servante_. I
did not hunt, fish, or shoot. In a word, I was somewhat of a dreary drug
in Vanity Fair.
Why Sergeant Frizwig asked me to dinner I cannot determine; and why Sir
Geoffry Didcote, after that excellent repast, took it into his head to
invite me to Rathdangan Castle is a mystery unto this present hour.
The vulgar question of ways and means stared me in the face and almost
out of countenance as I walked homewards. Rathdangan was distant from
Dublin at least thirty-five miles, thirty of which could be traversed by
rail. The cost of a conveyance from the station might or might not be a
“crusher”; and then the tips to the retainers! Luckily, my aunt had
forwarded a remittance of five pounds upon that very morning, sixty
shillings of which still remained firm and true; and as she invariably
impressed upon me, in addition to the necessity of obtaining briefs, the
advisability of mixing in the best society _only_, I naturally
calculated on a “tenner” upon receipt of the intelligence of my arrival
at the Castle, inscribed upon the Didcote paper. My wardrobe was the
next consideration, and this was of the scantiest description. The
evening suit might pass muster in candlelight, but once turn a jet of
gas upon it, and the whole fabric tumbled to pieces. The grease of
countless dinners, the patches beneath the arms, the seams artfully
blackened with ink, the frayed linings, would jointly and severally step
into the witness-box and turn evidence against me. My shirts were
singularly blue, and worn away from constant friction with the horny
palms of the washerwoman, whilst the collars resembled those “sierras,”
or saw-edged mountains, which the observant traveller recognizes upon
entering the dominions of his most Catholic Majesty Alfonso the Twelfth
of Spain. My walking-suit was presentable enough, consisting as it did
of Thomastown frieze, and my boots, although machine-made, possessed the
redeeming influence of novelty.
“I’ll risk it,” thought I. “The investment is a safe one, and the return
will amply repay the outlay.” A new and unforeseen difficulty presented
itself. The battered portmanteau which usually bore my “fixins,” whilst
quite good enough for “the boots” of provincial hotels, was utterly
unfit to be handled by the genteel retainers at Rathdangan Castle; and
as nothing bespeaks a certain _ton_ more than smart-looking luggage, I
found myself under the necessity of investing in a new valise.
“There’s wan fit for Roosia, or Pinsylvania—no less,” exclaimed the
proprietor of a description of open-air bazaar situated behind the Bank
of Ireland, with whom I was in treaty for the desired article. “Its
locks is as sthrong as Newgate, an’ ye might dhrop it from Nelson’s
pillar an’ ye wudn’t shake a nail in it.”
This was a large black box strongly resembling a coffin, both in size
and shape.
“Mebbe it’s a hair thrunk yer looking for? Here’s wan. There’s brass
nails for ye! There’s hair! Begorra, there’s many a man in Merrion
Square that hasn’t half as much.”
Informing him that I had no intention of emigrating just at that
particular moment, and that I required a small, solid leather
portmanteau, Mr. Flynn proved himself equal to the emergency.
“That’s solid enough, anyhow. Shure, ye’d think it was Roman
cimint—sorra a less,” he cried, as he administered several resounding
whacks to the article in question.
“What are you asking for this?” I demanded.
“What am I axin’ for it?” Here he fixed me with his eye, as the Ancient
Mariner fixed the wedding-guest. “It’s worth thirty shillin’s.”
“Say twenty,” said I.
“I couldn’t if ye wor to make me a lord-mayor.”
“I cannot give more.”
“Well, here now: we’ll shplit the differ—say twinty-five.” And he spat
upon what he elegantly termed “the heel of his fist.”
“Twenty,” said I.
“Begorra, yer a hard man! I suppose ye must have it.”
My preparations being now completed, five o’clock on the Saturday
evening found me on the platform of the Amiens Street terminus.
“Hillo, Dawkins!” exclaimed Mr. Dudley Fribscombe, a brother barrister,
whose father (in the bacon trade) allowed him five hundred a year.
“Going as special, eh? A hundred guineas—you’re coining, by Jove!”
“No,” I replied with assumed _nonchalance_, “just running down to
Rathdangan Castle to spend a few days with the Didcotes.” I never felt
better pleased in my life. This fellow was always sneering at the
poverty of his briefless brothers, and as his people happened to reside
near Rathdangan, but were of course _un_visited, my red-hot shot told
with withering effect.
“Oh! indeed,” he muttered. “What an awful swell! Going second?”
“First,” was my sententious reply.
“Let us travel together.”
“All right.”
Now, my intention was to have taken a second-class ticket, but the tone
of Fribscombe altered my mind. What a crisis in my destiny as I walked
to the booking office! What a pivot in my fate!
Had I travelled second—but I will not anticipate.
“The smoking-carriage is full. Let’s get in here; _I_'ll tip the guard
to let nobody else pass,” said Fribscombe, carrying his idea into
execution.
We ensconced ourselves snugly in the pet corners, and made a great
display of luggage all over the compartment. My companion offered me a
cigar, but I preferred my ebon meerschaum, bought of Hans Larsen himself
at Lillehammer, and which I had colored with possibly as much delicate
assiduity as Mr. Millais, R.A., bestows upon his delightful
masterpieces.
We were about to “scratch,” as the last bell had rung, when the door was
suddenly unlocked, thrown open, and a bundle of rugs bristling with
umbrella-handles, a portmanteau, and a lady attired in the newest and
presumably most correct thing in widow’s weeds were flung violently into
the compartment. The whistle sounded, the door was banged to, and the
train glided out of the station ere we could make any move in the
direction of a change of seats.
“What an infernal sell!” muttered Fribscombe.
“Too bad!” I growled.
“That guard is a 'do.’ Half a crown thrown into the Liffy!”
“Would she stand it, Fribscombe?”
“Not she. If the dear departed smoked, it would remind her too forcibly
of him; and if he didn’t smoke, she’d scream and call the guard.”
In the meantime the object of our solicitude had shaken out her
draperies and snugly wrapped herself in a wolf-skin rug, the head and
glass eyes of which reposed in her lap like the sporran of a Highlander.
Her figure appeared to very little advantage in the heavy folds of her
ribbed-silk, crape-laden cloak; nevertheless, it betrayed a youthful
grace and symmetry. She kept her veil down, and from the posture she
assumed—her head pressed back against the cushion—it became pretty
evident that, if she were not _en route_ to dreamland, she wished to
indulge in a profound meditation.
“This train won’t stop till we get to Skerries,” said Fribscombe. “I
think,” he added _sotto voce_, “that she is asleep, and a whiff or two
of real Havana will not awaken her.”
“It’s much better to ask her consent, and I’ll do it,” I whispered.
She sat directly opposite to me, facing the engine. I leaned a little
forward.
“I beg your pardon, madam; but may I ask if you have any objection to
our smoking? If you have the slightest feeling on the subject, I beg to
assure you that it will be no deprivation to us to wait until we reach
Skerries.”
She raised her veil.
“I have no objection whatever,” she said in a low, sympathetic murmur.
“I like the perfume of tobacco.” And, as if smitten by some sorrowful
remembrance, she sighed and sank back, but did not lower her veil.
I mumbled some incoherent expression of thanks, scarcely knowing what I
said; for my whole soul was focussed in my eyes as I gazed into one of
the loveliest faces that I had ever beheld.
“You are not availing yourself of my permission, sir,” she observed,
almost laughingly.
“'Pon my conscience! I forgot all about it,” was my reply.
Woman-like she felt the compliment, and woman-like she was grateful for
it; she knew it to be genuine.
Somehow or other we drifted into conversation. There are some women who
can trot a man’s ideas out for him, walk them gently up and down,
canter, and, lastly, gallop them. Any little defects are concealed by
the excellent hand which is over him; and were he to come to auction at
that particular moment, he would be knocked down to the very highest
bidder, be he ever so modest—namely, himself. This young girl—for she
could scarcely have passed her teens—possessed this marvellous gift,
and, as she deftly passed from subject to subject, I found myself,
usually so dull, so reticent, so uninformed, discussing topic after
topic—travel, music, the drama, literature, anything, everything—with a
feverish facility, and offering decided opinions upon subjects even to
approach which would have ordinarily been a matter of no little
enterprise, doubt, and difficulty.
So deeply had I become absorbed that when Fribscombe, whose existence I
had totally forgotten, suddenly awakening from a cosey slumber, shouted
in a very excited tone: “I say, Dawkins, jump out, man! This is your
station. We’re moving off,” I could scarcely realize the fact of its
proximity, and that two hours had rolled by, compressed into so many
minutes.
My first thought was to journey onwards with my fair _vis-à-vis_—I cared
not whither; my second, that Fribscombe would laugh me to death at the
“Hall.” With a sense of sorrow—I might almost say of agony—in my heart
at the idea of parting from her, I seized upon my portmanteau, and just
succeeded in alighting without accident as the train moved rapidly away.
I stood upon the platform like a person just aroused from a deep
slumber. I was purposeless. The tide had receded, and the bleak
barrenness of my shore life confronted me. The fair enchantress whose
wand had conjured up a new order of being within me had departed.
“Ye’ll have for to come inside the station, sir. I’m goin’ for to lock
the doore,” observed a porter, as he significantly pointed in the
direction of the exit.
“Can I get a car over to Rathdangan Castle?”
“Sorra a wan, sir. Billy Heffernan dhrew two gintlemin over there that
come be this thrain.”
“Will he return here?”
“Sorra a fear av him. Ketch him lavin’ a house where there’s such
lashins as at the Castle! Ow! ow! sez the fox.”
“How am I to get across?” I asked in some trepidation.
“Shure, it’s only a nice little taste av a walk—nothin’ less.”
“How far is it?”
“Well, now, you might _coax_ it into four mile, but, be the powers!
it’ll fight hard for five.”
I could not refrain from laughing at this peculiar form of expression,
although there was anything but mirth in my present position. To be late
for dinner would be a high crime and misdemeanor, and nothing short of
_lèse majesté_, even were I to accept the porter’s _ultimatum_ and walk.
I could scarcely reach the Castle in anything like time.
“Did they expect you, sir?”
“Yes.”
“Troth, thin, they might have sint a yoke for ye. They always does for
the quollity.”
This was not complimentary, but, like many a speech of a similar nature,
it contained a great deal of truth in it. Could Sir Geoffry have
forgotten all about his invitation? It had been given hurriedly as the
whist-table was breaking up. He had had his share of wine, if revoking
twice might be taken as an index. Yes, the following morning had erased
me from the tablets of his memory. What an ass to come all this way to
be instructed by a common fellow in a corduroy suit. Served me right! I
ought to have known better.
“What time does the next train go up to Dublin, my man?” I asked.
“What time?” he ejaculated.
“Yes, yes, what time?”
“In forty minits, if she’s not late; but she’s shure to be in time if
_I’m_ not here, bad cess to her!”
I sat down in the cheerless waiting-room, disgusted with Sir Geoffry
Didcote, disgusted with myself, boiling with anger, and writhing with
mortification, till the recollection of my fair travelling companion
descended like oil upon the troubled waters of my mind, and the desire
to discover who she might be became overwhelming. Fool that I was not to
have gained even a solitary clue! She might be travelling to Belfast _en
route_ for Scotland, or she might have alighted at the next station. The
last thought induced me to question the porter.
“Did you see a handsome lady in weeds in the train that I travelled by?”
I asked.
“Is it a widdy woman ye mane?”
“Yes.”
“Young?”
“Yes—very.”
“Purty?”
“Beautiful!” I exclaimed.
Here he winked facetiously. “I seen her. Me an’ her is acquainted.”
“Who is she?” I eagerly asked.
“She’s the widdy av a dacent, sober man be the name av O’Hoolahan, that
died av the horrors av dhrink.”
“Poor thing!” I muttered half-aloud.
“Poor? Begorra, it’s him that left her warm an’ snug, wud three av the
elegantest childer.”
“Three children!” I interposed, somewhat disconcerted. The name
O’Hoolahan was bad enough, but three little O’Hoolahans!
“She left this parcel wud me.”
“When?”
“A few minits ago, whin she got out.”
“Got out? Where!”
“Out av the third class, foreninst the doore there.”
Pshaw! We had been talking of the wrong woman, and somehow I felt
intensely pleased to think that my fair _incognita_ was _not_ the relict
of the defunct O’Hoolahan and the mother of three little O’Hoolahans.
“Whisht!” suddenly exclaimed my communicative friend. “I hear a horse’s
feet. He’s tearin’ along like murther—a rale stepper”; then turning to
me: “Yer not forgotten. It’s from Rathdangan. Yer sint for. It’s
Highflier, an’ Jim Falvey’s dhrivin’ him.”
These surmises proved to be correct.
“I’ve to beg your pardon, sir, for being late,” said Falvey, touching
his hat; “but we cast a shoe at Ballinacor, and I done my best to pull
up the lost time. Any luggage, sir?”
“This portmanteau.”
“All right, sir. Will you be pleased to jump in? You’ll only get over at
the first dinner bell, if you do that same.”
Having tipped the loquacious porter, I sprang into the tax-cart, and the
next minute Highflier was dashing at a hand gallop on the road to
Rathdangan.
Mr. Falvey informed me that there was the “hoigth” of company at the
Castle; that every room was full; Lord Dundrum and Captain Buckdash had
arrived by the morning train, and the Bishop of Ballinahoo and his lady
had just entered the avenue as he was leaving it; the partridge were
plenty, and a covey might be found within “a few perch” of the west
wing; Master James (the Didcote heir) was expected with two of his
brother officers of the King’s Dragoon Guards; Miss Patricia’s
collar-bone was now as good as new, etc. We then talked horses, and he
was still hammering away at the pedigree of Highflier when we reached
the entrance gate. This was castellated and partly covered with ivy. A
stout old lady unlocked the ponderous portals, and, as she admitted us,
dropped a courtesy whilst she uttered the cheery words, “Yer welkim,
sir.”
Why do people keep gloomy-looking servants, dismal phantoms who reply to
your ring with a sigh, answer your query with a sob, and wait upon you
with a groan? Their depression is infectious, and although you may, with
a naturally lively constitution, baffle the disease for a time, sooner
or later you are laid low by it.
According to a time-honored maxim of the road, we kept a trot for the
avenue, and just as we whirled up to the grand entrance the sound of a
gong reached us.
“Jump out, sir. You’ve only ten minutes; that’s the second bell. There’s
some of them in the drawing-room already,” cried Falvey, as he flung my
portmanteau to a solemn-looking domestic, who gazed at me as though he
were engaged in a deep mental calculation as to the length of my coffin
and the exact quantity of linen necessary for the formation of a shroud.
Following this grim apparition across a low-ceiled, wainscoted hall, in
which a billiard-table of the present contrasted strangely with oaken
furniture of the sixteenth century, and up an old oak staircase
decorated with battered corselets, deeply-dented morions, halberds,
matchlocks, steel gloves, and broadswords, along a wainscoted passage as
dark as Erebus, and up a spiral stone staircase the ascent of which took
all the breath out of my body, I was finally deposited in a little stone
chamber in one of the towers of the Castle.
“Your keys, please, sir,” demanded my janitor.
“Oh! never mind; thanks; I’ll get out my things myself.” I feared the
penetrating gaze of this man. I shuddered as I thought of the frayed
linings and the inked seams.
“Very good, sir,” uttered like a parting benediction; and with a bow
which plainly said, “We shall never meet at this side of the grave
again,” the dread apparition vanished. The old saying, “More haste, less
speed,” never exemplified itself more unhappily than in my case. With
the thoughts of the last gong ringing through my brain, I vainly
endeavored to open my portmanteau. My keys had got mixed up, and, as
they were nearly all of a size, I had to travel round the entire ring
before I could manage to induce one to enter the keyhole. Then, when I
came to turn it, it got blocked and wouldn’t move either backwards or
forwards. I withdrew it, whistled it, probed it with my breast-pin,
tugged and strained until my backbone ached again, but without effect.
What was I to do? Break it open. But how? I possessed no implements.
Perceiving a bronze figure poised upon one leg on the chimney-piece, I
resolved upon utilizing the outstretched limb of the harlequin, and,
having inserted it in the ring of the key, I finally, to my unspeakable
delight, succeeded in detaching the bolt.
Throwing open the portmanteau, I plunged my hand into the corner where I
had deposited my brushes, but found that they must have shifted during
the journey. I tried the other corner, with similar success. I then
probed and groped in the lower compartment. Here was a pretty go. I must
have forgotten to pack them, although I could have sworn not only to
their having been packed, but as to the precise spot in which I had
deposited them. Mechanically I drew forth my linen and laid it on the
bed, in order to mount my studs.
I was somewhat astonished to find that the breast was most elaborately
adorned with floriated needlework.
Some mistake of the laundress. I detest worked shirt-fronts, which are
only worn by cads and shoddy lords, so I picked out another. If number
one was embroidered, number two was done in fresco, and, in addition to
the vast _tumuli_ of birds, beasts, fishes, and flowers, an edging of
lace played a prominent part. What could this mean? Surely I put up my
own time-honored linen myself, and here were bosom decorations fit for a
fop of the year 1815. Hastily turning out the contents of the
portmanteau upon the floor, in order to realize my own property, what
were my sensations in discovering that this pile of snowy drapery did
not contain one single article of male apparel!
The truth flashed across me now in all its appalling reality: Heavens
and earth! _I had taken the young widow’s portmanteau for my own._
I do not know what the exact sensation of fainting comes to, but this I
do know: that if I did not faint, I went within a pip of it. A cold
perspiration burst out all over me, and I felt as if I was on board the
Dover and Calais boat and about to call the steward. How could I appear
to the assembled company? With what ridicule would I be overwhelmed when
the true state of the case came to light! And then what would _she_
think? _She_ would write me down an ass—a donkey unfit to be allowed to
wander from a thistle-grove. Her key would open _my_ leathern
“conveniency,” and the ghastly condition of my wardrobe would be laid
bare, whilst I had profaned the sanctity of—but it was too dreadful to
contemplate. How could I meet her? How could I look into that beautiful
face again? How was I to recover my wandering wardrobe? My whole stock
of clothes, save those I wore, were now in the possession of another,
whilst in exchange I had received a commodity of no value to me
whatever. On the contrary, my prize was worse than valueless—it was
contraband.
Bang-ang-ang-ang-oong-ang! went the gong.
Let it go! What were its sounds to me? If I were starving, I could not
descend in my present costume.
“Sir Geoffry Didcote begs me to say, sir, that he waits on you in order
to enter the dining-room,” mournfully announced the dismal servitor.
“Please say to Sir Geoffry that I don’t feel quite well—that I will go
down by and by.”
“Thank _you_, sir.” This was uttered as if he wished to say: “I am glad
that you are dying. _I_ knew how it would be—you couldn’t deceive _me_.”
The man had scarcely time to deliver my message ere Sir Geoffry himself
panted and puffed into my apartment.
“My dear sir—aw—I hope—aw—that you are not—aw—ill. It would—aw—grieve me
very much”—here he availed himself of my mirror to adjust his spotless
white choker—“if—aw—upon your—aw—first visit you—aw—became indisposed.”
Honesty, thought I, is the best policy, and it saves a lot of trouble;
so I made a clean breast of it to the pompous baronet.
“How very unfortunate—aw—for the lady! We will dispense—aw—with ceremony
under—aw—the peculiar, not to say delicate—aw—circumstances of the case,
and Lady Didcote will—aw—receive you in your—aw—present attire. You can
telegraph—aw—for reinforcements, which—aw—will arrive on—aw—Monday
morning.”
I could not see the force of this. I might easily telegraph for
reinforcements, but would they come? Secondly, as my visit was to
terminate upon Monday, reinforcements were not necessary, unless they
could be brought up at once. I begged to be excused from attending
table; but this he would not listen to, and, as he informed me that I
was keeping dinner waiting, there was nothing for it but to descend with
him.
I have, when a boy, been lugged into the school-room to suffer condign
punishment; at a later period I have been forced into the presence of a
young lady of whom I was deeply enamored; I have had to march up to the
pulpit in Trinity College dining-hall to repeat the long Latin grace
amid the muffled gibes of my peers; I have been placed in positions
where my bashfulness has been ruthlessly tortured and my retiring
modesty tried by fire and water; but never did I experience the pangs of
the rack until the full blaze of that drawing-room burst upon my vision.
The apartment appeared to swim round, carrying with it the form of a
hooked-nosed dowager in a turban, who screwed an eye-glass into the
corner of a wicked old eye, to have a good stare at the strange figure
her husband had introduced into her _salon_.
A confused murmur of many voices, in which “Who is he?” “What is he?”
“Stole a portmanteau,” “Highway robber,” “Police” smote upon my ear,
whilst a general craning of necks in my direction announced the
curiosity which my appearance had naturally excited.
I am aware that I bowed to something in blue drapery surmounted by a
head, that it placed the tips of its fingers on my arm, that I
mechanically followed a crowd of people towards an aperture in the wall
which proved to be a door, that I plunged downwards upon a chair, and
that then I came slowly to my senses. Having gulped down three glasses
of sherry in rapid succession, I found myself seated beside a gaunt
young lady of about five-and-thirty, so covered with pearl powder that
she was only partially visible to the naked eye. On my right hand sat a
portly dowager, who viewed with some alarm my inroads upon the sherry,
and she appeared so interested in my movements that I fully expected to
receive a temperance tract before the evening was half over. There were
about twenty at table, all stiff, solemn, and ceremonious.
“So you have been robbed?” snappishly remarked the young lady in blue.
“Oh! dear, no; merely an exchange of portmanteaus.”
“How stupid!”
Now, whether this applied to me or to the fact, I was not in the
position to say, so I merely rejoined:
“Very stupid _of_ me and _for_ me.”
“How so?”
“Why, I was the offending party.” And I endeavored to make myself
agreeable by narrating the circumstances exactly as they had occurred.
“And do you mean to say that you opened the lady’s trunk, sir?” demanded
my companion with great asperity.
“In mistake, madam, I assure you.”
The waspish lady waited until a portion of the ice which she was engaged
in despatching had cleared two very shaky-looking teeth bound in gold.
“There are some mistakes, sir, which no _gentleman_ should make.”
This was quite enough for me. To endeavor to make terms with this foe
were worse than folly, explanation weakness, and concession cowardice.
She gained nothing, however, by her viciousness; whilst I remained upon
the field and prepared to bivouac, surrounded by sturdy sentinels in the
shape of port, claret, and Madeira.
“The—aw—guard insisted upon his taking the old lady’s—aw—portmanteau.”
And Sir Geoffry was proceeding to retail his version of the story when
Lord Dundrum gaily exclaimed:
“Oh! by Jove, we’d better put the witness into the box. Let us
cross-examine the lawyer.”
“With all my heart,” said I; “the absurdity of the sensation will redeem
itself by its novelty.”
My story flowed joyously along, and peal upon peal of laughter greeted
me as I described my sensations upon discovering the strange garments.
“So—aw—the widow was—aw—young?”
“About eighteen, Sir Geoffry.”
“And pretty?” added his lordship.
I devoutly kissed my second finger and thumb, and flung them in the
direction of the ceiling.
“I’ll lay five to two he never hears of his portmanteau,” lisped Captain
Buckdash.
“Shall I be at liberty to hunt it up?” said Lord Dundrum.
“Certainly. Are you on?”
“In tens?” asked his lordship.
“Ponies, if you but limit the period to one week.”
“Done, Buckdash! I’ll book it.” And the peer, producing a pocket-book,
entered the bet, the terms of which he read aloud, and which the gallant
captain pronounced eminently satisfactory.
“I’m afraid, my lord, that you’ll lose your money,” I observed to Lord
Dundrum as we ascended to the drawing-room.
“I’ll give you the same bet, and that I’ll get your portmanteau, without
any interference of _yours_, in less than a week—say five days.”
“You know the lady?”
“No.”
“You suspect who she is?”
“I have no more idea of who she is, where she came from, or where she is
going to, than the man in the moon. Will you evince your sincerity by
betting now?”
“The fact is, my lord, I cannot afford to bet.”
“Quite right,” slapping me on the shoulder. “Never do. It’s a doosid
bad, pleasant habit.”
“And might I venture to ask how you purpose proceeding towards winning
your money?”
“I’ll tell you. I have just ordered round a trap. I’ll drive to
Ballynamuckle Station and telegraph along the whole line. If she’s local
or a county swell, we’ll have her name and address to-night. If, on the
contrary, she is not known along the line, she will have gone on to
Belfast. I’ll set the police to work there, and put advertisements in
all the papers on Monday morning. If Tuesday tells me nothing, I’ll put
the wires in motion north of Belfast, and on Wednesday we’ll have a
touch at Scotland. I feel certain, however, that we’ll find her this
side of Newry.” And his lordship retired for the purpose of equipping
himself for the road.
This bet was a lucky chance for me. Not that I cared much whether my
wardrobe ever turned up again or not, but I longed to discover the
identity of my fair acquaintance. I would at least enjoy the
satisfaction of learning her name, and gain some knowledge of her
surroundings, and then—pshaw! bow over my restored baggage and utter
_Vale, Vale, Vale_ to my three-hour dream.
In the billiard-room the menkind were assembled for pool. By a series of
ghastly flukes I managed to clear the table and divided every pool.
Captain Buckdash muttered something in reference to Dawson Lane, and one
young fellow, whose lives were sacrificed to my ruthless cue with
startling rapidity, offered to back me against some formidable player in
the Guards, laying the odds. For the second time in this eventful day
did I feel myself fit for the front rank. Lord Dundrum lounged into the
room about eleven o’clock. He indicated by a look that he wished to
speak to me, and, under cover of “splitting a bottle,” exclaimed in a
low tone:
“It’s all right.”
My heart gave a bound.
“The portmanteau is found.”
“Where?”
“At Nobberstown, the next station but one. She evidently discovered your
mistake; for she tumbled it out. It’s coming on.”
“And where is she?”
“Oh! hang me if I know or care. My ponies are safe. _You_ can look her
up.”
“Did she leave no message, no directions?” I asked eagerly.
“Don’t know,” said his lordship, as he chalked the top of his cue
preparatory to joining in the pool.
Lord Dundrum was correct in saying that _I_ should take up the running
now. It was my business to make restitution and to deliver the white
elephant left on my hands to its rightful owner. This task should be
undertaken at once. I scarcely closed my eyes all night, thinking of the
_modus operandi_; and when I came down to breakfast next morning I had
resolved upon nothing more definite than a searching cross-examination
of the _employés_ at Nobberstown Station.
“I’ll thank you for a check, Buckdash,” said Lord Dundrum, as the
gallant warrior entered the breakfast-room.
“For what?” asked the captain.
“For Mr. Dawkins’ portmanteau.”
“Wait till you get it.”
“I have it here.” And as he spoke he lugged my valise from beneath the
table, accompanied by a roar of laughter from all assembled.
“A capital joke,” grinned the captain.
“A capital joke, indeed! Hand over the coin.”
Captain Buckdash turned to me.
“Mr. Dawkins, is this your portmanteau?”
“It is indeed,” I replied.
“The one which you left in the railway carriage?”
“Yes.”
“I am quite satisfied, Lord Dundrum. You shall have a check after
breakfast; in the meantime will you kindly inform us how you managed to
lay hold of it?” And he cracked an egg with a violence that almost
crushed in the china cup.
I searched for some note or mark by which to obtain a clue to her
identity, but in vain; my leathern “conveniency” was as bald as when I
purchased it behind the Bank of Ireland. No message had been forwarded,
not a line of instruction. This course appeared singular, inasmuch as it
was unlikely that she would make no effort to regain her property; and
why lose this most legitimate opportunity? Had she no desire to place
herself in communication with _me?_ Ah! there was that in her glance
which gave this thought the lie. Heigh-ho! I was in love up to my
eyebrows and badly hit. I was obliged to come face to face with myself,
to place my hand upon my heart, and to plead guilty. I thought of the
elder Mr. Weller, and of his opinion respecting widows, and voted him
vulgar. My preconceived ideas upon the subject of relicts underwent a
total change, and now a bashful maiden seemed but an insipid nonentity.
I longed to quit Rathdangan, and, excusing myself under the plea of an
important professional engagement, started for Nobberstown at cockcrow.
This station consisted of simply a “porter and a platform,” one equally
intelligent as the other, and of the two the platform was “the better
man.”
“Sorra a know I know,” was the invariable reply to almost every query.
“Did the lady alight here?”
“Sorra a know I know.”
“Did she give you no message?”
“Sorra a know I know.”
“No card?”
“Sorra a wan.”
“Who handed you the portmanteau?”
“Sorra a know I know.”
A thought now flashed across my brain: Fribscombe! He was not the man to
lose a chance of talking to a pretty woman. He would have told her who I
was, and it was through him that she had communicated. How asinine not
to have thought of this before!
Chartering a jarvey, I started across the country to the family mansion
of the Fribscombes, accompanied by the two portmanteaus.
“I never opened my lips to her. She dried up after you left, and pulled
down the shutters.” This gave me a pang of the keenest delight. “I got
out at Killoughter, the next station, and she went on.”
On my return to Dublin I caused advertisements to be inserted in several
of the leading Irish papers; I also tried the second column of the
_Times_ and the _Glasgow Herald_, but, alas! with no effect.
Six months had glided away, during which she made no sign. The
portmanteau maintained possession of a corner of my solitary apartment,
and the image of its whilome proprietor defiantly held more than one
corner of my heart; indeed, I may as well candidly confess that it was
strongly entrenched in all four.
The summer assizes were over, and the briefless ones flitted hither and
thither for the long vacation: some to Switzerland, with Mont Blanc in
the distance—very much in the distance—others the passes of the Tyrol,
sunny Spain, byways in Brittany, or the Highlands of Scotland. Connemara
found its true believers, and Killarney its pious pilgrims. As for
myself, I was perforce compelled to substitute the Dodder for the Rhine,
the Dublin mountains for the Alps, and Sackville Street for the
Boulevard des Italiens. My aunt had contributed the ten-pound note upon
which I had hung in fond anticipation towards the building of Father
Donnelly’s new church at Shinanshone, and the letter which conveyed this
intelligence concluded with the following: “I don’t see your name
figuring in any of the trials, good, bad, or indifferent. It’s all
Macdonogh and Armstrong. What are you about, at all at all? At this rate
of going you’ll never see a silk gown, let alone the bench. You might as
well be on the Hill of Howth as in the Four Courts, if you don’t stir
yourself. Let me see you cheek by jowl with Macdonogh and Armstrong
during the coming winter, or I’ll know the reason why, and make my
financial arrangements accordingly.”
I was seated one lovely morning in autumn gazing gloomily into the
street, which was as empty as my own exchequer. Dreamy visions of the
golden glory of ripening corn, of blood-red poppies, of fern-shaded
dells, of limpid pools and purple-clad mountains mocked my aching heart.
I sighed the sigh of impecuniosity, and railed at the inconsistency of a
fortune which gave little Bangs, who hadn’t one idea to rub against
another, a thousand per annum, a vulgar cad like Hopkins a bagful of
briefs, and which left me high and dry in a front garret in Eccles
Street, without a red cent to come into collision with a battered
sixpence in my somewhat cavernous pockets. Heigh-ho!
An outside car, driven at a frosty pace, smote upon the drowsy stillness
of the street, and my gloom was somewhat speedily dispelled by the sight
of my friend Tom Whiffler’s honest and beaming face, and his expressive
and expansive signals while yet a considerable distance from the house.
Tom is always full of money, full of health, and full of the most
boisterous and explosive spirits.
“Aha! you old cat on the tiles,” he shouted, “come down from your coign
of vantage. I was afraid you were out of town. Somebody said you were on
Circuit.” And standing upon the foot-board of the car, he burst forth
with—
“Hail to our barrister back from the Circuit!
Honor and wealth to the curls of his wig!
Long may he live o’er his forehead to jerk it,
Long at a witness look burly and big!”
“Come up, for gracious sake!” I cried, as I perceived heads peeping from
behind the partly-closed shutters of an opposite house, inhabited by a
genteel family, who wished their little world to imagine them in Italy,
France, Spain—anywhere but in Dublin—during the dog-days.
In a few seconds Tom bounded into the apartment. “This is a slice of
luck to get you, old man. Come, now, pack up your traps, and we’ll have
four days in the County Wicklow. I shall have the car in any case, and
our hotel bills will be mere bagatelles which we’ll square up at Tib’s
Eve. Lend me a couple of shirts and things; you can bring the baggage—a
change for two—and I’ll do the rest. We’ve twenty-five minutes to catch
the train.”
Five minutes found Tom upon one side of the car, myself upon the other,
and, calmly reposing in the well between us, the neat little portmanteau
of the fair unknown. I was compelled to make use of it, as Whiffler had
no “leathern conveniency,” and my travelling-valise had been lent to one
of “ours,” and was possibly at that particular moment strapped upon the
murderous mound of luggage which encumbers the groaning roof of the
Alpine diligence, or snugly ensconced on the grape-strewn deck of a
Rhine or a Moselle steamer. It gave me more than a pang to remove it
from its well-known corner. A chord had been touched which set all my
memories vibrating, and I handled it with as much care and anxiety as
though it were a new-born infant or a rickety case containing rack-rent
or nitro-glycerine.
A glorious moonlight found us driving through the Vale of Clara _en
route_ to Glendalough—the sad, stricken valley of the Seven Churches.
The hills, quietly entranced, lay gazing upwards at the gentle moon, who
enfolded them in her pellucid beams as with a soft, sheeny mantle of
light. The Avonmore far, far down in the valley musically murmured while
she glided onwards to join the Avonbeg, who joyously awaited her coming
in the sweet Vale of Avoca. The honest watch-dog’s bark bayed up the
valley, and the perfume-laden air in its holy calm was as sweet as an
angel’s whisper.
After “a square meal” of rasher and eggs which would have put the most
elaborate _chef-d’œuvre_ of the _cuisine_ out of count, we strutted
forth from the hostelry in the direction of St. Kevin’s Bed, and heard
the oft-repeated legend of poor Kathleen’s fate from the lips of a very
ragged but very amusing guide, whose services we were desirous of
engaging for the morrow.
“Troth, thin, but it’s me father’s son that’s sorry not to be wud yez;
but shure”—and here he lowered his voice—“it’s in regard to me bein’ in
a hobble that I’m out in the moonlight.”
“What scrape have you got yourself into?” asked Tom Whiffler. “Whiskey?”
“Musha, thin, it wasn’t a dhrop o’ sperrits that done it _this_ offer.”
“A _colleen_?
“Sorra a fear av all the colleens from this to Wicklow Head.”
“Mistaking another man’s sheep for your own?” laughed Tom.
“If ye wor spaikin’ airnest I’d make ye sorry for them words,” said the
man in an angry tone; but brightening up, he added: “Av yez wor guessin’
from this to Candlemas ye’d be out every offer. I got into thrubble be
raison av a saint, an’ I’ll tell yez how: A lot av ignoraamusses av
English comes here in the summer saison, an’ nothin’s too holy but
they’ll make a joke on it; but the divvle will have his own wan av these
days. Well, sir, last Monday I was engaged for to divart a cupple of
English, as bowld as brass, an’ that vulgar that the very cows turned
their tails to thim as we thravelled through the fields—sorra a lie in
it. I done me best for to earn an honest shillin’, but, on my word, wan
av thim, a stout lump av a man, gev me all soarts av impidince, an’ whin
I come for to narrate about St. Kavin he up’s an’ insults the holy saint
to me very face.
“'There never was no sich man,’ sez he.
“'There was, sir,’ sez I.
“'It’s all humbug,’ sez he; 'an’ as for Kathleen,’ sez he, 'she was no
betther nor—'
'“Ye’d betther stop, sir,’ sez I, intherruptin’ him; 'for St. Kavin was
a holy man, an’ never done nothin’ but what was good an’ saintly.’ Well,
sir, he up’s an’ calls the blessed saint a bad name, so I hot him betune
th’ eyes an’ rowled him on the grass, an’ I planted his comrade beside
him. An’ now I’m the worst in the world below at the hotel for bating
two blackguards that done nothin’ but insult me an’ me holy religion;
an’ that’s why I can’t go wud yez to-morrow.”
It was far into the “wee sma’ hours” when we parted with Myles O’Byrne
and gained sanctuary in the double-bedded room which had been told off
to us. The pale and gentle Luna was surrendering her charge to the pink
and rosy Aurora, and we sought our couches in beautiful budding
daylight.
“Where’s your portmanteau, Dawkins?” asked Tom Whiffler. “I want to get
at my things.”
To my utter dismay, the portmanteau was not in the apartment. To ring
the bell at this unseemly hour was but to alarm the entire hotel; so,
slipping off my shoes, I descended to the hall in the hope of
discovering it in a heap of luggage which lay piled in graceful
profusion near the entrance. My search was vain, and, with secret
forebodings of another mischance in connection with this unhappy valise,
I returned to the room and retired to bed.
“I seen it in yer hand, sir,” observed the waiter the next morning whom
I interrogated about the missing article—“a thick lump of a solid
leather portmantle. I can take the buke on it, if necessary, sir. Here’s
the boots; mebbe he can tell us something. Jim, did ye see a thick lump
av a solid leather portmantle lyin’ about?”
“I did,” replied the boots, who was a man of much _physique_ and very
few words.
“Ye did?”
“Yis.”
“Where is it, thin?”
“Where it ought to be.”
“Where’s that?”
“Wud th’ owner.”
“It was not left in my room,” I exclaimed.
“It was left in number five.”
“Shure, number five’s gone,” cried the waiter.
“It’s news yer tellin’ us,” observed the boots with a surly grin.
“An’ is the portmantle tuk be number five?”
“Yis.”
“Phew!” whistled the waiter. “Be the mortial the fat’s in the fire now,
anyhow.”
Here was a situation! My misgivings realized. My portmanteau gone,
perhaps never to return. How could I face the owner? I never gave up the
hope of meeting her and of restoring the property.
“Who slept in number five?” I asked.
“Number five is two faymales.”
“When did they leave?”
“They left for Father Rooney’s first Mass beyant at Annamoe.”
“Where were they going to?”
“To Lake Dan and Luggelaw.”
I proceeded to hold a council of war—consisting of the landlord, the
waiter, the boots, two or three stable-boys, and the surplus population
of the village—when it was determined to send a boy on a fast-trotting
pony in pursuit of the fugitive luggage.
I was two inches on a mild Havana after such a breakfast as the tourist
alone can dispose of, when the waiter burst into the summer-house
situated over the lake, whither we had repaired to enjoy the “witching
weed.”
“The portmantle is safe, sir, an’ number five is here with it an’ wants
for to see ye, sir.”
“Well, I do not want to see number five, waiter, so just say—”
“I dar’n’t say nothin’, sir; she slipped a half a crown into the heel of
me fist an’ towld me to hurry you up,” burst in the waiter, now in a
white perspiration.
“I’ll not stir till I finish this cigar, at all events, and there is a
good hour’s pull in it yet.”
“Och! murther, an’ she’s in such a hurry—such a dainty little craythur;
an’ it was _so_ dacent of her for to journey back the road with it.”
This last thrust failed to pierce my armor. The waiter was
conscientiously working out his half-crown.
“She’s quite convaynient in the coffee-room, sir. I’ll show ye a short
cut across the bog.”
I listened and puffed, puffed and listened.
“I must get back, sir. May I tell her ye’ll be over in five minutes,
sir?”
“Tell her anything _you_ like, my friend, but out of this till I finish
my cigar I’ll not stir.”
Why I acted in this manner I was at a loss to determine. My anxiety for
the valise almost amounted to pain; and yet here was the cause for worry
removed, and I would not even trouble myself to walk a few hundred yards
to the hotel to thank the lady for returning with it, which, as a
gentleman, I was bound to do at any cost as to personal discomfort.
“Some frouzy old maid,” suggested Whiffler.
“Probably; or a strong-minded female doing Wicklow on a geological
survey,” I added.
When I got back to the hotel, which might have been an hour or so
subsequently, I found my portmanteau safely deposited in my room.
“Where is this lady, until I—”
“She’s gone, sir,” interrupted the waiter in a reproachful tone, “but
she towld me for to give you this bit av’ a note,” handing me a piece of
paper folded cocked-hat fashion.
I opened it.
“I have two regrets,” it said—the geologist’s handwriting was
exquisitely feminine—“one, that I was inadvertently the cause of
inconvenience; and the other, that I was denied the opportunity of
claiming the portmanteau, as I imagine that I recognize in it one which
I lost about eight months ago during a railway journey to the north.”
I was literally stunned. I gazed from the letter to the now astonished
waiter, and back from his vacant countenance to the three-cornered
billet, which, alas! told so much and yet so little. It bore no name, no
initial, no monogram, no clue.
“Describe this lady’s appearance!” I shouted, clutching the waiter by
his greasy collar, and imparting to him no very delicate shake.
“I never seen her; her veil was foreninst her nose the whole time she
was spakin’ to me. The boy that attindid her is gone to the fair at
Knockatemple.”
“Who saw her?”
“Barrin’ the masther, dickins a wan; for Mary, the chambermaid, started
this mornin’ for Fogarty’s, of Glinmaloure. She an’ the misthress had a
few words in regard to—but here’s the masther.”
The burly host presented himself; he had not encountered my enslaver,
for the bill had been paid by the other lady.
“The red wan,” interposed the waiter.
“Just so, Mick,” said his master approvingly, and turning to me: “They
have gone on to Luggelaw, sir, and intend to sleep at Enniskerry
to-night.”
I unbosomed myself to Tom Whiffler, who immediately entered into the
affair _con amore_. “We’ll hunt them,” he said; “we must catch them at
Latouche’s Cottage. There is no exit from Luggelaw except the one.”
The road from the Seven Churches to Luggelaw is exquisitely picturesque.
Behind lies that lake whose gloomy shore skylark never warbles o’er,
with Lugnacullagh frowning sternly over its gloomy waters, and the round
tower standing like a grim sentinel ready to challenge the approach
alike of friend and foe. In front is the little village of Lara, with
Castle Kevin perched upon a ledge of rock like an aerie’s nest, and
stretching away in the distance the silvern beech-woods of Annamoe,
while to the left the purple-crowned crags of Slonaveena seem almost to
topple into the placid bosom of Lough Dan. It was a lovely summer
day—one of those days that recall past joys, and in which the present is
but a voluptuous dream.
At Roundwood we gained intelligence of the objects of our pursuit. The
car had passed through about half an hour previously; the ladies had
stopped at the hotel while the horse was being baited, and had indulged
in that inevitable cup of tea which is at once the dissipation and the
solace of the sex. The road to the first gate at Luggelaw is an ascent
of three miles, which must of necessity be traversed upon “shanks’
mare,” and it is a blisterer. Not a vestige of tree, and with scarcely
as much pasture as will satisfy the cravings of a few stunted sheep, the
sun smiles grimly upon the entire roadway and scorches the luckless
traveller whom destiny leads to the little lodge perched on the summit
of the mountain. We were not spared, and coats, waistcoats, and neckties
were cast upon the car, while we retained our pocket-handkerchiefs to
mop our glowing faces, which resembled two very full and exceedingly
dissipated-looking rosy moons.
Puffing, panting, blowing, mopping, by one supreme effort we gained the
table-land which crowns the ascent, and, plunging towards an adjacent
thicket of pines, took tremendous headers into the middle of it, where
we lay gasping like a pair of stranded fish.
“Blow _me_,” exclaimed Tom Whiffler, “if I’ll ever climb Luggelaw Hill
widow-hunting in July again. I wish you and your portmanteau and widow
at Timbuctoo!”
A low, musical laugh quite near us; a rustle of female garments—my heart
gave one mighty throb; for right in front of us, not two yards distant,
with her large, lustrous gray eyes bent searchingly upon me, stood the
owner of the peripatetic portmanteau.
To spring to my feet, to apologize for our _déshabille_—the car was as
yet half a mile down the hill—to mumble some horrible incoherencies, was
the impulse and action of half a minute.
She seemed puzzled to know how to act, but her friend, the “red wan,”
cut the Gordian knot of the present embarrassment by a fit of loud,
hearty, ringing laughter, which, maelstrom-like, sucked us one after
another into it, and whirled us into an ocean of mirth before we knew
where we were exactly, or what it was all about. There are some
contagious laughs in the world, and she of the ruby locks was the
fortunate possessor of one.
Two things establish instantaneous and easy communication with
strangers—with women a baby, with men a cigar. Throw in a laugh, and, if
the situation be a comical one, the laugh beats infant and tobacco. In
this case it proved a talisman, and a very few words found us at our
ease while I unfolded my tale.
I was i’ the vein and told my story well.
“Why did you not send it after me?” she asked.
“I had no clue,” I replied.
“I flung my card to the porter at the station.”
“It must have gone down the line; for the only reply I could awake in
that self-same porter was, 'Sorra a know I know.’” And I devoutly dwelt
upon all the bitter anxiety the hopeless efforts at restoration had cost
me, to all of which I found a deeply-interested listener.
Before the sun had set on Luggelaw’s deep-wooded vale I learned much
that satisfied me as to the past, and a something—inferentially
only—that caused the white wings of Hope to flutter against my heart.
Lucy Donaldson had been married to Captain George Middlecomb, of the
Sixth Dragoon Guards, if not against her will, at least under the
pressure of being talked into it. Captain Middlecomb had died within a
year of their marriage of _delirium tremens_.
Need I say that we travelled up to Dublin as a party; that I became a
constant visitor at Mrs. Middlecomb’s beautiful residence—Arcachon Villa
at Killiney; that—
I suppose I should not divulge it, but, as I have written so far, I may
as well finish the chapter. After all, I won’t. Those who have been
interested, however, in the portmanteau may be pleased to know that it
is now the common property of Lucy and the writer.
THE BRIDES OF CHRIST.
I.
ST. DOROTHEA.
The little martyr-maid of Cæsarea—
I do not a more lovely legend know.
Said young Theophilus, mocking: “Dost thou go
To join thy Spouse? If more than fond idea,
Send me, I pray thee, pretty Dorothea,
Of flowers and fruits that in his garden grow!”
The maiden meekly bowed her head; and so
She passed to death along the Roman Via.
A blooming boy, with hair like odorous flame,
Out-dazed the sword that slew her; the next morn
A blooming boy to young Theophilus came,
With three fresh roses and three apples: scorn
Melted in bliss. By crown and palm! we claim
To guess that fragrance, and are less forlorn!
II.
ST. CECILIA.
Two visions of divine Cecilia,
Born of Italian art, possess my mind.
One in the marble, at her tomb enshrined,
Reveals her as in catacomb she lay.
The budding maiden in her chaste array—
Ah! closely let that awful necklace bind
Clipt flower to stem!—to that cold sleep declined,
Was in warm marriage-bed a bud alway.
Her heart’s dear love starved for a Mystic Spouse;
She was not chary of sweet music’s gift
I see the listening rapture of her brows:
I hear her organ yearn, exult, and lift
Humanity to God! The heavens arouse,
And storms and seraphs o’er the white keys drift.
III.
ST. AGNES.
I was God’s maid, less woman than a child;
And yet they threw me in the common stews
Naked as I was born, for men to use.
The dear Lord saved his vessel, though reviled,
From outrage of a look: the Mother smiled—
Over my hot shame all my hair shook loose;
And, lo! it swept my feet in lengths profuse,
A bower of blinding awe to ruffians wild!
My life’s green branch they lopped with cruel sword;
But He hath kissed my hurts, and they are well;
And, walking in the meads of asphodel,
I kiss the scarred feet of my gracious Lord:
I lead his lambkins by my lily bell,
Where the pomegranates shade the softest sward.
SHAKSPERE, FROM AN AMERICAN POINT OF VIEW.[71]
Footnote 71:
_Shakspere, from an American Point of View: including an Inquiry as to
his Religious Faith and his Knowledge of Law; with the Baconian Theory
considered._ By George Wilkes. London: Sampson, Low, Marston, Searle &
Rivington. 1877. 8vo, pp. ix. 471.
This elegantly-printed volume, published in England, though by an
American author, has for its subject four distinct lines of inquiry; two
of these—the validity of a theory which originated in this country a few
years ago, that Bacon, Lord Verulam, really wrote the plays known as
Shakspere’s; and, secondly, the extent of Shakspere’s legal
knowledge—though carried through the work, are subordinate to the other
two—the anti-democratic tone of the dramatist and the fact that he was a
Catholic. These are the real issues of the book. Mr. Wilkes holds that
Shakspere should not exert the influence in this country that he does in
England, and he arraigns him at the bar of American public opinion to
answer the indictment that he is always a strenuous upholder of royal
authority, an advocate of the privileges of the nobility, regarding them
as far removed above the _ignobile vulgus_, for whom on all occasions
the poet manifests the utmost contempt. That a work teeming with
constant lessons of this character is no fit guide for Americans he
makes the real argument of his book. The second count is apparently
intended to be no less damaging. Shakspere was a Catholic, and as such
should exercise no influence on a Protestant community. His influence in
England for three hundred years has not apparently won that country back
to Catholicity, and the United States are probably as safe. Still, it
may serve for a new agitation to get up a cry: “No Shakspere in the
public schools!”
That Mr. Wilkes considers it a danger is seen by the fact that he uses
toward Catholics every vile nickname drawn from the slums by religious
hate to degrade us in the eyes of our fellow-men. Yet surely a
Shaksperean scholar should not need reminding that to rob one of his
good name is worse than stealing his purse, oft-times as bad as taking
his life. Not only this, but he more than once represents the Catholic
Church as actuated by a hatred of intense fury against the Jews, as an
earnest upholder of the unlawful claims of aristocracy, as an enemy of
popular rights, and as an excuser of perjury. While thus under a strong
anti-Catholic bias or prejudice—stronger even than he at all
conceives—he has attempted to understand Catholic terms and usages, and
to enter into that world which to Protestants seems so strange and
inconceivable—the world of Catholic thought.
The question as to the religious convictions of Shakspere is not a new
one. No Catholic has ever read the great dramatist without feeling that
he was strangely lacking in the usual anti-Catholic element, even if he
did not impress him as often Catholic in thought.
Catholic writers in English periodicals, such as the _Rambler_ and
others, had already claimed Shakspere as a Catholic. All evidence,
extrinsic and intrinsic, seems to sustain the position. His family
belonged to the gentry on the father’s and mother’s side, and on both
sides had adhered to Catholicity after the change of religion in
England. The will of his maternal grandfather, Robert Arden, who died in
1556, is distinctly Catholic: “I bequeath my soul to Almighty God, and
to our Blessed Lady St. Mary, and to all the holy company of heaven.” Of
his father there is still extant a _Testament of the Soul_—not, as Mr.
Wilkes supposes, a form drawn up by some chaplain of the family, but
that _Testamentum Animæ Christianæ_ which, in Latin and the vernacular,
has for centuries been found in Catholic devotional manuals, and the
copying of which, as a kind of formal act, has been maintained in many
families—certainly was in the family of the present writer down to the
nineteenth century. Shakspere’s father, too, was fined for
non-attendance at the established church. So far as the families of his
parents were concerned, he was evidently Catholic, and must in childhood
have been familiar with the thoughts and language of English Catholics.
How far in mature age he retained the impressions of youth, or how
faithful he may have been to the teachings of his religion, we have no
means of judging. The lightness with which moral obligations lay on him,
his career as a wild but gifted man, give little ground for supposing
him to have practised the religion he may still have professed.
In his dramas Shakspere constantly uses Catholic terms, speaks of
Catholic clergy, religious of both sexes, rites and ceremonies with
respect, and in many cases turns his ridicule upon the new order of
clergy in England. The Shaksperes and Ardens had both held office under
the Tudor kings, and the dramatist shows the utmost zeal for royal power
as against the Pope. To a Catholic, now, this gives his position at
once. His life was not a regular one; and he could scarcely, in those
days of persecution, have been a firm, consistent, practical Catholic,
although he clung to the faith, never abjured it, and had no liking for
any of the new forms. His Bible reading was in the Protestant versions
of the day, not in the Rheims and Douay, of which no influence has ever
been detected in his plays. That he died a good Catholic needs proof;
but Mr. Wilkes’ ideas of the meaning of the term are vague, since he
tells us that Henry VIII. died a good Catholic.
The fact that Shakspere makes his characters—most of whom are Catholics
in time or country—speak as Catholics is really no proof of his own
Catholicity, any more than Longfellow’s almost constant correctness in
his use of Catholic terms and familiarity with Catholic thought is proof
that he is a Catholic. The fact is, we admit, suspicious; for during
centuries Protestant writers seem to have made it a point to display the
most intense ignorance of Catholic terms, usages, rites, and ceremonies,
and equally a point to insist on talking about what they vaunt their
ignorance of. But, going back to Shakspere’s time, we must bear in mind
that the new religion had not yet taken any hold on the people at large;
that the only religious terms and expressions that conveyed any definite
ideas to their minds were those of the old faith sanctioned by the usage
of centuries, and that the terms introduced by the various classes of
reformers were diverse, new, strange, and, to the people, a mere
ridiculous jargon. The coinage of a new religious vocabulary took time
and skill. It was no easy task to shape Bible translation so as to avoid
old ideas and thoughts. This new jargon rose to be a language when the
King James Bible was imposed on the people after the Restoration. Though
long vaunted as a well of English undefiled, philologists now admit that
it is the language of no period of English history, of no district of
English soil; it was a hash made to meet the pressing want, with
obsolete words, terms drawn from every county of England, and new-coined
expressions, all forced into the service so as to supply the English
people with a new vocabulary of religious thought.
To convey religious ideas in Shakspere’s time, the readiest words were
those familiar to the people. The dramatist employs them with no regard
to the country or time. The pagan Hamlet refers to the Blessed
Sacrament, Extreme Unction, the Mass, and Office for the Dead; they talk
of confession and beads in the _Comedy of Errors_; of indulgences in the
_Tempest_, and even in _Troilus and Cressida_; of fasting days in
_Pericles_ and _Coriolanus_; and christening is spoken of in _Titus
Andronicus_. The anachronisms were apparently not noticed in his time,
nor taken into account.
The system had not been adopted of entirely ignoring Catholic terms;
there were no others, and Shakspere used what he had. One word seems to
be avoided. The Mass is introduced only like Moore’s “neat little
Testament, just kept to swear by.” It occurs only in the form of an
oath, except in one instance, to which Mr. Wilkes devotes a chapter.
Juliet, going to her confessor, asks:
“Are you at leisure, holy father, now,
Or shall I come to you at evening Mass?”
Mr. Wilkes goes into a lengthened argument to show that it was the
custom at that time in England to celebrate Mass at night. He says: “I
have found many illustrations from Catholic reviews and other reliable
authorities of the practices of the hedge-priests, as they were called,
in times of Catholic persecution, whose business it was to go in the
darkness of the evening to the houses of the faithful to celebrate a
nocturnal Mass.” We should be much pleased to see any such authorities.
He cites only an article in the _Manhattan Monthly_ last year, where a
writer speaks of priests in Ireland “who often at dead of night fled to
the mountain cave, the wooded glen, and wild rath to celebrate Mass for
the faithful”; but travelling by night is one thing, and saying Mass at
night is another. Again, there were no priests in England answering to
the Irish hedge-priests. The priests in England found shelter in the
houses of Catholic gentry; they had not a mass of poor and oppressed
faithful among whom they lived. But neither in Ireland nor in England is
there a single example that the writer has ever found of a Mass said in
what may be called the evening—that is, between sunset and midnight—much
less of its being so frequent an occurrence as to make Shakspere refer
to evening Mass as an ordinary matter. Dodd’s _History of the Church_,
Challoner’s _Missionary Priests_, the works of Father Parsons, Campion,
and other Catholic writers of the time, never allude to any single case
where such a Mass was said. Nor is there in any liturgical work
reference to any such custom ever having obtained in England.
Mr. Wilkes seems to feel that the theory is not very solid. He next
refers to the custom in some parts of saying a Low Mass immediately
after the Sunday High Mass. “Shakspere may have considered the last or
one o’clock Mass an evening Mass.” The play itself makes this untenable.
It was late in the afternoon when Juliet went to the friar. When she
comes back the nurse says:
“See where she comes from shrift with merry look”—
not half as charmingly as Longfellow describes Evangeline as most
beautiful
“When, after confession,
Homeward serenely she walks with God’s benediction upon her.”
Then, a few lines lower down, Lady Capulet, in the same scene, says:
“’Tis now near night.”
This fixes the time too clearly to allow that any reference is made to a
Mass about mid-day. “Evening Mass” is simply nonsense; but the phrase
has charmed later writers, and several poets introduce the expression,
just as poets and prose writers have all copied the Protestant Bible
misprint, “Strain _at_ a gnat,” instead of “Strain out a gnat.”
But the word Mass here is against all Catholic custom and reason. Juliet
wishes to go to confession. She politely asks her confessor whether he
is at leisure or whether she shall come again at a later hour. Would any
one, under the same circumstances, propose to come to confession to the
priest when he was saying Mass? It would be just the time when he could
not possibly hear confessions. If he expected to say Mass soon, he would
hear her then, and neither he nor she would think of putting it off till
he had begun his Mass. Shakspere critics have boggled and blundered over
this without seeing this incongruity, which to a Catholic is as patent
as the day. What, then, does it mean? Juliet can ask only whether he
will hear her then or whether she shall come later. Now, if we consider
Shakspere to have written:
“Are you at leisure, holy father, now,
Or shall I come to you as evening wanes?”
the whole thing is as natural, consistent, and usual to Catholic ideas
as can be. Then there is no such absurdity as evening Mass, or going to
confession to a priest who is saying Mass. The dense ignorance of later
times on every Catholic matter will easily account for the neglect to
correct the palpable error in the actual text.
The fact that, while Shakspere speaks of religion as the monastic state,
religious, monks, nuns, convents, monasteries, beads, penance, month’s
mind, dirge, requiem, purgatory, indulgences, relics, shrines, the
housel (Eucharist), christening or baptism, aneling (anointing), the
cross, altar, holy-water, he nowhere in any of his plays speaks of the
Mass (except in the oath “By the Mass”), is a strong argument against
its use here. Convents and monasteries were abolished; relics and
shrines were gone; no dirges or requiems resounded in the old church
walls; allusions to them were simply allusions to something deemed past
and gone; but there were nearly a thousand Mass-priests in England—men
who carried their lives in their hands, over whom the severest edicts of
the law were hanging like the sword of Damocles. To talk of the Mass as
a service with respect was verging on high treason. Having avoided it
everywhere else, he would scarcely introduce it here absurdly—no less
absurdly to him than to us.
At that time, though the government was anti-Catholic, the state church
was a mere matter of office. There was little zeal in its members—little
more than conformity to law. The Puritans were active and zealous in
spreading their doctrines; but the people were to a great extent still
Catholic, and, with many nobles and gentlemen as leaders, and a greater
number of priests than during the next two centuries, formed a power
which was finally crushed by the Civil War. With this body Shakspere
sympathized. He was not of the stuff to make a martyr. Ben Jonson and
Massinger were, we know, Catholics, but not a single act of Shakspere’s
is recorded that stamps him as a Catholic. He was not fined as a
recusant, had no intercourse with known Catholics, in all arrests under
the penal laws there is no allusion to him, even as using his undoubted
influence with the great to shield some poor victim. With the mass of
the people, at court and not at court, he ridiculed the new Gospellers,
as we do Millerites or any other oddities. Against royal supremacy or
the religion established by law, the Common Prayer, or the bishops who
had been intruded into the old Catholic sees, Shakspere says nothing.
His ridicule is never launched at them. His wit is turned, as was that
of the court circle, at the Puritan element. The state church was
respectable, but lacked earnestness, piety, and zeal: it was simply a
state affair. Those whose minds and imaginations tended to effusive
piety found themselves repulsed. Gradually they camped apart and formed
new organizations. In Shakspere’s time the government and the government
church laughed at them, when they should have used them to build up the
Church of England. Just so in the following century they repulsed
Wesley. Shakspere takes not a Catholic but the court-prelatic side; and
there were no prophets on that side to see that James’ son was to die on
the block and the Church of England be abolished by these very Puritans.
That he had any direct idea of attacking Protestantism as a system, or
making his dramas—with their coarse and often impure speech, such as
then found favor with Elizabeth and her court—an arm against the
Reformation, is absurd, and Mr. Wilkes, in going through play after play
to note every praise of convents or religious practices as done with a
direct view to elevate the Catholic Church, is extravagant. We have but
to remember that Protestantism had then no institutions, no religious
rites or practices, nothing absolutely for a poet or dramatist to employ
as illustrations. Protestant poets and artists feel the poverty to this
day, and in despair turn from cold, set formalism to Catholic themes,
where poetry finds so many a subject.
Our American critic has endeavored to follow out Catholic thoughts, but
not always successfully. Thus, in _Richard III._ Elizabeth addressing
her murdered children:
“If yet your gentle souls fly in the air,”
and Buckingham:
“If that your moody discontented souls
Do through the clouds behold this present hour,”
are gravely put down as evidences of Shakspere’s recognition of the
doctrine of purgatory, as though every believer in ghosts must be a
believer in purgatory. There are some comical remarks about Shakspere’s
familiarity with “the intricacies of the Roman Catholic faith,” because
in _Henry VI._ we find:
“Although by sight his sin be multiplied,”
when surely the Scriptural injunction to pluck out an eye that leads one
to sin might explain it without his getting tangled in intricacies. His
knowledge of the marriage service also seems peculiar; the rituals we
know are hardly the origin of Shakspere’s marriage form.
Mr. Wilkes is evidently led away by his theory in his forced Catholic
interpretation of many passages of the dramatist; and his desire to show
that the whole series of dramas was a device of the Catholic Church to
attack Protestantism in England induces him to strain much to support
his view, and often to jump at unwarranted conclusions, as in making
Hartley, in the strange Girachy case, to have been a priest. A man might
be hanged as a Catholic priest—as Ury was a century ago within sight of
the spot where Mr. Wilkes’ office now stands—and yet not have been even
a Catholic. There is no Catholic record of priest or layman suffering in
connection with this affair.
Hence, while we admit Mr. Wilkes’ diligence and ability in studying
Shakspere, we must regret that his judgment, like that of too many, has
been warped by the old anti-Catholic feeling, to the extent of giving
the plays a character which neither friend nor foe of Catholicity at the
time dreamed of ascribing to them.
In treating the question of Shakspere’s legal knowledge, he is free from
bias, and hence easily perceives and often exposes the exaggeration
which induces learned men of the law to interpret much that any
attendant at courts, whether as witness or juror, might easily acquire
as proof of serious legal study. The length to which the legal argument
has been pushed has led to similar claims by other professions; but a
young man of such Catholic stock as Shakspere undoubtedly was could
scarcely have attempted to obtain admission to the bar in those days.
Certainly, as Mr. Wilkes well maintains, the amount of legal knowledge
and the use of legal terms manifested in the plays are not of the
character that we should expect from one who had held such eminent legal
and judicial positions as Lord Bacon. Nor is this, as he shows, the only
difficulty. The style of the dramas and that of Bacon’s acknowledged
writings are utterly different; the conception of thoughts and their
clothing in language are both distinct. The ear attuned to Shakspere
finds in Bacon a measure, an adaptation of words, a symmetry of his own,
utterly at variance with the dramatist. Wilkes’ euphonic test has great
weight; and he well and aptly cites Bacon to show that the chancellor
made style a test of disputed authorship. If the Baconian theory is but
“a bubble which has never floated among the public with any amount of
success,” it has doubtless found some advocates, and Mr. Wilkes has
strengthened the arguments against it.
His argument against Shakspere as one who worships a lord and despises
the middle and lower classes has but the one fault: that it takes our
modern American theories as the test—our theories, and not our practice;
for after all personal liberty has, in a certain sense, steadily
declined in America during the last century, and many of the rights
possessed by individuals in Shakspere’s time, and enjoyed by our
ancestors down to the Revolution, have been swept away in the name of
liberty, while general and local taxation has reached a point that often
amounts practically to confiscation of all revenue, and sometimes of the
whole estate. In point of fact, the lower classes among us are more
oppressed in person and property by official power, and less able to
obtain legal redress, than they were in England in Shakspere’s time. The
distinction of rank was then as absolute almost as that of the Hindoo
castes, and the contemptuous style of the day in which the aristocratic
portion treated their inferiors was caught up too readily by Shakspere.
Mr. Wilkes develops this element steadily through the work, and makes
it, as we have seen, the basis of one of his heaviest charges against
the dramatist. He treats the point skilfully, and the subject affords a
fine scope for discussion. For our own part, we think that he carries
his theory too far, and that Shakspere may find an advocate who will
relieve him from much of the obloquy and secure his claim to respect in
America.
Shakspere literature is now a field so vast, and has won contributions
from so many able minds and eloquent pens, that it requires some courage
to produce a new work on the topic at large; yet Mr. Wilkes has
certainly produced a volume that will take a prominent place among the
Shaksperiana. It gives utterance to many new views; the whole treatment,
being thoroughly American, is fresh and free from much of the
conventional bias that is almost inevitable in England; while solid
German learning, by its very seriousness and profundity, seems often to
miss the point and _finesse_ of the dramatist.
The Catholic part is so prominent that we could not but treat it plainly
and frankly, addressing as we do more exclusively a circle of Catholic
readers. We do so with no wish to be merely censorious, and with our
recognition of the author’s evidently careful study and desire to treat
the question fairly.
“He presents the volume,” he avows, “rather as a series of inquiries
than as dogmatic doctrine, and strives,” he says, “to support them only
by such an amount of controversy as is legitimately due from one who
invites the public to a new discussion.”
NEW PUBLICATIONS.
ESSAYS AND REVIEWS By Rt. Rev. J. L. Spalding, D.D. 1 vol. 12mo, pp.
355. New York: The Catholic Publication Society. 1877.
The author of these essays has been recently raised to the dignity of
the episcopate and appointed to the newly-created see of Peoria, Ill.
His name and fame as an author, preacher, and orator are already widely
known in this country. His _Life of Archbishop Spalding_, his
illustrious uncle, will remain one of the landmarks of Catholic history
and biography in the United States. By this important and valuable work
the name of the learned and distinguished author is at present best
known outside of the immediate circle with whom friendship and the round
of daily life connect him. He has done, however, much more than this. He
has used his great gifts incessantly and in whatever way they could
prove of service to the cause which every word he utters and every line
he writes proclaim he has alone at heart—the growth and strengthening of
Christ’s church, the defence of Catholic faith and doctrine, and the
spread of Christ’s kingdom on earth. With this view he has even gone
down to that lowly, much neglected, yet most important field of editing
a series of Catholic school-books—that issued by the Catholic
Publication Society.
He has been a constant and most valued contributor to the pages of this
magazine, and a selection of his articles—which, had he chosen, might
have been much larger—goes to form the present volume of _Essays and
Reviews_. As they come before us now in book-form we are glad to have
this opportunity of saying publicly what we have always felt, not only
in regard to these but also all other contributions from the same pen:
that they are of the very best kind of that peculiarly modern,
peculiarly favorite, and peculiarly difficult form of literature—the
magazine article. Dr. Brownson used to say that there were not half a
dozen men in this country who could write a really good review article.
Whether that be so or not, we are sure that the veteran reviewer would
not have excluded these essays from his category. And what we here state
regarding them is only an echo of the general opinion, so far as it
reaches us through the medium of the public press and the private
verdict of excellent judges. The style is fascinating, glowing,
brilliant. There are here and there passages of extreme beauty and
eloquence. There is nothing like mere verbiage or redundance. There is
_a man_ behind it all—a man of knowledge, of wide yet careful culture,
writing in dead earnest, observing the march of events while the history
of the past is ever present to him, with power and courage to say what
he means in a manner that all will understand. Not one of these articles
fell dead. The leading one, “The Catholic Church in the United States,
1776-1876,” excited universal interest and attention not alone in this
country but abroad, and a distinguished writer in the _Correspondant_
made it the chief text of an important article on the United States. No
history or historical sketch that we have seen gives so complete and
profound a view of the history, the trials, and struggles of the
Catholic Church in this country within the century as that article. The
other essays are of a piece with it. Their very titles speak their
timeliness: “The Persecution of the Church in the German Empire,”
“Prussia and the Church” (three essays), “German Journalism,” etc.
Perhaps the most valuable of all, however, are the three essays on the
“Comparative Influence of Catholicism and Protestantism on National
Prosperity,” for which M. de Laveleye’s well-known pamphlet furnished a
text. They are eminently characteristic of the writer. He faces
everything, shirks nothing. He takes up the subjects of “Wealth,”
“Education,” and “Morality”—just the very points on which Protestant
writers are in the habit of claiming superiority for Protestant over
Catholic nations—and how he treats them we leave to the reader’s
enjoyment.
We are often asked the kind of article needed for THE CATHOLIC WORLD. We
can recommend no better text-book to such applicants than this volume of
_Essays and Reviews;_ nor can we recommend anything fresher, better, or
more interesting to Catholics generally who are anxious to defend their
faith on points where it is often believed to be most assailable.
MAGISTER CHORALIS: a Theoretical and Practical Manual of Gregorian
Chant for the use of the clergy, seminarists, organists,
choir-masters, choristers, etc. By Rev. Francis Xavier Haberl,
cathedral choir-master, Ratisbon. Translated and enlarged (from the
fourth German edition) by Rev. N. Donnelly, Cathedral Church of the
Immaculate Conception, Dublin. Ratisbon, New York, and Cincinnati:
Frederick Pustet.
This excellent and most timely work is one we have long desired to see.
Many pastors of churches and their organists have been willing to do
something towards the introduction of the holy chant in the divine
offices, but the means of instruction have been almost wholly wanting.
Very few organists and choir-directors in the United States have made
any study whatever of the chant, and the greater number are not able to
read even its notation. We have felt and lamented the difficulties in
the way of those who, convinced of the claims of Gregorian chant, and
wearied and disgusted with the wretched cheap concert performances they
have been forced to endure at Holy Mass and Vespers, have longed to rid
themselves of the “church music” nuisance and again hear the true song
of the church resounding in the sanctuary. Even with ample pecuniary
resources it would not have been enough to issue an order to the
choir-director to organize a Gregorian choir, or even to sing some
portions of the chant from the organ gallery. The work before us solves
almost all these difficulties. Of course the organist will need to study
the character of the chant in other works, that he may be able to
appreciate its tonality and style, and to give it its true
accompaniment, without which he would be more likely to produce poor
_music_ than good _chant_, or a detestable mixture of both, such as one
commonly finds published in various Catholic “choir-books” and books of
so-called “Services of the Catholic Church.”
We recommend to Gregorian organists the careful study of the harmonies
of John Lambert in his harmonized Gradual and Vesperal, the _Organum
Comitans by Dr. Witt, and the Accompagnment d’Orgue pour le Graduel et
Antiphonarium de Rheims et Cambrai_, by Messrs. Dietsch and Tessier.
The only faults we have to find with Father Haberl’s work are, first,
the rules as given for the Italian pronunciation of Latin, especially
for the pronunciation of the word _excelsis_, which is directed to be
pronounced egg-shell-sis! and, second, the rule on page 66 directing the
elision of the last vowel of a word when followed by another vowel in
the next word, in the verses of hymns; and we regret to see this rule
carried out in the new Vesperal as published by Mr. Pustet. This rule
may do for _reading_ classic poetry, but, if we mistake not, such
elision is absolutely forbidden in the _recitation_ of the divine
Office, whether read or sung. In all former editions of the Vesperal we
have found an extra note provided for the superfluous syllable.
We cannot bring ourselves to sing or say
Sit laus Patr-ac Paraclito,
or
Quænam lingua tib-o Lancea, debitas
Grates pro merit-est apta rependere?
Christi vivificum namqu-aperis latus
Und-Ecclesia nascitur.
How is one to sing _namqu-aperis_? and what are we to think of
_clavor-aditus_ for _clavorum aditus_, and _ill-hic_ for _ille, hic_? We
would like to be referred to some authority on this subject. That this
work has already reached the fourth edition in Ratisbon is a very
encouraging sign of the restoration of Gregorian chant among our German
brethren. May it find a wide-spread sale in our own country!
GOLDEN SAND: A Collection of little Counsels for the Sanctification
and Happiness of Daily Life. Translated from the French. New York:
Sadlier & Co. 1877.
We have not seen for a long time a more charming little hand-book of
daily piety than the modest volume of which a young lady, who is too
modest to put her name on the title-page, has here given us an excellent
translation. Miss Ella J. McMahon, to whom we are indebted for the
publication of this version of _Paillettes d’Or_, has turned the simple
and unaffected original into equally simple and attractive English.
First published periodically in the form of tracts, these short chapters
of practical counsels were afterwards collected in pocket volumes, and
the book now before us, though it could be read through in a morning,
contains the series for several years. It is addressed to people in the
world, and it embraces rules for the sanctification of all the actions
of life, for making home happy and the domestic hearth an altar of
blessing and sacrifice. No one can read a few of its pages without
feeling. “Here is something that just suits my case; the circumstances
described here are just my own; the temptations are mine; the little
trials are mine; nothing can be easier than to make the virtues mine,
too.” Several chapters of the book, for instance, are devoted to what
the author styles “The Angels of the Hearth,” and here is a description
of “The Angel of Little Sacrifices”:
“Have you never seen her at work?
“Have you never at least felt her influence?
“In every Christian family and in all pious communities, as the image of
his providence in the household, God has placed the angel of little
sacrifices, trying to remove all the thorns, to lighten all the burdens,
to share all the fatigues.
“She has for her motto these gracious words of an amiable saint: Good
makes no noise, and noise effects no good.
“Thus she is like a ray of sunlight, lighting, warming, giving life to
all, but inconveniencing no one.
“We feel that she is with us, because we no longer experience those
misunderstandings of heretofore, those rancorous thoughts, those
deliberate coolnesses which spoil family life; because we no longer hear
those sharp, rude words which wound so deeply; because affectionate
sentiments mount readily from the heart to the lips, and life is
sweeter.
“Who, then, has absorbed that self-love which would not yield; that
egotism which mingled with the most sincere friendship; that
self-indulgence, in fine, which always sought ease?
“The angel of little sacrifices has received from heaven the mission of
those angels of whom the prophet speaks, who removed the stones from the
road, lest they should bruise the feet of travellers.
“And that of the angels who, according to the simple legend of the first
Christians, scattered rose-leaves 'neath the feet of Jesus and Mary in
their flight into Egypt....
“But, like them, she is oftener invisible; she does her work in secret.
“There is a place less commodious than another; she chooses it, saying
with a sweet smile, How comfortable I am here!
“There is some work to be done, and she presents herself for it simply
with the joyous manner of one who finds her happiness in so doing.
“It is an object of trifling value, of which she deprives herself to
give to her who the evening before has manifested a desire to possess
one like it.
“How many oversights repaired by this unknown hand!
“How many neglected things put in their places, without our ever seeing
how they came there!
“How many little joys procured for another without his ever having
mentioned to any one the happiness which they would give him!
“Who has known thus how to do good in secret? Who has known how to
divine the secrets of the heart?
“Does a dispute arise? She knows how to settle it by a pleasant word
which wounds no one, and falls upon the slight disturbance like a ray of
sunlight upon a cloud.
“Should she hear of two hearts estranged, she has always new means of
reuniting them without their being able to show her any gratitude, so
sweet, simple, and natural is what she does.
“But who will tell the thorns which have torn her hands, the pain her
heart has endured, the humiliations her charity has borne?
“And yet she is always smiling.
“Does sacrifice give her joy?
“Have you never seen her at work, the angel of little sacrifices?
“On earth she is called a mother, a friend, a sister, a wife.
“In heaven she is called a saint.”
Here is another example of the familiar and easy spirit, the clearness,
the practicality of this admirable little counsellor:
“WHAT IS MY CROSS OF TO-DAY?—It is that person whom Providence has
placed near me, and whom I dislike; who humiliates me constantly by her
disdainful manner; who wearies me by her slowness in the work which I
share with her; who excites my jealousy because she is loved more than I
and because she succeeds better than I; who irritates me by her chatter,
her frivolity, or even by her attentions to me.
“It is that person who, for some vague reason, I believe to be inimical
to me; who, according to my excited imagination, watches me, criticises
me, ridicules me.
“She is there, always there.... My efforts to avoid her are of no avail.
“A mysterious power seems to multiply these appearances before me....
“This is my most painful cross; the others are very small compared to
this.
“Circumstances change, temptations diminish, positions improve,
misfortune becomes endurable by habit, but persons who are disagreeable
to us always irritate us more and more.
“HOW I MUST BEAR MY CROSS OF TO-DAY.—By not showing in any way either
the weariness, the dislike, or the involuntary repulsion which her
presence causes me. By obliging myself to render her some service, it
matters little whether she knows it—it is a secret between God and me.
“To say nearly every day something good of her talents, of her virtues,
her tact.... Something, certainly, I will find to praise.
“To pray seriously for her soul, and even to go so far as to ask God to
love her and leave her with me.
“Dear companion, blessed messenger of God’s mercy, you have
unconsciously the mission of sanctifying me, and I will not be
ungrateful.
“Angel of a rude and appalling exterior, were it not for thee I would
fall into humiliating faults. My nature disdains and repulses thee, but,
oh! how my heart loves thee.”
There is an abundance of good advice which will touch directly upon a
multitude of the commonest faults of good people—those apparently
trivial sins and imperfections which cause so much unhappiness at home,
which make family life so hard and bitter, and place so many obstacles
in the path of perfection.
The book cannot fail to do good. It will be a favorite companion of the
pious soul, an affectionate and never unwelcome monitor to the cold and
careless.
LIFE OF THE VENERABLE CLEMENT MARY HOFBAUER, PRIEST OF THE
CONGREGATION OF THE MOST HOLY REDEEMER. By a Member of the Order of
Mercy, authoress of the _Life of Catharine McAuley_, _Life of St.
Alphonsus_, _Glimpses of Pleasant Homes_, etc. New York: The
Catholic Publication Society. 1877.
We have received advance sheets of this beautiful and most interesting
life by the gifted author of the _Life of Catharine McAuley_. Father
Hofbauer was one of God’s heroes, and the story of his life will be
found full of interest and profit. He is fortunate in his biographer,
whose clever pen seems particularly adapted to a style of literary work
than which there is none more pleasing and useful. An extended notice
will appear later.
THE LADY OF NEVILLE COURT. A Tale of the Times. By the author of
_Marion Howard_, etc., etc. London: Burns & Oates. 1877. (For sale
by The Catholic Publication Society.)
It is really refreshing to come across a simple, unaffected, yet most
interesting story such as this. Its only fault is that happiest of
faults—brevity. The characters are few, natural, well contrasted, and
well developed; the situations well wrought up, yet by the most natural
of means. The pathetic portions are indescribably touching, but
constantly and happily relieved by bright dialogue or playfully humorous
narrative. Richard O’Meara is a genuine Catholic hero, albeit a modern
one; and Maud Neville as sweet and noble a woman as we have ever met
with in fiction. The real art of the book lies in its genuine
artlessness, and we trust the author may give us many such.
* * * * *
In the July number of THE CATHOLIC WORLD will appear the first
instalment of a new story, entitled _Alba’s Dream_, by the author of
_Are You My Wife?_, _A Salon in Paris before the War_, _Number
Thirteen_, _M. Gombard’s Mistake_, etc., etc. The story will be
completed in three parts.
THE CATHOLIC WORLD.
VOL. XXV., No. 148.—JULY, 1877.
THE EUROPEAN EXODUS.
We propose in the following pages to speak of the past history, the
present condition, and the future prospects of European emigration to
this country. We shall have to present many dry figures and prosaic
statistics; but the investigation will lead us to regard the wonderful
manner in which the wisdom and the love of God have been manifested in
the control which he, as the ruler of all things, has exercised over
this European exodus. Even out of those details of its course and
progress which have seemed most deplorable, and have caused to many of
God’s enlightened servants the greatest anxiety and grief, beneficent
and grand results now begin to be discerned which are likely to secure
the permanent establishment of the church in this land, and to prepare
her for the magnificent task which, as we believe, she is destined to
accomplish here—the salvation of the republic and of society from the
utter ruin into which the arch-enemy of mankind would otherwise soon
engulf them. The foolishness of men is sometimes the wisdom of God; and
God, who governs all things sweetly, has chosen to turn the apparent
folly of a large portion of the emigrants from Europe to the United
States during the last twenty-five years into channels through which
inestimable blessings have already flowed, and others, still more
glorious, are yet to pass.
The great wave of emigration began to rise in 1840, reached its highest
point in 1869-72, and, notwithstanding some fluctuations, continued to
bring to our shores a colony every day until 1875. In that year it
experienced a sudden and serious check, and has ever since steadily
subsided, until now it has not only sunk to low-water mark, but has even
seemed to be about to flow the other way. The official reports of the
Commissioners of Emigration of the State of New York classify the
passengers who arrive at this port from foreign countries as “aliens”
and as “citizens or persons who had before landed in the United States”;
and the “aliens” are subdivided into steerage and cabin passengers. It
is safe to take the “alien steerage passengers” as persons who have come
to this country for the first time with the purpose of residing here—in
fine, as _bonâ fide_ emigrants. The alien cabin passengers in most cases
are tourists or visitors, although among them also are some emigrants.
Now, the whole number of alien steerage passengers who arrived at the
port of New York during the year 1876 was only 60,308, of whom 17,974
were from Germany, 12,728 from Ireland, 5,429 from England, 1,479 from
Scotland, and 428 from Wales. The whole number of steerage emigrants
from the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland who landed at New
York during this year was only 20,064—a much smaller number than arrived
in any previous year since 1840. Indeed, in no previous year until 1875,
when it was 34,636, had the number failed to be twice as great; in many
years it was more than ten times as large. The following table will show
the emigration of all classes from the United Kingdom into the United
States at all our ports during the last thirty-six years:
1840 40,642
1841 45,017
1842 63,852
1843 28,335
1844 43,660
1845 58,538
1846 82,239
1847 142,154
1848 188,233
1849 219,450
1850 223,078
1851 267,357
1852 244,261
1853 230,885
1854 193,065
1855 103,414
1856 111,837
1857 126,905
1858 50,716
1859 70,303
1860 87,500
1861 42,764
1862 58,706
1863 146,813
1864 147,042
1865 147,258
1866 161,000
1867 159,275
1868 155,532
1869 203,001
1870 196,075
1871 198,843
1872 233,747
1873 233,073
1874 148,161
1875 92,489
1876 [72]54,554
Footnote 72:
Of whom 24,452 landed at New York.
The 54,554 persons who, not being citizens of the United States, arrived
in this country from the United Kingdom in 1876, embrace all those who
came either for pleasure, or for business, or to remain. But during the
same year 54,697 persons of Irish and British origin arrived in the
United Kingdom from the United States; so that the emigration from this
country to the United Kingdom exceeded the immigration into the United
States from the United Kingdom by 143 souls. The English Board of Trade,
in publishing these returns, says that “as regards North America, in
fact, the records of 1876 are the records of a movement of passengers to
and fro, and the so-called emigration is not really emigration.” We
digress here, for a moment, to speak of one or two facts disclosed by
the emigration returns of the British Board of Trade for 1876, which
cast a side light upon a portion of our subject.
The total emigration from the United Kingdom to places out of Europe in
1876 was 138,222 persons; the total immigration into the Kingdom was
91,647 persons, showing an apparent loss of population of 46,575. But
after deducting from both sides the persons of other than British birth,
the net loss of population to the United Kingdom by emigration is
reduced to 38,000 persons—a percentage scarcely worth mention when
compared with the annual increase by births. As regards the emigration
from that Kingdom to the United States, it is noted not only that it has
become very small, but that its character has materially changed. Only
73 agricultural laborers sailed from England for the United States, but
no less than 3,191 of this class sailed for Australia; while, on the
other hand, “4,535 gentlemen, professional men, merchants, etc., and
10,874 persons of no occupation, have gone to the States, and only 1,106
of the first-named class and 2,753 of the second migrated to Australia.”
The returns go on to point out that emigration from Ireland, and of
Irishmen living in England and Scotland, has almost entirely ceased.
“The total number of persons of Irish origin who emigrated from the
United Kingdom in 1876 to places out of Europe was 25,976.” Of these
16,432 came to the United States; some of these were only visitors; but
counting them all as emigrants, they would not number as many as arrived
here in a single month in former years.
The gradual but steady decrease of Irish emigration to the United States
is pointed out in these returns in a forcible and apparently exultant
manner. From 1853 to 1860 the annual average of Irish emigration to this
country was 71,856; during the ten years following it was 69,084; in
1871 it fell to 65,591; in 1874 it was 48,136; in 1875 it was 31,433;
and last year it sank to 16,432.[73] “The Irish people,” says the Board
of Trade with evident satisfaction, “do not at present migrate from the
United Kingdom in any appreciable numbers, although they may emigrate
from one part of the United Kingdom to another.” We cannot call the
correctness of this statement into question; it is no doubt quite
correct; and it is safe to conclude that, for the present at least, and
probably for many years to come, Irish emigration to this country will
be limited to very small proportions. Nay, there is some reason to fear
that, unless a marked improvement soon occurs in the industrial affairs
of our country, we shall be in danger of seeing too many of our Irish
and Irish-American citizens leaving us to seek homes in Australia. The
year 1877 is scarcely six months old, but it has seen three vessels sail
from this port with American, Irish, and German emigrants for Australia.
This movement is probably a wholly sporadic one, and too much importance
should not be attached to it. But we are not yet in a condition to
encourage emigration from this country nor to desire to see it under any
circumstances. We wish still to receive many millions of people from the
Old World, and, as we shall show, there is a strong probability that we
shall obtain them.
Footnote 73:
Of whom 13,314 landed at New York.
Emigration from the Continent of Europe, while showing a decrease, has
not diminished in such a marked degree as that from the United Kingdom.
The whole number of alien emigrants who arrived at the port of New York
during the thirty years ending December 31, 1876, was 5,604,073. Of
these 2,920,397 were natives of Great Britain and Ireland; 2,665,774
were natives of the Continent; and the remaining 17,902 came from all
the other countries of the earth. The following table will show the
exact number of emigrants from each country arriving at the port of New
York during the last thirty years:
FROM GREAT BRITAIN.
Ireland 2,001,727
England 732,922
Scotland 157,578
Wales 28,170
2,920,397
FROM AMERICA.
South America 3,066
West Indies 7,897
Nova Scotia 1,611
Canada 1,397
Mexico 1,030
Central America 289
15,290
FROM CONTINENTAL EUROPE.
Germany 2,121,020
France 107,710
Switzerland 81,798
Holland 39,069
Norway 44,772
Sweden 116,655
Italy 42,769
Belgium 10,096
Spain 7,796
Denmark 32,974
Poland 11,291
Sardinia 2,306
Portugal 1,791
Russia 22,124
Sicily 339
Greece 269
Turkey 242
Austria 21,677
Luxembourg 1,076
2,663,774
FROM THE ORIENT.
China 1,057
East Indies 304
Arabia 14
Africa 191
Australia 225
Japan 175
Unknown 646
2,612
5,604,073
We may remark that fourteen of the countries in this list are Roman
Catholic countries, and that the emigrants from these number 2,212,963
souls. The proportion of Catholics among the emigrants from the other
twenty-one countries would probably be, taking them altogether, not less
than one-fourth of the whole number—597,772. This would give a Catholic
emigration at the port of New York alone, during these thirty years, of
about 2,800,000 souls. But we shall return to this part of our subject
later on.
The emigration from Germany at the port of New York during the year 1876
was 21,035 persons, of whom 17,974 were steerage passengers; in 1875 the
number was 25,559; during the twenty-eight years from 1847 to 1875 the
average number of emigrants arriving from Germany at this port had been
75,000 annually. The severe and sudden check which emigration received
in 1875 must be traced, in the case of Germany, almost wholly to the
effects of the financial disasters which had occurred in the United
States, and which had then begun to be heavily felt. The Germans are a
prudent people; they are exceedingly well informed concerning the
condition of affairs here, and they were well advised not to come to a
new country at a moment when industry and trade were prostrated, when
labor was superabundant and poorly paid, and when confidence and
enterprise were so paralyzed that capital could find no productive or
safe employment. The restrictive measures against emigration instigated
and enforced by Prince Bismarck, and the financial distress which
prevailed, and which still prevails, in Germany, had also their
influence in discouraging and retarding emigration; but the principal
cause of its decline in the case of Germany was the one we have
mentioned. When that cause shall have ceased to act, as there is reason
to believe it soon will do, we can expect with confidence a revival of
emigration from Germany and the other Continental countries of Europe.
Should the present war in the East become general and involve all
Europe, the anxiety of the people to escape its horrors and burdens will
increase the desire for emigration, but their facilities for seeking a
new home will probably be lessened by the same causes. We must, in all
likelihood, wait for the return of prosperity here and of peace in
Europe before the great wave of emigration again rises to its former
level. There is no reason to doubt that in due time it will again attain
its former proportions; but the principal countries from whence we must
hereafter look for our emigrants are Germany, Austria, Sweden, Norway,
Denmark, Switzerland, Holland, and perhaps England. The emigration of
the future, most probably, will to a large extent be composed of people
possessed of some capital, and prepared to begin their new life under
far more favorable conditions than those which surrounded the Irish and
German emigrants of past years upon their arrival here. The latter,
landing here too often with no capital but their muscles, their honest
hearts, and strong but often uncultivated intellects, have accomplished
the work to which they were ordained. Their successors will find much
prepared for them, but they also will have their mission to fulfil.
Let us now endeavor to ascertain with as much accuracy as possible in
what manner our foreign-born citizens have disposed of themselves, and
what it is that they have done and are doing for us, for themselves, and
for God. It appears that, according to the census of 1870, the whole
number of foreign-born persons then in the United States was 5,567,229,
of whom 62,736 were Chinese, 9,654 were negroes, and 1,136 were Indians.
There were also 9,734,845 persons who had been born in this country, but
whose parents were all of foreign birth, and 1,157,170 others the father
or mother of each of whom had been of foreign birth. These 16,459,244
persons constituted, in 1870, the whole of that portion of our
population which could in any way be classed as foreign or as being
under the immediate domestic influence of foreigners. There remained
22,099,132 persons, who were not only native-born, but whose parents on
both sides were natives. Let us deal, first, with the persons of foreign
birth. In 1850 there were but 2,244,602 persons of this class; in 1860
they had increased to 4,138,697, and in 1870 to 5,567,229 souls. The
following table will show their nationalities:
Ireland 1,855,827
England 550,688
Scotland 140,809
Wales 74,530
Great Britain[74] 4,117
Germany 1,690,410
France 116,240
Denmark 30,098
Holland 46,801
Hungary 3,649
Italy 17,147
Belgium 12,552
Luxembourg 5,802
Austria 30,506
Bohemia 40,287
Norway 114,243
Poland 14,435
Portugal 4,495
Russia 4,638
Spain 3,701
Sweden 97,327
Switzerland 75,145
Turkey 301
Malta 51
China 63,042
Greece 390
Greenland 3
India 551
Japan 73
Africa 673
Asia 834
Australia 3,111
Pacific Isles 305
Sandwich Isles 539
South America 3,378
West Indies 4,897
Mexico 41,308
Cuba 4,811
Atlantic Isles 4,219
British America 489,344
At sea 2,612
Unknown 2,135
Footnote 74:
What part not stated.
We have omitted from the above table 9,654 negroes and 1,136 Indians,
born outside of the United States.
Where now do we find these five and a half millions of foreign-born
citizens? The greater part of them—4,193,971—were congregated in ten
States, as shown by the following table:
TABLE OF TEN STATES HAVING 200,000 OR MORE OF FOREIGN-BORN POPULATION.
STATES. 1870. 1860. 1850.
California 209,831 146,518 21,802
Illinois 515,198 324,643 111,892
Iowa 204,692 106,077 20 969
Massachusetts 353,319 260,106 164,024
Michigan 268,010 149,093 54,703
Missouri 221,267 160,541 76,592
New York 1,138,353 1,001,280 655,929
Ohio 372 493 328,249 218,193
Pennsylvania 545,309 430,505 303,417
Wisconsin 364,499 276,927 110,477
4,193,971 3,183,939 1,737,998
There were fourteen States each of which had an Irish-born population of
less than 10,000 souls—to wit, Alabama, Arkansas, Delaware, Florida,
Mississippi, Nebraska, Nevada, North Carolina, Oregon, South Carolina,
Tennessee, Texas, West Virginia, and Virginia; nineteen States each of
which had an Irish-born population of less than 100,000—to wit,
California, Connecticut, Georgia, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky,
Louisiana, Maine, Maryland, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, New
Hampshire, New Jersey, Ohio, Rhode Island, Vermont, and Wisconsin; while
Illinois had 120,000, Massachusetts 216,000, Pennsylvania 235,000, and
New York 528,000 Irish-born citizens. Eighteen States had each a
German-born population of less than 10,000—namely, Alabama, Arkansas,
Connecticut, Delaware, Florida, Georgia, Maine, Mississippi, Nevada, New
Hampshire, North Carolina, Oregon, Rhode Island, South Carolina,
Tennessee, Vermont, Virginia, and West Virginia. Thirteen States had
each a German-born population of less than 100,000—namely, California,
Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maryland, Massachusetts,
Michigan, Minnesota, Nebraska, New Jersey, and Texas; while Missouri had
113,618, Pennsylvania 160,146, Wisconsin 162,314, Ohio 182,889, Illinois
203,750, and New York 316,882. The following table will show the exact
number of persons of Austrian, German, French, and Irish birth residing
in each State in 1870:
States. Austrian. French. German. Irish.
Alabama 99 587 2,479 3,893
Arkansas 41 236 1,562 1,428
California 1,078 8,063 29,699 54,421
Connecticut 154 820 1,243 70,630
Delaware 8 127 1,141 5,007
Florida 17 126 595 737
Georgia 34 308 2,760 5,093
Illinois 2,099 10,908 203,750 120,162
Indiana 443 6,362 78,056 28,698
Iowa 2,691 3,130 66,160 40,124
Kansas 448 1,274 12,774 10,040
Kentucky 146 2,052 30,318 21,642
Louisiana 433 12,288 18,912 17,068
Maine 10 136 508 15,745
Maryland 266 640 47,045 23 630
Massachusetts 255 1,627 13,070 216,120
Michigan 795 3,120 64,143 42,013
Minnesota 2,647 1,743 41,364 21,746
Mississippi 85 621 2,954 3,359
Missouri 1,493 6,291 113,618 54,983
Nebraska 299 340 10,954 4,999
Nevada 157 414 2,181 5,135
New Hampshire 9 59 436 12,190
New Jersey 686 3,128 53,999 86,784
New York 3,928 22,273 316,882 528,806
North Carolina 13 53 904 677
Ohio 3,699 12,778 182,889 82,674
Oregon 53 308 1,875 1,967
Pennsylvania 1,556 8,682 160,146 235,798
Rhode Island 19 167 1,200 31,534
South Carolina 10 143 2,742 3,262
Tennessee 112 562 4,525 8,048
Texas 1,748 2,226 23,976 4,031
Vermont 2 93 370 14,080
Virginia 56 368 4,050 5,191
West Virginia 59 223 6,231 6,832
Wisconsin 4,486 2,704 162,314 48,479
30,104 116,240 1,690,410 1,855,827
These four nationalities, then, account for 3,692,581 of the
foreign-born population in 1870; and the remaining 1,874,648 had their
birth in the other thirty-five different countries named in one of our
preceding tables. A glance over the table just given will show still
more plainly within what limits the great bulk of the Irish and German
born population is found; and the reader will remember that we have
shown that all but 1,373,258 of the entire foreign-born population were
residing in the ten States of California, Illinois, Iowa, Massachusetts,
Michigan, Missouri, New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin. In
twenty of the States the persons of Irish birth exceeded those of German
birth; in the remaining seventeen States the latter outnumbered the
former. The excess of persons of Irish birth over those of German birth,
however, was only 165,417. This was seven years ago. During these seven
years the emigration from Germany has almost equalled that from Ireland,
and for the thirty years last past, taken as a whole, the arrivals from
Germany have exceeded those from Ireland by 119,293 souls. We shall
probably not be far out of the way if we assume that the entire
foreign-born population of the United States is at present about seven
millions, of whom two and a half millions are of German, and nearly an
equal number of Irish, birth. Let us, however, continue to confine
ourselves for the present to the official facts in our possession, and
proceed to follow up the 5,567,229 persons of foreign birth whom we know
were among us in 1870.
One of the remarks most frequently made concerning the foreign-born
population of this country is that it has a general disposition to
congregate in our large cities, from which have come consequences highly
prejudicial both to itself and to the community at large. These two
assertions have been made so persistently and in such good faith; they
have seemed to be so susceptible of proof and so apparently true; and
they have chimed in so well with the sometimes latent and sometimes
active prejudice against “foreigners” which is so often found in the
breasts of the natives of every country, that they have passed current
almost without challenge and have come to be regarded as axioms. Nay,
not a few of our foreign-born citizens themselves, and even of the
Catholic bishops and clergy, have often accepted these two assertions as
true, and have not ceased to deplore the crowding of the foreign
population into the large cities, regarding it as an almost unmixed
evil, and pointing to it as the source of direful woe. No doubt they
have had some reason on their side. A large proportion of the crime and
misery of our cities is perpetrated and suffered by foreign-born
citizens or by their children in the first generation. Had these
citizens not been gathered together in the cities, but scattered at
remote distances throughout the country, they might have been criminal
and miserable, but their crime and misery would not have been so
obtrusive and apparent to every observer. But, leaving this point for a
moment to return to it in the light of the facts we are about to adduce,
let us see what amount of truth there is in these two assertions. We may
remark, in passing, that the truth of the first does not necessarily
imply the truth of the second: it may be true that the foreign-born
population has congregated to an apparently undue and unwise extent in
our cities, but it may not be true that this has been by any means an
unmixed evil either to the foreigners themselves or to the native-born.
POPULATION, NATIVE AND FOREIGN, OF THE LARGE CITIES, 1870.
CITIES. Scotch. French. Austrian. Belgian.
New York 7,559 8,240 2,737 325
Philadelphia 4,175 2,471 519 116
Brooklyn 4,098 1,892 321 142
St. Louis 1,202 2,788 751 254
Chicago 4,195 1,417 704 392
Baltimore 525 428 215 29
Boston 1,794 615 124 31
Cincinnati 787 2,090 554 46
New Orleans 568 8,806 253 134
San Francisco 1,687 3,543 470 139
Buffalo 996 2,332 135 37
Washington 298 191 26 8
Newark 870 710 261 45
Louisville 298 856 69 31
Cleveland 668 339 2,155 16
Pittsburgh 584 348 117 9
Jersey City 1,175 276 69 43
Detroit 1,637 760 161 233
Milwaukee 423 189 574 79
Albany 427 149 36 17
Providence 575 72 5 1
Rochester 428 475 39 4
Allegheny 570 619 109 6
Richmond 146 144 29 5
New Haven 347 133 54 6
Charleston 115 97 39 4
Indianapolis 258 237 14 5
Troy 462 88 14 7
Syracuse 138 276 47 1
Worcester 187 29 12 1
Lowell 469 28 3 3
Memphis 119 207 14 10
Cambridge 298 100 9 1
Hartford 359 92 20 6
Scranton 366 64 4 —
Reading 35 77 36 2
Paterson 879 237 48 21
Kansas City 180 110 44 1
Mobile 166 311 33 11
Toledo 119 206 93 —
Portland 172 23 2 1
Columbus 133 238 20 —
Wilmington 117 64 — 2
Dayton 90 242 28 2
Lawrence 691 4 9 2
Utica 198 287 25 2
Charlestown 89 29 1 2
Savannah 72 99 5 —
Lynn 72 5 1 —
Fall River 382 3 4 2
Totals 43,055 42,430 11,218 2,232
CITIES. Native. Irish. German. English. Brit. Amer.
New York 523,198 201,999 151,203 24,408 4,372
Philadelphia 490,398 96,698 50,746 22,034 1,453
Brooklyn 251,381 73,985 36,769 18,832 2,779
St. Louis 198,615 32,239 59,040 5,366 1,986
Chicago 154,420 39,988 52,316 10,026 9,528
Baltimore 210,870 15,223 35,276 2,138 292
Boston 162,540 56,900 5,606 5,968 13,548
Cincinnati 136,627 18,624 49,446 3,524 1,175
New Orleans 142,943 14,693 15,224 2,005 384
San Francisco 75,754 25,864 13,602 5,166 2,237
Buffalo 71,477 11,264 22,249 3,558 4,113
Washington 95,442 6,948 4,131 1,231 211
Newark 69,175 12,481 15,873 4,040 296
Louisville 75,085 7,626 14,380 930 311
Cleveland 54,014 9,964 15,855 4,530 2,599
Pittsburgh 58,254 13,119 8,703 2,838 282
Jersey City 50,711 17,665 7,151 4,005 556
Detroit 44,196 6,970 12,647 3,282 7,398
Milwaukee 37,667 3,784 22,599 1,395 792
Albany 47,215 13,276 5,168 1,572 843
Providence 51,727 12,085 592 2,426 1,038
Rochester 41,202 6,078 7,730 2,530 2,619
Allegheny City 37,872 4,034 7,665 1,112 152
Richmond 47,260 1,239 1,621 289 42
New Haven 36,482 9,601 2,423 1,087 336
Charleston 44,064 2,180 1,826 234 32
Indianapolis 37,587 3,321 5,286 697 297
Troy 30,246 10,877 1,174 1,575 1,697
Syracuse 29,061 5,172 5,062 1,345 1,167
Worcester 29,159 8,389 325 893 1,960
Lowell 26,493 9,103 34 1,697 3,034
Memphis 33,446 2,987 1,768 589 225
Cambridge 27,579 7,180 482 1,043 2,518
Hartford 26,363 7,438 1,438 787 396
Scranton 19,205 6,491 3,056 1,444 125
Reading 30,059 547 2,648 305 26
Paterson 20,711 5,124 1,429 3,347 128
Kansas City 24,581 2,869 1,884 709 821
Mobile 27,795 2,000 843 386 55
Toledo 20,485 3,032 5,341 694 984
Portland 24,401 3,900 82 557 2,017
Columbus 23,663 1,845 3,982 504 190
Wilmington 25,689 3,503 684 613 47
Dayton 23,050 1,326 4,962 394 131
Lawrence 16,204 7,457 467 2,456 1,563
Utica 18,955 3,496 2,822 1,352 261
Charlestown 21,399 4,803 216 488 1,119
Savannah 24,564 2,197 787 251 63
Lynn 23,298 3,232 17 330 1,133
Fall River 15,288 5,572 37 4,042 1,324
Totals 3,808,770 826,398 564,967 165,024 80,728
In fifty of the largest cities of the United States there was in 1870 a
total native population of 3,808,770 souls; 826,398 persons of Irish
birth; 564,967 of German birth; 165,024 of English birth; 80,728 natives
of British America; 43,055 natives of Scotland; 42,430 natives of
France; 11,218 natives of Austria; and 2,232 natives of Belgium—in all,
1,736,052 persons born in foreign countries.
The foregoing tables give the native population of each of these fifty
cities, with the foreign population belonging to each of these eight
nationalities.
The persons of foreign birth of other nationalities in the above cities
would raise the whole number to about 1,800,000 souls.
It is to be noticed from this table, in the first place, that in these
fifty cities, in 1870, the proportion of foreign-born to native
inhabitants was almost exactly as 18 is to 38—1,800,000 to
3,808,770—while the proportion of foreign-born to native inhabitants in
the entire Union was almost exactly as 5 is to 38—5,567,229 to
38,558,371. It must be confessed that on this showing there was an
apparently or a really undue proportion of our foreign-born citizens
congregated in the large cities. But it should be remembered that among
the native-born population were the 10,892,015 persons who had been born
here of parents, on one or both sides, of foreign birth, and who, to
this extent, were _quasi_-foreign. If these be taken into account, the
proportion of foreign-born and the immediate descendants of foreign-born
persons to the rest of the population throughout the country in 1870
would have been as 16 to 38—16,459,239 to 38,558,371. This is really the
more correct basis upon which to make the comparison; for without doubt
a large proportion of the ten millions of persons born here of foreign
parents were the children of the five millions of foreign-born persons;
and it is perfectly natural that the parents and the children should be
found living in the same localities. After giving to this consideration,
however, all the weight to which it is entitled, the fact still remains
that an apparently excessive proportion of our foreign-born citizens are
to be found in the large cities.
Let us look still closer into the subject. The whole number of persons
of Irish birth in the United States in 1870 was 1,855,827, and of these
826,398, or 44.4 per cent., were living in these fifty cities. There
were 1,690,410 Germans, and 564,967 of them, or 33.4 per cent., were in
the cities; 550,688 English, of whom 165,024, or nearly 30 per cent.,
were in the cities; 489,344 British Americans, of whom 80,728, or only
16.5 per cent., were in the cities; while 30 per cent. of the Scotch,
36.5 per cent. of the French, 36.7 per cent. of the Austrians, and 17.7
per cent. of the Belgians were in the same category. Our Irish
fellow-citizens are the greatest sinners—if any are sinners in this
respect—and after them, in a declining ratio, come the Austrians,
French, Germans, Scotch, English, Belgians, and British Americans. The
Irish, Austrians, French, and Germans are the Roman Catholic emigrants,
and in the wisdom of God it has been ordained that they should be the
ones most crowded into the cities. How have they performed there the
work which he sent them to do?
Our cities are the centres of the intelligence, the culture, and the
wealth of our country. They contain to a very large extent the brains of
the republic. From them issue influences which sway, if they do not
absolutely control, the thoughts and actions of the people. These
influences are not, by any means, always altogether wholesome, but they
are unquestionably potent. The newspapers, magazines, and other
periodicals published in New York, Philadelphia, Boston, St. Louis,
Chicago, Baltimore, Cincinnati, New Orleans, San Francisco, and
Milwaukee have a circulation exceeding that of the similar publications
of all the rest of the country combined. The serial publications of one
firm in New York alone reach into the millions; the aggregate annual
circulation of the New York daily and weekly journals is so large that
mere figures expressing it convey but a faint idea of its extent. The
publisher of a magazine in New York told the writer the other day that
if the copies of his publication issued each year were stacked together,
the column would be three times as high as Trinity Church steeple.
The social influences of the cities upon the rural districts are also
powerful. The cities not only set the fashions in dress, but in
political, moral, and religious thought and custom. The sturdy
independence of the bucolic mind may yet boast of its existence, but it
very often yields to the sway of urban ideas. A lady who had lived all
her life in a small village, in which the only Catholic population
consisted of a handful of poor Irish people, destitute of a church, and
visited only at long intervals by a humble priest who celebrated the
divine Mysteries in an attic over a liquor-store, not long ago came to
New York, and was taken by her friends into one of our magnificent
Catholic churches. The grandeur and beauty of the Mass were for the
first time revealed to her; for the first time she obtained an idea of
what the Catholic Church was and what it taught. By the grace of God her
conversion followed, and, mainly through her exertions and her influence
after her return home, her village is now blessed with a church, a
resident priest, and a Catholic population composed largely of converts.
In very many of our rural localities all over the Union the Catholics
are few and poor; in too many of them the idea of a Roman Catholic in
the minds of the natives is still associated only with the idea of an
ignorant fanatic, who worships images, pays half a dollar to a priest to
pardon him for a crime, and believes that the Pope is God. But when the
country merchant of such a locality comes to New York to make his
purchases, and sees the splendid Catholic churches here, and finds,
perhaps, that the great importer with whom he deals, or the wealthy
banker, or the renowned lawyer to whom he is introduced, is a Roman
Catholic, and not unseldom an Irishman or a German, his eyes are opened
and his mind is prepared for the reception of the truth. In a word, the
congregation of foreign-born emigrants, the most of whom are Catholics,
in our large cities, has had the effect of making the Catholic church in
these cities a noticeable and a respectable fact, and of thereby
accomplishing one of the preliminaries in the work which it has yet to
perform in the republic. The influence of this fact is to be perceived,
also, in the changed tone of the secular press with regard to the
church. Respectable journalists, with few and decreasing exceptions,
have become ashamed to repeat the vulgar and senseless slanders and the
worn-out calumnies concerning the church, her ministers, her dogmas, and
her sacraments which were so current twenty years ago. In communities
consisting in an appreciable and often in a large proportion of
intelligent, wealthy, and influential Catholics, the able editors do not
venture any longer to amuse their readers with arguments based on the
assumption that the church is the foe of knowledge and of education, and
that her mission is to degrade, enslave, and pauperize mankind. In
cities where the spires of dozens and scores of Catholic churches,
tipped with the emblem of our salvation, point towards heaven; where
Catholic hospitals, asylums, schools, and academies abound; where many
of the most enterprising and wealthy merchants, manufacturers, and
bankers are Catholics; where in the front rank of all the professions
Catholics are found—in these communities it is no longer a social
disgrace or a mark of singularity to be a Catholic, and a convert to the
faith is no longer looked upon as a person of weak intellect or a slave
to a benumbing and degrading superstition. We shall show, in the
subsequent pages of our article, that for all this, to a very great
extent, and under what seems to have been the direct guidance of God, we
are indebted to the foreign-born population of the country, and that its
accomplishment was made possible, humanly speaking, by their
congregating themselves in the cities instead of dispersing in small
bodies throughout the agricultural regions of the country. But we shall
show, also, that, the work of God having thus far been accomplished, the
time has now arrived when the future emigration to the United States
should be directed towards the rural districts, under conditions which,
until now, were practically impossible; and we shall seek to point out
in what manner this new colonization may be best directed in order to
promote the welfare of the emigrants themselves, the prosperity of our
country, and the greater glory of God.
ALBA’S DREAM.
BY THE AUTHOR OF “ARE YOU MY WIFE?” “A SALON IN PARIS BEFORE THE WAR,”
ETC.
PART I.
Once upon a time, some sixty years ago, on one of the bleakest points of
the coast of Picardy, high perched like a light-house overhanging the
sea, there was a building called the Fortress. You may see the ruins of
it yet. It had been an abbey in olden times, and credible tales were
told of a bearded abbot who “walked” at high water on the western
parapet when the moon was full. One wing of the Fortress was a ruin at
the time this story opens; the other had braved the stress of time and
tempest, and looked out over the sea defiant as the rock on which it
stood. The Caboffs lived in it. Jean Caboff was a wiry, lithe old man of
seventy—a seafaring man every inch of him. His wealth was boundless,
people said, and they also said that he had gained it as a pirate on the
high seas. There was no proof that this was true; but every one believed
it, and the belief invested Jean Caboff with a sort of wicked prestige
which was not without its fascination in the eyes of the peaceful,
unadventurous population of Gondriac. Caboff had a wife and three sons;
the two eldest were away fighting with Bonaparte on the Rhine; Marcel,
the youngest, was at home. A shy, awkward lad, he kept aloof from the
village boys, never went bird’s-nesting or fishing with them, but moped
like an owl up in his weather-beaten home. They were unsocial people,
the Caboffs; they never asked any one inside their door; but the few who
accidentally penetrated within the Fortress told wonderful stories of
what they saw there; they talked of silken hangings and Persian carpets,
and mirrors and pictures in golden frames, and marble men and maidens
writhing and dancing in fantastic attitudes; of costly cabinets and
jewelled vases, until the old corsair’s abode was believed to be a sort
of enchanted castle. The stray visitors were too dazzled to notice
certain things that jarred on this profuse magnificence. They did not
notice that the damp had eaten away the gilded cornices, and the rats
nibbled freely at the rich carpets, or that Jean Caboff smoked his pipe
in a high-backed wooden chair, while Mme. Caboff cut out her home-spun
linen on a stout deal table, the two forming a quaint and not
unpicturesque contrast to the silken splendor of their surroundings.
Some five miles inland, beyond a wide stretch of gorse-grown moor, rose
a wood, chiefly of pine-trees, and within the wood, a castle—a fine old
Gothic castle where the De Gondriacs had dwelt for centuries. The castle
and its owners, their grandeur and state and power, were the pride of
the country, every peasant along the coast for fifty miles knew the
history of the lords of Gondriac as well as, mayhap sometimes better
than, he knew his catechism. The family at present consisted of Rudolf,
Marquis de Gondriac, and his son Hermann. The Marquis was a hale man of
sixty; Hermann a handsome lad of eighteen, who was at college now in
Paris, so that M. le Marquis had no company but his books and his gun in
the long autumn days. He was a silent, haughty man, who lived much alone
and seldom had friends to stay with him. When Hermann was at home the
aspect of the place changed; the château opened its doors with ancient
hospitality, and laughter and music woke up the echoes of the old halls,
and the village was astir as if a royal progress had halted on the
plain; but when Hermann departed things fell back into the stagnant life
he had stirred for a moment. It was natural that the young man’s
holidays were eagerly looked forward to at Gondriac. But one August
came, and, instead of returning home, Hermann joined a regiment that was
on its way to the frontier. He went off in high-hearted courage as to
the fulfilment of his boyish dreams. M. le Marquis, who had himself
served in the guards of the Comte d’Artois, was proud of his son, of his
soldier-like bearing and manly spirit, and kept the anguish of his own
heart well out of sight as he bade the boy farewell. “I will come back a
marshal of France, father,” was Hermann’s good-by.
Not long after his departure tidings were received of the death of
Hugues Caboff, the old pirate’s eldest son. He had fallen gloriously on
the field of battle; but glory is a sorry salve for broken hearts, and
there was weeping in the Fortress that day—a mother weeping and refusing
to be comforted. Old Jean Caboff bore his grief with an attempt at
stoicism that went far to soften men’s hearts towards him—farther than
his gold, which they said was ill-got, and his charity, which they
called ostentation.
“Who may tell what will come next?” said Peltran, the host of the
village inn.
“They say that M. le Marquis has been over to see the Caboffs,” said a
customer, who dropped in to discuss the event. People felt for the
Caboffs, but, there was no denying it, this sad news was a break in the
dull monotony of Gondriac life.
“I saw his carriage at the foot of the cliff,” said Peltran; “he stayed
full fifteen minutes up at the Fortress. Père Caboff conducted him down
to his carriage, and Marcel stood watching them till it was out of
sight.”
“It must have consoled them mightily to have M. le Marquis come in and
sit talking to them in that neighborly fashion,” remarked lame Pierre, a
hero who had lost a leg and an eye at Aboukir; “that, and poor Hugues
being killed by a cannon-ball under the emperor’s own eye, ought to
cheer up the Caboffs wonderfully.”
“Ay, ay,” said Peltran; “God tempers the wind to the shorn lamb.”
“M. le Marquis looked as down-hearted as if he had lost a child of his
own,” observed Pierre; “may be he was thinking whose turn it might be
next.”
“There goes Mère Virginie with the little one!” said Peltran; and all
present turned their heads towards the window and looked out with an
expression of interest, as if the objects in view were a rare and
pleasant sight. And yet it was one that met them in their daily walks by
the roadside and on the cliff—the little old lady in her nun-like dress,
with her keen gray eyes and sweet smile, and the dark-eyed,
elfin-looking child whose name was Alba. Alba was always singing.
“Is not your little throat tired, my child?” said Virginie, as the
blithe voice kept on soaring and trilling by her side.
“I am never tired singing, petite mère! Do the angels tire of it
sometimes, I wonder?”
“Nay, the angels cannot tire; they are perfectly happy.”
“And I, petite mère—am I not perfectly happy?”
“Is there nothing you long for, nothing you would be the happier for
having?”
“Oh! many things,” cried Alba: “I wish I were grown up; I wish I were as
beautiful as the flowers; I wish I had a voice like the nightingale—like
a whole woodful of nightingales; I wish I lived in a castle; I wish I
were so rich that I might make all the poor people happy in Gondriac; I
wish everybody loved me as you do. Oh! I should like them all to adore
me, petite mère,” cried the child, clasping her little hands with
energy.
“Nay, my child, we must adore none but God; woe to us if we do!” said
Virginie, and her face contracted as with a sudden pain. “But it seems
to me, with so many wishes unfulfilled, you are a long way off from
perfect happiness yet?”
“But I am always dreaming that they are fulfilled, and that does as
well, you know.”
Yes, perhaps it did, Virginie thought, as she bent a wistful smile on
the young dreamer’s face. Alba’s face was full of dreams—beautiful and
passionate, changeful as the sunbeams, tender and strong, pleading and
imperious by turns. How would the dreams evolve themselves from out that
yearning, untamed spirit that shone with a dangerous light through the
dark eyes? Would they prove a mirage, luring her on to some delusive
goal, and leaving her to perish amidst the golden waste of sands, or
would they be a loadstar beckoning faithfully to a safe and happy
destiny?
The child gave promise of rich fruit; her instincts were pure and true,
her heart was tender; but there was a wild element in her nature that
might easily overrule the rest, and work destruction to herself and
others, unless it were reduced in time to serviceable bondage. Who could
tell how this would be—whether the flower would keep its promise and
prove loyal to the bud, or whether the fair blossom would perish in its
bloom, and the tree bring forth a harvest of bitter fruit?
“It will be as you will it,” a wise man had said to Virginie; “the
destiny of the child is in the hands of the mother, as the course of the
ship is in the hands of the pilot.”
“Then Alba’s will be a happy one!” Virginie replied; “if love be
omnipotent here below, my treasure is safe.”
* * * * *
Hermann de Gondriac had won his epaulets. Every post brought letters to
the castle full of battles and victories; and though the young soldier
was modest in his warlike narrative, it was clear to M. le Marquis that
Hermann shone like a bright, particular star even in the galaxy of the
_grande armée_, and that now, as in olden times, France had reason to be
proud of the De Gondriacs. If the boy would but calm his rhapsodies
about Bonaparte! M. le Marquis’ patrician soul heaved at the sight of
this enthusiasm for the upstart who had muzzled his country and usurped
the crown of her lawful princes. But he was a great captain, and it was
natural, perhaps, that his soldiers should only think of this when he
led them in triumph from field to field.
So far Hermann bore a charmed life. Not so the Caboffs. One day, some
eight months after the death of the eldest son, the second brother
followed him—“killed gloriously on the immortal field of Wagram,” the
official letter announced in its most soothing style. M. le Marquis’
carriage was again seen standing at the foot of the cliff, and Peltran
informed the population that he had remained over twenty minutes this
time at the Fortress.
“M. le Marquis is a true _grand seigneur_, and never begrudges any
condescension for the good of his inferiors,” observed the old tory
host. “This time it was only Marcel who accompanied him down the cliff.
Old Caboff, they say, was more cut up by this last blow; still, grief
ought not to make a man selfish and unthankful.”
“Just so,” said lame Pierre, who sat puffing in the bar; “and it’s only
what those two poor lads had to expect; moreover, since a man must die,
better be killed in battle than die of the small-pox.”
“All the same, it’s hard on the folks up yonder,” remarked a bystander,
“and it isn’t their money-bags—no, nor even M. le Marquis’ good
words—that can comfort them to-day.”
Soon after this M. le Marquis left Gondriac rather suddenly one morning.
After reading his letters he ordered his valise to be got ready, and in
an hour he was posting to X——. There he dismissed the postchaise, and no
one knew whither or how he had continued his route. Gondriac busied
itself in endless conjectures as to the purport and destination of this
mysterious journey. Had M. le Marquis been summoned to Paris to assist
the government in some political crisis? Had he gone over to England to
pour oil on the angry waters there? For the king of England was full of
wrath and jealousy against the great emperor, and it was well known at
Gondriac that he was plotting foul play of some sort against France. Or,
again, could M. le Marquis’ hasty departure have had any reference to M.
le Comte? Perhaps M. le Comte was wounded or a prisoner; who could tell?
So the wiseacres gossiped, adopting first one theory, then another.
A month went by without throwing any light on the mystery. Then the cold
set in suddenly, and the gossips had something else to talk about. The
cruel winter was down upon them, catching them unprepared, so how were
they to face it? They were only in October, and the wind blew from the
northeast as if it were March, keeping up its shrill, hard whistle day
and night, and the sea, as if it were exasperated by the sound, roared
and foamed and thundered, till it seemed like a battle between them
which should make most noise. And it was hard to say who carried the
day.
One night, when the battle was at its fiercest, the wind shrieking its
loudest, and the sea rolling up its biggest waves, Alba sat at her
window watching the tempest with thrills of sympathetic terror. Virginie
thought the child was in bed and asleep hours ago, and she was glad of
it; for the storm drove right against the cottage, and burst upon it
every now and then with a violence that shook her in her chair and made
the walls rock. She was knitting away, but between the stitches many a
prayer went up for those who were out breasting the fury of the
hurricane. Suddenly a sound came up from the sea that made her start to
her feet with a cry. Boom! boom! boom! it came in quick succession,
leaping over the rocks with a sharp, dull crash. The door of the little
sitting-room was thrown open, and Alba stood on the threshold, white as
a ghost, her dark eyes gleaming. “It is the signal-gun, mother!” she
cried. “There is a ship in distress!”
“How came you up and dressed, child?” exclaimed Virginie.
“Mother, I could not sleep; I have been watching the storm. Hark! there
it is again. Why don’t they answer it? Let us hurry down to the beach.”
“Of what use would we be there, my child?” said Virginie. “Let us rather
kneel down and pray that help may come.”
“I cannot pray; I cannot stay here safe and quiet while that gun is
firing! Hark! there it is again. Oh! why don’t they make haste? Mother,
I must go! If you won’t come I will go by myself.” Alba, as she spoke,
threw back her head with the wild, free movement that Virginie knew, and
knew that she could no more control than she could check the flight of a
bird on the wing.
“I will go with you,” she cried, and, wrapping a cloak round Alba, she
flung another round herself, and then lighted her lantern, and the two
sallied forth into the storm, clinging fast to one another for support
until they got under the shelter of the overhanging cliff. Lights were
glancing here and there, hurrying down from the cottages, and a few
fishermen were already on the beach watching the distressed ship,
helpless and hopeless. Presently old Caboff appeared, holding his
lantern high above his head—an aged, shrivelled man, likely to be of
little use in this desperate strait; but such was the prestige which his
supposed antecedents lent him in the eyes of the panic-stricken group
that of one accord they turned to him as to the only one who might give
help or counsel. The night was pitch dark, and the blinding rain and
deafening roar of the breakers seemed to make the darkness thicker. It
was impossible to see the ship, except when the flash of the gun lighted
up the scene for a second. In the lull of the billows—that is, between
the heavy sweep of their rise and fall—the cries of the crew and the
whistle of the captain issuing his commands were faintly audible. How
was it with the ship? Had she struck upon a rock, or was she simply
going down before the storm? It was impossible to say. On finding that
her signals were heard and her position seen from land, she slackened
fire, and the gun only spoke every three minutes or so. In the interval
of unbroken darkness all conjecture as to the immediate cause of the
peril was at a stand-still. Caboff said she had struck upon a rock; the
others thought she was simply disabled and rolling in the trough of the
sea.
“Can we put out a boat? Who is for risking it?” said Caboff, pitching
his voice to a whistle that was heard distinctly above the roar of the
black breakers clamoring for the moon. There was no answer, but heads
were shaken and hands gesticulated in strong dissent.
Alba pushed her way into the midst of the group. “What does it matter
what the danger is? Go and help them!” she cried. “If you don’t help
them they will all perish!”
“We cannot help them, little one,” said an old fisherman. “No boat could
live in such a sea. See how the waves run up in mountains to our very
feet, and think what it must be out yonder! See, now the signal-gun
lights it up! Look! again it flashes.”
It was an appalling sight while the flashes lasted. The waves, rushing
back, left the side of the ship visible, and then, returning with a
tremendous sweep, broke over her and buried her out of sight in foam.
The stoutest heart might well recoil from venturing to put out in such a
sea.
“Naught but a miracle could do it,” said one of the oldest and hardiest
of the fishermen; “and we none of us can work miracles.”
“God can!” cried Alba, and she looked like the spirit of the storm, her
dark hair streaming, the light of courage and scorn and beseeching hope
illuminating her face with an unearthly beauty—“God can, and he does for
brave men; but ye are cowards!”
“Gently, little one; men will risk their lives to do some good, but it
is suicide to rush on death where there is not a chance of saving any
one.”
It was Caboff who spoke, and his words were followed by strong approval
from the rest.
“Ye are cowards!” repeated Alba passionately. “God would work the
miracle, if ye had courage and trusted him. See, there is the light
now!” She pointed to the sky, where, as if to justify her promise, the
moon came forth, and, scattering the darkness, shed her full blue
radiance over sea and shore. The storm was now at its height. The guns
had ceased to give tongue, and the crowd stood watching the scene in
mute horror, while the reverberating shore shook under their feet at
every shock of the furious billows.
Caboff was right. The ship had struck upon the Scissors, and, caught
between the two blade-like rocks, was rapidly falling to pieces. The
deck was deserted. The crew had either gone down into the cabin to meet
their fate or they had been swept away by the devouring waters. One man
alone was descried by Caboff’s keen eyes clinging to the broken mast. “I
will risk it!” cried the old pirate, after watching the wreck for some
minutes intently. “I will risk it; my old life may as well go out in
saving his. Come, boys, help me to push down a boat. I must have three
pairs of hands. Who is to the fore?”
A dozen men rushed forward; the boat was at the water’s edge in a
moment, and after a short scuffle—for now all were fighting for
precedence—three men got into it, and the others, putting their hands to
the stern, launched it with their might. A cheer rang out from the
shore; but close upon it came a cry, piercing and full of terror. It was
Marcel Caboff, who was flying down the cliff, and reached the scene just
as the boat put off.
“Father! father!” cried the lad, and he fell on his knees sobbing.
“Don’t be afraid, Marcel,” said Alba, falling on her knees beside him;
“he is a brave man, and God will protect him!”
Something in the tone of the child’s voice made him turn and look at
her, and as he caught sight of the beam of confidence, almost of
exultation, on her face, he felt his courage rise and despair was
silenced. But what meant that shout?
The boat was no sooner borne out on the receding wave than it went down
into the sea as if never to rise again; there was a moment of breathless
suspense, and then the wave rose and tossed it violently to and fro, and
flung it back upon the shore. The men who had launched it were still
upon the spot, and rushed forward to seize the boat and help the brave
fellows out again. One was so stunned by the force of the shock that he
became insensible and had to be lifted out. Old Caboff refused to stir.
“It is madness to try it again,” said his companions. “A cork could not
live in such a sea!”
“I will risk no man’s life,” said Caboff. “I will go alone. Here, my
men, lend a hand once more!”
There was a clamor of expostulation from all present; but the old man
was not to be moved.
“I will go with you, father,” said Marcel, stepping in and seizing an
oar.
“You here, lad! And your mother?”
“She sent me to look after you. _Allons! mes amis_; push us out and say
God speed us!”
But there was now a third figure in the boat. “Now we are three, and God
will make a fourth!” cried Alba; then, turning to the men, “Push us
out,” she said, “and then go home, lest ye take cold here in the rain!”
“Good God! the child is mad,” cried Virginie, rushing forward to snatch
her away. But it was too late; a heavy wave rolled in and made the boat
heave suddenly, which the men seeing, with one impulse put their hands
to it, till the breaker washed under it and swept it out to sea once
more. Virginie stood there like one turned to stone, watching in dumb
horror the boat drifting away on to the seething waters. Alba was on her
knees, her arms outstretched, her face uplifted in the moonlight,
transfigured into an apparition of celestial beauty—a heaven-sent
messenger from Him who can unchain the storm and bid the winds and waves
be still. The rough men, subdued by the sublimity of the scene, knelt
down like little children and began to pray.
Gallantly the little boat rode on, now drowned out of sight, now rising
lightly on the crest of the wave, while the sea, as if enraged at so
much daring, redoubled in fury and pitched it to and fro like a ball.
Old Caboff, grown young again, worked away like a sea-horse. Many a time
had he and Death looked into each other’s faces, but never closer than
now; and it was not the old seaman who quailed. Marcel, feeble Marcel,
seemed endowed with the energy and strength of an athlete. They were now
close upon the sinking ship; but the peril grew as they approached it.
There was a lull for one moment, as if in very weariness the hurricane
drew a breath; then a huge wave rose up like a mighty water-tower,
oscillated for a moment like a house about to fall, and, dashing against
the boat, swallowed it up in an avalanche of foam. Five seconds of
mortal suspense followed; not a gasp broke the horrible silence on the
beach. But the boat reappeared and rode bravely on to within a stone’s
throw of the ship. The solitary man on deck was signalling to them with
one hand, while with the other he clung to the mast. At last the little
skiff was close under the bows. Old Caboff threw up a rope-ladder; it
missed its aim, once, twice, three times. “How the old fellow is
swearing! I can see it by his fury,” cried one of the fishermen,
stamping in sympathetic rage. “Ha! the poor devil has caught it. Bravo!
Hurrah! He is in the boat!”
Then there was a cheer, as if the very rocks had found a voice to
applaud the brave ones who had conquered the storm. Wind and tide were
with them as they returned, the waves pitching the boat before them like
an angry boy kicking a stone, until one final plunge sent it flying on
the beach.
“Vive Caboff! Vive Marcel! Vive la petite Alba!” And every hand was
stretched out in welcome. Then there was a pause, a sudden hush, as when
some strong emotion is checked by another.
“Monsieur le Marquis!”
“Yes, my friends, thanks to these brave hearts I am amongst you and
alive.”
He was the first to step from the boat; then he took Alba in his arms
and lifted her ashore into Virginie’s. Marcel alighted next, and was
turning to assist his father when M. le Marquis pushed him gently aside
and held out both hands to his deliverer. But the old man still grasped
his oar and made no sign.
“Mon père!” cried Marcel, laying a hand on his arm, “mon père!”
But old Caboff did not answer him. He was dead.
* * * * *
The _grande armée_ was still winning famous victories, ploughing up
sunny harvest-fields with cannon-balls, and making homes and hearts
desolate.
“There is one comfort,” said old Peltran, sitting moodily in his
deserted bar: “when things come to the worst they must get better.”
“They’ve not come to the worst yet,” observed a neighbor. “There’s lots
of things that might happen, that haven’t happened yet; the plague might
come, or the blight, or the _grande armée_ might get beaten. We’ve not
come to the worst yet, believe you me.”
“There’s one thing anyhow that can’t happen,” said Peltran: “there can’t
be another recruitment in Gondriac, for there isn’t a man left amongst
us fit to shoulder a musket; we are all either too old, or lame, or
blind of an eye.”
“There’s young Caboff is neither one nor the other. To be sure, he’s not
the stuff to make a soldier out of; but when they’ve used up all the men
they must make the best of the milk-sops.”
“Marcel is a widow’s only son; he’s safe,” said Peltran.
“From one day to another the last reserves may be called out,” observed
the neighbor; “it will be hard on the mother, after two of her sons
going for cannon’s meat. It was a plucky thing of the old father putting
out that night. I wonder if he knew for certain who was on the deck of
the ship.”
“If he didn’t he wouldn’t have been such an ass as to put out,” said
Peltran. “Why should he fling away his bit of life for a stranger that
he owed nothing to?”
“For the matter of that, he owed nothing to M. le Marquis; the Caboffs,
they say, are rich enough to buy up every inch of land in Gondriac.”
“Folks may owe more than money can pay,” retorted Peltran. “M. le
Marquis was very kind to the old man when his sons were killed, and,
whatever Caboff’s sins may have been, he had a fine sense of his natural
obligations. It didn’t surprise me much when I saw how handsomely he
paid off his debt to M. le Marquis.”
“They say that monseigneur swore to Mme. Caboff that if ever she asked
him a favor, whatever it was, he would grant it,” said the neighbor.
“Very likely,” remarked the host. “M. le Marquis has a grand-seigneur
way of doing everything. I hope the Caboffs will have the delicacy never
to abuse it.”
Not many days after this conversation Mme. Caboff was to be seen walking
across the moor on her way to the castle. She looked an older woman than
she was; sorrow had broken her down, and it would take little now to
destroy the frail tenure of life that remained to her.
This was the first time she had ever entered the castle. Under other
circumstances the visit would have thrown the widow into some
trepidation. She would have been pleasantly fluttered at the prospect of
an interview with the great lord in his own halls, and would have been
much exercised on her way thither as to what she should say to him; but
her mind was full of other cares to-day.
M. le Marquis was at home. He had spent the morning over a letter from
Captain Hermann de Gondriac, which contained a graphic personal
narrative of the retreat from Moscow of that disastrous expedition from
which, out of the fifty thousand cavalry who went forth, only one
hundred and twenty-five officers returned. A pang of anguish and
patriotic indignation wrung the old nobleman’s heart as he read and
re-read the terrible story, but tears of deep thankfulness fell from the
father’s eyes at the thought that his son was spared and was returning
safe and unhurt with that decimated army of starved, exasperated
spectres. The marquis was perusing the letter for the tenth time when
Mme. Caboff was announced. He rose to receive her with a warmth of
welcome that boded well for her petition.
“M. le Marquis, you made me give you a promise once—that night; do you
remember it?” she said, holding his white hand lightly between her two
black-kidded ones, and looking up into his face with the meek and hungry
look of a dog begging for a bone which may be refused and a kick given
instead.
“Remember it? Yes,” replied the Marquis, returning the timid pressure
with a cordial grasp. “You are in trouble; sit down, madame, and tell me
what there is that I can do to make it lighter for you.”
“My son, my last and only son, Marcel, is called out, M. le Marquis!”
“And you want to find a substitute for him. It shall be done. I will set
about it without an hour’s delay.”
“M. le Marquis, it cannot be done; there are no more substitutes to be
had. I would give every penny I possess to get one, but there are none
left. The widows’ only sons were the last spared, and now they must go.
Marcel has been to the prefecture, and they told him there was no help
for it: he must join the new levy to-morrow at X——M. le Marquis, have
pity on me! It will kill me to let him go; and, oh! it is so dreadful to
see the boy.”
“He is frightened at the prospect of going to battle?” There was an
imperceptible ring of scorn under the courteous tone of the aristocrat
as he put the question.
“He is mad with delight, M. le Marquis; he has always been wild to
follow his brothers and be killed as they were.”
“Brave lad! But he shall not have his wish; he shall not be made food
for Bonaparte’s cannon,” said the Marquis. “Go home in peace, madame,
and break the bad news to him as tenderly as you can.”
“Thank God! God bless you, M. le Marquis!” said the widow fervently.
“But is it indeed possible? I can hardly believe in so great a joy.”
M. le Marquis was silent for a moment, as if making a calculation; then
he said musingly:
“The emperor is in Paris to-day; I will start in an hour from this and
see him to-night. He owes me something. I never thought to have asked a
favor at his hands; but I will stoop to ask him that your son be
exempted from the service.”
“O M. le Marquis!” Mme. Caboff began to cry with joy; but remembering
suddenly that this great emperor was conquering the whole world and
turning kings in and out like valets—for Gondriac heard of his fine
doings and was very proud of them—it occurred to her that he might by
possibility refuse a request proffered even by so great a man as M. le
Marquis. “You think his majesty is sure not to refuse you, monsieur?”
she added timidly.
M. de Gondriac was too well cased in his armor of pride to be touched by
the poor woman’s unconscious insult; he smiled and replied with a quiet
irony that escaped his visitor: “I think that is very unlikely, Mme.
Caboff. Be at rest,” he continued kindly. “I pledge you my word that
your son shall not be taken from you. Instead of going to-morrow to X——,
he had better start off at once with a letter which I will give him to
the prefect.”
He wrote the letter and handed it to Mme. Caboff.
* * * * *
It was late that evening when M. de Gondriac arrived in Paris. He drove
straight to the Tuileries. Time was precious, and he had travelled in
court dress, so as not to lose an hour at the end of the journey. It did
not occur to him that there could be any delay in reaching the presence
of the emperor. Petitioners of his class were not so common at the great
man’s door that it should close upon them because of some informal haste
in their demand for admittance. He handed in his card and asked to see
the lord chamberlain. After some delay he was shown into the presence of
that high functionary, to whom he stated his desire for an immediate
audience of his majesty. The lord chamberlain smilingly informed him
that this was impossible; mortals were not admitted into the august
presence in this abrupt manner; but he—the lord chamberlain—would
present the request at his earliest opportunity to-morrow, and
communicate in due time with M. le Marquis.
“Things do not proceed so summarily at court,” he added graciously. The
marquis felt his blood boil. This mushroom duke telling a De Gondriac
how things were done at court!
“I know enough of courts to be aware that on occasions etiquette must
yield to weightier reasons,” he replied. “Oblige me, M. le Duc, by
taking my message at once to the emperor.”
There was something in his tone which compelled the obsequious courtier
to obey. He withdrew, and returned presently with a face full of amazed
admiration to announce to the visitor that his majesty was willing to
receive him.
The emperor was standing with his hands behind his back in the embrasure
of a window when M. de Gondriac entered. He did not turn round at once,
but waited until the door closed, and then, walking up to M. de
Gondriac, he said brusquely: “I have invited you many times, marquis,
and you have never come. What brings you here to-night?” The speech was
curt, but not insolent; it did not even sound uncivil.
“Sire, I am an old man, and it is so long since I have been at court
that I have forgotten how to behave myself. My lord chamberlain was
deeply shocked, I could perceive, at my breach of ceremony in coming to
the palace in this abrupt way without going through the usual
observances. My motive will, I hope, excuse me to your majesty.”
“Yes, yes, I will let you off easier than Bassano,” said the emperor.
“But what do you want of me?” He had his hands still behind his back,
and, without desiring his visitor to be seated, he turned to pace up and
down the room.
“I have come to ask a favor of your majesty.”
“Ha! that is well. I am glad of that. Do you know, that boy of yours has
behaved admirably,” he said, facing round and looking at the marquis.
“We are accustomed to fight, sire,” replied M. de Gondriac. “It came
naturally to my son; he had, moreover, the advantage of drawing his
maiden sword under a great captain.”
“I mean to keep him by me. I have appointed him on my own staff. We are
not done with war. I am raising troops for a campaign in the spring.”
“Sire, I am aware of it; it is precisely about that that I have come to
speak to your majesty. There is in my village a widow whose two sons
have fallen in the service of the country; there remains to her one more
son, a lad of nineteen....”
“And she is ambitious that he should share the glorious fate of his
brothers; that is natural,” broke in the emperor.
“Sire, she is a widow, and this boy is all she has in the world. It is
no longer possible to procure a substitute; therefore I come to crave at
your hands his exemption from the service.”
“What! you would rob France of a soldier, when they are so scarce that
gold cannot buy one? Is this your notion of duty to your country, M. de
Gondriac? Is it thus you aristocrats understand patriotism?” The emperor
confronted him with a flashing eye.
“My son has answered that question, sire.”
“Tut! And because, forsooth, your son has done his duty, you would have
other men’s sons betray theirs! A peasant makes as good a soldier as a
peer, let me tell you. Because your son condescended to share the glory
of the _grande armée_ you expect me to make you a present of a strong
young soldier! I do not understand such sentimental logic.”
“Neither do I, sire. I was not putting forward the services of my son as
a claim for this poor lad, but those of his two brothers who lost their
lives, one at Wagram, the other at Friedland.”
“What better could have befallen them?”
“Nothing, in my estimation; but their mother....”
“France is their mother; she claims their allegiance and their life
before any one. The man who puts his mother before his country is a fool
or a coward!”
“This young man has not asked to be exempted; his mother came and
besought me to have him spared to her, and, counting on your gratitude
and generosity, sire, I have come to lay her petition at your feet. The
boy himself is frantic to be off and die like his brothers.”
“Then he shall have his wish and France shall count one more hero. Tell
his mother she shall have a pension. Give me her name, and it shall be
done at once.”
“She is not in want of it, sire; she has wealth enough to buy a score of
men, if they were to be had.”
“But they are not, and so her son must go.”
“This is your last word, sire?”
“Yes, marquis, my last.”
“Then I have only to crave your majesty’s forgiveness for my intrusion.”
M. de Gondriac bowed and was moving towards the door, when the emperor
called out:
“Stay a moment. What motive have you in pleading this widow’s cause so
strongly?”
The marquis in a few words told the story of that memorable night when
Caboff saved him at the cost of his own life. The emperor listened to
the end without interrupting him; then he resumed his walk, and,
speaking from the other end of the room, “You are naturally anxious to
pay back so heavy a debt,” he said. “Would this feeling carry you the
length of making some sacrifice?”
How could Bonaparte ask the question? Did not M. de Gondriac’s presence
here to-night answer it exhaustively?
“I think I have proved that, sire,” he answered coldly.
The emperor was silent for a while; then, turning round, he looked
fixedly at the marquis and said:
“I withdraw my unconditional refusal. I will let you know to-morrow on
what terms I consent to exempt the son of your deliverer from dying on
the field of battle.”
M. de Gondriac bowed low. “I have the honor to salute your majesty.”
“_Au revoir_, marquis.”
What did he mean, and what was this condition so mysteriously hinted at,
and only to be declared after the night’s preparation?
M. de Gondriac was sitting over his breakfast next morning when an
estafette rode up to his old hôtel, bearing a large official envelope
stamped with the imperial arms and the talismanic words, “Maison de
l’Empereur.” M. le Marquis broke the seal and ran his eye down the large
sheet, and then tossed it from him with an exclamation of anger and
contempt.
“Enter _his_ service! Play lackey at the court of an upstart who is
drenching my country in blood from sheer vanity and ambition—a usurper
who is keeping my liege sovereign in exile, and the best part of my
kindred in idleness, or else in a servitude more humiliating than the
dreariest inactivity! A De Gondriac tricked out in the livery of a
mountebank king like him! Ha! ha! M. de Bonaparte, when you give that
spectacle to the gods, ... _je vous en fais mon compliment_!”
M. le Marquis laughed a low, musical laugh as he muttered these
reflections to himself. But presently he ceased laughing and his face
took a dark and troubled look. The emperor made his acceptance of this
offer the price of Marcel Caboff’s exemption. If he rejected it, the lad
must join. “Would gratitude carry you the length of a sacrifice?” When
the question had been put to him, it seemed to M. de Gondriac that he
had forestalled it; but the emperor evidently did not think so, and now
he was putting him to the test. It was the severest he could have
chosen. When Hermann de Gondriac took service under Bonaparte, the old
nobleman considered his son was making a fine sacrifice of personal
pride to patriotism; but the service here, at least, was a noble one,
and rendered to France rather than to the upstart who had captured her.
But this other was of a totally different order. Even in the bygone
days, when France had a legitimate king and real court, the De Gondriacs
had been shy of taking office in the royal household, preferring the
service of the camp, diplomacy abroad, or statesmanship at home; to
stoop now to be a courtier to Bonaparte was a degradation not to be
calmly contemplated. If the tyrant had asked any sacrifice but this, M.
le Marquis said to himself, he would have made it gladly; but this was
impossible. It meant the surrender of his self-respect, of those
principles whose integrity he had hitherto proudly maintained at no
small personal risk and cost. Before he had finished his coffee, the
question was settled, and he rose to write his answer.
Trifles sometimes affect us with the force of great repellant causes.
The act of taking the pen in his hand brought before him vividly the
last time he had held it: it was in his library at Gondriac; the widow
sat watching him with a swelling heart, made glad by his promise
solemnly given: “I pledge you my word that your son shall not be taken
from you.” M. le Marquis laid down his pen and fell to thinking. “No, I
can’t do it,” he said after a long pause. “I can’t belie the traditions
of my race; I can’t stain the old name and turn saltimbanque in my old
age.” He took up the pen and wrote to the emperor, declining his offer.
The next day the town of X—— was full of excitement. The new recruits
were pouring in, sometimes in boisterous crowds, singing and hurrahing,
sometimes in sober knots of twos and threes, sometimes singly,
accompanied by weeping relatives, mostly women. There had been an
official attempt to get up a show of warlike enthusiasm, but it had
failed; people were growing sick of the glories of war, sick of sending
sons and brothers and husbands to be massacred for Bonaparte’s good
pleasure. The recruits were called out by name, and answered sullenly as
they passed through the Mairie out to the market-place, where the
sergeant was waiting to give them their first lesson in drill, showing
them how to stand straight and get into position.
“Marcel Caboff!” called out the recruiting agent.
“_Remplacé!_”
“By whom?”
“Rudolf, Marquis de Gondriac!”
TO BE CONTINUED.
HIGHER.
I have lifted up my eyes unto the mountains, whence help shall come to
me.—_Ps._ cxx.
Too late have I known thee, O Infinite Beauty! too late have I loved
thee, O Beauty ever ancient and new!—_St. Augustine._
I.
'Mid wide green meadows, made more fair with flowers—
Tall, golden lilies, swaying in the sun,
Slight, clustering rue that web of silver spun—
I lingered dreaming through the day’s first hours.
About me men in work-day toil were bent,
Swift levelling the daisies’ drift of snow,
The clover’s purple sweetness laying low,
And ripened grain whose summer life was spent.
I sat where leafy trees a shadow wrought
Amid the broad, warm sunshine of the plain,
Where, undisturbed, poured forth the wood-birds’ strain
And fancy’s magic played with every thought:
A whole life centred in each daisy-round,
And work-day toil seemed but a slumbrous sound.
II.
Low rippling at my feet a loitering stream
Slipt, murmuring music to each listening stone,
Or flung its silver laughter where soft shone
The slant sunbeam breaking the shadows’ dream;
Betwixt the robins’ song the swift blue-bird
Flashed like a heavenly message through the shade
Where with the sunshine gentlest breezes played,
And quiet shadows to soft motion stirred.
Between me and the meadow’s smitten flow’rs
The fresh June roses wreathed the rude fence bars,
Frail elder trailed its galaxy of stars,
While butterflies sped by in golden show’rs—
Far, far beyond, the earth-haze shining through,
Rose the great mountains’ dim and misty blue.
III.
So far and strange those misty hills! so near
And intimate the little, shady nook,
The skies reflected in the merry brook—
Those distant heights so lonely and austere!
Scarce e’en the busy mowers of the field
Lifted their eyes to those dim gates of blue
Where all their gathered harvest must pass through,
Its grass and stubble be one day revealed.
As grew the day, more clear the summits grew;
Springing from shadow, radiant waterfalls
Flung trails of sunshine o’er the stern rock-walls—
Such sunshine as the valley never knew!
Paled the June roses, fading in my hand,
Tarnished the lowland river’s golden sand!
IV.
Then seemed to stir the trembling leaves amid,
To mingle with the robins’ cheerful call,
A low, sad voice, as if the hills let fall
Faint, wandering echoes of sweet music hid
In dark ravine, on solitary height.
I dropped my roses, gone their ravishment;
I passed the mowers o’er their harvest bent;
I sought those distant mountain-lands of light.
Wild, thorny brambles stretched across my way,
Sharp rocks were weary pathways for my feet,
Yet ever lured me on those accents sweet
Whose very sadness was my weakness’ stay,
With every step more intimate and near—
“Take heart, poor child! ’tis I; have thou no fear.
V.
“Take heart, and I thy faltering steps will lead
Above the earth-mists and the brier-strewn road
To my far mountain-tops, the pure abode
Of heaven-born stream, and fair enamelled mead
Whose flow’rs immortal fells not any scythe.
Long have I sought thee 'mid the withering flowers
Wherewith thou smiling crown’dst the fading hours,
Weaving fine fancies 'mid the murmuring blithe
Of lowland stream, and birds, and pattering leaves;
Long have I called thee, waiting for thy voice,
So faint it rose above the troublous noise
Of earthly harvesters among their sheaves;
Long have I waited thy dear heart to win,
So long desired to reign with thee therein.”
VI.
O sorrow-stricken Voice, so piercing sweet!
Blinding my eyes with tears, smiting my heart
Like some fire-pointed, swift-descending dart,
And giving strength unto my climbing feet
Seeking those dim and misty hills of blue.
Lo! the great mountains at thy music thrilled,
And all their deep recesses echoes filled—
Near and more near the sunlit summits grew!
The little birds that gathered, unafraid,
On berry-laden boughs beside my way
Mingled thy cadence with their roundelay—
Its joyousness grown sweeter through thy shade.
O Voice of love and grief, sad for my sin,
What ways were thine so poor a thing to win!
VII.
O thou Almighty Lord of life and death,
Thou that hast led me out the wilderness
And shown me thy great hills’ pure strength to bless,
Guard in my soul, lest still it perisheth!
The cross thou gavest still I strive to bear—
So light it grows that half, at times, I fear
My trust is lost, sign of thy service dear—
Dost thou bear all, dear Lord, for me no share?
So in thy steps to follow still I seek,
The wearing way thy patient feet have pressed,
The blood-stained way thy heavy cross hath blessed—
Dost thou hold me to suffer aught too weak?
E’en when I strive one little thorn to grasp
It turns to tender roses in my clasp.
VIII.
The very stones win smoothness from thy feet,
Beneath whose tread immortal flowers spring,
Holding within their snowy hearts no sting,
And breathing spices for love’s incense meet.
The lark, swift rising thy approach to greet,
The fulness of his heavenly song to pour
No higher than thy breast divine need soar,
There hiding life and song in joy complete!
Though sheltering trees o’ershadow not my way
To ward the sultry glow of noonday sun,
Yet 'neath thy cross the coolest shade is won
That dims no ray of that eternal day
That from yon unstained hills of peace doth shine,
Whereto thou leadest me, O Love Divine!
IX.
Yet many bitter tears I needs must weep,
Remembering the glimmer of the plain
Where nodding lilies and the bending grain
Seemed rarest treasure in their gold to keep;
Those thoughtless hours ere I learned to look
Beyond my roses to the misty hills—
The far-off pastures only God’s hand tills;
Where lost I in the laughter of the brook
And song of earthly birds that loving Voice,
That patient call, alas! too long denied.
Still in my heart in weeping woe must bide,
E’en in His breast who bids my soul rejoice,
The mem’ry of that day’s ingratitude
When God in vain for love his creature sued.
THE IRON AGE OF CHRISTENDOM.
Our period is emphatically one of historical studies, as we have had
occasion to remark in a former article on the _Life and Works of M.
Ozanam_. Among other illusions swept away by the light of truth which
these laborious researches have let in upon the obscurity of the past,
there is one great illusion about golden and iron ages. In respect to
the Christian period, specifically, it is manifest that it is vain to
look, in the apostolic, ante-Nicene, mediæval, or modern ages, for that
ideal perfection in real, concrete existence which may have been in our
imagination as a pleasing picture. There has never been an age of gold
unmixed with baser metal for the church any more than for humanity in
general. The analogy of the past, which is the only sure criterion we
can apply to the future, forbids us to expect that there ever will be
such a purely golden age on the earth. Moreover, those iron ages or dark
ages, of Christian or pre-Christian, historic or pre-historic times,
which have been imagined to precede or to interrupt the epochs of
splendor and light, are seen on inspection not to have been all iron or
all darkness. The progress of mankind towards its destination has been
continuous from the beginning, although, in larger or smaller local
extensions or numerical portions of humanity, there has been in various
periods a stoppage or retrogradation of the movement, in appearance, and
in respect to individual progress. The earth keeps its regular course,
though men walk on its surface in an opposite direction, and they are
carried with it unconsciously. The ship goes on and carries with it the
passenger, while he is walking from the bow to the stern. Clouds, night,
and eclipses are not a destruction or suspension of the irradiation of
light from the sun on the earth, but its partial and temporary
impediments. The ship which makes a long, dangerous, but successful
voyage is making headway while plunging into the trough of the sea as
well as while riding the crest of the waves; often is less delayed by
beating against adverse winds than by calm weather and light breezes.
The bark of Peter, freighted with the treasures of human hope and
destiny, is steadily proceeding, under the guidance of her heavenly
Pilot, over the waves of time, through calm and stormy seas, toward the
port of eternity. Seldom does she seem to be in safety, and show the
speed of her motion, to the uninstructed eyes of those who do not
possess the sublime science of the stars and charts by which her
celestial course is directed. “Never,” says Lacordaire, “is the triumph
of the church visible at a given moment. If you look at any one point in
the expanse of the ages, the bark of Peter appears to be about to be
engulfed, and the faithful are always prompt to cry out: _Lord, save us,
we perish!_ But if you look at the whole series of times, the church
manifests her strength, and you understand what Jesus Christ said in the
tempest: _Man of little faith, wherefore didst thou doubt?_”[75]
Footnote 75:
_Conf. de Notre Dame_, tome i. conf. iv. at the end.
There is nevertheless a difference in the character of epochs. The
epochs of Constantine, Charlemagne, Gregory VII., of the thirteenth and
seventeenth centuries, are seen in the retrospect to have a special
light of glory about them. The seventh, tenth, sixteenth, and eighteenth
centuries present a dark aspect. The tenth century particularly, which
we are at present bringing under review, is generally called “the iron
age” even by our modern Catholic historians, and not without
considerable reason, more especially in respect to the state and
condition of the Roman Church and the sovereign pontificate.
Nevertheless, the common notion, derived from compendious histories and
the generalized statements which form the commonplaces of popular
literature, respecting the tenth age of Christendom is not correct and
is extremely confused. It was not an age of complete barbarism and
universal ignorance. Ozanam says: “Indeed, letters did not, at any time,
perish. The truth is that the period of complete barbarism, supposed at
first to extend over a space of a thousand years, from the fall of the
Roman Empire to the capture of Constantinople, then gradually reduced to
narrower limits, until it remained finally restricted to the seventh and
tenth centuries, vanishes away under a more severe scrutiny.”[76] Cantù
remarks: “This epoch is justly called the iron age, because of the cruel
sufferings endured by individuals and nations; but humanity made a
sensible progress in the face of these trials. We cannot, therefore,
concur in the judgment of those who consider it the most unhappy period
of the human race.”[77] We cannot make logical divisions of history into
epochs exactly corresponding with the numerical notation of years and
centuries. It would be absurd to suppose that at 12 A.M. of January 1,
A.D. 900, to borrow Carlyle’s expression, “the clock of Time struck and
an era passed away”; and that the same venerable old timepiece, from its
corner in the parlor of the universe, struck again in just a hundred
years, announcing the end of the iron age and the beginning of another
of some different metal. The boundaries of epochs are not quite so
determinate, and centuries, periods, epochs, run into one another, mix,
blend, elude precise delineation. Cantù’s tenth epoch is not the tenth
century, but the period beginning A.D. 800 and ending A.D. 1096. This
period, between Charlemagne and the Crusades, far from presenting the
aspect of a desolate waste to the eye, is crowded and variegated with
events and persons of the most important and interesting character, and
their history is one great act in the European drama, advancing it
sensibly toward the consummation which we are still, in our own age,
hastening forward and awaiting in the near or distant future. Within
this great period are other and lesser cycles, embracing epochs, phases,
temporary states of ecclesiastical and civil prosperity or adversity,
alternations of various kinds, in Christendom, in Europe, or in portions
of the Christian commonwealth, each having its distinctive notes. That
part of it which is in the centre presents the characteristics of an
iron age more distinctly marked than the preceding or following periods.
The latter half of the ninth and the earlier half of the tenth century,
taken together, really constitute the period which can with strict
propriety be called the iron age. And within this century a period of
about forty years, including the end of the ninth and the first years of
the tenth century, was a sort of crisis in which Christian Europe seemed
to have reached the dead-point in her progress, and, having passed it,
went on again under the attraction of a new force.
Footnote 76:
Dante, _Disc. Prelim._, sec. v.
Footnote 77:
_Hist. Univ._, ep. x. epilogue, tome ix. p. 478.
This statement must not be taken as rigorously and uniformly applicable
to all Europe and Christendom. The Greek Empire and the degenerate
Eastern Church were in a state of hopeless decadence, verging toward a
permanent downfall. England and Spain, on the other hand, passed through
their worst times earlier, and were going upward and onward, led by
great men and heroes—Alfred and the forerunners of Ferdinand and the
Cid—just at the time when the rest of Europe was in the most disordered
and disastrous condition. The crisis of the iron age affected chiefly
the countries which had constituted the great domain of
Charlemagne—France, Germany, and Italy. Its phases were various, in
respect to time and other conditions, in these very countries. The whole
panorama, as presented to our view in the pages of historical narrative,
is as shifting, varied, apparently capricious, as mountain scenery in
the changing aspects of light and shade, produced by sunshine, clouds,
and moonlight, by transforming mists and sombre night. It is only when
we rise to the logical order and sequence of events, trace effects to
their causes, enlarge our scope of vision, ascend into the upper regions
of a true philosophy of history whose atmosphere is the Christian idea
and whose light is celestial faith, that a real order, harmony, and
progression toward an intelligible and grand result are clearly
discernible.
Some few general statements borrowed from this higher branch of
historical science must be premised before we can come at a satisfactory
view of our particular and immediate topic and set its details in
systematic order.
The actual evils and miseries which afflicted the Christian people of
Europe during the iron age were invasions of Saracens, Scandinavians,
and Hungarians, incessant wars among greater and lesser princes,
terrible famines and pestilences, and, in general, a state of
turbulence, insecurity, social and moral confusion. This whole state of
things was a relapse into the condition brought about by the fall of the
Roman Empire and the barbarian irruption in the seventh century. The
great reason why it occurred is found in the fact that Charlemagne’s
great empire and power passed away and that no unifying, organic power
succeeded it until Europe had passed through a period of transition. The
Roman Empire had to pass away to make room for Christendom, and for a
time its _débris_ and the new material lying on the ground for a
reconstruction made a state of confusion. Charlemagne’s fundamental work
was solid and lasting, but he had to make some temporary structures
which were showy but not substantial, and therefore fell down or were
torn down; causing more disorder for a time, until they were cleared
away to make room for the permanent and splendid walls to be built up
according to the idea of the divine Architect. The European, Christian
Idea is not that of one, uniform political western empire, ruled by an
autocracy which continues or succeeds to the old, imperial Roman power.
It is that of a community of nations, bound together by a common faith,
common principles, international law, mutual alliance and amity, and
preserving full scope for distinct and beautifully various forms of
free, spontaneous growth and culture. Its regenerating, vivifying, and
controlling spirit is Christianity in the Catholic organization. Its
centre of unity and force is Rome and the spiritual supremacy of the
pope. The political supremacy of an emperor—understanding by an emperor
a universal monarch ruling subordinate kings set over dependent
kingdoms—is incompatible with this true idea of a Christendom. Even,
supposing this universal political sovereignty united with the sovereign
pontificate of the Pope, it is incompatible with that true idea, partly
for the same reasons, partly for different reasons from those which
militate against it, supposing the two distinct powers to exist
separately. It was necessary that the pope should possess his own
separate sovereignty in a kingdom of moderate size. It was also
necessary that some one powerful king should be endowed by the pope with
a special, sacred pre-eminence among other sovereigns, as the protector
of his civil princedom and of his spiritual supremacy. This was the
meaning of Charles the Great’s imperial coronation. He was, in fact,
really the king of almost all Europe. But this was temporary. His
kingdom was divided. The imperial dignity was conferred on different
sovereigns of France, Italy, and Germany from time to time, and for
above thirty years remained in abeyance for want of a proper subject to
receive it, until it rested at last on the head of the first of the
Saxon line, passing thence to the Franconian house, and afterwards to
the Hohenstaufen. The German emperors were, however, by election kings
of Germany, and as such governed their states; whereas they were made
emperors by papal consecration, and in that capacity were protectors of
the Holy See and the church. The authority which they lawfully exercised
as emperors in the city and principality of Rome was the authority of a
civil magistrate who was not the head but the right arm of the pope, the
real political sovereign in his own state.
The European crisis of the tenth century was a period in which the
Carlovingian dynasty was going into decadence, and the new dynasties of
France and Germany had not yet arisen. There was a great want of able
sovereigns, and especially of men who were strong enough to fulfil the
functions of the imperial office. To turn now especially towards Italy
and Rome, it was the lack of a strong hand to preserve peace and order
among the petty princes and states of Italy, and to protect the pope and
the Holy See from the rebellions and intrigues of powerful nobles and
contending factions within and around the Roman principality, which was
the chief cause of the long obnubilation of the sun of Christendom—the
Roman Church—during the tenth epoch. We propose to enter now more
minutely into the exposition of the historical truth respecting this
period, so far as it relates to the popes and the Roman Church directly
and immediately.
The ordinary accounts of this epoch in Roman and Italian history produce
a singular impression on the mind of the reader. It seems as if the gas
had been suddenly turned off and all had become dark, or as if an
express-train filled with passengers had all at once been stopped by an
impediment in the middle of the night at an obscure way-station, to the
surprise and chagrin of all on board when they awoke in the morning. One
is puzzled and disgusted by a confused, disconnected story which reads
like the record of crimes and disasters in a modern newspaper. The
persons mentioned seem to have no reality or distinct character—to be
like the spectres of dreams or the personified abstractions in parables.
The very names of the popes, such as Formosus, Marinus, Lando, Romanus,
have a strange, unpapal sound. They appear and vanish with marvellous
rapidity, leaving no trace behind. When we read that the world was
generally expected to explode in the year 1000, we are not surprised,
but rather wonder why it did not, and are quite relieved to find
ourselves safe and sound in the eleventh century, and hear those “whom
the Lord hath sent to walk through the earth answer the angel of the
Lord, and say: We have walked through the earth; and behold, all the
earth is inhabited, and is at rest.”[78]
Footnote 78:
Zacharias i. 10, 11.
One great difficulty in picking the thread of history out of this snarl
is the paucity of contemporary documents. Another cause of
misunderstanding and misrepresentation has been the flippant and
mendacious character of the most extensive and minute of the chronicles
of the period, that of Luitprand. The same kind of gossiping,
scandal-mongering centres which exist among us may not have existed in
the tenth century. There were no newspapers filled with libels and
calumnies, falsifications of news, reports of the army of detectives of
the press. But there were the same violent factions, party animosities,
intrigues, mutual denunciations, raising a cloud of smoke and dust like
that which overhangs a battle-field, in even more virulent activity then
than we now behold them in our modern political _mêlées_. All the
condensed scandal, partisan vituperation, indecent gossip, and malicious
calumny of the time in which he lived are collected in the memoirs of
Luitprand, and from these have been infiltrated through succeeding
times, leaving great stains which only the acid of criticism has been
able to efface. Even Fleury says of him that he is extremely passionate,
excessive both in his abuse and his flattery, and given to buffoonery to
a degree which transgresses the bounds of decency. He was originally a
subdeacon of the church of Toledo in Spain, afterwards a deacon of the
church of Pavia, during which time he was sent by Berenger, King of
Italy, on a diplomatic mission to Constantinople. Later he became Bishop
of Cremona, but was a disgrace to the episcopate. He was a courtier of
Otho the German emperor, who sent him on another mission to
Constantinople, a violent adherent of the German party, bitterly hostile
to the Italian party and all the popes who favored it, and a
participator in the schismatical proceedings of Otho’s anti-pope. His
credit is now entirely lost. But at the time of the revolt of Luther all
the incriminations of the popes and the Roman clergy, whether true,
false, or doubtful, were gathered up and made the most of to sustain the
bill of indictment against the Holy See. The same stories, repeated by
numbers of writers, produced the effect of concurrent testimony on the
general mind of the readers of history. Baronius and other Catholic
historians, not having sufficient materials for testing and correcting
all these accusations, let a number of them pass uncontradicted or
admitted their truth. Fleury and some others of the lowest Gallican
school, who always write like advocates who have taken out a brief
against the Holy See, have in their historical works neglected and
perverted facts in a manner which is equally shallow and perfidious, and
as contrary to sound criticism as it is to orthodox doctrine. It is only
since the discovery of Flodoard’s _Lives of the Popes_, the critical and
learned researches of Muratori, and the great modern advance of genuine
historical science, that the tissue of lies depending solely on the
worthless testimony of Luitprand has been swept away. A better
appreciation of the great course of events and the essential facts of
history is now possible, and even easy. Men of genius, learning, and
conscientious devotion to truth have lighted up these dark, buried
crypts of the substructure of Christendom, as the zealous archæologists
of York have done in the old minster, whose foundations were laid in the
very period we are describing.[79]
Footnote 79:
See Mr. Ticknor’s _Life_, vol. i. p. 436.
In regard to many particular events and certain individuals whose names
figure in connection with the transactions of an obscure epoch we cannot
expect to acquire a perfect certainty. Nor is there anything of moment
depending on the discovery of the truth in such cases. We have to be
content with a probability or with a doubt in thousands of matters of
detail. There are a considerable number of popes of whom we know next to
nothing. In certain instances it is not easy to determine whether an
election of a given individual was valid or invalid. Of the truth or
falsehood of the accusations made against several popes and other
persons of high ecclesiastical or civil rank, and of the reports of
assassinations and other great crimes, which are so frequent in this
period of disorder, we cannot always form a certain judgment. There is
enough, however, of that which is certain or fairly probable to show the
connection, the continuity, and the identity of principles both with the
foregoing and the following epochs, and to furnish ample material for
the vindication of the cause of the Holy See and the Papacy. There is a
sequence in the progress through the struggles of transition; there are
great and good men, noble and heroic achievements, interesting and
curious episodes—in fine, there is a human and a Christian character
showing its lineaments in place of the cloudy spectre with distorted
features which has heretofore scared the imagination.[80]
Footnote 80:
We make here our acknowledgment of indebtedness to the series of
articles in the _Civiltà Cattolica_ entitled “I Destini di Roma,”
which was begun Aug. 19, 1871, for a great part of what is to follow
in this article.
We begin our historical sketch with Pope Formosus, who was elected A.D.
891. This is one of the popes of whom we have said above that they seem
in our common histories like a mere shadow of a great name without a
personal reality. Besides, there is a certain cloud on his memory,
arising from the fact that he was deprived of his see of Porto by John
VIII., and that he was the subject of a great outrage from his
successor, Stephen VI. A careful examination of his history shows,
however, that he was no common man and was both a good and an able pope.
As Bishop of Porto he was one of the most conspicuous among the Italian
prelates. He left his see to become a missionary among the Bulgarians,
where he labored zealously and successfully in the work of their
conversion. There is nothing to show that his censure by Pope John
VIII., which seems to have been chiefly occasioned by his taking an
active part in a political opposition to the Emperor Charles the Bald,
involved in it any moral dishonor. He was restored by Pope Marinus, and
the indignities inflicted on his memory by his successor were a wanton
and causeless outrage, which was condemned and repaired by a subsequent
pope with the approbation of the Roman people.
Europe was just then in the depths of the disorders and miseries caused
by the decay of the imperial authority and the degeneracy of
Charlemagne’s successors. Berenger was king in Northern Italy, but
Guido, Duke of Spoleto, and his son Lambert had been crowned emperors in
opposition to him and to all the French and German claimants. Toward the
end of the short reign of Formosus, which lasted less than five years,
and after the death of Guido, the dissatisfaction of the pope with the
conduct of Lambert and his mother, Ermengarda, induced him to summon
Arnulph, King of Germany, to come to the relief of the Holy See and of
Italy. He obeyed the summons, made a forcible entry into Rome, where the
Lambertine faction had gained the upper hand and thrown Formosus into
prison, and was by him crowned emperor. This was the beginning of the
appeals of the popes to Germany for intervention in Italian affairs, and
of the never-ending conflicts between the Italian and German parties in
Italy, whose _finale_ we have but just witnessed in our own day in the
exclusion of Austria from her dominion in Venetia. We have no doubt that
it was necessary, and on the whole productive of good results, that the
imperial crown should be transferred to the German sovereigns. But,
without delaying to consider this point, we simply take note of the fact
that this was one of the great questions of violent dispute and
contention which disturbed the Roman Church and the papal elections so
long as there were Italian princes who disputed the imperial dignity
with the Germans. Arnulph returned almost immediately to Germany.
Formosus died and was followed to the tomb a few weeks after by his
immediate successor, Boniface VI. The party of Lambert succeeded in
obtaining the election of Stephen VI., the first of the popes who
grievously dishonored the tiara. His violent and shameful conduct caused
a temporary reaction in favor of the opposite party, by whom he was
imprisoned and strangled. Lambert was, nevertheless, acknowledged by the
three succeeding popes, Romanus, Theodore II., and John IX., and by two
successive councils, and the pact between the church and the empire was
solemnly renewed. These three pontificates filled only a space of three
years and closed the century. The year 901 saw a new competitor for the
imperial crown, which death had taken from Lambert’s head, in the person
of Louis of Provence, who was actually crowned by Benedict IV., but very
soon driven away by Berenger, who was still reigning in the north of
Italy. Berenger was an able and warlike sovereign, in many respects
worthy of admiration, and capable of filling the imperial office with
honor to himself and advantage to Italy. Circumstances were, however,
extremely adverse. He maintained himself in possession of a certain
pre-eminence among the petty sovereigns of Italy, and carried on
vigorously wars against the Saracen and Hungarian invaders. He was even
crowned emperor in 915, but was never able to establish his authority on
a solid and permanent basis, and at last, in 924, he was assassinated by
a conspiracy of Italian nobles. With him the imperial office became
extinct, and remained so until it was resuscitated, thirty-eight years
afterward, in the person of Otho the Great.
The failure of the imperial power which had been instituted in the
person of Charlemagne left the Holy See and all Italy a prey to
contending, petty sovereigns, to powerful and mutually hostile nobles
and factions, and to fierce heathen invaders. The Roman pontiffs
maintained with difficulty a restricted, often merely nominal, civil
sovereignty in the city and principality of Rome. Between the years 900
and 914 six popes succeeded each other: Benedict IV., Leo V.,
Christopher, Sergius III., Anastasius III., and Lando. Of the nine popes
who came between Stephen VI. and John X., it is certain that nearly all
were worthy of their exalted position, and the grave accusations made
against two of the number, Christopher and Sergius, rest on uncertain
testimony. The average length of their reigns being less than two years,
and that of the longest among them only seven, most of the number had no
time to make a conspicuous figure in history, and their annals are so
scanty that very little is known of the acts of their administration.
The reign of John X., which lasted fourteen years, from 914 to 928, was
of a different character. He was one of the great popes, and proved
himself fully equal to the emergencies of the time and the difficulties
of his position. For nine years previously to his election to the Roman
See he had been Archbishop of Ravenna, and the extraordinary ability
which he had exhibited in his government of that important church had
pointed him out as one capable of making head, in conjunction with
Berenger, against the perils with which Rome and Italy were beset at
this most dangerous crisis in their destinies. In fact, he was obliged
to do the work alone; for Berenger was unable to help him, having his
hands full in fighting Saracens and Hungarians in Northern Italy. There
was no hope to be placed either in Germany or France. The only resource
for the pope was to place himself at the head of his own barons and in
alliance with the neighboring princes, and to lead the war against the
Saracens in person. For this purpose he formed a league among the
princes of Southern Italy, and, obtaining also auxiliaries from the
Greek emperor, conducted a short and brilliantly successful campaign
against the Saracens, by which they were completely discomfited and
finally expelled from that part of Italy. The entire reign of John X.
was in conformity with its glorious beginning; but soon after the
violent and tragical overthrow of the noble Emperor Berenger by the
turbulent Italian nobles, a similar catastrophe ended the career of the
great pope, his friend and compeer. Alberic, Count of Tusculum, and
Theophylact, senator of Rome, had been the two most powerful supporters,
and the former had been the chief subordinate leader, of the great
military operations of John X. The almost exclusive glory and credit
which the popular voice ascribed to John for the liberation of the
country from the Saracens, and the great increase and concentration of
the sovereign authority under his vigorous administration, stirred up
the jealousy and discontent of these great nobles. The wife of
Theophylact was the famous Theodora, the younger Theodora was their
daughter, and another daughter, Mariuccia, commonly called Marozia, was
the wife of Alberic. These women, but especially the last mentioned,
were remarkable for their beauty, talents, and ambition. The stream of
filthy tradition which has come down through the sewer of Luitprand and
the popular romances of the period has transmitted to posterity the
names of these women, stained with every kind of foulness and cruelty.
How much of calumny and exaggeration there may be in these scandalous
stories we cannot determine. It is certain that the family exercised a
great sway in Rome for many years both before and after the great _coup
d’état_ in which the intrigues of Marozia culminated and collapsed, as
we are about to relate. One year after the murder of Berenger, Alberic
was killed in an unsuccessful assault on Rome, and Marozia married
Guido, Marquis of Tuscany. The sister of Guido, Ermengarda, Marchioness
of Ivrea, was another of the group of Italian princesses of that period,
remarkable in all respects, except in the special virtues of Christian
women. In 926 Marozia set on foot, with these two accomplices, a
revolution in Italy, by which Rodolph of Burgundy, the successful rival
and successor of Berenger in the kingdom of Italy, was chased out to
make room for Hugo of Provence, the half-brother of Guido. After the
coronation of Hugo at Pavia, Guido and Marozia took possession of Rome
by force of arms and imprisoned Pope John X., who died a few months
afterward, it is suspected by violence. Guido also died within a year
from his usurpation, and Marozia governed the city alone with the titles
of senator and patrician. After the two short, and perhaps abbreviated,
pontificates of Leo VI. and Stephen VIII., she caused the younger of her
two sons by Alberic to be elected pope under the name of John XI. Still
unsatisfied, she aspired to become queen of Italy, and empress, and for
this purpose contracted a marriage—which by the ecclesiastical law was
null and void[81]—with her brother-in-law, Hugo, the King of Italy. The
marriage was celebrated in 932, and the imperial coronation was expected
to follow in due time. But the violent and imperious temper of the
Burgundian Hugo ruined all these plans. Alberic, eldest son of Marozia
by her first husband, Alberic of Tusculum, was a youth who inherited all
the brilliant qualities of both his parents, and whose character was
certainly not derived from his mother or due to her influence. One day
at dinner the princely youth was acting as page to the king, and by
accident or design poured too much water on his hands, for which he
received a buffet on the cheek from his rude step-father. He immediately
left the room in a towering passion, and, running out upon the piazza,
summoned the people, with words of burning eloquence, to vengeance and
rescue. The Castle of St. Angelo was very speedily taken by assault,
Hugo was forced to save his life by flight, and Marozia, banished from
Rome, repudiated by her husband, thwarted in her wicked schemes,
disappeared from view, and, it is to be hoped, passed the rest of her
days until her death, which did not occur later than 945, in doing
penance for her sins.
Footnote 81:
A dispensation may have been granted, but Hugo afterwards disavowed
the marriage on the plea of the ecclesiastical impediment.
Now followed one of the most curious and interesting of episodes in the
history of Christian Rome. Alberic reigned during his whole life-time—a
period of twenty-two years—as absolute sovereign of Rome, with ability,
justice, and popularity. He was in harmony with the popes, a protector
of his kingdom and of the Holy See, a munificent patron of religious
orders, a benefactor to the church and religion. The period of his reign
is like an oasis in the desert of the tenth century. It is true that he
kept his brother, John XI., in an honorable yet strict imprisonment
during his life-time. Yet, although there is nothing recorded to the
discredit of this pope, Alberic’s conduct toward the succeeding pontiffs
shows that he must have had strong reasons for his treatment of his
brother. The elections of popes during his reign were free and peaceful,
and the best men among the Roman clergy were chosen. By degrees the
legal form of the administration was so regulated that the sovereign
rights and titles of the pope were preserved; and although the actual
civil government was entirely in the hands of Prince Alberic, it was
administered by him as the pope’s temporal vicar, without discord
between the two powers. As a provisional arrangement it worked well, but
Alberic was too wise and far-seeing to think its permanent continuance
possible or desirable. By a singular stroke of policy he prepared for
the restoration of the real sovereignty to the one who had not ceased to
retain the title and the right. His son Octavian was educated as an
ecclesiastic, and the chiefs of the clergy and nobility were induced to
make a solemn engagement before Alberic’s death to elect Octavian pope
on the first vacancy of the Holy See. He was accordingly elected pope
soon after the death of his father, although he was but eighteen years
of age, and assumed the name of John XII.
Of the personal and private character of this youthful pontiff, who died
at the age of twenty-six after a reign of eight years, it is very
difficult, if not impossible, to form an exact and certain estimate. The
accusations made against him during his life-time are atrocious, and
they are still repeated by modern writers, although the most judicious
and moderate historians soften them down considerably. The learned
writer in the _Civiltà_ gives his judgment that as a pontiff all his
acts were laudable, and, as a king, worthy of one who was the son of
Alberic. In respect to his private morals, he considers that the
accusations of his political enemies and of writers attached to the
German, imperial party—the almost sole remaining source of information
respecting that period—are to be distrusted; but that it is difficult to
exculpate him altogether from the reproach of having lived more as
secular princes are wont to do than as became the holy state of a
bishop. The salient point of his administration was the calling in of
the King of Germany, Otho the Great, and the subsequent imbroglio
between the pope and the emperor. Otho, who well deserves the name of
Great, notwithstanding grievous errors and wrongs in his conduct toward
the Holy See, had been reigning twenty years when he was summoned to
Rome and crowned emperor. The return of the old disorders in Italy made
his intervention necessary, but he carried it too far, and John XII.,
probably with good reason, and certainly acting in a way which was
natural in a high-spirited and youthful sovereign trained in the maxims
and sentiments of an Italian prince, joined with the other princes of
Italy in opposition to the German domination. A struggle between John
and Otho was the consequence. The emperor, misled by the bad advice of
Luitprand and other bishops, attempted to depose the pope and substitute
an anti-pope, who called himself Leo VIII., in his place. John XII. died
suddenly before this conflict had any decisive issue, and Benedict V.
was elected in his place, but was soon after carried away into Germany
by Otho and kept in captivity at Hamburg. On the death of the anti-pope,
which occurred in March, 965, a few months after the death of John, the
Romans requested the restoration of Benedict V., which was granted by
Otho. The pope, however, died on his journey to Rome, venerated and
regretted even by the emperor and by all with whom he had come into
personal contact, as well as by the Romans.
The emperor and all the various parties by which Rome was divided agreed
together and concurred in the election of John XIII., who favored the
German party in politics, and had, on the whole, a peaceful and
prosperous reign of six years, sustained by the imperial power, although
it was interrupted by one violent sedition, which was repressed and
punished in the severest manner.
The close of the reigns of the Pope John XIII. and the Emperor Otho the
Great was marked by one extraordinary and most interesting event—the
marriage of the young Emperor Otho II. with Theophania, a Greek princess
of distinguished beauty, intellectual accomplishments, and personal
virtues. She brought with her as dowry all the Greek possessions in
Italy, and was regarded as an angel of peace between the two empires.
The death of Otho I. in 973 was the signal for new outbreaks and
disturbances in Italy. In Rome a struggle began between two powerful
families: the Crescenzi, who were the great lords of the Sabine
territory, and the Conti—that is, the Tusculan counts—who were the
principal barons of Latium. The latter favored, while the former
opposed, the imperial power in Italy. Crescenzio, or Cencio, the first
leader of the Italian faction, is supposed by many writers to have been
a grand-nephew of Marozia. He attempted an imitation of Alberic, though
not by the same honorable means, and endeavored to gain possession for
himself of the Roman principality. The pope, Benedict VI., who had
succeeded John XIII. a few months before the death of Otho I., was
assaulted and dethroned by armed force, imprisoned in the Castle of St.
Angelo, and at last strangled. An infamous ecclesiastic, a partisan and
accomplice with Crescenzio in his crimes, was intruded into the chair of
St. Peter while he was still, in the language of Pope Sylvester II.,
dripping with the blood of his predecessor. This so-called Pope Boniface
VII., who is commonly regarded as an anti-pope, was dispossessed, after
one month, together with his patron, Crescenzio, by a counter-revolution
under the counts of Tusculum, and fled to Constantinople. At a later
period he returned and succeeded in seizing on the government for a
brief period, but came at length to a most tragical and ignominious end.
Crescenzio ended his days in a monastery. It is uncertain whether there
was or was not a pope named Donus II. who reigned for a few months after
the death of Benedict VI. Benedict VII., a nephew of Alberic, Count of
Tusculum, and Bishop of Sutri, was enthroned, according to Mansi, on the
28th of December, 974, and governed the Roman Church during his
pontificate of nine years in such a manner as to leave no stain upon his
reputation. One of his first acts was to excommunicate, in a council of
bishops, Cardinal Franco, the anti-pope. In 980 he was obliged to call
upon the young emperor, Otho II., to come to his assistance in Rome. He
came, in fact, during the following year, but, after an unsuccessful
campaign against the allied Greeks and Saracens, died in his imperial
palace at Rome, Dec. 9, 983, in the twenty-eighth year of his age—a
prince whose character made him worthy of his father, but who was less
fortunate in his destiny. His premature death and the infancy of Otho
III. seemed to threaten both Germany and Italy with great disasters.
Germany was preserved from these menacing evils by the sanctity and
ability of two noble and heroic women—St. Adelaide, the widow of Otho
the Great, and Theophania, widow of Otho II., and imperial regent in the
name of her son, who was but three years old, yet universally recognized
as King of Germany and emperor-elect. Rome, however, had still to
suffer, and remained for another half-century to come the foot-ball of
rival factions. The son of Crescenzio, called Crescenzio Nomentano,
obtained the upper hand in Rome, recalled the anti-pope, Boniface VII.,
imprisoned and put to death John XIV., the successor of Benedict VI.,
and made himself patrician and governor of Rome. The sudden death of
Boniface, however, and the universal hatred in which his memory was
held, enabled the clergy and people of Rome to elect a worthy pope in
the person of John XV. (April, 986), who held the see ten years,
governing with great prudence and success, notwithstanding the great
difficulties of his position. In 989 the empress-mother, Theophania,
came to Rome and held an imperial court. It was expected that she would
put an end to the tyranny of Crescenzio Nomentano, but she was deceived
by his extreme cunning and hypocritical promises so far that she
confirmed him in his office as patrician. After her departure he became
so much worse that the pope was obliged to leave Rome and take refuge
with Hugo, Marquis of Tuscany, through whose intervention a pressing
request was sent to the emperor-elect, Otho III., now seventeen years of
age, to come in person to Italy. So great was now the fear of the
imperial power that Crescenzio hastened to reconcile himself to the
pope, who returned and was reconducted with great manifestations of
honor to the Lateran palace.
On his arrival in Rome at the head of a large army, early in 996, Otho
III., who, with precocious vigor of mind and character, had assumed the
reins of government, found the Roman See vacant by the death of John
XV., and his first care was the election of his successor. The one whom
he proposed, and who was accepted by the electors, was a young
ecclesiastic but twenty-four years of age, the son of the Duke of
Franconia and his own cousin-german. His name was Bruno, and his
accomplished education, joined with a mature virtue, made him worthy to
fill the see of Peter. He assumed the name of Gregory V., and gave great
promise of adorning the Holy See during a long pontificate, as Otho did
of becoming an illustrious emperor of Germany. The hopes of the church
and the empire were, however, frustrated by the early death of both.
Crescenzio had been condemned to banishment, but, at the request of
Gregory, his sentence was remitted. The generosity of the two youthful
and confiding sovereigns was requited by Crescenzio, as soon as Otho’s
back was turned, by an uprising against the German pope and the imperial
officers, the expulsion of Gregory, and the creation of an anti-pope,
who was John Philagathos, a Greek monk, Bishop of Piacenza, and lately
ambassador of the emperor at the court of Constantinople. The bold plan
of these two conspirators was nothing less than the restoration of the
sovereignty of the West to the Greek emperor, under whose auspices each
one hoped to be confirmed in his usurped authority at Rome. In 998
Gregory and Otho re-entered Rome together, and this time showed no
clemency either to Crescenzio or Philagathos, both of whom were victims
of a terrible vengeance.
Pope Gregory died in 999, in the twenty-seventh year of his age and the
third of his pontificate. He was succeeded by the celebrated Gerbert, a
French monk, formerly abbot of the famous monastery of Bobbio, and at
this present time Archbishop of Ravenna, who took the name of Sylvester
II. He had been the guide, the tutor, and the friend of Otho during his
boyhood. In his earlier career he had been somewhat hot-headed, and had
sustained a sharp and obstinate contest with Pope John XV. in respect to
the see of Rouen. Now, however, he was an old man and a wise. No pope so
truly great, in the sense of the word most appropriate to a bishop and
an ecclesiastical ruler, had ascended the papal throne since the time of
St. Nicholas the Great, in the middle of the ninth century. Otho
remained always in Rome and Italy, for which he had a special
predilection. Nothing can be more beautiful than the picture of this
venerable and learned old man, with his gifted and loving pupil by his
side, “_pulchri Cæsaris pulcherrima proles_,” filling together the
throne of ancient, eternal Rome with their pontifical and imperial
majesty. What a subject for a painter or a poet! Otho is one of the most
winning characters to be found in all history. His mother, the Greek
princess, had given him an exquisite mental culture, and his
grandmother, St. Adelaide, a most pious education. There was something
visionary and romantic in his nature which only adds to his personal
attractiveness. He dreamed of great things for Rome and the empire, such
as the Florentine seer who had the vision of the unseen world dreamed
of, but which were not in accordance with the plans of divine
Providence, and probably not with the views of Sylvester II. He died at
a castle near Civita Castellana, in the twenty-third year of his age, in
the arms of Sylvester, who followed him to the tomb in a little more
than a year after, on the 12th of May, 1003.
The dreaded year 1000 had been passed and the eleventh century was
begun. It was really one of the most fortunate of all the centuries for
Rome and the popes, yet it began under dark and menacing auspices. The
Crescenzi regained the predominance in Rome and kept it for twelve years
during three pontificates—viz., those of John XVII., which lasted only
five months, of John XVIII. and Sergius IV., both of whom ruled the
church in peace and with honor to themselves, yet were obliged to
tolerate the usurpation of the patrician Giovanni Crescenzio, who seems
to have governed with more mildness than his father, Nomentano, had
done. In 1012, after his death, the dominion of this family came finally
to an end, being supplanted by that of the Conti Tusculani, who retained
it for thirty years. Count Gregory, a descendant of Alberic and Marozia,
whose later years were rendered illustrious by piety and good works of a
splendid munificence, left at his death three sons, Alberic,
Theophylact, and Romanus. The second of these became pope under the name
of Benedict VIII., and governed the church as well as the Roman
principality during twelve years with consummate ability, aided in his
civil administration by his two brothers, and in perfect amity with the
emperor, St. Henry II., who had succeeded his cousin, Otho III., but had
always been prevented by wars and other pressing employments elsewhere
from interfering in Italian affairs. In 1014 St. Henry was able to come
to Rome with his queen, St. Cunegunda, to receive the imperial
coronation from the pope. A rival king of Italy, Arduin, the last of the
Italian kings who aspired to the iron crown of Lombardy until Victor
Emanuel appeared, had been conquered, and, retiring to a monastery,
passed the rest of his days in penance. Henry and Benedict together made
successful war upon the Greeks and Saracens, putting an end to the
troubles of Italy from both these enemies. The pope and the emperor both
died at about the same time in 1024, and with Henry II. was ended the
Saxon line of emperors, which was succeeded by the Franconian, called
also the Ghibelline from the family castle of Waiblingen, and the Salic,
from the tribal name Salii—_i.e._, dwellers by the river Sala.
Benedict’s brother Romanus succeeded him on the pontifical throne under
the name of John XIX., and united more strictly in his own person the
functions of ecclesiastical and civil sovereignty than had been the case
during the reign of his predecessor. His pontificate of eight years was
a laudable administration, without any event of note which has been
recorded, except the coronation of the first Franconian emperor, Conrad
II. This coronation was marked by the presence of an unusually numerous
and splendid assemblage of princes and prelates from all parts of
Europe, among whom were Rudolph, Duke of Burgundy, and Canute the Great,
King of Denmark and England. This grand ceremony was performed in the
spring of 1027, but, notwithstanding the new splendor which seemed at
that time to environ the Holy See, the greatest disgrace and scandal
with which it was ever afflicted was close at hand and came upon it in
the next pontificate. On the death of John XIX., in 1032, there was no
one of the family of the Conti upon whose head the tiara could be placed
with any sort of fitness and propriety. So great and so strongly fixed
was the power of that family that they succeeded in securing the
election and coronation of a young boy, Theophylact, nephew of the two
preceding popes, and the son of Count Alberic, their elder brother. He
is said by some historians to have been twelve years old, by others to
have been perhaps seventeen. Under the name of Benedict IX. he continued
during the thirteen years of his reign, under the protection of the
emperor and supported by the power of his family, to harass his subjects
by his capricious tyranny, and to afflict and desolate the church by the
unrestrained license of his moral conduct. His scandalous life and
maladministration of the government brought on a schism headed by an
anti-pope calling himself Sylvester III., caused frequent and violent
popular tumults, and excited universal contempt and odium against his
own person. At last the discontent reached such an extreme that of his
own free-will Benedict abdicated his office, that he might have greater
freedom to live without any restraint upon his conduct. The most
distinguished and the most respected priest of the Roman Church at this
time was John Gratian, arch-priest of the church of St. John at the
Latin Gate, the preceptor of St. Hildebrand, who was afterwards Pope
Gregory VII. Desiring to put an end to the calamities of every kind
which were the consequence of a sacrilegious pontificate, Gratian took
the extraordinary course of offering a large subsidy in money to
Benedict IX. on condition of a complete renunciation of all his rights
to the Roman See. He was then himself canonically elected Pope under the
name of Gregory VI., and began with zeal the work of reformation in both
church and state. Nevertheless, the circumstance that he had given a sum
of money to induce Benedict to resign gave occasion to such a plausible
outcry of simony and personal ambition against Gregory, and the
resistance of the anti-pope Sylvester as well as that of Benedict, who
reclaimed his former office, was so violent, that it was necessary to
call in the aid of the new emperor Henry III., and to summon a numerous
council, that the rival claims might be adjudicated and sufficient
measures be adopted for restoring peace and order. The council, which
met at Sutri, set aside entirely both Sylvester and Benedict. The
decision of his own case was referred to Gregory with great respect, but
with a manifest wish that he should resign. The pope disclaimed in the
most solemn manner all mercenary and selfish motives for what he had
done, yet nevertheless, on account of the scandal which had been
occasioned, he judged himself to be unworthy of the papal dignity, and
abdicated it with many tears and expressions of humility. The council
confirmed his resignation, which St. Hildebrand and many others
regretted, but which the greater number, with St. Peter Damian, highly
approved, notwithstanding their esteem for Gregory, who retired into a
monastery, where he lived a secluded and holy life. Even Benedict at
last repented, and spent the few remaining years of his life in prayer
and penance in the monastery of Grotta-Ferrata, which his grandfather,
Count Gregory, had founded.
On Christmas eve, 1046, Suidger, Bishop of Bamberg, was proposed by the
emperor to the Roman clergy and people, and by them elected pope, taking
the name of Clement II. He was enthroned on Christmas day, and on the
same day crowned the emperor and empress, and, as a safeguard against
the abuse of the power of the Roman patrician by the Italian barons, it
was transferred to the emperor, who was thus made the recognized head of
the Roman aristocracy, with a special right of superintending the
election of the sovereign pontiffs. From this moment commenced the dawn
of better and brighter days for Rome. The great work of reformation was
begun by Clement; and, although his reign lasted but one year, and his
successor, another German prelate of high character—Poppo, Bishop of
Brixen, who became Damasus II.—survived his enthronization but
twenty-three days, a saint was waiting to inaugurate the glorious series
of the Hildebrandine popes.
Bruno, Bishop of Toul, who was St. Leo IX., having after long resistance
been persuaded by the emperor and the most eminent prelates to consent
to assume the tiara, stopped at Cluny to see Hildebrand, a young monk,
who became St. Gregory VII. With difficulty he induced him to accompany
him to Rome, on the condition that he would make the journey in
pilgrim’s garb, and submit the imperial nomination without reserve to
the free election of the clergy and people of the Roman Church. He was
enthroned on the 12th of February, which was the first Sunday of Lent,
1049. The eleventh century was at its zenith, and the bright sun of a
new era shed its rays upon Christendom, as a new St. Leo sat upon the
throne of St. Peter, St. Leo the Great, St. Gregory, and St. Nicholas,
chasing away the darkness and the clouds of the tenth century, and
putting an end to the period of the obnubilation of the Roman Church.
We have confined our attention almost entirely to the local history of
the popes, without noticing their administration of the universal
church. The general ecclesiastical history of the whole period between
St. Nicholas I. and St. Gregory VII. furnishes abundant proof of the
universal recognition and continuous exercise of the papal supremacy in
the East as well as in the West. Adrian II. celebrated the eighth
œcumenical council at Constantinople in 870. John VIII., John X., and
John XV. exercised throughout Europe the same spiritual authority which
was exercised by Nicholas the Great. The local difficulties of the
popes, and even the scandals which disturbed the Roman Church, had no
effect throughout Christendom to diminish the authority of the Roman
See. During the general anarchy and chaos caused by the new irruption of
barbarians the unity and common life of Christendom was oppressed and
enfeebled, and the corporate, organic action of the universal church
could not manifest itself so vigorously as it had done before and did
afterwards. When all the evils which had attacked the church and
Christendom at the very centre of life in Rome reached their crisis in
the pontificate of Benedict IX., it was certainly felt by all good and
honest men that the very existence of the Papacy and the Catholic
Church, of the whole European society, and of all civilization,
morality, and order on the earth, was in imminent danger. The spectacle
of a youth who was no better in morals, and no stronger in intellectual
or princely qualities, than the weakest and most dissolute of the
Carlovingian monarchs, seated on the throne of St. Peter, shocked and
scandalized Christendom to such an extent that the loud outcry has not
yet ceased to resound in our ears. Yet we perceive in the action of the
Council of Sutri, and of the emperor, Henry III., in respect to Gregory
VI., one of the most signal and splendid testimonies to the undoubting
and unshaken faith of that age in the supremacy of the pope. Sylvester
was judged and condemned to perpetual imprisonment as an intruder and a
pseudo-pope. Benedict was set aside, not because the council pretended
to judge him for his conduct while pope, but because he had executed a
legal and valid abdication of his office. In respect to Gregory, the
council examined and judged of nothing except the validity of his
election, and, this being ascertained, left the judgment of his own case
to his own supreme authority, to his conscience, and to Almighty God.
Just one rapid and parting glance we must cast over Christendom, to take
in by a general view its movement through this segment of the great
cycle of time, and the state into which it had grown in the middle of
the eleventh century. The great barbarian and heathen irruption into
Christian Europe was like the casting of an immense mass of fresh coals
upon a glowing but gradually-expiring fire in a great foundry furnace.
The general aspect was black and dead, and the momentary effect was a
suspension of the great works commenced, but the result was a rapid
kindling from the burning bed beneath, a stronger and hotter fire, and a
more vigorous resumption of operations. The threatened Mohammedan
conquest of Europe was averted, the Hungarian invasion completely and
finally repelled, the Scandinavian eruptions changed into a most
beneficial colonization and infusion of a new element of strength. Many
other most remarkable and salutary political and social transformations
were effected. The Scandinavians, Hungarians, Russians, and other
Sclavonian nations were converted and added to the church. A beginning
was made with the Prussians, even, by the martyrdom of their first
apostle, St. Adalbert, although the work was not completed until near
the close of the thirteenth century and proved to be short-lived. Since
they have resumed the persecution of bishops, there may be, perhaps, a
hope of their reconversion.
The calendars of the two centuries from 850 to 1050 are crowded with the
names of great saints and other illustrious men and women. Among the
popes flourished St. Leo IV., founder of the Leonine City, St. Nicholas
I., John X., Benedict VIII., and Sylvester II. Among the emperors and
kings we may single out Berenger, Henry the Fowler, Otho the Great, St.
Henry II., Hugh Capet, Robert, Alfred, Canute, Edward the Confessor;
Edward and Edmund, martyrs; Brian Boroihme, Ferdinand, St. Stephen, St.
Olaf, Rollo, and Wladimir. In the brilliant group of Christian empresses
and queens shine with special lustre Theodora, St. Adelaide, St.
Cunegunda, St. Matilda, Theophania, and Olga. As illustrious specimens
of the great number of bishops and abbots of high virtue and merit, we
mention St. Anscharius, St. Methodius, St. Ignatius of Constantinople,
St. Dunstan, St. Odo of Cluny, and St. Romuald. These two centuries
contributed but little to the treasury of literature. There is,
nevertheless, a considerable list of authors, among whom are worthy of
mention Nithart, Flodoard, Suidas, Pascharius Radbert, Wuthikind the
German annalist, and John Scotus Erigena. One of the most gifted and
clever of the Latins, Luitprand, and the most intelligent and erudite of
the Greeks, Photius, were unhappily both so morally despicable that they
reflect disgrace rather than honor upon their age.
The epoch we are considering was more remarkable for action than for
writing. The vast and strong foundations were laid for the future
superstructure. Empires and kingdoms, smaller states, cities, towns,
universities, monasteries, and great churches, rose in majesty during
the latter part of this epoch upon the ruins made during its earlier
period, or upon heretofore waste and desert land. The glorious orders of
Cluny and Camaldoli, the universities of Oxford, Cambridge, Cordova,
several of the great minsters, and the first efforts of the new school
of Christian art date from this period. It made scanty records of its
own history, but it is crowded with the richest materials for the
student and the literary artist. M. Ozanam projected a course of
lectures at the Sorbonne covering the whole space from the fifth to the
fourteenth centuries, but executed only the first and last part of his
programme. The middle portion still lies open to any one worthy to
complete his work. The Iron Age is worthy of more study than has been
given to it, and, when it is carefully examined, there are many great
discoveries to be made concerning the ages which preceded as well as
those which have followed this hard era. When will intelligent
Englishmen and Americans begin to read history and find out how they
have been duped? When will the wretched little manuals such as Mrs.
Markham’s _History of England_ be driven out of our schools and
children’s libraries and replaced by books which tell the truth? Let us
lay bare history and search for the hard foundations of society and
civilization, and we shall see with ocular evidence that the converging
and diverging lines of all the centuries have but two centres, Jerusalem
and Rome. The rocky height of Jebus, which David carried by craft and
valor; the Capitoline Hill, where Romulus and Numa laid the foundations
of Rome, are in the cycle of history what the two foci are in an
ellipse. When the fortunes of Juda are at their lowest point, the
supernatural providence of God over that royal tribe and the house of
David is most signally manifested. It is impossible to read
intelligently the history of the Roman See and the popes without
perceiving a providence of a higher order, working on a more sublime
plane, in the disasters as well as in the glories and triumphs of the
New Jerusalem and its line of priestly kings, the vicegerents of David’s
royal Son and Lord. The supernatural providence manifest in the
destinies of Rome and its dependent Christendom makes also the
supernatural end toward which God is conducting mankind equally
manifest. The search after natural causes without regard to the first
cause being proved absurd, the search for natural effects without
respect to the final cause is equally absurd. The ideal kingdom on earth
is not to be found. Not only are we unable to find it realized, we
cannot even find a tendency toward a future realization. Royal power,
national greatness, the achievements of art and science, the external
order and splendor of the church, are all, manifestly, only means, and
the end is in the spiritual order, in the souls of individual men.
Everything external and temporal is built on the shifting, unstable sand
of human free-will, and is therefore evanescent and changeable. The only
permanent and eternal result is in the great, unknown mass of human
beings who have found the gate and the way to the kingdom of heaven, and
in the _élite_ of the human race who have found the way to its highest
places and wear its brightest crowns. The earth is only a _palæstra_, a
school, an ingenious contrivance of divine art for the acquisition and
exercise of virtue, for gaining merit, for nurturing the childhood of
the destined citizens of the true and eternal city of God—_Cœlestis
Urbs, Jerusalem_. The whole order of divine Providence in the church and
the world, and its chief intention, must be changed, if any ideal and
stable state of perfection is established on the earth; for this would
require that no longer free scope should be given to the liberty of the
human will. We conclude, therefore, that future ages will not differ
essentially from those which are past. As the fourth and the seventh
centuries differ, as the tenth and thirteenth, the fifteenth,
seventeenth, and eighteenth centuries mutually differ, so there are
possible cycles of change from worse to better, or the reverse, so long
as the world continues. There is a perpetual progress toward that
consummation which God has in view. But there is no change in the
_militant_ state of the Catholic Church. We are informed by divine
revelation that the earthly sovereignty of Jesus Christ will continue
only so long as he has enemies to conquer, and that when his conquest is
completed he will give up this kingdom to the Father, that God may be
all in all. His eternal reign, in which all the elect will share,
consists in the glory won by merit. All the rest is only scaffolding to
be torn down and thrown away for fire-wood; it is scenery and
stage-costume, of no use when the play is over. The lessons of history
teach us to discern all the illusions which have deceived past ages; if
we are wise we shall learn also not to make new illusions for the
future. We shall fear nothing for the eternal cause of truth and right,
and we shall have no fanciful hopes of a coming millennium. We shall
learn the one needful and useful maxim that all effort is a waste of
time, except the one effort to make ourselves and others better and more
virtuous.
SIX SUNNY MONTHS.
BY THE AUTHOR OF “THE HOUSE OF YORKE,” “GRAPES AND THORNS,” ETC.
CHAPTER XIV.
THE RAVEN AND THE DOVE.
CONCLUSION.
The morning they started for Monte Cassino the Signora had a Mass said
for her intention, and the intention was that she might be enabled to
decide speedily on her state of life, and to decide so clearly and
wisely as never again to have a doubt about it. Never had she been
nearer to accepting Mr. Vane, and never had she been more tremblingly
afraid of doing so. The suspense and trouble were becoming intolerable.
She felt that it must be settled within these three days.
But no sooner was the journey begun than all else was lost sight of. It
was impossible to pass with a preoccupied mind amid all that beauty;
impossible not to feel one’s individual life dwindle in view of the life
of centuries there made visible. The Campagna slipped past like an old
monotonous song that has been sung over one’s cradle, and heard in quiet
intervals all up the years, till every note has grown to be something
more than a simple sound, and is rather a long series of octaves caught
along the heart-strings. Then
“The old miraculous mountains heaved in sight,”
pressing near the track, and looking over each other’s heads at the
train as it went, as if wondering what new Jason was ploughing with
fiery-snorting monsters down through the green fields of the south. Dim,
gray cities stood petrified on their heights, without a sign of life;
and the torrent-beds on their sides were like silvery paths up which the
souls of all the dead had climbed, and so faded off into space. What
fancies went up those converging paths, and spread their wings in the
shining clouds that moored themselves on crest after crest! Or, fair as
any fancy, what brooks and torrents came rushing down in the rainy
October and petulant April, catching the sunshine as they ran, and
bringing flowers and harvests and fountains for the thirsty plains. On
they went through the smiling, luxuriant paradise waving with solid
green and bloom in the valleys. Dark forests hung suspended in gorges,
cities lifted themselves between the mountains to look, here and there a
castle sat on its rock like a king on his throne. They could no more
have pointed out the rapidly-succeeding beauties to each other than they
could have indicated the swift flashes of a tempest.
At length, and before they had begun to think they were tired, the cars
stopped at the station of San Germano, and here a very tall old man,
bent into the shape of a new moon, recognized them as the party he was
on the watch for, and informed them that the donkeys were waiting for
them outside, and that they were expected to dine at Monte Cassino.
They recollected that they were a little tired and a little hungry, and,
very opportunely, a pretty young _contadina_ presented herself with a
basket of bread, fruit, boiled eggs, and wine. So they seated themselves
in the waiting-room, a circle of admiring _contadini_ standing about and
watching every mouthful they ate, as a dog watches.
“Are we expected to take more than we want and give them what remains?”
Isabel asked.
The Signora glanced over the company, and demanded to know which men had
charge of the donkeys.
Five stout young fellows stood forward, and a sixth made haste to
explain that four of them would attend to the party, and a fifth would
carry their baggage up on another donkey.
“And have you anything to do with us?” she inquired politely of this
informant.
“I belong to the hotel of San Germano,” he replied, and then went on to
explain the situation still further.
“Oh! thanks; but don’t trouble yourself,” the Signora interrupted quite
coolly. “You need not wait for us. Five men are quite enough to do all
we want done.”
He withdrew a little, but did not go away. There was not the slightest
sign of resentment or mortification. He was actuated by a simple and
unadulterated desire for money, and meant to stay by till the last
minute, in the hope that he might snatch at the chance of some small
service which would give him a claim.
“Now, girls,” the Signora said, “don’t you give a penny to any one,
unless I tell you. Here are twenty people on the watch for money. Don’t
let any one do the smallest thing for you, except these five men. We
will give them some bread and wine. That is all they will want. The
Italian poor live on bread. What does that old man want of us?” she
inquired of one of the donkey-men.
The old man, who had been constantly hovering near, came forward at
once. He was the letter-carrier for the monastery.
“Oh! I did not know but you had something to do with the donkeys,” she
remarked.
He came a step nearer. “I do not go up till evening,” he said with an
insinuating smile.
“Go whenever you like,” she answered obligingly. “If you should bring us
up any letters, however, we will give you a _soldo_ for each one.”
He glanced longingly at the bread and wine, but she rose without taking
any further notice of him.
“How much is your wine a bottle?” she asked of the pretty young vendor.
“Fifteen _soldi_, Signora,” was the innocent reply.
“Nonsense! I will give you five.”
Exclamations, deprecation, grieved reproach on the part of the young
woman. The wine was too good for that, she protested. It was the best
dry wine of the country, and sincere, as the Signora could see.
The Signora was not so new as they had supposed. She had bought better
wine in larger bottles, in Genzano, close to Rome, for seven cents a
bottle, and this was high at six. It was not, however, worth while to
multiply words about it, and they made a compromise by paying seven
_soldi_ a bottle, with which the young woman seemed to be perfectly well
satisfied.
Then they went out and mounted their donkeys, followed by the
reproachful eyes and extended hands of fourteen men and children, and
closely attended by the young hotel servant, who attached himself to
Bianca. Marion, having visited Monte Cassino thoroughly not long before,
had not accompanied them, being a little delicate, too, about joining
himself to a party without an invitation from the monastery, though he
would certainly have been included had his connection with the family
been known.
Bianca dropped her pocket-handkerchief, and the young volunteer esquire
rushed to pick it up and present it to her with a gallant touch of the
cap and a smile that displayed a fine set of teeth. She accepted it with
blushing thanks.
“My dear, he counts on half a _lira_ for that,” the Signora remarked.
“Don’t get any romantic ideas into your head. He would be as gallant as
that to a witch, if he thought she would pay him. You must really put on
a more severe expression. You have precisely the look at this moment of
some young princess of fairyland who goes about giving bags of gold to
everybody. If you keep on that sweet face, you will be as surrounded by
beggars as a lump of sugar with flies.”
“You are a terribly forbidding and obdurate woman,” Mr. Vane said,
looking into the Signora’s laughing face.
“I am sometimes,” she protested. “I pity one beggar, or two beggars, or
sometimes three beggars; but when I see a score of healthy cormorants
surround poor travellers, and ready for any pretence or any servility to
get money out of them, I lose patience. I’ve been victimized too much in
days that are gone to be very long-suffering now. Besides, I work for my
money and have a feeling of indignation when I see a strong, healthy
person stretch out a hand that has done me no service. Aren’t these
donkeys little darlings? I do think they are the most useful, faithful
creatures in the world.”
“If I could only know just where the backbone of mine is situated,”
Isabel said pathetically; for her saddle had been constantly slipping
either backward or forward ever since she mounted. “It really seems to
me that I could ride a rail more securely. There I go! Oh!”
The hotel-servant rushed enthusiastically to catch the back of her
saddle, and lift the rider from her nearly horizontal position, and help
her off while they tightened the girths.
“It’s a sort of knack which you will soon learn,” the Signora said
consolingly. “The poor little animals are as thin as a rail, but the
saddles are like a chair. Just let yourself go, humor the motion of the
donkey, and in a little while you will sit like—like Bianca there. Look
at that child! All she wants is an infant in her arms!”
They had passed the narrow and stony loops of the path out of the town,
and reached the mountain-side, and, as the Signora spoke, Bianca,
leading the procession, went round a turn before them and came back
higher up. She sat in the saddle as easily as if in a chair, upright,
her hands folded in her lap, and her fair face uplifted as she gazed at
the great pile of the monastery on the peak above them.
She needed, indeed, but an infant in her arms to be a ready picture of
the Holy Mother and Child in the Flight into Egypt. She had taken off
her hat and laid a large veil over her head. A blue mantle hung over her
shoulders and came close to her white neck. The beast she rode, the
saddle, the rocky path—all were perfect. She passed under a cypress-tree
that pressed her eyes down with its black shadow, and, in that downward
glance, caught their looks directed to her. She smiled, clasped her
hands, and glanced around in mute rapture.
To and fro, to and fro they wound up the height, every turn unwinding
and enlarging the scene below. The low hills of the plain disappeared,
leaving only a vast level laid out in an exquisite mosaic of varied
greens, with houses here and there, single or in clusters, forests that
had dwindled to groves, and groves that looked like bouquets. The
shining turns of a river lay amid that verdure, like a silver chain
dropped and half-hidden in the grass. All round the mountains circled
close and jealous, guarding this little paradise. Now they were skirted
with trees; now they rose in harsh masses of stone that looked as if not
even a blade of grass could find a foothold. A picturesque castle stood
on a spur sent off from the mountain they were ascending.
Above them the vast square of the monastery, with its many windows and
balconies, grew every moment nearer. After an hour’s ride trees shut
them into an avenue, and they found themselves close under the grand
walls of the building. They alighted at the lofty open archway and saw
before them a long, ascending passage that looked strong enough to
support even that pile on its solid arches. The first half was dim, and
part way up, at the right, was a shrine in the wall, with its floating
flame burning before some saintly face only half-visible behind the wire
screen. The upper half was lighted by arched windows at the left,
showing a double wall there, with some sort of room or passage between,
arched openings in the inner wall answering to the windows. At the upper
end of this avenue of stone shut the great black valves of a double iron
door, studded thickly with nails, pierced with a little cluster of holes
to peep through at one side, and showing the outline of a smaller door
in the right valve.
The massive walls and doors, the long, sloping ascent, the light and
shade, the one little golden flame, were like nothing of the nineteenth
century. The action and business of such a place were not the action and
business peculiar and suitable to our times. Ecclesiastical processions
might go up there; the scarlet fire of a cardinal’s robe in the midst of
a group of attendants would well befit that dim and echoing passage; a
cavalcade of knights and ladies, with horn and hound and nodding plumes;
a company of soldiers with shield and helmet—these were the figures to
animate such a scene. Or, most perfect picture of all, one might imagine
there that sublime company, the very thought of which brings tears to
the eyes—that long procession of ecclesiastics and people, with their
banners and crucifixes and candles, chanting funeral hymns as they
ascended, bearing up to the mountain-top for burial the twin saint of
the glorious founder and father of the monastery—Santa Scholastica. It
is but yesterday, it seems, that the brother and sister parted, having
their last conference together under a little roof down the
mountain-side, while the tempest stormed about them. It is but this
morning that St. Benedict has sent his monks down to bring the holy
relics up and lay them in his own tomb under the grand altar, where soon
he will join her. So the colossal saints of all time know how to
recognize the grandeur of a true woman. These men are so near the most
sublime and regal of creatures—the awful, immaculate Virgin—and the very
type of penitents—the thrice-purified Magdalen—that the shining veil of
the one and the sacred tears of the other flow about their sisters, and
woman is honored in whatever work her Creator calls her to do. It was in
the times, still illuminated by the twilight of the scarcely-departed
presence of the Morning Star and the Son, that St. Gregory the Great
ordered his mother’s portrait painted with the mitre of a doctor on her
head, and one hand raised in benediction, while with the other she
taught her son from the sacred Book on her knees—the queenly St. Sylvia!
It was in such days that St. Chrysostom proclaimed that women may
participate, as well as men, in combats for the cause of God and the
church; that St. Melania, the younger, disputed so eloquently with the
Nestorians that she converted many and frightened the rest, showing
herself so powerful that Pelagius, who drew away priests and bishops,
strove, but in vain, to convert her into an assistant; the same Melania
who converted the persecutor, Volusianus, whom all the eloquence of St.
Augustine could not convert. It was in such days that saintly women
inspired the Fathers of the church to write, and that St. Gregory
conceived his Treatise on the Soul and on Resurrection while sitting at
his dying sister’s bedside and listening to her discourse on death, as
she consoled him for the death of St. Basil.
And not only such thoughts and recollections, dear to women, flowed in
as they went up the path that St. Scholastica had passed before them,
but other recollections, dear to scholars and precious to the church and
to civilization. Here was one of the citadels of learning in times when
barbarous invasions overran the land and threatened to extinguish every
spark of intellectual and spiritual wealth that the race of man had
accumulated. Here the monks, with a zeal kindled to passion, hoarded and
preserved the remains of their devastated treasures, and spent unwearied
days and nights in multiplying copies of writings that must not die.
Here, with the devotion of the bridegroom who brings the most precious
gems he can procure to deck his bride, or of parents who shower upon
their only child every gift in their power to bestow, genius the most
exquisite consecrated itself to the work of adorning the page of the
text of praise and prayer with such marvellous miniature beauty of form
and color as only the fairy pencil of Nature can rival.
Wrapt and exalted in such recollections, the Signora moved as one in a
dream, forgetting her companions entirely. It was only when the great
iron doors swung open before her, and she saw a tall gentleman in a
black robe hurrying forward, with his hand extended in cordial welcome
to Mr. Vane, that she came back to the nineteenth century, and made an
effort to salute in a sufficiently-composed manner the prior of Monte
Cassino, Father Boniface.
But it was a very beautiful nineteenth century that she recalled herself
to. They were within the monastery buildings, which completely
surrounded them in a massive square, broken in the middle at the left by
a long portico of white travertine supporting a superb terrace called
the _Loggia del Paradiso_, and at the right, in the centre, also, by the
grand stairs that go up to the higher level of the mountain peak, around
which the monastery is built. This _loggia_ and the grand stairs are at
the opposite sides of a court with a picturesque well in the centre, and
colossal statues of St. Benedict and St. Scholastica. The paved court is
between two others, which are turned into gardens, the three separated
by double colonnades and surrounded by porticos. At the head of the
stairs, which are the whole width of the court, another portico opens
into the upper court—that of the church—and has a door at either side
leading back to the _Loggia del Paradiso_. The church court, also
surrounded by porticos and adorned with statues, is closed on one side
by the church. This is built on the very mountain-top, the confession
being hewn out of the solid rock.
This plan they caught at first, though but in a glance; for, after
welcoming them all, the prior conducted them through two or three
dimly-lighted rooms, all of stone, unfurnished and unadorned, into a
bright parlor, where a balcony window gave them a view of all the
beautiful valley with its surrounding mountains. In a few minutes dinner
was announced as prepared in the next chamber, and here they found a
table laid out with the freshest of linen, old silver as white almost as
the cloth, and a well-cooked and well-served dinner.
Weakening their wine before drinking it, they all observed the quality
of the water, limpid and light as some third element half-water and
half-air, and the prior explained to them that the monastery used
rain-water filtered.
“We have a great cistern, ninety feet square, hollowed out in the
mountain under the central court. The well you saw there is in the
centre of it. The water is thoroughly filtered. Moreover, the conduits
that admit it to the cistern are closed during the four hot months, so
that only cold water enters.”
This prior, the “urbane librarian” of Longfellow’s recollections of
Monte Cassino, was not only a kind and generous host and an intelligent
_cicerone_, but a most agreeable and interesting man. He had a noble
figure and a handsome, bright face, and combined in his character
qualities which might have been thought to be inharmonious; for he was
at the same time an enthusiastic monk, proud of his venerable order, and
devoted heart and soul to his monastery, and a man quite up to the times
in all that the times have of praise-worthy.
After dinner he led them up to see the church, pointing out the statues
as they went. Here were the father and mother of St. Benedict, and with
them popes, royal dukes, kings, and emperors. Before entering they
paused to look at the great door of bronze, cast in Constantinople, in
which is written in silver letters the list of the possessions of the
abbey at the time the door was made, in 1066. At this time, more than
eight hundred years later, nothing was left of these riches.
Entering the church, they stood astonished. If it had been built of
simple marble, moderately varied and ornamented, there would still have
been enough to praise warmly in the beautiful form and proportions of
the three naves, the grand altar by Michael Angelo, the raised tribune,
and the beautiful paintings of the dome, roof, and eight chapels. But
these were only the frame-work of a mosaic the most splendid covering
every part of the edifice to the dimmest corner or the smallest nook
behind a column. And this mosaic is not that comparatively simpler kind,
made of small bits, but each flower and figure is cut from a single
piece of marble or precious stone, and so perfectly fitted into the
groundwork that the point of a pin could not be introduced between them.
It was hard at first to believe that the whole was not exquisitely
painted in every possible color and shade, and it needed a touch or a
near sight of that fine, inimitable gloss of marble to convince one of
the incalculable riches of the whole. The very floor was superb enough
for the walls of a splendid church; the very steps of the tribune were
set with mosaics.
The Signora took pencil and paper, and attempted to make a memorandum of
only one chapel, to enumerate its alabaster columns, its flowers of
mother-of-pearl, amethyst, agate, and lapis-lazuli, its
infinitely-varied marbles and precious stones and its infinitely varied
designs, and, after ten minutes’ rapid work, gave up the task. A week
would have been necessary for that one chapel; and there were seven
more, besides the altar, the confession, and the tribune.
“You like carved wood?” the prior asked, with a smile of anticipated
triumph, as they went up the tribune steps.
“Who does not?” the Signora exclaimed. “Carved wood and lace are two of
my passions. I have never stolen any lace, and I hope I never shall.
Wood-carving is fortunately usually in too heavy pieces to suggest the
possibility of being carried away in one’s pocket.”
“We must, however, first visit St. Benedict and Santa Scholastica,” said
their guide, too charitable, as well as too enthusiastic for beautiful
things, to be shocked at this little escapade.
Thirteen silver lamps burned before the screen at the back of the grand
altar, and under that screen reposed the bodies of the twin saints.
Above them, written in golden letters, was the inscription:
“Benedictum et Scholasticam
Uno in terris partu editos,
Una in Deum pietate cœlo Redetos,
Unis Hic Excipit Tumulus,
Mortalis depositi pro Aeternitate custos.”
Rising from their knees, they turned and faced the choir—a double row of
stalls forming three sides of a large square open to the altar. Looked
at from a little distance, these stalls had the appearance of having
been closely overgrown at some past time with the finest of vines, which
had turned black and petrified there, preserving perfectly every little
leaf and tendril, and still covering entirely the plain wood beneath.
Looking longer, one saw little figures and faces, and birds and animals.
Going nearer scarcely dispelled the illusion, so finely was every
particle carved—the vines and leaves in some places quite separated from
the ground, so that one slipped the finger-tip behind them. Every stall
was different, every one provoked a new exclamation of admiring wonder.
Then they went into the sacristy, a long hall with the sides completely
lined with presses of dark wood with gilded metal ornaments. These
presses also were carved finely, each department, in front of which a
priest would vest himself for Mass, having a bas-relief of a subject
suggesting some particular virtue, as that of the Pharisee and the
publican in the Temple, suggesting humility.
Back of the sacristy was the relic-chamber, where, in addition to the
more sacred treasures, the ladies admired especially two little antique
caskets, one of smalt, bright as a jewel, the other of carved ivory of
the most delicious tint of creamy white—that tint so soft that it seems
as if the material itself must yield like down to the touch. They gave
one glance at a crosier by Benvenuto Cellini, on the inner curve of
which stood a tiny group, then tore themselves away. The afternoon was
waning, and there was left them but a day and a half more, with
“Such rooms to explore,
Such alcoves to importune.”
The air of this place was an ideal atmosphere; one breathed it like a
fine wine that exhilarates delicately, but does not inebriate. It was
soft but not warm, fresh but not chilly, and as pure as pure can be. The
fresh, rosy faces of the troop of young students they met going out
showed how this mountain air agreed with them.
“What a place to send boys to!” Mr. Vane exclaimed. “It is a little
world in itself, where they can have every amusement and companionship,
as well as instruction; and one has but to look at them to see that they
are as happy as they are healthy.”
The boys were coming in from their afternoon walk down the
mountain-side, and all glowing with just-subsiding fun. Each one,
passing the prior, caught at his hand to kiss it; but as he would not
permit himself to receive such an homage, they resorted to the amusing
substitute of kissing their own hands after they had touched his.
“What beautiful recollections of their school-days those boys will carry
with them through their lives!” Mr. Vane remarked, as they went out over
the colonnade to the _Loggia del Paradiso_. “In no way, it seems to me,
except by being educated here, unless one spend one’s life here, could
one become perfectly familiar with the riches, visible and invisible, of
the place; and such a familiarity would be of itself an education,
especially for the impressible minds of the young.”
The front of the _Paradiso_ fills the gap in the middle of one side of
the monastery—that part opposite the church—and is on a level with the
church, or the second story of the monastery. It is probably the same
width as the church. Leaning on the parapet there, one looks off on a
view which may well give the place its name—the beautiful plain and the
beautiful circling mountains, with the still, blue splendor of the
southern sky gazing down upon them as if enamored of their beauty. There
was no need of imagination in such a place. Simple, literal eyes were
enough to flood the soul with beauty.
Familiar as he was with the scene, the prior was sympathetic enough to
say but little; and even Isabel, whose impressions, being more
superficial, ran a good deal into words, hushed herself out of respect
for the others.
“Until we reach Rome again,” the Signora remarked to her friends as they
went down the stairs to the great court, “I should like to be excused
from all social intercourse, except the mere being with you bodily. I
don’t want to speak or be spoken to, except to learn of this place. We
have no right to talk; we are ghosts. We have come here in a dream or a
vision. Father Boniface talks, of course, because he is a part of the
place.”
They laughed and agreed.
“But I hope,” the prior said, “that you are not too ghostly to taste the
water they are just drawing up now. See how it sparkles!”
Two columns support a cross-piece over this beautiful well, and from the
centre drops an iron chain with a copper bucket at each end. When one
goes down the other comes up, dripping full of airy water.
They all drank silently—each, probably, to some friend, absent or
present. Bianca blushed as she drank, and her pretty mouth seemed to
kiss the water. Then, standing on the upper step of the well, they
leaned over the stone curb and looked down to where, far below, the
surface of the water shone like a huge black diamond set in a gray
border.
Tired out with travel and with pleasure, the ladies were not sorry when
the prior proposed that they should go down to the house where they were
to sleep.
This house is the only building on the mountain except the monastery,
and is under the control of the monastery. It was built merely to
accommodate lady relatives of the students who might wish to see their
sons, or brothers, or nephews without the fatigue of coming up and going
down the mountain the same day, and without suffering the embarrassment
of spending the whole day in a house inhabited and served only by men.
Now and then some benefactress or a friend of the superiors of the
monastery has the privilege of stopping there. The house is small and
plain, and kept by a _contadine_ and his wife. The ladies stopping there
have their coffee in the house, but they dine always in a private
dining-room at the monastery, from whence, also, their supper is sent
down to them in the evening—supper being after Ave Maria, when the gates
are closed.
Mr. Vane stayed with the prior, and the three ladies followed their
guide. Their way led them a five minutes’ walk back as they had come up,
then turned through an open gate in the stone wall at the right, where
they found their lodgings. A _contadina_ with dark cloth draperies
pinned smoothly about her, and a huge white edifice of starched linen on
her head, overshadowing a pair of bright eyes, met them at the gate and
welcomed them with a pleasant voice, but in a tongue where the soft
Roman consonants seemed to have each and every one turned itself into
the hardest kind of a Z.
The windows looked out on a long terrace with a parapet, and outside the
parapet the mountain dropped steeply to the plain.
A stair, which belonged entirely to the strangers’ house, led up to the
second floor, and here they found three pleasant bed-chambers awaiting
them. An hour later, as they sat at their windows looking out into the
twilight, they saw their _donna_, Catarina, come into the terrace with a
huge basket on her arm. Her head-dress and sleeves shone white in the
light of the rising moon, and there was a soft richness where the
scarlet stripe ran round her petticoat, and where the rainbow colors of
the apron-like upper mantle bound her without a fold. Her solid step
sounded on the stair the next minute, there was the spurt of a match in
the outer room of the suite, and, looking through the open doors, they
saw the woman, more like a picture than any picture they recollected to
have seen, standing with a curious brass lamp in her hand, carefully
lighting its wick, the basket she had brought sitting on the floor at
her feet.
She came into the Signora’s room with that red light all over her from
the lamp she carried in her hand, smiled so as to show two rows of
snowy-white teeth, and, with a “_Buona sera_,” announced that their
supper had come and would be on the table in a few minutes.
The three went out into the dining-room to witness the preparations and
listen to the woman’s pleasant voice as she half-talked, half-sang an
account of her life and adventures there, her manner of speech being
that so common among the lower classes of Italy, especially at the
south—almost a sort of chant, inexpressibly soft and touching. The
peculiarity of this manner of speaking consists more, perhaps, in the
ending of the sentences than in their progress; for they never come down
to the definite tone that ends a period, but stop on some swinging note
a little higher up, it may be only half a tone above. It is the voice of
weeping, which never has a positive tone, as if the whole gamut were
washed over and blurred by tears.
Talking so, the woman brought out from her basket a linen cloth for the
table, next a pair of cruets with vinegar and oil, next a decanter of
white-wine, next an omelette made with herbs, after that a salad that
looked like sliced cucumbers, but was something else. Bread followed,
then the necessary dishes.
“I’m ashamed to confess that I am hungry,” Isabel said. “It is a
miserable coming down, but we won’t say anything about it.”
“My dear,” responded the Signora, “you are very ungrateful to say so.
Let us be just. Our bodies have brought our souls up to this beautiful
place, and carried them about from point to point of it, and kept as
quiet as possible about their own affairs. Now, if they are hungry, let
us feed them. Poor bodies! they have the worst of it. They are extremely
useful, and we sublime creatures are always turning up our noses at
them; they suffer, and we protest that we want to get rid of them, when,
in nine cases out of ten, we have wantonly caused their suffering. Can a
body take care of itself, or even know how it should be done? No; the
soul has to do it, and ought to do it in gratitude for house-rent, or
body-rent. Then, at last, the poor things have got to corrupt, and be
devoured by worms, and go to dust. Fortunately, these sufferings will
not be felt. It is also a satisfaction to know that this arrogant
spirit, which is for ever crowing over its poor companion, will have to
suffer consciously for it all and pay the uttermost farthing. You will
please to recollect, Miss Isabel Vane, that if ever you should have the
happiness of going to heaven, your body will go there too. Sometimes,”
she said, holding her hand up before the light, which shone through and
made a ruby of it,—“sometimes I think that my poor flesh has a
glimmering, a presentiment of the possibility of being one day
glorified.”
“Most worshipful body,” said Isabel to herself with great respect,
“would you like a piece of that omelette—a large piece, a half of it,
say, leaving the other half to those two? Yes? Well, you shall have it.”
And she proceeded with all possible dignity to help herself to a hundred
and eighty degrees of the circle of herbs and eggs before her.
The _donna_, who, of course, had not understood a word, looked with
astonishment at this shocking piece of voracity; and when Bianca, in
protection of her client, clasped her arms around the wine, and the
Signora, with an air of determination, took possession of the salad, the
poor creature evidently thought that she was waiting on a company of
maniacs.
“Do let’s laugh,” said the Signora, and at once set the example. “We are
frightening the poor soul to death.”
Their supper and their nonsense finished, the three took possession of
their rooms.
A full moonlight was filling all the valley, or plain, which looked like
the bottom of an emerald chalice full of golden wine. A pure and sacred
silence reigned over all—the silence of peace and lofty contemplation.
Had it been some such silence that suggested to Charlemagne, when,
almost eleven hundred years before, he came to venerate the relics of
St. Benedict, the beautiful thought of bestowing on the abbot, with all
the other singular privileges he gave him, that of being the sole
mediator between the emperor and the rebellious barons—the only person
by whose means they could make their peace? It was doubtless by virtue
of this ancient title that the prior had written “Pax” at the head of
his letter to Mr. Vane.
Yes, Charlemagne came up here ages ago, and popes, and princes, and
kings came, and the Saracens swarmed up with fire and sword, and the
Lombards and the Normans; and the Crusaders came to pray at the shrine
before going to the East. They had seen on the pilasters of the church
the different crosses in precious mosaic of the orders of knights which
had been formed under the Benedictine rule, among them the familiar
names of Calatrava, Alcantara, St. Stephen, St. James of the Sword, and
Templars. Ignatius of Loyola came up and stayed fifty days.
“But, _signora mia_,” said the lady who was going over all this part, as
she gazed out into the night, “since you are not going to stay here
fifty days, you will be so good as to shut your mind and your eyes and
go to sleep.”
The next morning they went to see the monastery proper, for which they
had a special permission from the Pope, and spent hours in the library,
archives, printing and lithograph rooms. It would be vain to tell what
old books—worth their weight in gold, printed on creamy vellum in
characters that modern type has never excelled, if it has equalled—what
drawers filled with scrolls, what autographs, what illuminations, they
saw. It were vain to fancy with what feelings one sees for the first
time the writing of Charlemagne, of Hildebrand, of Gregory the Great, of
Frederick II., of Countess Matilda. Then there was the long, long
dormitory of the boys, with a row of snowy beds at either side, and the
immense arched window at the end framing a superb outside picture, with
Monte Cairo in the centre, and long, long corridors that dwindled people
seen from opposite ends, with cracks made by earthquakes in their walls,
and solid groined arches that only an earthquake could shake down. Then
the nooks, courts, and passages, which they came upon without guessing
in the least in what part of the building they were; the round window in
the wall—_occhio_, or eye, they call it—through which they looked as
through a lens, and saw the three courts and the colonnades. Finally,
coming down a stair with a wall at either side and a door at the foot,
they were told: “When you have crossed that threshold you cannot return.
The cloister ends there.”
“What!” exclaimed Isabel, “if I should run out a minute, couldn’t I come
back on to the stairs again for another minute?”
The prior shook his head. “It would be excommunication. That seems
unreasonable; but listen: This is a cloister which women can enter only
by special permission of the Pope. That permission is not lightly
granted, and is for but once. Your running back a minute would do no
harm in itself, but would do harm to the principle. If you can return in
one minute, you could come back in five, or ten, or half an hour, or an
hour, or a day, and so on; and so one visit might be made to cover an
indefinite time. The only way, you see, is to be strictly literal in
excluding from a second entrance.”
That afternoon they were presented to the Abbot—“Abbot of Abbots” he was
called in the palmy days of Monte Cassino—and received, not only his
benediction, but each a little souvenir of the place: a tiny photograph
of the tomb of St. Benedict and St. Scholastica, with a wreath of
flowers pressed round it that had been on the tomb, and at the back his
own name written, with the date, and under it “Ora pro me.”
They stood in the church speaking with him a few minutes, then went out
to the _Paradiso_.
A storm was coming up from the east, and round the angle of the building
they could just see that the mountains in that direction were
obliterated and mists fast filling the plain. Standing up against these
mists, as if to impede their progress, was the lower end of a rainbow,
set straight and solid on the green like a jewelled column. The cloud
advanced and pushed the column before them.
“It is like the pillar of light leading the Israelites,” Isabel said.
The cloud unrolled itself above, and down through the rainbow ran a
crinkling line of white fire.
“How plainly lightning asserts its own force!” Mr. Vane remarked.
“Seeing it for the first time, without knowing what it was, one would
know at once that it is an irresistible power. What an experience it
would be to stand just near enough to a passing flash to perhaps hear it
hiss through the air, to be between it and its thunder, and yet not so
near nor so in its track as to be smitten!”
Little by little the sun was vanquished, and the rainbow grew dim,
faltered, blushed along the line of the advancing shadows, and
disappeared. There was an odd murmur growing up, fine and pervading—the
sound of rain in the plain below. All the tiny noises of each falling
drop joined in a multitude, countless nothings making themselves heard
in pauses of the thunder. It was to solid sound as fine carving is to
plain wood, as embroidery is to a fine web—a continued succession of
millions of infinitesimal watery strokes separated by millions of
infinitesimal silences.
The others went into the house at the first drop that splashed on the
_Paradiso_, but the Signora went back to the portico and seated herself
under its shelter. Behind her the court of the church looked weird and
strange. The pillars of the porticos appeared to move as the lightnings
came and went, the statues and busts behind them seemed to lean forward
and retreat, and the one window in the church front looked blue, as if
there were light inside it.
She took herself out of the draught, and went to lean on the wall
between the doors. In front of her the grand stairs went down to the
central court, and the gardens shone green and wet through the
colonnades at either side. On a level with her, across the space,
stretched the _Paradiso_, and under the portico that supported it a
large, arched door led from the court out on to a beautiful _loggia_.
Two or three monks, who had been standing in this _loggia_ watching the
storm, were driven in by the rain, and in a minute the whole place
seemed to be deserted. The rain and the lightning had it to themselves
and were washing and purifying all “so as by fire.”
This one visible witness felt her soul expand as she gazed. If only she
also might be purified and enlightened in that time and place! If the
littlenesses of life might be washed away from her, and only the
realities remain!
“Come, Holy Spirit!” she said, and blessed herself.
Then, content and confident, without saying another word, she waited
with her two inarticulate but eloquent companions—Art, consecrated to
God, and Nature, informed by God—and felt above and about the
illuminating Presence. For faith is the rod that calls the divine
Lightning down, whether it came as a dove, or a tongue of fire, or a
pointing finger, or a whispering voice.
The landscape of the plain, seen through the arched door under the
_Paradiso_, was dim and gray with rain, or glittering and red with
lightning; the mountain-tops above it, and the sky, were a changing
tumult of shadows veined with threads of fire, and rolled hither and
thither in visible thunders. The white pavement of the court below
changed every instant into jaspers, the beautiful columns and curb and
steps of the well became jewels, and one of the copper buckets that
stood on the brink was like a vessel of red gold brimming over with red
wine.
St. Benedict with his crosier, and St. Scholastica with her dove, stood
immovable but living, and their calmness in that tumult was like a song
of triumph. Did he sing with Moses?—“_Thou shalt bring them in, and
plant them in the mountain of thy inheritance, in thy most firm
habitation which thou hast made, O Lord; thy sanctuary, O Lord, which
thy hands have established._” And did she reply, like Miriam with her
timbrel?—“_Let us sing to the Lord, for he is gloriously magnified, the
horse and his rider he hath thrown into the sea._” Such silence in a
tumult seems ever a singing.
When the Signora went down, slipping from colonnade to colonnade,
dry-shod, the storm was spent. From the little balcony of the parlor,
where she found her companions, she saw a grand arch of rainbow
trembling out over the east, as if astonished at its own glory,
trembling as it grew, but as strong and bold as light.
Flocks of birds were swinging by in a great circle, screaming impudently
as they passed the balcony, as if to say, “Catch us, if you can!” There
was a little parallelogram of garden under the window, with a rough pole
frame-work supporting a dripping vine, and, below the dropping fields, a
crest of land and rock, curling over like a pointed wave, rose boldly in
the foreground; then, the plain.
Mr. Vane came to stand beside her, looking at her keenly one instant,
then averting his eyes.
“Well,” he said, “what has the storm been saying to you up there?”
“It has washed the drift-wood out of my path, and made it as clear and
white as one of those torrent-beds up the mountain-side,” she answered.
“I think I ought to work a little harder for the future. Life is short,
and I have, perhaps, sometimes played with my talents. They were given
me for serious use. When you shall have left me alone, instead of
sitting weakly down and thinking that it is rather lonely, I shall begin
to carve a new book out of the next year. Do you know that year to come
looks to me as the block of marble looked to Michael Angelo when he
said, 'I will make an angel of it.’ I am not a Michael Angelo,” she
added, smiling; “but I am something, and, firmly and intelligently set
to work, I may do what need not be despised. My mind is clear.”
He was answered.
If a shade passed over his face, it was slight. If his lips were
compressed a moment, she did not look to see. He stood and watched the
rainbow grow and fade, and, as its colors went out, so faded out of his
life a sweet hope. But he reflected: “Denials make strong. And the light
that made the rainbow is not dead.”
“Yes, life is short,” he said presently, and half-turned away. “God
bless you!” he added and hastily left her.
The next morning they made their last visit to the monastery, and the
prior, after showing them the tower of St. Benedict and the fine
collection of pictures there, had some of the choir-books brought into
the parlor for them to see. There are fifty-seven in all of these great
volumes, bound in leather, with metal corners and knobs. These are all
in manuscript, beautiful black scores and lettering on white parchment.
Every capital letter is painted, every one different and every one
beautiful, and occasionally the page has a border, and in some cases a
picture in the corner, so exquisitely beautiful that one could never
tire of examining it—such leaves and flowers, and birds and figures and
arabesques, fine as the finest pencil and most delicate imagination
could make them, and so executed that one had to touch them to be sure
they are not in relief. One long, silver leaf slightly curled over to
show a golden lining; Bianca stretched her finger to touch, and drew it
back immediately, fearing to break.
Not a tint was faded of them all, though they had been in constant use
three hundred years. They are not used every day now, however.
One page was especially rich—the first page of the Christmas service.
The whole ground of this inside the border is a deep velvety crimson,
the score and text being of gold. On the border imagination had
exhausted itself, and in the left upper corner is a picture of the
Nativity, delicate and pure, with its cool, pale mountains of Syria, and
the heavenly faces of the Mother and Child.
“You should see that at the Midnight Mass of Christmas,” the prior said,
“with the light of all the candles shining on it as it lies open on the
desk. It is splendid then. I copied that picture in the corner of the
page to send the Pope on his great anniversary,” he added, “and it took
me a year.”
For the prior was an artist as well, and not only made exquisite copies
from these old manuscripts, but played the organ, and had the evening
before done the honors of their grand instrument for his visitors,
displaying its orchestra stops.
The hours slipped away, and regretfully at length they took leave of
this beautiful and sacred place, and the kind host who had made it so
pleasant for them. The donkeys stood ready at the gate, and they mounted
and went down into the world again. In the valley, before going to the
station, they stopped a minute and gazed back with a mute farewell to
Monte Cassino. The Signora thought, but did not say aloud: “I will lift
mine eyes unto the hills, whence cometh help.”
The road they took through the plain to the station ran along the
river-side. This river—the Rapido—narrowed to a swift, yellow sluice
that one could toss a penny across, to be caught by the beggar at the
other side, did not look very imposing to American eyes, accustomed to
the grand crystalline floods of the New World; but every drop of it
moved to the tune of a memory, and farther on it meets the Carnello, and
the two, the ancient Vinius and Liri, join to make the Garigliano, the
river made famous by Bayard.
Then back to Rome, through crowding mountains at first. But, by dark,
the mountains began to draw back, the level widened, they passed the
city wall by the stars, and rolled into the _Città vecchia_.
“Now we must begin to look respectfully at the guide-book,” Mr. Vane
said the next morning. “We have been sipping the foam of the wine as it
came. We must drain the cup, if we can.”
There was nothing more to be said. Their story was finished, and the
remaining few weeks were but a study of what all travellers study in
Rome.
“I am laying up riches for my life,” Mr. Vane said to the Signora. “I
have learned of you to work, and I hope that the last of my life will be
more useful than the first has been. These memories that I am preparing
now will be the only recreation of my future and my only dream.”
He did not trouble her with sadness or importunities, but took his life
up with manly cheerfulness, and she honored him for it and liked him
better than ever. But never for an instant did she waver in her
decision. Her mind, once cleared, was cleared for ever. She would not
have married him, nor any other man, to have possessed the world.
One bright October day they left her. There was sadness and tears, but
no heart-break for any one. Marion’s tender sympathy threw a rainbow on
Bianca’s gentle sorrow, and Isabel clung to her father’s arm and dropped
her head on his shoulder, soothing and soothed.
“I shall never leave you, papa,” she whispered.
Did she suspect what he had missed?
The Signora watched the train roll away, then went back to her silent
house, wiping her eyes as she entered.
“What a pity it is that you will have to be alone now!” said Annunciata.
“Alone!” the Signora’s eyes flashed out through the tears. “I am not
alone. I never was alone in my life!”
She smiled as she shut herself into her room. “Alone? How little they
know!”
What, indeed, did they, who cannot live a day without their gossip,
without trying to fill their emptiness with the husks which make up by
far the greater part of the world’s talk, of the life of one whose mind
was as a fountain for ever overflowing, who had eyes in her finger-tips,
and who listened with every pore of her body? What knew the readers of
daily newspapers of the hoarded treasures of literature, ever ready with
eloquent voices? What knew the Christians of one communion in the year,
and one Mass when there was obligation, of long, delicious hours in
churches when there was no function to stare at, nor music to talk
through? The world has no such society as the cultivated mind can fill
its house with; and there are no receptions so splendid as those given
by the imagination. Bores never come, tattlers and enemies never are
admitted, late hours never weary, and the wine never inebriates. And,
better yet, those who are invited are always present and ready to stay.
How the possessors of such a society laugh at the “societies” of the
outer world, and how truly they can exclaim, “Alone? I never was alone
in my life!”
DOUBTS OF A CONTEMPORARY ON THE DESTINY OF MAN.
The New York _Sun_ gave us (March 25, 1877) a short but thoughtful and
substantial review of a little work lately published by Rev. Dr. Nisbet,
of Rock Island, Ill., on _The Resurrection of the Body_. The reviewer
very justly affirms that the author’s conclusions are anti-Scriptural,
and that his method of interpretation lays the way open to a general
disregard of dogmatic truth; for if the Bible, as the doctor contends,
does not really teach what the whole world has hitherto believed it to
teach concerning the resurrection of the flesh, it is plain that we can
never be sure that we understand the doctrine of the Bible, even when it
seems perfectly clear; and, if this be so, we can have no definite
knowledge of revealed truth. The critic makes some very pertinent
remarks on the baneful effects that such works as the one he criticises
are apt to produce; and, although he does not point out explicitly the
root of the evil, yet he gives us a clue to it by averring that any
interpretation of Scripture which conflicts with the universal and
traditional interpretation received in the church is calculated to shake
the very foundations of faith, and exposes every dogma to the attacks
and sneers of unbelievers. This is to say that the Protestant principle
of freely interpreting the Bible without regard to ecclesiastical
tradition leads to infidelity—a truth which is painfully confirmed by
daily experience, and which accounts for the sympathy of all the
anti-Christian sects with Protestantism; but which the writer in the
_Sun_—an excellent Protestant, we presume—could not very consistently
insist upon. Yet the whole tone of his article shows his sincerity. He
is evidently an intelligent scholar; and though he finds himself
somewhat entangled in the solution of some important questions, yet he
does not imitate the folly of such flippant scribblers as blaspheme what
they do not understand, but he shows forbearance and circumspection, a
wholesome reverence for religion, and an ardent love of truth, and
expresses an earnest desire to be taught how the resurrection of the
flesh and the immortality of the soul can be successfully established
and vindicated against the allegations of modern sceptics.
As we anticipate that Protestant divines will probably not take the
trouble to investigate the objections of the infidel school with which
they too often sympathize and of which they are the unconscious props
and promoters, we will consider the honest appeal of the writer as
addressed to Catholic thinkers; and we intend to do briefly what we can,
from our doctrinal point of view, to solve his difficulties and to set
at rest his doubts. The more so because, as he remarks, whoever can
furnish a way out of such difficulties will confer, by so doing, an
immense benefit upon a whole world of anxious but sincere doubters on
the subject of immortality.
“It cannot be denied,” says he, “that while the Christians generally
believe in some kind of continuance of human existence after death,
there is a great diversity of opinions among them in regard to its
nature and characteristics. The men of the primitive church were not
perplexed about the matter, as they were not about many others which
are actively debated among us.”
This introductory remark is exceedingly important. The primitive church
“was not perplexed” about the matter. Why? Apparently because the
faithful were in the habit of accepting the Gospel with humility and
simplicity as it was given to them by the apostles and by their
successors; because the Protestant method of interpreting Scripture
according to every one’s individual bias was not thought to be
consistent with the profession of Christianity; because the teachers of
the faith did not contradict one another, as our modern Protestant
preachers and writers are wont to do to the scandal and ruin of their
bewildered flocks. When we see that our Lord’s words, “This is my body,”
can be construed by Protestant divines as meaning “This is _not_ my
body,” we may form an idea of what must be the result of the Protestant
system of Scriptural interpretation. No one can be surprised that such a
system creates perplexity, fosters debate, and ends in discord and
ultimately in unbelief. But if there is “a great diversity of opinions”
among Protestants, such is not the case with us Catholics. We members of
the universal church are not perplexed about such matters. We still
believe with perfect unanimity as the primitive Christians believed; our
teachers teach all the same Gospel—the Gospel of Jesus Christ as
transmitted to us by legitimate channels, not the contradictory gospels
and the doctrinal crotchets of free-thinking divines. That is what makes
the difference.
The critic whose words suggested to us these passing remarks will not
fail to see that it is mainly to the rebellious spirit and presumption
of the Protestant reformers that the present age owes its theological
perplexities and the loss of religious unity. Would it not be better,
therefore, to give up at last the gospels of men, and return to the
Gospel of the primitive Christians?
“They believed,” as our critic points out, “that at the last day the
bodies of the dead would be raised to life, and that the faithful
would once more, in flesh and blood, inhabit their former abodes.
The most ancient versions of the Apostles’ Creed teach explicitly
the resurrection of the flesh, and the earliest Christian apologist,
Justin Martyr, writing only a hundred years after the death of
Christ, defends the doctrine by asking whether it be any more
difficult for God to create a body anew from its dust than for him
to create it the first time in its mother’s womb. And Mr. Nisbet
concedes that all the succeeding Fathers of the church maintain the
same view. Tertullian declares: 'The flesh shall rise again wholly
in every man, in its own identity, in its absolute integrity.’
Irenæus agrees with him, and so do Jerome and Augustine.”
It would appear that these authorities, to which many more of the same
kind might be added, should leave no doubt in the mind of a Christian
about the legitimate interpretation of the dogma of resurrection. For,
when an article of faith is clearly expressed in the Gospel and has been
uniformly understood in all ages by the doctors of the universal church,
it is difficult to see how a man who makes profession of Christianity
can think himself authorized to twist it according to his individual
bias. Yet this is what Dr. Nisbet has had the courage to do.
“It is remarkable,” says the reviewer, “with what confidence Dr.
Nisbet overrides this primitive interpretation of Scripture and
declares it to be incorrect. He allows no weight whatever to the
obvious fact that men living so much nearer than he does to the days
when the New Testament was written, and with whom its very language
was still in colloquial use, would be more likely than he to
perceive its true meaning. He lays great stress upon the famous
passage in Paul’s Epistle to the Corinthians (1 Cor. xv. 35-53),
which, he thinks, asserts the resurrection-body not to be of flesh
and blood. But he fails to perceive that all that Paul is contending
for is a finer and more glorious form of flesh and blood. Paul’s
language is: 'The trumpet shall sound, and the dead shall be raised
incorruptible, and we shall be changed’ (v. 52). This he further
explains in writing to the Thessalonians: 'We which are alive and
remain unto the coming of the Lord shall not prevent them which are
asleep. For the Lord himself shall descend from heaven with a shout,
with the voice of the archangel, and with the trump of God: and the
dead in Christ shall rise first. Then we which are alive and remain
shall be caught up together with them in the clouds, to meet the
Lord in the air: and so shall we ever be with the Lord’ (1 Thess.
iv. 15-17). It was the expectation of the apostolic church that the
Lord would come again in their time, agreeably to his prediction in
Matthew xxiv.: 'This generation shall not pass, till all these
things be fulfilled’; and in John v.: 'The hour is coming, and now
is, when the dead shall hear the voice of the Son of God, and they
that hear shall live.’ They know that the Lord had raised Lazarus
and many others in their own flesh and blood, and had himself, after
his resurrection, offered his body to the touch of Thomas; and they
would have had to do violence to their own reasoning faculties had
they conceived of any different fulfilment of his promises. When,
therefore, Dr. Nisbet denounces, as he does, Mr. Talmage’s picture
of the final resurrection, with its general scramble of souls for
their old bodies, the flying of scattered limbs through the air, and
their reconstruction in their pristine integrity, he discredits what
has been for eighteen centuries the accepted faith of the Christian
Church.”
One would scarcely expect that the writer, after so judicious a
criticism, should hesitate to condemn Dr. Nisbet’s view; and yet he
seems afraid of passing too severe a judgment on it, as he immediately
adds: “Not that this proves him to be in the wrong, but only that, if he
is in the right, no dogma, however venerable, is safe from attack.”
The conception that a man who professes Christianity may not be in the
wrong while he throws discredit on the most venerable dogmas of
Christianity is a monstrosity not only in a religious but also in a
logical point of view. Unless the expressions of our critic can be
construed as a figure of speech conveying under a mild and civil form
the merited censure, every Christian reader will say that the critic
himself is in the wrong. A pagan, or a man absolutely ignorant of the
divine origin and glorious history of Christianity, might hesitate about
the right or wrong of tampering with our revealed dogmas, for he would
have to learn first how the fact of divine revelation has been
ascertained; but a man who has read the New Testament, who lives in a
Christian atmosphere, who knows the life, the miracles, the death, and
the resurrection of Christ, and who consequently cannot conceal from
himself the great fact of revelation—such a man, we say, astonishes us
when he assumes that a Christian doctor may not be in the wrong, though
he deal with revealed truth in such a loose manner as to expose every
dogma, however venerable, to the attacks of our modern pagans. But let
us proceed. To show how suicidal is Dr. Nisbet’s method of
interpretation the reviewer says:
“In fact, men more daring and less respectful than Dr. Nisbet have
employed his method of reasoning against the resurrection of what he
calls the grave-flesh to controvert the idea of any resurrection at
all. He assumes as unquestioned the proposition that human beings
must in some way survive the death of the body, and is only
solicitous to determine what that way is. But just as he shows the
irrationality of expecting that the cast-off flesh and blood which
served the soul for a tabernacle during life shall be taken up
again, so do sceptics undertake to show the irrationality of
expecting any kind of future existence whatever.”
The reviewer is perfectly right. If the teachers of Christianity are to
be free to twist the word of God as they please, why shall their
followers and other men be denied the same privilege? And what can be
the ultimate result of such a reckless meddling with truth but universal
unbelief? Faith must rest on unquestionable authority; when this latter
is shaken, faith is replaced by doubt, opinion, perplexity, despondency,
and all the vagaries of a weak, distracted reason. The present growth of
unbelief is therefore nothing but the logical development of the
Protestant method of free interpretation, which has engendered a
thousand conflicting opinions and thwarted all honest efforts of its
followers in the search after truth. The Catholic Church alone has a
remedy for this plague of religious scepticism, for she alone has the
power to teach with authority, as she alone has faithfully preserved in
its primitive entirety the sacred deposit of revealed truths.
And now the reviewer comes to the most important part of his article,
which consists of the objections urged by the modern unbelievers against
both resurrection and immortality. He says:
“Let us briefly state some of the various reasons which they adduce,
in the hope that Dr. Nisbet, or some other writer of ability, may be
led to meet and overthrow these reasons, and to furnish the world at
last with a solid and impregnable philosophical demonstration of the
doctrine of immortality.”
It was after reading this passage that we resolved to write the present
article. Not that we consider ourselves “a man of ability”; but we are
in possession of truth, and are confident that we can vindicate it
successfully, though we may lack the ability of our opponents. Let us
proceed, therefore, without further observations, to the reviewer’s
arguments.
“In the first place,” he says, “those who deny that there is any
immortality of the individual human soul say it is contrary to all
the analogies of nature to suppose that the death of the body does
not end its individual being. Throughout creation, whenever any
organization is destroyed, it is destroyed for ever. A new
organization may arise similar to the old one, but it is not that
one. A crystal crushed into powder ceases to be a crystal. Its
particles may be dissolved and be crystallized anew; but they will
form another and not the same crystal. Every vegetable runs its
career from the seed to the mature plant, and, when resolved into
its elements, perishes as a plant. If those elements be made to
constitute a new plant, that plant begins its round as a new plant,
and not as the old one. In like manner, when animals die and their
bodies decay, they never reappear as the same animals. They may
furnish materials for new forms of mineral, vegetable, and animal
organisms, but these organisms are essentially new, and not the old
ones under the new forms. And, in the same way, these sceptics
contend, so far as our observation goes, human beings die once and
finally, other men are born and succeed them, but they are other men
and not the men who have died. Whether their dissolution took place
yesterday or thousands of years ago, it is alike, so far as our
ordinary experience goes, complete and irreparable.”
To answer this argument it suffices to point out that the resurrection
of the flesh and the immortality of the soul are two distinct truths, of
which the first is known to us by divine revelation only, the second by
revelation and by reason. To say that “throughout creation whenever any
organization is destroyed it is destroyed for ever,” is to say that we
find nothing in the order of nature that authorizes us to infer the
resurrection of our bodies. This, of course, is true; but what of it? No
one pretends that the future resurrection will be brought about by
natural causes acting in their natural manner and obeying natural laws.
Resurrection will be the work of the Omnipotent. We believe it, not
because it agrees with the analogies of nature, but because God himself,
infallible truth, has informed us that he will raise us from death
against all the analogies of nature. We concede, then, that whenever an
organization is destroyed, it is, in the natural course of things,
destroyed for ever; and consequently we concede that the course of
nature affords no proof of our resurrection. But the course of nature is
not the standard by which we have to judge of things supernatural. The
analogies of nature did not prevent the resurrection of Lazarus, of the
son of the widow, and of others of which we read in the Gospel and in
other Scriptural books; nor did Christ respect the analogies of nature
when he rose glorious from the tomb, as he had promised. Hence the
argument from the analogies of nature has no strength whatever against
the dogma of the resurrection.
Has it at least any weight against the immortality of the soul? On the
contrary, it proves that the soul is naturally immortal. For, though
nature can destroy the organic form, it has no power to destroy the
substances of which the organism consists. The organic compound is
destroyed, but all the components remain. If, then, no substance is ever
destroyed by nature, how can we fail to see that the human soul, which
is a substance, cannot naturally perish when the organism of the body is
destroyed? We may be told that the sceptic does not concede that our
soul is a substance; he rather believes that what we call _the soul_ is
a mere result of organic movements which must cease altogether when the
organs are destroyed. But we answer that, if the sceptic honestly
desires to be enlightened on this subject, he must not rely on the
assertions of ignorant or perverse scientists who profess to know
nothing but matter and force; he must read and meditate what has been
written on the subject by competent men. If he has sufficient ability to
understand their philosophical reasonings, he will come to the
conclusion that the substantiality of the human soul is a demonstrated
truth; if, on the contrary, he has too little stock of philosophy to be
able to follow such reasonings, then he has no right to be a sceptic,
and it becomes his duty humbly to recognize his incompetency, and to
accept without demonstration what more cultivated minds consider a
demonstrated truth. This last remark is very important. Scepticism and
unbelief are the offspring of pride. Men pretend to see the _why_ and
the _how_ of everything; but they often forget that they are born in
ignorance, and that, as their knowledge of material things is the fruit
of long and varied experience so, the knowledge of supersensible things
is the fruit of long and methodic study. He who has not studied
astronomy, may say very honestly that he does not know how to determine
the mass of the sun or the distance of the moon; but he cannot honestly
deny what astronomy teaches on the subject. To do this, to declare
himself sceptic, would be accounted folly. How, then, can those be
justified who, without having applied to philosophical studies, refuse
to accept the soundest conclusions of philosophy about the nature of the
soul? If they are at all anxious to know how to prove the substantiality
of the soul, let them apply to philosophy; and they will learn that
matter, owing to its inertia, cannot think, and that the organic
movements cannot be the thinking principle.
The writer in the _Sun_ answers the preceding objection in the following
manner:
“In answer to this it is usually alleged that, though the body of a
man dies and decays, his soul survives, and either, as Dr. Nisbet
maintains, continues its existence in a purer or more ethereal
world, or, as the Christian Church believes, retaining its
potentiality of life, will clothe itself again, at some future time,
with a bodily form and enter upon a new career.”
Let the writer take notice that, according to the doctrine of the
Christian Church, the soul, when separated from the body, retains not a
mere “potentiality of life,” but actual life and the exercise thereof.
The life of the soul does not depend on the organism of the body; its
spiritual operation has no need of organs; for reason and will are not
organic faculties, though in the present life they are associated with
the sensitive faculties which work through the organs. The potentiality
of life, in the language of philosophy, means the capability of
receiving life; and it is the organism, not the soul, that has such a
potentiality.
The writer continues:
“This idea of the distinction between soul and body is as old as the
history of the world. The ancient Greeks illustrated it by the
example of the butterfly emerging from the hard chrysalis and
winging its flight through the air. Like the butterfly, the soul of
man, they said, when it casts off its material envelope, soars aloft
in the enjoyment of a purer atmosphere. The symbol, and the argument
drawn from it, have been adopted by moderns, and they represent the
common opinion on the subject. The assertion is that the soul exists
within the body as a separate entity, and that when the body dies
the soul is merely set free.”
We wonder if any “argument” has ever been drawn from the example of the
butterfly to prove that the soul survives the collapse of the body.
Similitudes are simple illustrations of things, and they serve to help
the imagination, not to convince the intellect. Yet the author seems to
believe that the common opinion which holds the soul to be a substance
distinct from the body owes its demonstration partially to an “argument”
drawn from the butterfly; and he undertakes to show that such an
“argument” has no weight. He says:
“But those who maintain this view fail to note that the butterfly,
like the worm, is visible to the eye and subject to the laws of
matter; and, moreover, that the butterfly, when it has fulfilled its
function in the economy of creation, perishes and is never seen or
heard of more. If the soul is enveloped in the body as the butterfly
is in the worm, it should appear to sight when its covering is
removed. This notoriously does not happen, and therefore the
argument is unsatisfactory.”
Of course the “argument” would be unsatisfactory; and therefore it is
that philosophers do not use it. But the critic should not condemn the
similitude as wrong on the ground that “the butterfly is visible to the
eye and subject to the laws of matter,” whilst such is not the case with
the soul. Similitudes are used for illustrating something different from
them; hence they cannot agree in all points with the things illustrated.
When the visible is used as a symbol of the invisible, it is by no means
pretended that we can see the one as we see the other, or that there is
in the one every property of the other. A genius may be compared to an
eagle; but the eagle has feathers, a beak, and a tail, which the genius
has not. So the butterfly is visible to the eye, subject to the laws of
matter, and perishable; and in all this it differs vastly from the human
soul. But it is not on these points that the comparison is based. Hence
it is idle to argue from these points against the use of the comparison.
The writer concludes the preceding in these words:
“The argument from analogy, therefore, does but little towards
supporting a belief in the future existence of the soul either
separately or in connection with a restored body.”
We admit that the analogies of nature, as alleged by the writer, do very
little indeed towards proving a future resurrection; but we have seen
that the same analogies afford an irresistible proof of the natural
immortality of the human soul: _No power in nature can deprive a
substance of its being; the human soul is a substance; therefore no
natural power can deprive it of its being._ We have, then, in this
argument, a first demonstration of the natural immortality of the soul.
But let us follow the reviewer. He mentions four proofs adduced by
philosophers and divines in favor of the immortality of the soul—namely,
the reasonableness of immortality, the promises of Scripture, the
legendary stories of apparitions, and, in our time, the phenomena of
what is called spiritualism.
“Without in any way admitting the sceptic’s proposition,” he says,
“we must yet recognize the striking fact that in the construction of
the argument from reasonableness, or the _à priori_ demonstration of
the survival of the soul, our philosophers have not, so far, got one
step beyond the point arrived at by the old Greeks two thousand
years ago. No one has written more convincingly on the subject than
Plato in his _Phædo_, nor is there any more thorough and exhaustive
presentment of it extant than the one given by that diligent student
of Greek literature, Cicero, in his _Tusculan Disputations_. Plato
begins by appealing to the general belief of men in their
immortality, which is like appealing to the general belief in
fairies and witches as a proof of their existence. He then argues,
from the soul’s readiness in acquiring knowledge, that it must have
learned the same things in a previous state of existence; and hence,
as it existed before the body, it will exist after the body ceases
to be, which nowadays is not worth refuting. Next he says that the
soul, being uncompounded and invisible, is indissoluble, and
therefore immortal; but this is begging the question. Finally, he
argues that the soul is in itself life and the opposite of death,
and therefore cannot die; which is another _petitio principii_. In a
similar manner Cicero enumerates in favor of the soul’s immortality
the wide-spread conviction that it is immortal; the thirst for fame
which inspires heroic deeds, and which would be absurd if death were
the end of all existence; the volatile nature of the soul, which
preserves it from destruction; and its superior powers over those of
the body.”
We beg to remark that this passage is full of gratuitous assertions.
What the writer calls “a striking fact” is not a fact. Our philosophers,
as he himself proceeds to show, have added much to the reasonings of the
old Greek philosophers. How can it be true, then, that they have gone
“not one step beyond the point arrived at two thousand years ago”? And
if this were true, how could the writer disclaim any intention of
admitting “the sceptic’s proposition,” considering that the old proofs
of immortality are, in his opinion, quite unsatisfactory?
A second gratuitous and unwise assertion is that to appeal to the
general belief in immortality is “like appealing to the general belief
in fairies and witches as a proof of their existence.” To say nothing of
witches (for we need not enter into this controversy), it is not true
that belief in fairies is, or has been, general, except perhaps among
nursery children. But let this pass. There is a difference between
belief and belief. The belief of men in the immortality of the soul does
not originate in nursery tales, but in natural reason; nor is it a
belief extorted by imposition, but a conclusion of which thinking men
find sufficient evidence in their own nature. It is because the nature
is common that the belief in immortality is common. To question it is to
ignore the _sensus naturæ communis_, and to forfeit all claim to a fair
philosophical reputation.
A third assertion, equally gratuitous and manifestly false, is that we
cannot, without begging the question, infer the soul’s immortality from
its simplicity. It is not easy to understand how the writer could fall
into such a tangible error. The simplicity of the soul and its
spirituality are demonstrated independently of the question of
immortality. This being the case, it is plain that no begging of the
question is possible in arguing from the known spiritual simplicity of
the soul to its immortality. The writer might probably object that to
assume the simplicity and spirituality of the soul is to assume its
immortality. This is to say that to assume the premises is to assume the
conclusion. But, if the premises are only assumed after demonstration,
the conclusion which they involve will be based on demonstration and
will be demonstrated. And this is the case with the soul’s immortality.
If the simplicity and spirituality of the soul were assumed without
proof, the argument would be worthless; but, since both are established
by independent considerations, the conclusion is unquestionably valid.
The fourth gratuitous assertion consists in denouncing as a _petitio
principii_ the argument which says that the soul cannot die, “because it
is life in itself.” The words “the soul is life in itself” mean that the
life of the soul is not, like that of the body, borrowed from a distinct
vital principle, but constitutes the very being of the soul and is
involved in its essence. Hence, if the substance of the soul cannot be
blotted out of existence by natural agencies, the soul is naturally
immortal; for its very existence is life. And, since it is known and
admitted that natural agencies are wholly incompetent to cause any
created substance to vanish out of existence, the consequence is that
the soul, as Plato very justly remarks, cannot naturally lose its life.
To complete the demonstration, however, something more is needed. For,
although the preceding arguments show that the soul cannot be destroyed
by natural agencies, they do not prove that the Author of nature, who
has created it, will keep it in existence after its separation from the
body. In other terms, it is necessary to show that the soul is no less
extrinsically than intrinsically immortal. This the Greek philosophers,
owing to their pagan notion of Divinity, have been unable to do; but it
has been done by Christian philosophers, as our writer himself
recognizes. He says:
“One argument, indeed, is employed by Christians which the heathens
do not seem to have thought of—namely, the necessity of a future
existence to compensate men for their sufferings, and to punish them
for their misdeeds, in this world, and thus vindicate God’s mercy
and justice. Virtuous human beings, it is said, are more or less
unhappy in this life, while the wicked are happy; and therefore we
must suppose that so just and benevolent a being as God will reward
the one class and punish the other in a life to come.”
To this argument nothing can be objected. God cannot be more partial to
the wicked than to the good. Such a course would evidently conflict with
his sanctity, which necessarily loves all that is right, and necessarily
hates all that is wrong. Hence the prosperity of the wicked and the
trials of the good, though permitted by God for our present probation,
are not final, but must be reversed when the time of probation is
over—that is, at the end of the present life. A final triumph of virtue
and a final punishment of vice are therefore as certain to come after
this life as it is certain that God cannot forfeit his sanctity.
Nevertheless, the writer in the _Sun_ thinks that he can get rid of the
argument by remarking that, if it proved anything, it would prove top
much.
“As if God’s goodness,” he says, “does not much more require him to
reward the virtuous here, if it requires him to reward them at all,
and as if an uncertain future punishment, in a problematical state
of existence, would offset a present sin.”
But this reply is extremely futile; for how can it be proved that God’s
goodness requires him to reward the virtuous here? The assertion is
quite arbitrary, not to say absurd; for if God’s goodness does not
actually reward the virtuous here, it is evident that God’s goodness
does not require that they should have their reward here. Then the
writer seems to question the very necessity of reward and punishment;
but he gives no reason for his doubt, as in fact no reason could be
found for assuming that the moral law can be either observed without
profit or violated with impunity. If there be no retribution, right and
wrong are empty names, virtue becomes vice, and vice virtue. If no
happiness is to be expected after death, he is most reasonable and
virtuous who strives to satisfy all his passions, and he is most vicious
and unreasonable who renounces his present gratification for the sake of
morality. The sceptic, therefore, who denies a future life is
constrained logically to admit that all virtue is foolishness, and all
wisdom consists in self-indulgence and pleasure. The evident absurdity
of this conclusion shows the falsity of the opinion from which it
proceeds.
The writer imagines also that the future punishment is “uncertain,” and
that after death there is only a “problematical” state of existence. To
this we need not make a new answer, as we have seen that a future
retribution is absolutely certain and not at all problematic.
“It may still further be said,” adds our writer, “that when we turn
to the Scriptures, we do not find them by any means so clear and
positive in regard to the survival of the soul as people generally
suppose. The five books of Moses are absolutely destitute of all
allusion to the subject. The Jews were told by the great lawgiver
nothing whatever concerning a life beyond the grave. They were
promised rewards in this world if they behaved well, and threatened
with punishments in this world if they behaved ill. Their whole
subsequent history illustrates this fundamental principle. When they
rebelled against Jehovah and worshipped other gods, they were
smitten with war, pestilence, famine, and captivity. When they were
obedient to him, they were blessed with peace and plenty, and
victory was granted them over their foes. In the prophetical
writings, full as they are of rebukes and warnings, there is no more
explicit teaching of a future life than in the Pentateuch; and, down
to the advent of Christ, the sect of Sadducees, who prided
themselves of their adherence to the faith of their fathers, stoutly
denied it.”
Let us make a few remarks on this argument. First, were we to concede
that Moses is absolutely silent about a future life, it would make no
difference as to the question of the soul’s immortality. For if we argue
with Christians, Moses’ silence is abundantly compensated for by other
inspired writers; and if we argue with unbelievers, we know that Moses
with them is no authority whether he speaks or remains silent.
Secondly, it is not true that “the five books of Moses are absolutely
destitute of all allusion to the subject.” We are not going to write a
dissertation on this Biblical question; it will suffice to point out a
few passages which would have no meaning apart from a belief in a future
life. We read in Genesis (xv. 1) that the Lord said to Abraham: “I am
thy protector, and thy reward exceedingly great.” Can these words have
any other meaning than “protector in the troubles of thy present life,
and reward exceedingly great after the end of the struggle”? Again we
read that Jacob at the approach of his death, while blessing his
children, exclaimed: “I will look for thy salvation, O Lord” (_ib._
xlix. 18)—that is, “though I shall soon die, yet my soul will not cease
to rejoice in the earnest expectation of the Redeemer who is to
come”—_Salutare tuum expectabo, Domine._ And the same patriarch, when
mourning for his son (Joseph), “would not receive comfort, but said: I
will go down to my son into hell, mourning” (_ib._ xxxvii. 35). He
therefore believed that his soul would survive its separation from the
body. It is not true, then, that the books of Moses are absolutely
destitute of all allusion to a future life. Nor is it lawful to argue
that, because the great lawgiver promised rewards and threatened
punishments of a temporal order, the eternal rewards and the eternal
punishments must have been unknown to the children of Israel; for we
must reflect that Moses’ menaces and promises were made to the nation or
the political body, not to individual persons, and that the political
body was not destined to last for ever; whence it follows that all the
promises and all the menaces addressed to the nation ought to refer
exclusively to the temporal order.
Thirdly, it is not true that the prophetical writings do not teach a
future life. We read in Daniel (xii. 2) that “many of those that sleep
in the dust of the earth shall awake, some unto life everlasting, and
others unto reproach.” These words are decisive. Death is but a sleep;
we shall awake to a new life, and this future life will last for ever.
“On the last day,” says Job, “I shall rise out of the earth, and I shall
be clothed again with my skin, and in my flesh I shall see my God” (c.
xix.) David says: “The wicked shall be turned into hell, all the nations
that forget God. For the poor man shall not be forgotten to the end: the
patience of the poor shall not perish for ever” (Psalm ix.) “Thy dead
men,” says Isaias, “shall live, my slain shall rise again: awake, and
give praise, ye that dwell in the dust” (c. xxvi.) Ezechiel (c. xviii.)
intimates to the wicked that they shall die, while the just shall live;
where _living_ and _dying_ cannot refer to the course of natural events,
but must be interpreted as meaning salvation and damnation. David says
again: “But God will redeem my soul from the hand of hell, when he shall
receive me” (Psalm xlviii.) These passages, to which many others might
be added, suffice to show that our writer is not more accurate in
speaking of the prophetical writings than he is in speaking of the
Pentateuch.
Fourthly, he does not seem to know that the Sadducees, notwithstanding
their “priding themselves of their adherence to the faith of their
fathers,” were nothing but a heretical sect; they denied the
resurrection of the flesh, just as modern Protestants deny
transubstantiation; and it is as absurd to appeal to the Sadducees for
the right understanding of the Jewish faith as it would be to appeal to
our modern heretics for the interpretation of the Catholic doctrine.
The writer adds:
“The historical books, indeed, show that in later days the doctrine
gained admission into some Jewish minds, having most probably been
communicated to them from their Assyrian, Persian, and Babylonian
captors; but the form it took on was that of the resurrection of the
flesh, which, Dr. Nisbet says, was erroneously adopted by the
Christian Church. If, therefore, the Old Testament be silent on the
topic, and the New Testament, as interpreted by contemporary
critics, teaches a doctrine which reason cannot accept, what is
there in the Bible to require a belief in any resurrection
whatever?”
We have shown that the immortality of the soul was known to the Jews
from the time of the patriarchs. The Assyrians, the Persians, the
Babylonians, and the Egyptians were also acquainted with the same truth,
but they seem to have been altogether ignorant of a future resurrection,
and many of them thought that their souls were destined to transmigrate
from one body to another. These errors may have been communicated to
some Jews by their captors; as we know that the Sadducees denied the
resurrection, and most of the Pharisees believed in metempsychosis,
according to Josephus (_Antiquit._ l. xviii. c. 2). But if the captivity
of the Jews may have been the source of these errors, it has certainly
not been the origin of the belief in immortality and resurrection, which
pre-existed among the Jews long before their captivity.
As to the argument which the author draws from Dr. Nisbet’s view of
resurrection, we need hardly say that, if it may have some weight
against Dr. Nisbet, it can have none against the Christian doctrine. The
New Testament, “as interpreted by contemporary critics”—that is, by Dr.
Nisbet—“teaches a doctrine which reason cannot accept.” What then? Then,
concludes the writer, “there is nothing in the Bible to require a belief
in any resurrection whatever.” We are at a loss to understand the
logical connection of the consequence with the antecedent. Can we not
suppose that there is something in the Bible which requires a belief in
the resurrection of the flesh, and that Dr. Nisbet, whose infallibility
is far from being demonstrated, has failed to understand it? When a man
is bold enough to say that the Christian Church has “erroneously
adopted” a doctrine which has been preached by the apostles and believed
in without interruption for eighteen centuries by the Christian world,
there is little doubt that such a man is himself in error, and that his
assertions cannot be made the ground of any argumentation. On the other
hand, if Dr. Nisbet “contends for a resurrection in a form composed of
finer substances than flesh and blood,” he may indeed err theologically,
but we fail to see how he thereby “teaches a doctrine which reason
cannot accept.” In fact, reason is incompetent to decide what mode of
resurrection should be accepted and what rejected; it being evident that
in a question of this sort the province of reason is to submit to
revelation, and to accept the doctrine universally received by the
members of the church. If therefore the Old or the New Testament, or
both, as interpreted by the Fathers of the church, teach a doctrine
against which reason has nothing whatever to object, it is the duty of
every wise and reasonable man to accept the doctrine without the least
regard to the vagaries of “contemporary _Protestant_ critics.” Now, this
is the case with the doctrine of immortality and resurrection.
But our writer has more to say:
“Moreover, it is urged, if the survival of the soul is a fact at
all, it is a fact to-day as much as it ever was, and, like other
facts, susceptible of proof. There are departed souls enough now, if
there ever were any, to make it easy to demonstrate their existence.
If it be true, as so many multitudes believe, that when the body
dies the soul of the man, the woman, or the child who inhabited it
survives as a real man, woman, or child, with all that is requisite
to personal identity, why, ask the doubters, does it not in some way
manifest itself? From every home on this planet there go up daily
and hourly passionate demands for the return of loved ones whom
death has snatched away. Were they still in the flesh, no obstacle
would prevent their hurrying to join the objects of their affection;
and the sceptic finds it inconceivable that if, as is said, they
hover about us in spirit form, they should not make their presence
felt in some undeniable way.”
It is perfectly true that the survival of the soul is, like other facts,
susceptible of proof. Yet not all facts are proved by the same kind of
proofs. There are, even in the natural sciences, facts which must be
proved by reasoning, owing to the impossibility of ascertaining them
directly by the experimental method. We must not expect, therefore, that
souls, which are spiritual and invisible, should, after departing from
their bodies, give sensible signs of their survival in a different
state. Nor do we need any such sensible proof of their survival; for we
have proofs of a higher order, by which we show that the human soul
cannot die. We therefore establish not only the fact of its survival,
but also the necessity of the fact. On the other hand, if a soul were to
appear before us, we might suspect the objective reality of the
apparition; at best we might simply conclude that such a soul has been
kept in existence; but we would have no ground for concluding that all
other human souls are likewise kept in existence, and that they must
remain in existence for ever. In fact, could not that soul be
annihilated some time after its apparition? Or could we logically
maintain that the survival of one soul suffices to prove the survival of
all other souls? It is therefore impossible to prove the immortality of
all human souls by means of individual apparitions; to establish it a
general principle is indispensable, and this principle is drawn from the
very essence of the soul and from the sanctity and justice of its
Creator.
But “why does not the soul in some way manifest itself”? This question
is very easily answered. The departed souls are either in heaven, or in
hell, or in purgatory. If in hell or in purgatory, they are there like
prisoners, and cannot freely roam about. If, on the contrary, they are
in heaven, they have none other than spiritual relations with this
world, except by special dispensation of divine Providence. And again,
why should departed souls manifest themselves in a sensible manner? To
convince us that the Scriptural doctrine of immortality is true? As if
our faith in the word of God were based on the testimony of our senses,
not on the authority and truthfulness of God himself. “Because thou hast
seen me, Thomas, thou hast believed,” said our Lord to his sceptical
disciple: “blessed are they that have not seen and have believed.”
Miracles, in the present order of Providence, are not the rule, but the
exception: hence the sensible manifestation of departed souls, as being
above the requirements of nature, is not to be made the test of their
survival.
“Were they still in the flesh,” we are told, “no obstacle would prevent
their hurrying to join the objects of their affection.” Certainly; for
if they were still in the flesh they would belong to this world; but,
since they are no more in the flesh, they now belong to the world of
spirits, which is invisible to our eyes of flesh, and from which they
cannot communicate with us in sensible forms without a special command
or permission of God. It is not true that they “hover about us in spirit
form”; this is a pagan conception. Nor is it true that the soul survives
“as a real man, woman, or child.” Souls have no sex, and man cannot be
without a body; hence no departed soul is either man, woman, or child:
it is a soul simply, and its “personal identity” consists in its being
the same soul which was in the body.
To the question, “Why do not souls manifest themselves in a sensible
way?” a second answer can be given by replying that many souls have thus
manifested themselves. This answer, good and legitimate as it is, is
ridiculed by sceptical critics, who, while constantly appealing to
facts, are invariably determined to spurn all facts contrary to their
theories. Our writer says:
“Equally inconclusive is the little we have of positive testimony on
the subject. It is true that in all ages there have been some who
have asserted the power of actually seeing and speaking with
departed souls, and the whole tribe of spirit-mediums pretend to it
now. As to what has happened in bygone times it is, of course,
impossible now to base any conclusion upon it. The circumstances
cannot be inquired into, and, moreover, one single witness coming
before us and submitting his testimony to our scrutiny is worth more
than a thousand who are out of our reach. The question is: Does
anybody at this day really have intercourse with the spirits of the
dead? The spirit-rappers and their followers say Yes, but the great
incredulous world, after hearing all they have to present in
confirmation of their assertions, still says No. There is so much
fraud and nonsense connected with the business that the scientific
mind rejects it contemptuously. The very phenomena themselves are
clouded with a suspicion of jugglery and deceit, while there is a
wide divergence of opinion as to their interpretation, even granting
them to be honestly produced.”
We agree with the author that spiritists have no intercourse with the
spirits of the dead, and we add that no mortal has the power to call
back to this world a departed soul. This, we think, is certain both by
authority and philosophy. Hence, if any spirits are really made to
appear and to answer questions—which we know to be a fact, though not so
frequent as simpletons are apt to believe—those spirits are not the
souls of the departed, but the lying spirits of hell, who volunteer to
play nonsensical tricks for the amusement and the perversion of their
foolish consultors. But that departed souls have now and then appeared
to men in visible form is a fact established on indisputable historical
evidence. Do we not read in the Bible that the ghost of Samuel appeared
to Saul, rebuked his recklessness, and intimated to him the impending
defeat of his army and his own death? Nor can it be objected that the
ghost was a devil, for devils do not know the future actions of men; nor
can it be said that the apparition was a delusion, for the ghost was
seen by the witch before it was seen by Saul; and the whole narrative of
the sacred writer is so worded as to exclude the possibility of
explaining away the fact by such a loose interpretation. It will be
said, however, that “the scientific mind” rejects all such facts with
absolute contempt. To which we may reply that “the scientific mind” has
no right whatever to reject historical facts. Science is based on facts;
its duty is to account for them by a sufficient reason, not to deny them
when they transcend our comprehension. We know that there is a class of
modern scientists who contend that everything must be explained by the
properties of matter, and that no exception can be admitted in favor of
supernatural facts. But we do not see how this mental disposition can be
called “scientific.” If physicists refuse to acknowledge all the facts
which transcend the limits of their sphere, why could not the musician
reject all the phenomena which transcend his musical knowledge, or the
chemist ridicule all the astronomical calculations? It is evident that
every science must dwell within its proper limits, and therefore no
weight can be attached to the opinions of mere physicists when they
presume to decide questions entirely extraneous to their profession.
Thus the facts remain, and all attempts at discrediting them must be
accounted idle and unscientific talk. Lazarus, dead and buried, at the
voice of Christ revived. The fact was public and recognized by Christ’s
enemies. “The scientific mind” will not deny it. But then, we ask, how
could the soul of Lazarus retake possession of his body, if it had
ceased to exist? and what else was the rising of the body from its tomb
than a sensible manifestation of the soul returned to its primitive
office? We read in the Gospels, in the Acts of the Apostles, and in
ecclesiastical history of many dead recalled to life either by Christ or
by his disciples and followers. In all such facts souls have manifested
themselves. We might mention a great number of genuine apparitions well
known to all readers of the lives of saints; but as we have neither time
nor intention to enter into a critical discussion of the evidence by
which they are supported, we shall content ourselves with citing the
glorious apparitions of Lourdes, of La Salette, and of Marpingen, which,
as all the world knows, are unquestionable facts, accompanied and
followed by a continuous series of public miracles, to which “the
scientific mind” of modern thinkers has found nothing to object, though
it has been formally and repeatedly challenged to disprove them by its
pretended superior knowledge. Our Catholic readers know most of the
facts to which we allude; but it is probable that the writer to whom we
reply is not acquainted with them, and we would suggest to him to read
M. Lasserre’s book on the apparition of Lourdes, where he will find, we
trust, sufficient evidence concerning the reality and nature of the
facts just mentioned. But we repeat that a Christian and a philosopher
has no need of sensible manifestations to believe in the immortality of
the human soul. Reason and the Gospel afford such a strong evidence of
this truth that all further evidence may seem superfluous. When
unbelievers ask for apparitions or sensible manifestations, we may
answer them as Abraham answered the rich man: “If they hear not Moses
and the prophets, neither will they believe if one rise again from the
dead” (Luke xvi. 31).
Our writer sums up his arguments as follows:
“The fact, then, seems to be—and we would earnestly press it upon
the attention of religious thinkers of every kind, and especially
upon theologians and clergymen, whose peculiar duty it is to deal
with such subjects—the fact seems to be that analogy, reason,
revelation, and human testimony alike fail to establish the doctrine
that man can exist as a man without a material body. Books such as
that of Dr. Nisbet rather add to than remove the philosophical
difficulties of the subject so long as they leave the main question
untouched. Moreover, in explaining away the popular interpretation
of the Scriptures in regard to it, they tend to produce very much
the same results as have been produced by the efforts to reconcile
Genesis with geology. The conclusion that the Bible does not teach
science correctly has been followed by the conclusion that it does
not teach science at all; and so, if we agree with Dr. Nisbet that
what it says about the resurrection is not to be taken literally, we
shall be in great danger of rejecting its testimony altogether.”
This is to say that the Scriptures, in the Protestant system of free
interpretation, lose all authority, inasmuch as the word of man is
thereby substituted for the word of God. Thus far we agree with the
writer. But that religious thinkers, theologians, and clergymen should
undertake a new demonstration of the soul’s immortality and of the
resurrection of the flesh, we consider unnecessary. Theologians and
clergymen have done their duty on this point with such completeness as
to make all sceptics inexcusable. All that is wanted is that the
sceptics themselves undertake to study the works of such theologians and
philosophers as have answered the objections of the materialists of the
last century. Scepticism is ignorance. There is no remedy for it but
study—the study of that special branch of knowledge on which the
solution of any given question depends.
Our writer imagines that some “efforts” have been made “to reconcile
Genesis with geology.” This, however, is not the case. The truth is that
a class of scientists have made some “efforts” to turn geology against
Genesis, and that those efforts have been unsuccessful. A science which
denies to-day what it considered yesterday as demonstrated, and which is
apt to deny to-morrow what it teaches to-day, needs none of our
“efforts” to be reconciled with Genesis. When the facts of geology shall
be well known, and when the theories built on those facts shall be
logically correct, then we shall have no need of “reconciling” geology
with Genesis; for geology will teach us nothing in opposition to the
revealed origin of things.
As to the conclusion “that the Bible does not teach science correctly,”
or “that it teaches no science at all,” we will only remark that the
Biblical record of creation is a history of _facts_, not a treatise of
science. Hence the proposition that the Bible does not teach science
correctly has no meaning, whilst the proposition that the Bible teaches
no science at all is perfectly true, although the facts themselves which
it relates must be looked upon as the groundwork of geological science.
But our writer seems to take a different view of the subject. He says:
“Many believers in Christianity deny that the world was made in six
days, although the Bible says it was made in six days; deny that a
flood ever covered the tops of the mountains, that there ever were
witches and magicians, and that Joshua made the sun and the moon
stand still, although the Bible asserts all these things; why may
they not likewise safely deny as unscientific the dogma of a future
existence of all individual human beings? This is the dilemma into
which speculations like those of Dr. Nisbet bring us; and if he and
his school can furnish a way out of it, they will confer an immense
benefit upon the whole world of anxious but sincere doubters upon
this great subject.”
Such is the end of the article we have been examining. We would tell the
writer that if there are believers in Christianity who deny anything
revealed by God in the Bible, such believers are not consistent with
themselves; for why should they believe in Christianity if they
disbelieve the Bible? If the word of God in the Old Testament does not
command their assent, why should the same word of God in the New
Testament cause them to believe? It is clear that, if they believed on
God’s authority, they could not reject anything based on that authority.
A belief of this sort is not divine faith, but human opinion; it is not
submission to God’s authority, but a denial of God’s authority in all
things which man chooses to disbelieve; and consequently such a belief
is not that faith “without which it is impossible to please God.” It is,
however, the faith of many advanced Protestants; and thus we are not
surprised that the writer considers such an irrational form of belief as
consistent with the mutilated form of “Christianity” with which he is
familiar. But we Catholics—we heirs of the apostolic doctrine
transmitted to us in an uninterrupted manner by the universal church—we
believe everything that has been revealed either in the Old or in the
New Testament. We do not question the fact that there have been witches
and magicians, nor do we see any reason for questioning it; we believe
in like manner what the Bible says about the Flood, the six days of
creation, Joshua’s great miracle, and everything else; by which we mean
that those facts which we read in the Bible, whether we have a true
appreciation of them or not, are all true, and that the difficulties we
may find in their explanation arise from our ignorance, which the modern
progress of science has done very little to dispel. Thus, while we are
free to choose among the various explanations of Biblical facts, we all
agree in believing the facts themselves. But, if this is true of those
passages of Scripture whose meaning is obscure, and whose interpretation
has not been settled by the authority of the church or by the
_consensus_ of the doctors, it is not true of those other passages whose
meaning is obvious and unmistakable, or whose interpretation has been
sanctioned by the unanimous decision of the universal church. Hence,
while we may freely discuss the six days of creation and the
astronomical result of Joshua’s dealings with the sun, we have no
reasonable ground for discussing or doubting “the dogma of a future
existence of all individual human souls.” To say that this dogma is
“unscientific” is to assume what neither has been nor can be proved;
unless, indeed, we call “unscientific” every truth which ranges above
the compass of experimental science; in which case even logic itself
would be utterly unscientific.
Whether Dr. Nisbet or his school can furnish a way out of the
difficulties complained of by our writer we do not know. It is probable,
however, that neither Dr. Nisbet nor any other doctor of the same school
can successfully combat the invading spirit of infidelity so long as
they do not give up their Protestant method of reasoning and their
Protestant profession. Protestantism is itself one kind of infidelity;
it cannot contribute in any way towards the restoration of sound
philosophical or theological ideas; it can only sow doubt, discord, and
inconsistency, thus paving the way for religious scepticism and its
concomitant evils. The history of Protestantism is sufficient evidence
of the fact. It is vain, therefore, to hope that Dr. Nisbet or his
school will “confer any benefit upon the whole world of anxious but
sincere doubters” by establishing either the immortality of the soul or
the resurrection of the flesh on impregnable proofs. Let, then, all
anxious but sincere doubters turn to Catholic doctors and Catholic
books; let them hear the church—the old, calumniated church, the column
of truth, the heir of the apostles, of the prophets, of the patriarchs,
and the spouse of Christ. She will teach them how to reconcile reason
with faith and religion with science, so as to believe rationally and
consistently whatever God has revealed, while preserving the fullest
liberty of judgment in regard to all other things. Yet we must warn
these “anxious but sincere doubters” that no benefit will accrue to
them, if they approach our divines or read our books with that spirit of
contention which is so common among all the Protestant sects. If they
are “anxious” to know the truth, they must not rely exclusively on the
strength of their reasoning powers, but must be ready to yield to
authority in all things connected with Christian faith. If they are
“sincere,” humility must be a part of their sincerity.
To conclude: We have met and answered the reasons alleged by the writer
in the _Sun_ against the immortality of the soul and the resurrection of
the flesh; and although we have scarcely developed the reflections
suggested by those reasons, yet we confidently believe that our brief
remarks will be found sufficient to set at rest the arguments of the
sceptic. As to the doctrine of immortality in particular, of which the
same writer desired “a solid and impregnable philosophical
demonstration,” we have shown that the human soul neither can be
destroyed by any created cause nor will be destroyed by God;
accordingly, the human soul is intrinsically and extrinsically immortal.
Our proofs have been few, but simple and intelligible; and we trust that
the writer who gave us occasion to speak of this subject, if he chances
to read these pages, will soon acquire the conviction that the doctrine
of immortality was really in no need of a new philosophical
demonstration.
SANNAZZARO.
One Sunday morning, while at Naples, we went to hear our Mass of
obligation in the church of the Servites, erected by the poet Sannazzaro
in honor of the divine Maternity of Mary, and called after his famous
poem, _De Partu Virginis_. It stands on the Mergellina, that _pezzo di
cielo caduto in terra_, as the Neapolitans say—“a fragment of heaven to
earth vouchsafed”—and certainly the most beautiful shore on which the
sun shines. It was this shore that inspired the ardent Stazio. Not far
off is the tomb of Virgil, and the place where Pollio lived, and the
grove where Silius Italicus conceived the idea of his _Punica_. Here,
too, Sannazzaro had a charming villa which tempted the very Muses to
descend from the mountain to dwell on the sandy shore, as Ariosto says:
“Alle Camene
Lasciar fa i monti e abitar le arene.”
Here he wrote most of his poems and gathered around him all the wit and
talent of Naples on those _Dies geniales_, which were as famous at that
time as the _Noctes Ambrosianæ_ of Christopher North at Edinburgh in our
younger days, though not quite so convivial, perhaps. This villa had
about it a certain perfume of antiquity of which we know nothing in
these times, and which we affect to despise. It was the natural
atmosphere of this Virgilian region, and it had an inspiration of its
own which must be taken into account in reading the works of Sannazzaro.
He has celebrated his villa in an ode worthy of Horace. He did not,
however, notwithstanding his classical tastes, dedicate his household
altar to Apollo, or even to Venus—he was too genuine a Christian for
that—but to the tutelar care of San Nazzaro, whom he reckoned among his
ancestors. When nearly done with life, he built a church on the spot, in
memory of that divine Birth which he had so sweetly sung, and attached
thereto a convent of Servite monks, to whom he gave the income of eight
thousand florins for the solemn celebration of Christmas and certain
expiatory services for himself, his ancestors, and King Frederick III.
of Naples. Here he also set up an altar to San Nazzaro, and ordered his
own tomb to be built.
We had repeatedly passed the Church del Parto without being able to find
it, so embedded is it among houses on the side of the cliff. And the
entrance is from a side terrace, to which you ascend by a flight of
steps, as to the court of a private dwelling. This terrace commands a
view that surpasses all the most vivid imagination could conceive. The
Castel del Ovo advances directly before you into the incomparable bay,
the waters of which, generally blue as the heavens, were at this early
hour all crimson and gold and amethyst, with great floods of silver
coming in from the sea. Behind them were islands, such as we see in
dreams, rising out of the magic waves: Capri, with its marvellous
grottos, clouded with the memory of Tiberius; Procida, with its fort on
the volcanic rocks; and Ischia, where the beautiful Vittoria Colonna,
beloved of Michael Angelo, retired to mourn her husband’s loss, and
beneath which the giant Typhœus, transfixed by a thunderbolt from
Jupiter, lies imprisoned, at long intervals groaning with pain, and
sending forth in his rage fearful eruptions of burning lava. On the
inner curve of the bay sits Naples like a queen, with her palaces, her
citadels, her white villas gleaming like jewels—her glance all flame,
and her heart all fire. Beyond rises Mount Vesuvius, with its cone of
perfect symmetry, full of mystery and terror, its summit now flecked
with patches of snow, looking like great white flowers that bloom
“Around the crater’s burning lips,
Sweetening the very edge of doom.”
A light vapor, rather than smoke, issued from the top, no longer dark
and foreboding like the evil genius whose vase was unsealed, but of
soft, dove-like hues, as if some pacific herald. At its foot sleep fair
villages among peaceful olive-trees, wreathed with vines, and lulled
into forgetfulness by the gentle waves that caress the shore. Harmonious
tints blend earth and sky and sea, but they are constantly varying with
the rolling hours. There is nothing monotonous here, except the languid
air which wearily plays among the odorous trees without the force to
agitate their branches. Nature is here a genuine siren, half-earth,
half-sea, whose magic voice wooes many a wanderer still to forget his
native shore. We feel its charm as we survey the matchless landscape. An
electric fire comes over the soul—admiration, wonder, emotions no words
can express. Poetry is in the golden air, the bright waves, the
enchanting shores, the intense hues that color everything—yes, even in
the awful scars and lava streams that furnished the ancients with their
ideas of Tartarus, and made Virgil place his descent thereto near the
_tenebrosa palus_—the gloomy lake of Avernus, formed from the
overflowing of the Acheron—
“Sad Acheron of sorrow, black and deep.”
The church bell awoke us from this delightful vision, and we entered the
open door. It is a small building whose walls within are tinged a
delicate sea-green, and have white mouldings, as if to harmonize with
the foam-crested waves of the bay without. The windows are mere
lunettes, high up in the arches, and below are five or six deep recesses
with altars and paintings. The white marble basin at the entrance, for
holy-water, looks like a flower on its tall, slender stem. On it is
graven a shield like a chess-board—perhaps the arms of some noble of
this _farniente_ land to whom life was a mere game. We were at once
struck by a singular crucifix on a kind of a tripod, under a canopy like
a penthouse. Near by stood the _Addolorata_—the Madonna of Many
Sorrows—in black like a nun, with wimple and veil, a stole embroidered
with gold, and a wheel of gilt arrows piercing the silver heart on her
breast. One poor dim lamp was burning before her. Opposite was a more
cheerful altar with the Virgin _del Parto_, the titular of the church,
gaily dressed after the Italian taste, and surrounded with lights and
flowers. These two Madonnas seemed to personify Bethlehem and
Calvary—the Alpha and Omega of the Christian mysteries—and between them
we knelt to hear Mass.
The church was nearly full of people in bright holiday attire, quite
absorbed in their devotions, and, though mostly of the lower classes,
so-called, they all responded in Latin to the litany at the close of the
service. Near by us, in the pavement, was a tomb-stone with the
bas-relief of a boy with a book under his head, another in his hand, and
one at his feet. This was a promising youth named Fabrizio Manlio, who
so loved the Mergellina that, when ill, he wished to be brought here to
die, and here be buried, as his touching epitaph relates. But that was
three hundred years ago, and the father who here records the tears he
shed long since rejoined his son, and now there is not a smile the less
at sunny Naples. Why lay aught too much to heart?
In a recess at the right is a noted painting, generally known at Naples
as the _Diavolo di Mergellina_. This is no new fiend, but the old
outcast from heaven vanquished by St. Michael, the great captain of the
heavenly host, a picture by Leonardo da Pistoja, a Tuscan painter of the
Da Vinci school. The archangel, “severe in youthful beauty,” is girded
with a vest of heavenly azure, and from his shoulders spring broad wings
of many hues—green, yellow, and purple—with rays like long arrows of
gold. His right hand seemingly disdains to use its sword—“Satan’s dire
dread”—but holds it behind him, while with the left he thrusts his long
spear through the demon’s neck and nails him to the ground. His face is
perfectly passionless, as if not even so terrible a combat could ruffle
the serenity of his angelic nature. The _Diavolo_ is one of those
strange demons that entice souls down to the gulf of perdition, common
in the middle ages, with two faces, not Janus-wise, but with the second
face on the bowels, of most startling character. The fiend before us has
the beautiful face and bust of a woman, said to be the genuine portrait
of a lady who became passionately enamored of Diomedes Carafa, Bishop of
Ariano, who lies buried at the foot of the altar beneath, with the
triumphant inscription: _Et fecit victoriam, halleluja!_ which may be
applied both to the bishop and the archangel. The round arms of this
fair demon are drawn up under her head. Her long, golden locks
“In masses bright
Fall like floating rays of light”
around her shoulders and half-veil her bosom. Her youthful face is
deadly pale, but not contracted, and her eyes are cold and vigilant. The
lower face, on the contrary, is old and convulsed, as if crying with
pain. The hair is grizzled and witch-like. The legs are like two scaly
serpents, twisted and writhing, and the bat-like wings shade off to a
lurid brown and yellow. The contrast in these two faces is very striking
and has a deep moral. It is a common proverb at Naples to compare too
tempting a project, or too seducing a beauty, to the Diavolo di
Mergellina.
The high altar of the church is of inlaid marble. At the sides are
niches containing statues of SS. Jacobo and Nazzaro, the patrons of the
founder. On what is called the arch of triumph over the head of the nave
is an old painting of the Annunciation, the Virgin in one spandrel with
the dove on her hand, and the angel in the other with the lily stem.
Along the connecting arch is the distich from Sannazzaro:
“Virginitas Partus discordes tempore longo,
Virginia in gremio fœdera pacis habent.”[82]
Footnote 82:
Virginity and Maternity, long at variance, have made peace in the womb
of the Virgin.
In a neighboring recess is an Adoration of the Magi, which contends with
that of the Castello Nuovo as being the one given Sannazzaro by
Frederick of Aragon, painted by Van Eyck, and said by Vasari to be the
first oil-painting ever brought to Italy.
We searched a long time in vain for the tomb of Sannazzaro. Chapels,
flagstones, and mural inscriptions, all underwent a severe scrutiny;
and, supposing it must have been destroyed in some political convulsion,
when even death itself is not respected, we were on the point of leaving
the church when it occurred to us to go behind the high altar. We found
there a door which we made bold to enter, remembering how often we had
been repaid for exploring sacristies and odd nooks. There was the tomb
directly before us, in the smallest of choirs in which ever monk lost
his voice “with singing of anthems.” It is the most quiet, secluded spot
in the world—dim, frescoed, and crowded with a dozen stalls, on which
cherubs’ heads are carved. It is more like a little chantry than a
choir, and nothing ever breaks the silence but the voice of holy
psalmody. The poet’s tomb is of white marble, chiefly sculptured by Fra
Giovanni da Montorsoli. It is surmounted by his bust crowned with
laurel. The face is somewhat haggard, but the features are noble. He
wears a cap like that we see in pictures of Dante. Beside him are two
_putti_, one with a book and the other bearing a helmet, in allusion to
the different ways in which Sannazzaro distinguished himself. The
sarcophagus beneath rests on an entablature, below which, in delicate
relief, are Neptune and his trident—doubtless in allusion to the
_Piscatoriæ_—and Pan with his reeds, accompanied by fauns and satyrs,
with jovial faces and shaggy sides, as if to sing the praises of the
author of the _Arcadia_. Along the base of the monument is an
inscription by Bembo, which shows he believed Virgil to have been buried
at Naples:
“Da sacro cineri flores: hic ille Maroni
Syncerus musa proximus ut tumulo.”[83]
Footnote 83:
Strew this sacred tomb with flowers. Here, near Virgil, lies Syncerus,
his brother in the Muses.
At the sides are fine statues of Apollo and Minerva by Santa-croce.
Iacopo Sannazzaro, the inspired poet of the Virgin, was born at Naples
in 1458. He sprang from an illustrious family of Spanish origin that had
fallen from its former grandeur, but was left not without considerable
means. His mother, on becoming a widow, withdrew into the country in
order to bring him up in retirement, uncontaminated by the world; but he
soon displayed such uncommon abilities that she was persuaded to return
to Naples and there watch over his education. It is said he showed a
talent for poetry at eight years of age; but it must be remembered he
belonged to a land where poesy is like the flowers that spring up
spontaneously from the soil at every season. Of course his education was
chiefly classical; for he belonged to an age when Greek and Latin
literature was regarded as the standard of excellence, and the very
mysteries of religion were sung in the measure of Homer and Virgil. When
of sufficient age he chose as his master Giovanni Pontano, called “the
Trojan Horse” on account of the great number of illustrious poets,
orators, and warriors that sprang from his school. Pontano was then
director of the celebrated Accademia Napolitana, in which he figured as
grammarian, philosopher, historian, orator, and poet. He was the
literary autocrat of Naples,
“Whose smile was transport, and whose frown was fate.”
He was regarded as the favorite of Apollo and the Aonides, and from his
lips was said to flow a river of gold:
“Quel bel tesoro
D’Apollo e delle Aonide sorelle,
Che con la lingua sparge un fiume d’oro.”
His astronomical discoveries were announced in Latin verse. It is said
he was the first in modern times to revive the idea of Democritus that
the Milky Way is composed of myriads of stars.
Sannazzaro succeeded his master at the Academy of Naples, which at that
time held its meetings at Pontano’s residence, near which was the
Cappella Pontaniana—a gem of art, erected by Pontano in honor of the
Virgin and the two St. Johns. Here were set up the wise maxims of the
founder, graven on stone, which we translate from the original Latin:
“It is noble but difficult to restrain one’s self in opulence.
“He who never forgets injuries forgets that he is man.
“Whatever thy fortune, be mindful of Fortune herself.
“Integrity promotes confidence, and confidence friendship.
“He who decides too hastily on doubtful occasions repents too late,
though he repent quickly.
“It is in vain the law cannot reach him whose conscience absolves him
not.
“The sky is not always serene, nor does prudence always ensure safety.
“In every condition of life the chief thing is to know thyself.
“It belongs to the upright to despise the injuries of the wicked, whose
praises even are a disgrace.
“Let us bear the penalty of our faults rather than the state should
expiate them to its injury.
“Content not thyself with being upright, but find others who resemble
thee to serve thy country.
“It is by boldness and conquest a kingdom is enlarged, and not by those
counsels that seem to the timid full of wisdom and prudence.”
Such were the maxims instilled into Sannazzaro’s youthful mind. They
have a flavor of antiquity. The Academy of Naples still exists, but
holds its meetings in the cell of St. Thomas Aquinas at San Domenico’s,
where royalty itself used to attend the lectures of the Angelic Doctor.
In the church of Monte Oliveto at Naples—where Tasso found shelter—there
is a striking group of figures in the chapel of the Holy Sepulchre,
gathered in sorrowful attitudes around the dead Christ—all life-size
likenesses of celebrities in the time of the artist, Modanin of Modena.
Sannazzaro is represented as Joseph of Arimathea; Pontano as Nicodemus;
Alfonso II. as St. John, with his son Ferdinand beside him.
Sannazzaro has celebrated a young Neapolitan girl in classical measure,
under the Greek names of Amarante, Phyllis, and Charmosyne, which
signify joy, love, and the immortal; but he veiled his passion, if it
was one, under mythological allusions. He took as his device an urn of
black pebbles, among which was a single white one with the motto,
_Æquabit nigras candida sola dies_, as if in time he hoped to please his
lady. But she died young, and he bewailed her in suitable elegies. In
spite of this somewhat fantastic attachment—perhaps only a poetic
fancy—it is sure Sannazzaro was all his life rather a votary of Diana
than of Venus, as became one destined to sing the praises of the
Purissima.
Admitted to familiarity with Frederick of Aragon, son of King Ferdinand
of Naples, Sannazzaro was appointed director of the royal festivities,
and in this capacity composed dramas in the language of the _lazzaroni_
for the amusement of the court. These soon became as popular in the
streets as in the palace, and were the germs of the modern Italian
comedy, which finds its broadest expression in Pulcinella’s farces at
San Carlino. One of these plays is spoken of with particular admiration,
composed in 1492 to celebrate the conquest of Granada, and acted at the
Castello Capuano in presence of Alfonso, Duke of Calabria.
Sannazzaro became so attached to his royal patron that he accompanied
him in an expedition against the Turks, where he acquired the reputation
of a courageous soldier. And when the prince was deprived of the throne
to which he had succeeded, and retired to France, the poet, more
faithful in misfortune than Pontano to Frederick I., generously sold two
paternal estates to provide for his sovereign’s wants, and accompanied
him into exile. It was in the following lines he bade adieu to Naples,
which to leave is a kind of death:
“Parthenope, mihi culta; vale, blandissima siren,
Atque horti valeant, Hesperidesque tuæ;
Mergellina, vale, nostri momor; et mea flentis
Serta cape, heu domini numera avara tui;
Maternæ salvete umbræ, salvete paternæ.”[84]
Footnote 84:
Farewell, adored Parthenope; sweet siren, farewell! Farewell,
enchanted gardens of the Hesperides! Farewell, Mergellina, be mindful
of me; accept these tears of regret from the master who has naught
else to offer thee! Farewell, shade of my mother; my father’s shade,
farewell!
Sannazzaro remained with Frederick III. till his death at Tours, and
then returned to Naples, where he devoted himself wholly to literature.
The _Arcadia_, which he finished in France, was published in 1504. This
is a romance of mingled prose and verse after the manner of Boccaccio’s
_Ameto_. It caused a great sensation in Italy, and is still regarded as
one of the happiest inspirations of the Italian muse. His pleasant villa
on the Mergellina had been respected during his exile, and here he
established himself at his return. It became a rendezvous for all the
literary men of the city. On Thursdays in particular, when the scholars
and barristers had a holiday, all that was brilliant at Naples assembled
here for a frugal repast, at which poems and epigrams were recited.
Sannazzaro was very popular, and to be his friend was regarded as a
_brevet_ of immortality.
“Dipinto io sia nell’opre eterne e belle
Del mio bel Sannazzaro, vero Sincero,
Ch’allora io giugnero fino alle stelle,”[85]
Footnote 85:
Let me be depicted in the immortal works of my glorious Sannazzaro, so
worthy of the name of Sincerus, and I shall be exalted to the very
stars.
wrote Cariteo. Sannazzaro, it should be remarked, had, after the fashion
of the time, taken the more classical name of Actius Syncerus, to which
allusion is made on his tomb.
But the greatest festival of the year on the Mergellina was the birthday
of Virgil, for whom Sannazzaro had a kind of passion. He celebrated this
anniversary—perhaps in imitation of Silius Italicus, who offered an
annual sacrifice to the manes of the bard of Mantua—by a banquet, to
which he invited his most intimate friends, such as “Alessandro, the
jurisconsult, whose works, so long popular, furnish curious details
respecting the public and private life of the Romans; Cariteo, who sang
in his heterodox style the human soul formed by the Creator, from which
nothing is concealed in heaven before it assumes its earthly veil, but
which, coming below, as if fallen from some star into a human body, no
longer retains any memory of the past; Andrea Acquaviva, who dismounted
from his war-horse to take the lyre and drink from the fount of
Hippocrene; Girolamo Carbone, who preferred the Tuscan language to the
Latin, then so popular, and whose rhythm is a kind of music to the ear;
and, finally, Pontano, the master of Sannazzaro, the restorer of the
Neapolitan academy founded by Panormita.”[86] These repasts were served
by Hiempsal, a young African slave whom Sannazzaro had freed and taught
to sing the elegies of Tibullus to an air he himself had composed. It
was after one of these Virgilian feasts the poet went to hear Egidio, an
Augustinian monk, preach. He was as celebrated for his eloquence as his
learning, and was a favorite of two popes, one of whom (Leo X.)
afterwards made him cardinal. Egidio, in declaiming with his usual
animation against the vices of the time, made a happy citation from
Virgil, which delighted his hearer and led to a friendship between them.
It was this or some other sermon of his that suggested to Sannazzaro the
idea of his great poem, _De Partu Virginis_, to which he devoted twenty
years of his life—a poem of which Mr. Hallam says “it would be difficult
to find its equal for purity, elegance, and harmony of versification.”
Pope Leo. X., who appreciated genius in whatever way it found
expression, whether by pen, chisel, or pencil, sent the poet a brief in
1521 to encourage him in singing the mysteries of the Christian faith,
and to express his satisfaction that, at a time when the voice of a monk
was troubling the peace of the church, the Catholic faith should find a
defender among the laity—another David, as it were, to smite the new
Goliath and appease with his lyre another Saul; and he declared the poem
an honor to religion and to his pontificate. Clement VII. also wrote him
a brief, accepting the dedication, which alone, he said, was enough to
immortalize the pontiff thus honored.
Footnote 86:
Audin.
The _De Partu Virginis_ is the most remarkable poem of the Renaissance,
and its publication was an event in the literary world. It was
everywhere eulogized, and the author was styled the Christian Virgil.
Egidio of Viterbo, after reading it, thus wrote to the author: “When I
received your divine poem, I eagerly hastened to make myself familiar
with its contents. God alone, whose inspiration suggested so wonderful a
creation, can reward you suitably—not by admitting you to the Elysian
Fields, the fabulous abode of Linus and Orpheus, but to a blessed
eternity.” This poem still merits attention, if for no other reason, at
least because of its effect on religious art in the sixteenth century—an
influence which has been compared to Dante’s. Mrs. Jameson says she can
trace it in all the contemporary productions of Italian art of all
schools from Milan to Naples. She regards this influence, however, as
perverse. But let us take a brief glance at a poem which has excited so
much admiration and criticism down to the present day.
The _De Partu Virginis_ is an epic poem, in which the birth of Christ is
sung with the harmonious flow, the variety of imagery, and the elevated
tone of Virgil. But, strange to say, none of the sacred characters
introduced are called by their real names—perhaps because unknown to the
Latin muse. Even the names of Jesus and Mary are expressed by Virgilian
paraphrases. The former is called _Divus Puer_ and _Numen sanctum_; the
latter _Alma parens_, _Dia_, and _Regina_. St. Joseph is the _Senior
Custos_; St. Elizabeth the _Matrona defessa ævo_; and the Supreme Being
is styled the _Regnator_, _Genitor superum_, etc. The author calls upon
the inhabitants of heaven (_cœlicolæ_) to reveal to his limited vision
the profound secrets of the mystery he is about to sing, and invokes the
sacred Aonides as the natural protectresses of virginal purity. “Dear
delight of poets,” says he, “ye sacred Muses who have never refused me
your favor, allow me once more to take a long draught at your clear
fount. Ye who derive your glorious origin from heaven, and have so
singular a regard for what is pure, aid me in singing of heavenly themes
and celebrating the glory of a Virgin. Drive away the darkness of my
mind and show me the way by which to rise to the highest summit of your
celestial mount. These lofty mysteries were not unknown to you. You must
have beheld the sacred grotto of the Nativity. You must have heard the
sweet music of the angels that surrounded it. And it is hardly credible
you did not admire the splendor of the star that led from the extremity
of the Orient three powerful princes to render homage to the new-born
Child.
“I have not herein the less need of thy aid, thou constant Hope of men
and gods, at once Maid and Mother! If I have taken delight every year in
adorning the walls of thy temple with festoons and garlands of flowers;
if, on this delicious cliff of the Mergellina, that seems from its proud
height to disdain the waves of the sea and promise safety to the boatmen
who hail it from afar, I have hewn out for thee altars of eternal
duration; if, following the footsteps of my ancestors, I have taken
pleasure in singing thy praises and celebrating thy honor with the
immense crowds of devout people who, with lively joy, hallow the for
ever memorable day of thy happy deliverance, guide my steps in these
unfrequented paths, give me the courage to accomplish what I have
undertaken, and abandon me not in a task at once so glorious and so
difficult.”
The poet goes on to relate how the _Regnator Superum_, seeing the human
race in danger of falling into Tartarus, a prey to the fury of
Tysiphone, wishes, as all this evil has been brought about by woman,
that by woman it should be repaired. He therefore despatches one of his
ministering spirits to announce to the purest of virgins the sublime
destiny that awaits her. The messenger finds her plunged in meditation
with the prophetic page of the Sibyl open before her, and, saluting her
with reverence, he makes known the advent of the _Numen sanctum_ who
would deliver mankind from the horrors of the Styx. Fame everywhere
publishes the tidings of this mysterious event. Hell itself is told of
it. The Eumenides tremble. Alecto, Cerberus, and all the monsters of
paganism shudder with fear. The souls of the Fathers—those genuine
heroes, as Sannazzaro, after St. Jerome, calls them—rejoice. David
himself repeats his prophetic Psalms, and sings the life of Christ, his
Passion, Death, and Descent into Limbo.
But it is the great Governor of the universe himself who reveals to the
inhabitants of heaven his designs of mercy towards mankind. And when the
time of the Nativity comes, he summons Joy (_Lætitia_) to his presence,
whose privilege it is to appease the anger of the Thunderer and diffuse
serenity over his face:
“Hæc magni motusque animosque Tonantis
Temperat et vultum discussâ nube serenat,”
and sends her to announce the glad tidings of the divine Birth. Putting
wings to her feet, she leaves heaven, guarded by the Hours, and proceeds
to earth, where she reveals the great event to the shepherds. Two of
them, Lycidas and Egon, recite a part of the fourth Eclogue of Virgil,
applying it to the new-born Child. The birth of Christ is related with
delicacy and poetic grace. There is a sublime energy worthy of Dante in
the lines that speak of the Incarnation, and the astonishment of nature
in view of the prodigy. Angels in the air celebrate it by sports and
combats in the style of Homer’s heroes, with the instruments of the
Passion for arms. Other angels, like Demodocus, sing the creation,
renovation of nature, the seasons, etc. The Jordan, leaning on its urn,
is moved to its depths, and relates to the Naiads gathered about him the
wonderful event on its shores. An angel comes to bathe the Child in its
waters. A dove hovers above. The water-nymphs bend around in veneration.
The Jordan, amazed, stays its current with respect, and recalls the
prophecy of old Proteus, that the time would come for it to be visited
by One who would raise the glory of the Jordan above the Ganges, the
Nile, or the Tiber. After which the river, wrapped in its mantle,
wonderfully wrought by the Naiads, returns majestically to its bed.
This is too brief an outline of the splendid crown Sannazzaro has woven
for the Blessed Virgin, set with so many antique gems. Many have been
shocked by the mingling of paganism and Christianity in this poem, but
to us it is as if the waters of the Permessus had been turned into the
Jordan. All these pagan deities and profane allusions that sprinkle its
pages seem to sing the triumph of Christianity. They are in harmony,
too, with the Virgilian region in which the poem was written, as well as
with the spirit of the age. There was such a passion for antiquity and
for Greek and Latin authors in the sixteenth century that even religion
and art put on a classic air. Nor was Leo X., to whom it has been made a
subject of reproach, the only dignitary of the church that has felt this
fascination. St. Jerome himself was called by the accusing spirit, _Non
Christianus, sed Ciceronianus_, and he used to fast before reading the
works of the great orator, so much did he fear their ascendency.
Virgil was especially dear to the middle ages on account of the
tenderness and melancholy of his noble nature and his strange
presentiment of the future. We all remember the famous passage: “The
last age of the Cumæan song now approaches; the great series of ages
begins again; now returns the Virgin (Astrea), now return the Saturnian
kingdoms; now a new progeny is sent from high heaven. Be propitious,
chaste Lucina, to the boy at his birth, through whom the iron age will
first cease, and the golden age dawn on the world.”
The learned at that time regarded Virgil as a prophet; and the people,
as a magician. It was common to have recourse to his writings, as well
as Homer’s and other authors, to obtain prognostics. But this was not
exclusively a mediæval superstition. It was in use before the Christian
era, and has not in these days wholly disappeared. The author of
Margaret Fuller’s life says: “She tried the _sortes biblicæ_, and her
hits were memorable. I think each new book which interested her she was
disposed to put to this test and know if it had somewhat personal to say
to her.” The church has condemned this practice, even by a similar use
of the Holy Scriptures.
Dante shared in the general passion for Virgil. He makes him his
guide—“My guide and master, thou”—through the lower realms; not in
Paradise, whence he is excluded,
“For no sin except for lack of faith.”
Petrarch, too, loved Virgil and planted a laurel—“the meed of poets
sage”—at his tomb, but it was long since done to death by the cruel
hands of tourists.
A touching sequence was long sung in the church of Mantua, in which St.
Paul is represented visiting the tomb of Virgil at Naples, and weeping
because he had come too late for him.
In the time of Sannazzaro, Plato was also in great repute. Every one
remembers the festival instituted in his honor by Lorenzo de’ Medici at
his villa on the side of Fiesole, in which Ficino, Politian, and all
that was brilliant in the intellectual world of Florence took part. The
bust of the divine Plato, presented by Jerome Roscio of Pistoja, was set
up at the end of a shady avenue and crowned with laurel, and, after a
grand repast, they all gathered around it and sang cantos in his honor.
Ficino even pretended to find in Plato’s writings the doctrines of the
Trinity, Incarnation, Eucharist, etc. He used to address his audience as
“My brethren in Plato,” and he makes Christ, in his descent into Limbo,
snatch Plato from the jaws of hell to place him among the blessed in
Paradise. This reminds us of the great Erasmus, who says: “There are
many in the society of the saints who are not in the calendar. I am
every instant tempted to exclaim: _Sancte Socrates, ora pro nobis_, and
to recommend myself to the Blessed Flaccus and Maro.”
Another of these academies that sought to revive the antique spirit was
that of Pomponio Leto at Rome, which has brought so many unmerited
reproaches on Pope Paul II. because it was for a time suppressed by him
for carrying its passion for antiquity to a pernicious degree. One
historian after another has declared him an enemy of the sciences on the
principle of their tending to heresy! Hallam, Roscoe, and Henri Martin
all echo the calumnies of Platina against this pope. M. de l’Epinois has
proved the falseness of this accusation. As if a pope, as he says, who
was all his life an amateur of ancient manuscripts, a numismatist of the
first class, and an able judge of painting and sculpture, who took
pleasure in doing himself the honors of his collections, and provided
liberally for the education of poor children that showed an aptitude for
study, was an enemy of science! Francesco Filelfo did not think so when
he thus wrote to Leonardo Dati: “What do not I and all learned men owe
to the great and immortal wisdom of Paul II.?”
As for the Academy of Pomponio Leto, there was a general conviction that
it was pagan and licentious in its tendency, if not in actual practice.
Canensius, in his life of Paul II., says explicitly: “The pope dissolved
a society of young men of corrupt morals, who affirmed that our orthodox
faith was not so much founded on the genuine basis of facts as on the
jugglery of the saints, and maintained that it was permissible for every
one to indulge in whatever pleasure he liked.” And the Chevalier de
Rossi, in the _Roma Sotteranea_, quotes the following passage from a
letter of Battista de Judicibus, Bishop of Ventimiglia, written to
Platina a short time after the affair in question: “Some call you more
pagan than Christian, and affirm that you follow pagan morals rather
than ours. Others circulate the report that Hercules is your deity.
Another says it is Mercury, a third that it is Jupiter, a fourth that it
is Apollo, Venus, or Diana. They say you are in the habit of calling
these gods and goddesses to witness, especially when in the company of
those who give themselves up to like superstitions—people whom you
associate more willingly with than others.” M. de Rossi has also found
several inscriptions which prove that a secret hierarchy was established
by this society, of which it is reasonable to suppose Pope Paul II. was
as aware as of their other anti-Christian practices. Additional
suspicion was excited by their secret meetings from the report at this
very time that a conspiracy was formed against the life of the Sovereign
Pontiff—the more readily credited because only nine years previously the
streets of Rome had been deluged with blood by an insurrection. However,
the pope, so far from being the _farouche_ and sanguinary ruler M.
Martin styles him, let off the academicians with a short confinement,
and in 1475 Pomponio and his companions were once more quietly pursuing
their studies, having profited by so beneficial a lesson. The academy
became more flourishing than ever, and counted among its members a great
number of bishops and prelates of the church.[87] Pope Leo X. himself,
before his elevation to the papacy, was in the habit of attending its
reunions. Archæology, poetry, and music all had a part in them, as well
as other sciences, and all these Leo X. sincerely loved. “I have always
loved letters,” wrote he to Henry VIII. “This love, innate in me, age
has only served to increase; for I have observed that those who
cultivate them are heartily attached to the dogmas of the faith, and are
the ornaments of the church.” Notwithstanding this love of literature,
especially ancient, Leo X. himself realized that too excessive an
application to such pursuits might be prejudicial to the spiritual life.
Though at Florence he participated in the general admiration for Plato,
after his elevation to the Papacy he recommended to the pupils of the
Roman College to give themselves up to serious studies, and renounce
Platonic philosophy and pagan poetry as tending to injure the soul. So
also St. Odo, Abbot of Cluny, was so fond of Virgil that it finally
became injurious to his spiritual interests, and, falling asleep one day
while reading one of his Eclogues, he saw in a dream a beautiful antique
vase full of serpents. He understood the allusion and gave up profane
reading.
Footnote 87:
See essay of M. de l’Epinois.
Sannazzaro’s poem, therefore, is only an expression of the tastes of his
age. It may also be considered in harmony with those of the primitive
church, which adorned the very walls of the Catacombs with pagan
symbols, and blazoned them in the mosaics of their churches. There we
find Theseus vanquishing the Minotaur, beside David slaying Goliath. The
Jordan is represented as a river-god leaning on an antique urn, his head
crowned with aquatic plants and his beard dripping with moisture; Cupids
flutter among the vines around the form of the Good Shepherd; and
Orpheus is made the emblem of our Saviour.
The _De Partu Virginis_ is like one of those beautiful Madonnas so often
met with in Italy, not seated in a humble chair at Nazareth, but robed
like a queen, occupying a throne covered with mythological subjects and
antique devices—an emblem of the church enthroned on the ruins of
paganism.
A BIRTH-DAY SONG.
TWENTY-ONE.
Bright summer sun, to-day
Mount with thy glancing spears, a cohort proud,
O’er cliff and peak, and chase each threatening cloud,
Each gathering mist, away.
Fair, fragrant summer flowers,
Lily and heliotrope and spicy fern,
Exhale your sweets from leaf and petaled urn
Through all the golden hours.
Thou deep-voiced western wind,
The stately arches of the forest fill,
Till oak and elm to thy _andante_ thrill
As mind replies to mind.
Take up the song and sing,
O summer birds! until the joyous strains
Ring through the hills, chant in the blooming plains,
Gurgle in brook and spring.
And thou, O river deep!
Send from the shore thy message calm and plain,
As, bearing ship and shallop to the main,
Thy mighty currents sweep.
Sing, while the golden gate
Swings open, and reveals the thronging hopes,
Wingèd and crowned, that crowd the flowery slopes
Of Manhood’s first estate.
Yet soft and low! The door
Is closing, as ye sing, on Childhood’s meads;
The garrulous trump of Youth’s heroic deeds
Is hushed for evermore;
And shining shapes, that blaze
Like loadstars, with occasion wait to lure
The dazzled soul o’er crag and fell and moor
From Wisdom’s peaceful ways.
Tell him, O sunshine bright!
How clouds of lust and mists of evil thought
By Chastity’s white beams are brought to naught
Through Virtue’s silent might.
Tell him, ye blossoms sweet,
How Charity divine her perfume rare
Exhales alike in pure or noxious air,
With holy love replete.
O brook and bird and spring!
Babble your simple sermon; say, Behold
Contentment, better far than gems or gold,
Or crown of sceptred king.
Tell him, thou deep-voiced wind,
How a brave, earnest spirit may awake
Responsive thought, till distant cycles take
Their orbits from his mind;
And thou, O river wide!
Tell how a steady purpose gathers strength
From singleness of aim, until at length
On its resistless tide
It bears both great and small
With equal, silent, comprehensive love
To that great sea whose calm no storm can move,
God’s grace o’er-arching all.
So may his spirit clear,
Untroubled by the scoff, the sneer, the sting
Of clashing creeds, find heaven a real thing,
And walk with seraphs here.
Thou great Triune! thy sign
Is on his forehead. May he, manful, fight
Under thy banner, till upon his sight
Fair Paradise shall shine;
Till, crown and palm-branch won,
He shall before thee stand without a fear,
Wearing the bright and morning star, and hear
The Master say, _Well done_.
JANE’S VOCATION.
“O amare! O ire! O sibi perire! O ad Deum pervenire.”—ST. AUGUSTINE.
She sat upon an enormous sea-washed cliff of granite, in a flood of
golden light from the stooping western sun behind her. Beneath her the
sea-waves rippled lightly against the cliff. Far out before her the
broad expanse of sea extended till it met the sky. But on neither sea
nor sky were the girl’s eyes fastened. She was looking steadily across
the narrow gulf that separated the high promontory where her home was
from the fishing town on the mainland. Behind her was a farm-house with
its prosaic surroundings, and a few huts for drying fish were close at
hand. Not far beyond these the stage-road ran, and coming over the brow
of the promontory was the lumbering stage.
She did not hear the wheels as they went rumbling by, and did not know
how closely she was scanned. Next the driver a youth was sitting, whose
face bespoke the artistic temperament as plainly as did the portfolio
and hastily-traced sketch upon his knee. Like a flash he caught the
loveliness of the picture—its glorious framework of nature’s beauties,
its central point of that girlish figure in its graceful _pose_: the
upraised head, the hands clasped round the knee as she sat bending
slightly forward, the sense conveyed of absorbed, pathetic yearning for
something more and higher than the farm life of her home.
“Who lives there?” asked the young man of the driver; and the driver
made answer, glancing for very pleasure at the boyish, handsome face,
stamped, in spite of its vanity, with the impress of a singularly clean
and happy heart:
“Nobody much, mister: old Jake Escott and Marm Escott and Jane. That’s
Jane sitting there. She’s their niece, and the best o’ the lot.”
“Jane!” repeated the youth to himself; but to the driver he said: “Do
they take boarders there?”
The man chuckled, as if the very idea was absurd.
“Much as they can do to board themselves, _I_ guess. Shiftless set.
'Tan’t so much lack of money, though, as of go-aheadativeness. ’Twould
be too much trouble.”
“Think I’d be a trouble?”
The man laughed again. “Don’t know 'bout that. You’re as clever a chap
and as taking a chap to talk with as I’ve seen this many a day. You’re a
real true, good-hearted gentleman, you be, sir; but you’re city-bred for
all that. Reckon you’d want white napkins every meal, and all sorts of
finified stuff. Marm Escott couldn’t give you such. 'Cause why? She’s no
idea what they are.”
“I’ll try it,” the traveller said, shutting his portfolio decisively and
speaking like one who always had his way. “Can’t you stop at the
turn—there’s a good fellow—and let me and my traps down?”
“Well, well! You never meant to come here; that’s certain. Where ye
bound?”
“Nowhere.” Then, seeing the driver’s puzzled look, “Anywhere,” the youth
added merrily. “I’m come to do what I please, and stop where I please,
and stay as long as I please. This is the loveliest place I have seen
yet, and I must sketch it. Why, surely you have carried passengers
before who had no settled destination, but liked to stop where it suited
them.”
“Ye—es,” was the doubtful response. “Yes, mister. But never one quite
like you. You’re a wide-awake chap and a merry, but you look as dainty
as any city lady I ever met.”
The words were evidently taken as a compliment, in whatever way they
might have been meant. The youth slung his knapsack over his shoulder,
concealing the long name which had puzzled the driver for the whole
journey—Van Stuyvesant Van Doorm—leaped lightly down from the coach
almost before it stopped, doffed his cap courteously, and with a gay
farewell was on his way along a narrow path to the house.
A woman, remarkable for nothing except her curiously total lack of
anything noticeable, opened the door, but into that dull face an actual
sunny gleam of pleasure came as soon as she saw the blithe young face
before her. The descendant of all the Vans doffed his cap courteously
again, with an answering gleam in his very brilliant eyes. He had been
used all his life to know that people admired him, but it is to be
acknowledged that this oft-repeated fact had never lost its charm.
“Is this Mrs. Escott?” he asked.
“I be,” was the succinct reply.
No faintest shadow of a smile betrayed her hearer’s amusement. He knew
himself master already of the field. “If you please, Mrs. Escott,” he
said audaciously, in his most captivating tone and with his most
pleading, obstinate look, “I’m come to board with you.”
Mrs. Escott stared as one taken by storm and unable to collect her
scattered forces. “But—but,” she stammered, “we never take boarders, we
don’t.”
“This exception will prove the rule, then,” quoth Van. “Oh! for shame,
Mrs. Escott. You never would have the heart to turn me away from such a
view as this. I want to sketch it, and I will give you a sketch of it,
and pay you the highest board into the bargain.”
“But we an’t got nothing fit to board ye on.”
“Ah? No eggs, then, I suppose,” suggested Van mildly, pointing at the
hens cackling in the yard. “No milk, either,” he added as the lowing of
a cow sounded near by. “No berries to be had for love or money, eh? And
of course there are no fish to be found in the sea.”
The woman actually laughed. “I’ll speak to Jake,” she said, then
disappeared, and Van seated himself on the doorstep and waited her
return without fear of disappointment.
“Jane and I can pick berries,” he said to himself; and then he trilled
forth gaily, in a voice that was the envy and admiration of city
circles:
“In the days when we went gipsying,
Long time ago.”
The melody pleased him; it chimed in well with the birds’ blithe song in
the trees and the faint dash of the waves along the shore. He began the
song and went through it all as blithely and carelessly as they.
“That’s handsome, now,” an uncouth voice behind him said when he stopped
at last with a sense of buoyant delight in his own power. “That’s
handsome, stranger. Sing like that, and you’re welcome here, and no
mistake.”
This was “Jake,” then, shuffling, untidy, uncouth as his voice. A
misgiving arose in Van’s mind. Would the house, the table, his room, be
like Jake and Marm Escott? But he need stay no longer than he chose—no
longer than one night; and it was now nearly six o’clock in the
afternoon. So, all necessary arrangements being concluded, Jake trundled
a dilapidated wheel-barrow, in some vague, slipshod fashion, to the road
to “fetch the stranger’s traps,” and Mrs. Escott, going to the gate,
called loudly, “Jane! Jane! I want ye, child.”
Van, waiting in the parlor for her coming, looked attentively about him.
There was almost nothing in the room to show that any one ever came
there who cared a whit more for beauty than Jacob Escott himself did.
Rag mats of discordant hues covered squares and ovals and rectangular
parallelograms of the pine floor; the walls were decorated with coarse
prints of General Washington and of the prize ox of twenty years ago; on
the table was a big family Bible and a Farmer’s Almanac illuminating the
sombre cover with its sickly yellow, and on this was a half-knitted blue
yarn stocking.
There was a cheap piano in one corner, but it looked as though it was
never opened. The windows were not uncurtained, but, of all other things
there, they set Van’s teeth on edge with their execrable attempts at
some sort of a painted landscape; he seized the tassels vindictively,
and pulled the curtains out of sight, thus letting in the superb view
beyond.
Some one, he discovered then, had had taste enough to put flowers in the
room. A great handful of daisies and clovers and delicate grasses stood
on the sill of the window that looked out to where the narrow gulf
separated the promontory from the mainland.
“Jane’s work,” said Van to himself; and as he thought it, he heard a
slow, calm step coming through the entry, and Jane herself stood in the
doorway.
Involuntarily he bent his head with such a reverence as he had never
paid to woman before. He was the cynosure at home among all ladies, but
none yet had won from him the reverent greeting of an utter
self-forgetful absorption in another’s presence. The girl who stood
there was not beautiful, though there was nothing in her features to
displease the artist’s eye; indeed, the absence of mere material beauty
made more marked the impression conveyed in movement and feature and
face. Of all colors in the world—and Van was passionately fond of
color—he loved best the gold that is sometimes seen in the western sky
near where the sun is setting: a clear, fair hue that does not dazzle
but rests the eyes that gaze upon it. Van thought of that color when he
saw Jane’s face with its look of unclouded peace.
She lifted her eyes and glanced at him, at first with a tranquil,
unmoved expression, as though it was quite indifferent to her who it was
that she was meeting; then she gave a quicker, keener glance that
thrilled Van with an uneasy sense that she was reading him through and
through. What was it that she read? he wondered.
He tried to talk with her as she moved about the room, engaged in the
very ordinary task of setting the supper-table. Her language showed some
culture and refinement. He hazarded the question, “Are there good
schools about here?”
“I do not know,” she said meditatively. “There is the district school.”
“Why does she not say, 'I went there’?” thought Van. “That would tell me
something about herself.”
But more and more he found, as his talk went on, that Jane ignored
herself. It did not appear to enter her mind that she was anybody to be
thought of or talked about. He had at first to make conversation at the
supper-table—the farm, the fisheries, the crops—but presently Jacob
Escott made bold to ask: “What may be your occupation, sir?”
And, nothing loath, Van launched upon one of his pet topics—art and
artists. Even the plain farmer and his wife enjoyed it. How could they
resist the fascination of the merry stories, the musical voice, the face
that spoke as clearly as the words? But Jane hardly listened, and
suddenly a thought struck Van: “This is mere surface-talk after all. Can
it be that this farmer’s girl cares for anything deeper, or is it only
that she has not depth enough to care?”
They rose from the table, and Van followed Jane to the door. She did not
see or heed him. The tide was at the full; wave upon wave came heaving
gently onward toward the land as a child, tired out with play, comes
home to its mother’s arms to rest; through the twilight the dark,
restless mass of water and its ceaseless murmuring alike woke a sense of
mystery and awe; above, in the darkening skies, a pale half-moon was
shining and a few great throbbing stars. And in the dim light Van saw
Jane’s face, and it seemed to him as beautiful and as full of mystery as
sea and sky. Such a look of hunger marked it! He thought of Niobe, and
of Cassandra, and of Mariana in the moated grange, but she differed in
some inexplicable fashion from them all, and then he heard her say below
her breath: “My God! My God! My God!”
Over and over again—not what Van had ever fancied a prayer could be, and
yet to his ear more full of intense personal pleading than any prayer he
had ever heard. Faith, hope, love, expectation, keen desire, and
suffering were all summed up in two words; and though he knew nothing of
her trouble, yet when the aunt’s call for her came from the room within,
Van started as if he had been struck. He could not bear to have her
harried back into the dull life of her home.
“Just mend this, Janey, will you?” Mrs. Escott said, exhibiting a coarse
blue shirt. “Your uncle wants it for to-morrow.”
The girl’s face was tranquil and happy again by some sudden
transformation. She took the rough work—it was not clean work, either;
it had evidently been worn once or twice, Van saw with mingled disgust
and pity—and, sitting down contentedly in the dingy room, she began her
mending. She puzzled Van greatly, she interested him intensely. As he
talked to her uncle he watched with his artistically-trained eye each
expression of her face. It varied now and then, though the strange,
yearning look did not return to it. The peace was there, and an
exquisite happiness.
“She is like a dove,” thought Van. “She is like an innocent baby. Oh! if
one could take her away from this.”
But one clue to her character he was certain that he had found. He rose
up before she finished her work, and he flung open the old piano and sat
down before it. It was not so unfit for use as he had feared it would
be, and he knew how to glide skilfully over the worst notes. And then he
began to try Jane. First he sang ballads, “Robin Adair,” “John Anderson
my jo, John,” “Oh! wert thou in the cauld blast.”
“That’s fine, Phœbe,” said Jacob, and Phœbe said “Yes” with an unwonted
enthusiasm. But Jane worked steadily on, and if she heard or cared Van
could not tell, though he fancied the sweet, dove-like look deepened
upon her face.
“The brightest jewel in my crown
Wad be my queen, wad be my queen.”
The last tender notes of the song lingered under Van’s fingers, as a
knock was heard at the kitchen door, and Jacob went to answer it,
followed soon by Phœbe, who evidently recognized the voice of the
new-comer. There was a scraping of chairs on the kitchen floor—the plain
indication that somebody had come to stay awhile. Van leaned his head
forward against the music-rack, and once again before his eyes was the
scene he had witnessed in the twilight one hour before. Could the same
person who sat quietly at her rough work now be she whom he had seen and
heard then in that passion of prayer? And while he mused there rang
through his brain echoes that always thrilled his music-loving,
art-loving nature with an especial power, and that seemed now like fit
mates for the darkly-heaving sea, the star-lit sky, the girl’s yearning
face; and from the old ivory keys, that grew strangely full of power and
sweetness beneath his magical touch, rang out Chopin’s grand funeral
march.
The work dropped from Jane’s hands. He could not watch her face, for she
turned it straight toward that eastern flower-decked window that looked
out to gulf and sea; but he saw her fingers lock tightly into one
another and her form become rigidly still. When he ended she rose
quietly and went away, and he did not see her again that night.
But long that night he studied her, while an unwonted shame of himself
and a keen admiration for her grew steadily in him, and what he inferred
of her then was confirmed each day more and more.
“She does not know one-half the things that I know,” he said, “but she
has it in her to care for the highest art and beauty. And she is so
noble by nature that she _couldn’t_ spend her thoughts on a thousand
trifling things that I waste mine upon. Such a glorious creature
imprisoned here! I’ll do my best for her.”
Never used to early rising, he came down stairs the next day to find his
breakfast waiting for him and the morning of the family half over.
“Yes, we be early risers,” said Mrs. Escott. “Leastways, Jake and Jane
be. I’m a poor hand at it myself. Why, Jane here, she’s across the gulf
and home again afore six every day.”
“Across the gulf! Before six!” exclaimed Van.
“Certain sure, Mr. Van. These Catholics are queer creatures. Jane’s a
Catholic, you know.”
Habitual courtesy quelled the words of surprise and of pain that rose to
Van’s lips—surprise at finding a Catholic in this notedly Protestant
fishing settlement, pain at hearing Jane’s deepest feelings thus lightly
exposed to view. But Jane showed not the slightest shade of annoyance.
Now he thought he understood her better. One of the many marvellous
spells of Catholicism had been woven about her—some vision of beauty had
thus come into her hitherto blank life; he would strive the more now to
teach her of what he blandly deemed the freer, nobler lights of art and
science, but never should word or look from him throw scorn or jest or
trifling speech of any kind on that which was dear to her.
Love at first sight—Van had always maintained that he believed in it; he
was always falling in love with any pretty face that struck his fancy,
and then just as easily falling out of love with an unwounded heart. But
here love and pity and real reverence all awoke together and made of him
their willing slave. “I’ll go with her to Mass to-morrow,” he said, and
on the morrow he stood in the early sunrise on the beach.
So early was it that Jane herself was not yet there. He watched her
coming towards her boat, her eyes cast down, and that hungry, longing
look stamped plainly on her.
“May I go too?” he said, the gay, trifling manner gone, and that
peculiarly distinct imprint of a clean heart shining in his eyes.
Lifting her own sweet eyes, once again he felt that she read him
through; then, saying nothing, she bowed assent and stepped into the
boat. And still without a word she let him take the oars from her, and,
drawing her rosary from her pocket, she began to tell her beads. Van
thought she never would stop, and she did not till they reached the
town. Still silent, she led the way from the shore through some dull,
shell-paved paths to a small chapel, and, entering, forgot Van
altogether and went with eager footsteps up the aisle. Van stationed
himself where he could see her; she sank on her knees before the altar,
and crossed herself, and lifted up her face. The lips were parted in a
smile of ecstasy, the eyes were shining bright as though they saw
unearthly loveliness.
What Van saw was this: a square, low-studded, dingy room, poor prints of
religious subjects, mean tallow dips for candles, tawdry gilding and
hangings, artificial tawdry flowers, a plain, small altar, a few squalid
worshippers; presently an aged priest, who said Mass in a cracked and
feeble voice.
“What spell is over her?” thought Van, marvelling. “Oh! if I could once
take her out of it all, home to wealth and beauty and tenderness, and to
our churches. No need to tell her that Catholics have beautiful ones
somewhere.”
But on their way back to the farm she did not speak, and he could not
venture to break the intense calm in which she was wrapped. Every
evening he read or sang and played, or talked his best, in the parlor
where the household gathered, but she never again was there alone with
him, and in the daytime she was always busy just when he wanted her
society most. Often he was conscious that what he said or read or did
failed to make any impression at all upon her; often while he tried to
interest her he found her gazing toward that eastern window, and knew
that she did not heed him. He longed to say: “I cannot see what you find
in that dull church to give your eyes and thoughts to,” but he could not
say it.
Sometimes when he read, far oftener when he played grand music—often,
too, when they watched the sky and sea and listened to the waves, the
noble nature woke responsive to his call. But it stung him to the quick
to feel his general powerlessness to move her except when he roused his
best and highest powers; it stung him to see how little she cared for
the comforts and luxuries and prettinesses, for knowledge even and the
art, that were part of his daily existence, and which he deemed
necessary to him; it stung him to find that the meanest occupation never
made her discontented, but glad and bright instead; while what he
considered suited to her condition or her needs was as nothing to her,
and the yearning which he could not fathom seldom came into her face
when at her daily labor, but often when he told himself she ought to be
content and glad with him.
She talked very little to him; she never seemed to care whether he came
or went, and he—all his thoughts became engrossed in her.
One afternoon, near the close of a sultry day, as the first mutterings
of thunder and the first far-off flashes of lightning shone and sounded
from the dark depths of low-lying clouds above the sea—when the winds
were rising, and the poplars showed their leaves’ white faces, and the
white-crested waves broke in ominously upon the shore; when Jane’s
sensitive nature was awake and quivering in sympathy with the gathering
storm—Jacob Escott came hurrying his cattle home to shelter, bringing
with him a letter which the stage-driver had flung down to him as he
raced his horses by to town. “For you, Mr. Van,” he said.
Van opened it carelessly, read it carefully, then came straight to where
Jane stood, watching with keen delight the seething sea and storm-tossed
sky.
“Jane,” he said, “listen to me. They have sent for me to go home at
once. My father is very ill. Jane, I love you. Will you be my wife?”
She turned with great displeasure in her eyes. “You jest, sir,” she
said. “Such jesting pains me much. Even my uncle understands that now.”
“I am not jesting,” he cried vehemently. “I speak the truth. I love you.
None but you can ever be my wife. Give me your promise, Jane. I love you
so.”
At first her look of rebuke waxed sterner; then for a moment her eyes
met the pleading bright eyes fastened on her with the look peculiar to
them, that bespoke a singularly clean heart. She smiled as one smiles at
a child.
“It is impossible,” she said.
Tumultuously he hurried on: “No, no, not impossible. If I will promise
to read, to study, to be a Catholic if I can—will you think of it then?
Will you try me?”
“It is impossible,” she repeated. “You pain me.” And then, with an
effort, as though she spoke of things too sacred for the common ear, “By
the grace of God,” she said slowly, “when he makes the way plain before
me, I am to be a nun.”
“No, no!” Van cried again. “No, no! Think—listen. Think it all over
again. You do not understand. Your life has been cramped here in this
poor, mean place. That is why you want to be a nun. Come away with me to
a life that suits a soul like yours. I have seen your craving for higher
things.”
The sudden, jagged lightning cleft the skies. By its glare he saw her
face distinctly, and a noble scorn was on it, and a righteous
indignation.
“Come away with you—from _God_!” she said, and in the pause that
followed Van felt himself more mean than the dust from whence he came.
“Forgive me,” she said gently. “I forget. It is you who do not
understand. I do not mind that this house is poor and mean; my Lord was
born in a stable, and he died upon a cross. And if I suffer here and
crave for higher things, it is a suffering which even the cloister can
never cure—far less, then, you—for I crave to see the face of God! To
love my God, to cease from sin, to come to my God and be for ever one
with him in his high heaven—I hunger for it by night and by day.”
“And if this life suits you so well, and you must suffer anyhow,” Van
said curiously, “why not stay here always? or why not come with me?”
“Mr. Van,” Jane answered, “to be a nun is my vocation. God himself calls
me. I must do his will. Forgive me again, but I cannot talk any more to
you about it. If you did not seem so young to me—so like a little
innocent child, in spite of all your knowledge—I could not have said so
much.” And the next minute she was gone, leaving Van abashed and utterly
ignorant of the high meed of true praise which she had bestowed upon
him.
He went home to watch for two long days and nights beside a couch of
foolish delirium and lingering death; to see a mind of uncommon
intellect and far-famed, exquisite taste reduced to folly; to see the
eyes stare vacantly at picture and statue and familiar face alike; and
then to follow the lifeless body to the grave, and hide it there, clay
to its kindred clay. The young heir of enormous wealth and princely
possessions paced alone in his father’s halls that night, and found no
pleasure in the beauty that once had satisfied him. Even the memory of
Jane’s face was a burden to him.
“She would have to die too,” Van muttered. “And, after all, one could as
soon love a St. Catherine borne by angels as love her. I do not believe
I ever did. And yet if I did not, I never really loved any woman.”
Wherein he spoke the truth.
Yet one look of hers haunted him—that look of settled, tranquil peace,
like the undazzling gold of the western sky; and while it shone before
him the steady, tranquil voice echoed through his memory, “To be a nun
is my vocation. God himself calls me. I must do his will.”
“I wonder,” queried Van wistfully—“I wonder what my vocation is. I’m
sure it has never made any difference to me. I have sketched, and
played, and read, just as I fancied.”
And, with that great grace vouchsafed him, of which he was so ignorant,
he said like a child: “O God! what shall I do?”
The answer did not come at once. He fretted and puzzled; by and by he
began to wonder whether Jane’s religion had anything to do with her
choice. Besides, if it was worth a man’s while to think of changing his
religion because he fancied himself in love with a creature that some
time must die, had he not reason to think seriously about it anyhow?
What did she mean when she said she craved to see God’s face? What
caused that woman of so few words to speak with such power when she
spoke of that?
Van read and thought, but it was not the books that enlightened him. He
went one evening where he seldom went by day, when curious eyes could
watch him—to his father’s grave. It was a warm evening late in
September. As he passed the rectory adjoining the church, which his
father, and his father’s father, and all the Van Doorms of the region
had religiously attended, gay voices and snatches of music caught his
ear, and he looked up involuntarily.
It was a pretty sight. The gas had just been lighted, the curtains were
still up. Lonely, sorrowful Van, forgetful of his wonted courtesy, stood
still where he was and took in the whole picture with an added
heartache.
In the pleasant parlor, not luxurious, but a _home-room_, the mother sat
with her baby on her knee. Van remembered her when she came a bride to
the parish, and he was only a child of five years old. It was one of his
earliest memories—that being taken to church with the promise of seeing
the new young minister’s new young wife, if he would be very good. That
was twenty years ago, and there were lines of gray in Mrs. Charles’
hair, but her face wore the same kindly smile that had marked it then in
the freshness of her nineteen years, and at the piano a girl of nineteen
might have been taken for the bride brought back again in her youthful
bloom. She was playing some familiar melody; five or six brothers and
sisters clustered about her, sang blithely with her; a toddling child at
the mother’s knee beat time with its chubby fingers on the younger
baby’s chubby hand. Presently an inner door opened, and the pastor
entered. There was a cry of “Father! father!” a general rush to meet
him, frantic, merry embraces from the children, while the mother smiled
contented, and the father stood tender and strong in the midst of his
happy flock.
The picture lasted for a brief space only; with a pretty gesture of
horror the eldest daughter sprang toward the window and drew down the
shades, lest somebody should see, and Van stood alone outside in the
gathering night.
He plodded on dreamily to the church-yard, and sat down near the new
grave among many, many older graves where the men and women of his race
lay buried.
“Wife and child,” said Van, with a long, hard, envious sigh, “father and
mother, and happy home. And I—”
“Wife and child—father and mother.” The words repeated themselves in
that curious, echo-like fashion which words have when they come to the
mind as a part of a familiar saying, whose whole cannot be at once
recalled, and which for a time we vainly strive to place.
“Wife and child—father and mother.” Ah! something else comes: “Houses
and lands.” What is it? What is Van striving to get?
“Houses and lands.”
He has it.
“No man who hath left house, or brethren, or sisters, or father, or
mother, or children, or lands for my sake and for the Gospel, who shall
not receive an hundred times as much, now in this time: and in the world
to come life everlasting.”
He does not see with his bodily eyes at all now, but the eyes of his
soul are wide awake, and they see clear and true.
In which church—Catholic or Protestant—were the men who, not by tens or
by hundreds, but by thousands upon thousands, and through centuries upon
centuries, had carried out to the very letter the words of Christ, the
Bible words? Which, except through some exceptions that only served to
prove the rule, had by loud-voiced declamation, and an action that spoke
more loudly still, set at naught the teaching of the Master—set at
naught the example of Him who left all for them?
Van seemed to hear it once again—the missionary letters read from the
pulpit and published in Protestant magazines; the pleadings for clothes
for the missionary’s wife and children; the appeals for money, or a
missionary must leave his important field because his family could not
be supported there; the vaunted heroism of missionaries who endured to
see their children suffer rather than desert their post. Where were the
men whose heroism was such that they had no home, no family, no earthly
tie, but stood ready like the angels—true messengers—to go or to stay,
undeterred by any human consideration, where God and his church asked or
needed them?
And so it came to pass that Van understood the mystery of Jane’s
vocation; comprehended that men and women, young and old, rich and poor,
ignorant and lettered, heard, as the wedded Peter and the unwedded John
heard once the voice of Christ call to them, and literally, like them,
left all and followed him. It came to pass also that he understood
Jane’s suffering; knew that that call of God and the accompanying love
of God were a hundred-fold more in this life than the earthly joys
renounced, and yet that the promise of the everlasting life spoke of
such ineffable bliss that the longing awakened for it could only be
appeased in heaven.
Van found his vocation too. He threw himself, heart and soul, into true
Christian art. His pictures were seldom seen on the walls of rich men’s
houses, but churches and convents owned them free of price. That part of
his work, however, was the smallest part. Money and time and strength
were lavished nobly with and in aid of those who are successfully
laboring in our day to show, by research in catacombs and ruined sacred
buildings and among old missals and breviaries and parchments, that the
Catholic Church of to-day is the church of the early Christians and
martyrs.
In Italy he met and married some one very different from Jane—a very
lovely and good and noble woman—and Jane to him became more and more a
St. Catherine borne by angels, and more and more he wondered that he
ever had presumed to think of offering her an earthly love.
“Had I been a Catholic then, I never could have done it,” he told his
wife. “God had called her for himself, and set his seal upon her.”
And the happy wife said humbly: “Hers was the higher calling, dear.”
So when, one day, their only daughter came to them—a strong,
high-spirited, brilliant girl, the sunshine of their home—and told them
that God’s call had come to her to leave her home for Christ’s poverty,
and all human love for his love alone, she found no weak resistance.
“Thank God,” they said, “for the honor he has done us! For him we gladly
bid thee forget thine own people and thy father’s house.”
But of Jane they never heard, except that, when God’s time came, she
left the farm beside the sea. What need to know more of her, who was
where she longed to be—one of the great number who lose all to find All,
and, having Him whom their soul loveth, need nothing more?
COUNT FREDERICK LEOPOLD STOLBERG[88]
Footnote 88:
Frederick Leopold, Count Stolberg, since his return to the Catholic
Church, 1800-1819. From hitherto unpublished family documents. By John
Janssen. Freiburg in Breisgau: Herder & Co.
Count Stolberg, a well-known statesman and writer, a minister of the
Duke of Oldenburg, the friend of Goethe, Schlegel, Klopstock, Lavater,
Stein, John and Adam Müller, La Motte Fouqué, Körner, and others as
distinguished, the correspondent of most of the German historians,
philosophers, and _savants_ of his day, became a Catholic, after seven
years’ anxious seeking for truth, on the 1st of June, 1800, at Münster,
in Westphalia, in the fifty-first year of his age. He immediately
retired from public life, although circumstances afterwards brought him
before Germany as a representative man; and his writings spread through
all classes of his countrymen as a worthy and dignified exposition of a
religion at that time much reviled, misunderstood, and in some cases
persecuted. His example in home-life was as powerful in a smaller circle
as his writings were in a wider one; and his relations with his wife and
children (he had eighteen children by his two marriages) were such as to
make it true of him that he was a model for all Christian heads of
families. His own tastes were simple and domestic; he was fond of the
country, and was a childlike companion even to his youngest children,
while to all, as they grew up, he was a wise friend and teacher. All his
children, except Mariagnes, his eldest daughter by his first marriage,
became Catholics with him; those born after his conversion were of
course brought up in the church. His second wife, Sophie, Countess von
Redern, had shared his doubts and his experiences during those seven
years of eager search after religious certainty, and became a Catholic
also; but while he remained in intimate and sympathetic relations with
his brothers and sisters, he never influenced any of them far enough to
make them follow his footsteps. His brother Christian and his wife Luise
were his most constant and intimate correspondents; with the former
religion seemed to make no difference, as his admiration for, and
sympathy with, Stolberg was proof against anything—indeed, Stolberg
often called him his “other self”; and the latter, to judge by her
letters, was a woman of more than common understanding, a student of
science, an observer of the times, whose mind was open to receive any
new impression that had the semblance of truth or real progress in it;
an investigating and impartial searcher, better versed than most women
in classic learning, and eager for knowledge in any shape. To give up
constant intercourse with his own family and remove to a Catholic city
was the hardest sacrifice Stolberg had to make on leaving the Lutheran
communion; but he considered the change imperative for the proper
education of his children. In a letter to Luise announcing this resolve
he says: “There is no dilemma, but, even if there were, you will agree
with me that a tender conscience, in a doubtful case, must always choose
against its wishes—I mean its natural wishes, which are always
suspicious to upright morals, let alone to Christianity.” To his friend
Princess Gallitzin, the mother of the zealous missionary in America,
Demetrius Gallitzin, he says: “It is an unspeakable joy to me that my
brother and sister-in-law remain bound to me in the fullest and most
unreserved love, and that not even the shadow of a misunderstanding has
come between them and me, however painful to them is the separation from
me, from Sophie, and from the children.”
He took a house in Münster and made it his home for thirteen years,
living there through the winter and spending his summers at a
country-house a few miles out of the city, at Lütjenbeck. His children’s
studies were his first care. Greek being his favorite study, he made
each of his sons a good Greek scholar, and kept up his own studies by a
repeated round of all the great authors, read successively with each of
his many boys. Ernest and Andrew, the sons of his first marriage, were
his first pupils, and his own teaching was supplemented in languages and
history by a French _emigré_, the Abbé Pierrard, and in philosophy by
some professors resident in Münster. Stolberg did not neglect the
physical education of his boys, and would no more dispense with the
daily walk, ride, or swim than he would with the studies. His sons were
good shots, too, and in the summer he and they spent most of their time
in the open air. Their mother writes of them that they are “truthful,
generous, and good-hearted,” and “that their tender respect for their
great father increases day by day.” She was herself a patient and
judicious teacher, and fully recognized how much harm is done to
children, and the “quiet workings of God’s influence disturbed in them,
by the expectation of hurried development and individuality.” Stolberg
was already beginning his literary work in the interests of religion and
education, and in 1801 was translating St. Augustine’s _De Vera
Religione_. The early Fathers were his favorite spiritual reading; also
the Greek Testament and the Hebrew version of the Old Testament. He
wisely resolved to lead a retired life, and not enter into what is
called society; but he gathered round him a circle of real friends, in
intercourse with whom he spent many hours, especially in the evenings.
Among these were Princess Gallitzin, to whom we owe the suggestion that
produced Stolberg’s great work, _The History of the Religion of Jesus
Christ_; Prince Fürstenberg, an old man of very exemplary life;
Kellermann, his friend and pupil, and the tutor of his younger sons for
sixteen years—a priest who was the model of his order; some of the
cathedral chapter, learned and enlightened men; and many young people,
friends of his children, among whom the latter afterwards found wives
and husbands, in all cases happily acceptable to their parents. Whoever
has read the real-life idyl of _A Sister’s Story_ will see some likeness
between the home of the La Ferronays and Stolberg’s happy home. Indeed,
his friends were part of his family, and admission to his intimacy
became the ambition of all such in Münster as had minds beyond the
common run, and aspirations beyond those of fashion, politics, and
frivolity. Stolberg’s dislike to the loss of time involved in ordinary
visits and the inanities of society is thus described by himself in
1810:
“I am growing more unfit from year to year for large gatherings.
Intercourse with friends, like the leaves of the Sibylline books, is
more precious the less time it occupies and the less often it
recurs. To hear social chatter for more than an hour affects me so
that I feel much like a dead donkey.... How true are Lavater’s
words: 'Even the circle of good souls seldom gives me a new impulse,
and a thousand trivial pleasures rob me of true enjoyment. Only
solitude can shadow and cool my spirit, thirsty and weary from the
company even of loved ones; only solitude can give what no friend
can offer—a new consciousness and new life, and a feeling that God
loves me.’”
This country life which was such a relief and yearly joy to the whole
family is charmingly described in Stolberg’s letters. His garden, his
hay-field, his children’s play; his walks in the beech, oak, and maple
woods; the squirrels in the trees, the favorite kid of his little girls,
the nightingales, the blossoming fruit-trees that suggested to him the
saying that the “apple-tree did not eat of the apple”; the grottos,
rocks, valleys, castles, torrents of the neighborhood of Stolberg; the
old family house which he had not seen for twenty-eight years, and upon
which he prided himself as a possession that had been in the family for
a thousand years; the beauties of the Erzgebirg, and the Bohemian hills
that lean against it; the Scotch or Norwegian-like scenery, wild and
grand, of these mountains with their narrow, fruitful valleys and green
meadows, fringed with dark pine woods—are all described with that
heartiness and enthusiasm which real lovers of the country know, but
which, as Stolberg says, so many others pretend to, while in reality
they see in nature nothing but a cold show, a theatre decoration. “They
look complacently as into a peep-show at the sunrise and the heavens,
but their heart does not swell within them nor their eyes grow dim.” He
was as fond of childish games, especially of blowing soap-bubbles, as he
was of beautiful scenery, and counted it a sign of soul-health when he
was in the frame of mind to enjoy such games. And now that we have
before us the picture of the man in his domestic life, who in his
public, political, literary, and social life was of so much importance
and had so wide an influence, we will keep mostly to his own letters,
which give full vent to his opinions on the important events of the
time, and show him forth as emphatically of the old school, a model
Christian, a thorough gentleman, but a man of his own generation;
impatient of novelty, a great admirer of the English constitution, but a
scornful contemner of the mushroom constitutions of the Continent; a hot
_Légitimiste_, but a patriotic German; an uncompromising and somewhat
irrational foe of Napoleon, over and above his mere national antagonism
against the great and successful warrior—for instance, he believed that
“Napoleon’s greatness was kneaded out of the abjectness of Europe,”
forgetting that a man’s greatness may lie precisely in the art of taking
advantage of a weakness inherent in an adversary, and seizing the right
moment to overwhelm small minds with his stronger one; a firm believer
in the necessity of his own order, but an “aristocrat” with lofty and
beautiful theories of what aristocracy consists in; in a word, a great
Christian and a thorough man.
Besides his Greek and Hebrew studies, he was fond of English history and
literature, and knew French and Italian well; Milton and Young were his
favorite English poets, though he often quotes Shakspere too, and one of
his works, second only to the _History of Religion_, was the _Life of
Alfred_—a man whom he looked upon as a heroic model, and whose example
he wished to dwell upon as a guide to his sons through life. He also
translated the whole of Ossian. His letters relating to his home-life,
his losses and those of his relations, the death of his sons and
son-in-law, and of many dear friends, full as they are of Christian
manliness and resignation, and of moral axioms that might be taken as
mottoes, we will pass by, as they have less of individuality than his
letters containing opinions on religion, politics, and literature, as
well as expositions of theories of his own, all strongly and
conscientiously held. He firmly contradicted a current misconception in
his time—and, indeed, a not unfrequent one now—of the intolerance of the
Catholic Church.
“Only for those who confess Catholic truth,” he writes, “and yet
consciously keep aloof from the Catholic communion, is there no hope
of salvation. Of others who err in all good faith, my church teaches
me to believe that they are her members, though unknowingly. God
allows many honest Protestants to remain in error, and to fancy that
the Catholic Church, that truly merciful mother, is intolerant
against those outside her pale. It is not the true spirit of that
church to persecute, curse, or burn the erring. Infallible in her
doctrine, as were also the teachers who sat in Moses’ seat, she
still cannot preserve all her members free from imperfections in
their acts—not even the pope, nor, in the old dispensation, the
high-priest.”
In another letter he says:
“Far be it from me, as it is from every Catholic who knows the
spirit of his church, to doubt that among Protestants also there are
and have been holy souls—holy in the sense in which all true
children of God are holy; ... but my church teaches me to look upon
these as unconscious members of the true, though to them unknown,
church.”
“Overberg, of whose rarely beautiful catechism thirty thousand
copies have been sold, especially for schools and children,
expresses himself very pleasingly on this subject. No
well-instructed Catholic has any objection to make to this, but even
no half-taught Catholic can, on the other hand, mistake other altars
for that altar of sacrifice which Malachi prophesied of, and will
hold all other altars only for such as they really are.... Among
unlearned Protestants (and, as I said before, among a few learned
ones) there are very many whom the spirit of Protestantism as such
has not touched, who have never been disturbed, because they have
found in Holy Scripture a full rest and contentment, and lean with
heartfelt love on Jesus Christ, doing for love of him all they do,
in fullest confidence, and what flesh and blood would never teach
them to do. Plants that bear such fruit as this I can only hold to
come from roots watered by the Heavenly Father himself. You believe
[he is addressing Sulzer, of Constance] that the number of such
souls is small; and such a belief grieves me, for I think that it
drives many away and discourages them. And, indeed, such hard
suppositions as you make and insist upon having categorically
answered lead to embittering results. I speak from experience. For
seven years did I seek for truth with an upright heart, after God
first put it into my heart to seek. After seven years’ search was I
led, through circumstances that God overruled, to know and confess
the truth. Others have sought longer and more anxiously, and have
not found what I did, but they serve God in the simplicity of their
hearts better than I do, and will assuredly find the truth in the
kingdom of light and truth....”
“You see,” he says to his brother, “that I am not intolerant. But I
hope to God that I shall never be tolerant in the _newest sense_ of
the word—that is, indifferent, lukewarm, fit to be spat out of the
mouth of Jesus Christ.”... “Do not let,” he says to his son Caius at
Göttingen University, “yourself be led away from the rock-founded
church by the many good and worthy Protestants you meet. Among all
in error are many who are individually children of God, but they
have no church, no sacrifice, no priesthood, no Eucharist. The
helter-skelter union of both Protestant bodies (the Lutheran and the
Calvinist) must give serious scandal to the earnest souls in both,
and will, I hope, lead many into our church.”
Of the difference between feeling and truth he says:
“Certain sensations may be real to one person and unreal to another.
Not so with facts and doctrine. It is the peculiar character of the
true religion that as it must be the same in all ages, so must every
man be equally able to understand and embrace it.... I could not
believe in a true religion which it would not be possible for every
human being to believe in.... He leads some through rough paths,
others through smooth ones; some towards truth, some through error.
The way of error, _as such_, is not His way, although he is always
ready to unfold the truth, to be beforehand with, and to meet half
way, the upright soul who in all simplicity holds an erring belief.”
Indeed, in Stolberg’s experience, the difference between lukewarm and
conscientious Protestants was fully shown; for the former reviled him
for his change of religion, while the latter approved of his following
what he looked upon as truth. Other misconceptions of Catholic doctrine
he also combated, and greatly enlightened many of his friends on the
Catholic belief in the justifying merits of Christ. Holy Scripture was a
source from which he considered spiritual light to come, but, as he
observed, “the learned have not yet been able to see that the healthy
eye, like the concave mirror, gathers into one point all the scattered
rays, while _they_ split and split until the last particle of light is
lost in shadow.” Elsewhere he says:
“He who is careless of Holy Writ is careless of the life of the
soul, and he is happy if he becomes conscious, were it only now and
then, of the fact that the world, whether with its pleasures or its
wisdom, offers him nothing but what is poisonous to the immortal
spirit.”
His advice to his son Ernest, who left home in 1803 to join the Austrian
army, is full of the true Christian spirit. He recommends him to
practise every virtue that would make a man perfect, and goes into many
details which, of course, we cannot follow here, but this sentence is
almost a compendium of the whole:
“A true Christian cannot find true freedom nor true unsolicitude but
in the possession of a good conscience. Where the conscience is
tender and watchful it watches alike over every act; and the more we
pay attention to it, so much the more does it become,
notwithstanding the violence it at first does to nature, a principle
of our life which puts us in harmony with ourselves, and therefore
makes us truly free.”
Elsewhere he says, speaking to another youth, a friend of his sons:
“Lassitude and a want of courage increase the strength of the enemy;
and discontent concerning the post to which God has appointed us is
unseemly in any brave man, much more in a foremost fighter. Not the
wish that 'everything were otherwise,’ but the resolve always to act
well and bravely—or, as Holy Writ says, 'to walk before God and be
perfect’—can make men of us. That wish unnerves us; this resolve
strengthens us and gives us a might which remains with the weapons
of the fighter even on the other side of the grave. He who has done
and suffered much does not dream of soiling his crown with tears,
while he who has as yet found no opportunity of doing or suffering
has still less a right to weep.”
The melancholy which the French have aptly called “_la maladie du
siècle_”[89] was abhorrent to Stolberg—that unmanliness and cowardice of
mind which became fashionable through the writings of atheists, and
which in many phases has spread itself into our present literature as
well as our practice. He also writes concerning the same thing:
Footnote 89:
The disease of the age.
“Every human being has his own history to work out, and that this
should be thoroughly done does not depend upon the amount of talent
he has, but upon the will which few bring to it unconditionally and
in a cheerful spirit.”
Stolberg was of a healthier school and generation; he did not see the
beauty and sentiment and romance of passion running riot, misunderstood
natures, morbid hearts, vain strivings, and all the paraphernalia of a
moral sick-bed. For instance, the baneful and unreal excitements of the
theatre were very dangerous in his eyes, and the evil custom which even
good and well-meaning people fell into of countenancing private
theatricals, and letting even their young children take part in them,
was a great sorrow to him. One of the evils he deprecated was the
rousing of a false sympathy with imaginary woes, which ended by
undermining true sympathy with our neighbor’s actual troubles; another,
the vanity which play-acting fostered in young people, and the
excitement which rendered them unfit for serious study and work. It also
destroys the simplicity of the soul and that modesty which is the chief
adornment of young souls, especially of a girl’s soul.
“Young girls,” he says, “when they have once overcome their shyness,
long after the same excitement, and are always wishing to be playing
a part. The truthfulness of their nature is soon lost; seeming
overcomes being, every acted feeling destroys real feeling; the
heart becomes cold for reality, and is only to be aroused by
supposed passion.”
Public theatricals he looked upon as equally dangerous, and even wrote
against them, praising Geneva for having, until it became French,
refused to allow the erection of a theatre within the limits of its
territory. “The special charm of the stage,” he says, “lies in its
flattery of our lusts, our vanity, and our laziness.” We have often
heard fine theories advanced as to the mission and morality of the
drama, but as long as practice belies these theories it is impossible to
look upon them otherwise than as a well-meaning Utopia. Stolberg saw the
real harm done, and not the imaginary good which some high-minded and
exceptional artists would fain do.
The atheistical and deist philosophy of the eighteenth century and early
part of the nineteenth were naturally repugnant to such an upright mind
as Stolberg. He hated the wilful groping in the dark after a truth which
the “philosophers” might have found in the Gospels, had they had the
fairness to admit these on an equality, at least, with other so-called
“proofs.” He called Steffen and Schleiermacher at Halle the “new
Gnostics,” and compared their systems to the vain effort of the fabled
Danaides to pour the ocean through a sieve.
“The name of Gnostics sounds ominous,” he says, “and brings to mind
the Gnostics of the first centuries, with many of whose beliefs,
indeed, the wisdom of our newest sages astonishingly coincides.
Under their treatment even realities dissolve themselves in shadow,
while they give to shadows the form and appearance of realities.”
Jacobi was at that time a very prominent leader of philosophy in
Germany, and Stolberg mentions him many times in his correspondence with
various persons, evidently as a representative man. At one time this
teacher, the friend of Goethe, a sort of Medici among his disciples near
Düsseldorf, where he had a beautiful house, and still more beautiful
garden—now the property of the town and the appropriate scene of
artists’ banquets and popular _fêtes_—confessed himself, in the midst of
his philosophy, “a very beggar” in the true learning of the Spirit.
Stolberg often alluded to this, and, when the master’s pride had long
distanced the frame of mind in which this acknowledgment had been made,
wrote of him: “Poor Jacobi! he was richer indeed when he called himself
poor as 'a beggar.’” In 1812 he writes:
“I have just read Jacobi’s last pamphlet. The one before the last
_On a Wise Saying of Lichtenberg_, seems to me in the highest degree
satisfactory. That on _The Recension_ (Jacobi cannot help putting
odd and often trivial titles to his works) has also excellent
points, but the whole seems to me loose, and a windy toying with
views which he borrows from Christianity, the whole system of which,
however, he, as far as in him, the puny mortal, lies, seeks to
weaken and annihilate. While he praises the god-like Plato, he seems
to forget that this philosopher, or rather Socrates in his platonic
_Phædrus_, evidently longs, as a hart after the fountains of waters,
for a god-given revelation whose very possibility itself Jacobi, on
the contrary, strives to reason away.”
Schelling’s answer to Jacobi, however, equally displeased Stolberg, and
he accuses him of making Jacobi appear, “through certain wiles of
speech, now an atheist, now a fanatical dreamer,” and of taking credit
to himself for
“Having been the first clearly to prove the existence of God. His
God has been from all eternity the greatest Force, which contained
within itself, _in potentia_, but not _in actu_, that goodness and
wisdom which it developed in later ages. He falls thus into Count
Schmettau’s error, of a god who has raised himself from a lower
state to the highest, which theory one might compare with the career
of a field-marshal who has risen by degrees from the ranks....
Evidently Schelling is a man of much mind, but of overweening
vanity. He speaks of Christianity with respect, and probably
believes in the divine mission of Christ, whose system, however, it
was reserved for him—Schelling—fully to explain. He sent this paper
of his to Perthes (Stolberg’s publisher), and told him he wished me
to read it, and that I should then have quite another idea of what
his philosophy was, and discover that he did not hold the views I
attributed to him.”
At another time he writes:
“The deplorable frivolity of these times is one of their worst
signs. I find it the saddest of all. Would that one could hope,
“When the hurly-burly’s done,
When the night is past and gone,”
that things would come right again. But moral nights are not as
physical ones. The latter bring us dreams which the dawn of day
dispels. The moral nights are full of the feverish dreams of
mankind, and they have no certain limit as to time. They go
_crescendo_ from error to folly, until the awakening at the end of a
completed, comet-like course of misery.”
We have mentioned Stolberg’s warm love of his country. Prince Francis
Fürstenberg said of him during the time of the humbling of Germany under
the yoke of Napoleon: “I know, and have known in my long life, many of
the noblest men in the nation, but I saw none surpass Stolberg in
genuine love for the Fatherland. His German and imperial heart is pure
as gold and shines like a diamond.” The epithet imperial sounds odd to
our ears; it is an allusion to his belief that the Empire of Germany,
such as it existed just before the Congress of Vienna, was the proper
representative and bulwark of the nation. He blamed the Emperor Francis
very strongly for laying down his time-honored dignity later on, and
contenting himself with a local title which severed his interests
materially from those of Germany at large. He also saw in this
withdrawal of imperial authority and protection over non-Austrian
countries a danger to the Catholic faith, and a possible interference of
Protestant powers in the communications between Catholic German states
and the Holy See. But concerning the ever-vexed question of the Rhine
frontier his patriotism was quick and hot; he wished that in the new
partition at the Congress Alsace and Lorraine should be given back to
Germany, and lamented the injudicious behavior by which some of the
German troops had spoilt the evidently favorable state of mind of the
Alsatians during part of the disturbances on the frontier.
“Eighteen months ago,” he writes in 1815, “the Alsatians were very
well disposed, came to meet our troops with flags and received them
with ringing of joy-bells; then came the Bavarians, the Badeners,
and so on, and behaved so as to make them hate us. We all talk of
our wish to reunite our once torn-away brethren with Germany, but we
have angered them instead and are burning their towns and villages.
My hair stands on end and I could weep tears of blood at the
thought.”
Early in the century, a few weeks after his conversion, Stolberg wrote
thus to Princess Gallitzin:
“True patriotism embraces the highest good of the people in all
things: the blessings of faith, those of law, of freedom, and of
morals. It can never follow the path of forcible overthrows and of
revolution, nor covenant with an outside enemy, nor lend itself to
the service of injustice, even when a seeming and momentary
advantage is to be gained by such service. What a disgrace for us
Germans is the Franco-mania that reigns among us—the cap-in-hand
alliance with the Corsican adventurer, who is spreading horror and
desolation among us and knows no right but that of the sword. What
undermines all our strength, and will sink us even lower and lower,
is not only the jealousy and spirit of aggrandizement current among
the German states against the empire and the emperor, the fawning on
the French with the hope of getting their help to win new slices of
territory, but far more the weakened character of the whole people,
and their want of moral energy and good feeling—the result of the
unbelieving philosophy and immoral literature that have unnerved the
nation.”
Just as impartially he condemned in after-years, when German patriotism
had spread with a sudden rush from the field into literature, the
“coarse Teutonism” which rejected every refinement of foreign origin,
maligned every foreign custom, and made patriotism ridiculous by
enjoining upon it to be no less than rabid. He then defended all that
was reasonable and applicable to German life, all the praise-worthy
customs, books, and improvements that fashion had turned suddenly
against. He had earned a good right to be independent; for four of his
sons fought in the different German armies that overwhelmed Napoleon
after the retreat from Moscow, and one, his son Christian, a brave boy
of eighteen, died at the battle of Ligny. His two sons-in-law also,
fathers of large families of young children, were in the national army,
and the greatest enthusiasm was felt by all the members of the family,
old and young, for the cause which Stolberg called “ours, God’s,
Europe’s, mankind’s, and the right’s.”
In 1815 he wrote: “True German feeling it is to welcome all that is
noble and good, out of all ages and nations, as our own. Every one now,
with narrow minds, is Nibelungen-mad, barbaric-mad”; and concerning his
_Life of Alfred_ he says:
“Alfred belongs to us, and therefore do I wish to hold him up to the
veneration and imitation, and for the teaching, of my children. But
not only do Alfred and his people belong to us; we should also make
our own all that is great and noble in the life of all nations, yet
without losing thereby our own individuality.”
In 1805 the decree freeing the serfs in the Duchy of Holstein went into
effect, and Stolberg congratulates his brother Christian on this happy
event; naturally, the greater event of the abolition of negro slavery in
the British West Indies was a great joy to him, and he rejoiced the more
that the _Illuminati_, his special aversion, lost thereby their best
weapon against England, and that the French Declaration of the Rights of
Man could be unfavorably compared with the English constitution, on
account of a contradictory law, at that time still in force, forbidding
the liberation of the negroes in French colonies to be even mentioned
before the legislature. The alliances, dictated by fear or by interest,
of German sovereigns with Napoleon were a subject of great grief and
indignation to him, and he looked upon England with almost exaggerated
admiration because she withstood the conqueror. He said “Pitt would save
England against Europe’s will,” and his confidence in the general policy
of the English statesman was unbounded. He had, too, a kind of
historical admiration, if we may so call it, for the English form of
government, which alone he thought proper for freedom, but which he did
not believe fit for the wants of every nation, indiscriminately, on the
Continent. It strikes us, however, that the fact of the English
constitution, in its then state, being nearly a hundred and fifty years
old had somewhat blinded his mind to the facts—according to his theory,
rather suspicious, to say the least—of the change of dynasty in 1688;
for the Stuarts in England were surely as legitimate sovereigns, from
his point of view, as the Bourbons in France, whose least advances, in
the person of Louis XVIII., towards the modern spirit so incensed and
disgusted Stolberg; and when he said that “England alone stood in the
breach” against Napoleon, he forgot that she considered it her interest
to withstand him, and that a deeply-rooted prejudice egged on the nation
against him. If he had seen anything of the unreasoning panic which the
threatened invasion caused among the English, he would have been less
ready to jest at the falling through of the scheme, which he called “an
expedition to gather mussels along the British shores.” It has often
been so, we think, among Continental statesmen and thinkers: they look
upon England with exceptionally favorable eyes and weigh her doings in
special balances, forgetting the lawless and riotous disturbances that
she experienced earlier than other countries, after which she settled
into the solid, steady, conservative, law-abiding, slow-to-be-moved
nation which she had been for over a hundred years when the French
Revolution suddenly broke out. Stolberg, much as he praised England,
almost refused to see any good in the chaos of new ideas that were
seething pell-mell together; he saw nothing but the evident godlessness,
selfishness, pride, and cruelty which marked that era; and, indeed, he,
the man of another age, the lover of a lofty ideal which we shall
mention presently—the man who said that “all politics hinged on the
Fourth Commandment”—could hardly be expected to allow that out of such
confusion God could glean anything worthy of being offered to himself.
Stolberg often called Germany the “heart of Europe,” and wrote an ode
with that title; but he would not allow with the innovators that the
“philosophy” of the age was the true source of the influence his country
should have on the Continent. Allied to this false idea of many Germans
was the affected custom, in the early part of the century, of using the
French language instead of the mother-tongue, even in the nearest
domestic intercourse—a fault which the Russians also fell into, but
which at present they have seen the folly of and have nearly
successfully remedied. Stolberg heartily hated and despised this foreign
intrusion into German home-life.
“Even in my younger days,” he says with scorn, “I can remember
hearing of a gifted German girl being reproached by German women
with being 'affected’ enough to write 'German’ letters.... Germans
now write to each other, brother to brother, husband to wife, in
French.... Is that not to estrange one’s self from one’s nearest and
dearest? nay, even from one’s self?”
His relations and correspondence with well-known people of his day
furnish us with his opinions on many of the writers, _savants_,
statesmen, and philosophers, the reigning and rising public men. Of the
historian Johann Müller he says:
“No one ever seized the true spirit of history so early in life as
he did.... His life is very interesting; it is true he showed a good
deal of vanity, but also so much cheerful good-humor that one does
not feel inclined to be hard upon him for the former. His plan of
study, as he arranged it for himself, and the scrupulous way in
which he followed it out, seem to me truly noteworthy.... What a
comprehensive spirit, what feeling and sympathy for the true, the
good, and the beautiful! How early, too, he broke loose from the
unwisdom of the philosophy of the times, and how deep a religious
spirit remained firm in him in the midst of many disturbances, since
he so clearly understood the history of the world by the light of
that Providence whose finger he was always tracing in it! He once
said very beautifully that Christ was the key to the world s
history.”
In 1807 he gives the following opinion of Alexander von Humboldt:
“I know Humboldt personally. He has much understanding, much
liveliness, much industry. But is he not inclined to be too much
enslaved by the German _à priori_ tendency and by a love of the
scientific form? Is he strong enough not to let himself be carried
away by the method of modern criticism, which tends to violent
disruption from all that has gone before, instead of tracing out the
great analogies on the path of simple observation? Is he _quite_
free from a delicate and imperceptible charlatanism? Years may have
matured him, but such maturing seldom takes place when the quick
strides of science make it difficult for wisdom to keep up with
her.”
Of Frederick Schlegel’s poetry, and that of others in the
_Dichtergarten_ (or “Poet’s Garden,” a collection of fugitive songs by
various poets), he writes:
“The rarer and the more beautiful is the noble, religious spirit
that breathes through the _Poet’s Garden_, the more do I wish that
its authors might put forth all their strength. And so it would be,
if it were not for a particular theory which lies at the bottom of
the poetry—a theory whose foundation I do not know, but whose
evident peculiarity strikes the eye, bewilders the reader, forces
the Muse, and in its purposed negligence of language goes so far as
even to disfigure it. The Muse craves freedom above all things, if
she is to express what comes from the innermost of our heart or our
mind. Every trace of art lames poetry, and theory often misleads,
because it is born of human philosophy, while poetry is something
divine. Therefore poets always succeed best in rhythm where the
inspiration is great and noble, and the quickly-passing images,
thoughts, sensations only group themselves well and naturally when
they are conjured up by an infallible, all-subduing inspiration,
without the poet knowing how it happens.”
Of Niebuhr’s Roman history he writes, in 1812—not, perhaps, in the sense
that most of the readers of that work will endorse:
“I marvel at the deep learning, and often at the penetration, of our
friend; but who will read him? What a bulwark of tedious researches,
the result of which is often nothing more than a learned outwork! It
is strange that, with this fault of historical pedantry, he could
not avoid the contrary one of reasoning _à priori_, so common to the
German professors. There is much understanding in the book, and in a
few places one is pleasantly surprised at its spirit; but this
spirit is neither _a joyful nor a certain one_. He fails in
simplicity. From this springs his heavy style, despite his choice
use of words. He is too forward in making hypotheses and foregone
conclusions; for instance, his open partisanship with the plebeians
leads him to make false and hasty judgments. His pragmatical
tendency makes him unjust even to Livy, and he has no appreciation
of the noble amiability of Plutarch. Yet, with all these faults, he
must ever remain a valuable historian—not a star of the first
magnitude, but still too good to be a mere _famulus_,[90] to gather
material for great historians. Among other things, he lacks the art
of managing his style so as to appear to be led by it and yet to
make it convey exactly what the writer pleases. But concerning his
principles, some of which, however, I do not endorse, his conscience
always appears as it is, noble and tender, while his love of truth
follows him even on his hobby—hypothesis.”
Footnote 90:
Servant; meaning here a second-rate chronicler.
It may be interesting to give the opinion of some of the same men on
Stolberg himself as a historian and writer. The _History of Religion_,
which was his great work, and which he mainly attributed to the
suggestion, encouragement, and interest of Princess Gallitzin, became a
topic of discussion and interest all through Germany. Many were brought
by it to the Catholic Church, and of these most wrote to him first,
asking advice and making confidences, before they read further or asked
instructions from a priest. It was a source of deep thankfulness to him
that he had thus been the means of making others share in the same
blessings and peace which he had won through the grace and leading of
God. But his _History_ was no controversial work; it was very
comprehensive, and embraced the whole subject of true religion from the
beginning of the world, tracing the connection between Judaism and
Christianity; the fulfilment of the prophecies in Christ; the spirit of
aloofness from the world, first symbolized in the national exclusiveness
of the Hebrews, and then proved in the persecutions under the Roman
emperors in the struggle between Christianity and heathendom; and,
lastly, the gradual, onward sway which the truth at last won over error,
and which, speaking in a certain sense, culminated in the conversion of
Constantine. Here Stolberg ended his history, feeling that his life
would not be spared much longer, and that he had done his work, so far
as he felt called upon by God to witness to the truth that was in him.
The unhappy struggles, rents, and abuses of later church history he left
untouched; surely there were counterparts to them in earlier days, but
no such embittering could come from a relation of the old heresies and
divisions as would have sprung from even the most impartial discussion
of recent and more local ones. Schlegel took the greatest interest in
this work, and of the least important part he spoke thus admiringly:
“I am especially delighted at the strength and simple beauty of your
style; whoso compares it with what is called nowadays the art of
representing things will easily discover where is to be found the
true source of even this beauty.”
Again, of the second part of the history (it was divided into fifteen
parts) he says:
“I found myself much steadied and strengthened by the whole, and
particularly enlightened by the exposition on the Hebrew belief in
the immortality of the soul and on the Mosaic code. May you in the
future of your work, as often as opportunity allows, return to and
dwell upon the immortality of the soul. It seems to me the path by
which mankind at present can best be led towards truth, better than
by any other teaching regarding the Godhead.”
He then says that pantheism and a vague sentimentality had perverted
everything distinctly Christian into an empty shadow-form, but that few
were so absolutely dead to all higher feeling as not to distinguish
between the “real personal immortality, and the mere metaphysical image
of it, without a hereafter, and without a continuance of the memory.”
“Bring vividly before them the true personal immortality, and you
will often find those whom you had thought most spiritually dead and
careless to be palpably roused. To me the doctrine of the Trinity is
the central point of Christianity, and therefore the foundation and
source of all my convictions, views, and aspirations.... The
unfolding and representation of this secret of love (the Trinity) I
have found to permeate every doctrine, principle, and even custom or
rubric of the Catholic Church; although even in her pale many good
individuals are less impressed with the divine spirit of the whole
than with some one or other literal regulation.”
Johann von Müller wrote thus of Stolberg’s work:
“It is not a lukewarm, sham impartial church history, in which one
is uncertain what relation it bears to Jesus of Nazareth, but the
work of a man who knows what he believes, and would fain move all
men to believe as he does. Not a church history critically weighing
the Messiahship of Jesus from the Old Testament against his Godhead
from the New, but the work of a man who sees everywhere and at all
times Him who was and is, and is to come, and to whom all power is
given in heaven and on earth. Lastly, it is not a worldly
representation of the deceits and time-serving devices through which
Christianity crept into the world, and is still able to maintain
herself, the humble handmaid of statecraft, in these our enlightened
times, but the confession and outpouring of soul of a man to whom
the whole world is nothing in comparison with the Saviour of the
world. Of the latter he speaks so that whoever loves him must love
this book, and he who knows nothing of him will learn from this book
what Christians possess in him. Therefore, reader, if thou art a
reed, driven before the learned wind of our modern writings, look to
this rock, and see if it has not a foundation in the needs of
mankind and the love of the Godhead; and thou who knowest not
Christianity, come and see _what it is_, as thy forefathers felt it,
as it is yet, mighty in every childlike heart; and thou who
believest, come hear, and enjoy, and rejoice thy heart with the word
of life.”
Claudius spoke of the book being read by thousands, and of its
“undoubted influence in strengthening the Christian faith among the
German people.” A person in comparatively private life, Major Bülow, a
stanch Bible man, said that Stolberg’s _History of Religion_ had been a
“welcome surprise to him, although the style was not always clear to his
understanding, and he was only fearful lest the author should not live
long enough to finish it.”
Joseph de Maistre spoke thus of the work in his _Recueil de Lettres_, p.
23:
“New researches and discoveries, and the progress of the art of
tracing all up to the first sources, may correct or supplement much
in his history, may bring a new light to bear on many of his
opinions—for the work, in spite of its foundation on, and
buttressing by, much study of a high order, is not meant to be an
exhaustive scientific work; but I doubt if any, in our century at
least, will surpass the author of this history in pure love of God
and mankind, love to Christ and his church, and in pure and truly
creative spirit. How striking also are his observations on the
circumstances of our time, his opinion on the persecution of the
church by the spirit of this world, on false teachers, on the
marriage tie, and the sanctity of oaths, and many like things!”
Stolberg was rejoiced by these commendations, but more encouraged than
rejoiced. Mere vanity was far from him; he thanked God that he had been
able to supply “what these oft-repeated praises of good and
single-minded men proved to him to have been really a want.”
The ideal which we have alluded to, and which was a great characteristic
of Stolberg’s mind, was that of the mission and duties of an
aristocracy. He believed that, in the abstract, the existence and
allowed influence of such a class was an instinct inborn in man, and
that it was only when the aristocracy was false to its own principles
that the people could grow antagonistic to it. His theories on the
subject were beautiful, noble, poetic, but in his time there had been so
much evil practice that such theories were nearly swamped under it. It
was natural to his character, however, to lean more on the theory than
the practice, and to consider the latter an excrescence and abuse which
might be done away with, and the ideal thereby reinstated in its first
dignity. At first sight his theory seems simply a feudal, mediæval,
romantic one, the dream of a man proud of his own order, and nursed in
prejudices such as no change in political relations _de facto_ could
uproot but if we look closer into it, it becomes a very different and
far more worthy thing—namely, a belief in the essence of chivalry, a
standard of conduct such as King Arthur’s, a translation into altered
forms and circumstances of the Gospel rules of charity, courtesy, and
patience. Here are some of his own sayings on the subject, on which he
reasoned in a way so far removed from either fanaticism or vanity that
we place his explanations here as something wholly special to himself,
and quite different from the ordinary rhapsodies about the necessity of
various grades of classes:
“The ideal of the aristocracy[91] is not weakened through the
unworthiness of many who are of noble birth. On the contrary, the
just scorn which follows these men redounds to the honor of their
class, of which one cannot become unworthy without being despised by
all. Nature gives the aristocracy neither more understanding nor
more physical strength than she does to other classes; it takes its
worth wholly from an ideal, but not a mistaken ideal. This, like all
that is great in mankind, is founded upon the sacrifice of all that
is lower for the sake of attaining the highest.
Footnote 91:
_Adel_, nobility, from _edel_, noble, our Saxon _Ethel_ and
_Atheling_. The word is here translated by aristocracy rather than
nobility—the former being a word of wider signification, and
embracing the class of untitled gentlemen (which of course
Stolberg included), as well as that of strictly so-called
noblemen.
“The aristocracy must give up every mercantile and lower traffic.
Three things were entrusted to its keeping—agriculture, of which
kings have not been ashamed, statesmanship, and the defence of the
Fatherland.
“As an ennobled countryman the aristocrat can pursue the most
necessary, the oldest, and the most innocent work with better
results than the peasant, because he has more means, more insight,
and can better afford the danger of an occasional failure. His
experience and example teach and encourage the common countryman,
whom it is the beautiful and holy duty of the nobleman to enlighten
and to protect, and whose well-being, morals, and temporal and
eternal good it is his duty to further by every means in his power.
This business is one which, if he wishes to be respected as a
nobleman, he has no right to evade or neglect; except temporarily,
if he is chosen as a representative of his province—a business to
which he has also a special call as a citizen of the state. He must
and ought, however, to take part in the government, even if he be
not chosen by his province; and either as a magistrate or only as a
land-owner he can take a prominent part in it. The defence of his
country devolves upon no one so strongly as upon the nobleman. This
is a worthy and beautiful duty of knighthood. It is well for that
state where the aristocracy, as such, is called to the defence of
the Fatherland as leaders of their own country people, whose patrons
they are in times of peace, whose heads, judges, mediators, example,
and benefactors they should be at all times. The old, fair relations
have been rent by false representations, but they are not
effaced.... The aristocracy has an inner worth, no matter how
unworthy are many of its members. Neither royal nor priestly
anointing can preserve from moral corruption! Of how much less avail
are mere human, outward means to preserve the spiritual existence!
Indeed, they often soil it. Let every one who is of knightly
standing strive to prove by his actions that the ideal of knighthood
lives in him, in noble simplicity, in courteous behavior, in quick
willingness to give blood and lands for the Fatherland. His example
will not remain without fruit. He will be far from looking upon
certain virtues as virtues of his condition, and neglecting to
practise others or superciliously leave them to other classes. If we
hold fast to our knightly calling, the essence of knighthood will
remain to us. The shell of the thing renews itself from time to
time.... Whatever is worthy of respect in knighthood has come from
self-sacrifice.... In order to keep pace with the century, the
nobleman must be the equal of the citizen in knowledge, whenever the
two meet in the same field. If he neglects this, he will see the
burgher reigning as a cabinet minister and himself reduced to the
_honor_ of waiting in the king’s ante-chamber by virtue of his
birth. And even in war, the knight’s proper field, how can the
nobleman boast of his superiority to one who knows more than he does
of the science of war? If the knight covets intellectual
superiority, he must not seek it in emulation so much as in brave
and silent self-sacrifice. The life of his fathers must teach his
heart this lesson: _Be worthy of thy fathers, whether the world
acknowledge thy worth or no.[92]_ A thirst after approbation does
not behove a knight, but steady reliance on his strength and his
intentions.... The present hatred of the aristocracy is a fever
which will soon be spent.... It remains for us, each in his own
circle, to maintain a lofty ideal and to spread it abroad—that is, a
true spirit of religion and that spirit of brave self-denial, of
earnest courage, and discreet worth which should mark the
aristocracy—and at the same time to encourage among ourselves a
desire not to be behindhand in such knowledge and in such strivings
as elevate the heart, adorn the mind, and make us fitter for the
callings that specially beseem us.”
Footnote 92:
The italics are ours.
It will be readily understood from the foregoing quotations that
Stolberg had not much sympathy with a scheme which some German noblemen
had started—that of a new knight-union or society. He deprecated the
publicity such a step would necessarily bring upon them, and saw in it
only a hollow, childish plan of defiance, a foolish revival of old
customs as powerless in practice as a return to the weapons of the
ancient knights, a protest against firearms and the altered arts of
warfare. His enthusiasm was always dignified and reasonable; it had no
touch of sentimentality and “playing at” things. To the last his
character remained the same. Forgiving and temperate as regarded any
wrong done personally to him, he could not brook the distortion of
truth, and was in the act of replying to a libellous pamphlet of Voss,
of Heidelberg, destined to spread among the public distrust of
Stolberg’s sincerity in his conversion, when his last sickness overtook
him. He had just finished the _Life of St. Vincent of Paul_, which he
had written instead of the autobiography that his friends strongly urged
him to write. He had objected that he felt no call from God to do so,
and that, unless one wrote with the view of God’s call, vanity and self
were too apt to become the leading motive in the work. He commended St.
Augustine’s _Confessions_ because they were evidently inspired by love
of God’s honor only, and a monument of thankfulness to the One who
called such a sinner to repentance. In St. Vincent he saw a man of
modern times whom one could hold up as a model not too exalted and
extraordinary, yet thoroughly humble, perfect, and holy, to men of his
and future generations.
Stolberg died December 5, 1819, at the age of seventy, at Sondermühlen,
a country-house for which he had, four years before, exchanged his
favorite Lütjenbeck, when French domination was in the ascendant and he
had become an object of suspicion to the French spies in Münster.
What his death was to his family can be easily imagined; it was hardly
less to a large circle of friends, acquaintances, and even strangers who
knew him only by name and by his works, but whose reliance on his
advice, example, and opinion had long been their best and surest
standard of duty.
FROM THE HECUBA OF EURIPIDES.
_A free translation._
BY AUBREY DE VERE.
[_The Chorus of Trojan Women lament their Captivity._]
STROPHE I.
Breeze of the ocean, fresh and free!
Whither, O whither wilt thou bear
The Exile, and her great despair?
Thou speed’st, and I must speed with thee!
Say, must some Dorian haven be
The home of Troy’s unhappy daughters?
O unbelovèd home!—or where
The father of most lovely waters,
Apidanus, goes winding by
The fruitful meads of Thessaly?
ANTISTROPHE I.
Or 'mid those isles of old renown,
Haply bright Delos’ sea-born glades,
Where deathless palms and laurels spread
Above their own Latona’s head
Green boughs (commemoration holy
Of that twin-birth that lit their gloom):—
There must I weep a captive’s doom?
There sing, with gladsome native maids,
Extorted song and melancholy
To Dian’s silver bow and crown?
STROPHE II.
Perchance, a slave in Athens pining,
On tap’stried walls these hands must trace
Minerva’s awful steeds and car
Still radiant from the Ten Years’ war;
Or blazon there the Titan race
Beneath the Thunderer’s wrath oppressed,
And every godlike head declining
Upon the thunder-blasted breast.
ANTISTROPHE II.
Alas my people, and alas
My fathers, and my country’s shore!
And thou, O Troy—’tis Fate’s decree—
Farewell! I see thy face no more!
Alas for thee, alas for me!
Above thy head the plough shall pass:—
Worse fate is mine, o’er ocean’s wave,
The conqueror’s plaything, and his slave.
THE TRUE IRISH REVOLUTION.
The Irish people, albeit much given to intermittent spasms of
insurrection, are at present as peaceable, and apparently as contented,
as the contending passions of local politicians and the intrigues of
imperial statesmen will allow them to be. The constabulary, in their
rifle-green and burnished accoutrements, continue to be the envy and
terror of the unsophisticated peasant; the queen’s writ runs
unobstructed in the remotest parts of the island; “the castle still
stands, though the senate’s no more”; and, save the sharp crack of a
rifle at Dolly-mount or the more death-dealing fowling-piece of the
sportsman, no warlike sound disturbs the quiet slumbers of the weary
sentinel or the superserviceable stipendiary magistrate.
And yet a revolution has been in progress in Ireland and in Irish
affairs elsewhere for the last three-quarters of a century as beneficent
in its effects and as tangible in its benefits as if blood had flowed in
torrents and the pure atmosphere from shore to centre of the land had
been polluted by fumes of villainous saltpetre. We mean that within the
memory of men now living a radical though gradual change has taken place
in the manners, habits, and tastes of the Irish people, but more
particularly in their literature, which after all is the best evidence
of a nation’s ability to think correctly and express accurately what
their minds are capable of conceiving.
Looking back to the condition of Ireland at the beginning of the
century—her domestic legislature annihilated and seven-eighths of her
people unrepresented in the imperial Parliament—beyond broken relics and
dim memories of a glorious past, it can be said truthfully that she had
no literature whatever, or rather no literature save what was alien and
hostile in tone and spirit. There were no native authors except those
who had earned pelf and unenviable notoriety by decrying Ireland’s
nationality, maligning her faith, and holding up to the contempt and
ridicule of the world the faults and foibles of her unlettered
peasantry. But, even had there been men of a different character, they
could not have found either encouragement or patronage; for the mass of
the population, thanks to the Penal Laws, could not read English, and
one-half at least could not even speak it.
The consequence, therefore, was that every young Irishman who felt the
spirit of literary ambition stir within him, as soon as he had attained
manhood, hastened to pack up his scanty wardrobe and turn his face
toward London—then as now the great intellectual focus of the United
Kingdom. The pioneers of this movement were generally men little fitted
to represent their country. They were merely adventurers, without
principle or honor, facile and versatile, and in some instances even
educated, but, from previous training and association, just such tools
as Grubb Street publishers loved to handle and the lowest class of
Britons delighted to patronize. They were the originators of the “Denis
Bulgruddery” and “Paddiana” school of so-called comic literature, and
were useless if they did not caricature in the grossest manner, on the
stage and in the newspapers and periodicals, their Catholic
fellow-countrymen. With them a priest was an ignorant and low-bred
tyrant; the peasant his abject, superstitious slave. This worthless
class, while it did much to destroy the moral effect produced by men of
a preceding generation, like Goldsmith, Coleman, O’Keefe, Sheridan,
Burke, Barry, and other distinguished Irishmen, did more to instil into
the popular mind of England that utter misconception of Irish character
and insensate hostility to the Catholic religion of which we find at the
present day such marked traces even among fairly intelligent men.
Those mercenaries were followed by others of a higher order of intellect
and of greater pretensions, of whom Crofton Croker and Sheridan Knowles
may be considered to have been the representatives. The drama, poetry,
and prose fiction of every description employed their attention
alternately, and in each they proved true to the baser instincts of
their nature and the traditions of the faction whence they had sprung.
They were stanch no-popery men of the Orange stripe, and, having a
Protestant, English audience to gratify, they were consistently and
virulently anti-Catholic and anti-Irish. When they wished to delineate
their co-patriots, whether before the foot-lights or in the pages of
cheap novels, they invariably divided them into two classes: the
high-spirited, accomplished Protestant gentleman, and the low,
grovelling, ignorant papist. Thus for many years did they thrive on
bigotry and fatten upon treason to the land that was unfortunate enough
to have given them birth. It was only natural that England should have
viewed with complacency the caricatures of a faith she had so long and
so strenuously proscribed, and a people whom she had robbed of the last
vestige of independence; but it is humiliating to reflect that the works
of such libellers were up to a recent period popular in Ireland, and
that their comedies and farces “have kept the stage” even to our own
day.
There were yet other candidates for fame, who, tired of the
provincialism of Irish towns, or impatient of the restraints which their
peculiar calling in life had placed upon them, sought an English market
for their intellectual wares—spoiled children of genius, men like Maginn
and Mahony, of much learning and fascinating accomplishments, fitted to
have conferred lasting honor on their country, but who, lacking the true
spirit of national dignity and personal respect, easily fell a prey to
one or other of the contending English parties, and sank to the level of
those who disgrace the noble profession of letters by making it
subservient to the base purposes of political factions. This class
contributed much of what is still to be found brilliant and entertaining
in English literature, but little that reflects credit on their
character as Irishmen.
Following or contemporaneous with them came another and a different
school of Irish writers, such as Lever, Lover, Maxwell, and even
Carleton; for, though the latter in many of his later works showed a
just appreciation of the vast improvement taking place in public taste,
his earlier and more popular productions, apart from their occasional
touches of true pathos and flashes of genuine wit, were devoted mostly
to caricature and exaggeration. Charles Lever, who has written so many
books, and who is yet the most read of all the Irish novelists of this
century, has been called the best recruiting sergeant the British
government ever employed; while Lover may be styled a gifted and
versatile buffoon in all save his lyrics. The first’s highest conception
of an Irish gentleman was one who broke his arm over a Galway fence, was
commissioned in the British army, blundered into all sorts of scrapes
and out of them, hated Napoleon, worshipped “Sir Arthur,” charged wildly
at Ciudad Rodrigo or Waterloo, and finally—married an heiress. His best
Irish peasant does not rise above the grade of Mickey Free or Darby the
Blast, while he seemed utterly unconscious of the existence of a very
important social element in all agricultural countries—the farming or
middle class, always remarkable for their sturdy common sense and
practical views of life. It was from this portion of his countrymen and
from the hardy mechanics of the towns that Scott drew his best and most
enduring portraits of Scotch manliness, shrewdness, and humor.
Lover, though tender and natural in verse, was singularly unfortunate in
his choice of subjects and altogether false in his attempts to develop
them. He also ignored the “middle classes,” and substituted for
gentlemen sentimental non-entities, and for the free-spoken,
light-hearted, and withal poetical plebeian, blundering boobies full of
chicane and deception. We can scarcely believe that the man who wrote
_Treasure Trove_ and _Handy Andy_ could have conceived such pathetic
songs as “The Angels’ Whisper” and “The Fairy Boy.”
Still, the works of these authors, though exhibiting many glaring
defects, were a great improvement on those of their predecessors, and
consequently they have not yet been consigned to the oblivion which has
enshrouded the productions of the bigots of the previous era.
But the revolution in Irish literature had commenced long before their
advent, and the credit of initiating it belongs to one who was not only
universally admired and applauded during his life, but whose fame
continues to augment as time rolls along, and the memory of his
extraordinary efforts in behalf of his faith and country becomes
brighter and more enduring. That man was Thomas Moore, the son of humble
Catholic parents, who, on account of his religious belief, was refused a
fellowship in the only university of which his native country could then
boast. Naturally disgusted at such ostracism, Moore, at the age of
twenty-three, went to London, and entered upon that brilliant career in
poetry and prose which has indelibly stamped his name on the history of
the literature of the nineteenth century. Never was the force of genius
better exemplified than in the life of Moore. A plebeian, a Catholic,
and an Irishman in the strongest sense of those terms; without
condescending to apologize for, or attempting to palliate, the facts of
his station and belief; with scarcely a friend or acquaintance in the
great metropolis, and no recognition in the world of letters, the poet
rose amid an aristocratic, Protestant, and anti-Irish community to a
position equal to the most gifted of Scotland’s and England’s men of
genius, and in his _Melodies_ far surpassed any lyrics that have been
written in our language since or before his time. In 1808 the first part
of that unequalled collection of songs appeared, and each successive
instalment but added to the popularity of the preceding. From the first
they became fashionable, and consequently popular. They were sung in the
drawing-rooms of princes and in the cottage parlors of the shop-keeper
and tradesman. Persons of every rank in life who knew little of Ireland,
and that little not to her credit, listened entranced to “Remember the
Glories of Brian the Brave” or “Oh! blame not the Bard,” and began to
think that a country that could produce such airs and so sweet a poet
could not after all be considered very barbarous. It was but a poor
concession, yet under the circumstances a most valuable one. It was the
first blow struck against the solid wall of prejudice with which English
society had surrounded itself.
Next to Moore we place John Banim, the principal author of the _Tales of
the O’Hara Family_. Banim, like Moore, sprang from the ranks of the
humbler classes and sought in London a field for his rare genius which
was denied him at home. Though a dramatist of no mean order, his
reputation rests principally on his novels, many of which, like the
_Boyne Water_, _Crohoore of the Bill-Hook_, _The Priest-Hunter_, and
_The Fetches_, are works of real power, interspersed here and there with
pleasantry and humor, but always moral, dignified, and true to nature.
The sale of Banim’s tales and shorter stories from their intrinsic
merit, and perhaps somewhat on account of their novelty, was very
extensive in England, and helped to increase the good feeling towards
the Irish people which the lyre of Moore had first called into being.
In Gerald Griffin, afterward the humble Christian Brother, Banim found
not only a friend but a powerful auxiliary. Griffin, of all the writers
of fiction in the English language, was the purest and most actively
moral. If we search all his works—and they fill nine or ten volumes—we
will not find an expression or an innuendo to offend the most sensitive.
The writings of the great English novelists of this century, like those
of Scott, Thackeray, and Dickens, cannot be said to be positively
immoral, though the author of the justly-celebrated _Waverley Novels_
often exhibited marked prejudice, and sometimes downright bigotry; while
his later rivals, when not satirical or trifling, can at best claim but
a negative morality for their teachings and tendencies. But the genius
of Griffin sprang from a pure Catholic heart filled with love for all
his kind, and consequently he wrote with a sense of religious
responsibility, and in a spirit of justice and rectitude rarely to be
found so thoroughly developed in a writer of fiction in our days. His
works have had a great influence on the popular mind of both countries.
But, though he first wrote in England, his sole and absorbing object was
to benefit his countrymen. When satisfied that the germ of his laurels
had begun to fructify in a foreign soil, he returned to his home, where,
amid domestic pleasures, and in daily communion with the characters he
so admirably portrayed and the scenes of natural beauty he so loved to
describe, he composed his more important and finished works.
Meanwhile, another and not less important impetus had been given to the
rapid change taking place in popular sentiment regarding Irish character
and literature, and this was in Ireland itself. The letters of “J. K.
L.”—the learned Dr. Doyle—on Catholic Emancipation and the Tithe
Question, and those of the present venerable Archbishop of Tuam on
similar topics, had thrilled the Irish heart and evoked in it a feeling
of national dignity and self-reliance that had long lain dormant; and
even the great O’Connell, amid all his professional and political
labors, found time to contribute his aid to the new movement. But it was
not till after 1840 that the various rivulets combined and assumed the
proportions of a mighty flood, which, bursting through the barriers of
ignorance and prejudice, overspread the entire land. Then began to
appear the theologians and ecclesiastical historians of Maynooth and the
antiquarian writers of old Trinity; the fiery ballads of the _Nation_
and the graceful and learned essays of the _Dublin Review_ and
_University Magazine_. Archæological and Celtic societies were formed,
the hitherto neglected _Transactions_ of the Royal Irish Academy were
brought into public notice, and the musty tomes that were crumbling to
dust and decay on the shelves of Trinity College library, after their
sleep of centuries, were explored, collated, and vivified. The names of
Murray, O’Reilly, Petrie, Todd, O’Donovan, O’Curry, Graves, Wilde,
Meehan, McCarthy, Mangan, and a host of other lesser lights, became
familiar to the intellectual world by their profound, subtle, or
brilliant contributions to the literature of the age. One thing alone
was wanting to complete this grand national revival: a Catholic
university—and even that soon came, not as a subordinate worker in the
common cause, but as the leader of the movement.
Yet, though general education and popular instruction, in their own
sphere, kept pace with the mental awakening in the higher departments of
learning, strange to say, the stage, generally considered the first to
yield to popular impulse, was the slowest and last to acknowledge the
improved spirit of the times, and even to this day clings to many of the
antiquated and bigoted so-called Irish dramas and comedies with
insensate tenacity. Theatrical managers still persist in presenting for
the amusement of patrons, a large portion of whom are Irish, the farces
and low interludes which fifty years ago were written to gratify the
anti-Irish and anti-Catholic feelings of the lowest class of London
society. A partially successful effort has been made recently to redeem
this gross and fatal error; better, or rather less bad, Irish dramas
have of late made their appearance, and let us hope the reformation,
once set on foot, will be carried out. There is no reason why we should
not have Irish dramas as good as Irish poems, tales, and other works of
fiction. If people will go to theatres, they ought not be compelled to
become interested spectators of outrages on faith and morals, and
patrons and supporters of those who commit the outrages.
Still, casting our memory back over the history of Irish intellectual
life for more than half a century, it would be scarcely an exaggeration
to say that since the _Renaissance_ epoch no country has given such
evidence, in so short a time, of mental fertility and activity as that
island which was once almost as famous throughout Europe for her
learning as for the piety of her children. Ireland has at last a
literature which is not only rich in ideas and information, but which is
both national and Catholic. Her history, once so obscure and
misunderstood, can now be studied with as much ease and satisfaction as
any in Christendom; her antiquities, formerly the spoil of the ignorant
or the jest of the sceptic, have been collected, arranged, and
scientifically explained in a hundred ways; while the lives and actions
of her great and holy men, from the earliest ages, have received full,
critical, and impartial justice. And as yet we have only seen the
beginning! If that be so fair and full of promise, what may not be hoped
for from the intellectual future of a keen yet imaginative, brilliant
yet conscientious, witty yet harmless in their wit, passionate in the
wider sense, yet profoundly religious, people?
THE BRIDES OF CHRIST.
IV.
ST. CATHERINE.
“Whom I shall wed,” said Alexandria’s princess, “rare
Of beauty must be, past imagining;
So great I shall not think I have made him king;
More rich, sweet-hearted more, than summer air!”
In dreams she came where courts such state declare
Of Mother and Son enthroned, that worshipping
She knelt, though royal: the Child placed a ring
Upon her finger, and she woke—’twas there!
So Catherine became Christ’s. Again she kneels:
With rose and lily, in white and purple clothed,
No shining host now hails the heaven-betrothed,
But God’s bolt shatters the sharp torture-wheels.
Then Night and angels her pall-bearers are—
The Bridegroom waits on Sinai lone and far.
V.
ST. MARGARET.
Of all the virgins pure that bear the palm,
There is not any one more meek and mild
Than sweet maid Margaret. Tending while a child
The flocks, she drew near, in the mountain’s calm,
To the Good Shepherd, like a trustful lamb;
She felt that God with man was reconciled;
She saw diurnal victory undefiled
Of light o’er darkness hoist the oriflamme.
Of Morning. So flashed she, in dungeon drear,
The Cross uplifted, till the Dragon foul
Crouched at her feet, in fear of that white soul.
O Pearl of Antioch, so soft and clear!
O Daisy, with the chaste dew on thy lips!
Thou touchest Christ with stainless finger-tips.
VI.
ST. BARBARA.
Dioscorus of Heliopolis
Shut his wise daughter in a lofty tower,
Jealous of lovers; therein, for her bower,
She caused three windows to be made, in this
Her father disobeying, but said: “It is
Through three clear windows that the Almighty Power,
The Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, shower
Light on the soul—with light immortal bliss!”
Scourged, by the gold hair dragged, slain by thy sire—
A turbaned heathen!—soft as rosy May,
Yet resolute, and avenged by instant fire,
Christian Bellona! sweet-browed Barbara!
With the Red Mantle of thy fortitude,
Thy Tower and Cannon, be my soul endued!
MARSHAL MacMAHON AND THE FRENCH REVOLUTIONISTS.
The inconveniences resulting from the present system of transmitting
political intelligence from Europe to this country for the use of our
daily journals are serious. An event of importance occurs to-day in
London, Paris, Constantinople, or Rome; the same afternoon we read what
purports to be an account of the event in our evening journals, and the
next morning we are furnished with a few more details, accompanied often
by a leading article hurriedly written and based, as a rule, upon no
other information than that contained in the despatches. In twenty-four
hours afterwards the event is almost forgotten; and by the time that the
letters of correspondents on the spot, or the journals of the locality,
can reach us, the incident has become an old story and the interest
excited by it in the first place has faded away. This manner of dealing
with matters of great importance would be lamentable, even if the
information contained in the cable despatches were always correct, full,
and uncolored by prejudice; but too often the despatches are models of
what they should _not_ be—that is, they are incorrect in matters of
fact; marked by omissions of the truth and by suggestions of falsehood;
and disfigured, in the majority of cases when the events reported have,
or are supposed to have, some relation to the interests of the Papal
See, by an ingenious perversion of the real and natural meaning of the
incidents which they purport to describe. A heavy responsibility rests
upon the conductors of our daily journals in this matter—a
responsibility to which we should be glad to see them more sensitive
than they now appear to be. They know well enough how it happens that
the bulk of their cable despatches from the Continent of Europe is
continually affected by an evident animus against the Holy See whenever
there is an opportunity to display this feeling; they know well enough
why it is that, whenever possible, a coloring hostile to the church, and
calculated to excite Protestant or non-Catholic prejudice against her,
is given to events.
The greater part of the European despatches of the New York journals is
transmitted from London, being made up there chiefly from the despatches
of the Reuter Agency, supplemented by the special despatches received by
the leading London journals. The Reuter News Agency, which has its
ramifications throughout all Europe, and is conducted with admirable
skill and good management as a business enterprise, is in the hands of
Jews; its agents have peculiar relations with the governments which
stand in need of their services, and a system of mutual benefit is kept
up between them; in return for the monopoly of official news and other
similar favors on the part of the governments, the agents of the Reuter
company transmit only such intelligence as is agreeable to the
governments, and with such coloring as the governments wish. The
relations existing between the Italian government and the Reuter Agency
are understood to be especially intimate; and certain it is that from no
capital in the world has more false and distorted news been sent forth
than that which all the world has received from Rome since the Italian
occupation of that city. As for the Continental despatches taken from
the London journals and sent to New York, it should be remembered that
not one of the London daily papers is in the Catholic interest, and that
those whose despatches are most frequently sent to us—namely, the
_Times_, the _Daily News_, and the _Pall Mall Gazette_—are inspired by a
very lively hatred and fear of the church. We believe that the
conductors of our own daily journals are for the most part actuated by
honest motives. Their heads are sometimes deplorably at fault, but their
hearts are generally right; and, with rare exceptions, they are free
from the guilt of wilfully misrepresenting facts and designedly
deceiving their readers. But too frequently they do permit themselves to
be deceived or misled, in the manner we have explained, with respect to
the true meaning and co-relation of political events on the continent of
Europe.
The facts mentioned are, or should be, perfectly well known in the
editorial rooms of all our journals; and it is certainly to be desired
that our editors should cease to take their opinions at second-hand, and
should begin to exercise their own good and honest judgment upon events
as they occur abroad. If they were in the habit of doing this, and if
they were furnished with cable information of a correct and uncolored
character, they would not, we are certain, have fallen into the error of
regarding the recent change of government in France as a wicked, base,
and unprovoked conspiracy to destroy the republican institutions of that
country, but would have recognized in Marshal MacMahon’s action the
wise, absolutely necessary, and not too rapid determination of that
ruler to save the republic, if possible, while it is still worth saving,
and at all events to save France and society generally throughout Europe
from the convulsion, anarchy, and destruction into which the
revolutionists were so rapidly and surely dragging them. It is by no
means certain that Marshal MacMahon will now succeed in the task before
him; he may have waited too long. Nor are we concerned to prove that the
motives of the Marshal-President in his dismissal of M. Jules Simon, and
in his selection of his present advisers, were unmixed; but we are
anxious to show to our readers that his action was necessary, and that
the good wishes of Americans who reverence law and order, who detest
red-republicanism and communism, who cherish religious liberty, and who
dread and abhor tyranny, whether exercised in the name of many or of
one, should be on his side. “I am conscious,” said Marshal MacMahon nine
days after the dismissal of M. Simon—“I am conscious of having fulfilled
a great duty. I have remained, and shall remain, absolutely within the
bounds of legality. It is because I am the guardian of the constitution
that I acted as I have acted. To attribute to me an intention of
assailing the constitution is a misconstruction of my character. The
country will soon comprehend that my sole aim is the salvation of France
and of the government which she has given herself.”
We believe that these are sincere and honest words; and we shall have no
difficulty at least in showing that Marshal MacMahon could not have
acted otherwise than he did, unless he had been prepared to surrender
the virtual government of the republic into the hands of men who are
leagued together to destroy the rights of property; to degrade marriage;
to enslave, if not wholly to overturn, the church; to cut her off from
her connection with her earthly head; to reduce her prelates, if they
were permitted to exist at all, to the condition of servants of the
civil power; to exile her contemplative and teaching orders; to take
from her the right of educating her children; and to drag France, ere
long, into an alliance with the revolutionary associations in Germany,
Italy, Belgium, Spain, and Russia, which dream of establishing on the
ruins of religion and of society a new confederation from which God
shall be banished, and over which Satan shall rule supreme.
Comparatively few of the constituents of the Gambetta party in the
French Assembly are aware of the designs of the leaders of this faction;
but enough light has within the past few weeks been thrown upon their
machinations fully to justify the President in making a firm stand
against their further progress.
M. Jules Simon refused to aid the President in executing this
determination; and M. Simon was removed to give place to a minister who
would co-operate with his chief. So powerful had the Gambetta faction
become in the Assembly that the whole of the cabinet followed M. Simon
in his enforced retirement from office, and the President was for the
moment left alone. The men whom he called to his aid, however, and who,
indeed, had encouraged him to dismiss M. Simon, were prompt in taking up
the fallen reins of office, and the government, without a day’s delay,
began its work of preserving France from her worst foes. The task before
them is a most arduous one, and it has been begun none too soon. Let us
show how it became necessary that it should be undertaken at all.
The French Assembly was re-convened at Versailles on the 1st of May
after the usual Easter recess. During the vacation events had occurred
which made it probable that the long-threatened rupture between the
Gambetta faction, or Extreme Left of the Chamber, and the conservative
elements in the executive department of the government, could not be
delayed much longer. The administration had indeed gone to the very
furthest point of concession in endeavoring to satisfy the demands of
the Left. The consent of Marshal MacMahon had been given to these
concessions, but it was known that this assent had been extorted from
him with difficulty, and that he was personally of the opinion that the
more was given to the Gambettists the more would they ask, and that the
true and safe course was that of steady and uncompromising resistance to
their unconstitutional and revolutionary demands. The Left, by skilful
management of the press in its interest; by the manipulations of the
local public functionaries who had from time to time been appointed at
its request, or whom it had been able to purchase; by adroit
misrepresentations and exaggerations of the policy of the conservative
members of the Assembly; and by the not infrequent maladroit utterances
and acts of certain of the imperialist and monarchical members, had
contrived to make an imposing show of their strength in the country as
well as in the Assembly. It is no doubt true that, all other things
being equal, a large majority of the French people would prefer a
republic to any other form of government. But the republic which would
satisfy them is not at all the republic which would satisfy M. Gambetta
and his friends. The republic which the majority of the French people
desire is a republic in which property would be safe; in which law and
order would reign; in which God would be respected; and in which the
church would be free. The republic of Gambetta would possess none of
these characteristics; but Gambetta and his lieutenants had been allowed
to assume the attitude of the especial friends and defenders of
republican institutions, and many of their members in the Assembly owed
their election to the votes of good Catholics and sober citizens. They
now felt themselves strong enough to advance further, and to wrest from
the administration a still greater share of power.
Marshal MacMahon was himself irremovable for three years longer, only
four years of his Septennate having expired. But it might be possible,
in the opinion of the Gambettists, to force him to accept a cabinet
which should be dictated by themselves, and which would hand over to
them the virtual control of the government. One of the members of the
then cabinet, they believed, would be useful to them, and their plans
involved his retention. What was the nature of the communications which
are said to have taken place in secret between MM. Gambetta and Simon
cannot at present be known. Nor can we unveil the mysteries of the
correspondence which has been kept up during the last few years between
the controlling members of the French Extreme Left and the revolutionary
leaders in England and throughout the Continent of Europe. The
operations of the secret societies are seldom brought to light until
after their work has been accomplished—and not always even then. The
once famous “International Society of Working-men” has ceased to exist
for all practical purposes; but it, at the best, was only an engine
invented and put in motion by men who still are laboring in the secrecy
of Masonic lodge-rooms and in the caucus-chambers of hidden political
organizations to accomplish the destruction of Christian society and
Christian government. It cannot be doubted that a certain solidarity
unites the socialists of France, Germany, Switzerland, Belgium, Greece,
Hungary, Italy, Russia, Spain, and Portugal, and that they have the
means of acting together. The Gambetta faction in France by no means
stood alone in their recent attempt to gain the upper hand in the
administration of the republic; they had the active sympathy and the
moral support of their _confrères_ throughout Europe.
Now, the great bulwark of the conservative republic in France is the
Roman Catholic Church, the Roman Catholic faith, the Roman Catholic
people. So long as the church is free and undisturbed in France—free to
pursue her work of educating her children, preserving morality, and
saving souls—the French people, of whom all but a small fraction belong
to her, will remain tranquil and happy, and they would make short work
of men who proposed to set up in France a communistic and atheistic
republic. They are quite well contented with the republic as it at
present exists, and are hopeful of its future; under it the church for
the first time has been allowed full right of teaching; and the avidity
with which Catholics availed themselves of the privileges conferred by
the new university law sufficiently attests at once their intelligence
and their zeal. Still, the Catholics in France, like the Catholics
throughout the rest of the world, have a sorrow and a grievance; and
French Catholics, like all other Catholics, claim the right to express
this sorrow and to do what is in their power to redress this grievance.
The earthly head of their church is a prisoner in his own city; he has
been despoiled of his patrimony and plundered of his crown; his jailers
threaten from time to time to deprive him of the little that is left to
him; there is positive danger that the freedom of the election of his
successor will be assailed, and that the church throughout the world may
be subjected, through the malice of her foes at Rome, to the gravest
perils. The French Catholics conceive that it is their right and their
duty to protest unceasingly against this state of things, and to inspire
their government to speak in their name—and, if occasion arises, to act
in their name—for the purpose of protecting the Holy Father from further
insults and oppression, and of seeking to bring about the peaceable
restoration of his independence. In all this they are strictly within
the limits of their constitutional rights as citizens of the French
Republic.
Let us bring the matter home to ourselves. Suppose that a petition
should be drawn up praying President Hayes to instruct our minister at
Rome to represent to the government of Italy that nine millions of
American Roman Catholics felt themselves deeply aggrieved and injured by
certain acts of the Italian government towards the Pope, and that they
considered these acts all the more unjustifiable because they were one
and all in open and undisguised violation of the promises made by the
Italian government to the whole Catholic world; suppose that this
petition should be signed by every Catholic man and woman in the United
States and sent to the President; would it be said, then, that we were
exceeding our rights as citizens, and that we should be punished for our
temerity? The President might do as he pleased with the petition; he
might act upon it or cast it aside—that would be for him to decide; but
could we, as citizens, be blamed and punished for exercising the right
of petition in order to make known our feelings upon a matter which
touches us so closely? Yet this is all that the French Catholics have
done; and it is because of the solidarity of interests and of purpose,
of hope and of fear, which exists between the revolutionists and
socialists of Italy and of the other Continental nations that the
Gambettists in France were spurred up to make this perfectly legitimate
action of the French Catholics the pretext for a new and desperate
assault upon the liberties of the church in France—an assault under
cover of which, and aided by what seems to us very much like treachery
on the part of M. Jules Simon, they hoped to compel Marshal MacMahon to
capitulate to them.
The allocution of the Pope issued on the 12th of last March had moved to
the very depths the hearts of Catholics in France, as it had moved the
hearts of the Catholics of every other land. They felt that it was
impossible for them to remain silent after hearing that most pathetic
and powerful appeal; they wished that their reply should be as emphatic
as possible, and that it should consist of acts as well as of words.
They resolved to draw up addresses to the Holy Father; to organize
pilgrimages to convey these addresses, with their gifts, to Rome; and to
devise means whereby they could express to their own government their
anxious wish that it would use its influence with the government of
Italy in behalf of the restoration of the independence and freedom of
the Pope. Each of these projects was entered into with commendable zeal;
and early in April the Bishop of Nevers addressed a letter to Marshal
MacMahon, asking him, in the name of his flock, to use the influence of
France at the court of King Victor Emanuel and at other courts for the
protection of the Pope and for the restoration of his rights. The
marshal’s cabinet at this moment were greatly under the influence of M.
Jules Simon, the President of the Council; they were imbued with the
idea that it would not be safe for them to exasperate the Gambetta
faction; and they persuaded the marshal to approve a letter addressed by
the Minister of Public Worship to the bishop, in which entire
disapproval of his appeal was expressed, with the remark that “the
marshal, as a sincere friend of religion, saw with pain the clergy
intervening in internal, and still more in foreign, politics.” The
Gambettists were encouraged by this mark of weakness on the part of the
government, and prepared to push their advantage. But the Catholics did
not choose to take their views of duty from the dictates of a Council
whereof M. Simon was the chief; and they continued to organize their
pilgrimages and to draw up and circulate their addresses to the Pope. On
the 19th of April the Bishop of Nevers, not at all disconcerted by the
rebuke which he had received from the Cabinet, addressed a letter to the
Mayor of the Nièvre, in which he explained to that official what, in his
opinion, was the duty of all good Catholics occupying influential
positions.
“The Pope being no longer free in Rome,” wrote the bishop to the
mayor, “the result is that we ourselves are no longer free in our
consciences, and we consequently should use all our influence to
obtain a change in such an abnormal state of things, and the
restoration to the sovereign of our souls of the independence which
he absolutely requires in order to guide us. We must first instil
these views in the minds of the population whose interests are
confided to us. We must then concert together to cause similar
convictions to prevail in the various councils of the country.”
On the 20th, at a cabinet council, the general petitions of the
Catholics addressed to the government were taken into consideration, and
it was proposed that, in order to silence the complaints of the
Gambettists, who were declaiming violently that the circulation and
presentation of such memorials would embroil France in a difficulty with
Italy, the bishops should be ordered to forbid the further exposure of
these petitions in their churches for signature. But the marshal on this
occasion displayed a little more firmness and the matter was passed over
without action. A few days before this an event had occurred in Italy
that served to increase the distrust with which Marshal MacMahon already
regarded the secret intentions of the leaders of the Left. In Benevento,
near Letino, and again near Rome, the government had arrested a number
of socialists who, it appears, were engaged in a conspiracy for the
establishment of a Red Republic. The papers found on the persons of the
arrested men were of the usual inflammatory character, and set forth,
among other things, that “man ought not to be subjected to any tyranny,
human or divine; that the principle of private property is the climax of
infamy, because it creates inequality between men; that the union
between men and women ought to be free; and that the state is the denial
of the most sacred principles.” The chief leader of the band, who was
arrested with about fifty of his adherents, was a young Milanese named
Caffiero, a man of wealth and position; and an examination of his papers
disclosed the fact that his association was only one of a large number
of others spread throughout Europe, and that the names of some of the
leading radical republicans of France appeared upon a list which was
believed to enumerate the advisers and real leaders of the conspirators.
On the 28th of April, however, the cabinet again induced the marshal to
make another effort to conciliate the Gambettists, who had redoubled
their agitation against the Catholic movement, which had by this time
become very general throughout the whole country. On that day the
Minister of the Interior issued a circular to all prefects, directing
them to discourage the signature of the Catholic protests and petitions
by not allowing them to be publicly circulated within their respective
jurisdictions. The circular—to which Marshal MacMahon assented after
much pressure—instructed the prefects to regard these petitions and
protests as “an unjustifiable and illegal interference in the
legislative and domestic affairs of a friendly foreign state,” and to do
all in their power to suppress them. Gambetta himself could scarcely
have said more; but the marshal was quite correct in his opinion that
Gambetta would still ask for more. Meanwhile, the _mot d’ordre_ to the
Gambettists had gone forth to strike terror into the hearts of their
opponents by public manifestations. The students of the Sorbonne were
instigated into making violent assaults upon the Catholic universities;
on the 1st of May five hundred students assembled in front of the
Catholic university in the Rue de Vaugirard, where they insulted the
Catholic students and professors by indecent harangues and by singing
blasphemous parodies of a hymn to the Sacred Heart; dispersed by the
police, they separated only to assemble again before the Jesuit school
in the Rue de Shomond, where the same disorderly and disgraceful scenes
were repeated until the police arrived and arrested the ringleaders of
the mob. In all the cities where the Gambettists were sufficiently
numerous manifestations against the church and her liberties were
organized; and in some cases the zeal of the disciples so far outran the
directions of the leaders that it was with difficulty the latter
prevented the former from outrages which would have alarmed and
disgusted the whole country.
Affairs were in this condition when the Chambers reassembled on the 1st
of May. The Left lost no time in bringing forward their guns and forcing
the fighting. M. Leblond was put up by them in the Chamber of Deputies
to give notice of a question addressed to the government “as to the
measures which it proposed to take to repress Ultramontane intrigues.”
M. Jules Simon, hastening to comply with the demands of the men with
whom, as it now appears, he was secretly in accord, at once replied that
the debate on the proposed question could take place on the next day.
The Catholic members of the Chamber seem to have already distrusted the
sincerity of M. Simon. One of them—the eloquent and fearless Count de
Mun—announced that he and those who acted with him insisted upon a clear
understanding of the position of the government.
“We shall insist upon knowing,” said he, “whether the government
accept the responsibility for the campaign that is being waged by
means of impure calumnies against the Catholics of France. The
patriotism of French Catholics cannot be called in question; it is
above suspicion. In what we are doing—in what we wish to do—we are
claiming but our rights. We demand, however, that the government, to
which we give our support, should free itself from the
responsibility for the attacks made upon us, which render our
position intolerable.”
M. Simon seems to have perceived that matters were growing serious, and
that he could not much longer continue to pretend to serve two masters;
but he resolved to struggle still to maintain his position. On the
following day, after M. Leblond had put his question and supported it by
a harangue in which he urged that the government should at once proceed
to repress by the most stringent means “the Ultramontane intrigues,” M.
Simon addressed the Chamber in a speech highly disingenuous and full of
double meanings. It was virtually an appeal to the Gambetta faction to
permit him to remain in power in order that he might do their work;
while at the same time it was an attempt to throw dust in the eyes of
the Catholics by hypocritical professions of respect for religion and
its rights. The government had been blamed, he said, for permitting
Catholic newspapers to assail Italy; but the government could not
prevent this; the law would punish the writers, if what they wrote was
punishable under the law. On the other hand, the government would not
tolerate any attack upon the Catholic religion—“which it sincerely
respected”—and would protect the rights and liberties of Catholics. In
fact, the church in France enjoyed to-day more freedom than at any
previous time. But it was necessary to limit this freedom. For instance,
the government “tolerates” the existence of Catholic societies so long
as they are used only for the purposes set forth in their statutes, but
it had interdicted the Catholic committees which were employed in
political undertakings and which had “formidable ramifications.” Having
gone thus far, M. Simon thought he might as well go a little further,
and he proceeded to make a statement which was a direct insult to the
intelligence of the whole Catholic world. “The Catholic petitions and
the demonstration made by the Bishop of Nevers,” said he, “_were based
upon a fiction—namely, that the Pope is a prisoner in the Vatican_”;
“the law of guarantees has taken every care of the spiritual
independence of the Holy Father”! And he then went on to condemn the
petitions as “an interference in the internal affairs of a neighboring
country,” and to remind the Chamber that the government had done all in
its power to suppress these lawful manifestations of Catholic feeling.
The government, he added, would continue to protect the clergy as long
as they confined themselves to their spiritual duties, but would in the
future punish them severely “if they encroached upon the civil
power”—that is, if they continued to exercise their freedom and to
discharge their duty by protesting against the acts of the Sardinian
robbers, and by seeking to enlighten the public mind and conscience as
to the real condition of the head of the universal church.
This speech of the President of the Council was a virtual surrender to
the Extreme Left; but M. Gambetta was determined to force a more formal
and complete capitulation. On the following day, May 4, he resumed the
debate in a speech which he had carefully prepared, and which he
delivered with great eloquence and animation. Its spirit is expressed in
the sentence which was received with the loudest applause by the Extreme
Left: “It is time that lay society should drive back the church to that
subordinate rank which belongs to her in the state.” M. Gambetta, our
readers will perceive, is very far in advance of M. Cavour. The Italian
statesman dreamed of “a free church in a free state”; the French
revolutionist demands an enslaved church in an atheistic and communistic
state. Listen to him:
“The church has set citizens by the ears, alarmed France, and
troubled Europe. It is always thus: the monarchy was often compelled
to resist the encroachments of the church, but the republic must do
more, for now the state is assaulted on all sides in the name of
religion and her very existence is threatened. The Catholic
leaders—ex-ministers, senators, and members of this Chamber—have
exalted the Pope as the supreme ruler of France and of the world;
when the Pope has issued an order they exclaim: 'Rome has spoken and
must be obeyed.’ The Pope on the 12th of March commanded that an
agitation in his favor should be everywhere set on foot; immediately
we behold deputations of Catholic royalists calling upon the
Minister of Foreign Affairs, convocations being held, and petitions
circulated in spite of the feeble pretences of the government to
suppress them. It will not do to say that the church in France must
have the liberty which she enjoys elsewhere; she shall not have it,
for the reason, among others, that here the church is bound to the
state, and the state is responsible for the language and the acts of
the bishops. No longer must it be permitted that the Pope may
address himself directly to France, without having first obtained
the sanction of the civil power, and without first submitting to it
his bulls, briefs, and allocutions. No longer must the bishops be
allowed to address themselves to mayors and prefects, conveying to
the civil functionaries of the republic orders received from Rome.
It is useless to say that only a few of the bishops have done these
things; for these bishops represent the whole hierarchy, the church
is unanimous, and its submission to Rome is complete. There is no
such thing as resistance or opposition in the church; the old
Gallican liberties have been swept away by the Syllabus and by the
Vatican Council. The Pope must not be permitted again to usurp the
rights of the state, as he has recently done in appointing one of
his bishops chancellor of a French university and giving him the
right of conferring degrees. I cannot understand how it happened
that the papal instrument making this appointment was ever permitted
to enter France! We must no longer endure these things; we must
drive back the church to the place where she belongs. We need not
fear that the people will not be on our side; if there is one thing
more than another that is repugnant to France, it is the yoke of
clericalism; and it cannot be too strongly said that clericalism is
the enemy of the country.”
To this bitter harangue M. Jules Simon had no reply; he contented
himself with declaring that he and the cabinet were not subject to the
dictation of any power behind the throne, and that perfect harmony
existed between the marshal and himself. He hastened to add that he
would accept, in the name of the government, the order of the day
proposed by M. Leblond, which was in these words:
“The Chamber of Deputies, considering that the recrudescence of
Ultramontane manifestations constitutes a danger to the domestic and
foreign peace of the country, calls upon the government to make use
of the lawful means which it has at its disposal.”
This was adopted by a vote of 361 against 121; thus M. Gambetta won his
victory, and, so far as M. Simon could pledge it, the government was
pledged to carry out the demands of the foes of the church. This was on
the 4th of May. Marshal MacMahon, it appears, hesitated as to his future
course; but it appears also that he was conscious he had been betrayed
into an intolerable position. He seems to have determined, from that
moment, to dismiss M. Simon, and to appeal to the country to sustain him
in his refusal to comply with the unconstitutional and tyrannical
demands of the revolutionists; but, with what may seem to some an unwise
timidity, he resolved to wait for some other act on the part of M. Simon
which might be made the immediate ground for his dismissal.
He had not long to wait. During the next few days the sittings of the
Chamber were characterized by great excitement and tumult. M. Simon was
made the target of continual attacks; he was accused of having formerly
belonged to the International Society, and of having been morally in
league with the Communists who assassinated the Archbishop of Paris. He
defended himself with vehemence, but his affiliation with the Gambetta
faction became daily more apparent. He promised to draw up and send to
the bishops a stringent circular, warning them that they would be held
to a strict responsibility for all their future acts. The Committee of
the Budget, on the 12th of May, reported in favor of according the sum
annually paid for the support of the church, $10,626,199; but it
accompanied this recommendation with the remark that it was now the duty
of the government to revive and enforce a number of obsolete and almost
forgotten laws which had been enacted, from time to time, by various
governments which had desired to enslave the church. If these obsolete
enactments should now be enforced, no French bishop could visit Rome
without the consent of the government; no subscriptions for the Pope
could be raised in France; no papal brief or bull could enter France,
and no council or diocesan synod could assemble, without the consent of
the government; and the ecclesiastical seminaries would be compelled to
teach that the civil government is supreme in all things. M. Simon, it
was understood, was about to enforce these unjust and virtually
abrogated restrictions, and the Gambettists were in high feather. But
their exultation was soon to be changed into disappointment and rage.
The Chamber of Deputies had before it a bill modifying the organization
of municipalities, and another measure for the repeal of the law on the
restrictions of the press which had been passed two years ago to secure
social order. The cabinet had consulted upon these measures and had
agreed upon the line which the ministers should take in opposing them.
To this agreement M. Simon was a consenting party; it was well
understood between him and the marshal that when these measures came up
for decision M. Simon should explain that the government could not
consent to them. But the new masters of M. Simon held him to the
engagement he had made with them; and when these measures were brought
forward M. Simon found it convenient to be absent from the Chamber, and
the government was again betrayed. The patience of Marshal MacMahon was
now exhausted; he was perhaps glad that M. Simon had so soon furnished
him with a sufficient reason for his dismissal. Early on the morning of
May 16 the marshal, having, it is said, passed a sleepless night,
addressed the following note to M. Simon, and sent it to him without
consulting with any of the other members of the government:
“I have read in the _Journal Officiel_ the report of last night’s
proceedings in the Chamber of Deputies. I observed with surprise
that neither you nor the Keeper of the Seals put forward from the
tribune the reasons which might have prevented the repeal of a press
law, passed less than two years ago on the motion of M. Dufaure, and
which you yourself quite recently wished to see applied in the
courts of law. And yet it had been decided in several meetings of
the cabinet, and indeed in the council held yesterday morning, that
you and the Keeper of the Seals should undertake to oppose the
motion for the repeal of the law.... In view of such an attitude on
the part of the chief of the cabinet, the question naturally arises
whether he retains sufficient influence to assert his views
successfully, An explanation on this point is indispensable; for I
myself, although not, like you, answerable to Parliament, have a
responsibility towards France which to-day more than ever must
engross my attention.”
M. Simon, upon receiving this note, saw that between his two stools he
had fallen to the ground; but he made one more effort to again deceive
the marshal. He repaired to the Elysée with a letter of resignation in
his pocket; but before presenting it he asked the marshal if it were not
possible that they should continue to act together. “No,” was the reply.
“I have gone as far as I can possibly go in the wake of you and your
allies; I shall go no further.” M. Simon then presented his letter of
resignation, which was composed mainly of rather lame excuses for his
absence from the Chamber on the two occasions complained of by the
marshal. Immediately afterwards the other members of the cabinet
resigned, in order to leave the marshal full liberty of action; and by
the time the Gambettists had eaten their breakfasts they learned that
they had overshot the mark, and that, instead of forcing Marshal
MacMahon to accept their revolutionary programme, they had driven him to
dismiss from his councils the man on whom they most relied, and in all
probability to surround himself with men whom they could neither
frighten nor purchase.
The excitement among all the members of the Assembly was great as the
news spread; and a meeting of the Gambettists was called for the same
evening, at which a line of action was laid down. One of the first
things to be done, it was agreed, was to use the machinery at their
disposal “in order properly to inspire foreign public opinion,” so that
it might react upon France; and during the night “the republican leaders
sent to foreign journals instructions to insert opinions upon the
crisis” which would have the effect of alarming the marshal by holding
up before him the threat of the displeasure of Germany and Italy. The
London journals were especially inspired in this sense; and it was thus
that our own journals, re-echoing this echo of the Gambetta caucus, gave
their readers the idea that Marshal MacMahon had dismissed his cabinet
in order to destroy the republic and to engage at once in a war against
Italy for the restoration of the temporal sovereignty of the Pope. The
session of the Chamber of Deputies on the 17th was excited; and M.
Gambetta once more demonstrated the foolishness of those who, deceived
by his affected moderation and calmness during the last two years, had
believed that this _fou furieux_ had become a decent and practical
statesman. He moved the resolution which had been adopted at the caucus
the preceding night, and supported it in a speech full of fire and
venom. The resolution, which the Chamber accepted by a vote of 355
against 154, simply declared that “the confidence of the majority can
only be enjoyed by a cabinet which is free in its action and resolved to
govern in accordance with republican principles, which can alone secure
order and prosperity at home and abroad”—words with which no one can
find fault. But M. Gambetta, giving full vent to his rage at finding
himself foiled at the very moment when he was dreaming of victory,
declared that the dismissal of M. Simon had been brought about by the
intrigues of “a secret influence with which no ministry could cope.”
“It is not true,” he cried, “that the President of the republic
bears a responsibility over and above that of the ministry. We must
recall him to an exact observance of the constitution, and deliver
him from perfidious counsels. The country wishes to be rid of the
nightmare of those men of reaction who show their livid faces at all
moments of uncertainty. If the Chambers are dissolved we have no
fear of the result, but the country may see in it a prelude to war.
Criminals are those who would provoke it.”
No one thinks of provoking war save M. Gambetta and his friends, and
they are the only criminals. Marshal MacMahon was not at all dismayed by
this loud talk; on the same evening the new cabinet was announced. The
Duke Decazes and General Berthaut, Ministers of Foreign Affairs and of
War in the former cabinet, retained their portfolios; the Duke de
Broglie was made President of the Council and Minister of Justice; M. de
Fourtou, Minister of the Interior; M. Caillaux, Minister of Finance; M.
Paris, Minister of Public Works; M. de Meaux, Minister of Agriculture;
and M. Brunet, Minister of Public Instruction. The cabinet is a
homogeneous and a respectable one; as long as it remains in office the
country may be certain, at least, that order will be maintained and that
the plots of the Reds will be frustrated. During the morning of the 18th
the Gambettists were very busy in preparing to give battle to the new
cabinet. But they found themselves again disconcerted by the firmness of
the President, who, exercising his constitutional right, sent a message
to both houses, adjourning their session until the 16th of June. In this
message Marshal MacMahon explains that he has scrupulously conformed to
the constitution. He appointed the cabinets of M. Dufaure and of M.
Simon with the object of placing himself in accord with the majority in
the Chamber; but neither of these cabinets were able to unite in the
Chamber a majority capable of causing constitutional and proper ideas to
prevail.
“I could not,” the marshal went on to say, “take a further step on
the same path without making an appeal to the republican fraction
which desires a radical modification of all our institutions. My
conscience and my patriotism do not permit me to associate myself
even distantly with the triumph of these ideas, which can only
engender disorder and the humiliation of France; and so long as I
hold power I shall use it within legal limits to prevent that
consummation, for it would be the ruin of the country. But I am
convinced the country thinks as I do. It was not the triumph of
these theories which the country desired at the last elections, when
all the candidates availed themselves of my name. If it were to be
again interrogated it would repudiate such a confusion of ideas. I
am firmly resolved to respect and maintain the existing institutions
of the country. Until 1880 I can propose no modification, and
contemplate nothing of the kind. In order to allow the excitement to
calm down, I invite you to suspend your sittings for one month. You
will then be able to discuss the Budget. In the meantime we will
watch over the maintenance of public peace. We will suffer nothing
at home tending to compromise it; and it will be maintained abroad,
I am confident, notwithstanding the agitations which disturb a
portion of Europe, thanks to our good relations with all the powers
and our policy of neutrality and abstention. On this point all
parties are agreed, and the new cabinet holds the same views as the
old. If any imprudence in the language of the press compromises the
concord which we all desire, I shall repress it by legal means. To
prevent this I appeal to that patriotism which is wanting in no
class in France.”
Violent were the scenes in both Chambers when this message was read, but
they were cut short by the firmness of the new ministers. M. Gambetta
attempted to speak; his voice was drowned by shouts of “Down with the
Dictator!” In the Senate M. Simon essayed to deliver an oration, but the
Duke de Broglie announced that no one could speak, as the President had
adjourned the session. The houses separated in confusion, and the
Gambettists occupied themselves during the next few days in issuing
inflammatory appeals to the country. The new government began without
delay the task of strengthening itself by the removal of disaffected
prefects, sub-prefects, and other department officials, and this work
has been carried out with the same thoroughness that is displayed in our
own country after a radical administrative change.
All this is the prelude to an appeal to the country in the shape of a
general election for a new Assembly. The people will be summoned to
decide, not whether they wish a republic or a monarchy, but whether the
republic shall be entrusted to the extreme radical party or to those who
can and will save France from the ruin into which Gambetta and his crew
would engulf it. The decision will be waited for with anxiety, but
without fear on our part. The French people, we believe, are sound at
heart, and have no wish to resign themselves into the hands of men who
fear not God nor regard man save as a convenient tool for their own
ends. Meanwhile, however, the utmost circumspection should be exercised
by the new government. Prince Bismarck is enraged when he sees France
strengthening herself; he is delighted when he beholds her weakening
herself by internal dissensions. Thus growls of displeasure at the check
given to the Gambetta party have already been heard from Berlin, and the
German press has been instructed to represent that the new French
administration intends “to restore the Papacy through the humiliation of
Germany.” The Italian government, troubled with a bad conscience,
indulges in similar anticipations; and the first duty of the Duke
Decazes has been to reassure these cabinets and to point out that the
French government wishes simply to devote itself to the domestic
interests and safety of France. We believe that this is the plain truth.
If Marshal MacMahon and his present advisers are sustained, France will
be saved from domestic ruin, and her salvation will go far towards
checking the revolution in other countries.
The time will come, no doubt, when France will again assert herself in
European affairs, but with a wisdom gathered from her terrible reverses
and humiliation. For those reverses she had no one but herself to blame.
They were the bitter fruit of an overweening pride, and of the desertion
of those eternal principles of justice and right, and of the faith that
embodies them, close adherence to which alone makes nations truly great.
France is coming back to her faith, and with her faith will return her
greatness, her nationality, her life. Before, however, she can make her
voice heard in Europe she must speak in clear, calm, and not discordant
tones. She must be united in herself, one nation, one people, with one
heart and one soul. It is this that Germany dreads of all things, and
consequently the threats and intrigues of Germany and Italy will be
exerted to the utmost in aid of Gambetta and his faction, who, indeed,
have much strength of their own. While we are far from thinking that the
contest will be an easy one, we have little doubt as to the final issue.
The republic of order in France is the Catholic republic. The French
nation is Catholic. All the real glories of France are indissolubly
linked with the Catholic name. Her greatest disasters are as fatally
linked with the party of which Gambetta is to-day the ostensible leader.
It is time for Catholic France to gather herself together and arise in a
strength that she never before had the opportunity of possessing. The
way is open. She stands now quite untrammelled from alliances with any
dynasty or name. Her fate lies in her own hands, and the honest soldier
who has guarded so well her truest interests will not betray the trust
placed in him by his countrymen.
NEW PUBLICATIONS.
LIFE OF THE VEN. CLEMENT MARY HOFBAUER, C.SS.R. By the Author of the
Life of Catharine McAuley, etc. New York: The Catholic Publication
Society. 1877.
Father Hofbauer was a second St. Alphonsus in the Congregation of the
Redemptorist fathers, and the founder of the institute as existing
outside of Italy. He will probably be canonized; and it would not be a
matter of surprise if the veneration for his memory in Austria and the
neighboring countries, in case this solemn recognition is accorded to
his sanctity by the Holy See, should equal that for St. Vincent de Paul
in France. He was a plain, simple man, of humble origin, moderate parts
and learning, but truly angelic purity and miraculous sanctity. The
influence he obtained and the good he accomplished are simply wonderful.
The history of his life is graphically portrayed by the religious lady
who has written his biography. We could wish that every priest and every
ecclesiastical student in the United States might read it. The scandal
and mischief wrought by perverse men of brilliant intellectual gifts,
like Gioberti and Döllinger, by apostate princes, faithless prelates,
and unworthy or careless priests, are best repaired by such worthy
successors of the apostles as the Venerable Father Hofbauer. The study
of their characters and actions is better than the most thorough course
of polemics, as an antidote to every kind of pseudo-Catholic liberalism.
THE LIFE OF CHRISTOPHER COLUMBUS. By Arthur George Knight, of the
Society of Jesus. New York: The Catholic Publication Society. 1877.
Christopher Columbus is, and always will remain, one of the greatest
figures in history and one of the grandest of Catholic heroes. He may be
said to have passed through all human experience. He was born in poverty
and schooled in poverty. His days were cast in one of those eventful
periods in the world’s history when “the old order changeth, yielding to
the new.” With ideas in his mind just beyond his time, and convinced
himself of their truth and power, he had to struggle hopelessly for
years under the most adverse circumstances before he could imbue other
minds with the ideas that possessed him. He could only think and talk
and plan. He was powerless to act, for lack of means. He had the
satisfaction of being regarded as a dreamer by the enlightened men of
his time. At last his ideas prevailed, and resulted in the discovery of
a new world.
Then came his hour of triumph—a triumph unparalleled in history; and
after it, more bitter than his early struggles upwards, ingratitude,
contempt, chains, and misery. There is nothing more romantic than this
story, nothing fraught with more solemn lessons. Through all, through
triumph as through adversity, through poverty as through greatness,
stands out the true Catholic, who cherished his faith above all things,
who in all things looked first to the greater glory of God, and who from
first to last lived the life of a practical Catholic. Indeed he was
truly a holy man, and strong efforts are now being made for his
canonization.
It seems strange that this great Catholic figure should have fallen so
completely into Protestant hands. There are admirable histories of him
in English, works that have won deserved fame for their authors, but
they are all written by Protestants, who, however well disposed they may
be, must in the nature of things make mistakes when treating of Catholic
subjects. Grave mistakes have been made, not by Protestants alone, but
by Catholics also, in the story of Columbus’ life. It is with a view to
rectify these mistakes, and to present to the Catholic reader the true
story of a most important, edifying, and interesting life that Father
Knight has written the present volume. He has done his work thoroughly
well, and we have no doubt that the book will become a favorite with all
classes of Catholic readers.
BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES OF DISTINGUISHED MARYLANDERS. By Esmeralda
Boyle, author of _Thistledown_, _Felice_, etc. Baltimore: Kelly,
Piet & Co. 1877.
This little volume is replete with interest. It recalls in graceful
language the memory of men who have honored by their upright lives and
heroic actions the gallant State that gave them birth. It is no small
boast for Maryland that no State in the Union has produced more men
distinguished for their ability, patriotism, and, above all, a
high-toned chivalry which could never stoop to aught having the flavor
of dishonor about it. These were the men who first won for our country
the recognition of European scholars and statesmen. Their lofty
principles, their graceful accomplishments, their scholarly attainments,
and their dauntless courage drew on them the eyes of the world, and
earned for their mother State the proud reputation she now enjoys. From
the time that Lord Baltimore landed on her shores to the present day no
public man has disgraced the fair record or blurred a page of the
history of Maryland. And, indeed, the beginning of her civilized days
was an eminently fit prelude to her whole subsequent career. From out of
the first colony established on the banks of the Chesapeake flowed the
doctrines of religious toleration and equal religious rights to all men
irrespective of clime and color, at a moment when witch-burning fires
lighted up the settlements of Massachusetts. The Indians of those times
for once felt that Christianity and civilization were blessings and not
a cloak to avarice and tyranny. “From the records left to us,” says Miss
Boyle, “it is evident that these teachers endeavored by all mild and
lawful means to elevate the hearts of the Indians to a knowledge of the
true God. The Indian of the present day, dwelling on the border-lands of
civilization, deems the white man a traitor to his word, an enemy to the
Indian race, and a breaker of compacts, whose perfidy must be retaliated
upon the innocent by fire and _tomahawks_. This is rather a sad
commentary upon the savage or the Christian of our times. Which is it?”
Miss Boyle appropriately begins her series of biographical sketches with
a notice of that truly grand historic figure, Daniel Dulany, the Nestor
of the Maryland bar. The unflinching advocate of probity and truth, and
a strong friend of freedom, he distinguished himself fitly for the first
time by counselling opposition to the famous Stamp Act. His eloquence
and fearlessness greatly helped the cause of the Revolution; for
although he opposed immediate separation from England, his burning words
kindled the fires of opposition to British rule. The name _parce
detortum_ is the same as Delany and indicates the Irish stock whence he
sprang.
The paper on Charles Carroll of Carrollton is extremely interesting. It
presents a very life-like picture of that great patriot, statesman, and
devout Catholic. We behold the courtly and polished gentleman, tinged
with the airs and manners of an education acquired in the gay capital of
France. And though fashionable Paris was at that time the hotbed of
infidelity, and Voltaire ruled supreme, young Carroll never became so
imbued with the madness of the hour as to abandon the strong Catholic
principles and spirit pious parents and teachers had early implanted in
his heart. His name will ever remain an honor to his native State, and
his virtues and loftiness of character an incentive to her children to
cling to the highest standard of a true gentleman’s life.
It is evident that Miss Boyle had abundant materials at hand, for she is
constrained at times to sacrifice method to condensation; and this,
perhaps, is the worst that can be said of her interesting volume. The
sketch of the Most Reverend John Carroll, first Archbishop of Baltimore,
is illustrative of this defect. The writer labored under an _embarras de
richesses_, and passes too brusquely from one incident to another.
It is not generally known, nor does Miss Boyle make mention of the fact,
which has been already announced in this magazine, that at the time when
John Wesley, the founder of Methodism, was supplicating George III. to
send more troops to America for the purpose of suppressing the unholy
rebellion against his majesty’s benign sway, Father John Carroll, the
Jesuit priest, was on a mission to Canada, seeking the non-intervention
of that colony in the efforts of the States to free themselves from the
yoke of British tyranny. And yet it is almost a Methodist article of
faith that the Jesuits have ever been the enemies of the republic, and
the sons of John Wesley its warmest friends.
William Pinkney, one of Maryland’s most gifted sons, whose eloquence
ranks him with Pitt, Fox, and Burke, receives a most fitting tribute
from the pen of Miss Boyle. The history of this wonderful man should be
known and closely studied by the young men of our time; for few lives
exhibit a more perfect pattern of true manliness. His struggles against
early poverty and the numerous difficulties attending the efforts to
acquire knowledge in those times gave earnest of his future success in
life. The late venerable Chief-Justice Taney spoke of him in these
words: “I have heard almost all the great advocates of the United
States, both of the past and present generation, but I have seen none
equal to Pinkney.” Rufus King, having once listened to him exclaimed in
a burst of enthusiasm “that the speech of Pinkney had enlarged his
admiration of the capacity of the human mind.” Of such men is Maryland
justly proud, and Miss Boyle has performed a timely and praiseworthy
task in having brought us face to face with the heroes of a past
generation, whose memory their native State should ever delight to
honor.
SIDONIE. (Fromont Jeune et Risler Aîné.) From the French of Alphonse
Daudet. Boston: Estes & Lauriat. 1877.
We understand that this story has had an enormous circulation in France.
This circulation we are inclined to attribute rather to the author’s
name than to any special excellence in the book itself. Alphonse Daudet
is one of the pet French novelists of the day, and it takes much to
destroy a well-earned reputation. _Sidonie_ is a repulsive story, told
with great skill, and embellished throughout by those thousand and one
delicate artistic touches, lights and shades, of which French writers
alone seem to possess the secret. M. Daudet is actuated by the very
laudable design of punishing vice, and showing in a very strong and real
light the awful, the tragic misery it brings upon the vicious and the
good alike. All very well. Novelists, however, who take up this kind of
theme—and many are very fond of it—have an unpleasant and untrue habit
of making their good people fools or simpletons. It seems to us that, as
a rule, good people, particularly good women, are remarkably keen in
detecting falsehood and scenting rascality. In _Sidonie_ it is all the
other way. One detestable little wretch of a woman, who has not half an
ounce of good in her whole system, sets all the good people by the ears,
destroys the peace of happy families, ruins a great business-house,
causes the suicide of several excellent and very charming characters,
and ends by retiring to that kingdom from which she should never have
been called—Bohemia.
It seems to us a pity that an author of such real power and skill in
delineation of character and plot as M. Daudet should waste himself on
the unutterably mean. We are not of the opinion that this world is given
over to the dominion of the devil and his servants. It is not heaven to
any of us; yet as between the good and the bad, all things considered,
we believe that the good have the best of the battle even in this life.
Of course novel-readers must have their villain, male or female; and the
female villain must, of course, be very, very bad. Their viciousness,
however, could be shown sufficiently, and the lesson it entails
inculcated, without making them the pivots on which the world turns. It
is the noble, not the ignoble, who really move the world; and until the
race of the noble is exhausted, novelists may as well draw their heroes
and heroines from that class. At least we object to their being for ever
depicted as fools.
The translation of _Sidonie_ is admirable. It is from the graceful and
cultivated pen of Mrs. Mary Neale Sherwood.
LEGENDS OF THE BLESSED SACRAMENT. Gathered from the History of the
Church and the Lives of the Saints. By Emily Mary Shapcote. London:
Burns & Oates. 1877. (For sale by The Catholic Publication Society.)
This is in every sense a most beautiful and attractive volume. The
author has collected a large number of legends connected with the
Blessed Sacrament. These are abundantly and very handsomely illustrated,
and the letter-press itself is admirable. There is much more, however,
than legends in the volume. The devotion of the church to the Blessed
Sacrament is traced down to the very days of the apostles, verified by
ample quotations, and illustrated by pictures taken from the Catacombs
and the earlier monuments of Christian art. This is indeed an excellent
and most valuable feature of the work. The whole is in keeping. The
devotion is brought up to our own days, and its wonderful growth and
development brought out in a clear and most interesting manner. The
author has done her work skilfully, gracefully, and reverently. The
admirable preface shows how much she is inspired by real love for and
devotion to the Blessed Sacrament. The last picture in the volume is a
large and admirably-executed portrait of our Holy Father Pope Pius IX.
THE DISCIPLINE OF DRINK: An Historical Inquiry into the principles
and practice of the Catholic Church regarding the use, abuse, and
disuse of alcoholic liquors, especially in England, Ireland, and
Scotland, from the sixth to the sixteenth century. By the Rev. T. E.
Bridgett, of the Congregation of the Most Holy Redeemer. With an
introductory letter to the author by His Eminence Cardinal Manning,
Archbishop of Westminster. London: Burns & Oates. 1877.
The best notice we can give of this valuable work will be to make a few
extracts from Cardinal Manning’s letter. His Eminence says it is “the
first attempt to collect the counsels and judgments of Catholic pastors
and writers on the use of wine and on the sin of drunkenness.” He
believes the book will be “of signal use in clearing away a multitude of
prejudices, and perhaps some more reasonable censures, which have
impeded the efforts we are making to check the spread of intoxication.”
These “more reasonable censures” have been called forth by the words and
acts of associations not in the unity of the Catholic Church, and
particularly by Catholics having joined such societies and adopted their
“wild talk, worthy of the Manichees.” Father Bridgett’s book, then,
“will show how broadly the Catholic Church has always taught the
lawfulness of using all things that God has made, in all their manifold
combinations, so long as we use them in conformity to the law of God.
Drunkenness is not the sin of drink, but of the drunkard.” On the other
hand, “in every utterance of the church, and in every page of Holy
Scripture, wine is surrounded with warnings,” says his Eminence, and
adds that our author has “done well to point out that a new and more
formidable agent of intoxication even than wine has in the last three
centuries confirmed its grasp, chiefly upon the Teutonic and Anglo-Saxon
races.” So that “no exact precedents can be found in the past action of
the church as to the way of dealing with an evil new in its kind, and so
far more formidable both in its spread and in its intensity”; while at
the same time “the principles of the church are always the same, and, in
bringing forth things new and old, forms may vary, but the mind and
action are immutable.” The cardinal then proceeds to give his own views
of what should be done. He is in favor of “a widely-extended
organization,” and advocates total abstinence as the only hope for
multitudes, and a specially meritorious act of self-denial in those who
do not need it themselves, but embrace it for the sake of others.
But—and to this we would call particular attention—the “widely-extended
organization” should comprise, in his opinion, those who are not total
abstainers. He expresses satisfaction at Father Bridgett having quoted
in the appendix some words of his own. We quote them, too, because we
most heartily agree with them: “Now, my dear friends, listen! I will go
to my grave without tasting intoxicating liquors; but I repeat
distinctly that any man who should say that the use of wine or any other
like thing is sinful when it does not lead to drunkenness, that man is a
heretic condemned by the Catholic Church. With that man I will never
work. Now, I desire to promote total abstinence in every way that I can.
I will encourage all societies of total abstainers. But the moment I see
men not charitable attempting to trample down those who do not belong to
the total abstainers, from that moment I will not work with those men. I
would have _two kinds of pledge_: one for the mortified who never taste
drink, and the other for the temperate who never abuse it. If I can make
these two classes work together, I will work in the midst of them. If I
cannot get them to work together, I will work with both of them
separately.”
Father Bridgett has given in his appendix “a summary of the principal
Catholic organizations which have lately been set on foot in these
countries” (England, Ireland, and Scotland). Some of these organizations
include _partial_ abstinence in their rules. Another society is
mentioned as existing in some parts of Germany, and approved by His
Holiness Pius IX. and enriched with indulgences. The members of this
last promise total abstinence from _distilled_ liquors, and _sobriety_
in the use of _fermented_ drinks.
We hope this labor of love from the pen of Father Bridgett will have the
circulation it deserves.
SPIRIT INVOCATIONS; or, Prayers and Praises publicly offered at the
_Banner of Light_ circle-room free meetings by more than one hundred
different spirits, of various nationalities and religions, through
the vocal organs of the late Mrs. J. H. Conant. Compiled by Allen
Putnam, A.M., author of _Bible Marvel-Workers_, _Natty: a Spirit_,
etc. Boston: Colby & Rich. 1876.
_Quos Deus vult perdere prius dementat_ would be an appropriate motto
for this hodge-podge of nonsense and lunacy. Imagine a sane man being
called on to believe that he is listening to prayers offered by the
spirits of Tom Paine and Cardinal Cheverus through the same set of
“vocal organs”! It is evident that the “prayers” were all ground from
one mill, as there is the utmost sameness pervading them. Tom Paine
condescending to come down from the pedestal of his celestial greatness,
and praying with unctuous fervor to the God he blasphemed on earth, is a
spectacle highly refreshing; but more astonishing still is it to find
him surpass Father de Smet and Cardinal Cheverus in the ecstatic
intensity of a mystical devotion. “We pray not for more blessings,”
exclaims the pious Thomas; “we only pray that we may appreciate those
already received; and when we lift up our souls in prayer, asking that
thy kingdom may come on the earth, we do but ask that thy children in
mortal may know themselves and their relations to thee.”
It is evident that the author of the _Age of Reason_ has materially
changed his “spirit” since he exuviated his mortal coil, or perhaps he
has deftly substituted that of Mr. Putnam, A.M., for his own. This, we
rather suspect, is the case. Theodore Parker, too, has been to
camp-meeting up above; for a great change has come over the “spirit” of
the frigid founder of New England transcendentalism. He prays with a
_vim_ that no leader of a revival at Sea Cliff or Sing Sing could ever
hope to emulate, and appears shamefully unlike the Rev. O. B.
Frothingham’s ideal of a hero. Some of the prayers are quite touching,
and sound as if they had been pilfered from Catholic books of devotion.
KNOWN TOO LATE. By the author of _Tyborne_, _Irish Homes and Irish
Hearts_, etc., etc. Baltimore: Kelly, Piet & Co. 1877.
This little volume bears the impress of patient and painstaking care.
The author is the happy possessor of a pure and pleasant style, and yet
throws off nothing carelessly, as too many with facile pens are disposed
to do. The narrative is done in subdued colors, and nowhere is good
taste shocked by the utterance of extravagant or whimsical sentiments.
The plot of the story unfolds itself quite naturally, and, though the
_dénoûment_ is a hard one to bring about, it is done so ingeniously as
not to appear at all violent. We can conscientiously say of this little
book that it is a shade in advance of Catholic stories generally and is
well deserving a perusal.
THE PARADISE OF THE CHRISTIAN SOUL. By James Merlo Herstius, of the
Church of the B. Virgin Mary in Pasculo Pastoris, at Cologne. A new
and complete translation. By lawful authority. London: Burns &
Oates. (For sale by The Catholic Publication Society.)
A most complete manual of prayer for ordinary use. One cannot tire of
it. The present edition is illustrated; but the illustrations might
easily have been improved.
THE CATHOLIC WORLD.
VOL. XXV., No. 149.—AUGUST, 1877.
THE POLITICAL CRISIS IN FRANCE AND ITS BEARINGS.
I.—QUESTION STATED.
The attention of the world at large is at present fastened on two
important movements—the war between Russia and Turkey and the recent
political changes in France. Both of these have the same origin, but the
aspect of each is different. No one will dispute that both are fraught
with most momentous interests, that their development will be watched
with great concern, and that it is not impossible that their final issue
may change the religious features no less than the territorial limits of
Europe.
Our purpose in this article is to confine the attention of our readers
to the affairs of France; not with the design of narrating the
successive events which brought about the present crisis,[93] but with a
view to the principles involved in the struggle and their bearing on the
great interests of Europe, actual and prospective.
Footnote 93:
See THE CATHOLIC WORLD, July, 1877: “Marshal MacMahon and the French
Revolutionists.”
What agitates France at this moment is not an “ultramontane” and
“clerical intrigue” to restore “the temporal princedom of the Pope,” or
an “anti-republican” plot of legitimists to place Henry V. on the throne
of his ancestors, as our daily newspapers of all political parties and
the weekly Protestant journals of every sect would have the public
believe. The real political leaders in France today are representative
of none of these parties, nor are they champions of their distinctive
principles or advocates of their cherished measures. They have other
fish to fry. Some of the newspaper writers and correspondents would
persuade their readers that the change of front in France by the
government is owing to the influence exerted by Madame MacMahon over the
President of the Republic, her husband. Drowning men catch at straws,
and men who lack common sense clutch at any flimsy pretext to bolster up
a foolish project.
The day of the supremacy of such influence in great state affairs is
gone by; and, even were it not, the character of the men engaged in this
weighty piece of political strategy is not made of stuff that would
incline them to be led by the nose by a woman, whatever may be her
reputation for piety or her supposed or declared inclinations for
legitimacy. We venture the opinion that the most estimable Christian
wife of the Marshal-President of the Republic of France is not wasting
her time in fruitless political intrigues, but employs it better in
telling her beads, in taking care of her children, and in works of
charity to her neighbor. All these are random shots.
The raising of such false issues, however, serves the purpose of their
inventors in throwing the public attention off the true scent, and
thereby prolonging the opportunity for them to invent new schemes
against public order and society under the restored leadership of the
octogenarian, M. Thiers. This was their manœuvre in 1871, and “Prince
Bismarck regretted the fall of M. Thiers, because he would have
infallibly thrown France into the arms of M. Gambetta and anarchy.”[94]
They also afford them additional chances of escape from the due and
certain punishment which is impending over them.
Footnote 94:
See Count von Arnim’s pamphlet, _Pro Nihilo_.
These pretexts show also the craft of those who make them and the
simplicity of their dupes. For they are well aware that there is a large
class of persons, especially in Protestant communities, whose
prepossessions are stronger than their attachment to Christianity, and
there are no absurdities too great for them to swallow, provided only
you bait them with the cry of “Popery!” “Vaticanism!” “Clericalism!” As
for those who are caught by the cry of “anti-republicanism,” they appear
not to understand that a king without the popular instincts of a people
in his favor is a mere cipher, and that the age is past and never again
to return, at least in Europe, when, as an Eastern despot, the king dare
say: “_L’Etat, c’est moi_.”
The transformation that has taken place in the nations of Europe, the
expansion of their narrow lines of policy into broader political
principles, has been so rapid and powerful that its force in our day has
passed beyond all possible human control. These principles have become
profound convictions, and for not heeding them the people of France
dethroned Charles X. and Louis Philippe; and were Henry V. placed to-day
upon the throne of France with the intention of attempting to restore
the ancient _régime_, it would be as vain, even though he should have
Marshal MacMahon and the army at his command to back him, as an effort
to stem and throw back the mighty torrents that pour their waters over
the precipice of Niagara.
The tendency of modern society to a political equality, without
distinction of the privileges of birth or rank, has its root in the
spirit of Christianity. The Catholic Church, in this sense, is the most
democratic institution that has ever existed upon this earth. There is
no barrier in the path for its humblest member to become its chief in
power and dignity. It is not seldom, too, that those who have risen from
the lowest walk in life have been elected to this high position. The
spirit of an age, rightly interpreted, is the breath of the Almighty
stirring within men’s souls, which finds its utterance in their voices,
even in spite of themselves. Nowhere has the Catholic Church been given
such fair play, though this is yet imperfect, as in the democratic
republic of the United States. This fact has been recognized by the
supreme pastor of the faithful, Pius IX., and again and again he has
called the attention of the world to it.
France has the opportunity under the presidency of Marshal MacMahon, if
she only knew how to profit by it, of forming a political government
adapted to the genius and character of her people and in harmony with
her present wants and future greatness; to govern herself, if she wishes
it, independently of an emperor or a hereditary monarch; and this task
will be accomplished, unless hindered by that enemy of all rational
liberty—a destructive radicalism. If the young Napoleon, or the Count of
Paris, or Henry V. ascends the throne of France, it will be due to the
Thierses, the Simons, and the Gambettas and their abettors.
II.—TWO MOVEMENTS IN THE WORLD.
There have been from the beginning only two fundamental movements in
this world, and these are becoming in Europe more and more distinct,
powerful, and antagonistic. The one has its source in the Catholic
Church, which is the concrete form of the direct action of God on
society in view of man’s true destination. The other consists in
rebellion against this divine action, and finds on earth its
headquarters and expression in heresies, in despotisms, and, more
particularly in recent days, in organized secret societies.
III.—FIRST MOVEMENT.
The order and stability of modern society and civilization are based
upon the truths which find their root and support in the doctrines
unswervingly taught and uncompromisingly upheld by the Catholic Church.
Among these great truths are the divinity of Christ and the divine
establishment and perpetuity of his church upon earth; the
unquestionable responsibility of both kings and peoples to the law of
God; the indissolubility of the marriage tie and the sacredness of the
family; the reign of the law of justice between man and man, and, when
violated, the strict obligation of restitution; the sacredness of oaths
and the equality of all men, without distinction of rank, color, or
race, before God. By the undeviating application of these and other
great first truths of divine revelation and of human reason, at the cost
of the lives of millions of her children; by withstanding the fierce
attacks of the barbarians of the northern forests of Europe; by her
contest with Mahomet and his followers; and by her resistance to the
errors and vices of her inconsistent and disobedient children, the
Catholic Church formed the conscience of modern society, founded the
nations of Europe, united them in a universal commonwealth called
Christendom, in view and as the means of establishing the reign of God
in men’s souls and upon earth, as preliminary to the kingdom of heaven
hereafter, issuing finally into the Christian cosmos.
Such has been the work of the first movement.
IV.—SECOND MOVEMENT.
All heresies, all despotisms, all secret societies have this postulate
in common: that the overthrow of the Catholic Church is a _sine qua non_
to their attaining ultimate success. Hence there is an instinctive and
unanimous sympathy among their adherents whenever there is an attack
aimed against the Catholic Church—an unmistakable sign of their common
origin and an unquestionable proof of their parentage. Peoples of
countries distinguished for their profession of universal toleration and
championship of the right of every individual to the enjoyment of his
own religious convictions will applaud to the skies the violation of
these principles, provided the persecuted be only Catholics! Every right
guaranteed by constitutional law, every principle of divine and human
justice, may be trampled under foot—yea, with sympathy and
applause—provided those who do so are animated with hatred for the
Catholic Church! Witness the public sympathy, both in England and the
United States, with the war of imprisonments, fines, and banishments
waged against Catholics, with murderous intent against their church, by
the “iron and blood” chancellor of the Hohenzollern Empire; witness the
confiscations and sacrilegious spoliations by the crew of infidels of
Italy, led by a Mancini, against the church; witness the banishment of
all the Catholic priests without exception from its district, in
violation of the federal constitution, by the canton of Berne, and the
robbery of the churches built by the sacrifices of loyal Catholics,
which are given over to the use of a rebellious and insignificant
faction by the authorities of the Swiss so-called republic; witness, to
come nearer home, the assassination, by the agents of secret societies,
of the President of Equador, and, within a few weeks, the poisoning of
the Archbishop of Quito at the altar! There are none to raise a voice,
not to say a cry of horror or indignation, among these sticklers for
liberty and justice, in condemnation of this wholesale tyranny, these
cruel persecutions, and this secret and deadly violence. This is well
known by the atheists, who aim at the ruin of all Christian
institutions: that to delude a large class in these so-called
liberty-loving countries, and gain their sympathy, material aid, and the
use and support of their press, all that is required to make them run
like an enraged bull at a red rag is to shout lustily, “Ultramontanism!”
“Vaticanism!” “Popery!”
Herein lies also the interpretation of the assertion of the governments
actuated by an anti-Christian spirit and under the influence of members
of secret societies, to whom they are bound to trim, that the present
attitude of France is dangerous to the peace of Europe. That is, the
secret designs of radicalism are detected, and their plots are in danger
of being checkmated. “Let the galled jades wince.” At the same time it
gives the explanation of the motives of Marshal MacMahon, which is
nothing else than to head off the efforts of these anti-Christian
conspirators, and prevent France from falling into their hands and the
civilized world from witnessing the repetition of the atrocities of the
Commune of the _petroleuse_ notoriety of 1871. A large portion of the
people, and with them the press, of England and the United States, is
duped by cunning and designing men; and probably, if all were known, a
portion of Bismarck’s Reptile Fund has found its way to their shores and
done some service.
The present crisis in France is fraught with her deliverance as well as
that of Europe from the most desperate and wide-spread organized
conspiracy that has ever existed in the world. They fail to interpret
rightly public events and to discern the signs of the times who take it
to mean anything less than the saving of Christianity and modern
civilization in Europe.
“Let order die!
* * * * *
Let one spirit of the first-born Cain
Reign in all bosoms, that, each heart being set
On bloody courses, the rude scene may end
And darkness be the burier of the dead.”
Such is their aim, and it is also their undisguised and outspoken word;
for these men “know not how to blush.”[95]
Footnote 95:
If any of our readers wish authentic information on this point, they
will find it abundantly in a book entitled _Les Libéraux Peints par
Eux-Mêmes_. Par G. Lebrocquez. Paris: Victor Palmé, 1876.
And these are the chief characteristics of the second movement.
V.—THE LINES OF BATTLE.
The explosion of the first mine laid by secret societies has been heard
in the outbreak of the war between Russia and Turkey, if we are to
credit Disraeli, than whom no man is in a position to be better informed
of the decisions gone forth from their secret revolutionary
headquarters. Unless thwarted by a counter movement, prompted by the
instincts of self-preservation on the part of all the Christian and
conservative elements of European society, we may expect to hear, as in
1848, the successive explosions of revolution in Paris, Vienna, Rome,
Madrid, and Berlin; and being more skilfully planned, and more
extensively spread, and more powerful, a revolutionary upheaving of the
populations in St. Petersburg and London as well as in the lesser
centres of Europe, is not improbable.
Men who read in consequences their causes will not fail to see the
significance of the position taken by the President of the Republic of
France; for, whatever may be his reputation as a politician, his
military sagacity and strategical genius are unquestioned. President
MacMahon’s change of cabinet is the first declared, earnest, and decided
step taken to avert from France and all Europe this great and
threatening catastrophe. For Jules Simon surreptitiously attempted to
insert the edge of the radical wedge, whose butt end is made up of
socialism, communism, and anarchy, into the Republic of France, which M.
Gambetta, his aspiring and designated successor, would have
energetically and logically driven home and riven her asunder, to the
delight of her enemies and to the advantage of her foes. Let us hope
that the President of France has taken time by the forelock.
The die is cast; there can no longer be any neutrality or secondary
motives to divide one’s allegiance between these two distinctly-drawn
camps. He is a traitor to Christ and a renegade Christian who stands
aloof or hesitates which side to take when a battle is fairly drawn
between Christianity and atheism. Every Christian, whatever may be his
peculiar tenets, will make common cause when the primary truths of
divine revelation and the first principles of morality are at stake. All
political party designations will be sunk into oblivion by men who
intelligently and disinterestedly love their country and their race,
when both society and civilization are endangered.
The present crisis in France is a call to both religion and patriotism,
in their best and widest sense, to unite in a common defence of their
truest and highest interests.
There is no alternative, and he who does not see this battle imminent in
Europe is like an officer on board of a ship, lulled in a dream of false
peace or disputing about the rigging of his vessel when the enemy is
fastening a torpedo to its bow that will in a few seconds blow them all
into atoms and send their vessel to the bottom of the ocean.
The conservative elements, if not from higher motives, will be forced to
unite from the instinct of self-preservation to save their property from
the _petroleurs_ and their necks from the guillotine.
VI.—THE ISSUE OF THE BATTLE.
This movement in its weak beginnings in France, regarding only impending
dangers to the state, will not exhaust itself until it has restored the
Catholic Church to her normal position in Europe. This final result is
no more intended by the leaders of the movement than it was the design
of the Allied Powers to restore the Papacy at the downfall of the first
Napoleon. It is a divine law that man acts, but God directs.
“There’s a divinity that shapes our ends,
Rough-hew them how we will.”
There is, then, this increasing purpose running through the history of
God’s dealings with the human race: to bring into clearer light the
divine character of his church, his spouse, rendering it less and less
possible for men to recognize his existence and not be Christians, and,
being Christians, not to be Catholics. This is the key of universal
history.
There is not an “ultramontane,” a “clerical,” or a “papist,” in the
sense in which these words are used by those hostile to the actual
movement in France; and if its final outcome be favorable to the
Catholic Church, it is because this is the nature of things.
VII.—ERRORS OF MODERN PHILOSOPHY.
Europe for the past century has been in the state of transition to a new
epoch—a renewal of Catholicity. This statement is in flat contradiction
with the assertions of some modern thinkers who claim the title of
philosophers. They would have us believe that religious motives—or, as
they term it, “theological motives,” which is the same thing; for
theology is nothing else than the scientific statement of religion—are
exhausted. This is equivalent to saying that human nature is exhausted;
for religion is what lies deepest in human nature, and consequently all
other motives will be exhausted before those of religion.
Religion is the very essence of man’s nature; for it springs from the
intellectual sense of his entire dependence for existence on an absolute
cause. Religion is, in its last analysis, reason’s recognition of God
and man’s fulfilment of his relations to God. Religion and reason are,
therefore, correlative.
Men who pretend that religious motives have ceased to have a strong hold
upon human nature labor under a complete hallucination. First they fancy
that those faculties through which God acts on the soul, and which bring
the soul in contact with God, have by some strange freak suddenly become
defunct. That religious motives to an almost incredible extent have
become extinct in some men’s souls we, with pain and pity, admit; that
this is the case with the bulk of mankind is an egregious mistake. There
has seldom been an age when religious questions occupied so large a
share of intellectual attention as our own; and religious motives still
influence the bulk of mankind in their conduct.
It is too true, however, that a class of men have fatally succeeded, by
a false education and an erroneous philosophy, in paralyzing the action
of the noblest faculties of the soul; but this disease is confined to a
small class. Deluded men! they would have the rest of mankind to esteem
their descent as a privilege and count their defect an honor.
The second form in which the symptoms of this malady manifest themselves
is the eschewing of the first principles of sound logic. As “God is a
provisionary idea,” or “man’s intuition of himself projected into
space,” or “the creation of a wish”—so runs their premise; and the
religious faculties of the soul having become extinct, they jump to the
most absurd of all conclusions: “God is extinct,” “the soul’s
immortality is a fable,” and “religion is a worn-out superstition”! The
inspired Psalmist wrote in his day that none but “the fool said in his
heart, There is no God.” Were he now to come upon earth, he would be
surprised to see the fools of his time dressed in the garb of
philosophers and proclaiming from the house-tops as the highest wisdom,
“God is extinct!” These delirious minds are like the ostrich, which,
when on the point of being captured, blinds its eyes by thrusting its
head under the sand, and foolishly fancies, because of its incapacity to
see, it has destroyed its pursuers and escaped all danger.
“Le nid n’a pas créé l’oiseau.”
“I tell thee, friend, a speculating churl
Is like a beast some evil spirit chases
Along a barren heath in one perpetual whirl,
While round about lie fair, green pasturing places.”
The eternal God is, and in him is all that lives, moves, and exists, and
his providence directs all things to the end for which he called them
into existence.
The world is not out of joint, nor is the responsibility of setting it
right placed upon the unsteady and feeble shoulders of inventors of
absurd religions, the cogitators of false philosophies, or the dreamers
of sterile Utopias.
God is not ousted from his creation as easily as these ambitious
philosophers, who are so ready to occupy his place in the universe,
would have the world believe.
VIII.—MISTAKE OF MODERN PHILOSOPHERS.
The mistake of a class of speculative thinkers consists in regarding the
state of transition of society from one epoch to another—in interpreting
a phase of religion—as the change and vanishing of the indestructible
elements of all religion.
A certain class of truths suits one age, awakens the greatest enthusiasm
and profoundest devotion, and in another epoch falls dead almost upon
the ears of men and hardly calls forth an audible response. Epochs
differ from epochs in their aspirations and instincts, like those of
individuals; and this is a law of the providential education and growth
of the human race. One race of men differs from another in its capacity
to seize hold of, appreciate, and give the proper expression to certain
truths, and in turn is brought to the front ranks in the providential
march of humanity. And this is the intention of the Author of the human
family. Men of the same race differ also greatly from each other; for in
the wide universe there are no two things in all respects precisely
alike, and in this is seen displayed God’s creative power.
These separate epochs, this variety of races, and these differences
among men afford to Christianity the opportunities and means of giving
expression to the great truths contained in all religions of which she
is the adequate representation. For Christianity is the synthesis of all
the scattered truths of every form of religion which has existed from
the beginning of the world, and the Catholic Church is its complete
organic, living form. Christianity is the abstract expression of the
Catholic Church, which, in the successive centuries of her existence,
has come in contact with every race of men, and has known how to
Christianize and retain them in her fold in harmony with their natural
instincts. She has met humanity in every stage of its development, from
the intellectual and refined Greek to the man-eating savage, and, by
working on the foundations of nature, she has captivated them to the
easy yoke of Christ. The Catholic Church alone has known how to supply
the defects of human nature and correct its vices while giving free play
to its instincts and retaining the charm of its native originality—not
by a superior human sagacity or a preternatural craft, as sophists would
make the world believe, but because in her dwells that divine Spirit
which breathed into man’s nostrils the breath of life, and made him a
living, rational, immortal soul, and in whom he lives, moves, and has
his being.
God is not extinct nor are religious motives effete. The mistake of
these theorizers consists in supposing that the present is the finality
of Christianity, whereas the hand of God is opening the way by purifying
his church, by directing the movements of nations and the issues of the
world, in order that she may shape the coming future beyond all past
experience in her progressive approach to the perfect realization of her
divine Ideal.
“An age comes on, which came three times of old,
When the enfeebled nations shall stand still
To be by Christian science shaped at will.”
IX.—NEW UNITED CHRISTENDOM.
Are the intelligent Christians of our day sufficiently aware of the
serious character and the extent of the dangers which are now impending?
Do they appreciate the import of the questions which engage and agitate
the active intellect of their contemporaries? Are they sensible of the
weight of their responsibilities, and ready to lift their minds and
hearts to the grandeur of the mission of the age in which their lot is
cast?
He who can see things as they are throughout the world where the
Christian faith has spread, and appreciate them rightly, cannot help
seeing that a fresh unfolding of the great design of Christianity in all
its simplicity, vastness, and splendor, and a stricter application of
its principles in the several spheres of life, alone are adequate to
meet all the genuine aspirations and satisfy the honest demands of this
age.
The attack is against the primary truths of reason no less than the
essential truths of divine revelation, and the defence, to be adequate
and victorious, must at least be equal to the attack. Thus the law of
reaction is forcing upon the leading Christian minds a reaffirmation of
natural and revealed truths with a completeness and a force which the
world has not up to this time witnessed. There can be no compromise with
the false principles of atheists in religion, revolutionists in the
state, and anarchists in society. Their errors must be refuted and their
movements counteracted. The positive side of truth must be brought out
and clothed in all its beauty. The true picture must be presented and
contrasted with the false, so as to captivate the intelligence and
enlist the enthusiasm of the active minds of the youth of the age. This
is the great work that, in the economy of God, is mainly left to the
initiative of individual minds of the members of his church. It is the
work of Catholic genius illuminated by the light and the interior
inspirations of the working of the Holy Spirit. The Church, in every
critical or important epoch in her history, has always given birth to
providential men; these are her Gregories, Augustines, Benedicts,
Bernards, Francises, Neris, Ignatiuses, Vincents of Paul.
As in the past, so in the present, a new phase of the church will be
presented to the world—one that will reveal more clearly and completely
her divine character. “It is the divine action of the Holy Spirit in and
through the church which gives to her organization the reason for its
existence. And it is the fuller explanation of the divine side of the
church, and its relations with the human side, giving always to the
former its due accentuation, that will contribute to the increase of the
interior life of the faithful, and aid powerfully to remove the
blindness of those—whose number is much larger than is commonly
supposed—who only see the church on her human side.”[96]
Footnote 96:
_An Exposition of the Church, in view of recent Difficulties and
Controversies and the present Need of the Age._ London: Pickering.
1875. THE CATHOLIC WORLD, April, 1875, p. 128.
The reintegration into general principles of the scattered truths
contained in the religious, social, and political sects and parties of
our day would reveal to all upright souls their own ideal more clearly
and completely, and at the same time present to them the practical
measures and force necessary to its realization. By this process sects
and parties and antagonisms would become as far as possible extinct—not
by way of antagonism, but by the power of assimilation and attraction.
Just as the lesser magnet is drawn to the greater by cords of attraction
identical with its own, only more intense, more powerful, and
all-embracing, so the fragmentary truths contained in error, when
reintegrated in their general principles, will be drawn to them and
their division disappear. Christianity once more will be perfect in one,
and, uniting its forces for the conversion of the world, will direct
humanity as one man to its divine destination.
X.—THE KINGDOM OF GOD ON EARTH.
Is not such a consummation the answer to the devout aspiration of all
sincere Christian souls? Is it not also the promise of Christianity, and
was it not the object of the most earnest prayer of its Founder when
upon earth? The Son of God did not pray in vain.
Underneath all the errors and evils found among men of all times is the
prime desire for the knowledge of the truth and the native hunger for
the good. Now, the absolute truth which contains all truth, and the
absolute good which contains the supreme good, is God. God is therefore
the ideal of the rational soul, the term of all its seeking, and the end
of all its wishes. The perfect union of the soul with God is bliss.
Again, Christianity does not confine itself to the reign of God in the
soul; it seeks to establish the reign of God upon earth. “Thy kingdom
come; thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven,” was the petition of
Christ to his heavenly Father. His life was not confined to
contemplation and preaching; he “went about doing good.”
Genuine contemplation and action are inseparable. He who sees truth
loves truth, and he who loves truth seeks to spread the knowledge and
the practice of truth. Divine love is infinitely active, and, when it
has entered the human heart and has set it on fire, it pushes man to all
outward perfection and visible justice. No men have labored so zealously
and so efficiently for their fellow-men, for the establishment of God’s
kingdom upon earth, as the saints of God.
The love of God and the love of man are one. God promises his reward not
to the ignorant, or to the indolent, or to the indifferent, but to those
who visit the prisoner, feed the hungry, give drink to the thirsty,
clothe the naked, to the doing of good works as the evidence of the true
faith.
The Catholic Church teaches to men their true relations to God and to
their fellow-men, and by the practical application of the principles
which govern these relations are removed the errors and vices which
hinder the establishment of the reign of God in men’s souls and
everywhere upon earth. The history of civilization since the moment of
the church’s institution on the day of Pentecost is nothing else than a
record of the several steps of progress of society, under the guidance
of the Catholic Church, in reaching this goal. Whatever elements the
nineteenth century possesses superior to Judaism, paganism, barbarism,
and Islamism are due to the uninterrupted action of Christ upon the
world through the Catholic Church. Modern civilization may be defined as
the result of nineteen centuries of action of the Holy Spirit dwelling
in the Catholic Church in establishing the reign of God in men’s souls
and the kingdom of heaven upon earth. “God is now taking the dross out
of the crucible, so as to render his people free from all alloy, and
once more to clothe the church for which our Lord delivered himself up
with beauty resplendent with glory. And when God shall have accomplished
this, he will remove the rod of his justice from the church, and, that
his divine name may no longer be blasphemed, he will give her victory, a
victory far more brilliant than her sufferings have been terrible. May
this triumph not be delayed!”[97]
Footnote 97:
Letter of Pope Pius IX. to Mgr. Lachat, April 27, 1876.
XI.—THE CATHOLIC IDEA OF HEAVEN.
The Catholic Church teaches that the road to a blessed hereafter is by
striving to establish the kingdom of heaven upon earth; it is after a
life spent in practical good works that the soul merits to hear the
words, “Well done, good and faithful servant: enter thou into the joy of
thy Lord.” But then do all the soul’s interests cease the moment it has
left this world and entered upon its future life? Is it true that the
only thought of a true Christian is to get well out of this world and
all that belongs to it, and give it no further concern? Is this the
Catholic idea?
Not at all. The Catholic idea is that as our transformation in God is
perfected, so do all the faculties of the soul increase. The soul knows
more, loves more, and does more infinitely in the blessed land than when
upon this earth. The lives of most of us while here are only a little
better than a sleep. The soul’s vision of the divine Essence, and its
participation in the divine Nature, render it, like the angels, “God’s
coadjutor” in the realization of his ideal in the vast universe. So far
from the knowledge of this globe, and the affection towards its
inhabitants or interests in its concerns, being lessened or lost by the
citizens of heaven, the knowledge acquired and the affections formed
during their life upon earth are essentially retained, and are enlarged
and intensified; and on this truth is based the Catholic doctrine of the
communion and invocation of saints. Hence to this knowledge and
affection and constant interest taken by the souls in heaven in the
welfare of this world, and of those from whom they are corporally but
not really separated, and to their power to aid them, is owing the
adoption of angels and saints as patrons by Catholic nations, cities,
villages, towns, and by every individual Catholic. He who is ignorant of
the Catholic doctrine of the communion of saints, and who is not within
the Catholic fold, can have no conception of the intimate and intense,
uninterrupted spiritual intercourse between the soul of a truly devout
Catholic and the angelical and saintly inhabitants of heaven. The church
militant and the church triumphant are substantially one, form one
communion, and their action is inseparable. The Catholic idea, then, is
this: that the power of the soul, on entering into heaven, to aid man
upon earth in the realization of his true destiny is redoubled; and that
this power is most efficaciously employed in our favor by the souls of
the eternally blessed. The retrospective action of the inhabitants of
the other world on the welfare of this world greatly accelerates its
progress, and, compared with their direct action while upon earth, it is
immeasurably greater and free from all alloy.
XII.—FALSE ACCUSATIONS OF MODERN INFIDELS.
The Catholic Church places no gulf between God and humanity, or divorce
between heaven and earth, or antagonism between revelation and reason,
or religion and science; and she repudiates the doctrine which
emphasizes faith at the expense of good works. Hence the accusation of
modern infidels against Christianity, as confining itself exclusively to
man’s happiness hereafter—“a post-mortem happiness”—while ignoring his
actual, present good—“ante-mortem happiness”—may have some show of
reason as against Protestant sects, especially of the Calvinistic sect;
but it is altogether false, and must be set down to defective knowledge,
when made against the Catholic Church.
It is through the faithful reception of the divine action of the
Catholic Church by individuals and society that the highest good
possible for man here and hereafter can be surely attained; and this
needs only clearly to be seen to restore to her true and visible fold
all the descendants of the members separated from the Catholic Church by
the religious revolution of the sixteenth century, who are in good
faith.
And it is the bringing out into a clearer light the divine side of the
church, and to the front those truths which eliminate the errors rife in
our day and their stricter application to present evils, that, by the
instinct of the Holy Spirit, now preoccupies the active intelligent mind
of Catholics throughout the world, especially in countries where the
dangers are most imminent, such as France, Germany, and Italy.
XIII.—PROMISES, FALSE AND TRUE.
There are two controlling forces, explain their origin as we may,
visible in the conflicting movements of human affairs in this world. The
one places man in possession of the Supreme Good, and makes him a
co-worker with his Creator in the realization of the ideal for which God
called this great universe into existence. The other is instigated by
the enemy of God and the human race, seeking by false promises to lead
man astray.
“You shall be as gods, knowing good and evil,” was Satan’s promise to
our first parents. This promise contained what was desirable for man;
God had implanted in the human soul the aspiration for its fulfilment.
But what the enemy promised he had not the power to perform, and the
road that he pointed out as leading to the fulfilment of the promise led
in a wrong direction.
The right answer of our first parents to Satan would have been: “We know
that God has made our souls in his own image and likeness, and that we
shall be made participators of his divine Nature, and thereby deified;
and as our Creator has endowed us with the gift of intelligence, we
shall also gain the knowledge of good and evil—for this is its proper
object. And we know also with certitude that we shall gain these great
rewards by following the paths which God has pointed out to us.” Had
they thus spoken, they would have, in the strength of their innocence
and conscious rectitude, added: “Begone, tempter! Thou art a liar; for
what thou dost promise it is not thine to give; and instead of wishing
our elevation, thou seekest to accomplish our fall and utter ruin!”
As in the beginning, so now, Satan seizes hold of the noblest
aspirations of the soul, and, by deceiving men under the guise of a real
good, leads them quite astray. For what underlies the promises of
Protestantism and its innumerable sects; and rationalism, so-called, and
its different phases; and the secularists, positivists, scientists,
atheists, radicals, materialists, spiritists, revolutionists,
evolutionists, socialists, pessimists, free-religionists, communists,
internationalists, optimists, theists, nihilists, _kulturkämpfer_,
agnostics, intuitionists, transcendentalists, and other sects and
parties too numerous to mention—for their name is legion, and their
confusion of tongues is as great as that of Babel—what underlies their
promises is in one aspect true and in a sense desirable. The right
answer to all their fine promises is this: “You affirm undoubted truths
and you hold out a desirable good; but the way that you point out for
realizing the one and attaining the other is subversive of all truth and
the supreme good, and it will not reach even what you aim at, but end in
entire disappointment and anarchy. Put together the fragmentary truths
affirmed by each of your different religious sects, and you will find
them all contained in Catholicity. Make a list of all the honest demands
for ameliorations and reforms in man’s social, industrial, and political
condition—it will not be a short one—and you will discover that they
have their truth in the spirit, and are justified by the teachings and
the practice, of the Catholic Church.” O sincere seeker after truth! did
you but know it, the path lies open before you to a perennial fountain
of truth, where you can slake to the full that thirst which has so long
tormented your soul. O sincere lover of your fellow-men! there is a
living body which you may see and co-operate with, whose divine action
is realizing a heavenly vision for the whole human race, brighter and
more beautiful than the ideal which so often haunts your lonely dreams!
The divine ideal is a God-given aspiration to your soul, but the way to
realize it is not by building up a tower of Babel.
XIV.—CONCLUSION.
The evolution of Catholicity which is now coming slowly to the light
will gather up all the rich treasures of the past, march in response to
every honest demand of the interests of the actual present, and guide
the genuine aspirations of the race in the sure way to the more perfect
future of its hopes.
This sublime mission is not the self-imposed work of any man or party of
men, but the divinely-imposed task of religion, of the present, visible,
living body of Christ, the church of God. None other has the power to
renew the world, unite together in one band the whole human race, and
direct its energies to enterprises worthy of man’s great destiny.
Marshal MacMahon, Duke de Broglie, or any one else, legitimists,
imperialists, Orleanists, republicans, anti-republicans, these men and
these parties in France may contribute more or less as instruments to
the initiation of the new order of things in Europe, but that is all.
They will betray the cause of God and the interests of humanity, if they
should attempt to turn it to any individual account or to any partisan
triumph, whether called religious or political. The enemies of the
church may place hindrances in her way, but they cannot stop her in
reaching her goal. God alone rules and reigns.
God has spoken his “thus far shalt thou go, and no further” to his
enemies and to all the persecutors of the church of Christ. When God
arises, his enemies will flee and be scattered. Their strength, compared
with that of his children, is as the strength of a rope of sand. Their
power is gained by secrecy, and their influence by threats and deeds of
violence; for their real numbers constitute but a small fraction of the
French, German, Italian, and Spanish or any other people. The present
struggle will render this fact evident to all the world.
Strange destiny that of France, to be the leader of Europe both for good
and for evil! France was the first nation converted to Christianity in
western Europe, and the first to proclaim herself, as a nation, infidel.
France will be the first to recover from her errors and give the initial
blow that will end in the overthrow of the enemies of modern
civilization and Christianity.
The Marshal-President of the Republic of France, the brave soldier, the
man without fear or reproach, is not the man to betray his high trusts
through any personal ambition, or to any party, legitimist, Orleanist,
imperialist, Gambettist, or whatever may be the name which it bears on
its banner.
The mission of the President of France is to keep ambitious men and
partisans at bay, and afford the best elements and the truest interests
of all France a fair expression and the opportunity of forming a stable
and suitable political government. The Catholic Church has been made to
suffer too much and too long from crowned emperors, royal dynasties, and
political factions in France and elsewhere to identify her great cause
with theirs.
France, under the providence of God, is slowly being taught to stand on
her own feet, to assert her true manhood, and to practise
self-government. The political virtues the French people have practised,
and the self-control they have displayed, since the formation of the
republic, have discomfited their enemies, increased the admiration of
their friends, and won the applause of the civilized world. France never
was so really great as she is at this moment.
The purity of the motives of the President of the Republic, the
disinterested love of his country, and his undaunted valor have never
been impeached, nor has his escutcheon ever borne the slightest stain.
His sagacity and prudence have never been at fault. That he has a will
Jules Simon has learned to his cost. Patrick MacMahon, the marshal of
the armies of France and the first President of her Republic, possesses
evidently all the distinguishing qualities of the first
commander-in-chief of the American army and the first President of the
Republic of the United States—George Washington. The French people can
safely trust for one term, and not unlikely for a second, their
liberties, their interests, and their honor to the keeping of such a
man.
France will find in her president a providential man, and his name will
go down to posterity with the title of our own great patriot, the
noblest of all titles—“MacMahon, the Father of his Country.”
The turning point of a new era for Europe and of the renewal of
Catholicity is entrusted by divine Providence to the hands of the eldest
daughter of his church—France! In the answer of France to the present
issue lies the secret of the weal or the woe of the future of Europe.
PHIL REDMOND OF BALLYMACREEDY.
“Whisht!” exclaimed the blind hostler attached to the Derralossory Arms.
“There’s a car rowlin’ along the Bray Road, an’, from the sperrit that’s
in the baste, it’s Luke Finnigan that’s dhrivin’ him. Ay, faix,” he
added with a self-satisfied chuckle, “an’ that’s Luke Finnigan’s note.
I’d know it from this t’ Arklow.”
A wild whoop and a sound of wheels in the direction indicated announced
the approaching vehicle, and, ere the sightless hostler could grope his
way from the snug corner in which he had been ensconced by the roaring
kitchen fire—it was the middle of July—an outside car dashed up to the
principal door of the hotel, stopped with a jerk as if on the edge of a
precipice, and the driver, throwing the reins upon the neck of the
panting horse, cried out as he gaily entered the hostelry:
“Now, thin, Misther Murphy, be nimble wud the liquor. There’s a rale
gintleman goin’ for to stand, an’ I’m as dhry as a cuckoo.”
Upon the vehicle sat a young man whose exquisitely-fitting frock-coat,
faultless linen, diamond studs, soft hat, and square-toed boots bespoke
the American. He was fair, with soft and expressive eyes, and wore a
_Henri Quatre_ beard which admirably became his long and pensive face.
“Yer welkim to the County Wicklow, sir,” cried the hostler, who had
approached the car and was engaged in giving a drink to the jaded
animal. “It’s an illigant place for rocks an’ rivers an’ threes an’
scenery. Sorra a forriner that cums into it but is loath for to lave it.
It takes a hoult av thim.”
“It is a very, _very_ beautiful place,” exclaimed the new-comer
enthusiastically, as he sprang to _terra firma_. “So green, so fresh,
so—but you cannot enjoy it, my poor fellow!” suddenly perceiving the
sightless orbs which were turned toward him.
“It’s many a day sence I seen it, sir,” responded the man, with a weary
moan in his utterance—“many an’ many a day.”
“Thrue for him,” added the driver, emerging from the hotel and swabbing
his mouth with the back of a bronzed and blistered hand, while bright
beads twinkled like fallen stars in his merry eyes. “He’s dark sence he
was a gossoon! An’ it’s a sight for to see him along wud the horses in
the stable; he’ll go into stalls, an’ the bastes kickin’ thim to
smithereens, but sorra a word they’ll say to him, though they’d be
afther knockin’ sawdust out av any other tin min. He thravels the roads
day an’ night. To be sure it’s all wan to him in regard to his bein’
dark, but he’ll work his way down to Lake Dan below—ay, an’ to the Sivin
Churches, begor.”
“God is good to me, sir,” said the hostler; “an’ whin it plazed him for
to take me eyesight, he gev me sight in me ears an’ hands.”
“Here, my poor fellow.” And the stranger placed a coin in the other’s
horny palm.
“A five-shilling bit! Och, thin, may the saints light ye to glory, an’
may ye never die till they sind for ye! It’s lonely they’ll be till ye
go to thim.”
By this time the car was surrounded by a motley group of tatterdemalions
of all ages, sizes, and sexes, in every stage of decrepitude and every
variety of raggedness.
“Throw a few coppers to an ould widdy, an’ the Lord reward ye!”
exclaimed one.
“Ye’ll never miss a fourpenny bit,” added another.
“A sixpince to an orfin will take a bag o’ coals from undher ye in
purgathory,” chimed in a third.
“Give us the price av an ounce av tay,” droned a fourth.
“More power to the stars an’ sthripes! Three cheers for Ameriky, boys!”
roared a leathern-lunged dwarf, throwing a rabbit-skin cap into the air.
This appeal was responded to with an enthusiasm that brought the fire
into the stranger’s eye. Turning round upon the steps of the
hotel—along, thatched, whitewashed, two-storied building—he made a sign
as if desirous of addressing the assemblage.
“Be jabers! he’s going for to spake.”
“I riz him wud the stars an’ sthripes,” joyously chuckled the dwarf.
“Faix, it’s more nor a speech we want,” wheezed a little old fellow on
crutches.
“The Home-Rulers has stuffed us like turkeys.”
“Ordher! Ordher in the coort!” yelled the dwarf. “Be aisy, Billy McKeon.
Lave off scroogin’ me, Mary Nayle, an’ let the cripples in front.”
A few additional _facetiæ_, and the silence became complete.
The new-comer had removed his hat, and his massive white forehead stood
out from beneath his soft brown, curly hair.
“I thank you for the cheer which you have given for the country of my
birth.” (“That’s half a crown to me, anyhow,” muttered the dwarf.) “I
hope that cheer was an honest one. It was not my intention to bestow ten
cents among you, as I do not encourage mendicants; and once a beggar,
always a beggar.”
This was received with very audible manifestations of dissatisfaction.
“Musha, but ye’ve come far enough for to tell us that,” growled the old
man with the crutches.
“I _have_ come a long way to tell it to you,” retorted the stranger,
“and I’ll tell you more. It is positively sickening to travel through
this beautiful country, on account of _you_ and the like of you. From
Cork to Killarney, from Killarney to Dublin, from Dublin to—”
“Boys, let’s make up a subscription for him,” interrupted a little
fellow whose rags depended for support upon a straw rope—technically
termed a “suggawn”—fastened around his waist.
“Th’ hostler 'll hed it wud five shillin’s,” observed a bystander with a
droll, malicious grin.
“Begorra, we’ll tell the landlord for to put it in the bill.”
“Are ye goin’ for to give us anything?” demanded the dwarf. This query
was backed up by a unanimous murmur of approval.
“I am.”
“Well, that’s raysonible, anyhow.”
“I’m going to give you some sound, wholesome advice,” said the stranger.
A yell of anger, disappointment, dissent, and derision followed this
announcement. Crutches were brandished, sticks flourished, fists shaken,
and general denunciations upon this “nagurly” conduct were indulged in,
in terms as pungent as they were personal.
“You won’t hear me?” he resumed during a lull in the storm.
“Sorra a hear.”
“Well, good-afternoon.” And making them a low bow, he turned into the
house, whither execrations loud, prolonged, and deep rapidly followed
him.
The accommodations at the “Derralossory Arms”—for so the hostelry was
named—were somewhat pretentious. Opening a door with the word
“coffee-room” imprinted thereon in brazen letters, the new-comer found
himself in a long, low-ceilinged apartment. A cracked mirror, the
surface of which was scratched from frame to frame, like an ice rink, by
amorous owners of diamond rings, stood over the mantel-piece, and above
it a smoke-dried card containing the announcement of the meets of the
Wicklow Harriers of the preceding season. Upon a mahogany sideboard
shone a brave array of glassware interspersed with pickle-jars and some
mysterious specimens of the ceramic art. Facing the sideboard was a huge
antiquated sofa whose springs revealed themselves like the ribs of a
half-starved horse, and opposite the sofa an ancient but
uncompromisingly upright pianoforte. But not upon the mirror, sideboard,
sofa, or piano did the eyes of the stranger continue to rest. The window
had been lowered, and a young girl was leaning her arms upon the sash,
gazing out upon the tatterdemalion crowd beneath. Her figure was
_petite_, but of that faultless outline which no amount of drapery can
conceal. A long plait of lustrous brown hair hung down her back. She was
attired in black, and a huge Puritan cambric collar and cuffs adorned
her wrists and neck.
“If her face is as her figure, she must be enchanting,” thought the
new-comer.
“He should have given them _something_,” she murmured half aloud. “Poor
creatures! hoping and fearing is weary, weary work.” And she slowly
faced him.
He gazed at features as regular as the classic model, and whose paleness
almost imparted to them the calm, impassive beauty of marble. She
flushed and was about to withdraw when he blurted forth:
“I—I beg your pardon, but I overheard what you said. I am not so mean as
you think.” And striding to the window and attracting the attention of
the mob, who received him with a yell of derisive defiance, he flung a
handful of silver among them.
A scarlet flush mantled over her face and throat. “I was but speaking to
myself, thinking aloud—and—but nevertheless on the part of those poor
miserable people, I beg to thank you, sir. _I_ am sorely to blame, and
your generosity only rivets the fetters that bind them to beggary.” And
with a low courtesy, old-fashioned but witching grace itself, she swept
from the apartment, leaving the stranger lost in admiration.
“What is that young lady’s name who was here just now?” he asked.
“Her name is Miss O’Byrne—wan av th’ ould anshint O’Byrnes that fought
hard agin’ the Danes an’ Crummle—bad cess to thim, body an’ bones!”
replied the waiter.
“Does she live near this place?”
“Beyant four mile, over be the side o’ Lake Dan. It’s an illigant place,
wid no ind av ruins, an’ a darlin’ ghost that walks whinever sorra is
comin’ to the race; an’ be me song, they’ve supped lashins av it.”
“Is Mr. O’Byrne wealthy?”
“Well, now”—here the waiter scratched a very shock head—“he’s not
rowlin’ in goold, but he’s warm and”—brightening up—“as proud as a
paycock. But there, I’m forgettin’ me message to ye.”
“To _me_? exclaimed the stranger with a start, half hoping it might be
from Miss O’Byrne.
“Yes, sir. There’s two gintlemin cum here in regard o’ the fishin’,
though sorra a haporth they ketch; an’ they cum regular wud rods an’
hooks an’ nets, an’ all soarts av cumbusticles. Wan av them is an
attorney, a gay man, an’ th’ other houlds a situation in the Four Coorts
beyant in Dublin, an’ he’s as nice a mannered man as there’s in the four
walls o’ Wicklow this blessed minit.”
“But the message?” interrupted the stranger.
“That’s it. Yer to dine wud thim—no less. Misther Minchin tould me to
prisint his respects an’ to hope ye’d favor him wud yer company; an’
don’t be hesitatin’, mind ye”—here the waiter winked an indescribable
wink, such as an augur might have indulged in consequent upon a
successful omen; “there’s lovely chickens, an’ the elegantest bacon, wud
a filly av cabbage, an’ a dancing leg o’ lamb.”
“But I don’t know these gentlemen, and—”
“Permit me to introduce myself, sir,” exclaimed a small, elderly man
with a merry eye, a bulbous nose, a very stiff, old-fashioned stock, and
a stiffer rim of shirt-collar which kept his head as erect as though he
was hung up by the chin, entering and bowing very courteously.
“Minchin—Dominick Minchin. Hearing from this shock-headed retainer that
you were a stranger, and having experienced on more occasions than one,
especially during piscatorial excursions, the thrice-accursed loneliness
of an inn, I beg, sir, that you will favor us by coming where glory
waits you and—a bit of dinner.”
This was uttered with a quaint cheeriness that bore everything before
it.
“Really, sir, I am quite impressed by your consideration, and accept
your invitation most gratefully. My name is Philip Redmond.” And he
handed the other his card.
“Redmond is not an American name, sir?”
“No, sir; my father was Irish.”
“Anything to the Redmonds of Ballymacreedy?”
“I am Redmond of Ballymacreedy.”
Mr. Minchin seized him warmly by both hands and shook them repeatedly.
“By Jupiter, sir! this is positively glorious—sublime, sir! I knew your
father well; and when he thought fit to part with his property—”
“His property parted from _him_, Mr. Minchin. It is gone, and I am now
here to try and repurchase it at any cost. However, we’ll talk of that
by and by. I _feel_ that dinner is not very far off, and that you are
only half as anxious about it as I am.”
Mr. O’Hara, Mr. Minchin’s companion, was a tall, handsome, florid-faced
man of about five-and-thirty, with a profusion of sandy hair which stood
out from his head like quills upon the fretful porcupine, and a smile
like sunlight. In five minutes Redmond was as much at home with the two
anglers as if he had known them all his life, and had planned two
excursions with them.
“I’m afraid you’ll have some trouble about getting back this property,”
observed O’Hara. “It’s now in the possession of a man who doesn’t want
money, and who would call you out if you proposed to purchase it.”
“Every man has his price, has he not, Mr. O’Hara?” asked Redmond.
“True; but there are exceptional circumstances connected with this case
which hedge it round with an impenetrable _chevaux de frise_.”
“Of what nature?”
“Family pride, which will never consent to confiscate the old acres.”
“But the lands of Kilnagadd and Derralossory belonged to our family.”
“That may be, Mr. Redmond, but they were part and parcel of other
territory before the Redmonds came north of Vinegar Hill. I know all
about them, as I rented a fishing lodge from one of the tenants, and,
being anxious to purchase it, inquired into the title.”
“I made my dying father a solemn promise that I would get back the old
place. Money is no object, Mr. O’Hara. My father operated both in real
estate and in gold, and died wealthy, so that a few thousands will not
balk me.”
“You can try it,” was the rejoinder, accompanied by a shake of the head.
It was late when they separated, Minchin warbling “The young May moon,”
and insisting upon shaking hands with the “young boss,” as he designated
him, over and over again.
The summer’s morning was bright and balmy, and Redmond, after a yeoman’s
breakfast—consisting of trout fried with bacon, fresh eggs, and tea in
which the cream was pre-eminent—started out into the glorious sunlight
which was irradiating hill and dale, mountain and valley. The
forget-me-nots told their tale to the crystal pools, the graceful ferns
languidly embraced the lichen-covered stones, an occasional cur basking
in the heat and glow opened a lazy eye as Phil passed along the road,
and compromised a bark with a prolonged yawn. The hawthorns threw their
shadows across the path, and the “blossoming furze unprofitably gay”
sent forth that fresh, quaint, and delicious perfume that tells us with
speechless eloquence that we are out in the bright green country and
away from the heat and turmoil and loathsomeness of the over-crowded
human hive. Having promised to join his newly-found friends at Lough
Dan, Phil took the steep and romantic road that leads to the lake direct
from the village of Roundwood. Far away to the left in the summer haze
lay the picturesque village of Annamoe, and farther still the sweet, sad
valley of Glendalough, guarded by the giant Lug na Culliagh, while the
deep-tinted groves of Castle Kevin lent a delicious contrast to the
purple heights of the heather-covered Derrybawn; on his right the grim
gray crags of Luggelaw, and, as he gained the crest of the hill, the
blue waters of Lough Dan lay mirrored beneath him, reflecting the giant
shadows of Carrig-na-Leena. The exquisite loveliness of the scene fell
upon the young American like a dream or a perfume. It was refreshing,
yet almost intoxicating. He thought of the color glories of the Hudson
in the fall, of the blood-reds and orange-yellows and wine hues of the
autumn foliage, and they seared his mental vision when he came to
contemplate the soft, cloudy green, the odor-laden atmosphere, pure yet
filmy as a bridal veil, and the delicious completeness of the _coup
d’œil_, so satisfying, so soothing, and so enravishing. Somehow or other
he associated all this perfection with the fair young girl whose pale
face and mantling blush still haunted his imagination like a sweet
strain of music. These scenes were a suitable setting for her beauty.
She would comprehend them, she would commune with nature in this wild,
secluded spot, so lonely and yet so lovely. As his ideas glided in this
rosy channel, his revery was suddenly disturbed by the sound of wheels,
and close upon him came a basket-phaeton attached to a very diminutive
pony. His heart gave one violent bound—the object of his immediate and
gushing thoughts was the occupant of the vehicle. Would she pass without
noticing him? There had been no introduction. He could expect no
recognition, and yet—
Chance fills up many a gap in life, solves many riddles, and hastens
many _dénoûments_.
The pony, evidently a wilful, over-petted, hand-fed little brute, took
it into its stubborn head that a rest at this particular spot in the
road would admirably suit his inclinations; and as he feared no whip,
and, save a gentle chuck upon the reins and a solemn admonishment from
his fair mistress, his whim could be indulged in with comparative
impunity, he proceeded forthwith to carry his idea into execution, and
stopped with a jerk right opposite where Philip Redmond stood.
“Do go on, Doaty!” exclaimed Miss O’Byrne, shaking the reins. “Do go on,
there’s a pet. You shall have a lump of sugar when we get to stable.”
Doaty shook his head and stolidly gazed at the lake beneath him.
“Permit me to try and persuade him,” said Phil, stepping forward and
lifting his hat, which, by the way, doubled up in his hand, clumsily
concealing his face and utterly destroying his bow.
“Oh! thanks; I seem destined to give you trouble, sir.”
This was a delicate recognition.
“I have to thank you for making me the most popular man in Roundwood,”
retorted Redmond. “I feel like the lord lieutenant. I held quite a
_levée_ this morning.”
“And your courtiers, instead of looking for place, were seeking for
pence.”
“A distinction without much difference.”
“Except in the viceroy,” she laughed.
Doaty was as good as gold—at least so thought one of the party—and
manifested no intention of budging an inch.
“What a tiresome pony!” exclaimed Miss O’Byrne. “I shall have to beat
him.”
“Let me try and get him along.” And Phil, taking hold of the shaggy
mane, lugged the unwilling Doaty along in the direction of the lake.
“This is really too bad, sir,” remonstrated Miss O’Byrne. “I cannot tax
you in this way.”
“It is no tax, I assure you. I have nothing on earth to do but to revel
in the especial sunshine of this moment.”
This was said with ever so slight an emphasis; nevertheless it bore a
scarlet blossom in the rich blush which came whispering all over the
young girl’s charming pallor.
“You—you are a stranger here?”
“I am, and yet I ought not to be.”
“This savors of a riddle.”
“Very easily solved. My fore-fathers hunted these hills and fished that
lake. My father was reckless, extravagant, and new men came into
possession of the old acres. My father emigrated, and made a great deal
of money in New York, and—”
“I have been in New York,” interposed the young lady.
Here was a bridge for thought-travel. Here was a market for the disposal
of mutual mental wares.
“Did you like it?” he asked.
“Like it!” she exclaimed enthusiastically. “Who could dislike it? It is
the most charming city, perhaps excepting Paris, that I have ever lived
in. And how are Fifth Avenue and Broadway, and the ash-boxes?” she added
with a ringing laugh.
Doaty made another stop, and no earthly inducement would stir him until
he so willed it himself. His fair mistress relinquished the idea and the
reins, and, stepping from the vehicle, clambered, with the assistance of
Redmond, to a moss-grown bank, from which she pointed out some objects
of special interest in the scenery.
“That is Billy Doyle’s cottage at Shinnagh, down far in the valley by
the edge of the lake. See the amber thatch glowing in the sunlight, and
the red flag. That flag shows that poor Mr. Fenler is on the lake
fishing.”
“Who is poor Mr. Fenler?” asked Phil.
“He is a man who was a great merchant in Dublin, but who lost all his
property, and his wife and all his children. He saved as much from the
wreck as enabled him to purchase one-half of that cottage—the slated
half—and to support himself. He came here seven years ago, having made a
vow _never_ to leave the valley again.”
“And has he kept it?”
“Religiously. He goes nowhere, and spends his whole time in fishing. Do
you see that golden strand at the head of the lake?”
“Yes.”
“Well, there is a legend about that which you should hear. Any old crone
in the valley will do it ample justice.”
“I should prefer to hear it from a fairy on the hill,” said Redmond
gallantly.
“_Pas des compliments_, although yours was nearly French.”
“You beat me at my own weapons,” laughed Redmond. “But whose palatial
residence is that right over in the cleft between those two hills?”
The fire lighted up in the young girl’s eye, the delicate nostril
expanded, the rich, ripe lips quivered, as she proudly replied: “That is
my home.”
_Her_ home—the nest in which she had been nurtured. What a precious
flower in that gloomy valley! What a world of love and joy and beauty in
that lone and sequestered spot!
“I envy you,” murmured Phil. “The tranquil loveliness of your home is—”
he was going to send the words from his heart to his lips, but luckily
they encountered Prudence upon the road, and altered themselves to suit
that cold, passionless, interfering busybody—“is—just as it ought to be.
_You_ have made no vow to leave this valley?” he added.
“No, but I have often thought it.”
“Such a determination would be a calamity, Miss O’Byrne.”
“How do you know my name?” she quickly demanded.
“I asked the waiter after you had left.”
“Now for an exchange,” she laughed. “Let us trade. What is _your_ name?”
“Philip Redmond, son of Redmond of Ballymacreedy.”
“Why, that is Ballymacreedy,” exclaimed the young girl, pointing to a
fir-covered mountain, upon the side of which, as though perched on a
shelf, stood a gaunt, uncompromising-looking, square-built mansion, all
roof and windows.
Phil Redmond’s feelings, as he gazed on the home which he had never
known save by hearsay, were of a very varied and conflicting nature. He
had pictured it a feudal stronghold towering over an extensive lake such
as America boasts of—a diminutive ocean—a battlemented castle, with keep
and moat and drawbridge, ivy-grown in the interests of the picturesque,
and plate-glassed in the interests of modern sunlight.
“Good heaven!” he exclaimed involuntarily, “how unlike what I conceived
it to be. What a cruel disappointment!”
So rudely were his ideas shattered, and so bitterly the pride of
baronial halls mortified, that the poor fellow’s heart felt quite
crushed. Whether Miss O’Byrne saw this or whether Doaty saw it is not
the question here; but _certes_, that admirable little brute gave a loud
neigh as a trumpet-call to Redmond’s scattered senses, and evinced for
the first moment during the preceding half-hour a desire to proceed upon
his homeward journey.
“Papa does not visit, Mr. Redmond,” said Miss O’Byrne as she grasped the
reins upon resuming her seat in the basket upon wheels, “but I shall ask
him to call upon you, when I may hope for something like a formal
introduction. How half an hour flies upon the wings of _sans
cérémonie_!” And with a delicious inclination of the head, half-saucy,
half-dignified, and wholly _piquante_, she disappeared at a turn of the
road leading into the valley.
“Heigh-ho!” sighed Philip Redmond of Ballymacreedy.
While all this—shall we say nonsense?—was going on upon the hill, Mr.
Minchin and his _fidus Achates_, O’Hara, were busily occupied upon the
lake; and although not a single rise greeted their longing vision, like
true sportsmen they lived in hope.
“That’s a very good style of man,” observed O’Hara.
“Redmond?”
“Yes.”
“The son of an Irish king, sir. By Jupiter! a fine fellow. A noble
fellow!” exclaimed Minchin, whacking the lake with his line in emphasis.
“He’ll go back to New York without as much of his father’s property as
would sod a lark.”
“You are still of opinion that the O’Byrne will not sell?”
“He’d burn the land first,” was the sententious rejoinder.
“Well, sir, the next best thing that Redmond can do is to purchase
Glenasluagh. It adjoins Ballymacreedy, and he will enjoy the right of
fishing the Clohogue—an enjoyment fit for the gods. Yes, by George! fit
for the gods.”
“I never thought of that. Are you sure it’s for sale?”
“A scoundrelly attorney, one of those pitiful miscreants with whom it is
my bane to be officially associated, knowing that I loved the gentle
sport, endeavored to curry favor with me by mentioning this. I listened
to the scoundrel and made inquiries elsewhere—in fact, I own I felt my
way towards the Clohogue myself, but the figure was too high, sir.”
“We must put Redmond on to it at once.”
“There’s our man crossing the bridge. George! how I envy him his
sensations upon beholding this cherished spot, 'where all save the
spirit of man is divine.’” And Minchin glowed again in the summer light.
Redmond instinctively paused upon the quaint old lichen-covered bridge,
in the worn interstices of which dainty little ferns of emerald green
toyed with the pale blue loveliness of the forget-me-not, and gazed
across the sheening waters of the tranquil lake. All was sleeping in
sunlight, even the deep, clear shadows of the purple-covered mountains,
while the melodious hum of glowing insect-life lent its peculiar charm
to the peaceful surroundings.
The boat, by direction of Mr. Minchin, was turned for the bridge, and a
few lazy strokes from the oar of the ragged urchin who acted as waterman
brought it bump against a projecting bowlder which served as a
landing-place.
“The top of the morning to you, Mr. Redmond!” cried Minchin. “You are
just in the nick of time. Nature abhors a vacuum, and we were about to
pass the rosy. This, sir, is a very dry country.” And the cheerful old
biped laughed until the crags of Shinnagh re-echoed his jovial hilarity.
At this moment a cart attached to a donkey appeared upon the bridge, and
two formidable-looking hampers jostled each other for supremacy.
“Jump in, Mr. Redmond. We shall take our pick on that lovely little neck
of land just under the stronghold of the O’Byrnes yonder.”
“Have you room for two friends of mine?” asked Phil.
“Any friend of yours is my friend, sir,” exclaimed Minchin with the
pompous mannerism of the old school.
“Then lend a hand,” to the boat-boy, “to get these hampers on board.”
“What does all this mean?” asked Minchin as the baskets were safely
stowed away.
“A liberty I have taken,” said Philip. “I want you and Mr. O’Hara to
lunch with me to-day, as I dined with you yesterday.”
“O’Hara,” exclaimed Minchin, “what _shall_ we do with this dog? Pitch
him into the lake, hampers and all?”
“I should say not,” laughed the other.
“'My foot is on my native heath,’” cried Redmond; and, taking an oar, a
pull of twenty minutes keel-grated them upon a silvery strand beneath
the shady foliage of a gigantic horse-chestnut tree.
“A lobster-salad, George!” cried Minchin, unloading the basket. “A
chicken-pie, Jupiter! A magmain of salmon! Why, hang it, man! this never
was raised at the Derralossory Arms.”
“How was it done?” asked O’Hara.
“I sent a man into Dublin for it.”
“Ah!” with a long-drawn breath of admiration. “You Americans do things
in the right way.”
“By the nine gods! champagne,” ejaculated Minchin as he extracted the
golden-necked bottles from their wicker cradles. “Heidsieck extra dry. I
am extra dry too. _Per Bacco_, Redmond! you _are_ the son of an Irish
king.”
Where is the mortal who does not enjoy a picnic?—that picnic where the
food is laid upon the grass, and with the green leaves or the sky for a
canopy; where fingers do service for forks, and the wild flowers for
napkins; where the food is ambrosia and the drink nectar. _Ay de mí_, we
have changed all that, and now we must have silver and cutlery and
napery, and servants to wait upon us, and hot dishes _ad nauseam_. We
must don our best and encase our sweltering hands in delicate-hued
gloves, and icy etiquette now reigns where nature’s happy freedom
heretofore presided.
They were busily engaged with the chicken-bones, and Redmond, as host,
was uncorking the second bottle of champagne, when Minchin exclaimed:
“Jupiter Olympus! here’s the O’Byrne and his daughter.”
Now, to be caught, under ordinary circumstances, in a stooping posture,
wrestling with an infrangible wire, almost black in the face, and with
the drumstick of a chicken stuck saltier-wise in your mouth, your hat
anywhere, and your hair in the wildest and most elfin disorder, is
embarrassing enough in all conscience; but, in the condition of feeling
under which our romantic hero labored, to be thus detected was simply
horrible. As Redmond beheld the tall and stately form of a man of about
fifty, with a pair of fierce black eyes beneath still fiercer brows,
advancing towards him, and by his side, gliding with that graceful
undulation which is almost exclusively confined to the women of Spain,
the young girl for whom the portals of his heart had been cast wide
open, his desire to sink beneath the daisies was about the only
sensation left to him.
“We have invaded the land of the O’Byrnes,” said Minchin, rising and
bowing to the _châtelaine_.
“You seem tolerably well armed,” observed the O’Byrne, casting a comical
glance at the champagne bottles.
“Permit me the honor of crossing swords,” cried Minchin.
At this moment Miss O’Byrne interposed by exclaiming: “That gentleman is
Mr. Redmond of Ballymacreedy.”
The O’Byrne took a short, sharp survey of Philip from beneath his shaggy
brows, and, advancing with outstretched hand:
“Mr. Redmond, I am glad to meet one of the old stock. You resemble your
father very strongly.”
“You knew my father, sir?” asked Redmond eagerly.
“Yes.” The monosyllable spoke for itself. It shut down on the subject
like an iron door.
“The old stock are thinning out, like my brown hairs,” laughed Minchin.
“_Apparent rari nantes in gurgite vasto_,” was the rejoinder.
“_Per Bacco!_ you must taste the Falernian. I am Dominick—”
“Minchin,” interposed the O’Byrne, “the best angler in Wicklow. We
disciples of the rod and reel scarcely need a formal introduction.”
Somehow or other, while the O’Byrne and Dominick Minchin were bandying
quaint and courtly compliments, Philip managed to pull himself together
and to engage in conversation with the daughter of the house.
“You perceive, Mr. Redmond, how fate is against our being introduced—so
dead against as to compel me to make you and my father acquainted as if
you and I were old friends.”
“I _do_ feel as if I had known you for ever so long, and that a void—”
“Do look at the trout jumping. What perfect circles they make in the
still water!”
She had interrupted with a woman’s tact. Redmond was unversed in the
subtle distinctions which form the rungs of the ladder of love. Most of
the girls whom he met in society were as so many agreeable
nothings—exquisitely-attired statuettes, whose ideas were bounded by
silk, satin, feathers, and lace. With them he had nothing in common save
the weather and ice-cream; and being imbued with a feeling of aversive
contempt for the whole sex, the revelation of light and love which now
burst upon him revolutionized his whole being and begat an enthusiasm
that forgot impossibilities. A child of nature sounds very well in
poesy, but the article attired in broadcloth is very rapidly put down as
a bore, if not a nuisance.
“I drink with you on one condition,” said the O’Byrne to Minchin, who
presented a bottle at his head.
“Condition me no conditions, chieftain!”
“I shall; and the condition is this: that you, with Mr. Redmond and Mr.
O’Hara”—to whom he had been introduced by Minchin—“will help me to
punish a cooper of claret after a seven o’clock dinner.” O’Hara excused
himself on the plea of being compelled to reach Dublin by the night mail
from Rathdrum. Minchin called a number of the Olympian deities to
witness that so superb an offer should not be lightly considered, and
Redmond thought of his dress and hesitated to say yes, when his whole
soul was in that solitary word.
“I want to have a gossip about New York, and surely you will not refuse
me that boon?” urged Miss O’Byrne, and this decided the question.
“Are you of the true faith, Mr. Redmond?” she asked, as some hours
later, in acting as _cicerone_ through the old castle, she took him to
the private chapel.
“I should be a recreant Redmond if I were not,” was his proud reply.
Coolgreny, the stronghold of the Clan O’Byrne, was as picturesque as a
round tower, an ivied keep, a battlemented outer wall, a dry moat, a
veritable carpet of bright flowers, solemn old yew-trees whose branches
had supplied many a sturdy bow wherewithal to resist the incursions of
the O’Tooles, and a rookery, could make it. As he crossed the drawbridge
and gazed at the oaken door with its rusty iron rivets, at the massive
archway telling an imperishable tale, at the inner quadrangle, its gray
stone lighted up by blood-red geraniums and deeply, darkly, desperately
blue forget-me-nots, and from thence to the high-bred-looking girl by
his side, Philip Redmond felt the old blood in his veins as the old, old
story began to whisper itself to his heart.
They passed into the old banqueting-hall, rich in oaken tracery and
wainscoted up to the ebon-colored ceiling. Portraits of doughty warriors
in the grim panoply of battle-axe and shield, suits of Milan steel, and
buff jerkins of the later periods adorned the walls—formidable O’Brinns
who stood in many a gap, and fought the rocky defiles of Auchavana inch
by inch; who displayed their prowess on many a tented field; who
followed the fortunes of the luckless house of Stuart even after the
unhappy disaster at the Boyne; and who, nobly fighting, fell against the
hated usurpation of the Orange William. Here, too, were soft,
silken-bearded representatives of the house who attached themselves to
the Irish Brigade and covered themselves with glory at Lannes and
Fontenoy.
“Now for the ladies, monsieur!” exclaimed Miss O’Byrne. “I see that you
are lost in admiration of my male ancestors. Prepare now to be enchanted
by the beauty of their wives and daughters.”
“I need no preparation,” said Phil with a low bow. “I see all their
perfections concentrated in their charming descendant.”
“Admirably done!” cried the young lady, with heightened color; “but
'bide a wee.’ Look at that little dame. There is fire for you. She was
Countess of Ovoca in her own right—a Geraldine. She defended this castle
against two attacks of Cromwell’s crop-eared curs, and when it was
intimated to her that the defence jeopardized her husband’s life, she
_naïvely_ replied: 'I could replace my husband, but I could not replace
Coolgreny.’ 'Wasn’t that complimentary to that ill-looking fellow
opposite leaning upon his sword? I _do_ believe that he steps out of
that frame occasionally for the purpose of upbraiding her, poor dear!”
Redmond laughed heartily as he replied that he thought the cavalier was
likely to get the worst of it.
“Here is a Lely—my great, great, great, ever-so-great grandmamma. Isn’t
she lovely? Look at her cool blue pastoral drapery, her bright brown
hair, her matchless eye, and her ivory complexion.”
“I am looking at her,” said Redmond, gazing earnestly at Miss O’Byrne,
“and she is lovely.”
It was as if the portrait had been painted for herself.
“Mr. Redmond, you are incorrigible. I absolutely refuse to act as
_cicerone_. Tyrconnel was madly in love with her.”
“Of course he was; and if he wasn’t he ought to have been,” laughed
Philip. “Pray who is that sparkling brunette, with the color glowing
beneath her swarthy skin, and with the head and hair of Cleopatra?”
“That is Mistress Lettice O’Byrne, who received King James in this very
hall, as, blood-stained and travel-sore, he honored our poor house by
resting here after the disaster of the Boyne. He heard Mass in our
little chapel before he started at daybreak.”
They wandered from portrait to portrait, she chatting gaily,
brilliantly, until they came directly opposite that of a very young man
attired in a gorgeous hussar uniform.
“This is a picture of today,” said Redmond. “Who is he?”
A bright diamond-drop welled into her eyes as she replied:
“It is my only brother. He took service with our kinsman, Field-Marshal
Nugent, in Austria, and fell at Magenta. God be merciful to him!”
“Amen!” And the response was a prayer, so fervently and reverentially
was it uttered.
“Let us go to the chapel and say an _Ave Maria_ for the repose of his
soul.” And, leading through a long, dark passage, and thrusting aside a
scarlet velvet curtain which hung over the entrance, she ushered Redmond
into the church. Pure Gothic, the oaken traceries of its pulpit and
chancel rails were worthy of the hand of Verbruggen, while the altar, of
white marble, was decorated with constellations of the rarest hot-house
flowers and plants.
As they emerged from the chapel the hideous clamor of a gong announced
that dinner would be served in a quarter of an hour, and Redmond was
ushered by his host to an apartment to prepare as best he might for the
all-important ceremony. For after all “the dine” is a very serious piece
of business, and it is only such foolish young fellows as Redmond—who
spoiled his appetite at luncheon—or such delicately-nurtured young
ladies as Miss Eileen O’Byrne, who can afford to turn up their noses at
the mention of the word, and wish with a sigh that the noble institution
yclept eating had never been invented.
When Redmond descended to the drawing-room he was formally presented to
the Rev. Father O’Doherty, the parish priest “of as wild a district as
lies between this and New York,” gaily added his reverence. “I am proud
to meet you, sir; and let me tell you that the Redmonds of Ballymacreedy
have left a name behind them respected, loved, and honored. Have you
come to stop with us?”
“Not—that is, I’m—I’m so enchanted with all that I have seen of Ireland,
and with _all_ whom I have met here”—he sought the eye of his hostess
(it should be mentioned that her mother had died in giving birth to
Eileen)—“that if I do not return to it, it will not be my own fault.”
This was doing pretty well—much better than he could have hoped. It was
very _prononcé_, but Phil liked to be understood. He was straight in
everything, and was perfectly prepared to step into the O’Byrne’s
library and explain himself right away. But he was not to get the
chance. Father O’Doherty took the _châtelaine_ into dinner and presided
at the foot of the table. The dinner was not _à la Russe_, and, although
served with extreme elegance, the guests were allowed the privilege of
seeing what they were about to partake of, and to make a judicious
selection according to palate. The wine was, as Minchin subsequently
remarked, “of the rarest and choicest vintage.” To hear _her_ speak, to
listen to the music of her laugh, to gaze upon her when her looks were
turned in another direction, was rapture to poor Philip, who drank his
wine, eating nothing, being wholly and solely absorbed in the radiance
of her presence. It was rack and torture to him when she arose to leave
the room, and, as he opened the door to permit her egress, the words,
“Do not remain too long over your wine,” rang into his senses like a
peal of sweet bells.
“Push the claret, Mr. Redmond,” exclaimed his host; “you may get richer
but you won’t get softer wine across the Atlantic.”
“_Per Bacco!_ this is bottled velvet,” said Minchin, smacking his
lips—“the odor of the violet, and the gentle tartness of the raspberry.
By the nine gods! a bottle of this makes a man look for his wings to
fly, sir—to fly like a bird.”
After some considerable time, during which Minchin and the O’Byrne had
indulged in a very serious potation of the Château Lafitte, “Are you
here on a pleasure trip, Mr. Redmond?” asked Father O’Doherty.
“Well, my good fortune has made it one of pleasure, but I came
originally on business. I came to endeavor to rescue some of my poor
father’s property,” replied downright Phil.
“What do you mean by _rescue_, Mr. Redmond?” asked the O’Byrne, flushing
darkly red.
“I mean, to purchase it from the man who now holds it.”
“Oh!” And his host tossed off a bumper of the wine. “Do you refer to
Ballymacreedy?”
“I do, and to the lands of Kilnagadd and Derralossory.”
The beetling brows of the Irish chieftain met in a black scowl.
“And suppose this man who holds these lands were unwilling to sell?”
“Oh! every man has his price,” said the unconscious Philip.
The O’Byrne rose, and, stretching himself to his full height, haughtily
exclaimed:
“When I sell one rood of Ballymacreedy, Kilnagadd, and Derralossory, may
I be shattered into fragments like that wine-glass,” casting, as he
spoke, the crystal goblet upon the oaken floor, where it shivered into
ten thousand pieces.
Had a thunderbolt fallen upon the _épergne_, and, splitting roof and
ceiling, descended into their midst, the luckless hero of this narrative
could scarcely have been less scared and astonished. The admonitory
winkings of Minchin, the ankle-rubs of the good priest, had been lost
upon him. He had rushed upon his fate and had impaled himself. Fool that
he was, never to have conjectured that the haughty possessor of the land
of his ancestors was the fiery, fierce old chieftain who now sat
scowling at the ceiling and quaffing goblet after goblet of the rich red
wine! Everything pointed to the fact—the conversation of the previous
evening, the exclamation of Eileen upon the hill overlooking Lough Dan,
the references of Father O’Doherty. He was a senseless idiot, and had
planted the thorn of offence where he would have sown the bright seed of
friendship. Could he apologize? How? Could he explain? He must.
“The fact is—” he commenced, when his host pulled him up:
“A word of advice to you, Mr. Redmond. When you enter a man’s house do
not turn appraiser and play the amateur auctioneer.”
“But-” burst in Phil.
“Pardon me. If you consider that because you have scraped a few
greenbacks together—Heaven knows how; _I_ don’t want to inquire—that you
can come over here to dictate insulting terms to a man with reference to
his own goods and chattels, upon his own hearth, let me tell you, sir,
that—”
“Hear _me_,” exclaimed Father O’Doherty. “I am certain that our young
friend had no intention of giving annoyance when he made those
observations.”
“On the honor of a man,” roared Redmond, who was in a white heat of
mortification, “I meant no offence, and furthermore—”
“Let us drop the subject, sir, and go to the drawing-room for coffee,”
said the O’Byrne, rising.
“But I will _not_ drop the subject until I explain myself.”
“Mr. Redmond, do not press my endurance in my own house.” And the
haughty host motioned to the door.
“Not a word,” whispered Father O’Doherty. “You can make it all right by
and by, and if _you_ fail _I_ will succeed.”
Still, Philip was not satisfied. He was the outraged party. He demanded
redress for a cruel wrong. Was he to remain in the pillory and be pelted
with the mistrust and dislike of the man whom of all others he was most
desirous of conciliating. What would _she_ think of him when her father
came to tell her his version of the affair? Would _he_ not suffer and
stand convicted, however innocent he might be? It was maddening, and
Redmond, following his host, brusquely demanded a few minutes’
conversation.
“'Forbid it, Heaven, the hermit cried!’” exclaimed Minchin, playfully
seizing our hero by the shoulders and twisting him teetotum-fashion,
while the priest engaged the attention of the O’Byrne in another
direction.
“Are you mad, Redmond?” said Minchin in a low tone. “On this subject he
has a craze. Why, in the name of Jupiter Olympus, did you introduce it?”
“Am I to lie under the imputation of being a peddler, an auctioneer, a
blackguard?” asked the other excitedly.
“The thing will be as dead as Queen Anne in five minutes, if you will
only let it cross the Styx.”
“But I did not know that Mr. O’Byrne was the present proprietor of
Ballymacreedy.”
“Then why didn’t you say so?”
“I would not be listened to.”
“It’s easily explained.”
When Redmond entered the drawing-room the host was speaking to his
daughter, and that it was about him he had little doubt from the
expression of surprise, pain, and anger which flitted across her face.
Determined not to be baffled in his purpose this time, he strode across
the apartment, and, confronting the O’Byrne, said:
“If you will kindly permit me a word of explanation—”
“_Do_ take a cup of coffee, Mr. Redmond,” interrupted Miss O’Byrne;
“and—and you will excuse me if I—I wish you good-night.” And courtesying
very low, she turned from him and swept out of the room.
A choking sensation seized our hero. A something in his throat—anger,
mortification, bitter mortification—clutched him and held him fast.
“I’ll be hanged if I’ll stop here any longer!” he said; and so earnest
was his rage that, without waiting to bid his host farewell or to hint
his intention to Minchin, he strode out into the quadrangle, through the
arched entrance, across the drawbridge, and onwards he knew not in what
direction, reckless, hopeless, and hatless.
Why had he met her? His path had been calm and peace. Why had she
treated him in this way? What had he done to _her_? _He_ knew how her
father would vamp up his version of the story. Was ever innocent man so
deeply wronged? He would leave Ireland next day, and place the broad
Atlantic between him and this—ay, this lovely, bewitching girl. Why was
she so captivating? Where did the charm lie?
Thoughts all-conflicting, all-contradictory surged through his brain as
he marched onward. The summer dew failed to soothe his fevered mind; the
soft night-wind sighing across the Shaughnamore mountain did not cool
his burning brow. The gray dawn of glorious day still found him plodding
onwards, and the sun was high above the horizon when he entered the
picturesque little village of Enniskerry. He had left Coolgreny fifteen
Irish miles behind him across the mountains.
When he had succeeded in arousing the inmates of the Powerscourt Arms,
he demanded writing materials and a messenger.
“Is it pin an’ ink at this time o’ day, sir?” demanded the sleepy
handmaiden.
“Yes; here’s half a crown for you. Open your eyes and hurry up.”
He wrote the following note to the O’Byrne, and despatched it by a
ragged gossoon, who started on his errand, up the hill that leads by the
Dargle, like a mountain deer. He also forwarded an order for his luggage
to the landlord of the Derralossory Arms.
SIR: As you would permit me no explanation last night, I _insist_
upon making it now. I did not know that you were the possessor of
the lands of my forefathers until you yourself announced it. In
thanking you for your hospitality I cannot refrain from saying that
I wish I had never enjoyed it, as it has been a source of intense
pleasure and likewise of bitter pain.
I am, sir,
Your obedient servant,
PHILIP REDMOND.
The messenger returned in a few hours with his luggage.
“Did you deliver my letter at Coolgreny?”
“I gev it to wan av the boys, sir.”
“Did you see any of the—family?”
“None o’ them, barrin’ Miss Eileen’s pony that does be dhruv be her in a
sthraw shay, yer honner.”
Happy pony! thought Redmond, as he gazed into the past and beheld Doaty
coming to a standstill despite the musical remonstrances of his
mistress.
“They axed me if your honner’s name was Ridmond, an’ I sed I didn’t
know; an’ I was axed if ye cum wudout a hat, an’ I sed yis. 'That’s
him,’ sez Luke Byrne, the boy. 'A low-sized man,’ sez he. 'No,’ sez I,
'he’s a cupple o’ yards high anyhow’; an’ Luke tould me they wor
draggin’ the lake beyant at Shinnagh for ye, an’ that Miss Eileen was
roarin’ an’ bawlin’ the whole mornin’.”
A thrill went through every fibre in Redmond’s body as this last
announcement fell upon his ear; and although the idea was coarsely
expressed, that the tender girl might be sorrowing for him caused an
unutterable sensation of joy. She could not believe him capable of
insulting _her_ father beneath the same roof which shut the stars from
her; and yet—pshaw! he would shake the whole thing off as a disagreeable
yet delightful dream.
His immediate resolve was to proceed to Dublin, and from thence to
Queenstown and back to his native shores; but second thoughts, always so
sober, so full of judicious counsel, whispered that the long, lonely
days and nights upon the Atlantic would but serve to increase his fever,
and that his best chance lay in the distracting influence of European
travel. Seven o’clock that evening found him on board the mail steamer
for Holyhead; and as he gazed at the soft outlines of the Wicklow hills
receding from his wistful glance, and thought of _her_ in that secluded,
peaceful valley, he would willingly have parted with a moiety of his
existence to be once again in the sunlight of her presence.
* * * * *
While our hero was on the road to Enniskerry Father O’Doherty found an
opportunity for comparing notes with Minchin, and, fully convinced of
the truthfulness of the young American’s statement, proceeded at once to
disabuse the diseased mind of the O’Byrne. This he ultimately succeeded
in doing, but not without a deal of powerful and full-flavored argument.
“I do believe, Father, I took too much wine. Where is Mr. Redmond, until
I make the _amende honorable_?”
“Strolling about the grounds, I believe.”
“Let us go in search of him.”
“You can go, O’Byrne; I want to have a chat with my fair young child,”
said the clergyman, who had witnessed Eileen’s stately courtesy and
exit.
Minchin and O’Byrne strolled out into the summer night, making sure of
finding Redmond on the terrace overlooking the moat.
“We have bail for his appearance,” said Minchin, “as his hat is
decorating the antlers of a lordly stag in the entrance hall.”
The two gentlemen smoked their cigars as they leisurely went in quest of
the missing one, and from terrace they proceeded to garden, from garden
to pleasaunce, and from pleasaunce to gate-house, but no trace of him
could be found. “He is in the stables,” suggested the O’Byrne; and they
returned to the enormous quadrangle in which the houses were quartered,
but none of the helpers had seen him, and the stables were all locked
for the night.
“He is a romantic, hot-headed young dog, and is just taking a cooler. He
will turn up by and by, I warrant me; or mayhap he has hied him to my
lady’s bower.” And Minchin laughed at the conceit.
“Where is Redmond?” asked Father O’Doherty, as they regained the
drawing-room.
“We were going to ask you,” said the O’Byrne. “Where is Eileen?”
“The poor child has a bad headache and has gone to lie down.”
“Come along, Mr. Minchin, and we’ll take our _cruiskeen lawn_. In the
meantime I shall send some of the men to scour the wood in pursuit of
this invisible guest. I needn’t ask you to join us, father?”
“No, sir; a little wine at dinner is my _quantum_.”
As the night rolled over considerable uneasiness was felt about Philip’s
non-appearance; but Minchin’s theory, that he had, in his agitation,
returned to the Derralossory Arms _minus_ his hat, was gladly accepted,
and the O’Byrne insisted upon driving with Minchin into Roundwood in
order to set matters right.
It is scarcely necessary to say that the worthy proprietor of the
hostelry had nothing of Redmond’s but a small nickel-mounted valise,
which he described as set in solid silver.
This increased the anxiety, and as a portion of the lands of Coolgreny
abutted upon the lake in sheer precipices of two and three hundred feet,
fears began to be entertained that poor Philip in his ignorance of the
country might have taken this unfortunate path. There was nothing for it
but to await the advent of daylight, and then to scour the country, and,
if necessary, to drag the lake at this particular place.
The morning brought no Redmond, and as traces of recent footsteps were
very distinct in the neighborhood of the precipice, and the heather
rudely torn away at the edge of the cliff, as though by a despairing
clutch, the idea that he had fallen into the lake grew into a certainty.
A grapnel was got ready, and the melancholy process of dragging rapidly
commenced.
The relief which Redmond’s letter brought produced immediate reaction.
Father O’Doherty at once started with his car to Enniskerry, with a very
courteous note from the O’Byrne and a message from Eileen, but arrived
about an hour after our hero had quitted the village. Later on, when the
good priest had returned with this intelligence, the O’Byrne telegraphed
to the Shelborne Hotel, Dublin, on chance, writing also to that address.
Philip was on board the steamer when the telegram arrived, and in London
when the missive reached Ireland’s capital. Had he received either, he
would have flown back to Coolgreny; but it was not to be.
* * * * *
It was Sunday forenoon, and a great human wave surged out of the
Madeleine Church, Paris. Instinctively one pauses beneath that noble
portico and gazes across the Place de la Concorde, taking in the
glittering Boulevard and the whole brilliancy of the _coup d’œil_.
Philip Redmond had been amongst the worshippers, and was now on his way
to the Hôtel du Louvre, so different in every respect to the
white-washed, thatch-covered hostelry in the heart of the County
Wicklow, and at the door of which he was introduced to the reader. He
had indulged in a lazy tour, commencing with the quaint old cities of
Belgium, whence he proceeded to Cologne and up the Rhine to Mayence, and
after a wandering of two months found himself in the gay and fascinating
capital of the world. Philip’s wound had been healed; his heart ceased
to throb at the recollection of the “tender light of a day that was
dead”; and if the image of Eileen O’Byrne did come back to him, he felt
inclined to place himself in the pillory of his own thoughts and pelt
himself with ridicule. It was a delightful thing to be heart-whole. He
had played with fire and had passed through the red-hot furnace, badly
burnt, no doubt, but cured at once and for ever. He used to amuse
himself by imagining what the effect of his letter upon the haughty
chieftain might be, and would not _her_ vanity be ruffled by the utter
absence of the mention of her name? He had done his _devoir_ in stating
that the day was one of intense enjoyment; this _she_ could easily
translate by the aid of her own dictionary. Heigh-ho! it was a pity the
dream did not last a little longer, he thought, as he prepared to
descend the steps of the church upon that lovely August forenoon. As he
descended, his foot became entangled in the skirt of a young girl right
in front of him. He turned to apologize—his heart gave one fearful bound
and his brain reeled till he became dizzy. He felt himself grow pale and
cold, but, lifting his hat with a cold salutation, he passed down and
onwards. It was Eileen O’Byrne!
When he reached the hotel—and he felt as if treading on air—he repaired
to his apartment and flung himself into a chair in a whirl of
conflicting emotion. The old wound which he had imagined healed had
broken out afresh beneath the sad, reproachful glance of those lovely
gray Irish eyes. There was but one chance left, and that was to fly. To
be in the same city, country, hemisphere with her would be torture. He
felt as if some great sea should divide them, and then that the joyous
serenity of the last few weeks would be restored to him. He had very
little packing to do, as he had not unpacked, and he at once proceeded
to the _bureau_ to settle his bill. As he was passing along a corridor
in order to reach the _vestiaire_, he became almost rooted to the
ground. A turn in the passage brought him face to face with her whom he
was doing his uttermost to avoid. She was deadly pale, and she passed
him with a scarcely perceptible inclination of the head, cold, glacial,
haughty. There was a cry of anguish in Phil Redmond’s heart, and, acting
upon an unconquerable impulse, he turned after her and almost fiercely
demanded: “What _have_ I done to deserve this?”
The same bright rush of crimson which flashed across her face like a
rosy sunset when first he met her covered her now as she panted forth:
“_You_ seemed to wish it so.”
“_I!_” And Phil Redmond blurted out something with reference to
explanation and unfair treatment in his usual _brusque_ way.
* * * * *
It was chill October, and a huge log burned in the cavernous fire-place
in the banquet-hall at Coolgreny. The claret was upon the ebon-colored
oak table, and round it sat no less a party than that which was
assembled upon the memorable night when Phil Redmond so innocently
brought the wrath of his host upon his devoted head.
“To think,” said Minchin in a state of ecstatic glow, “that we should
meet here under such remarkable circumstances. Ye gods!”
“Yes,” said the O’Byrne, rising, “I wanted the same party exactly, and I
have been fortunate. You all heard me swear that I would never sell a
rood of Ballymacreedy, Kilnagadd, or Derralossory; but”—with a
smile—“that oath does not prevent my giving them away, and, please God,
when you, Father O’Doherty, unite my honest young friend Philip Redmond
to my only child, he shall be restored to the lands of his fathers
through his wife.”
THE BEGINNING OF THE POPE’S TEMPORAL PRINCIPALITY.
The Vicar of Jesus Christ is by virtue of his office, and by divine
right, of necessity in his own person a sovereign. He is exempt from all
subjection to any temporal power, and perfectly free in respect to his
own person and the full exercise of his spiritual supremacy, to which
kings are as much subject as other baptized persons, and nations as
individuals. The right of acquiring property and domain, in a manner
which does not violate any other human right, is inherent in this
personal sovereignty, and carries with it all the rights of eminent
domain, so that whatever is acquired in this way becomes inalienable
except by a voluntary cession. The possession of actual sovereign
dominion over a sufficient territory is evidently the logical and
natural complement of this personal sovereignty, yet is not acquired
except by some legal, human act, similar to that which subjects any
given domain in particular to any other given individual or corporation.
The possession of spiritual sovereignty united with the temporal dignity
and power of a civil monarch is, manifestly, the most dangerous and
liable to abuse of all the attributions which any individual ruler or
dynasty of supreme rulers can be supposed to have received as a stable
and permanent right. The danger is increased in proportion to the
magnitude and duration of the spiritual empire and the political
monarchy united with it. We are obliged, therefore, to believe that
Jesus Christ, as the Sovereign Lord of the world, when he founded such
an institution, provided efficaciously for the protection of Christian
society against this danger and liability to abuse. This he could not do
without exercising a special and supernatural providence over his
earthly vicariate, the Papacy. Yet, according to the analogy of all
other departments of the divine government, this special providence
ought to be reduced to a minimum and made as little miraculous as
possible, by a wise ordering of natural and secondary causes in
reference to the desired effect. In point of fact, we see, from the
history of the Papacy, that God has permitted it to exhibit as much of
the weakness and imperfection of all human things as was consistent with
the fulfilment of the end of its institution. His supernatural
overruling of the natural course of events has been limited to this
result. And the preservation of the Holy See from perversion by human
passions into a merely earthly power, an empire of this world, has been
accomplished in great part by the difficulties and struggles which have
always environed the possession of the greatest of human dignities and
powers—the papal sovereignty.
From Nero to Constantine the Popes were obliged to struggle with the
heathen emperors in order to conquer their liberty at the cost of
martyrdom. From Sylvester to Gregory the Great they were obliged to
struggle with civil and ecclesiastical princes for the recognition and
maintenance of their spiritual supremacy. The temporal and civil domain
necessary for the stable possession and exercise of the personal,
sovereign independence of the Pope as Supreme Pastor of the church was
not given until its necessity became manifest. It came in the natural
course of events, without violence or miracle. Its tenure was precarious
and constantly disputed, and has so remained until the present day. Our
present purpose is to sketch the history of the struggles by which the
first Popes who were kings of Rome secured the dominion of the patrimony
of St. Peter as an inalienable right recognized by the international law
of Christendom.
The temporal domain of the Popes began with the natural and gradual
acquisition of landed property, which in those times carried with it
princely authority over the tenants and inhabitants of estates. Not only
the Popes but the principal bishops in Italy and other countries became
in this way dukes and counts. The sovereign rights of the emperors
lapsed through a long-continued neglect to fulfil the essential duties
of sovereignty, and there was no other royal power in Italy which
succeeded to them in a legitimate manner. The ruling power devolved
naturally upon the local princes. The Roman people turned toward the
Pope as their immediate bishop; just as the people of Ravenna, Milan,
Treves, Cologne, and many other cities did to their own bishop, because
he was the chief of their aristocracy, and also the protector of the
people, and was the only one who was both willing and able to take the
place vacated by their former rulers. The Western Roman Empire ceased to
exist when the Heruli under Odoacer took and sacked Rome, making
themselves masters of Italy. Odoacer was in turn conquered and killed by
the Ostrogoth Theodoric, who was nominally the lieutenant of the Greek
emperor, but in reality conquered Italy for himself. When the empire
revived under the able administration of Justinian, the kingdom of the
Ostrogoths was subdued and overthrown by the great general Belisarius. A
new invasion of Lombards, or Long-beards, from Germany put an end once
more to the imperial dominion in Italy, with the exception of a certain
part called the exarchate, which had its capital at Ravenna. The
authority of the Lombard kings was very limited and precarious, and
under their sway the duchies and marquisates and independent
municipalities of Italy assumed that character of autonomy which made
Italy ever after incapable of anything except a federative unity. The
Lombards were at first Arians, but the conversion of their beautiful and
accomplished queen, Theodolinda, by St. Gregory the Great was the
beginning of a general reconciliation of the whole people to the
Catholic Church, and of the complete extinction of the Arian heresy in
Italy. The Popes never acknowledged the sovereignty of the Lombard kings
over the city and duchy of Rome. The Greek exarch at Ravenna, as the
representative of the emperor, was recognized as having lawful
jurisdiction, and a magistrate delegated by him, called a duke, resided
in Rome. The actual authority of these representatives of the ancient
imperial power and of their master at Constantinople became, however,
continually more and more a restricted and almost nominal formality,
until it was altogether extinguished by the fall of the Greek exarchate.
A few passages from the Italian historian Cantù will show in a clear and
brief manner how the temporal sovereignty of the Popes in Rome resulted
naturally and necessarily out of the new order of things which issued
from the universal disorder and confusion that prevailed:
“At the time of the descent of the Lombards upon Italy the country
lacked a head possessing general authority, and the Roman people, as
well that portion of them who had been subjugated as those who were
still free, had no other eminent personage to whom they could look
except the Pope. He possessed immense domains in Sicily, Calabria,
Apulia, the Campagna, the Sabine territory, Dalmatia, Illyria,
Sardinia, in the Cottian Alps, and even in the Gauls. These domains
being cultivated by farmers, he exercised over them a legal
jurisdiction, appointed officers and gave orders; and, besides, his
revenue enabled him to distribute succors in times of dearth, to
furnish asylum to refugees, and to pay troops. After the conquest
had interrupted the communications between Rome and the exarch of
Ravenna, the Pope remained the _de facto_ head of the city where he
resided; he corresponded directly with the Byzantine court; made war
and peace with the Lombard kings; and, moreover, by putting himself
in an attitude of resistance to their conquests, _he became the
representative of the national party_. The chair of St. Peter
awaited only a pontiff who should feel all the importance and
display all the dignity of his high position. Such a man was Gregory
the Great” (580-603).
“Italy, at this time, had no more stability in its civil
institutions than France. The Lombards had occupied a large part of
it in the first burst of invasion; but the partition which they made
among several dukes, though it served to consolidate their
possession, prevented them from completing their conquest. As the
king was elected from among these different nobles, without any
hereditary right, there was a revolution at every vacancy; moreover,
the dukes obtained continually more considerable privileges by
favoring one or another among the competitors—so much so that those
of Benevento and Spoleto acquired complete independence. The only
thing they all desired was to remain in tranquil enjoyment of
absolute authority in their particular domains, or to make war for
their own personal aggrandizement in power and wealth, and not in
obedience to the king’s command; so that the king could with
difficulty induce them to follow him in any military enterprise
against the Greeks for the purpose of expelling these from Italy, or
against the Franks, who molested them unremittingly, either for the
sake of pillage or at the instigation of the Eastern emperors....
The Greek exarch’s administration extended over the Romagna, the
marshy valleys of Ferrara and Comacchio, over five maritime towns
from Rimini to Ancona, and five other towns between the shore of the
Adriatic and the Apennine slope, over Rome, Venice, and almost all
the cities on the sea-coast. Some cities, for instance Venice, made
themselves independent, while others were constantly menaced and
often invaded by the Lombards. When these latter were involved in
foreign or civil wars, the exarchs would avail themselves of the
chance to repossess the places they had lost, but were always
speedily driven back into narrow limits, without ever enjoying
peace, and subject to the necessity of making every year short
truces, for which they frequently had to pay a tribute of three
hundred livres in gold. When the means failed for paying tribute and
the wages of the soldiers, they ran down to Rome and plundered the
treasury of the church, or pillaged the sanctuary of St. Michael at
Monte Gargano, which was an object of great veneration to the
Lombards....
“Another power remained in Italy, as yet imperceptibly growing up,
but destined to be developed during the course of the century and to
cast lasting roots amid the ruins of the others. The Popes had
always shown themselves hostile to the Lombard domination and
desirous of preserving the invaded provinces to the empire. Gregory
the Great had employed for this effect his authority, his eloquence,
his treasure, and his skill in the arts of diplomacy; his successors
followed his example, and whenever they were menaced by the Lombards
they implored without delay the aid of Constantinople. Preserving
toward the emperor the submission which they had constantly
exhibited while Rome was the capital of the world, they asked his
confirmation of their election, paid him a fixed tribute, and kept
at his court an apocrisiarius, who treated with him respecting their
affairs; but their dependence on distant sovereigns and feeble
exarchs, upon whom the people looked with an evil eye, kept on
continually diminishing. Thus the authority of the Popes, who were
at the head of the municipal institutions which had been preserved
in the city, rendered that of the Duke of Rome almost a nullity, and
approached to a species of sovereignty.”[98]
Footnote 98:
Cesar Cantù’s _Univ. Hist._, French translation, vol. vii. p. 418,
vol. viii. p. 214.
Alboin, the first Lombard king, was murdered soon after his conquest by
his own wife, in revenge for the death of her father, Cunimond, chief of
the Gepidæ. He was succeeded by Clefis, who was assassinated after
reigning eighteen months. The Lombard dukes were disposed to do without
a king, and elected no successor to Clefis, until the necessity of
uniting in war against their enemies compelled them to elect Autharis,
the son of Clefis, the prince whose wife was the celebrated Queen
Theodolinda. Autharis died one year after his marriage, and Theodolinda
was requested by the dukes to choose a new spouse and king from among
their number. The choice fell upon Agilulph, Duke of Turin. His son and
successor, Adoloald, was deposed and Ariovald, Duke of Turin, elected in
his place, to whom succeeded Rotharis, Duke of Turin, the second husband
of Gundeberga, widow of Ariovald, and who was followed by his son
Rodoald, the last of the descendants of Theodolinda. The nobles and
people were so much attached to the memory of this pious queen that they
sought for a new king in her family, although it was not Lombard, and
elected her nephew, Aribert of Asti, of the Agilolphingian tribe settled
in Bavaria. At his death the kingdom was divided between his two sons,
from whom it was wrested by Grimoald, Duke of Benevento. His son
Garibald was dispossessed by Perthurit, one of the sons of Aribert.
Cunibert, Luitpert, Ragimpert, and Aribert II. completed the list of the
Agilolphingian kings. Ansprand, a partisan of Luitpert, who had been
dethroned by his rival Ragimpert and imprisoned by Aribert, conquered
Aribert, and after a short reign of three months was succeeded by his
son Luitprand, who reigned thirty-two years (712 to 744) and was the
greatest of the Lombard kings.
With the reign of Luitprand begins the epoch of the decisive events
which resulted in the final severance of all the bonds of political
dependence which united Rome with the Greek Empire, in the establishment
of the formal and legal monarchy of the Popes, and the overthrow of the
Lombard dominion in Italy by Charlemagne.
Luitprand was a sovereign in the strict sense of the word, through his
ability and energy of character even more than by the recognized title
to the royal dignity which was vested in his person. He undertook and
carried out a thorough reformation in the political administration of
his kingdom, re-established order, extirpated the germs of disunion and
civil war, secured the obedience of his subordinate dukes, and preserved
a good intelligence with the Popes and the church. His ultimate aim was
the union of all Italy in one kingdom under his own laws, including all
the remaining Greek possessions and the city and principality of Rome.
The first great step toward the fulfilment of this design must obviously
be the conquest of the Greek exarchate. In this undertaking he had the
sympathy of the Roman aristocracy and people, though not that of the
Popes. The remnant of the old Roman nation existed at this time almost
entirely in the ancient capital and its adjacent territory. The Roman
Empire really perished from no other cause than the general extinction
of the Roman race. As the barbarians swarmed into Italy the best part of
the old Italians took refuge in Rome, where the old spirit, the old
manners and institutions—so to speak, the Roman essence—was concentrated
and preserved to effect a new and peaceful conquest of the world. This
Roman nation desired to have its own autonomy and to be subject neither
to the Roumanians of the east nor the barbarians of the west. They had
no thought of accepting Lombard sovereignty over themselves, yet they
were eager to see the Greek domination in Italy terminated, and
therefore desired Luitprand’s success in the enterprise of overthrowing
the exarchate. For Rome they desired independence. The Popes, however,
would not take any measures for making Rome a sovereign state, until
divine Providence directed the course of events to this end as a natural
and necessary result, without any positive act on their part renouncing
civil allegiance to the empire.
The course of events actually favored most opportunely and remarkably
the designs of Luitprand and the wishes of the Roman people. The
unutterable folly of the Emperor Leo the Isaurian drove him to an attack
on the religion of the Romans and the sacred person of the pontiff. He
ordered the exarch Paul to enforce submission to the heresy of the
Iconoclasts by military power. Pope Gregory II. excommunicated Leo and
exhorted all the Catholic princes and people of Italy to stand firm in
defence of the faith and discipline of the church. They obeyed his voice
so readily and with so much zeal that the absolute and final extinction
of the Greek dominion in Italy was only averted by the mediation of the
Pope himself. As Luitprand and the Lombards, profiting by the general
uprising against the imperial authority, became stronger and advanced
toward a more entire subjugation of Italy, they became more dangerous to
the independence of the Holy See than were the feeble dukes and exarchs
who represented the distant emperor. The king even allied himself with
the exarch for the subjugation of the proud republic which disdained to
be subject to either Greek or Lombard, and besieged the city of Rome.
Pope Gregory II. went to Luitprand’s camp, and the majesty of his
presence, together with the force of the arguments which he addressed to
the noble and Catholic mind of the king, produced such an effect upon
him that he cast himself at the feet of the pontiff, imploring his
benediction and promising peace. In company with the Pope, Luitprand
went to St. Peter’s Church, where he laid upon the tomb of the apostle
his royal mantle, bracelets, coat of mail, dagger, gilded sword, golden
crown, and silver cross as a gift to St. Peter and the church.
Nevertheless, he renewed his attempt to make himself master of Rome ten
years later during the pontificate of Gregory III., and continued during
the pontificate of Zacharias his occasional irruptions into the
exarchate of Ravenna and the duchy of Rome, although in every instance
he yielded to the voice of his conscience and of the Vicar of Christ,
desisting from his purpose as often as he renewed it, and making
restitution of the towns which he had conquered. His successor, Rachis,
undertook anew the enterprise of subjugating the exarchate, but was so
much affected by the remonstrances of the Pope that he abdicated his
dignity and withdrew with his wife and children into a monastery. His
brother and successor, Astolpho, actually achieved the conquest of the
exarchate,[99] and put an end to the Greek dominion in that part of
Italy. Henceforth the Byzantine emperors had no authority in Italy
except in Calabria and Sicily. Astolpho next turned his attention toward
Rome and made a formal demand of allegiance on the senate and people,
supported by a large army. The city was strongly fortified, and all its
people were determined to make a stubborn defence of their independence.
Astolpho would not lend his ear to any negotiation, help was demanded in
vain from the Greek emperor, and in these sore straits Pope Stephen III.
betook himself for aid and succor to Pepin, the King of the Franks.
Footnote 99:
The term exarchate is here used in its restricted sense.
Gregory III. had once before invoked the help of Charles Martel without
any result. Since that time the Frankish nobles had referred to Pope
Zacharias the question of their right to set aside the effete dynasty of
the Merovingians and to substitute in its place the family of Charles
Martel. The Pope had answered that the royal title ought to be given to
the one who actually possessed and exercised the royal authority and
functions. The new Carlovingian dynasty was thus formally established in
France with the sanction and benediction of the Pope. And the time was
now come for these powerful kings, Pepin and Charlemagne, to step
forward as the eldest sons of the church, to secure the temporal
sovereignty of the Pope, and to inaugurate that close relationship which
has ever since existed between the kingdom of France and the Holy See.
Pope Stephen, although old and in extremely feeble health, went to
France, where he was received with a spontaneous and splendid ovation by
all ranks of the people, from the highest to the lowest. The Pope
performed the solemn ceremony of the anointing of the king, the queen,
and the royal princes, and conferred upon Pepin the dignity of patrician
of Rome. A solemn assembly of the magnates of the kingdom was held at
Quiercey, at which the king and nobles bound themselves to place the
Pope in possession of the sovereign dominion of Rome and the exarchate.
Pepin first attempted peaceful negotiations with Astolpho, and, these
being absolutely refused, crossed the Alps with an army, and compelled
him to make a treaty of peace with the Pope, by which he renounced all
claim upon the Roman principality and the exarchate. Astolpho, however,
disavowed and violated his engagements as soon as Pepin had withdrawn
his army. Again (755) Pepin crossed the Alps and suddenly appeared with
an overwhelming force before Pavia. Severer conditions of peace were
this time imposed upon Astolpho—a mulct of one-third of his treasure, a
yearly tribute of 12,000 gold _solidi_, and hostages for the fulfilment
of his promises. French and Lombard commissaries were appointed to visit
the whole territory assigned to the Pope and receive the keys of all the
cities. Pepin made a solemn and festal entry into Rome amidst universal
jubilation, and laid a formal document of investiture of the pontifical
domain, together with the keys of the towns, upon the tomb of St. Peter.
Astolpho died suddenly from an injury received by a fall from his horse,
very soon after these events (756). Rachis came out of his cloister with
the design of regaining the crown which he had resigned. The majority of
the princes favored the election of Didier, Duke of Brescia, who secured
the influence of the Pope and of the envoys of Pepin in his favor by a
solemn promise under oath to execute the treaty made by Astolpho and to
cede some additional territory to the Holy See. He was accordingly
elected King of Lombardy, but failed to fulfil his engagements and
passed the seventeen years of his reign in perpetual efforts to secure
an undivided sovereignty over all Italy. At last, taking advantage of
the death of Pepin and of Pope Stephen III., and of cabals and factions
among the Romans in reference to a new election, he made an open and
violent effort to seize the dominion of Rome and the entire
principality. He was deterred from actually consummating his intention
by an armed entry into the city, where there was no force which could
have prevented it, simply by the threat of excommunication, and withdrew
to Pavia. The end of the Lombard kingdom was now near at hand. Pope
Adrian, the Italian people, Charlemagne, and all except a few adherents
of Didier were in accord on this subject. Charles crossed the Alps with
a large army, evading the troops which guarded the passes by means of a
secret defile, and easily took possession of the whole territory, Pavia
only excepted, which held out for a year under Didier and his gallant
son, Adelchis. Pavia at length surrendered, the Lombard kingdom was
abolished, Didier was confined in a French monastery, where he became a
monk in earnest for the rest of his life, the donation of Pepin to the
Holy See was confirmed, and Charles returned home to prosecute that
brilliant career which made him before the end of the century the
monarch of almost the whole of Europe.
The temporal kingdom of the Pope was now established in a definite and
stable manner, with the universal recognition of Catholic Christendom.
Nevertheless, as a civil institution it was still exposed to the inward
and outward vicissitudes and dangers to which all states are liable from
the very nature of things. It was necessary that some great political
power, distinct from the papal sovereignty, should hold over the See of
St. Peter the ægis of protection. The providence of God, therefore, soon
raised up that power which was consecrated by the name of
“THE HOLY ROMAN EMPIRE.”
During the last year of the eighth century Adrian’s successor, Pope Leo
III., was obliged to implore the aid of Charlemagne to repress the
turbulence of Roman factions. Leo was received by Charlemagne at
Paderborn, in the midst of a brilliant assemblage of nobles and a vast
army, with all possible veneration and honor, and returned to Rome
escorted by princes and prelates and a guard of honor, to await the
promised visit of the king. In December, 799, Charlemagne came to Rome,
a great council was assembled, and all the measures which were necessary
for restoring and confirming order in the pontifical state were adopted.
The Christmas festivities were celebrated with the greatest possible
pomp and splendor, and while Charlemagne was kneeling before the tomb of
the apostles Leo suddenly and unexpectedly approached him and placed on
his head a golden diadem. The people burst forth into the acclamation:
“Life and victory to Charles, the great and pacific Roman emperor!” In
the bull which Leo published on the same day he says: _Quem Carolum
auctore Deo, in defensionem et provectum sanctæ universalis ecclesiæ
Augustum hodie sacravimus_.
In a former article[100] we have sketched an outline of the destinies
and vicissitudes of Rome during the period of the decline of the
Carlovingian dynasty and the rise of the German Empire. We have,
therefore, now presented in a general view the history of the rise and
consolidation of the temporal sovereignty of the Popes between the two
great eras of St. Gregory I. and St. Gregory VII. From that time forward
the political history of the Papacy relates chiefly to the rise and
subsequent decline of the temporal power of the Pope over all
Christendom, until at last, in the disruption of political unity among
European states, the Holy See is once more subject to the same struggle
for independence in its immediate patrimony which preceded the period of
its mediæval power. The confederate union of the European nations under
the moral presidency of the pope and the political primacy of the
emperor was gradually transformed, by the waning of the imperial power
which became restricted to Germany and at last subsided into a mere
royal dominion over Austria, and the diminution of the spiritual power
of the Holy See by the schism in Christendom, into a weaker sort of
alliance, held together by common interests and mutual treaties. So long
as this continued the Pope retained his place among the other sovereigns
as one of the Italian princes, with a personal pre-eminence and a moral
influence derived from his spiritual supremacy over the Catholic
nations, and over the Catholic population in those nations which were
not Catholic. Sound policy and the necessity of preserving an
equilibrium in Europe caused the powerful monarchs of the great states
to protect the independence of the Pope against one another, and to
restore it when it was invaded. The disruption of the last bonds of
European alliance in our own day has left the Holy See and the church
once more a prey to secular tyranny exercised by a new German emperor,
and a new Lombard king, without protection or defence from any political
power. As Rome and Christendom went up together, so they have gone down
together. And if a regeneration or restoration in the actual present or
the future is destined for Europe and the rest of the world, it must be
accomplished in both together; for they are inseparable parts of one
whole. The history of the past is therefore a guide for judging the
present and forecasting the future. The question of the temporal
sovereignty of the Pope in the Roman state is essential and pre-eminent
in the discussion of the principles of a reconstitution of the family of
civilized and Christian nations. The complete independence and liberty
of the Pope as supreme head of the church, and of the church itself, are
intrinsically the most important of all rights and interests; and with
these the temporal sovereignty of the Pope is necessarily connected so
intimately that it becomes indirectly and extrinsically of equal
importance, being, in fact, practically identified with them. We have,
therefore, in our preceding historical sketches prepared the way for
showing how this sovereignty of the Pope over Rome and the whole
territory which he claims as subject to his crown is an indubitable and
inalienable right, which must be restored and secured to him as the
indispensable condition of religious and political order and well-being.
Footnote 100:
“The Iron Age of Christendom,” THE CATHOLIC WORLD, July, 1877.
We shall not attempt to reconcile this proposition with the doctrine of
a divine or natural right of sovereignty inhering in the multitude of
every nation or a majority of them. At the present time this doctrine is
not maintained by sensible and moderate advocates of a constitutional
form of government and of popular franchises. The sovereignty may
lawfully reside in the multitude politically organized, as it does in
our republic, but it is not by virtue of divine or natural right
coalescing from the separate, individual rights of the units who make up
the mass. The right of Mr. Tilden to the Presidential chair was not
asserted on the ground that he received a majority of the popular vote,
which he did receive without question, but on the ground that he
received a majority of the votes of the electors who were really
competent to vote for the appointment of a President, according to the
Constitution. We might make a plausible argument to show that the Roman
people have always consented to the papal sovereignty, except during
intervals of political madness, and actually at the present time would
re-establish it, if they were free to do so. But the right of the Pope
cannot be maintained on a theory, which would reduce it to a popular
concession revocable at any time by the will of his subjects. Some good
Catholics may hold the doctrine of popular sovereignty as above defined,
but they do so inconsistently; for, although it is not directly contrary
to the Catholic faith, it is incompatible with the principles and
practice of the Holy See and the church, and the doctrine of every
authority respected by sound and loyal Catholics who are instructed in
the science of political ethics. In certain circumstances the will of
the people suffices, alone or in concurrence with other causes, to
convey or transfer lawful dominion. We have shown how, in the case of
the papal sovereignty, the Roman people did, voluntarily, withdraw or
refuse allegiance to all other princes and eagerly give it to the Pope.
We have shown, also, how other causes concurred in establishing his
right as a fact, and placing him in actual possession of the
sovereignty, without prejudice to any other really existing legitimate
right. The Pope possessed all the rights belonging to his position as
the chief land-owner and prince among the Roman princes. He possessed
the right, as head of the church, to have no temporal prince placed over
him who could control or hinder the exercise of his spiritual supremacy.
Moreover, he possessed a great many imperfect rights or claims upon the
allegiance of the Roman people arising from the services he had rendered
to the state in preserving, defending, and succoring it in circumstances
when it was near extinction, from his superior ability to govern the
state, and the fitness of things making it expedient, and even
necessary, for the public good that sovereignty should be vested in his
person. The action of Pepin was that of one who defended the Roman
people in the right of their independence against tyrants and
aggressors, and defended the general right of his own and other nations
to the independence and tranquillity of the Roman Church as the centre
of Christendom. The action of Charlemagne was similar, and his overthrow
of the Lombard kingdom was justifiable by the right of conquest, the
consent of the greater part of the people of Italy, and the necessity of
providing for the welfare not only of Italy but of all Europe. His final
act of settlement in the beginning of the year 800 had still greater
force and legitimacy as the act of the king of Europe, in which all the
great estates of his realm concurred, the whole people of Western
Christendom applauding, and the Eastern empire tacitly consenting. The
possession of a temporal principality by the Pope became thus a fact,
which was so connected with natural and divine rights of various kinds
that it became a perpetual and inviolable right. This is the only way in
which sovereign rights can become vested in any kind of lawful possessor
or political person. There is no such thing as a right to civil
sovereignty immediately delegated by God or springing out of the
constitution of nature directly. Scarcely any one can be found, even
among legitimists, who maintains any such origin for sovereign rights.
There is a natural and divine right to good government inherent in the
social and political order. There is a divine right, having a natural
basis, in the Catholic Church to good government, which is specifically
secured by the divine appointment of the form of government, as a
hierarchy subordinated to a supreme head. This right takes precedence of
all others. As those rights which are more particular cede to the more
general, all rights whatever must give way to the universal right of all
Christians and all mankind, that the Vicar of Christ shall be left free
and independent in the possession and exercise of his spiritual
supremacy, and that all men shall have liberty of obeying him as the
vicegerent of God on earth. The Roman people have a right to good
government, the Italian people have a right to national well-being, all
Europe has a right to the advantage of a due political equilibrium and
alliance among nations. All these advantages were secured by the
establishment of the sovereignty of the Pope in Rome. It grew up and
became strengthened, and sustained itself for ages, as an essential part
of the political constitution of Europe. Whatever pretence to right,
legitimacy, stability, or sanction of any kind can be made by any
European institution, the same is applicable to the temporal
principality of the Pope. But, beyond all this, it is necessary to the
spiritual independence of the Holy See, and therefore protected by the
sanction of a higher right and a higher law. It has been given to God
and accepted by his vicegerent, and has thus become sacred, inviolable,
irrevocable. It is like a cathedral, an altar, the sepulchre of a saint.
It is the property of the universal church, of Christendom, and of God.
As such it is under the protection of ecclesiastical, international, and
divine law; it is within the domain of right and of morality, and
therefore appertains to the Catholic religion; is included in the order
which is subject to the spiritual supremacy of the Pope. In this order
he is the supreme judge and lawgiver, infallible in defining and
declaring the law, sovereign in the judgments and decrees by which he
applies it to particular questions and concrete matters. The Pope is
therefore the supreme judge, the Catholic episcopate being associated
with him in the same tribunal, by whom alone the right and the necessity
of the temporal sovereignty of the Holy See can be determined. The
consent of the Catholic people adds moral weight to this determination,
and the political action of states gives it the necessary physical force
for its execution. But there is no appeal from the judgment of the Pope
himself on his own rights as sovereign in the Roman principality, either
to bishops, sovereigns, or people. His own judgment has settled the
right of the Roman question, and it is the duty of all Catholics to
adhere to that judgment. The Pope will not cede his sovereignty, and the
Catholic people will not consent to its cession or to its violent
occupation by any usurper.
The history of the destinies of Rome in the past shows that the recent
calamities of the Holy See do not warrant the expectation that its
temporal sovereignty has passed away to return no more. It has proved
itself to be indestructible amid all the vicissitudes of Europe. When
Rome is shaken and disturbed, the civilized world is thrown into
commotion. As we are writing, the Russian army is crossing the Pruth,
and it cannot be doubted that we have reached one of the most momentous
epochs of history. When our readers are perusing what has been written,
another fold of the scroll of time will have been unrolled, perhaps
thickly written over with records of great events. We have read this
morning the significant utterance of Von Moltke on the necessity of
arming more German troops for the defence of the empire. Some may take
Châteaubriand’s gloomy view of things and think that Europe is hastening
on a funeral march to the tomb. If this be so, then there is no refuge
for the Pope but the catacombs. If atheism, despotism, revolution, and
anarchy are going to hold a wild revel amid the ruins and monuments of a
Christendom which was but is no more, then Rome will be involved in the
common ruin. But “when Rome falls, the world.” However, we do not feel
obliged, as yet, to despair of Europe, Christianity, or civilization. If
there is a resurging movement after a temporary convulsion, Rome will be
the centre of it, and the successor of Pius IX. will reap the advantage
of his long watch by the tomb of St. Peter. We believe in the triumph of
the Catholic Church over infidelity, heresy, schism, revolution, and
despotism; over Judaism, Mohammedanism, and heathenism. The restoration
of the Pope’s temporal kingdom is necessary to this triumph, and
therefore we believe it will be restored. We hope for a pacification of
Europe after the war which has now begun is terminated. Civilized
mankind is tired of war, and the almost bankruptcy which is universally
produced by the enormous military establishments of the nations of
Europe, it would seem, must enforce at length disarmament and bring
about a period of amicable alliance and devotion to the arts of peace,
the study of the welfare of the people as the end of government, the
moral sway of principles which are not only patriotic but Christian and
Catholic. In such a state of things the moral influence of the Holy See
would naturally rise to a higher point than it attained even under the
mediæval system.
As for Rome and Italy, their temporal prosperity, so far from being
sacrificed, would be promoted, by the re-establishment of the pontifical
state and the overthrow of the visionary fabric of Cavour and Mazzini.
We certainly desire to see all just national aspirations of the Italians
satisfied. We are glad that Austrian domination in Italy has ceased. But
all history seems to show that a confederate unity of distinct states is
the only order suited to Italy, and that a monarchical unification is
foreign and hostile to the genius and conditions of the Italian people.
But, whatever may be done by the Italians and the European princes who
will be left masters of the situation and arbiters of national interests
after the conflict now impending, in respect to the rest of Italy, the
domain of the Pope must be restored to him in its integrity and placed
under the protection of the law of nations. This is the indispensable
condition of the restoration of Europe from the condition of decadence
into which it has fallen, and no doubt the providence of God will force
upon the rulers of the world the recognition of this truth in due time
and by the course of events wholly beyond their foresight or control.
ALBA’S DREAM.
BY THE AUTHOR OF “ARE YOU MY WIFE?” “A SALON IN PARIS BEFORE THE WAR,”
ETC.
PART II.
When it was known in the country that M. le Marquis had joined the army
as a common soldier, the consternation was great; but when it was known
why he had done so, surprise gave way to bitter indignation and regret.
The Marquis de Gondriac gone to risk his life for the son of a low
plebeian, generally supposed to have been a pirate! The marvel was how
the world stood still while such a scandal was enacted in its face. As
to the widow, nobody thought of congratulating her. If Marcel had gone
out and been shot, they would have pitied her, within reasonable bounds;
but now every man’s hand was against her and her son—even the women felt
the sweet font of pity dried up within them when they thought of what
might come of this. But the people, despite their wrath, were loath to
take so gloomy a view of the future.
“The bullets have a sense of their own,” said Peltran; “they know who to
hit first and who last, and who never to hit. Look at M. le Comte, how
they respect him! He has seen more fighting than ever the Caboffs did,
and yet the bullets have never touched a hair of his head. It’s my
belief the things are alive and know what they are about.”
No one contradicted this sapient remark; for Peltran was not a pleasant
person to contradict.
Marcel Caboff had never been popular, but from this time forth he was
branded as a sort of potential malefactor; if M. le Marquis died, Marcel
would be his murderer, and Marcel’s life would not be worth an old song
in Gondriac. The only people who did the young man justice and had the
courage to take his part were Virginie and Alba. Since the night of the
storm a friendship had sprung up between Marcel and Alba which had grown
to more than friendship on his side. Alba was a lovely maiden now;
impulsive, untutored as the waves that her nature seemed attuned to,
wild as the sea-birds whose lot she sometimes envied when they beat
their wings, rose up from the rocks, and took flight across the sea.
“I wonder you can stay here and live this idle, humdrum life when you
might be away seeing the great world,” Alba said to him one day, as they
met upon the cliff and walked on together.
“You wish I were away, do you?”
“Oh! no; only I wonder you don’t go. I should, if I were a man.”
“It is harder on me than you think,” said Marcel bitterly. “I did my
best to get away; but mother went on her knees and said I would kill her
if I went. It was hard to resist that; but it makes me feel angry with
her when I think of what has come of it. I know the people hate me and
call me a coward. Alba,” he said, turning suddenly round, “you don’t
think me a coward, do you?”
“No, Marcel; if you had not been braver than any man in Gondriac, except
your father, you would not have come out in the boat that night. How
dare they call you a coward when they remember it!”
“They don’t remember it. Everybody has forgotten it but you.”
“M. le Marquis has not forgotten it.”
“I wish he had. That is what has brought all this misery about. If he
had not remembered, I should be away with the _grande armée_ now, and
should either die a glorious death like my brothers, or come home by and
by with the cross, and perhaps a wound or two. Then everybody would know
I was a brave man, and mother would have had something to be proud of.”
“Yes,” said Alba dreamily; she was watching a ship that flecked the
horizon far away like a great swan, its white sails flapping against the
sky, the sea-gulls following in its wake, as it cleaved the wave.
“Would _you_ have been proud of me?” asked Marcel.
“Yes,... perhaps.”
“You would not have cared a straw, I believe,” he said, angry and hurt
at her indifferent tone.
“If you had been killed? Indeed I should, Marcel. I should have been
very sorry; but what is the good of being sorry now, when it is never
going to happen? Look at that ship out there! With what a dip she shears
the water! How fast she goes! Her sails are like wings. I wish I had
wings!”
“You are always wishing for impossible things,” said Marcel, huffed at
this summary dismissal; “you were wishing you were a man a little while
ago, and now you want to be a bird. Why don’t you wish for something I
could give you?”
“_You_ give me! You could not give me any one of the things I wish for!”
Alba flung back the waves of swart hair from her low, broad brow and
laughed derisively.
“How do you know that? I have plenty of money, and money can buy
everything—everything reasonable, that is. Suppose a fairy were to come
and say she would give you whatever you wished; what would you ask for?”
“I would ask her first to make me perfectly beautiful, perfectly good,
and perfectly happy,” began Alba.
“Why, you are all that already, you foolish girl!”
“You think so; but you know nothing about it. I would ask her to make me
as rich and powerful as a queen, and to make everybody pay me homage—not
because I was rich and powerful, but because they loved me! Oh! I should
like to be loved more than anybody ever was in this world before. And I
should like to live in a beautiful castle, like the castle yonder, and I
should fill it with beautiful things, and make it a real fairy palace to
live in.”
“And who would you like to live in it with you? You would not care to
live in it all alone?” inquired Marcel, bewildered by these ambitious
aspirations that left himself and his money-bags altogether out of the
reckoning.
“Well, first, I should like to have petite mère, of course; then ...
then I should ask the fairy for a brave and handsome prince, who would
come and woo me as they do in the story-books; he should be handsome and
clever and good, or I should not care for him; but if he was all that, I
should love him with all my heart and soul, and we should be as happy as
the days are long!”
Marcel heard her to the end, and then began to consider if there was not
some one item in the capacious list that came within his possibilities.
“If another castle would do instead of this one—you know you never
_could_ have this one—I would go and buy it for you, Alba, and you might
have as many pretty gauds to fill it as you liked. We have lots of gold
and silver things and pictures up there”—nodding towards the
Fortress—“and if I asked mother she would give them to us—to you, I
mean.” Alba’s laugh rang like a silver echo all along the cliff.
“And the prince—where would you get him?”
“Must he be a prince? Would not a brave man who loved you and was ready
to do your bidding in everything, who would spend his whole life in
trying to make you happy—would not that do instead? Must he be a prince,
Alba?”
He took her hand and held it, and she did not struggle to release it.
They were standing at the foot of a rock that cast a long, black shadow
far out upon the sea; the west wind blew into their faces; Alba’s
scarlet hood had fallen back, and her hair drifted in a heavy stream
behind her, as Marcel bent over her, waiting to hear his fate. He might
have read it in her blank, scared looks, in her startled, reluctant
attitude. If there had been hope for him, would she have shrunk away and
drawn closer to the rock, as if asking it to protect her?
“I have been too hasty,” said the young man penitently; “I should have
spoken to Mère Virginie first. Forgive me, Alba, and say only if I may
go to her now and ask you for my wife?” He still held her hand, and,
mistaking her silence, made an effort to slip his arm around her. The
movement acted on Alba like the sting of a snake; she escaped from him
with a cry, and sped along the cliff like a deer flying from the
hunters.
“My child, you have been foolish, and so has Marcel; but there is no
need to cry or be unhappy about it,” said Mère Virginie when Alba had
sobbed out the terrible story on her breast. But Alba was not to be
comforted. She had been living in dreamland, and now awoke to find the
hard ground under her feet instead of golden clouds. Of course she had
dreamt of love and lovers, and her heart, or that vague yearning which
as yet took its place, had become enamored of the dreams, visions that
lay safe beyond the disenchanting present, wrapped in the golden haze of
distance; and now this rude awakening had dispelled them, and brought
home to the dreamer that she had reached that border-land that lies
between the mystery of morning and the revelation of noon; the pearly
mists had rolled away in an instant, and the blaze of the mid-day sun
was upon her, chasing the fairy phantoms and making sober realities
pitilessly clear. She had been dreaming of a lover in some remote time
and place, and, lo! he was at her side; he had been close to her all
along—an ugly, common man, who seemed made on purpose to mock the
visions of her fancy. And yet this incident, which threw Alba into such
despair, had been for many a day the fond anticipation of her mother’s
heart.
“Why need it frighten you to find that Marcel loves you and wants to
have you for his little wife, my child?” said Virginie. “Don’t shudder
and cling to me as if he were going to drag you away this very moment!
You shall never leave me, unless you do it of your own free will. But
remember, darling, that I may have to leave you; and then what will
become of you?”
“You leave me, petite mère?” And Alba looked up at her in dismay.
“It must come to that some day. I am old and you are young. I have a
trouble here that reminds me of this often, and then I lie awake of
nights, thinking of my little one, and praying God to give her a friend,
the best and truest friend a woman can have in this world, to take care
of her before I am called away.”
“Mother, if you go I will go too. I could never live without you! What
should I do here if you were gone? Nobody wants me, nobody loves me in
the whole world but you.”
“Marcel loves you, my child, and he will be that good friend, if you
will let him.”
“Marcel! Marcel! As if he could replace you! I don’t love him; I don’t
care if he went to the wars and never came back again.”
“If you married him you would soon learn to love him; his goodness would
soon win your love. And then remember, Alba, how happy he could make
you. You often long to have beautiful things—pearls and jewels and
splendid dresses—and you sigh to go away in the ships that we see
setting sail for distant lands, and to see fair cities, and the great
mountains, and the countries where it is always summer and the flowers
never die. Marcel would give you all these wishes; and then he would let
you be so good and generous to the poor!”
“I should not care for pearls and pretty things, if I had to marry
Marcel,” said Alba. “I should not like to go to distant cities with him;
and if he loved me like a real lover, he would let me be good to the
poor without making me his wife.”
How was the anxious woman to argue with this sweet, foolish innocence?
If she could but teach the child to believe in the happiness that was at
her feet, and persuade her to become Marcel’s wife, how easy it would be
to die! How terrible it was to have to leave her unprotected and alone!
Virginie’s heart overflowed in tears as she thought of it, and the hot
drops trickled down her face and fell on Alba’s.
Alba looked up quickly. “Petite mère!” she said.
Throwing her arms round Virginie and kissing the wet cheeks again and
again, “I will marry him! I will do anything, only don’t be unhappy,
don’t cry! O mother, mother! what is it?” she cried, starting up in
terror; for Virginie had fallen back and was gasping for breath. She
pressed the child’s arm, and with her eyes bade her be still. The spasm
of pain passed away after a while; but when she tried to speak the words
came faintly in broken sentences.
“Petite mère! what is it?” entreated Alba, scarcely reassured. “May I
call Jeanne? Shall we send for the doctor?”
“No, my darling, it is nothing; I am well now,” said Virginie, with a
sickly smile that belied her words. The sharp pang had, it is true,
subsided, but she was still ashy pale and could only speak under her
breath. Alba watched her intently for some minutes, and then, twining
her arms round Virginie’s neck, she laid her head upon her breast,
nestling to her like a bird.
“Mother,” she whispered, “would it really make you happy if I were to
marry Marcel?”
“My darling, it would make me happier than anything else in this world.”
“Then I will marry him, petite mère.”
“My child!” Virginie’s face lighted up with a beaming joy.
“I will marry him to please you. There, now, promise me not to be
unhappy, not to lie awake at night fretting, and never to have any more
pains at your heart!”
“But, my darling, I would not have you do it to make me happy. It is
your happiness I am thinking of, not my own. Don’t you think you could
learn to love Marcel after a while?”
“Petite mère! how can you ask me? Foolish, ugly Marcel, whom everybody
laughs at and calls a coward! But never mind. I will marry him, since he
wants me and you wish it; I promise you I will.”
“You are a foolish child to speak of Marcel so,” said Virginie; “those
who laugh at him are the fools, and you know he is not a coward. As to
his ugliness, what does that matter, if he is faithful, and fond, and
good?”
Alba pondered this philosophy for some minutes; then she said: “When
will he want to marry me, petite mère?”
“Not for a long while yet, my darling. You are both very young; there’s
time to wait.”
“How old am I?”
“You were sixteen in September.”
“And how long will you let me wait?”
“Till your seventeenth birthday is passed, at least.”
“Nearly a whole year! Then I have all that time to be free and happy!”
“And if at the end of that time you have not learned to care for Marcel,
I shall not ask you to marry him at all,” said Virginie. The ecstasy
which the reprieve had called forth sent a pang through her heart, and
made her ask herself whether, after all, she was doing wisely and well
in forcing upon the child a lot from which her sympathies recoiled so
violently.
“Not marry him at all!” repeated Alba in amazement; but she added
quickly, with one of those sudden changes of manner that were familiar
to her sensitive and mobile nature: “I think, petite mère, I had better
not wait for the year. Instead of growing easier, it might grow harder
by thinking over it all that time. You know you always tell me that when
one has a disagreeable thing to do, it is better to do it at once and be
done with it; one only makes it worse by looking at it. I think it would
be better if I were to marry Marcel at once and get it over.”
Virginie was aghast at the combination of strength and utter childish
ignorance of the true nature and bearings of the sacrifice in
contemplation which Alba’s reasoning revealed. In the bottom of her
heart the mother believed this repugnance would pass away, and there was
no cruelty in coercing the child’s will at the outset, in order to bend
it to her real happiness; but unless it could be so bent, Virginie would
rather die trusting her treasure to God’s guardianship than force it
into any man’s keeping.
“We will say no more about it for the present, my child,” she said; “we
will leave it in the hands of God for another year.”
“And you will be happy now, petite mère?”
“Yes. I feel more tranquil about my darling’s future.”
“And Marcel—must I tell him?”
“No, you must not mention to him or to any one what we have been saying.
I will speak to him myself.”
So there was no engagement, no promise exchanged; not a word of thanks
or of rejoicing passed between him and Alba; but Marcel knew how docile
she was to the power of love, and she loved her mother with a strength
and depth of feeling that knew no limits and measured no sacrifices. He
did not mean to be accepted as a sacrifice. He had faith enough in his
love to believe that before the year was out it would have conquered the
coy heart of his lady-love and brought her a willing captive to his
side. Meantime, he would leave none of the stratagems and tactics of
honorable warfare untried.
Alba was fond of books; he sent for all those he could hear of that were
likely to interest her, and she and Virginie read them together in the
long evenings, and talked over them, until their days were brightened by
the scenes of travel and story which the books described. He knew she
loved jewels and shining silks, and he went to Paris himself and
selected pretty trinkets of every kind—a necklace of pearls, and rings
of emeralds and rubies, and silks of soft and brilliant colors—and he
would carry them to the cottage, and shyly lay them down without saying
a word. Alba seldom noticed them till he was gone, when she would open
the parcel and examine its contents; but Mère Virginie seemed to take
more pleasure in the gauds than she did. This went on for three months.
Then, one morning, Alba, who had been out since sunrise, sitting on the
rocks and watching the tide come in and the creamy surf break upon the
shore, entered the cottage and said abruptly:
“Mother, I won’t take any more presents from Marcel, and I want to give
him back all those we have. I can’t keep them; I can’t indeed.”
“You have made up your mind never to marry him?”
“I will marry him whenever you wish it. It is not that, only I can’t
take his gifts; they make me miserable. I hate them!”
“My darling, I will send them back to him, if you wish; but it will hurt
him very much, poor fellow!—he took so much trouble to get them for you,
and you used to love pretty things. How often have I not heard you long
for the rings and flowers and shining silks we have seen in the fine
shops at X——? Many a time you have wished a fairy or a lover would come
and give them to you! Do you forget?”
“Ah! that is just it,” said Alba, with a light laugh that was full of
pain; “if a lover gave them to me, I dare say I should like them well
enough.”
“But Marcel is your lover?”
“Poor Marcel! It is so funny trying to think of him like that. He is so
awkward and stupid and ugly; a real lover would be quite different. But
I don’t want one now; I don’t indeed, petite mère. Only please send
Marcel back his gifts. They make me feel as if he were bribing me to be
fond of him, and I should not care a bit more for him if he gave me the
loveliest jewels in France. I don’t care any more for jewels. I used to
long to be happy myself, but now I only care to make you happy. You
promised me to be very happy when I married Marcel?”
This was dreadful. This was not what the mother meant when she prayed
for the marriage that Alba contemplated with such pathetic resignation,
as if it were a sacrifice or a torture that every day brought nearer to
her. There were still eight months between her and the dreaded fate, and
Virginie was strongly moved to tell her at once that she was released.
It seemed cruel to poison the child’s life all that time on the chance,
which apparently grew less as the months went on, of her getting to love
Marcel at the end of the year. But, again, this marriage was the one
prospect of security and happiness which the future opened out—quiet,
substantial happiness such as the mother longed to see her in possession
of. If Alba flung it away, there was nothing before her but a lonely,
loveless life of unprotected poverty. It was best to be patient, to keep
silence a little longer. Virginie, meantime, had faith in the power of
her own love, and she would never cease imploring heaven to take the
destiny of her darling into its safe-keeping.
* * * * *
Hermann de Gondriac had now been five years absent, and those years had
been an uninterrupted series of triumphs for him; he had borne a charmed
life on every battle-field, and come off unharmed where all around him
were stricken. But the chances of war prevailed at last, and the news
came to Gondriac that M. le Comte had been seriously wounded and was
coming home. His left arm had been shattered, and, though the skill of
the emperor’s surgeon had saved him from amputation, he was in great
suffering and condemned to the severest precautions. A few bonfires were
lighted on the cliffs to bid the home-comer welcome, but this was all
the people ventured on. M. le Marquis, it was said, had been in the same
engagement with his son, but had come out of it unhurt.
That winter was a fierce one all through France, and Gondriac suffered
terribly; the bleak gray sea in a perpetual roar, and the winds beating
on its wild, open coast. Food and fuel were scanty, and but for the
presence of the young lord at the castle many amongst the fishermen’s
families must have perished and starved. No one had yet seen him; the
great physician, who came from Paris at intervals, forbade his going
beyond the southern side of the park until spring came with sunshine and
blossoms. But Hermann could not have been more actively present amongst
his people had he been walking daily in the midst of them. He seemed to
know by inspiration what they wanted, and food and clothing were dealt
out from the castle in unlimited supplies. There were toys for the
children, and medicine and strengthening wine for the sick, and books
for those who could enjoy them, until the people came to think that the
bird of the fairy-tale must be true, and that their young master had the
tell-tale messenger at his orders.
Alba busied her poetic fancy in making pictures of what Hermann was
like. She had not seen him since she was a child and he a tall, slim
lad. Now that he was a man and a hero, she longed to behold him again.
Even to look at a hero from a distance would be something—life was so
tame, and all the people she knew were so commonplace. Was he proud and
stern and abrupt in speech, as they said the emperor was? Or was he
gentle and honey-tongued like the knights of old?
One morning a man rode in from X—— to the castle bearing important news
to M. le Comte. Important news indeed: the emperor was coming the next
day to inspect the fortifications of a neighboring seaport. It was
settled at once in Gondriac that M. le Comte would go to meet his
majesty. No physician could hinder him in that, come what might of it.
Alba had heard nothing of this great event which was stirring the
country for fifty miles round. She and Virginie lived a life apart up in
their sea-nest, and old Jeanne was not given to gossip, but did her
marketing without waste of words, and brought home little news in her
basket.
It was a lovely morning; the sun shone brightly on the sea; the breakers
were scampering in, not loud and angry, but tossing over one another in
masses of creamy foam. Alba loved these laughing seas, and would sit for
hours on the rocks, watching the tide ride in on the silver horses.
To-day the salt breath of the ocean and the mellow west wind excited her
like wine, and carried her off to the old dreamland where she seldom
ventured now. She was away on the dancing billows, sailing to the land
of the sun with a noble knight by her side. Virginie sat there with
maidens serving her; there was music on shore, and crowds waving glad
farewells. Alba began to sing as she walked briskly along the cliff,
building her castle in fairy-land. But the Fortress standing out like a
spectral prison, with the ivy blown inside out on its grimy walls, sent
a sudden chill through her and put out the sunlight. There was a figure
at the window watching her. She turned hastily back, walking quickly
until she got down the slope, when she almost flew across the moor, on
and on till she was safe in the shelter of the park. O that figure, how
it pursued her! How the Fortress threatened her! If she could but fly
from them for ever, and never hear of Marcel Caboff any more! She had
fancied latterly that the prospect of being his wife and living with old
Mme. Caboff in the gloomy, rat-haunted place was less odious to her than
it used to be; but to-day the thought nearly drove her mad. She had sped
along as if some evil fate were behind her, and she was tired; there was
a moss-grown oak close by, and she sat down on the trunk to rest. The
wind rustled the dead leaves at her feet and swept the topmost branches
of the pines; then the anthem died softly away and all was silent. The
place was very still; nothing stirred but the insects in the grass, and
the zephyr high up above her head, as it rose and fell in swift, Æolian
breathings. In the distance, with a forest of trees between, lay the
castle, its battlements and towers and flying buttresses rising
majestically against the sky—a high romance of chivalry and war
chronicled in stone; to Alba the door of an enchanted realm whose
portals she might never pass. No wonder men were heroes who lived in
homes like this; how easy it must be to lead grand lives where the very
walls are heralds and witnesses urging to noble and knightly deeds! The
present owner of this splendid house was worthy in all this of his proud
ancestors. What a royal act of heroism it was of the old Marquis to
enlist as a common soldier out of gratitude to a dead man and pity for
his widow! Then Alba thought of Marcel, of the poor, tame creature he
showed beside this race of knightly nobles, and she despised him, and
fell to wondering how it would be when she was his wife. Gradually the
castle melted away, and in its place rose the Fortress, dark and
frowning, and it lowered on her like a doom, and Marcel and his grim old
mother stood at the window beckoning her to advance. Alba flung herself
down upon the trunk and buried her face in the moss, and began to cry
passionately. She cried a long time, being full of pity for herself, and
there was no one within reach that she need check her sobs.
“What has happened? What is the matter with you, child?” said a voice
close to her.
She started up in terror. Yet the speaker was not at all terrible to
look at—a gentleman in the brilliant uniform of the Imperial Guard,
young and handsome, with a most commanding air, and carrying his left
arm in a sling. When Alba rose it was his turn to start. Lying there in
an attitude of child-like _abandon_, shaken with sobs, her scarlet hood
thrown back and her masses of black hair falling in loose coils over her
neck and face, he had taken her for a little girl; he had called her
child, and, lo! she was a full-grown maiden, and lovely beyond words,
despite her tears and her dishevelled mien. He bowed to her as he might
have done to a queen.
“You are M. le Comte!” said Alba, pretty much as she might have said to
a celestial apparition, “You are the Archangel Gabriel!”
“Hermann de Gondriac, your humble servant, mademoiselle.”
She stared at him through the big tears that hung like dew-drops from
her lashes, her soft, large glance modest, yet unabashed as if it were
gazing on a picture. The knighthood in Hermann recognized the maidenhood
of that fearless gaze and did it reverence, but he could not quench the
glowing admiration of his own. How liquid and pure they were, those
black stars with which she stared at him, those soul-lit eyes that met
his without dismay, too innocent to quail beneath their burning light!
Why should they quail? Were they not looking at a vision, a dream
transmuted into substance? This was the young chief whom she had
pictured to herself so often, whose lineage and prowess were the pride
of all the people. Only how much grander the reality was than anything
she had fancied! What a martial air he wore in his gold-embroidered
uniform, with his spurs and clanging sword and plumed helmet, the stars
upon his breast—every inch a warrior and a knight!
“You have hurt yourself, mademoiselle; you are in pain,” said Hermann.
“Can I send to the castle for assistance for you?”
“Thank you, monseigneur; I have not hurt myself.”
“Yet you were crying?”
“It was not with pain.” This time Alba dropped her lids and blushed.
“Forgive me; I did not mean to intrude upon you.” Alba stood looking
down like a guilty child, her cheeks aflame, her lips quivering with the
sudden conflict between fear and shame, and a strange emotion that
thrilled her like sweet music. “Who is she?” thought Hermann. He
remembered, years ago, a child whom his father raved about, wondering
how a plebeian stem could have put forth so fair a flower. Could this be
she? The _curé_ had told him of the girl’s rare beauty as a sad and
anxious burden on his mind, and of the mother’s being ill and in need of
generous wine, and he had ordered the best in his cellar to be sent to
her. Half unconsciously, as when we try to catch some forgotten air by
humming it under our breath, he murmured, “Alba....”
She looked up with a start, and then they both smiled.
“How did you guess I was Alba?” she said, her shyness gone in an
instant.
“I did not guess, I remembered.”
“How wonderful! I should never have remembered you, monseigneur.”
“That is not surprising. I am changed since you saw me.”
“And so am I, am I not?”
“Yes, more changed than I could have believed.”
“Ah?” Did he mean for the better or the worse? The man read the question
in her eyes and answered it:
“You are far more beautiful than I expected.”
“Beautiful!” she repeated, and her face lighted up.
“I was frightened when I saw you; I took you for a fairy princess,” said
Hermann, yielding to the irresistible temptation of pleasing her.
Alba’s face clouded over. “Now I know you are laughing at me,
monseigneur; you don’t believe in fairies, and you know very well I’m
not a bit like a princess.”
“I have seen many a one who would have given a great deal to be like
you,” said Hermann.
“Like me! I thought princesses were all so happy!”
Hermann smiled. “Sometimes they have hearts,” he said.
“Sometimes! And does that make them unhappy?”
He turned to walk under the trees, tacitly inviting her to do the same.
“It endows them with the power of loving,” he answered absently.
“But I thought....” She hesitated; it was difficult to put the thought
into the right words.
“You thought that love always led to happiness?” said Hermann, finishing
the sentence for her, while he looked at her with a curious glance. Why
had she come to cry in this lonely place?
“I don’t know what it leads to. I shall never know,” said Alba very
gravely.
M. le Comte smiled. “Tell me, Alba, why were you crying so bitterly just
now?”
She turned away her head and made no answer.
“Tell me, sweet Alba,” persisted the young man; “perhaps I can help you
if you are in trouble. Trust me with your secret. As I am a soldier and
a gentleman, I will defend you if I can. Tell me, is there some one you
care for who does not know it?”
She shook her head. “It is not I who care.... I wish I could, but I have
tried my best and I _cannot_ love him!” The tears welled up again and
were flowing freely.
“Who is forcing you to love him? Tell me his name and I will protect you
from him. I swear to you I will!” And Hermann, with a soldier’s
instinctive gesture, put his hand to his sword, while his eye kindled
with chivalrous anger. Alba thought him the ideal of a noble knight, as
she looked at him, terrified and enchanted.
“He is not forcing me, monseigneur,” she said, “and you can do nothing
to help me. I have promised to marry, and I must keep my word.”
“You shall not, by heaven, if it makes you wretched! He is a cowardly
dog who would hold you to your word against your will,” protested the
count hotly.
“He is not forcing me; but I have promised,” repeated Alba.
“And you cannot love him?”
“No! and I have tried so hard.... But mother says that when I am his
wife it will be different....”
“Yes, it will be worse, a thousand times worse! Alba, tell me this man’s
name; trust me with your secret,” said Hermann, changing his angry tone
to one of soft persuasion.
“I dare not,” said Alba in a frightened whisper; “you would go and kill
him.” The great, swart eyes were looking up at him, full of trust and
admiration.
“Kill him, child! Do you think me so terribly wicked? Do I look like a
murderer?”
“It would not be murder in you. You are a warrior; you don’t think it
wrong to kill men. That is what warriors are for; but I should not like
you to kill poor Marcel.”
“Marcel!... Marcel! I seem to know that name,” said the count, musing.
“Has he no other?”
“Yes, Marcel Caboff,” replied Alba in a confidential tone; “but you must
not hurt him, monseigneur. Oh! I wish I had not told you.”
Hermann started and muttered something between his teeth which she did
not hear, but his look frightened her.
“Marcel Caboff! the fellow whom my father ransomed at the risk of his
own life!” said the count. “And he would force you into marrying him! By
heaven! he shan’t. I will foil him there.”
“O monseigneur, monseigneur! you will not kill him,” pleaded Alba,
clasping her hands and appealing to the murderer with a scared face. “It
is not his fault—it is not indeed, monseigneur!”
“I don’t mean to kill him; I would not touch a hair of his head,” said
Hermann. “But why do you say it is not his fault? Does he not love you?
Does he not want you to marry him?”
“He does, oh! so dreadfully. But I should not mind that. It is mother
whom I have promised. It is to please her that I must marry him,” said
Alba, and her breast heaved with big sobs, and all the floods were let
loose again.
Hermann longed to draw her to his breast and kiss away the tears—she was
such a child in spite of her sixteen summers and their full-blossomed
beauty! But he checked the impulse. There is no majesty so imposing as
the majesty of childhood. “Alba,” he said, “I will save you from Marcel
Caboff without hurting him or any one. You shall not marry him, unless
you come to wish it yourself. Are you sure that if he gave you up you
would not change your mind and wish him back again?” This was Hermann’s
estimate of woman’s nature; true, his experience had been gathered among
types as different from the one before him as the flowers of a hot-house
are from the primrose of the woods.
“I should never wish him to come back; I could never love him,” said
Alba—“never, never, never.”
“Then I swear to you on my sword you shall not marry him!” said the
count impetuously. “Now tell me, Alba,” he resumed, seeing that she did
not speak, “is there not some one you would like to marry better than
this fellow Caboff? Tell me the truth. If you had a brother, you would
not mind telling him. Try and fancy I am your brother.”
Fancy him her brother! Alba’s fancy had taken many an aerial flight, but
never such a one as this.
“Who is he? What is his name?” said Hermann in a whisper, bending closer
to her.
But she shook her head. “There is no one, monseigneur.”
“Oh! I don’t believe that; you are afraid to trust me. There is surely
some one else who wants to marry you?”
“No one, monseigneur, but Marcel.”
“Alba, look at me!” She turned and looked at him like a docile child.
“Have you never seen any one whom you could love or whose heart you
would care to win?” He was gazing deep down into the two dark pools of
light, as if he thought to see into her soul through them. She did not
shrink from the searching glance, but dwelt in it for one long moment;
then, as if the flame in Hermann’s eyes leaped out and flashed upon her
with too intense a radiance, revealing the spring of some sweet mystery
in her heart and his, the white lids quivered and dropped, and a deep
blush rose to Alba’s face. They were alone. The voices of the wood were
hushed; the dead leaves ceased to rustle at their feet; the zephyrs
paused in the branches overhead; the silence grew and deepened, filling
the solitude with an overpowering presence, till each seemed to hear the
beating of the other’s heart. Suddenly the sound of a horn, followed by
a noise of wheels crushing the gravel in the distance, broke the spell
and admonished Hermann that he must be gone. He lifted Alba’s hand to
his lips, and without a word of farewell turned from her and struck
across the park towards the castle.
Alba watched him out of sight, and then turned and wended homewards. Her
heart beat with wild throbs of joy; the spirit that had been dead within
her all these miserable months woke up, quickened to a new birth, and
overflowed in song. The flute-like voice trilled out over the lonesome
moor like the carol of a bird let loose; but as she drew near the
confines of the heath the Fortress came in sight and checked her song.
Was it so certain that Hermann could set her free? and how? What would
her mother think of it? how of this wonderful meeting and monseigneur’s
promise? Alba slackened her steps and took to pondering. A moment ago
she was impatient to pour into Virginie’s ear the story of the
interview, to repeat every word Hermann had said, to convey, as far as
it was possible, the impression he had made upon her, to describe his
manly beauty, his warlike aspect, his gentle courtesy, the incomparable
sweetness of his voice, the chivalrous kindness of his manner, never
doubting but that Virginie would sympathize in this new delight, as she
had done in every little joy that had gladdened her child’s young life.
But suddenly a change came over Alba—something vague, and undefined; a
sense of doubt, of warning, of intangible fear. She had done nothing
wrong, and yet the still, small voice was whispering inaudible reproach
as if she had. Could Virginie be angry with her for speaking to
monseigneur? How could she have avoided it, how refuse to answer his
persistent questions, so kindly and so courteously put? He had entreated
her to trust him! Alba stood amidst the breezy waves of heather, and
recalled him as he bent near her and lowered his voice and bade her look
at him. How he had seemed to read her through and through! “Have you
never seen any one whose heart you would care to win?” She murmured the
words softly to herself, and the sound of them was like the echo of his
voice, and called up the hot blush to her cheeks again. There was
nothing wrong in monseigneur’s asking her the question. Why, then, did
she feel afraid to tell her mother of it? Musing for a moment on this
mystery, Alba remembered how he had said: “Try and fancy I am your
brother.” Virginie could not be angry at that, surely. “I will tell her
that, and say nothing about the other,” muttered Alba to herself; and,
satisfied that this was a safe way out of the difficulty, she walked on
briskly till she was close upon the confines of the moor. Then the sound
of a carriage coming down the road made her stop till it should pass. It
was an open calêche preceded by outriders. Alba recognized the occupant
at once, even before his hand was raised in courtly salutation as he
flashed by. Her heart beat fast, and sent the blood to her cheeks and
brow, dying them crimson.
“Perhaps I had better say nothing at all to petite mère,” was her
reflection as she crossed the road and began to climb the cliff. “He
told me to trust him; perhaps he would be angry if I spoke until he bade
me.” And so it was decreed. The tyrant had stepped in, and at his first
whispered prompting the discipline of a life gave way.
It was not many days after this wonderful morning when an event occurred
which threw all the sweet romance of life into the shade, and made Alba
forget her own cares and hopes in concern for the great sorrow of
another. M. le Marquis was dead. He had died, not actually on the field,
but of a wound received in battle. The young lord’s grief was like a
madness, they said. Those about him said that in the first frenzy of
despair he had called on Marcel Caboff and cursed him as the murderer of
his father. Whether this was true or not, Gondriac believed it, and
bitter words were spoken against the widow’s son in all the country
round. Bitter words are like the wind; they fly, and have a faculty for
reaching those whose aching nerves most dread their sting. The widow
heard what was said of her son and felt it keenly; it was cruel, yet it
was just; it was a hard price to pay for Marcel’s safety, but she could
not reckon it too high. If only she might pay it alone! They are all
alike, these mothers. Mme. Caboff was a vain, hard woman, but the mother
in her was all soft and generous and beautiful. She came to Virginie for
sympathy—not for herself, but for Marcel. It was her doing, M. le
Marquis’ death, not his. Why would not people visit her sin upon
herself, and not upon her boy? But Virginie and Alba would be kind; they
had always said that Marcel was no coward. Virginie gave the poor woman
what comfort she could; but Alba was not there. She could not bear the
sight of Marcel’s mother; for the thought of Marcel was now unendurable
to her. It might be unjust, and yet it was true to say that he was the
murderer of M. le Marquis, of Hermann’s father. The news had thrown her
into such a paroxysm of distress that Virginie was terrified, not
holding the key to it. It was right that she should be sorry, and
natural that she should be shocked, but this agony of grief was
unaccountable. Virginie took her in her arms, and soothed her with
caresses and endearing words, and then bade her go and rest awhile. But
Alba, as if instinct warned her of the coming visit, hastened out of the
house, and fled across the moor until she was safe in the shelter of the
park, and then she flung herself down on the moss-grown trunk that had a
memory of its own, and buried her face in the primroses and cried her
heart out in pity for Hermann.
After this it was impossible to mention Marcel Caboff’s name in her
presence. “I loathe the very thought of him, mother! I would rather die
than marry him!” she said; and Virginie felt that Providence was against
her, and surrendered. Marcel took back his gifts, and quarrelled with
his mother, and went away from Gondriac. People said it was shame and
remorse that drove him forth; but Alba knew this was not true, and, now
that he had set her free, she pitied him.
* * * * *
M. le Marquis was borne to the grave amidst such honors as the proudest
Crusader of his name might have envied. It was with the jubilant pomp of
a coronation rather than the mournful pageant of a burial that they laid
him to rest. For his people would have it that he was a martyr; he had
gone out to die of his own free will, sacrificing himself out of
gratitude to the dead and charity to the living. The population flocked
in from thirty miles round to attend the funeral. Five hundred men
followed the crimson-draped car with palms and laurel branches; children
clad in white bore crimson banners that fluttered in the breeze, while
their voices rose in hymns of victory, giving glory to God and the
Christian soldier; the voices of the multitude made response in chorus,
and the waves, breaking in low thunder against the rocks, sounded their
everlasting _amens_ as the procession wound its way by the sea-shore to
the cemetery.
And now Hermann de Gondriac was alone, the head of an ancient house,
wealthy and young, but as poor in that which makes life rich as the
poorest of his peasantry. If he could but have girded on his sword, and,
escaping from solitude, have drowned his grief in the excitement of the
camp! Spring came, and the fields were carpeted with wild flowers, and
the woods were full of music. But Hermann was seldom seen abroad; he
lived indoors, amidst his books, the people said; but, in truth, the
young lord’s chief companions were his thoughts, angry, rebellious
thoughts, that made him chafe most bitterly against his forced inaction.
The park was vast as a forest, and he never went beyond it. Often, in
his moody walks, he strayed to that spot close upon the moor where he
had first seen Alba lying upon the mossy trunk. The charm of her beauty
and her daisy-like simplicity had wrought upon his heart more deeply
than he was aware. For days after that meeting she had been ever in his
thoughts. He said that he was thinking only of how he might rescue her
from a cruel fate; no doubt it was to help him to this issue that he
returned to the spot where she had stood, and conjured up her image,
till the nymph-like figure with the dark eyes and witching smile seemed
to float visibly before him, and listened for her voice until he thought
he heard it in the sighing of the wind.
Then came the thunderbolt of his father’s death, and Alba and all the
world were forgotten. But grief cannot hold its sway in human souls
beyond a given time. As the days go by they bear away its sting upon
their wings, that touch the bleeding places with a balm. Hermann was
young, and as the weeks passed youth vindicated itself, and rebelled
against the stagnant, lonely life, and longed for action and for the
sweet companionship of kindred youth. If he could not fight, he could at
least love; but who was there at Gondriac to love? The merry comrades of
the bivouac were out of call, and when he returned to the midst of them
he would find his place filled up; others would have come and gone
again, and risen in command and won place and distinction, while he was
out of sight, a prisoner to a stiff arm, as good as a dead man. He hated
himself with bitter vexation. One morning he betook himself in one of
these savage moods to wander in the park, and, not heeding which way he
went, strayed to that lonely walk under the shadow of the old trees near
the moor. Some one, meanwhile, was watching him, crouched timidly behind
a furze-bush, admiring his quick, military stride, thinking how grand
and lion-like was that angry toss of the head which every now and then
relieved his bitter thoughts.
The air was fresh, and yet warm with that delicious warmth of some
spring days that come like heralds of the summer, gathering up all the
sweets of earth into one fragrant breath, wooing us with soft, furry
zephyrs, and the scent of opening blossoms, and the melody of young
birds learning to sing. Alba had been tempted across the heath to the
park, where the trees had put out their bright green foliage that looked
so lovely sparkling in the sunlight. Perhaps, too, though she did not
own it, there was a lurking hope in her heart that she might catch a
glimpse of Hermann in the distance. If so, she was not disappointed.
There he was, walking under the pine-trees, but, happily, with his back
to the heath, so that he did not see her! She dipped quickly behind a
furze-bush, and disappeared from view just as he turned, and, coming
through the trees at an angle, stepped out on the pathway. A nightingale
began to sing in the distant copse; but Alba, as she cowered behind her
bush, thought the crystal trills and the loud call-note less musical
than the sound of Hermann’s foot-fall crushing the gravel close to her
hiding-place—so close she almost feared he would note the shadow of her
pink skirt upon the grass, or mayhap overhear the palpitation of her
heart. But presently the foot-falls died away, and the nightingale and
the zephyrs had it all to themselves again. She waited some minutes—an
hour it seemed to her—before she ventured to look up; but at last she
did, and there, within a few paces, straight before her, stood Hermann.
He had left the pathway and taken to the noiseless grass under the
trees.
“Alba!”
There was a ring of joy in the greeting, as the young lord came forward,
holding out his hand.
“Why have you never come? I have been here again and again in hopes of
seeing you!”
He was a true knight and meant no harm; but in his joy at seeing the
sunbeam on his path he forgot that he had no right to be so glad or to
let Alba see it.
“I did not forget my promise,” he said, leading her into the park and
turning to walk by her side; “but I learned soon after that there was no
need for me to interfere. Caboff left the place, they told me.”
“Yes, monseigneur, people said” ... she hesitated. “They were all so
sorry for you, and Marcel could not bear it, because they hated him—poor
Marcel! It was not his fault; he never was a coward.”
“You are sorry now that he is gone! Perhaps he will come back? No doubt
he will, if you ask him.”
“I will never ask him; but I am sorry for him,” she replied, and then,
looking up at Hermann with those soul-lit eyes that had a language of
their own like music, she added timidly: “But I was more sorry for you,
monseigneur.”
“Alba!” He took her hand and kissed it. It was very sweet to be so near
him, Alba thought. They walked on together, hand in hand, without
speaking for a while. The grass was soft beneath their feet, and the
trembling sunbeams stole through the trees and touched their faces with
golden shadows, thrilling and pure and full of gladness, as the touch of
nature is when it stirs the chords of young vibrating hearts. “If I
could but comfort him!” she was thinking, till the thought grew so loud
within her she feared he would overhear it. But we are deaf to those
voices that lie “upon the other side of silence.” Hermann, as he held
the warm, soft hand within his own, was wondering how it came to pass
that yonder on the barren cliffs a flower so rare and delicate had
grown, and been trained to so much grace and ease by a woman who was
called Mère Virginie. Then he remembered his father’s words about the
royal flower on the plebeian stem, and, thinking of him, he sighed. Alba
looked up quickly, offering all her soul’s wealth of sympathy through
her eyes, and Hermann bethought to himself how delightful it would be to
have this sympathetic creature always at his side. But he thought also
of the emperor and the world, and wondered what these potentates would
say were he to pick up the jewel from the dust and set it in his
coronet. Bonaparte had a way of choosing mates for his officers as he
chose sites for his battles, and ordering them to marry as he ordered
them to charge; but Hermann felt he was not one to be cowed by the
imperial match-maker, and there was something rather inspiriting in the
idea of defying the despot if he attempted to meddle with his life
outside the camp. Why should he not gather this wild flower, if he
chose? Had his father lived, it would have been different; but now he
was free, there was no one to whom he need sacrifice the promptings of
his heart, be they wise or foolish. The world and the court might laugh;
it was not from amongst them he cared to take a wife; he wanted to be
loved, to be wed for his own sake, and not for the good things he had to
offer. But did Alba love him?
“Alba,” he said, “now that Marcel is gone, who is to be the favored
suitor?”
“No one, monseigneur; I told you so before.”
“But I did not believe you. I don’t believe you now.”
“Why should I tell you a lie? I never told one in my life.”
She spoke without anger or offended pride; but Hermann saw that he had
pained her, and there was a purity of truth about her that rebuked his
denial, though it was spoken in jest.
“Forgive me, dearest! I wanted to hear you say it again. I wanted to be
certain there was no one else you cared for.”
He bent toward her caressingly, and, looking under her hood, saw two big
tears slowly trickling down her cheeks.
“Alba....”
What an idle boast seems this about the freedom of the human will! Our
most pregnant words, our weightiest actions, spring far oftener from
impulse than from deliberate resolve; a touch, light as the feather
floating on the summer breeze, will stir the fountain and make its
waters overflow; a word spoken when we had meant to be silent will
change the current of our life, and push us to a step that can never be
retraced. An hour ago Hermann de Gondriac no more dreamed of offering
his hand to Alba than he did of burying himself in the Grande
Chartreuse; but those two tears were the drops that made the fountain
overflow, and, in the sudden flood of tenderness, pride, prudence,
everything but love was swept away.
“Alba,” he whispered, clasping her in his arms and gathering her to his
breast—“Alba, I love you. Will you come to me and be my wife?”
Was she awake, with the solid earth under her feet, or were those
whispered words the music that our fancy makes in dreams? But the music
did not die away, nor did the clasping arm melt from her, as do the
embraces of those loved ones who visit us in sleep.
“You love me!” she said, looking up into his face with her large, warm
glance, pure and trusting as a child’s—“you love me!” And the sunbeams
went on singing it in shadow music on the grass, and the cuckoo called
it through the woods, and the trees in their murmurous song repeated it,
and the clouds, as they sailed over the zenith, traced it in silver
lines upon the sky—“You love me!”
TO BE CONCLUDED NEXT MONTH.
MAGDALEN AT THE TOMB.
Deep sombre clouds roll up to shroud the night,
For in the silence of a guarded tomb
Rests the rich promise of a Virgin’s womb;
And hearts that hoped are shrunk as buds by blight,
Till, like a soul which gains from Heaven delight,
The radiant morn dispels the woeful gloom,
And casts o’er hungry Earth a new perfume.
A white-robed Angel, pinion-fring’d with light,
Beside the empty grave bade one rejoice,
Who, coming from the cross, outran the morn,
In loving haste the body to adorn;
But found it gone—and wept. Oh! hasty choice
Of tears, for one who was the first to turn
Her eyes upon her Lord, and hear his voice.
FROM THE MEDEA OF EURIPIDES.
_'A free translation._
BY AUBREY DE VERE.
[_The Chorus dissuades Medea from slaying her children._]
STROPHE I.
O race renowned in ancient story,
Race from the blest Immortals sprung,
Athenians, ye who all day long,
Feeding on wisdom and on glory,
Walk lightly through that climate fine,
Where, as the fabling poets say,
The yellow-tressed Harmonia
Brought forth the Muses nine;
That sage and virgin choir whose shell
You hear so often, love so well:—
ANTISTROPHE I.
To you white Aphrodite sends
Her Loves, to make you wise and kind;
For they are Wisdom’s choicest friends;
And here they say the goddess wreathed
Her fragrant locks with rosy twine;
And here they sing that, passion-fraught
And o’er Cephisus’ stream reclined,
Along the flowery vale she breathed
Sweet airs from that cold current caught
Upon her balmy lips divine.
STROPHE II.
Medea, dream not that the city
Of sacred founts and streams can e’er
Give harbor to a wretch like thee:
Pity them, ruthless mother, pity!
See but thy guilt as others see;
By all things great and good, forbear!
We clasp thy knees, and bid thee spare
The babes that laughed upon thy knee!
ANTISTROPHE II.
They are thy children! They will call
Aloud, aloud upon their mother!
How can’st thou hear that pleading cry?
In vain thou striv’st:—thou can’st not smother
A mother’s love. Thy hand will shake;
Thy heart will bend; thy heart will break,
Thy frenzy melt away and die,
When twining round thy feet they fall
In that despairing agony.
THE STORY OF THE GOTHIC REVIVAL.
When, centuries hence, historians endeavor to delineate the
characteristics of the present century, it is more than probable that
the features that will most strike them will be those of innovation and
change. Progress in every science, rapid advance in material prosperity,
sweeping reforms in laws and governments, political and social changes
not a few, will appear to have pretty well filled up the records of the
busy century that is fast drawing to its close. To those, however, who
look more closely into the minor though oftentimes important details
that contribute in a great measure to influence the character of an age,
it will be evident that, if change and revolution have to a large extent
reigned paramount in this century, neither has it been altogether
wanting in a just recognition of the past, and in a serious revival of
some of the best features of that past.
These thoughts have been suggested by the perusal of Sir Charles
Eastlake’s _History of the Gothic Revival in England_—a work in which is
displayed a thorough knowledge of the subject combined with an agreeable
style and a high artistic taste, which cannot fail to interest even
those whose predilections are for other styles of architecture.
The revival which it describes has not been confined to England; in both
France and Germany progress in Gothic art has made rapid strides during
the last thirty years. In the production, indeed, on the history and
theory of the pointed style France is perhaps in advance of England; but
nowhere else has the revival been so universal and so practical as in
the latter country, nowhere else has it reached a point which could
justify an author in attempting its history. So many Catholic
associations are linked with Gothic architecture, so many fond
recollections of a glorious past are called up by the mere name, that it
is only natural that Catholics should take a special interest in its
revival, should feel justly proud of the large part that some of their
co-religionists have had in that revival, and should refer with feelings
of pleasure to the influence brought to bear upon it by the adoption of
many Catholic doctrines and practices by their Protestant brethren.
American readers cannot be indifferent to the history and fortunes of
edifices where their ancestors prayed in those happy days when unity of
faith prevailed; nor can they fail to take an interest in the history,
which we propose to sketch, of those years during which a handful of
earnest men struggled, and struggled successfully, to revive the glories
of a style that had been rendered for ever illustrious by such names as
Cologne and Chartres, Amiens and Salisbury, Notre Dame and York Minster.
Many were the fair buildings that graced the broad lands of merry
England at the commencement of the reign of Henry VIII.; stately
churches and splendid monasteries adorned her towns and nestled among
her wooded hills and valleys; the one same principle of art had presided
over their structure—happy symbol of the one faith to whose service they
ministered. Before the end of that reign what a transformation had come
over the face of the land! One of the first acts of the Reformation had
been the suppression of the monasteries and confiscation of their
property. Cromwell and his band of impious followers but too faithfully
carried out the orders of their royal master; the venerable and
beauteous piles on which the pious munificence of ages had lavished
their skill and their treasures were soon reduced to bare and crumbling
ruins. Nor did the spoliation end here; the zealous reformers of God’s
church were not slow in condemning as idolatrous the rich and brilliant
decorations and ornaments that filled the cathedrals and churches, and
thus these sacred edifices were shorn of all the costly treasures that
devotion had accumulated to honor the abiding presence of a heavenly
King, in order to fill the coffers of a licentious monarch.
It was not, however, the material ruin and desecration of its finest
buildings that struck the severest blow at Gothic art; it was rather the
loss of that faith which had witnessed its earliest efforts and had
inspired its grandest works. When the cold blast of Protestantism swept
away one after another each Catholic dogma and each Christian belief,
the sources of Gothic inspiration were dried up, its very _raison
d’être_ ceased to exist. Not that the Catholic Church has in any way
adopted one style of architecture as the _only_ fitting one for her use;
she has equally sanctified by her solemn ritual and her sacred
ceremonies the colonnades of the Greek temple, the dome of the Italian
basilica, and the pointed arch of the Gothic cathedral. But this last,
if we may use a comparison, seems somehow more especially her own child;
the others are but children of adoption—wayward children that she has
rescued from pagan parents. She has not watched over them from their
birth, nor seen them grow up under her fostering care to the vigor and
strength of manhood.
It naturally took some time before the spirit of a form of art which was
then the only form could completely disappear from the country; for we
must recollect that in England at the time of the Reformation not only
ecclesiastical but civil and domestic architecture was entirely Gothic.
As there were for several centuries no new churches built—for the
usurped edifices of Catholic days more than sufficed for the needs of
Protestant piety—it was in domestic structures that the spirit of the
style lingered longest in a practical form.
“Even down to the reign of James I. the domestic architecture of
England, as exemplified in the country-houses of the nobility, was
Gothic in spirit, and frequently contained more real elements of a
mediæval character than many which have been built in modern times
by the light of archæological orthodoxy. Inigo Jones himself
required a second visit to Italy before he could thoroughly abandon
the use of the pointed arch. But its days were numbered when in 1633
the first stone was laid for a Roman portico to one of the finest
cathedrals of the middle ages, and Gothic architecture as a
practical art received what was then no doubt supposed to be its
death-blow.”[101]
Footnote 101:
Eastlake, p. 5.
From this period the practice of Gothic art gradually died out. Classic
and Italian architecture, which had received a fresh impulse from the
French Renaissance, rapidly came into fashion. Architects studied no
other style, for the very good reason that the public admired no other.
It was henceforth considered the criterion of good taste to abuse as
barbarous all the productions of mediæval art, and the test of good
Protestantism to look upon them as superstitious and popish. It is
indeed surprising that so many of the wonderful productions of a period
no longer understood or appreciated should have been allowed to come
down to us unaltered by “classical” remodelling. What saved them and at
the same time preserved the spirit of the old art from total extinction
is thus told by Sir C. Eastlake:
“By a strange and fortunate coincidence of events, however, it
happened at this very time, when architects of the period had
learned to despise the buildings of their ancestors, a spirit of
veneration for the past was springing up among a class of men who
may be said to have founded our modern school of antiquaries.
Sometimes, indeed, their researches were not those of a character
from which much advantage can be expected.... But, luckily for
posterity, the attention of others was drawn in a more serviceable
direction. Up to this time no work of any importance had been
published on the architectural antiquities of England. A period had
arrived when it was thought necessary, if only on historical
grounds, that some record of ecclesiastical establishments should be
compiled. The promoters of the scheme were probably little
influenced by the love of Gothic as a style. But an old building was
necessarily a Gothic building, and thus it happened that, in spite
of the prejudices of the age, and probably their own æsthetic
predilections, the antiquaries of the day became the means of
keeping alive some interest in a school of architecture which had
ceased to be practically employed.”[102]
Footnote 102:
_History of the Gothic Revival_, p. 6.
Amongst the earliest names that attained to a certain celebrity by their
researches and writings may be mentioned those of Mr. R. Dodsworth and
Mr. W. Dugdale, joint authors of the _Monasticon Anglicanum_, a work
first published in 1655, and which still retains much interest for the
modern student, as it includes many records and views of buildings which
have long since perished. Another writer whose name deserves mention was
Antony à Wood, born 1611, whose _History of the Antiquities of Oxford_
was a book of considerable importance, connected as it was with a
university where Gothic architecture was so nobly illustrated and where
the traditions of the style lingered long after its true principles were
forgotten.
During the next two hundred years the annals of Gothic art are indeed
meagre; from time to time we have the record of some antiquarian
research, and at rare intervals we hear of some uncouth attempts at
Gothic building remarkable only for the egregious mistakes they display.
Early in the eighteenth century we find the name of a remarkable man
connected with one of these crude attempts at mediæval art—that of the
celebrated Horace Walpole, Earl of Oxford, the author of the first work
of modern fiction whose scene is laid in the middle ages. His labors in
the fields of literature and art were not profound. Eccentricity seemed
the most marked feature of his taste; and, as may be well imagined, his
famous Gothic house, Strawberry Hill, which has remained almost
unaltered to the present day, is a strange monument of what debased art
can achieve. The fact, however, that a man of his position, and enjoying
the reputation he did, could patronize a form of architecture which had
fallen into almost universal contempt could not have been without a
powerful effect on the public mind—an effect which may be traced in the
erection during the next fifty years of a certain number of mansions
throughout the country in that style which Pugin loved so much to call
“Brummagem Gothic.”
Towards the end of the century some useful books on architectural
archæology appeared, such as Carter’s _Specimens of Ancient Sculpture
and Painting_, Hearne’s _Antiquities of Great Britain_, Gough’s
_Sepulchral Monuments_, Halfpenny’s _Gothic Ornaments of the Cathedral
of York_, B. Willis’ _History of Gothic Architecture in England_.
“It was something at least to draw attention to the noble works of
our ancestors, which had long been neglected and despised; to record
with the pencil or with the pen some testimony, however inadequate,
of their goodly form and worthy purpose; to invest with artistic and
historical interest the perishing monuments of an age when art was
pure and genuine.”[103]
Footnote 103:
_History of the Gothic Revival_, p. 71.
When the nineteenth century opens, we find these works already producing
practical fruits; for we see several architects of note, such as Wyat,
Nash, and Smirke, attempting, and not without some success, the erection
of edifices of Gothic design. Nearly always, however, their efforts were
confined to domestic structures for private individuals—a proof how
completely the taste was confined to the upper classes and was still
unappreciated by the general public. If they did not often attempt to
_build_ new churches, unfortunately they did not hesitate to restore and
_improve_ the venerable cathedrals and churches of the past. Wyat in
particular has a heavy burden of responsibility to bear on this score;
for many were the noble buildings that long bore the traces of acts of
vandalism and ignorance associated with his name.
How, indeed, could we expect better things in ecclesiastical
architecture at a time when religion was at so low an ebb in England? As
each generation had passed away the lingering memories of the old faith
and the old ritual had vanished one by one; the last remnants of
Catholic feelings and practices had disappeared under the influence of
the cold formalism of the Puritans and the colder indifferentism of
those who succeeded them. When we read the following description, given
by Sir C. Eastlake, of a Protestant church and Protestant worship as he
recollected them during the early years of the present century, we
cannot feel surprised that there was a lack of inspiration among church
architects:
“Who does not remember the air of grim respectability which
pervaded, and in some cases even still pervades, the modern town
church of a certain type, with its big bleak portico and
muffin-capped charity-boys? Enter and notice the tall,
neatly-grained witness-boxes in which the faithful are empanelled;
the 'three-decker’ pulpit placed in the centre of the building; the
lumbering gallery which is carried round the three sides of the
interior on iron columns; the wizen-faced pew-opener eager for stray
shillings; the earnest penitent who is inspecting the inside of his
hat; the hassock which no one kneels on; the poor-box which is
always empty. Hear how the clerk drones out the responses for a
congregation too genteel to respond for themselves. Listen to the
complicated discord in which the words of the Psalmist strike the
ear after copious revision by Tate and Brady. Mark the prompt, if
misdirected, zeal with which old ladies insist on testing the
accuracy of the preacher’s memory by turning out the text. Observe
the length and unimpeachable propriety, the overwhelming dulness, of
his sermon.”
Alas! as far as exterior worship was concerned, the Catholic chapels of
this period were in an equally sad condition; but from how different a
cause! Centuries of persecution had not been able to stamp out the
Catholic faith, but penal laws still in force, though not rigorously
carried out, forced it to hide away in back streets and lanes, always
avoiding whatever might attract public notice, lest it might awaken
again the dormant flames of bigotry. Add to this the state of poverty to
which, in many places, the Catholic body was reduced, and we need not
wonder at the desolate aspect of the chapels, if the miserable
structures that oftentimes were used for divine service deserved the
name. _They_ possessed, however, the presence of that God who had not
disdained the poverty of a stable nor the humble offerings of poor
shepherds; in like manner he looked with indulgence on the mean and
scanty ornaments that in these sad times decorated his altars, and on
the cold and desolate walls within which persecution had forced him to
make his dwelling. He was pleased to await the time when happier days
and gentler laws should once again permit his worship to be freely
celebrated with all the glory and pomp of by-gone years. Such days were
rapidly advancing, and Catholics were not slow in availing themselves of
each relaxation of penal statutes, each favorable turn of Protestant
bigotry, to improve their churches and to carry out more fully their
sacred ceremonies—a task of no small difficulty on the part of a
community so ill supplied with the riches of this world, and so long,
from cruel necessity, forced to content themselves with a simplicity
almost akin to that of the early Christians.
The dawn of the revival, which was now at hand, was marked by some
writers of eminence whose theoretical works contributed much to prepare
the way for it. Their writings were distinguished from those of the
earlier antiquarians by a more practical knowledge of building and a
more exact delineation of the details of the edifices they describe. Mr.
J. Britton may be looked upon as a link between the two schools, as he
had some of the characteristics of both. He was the author of numerous
works on the English cathedral and other Gothic edifices, all
illustrated with really artistic drawings. They were, however, more
designed to create a taste for ancient art among the reading public than
to assist the professional architect.
“While Britton was thus enlisting the sympathy of the amateur world
two architects were engaged in preparing a practical and valuable
work for the use of professional students.
“The examples of Gothic architecture which had hitherto been
selected for publication were chiefly those which either served to
illustrate a principle in the history of the style, or possessed
some picturesque attraction in the way of general effect. But
neither of these were of real service to the practical architect,
who required geometrical and carefully-measured drawings of ancient
roofs, doors, and windows to guide him in his designs and to help
him in reviving a style the details of which had been as yet most
imperfectly studied. Pugin’s (father to the celebrated Welby Pugin)
and Wilson’s specimens of Gothic architecture supplied this want. It
was a happy accident which brought these men together, the one
eminently qualified as a draughtsman for the task, the other equally
fitted to undertake its literary labor.”[104]
Footnote 104:
Eastlake, page 88.
The writer whose name next appears on the roll of champions of Gothic
art is one whose memory is enshrined in the hearts of all English
Catholics—Dr. Milner, Vicar-Apostolic of the Midland district, better
known to most people for his holy life, his ardent zeal, and his
controversial power than as a writer on architecture. In this latter
capacity, however, he deserves a foremost place among those who prepared
the way for the great revival which unfortunately he did not live to see
accomplished.
His _Survey of the Antiquities of Winchester_ revealed much erudition
and a thorough appreciation of ancient art; but by far the most
important part of it was the short but now famous essay it contained,
“On the Rise and Progress of the Pointed Arch.” In it the author uses
for the first time the appellation now become so general as applied to
the architecture of the middle ages—viz., _the pointed style_. His next
work was an important _Treatise on the Ecclesiastical Architecture of
England during the Middle Ages_. In this work the author not only proves
himself an antiquary but a man of taste. A work more important still,
and one productive of the most serious results, was a short pamphlet
entitled _A Dissertation on the Modern Style of Altering Ancient
Cathedrals, as Exemplified in the Cathedral of Salisbury_. In it he
protests in vigorous language against the miserable degradation of the
old churches accomplished under the name of restoration; nor does he
spare Wyat, the leading spirit in these unfortunate _improvements_. No
one before the days of Welby Pugin had so enthusiastically entered into
the spirit of the old art, so thoroughly appreciated its beauties, and
so ably defended its principles, not only against its avowed enemies,
but against the ignorance of many of its would-be admirers. So
outspoken, indeed, was Dr. Milner’s language in this pamphlet that it
shocked the staid members of the Society of Antiquaries, before whom it
was to have been read, and was in consequence withdrawn—not, however, to
lie mouldering in its author’s desk, but soon to appear in print, and to
work even more important effects on the future than its author ever
contemplated.
Dr. Milner died in 1826, the very year that W. Pugin, then a youth of
fourteen, was displaying one of the earliest proofs of his taste for
mediæval art in devoting long hours to the studying and sketching of the
old castle of Rochester.
How little did the gray-haired bishop dream of the wonderful revolution
this youth, as yet unknown to fame, was to accomplish within a few
years. Little did he think, when he saw arising the humble walls of his
Gothic chapel at Winchester, that the day was not far distant when a
Catholic architect would revive throughout the land the glories of that
style which Dr. Milner had so well defended in days when it was
neglected and abused.
One more name of importance must be mentioned before we attempt to trace
the outline of Pugin’s career; we again quote from Sir C. Eastlake:
“Midway in point of time between Milner and Pugin, and possessing,
though in a minor degree, the talents of both, Thomas Rickman, as an
architect and author, plays no unimportant part in the history of
the revival. His churches are perhaps the first of that period in
which the details of old work were reproduced with accuracy of form.
Up to this time antiquaries had studied the principles of mediæval
architecture, and to some extent classified the phases through which
it had passed, while architects had indirectly profited by their
labors when endeavoring to imitate in practice the work of the
middle ages. Rickman united both functions in one man.... In the
science of his art he will not, of course, bear comparison with
Willis. In the analyzing of its general principles he must yield to
Whewell. In capability of invention he ranks, even for his time, far
below Pugin; but it may be fairly questioned whether, if we consider
him in the twofold capacity of a theorist and a practitioner, he did
not do greater service than either his learned contemporaries or his
enthusiastic disciple.”[105]
Footnote 105:
Page 122.
Had Rickman done no more than write his _Attempt to discriminate the
Styles of English Architecture_, he would have been worthy of a high
place among those who contributed to revive Gothic art. He supplied by
this book a want long felt by architects and by those interested in
architecture. Of learned, or rather unlearned, dissertations on the
origin of the pointed style there were plenty, but of those short and
useful volumes to which have been aptly given the name of _hand-books_
there was a complete absence. Rickman’s book gave in a small compass a
very complete history of the various phases of Gothic architecture in
England; the main divisions into periods which he adopted being so good
that they have remained unaltered to the present day. The work was
illustrated with very fair engravings, and no architect who had perused
it could any longer plead ignorance as an excuse for the monstrosities
that were so often produced in those days under the name of Gothic.
His work on French Gothic, the fruits of a journey through the North of
France with his friend Whewell, afterwards the famous Master of Trinity,
is full of interest and contains an elaborate and carefully-drawn
comparison between the mediæval remains in France and England.
With Rickman ends that gloomy night which had so long, with faint
flashes of light now and again, enveloped the science and art of Gothic
architecture; a dawn as sudden as it is bright foretells a day of more
than ordinary brilliancy.
Ignorance and prejudice, which had so long reigned supreme in England in
all matters concerning true religion and true art, were fast giving way
before the researches of conscientious science, and as a result we see
two great movements marking the first quarter of the present century—the
Tractarian movement and the Gothic revival; the one religious, the other
artistic. Of the first it does not enter into our plan to speak here,
though it would no doubt afford a highly interesting study to trace out
the mutual influence these two movements have exercised on one another;
for it is impossible not to perceive that, on the one hand, the inquiry
into the principles and form of ancient art led naturally on to an
inquiry into the ancient formularies and practices of the faith which
had inspired that art; and that, on the other hand, the revival of the
long-forgotten ritual of the old faith led directly to the restoration
and refurnishing of those temples that were so intimately connected with
it. Before entering on the life of Pugin, which constitutes the
culminating point in the great artistic revival we are attempting to
sketch, we cannot do better than quote the opening words of the chapter
in which Sir C. Eastlake traces his career, as it clearly proves the
importance he attaches to the labors of this great man:
“However much we may be indebted to those ancient supporters of
pointed architecture who, faithfully adhering to its traditions at a
period when the style fell into general disuse, strove earnestly, in
some instances ably, to preserve its character; whatever value in
the cause we may attach to the crude and isolated examples of Gothic
work which belong to the eighteenth century, or to the efforts of
such men as Nash and Wyat, there can be but little doubt that the
revival of mediæval design received its chief impulse from the
energy and talents of one architect whose name marks an epoch in the
history of British art, which while art exists at all can never be
forgotten.”[106]
Footnote 106:
P. 145.
Augustus Welby Pugin, the architect to whom these words apply, was born
in London on March 1, 1812. We have already spoken of his father, and of
the important place his illustrated works occupy in the history we are
tracing; he was a French refugee and a Protestant, and his son was
brought up a Protestant. Although the elder Pugin had little
professional practice, he seems to have attained to a position of ease
by the sale of his works and the instruction of pupils. His son was
educated at Christ’s Hospital, on leaving which he entered his father’s
office, having from his earliest years shown a great taste for drawing.
He soon mastered the first elements of his profession and became of much
use to his father, already showing that earnestness in all he undertook
that was so characteristic of him in later years. His taste for mediæval
art received a fresh impulse from a professional tour he made in 1827
with his father through Normandy, which gave him the opportunity of
studying the beauty of Gothic ornament in some of its most splendid
productions.
While still a mere youth his cleverness in designing attracted
attention, and he received a commission from the royal upholsterers to
prepare designs for the new furniture for Windsor Castle, which it was
determined should partake of the character of the building. The drawings
he gave were probably better than what most architects of the day could
have produced, yet in the writings of his after-years he always frankly
pointed out their faults.
A love of variety and a strong taste for roving interrupted for a short
period his architectural studies. He devoted for a time his energies to
scene-painting, and with much success when the subjects were of a
mediæval character. Next we find him carried away by an extraordinary
passion for the sea, and he actually for a certain period commanded a
merchant schooner trading between England and Holland. Having been
wrecked, however, on the Scotch coast, his seafaring ardor was somewhat
cooled, and he returned to the labors of his original profession.
His talents were soon rewarded by increasing practice, many architects
being glad to avail themselves of his wonderful, one might almost say
innate, knowledge of Gothic ornament.
A most serious and important event in Pugin’s life, and one having much
influence on his future career, occurred about this time—his conversion
to the Catholic religion. There can be no doubt that his intense love of
the past and his enthusiastic admiration of the glorious monuments of
the ages of faith strongly biassed his mind towards this determination,
though of course it was not these considerations alone that led him to
take so important a step. His after-life proved how thorough was his
faith and how sincere his piety.
This change of religion affected, in more ways than one, the
professional career of Welby Pugin. From a pecuniary point of view it
probably made little difference to him—as his talents were such as to
insure for him constant work, and he already possessed independent
means. But by this step he sacrificed what was far dearer to him, his
future fame as an architect.
Never was there a more splendid opening for architectural talent than
that very time when Pugin, in the first dawn of his genius, embraced the
Catholic faith. Everything had combined to prepare a revival of Gothic
art. The materials were already collected and awaited but the hand of a
man of genius to make a practical use of them. The ritualistic movement
had awakened the desire to restore the old and to build new churches.
Rich men were ready to give unbounded wealth to further the enterprise.
Had Pugin remained a Protestant, had he preferred fame to conscience, he
might have found an easy road to it by availing himself of an
opportunity so worthy the gifts of one eminently fitted to be a leader
in a movement that combined religion and art. He preferred to return to
the faith that had inspired those mediæval times he so fondly loved, and
to risk his future reputation by offending that feeling which is so
strong in Protestant England against converts. The Catholic who for
centuries has kept his faith they can tolerate, nay, admire; but one who
was their own and deserts them they find it hard to forgive.
Not only did Pugin, in thus affronting public opinion, bias the judgment
of his contemporaries and of future critics, but he actually, by
attaching himself to the poorest religious body in England, deprived
himself of the means of adequately displaying his power.
During the next years that composed the short career of Pugin we find
him working with an activity and enthusiasm that showed how all labor
connected with his art was to him a labor of love. His pen and his
pencil were alike devoted to its service. In 1836 he published his
celebrated _Contrasts_—a work in which he compares with keen irony and
scathing satire the buildings and institutions of the past with those of
the present; in the sketches which illustrate it he delineates with
wonderful humor all the weak points of modern architecture. His style of
writing was flowing and easy, always highly picturesque and
enthusiastic, but sometimes slightly inclined to exaggeration and
eccentricity. It was this that made it so difficult for him to write
without giving offence sometimes even to his own friends and
co-religionists.
His next work was his _True Principles of Pointed Architecture_. It is
but a short volume, consisting of two lectures delivered at St. Mary’s
College, Oscott, but it forms a most complete elementary treatise on
Gothic art, founded on the two great principles enunciated in its first
page: “1. That there should be no features about a building that are not
necessary for convenience, construction, or propriety; 2. That all
ornament should consist of enrichment of the essential construction of
the building.”
It is clearly shown that in these principles lies the true secret of all
correct pointed construction and ornament, and that any analysis of
Gothic work undertaken without taking them into consideration must
inevitably lead to erroneous conclusions.
The truth of these principles is now universally admitted in works that
treat of pointed architecture, but to Pugin belongs the honor of having
first laid them down and having shown how important they were to the
right understanding of the lessons handed down to us in the wondrous
structures of the past.
His next work was _An Apology for the Revival of Christian Architecture
in England_. It is a brilliant defence of Gothic art, intended specially
to prove that it is still “the only correct expression of the faith, the
wants, and climate of our country.”
As a specimen of Pugin’s amusing style when describing the incongruous
productions of modern architecture, we cannot do better than quote the
description of a nineteenth-century cemetery contained in this book; we
only wish we could reproduce the delightful picture that accompanies the
text:
“There are a superabundance of inverted torches, cinerary urns, and
pagan emblems, tastefully disposed by the side of neat gravel walks,
among cypress-trees and weeping willows.
“The central chapel is generally built on such a comprehensive plan
as to be adapted (in the modern sense) for each sect and
denomination in turn as they may require its temporary use; but the
entrance gate-way is usually selected for the grand display of the
company’s enterprise and taste, as being well calculated from its
position to induce persons to patronize the undertaking by the
purchase of shares or graves. This is generally Egyptian, probably
from some associations between the word catacombs, which occurs in
the prospectus of the company, and the discoveries of Belzoni on the
banks of the Nile; and nearly opposite the Green Man and Dog
public-house, in the centre of a dead-wall (which serves as a cheap
medium of advertisement for blacking and shaving-strop
manufacturers), a cement caricature of the entrance to an Egyptian
temple, two and a half inches to the foot, is erected, with
convenient lodges for the policeman and his wife, and a neat pair of
cast-iron hieroglyphical gates which would puzzle the most learned
to decipher; while, to prevent any mistake, some such words as 'New
Economical Compressed Grave Company’s Cemetery’ are inscribed in
_Grecian_ capitals along the frieze, interspersed with hawk-headed
divinities, and surmounted by a huge representation of the winged
Osiris bearing a gas-lamp.”[107]
Footnote 107:
_An Apology for the Revival of Christian Architecture_, p. 12.
In 1844 he published his next important work, _The Glossary of
Ecclesiastical Ornament and Costume_. It is a thoroughly practical book,
designed to supply correct descriptions and patterns for the use of
those who manufacture the various ornaments employed in the ritual of
the church, which were at that time of the most incorrect forms and in
the worst taste.
His other literary productions were numerous but of less importance,
being for the most part of a controversial character, and we pass on to
examine, as far as our limited space permits, Pugin’s career and
influence as a practical architect. Catholic emancipation, in freeing
the church from the galling restraints to which she had been so long
subjected in England and Ireland, opened for her a new era of liberty
and prosperity in those countries. True, she did not regain that wealth
which had been sacrilegiously torn from her at the Reformation; still,
she was enabled, through the generosity of her children, to expend large
sums in the construction of churches somewhat more worthy of the august
mysteries she celebrates than those poor edifices she had been so long
forced to use.
As a Catholic of undoubted talents, Pugin soon found that his
architectural capacity was appreciated by his co-religionists, who
entrusted to him the construction of all their principal churches. Few
among them, indeed, were, by their size or importance, calculated to
give full scope to Pugin’s genius; nevertheless, to the smallest
building he always devoted long study and attention and a scrupulous
fidelity to the principles he had laid down in his writings, although in
many cases it was extremely difficult to do so, owing to the small
amount of money that could be expended on the work. Among the many
churches he designed we may mention, as the best specimens of his skill,
the cathedrals of Birmingham, Southwark, Nottingham, Killarney, and
Enniscorthy; the churches of St. Wilfrid’s, Manchester; St. Marie’s,
Liverpool; St. Giles’, Cheadle; St. Bernard’s Abbey, Leicestershire; St.
Augustine’s, Ramsgate.
In all these churches the exterior beauty has been more or less
sacrificed to interior ornament and decoration, Pugin preferring to
devote all the money possible to beautifying those parts which were most
closely connected with the presence of his God, when the funds did not
permit him to adorn fully both exterior and interior. This has often led
his critics to misjudge his capacity as an architect; even Sir C.
Eastlake falls into this error, and, though a sincere admirer of Pugin,
does not hesitate to assert that “of constructive science he probably
knew but little.” That his greatest power lay in ornament and detail may
no doubt be true; still, we are fully convinced that had he found the
same opportunities of displaying his knowledge as a scientific
architect, and had he not been trammelled by the constant necessity to
keep down expense, he would have amply proved to the world how unfounded
were these accusations.
In comparing Pugin with the architects who have succeeded him people
often forget the difficulties _he_ had to contend against. He had to
revive and educate the whole series of artisans whose combined labors
are required to construct the smallest Gothic edifice—sculptors,
carvers, iron-workers, painters, and decorators. When he began his
career as a practical architect he had to design every smallest item
required for his buildings, and, what is more, often personally to
superintend their manufacture; a lock, a screw, a nail of correct
pointed design were then things that had no existence.
If we take up now a book of that period, we can scarcely believe that
ignorance and absurdity could go so far as to call Gothic the designs we
see there depicted under that appellation. It is solely to Pugin’s
untiring energy, to his conscientious love of his art, and to his
wonderful fertility of invention—gifts which even his adversaries cannot
deny him—that we owe the change that has been wrought in a few years.
The important progress in metal work, which now places at the disposal
of the architect and builder material and designs almost equalling the
best products of the middle ages, is completely due to him; in this, as
in another long-lost branch of art—glass-staining—he found in Mr. J.
Hardman, of Birmingham, one thoroughly competent by his practical
knowledge and refined taste to assist him in carrying out his reforms.
How many other branches of industry, connected directly or indirectly
with mediæval art, could be mentioned in which the influence of Pugin’s
labors can be traced!—the production of encaustic tiles, silk
embroidery, wood-carving, the manufacture of church plate and furniture
of all kinds, even household articles and jewelry. Sir C. Eastlake truly
remarks: “Those establishments which are known in London as
ecclesiastical warehouses owe their existence and their source of profit
to Pugin’s exertions in the cause of rubrical propriety.”[108] He might
have added with equal truth that the many beautiful objects we admire in
them owe their existence to the principles he established by his
writings and to the endless models which his unrivalled facility of
invention placed at the disposal of the public.
Footnote 108:
_History of the Gothic Revival_, p. 153.
If a proof were wanting of the hold that the revival of which Pugin was
the leading spirit was taking on public opinion, it is the fact that a
Parliamentary committee, in drawing up the terms of the competition for
the plans of the new Houses of Parliament, stipulated that the designs
should be Gothic or Elizabethan. It has often been regretted that Pugin
did not take part in this competition, and his reasons for not doing so
have never been quite satisfactorily explained.
Barry, the architect selected for the new buildings, showed his
appreciation of Pugin’s capabilities and his esteem for his talents by
applying to him for designs for all the important interior decorations
and furniture. The beauty of these parts shows how well suited he was
for the task; many consider them the most perfect parts of the edifice,
the exterior, notwithstanding its real merits, having numerous
faults—some of them, it is true, inherent to the style adopted—Tudor or
perpendicular.
Besides the many churches and other religious edifices which Pugin
designed, he devoted considerable attention to domestic architecture;
and among the best specimens he left may be mentioned Bilton Grange,
Adare Manor, and Scarisbrick Hall, Chirk Castle and Alton Towers; the
last two he only restored and altered. But perhaps his happiest effort
in this style was his own house at Ramsgate, which is, in every detail,
a perfect specimen of a mediæval residence, strongly illustrating how
deeply imbued Pugin was with the spirit and traditions of the past. So
thoroughly Gothic were all his feelings and tastes that we firmly
believe it would have been impossible for him to design a building in
any other style.
With Pugin’s death, which occurred in 1854, we shall terminate this
short sketch of one of the most wonderful revivals of the present age.
We have told how Gothic architecture became extinct as a practical art,
how its theory was forgotten and misunderstood for centuries, its very
name kept in remembrance only by a few rare lovers of antiquity. We have
traced the first dawn of a change in public taste, originated by the
serious works of men versed in the history of ancient art, and inspired
by a love of its grand productions.
In what a different position we leave it now! The master spirit that had
breathed a new life into its almost inanimate form has passed away; his
mortal remains are sleeping in the hallowed transept of that beautiful
church at Ramsgate, the designing and decorating of which had been to
him such a labor of love; but, unlike many reformers, he had lived to
see his cherished dreams realized; he had lived to see the mystic
steeple and the high pitched roof once more ascend to heaven from the
crowded cities and the wooded fields of his country; he had lived to see
a long array of distinguished names consecrate their gifts to that one
style he had loved and for which he had labored.
ALONG THE FOOT OF THE PYRENEES.
We followed the old Roman way along the foot of the Pyrenees—a
delightful route, picturesque on one side and fair on the other, and
everywhere abounding in historic and legendary memories. Every age has
left its impress here, as every geological period has left its strata in
the mountains. Many of the cultivated hills are crowned with the ruins
of feudal times. The plains are blooming with a thousand traditions and
marvellous events that have sprung up from the contests with the Moors
in the eighth century. Numerous remains of ancient art are constantly
coming to light from the soil to prove that, during the Roman occupancy
of the land, many wealthy patricians established themselves in this
region, at once attractive to the eye and favorable to health. The
Visigoths also, who once held possession of the country, have left
behind them memorials of their barbarity in the martyrs who are still
honored; and the Huguenots and Revolutionists ruined churches and
cloisters that are still deplored.
At length we came to Martres-Tolosanes—the ancient Callagorris—an
industrious place on the left bank of the Garonne containing about two
thousand inhabitants. Clouds of smoke hover over it by day, and flames
and sparks stream up at night, from the numerous potteries which supply
all the neighboring region with dishes and tiles, and pave all the
by-roads with broken crockery. The streets are narrow, and the begrimed
houses seem inclined to stray off on the road to Spain, as if to breathe
the pure mountain air. There is an interesting old church here that was
consecrated in the year 1309. The baptismal font is an ancient
sarcophagus, set up on four pillars, its sides divided by colonnettes,
between which are holy emblems and other carvings. In one chapel there
is a sculptured retable over the altar, with the shrine of St. Vidian
supported by chained Moors—not covered with precious stones, or a work
of art, like so many of the shrines of Italy, but a mere urn of gilded
wood. On great festivals this is taken down and placed before the
grating of the sanctuary, surrounded by lights and flowers. The bust of
the saint is placed above it, the head shaded by nodding white plumes to
give it a martial character, in view of St. Vidian’s achievements, the
face painted more or less after nature, the shoulders covered with a
gilded mantle of imperial fashion, and the neck adorned with a collar,
or necklace, of blue and white crystal—probably the offering of some
devout peasant. In another chapel, on such days likewise full of flowers
and tapers, is St. Vidian’s ivory comb exposed in a kind of monstrance,
as if the object of particular veneration. It is rudely carved, and the
teeth which used to disentangle the long blond locks of the warrior
after battle are of portentous size and length, and jagged from the
conflict. But those were not days of gentle measures. This comb is of
considerable celebrity in the country, not merely on account of its
original use, but also because of the curious tale that hangs around it.
In the golden ages, when kind Heaven directly intervened in human
affairs more frequently than is thought to be the case now, and did not
suffer sacrilegious deeds to go unpunished, a peasant woman of the
neighboring canton of Cazères, who had come to Martres to attend St.
Vidian’s fair, went into the church to pay her devotions at the shrine,
and, finding it empty, was induced by some diabolical inspiration to
steal the wondrous comb, which was not then kept under glass as now. She
hid it under her scarlet _capulet_, and, rejoining her husband at the
market-place, set out for home. The afternoon was drawing to a close.
Some rays of the declining sun still brightened the gray tower of Mauran
among the mountain oaks, but the evening shadows had begun to gather in
the valley below. Accordingly, they hurried along the road that bordered
the river, the irons on their shoes clattering over the stones and
giving out an occasional spark. The woman’s feet, however, often
faltered, and, contrary to custom, her tongue was mute. But this was no
affliction to her husband, and he pretended not to observe it. At
length, on crossing the boundary that separates Martres from Cazères, he
suddenly found himself alone, and, hearing a cry, looked around. His
wife remained fastened on the line, as if by some invisible influence,
with one foot in the parish of Martres and the other in that of Cazères,
without the power of moving. He hurried back to her assistance, but, in
spite of herculean efforts, he could not move her an inch, more than if
she had been Lot’s wife. Night was now coming on fast. Not a ray of the
sun was left on St. Michael’s tower, and they were only half way home. A
cart from the mountains came by, drawn by three cows, and he begged the
driver’s assistance. The woman seized hold of the cart. The driver
goaded the cows. They were usually gentle and tractable, as becomes the
female nature, but they now set off as if suddenly gone mad, leaving the
poor woman behind, her arms nearly dislocated with her efforts, but her
feet still glued to the ground. Then came along some Spaniards with
their mules covered with gay tassels and bells. New efforts were made to
remove her. She clung desperately to bridle and harness, but the mules
so reared and kicked that she was obliged to give up the attempt.
“Certainly the devil must have a hand in this,” said the husband. The
woman rent the mountains with her cries, and at length was forced to
confess the deed she had done. It was evidently a case in which the
spiritual powers alone could be of any avail, and, as she could no more
go back than forward, her husband sent to Martres to make known the case
and ask the benefit of the clergy. As St. Vidian would have it, they
were all keeping solemn vigil at his shrine, and, taking the torches
that stood around it, they came hastening out with cross and banner, and
as soon as they took possession of the relic the woman had stolen, her
feet recovered their liberty. After this the comb was kept under lock
and key, and, at a later day, was placed in the reliquary where it now
is. Of course so stupendous an event caused a great sensation in the
valley, which had not been so stirred up since the Norman invasion, and
made the comb not only an object of universal curiosity but of increased
veneration. The legend is related to this day. It is pretended that the
women of Cazères are a little spiteful about it, and dress their shining
black hair with much more care than their neighbors at Martres, probably
to show they have no need of the comb of St. Vidian.
St. Vidian figures everywhere in this region. Charming legends, handed
down from father to son for ages, have thrown quite a veil of poetry
over numberless places. They are not very clear as to the precise place
of the saint’s birth, but they are quite positive that he was one of the
_preux_ who served under Charlemagne, and had even a dash of imperial
blood in his veins. In his youth he became a hostage for his father, who
had been taken prisoner by the Basques of Luceria, then idolaters. They
sold the young Frank as a slave. An Englishman bought and adopted him,
and as soon as Vidian was sufficiently inured to the use of arms he
organized a crusade against Luceria, which he pillaged and completely
destroyed. Of course such a feat recommended him to his imperial
kinsman. Charlemagne invited him to his court and created him duke.
About this time the Saracens crossed the Pyrenees and began to ravage
the plain of Toulouse. Vidian joined the imperial hosts who came to the
rescue of the land, and entrenched himself with his followers at
Martres, then called Angonia. He defended the place so bravely against
the enemy that for a while it was supposed saved, but, surprised by an
ambuscade near a fountain where he had gone to stanch his wounds, he was
slain after a stout resistance, and the town taken and devastated. When
it rose from its ruins it took the name of Martres in memory of those
who were martyred in trying to defend it.
It is certain that all this part of France was once overrun by the
Moors. They, and the Normans after them, probably destroyed not only
most of the ancient Christian churches, but the monuments left by the
Romans. History has not recorded all the efforts made to repel them, but
a confused memory of the struggle has been left in the minds of the
people, and, colored by time and the warm southern imagination, these
memories have become a genuine cycle of poetic traditions, not the less
founded on fact because only written with the sword and blood of their
ancestors.
The country around Martres is full of character and beauty. The Garonne,
fresh from its mountain sources, winds through the verdant plain. To the
south are broad terraces and wooded hills, and behind is the grand
barrier of mountains, their summits all crystal in the morning light,
and at evening all rose and amethyst. No wonder the Romans thought it
rivalled Italy, and established themselves here. On one of the
neighboring plateaus have been found the remains of a magnificent Roman
villa that must have belonged to some wealthy person of luxurious and
cultivated tastes, to judge by the objects brought to light from time to
time. In 1826 a vault was found by a laborer, and excavations were
systematically made which led to the discovery of sumptuous apartments
paved with mosaics and marble, with remains of columns, statues, and
bas-reliefs, and fine bathing-rooms with furnaces and earthen pipes, and
all the accessories of Roman luxury. Among the works of art that have
been found here are about forty busts and medallions of Roman emperors
and empresses from Augustus down; a white marble statue of a reclining
naiad; the beautiful head of another statue called the Venus de Martres;
medallions of Jupiter, Juno, Minerva, Cybele, and Atys; large
bas-reliefs of Serapis, the labors of Hercules, etc., and several
bronzes. These form quite a gallery of ancient art in the museum at
Toulouse, where we saw them in the old cloister of Augustinian friars.
Beneath one of the plateaus is a pretty fountain with a cross near it,
in the midst of gentle undulations of verdure, shaded by a grove. Here
St. Vidian had his encounter with the Moors and was slain. The pebbles
in the spring are said to be still stained with his blood. Every year
his exploits are celebrated here by a mimic battle between the Moors and
Christians, in which nearly all the male population take part. It is
said the brilliant costume of the Saracens is so attractive to the
younger portion that they show a lamentable disposition to enter the
service of the infidel. However, by dint of cautious measures, both
armies are kept about equal. They consist of nearly one hundred and
twenty-five men each, of whom fifty are horsemen. The Moorish cavaliers
wear red and white turbans with silver trimmings; green stomachers
adorned with a yellow crescent; orange coats turned out with red
facings; girdles of scarlet silk; and blue pantaloons of Oriental
amplitude. It will at once be perceived that nothing could be more
gorgeous. The infantry are less pretentious. They content themselves
with the white pantaloons of the French hussar, but make up for this
with bright orange vests a Mameluke might envy. The Christian knights
wear a black pasteboard helmet with a silver cross on the front, a blue
tunic, and a tin cuirass that is quite dazzling in the sun. The
foot-soldiers are dressed in gray, with blue caps, and a silver cross on
their breasts. Both armies are furnished with tall lances, and each has
its standard. That of the Moors is green and orange. On it gleams the
ominous silver crescent. The Christians’ is blue and bears the
redoubtable figure of St. Vidian.
The battle takes place on St. Vidian’s day. The relics of the saint are
exposed in the church. High Mass is celebrated with the utmost pomp.
Even the followers of Islam are so unfaithful to their traditional
intolerance as to attend and present arms at the Elevation of the Host,
in utter disregard of the Prophet. Mass over, the clergy and people go
in procession to the miraculous fount, bearing the shrine and chanting
the hymn of St. Vidian. There they bathe the bust of the saint in memory
of his wounds. These traditional services concluded, the military ardor
of the soldiers begins to assert itself. The two armies draw up on the
neighboring field. Prodigious acoustic performances are made on the drum
of the commune. Military evolutions begin. The banners fly. Red, yellow,
and blue uniforms flash across the green field. The cavaliers show
themselves true paladins. Such curveting and prancing have not been seen
since the days of Charlemagne and Haroun al Raschid; at least, on such
steeds—mostly farm horses the worse for wear. Sometimes the contest
becomes too warm and real. However, their ardor never lasts longer than
is warranted by tradition. The Moorish flag is invariably captured by
the Christians, and the battle-field deserted till the next anniversary
of St. Vidian’s martyrdom.
Vigilantius, the first heresiarch that troubled the peace of Christian
Gaul, was a native of Callagorris. He was of a roving turn and a lover
of novelty. In early life he crossed over into Spain and there became an
inn-keeper. Then we hear of him as a priest at Barcelona. He made the
acquaintance of St. Paulinus (afterwards of Nola) in Spain, who was
induced to give him a letter of recommendation to St. Jerome. Furnished
with this, he went to the Holy Land, but there he took sides with the
enemies of St. Jerome and attacked the monastic life, celibacy of the
clergy, the veneration of relics, the use of candles in the daytime,
etc. St. Jerome, sarcastically referring to his original calling, told
him the faculty of testing wine and that of expounding the Scriptures
were not quite the same, and advised him to acquire the elements of
grammar and the other sciences, and then learn to be silent. His
countrymen do not seem to have been influenced by his example, however,
but have always been remarkable for their confidence in the saints and
veneration for relics.
Five or six miles beyond Martres we came to St. Martory, so named from a
holy monk of the East whose beautiful legend is related by St. Gregory.
One evening this saint, on his way to a neighboring monastery, overtook
a poor leper forced by fatigue and disease to rest by the wayside.
Filled with intense compassion, St. Martyri, as he is otherwise called,
spread his cloak on the ground, placed the leper thereon, and, carefully
wrapping him up, took him on his shoulder and proceeded on his way. The
abbot of the monastery, seeing him coming, cried: “Hasten, my brethren,
to open the gates. Behold Brother Martyri coming, bearing the Lord.”
While they were gone to execute his command the leper descended from the
good monk’s shoulders, and, taking the form under which the Redeemer is
usually represented, he addressed him in these words: “Martyri, thou
hast had pity on me on earth; I will glorify thee in heaven.” And, while
the monk was gazing at him in speechless amazement, he ascended to
heaven. When St. Martyri entered, the abbot asked what he had done with
the person he was carrying. The saint replied: “Oh! had I known who he
was, I would have held him by the feet!” And he related how light he had
seemed on the way. The body of St. Martory is still revered in the
church.
Not long after leaving St. Martory we came in sight of the towers of St.
Gaudens at one end of a broad plateau, once the place of a Roman
encampment. Behind it are the mountains that enclose the beautiful
valleys of Aure and Campan, the Pic du Midi, and the whole of the mighty
chain that binds sea to sea. Below is a vast plain, fertile and smiling,
supposed to be the bed of a lake in which the waters of the Neste once
mingled with those of the Garonne. On the other side are to be seen the
ancient thermal place of Labarthe, overlooked by a feudal tower and a
village that dates from the fourth century, called Valentine, in honor,
it is said, of Valentinian II., who was assassinated in Gaul Narbonnaise
in 392. Here and there in the fields are found remains that attest the
importance of the place under the Romans—fragments of tombs,
bas-reliefs, and antique vases. At one corner of the church of Valentine
is the head of a Roman soldier with his helmet on, and near it a white
marble urn. Inserted in the wall of the church is a marble slab with a
Latin inscription, thought to be of the fourth century, which may be
thus rudely rendered:
“Nymphius, whose limbs are cold and stiff in eternal sleep, reposes
here. His soul is in heaven. It contemplates the stars, while his body
is left to the repose of the tomb. His faith dispelled the darkness that
seemed to envelop it. O Nymphius! the renown of thy virtues raised thee
to the very stars and placed thee in the zenith. Thou art immortal, and
thy glory will be perpetuated in ages to come. The province honors thee
as its father. The entire population made vows for the preservation of
thy life. At the celebration of the games due to thy munificence the
spectators on the gradations of the arena testified their joy by
acclamations. Once thy beloved country, at thy command, assembled its
magistrates and spoke worthily by thy lips. Now our cities, deprived of
thee, are plunged in mourning, and the senators, in consternation, are
incapable of action. They are like the human body that, deprived of its
head, falls lifeless and inert, or a flock without its shepherd that
knows not which way to direct its steps. Serena, thy spouse, abandoned
to grief, erects this monument to thee, and finds in this pious duty a
slight solace for her pain. Thy companion for eight lustres, she only
thought and acted by thee. At thy side life seemed sweet. Now, abandoned
to her sorrow, she sighs for the eternal life, hoping that which she now
possesses may be brief.”
What a tale might be woven out of the epitaph of this old Roman, who
died fourteen hundred years ago in this remote valley—made up of
domestic bliss, political honors, the happiness that virtue alone can
bestow, and an untimely death mourned by the public and, above all, by
the gentle-hearted Serena!
The Romans knew how to choose their sites. Nothing can exceed the charm
of this region, especially in the month of May, when we visited it for
the first time. The fresh valleys, the clear streams, the unexpected
views at every turn, the harmonious outlines of the landscape, are a
perpetual delight to the eye. The fertile plain of Valentine especially
is so lovely that all the mountain-tops seem crowding together to gaze
at and admire it, and they send down their purest streams to preserve
its freshness and beauty.
On the sides of the plateau that overlooks Valentine a young shepherd,
named Gaudentius, led his flocks to pasture in the latter part of the
fifth century. His mother, a holy woman of the name of Quitterie, had
brought him up in the practice of the most fervent piety. The country at
that time was in possession of the Visigoths. Euric had succeeded to the
throne by slaying his brother, Theodoric II. He was a man of great
military genius, who extended his conquests in Gaul from the Loire
beyond the Rhone, and carried war beyond the Pyrenees with so much
success that he conquered most of the Peninsula. Toulouse was thus made
the capital of an immense empire that extended from Provence to
Andalusia. Euric was a fanatical Arian, and, attributing his success to
his fidelity to his principles, he began a violent persecution of the
Catholics, though they constituted a large part of his subjects.
Executioners were frequently his missionaries, and one of these
summarily opened heaven to the young shepherd Gaudentius, who, refusing
to apostatize, gave a last look at his mother, who encouraged him, and
submitted to martyrdom. His remains were carefully transported to the
place of his residence, and, after the downfall of the Visigoths, an
oratory was erected over his grave.
Such miracles were now wrought through the instrumentality of St.
Gaudens that his fame extended all through the country, people came to
live around his tomb, and a village soon sprang up that took his name.
More than a thousand years passed away without diminishing the affluence
at St. Gaudens’ tomb, but in the sixteenth century the town was taken by
Montgomery the Huguenot, the church stripped of its ornaments and
greatly injured, the statues broken, the tombs desecrated, and most of
St. Gaudens’ relics thrown into the flames. But that was a way of
reforming the Huguenots had.
“N’est ce pas réformer, quand on trouve une église
Trop riche, lui ravir ses trésors anciens?”
says the old Plainte de la Guienne of 1577 with a bitterness that is
quite natural. The bullet-holes made in the church are still pointed
out. This is a noteworthy building of the Romanesque style, with round
arches, clustered columns, and carved capitals. Each aisle ends in a
chapel, and a choir is at the apsis. Over the altar is a statue of the
Virgin that, before the Revolution, belonged to the neighboring abbey of
Bonnefont, now completely destroyed. This statue is the production of
Pierre Lucas, the founder of the academy of art at Toulouse. A priory
was formerly attached to the church of St. Gaudens, dependent on the
abbey of St. Sernin at Toulouse, but it has been totally destroyed. The
old cloister of Pyrenean marble, built by Bernard I., Bishop of
Comminges, and of the race of its counts, has also been destroyed. Of
the tombs that once lined the arcades, only one here and there is left,
with its touching mediæval inscription, and perchance some consoling
emblem of religion, such as a cluster of grapes on a vine branch,
recalling the Saviour’s words, “I am the vine and ye are the branches”;
the monogram of Christ; the Alpha and Omega, etc.—symbols of hope graven
on the cold marble tomb. And there is an ancient portal over which used
to hang the horseshoes of Abderahman’s steed, which, according to
tradition, plunged and reared when his master attempted to pillage the
shrine of St. Gaudens, and thus lost its shoes. The horse of Montgomery
seems to have been of a coarser nature, and as insensible as his
ferocious owner to the spiritual influences around the tombs of the
saints.
There is a kind of mournful pleasure in sitting down among the ruins of
such old cloisters, listening to the echoes of past times, and trying to
decipher the pious inscriptions on the tombstones among the rank grass,
and to divine the history of those who lie beneath—once centres of fond
affection, but now forgotten and unknown. Through the rifts in the wall
is seen the peaceful rural valley, with the Pyrenees in the distance,
resplendent in the light; and the contrast between all that is graceful
and sublime in nature, and the desolation of this spot once beautified
by art and hallowed by religion, is exceedingly touching. How peaceful,
how religious, this cloister must have been, where paced the silent,
prayerful monk among the tombs! And there is a sacredness in its present
desolation that appeals to the heart; if the solemnity of the ancient
arches is wanting, there is no lack of beauty in the lovely vistas among
the picturesque mountains and delicious valleys.
St. Gaudens is a place of four or five thousand inhabitants, with old
blackened houses full of industry. The country around is densely
populated, and at certain seasons many go into the neighboring districts
to add to their slender earnings. The young men have a commercial taste,
and all through the Pyrenees you meet peddlers and colporteurs from St.
Gaudens, hawking their small wares with amusing pertinacity. The girls,
too, in harvest-time descend to the neighboring valleys to offer their
services, and there are many popular _rondeaux_ that allude to them.
“Las fillos de Sen Gaoudens nou n’an d’argent,
Las qui nou n’an qu’en bouléren:
Faridoundaino, qu’en bouléren.”
—The girls of St. Gaudens are penniless, and those without money desire
it. Tum-te-tum, yes, desire it.
“Aou pays bach, anem! anem!
Coillé d’argent!
En sega blat et dailla hen,
Faridoundaino, n’en gagnaren.”
—Down to the valleys let us go, go! Money to seek, by reaping grain and
raking hay. Tum-te-tum, we shall gain some.
On the outskirts of St. Gaudens is shown the house where St. Raymond was
born—the celebrated founder of the order of Calatrava, which rendered
such glorious services to Spain, and thereby to all Christendom, in the
struggle with the Moors. It is a humble birthplace for one who gathered
under his banner the haughtiest grandees of Spain. His companion,
Durand, was also a native of St. Gaudens. They both became monks at the
noted abbey of Escale-Dieu, where they inured themselves by austerities
for the mission Providence had in reserve for them. There would seem to
be but little in common with the peaceful pursuits of the Cistercians
and the valiant exploits of the knights of Calatrava, to those who know
nothing of the bracing discipline of monastic life.
Not far from St. Gaudens is the chapel of Notre Dame du Bout-du-Puy—a
place of pilgrimage, enriched with indulgences by Pope Innocent XI. It
is under the continual guardianship of a hermit. This Madonna is
particularly invoked by people in danger of death. Among the _ex votos_
on the wall is the picture of a child carried away by a neighboring
torrent, the mother kneeling on the bank with eyes and arms raised
towards heaven, where Mary appears, commanding the waves to bring back
her child.
We have mentioned the tower of Labarthe. The viscounts of this name were
the lords of the Four Valleys for several centuries, and played an
important _rôle_ in the history of Bigorre. The fifth Vicomte de
Labarthe married the grand-daughter of Eudoxia, the daughter of Emmanuel
Comnenus, Emperor of Constantinople, who died at Rome in the odor of
sanctity, and was buried at the church of the Vatican. Geraud de
Labarthe, Archbishop of Auch, put on the cross and accompanied Richard
the Lion-hearted to the Holy Land as the prefect of his army. One of the
glories of this race is Marshal Paul de Labarthe, Lord of Thermes, who
lived in the sixteenth century and saw six kings succeed each other on
the throne of France. He took part in the siege of Naples, and, made
prisoner by the corsairs, endured a severe captivity for two years. He
afterwards distinguished himself in the Piedmont war and fighting in
Scotland against the English, and was finally created Marshal of France.
He was so noted for his humanity that the Huguenots said he could not
hold his place as governor of Paris because he was “too little inclined
to slaughter.” Some of his descendants still live in Bigorre.
On our way to Bagnères de Bigorre we stopped to visit the abbey of
Escale-Dieu, at the bottom of a deep valley enclosed among the hills.
The name is derived from _Scala Dei_—the ladder of God—a ladder to aid
man in his ascent to heaven! No name could be more appropriate for a
monastery where, as Wordsworth says, paraphrasing the words of St.
Bernard:
“Man more purely lives; less oft doth fall;
More promptly rises; walks with nicer tread;
More safely rests; dies happier; is freed
Earlier from cleansing fires; and gains withal
A brighter crown.”
This abbey is on the banks of the Arros, a river noted for its impetuous
character and sudden overflows. It has its source in the valley of
Oueil, the ancient _Vallis Oculi_—so called from its shape, where it is
said three barons once could breakfast together without leaving their
own domains. Near by is a little hamlet called Mayleu, on the edge of a
torrent, where on stormy nights pale lights are said to wave to and fro
on the current, which the mountaineers say are caused by the soul of an
old miser that agitates the waters—emblem of his restless life, spent in
grasping the goods of others with insatiable avidity. His influence
surely extends all along the Arros.
The valley of Escale-Dieu was given to a community of Cistercian monks
in the twelfth century by Beatrix, Countess of Bigorre, in order, as she
says in her charter, that she “might be accounted as a sister in Christ
by the brethren of Escale-Dieu in their watchings, and fastings, and
prayers, and obtain the redemption of her soul, her husband’s, her
father, Centulle’s, her mother, Amable’s, and other relatives’.” The
Cistercians were famous as agriculturists, and in bestowing on them
large tracts of land the old lords of the middle ages ensured the best
means of bringing the country under cultivation and humanizing the
inhabitants. The monks built a church here under the invocation of SS.
Peter and Paul, which was consecrated October 23, 1142, by the
Archbishop of Auch, in the presence of the Countess Beatrix and her
husband, many abbots and neighboring lords, and an immense crowd of
people. This church became the St. Denis of the counts of Bigorre, who
doubtless thought to rest here in peace till the end of the world; for
the abbey was at that time so remote from the highways of travel that
its solitude was almost unbroken. The Countess Beatrix was one of the
first to be buried here, but her tomb was broken open at the Revolution,
and the remains, spared by centuries, fell into dust at contact with the
air.
The first abbot of Escale-Dieu was a son of the Vicomte de Labarthe, and
his successors, over forty in number, were mostly from the great
families of the country. The house was immediately dependent on the Holy
See, and the Sovereign Pontiff forbade any one to rob, burn, make any
arrest, commit murder, or do any violence on its domains.
One peculiarity about its history is that, contrary to most great
monasteries, no town or village ever sprang up around it. It remained
solitary in its valley, studying “the secret lore of rural things” and
pruning the wings of Contemplation, unconscious that Providence was to
give it a mission in the world seemingly incompatible with the spirit of
the order. The monks became so numerous, however, that two colonies were
sent across the Pyrenees under the charge of St. Raymond and Durand, to
found the abbeys of Yergo and Fitero. In 1147 the town of Calatrava, the
bulwark of Andalusia, was taken by Alfonso, King of Castile, and
entrusted to the care of the Knights Templars, who held it for ten
years. Then the success of the Moors made them fear they would not be
able to defend it any longer, and they resigned the place to the king.
The latter, embarrassed at having it thrown on his hands, offered it to
any one who would undertake its defence. St. Raymond, indignant to see
knights, vowed to the defence of religion, thus abandon the post of
danger, asked the honor of taking their place. The king willingly
consented. St. Raymond went through the provinces preaching a kind of
crusade, and twenty thousand soldiers ranged themselves under the
Cistercian banner. Their success made him conceive the idea of cementing
the union of the knights with his order. The abbot of Escale-Dieu did
not at first approve of the design. “What an idea,” said he, “for
solitaries by profession to convert a monastery into a school of war,
and flatter themselves tumultuous exercises can be combined with the
silence of prayer and the chanting of Psalms!” A chapter of the
Cistercian order was held, but the Kings of France and Castile, and the
Duke of Burgundy, overcame the scruples of the abbot, and the pope
issued a bull authorizing the affiliation of the Knights of Calatrava
with the Cistercian Order as lay brothers. All the houses in Spain were
subjected to the rule of the abbot of Escale-Dieu, who had the right of
visiting and inspecting them till the secularization of the knights.
The most brilliant era in the history of Escale-Dieu is the thirteenth
century. Two saints had sprung from the house (for we must not forget
St. Bertrand of Comminges, one of the most popular saints of the
Pyrenees, whose tomb is still honored in the town called by his name);
it held rule over ten monasteries in Spain; and it was greatly enriched
by the neighboring lords, particularly by the counts of Bigorre, who
made it their burial-place. The Countess Petronilla, so famous for her
five husbands, was a great benefactress of the house. Besides endowing
it during her life, she bequeathed it, at her death, all her gold and
silver vessels and reliquaries, her jewels, rings, and precious stones,
her dresses (probably for vestments), sheets, and blankets. Her first
husband was Gaston, Viscount of Bearn, who took sides with Count Raymond
of Toulouse, but was reconciled to the church before his death. The
second was Nuñez Sancho of Aragon, whom she repudiated under pretext of
consanguinity. The third was Guy de Montfort, son of the great opponent
of the Albigenses, who was killed at the siege of Castelnaudary. The
fourth, Aymar de Rançon, who died about the same time as her second
husband. And finally, Boson de Matas, Lord of Cognac. After these five
chapters she died at the Abbey of Escale-Dieu in great need, it is
thought, of expiatory prayers and good works. Henry III. of England was
captivated by the beauty of her daughter Amate, and three other princes
sought to obtain her hand in marriage; but she married Gaston VII. of
Bearn, and two of her daughters, by the intermediation of Abbot Bernard
of the house of Castelbajac, married princes of Aragon.
One of the viscounts of Lavedan also became a benefactor to the abbey,
and in his deed of conveyance declares he gives it the soil, the rocks,
the vegetation, the fruit, leaves, all that rises from the land towards
heaven, and all it contains in its depths.
Rising over the valley of Escale-Dieu are the ruins of the old feudal
castle of Mauvezin, like a vulture’s nest on the cliff, overlooking the
whole country. It was once considered impregnable, and was, after that
of Lourdes, the most important fortress in Bigorre. From this castle
went many a valiant knight to the Crusades. One of them, in making his
preparations to go beyond the seas with St. Louis, gave to “God and
Madame St. Mary of Escale-Dieu” fifty sols of Morlaas money[109] from
the rents of the thermal springs of Capvern.
Footnote 109:
A sol Morlaas was worth about 2.4 francs.
In early times the abbey found a kind protector in the castle; but when,
at a later period, it became the stronghold of freebooters, who only
issued forth to pillage the lowlands and fat abbeys, the good monks of
Escale-Dieu had reason to call it a _Mauvais Voisin_—a bad neighbor—a
name that has ever since clung to it.
When the English took possession of the country after the treaty of
Brétigny, the Black Prince established a garrison of soldiers here, who
rendered themselves as famous for their brigandage as for their heroic
exploits. When the Duke of Anjou and Duguesclin went to the Pyrenees in
1374 to root the English out of the land, the castles of Lourdes and
Mauvezin long resisted their stoutest efforts. The latter was besieged
by eight thousand men, but the castle was so strong that it would have
held out a long time, had not the supply of water been cut off by the
capture of the outer cistern. The garrison now suffered all the horrors
of thirst under a burning sun. Froissart says the weather was
excessively warm, and not a drop of rain had fallen for six weeks. There
was no choice but to surrender. Captain Raimounet de l’Epée, the
commander of the fortress, like the true Gascon he was, made the best of
his fate, and offered to yield up the castle on conditions that were the
most advantageous to himself and his soldiers. Unwilling to lose any of
his plunder, he stipulated that they should be allowed to depart in
freedom, taking with them all they and their sumpter-horses could carry.
The duke consented, saying: “Go about your business, every man to his
own country, without entering any fort that holds out against us; for,
if you do, and I get hold of you, I will deliver you up to Josselin [the
executioner], who will shave you without a razor.”
Raimounet had fought well for the English, but he had an eye to the main
chance, and he now showed the nature of his bravery by entering the
service of the Duke of Anjou and continuing, under the _fleurs-de-lis_
of France, the pillaging he had so long practised under the leopards of
England. What he had not seized in the name of St. George he now took in
honor of St. Denis, and thus filled both pockets at once. He died
fighting by the side of the Duke of Anjou under the walls of Naples.
The sixteenth century, so fatal to innumerable churches and monasteries
in France, did not spare the abbey of Escale-Dieu. The Huguenots now
invaded the peaceful valley and proved far worse than the old troopers
of Raimounet de l’Epée. The first band came in 1518 and burned the
stables and the abbot’s residence. In 1567 a more formidable company
appeared that put the monks to flight and took possession of the abbey,
which they made the centre of their operations, issuing suddenly forth
from time to time, like birds of prey, to plunder some church, or
monastery, or well-garnished priest’s house. Blasphemies now resounded
beneath the arches only accustomed to the voice of prayer and psalmody.
All religious emblems were destroyed. The sanctuary angels feared to
tread witnessed their orgies. At length, by the combined efforts of some
of the lords of Bigorre, they were routed from the abbey, but before
leaving they set fire to it and nearly destroyed it. In this destruction
was included the fine old Romanesque church of the twelfth century,
where St. Raymond and St. Bertrand had so often prayed, and the cloister
they had so often paced in silent meditation. It is a poor comfort to
know that the leaders of this sacrilegious deed were taken and executed
at Toulouse. The monks returned to Escale-Dieu, but only to find it in
ruins. In the course of time, however, it was rebuilt, but in an
inferior style, as suited their diminished means, and the house led a
precarious existence till the French Revolution, when it was once more
ravaged, the very tombs violated, and the monks for ever dispersed.
The abbey is now owned by a layman who is more interested in agriculture
than archæology. It contains, however, but little that is ancient. At
the end of a long file of poplars you see the dome and white walls of
the church, a building of the seventeenth century, now a grange. There
is a flower-garden on the site of the ancient cloister, and in the walls
are encrusted a few of the old columns with palm-leaves sculptured on
the capitals, emblem of spiritual victory. And the hallowed name of
Escale-Dieu, which once gave laws to Spanish knights, is now degraded to
a mere post station.
Mauvezin itself became the hold of the Huguenots under Captain de Sus in
1584, and they made the castle more than ever worthy of its name. They
extended their ravages as far as St. Bertrand of Comminges, and the name
of their leader became a terror in the land. Now the castle is in ruins,
which are as melancholy as its history. The square, massive tower that
withstood so many attacks is roofless, windowless, and dismantled.
Beneath is the vaulted dungeon where the prisoner once groaned in
vain—dark and hopeless as the tomb. Over one of the doors of the tower
is an escutcheon on which the arms of Foix are quartered with those of
Bearn, with the inscription _Fébus mé fé_—Phœbus made me; for here lived
for a time the famous Gaston Phœbus of Bearn. The kite and the osprey
inhabit it now. The hoarse notes of birds of prey well suit the place
where once resounded the war-cries of Raimounet de l’Epée and Captain de
Sus.
Two leagues from Mauvezin is Bagnères de Bigorre, one of the most
popular watering-places in the Pyrenees. Here “_Esculapius est sans
barbe et sans rides_” says the poet Lemierre. Long before you arrive you
see the tower of the Jacobins rising into the air light and slender as a
column. It is a clean, attractive town in a circular valley surrounded
by hills cultivated to the very top, or covered with woods whose shady
paths are full of mystery. The valley is watered by several streams, and
cooled by mountain breezes that are delicious in summer. Numerous canals
convey the waters of the Adour through most of the streets of the town,
giving a certain freshness to the air, and a supply of water for
domestic purposes. An old author attributes the foundation of the place
to Venus and Hebe, and says it was here the god Mars came to be healed
when wounded at the siege of Troy. It was, at least, frequented by the
Romans, who gave it the name of _Vicus Aquensis_. Their homages to the
nymphs who guard the springs are still to be seen graven on marble, such
as: _Nymphis pro salute sud, Sever. Seranus_ V. S. L. M.
Like most of the towns of this region, Bagnères was formerly held by the
Visigoths, Saracens, Normans, and English one after the other, but seems
to have been spared by the Huguenots, who perhaps were more afraid of
offending the water-nymphs than the saints. The people, it is said,
propitiated their leaders by sending them occasionally a tribute of
butter and maize. The town, notwithstanding its antiquity, has but few
ancient remains. There is a feudal tower or two that formed part of the
old fortifications, necessary when, as Froissart says, it was so often
worried and beset by the garrison at Mauvezin. The old church of the
Templars is standing, but used for profane purposes.
There are many agreeable promenades around Bagnères. One of these is to
a green hollow among abrupt cliffs, called the _Elysée-Cottin_, from
Madame Cottin, who was very fond of this quiet nook. It was here she is
said to have conceived the noble character of Malek Adhel, which so
delighted us in our youth, and wrote not only _Mathilde_ but some of her
other works. It is a charming retreat with a fountain in the bottom of
the valley, in her time shaded by fine beeches and ash-trees, which have
since been cut down.
The Allée Maintenon is so called in honor of Mme. de Maintenon, who
accompanied the Duc du Maine here for his health. This Allée begins at
the end of the town, and, climbing a steep hill, proceeds along the
plateau of Pouey till it comes to a spot where you can see the whole
plain of Bigorre, and the waters of the Adour dashing down the steep
sides of the mountains. Here, taking the road to Campan, you soon come
to the place where once stood the Capuchin convent of Médoux, founded in
the sixteenth century by Susanne de Grammont, Marchioness of Monpezat.
It was particularly renowned for a miraculous statue of the Virgin,
honored under the name of _Sancta Maria in Melle dulci_, corrupted into
Notre Dame de Médoux. The convent was destroyed during the Revolutionary
period, but the Madonna, so dear to popular piety, was saved and now
adorns the high altar of the church of Asté. The people say it was
miraculously transported through the air and thus saved. It is of white
marble, and a genuine work of art, by an Italian sculptor. It was the
gift of one of the viscounts of Asté, who were generous patrons of the
monastery. The expression and pure outline of the face, the dignity of
the attitude, and the graceful flow of the drapery excite the admiration
of every visitor.
A modern villa now occupies the place of the convent. It is in the midst
of a fine park watered by a stream that comes pouring out of a cool
grotto. Nothing could be more delightfully rural. Not far off is an old
feudal tower, and beyond is Baudeau, the birthplace of Larrey, the
favorite surgeon of Napoleon. The Vicomte de Castelbajac has sung the
beauties of this spot where once stood
“Une chapelle hospitalière
Toujours ouverte au pélerin,
Jamais il n’y frappait en vain;
Et le malheur et la misère,
La pauvre veuve et l’orphelin,
Y trouvaient toujours la prière
Et l’aumône du Capucin.”
“CATHEDRAL WOODS,”
MANCHESTER, MASSACHUSETTS.
Hushed grow our voices as our footsteps fall
These darksome woods’ high fretted roof beneath,
Whose living arches, sprung from living sheath,
Are organ-pipes for winds to play withal.
We leave, without, the meadow’s autumn glare—
Its Tyrian wealth of asters prodigal,
Its pomp of scarlet-robed cardinal,
Its gentian that doth heaven’s livery wear.
So leave we, too, the sparkle of the sea,
And land-locked beach where waves break lazily.
Herein we seem among the hills at rest;
Their balm by breath of salt wind undefiled;
Freshness of streams, and strength of great rocks piled,
Seem by our souls in this calm shade possessed,
Where hemlocks stretch their dusky branches o’er
The scattered rocks, whereto the green moss clings,
Catching the prisoned sunbeam as it flings
A miser’s portion of its golden store,
As if it feared to break the shadow deep,
To mar some vigil these grave giants keep.
Here only mountain incense seeming fills
The lofty arches, by sea-wind unbent,
That rise as if with height still nobler blent:
Some peak, cloud-piercing, 'mid the sunlit hills
Whose glamour holds us fast, whose blossoms lie
The darkness of the broken rocks amid,
Whose written speech in these lithe ferns is hid,
Whose forests whisper in the winds’ low sigh.
Should any bird this inland silence break,
Sure in his song the mountains’ soul would wake.
Hearken! breaks through the silence soft a sound
Faint as the thought of half-forgotten dream.
Not speech so sad is that of mountain stream
That from all loftiest heights doth reckless bound,
Scattering its broken life in shining drift
Of constant dew that mocketh at the sun.
Nor breathes the wind in such low, measured tone
When doth it lightly leafy branches lift—
This wakes and dies in mournful monotone:
The sea’s vast life dashed out against a stone!
Some law this chant seems ever to obey—
Advancing, swells, now sinketh in retreat,
Sad-voiced like life that knoweth but defeat,
Yet still with patient purpose keeps its way.
Joy-burdened silence of the hills, farewell!
And salt sea-wind, thy carven choir reclaim!
Brave sun, set all these dusky trunks aflame!
Lost are our mountains in yon ceaseless swell
That, shoreward rolling, lapsing quietly,
Holds all the strength of the untiring sea.
The land grows little, and we crave the blue
No earthly shade e’er shutteth from the sun,
The barren sands whereon the light waves run
But rest not, bidding evermore adieu,
And evermore returning, bringing gifts
They give and take, and still give o’er again.
We crave the vastness of the salty plain!
As sea-bird on unbreaking billow drifts
Our hearts with that soft plashing throb in time—
Longing, we list our dim cathedral chime.
One well might paint the hemlock solitude,
The quiet shadow that the sunshine breaks;
Even in color give the song that wakes
At windy touch amid the peaceful wood.
Limned all might be, indeed, so cunningly
That one should hear the babble of glad stream,
E’en catch the climbing mountains’ happy gleam;
But—who could paint the murmur of the sea?
Who dream, amid these dark boughs closing o’er,
The song eternal of the broken shore?
JULIETTE: A NORMAN STORY.
I.
Marriage is in one respect not unlike greatness: some are born to it,
some achieve it, some have it thrust upon them. And the last-named some
are apt to find it as unprofitable an acquisition as to Napoleon the
Little it proved to be the nephew of his uncle.
Now, M. de Boisrobert was a born bachelor, and, left to himself, a
bachelor he would have died. But who shall gainsay fate? Upon him gayly
baccalaureating Fate fixed her eagle eye and made up her mind that he
should marry. Not without reason has Fate been made a female. When a
person of that charming but inflexible sex makes up her mind that any
bachelor of her acquaintance shall marry, we know what happens. Married
M. de Boisrobert accordingly was, with what direful consequences to the
poor gentleman the reader shall see.
Up to his forty-fifth year Messire Guillaume Georges de Boisrobert,
Sieur de Boisrobert and Saintange, had lived the happy life of a country
gentleman upon his estates in Normandy, near Evreux, satisfied with
himself and with the world. Indeed, he had every reason to be satisfied,
possessing as he did a fine château, a princely income, an honorable
name, an easy conscience, and the respect of all who knew him. From the
summit of his towers, look which way he would (and his sight was keen,
as so good a sportsman’s should be), he could scarce fix the boundary of
his domains. Farms, meadow-land, and woodland, his broad acres stretched
for many a mile along the blue waters of the Eure; upon his pastures fed
sheep and cattle by the hundred; in his stables neighed scores of
gallant steeds. Yet, strange to say, with all his wealth, envy had no
word for him, nor was he even decried more than it was fitting a rich
and handsome bachelor should be. Certain maiden ladies of uncertain age,
to whose charms he had, perhaps, been ungallantly cold, sometimes,
indeed, made light among themselves of his pretensions to noble birth.
That, truly, was the simple gentleman’s weakness, and he loved to style
himself after the stately fashion written above.
“He De Boisrobert, forsooth!” Mlle. Reiné might say over her tatting (or
is it tattling the ladies call it?). “He was never aught but plain”
(“plain indeed!” Mlle. Gudule would giggle, pointing the _mot_ with her
crochet-needle. Ah! thou thoughtest otherwise, fair Gudule, of his
beauty when the embroidered slippers, and watch-pockets, and what-nots
worked by thy own fair fingers—or thy maid’s—deluged the château and
made largesse for its kitchen!)—“plain Guillaume Robert till his father,
the notary, got an army contract and left him money enough to buy the
wood in which his dismal old château is buried—the stingy old hunks!”
Now, this was not entirely true; and these fair Ariadnes were, to say
the least, uncharitable. But it must be remembered, for the credit of
the sex, that these events took place very long ago—so long ago, indeed,
as the time of that great and glorious monarch, Louis XIV.—“le doyen des
Rois,” as he called himself—whose majesty was like the sun (which orb,
indeed, depicted in the act of illuminating the world, he modestly took
for his device), and whose grandeur was indisputably shown in the fact
that he could eat more for dinner than any man in his kingdom.[110] In
point of fact, no small number of his loving subjects, owing to their
sovereign’s majestic and princely appetite, had rarely anything to eat
at all. But to return to our sheep.
Footnote 110:
Read the monarch’s usual _menu_ in the memoirs of the Princess
Palatine, who seems to look with a certain _naïve_ admiration on the
trencher prowess of her august kinsman: “The king devours with ease at
a single meal four basins of different kinds of soup, a pheasant
whole, a partridge, a dish of salad, two slices of ham, some mutton
with gravy, a plate of pastry, and for dessert (_O dura messorum
ilia!_) a quantity of hard-boiled eggs and fruits of every sort, the
whole washed down with abundance of wines.” Here, at least, he might
justly claim to be _nec pluribus impar_.
M. de Boisrobert was not stingy. On the contrary, his open-handed, and
even profuse, hospitality endeared him to all the men about him, who
had, no doubt, their own private reasons for liking him, as some of the
women had theirs for looking upon him with a different feeling. The
manner of his living was almost lordly; and when he was at home, it was
nothing but junketing and merriment from month’s end to month’s end. An
enthusiastic sportsman himself, his stables and his kennels contained
the best that money could buy; while his huntsmen, his gamekeepers, and
his beaters were a small army in themselves. Being so rich and so
generous, he was naturally looked upon with great respect, and even
liking, through all the country round; and many a man who had little
reverence for aught besides would doff his hat most humbly to the
well-furnished larder of that excellent M. de Boisrobert.
It must be said, however, that in his case—what is unhappily not always
true—this respect was rightly his, for better reasons. Amiable, simple,
and sincere, a scrupulous observer of his word, his charity was greater
than his hospitality, and his piety was as unbounded as his wealth.
Every morning he was first at Mass in the little village church of
Boisrobert, whose excellent _curé_ was his favorite and, it may be said,
his only intimate associate. His best friends, indeed, he counted among
that admirable class, whose sterling and unobtrusive virtues he
thoroughly appreciated. It was strange that so worthy a _penchant_ was
destined to lead him into the great danger of his life. Of the great
folks our friend was a little shy; and as for the small farmers and
_hobereaux_, or “squireens” (to borrow from the familiar speech of
Ireland a word which alone fitly translates it), who made the bulk of
the neighboring landed proprietors, their tastes and habits were little
congenial to his own. So good Father Bernard and he were much together;
and a pleasant sight it was to see the two friends placidly angling,
side by side, for the fish which somehow a French angler seems quite as
well satisfied never to catch; or, in the bright summer evenings,
playing bowls with all the zest of school-boys on the village green. No
more welcome guest than Father Bernard entered the gates of the Château
de Boisrobert; and when the November nights grew chilly, and the logs
were piled high and glowing in the wide Norman hearth (its owner always
quoted Horace at such times, and old Mère Chicon, the housekeeper, knew
as well as any one that _dissolve frigus_ was the Latin for “stir up the
fire and fetch a bottle of Burgundy,” and had had, indeed, many bouts
thereanent with the village schoolmaster, in which that worthy was not
always triumphant), our hero liked nothing better than to engage his
friend in a contest at chess, or _trictrac_, or _piquet_, or, over a jug
of Norman cider or the aforesaid Burgundy, to discuss the movements of
the court, with which he professed to be in constant communication.
That was, as we have said, the honest gentleman’s foible—almost his sole
one; he secretly worshipped rank, and often sighed to think that he, who
might—and, he sometimes added to himself, should—have been a De Rohan
was only a De Boisrobert, barely a gentleman, by virtue of the lands his
money had bought. Yet, if not the rose, he had at least lived near the
rose. The son of a notary himself, he was yet distantly connected with
one of the noblest names in France, as he was by no means slow in making
folks aware.
“My good cousin, De Beaumanoir,” he would say in an off-hand way,
pronouncing the name _tout sec_, like the provincial ladies in the
_Roman Comique_, though to his face he never ventured to address him
otherwise than as M. le Comte—“my good cousin De Beaumanoir writes me
that he is to visit Saint-Aignan at his country-seat, and will have me
to be of the party.”
Or, mysteriously: “The army—but this, you conceive, my friend, is
between ourselves—a secret, mind you, of state—the army moves on
Flanders this week. I have it direct from Beaumanoir.”
It was then, as you may read in Scarron’s sprightly pages, a common
ambition of provincial gentlemen to be thought on familiar terms with
the great folks of the court. Truly, an extraordinary time!
At these _naïve_ confidences the _curé_, who knew his friend’s failing,
but respected his virtues, smiled, if at all, to himself.
But M. de Boisrobert’s reverence for his noble kinsman went further than
talking of him in season and out of season. He gave a more substantial
proof of his regard in making him his sole heir. “The money should go
with the title,” he said; “the family must be kept up.” It seemed to him
a little price to pay for the privilege of being admitted for a month or
two in the year to the rather frigid hospitality of the Hôtel
Beaumanoir, of being nightly snubbed by the bluest blood in France, and
of having down a great man or two for a day in the shooting season, to
convert the Château Boisrobert to his enamored fancy into a new
Versailles. His noble cousin he would gladly have had stay longer; but
the count, after yawning through forty-eight hours of _ennui_,
invariably left. The lands of Boisrobert he wanted; its simple and
placid life he could not stomach. His palate was seasoned to higher
flavors.
Not to put too fine a point on it, M. the Count de Beaumanoir was as
insolent, imperious, and ungrateful a scoundrel as was to be found in a
court where gentry of his pattern were rather a drug. Had it not been
that he enjoyed the confidence and familiarity of a still greater rogue
than himself—no less a one, to wit, than Monsieur, the brother of the
Most Christian King—he would long since have come to grief. He was more
than suspected of a share in the mysterious poisoning of the hapless
Henrietta of Orleans, and it was only the credit of his patron and his
own well-known courage and skill as a swordsman that kept these doubts
from taking form.
Such was the heir whom our worthy M. de Boisrobert had selected for the
reversion of his vast estates; and his promise once given, the count
determined that it should be kept.
II.
Daybreak of a pleasant morning in October, 1681. In the court-yard and
stables of the Château de Boisrobert, and in the great farm-yard near
by, all is bustle and confusion. Grooms and footmen, herdsmen and
farm-servants, are scurrying to and fro, with lanterns and lighted
torches, through the gray dawn, tumbling over one another in their
haste, shrieking out contradictory orders at the top of their lungs,
clamoring and making all the noise possible, as though they had taken a
contract for the purpose and felt they had but a limited time to fulfil
it. In the farm-yard the heavy Norman horses are being harnessed, with
collars that would be in themselves a load for a horse of our degenerate
days, to the unwieldy Norman carts, already loaded with huge sacks of
wheat and barley; further on, in the barns, a prodigious lowing and
bleating and bellowing tell where Pierrot and Hugues are marshalling
their herds; in the court-yard, saddled and bridled, are stamping and
snorting the steeds which shall bear M. de Boisrobert and his bodyguard
of two armed domestics to the great fair of Moulin-la-Forêt. Himself
booted and spurred for the journey, that gentleman stands upon the
terrace of the château, overlooking these preparations; chiding here,
encouraging there, animating all by word and gesture. M. de Boisrobert
has not been a nobleman long enough to forget that he is a farmer, and
prefers to be his own steward. He finds it saves time and temper as well
as money.
By dint of much exhortation and shrill volubility of expletives in the
curious Norman _patois_ all is at last in readiness, and they are off,
with many tender partings and tearful embraces between Blaise and
Madelon, and much scolding from Mère Chicon the housekeeper, and fervent
adjurations to the _Bon Dieu_ to bring them a good market and a safe
return. The latter prayer may seem superfluous, as the distance is but
thirty miles and they are a stout party. But it is the day of the famous
Mandrin, most redoubtable of robbers, and of the terrible _chauffeurs_
who extort the farmer’s hidden hoard by roasting his feet at his own
fire; so there is some room for trepidation in the bosoms of the simple
peasant-girls whom this animated company soon leave behind.
We have not space to follow the great cavalcade as it goes bellowing and
baaing and shrieking and _sacrréing_ over the white roads between the
hedges and the apple-orchards to the great fair. We cannot even stop
with M. de Boisrobert at the tidy little _auberge_ of the Pomme d’Or for
the welcome _déjeuner_ of _soupe aux croûtes_, to be followed by ham,
and perhaps a _poulet_ with the freshest of eggs and salad, and the most
delicious of cheeses, and a most refreshing draught of cool cider from
the great stone jug. Nor can we do more than glance at the humors of the
fair—much like other fairs, for the matter of that—with its inevitable
jugglers and tumblers and charlatans, swallowing flames as if they were
sausages, and pulling endless yards of ribbon from their mouths, to the
delight of gaping rustics; its gipsies and gingerbread hawkers; its
shrill-voiced peasant women, in high Norman caps, selling eggs and
poultry; its shriller-voiced ballad-singers piping out:
“Si le roi m’avait donné
Paris sa grand’ ville,”
or some other favorite _chanson_ of the time. These joys we must pass
lightly by, to say that, before the afternoon was well over, M. de
Boisrobert had already sold his entire venture at an excellent profit,
and it was rumored about the fair that he would go home richer by 20,000
francs (equal to 80,000 now) than when he came. The interest in the
lucky capitalist increased; it extended even to his horses, and one or
two simple rustics went so far as to push their way, during the
temporary absence of the grooms, into the stables, there to gaze in
open-mouthed admiration upon the steeds that had the honor of bearing—so
history renews itself—M. Cæsar de Boisrobert and his fortune.
The hour for departure drew nigh. As the days were getting short and the
homeward ride was long and lonely, and, as already hinted, far from
safe—few roads in France were safe in those days after nightfall—M. de
Boisrobert commanded an early start. He himself was to ride on ahead,
attended only by his two mounted valets, leaving the wagoners and
herdsmen to follow more leisurely with the carts. The horses were
accordingly brought forth and saddled, and the worthy squire was just
setting foot in stirrup when he was accosted by a _curé_, who, calling
him by name, politely craved leave to ride with him, as their road lay
in the same direction. M. de Boisrobert assented more than gladly, for
not only was company desirable, but a _curé_ the company he most
desired, and which could be accepted, as would not have been the case
with every comer, without suspicion. So they set forth together.
The _curé_ turned out a most agreeable travelling companion, and M. de
Boisrobert secretly felicitated himself on the chance which had thrown
them together. So charmed was he with his new-found friend that, when
the latter pressed upon him the offer of a supper and a bed at the
vicarage, he wavered, until reminded by the sum he had about him of the
wisdom of pushing on. But even while he doubted came a most distressing
mishap. The horse ridden by one of the servants stumbled, fell, and,
before his rider had fairly scrambled to his feet, rolled over stone
dead. There was nothing for it but to mount Blaise behind Constant, and
so get on as best they might. But, lo and behold! scarcely had Constant
drawn rein for the purpose than, with what seemed to the startled
hearers almost a shriek, the beast he bestrode set off at a furious
gallop, which soon left his luckless rider on the ground with a broken
leg. And, strange to say, the poor animal had run but a few yards
further when he too stopped, staggered, and—_pouf!_ before one could say
Jack Robinson, or its equivalent in Norman French, he is as dead as the
very deadest of door-nails or herrings.
Whatever M. de Boisrobert may have thought of this odd coincidence, he
had little leisure to dwell upon it; for the next instant his own steed
was in convulsions, and, barely giving him time to spring from the
saddle, like the others rolled over dead. How account for so singular a
fatality? Had some poisonous weed got into their fodder? had some
venomous reptile stung them in their stalls? or—uneasy doubts crept into
the good gentleman’s mind—had they been foully dealt with by reptiles in
human form who meant to waylay and rob, if not murder, the travellers?
If the latter, it would be indeed most prudent to accept the good
_curé’s_ hospitality. His house was luckily not far off, and the
disabled servant being first made comfortable in a wayside cabin, and
the sound one despatched to the nearest town for a surgeon, M. de
Boisrobert and the _curé_ took their way to the home of the latter.
Night had fallen when they reached it, but enough light still remained
to show that it was a partly-ruined château, dating probably from the
time of the Crusades. One wing had been so far reconstructed as to be
habitable, and the ancient chapel, the _curé_ explained, had also been
put in order to serve as the village church. “My parish,” he added with
a sigh, “is too poor to build a better.” A moat, still filled with green
and stagnant water, surrounded the walls; a few planks served for a
pathway across it, where once had hung the feudal drawbridge; a dark and
snake-like ivy crawled up the crumbling walls; dense woods cast about it
a funereal gloom. Altogether its outward aspect was sombre and
forbidding in the extreme, and M. de Boisrobert could not repress a
shudder or stifle a sinister presentiment as he looked upon his quarters
for the night. Had his host been anybody but a _curé_, he would have
felt like drawing back even then.
A little old man, who filled in the modest household by turns the
comprehensive functions of butler, valet, groom, gardener, waiter, cook,
and general factotum, took their horses in silence, but with a curious
glance at the visitor the latter could not help remarking, and the
_curé_ led the way to the drawing-room. This was a lofty, vaulted
apartment almost bare of furniture, on the walls of which flapped
dismally a few tattered pieces of tapestry, the relics of old-time
grandeur. A faggot or two crackled and sputtered feebly on the gloomy
hearth. Near it, busied apparently over woman’s work of some kind, were
seated an old woman of repulsive aspect and a young girl, the latter of
whom the _curé_ introduced as Juliette, his niece, and, briefly
requesting her to entertain their guest, excused himself to see to the
latter’s entertainment for the night.
And now, as the heroine of this exciting history has at last arrived—a
little tardiness, as you know, messieurs, must be forgiven to her sex—it
seems only becoming that she should have a chapter to herself.
III.
Lovely? Of course she is lovely. What a ridiculous question! Who ever
heard of a heroine who wasn’t lovely, still less a heroine who was also
the niece of a rob—_Peste!_ The cat was almost out of the bag that
time—so nearly out, in fact, that we may as well slip the noose and let
her go at once. Scat! And now, the author’s mind being freed of an
enormous load, he breathes more freely and announces that our luckless
M. de Boisrobert has literally fallen into a den of thieves. For what
purpose otherwise that artful hint about the rustics prying into the
stables, the horses falling dead upon the way, the elaborate setting
forth of the gloom and desolation hanging like a pall over the ruined
château—to what end, do you suppose, was all this expenditure of
literary artifice, except to prepare the reader’s mind for some
blood-curdling and harrowing event? But the _curé_? the _curé_? Why,
simply no _curé_ at all: a wolf in sheep’s clothing, as there were then
but too many in France.[111]
Footnote 111:
It should be said here that the main incident on which this tale is
founded is true, and that this sacrilegious disguise was in those days
frequently assumed by French robbers the better to disarm suspicion.
The fact is in itself a striking testimony to the implicit confidence
which the clergy of France have always inspired, and deserved.
Of this, however, as yet M. de Boisrobert knew nothing. Filled with
vague forebodings of evil he could neither define nor reason down, he
felt but little in the humor for talk, and still less—being, as you
remember, in his tenth lustrum—for flirtation. So, after one or two wise
remarks upon the weather, or the state of the crops, or the latest
opera, or whatever other topics gentlemen-farmers then chose to break
the ice of conversation with a pretty girl, had been answered _more
virgineo_ with shy blushes, or faltering monosyllables, or embarrassed
and embarrassing silence, M. de Boisrobert betook himself to the window
to look out upon the surrounding country. A full moon threw upon every
object a lustre like that of day, and—ha! what is this he sees in the
court-yard? Can that be his host, the _curé_, talking so confidentially
to those exceedingly sinister-looking chaps (one of whom he now
remembers to have had pointed out to him at the fair as a coiner of base
money, the other as a more than suspected thief), and handling those
three exceedingly long and ugly-looking poniards!—ugh! how their keen
edges glitter in the moonlight as the rascals run their dirty thumbs
along to try their temper.
M. de Boisrobert turned from the window with a gesture of affright and
despair, and beheld Juliette standing before him, no longer a timid
child but a lovely and courageous woman, one finger upon her lip, the
other pointing to the ill-featured duenna, who had had the good manners
to go to sleep. In a few rapid whispers, and still more eloquent
gestures, she explained the danger and her unalterable resolve to save
him or perish in the attempt. Whether it was her words or her beauty, M.
de Boisrobert felt instantly reassured. Indeed, had he known anything of
the course of such adventures, he must have felt so from the moment he
laid eyes on her. For what other purpose except to save him could he
suppose so lovely a creature was to be found in so vile a den? And let
it here be said for the benefit of scoffers that the present writer is
well aware how often this incident has been used for purposes of
fiction—at least ten thousand times in the English language alone. Yes;
but does not the very frequency of its use prove it to be founded on
fact, that some time or other it was true? Very well; this is the time
it was true. Besides, who has said that Juliette is to succeed in her
noble but rash endeavor? Suppose—now just suppose—she were to fail; in
which of your fictions do you find a stroke of originality like that? If
the historian were revengeful; if he had a mind to distort facts, as
historians in very remote ages are said sometimes to have done—well,
well, we shall see.
In her hurried warning Juliette had made shift to tell M. de Boisrobert
that it was meant to put a sleeping potion in his wine, and afterwards
to enter his chamber and kill him while still under the influence of the
drug.
“Do not for your life refuse to drink,” she added, “but be careful to
eat the apple I shall offer you after it, and which will contain the
antidote to the drug.”
Scarcely had she ended when the pretended _curé_ came in with his
precious comrades, whom he introduced as parishioners. (“A fit flock for
such a shepherd!” thought poor M. de Boisrobert.) Supper was served at
once, and all went as the young girl had foretold. The wine was drunk
and the apple duly presented and eaten with a confidence that must seem
truly sublime under the circumstances, remembering, too, that one of M.
de Boisrobert’s remote ancestors had lost his entire patrimony through
accepting a similar gift from a near female relation. Feigning weariness
and sleep, the traveller begged to be excused and was shown to his room.
No sooner was he alone than he began to examine his means of defence and
offence. The flints, of course, were taken from his pistols and the
bolts removed from the door—they would be poor robbers, totally unworthy
the attention of an enlightened reader, who would neglect such obvious
precautions as these. Somewhat disconsolately M. de Boisrobert looked
under the bed and into the wardrobe, but found no comfort there. Then he
piled all the furniture against the door, drew his sword, said his
prayers, set his teeth, thought of Juliette (O middle-aged and most
forlorn of Romeos!), and awaited the conspirators.
He had not long to wait. Scarcely had he taken position when a stealthy
tread outside, a fumbling at the latch, and probably a strong odor of
garlic penetrating through the keyhole, announced their arrival. The
door was first softly, then strongly, pushed, and then, as the
unlooked-for resistance showed their plot was discovered, a furious
volley of oaths was followed by an onset that made the barricade
tremble. Now should we dearly love to entertain the reader with the
description of a terrific combat _à l’outrance_—also _à la_
Dumas—wherein M. de Boisrobert, calmly awaiting his foes’ approach,
falls upon them with such ferocity that in a twinkling he has one
spitted like a lark, another cloven to the chine, and the third in
headlong flight and bawling lustily for mercy, but pricked sorely in
tender places by the relentless sword. But, alas!—such is the fatal
limitation of your true story—nothing of the sort took place. On the
contrary, our hero was in all probability horribly frightened and
thoroughly glad to see a secret panel suddenly slide back, and a white
hand thrust through the opening, while the sweetest voice he had ever
heard begged him to make haste. To seize that hand—and who shall blame
him if he pressed it to his lips?—to dart through the opening—quick!
quick! good Jean!—to close the panel, is the work of an instant.
Scarcely is it shut when cr-rack! crash! bang! go door and barricade,
and the foiled assassins are heard stamping and swearing furiously about
the deserted room. If you could but have seen their faces and heard—no,
it would not have been edifying to hear their language. But the
fugitives are safe. Need it be said that the foresight of the faithful
Jean (who, of course, follows his young mistress, having, indeed, waited
this long time in the robber’s den only for a chance to be on hand in
this emergency) had provided horses, on which they soon reached Evreux,
where they lodged an information, which, there being no police there to
speak of, led to the prompt arrest of the ruffians.
Placing the lovely Juliette in a convent, M. de Boisrobert returned
home. But it was observed that he hunted less than formerly, that he was
often closeted with Father Bernard and his notary, and that he spent
much time in settling his affairs. Need the result be told? What in the
world is a middle-aged bachelor to do whose life is saved by a lovely
maiden of spotless virtue? For, be it known, the fair Juliette, left an
orphan only a week before, had, by her dying father, a rich farmer of
Brézolles, been consigned to the guardianship of this wicked brother,
whose evil courses he was far from suspecting. All that is as plain as a
pikestaff; as it is that in less than six months after, just long enough
to get the trousseau ready (from the Worth of the day, of course) and to
see the wicked uncle comfortably hanged, the bells of Friar
Lawrence’s—we should say of Father Bernard’s—little church at Boisrobert
rang out a merry answer to the problem last propounded.
When the distant echoes of these wedding chimes reached the ears of M.
le Comte de Beaumanoir at Paris, he was not at all angry, as people
thought he would be. Oh! dear, no. On the contrary, he only smiled,
showing a remarkably fine set of teeth. So that people said he was a
brave man, this poor M. le Comte, and not by any means as black as he
was painted. And, indeed, a great many folks began to commiserate him
and to abuse M. de Boisrobert.
IV.
Well?
Well what?
Why, what came of M. de Beaumanoir showing his teeth?
Oh! that? Nothing—just nothing at all. That’s the trouble, you see, of
telling a true story: one’s imagination is hampered at every step. It
would have been most delightful and exciting to have invented a
frightful tale of the count’s vengeance; how he slew his recalcitrant
kinsman, immured his weeping bride in a dungeon for life, and laid waste
the lands of Boisrobert with fire and sword, etc., etc. But the truth
is, he did nothing of the kind. Indeed, his teeth were speedily drawn,
and he was glad to get away with his worthless life. The false _curé_
confessed before his death that the count had suborned him to kill his
kinsman as he returned from the fair, promising him a sum equal to that
which he would be sure to find on M. de Boisrobert’s person, and even
suggesting the disguise. He little thought that the very scheme he
fondly imagined was to secure him his coveted inheritance was destined
really to lose it to him for ever. So ever come to grief the
machinations of the wicked! This last escapade was a little too much
even for courtly morals, and Monsieur was quietly advised to hint to his
murderous favorite that his health would probably be the better for a
change of air.
And the fatal consequences resulting from this marriage?
Yes, yes, of course; how stupid to forget it! Well, a cynic might say
that for a bachelor to marry at all, especially at forty-five—but never
mind the cynic. Their married life was surely not unhappy? Let us hope
not. Do Romeo and Juliet ever throw teacups at each other over the
breakfast-table because that duck of a spring bonnet is not forthcoming?
In romances certainly not; but in true stories—hem! Let us trust,
however, that peace reigned eternal over the domestic hearthstone at the
Château de Boisrobert. But his marriage had cost its owner an illusion—a
life-long illusion; and that is a painful thing at forty-five.
Disenchantment seems to come harder as one gets older and has anything
left to be disenchanted of. He ceased to believe that rank and birth are
the same as goodness, or even greatness, and it cost him many a pang,
and no doubt a great deal of real though whimsical unhappiness, to be
forced thus suddenly and radically to readjust his scheme of life. But,
in spite of the adventure which gave him a wife, perhaps because of it,
he never lost his faith in _curés_ or in Juliette; and the games of
bowls and of _trictrac_ were all the pleasanter for the sweet face that
thenceforth lit them up, and the romping curly-pates that disturbed them
and in time effaced from their fond father’s memory his lingering regret
for the loss of a noble heir.
TO AUBREY DE VERE.
AFTER READING “POEMS OF PLACES—ITALY,” EDITED BY H. W. LONGFELLOW.
I stood in ancient church, ruined and vast,
Whose crumbling altar of its Lord was bare,
Whose shattered windows let in all the glare
Of noonday heat, and noise of crowds that passed
With careless jest, of malice not assoiled.
Within, fast-fading angels still lent grace
Of art, believing, to the holy place
That cruel hands of its best gift despoiled.
With weary feet I trod the broken floor,
With tearless eyes the maimèd aisles gazed down,
When, lo! afar a waxen taper shone,
Burning a hidden altar clear before:
Here hastened I, here knelt—O poet true!
Thine was the light that shone my sorrow through.
COLONIZATION AND FUTURE EMIGRATION.
God has apparently chosen the United States as the theatre for the
demonstration of the truth that the Catholic Church is the church of the
people. She has always been the church of the people; many of her most
severe persecutions have been caused by the stand she has taken in
behalf of popular rights and individual freedom against the tyranny of
kings and the exactions of nobles. But never before has she been
furnished with so large a field for the manifestation and development of
her popular and democratic character as has been prepared for her here.
It is her destiny, we believe, to save the republic from the ruin to
which the sects and their offspring, the atheists, would lead her. Even
those of our Catholic readers who may not fully share this belief will
admit that, to all seeming, the Catholic Church is destined to play an
important part in the future history of our country—at least that she
has grown in numbers, material wealth, and social influence during the
last thirty years to an almost marvellous degree.
A better or more certain method of accomplishing the work of the church
in the United States could scarcely have been devised than the
congregation of a large share of the Catholic emigration in our great
cities. The Catholic Church in the United States is not “a foreign
church” in any other sense than the Bible, or Shakspere’s plays, or
Homer’s poems are “foreign” books; she is, as they are, and far more
than they are, the common inheritance of all, and she is as much at home
here, and as rightfully at home, as she is or ever was in any other
land. Indeed, the church of God is not and cannot be foreign to any of
God’s creatures. But a large proportion of her children in the United
States at present are either of foreign birth or are the descendants of
foreign-born persons in the first or second generation. These people did
not bring the Catholic Church with them to America: they found her here;
she had always had an existence here since Christopher Columbus planted
the cross upon San Salvador, and since the Jesuit priests sailed up the
St. Lawrence and down the Mississippi rivers. If, however, the
emigration which has poured into this country since 1840 had not
arrived, or had it come from non-Catholic countries, and had the growth
of the church here been dependent wholly, or even chiefly, upon the
natural increase of American Catholic families and upon converts from
Protestantism or heathenism, the church in America to-day would have
been numerically insignificant; which is only the same as to say that,
if emigration had ceased after the first European exodus, the population
of the United States to-day would be equally insignificant.
We may form some idea of what the progress of the church under these
conditions would have been here by remembering what it has been in
England since the cessation of the active persecutions which followed
the Reformation. There are about 1,800,000 Catholics in England to-day.
Of these not less than 800,000 are Irish, French, German, Spanish, and
Italian emigrants or their children; the remaining 1,000,000 represent
all the converts of English birth, as well as the descendants of the old
Catholic families who always retained the faith. Half a century has
elapsed since the English Catholics were emancipated from the last
remnant of the persecuting and restrictive legislation which had
oppressed them since the days of Elizabeth. During this half-century the
church in England has been free—free in its own government, free in its
work of propagating the faith and of bringing back the English people to
the religion which their fathers had cherished for a thousand years.
Yet, with some advantages that Catholics in the United States did not
and do not yet possess, the growth of the church in England during the
last fifty years has been vastly less than the progress she has made in
this country during the same period. In 1830 there were more Catholics
in England than in the United States; since then the church in both
countries has been equally free, with the advantages at the start on the
side of England. But now the Catholics in the United States outnumber
those in England more than fourfold.
In 1830, according to the most trustworthy estimates, there were 600,000
Catholics in England and 475,000 in the United States; now they number
two millions there and from six to seven millions here. In England
to-day the church has a cardinal, twelve suffragan bishops, and 2,064
priests; in the United States she has a cardinal, 66 archbishops and
bishops, and 5,297 priests. In England, according to the English
_Catholic Directory_ for last year, there were 997 Catholic churches, 7
theological seminaries, 312 ecclesiastical students, 15 colleges, 38
asylums, and 5 hospitals. In the United States, according to the
American _Catholic Directory_ for the same year, there were 5,292
Catholic churches, 34 theological seminaries, 1,217 ecclesiastical
students, 62 colleges, 219 asylums, and 95 hospitals.[112]
Footnote 112:
These figures, as far as they relate to the institutions of the church
in England, are probably not entirely correct. The _Register_ from
which we have quoted contains no tabular statement of these
institutions, and we have been compelled to arrive at the totals by an
enumeration of our own, the accuracy of which has been rendered
doubtful by the confused manner in which the statistics of each
diocese were given. However, our figures cannot be very greatly at
fault.
We have drawn out this comparison for the purpose of accentuating our
former remark that the marvellous growth of the church in the United
States during the last half-century has been mainly due to emigration
from Catholic countries. Had it not been for these accessions, it is
doubtful, in our opinion, whether the church in the United States would
to-day equal in numbers the church in England. But would its growth have
been so great, so pronounced, so commanding to the attention of all
beholders, had this emigration been directed away from the cities and
dispersed throughout the rural and agricultural sections of the country?
A little reflection will, we think, show that this question must be
answered in the negative. It would have availed the church nothing had
these emigrants been placed in their new homes under conditions where
the preservation of their faith in any practical form would have been
almost impossible; where they would have been deprived of the care and
counsel of their spiritual guides and of the sacraments necessary for
salvation; where their children would have remained unbaptized, their
marriages have been degraded to civil contracts, and their souls starved
and enfeebled by the absence of the Bread of Life. Yet that this would
have been the fate of the great majority of them, had they not
congregated in the cities, cannot be doubted, unless, indeed, God had
chosen to work another miracle in their behalf and to create for them a
miraculous supply of priests—a supply so large that every little hamlet
in the far-off wilds of the West and North should have been furnished
with a spiritual director.
Some boast of having even nine millions of Catholics in the republic;
but it can be shown that there are perhaps half as many more Americans
now living who are the children of Catholic parents in the first or
second generation, but who have lost their faith and grown up as
Protestants or without any religion at all, chiefly because their
parents had gone into districts where there were no priests, and where
the exercise of their religion, save as a spiritual meditation, was
impossible.[113] It was only when the Catholic emigrants began to arrive
here in large numbers, and to dwell together by hundreds and thousands
and tens of thousands in the great cities, that it became possible,
humanly, to provide for their religious wants and for their Catholic
education. How nobly they have themselves furnished the material means
for this work the statistics given above show. They have mainly done it
for themselves. In England the Irish Catholics, in their works of
charity and in the erection of their churches, have often been aided by
the contributions of their wealthy English fellow-Catholics; but in
America the foreign-born and the descendants of the foreign-born
Catholics have for the most part built their own churches, their own
convents, seminaries, and schools, and have received but little aid from
their co-religionists of native ancestry. Indeed, in some instances
within our own knowledge it is the latter who have been the
beneficiaries of the former; and many an American Catholic to-day is
indebted to the charity and self-denial of German, French, and Irish
Catholics for the services of the priest who was the means of his
conversion, and for the erection of the church in which he hears Mass.
We repeat that all this was made possible by the congregation of our
Catholic emigrants in the cities, and that the most deplorable
consequences would have followed had not this congregation taken place.
Footnote 113:
A very ingenious statement was published some time ago in one of our
journals, setting forth what was believed to be “the constituent
elements of the population of the United States in 1870.” This
statement may be thus summarized: In 1784 the entire white population
of the United States was 3,172,000 persons; of these 1,141,920 were of
Irish birth, 751,280 were of other Celtic races, 841,800 were of
Anglo-Saxon extraction, and 427,000 were of Dutch and Scandinavian
birth. The total immigration to the United States from 1790 to 1870
was 8,199,000 persons, of whom 3,248,000 came from Ireland, 796,000
from Anglo-Saxon races; and 4,155,000 from all other sources. The
total population in 1870 was 38,500,000; and this vast number was thus
analyzed:
Joint product in 1870 of Irish colonial 14,325,000
elements and subsequent Irish
immigration, including that from Canada
Joint product in 1870 of Anglo-Saxon 4,522,000
colonial elements and subsequent
Anglo-Saxon immigration
Joint product in 1870 of all other 19,653,000
colonial elements and all subsequent
immigration, including the negroes
—————
38,500,000
From these figures was drawn the somewhat startling deduction that the
population of the United States in 1870 was composed of 24,000,000 of
Celtic birth or origin (Irish, Scotch, French, Spanish, and Italian),
and that of these 14,325,000 were of Irish birth or origin, 4,522,000
of Anglo-Saxon birth or origin, and that the remaining 9,978,000 were
of neither Celtic nor Anglo-Saxon extraction. We are not in any way
responsible for the accuracy of these figures; but that they express
at least an approximation to the truth we do not doubt.
It is not, moreover, in spiritual matters only that our emigrants have
been wise in congregating in the cities. One must remember the condition
in which the great majority of them landed here during the years when
emigration was at the flood-tide, and then compare with that their
present state and the future which is before them and their children.
They were desperately, or apostolically, poor, because they came from
lands where it was impossible for them to acquire anything beyond the
means of bare subsistence. They were uneducated, because they had been
the subjects of governments whose studied policy it was to keep them in
ignorance. They had neither the capital nor the knowledge necessary to
render them successful as independent agriculturists. Labor was most
abundant in the cities, and in the cities they remained. What have they
done there? If you seek their monument, look around you! Behold not only
the 57 Catholic churches (12 of them built almost or quite exclusively
by Germans, 1 by Poles, 1 by Italians, 1 by Bohemians, 1 by Frenchmen,
and 30 by Irishmen), the 17 monasteries, the 22 convents, the
magnificent Protectory, the theological seminary, the 3 colleges, the 22
select schools, the 19 asylums, the 4 homes for aged men and women, the
4 hospitals, and the 85 parochial schools of which the city and diocese
of New York alone boast; but the great business houses, the large
manufactories, the numberless smaller though important factories,
stores, and shops belonging to the foreign-born and foreign-descended
population of this metropolis; make a similar examination of what this
class of our citizens have done in Brooklyn, Baltimore, Boston,
Hartford, Portland, Springfield, Cincinnati, Detroit, Milwaukee, St.
Paul, Albany, Buffalo, Newark, Philadelphia, St. Louis, Chicago, San
Francisco, and twoscore more of our large cities; and then compare these
truly magnificent religious, moral, charitable, commercial, and
industrial results with all that the same people could have accomplished
had they been scattered as sheep without shepherds throughout our
Western and Northern wilds, destined to lose their faith, deprived of
the support and strength which common association and common interest
afford, and doomed, most probably, to lives of hopeless poverty and
unremunerative struggle. God has been too good to them, and to the
country in which they have become so important a factor, to permit this,
and what the arrogance of man has so often stigmatized as folly has
proved to be the highest and best wisdom both for eternal and for
temporal ends. The whole number of foreign emigrants who have landed in
the United States during the first 75 years of this century was
9,526,966. We showed in a former article[114] what proportion of these
has remained in the cities; and we have now pointed out some of the
results of this congregation.
Footnote 114:
“The European Exodus,” THE CATHOLIC WORLD, July, 1877.
We must not be understood, however, to convey the idea that a very
considerable proportion of our foreign-born Catholic citizens have not
made homes for themselves in the rural districts of the country, under
conditions which rendered it possible for them to continue the active
exercise of their religion, and that the happiest results have not
followed. In the New England States, in New York, New Jersey, and
Pennsylvania, in Illinois, Indiana, and Ohio, in Wisconsin, Iowa,
Missouri, and Minnesota, the number of Irish and German Catholic
farmers—well-to-do, prosperous, and faithful—is very large. In the New
England States the increase of this class has of late been marked. The
farms throughout this section are generally small; their native
owners, especially when they are young men, find it difficult to
extract from them incomes large enough to supply their desire for the
luxuries of life; they are often anxious to try their fortunes in the
cities or in the West; whenever one of them offers his little estate
for sale the purchaser is most likely a German or Irishman, whose
wants are more modest, and who finds it quite possible to derive from
a farm of twenty or thirty acres a comfortable subsistence for his
family. This change in the proprietorship of the soil in New England
has gone on to an extent much larger than is generally known; and one
would labor under a serious mistake who supposed that the foreign-born
and foreign-descended population of New England was altogether, or
even unduly, congregated in the cities. There are in New England,
according to the last _Catholic Directory_, 539 Catholic priests, 508
churches, 167 chapels and stations, with a Catholic population of
about 890,000 souls; and it is evident from an examination of the list
of the churches that a large proportion of them are in the small towns
and rural districts of these States. It may be unwelcome news to our
Protestant readers, but it is true, that nearly 25 per cent. of the
present population of New England is composed of Roman Catholics. It
may be still more unpleasant for them to learn that nearly 70 per
cent. of the births in that region are those in Roman Catholic
families. New England, indeed, promises to be the first portion of the
country which is likely to become distinctively Roman Catholic. The
immigration into New England is small, but it is mostly composed of
Catholics; the increase of population is very largely Catholic; the
emigration is almost entirely non-Catholic. From this digression from
our main subject we return with the remark that the rural Catholic
population in the Middle and Western States—a population largely
composed of foreign-born citizens and their descendants—constitutes a
most important factor in the material strength of the Catholic body,
and that, as we shall show, the future course of foreign emigration
should, and most probably will, tend mainly to increase this class.
The late decline in emigration to the United States, and the present
lull, amounting almost to stagnation, which has taken place in it,
together with the fact that there is abundant reason to suppose that
this lull is but temporary and that emigration will again ere very long
pour in upon us, suggest some reflections respecting the changed
character which that emigration will probably assume, the changed
conditions under which it will be carried on, and the changed duty of
the Catholic body in the United States towards it. What was so
essentially necessary in the past will be necessary, under these new
conditions, no longer; what was so often impossible in the past will now
become generally easy of accomplishment. The Catholic Church in the
United States has passed through the stage of its infancy and
feebleness, and has entered upon the period of its manhood and strength.
Firmly planted throughout the land, it fears nothing and can watch over
and abundantly protect the faith and the education of its children. In
every State and Territory, save Alaska, at least one bishop; in seven
States two bishops; in five States three bishops; in one State six, in
another State eight bishops, and with more than 5,000 priests—surely
with this army of shepherds the sheep and the lambs of the flock can be
fed and guarded from the wolves of infidelity, sectarianism, and
bigotry. God has built up his church in the republic in the manner, and
chiefly through the agencies, which we have pointed out, and has thus
fitted her, armed her, and made her strong for the great work which
still lies before her. That work is the conversion of the non-Catholic
portion of our fellow-citizens; the nurture of Catholic children; and
the care, the protection, and, if need be, the conversion of the
emigrants who, in the future, are to come to us from the Old World. It
is only with this latter branch of her duty that we now deal. Emigrants
to the United States have hitherto arrived here chiefly as isolated
individuals, or at best as isolated families. There have been some
attempts at colonization—that is, in bringing in one company a large
number of individuals and of families, destined to migrate together to a
spot already selected for them, and which they are to occupy as a
community. Most frequently these attempts at colonization have been
successful. Where they have failed the failure has been due to some
incapacity or dishonesty on the part of the agents who had the matter in
charge, and not to any vice in the system itself. There is evidence to
show that emigration in future will be to a great extent, and may be
almost wholly, conducted on the colonization principle. We have already
said that emigration from Ireland in the future would most probably be
confined within small limits; but if anything could stimulate it, it
would be the development in Ireland of wise plans for colonization,
carried out by men of probity, experience, and practical wisdom. Our
chief sources of emigration, however, for some years to come, are likely
to be England, Scotland, Germany, France, Austria, Bohemia, Switzerland,
Sweden, Denmark, Belgium, Italy, Poland, and Russia. There are causes at
work which even now are stimulating emigration from each of these
countries, and these causes may attain great strength. As an instance of
the curious manner in which apparently insignificant causes, originating
at a distance, produce large effects, we may mention the fact that the
shipping of fresh meat from this country to Great Britain—an enterprise
only in its infancy—has already so seriously unsettled the relations
existing between landlords and farmers in England and Scotland that the
latter are declaring their inability to make both ends meet, and are
turning their thoughts towards emigration. So general and so serious is
this feeling that the leading journal of Scotland has sent to this
country a trusted member of its permanent staff (the editor of its
agricultural department for many years), with instructions “to make the
fullest possible inquiry into everything connected with the
stock-raising department of agriculture” in the United States, extending
his researches to Texas, “where he proposes to examine thoroughly the
system of cattle and sheep breeding and raising carried on in that State
on so immense a scale, and to obtain all the information that is to be
had with respect to the breeds of cattle, the methods taken to improve
the quality of the stock, and Texan agricultural methods and
circumstances generally.” He is then to visit other States for the same
purpose, and “all along his route he will take note of all the phases
and conditions of agriculture, and of the suitability of the States for
advanced farming.” The results of his investigations, published in
Scotland and England, will enable the farmers there “to determine the
full significance of the competition of American cattle-growers in the
British dead-meat market,” and in all probability determine many of them
to emigrate to this country, with their capital and their skill, to
engage in this competition on the American side.
Farming in England and Scotland—especially in Scotland—has long been a
precarious and hazardous business; and now the reduction of four or six
cents a pound in the price of beef which has been caused by the
importation of about 1,000 tons of American beef and mutton every week
at Glasgow and Liverpool, threatens to be the last straw to break the
back of at least the Scotch farmer. Irish agriculturists likewise depend
to a great extent for their profits upon the money received for their
cattle, and they, too, will feel as severely as their Scottish friends
the ruinous consequences, to them, of a reduction of twenty-five per
cent. in the market value of their principal commodity. Thus the
emigration of the well-to-do farmers of the United Kingdom is likely to
be stimulated, and these agriculturists, most probably, would need but
little persuasion to induce them to emigrate, if they emigrated at all,
in colonies, and not as isolated families or individuals. So, also, as
respects the future emigration from the Continent of Europe. Different
causes are at work in each of the countries above named, but they all
tend to the same result.
We have already hinted that the emigration of the future will be of a
different class from the emigration of the past. At the present moment,
and probably for some time to come, it would be dishonest, cruel, and
unwise to encourage the emigration to this country of people without
capital—those who must earn daily wages in order to live. Hitherto the
great majority of our emigrants have been people of this class, and most
fortunate is it that they came in such vast numbers. The time will again
arrive, no doubt, when this class will be once more necessary and
welcome among us, and when they will come, as they have come before, in
thousands and tens of thousands. But at present they are not needed
here; to bring them hither would be cruel to us as well as to
themselves. The emigrants whom we need, and who are for some time most
likely to come, are those who possess considerable worldly wealth at
home, but who, like the English, Scotch, and Irish farmers of whom we
have spoken, find it difficult to provide sufficiently for their
increasing families, or wish to secure for them, in the New World,
better fortunes than they can hope for in the Old. On the European
Continent, and especially in Germany, other causes are at work which are
morally certain to promote emigration. The war in the East may be
localized—although all the probabilities point to a different
conclusion—but even now it has increased the burdens which oppress the
German people, and rendered the “blood-tax” that they are compelled to
pay heavier and harder to bear. There is probably no intelligent man in
Germany who does not look forward to a not distant day when that country
will be again engaged in a desperate conflict; and meanwhile the
military service exacted from every German citizen, and the cost of
maintaining the army, press with a crushing weight upon the country. A
thoughtful and experienced writer in one of our daily journals—a writer
who, if we mistake not, has himself had extensive experience in the
organization of emigration enterprises—thus treats of this subject:
“But it is in Germany that the fears awakened throughout Continental
Europe will contribute most powerfully to a renewal of interest in
the subject of emigration among classes to whom this country even
now presents all requisite advantages. The stern methods employed by
Bismarck to repress emigration movements—his interference with the
freedom of American citizens who dared to speak of the attractions
held out by the fertile West, and his suppression of whatever seemed
likely to facilitate emigration to the United States—were all called
forth by the anxious desire of people to escape the liability to
military service. The military glories of the empire had charms for
the cities, which acquired delusive appearances of prosperity. Among
the population of rural districts the situation was different. The
burdens and penalties of war, and of a system which exacts incessant
preparation for war as a condition of national safety, have among
these people stimulated the feeling in favor of emigration to a
degree which the action of the Imperial Government has imperfectly
controlled. The dread, vague before, will now be a reality. What, as
a mere contingency, has sufficed to foster the wish to leave the
Fatherland is now so near a certainty that the movement in favor of
emigration needs but a guiding hand to assume large proportions. And
the emigration available is of the description which, discreetly
operated upon, should be attracted rather than repelled by the
considerations which have driven wage-earners back to Europe. Those
who would gladly get out of Germany to save their sons from service
in the army look to the land for a livelihood, and would form
valuable accessions to the Western States. As far as Germany is
concerned, the difficulty is in reaching this class. Agencies that
might be freely used in England or Holland are in Germany
unavailable. All that seems possible there is to provide authentic
information through channels which would not conflict with local law
or incur the suspicion which, in view of recent experience,
interested representations are likely to excite. Might not our
consular agencies be utilized, not as emigration bureaux, but as
means of supplying to those who seek it information in reference to
lands and farms in the West and South, and to other matters
connected with the opening or purchase of farms, and stocking and
working them? The laborious head of the Statistical Bureau some
years ago compiled a volume of statistics which to the working-men
of the Old World was invaluable. The manual at present needed would
deal with the phases of the emigration question, and would be much
more than an accumulation of figures. It would be more legitimate
than half the matter which emanates from the department and is
printed at the public cost; and it would contribute to a revival and
increase of the only immigration which can be honestly encouraged in
the face of hard times.”
The French have never shown much anxiety for emigration; but the
arrivals of emigrants from that country have increased during late
years, and were slightly larger last year than in 1875. In France the
burdens which are felt in Germany are also a cause of suffering, if not
of complaint; and emigration from France, if the proper means for
stimulating and directing it were employed, might reach large
proportions. In Holland causes like those to which we have alluded as
potent in Great Britain exist. The emigration from Russia has hitherto
been of a peculiar character; it has consisted mainly of the Mennonites,
whose anti-war principles impelled them to escape from the military
service exacted from all Russian subjects, and from which only the
temporary and partial concessions of the czar exempted some of them. The
mission now undertaken by Russia is of a character which will compel her
ruler, ere he has finished his task, to press every one of his subjects
into the military service, directly or indirectly. The desire for
emigration from Russia may be expected to increase, although some time
will probably elapse before large results can be hoped for from it. The
emigration from Austria has thus far been small. The total arrivals of
emigrants from that country at the port of New York during the last 30
years have been only 21,677, of whom 1,210 came last year and 1,088 in
1875. But Austria is a country especially fit to emigrate from, and the
incentives which are powerful in Germany will ere long be felt in
Austria also. From Switzerland, Norway, Sweden, Belgium, Denmark, and
Poland emigration of the better class may with reason be anticipated;
and even from Italy, which has sent us 42,769 emigrants since 1847,
considerable accessions may be expected.[115]
Footnote 115:
During the year ended December 31, 1876, 157,440 immigrants arrived in
the United States, of whom 102,960 were males and 54,480 females.
Their ages were: under fifteen years, 26,608; fifteen and under forty,
111,764; forty years and upward, 19,068. The countries of last
permanent residence or citizenship of the immigrants were: England,
21,051; Ireland, 16,506; Scotland, 4,383; Wales, 294; Isle of Man, 8;
Guernsey, 1; Germany, 31,323; Austria, 6,047; Hungary, 475; Sweden,
5,204; Norway, 6,031; Denmark, 1,624; Netherlands, 709; Belgium, 454;
Switzerland, 1,572; France, 6,723; Italy, 2,980; Malta, 2; Greece, 24;
Spain, 597; Portugal, 816; Gibraltar, 16; Russia, 6,787; Poland, 854;
Finland, 22; Turkey, 59; Arabia, 13; India, 22; Burmah, 9; China,
16,879; Asiatic Russia, 83; Japan, 6; Asia, not specified, 14; Egypt,
3; Liberia, 14; Algeria, 9; Africa, not specified, 17; Quebec, 15,545;
Nova Scotia, 3,200; New Brunswick, 1,494; Prince Edward Island, 437;
Newfoundland, 58; British Columbia, 484; Mexico, 532; Central America,
14; U. S. of Colombia, 20; Venezuela, 37; Guiana, 3; Brazil, 28;
Argentine Republic, 6; Chili, 20; Peru, 11; South America, 10; Cuba,
880; Porto Rico, 17; Jamaica, 23; Bahamas, 559; Barbados, 32; other
West India Islands, 43; Curaçoa, 14; Azores, etc., 960; Bermudas, 29;
Iceland, 30; Mauritius, 3; Sandwich Islands, 20; Australasia, 1,261;
East Indies, 16; and born at sea, 23.
During the month ended April 30, 1877, there arrived at the port of
New York 7,353 immigrants, of whom 4,553 were males and 2,800 females.
The countries or islands of last permanent residence or citizenship of
the immigrants were as follows:
England, 1,500; Scotland, 191; Wales, 46; Ireland, 1,364; Germany,
2,184; Austria, 286; Sweden, 415; Norway, 67; Denmark, 171; France,
241; Switzerland, 183; Spain, 58; Italy, 350; Holland, 60; Belgium,
26; Russia, 35; Poland, 34; Hungary, 37; Quebec, Ontario, Nova Scotia,
and Newfoundland, 25; Cuba, 19; Sicily, 18; India, 14; Mexico, 8; U.
S. of Colombia, 4; Venezuela, Bermuda, and born at sea, 3 each;
Greece, China, and Peru, 2 each; Turkey and Iceland, 1 each.
We have before us a collection of documents relating to colonization in
the West and Northwest. One of them describes the admirable plan of the
Coadjutor-Bishop of St. Paul for Catholic colonization in Minnesota. In
a powerful letter addressed, on the 16th of September last, to the
President of the Board of Colonization of the Irish Catholic Benevolent
Union, the bishop dwells upon the evils which have followed the
settlement of our Irish emigrants in the large cities—evils which we
have no wish to belittle; but he also confesses that the misfortunes of
those who went into the rural districts were equally deplorable. He
remarks:
“Those who—exceptions to the rule—did move forward into the country,
in search of homes on the land, suffered in many instances from the
absence of proper and systematic direction no less than their
companions in cities. They lost their faith. They strayed away from
church and priest, from Catholic associations, and in certain States
to-day there are whole districts where you hear the purest of Celtic
names, and where, nevertheless, not one man proclaims himself a
Catholic or smiles at the mention of the old land.”
And then, after a charming picture of a certain little Irish Catholic
colony in the West, of which he says that, beginning in poverty and
hardship twenty years ago,
“To-day those families are prosperous—rich; their children are as
innocent and as true as if they had always breathed the atmosphere
of the most Catholic of lands; the number of families has doubled,
through mere natural increase; their district of country is for ever
secured to the church,”
Bishop Ireland goes on to say that the results of his own colonization
labors in Minnesota may be thus described:
“We began last February. Our first step was to secure the control of
117,000 acres of land, situated in Swift County, belonging to the
St. Paul and Pacific Railroad. There was at the time in the county
about as much more vacant government land open for settlement under
the pre-emption and homestead acts. The price of the railroad land
was fixed, so that during the time it was to remain under our
control the company could not advance its figures. We at once placed
a priest in the colony, whose duty it was to direct and advise the
immigrant as well as to minister to his spiritual wants. An office
was opened in St. Paul, where the immigrant would be received on his
arrival from the East, and where all letters of inquiry would be
answered. Two weeks after publication of our plans had been made in
the Catholic press, immigrants commenced to arrive, and up to the
date at which I am writing over eight hundred entries have been made
by our people on government land, and about 60,000 acres of railroad
land have been occupied. We permit no speculation, so that each
quarter section generally represents a family, persons, as a rule,
being allowed to take more land only when they have grown sons, who
soon will themselves need a home.”
He then gives a letter from the register of the Land Office, showing
that the number of land entries made in Swift County from January 1 to
June 1, 1876, was 1,317, and saying that over 800 of these were made by
“your people.” The register adds:
“In this connection allow me to bear testimony to the intelligence,
integrity, and good order always manifested by your colonists in all
their business relations with this office. I can now call to mind no
instance in which one under the influence of liquor has been in this
office. Cases of profanity are extremely rare; in no instance have
we had trouble or contention with any one. They are model colonists.
I know this opinion to be shared by all who come in contact with
them.”
The bishop adds:
“We have already in the colony two churches; one more will be built
in spring. Two promising towns have sprung up—De Graff and Randall.
In De Graff there are some forty houses, stores or residences, a
large brick-yard, a grist-mill; a grain elevator and a convent
school are to be put up during the winter. The settlers, whom I had
the pleasure of visiting a month ago, are full of hope and delighted
with their prospects. Last spring Swift County was a wild,
untenanted prairie; to-day on every side new houses and
freshly-broken ground meet the eye. Our expenses in organizing and
directing the colony were large; still, we were able to meet them by
direct revenue from the colony itself. Each settler paid a small
entrance fee, and we sold town lots. We have also reserved from sale
some choice sections of land, which can at any time, if there is
need, be disposed of at a high advance over the original price; so
that we are safe against all losses in our enterprise. As soon as a
settlement is formed the land advances at once in value; one farm
bought in Swift County last spring at two dollars per acre has been
sold since at nine dollars per acre, and a settlement that embraces
three or four hundred families always affords room for a valuable
town-site. The two excellences which I deem our Minnesota plan
possesses are the following: We had control of the land; this is
necessary to ward off speculation and preserve the land for our own
colonists. No sooner would twenty families be settled in a district
than the surrounding land would be bought up by speculators or
strangers, if you had not complete control over it in some manner.
Next, we began the colony with a priest on the spot; the presence of
a priest does more than any other agency to attract immigrants and
to encourage them in their difficulties. We have been so well
satisfied with our work in Swift County that our programme for next
year includes the opening of two new colonies.”
Our space does not permit us to summarize even the accounts of the other
Catholic colonization movements which have come under our notice. These
movements are serious and important, and those engaged in them should
take every possible precaution to prevent them from falling into the
hands of careless, incompetent, or dishonest persons. The work, it
appears, will have two chief departments—the home and foreign agencies.
The former will undertake and supervise the task of selecting and
securing proper localities for colonies, and of procuring as settlers
families and individuals already resident here, but whose interests
would be promoted by their translation to these new homes; the foreign
agencies would be employed in diffusing the necessary information among
the classes in Europe who would be most likely to emigrate, and who
would be the most desirable emigrants, and in inducing them to join new
colonies already established or to form others of their own. The
_Catholic Advocate_, of Louisville, Ky., in some well-considered remarks
on the subject, says:
“Now, it is our opinion that a great impetus could be given to this
good work if the directors of the colonization project could so
manage as to awaken the Irish people at home to the value of the
movement; if they could have their plans placed in all their
development before that class in Ireland from which emigration
recruits its numbers. This could be best and most efficiently done
by inducing the formation of corresponding organizations in the old
country. There are very many thousands of people in Ireland, with
farming-stock worth two and three and four hundred pounds sterling,
holding their lands by an insecure tenure and at a rack-rent, who
would come out to this country to-morrow, with all their valuables
converted into gold, if they knew or understood the advantages of
the colonization scheme. As it is now, they only hear about it. It
comes to them by newspapers, as a kind of far-off echo. It is not
brought forcibly to their notice. Its benefits are not urged upon
them personally. There is no persuasion about it, and it is as a
dead interest to the great majority of the people, who, if they only
knew and understood it thoroughly, would grasp at it. The British
government was very earnest in its efforts to colonize Australia and
New Zealand some years ago, and the advantages it had to offer were
far and far away from those offered by the Catholic colonization
movement amongst us. But how did the British government act? It sent
agents amongst the Irish and English and Scotch, prepared with maps
and pamphlets and lectures, to impress the value of their project
upon the people at home and put it immediately before their eyes.
What was the consequence? Numbers of emigrants came forward, and of
a class which had the means to colonize, and they settled in
Brisbane, Queensland, and New Zealand, where they are to-day
prosperous and promising. We do not say that paid agents should be
sent to Ireland for the purpose we indicate, but it would be very
easy to communicate with influential persons there to put before
them the value of forming organizations in connection with Bishop
Ireland’s scheme, with the St. Louis scheme, and any others that may
be started. What is required is emigrants with some capital, and
this is the way to get them.”
Bishop Ireland, in the letter from which we have already quoted, sets
forth at some length what such a body as the Irish Catholic Benevolent
Union could do in this work. It could constantly agitate the subject of
colonization, and it could establish a national bureau of information,
which would collect information, publish pamphlets, secure the
co-operation of bishops and priests, and open colonies of their own. But
the “crowning stone in the work of colonization,” in the bishop’s
opinion, would be “the formation of joint-stock colonization societies.”
He says:
“By no other means can the poor among our people—those most in need
of homes—be colonized. However successful our Minnesota plan may
seem to have been, it does not reach the poor. We have received
hundreds of letters from most deserving persons, to whom we were
obliged to answer that we had no place for them in our colony. How
many there are who have simply means to bring them West, but who can
neither pay for land nor maintain themselves while waiting for the
first crop! A joint-stock company would give them land on long time,
at reasonable rates of interest, and would also advance them small
sums to assist them in opening their farms. The plan might be
somewhat as follows: The executive power of the company should be in
the hands of most reliable business men. Stockholders would be
promised that their money would be paid back in five years, with
interest at six per cent. per annum, and, in order that men of all
classes might take part in the work, shares would be put at low
figures. The inducement to take shares is that good is done to our
fellow-countrymen without any loss to ourselves. The company
purchases a tract of land; cash in hand, the land would cost but
little. Immigrants, in purchasing it from the company, would give
back a mortgage, promising to pay the full price in four or five
years, with interest at eight per cent. per annum. An industrious
settler could not fail to meet such obligations. If he failed to do
so, the land reverts to the company, worth much more than it was
when first purchased. The company derives its expenses from the two
per cent., which it charges the settlers over what it pays its
shareholders; but to protect itself the better it could sell the
land at a slightly increased figure, especially a few choice pieces;
it could also lay out for its profit a town-site, and sell the lots.
“There should be colonies in every State where cheap lands are to be
found. The movement should be made general, our entire Irish
Catholic people entering into it: one class coming forward with
advice and money, the other profiting, for their own good and that
of their religion, of the assistance offered to them. What is to be
done must be done quickly. The time is fast passing when cheap lands
can be had in America. Already the tide of immigration—bearing,
alas! but a small number of our people—has crossed the Missouri,
leaving in its wake but inconsiderable portions of unoccupied land,
and reaching even now the limits of the arable lands of the
continent. Patriotism and religious zeal are two great incentives to
action for Irish Catholics. Colonization is a work upon which both
can be most easily brought to bear.”
Already one such joint-stock company has been formed—on the 10th of
April last—in St. Paul, in which the bishop and the coadjutor-bishop of
that see have taken shares.
It will henceforth be the duty of the church in America to see that no
Catholic family landing on our shores and seeking a new home in our
Western States and Territories shall be permitted to stray beyond her
control, but shall be conducted to localities where her priests are
already prepared to receive them, and where their fellow-citizens will
be bound to them by the ties of faith. Catholics in this land are
already about as one in six. We receive accessions every day from the
ranks of the Protestant sects; few, if any, of our own number fall away
from us; the emigration of the future, to a great extent, will be in our
hands. Thus will the church in America—where to-day, to use his own
words, our Holy Father “is more truly Pope than in any other land”—grow
in strength and beauty, and thus will she be prepared, when the hour
comes, to save the republic for which her sons, from the hour of her
birth until now, have shed their blood, and given their toil and their
prayers, in unstinted measure.
A THRUSH’S SONG.
Underneath a leafy cover,
Green with morning-wealth of June,
Wanting still, like gift of lover
Craving even greater boon,
Deeper chords of light to perfect summer’s fulness, love’s high
noon;
Just apart from all the glitter
Of a busy crystal world
Where, amid quick human twitter,
Pond’rous engine huge arms hurled,
Leaping shuttle wrought bright fancies, girded wheels obedient
whirled;
Just a little from the glimmer,
From the footfalls’ tuneless tread—
With the distance ever dimmer—
Rose, so calm o’ershadowèd,
Sound of lusty drum and hautboy, with clear flute voice interlaid,
Notes exultant loud outpouring
Chant of nations, lightly bound
With frail melody, up soaring
O’er the people gathered round,
Resting from the glare a little, from the wearing sight and sound.
Ears of loyal Briton tingling
Hark’ning there, “God save the Queen”;
Erin’s children’s tears commingling
At “The Wearing of the Green,”
Thinking of a loveless bondage, truer trust that might have been.
Sounds of wrathful people seeming
Storming through the “Marseillaise,”
Stirred a land, nigh dead in dreaming,
Through Hortense’s song of praise,
Through its wailing sadness tolling bells of old chivalric days.
Through sad France’s slumber breaking
Germany’s triumphant hymn,
Armed peoples, eager waking,
Watching Rhine-lights growing dim,
Hearing clear a weary nation struggling sore with spectres grim.
In the nations’ anthems swelling
Ever twanged some chord of wrong:
Broken notes in anguish welling
Even in our starlit song—
Shadowy notes from swamp and prairie mingling with the suffering
throng.
Stilled at last the music’s clamor,
Drum and hautboy laid to rest,
Softly through the silence’ glamour
Stole the light wind of the west,
Gently parted the green branches, tenderly each leaf caressed.
And a sudden thrill of sweetness,
Mellow, careless, glad, and clear,
Love’s noon-song in its completeness,
Poured in peaceful nature’s ear
From a thrush’s throat of silver—happy song without one tear—
Fell like precious, heav’n-dropped token
'Mid the elements of strife,
'Mid the melodies, grief-broken,
Blare of trumpet, shriek of fife—
Only with undarkened blessing was the thrush’s singing rife.
Where the ways were broad and ordered
England’s Indian blossoms flamed;
Here, where guarding thickets bordered,
Bloom of May June’s sunshine claimed,
Lifting, 'mid the throngs of people, glance, half-fearing,
half-ashamed;
Trembling at the cymbals’ crashing
Through the ancient solitude,
Till the thrush’s sweetness flashing,
With its wild-wood joy imbued,
Seemed a covenant from heaven, arc of promise, rainbow-hued.
In the upper silence singing,
Hidden minstrel, unafraid,
In the sunlit branches, swinging,
By the west wind, whispering, swayed,
All the lower tumult silenced in the clear, blue depths o’erhead;
Whence the peace of heav’n, descending,
Filled the bird’s song, true and clear,
Lightsome duty sweetness lending,
Joy o’erbrimming in its cheer,
Freedom on his pinions resting, sunshine soft, and heaven near.
Careless strength and free heart blending
In each note’s melodious mirth,
Calm within a pure soul bending
Praising for its heavenly birth,
For its gift of soaring pinions, lightening so the bonds of earth.
With that clear and sudden sweetness
Sober fancies swept along,
And its wild-wood, perfect meetness
Seemed our country’s truer song—
Sunshine soft, and heaven near it, and no undertone of wrong.
So, methought, her clear voice, ringing,
Should in strength of freedom rise,
With the sweetness of its singing
Every evil exorcise;
Blessing for her children winning through her nearness to the skies.
PHILADELPHIA, June, 1876.
THE CONGREGATION OF CLUNY.
TRANSLATED FROM SCHOEPPNER’S “CHARACTER-BILDER DER GESCHICHTE DES
MITTELALTERS.”
At the close of the ninth century the great wealth of the Benedictine
Order in France had produced a relaxation of discipline and a departure
from regular observance in many of its monasteries which brought it into
a state of decadence. One principal source of this degeneracy lay in the
want of all organic union binding together the distinct monasteries,
each one of which was exclusively subject to its own abbot. It is true
that in earlier times the bishops exercised a certain jurisdiction over
them; but this was seriously impeded by the fact that the abbot was
frequently equal to the bishop in power and in external consideration.
The pope was too distant; disorder could strike deep root before any
information would reach him, and even then he was ordinarily able to
employ only indirect methods of remedying the evil. This seems to have
been felt by all those who, from the tenth century onwards, endeavored,
by various additional statutes, explanations, and stricter applications
of the Rule of St. Benedict, to bring back those who were subject to it
to a more conscientious fulfilment of the obligations of their religious
profession. At the time when the Carlovingian dynasty, represented in
the person of Charles the Simple, was verging toward extinction, William
the Pious, Duke of Aquitaine and Count of Auvergne, in concert with his
duchess, Ingeburga, formed the plan of founding a new monastery. He took
counsel respecting the carrying out of his design with Hugh, Abbot of
St. Martin’s at Autun.
In company with the duke and duchess Hugh made an exploration of their
domains in search of a suitable location, and selected a meadow on the
banks of the little river Grosne, near an agreeable cascade, where a
chapel in honor of the Blessed Virgin and St. Peter had been already
erected. The duke objected that this was his favorite hunting-ground,
and that the noise and tumult of deer-chasing would frequently disturb
the quiet of the monastery. “Well, then,” replied the abbot, “drive away
the hounds and bring in the monks; you well know which of the two will
bring you the most favor with God.” The duke cheerfully assented to this
proposition, and took measures for the erection of a monastery in honor
of the apostles SS. Peter and Paul upon this territory, of which he had
but recently acquired the possession.
At the recommendation of Hugh, Berno was invited from a neighboring
monastery to become the first abbot. He was succeeded by Odo, the son of
a Frankish knight, who had been brought up at the court of Duke William,
had afterwards devoted himself to the religious state, and was at the
time of his election in the maturity of his manhood. Odo saw that in
many monasteries the end of the religious vocation had been entirely
forgotten, and, in order that he might restore the primitive discipline
of St. Benedict, he determined to reform the monastic state in
accordance with its original spirit and intention, and to induce the
monasteries in his own vicinity to adopt his reformation. He was a man
well fitted to undertake such a task, by his personal austerity, his
self-devotion to the good of others, and his extraordinary charity,
which was so great that he was ready at any time to bestow all he had
upon the poor, without any thought of reserving on one day what might be
necessary for the next. The influence of his personal character, and the
effect of his active efforts during a prolonged life, were so great that
a number of monasteries became affiliated to the one over which he
immediately presided. He is, therefore, properly speaking, the founder
of the Cluniac Order.
His meek and humble successor, Aymard, won for himself by his amiable
virtues the confidence of all the brethren of the order, and the favor
of the great and powerful, who were profuse in conferring upon it
liberal gifts, charters of protection and privilege. His successors in
office, Majolus, Odilo, and Hugh I., were all equally eminent by their
able administration, their great influence in all the most important
ecclesiastical and political movements of their time, and their high
favor with emperors, kings, and princes. Emperors, kings, popes, and
bishops maintained intimate relations with the abbots of Cluny, and all
the great and powerful nobles of the country sought their advice in
matters of importance. Three Sovereign Pontiffs were taken from Cluny to
fill the chair of St. Peter. When the son of a king was obliged to
become a fugitive, he sought for a refuge at Cluny, and princes who were
weary of life and disturbed by remorse of conscience came there to do
penance among the brethren. The rulers of foreign countries were lavish
of their donations to the order, the popes were equally munificent in
conferring marks of their high favor, and bishops were eager for the
affiliation of the most important monasteries in their dioceses with
Cluny. The immense revenues which flowed into its coffers from all
countries in the world became at last proverbial.
The internal discipline and external splendor of Cluny were maintained
in an undisturbed permanence and stability for a period of two
centuries. At the end of that time both were grievously shattered by the
disastrous administration of the unworthy Abbot Pons, a man of worldly
levity in character and manners, haughty and ambitious in his
disposition, whose whole course of official conduct was such as to
threaten the complete downfall of the order. After a length of time he
was formally impeached and tried at the tribunal of Rome, by which he
was deposed from his office as abbot. Disregarding this sentence, he
seized anew on the possession of the monastery of Cluny by force of
arms, but was soon after overpowered and cast into a prison, where he
was carried off by a sudden attack of fever.
After a short period of only three months, during which the abbatial
chair was occupied by Hugh II., Peter the Venerable was placed over the
Cluniac Order, which he ruled for thirty-nine years, precisely during
the period of St. Bernard, who was his intimate friend, and whom he
survived about three years. His activity, prudence, and universal
reputation, the intellectual power, deep learning, and exalted virtue
which merited for him the appellation of Venerable by which he is
designated in history, sufficed not only to heal Cluny from the wounds
inflicted on it by the Abbot Pons, but to raise the whole order to its
highest summit of importance, and to make the monastery which was its
centre flourish in a state of unexampled spiritual and temporal
prosperity. If we consider the many journeys which this great abbot
undertook on affairs of the utmost importance connected with the public
interests of the day, it would seem that he was exclusively a statesman;
his vast correspondence seems sufficient to have employed the time of
one whose whole attention was given to counselling all sorts of persons
seeking his advice by letters; his theological works are like the
productions of one actively occupied in study; the strictness with which
he observed and enforced upon his subjects in the cloister the monastic
rule indicates a contemplative ascetic; his administration of the
temporalities of his monastery presents him in the light of an able
financier and man of business. The world was filled with his fame, and
his order attained the highest zenith of its glory during his
administration, which ended at his death, during the Christmas-tide of
the year 1156.
All the special rules of the Cluniac Order were based upon the Rule of
St. Benedict. The ecclesiastical chant and the service of the choir
employed much more time and attention, according to the customs of
Cluny, than in other Benedictine monasteries. As far as possible,
uniformity was enforced in the different houses after the model of the
mother-house. Besides the special prayers which each one said according
to his own devotion, one hundred and thirty-eight psalms were prescribed
to be recited daily, which was usually done while engaged in performing
the various tasks; and even in the great heats of summer, on the days
when talking was permitted, there was only time for a recreation of half
an hour. Every negligence or mistake in the choir-service received
instantly a reproof. This was regarded as a spiritual military service,
in which no individual caprice or negligence could be tolerated. Special
care was exacted on the greater festivals of the church, and their high
importance was recognized by the greater length of the choral song, the
reading of longer lessons, and a more fervent devotion. During High Mass
no Low Masses were allowed to be said, so that no one could in that way
consult his own convenience and escape from the public and solemn
celebration. The moment of the departure of one of the brethren from
this world was treated as a specially solemn occasion. As soon as he had
received Extreme Unction a wooden cross was put under his head in place
of a pillow. All who could possibly attend were obliged to assist at the
last agony of the dying man, and, although at other times running
through the corridors was strictly forbidden, it was specially ordered
whenever the passing-bell announced that one of the brethren was about
to depart this life. Special revenues were devoted to all charitable
purposes, and their conscientious expenditure strictly enjoined. There
was a particular endowment for eighteen poor men who were perpetually
supported by the mother-house. Six brothers were appointed for the
service of the poor, one of whom waited on them, another acted as porter
of their hospital, two others furnished the wood out of the forest for
their fires, and two had charge of ovens for baking bread, to be given
away in alms to the poor. Everything remaining on the tables of the
refectory after the meals was taken by the almoner for distribution
among the poor. A cover was laid for each one of the most distinguished
benefactors at every meal, even though they were living at a great
distance or had been long dead, and all their portions were taken for
the poor. Twelve loaves, each weighing three pounds, were prepared each
day for widows, orphans, feeble and aged persons. On Holy Thursday the
ceremony of foot-washing was performed for as many poor men as there
were brothers in the community, all of whom were afterwards served at
dinner. On certain special occasions, and on all the festivals when the
table of the brethren was better served than usual, more abundant alms
were distributed. The almoner was bound to make a weekly visitation of
the houses in the village near the monastery, that he might find out
every poor person who was sick, and furnish him with food, wine, and
medicines. The number of poor persons who regularly received aid was
estimated at seventeen thousand. The Abbot Odilo sold the ornaments of
the church and a crown presented by the German emperor Henry II. in
order to relieve the wants of the people during a famine. The
subordinate monasteries were required to imitate in this generous
alms-giving the example of Cluny, and a similar observance of
hospitality was also exacted. Precise rules were laid down for the
reception of visitors of different ranks and conditions, who were
continually arriving at the monastery on foot or on horseback. If they
were ecclesiastics, they were not only invited to partake of the
hospitality of the monastery, but also to participate in its religious
exercises. Every one who travelled on foot received a certain amount of
bread and wine on his arrival and at his departure. If the poverty of
the house did not permit anything more than a temporary shelter and a
friendly reception, this, at least, was to be cheerfully given to every
one. The prior was not to consider what was within his means, but to go
beyond them in providing for the wants of strangers. Frequently, when
they had consumed all the provisions of the larder, the monks had to
endure hunger until new supplies, which often came unexpectedly, were
furnished by royal and noble benefactors.
The life of the monastic brethren was austere. Besides the regular and
very long choir-service, which no one was dispensed from attending, the
fasts were frequent. The flesh of quadrupeds was never allowed, and on
the ferial days and the entire period from Septuagesima to Easter, not
even fat could be used in preparing the food. The principal article of
their daily diet was beans, with an occasional allowance of eggs and
cheese, and more rarely of fish. After night prayers no one could taste
food or drink anything without special necessity and permission. The
violation of these rules and of the law of strict poverty was considered
as a grievous transgression, exposing the offender to excommunication
and privation of Christian burial.
Obedience, the pivot of all the virtues of an ecclesiastic, was regarded
as having a higher and more extended obligation for religious. Its
disregard was esteemed worthy of the severest punishment, and the
incorrigible were subject to expulsion. Priors and other officials were
twice admonished, and afterwards deposed without any hope of
restitution. The observance of a strict rule of silence was regarded as
a specially efficacious help to the acquisition of perfect spiritual
virtues, and, in the opinion of the Abbot Odo, monastic life was utterly
worthless without it. Absolute silence was invariably observed during
meal-times, and during all times of the day throughout Lent and several
other penitential seasons. The Cluniac monks became so expert in the use
of the sign-language through their disuse of speech that they might have
dispensed with talking altogether without the least inconvenience. The
most perfect silence and stillness, undisturbed even by hasty and noisy
walking through the cloisters, reigned throughout the monastery.
Every fault must be expiated by penance, or at least an acknowledgment
before the abbot. Those who were late must remain standing or prostrate
until a sign was given to them to repair to their places. The tardy at
table received also a penance. Public offences received public penances,
in order that every one might have sensible evidence that the community
was vigilant in observing the behavior of each individual member.
Smaller offences were punished by solitary confinement, making a station
at the church-door, or exclusion from the common exercises. Those which
were more serious were punished by flagellation, and, if the offence had
been public, the penance was administered at the door of the church
while the people were assembling for Mass, and the cause of it announced
to them by an official of the monastery. For the gravest faults the
culprit was put in irons or imprisoned in a dark, underground dungeon.
St. Hugh’s maxim was that a monastery is not dishonored by the faults of
its members, but by their impunity. Several brothers were appointed to
make the rounds of the monastery at intervals, and to declare in chapter
every disorder which they observed, whereupon due penance was inflicted
on the delinquents. This duty devolved on the prior for the first hour
of the night, and at intervals during its progress, with a special
charge of watching that all the doors were properly closed and fastened.
Such a special care was observed in regard to cleanliness that the most
particular housekeeper could not be more thorough or exact in a
well-regulated private family than were these monks of Cluny in their
domestic arrangements. This care for cleanliness showed a deep
psychological insight into the close connection between this exterior
virtue and interior purity, which is often endangered and damaged by a
slovenly disregard of outward propriety. Articles of clothing and all
the bed and table furniture were regularly changed according to an
invariable rule. Careful supervision was observed towards the novices in
respect to their personal neatness in such minute particulars as
washing, combing their hair, etc., and conveniences for these purposes
were provided in abundance for all, that they might easily make use of
them when they came in from work to go to the choir or the refectory.
The clothing was very plain, in contrast to the worldly elegance and
vanity in dress which prevailed in many other religious communities, but
all the different articles of dress were provided in abundance, with two
complete outfits for each one. The winter clothing was made to suit the
season and the climate, warm and comfortable; for the men who made the
regulations of Cluny were not so narrow-minded as to adhere scrupulously
to purely exterior customs which were suitable to Italy but utterly
unfit for the ruder climate of the North.
The sick were cared for with the most tender solicitude, six brothers
were deputed to the service of the infirmary, and the best ass in the
stables was set apart to haul wood for the fire. The infirmarian was
always provided with spices and wholesome herbs to make the food of the
sick more appetizing and wholesome. Meat was provided for them every
day, and even on fasting-days. A certain part of the presents made to
the monastery was assigned to the purchase of comforts and delicacies
for the sick and weakly. They were dispensed from the rule of silence,
and only required to refrain from abusing the privilege of talking. The
abbot and grand-prior were required to make frequent visits to the sick,
and the cellarer was bound to see each one, in company with the
infirmarian, every day, and inquire what kind of food he wished for and
in what way it should be prepared. As soon as one was released from the
infirmary he came to the chapter, and, standing up, said to the prior:
“I have been in the infirmary and have not kept the rules of the order
according to our obligation.” The prior answered: “May God pardon you!”
whereupon the convalescent brother went to the place of the penitents
and recited the seven penitential psalms or seven _Pater Nosters_.
As for the interior legislation and administration of the order, a
general chapter was held at Cluny once a year, where all the abbots,
priors, and deans of the entire congregation were bound to appear under
pain of deposition, those only who lived in distant countries being
exempted from attendance oftener than once every two years. Every
question which related to the rules was submitted to this chapter, and
to the votes of all the brethren of the monastery of Cluny. Each one was
obliged to make known in the chapter, without any regard to personal
considerations, whatever he had noticed in any of the houses or in any
individual member of the order which was worthy of censure, and was
protected from any unpleasant consequences which might possibly ensue
afterwards to himself from his disclosures. All priors whose
administration or personal conduct was censurable were deposed by the
chapter; and, finally, they made an examination of all the novices of
the congregation.
As soon as the chapter was dissolved the supreme power reverted to the
abbot of Cluny. He appointed all the priors and confirmed all the
abbots-elect, being strictly forbidden to receive any presents or
perquisites in connection with any such official act. He could make such
regulations as he saw fit in all the houses; all his sentences upon
individual delinquents which were in conformity with the canons were
binding; and in the interval between the capitular assemblies he could
depose from all offices without appeal. He was bound to share as much as
possible in the common life of the other monks, to be with them in the
common dormitory and at the common table, and to use the same food, the
only mark of distinction being that he was served with wine of a better
quality and with two loaves at dinner.
Next in rank and authority came the grand-prior, appointed by the abbot
with the counsel of the elders of the monastery and the assent of the
chapter. Under the abbot’s supreme direction he presided over all the
spiritual and temporal offices of the monastery, with a special
oversight of those brothers who were charged with out-door employments
on the cloistral domains. Every year, after the vintage, he made an
inspection of all the farm-lands, examined the stores laid up in the
barns and cellars, and directed the division of the fruits of the
harvest for the use of those who resided in the outlying farm-houses,
and for the general use within the monastery.
The interior order of the house was under the oversight of the prior of
the community, who had several assistants, and in case of absence a
deputy. The rule prescribed that no account should be taken of birth or
other personal considerations of human respect in the choice of prelates
and officers, but only of moral virtue, experience, and prudence. No
abbot or prior, not even the abbot-general of the congregation, was
allowed to travel without some of the brethren in his company, as
witnesses of his conduct and associates in fulfilling the devotions
prescribed by the rule.
We can form some estimate of the extent of the monastic buildings of
Cluny from the circumstance related in history, that in the year 1245
Pope Innocent IV., with twelve cardinals and his entire suite; also two
patriarchs, three archbishops, eleven bishops, with their respective
suites; farther, the king of France, with his mother, wife, brother, and
sister, and the whole of their retinue; the emperor of Constantinople,
the crown-princes of Aragon and Castile, several dukes and counts, and a
crowd of knights, ecclesiastics, and monks, were accommodated within the
precincts of the monastery without encroaching on any part of it which
was ordinarily occupied by the community or incommoding any of the
brethren.
The fine arts were made to contribute to that which is their highest
end—the service of religion—in the Cluniac Order more than in any other
contemporary institute. They were all employed in harmony and unity with
each other to enhance the splendor of the divine service. The candles
and lamps by which the church was lighted were placed in costly hoops
beset with precious stones. Instead of candelabra, trees artistically
wrought in bronze stood near the altar, having the lighted candles
prescribed for the solemn ceremonies blazing among their branches.
Paintings covered the walls; the windows were richly ornamental and
filled with colored glass. Costly tapestry and hangings,
beautifully-carved stalls, a decorated pavement, chimes of bells of
unusual size, reliquaries of gold whose beauty of workmanship even
surpassed their costliness, chalices, ciboriums, and monstrances of
gold, sparkling with jewels, vestments heavy and stiff with cloth of
gold, and all else that was magnificent in sacred art and decoration,
made the church of Cluny a theme of praise and admiration throughout all
France. It was probably at the date of its erection the largest in the
world, and rested upon sixty-eight columns, each eight and one half feet
in diameter. Thirty-two of these pillars supported the vast dome, and
the whole edifice, which was built in the peculiar form of an
archiepiscopal cross, was regarded as one of the most splendid monuments
of the Roman style of architecture in France. Sculpture, carving, and
painting rivalled each other in the decoration of this magnificent
church, and there still remained at the beginning of the present century
a representation of the Eternal Father on a gold ground in the vaulting
of the apse, ten feet in height, which retained all its original
brilliancy of color. The choir-stalls, which were of a comparatively
late period, were two hundred and twenty-five in number at the time of
the suppression—showing how numerous the community had become—and the
towers were filled with a great many bells, the largest of which were
melted down to cast cannon during the religious wars. At present but
little remains of this grand structure in a state of ruin. During the
French Revolution the whole was sold for building material for the sum
of twenty thousand dollars, and thus rude force destroyed this grand
work of the spirit of Christianity.
The cultivation of science was fostered in the Cluniac Order with much
greater care and zeal than in some of the other monastic bodies. Its
founders were more solicitous for the promotion of intellectual labor
than for material industry. The Abbot Peter wrote: “In virtue of a
special privilege, the abbots of Cluny from ancient times promoted
literary occupations with zeal and energy. It is not the desire of
winning a high reputation which stimulates them to write books, but the
feeling that it would be shameful to neglect the imitation of their
predecessors, the holy Fathers of the church, and thus to prove
themselves degenerate sons.” Under such superiors the brethren were not
deterred by any ill-grounded scruple from applying themselves to the
study of the heathen classics, and in fact considered this study as a
valuable auxiliary to the investigation of the Sacred Scriptures. The
works of the great ecclesiastical writers were fully appreciated and
diligently perused, and the valuable manuscripts collected in the
library of Cluny were not considered as a mere assortment of curiosities
for the sake of show, but as useful implements for the cultivation of
science, and in a generous spirit of liberality were freely lent to
other monasteries for the sake of making copies or recensions. The books
used for the church service were written out in a beautiful, ornamental
text, richly adorned with initial letters executed in the most elaborate
style of art; and those who were engaged in this kind of work, if it
would not admit of interruption, were excused from choir for the time
being. The ability and industry of the Cluniac monks in collecting
manuscripts and preserving precious monuments of ancient history have
been recognized even in later times, and abundant documents of that zeal
for the promotion of science which was not damped by the earnestness
with which religious discipline was enforced have come down to our own
day.
The confraternity of Cluny, which had speedily risen to a high
consideration throughout France, attained to a higher and more
solidly-established reputation during the period extending through
nearly forty years of the administration of Peter the Venerable. The
renovation of the Benedictine Order in its original spirit which had
been effected by the Cluniac reform became renowned in other countries
as well as in France, and awoke the desire of attempting to accomplish
the same happy results elsewhere by the use of similar methods. Every
founder of a new monastery in France desired to introduce the rule and
submit to the supremacy of Cluny. Kings, princes, and bishops urged upon
the already existing monastic communities, especially when they had
fallen into disorder, incorporation with the Cluniac congregation.
During the rule of Peter the Venerable it was increased by the addition
of three hundred and fourteen monasteries, collegiate foundations, and
churches, and at its most flourishing period it embraced within its
limits more than two thousand distinct houses. At the time of the
Crusades it extended itself even beyond the sea. Cluniac houses were
founded in the valley of Josaphat and on Mt. Tabor, and in the time of
Abbot Peter a monastery in a suburb of Constantinople was united to the
mother-house, over which he presided.
Men of all conditions who desired to do penance for their sins, to seek
a refuge from the dangers of the world, or to find spiritual direction
and come under a holy influence for their own sanctification, sought to
make reparation and deserve the grace of God by rich gifts to Cluny, to
consecrate themselves to God in some house of the order by the religious
vows, or to secure for themselves by becoming affiliated to it a share
in the sacrifices and prayers perpetually offered within its sacred
enclosures. It is related that Count Guy of Macon, who had been a bitter
persecutor of the order, one day presented himself at the gates of Cluny
in company with his son, several grandsons, thirty knights, and the
wives of each one of the noble group respectively, all of whom demanded
permission to take the vows of religion. Under the sixth abbot, Hugh I.,
three thousand monks were present at one general chapter. The crowd of
applicants for admission became so great that Hugh VI. was once
compelled to issue an edict forbidding the reception of any new
candidates during a term of three years. Under Peter the Venerable the
number of monks resident at Cluny increased from two hundred to four
hundred and sixty, some of whom, however, led a solitary life as hermits
in the neighboring forests.
The popes were lavish in their grants of privileges to Cluny and the
monasteries connected with it. Alexander II. decreed that no bishop or
prelate should have the right of excommunication in respect to the
Cluniac congregation. Urban II. allowed the use of episcopal insignia to
the abbot, and Calixtus II. conceded to him the special privileges of a
cardinal. The brethren of the order were even permitted to have the
celebration of Mass continued for their own benefit during an interdict.
There is nothing which shows more clearly the high esteem in which Cluny
was held than the decree of Pope Innocent IV. in the third session of
the Council of Lyons: that accredited copies of all the official
documents relating to the diplomatic intercourse of emperors, kings, and
other princes with the Roman Church should be deposited in its archives.
This important and precious collection was still in existence at the
outbreak of the Revolution.
The history of Cluny has a very great importance in connection with the
general history of the mediæval period, but especially with the great
ecclesiastical reformation of Gregory VII., which was prepared by the
interior working of the order within the church. For many prudential
reasons the fact that the great ecclesiastical movement of the eleventh
century had its source in the monastery of Cluny was kept out of sight
as much as possible; but it is proved by abundant evidence, and Gregory
VII. himself, who was its prior when St. Leo IX. persuaded him to return
with him to Rome in 1049, speaks of the peculiar and intimate relations
between Cluny and the Holy See.
THE BRIDES OF CHRIST.
VII.
ST. AGATHA.
“She hath no breasts—is cruelly maimed withal:
What shall we do for her, when spoken for,
Our little sister? Sheathe her, if a door,
In boards of cedar; if she be a wall,
Build up a house of silver,[116] and instal
Her worship”—so the monks. O bleeding core
Of maidenhood, thy Spouse and King shall pour
Balm in thy wounds, the lilies’ growth recall!
When Etna belched forth Phlegethon, and rolled
Its molten flanks upon Catania,
The saint’s veil they did reverently unfold
And wave it in the face of fire—Behold!
Piled black against the convent’s wall to-day,
That Red Sea curdled by Saint Agatha!
Footnote 116:
Song of Solomon viii. 8, 9.
VIII.
ST. LUCIA.
“What’s this? Two human eyes upon a dish?
Wretch! what dost mean?” “Lucia sends thee these;
She greets thee: 'Be no longer ill at ease;
They are thine! When mine, a spirit devilish,
With them, with pink bloom and pale limbs, did fish
For men’s souls.’” Quick! to her—ere horror freeze.
Her wan lips smiled beneath the bandages:
“Thou hast languished for mine eyes—have, then, thy wish!”
She raised the fillet—the youth dropped as dead.
“Look up!” a sweet voice spake, “and praise the Lord!”
He obeyed trembling—O illumined head!
Low with an altered spirit he adored.
Thenceforth an angel’s eyes, her own instead,
Lighted her to her martyrdom’s reward.
IX.
ST. URSULA.
A bower of woven palms! In white arrayed,
Marshalled beneath that verdant canopy
By fair-haired Ursula of Brittany,
Eleven thousand martyrs, each a maid!
For England’s heir, Etherius, had obeyed
His bride’s will, honoring her virginity.
To Rome on pilgrimage, by river and sea,
They sailed, and prettily the bold mariner played.
Saint, dear to tender years! thou and thy doves
Fell pierced with many arrows, and the Rhine
With blood of innocents ran red as wine—
Still teach that to the pure Death’s kiss is Love’s!
Still teach it, though thy mortuary shrine
May moulder, while the stream to ocean moves!
THE UNKNOWN EROS.[117]
Footnote 117:
_The Unknown Eros, and Other Odes._ London: George Bell & Sons. 1877.
There seems a growing and lamentable tendency among English poets in
these days to divide themselves up into schools. We have the
Tennysonian, the Swinburnian, the Rossettian, as a little earlier we had
the Lake school, the Byronic, and so on. In these schools of poetry, as
in schools of painting, there are certain marked features peculiar to
each and forming, as it were, the common property of that one. Certain
tones and colors belong to this: subdued grays, royal purples, dim and
far-away lights on meadow and mere. Another is a lustier flesh-and-blood
school: its men and women are decidedly, though musically, improper. The
choice expressions and tender care that the other lavishes on the
beauties of nature this one devotes to a maiden’s hair, or her cheek, or
her nose, the droop of her lashes, or the arch of her brow. A third
affects the mystic in matter and form; the more incomprehensible it is,
the finer the poetry. It is like the “vague school” in painting. One is
sometimes puzzled to know whether the picture be a battle-piece, a
landscape, a portrait, or a nightmare on canvas. And so they go on.
This follow-my-leader tendency is unquestionably a mark of feebleness.
It would be so in any art; it is obviously so in an art that springs
from inspiration, and is thus necessarily original. A poet is
comprehensible; a school of poets is absurd. Imagine a school of Homers,
of Virgils, of Dantes, of Shaksperes, of Miltons, of Byrons! Why, the
world could not hold them.
Weak as our days may be in original poets, they are strong at least in
numbers. Probably, unless in the days of good Queen Anne, never before
did such a constant and voluminous stream of English verse roll through
the press. Most of it falls still-born on the market; yet nothing seems
to discourage the poets. From Tupper to Tennyson they publish and
publish and publish all the time. Yet there is not a living English poet
to-day—unless Aubrey de Vere, whose best work has been his latest—who
did not establish whatever fame he has almost a quarter of a century
ago, and whose poems since that period have not shown a marked and
steady decline.
In the author of _The Unknown Eros_ we find a man who has certainly
something new to say; who follows no leader; who has thoughts, and a
mode of expressing them, all his own; who cares less for how than for
what; whose work compels attention, and who depends in nowise on the
jingle of words, the tricks of adjective and rhyme—the ballet-dancing,
so to say, of the English language—for his attraction. Indeed, in
respect of form he is far behind the other poets of the time. He almost
disregards it. Yet, as will be seen, the strange dress that he has
chosen for his creation fits it admirably, and moulds itself at will to
the strenuous freedom of the combative athlete, the scorn of a man of
fine feelings and bright intelligence, the meditative mood of the
student, or the softer movements of a lover. His instrument is now a
clarion call to battle, now a lover’s lute, now a dirge. It has the
strength and simplicity of the Gregorian chant, which in a few notes and
changes expresses the heights of inspiration and exultation, the depths
of dread, the saddest sorrow of the human heart.
The volume is a collection of odes, written at various and long
intervals apparently, and in a style of metre resembling somewhat that
of the minor poems of Milton. It has often the regular irregularity of
the Greek chorus, with much of the latter’s elasticity, brightness,
flexibility, and crystalline texture. In all this it is novel—markedly
and successfully so. It is more novel, however, in subject-matter. It is
refreshing to come across a man, a poet especially, who can drop out of
the commonplace, and do it without affectation. So accustomed have we
grown, however, to the commonplace that we follow him at first with
difficulty. His “Eros” is indeed an unknown god to the run of readers.
He is no Cupid rosy-red, with flowery bow and fire-tipped dart to smite
and melt the hearts of sweet young lovers. He does not slumber in summer
meads, or rove listlessly by laughing streamlets, or roguishly haunt the
bosky dells, or float adown the slanting sunbeam to flame on the unwary
and capture their hearts and kindle them into passion while they
languish in the soft arms of Mother Nature. His God is not this pagan
deity. He is remote, obscure, harsh-seeming. The poet’s song is no
pleasing love-tune. It is martial, high, far away, up on crags remote
and to be reached only by thorny paths with bleeding feet and straining
eyes, and hearts that faint many times on the way. True love is banished
from the earth, the poet seems to think; and in place of him, high,
pure, serene, with his head lifted up and bathed in the clear light and
refulgence of heaven, and his feet only touching the earth, men have set
a toy, a plaything, a fair bestiality.
“What rumored heavens are these,” he asks,
“Which not a poet sings,
O, Unknown Eros? What this breeze
Of sudden wings
Speeding at far returns of time from interstellar space
To fan my very face,
And gone as fleet,
_Through delicatest ether feathering soft their solitary beat_,
With ne’er a light plume dropp’d, nor any trace
To speak of whence they came, or whither they depart?
* * * * *
O, Unknown Eros, sire of awful bliss,
What portent and what Delphic word,
Such as in form of snake forebodes the bird,
Is this?
In me life’s even flood
What eddies thus?
What in its ruddy orbit lifts the blood
Like a perturbed moon of Uranus
Reaching to some great world in ungauged darkness hid;
And whence
This rapture of the sense
Which, by thy whisper bid,
Reveres with obscure rite and sacramental sign
A bond I know not of nor dimly can divine;
This subject loyalty which longs
For chains and thongs
Woven of gossamer and adamant,
To bind me to my unguess’d want,
And so to lie,
Between those quivering plumes that thro’ fine ether pant,
For hopeless, sweet eternity?”
The hard questions here put the poet answers, to some degree at least,
in other odes. In the “Legem Tuam Dilexi” (p. 43) he sings:
“The 'Infinite.’ Word horrible! at feud
With life, and the braced mood
Of power and joy and love;
Forbidden, by wise heathen ev’n, to be
Spoken of Deity,
Whose Name, on popular altars, was '_The Unknown_,’
Because, or ere It was reveal’d as One
Confined in Three,
The people fear’d that it might prove
Infinity,
_The blazon which the devils desired to gain_;
And God, for their confusion, laugh’d consent;
Yet did so far relent,
That they might seek relief, and not in vain,
_In dashing of themselves against the shores of pain_.”
Was there ever a truer picture painted by man of the curse of lost souls
and the hopeless relief they find “in dashing of themselves against the
shores of pain”—that relief that the demented seek in beating their
weary brains out or letting out the stream of the tired and useless life
into the dark ocean of infinity, severing with maddened and sacrilegious
hand the little knot that separates Time from Eternity? And what
stronger picture of the prevalence of evil and the inherent tendency in
the fallen world to rebel than this:
“Nor bides alone in hell
The bond-disdaining spirit boiling to rebel.
But for compulsion of strong grace,
The pebble in the road
Would straight explode,
_And fill the ghastly boundlessness of space_.
The furious power,
To soft growth twice constrain’d in leaf and flower,
Protests, and longs to flash its faint self far
Beyond the dimmest star.
The same
Seditious flame,
Beat backward with reduplicated might,
Struggles alive within its stricter term,
And is the worm.”
And here follows the response to the search after the “Unknown Eros”:
And the just Man does on himself affirm
God’s limits, and is conscious of delight,
Freedom and right,
And so His Semblance is, Who, every hour,
By day and night,
Buildeth new bulwarks ’gainst the Infinite.
_For, ah, who can express
How full of bonds and simpleness
Is God,
How narrow is He_,
And how the wide waste field of possibility
Is only trod
Straight to His homestead in the human heart,
And all His art
Is as the babe’s, that wins his mother to repeat
Her little song so sweet!
* * * * *
Man,
Darling of God. Whose thoughts but live and move
Round him; Who woos his will
To wedlock with His own, and does distil
To that drop’s span
_The attar of all rose-fields of all love_!
Therefore the soul select assumes the stress
Of bonds unbid, which God’s own style express
Better than well,
And aye hath borne,
To the Clown’s scorn,
The fetters of the three-fold golden chain....”
What “the three-fold golden chain” is that binds “the soul select” to
God no Catholic needs to be told. Free and loyal self-sacrifice, in a
world where self-sacrifice, whether we like it or not, is necessary and
must be endured, brings us nearest and makes us likest to Him, the true
Eros who “emptied himself for us.” These lines will help us to read the
riddle of the “Unknown Eros,” “some note” of whose “renown and high
behest” the poet thinks might thus “in enigma be express’d”:
“There lies the crown
Which all thy longing cures.
Refuse it, Mortal, _that it may be yours_!
It is a spirit though it seems red gold;
And such may no man, but by shunning, hold.
Refuse it, though refusing be despair;
And thou shalt feel the phantom in thy hair.”
This thought again is more fully wrought out in the conclusion of the
same ode, “Legem Tuam Dilexi”:
“... For to have naught
Is to have all things without care or thought!
* * * * *
And lastly bartering life’s dear bliss for pain;
But evermore in vain;
For joy (rejoice ye Few that tasted have!)
Is Love’s obedience
Against the genial laws of natural sense,
Whose wide self-dissipating wave,
Prison’d in artful dikes,
Trembling returns and strikes
Thence to its source again,
In backward billows fleet,
Crest crossing crest ecstatic as they greet;
Thrilling each vein,
Exploring every chasm and cove
Of the full heart with floods of honeyed love,
And every principal street
And obscure alley and lane
Of the intricate brain
With brimming rivers of light and breezes sweet
Of the primordial heat;
Till, unto view of me and thee,
Lost the intense life be,
Or ludicrously display’d, by force
Of distance, as a soaring eagle, or a horse
On far-off hillside shown,
May seem a gust-driv’n rag or a dead stone.”
To those who read these lines carefully it will not be necessary to say
that the author is a Catholic. His name, though modestly withheld from
the present volume, is not unknown. It is many years ago since Coventry
Patmore sang his sweet love-songs, _The Betrothal_ and _The Espousals_.
They were received favorably enough by the critics—far more favorably,
indeed, than have been many higher and greater poems on their first
appearance: Keats’ _Endymion_, for instance. Then a strange silence
struck the poet, and he was dumb.
If the present volume is the growth of all these silent years, Mr.
Patmore has not suffered by his solitude. Between his earlier work and
the present there is no comparison. Indeed, it takes a very careful
reading of the first to detect therein the germ of the strong growth and
most beautiful flower that compel admiration to-day. Those were nothing
more than the story, told with all the fond minuteness of a gentle,
ardent, intelligent, and chivalrous young lover, of his first true love;
of the flowery paths and pleasant ways that led up to it; of the
gracious nothings that make that time so sweet and ever memorable to the
lovers; the lone communings, the tremulous doubts, the bitter-sweet
emotions, the sun and shade, the laughing April showers that weave
Love’s many-colored web and make a brief paradise for the new Adam and
Eve, with no serpent lurking in the grass—all this is told delightfully
and with delight. The verse is sweet and pleasant and flowing as the
subject; but it is a song to while away a drowsy hour, not to cause us
to halt and listen in the busy march and fierce strife of life. We
glance over them with lazy pleasure as we watch the gambols of children
in the sun.
These later poems are of a far different and more solemn nature. The
poet has lived much, felt much, suffered much, joyed much, thought and
meditated much in this long interval. He has been lifted to the heights
of heaven; he has been dashed back to the gates of hell. He has been
tossed on the waves of Doubt and felt the brotherhood of Despair. He has
lost her who first taught him to sing; whose gentle glances thrilled the
tender chords of his nature and moved them to utter sweet music. Here is
her picture:
“But there danced she, who from the leaven
Of ill preserved my heart and wit
All unawares, for she was heaven,
Others at best but fit for it.
I mark’d her step, with peace elate,
Her brow more beautiful than morn,
Her sometime air of girlish state
Which sweetly waived its right to scorn;
The giddy crowd, she grave the while,
Although, as ’twere beyond her will,
About her mouth the baby smile
That she was born with linger’d still.
Her ball-dress seemed a breathing mist,
From the fair form exhaled and shed,
Raised in the dance with arm and wrist
All warmth and light, unbraceleted.
Her motion, feeling ’twas beloved,
The pensive soul of tune express’d,
And, oh, what perfume, as she moved,
Came from the flowers in her breast!”[118]
Footnote 118:
“The Angel in the House,” _The Espousals_, p. 61.
Here is she ten years later:
“Her sons pursue the butterflies,
Her baby daughter mocks the doves
With throbbing coo: in his fond eyes
She’s Venus with her little Loves;
Her step’s an honor to the earth,
Her form’s the native-land of grace,
And, lo, his coming lights with mirth
Beauty’s metropolis, her face!
Of such a lady proud’s the lord,
And that her happy bosom knows;
She takes his arm without a word,
In lanes of laurel and of rose.”[119]
Footnote 119:
_The Espousals_, p. 73.
And here at last is her “Departure,” as told in the latest volume:
“It was not like your great and gracious ways!
Do you, that have naught other to lament,
Never, my Love, repent
Of how, that July afternoon,
You went,
With sudden, unintelligible phrase,
And frighten’d eye,
Upon your journey of so many days,
Without a single kiss or a good-by?
I knew, indeed, that you were parting soon;
And so we sate, within the sun’s low rays,
You whispering to me, for your voice was weak,
Your harrowing praise.
Well, it was well, my Wife,
To hear you such things speak,
And see your love
Make of your eyes a growing gloom of life,
As a warm south wind sombres a March grove.
And it was like your great and gracious ways
To turn your talk on daily things, my Dear,
Lifting the luminous, pathetic lash
To let the laughter flash,
Whilst I drew near,
Because you spoke so low that I could scarcely hear.
But all at once to leave me at the last,
More at the wonder than the loss aghast,
With huddled, unintelligible phrase,
And frighten’d eye,
And go your journey of all days
With not one kiss or a good-by,
And the only loveless look the look with which you pass’d,
’Twas all unlike your great and gracious ways.”[120]
Footnote 120:
_The Unknown Eros_, pp. 63-65.
It goes without saying that such a loss must tell with incalculable
force on a man of intense sensibility. Trials of this kind best prove a
man. Some they crush; others they humiliate only to exalt. If we may
judge by the silent testimony of the book before us, his great loss made
this man greater. He felt, if not for the first time, more keenly than
ever before, how uncertain and passing is all merely human happiness.
The known Eros that had charmed his life suddenly passed away “with
sudden, unintelligible phrase,” and in the darkness that fell upon his
soul his humbled eyes were opened to the unknown Eros who was near him
all the while.
But, beyond and beside this, between the publication of his earlier
poems and the latest his conversion to the Catholic faith took place. So
we judge, at least, from internal evidence in the books. Here was a new
and most powerful agent introduced to act upon his nature. Moreover, the
world had moved in the interval. Many and mighty changes had taken place
in the world, and they did not pass unfelt or unobserved by the silent
poet. But before we come to these we will give one more response to his
questioning of the oracle before whom of all he burns his incense. In
the “Deliciæ Sapientiæ de Amore” he sings joyously:
“Love, light for me
Thy ruddiest blazing torch,
That I, albeit a beggar by the Porch
Of the glad Palace of Virginity,
May gaze within, and sing the pomp I see....
* * * * *
Bring, Love, anear,
And bid be not afraid
Young Lover true, and love-foreboding Maid,
And wedded Spouse, if virginal of thought;
For I will sing of naught
Less sweet to hear
Than seems
A music in their half-remember’d dreams.
* * * * *
... The heavens themselves eternal are with fire
Of unapproach’d desire,
By the aching heart of Love, which cannot rest,
In blissfullest pathos so indeed possess’d.
O, spousals high;
O, doctrine blest,
Unutterable in even the happiest sigh;
This know ye all
Who can recall
With what a welling of indignant tears
Love’s simpleness first hears
The meaning of his mortal covenant,
And from what pride comes down
To wear the crown
Of which ’twas very heaven to feel the want.
* * * * *
Therefore gaze bold,
That so in you be joyful hope increas’d,
Thorough the Palace portals, and behold
The dainty and unsating Marriage-Feast.
O, hear
Them singing clear
'Cor meum et caro mea’ round the 'I am,’
The Husband of the Heavens, and the Lamb
Whom they for ever follow there that kept,
Or, losing, never slept
Till they reconquer’d had in mortal fight
The standard white.
* * * * *
Gaze and be not afraid,
Young Lover true and love-foreboding Maid.
The full noon of deific vision bright
Abashes nor abates
No spark minute of Nature’s keen delight.
’Tis there your Hymen waits!
There where in courts afar all unconfused they crowd,
As fumes the starlight soft
In gulfs of cloud,
And each to the other, well-content,
Sighs oft,
'’Twas this we meant!'
Gaze without blame,
Ye in whom living Love yet blushes for dead shame.
There of pure Virgins none
Is fairer seen,
Save One,
Than Mary Magdalene.
* * * * *
Love makes the life to be
A fount perpetual of virginity;
For, lo, the Elect
Of generous Love, how named soe’er, _affect
Nothing but God,
Or mediate or direct_,
Nothing but God,
The Husband of the Heavens:
And who Him love, in potence great or small,
Are, one and all,
Heirs of the Palace glad
And only clad
With the bridal robes of ardor virginal.”
The Love that our poet has been seeking, has found, and here hymns in
strains that at times are truly little short of seraphic, will now be
known to the reader; and we leave this high, ethereal Court of Love that
is human indeed, yet more than human, to glance at other and more
ordinary, though still lofty, subjects which the poet has touched.
In a sense it is really refreshing to find that he is not always in the
skies; that he is very human and made of flesh and blood like ourselves.
Indeed, so human is he that he openly confesses, in a poem of matchless
beauty and delicacy, to having found a substitute for his dead wife.
Ordinary men, who are not poets, yet who nevertheless have hearts, will
give a rough reading to the exquisite ode, “Tired Memory” (p. 93),
wherein the poet, lamenting his wife, and confessing truthfully, albeit
sadly, that
“In our mortal air
None thrives for long upon the happiest dream,”
and seeking round “for some extreme of unconceived, interior sacrifice,
whereof the smoke might rise to God,” cries in agony:
“My Lord, if thy strange will be this,
That I should crucify my heart,
Because my love has also been my pride,
I do submit, if I saw how, to bliss,
Wherein She has no part.”
“And I was heard,” he adds, let us hope untruthfully; for the
“crucifixion of his heart” took the shape apparently of a second wife,
thus:
“My heart was dead,
Dead of devotion and tired memory,
When a strange grace of thee
_In a fair stranger_, as I take it, bred
To her some tender heed,
Most innocent
Of purpose therewith blent,
And pure of faith, I think, to thee; yet such
That the pale reflex of an alien love,
So vaguely, sadly shown,
Did her heart touch
Above
All that, till then, had woo’d her for its own.
And so the fear, which is love’s chilly dawn,
Flush’d faintly upon lids that droop’d like thine,
And made me weak,
By thy delusive likeness doubly drawn,
And Nature’s long-suspended breath of flame,
Persuading soft, and whispering Duty’s name,
Awhile to smile and speak
With this thy Sister sweet, and therefore mine...”
But this is not so much the humanity to which we referred. We think that
three characteristics will strike the readers of these odes: 1, the high
spiritual nature of many; 2, the deep pathos and human love of others;
3, the lofty scorn and fierce sarcasm displayed, mistakenly sometimes,
in certain of the odes.
The poet is an Englishman of Englishmen, and, only for his Catholic
faith, it seems to us that he would be one among the prophets of
despair, whose name is legion and whose day is the present.
“O, season strange for song!”
he cries in the Proem;
“Is’t England’s parting soul that nerves my tongue
As other kingdoms, nearing their eclipse,
Have, in their latest bards, uplifted strong
The voice that was their voice in earlier days?
Is it her sudden, loud and piercing cry,
The note which those that seem too weak to sigh
Will sometimes utter just before they die?”
To speak frankly, we do not think it is. We do not think England’s soul
is parting yet. We think there is much good left in this world for
England to do; at the very least there is much atonement to be made for
the many and great evils and national crimes—among others that greatest
of all, apostasy—for which that soul has to answer. She can do much, she
has done something, toward making this atonement; and the time of grace
was never nearer to her than at present. Nevertheless, it is impossible
to deny the intense pathos and exquisite beauty of the following sad
lines:
“Lo, weary of the greatness of her ways,
There lies my Land, with hasty pulse and hard,
Her ancient beauty marr’d,
And, in her cold and aimless roving sight,
_Horror of light_....”
In the sixth ode, entitled “Peace,” he returns to this theme:
“O England, how hast thou forgot,
In dullard care for undisturbed increase
Of gold, which profits not,
The gain which once thou knew’st was for thy peace!
Honor is peace, the peace which does accord
Alone with God’s glad word:
'My peace I send you, and I send a sword.’
* * * * *
Beneath the heroic sun
Is there then none
Whose sinewy wings by choice do fly
In the fine mountain-air of public obloquy,
To tell the sleepy mongers of false ease
That war’s the ordained way of all alive,
And therein with good-will to dare and thrive
Is profit and heart’s peace?
* * * * *
Remnant of Honor, brooding in the dark
Over your bitter cark,
Staring, as Rispah stared, astonied seven days,
Upon the corpses of so many sons,
Who loved her once,
Dead in the dim and lion-haunted ways,
Who could have dreamt
That times should come like these!”
We do not altogether go with Mr. Patmore in this invective, however much
we may admire its form. England has certainly acted meanly in many
important European questions of late years. She will probably so act in
many more in the future, if she finds it advisable or profitable. And it
is a poor excuse to ask what other European nation has not acted or
would not act, had it the chance, equally meanly with England. We may be
very wrathful about the matter; we may have some very hard things to say
against England for not drawing the sword in certain cases; yet between
the nation that is too ready to fight and the nation that guards
severely what are strictly its own primary interests without fighting,
we certainly prefer the latter. The bloody road is a sad road to glory,
and its end is never seen. While, then, we may for the moment side with
the passionate poet who sits down in his studio and hurls his wrath in
words of flame against the ministry for not leading the country into war
and reviving ancient glories, as they are called, on second thoughts,
while still, perhaps, thoroughly disgusted with the ministry and the
meanness of their ways, we become gradually reconciled to the situation,
and thank Heaven, though of course not the ministers, that we can sleep
quietly in our beds. It may be an ignoble sense—doubtless it is; yet if
it prevailed a little more generally throughout the world just now, the
world would not, in the long run, be the sufferer from it.
There is another peace against which Mr. Patmore declaims in no measured
terms in “The Standards.” This was written soon after the launching of
Mr. Gladstone’s first pamphlet, not so much against “the English
Catholics,” as the author states in a note—he would do well to remember
that the world is a little larger than England—but against _Catholics_:
against the Catholic Church and its chief.
“... That last,
Blown from our Zion of the Seven Hills,
Was no uncertain blast!
Listen: the warning all the champaign fills,
And minatory murmurs, answering, mar
The Night, both near and far,
Perplexing many a drowsy citadel
Beneath whose ill-watch’d walls the Powers of Hell,
With armed jar
And angry threat, surcease
Their long-kept compact of contemptuous peace!
Lo, yonder, where our little English band,
With peace in heart and wrath in hand,
Have dimly ta’en their stand,
Sweetly the light
Shines from the solitary peak at Edgbaston,
Whence, o’er the dawning Land,
Gleam the gold blazonries of Love irate
’Gainst the black flag of Hate.”
This call is most spirited and trenchant and bold. We can only find
space for the strong end:
“The sanction of the world’s undying hate
Means more than flaunted flags in windy air.
Be ye of gathering fate
Now gladly ware.
Now from the matrix, by God’s grinding wrought,
The brilliant shall be brought;
The white stone mystic set between the eyes
Of them that get the prize,
Yea, part and parcel of that mighty Stone
Which shall be thrown
Into the Sea, and Sea shall be no more.”
“1867” is a poem strongly written and of marked character, but with
which we cannot agree. It was called out apparently by the passage of
the bill extending the suffrage by the conservative ministry under the
leadership of Mr. Disraeli. It is—so we read it, and we see no
possibility of reading it otherwise—a direct and bitter attack on a
rational extension of the popular liberties, which we take to be
radically wrong in conception:
“_In the year of the great crime_,
When the false English Nobles _and their Jew_,
By God demented, slew
The Trust they stood twice pledged to keep from wrong,
One said, Take up thy Song,
That breathes the mild and almost mythic time
Of England’s prime!
But I, Ah, me,
The freedom of the few
That, in our free Land, were indeed the free,
Can song renew?”
* * * * *
Let us here say that if a man cannot attack Mr. Disraeli, or the Earl of
Beaconsfield, on higher and fairer ground than on that of his being “a
Jew,” he may as well let that statesman alone. A man who adopts this
very small, very cheap, and very common mode of attack is not worthy the
hearing of sensible men. Addressing the “outlawed Best”—by the bye, the
poet is very arbitrary and perplexing in his use of capitals—England’s
nobles, presumably, Mr. Patmore says:
“Know, ’twas the force of function high,
In corporate exercise, and public awe
Of Nature’s, Heaven’s, and England’s Law,
That Best, though mix’d with Bad, should reign,
Which kept you in your sky!”
Does he mean that the “Best” are restricted to the English nobility? If
he does mean this, he is quite wrong; if he does not mean it, then the
lines immediately following are meaningless:
“But, when the sordid Trader caught
The loose-held sceptre from your hands distraught,
And soon, to the Mechanic vain,
Sold the proud toy for naught,
Your charm was broke, your task was sped,
Your beauty, with your honor, dead.”
And so the ode goes on to hope that
“Prayer perchance may win
A term to God’s indignant mood
And the orgies of the multitude,
Which now begin....”
We cannot help thinking, if God’s name must be introduced in the matter,
that he is not especially indignant with Mr. Disraeli and the English
nobles and people at the extension of the suffrage, and that for this
reason to stigmatize 1867 as “the year of the great Crime” is nonsense.
As for “the sordid Trader,” there has always been a considerable
admixture of the “Trader” in the composition of the English government,
noble or ignoble. The first Napoleon’s estimate of the English as “a
nation of shopkeepers” was not an ill-judged one; and never was that
government, at least since Reformation times, so pure and its members so
honest as to-day, when “the sordid Trader” has a large hand in the
administration. We do all honor to the spirit of chivalry; we do not
object to class distinctions in countries where such distinctions are
historic and hereditary; but we recognize manhood wherever we find it,
and set it above all accidents of time or clime or artificial
restrictions. At the end of the ode, however, the poet rises above his
smaller self to a strain that is noble and true:
'And now, because the dark comes on apace
When none can work for fear,
And Liberty in every Land lies slain,
_And the two Tyrannies unchallenged reign_,
And heavy prophecies, suspended long
At supplication of the righteous few
And so discredited, to fulfilment throng,
Restrain’d no more by faithful prayer or tear,
And the dread baptism of blood seems near
That brings to the humbled Earth the Time of Grace,
Hush’d be all song,
And let Christ’s own look through
The darkness, suddenly increased,
To the gray secret lingering in the East.”
We could linger with delight over many passages in these odes, and dwell
with pleasure on the peculiar depth, conciseness, and expressiveness of
the phrases used, the mere words often which the poet chooses. His power
of condensation and deep philosophic comprehension and observation
constantly strikes one. The concealed art of the whole is marvellous.
But this, we have no doubt, will, from the copious extracts we have
given, strike the reader as it has struck us. And we hasten on to quote
a few more passages and take leave of the book.
We have called attention to the poet’s scorn. It is very bitter, and is
at its best when it attacks not so much persons or matters which are at
least open to question as when it deals with obvious shams and
pretentious littleness. What could be better than this placid treatment
of the modern scientific school which can see nothing more than its
telescope and its instruments disclose to it?
“Not greatly moved with awe am I
To learn that we may spy
Five thousand firmaments beyond our own.
The best that’s known
Of the heavenly bodies _does them credit small_.
View’d close, the Moon’s fair ball
Is of ill objects worst.
_A corpse in Night’s highway_, naked, fire-scarr’d, accurst;
And now they tell
That the Sun is plainly seen to boil and burst
Too horribly for hell.
So, judging from these two,
As we must do,
The Universe, outside our living Earth,
Was all conceiv’d in the Creator’s mirth,
Forecasting at the time Man’s spirit deep,
_To make dirt cheap_.
Put by the Telescope!
Better without it man may see,
_Stretch’d awful in the hush’d midnight,
The ghost of his eternity_.
Give me the nobler glass that swells to the eye
The things which near us lie,
Till Science rapturously hails,
In the minutest water-drop,
_A torment of innumerable tails_.
These at least do live.
But rather give
A mind not much to pry
Beyond our royal-fair estate
Betwixt these deserts blank of small and great.
Wonder and beauty our own courtiers are,
Pressing to catch our gaze,
And out of obvious ways
Ne’er wandering far.”
At other times his strong humanity seems to die in him, the struggle of
life seems small and profitless, and the many ends that move us weak and
purposeless as children’s plans. “Here, in this little Bay,” he says:
“Full of tumultuous life and great repose,
Where, twice a day,
The purposeless, glad ocean comes and goes,
Under high cliffs, and far from the huge town,
I sit me down.
For want of me the world’s course will not fail;
When all its work is done, _the lie shall rot_;
The truth is great, and shall prevail,
_When none cares whether it prevail or not_.”
Of course we need not remind the poet that it is just the duty of honest
men to see that the truth prevails and the lie rots, for his poems are a
very pæan of Truth and its high offices; but in this as in others of the
odes he gives complete expression to the weariness that at times creeps
over all who are struggling for the right. It is like the song of the
tired mariners in Tennyson’s _Lotos-Eaters_.
Again he sings:
“Join, then, if thee it please, the bitter jest
Of mankind’s progress; all its spectral race
Mere impotence of rest,
_The heaving vain of life which cannot cease from self_,
Crest altering still to gulf
And gulf to crest
In endless chase
That leaves the tossing water anchor’d in its place!
Ah, well does he who does but stand aside,
Sans hope or fear,
And marks the crest and gulf in station sink and rear,
And prophesies ’gainst trust in such a tide:
For he sometimes is prophet, heavenly taught,
Whose message is that he sees only naught!
Nathless, discern’d may be,
_By listeners at the doors of destiny,
The fly-wheel swift and still
Of God’s incessant will_,
Mighty to keep in bound, tho’ powerless to quell,
_The amorous and vehement drift of man’s herd to hell_.”
We can quote no further at any length, though we find something to
attract us in every ode; and the more we read the odes the more we find
in them, the more we admire them, and the clearer they become. Though
independent of each other, a secret string of purpose, of aim and
aspiration, of a yearning after something that the poet has not yet
quite caught or cannot as yet fully express, becomes apparent. To this
is due much of the obscurity and dimness that at first offend the eye.
Closer study, however, reveals a throbbing passion, a high ideal, gleams
of light from heaven, the flashes of a bright intelligence warmed by a
pure heart and looking from and through all things earthly heavenwards.
We have seen no man of late who can lash the follies and lay bare the
falsehoods of the time so thoroughly. A man of intense and rooted
convictions, he may make mistakes sometimes, but at least he makes them
nobly. He is very human, as we have already said. Indeed, there are
touches here and there in some of the odes that are strongly sensuous,
and the two last poems, “The Rosy Bosom’d Hours” and “The After-Glow,”
were better omitted from the volume. Their littleness offends and breaks
with a discordant jar on the high and serene atmosphere through which we
have been passing. It is almost like what the introduction of one of
Offenbach’s airs would be into a solemn Mass. From the poet whose
“Proem” is pitched in so high a key as this:
“Therefore no 'plaint be mine
Of listeners none,
No hope of render’d use or proud reward,
In hasty times and hard;
But chants as of a lonely thrush’s throat
At latest eve,
That does in each calm note
Both joy and grieve;
Notes few and strong and fine,
Gilt with sweet day’s decline,
And sad with promise of a different sun,”
we certainly expected no such stuff as the following, addressed to his
bride:
“At Dawlish, 'mid the pools of brine,
You stept from rock to rock,
One hand quick tightening upon mine,
One holding up your frock.
* * * * *
I thought, indeed, by magic chance,
A third [day] from Heaven to win,
But as, at dusk, we reach’d Penzance,
_A drizzling rain set in_.”
There is so much that is high and noble and full of great promise in
this new writer—for such he really is—and we have been so honest in our
admiration of it, that we feel all the more at liberty to point out some
of the blemishes that mar a work of rare excellence and strange beauty.
Here and there throughout the volume are lines and couplets that linger
lovingly in the memory; as, for instance:
“Pierce, then, with thought’s steel probe the trodden ground
Till passion’s buried floods be found....”
And again:
“Till inmost absolution start
_The welling in the grateful eyes,
The heaving in the heart_.”
What could be more tenderly and naturally expressive than those two last
lines? Or than this:
“_Winnow with sighs_, and wash away
With tears the dust and stain of clay.”
Often have we heard aspirations of the following kind, but never sweeter
than this:
“Ye Clouds that on your endless journey go,
Ye Winds that westward flow,
Thou heaving Sea
That heav’st ’twixt her and me,
Tell her I come....”
The poet yokes all Nature to the wings of his fancy, and makes it the
loving slave of his Love.
How simple, yet how subtly told, is this great truth:
“Who does not know
That good and ill
Are done in secret still,
And that which shows is verily but show!”
And this deep reflection contains a volume:
“How high of heart is one, and one how sweet of mood:
_But not all height is holiness,
Nor every sweetness good_.”
Here is a proverb, only too often verified:
“One fool, with lusty lungs,
Does what a hundred wise, who hate and hold their tongues,
Shall ne’er undo.”
In “Victory in Defeat” he says—how truly!—
“Life is not life at all without delight,
Nor has it any might;
_And better than the insentient heart and brain
Is sharpest pain_;
And better for the moment seems it to rebel,
If the great Master, from his lifted seat,
Ne’er whispers to the wearied servant, 'Well!’”
We hope to hear again and soon from Mr. Patmore. If he can avoid a
certain obscurity that will repel many who would be sincere and honest
admirers of so noble a writer, it will be better for himself and those
whom he addresses. Even as his work now stands we are happy to say of
it, in closing our review, what a true poet whose name often adorns
these pages has said: “Many parts of the book seem to me both to ascend
higher and descend deeper than almost anything we have had for a long
time.”
NEW PUBLICATIONS.
PRIESTHOOD IN THE LIGHT OF THE NEW TESTAMENT. By E. Mellor, D.D. New
York: A. S. Barnes & Co.
The author in the preface of the book before us says that his lectures
were prepared at the request of the Committee of the Congregational
Union of England and Wales, and though not considered as exhausting the
subject, yet they furnish a contribution toward the settlement of the
question of the priesthood and its claims; which settlement in the
author’s aim means toward doing away altogether with the priesthood and
its claims. After a careful perusal of the volume, we must confess that
we think the contribution exceedingly small, and not calculated to
settle anything at all in the reverend gentleman’s sense. For the
doctor’s lectures are a rehash of all the old objections brought forward
against the priesthood, from the time of the Reformation downwards; and
which have been time and again triumphantly refuted by our
controversialists; but of which refutation the author takes no heed, as
if such men as Bellarmine, Petau, Suarez, Thomassin, and a host of
others down to our day had never existed. If the author had wished to
bring towards the settlement of the subject a _real_ contribution, the
proper course for him to pursue would have been to state the objections,
to bring forward the answer to each one of them given by our
controversialists, to show the futility and untenableness of their
answer, and to conclude that the objections yet hold good against the
subject. His having, therefore, of a set purpose, or most innocently,
ignored those answers leaves the question just where it was, and no one
the wiser or better by the author’s lectures.
It is not possible for us in the brief space of a passing notice to
attempt a refutation of all the objections he rehashes so carefully. It
will suffice to remark that all his objections, even if nothing at all
could be said against them, would prove nothing _positive_ against the
priesthood. For they may be classified under two heads. The first are
those of purely negative character, which, as they prove nothing in
favor of the priesthood, neither do they prove anything against it.
Under this head we put the old objection, drawn from the Epistle of St.
Paul to the Hebrews, which exalts the priesthood of Christ above the
Jewish priesthood, and which says _at least_ nothing against the
Christian priesthood, which is identical with that of Christ.
The other class of objections is when our author examines the positive
proofs brought in favor of the Christian priesthood. These proofs, so
clear, so satisfactory, so weighty, the author dismisses very summarily
by throwing doubt on the meaning of the words, after the fashion of the
Protestant method. One example will suffice to prove our assertion.
Examining the text, “Receive ye the Holy Ghost: whose sins you shall
forgive, they are forgiven them; and whose sins you shall retain, they
are retained,” he disposes of it as follows: “It is not needful to enter
into a consideration of the meaning of the words [as if the question was
not just about the _meaning_ of the words; or as if our Lord was
speaking merely for a joke] which set forth the high powers of the
apostles; whether the sins they were to remit or retain were spiritual
sins [are there any corporal sins?], or ecclesiastical ones, or both.
The question before us is, be the function here referred to what it may,
to whom was it accorded and by whom was it meant to be exercised? Almost
every word in the passage has been a battle-field.” We would remark on
this passage that there is no reason for waiving the question, be the
function here referred to what it may, when our Lord says expressly it
_is_ to remit or to retain sins; that it is evident from the text, if
words or language mean anything any more, that this function was to be
exercised by those to whom our Lord spoke, and by those whom they
preceded, as the apostles were essentially first and representative men;
but it is useless. We only wish to call the attention of our readers to
the fact that, if a text clear and palpable in itself, proving a truth
or a dogma, can be disposed of in this manner, no Christian truth can
stand any longer, and we may as well have done with all Christian
revelation. For suppose we want to bring a contribution towards the
settlement of the question of the Divinity of Christ, all we have to do
is to throw doubts on the meaning of the words of those texts which
assert it, and the contribution is made, and so on to the end of the
chapter.
We think we have made our statement good, that our author has proved
nothing in his book against the Christian priesthood, as all his
objections are of a negative character.
But we will exceed him in liberality, and grant for a moment that those
texts by which we assert the nature and prerogatives of the priesthood
prove nothing in its favor, as his negative objections prove nothing
against it. What then? Has he gained anything by our concession, or has
he made any step forward towards the settlement of the question? Not at
all. There will always be the fact of the existence of the priesthood,
in the full exercise of all its claims, staring him in the face. How to
account for that fact? Our author sees the difficulty, and admits that
to account for it by urging an ambitious conspiracy on the part of the
presbyters or bishops is absurd, that such a conspiracy could not have
succeeded in establishing itself (page 74), and endeavors to account for
it by a bias of humanity towards the priesthood identical with a bias
towards selfishness and sins. And he goes on developing the thought by
saying that the priesthood was called into being by ill-defined terrors
of the future, by a fear of God not yet cast out by love, by the
irksomeness of the duties of self-discipline, by the intolerable
oppressiveness of the sense of personal responsibility seeking relief by
its transference to others.
Whether all these reasons can produce a bias towards the priesthood in
humanity identical with the bias it has unfortunately towards
selfishness and sin, we will leave to the author to assert. We think
that all those reasons, when well understood and stated properly,
dispose humanity towards the priesthood—in fact, create an instinct for
it—and that that instinct is a legitimate, noble, generous craving of
the human heart; and to say that they create a bias identical with a
bias to sin is to show the most supine ignorance of human nature, of the
history of mankind, and the true philosophy of history. But let that
pass; do all these reasons account for the existence and claims of the
priesthood? According to the author himself _they do not_. For he says
himself all this contributed to prepare the way for a transformation of
that religion which knows no earthly mediator (page 75).
Well, Dr. Mellor, you have accounted for the preparation of the way, but
not for the fact of the existence of the priesthood. When and how did it
come into existence? Who were the first who hatched it? Where was it
established first? Who were the first Christians they imposed it upon?
How did they succeed in persuading them to accept it? Was there any
opposition on the part of the Christians who first heard of such a
thing? Must not the imposition on any Christian people of a priesthood
well organized into a compact body, strong and valiant, and exceedingly
sensitive about its rights and claims, have been brought about by a
conspiracy of somebody or other? And have you not said—page 74—that to
account for the existence of the priesthood by a conspiracy is absurd?
We wish to advert to another theory before closing these remarks. He is
not satisfied to have proved _more suo_ that the priesthood has no place
in the New Testament; he strives to prove that it was congenial with the
whole spirit and nature of it, and the proof, he alleges, is drawn from
the words to the Samaritan woman: God is a spirit, and in spirit and
truth he must be adored; that is, by having recourse to an invisible
church, is the sense he attaches to those words. Of course, if the
church is not a visible body, the mountain placed on the top of
mountains, we must necessarily do away with the priesthood and
sacraments, etc., for they can have no scope in an invisible, abstract
thing. But in that case why not abolish Christ the Emmanuel, the
God-man?
We could easily enough prove the congeniality of the priesthood with
Christianity by showing to the reverend doctor that all the works of God
are _permanent_. That the Incarnation is permanent in the church, and
that Christ the High-Priest is permanent in the Catholic priesthood, and
discharges all the functions necessary to bring all men to salvation in
all time and space, in it, and through it, and so forth. But we fear the
reverend gentleman has not philosophy enough to understand us, and we
forbear. We will not, however, conclude our remarks without thanking the
reverend lecturer for the polite courtesy which he uses towards the
Catholic priesthood: first, using the _nom de guerre popish_ whenever he
has occasion to make mention of it; and, secondly, for associating it
with the priesthood of the English Episcopal Church. In the lecturer’s
mind, perhaps, it was to do honor to the Catholic priesthood by
confounding it with the other. It is a goodly company, no doubt, and we
ought to be highly flattered; but we respectfully decline through excess
of modesty such unmerited honor, and would rather keep by ourselves, if
it is all the same to the reverend doctor.
THIRTY-FIFTH ANNUAL REPORT OF THE BOARD OF EDUCATION OF THE CITY AND
COUNTY OF NEW YORK, FOR THE YEAR ENDING DECEMBER 31, 1876.
Much has been written on the school question within the past few months;
not, however, by opponents of the public schools as they exist here, but
by those who pay for them—the taxpayers. Four million dollars for the
Department of Public Schools alone is a great load. This tax increases
yearly, and no doubt will soon reach the fifth million. The strange
enthusiasm that led sects to trample on the religious convictions of
their neighbors also led them to make light of the burden that came with
the victory. But five millions is terrifying. Why not six? Will there be
no end to the increase?
Perhaps the originators of the present school system recognized the
moral baseness of severing the instruction which may enable the child to
act with judgment from the training which teaches him moral
responsibility for the judgment as well as for the action springing from
it. They certainly desired to accomplish indirectly the chief end of
education by placing the school machinery in the hands of
philanthropists who serve without pay or emolument.
The result has been a gradual complication of the common-school system,
so as to include technical education, and even the higher branches of
learning. Years ago a Free College was successfully engrafted. Next came
a Normal College for young ladies. In order to render this latter
offshoot permanent, it was deemed necessary to provide the graduates
with positions in the common schools. The first step was to raise the
standard of proficiency for a teacher’s certificate; the next, to
declare that the college diploma was sufficient evidence of
qualification, without a public examination by the city superintendent.
The report tells us that “under the by-law by which the graduates are
licensed to teach without a second examination, the city superintendent
and the president of the college have performed their duties in perfect
harmony.”
When the mode of testing the qualification of applicants who are not
Normal College graduates is discussed, the report states, “a system of
rigid examinations in the superintendent’s office precludes the
possibility of incompetent persons being foisted upon the system through
political or social influence.”
Nor is this the only injury to the common schools. The favored graduates
are not to be allowed to work for the low salaries received by primary
teachers during the past thirty-five years. An _adjustment_ of salaries
is demanded. These primary teachers must receive as large a sum as
grammar-school teachers. This simply means an increase in the cost of
the common-school system.
If that system, as it now exists here, answer to the purposes for which
it was intended, it is high time for that fact to appear. Yet the
gentlemen who have charge of the board, from the president down, seem
strangely to disagree on most important matters. Without committing
ourselves to one side or the other in the discussion, we take a few
instances. The grammar schools surely form a very important branch of
the system. Here is how the president treats of them in the report: “Our
primary-school teachers have a lower rate of pay than our grammar-school
teachers, and the primary schools have been used as training places for
the better-paid positions in the grammar schools. The plan for
uniformity in salaries in these two departments has received serious
consideration by a committee of the board, and deserves to be carried
out. The majority of our pupils receive all the education they have in
the primary, _and never enter the grammar schools_. This majority
deserves the first consideration. Instruction and discipline are no more
difficult in one than in the other, and in neither department is the
range of knowledge required to be mastered extensive.”
The president asserts that the common-school system only succeeds in
furnishing primary instruction to a majority of pupils, and he would
seem to imply that the enormous sum of four million dollars should be
spent on the primary schools, reserving, of course, a sufficient sum for
the Normal College.
Lest his opinions as to the range of knowledge required in a teacher
should dishearten those who are toiling through Normal College, he
inserts a few lines for their benefit: “An erroneous idea seems to
prevail that a primary teacher can dispense with the higher studies. The
truth is that this class of teachers more than any other class needs
trained faculties and sound judgment, and these are only obtained by the
discipline of hard and close study. Normal study and normal practice, to
be effective, must be based on the broad foundation of a liberal
education.”
Compulsory education the city superintendent pronounces a complete
failure, while those who are paid to enforce it consider it successful.
In the discussion some interesting facts are brought to light. The city
superintendent states: “Many parents, finding that our schools are
unable to govern their wilful and unruly children, send them to the
parochial schools. In connection with this, it is proper to call the
attention of the board to the fact that, while the average attendance of
pupils in the schools immediately under its care has, during the past
year, increased less than two and a half per cent., in the corporate
schools it has increased more than five per cent. It is also of interest
to observe that, at the close of 1875, the number of pupils enrolled in
the Catholic parochial schools was 30,732, while in 1867 it was only
16,342, showing an increase, in less than ten years, of nearly 90 per
cent.; while the increase in the attendance of the pupils in the public
schools has, during the same time, been only about 13 per cent. The
increase in attendance at the corporate schools, during the same period,
has been more than 57 per cent.... The question, therefore, very
properly suggests itself, why should a system for compelling pupils to
attend the schools be sustained at great expense to the city while there
is no effective means of controlling and educating those children after
they have been brought into the schools?”
These are but a few of the spots uncovered in this interesting report.
Never was the want of harmony in the system more manifest. The iniquity
of taxing a people for what it cannot use, and turning over the amount
collected to the keeping of gentlemen who care more for pet schemes than
for the real object for which the tax was levied, becomes more and more
apparent. Higher education, technical education, and compulsory
education are battling vigorously for larger shares of the funds; and
the battle seems likely to end when the funds are made large enough to
satisfy all demands. In the meantime the common-school system is slowly
dying out. The primary schools are becoming departments for the
employment of normal school graduates, and the grammar schools feeders
for the colleges.
A QUESTION OF HONOR: A NOVEL. By Christian Reid, author of _A
Daughter of Bohemia_, _Valerie Aylmer_, _Morton House_, etc. New
York: D. Appleton & Co. 1876.
A well-written novel, thoroughly American in its tone, its incidents,
and its characters, and yet availing itself of none of the peculiar
“isms” which form the chief stock in trade of our native
novelists—shunning alike the “woman question” and the shallow
metaphysics of “free thought,” depending for no share of its interest
upon suggested immorality or social license, and vivacious in its
dialogues without any reliance upon the slang which generally does duty
in place of wit—was something for which some sad experience in recent
fiction had forbidden us to hope. That Christian Reid is already well
known to the novel-reading public is evident from the title-page of _A
Question of Honor_, but that is the only one of her stories which we
have read. We find in it everything to praise and nothing to condemn. It
is thoroughly well written, to begin with, its descriptions of scenery
being particularly artistic and well done. The author attempts nothing
ambitious in the way of character-drawing, but her men and women live
and have a true individuality. Their souls are not dissected after the
manner with which the New England school of fiction has made us too
familiar for our comfort, but their manner of life and speech and
thought is indicated with a firm, graceful, and un-provincial touch
which is extremely pleasant. Altogether, the book belongs to the best
class of light literature. There is nothing in it to shock taste or to
jar prejudice, and everything in the way of grace of style and purity of
thought to recommend it. So much being said by way of praise, we may add
that the author, who is evidently a Catholic, has drawn a picture of
social life which is, no doubt, true to a reality of a better kind than
the ordinary novel of the day aims at, but which is nevertheless
un-Christian. Her characters are neither underbred nor vicious; with two
exceptions, they are simply a rather pleasing variety of pagans. We do
not quarrel with that, considered as a faithful transcript of reality.
But we shall find it a cause for real regret if a writer so graceful and
possessing so much genuine ability does not some day give us something
better than a mere transcript of lives that might have been lived and
ideals that might have been attained had the Creator never stooped to
the level of his creatures in order to show them the one way in which he
would lift them to himself.
BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES. By the graduating class of St. Joseph’s
Academy, Flushing, L. I. (Translated from the French of Mme. Foa.)
New York: P. O’Shea. 1877.
Translation from the French is a literary exercise which cannot be too
highly commended to young students. The publication in book-form of such
students’ translations can scarcely be too severely condemned. Young
ladies and young men “graduate,” as it is called, at an age ranging from
seventeen to twenty or twenty-one. They are then popularly supposed to
have “finished” their education, whereas not much more has been done
than to set them on the right road of learning and appreciating what
real education is. Indeed, if so much has been accomplished, both the
pupils and their teachers may be congratulated.
To set these young persons straightway at book-making is a grave
mistake—how grave may be gathered from the following specimens of
translation which half a glance at the volume before us reveals.
The cover informs us that these are “Gems of Biography.” The first gem
is entitled “Michael Angelo Buonarotti.” The opening page introduces us
to “an old domestic” and “a young _man_ of fifteen or sixteen” “at the
_door_ of the Castle of Caprese.” In page 2 the “young man” of fifteen
is a “young _interlocutor_.” In the same page “to intercept the passage”
is used in the sense of to block up the passage. In page 3, “to cover
his curiosity” is used in the sense of to hide or conceal his curiosity.
In page 4 we have this elegant sentence: “I don’t think that either of
you does anything wrong in the place you go.” In page 5 the young man of
fifteen, who was an Italian of four centuries back, indulges in this
peculiar bit of slang: “One is not perfect at it _right away_.” A little
lower on the same page he says of Michael Angelo: “He is even quicker
than I _in piecing_ his man.” “_Mr._ Francis Graciana” and “_Mr._
Michael Angelo Buonarotti” occur quite frequently. “Canosse” is always
made to do duty for Canossa, “Politien” for Politian or Poliziano, etc.
Such phrases as “You are not _de trop_, Signor Graciana,” constantly
occur; but we have no patience to examine further.
Expressions such as these—and they characterize the book, with the
exception of “The Mulatto of Murillo,” which runs fairly enough—should
not have been allowed to pass in a written composition; but to embalm
them in a printed volume is simply an act of cruelty. The sketches in
themselves are good for nothing and were not worth the trouble of
translating, inasmuch as they have been far better given in English over
and over again. “Flushing Series” is the threatening legend on the
cover. If this volume be a specimen of what is to come, we trust
sincerely that we have seen the last of the “Series.” Catholic education
is too serious a subject for trifling.
THE WONDERS OF PRAYER: A remarkable record of well authenticated
answers to prayer. By Henry T. Williams. New York: Henry T.
Williams, Publisher.
It is not often that an author is his own publisher. In the present case
this may have been a matter of necessity; but it should not have been
so, for the volume is interesting enough. It is a collection of
anecdotes, the authenticity of which Mr. Williams personally vouches
for, showing that God answers in an immediate and direct manner the
requests of those who in faith ask him for temporal blessings. “They
demonstrate,” says the author, “to a wonderful degree the immediate
practical ways of the Lord with his children in this world; that he is
far nearer and more intimate with their plans and pursuits than it is
possible for them to realize.” We have no disposition to scoff at the
stories related by Mr. Williams, although the style in which they are
told often provokes one to mirth. There is but one true faith in the
world, but there are many people who hold more or less of this faith
without knowing it. “_Souffrons toutes les religions, puisque Dieu les
souffre_,” said Fénelon; and our Holy Father, the Pope, has not
unfrequently expressed his affection as well as his pity for good
Protestants. No doubt many of the people who are spoken of in this book
were very good Protestants. And we are glad to observe in it this
passage: “The present is the age of miracles as well as the past. Fully
as wonderful things have been and are constantly being done this day by
our unseen Lord as in the days of old when he walked in the sight of his
disciples.”
THE LITTLE PEARLS; OR, GEMS OF VIRTUE. Translated by Mrs. Kate E.
Hughes. New York: P. O’Shea. 1877.
Will be found very entertaining and instructive reading for our young
folks, and we recommend it as suitable for a present at the distribution
of school prizes. We think, however, that the name of the writer whose
work is translated should have appeared on the title-page.
BESIDE THE WESTERN SEA: A Collection of Poems. By Harriet M.
Skidmore (“Marie”). New York: P. O’Shea. 1877.
This gifted lady has done well to collect her scattered poems into a
volume. They are chiefly of a devotional character, and, though unequal,
none of them are without merit, some of a very marked kind. She has the
gift of song, and she sings easily and gracefully on almost any subject.
The following, though one of the shortest and least ambitious of the
collection, strikes us as a very sweet poem, and affords a fair idea of
the author’s powers. Its title is “The Mist”:
“I watched the folding of a soft white wing
Above the city’s heart;
I saw the mist its silent shadows fling
O’er thronged and busy mart.
Softly it glided through the Golden Gate
And up the shining bay,
Calmly it lingered on the hills, to wait
The dying of the day.
Like the white ashes of the sunset fire,
It lay within the West,
Then onward crept above the lofty spire,
In nimbus-wreaths to rest.
It spread anon—its fleecy clouds unrolled,
And floated gently down;
And thus I saw that silent wing enfold
The Babel-throated town.
A spell was laid on restless life and din,
That bade its tumult cease;
A veil was flung o’er squalor, woe, and sin,
Of purity and peace.
And dreaming hearts, so hallowed by the mist,
So freed from grosser leaven,
In the soft chime of vesper bells could list
Sweet, echoed tones of heaven;
Could see, enraptured, when the starlight came,
With lustre soft and pale,
A sacred city crowned with 'ring of flame,’
Beneath her misty veil.”
ROMAN LEGENDS: A Collection of the Fables and Folk-lore of Rome. By
R. H. Busk, author of _Sagas from the Far East_, etc. Boston: Estes
& Lauriat. 1877.
These are very graceful and interesting legends. They furnish glimpses
that could not otherwise be well obtained of the peculiar constitution,
habits of mind and thought, of the common people in and about Rome. For
the most part they are such as have not hitherto found their way into
literature, being taken as they fell from the lips of narrators to whom
they had been household words, handed down from one generation to
another. The task of eliciting them seems to have been no easy one, but
its results are pleasant enough to earn honest gratitude for the years
of labor which have been spent in gaining them. The tales themselves
range under four categories, concerning which the author notes that the
Romans are rigidly exact in adhering to, never by any chance giving a
fairy-tale if asked for a legend, or a fairy-tale if inquired of
concerning ghosts. They comprise legends; ghost-stories and local and
family traditions; fairy tales and _ciarpe_, or gossip. The book is
particularly rich in stories of St. Philip Neri.
PHILIP NOLAN’S FRIENDS: A story of the change of Western Empire. By
Edward E. Hale. New York: Scribner, Armstrong & Co. 1877.
This volume traces the course of a journey into the heart of the great
South-west at the beginning of the present century. This tract was still
the border-land of the Aztec kings. Throughout its vast extent Spanish
heroes had wasted their lives in _ignis-fatuus_ searches. Rich
discoveries of gold did not reward their diligence, and they resigned so
inhospitable a region to a new order of pioneers. Even to this day the
names of places bear token that the zeal of the Spanish missionaries was
in no way inferior to that of the sons of Loyola along the St. Lawrence.
Such was their indomitable perseverance that twenty-seven missions had
been established in this region previous to 1626, and a century later
the missionary spirit carried the Gospel among the Apaches, Moquis, and
Navajoes.
The heroine’s escort through this _terra incognita_ to Americans is
ample, the weather delightful, and we do not care to question the
adequacy of the motive for the expedition. Nor does it matter that we
are led to believe that Philip Nolan possesses a sterling character,
though what he says or does, or what apparent influence he has over the
course of events, would hardly justify this conclusion.
The novel is readable, but not by any means artistic. The author lacks
the power to create a character that can think and act like a human
being. He wishes us to believe his heroine possesses beauty,
sensibility, and vivacity; but he lacks the subtle power to invent
actions and conversations which impress individuality, and we gather our
notions of the lady more from his suggestions than from the movement of
the story. This seems to be the author’s weakness: his figures act and
he suggests the motives and impulses.
His male characters miss no opportunity to abuse the missionaries. They
regard the “black-gowns” as the cause of Indian rascality and Spanish
treachery. Ill-luck is always traced to them, and the torrents of abuse
poured on the servants of God lend the only touches of nature that may
be found in the author’s passive figures. Of course these outbursts of
hatred reveal the true character of the adventurers. They are border
ruffians.
The book is partly historical. It treats of a transition period. The
allegiance of the inhabitants had suffered a violent dissolution. A
border element existed, mainly recruited from the United States. This
element was of service in manufacturing public opinion, and, in this
way, might have hastened the transfer of the Louisiana tract to its
natural owner, the United States. We are inclined to the opinion that
Southern interests would have brought about the transfer without the
assistance of European complications or scenes of border treachery.
REPLY TO THE HON. R. W. THOMPSON, SECRETARY OF THE NAVY, ADDRESSED
TO THE AMERICAN PEOPLE. By F. X. Weninger, D.D., of the Society of
Jesus. New York: P. O’Shea. 1877.
In this pamphlet of eighty-six pages Father Weninger has undertaken the
almost unnecessary task of replying to Mr. Thompson’s book, _The Papacy
and the Civil Power_. If there is anything in that book to refute, it
refutes itself. Mr. Thompson, however, over and above the rashness of
attempting such a book at all, was rash enough to quote Father Weninger.
The natural result is the present pamphlet. The pamphlet is addressed to
“the American people.” If the American people take it up, they will be
rewarded by some lively reading. The reverend author says at the
conclusion: “We have handled our adversary throughout the whole
discourse without gloves.” No reader of the pamphlet will be inclined to
dispute that statement.
THE PEARL AMONG THE VIRTUES; OR, WORDS OF ADVICE TO CHRISTIAN YOUTH.
By P. A. De Doss, S.J. Translated from the original German by a
Catholic priest. Baltimore: John Murphy & Co. 1877.
This work, written by one of the Jesuit Fathers banished from Germany,
is an excellent treatise on the angelic virtue, which he considers from
almost every point of view in a solid, instructive, and highly
interesting manner. No more useful book could be placed in the hands of
the youth of either sex.
GOD THE TEACHER OF MANKIND: A PLAIN, COMPREHENSIVE EXPLANATION OF
CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE. By Michael Müller, C.SS.R. New York, Cincinnati,
and St. Louis: Benziger Brothers. 1877.
We have received advance sheets of this new and most interesting work by
the indefatigable Redemptorist father to whom Catholics in this country
are so much indebted for works that are really useful as well as
popular. The book is too important in itself and on too important a
subject to be dismissed with a hasty notice. We shall return to it
later.
EDMONDO: A Sketch of Roman Manners and Customs. By Rev. Fr. Antonio
Bresciani, S.J., author of _The Jew of Verona_, etc., etc.
Translated from the Italian. New York: D. & J. Sadlier & Co. 1877.
This is a powerfully-written story that cannot but excite the liveliest
interest on account of its faithful and beautiful description of Roman
scenery and vivid delineation of Roman life and customs.
The translation is well rendered, but we do not approve of the omission
of two chapters from the writings of such an author as the learned
Bresciani. Such men do not write anything that can be cast aside without
loss to their readers and admirers.
DORA. By Julia Kavanagh.
BESSIE:
SILVIA. By the same author. D. & J. Sadlier & Co.
We have not read any one of these three stories, and can only
acknowledge their receipt. From others that we have read by the same
author we think it safe to recommend these to persons who are fond of
novels. Julia Kavanagh is, to our thinking, one of the purest, most
graceful, and most interesting story-writers of the day.
THE CATHOLIC KEEPSAKE. A gift-book for all seasons. Baltimore: John
Murphy & Co. 1877.
The best encomium we can bestow on this collection is to say that it is
worthy of its name. The numerous sketches and stories are short,
entertaining, and very agreeably written, even though a little ancient.
BESSY; OR, THE FATAL CONSEQUENCE OF TELLING LIES. By the author of
_The Rat-Pond; or, The Effects of Disobedience_. Baltimore: Kelly,
Piet & Co. 1877.
A plain, simple story for children, and, as the title designates, with a
moral attached.
THE STORY OF FELICE. By Esmeralda Boyle. London: Trübner & Co. 1873.
SONGS OF THE LAND AND SEA. By Esmeralda Boyle. New York: E. J. Hale
& Son. 1875.
In these poems Miss Boyle displays much true poetic feeling and a gift
of melodious utterance.
THE CATHOLIC WORLD.
VOL. XXV., No. 150.—SEPTEMBER, 1877.
AMONG THE TRANSLATORS.
VIRGIL AND HORACE.
The number of versified translations of Greek and Latin poets which the
English presses continually put forth must be a never-ending surprise to
the practical American mind—if, that is to say, the practical mind ever
thinks of so manifestly useless and absurd a thing at all. Authors are
supposed to write and publishers to print for the purpose of making
money; that either should work to any other end is a proposition which
to the practical mind is simply bewildering. Yet one would think there
can be but little money in laboriously turning into English a quantity
of school-books which no one reads except at school, and whose only
value is in their being in a foreign tongue. Original poetry is bad
enough; the verdict of the practical mind on that point is pretty apt to
be one with the view taken by Heine’s rich uncle, to whom the poet, at
the height of his fame, was but a _Dummkopf_ (may not the uncle, alas!
have been right?); but poetry at second hand, the “old clo’” of the
Muses, Apollo’s second table, the cold victual of Parnassus, a
disaerated Helicon—the practical mind can only gasp at the notion
(which, by the way, strikes it in quite another shape than the poetical
one we have chosen to give it, but just as effectively) and seek to
renew its faith in human nature over the credit column of its ledger.
Another class of minds, too, not quite so practical—a class that has
been at college, we will say, that knows Virgil and Horace by name, or
even by certain quotations (_arma virumque_, _pallida mors pulsat_,
_atra cura_, etc.), and can read Greek letters at sight, but on the
whole thinks Huxley a greater force in the world to-day than Homer—the
cultured class, in short, about which some of our newspapers make so
much to-do—can understand why the great classic poets should be turned
into English verse (for the benefit of those who have not been at
college), but not at all why such versions should be multiplied. If you
want Virgil in an English dress, there’s your Dryden; or Homer, there’s
Pope—say our person of culture is from an extreme northern latitude,
geographically or mentally, he will perhaps put Chapman here, and
pooh-pooh Pope with a reference to Bentley. Do you desire Horace in the
vulgar, there’s good old Francis—pray, what better do you ask? What
better, indeed, can you expect to get? Just look at your _Cyclopædia
Septentrionalis_ and see what it tells you! So what is the use or the
meaning, what is the reason of being, of your Theodore Martins and your
Coningtons, your Morrises and Cranches? What is there to be had of them
all but vanity and vexation of spirit, and time and money mislaid?
Somewhat in that way, we take it, a good many folks, even of the
book-buying, nay, of the book-reading, sort, must feel over every fresh
announcement of a translation of one or other of the favorite classic
poets. And as the supply of such things is in the long run, by a
beneficent law of nature, tempered to the demand, and the mind of the
book-buying many reacts upon, and often rules, the ardor of the
book-making few—“book” in Lamb’s sense, be it understood—it is not
surprising that the list of American translators should be of the
scantiest. Mr. Cranch’s bold venture of last year—a blank-verse
rendering of the _Æneid_—had few precursors or precedents. There is
Mumford’s blank-verse Homer, which Professor Felton praised, and
Professor Arnold, strange to say, seems not to have seen; and Mr.
Bryant’s blank-verse Homer, which everybody praised and a smaller number
read. Then, some years since, a Philadelphian gentleman put forth still
another version of the _Iliad_ in what he said was English verse,
although the precise metre of such lines as
“For Agamemnon insulted Chryses”;
“But Agamemnon was much displeased”;
“Wounded is Diomed, Tydeus’ son,
Ulysses, also, and Agamemnon.”
unless it be hexameter—everything you cannot scan in English verse is
hexameter, just as everything you cannot parse in Greek is second
aorist—we have been unable to determine. We have heard, also, of a
version of Horace by a professor in some Southern university, but this
we have not seen. Are there any others? Mr. E. C. Stedman ten years ago
printed specimens of a projected translation of Theocritus, in English
hexameters, of considerable merit; but his reception does not seem to
have encouraged him to go on. And that is all, a little Spartan band of
four or five to oppose to the great host of British translators from
Phaer to Morris. The practical mind may feel reassured of its country.
It is true that these English versions are often reprinted here; but it
is only the chiefs of the army—those who shine pre-eminent among their
fellows,
“sicut inter ignes
Luna minores,”
or who are already known to fame for triumphs in other fields. Prof.
Conington made something of a critical furor by the bold breaking away
from rule and precedent in his choice of a metre, though Dr. Maginn, in
his Homeric ballads, had given him the hint. In like manner our
booksellers have reprinted and our book-buyers bought Mr. Morris’
_Æneid_ (we beg his pardon—_Æneids_), not because it was a new
translation of Virgil, but because it was a new work of the latest
popular poet; just as they printed and bought Mr. Bryant’s Homer because
it was the latest work of our oldest living poet, as they printed and
bought Lord Derby’s _Iliad_ because it was the work of a nobleman, and
not only that, but of a leading European statesman, and therefore, in
both aspects, a very surprising and desirable thing for our people, who
have never been used to connect that sort of accomplishment with the
idea they had formed of a nobleman, still less with their notion of a
statesman. But we did not reprint or buy Mr. Worsley’s, or Prof.
Newman’s, or Prof. Blackie’s, or Mr. Wright’s Homer; and even if we
printed, it is to be feared we did not extensively buy, Mr. Cranch’s
_Æneid_, although in the way of buying English _Æneids_ we might have
done worse. Why? Not, certainly, because any of the versions named
lacked merit, but because they appealed to us on their merits simply,
without any outside helps to popularity, and we would none of them. The
fact is, we do not care in the least for Homer or Virgil, and we care a
great deal for Morris and Bryant—that is to say, while they are topics
of talk; and it is one of the social duties, which persons of culture
would die almost sooner than fail in, to have something, or even
nothing, to say about the ordained subjects of fashionable gossip.
But in England it is otherwise. There is in that country a large class
always to be counted on to buy any translation of a favorite classic
which has successfully run the gauntlet of the reviews. This class is
made up of diverse elements. First, the translators themselves, who in
England form no inconsiderable percentage of the literary public; for
every other graduate of either university who has not been a
stroke-oar—that is honor enough to win or give—seems to feel within him
a sacred void unfilled, a mysterious yearning unsatisfied, a clamorous
duty unperformed, until he has translated some classic author in whole
or in part. Every translator, of course, buys the publications of every
other translator to chuckle over his failures or—let us do them
justice—to applaud heartily and generously the happy dexterity which
conquers a difficult passage. Then, too, even scholars who have Homer
and Horace at their fingers’ ends, who think in Latin and dream in
Greek, who dare to take liberties with the digamma and speak
disrespectfully of the second aorist—even they to whom the best
translation of a classic is as corked claret? or skim-milk—may still buy
Prof. Conington’s _Æneid_ or Lord Lytton’s Horace for a better reason
than the pleasure of finding fault with it. They know, none better,
that, as the former puts it, a translation by a competent hand is itself
an “embodied criticism” and commentary; and even scholars, after twenty
centuries or so of criticism and commentary, and even of mutual
vituperation, have not yet quite made up their minds as to the meaning,
or at least the shades of meaning, straight through of any poet of
antiquity. This is not to say that we have not here, too, scholars who
might buy a translation for the same reason; but in neither country,
perhaps, are there so many as to be much of a stand-by in themselves.
But the mainstay of the English translator is that sort of fashionable
sentiment in favor of classical learning necessarily fostered in a
country where the university is a working element and influence in
political, social, and literary life. This sentiment is not so powerful
or wide-spread as it once was; as it was, let us say, when a couplet
made Mr. Addison a secretary of state, or a burlesque made Mr. Montague
a minister and Mr. Prior an ambassador—an improvement still on the age
when Sir Christopher Hatton danced himself into the chancellorship. But
it is still powerful; and the university is still such a force in
English life as it never has been, as it probably never will be, here.
The Oxford and Cambridge debating clubs used to be regularly looked to,
and are still, perhaps, now and again beaten up, by experienced huntsmen
for embryo statesmen, much as the metropolitan manager will scour the
provincial stage for an undiscovered star. University men edit the
leading organs of public opinion; university men fill the desks in
Downing Street and the Parliamentary benches in Westminster Hall;
university men yawn day after day in the club-windows of Pall Mall, and
night after night in the dancing and supper rooms of Belgravia—no, not
the supper-rooms; that is, perhaps, the one spot of the fashionable
world where young England forgets to yawn. Like enough, the learning of
many of these sages is no deeper than the lore of our own pundits from
Yale and Harvard; and not a few of them, no doubt, would be far more at
home criticising the boat-race in the Fifth Æneid (the contestants in
which they would probably characterize, in their delightful idiom, as
“duffers”) than construing the Latin it is told in. Such is the proud
result of modern university education in a free and enlightened
Anglo-Saxon community. Nevertheless, though the university may not
actually give learning, it creates a sentiment in favor of learning; it
develops almost unconsciously a taste for it. One may say that it is
next to impossible for any man to go through college without taking in
some sense of classical culture—through the pores, as it were—which
shall ever after give him a feeling of companionship, a kind of
Freemasonry, with authors he could never read. To have lived among
books, in an atmosphere of books, is itself in some sort an education.
Now, with this feeling for learning diffused throughout a great nation,
showing itself in its chief organs of public opinion, in its selection
of public officers, and even to some extent in its popular elections,
and centring above all in a great city, the headquarters of all the
social, political, and literary activity of the nation—its book-making,
book-branding, book-buying centre—we come to see why translations from
the classics should have more vogue across the water than with us. If a
cabinet minister choose to beguile his leisure by turning Aristophanes
into English, it is but fit that society, before having him in to
dinner, should know something about it, if only to avoid such a slip as
is told of Catalani. The _prima donna_ was seated, as a great
compliment, next to Goethe at a state dinner, but not knowing the divine
Wolfgang—or, indeed, much of anything but some operatic scores—gave her
mind to the potage rather than to the poet. A friend nudged her: “Why do
you not talk to M. Goethe?” “I don’t know him, and he’s stupid.” “What!
not know M. Goethe, the celebrated author of the _Sorrows of Werther_?”
“The _Sorrows of Werther_! Ah! M. Goethe,” cried the _diva_ with
_empressement_, turning to the great man, “how can I ever thank you
enough for your charming _Sorrows of Werther_! I never laughed so much
at anything in my life.” She had seen a parody of that immortal work in
a farce at Paris. Here, when our cabinet minister lets loose his
intellectual surplus on exposures of Popery, society runs no great risk.
Everybody can talk a little Popery—an easier subject, on the whole, to
talk or write about than Aristophanes; and one knows pretty well what
our cabinet minister’s book is about without the fatigue of failing to
read it.
Of the feeling we have mentioned the taste for quotation in
Parliamentary debate is a good test. An apt illustration from Horace or
Virgil had at one time almost the force of an argument. “Pitt,” says the
late Lord Lytton, in the excellent preface to his unrhymed version of
Horace’s _Odes_, “is said never to have more carried away the applause
of the House of Commons than when, likening England—then engaged in a
war tasking all her resources—to that image of Rome which Horace has
placed in the mouth of Hannibal, he exclaimed:
“'Duris ut ilex tonsa bipennibus
Nigræ feraci frondis in Algido,
Per damna, per cœdes, ab ipso
Ducit opes animumque ferro.’”[121]
Footnote 121:
“Even as the ilex, lopped by axes rude
Where, rich with dusky boughs, soars Algidus,
Through loss, through wounds receives
New gain, new life—yea, from the very steel.”
—Horat. _Carm._ iv. 4, Lord Lytton’s Trans.
Pitt, indeed, is famous for such felicities. In his speech on resigning
the chancellorship in 1782, after claiming “to have used his best
endeavors to fulfil with integrity every official engagement,” he
continued: “And with this consolation, the loss of power, sir, and the
loss of fortune, though I affect not to despise, I trust I shall soon be
able to forget.”
“Laudo manentem: si celeres quatit
Pennas, resigno quæ dedit ...
... probamque
Pauperiem sine dote quæro.”[122]
Footnote 122:
“Constant I praise her, but resign
With equal mind her gifts.
When, swift deserting me and mine,
Her ready wing she lifts,
And, _wrapped up in my virtue_, wait
Fair Poverty’s undower’d estate.”
—Horat. _Carm._ iii. 29.
The original of the line italicized Pitt modestly omitted.
Sir Robert Walpole had worse luck in attempting a like feat on his
retirement, made not so gracefully in the shadow of a threatened
impeachment.
“Nil conscire sibi, nulli pallescere culpæ,”[123]
Footnote 123:
“Conscious of no wrong done, no crime to pale at remembered.”
—Horat. _Ep._ 1. i.
he quoted, and was at once taken up by his rival, Pulteney, who offered
to bet him a guinea that the line read _Nulla pallescere culpa_. Walpole
lost, and, tossing the coin to Pulteney, the latter, before pocketing
it, held it up to the House with the grim remark: “It is the first money
I have received from the treasury for many years, and it shall be the
last.”
It may well be that there is less of this sort of thing nowadays, when
Parliamentary illustrations, among the younger members at least, seem to
be drawn more extensively from natural history than from ancient poetry.
Yet it is but a few years since Mr. Gladstone, on going out of office,
created a sensation in his turn by his application of Virgil’s fine
line,
“Exoriare aliquis nostris ex ossibus ultor.”[124]
Footnote 124:
“Rise from our ashes thou unknown, the predestined avenger.”
We cannot very well imagine a leading Congressman summoning Horace to
enforce his argument, say, on the vital necessity to the nation of
repealing the Seventh Commandment until such time as his constituents at
Podunk can get enough of their neighbors’ currency to make resumption
and patriotism convertible terms. Not only would he be doubtful of being
understood, but he would be awed by that practical-minded public opinion
at home which severely discourages in its chosen representatives such
frivolities as unknown tongues. He would see behind the Speaker’s desk
the grim phantom of the honest Granger transfixing him with a spectral
finger, and asking him in hollow tones if he was sent to Congress to
talk gibberish or to get that little appropriation; he would see the
still more appalling phantom of the local editor grimly sharpening his
quill and squaring himself for another of those savagely sarcastic
articles about our erudite Congressman, who spends his time—the time we
pay for, etc.—muddling his brains—the few brains, etc.—over obsolete
rubbish in the Congressional Library, while he neglects his
constituents’ interests and allows that little bill, etc., etc. He sees
all this, and, instead of Horace, he quotes Josh Billings, and everybody
is satisfied.
Now, this is not meant to the dispraise of either the Congressman or his
constituents, but only to show that here political is divided from
literary life in a way quite unknown in England. The scholar in politics
is a fond illusion of youthful enthusiasm. Our politicians do not write;
our literary folks do not go to Congress. A stray editor, to be sure,
now and then gets in, tumbling over, as it were, from the Reporters’
Gallery, or a flourish is made of sending Mr. Motley or Prof. Lowell
minister to some foreign court; but these are spasmodic exceptions, and
usually result in a way to confirm the rule. We have no counterparts to
Disraeli, or Gladstone, or Mr. Lowe, or Sir George Cornewall Lewis, or
the Duke of Argyle. Perhaps, however, a new era is dawning with the
present Secretary of the Navy, who spells his literature with a “P.”
We have said enough—the reader may think more than enough—to show why
translations from the classics should flourish better in England than
here, and also, by implication at least, why of all classic authors,
with the one exception of Homer, Horace and Virgil should most have
taken the translators’ attention. From one or other of these are all the
Parliamentary quotations we have given; and it is indeed, we believe,
considered what our English friends call “bad form” to quote in debate
any other Latin or Greek. The cause of this popularity it is easy to
see. Horace and Virgil, in the usual college curriculum, are put into
the student’s hands just as he has got over his initial struggles with
the language, and his mind is a little freed to feel some of the
beauties as well as the difficulties of the author—to know that the rose
has fragrance as well as thorns. Homer, on the contrary, from his
comparative ease, comes much earlier in the Greek course, and becomes so
much the more distasteful to the learner as Greek is harder than Latin;
its very letters are aliens to his eyes, its alphabet is a place of
briers and brambles. It is hard to get over these early dislikes. St.
Augustine confesses a hatred for Homer thus implanted in his school-days
which he could never overcome, while he declares Virgil to be the
greatest and most glorious of poets—a censure echoed by Voltaire, who
pronounced the _Æneid, le plus beau monument qui nous reste de toute
l’antiquité_, and asserts that if Homer produced Virgil, it was his
finest work.
Both in Virgil and Horace there is much to captivate a youthful mind and
everything to keep the affections won. The story of the _Æneid_ is not
only full of life and color and motion, with plenty of fighting, which
all boys love of course, but, despite its later-discovered want of a
reasonable hero or heroine, its episodes—the Trojan horse and the sharp
street-fight in fallen Ilium, the mysterious journey through the shades
under a spectral moon, the races in the Fifth Book, the midnight scout
of Nisus and Euryalus, the plucky young Iulus fleshing his maiden shafts
at the siege in Book Ninth, the gallant onset and tragic fate of the
young champions Lausus and Pallas—all are apt to take the boyish
imagination; and in older years the haunting melody of the verse, the
pensive grace that suffuses the telling of the story, renew and rivet
the early charm.
Horace, too, is full of matter that even boyhood can taste and manhood
never tires of. The lovely bits of rural landscape scattered like so
many cabinet pictures through the odes—the sweltering cattle standing
knee-deep under the oak-boughs in the pool of Bandusia, the bickering,
pine-arched rivulet by whose side Dellius takes his nooning; the sunny
slopes of Lucretilis dotted with sheep; the romantic beauty of the Happy
Isles—do we not all recall the delight we felt when these enchanting
little sketches first smiled on us from the weary drudgery of Tacitus
and Thucydides like vistas of fresh meadow and woodland and cascade
caught by the wayfarer from the hot and dusty highway? We did not so
well relish then, in that out-door time of life, the warm little
interiors that contrast and set off these: the glowing fire-side piled
high with logs, made merry with old Falernian, and laugh and joke and
friendly talk, while the rain beats upon the roof and the snow whirls
about Soracte, and, drawing closer to the cheery blaze, we hug ourselves
in the “tumultuous privacy of storm”; the jolly dinner-parties, where we
help to quiz Quinctius for his gravity or chaff that harebrain Telephus
out of his affectation of wisdom; the more sober feasts with Mæcenas or
Virgil at the little Sabine Farm—but these, too, we soon get to know,
and linger over them with fond familiarity. Then, too, we win to the
secret of that genial though pagan philosophy which comes home to the
“business and bosoms” of all of us, and whose precepts are so pithily
expressed we cannot forget them if we would: that there is a time when
folly is the truest wisdom; that he alone is happy who is content with
little; that a wise man takes care of the present and lets the future
take care of itself, because, as Cowley puts it,
“When to future years thou extend’st thy cares,
Thou dealest in other men’s affairs”;
that we must pluck the blossom of to-day, or we may never have a chance
at the morrow’s.
“Gather ye rosebuds while ye may,
Old Time is still a-flying,”
says Herrick, a later Horace. As we grow older and graver his
sympathetic companionship keeps pace with us still, and in his deeper
tones there are hints which even Christian civilization need not disdain
to add to its scheme of a lofty and noble life.
So it is that England for three centuries back—indeed, ever since she
began to have a literature to house them in—has been trying to
naturalize and domesticate these Roman poets. In this, however, Virgil
had nearly a century the start of Horace, owing, no doubt, to the nature
of his great work, which appealed to the romantic impulses of that early
time. Indeed, long before either the _Æneid_ or the _Iliad_ was
generally known in Europe, the stories of both had been made over into
the form of romances: the former by Guillaume de Roy in French, the
latter by Guido de Colonna in Spanish. De Roy’s _Livre d’Eneidos_,
translated into English and printed by Caxton, “no more resembles
Virgil,” cries the good Bishop of Dunkeld wrathfully, “than the devil
does St. Austin.” It was probably to clear the fair fame of his beloved
poet that the bishop brought out his own quaint and spirited Scotch
version in 1513. The first complete English translation came out in
1558; but in the previous year appeared the Second and Fourth Books,
done into blank verse by the Earl of Surrey, notable as the first-known
blank verse in the language, unless we are to take as such the unrhymed,
alliterative metre used by Longland in _The Vision of Piers Ploughman_.
It is thought to have been Surrey’s design, had he lived, to translate
the remaining books. Had he done so, he would have added an ornament to
our literature.
As it is, the distinction of giving the first full translation of the
_Æneid_ to the language rests with a Welshman—Dr. Thomas Phaer. He
himself, however, did only the first nine books and part of the Tenth;
when dying, the work was taken in hand and finished, with the Thirteenth
or supplementary book of Maffeo Veggio, by another physician, Dr. Thomas
Twynne. English doctors then and afterwards seem to have had a
propension towards the Muse. Dr. Borde, Dr. Thomas Campion (“Sweet
Master Campion”), and Dr. Thomas Lodge—they seem to have had a
propensity to be named Thomas also—were only the first of a long line of
tuneful leeches, ending with our own Drs. Holmes and Joyce. Is there any
occult connection between physic and Parnassus, between rhyme and
rhubarb, between poetry and pills? and is Castaly a medicinal spring?
Phaer’s version, which is printed in black-letter, is in rhymed
fourteen-syllable verse, or “long Alexandrines”—a metre which Chapman
afterwards took for his Homer, and to which Mr. Morris, the latest
translator of the _Æneid_, has reverted.
The long Alexandrine has perhaps as much right as any to be called the
English national metre in the sense in which we call the Saturnian verse
the national metre of the Latins. Chaucer took his heroic couplet from
the Italian or French, and Surrey, no doubt, had from the same source,
or perhaps the Spanish, the hint for his blank verse. A curious parallel
might be drawn between Surrey and Ennius, who, like him, introduced a
new or “strange metre—the Greek hexameter—and, like him, by doing so
revolutionized the versification of his country. Another point in common
is that each has been reproached for his action. Ascham impliedly finds
fault with Surrey because he did not choose hexameters or unrhymed
Alexandrines instead of his unrhymed verse of ten or eleven syllables;
and certain of those dreadful German scholars, who know everything and a
few things besides, assure us that Ennius dealt a fatal blow to Latin
poetry when he foisted on it a metre unsuited to its genius. One can
hardly help speculating on the result had Virgil had to content himself
with the _horridus numerus Saturnius_ as the vehicle of his tenderness
and elegance, or if Hamlet had had to soliloquize in the metre of
Sternhold and Hopkins. Would the rude instrument have cramped the
player, or would the genius of the player have elevated the instrument?
As Macaulay points out, the old nursery line,
“The queen is in her parlor eating bread and honey,”
is a perfect Saturnian verse on Terence’s model:
“Dăbūnt mălūm Mĕtēllī Nævĭō pŏētæ.”
How would Mr. Gladstone’s menace,
“Exoriare aliquis nostris ex ossibus ultor,”
have sounded in that shape? Should we recognize, do you think, those
“Daffodils
That come before the swallow dares, and take
The winds of March with beauty,”
done up in long Alexandrines or in such hexameters as those of Master
Abraham Fraunce, which moved Ben Jonson to dub him a fool:
“Now had fiery Phlegon his dayes revolution ended,
And his snoring snout with salt waves all to be-washed,”
or even in Sidney’s or Spenser’s, which were, in truth, little better?
No doubt Virgil and Shakspere, being great poets, would have subdued
what they worked in to their own artistic uses. Yet all the same let us
be thankful to the humbler artisans who furnished to their hands pipes
fit for them to play on, and to make such music as the world shall never
tire of hearing. It should be added that the likeness between the
English and the Latin reformer does not extend to the degree of
refinement attained by each. In this respect Surrey is much the more
advanced. Ennius never got over the barbarism of excessive alliteration
which seems to mark the early metrical efforts of all peoples.
“Sicut si quando vincleis venatica velox”;
“Sicut fortis equus spatio qui forte supremo”;
“Quai neque Dardaneis campeis potuere perire
Nec cum capta capei, nec cum combusta cremari.”
The last passage Virgil copied, as he did many others, and it is
instructive to see how his more polished taste tones down his
predecessor’s jingle:
¸ “Num Sigæis occumbere campis,
Num capti potuere capi? num incensa cremavit
Troja viros?”[125]
Footnote 125:
“Was there no dead man’s place for you on that Sigeian plain?
Had ye no might to wend as slaves? Gave Troy so poor a flame
To burn her men...?”
—_Æneid_, vii. 294 seq., Morris’ Trans. p. 175.
Surrey’s blank verse has the quaintness of his age, but not its defects
of taste. Martial, writing about two centuries after Ennius, sneers at
him, much as Ennius had sneered at his predecessor, Nævius—he who
lamented that Latin poetry was to die with him!
“Ennius est lectus, salvo tibi Roma Marone.”[126]
Footnote 126:
“And Rome reads Ennius while Virgil lives!”
Pope, writing nearly the same length of time after Surrey, has only
praise for him: “Surrey, the Grenville of a former age“—at least, Pope
meant it for praise.”
To return to Phaer. It may be of interest to the reader to contrast the
manner of the earliest and latest English translators of the _Æneid_.
Venus’ admonition to Æneas (ii. 607) is thus given by the Welsh doctor:
“Then to thy parent’s hest take heede, dread not, my mind obey:
In yonder place where stones from stones and bildings huge to sway
Thou seest, and mixt with dust and smoke thicke stremes of reekings
rise,
Himselfe the god Neptune that side doth furne in wonders wise:
With forke three tinde the wall vproots, foundations allto shakes;
And qvite from vnder soile the towne, with ground-works all uprakes.
On yonder side with Furies most, dame Juno fiercely stands,
The gates she keeps, and from the ships the Greekes, her friendly
bands,
In armour girt she calles.
Lo! there againe where Pallas sits, on fortes and castle-towres,
With Gorgon’s eyes, in lightning cloudes enclosed, grim she lowres,
The father-god himself to Greekes their mightes and courage steres,
Himselfe against the Troyan blood both gods and armour reres.
Betake thee to thy flight, my sonne, thy labours’ ende procure,
I will thee never faile, but thee to resting-place assure.
She said, and through the darke night shade herselfe she drew from
sight;
Appeare the grisly faces then, Troyes en’mies vgly dight.”
Mr. Morris gives it thus:
“And look to it no more afeard to be
Of what I bid, nor evermore thy mother’s word disown.
There where thou seest the great walls cleft and stone turn off from
stone,
And seest the waves of smoke go by with mingled dust-cloud rolled,
There Neptune shakes the walls and stirs the foundings from their
hold
With mighty trident, tumbling down the city from its base.
There by the Scæan gates again hath bitter Juno place
The first of all, and wild and mad, herself begirt with steel,
Calls up her fellows from the ships.
Look back! Tritonian Pallas broods o’er topmost burg on high,
All flashing bright with Gorgon grim from out her stormy sky;
The very Father hearteneth on, and stays with happy might
The Danaans, crying on the gods against the Dardan fight.
Snatch flight, O son, whiles yet thou mayst, and let thy toil be
o’er;
I by thy side will bring thee safe unto thy father’s door.
“She spake, and hid herself away where thickest darkness poured.
Then dreadful images show forth, great godheads are abroad,
The very haters of our Troy.”
The half-lines respond to the imperfect verses in Virgil, which, in the
fashion of the Chinese tailor, both Mr. Morris and his forerunner
conscientiously copy. Phaer has other oddities, such as “Sybly” for
Sibylla, “lymbo” for Hades, “Dei Phobus” for Deiphobus, and “Duke
Æneas”; while every book is wound up with a _Deo Gratias_ by way of
colophon. Let us hope it was not too fervently echoed by his readers.
Indeed, Phaer’s version is better than its fame.
“After the associated labors of Phaer and Twynne,” says Warton in his
_History of English Poetry_, “it is hard to say what could induce
Richard Stanihurst, a native of Dublin, to translate the first four
books of the _Æneid_ into English hexameters.” The remark shows less
than the wonted perspicuity of the historian of English poetry. What
induces any translation, except the belief (the fond belief!) that the
work it aims to do has not yet been done? Master Stanihurst, like many
other learned men then and since, was firmly persuaded that the
hexameter was your only measure for a translation of Virgil. But there
are hexameters and hexameters, and Master Stanihurst’s were unluckily of
the other sort. A poet who proclaims his intention to “chaunt manhood
and Garboiles,” and gives us
“With tentive list’ning each wight was settled in hark’ning”
for
“Conticuere omnes intentique ora tenebant,”
or
“You bid me, ô princesse, to scarifie a festered old sore”
as an equivalent for
“Infandum, regina, jubes renovare dolorem,”
must be content with “audience fit though few.” Sir Philip Sidney and
Gabriel Harvey and a few other choice spirits, all bitten with the same
flea, patted poor Stanihurst on the back and told him that what Nash
called “his [and their] foul, lumbring, boisterous, wallowing measures”
had “enriched and polished their native tongue.” But the rest of the
world laughed with Nash, and may still for that matter; for Stanihurst’s
version is full of conceits even droller than Phaer’s. “Bedlamite” for
_furiatâ mente_, “Dandiprat hop-thumb” for _parvulus_, Jupiter “bussing
his pretty, prating parrot”—_i.e._, Venus—and Priam girding on his sword
Morglay, are some of them. The last shows how the glamour of the Gothic
romances, in which Virgil figured sometimes as a magician—the _Sortes
Virgilianæ_ long outlived their origin—still hung about even the
learned, of whom Stanihurst was indisputably one— “eruditissimus ille
nobilis” Camden calls him. It may be interesting to add that he was a
Catholic, a friend of Campion the martyr, and died in exile because of
it.
Stanihurst seems to have played the part of horrible example to all
after-translators; for although Surrey’s metre has been repeatedly used,
and Phaer’s of late by Mr. Morris, and we might add by Prof. Conington
(for his octosyllabic verse is but a variation of the Alexandrine, which
skipped capriciously from twelve syllables to sixteen[127]), the
hexameter has never again, so far as we know, been applied to rendering
the _Æneid_. Yet the measure which in English goes by that name seems
far better adapted, _pace_ Mr. Arnold, to the pensive grace of Virgil
than to the grave majesty of Homer. It may be true, as scholars contend,
that it by no means reproduces the effect of the Greek or Roman
hexameter, and it may be equally true, as other scholars tell us, that
we have no conception of what was the effect of the Greek or Roman
hexameter on the Greek or Roman ear—though the second objection might,
in malicious hands, prove an embarrassment for the first. Yet as we read
Homer and Virgil there is no doubt that hexameters can be—indeed, that
such have been—constructed which do go far to reproduce the effect of
Homer and Virgil, according to the modern reading, upon the modern ear.
Grant that this is an entirely wrong effect; that either Homer or
Virgil, hearing his verses read in modern fashion, would be sure to clap
hands to ear, and cry out in an agony with Martial:
Footnote 127:
See Warton, _Hist. E. P._ sec. 1.
“Quem recitas, meus est, O Fidentine, libellus;
Sed male cum recitas, incipit esse tuus”;[128]
Footnote 128:
“My piece you’ve been spouting! I ne’er should have known:
Next time, if you love me, do say it’s your own.”
—Mart. _Epigr._ i. 39.
it is yet the only effect we are ever likely to get until the day of
judgment; and what are you going to do about it? Of course it is
hopeless to try to imitate Homer’s sonorous harmonies—the καλὰ τὰ Ὁμήρον
ἔπη, as Maximus Tyrius calls them, the lovely Homeric words—the
πολυφλοίς βοιο θαλάσσης and ἀργυρέοιο βιοῖο. It is not in ours or any
other tongue but Homer’s own to do it. But Mr. Arnold has shown that we
can imitate afar off his rhythm and metrical effect, and why should we
not do that? If anybody can give us hexameters that please the English
ear and make it fancy, without being conscious of too much elongation,
that it is listening to the faintest echo of Homer’s mighty lyre or
Virgil’s silver string, why, let us have them, prithee, and a _fico_ for
the grammarians.
In this desultory review of Virgilian translators we mean to confine
ourselves to the _Æneid_; but we may say in passing that the _Eclogues_
were, about 1587, put into unrhymed Alexandrines by Abraham Fleming, who
thus nearly anticipated the metre Prof. Newman, after much
experimenting, hit on as the proper one to render Homer, and which, as
Prof. Marsh says, has the disadvantage (or the merit?) to American ears
of suggesting our own epic strain of _Yankee Doodle_. Fleming, however,
as will be seen from the following quotation, taken from the beginning
of his Fourth Eclogue, only dropped into our national music
occasionally:
“O Muses of Sicilian ile, let’s greater matters singe!
Shrubs, groves, and bushes lowe delight and please not every man.
If we do singe of woods, the woods be worthy of a consul.”
While Virgil was thus engrossing the attention of Elizabethan scholars
Horace lay comparatively neglected, although it was an era of
translation, as transitional periods in the literature of a country are
apt to be. Nearly all the Latin poets then extant were done into English
before the beginning of the seventeenth century, and the Greek series
began sonorously with Chapman’s Homer soon after. Even that most perfect
of all actual or possible poets, as her courtiers called her—Queen
Elizabeth—tried her hand at it in a translation of part of the _Hercules
Œteus_ of Seneca. But no complete version of Horace seems to have
appeared prior to Creech’s towards the end of the seventeenth century.
In 1567, however, Thomas Drant published _Horace, his Arte of Poetrie,
Pistles, and Satyres Englished_. In his preface is one quaint remark, to
the truth of which all Horatians will bear witness: “Neyther any man
which can judge can judge it one and the like laboure to translate
Horace and to make and translate a love booke, a shril tragedie, or a
smooth and platleuyled poesye. Thys I can truly say, of myne owne
experyence, that I can sooner translate twelve verses out of the Greeke
Homer than sixe out of Horace.”
The first version of the _Odes_ was that of Sir Thomas Hawkins, about
1630. This, though it seems to have been popular enough to go through
several editions, was far from complete, the lighter odes being omitted
as being “too wanton and loose.” Our own edition, which is the fourth,
dated 1638, contains about two-thirds of the odes and epodes. Here and
there we find a tolerably good verse:
“What man, what hero [Clio] wilt thou raise
With shrillest pipe or Lyra’s softer lays?
What god whose name in sportive straine
Echo will chaunt thee back againe?”[129]
Footnote 129:
_Carm._ i. 12.
This will compare not too disadvantageously with the latest version—Lord
Lytton’s—which, indeed, is not especially good:
“What man, what hero, or what god select’st thou,
Theme for sweet lyre or fife sonorous, Clio,
Whose honored name shall that gay sprite-voice, Echo,
Hymn back rebounding?”
As a rule, however, Sir Thomas is stiff—a fault common to almost all
translations of the easiest of lyrists up to a much later period. Yet in
this century there were many versions of single odes, epistles, and
satires, some of which have scarcely ever been surpassed. Such, for
instance, were Ben Jonson’s rendering of Ode IV. 1, _Ad Venerem_, and
Milton’s of I. 5, _Ad Pyrrhum_, severally included by Mr. Theodore
Martin and Lord Lytton in their respective versions as beyond their
skill to better; Dryden’s fine paraphrase of III. 29, _To Mæcenas_,
which Mr. Martin, non sordidus auctor, pronounces finer than the
original; and, on a lower plane, however, Roscommon’s version of the
_Art of Poetry_. Of these, Milton’s has been said to touch the
high-water mark of translation, and is indeed very elegant and close.
Ben Jonson’s set translations are often injured by a rigid strictness
which Horace might have warned him against:
“Nec verbum verbo curabis reddere, fidus Interpres,”[130]
Footnote 130:
“Nor word for word translate with painful care.”
—Horat. _De Arte Poet._, Francis’ Trans.
and which evoked Dryden’s protest against “the jaw-breaking translations
of Ben Jonson.” Yet even in fetters he danced better than most; and some
of his translations, notably the one mentioned above and one of Martial,
_Liber, amicorum dulcissima cura tuorum_, it would be hard to pick flaws
in.
In Jonson’s day, however, there was no mean between word-for-word
rendering and the loosest paraphrase, until Denham laid down something
like the true rule in his verses to Fanshawe on the latter’s translation
of Guarini:
“That servile path thou nobly dost decline
Of tracing word for word and line for line....
A new and nobler way thou dost pursue
To make translations, and translators too.
They but preserve the ashes, thou the flame,
True to his sense, but truer to his fame.”
Cowley, who translated largely from Horace, runs to the opposite extreme
from Jonson: his versions are as much too free as Jonson’s are too
close. Yet some of his single lines are unmatched for felicity and
force:
“Hence ye profane, I hate ye all,
Both the great vulgar and the small”
(a phrase which has passed into a proverb) for _Odi profanum vulgus et
arceo_; “The poor rich man’s emphatically poor” for _Magnas inter opes
inops_; “From his toucht mouth the wanton torment slips” for _Fugientia
captat Flumina_; and, best of all, perhaps, “He loves of homely
littleness the ease” for Martial’s _Sordidaque in parvis otia rebus
amet_—which shows how a deft translator can, without leaving his
original, breathe into it, so to speak, a beauty it scarcely had—such
lines as these make us regret either that Cowley did not translate more
or that he was unable to transfer to his own poetry more of the same
simple elegance of thought and word.
All of Cowley’s contemporaries were not so happy, however, as he in
their attempts to better Horace, though many tried it. One of them, Sir
Edward Sherburne, claps a periwig on Mt. Soracte:[131]
Footnote 131:
Horat. _Carm._ i. 9. One of the best versions of this ode is that of
Allan Ramsay, in the Scotch dialect.
“Seest thou not how Soracte’s head
(For all his height) stands covered
With a white periwig of snow,
While the laboring woods below
Are hardly able to sustain
The weight of winter’s feathered rain?”
He had evidently been reading and, with Dryden, admiring Sylvester’s _Du
Bartas_:
“And when the winter’s keener breath began
To crystallize the Baltic Ocean,
To glaze the lake, to bridle up the floods,
And periwig with snow the bald-pate woods.”
The conceited style then in vogue was not well fitted to do justice to
Horace’s _simplex munditiis_, although he was now universally read and
esteemed—“The next best poet in the world to Virgil,” Cowley calls
him—and has left the mark of his genial influence on all the writers of
the time. One finds the Horatian sentiment running like a golden thread
through the minor poetry of James and Charles I., at times informing
whole poems with a pithiness of phrase and a dignity which Horace might
call his own. Such are Marvell’s ode on _The Return of Cromwell_, such
Shirley’s “The glories of our blood and state” and “Victorious men of
earth, no more”—all three among the finest productions of their kind in
the language.
After the Restoration the business of translation was resumed with
vigor. Dryden in his Virgil, and, somewhat later, Pope in his Homer, set
a fresh model which was followed by all their successors until Cowper’s
Miltonic _Iliad_ came to break the spell and pave the way to the modern
style, which aims to combine freedom with fidelity, ease of manner with
correctness of meaning, and so far as possible to reproduce the author
himself, form as well as matter. Creech’s Horace was hardly a success,
being stiff and ungainly without being particularly close, and, while
showing in its metre some sense of the poet’s rhythmical grace, scarcely
attempted to render the characteristic delicacy of his wording—that
_curiosa felicitas_ we all have heard of. In this—and indeed in
every—respect the version of Dr. Francis, which came out about half a
century later, was greatly superior as a whole to any previous one, and
took with Horatians a position the best of its successors has found it
hard to shake. Indeed, with such of the poet’s lovers as date from the
golden age of Consul Plancus, Francis is still the paramount favorite,
and you will talk to them in vain of the merits of Robinson or Lytton,
of Conington’s fluent ease or Martin’s sprightly grace. Francis is in
the main faithful, generally pleasing, and always respectable at least,
but, like most of his rivals, he lacks a certain lightness of touch, an
airy gayety of treatment in the minor odes which no one, we think, has
hit off so well as Mr. Theodore Martin. They are, as that accomplished
writer says, in many instances what would be called now _vers de
société_, and their chief value rests in the poet’s inimitable charm of
manner. Unless some notion of this can be given, the translator’s labor
is lost, and he offers his readers but a withered posy from which color
and perfume alike are fled.
ALBA’S DREAM.
BY THE AUTHOR OF “ARE YOU MY WIFE?” “A SALON IN PARIS BEFORE THE WAR,”
ETC.
PART III.
Gondriac had seen many strange things come to pass of late years:
stupendous things, as when M. le Marquis climbed up the cliff like a
common man to condole with old Caboff; wonderful things, as when M. le
Marquis was rescued by old Caboff in the storm; tragic things, as when
he went forth and died in the place of young Caboff; but nothing so
untoward as this had ever happened at Gondriac before: M. le Marquis was
going to marry Alba. The wonder was both lessened and heightened by the
romantic story concerning Alba’s birth, which was spread through the
village simultaneously with the announcement. The fatherless girl, who
had owned no name but Alba, was the daughter of a nobleman, who had been
affianced by his family to a great heiress, but who fell in love with a
penniless orphan and married her secretly; a few months after his
marriage he was ordered off to Egypt with Bonaparte and was killed in
his first engagement. The young wife lived to give birth to her child,
and then died, leaving it to the care of an old friend of her mother, a
childless widow, whom the Revolution had ruined, and who now gained her
bread by needlework. Virginie accepted the charge, and adopted as her
own the little one, whose sole provision was a pittance which the father
had been able to secure to his wife as a dower. Her heart, hungering for
some one on whom to lavish its great capacity for loving, bestowed upon
the baby more than a mother’s tenderness; she loved it with a love that
seemed to gather up into one passion all the loves that a woman’s heart
can hold. She left the shelter of her native place, where all had known
her from her childhood, and where, in spite of her poverty, she held her
head high, and went to live at Gondriac, where no old familiar face
would smile upon her, but where her secret would be secure, and none
would know that she was not Alba’s mother. This was the story she told
Hermann when he asked her for Alba’s hand.
“I thought to let the secret die with me,” she said, “and that the child
might have loved me to the end as her own mother; but now she must hear
the truth. To me she will always be my child, my very own—as truly mine
as if I had given her birth.”
“Let her know nothing until she is my wife, and then I will break it to
her,” replied the young lord; “and I doubt but she will love you more
dearly still when she learns the truth.”
Alba was very happy—so happy at times that it was more than she could
bear; she would often heave great sighs for very bliss as she sat upon
the rocks, her hand clasped in Hermann’s.
“Why do you sigh, my Alba?” he asked her once reproachfully. “Are you
afraid I shall not make you happy?”
“I am afraid of being too happy; I am so happy now that I could die of
it. And by and by, when I am your wife, and you will never leave me, and
that all I used to long for when I believed in fairies shall be mine—I
feel as if the joy of it must kill me. Hermann, we will try to be very
good together, will we not? We will do our best to make everybody good
and happy. There shall be no poor people here, and when they are sick we
will have a good doctor to come and take care of them, and I will go and
nurse them myself. I hope they will all love me. Do you think they will?
Sometimes I am frightened lest they shouldn’t care for me any more when
I am a great lady, living in a castle.”
“You foolish child! They will care ten times more for you then,” said
Hermann, “because you will be able to do so much for them.” Then,
looking at her with a smile at once tender and suspicious, “What a
greedy little thing it is for love!” he said. “You can’t care for me as
I do for you, Alba, or else my love would be enough for you; I don’t
long for anybody’s love but yours.”
“It is not so much that as that I long to make them happy,” explained
Alba; “and how can I do that until I can make them love me?”
They quarrelled over this philosophy of hers, and then made plans for
the future.
“You will take me to see all the beautiful places you have told me of,
will you not?” said Alba.
“I will take you round the world, if you like it—that is, if you don’t
get tired of it before we are half way.”
“Tired! with you? I should never be tired—never, never, never.” She
repeated the word in a low voice, as if speaking to herself, while
looking dreamily out over the sea, where a ship, with her white sails
set, was drifting away into the sunset.
“Where shall we go to first?” said Hermann.
“To Egypt, I think; or perhaps to Italy—I am dying to see the city with
the streets of water, and Spain, where the palaces grow, and Moorish
temples; but let us go first of all to Germany and see the countries
where you won the battles. I should like that best. O Hermann, Hermann!
how happy we shall be.” And then, as if her heart were overfull of joy,
she began to sing. Hermann liked this better. Those silent, rapturous
moods sometimes frightened him, as if they were a demand for something
that he could not give. M. de Gondriac was as much in love as a man
could be, and so far he would have no difficulty in making his wife’s
happiness his chief concern; but he was quite aware that this was not to
be achieved by the usual commonplace means. Something more than ordinary
love, let it be ever so tender and chivalrous, was needed to satisfy the
cravings of a heart like Alba’s. She worshipped him as the noblest of
men; and it was no easy thing to realize this ideal. Would he be able to
achieve it, to live up to her exalted standard through the coming years,
when the glamour of young love’s idealizing mists should have cleared
away, and his wife would be at leisure to observe him with her clear,
intelligent eyes?
But a cloud was gathering over these sunny days of courtship. M. de
Gondriac was summoned to Paris by the chief of the War Office. The call,
of course, brooked no delay. His arm, though nearly healed, still
incapacitated him from joining his regiment; but he must go in person
and certify to this. Though they might admit him unfit for active
service, he might be retained in attendance on the emperor; Bonaparte
liked to have high-sounding names upon his personal staff. But Hermann
would not alarm Alba by suggesting this possibility. They parted in
sweet sorrow, looking forward to meeting soon again.
Alas! is it a decree of fate that the course of true love never shall
run smooth? Are poets prophets, or do the loves of all humanity conspire
to make their voice an oracle? The days went by, and Alba waited; but
Hermann neither came nor wrote, and they could get no tidings of him.
Had he been ordered to the frontier, in spite of his disabled arm, and
killed or taken prisoner? Doubts crowded upon Alba’s heart until they
almost stopped its pulses. But Virginie feared even worse than this,
and, if her fears were true, there was no comfort in store. M. de
Gondriac had felt strong enough to brave the emperor’s displeasure at a
distance; but how when he stood face to face with it, with the power of
that magnetic will, with the ridicule of his equals, with the
blandishments of refined court ladies? Was his love of the metal to
challenge these antagonistic forces and prevail?
Spring passed, and summer, and now it was harvest-time; the reapers
waded through the yellow fields, the sickle was singing in the corn, the
grapes hung heavy on the vine. But no news came from Hermann. Alba pined
and drooped, and at last fell ill. The doctor came from X—— and saw her,
and said that it would be nothing; it was weakness and oppression on the
heart; she wanted care and nourishment. But no care revived her. She
grew weaker and weaker, and the low fever came, and there was no
strength left to battle with it. But Virginie would not see the danger;
when the neighbors came for news, she would answer, with a smile on her
wan face: “Thank God! no worse. The child is very weak; but last night
she slept a little.” Thus twenty days went by, and then there came a
change, and on the twenty-first day, as the Vesper bell was tolling, the
_curé_ came, and Alba was anointed as a bride for heaven. The old man
wept like a child as he blessed her and departed. “God comfort you, Mère
Virginie!” he said, laying his hand heavily on the mother’s head. But
Virginie was like one in whom the faculty of pain or of despair was
paralyzed. “She will not die, M. le Curé. God is merciful; his heart is
kind,” she said. When the sun was going down, Alba spoke: “Mother, bring
me his picture and the pearls he gave me; I should like to wear them
once before I go....” They brought the pearls and decked her in them;
they smoothed back the moist, dark hair and crowned her with the queenly
coronet; they clasped the necklace round her throat and the bracelets on
her arms, while she lay quite passive, as if unconscious of what they
were doing. Never had she looked so beautiful as at this hour in the
deepening twilight, with the shadow of death stealing on her and
touching her features with a celestial pathos. Virginie could not but
see it now. Alba was going from her. But, no! it should not be. No,
there was a God in heaven, a merciful, all-powerful God; it should not
be. He would save her child even at this extremity. She had not cried to
him loud enough before, but now she would cry and he should hear her,
now that she knew how dire was her need of him. She knelt down at a
little distance from the bed and began to pray. It was terrible to see
her; to see how despair and faith wrestled within her. The agony of the
strife was visible in her face; it was pale as death, and the big drops
stood upon her brow, that was contracted as by breathless pain; her eyes
were open, fixed in a rigid stare as on some unseen presence; her white
lips, drawn in, were slightly parted, as if to let the words escape that
she could not articulate; her hands were locked together, bloodless from
the fierce grip of the fingers. Old Jeanne cowered in the corner as she
watched her.
An hour went by. The tide was coming in; the waves were washing on the
shore with the old familiar sound. The moon rose and stirred the shadows
on the plain; its light stole through the latticed window and overflowed
in a silver stream upon the bed, illuminating it like a shrine in the
darkened chamber.
“Mother!” murmured Alba faintly.
“My child!”
“Kiss me, mother.... I am going....”
“Alba! my child!... O God! O God! have pity on me....”
But Alba had passed beyond the mother’s voice.
* * * * *
There are cries, we sometimes say, that might wake the dead—cries that
sound like a disembodied spirit, as if a human soul had broken loose
with all its terrors and hopes and concentrated life of love and agony,
and, escaping in a voice, traversed the void of space and pierced into
the life beyond. Those who have heard that cry will remember the silence
that followed it—a silence like no other, infinite, death-like, as if
the pulse of time stood still, hearkening for the echo on the other
side.
The neighbors came and grieved. “How beautiful she is!” they whispered
to one another, as they stood by the couch where Alba lay smiling in her
death-sleep and decked in her bridal pearls. “No wonder our young lord
loved her. How strange that he should have left her! Has she died of
love, I wonder?” Many thought more of Virginie than of Alba. “She will
die of grief,” they said. For Virginie had not shed a tear, not uttered
one wail of lamentation, since that great cry that followed Alba into
the dark beyond. She and Jeanne had arrayed her in her bridal
dress—those splendid robes of silk and lace which her lover in his pride
had prepared for her; it was a foolish fancy, but the mother,
remembering how her lost one had loved these splendors, seemed filled
with a vague idea that they might even now give her some pleasure. When
this was done she sat with her hands lying loosely locked together on
her knees, gazing on the dead face, as mute and motionless as if she
were dead herself. Yet some said they noticed a strange look like a
gleam of disbelief in her eyes now and then, as if she thought death but
mocked her with some kind intent.
The night and the day passed, and the night again, and to-day at noon
the dead bride was to be borne away. Friends crowded in for a last look;
then, as the hour drew near, there was a movement without, a sound of
voices chanting in the distance, the tramp of feet approaching, and they
knew it was time for them to go. But Virginie still sat there, pallid,
immovable, like a statue set up to stir pity and reverence in the hearts
of the beholders. Mme. Caboff laid a hand upon her arm and pressed her
gently to come away. “The child is not dead, but sleepeth,” she said;
“take comfort in that thought.”
Then Virginie rose like one waking from a trance, and that strange gleam
of disbelief which some had noticed in her eyes was now visible to all.
“Go ye away, my friends,” she said, “and leave me here awhile with my
child and God.” There was no murmur of dissuasion, though many thought
that grief had made her mad; the majesty of grief subdued them to
obedience, and one by one they passed out of the room in silence.
Then Virginie knelt down and lifted up her voice in a last supreme
appeal to God.
“She is not dead, but sleepeth! Was that a message from thee, Lord? Thou
hast whispered it to my heart before. And what if she were dead—are not
death and sleep alike to thee? Canst thou not wake from one as easily as
from the other? She is not dead, but sleepeth! When the Jews laughed
thee to scorn, thou didst glorify thy Father and raise the dead girl to
life again, and all the people blessed thee. Thou didst pity the widow
and restore her son, though she knew not of thy presence nor believed in
thee. Wilt thou be less pitiful to me, who believe and cry to thee? Son
of David, look down upon me, have pity upon me, and awake my child! She
is not dead, but sleepeth. Canst thou not wake her from this sleep as
readily as thou didst raise Lazarus from the grave where he had lain
four days? Christ crucified! Redeemer! Saviour! Father! hearken to my
prayer and have mercy on me! By thy pity for the widow, and for Lazarus’
sisters, and for thy own Mother at the foot of the cross, and for John
and Magdalen, and for thy murderers, have pity on me and call back my
child! She is not dead, but sleepeth. Father! by the birth of thy dear
Son, by his thirty-three years’ toil and poverty, by his bloody sweat,
by his scourging, by the nails that were hammered into his hands and
feet, by the lance that cut into his heart, by his death and sleep in
the sepulchre, by his victory over the grave, by his resurrection and
his reign of glory at thy right hand, hear me and give me back my child!
She is not dead, but sleepeth. Lord! I believe in thy name, I believe in
thy love, I believe in thy mercy and omnipotence. I believe; O God! help
thou my unbelief. The child is not dead, but sleepeth.”
She rose from her knees, and, pressing the crucifix with one hand on the
breast of the dead, she held the other uplifted with priest-like
solemnity. There was a pause of intense and awful silence; the chanting
without had ceased; every ear was strained, every heart stood still,
listening to the prayer they dared not say _amen_ to. Then Virginie’s
voice arose again, sounding not like hers, but rather like a voice that
came from some depth of life within, beyond her, and making the mute
void vibrate to its solemn tones: “_Alba! in the name of the living God,
awake!_...”
Then silence closed upon her speech, and every pulse was stilled to a
deeper hush.... The white lids quivered, the sleeper’s breast heaved
beneath the pressure of the cross, sending forth a soft, long sigh, and
Alba was awake.
“Mother!”
And now a cry arose from without the cottage which must surely have been
heard in heaven; for the rocks took it up and bore it out to sea, and
the waves rolled it back to the reverberating shore, and deep called
unto deep, and louder and louder it rose and rang, until it thrilled the
welkin, and heaven sent back to earth the shout of jubilee and praise.
But there was one who did not join in it. When the first ecstasy of her
thanksgiving was past, and Virginie had clasped the loved one in her
arms, and felt the warm blood returning to the cold lips under her
kisses, she saw that Alba was like one whose spirit was not there; her
eyes were open in a wide, intense gaze, as if straining to see beyond
their ken, her ears were deaf to the sounds around her, hearkening for a
voice that others could not hear.
“My child, my darling, let us give thanks together!” Virginie said when
they were once more alone. But Alba turned her eyes upon her mother with
that far-off gaze that seemed to reach beyond the veil. “Mother,” she
said, speaking in low, fearful tones—“mother, why did you call me back?
Did you not know I was with God? I was with God,” she continued in the
same hushed tones; “I was in heaven with the angels and all the blessed
ones, so full of happiness that I have no words to speak of it.”
“Tell me what you saw, my child. It was a dream; but God sometimes gives
us visions in a dream.”
“It was no dream, mother. I was dead. My soul had left my body and taken
flight into eternity. I stood before the throne and saw the vision of
God. But of this I cannot speak.”
Alba paused like one whom reverence made dumb, and then continued: “I
sang. O the joy of victory that thrilled through me as I lifted up my
voice, and heard it amongst all the voices of the blessed! That was the
wonder. Voice upon voice uprose, till all the hosts of heaven were
singing, and yet you heard each singer distinct from all the rest; each
voice was different, as star differeth from star when all are shining.
And there was room in the vast space for silence. I heard the silence,
deep, palpitating, as when we hold our breath to listen, and I heard the
songs as they rolled out in full organic numbers from the countless
choir. I heard my own voice, clear and sweet and loud like the clarion
of an archangel; thousands of nightingales singing as one bird in the
stillness of the summer night were nothing to it! And then the joy of
recognition and of love—the very air was warm with love. Every spirit in
the angelic host—the saints, the prophets of the old law, the martyrs
and confessors and virgins—all loved me and knew me with an individual
knowledge, and I knew them. And—I know not how it was—though all were
resting in a halcyon peace, none were idle; they were busy at some task
in which the faculties of mind and soul, new-born and glorified and
quickened a thousand-fold, were eagerly engaged. I seemed to see that
they were governing the world and caring for the souls of men—of those
chiefly whom they loved on earth. For this I know: that no true bond is
broken by death; the loves of time live on into eternity; the sorrows of
earth are felt and pitied up in heaven, and the blessed clasp us in
their cherishing sympathies closer than they did on earth. For the life
in heaven is manifold, and, while the blessed citizens toiled, and sang
as if their very being were dissolving into music, their souls were
dwelling in the light of the vision of God, feeding on its beauty in
unbroken contemplation. All was activity, and a fulness of life compared
to which our life is death, yet all was steeped in peace, in rest
unutterable. O mother! why did you call me back from it?”
“It was a dream, my child; your soul was in a trance; perhaps it was at
my prayer God woke you from it in time. But, Alba, are you not glad to
be with me again? It seems to me that even in heaven I should have
missed you!”
“I did not feel that I was parted from you; you seemed nearer to me
there than when I was on earth. But, mother, I saw standing near the
martyrs, yet not of them, a soul arrayed in crimson—that flaming light
that I call crimson, not knowing its real name—and she stretched forth
her arms to greet me with a greater joy than all the rest, and she
called herself my mother?”
Virginie’s heart stood still. Had heaven betrayed her secret? If so, it
were vain to try to hide it any longer. She told the truth to Alba. “And
now,” she said, “you will love that mother in heaven better than you
love me!” There was a look of humble, beseeching misery in her face as
she said this that was most pitiful. But Alba did not answer; that
far-off gaze was in her eyes again. At last, slowly turning them upon
Virginie, she said: “Now I can understand why you called me back. If you
had been my real mother you would have let me go; your love would have
been brave enough to part with me, to suffer when you knew that I was
happy.”
There was no anger in her voice, no reproach in her look; but the words
held the bitterness of death to Virginie, and pierced her heart like
blades of poisoned steel.
* * * * *
The mystery of the young lord’s silence ceased to occupy the first place
in local gossip, now that a more exciting theme had been provided, but
it held its place in Virginie’s mind and was seldom out of her thoughts.
“Would it not be a great joy to you to see him again?” she said to Alba.
“I should be glad of it, mother; but the time is so short it matters
little whether I see him here or not.”
“You never loved him, Alba.”
“I loved him with my whole soul; I loved him too well. I would have died
for love of him.”
She had died for love of him, the mother thought.
“And yet you do not care to see him again?”
“I am satisfied to wait until we meet in heaven.”
The spark was dead; it was useless trying to blow the cold ashes into a
flame. Virginie devoured her heart in uncomplaining silence. If Alba’s
reproach was merited, if her love had been at fault, tainted in its
origin with egotism and cowardice, then it was meet that she should
suffer and expiate the sin.
But Hermann, meantime, was on his way to Gondriac. He had not been
killed or wounded or faithless; he had been confined at Vincennes by
order of the emperor, in hopes that solitude might help him to see the
folly of this intended marriage, and bend his stubborn fancy to the
reasonable will of his imperial master. The experiment had failed. The
emperor was dethroned, a captive now himself, and M. de Gondriac was
free and speeding on the wings of love to claim the reward of his
fidelity.
Before he reached the cottage on the cliff he had learned the story of
Alba’s—resurrection, was it?—of her having passed in spirit through the
gates of death, and come back to life so changed men hardly knew her for
the same. “It was a trance,” the _curé_ said, when Hermann stopped on
the road to take his greeting.
“It was death, monseigneur,” said the fishermen who gathered round his
saddle-bow. “She died of love, and the mother’s prayer called her back
to life; but the child left her heart in heaven and pines to be gone
again.”
Hermann sent his horse on to the castle and made his way up the cliff,
pondering this strange story. She had died of love of him, they said in
their simple superstition, and was pining to die again. Sweet Alba! He
would make her life such a paradise of love that she should have no
reason to regret her glimpse of heaven. As he drew near the low,
thatched cottage the purr of Virginie’s spinning-wheel came to him with
the old familiar welcome. He opened the door and entered unannounced.
“Monseigneur!” She dropped her yarn with a cry.
The glad surprise subsided, Hermann in a few words explained all, and
then heard the details of the wonderful tale Virginie had to tell.
“You will find her somewhere on the rocks,” she said. “It may be that
the sudden sight of you will startle her dead heart into life and bring
back a thrill of the old happiness; if not, I pray God to take her to
himself, for the sight of the child’s patient misery is killing me.”
But M. de Gondriac had no such dismal apprehensions as he went out to
seek his beautiful one. How would she meet him? Would it be with the old
shy glance of pleasure, giving him her hand to kiss, and forbidding any
tenderer caress by that air of virgin pride that sat on her so queenly?
Or would joy break down the barriers and send her bounding into his
arms? He trod the sandy grass with a quick, strong step, but the sound
of his footfalls fell upon her ear unheeded; she sat motionless, with
her face set towards the sea till he was at her side.
“Alba!”
Then she looked up, and a pale blush, faint as the heart of a white
rose, clouded her face.
“Hermann!”
He caught her in his arms and kissed her, and she took his caress as she
might have done a brother’s. The placid tenderness of her manner chilled
him.
“Alba! my wife! You are glad to see me back again!” he said, still
holding her close to him and looking into her eyes for some answering
sigh, some flash of the old coy, shrinking fondness; but they looked
back into his limpid, calm, passionless as a dove’s. She smiled and
lifted up her face to kiss him. He bent down to receive it, but that
proffered kiss was like the iron entering into his soul. The Alba whom
he had left was not here; she had gone, he knew not whither, and in her
place another being had come—a shadow of the woman who had loved him
with all a woman’s tenderness. He sat down beside her and related the
history of his life since they had parted, all he had suffered for her
sake, and how light he held the suffering now that the reward was his;
and she listened calmly, and spoke her gratitude with a gentle humility
that was very touching. Then they were silent for a while, Alba
apparently not caring to speak, Hermann longing to do so, but not daring
to say what his mind was full of. At last Alba broke the spell.
“You know that I was dead,” she said; “I should be in heaven now, if
mother had not called me back.”
“My darling! I will make a heaven for you on earth.”
“I once thought that was possible. I thought that heaven could give me
nothing better than your love; but now I know that all the love of earth
is but a shadow, a mockery compared to the love of heaven. It is
nothing, nothing beside it! O Hermann! when we talk of happiness we are
like blind fools. We don’t know what happiness means.”
“Alba! you have ceased to love me, or you would not speak so!”
“I love you as well as ever—nay, better than I did before; but, O
Hermann! I should have loved you so infinitely better up in heaven. If
you knew what the life of love is there!”
She clasped her hands, and her dark eyes shone with a supernatural
light, as if the brightness of glory, invisible to him, were reflected
there.
“You will tell me about it, darling, but not now,” he said, a terrible
dread seizing him. “I want you to think of me a little now, and not so
much of heaven. We must fix our wedding-day; it shall be soon, shall it
not? There is no need for any delay.”
“No, there is no need,” she repeated. Then, after a pause, she said,
looking calmly into his face: “Hermann, why should we not wait to wed
one another in heaven?”
“There is no marrying or giving in marriage there,” he replied: but he
had grown ashy pale, and the chill of a horrible fear was in his heart,
deepening with every word that Alba spoke.
“You are angry with me,” she said, misunderstanding his pallor and the
changed expression of his face. “O Hermann! don’t think that I have
ceased to love you. I love you with all my heart. I have never loved any
one, never could love any one, but you. Say you are not angry with me!”
“No, darling, I am not angry; but I thought we were to be so happy
together, and I see that you are changed. But, Alba, I will not hold you
to your promise; you shall not marry me unless you wish it.”
“I do wish it. I wish to make you happy. I have no other wish on earth
now.”
He kissed her without answering, and they went home.
The terrible fear which for a moment possessed him was soon dispelled.
Alba was not mad. Whatever was the mysterious change that had come over
her, her reason was unimpaired. But all else was changed: the conditions
of life had become reversed, the spiritual relations between the seen
and the unseen were in some way disturbed, and things thrown out of
their natural proportion. But the nature of the experience by which this
change had been wrought eluded Hermann’s grasp, baffling reason while it
compelled belief. Belief in what? Had Alba’s spirit, infringing the laws
that rule our mortal state, broken loose from its prison, and been
permitted to stand before the gates of pearl and taste of those joys
which it hath not entered into the heart of man to conceive, and then
been sent back to earth, home-sick as an exiled angel? Was this thing
possible? Is anything not possible to Him who bids the lilies blow and
the stars shine, and who holds the sea in the hollow of his hand?
Hermann de Gondriac did not stop to investigate the mystery. His was one
of those human souls whose deepest convictions lie dormant in their
depths, not only unanalyzed but unrecognized, for want of a voice to
question them. He loved Alba, and he would trust to his love to mend the
broken spring and reconcile to the happiness of earth this heart
enamored by the bliss of heaven.
* * * * *
The wedding-day rose bright and fair; a golden glow was on the flood;
the sun shone on the breakers, turning the green to sapphire blue, while
the tide flowed in, swelling the anthem of the dawn; the yellow woods
round Alba’s home glistened like a golden zone, fit symbol of the
enchanted life awaiting her within their magic ring. No sad Vesper bell
was tolling; merrily the silver-footed chimes, like messengers of joy,
tripped on to meet her on the morning air, as she came forth, once more
arrayed in bridal pearls. A train of little children, clad in white and
piping canticles, went on before, strewing flowers upon her path.
Pale as a lily in her snow-white robes was Alba, her dark eyes glowing
with a light that was most beautiful; and when the bridegroom turned to
greet her at the altar, her smile, they said, was like the smile of an
angel.
The wedding rite began; the ring was passed, the solemn words were
spoken: “_Until death do part ye...._” Then Alba, with a cry of joy, as
when we greet some vision of delight, fell forward and was caught in
Hermann’s arms.
“Farewell, beloved!... Mother, farewell!...”
“Alba! my wife! O God! can it be possible?...”
But loud above the lover’s wail and that of all the people Virginie’s
voice was heard in tones more of jubilee than lamentation: “Thy will be
done, O Lord! Blessed be the name of the Lord!”
* * * * *
That night the moon rose late; the sea-gulls, poised above the purple
flood, heard the waves wash softly on the noiseless shore; the stars
came out and looked into the shining sea below; the rocks gleamed white
as snow-peaks in the moonlight, and all the land lay listening to the
silver silence. From out its depths a voice was calling, though only
those who hearkened heard it, and the voice said: “Thou shalt see His
face, ... and night shall be no more, and they shall not need the light
of the lamp, nor the light of the sun, because the Lord God shall
enlighten them, and they shall reign for ever and ever.”
THE END.
ITALY.
WRITTEN AFTER READING “POEMS OF PLACES—ITALY,” EDITED BY H. W.
LONGFELLOW.
I.
Amid those shining ways of Italy
I thought of one who walks with bandaged eyes,
Led by some loving guide who, in sweet guise
Of eloquent speech, makes blinded vision see
The very lines that make tall towers fair,
The peaceful saints that guard cathedral door—
In death still keeping watch the people o’er—
Lifting tired souls to holy heights of prayer.
Even frail nest familiar form doth wear
Built far above upon the shoulders broad
Of sculptured friar, bearing light the load
His brother birds give, trustful, in his care.
So, poet-led, seemeth scarce need of eyes,
Pictured earth’s loveliness in words so wise.
II.
The blinded wanderer sees the far-off light
Of shadowy Alp, and his the lingering glow
That breathes in western skies along the low
And gleaming marshes darkening with the night.
Not bluer to fond eyes that see most clear
Are Naples’ waves than break they in his sight;
Nor floats St. Peter’s dome in softer light,
Seen from the Pincian, than its image fair
Rests in the pilgrim’s heart that in Rome sings
Its _Nunc dimittis_, whether it hold dear
For Brutus’ sake the city, or revere
The holier presence shadowing with strong wings
The mighty one, earth’s new Jerusalem,
Whose virtue fills her very garment’s hem.
III.
He sees the shadows o’er the valley creep—
Nay, even knows he, through his guide’s clear speech,
Where, at each hour, the ilex shade shall reach.
Though blinded, he can feel the sunshine steep
The hill he climbs; fair Italy’s soft air
Grow yet more soft with pity for poor eyes
That only feel the brightness of her skies,
Not know the infinite depths that glisten there.
And quick his ears catch sound of falling stream,
Twitter of leaves in Vallombrosan woods,
Bird-carol flung from chestnut solitudes;
While soft-voiced waves, like music in a dream,
Now tread with rippling touch Sorrento’s shore,
Now rise and fall Venetian stairway o’er.
IV.
He hears in Roman mouth the Tuscan speech;
Hears Naples chant the light of Syracuse,
Siena’s tongue, in guileless praise let loose,
In its pure utterance ancient glory teach.
And tells the poet to the wondering heart
Old histories of older Latin days;
Of distraught Italy’s sad, stormy ways
When feud and treason tore her sons apart,
When Dante ate the exile’s bitter bread,
When eagles dark swept down upon the land,
And lilies white, that should all stain withstand,
With deeds unworthy were discolorèd.
While from the Vaudois’ shivering mountain crown
The echoes of their bard-sung wars sweep down.
V.
Singeth the poet of still nearer days
When all the little lands fade one by one,
Like wan stars melting 'neath Sardinia’s sun—
While, for her crowning, 'mid the strangers’ praise,
Hastes Italy unto the Capitol.
Life of her sons laid down for her new life,
Maidens their soldiers arming for the strife,
Weeping the field where love and banner fall.
Sings he of carbine and of bayonet
That gleam and darken on Perugian hills,
Of sorrow that a frightened city fills,
And priestly robe with blood defenceless wet.
White Roman robe earth’s shadow marketh dark—
World-licensed target for the poets’ mark!
VI.
The pilgrim hearkens to his guide’s strong words,
Basks in their sunshine, thanketh for their dew,
Yet wonders, could his eyes behold the blue
As well as ears can mark the song of birds,
If something still he lacks he might not find—
Some perfect key of heavenly harmony
That should attune all sad discordancy,
In true accord the clashing fragments bind.
Soft fall the _Angelus_ bells on listening ear,
The _Miserere_, in distress divine,
Wails from the heart of city Leonine.
Feels he the light that makes his darkness clear,
Grasps he the chord of pure and infinite blue
His picture lacks to make its color true.
VII.
So, poet-led, I trod Italian ways,
Seeing the glimmer of pale olive-trees,
Drifting, entranced, o’er warm Sicilian seas,
Hearkening Siena’s perfect speech of praise,
Drinking of Trevi’s fountain, o’er and o’er,
Yet craving ever something still more rare,
Some gift of grace that Italy must wear
To make her so the heart’s-best evermore;
Some crown above her hills, than her blue seas
More luminous, beyond her painters’ fame,
Or passionate poets’ soaring words of flame,
More than all proudest earthly destinies.
So drowned, amid the peal of Saxon bells,
Thought of that life wherein her true soul dwells.
VIII.
Seemed it as if the poet built a shrine—
Lifting its towers in the radiant air
The doves might haunt to make it seem more fair,
Lifting its columns that an art divine
With watching saints should crown, setting its floor
In firm mosaic, where, alas! inwrought
Should forms misshapen of ungentle thought
Sadden the Roman sunshine wandering o’er,
That, creeping onward, still should hope to kiss
The gladder sunshine of St. Philip’s feet.
Heaped high the altar with all flowers sweet—
Rich Italy’s unstinted loveliness—
Kindled the lamp before the inmost shrine,
Withheld the presence of the Guest Divine!
THE SEVEN VALLEYS OF THE LAVEDAN.
On the 4th of July, 1876—the day after the coronation of Notre Dame de
Lourdes, _la plus noble dame qui fut jamais_, to use the expression of
an old chronicler—we set out for the springs of Cauterets. South of
Lourdes the mountains seem to stand apart to afford a passage to the
headlong Gave. Here begins the Lavedan, the old _Pagus Lavitanensis_,
which comprises seven valleys that extend to the very frontier of Spain.
This was the ancient country of the Sotiates, who were famous for their
horsemanship, as Lavedan has always been for its horses. In the middle
ages it became a vicomté, which dated from the early Carlovingians and
flourished for more than seven centuries. The vicomtes of Lavedan
figured in all the great wars of their time, particularly against the
Moors in Spain, and became so powerful as to defy the Count of Bigorre,
their own liege lord. They displayed great valor, too, against the
English, who for sixty years held the citadel of Lourdes that commanded
the entrance to their valleys, as well as several fastnesses among the
mountains. We find members of their race among the bishops, abbots, and
Knights-Templars of the province, as if able in every path of life to
assert their capacity. The last of the old lords fought with Dunois the
brave under the banner of Joan of Arc at Orleans. His only grandchild
married Charles de Bourbon, a favorite of Henry IV.’s. The glory of this
family, however, is mostly confined to the Pyrenees, and might never
have come down to modern times had it not been for the faithful
chroniclers of the Lavedan monasteries. It is, in fact, first mentioned
in 945 in a cartulary of the abbey of St. Savin, of which it was a
benefactor.
Hardly had we entered the valley of the Lavedan before we saw, on an
isolated mount at the left, the dismantled tower of Hieou, one of the
signal-towers that, in times of border warfare, used to transmit
messages from the Spanish frontier to the heart of France. The shores of
the Gave were deliciously fresh, but the mountains on both sides are at
first treeless and uninteresting. Nothing grows on them but the purple
heather, and patches of odorous shrubs that perfume the valley. Here and
there on their sides are great heaps of black slate from the numerous
quarries. But these mountains have a certain austere charm of their own,
not unbefitting sentinels that guard the approaches to the grotto of the
Virgin. We passed group after group of pilgrims returning from the
recent celebration, with red crosses fastened to their breasts, or
blue-and-white badges of the Immaculate Conception, saying their
rosaries or singing a hymn. They invariably saluted us politely as we
drove past, and two bronzed mountaineers whom we stopped for information
sped us on our way with the pious wish: “May God accompany you!”
After several leagues the mountains became wooded, and a bend of the
river, along which we kept, brought us into the delightful basin of
Argelés, one of the valleys of the Lavedan. This is the Eden of the
Pyrenees. On the mountain slopes grow the walnut and the oak. The roads
are shaded with long lines of ash-trees. The meadows were covered with
rich harvests. The thickets were blooming with roses. The houses were
almost buried among fruit-trees of all kinds. Every now and then we came
to a tall cross with the insignia of the Passion, or some wayside niche
with its Virgin and fresh flowers before her. We passed the square tower
of Vidalos on a height, and farther on came to the ancient castle of
Vieuzac, once a military post that kept alive the signal-fires in
troubled times. On every hand were quaint-looking villages with pretty
chapels half-hidden in the folds of the mountains, each with some old
monument, or older tradition, to which it fondly clings. From Agos to
Pierrefitte, only about six miles, there are ten charming villages set
in a framework of mountains no poet could describe. They close around
this happy valley, as if to shield it from all outward influences.
During the Huguenot ascendency in the neighboring province of Béarn it
is said no taint of the new religion ever found its way into this
valley. At the north is Mount Balandraü, easily ascended, that affords a
fine view of the country, which is full of wonderful contrasts. The Gave
winds swiftly through the most beautiful of valleys; on every hand are
the mountains, sometimes like a vast rampart of verdure, sometimes
swelling up, one after the other, like great waves, with a high peak
occasionally, jagged as a saw, and in the distance the eternal glaciers
glittering in the sun and feeding the numerous cascades and torrents
that lash the mountain sides.
To this peaceful valley came St. Orens from his native Spain, in the
fourth century, before whom, according to the Spanish legend, a
supernatural light burned and a mysterious hand pointed the way. And it
was yonder umbrageous mountain that, when he sought to escape from the
fame of his sanctity, opened at his approach and hid him in its bosom.
Here, too, four centuries after, came St. Savin, son of the Count of
Barcelona, when he forsook the grandeurs of the world for a cell in the
wilderness. A few years since there were vestiges of his cell at Pouey
Aspé, after a thousand years; and tradition points out the fountain that
sprang up from a blow of his staff when the stream that flowed past his
cell dried up in the summer. His tomb is still honored in the abbey
church of St. Savin, which is one of the most conspicuous objects in the
landscape, with its queer steeple, shaped like an extinguisher.
No tourist fails to visit St. Savin: the archæologist on account of its
old Romanesque church of the tenth century; the artist for its
picturesque site; the pious to honor one of the most popular saints of
the seven valleys; and the political economist because, in the middle
ages, this abbey was the nucleus of a little republic of eight villages,
called the Pascal of St. Savin, the inhabitants of which had from time
immemorial the right of universal suffrage, and where even the women,
without the advantages of modern progress, were admitted to vote!
The abbey of St. Savin—that is what remains of it—stands on the side of
a mountain amid dense groves of chestnut-trees. According to the old
cartularies, it was founded by Charlemagne on the site of the Palatium
Æmilianum erected by the Romans after the conquest to keep the country
in subjection, but ruined by the Saracens. Roland himself is said to
have received hospitality from the monks. Pulci, in his _Rotta di
Roncisvalle_, relates how he delivered them from the giants Alabastre
and Passamonte, and their brother Morgante only escaped being cleft in
two by submitting to be baptized in the church. This monastery, renowned
in legend and song, was burned to the ground by the fierce Normans, and
it was more than a century before it rose from its ashes. It was
restored by Raymond I., Count of Bigorre, about the middle of the tenth
century. He gave the house to the monks of St. Benedict, and bestowed on
them the valley of Cauterets, on condition that they would build a
church there in honor of St. Martin, and provide accommodations for
those who should frequent the springs. He also made over to them his
rights to the game in the _pascal_ valleys, as well as certain claims on
the produce of the dairy. The abbey became likewise an object of bounty
to other neighboring lords, who confided in St. Savin when alive, and in
death wished to lie near his hallowed shrine. Cornelia de Barbazan,
grandmother of a Vicomtesse de Lavedan, had great devotion to St. Savin,
and gave the monastery one-half the abbey of Agos. The other half
belonged to Arnaud de Tors, a lord who only had two children, and they
were deaf mutes. He offered them both to God and St. Savin, and
subsequently his wife, himself, and all he possessed. Cornelia’s husband
outlived her, and on his death-bed asked the monks of St. Savin for the
monastic habit, and gave them also all he owned at Agos. The kings of
Navarre, the vicomtes of Béarn, and Henry IV. himself proved themselves
the zealous patrons of this monastery.
The abbey of St. Savin became the intellectual as well as moral centre
of the valleys around. Several of the abbots were noted for their
sanctity, and most of them were from good families. They figured among
the great lords of the province, and when they visited the little states
of their republic the people came out to meet them with young maidens
bearing flowers in a basket. They had certain feudal rights over the
eight villages, but bound themselves, on taking possession of their
office, to respect the customs and privileges of the inhabitants,
believed to have been handed down from the beginning of time. The people
were none of them serfs, but all free citizens who had the right of
deciding by majority of votes every question that affected the interests
of the republic. Each village was a little state by itself, and sent its
representatives to the general assembly, which was held in the cloister
of St. Savin. The women themselves, as we have said, had a voice in
public affairs. An old record of 1316 says that when the people of
Cauterets came together in the porch of the church to decide whether
they should yield to the abbot’s proposition to change the site of the
town and baths, they all consented, except one strong-minded woman,
named Gaillardine de Fréchou, who stoutly held out against the lord
abbot. Women seem to have been regarded in these valleys as something
sacred. In the old statutes of the country, drawn up by the abbot of St.
Savin and other dignitaries of the province, one of the articles
declared that if a criminal took refuge under a woman’s protection, his
person was safe, on condition of his repairing the damage. She gave him
asylum, as if a temple, or had something of the nature of a divinity!
This code also forbade the creditors seizing the oxen and agricultural
implements of the laborer. The people elected seven judges to try all
criminal cases, but the abbot exercised the higher prerogatives of
justice. He never stained his hands with blood, however; it was the
Count of Bigorre alone who could impose the sentence of death. The abbot
had special rights, also, which he jealously guarded as a means of
revenue. The pastors of the eight villages could say Low Mass for their
flocks and administer the Holy Communion, but High Mass had to be
attended at St. Savin, where the children were also brought to be
baptized and the dead for burial, unless in exceptional cases. The
obligation of baptism and burial at St. Savin was not confined to the
Pascal, but extended to the sixty villages of the valleys of Argelés and
Azun. The people had the privilege of hunting in the forests and fishing
in the streams—and the game and trout are not to be despised in these
days—but the abbot had a right to the skins and a shoulder of certain
animals, and an annual tribute of fish.
The monks of St. Savin were noted for their hospitality, and they often
received visits from those who frequented the baths of Cauterets. In the
sixteenth century they welcomed Catharine of Navarre in spite of her
_Contes_ and taste for the doctrines of Calvin; and in the seventeenth
the poet Bertin, who, in his light, scoffing way, has celebrated “the
long dinner and short Mass of the good abbot of St. Savin,” though he
does not seem to have attended the latter, brief as it might have been.
Margaret of Navarre had been staying at Cauterets, where she is said to
have composed the _Heptaméron_. She set out thence for Tarbes, but the
bridges had all been carried away by rains, which she says were “so
marvellous and great that it seemed as if God had forgotten his promise
to Noe not to destroy the earth again by water.” The preface to her work
says: “After riding all day she and her suite towards evening espied a
belfry, where, as well as they could, but not without great trouble and
difficulty, they succeeded in arriving, and were kindly received by the
abbot and monks of the abbey, called St. Savin. The abbot, who was of an
excellent family, lodged them very honorably, and, as he conducted them
to their rooms, made inquiries as to the dangers they had undergone.
After listening to their account he told them they were not alone in
their misfortunes, for there were two young ladies in another apartment
who had escaped great danger. These poor ladies, at half a league from
Pierrefitte, had met a bear descending from the mountain, from which
they fled at such speed that their horses fell dead on arriving at their
place of refuge.”
When the princess left St. Savin the abbot furnished her party with “the
best horses in Lavedan, thick Béarn cloaks, substantial provisions, and
excellent guides across the mountains, which they were obliged to
traverse partly on foot, in spite of the horses, and, after great sweat
and labor, arrived at Notre Dame de Sarrance.”
The sceptical poet Bertin, too, thought his visit worthy of recording:
“We chose that day to pay our brief devotions at the Abbey of St. Savin;
that is to say, to dine there at the expense of St. Benedict. The
steeple of the Abbey comes in sight between Pierrefitte and Argelés. The
road ascends amid the trees, a little rough, but cool, impenetrable to
the rays of the sun, and watered by an infinite number of living streams
that come down from the mountains. It may be well to say that some of us
were in a carriage and others on horseback, but the greater part were
perched, well or ill, as the case might be, on donkeys. Our arrival was
triumphant. The ladies were received by the prior to the sound of the
organ, the only instrument he could strike up, thanks to the talent of
his cook. He likewise presented them a bouquet of flowers and made them
a compliment.... The house is well built, spacious, and in the finest
position in the world. From the upper terrace of the garden the eye
wanders over the magnificent plain of Argelés, which bears comparison,
to say the least, with the famous valley of Campan. The day was spent
very agreeably, but almost wholly at table. We returned a little late in
the evening, without any other accident but the loss of one of our
donkeys, which took it into its head to die on the way, under the
pretext that he had been overworked in the morning and could go no
farther. We celebrated in couplets, half sad, half merry, to which every
one contributed:
“'Le trépas de la veielle ânesse,
Qu’on magnétisa, mais en vain
(Trop sotte était la sotte espèce);
Le long dîner, la courte messe,
La chère fine, et le bon vin,
L’enjoûment et la politesse
Du bon prieur de St. Savin.’”
None of the local traditions or documents contain anything to the
disparagement of the monks of St. Savin, and their memory is still dear
to the inhabitants of the valley. Madame de Motteville, lady of honor to
Anne of Austria, when she came to the Pyrenees on the occasion of Louis
XIV.’s marriage, visited St. Savin, and thus speaks of it: “There is an
abbey here of great importance and renown. It is well built and the
monks lead an exemplary life.”
The abbatial church escaped at the Revolution, and the tomb of St. Savin
was respected. But it became the property of the government, and it was
not till 1874 that it was purchased by the Bishop of Tarbes. The greater
part of the abbey has disappeared. The old chapter-hall, however, is
still standing. It is of the twelfth century, and has six low arches
supported by two central pillars, cylindrical in form. This hall opened
into the cloister, which has been totally destroyed. The fine Romanesque
church is in good preservation. Around the deep embrasures of the
entrance are symbolic animals of evil import somewhat coarsely
sculptured, such as the scaly dragon of adverse influence, a bear
devouring a sinless child, and the screech-owl, symbol of Jews,
traitors, and the foul fiend:
“En cest oisel sunt figuré
Li felon Jeve maleur”
—by this bird is figured the felon Jew malign. And, in fact, the Jews
closed their eyes, like the owl, to the light, not to recognize the
Messias.
We descended by several steps into the church, into which the sun was
streaming from the rose window at the west. The tomb of St. Savin is at
the apsis, beneath a gilded canopy of rich design. It is of schist,
about six feet long and three broad, and rests on double columns of
marble, which have carved capitals. It was long used as an altar,
according to the custom of the early church. Above is an ancient statue
of the Virgin, said to have been brought from the East by the Crusaders,
and in another part of the church is a revered crucifix of great
antiquity. One of the most interesting ornaments is a painting in
eighteen compartments that presents a complete epitome of St. Savin’s
life, and is curious for its details of costume and architecture. Here
we are told how St. Savin was sent by his mother, the Countess of
Barcelona, to complete his education at the brilliant court of her
brother, the Count of Poitiers, who received him with great favor and
entrusted his son to his care. St. Savin, for whom, young as he was,
life had no illusions, inspired his cousin to lead a simple,
unostentatious life in the midst of worldly luxuries, and the latter,
not satisfied with this taste of self-renunciation, soon betook himself
to the convent of Ligugé, near Poitiers. His mother, in despair, threw
herself at St. Savin’s feet, crying: “Give me back my child! It is you
who have robbed me of him. You have a mother; think of her grief should
you abandon her for ever.” Alas! this was the very thing the saint was
thinking of, but he could not resist a higher will. He soon followed his
cousin’s example, and they took the monastic habit together. St. Savin’s
heart, however, yearned for a more profound solitude, and a celestial
inspiration directed his steps toward the Pyrenees. Coming to the valley
of the Gave, he followed its windings till he reached a spot
overshadowed by three lofty mountains that were covered with snow nearly
all the year round—cold, stern, wrapped in gray mists, and infested with
wild beasts. Here he looked down on the lonely valley once inhabited by
his countryman, the great St. Orens, and resolved to build his cell in a
place so favorable to meditation and prayer, and give himself up to a
life of austerity. He trod the rough mountain paths with bare feet—he
who had been brought up in the court of princes. His only garment lasted
him thirteen years. He dug a grave seven feet long and five deep, and
there he slept, or lay buried in divine contemplation. Chromasse, a
neighboring lord, angry to see a stranger on his lands, sent a servant
to drive him away, but the latter only rendered St. Savin incapable of
obeying by the blows he inflicted on him. Both master and servant were
punished for their cruelty. The former was struck blind, and the latter
became possessed by the devil. The moral condition of the servant
particularly excited the compassion of the saint, who obtained his
deliverance by the power of prayer.
An old legend says that when St. Savin wished to have a light in his
cell he used to hold a torch to his breast, and in that furnace of
divine love it was at once lighted. This torch used to burn all night
long without being consumed, and only grew pale when the morning light
came to surprise the saint lost in prayer.
St. Savin, in his last illness, was attended by Sylvian and Flavian, two
monks from the neighboring abbey. When he felt his end was drawing near
he requested to see Abbot Forminius, who, detained by important
business, sent word that he would come on the following day. The dying
hermit replied that the morrow would be too late, for then a higher
occupation would engross him. As soon as his condition became known a
great number of priests and monks hastened to his cell. He received the
Body of the Lord, and, with his arms stretched towards heaven and a face
radiant with joy, he fell asleep in the midst of a prayer which he
finished in heaven.
All the people of the neighboring valleys followed St. Savin’s body to
the grave. The repentant Chromasse himself joined the procession, and,
pressing close to the bier, he touched with trembling hands the body of
the saint, and his eyes, so long closed to the light, instantly
recovered their sight.
Such is the legend of St. Savin, who became of so much repute in these
mountains that it is not surprising his name should be given to the
abbey where he was buried.
From a terrace before the church is a superb view of the vale of
Argelés, around which rises mountain above mountain; the lowest rich
with vegetation, the upper peaks bare and covered with eternal frosts.
Not far off are the remains of the old feudal castle of Baucens,
formerly inhabited by the Vicomtes de Lavedan, lords of the Seven
Valleys. Madame de Motteville, who stopped here, compares it in her
_Mémoires_ to the palace of the fairy Urgande.
Just below St. Savin is the village of Adast with the château de
Miramon, the heiress of which married Despourrins, the bucolic poet of
the Pyrenees, who composed here, in the idiom of the valley, pastoral
songs full of grace and feeling, which have made his name popular in the
mountains, where they are still sung by the herdsmen. Béarn and Bigorre
contend for the honor of being his birthplace, as the Greek cities of
old for that of Homer. Here Boieldieu, struck by the beauty of the
country and its poetic associations, wished to found an academy of
artists. His plan was, as he wrote his friend Berton in 1832, “to buy an
old château in the beautiful valley of Argelés, as finely situated as
that of the poet Despourrins. The sight of so glorious a landscape would
rouse the torpid imagination, and perhaps awaken in the exhausted brain
fresh inspirations that might rival the vagaries of certain artists of
the new school. The sky of the Pyrenees ought to be as propitious as
that of Italy. The Pic du Midi is not a volcano, but it is covered with
flowers. And Marboré, the Brèche de Roland, and the Cirque de Gavarnie,
with its cascade that falls down twelve hundred feet, are monuments
capable of electrifying the imagination as well as St. Peter’s, the
Coliseum, and the Pantheon at Rome.”
On a promontory near Miramon is the votive chapel of _Piétad_, with its
Romanesque lucarnes and low arches, that dates from the ninth century.
It was saved at the Revolution by the mountaineers, among whom, as in
Spain, Our Lady of Sorrow (or of Pitié, as she is called here) is
especially popular. There is, too, the chapel of Soulon, with its
crenellated tower, and near by the hermitage of St. Aoulari, with its
Roman apsis—a rural oratory, once supported by the offerings of pilgrims
and a field that yielded three sacks of wheat, but where services are
now held only on certain festivals of the Virgin.
On the other side of the Vale of Argelés stood the hermitage of St.
Orens between two cliffs, where, in the tenth century, the Countess
Faquilie of Bigorre built a monastery, that this great saint might come
to her aid on the dread day of judgment; but only a few picturesque
ruins now remain on the edge of a frightful abyss. An old charter
enumerates the gifts of the countess for the support of this abbey,
called St. Orens of Lavedan: fields, vineyards, books, vestments, and
sacred vessels. Nay, more: twenty cows with their calves, six horses,
cattle, sheep, swine, and a donkey. The neighboring lords verified the
boundaries of the land she gave, and swore thereto by six saints popular
in the mountains: St. Saturnin, St. Paul, St. Andrew, St. Martin, and
St. Orens.
St. Orens rivals St. Savin in popularity in southwestern France, where
many churches and convents still bear his name. Nor is his fame confined
to this region. St. Hugo consecrated a chapel to his memory in the
magnificent church of Cluny. In Spain there is a church bearing his name
at Huesca, which claims to be his native place. In it is the tomb of St.
Patience, his mother. And we remember seeing a marble statue of St.
Orens beside the shrine of St. Isidro in one of the finest churches of
Madrid. The Spanish say St. Orens was the brother of the great St.
Lawrence, so honored by the church universal; but the traditions of
France only speak of him as the son of the Duke of Urgel, who crossed
the Pyrenees to bury himself in the solitude of the mountains. Here he
found a cave in a melancholy valley—the Val Caprasie—where the only
noise to break the everlasting silence was the torrent that escaped from
Lake Isaby. No place could have been better suited to the poetic soul of
St. Orens; for a poet he was. His hymns and other writings are still
admired in our day, and his Latin poem, entitled _Commonitorium_, has
recently been translated into French. Fortunatus mentions it:
“Paucaque perstrinxit florente Orientius ore.”
This is a treatise of Christian morality in elegiac measure. It is
pleasant to read it in the place where it was written and among people
whose ancestors probably first read it. We quote one passage, worthy of
being written over the doors of the hospitable monasteries that bear his
name, in one of which we have so often found shelter: “Fail not to
receive under thy hospitable roof the traveller overtaken by darkness.
When thou art naked, thou desirest a garment to cover thee; thirsty, a
cup to refresh thee. Let similar wants, therefore, excite thy
compassion. Share thy mantle, thy loaf with the unfortunate.”
It is said that this saint, so benevolent to others, exercised such
severity towards himself as to gird his body with an iron chain and
recite the Psalter daily standing in the icy waters of Lake Isaby. He
may be cited as an early example of the benefit of hydropathy, for he
lived to a good old age in spite, or in consequence, of the rigors of
penance. He erected a flour-mill on the borders of the lake for the use
of the people around, which tradition says lasted most miraculously
seven centuries without ever needing the slightest repair. The remains
of it are still pointed out with respect by the herdsmen of the valley.
And the stone on which the saint used to kneel in his cave has been
carefully preserved; for nothing can exceed the tenacity with which
these mountaineers cling to their ancient traditions and memorials. It
is worn by the knees of generation after generation who have knelt to
pray where St. Orens prayed fourteen hundred years ago.
St. Orens became noted throughout the province for his sanctity and
eminent abilities, and the inhabitants of Auch, after three days of
fasting and prayer, chose him as their bishop. The messengers they
despatched to the mountains found him cultivating the earth. “Deign, O
Lord!” cried he, planting his spade in the ground, “deign, I beseech of
thee, to manifest thy will in an unmistakable manner.” And in an instant
the handle became a bush, which put forth branches and was covered with
foliage. The saint no longer hesitated, but departed with the
messengers. When he entered the city of Auch all the sick are said to
have been instantly healed. He found his diocese partly under the
influence of paganism, and showed his zeal in demolishing the altars of
the false gods. He saved it also from the ravages of the Vandals at the
beginning of the fifth century, and was deputed by the king of the
Visigoths to avert the danger that threatened Toulouse, on which the
Romans were marching. He is believed to have saved that city by his
prayers, and his statue was afterwards placed over one of its gates out
of gratitude. A portion of his relics is likewise borne through the
streets in the magnificent annual processions for which Toulouse is
famous.
St. Orens is said to have regretted the solitude of this peaceful
mountain valley, and once, when overwhelmed with the responsibility of
his office, he secretly escaped and fled to his cave. His people,
however, went in pursuit of him and succeeded in bringing him back. But
the time of release came. On his death-bed he had a wondrous vision of
Christ surrounded by a multitude of angels, and while in mystic converse
with them his soul took flight for heaven. He was buried in the church
of St. Jean de l’Aubépine at Auch, and his tomb became famous for
miracles, particularly in cases of epilepsy and diabolical possession.
A Benedictine monastery was built here in the tenth century and called
St. Orens’ Priory. Its third prior, Bernard de Sédirac, afterwards
Archbishop of Toledo, had the remains of St. Orens exhumed and placed in
a coffer covered with silver bas-reliefs relating to the saint’s life.
This _châsse_ was suspended on the wall of a chapel behind the high
altar, and could only be reached by means of a ladder. Notwithstanding,
it was robbed of its silver covering some time after by two soldiers,
one of whom exclaimed in the true modern spirit: “What! workest thou
miracles at this late hour?” But he speedily expiated his sacrilege. He
was seized inwardly with a terrible fire that soon consumed him. After
this the pavement beneath was covered with bristling iron spikes to
prevent another profanation. But the relics of St. Orens, that had
escaped the Moor and the Norman, and were even spared by the iconoclasts
of the sixteenth century, were less fortunate at the Revolution, when
the church of which they were the glory, with its tombs of the early
bishops, and the mausoleum of Sancho Mitarra, the scourge of the Moors,
from whom sprang the great family of the Armagnacs, so celebrated for
their power and their misfortunes, was mostly destroyed, together with a
part of St. Orens’ Priory.
The last prior of this monastery was a member of the illustrious house
of Montesquieu, one of the most ancient in the province. His brother, a
writer of some merit, when the family name and arms were claimed by the
sires of Boulbène, instituted a lawsuit against them, and wrote a work
to prove his descent from Clovis, which led the Count de Maurepas to
exclaim with affected alarm after M. de Montesquieu had gained his suit:
“Now, we really hope you are not going to claim the throne of France!”
And among the epigrams that rained on him when he was made a member of
the French Academy was the following:
“Montesquiou-Fezensac est de l’Académie.
Quel ouvrage a-t-il fait? Sa Genéalogie!”
The prior was one of the deputies of the Etats-Généraux, and made
himself conspicuous for his mild, persuasive eloquence. One day
Mirabeau, perceiving the effect of his discourse, cried out:
_Méfiez-vous de ce petit serpent: il vous séduira_! After being in exile
twice he was, at the Restoration, made a duke and peer of France.
How dear St. Orens’ memory still is in the diocese he once governed we
well know who have spent several years of our life there. How joyous is
the 1st of May, on which his festival falls! His relics are exposed at
the priory, a procession, with lights and music, gathers around the
place where his shrine once stood, and at night bonfires are lit on the
other side of the Gers and the people dance in the open air.
But to return to the pastoral valleys of the Lavedan. Out of Argelés you
pass into the valley of Azun, one of the least known, but one of the
most picturesque in the Pyrenees. It is high up among the mountains and
divided by the deep and turbulent Gave.[132] The entrance was once
defended by the castle of Vieuzac, the ruins of which remain, associated
with the memory of the too famous Barère. The valley is inhabited by
people of primitive manners with few artificial distinctions. Here every
year, at Carnival time, is to be seen the peculiar dance of the country
called the _Ballade_, performed by the young men, who often assemble
from different villages in short vests gaily adorned with ribbons, with
the most efficient _balladeur_ at their head, playing on the fife and
tambourine and waving their flags. The tambourine of the Pyrenees is a
primitive instrument of pine wood, as simple as the lyre of Apollo, and
with the same number of strings, which the performer beats with a little
rod. These dancers are escorted to the edge of their villages by young
girls, who welcome them at their return and lavish praises on those who
have distinguished themselves. They are presented with eggs, ham, and
butter in all the villages they pass through, on which they feast the
following day.
Footnote 132:
Gave is the general name of these mountain streams.
Among the curious old usages of this valley, before 1793, was the
tribute of butter to the shrine of St. Bertrand of Comminges, a popular
saint in the Pyrenees, where he labored in the eleventh century. The
people of Azun were then almost out of the bounds of civilization, and
for what religious instruction they had they were chiefly indebted to
the holy hermits of the neighboring mountains. It is said that when St.
Bertrand came to preach among these rough mountaineers, he was treated
with so much indignity that the tail of his mule was cut off, for which
the land was cursed with sterility for several years. Touched by the
repentance and sad condition of the inhabitants, the saint, by his
prayers, obtained the cessation of their punishment, and they, in their
gratitude, promised to give him henceforth all the butter made the week
before Whitsuntide. This vow was kept for nearly seven centuries. A
canon and two prebends from St. Bertrand’s came every year to the valley
in acknowledgment of this tribute, bringing with them water that had
been passed through the saint’s pastoral staff while chanting some
orison in his honor. This they gave to the people as a remedy for
disease among cattle. These deputies never failed to pass before the
house, which is still standing, where St. Bertrand had been so
disrespectfully treated. The master stood in the door and humbly prayed
them to enter and partake of the refreshments he had prepared, which
they did with emotion, like angels of peace and reconciliation.
At the farther end of the valley of Azun, not far from the Spanish
frontier, rise the dome and square tower of Notre Dame de Pouey-la-Hun,
that stands on an isolated peak overlooking the village of Arrens,
between the two roads that lead to Spain and the province of Béarn. The
present edifice is comparatively modern, but its foundation is so remote
as to be lost in obscurity. You enter by a fine porch supported by four
marble pillars, and are at once surprised at the richness of the
interior. The walls are brown and gold, and the pillars, carvings,
statues, and the very mouldings of the blue arches are all gilded,
producing a most brilliant effect. Around the nave are two galleries,
one above the other, for the men, who are generally separated from the
women in the churches of Bigorre; at least, in the villages. The
pavement is the unhewn granite cliff, which is worn quite smooth by the
feet of so many generations of worshippers. It descends like an
amphitheatre, enabling every one to see the altar distinctly. Across it
is a groove, worn by a mountain stream at certain seasons of the year.
All the joys and sorrows of the valley are brought to the feet of Notre
Dame de Pouey-la-Hun, and numerous pilgrimages are made here at certain
seasons of the year.
In 1793 orders came to destroy this venerated chapel, but when the
emissaries entered it they were saluted by mysterious voices among the
arches, as if reproaching them for their blasphemies and imprecations,
and, terrified by the unearthly sounds, they at once made their escape.
There was nothing supernatural in this, however. It was a mere stratagem
on the part of the peasants to save their beloved chapel, and they boast
of it to this day.
During the troubles with Spain this chapel was used as a military post,
and consequently much injured. As soon as it was no longer needed for
this purpose the government again decided to demolish it and sell the
materials. The people became excited, and the women assailed with stones
the agents sent to examine the building, who fled for their lives. Then
a pious widow, to save it from further profanation, bought it for about
fifteen thousand francs, which was nearly all she had, and, when she
died, bequeathed it to her nephew, a priest, till better days should
arrive. Time and neglect were beginning to leave their traces on the
chapel when Queen Hortense came to the Pyrenees. She had just lost her
son, the Prince Royal of Holland, and the wild, melancholy grandeur of
these mountain valleys harmonized with her sadness. She was particularly
pleased with the quaint village of Arrens and its picturesque chapel,
and made a sketch of the landscape herself. The devotion of the people
to the Virgin of Pouey-la-Hun touched her, and she sympathized in their
wish it should be reopened for public worship. She went there to offer
her vows, and founded an anniversary Mass for her son, which was to be
celebrated with all possible solemnity, as recorded by the authorities
of the place. This was shortly before the birth of Louis Napoleon. She
never forgot her visit to Pouey-la-Hun. She alludes to it in her
travels, and excited the interest of the government in its neglected
condition. In 1836 it was made over to the Bishop of Tarbes, who founded
a seminary here under the care of missionaries from Garaison, who have
rendered it one of the most popular chapels in the Pyrenees.
But to return to the basin of Argelés. The valley of Cauterets begins at
Pierrefitte. A carriage-road has been hewn along the steep mountain side
on the very edge of a precipice, three or four hundred feet deep, at the
bottom of which rushes a fierce torrent that breaks into foam over the
sharp rocks that encumber its bed. On each side of this gulf rise steep
cliffs almost perpendicularly, down which dash here and there miniature
cascades, all in a foam. A bend in the river enables you to look back
through the gorge over the wild Gave, the waters of which are of the
color of beryl. Nothing could be more delicate than the tint of the
foam. Beyond the bold arch of the bridge at Pierrefitte can be seen the
fair vale of Argelés, forming a lovely picture framed by the lofty
palisades of this wild pass. We left the carriage and wandered on afoot,
gathering the eglantine and other wild flowers, inhaling the delicious
mountain air, and drinking the cool waters of its numerous streams. By
moonlight the scene is particularly sublime. The gloom of this narrow
gorge shut in by the lofty mountains, the deep shades of the forests
that cover them, and the abyss below, with the ceaseless rush of the mad
stream, produce a profound impression on the mind. We remember driving
through it on one occasion at midnight. The full moon hung over the
mountains of Gavarnie, its light streaming down here and there into the
gorge with mysterious, enchanting effect. Before us was the peak of
Péguère, like an enormous pyramid with one tremulous star above, its
summit bathed in the soft radiance, while its furrowed sides and
unfathomable gulfs were veiled with a thousand shadows. As you wind up
the Côte du Limaçon, the whole Gave is beaten into spray among the huge
rocks. Here the lateral mountains recede somewhat, and you shortly come
to the triangular valley of Cauterets, completely shut in among majestic
mountains. Its springs were well known to the Romans, and some pretend
that Cæsar himself visited them. It is more certain that the kings of
Aragon and Navarre did, as well as the ancient lords of Bigorre and
Béarn. The little town is more sumptuous now than when under the rule of
the abbot of St. Savin. Wooden cabins have been replaced by marble
edifices, and the artificial appliances of modern times substituted for
the primitive observances of St. Orens. But one gives a sigh now and
then for the good old simple days when the lord abbot, to prevent all
imposition on the stranger and the poor, forbade the sale of provisions
except on the public square. The wine, too, which had to be of good
quality, could only be sold a _liard_ more on a pint than at St. Savin,
and if false measure was given a fine of ten crowns was imposed on the
vender, one-half of which went to the poor and the rest to the abbot.
Cauterets is a very agreeable residence in the season. Here you meet
strangers from all parts of the world, and there is a certain charm in
the unrestrained intercourse. At certain hours, of course, every one
goes to partake of the waters and to bathe. There are pleasant walks
along the banks of the Gave, and fatiguing ones up the steep mountain
sides. At table you have trout from the river and game from the forests,
fowl and vegetables from Argelés, apples and plums from St. Savin’s,
peaches from Béarn, and berries of rare flavor from the mountains.
Buried in this quiet valley, away from all human agitations, in daily
communication with nature, that puts on here its fairest aspect, the
invalid returns to a simple, inartificial life which produces more
effect than the waters. Rousseau thought no violent agitation whatever,
no vapors of the mind, could long resist such a place of residence, and
he was astonished that the salutary air of the mountains was not
numbered among the chief remedies of medical and moral science.
The valleys of Barèges and Gavarnie also belong to the Lavedan. Another
gorge near Pierrefitte leads to them, which is even gloomier and more
savage than that of Cauterets. A little more than a century ago it was
inaccessible to carriages, but since, by a miracle of engineering, a
road has been constructed along the edge of the precipice, and when it
cannot find room on one side it springs boldly across the abyss to the
other by means of a bridge from which you look down a terrific depth at
the Gave, that roars and struggles along with scarcely room enough in
its bed. The road thus crosses and recrosses the river seven times. It
was completed in 1746, when a carriage was for the first time seen in
the gorge. Anything more wild and melancholy than this defile cannot be
conceived. The mountains rise perpendicularly up on both sides, with
nothing growing on them but a few wretched pines twisted by the winds.
The height of these grim walls, the depth of the abyss over which you
hang, the gloom, the silence only broken by the roar of the torrent,
appall. From time to time you see an isolated house, and at length the
village of Viscos, hanging like an eagle’s nest on the rocks. There are
two ferruginous springs in the gorge, but they cannot be utilized on
account of their position.
Just as you are beginning to yield to the horrors of this wild pass, it
opens, and you soon come to the sweet, fresh valley of Luz, one of the
most beautiful in the Pyrenees. It is three thousand feet higher than
the Vale of Argelés. Here the Gave is a peaceful, well-behaved stream.
Its shores are planted with long lines of decorous poplars. The meadow
is dotted with trees and covered with harvests. Lofty mountains keep
guard around, the lower ones wooded and crowned with the ruins of some
old castle, the upper covered with glaciers. In the depths of this
valley is the town of Luz, with narrow, tortuous streets, and at the
right, on the side of the mountain, is the fashionable watering-place of
St. Sauveur. The church of Luz, built by the Knights-Templars in the
twelfth century, looks like a fortress with its battlements and great
square tower. As in many churches of this region, there is a low, narrow
door, now walled up, by which the Cagots—those unhappy pariahs of the
Pyrenees—were once obliged to enter. This proscribed race is known to
have existed in the time of the early French monarchy. It is said that
they descended from the Goths or some vanquished nation, which made them
an object of contempt. They were denied citizenship and obliged to live
apart and wear a red badge on their breasts, shaped somewhat like a
duck’s foot. The church endeavored to triumph over this prejudice by
reminding the people that all men are brethren. She would not allow the
Cagots, though they were deemed infectious, to be banished from the
churches, but gave them a separate place till they should be regarded
with more favorable dispositions. They had their own stoup, and it was a
defilement to pass through their door. In one church of the diocese of
Tarbes the archdeacon with the other clergy, to do away with this odious
distinction, passed through their door at some public procession, and
the people were obliged to follow. From that time they passed
indifferently through either door. The race is nearly extinct now, or
has gradually become almost identified with the other inhabitants.
Ascending one of the church towers to the battlements, you find broken
lances, stirrups, and other accoutrements—perhaps left behind by the old
Knights. There are also four cannons placed here by the Leaguers to
defend the edifice against the Huguenots, who always made churches the
principal object of attack.
East of Luz, on a high mount, are the picturesque ruins of the Castle of
Sainte Marie, which once defended the valley, likewise attributed to the
Templars. This was one of the last holds of the English in Bigorre. It
is also associated with Burke of the “Sublime and Beautiful,” who surely
found both in this incomparable valley. Was it in France that he found
reason to prefer “the furniture of ancient tyranny, even in rags,” to
the torrent of liberty that swept it violently away?
St. Sauveur is built in a curve of the mountain side, and its houses on
the cliffs and terraces produce a charming effect. It is only ten
minutes’ walk from Luz, through a long avenue of Lombardy poplars,
across a marble bridge over the Gave, and then up a spiral _rampe_ which
affords a new and more extensive view at every step. You see the verdant
meadow, pretty hamlets on the mountain slopes, foaming cascades, on
every hand a landscape varied, brilliant, and imposing.
The first to discover the virtues of the thermal springs of St. Sauveur
was a bishop of Tarbes who took refuge here when his diocese was ravaged
by the Huguenots of Béarn in the sixteenth century. Surely he had need
to drink of their soothing waters! After experiencing their virtues he
placed the following inscription over the principal spring: _Vos
haurietis aquas de fonte Salvatoris_, whence the name of St. Sauveur.
But the place did not become a fashionable resort till the present
century. At the Restoration the French aristocracy, diplomatic
highnesses, and military officers flocked hither to enjoy the scenery
and allay the fever of their uncertain political life by drinking of the
sulphurous waters.
Not far from Luz, on a verdant hill, are the ruins of a hermitage where
from time immemorial lived a succession of hermits down to the end of
the eighteenth century. Beside it was the chapel of St. Pierre, held in
great veneration by the mountaineers, who, on solemn occasions, went
there to pray for some special blessing or be delivered from some evil.
The statutes of Luz forbade under severe penalty any person over twelve
years of age to ring the bells of this chapel without orders. They
required, moreover, a general procession to be made here on St. Mark’s
day in order to “obtain a blessing on the fruits of the earth, peace
with the neighboring valleys, power to resist the devil and all
wickedness, and strength to perform those works agreeable to God by
means of which is attained the glory of Paradise—Amen.” When the bells
rang out on the 25th of April, the master and mistress of every house in
the valley were to present themselves, as well dressed as possible, in
the church of Luz, and thence proceed, reciting a prescribed number of
_Paters_ and _Aves_, to the hermitage, where the Mass of St. Mark was
said and a portion of the four Gospels read. Those who failed to take
part in the procession of “Monsieur Saint Marc,” without a legitimate
excuse, were obliged to pay a fine of two quarts of wine and half a
pound of wax.
St. Peter’s chapel was latterly restored by Napoleon III. under the name
of St. Pierre de Solferino. The last hermit who lived here was a
Capuchin named Father Ambrose, who consecrated himself to God at the age
of sixteen and was all his life a model of holiness. When he took
possession of his cell he exclaimed: “I wish to live here as in a
tomb—to be counted as nothing—to live unknown, a simple, prayerful,
abject life, in utter ignorance of all that is passing in the world.”
How complete his renunciation of the world was, how profound the peace
he found here, may be seen by two works he left behind, which breathe
the deep piety of his nature. They are entitled: _Traité de la Paix
Intérieure_ and _Traité de la Voie de l’Ame_. In the latter he says: “It
is in the silence of the passions, interior calmness, exemption from
unruly desires, and the government of one’s self that true happiness
consists.” This work acquired great renown. The Queen of France accepted
the dedication, and nine or ten editions were published during the
author’s life without disturbing his profound humility or love of
solitude. He died here in the odor of sanctity, in 1778, at the advanced
age of seventy.
One of the excursions generally made from Luz is to the hermitage of St.
Justin, the first bishop of Tarbes, who fled from persecution to the
summit of this lofty mountain, where he and his companions built three
cells and gave themselves up to austerities and prayer. They were
succeeded by other hermits for ages. The ruins of their cells are still
to be seen. St. Justin, says the Martyrology, “rendered himself glorious
by the multiplication of his talents.”
At the foot of the castle of Sainte Marie is the gorge to the valley of
Barège along the river Bastan, which you follow a few miles, through the
poplars and willows, till you come to the village at the head of the
valley, which is here so narrow as to leave barely room for a single
street. Nothing could be sterner and wilder, and the place would long
ago have been abandoned to the bears and the elements but for the
reputation of its mineral waters. It is, in fact, nearly abandoned in
the winter, when a part of the village is generally carried away by the
avalanches or the inundation of the most insubordinate of streams. It
was Madame de Maintenon who came here with the Duc du Maine, that gave a
reputation to the springs of Barèges. Louis XV. built a military
hospital here, as the waters are efficacious in the healing of wounds.
The heiress of Barèges in the middle ages married a knight named
D’Ossun, but the mountaineers, unable to tolerate the rule of a
stranger, resolved to slay him. He was warned and took flight. All the
mountain passes were guarded, but he had, says the legend, a wonderful
horse, by means of which he leaped from cliff to cliff, and thus made
his escape. This place is still called the Pas d’Ossun. The house of
Ossun was famous for its warriors. Pierre, a member of this family in
the sixteenth century, was a great captain and chiefly contributed to
the victory at Dreux. Disheartened at one moment, he followed the
example of his fellow-soldiers who were flying from the battle-field,
but a feeling of honor brought him back and he covered himself with
glory. He could not, however, forgive himself for a moment of weakness,
and, in punishment, suffered himself to die of hunger.
There are numerous hollows among the Pyrenees called _Oules_ (a word in
_patois_ signifying a large pot or kettle), around which the mountains
rise almost perpendicularly. These basins are also called _Cirques_. The
most famous, as well as most perfect, is that of Gavarnie, surrounded by
the mighty walls of Marboré with its towers and embattled summit. The
emotion that seizes one in this sublime spot is unparalleled. But its
chaos of terrific aspect, its mountains with their glaciers, the famous
Brèche de Roland, and the thread-like cascade that falls down so many
hundred feet—the source of the Gave that flows past the grotto of
Lourdes—have too often been depicted to need repetition. The scene is to
be felt, not described. Here end the seven valleys of the Lavedan on the
very boundaries of Spain.
JOB AND EGYPT.[133]
Footnote 133:
V. _Le Rédempteur et la Vie Future, dans les Civilisations
Primitives._ Par M. l’Abbé Ancessi. Paris: Leroux.
There is perhaps no fact more important in the history of the human
race, or which, in its striking corroboration of revealed truth, is
worthy of higher consideration, than the accumulation of proof,
resulting from the exhumation of past ages by modern research, that
there are certain beliefs which are the inalienable inheritance of the
great human family—beliefs which modern scepticism attacks by a process
of false reasoning incomprehensible to any simple and upright nature.
For some years past the sacred texts have been put to the proof by tests
of a character as severe as they were unexpected; and thus, from the
moment that the key was obtained for deciphering the inscriptions of a
far-remote antiquity, it was not without eager anxiety that the judgment
was awaited which science was about to pronounce.
But on this occasion, as always when interests of this description are
at stake, the first conclusions were too hastily arrived at, and
precipitation led to mistakes.
After the vain attacks made on the one hand, and the groundless
anxieties raised on the other, with regard to the question of the
zodiacs, it was soon found that greater circumspection as well as more
accurate criticism must be brought to the examination of evidence before
it could be quoted in proof or disproof of any theory. Since that time
the lapse of a century has witnessed a vast accession of documentary
testimony, and it may be affirmed that up to this moment the whole
concurs in establishing the veracity and authenticity of the Holy
Scriptures. As the inscriptions of the kings of Assyria bear witness to
the fidelity of the Bible narrative, and the Babylonian tradition of the
Creation, the Fall, the Tree of Life, the Tower of Babel, and the Deluge
confirm the grander, more logical, and simpler account given in the Book
of Genesis, so do the annals and theological teachings of ancient Egypt
testify to the truth of those doctrines contained in the inspired
writings of which they are the traditional echo—an echo mute for ages,
and but now reawakened as if to add its protest against the miserable
scepticism which is one of the signs of a degenerate and decaying world.
M. l’Abbé Ancessi, whose work on the sacerdotal vestments of Israel and
Egypt we have already noticed,[134] has lately published one of more
extensive interest, the object of which is to establish from the most
ancient documents in existence, outside the Holy Scriptures, that the
dogmas necessary to the religious and moral life of man were, from the
very origin of society, the heritage of our forefathers, and that, more
than a thousand years before Moses, well-nigh all our doctrines and all
our hopes existed in the most remote civilization in the universe; and
from thence to draw the conclusion that these doctrines and principles
would not have remained indestructible in the human mind, diversified
and restless as it is, had they not been a part of itself, the
foundation of its nature, and one final reason of its being.
Footnote 134:
THE CATHOLIC WORLD, Nov., 1876, p. 213.
The author proceeds to group the Egyptian belief with respect to God, a
Redeemer, and the life to come around the well-known text in which Job,
overwhelmed by the reproaches of his friends and the weight of his
misfortunes, despairing of consolation in this world, declares his
certainty of a life to come, where, after death, he will meet with a
powerful Avenger, who will put his enemies to shame and make his cause
triumph, end his trials, and recompense his virtues by the supreme
blessedness of the Vision of God.
The argument of Baldad the Suhite, put briefly, is that _The impious man
is always unfortunate in this world_, with its counterpart, _Whoever is
unfortunate is impious_; but, in spite of this most imperturbable of
theorists, Job is conscious of his own innocence, and after listening to
a long outpouring of eloquent imagery, amid the desolate splendors of
which there shines no ray of hope or comfort for him, he bursts forth
like a tempest:
“How long, then, will you afflict my soul, and break me in pieces
with your words?... Have pity, have pity upon me, at least you my
friends, for the hand of the Lord hath touched me.... Who will grant
me that my words may be written? who will grant me that they may be
marked down in a book with an iron pen, and in a plate of lead; or
be graven with an instrument in the rock? For I know that my
Redeemer liveth, and that he shall stand at last upon the dust. That
these bones shall again be covered with their skin; that in my flesh
I shall see God. I myself shall behold him; mine eyes shall behold
him, and not another.”
This rapid incursion into the world beyond the tomb, with which the
Semitic races were never familiar, and which they appeared in thought to
avoid with a singular reserve, contains all the solution of the
redoubtable problem; but though the question was settled, the arguments
of the pitiless sages began again with renewed volubility, until the
voice of God himself interposed, on behalf of his servant, to silence
them.
The words quoted above contain evident allusions to traditions and
dogmas which appear to have become obscure or been forgotten among the
Semitic races. This profession of faith remains isolated, without a
precedent which explains it; there is, in fact, nothing analogous to it
in the most ancient texts of the Pentateuch, in the Songs of Israel, or
the promises and teachings of the prophets.
In the family of Israel, with the Mosaic legislation, the primitive
world closes and another begins. The doctrines and hopes freshly
implanted by God develop like a plant from its seed, each part being
necessary to the other parts; but amidst all the Hebraic literature the
Book of Job and his profession of faith remain isolated, and on this
account the value of both have been disputed by persons interested in
lessening their importance. From this point of view, therefore, it is of
moment to find an analogous doctrine in the outlying records of a remote
antiquity, and to discover the edifice from which this fragment has been
detached.
On the rolls of linen and papyrus preserved in the tombs of Thebes or of
Serapeum we find not only the belief mentioned in the Book of Job, but
the very expressions there made use of. On these rolls not only is this
belief repeated in a multitude of forms, but a community of traditions
in the two great families of Sem and Cham is also proved.
Long centuries had elapsed since their dispersion; they were separated
not only by their intervening deserts, but by their difference of
language, customs, laws, and worship; and yet, where the Semitic text is
obscure, we have but to compare it with the writings left by the old
Egyptians to make clear its meaning.
The opening words of the quotation above apparently allude to some
contemporary usage well known to the patriarch and his friends, but
still not in use among themselves: “_Who_ shall grant that my words may
be written ... and engraved in the flint-stone?” M. Ancessi asks if we
have not here an allusion to the _styles_ or small obelisks which then
abounded in the temples and tombs of Egypt, and which, if not in use
among the tribes of the land of Uz, had nevertheless been seen by these
families of shepherds in their distant wanderings. Besides the great
inscriptions commemorating the conquests of the Pharaos, there are, in
or near the Egyptian temples, at the gates of the tombs, or within the
sepulchral chambers, innumerable smaller monuments placed there by
private individuals, and inscribed with their confession of faith. Of
this we shall speak further on.
Numerous passages in the Book of Job seem to indicate that he had
visited the land of Egypt,[135] and, among these, allusion is made to
the tombs of the “kings and counsellors of the earth,” with whom he
would fain “be at rest,” and “with princes, who possess abundance of
gold and fill their dwellings with silver”[136] (alluding to the
Egyptian custom of heaping precious objects in the tombs for the use of
the departed at the resurrection). Like them, Job desired to leave his
tablet, in which, after the manner of the commemorative obelisks of the
valley of the Nile, he would declare the innocence of his life, his
faith in a divine Avenger, in the resurrection of the body, and the
vision of Him who recompenses the just and punishes the wicked.
Footnote 135:
Job viii. 2. Take, for instance, the description of the papyrus (Job
viii. 11); the allusion to the rush-boats which are used on the Nile
(ch. ix. 26), and to the hippopotamus, under the name of Behemoth, the
Hebrew translation of the Egyptian _pihémout_, or river-horse, and
which is described as “sleeping in the shadow of the lotus, in the
covert of the reeds, and in the marshes;... compassed about by the
willows of the brook” (Job xl. 16). Again, in ch. xxviii. 1-11, there
may be an allusion to the mines worked by the Egyptians on Mt. Sinai,
where also are numerous inscriptions left by that people on the rocks.
Footnote 136:
Job iii. 13-15. In the papyri of Neb-Qed in the Louvre, in a gallery
parallel to the great hall where the sarcophagus is placed, we see a
coffer, a mirror, a collyrium-case, a pair of sandals, a cane, a vase
for unguent, another for ablutions, a third for perfumes. The kings
and queens took with them into the tomb also their jewels and richest
garments, so sure were they of their resurrection. The ordinary
dwellings of the Egyptians were small, built of wood or unbaked
bricks, but their tombs, the “_Eternal Abodes_,” were of granite. Not
a house, not a palace of ancient Egypt is now standing, but their
tombs and sepulchral pyramids will probably last as long as our
planet. The Hebrews, after the example of the Egyptians, appear to
have had treasure buried with them. Josephus relates that Herod, being
in want of money, made a nocturnal descent into the tomb of King
David. He found there no money, but “_aurea ornamenta multumque
supellectilis prætiosæ, quæ omnia abstulit_.”—_Ant. Jud._ lib. xiv.
cap. vii. p. 724, Ed. Oxford.
The funereal inscriptions of ancient Egypt are of two kinds: those
written on rolls of papyrus or linen bands, enveloping the body of the
mummy or enclosed with it inside the sarcophagus; and the incised
monuments of stone or granite, erected in the chambers or cut in the
walls of the tombs and temples and at the entrance of the pyramids.
Almost all the texts[137] found upon the mummies are extracts from a
book which Champollion called the _Ritual_, but which is now styled the
_Todtenbuch_, or Book of the Dead; the term “ritual” being confined to
the liturgical manuals relating to the ceremonies of inhumation, etc.,
some curious copies of which may be seen in the Louvre.
Footnote 137:
The faithful in the middle ages were frequently interred with their
profession of faith, the _Credo_ and _Confiteor_, or sometimes also
the very text from the Book of Job which we are about to consider.
The _Todtenbuch_ is a collection of hymns, prayers, and theological
instructions, divided into one hundred and sixty-five chapters, with
their titles and rubrics. These rubrics, as in the Catholic missals and
breviaries, consist of a few words in red ink to guide the celebrant.
The titles of the chapters are also in red. The lines are usually
vertical, and, in the richer copies, the upper margin of the roll is
adorned, by the side of the title of each chapter, with an illustration
or vignette representing the subject there treated. Finally, a whole
page is taken up by a picture of the judgment of souls and the
ingathering of the harvest in the blessed fields of Ker-Neter.
These texts were to be recited by the soul during its journey, as a
safeguard from danger and to purify it at the moment of the solemn
judgment which should decide its eternal destiny. The manuscript is
intended to assist the memory of the departed. Under the twelfth dynasty
these texts were often engraved on the sarcophagus itself.
Thoth, the God of Wisdom, was said to have dictated the _Book of the
Dead_, the greater portion of which Bunsen does not hesitate to relegate
to prehistoric times.[138]
Footnote 138:
Bunsen, _Egypt’s Place in Universal History_, vol. v. p. 110.
In support of this supposition, M. Deveria notices two very ancient
annotations. The first of these, at the sixty-fourth chapter, states
that this portion of the _Book of the Dead_ was found at Hermopolis,
written in blue, on a cube of _Baakes_, under the feet of the god, where
the royal son Hardanouef found it in the time of King Menkera when
making the inventory of the temple. The second annotation tells that
chapter one hundred and thirty was found[139] in the pylone of the great
temple in the reign of King Housapti, who was the fifth monarch of the
first dynasty, and Menkera built the third pyramid. Thus, at these
periods, certain parts of the _Todtenbuch_ were discovered as
antiquities, the memory of which had been lost; and certainly we find on
the wooden mummy-coffins of the eleventh dynasty long passages from it,
proving, therefore, its composition to have been long anterior to the
Shepherd Kings, and consequently long before Abraham.
Footnote 139:
_Catalogues des MSS. Egyptiens_, p. 51.
The obelisks, or inscriptions in stone, have not, however, the
impersonal and theological character of the writing on the rolls. On the
obelisks the name of the departed is usually inscribed side by side with
the names of his family, parents or children, and his titles and
occupation are there given. At the head of the monument he is
represented making an offering to Osiris, his judge, or his children are
there depicted offering libations before the image of their father and
reciting the liturgical hymns for his soul.
It is not rare to find the dead himself asking for prayers. The funereal
obelisk of Neb-oua at Boulag ends thus: “To the living; to the ancients
of the earth; to the priests; to the panegyrists; to the divine fathers;
to all who see this obelisk: make for me your songs, beloved of Osiris,
the Eternal King. Say: May the delicious breath of life breathe in the
face of Neb-oua, the first prophet of Osiris, the acknowledged just
one.”[140]
Footnote 140:
_Notice des Princip. Monum._ Par M. Mariette.
Again, on the lid of a sarcophagus in the same museum (No. 978) we find
a “Prayer to be said by every person who draws near to this tomb: May
God give thee light,[141] and may its beams shine into thine eyes; may
he breathe into thy nostrils the breath which thou must breathe to
live.”
Footnote 141:
As this formula recalls the _Lux perpetua liceat eis_ of the Catholic,
so also we find on the tombs of Egypt the _Requiescat in pace_.
The personal details, which vary upon every obelisk, are accompanied by
formulæ taken from the _Book of the Dead_, which recall the faith of the
departed in the resurrection of the body; the rewards and punishments of
a future life; the judgment, presided over by Osiris, his redeemer; and
the hope of an eternity of happiness flowing from the beatific vision.
Here we have, in fact, the profession of faith of the patriarch Job, a
further examination of which will show us that the analogy is carried
into the minutest details. In regard to it we will first consider
briefly the Egyptian doctrine about God and the Redeemer.
Although nothing was originally more simple than the theology of Egypt,
yet nothing could well be more confused and perplexing than it became as
the commentaries of the schools and the mythological superfetations of
each temple developed in the course of time. From its earliest to its
latest days Egypt believed in one God, personal, uncreated, almighty,
the author and watchful preserver of the universe. How, then, it may be
asked, can its exuberant polytheism be reconciled with this doctrine? In
traversing the galleries filled with long ranks of the Egyptian
deities—Thoth with the head of an ibis and the hawk-headed Horus being
conspicuous among them—we pass along the stony piles of these antique
and impenetrable monstrosities as if under the influence of a nightmare,
while the words of liberated Israel echo from distant ages in our ears:
“Os habent et non loquentur; oculos habent et non videbunt; manus habent
et non palpabunt; pedes habent et non ambulabunt; non clamabunt in
gutture suo.” And we ask what there can be of just and true behind the
strange forms of these old-world phantoms.
The answer is contained in the fact that the Egyptians attributed to God
different names and forms, according to the aspects and attributes to
which they wished to give prominence, while, under each of these names
and forms, God, in his inalienable infinity, remained always the same;
and, as if they had anticipated our perplexities at the sight of these
battalions of divinities, they have taken exceeding pains to instruct us
on this point. As the Eternal, God had one name; as Creator, he had
another; as Providence or Preserver, another; and as Judge and Redeemer
of souls, the name of Osiris. In each sanctuary the one God of the whole
country, living in a Triad which, without division of substance,
expressed the phases of his threefold existence, was worshipped under a
particular form and name. He had a special worship, rites, chants, and
ceremonial, unknown in the neighboring temples; but the hymns and
inscriptions constantly dwell on the fact that each temple and each
ritual was in honor of the only God, to whom belong all temples, and to
whom all prayers are addressed.[142]
Footnote 142:
An historical fact which exercised considerable influence on the
religion of Egypt, and which helps to explain the multiplicity of the
names given to the Deity, was that the whole of Egypt which Menes
united under his sceptre was divided into _nomes_, each having its
capital city; and each of these regions had its principal god,
designated by a special name, but under these different names the same
doctrine always remains of a divine unity. Thus by the side of the
political there was also a kind of divine feudality. Tum reigned at
Heliopolis, Osiris at Theni and later at Abydos, Ammon was over
Thebes, and over Memphis Phtah. Each of these gods, identical in
substance with the gods of the other nomes, easily allowed this
fundamental identity. Ammon of Thebes gave hospitality in his temple
to Min or Khem of Coptos, to Tum of Heliopolis, and to Phtah of
Memphis, who on their part received Ammon with equal readiness into
their own sanctuaries.
[Illustration: _The One who alone is: there is of him no second._]
The Egyptians knew that the Deity is an unfathomable mystery and can
have no name. “His name,” say the texts, “is mysterious as his being.”
Considered from this point of view, he is called _The Hidden One_—Ammon,
whose image is enveloped in an impenetrable veil. In his uncreated
essence God is invisible, but he has revealed himself in his acts,
expressive of his wisdom, power, and goodness, and each of these
attributes presents an accessible side, by which the mind can take hold
of the incomprehensible, see the invisible, and name the nameless One.
Having in himself all powers and every form of greatness, his names and
forms are without number, and the texts, as in the Hymn to Ammon,
expressly designate him as _The Many-Named_—the _Multitude by the
Names_.[143]
Footnote 143:
“The habit of reuniting in one worship the different forms of the
Divinity continually led to their fusion into one personality. Sevek,
of Fayom, associated with Ra, became Sevek-Ra; Phtah was fused with
Sokari under the name of Phtah-Sokari, and Osiris, being afterwards
joined to these, made Phtah-Sokar-Osiris. All the divine types were
reciprocally interpenetrated and absorbed into the supreme deity. The
names and forms of God were indefinitely multiplied, but God,
never.”—G. Maspero, _Hist. Anc._, ch. i. p. 29.
The true name of God appears to have been, with the Egyptians as with
the Hebrews, the greatest of mysteries. Probably it was not allowed to
be written; in any case, as in the papyrus Harris, its utterance was
forbidden. “I am He who makes trial of the warriors, he whose name is
known to none. His name must be kept in silence on the borders of the
river: whoso shall utter it, he shall be consumed. His name must be
silent upon earth.”
We find this in the hymn to Ammon,[144] and the remainder of this text
leads us further into the doctrine of a Trinity which Egyptian theology
had preserved amidst other primeval traditions.
Footnote 144:
See papyri in the museum of Boulag.
“Creator of the pastures whereon the cattle feed, and of the plants
which nourish man; he who provides for the fishes of the sea and the
birds of heaven, who gives the breath of life to the germ yet hidden
in the egg, who feeds the flying insect and the creeping thing, who
provides the stores of the mouse in his retreat and of the birds in
the forest[145]—homage to thee, the author of all, who alone art,
... who watchest over men when they repose, and seekest the good of
thy creatures; God, Ammon, the preserver of all; Tum and Armachis
worship thee in their words, and say, Homage to thee, because of thy
immanence in us; prostration before thy face, because thou producest
us; ... the gods bow before thy majesty, and exalt the soul of him
by whom they were produced, happy in the immanence of their
generator,” etc.
Footnote 145:
Conf. Job xxxviii. 39-41.
It will be perceived that Tum and Armachis appear to form, with Ammon, a
triad, of which the persons are distinct without being separate, each
person being represented as reposing in one divine substance, of which
each is an aspect, of which each expresses an attribute, and of whose
indivisible essence each forms a part.[146]
Footnote 146:
At Heliopolis the divinity appears under three forms: Atoum, the
Inaccessible God; Choper, the Creator (the scarabæus God); and Ra, the
Manifestation of God—the visible sun. It was not until later that we
find a feminine divinity.
It is not to be supposed, however, that this lofty and abstract
conception was appreciated by the multitude, with whom, on the contrary,
the numerous names and forms of their deity degenerated into a monstrous
polytheism, and who, in spite of the reiterated affirmations of the
hymns and inscriptions, crowded their altars with fantastic idols.
But for the depositaries of the sacred doctrine there was but one God,
living in the midst of the divine triads, uncreated, and the principle
of life. He was also the principle of truth: “Hold nothing as truth but
the Eternal and the Just.... Man is only the appearance; and the
appearance is the supreme lie.... What is the First Truth? He who is one
and alone, the Lord of Truth and Father of the gods.”
The explanation to this formula is to be found in the other text which
supposes the Word to be the principle of the divine persons:
[Illustration: _Giving utterance to the Word, exist the gods._]
Hermes Trismegistes, commenting upon the above, says: “He who made the
world made it not with his hands, but with his word.” And again:
“The luminous Word (_Verbum_), which emanates from the Intelligence,
is the Son of God.... The Intelligence of life and light engendered,
by the Word, another creative Intelligence, the god of fire and
fluids, who in turn formed seven ministers, enveloping in their
circles the sensible world, and governing it by what is called
destiny. This spirit is necessary to all; he gives life to all,
sustains all. He flows from the holy source, and unceasingly comes
to the aid of the spirits and of all things living.”[147]
Footnote 147:
We seem to have here a vague idea of the Holy Spirit, with his Seven
Gifts, which are resplendent in the world of nature as well as in the
world of grace.
This spirit, Tum, or Tum Cheper (creator), is described in the texts as
“Master of understanding, ... giving to all things their motion: when he
wrought in the abyss of the waters,[148] then was produced the
gladsomeness of the light. The gods rejoiced at its beauty.”
Footnote 148:
“And the spirit of God moved over the waters” (Gen. i. 2). “And God
saw the light that it was good” (Gen. i. 4).
The Author of the universe is also worshipped as the principle of
Goodness under the name of Oun Nofrè—the Good Being; and the
inscriptions reiterate the appellation:
[Illustration: _The good God; greatly beloved ... greatness of loves._]
“His love is in the south: his graces in the north: all hearts are
transported with his beauty.... When he traverses the heavens in his
bark, and travels in peace through celestial space, his rowers are in
gladness.”[149]
Footnote 149:
Hymn to Ammon-Ra.
Again, in the wisdom of his secret counsels, God is described as holding
in reserve all that may happen in the future. “He is that which is, and
that which is not,” says the _Todtenbuch_; “for that which is, is in my
hand, and that which is not is in my heart.”
It has been necessary to dwell at some length on the Egyptian doctrines
respecting the nature of God and his relation to the world before
approaching another feature of exceeding interest in their
theology—namely, _the history and office of the Redeemer_.
This mighty Liberator, the first hope of whom was given by God to our
first parents, appears under various forms in the traditions of all the
peoples of a distant antiquity, and among these traditions the most
ancient and the most pure is certainly that of Osiris, whose noble and
beneficent attributes raise him above all the divinities of other
nations, represented as coming to bring succor to man. The Doctors of
the church were themselves struck with admiration before this august
figure, and did not hesitate to identify the name of Osiris with that of
our Lord Jesus Christ,[150] being convinced that the belief respecting
him was but an echo of the primitive revelation. It would indeed be
difficult to explain otherwise its correspondence to the Messianic
prophecies given later to the chosen people, or the analogies of the
Osirian teaching with the accomplishment, in the life of our Lord, of
the hopes which, during long centuries, it kept alive in the countless
generations of Egypt.
Footnote 150:
This fact, which appeared inexplicable temerity on the part of
Tertullian, is justified by what has of late years been
discovered from original documents, which correct the classical
misrepresentations of Egyptian theology.
The special attribute of Osiris is _goodness_; it is he who is
_Oun-Nofre_ the Good Being _par excellence_; it is he who, with Tum (or
Phtah) and Thoth, partakes of the divine essence, and is called, like
Ammon, _Neb-oua—the Lord alone_.
In the papyrus 3292 in the Hall of Tombs in the Louvre is the following
passage: “Hail to thee, Osiris, ... the great eldest Son of Ra, Father
of fathers,... King of immeasurable time and lord of eternity.... None
knows his name; innumerable are his names in the cities and the
nomes.[151]... Hail to thee, ... the one who didst rise from the dead.
He is the lord of life, and we live by his creations; none can live
without his will.” The second aspect of the life of Osiris is his
sojourn upon earth in human form, his death, and passage into the land
of the departed. Plutarch tells us that Osiris, lord of time, made
himself man and reigned on earth, giving his people wise and holy laws;
that he taught them agriculture and reverence to the gods, going through
all the country to instruct his subjects, whose attention he won and
whose manners he softened by the penetrating charm of his words and by
music.[152]
Footnote 151:
It is of these innumerable names that the Egyptians formed their long
litanies, which are, as it were, the type of those of the Catholic
Church. M. Ancessi mentions having heard at Cairo some wandering
musicians chanting under his window an old legend in the simple rhythm
in which the melodic phrase, incessantly repeated, has a close
resemblance to the Catholic litanies.
The following is a comparatively small portion of the papyrus of
Neb-Qed, where the departed, arrived in the hall of Supreme Justice,
enumerates the faults which he has avoided, proclaiming, at the same
time, some of the titles of Osiris:
“O thou who marchest, [_who art_] _come forth from An_! I am without
fault.
“O consumer of shadows! _come forth from the double retreat_; I have
not slain any man.
“O purity of the face! _come forth from Rastou_; I have committed no
fraud on the measures of corn.
“O Two Lions! _come forth from heaven_; I have committed no fraud in
the dwelling of justice.
“O Flame! _come forth in turning backwards_; I have told no lie.
“O Rampart! _come forth from the mysterious abode_; I have done
nothing worthy of condemnation.
“O thou that vivifiest the flame! _come forth from Hat-Phtah_; my
heart has had no evil intentions.
“O thou that turnest back the head (etc)!... I have been no detractor.
“O mystery of the leg! _come forth from the night_; I have not given
way to anger.
“O light of the senses! _come forth from the mysterious region_; I
have had no intercourse with a married woman.
“O blood! _come forth from the chamber of the lotus_; I have not been
depraved.
“O thou who perpetually renewest that which is! _issued from Khem_; I
have not been violent....
“O thou who hidest words!... I have not been prodigal of words.
“O Nofre-Toum in Ha-Phtah-Ka. I have not committed abomination.
“O thou who art unchanging! _issued from Dadou_; I have done no
outrage against the gods.
“O thou who sendest forth the heavenly river! come forth out of Saïs;
I have not made the slave to be maltreated by his master.
“O thou who vivifiest intelligent beings! I have not defrauded the
loaves in the temple.
“O beautiful Neb-Ka! I have not profaned the meat of the gods.... I
have not taken off the wrappings of the mummies.... I have not taken
away milk from the mouth of the infant.
“O thou whose eyes are like a sword! I have committed no fraud in the
abode of justice.”
Each title given to Osiris alludes to some mystery or teaching in the
Egyptian theology.
Footnote 152:
Music amongst the ancients was, far more than it is with us, an
agreeable pastime. Socrates declares that philosophy is nothing but a
sublime music: ὡς φιλοσοφίας μεν οὔσης μεγίστης μουσικῆς. In the third
book of his _Republic_ Plato goes much further, and affirms that the
musician alone is truly a philosopher: ὄτι μόνος μουσικός ὁ φιλόσοφος.
The chanted poems and traditions were for ages the depositaries of the
laws, ritual and history of a nation.
Even according to the myths, however, righteousness does not long
prosper upon earth. The Principle of Evil, enraged against him,
compassed his painful death when his life upon earth had attained
twenty-eight years[153]—often represented by twenty-eight lotus-flowers
in the inscriptions, and fixed by the traditional age of the Apis.
Footnote 153:
It has hitherto been difficult to discover the circumstances of the
death of Osiris, or the primitive tradition of his sufferings, about
which several legends have successively prevailed. The one given by
Plutarch cannot be of great antiquity. In the Isle of Philæ, which, if
we may so express it, had a special _devotion_ to Osiris, the history
of his life is given in a series of bas-reliefs in a small sanctuary
on the west of the great temple, his death and resurrection forming
the principal subjects.
There is a splendid passage relating to this god in Plutarch, ch.
lxxix., _Treatise on Osiris and Isis_.
But for Osiris, as for the true Saviour, the hour of death is the hour
of victory. He rises again, and reigns henceforth, king of an eternal
kingdom.
The priests and faithful of Osiris could not endure the attempts made by
travellers and philosophers to find a resemblance between this pure and
lofty divinity to any of their own disreputable gods, or to fix in the
depths of the earth and the abode of the dead the dwelling-place of him
who had “no kind of communication with substances subject to corruption
and death.” No other god had in Egypt so many temples and worshippers as
this the favorite deity of the country, since, besides its own local
divinity, each of the nomes worshipped Osiris and Isis, and thus the
“Protector of souls” was, from the Mediterranean to the cataracts, the
god of all the Egyptians.
The anniversary of the death of Osiris[154] was every year observed with
lamentations throughout the land, until the hour of his resurrection,
which was hailed with joy, festivities, and triumph; this people, always
so anxious and interested about the future beyond the tomb, having for
the “Lord of the life to come” the most deep and tender devotion. For,
of all the phases of his worship, that which occupied the largest place
and exercised the profoundest influence on the religious life of this
great nation is connected with the office of Osiris in regard to each
separate soul. All the funereal inscriptions dwell upon this. Osiris was
not only their saviour but their judge. In the paintings and sculptures,
and the vignettes of the ritual, he is usually represented enthroned in
the Hall of the divine Justice, where, enveloped, all but the face and
hands, in the shroud which had enfolded him in the tomb, and holding in
his right hand the hyk, or pastoral staff (not unlike an episcopal
crosier), and in the left a double-thonged scourge, he awaits the soul
of the departed. At his feet are the divine balances, wherein will be
weighed the heart of the dead. At the threshold of the hall Maat, the
symbol of justice and truth, receives the soul and presents it to the
Judge.
Footnote 154:
Most nations of antiquity have known the traditional mystery of a god
suffering, dying, and rising again. The worship of Adonis, long
prevalent among the Syrian races, penetrated, under the name of
Thammuz, even into the sanctuary of Israel (Ezek. viii. 14). Macrobius
speaks of it also among the Assyrians, and of the lamentations of
Proserpine; and the same belief is to be found in the long poems of
India. It is also probable that the Moabite worship of Beelphegor was
analogous to that of Osiris, Adonis, and Thammuz (see Numb. xxv. 2).
Women are here, as in Egypt, at Byblos, and Athens, especially charged
with his worship.
The soul’s first words on being brought into the presence of its God
were: “I am the Osiris [such a one],” giving his earthly name.[155]
Footnote 155:
In the papyrus Neb-Qed we find as follows: “Words, on entering the
Hall of Double Justice to see the face of the gods, spoken by the
Osiris Neb-Qed. He said: Hail to thee, great God, Lord of justice! I
come into thy presence to behold thy beauties ... _on the day of the
giving account of words_ before the Good Being. I place myself in your
presence, my lords; I bring you the truth.”
This assimilation of the faithful worshipper with his divine type is one
of the most elevated and touching characteristics of the Egyptian
doctrine; nor does anything analogous to it exist in any other religion
of antiquity—it is only in Christianity that we find it again. In the
same way that the Christian is a living member of Christ, sharing in his
life, rights, and merits, bearing his name, taking refuge behind the
person of his Saviour, so does the worshipper of Osiris become a living
member of his liberator, and another Osiris; and at the hour of death
the soul calls for aid from him who had also passed its dark portal and
come forth again victoriously.
Nothing is more touching than the prayers addressed by these suppliant
souls to their protector; thus we read, in a papyrus of the Louvre:
“Amensaouef the departed says to Osiris: Receive in peace this Osiris,
Amensaouef justified.... Open to him thy gates, that I may enter there
when my heart shall desire: may the guardians of thy pylones not fight
against me, and may I not be thrust back by thy guards, that I may see
God in his beauty; that I may serve him in the place where he dwells.”
To obtain a right to these favors, the soul, as in the litany already
quoted from the Book of the Dead, recalled its innocent life; in the
_Book of the Breathings_ the dead continues his justification by
enumerating his good works: “O gods who dwell in the lower hemisphere!
listen to the voice of the Osiris [such a one]; he is come before you.
There is in him no fault; no testimony arises against him.... He gave
bread to the hungry and water to the thirsty; he gave clothes to the
naked;[156] he offered peace-offerings to the gods and oblations to the
_manes_.”
Footnote 156:
Cf. Job xxix. 12-17, and xxxi. 16-22.
According to the result declared by the unerring balances, judgment was
given, and the name of the righteous written down by Thoth in the Book
of Life. The just had right to enter into the “Mysterious Retreat,” the
place of eternal bliss, to eat the fruit of the tree of life, _Astu_,
and rest in its shadow; to drink the waters of the river of life, to sit
down at the heavenly feast with Osiris, and to find the fulness of
happiness in the contemplation of the face of God. The impious were
driven to endless punishment in the fiery gulfs of _Amma_, while
“intermediate souls” were purified, by an expiation proportioned to
their faults, in the Lake of Fire.
The most curious document, after the _Todtenbuch_, which Egypt has
bequeathed to us on the subject is the long MS. entitled _The Book of
that which takes place in the Lower Hemisphere_.[157] The author there
describes, as if he himself had visited them, all the various localities
of these regions of darkness. In it we advance, with Osiris and his
dead, along the gloomy paths which frequently remind us of the
wanderings of Dante. The way is divided into twelve “Hours” with their
corresponding stations, and is peopled with mysterious phantoms and
mythological forms, who sometimes stop the travellers and at others
favor their progress. It is said at the seventh hour: “Who knows this,
the panther devours him not.”[158] The name of this hour is, “He who
repulses the reptile, who wounds the serpent Ha-her.”[159]
Footnote 157:
M. Deveria has given a summary of this book, in his _Notice des
Manuscrits du Musée du Louvre_.
Footnote 158:
It is also a panther that Dante encounters at the entrance of the
forest which is the commencement of the mysterious realm of Death. The
Egyptian texts mention also the lion, of which the Catholic liturgy
retains the remembrance in the Offertory for the Mass for the Dead:
_Domine Jesu Christe, libera animas defunctorum ... de ore leonis, ne
absorbeat eas Tartarus._
Footnote 159:
Each hour of this night has a name, according to the mystery
accomplished in it. The eighth hour is characterized by the defeat of
the great serpent, cast into the abyss. One of his names is _Apep_—_he
who lifts the head_, the _proud one_, represented by a serpent pierced
with arrows.
The most detailed description of the Egyptian hell is given in the third
register of the eleventh hour. There we are shown seven goddesses
standing, each armed with a sword;[160] the flames which spring from
their mouths fall into seven gulfs, wherein condemned souls,
hieroglyphic symbols of spirits, heads cut off, etc., are confusedly
mingled amidst the fire. Each gulf is designated in retrograde
characters by the word _Had_, reminding one of the Greek Hades; and each
goddess has a name which indicates her powers and functions. It was this
hell that was called also _the second death_—an expression preserved by
tradition to the days of Christianity, and repeated by St. John in the
Apocalypse, in which we find almost all the ancient formulæ of the
religious beliefs of primitive times.
Footnote 160:
“In that day, fear ye before the sword; the vengeance of the sword is
burning; that ye may know that there is a judgment” (Job xix. 29).
We have now briefly to consider Osiris under the aspect of _the Risen
One_. When, like the sun overcoming the shades of night, he rises from
the dead, he is called Horus; and although the texts insist upon the
absolute identity of the divine personality who manifests himself under
these two aspects, Horus nevertheless, in the mythological form of the
doctrine, is called his son—the Avenger of his father Osiris.
This formula, “I am Horus, the Avenger of his father,” occurs repeatedly
throughout the _Todtenbuch_; the Avenger being the God himself awakening
from the tomb under a new form, and taking possession of the second life
that knows death no more; that which happened to Osiris being repeated
in each departed soul, of whom he was the type and the Saviour.
Later on Egyptian mythology furnished Osiris with assistants for this
combat with death. The _Book of the Lower Hemisphere_ represents, at the
tenth hour of the journey through the lands beyond the tomb, and at the
moment when the trial is about to end, four gods, each bearing a bow and
arrows, with the legend: “These with their bows and arrows, going before
the great God, open to him the eastern horizon of heaven. This great God
says: Choose out your arrows, draw your bows; wound for me mine enemies
who are in darkness at the gate of the horizon.”[161] This combat is
renewed for each soul, and the avenging God invariably intervenes with
his attendant spirits. M. Ancessi considers that we have here an
unexpected and natural commentary upon the words of Job, “_I know that
my Avenger liveth_,” and proceeds to examine the sense of the word
_goel_, or avenger, of the Hebrew text.
Footnote 161:
Cat. of Egypt. MSS., _Book of the Lower Hemisphere_, p. 15.
In the social order of the wandering tribes a traditional law regulated
that, in case of murder, it rested with the family of the victim to take
vengeance on the murderer. It was for the son to avenge his father, or,
in default of a son, the nearest relative, who thus became the _goel_ of
the slain. It is easy to imagine the terrible effects of this fatal law,
which still prolongs itself through centuries, and sometimes does not
end before a whole tribe has been cut off.
But besides the earthly avenger, there was another—God himself, who
intervened at the hour of death to adjudge the punishment of the wicked
and take in hand the cause of the departed. Such is, in fact, the
character of the mysterious protector whose aid is claimed by Job when
he exclaims, “I know that my _Goel_ is living”; he can count upon him,
as in his tribe he counts upon the never-failing avenger of the cause of
the oppressed.[162]
Footnote 162:
Osiris surrounded his children with so much solicitude that he is
represented as even sending his attendants to visit their sepulchres.
We find, for instance, the following in papyrus 3283 of the Louvre:
“Said by Osiris to the gods of his suite: Go, then, and see this
dwelling of the departed, that it may be thus constructed; hasten it
for the moment of his heavenly birth with you; respect him; salute
him, for he is honorable.” It is curious to find so early the _dies
natalis_ of our martyrologies.
We need only allude to the frequency with which, in all poetical and
imaginative nations, a metaphor becomes a myth, to perceive the facility
with which the idea of the resurrection of Osiris became the birth of
Horus in the cradle of his father’s tomb. Thus there was a violent
death; there was a son; the next step naturally transforms Horus into
the avenger.
How often is it the case that a word of apparent unimportance, having
found its way into a dogmatic explanation, ends by entirely disfiguring
its sense, like a graft left by an unknown hand in the bark of a tree,
and which produces a complete change in its fruit![163] Thus, as time
goes on, we find grouped around Osiris, Horus the Avenger, who is called
his son, Isis and Nephtys, who are his sisters, forty terrible assessors
who surround his tribunal and aid him as judge, besides a multitude of
details which compromise and disfigure the ancient doctrine; while the
text of Job preserves the mysterious germ of the Osirian doctrine in its
simplicity and grandeur, and then applies it in prophetic allusion to
the death and resurrection of Messias the Redeemer.
Footnote 163:
“How often would the Catholic faith have hopelessly foundered amidst
the innovations which the heretics and sectaries of all times have
attempted to foist upon her, had not an infallible authority watched
over her and secured her integrity! I know nothing more convincing as
to the necessity of this doctrinal magistracy than the incessant
variation of the religions of antiquity. From a distance, and at first
sight, they seem to have changed the least; whereas, on the contrary,
their history has been nothing but a gradual and perpetual change, the
laws of which it may not be impossible some time to discover.”—_Le
Rédempteur et la Vie Future._
An additional probability that the words of Job contain an allusion to
this doctrine is to be found in the remarkable identity of the remaining
portion of this text with the formula of the Egyptian papyri. After his
affirmation of faith in a living Redeemer Job immediately adds, with the
theologians of Egypt: “In my flesh I shall see God, whom I, I shall see
for myself; mine eyes shall see him, and not [those of] another.”
The passages in the _Todtenbuch_ and funereal inscriptions are
numberless in which we find it said of the departed:
[Illustration: _This glorious spirit, in his flesh, he himself, he sees
(God)._]
Again: “I come to thee, Lord of gods and men; I come to contemplate thy
beauties.” “I behold the great God in the interior of his tabernacle; in
this day of the judgment of souls.”
The resemblance is so striking between the Hebrew and Egyptian texts
that comment is needless; nevertheless, we would guard against the
supposition that the ideas uttered by the patriarch were borrowed from
Egyptian theology; for, besides that in the words of Job there is the
absence of any myth or secondary personage whatever, it appears certain
that these doctrines, preserved in greater purity in their primitive
form among the Semitic races, may be traced back to the time of the
separation of the families of Sem and Cham, whom they respectively
accompanied into their distant wanderings as their most precious
heritage; but whilst the scribes and doctors of Egypt gradually
enveloped them in an exuberant mythology, the pastoral tribes of Sem
preserved them in the simplicity of the first ages.
And yet all these doctrines, which are proved to be the heritage of
humanity, would have been lost and buried with the Egyptian dead had it
not been for the intervention of Christ. In vain for three centuries did
the loftiest intelligences of Greece weary themselves in studies whose
result was to prove that man was incapable of forming true notions of
God, the soul, and our destinies from the chaos of systems which
enveloped the original revelation when our Lord brought to the human
race the realization of its venerable traditions and the faith of its
earliest days.
Let it not be objected that the doctrines of the Redeemer were more
ancient than his advent and known to man before he taught them upon
earth; for man having always had the same duties to fulfil in regard to
his future destiny, of necessity God did not leave him in ignorance of
them from the time of his origin; and when, later on, they were
forgotten, and the whole world lay in darkness, then arose the Light of
which a faint reflection in the firmament had long heralded the
approach, though clouded most before the dawn.
MILLICENT.
I.
About two years ago we were sitting in our sunny _salon_ in the Avenue
Gabrielle, my mother and I, she reading, I at my harp, when Tomlins, our
English maid, opened the door, her face all alight with suppressed
laughter.
“Well, Tomlins?” said my mother.
“Please, ma’am, it were _such_ a joke!” said Tomlins. “I was a-comin’
past the porter’s lodge when I 'eard a gentleman trying that 'ard to
explain himself, and he 'adn’t 'alf a dozen words o’ French, he 'adn’t;
and the _concierge_ he could make neither 'ead nor tail of what he was
wanting to say; and it _was_ that funny I couldn’t for the life of me
but burst out a-laughin’!”
“That was a shame! You should have gone to the gentleman’s assistance,
instead of laughing at him,” said my mother reprovingly; “he would have
done so had he seen you in a difficulty.”
“I think he was Hamerican, ma’am,” said Tomlins, in a tone which clearly
indicated that she thought this fact an extenuating circumstance of her
misbehavior.
“That makes no difference,” said my mother; “you know enough of French,
such as it is, to have been useful to him, and you should have come
forward. But how do you know he was an American?”
“He wore a white 'at, ma’am, and that’s what Henglish gentlemen don’t
use to, leastways not this time of year. He be the family that has took
the flat down-stairs for the winter.”
“Oh! he is a neighbor, then!” remarked my mother; and, turning to me,
she added: “Perhaps I ought to go down and see if we can be of any use
to them?”
“Indeed, mamma,” I replied hastily, “you will do nothing of the sort! We
have had enough of American acquaintances. These are most likely
enormously rich people, whose neighborhood, if we knew them, would be
nothing but a bore.”
“We have known some very rich ones who were exceedingly pleasant,” urged
my mother.
“Yes, and that is why I have registered a vow never to know another—not
if I can help it, at least,” I replied. “Just as you have grown to care
for them they sail away across the Atlantic, and you never see them
again! No, please, let us have nothing to do with these people
down-stairs! They may be perfectly charming, and, if they are, all the
more reason for keeping clear of them.”
“This is all very selfish and not at all like you,” persisted my mother.
“These people are at our door, strangers, and at the mercy of the
_concierge_, who will fleece them and worry them till they are driven
wild; it is a real act of charity to come to their rescue. I will send
Tomlins down with my card.”
I gave up the contest. I knew that, when there was an act of kindness to
be done, it was no use trying to oppose my mother, especially on such
selfish grounds as my present ones. The card was sent accordingly with a
message, and about ten minutes later up came the whole tribe—Dr.
Segrave, Mrs. Segrave, and Miss Sybil Segrave. They were simply beside
themselves with gratitude. Their delight on discovering that there was a
deliverer at hand, under the same roof with them, was quite affecting.
How they ever found the courage to come and face the situation at all,
with such a lively horror of its consequences, was a matter of great
surprise to us. Miss Segrave spoke French fluently, but this
accomplishment apparently was reserved solely for ornamental purposes;
her disconsolate parents had evidently not thought of pressing it into
such vulgar service as parleying with the _concierge_ and the cook—two
domestic enemies before whom they had already learned to shake in their
shoes.
There was something about the three that smote my heart at once. There
was a freshness, a frankness, a spontaneous trustfulness that it was
difficult to resist. I made a stand for it, nevertheless, and was as
coldly unresponsive to their exuberant warmth of manner as was
consistent with politeness. The doctor, however, took me by storm, and
in one minute and a half I had capitulated.
He was only doctor by courtesy; he had taken every degree that could be
taken, but he had only practised as an amateur, being, as my prophetic
soul had warned me, “enormously rich.” He was about fifty-five years of
age, tall, slim, dark, but he had a quizzical expression of face, a
twinkle in his eye, and a spring in his manner that made you forget he
was not a boy.
Mrs. Segrave was a complete contrast to him. Middle-sized, stout, and
unfashionable in appearance, she had the gentleness and the kindliness
of half a dozen mothers rolled up into one; her voice was low, her
manner simple almost to homeliness, but full of that easy
self-possession that stamped her at once as a lady—a most winning woman.
Sybil—O Sybil! How shall I describe her? She was not a beauty, and yet
she made the effect of being one. There was a brilliancy about her that
is indescribable; it lighted up the room the moment she entered. Pull
her to pieces, and she was nothing; take her as a whole, and she dazzled
you. Her features were irregular, her complexion was nothing particular,
but there was a sparkle, a glow, a grace about her altogether that were
more striking than the loveliest coloring or the most perfect symmetry.
I can see her now as she appeared to me that first day, standing on her
high heels, a little behind the doctor and Mrs. Segrave, her black eyes
glancing right and left like flashes of lightning, her scarlet feather,
set like a flame in her black velvet hat, illuminating her olive skin,
and her gold-brown silk dress glistening like a separate patch of
sunshine in the sunlit room. A most picturesque creature she looked. I
longed to hear her speak. No one was kept long waiting for this in
Sybil’s presence.
“This is the very kindest thing I ever heard of!” said Mrs. Segrave,
holding out her fat little hand to my mother.
“You have saved a family man from suicide, my dear madam!” said the
doctor in the heartiest tone.
“Father!” protested Sybil, “there you are making _such_ a character for
us! Mrs. Wallace will set us down as a family of mad Americans. I assure
you, Mrs. Wallace, we are all perfectly in our right minds, and _very_
grateful to you.”
This sortie broke the ice into splinters. We all laughed, shook hands,
and sat down, and the doctor began forthwith to pour out his troubles.
Their name was legion. He had not been twenty-four hours in the house,
and the _concierge_ had already driven him to the verge of insanity.
“If I could speak to the rascal, I’d be a match for him, and soon make
him know I would stand no nonsense,” he went on to explain. “But that’s
where he has me on the hip, as Shakspere says; he keeps jabbering on,
and I can’t answer the fellow. I know what he’s driving at, I know he’s
robbing me; but what aggravates me most is that he thinks he’s fooling
me.”
My mother poured all the oil she could on these angry waters, and in ten
minutes I could see that she and the doctor were sworn friends.
Sybil listened so far to the conversation with an air of amused
interest, just as I was doing; then abruptly turning from it, as if she
had had enough of the subject, “You are a musician, I see,” she said—my
harp and piano stood open ready for action. “I am perfectly devoted to
music! I will come up and play duets with you, if you let me?” I said I
should be delighted.
“But I like talking ten thousand times better than music,” she went on.
“Music is a way of expressing one’s self with another instrument than
one’s tongue; but one tires of it after a while. One never tires of
talking; _I_ never do.”
I could readily believe this, but assented as to a general proposition.
“Do you read a great deal?” she continued. “I don’t. I find life is too
absorbing, too full; one has no time left for reading. Have you? Human
beings are the books I enjoy most. I am so _intensely_ interested in my
fellow-creatures! I like to study them, to turn them inside out, to
analyze their characters, to exchange views with them. I do so enjoy
discussing life. Don’t you?”
This time she did “pause for a reply,” and I was able to make one. It
was not very satisfactory.
“No, really! You don’t care for discussing life! Well, I _am_ surprised
at that. Dangerous! What a funny idea! But if it were, that would only
make it ten times more interesting to me; there is such an excitement in
danger! If I had been a man I should have been passionately devoted to
tiger-hunting. Now, life is a kind of tiger-hunt, when one comes to
think of it; one can always get some excitement out of it—watching other
people at the hunt, I mean. Don’t you think so? People take such
different views of life. Good gracious! one would never get to the end
of one’s friends’ views, if one began, even on one particular subject.
Take love and marriage, for instance; what _can_ be more intensely
interesting than to discuss marriage with a person who holds views
_diametrically_ opposite to one’s own?”
She rattled on in this way for half an hour: it was very amusing. I felt
very tame beside her, and I fancied she must have found me insufferably
dull and unsympathetic. I found out afterwards that I was mistaken in
this; her estimate had been very flattering. On reflection it need not
have surprised me; there is nothing a great talker likes so much as a
good listener.
We all parted most cordially, with mutual congratulations on the chance
that had brought us together.
“I feel as bold as a lion,” said the doctor as he shook hands with my
mother. “I am ready to brave an army of _concierges_.”
“Oh! keep the peace; keep friends with him at any cost. If you make him
your enemy, he will worry your life out,” was her parting injunction.
“Well,” she said, when the door had closed on our new acquaintances,
“what do you think of them?”
“I think them perfectly odious!” I replied.
“My dear Lilly!”
“Yes. They are just the kind of people we are sure to get fond of, to
make a friendship with, and then away they will fly, and we shall never
hear or see them for the rest of our lives.”
“You are determined to make a tragedy out of it, so I will not
contradict you,” said my mother. “Meantime, I shall enjoy the pleasant
neighborhood, and trust to its not ending so badly. They are here for
six months certain, and if they like it, and the countess likes to renew
their lease, they may remain for six months more. They intend to make
themselves very comfortable, meantime, and to receive a good deal.”
“Humph! They will be sending us invitations to their entertainments, I
suppose,” I said.
“That is very likely.”
“They will have their share in their thanks, as far as I am concerned,”
I said; and I sat down to my harp again. “I have no fancy to go and
figure as a housemaid amongst their magnificent American toilettes.”
“I am vain enough to flatter myself that my child would look like a
gentlewoman, whatever her surroundings might be,” observed my mother
quietly, “and that she does not depend on dress for her individuality.”
What else could I do but jump up and kiss her for this speech, and
declare myself ready to go and sport my white muslin and pink ribbons in
the midst of all the latest wonders of Worth & Company?
It was not many days before I had an opportunity of putting this heroic
resolve into execution.
You may laugh; but it was heroic. I realized this distinctly, even
before the supreme crisis of the eventful evening came. Sybil herself
came up with the card of invitation.
“Mamma was putting it into an envelope to send it by Pierre,” she said;
“but I said that was the veriest nonsense, and that I would take it
myself. Of course you are disengaged? You _must_ be disengaged!”
“Unfortunately, we are,” I replied.
“Why, Lilly Wallace, what _do_ you mean!” screamed Sybil.
“Just this: that I am a trifle proud, and just vain enough not to care
to look a guy wherever I go, and that I am pretty sure to look that at
your house on the 22d. You will all be dressed to kill, as you
say—rigged out in the very newest fashions by the most expensive
dressmakers in Paris—and I shall have to appear like a school-girl in
plain white muslin. I never wear anything else; mamma can’t afford it. I
shall have a new one, and she will give me a handsome sash and fresh
flowers; but that is all. She will appear herself in plain black velvet,
without either old point or diamonds. If you think we will make too
hideous a blot on your splendor, say so honestly, and we will spare you
the disgrace.”
“Lilly, you are the very oddest girl I ever came across in the whole
course of my life!” protested Sybil. “Why, how _can_ you talk so? You
will look perfectly lovely in your sheer white muslin. I only wish we
Americans were not such fools as to spend all our money on our backs as
we do; I can tell you most of us hate it and think it awfully hard to
have to do it. But we can’t help it; we should get so laughed at if we
went to a ball in white muslin that we should _die_ of shame.”
“Well, that’s a pleasant lookout for me!” I remarked.
“Oh! it’s quite a different thing with you,” Sybil declared, and with a
warmth I felt was sincere; indeed, I felt she was sincere all through.
“You are English, and we know perfectly well you have a different
standard in those things.”
“And my mother?” I said. “What sort of effect is she likely to produce
in her plain black velvet?”
“She will look like a queen—that’s all; you know she will, Lilly.”
I did know it; I had known it as long as I could remember. I had been
brought up by my mother in a black velvet dress, and believed, nay,
knew, that she looked as beautiful and queenlike in it as if its soft
and sombre simplicity had been embroidered in gems and beflowered by all
the Worths in Christendom.
I confess, nevertheless—and I do so with shame—that I felt mortified at
her having to present herself in this splendid gathering of
Transatlantic rank and fashion in the attire which had borne her
triumphantly through many a stately Parisian crowd. I was really dazzled
by the splendor of the dresses when we stood in the midst of them. There
was no distinguishing the young from the old, the maid from the matron;
silks, satins, laces, jewels glistened indiscriminately on all. There
was a great deal of beauty amongst the women—there is sure to be in an
American assembly; but the richness of their dresses surpassed anything
I ever beheld. In a French _salon_ you may expect to meet a great deal
of elegance—some dresses that stand out from the common level of taste
and becomingness by their more brilliant hues and elaborate trimmings;
but here all were brilliant, all were elaborate, all were magnificent. I
really did feel an anachronism as I stood there in my innocent,
fluttering muslin, while these superb, many-colored birds-of-paradise
floated and rustled all round me, sweeping the dark carpet with miles of
silk, and satin, and velvet, and lace of every hue in the rainbow. It
was like being shut up in a kaleidoscope; the pattern shifted, flashing
into new forms before my eyes at every turn, until I felt fairly
bewildered by the moving glory. What kind of conversation could go on
under external conditions like these? How were people, women at any
rate, to collect their thoughts to converse on any possible subject
except the one that was under their eyes, brought before them in such
victorious, fascinating guise? If they were not talking of dress, their
own dress, their friend’s dress, dress in general or in particular, they
were most assuredly thinking of it. And small blame to them. I know I,
for one, could think of nothing else.
Nothing could exceed the courtesy of our hosts. They led up guest after
guest to introduce to us; all the magnates were presented to my mother,
all the young ladies to me. They were very gracious, every one of them,
but we did not get on well after the first exchange of commonplaces. How
could we? What interest could a white-muslin creature like poor me have
in the eyes of these sumptuously-attired young ladies? I said simply
nothing to them, I suggested nothing; I was a blank. Sybil never sat
down for a moment. She was untiring in her efforts to make everybody
happy and pleasant and at home. She kept flitting about from room to
room, bringing young gentlemen up to young ladies, seeing that no one
was overlooked, that congenial elements were drawn together, that
antagonistic ones were kept asunder. There probably were some
antagonistic ones, though they were invisible beneath the gay,
harmonious surface—that pale, stately-looking girl, for instance, whom I
had noticed sitting apart beside a large console that separated her from
the gaudy group standing close by. I knew she was a great friend of
Sybil’s, because I had seen her photograph in a dainty gilt frame in the
place of honor on her writing-table. I saw Sybil making a dart to her
side every now and then, and interchanging a few hurried words in a tone
of close confidence; and yet she took no pains to bring her forward or
to introduce people to her. There was something peculiar about the
girl’s air and countenance that drew my attention and made me wish to
speak to her. I seized the first opportunity to whisper this wish to
Sybil.
“The pale girl in the corner? Whoever do you mean? Oh! Millicent Gray.
Yes, by and by. I don’t think you would care much to talk to her; I mean
I don’t think you and she would hit it off very well,” said Sybil in a
hesitating way; and somehow it was borne upon me that she thought
exactly the contrary; that we should hit it off too well, and that she
preferred, for reasons of her own, not to bring us together. I there and
then resolved that I would make Millicent Gray’s acquaintance before I
left the room—or die.
Did Sybil see this in my face, I wonder? She had a way of flashing a
look at you with her round black eyes that suggested a power of reading
you through and through which was sometimes uncomfortable. I felt it so
now, and, trying to assume an air of supreme indifference, I observed,
looking in another direction:
“Then never mind. I only fancied talking to her because no one else has
been doing so; she looked lonely.”
Sybil’s rose-colored skirts floated away in the direction of Millicent
Gray, and for a moment I half-expected she was going to bring her up to
me. I was mistaken; she bent over her friend, and began talking in
animated tones, gesticulating with her fan in an excited manner.
Millicent listened apparently with more surprise than approval; there
was a faint expression of sarcastic resentment on her pale, thoughtful
face, and an imperceptible movement of her shoulders seemed to shrug
away some remark of Sybil’s with smiling dissent; as she did so, her
eyes turned towards me and our glances met. There was a mute recognition
in them which we both felt. I blushed, feeling rather guilty for
watching her so closely; she smiled, and, in spite of myself, I obeyed a
law of nature and smiled too. The rooms were now so full that it was
difficult to move about; there was small chance of the crowd swaying me
across towards Millicent, and she sat on, surveying the scene from her
nook with a face that was more expressive of quiet observation than
enjoyment. She was dressed in white silk, with waves of tulle flowing
over it, but without further ornament—neither ribbons nor flowers; she
wore one large crimson rose in her hair, a long _trainée_ of leaves
dropping down from it and entangling a rich curl of her dark hair. The
relative simplicity of the dress singled her out as a very remote cousin
to my white muslin, and I felt more than ever convinced we should prove
sympathetic to each other. How was I to make good my vow to speak to her
or die? The chances were that I should die, for just at this moment
Sybil bore down on me from the rear, and took me in tow through the
billows of silks and lace into her own boudoir, which was two rooms off
from the central _salon_ where my pensive heroine abided.
“Are you having a good time of it, Lilly?” she inquired, darting her
bright black eyes through me, when we came to a little breathing space.
“What do you think of our American society? Are our women as handsome as
yours? Are our young men as agreeable?”
“Four questions in one breath!” I cried, pretending to gasp. “Let me
answer the first—the only one I can meet on such short notice: I am
having a capital time of it. You are the best hosts I ever saw, all
three of you. But, Sybil, do introduce me to that girl in white silk.”
“No, I won’t,” said Sybil. “You must want some refreshment. I don’t
believe you’ve taken so much as an ice; I’ve seen you let the trays pass
a dozen times untouched. Come into the supper-room and have something.
Stay,” and she bent close to me and went on in a whisper: “I will make
Mr. Halsted take you in. You see that young man with the fuchsia in his
buttonhole? He is perfectly charming. I have had such a delightful talk
with him just now!”
“About what?”
“Good gracious! About everything.”
“You have been discussing life with him?”
“Precisely.”
“And what has come of it? Has he proposed, or is he only hovering on the
brink, poor wretch?”
“How absurd you are, Lilly, with your English ideas!” cried Sybil, still
in a _sotto voce_, although the music drowned everybody’s voice. “You
won’t understand that one may discuss life with a young man without
meaning any harm!”
“Harm? To his heart, do you mean?”
“Or to one’s own.”
“Have you got one, Sybil?” I asked quite seriously.
“Yes, I have, and a _very_ sensitive one too, let me tell you,” she said
in her vehemently emphatic way. “Mr. Halsted, will you take my friend to
have some refreshment? Mr. Halsted—Miss Wallace.”
And off I went with this perfectly charming young man.
The first person I met in the supper-room was my mother, whom the doctor
had just taken in and was plying with some delicious nectar of an
American drink.
“My dear, I was beginning to wonder what had become of you,” she said.
“It is growing rather late, is it not?”
The doctor protested, but we made good the opportunity as soon as his
hospitable back was turned, and disappeared from the brilliant scene.
And Millicent Gray? I was of course in honor bound to die, as I had not
spoken to her; but I thought it better to live, and try and make good my
resolution in some other way. Chance favored me unexpectedly. A few days
after the magnificent reception on the first floor I went down to
discuss life quietly with Sybil for half an hour, when the servant said
she had been obliged to run out for a few minutes to her aunt’s, next
door, but that she would be back presently, and had begged I would go in
and wait for her.
I had not been many minutes in the _salon_ when the doctor came in. He
had been “down town” to Galignani’s, and had gleaned all the news that
was abroad, what steamers were signalled, which had come in, which had
sailed, and who had come in by the last arrival. The doctor was a
terrible flirt. He sat down on the sofa beside me, and began to repeat
verses from Tommy Moore about my “bright eyes that were his heart’s
undoing,” and I know not what besides. Mrs. Segrave heard us laughing,
and came in to see what it was all about.
“Ah! my dear,” she said, “he whispered those very same verses to me
five-and-twenty years ago. Don’t believe him; he’s a gay deceiver.
Charles dear, did you ask Mrs. Wallace what we were going to do about
this claim the _concierge_ is making of twenty francs a month extra for
bringing up our letters?”
“No, I did not,” said the doctor. “In fact, I had not time yet; but I
dare say Miss Lilly can tell us just as well!”
“Oh! if it’s anything about the _concierge_ you had much better appeal
to mamma,” I said to Mrs. Segrave. “She is at home now, and if you go up
you will find her alone.”
“I see how it is: you want to get me out of the way!” said Mrs. Segrave.
“You want to hear what more Charles has to say about your bright eyes.
Well, well, I’ll go; I’ll not be a spoil-sport.”
She was going to open the door when Pierre opened it, and in
walked—Millicent Gray. After the usual greetings Mrs. Segrave said,
turning to me:
“You know Sybil’s friend, Miss Gray, of course? No! I was sure you had
met. Then let me introduce you—”
As soon as we had got “well into conversation,” the doctor proposed that
he and Mrs. Segrave should leave us young ladies together, and go up to
consult my mother about this new imposition of the _concierge_.
When Millicent and I found ourselves alone there was an awkward pause
for a moment; we felt as conscious as a pair of lovers thrown together
for the first time. At last we looked at each other and began to laugh.
“I am so pleased to meet you,” I said.
“Not so much pleased as I am,” she replied. “I have been entreating
Sybil to make me acquainted with you, and she would not. We came near
quarrelling over you the other evening.”
“So did she and I! What could have been her motive?” I said.
“Did she not tell you?”
“No.”
“And you don’t guess?”
“No! Pray tell me, if it is not a secret,” I said.
“Oh! no, it’s no secret,” replied Millicent, laughing. “You are a
Catholic. She was afraid to let me know you.”
“Lest I should contaminate you!”
“Lest you should convert me.”
I was silent from sheer surprise.
“You see what a dangerous person she thinks you!” said Millicent,
laughing.
“I don’t see why she should,” I replied, rather nettled. “I never tried
to convert her.”
“Perhaps because you felt it was a hopeless case,” said Millicent, who
could not apparently see the thing in a serious light; for she was
laughing still, and looked altogether highly amused.
“I don’t know whether I felt about it one way or the other,” I said. “I
am utterly bewildered that Sybil should have laid hold of the idea of my
being so dangerous in that line; from the moment I discovered what her
notions on religion were I avoided even touching on the subject directly
or indirectly, and yet she looks upon me as a lion or a fox going about
and seeking whom I may devour!”
“No, no; you must not think that,” protested Millicent. “She looks upon
you as dangerous, but in quite another sense from proselytizing. She
suspects me—very unjustly, I assure you—of having what she calls Roman
Catholic proclivities; and when I expressed a wish to know you—she raves
about you in the most enthusiastic way—she said nothing would induce her
to make us acquainted; that you were just the kind of person to whisk me
into the Catholic Church before I knew where I was.”
There was something at once so absurd and so thoroughly characteristic
of Sybil in this remark that, in spite of myself, I burst out laughing.
“I promise solemnly,” I said, “that I will not whisk you in without
giving you due warning, and, moreover, having your full and free consent
to the operation beforehand.”
“Thank you. That is generous,” said Millicent; “and to prove my sense of
it I solemnly promise not to whisk you into my church without having
your full and free consent beforehand.”
“Yes, by the bye,” I said, “it never seems to have occurred to Sybil
that the danger might be mutual; that I ran a risk as well as you by our
becoming acquainted?”
Millicent was hesitating in her answer when we heard a loud ring at the
door, and in an instant Sybil burst into the room. She stood for an
instant looking at us, and then cried out in her ringing tones:
“Well, is it all over with you? Has she done it?”
“Done what?” I said. “Miss Gray has not attempted to do anything except
to make herself exceedingly agreeable.”
Sybil laughed merrily.
“I call that exceedingly smart—quite worthy of a Yankee!” she cried. “By
the way, it puts the thing in a new light. Milly, turn on the guns and
try and convert _her_.” And she pointed to me with her chinchilla muff.
“That _would_ be a feather in one’s cap! Good gracious!”
“Then why should you not try for it yourself?” I inquired. “Sybil, I am
inclined to be very angry with you for making me such a reputation. You
know perfectly well I have never had a word of controversy with you
since we have known each other; never done the least thing to try and
make a Catholic of you. You know I have not!”
“I know nothing of the sort,” protested Sybil. “I know this: that you
and your mother are the very most dangerous pair of Catholics I have
ever met—just the kind of Catholics to knock one’s prejudices on the
head with one blow.” And she banged the table with her pretty little
muff. “You never preach, either of you, or talk controversy, or do any
mortal thing to put one on one’s guard; but you do every conceivable
thing to make one fall in love with your religion: you are the very milk
of human kindness, you never speak ill of any one, you are always ready
to help people, you spend your time going after the poor, nursing the
sick, and heaven knows what besides; for you are up at cock-crow, and
out by candlelight saying your prayers, when we are fast asleep in our
beds. Milly Gray, now mark my words”—and she faced round and confronted
Millicent with uplifted muff, in a Sibylline attitude of warning—“mark
my words: this is none of my doing, and whatever comes of it is not to
be laid at my door.”
“Sybil, I promise that, whatever catastrophe the future of this day may
have in store, it shall not be visited on you,” said Millicent. “You
have warned me of my peril, and, you know, he who is forewarned is
forearmed. Tell me, now, what have you done with Mr. Halsted?”
“Done with him? What did you want me to do with him?”
“Either kill him or cure him.”
“I should kill him, if I could,” said Sybil. “I never knew so perverse a
man in the _whole course of my life_.”
She dragged out the last words with an emphasis that might have led one
to suppose the course of her life embraced a period of at least
ninety-nine years.
“What is he perverse about?” inquired her friend.
“He won’t change his politics, he won’t go back to the States, and he
won’t marry the girl he ought to marry.”
She enumerated these grievances with a gusto of indignation that made us
scream with laughter.
“I thought his politics were on the right side—that is, on your side,”
said Millicent when she had recovered her gravity.
“That’s the wrong side,” said Sybil; “_her_ politics are strongly
Democratic, and there is not the ghost of a chance for him, unless he
turns Democrat too.”
“But if he does not want a chance?” I ventured to put in.
“But he ought; I want him to want it. She’s the very sweetest girl in
the whole of the United States; and her father is the dearest old man,
and would give her a splendid fortune if Mr. Halsted would marry her.
And everybody believed he would; only old Nick put it into his head to
come out to Europe, and he has gone and fallen in love with another
girl!”
“Who won’t marry him?” suggested Milly.
“_Cer_tainly not!” declared Sybil.
At this juncture Dr. and Mrs. Segrave came in, bringing my mother with
them. She was dressed for me to go out with her, so I had to run off to
equip myself, having first cordially invited Millicent Gray to come and
see me as soon as possible.
She came the next day, and on a strange errand, considering the warnings
of Sybil.
“I am anxious to be of some use to the poor,” she said, after we had
talked some little time, “and I don’t know how to go about it here. I
suppose there are no Protestants to visit, or at least they must be very
few; would there be any objection to my visiting Catholics?”
“Not the slightest,” I replied, “unless you intend to whisk them into
the Protestant Church before they know where they are; in that case I
don’t think M. le Curé would care to enlist your services.”
“I have no sinister designs of that sort, I assure you,” said Millicent;
“and to prove it, I want you to let me go with you on your rounds. I
will make myself useful in any way you appoint, and I will do exactly as
you tell me—as far as I know how, that is.”
I said, of course, that I should be delighted to have her as a
companion, and that we should begin our partnership to-morrow; but my
mother came in as we were settling about the hour we were to meet, and
unexpectedly put a spoke in the wheel.
“Does Mrs. Gray approve of this arrangement, my dear?” she inquired.
“I have not mentioned it to her,” replied Millicent, her American ideas
of independence evidently a little shocked by the question; “but she is
sure to approve of it when I do. Is there any reason why she should
not?”
“There may be. You are a Protestant, and this scheme of visiting the
poor with my daughter must bring you in contact with Catholics of
various classes—the poor, the Sisters of Charity, perhaps incidentally
with M. le Curé and other priests. Before you embark on these perils I
should prefer that your mother’s consent was secured. We English mothers
have Old-World prejudices about parental authority, you perceive,” added
mamma, smiling; “you will not mind humoring mine in this case.”
Millicent declared her perfect readiness to do so. She looked like one
who would gladly humor everybody’s wishes. I was already in love with
her. The charm which attracted me that night amidst the gay crowd had
not fled “like the talisman’s glittering glory” on a nearer approach. I
was at a loss to see where the point of mutual attraction lay between
her and Sybil; but Sybil was one of those creatures who spirited away
your sympathies before you had time to challenge the thief or lay a
protecting hand upon your treasure. She was a siren, who drew you to her
cave and did not devour you. Millicent was a complete contrast to her in
appearance as well as in character; her eyes were deep blue, and her
hair, which was very dark, whitened her fair complexion to the
transparency of alabaster, and gave a stronger individuality to her
delicate features than blond hair, which seemed their natural
birthright, could have lent them. She was very tall, and her small,
beautifully-formed hands and feet put the seal on the character of
singular refinement which pervaded her whole exterior.
My mother was greatly taken with her. “You have committed yourself more
seriously in this case, it strikes me,” she remarked when Millicent had
taken leave.
“They are settled in Paris permanently,” I replied; “I asked her that at
once. I should not have embarked on an intimacy with her, if they had
been only birds of passage.”
Mrs. Gray made no difficulty about Millicent’s joining me in my visits
to the poor; she observed, indeed—very naturally, I thought—that “Mrs.
Wallace ran just the same risk in allowing her daughter to associate
with Millicent.” Millicent returned next morning quite jubilant with
this message, and we set out on our first walk together. We agreed that
we were not to improve this or any future opportunity to convert each
other. Was I quite sincere when I entered on this agreement? Looking
back on it, I think I can honestly say I was. I meant that I would not
discuss religion or say anything to prejudice Millicent against her own;
that I would rigidly avoid controversy; and in all this I kept my word.
But I did not disguise from myself that I had a great longing to see her
a Catholic, and that I should do my best in another way to bring about
this result. For this purpose I had her name put down at Notre Dame des
Victoires for prayers. I asked several of my friends to pray for the
same intention, and I made a point of praying every day for it myself. I
took her to see Sœur Lucie, a Sister of Charity I was very fond of, and
I interested her in the same object. I counted a good deal, too, on the
impression which the faith of the poor was likely to make on her.
I was just then much occupied with a poor woman named Mme. Martin, who
was dying, who had been dying these five years of a very painful malady.
I think she was the first person I took Millicent to see. She lived in a
room on the sixth floor—that is, in the attic—of a house where her
mother was _concierge_. She had been better educated than the generality
of her class, having been brought up as a teacher of singing. This
pursuit had subsequently thrown her into the society of persons much
above her in position, and the contact had contributed still more to
educate and refine her. She had consequently acquired something of the
varnish of a lady, and, without being really educated, she had gained
that increased capacity for suffering which even imperfect education
gives. Her illness had thrown her back into her original position and
surroundings, and these were perfect misery to her. She could not bear
the society of the servants—her constant one now, owing to that horrible
French system of stowing away the servants of every flat in the same
house into pigeon-holes under the roof, old and young, men and women,
innocent, honest girls and vicious old veterans in dishonesty, all
crammed higgledy-piggledy in a proximity full of dangers to both soul
and body. This population of the pigeon-holes was insupportable to Mme.
Martin; she had nothing in common with them nor they with her. They
pitied her—for the French are always kind-hearted—but they resented her
evident superiority, and often showed their pity in a way that hurt more
than it soothed. She writhed under the compassion of these coarse,
vulgar-minded men and women, whose conversation turned chiefly on the
domestic concerns of their masters, how they cheated them, the tricks
they practised on them.
They came to see, after a while, that she did not care for their
society, and they ceased to inflict it on her, and Mme. Martin came
gradually to be as isolated as if she had been living in a desert. She
was glad of it in one way. We most of us prefer solitude to
unsympathetic company; we had rather be left alone than intruded on by
those loud voices and heavy steps that jar so painfully on the nervous
atmosphere of a sick-room; but there were times when her loneliness
weighed terribly on her, when she longed for any hand that would but
raise her paralyzed limbs from a posture that had grown agonizing from
prolonged immobility, that would give her the drink that was just beyond
the reach of her arm. Her mother could come to her but very seldom; she
dared not absent herself during the busy portion of the day from her
lodge downstairs. Sœur Lucie was very kind, and came as often as she
could; it was she who had taken me to her and begged me to look after
her. I was the better able to do so that Mme. Martin lived only five
minutes’ walk from our house. I don’t think I ever came in contact with
a sufferer who edified me more than this poor woman. It was not that she
was so wonderfully pious, or heroic, or resigned; she was all three by
turns, but none constantly. Perhaps it was this very fluctuation that
made one realize so vividly the supernaturalness of the struggle she was
carrying on. You saw the power of the sacraments, the action of grace
working on her soul, almost as visibly as that of medicine on the body.
She was a woman of very strong passions, acute sensibilities, and ardent
imagination; you can fancy what it was to such a nature to be immured in
a room about twelve feet long by eight, with a roof slanting to the
floor at one side, and a window in the slant, incapable of moving in her
bed without help, dependent on charity for even that bed and for the
bread she ate. For the first years of her illness this misery was so
unendurable, she told me, that she thought it would have driven her mad,
and the terror of this prospect was the most unbearable thing of all.
She had not the consolations of religion then. Her artist life, with its
alluring perils, its wild companions, its passionate aspirations, had
led her away from the realities of the faith and gathered a mist before
her eyes. But she fell ill, and then the mist began to clear away. The
Sisters of Charity found her out, and the old sacred memories of
childhood were awakened; her First Communion, with its sweet, pure joys,
its lovely, solemn pageant, the bright companionship of kindred hearts
starting with the fervent promise to the divine Guest whose first coming
was the grand event, the supreme crisis of their little lives, the goal
to which, thus far, their lives had tended—all this came back like a
well-remembered dream at the sight of the gray habit and the white
cornette. It was the old, old story: the prodigal had wandered into a
strange country, and had grown homesick and turned back, and the Father
had met him half way on the road. She had not fed upon the husks of
swine, poor Mme. Martin; only “forgotten to eat her bread,” and hunger
had driven her home. She spoke to me of her conversion in terms of such
deep humility and compunction that I might have fancied her the most
appalling sinner who had ever lived, if Sœur Lucie had not told me the
exact history of it.
But it was not all sunshine and smooth waters even after this blessed
welcome home. There were dreadful battles to be fought yet. She fought
bravely, but not always with a smiling face and a glad heart. Oh! no.
There were days, of such terrific anguish, such utter, black despair,
that it used to seem to me sometimes that her faith _must_ fail this
time, that nothing short of a miracle could save her now. And nothing
else did. What greater miracle is there than the triumph of God’s grace
over our corrupt and fallen nature, the victory of sacraments over the
devil that holds our soul? It was a greater wonder to me every time I
witnessed it in Mme. Martin. This presence of an evil spirit in her—a
real though invisible presence of tremendous, almost omnipotent
power—was so palpable that I used to feel something like the kind of
terror one would feel near a person possessed. I always felt perfectly
helpless while the crisis lasted, and would sit there and listen dumbly
while she uttered her bitter, fierce words, not raving in loud, wild
accents, but with a sort of hard, suppressed anger, a deep-down
rebellion against the cruel, all-powerful will that was torturing her.
There was no use arguing or preaching, or trying to make her see the
sinfulness and the stupidity of it all; one could do nothing but bear
with it, praying silently to God to come to her, and lay his finger on
the wounded soul, and speak with his voice, and bid the winds be still.
One thing struck me with peculiar significance: no matter how fiercely
rebellious she was towards God, she could always turn with a softened
glance towards his Blessed Mother. There was an old print of the _Mater
Dolorosa_ on the wall over her bed, and it was the strangest thing to
see the poor sufferer lift her dark, vindictive eyes to it with a
tender, compassionate, entreating glance, while words of almost savage
petulance against the Son were still hot on her lips. Once I remember
her bursting into tears as she turned towards it in one of these sudden
appeals. The fiend was exorcised for that day. I sat beside her till she
had cried herself to sleep like a tired, naughty child.
These terrible days were invariably followed by periods of compunction,
humble self-reproach, and love so fervent and consoling that it used to
seem to me they could never pass away, that the darkness could never
return, that this time the rescue was complete and irrevocable. The
humility with which she would beg my pardon for the scandal she had
given me, the way she would upbraid herself for her base ingratitude to
our Blessed Lord, were more touching than I can describe. She would look
up fondly towards the _Mater Dolorosa_ with such an expression of
tenderness on her haggard, sunken face, and say, as if apostrophizing
it: “Ah! I knew she would gain the victory. I knew she would not desert
me! _Pauvre mère! Elle a tant souffert!_”
The first day that I took Millicent Gray to see her she was in one of
these blessed, penitential moods. It had lasted through several
days—days of fearful suffering, and nights of sleepless weariness. She
uttered an exclamation of joyous welcome when I appeared.
“_Que le bon Dieu est bon!_ I knew he would not keep me waiting much
longer. My little stock of patience was just coming to an end!” And she
smiled good-humoredly.
“What is it you want?” I inquired.
“I was dying with thirst,” she said, “and I managed to draw this cup to
me by hooking my finger in the handle, but I was in such a hurry to
drink it that it slipped from me, and I am all wet and half-perished!”
And, indeed, she was trembling with cold; her hands were like ice and
her teeth chattered. I hastened to lift her up on her pillows and repair
the accident, Millicent helping very dexterously. I had prepared Mme.
Martin for her visit, so merely introduced her as a friend of mine, who
would be glad to come and see her sometimes, if she allowed it.
When we had settled her in some degree of comfort, Millicent and I sat
down and began to converse. Mme. Martin was in too great pain to join in
the conversation, except by throwing in a word now and then to show she
was following it, but one could see she was interested in what we were
saying. There was an unusual brightness and peace about her, in the
expression of her face and the tone of her voice; I rejoiced that
Millicent should see it, for I knew it could not fail to impress her.
“Was last night as bad as the preceding ones?” I said when we were going
away.
“Yes; it was very bad. I did not get a moment’s rest till it was
daylight,” she said; and she smiled quite serenely.
“My poor friend! How cruelly tried you are!” I could not help
exclaiming. “May God give you courage!”
“He does! he does!” she cried fervently. “It is a miracle how good he is
to me—a miracle.”
“We must ask him for another one, that your courage may be rewarded by a
cure,” said Millicent kindly.
“Oh! no. Don’t ask for that! I don’t want it!” said Mme. Martin quickly,
as if she were frightened the miracle was going to be wrought on the
spot. “I don’t want to be cured, only to be sustained, and to go on
suffering a long time—as long, that is, as He likes—that I may prove I
am not ungrateful; that I love him a little bit after all he has done
for me! All he has done for me!” There was a look almost of ecstasy on
her features as she said this, her face slightly upturned, but her eyes
closed as if she were looking within her, into that sanctuary of her
soul where God was present. I felt, rather than saw, Millicent turn a
sudden, startled glance towards me.
“That is the most precious and most beautiful of all miracles,” I said
presently, “that our hard hearts should be softened by the cross, and
that we should come to love it for His sake; is it not?”
“Yes,” she replied; “it is the one I have most prayed for. It is to her
I owe it.” And she turned to the _Mater Dolorosa_. “In my worst moments
I always felt for her; that my cross was nothing compared to
hers—nothing! _Pauvre mère!_”
When we were out of earshot, on the landing about half way down the
narrow stair, Millicent stopped, and, looking round at me, said: “Her
brain has begun to be affected; she is a little mad, poor creature, is
she not?”
“Yes,” I replied, “she is; she has got what we call the madness of the
cross. Many of our saints have died of it: _la folie de la croix_.”
Millicent stared at me for a moment with an expression that suggested
some vague alarm as to my own sanity, but she made no further remark
until we had got out into the street.
“What did she mean by saying it was the Virgin Mary that worked the
miracle for her?” she then asked.
“She meant that the Mother of Sorrows had prayed for her and obtained a
great grace for her.”
“But God would have given it to her, if she had asked him, without going
to any creature for it, would he not?” answered Millicent.
“Perhaps; but he would be more willing to grant it to a creature who was
sinless and his Mother, and who had stood by the side of his cross, than
to a poor weak, rebellious creature who had sinned a thousand times and
more. Does it not seem likely?”
“Oh! putting it in that way,” said Millicent dubiously. “But he is God,
our Saviour; he must love us more than she does. He died for us; the
Virgin Mary did not die for us?”
“Well, really, Millicent—almost,” I said, and, stopping, I looked her
straight in the face. “Fancy a mother that loved her son, her only son,
as Mary must have loved him, standing by while he was being executed—I
don’t say scourged, and beaten, and hammered with nails to a gibbet,
murdered piecemeal with the rage of devils let loose from hell, but
simply hanged, or even beheaded; would it not be worse to her than any
death that ever a mother died? And then fancy her blessing the men that
murdered him, praying for them, adopting them! And you can say the
Mother of God did not die for us?”
Millicent made no answer, but walked on in silence. We said no more
until we got to my door, and then I asked if she would not come up and
rest a while.
“No, I prefer to go home, thank you,” she said, putting out her hand.
She held mine for a moment, as if she were going to say something; but
she did not, and we parted silently.
She seemed strangely moved.
II.
I did not see Millicent until the following Sunday, when she came to ask
me if I would go for a walk in the afternoon.
Sybil happened to be there when she came in.
“What hour do you go to church, Milly—the morning or the afternoon?”
asked Sybil. I saw the drift of the question: she suspected Millicent
had been to church with us.
“I generally go in the morning; mamma likes it best,” replied Millicent.
“She was not well this morning, so we are going to late service. And
you?”
“Me? I don’t go to late or early. I stay at home and think it over,”
said Sybil.
“Think what over?” I asked. “The service?”
“Services in general, religion in its cause and effect—life altogether,
in fact,” summed up Sybil. “Will you two let me join you in your walk
this afternoon, or shall I be in the way?” We both protested we should
be delighted to have her; and at four o’clock we were assembled
down-stairs in her boudoir, ready to start, when a loud ring sounded at
the door.
“Good gracious!” screamed Sybil; and she dropped into a chair, the
picture of astonishment and vexation. “I’ll bet any mortal thing you
like that that is Mr. Halsted! Was there ever anything so provoking! I
so wanted to have a walk with you!”
“Why need his coming prevent you?” I said. “The doctor and Mrs. Segrave
are at home, are they not?”
“Why, Lilly, how can you talk so!” she exclaimed. “What does that matter
to Mr. Halsted? He comes to see me!”
“Then you throw us overboard?” I said. “That’s complimentary. What do
you say, Millicent?”
Millicent laughed. She was not sorry at heart, I could see, that we were
to be left to a _tête-à-tête_. Perhaps Sybil saw it, too, for she said,
starting up suddenly:
“I won’t throw you overboard. Let him call again. Let him come with us,
if he likes. Have you two any objection?”
Millicent said she had none. I, however, demurred.
“You will think it absurdly priggish,” I said, “but you know I am
half-French—at least, I live amongst the French, so I can’t afford to
knock against their _hautes convenances_; and if I were seen walking
with a gentleman without my mother or some married chaperon, it would
make quite a _scandale_.”
“How inconceivably ridiculous!” cried Sybil, staring at me with round,
shining eyes. “What a grand privilege it is to be a free-born American
woman! I wouldn’t be a slave like you—no, not for the empire of France,
Lilly!”
Pierre came to the door to announce Mr. Halsted’s arrival, and we all
sallied into the drawing-room. Sybil burst out into regrets at having to
go out, and then, pointing a finger of scorn at me, “Only fancy!” she
cried—“you’ll hardly believe it, but it’s a fact—Miss Wallace says she
dare not come out for a walk with you without her mother, lest it should
make a scandal in the town! Did you ever hear anything so
pre_pos_terously absurd, Mr. Halsted?” I crimsoned to the roots of my
hair, and longed to choke Sybil on the spot. Happily, gentlemen being
the same in all countries, Mr. Halsted saw my embarrassment and turned
it off with easy good breeding.
“Miss Wallace has been brought up in France,” he said. “It is quite
natural she should have adopted the notions and manners of the country;
but it’s rather hard on us poor fellows. We are cut off from our most
cherished prerogatives here in this centre of civilization. May I call
this evening? You promised to teach me the Polish mazurka?”
Sybil hesitated. There was to be a dinner-party that evening, so the
dancing lesson could hardly take place, and I knew he wanted to figure
in the mazurka at a Polish house the next night.
“I can’t this evening,” she said musingly; then, as if moved by a sudden
inspiration, she flung down her muff. “I see I must victimize myself for
my country’s sake, and give up my walk to save you from making an
exhibition of yourself to-morrow before the assembled nations. You two
go and take your walk alone.”
Mr. Halsted entered a feeble protest, which Sybil did not even so much
as notice, but proceeded to take off her bonnet and prepare for the
dancing lesson.
We were not long on the road together when Millicent opened the subject
of religion; Sybil’s idea of “thinking it over” being the ostensible
pretext.
“I wonder you don’t talk to her about it,” she said; “you might do a
good work in that direction, if you tried.”
“By making a Catholic of Sybil?”
“By making a Christian of her.”
“Poor Sybil! Is she as bad as that?” I said, laughing. “She is more in
your line than mine, at any rate. She hates popery like fire; I would as
soon try to convert the Great Mogul.”
“You are a great puzzle to me, do you know,” said Millicent, looking at
me with a glance of searching curiosity. “Catholics as a rule are such
ardent proselytizers, and you seem to have no taste in that direction at
all.”
“Have you known a great many Catholics before me?” I asked.
“You are the first I may say I have ever known.”
“Then how can you answer for what we are as a rule?”
“I have always understood it,” she replied.
“You have understood, or rather misunderstood, many things about us,” I
remarked. “Is Mr. Halsted in love with Sybil, do you think?”
“Mr. Halsted is _nothing_ of the kind. Nice conversation for the Sunday
afternoon!” said a sharp, bright voice, and Millicent and I leaped half
a mile asunder as Sybil popped her scarlet feather in between us.
“I made sure you would be discussing theology,” she cried, “instead of
which I find you discussing me!”
“And why are not you discussing the mazurka with Mr. Halsted?” demanded
Millicent and I together.
“Because I thought better of it,” was Sybil’s terse explanation, nor
could we extract any other from her.
“What were you talking about before you began about Mr. Halsted and me?”
she inquired, flashing her lightning glances from one to another.
“We were talking about you and the Great Mogul,” I replied, “and I was
considering which of you I should first set about converting.”
“You had better begin with him,” said Sybil. “Have you done for Milly
already?”
“Not—quite—” I said.
“I should like to have it out with you once for all, Lilly,” she said,
“and just hear from beginning to end what your religious views are, and
how far exactly they differ from mine.”
“You have views on religion, then?” I said in a tone of surprise.
“Certainly I have, Lilly Wallace,” retorted Sybil with indignant
emphasis, “and I should like very much to compare them with yours.”
“That would be difficult,” I replied, “for I have no views.”
“What!”
“Not the ghost of one,” I repeated. “We Catholics never have; we listen
to the church and accept all she teaches. There is not such a thing
amongst us as a view; we would not know what to do with one.”
“Good gracious! That reasonable beings should let themselves be so
gul—so—that you should—in fact, it’s beyond belief!”
“No, that’s just what it is not beyond; it is our belief that binds our
reason and puts views out of the question,” I said. “We have our faith
propounded to us by the church, and the church is the infallible witness
of the truth; we have not to make out a creed for ourselves, as you
Protestants have.”
“Then why did God give us brains, if we are not to make use of them?”
demanded Sybil. “I would not hand over my conscience to any man or any
body of men living; I would rather take my Bible and make out the right
and the wrong of it myself.”
“Suppose you make it out all wrong—for you admit there is a right and a
wrong to it—what then?” I said.
“It does not much matter, so long as our intention is good. God Almighty
does not expect us to be infallible.”
“Certainly not!” I replied; “that is precisely why he made his church
infallible, to save us from our own fallibility and teach us what to
believe and what not to believe. If I believe black and you believe
white, we can’t both of us be right; one or other must be in error, and
God, who is Truth itself, can’t approve equally truth and error?”
“I tell you what it is, Milly,” said Sybil, turning round sharply on
Millicent, who was walking on the other side of her, “it is _very_ bad
for you to be discussing theology with Lilly Wallace in this way. Mind
what I tell you, no good will come of it!”
“Why, I’ve not opened my lips!” protested silent Milly. “It is you who
are discussing it; it was you began it!”
“If I had not, you would,” retorted Sybil; “you are perfectly _crazed_
on religious discussion. I see how it is going to end!”
I burst out laughing. Millicent, however, looked amazed.
“I will tell you what _I_ see,” I said: “that you had much better have
stayed at home and discussed life with Mr. Halsted than come out here to
bully us. It would be serving you right if I made a papist of you on the
spot.”
Sybil saw that Millicent was vexed, and, adroitly dropping the subject,
burst out into vehement denunciation of French conventionalities. If it
had been any other country in the universe, Mr. Halsted might have come
out for a walk with us, and we should have had an excellent time of it;
for he was the very best company she knew. We continued, nevertheless,
despite his absence, to enjoy a very pleasant walk, and to steer clear
of burning subjects the rest of the way. The incident, however, left its
mark on us all three, and from that day forth there was an imperceptible
but a very decided change in Millicent’s “views.” As to Sybil’s, I never
got a glimpse of them, so it may not be rash judgment to express a doubt
whether she had any.
I kept to my promise of avoiding controversy with Millicent, and she,
seeing my reluctance to gratify her curiosity on this point, gave up
trying to overcome it. We talked very freely on religious customs and
institutions, but whenever she demanded my reasons for believing this or
that I evaded controversy by that inexorable Catholic answer so
aggravating to a Protestant—“The church teaches it.”
The winter passed, and the spring, and my mother and I were preparing to
leave Paris to spend the month of June in London. One of my greatest
difficulties in going away was how poor Mme. Martin was to get on in my
absence. Millicent had come with me once a week to visit her. She would
continue to do this when I was gone, I had no doubt; but the poor soul
was in a state that required a visit every day, and I hardly dare ask or
expect that Millicent would break from her mother and her own
occupations regularly every day for this purpose, or that Mrs. Gray
would allow it. I told her of my trouble, and the next morning she ran
in looking quite radiant.
“Mamma says she will allow me to go every morning from eleven to twelve
and sit with Mme. Martin and do all she wants; is it not good of her!”
she exclaimed, embracing me.
“It is!” I cried, “and very good of you, dear Milly. You can’t think
what a relief it is to my mind! I was miserable at the thought of
leaving her without some one to take my place of a morning; and she is
so fond of you, poor soul! She is so touched by your charity—above all
in a heretic!” I added, laughing.
“Charity covereth a multitude of sins,” said Millicent. “I suppose the
sin of heresy is included?”
It was quite true: Mme. Martin was wonderfully taken with her. She
admired her grace, the quiet distinction of her manner, the subdued
elegance of her dress—a Frenchwoman has an eye for _la toilette_ so long
as the breath of life is in her—and most of all the gentle kindness with
which Millicent performed the little services of the sick-room. It was
quite beyond her comprehension that so much sweetness and goodness
should exist in anybody who was not a Catholic; it was most amusing to
see her _naïf_ wonder at this phenomenon, and her surprise that I did
not abolish it.
“But, mademoiselle, why do you not _explain_ to her how dreadful it is
not to be in the true church?” she would urge again and again; and to my
answer, “I have tried, but she cannot see it,” she would return the same
wondering exclamation, “_Est-il-possible_!”
She evinced as much pleasure as surprise when I told her that Millicent
was to come every day during my absence, and read to her and put things
tidy in the little room.
“Now,” I said, “you must pay back all this kindness by getting the grace
of the faith for her.”
“Oh! if I could but do it,” she exclaimed heartily.
“You may do a great deal,” I said; “your prayers ought to be very
powerful with our Blessed Lord, because you are on the cross.”
She shook her head.
“If I lay on it lovingly, as he did,” she said; “but I don’t—not always,
at least. I wriggle, and kick, and try to slip off it every now and
then.” And she heaved a deep sigh.
“You are not a saint,” I said; “of course you have your ups and downs,
but you would rather stay on the cross for any length of time than get
off it, if you could, against the will of God, would you not?”
“Oh! yes, that I would,” she answered impulsively.
“Then you are all right,” I said. “Never mind the wriggling and the
kicking; your heart is loyal to God, and that’s what he looks to. Set
about asking for Mademoiselle Gray’s conversion, and he will not refuse
it to you. Offer up all your sufferings for it from this time forth, and
I feel perfectly certain our Lord will grant it to you.”
“Well, I will try,” she said, in an accent of simplicity and earnestness
that sounded already like a guarantee of success; and then, looking at
her _Mater Dolorosa_, she added suddenly: “I will ask _her_ to get it!”
I had brought some fresh flowers, and was arranging them in a pretty
vase that Millicent had given her, when my eye fell upon a new book that
lay beside it. It was _Notre Dame de Lourdes_, which Sœur Lucie had
brought her the day before.
“I will get Mademoiselle Gray to read me some of it every morning,” said
Mme. Martin; “they say it is beautiful. Do you think she will mind
reading it?”
I thought not, and was delighted with the suggestion.
“I have a beautiful life of St. Francis de Sales which I will bring
you,” I said, “and you will ask her to read it to you when this is
finished. He was a charming saint, and had a great deal to do with
converting Protestants; ask him to help you.”
We consulted what other books it would be advisable to get, and what
snares were to be set in other ways for Millicent. Sœur Lucie was, of
course, to be actively established in the service, the orphans were to
be set to pray—nothing was to be left undone, in fact, for the capture
of the unsuspecting soul. Of course this was all very treacherous and
base, and we were no better than a pair of designing Jesuits—so our
Protestant friends will say, if they should happen to light on my little
story. I cannot help it if they think so.
We left Paris, my mother and I, and during the three months of our
absence Millicent devoted herself like a real Sister of Charity to the
service of our poor friend. The weather became intensely hot, but she
never let this deter her; she never missed a day. She was inexhaustible
in her devices for amusing and comforting the poor paralyzed invalid:
she made her bed, and dusted her room, and kept it fragrant with
flowers; she brought her little delicacies of every sort; she read to
her by the hour—for, though it had been understood that she was only to
devote from eleven to twelve to this visit of charity, she managed
generally to spend double that time there. All this kindness called out
passionate love and gratitude from Mme. Martin. She longed with the most
intense longing to requite it by drawing down a blessing upon Millicent;
she told me afterwards that the yearning to obtain the faith for her
grew to be a kind of thirst that never left her day or night. She
offered her sufferings—and they were manifold and terrible—her weary,
sleepless nights, her long days of feverish loneliness, every pain and
trial of soul and body, not once nor many times a day, but constantly,
for her dear benefactress’ conversion, till it became an _idée fixe_
that was never absent from her mind, and found vent continually in
interior aspirations or ejaculatory prayers; waking or sleeping, there
it was, a part of herself, something that never left her. If she lay
awake at night, restless and throbbing with pain, she comforted herself
with the thought that it was so much suffered for this dear object; she
fell asleep praying for it, and woke up to pray for it again.
We returned to Paris just as Mrs. Gray and Millicent were getting ready
to start for some watering place, from which they were to proceed to the
south and not return until the spring. Their departure was a real sorrow
to me. I had grown sincerely attached to Millicent, and she to me. I had
struggled at first to keep my feelings within the proper bounds, not to
let myself slip into bondage and so prepare the day of reckoning that
waits on all human affections; but the chains had coiled round me
unawares, and when it came to saying good-by I found myself hopelessly a
captive. We parted with full hearts and promises of mutual remembrance.
Millicent was afflicted with that common vice, hatred to letter-writing,
which so many of our friends make us suffer from, so we exchanged no
vows in this respect, I steadily refusing to write unless my letters
were answered. Our separation was therefore likely to be complete.
“You will pray for me, at all events?” she whispered as we embraced.
“Yes,” I said, “but on condition that you pray for me.”
Sybil went with me to the railway station to see the Grays off. She was
sorry to lose Millicent, but I could see at the same time that she was
glad to have her out of the way.
“I never expected to see Milly come so safely out of it!” she exclaimed
as we turned away, after watching the train puff out of the station. “I
could have staked my head on it that you would have made a Romanist of
her by this.”
“You would have lost your head, then, and, such as it is, you would be
worse off without it,” I answered crossly. “One really would imagine, to
hear you talk, Sybil, that the faith was a disease that people caught
like measles or the small-pox.”
“And so it is—that is—I don’t mean exactly that—but it certainly is
contagious; everybody says it is, and that there is nothing so dangerous
as living amongst good Catholics. I was terrified out of my life for
Milly; I told her so over and over again, and did my very best to
protect her. But I must say you have behaved very honorably, Lilly; I
suppose there is hardly a Roman Catholic you know who would have behaved
as well.”
“You mean to be complimentary, so I suppose I ought to say 'thank you,’”
I replied, while I could not but laugh at her impertinence. “Just tell
me one thing, Sybil,” I said: “You admit the right of private judgment,
don’t you?”
“Do I? Why, I admit nothing else!” screamed Sybil.
“Then if Protestants, in right of their private judgment, choose to
believe in the Catholic Church, what have you to say against it?”
“Only this: that in becoming Catholics they don’t exercise their private
judgment, they renounce it,” said Sybil.
“_After_ they become Catholics; but in the first instance? The act of
renunciation involves an exercise of the judgment, does it not?”
“Oh! if you are going to be metaphysical, I give in,” said Sybil; “I
hate and detest metaphysics!”
“Well, just answer me this much,” I pleaded: “Do you think Catholics are
all certain to be damned?”
“Good gracious! I don’t believe one of them will be damned. Not the good
ones, at any rate—not such as you, Lilly!” replied Sybil with
extraordinary vehemence.
“Then why, in the name of wonder, should you have such a horror of any
one becoming a Catholic?” I asked.
“Why? Why, because it’s a dreadful thing to ... change one’s religion,
and the Roman Catholic religion is full of superstitions, of mistakes of
all sorts.... But look! I declare that’s Mr. Halsted on the other side
of the street, and he sees us and is coming across!”
“In time to rescue you from metaphysics,” I said. “I hope he won’t stand
and speak to us; do you think he will?”
“I won’t let him; I’ll make him walk on at once with us,” said Sybil.
“O Sybil!” I cried, “you must not do that; mamma would be very angry if
I were seen walking with him alone.”
“What nonsense! You’re not alone; _I_'m here,” said Sybil.
“You don’t count,” I said; “you know you don’t.”
“Well, you talk of being complimentary,” protested Sybil, “but that
beats all _I_ ever said in the way of polite compliments.”
“You must dismiss him at once,” I said hurriedly, for he was close on us
now; “if you don’t, I’ll call a cab and go home alone.”
Mr. Halsted, serenely unconscious of being a cause of terror or
contention, approached, smiling, with his hat in the air. He rather
affected the extreme of French courtesy in his demeanor towards ladies;
which was a mistake, for his native American urbanity, frank and free
from grimace and palaver, was much more formidable, if he had but known
it. Strange to say, it had not occurred to me before that he was here on
invitation; but this fact flashed on me suddenly as I noticed Sybil’s
embarrassment. It was certainly hard on her to have to turn him away
after inviting him to meet her. I saw but one way to rescue her and
myself.
“I am so glad you have come; you will accompany Miss Segrave,” I said.
“I am rather tired, and shall be thankful now to drive home. Will you
kindly call a cab?”
There was a little pretence of protest, from Sybil, of offering that we
should both drive, but I overruled this and had my own way. I was glad
to be alone. I wanted to think about Millicent, to look back over the
short history of our intercourse, to look forward to its possible issue.
I felt disappointed. I had hoped to find her, if not a Catholic, at
least very near it, on my return; I had built so much on Mme. Martin’s
prayers, on the example of her patient piety, and the living triumph of
the faith which she presented. Then I began to reflect that after all I
was quite in the dark as to how far these hopes had been disappointed. I
had had scarcely any opportunity of judging. Millicent and I had not
been once entirely alone since my return, and it was impossible to enter
on the subject in a room where others were present. By the time I
reached home I had cheered up, and began to take a more hopeful view of
things. God works slowly, I said to myself; what are three months to his
eternal patience? Mme. Martin was full of hope, though, like myself, the
delay seemed long to her.
Her own day of trial was drawing to a close. I found her very much
weaker, and altogether more worn and exhausted than when I left. Her
soul, on the contrary, seemed to have risen to a higher and purer
region, and to be breathing the air from the heavenly hills; her spirit
of detachment, her love of the cross, had reached those heights where I
could only follow her with a gaze of wondering, awe-stricken admiration.
I had always felt a poor creature by the side of her, but I had felt
justified in offering her sometimes what little help I could, reminding
her of consolations and truths that temptation or overpowering physical
pain had momentarily obscured. From this time forth I never dared to do
so. Indeed, the opportunities which she herself had formerly furnished
for it never occurred. That folly of the cross which had been a source
of mild scandal to Millicent on the occasion of their first meeting had
come to be her normal state. She had chewed the bitter wood until it had
become sweet. The winter wore on and brought no change in her condition,
except the gradual, almost imperceptible decay of strength which
foretold the approaching close of the struggle. She continually asked
for news of Millicent; I was able to tell her that she was well and
happy. There were some American families at Cannes who wrote now and
then to the Segraves, and generally reported of mutual friends; but
Millicent herself perversely refrained from writing to me. I half
suspected that there was a motive in this. I said so to Mme. Martin, and
it consoled her greatly.
“Yes, it is very possible,” she remarked. “I often fancied Mademoiselle
Gray wished to speak more openly to me than she did; the life of St.
Francis of Sales evidently made a great impression on her. Sometimes,
when she was reading to me, she would stop and look up as if she were
going to ask a question, but, after hesitating a moment, she would go on
without saying anything.”
“You must pray harder than ever,” I said; “there is nothing else to be
done.”
“When I am in purgatory, please God, I will pray for her,” she replied.
“I hope you may go straight to heaven without going through purgatory at
all,” I said; “you have suffered so long and so patiently!”
But she shook her head, and answered, with a look of austere humility I
shall never forget:
“What are my sufferings compared to my sins—compared to the holiness of
God?”
“Do you long very much to see heaven—to know what it is like?” I said,
after we had been silent a while.
“No; I can’t say I do,” she replied. “I only long to see God.”
“Do you realize at all what the vision will be?” I asked.
“No,” she said, and her black eyes, so deep-sunk in their sockets, were
lifted up with an expression of eager, tender yearning that was
indescribable. “I realize nothing; but when I try to do so, I feel the
most wonderful peace stealing over me—a sense of safety, of rest, of
happiness. I can’t describe it; but it is like a foretaste of the bliss
of Paradise—_to see God_! That is what makes Paradise!”
She was speaking rather to herself than to me, in a low voice, scarcely
above a murmur. I felt that God was very near to her; the low-roofed
attic was filled with an august, unseen Presence that touched us with a
thrilling solemnity.
Presently I said: “You will remember me when you see God, will you not?
You will pray for me by my name?”
“Oh! yes, that I will,” she answered, with a loving smile; “after my
mother, you are the first person I shall name. I shall tell our Lord how
kind you have been to me for his sake; I shall beg him to pay it all
back to you.”
“There is very little to pay,” I said; “it has been a privilege and a
delight to me to come and see you. But I will ask you to do some
commissions for me the first thing when you get into heaven.”
I gave her the commissions. There were three. Millicent Gray’s
conversion was the second on the list. She promised me solemnly that she
would execute them, either in heaven, if she was so happy as to go there
straight, or else in Purgatory, if this were possible.
It was wonderful to see the calmness with which she lay there discussing
the prospects of the life beyond, the simplicity and childlike
fearlessness with which she watched the approach of death, while at the
same time her soul was filled with a sort of awful reverence at the
thought of appearing before God. It was impossible to witness it without
having one’s faith quickened.
Christmas came. The winter was unusually severe, and the intense cold,
from which it was impossible to protect her fully in her miserable room
close under the thin roof, brought terrible aggravation to Mme. Martin’s
sufferings. It interfered, too, with my daily visits; when the snow came
I was compelled to limit them to one or two a week. This was a privation
to both of us. I had grown not only deeply interested in her, but
sincerely attached to her, and she, on her side, had come to love me
with a love of sympathy as well as gratitude that was very precious. It
was like being in the companionship of a soul in purgatory; she seemed
so _loosened_ from this life, so lifted up, as if the nearness of God
were all but a visible reality to her. The more the shadow of death
closed round her, the more fully the light from the heavenly mount
seemed to shine upon her. My visit was the solitary break in her long
day—the only little breeze of human sympathy and comfort that came to
refresh her. I knew it was a great trial to her to be deprived of it;
she had often said the sound of my steps on the stairs was like a drink
to her when she was parched with thirst; sometimes she greeted me
playfully with the salutation, “_Bonjour, mon verre d’eau fraîche_!” But
she had now grown so strong in sacrifice that it was difficult to trace
the slightest symptom of regret in her. She would reproach me for coming
out in the severe weather, declaring that she would rather never see me
than have me take cold; that it was wrong of me to run such risks; and
that there was no necessity for it, because she wanted for nothing, her
mother came up twice a day to look after her, and so on.
One day she asked me if I had any news of Millicent. I had heard that
very morning from Sybil that she was figuring with great success in some
private theatricals at Mentone. But I did not like to tell Mme. Martin
this; I feared it might shock her, or at least jar painfully on her
present mood.
“She is very well,” I said. “You know she is very bad at writing
letters; I only hear of her through friends.”
“I was dreaming of her last night,” she answered musingly. “How I wish
she might become a Catholic before I die! It would be such a consolation
to me to hear of it!”
“You will hear of it in the next world, please God,” I said.
“You think souls know what goes on on earth?” she inquired.
“Of course they do!” I said. “How could there be joy in heaven for the
return of the sinner unless they heard of it?”
“Ah! yes, in heaven, to be sure; but I was thinking of purgatory. Do you
think they know there what happens here below?”
“I see no reason for not believing it,” I replied. “Many saints and
doctors have believed it; why should not our guardian angels carry
messages from us to the angels of holy souls, if not to themselves
direct, and tell them when we are helping and praying for them, and ask
their prayers for us in return? It is a belief that fits in perfectly
with the doctrine of the communion of saints.”
“It is a most consoling idea,” she said. “I shall be longing for a
message from your guardian angel to tell me I have obtained all your
requests.”
“Pray hard, then, that you may not have long to wait,” I said, kissing
her face, that was looking up at me with a smile. I smoothed her pillows
once more, and fussed about the bed and the room, with a pretence of
busily setting things to rights, but in reality to hide an emotion that
I could neither explain to myself nor master. I remember turning back,
as I was closing the door, to have a last look at her. She made a sign
with her head, and answered me with an affectionate smile.
On the stairs I met Sœur Lucie.
“She seems just the same, _ma sœur_,” I said. “How long do you think it
will last like this?”
“Oh! not very long now,” she replied. “This cold will soon bring it to
an end. She may be carried off at any moment.”
My heart gave a great thump against my side. I could not realize it, and
yet it had been borne in upon me that this was the last visit I should
pay her. The longing to kiss her once more, to say good-by with the full
consciousness that it was to be for the last time, was so strong that I
could not resist it. I turned back with Sœur Lucie, and went up again to
her room. She did not seem surprised—at least, she said nothing about my
reappearance. I waited a moment while Sœur Lucie questioned her, and
then kissed her and said good-by.
“_Au revoir_,” she said, “_au revoir_. I will not forget your
commissions; and mind you pray for me _always_.”
I was laid up with a violent attack of neuralgia for several days after
this. One afternoon, about four days after I had seen her, a messenger
came from Sœur Lucie to say that Mme. Martin was dying; she was to
receive the Viaticum and Extreme Unction in an hour, and had expressed a
wish that I might be present. The doctor was in the room when the
message was delivered. I entreated him to let me get up and go, if it
was possible.
“You will do as you wish,” he replied, “but you will do it against my
emphatic prohibition. I won’t answer for the consequences, if you
attempt it.”
Of course this settled the question. Had I been rash enough to try to
disobey him, my mother was there to prevent it. I was greatly
distressed. I had looked forward for so long to being with her at the
last, to receiving her last kind word of farewell, and helping her with
my love and my poor prayers through the great passage. My mother saw how
pained I was, and volunteered to go and take my place, and tell Mme.
Martin how grieved I was at being prevented. She just arrived as the
room was being made ready for the coming of the priest. The dying woman
had insisted on being taken out of bed and placed sitting up in a chair,
that she might receive our Lord more befittingly on this his last visit
to her; this was done accordingly with great difficulty and immense
suffering to herself. She insisted, too, on being washed, and dressed in
her best clothes, and, what struck me as still more characteristic at
such a moment, she entreated her mother to put on her Sunday clothes,
and to wear a cap which was only taken out on very great occasions. When
all was ready, and the three assistants sat praying in silence, Mme.
Martin signed to my mother that she wished to speak to her. “Give my
love and thanks to Mlle. Lilia,” she whispered, “and tell her I will not
forget her commissions.” Then, after a short silence, she said, as
quickly as she could gasp out the words: “He is coming! Make haste!
Light the candles!”
They did so, but waited still full ten minutes before the tinkle of the
silver bell was heard on the stairs. Sœur Lucie told me this incident
was not such a rare occurrence with the dying; that frequently they
announce the approach of the Blessed Sacrament when the priest is yet a
long way off, as if their senses were quickened by some spiritual
faculty that is only awakened in death. The solemn, magnificent rite was
performed, but it was too late to think of Holy Communion. The priest
gave the last absolution and began the prayers for the dying. Before he
had finished them the long struggle was over. Mme. Martin was at rest.
About five weeks after her death I received a letter from Millicent,
informing me that she had become a Catholic. “It has been all so quickly
done; I seem to have been so completely taken up and lifted into the
church,” she said, “that I cannot help thinking some powerful
supernatural agent has been at work all along overruling my own will. I
had no more idea of becoming a Catholic than I had of turning
Mohammedan—although all my sympathies had been quite gained over to the
church by you and Mme. Martin—when one evening I went to act Racine’s
_Athalie_ at the house of a friend here. When it was all over, and the
people were crowding round me with compliments and congratulations, a
gentleman, a Catholic priest, came up and spoke to me; he thought I was
a Catholic, and began at once to discourse on the grandeur of the Bible
narrative and Racine’s interpretation of it. I undeceived him as soon as
I had the chance; he seemed sorry and surprised, but went on talking
very pleasantly, and, when we were saying good-evening, I said: 'My
mother will be happy to see you, M. l’Abbé, if you would not object to
call upon a heretic!’ I cannot to this day tell what moved me to say
this. The next moment I thought I must have been out of my mind. He
replied good-humoredly that he was not afraid of heretics, and was very
glad when they were not afraid of him. My dear Lilly, if the heretics
only knew, they would fly from that man as the devil does from holy
water! He came to see us next day; it so happened mamma was out, so I
saw him alone. I met him several times again, and—well, dear, before the
month was out I was a Catholic. When I look back on it, it seems to me
that I was in a dream, and that I was led on and on without any
conscious will or action of my own, but just let myself follow the lead
of some invisible attraction, some magnet that drew me in spite of
myself, and here I am safe in St. Peter’s net and happily landed in his
bark. Are people often converted in this way? Tell me if the church has
invisible fishermen who go about casting nets and catching wayward,
silly souls thus, or is it a special dispensation of mercy invented for
me?”
“Dear, grateful Mme. Martin! How quickly and well you have executed my
commission! Make haste and fulfil the others now!” I cried out to my
dead friend on reading Millicent’s letter. She has kept me waiting for
the other two; but I have not a doubt they will come in good time.
You can imagine Sybil’s feelings on hearing of this event. I shall
certainly not attempt to depict them. Yet, in the midst of her genuine
displeasure, there was a high note of satisfaction—the exultation of a
prophet who had lived to see his prophecy fulfilled. I am sure this was
a great comfort to her. We did not quarrel, though she let me plainly
see she looked upon me as a kind of spiritual murderer. On the other
hand, she took a more merciful view of it: It was to be, it was written;
I was the appointed, or the permitted, instrument of Millicent’s
destiny, and if I had not come some one else would; Millicent was doomed
from the beginning.
In the spring my fears were realized: the doctor and Mrs. Segrave and
Sybil sailed away to New York.
A few days before they left Paris Sybil burst into my room in high
excitement.
“Will you believe it!” she cried. “Mr. Halsted has taken his place in
the _Tiger_ and is going back with us!”
“Well, and why not?” I said. “You and he will have delightful
opportunities for discussing life on deck every day.”
Soon after their arrival I had a letter from her informing me that they
had discussed it to the issue I had long since foreseen: she was to be
married to him in a month.
THE MADONNA-AND-CHILD A TEST-SYMBOL.
Among the most beautiful of American lakes is one in the northern part
of New York State. The old Indian name for it was Horicon, or Holy
Lake—called so, perhaps, from the transparency of its water. Its banks
abound with historic memories. They have been a battle-ground for
English and French, and again in the war of Independence. But what
specially endears it to Catholics is its consecration by the Jesuit
missionary Father Jogues, who gave it, on the Eve of Corpus Christi, in
the year 1646, the name of Lac du Saint-Sacrement—Lake of the Blessed
Sacrament. Unhappily, the name it bears at present is the one conferred
upon it by Sir William Johnson, who, courtier-like, dubbed it Lake
George, after George I. of England.
May its Catholic name soon be restored! As an earnest whereof there now
stands on the right shore—about a mile and a half from the head—a
building known as “St. Mary’s of the Lake,” from which, through the
summer months, a silvery bell rings out the _Angelus_ at morning, noon,
and evening. Strangers are informed that this building is “the
monastery”; but a front view of it presents one feature which dispenses
with all need of inquiry as to the creed of its occupants: not the cross
upon the roof—for heresy has stolen that; but an unmistakable
“encroachment of popery” in the shape of a Madonna-and-Child.
Among the curious who have ventured upon visiting “the monastery,” a
certain good woman was one day discovered standing before the house and
looking up at the statue. On being asked what she thought of it she
replied, in the accent of Vermont: “Waal, it gives me a feeling as if
something was crawling all over me to see the Virgin so big and the
Saviour so small! It’s the Saviour that ought to be big.” Now, this
sentence, absurd as it sounds, contains, we may say, an entire theology.
To one who has never been a Protestant it is unintelligible, no doubt;
but to one who has, or has had, that misfortune it expresses, though
poorly, an idea of which he is, or has been, himself conscious. Our
friend was sufficiently familiar with the Gospel story to know that the
figures before her represented the Virgin Mary and the Child Jesus. Her
remark, too, evidenced her belief in that story. She meant to tell us,
in her simple way, that we made almost everything of the Virgin and
almost nothing of the Saviour. Perhaps, had she been better educated,
she would have expressed a preference for seeing the Saviour alone, and
not as a child but as a man. Such, at least, would have been the
writer’s own sentiment, years ago, when he was a Protestant. Not but
that we should have felt more at ease had there been no image there at
all; for the genius of Protestantism dislikes images: it is essentially
iconoclastic. But, certainly, we would rather have seen any image than a
Madonna-and-Child.
Here are two points for investigation: Why Protestantism is essentially
iconoclastic; and why it is particularly uneasy and bitter in the
presence of a Madonna-and-Child.
The heresy of the Iconoclasts, or Image-breakers, was Eastern, and raged
in the eighth and ninth centuries; even reviving, for a time, after its
condemnation by Pope Adrian I. and the Seventh Œcumenical Council. It
sought to abolish sacred images and pictures, on the ground of their
being idolatrous. Originating with an ignorant soldier, Leo the
Isaurian, who had become Emperor of Constantinople, and “manifesting
itself” (to borrow the words of Döllinger) “as a blind and senseless
hatred of the imitative arts,” we wonder that such a fanaticism could
gain footing at all. But, in fact, it developed into a persecuting
heresy which “shed more blood,” says the same writer, “than any which
had preceded it.”
Now, Protestantism has been said to partake of all the previous
heresies; and we, for one, can testify to the truth of the accusation;
for, after becoming a Catholic, we discovered, in the course of study,
that our mind had entertained, at some time or other—though not always
culpably, we trust—nearly every heresy ever known. But that
Protestantism has especially distinguished itself by its iconoclastic
zeal will be questioned by no one who is acquainted with its history.
We say, then, that Protestantism, as such, is _necessarily_
iconoclastic. And, first, from the negative attitude which its very name
implies—from its principle of asserting the right of private judgment to
the rejection of extrinsic authority. Man, having a body as well as a
soul, and living in an order of the visible and the palpable, naturally
seeks to _image_ his ideas—to place them outside of himself in a
representative form. And particularly does he feel this need in matters
of religious belief. Whence we find the use of symbolic representations
in all the ancient religions. The Egyptian, Greek, and Roman minds were
peculiarly fertile in symbolism—most so the Greek (the _word_ “symbol”
is Greek). But a creed, if it can be called a creed, which consists of
negations—which finds its vitality in protesting against
authority—cannot consistently use symbols; for, obviously, it has
nothing to symbolize. Protestantism, therefore, instinctively dislikes
images, seeing in them the symbolic representation of what is positive,
affirmative, dogmatic.
Again, Protestantism started with another principle which gave it a
tradition of iconoclasm—the principle of a false supernaturalism. The
supernatural was exaggerated, to the destruction of the natural. Our
nature was declared to be totally depraved, so that even free-will was
wanting to us. Consequently, instead of being able to co-operate with
grace and acquire merit, we had to be justified by “faith only”; the
righteousness of Christ had to be “imputed” to us—thrown over our
depravity like a cloak over a leprous body. Now, of course, as an
immediate result of this doctrine, away went the saints; for they were
no better than ordinary mortals—possessing no merit of their own and
nothing to be venerated for. And with them away went their images.
Furthermore, this exaggerated supernaturalism involved elimination of
the visible and the material from the economy of grace. For the natural
being evil, the visible and the material were evil too, as a part of the
natural, and therefore incapable of forming a system intermediary and
sacramental between the soul and grace. Hence, away went the idea of a
visible church, and away went sacraments and sacramentals. Now,
images—representations of any kind—come under the sacramental system,
inasmuch as, by raising our thoughts to their originals, they help us to
commune with the unseen, and put us in mind the more constantly to
invoke that mercy or intercession from or through which graces flow to
us. Therefore, again, away went images with the rest of the sacramental
system.
But, now, does not all this hostility to the visible and the material as
elements of religion look very much like a misunderstanding on the
subject of the Incarnation? If Christ is God-Man, he is _God made
visible_—God with a human soul and a _material_ body. Surely, then, to
maintain that Christianity has nothing to do with the visible or the
material is to betray an unfamiliarity with the meaning of the
Incarnation.
This unfamiliarity will become the more apparent when we shall have
considered an objection to what has been said on the iconoclastic
tendencies of Protestantism. We may not unreasonably be reminded that
Protestantism has passed through various important changes in the course
of its career, and especially within the last half-century; that the
doctrine of total depravity has long gone out of fashion and is
practically extinct; and, again, that Protestants do use symbols
now—such as the cross and the triangle—while some of them encourage
painted windows, and even images, in their churches. Very true. And the
change is not surprising—what with unnaturalness of doctrine on the one
hand and conflict of principle on the other. “_Naturam expellas furca,
tamen usque recurret_,” says Horace—“You may drive nature off with a
pitchfork, yet she will keep running back.” Then, as to principles,
logic, like murder, “will out.” The doctrines of the Reformation, though
negations of Catholic dogmas, took a positive aspect for themselves; and
the right of private judgment, which had made them, was only consistent
in destroying them. Within the last half-century—and particularly within
the last quarter—the principle of self-sufficiency has found its extreme
in the complete rejection of the supernatural. Its votaries who have not
reached that terminus are drifting thither, if unconsciously. And hence
a reaction, in favor of what are called “orthodoxy” and “churchmanship,”
is perceptible among all earnest Protestants who retain belief in
Christianity as something more than philanthropy, something with a
divine meaning. Not that they at all suspect (except those in the front
ranks of the movement—the Ritualists, who openly avow it) that they are
going back upon the Reformation. But they are. And as they advance they
take in ideas which are less and less compatible with genuine
Protestantism. One of these ideas is symbolism, the representation of
doctrines by signs or images—as the triangle signifies the Blessed
Trinity and the cross the Redemption.
Our argument, therefore, that Protestantism, _as such_, is necessarily
iconoclastic or hostile to images, holds good in spite of the fact that
modern Protestants are returning to the use of symbols. This return
means that they have abandoned the position taken by the Reformers, and
have set their faces—how little so ever they think so—Romeward and
homeward.
Here, then, comes in a very appropriate question. If Protestants are
gradually relinquishing their old iconoclastic spirit—if nowadays they
set up the cross to express their faith in the Atonement, and use the
triangle as an affirmation of their belief in the Trinity—where is their
symbol for the Incarnation? Of course they acknowledge the Incarnation.
They bracket it with the Trinity as a fundamental doctrine of
Christianity. Then why do they not equally symbolize it? Evidently,
their not even attempting to do so—their having no symbol for it—is
abundant proof of what has been just said, that, while they profess to
receive the doctrine, they are strangers to its meaning. They understand
by it merely the divinity of Christ, and beyond this keep it in the
background and give it no practical bearing. The Atonement is everything
with them; the Incarnation nothing. But Christianity is _the religion of
the Incarnation_. For call it, if you will, the religion of the cross,
that term does not designate it as a whole. The truth expressed by the
cross depends on the truth of the Incarnation; and so does every other
Christian dogma. Christianity, therefore, is either the religion of the
Incarnation or it is nothing. _As that_ it must stand or fall. And if we
would express it as a whole, we must symbolize the Incarnation. Now, the
crowning proof (were any needed) that the Incarnation, rightly
understood, has no place in Protestant theology lies in the fact that,
besides not attempting to symbolize the doctrine themselves, all
Protestants agree in a common aversion (not to say abomination) to the
only symbol possible, which is—the Madonna-and-Child.
And why is the Madonna-and-Child the only symbol of the Incarnation?
Because the Incarnation means that God is man; but how can we express
the truth that God is man, except by showing that he has a Mother? In
his divine nature he has no mother; then, if he has a mother, he is man.
Whence the creeds do not merely say that Christ is the Son of God, or
that the Son of God was made man, but affirm that he was “_born of the
Virgin Mary_”; “_Incarnate of (or from) the Virgin Mary_”—thus setting
forth the same divine Person as at once the Son of God and the Son of
Mary. That is, they show us Incarnate God as a Child in his Mother’s
arms; they _symbolize_ the Incarnation (a creed is called a “symbol”) by
the Madonna-and-Child.
* * * * *
Thus far, then, we have seen that the genius of Protestantism is hostile
to images in general, and to the Madonna-and-Child in particular,
because it is out of joint (so to speak) with the genius of the
Incarnation. We have here a very singular spectacle: a vast body of
professing Christians, who hold, with us, the doctrine of the
Incarnation, and have not formulated any heresy about it in their
“confessions of faith” (we are not including Unitarians among
Christians; for they have no more right to the name than Mohammedans); a
body of Christians who say with us that they “believe in Jesus Christ
... born of the Virgin Mary”; who keep “merry” Christmas, too, with
us—Christmas, the feast of the Madonna-and-Child—who yet, for all this,
instead of dwelling with delight on a representation of the Infant
Saviour in the arms of his Blessed Mother, invariably show that they are
not at home with it as a religious symbol.
Can it be that they are insensible to what is beautiful and touching?
No; their hearts are as human as ours. Any other mother and child by an
artist of moderate skill could scarcely fail to interest them. Moreover,
it is fashionable with cultivated Protestants to admire _this_ Mother
and Child where the question is one of art, not of religion. They
display a very creditable taste for the Madonnas of Raphael and other
great painters. Or if the association of religion add a charm, it is
nothing more to them than the glamour which invests a symbol of pagan
superstition. And in saying this we speak from experience. When, as a
school-boy, the writer became acquainted with the mythologies of Greece
and Rome, he found them full of poetry, and soon came to envy the
religion of those old pagans—a religion so much in contrast with the
aridity of his own. So, too, when, a year or two later, he first saw
Catholic worship (it was Benediction, of all lovely rites), he remarked
as he came away: “That religion is full of poetry.” “Yes,” was the
answer—“of pagan poetry.” And then he was told how all the “corruptions”
of Rome had been introduced from paganism; and, as an instance, the
Madonna was cited. “They call her the Mother of God,” said the informant
(a clergyman of the Church of England, who had learnt his lesson well).
“You remember Cybele, the 'mother of the gods’? Well, there’s their
Madonna—the Virgin Mary in place of the goddess Cybele.” He was told
this and other things of like nature, and so became imbued with the idea
that the Catholic religion was a paganized Christianity. Still, for this
very reason (as we are free to confess), it had a fascination for us;
and the greatest charm of all was its supposed goddess-worship.
At sixteen, again, our attraction to the Madonna was greatly increased
by some stanzas of Lord Byron, in which that most wonderful of poets,
inspired by the beauties of the Mediterranean twilight, and with some
famous painting in his mind, thus apostrophizes Our Lady:
“Ave Maria! Over land and sea,
That heavenliest hour of heaven is worthiest thee!
“Ave Maria! ’Tis the hour of prayer!
Ave Maria! ’Tis the hour of love!
Ave Maria! _May our spirits dare
Look up to thine and to thy Son’s above!_
Ave Maria! O that face so fair!
Those downcast eyes beneath th’ Almighty Dove!
What tho’ ’tis but a pictured image strike,
_That_ painting is no idol—’tis too like!
“Ave Maria! Blessed be the hour,
The time, the clime, the spot, where I so oft
Have felt that moment in its fullest power
Sink o’er the earth, so beautiful and soft!
As swung the deep bell in the distant tower,
And the faint dying day-hymn stole aloft:
While not a breath crept thro’ the rosy air,
Yet all the forest leaves seem’d stirred with prayer!”
Perhaps, too, we were even more impressed by a single stanza in another
canto of the same poem, where, in his description of Norman Abbey (his
own Newstead), he recalls a solitary Madonna-and-Child which had been
standing amid the ruins:
“But in a higher niche—alone, but crown’d—
The Virgin-Mother of the God-born Child,
With her Son in her blessed arms, look’d round:
Spared, by some chance, when all beside was spoil’d.
_She made the place beneath seem holy ground._
This may be superstition, weak or wild:
But ev’n the faintest relics of a shrine
Of any worship wake some thoughts divine.”
Lord Byron, it is true, was not a Protestant, but a deist. But this
makes it all the more evident how full of poetry the Catholic religion
is—and particularly in its worship of the Madonna—when it could so
attract a mind that rejected Christianity altogether. Other
non-Christian poets have proved the same thing, and none more so than
our own great Unitarian poet, Longfellow, whom, when we first read
“Evangeline” and “Hiawatha,” we supposed to be a Catholic. But
Protestant poets, too, and of various persuasions, have evinced a
sympathy with particular features of the Catholic religion as it appears
to those outside of it, and especially with the Madonna. These see an
_ideal_ in our Virgin-Mother. And none has expressed this higher view so
well as Wordsworth in his celebrated sonnet—to which, perhaps, we are
indebted for our own first glimpse of her as an ideal. It is one of his
_Ecclesiastical Sonnets_, and comes among a series in which, as a true
poet, he is forced to lament the destructive work of the so-called
Reformation.
“Mother, whose virgin bosom was _uncrost
With the least shade of thought to sin allied:_
Woman above all women glorified—
_Our tainted nature’s solitary boast!_
Purer than foam on central ocean tost:
Brighter than eastern skies at daybreak strewn
With fancied roses: than the unblemished moon,
Before her wane begins on heaven’s blue coast!
Thy image falls to earth. Yet some, I ween,
Not unforgiven the suppliant knee might bend,
As to a visible Power, in which did blend
All that was mix’d and reconciled in thee
Of mother’s love with maiden purity—
Of high with low—celestial with terrene!”
Clearly, therefore, it is _not_ an obtuseness to the beautiful, or even
to the ideal, that alienates the Protestant mind from our symbol of the
Incarnation. No; the key to the puzzle is this: that the system of
Christianity known as Protestantism cannot see in the Madonna-and-Child
a symbol _of itself_—has nothing in it capable of being symbolized by
either Madonna or Child.
* * * * *
The Incarnation, once more, is God made visible. As such it must needs
create for itself a visible kingdom on earth: a kingdom over body as
well as over soul—a kingdom in the world of mind, and equally into the
world of sense and matter. The kingdom thus created will, of course, be
in harmony with that which created it—the Incarnation—and, therefore,
with the symbol of the Incarnation—the Madonna-and-Child; and so will
find in the Madonna-and-Child the symbol _of itself_—the mould upon
which it was cast.
Here, then, the reader will perceive what we mean by calling the
Madonna-and-Child a _test_-symbol. Whatever system of Christianity is
not at home with this symbol, or not entirely in harmony with it, is
thereby convicted of being false, as not the kingdom of the Incarnation.
So that, to demonstrate the true Christianity, out of all existing
systems calling themselves Christian, we have only to confront them with
the Madonna-and-Child.
Let us do this. And, first, we will call up all the Protestant
communions, and particularly the two most important and respectable—the
state church of England and her daughter in America; excluding on the
one hand whatever sects deny the divinity of Christ, and on the other
that party in the said Episcopalian churches which is working, more or
less consciously, to bring back “popery without the pope.” Neither of
these extremes is genuine Protestantism.
All classes of genuine Protestants, when confronted with the
Madonna-and-Child, acknowledge it, of course, the representation of an
historic fact in which they believe—the birth of Jesus Christ from the
Virgin Mary—but instinctively feel that it _means a great deal more_.
They principally object to the Madonna, as giving the Blessed Virgin too
much prominence. “We all know,” they argue, “that she is the Mother of
our Saviour; but, beyond this, what is she to _us_?” They are not
accustomed to speak of her, except when they mention her in the Creed;
or even to think of her, except when they pity or abuse their
“idolatrous” fellow-Christians. At the same time neither do they care to
see the Child, particularly in Mary’s arms or by her side. “He did not
remain a child all his life,” they say. “It was not as a child that he
came out in public to work miracles and preach the Gospel; it was not as
a child that he suffered and died. Then what is his childhood to _us_?”
In a word, our symbol of the Incarnation reminds them of nothing with
which they are familiar.
The secret is, they are not within the visible kingdom of the
Incarnation; they are outside the visible church. Each sect will call
itself a church, no doubt; and the Episcopalians have something to show
for theirs, because, in its outward form, it is a fair imitation of a
real hierarchy. But when they say in the Creed, with us, “I believe in
the Holy Catholic Church,” they do not mean at all what we mean. To them
the Catholic Church of the Creed is the collective multitude of
omnigenous believers in Christ, instead of signifying a visible
institution divinely endowed to teach and govern, and standing to them
in the relation of a _mother_—carrying them in her arms and feeding them
at her breast. If they _did_ mean _this_ by the Catholic Church, they
would recognize at once in the Madonna-and-Child a symbol of that church
with them in her arms, and would, so far, feel at home with the
Madonna-and-Child.
Neither, again, have they the Blessed Sacrament—that lovely “second
infancy” of Jesus—or they would joyfully acknowledge in the
Madonna-and-Child an image of the church with the Blessed Sacrament in
her keeping.
But especially would their attitude towards Our Lady be different from
what it is now. Believing in a visible church, they would not insist, as
now, on having nothing between themselves and Christ, who, by
instituting the church, chose to place an entire system between himself
and them. And, seeing the type of this church in Mary, they could not
vituperate our doctrine of the latter’s maternal mediation; not only
because of the church’s mediation, but also because Mary, as the type of
mother church, must needs be _Mother_ Mary.
Now, to the writer this is all the more clear because it is the history
of his conversion. Having come—and, thank God! not so late as it might
have been—to feel the necessity of a visible church as a mother and
guide, at whose feet we could sit child-like and learn from her “the
words of eternal life”—to hear whom would be to hear Christ; to go to
whom, to go to Christ—we gradually discovered that the Church of
England, in which we had been reared, and to whose ministry we were
looking forward, was no such mother and guide, nor ever could be. We
found that she did very well as a state church, a moral police, a “part
of the civil service”; but that her success in being _fashionable_ was
owing—_not_ to any _divine_ commission, _not_ to her speaking “as one
having authority,” _not_ to her teaching one definite body of
doctrine—but, on the contrary, to her being the creation of Parliament;
to her _disclaiming_ all authority to teach, except as a fallible human
witness; and to her leaving the utmost latitude for every variety and
_contradiction_ of opinion, so that her clergy were equally at liberty
to hold or deny such vital doctrines as baptismal regeneration, the Real
Presence, sacerdotal absolution, and apostolical succession. Added to
these doctrines—which we had come to believe from joining first the
moderate High-Church party, and then the extreme, or the Ritualists—was
a parallel attraction to the Blessed Virgin, whom we had discovered to
be truly the Mother of God. And the two ideas of a mother in the church
and a Mother in the Blessed Virgin rose together and grew together, till
we found them both realities in the kingdom of the Incarnation.
* * * * *
And now we may let Protestantism go. Its votaries are loud in exhorting
us to return with them to the purity of primitive Christianity. But when
we take them back with us over the centuries to the very cradle of
Christianity—to the cave of the Nativity at Bethlehem—and enter that
sanctuary on the first Christmas morning, are they or we more at home
there, in the presence of the Madonna-and-Child? So far, then, from
establishing its clamorous pretensions to be the only unalloyed
Christianity, Protestantism is ruled out of court by our test-symbol, as
neither the kingdom of the Incarnation nor any part of that kingdom, and
therefore—virtually and logically—not Christianity at all.
The Catholic Church, however, has not the field all to herself yet.
There is the Russo-Greek, including some half-dozen independent
communions. Is not she in harmony with our test-symbol?
While on the road to Rome we were much attached to the Greek Church.
Most Anglicans of the “High” school are—because they know very little
about her. (A case where “distance lends enchantment”—and a very hazy
distance, to boot.) There is one thing, though, which Anglicans ought to
know about the Greek Church, and which we did know: the fact that her
worship of the Blessed Virgin is more “excessive” (to use their own
phrase) than that of the Roman Church. We say we knew this, and confess
that, instead of being repelled by it, we were the more attracted. So
far, therefore, the writer was consistent, at least—unlike other
Anglicans, who protest especially against our “Marian system” (as they
call it), and at the same time babble and dream (for dream it is) of
union with the Greek Church. What we were afraid of in the Roman Church
was not the Blessed Virgin, but the Pope. We had been so thoroughly
imbued from boyhood with the notion that the Pope was “Antichrist” and
the “Man of Sin,” that the influence of this monstrous superstition
haunted us, in some shape, to the very eve of our conversion. We say in
some shape. We had come, since a Ritualist, to believe that Antichrist
was yet to appear, and that the Pope could not possibly be he.
Nevertheless, we took it for unquestionable that the Papacy was a
usurpation; had caused the separation of the Greek Church from the
Latin; and was also to blame, in a great degree, for England being out
of communion with the other western churches. While under instruction
for reception into the church we read Mr. Allies’ _See of Peter_; and
our amazement at the evidence for the Papacy was only equalled by our
indignation at the unblushing impudence which had assured us, and with
such pretence of patristic learning, that there was not a single proof
from the first six centuries for the supremacy of the Bishop of Rome.
Well, then, the Greek Church _is_ in harmony with our test-symbol to a
certain and considerable extent. In the first place, she holds the
Catholic doctrine of the Incarnation, and by no means keeps it in the
background, but gives it due prominence in her catechism and liturgy.
And since she teaches the devotional use of representations,
particularly of pictures, her people are no less familiar than we are
with the Madonna-and-Child as the symbol of the Incarnation. Secondly,
although (as must be the case) they have not the same tender _mother_ in
their church that we have in ours, still, all who are in good faith
being by intention Catholics, they can speak, with us, of “our mother
the church.” And, again, though they are made much less familiar with
the Blessed Sacrament than we are, yet, having a true priesthood (not a
sham one like the Anglican), a true altar, and a true Mass, the Real
Presence is a living fact with them. So that they _may_ see in the
Madonna-and-Child the church and the Blessed Sacrament as we do.
The Madonna-and-Child, however, being, as we have said, the mould upon
which the church is cast, makes a law which must not be violated in any
single particular. If, therefore, this self-styled “orthodox” Greek
Church be found out of harmony with our test-symbol in even one point,
she is no more the kingdom of the Incarnation than if she were in
harmony with it at no point.
Now, she does fail to correspond with it in one most important point:
viz., in her theory of the church as a whole. She holds, like the
Anglican Ritualists, the theory of a _divided_ church. But the Madonna
can no more represent a divided than an invisible church, and those who
say, with us, in the Nicene Creed, “I believe _one_ Catholic and
Apostolic Church,” yet maintain that she need not be _visibly_ “one,”
are more illogical than those who use the words in the sense of an
invisible church. That a visible church, of which _oneness_ is a mark,
need not be _visibly one_!—could absurdity, in the shape of theory, go
further?
Again, if this theory of the church as a whole—that she is no longer
visibly one as her divine Author made her—renders it impossible to see
the type of such a church in the Madonna separately, what meaning will
it find in the Madonna-and-Child together? It beholds in the Madonna a
unity which it denies; and in the Child—either nothing at all, or
something which it consciously rejects.
What makes a church, according to the apostolic constitution? All
churches which have that constitution agree that the essentials of a
church are a _bishop_ with a clergy and laity in his communion. The
bishop is its nucleus, and _makes_ the church in the sense in which the
head makes the body. A bishopless church is a headless body. We say this
is what all Christians agree upon who believe in apostolical succession.
So that even the recent contemptible sect calling themselves “Old
Catholics” were bound to procure a bishop for their schism, albeit they
set at defiance both authority and logic.
A bishop, then, and the church in his communion are the normal or
representative church. Now, we see in this representative church the
form of the Madonna-and-Child. To some this may seem fanciful. It is
not. Every priest is “another Christ”—in the celebrated words of St.
Bernard; and the bishop is the _complete_ priest, as having the power to
confer the priesthood. If, then, the Madonna typifies the church, the
Christ-child typifies the priesthood, and, if the priesthood, still more
the episcopate. Again, as Christ has in Mary not only a Mother, but a
Daughter and a Spouse—for he is her Father by creation (whence Chaucer
and Dante exclaim, “Daughter of thy Son!”) and her Spouse as the Spouse
of all elect souls, among whom she is “as the lily among thorns”—so,
too, has the priest in the church at once a mother, a daughter, and a
spouse; and therefore still more does the bishop stand in this threefold
relation to the church. And, once more, as Christ is “the first-born
among many brethren,” his Mother being ours also, so is the priest an
elder brother, ruling his brethren from the arms of their common mother;
and, if the priest, much more the bishop.
There is nothing fanciful, then, in our view of the Madonna-and-Child as
a symbol of the normal or representative church. But what does this
mean, if not that the collective church, consisting as it must of a
multitude of single churches, has equally the form of the
Madonna-and-Child—is equally capable of being symbolized thereby? or, in
other words, that all single episcopates must be subordinated to one
universal episcopate? Now, the Russo-Greek Church, while affecting (at
least in theory) the principle of hierarchical subordination from the
bishop up to the patriarch, stupidly contradicts her own assertion of
this principle, and destroys the church as a whole, by rejecting the
supremacy of the Pope. She is, therefore, in this all-important point,
as much out of harmony with our test-symbol as the Anglican and the
other Protestant sects; and is ruled out of court, in her turn, as
neither the kingdom of the incarnation nor any part of that kingdom.
* * * * *
So at last we have only the Roman Church to contrast with the
Madonna-and-Child. And small need have we to show how harmoniously at
all points she corresponds with our test-symbol. The Catholic recognizes
in the Madonna-and-Child not only the Incarnation but its kingdom. He
sees there the church with the Blessed Sacrament in her hands; and,
again, the church our _mother_ with her Christ-child at her breast; and,
lastly, this same mother as our lady and queen, with her eldest son the
Pope ruling his brethren from his throne on her heart, the _Sancta
Sedes_.
With regard to this last point we think it strange that
controversialists have made so little use of the Madonna-and-Child of
the Apocalypse.[164] We proposed to conclude our subject with a proof of
the Papacy from this vision, but must reserve it for a separate article.
Footnote 164:
Chap. xii.
COLLEGE EDUCATION.
The schools of the country have held their days of exhibition or of
graduation, the young men are enjoying their holidays, and the teachers
are preparing themselves for a new year of work. It would seem to be a
favorable moment to say a word about the question that more or less
occupies all who think seriously of the future—education. This word, so
often used, conveys different ideas, according to the person who speaks.
Its etymology undoubtedly gives it a certain definite meaning: _educo_,
_erudiri_ are two words that signify the bringing forth from a negative
state to a positive one—from ignorance and rudeness to knowledge and
culture. But this general idea does not cover the whole matter. We have
to consider the end to which this process is directed in order to have
an adequate idea of what it should be. Now, this end we shall have
clearly before us if we call to mind the end for which man is here on
earth. Christians all acknowledge and teach that man is here to know,
love, and serve God and save his soul. These two, therefore—redemption
from ignorance and a rude state, and the end for which man is here—give
us the right idea of what education ought to be. The appreciation of
both will enable us to avoid two fatal obstacles—presumption and error.
The proper state of mind of any one beginning a course of education is
the recognition of his want of knowledge. There is nothing so hurtful as
a spirit of pride; for this blinds the mind, makes one overweeningly
confident of his powers, attached to his own opinions, and loath to
receive instruction. We have heard in our day young people discussing
the question whether a man were not able to work out the most difficult
problems of human science of himself; whether he absolutely stood in
need of the guidance of others; and whether there were any branch of
human knowledge or achievement of past times _any one_ might not be able
to attain to or accomplish, provided he turned his attention to it, and
circumstances were favorable. And when a young man had succeeded in
mastering a certain amount of learning or science, we have been
witnesses of the very remarkable phenomenon of seeing him set himself up
as one whose opinion should cut short every discussion, and form the law
of belief or action for those around him. Any one having had any
experience of truly learned men, who even may not have been models of
virtue, must have been struck at the humility of mind they give proof
of. They, more than others, appreciate how little they know of what it
is possible to know; they see the vast field of knowledge of which they
individually can but cultivate a part, and common sense keeps them from
thinking themselves possessed even of all that can be known of what they
are actually engaged in. They agree in spirit with the celebrated master
of Plato, whose saying is familiar to us: “I know only this: that I know
nothing.” The first requisite, therefore, for sound education is a
humble state of mind, a disposition to be taught and receive the lessons
with docility—a disposition not only needful in a beginner, but required
even more the further one advances into the domain of knowledge. When
one adds to the original and relative ignorance of us all the further
fact of the ease with which we go astray, fall into error—a facility so
great as to have given rise to the adage in universal use, “_Humanum est
errare_”—it is impossible a man of sense should not recognize the
necessity of keeping down the spirit of pride and self-confidence, and
confess that, in not having controlled himself in this respect, he has
given the most complete proof of the adage in his own case. We are
therefore all in the same condition, all in need of learning, and stand
in want of a teacher to instruct us and lead us in the path of truth.
What is the truth we are to seek after, who the teacher we are to go to,
results from the study of the end to which education is to be directed.
We have seen that the end of man is to know, love, and serve God and
save his soul, and this tells us what education should be. Anything that
conflicts with this end is to be rejected; whatever aids us in attaining
it is to be embraced; and as all truth is in harmony with that end, it
follows that education can embrace all sciences that are truly such,
while it must eliminate all error; for error has a logical effect of
keeping us from the attainment of that end, especially where that error
regards the higher branches of speculative education.
Here, then, comes in the most important element in the education of
man—religion; religion, that is, to teach his head and train his heart.
If, as is most certainly the fact, man was made for God and for immortal
life hereafter, education that would exclude this element—religion—which
regulates the relations of man with God, and teaches him how he may gain
that everlasting state for which he has been created, is wanting most
deplorably in the one thing needful. Such an education fits a man only
for matter; is of the earth earthy. It has no higher aim than the
objects around him; it is a guide that does not bring into the presence
of the King, but takes one no further than the domain over which the
King’s power is exercised. However much it may delight the eye with
grandeur of scenery, proofs of power and of wisdom, it has no right or
ability to introduce into a close communion with the Sovereign, the
source of all it beholds. It is simply an unworthy servant banished for
ever from the face of his Master. This kind of education, which we shall
style secular, professedly excludes all religious control of any kind
whatsoever, and it consequently relies only on reason and scientific
examination. Now, reason has been found wanting. In the brightest
examples of pagan times, familiar to students of history, are to be
found not only actions nature itself condemns, but principles laid down
by them subversive of natural society and of all Christian
virtue—pantheism and immorality. And we owe it to Christianity that we
have been rescued from the social life in which such principles
prevailed and were in practice. Any one nowadays who knows something of
men will bear witness to the fact that both the one and the
other—pantheism and immorality—are on the increase and show themselves
publicly in the speech of the men and women of to-day. This can be owing
only to one cause—the divorce of religion from education. And because
this is so, because secular education does not lead us to God, but takes
us from him, a dividing line must be drawn between religious education
and secular education; an insuperable barrier exists between them, which
must and ought to keep all that believe in revelation on the side of a
training under the eye of religion. And if this be the case with regard
to all who profess belief in Christ, how much truer is it with reference
to those who have given their names to the Catholic Church and look to
her infallible voice for their guidance! In saying this we do not wish
to speak disparagingly of the learning, the ability, or the zeal of
those engaged in the cause of education who are not with us. We respect
all those who are striving to increase the treasure of human knowledge
or dispense it to their fellow-men. We join hands with all who are
earnest in their study of true science, and rejoice in their success. We
have no right to question their sincerity. But between their efforts and
success in discovery, or in acquiring and imparting learning, and the
way in which they educate, there is a difference most vital and
essential. The one investigates the works of the Creator, while the
other leads men practically, where it does not absolutely tell them as
much, to ignore the Creator himself. Godless science can only fill a man
with himself, while it offers no guarantee for the preservation of his
morals and the attainment of his last end.
On the other hand, religion goes before the education which is allied
with her. With her torch of faith she illumes the darkness of men’s
minds. She shows them how much more beautiful is the Author of all the
beautiful things they contemplate than are the objects themselves. She
makes them behold in him the original essential beauty of which the
universe is only a faint participation, and yearn for the possession of
that Beauty and sovereign Good she tells them is within their reach; and
she shows them how, under her direction, they may not be carried away by
transient allurements, by what they see around them, but attain to an
indissoluble union with that Beauty and sovereign Good—with God himself.
But it may be said religion has nothing to do with natural science; it
cramps man’s mind, fetters his intellect, stops his investigation. It
will do well enough in its sphere, but its action is hurtful to
scientific pursuits.
Is this true? It is not true; and we can refute the charge by principle
and by fact.
All that exists belongs to God. All science, all truth comes from him,
the great First Cause, from whom all things proceed, in whom there can
be no contradiction. His works, therefore, cannot contradict him nor
contradict each other. Natural truth and revealed truth must, then, be
in harmony, and we do not fear a conflict between them. The Catholic
student of science is as fearless an investigator as is his rationalist
_confrère_; but the former will not rashly give himself up to
speculations the other’s further experience will oblige him to retract.
The facts of science will never be in opposition to revelation, though
the interpretation of scientific men may be, to their discomfiture later
on. Even if the teacher of revelation, the church, should by any
possibility, as is asserted in the case of Galileo, fail in a
_disciplinary_ decree with regard to scientific research, such decrees
not being infallible utterances of the Holy See, there remains always
the remedy of a reversal when the incontestable proof of the contrary,
such as he did not bring forward, shall be produced. So spoke Cardinal
Bellarmine, one of Galileo’s judges. Though we may safely say that those
in charge of the interests of the church do well in being exceedingly
careful how they interfere with scientific investigation, it
nevertheless may become necessary at times to curb the license of those
who undertake to interpret the truths of revelation according to their
ideas or appreciation of science. How many scientific theories fall to
pieces every day! And is it not reasonable that those who believe in a
revelation should not be left at the mercy of every clever scientific
man who is pleased to have a tilt against it? Let any scientific truth
be fully proved, and the Catholic Church will be the first to applaud,
for it redounds to the glory of her Head.
We need not, however, confine ourselves to this negative way of
advocating the cause of revelation as friendly to science, for there is
no dearth of positive proof of the fact.
Revelation is positively of advantage to the study of science. It is
clear that any one who keeps me, when on a journey, from going out of my
way saves me an amount of time and trouble. Instead of wandering in the
woods and bypaths, I am enabled to keep the highway and so reach sooner
my destination. This is one of the important services revelation renders
science. It tells us: Don’t direct your attention hither or thither; for
you will find out you are wrong, after losing precious time and making
yourself a laughing-stock. Don’t go in search of the “missing link,” for
you won’t find it. Don’t divide the unity of the human race, for it is
one—of one man and one woman. Don’t grovel with the materialists; for
man has a spirit, and he is destined for a better life hereafter. Such
like warnings we have from revelation, and, instead of going astray with
evolutionists and so-called philosophers, we employ our time and talents
on points that are serious and practical in science and nature; and
Heaven knows there are plenty of these to engage us. The result is
useful knowledge that does not undo but builds up society and perfects
civilization. For this our grateful thanks are due revelation.
Then, again, revelation opens up to us new fields of thought. It gives
us an insight into what we could not otherwise know. It is as if chance
discovered to us some principle of art or science no one had before
suspected. Once presented, reason can occupy itself on it, explore it as
far as possible, make deductions and applications. How much human ethics
have gained in clearness and usefulness by the light of the command to
love our neighbor, and by the example of the Redeemer of man! How much
speculative philosophy with regard to personality, responsibility, good
and evil, and the future life! The crude theories of pagan times excite
our compassion nowadays, though we honor the ability of their original
propounders; yet these same theories we see now broached by those who
have cast aside revelation, but often with less depth and less wisdom
than the pagan in whose mind not all the light of natural religion was
quenched. No! revelation is the friend of science; science divorced from
religion, the vaunted glory of to-day, is the enemy of progress;
retrograde in all save the energetic talent that is lost in its service.
A few examples will show what revelation or the church has done and is
doing for the cause of education; whether it has checked the development
of man or favored it.
We will go to the “dark ages,” in which those who oppose the church as
an educator are wont to find their _cheval de bataille_, their bugbear
to frighten off those inclined to trust her. We say nothing of the
unfairness of Protestants who wilfully ignore the sad state of the Roman
world consequent on the barbarian invasions of the fifth, sixth, and
seventh centuries, and the struggles with the Saracens, who penetrated
even into Italy—a condition of things most inimical to the quiet
requisite for study; who pass over the conquest of those barbarians and
their civilization by the church; who pretend to know nothing of what
was done by the monks to preserve learning in their monasteries, to whom
the preservation of the classic, philosophic, and ascetic works of
antiquity and of the early church—the Bible among them—is due. We come
to the thirteenth century. There we see, burning with a light that is
celestial, a luminary not of the church only but of human reason—St.
Thomas Aquinas, the Angelic Doctor. There was hardly a branch of
intellectual pursuit of which he was not a master. His works are
wonderful, and have always been a precious and useful legacy in every
subsequent age. His great work, the Sum of Theology, has remained the
text-book of theologians. In fact, no theologian is master of his
subject who has not made St. Thomas the object of his constant study.
Though at times somewhat neglected, we may safely say that at present
there is an increasing appreciation of his works. Certainly this is true
of his philosophical treatise _Contra Gentiles_. There is now a
wide-spread movement in all civilized nations to return to the use of
the metaphysical and ethical teachings of St. Thomas, and it will be the
means of regenerating such philosophical studies in this epoch of
individual self-assertion, of _ipse dixits_, when every man of talent
who lists puts forth his own hazy speculations as the truth, and strives
to force down his deductions as the _ne plus ultra_ of science. Domenico
Soto, at the Council of Trent, defined scholastic theology to be reason
illumined by faith; we may, like him, style scholastic philosophy reason
kept in its right path by the torch of faith. In the works of St. Thomas
will be found the refutation of the pantheism of Spinoza and the present
German school, of the materialism of Hobbes and Büchner, of the
utilitarian ideas of Mill, Spencer, and others of the followers of
Puffendorf. We shall find, too, in his writings the ablest defence of
revelation, and the sound principles that will enable us to put to
flight the whole host of mythical theorists of the age. So much for
theology, metaphysics, and ethics.
If we wish to speak of the work of the church in poetry, science, and
literature, we have a monument of what she could do, even in the middle
ages, in Dante. We hardly know which to admire most in this
extraordinary man—his native genius, his extraordinary powers of
imagination, the beauty of his imagery, the remarkable knowledge of
theology and philosophy he exhibits in his writings, or the beauty of
the language he created. His culture was due to the church; his
inspiration was drawn from revelation; and his science he drank in at
the great schools established and carried on by the church in Italy, in
France, and in England. So pre-eminent is this writer, philosopher, and
poet, that even in the nineteenth century our own poet whose works are
read and justly appreciated wherever the English language is
spoken—Henry W. Longfellow—has deemed it well worthy of his own genius
to be his translator. Yet Dante is the product of the Catholic Church.
But the fashion to-day is to extol physical science. Of a truth,
physical science does not hold, and should not hold, the first place. If
man were only matter, it might and should; but he has a soul, and the
spiritual and intellectual world is his proper sphere. Scientific
knowledge is useful for the arts that serve to make commerce prosper,
and should be sought after; but to make commerce and what pertains to
it, and the material comforts of man, the main object of his thoughts
and aims is a monstrous disorder.
However, even in this sphere of physical science the church is not
afraid of her competitors. We leave to one side old Friar Bacon and
other patriarchs of science, and we come to our own day. The church can
point to Angelo Secchi, one of the first of living astronomers and
physical scientists, and a member of a society that counts among its
members men distinguished in every branch of human knowledge—the Society
of Jesus. So great is the pre-eminence of this distinguished _savant_ in
his native Italy that, since the city of Rome has been in the hands of
the present rulers, they have left nothing undone to gain him over to
their side. And it is a pleasure to us to pay this public tribute to the
noble fidelity he has shown to his faith, his church, and his society,
giving as he does a splendid example of the alliance between the most
advanced physical science and the Catholic Church.
As faithful adherents to revelation, though not Catholics, we may
mention the late Prof. Faraday and the no less distinguished Dr.
Carpenter, who show that revelation and science do not war against each
other.
But we need not content ourselves with showing that the church is not
hostile to human learning. It is easy to bring forward facts that put
her before the world in her true character as the real friend of man,
the guardian of his dignity, the zealous protectress of the truth of his
intellect and of the freedom of his will. _In medio stat virtus_—Virtue
avoids extremes. Our tendency to go wrong is by doing too much or too
little, and we need something to keep us from either of these two
extremes. It is here the church comes in to fulfil this friendly and
much-needed office.
There was in the fourth and fifth century an intellectual movement that
attributed more than its due to human nature. The Pelagian errors gave
to man a power he does not possess, and those errors are very widely
spread in this nineteenth century. They ignore the efficacy of grace, or
the help the will stands in need of to serve God. Grace, according to
their most favorable view, was only a light for the intellect. Here was
an excess; too much was claimed for human nature. Such doctrine is
contradicted by Scripture and by the Fathers. Our Lord tells us: “I am
the vine, and you are the branches; without me you can do nothing.” And
St. Paul says: “We are not able to think of anything [conducive to
salvation] of ourselves; but our sufficiency is from God.” And St.
Augustine, against those who spoke of some of the precepts as
impossible, writes: “God does not command what is impossible; but
commanding [thereby] counsels us to do what we can, to ask for aid to do
what is beyond our power, and aids us that we may be able to do it.” In
this case we have the church curbing human pride and keeping the
intellect and will within its true limits.
In the sixteenth century there was a movement, resulting from pride and
rebellion, that had its own punishment in the degradation to which it
reduced man’s nature. Luther’s dogmatic system had, and has—for it lives
in Protestantism—the effect of so debasing human nature as to deny light
to the intellect and power to the will to do anything that was not
sinful; for he held that the will of man is essentially changed, so that
it depends on who directs it, God or the devil; and, besides, whatever
it does is sinful, though covered by the merits of Jesus Christ, which,
like Esau’s garments, prevent the knowledge or sight of the true state
of things and the imputation of sin.
Here was a defect; human nature was denied some of its powers.
The church fulminated this doctrine, and taught formally that man’s
intellect and will, though weakened by sin and passion, are not
essentially changed, and that all man’s acts are not sinful. She
recognized something of his original dignity in man. Hers is the spirit
of the great St. Leo, whose eloquent words made the Christians and
Romans of his day remember their origin, and the height to which they
had been raised by the Incarnation. He exclaims: “Remember, O man! thy
dignity, and, having been made a partaker of the divine nature, return
not by degenerate conversation to thy former vileness.” She bade man
remember that his nature, never essentially corrupt, had been purified
by the grace of God, and that “in those that please God there is nothing
defiled.”
Luther’s teachings shed a sinister influence far and wide that tainted
even Catholic universities and affected writers who still professed to
be in union with the church.
In the former University of Louvain Jansenius went so far as to say that
some of the gospel precepts were impossible, and that no grace was given
to fulfil them. The words that were used by St. Augustine to refute the
Pelagians were turned against Jansenius, and the voice of the church was
heard anew vindicating man from the necessity of committing sin. Later
on came Baius, of the same university, teaching also a doctrine of
universal depravity; and the Sovereign Pontiff proclaimed that negative
infidelity—that is, idolatry in good faith—is not a sin; that
consequently those who have not grace or the illumination of faith can
do many good actions, though such actions have not the merit of those
which are made available through the merits of Christ. Thus again did
the church prove herself the friend of human dignity.
Further on we meet those who, suffering the infection of the air caused
by the doctrines of universal depravity, deny to the intellect the power
of discovering the truth by itself. The traditionalists wish to trace
everything to an original revelation; man has nothing he has not
received from outside. Even his knowledge of God comes from tradition.
And this doctrine the church, through her supreme teacher,
discountenanced. She bade them recall to mind the words of the Book of
Wisdom and of St. Paul, where we are told that God can be known from the
contemplation of this visible world.
We will crave indulgence if we go so far as to venture the assertion
that the doctrines of Malebranche and his school had their origin in
this same depreciation of the powers of the human intellect. It may be
said that the idea of intuition is a nobler one than that of painful
analysis and deduction; that intuition—vision—is the lot of the blessed,
and therefore a higher state. But this is a state above nature, for the
blessed; not a natural state in our present condition. Moreover, there
are reasons to make us believe that Malebranche did not escape the
infection of the world of thought prevalent in his day—the disesteem of
human nature; an infection not, indeed, logically connected with the
system of Luther. It was, if we may be permitted so to speak, a
psychological effect—a habit of mind being induced, whereby one was led
so to think. This would appear to be evidenced by his doctrine of
occasionalism, which made God always acting because man could not—a
doctrine the authority of the church obliged him to modify, for he would
thereby have made God the author of sin. Though no official condemnation
of the theories of Malebranche, regarding the primary mode of knowing
truth, has ever been given by the church, or is at all likely to be
given, the deductions of certain of his followers have been condemned;
and it is well known that the weight of the influence of the Holy See
has been cast in the scale of the psychological theories of St. Thomas,
whose principle, clearly laid down, is: “Operatio intellectus præexigit
operationem sensus”—“The operation of the intellect prerequires the
operation of sense”—I. 2, quæst. iii. art. 3, resp. And in his first
part, quæst. xviii. art. 2, he writes: “Intellectus noster qui proprie
est cognoscitivus quidditatis rei ut proprii objecti, accipit a sensu;
cujus propria objecta sunt accidentia exteriora. Et inde est, quod ex
his quæ exterius apparent de re, devenimus ad cognoscendam essentiam
rei”—“Our intellect, that properly takes cognizance of what a thing is
(its essence) as its proper object, receives of the senses, the proper
objects of which are external accidents. Hence it is that from what
appears externally in a thing we come to know its essence.” Of course
sense is to be taken in its widest meaning, so as not to exclude the
perception of the modifications going on in our internal being, which
are the accidents of our spiritual essence. Man, therefore, has no
natural revelation, but he arrives at knowledge by the essentially
inherent powers of his mind—perception, abstraction, generalization. God
sees by intuition everything in himself—this is essential in him;
created intellects see what is, or intellectual truth, the archetype in
God, reflected from creation as from a mirror.
From these instances, then, it is evident that the church has always
been the friend of human nature, asserting for it the possession of
faculties denied it, protecting it from error, and guiding it in the
search of truth. She is, therefore, worthy of the gratitude of mankind
for what she has done in the cause of education, as well as of the
confidence of men as an instructor of youth in the future.
We come now to a more directly practical part of our assumed task, and
shall consider it our duty to speak plainly, and perhaps in a way to be
censured by some; but we do it in what seems to us the interest of our
people and country. The Rev. Father. T. Burke, O.S.D., while in this
country some years ago, addressing a society of young men, told them
that Americans could not expect to take their position among the
civilized nations of the world unless they studied, and studied not
superficially but well. For our part, we thank him for this word. It is
time to put out of our heads that we are the most cultivated, civilized,
well-informed people of the world. We are not. Alongside the generality
of the educated men of Europe the generality of the educated men of
America do not appear to advantage. Who and what is to blame for this?
In the first place, we blame parents. They ought to know better; they
have had experience of the world. They are the natural guardians of
their offspring, and should provide by their experience a remedy for the
inexperience of youth. Yet they, and especially Catholic parents, are
those who put the greatest obstacles in the way of those engaged in
teaching. They want their boys hurried through school; they can’t see
the use of Latin, much less of Greek. As for philosophy, a man can make
a fortune without philosophy; as if a fortune were the only thing worth
living for! If that were the case, your California stage-driver who has
struck a “bonanza” is the type of what a man should be intellectually.
Heaven save the mark! We have had such men say to us: “I assure you,
sir, it is a very great misfortune my education was neglected; I have
wealth and don’t know how to enjoy it.” There are numbers of unhappy
wealthy Americans travelling in Europe whose children are looking
forward to brilliant futures, but who themselves rush from one place to
another, tortured by the necessity of having to come in contact with
educated people and learn daily their own inferiority. We have met such
people, and, out of sheer pity for their unhappy lot, have done what was
in our power to make them forget for a while their troubles.
The fact is, no greater boon can a wealthy parent bestow upon his child
than a thorough, careful education, and every effort should be made to
secure such education. And one of the first steps to be taken is that
parents second the efforts of zealous educators in our Catholic
institutions. These institutions have their defects, but those defects
can hardly be remedied without the co-operation of parents. What that
co-operation should be will be seen further on.
There are defects in our institutions of education. This is our next
point. These defects are in the manner of teaching and in what is
taught.
We acknowledge that there have been great improvements in the manner of
teaching since we were boys; but with all this the want of uniformity,
scarcely attainable in this country, will always leave the door open to
defects in teaching. As a rule, the mind of a boy is too much taxed with
speculative matter, and his memory comparatively neglected. The memory
is one of the first faculties to show itself active, and it is also
capable of wonderful development. In the earlier education of the child
the exercise of the memory should predominate; as little strain as
possible should be put on the mind yet tender. As the education
progresses the exercise of the memory should be kept up; choice extracts
from the best poets and writers should alternate with the useful storing
in the mind of facts and definitions. The preliminary education should
consist in the learning of languages, which are means of acquiring
further knowledge by intercourse and reading, not by any means the sum
total of education. We wish our Catholic parents would understand this;
for when a boy succeeds in knowing a little French and German they seem
to think everything done. These languages are only the keys to the
treasures locked up in the writings of other nations. They are
principally to be acquired by memory; and, in fact, this is the way the
most successful and generally used method—that of Ollendorf—adopts.
There is no reason why the boy should not be put at a very early age to
learning foreign languages. There is, too, one great advantage in this:
that his work at such languages will be lighter and less absorbing when
he comes to be engaged in scientific study. Again, care should be taken
not to put into the hands of a child books of an abstruse or relatively
difficult character; for excessive caution against straining the mind of
such a scholar can scarcely be taken. A great deal of harm is sometimes
done from the too high standard exacted by school-boards of the various
categories of boys. We have never ceased to praise the judicious
interference of our father, who, finding us with an analytical
arithmetic put into our hands at seven years of age, took it away and
placed it on the highest shelf of his closet.
When a boy is well under weigh in the languages—we do not speak of
religious education, which we take for granted—he may very properly be
introduced to the study of experimental science and the more difficult
problems of analytical arithmetic and mathematics. But these branches
should not be arranged in such a way as to compete, as it were, with
that much-neglected study, so lightly thought of—mental philosophy. If
one visits our different Catholic institutions of learning, and examines
their system, still more looks into the practical working of it, he will
find that the year of philosophy, much talked of, is employed in a most
perfunctory manner. We would not be understood as attributing any _culpa
theologica_ to the instructors. We consider this state of things owing
first to parents, and consequently to their children, and in part to the
want of appreciation of the need of such philosophical training on the
part of the teachers; though also, sometimes, to want of competency in
the teachers themselves, whose previous education has been on the old
plan. We conceive that too great attention and zeal cannot be expended
in the correction of these defects. Corrected they can be, and they must
be, if we wish to take and keep our proper standing. We cannot have a
university for the present, and therefore it is all important that the
one essential thing a university can give—a higher mental
training—should be given to our young Catholic men. They must receive
this in our colleges; they will not have it elsewhere. Of the need of it
there can be no question. The great number of able, educated Europeans
who, from political causes, have had to leave their native country and
come to us, and the large number of Americans who nowadays study in
European universities, all of whom, in conversation and through the
press, retail to us the wildest phases of infidel, metaphysical, and
social doctrine, is a sufficient argument to decide the matter, should
any one hesitate. The church, to be sure, is our infallible guide, but
there are many questions she does not treat, or, if she has treated
them, her decisions can be understood only by careful study and
explanation in the language of philosophy. So far from discouraging the
study of philosophy, of metaphysics, and of ethics—possibly the more
important of the two—she encourages us to make a good use of this
handmaid of theology. It is therefore a duty incumbent on those in whose
hands is placed the education of our young men to pay more attention
than ever to this kind of instruction. We know of efforts in some
instances that have been made in this direction, but which have failed.
We are afraid they were not very numerous. In some instances a tincture
of metaphysics was deemed enough; ethics were wholly neglected. How this
could be has always been a puzzle to us. But it should not be any
longer. A careful course of metaphysics that would embrace particularly
the refutation of pantheism and materialism, besides establishing
thoroughly the existence of God and the spirituality and immortality of
the soul; and an equally careful course of ethics that would refute the
utilitarians and socialists of the day, while making clear the claims of
authority, the nature of law, the origin of right in the eternal fitness
of things as seen in the divine Mind, and such kindred questions, should
be the object of the most earnest solicitude of the superiors of our
Catholic colleges. The young students should be made to apply their
knowledge thus received either by short compositions in addition to the
repetition of the lessons taught; or, far better still, by academic
exercises in which one student defends in the school-room before his
teacher and fellow-students a thesis or proposition already explained,
while one or two others object against it all they can think of or
learn, and this, too, in strict syllogistic form. Exercises such as
these would be of the greatest advantage in training the mind to the
ready use of logic, and to refuting the arguments possible to be urged
against sound doctrine. Nothing better than this would tend to take away
the reproach so often, and perhaps in some cases most unjustly, made
against our educational institutions, of incompetency for thorough
education. Did it depend on us to have the recasting of the system of
education, we should be inclined to add on a year of further study as a
requisite for graduation, and during the last two years of a young man’s
course we would employ him entirely in the study of metaphysics and
ethics, including the principles of political economy, of the philosophy
of history—in which the great questions of history, as far as possible,
might be reviewed—and in the further polish of his literary English
training. The philosophy of history is most important, for it is a
powerful teacher. History is not to be studied as a bare narrative of
facts; the facts have a language of their own which needs an
interpreter. The polish of literary education is of great necessity, as
it is the one thing those educated in the non-Catholic colleges may be
said to excel us in. We do not dwell much on scientific education,
because that is really of secondary importance, and it is impossible to
give boys more than an elementary training in this branch, which may
serve as a ground-work for further pursuit of it, if one is destined to
turn his attention in that direction. To enable the superiors of our
colleges to carry out such a plan would depend upon the parents of young
students having the fortitude to oblige their sons to remain the
requisite time and make a diligent use of their opportunities. Herein
lies their co-operation in the great work of the future education of the
young Catholic men of America; and our word for it, if they follow this
counsel, they will never have cause to repent. They will give us, too,
far abler champions of truth than our young men have shown themselves to
be in the past.
THE DANCING PROCESSION OF ECHTERNACH.
FROM THE REVUE GENERALE.
In the year of our Lord 690 a vessel from the island of Britain left
upon the coast of Catwyk, in Holland, twelve young Anglo-Saxons who had
abandoned their newly-converted country to carry the blessing of the
Gospel to their brethren of the Continent. Chief among these young men,
several of whom were of noble birth, was Willibrord, predestined from
his mother’s womb to be a glory to the church and famous in the
estimation of men. The young strangers separated, to work, each in his
own way, in the vineyard of the Father. Willibrord began that very day
the long and heroic apostolate of fifty years which ceased only with the
pulsations of his heart. If we except his two journeys to Rome, where
the great servant of the Papacy twice received the blessing and
encouragement of the Sovereign Pontiff, he did not relax for a single
day his labors in the vast region which stretches from the mouths of the
Elbe and the Rhine to the banks of the Moselle. At his voice nations
sitting in darkness rose up to behold the light, idols crumbled before
the amazed eyes of their worshippers, churches arose from the soil and
gathered about their altars multitudes of Christians, lay society
organized itself little by little after the model of spiritual
society.[165]
Footnote 165:
_V._ Alcuin in _Vita Willibrordi_ ap. Mabillon. _Acta Sanctorum_, Ord.
S. Benedicti, t. iii. p. 567, Venetian edition.
Tradition and history show us by turns the great Anglo-Saxon apostle in
Friesland as the master of St. Boniface; in Denmark, preceding by more
than a century the famous St. Anscarius; in the island of Helgoland,
destroying the idol of Fosite and braving King Radbod’s wrath; in the
Isle of Walcheren, where he nearly fell a victim to his heroism and
apostolic zeal; in Campine as the friend of St. Lambert, another
untiring athlete of Christ; and, finally, in Luxembourg, where even more
than elsewhere his name is glorified and revered. For half a century he
stood with Lambert and Boniface in the breach, the father of
civilization in Western Germany and one of the most signal benefactors
of mankind.
The common people, though they forget great poets and great generals,
preserve the memory of saints. Seventeen churches in Belgium and
fifty-eight in Holland are under his patronage, without counting those
in the valleys of the Moselle and the Rhine, where his fame is equally
wide-spread. Sixty-three leagues apart, a small section of St.
Willibrord’s vast itinerary, two villages to-day preserve in their own
names the undying memory of his works: Wilwerwiltz on the sterile moors
of the German Ardennes, and Kleemskerk on the low, fertile plains of
maritime Flanders.[166] Drawn, as it were, from nothingness by this
great man, these two localities, were other witnesses wanting, would
tell to later ages the glory of their sublime founder. Answering one to
the other across the whole extent of Belgium, they testify to his vast
labors and his devotion to the Roman Church, which we unworthily defend
to-day against the barbarism conquered by him twelve centuries ago.
Footnote 166:
Wilwerwiltz is a contraction of Willibrordswiltz. As to Kleemskerk
(Clement’s Church), we know that in Rome Willibrord received the name
of Clement, as did Winfrid that of Boniface, under which he is
venerated.
I.
During his apostolic missions through the forests of Luxembourg
Willibrord remarked one of the most charming and romantic spots in that
fine country. It was at a turn of the Sûre, which even to-day flows on
beneath the shade of savage rocks and deep forests. The valley, widening
at this place, must at that time have presented a most imposing aspect,
while it offered every facility for a settlement of human habitations.
Indeed, the dwellings were even then of ancient date. The place bore a
name recalling incontestably its first Celtic occupants: Epternacum.
There, too, the Romans had left traces of their passage. A short league
from Echternach archæologists may still read beneath the great shadowy
oaks and thick brushwood that half hide it the following inscription
engraved on the base of a monument:
DEÆ DIANÆ
Q. POSTVMIVS
POTENS. V. S.
The upper part of the monument is gone, but enough remains to show that
it represented two persons—no doubt the goddess and her worshipper, with
a hunting-dog crouched at Diana’s feet. He who overthrew the false gods
of Helgoland and Walcheren must have crushed in holy ire this monument
of the paganism he had just destroyed.[167] At all events, the image of
Diana, once proudly throned above the valley at the edge of the wood,
now hides, degraded and mutilated, in the dank gloom of brambles and
brushwood—an eloquent emblem of St. Willibrord’s work in this country.
Echternach, where even then two little Christian oratories stood on the
site of the two churches of to-day, attracted the great man’s attention
and heart. He built there a Benedictine monastery, which was favored
from its foundation by the bounty of two royal families, the
Merovingians and Carlovingians. Around this focus of Christian life
habitations gathered, and, as always happened, the monastery expanded
and became a town. Such was the origin of the commune of Echternach, one
of the most flourishing in that happy country of Luxembourg which knows
neither great cities nor great miseries.
Footnote 167:
This, at least, is the plausible conjecture of a scholar of the first
rank—F. Alexander Wiltheim—in his fine book, _Luxemburgum Romanum_.
The monastery of Echternach was always dearer to its founder than his
other foundations. There he loved to pass his rare hours of repose.
There, on the 6th of November, 739, at the age of eighty-one years, he
reached the term of his mortal career. His remains were laid in the
basilica of the abbey among his monks and his people. Even in the tomb
he continued to be the father of that country and to exercise over men
the sovereign authority which his virtues and labors had won. Death has
no hold upon the saints; when we lower their bodies into the grave we
rear their images upon our altars. St. Willibrord, more than any other
patron of the country, is one whose sepulchre may be called glorious.
Few tombs have inspired a veneration so extraordinary, attracted the
faithful in such crowds, excited acts of faith so intense. No sooner was
he laid in his grave than multitudes came to invoke the apostle of
Luxembourg, and frequent miracles bore witness to his powerful
protection. A century had not elapsed when this wonderful devotion was
spoken of by the greatest writer of his time—Alcuin, the biographer of
our saint.[168] His festival was celebrated by an immense concourse, who
filled the air with his praise. “See, brethren,” says St. Alcuin.
“Behold the glory of serving God. Our holy patron, for love of Christ,
left his native country and led the life of a pilgrim. He trampled under
foot the riches of this world; he loved, he clung to poverty. And you
know the glory he acquired among men. But preferable far is that which
he possesses for all eternity among the angels.”[169] And the
illustrious friend of Charlemagne, speaking to his contemporaries of
facts of which he had been an eye-witness, told of the iron fetters on
the wrists and ankles of devout pilgrims which burst asunder when they
came to do penance for their sins at the venerated tomb.[170]
Footnote 168:
Ibi usque hodie divinâ operante misericordia signa et sanitates ad
sancti viri et sacerdotis reliquias fieri non cessant.—_Alcuin O.C._,
iii. p. 571.
Footnote 169:
Id. in _Mabillon_, iii. p. 575.
Footnote 170:
Id. ib. iii. p. 572.
Two centuries afterward the voice of Theofrid, St. Willibrord’s
successor and later biographer, echoes the powerful voice of Alcuin and
tells of the ceaseless devotion which brings crowds to Echternach every
year. He, too, bears witness to the saint’s miracles—so numerous, he
says, that a yoke of oxen could not drag the chariot that would hold the
votive offerings of wax and metal. And among these wonders, as in
Alcuin’s day, were to be seen broken chains and instruments of torture
worn by slaves, which were shattered into splinters.[171] No miracle is
oftener recorded of our saints than this one. I confess I never read the
record in the quaint and simple narrative of our ancient hagiographers
without emotion. Wherever they went the breakers of idols were also
breakers of fetters; that word which called men to the knowledge of the
true God called them also to the enjoyment of true liberty. _Christus
nos liberavit._ Therefore the church has been honored by the opposition
of all the tyrants who have wished to subjugate nations. They have felt
that liberty could be easily destroyed, if they could destroy her who is
the fertile mother and the fearless guardian of freedom. But nothing can
avail against the church nor against the liberty which is her offspring,
which her voice called into life, which she has bathed in the blood of
her idol-breakers.
Footnote 171:
_Theofridus vita S. Willibrordi_, c. 24 (sæc. xii.) This life of St.
Willibrord is still unpublished; only a few fragments having appeared
in _Mon. Germ. Hist._, t. xxiii. Script. The fact I mention is taken
from M. Krier’s pamphlet, _Die Springprocession_, p. 33, from the MS.
life.
It was St. Willibrord’s destiny to see crowned heads bow among the
crowds that pressed around his altars, and the imperial purple of
Germany trailing in the dust before his coarse robes of haircloth. In
the imposing procession of generations marching towards the saint’s tomb
it is difficult to distinguish the royal forms mingling with the crowd
of pilgrims, so petty seem to him who gazes from the altar the earthly
grandeur which sets them apart from other Christians.
Many a time in earlier days the Carlovingians had come to pray and
humble themselves in the sanctuary at Echternach. They came with hands
filled with gifts, and, by one of those strange vicissitudes which the
finger of Providence points out, it was one of their number who, blind,
outcast, and bereft, came later to eat the bread of St. Willibrord and
seek refuge in the shades of his monastery. History hardly mentions the
wretched Carloman, rebel son of Charles the Bald, whose eyes were put
out by his father’s orders, and who received in charity from his uncle
Louis the Abbey of Echternach _ad subsidium vitæ_.[172] The families who
succeeded the Carlovingians in Germany never forgot the saint or the
duty of paying him homage. In the year 1000 the list of imperial
pilgrimages was opened by Otto III., the young and brilliant prince who
planned so many great expeditions, and whom death had already marked
with his mysterious seal. Lothaire of Saxony, and Conrad of
Hohenstaufen, came in their turn to pray before the saint’s relics, the
one in 1131, the other in 1145. Then, in 1512, Maximilian joined in the
procession, and in memory of his visit gave to the town the bell which
bears his name and still rings on feast days. Thus, except the
sacrilegious house of Franconia, all the dynasties of the German Empire
seem to have been represented at Echternach, and to have paid court to
this prince of peace, greater and more respected than they.
Footnote 172:
M. G. xxiii. Script., _Catalogus abbatum Epternacensium primus_.
Echternach was always the capital of St. Willibrord’s peaceful realm.
There was his tomb; there rose convent and basilica, perpetual heralds
of his great deeds. The convent was a city in itself, and the basilica
is a most precious relic of eleventh-century architecture—a veritable
pearl which alone would make the reputation of a town. I will not be
drawn into further details, for fear of leaving my subject.[173] It
suffices to remember that this wonderful monument, a victim of
revolutionary vandalism, had been sold as national property, and was
falling into decay, when the piety and patriotism of the people of
Echternach snatched it from certain destruction. They formed, under the
name of _Willibrordus Verein_, a society whose aim was to recover the
basilica and restore it to worship. This society, founded in 1862 by a
few citizens in a little town of four thousand souls, now numbers its
members by hundreds. It has already devoted more than one hundred
thousand francs to the basilica, and will soon crown its work by
bringing back the shrine of the saint, now preserved in the parish
church. All reverence to the intelligent Christian people who guard
their honor so faithfully and understand so well the interests of their
own glory! Inspired by the three-fold love of religion, country, and
art, the Willibrordus Verein is one of the finest institutions that I
know. It does honor to the whole of Luxembourg, and will leave a lasting
memory. Of how many associations of our day can as much be said?
Footnote 173:
On the basilica of Echternach read a good notice by Prof. Namur
inserted in t. xxii. of _Annals of the Archæological Academy of
Belgium_; and another by M. Bock, in _Rheinlands Baudenkmale des
Mittelalters_.
The entire town of Echternach has retained that stamp of antiquity so
eagerly sought by artists, and so much despised by our petty, material
generation. Surrounded by the fantastic hills that form the valley,
whose strange summits look like crumbling castles; still enclosed by
three-quarters of its ancient fortifications, with here and there a
ruined tower, it strikes the beholder with a surprise which only
increases as he penetrates to the interior of the town. Passing through
crooked and narrow streets, where each house has an architecture of its
own which is often very impressive, he reaches the public square, where
stands the antique town-hall, known by the more ancient name of
Dingsthal, an interesting building which rests on Gothic arcades. The
parish church is equally worthy of attention for its old Romanic
architecture and its beautiful position upon the summit of an eminence
overlooking the town.
What especially tends to give to Echternach its peculiar character is
the habits of its population, so in harmony with the tranquil, cheerful
country and its mediæval monuments. Here more than elsewhere Catholic
faith has impregnated the life of the people. All their actions reflect
its powerful simplicity, its generous hardihood, its customs of ten or
fifteen centuries back. The poetry of the past, that exquisite influence
of ancient times which we inhale with delight, is here an incense ever
ascending from this happy valley. In this respect nothing can equal the
dancing procession of Echternach, which takes place always on
Whit-Tuesday, in honor of St. Willibrord, and attracts those who come
especially to invoke his aid for nervous diseases. This procession has
taken place for more than five hundred years. It can be traced back to
the fourteenth century, and may be perhaps of even earlier origin. The
dance has been explained in various ways: sometimes as expressing the
joy of a Christian people coming to venerate the relics of their patron
saint; sometimes as a symbolical representation of nervous attacks,
epilepsy, and other maladies of the kind, from which the country was
delivered by St. Willibrord’s intercession in the fourteenth century.
It is this ceremony, whose original and picturesque character is quite
unique in the Christian world, which I am about to describe to the
reader.
II.
When Whit-Sunday comes an amazing animation rouses the little town from
its habitual tranquillity, and the excitement only increases on the
Monday. Hotels and private houses are thronged with guests; many
travellers, unable to get lodgings, camp out in the neighboring villages
or go back to _die Kirch_, to return by railway the next day. The
streets are thronged with dusty tourists: gentlemen of leisure regarding
everything with a patronizing smile, peasants in rustic garb, rich
strangers arriving in spruce equipages, and respectable jaunting-cars
with three rows of seats, conveying the opulent farmers of the
neighborhood. Booths are planted everywhere, blocking up the streets and
setting their backs against every available corner. Mountebanks and
charlatans, who come to levy their tithe on public piety, stun with
their piercing outcries the busy folk running about to look for
lodgings. Religion preludes the imposing solemnities of the following
morning. The faithful flock to religious offices and sermons. All day
long they are at prayer before the sarcophagus where lies the body of
the saint. There you will see the most fervent; and by their attitudes,
the expression of their faces, and the ardor of their gaze, it is plain
that they have some great favor to implore and hope not to go away
unsatisfied. Prostrate before the altar, these rude laborers from the
Eyfel and the Ardennes, with their great horny hands and tanned faces,
opening their whole hearts to God and absorbed in prayer, are beautiful
to look upon. They seem to symbolize the destiny of mankind, born to
labor, to suffer, and to pray. It is pleasant to ponder and pray in the
stillness of that little Romanic church, beside the greatest man of the
country.
It was an humble church with vaulted roof,
The church we entered in,
Where for eight hundred years the sons of men
Had wept and prayed ’gainst sin.
There, on the hill sacred for so many ages, under the shade of the
lindens that screen the courtyard of this modest edifice, in the
presence of the wide and peaceful landscape, the heart feels at ease,
the mind is in repose. It is like a haven of rest or like some enchanted
country. The hideous, infernal tumult of the church’s enemies dies away
in this Catholic oasis. Man and nature are in harmony; the serenity that
reigns in this lovely country sinks into the most stormy heart. Here
Dante would have found the peace he sought under the vaulted roof of the
monastery at Monte Corvo.
Evening fell; the chants for Benediction rang through the church as I
entered. Thousands of voices, accompanied by the grave and solemn tones
of the organ, were singing the beautiful litany of St. Willibrord, which
is like the national air of Echternach, and has a peculiar sweetness in
a language that admits of saying _thou_ to God and to the saints:
St. Willibrord, shining star of our country,
St. Willibrord, ornament of the Roman Church,
St. Willibrord, breaker of idols, _Pray for us_.
I cannot describe the effect of this chant, rising on so many voices in
accents of plaintive supplication, penetrating the heart with its
expression of love and trust. These people love St. Willibrord and treat
him with a sweet familiarity. “Who and what was he that men should come
every year to kneel before his relics and pay him honors so exceptional?
What had he more than others, and by what was he distinguished? By
beauty, genius, science, riches?” Such was the idea of the sermon which
followed Benediction, and was heard by that whole multitude in
breathless attention, some standing, others kneeling on the flags—for
all the chairs had been taken away. The sacred orator developed his
theme with remarkable skill, and, after proving that St. Willibrord had
shone by none of these gifts, he concluded that he had reached this
exceptional glory on earth and in heaven because he had understood and
applied better than others the divine command, “Love God above all
things, and thy neighbor as thyself.”
O grandeur of Christianity! O eternity of the church! A thousand years
ago Alcuin said the same in his panegyric; the modern preacher’s noble
words were like the lingering echo of the same Christian voice sounding
through ages—of that voice which ever repeats itself, and yet is always
fresh, for it is the voice of truth. Thus, at the two extremities of
this decade of centuries, the friend of Charlemagne and the young priest
of Luxembourg were the two ends of a chain whose every link is an
extinct generation, and which brings down to our own day the
unchangeable, immortal tradition. One thousand years hence other
pilgrims will come to contemplate these great lessons of time and pray
before the sacred tomb, treading beneath their feet the ruins of our
civilization and modern society.
After Benediction I went to walk on the heights above the town. The
night was clear and the moon hung calmly serene in the heavens. Every
time I pass through Echternach I climb these hills; the place is full of
calm and refreshment, and I always feel happy there. Looking down upon
the town, with its spires and ancient roofs mirrored in the peaceful
river, I listened to the last sounds dying away in the streets; for the
town went to rest as early that night as on any other. Heaven and earth
seemed so quiet, so infinitely peaceful! If at that hour propitious to
dreams you would evoke in spirit the memory of the past, it would rise
like a gigantic phantom. One glance cast into the domains of fancy would
show the wild valley heaped with Druidic stones, crowned with altars and
Roman monuments, and traversed by the swift, silvery flood of the Sûre,
which seems to pierce like a dart the mysterious depths of the ancient
Ardennes. On the summit of the height appears a wonderful man, who
breaks the Gallic and Roman idols, and with their fragments builds
Christian oratories; he levels the forest and cultivates the valley;
builds dwellings around the church, calls men, and they come at his
bidding; and this new Orpheus, with no lyre but his voice, leads in his
train Barbarism, conquered, charmed, converted.
The next day I breakfasted between five and six o’clock in one of the
many pretty pleasure-gardens of the town. The evening before had been
very warm; the day dawned under the same auspices, but perfectly clear.
The people of Echternach declare that it cannot rain on the day of their
procession, or, at least, that the rain must stop before they enter the
church. On all sides resounded clear and full the voices of pilgrims
coming in procession from villages near by and chanting the litany of
St. Willibrord. These aerial tones, coming to us in the freshness of
dawn through blossoming trees, opened the day very pleasantly. I went
out. Through every street there poured a stream of country people,
preceded by crosses and banners. Whole parishes came with their pastors;
they had left home at daybreak and walked several leagues, with prayers
and chants rousing the wondering birds, unused to hear human voices
praise the Creator in advance of them. The nearest villages came in
procession; others, who could not send a solemn train, furnished a large
number of pilgrims, who marched in isolated groups. Without counting the
pilgrims of the Luxembourg, Belgium, France, and Russia are represented
every year. The number of devout Christians whom each anniversary brings
to the sacred tomb varies from 12,000 to 15,000, leaving out those who
come without having made a vow, some from religious feeling, others from
mere curiosity. About 20,000 strangers in all crowd into the narrow
precincts of the little town every Whitsuntide. For whole hours you see
the flood of humanity ascend and descend the steps of the parish church;
for all the pilgrims on their arrival go first to kneel at the saint’s
shrine. About eight o’clock the multitudes pass over to the other bank
of the Sûre, where the procession is to begin. The Sûre forms the
boundary between the territory of Luxembourg and Prussia. Just there the
procession falls into line of march. At the foot of the hills, beside a
little stone cross, they erect a temporary pulpit, from which a priest
addresses the people before the ceremony begins. Thousands had collected
to await the coming of the clergy. Some walked about, others sat along
the edge of the road or leaned against the parapet of the bridge. The
crowd, scattered in picturesque confusion and disorder, buzzed like a
hive of bees. The throng increased; along every road came hosts of
pilgrims ploughing their way. From afar came vague, indistinct sounds of
singing, and along the valley, through the narrow road traced between
the Sûre and the hills, there advanced a long column. Banners floated in
the sunshine and gleamed through the trees; the procession undulated and
unrolled its length as it followed the windings of the river. The
voices, as they drew nearer, became distinct, and soon the head of the
procession appeared. They were pilgrims from Prüm, in the Eyfel, more
than twelve leagues from Echternach, coming to make their annual
devotions to St. Willibrord. These good people had set out on Sunday
evening; they had walked part of that night and of the next day, praying
and chanting. On Monday evening they had disbanded, scattering about
through fields and in barns a few leagues from Echternach, and had
resumed their march early in the morning. Tanned, heated, dusty, clad in
coarse raiment, they came on in good order, forming an almost
interminable train. It seemed as if the whole village had come. Their
accoutrements were rustic, fantastic even; the men carried crosswise
over their backs an umbrella fastened by a string which passed over
their breasts, crossing the strap of a large leathern valise hanging on
the other side. The women had baskets on their arms. These valises and
baskets held the provisions for that journey of four or five days. It is
remarkable that this pilgrimage of the people of Prüm is voluntary and a
popular movement; the clergy take no part in its organization, and
seldom join it, the parishioners making it their own affair. On this
occasion, indeed, a priest was with them, but the order of march and the
devotions were directed by a certain number of men placed at intervals
in the procession. They carried, as the insignia of office, a red staff
surmounted by a little copper cross. The priest, who closed the
procession, walked between two young men clad in quaint and antique
garb, with hats turned up and trimmed with flowers. One carried the
cross, the other a large votive candle adorned with emblems, the annual
gift of their village to the patron of Echternach. The procession
advanced in perfect order. Indifferent to curious looks, turning their
eyes neither to the right nor to the left towards the human hedge that
lined their path, they passed on, saying their rosary aloud and
repeating after each _Ave_ this familiar salutation, full of simplicity
and grace: “St. Willibrord, we are coming to thy tomb!” I loved to see
and hear them. Their fervor in prayer and contempt of fatigue, their
rustic dress and primitive manners, their indifference to all but their
one object, made these peasants a people set apart, and their pilgrimage
a type of the pilgrimage of human life as it ought to be made. I watched
the pious train until it entirely disappeared on the other side of the
bridge; for, before returning to the Prussian bank to take part in the
sacred dance, the people of Prüm were going to kiss the shrine and pray
before the relics of the saint.
At last, about nine o’clock, a numerous band of clergy appeared, and the
ceremony opened with the accustomed sermon. Fancy the scene: the lovely
morning and beautiful country, the vast host of listeners intent on the
words of the priest. For a frame there were the high hills on one side,
on the other the silvery course of the Sûre, and below the spires of the
town.
Not less wonderful was it to hear on Prussian ground a Catholic voice
calling upon thousands of the faithful to pray for the Holy Father and
the persecuted church. And while the priest was speaking there came from
all the heights belated pilgrims hastening to the ceremony. They were
seen afar off, coming down the steep paths bordered with flowering
hedges; and the bells rang out full peals, and the word of God was
scattered among the multitude with the song of birds.
When the sermon was ended, the clergy, in white surplices, formed in
line of march and opened the procession. Behind them came the musicians,
and afterwards the immense throng of those who were to join in the
dance. At first there was much crowding. Leaning against the parapet of
the bridge, I had to ply my elbows lustily to prevent the multitude from
suffocating me, and farther on, when the train began to defile through
the narrow street which leads to the Sûre, the pressure was quite
frightful. There were not ushers enough to preserve order. A few firemen
and policemen had to be everywhere at once, and were swallowed up in the
billows of the confused crowd. The cause of the disorder was the
impatience of some people, who, instead of waiting until the street
should be cleared for the beginning of the dance, went forward to post
themselves higher up in the procession. This choked the way in some
places, and there was terrible pushing. Women screamed; several were
nearly suffocated. I saw some men, who, as they awaited their turn with
philosophic patience, set their backs against walls and rowed with their
arms against the human flood to save themselves from wreck. A
hospitality, as unexpected as it was welcome, rescued me from the tumult
to become a peaceful spectator in a neighboring house instead of an
actor in the scene. “It is sweet,” says Lucretius, “when the sea is
swollen and tossed by rough winds, to look from the shore upon the
distress of others, not finding pleasure in their troubles, but in our
own exemption from them.” I felt, in selfish enjoyment, the spirit of
these lines, gazing at my ease from an upper window upon the undulation
of several thousand heads floating apparently upon a liquid expanse.
Actually, a needle thrown from above would not have reached the ground.
Order was soon restored. The police got angry and used their fists
unsparingly to force back into their places the intruders, who continued
to leave the ranks and insinuate themselves in among the front rows of
the procession. All this went on while the head of the _cortége_
disappeared at the turn of the street, dancing to the traditional air
played by the musicians. It was a quaint tune, rather quick in measure
and old-fashioned. It was hard to say whether it expressed joyful
excitement or the emotions of grief; for music, with its wonderful
suppleness, may sometimes speak to us of our joys and sorrows, according
to the mood in which we listen. And now this melody, centuries old, set
in motion a dancing multitude. The sight was strange, striking,
indescribable. To an unaccustomed spectator the first moment is of
stupefied amazement. His fancy enters a new world; the movement of all
these heads bending and rocking in a rhythmic measure produces a
fantastic effect that no words can convey. I do not know whether I can
tell exactly what I saw, or if my sketch will give even a faint idea of
a scene which defies analysis and description.
Think of a stream of twelve thousand persons in a street where only
eight can walk abreast; fancy all these people, in rows of four, six, or
eight, advancing, held together by handkerchiefs or staves to keep order
in the ranks and measure in the dance; fancy them, I say, executing a
dance which consists of three steps forward and two back, and which
moves the whole multitude from end to end with one unceasing action of
ebb and flow. The interminable train stretched over about fifteen
hundred metres from the bridge of the Sûre to the parish church. It took
not less than four hours to accomplish that quarter of a league by
dancing, and under the direct rays of the sun, without a moment’s rest.
It is easy to imagine that order and regularity were sometimes
disturbed, but what was lost in symmetry was gained in picturesque
originality of detail. There were almost as many different styles of
dancing as there were various groups, everybody managing his own
affairs. The groups just behind the musicians succeeded best, being kept
in step by the music; and in general the people of Echternach danced
more harmoniously and correctly than the others. As the bands were few
and stationed quite far apart, the pilgrims who could not hear them
hopped about in utter confusion, while the rest had a certain harmony of
movement. These eccentricities of choreographic movement were worth
seeing; here they glided with light step, elegantly and smoothly; there
they jumped about with heavy tread and immense exertion. Watching
carefully those who seemed to have best preserved the tradition, I
thought that the most pure and “classic” rhythm consisted in five steps
of a dance, quite slow and without turning, three forward and two back,
made by gliding rather than bounding. The whole character was grave,
solemn, and suited to a religious dance. A band from Echternach opened
the march and played the tune for the first pilgrims. The others danced
to the strains of a few isolated instruments. Each _cortége_ had its own
musicians, and, as each parish danced separately, they had their local
players. It is needless to say that variety reigned among the
instruments—drums, violins, flutes, clarionets, and hautboys—all hard at
work and producing combinations hardly grateful to musical ears. But the
good fellows did not pretend to be artists. They worked for conscience’
sake; they piped and they blew, they beat and they scraped, with all the
accumulated force of lungs, fists, and bows. St. Willibrord is not
fastidious; he takes the will for the deed, and if there be here and
there some cockney scandalized by this cacophony, so much the worse for
him. Ill though they play the melody, it is a good work to make the
attempt, and the worthy pilgrims accommodate themselves to
circumstances. Formerly no fiddler was allowed to play in village fairs,
if he had not paid for the privilege at the procession of Echternach
that same year. This custom, with many others, is obsolete, but many
musicians remain faithful to tradition.
This year, while the procession was crossing the town, there came
marching through a cross-street a brilliant band of music preceded by a
banner; it was a philharmonic society from Remich on the Moselle, and
was received with acclamation. It joined the procession, and its fine
execution came as a welcome reinforcement to the poor musicians, who
were nearly exhausted.
I could not take my eyes off the wonderful scene, sometimes taking in
the whole picture at a glance, sometimes pausing to examine details in
all their picturesque variety. Most attractive of all was the sight of
the children of Echternach, dancing at the head of the procession just
behind the village band; they put such life into the affair, and felt it
such a festive occasion. It was refreshing to watch the rosy-cheeked,
laughing rogues, usually in their shirt-sleeves, bounding merrily “for
St. Willibrord.” Then came the grown folk of Echternach, then the
various parishes, each, as I said, forming a distinct group with its own
musicians. The sexes were separated. Formerly the pilgrims from Prüm and
Waxweiler, who came from the most distant points, had the right of
opening the procession, while the inhabitants of Echternach, through
courtesy, took the last place. Now there is no fixed order; the parishes
take their places at hap-hazard, and many people leave the ranks to join
the front rows at the risk of throwing the whole procession into
confusion. I saw the good people of Prüm, with their monumental green
and blue umbrellas capable of sheltering whole households. Now they were
unstrung from their proprietors’ backs, and, bound two and two, served
as a balustrade to be grasped by three or four persons to keep them even
in the ranks and regulate their step. Here and there, amid the rhythmic
movement of these thousands of heads, I descried some unhappy being
afflicted with St. Vitus’ dance, shown by wild, spasmodic springs,
violent excitement, and the pitiful rocking of all the limbs. They were
usually women, young girls stricken with this terrible disorder. I
noticed one in particular whom every one looked at with earnest
sympathy. She leaped in a wild, feverish way, supported under the arms
by her mother, whom I knew by the look of anxiety and sadness imprinted
on her face. The kind people of the town stood ready at their doors with
refreshing beverages for these poor creatures; but they hardly stopped
to drink before continuing their dance under the whip of the sun, as the
great Alighieri says, whose words came to my mind more than once at
sight of these miseries. So drawn along by this weird dance, the
pilgrims appeared and vanished, as wave follows wave, and the monotonous
melody carried on ten thousand people to the sound of its fantastic
cadences. Add one or two thousand pilgrims who, not joining in the
dance, followed the procession, saying their beads or reciting the
litany, and you have in all twelve thousand Christians of both sexes and
of every age and rank, who, through four whole hours, formed St.
Willibrord’s triumphal procession and visited his sacred tomb.[174]
Footnote 174:
According to the _Echternachter Anzeiger_ of June 5, the number of
dancers was 10,600; of other pilgrims 1,800. This does not include 188
musicians, 72 priests, 1,100 chanters, and various corporations. There
were, moreover, 14,000 or 15,000 spectators, making a total of about
30,000 people. Comparing these numbers with those of former years, we
shall see that the ancient ceremony increases in importance and
_éclat_. This conclusion is correct, as M. Krier’s statistics show,
_Die Springprocession_, p. 148. Since the beginning of this century
the number of dancers had not before reached 10,000.
All the energy of the vigorous Luxembourg sinews is required to bring to
a successful close this long and fatiguing pilgrimage, whose
difficulties increase as they near their end; for I forgot to say that
the procession danced up the sixty-two steps which lead to the parish
church. Not every one can go to Corinth, says the proverb. The same is
true of Echternach, though in a different sense, thank God! But it would
be a mistake to think that the famous ceremony demands anything
excessive or superhuman. The calm, grave character of the dance, and the
numerous pauses which are made necessary by the blocking of the way,
suffice to husband the pilgrim’s strength. Their vow, though hard and
laborious, is not impossible or dangerous. The proof of this is that
many children in the procession dance the whole length of the way twice
over. No sooner do they reach the church at the head of the procession
than they scamper back to join the rear and begin the exercise over
again. Pilgrims who, on arriving at Echternach, do not feel equal to
executing their vow, and yet wish to contribute to the brilliancy of the
festival, give a few sous to one of these children, and the
indefatigable little fellows acquit themselves of their task with
imperturbable seriousness and charming grace. But prodigious people are
again the people of Pürm. They arrive at the town, to use a familiar
expression, with twelve leagues in their heels; and at once they set to
work and dance four long hours. Then, when their devotions are ended,
they take barely time to eat their modest fare out doors or at an inn
table, and go home singing and praying to the high table-lands and
extinct volcanoes of their wild country.
One should be in the church when the procession pours in by traditional
custom through the left aisle, to pass round the altar in the choir and
go out through the right aisle. The dance does not cease an instant as
they pass through the sanctuary; the orchestra goes on playing the
quaint, archaic melody, the dancers make the old Romano-vaulted roof
ring with the clang of their measured steps. The pilgrims do not think
their vow fulfilled until, after making the tour of the church, they
find themselves in the courtyard before an old wooden cross, where they
break ranks. Nothing can be more fantastic than this irruption of
dancing and music in the house of God. The spectacle in the church is
beyond description; you feel as if you were dreaming, and your spirit
floated in the domain of the impossible. What do the people mean? Have
they come to pillage and destroy? Is this tumultuous throng the prey of
a sudden delirium, of a dancing mania? Or, if it be worship, does it not
revive the solemn orgies of ancient Greece, where certain deities of
Oriental origin were honored by the leaps, the cries, and the races of
their idolaters? No; to the first instant of amazement there succeeds a
more correct and complete judgment. Beneath the external agitation,
beneath the noise and movement, you see the religious calm which fills
these souls, and the solemnity pervading the expression of their inner
feelings. It is this contrast which gives to the singular ceremony its
character of deep originality. No doubt we have lost the sense of
mysterious symbolism in the sacred dance; we no longer see its true
motive or significance; we only know or divine that the devout thought
which first inspired it animates it at the present day.
Among various ideas suggested by this astonishing experience, there was
one that I could not get rid of, and which returned to me on the
festival and its eve again and again. While multitudes knelt before the
altar, kissed the shrine, touched it with objects of devotion, and
filled the church with their prayers, you would have said that the great
man must be there, present among the faithful, speaking to them and
listening to them. What glory equals that of the saints? What other son
of Adam enjoys such honors? Those whom the Catholic Church has crowned
with eternal palms do not reign only in heaven; the human glory which
they despised is given to them abundantly, and these little ones, who
passed through life obscure and despised, see themselves suddenly
surrounded with an amazing glory with which Cæsar, Homer, Archimedes,
and Plato do not shine. The world rings with their name, and the least
and most ignorant of human beings know, love, and revere them. They are
not only illustrious, they receive solemn veneration, they share in a
certain way the honors of God himself. Their names are uttered with
bended knee, nations flock to their tombs, and they are gloriously
enthroned in Christian hearts. Beside such a destiny is it worth while
to try to immortalize one’s name and to flutter, as the poet says, upon
the lips of men? What is the greatest name on earth, unless it be
encircled with the aureole of sanctity? Ignored by the crowd, uttered
coldly by most of those who know it, respected by a few, but invoked by
no one with clasped hands and heart uplifted to him who bore it. The
name of the least saint prostrates in the dust all human generations
through the long succession of ages, and resounds like a word of life on
all lips. The church alone is the dispenser of glory, and even among
secular names the noblest and most lasting are those of Catholic
associations.
III.
The reader asks, no doubt, what is the final impression produced by the
spectacle of the dancing procession, and how we should estimate this
strange ceremony? I will try to answer the double question clearly. In
the first place, one must see the procession with one’s own eyes to
judge it fairly. The public must beware of newspaper reports, which are
numerous and usually wholly incorrect, not to use a more uncivil term.
There is no name which certain papers have not applied to the subject;
for correspondents of a farcical turn amuse themselves every year at the
expense of a credulous public. We may say, _en passant_, that no class
of beings can be more contemptible than reporters hunting for a
sensation—travelling bagmen of the press who are allured by scandal as
the vulture is by a carcase. It is easy to fancy what the ceremony at
Echternach must have become under their pen. The very name of dancing
procession makes them scent a topic, and, devoid of all religious
feeling, they describe first and judge afterwards a spectacle they are
incapable of understanding. Their descriptions are so unfaithful that
you doubt whether the good people ever saw the procession, or whether
they did not write the account before going to the ceremony. They give
caricatures of a mass of humanity entangled in frightful confusion and
bounding with all their strength to the sound of a gigantic hubbub. The
ranks get mingled; the dancers crush each other and spring about,
regardless of the toes of their neighbors, who scream for mercy. With
rubicund faces streaming with perspiration, and with eyes starting from
the sockets, these wretched fanatics would die rather than pause. On all
sides numbers give up in despair and drop breathless among their
barbarous companions. Sometimes they are drawn out of the crowd by
compassionate persons and restored to life, but no one in the procession
stops for anything, and the pitiless Catholic _bamboula_ goes on and on,
sowing devastation at every step. I spare the reader further details and
give only the canvas of an embroidery more or less varied according to
the imaginative powers of the correspondent. In short, despite the
diversity of some details easy to add, this fancy sketch has appeared in
nearly all the anti-religious papers in Belgium, and will end in being
stereotyped. It is needless to say that it is false throughout. Among
ten thousand persons who were dancing I did not see one give out. Also,
contrary to another assertion, the number of epileptics and other
invalids in the procession is very small. I saw in all five or six
persons evidently afflicted with nervous diseases.
After reading this high-toned description, flavored with a few
Voltairean jests of the old type, it is natural to pronounce the
procession of Echternach an absurdity. The sarcasms of free-thinkers
annually assail the venerable ceremony, but without injuring it. In
fact, it is irreverent enough in this nineteenth century to increase in
importance. Eye-witnesses of the strange spectacle always retain an
impressive memory of it. I confess to having been rather prejudiced
against the grotesque scenes I expected to see. At the end of a quarter
of an hour I was convinced of the powerful religious character of this
great public act, and I remarked that all the spectators shared my
feeling. Any one must have a singularly empty mind and heart not to be
struck by the grandeur of the scene. Those who always take a petty view
of things, because they can take no other, may laugh at the discordant
music and the clumsy dancing of some of the pilgrims. For myself, when I
see the same belief, centuries old, translated by thousands of men into
bold, spontaneous action, I cannot restrain my admiration. Before the
intrepidity with which these men, trampling under foot all human
respect, honor with consecrated rites their patron saint, I feel moved
and impressed. Where is there such faith left in Israel? “When I hear
the old tune,” said one of the most honorable _bourgeois_ of Echternach
to me, “and when I see the first pilgrims arrive, I feel something
circulate between my flesh and skin that makes me fairly shiver.” A
young student of the town said to me very prettily: “I do not care much
for the dancing of the grown people, but the sight of the dancing
children carries me back to my own happy childhood, and my eyes fill
with tears.”
These feelings are unanimous. You see once in a while in the crowd a
travelling clerk on his vacation hazarding a timid and colorless sarcasm
which a generous public passes over unnoticed. Beyond dispute, the sight
of the procession exercises a moral and religious influence. Like
incredulity, faith is contagious; timid spirits feel strengthened in
this region where the breath of Catholic life circulates so freely; sick
hearts come out renewed from the spectacle of thousands of Christians
revealing the true remedy for human woe. The people of Luxembourg,
essentially serious and meditative, understand the aim of the ceremony;
its quaintness does not prevent them from seeing it as it really is—a
great and solemn affirmation of faith, at once an act of penance and a
prayer, to be preserved in the original form out of respect to their
ancestors and veneration for the saint. Whatever the origin of this
ancient custom,[175] it deserves to be preserved not only because it
fosters and develops religion in the people, but because it revives
before our eyes, in the most picturesque way, the manners of our
fathers, whose least traces historians and archæologists are jealous to
discover. A Luxembourg writer says well on this subject: “We preserve
with scrupulous fidelity old monuments and objects of antique art. Why
not do our best to preserve in its original type this remarkable
procession, this monument graven in the living hearts of our
brethren?”[176]
Footnote 175:
I have given the two current opinions on the origin of the dancing
procession. I share neither, and hope my different explanation clear
by weight of proof.
Footnote 176:
Krier, _Dancing Procession_, p. 55. This author wrote his work first
briefly in French, then in German with more details. The latter is a
serious and interesting work as regards the ceremony. It is also an
edifying appeal from a Christian priest to his brethren.
The intelligent town of Echternach perfectly understands that it is
incumbent upon its honor to respond to this wish. It has neglected
nothing in the cause, and at various times has had to surmount great
obstacles. The administrative prohibitions of Joseph II., the
brutalities of the French Revolution, the petty opposition of the Dutch
government, have not discouraged them; they have held faithfully to
their patriotic tradition, and have no cause to repent it, for they find
in this devotion a source of great prosperity. Their unalterable
attachment is the more remarkable because even the clergy have often
been opposed to the procession. In 1777 the Prince Elector of Treves,
Clement Wenceslaus—under the reign of the Febronians, I should
add—actually forbade the dance, and thus furnished excuse to Joseph II.
to forbid it also a little later. To-day quite a number of the clergy
look unfavorably on these extraordinary demonstrations of faith. They
think religion is compromised by associating it with practices which,
without being bad in themselves, may provoke the mockery of the
incredulous and alienate them farther from the church. This opinion,
based, of course, on a sincere devotion to religious interests, appears
to me an unconscious and useless concession to the petty spirit of the
age, which is never satisfied with half-measures. Anti-religious
fanaticism will not be appeased by our throwing to it as a sop a small
portion of Catholic treasure. What it wants is the entire suppression of
religion. To yield any point whatever will only serve to whet its
appetite and augment its pretensions.
Far from sharing these fears, I think that in these days of struggle it
is important to oppose the faith as a whole to unbelief as a whole, and
not yield an inch of ground, unless we wish to lose all. From the
earliest days of Christianity there have been people who took scandal at
faith which goes beyond what is strictly necessary; among Christ’s
apostles there were those who blamed Magdalen for anointing the feet of
her Master with precious ointment. It is instructive to remember that it
was Judas who showed himself most shocked by what he called useless
expense. We may be sure that, as a general rule, the enemies of the
church detest all her practices and would like to see them every one
abolished. Give them the dance of Echternach to-day; to-morrow they will
demand the suppression of the procession itself, and soon after they
will wish to close the church where the saint’s relics are venerated. We
know something of this in Belgium. Because we submitted to the
proscription of jubilee processions last year, we have had to resign
ourselves this year (1876) to seeing God in the Eucharist confined to
the temple; and we shall see worse things still, if we do not guard
against them in time. It would, therefore, be mere folly to sacrifice to
interested claimants a venerable custom, dear to whole populations and
full of poetry and originality. “But why dance?” you ask. “Cannot faith
be shown in some other way?” Of course it can. Do not let us kneel down
to pray, or stand uncovered before holy images, or make the sign of the
cross, or do a hundred other things equally useless, strictly speaking.
Yet who would propose to give them up? There is in the heart of man a
powerful, mysterious tendency to express the inner feelings of the soul
by symbolical actions. Thence come these many ceremonies which have no
sense in themselves, and all owe their worth to a hidden significance.
The dance of Echternach has no other origin; it is the symbolical
representation of the sentiments of joyful confidence which the people
feel in the holy patron of their town. In every age joy has been
expressed by dancing, and among those who blame the custom of Echternach
may there not be some one who has danced for joy at hearing good news?
Many examples could be cited since David danced before the Ark of the
Alliance down to our own days, so readily do these impetuous emotions of
the soul translate themselves into movements of the body.
Still, the church, while introducing into her ceremonies a rich and
varied symbolism, has never admitted dancing; and this prudent reserve
is to be admired because dancing, harmless in itself, is one of those
dangerous things which can, according to time and place, produce
deplorable abuses. With the same wise moderation she has not absolutely
forbidden it; and where the practice has been introduced naturally, and
has become a part of popular devotion, she has tolerated it, as at
Echternach, and even encouraged it because she saw in it clearly a
religious element. Nothing is more wonderful in the church than this
perfect wisdom, this superior good sense, with which she regulates great
social and political questions and decides the petty details of
individual life. Her attitude towards this ancient ceremony is as clear
and correct as possible; she mildly favors it in spite of its strange
forms, and refuses to blame these unless they become an occasion of
scandal. From the moment that the dance should lose its traditional
character of austere and respectable devotion, and become a pretext of
pleasure and disorder, it would be at once condemned by the church and
would fall into discredit. Thank God! that day is not near, and the
procession of Echternach will still outlive many a kingdom and empire.
As a matter of course, it will be discussed as long as it lasts, and
will always have adversaries and partisans. Prose and poetry will for
ever dispute over human society, and will seek to model it after two
opposite fashions. We live to-day in a prosaic age. Prose triumphed with
the French Revolution and has passed through western Europe with a
hammer, destroying, together with works of art, all the flower of
Catholic institutions and habits. They will revive, but slowly, and this
generation will not see their complete restoration. Now, despoiled of
all which lent a charm to existence, society languishes in a desert of
monotony. Rhythm, so to speak, has disappeared from our lives with that
glorious succession of festivals, customs, memories, and hopes which
surrounded us from the cradle to the grave. All that was Catholic
poetry; it enlivened the existence of the poor laborer, and made of a
peasant, attached to the soil and toiling for his master, a happier man,
more contented with himself, than workmen in the cities who get a good
salary and enjoy their independence. There is in the human soul a
sublime aspiration after beauty and poetry which nothing can destroy,
and its wings grow strong as they meet with resistance. Does not the
tedium which has devoured the last generation betray a sense of want and
an aspiration after Catholic life with its artistic magnificence and
poetic influences? Humanity is tending in that direction, and has
already met the enemy who would bar the way. Thence comes the loud and
terrible struggle which tears the whole earth, and of which we may,
without presumption, hope to see the close.
The procession of Echternach, like the mysteries of Oberammergau in
Upper Bavaria, is a precious relic of the old popular poetry of
Catholicity translated into the habits of life. That is its true and
complete meaning. It is neither more nor less; it is not an act of
worship nor a vulgar profanation. It stands on that boundary line where
the church condescends to popular feeling and makes the hard road
through life easier by her help. It is the natural fruit of popular
devotion which sprang from a religious feeling and has been preserved
with respectful piety. It could not be imitated or transplanted; like
generous wine, it would lose the flavor of the soil if it were
cultivated on strange land. It is only possible there where all is
harmonious with it. One must have a studied hostility towards religious
things to fail to see its æsthetic character, even without recognizing
the sincerity and the venerable tone of the old custom. Some people fall
into ecstasies over Grecian theories and the beautiful religious dances
sculptured on the metopes of the Parthenon. Others devote their lives to
the study of the chorus in ancient tragedies and its evolutions on the
stage. I do not say that the dance of Echternach, as such, is comparable
to these choreographic works of art, but why refuse to a Christian
practice in use among our fathers the benevolent attention lavished on
pagan society? Has it not a double claim to study in the fact that we
received it from our Catholic ancestors? For five centuries, at least,
it has lived and flourished among the populations of the Ardennes and
its surroundings. Every year it draws from their homes thousands of
these sedentary peasants; it furrows with the steps of pilgrims the
long, white, desert roads of Luxembourg; it draws together in fraternal
relations men far removed from each other, by the same prayers and the
same emotions; it lifts towards heaven in unalloyed joy their faces
bowed pitilessly earthward all the rest of the year. It teaches them to
know beyond their own fireside and parish the great Christian family of
which they are members, and leaves in their memory for all the rest of
the summer and through the long winter evenings ineffaceable impressions
of peaceful happiness. That is poetry, it seems to me, and of the best
kind; more is the pity for those who cannot feel it. As the name of
_pèlerinard_ is not one that frightens or mortifies me, I will assert
that the ancient procession of Echternach inspired me with unlimited
admiration, that it edified, moved, and consoled me, and appeared to me
a most charming episode in the great, mournful epic of human life.
THE PAN-PRESBYTERIANS.
After two years of careful preparation the great Pan-Presbyterian
Council has assembled; has eaten seven luncheons in public and at the
public expense, and a corresponding number of breakfasts, dinners, and
suppers in private and at private cost; and has dispersed; its members
talked much—but these were their only deeds. The labor of the
Pan-Presbyterian mountain brought forth not even a mouse. Its promise
was large; its performance was ludicrously small—so small that the
leading journals of England appear to have been almost unaware of the
existence of the Pan-Presbyterians, while the principal organ of opinion
in the Scotch city where the council was held—“close to the grave of
John Knox, the founder of Presbyterianism”—gave to the record of its
proceedings not so much space as it often devotes to the report of a
local synod, and dismissed it at its close with good-humored but
contemptuous ridicule. Here, however, the ingenuous reader may inquire,
“Who are the Pan-Presbyterians, and for what purpose were they in
council?” The question would be a natural one, and he who propounds it
need not blush for his ignorance. The people of Scotland may be presumed
to know all that is worth knowing about Presbyterianism in all its
forms; but it appears that in certain rural districts of that very
Presbyterian land the impression prevailed that Pan-Presbyterian was the
title of a new sect indigenous to America, and recently smuggled into
Scotland like the Colorado beetle; while in the more learned circles of
Edinburgh this bucolic delusion was derided by erudite philologists, who
explained that “Pan-Presbyterianism is a learned form of stating that
Presbyterianism is Everything, and that a Pan-Presbyterian is a person
who holds that comprehensive yet exclusive doctrine.” In point of fact,
however, the Pan-Presbyterians were simply three hundred and twenty-five
gentlemen, most of them with the handle of reverend to their names, who
claimed to be the delegated representatives of the various Presbyterian
sects throughout the world. From time to time some of the almost
innumerable Protestant sects show that they are ashamed of their
sectarianism. Those of them who recognize at all the fact that Jesus
Christ established _one_ church in the world are uneasy when they
remember that they are members only of a sect which has a human origin.
This feeling, if rightly nurtured and obeyed, would lead those who
entertain it into the fold of the church; but prejudice, pride,
ignorance, and self-interest too often stand in the way, and lead to
attempts to satisfy the natural Christian yearning for unity by projects
for the amalgamation of a few of the sects into one body. Thus we have
had a Pan-Anglican Congress, a Bonn Conference, and an Evangelical
Alliance; and now this Pan-Presbyterian Council. Presbyterianism has a
history of about three hundred and twenty-five years, and in this period
it has succeeded in dividing and subdividing itself, until even its own
doctors do not know with exactness how many different kinds of
Presbyterians there may be, or in what manner the points of doctrine
which separate them should be formulated. It was suggested at the
council that accurate information upon this subject was desirable, and
the task of obtaining it was entrusted to a committee, who hope they may
be able to report in three years’ time. The project for the
Pan-Presbyterian Council was originated by an eminent American
Presbyterian minister—President McCosh, of Princeton (New Jersey)
College; and it took definite shape at a meeting held in London in 1875,
when “the alliance of the reformed churches throughout the world holding
to the Presbyterian system” was organized. Before the council could be
summoned, however, careful precautions had to be taken in order to
prevent the assemblage, which was to meet for the promotion of unity,
from breaking up in a row and resulting in the establishment of one or
more new schisms. A charm of novelty was thus imparted to the
undertaking; every one felt that a Presbyterian synod which could hold
its sessions without a free fight would indeed be a new spectacle. The
harmony of the council was to be assured beforehand by forbidding it to
exercise any authority whatsoever. It was especially prohibited from
attempting to “interfere with the existing creed or constitution of any
church in the alliance, or with its internal order or external
relations.” Thus the door was opened for the admission of the
representatives of sects who are almost as wide apart from each other in
what they believe and teach as they are from the church. So long as they
called themselves Presbyterians, or “held to the Presbyterian system of
church government,” it was enough. There is a Presbyterian sect in
Holland whose pastors, at least, teach that the Bible is not an inspired
book, and who deny the divinity of Christ; there is a Presbyterian sect
in France which avows the boldest rationalism; there are Presbyterian
sects in the United States who rejoice with exceeding great joy in the
belief that there are millions of infants not a span long frying in
hell; and there are others who have recoiled so far from Calvinism that
they have fallen into Universalism. In Scotland itself bitter strife
prevails between the various Presbyterian sects on such questions as the
connection of the state with the church, the binding force of the
“Standards,” and the extent and nature of the Atonement; and there is a
large party which is declaring that if a certain reverend professor, who
has written to prove that parts of the Bible are forgeries, myths, or
fables, is disciplined for that expression of opinion, they will revolt
and help him to set up a sect of his own. But the Pan-Presbyterians
resolved to concern themselves with none of these things. Everything
unpleasant was to be avoided; unity was to be talked about, but no
attempt to effect it by defining truth or denouncing error was to be
made. Even with these restrictions the promoters of the council realized
the danger of their experiment, and at the last moment they diminished
its perils by enacting that no one should speak twice on the same
subject, and that the discourses should be limited from twenty to ten
minutes each. The latter provision, which was stringently enforced, more
than once saved the council from painful scenes. We had occasion, when
writing in these pages six months ago,[177] to show that in the
Presbyterian body in Scotland theoretical infidelity had made such
headway and had obtained so firm a foothold that to deny the inspiration
of the Bible, and to cast doubt upon the authenticity of the miraculous
events recorded in its pages, was regarded by a powerful section as an
evidence of profound scholarship and of a fearless love for truth,
rather than as a proof that the advocates of these opinions had ceased
to be worthy of the name and position of Christian teachers. In a word,
the condition of the Presbyterian sects throughout the world was such
that a general council of its leading men was highly desirable, provided
that there remained in the sects anything worth saving, and they
possessed in themselves the power of saving it. For ourselves, we
believe that the mutilated fragments of Christian truth still retained
by the majority of the Presbyterian laity and by a considerable number
of the Presbyterian ministers are well worth saving; but we fear that
the Presbyterians themselves will not, or cannot, save them. If these
Pan-Presbyterians were truly representative men, then, we should say, it
is all up with Presbyterianism. The spirit which conceived the council
and which governed its proceedings was the spirit of cowardice, of
temporary expediency, of prophesying smooth things, and, if we must
speak with entire plainness, the spirit of utter and base unfaithfulness
to God’s revealed truth, even to that version of his revealed truth
which the Presbyterians profess with their lips, and which they have
formulated in their own creeds, confessions, and catechisms. In the face
of the fact that on the Continent of Europe their co-religionists are
rapidly becoming Unitarians, rationalists, and infidels; that in
Scotland German rationalistic philosophy has won its way into their
theological schools and poisoned the very fountains of their
ecclesiastical learning, so that it has now become notorious that a
large share of their ministers either do not believe what they preach or
else preach that which is in irreconcilable antagonism to the
“Standards”; and that in America the Presbyterian bodies are drifting
into Socinianism on one hand, and back into the hardest and most
repulsive form of Calvinism on the other—in view of all these undeniable
facts, or rather with assumed and predetermined blindness to them, the
chosen representatives of the Presbyterian sects assemble, spend seven
days in talking with each other, and separate without uttering a word or
performing an act in affirmation or defence or vindication of absolute
and divine truth. No! That was not in the programme; it was only on
condition that nothing of the kind should be attempted that the council
was got together at all; it was only because this promise was observed
that the council managed to do its talking and to disperse in peace. At
one of its meetings a curious scene occurred. A woman—an earnest
Presbyterian of the old sort, a spiritual descendant of Jennie
Geddes—had made her way into the council, and had listened to the debate
for some time in silence; but her emotions at last overcame her, and,
rising to her feet, she politely informed the chairman that she hoped
God’s lightning would come down and strike the assembly for its
unfaithfulness. This irate lady was indiscreet; but she only expressed,
we suppose, the feelings of many an honest Presbyterian. The council,
however, was wise in its generation, and it must be confessed that it
acted upon strictly Protestant principles. The essence of Protestantism
is a revolt against supreme authority; it is the affirmation of the idea
that one man’s opinion is as good as another’s, and perhaps better. An
attempt to provide means for an organic unity of the sects represented
would have ended in a free fight; the affirmation of positive truths
condemnatory of the heresies which honey-*comb the sects was impossible
so long as the bargain by which these heresies were to be ignored was
carried out.
Footnote 177:
See THE CATHOLIC WORLD for April.
The official programme of the work of the council was thus conceived:
“To consider questions of general interest to Presbyterians; to
strengthen and protect weak and persecuted churches; to explain and
extend the Presbyterian system; and to discuss subjects of church
work—evangelization, training of ministers, use of the press,
colportage, suppression of intemperance, observance of the Sabbath,
systematic beneficence, and the suppression of Romanism and
infidelity.”
We must here record, with a grateful heart, that “Romanism” came off
very lightly. We are not certain that for this crowning mercy we are not
indebted to those wily fellows, the Jesuits. For it was observed that,
whenever one of the speakers began to adduce evidence that the Pope was
Antichrist, the chairman suddenly discovered “that time was up”; and it
was likewise remarked that more than one soul-stirring revelation of the
diabolical seductions of the Scarlet Woman was cut short by the
announcement that “the luncheon hour had arrived, and that Bailie
McTavish would preside”—an intimation which never failed to empty the
hall. Now, there are Jesuits in Scotland—no less than a score of
them—and that they are quite equal to the task of devising means like
these for their protection cannot be doubted by any enlightened
Protestant mind. As for the twin sister of Romanism—infidelity—that
escaped almost scot free. The learned and pious delegates fought shy of
the subject; it was felt to be a dangerous one.
The council began its sessions in the Free Assembly Hall, Edinburgh, on
the 4th of July. It was found to consist of 325 members, of whom 238
were regularly-appointed delegates, and 87 were honorary, or associate,
delegates. Thirty-one of the delegates were from the Continent of
Europe; Scotland, England, Wales, and Ireland sent 92 delegates; the
colonies 30; and the United States 85. The American delegates had
brought with them 32 “associates”; and it was, perhaps, in order to
guard against bulldozing on the part of the Americans that the Scotch
delegates appointed on the spur of the moment 48 “associates” to sit
with their delegates and thus maintain a proper balance of power. The
precaution was not unnecessary; even after it had been adopted the
Americans did far more than their share of the talking. The established
church of Scotland, in appointing its delegates to the council, had
instructed them to take a high and mighty attitude, and to refrain from
doing or saying anything which would imply that they had been sent there
to treat on terms of equality with the representatives of the other
sects. The American delegation was respectable for its ability, and the
ultra-orthodox element was dominant in it. The two hostile camps into
which the handful of French Presbyterians are divided were both
represented; and so were the two Presbyterian sects of Holland. There
were enough Presbyterians in Belgium to send one delegate, and no more.
The German Presbyterians declined to be officially represented, and the
three German members of the council came as volunteers. Bohemia and
Hungary had their delegates; Switzerland sent some gentlemen who were
rather sat upon; the modern inheritors of the old Waldensian heretics
were the constituents of a delegate who had little to say; and the
remainder of the thirty-one European delegates were representatives of
“the missionary churches” in Italy, Spain, and Greece. As nearly as
could be ascertained, there are about fifty different Presbyterian
sects, and it was estimated that more than half of these were
represented in the council. But the delegates were not endowed with any
power to act, or even to speak officially, in the name of their
respective constituents. Those of the sects in Switzerland, Germany,
Bohemia, and Hungary which have a connection with the state had either
refused to be represented at all or had permitted their members to
attend only as individuals. This complete absence of everything like
legislative or judicial power in the council is a sufficient apology for
its failure to promulgate new decrees or to define any dogma. But had
the Pan-Presbyterians been of one mind and heart, they might at least
have lifted up their united testimony, in some shape or other, in
defence of those cardinal truths of Christianity which are now assailed,
all the world over, by men in their own ranks. This they did not venture
to do, for the reason that, had they tried to do it, their congress
would have ended in a row.
The opening sermon of the council was preached by Professor Flint, who
took for his text the prayer of our Lord for the unity of his church,
and whose discourse was an argument to the effect that when the
Founder of the church prayed that his followers “all may be one,” he
intended that they should be all divided. “A universal church,” says
Professor Flint, “was as grandiose and diseased a dream as was a
universal empire”; and he warned the council against striving after
organic unity even among the fifty separate Presbyterian sects. The
adoption of the rules of order, which provided that the meetings
“should be opened shortly with prayer,” caused a member to complain
that it was very awkward to use the word “shortly” in connection with
prayer; but the chairman replied that while it was awkward it was very
necessary, else they would have nothing but praying. The first subject
of discussion was “Harmony of Reformed Confessions,” which were
divided into three classes—ante-Calvinistic, Calvinistic, and
post-Calvinistic. These originally were not intended to be formulas,
but only apologies—“vindications of the Protestant faith against
Romish misrepresentation and slander.” For a while these confessions
maintained their supremacy, but now “they have lost their authority in
almost every country except England, Scotland, and the United States”;
and each church interprets the Scriptures to suit itself, even upon
such grave questions as “reprobation and infant salvation.” Should the
council@ leave this matter in its present indefinite state, or should
it undertake to formulate a new confession to which all Presbyterians
should subscribe? A Swiss delegate ventured the startling suggestion
that if such a confession were formulated “the Divinity of Christ
should be the central stand-point in it”; and another delegate
produced the draught of a new dogmatic constitution, in thirty-one
articles, which had been obligingly formulated by Professor Kraft, of
Bonn, who had patched it up from the various confessions and had sent
it to the council with his compliments. Principal Brown, of Aberdeen,
remarked that it would be extremely desirable that this or some other
similar constitution should be adopted, or something else done,
chiefly “in order to silence—no, it would not do that—but to put to
shame the calumny of the Church of Rome, which said that the Reformed
churches were divided into as many distinct and conflicting religions
as there were sects of them. The more intelligent Romanists knew this
was false” (then we cannot be classed among the more intelligent
Romanists), “but it suited them all the same to say it and repeat it,
because it had a certain pithy and plausible sound. And Presbyterians
were there to testify that it was false, and that in all that was
substantial and vital in Christianity the Reformed churches were
practically one.” After this bold declaration it would have been
naturally in order to take the step necessary to prove it. But canny
Professor Brown hastened to add that, on second thoughts, he was of
the opinion that the council had better leave the matter alone and not
attempt any unity save that of “sympathy.” Professor Candlish lamented
that “there was not now that lively sense of the unity and harmony of
the Reformed confessions that there once was.” In fact, no one knew
exactly what changes the various churches had made in the “Standards,”
and he thought it would be interesting, at least, to collect
information on that point, so as to ascertain how many different
Presbyterian beliefs there were. Dr. Lang, of Glasgow, warned the
council that it was treading on dangerous ground. “There were deeper
issues involved than merely touching the surface of their confessions:
there was the whole question as to the authority and place of the
Bible, and behind that the whole question of the supernatural.” The
widest differences of opinion existed on these questions—every one
knew that—but as long as possible let them be kept in the background.
By covering them up, and avoiding “a restless and continual
nig-nagging at the matter,” a sufficient degree of harmony could be
maintained, at least for the present. A lay delegate, a lawyer, said
that if the council once ventured to deal “with the very complicated,
delicate, and difficult question of creeds,” there might be found many
who would propose to solve the difficulty by dispensing with all
creeds. Dr. Begg at this point boiled over, and read the council a
severe lecture, expressing the disgust with which he had listened to
some of the statements which had been made and apparently accepted.
“Every age had its own theology!—(laughter and applause)—he did not
in the least believe that. Theology had been the same since the days
of Eden. The idea of having a new theology at every stage was a
blunder. (Laughter.) They heard of discoveries being made; but these
discoveries were only resurrections of old errors. (Laughter.) He
found a revolt against the divine authority and the divine Word—and
the rebels were the discoverers of these new theologies.”
The discussion was now growing warm, but as it was announced that “the
hour for luncheon had arrived, and that Mr. Stevenson, M.P., would
preside,” the threatened fight was averted, and the subject was disposed
of at a subsequent meeting by the passage of the following resolution:
“That this council appoint a committee with instructions to prepare
a report to be laid before the next General Council, showing, in
point of fact—1. What are the existing creeds and confessions of the
churches composing this alliance, and what have been their previous
creeds and confessions, with any modifications thereupon, and the
dates and occasions of the same from the Reformation to the present
day. 2. What are the existing formulas of subscription, if any, and
what have been the previous formulas of subscription used in those
churches in connection with their creeds and confessions. 3. How far
has individual adherence to those creeds by subscription or
otherwise been required from the ministers, elders, or other
office-bearers respectively, and also from the private members of
the same. And the council authorize the committee to correspond with
members of the several churches throughout the world who may be able
to give information; and they enjoin the committee, in submitting
their report, not to accompany it either with any comparative
estimate of those creeds or with any critical remarks upon their
respective value, expediency, or efficiency.”
There was an unhappy and heated controversy concerning the appointment
of some of the members of this committee, but this excitement was
unnecessary. The information can all be obtained by the purchase of a
few books and pamphlets; and as the committee is forbidden to accompany
its report with “any critical remarks,” the presence upon it of a few
rationalists or Universalists can do no mischief.
The remainder of the time of the council—and it sat thrice a day for a
week—was occupied with talk. Nothing was done that was worthy of the
name of action. Extracts from scores of religious essays were read;
hundreds of little religious or semi-religious speeches were made; and
that was all. We do not know what the Presbyterians here and elsewhere
expected; but if they expected anything practical they have been sadly
disappointed. Some of the little speeches were comic—as, for example,
that of “the Rev. Mr. Robinson, of Louisville, U. S.,” who seems to have
pursued antiquarian researches with startling results, since he has
ascertained that Presbyterianism began with Abraham; that Moses was a
member of the presbytery of Egypt; and that Elisha and Ezechiel were the
moderators of the Presbyterian synods of Samaria and Jerusalem.
Presbyterianism was the true form of government in the Jewish Church,
and it was the general assembly of the Presbyterian Church of Judea that
passed sentence of death on Jesus of Nazareth. Nay, according to this
sprightly Kentucky divine, heaven itself will be a Presbyterian
community, governed by a presbytery of four-and-twenty members. To
listen to such excellent fooling as this; to read the essay laboriously
prepared at home in Peoria or Dundee, and carefully rehearsed to
admiring wife and wondering bairns for months before starting; to
discuss, even in ten-minute speeches, such thrilling and novel themes as
the uses of elders, the sinfulness of Sabbath-breaking, the advantages
of assemblies, the wickedness of the Pope, and the unquestionable
mental, moral, and religious superiority of Presbyterians in general,
and Pan-Presbyterians especially, over all the rest of mankind—all this,
no doubt, was pleasant enough to the participants; but it was scarcely
the entertainment to which the outside world had been invited. True,
there was voted, at the close of the council, and after an unusually
hearty luncheon at which the brethren tarried long, “an address to the
queen,” accompanied by what an Edinburgh journal irreverently describes
as “unanimous votes of thanks to the Deity, Mr. A. T. Niven, C.A., and
the lord provost.” Probably her majesty will never read the address, as
it is a long one and does not call for a reply. But if she should peruse
it, she will scarcely thank its authors for suggesting that she, too, is
a Pan-Presbyterian, or that she changes her religion every time she
crosses the Tweed. It appears something like an impertinence in the
Pan-Presbyterians to write thus to the queen:
“We venture to indicate the deep interest which we take in the
circumstance that, while residing in Scotland, your majesty joins in
the Presbyterian worship and communion.”
The queen goes to a Presbyterian church when in Scotland because
Presbyterianism is the religion of the state in Scotland, of which she
is the head; and she goes to an Episcopalian church when in England
because episcopacy is the religion of the state in England. If she were
in India, and Mohammedanism were the state religion there, she would
probably go to a mosque with the same good grace that she displays when
sitting under the parish minister near Balmoral. The council also
appointed a committee to see whether money could be raised for the
publication of a mass of old treatises and essays upon Presbyterianism
which no private publisher has ever thought of reprinting; and another
committee to “consider” what could be reported to the next
council—which, by the way, is to be held at Philadelphia in 1880, if the
world and Pan-Presbyterianism be then in existence. That portion of the
programme which promised “the suppression of infidelity” was not carried
out; a day was spent in talking about the best methods of getting the
better of Spencer, Darwin, Huxley, Bradlaugh, and the like, but the
matter ended with the acceptance of the remark of Prof. Cairns, that
disputation with such people is rather worse than useless, since they
are well skilled in argument, and that the only thing to be done with
them is to pray for them. As Americans we record with justifiable pride
the encomiums bestowed upon the American delegates by the great Dr.
Phin, and the still greater Dr. Begg. “Sound Christian doctrine,” said
the first, “in this land has received a most powerful impulse from the
addresses of the American brethren”; and Dr. Begg “rejoiced because of
the firm tone which had characterized the addresses of the American
speakers, as we require in Scotland an ecclesiastical tonic to brace us
up to a firm maintenance of our own Scriptural principles.” The firm
tone was not backed up by firm action, nor by any action at all; but,
all the same, Dr. Begg is of the opinion that if the orthodox
Presbyterians in Scotland could talk as their American brethren do,
there would soon be an end to the croaking of “the frogs of infidelity
that are coming into our churches like the frogs that went into Pharao’s
bed-chamber.” But it may prevent some disappointment in the future to
our American Presbyterian friends if we convey to them the warning
uttered by the Edinburgh _Scotsman_ at the end of the council—a journal
whose opinion on the affair is all the more valuable from the fact that
its editor is a Presbyterian clergyman of renown who has abandoned the
pulpit for the press:
“Meanwhile,” says the _Scotsman_, “what with choking 'frogs’ and
covering up disputable subjects, the appearance of a complete, if
not a completely beautiful, harmony was unquestionably produced. But
it is only right to warn the Pan-Presbyterians that if they leave us
with the notion that, because all is peaceful now, unity is
established, they are the victims of a delusion. They may depart to
their Swiss hamlets or their Transatlantic cities with psalm-tunes
sounding peace within Jerusalem ringing in their ears, and imagine
that after this most refreshing time the millennium has come when
Dr. Phin and Dr. Blaikie will lie down together, and Dr. Marcus Dods
and Dr. Moody Stewart will kiss each other. But, alas! shortly after
they have told their deeply-affected flocks at home of the harmony
which prevails in Bible-loving Scotland, some morning when Dr. Rufus
Choate examines his Chicago _Trumpet_, and Dr. Brunnelhanner lays
down his meerschaum to take up his paper, they will find that all
the old dissensions have broken out again with alarming violence;
that ministers who agreed on a platform of wood can agree upon no
other; that Dr. Blaikie has attacked Establishments from love of
their members, and has Dr. Pirie’s head in Chancery; that Dr. Phin
has a new scheme to 'dish’ the Dissenters; that those who led the
devotions are now leading the fray; that those who were at peace are
not on speaking terms, or on terms in speaking which are very bad
indeed; while those who lauded the agreement between confessions
cannot agree amongst themselves as to what these confessions mean to
say. The visit of the Pan-Presbyterians may, after all, share the
fate that generally overtakes the other numerous excursionists who
appear among us about this season. For the moment we may be struck
by their numbers and their banners with their strange devices, and
be moved to the heart, or even deeper, by their bass-drum and their
instruments of brass; but when they have gone, if any memory of them
remains, it is only of something that was loud and singular, but
what it was or what it did there is nothing palpable to show.”
The Pan-Presbyterians repeated very often that, while they did not
expect, or even desire, to effect “organic unity” between their various
sects—that unity being, in their opinion, opposed to the will of
God—they were, all the same, “one in spirit and in sympathy.” But the
hollowness of even this pretence was manifested when an attempt was made
to induce them to unite in what they call “partaking of the Lord’s
Supper.” Toward the close of the council it was announced that “Dr.
Moody Stewart and his session invited the members of council to
communion at half-past twelve on Saturday.” Now, from a Catholic, or
“Romanist,” point of view, it is rather surprising that a convention of
eminent Christian ministers, assembled for what they professed to regard
as the most important purposes, should have already spent several days
without performing this supreme act of Christian devotion. But
Pan-Presbyterian ways are not as our ways. Nevertheless, one would have
supposed that, being thus invited to do what they had neglected, they
would at least have received the invitation kindly. On the contrary, a
most unhappy scene followed. The Orthodox Pan-Presbyterians were willing
to talk with their unorthodox colleagues; they would eat luncheons with
them, make speeches and read papers to them, and even listen to their
speeches and papers in return; but when it came to “partaking of the
sacrament” with them, they would not do it at any price. Dr. Phin at
once protested against the idea that he, for one, could thus be yoked
unevenly with unbelievers. “He happened to entertain certain
old-fashioned ideas with respect to the dispensation of the Lord’s
Supper” which would prevent him from joining in it unless he knew his
company. For instance, there should be “the fencing of the tables”; and
this fencing would surely shut out either the sheep or the goats. The
“fencing of the tables,” it appears, is a curious custom prevalent in
Scotland, and may be thus explained: an invitation to “the communion” is
given, and then every one who wishes to receive it is scared off either
by terrific denunciations of the awful guilt incurred by those who
partake unworthily, or is compelled to pass a severe competitive
examination as to the soundness of his faith and his acceptance of the
“Standards.” Dr. Phin was, no doubt, correct in supposing that the
application of these tests would produce unpleasant results, and his
conscience would not permit him to assist at a communion where they were
not applied. Dr. Begg took the same view, and “regretted that the
invitation had been given.” The chairman—who on this occasion happened
to be Dr. Ormiston, of New York—sought to get over the difficulty by
suggesting that “it would be understood that nobody was committed except
the gentlemen who took part in it,” and he added the remarkable
declaration that “as members of council not one of them had any
responsibility to the weight of a hair.” A lay member “protested against
any administration of free communion in connection with the council”;
and Dr. Blaikie said the committee had “taken every precaution that the
council should not be committed in any way.” With this assurance the
subject “was allowed to drop,” and when the time for the communion
arrived only one hundred and thirty of the three hundred and twenty-five
Pan-Presbyterians presented themselves to receive it—and among these
neither Dr. Phin nor Dr. Begg was seen.
The Continental Pan-Presbyterians made a pitiful show for themselves
during the council. Few of them could speak English; and the linguistic
accomplishments of the majority of their colleagues being limited, they
were compelled, when they spoke at all, to express themselves through an
interpreter, which is not generally an exhilarating process. One of the
French delegates said there were forty Presbyterian congregations in
France without pastors, and he suggested that a collection might be made
to aid in hiring men to fill these vacancies; but this hint was not
taken. A volunteer member from Berlin read a sensible paper upon
“missions,” in which he ridiculed the present system of Protestant
missions, and said that their only fruits were the inculcation of
hypocrisy and of pauperism among the so-called converts. On this same
subject, by the way, one of the members put forth the novel idea that
the conversion of one Jew was worth more than the salvation of a hundred
pagans. Dr. Hoedemaker, of Amsterdam, said that the Presbyterians there
had long been poisoned with the virus of rationalism, and that forty
years ago “there were very few who preached the living Christ in his
church”; but now, he hoped, there was some improvement. M. Decoppet, of
the French Presbyterian body, complained that the sect could make no
progress there, “because they were not allowed by the law to give a
tract on the street or to deliver public lectures”; but still he was
confident that “France would soon become a Protestant nation”—by the aid
of M. Gambetta and the Reds, we presume. The representative of the
Waldensian heretics apologized for the bad character of some of its
ministers, but said that as fast as the false shepherds were detected
they were expelled from the fold.
Politeness, perhaps, would command us to express our acknowledgments of
certain courteous, sensible, and truthful things which were said about
the church—as, for example, that “she was the mother of infidelity” and
the fountain and origin of all civil, moral, and religious evil. But, on
the whole, we think our readers will have had enough of the
Pan-Presbyterians. Dr. Begg, at the last meeting of the council, said
that “they saw the shadow of the great eclipse of Romanism again cast
over the country.” We take this to be the Beggonian method of expressing
the fact that the few Christians who remain in Scotland are on the way
to return to the church of their forefathers—the church which civilized
and Christianized Scotland, and which had the unhappiness to nurture in
her bosom the apostate priest who was the father of Scotch
Presbyterianism. Dr. Begg is not an infallible prophet, but such events
as the Pan-Presbyterian council are calculated to hasten the event which
he predicts. For the council has shown that the Presbyterian Church
throughout the world, as represented by its chosen men, is undermined by
infidelity, and that its existence, in their opinion, depends upon
concealing this fact and pretending that no one has the right to
proclaim it.
TRANSLATION FROM HORACE.
ODE 14, BOOK 2.
_Eheu! fugaces, Postume, Postume!_
Alas! my Posthumus, our years
Glide silently away; no tears,
No loving orisons, repair
The wrinkled cheek, the whitening hair,
That drop forgotten to the tomb:
Pluto’s inexorable doom
Mocks at thy daily sacrifice;
Around his dreary kingdom lies
That fatal stream whose arms enfold
The Giant race accursed of old;
All, all alike must cross its wave,
The king, the noble, and the slave.
In vain we shun the fields of war,
And breakers dashed on Adria’s shore;
Vainly we flee, in terror blind,
The plague that walketh on the wind;
The sluggish river of the Dead,
Cocytus, must be visited;
And Danaüs’ detested brood,
Foul with their fifty husbands’ blood;
And Sisyphus, with ghastly smile
Pointing to his eternal toil.
All must be left: thy gentle wife,
Thy home, the joys of rural life;
And when thy fleeting days are gone,
Th’ ill-omened cypresses alone
Of all those fondly-cherished trees
Shall grace thy funeral obsequies,
Cling to thy loved remains, and wave
Their mournful shadows o’er thy grave.
A lavish but a nobler heir
Thy hoarded Cæcuban shall share,
And on the tessellated floor
The purple nectar madly pour,
Nectar more worthy of the halls
Where Pontiffs hold their festivals.
S. E. DE V.
NEW PUBLICATIONS.
PUBLIC LIBRARIES IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA; their History,
Condition, and Management. Special Report. Department of the
Interior, Bureau of Education. 1876.
In 1874 the Commissioner of the Bureau of Education in the Department of
the Interior at Washington began the preparation of a complete Report on
the Public Libraries in the United States; on the 31st of August, 1876,
the report was submitted; it was printed, and it makes a volume of 1,187
pages. A careful study of the contents of this unique work compels us to
express, in the first place, our most cordial appreciation of the great
labor which has been expended upon it, and of the value of the
information which it contains. The size of the volume, we fear, has
deterred many into whose hands it has fallen from more than glancing
over its pages; we confess for ourselves that we shrank, for a while,
from the task of reading it. But we have been amply repaid for our toil,
which soon became a pleasure; and we may say here that we have seen in
foreign periodicals and journals a number of highly eulogistic and
discriminating reviews of the report. We propose to make our readers
share in the satisfaction we have derived from our study of this work;
but our space will permit us only to give a condensed summary of a
portion of its contents.
No less than 132 pages of the report are taken up with a table giving
the statistics of all the “public libraries” in the United States and
Territories numbering 300 volumes or more, excepting common or district
school libraries. The table is as complete as it could be made from the
returns received in 1875-76; but it is incomplete, because many of the
libraries named in it do not report the date of their foundation, their
average annual increase in books, their financial condition, or their
yearly expenditures. But with all these defects the table is extremely
valuable. It shows, to begin with, that the total number of these
libraries is 3,647, having as their total number of volumes 12,276,964.
We pause here for a moment to say that the report also shows that in the
district-school libraries, not included in the table, there are
1,365,407 volumes, and that in all the libraries there are about
1,500,000 pamphlets not classed as “volumes.” The census of 1870 showed
that there were 107,673 private libraries, containing 25,571,503
volumes, exclusive of those which may be in the State of Connecticut,
from which State no returns on this subject were received. Here, then,
we have a total of 39,213,874 volumes of books in the public, private,
and school libraries of the country—a mass of printed matter large
enough, estimating each volume to weigh a pound, to fill nine merchant
vessels of 2,000 tons burden each. Let us also in this place give the
following list of the number of volumes in several noted libraries in
other countries, with the remark that, as the statistics of these
libraries differ widely according to different authorities, we have in
each case taken the highest number given, and that this number relates
only to books, and not to manuscripts or pamphlets, fugitive
publications, etc.:
Bibliothèque Nationale, Paris 2,000,000
Mazarin Library, Paris 160,000
Royal Library, Madrid 200,000
Convent Library of the Escorial, Madrid 130,000
Vatican Library, Rome 1,000,000
Magliabecchíana Library, Florence 200,000
Laurentian Library, Florence 120,000
Museo Borbonico, Naples 200,000
University Library, Bologna 200,000
Brera Library, Milan 200,000
Ambrosian Library, Milan 140,000
University Library, Turin 150,000
Royal Library, Berlin 700,000
Royal Library, Dresden 500,000
University Library, Breslau 350,000
University Library, Göttingen 400,000
Ducal Library, Wolfenbüttel 300,000
University Library, Freiburg 250,000
Royal Library, Stuttgart 450,000
Royal Library, Munich 900,000
Royal Library, Copenhagen 550,000
Bodleian Library, Oxford 700,000
Advocates’ Library, Edinburgh 300,000
University Library, Edinburgh 130,000
Imperial Library, St. Petersburg 1,100,000
City Library, Augsburg 150,000
University Library, Cambridge 400,000
City Library, Frankfort 150,000
Ducal Library, Gotha 240,000
City Library, Hamburg 300,000
City Library, Leipsic 170,000
University Library, Leipsic 350,000
British Museum, London 1,020,000
In these 33 libraries in the Old World there are 14,110,000 volumes,
exclusive of manuscripts, or 1,833,176 more volumes than we have in all
of our 3,647 public libraries. We say nothing of the comparative value
of the collections, for of course there is no comparison between a
collection which has been accumulating for a thousand years and one
which was made yesterday. But we have no reason to be ashamed of our
American public libraries; on the contrary, as the report which we are
reviewing abundantly shows, we have every reason to be proud of them. We
take from this report the following table:
Whole number of public libraries 3,647
Whole number of volumes 12,276,964
Average number of volumes 3,366
Yearly additions (1,510 reporting) 434,339
Yearly use of books (742 reporting) 8,879,809
Amt of permanent fund (1,722 reporting) $6,105,581
Yearly income (830 reporting) $1,398,756
Yearly expenditures for publications $562,407
(769 reporting)
Yearly expenditures for salaries, etc. $682,166
(643 reporting)
The 3,647 libraries are distributed among the various States and
Territories as follows; and here we make our only complaint against the
report—to wit, that its laborious and faithful editors have not
furnished the footings, which we have been compelled to make for
ourselves:
Alabama, 31 libraries; Alaska, 1 (the post library at Sitka, and now
removed since the garrison has been withdrawn); Arizona, 3 (two of them
being military libraries); Arkansas, 6; California, 87; Colorado, 8;
Connecticut, 125; Dakota, 4 (two being military libraries); Delaware,
18; District of Columbia, 57 (31 of them belonging to the federal
government); Florida, 6; Georgia, 44; Idaho, 1; Illinois, 177; Indiana,
133; Indian Territory, 4 (two of them military libraries); Iowa, 80;
Kansas, 19; Kentucky, 72; Louisiana, 31; Maine, 85; Maryland, 77;
Massachusetts, 453; Michigan, 89; Minnesota, 39; Mississippi, 23;
Missouri, 87; Montana, 2; Nebraska, 14; Nevada, 6; New Hampshire, 86;
New Jersey, 91; New Mexico, 4 (one of them a military library, and two
of the others belonging to Catholic academies); New York, 617; North
Carolina, 37; Ohio, 223; Oregon, 14; Pennsylvania, 367; Rhode Island,
56; South Carolina, 26; Tennessee, 71; Texas, 42; Utah, 5; Vermont, 65;
Virginia, 63; Washington Territory, 2 (one of them a Catholic library);
West Virginia, 23; Wisconsin, 73; and Wyoming Territory, 3.
These figures are suggestive in various ways, and many interesting and
valuable inferences might be drawn from them. But a careful analysis of
the other portions of the table would also be necessary in order to
avoid mistakes; and the wholly unknown quantity in the problem—the
comparative value of different collections—would imperil the accuracy of
any deductions which might be made from the statistics in this table.
For instance, the 31 libraries in Alabama contain 60,615 volumes—nearly
5,000 less than are in the New York Society Library alone. A library is
a library, for the purposes of this report, if it contain 300 or more
volumes, just as a book is a book although there may be nothing in it.
Who is to say whether some of the smaller collections in the South are
not really more valuable than the larger and newer libraries in the
North? We fear it is not so; but there is no test by which to decide the
question. If we leave this point, and turn our attention to the
statistics relating to the principal libraries, we shall come upon more
satisfactory ground.
The thirty-eighth chapter of the report, filling 273 pages, is devoted
to a review of the public libraries of ten principal cities—Baltimore,
Boston, Brooklyn, Charleston, Chicago, Cincinnati, New York,
Philadelphia, St. Louis, and San Francisco. In these ten cities there
are 471 public libraries with 3,447,628 volumes, viz.:
_Name of City._ _No. of Libraries_ _Volumes._
Charleston 6 26,600
Chicago 23 141,910
San Francisco 30 164,228
Brooklyn 21 165,112
St. Louis 31 170,875
Cincinnati 30 197,890
Baltimore 38 230,342
Philadelphia 102 707,627
Boston 68 734,741
New York 122 906,203
—- ————-
Total 471 3,445,528
To this list we add, in order that the South may have justice done to
her:
_Name of City._ _No. of Libraries_ _Volumes._
New Orleans 15 94,080
Louisville 6 65,897
Richmond 17 63,526
A library containing 10,000 volumes or more, if well selected, may be
said to be a respectable collection. Now, there are no less than 266
libraries of this class in the United Slates, and they contain a total
of 6,984,882 volumes—an average of 26,259 volumes in each. These 266
libraries, it will be seen, account for more than one half of the total
number of volumes in all the public libraries, and they reduce the
average number of volumes in the remaining 3,381 libraries to 1,565. But
even a library with 1,500 good books is not to be despised.
The largest library in the United States is that of the National
Congress at Washington, which has 300,000 volumes; and then follow:
Social Law Library, 299,869
Boston
Harvard University 227,650
Mercantile, New York 160,613
Astor, New York 152,446
Mercantile, Philadelphia 125,668
House of Representatives, 125,000
Washington
Yale College 114,200
Athenæum, Boston 105,000
These are the only libraries which have 100,000 volumes and more. Those
which have 50,000 and less than 100,000 volumes are the
State Library at Albany 95,000
New York Society, New 65,000
York
Antiquarian Society, 60,497
Worcester
Peabody Institute, 57,458
Baltimore
Apprentices’, New York 53,000
Dartmouth College 52,550
Mercantile, Brooklyn 50,257
State University, Baton 50,000
Rouge
There are 10 libraries having more than 40,000 and less than 50,000
volumes; 23, with more than 30,000 and less than 40,000; 49, with more
than 20,000 and less than 30,000; 52, with more than 15,000 and less
than 20,000; 100, with more than 10,000 and less than 15,000; 264, with
more than 5,000 and less than 10,000; 156, with more than 4,000 and less
than 5,000; 236, with more than 3,000 and less than 4,000; 362, with
more than 2,000 and less than 3,000; 762, with more than 1,000 and less
than 2,000; and 925, with more than 500 and less than 1,000.
Of the whole number of 3,647 public libraries mentioned in this report,
we find 221 which we recognize as those of Catholic institutions. There
are no doubt others in the list, but there is no mark by which they can
be certainly recognized. Of these 221 distinctively Catholic libraries
the following are the chief:
_Place._ _Name._ _Origin._ _Vols._
San Francisco, St. Ignatius’ College, 1855 11,000
Santa Clara, Santa Clara College, 1851 10,000
Georgetown, Georgetown College, 1791 32,268
Washington, Gonzaga College, 1858 10,000
New Orleans, Libraire de la famille, 1872 15,000
Baltimore, Archiepiscopal, .... 10,000
Baltimore, Loyola College, 1853 21,500
Baltimore, St. Mary’s Seminary, 1791 15,000
Hagerstown, St. James’ College, 1842 11,000
Worcester, College of the Holy Cross 1843 12,000
St. Louis, College of the Christian 1860 22,000
Brothers,
Brooklyn, St. Francis’ College, .... 13,970
Fordham, St. John’s College, 1840 15,000
New York, St. Francis Xavier’s 1847 21,000
College,
Cincinnati, Mount St. Mary’s, 1849 15,100
Cincinnati, St. Xavier’s College, 1840 17,000
Latrobe, Penn., St. Vincent’s College, 1846 13,000
In these 17 Catholic libraries there are 264,838 volumes. It is a very
respectable number, and, when the probable quality of the books
contained in these collections is taken into account, the value of such
comparatively small libraries will be seen to be great. The number of
volumes in the other 204 Catholic libraries, as we have ascertained by a
laborious examination of the tables, is 448,688, so that the total
number of volumes in the distinctively Catholic libraries is 713,526. It
is a large number of books; but one might complain that it was not
larger. We are not sure that these complaints would be well founded. As
Catholics we establish our own libraries, but as citizens we aid in the
labor and share the cost of forming the general libraries, and we have
our part in the advantages which they afford. It will always be our
duty, of course, to exert our influence in preserving these collections
of books from the contamination of the works of authors whose aim is to
undermine morals and to destroy faith; and to introduce to their shelves
the writings of the best and most able defenders and advocates of truth
and religion. But this duty being well performed, we are free to aid in
the work of building up our general libraries and in enjoying the pure
intellectual delights which they may afford.
Thirty-eight pages of the report before us are devoted to a chapter upon
Theological Libraries. A table is given of 44 of the principal
theological libraries in the United States; they contain 528,024
volumes. Eight of them belong to Catholic theological seminaries and
contain 71,600 volumes. The two largest of the theological libraries are
those of the Union Theological Seminary of New York, and the Andover
Theological Seminary, each of which contains 34,000 volumes. The report
states that, with a few exceptions, the public theological libraries in
this country are the libraries of theological seminaries. The exceptions
are the General Theological Library in Boston, established in 1860, and
now containing 12,000 volumes; and the library of the Congregational
Association in the same city, which contains 22,000 volumes and 80,000
pamphlets. None of the theological libraries are 100 years old. The
eldest of all of them is the library of St. Mary’s Theological Seminary
of St. Sulpice in Baltimore, founded in 1791 by the Sulpician Fathers.
It now contains 15,000 volumes. The report devotes considerable space to
a dissertation upon “Catholic Libraries,” and its remarks upon this head
are conceived in a kindly and enlightened spirit. “All learning,” writes
the reporter, “is welcome to the shelves of Catholic libraries, and
nothing is excluded from them that should not equally be excluded from
any reputable collection of books. Nor will anti-Catholic works be found
wanting to them, at least such as possess any force or originality. The
history of the church being so interwoven with that of the world since
the days of Augustus Cæsar, there is no period which is not redolent of
her action, and consequently no history which does not have to treat of
her, either approvingly or the reverse. In regard to general literature,
she preserved ... all that has come down to us from classic sources, and
therefore works of this character can be no strangers to shelves of
Catholic libraries. Still less can the Sacred Scriptures be, which
Catholic hands collected, authenticated, and handed down for the use of
the men of our time. Nor will the sciences be overlooked by
ecclesiastics in forming their libraries; for in past ages it was the
care of their brethren, with such limited facilities as were at their
command and in days inauspicious for scientific investigation, to
cultivate them.” No new truths these; but they are well expressed, and
it is worth something to have them set forth in a volume prepared by
federal authority and published with federal approval. The report goes
on to speak of the general characteristics of Catholic theological
libraries. They contain, it says, abundant versions of the Sacred
Scriptures in all languages, with copious commentaries and expositions;
and the writer adds that the professors of our Catholic theological
institutions “are generally graduates of the best theological schools in
Europe.” He thus proceeds:
“Next in authoritative rank come the Fathers and Doctors of the church,
from those who received instruction from the apostles themselves and
committed their doctrine to writing, down to almost our own day; for St.
Alphonsus Liguori, the latest on whom the Holy See has conferred the
title of Doctor of the Universal Church, died only in the latter part of
the last century, and his authority is that which is principally
followed in the treatment of moral questions. Works also by later
writers, principally on dogmatic subjects, are constantly appearing. The
study of dogma embracing an investigation into all revealed truths, and
therefore essential to those who are to instruct others authoritatively,
involves a reference to many learned books in which proofs and
illustrations are elaborated to the last degree of exactness, side by
side with every possible difficulty or objection that can be brought to
bear against each doctrine treated of. Some works are occupied with the
discussion of but a single point; others take in a wide range, and some
voluminous authors have published an entire course of dogma....” “The
study of moral, the other great branch of Catholic theology, embraces a
scrutiny into every question of morals that needs to be investigated by
those who have the direction of consciences, or whose duty it is, in the
tribunal of penance, to adjudicate upon matters affecting the rights of
others. As solutions in these cases are sometimes attended with
considerable difficulty, and a grave responsibility is attached to the
delivery of an opinion, authorities for reference must be ample and
exhaustive. Such authorities will be found in the theological libraries,
and are relied upon in proportion to their world-wide repute, as
representing the opinions of prudent, learned, and experienced men.”
The report goes on to speak of the reasons why every complete Catholic
library must have copies of the published acts of the general councils
of the church, and of national and provincial councils, as well as of
the decisions and solutions of the various congregations at Rome, and
other documents emanating from the Holy See. The supply of “works on
ritual,” and those necessary for a thorough course of rational
philosophy, must be ample, and there must be works on mathematics,
physics, astronomy, meteorology, chemistry, and other sciences. We again
quote:
“The attention given in these schools to sacred eloquence—for practice
in which students are required to prepare and deliver sermons in
presence of the community—calls for the best models of sacred oratory,
besides works on rhetoric and elocution. As models of composition,
arrangement, and intrinsic solidity, the sermons of the ancient fathers
share equal attention with those of the great French orators of the last
century, and no library for the use of ecclesiastics will be without a
copious supply of the works of those and others of the best pulpit
orators in the church. Catholic libraries in general—and not those alone
which are attached to theological schools—will be found amply supplied
with controversial works written by Catholic authors. These are needed,
however, not so much for the use of the owners as for that of
non-Catholic inquirers who wish to be enlightened in regard to some
controverted point, or who desire to learn the evidences upon which the
Catholic Church bases her claims to the credence of mankind.
Catechetical works, of which there are a great number, answer this
purpose still better when the polemic spirit has been allayed, and it is
impossible to conceive of a Catholic library, large or small, without an
abundance of both these classes of books. The controversial works
discuss every objection which can be alleged against the church or the
practice of members of it, and are necessarily very numerous. Every age
has left behind it these testimonies to the controversies that agitated
it, and the present age is no less prolific than its predecessors,
though the grounds of dispute are shifting now rather from dogma to
historical questions and matters of science, indicating the lessening
hold which doctrine has on the non-Catholic mind.”
And again:
“Ecclesiastical history, of course, forms an important element in
Catholic libraries; but this history not only includes the exhaustive
tomes of writers who take in the whole history of the church, but of
others who illustrate a particular age, country, event, or transaction.
Works concerning the history of the church in the United States, or in
particular States, form a growing collection. The current of
contemporary Catholic history is well shown forth through the monthly
and weekly publications which appear in many countries and languages.
The Catholic quarterlies, however, and some of the monthly publications,
are devoted chiefly to literary or scientific criticism. The Catholic
weeklies in this country are now so numerous that their preservation in
libraries is seldom attended to. If this apology is needed for the
absence from such libraries of publications that will form an important
reference hereafter for others besides Catholics, it ought to be coupled
with the suggestion proper to be made in a work which will be placed in
the hands of persons of all religions: _that a general Catholic library
ought to be established at some central point where every Catholic
publication, at least among those issued in this country, may have a
place. Materials for history would gather in such a collection that
might not readily be found combined in any other._
“Having thus touched upon the more important characteristics of Catholic
libraries, it would be well, perhaps, to observe that while the leading
ones in this country are attached to seminaries, colleges, or religious
houses, there are many private collections of considerable value,
especially those in episcopal residences, or belonging to gentlemen of
the clergy or laity who, together with literary tastes, possess the
means to gratify them. Catholic libraries are also beginning to be
formed in cities and towns, chiefly under the auspices of associations
that seek to provide a safe and pleasant resort for young men in the
evenings. In these libraries will be found the lighter Catholic
literature, to which no reference has so far been made in this
paper—travels, sketches, poems, tales, etc., a few of which are by
American and some Irish authors, but the majority by English writers,
chiefly converts, or translated from the French, German, Flemish, and
other Continental languages. Finally, it would be well to observe that
Catholic libraries are accessible for reference, if not for study, to
all inquirers. In most cases non-Catholic visitors would doubtless be
welcomed to them with great cordiality. _Those who have these libraries
in keeping rather invite than repel scrutiny into whatever is
distinctively Catholic in their collections._”
We regret that the limits of our space forbid us to dwell further upon
the contents of this really fascinating volume. To use such an adjective
in speaking of a “Blue-Book,” or an official report, may seem
extravagant, but in this case it is not so. Its chapters upon the growth
of libraries in the United States; college libraries; law, medical, and
scientific libraries; libraries in prisons and reformatories; libraries
of the general and State governments; libraries of historical societies;
and upon “catalogues and cataloguing,” are crammed with useful and
important information; and whatever may have been the sins of omission
or commission that may be laid at the door of the “Department of the
Interior at Washington,” we are willing to bear witness that its Bureau
of Education, in the preparation and publication of this report, has
done much to atone for them.
ELEMENTS OF GEOMETRY. By G. M. Searle, C.S.P. With an Appendix
containing Problems and Additional Propositions. New York: John
Wiley & Sons. 1877.
The object of this work is to place geometry on a more perfectly logical
basis than it has been usually considered worth while to adopt in
text-books. Geometers at the present day generally agree as to the
unsatisfactory nature of the axioms usually adopted, some being
superfluous, and others, especially the famous one about parallels, not
being clearly self-evident.
The reduction in the number of axioms has of course introduced some
complexity into the reasoning in this book, and the difficulty about
parallels is not completely removed; nor does the author pretend
completely to remove it. Some new views, however, are presented which
may be worthy of consideration.
ELEMENTS OF ECCLESIASTICAL LAW. Adapted especially to the Discipline
of the Church in the United States. By Rev. S. B. Smith, D.D.,
formerly Professor of Canon Law, author of “Notes,” etc., etc. New
York, Cincinnati, St. Louis, and Einsiedeln: Benziger Brothers,
Printers to the Holy Apostolic See. 1877.
This work of Dr. Smith’s cannot fail to be a welcome addition to any
theological library. There are a great many works on canon law, it is
true, but very few which give much information on the discipline of the
church here, which is what priests in this country and those who are
preparing for the priesthood principally need to understand.
The present volume goes far to supply this deficiency, and the author
promises to supplement it soon by another, for which we shall look with
interest. He has made a good choice in writing in English; there seems
to be no need of choosing Latin for a book on this subject, and intended
for this nation chiefly.
Transcriber’s Notes:
Missing or obscured punctuation was corrected.
Typographical errors were silently corrected.
Spelling and hyphenation were made consistent when a predominant form
was found in this book; otherwise it was not changed.
Text in italics is enclosed by underscores (_italics_).
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