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Title: The Catholic World, Vol. 19, April 1874‐September 1874
Author: Various
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***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE CATHOLIC WORLD, VOL. 19, APRIL 1874‐SEPTEMBER 1874***
The Catholic World
A Monthly Magazine of General Literature and Science
Vol. XIX.
April 1874 to September 1874
The Catholic Publication House.
New York
1874
CONTENTS
Contents. The Catholic World. Vol. XIX., No. 109.—April, 1874. The Principles Of Real Being. IV. Intrinsic Principles of Substance and Suppositum. On Hearing The “O Salutaris Hostia.” On The Wing: A Southern Flight. A National Or State Church. The Captive Bird. The Farm Of Muiceron. By Marie Rheil. XIX. Home Rule For Ireland. Sonnet: Good Friday. Grapes And Thorns. Chapter X. The Descent of Avernus. A Looker‐Back. III. The Temple. Was Origen A Heretic? Social Shams. To S. Joseph: On The Day Of My First Mass. Odd Stories. VI.—King Ruli. Epigram. The Widow’s Mites. Old Versus New. New Publications. The Catholic World. Vol. XIX., No. 110.—May, 1874. The Coming Transit Of Venus. The Veil Withdrawn. I. II. III. The Principles Of Real Being. V. Intrinsic Principles Of Complex Beings. Principles of substantial compounds. Principles of accidental compounds. Principles of attributes and properties. The Butterfly. The Farm Of Muiceron. By Marie Rheil. XX. XXI. Fragment Of Early English Poetry. Self‐Education. On The Wing. A Southern Flight. II. There Was No Room For Them In The Inn. Antar And Zara; Or, “The Only True Lovers.” I. F. Louage’s Philosophy. Easter. Grapes And Thorns. Chapter XI. A Harvest of Thorns. Dante Gabriel Rosetti. For Ever. Visit To An Artist’s Studio. Visions. A Word For Women. New Publications. The Catholic World. Vol. XIX., No. 111.—June, 1874. The Principles Of Real Being. VI. Principles of Nominal Realities. Principles of possible being. Principles of real relation. Principles of real distinction. Antar And Zara; Or, “The Only True Lovers.” II. The Farm Of Muiceron. By Marie Rheil. Concluded. XXII. XXIII. Public Worship. The Answered Prayer. The Veil Withdrawn. IV. V. VI. On The Wing. A Southern Flight. III. The Female Religious Of America. Switzerland In 1873. Epigram on Abraham Lincoln. Grapes And Thorns. Chapter XII. A Taper Lighted, And A Taper Blown Out. Material Faith. A Glimpse of the Green Isle. I. Cora. Charles X. At Holyrood. New Publications. A Criticism. The Catholic World. Vol. XIX., No. 112.—July, 1874. A Discussion With An Infidel. I. Flippancy And Scholasticism. II. Tergiversation And Jugglery. III. Creation. Dante’s Purgatorio. Canto Fourteenth. The Veil Withdrawn. VII. VIII. IX. Anglican Orders. I. The Nag’s Head Story. The Lambeth Register. Barlow’s Status. Grapes And Thorns. Chapter XIII. The Jesuit Martyrs Of The Commune. Antar And Zara; Or, “The Only True Lovers.” III. A Glimpse of the Green Isle. II. One Corpus Christi. Relatio Itineris In Marylandiam. On The Wing. A Southern Flight. IV. Switzerland In 1873. Odd Stories. VII. The Philosophers Of The Dragon’s Bower. New Publications. The Catholic World. Vol. XIX., No. 113.—August, 1874. Matter. Antar And Zara; Or, “The Only True Lovers.” IV. The Veil Withdrawn. X. XI. XII. The Rock Of Rest. Anglican Orders. II. On The Wing. A Southern Flight. V. A Discussion With An Infidel. Who Will Remember? Church Music. Comparison Of Waves With Flowers. A Glimpse of the Green Isle. III—Concluded. Grapes And Thorns. Chapter XIV—Uprooting Thorns. Madame Du Deffand. Cain, What Hast Thou Done With Thy Brother? The Legend Of Vallambrosa. Odd Stories. VIII. Snifkin. New Publications. The Catholic World. Vol. XIX., No. 114.—September, 1874. Matter. Antar And Zara; Or, “The Only True Lovers.” V. The Veil Withdrawn. XIII. XIV. XV. Pius VI. Assunta Howard. Church Music. Concluded. A Week In Wordsworth’s Haunts. On The Wing. A Southern Flight. VI. A Discussion With An Infidel. Hymn Of The Flowers. Kathleen Waring. New Publications. Footnotes
[Cover Page]
CONTENTS.
Anglican Orders, 467, 610. Artist’s Studio, Visit to an, 273. Assunta Howard, 765.
Cain, What Hast thou Done with thy Brother? 698. Charles X. at Holyrood, 419. Church Music, 654. Coming Transit of Venus, The, 145. Comparison of Waves with Flowers, 662. Craven’s The Veil Withdrawn, 162, 333, 454, 597, 741.
Dante Gabriel Rosetti, 263. Deffand, Mme. du, 693. Discussion with an Infidel, A, 433, 637, 823.
Education, Self, 198.
Farm of Muiceron, The, 39, 187, 308. Father Louage’s Philosophy, 231. Female Religious of America, The, 362.
Glimpse of the Green Isle, A, 408, 526, 663. Grapes and Thorns, 68, 247, 388, 480, 671.
Hello’s Cain, What hast thou Done with thy Brother? 698. Home Rule for Ireland, 54.
Infidel, A Discussion with an, 433, 637, 823. Ireland, Home Rule for, 54.
Jesuit Martyrs of the Commune, The, 505.
Kathleen Waring, 843.
Looker‐Back, A, 102.
Madame du Deffand, 693. Matter, 578, 721. Music, Church, 654, 785.
National, A, or State Church, 29.
Odd Stories, 137, 570, 714. Old versus New, 140. On the Wing, 15, 209, 347, 541, 622, 807. Origen: Was he a Heretic? 109.
Philosophy, F. Louage’s, 231. Pius VI., 755. Principles of Real Being, The, 1, 173, 289. Public Worship, 322.
Relatio Itineris in Marylandiam, 537. Rheil’s The Farm of Muiceron, 39, 187, 308. Rosetti, Dante Gabriel, 263.
Self‐Education, 198. Social Shams, 125. Southern Flight, A, 15, 209, 347, 541, 622, 807. Switzerland in 1873, 375, 557.
Veil Withdrawn, The, 162, 333, 454, 597, 741. Visit to an Artist’s Studio, 273.
Was Origen a Heretic? 109. Week in Wordsworth’s Haunts, A, 795. Word for Women, A, 277.
Poetry.
Answered Prayer, 332. Antar and Zara, 226, 303, 521, 592, 735.
Butterfly, The, 186.
Captive Bird, The, 38. Cora, 418.
Dante’s Purgatorio, 450.
Easter, 246. Epigram on Abraham Lincoln, 387. Epigram: The Widow’s Mites, 139.
For Ever, 272. Fragment of Early English Poetry, 197.
Hymn of the Flowers, 841.
Legend of Vallambrosa, The, 710.
Material Faith, 407.
One Corpus Christi, 536. On Hearing the “O Salutaris Hostia!” 14.
Rock of Rest, The, 609.
Sonnet: Good Friday, 67.
There was no Room for Them at the Inn, 225. To S. Joseph, 136.
Visions, 276.
Who Will Remember? 653.
New Publications.
Adeline de Chazal, 860. Alexander the Great, 859. Amelia; or, The Triumph of Piety, 858. Archdall’s Monasticon Hibernicum, 719.
Baltimore Gun Club, The, 575. Bégin’s La Sainte Ecriture et La Regle de Foi, 719. Bellasius’ Cherubini, 719. Blessed Margaret Mary Alacoque, 855. Buckley’s Sermons, Lectures, etc., 286.
Castaniza’s The Spiritual Conflict, 856. Catholic Church, The, in its Relations to Human Progress, 575. Catherine Hamilton, 432. Catherine of Genoa, 573. Cherubini: Memorial Illustrative of his Life, 719. Children of Mary, 576. Christian Cemetery in the XIXth Century, The, 573. Church and the Empires, The, 859. Commonitory, The, of S. Vincent of Lerins, 719. Complete Pronouncing Gazetteer, A, 720. Conferences on the Spiritual Life, 143. Consoling Thoughts of S. Francis of Sales, 286. Conway’s The Sacred Anthology, 574. Count de Montalembert’s Letters to a School‐fellow, 281. Coxe’s Catholics and Roman Catholics, 575. Curtius’ History of Greece, 431.
Deharbe’s A Full Catechism, 718. De Vere’s Alexander the Great, 859. Dialogues of S. Gregory, 575. Dictionary of the English Language, A, 720. Dr. Coxe’s Claims to Apostolicity Reviewed, 281. Dubois’ Madame Agnes, 430.
Ecclesiastical Antiquities of London, 143. Essay Contributing to a Philosophy of Literature, An, 858.
Fairplay’s Notes of the Wandering Jew, 144. Farm of Muiceron, The, 430. Favre, B. Peter, The Life of, 142. Francis of Sales, S., Consoling Thoughts of, 286. Franco’s Tigranes, 575. French Prisoner in Russia, The, 431. Full Catechism of the Catholic Religion, A, 718. Fullerton’s Rosemary, 860. Fullerton’s Short Stories, 860.
Garside’s B. Margaret Mary Alacoque, 855. Garside’s The Helpers of Holy Souls, 860. Gaume’s The Christian Cemetery, 573. Glory and Sorrow, 432. Grapes and Thorns, 856. Gregory, S., Dialogues of, 575.
Hedley’s Who is Jesus Christ? 431. Helpers of Holy Souls, The, 860. History of Greece, 431. Hodge’s What is Darwinism? 429. Holy Places, 718.
In Six Months, 281.
Lancicius’ Meditation, 431. Lasserre’s The Month of Mary of Our Lady of Lourdes, 718. Letter‐Books, The, of Sir Amias Poulet, 576. Letters to a School‐fellow, 281. Lewis’ Life of S. John of the Cross, 429. Life and Doctrine of S. Catherine of Genoa, 573. Life of B. Peter Favre, S.J., 142. Life of S. Thomas of Villanova, 573.
McMullen’s Snatches of Song, 287. Madame Agnes, 430. Manning’s Sin and its Consequences, 431. May Papers, 432. Meditations for Every Day in the year, 431. Meditations on the Holy Eucharist, 287. Meline’s In Six Months, 281. Monasticon Hibernicum, 719. Montagu’s On Some Popular Errors, 573. Moriarty’s The Catholic Church, etc., 575. Morris’ The Letter‐Books of Sir Amias Poulet, 576.
Neptune Outward Bound, The, 860. New Manual of the Sacred Heart, The, 431. Noel’s The Red Flag, etc., 144. Notes of the Wandering Jew, 144. Novena to Our Lady of Lourdes, 287.
O’Sullivan’s School Hygiene, 576. Olmstead’s De l’Autorité; ou, La Philosophie du Personnalisme. Lettre au Rev. Père J. F. Hecker, etc., 717. On Some Popular Errors, etc., 573.
Paradise of God, 288. Personal Reminiscences, 576. Philippe’s, Brother, Meditations, 287. Pope, The, and the Emperor, 431. Pride of Lexington, The, 142. Purbrick’s May Papers, 432.
Ramsay’s Bishop Grant, 855. Ravignan’s Conferences, 143. Red Flag, The, etc., 144. Report of a Committee on a New Bellevue‐Hospital, 280. Rheil’s The Farm of Muiceron, 430. Rivière’s Holy Places, 718. Rosemary, 860. Ryan’s Dr. Coxe’s Claims, 281.
Sacred Anthology, The, 574. School Hygiene, 576. Selim, Pacha of Salonica, 432. Seton’s The Pride of Lexington, 142. Short Stories, 860. Sin and its Consequences, 431. Sketches of Illustrious Soldiers, 719. Snatches of Song, 287. Spiritual Conflict and Conquest, 856. State Charities Aid Association, 280. Sweeney’s The Pope and the Emperor, 431. Sylvia, and Other Dramas, 576.
Theologia Moralis Novissimi Ecclesiæ Doctoris S. Alphonsi, in Compendium Redacta, etc., 576. Thomas and Baldwin’s Gazetteer, 720. Thomas’s Dictionary of Biography, 720. Thomas Grant, First Bishop of Southwark, 855. Thomas, S., of Villanova, Life of, 573. Tigranes, 575. True to Trust, 281. Twelve Tales for the Young, 576.
Université Laval: Sixième Centenaire de S. Thomas d’Aquin à S. Hyacinthe et à Quebec, 281.
Verne’s The Baltimore Gun Club, 575. Virtues of the Sacred Heart of Jesus, The, 288.
What is Darwinism? 429. Who is Jesus Christ? 431. Wilberforce’s The Church and the Empires, 859. Wilson’s Illustrious Soldiers, 719. Wood’s Ecclesiastical Antiquities, 143. Worcester’s Dictionary, 720.
THE CATHOLIC WORLD. VOL. XIX., NO. 109.—APRIL, 1874.
The Principles Of Real Being. IV. Intrinsic Principles of Substance and Suppositum.
We have briefly shown in the preceding article that a complete being, to be a substance and a suppositum, requires no positive addition to its three intrinsic principles, but needs only to be left to itself. This is, in our opinion, an obvious truth. But as there are philosophers of high repute who do not fully share the same opinion, and, on the other hand, the notions of substance and of suppositum are both intimately connected with some theological truths which cannot be well explained without a distinct knowledge of what these two notions really imply, we deem it expedient to enter into a closer examination of the subject, that we may better understand by the light of reason, and confirm by the weight of authority, the traditional doctrine on substance and suppositum, their essential constitution, formal distinction, and supernatural separability.
Substance is very commonly described as “that which is in itself and by itself”—quod in se et per se subsistit. This definition exhibits the “predicamental” substance—that is, a substance ultimately complete, which is at the same time a suppositum also, according to Aristotle’s comprehensive conception of substance. And it is for this reason that such a definition is made up of two members; of which the first—viz., “that which exists in itself”—strictly applies to substance as such; whilst the second—viz., “that which subsists by itself”—strictly refers to the suppositum as such, and exhibits substance as possessing its own natural subsistence or suppositality.
Philosophers, when speaking of things as existing in their natural state and condition, are wont to say indiscriminately that substance is a being which “exists in itself,” or a being which “subsists by itself.” This they can do without any danger of error so long as they keep within the bounds of pure nature; since, in the natural order, anything that exists in itself subsists by itself, and vice versa. But natural things can, by supernatural interference, be raised to a mode of existence transcending their natural condition, as we know by divine revelation; and in such a case, the mode of substance and the mode of the suppositum must be, and accordingly are, most carefully distinguished from one another. Thus we know by faith that in Christ our Lord there is the true substance of a human body and of a human soul; and nevertheless we know that his human nature does not subsist by itself, but by the Divine Person of the Word. The obvious inference is that a nature which exists in itself does not necessarily subsist by itself; in other terms, the formality of substance and the formality of the suppositum are entirely distinct from one another, and the one can remain without the other. “What makes substance to be essentially a substance,” as Suarez remarks, “is not its subsisting actually by itself, but its having an essence to which subsistence is naturally due—viz., an essence which is of itself a sufficient principle of subsistence.”(1) From this we learn that the words per se esse, or “to subsist by itself,” are inserted in the definition of substance, not to show what substance as such is, but only to point out what is naturally due to substance—viz., what accompanies it in its natural mode of existing. Substance as such would therefore be sufficiently characterized by the words, “that which is in itself.”
Let us now inquire what is the legitimate meaning of these last words. A thing is said to exist in itself which not only has in itself what is needed for its own sustentation, but is moreover actually unsustained by anything lying under it, while it is itself the first subject of all its appurtenances. Such is the legitimate and traditional meaning of the words, “to exist in itself.” Hence substance may be legitimately defined as “a being which by its intrinsic constitution has no need of being supported by a subject, and which is not actually supported.”
A living author, however, in a valuable work to which I have no access at this moment, and from which, therefore, I do not make any quotation verbatim, asserts that substance “up to the present day” has always been understood to mean “a thing which by its intrinsic constitution has no need of being supported by a subject,” without taking into consideration its actual mode of existing. We shall presently show that this assertion is not true, and that this pretended definition is essentially incomplete. Meanwhile, let us observe that the precise difference between our definition and this new one consists in this only: that whilst the first presents substance as having no actual support, the second presents it as having no need of actual support, whether it be supported, at least supernaturally, or not. This difference, of course, would amount to nothing, and might be entirely overlooked, if things could not exist but in their natural condition; for anything which is in no need of support will naturally exist unsupported. But as philosophy is the handmaid of theology, we must remember that natural things can be raised to a supernatural state, and thus change their mode of existing; and in such a case the difference between the two said definitions may amount to much; because, if a thing which is naturally in no need of support be actually supported, then, according to the first definition, that thing thus actually supported would cease to exist as a substance, whilst, according to the second definition, it would still continue to exist as a substance, as it would still have no need of support. Hence the importance of ascertaining which of the two definitions we are authorized to hold according to the traditional doctrine of philosophers and theologians.
And first, Aristotle, at the head of the peripatetic school which held its sway for centuries, defines substance to be ultimum subjectum—“the last subject”—that is, the undermost subject; by which he unquestionably means that substance is something which not only lies underneath (subjacet), but is moreover the “last” thing which lies underneath. In other terms, substance, according to Aristotle, must have nothing lying under it, and, while supporting all its appurtenances, is itself actually unsupported. Hence it is, that quantity, for instance, though lying under some figure and supporting it, is no substance at all; for, though it is a subject, it is not the undermost.
This definition of the Greek philosopher has been universally accepted and made use of by Christian as well as pagan philosophers of all times, though many of them called the first subject what Aristotle had called the last—a change which does not affect the meaning of the definition, since what is last in the analytic is first in the synthetic process. It is clear, therefore, that both Aristotle and his followers do not define substance simply as that which has no need of support, but as that which is actually unsupported.
S. John Damascene, in the fourth chapter of his Dialectics, defines substance to be “that which is in itself in such a manner as not to exist in anything else”;(2) and after a few lines, “Substance,” he says, “is that which has its existence in itself, and not in anything else”;(3) and again in another chapter of the same work, “Substance,” he says, “is anything which subsists by itself and has its own being, not in any other thing, but in itself.”(4)
According to these definitions, which are identical, substance is a thing which not only is able to support itself, but actually supports itself to the exclusion of any other distinct supporter. This is quite manifest; for, if substance, in the opinion of this great doctor and philosopher, had been only a thing having no need of support, how could he require so pointedly and explicitly the actual mode of existing in itself and not in anything else?
S. Ambrose admits a notion of substance quite identical with that of Aristotle and of all the ancients, and employs it even in speaking of God himself. “God,” says he, “inasmuch as he remains in himself, and does not subsist by extrinsic support, is called a substance.”(5) God, of course, does not fall under the predicament of substance, as philosophers know; and yet the substantiality even of his nature, according to this holy doctor, implies the actual absence of extrinsic sustentation.(6)
S. Thomas, as we might expect, teaches the very same doctrine. “Substance,” says he, “is a thing whose quiddity requires to exist unsupported by anything else”—cui convenit esse non in alio;(7) and he adds that this formality (esse non in alio) is a mere negation; which is evident. And in another place, “Substance,” says he, “does not differ from being by any difference which would imply a new nature superadded to the being itself; but the name of substance is given to a thing in order to express its special mode of existing.”(8) Two things, then, or two constituents, are needed, according to S. Thomas, that we may have a substance: a physical being and a special mode of existing. The physical being is a positive reality, a nature perfectly constituted, both materially and formally, whilst the special mode is a mere negation; but, though a mere negation, is that which causes the thing to be a substance, as the name of substance is given to the thing in order to express its special mode of existing. Therefore the thing itself apart from such a special mode cannot be a substance, any more than a six‐pence apart from its rotundity can be a circle.
Toletus includes in his definition of substance both the thing and the special mode of existing. He says: “The first substance is a sensible nature which is not predicated of any subject nor exists in any subject.”(9)
Suarez says even more explicitly, “It is not necessary for the essence of substance that it should have its own subsistence, but that it should have the mode of substance.”(10) We cannot, then, overlook, and much less discard, this special mode without destroying the essential notion of substance as such. Now, he who defines substance to be simply a thing which has no need of support overlooks and discards this special mode; hence he destroys the essential notion of substance as such.
Balmes, in his Fundamental Philosophy, says: “In the notion of substance, two other notions are implied—to wit, that of permanence and that of non‐inherence. Non‐inherence is the true formal constituent of substance, and is a negation; it is grounded, however, on something positive—that is, on the aptitude of the thing to exist in itself without the need of being supported by another.”(11) This passage establishes very clearly the common doctrine that the aptitude of a thing to exist without being supported is not the formal constituent of substance, but only the ground on which the proper formal constituent of substance (non‐inherence) is conceived to be possible.
Ferraris, a modern Italian Thomist, in his course of philosophy, says explicitly that substance is destroyed if its “perseity”—per se esse—be taken away.(12) The word “perseity” stands here for the “special mode” of S. Thomas, the “mode of substance” of Suarez, the “non‐inherence” of Balmes, etc.
Liberatore has the following: “Going back to the notion of substance, we may consider three things which are implied in it: the first, that it exists, not in any manner whatever, but in itself; the second, that it consists of a determinate reality or essence, from which its determinate active powers arise; the third, that it is in possession of itself—sui juris—with regard to its manner of existing. Of these three things, the first exhibits properly and precisely the notion of substance; the second presents the concept of nature; the third expresses the notion of suppositum.”(13)
The preceding quotations, to which others might be added, are more than sufficient, in our opinion, to refute the assertion that substance at all times was considered simply as a thing having no need of support; for we have seen that the most prominent philosophers and theologians of all times uniformly consider the actual negation of support as an essential principle of substance. Sanseverino, a very learned modern philosopher of the Thomistic school, treating in his Logic of the predicament of substance, establishes the fact that, according to the common teaching of the scholastics, “not the essence of the thing, but its mode of existing, formally constitutes the predicament of substance.” Although that special mode of existing is not implied in the essential concept of the thing, inasmuch as it is a thing, yet, according to the doctrine of the schoolmen, the same special mode is implied, as a formal constituent, in the essential concept of the same thing, inasmuch as it falls under the predicament of substance; so that, in the constitution of substance, the essence of the thing is to be ranked as its material, and the special mode of existing as its formal, principle. And the learned writer sums up all this doctrine in one general conclusion of Henry of Ghent, which runs thus: “Every predicament arises out of two constituents, of which one is the thing which is to be put under the predicament, the other is its mode of being which determines the predicament, and by these same constituents are the predicaments distinguished from one another”(14)—a doctrine explicitly taught by S. Thomas himself.(15) And here let us reflect that, if all the schoolmen, as Sanseverino with the authority of his philosophical erudition declares, affirm that the mode of substance, the non‐inherence, the negation of support, is an essential constituent of substance as such, we are free to conclude that to affirm the contrary is to give a false notion of substance; while to say that philosophers have at all times, or at any time, taught the contrary, is to give a very false statement of facts.
This may suffice to convince the student that the essential formality of substance as such is the negation of actual support. And now let us inquire what is the formal constituent of suppositum. Suppositum and substance, though not identical, are similarly constituted. The positive entity of both is the same, and the difference between them arises entirely from the different character of their negative formality, as we are going to explain. For the essence or nature of every created being is naturally accompanied by two negations, of which neither is essential to it, while either of them, absolutely speaking, can be made to disappear. The first is the negation of anything underlying as a supporter and acting the part of a subject; and it is to this negation, as we have proved, that any complete nature formally owes its name and rank of substance. The second is the negation of anything overlying, so to say, and possessing itself of the created being in such a manner as to endue it with an additional complement and a new subsistence; and it is to this negation that a complete nature formally owes its name and rank of suppositum. The complete nature, or the thing in question, when considered apart from these two negations, does not, therefore, convey the idea either of substance or of suppositum, but exhibits a mere potency of being either or both; as it is evident that there cannot be a substance without the formal constituent of substance, nor a suppositum without the formal constituent of suppositum.
This doctrine, which is so simple and clear, and which fully explains the true meaning of those phrases, “it exists in itself,” and “it subsists by itself,” can be confirmed by what S. Thomas teaches on the subject. And since we have already said enough in regard to the mode of substance, we shall give only what he says concerning subsistence or suppositality. That the words per se—“by itself”—which strictly exhibit the formality of the suppositum, are the expression of a mere negation, is admitted by S. Thomas in a passage above mentioned. This would lead us immediately to conclude that the formal constituent of suppositum, in the judgment of the holy doctor, is a mere negation. But we may find a more perspicuous proof of this in those passages where he explains how the human nature in Christ subsists without the human personality. The absence of the human personality in Christ does not depend, says he, “on the absence of anything pertaining to the perfection of the human nature—but on the addition of something that ranks above the human nature, to wit, on the union of the human nature with a divine Person.”(16) And again: “The divine Person, by his union, prevented the human nature from having its own personality.”(17) It is manifest from these two passages that, according to S. Thomas, the absence of the human personality in Christ is to be accounted for by the addition of something above the human nature, and not by the suppression or subtraction of any positive entity belonging to the human nature. If, then, the absence of the human personality entails no absence of positive reality, it is obvious that the human personality is not a positive reality, but a real negation. Such is S. Thomas’s doctrine, endorsed by Scotus and many others.
There are, however, some philosophers and theologians, Suarez among others, who consider personality as something positive; and we must briefly discuss the grounds of their opinion.
They say that, if the human personality is nothing positive, human person will be the same reality as human nature, and therefore the one will not be really distinct from the other; and if so, the one cannot be assumed without the other. How, then, can we say that the Eternal Word assumed the human nature without the human person?
We reply that all negation which belongs to a real being is a real negation, and constitutes a real mode of being. Accordingly, although the human personality is only a negation, the nature existing under that negation really differs from itself existing without that negation, no less than a body at rest really differs from itself in movement, although rest is only a negation of movement. And this suffices to show that the objection is wholly grounded on the false supposition that nothing is real which is not positive.
They affirm that subsistence or suppositality gives the last complement to the nature, as it terminates it and makes it subsistent. Hence subsistence, as they infer, must add something positive to the nature; which it cannot do unless it be a positive reality.
We deny the assumption altogether. Subsistence, in fact, gives no complement whatever to the nature, but, on the contrary, presupposes the complete nature, which, when simply left to itself, cannot but be subsistent by itself, and therefore is said to have its own subsistence. It is not subsistence that causes the thing to subsist; it is the thing which abides by itself that, in consequence of this same abiding by itself, has subsistence, and is called subsistent; just in the same manner as it is not rest that causes the body to be at rest, but the concrete resting; as rest is evidently the consequence of the resting. Hence this second objection, too, is based on a false assumption.
Another of their reasons is the following: In God, personality is a positive reality, therefore in creatures also; for the created person is a participation of divine person, which is a positive reality.
We do not see how this assertion can be true. In God there are three Persons, but neither of them is participated or communicated to creatures. Indeed, creatures bear in themselves a faint imitation of the three divine Persons, inasmuch as they involve three intrinsic principles in their constitution, as we have explained in the preceding article; but these three principles are not three persons. Yet, if divine personality were in any way communicable to creatures, creatures would subsist in three persons; for how could the personality of the Father be communicated in any degree without the personality of the Son and of the Holy Ghost being communicated in the same degree? Personality in God is a relative entity, and cannot be conceived without its correlative; and consequently, if the human personality were a participation of divine personality, it would be impossible for man to be a single person; whence it appears that human personality is not a communication of divine personality, and is not even analogous to it. What we call a human person is nothing but a human individual nature which is sui juris—that is, not possessed by a superior being, but left to itself and free to dispose of its acts. It therefore imitates, not the divine Persons, but the divine absolute Being, inasmuch as it is independent in disposing of everything according to his will. Now, independence, even in God, implies the negation or absence of any necessary connection or conjunction with anything distinct from the divine nature. It is but reasonable, then, to hold that the human nature also exists free and independent by the very absence or negation of personal union with a higher being. We remark, however, that such a negation in God is a negation of imperfection, while in creatures an analogous negation is a negation of a higher perfection, since it is the negation of their union with a more perfect nature.
It has been argued, also, that to be a person is better than not to be a person; whence it would follow that personality is a perfection. On the other hand, negations are not perfections; hence personality cannot be a negation.
To this we answer that the proposition, “to be a person is better than not to be a person,” can be understood in two different manners. It may mean that to have a nature which is capable of personality, and is naturally personal, is better than to have a nature incapable of personality; and in this sense the proposition is true, for it is certainly better to have the nature of man than the nature of an ox. This, however, would not show that personality is a positive formality. But the same proposition might be taken to mean that to have one’s natural personality is better than to exist without it, in consequence of hypostatic union with a higher being; and in this sense, which is the sense of the objection, the proposition is evidently false. For the whole perfection of the human person is the perfection of its nature; so that human personality, instead of being a new perfection, is only an exponent of the perfection and dignity of human nature, which is such that the same nature can naturally guide itself and control its actions. We therefore concede that human personality is a formality of a perfect nature, but we cannot admit that it is a perfection of itself. If human personality were a perfection of human nature, we would be compelled to say that human nature is less perfect in Christ than in all other men; for, though the Eternal Word assumed the whole human nature, he did not assume that pretended perfection, human personality. But S. Paul assures us that Christ’s human nature “is like ours in all things, except sin.” We cannot therefore suppose that the human nature is less perfect in him than in other men; and this leads us to the conclusion that human personality is not a positive perfection.
Some have pretended that the mystery of the Incarnation would become quite inexplicable if the human person were nothing more than the human nature left to itself. Their reason is that by the Incarnation the human nature is separated from the human person; which they deem to be impossible if the person is nothing else than the nature alone.
This is, however, a manifest paralogism. If, in fact, the human person is the human nature left to itself, the nature assumed by the Word will certainly not be a human person, since it is clear that the nature thus assumed is not left to itself. This suffices to show the inconsistency of the objection. Let us add that it is not entirely correct to say that by the Incarnation the human nature is separated from the human person; it would be more correct to say that the human nature is prevented from having that natural subsistence which would make it a human person.
Lastly, it has been said that, if the human nature which has been assumed by the Eternal Word was entirely complete, the union of the Word with it could not be intimate and substantial. Hence, according to this reasoning, there must have been something wanting in the human nature assumed, which something has been supplied by the hypostatic union.
We cannot but repeat, with S. Thomas, that the human nature assumed by the Word is absolutely perfect, and therefore exempt from any deficiency which could have been supplied by the hypostatic union. And as for the reason alleged, we say that it is grounded on a false supposition. The union of the Word with the human nature is not a conspiration of the divine and the human into oneness of substance, for the thing would be impossible; and therefore it is not wholly correct to say that the union is substantial. The proper term is hypostatic—that is, personal; for, in fact, the human nature conspires with the divine Word into oneness of person, the two natures or substances remaining entirely distinct. Now, the oneness of person is not obtained by supplying any deficiency in the human nature, but by adding, as S. Thomas teaches, to the perfect human nature that which is above it—that is, by the Word taking possession of it in his own person.
Such are the principal reasons advanced by those who consider human personality, and suppositality in general, as a positive mode. We think we have answered them sufficiently.
We cannot better conclude this controversy than by inviting the same philosophers to take cognizance of the following argument. The mode of suppositum, as well as the mode of substance, is not an accidental but a substantial mode, as all agree, and every one must admit. Now, no substantial mode can be positive; and therefore neither the mode of suppositum nor the mode of substance can be positive. The minor of this syllogism can be proved thus: Positive modes are nothing but positive actualities or affections of being; and unless they are mere relative denominations (which is not the case with substantial modes), they must result from the positive reception of some act in a real subject. This is an obvious truth, for nothing is actual but by some act; and all acts which are not essential to the first constitution of the being are received in the being already constituted as in a real subject. And since all acts thus received are accidental, hence all the positive modes intrinsic to the being must be accidental modes; and no substantial mode can be positive. Therefore whatever is positive in the suppositum and in the substance belongs to the nature of the being which has the mode of suppositum or of substance, whilst the modes themselves are mere negations.
This truth, however, should not be misunderstood. When we say that “to be in itself” or “to be by itself” is a mere negation, we do not refer to the verb “to be”; we only refer to the appendage “in itself” or “by itself.” To be is positive, but belongs to the nature as such, as it is the essential complement of all being, whether substance and suppositum or not. The negation consists, in the one case, in not being sustained by an underlying supporter, and, in the other, in not being taken possession of by an overlying superior being. Indeed, when we unite the verb to be with either of the two negations, we unite the positive with the negative. But the positive comes in as determinable, while the negative comes in as determinant. Hence the resultant determination or formality is only the actuality of a negation. Now, the actuality of a negation, though it is real inasmuch as it is the affection of a positive being, yet it is negative; for all actuality is denominated by its formal principle, and such a principle, in our case, is a negation.
A writer in a Catholic periodical has ventured to say that if the formality of substance (and the same would also apply to the suppositum) is negative, then substance “will consist merely in a negation.” It is surprising that a philosopher has not seen the absurdity of such a conclusion. Substance is not to be confounded with its formality. There are many positive things which involve a negation. In an empty pocket, emptiness is a negation; ignorance in the ignorant is a negation; and limit in all things finite is a negation. Yet no one will say that an empty pocket, an ignorant pupil, or a finite being “consist merely in a negation”; and therefore, although the formality of substance is a negation, it does not follow that substance is a mere negation.
It now remains for us to show that neither of the two aforesaid negations is essential to any created being, and that a created being can therefore, absolutely speaking, exist, at least supernaturally, without either of them. Our first proof is drawn from the fact that neither the one nor the other negation is reckoned among the essential constituents of created beings. All complete nature, by common admission, consists “of essence and existence”—ex essentia et esse—the existence being the formal complement of the essence, and the essence itself involving, as its principles, an act with its corresponding term, as the readers of our last article already know. Accordingly, there is nothing essential in a complete being besides its act, its term, and its complement; and therefore neither the mode of substance nor the mode of suppositum is essential to a complete created being.
Our second proof is drawn from the notion of existence. “To exist strictly and simply,” says Suarez, “means only to have a formal entity in the order of nature; and therefore things existing are equally susceptible of the mode of being which consists in leaning on a supporter, and of the opposite mode which excludes all support.”(18) This is a tangible truth; for although a complete being possesses in its own constitution what is required for its own existence, yet it has nothing in its constitution which implies the necessity of existing in itself and by itself. It can indeed, and will naturally, be in itself without anything underlying as a supporter, since it sufficiently supports itself on its own term; but it contains nothing that would make impossible the sub‐introduction of a supernatural supporter. And, again, a complete being can subsist by itself without further completion, since it is sufficiently complete by its formal complement; but it contains nothing which would exclude the possibility of its acquiring a further completion and a supernatural subsistence.
A third proof might be drawn from the fact that our own bodies exist indeed in themselves, but do not subsist by themselves, as their material nature is taken possession of by a spiritual being—the soul—and subsists by its subsistence. From this fact, which is alluded to in S. Athanasius’ Symbol as an image of the assumption of the human nature by the Word, we might show that suppositality can, even naturally, be supplanted by the union of a lower with a higher nature. But we will not develop this proof, as it requires too long an explanation and many new considerations, which cannot be embodied in the present article.
Last, but not least, it is evident that all negations which are not included in the essence of a thing can be supplanted by the position of their contrary. Hence the mode of substance and the mode of suppositum, which are negations, and are not included in the essence of created things, can be supplanted by the intervention of a supernatural power.
As we must here keep within the bounds of philosophy, we abstain from discussing other cognate questions which can be safely answered only by a direct appeal to dogmatic definitions and theological arguments. We may, however, state that the old scholastic theologians and the fathers of the church, both Greek and Latin, admitted that the mode of substance, as well as the mode of suppositum, can be made to disappear from the thing to which it naturally belongs in the manner above explained. For their common doctrine on the mysteries of the Incarnation and of the Holy Eucharist is, that the two mysteries are analogous to one another,(19) and admit of a parallel mode of reasoning for their explanation. The analogy more or less explicitly pointed out by them involves the admission of a principle which may be expressed in the following words: “As the whole human nature can exist in Christ without the mode of human person, which is excluded by the hypostatic union of the Word with it, so can the whole sensible nature (species) of bread exist in the Holy Eucharist without its mode of substance, which is excluded by the substantive presence of Christ’s body under it.” This traditional doctrine has been almost ignored in these latter centuries by those who were anxious to explain everything according to a special system of natural philosophy, and who little by little formed a new theory of the sacramental species; but the physical system on which these theologians took their stand having given way, and their new theory having lost its plausibility, we are of opinion that instead of seeking for new explanations, as some do, it is more prudent to fall back on tradition, and take into consideration the authorized teachings of our old polemic writers, of those especially who so valiantly fought against Berengarius and other heretics in behalf of the Eucharistic dogma.
Before we conclude, we wish to make a few remarks on some ambiguous expressions which may be a source of error in speaking of substance and of suppositum. We have said that Aristotle includes in his first category the suppositum as well as the substance, and that for this reason the words, “by itself,” “to support,” “to subsist,” have been promiscuously applied to the substance as well as to the suppositum. This has been done not only in philosophy, but even in theology. Thus we read in good authors that the divine Person of the Word “supports” or “sustains” Christ’s human nature. Yet these words, as also “sustentation,” when applied to subsistence, must have a meaning which they have not when applied to substance; and it is plain that to employ the same words in both cases may give rise to serious mistakes. Some authors, besides overlooking the distinction to be made between “existing in itself”—esse in se—and “subsisting by itself”—per se subsistere—confound also with one another their opposites—viz., “to exist in something else”—esse in alio—and “to subsist by something else”—per aliud subsistere. Suarez, for instance, though usually very accurate in his expressions, says that “the mode of existing by itself and without dependence on any supporter has for its opposite to exist in something else;”(20) which is not correct, for the divinity of Christ exists in his humanity, and nevertheless does not depend on it as a supporter. It would be more correct to say that the mode of subsisting by itself has for its opposite to subsist by something else. And it is evident that to subsist by something else is not the same as to exist in it.
To get rid of all such ambiguous phrases, we observe that the word “sustentation,” as compared with any created nature, can have three different meanings, according as we apply it to the act, the term, or the complement of the created being.
When sustentation is considered in connection with the act or the formal principle of a being, it means positive conservation; for all contingent being comes out of nothing by the positive production of an act, and needs to be kept out of nothing by the positive conservation of the same act, as we know from special metaphysics.
When sustentation is considered in connection with the intrinsic term of a being, it means underlying; and in this sense we say that substance sustains its accidents. This meaning of the word “sustentation” is most conformable to its etymology; and thus, if anything is lying under any reality in that manner in which substance lies under its accidents, we shall say very properly that it sustains that reality. In this sense, sustentation and support may be taken as synonymous.
When sustentation is considered in connection with the formal complement of a being, it means overlying in such a manner as to superinduce a new complement and a new subsistence. Such is the manner in which the Person of the Word sustains Christ’s humanity. This kind of sustentation implies hypostatic union and super‐completion.
We might, therefore, divide sustentation into conservative, substantive, and hypostatic. The first is usually called conservation; the second might keep the name of sustentation; whilst the third might perhaps be fitly styled personalization, as this word seems adequately to express the nature of personal sustentation.
As to the phrases, “to be in itself” and “to be by itself,” we have seen that their distinction is most important. It may be useful to add that, even in God, to be in himself and to be by himself are to be distinguished by a distinction of reason indeed, but which is grounded on a real foundation. God is essentially a se, in se, and per se—that is, of himself, in himself, and by himself. These three attributes are absolute, and belong to the divine nature as an absolute reality; but as in this absolute reality there are intrinsic relations of personalities, we may reflect that, in this relative order, to be of himself can be considered as owing especially to God the Father, who does not proceed from any other person, but is himself the first principle of their procession; to be in himself can be considered as having a special reference to God the Son, in whom the whole entity of the Father is found as in the substantial term of his eternal generation; and, lastly, to be by himself can be explained by reference to the Holy Ghost, who is the essential complement of the Blessed Trinity, as that is said to be by itself which is ultimately complete in its own entity.
Accordingly, God, as existing essentially of himself—a se—has no need or capability of conservation; as existing essentially in himself—in se—he has no need or capability of sustentation; and as existing essentially by himself—per se—he has no need or capability of super‐completion. But with contingent beings the case is quite different. And first, contingent beings are not “of themselves,” as they are from God; and for this reason they have an essential need of conservation, as we have stated, so far as their essential act is concerned. Secondly, although they naturally exist “in themselves,” yet this their mode of existing is not the result of an essential necessity, but only of a natural ordination, which God can supersede. They exist in themselves when the term of their own essence is their undermost support; for then the whole essence supports itself in a natural manner, and is a natural substance. Thirdly, although created beings naturally “subsist by themselves,” yet this manner of existing is not the consequence of an essential necessity, but only of a natural ordination, which can be superseded by the Creator. They subsist by themselves when the formal complement of their essence is their ultimate complement; for then the whole being is left to itself as a natural suppositum.
These explanations will be of some assistance, we hope, to the philosophical student in forming a correct judgment as to the formal constituents of substance and suppositum, and as to the manner of speaking about them with proper discrimination. We wish we had handled the subject in a better style and a less monotonous phraseology; but it was our duty to aim at preciseness rather than ornament. If there is any part of philosophy in which precision is more necessary than in another, it is that which treats of the principles of things; and if we succeed in presenting such principles in their true light, we shall deem it a sufficient apology for the dryness of our philosophical style.
To Be Continued.
On Hearing The “O Salutaris Hostia.”(21)
Song of the soul, whose clearly ringing rhythm Throbs through the sacred pile, And lengthened echoes swell thy solemn anthem Past chancel, vault, and aisle, An occult influence through thy numbers stealing, A strange, mysterious spell, Wakes in the longing heart a wondrous feeling, A joy no tongue can tell; A dreamy peace, a sense of unseen glory, Wells through thy thrilling praise, And calls a fairy vision up before me, A dream of brighter days. I hear the seraphs’ sweet‐tongued voices pleading, The cherubim’s accord, And see the sun‐robed shadows softly thridding The gardens of the Lord. I linger on the sight, and growing weary Of earthly dross and sin, Sadly, yet hoping, like the wistful peri, I long to enter in!
The rolling echoes peal Whilst glorious above The face of God smiles on the storied altar, Well pleased, and rich with love. And through the living air and slumbrous music, And through the chancel broad, The Heart of Jesus glows in mystic splendor, And lights us unto God!
On The Wing: A Southern Flight.
What induced us to pick our way on foot from the railway carriage to the Hôtel du Parc et Bordeaux, near eleven o’clock at night, on our arrival at Lyons, I cannot possibly conceive.
It was the 3d of January that we performed this unnecessary penance; and the only explanation I can give is that we were all rather dazed by the long journey from Paris, and had forgotten that of course there was waiting at the station an omnibus to carry on the passengers. We had been silent and sleepy for some hours, when the bright lights twinkling up and down the heights of the city of Lyons, and across the bridges, and, corruscating at the station, had roused us all up, and made us exclaim at the fairy sight. I had seen it again and again; but I always look out eagerly for the first peep at that tossed‐about town after night has closed in, and I know none more brilliant and picturesque. I thought we all looked rather rueful as we entered the hotel, and that it suddenly struck us we had come on foot, and might therefore look too economically inclined to suit the views of the buxom lady who advanced to meet us. I saw her cast rather a doubtful eye to the rear; but her face brightened when she found we had at least been able to afford a porter to carry such luggage as we might want for one night. We had no valid reason to give in reply to her anxious enquiries as to why we had not availed ourselves of the hotel omnibus; which very soon afterwards came rattling into the yard, quite empty, the guard and coachman viewing us indignantly. Madame, finding we had nothing to say for ourselves, compassionately furnished each with a candle, and allowed us to gather together our scattered wits in sleep.
The “we” consisted of brother Frank, sister Mary, and I; also of Ann, our maid. I suppose I must describe the party. I wish I could draw them instead. Frank is dressed all over in a gray tweed. I sometimes tell him he looks like a gray parrot; but that is absurd, because he is so extremely taciturn, which gray parrots are not. He makes a capital courier. He always knows what we poor women shall want, and how much we can do, which is a great comfort to me; because, as Mary is delicate, and we are travelling on her account, I should be so worried if Frank insisted on doing fourteen hours of railroad per diem. He is such a good fellow that he would never wish us to overtask ourselves. But then he is so strong that I know it must seem very extraordinary to him that we should be such poor creatures, and get tired out so soon. I sometimes wonder what has made Frank so tender and gentle, and so considerate. Perhaps it is the being so much with Mary. She makes everybody gentle who comes near her. Somehow she seems to stroke everybody’s fur the right way, no matter how ruffled they were before. Poor Mary! she has for many years been a widow, after a brief and unhappy married life, and having lost both her children, a girl and a boy. She is the eldest of us three, but has a marvellous knack of looking the youngest and the brightest. She has been very beautiful, and is so still in many ways. Now I come! But how shall I describe myself? The more I think of it, the more impossible I find it. As I am the relater of our adventures, I suppose my readers will form for themselves some idea of what I am like. So I will only say that my name is Jane, and that I am an old maid, but that I do not feel old. As to my looks, I really do not know what to say. I am not always altogether dissatisfied with them; but then, on the other hand, when I am inclined to judge them leniently, the unlucky feeling comes over me that it is solely owing to my hat, or the way my hair is done, or some fortuitous circumstance upon which I cannot reckon as a permanency, and which may be gone before any one else has had the time to observe it. So that though I have my lucky moments, I have little or no capital to go on. Now, Mary, with her large, soft eyes, her exquisite mouth, and beautiful teeth, attracts strangers wherever she goes; although she is always insisting upon it she is quite an old woman. And now comes Ann. She is about my age, but does not at all consider herself an old maid, and therefore always contradicts me when I speak of myself in such disparaging terms. I generally say something in reply about the observation being six for me and half a dozen for herself. But this she does not like. Ann is a very good girl, and a capital maid. She has pretty, fuzzy black hair, and bright though small black eyes; she has a very white skin, and a neat figure. But she does not like travelling, and is especially disgusted when the scenery is very bold and magnificent. Mountains are her abhorrence, distant views her antipathy. This is far from being our first journey; and whenever we have found ourselves in the railway carriage from Dover to London Bridge, Ann invariably remarks how lovely the country is as we dash through the flat green fields and monotonous cherry gardens of simple Kent. And her admiration culminates when we pass any gentlemen’s seats. The absence of striking features, the unbroken, unaccidental horizon, the universal green, and the level lines, give Ann a sensation of peace and repose; while I, who have something of an artist’s soul, am feeling how very difficult it would be to get an effective subject or a “nice bit of color” out of the platitudes of dear England’s quiet homesteads.
We were off the next day by daylight, I feeling like a swallow flying south; and very soon we perceived in the clear air a warmer glow than any to be had the other side of Lyons. Even the desert region of La Crau seemed full of charms to me. The dim, gray expanse of thick‐lying stones that Hercules persuaded by his prayers the angry Jove to shower down on the Ligurians, broken only by thin tufts of mint and scant rosemary, themselves also of a gray green, and leading on over thousands of acres to the blue distant hills that were blushing into rosy hues when we crossed the desert, were not without delightful “points,” which I could have transferred to my sketch‐book had time allowed me. “La Belle Provence” is a very journalière beauty, and requires a bright sun to clothe her in sparkling jewels, and to dye her dress in blue and violet and rose‐madder, to be worthy of the name that centuries have agreed to give her. When there are no lights, there is apt to be an air of desolation and barrenness. Those hills, arrayed in many tints, give back the lights from rocky and unproductive cliffs; but down in the valleys, with the exception of La Crau, the culture is rich and varied. The first stunted olive‐trees as we approached Marseilles were welcome less on their own account—for they are miserable specimens—than for the association of ideas connected with their pallid leaves, and because they gave promise of the large ones that would gladden our eyes further on.
The station of Hyères is a few miles from the town. We had ordered a carriage to meet us; and all the way Mary was looking out for the large umbrella pine that she remembered so well years ago, when there was no railway so far south. It had been the great landmark on the road from Hyères to Toulon. We measured our rides and walks in that direction by the great pine. There it stood, the same as ever, and brought back all Hyères and the two winters spent there, besides other shorter visits, to our memory with one rush. All else was changed. New houses had sprung up on all sides. Mme. Susanne’s old tumble‐down hotel, where Mary had stopped for a few days on her wedding‐tour, is changed into a magnificent building with caryatides supporting the façade like a Genoese palace; and the palms on La Place des Palmiers, which I had known in their babyhood, have grown to a size that would not disgrace Arabia. The hotel we went to stands in what used to be Le Jardin Frassinet. It had been full of orange‐trees when we first knew it, as had all the other gardens in the place. But one very severe winter having greatly injured the trees, the inhabitants have given up the cultivation of oranges, and have planted peach‐trees instead, much to the detriment of the beauty of Hyères. I found Mary, the day after our arrival, gazing wistfully at a group of tall cypress and one palm‐tree that had marked the boundary of the gardens belonging to the house where she lived with her children the second time she came here. We missed her soon afterwards, and refrained from following her, for we knew she wanted to visit alone the scenes of some joys and many sorrows long ago passed away—so far as anything is really past which is worthy the name of joy or sorrow. She came back with her hands full of the little, dark, mottled arum and its lance‐head leaves that grow so profusely on the hills and by the roadside. They are of a dingy‐purple hue, shaded off into white; and we exclaimed against them as she put them in a glass, alleging that they had an unpleasant odor. “I know they have,” she answered; “but their quaint, twisted shape, and blossoms like the head of a snake, are so full of memories that I rather like the smell than otherwise.” After that we let her enjoy her arums alone, for we knew how much that meant. Doubtless she had been wandering about, recalling visions of the past: the dead—the lost, but not dead, that worse separation!—and all the tangled maze of the years that are gone. Mary’s bouquet of arums was redeemed by a handful of the sweet white alyssum; and these two flowers, with a few of the bold‐ faced, unflinching daisies of Provence, so unlike our modest northern flowers, were all the wild blossoms we could hope to find in January.
We could not leave Hyères without performing a pilgrimage to Notre Dame de Consolation, the old church on a hill overlooking the coast. The ascent is marked by the Way of the Cross rudely painted in small niches of masonry by the side of the road. When we were last here, there was a daily Mass said by a hermit‐priest. He had some years previously tried his vocation at the Carmelites’, and had not succeeded. But the impulse to seek utter solitude was too strong to be resisted; and for a long time he had lived in the surrounding mountains, a veritable hermit, subsisting upon the poorest fare, which was brought to him at regular intervals by the peasants. Whether he had erected a hut for himself, or lived in a cave, I never learnt; but when the bishop of the diocese became aware of the fact, he thought it to be regretted that a priest should not celebrate Mass, and proposed to him that he should live in one of the small rooms of the deserted convent which is attached to the Church of Our Lady of Consolation, take care of the church, and say Mass. This offer he gladly accepted; and there he resided for some time. We used to go sometimes, on a bright spring morning, to attend his Mass. Our breakfast was packed in a basket, and hung to the pommel of my donkey’s saddle, to be eaten afterwards on the top of the low, semi‐circular wall which encloses a piece of ground in front of the church. I always looked with a special interest, not altogether unmingled with curiosity, at the slight, bent figure of the priest, who could not be more than forty years of age, as he emerged from the door of the sacristy, and, with eyes so cast down that they seemed closed, passed by us to the altar. Who shall say what had called up that deep thirst for utter solitude and silence which had driven him to so extreme a life? Was it some calamity, or some crime, or only—as is far more probable—that strange instinct which is implanted in the nature of some men to flee their kind, and be alone with themselves—an instinct which possibly many have felt stirring within them at odd moments, but which, when touched by divine grace, grows into a wonderful and exceptional vocation; once more common, in the early days of Christianity, when the whole world lay in pagan luxury and gilded vice, and which even our subduing, taming, commonplace civilization fails in some rare cases to smother in the soul?
What became of the hermit of Our Lady of Consolation I could never learn. Perhaps the solitude seemed incomplete when ladies could attend his Mass, and picnic afterwards on his premises. At any rate, he has been gone for many years; and Mass is only said on certain feasts, when the peasantry come in crowds, and bring flowers and offerings to the Madonna, as represented by a peculiarly ugly and dark‐colored wooden statue, which has grown to be very precious to those who have obtained special favors in answer to their prayers offered here. Many years ago, Mary, in her Protestant days, had brought a lace veil, the gift of a Russian prince, who was leaving Hyères with a sick wife, and who wanted prayers for their safe journey; thereby producing a curious admixture of heretical, schismatical, and Catholic feeling which no doubt had each their separate value and acceptance before God, being all offered in simplicity and good faith; for it was with no unwilling hands that, mounted on one of the prie‐dieux in the church, she had arranged the veil over the statue, and then knelt to say a prayer for the prince’s intention.
The church is full of votive offerings. The walls are entirely covered from roof to floor. As many of them have been put up by sailors, they more or less have reference to the dangers of the deep. There is a model of a ship hanging up near the entrance, probably because its larger copy was saved from wreck. The pictures representing recovery from sickness or preservation from peril are often extremely grotesque, and might provoke a smile were it not that they carry one’s thoughts direct to the faith and gratitude they represent.
I had often wandered through the deserted rooms and cells of the old convent. There is no glass left in some of the windows; but the weather is kept out by the external wooden shutters which are universal in the south. There is a lovely view from all sides. In front, the sea, with Les Isles d’Or (the Golden Islands) hemming it in as if it were a large lake, save to the left, where it opens out into the wide ocean. These islands form some of those originally called Les Larins, which name included the group before the coast of Cannes. And in most of them the first religious houses for men were established by S. Honorius, though only one island, that on which he and all his monks were martyred by the Saracens, bears his name. Les Isles d’Or, or Les Isles d’Hyères, as they are also called, are now but sparsely inhabited. Years ago, “when we were young,” we had landed on one of these islands, where stands a fort, and a few soldiers are stationed. There are also a half‐dozen of cottages, inhabited by fishermen and shepherds. We were a joyous band, and had sailed from the mainland in the admiral’s cutter, the French fleet riding at anchor off our coast. As we scrambled up the sandy beach, and pushed our way through the tangled undergrowth of myrtle, heath, cytisus, and leutisca, we found ourselves face to face with the solitary sentinel pacing in front of the blind walls of the low but solid‐looking fort. His face broke into smiles, and, with a saucy gleam in his dark eyes, he said to the foremost gentlemen of our party, “Comment, Messieurs! vous nous en menez toutes ces belles dames? Mais vous allez révolutionner notre pauvre curé.”(22) We could find no remains of monastic houses on the islands; but there are traces of walls close to the sea, on the mainland, which are said to be the remains of a convent of nuns who met with a severe punishment for an ill‐timed jest. Possibly they were not all that as nuns they might have been. At any rate, they seem to have found their life occasionally dull; and when the longing for a little excitement became irrepressible, the abbess would toll the great bell of the convent, which by rights was never used save to ring the Hours and the Angelus, or to summon the neighbors for aid when any of the frequent panics about the landing of the marauding Saracens threatened the safety of the Sisters. The jest had been played too often, and when at length the oft‐expected Saracens really came, the poor nuns rang their bell in vain. No one appeared to the rescue, and the Saracens had it all their own way, and the convent was destroyed.
The sea must have encroached since those days, for the waters wash over the scanty ruins, and I have picked my way along the foundations with little salt lakes lying between. Far to the left lie Les Salines, where they evaporize the sea‐water in shallow square spaces, and thus obtain a coarse gray salt. They say that sometimes flamingoes may be shot among this marshy land; but I could never obtain one, though I know it abounds in wild fowl of every description. The deep orange‐colored boughs of the large willow‐trees give a peculiar charm to the distant landscape in the winter when the leaves are off; and close upon the edge of the shore is a fine wood of umbrella pines, whereof three giants, standing apart from the rest, had been great favorites of ours. We had looked out eagerly on our arrival for our three pines. Alas! one was missing. Years ago these three solitary, magnificent trees had had a strange fascination for me. I wanted to find my way to where they stood; but it was beyond the marshes, and near the salines. There was no direct road, and no one could tell me how to get there; not even the young French naval officers, who used to come often and spend the evening with us, and who must have landed not so very far from where they stood. The craving to see my three pines face to face grew, however, too strong to be resisted; and so one day I set off on donkey‐back, taking Ann with me, and resolved that I would not return till I had accomplished my end. Great were our difficulties. We had to thread our way along narrow raised paths through the marshes, just wide enough for our donkeys to tread; and as, of course, we dared not leave these paths, which did not wind, but turned at right angles, we as often seemed to be going away from the pines as the reverse. At one moment we were pursued by a couple of savage dogs, who tore after us from the open yard of a farm‐house, and who were so very angry at our intrusion that escape along our narrow way, and with our leisurely steeds, seemed questionable. At length I found myself at the base of a high sand‐bank, on which the yellow sea‐thistle, with its glaucous leaves, found a scanty subsistence and a doubtful root‐hold. This I had to scramble up, while for every ten inches I made in advance I slid back six. At last I was at my long‐desired goal, and my three giants were really magnificent to behold. It was on my fourth visit to Hyères, with intervals of years between, that I accomplished this feat, and I had always looked at my pines the first thing in the morning, when the strip of sea between the mainland and the isles was still lying gray in the early light. Then, again, I watched for the red glow of the setting sun on their smooth stems, painted, as it were, in burnt sienna. Again, on moonlit nights I had looked for their broad, deep black crests, falling like an ink‐spot on the silver sea. And now at last, when they had almost become to me like some mystery, meaning more than met the eye, I could throw my arms about them, and lay my hot cheek on their noble trunks.
It was not till then I knew how tired I was. I could not delay long with my old friends. I do not remember anything about the getting home, save that the dogs who had so guarded my garden of the Hesperides, and stood between me and the fulfilment of my desire, now that I had accomplished the feat, let me return in silence. I was very weary; but I was thoroughly contented and satisfied. And now one of my old friends was laid low! How he came to his end I know not. But I felt that he had died, not that he had been cut down; and for a moment a strange, weird melancholy stole over me at finding I had outlived a noble tree. It seemed as if I must be very old to have done that, and that it was hardly natural. I remember I asked myself then, at the very time of my culte of the pine‐trees, and I have repeated the question since, whether there was not in my feelings something of that dim instinct which binds man in an obscure affinity with all nature, down to its lower strata and its primeval developments. As man contains something of all in his own being, so must he have a sympathy with all; for, as has been wisely said, man is a universe in himself, with another universe to wait on him. Most people have a special attraction to some race of animals. Some have a love for, and a power over, the horse and the dog greater than others; and this not always nor only as the results of habit, but as a natural gift. Certain flowers have a peculiar attraction for many people, in preference to others equal in beauty and perfume. All these preferences may point to hidden laws of affinity, of which we know very little more than the bare fact that all in creation finds its portion in each man, and that in his own single self he is chemical, vegetable, animal, and spiritual. I am afraid to say any more, lest my readers should think I believe we are in general descended from the little open‐mouthed sea‐squirts called ascidians, but that I claim for myself in particular some higher origin in the shape of a conifer great‐ grandfather. I assure them it is nothing of the kind. With regard to my sympathy with animals, of course, being an old maid, I ought to prefer cats and gray parrots. On the contrary, I prefer dogs, and Frank is the only gray parrot I ever thought of loving.
Before leaving Hyères, I made a sketch from the top of the hill (which in my younger days, for want of knowing better, I used to call the mountain) on which stand the picturesque ruins of the old château which formerly belonged to the French branch of the huge family of Fox; who, varying their name, if not their nature, according to the sky under which they flourished, had taken root in England, France, and Germany in the old feudal times. They possessed certainly a magnificent abode at Hyères, and probably kept all the neighborhood in awe. It is a glorious situation. It overlooks a long stretch of the road to Toulon as that winds through the fertile, well‐cultivated valley; and to the right rises the rocky summit of Le Coudon, the point of land that first strikes the sailor’s eye as he leaves the coast of Africa, and which on exceptionally clear days is dimly visible even from the coast itself. Next to it comes Le Phare Pharon, a lower mountain crowned by a fort. I know few views which combine such an exquisite variety of form and color as this. The small cork‐trees and the stunted oaks, equally beautiful, whether wearing their russet leaves through the brief winter, or almost matching the cork‐trees in dark‐green foliage; the olives, here of a very respectable size, with their gnarled trunks and fantastic shapes; and then the patches of vivid‐green corn, winter peas, and the green artichokes; the undulation of the land, assuming every shade from deep violet to light red—make altogether one of the loveliest views I know anywhere. But then, I am bound to acknowledge that there are not many such in the neighborhood of our much‐loved Hyères, and that, on the whole, the simple little place has far less beauty to recommend it than many of the towns along the Riviera. Its great merit for invalids arises from the air being a good deal softer than at most of the sea‐coast resorts of the sick. Mary could sit out for hours in the open air at Hyères, when at Cannes, and even at San Remo, she could only have driven in a close carriage; for, in spite of the brilliant sunshine in those places, the air is apt to be too exciting both for irritable lungs and susceptible nerves. One reason—probably the principal reason—for this is that Hyères is three miles from the sea, and more in the mountains than are the towns of the Riviera generally.
We had a lovely afternoon journey from Hyères to Cannes; passing numerous little bays and creeks where the blue waters lay in deep repose, or fringed with tiny wavelets that but kissed the shingly shore, and died in a gleam of light. As you looked down on them from the railway‐carriage, you felt you might have seen a mermaid combing her sea‐green hair, or a cupid astride a dolphin, as quite an expected vision. The intense blue sky and deeper blue sea, the various‐tinted rocks, and perhaps a solitary pine hanging over, and near by a group of the same, with their dense crowns of ever‐murmuring boughs, through which the evening air sings like the hum of winged insects, were each so full of harmonious and yet gorgeous color that they leave on the mind the impression of a Greek idyl, full of serene beauty—mere beauty, it may be—but intense, placid, and eternal. There are scenes in nature that are like the forms in Greek art. They are one; and they are typical. No wide view, albeit glorious, can produce this effect, however much it may appeal to the imagination. But a rock‐bound cove on the Mediterranean, with its sparse vegetation and its depth of color, is as suggestive of thoughts beyond itself as is the pure grace of a Greek statue. It belongs to another world than ours, and to a region of thought rarely lighted on in these times, and then by a few only. When I question myself of the “why,” I am at a loss to answer. Perhaps it lies in the fact that, to produce this abstract effect on the mind, the objects in nature must be few, simple, and perfectly beautiful of their kind. Then they recall Greek art, in which there is no multiplicity, no overlaying, but which represents as absolutely a pure idea as it is possible for art to do. It is without subtlety, as it is without crowding. It can be felt better than described, for the feeling is too deep for words. Nothing in English scenery, no accidental combination of beauty, has ever brought the Greek geist before my mind. Never for a second, amid the birchen groves and flower‐fringed lanes of my own land, had I thought of old Greece and the old Greek feeling. Pantheism would not be the natural religion of our northern skies. Never had I so strongly felt the tie between nature and art, and, as a necessary sequence, between nature and Grecian thought, till I had wandered on the pale sands by the calm blue waters of the tideless sea. It is like a floating essence, too intangible for words. If I could express it, the expression would perforce be brief and veiled. I would sing my idyl to a three‐stringed lute, or paint my white nymph against a whiter sky.
It was essential to Mary not to live close to the sea, therefore we engaged apartments at Cannes in one of the hotels situated among the hills, and full a mile and a half from the coast. It so happened that nearly all the people whom we met at the table‐d’hôte were English like ourselves, or rather British, for some came from the Emerald Isle; and amongst these a family of three charming girls, full of the spirit and humor of the race. They had with them an elderly maid, who had been their nurse, and whose quaint sayings afforded us much amusement while we were there. She had joined them only just before we arrived, bringing out the third sister, who had shown symptoms of delicacy like the second, and both were under the supreme care of the elder sister. Mrs. O’Brien had managed her journey in foreign parts very cleverly, though making every inch of the way under protest at the heathenish customs and abominable practices of these “foreigners,” as she deigned to call the French in their own land.
It had been with the greatest difficulty that she had, on leaving Ireland, been prevented from taking with her a large boxful of household stores, which, as she expressed it, would be such a comfort to “those poor darlints, just starvin’ in foreign parts, with nothing but kickshaws and gimcracks to keep the life in them.” In spite of all the remonstrances of her master, she had actually succeeded in so far cheating the custom‐house that she had smuggled “jist a nice little hand of pork, salted down at home,” among the young ladies’ linen. Norah flew into our room, amid fits of laughter, to show it to us, and to consult upon how we could possibly get it boiled. We could not insult the hotel by asking that it might appear at the table‐d’hôte; and a hand of pork was rather a peculiar dish for three young ladies to keep up in their bedroom for private eating. On the other hand, Mrs. O’Brien would never recover it if her eleemosynary offering were discarded. It ended in my explaining the state of the case, under seal of secrecy, to the landlady; and then we actually held a supernumerary feast in our drawing‐room, at a late hour, all to show Mrs. O’Brien that her kindness was appreciated. We did not sleep particularly well that night, and the rest was made into sandwiches and eaten on our next excursion up the mountains.
Mary and Mrs. O’Brien became great friends; for Mary’s sympathetic nature and marvellous control of countenance at once drew the old lady out, and prevented her discovering how intensely amused her listener was. Amongst other topics, she was very eloquent upon the subject of the Prince of Wales’ recovery from his serious illness, declaring how she, “as is a nurse myself, know well what a fine healthy man he must have been born ever to have got over the like of that. And now, sure, we must pray that nothing may happen to the blessed, darlint prince; for if he were to be taken, the country would be just ruined, and nothing left us but the constitution!”
She would talk by the hour of her “darlint” young ladies, sometimes blaming their conduct, sometimes extolling them to the skies. Occasionally, to tease her, they would pretend to walk lame, and tell her that was all the fashion, and was called the Alexandra limp. “Och! now, honeys, you, with straight limbs as God has made you, mocking at the darlint princess, as may be isn’t lame at all. If I saw you mocking at me, as is no princess, but is blind, and me groping round the table, don’t you think, honeys, as I should feel it?” Then turning to Mary: “Ah! your honor, they was always as wild as a litter o’ pigs on a windy day, good luck to them. I’ve seen them all come into the world, bless their hearts, one after the other, pretty nigh as fast as nature would let them. And a nice handful I’ve had wid them, too, bringing the most of them up by hand like a weaned calf. Children’s stomachs is just like sponges. But if you overdo the binding, may be you’ll give them obdurate bowels.” Mary bore even this without a smile; but we all laughed together when the morning after her arrival she found the nice little boy Celestin, who brought in the lamp and the basket of wood, and helped in the house generally, and who could not have been above fifteen, innocently aiding Marie, the housemaid, in making the beds. She could not understand a word of French, and of course he knew no English; but she seized him by the collar, and ejected him violently from the room, exclaiming, “Get out o’ that, you young varmint!” and protesting that he should never touch one of her “darlints’ sheets in this heathenish land, where they made no difference between a man and a woman, but put the men to make the beds and the women to tend the cattle.” The end of it was that she took the bed‐making into her own hands, though she never got reconciled to the mattresses stuffed with the outer sheaths of the Indian corn, or the pillows with wool. “That pillow is as hard as a dog’s head, and won’t do for my young lady; and the other’s as limp as a dead cat,” she remarked aloud to herself one day that Elina was going to bed early with a bad headache.
By degrees we became rather well acquainted with the other visitors at the hotel, which arose, no doubt, from the fact of our all being fellow‐ countrymen. For a long time Mary was the only married woman of the party; and with the exception of the three merry Irish girls, the ladies were all old maids like myself. Frank found Cannes rather slow, as he expressed it, and spent the greater part of the six weeks we were there in making excursions in the neighborhood, stopping away three or four days at a time. It was long before we got thoroughly comfortable with any of our fellow‐sojourners in a strange land. In the first place, we were the only Catholics, and most of the others were very decided Protestants, and so rather shunned us at first. Some of them especially objected to Mary, and seemed to think that her good looks and her accurate French pronunciation were rather offensive than otherwise. It made no sort of difference to her, and I am sure she never even found it out. One day, as I was coming down‐stairs, Miss Marygold was crossing the wide passage which went from the entrance to the dining‐room door. As I passed her, she tossed her head, and said, “I have just met your sister, Miss Jane, going out for a walk, and looking about five‐and‐twenty. I must say I think it must be very inconvenient not to show one’s age better than that.” “At any rate,” said I, “it is an inconvenience, Miss Marygold, that many would be happy to share with her.” And I swept along the wide passage lined with oleanders, myrtle, and cypress in large pots, sat down to the piano in the public salon, and dashed through the overture of “Robert le Diable” with much brilliancy of execution. I afterwards found out that both the Miss Marygolds strongly objected to a little red bow which Mary was apt to fasten in her hair when we went down to dinner. Their own coiffures resembled either a doll’s apron stuck on the top of her head, or a small “dress‐improver” of stiff lace. I suppose they thought there was some virtue in wearing what was at once ugly and ridiculous.
No one, on first arriving at Cannes, can form any idea of the exquisite beauty that will be within their easy reach as soon as they get beyond the long, straight street parallel with the flat coast. The town itself has no pretensions to beauty, except from the picturesque, fortified old church, standing high above the town, and whose mouldering walls assume so many different tints against the dark‐violet background of the Estrelle; that beautiful line of mountains that runs far out into the sea, and forms the most prominent object of the scenery. The market is held down the one long street, where it opens on the small garden and esplanade by the shore. This is planted with magnificent plane‐trees, and nothing can be more picturesque than the groups of peasant‐women, with their bright‐colored kerchiefs crossed over their shoulders, and their thick woollen skirts, sitting each at her little booth of cakes, or sweets, or household utensils, and especially the charming little crocks, pots, and pans of native manufacture. At a short distance from Cannes, at Valory, there is a very fine establishment of pottery works, well worthy of a visit. The native clay produces the most beautiful colors; and as the numerous visitors at Cannes have taken pains to supply the manufactory with very good models taken from the antique and from some of the best specimens of Minton and Staffordshire china, the result is most satisfactory. We found that they are in the habit of sending very large crates of garden‐vases, besides smaller and more delicate articles, all over Europe. The road along the coast towards Antibes is bordered by beautiful villas with gardens running down towards the sea, and generally laid out in terraces. Even now, in the month of January, they were full of roses, geraniums, ageratum, and violets in bloom. Part of this picturesque spot is called California, on account of the bright yellow blossom of the mimosa, which, when fully out, is truly “a dropping well of gold.” The light, feathery flower covers the whole tree, and there is scarcely a leaf to be seen. The beautiful eucalyptus, or blue gum‐tree, is much cultivated here. The peculiar variety of its foliage, the lower and older leaves being almost heart‐shaped, and the upper ones often a foot in length, and hardly two inches wide, makes it very remarkable. The lower leaves are of a blue green, shading off into deep bronze, and the new shoots are almost yellow. It is quite recently that this beautiful tree has been transplanted from Australia to Europe; but as it makes twenty feet in a year, there are already magnificent specimens. It has a highly aromatic gum; and it is supposed that in time it will greatly supersede the use of quinine, having medicinal properties which resemble that invaluable remedy, while it will be less expensive. When Mary is suffering from one of her neuralgic headaches, nothing relieves her so much as steeping the long leaves of the eucalyptus in hot water, and holding her head over the perfumed steam. A branch hung near the bed is also, they say, conducive to sleep.
The beauties of the position of Cannes are far outdone by that of the little town of Cannet, distant about three miles, and built among the mountains, and where the air is softer. Nothing can exceed the loveliness of the view from the Place, shaded by splendid plane‐trees, of the half‐ deserted little town, or the same view seen from the terrace of the one Pension, where we found every preparation for receiving guests, but which was locked up and entirely empty. You overlook numerous orange‐ gardens of the most vivid green, the starry blossoms and golden fruit gleaming amid the foliage. Then, far down the valley, and clothing an amphitheatre of hills and mountains, are groves of olives, with their soft velvet folds, mass overlapping mass of tender, dim green, shimmering all over with silver touches, as the air stirred the branches, and turned upwards the inner lining of the leaves—after which all other foliage is apt to look crude and hard. The blue sea lies beyond, and the sharp, purple outline of the Estrelle; while to the right the mountains fade off further and further, ending in snow‐capt heights.
From amid the dense, soft shadows of the valley rise the old tower of the church and the picturesque cupolas of the strange Moorish villa where poor Rachel, the famous French tragedian, breathed her last, and which is fast falling to decay. It is no longer let to strangers; but we made our way through the tangled gardens and wilderness of orange‐trees. Everything looked tumbling to pieces. The house itself is in ruin; and being painted in bright colors externally, and chiefly built of wood, at least in the ornamental parts, it looks like the cast‐off decorations of a dismal theatre. Two white pigeons were picking up the scattered grain in the little, untidy court. A few mutilated plaster figures of gods and goddesses near the entrance added to the tawdry and unreal aspect of the whole. It was as if the poor actress had selected it to die in for its scenic effect, and so had closed her life on a mute and deserted stage. I fancied I could see her lithe form and her sinuous glide (for she never seemed to walk like a common mortal) along the veranda. I could recall the intense passion of her matchless voice as she thrilled you through with the words:
“Je ne me verrai point préférer de rivale. Enfin, tous tes conseils ne sont plus de saison: Sers ma fureur, Œnone, et non pas ma raison.”
And then she came here, alone, to die! As I turned away from the place, so beautiful even in its desolation, I wondered if the rumor might be true which was prevalent at the time—that her maid, a French Catholic, seeing her poor mistress in a state of coma just before her death, had dared to baptize her—and thus give us a large‐hearted hope for the woman and the Jewess.
We drove through the narrow, sharp‐angled streets of the little town of Cannet to the church in the valley. The streets were so narrow, and the turnings were so sharp, that it always seemed that our horses were in one street while we and the carriage were in another. Three little children, with bright, dark eyes and tangled hair, hung over a wall, each with a rose in its mouth. They looked as if they would drop the flowers, and themselves after, into our laps. The church was very clean and well cared for; full of tawdry decorations, but fresh and neat, as if all were often renewed by loving hearts, if not by cultivated taste. M. le Curé is very old, and has not sufficient help for the wants of so large a parish; and there are no Sisters to teach the children. They seem a simple people; and if only there were a habitable house, what pleasure might be found in living in this earthly paradise, and working amongst them!
It is said that the Englishman carries Bass’ pale ale and Warren’s blacking with him where‐ever he goes, to say nothing of Harvey’s sauce. At any rate, he has established his own special amusements at Cannes, with no apparent consciousness of their incongruity with the scene around them. Of course we took our share, though denouncing and protesting all the way at the horrors of pigeon‐shooting. We drove over sandy lanes close to the shore, through groups of pine‐trees on either side; a glorious panorama of mountains and snow‐clad peaks beyond, the dark‐blue sea, and the purple Estrelle. There was a vulgar booth and a shed, and some rickety benches like those at a country fair. We sat down, facing three boxes, in which the innocent birds were concealed until the moment—unknown, of course, to the sportsman himself—when, bursting open, the pigeons spread their wings at liberty, to be perchance instantly killed by a clever shot. I acknowledge that I tried not to look, and that my heart gave a spasmodic leap every time I heard the clap of the lid of the box and then the sharp shot. I looked at the pine‐trees and the far‐off mountains, with the many‐ tinted, undulating middle distances, and tried to forget the coarseness and cruelty of the scene I was supposed to have come to as an amusement. The nuts and the ginger‐bread were wanting, and Aunt Sally was distinguished by her absence; but there was nevertheless a milder reflection of everything that might have graced this same kind of scene in England; and so the English gentleman of the XIXth century, brought by fortuitous circumstances into a new and exquisitely beautiful land, was doing his best to make himself “at home,” and to inspire the natives and foreigners with his own tastes. I am fond of sport, though I am but an old maid; but somehow this does not strike me as being sport in the true acceptation of the word. And I sat wondering how long it will be before my own brave countrymen, who are already addicted to battues, will build one‐storied, round summer‐houses in their woods, painted inside with arabesques, Cupids, Venus, and Diana, and having six or eight small windows all round it; then, seated in a large gilt fauteuil, with a bottle of choice Chambertin by his side, he will languidly pop his short gun at the thrushes or the finches as they flutter from bough to bough before him; and so, at the end of a couple of hours, saunter home with a bagful of “game,” wearied with the exertions of la chasse au tire, like the gentlemen in France in the times of La Régence.
The Duc de P. was there, and the Duc de C., and the Duke of H., and actually one of the men—what may they be called?—who preside over the pigeon‐shooting at Hurlingham, and who had been got over to ensure everything being en règle. What more could any one want? I wondered to myself whether the extraordinary beauty and sublime majesty of the surrounding scene had anything to do with enhancing the pleasure of the pigeon‐shooters; whether, in short, the successful slaughter of the poor birds was rendered more enjoyable by the fact of its taking place under a sky and in a spot fraught with exquisite beauty; noble and serene, vast and varied.
And if not, why did they not stop among the cockney flats of Hurlingham? When all was over and we returned home, I actually found myself semi‐ conscious of a sort of pride that the best shot, in this decidedly trying proof of skill, was an Englishman! So much for the inconsistency of human, especially of female, nature.
We are in the land of perfumes. Acres of roses, violets, and other scented flowers are cultivated solely for the perfume manufactories at Grasse, a few miles from Cannes. Of course, this is not the time of year to benefit by this exceptional form of farming; but in the spring it must be lovely.
We are preparing to leave Cannes, and, as I write these lines, Frank silently lays a sheet of paper by my side. And I see—a Sonnet.
THE OLIVE‐TREE.
That dusky tree grows in a noted place— A garden on the rocky mountain’s side, O’erlooking (in the evening of its pride) The doomèd city of the chosen race. There, as the swathing evening mists efface Temple and fane, in sunset glory dyed, And round the city walls the shadows glide, Beneath the dappled gloom our hearts may trace The ling’ring footsteps of the Holy One. Our Master walks alone; and who can know All the deep myst’ry of his awful woe, As on the earth sinks God’s eternal Son? But ever shall the gray‐green olive‐tree Recall the image of his agony.
A National Or State Church.
Fifty‐three peers protested against the disestablishment of the Protestant Church in Ireland, “because it is impossible to place a church disestablished and disendowed, and bound together only by the tie of a voluntary association, on a footing of equality with the perfect organization of the Church of Rome.” Mr. Disraeli had previously said the same thing in the House of Commons: “The discipline, order, and government of the Roman Catholic Church are not voluntary. They are the creation of the simple will of a sovereign pontiff” (if he means Jesus Christ, the phrase is Catholic), “and do not depend at all on the voluntary principle.... I maintain that as long as his Holiness the Pope possesses Rome, the Roman Catholic religion, in whatever country it is found, is an establishment.” In fact, there is a great deal of truth in these remarks. How, indeed, can undisciplined guerrillas contend against a well‐trained army of veterans? How can a number of voluntary associations, like so many insurance or stock companies, liable at any moment to disband, with no cohesive power, compete with a grand organization whose charter is divine, whose officers are divinely appointed, and whose laws bind in conscience in spite of adverse imperial, royal, or republican legislation? The peers were right; Mr. Disraeli is partially right. No sect or combination of sects can for any length of time, in a fair field, compete with the Catholic Church. Hence the cry of the sects in this country for state aid. The Catholic Church never asked for it except as a matter of justice or restitution. Whenever it was bestowed on her institutions, it was because they deserved it. If much was given to her, it was because her hierarchy or her religious orders, inspired by divine zeal, had founded and organized charitable institutions while the sects were asleep, lacking even in sufficient philanthropy, not to say charity, to provide for the wants of their own suffering members. The Catholic Church built and organized her asylums, schools, and other institutions, tried to support them, and did bravely support them, as she still does in this country, by the voluntary contributions of generous Christians, before the state gave anything. The sects did very little. They were too indolent, too deficient in vitality, to do much. They begged from the state. They threw the burden on the state; so that, whereas in Catholic times there were no state poor‐ houses, state asylums, or state charities, now they swarm. Protestantism is too cold a system to warm the hearts of men into life‐giving charity; so it depends, except in rare cases, on the state for the support of the poor and the orphans. The money is taken from the public treasury for the support of schools, asylums, and kindred institutions.(23) Such being the case, who can blame Catholics for receiving a portion of their own taxes to help their own institutions, mainly supported on the voluntary system? Are not the frequenters of Catholic schools and the inmates of Catholic institutions the children and citizens of the state as well as others? Will the state educate or support as cheaply as the church has done, or make as good citizens as she makes? If Catholic charitable institutions are abolished, if Catholic schools are broken up, how much will it annually cost the state for the building of new institutions and for their maintenance? Are the Sisters of Charity as safe custodians of the morality of orphans as the spinsters and political hirelings of the state institutions? Are teachers and matrons who work primarily from a religious motive as apt to discharge their duty faithfully as those who labor primarily for the “consideration” attached to their services? Well do the gentlemen who attack the Catholic Church know how futile it is for any sect to strive against her unless backed up by state aid; and hence, perhaps, the cry which has recently resounded throughout our country for a national or state church—a national Protestant church in opposition to the never‐ceasing progress of Catholicity.
The late “Evangelical Alliance” publicly endorsed the cry of a national church. The Rev. W. H. Fremantle, M.A., of London, an ecclesiastical functionary of the national church of England, in “a manner,” as the report in the Tribune has it, “quick and energetic, and, as he warmed to his subject, eloquent to a degree which elicited great applause,” on October 9, 1873, at a meeting of the “Alliance,” urged on his hearers the advantages and necessity of having a national church, “the true ruling elders” of which should be “our statesmen, our judges, and our officers who bear the supreme mandate of the whole Christian community.” With laconic pith, he said: “The Christian nation is a church.” The applause elicited by his remarks was no doubt due to the fact that his auditors remembered how admirably the Christian “statesmen” in Congress and our late Vice‐President, some of our “judges,” our “Evangelical” bankers and merchants, represented the interests of the Alliance in their respective avocations! The Rev. W. J. Menzies, of Edinburgh, emissary of the national church of Scotland, seconded and approved the doctrines of his Episcopalian brother. In vain did a sturdy American, the Hon. J. L. M. Curry, LL.D., of Richmond, try to defend the American system and the principles of our Constitution against these well‐fed and well‐paid gentlemen. The rubicund foreigners of the church establishments of Denmark, Sweden, and Germany came to the rescue of their English and Scottish brethren. They had preached to the “Alliance” in favor of the tithes, taxes, and intolerance of their own establishments, and were not willing to allow Mr. Curry to oppose them. The very president of the “Alliance,” himself an American, was obliged to coerce the honorable gentleman into silence. His voice was drowned in an “evangelical” chorus of national churchmen. We are no longer, then, astonished to read that the Rev. Dr. Stoughton, of England, was greeted in a Protestant Sunday‐school in this city with the anthem of “God save the Queen.” It was not a religious hymn, mark it well, but an anthem in praise of the head of a church establishment, who is more than pope, for she is impeccable as well as infallible, according to the axiom of English law that “the king can do no wrong.” No longer are we surprised to learn that the head of another national church, the would‐be pope‐Emperor of Germany, gave the “Evangelical Council” his blessing; that several of our highest magistrates, unless they are belied, have been secretly leagued against the Catholic Church in favor of a state Protestantism. Newspapers of reputed rank have been continually striving to create a Protestant public spirit in the state, and thus, as it were, to prepare the way for an absolute union of church and state on a Protestant basis. Indeed, we have a national, or at least a state, church already; although it has so far been administered to us only in homœopathic doses. Have we not a state school system with a Protestant Bible on its rostrum? Have we not “Juvenile Asylums,” “Soldiers’ and Sailors’ Homes,” state charitable institutions all controlled on the Protestant system, conducted to a great extent by Protestant clergymen? Are not the Bibles used in them Protestant? Are not the school‐books essentially sectarian in which such expressions as “gor‐bellied monks,” the “glorious Reformation,” the “great and saintly Martin Luther,” are frequent? Have we not a Protestant Indian policy and a Protestant “Freedman’s Bureau”?
It is true you cannot call the colorless Protestantism of these institutions peculiarly Methodist, or peculiarly Episcopalian, or peculiarly Baptist; but it is nevertheless Protestantism. We have a name for it. The late “Evangelical Alliance” gives it to us. The word “Evangelicalism” will express the Protestantism of our incipient national and state churches. We defy any impartial visitor to the so‐called “non‐ sectarian” state institutions to deny that their chief male officers, superintendents, guardians, and teachers have been chosen on account of their “Evangelicalism.” Every one that knows the inner working of our state institutions for charitable purposes is aware that they are mere pastures in which Evangelical ministers are retired on salaries of thousands a year taken from the state pocket.
The desire for having a state or national church is growing stronger. German imperialism, or pagan Roman Cæsarism revived, has given an impetus to it in Europe, in order to create a foreign public opinion to sanction its own persecutions of the Catholic Church at home. Switzerland has been moved by the pull of the German wire. Perhaps the same influence is at work in our republic. Or is it that a certain class of the Protestant clergy, dreading starvation if left depending on the bounty of flocks that are losing their Christianity and its generous impulses, envious of the portly frames and plethoric purses of the foreigners of the European establishments who lately visited our shores and banqueted at our expense, long to draw nutriment from the bosom of an established mother, rather than risk death from marasmus at the breasts of a dry and barren voluntary system? If this be the cause of the growing “Evangelicalism” of the sects, of their effort to combine for the purpose of giving us a national church, let us devoutly pray that the next delegates from abroad will be as spare in person and purse as our own country parsons. For the sake of our republican institutions, may his divine and imperial majesty of Germany and her gracious ecclesiastical majesty of England send hither no more of their rotund and jocund functionaries, to make the hearts of our Evangelical clergymen yearn after the flesh‐pots of Egypt!
Or can it be that the venerable heads of our “Evangelical” mayors, governors, and their compeers, returning in their senility, as is not uncommon with decaying brains, to their early loves, are striving to restore the state establishments of the old Puritan colonies? The recollection that all the original colonies except Catholic Maryland had a state church has not yet died out among these “Evangelical” ancients. They remember that so late even as 1793 an attempt was made even in New York to saddle an Episcopalian establishment on the back of our state, and this, too, at a time when the members of the Holland Reformed Churches were in the proportion of fifteen to one Church‐of‐Englander! Perhaps Governor Dix has an agreeable recollection of this beauteous trait in the character of his sect. Perhaps he remembers how well she had battened on the flesh and blood of the Irish people for centuries, though her votaries were not one‐ twentieth part of the Irish population. In 1643, the “orthodox” Episcopalian colony of Virginia expelled two New England Puritan ministers; while the New England Puritans, by way of “Evangelical” retaliation, sent back to Old England two professors of Anglicanism. The poor Quakers were driven out by all the colonies except Catholic Maryland. Indeed, even our modern “Evangelicals” had not the courtesy to invite them to their “Alliance.” In Virginia, the man who refused to have his child baptized was fined two thousand pounds of tobacco. In the colonies of Massachusetts and New Haven, for a time only church members could exercise the full powers of citizenship. The legislatures of the New England colonies convoked even the church synods. These were truly “Evangelical” times, and after these do the “Evangelicals” hanker. So late even as 1779 tithes were collected by law in some of the colonies. In fact, it was only in 1818 that the separation of church and state was effected in Connecticut. But in those days the Catholics were few, and nobody feared them. If they had been as numerous and formidable then as they are now, the disestablishment would never have been accomplished. These were the halcyon days when, in the words of Rev. Mr. Fremantle, already quoted, “the Christian nation was a church,” “the true ruling elders of which were statesmen, judges, and officers who bore the supreme mandate of the whole Christian community.” What a yearning there is for the return of those good times when none but “Evangelicals” may hold office to defraud the revenue, invest in Crédit Mobilier stock, or manage banking houses for the purpose of swindling credulous “Evangelical” depositors!
It is timely to warn all good citizens against the Protestant effort to restore the state‐church system of the early colonies. The Rev. W. H. Campbell, D.D., of New Brunswick, at one session of the “Alliance” said: “Revolution has everywhere borrowed the force of its political ideas from the Protestants of the XVIth century.” Never was language more correct. Rebellion against lawful authority, the overthrow of legitimate governments, the subversion of civil society, the destruction of law and order in modern times, are all traceable to Protestant principles. Nor can you ever tell where they will stop. As there is no fixity or certainty or unalterable code of doctrine or morals in Protestantism, a statesman can never tell when its councils will be impelled by whim, fanaticism, or prejudice. There is no telling but that the Protestant assembly which to‐ day favors the state to‐morrow will be in revolt against it. It has been on the side of unbridled license, of the extreme of liberty; and, again, it has been the creature, the slave, the blind instrument of despotism. A statesman always knows what to expect from the Catholic Church and her assemblies. Her principles are patent, her system plain, her doctrines unchanging, her secondary discipline modifiable according to law or necessity, but only by the spiritual power. She is always conservative, never revolutionary. She gives to Cæsar what belongs to him, but no more. She makes a reserve in her allegiance to the state: she reserves the rights of God, the rights of conscience. She must obey God rather than men when men try to alter or subvert God’s revelation. If the state wishes to persecute her, it may begin at once. She has nothing to hide from the state; and she will alter nothing of her doctrines. If the state dislikes her, at any rate she is an open foe. But Protestantism is a fickle subject. Like the ancient pagans, she admits the supremacy of the state over her; admits that the church is only a voluntary corporation subordinate to the state; yet practically she is never to be depended on. Fickle by nature, the state can never tell when a fit of madness may seize on her; when her imagination may be possessed by some idea subversive alike of good order and even of morality. We all know the history of the Anabaptists and Antinomians in Germany; the deeds of violence of the Independents in England. Protestantism, like a wanton filly, carries the state as a rider, but always at the risk of its neck. Let our statesmen, then, beware of the attempt which is being made to give us, if not a national, at least a state church. The threat has been made that when slavery was abolished, the next thing to undertake would be the destruction of the Catholic Church by the establishment of a state church.
It is easy to show that a national church is essentially opposed to our American principles, and that consequently all attempts to establish one are anti‐American. On this point many rationalists and infidels agree with Catholics, as they logically must when they argue from sound principles of pure reason or of pure politics. The Catholic religion recognizes the competency of reason in its own sphere, and admits its logical inerrancy. All the principles of the natural, political, metaphysical, or moral order known with certainty even by those who do not believe in revelation at all, are the common property of the Catholic Church; for although she insists on the subordination of reason to faith, she asserts emphatically the autonomy of reason, and condemns those who would abridge its powers. Hence true statesmen who judge our Federal or State constitutions from the viewing‐point of reason alone agree with Catholics in opposition to the so‐called “Evangelicals,” the chief of whom believe in “total depravity,” the loss of free will, and unmerited damnation. The ablest lawyers in the country teach that the fundamental idea of our civil government is that there shall be no interference of the state in church affairs. Absolute independence of the church; no interference of the state in religious matters—such is the AMERICAN IDEA. It is expressly laid down in the first amendment to the Constitution of the United States that Congress shall have no power to legislate on religious questions. The ablest commentary perhaps ever written on the Constitution is the Federalist; some of the best articles in which were written by Alexander Hamilton, whose son has recently published them. The teaching of this great man is that the framers of the Constitution were especially anxious to eschew church establishments or state religions in the policy of our republic. Indeed, some of the leading authors of the Constitution were rationalists, and more afraid of Protestant sectarian interference in state affairs than they were of the Catholic Church, which in their days was not strong enough to be feared. “Our theory is,” writes Gerrit Smith, “that the people shall enjoy absolute freedom in politics and religion.” Of course this freedom could not exist if we had a state church. Mr. Smith, whose intelligence and Americanism no one can dispute, in his celebrated letter on the school question,(24) from which the above phrase is taken, adds: “A lawyer than whom there is no abler in the land, and who is as eminent for integrity as for ability, writes me: ‘I am against the government’s being permitted to do anything which can be entrusted to individuals under the equal regulation of general laws.’ ” How few of the “Evangelicals” would be willing to act on this correct interpretation of our Constitution? How could they so easily give up the government pap that nourishes the Methodist preachers of the “Freedman’s Bureau” and the “Indian Bureau,” not to speak of the other countless branches of our homœopathic national church?
The attempt to establish a state church is also opposed to most of our State constitutions, and notably to that of New York. The first constitution of this State was so essentially hostile to a church establishment that it contained an article incapacitating any minister of the Gospel from holding any office, civil or military. Tradition has it that some Episcopalian minister, playing the political marplot in the preliminary convention, had so annoyed Mr. Jay that he had the article inserted. In 1846, this article was expunged; and ever since our State legislature, our public offices, and even our judiciary, have been afflicted by ambitious, incompetent, sometimes even illiterate, and always bigoted, political preachers. They are always striving to inflict on us more and more of their bigotry, while their acts show that one of their chief aims is to gratify the “Evangelical” appetite for power. We must especially guard our State constitution from the treacherous assaults of the sects. Even now their express provisions are violated or evaded.(25) They are easily modified.(26) Some of them are not inconsistent with a church establishment, and may at any moment become the prey of “Evangelical” bigotry or fanaticism.
Catholics are by conviction opposed to a change in the character of our Federal and State—we speak of New York—constitutions. They do not conflict with the CATHOLIC IDEA. There is nothing in or out of the Syllabus that is opposed to our system of government. This we shall now proceed to show. Pius IX., on December 17, 1860, in an allocution condemned a proposition which begins with these words: “National churches may be established.” It is number 37 in the Syllabus. We know that it will be objected to us that the Pope also condemns the attempt to separate church and state in countries in which they are by law united, and the abstract principle that they ought to be separate. It is true that where church and state have been united, not by force, but by the nature of things and the sanction of laws, it is condemnable to attack their union as iniquitous or improper; but it is also true that it is not always obligatory or expedient on the part of the state, as such, to establish a church, build its institutions, and salary its clergy out of a common fund. The Roman pontiffs, in the height of their temporal power, never compelled the Jews to build with their money Catholic churches and pay the salaries of Catholic priests. Let us historically examine the character of the union of church and state in the Catholic countries of Europe, and we shall find how just, fair, and honorable such an union becomes. What was the title to most of the Catholic church property in Europe? None better. The barbarian baron or king, grateful to the priest, the monk, or the bishop who had civilized him and taught him to save his soul, generously built a church or a monastery and endowed it. Legacies, donations, free gifts—these were the means by which the bishopric and monasteries grew rich. No title to property is better than this, which a thousand years had sanctioned. Of course every new donation increased the power of the church. The temporalities of the church had natural influence in the state. The abbots and bishops were peers of the realm. The church lived on her own resources—neither asked nor received anything from the state except protection and liberty. Before the Reformation, this was the character of the close union between the church and state. After the Reformation, when the church had lost her power chiefly through the corrupting influence of the kings and barons on the bishops and abbots, despite the protests and the efforts of the popes, the politicians confiscated the church property. This confiscation was simply robbery, for the church corporations, as well as individuals, had rights which the state was bound to respect. But it happened, as it often happens, that wicked kings or mercenary and unprincipled politicians used the political machinery of the state legally to rob the church. They abused the right of eminent domain. Gov. Dix himself, in his annual message for 1874, limits the exercise of this right. “The right,” says he, “of every individual to be secured in the undisturbed enjoyment of his property lies at the foundation of all responsible government. It is, indeed, one of the primary objects for which governments are instituted. To this fundamental rule there is but one proper exception. If private property is needed for public use, it may be taken by making just compensation to the owner; but the use must be one which is common to all, or which is indispensable to the accomplishment of some object of public necessity. This right of eminent domain, as it is denominated, is an incident of sovereignty, and it is one of the most arbitrary of all the powers of government.”(27) It is unquestionably the “most arbitrary of all the powers of government,” if we consider how many are the demagogues, political traders, and mercenary corruptionists who help to make the laws in parliaments, congresses, or State legislatures to regulate the property of respectable people; and how often the executive power in the state, be it imperial, regal, presidential, or gubernatorial, is wielded by despotic and corrupt hands. Imagine a parliament of Communists using the right of eminent domain of the state against the lands and tenements owned by the Trinity Church corporation of New York; or an assembly of “Evangelicals” legislating in regard to Catholic church property! The state in France, for instance, during the Revolution stripped the church of her lawful possessions; Napoleon endeavored to bring order back to the Republic by re‐establishing the church. But it is plain that the salary allowed by his concordat in A.D. 1801 to the clergy, and the revenue allowed by the state for the maintenance of church edifices, was not a tithe of the interest accruing from the property stolen by the state from the church. The sum now allowed to support the Catholic clergy of France is, therefore, only a fraction of restitution money due to them by the state. So it is in other countries in which the state, after confiscating the church property, salaries the clergy. The church in those countries does not get her due. She asks no favor from them; she does not even get her rights. The propositions in the Syllabus referring to the union of church and state must be explained in the light of these facts. The Catholic Church does not go to China or to Turkey, and say to the governments of those countries: “You must establish me here; you must build my temples and schools and asylums.” No, she claims no right of eminent domain over the pockets of infidels; and even when she converts them, she only asks their voluntary aid. All she asks is liberty to work and protection in her legitimate duties. She and her converts will do the rest. This was all she asked of the Roman emperors; this she asked of the mediæval kings. If they gave her liberty and protection, she thanked them, blessed them, worked for them, and civilized them. If they refused, still she blessed them and worked in spite of them; for she must “obey God rather than men.” She might with justice ask more than this in Prussia or England or Sweden; for there she might ask back her stolen property. But in this country she only asks a fair field and no favor. Contrast her conduct with that of Protestantism. Protestantism goes to the state begging on her knees; admitting the state’s supremacy over her; confessing that she is the humble servant of the king; and asks his gracious bounty. She will gladly sit on the foot of his throne as his slave, though a dangerous and treacherous one, if he will only smile on her, clothe and feed her. She will even stoop to become the receiver of stolen goods. Is it not so? Where is there a national Protestant church really established that is not living on property stolen by the state from the Catholic Church? Look to England and Scotland. Are not the Protestant establishments in those lands the possessors of ill‐gotten goods—of lands and churches iniquitously stolen from the Catholic Church? Surely the orthodox Catholic laity of the middle ages who gave these demesnes to the monasteries and churches never intended that the king should turn them over to a heretical establishment. The Prussian establishment is a theft from beginning to end; for every one knows that the apostate head of the Catholic religious order which ruled the duchy of Brandenburg, and laid the foundation of the Prussian power, had no right to transfer the property of his order to a Protestant clergy. Who could defend such a proceeding? Would our “Evangelical” brethren approve the conduct of a Protestant board of trustees or vestrymen who, on being converted, or a majority of them being converted, to the Catholic faith, should by a trick transfer the property of their congregation, their church, or college to the Catholic authorities to be used for Catholic purposes? How, then, can they approve the conduct of the English, German, and Scandinavian clergy who have received the lands and buildings taken from the Catholics by violence and regal usurpation? There is truly a very great difference between the Protestant and Catholic church establishments of Europe—a difference in origin, as well as in the manner of their continuance—and this difference is by no means flattering to the honesty or manliness of the sects. Correctly, therefore, did we say that Catholic principles as well as true American principles are opposed to a state church establishment in this country, and that nothing in the Syllabus condemns our system of government.
It is time, therefore, for all true American citizens to unite under the Catholic standard of opposition to national or state church establishments. The rights of conscience, the rights of religion, are the rights of God. They are not national, but universal; that is, catholic. We are not willing to come back to the pagan régime of Roman Cæsarism, and admit the ruler of the state or the state itself as supreme master of religion as well as of politics. The “Evangelical” semi‐paganized Protestants of Germany may bow the knee to the modern Cæsar, and admit him to be supreme pontiff; but they must keep their despotism at home. The Swiss “Evangelicals” may revive the ancient Spartan worship of the state, and assert its supremacy in spiritual matters; but they must keep their statolatry from our shores. The true American, like the true Catholic, will bow the knee to no idol, not even to the state, much as he may love it. He adores only his God. The state shall not interfere with his conscience, or dare to come between him and his God, no matter how much these foreign “Evangelical” emissaries may wish it. He is Catholic, even when he least suspects it. He hates despotisms, as the Catholic Church does; he suspects that German “Evangelicalism” is only a livery stolen to cover unbelief, as the Catholic Church knows it to be. He suspects the sincerity of those foreign “Evangelical” emissaries and their native hypocritical associates who preach in favor of state‐church establishments; he suspects them as traitors to American liberty or as seekers for notoriety or a full purse. When his suspicions have been clearly proven correct, he will turn from the sects in disgust, to love the grand old church which can be controlled by no national or state limits, and which has been battling all her lifetime against emperors and kings for the very principles of liberty that constitute the glory and the greatness of our republic.
The Captive Bird.
From the French of Marie Jenna.
He is all yours—’tis true—for life or death, The hollow of your hand contains his fate, You have the power to still his dulcet breath And make the grove he dwelt in desolate.
You hold him!—He is weak and you are strong, But pity may his liberty restore. Let him to shade and summer still belong, It is so sweet to live—with wings to soar!
The Farm Of Muiceron. By Marie Rheil.
From The Revue Du Monde Catholique.
XIX.
Now, to quiet your mind—for you must be as shocked as I am at all these horrors—we will speak, if you please, of our friend Jean‐Louis. On the afternoon of the day which proved the last for the innocent Barbette, Jeannet, knowing that the wood‐cutters would be dismissed, and that consequently he would have some leisure time, went off to the Luguets’ to have a little consoling conversation with good Solange. He kept no secrets from her, and expected great relief in recounting faithfully all that had happened; but, on entering, he instantly perceived something new had occurred in the house. The men were out at work; Mme. Luguet was seated by the fire, weeping bitterly; and Solange, sitting on a stool at her feet, was speaking to her in an angelic voice of her desire to enter a convent. Jeannet discreetly wished to withdraw.
“Don’t go,” said Solange to him; “isn’t it so, mother? Jeannet will not disturb us?”
“No, dear; on the contrary, my child, I am happy to see you, Jean‐Louis. Is it true that you will be free to accompany Solange to Paris?”
“Alas! Mme. Luguet,” replied Jeannet, “why should I not be free, having neither family nor friends, save only you and yours? The only roof that sheltered me from infancy is henceforward forbidden to me, without counting that, before many hours, the only thing that I can call my own—on condition that God leaves it to me—and that is my life, may be taken also.”
“What has happened?” asked Solange. “You speak in a quiet, serious tone that frightens me.”
“I have done my duty, dear Solange, and often in this world, after performing an act of conscience and justice, any consequence may be expected.”
And he related that, having discovered the criminal dealings of Isidore with the brigands of La Martine, he had been obliged to threaten the future husband of Jeannette, and give him warning that he must leave the country.
“But,” cried Solange, “that is just what I hoped; this fortunate event divine Providence has allowed, that Jeannette might be saved. Rejoice, then, Jeannet, instead of indulging in such gloomy ideas.”
“You are very kind to think so,” replied Jean‐Louis sadly; “but I, Solange, see things differently. Jeannette, already so irritated, will not pardon me for saving her at the expense of Isidore, who is not the man to let himself be crushed like a wolf caught in a snare. Much will be said against me; I will be rashly judged, and less than ever will I have the right to present myself at Muiceron. No, no; from that dear spot I am for ever separated. I have been already accused of jealousy; shall I expose myself to Jeannette’s reproaches that I have denounced Isidore to prevent her marriage?”
“I acknowledge,” said Solange, “that your reflections are just. The truth will one day be known, but it will take time; I see it as well as you.”
“I must expect the vengeance of the Perdreaux,” continued Jean‐Louis, “as well as of their friends, whose violent passions I know, and who will not leave me in peaceable possession of their secrets. Michou has discharged the workmen; apparently, they went off contented. But Isidore, meanwhile, received my letter; no doubt before this he has communicated it to his cut‐throat companions, and the easiest thing for all of them will be to get rid of me at the shortest notice.”
“My God!” said Solange, “why didn’t you think of all that before writing the letter? At least, you need not have signed it.”
“I thought of all that,” replied Jeannet, smiling; “but even if I had been sure of risking my life in saving Jeannette, I would not have stopped. Her father and mother preserved my existence, Solange, and therefore it belongs to them. And as for not signing such a letter, thank God! you think so because you are a woman, that you love me, and that you feel I am in danger; but if you were in my place, you would think as I do.”
“My children,” said Mme. Luguet, “you are both right. But my advice is that just now you had better plan for the future than discuss the past.”
“Tell us what shall be done, mother,” said Solange. “In the first place, Jean‐Louis must not return to the wood to‐night; isn’t that so?”
“Don’t think of such a thing,” cried Jeannet, as he rose hastily from his chair. “Did I come here to hide?”
“Be still,” said Solange with authority; “don’t be so proud. We all know you are brave, who, then, can accuse you of flying from danger? But courage does not consist in throwing yourself headlong in the midst of it, but in providing against it.”
“I will return,” said Jeannet, “Michou expects me.”
“You will not return, my child,” said Mme. Luguet. “I will direct you for one day; my age and friendship permit me. I order you to remain with us to‐night.”
“But,” said Jean‐Louis, “tomorrow the danger will be still greater; and, my good mother, you surely cannot count on keeping me a prisoner?”
“When you came in,” said the good woman, “Solange was asking my permission to leave home. It was very painful for me to decide, and I sought to gain time from the good God—a little time only, to become more courageous; for never will I be so bold as to refuse to give my child to the Lord. Well, what you have just related makes me think the good God has directed all with his own voice. My dear children, you will leave tomorrow.”
Solange threw herself on her knees, and laid her head on her mother’s hands, which she kissed, weeping. Jean‐Louis turned pale. His courage, which prompted him to face the danger, and his desire to oblige his friends, struggled violently in his heart.
“Listen to me,” said he. “I gave my word to Solange that I would accompany her; but circumstances have changed since then. Cannot Pierre take my place? They have gossiped about Solange and me, dear Mme. Luguet; what will they say when they hear we have gone off together?”
“Pierre!” cried Solange; “but he knows nothing, nor my father either. My mother alone has my secret; otherwise, it would be impossible for me to leave.”
“It is true,” said Mme. Luguet; “my men are good Christians, but not pious enough to understand Solange’s wishes. However, with the blessing of God, I will manage them. It is decided that I will tell the father she has only gone for a fortnight, to see how she likes it; there will be a fuss at first, and then we will go to see her; and if, as I believe, the good God will take her entirely to himself, then the sight of her happiness will satisfy all our hearts.”
Thus spoke that good Christian woman; and to the shame of many great ladies of the city, who show themselves so unreasonable under similar circumstances, I must say, with truth, she was not the only one in our village you might have heard speak in the same manner.
Jean‐Louis could urge no further objection. The public stage, which would carry them to the nearest railway station, passed the Luguets’ house every morning at six o’clock. At that time of year, it was still dark, and the men, who rose at four, that they might go to the barn and comb the hemp, went to bed very early in the evening. Pierre and his father entered and supped, without anything being said before them, and Solange and her mother found themselves again alone with Jeannet as the village clock struck eight.
It was then that Jeannet wrote the short note to Jacques Michou which we have already read; he ran and placed it in the box in the suburbs of the village, and quickly returned, as Solange had told him she would be half dead with fear during his absence, and that she would pass the time on her knees, saying her rosary.
You see it was very evident the Lord and his angels watched over these good people. At this very hour, when it would have been so easy to have attacked Jean‐Louis, he came and went through the wood, without incurring any risk, while the unfortunate Isidore uselessly committed a great crime.
Good Mme. Luguet and her daughter remained up until late in the night, busy making up Solange’s little bundle, in praying, and often embracing each other, mingling their tender and holy kisses and tears. Jeannet aided them to the best of his ability, admiring the courage of heart, which was worth more than that of the head and arms. Then the two women retired for a little rest, and he, in his turn, ended by falling asleep in his chair.
At five o’clock, Solange came herself to awaken him, and told him, in a low voice, that she had made her poor mother promise the night before not to get up, and so she had just kissed her softly for the last time without disturbing her sleep. At that instant could be seen the heroism of that holy soul in thus wishing to bear alone the weight of the sacrifice. Her face, without ceasing to be calm, was bathed in tears, and from time to time she kissed a little crucifix suspended from her neck, in order to sustain her brave heart.
“Come,” said she at last, “it is time, Jeannet; let us say the Our Father together, and then we will leave.”
“Courage, Solange,” said Jean‐Louis, much moved; “the good God will bless you.”
They repeated the prayer, and went out noiselessly, and just then was heard the jingling of the bells on the horses of the country stage.
Solange was well wrapped up in her black cloth cloak, with the hood drawn down over her face. Jean‐Louis carried her little bundle, in which she had slipped two of Pierre’s shirts; for the good Jeannet carried all his baggage on his back—to wit, a woollen vest, a blouse, and his plaid scarf. But, as we have already seen, it was not his habit to think of himself.
They arrived safely at Paris that very day, rather late in the evening, to be sure; and little did they dream of the great rumpus going on at that very time in our poor neighborhood. All along the route the strong family resemblance between Solange and Jeannet made every one think them brother and sister; and by good luck, owing to the severity of the weather, none of the travellers in the coach belonged to the village or its environs, so that they reached the station without the risk of being recognized.
The Sister‐Superior of the Sisters of Charity had been notified several days before of the coming of Solange by our curé, who was the good child’s confessor; but they had left home so suddenly, Jeannet was obliged to find a refuge for his companion the first night. Happily, in Paris all is at your service—people and things—where there is money, and our children were rich with Solange’s savings; therefore, there was no difficulty in finding respectable lodgings, where they passed the night in two beautiful rooms, well furnished, the like of which they had never thought existed, at least for their use.
The next day their first action was to go and hear Mass, after which, having inquired the way to the Convent of S. Vincent de Paul, which is situated in a very pious quarter of the city, they went there with hearts rather saddened; and one hour later Jeannet found himself alone in the vast city.
But no one is alone in this world when he carries in his heart faith in the Lord. All the children of God belong to one family, and feel in their souls a fraternal tenderness for each other. Jeannet, on taking Solange to the convent, found a mother in the good superioress, who received them both. She made him relate his story to her in a few words, and, learning that he was alone in the world and desirous of some engagement, she gave him the address of a good priest who passed his life in aiding young working‐men who, owing to unfortunate circumstances or lack of employment, ran the risk of becoming dissipated from the want of a helping hand.
He was called Abbé Lucas; and as he is now dead, and enjoying, I trust, the celestial happiness well merited by his great devotion, I do not think it indelicate to tell his name.
He received Jeannet with great kindness, and the good boy soon won his heart with his frankness and amiability. The abbé tried his hand, and seeing that he wrote well, and turned off a very good letter under dictation, advised him not to think of joining a regiment, as the conscription would be after him soon enough without his running to seek it. Therefore, he took him in his own house, and employed him with his correspondence, of which there was never any deficiency, owing to the great number of men who daily claimed his charitable assistance.
The arrangement was perfectly to Jeannet’s taste, who applied himself to his new occupation with joy and confidence; and you can well imagine that Solange was very happy, and redoubled her prayers that her dear school‐ fellow might come as triumphantly out of his heart‐troubles as he had been preserved from the dangers that threatened his life.
She immediately wrote home, informing M. le Curé of all these little events, but left it to his great wisdom to decide whether he should tell more or less of everything to the Ragaud family, Michou, and M. le Marquis. This should make us thoroughly understand the true virtue of this good child; for she had not been ignorant of the base insinuations made in relation to her and Jean‐Louis, and what ugly conjectures would be based upon their departure, Pierre joining with the rest, at least at the first news. These things go straight to the heart of a good, honest girl, and Solange, being of a quick, nervous temperament, had suffered martyrdom from all this gossip without speaking of it, except to God. It was to him, then, that she remitted the care of her full justification, as she knew many persons would not have believed anything she might have said. This beautiful tranquillity of soul is not an ordinary thing, and our curé judged rightly that it proceeded from great holiness, as in the end he did not fail to speak of it, with profit to his hearers, in his Sunday sermons.
This excellent pastor, who had been careful to keep clear of the whole affair before the downfall of the Perdreaux, contenting himself with praying and awaiting the good pleasure of the Lord, reappeared like an angel of consolation when nothing was left but tears to wipe away, hatreds to calm, simpletons to make hold their tongues, and truths to make known. It was wonderful to see how he forgot his great age and infirmities to fulfil his task, which was not the easiest in the world.
With the château it was quickly done. In a conversation of two hours with M. le Marquis, who was a man of great good sense—except in what touched his political hopes—he made the scales fall from his eyes, and decided his departure; and as, after all the villany of the Perdreaux, our master’s fortune had not suffered as much as might have been expected—as it was very great, and could have stood a much larger rent—our good pastor reserved his pity and real work for a corner of the country where it was infinitely more needed.
You can guess that I wish to speak of Muiceron. There truly sorrow, shame, and unhappiness were at their height.
So many blows at once had crushed the Ragauds, who no longer dared go out, and remained at home, devoured with grief. The old farmer, struck on the tender side of his pet sin, which was vanity, thought really that heaven and earth had fallen upon his shoulders, and that he should only leave his home for the cemetery. Pierrette, long accustomed to receive implicitly her husband’s opinions, thought also nothing wiser could be done; and as for Jeannette, overwhelmed with grief to see herself abandoned by all her friends at the same time, although apparently the strongest, it looked as though she would go the first to the grave, so plainly did her pallor and hollow eyes show the ravages of internal grief.
All the joy and life of rural labor had disappeared from around this house, formerly so happy. The door was closed, the shutters also, save one or two in the back rooms, where these poor people kept themselves hidden, afraid to speak, as they knew one subject of conversation was alone possible, and just then no one would approach it. The passers‐by, seeing the house shut up, and not supposing all the inhabitants were dead, ended by feeling uneasy as they passed the buildings, but not one ventured to inquire about them, not even Ragaud’s most intimate acquaintances. It is only truth to add that these, understanding well the sorrow that reigned within those silent walls, acted thus from respect, and not from indifference.
Big Marion went twice a week to the market in Val‐Saint, to buy provisions needed for immediate use, and returned at a gallop, to shut herself up with her master’s family.
Since Muiceron had belonged to the Ragauds, it was certainly the first time any food had been cooked but the beef and poultry raised and killed on the place. Poor Pierrette, like all good housekeepers, had always prided herself upon supplying the table with the fruit of her labors; for with us, a farmer’s wife who buys even a pound of butter or loaf of bread passes, with good reason, for a spendthrift; but, alas! self‐love was no longer thought of, and La Ragaude cared little what was said of her management, after she knew tongues could wag about affairs of much greater importance. Poor woman! she must have been fearfully depressed. Judge how the chickens ran wild, scratching up the gravel during the day, and perching on the trees, stiff with snow, during the night, at the risk of freezing. The pig, so fat it could no longer stand on its legs—as for a fortnight its true place would have been in the salt‐tub—continued uselessly to eat his allowance. The hens that recommenced to lay deposited their eggs at random, without any one taking the trouble to go after them, notwithstanding the little coricoco of warning, which showed that they never failed to cluck at the right time most faithfully. But Marion could not see after everything; and besides, as she had always been very stupid during the time that all were well and happy at Muiceron, she became more and more stupid and bewildered after affairs went so badly.
Such was the miserable condition in which our curé found his old friends on the first visit which he made them, about two weeks after Barbette’s funeral, with the sole object of raising them from the deep despondency into which they had fallen since the terrible shock.
Pierrette received him in the big parlor, which was very dark, as the shutters were closed, and for a quarter of an hour he could get nothing out of her but sobs; then Ragaud came in, looking thin and miserable, as much from want of air and exercise as from shame; and finally Jeannette, who, with a remnant of her old pride, tried to keep from weeping, but was nearly suffocated in the effort.
“My children,” said the dear, good man, “God tries those whom he loves, and I certainly do not approve of your shutting yourselves up in this manner, so as to avoid the society of your neighbors and friends, on account of a sentiment which doubtless you think good, but which I call honor ill placed—that is to say, wicked pride, to speak frankly.”
“Alas!” said Pierrette, “who wishes to speak to us now?”
“Whom have you offended?” replied the curé. “And why has the esteem in which you have long been held diminished?”
“Monsieur,” said Ragaud, “my daughter was on the point of marrying a revolutionist and an assassin. That is enough to kill a family like ours.”
“I acknowledge,” said the curé quietly, “you could have made a better choice; but, in reality, since all has ended without your playing any other part in this unfortunate affair than that of victims, I do not see why you should hide yourselves from the eyes of the world as though you were criminals.”
“As for me,” said Ragaud, “I can never reappear again in public, and support the looks and words of the people around, who certainly despise us.”
“Ragaud,” replied the curé, “when a man’s shoe hurts him, he usually sits down by the roadside, and looks to see whether it is a thorn or a flint that causes the pain; then he takes it out, and all is over. But if, instead of that, he continues walking, his foot would swell, the wound would inflame, and the cure would no longer be easy. Do you understand me?”
“Not at all,” said Ragaud.
“Nor I either,” added Pierrette, still continuing to weep.
“Well,” said M. le Curé, “it means that a wise man like you who fears anything of that kind should seek after the cause, to see if by chance it would not be as easy to drive such an idea out of his head as to take a thorn out of a shoe. And, between ourselves, it is precisely your case. Far from despising you, each and every one in the neighborhood only feels for you compassion, sympathy, and kindness, which they would willingly show in words and actions. I am constantly asked about you, and all desire you to return to the common life. They do not come to disturb you, through pure discretion; but for which, your house would be well filled. But as long as you live like wolves in their den, the pain increases in your heart, and soon it will be with you as with the man, wounded in the foot, who will continue to walk—you cannot be cured.”
“M. le Curé is right,” said Jeanne; “we must reappear, dear father.”
“Without counting,” resumed the pastor, “that you are not acting as Christians when you show so much pride. A Sunday has passed, and you were not seen at Mass, and nevertheless it is an obligation. Do you, then, intend to neglect your religious duties?”
“I would go to church if no one were there,” said Ragaud.
“Is it you, my friend, whom I hear speak thus?” replied the curé sadly. “So you prefer the esteem of men to the blessing of God? And you, Pierrette, whom I have always known as such a good parishioner, have you the same miserable ideas?”
The Ragauds lowered their heads without replying. They felt they were wrong, especially for the bad example given their daughter. Little Jeanne, on her side, came to a resolute decision.
“Father and mother,” said she, “M. le Curé makes me understand all my sins; for it is on my account you are thus borne down with grief. I, then, must be the first to trample pride under foot. Well, then, I will go to Val‐Saint on Sunday, and assist at Mass and Vespers in our usual place.”
“You shall not go alone, my poor child,” said Pierrette.
“That is right,” said the curé; “I expected as much. As for you, my dear Ragaud, as I know you to be truly honorable, you will not, I suppose, allow these two women to bravely fulfil their duty, and leave you behind?”
“I will see; I can’t promise any thing,” answered Ragaud.
“I count upon you,” said the curé, pretending to take these words as an engagement, “and I beg that you will come after Mass and dine with me; Germaine will have a nice dish of larks, which will not be much expense, as in this snowy weather they only cost five cents a dozen.”
“Monsieur,” said Ragaud, who felt greatly relieved by this pleasant conversation, which he very much needed, “commence by taking supper with me this evening; it will be a charitable deed to stay with people who are so unhappy.”
“Willingly,” replied the curé; “but with these closed shutters and cold rooms, that make me think of a tomb, I will not have any appetite. You must change all that, and let in some light. Come, madame, show us if you still can turn a spoon in the sauce‐pan.”
Pierrette could not repress a pleased smile at this apostrophe, and all her old occupations and favorite habits came back to her at the remembrancer, which tickled her heart. Just as in nursery‐tales a wicked fairy enchants a house for a time, and suddenly a good one comes, and with a wave of her wand changes affairs; at Muiceron, which appeared desolate and dead, the words of the curé restored the old life and animation which were so pleasant to behold in the former prosperous days. Ragaud made a great fire to drive out the close, damp smell; Pierrette threw open the shutters with a quick hand, and, seeing her garden ruined by the poultry, she blushed from shame, and grumbled aloud at her neglect. That was a true sign that her courage had returned. During this time, Jeannette and Marion got out the linen for the table, wiped the dishes, gray with dust, and prepared the fricassée, which consisted, for this meal, of a ragout of wild rabbits that M. le Curé looked at with a mischievous twinkle in his eye, as he knew well this game could only be the result of poaching.
“There,” said he, trying to the best of his ability to cheer up his poor friends, “is a dish which does you honor, Mme. Ragaud, and that will be perfectly delicious if you will put a glass of white wine in the sauce. But if you will let me give you a word of advice, don’t feed those little animals with cabbage.”
“Why not?” said Pierrette, astonished, thinking that M. le Curé mistook the game for a tame rabbit.
“Oh! yes,” said he, “that animal smells of cabbage, unless I have lost the sense of smelling; and it spoils the taste very much.”
“But, monsieur,” answered Pierrette, half offended, “this is a wild rabbit, caught in the wood of La Sange.”
“Not possible!” cried M. le Curé, feigning great astonishment. “And since when has the farm of Muiceron, which I have always seen the best supplied in the country with poultry, sheep, pigeons, and all other productions, been reduced to buy game stolen from its master for food?”
“Marion bought it,” said Pierrette; “the poor girl goes after provisions, and don’t look far; she brings back what she finds, without thinking of evil.”
“So Marion is mistress of the house now?” said the curé. “My dear friends,” he added, “this is a little incident which carries a great moral with it. I wish no further evidence to prove to you how much your grief, just at the bottom, is hurtful and wrong in reality. When I came in, Pierrette, I was pained at the disordered appearance of everything around. In a little while Muiceron will resemble the estate of an idle, lazy man who lets the ground lie fallow. What an example for the neighborhood, who looked upon you as models! Come, come, you must change all this, my good children. Commence your work; there is enough to do. I bet, Ragaud, your horses have not been curried for two weeks?”
“Alas! monsieur, you are half right—not curried as they should be,” answered Ragaud in a penitent tone.
“I must have lost more than six dozen eggs,” said Pierrette, looking down.
“I know nothing about the eggs,” resumed M. le Curé; “but as for your chickens, who have not had a grain of food but the gravel they have scratched, they are so lean I wouldn’t eat one of them if you gave it to me.”
These reproaches piqued the self‐respect of our good people more than any number of long and learned speeches uttered in a severe tone. Pierrette was deeply contrite for her faults. On setting the table, she could not keep from the eyes of M. le Curé, who spied everything designedly, the six‐pound loaf of white bread which Marion had that very morning brought home from the baker’s. This loaf, that was long and split in the middle, was not the least in the world like the bread made in the house, and proved that Pierrette had not kneaded the dough for a long time. Our curé would not let the bread pass unnoticed any more than the rabbit‐ stew, said it was dry and tasteless—which was true—and seized this opportunity also to make his friends promise to resume their ordinary train of life.
The supper was not very gay, it must be acknowledged, but passed off quietly, and thus this visit of the curé, which was followed by many others, began to bring back peace in those hearts so crushed with sorrow.
The following Sunday, Jeannette, according to her promise, went to Val‐ Saint, accompanied by her parents. She appeared neither too proud nor too subdued, but just between the two—that is to say, she moved along with a look of perfect modesty, which won every one’s respect, and made all the hats come off as she approached the church. Unfortunately, it is too true that human nature is apt to rejoice over the misfortunes of others. It is as though each one said, at the sight of a thwack received by his neighbor, “So much the more on his back, so much the less on mine.” And I do not conceal from you that the people of Val‐Saint were not exempt from this culpable weakness. On this very occasion even they were disposed to be severe; for, in fact, the Ragauds’ misfortunes were a little their own fault; and each one observed that if the parents had not been too proud and ambitious of making their daughter a young lady, she would not have been exposed to choose for husband a scoundrel whom they thought a gentleman. However, sincere pity replaced every other sentiment when they saw this afflicted family reappear in broad daylight in such an humble attitude; and poor Ragaud, who had made a violent effort to come, gradually recovered his ease at the sight of the kind faces that surrounded him. During the Mass, his old heart recovered its balance while praying to God. He felt that affliction is a good means of becoming better, because it draws the soul to its Creator, whom we are too often tempted to forget in the days of uninterrupted happiness; and when the divine office was ended, he could without difficulty stop in the village square, and shake hands with several of his friends.
Then they went to the pastoral residence, where the curé received them joyfully, and they ate with relish the dish of larks, which was done to a turn. At the dessert, the Ragauds looked like people restored to life, so much balm had that genial morning infused into their blood. Jeannette alone did not share the general happiness, and her bitter sadness, which could not be disguised, in spite of the care she took to smile and speak at the right time, was visible to all. It must be said to her praise that her vanity, which had been so crushed, was the least wound of her heart; she felt there another so much deeper, so much more painful, nothing, she thought, could ever cure it.
Where was Jean‐Louis? What had become of that brother she had driven out so roughly and unjustly? Her great seclusion since the terrible event had prevented her hearing a single word about him, and she dared not question any one.
As for the Ragauds, father and mother, they never mentioned him either, but for another reason. Ignorant that Jeannette had turned the poor boy out of the house, they were still firmly convinced of his jealousy; and as they believed him to be employed on some farm in the neighborhood, they were very much incensed at his prolonged absence, which, in view of the present circumstances, appeared the act of an ungrateful and hard heart.
M. le Curé, who knew all, and had Solange’s letter in his pocket, designedly prolonged the grief of Jeannette and the mistake of the Ragauds, in order that the lesson might be duly profitable to all.
“You see,” said he, “everything has happened as I foresaw. Fearing to displease you, I did not invite any one to our little entertainment; but understand well, my children, if I had had fifty vacant places at my table, I would have had great difficulty in choosing my guests; so many would have desired the pleasure of dining with you, I would have been afraid of exciting jealousy.”
“M. le Curé,” said Ragaud, “I thank you, and hope that your kindness was not mistaken. I speak the truth when I say that, but for you, I would have died rather than ever again have shown my face in public.”
“Well, now that it is all over, let us talk of our friends,” replied the curé. “Are you not curious to hear some news?”
No one replied; the tender chord was again touched.
“I do not conceal the fact,” said Ragaud, “that more than one of those so‐ called friends have pained us by their neglect.”
“Let us be just,” said the curé; “do you forget that your house was so tightly closed no one dared knock at the door? I even hesitated to visit you, and yet you cannot doubt my affection for you. Why, then, should others have been bolder?”
“Oh!” said Ragaud, “any one that wished could easily have found his way in. You had no difficulty, dear monsieur.”
“That I grant, but I was in the country. Do you know how many of your best friends are here yet? In the first place, the whole of the château are in Paris.”
“Yes, I know it,” said Jeanne. “My godmother did not bid me good‐by.”
“She was very sick, my daughter; you must not ill‐judge her.”
“And Michou?” asked Ragaud.
“Michou was at Mass, directly behind you,” said the curé; “and if he did not show himself, it was from delicacy; but he is not far off, and will come at the first signal.”
“And Solange?” asked Jeanne, in such a low tone she scarcely could be heard. That was the name the curé was waiting for. He looked at Jeanne in a serious manner.
“Solange,” said he, “left also on that unfortunate day, and knew nothing of it. She, Jeanne Ragaud, was your most faithful friend, and is so still. You have calumniated her, my daughter. I know it; but I hope you have sincerely repented; above all, when you hear that she is now at the novitiate of the Sisters of Charity.”
“Ah! is it possible?” cried she, clasping her hands. “Dear Solange! how unjust I have been to her!”
“Have you not been unjust to others also, my child?” asked the curé with gentleness. “Confess it, Jeannette; you should do so from a sense of justice.”
Jeannette hid her face in her hands, and burst into tears. The question had pierced her soul.
“M. le Curé,” said Pierrette, “I know of whom you wish to speak; but he, I believe, has not left the country, and his conduct, therefore, is scarcely excusable.”
“Ask your daughter,” replied the curé; “she, undoubtedly, can answer that question.”
And as Jeannette could not speak on account of her tears, he continued:
“What could he do, poor boy! but disappear when the only roof that could shelter him refused to receive him. He is no longer here, Mme. Ragaud, that child who loved you so dearly, and who had proved it so well. An inconsiderate word has driven him from your arms, and, having no other resource in this world, he is going to become a soldier, doubtless in the hope of dying honorably in fighting for his country.”
“Never did I drive off Jean‐Louis, monsieur,” said good Pierrette; “no, never, I can truly swear.”
“Nor I,” said Ragaud; “and at this very moment I am ready to redeem him from the conscription.”
“However, he is gone,” replied the curé; “and he, like Solange, did not know you were in trouble.”
“Oh!” cried Jeanne, falling on her knees, “I did it all. Heaven has justly punished me. Tell me where he is, M. le Curé; he will not refuse to pardon me, I am so unhappy.”
“What did you do?” asked Pierrette. “Alas! all this worry has turned the poor child’s head. Of what do you wish to accuse yourself, my daughter?”
Old Ragaud, who was not easily moved, approached the little thing and placed his hand on her head. He was very much affected to see her thus, kneeling and weeping, in the posture of a guilty person. He looked at M. le Curé, who looked at Jeannette, and Pierrette looked at all three.
Then that young girl did something very touching and unusual. She wiped her eyes, and, without rising, commenced in a sweet, low voice the true confession of all her past conduct, not sparing herself, as was right and just, and yet neither showing excitement nor too great bitterness against herself, which was the mark of sincere repentance. As she spoke, her face regained its color, and her eyes shone with holy joy; for the Lord, who saw her laudable intention, rewarded her with great interior relief for doing what for many others would have been the greatest mortification. When she had finished, she remained with her hands clasped, and her head bent low, before her parents and M. le Curé; but no person broke the silence. Of the three witnesses of this affecting scene, two wept behind their handkerchiefs, and the third, wishing to preserve his gravity as pastor, was too much moved to articulate a word.
“Father,” continued Jeannette in the same humble and firm tone, “judge me, now that you know how guilty I am. It is to you I speak, in presence of my mother and M. le Curé, and I am ready to submit to whatever punishment you may inflict upon me. I have deprived you of a son who made you happy, that you might keep a daughter who has only drawn misery and sorrow on your house. But that daughter is still capable of loving you; let her remain with you, that she may make reparation for her sins. I know I do not deserve it,” added she after a moment’s silence.
“My daughter,” said M. le Curé, “you have done well. Rise; the good God pardons you, and your parents also, very certainly.”
“O my poor darling! most surely,” said Pierrette, pressing her child to her breast.
“And you, Ragaud, will you not embrace your daughter?” asked M. le Curé.
The good farmer, you may well think, had no desire to be severe. He kissed Jeannette with great tenderness, and made her sit down by him. But his heart was much troubled; now that he understood his injustice towards Jean‐Louis, and his rash judgment, and remembering how easy it would have been for him to have prevented his departure by speaking a friendly word at the right time, he reproached himself as bitterly as Jeannette had done; and if his paternal dignity had not prevented him from humiliating himself before his child, he would have been tempted to confess in his turn.
“M. le Curé,” said he, “if God one day will let us know where Jean‐Louis is, do you think he would consent to return?”
“Hem!” said the curé, “he is proud; that remains to be seen....”
“Oh! I would beg him so hard,” replied Jeanne.
“In the first place, my child, we must put our hands on him; and there is the difficulty. Jeannet is not a boy to change his resolution like a weathercock that turns to every wind. And if he has enlisted, you will have to run after his regiment.”
“Poor child!” said Ragaud, “he don’t know that he has a little fortune stowed away in a safe place, and that it increases every year. If it should cost three thousand francs, I will redeem him, no matter where, no matter when.”
“Father,” said Jeanne, “before leaving M. le Curé, let me ask you one favor in his presence.”
“Speak, my child, I promise it to you in advance,” answered the good man.
“That you will never speak to me of marriage,” replied the little thing in a firm voice, “and that you will let me assist my mother in all her labors in the fields.”
“And when mademoiselle comes back?” asked the curé, with a spice of mischief.
“Oh! I understand too well that my place is no longer at the château; all our troubles have come from my having lived there too long,” said she.
“Jeanne Ragaud,” said M. le Curé, “always think so, and conform your conduct to your words; and if you will persevere in your resolution, in the name of the Lord I promise you that these trials will pass, and that you will yet have many happy days.”
M. le Curé pronounced these words in such a serious tone they all three felt wonderfully comforted. We can truly say that this Sunday was one of the happiest days in the life of the Ragauds. They went back to Muiceron with courage and peace in their souls, and on the next day each one set to work to repair the damage that two weeks of discouragement and gloom had introduced into that poor forlorn house.
The days passed rapidly between work and household duties faithfully accomplished. Gradually the remembrance of the recent misfortunes lost its bitterness, and they were even able to speak of them sometimes to Jacques Michou, who came frequently to visit his friends. As the police sought in vain for Isidore, people ended by letting him drop; and, as always happens, each one having resumed his usual course of affairs, they came to the conclusion that perhaps he was not so guilty as had seemed at first sight; so that, but for their ignorance as to the fate of Jean‐Louis, one month after the catastrophe the Ragauds appeared as happy and tranquil as before.
M. le Curé was not so ignorant, being kept fully informed by Jean‐Louis, who wrote to him regularly, but left to his wisdom to confide what he chose to the family at Muiceron. He preferred to keep a strict silence, for the very good reason that he wished to prove, by a long trial, the sincerity of Jeannette’s conversion. Thank God! on that side there was nothing to apprehend. Solange, with her great charity of soul, had not been mistaken in thinking Jeannette’s head weaker than her heart.
Misfortune had so purified and strengthened the little creature, Jean‐ Louis would have loved her more than ever, could he have seen her thus changed; for although nothing is perfect in this world, I can truly say, without exaggeration, she was now as near perfection as could be expected of anything human.
Pierrette, who at first wished to spare her little hands, so unaccustomed to work, did not wish her to undertake any of the heavier labor; but Jeannette was so quick and ready, the hardest and most difficult tasks were always accomplished by the time her mother came to give directions. She was the first at the stables in the morning, which she never left until all was in order, the fresh milk placed aside, and the cream taken off that of the evening before; on churning days she prepared the wheels of the machine, which would afterwards be turned by Marion. It was she also who measured the ashes for the lye used in the big wash the fifteenth of every month; and every week gave out the flour, half wheat, half rye, for the family bread. So great was her zeal she even wished to knead the dough, and put the loaves in the oven, which is terribly hard work; but this time Pierrette showed her authority, and declared she would sooner give up baking at home than see her daughter wear herself out at the kneading‐trough like a baker’s son‐in‐law.
From time to time, M. le Curé visited Muiceron at unusual hours, so that his appearance would be entirely unexpected, and always found Jeannette busy with her household labors, or, if it was late in the day, seated by the window, mending the clothes and linen of the family.
Her dress was always very simple, even on Sunday, and you may well think that mademoiselle’s beautiful dresses were left hanging in the closet without being even looked at occasionally. For another girl it would have been advisable economy to make some use of them by altering the style, so as to fit them for the farm; but Jeannette was too rich for any one to accuse her of extravagance for not using them, and it was every way better she should not reappear in costumes that would recall a time which, although passed, still left a painful memory.
She generally wore a serge skirt, striped in black and white, with a woollen basque which corresponded; and her Indian neckerchief from Rouen, covered with little bouquets of bright flowers, crossed in front, under her apron, was in no way more pretentious or coquettish than that of her mother Pierrette.
She even wore the cap of our country‐girls, which consists of a head‐piece of linen, with long ends of lawn, which they cross above the head on the days they wish to appear very fine. Coquettes know how to make themselves very elegant by adding embroidery and lace; but Jeanne Ragaud, who could have bought out a mercer’s shop, thought no longer of beautifying herself, much less her cap. Thus dressed, she looked more like a quiet little outdoor sister of some convent than the sole heiress of a large estate. She was told so sometimes, which highly delighted her, as she wished to appear in everything totally different from what she had been.
It needed a little courage to act thus before the eyes of the whole commune. Jeannette knew that after being called for ten years the vainest, silliest little peacock in the country, she was now looked upon as an exaggerated devotee; and, what was worse, some said she had thrown herself into the arms of the good God because her marriage had been broken off.
“Wait and see,” said the busy tongues; “only let her dear Perdreau come back, and all the fine dresses will be taken from the hooks, as before his departure.”
For they were persuaded she adored him, and that she still preserved, in the bottom of her heart, a tender remembrance, mingled with regret, which only waited an opportunity to show itself. Now, one’s nature is not changed, no matter how great is the desire to correct it, and you know that Jeannette was passionate and excitable. She therefore had much to suffer, and did suffer in silence, thinking that all these mortifications would aid her to expiate her sins, and to merit from the good God the favor of Jean‐Louis’ return, which now was the sole object of all her thoughts, desires, and prayers.
To see again the friend of her childhood; to soothe together the declining years of her old parents; to converse with him as in old times; to resume the gentle friendship, which now was so ardently desired by her poor little heart; to ask his pardon; and to make him so happy that he would forget the past—this was what this repentant, loving child thought of by day, and dreamt of all night, waking or sleeping. As her conversion had not deprived her of penetration, she quickly guessed that the good curé knew every movement of Jean‐Louis from A to Z; and it was amusing to see the way in which she would turn and turn again her questions, in the most innocent manner, so as to obtain some enlightenment on the subject. But our curé read this young soul like an open book, and, although he admired all that the Lord was working in it for her good, pursued the trial, and, under the manner of an old grandfather, kind‐hearted and tender, did not allow her to gain from him one foot of ground. However, occasionally he pretended to be surprised, taken by storm. It was when he would see the little thing sadder than usual, and ready to be discouraged. Then he would loose the string two or three inches—that is to say, he would say a word here and there, to make it appear he would speak openly at his next visit; and when that day came, he played the part of a person very much astonished that anything was expected from him.
However, like everything else, this had to come to an end. Half through pity, half through wisdom, the dear curé thought—as he said himself—that if the bow was too much bent, it would break; so one morning, having finished his Mass and eaten his frugal breakfast, he went to Muiceron, with the intention of conversing seriously with the Ragauds, and telling them all that he knew of good Jean‐Louis.
Home Rule For Ireland.
The term Home Rule as applied to British politics, in its local signification, has been a very unfamiliar one to American readers until quite recently, and even yet it is not generally recognized as the watch‐ word of a powerful and growing political party in and outside of the English Parliament, which has its headquarters in Ireland, and numerous ramifications extending throughout the principal cities and towns of England, Wales, and Scotland. In its leading features and designs this new organization may be said to be in fact the revival by another generation of the one formerly founded and led by O’Connell, and, like its prototype, is established for the purpose of effecting by constitutional means the abrogation of the treaty of union between Great Britain and Ireland, which was so delusively concocted and ratified, in the name of those countries, at the close of the last century; and the consequent reconstruction of the Irish Parliament on a footing of equality with that of England.
It is by no means what might be called a revolutionary movement, for it seeks neither to pull down nor destroy, by force or conspiracy, those bulwarks which society has raised for its own protection against lawless and unscrupulous demagogues; its object is simply to restore, as far as desirable and practicable, the old order of things, and to redress, even at this late day, an act of flagrant wrong and injustice done three‐ quarters of a century ago to a long misgoverned people, by restoring to them the right and power to regulate their own domestic affairs, subject, of course, to the authority of the common sovereign of the United Kingdoms.
The history of the treaty and acts of legislative union between Great Britain and Ireland, and of the motives which conduced to the formation of the conspiracy against the independence of an entire nation; of the plots formed in the fertile brain of Mr. Pitt against the civil and religious liberties of the sister kingdom, and but too successfully carried out by Castlereagh, Cooke, and other officials in Dublin, has never been sufficiently studied, even in this country, where every measure affecting the freedom of mankind, in what part of Christendom soever, possesses peculiar interest. This defective knowledge of a subject comparatively modern may be attributed partly to the fact that we Americans have been too much in the habit of looking at foreign politics through English spectacles, and in part because there seems to be a principle in human nature which inclines us to ignore, if not despise, the sufferings of the needy and unfortunate. Vanquished nations are regarded generally as are poor relations whom no one cares to know or acknowledge.
And yet the circumstances which eventually led to the destruction of the Irish Parliament were almost contemporary with, and to a certain degree grew out of, our own Revolution. The causes that effected the severance of the North American colonies from the mother country, and facilitated the consummation of our aspirations for independence, operated, paradoxical as it may seem, to bind Ireland firmer in the chains of alien thraldom, as well as to extinguish the last spark of her freedom.
It is generally conceded that the Irish Parliament, from its inception in the XIVth century till 1782, was not only not the legitimate legislative representative of even a moiety of the people of that country, but was actually a very efficient instrument in the hands of their enemies. At first it was merely an irregular gathering of the nobles and chief men of the “Pale”—a term applied for hundreds of years after the invasion to four or five counties on the eastern and southeastern sea‐board, over which the Anglo‐Normans held sway. Whenever a raid on the native chieftains was projected, or a scheme of spoliation to be adopted, it had long been the custom of the lord deputy, or other representative of English authority, to summon the heads of Anglo‐Irish houses and a few of the principal burghers of the larger towns and cities within his jurisdiction, to meet him at Dublin, Drogheda, or Kilkenny, and, having given the motley gathering the sonorous title of parliament, to demand the enactment of new statutes against the “Irish enemy,” or to extort fresh levies of men and money for his incursions into the interior.
Gradually, however, those erratic assemblies began to assume form and regularity, and even to display a certain independence of action distasteful to the governing power. As English conquest in Ireland gradually widened its sphere, particularly in Leinster and Munster, the number of members who attended those sessions increased; and as the descendants of the invaders, having lost the attachment of their forefathers to England, naturally evinced a desire to legislate for themselves, it was thought desirable in London to nip in the bud a flower which might insensibly expand into national independence. Accordingly, in the reign of the seventh Henry, the Irish Parliament being still weak and yielding, a bill was passed by it acknowledging the dependence of that body on the king of England and his council. This act, called after its originator, Poynings, most effectually repressed the aspirations of the only representative body in the kingdom, and produced the desired results. But as if this were not enough, we find subsequently, in the reign of William and Mary especially, instances of the English Parliament legislating directly for Ireland; and in the sixth of George I. there was passed a declaratory act which, if any vestiges of freedom or manhood yet remained in the Irish Parliament, most effectually destroyed them. These efforts, thus made from time to time to destroy the liberty and efficiency of the Parliament, naturally disgusted a great many of its members who had the least spark of self‐respect or personal honor left, and drove them from the nation’s councils; those who remained being almost without exception government officials or newly‐arrived and needy adventurers, ignorant of the character, wants, and wishes of the people, who hoped, by the display of extraordinary zeal and sycophancy, to push their fortunes and find favor in the eyes of the Castle authorities. It is not surprising, then, that a body composed of such elements should have unhesitatingly voted away the royalty of the ancient kingdom to Henry VIII., whose predecessors never claimed a higher title than that of lord; that at the bidding of the same monster, it officially and almost unanimously declared for the Reformation, and with equal alacrity, in the reign of his daughter Mary, explicitly repudiated everything it had done a few years previously.
Yet it still bore the semblance of a national legislature; and, gradually yielding to the influence of a growing public opinion, some good men, Catholics as well as Protestants, were again to be found among its members in the subsequent reigns, until that of William III., when, by an unconstitutional law of the English Parliament, the former were for ever excluded, and never during its existence was one of that proscribed faith allowed to sit on its benches. From this reign also may be dated the many cruel penal enactments, over one hundred in number, which disgraced its statute‐books; though, to do its members justice, they never went so far in ferocity and ingenuity as did their brethren of London at the same period and even long previously.
But though four‐fifths of the people were disfranchised and their co‐ religionists denied a seat in the Parliament, that body was again gradually approaching the assertion of its right of self‐legislation. A new generation had sprung up during the later half of the XVIIIth century who knew not William of Orange nor the bitter anti‐Irish prejudices that characterized his followers. The bold, incisive, and satirical writings of Swift, the learned disquisitions of Molyneux, and the homely but vigorous appeals of Lucas, had not been without their effect on the young students of Trinity and other colleges, fresh from the study of the lessons of human liberty so frequently found in classic lore; and the consequence was that when they entered the Parliament as members, confident in their position as gentlemen of fortune, and self‐reliant, not only from their aristocratic connections, but from their innate sense of mental superiority, language began to be heard and applauded which, for elegance, grace, and manliness, had never been equalled in that hall before. The outbreak of our Revolution, the broad principles of justice and humanity laid down in the speeches and writings of our ancestors, and the trumpet‐ toned Declaration of Independence occurring at the same time, gave an impetus and a clarity of ideas on questions of government which, up to that time, had assumed neither form nor consistency.
The first symptoms of active agitation for their political rights may be said to have sprung up at this period among the Irish of all conditions and creeds, but more especially in Ulster and the cities of Dublin, Cork, and Limerick—the homes of manufactures and the centres of produce, exports, etc. Their grievances were of two classes: restriction on foreign trade, and parliamentary dependence and corruption. Under the first head, it was charged, and with great truth, that Irish merchants were prohibited by English laws from trading with France, Spain, Portugal, Holland, many of the West India Islands, and the whole of Asia, for the purpose of benefiting their rivals in England; thus utterly crippling the manufacturing interests of the country, and completely stopping the exportation to these markets of farm products, of which she had even then a superabundant supply. This limitation of commerce had long been not only the principal cause of the impoverishment of the nation, but a fruitful source of clamor and popular discontent, which had invariably been unheeded by the dominant power as long as it was able to repress them by the strong arm. At length, however, a change was about to take place. Soon after our War of Independence broke out and the French alliance was cemented, England was obliged to withdraw from Ireland nearly the whole of her military and naval forces, thus leaving the latter undefended by either regulars or militia, and at any moment open to attack from the allies. Indeed, Paul Jones several times appeared on the coast, and in 1779‐80 the Franco‐Spanish fleets were absolute masters of the Channel. The people, kept in a constant state of alarm, at last determined to arm for mutual protection; and thus was originated that short‐lived but remarkable body of citizen soldiery known as the Irish Volunteers.
The movement began in Belfast in August, 1778, and before two years elapsed it had spread over the whole country, and counted on its muster‐ rolls nearly one hundred thousand men, fully armed and equipped at their own expense. Noblemen, judges, magistrates, and prominent members of Parliament were proud to serve in the Volunteers as company or field officers; and Lord Charlemont, one of the most accomplished and liberal members of his order, accepted the office of commander‐in‐chief.
The external security of the island having thus been amply provided for, attention was naturally turned to internal evils. Various meetings of Volunteers were held in the several counties, and strong resolutions passed in favor of the freedom of foreign trade. The Castle authorities were not in a position to resist a demand so made; the Irish Parliament, led by such men as Grattan, Flood, and other nationalists, voted in favor of the immediate emancipation of commerce; and the British premier, Lord North, in December, 1779, submitted three propositions to the English Parliament to permit the export of glass and woollens from Ireland, and permission for her to trade with the American colonies, Africa, and the West Indies. During the following February, a bill embodying these provisions was introduced by the ministry, and passed with little opposition.
This point gained, the Volunteers set to work to free the Irish Parliament itself from all dependence on the London Privy Council and the Parliament of the sister kingdom. In April, 1780, Grattan moved his Declaration of Rights, which avowed, among other truths, “that his most excellent majesty, by and with the consent of the lords and commons of Ireland, are the only power competent to enact the laws to bind Ireland.” This resolution was, however, opposed on technical grounds, and withdrawn. During the following year, Mr. Yelverton asked leave to bring in a bill virtually repealing Poynings’ law, which was granted by a vote of 167 against 37, though later in the session Flood’s motion of a similar purport was defeated by a majority of 72. The people, who had anxiously watched the action of their representatives, were now in a ferment of excitement, and numerous meetings of civilians and Volunteers were held throughout the provinces, the most noteworthy of which was the convention of the Ulster Volunteers at Dungannon, February 15, 1782. This powerful assembly passed a series of manly resolutions in favor of the right of the subject to bear arms, to express his opinions freely on political affairs, and to worship God according to the dictates of his conscience; but the one most to the point read as follows: “Resolved, unanimously, That a claim of any body of men other than the king, lords, and commons of Ireland to make laws to bind this kingdom is unconstitutional, illegal, and a grievance.” This was followed up by like meetings in the other sections of the country, at which similar resolutions were adopted. A few days after there was a change of ministry in England, and of course a change of policy. Messages were sent in the name of the king to both Parliaments, ordering them to take into their most serious consideration “the discontents and jealousies prevailing among his loyal subjects of Ireland, in order to such a final adjustment as may give mutual satisfaction to both kingdoms.” The answer of the Irish Parliament to this demand met with no opposition on the question of its adoption, though it declared emphatically “that there is no body of men competent to make laws to bind this nation except the king, lords, and commons of Ireland; nor any other parliament which hath any authority or power of any sort whatever in this country save only the Parliament of Ireland.” There was no mistaking or avoiding this expression of public opinion, endorsed as it had been by a national army able and willing to second their demands; so in May, 1782, the act of sixth George I. was repealed in the English Parliament, and the old objectionable law of Poynings simultaneously suffered a similar fate in that of Ireland.
Irish trade was now free, and Irish legislation independent at least of alien dictation; but another great task lay before the Volunteers, which unless accomplished, their well‐won victories were likely to prove barren indeed. This was the purification of their own House of Commons, and the right of representation for the people at large. That the popular branch of the legislature wanted reformation badly may be judged from the status of its members as given by contemporary writers. Only seventy‐two of them were returned by vote; one hundred and thirty‐three sat for “nomination” or “close” boroughs, absolutely controlled by a few peers; ninety‐five were similarly sent to the Parliament by about fifty commoners; so that, out of the three hundred members of the house, two hundred and twenty‐eight were wholly and solely dependent for their seats on less than half their own number. When we consider, also, that of those creatures at least one‐half were officials, pensioners, or expectants of pensions and government favors, we can well imagine how little reliance could be placed on their integrity or honesty in a struggle between a hostile, inimical power and the people; and it must also be remembered that at that time neither the right of representation nor of suffrage was allowed to the Catholics, who comprised seventy or eighty per cent. of the entire population.
The Volunteers, therefore, set to work to do for their countrymen what fifty years afterwards was at least partially effected by the Emancipation and Reform Acts for the United Kingdoms. They again held meetings, passed resolutions, and even called a national convention to meet in Dublin during the Parliamentary session of 1783‐4. One hundred and sixty delegates accordingly met in the Rotunda amid the general congratulations of the citizens and the high hopes of the nation. But, alas! this sanguine confidence in the manliness and liberality of the delegates soon received a shock so rude that its effects were felt in the most remote parts of the island, and carried with them gloom and dismay to the masses of the people.
The Volunteers were an essentially, and it might be said an exclusively, Protestant organization from the beginning, but it was earnestly supported by the Catholics from a feeling that unrestricted trade and legislative independence were national boons of the first importance, as well as from an apparently well‐founded trust that, these being obtained, the abrogation of the penal laws and the right of representation would speedily follow. They could not believe that an influential but very small minority, seeking liberty for themselves, would persistently deny it to the large majority of their countrymen. They were now about to be undeceived. One of the very first resolutions passed at the convention read as follows: “Resolved, That the Protestant inhabitants of this country are required by the statute law to carry arms and to learn the use of them,” etc.; and, lest any doubt should remain of the bigotry and narrow‐mindedness which pervaded the representatives of the Volunteers, the plan of reform, as drawn up by Flood and subsequently adopted, was made to read thus: “That every Protestant freeholder or leaseholder, possessing a freehold or leasehold for a certain term of years of forty shillings’ value, resident in any city or borough, should be entitled to vote at the election of a member for the same.”
The limitation of the right to bear arms and to vote to Protestants only was the destruction of the moral as well as physical power of the Volunteers, and a death‐blow to the longings and aspirations of the patriotic Catholics. It was more than a blunder, it was a crime—a piece of rank, selfish hypocrisy, which ill became men who had the words of freemen on their lips, but, it appears, the feelings of tyrants in their hearts. In vain did the Irish Catholics protest in a series of resolutions; in vain did the Earl of Bristol, then Protestant Bishop of Derry, vehemently advocate the claims of the people to something like religious and social equality. The convention was deaf to all remonstrance and entreaty, and blindly rushed to its own destruction.
It had taken the only step that could have gratified its enemies, and, by throwing away the friendship and support of the vast majority of the population, it left itself exposed and naked to the attacks and machinations of the Castle authorities. Pending the American war, England looked with fear and anxiety on that large body of armed men that could at any time, and with little risk, sever the connection between the two countries, for she was powerless to resist them; yet, when somewhat recovered from her humiliating defeats in her quondam colonies, she turned all her attention and used all her art to destroy not only the Volunteers, but the Parliament that had recognized and fostered them. She was determined, if possible, that such a dreaded contingency should not occur again. The convention, as we have seen, had rejected the moderate demands of the Catholics, many of whom, despairing of justice in that quarter, naturally looked to the government for some modification of their disabilities; while the Parliament, always under official control, took advantage of the occasion to sow division and discord among its members. When Flood, fresh from the Rotunda, moved for leave to bring in a reform bill embodying the plans of the convention, it was refused by a majority of eighty in a total vote of two hundred and thirty‐four.
The history of Ireland from this time till the close of the century could well be blotted out, for the sake of human nature, from the annals of the race. The Volunteers, who ought not only to have been the defenders of the country from foreign enemies, but the protectors of the civil rights of their countrymen at home, after the scornful rejection of their claims by Parliament and the adjournment of their convention, ceased to be either feared or respected. Many of their most prominent officers went over to the government, others of more advanced views joined the secret society known as the United Irishmen. The English authorities, having thus succeeded in their first project even beyond their expectations, applied themselves with extraordinary industry to carry out the second. Agrarian outrages became more frequent; “Peep‐o’‐day boys” and “Defenders” terrified the peaceful farmers of one or other side; Orangemen were petted and armed, while Catholic bishops and priests were deluded with false promises; the royal grant to Maynooth College was increased at the same time that martial law was proclaimed in the most peaceful Catholic districts; and churches were being burned to the ground unrestrictedly by those who wore the king’s livery. At the general election, which took place in 1790, the most scandalous means were adopted to secure a thoroughly subservient majority in the lower house; and, lest this should not be sufficient, new peers were created through corrupt influence, in order that the lords might not offer any opposition to the behests of the Castle.
It is difficult to imagine the scenes of outrage, rapine, private revenge, and general consternation which grew out of a persistence in so wily and nefarious a policy. Supported secretly by the authorities, the Orangemen became utterly regardless of the lives of their Catholic neighbors; while they, with a choice only between the oppression of an armed faction of bigots on one side, and the tender mercies of English law on the other, naturally inclined to the latter as the lesser of two evils, and began to long for imperial protection. There were many, however, who joined the United Irishmen, and here again arose another division. That society was a sworn secret organization, and, as such, the hierarchy and the priesthood were bound to condemn it, no matter how much they may have sympathized with its aims, and to denounce all who were in its ranks.
But notwithstanding the state of fear, confusion, and disruption to which the country was reduced, the English officials still feared to bring before the Parliament the question of a union. A blow must first be struck that would drive terror into the hearts of the whole people; so terrible and sanguinary that even the greatest lover of his country’s independence would, it was hoped, gladly desire peace and order, even at the price of British connection. This was done in 1798. The United Irishmen proposed to resort to armed insurrection and an appeal for French support, but as yet had committed no overt act of treason. The government, which had all along been cognizant of their schemes and movements, resolved to anticipate them by driving the country into premature rebellion; its tactics differing, however, in various localities. To Wexford, always a very peaceful, Catholic county, where there were very few United Irishmen, they sent the infamous North Cork militia, whose cruelty was only surpassed by their abject cowardice. These miscreants were to a man Orangemen, and their line of march to the town of Wexford, for miles on both sides, was marked by the ruins of burned chapels and the corpses of slaughtered peasantry. It was only then that the people of that country rose up in arms, seeking “the wild justice of revenge,” and waged on the murdrous brood a war which, for bravery and decisiveness during the time it lasted, has few parallels in modern history. In Dublin, the chiefs of the intended insurrection were suddenly seized, imprisoned, and many of them finally executed. The Presbyterians of Ulster, the originators of the United system, were hurried into untimely outbreaks by the knowledge of the discovery of their designs, and, after three or four detached efforts at rebellion, were easily put down by the militia and regular troops. Then came the judicial murders, drum‐head courts‐martial, torture and death. No man, no matter how innocent, considered himself safe, and no woman was free from insult and outrage. The spirit of the government seemed to be infused into all its officials from the highest judge on the bench to the lowest constable, and that spirit was one of terrorism and slaughter.
Ireland was now prostrate, defenceless, and bleeding from every artery and vein, and this was considered a fitting time to rob her of her Parliament, and snatch from her enervated grasp the last remnant of her independence. The measure was introduced into both Parliaments almost simultaneously, at first with doubtful success, but afterwards carried with little difficulty, except the expenditure of enormous sums by the government in bribing and pensioning members. The most alluring prospects were held out to the Catholics to induce them to support the measure out of Parliament—they had no voice inside of it—but, to their credit be it said, not even a moiety of them were deceived by such treacherous proposals. They were assured that, after the union, English capital would flow free as water into the country; that protection for their persons and property against Orange fanatics would be fully guaranteed; and that many of the more oppressive clauses in the penal code would be repealed—all of which, it is unnecessary to say, were conveniently forgotten by Pitt and his successors once the abominable bargain had been closed. The act of union passed the Irish House of Commons June 7, 1800, and the House of Lords on the 13th of the same month, to take effect on the 1st of January following.
The deed was at last accomplished, and Ireland, deceived, betrayed, and dejected, sank down into the lethargy of despair till once more aroused to action by the magnificent genius of the great agitator, O’Connell. For a long time he dared not hope or ask for a repeal of the union, but confined himself to the removal of Catholic disabilities, as the operation of the nefarious penal laws was elegantly called; though occasionally, in his more comprehensive speeches, he alluded to the future possibility of such a demand. Emancipation gained, the Reform Bill carried, and the tithe, poor law, and other questions of minor importance more or less satisfactorily disposed of, O’Connell turned his serious attention to the restoration of the Irish Parliament.
He initiated the movement in 1840, but for some time with very little appearance of making it in any sense a national one. The people were supine, and those who should have been their leaders rested content with comparative religious equality and the friendship of the Whigs, who, when in power, were always generous of petty offices to the poor relations and dependants of those who could influence elections in their favor. But the great Liberator, though he had nearly reached that term of threescore and ten allotted as the span of man’s life, was still full of vigor and determination. He travelled through every part of Ireland, arousing the dormant, reassuring the timid, arguing with the disputatious, and hurling his anathemas against those who, from cowardice or venality, refused to join in the crusade against English influence in Ireland. His success was more than wonderful. The hierarchy unanimously declared in favor of “repeal,” the priesthood almost without exception became his warmest and most efficient supporters, and of course the mass of the people, always on the right side when properly led, greeted him everywhere with the wildest applause. Money poured in from all sides to help the national cause; not Ireland and the British Islands alone contributing their quota, but the continent of Europe and the ever‐generous people of America lavishly advanced funds for the purpose of aiding the people in obtaining self‐ government.
Then came the year 1843—the year of the monster meetings at central and time‐honored localities, such as Mallow, Tara, Mullaghmast, and Clontarf, where assembled countless thousands of well‐dressed, well‐conducted, and unarmed peasantry, to listen to the voice of their champion and his co‐ laborers, and to demand in peaceful terms the restoration of their filched legislative rights.
The British government was decidedly alarmed, and with good cause. It tried to stem the torrent of popular opinion by the most extravagant distribution of patronage, by landlord intimidation, the denunciations of a venal press, and even by intrigues at the court of Rome; but all to no effect. Rendered desperate, it even projected a general massacre at Clontarf; but this savage project was defeated by the judicious conduct of the repeal leaders. Next it evoked the terrors of the law; for in Ireland, unlike most free or partially free countries, the law has actual terrors for the good, but very little for the wicked. O’Connell and eight of his associates, including his son John, three editors, and two Catholic priests, were arrested, indicted for “conspiracy,” tried, and all, on the 30th of May, 1844, were sentenced to imprisonment, with the exception of F. Tierney, who had died before the trial. The effect on the country was the reverse of what was expected. O’Connell’s popularity, if possible, increased, the repealers became more numerous, and several Protestant gentlemen of fortune and influence, who had hitherto held aloof, joined the association. But when three months had elapsed, and the decision of the packed Dublin jury and the rulings of the stipendiary English judges were set aside by the House of Lords, led by Brougham, the enthusiasm of the people knew no bounds.
These indeed were the halcyon days of Ireland. Never were her people so numerous, prosperous, and contented, so full of thankfulness for the present and hope in the future. Of the nine millions of her population, at least two‐thirds were active repealers or in sympathy with their cause. No nation, in fact, was ever more unanimous on any public question than were the Irish of the years 1844‐5, and never was the country so free from crime of every degree. Much of this enviable condition was to be attributed to the oft‐repeated admonition of O’Connell, that “he who commits a crime gives strength to the enemy”; more, perhaps, to the unceasing admonitions and personal presence of the priesthood at the monster gatherings; but most, we think, to the workings of F. Mathew’s beneficent projects. It was a fortunate coincidence that the Apostle of Temperance and the great Liberator were contemporaries. For the one teetotaler the first could show, the other could point out an ardent repealer.
But a change was impending that, amid the sunshine and gladness of the hour, was undreamt of—a change that was to spread woe and desolation over the face of the fair island. Famine, gaunt and hideous famine, with her attendants, pestilence and death, was knocking at the door, and would not be denied admittance.
The first symptoms of the failure of the potato crop, then almost exclusively the food of five or six millions of people, appeared as early as 1845, and, though it created much alarm and distress in certain neighborhoods, was not of so widespread a nature as to excite general anxiety till the close of that year and the beginning of the next. O’Connell, the mayors and corporations of the large cities, and many other prominent persons, lay and clerical, having exhausted all the resources of private charity, strenuously but vainly urged on the government the necessity of taking some steps to save the lives of the people. They represented, and truly, that the grain crop alone of the country was sufficient to feed twice the number of inhabitants, and asked that its exportation might be prohibited; that a large portion of the imperial revenue was raised in Ireland, and suggested that a portion of it might be expended there on useful public works, and thus afford employment to the famishing and needy; that a great part of the lands then unproductive might be reclaimed with benefit to the holders, and proposed that the government ought to loan money to the landlords for that purpose, to bear interest, become a first lien on the land, and to be repaid at the expiration of a certain number of years. Their appeals were answered by coercion and arms acts, and by the repeal of the Corn Laws, by which the Irish producer, who was obliged to sell his cereals in English markets in order to pay his rent, found himself undersold by importers from the great grain‐producing countries, like Russia and the United States. In truth, England did not want to stay the famine, for it was her best and only ally against the repeal movement; and the “providential visitation,” as it was blasphemously called by her politicians and clerical demagogues, was allowed to take its course. Thus unchecked, the dire destroyer swept on from county to county during the years 1846‐7‐8‐9, till the island, so fair to view in 1844, became almost a deserted graveyard, and its inhabitants who had neither sunk beneath its curse nor fled the country became a nation of paupers. It is now proven by trustworthy statistics that during those five years over one million fled for ever from their homes, and that at least a million and a third perished on their own soil, amid plenty, from want of food and the ravages of the fatal typhus!
No wonder, then, that the great repeal organization drooped, quarrelled, and finally ended a lingering and impotent existence a few years after. The bone and sinew of the land, who had given vitality and strength to its labors, were either far across the Atlantic or rotting in pauper‐graves. No wonder, also, that its great founder and chief, overburdened with years, but more by national misfortunes, should have sickened at the sights around him, and, fleeing from the ills he could not cure, should have died on a foreign soil, far from his beloved fatherland.
But though the famine had mortally wounded the repeal movement, its demise was hastened by dissensions among the leaders themselves. In 1846, in a discussion on the expediency of the use of moral force solely as a means of obtaining national redress of grievances, hot and personal remarks fell from the lips of the speakers on both sides; great excitement was created among the audience, and finally O’Brien and many of the ablest and most active of the repeal writers and speakers withdrew, and formed what was called the Confederation or “Young Ireland” party. Though thoroughly honest, high‐toned, and brilliant as orators and journalists, the Young Irelanders could never win any appreciable amount of popular support; and though up to February, 1848, when the French Revolution threw Europe into a ferment of excitement, they never contemplated armed resistance, the people generally looked upon them with suspicion, and refused their co‐ operation. In the summer of that year, however, they did make an attempt at revolution, and, as might have been expected, miserably failed. Thus the “Association” and the “Confederation” disappeared almost at the same time; and now that a quarter of a century has passed, and a new generation has come to the front, we find the principles and aims of the original organization revivified and incorporated into what is called the “Home Rule League.”
In its demands, this association is more moderate than was O’Connell. He wanted repeal of the treaty and act of union, pure and simple, and the restoration of the national legislature as it was in 1782, with the emancipation and other kindred acts superadded. The Home Rulers, if we may judge from the resolutions passed at a very large conference held lately in Dublin, only ask for a parliament to regulate their domestic affairs, leaving to the British imperial Parliament full power and authority over all matters concerning the entire empire, or, in other words, placing Ireland in the same position with regard to the law‐making power as that now held by Canada, except the right of Ireland to send a proportional number of members to the imperial assembly. The success of such a scheme in Ireland would naturally lead to the restoration of the old Scotch Parliament, and possibly to imperial representation for Canada and other trans‐marine colonies of Great Britain. Hence the widespread interest it has excited throughout the empire.
The objections to the home‐rule plan, as far as we can gather them from the English and Tory Irish press—for the politicians have carefully avoided its discussion—are principally three:
I. The confusion and possible conflict of authority which might arise from having two co‐ordinate legislative assemblies under the same government.
II. That the people of Ireland are unable to govern themselves, and, as the last Parliament was lost by the corruption and venality of its members, a restored one would be open to the same deleterious influences.
III. That as the Catholics, from their numbers, would necessarily have a majority in the Commons, the rights of property and the guaranteed privileges of their Protestant fellow‐subjects would be in danger.
IV. That the granting of legislative power would be only a step to complete independence.
To these objections it is answered, first, that as the advocates of home rule merely require power to regulate affairs purely domestic, and not touch on those within the jurisdiction of an imperial Parliament, there would be little possibility of a collision of the two bodies; secondly, they admit the premises, but deny the conclusion regarding the probability of bribery and corruption, for the conditions are altered. The rotten and presentation boroughs, from whence the tools of the Castle sprung, have been swept away by the Reform Bill, and landlord influence has received a decided check by the adoption of the ballot. They further allege that the Catholics now, particularly since the Encumbered Estates Act was passed, are the most numerous body of landholders in the kingdom, and are consequently conservative, and would be exceeding jealous of any agrarian law that might be proposed; that the late Church Disestablishment and Land Acts have done away with many of the causes of quarrel between Catholics and Protestants growing out of tithes, endowments, etc.; and triumphantly point to the numerous Protestant gentlemen, many of whom are clergymen, who have joined their movement. As to the idea of total separation, they very properly retort that if Ireland will not rest satisfied with the concession of her just demands, it is not likely that she will be more loyal to the crown as long as they are withheld.
This repeal movement, in another shape, like its predecessor, had a very obscure birth and a small christening. About three years ago, a few gentlemen met in a private room in the city of Dublin to chat over political affairs, amongst whom was Isaac Butt, a member of Parliament, and a lawyer of large experience and great eminence in his profession, who suggested the outlines of the present plan of operation. Like most hardy plants, its growth was at first slow, but it has recently sprung up a hale, hearty tree, with boughs overshadowing all classes and creeds at home, and roots extending through the sister island and its dependencies. From the first the leadership has been accorded to Butt, who, though by no means a man of the gigantic calibre of O’Connell, is still a very competent political guide and an energetic organizer. Though a Protestant and a great favorite with the more liberal sectarians, he seems to enjoy the confidence and friendship of many of the Catholic bishops and a large number of the priesthood, particularly those of the venerable Archbishop McHale, whose name we find appended prominently to the call for the late conference in the capital. With Butt are such men as Sir John Gray, Mr. Mitchell‐Henry Sullivan, Dease, Major O’Reilly, Digby, Synan, Murphy, Blennerhassett, the O’Connor Don, and other prominent laymen; while the Catholic clergy in great numbers, headed by Dean O’Brien, of Limerick, are active sympathizers. The Home Rulers count in their ranks in Ireland alone about sixty members of Parliament, besides nearly half that number representing English constituencies. Sir Charles Gavan Duffy, one of the most profound and the best organizing minds that Ireland has produced for many generations, is, it is said, about to return from Australia, and again enter the British Parliament as the representative of an Irish constituency. Duffy is a Catholic, a man of varied and remarkable experience in public affairs, and would be a most valuable acquisition to the nationalists in council or Parliament.
The movement, as we have stated, is not merely confined to Ireland. It is nearly as popular and has almost as many supporters in England and Scotland; and in every liberal newspaper published in those countries that reaches us we find reports of numerous meetings in the principal towns and cities, and even villages, of Great Britain. The English Catholic press particularly favor it, and this adds greatly to its strength. A late number of the London Tablet says in reference to the home‐rule conference: “We can all know at present what is demanded under the name of home rule; and we may frankly say at once that we have been agreeably impressed by the moderation and evident thoughtfulness which have presided over the preparation and adoption of the various resolutions that embody the proposed home‐rule constitution. It is superfluous to say that there is not a trace of revolution about them.... What, however, is not superfluous to say is that the new programme of the Home Rulers appears to us to have discarded with discrimination almost everything which could prejudice their cause, and to have retained almost everything calculated to render their project acceptable to the British public and imperial Parliament.”
The Weekly Register, on the same subject, makes the following sensible remarks:
“From Tuesday to Friday, both inclusive, hundreds of Irishmen from the north and from the south, from the east and from the west, Protestants and Catholics, alumni of Maynooth and of Trinity College, met in the Rotunda to discuss the expediency of demanding of the imperial Parliament such a modification of the act of legislative union as will allow the people of Ireland to manage their purely domestic concerns without in the least interfering with matters of an imperial character; and during these memorable four days, as we have already observed, the most admirable temper was manifested and the most perfect order maintained, or rather observed; for the chairman had throughout only to listen like others and put the question. The principal, if not the sole, ground of difference of opinion was the constitution of the domestic Parliament. To some members of the conference the House of Lords seemed a difficulty. Undoubtedly there cannot be in these realms any Parliament without a House of Lords, and there ought not to be. Equally certain is it that differences—serious differences—will sometimes arise between the Irish peers and the Irish commons. But does nothing of the sort ever occur in the imperial Parliament? Yet, notwithstanding the dissensions, occasionally of a very violent character, that happen between the Houses at Westminster, the constitution works and the business of the empire is done, not always in the best fashion, we admit, but still so to keep the vessel of state well afloat.”
Many of the bishops and clergy in England, also, are warm sympathizers, if not active advocates, of the proposed repeal, as the following extract from a recent letter of the Rt. Rev. Dr. Turner, late Bishop of Salford, will in part demonstrate. With regard to home rule, writes that prelate, “it seems to me that some measure of home rule for Ireland is certain. It is but a question of time and amount. Parliament will, sooner or later, be obliged to grant it, if only for the despatch of imperial business. A strong feeling prevails in favor of large powers of local and municipal self‐government even in England, and the extension of this principle must inevitably come to Ireland.”
We cannot but agree with the good bishop in his views of the necessity of some change in the parliamentary system of the United Kingdoms, at least as far as Ireland is concerned, and trust, sincerely trust, that his predictions will be justified by events, and that very quickly. With a home government, a denominational plan of education, and a fostering public opinion for ability and native genius, which would surely follow, that long‐suffering but faithful island might in the near future equal, or even excel, the glories that shone around her in her first ages of Christianity.
Sonnet: Good Friday.
Behold the highest Good! there on the cross ’Tis pictured on a canvas so sublime That God’s own thought, conceived before all time, Is fitly told; the universe at loss To fathom it, its mighty forces toss In darkened struggles that do wildly chime In thund’rous mutt’rings with the monstrous crime That man conceives; yet all the varied dross Of nature’s agitations but compose The adjuncts to that central Form, where God, Enthroned in pain, all suffering doth enclose In one brief day, that never might be trod A path more hard than that did interpose ’Twixt Pilate’s hall and Calvary’s blood‐stained sod.
Grapes And Thorns. Chapter X. The Descent of Avernus.
By The Author Of “The House of Yorke.”
It was Annette who told Miss Pembroke the result of the trial, taking it on herself as a sort of mission. Without saying a word on the subject to each other, perhaps without defining it clearly in their own minds, they had yet acted on an impression that she was to be treated with peculiar delicacy and tenderness in the matter.
As young Mrs. Gerald came down the street toward her mother‐in‐law’s home, she saw Miss Pembroke approaching her slowly from the opposite direction, a child at either side. She was just coming from her school, and these two little ones lived in the neighborhood, and were privileged to walk home with their teacher, each holding in its little hands, for warmth, a fold of her large sable cloak.
It was a still, frosty day, with a sparkling depth of cloudless blue overhead, and a spotless carpet of newly‐fallen snow, white as swan’s‐ down, underneath. But the mid‐air, rosy now with sunset, imparted a tinge of violet to the sky and a soft blush to the earth. Sleighs, with their gay bells, flew to and fro, the drivers muffled to the eyes from the stinging cold; and the planks of the sidewalk crackled under the steps that trod them.
“What a motherly look she has!” Annette Gerald said to herself, as she stood waiting at the gate, and watching her friend.
Honora had quite a matronly appearance, indeed, in the thick furs she always wore in winter. She was fond of warmth, and scarcely quick enough in her motions to resist the cold of a northern climate by means of exercise alone, and the cap, muff, boa, and mantle made her look like a Juno exiled to the court of Odin. The cold melancholy of her expression, the face as untouched with color as a white camellia, was in keeping with the fancy.
She did not hasten when she saw a visitor waiting for her, nor give any smile or word of welcome. If there was a sign of emotion, it was in the slight gesture with which she detached herself from her two little attendants, who, for the first time, missed the leave‐taking they prized so much. They had been wont to be stroked on the cheeks, with a gentle “Good‐by”; and, running, hand in hand, down the street, to turn at the first corner, and see their teacher wave her hand to them as she stood on the piazza.
“My dear Annette, why did you not go in, instead of freezing here in the snow?” she said, and seemed too much occupied in opening the gate to be able to look in her friend’s face, though her disengaged hand held that of her visitor closely.
“Oh! I never feel the cold in this still weather,” Annette said lightly. “Besides, I do not like to enter alone a deserted house. There is no one here but the servant. Mamma Gerald is with us, and we persuaded her to stay to dinner. I wish you would go up too.”
They had entered the house. Miss Pembroke paused a moment at the foot of the stairs, then led the way up to her chamber. Evidently she knew that there were tidings for her, and suspected that they were not good. “I shall not dine at home to‐day,” she said, catching sight of the servant.
But she did not, apparently, mean to go out, for she deliberately removed her wrappings, and put them away; then seated herself beside her friend, and looked at her with an expression that bade her speak out her errand, whatever it might be.
“It has gone as badly as it could,” Annette said quickly.
“He is, then, found guilty?” Miss Pembroke asked, without the slightest sign of emotion.
Annette nodded. “He is convicted on circumstantial evidence. It is as plain as such evidence can be, but not plain enough to shake my hope, at least, of his innocence. Lawrence is utterly disgusted and indignant with the whole affair. He says he would at any time head a party to rescue Mr. Schöninger. He felt so angry that he wouldn’t stay at home after coming up to tell us, but started off again somewhere.”
“Is he sentenced?” Miss Pembroke asked, speaking with some difficulty.
“Yes!” And since the eyes fixed on her still waited for more, Mrs. Gerald added: “There is a year solitary.”
Honora’s eyes opened a little wider. “A year solitary?” she repeated.
“Why, yes, dear. You know it is the custom to give a year of solitary imprisonment before....”
Miss Pembroke put her hand up, and seemed to clear some mist from before her eyes. “Before what?” she asked in a confused way.
“Dear Honora!” exclaimed her friend, “need I say what?” And then started up with a little cry; for Miss Pembroke, without a word or sign of warning, had slipped out of her chair, and fallen heavily to the floor.
It is not necessary to make an outcry because a lady has fainted, unless there is no person of sense present. Annette Gerald did what was needful without calling for help, and her efforts were soon rewarded. The cold hand she held suddenly became warm and moist as the recoiling wave of life rushed back, and in a few minutes Miss Pembroke was able to rise from the floor, and go to the sofa. Annette sat by her in silence, now and then touching her hand or her hair with caressing fingers, and waited for her to speak.
If she had to wait some time, it was not because her friend had not returned to full consciousness. Miss Pembroke was too strong and healthy to creep back to life, even after so violent and unaccustomed an attack. It was, perhaps, the first time she had ever fainted, and she was left almost ignorant of what had happened to her; but of the cause she was not a moment in doubt. It came back clearly on the first wave of returning consciousness. She lay with her eyes closed, and strove to set her mind in order again, and set it so firmly that this terrible and entirely unexpected fact should not again derange its action. She had not once anticipated such a conclusion. Her thoughts had occupied themselves with the horrors of the accusation, and the worst result she had looked for was that, though the prisoner would doubtless be acquitted, he would not be able to shake off the disgrace of having been suspected, and would go out into life branded with an ineffaceable mark—a mark which his name would bear even in her own mind. She had said to herself that, pity him as she might, she desired never to see him again, not because she believed him capable of any great crime, but because his image would always be associated with painful recollections, and because his dignity had been soiled by such circumstances and associations. Now, however, he was presented to her mind in quite a new light, more pitiful, yet with a pity far more shrinking and remote from its object. In this woman, confidence in, and obedience to, authority was an instinct; and as she contemplated the decision of the law against Mr. Schöninger, she began to look on him somewhat as a Catholic looks upon those whom the anathema of the church has separated from the fellowship of the faithful, “so that they are not so much as to say to them, God speed you.” A silent and awful distance grew up between them.
After a while, she sat up, and began calmly to put her hair and dress in order.
“It is very terrible, Annette, and we may as well try to put it quite out of our minds,” she said. “We can do nothing, that I see, but pray for his conversion. I thank you for coming alone to tell me of this, for I would not have had any other person see me so much affected by the news. People imagine things and tell them as facts, and there are many who are capable of believing that I had loved Mr. Schöninger. I never did.”
There were times when Honora Pembroke’s soft eyes could give a look that was almost dazzling in its firm and open clearness; and as she pronounced these last words, she looked into her companion’s face with such a glance.
Mrs. Gerald rose and walked somewhat impatiently to the window. She had hoped and expected to startle Honora into some generous expression of interest in Mr. Schöninger, and to win from her some word of pity and kindness which, repeated to him, would be like a drop of cooling water in his fiery trial.
“I am sure I should never imagine you capable of having an affection for any one whom the whole world does not approve,” she said rather pointedly, having snatched the curtain up and looked out, then dropped it again. “If you can put the subject out of your mind, and remember Mr. Schöninger only when you are praying for the heathen, so much the better for your tranquillity. I am not so happily constituted. I cannot dismiss the thought of friends because it troubles me, nor because some person, or many persons, may believe something against them.”
“What would you have me do?” Miss Pembroke asked rather loftily, yet with signs of trouble in her face.
“Nothing, my dear, except that you put on your bonnet and come home to dinner with me,” Annette replied, assuming a careless tone.
Miss Pembroke hesitated, then refused. It would be certainly more sensible to go if she could, but she felt herself a little weak and trembling yet, and disinclined to talk. The best distraction for her would be such as she could find in reading or in prayer, if distraction were needed. She felt, moreover, the coldness that had come over her friend’s manner more than Annette was aware, and for a moment, perhaps, wrung by a cruel distrust of herself, envied her that independence of mind and ardor of feeling which could at need strengthen her to face any difficulty, and which rendered her capable of holding firmly her own opinions and belief in spite of opposition. Miss Pembroke seemed to herself in that instant weak and puny, not because she did nothing for Mr. Schöninger, but because, had she seen the possibility or propriety of her doing anything, she would have lacked the courage. It was a relief to her, therefore, to find herself alone, though, at the same time, she would gladly have had the support and strength which her friend’s presence could so well impart to one in trouble.
The door closed, and she looked from the window and saw her visitor walk briskly away without glancing back.
“I wish I had some one,” she murmured, dropping the curtain from her hand, and looking about the room as if to find some suggestion of help. “I am certainly very much alone in the world. Mother Chevreuse is gone; I cannot go to F. Chevreuse about this; and the others jar a little with me.”
And then, like a ray of soft and tender light coming unexpectedly to show the path through a dark place, came the thought of Sister Cecilia and her gentle companions. They had asked her to come to them, if they could ever be of any use to her, and Sister Cecilia particularly had spoken to her with an affectionate earnestness which was now joyfully remembered. “I cannot hope to be to you what Mother Chevreuse was, but I would be glad if I could in a little, even, supply her loss to you. Come to me, if you ever wish to, quite freely. You will never find me wanting in sympathy or affection.”
And she had scarcely been to them at all!
She dressed herself hastily, and called a carriage. It was too late to walk there, for already the sun was down; and it was nearly two miles to the convent.
The sharp air and brisk motion were restorative. They brought a color to her face, and sent new life through her weakened frame. Besides, when one feels helpless and distressed, rapid motion gives a relieving impression that one is doing and accomplishing something, while, at the same time, it saves the necessity of effort.
Sister Cecilia was in her own room, writing letters, her little desk drawn close to the window for the light. She looked out when she heard the carriage, and beckoned Miss Pembroke to come up‐stairs then hurried to meet her half way. She had guessed her visitor’s motive in coming, and it needed but a glance into her face to confirm the thought.
“Come into my chamber, dear,” she said. “It is the pleasantest room in the house at this hour. See what a view I have of the city and the western sky. I sit here to write my letters, and every moment have to leave off to admire the beautiful world outside. It is a sort of dissipation with me, this hour of sunset. This arm‐chair is for you. It is my visitor’s chair. I should feel quite like a sybarite if I were to sit in it.”
She seated Honora by the window, drew up her own chair opposite her, and went on talking cheerfully.
“I sometimes think that all the earth needs to make it heaven is the visible presence of our Lord and his saints. It would require no physical change. Of course I include the absence of sin. There is so much beauty here, so much that we never notice, so much that is everyday, yet miraculous for all that. Look at that sky! Did you ever see such a rich air? It needs the cold purity of the snow to keep it from seeming excessive.”
A long, narrow cloud had stretched itself across the west, and, drawing to its bosom the light of the sun, now hidden behind the hills, reflected it in a crimson flood over the earth. Through this warm effulgence fell, delicately penetrating, the golden beams of the full moon, changing the crimson of the air to a deep‐opal color, and putting faint splashes of gilding here and there beside the rosy reflections.
“How the earth draws it in!” said the nun dreamily. “It never wastes the beauties of the sky. It hoards them up, and gives them out long after in marbles and precious stones. Did it ever occur to you to wonder how those bright things could grow in the dark underground? I used to think of it in Italy, where I first saw what marbles can be. I remember my eyes and my mind wandering to that as I knelt before the Confession of S. Matthew the Evangelist, in Santa Maria Maggiore, where the walls of the atrium glow with marbles; and the lesson I learned from it was this: that even though pains and sorrows of every kind should intervene between us and the joy of life as thickly as the clay, and rock, and turf had intervened between the sunshine of heaven and the dark place where those marbles took form and color, we could yet, if we had real faith, be conscious of all the glory and joy taking place overhead, and reproduce them for ourselves down in the dark, and make that beauty more enduring because we were in the dark. At the sunny surface, the brightness slips off and shadows succeed; but that solid jewel in the depths is indestructible. My dear”—she turned to her companion with a soft suddenness which warmed but did not startle—“do you remember S. Paul’s recommendation, ‘always rejoice’? It is possible. And now tell me why you do not.”
Her eyes, beaming with religious enthusiasm and tenderest human affection, searched frankly the pale face before her, and her hand was laid lightly on Miss Pembroke’s arm. No reserve nor timidity could stand before her. They melted like snowflakes beneath the heavenly summer of her glances. Honora told freely and simply what had distressed her.
How sweet is the friendship of one true woman for another!—sweeter than love, for it is untroubled, and has something of the calmness of heaven; deeper than love, for it is the sympathy of true natures which reflect each the entire being of the other; less selfish than love, for it asks no merging of another into itself; nobler than love, for it allows its object to have other sources of happiness than those it can furnish; more enduring than love, for it is a life, and not a flame.
“But can you not see, my dear,” the nun said presently, “that it would have been better if you had not had any friendly intercourse with him, even though this terrible thing had never happened? The injunction not to be unequally yoked with one another refers, I think, to all ties as well as to marriage. The gulf is too wide between the Christian and the Jew to be bridged over for familiar friendship. It is too wide for anything but prayers to cross. Once admit any intercourse with unbelievers, and you peril your faith; and, besides, you cannot set a barrier firmly anywhere when the first one is down. I have heard it said that this Jew loved you, and even fancied it possible that you would marry him.”
“People ought not to say such things!” exclaimed Miss Pembroke, blushing deeply.
“People ought not to have the chance to say such things, my dear girl,” replied the nun. “It was offering you an insult when he offered you his hand.”
“O dear Sister! is not that too severe?” expostulated Honora. “Setting aside what has happened since, should I not recollect, when a man makes me such an offer, what his intention is, and how the subject looks to him? And cannot I refuse him, and see that it is impossible for me to do otherwise, yet feel kindly toward him, and wish him well, and believe that he has meant to show me both affection and respect?”
“Honora,” said the Sister, “if any man had struck your mother, then turned to offer you his hand, would you not have recoiled from him in disgust and indignation?”
“Surely I would!”
“And is your God and Saviour less dear and sacred to you than your mother?” the other pursued. “Can you allow your thoughts to dwell with kindness and complacency on one who blasphemes the crucified Redeemer, and calls him an impostor? Because you have not heard this man talk against your faith, you forget what he must think of it. I tell you they mock at him, these Jews, and they call us idolaters. And what could he think of you, when, knowing that you adore Christ as God, he asked you to be the wife of one who would laugh, if he did not rave, when he saw you making the sign of the cross? He must have thought your faith so weak that he could in time make you renounce it. And the reason why he thought so was because he saw you receiving him in a friendly way, as if friendship were possible between you. I speak of what he was. What he is, we have nothing to do with.”
Miss Pembroke’s eyes were down‐cast. “When you place the subject in that light, I am forced to think myself all in the wrong,” she said. “But most people do not think in that clear, positive way. They act on an inherited motive, and their beliefs are moss grown, as it were.”
“They have no faith,” was the quick reply.
Honora was silent a moment, then said, with some hesitation: “I am always afraid of being uncharitable and illiberal, and perhaps I err the other way.”
“My dear, it is easy to make a mistake there, and very dangerous too,” the Sister replied with decision. “What is charity? You must first love God with all your heart; and if you do that, you will be very shy of the enemies of God. You cannot serve two masters. As to liberality, there is no greater snare. It is not liberal to squander the bounty and honor of God; it is not ours to spend. It is not liberal to praise those whom he condemns, and bless those whom he curses. It is not liberal to love those who refuse to acknowledge and obey him, and to contradict what he has clearly said. Or if these things are liberal, then liberality is one of the worst of vices, and one of the most futile too. Why, if I were to desire the reputation of being generous, and, having nothing of my own, should take what is not mine and give it away, I have stolen, it is true, and I have obtained a reputation that I do not deserve, but, also, I have enriched some one; whereas, if I put my hand into the treasury of God, and try to bestow on another what he has denied, the hand comes out empty. I have insulted the Almighty, and have not benefited any one. Do not suffer yourself to be deceived by sounding phrases. What are these people who talk so much of liberality? Are they liberal of what is theirs to give? Far from it. Do they give away all they have to the poor? Do they forgive their enemies? Do they give up their pride and vanity, and spend their lives in laboring for the needy? Quite the contrary. They are lavish only of what is not theirs to give. It has been reserved for those whom they call bigots to show an ardent and unsparing liberality in sacrificing their private feelings, their wealth, their comfort, their reputation, their lives even, for the glory of God and the saving of souls. There is the true liberality, my dear, and all other is a snare.”
“I wish I could shut myself up with God, and get into the right path again. I am all wrong.”
“Why not come here and make a retreat?” the Sister asked.
It was so precisely and unexpectedly what she needed that Honora clasped her hands, with an exclamation of delight. “The very thing! Yet I had not thought of it. When may I come? Very soon? It was surely an inspiration, my coming here to‐night.”
Immediately her troubles began to lift themselves away, as fogs begin to rise from the earth even before the sun is above the horizon. The certainty of approaching peace conferred a peace in the present. She was going to place herself in the hands of Him who can perform the impossible.
Sister Cecilia had supplied her need perfectly. Hers was not one of those impassioned natures which need to be, soothed and caressed into quiet. A certain vein of gentle self‐sufficiency, and a habit of contentment with life as she found it, prevented this. She wanted light more than warmth.
It was already dark when they went down‐stairs, and since, from economy, the nuns did not have their entries lighted, the two had to go hand‐in‐ hand, groping their way carefully, till they came to a turn in the lower passage; and there, from the open door of the chapel at the further end, a soft ray of light shone out from the single lamp that burned before the altar. By daylight both chapel and altar showed poor enough; but in the evening, and seen alone by this small golden flame, the imperfections were either transformed or hidden. Dimly seen, the long folds of drapery all about gave a sense of seclusion and tenderness; one seemed to be hiding under the mantle of the Lord; and the beautiful mystery of the burning lamp made wonders seem possible. Kneeling there alone, one could fancy all the beautiful legends being acted over again.
Sister Cecilia and Honora, still hand‐in‐hand, knelt in the entry the moment they saw that light.
“You remember the chalice of the bees?” whispered the nun.
“I never come here in the evening, and see that bright little place in the darkness, but I think of that sweetest of stories. And I would not be surprised to hear a buzzing of bees all about the sanctuary, and see the busy little creatures building up a chalice of fine wax, as clear as an alabaster vase with a light inside.”
They walked slowly and noiselessly by the door, and, as they passed it, saw beside the altar what looked almost like another lamp, or like that illuminated vase the Sister had fancied. It was the face of Anita, which reflected the light, her dark dress rendering her form almost invisible. That face and the two folded hands shone softly, with a fixed lustre, out of the shadows. No breath nor motion seemed to stir them. The eyes fixed on the tabernacle, the lips slightly parted where the last vocal prayer had escaped, she knelt there in a trance of adoration. But one could see, even through that brightening halo and sustaining peace, that a great change had taken place in the girl during the last few weeks. Her face was worn quite thin; and the large eyes, that had been like dewy violets bending ever toward the earth, burned now with a lustre that never comes from aught but pain.
“How the innocent have to suffer for the sins of the guilty!” sighed the nun, as she led her visitor away. “That child has received a blow from which I am afraid she will never recover. She is like a broken flower that lives a little while when it is put in water. Her conscience is at rest; she does not say now that she is sorry for having had anything to do with that trial; she does not complain in any way. She seems simply broken. And here she comes now! She has heard our steps, and is afraid she has stayed too long in the chapel.”
The young girl came swiftly along the passage, and held out her hands to Miss Pembroke. “I knew you were here,” she said, “and I was waiting to hear you come down. Mother told me I might come and say good‐by to you.”
“But you have not yet said a word of welcome,” Miss Pembroke replied, trying to speak cheerfully.
“Oh! yes, when I saw you come, I welcomed you in my own mind,” she replied, without smiling.
Honora waited an instant, but Anita seemed to have nothing to say except the good‐by she had come for. “Our whispering did not disturb your prayers?” she asked, wishing to detain her a little longer.
“Oh! no.” She glanced up at Sister Cecilia, as a child, when doubtful and lost, looks into its mother’s face, then dropped her eyes dreamily. “I do not say any prayer but ‘amen.’ Nothing else comes. I kneel down, thinking to repeat, perhaps, the rosary, and I am only silent a while, and then I say amen. It is as well, I suppose.”
Honora kissed the child’s thin cheek tenderly. “Good‐by, dear,” she whispered softly. “Say one amen for me to‐night.”
She went out into the still and sparkling night, and was driven rapidly homeward. On her way, she passed the prison, and, looking up, saw over the high wall a light shining redly through the long row of grated windows. It was a painful sight, but no longer unendurable. “No prayer but amen,” she repeated. “What does it matter by what road we go, so long as we reach heaven at last; whether it be in peaceful ways, or through sin and suffering?”
Another carriage drew up at the gate as she reached home, and Mrs. Gerald descended from it, having just returned from Mrs. Ferrier’s.
“Upon my word, young woman!” Annette’s voice called out from a pile of furs in the carriage. “We have been saying our good‐nights in whispers, and hushing the very sleigh‐bells, so as not to disturb your slumbers; and here you are out driving.”
Her bright and cheerful voice broke strangely into Honora’s mood. Was there, then, anything in the world to laugh about, anything that could possibly excite a jest?
“Good‐night, Mother Gerald!” the young woman added. “Don’t stand there taking cold. And if you do not see Honora in the house to‐night, make up your mind that I have carried her off with me, as I shall try to. Come here, my dear, and give an account of yourself. Where have you been?”
As Honora reached the carriage door, young Mrs. Gerald leaned out and caught both her hands. “Come with me to find Lawrence,” she whispered hurriedly. “He has not been home yet, but he will go for you.”
Though recoiling from the errand, Miss Pembroke would not refuse it. She stepped into the carriage, and suffered herself to be driven away. It was the first time such a service had ever been demanded of her. “Where is he? Do you know?” she asked.
“Oh! yes. He is only playing billiards,” the young wife answered, and a sharp sigh seemed to cut the sentences apart. “It is the first time for a long while, and I want to break it up in the beginning. John went down and told him that his mother was dining with us, but Lawrence paid no attention.”
She leaned back a little while without saying a word as they sped over the smooth snow. “It seems a shame to drag you into such an affair, Honora,” she said presently; “and I had not thought of it till I saw you, and then it came like a flash that you could help me. What I want of you is to write on a card that you and I are waiting for him. John will carry it in to him, and he will recognize your writing.”
The horses were drawn up before a large marble hotel, lighted from basement to attic. The shops underneath were all closed; but from three broad lower windows a bright light shone around the heavy lowered curtains, and in the stillness they could hear the faint click of billiard‐balls. There was no sound of voices from inside, and it was impossible to know if the players were few or many.
Honora wrote hastily, by the moonlight, as she was bid, “Annette and I are waiting for you,” and John took the card.
“Why doesn’t he go to this door?” she asked, seeing the man disappear around a corner of the house.
“You child!” said her friend compassionately; “are you so innocent as to suppose that any one can walk into one of those places when he pleases? These charming réunions are held with locked doors, and one has to have the password to go in.”
Honora was silent with indignation. To her mind, Lawrence could not do his wife a greater injury than in allowing her to become acquainted with such places, and she was half disposed to be vexed with Annette for not leaving him to himself, and refusing to be drawn into any objectionable scenes and associations.
Annette divined the last thought, and replied to it.
“It is impossible for a wife to be scrupulous as to the means by which she shall withdraw her husband from danger,” she said with quiet coldness. “They are one. If he is soiled, she cannot be quite clean, except in intention, unless she is very selfish; and then her intention is not good, which is worse yet. Of course she should be careful not to draw others into her affairs.”
“You must know far better than I, Annette,” her friend said quickly, feeling as though she must have spoken her thought. “At all events, you cannot be called selfish. And, indeed, if the angels of heaven were over‐ scrupulous with regard to their associations, we should lack their guardianship.”
Here John appeared, walking briskly round the corner of the hotel, and immediately after Lawrence Gerald came to the carriage‐door.
“You here, Honora!” he exclaimed. “What could have induced you?”
“We had better not ask each other questions,” she replied coldly. “It is late. Will you come home with us?”
She drew back into a corner, and made room for him, with an air almost of disgust; for the moonlight showed his face flushed with drinking, and, as he spoke, a strong odor of brandy had been wafted into her face.
He was too much confused for anything but simple obedience, and in rather a stumbling way took the seat assigned him.
“Honora has been driving this evening, and is sleepy and chilly,” his wife made haste to say in explanation, inwardly resenting her friend’s hauteur, and regretting having brought her. “She is going home to stay all night with us. I am sure you did not know how late it is.”
She furtively picked up his hat, that had fallen off, went on talking lightly, to cover his silence or prevent his saying anything senseless, and tried in every way to screen him from the scorn that she had exposed him to. He leaned back in the carriage, and took no notice of her. The presence of Honora Pembroke had confounded him, and he had just sense enough left to know that he could not keep too quiet. What had stirred her to interfere in his affairs he could not guess, for Annette had always so screened him that it never occurred to him she could have asked her friend to come. Had he known, it would have fared hard with his wife. He had, however, prudence and temper enough to keep him from making any disagreeable demonstration. John was at hand when they reached home, and, as the ladies went hastily up the steps and into the house, they were not supposed to be aware that it was his arm which enabled Mr. Gerald to go in without falling. Then Mrs. Ferrier stood in the open drawing‐room door, and, under cover of her welcome to Honora, he managed to get up stairs unnoticed, fortunately for all.
For the truce between Annette’s husband and her mother was over, and their intercourse was assuming a more unpleasant character than ever. Now, it was nearly always Lawrence who was the aggressor. Even when Mrs. Ferrier showed a disposition to conciliate, he found something irritating in her very good‐nature. Partial as his mother was, she was moved to expostulate with him after witnessing two or three of these scenes.
“You ought to recollect her good intention, Lawrence, and try to overlook her manner,” she said. “I know well she does not show very good taste always; but you cannot criticise a woman in her own house.”
“I am seldom allowed to forget that it is her house,” returned the son rather sulkily.
“At least, my dear, do not provoke her into reminding you of that,” Mrs. Gerald urged.
Lawrence wished to stand well with his mother, and had, indeed, improved in his behavior toward her in proportion as he had grown more impatient with Mrs. Ferrier. He seemed now to regret having answered her unpleasantly. “If you knew, mother, all the little annoyances I have to bear from her, you wouldn’t blame me so much,” he said coaxingly. “With other frets, she has a habit of asking any of us who may be going out where we are going, and when we are coming back; and Annette has humored her in that till she thinks she has a right to know. Teddy always tells her, too; but then he tells lies. That makes no difference, though, to her. Well, I have broken her of asking me when I am alone; but if Annette is with me, she asks her. Can’t you imagine, mother, that it would get to be irritating after a while? It makes me so nervous sometimes that I have really skulked out of the house slyly, as if I had no right to go. And then, when I come in, she will say, ‘Why, where have you been, Lawrence? I didn’t hear you go out.’ If a door opens anywhere, she goes to see who is about. I believe if I should get up in the middle of the night, and try to creep out of the house without being heard, I should see her head poked out of the chamber‐door before I’d got half‐way down‐stairs. Then she peers and finds out everything. Annette and I had a bottle of champagne the other night in our room, and the next morning she spied out the bottle, and spoke of it. I suppose she heard the cork pop when I drew it. You never looked after me half so closely when I was a little boy, always in mischief, as she does now I am a man. She knows what my clothes cost, every rag of them, and how many clean collars and handkerchiefs I have in the week.”
“I am sure she need not trouble herself about how much your clothes cost, since you pay for them yourself,” Mrs. Gerald said, her face very red. “And if she grudges you clean collars, send your linen home, and I will have it washed there.”
“Oh! she has no such thought,” Lawrence made haste to say. “She doesn’t mean to be cross about any of these things, but only prying. She wants to overlook everybody and everything in the house, and it annoys me. I only tell you so that you may not wonder if I do speak out now and then about some small thing. Then what do you think she has proposed about my going into business?”
“Well?” Mrs. Gerald said uneasily.
“She has selected a partner for me.”
His mother waited for an explanation.
“And who should it be but John!”
“John who?” asked Mrs. Gerald wonderingly, trying to recollect some notable person of that name among her youthful acquaintances.
“Why, I do not know that he has any other name. The big English fellow who lets you in here, and waits at dinner, and opens and shuts the carriage‐ door.”
“What! you do not mean the footman?” Mrs. Gerald cried.
Her son laughed bitterly. “I asked her if he was to open the shop‐door, and carry parcels, and if he would have the same sort of cockade on his hat, and she got quite angry about it. She says he has saved a good deal of money, and means to go into business, and she thinks I couldn’t have a better partner. What do you think of it, mother?”
Mrs. Gerald leaned back in her chair, and put her hand up to her face, half hiding a blush of vexation.
She was not willing to tell Lawrence all she thought of the matter. “What does Annette say?” she asked.
“Annette vetoed the proposal up and down. I’ve heard nothing of it for a week or more. I only told you because you seem to think me too difficult.”
Mrs. Gerald sighed. She had hoped to see her son busy and contented after his marriage, and she found him only more idle and dissatisfied than before. With the partiality of a mother, she tried still to find him unfortunate instead of blameworthy, and, rather than see any fault in him, looked only at his difficulties, refusing to recollect how easily he could now overcome them all. She fancied erroneously that to suggest to him that his trials had a good deal of brightness to relieve them, would be to show a lack of sympathy and tenderness, and that the best way to comfort him was to let him see that his annoyances showed in her eyes as misfortunes. It was a mistake which, in her over‐sensitive affection, she had always made with him.
His wife acted otherwise. “There is no use in anticipating evil, Lawrence,” she said. “Perhaps that may be the means of bringing it about. Fortune loves a smiling countenance. As to mamma’s plans and wishes with regard to John, the best way for us is to assume that it is impossible she should ever regard him as anything but a servant. And, indeed,” she concluded with dignity, “I think she never can do otherwise.”
But this assumption did not prevent young Mr. Gerald from going privately to F. Chevreuse, and begging him to interfere and try to bring her mother to reason; and perhaps Mrs. Ferrier was never so near being in open revolt against her pastor as when he undertook to show her that there were certain social distinctions which it was her duty to recognize and respect.
“I think, F. Chevreuse,” she said stiffly, “that a priest might do better than encourage pride and haughtiness.”
“He could scarcely do worse than encourage them,” he replied calmly; “and it is precisely against these sins that I would put you on your guard. Persons are never more in danger of falling into them than when they are complaining of the pride of others, and trying to reform what they conceive to be the abuses of society and the world. The only reformer whom I respect, and who is in a thoroughly safe way, is that one who strives to reform and perfect himself. When he is perfect, then he can begin to correct the faults of others. Moreover, the established customs and distinctions of society have often a good foundation, and are not lightly to be set aside. What would you say if your chambermaid should insist on sitting down to dinner with you and driving out with you?”
Mrs. Ferrier found herself unprepared to answer. Indeed, no lady could be more peremptory and exacting than she was with all her servants except John. She was not yet ready to explain that her generalities all had reference to one exceptional case.
“But John is not at all a common servant,” she ventured to say. “He never lived out but once before, and then it was with a very grand family in England; and he wouldn’t have come here with us, only that he wanted to look round a while before setting up business. I had to coax him to come, and give him the very highest wages. And Annette did all she could to persuade him.”
“John is an excellent man, I am sure,” F. Chevreuse replied. “I hope he will succeed in whatever good work he attempts. But we were speaking of your daughter’s husband. My advice is that he return to the office where he was before, and remain there till something better presents itself. I do not approve of any large and showy enterprise for him. It would not suit him. In that office his salary would be enough to render him quite independent, and leave him a little to lay up.”
“Lay up!” repeated Mrs. Ferrier, with an incredulous circumflex.
“He will put one‐half his income into his wife’s hands, and she can do as she will with it,” F. Chevreuse replied. “Annette has spoken to me about it, and it is his own proposal. She will put the money in bank every month. What he keeps will be his own affair, and what she takes will be a small fund for the future, and will relieve a little that painful feeling he must have in living here without paying anything. It is decidedly the best that can be done at present. Besides,” he added, seeing objection gathering in her face, “it may save you something. The young man is not to blame that he is not rich, and he is quite ready to take his wife home to his own mother, and Annette is quite willing to go, if necessary. They might live there very happily and pleasantly; but as, in that case, Lawrence would be the one on whom all the expense would fall, I presume you would make your daughter an allowance which would place her on an equality with him.”
Mrs. Ferrier was forced to consent. Nothing was further from her wish than to be separated from her daughter, not only because she was more than usually solicitous for Annette’s happiness, and wished to assure herself constantly that her husband did not neglect her, but because she had an almost insane desire to watch Lawrence in every way. Nothing so piques the curiosity of a meddlesome person as to see any manifestation of a desire to baffle their searching. The annoyance naturally felt and often shown by one who finds himself suspiciously observed is always taken by such persons as a proof that there is something wrong which he is desirous to conceal. Moreover, John had let fall a word of advice which she was not disposed to disregard.
She had been complaining of her son‐in‐law.
“You had better let him pretty much alone, ma’am,” the man replied. “You’ll never drive him to being a sober fellow, nor industrious. Scolding doesn’t mend broken china. I have a plan in my mind for them which I will tell you after a while, when the right time comes. He wouldn’t thank me for it now; but by‐and‐by, if he doesn’t drink himself to death first, he may think my advice is worth listening to.”
John had a quiet, laconic way which sometimes impressed others besides his mistress, and she did not venture to oppose him openly, nor even to insist on hearing what his mysterious plan might be.
It was, altogether, a miserable state of affairs, one of those situations almost more unbearable than circumstances of affliction, for the cares were mean, the annoyances and mortifications petty; and the mind, which is ennobled by great trials, was cramped and lowered by the constant presence of small troubles which it would fain disregard, but could not. For, after all, these small troubles were the signs of a great one threatening. It was plain that Lawrence Gerald, if not stopped, was going to kill himself with drinking. His frame was too delicately organized to bear the alternate fierce heats and wretched depressions to which he was subjecting it, and more than one sharp attack of illness had given warning that he was exhausting his vitality.
F. Chevreuse came upon him suddenly one day when he was suffering from one of these attacks. The priest had called at Mrs. Ferrier’s, and, learning that Lawrence was in his room, too unwell to go out, went up‐stairs to him somewhat against Annette’s wish.
“I will take the responsibility,” he said laughingly. “The boy wants me to wake him up; you women are too gentle. You are petting him to death. No, my lady, I do not want your company. I can find my own way.”
And accordingly Lawrence opened his eyes a few minutes later to see F. Chevreuse standing by the sofa where he lay in all the misery of a complete physical and mental prostration.
The priest drew a chair close to him, taking no notice of the evident disinclination of the young man to his society. “Now, my boy,” he said, laying a hand on the invalid’s shrinking arm, “are you dosing yourself up to go through the same bad business again? What has come over you? Come! come! Wake up, and be a man. You are too good to throw away in this fashion.”
The young man turned his face away with a faint moan of utter discouragement. “I am not worth bothering about. I’ve played my stake in life, and lost, and what is left is good for nothing. Besides, if I tried, I shouldn’t succeed. Why do you trouble yourself about me? I tell you that what there is left of me isn’t worth saving.”
He spoke with bitter impatience, and made a gesture as if he would have sent his visitor away.
F. Chevreuse was not so easily to be dismissed.
“The devil thinks differently,” he remarked, without stirring. “He is fighting hard for you. Rouse yourself, and join with those who are fighting against him! You have an idea that, because you have made mistakes and committed sins, you must lay down your arms. Nonsense! There are all the lives of the saints against you. Some of them never began to try till they found themselves on the brink of destruction. You fancy, too, that because you and your family have had misfortunes, and because you have not been very successful in trying to become a rich man, you must stand humbly aside for cleverer men, and ask no favors. You’re all wrong. God made you, and put you into the world, just as he has the rest of us, and you have a right to the light and air, and to repair your mistakes and repent of your sins, without troubling yourself too much about what people say and think, and to do the best you can in worldly affairs without being humbled or ashamed if you can’t fill your pocket with money quite as readily as some can. Let the money go, but don’t let your manliness go, and don’t throw away your soul. You are talking nonsense when you say that you are worthless. Respect yourself, and compel others to respect you, Lawrence. Nerve yourself, call up your good resolutions, and ask God to help you. Despair is a crime!”
The young man put his arm up, and covered his face with it, as though to hide an emotion he was ashamed of; or, perhaps, because the light hurt his eyes. “If I could forget everything, and sleep for a month without waking, I don’t know but I could begin again and try to do better,” he said faintly. “But there is no life in me now for anything.”
F. Chevreuse rose immediately. “Rest, then, if that is what you need,” he said kindly. “Rest, and forget everything painful. If any tormenting thought comes, say a little prayer, and tell it to begone. Don’t drink any liquor to quiet your mind. Let Annette get you some gentle sedative. I’ll tell her to keep everybody away from you, and let you lie here six months, if you want to. But when you are better, come to see me.”
He was standing, ready to go, but waited for an answer. There was none. He spoke more earnestly.
“You know well it is for the best, Lawrence; and I want you to promise to come to me when you are able to go out, before you go to see any one else.”
“Well, I will. I promise you.”
But the promise was given, apparently, only to get rid of the subject, and F. Chevreuse went away feeling that he had accomplished nothing.
Annette went directly to her husband, somewhat timid as to the reception she might meet with; but if he was displeased at having had a visitor, he did not seem to hold her responsible. He took the glass containing the opiate from her hand, and set it down beside him. “After a while,” he said. “And now I am going to lock every one out of the room, and try to go to sleep. If I want anything, I will ring.”
She began to make some little arrangements for his comfort, but, perceiving that they irritated him, desisted, and left him to himself. As she went along the passage, she heard the lock click behind her. Oddly enough, this little rudeness gave her a feeling of pleasure, for it showed that he felt at home there, and claimed a right to all that was hers.
“If only he will sleep!” she thought.
He did not sleep. His first act was to throw away the opiate she had brought. “Some such dose as they give to teething babies, I suppose,” he muttered. Then he seated himself on the sofa, and, clasping his hands over his head, as if to still the bursting pain there, remained buried in thought. One could see that he was trying to study out some problem in his mind, but that difficulties presented themselves. More than once his eyes wandered to a little writing‐desk opposite him, and fixed themselves there. “It would remove the only obstacle,” he said; “and yet how can I? That would be going over it all again. Now I am not to blame, but only unfortunate; but if I do that....”
It was pitiable to see a young face so distorted by pain of mind and body, and to see also that the pain was stinging him into still more angry revolt.
He began pacing up and down the room, and, in his doubt and distress, seized upon one of those strange modes of solving the question in his mind which, trivial as they are, most persons have at some time in their lives had recourse to.
“If there is an odd number of squares in the carpet from corner to corner of the room, I will do it,” he said, and began to count them. The number was odd. But, apparently, he wished to make assurance doubly sure, for he next counted the stucco ornaments on the ceiling. “Odd again! Now for the third trial.” He glanced about in search of the object which was to decide his fate, and spied a large patriarchal fly that had crawled out of its winter hiding‐place, and was clumsily trying its wings.
“If he can fly over that cord, I will go,” he said; and since this was the last trial, and the poor insect seemed to him something like himself at that moment, he watched with breathless interest its efforts to surmount the great obstacle of the curtain‐cord that lay in its path. The little creature attempted to crawl over, but, losing its balance, tumbled off and lay helplessly on its back. The young man set it carefully and tenderly on its feet once more. “Now do your best,” he said. “You and I have made a failure, but we will try once again.”
Inspired, it would seem, by this encouragement, the fly put out its wings, gathered all its energies, and flew over the cord, tumbling ignominiously on its back again at the other side.
Lawrence Gerald did not give himself the trouble to assist again his fallen friend, but went promptly to pull the bell‐tassel. He had thrown off all responsibility, and, choosing to see in these trivial chances the will and guidance of some intelligence wiser than his own, resolved instantly on following where they pointed.
“I dare say I shall stumble like that clumsy fly, but I shall succeed in the end. At all events, I will try. I can’t and won’t stay here any longer. It is torment for me, and I don’t do any one else any good.” He seemed to be arguing with some invisible companion. “They will be better without me. Besides, it was not I who decided. I left it to chance. If it was....”
His wife entering interrupted the soliloquy. She found him lying down, as she had left him, but with a color in his face that would have looked like returning health, if it had not been a little too deep.
He stretched his hand out, and drew her to the footstool by his side. “Now, Ninon,” he said coaxingly, “I want you to be a good girl, and arrange something for me so that I shall not be annoyed by questions nor opposition. It’s nothing but a whim; but no matter for that. I want to go to New York for a day or two, by myself, you know, and I must start to‐ night. I’m not going to do any harm, I promise you. I feel a good deal better, and I believe the little journey will cure me. The train starts at eight o’clock, and it is now five. It won’t take me half an hour to get ready. Will you manage it for me, and keep the others off my shoulders?”
She consented promptly and quietly, asking no questions. If he should choose to tell her anything, it was well; if not, it was the same. She knew the meaning of this coaxing tenderness too well to presume upon it. It meant simply that she could be useful to him.
“What is he going to New York for?” demanded Mrs. Ferrier, when Annette made the announcement down‐stairs.
“Mamma, you must not expect me to tell all my husband’s business,” the young woman answered rather loftily.
Poor Annette did not wish to acknowledge that she knew no more of her husband’s affairs or motives than her mother did.
“Then he will want his dinner earlier?” was the next question, Mrs. Ferrier having, by an effort, restrained her inclination to make any further complaints.
No; all he wanted was luncheon, and his wife had ordered that to be carried up‐stairs.
“I suppose I am not allowed to ask how long he will be gone?” remarked the mother.
“Oh! certainly, mamma; but that is not quite settled,” Annette said pleasantly. “It depends on circumstances. A few days, probably, will be the most.”
When Annette went up‐stairs again, her husband was dressed for his journey. A valise, locked and strapped, lay on the sofa at his elbow, and his wrappings were strewn about. She observed that the oak writing‐desk, that had not been opened for months, to her knowledge, had been opened now. The key was in the lock, and the lid was slightly raised. She noticed, too, that a little inner cover had been torn out, and lay on the carpet, broken in two.
“The carriage will be round in a few minutes,” she said. “I thought you would want plenty of time to buy your ticket and get a good seat.”
He merely nodded in reply, but looked at her wistfully, as if touched by her ready compliance with his wishes, and desirous to see if any pain or displeasure were hidden under her quietness.
But he detected no sign of any such feelings. She was merely examining his fur gloves, to make sure that the buttons were on, looking narrowly to the strap of his cloak, busying herself in the most commonplace manner with his preparations.
“Shall I go to the station with you?” she asked carelessly.
“I wish you would.” His tone was quite earnest.
Annette had arranged it so that they went down‐stairs while her mother was at dinner; and though the dining‐room door had been left ajar, before Mrs. Ferrier had time to leave her seat or call out, the two had left the house, and were driving through the clear starlight.
“Annette,” her husband said suddenly, “I’ve been thinking that if I had a boy, I would bring him up very strictly. No matter how much I might wish to indulge him, I would resist the wish. He should be taught to control himself from fear, if he had no other motive. He should be made hardy, and healthy, and active. I wouldn’t allow him much time to dream and think of himself; he should be kept busy; and I would never let him depend on any one, or sit still and fancy that some great fortune were going to drop into his hands without any effort on his part.”
Mrs. Gerald was silent, astonished by this unexpected lecture, of which she quite well understood the meaning. He would have no child of his brought up as he had been. But why should he speak of it now?
“There’s too much liberty and recklessness among young men,” he went on. “They have too much their own way. Parents ought to see what misery it will lead to. If they don’t care for what the child may make them suffer, they ought to recollect what the child has got to suffer when at last it wakes up to life as it is, and finds itself with ruinous tastes and habits, and not one right idea of anything. I am inclined to believe that it would be better for half the children in the world if they were brought up and trained by the state instead of by their own parents.”
They had reached the station, and he stepped slowly out of the carriage. His wife ventured to ask how long he would stay away.
“Oh! I’ve nothing to do in New York,” he said carelessly. “I shall not stay there more than two or three days.”
He leaned into the carriage, and took her hands. In the darkness she could not see his face, though the light from outside shone in her own; but his voice was tender and regretful, even solemn. “Good‐by, dear,” he said. “You have been only too good to me. May God reward you!”
He bent to kiss the hands he held, then hurried away before she had recovered herself sufficiently to speak.
“What a good‐by it was!” she thought with a startled heart. “One would think he were never coming back again.”
He did come back, though, and sooner than he was expected. He appeared at the door the next evening, nearly falling in, indeed, so that John had to steady him. Annette had run out of the drawing‐room on hearing the servant’s exclamation, but, at sight of her husband in such a state, was about to turn back in disgust.
“It isn’t liquor, ma’am,” John said. “Something’s the matter with him. I told you yesterday that he wasn’t fit to go away. Just push that chair this way for him to sit down in, and bring him a glass of wine.”
“I had to come back,” the young man said. “I was sicker than I thought, and not able to go on. I don’t know how I reached Crichton; and just now, walking up from the station, the cold wind on my forehead made me dizzy. I thought I should feel better to walk. Don’t be frightened, Annette. I can go up‐stairs now.”
He had every symptom of fever, and before morning had grown so much worse that a doctor was sent for, though much against his will.
“I don’t believe in doctors,” he protested. “My mother always cured me when I was sick without sending for a doctor. It’s all guess‐work. They only know what you tell them, and they sit and stare at you, and ask you questions when you don’t want to speak a word. I hate to have a doctor look at me.”
Mr. Gerald was indeed a very difficult patient for both doctor and nurse, irritable beyond expression, and nervous to the verge of delirium. At first no one was allowed near him but his mother. Then he found her tender sadness depressing, and insisted on having his wife in her place. Finally he begged John to take care of him.
“Keep the women away, if you don’t want me to lose my senses,” he said to the man. “They start and turn pale or red every time I cough or speak in my sleep; and even when they pretend not to notice, I know they are watching me all the time. I don’t dare to groan, or sigh, or rave, though it would sometimes do me good. I want somebody by me who doesn’t care whether I live or die, but who just does what I ask him to. Let Louis open the door and sit up in the dicky. It’s what he was made for. He’s far more of a footman than you.”
“I wouldn’t give either of you your salt as footman,” John retorted, smiling grimly. But he did not refuse to assume the post of nurse, and, having undertaken it, rendered himself so useful and unobtrusive that the others all gave way to him, and the sick man had no disposition to change again. He seemed a rather hard, dry man, but he was patient, and showed none of that obtrusive attention which is sometimes more troublesome to an invalid than neglect. If Lawrence groaned and tossed about, the attendant took no notice of him; if he said, “John, don’t leave me alone a minute,” the man would sit by his side all night, as untired, apparently, as a man of wood.
So three nights passed, and still the invalid grew worse.
“Wouldn’t you like to have me read some prayers to you, sir?” the watcher asked one night. “They might quiet you.”
Lawrence broke out impatiently:
“Do you think I am going to die? I am not. That is what the women are all crying about. Mrs. Ferrier came in to‐day, and told me she was having Masses said for me, and sprinkled me with holy water till I was drenched. And Bettie, when she sat here to‐day while you were away, rattled her beads and cried all the time, till I told her to get out of the room. That’s the way with some people. The minute a fellow is sick, they try their best to scare him to death. Why don’t you offer to read the paper to me, or tell me an amusing story? Give me the opiate now.”
“The doctor said you were not to take another till twelve o’clock,” the attendant said.
“I don’t care for the doctor’s orders. Give it to me now. I know best what I need.”
“I believe you do,” John said quietly, and gave him the opiate.
But in spite of care, and of a determination to recover, the illness grew upon him, till finally the physicians intimated that if he had any religious preparations to make, they had better not be delayed any longer, for his strength was rapidly wasting, and they could not promise that the result would not be fatal.
Mrs. Ferrier went in great distress to F. Chevreuse.
“What shall we do?” she asked. “After having refused to see a priest, and flown into a rage whenever we mentioned the subject, at last he is willing to have one. But he will see no one but F. O’Donovan; and F. O’Donovan is laid up with gout, so that he cannot move hand or foot. I went out to him to‐day, and I thought that if he could possibly be wrapped up and brought in in a carriage, I would ask him; but, father, I couldn’t have the face to speak of it. The doctor doesn’t allow him to stir out of his room. Even Mrs. Gerald sees that it can’t be done. I’ve begged Lawrence to listen to reason, but he is so set that if he had asked to have the Pope himself, he’d be mad if we didn’t send a messenger to Rome. I could send to L—— for a priest, but that might be too late. He is failing very much. I do wish you’d go once again, father.”
F. Chevreuse had already been twice, and had been denied admittance in terms anything but respectful.
“Certainly I will go,” he said. “I should have come up this evening, if I had not been sent for. Poor Lawrence! I cannot understand why he should have such a prejudice against me.”
It was early twilight when they reached the house, and, as they entered, the lamps burned with a faint ray, as if they, like all sounds and sights in that place, had been muffled.
“You go right up and tell him there’s no one to be got but me,” F. Chevreuse said.
But Mrs. Ferrier shrank back. “He never will consent if I ask him.”
“Annette, then.”
“He won’t allow Annette near him,” the mother sighed.
“John,” said the priest, “will you go up and tell Mr. Gerald that I am here to see him?”
“I wouldn’t venture to, sir,” John answered. “I don’t believe it’s of any use; and if you’d take my advice, sir....”
Even Mrs. Ferrier was scandalized by the man’s presumption, and faltered out an “O John!”
“I will go myself,” F. Chevreuse interrupted. “Stay down here, all you people, and say the rosary for my success. Say it with all your hearts. And don’t come up‐stairs till you are called.”
As he went up, a door near the landing softly opened, and in it stood the young wife with a face so woful and deathlike that tears would have seemed joyful in comparison. She said not a word, but stood and looked at the priest in a kind of terror.
“My poor child!” he said pityingly, “why do you stay here alone, killing yourself with grief? Go and stay with your mother and Honora till I come down.”
She made that painful effort to speak which shows that the mouth and throat are dry, and, when words came, they were but a whisper. “O father!” she said, “don’t go in there if you have any human weakness left in you! You have to be an angel and not a man to hear my husband’s confession. Find some one else for him. He will not speak to you.”
“Never fear, child!” he answered firmly. “I may have human weakness, but I have the strength of God to help me resist it.”
She watched him as he softly opened the door of the chamber where her husband lay, heard the faint cry that greeted him: “Not you! not you!” then the door closed, and she was alone again.
The priest approached the bed, and spoke with gentleness, yet with authority: “F. O’Donovan is too sick to come; and if you wait for another to be sent for, it will be too late. Think of your soul, and let everything else go. In a few hours you may be in the presence of God, listening to your eternal doom. What will you care then, my poor boy, who helped you to loosen from your conscience the sins you have committed in this miserable world? It cannot be because you hate me so much, this unwillingness. Is it because your sins have been so great? There is no sin that I have not heard confessed, I think; and the greater it was, the greater was my comfort and thankfulness that at last it was forgiven. Come, now, I am putting on my stole. Ask the help of God and of our Blessed Mother, and forget who I am. Remember only what I am—the minister of the merciful God—and that I have no feeling, no thought, no wish, but to save you.”
The bed‐curtains made a still deeper shade in that shadowed room, and out from the dimness the face of the sick man gleamed white and wild.
“I cannot!” he said. “You would not want to hear me if you knew. You would never give me absolution. You do not know what my sins are.”
The priest seated himself by the bedside, and took in his strong, magnetic hand the thin and shaking hand of the penitent. “No matter what you may tell me, you cannot surprise me,” he said. “Though you should have committed sacrilege and every crime, I cannot, if I would, refuse you absolution. And I would not wish to. I have only pity and love for you. Tell me all now, as if you were telling your own soul. Have no fear.”
“No priest ever before heard such a confession!” The words came faintly. “You do not know.”
“Confess, in the name of God!” repeated the priest. “The flames of hell are harder to bear than any anger of mine can be. God has sent me hither, and I have only to obey him, and listen to your confession, whatever it may be. It is not my choice nor yours. We are both commanded.”
“Promise me that I shall have absolution! Promise me that you will forgive me!” prayed the young man, clinging to the hand that he had at first shrunk from. “I didn’t mean to do what I have done, and I have suffered the torments of the damned for it.”
“I have no right to refuse absolution when you are penitent,” was the answer. “The person who repents and confesses has a right to absolution.”
“You will give it to me, no matter what I may tell you?”
“No matter what you may tell me,” repeated the priest. “The mercy of God is mighty. Though you should hem yourself in with sins as with a wall of mountains, he can overlook them. Though you should sink in the lowest depths of sin, his hand can reach you. A sinner cannot be moved to call on the name of the Lord, unless the Lord should move him and have the merciful answer ready. I have blessed you. How long is it since your last confession?”
The sick man half raised himself, and pointed across the room.
“There is a crucifix on the table,” he said. “Go and kneel before that, and ask God to strengthen you for a hard trial. Then, if you come back to me, I will confess.”
F. Chevreuse started up, and stood one instant erect and rigid, with his face upraised. Then he crossed the room, knelt before the crucifix, and held it to his breast during a moment of wordless prayer. As a sigh reached him through the stillness of the chamber, he laid the crucifix down, and returned to the bedside.
“In the name of God, confess, and have no fear,” he said gently. “Have no fear!”
The penitent lay with his face half turned to the pillow, and the bed was trembling under him; but he no longer refused to speak.
To the company down‐stairs it seemed a very long interview. Mrs. Ferrier, Mrs. Gerald, and Miss Pembroke, kneeling together in the little sitting‐ room near the foot of the stairs, with the door open, had said the rosary, trying not to let their thoughts wander; then, sitting silent, had listened for a descending step, breathing each her own prayer now and then. Their greatest trouble was over. Evidently F. Chevreuse had overcome Lawrence Gerald’s unwillingness to confess to him; and the three women, so different in all else, united in the one ardent belief that the prayer of faith would save the sick man, and that, when his conscience should be quite disburdened, and his soul enlightened by the comforts and exhortations which such a man as F. Chevreuse could offer, his body would feel the effects of that inward healing, and throw off its burden too.
In an adjoining room sat Louis Ferrier, biting his nails, having been forbidden by his mother to seek distraction in more cheerful scenes. He watched the women while they knelt, and even drew a little nearer to listen to their low‐voiced prayer, but lacked the piety to join them. He was both annoyed and frightened by the gloomy circumstances in which he found himself, and, like most men of slack religious belief and practice, felt more safe to have pious women by him in times of danger.
John had taken his place on a low stool underneath the stairs, and had an almost grotesque appearance of being at the same time hiding and alert. With his head advanced, and his neck twisted, he stared steadfastly up the stairway at the door within which the priest had disappeared.
For nearly an hour there was no sound but the small ticking of a clock and the occasional dropping of a coal in the grate. Then all the waiting ones started and looked out eagerly; for the chamber‐door opened, and F. Chevreuse came out.
One only did not lift her face to read what tidings might be written in the face of him who came forth from the sick‐chamber. Kneeling, almost prostrate on the floor, Annette Gerald still remained where F. Chevreuse had left her. She did not look up even when he paused by her side, and she felt that he was blessing her, but only bowed still lower before him.
“Take comfort, my child,” he said. “You have no reason to despair.”
She looked up quickly into his face, with an almost incredulous hope in her eyes.
He was pale, but some illumination not of earth floated about him, so that she could easily have believed she saw him upborne in air with the buoyancy of a spirit. The heavenly calm of his expression could not be described; yet it was the calm of one who, reposing on the bosom of God, is yet aware of infinite sin and suffering in the world. It was such a look as one might imagine an angel guardian to wear—heavenly peace shorn of heavenly delight.
He motioned her to rise, and she obeyed him. She would not then have hesitated, whatever he had bade her do. His imposing calm pressed her fears and doubts to a perfect quiet. There was nothing possible but obedience.
“Go to your husband, and see if he wants anything,” he said. “Let him be very quiet, and he may sleep. To‐morrow morning I shall bring him the Viaticum; but I think he will recover.”
She went toward the chamber, and he descended the stairs. John, bending forward eagerly, caught sight of his face, and drew quickly back again, blessing himself. “The man is a saint!” he muttered, and took good care to keep himself out of sight.
F. Chevreuse was met in the sitting‐room door by Mrs. Gerald, and the other two pressed close behind her; and when they saw him, it was as though a soft and gentle light had shone into their troubled faces.
“You are afraid that so long an interview has exhausted him,” he said. “It has not. The body is seldom any worse for attending to the affairs of the soul, and a tranquil mind is the best rest. Annette is with him now, and, if left undisturbed, I think he will sleep. Pray for him, and do not lose courage. God bless you! Good‐night.”
Not one of them uttered a word. The questions they would have asked, and the invitation they would have given the priest to remain with them, died on their lips. Evidently he did not mean to enter the room, and they felt that his doing so was a favor for him to offer, not for them to ask.
They glanced at each other as he went away, and Honora Pembroke smiled. “He looks as though he were gazing at heaven through the gate of martyrdom,” she said.
But the next morning, after seeing Gerald, he stopped a few minutes to talk with the family, and still they found that indefinable air of loftiness lingering about him, imposing a certain distance, at the same time that it increased their reverence and affection for him. The familiar, frequently jesting, sometimes peremptory F. Chevreuse seemed to have gone away for ever; but how beautiful was the substitute he had left, and how like him in all that was loftiest!
Lawrence was better that morning, and gained steadily day by day. Nothing could exceed the care and tenderness with which F. Chevreuse watched over his recovery. He came every morning and evening, he treated him with the affection of a father, and seemed to have charged himself with the young man’s future.
“I think you should let him and Annette go to Europe for a year,” he said to Mrs. Ferrier. “It would be better for him to break off entirely from old associations, and have an entire change for a while. His health has not been good for some time, and his nerves are worn. The journey would restore him, and afterward we will see what can be done. I am not sure that it is well for him to live here. When a person is going to change his life very much, it is often wiser to change his place of abode also. The obstacles to improvement are fewer among strangers.”
The young man received this proposal to go abroad rather doubtfully. He would not go away till spring, and was not sure that he would go then. As he grew better in health, indeed, he withdrew himself more and more from the priest, and showed an uneasiness in his society which not all F. Chevreuse’s kindness could overcome.
“You must not shun me, Lawrence,” the priest said to him one day when they were alone. “You have done that too long, and it is not well. Try to look on me as very firmly your friend. Let me advise you sometimes, and be sure that I shall always have your good in view.”
Lawrence had been very nervous and irritable that day, and was in no mood to bear expostulation. “You can’t be my friend,” he replied with suppressed vehemence. “You can only be my master. You can only own me body and soul.”
“That is a mistake,” was the quiet answer. “I do not own you any more than I do others.”
But he patiently forbore to press the question then.
“Encourage him to come to me whenever you think I can benefit him,” he said to Annette. “You can tell best. He has not quite recovered his spirits yet, and it will do no good for me to urge him. Make everything as cheerful as you can for him. It sometimes happens that people get up from sickness in this depressed state of mind.”
“Yes!” she replied, looking down.
She also had grown shy of F. Chevreuse, and seemed willing to keep out of his sight.
But to others she was perhaps rather more gay than they had known her for some time. Her mother found her at once kinder and more exacting, and complained that they seemed now to have become strangers.
“And how nervous you have grown, Annette!” she said. “You crush everything you take hold of.”
“What have I crushed, mamma?” asked the daughter, with a light laugh. “Have I made havoc among your bonnets or wine‐glasses?”
“It isn’t that,” Mrs. Ferrier said fretfully. “You squeeze people’s hands, instead of touching them. Look at that baby’s arm!” They were entertaining a baby visitor.
Annette Gerald looked as she was bid and saw the prints of her fingers on the soft little arm she had held unconsciously, and caught an only half‐ subsided quiver of the baby lip as the little one looked at her, all ready to cry with pain.
Every woman knows at once how she atoned for her fault, by what caresses, and petting, and protestations of sorrow, and how those faint red marks were bemoaned as if they had been the stripes of a martyr.
“If you touch any one’s arm, you pinch it,” the elder lady went on. “And you take hold of your shawl and your gloves and your handkerchief as if somebody were going to pull them away from you. I’ve seen your nails white when you held the evening paper to read, you gripped it so; and as to taking glasses and cups at the table, I always expect to see them fly to pieces in your hands.”
“Isn’t she an awful woman?” says Mrs. Annette to the baby, holding it high and looking up into its rosy, smiling face. “Isn’t Annette a frightfully muscular and dangerous person, you pink of perfection? What shall we do with her? She pinches little swan’s‐down arms, and makes angelic babies pucker up their lips with grief, and sets tears swimming in their blue violets of eyes. We must do something dreadful to her. We must forgive her; and that is very terrible. There is nothing so crushing, baby, as to be forgiven very much.”
And then, after one more toss, the infant was let suddenly and softly down, like a lapful of roses, over the face of its friend, and for an instant Annette Gerald’s eyes were hidden in its neck.
“Come and have a game of chess, Annette,” her husband called out across the room.
“Yes, dear!” she responded brightly; and, setting the child down, went to him at once, a red color in her cheeks.
“Why do some people always notice such little things,” he said frowningly, “and, instead of attending to themselves, watch how people take hold of cups and saucers, and all that nonsense, and fancy that some wonderful chance hangs on your eating butter with your bread, or preferring cheese?”
Annette was engaged in placing the men, and did not look in her husband’s face as she answered in a gentle, soothing voice:
“It is rather annoying sometimes, but I find the best way is to treat the whole jestingly. If one shows vexation, it looks serious. But you can ridicule a person out of hanging mountains by threads.”
He was going to answer, when something made him notice her face. The color was still bright there, but the cheeks were hollow, and dark circles had sunk beneath her eyes.
“Why, you are not looking well,” he said, only just aware of the fact. “Are you sick? Did you get worn out taking care of me?”
She waited an instant till the others, who were leaving the room, should be out of sight, then leaned across the table, careless that her sleeve swept away the two armies she had just placed, and took her husband’s hand in hers, and bowed her cheek to it with a sob.
“O Lawrence! Lawrence!” she whispered.
He made a motion to draw his hand away, but let it remain. “My God! what is the matter with you?” he exclaimed.
She leaned back instantly, and made an effort to control herself. “It must be that I am not well. Don’t mind me. And now, you will have to place your own men, and give me the first move.”
He placed the men, and appeared to be thinking pitifully of his wife as he glanced now and then into her face. “It seems selfish of me not to have taken better care of you, Annette,” he said.
“Oh! you needed care yourself,” she replied lightly. “Don’t imagine that I am sick, though. It is nothing. You didn’t marry me to take care of me, you know, and I am not very exacting.”
She would have caught back the last words, if she could, before it was too late. They escaped her unawares, and were a remembered, rather than a present, bitterness.
He blushed faintly. “Whatever I married you for, I have no desire to exchange you now for any one else,” he said, moving a pawn sideways instead of forward. “If you were ever so poor, I wouldn’t want a rich girl in your place. But then, you know, I’m not sentimental. I never was much so, and it’s all over now. I’m thirty years old, and I feel a hundred. I can’t remember being young. I can’t remember being twenty years of age. I wish to God I could!” he burst forth.
His wife made a careful move, and said, “I have a presentiment that I shall give you check in three moves more. Look out for your queen.”
“My only romance,” he went on, “was about Honora. I thought that I could do and be anything, if she would only care about me. What a stately, floating creature she always was! I used to think she looked as if she could walk on clouds and not fall through. Yes,” he sighed, “that is where she belongs—among the clouds. I never blamed her for not having me; she was too good. I never was worthy of such a woman.”
Slowly, while he spoke, the bright blood had deepened in his wife’s face, and swept over her forehead. Had he been less preoccupied, he would have seen the slight, haughty movement with which she drew herself up. It was only when he had waited a moment for her to move that he glanced up and met her eyes fixed on him with an expression very like indignant scorn.
“By what strange contradiction is it, I wonder,” she said coldly, “that the woman who does most for a man, and is most merciful and charitable toward him, is never too good for him, while the one who scorns him, and will not come a step off her pedestal to save him, is always the ideal woman in his eyes?”
Bitter tears of utter grief and mortification welled up and wet her eyelashes. “In another world,” she said, “when the faults and mistakes of this are set right, you may think yourself worthy of the companionship of Honora Pembroke, and of any union and closeness of affection which that life may know. And then she may be given to you. And, Lawrence, if she would and could consent to take you now, I would not refuse to give you up. At this moment, if, without any wrong, I could see her enter the room, and hold out her hand to you, and tell you that she was ready to take what she had refused, and be to you all that you could wish—if it could be right that it should happen so, I would not utter one word of objection. I would leave you to her without a moment’s hesitation.”
While she spoke, his hand had played tremblingly with the chessmen before him. “So you give me up too,” he said in a low voice.
Her proud face softened. She looked at him, and recollected herself and him, and pity sprang up again and effaced indignation. “I do not give you up, Lawrence,” she said gently. “I cannot and have no wish to; I only spoke of what I would do in circumstances which cannot take place. You had insulted me, without intending to, I know, and it was but natural that I should retort. You know that I would not leave you, nor give you up on any provocation. If you should leave me, I should follow you, because I should feel sure that you would sooner or later need me. We are one. You are mine; and I always stand by my own.”
He looked at her with an expression at once penetrating and shrinking. “You would stand by me, Annette, whatever should happen?” he asked.
“Certainly!” she replied, but did not meet his eyes. “There is no imaginable circumstance which could make me desert you. And now, what of this game? To your queen!”
He made a motion to save his queen, then pushed the board aside. “I cannot play,” he said; “I cannot confine my mind to it. Sing me something. It is long since I have heard you sing.”
He threw himself into a deeply‐cushioned chair, and leaned his head on his hands while she sang to him—knowing, how well! that a cheerful song would not cheer him nor a pious song soothe—of
“Waters that flow With a lullaby sound, From a spring but a very few Feet under ground— From a spring that is not very Far under ground.”
She was a magical singer, surely; and the still, cold melancholy of her tones was the very spirit and essence of death; and, like death, it pierced to the heart. She sang:
“And, oh! let it never Be foolishly said That my room it is gloomy, And narrow my bed. For man never slept In a different bed; And to sleep, you must slumber In just such a bed.”
She turned quickly at a sound behind her, and saw that her husband had buried his face in the cushions of the chair, and was trembling violently. She went to him, but there was no comfort to give nor to receive. Death alone could bring release for him and for her. She could only surround him with her arms while he sobbed with the terrible hysterical sobbing of a man utterly broken down, and let him feel that he was not alone and unpitied.
“I don’t know what ails me,” he said at length, trying to control himself. “Don’t mind me, Annette. My nerves seem to be all unstrung. It must be that fever.”
“Oh! don’t, Lawrence; please don’t!” she said faintly.
He became silent all at once, and it seemed as though a chill had passed over him. She sighed drearily, and smoothed his hair with her hand. “Trust your wife,” she said. “I am by you always.”
“You are not afraid of me?” He seemed to ask the question with a kind of terror.
“My poor Lawrence! no. I do not fear you as much as you do me. Don’t have such fancies.”
She did not explain in what confessional she had learned his secret; in what troubled sleep wherein the unwary tongue speaks; in what more troubled waking, when the eyes and actions speak; or in what sudden suspicion and enlightenment, coming she knew not whence. She told nothing, and he asked nothing, only leaned on her bosom, and wept again as though all his manhood had departed.
“O Annette!” he said, “I dreamed last night that I was a little boy, and that I stood by my mother while she brushed my hair into curls round her finger. I thought I had been away a long distance, and come back again, and I stood quite still, and remembered another childhood before I took that journey. I was so glad to be back—as glad as I should be now if I could go back. Some way I could see that my hair was golden, and that my mother smiled as she brushed it, though I did not look at her. Such dreams are always coming to me now. As soon as I go to sleep, I am a child that has been away and is solemnly glad to be back again. And then I wake, and am in hell!”
She went on smoothing his hair steadily.
“Some time soon the dream will come true,” she said. “Do the best you can. Do justice to the wronged. Come away with me, and we will hide ourselves somewhere in the world, and try to find peace for the days that are left. And by‐and‐by, Lawrence, will come the day when we shall both be as little children again, and all our terrible burdens will slip off. You must do justice to the wronged.”
“In some way, yes!” he said. “I have tried to think. He must be saved. But I cannot go away. Do you remember ever having been afraid to go up‐stairs in the dark, of having felt sure that there was some one behind just ready to grasp you, till you screamed out in terror? It would be like that with me. If once I turn my back on this place, my life will become a crazy flight.”
“The world is wide,” she urged, “and there are safe places enough in it. Besides, money can buy anything; and he has forgiven you. He will screen you.”
“My mother!” he exclaimed. “Who will screen and save her? I will not destroy her, Annette. No, everybody in the world may perish first. I never will destroy my mother. I have done harm enough.”
“He will die in prison,” she whispered. “He has sent to Germany for help, and it did him no good. He has demanded a new trial, and there was not enough to justify them in granting it. He is in a net from which there seems to be no escape. They say that he will die.”
“You want to make me crazy!” her husband cried out, pushing her fiercely from him. “Go away! You are worse than the rest.”
There was no way but to yield to him. “Well, well, Lawrence! I will try to think of some other means.”
The season had reached early spring, and one tempestuous evening in March, as F. Chevreuse sat at home, making up some church accounts, feeling quite sure that he should not be interrupted, he heard the street‐door softly open and shut, then a tap at the door of the room.
“Strange that Jane should leave that street‐door unlocked!” he thought, and at the same moment heard the servant coming up‐stairs from the kitchen. Her quick ear had caught the sound, and she, too, was wondering how she could have omitted to fasten the house up.
The door of F. Chevreuse’s sitting‐room was quickly opened, and shut again in Jane’s face, and a woman stood inside. It was Annette Gerald, wrapped in a large waterproof cape, with the hood over her head.
“Send Jane away!” she said hurriedly. “Don’t let her in here! Don’t let her see me!”
Here Jane opened the door and put her head in, eyeing curiously the visitor, whose back was turned to her. “I’m sure I shut the door and bolted it, father,” she began, and took a step into the room. “I....”
“No matter! I’ll see to it,” the priest said, waving her away.
“Oh! well, only I’m sure I locked it. And perhaps you’d like to have this lamp....”
“Jane!” he exclaimed, standing up, “when I dismiss you, you are to go.”
Jane retired, grumbling.
“She will listen at the door,” his visitor said.
F. Chevreuse flung the door open, and discovered his domestic lingering about the head of the stairs, affecting to examine an imaginary hole in the carpet.
“Once for all, Jane,” he said, “if you wish to remain in my house, you must not presume, nor show any curiosity about my affairs, nor the affairs of those who come to me. Go down into the kitchen, and shut the door, and stay there.”
Jane, albeit not very subordinate, was completely awed by a display of authority such as she had never seen before. She did not venture to resist nor complain, but returned without delay to her own place.
F. Chevreuse waited till he heard the kitchen‐door close with somewhat unnecessary force, then returned to his visitor.
“What has brought you out to‐night?” he asked in a low voice.
“Let me get my breath!” She was almost gasping. “Jane gave me such a fright that my heart is in my mouth.”
He set a chair for her, and seated himself near, waiting till she should be able to speak. “You had better shake the snow off your cloak,” he said.
She made a gesture of impatient refusal.
The rude mantle had slipped aside, and revealed a strangely contrasting toilet beneath. There was a shining of lustrous pale‐green silk with delicately‐wrought laces, a glimmer of emeralds and diamonds, and glimpses of pink roses set in bunches of green grass.
“I have been to the prison,” she whispered.
F. Chevreuse frowned, and dropped his eyes.
“The man is a fool!” she exclaimed. “He will not be saved. I had bought one of the guard. It was the hour for supper, and the man let me in, and promised that for ten minutes I might do as I pleased, and he would see and know nothing. I went into the corridor, and found the cell‐door unlocked. Everything was ready, was perfect; for the storm would prevent any loungers from coming about the prison or the guard‐room, and would give an excuse to any one who wanted to muffle up and cover their face. I had a large cloak all ready. But he would not go. He will not fly as though he were guilty, he said.”
“What did you say to him?” the priest inquired, without looking up.
“I told him that he could save himself, and prove his innocence afterward. I said that may be the real criminal would some day confess, and then he could come out before the world more than justified. I said that we loved and pitied him, and were unhappy at the thought of him there, and would do anything for him. He was to be secreted in our house till a way could be got for him to escape. I had left the carriage just round the corner, and John would have thought that it was Lawrence who got in with me. Mamma and Louis have gone to the President’s dinner, and Gerald was to watch and let us in, and afterward come out again with me. But, no; the stubborn simpleton would not be saved. I went on my knees to him, and he was like a rock. Then the watchman knocked at the door, and I had to run. The other guard were coming in from their supper, and, if I hadn’t hid behind a door, they would have seen me face to face. Oh! why did he not consent?”
She wrung her hands slowly till the jewels on them twinkled in the lamp‐ light.
F. Chevreuse still sat with his eyes downcast. “My poor child!” he said, “your pity for this man has led you into an almost fatal error. Never attempt such a thing again. It is not for you to cast yourself under the wheels of Juggernaut. I command you to try no such experiment again. Pray to God. That is all that you can do.”
“Yes, I know that now,” she answered despairingly. “I am utterly helpless. It is your turn. You must save him.”
“What can I do?” he asked wonderingly. “I have tried all I could, but in vain, as you know. I have left no stone unturned, and the only good result I can see is a probability that the sentence will not be executed to the utmost, and that in time something may happen to bring his innocence to light.”
“In time!” she repeated. “Have you seen the man? Why, I did not know him till he spoke. He will not live. No, there must be no delay. What you must do is this: You must go to the authorities, and say that you know who the true criminal is, but cannot tell, at least not now, and that Mr. Schöninger is innocent.”
The priest looked in her face with a gaze of calm surprise. “You mistake,” he said. “I do not know who the criminal is. If I did know, I should immediately go to the authorities, and denounce him.”
She looked him steadfastly in the face, but his calmness baffled her. He showed only a cool and dignified surprise.
“Oh! these men,” she muttered. “I feel as if I were being ground between stones.”
She stood, and the shining folds of her dress, that had been gathered up in her arms, dropped about her, and lay on the floor.
“Have you been walking through the snow in a ball‐dress?” the priest asked. “Have you anything to protect your feet?”
“Oh! I have fur shoes, and my carriage is near by,” she said absently, and seemed to be considering what to do next.
“Go home now, my child, and try to put all this wild work out of your mind,” F. Chevreuse said with emotion. “Perform your own duty simply and in the fear of God, and do not try to take the burden of others on those shoulders of yours. Go home and warm yourself well, or you will be sick.”
“Oh! I am not going home,” she said, her glance caught by the sparkling of a bracelet on her arm. “To‐night is a dinner and ball given to the President, you know; and since he is going away to‐morrow it couldn’t be put off. It must be time I was there, and I have to go home after Lawrence.”
“What! you will go to a dinner and ball to‐night?” exclaimed the priest. “You feel yourself fit for company?”
She smiled faintly. “I shall doubtless be the gayest of the gay. There is not much danger of my feeling sleepy.”
“Well, women are wonderful beings,” remarked F. Chevreuse to himself.
The young woman drew her wrappings about her, and gathered up again her flowing skirts, looking to see that no stain had fallen on them; and, in arranging her toilet for a new scene, she appeared to arrange her mind also. A gentle tranquillity settled upon her face, and her head was slightly lifted, as though she were already the centre of observation to a brilliant throng.
“But you are looking very pale,” the priest objected.
“That always mends itself,” she answered carelessly. “When I have need of color, it usually comes.”
Some way, in this firm self‐control, he found her more pitiful than in any abandonment of sorrow. She accepted the situation uncomplainingly, since she could do no more, and steeled herself to bear what she must.
“God bless you!” he said, when she was ready to go.
Her face stirred a little at the words. It seemed that she would rather not listen to anything of serious kindness then. Yet at the door she hesitated, and turned back. For once it was necessary that she should speak.
“I have no difficulty about company or anything but silence and darkness,” she said hurriedly, looking down. “I like a crowd, though I am always on the lookout for something to be said I will not wish to hear. When he and I are alone, I turn cold and creeping, for fear he should speak; and I keep close and cling to him, lest, if I should get a little way off, I should grow afraid of him. If we were to be separated for one week, I think we would never again dare to approach each other. But recollect”—she lifted her eyes for one quick glance—“I have told you nothing.”
“Certainly not,” he replied gravely.
In a moment she had gone out, and was running through the flying snow to find her carriage, left in the next street to baffle some possible watcher.
Young Mrs. Gerald was quite right in saying that she should probably be the gayest of the gay that night; and if any other person appeared to enjoy the scene more than herself, it was, perhaps, her husband.
“A very happy couple,” remarked a sympathizing friend to Mrs. Ferrier.
“Oh! yes,” the mother sighed, nodding her head. “He is always gay when he is doing no good, and as glum as a spade when he is behaving himself. I was in hopes that his sickness would sober him, but he is wilder than ever. You should see him drive my horses!”
Her son‐in‐law, passing by at that moment, caught the last words, and immediately joined the two ladies. “I know that Mrs. Ferrier is complaining of me,” he said gaily. “She will never forgive me for putting her precious bays out of breath. But the truth is, I am trying to save their lives; for they are so fat now that you could drive them to death at six miles an hour.”
“O Lawrence!” Annette said at his elbow—she was always hovering near when he spoke with her mother—“they say that Strauss, the composer, you know, is really coming to America next year, and will lead his own waltzes at the concerts.”
“And, by the way, Ninon,” said her husband, “is that the Strauss who always was? I have had a waltz‐writing, violin‐playing Strauss in my mind ever since I was born, and he had lived ages before, and was something like Mephistopheles, to my fancy. Perhaps he is the Wandering Jew.”
“Speaking of Jews—” began Mrs. Ferrier’s companion.
And here Annette drew her husband away, hanging on his arm, smiling and whispering to him, the brightest, prettiest woman in the room.
“And yet last night he was off somewhere, and she sat up for him till a quarter before two o’clock,” Mrs. Ferrier said, looking after them. “I looked to see what time it was when I heard him come in. It is wearing her out. I shall not allow her to do it again.”
It was easier for Mrs. Ferrier to say what should not be than to find herself obeyed, for the next night her daughter again kept vigil. “All I ask of you, mamma, is to let me attend to my own business,” she said decidedly.
So “mamma” toiled up‐stairs to bed, and the daughter lowered the lights, took out her rosary, and began her nightly task of fighting away thought, and trying to fix her mind on the future.
After an hour or two, John, the footman, put his head in at the door. “You’d a great deal better go to bed, ma’am, and leave me to let Mr. Gerald in,” he said. “I’ve something that will keep me up to‐night, and it’s a pity two should lose their rest. It is past twelve now.”
She felt faint and weary, and sleep was beginning to steal over her. “I believe I will go, then,” she said. “I have not slept for three nights.”
She went, with a dragging step, over the bright carpet roses. “What would become of him if I were to break up?” she thought.
When she had gone, the man put out the hall gas, opened the doors of the vestibule, and set himself to wait. He meant to have speech of Mr. Gerald that night without Mr. Gerald’s wife for a witness or any likelihood of other interruption.
About one o’clock he heard unsteady steps on the sidewalk, and, as he went to the door, Lawrence Gerald came reeling up the steps, and almost fell into his arms.
“Come into the sitting‐room, sir, and lie down on the sofa. It will be easier than going up‐stairs,” he said.
When he had been drinking, the young man was easy to lead, and he now submitted readily, and was in a few minutes in a deep sleep.
John locked the street‐door, shut the door of the sitting‐room behind him, and, seating himself, waited for the sleeper to wake.
A nervous man might have grown uneasy during that watch. There is something not always pleasant in hearing one’s own breathing, and the faint occasional sounds in floor and wall, and at one’s elbow, even, which, in the stillness of night, seem like the movements of unseen beings drawing near. Besides, there is a terror in the thought that we are going to terrify another.
But this man was not nervous. He was made of wholesome though rough material, and he had a strong will. He had been waiting for others to act, and had waited in vain, and now he had made up his mind that it was for him to act. Justice was strong in him, where he had the ability to perceive what was just, and he would no longer see the innocent suffer for the guilty. Besides, he reflected, there was no one else who could speak. Self‐defence, or the defence of one dearly loved, or a yet more sacred motive, sealed the lips of all who knew. His lips were not sealed, and justice commanded him to speak.
Three o’clock came and went, and still the young man slept. The other sat and studied him, noting how slight and elegant was his form, how fine the hands and feet, how daintily he was dressed and cared for.
John was stout and heavy, a man of delf, and the size of his boots had once provoked from Lawrence a very provoking quotation:
“What dread hand formed thy dread feet?”
and more than once the young man had mockingly pushed his two white hands into one of John’s gloves.
This sleeper’s hair was glossy, scented, as soft as floss, and curled in many a wilful ring; John’s was coarse and straight, and he wisely wore it closely cropped. Lawrence Gerald’s face was delicately smooth; the lines melted harmoniously into each other; his brows were finely drawn; the teeth, that showed through his parted lips, were pearly white; and as he lay with closed eyes, the lashes made two exquisitely curved shadows on his cheeks. John’s face was plain, he had no eyebrows nor eyelashes to speak of, his eyes were more for use than ornament, and his nose went about its business straight from end to end, stopping rather bluntly, and utterly ignoring that delicate curve which made this man’s profile so perfect.
This man? This drunkard, rather, John thought; this spendthrift, and gambler, and robber. This murderer!
The nerves of the serving‐man stiffened; and if he had felt any relenting, it was over. The insolent daintiness before him stirred all his bitterness. It was for such men as this that humbler honest folks were to bow and serve, and women’s hearts to break!
It must be nearly four o’clock, he thought, and glanced round at the clock. Looking back again, he met Lawrence Gerald’s eyes fixed on him steadily, and he returned the look with as immovable a stare. In that instant the meaning of each leaped out of his face as clearly as lightning from a cloud. Young Gerald’s eyes began to shrink in their depths, and still the other held them; he drew slowly back on the sofa, cowering, but unable to turn away.
And here John’s eyes released him, for another object drew them up to the mirror that hung over the sofa. Reflected there he saw that the door was partly open, and Annette Gerald’s white face looking in. She came swiftly gliding toward them, silent as a ghost, and melted, rather than fell, on to her knees before her husband, between him and the other. Her arms and bosom hid him from that relentless gaze which told that all was known, and her own face turned and received it instead, firmly and almost defiantly.
“Well, John?” she said. “Speak out what you have to say.”
“This can’t go on any longer, ma’am,” he whispered; “and I should think you would have the sense to see that. If you’re willing to let an innocent man suffer for him, even that won’t serve you long, for he will betray himself yet. You must go.”
“Yes, yes, we will go!” she replied hurriedly. “It is the only thing to do. We will go right away.”
“I will give you three weeks to get out of danger,” he went on; “or, if that isn’t enough, a month. But you mustn’t lose a day. I won’t see that man down in the prison die for nothing. After the four weeks from to‐ morrow morning are up, I shall go to F. Chevreuse with a paper that your husband will write. He may tell his own story, and make what excuses he can for himself, and it shall be for everybody to read. F. Chevreuse will carry the paper to the judges, and take that man out of prison. That is all I’ve got to say,” he concluded. “Four weeks from to‐morrow morning!”
Annette made no further reply, only watched the man out of the room, and locked the door after him. Then she returned to her husband, and, for the first time since she had entered the room, looked in his face. He was lying back with his eyes closed, as though from faintness. She brought him a glass of wine, knelt by his side while he drank it, then took his hand in hers.
“There is no other way, Lawrence,” she said.
He was sitting up now, but kept his eyes closed, as if he could not meet her glance, or could not endure to look upon the light. He answered her quietly, “Yes, it is the only way.”
“And now,” she continued, “since there is no time to lose, you will tell me the whole, and I will write it down. You can sign it afterward.”
He nodded, but did not speak. The blow had fallen, and its first effect was crushing.
She brought a writing‐table close to the sofa, and seated herself before it. As she arranged the paper, pens, and ink, heavy tears rolled down her face, and sigh after sigh struggled up from her heart; but she did not suffer them to impede her work—scarcely seemed, indeed, conscious of them. Everything was arranged carefully and rapidly. “Now, Lawrence!” she said, and seemed to catch her breath with the words.
He started, and opened his eyes; and when he saw her, with eyes uplifted, making the sign of the cross on her forehead and bosom, he knelt by her side, and, bowing his head, blessed himself also with the sacred sign.
Then he began his confession, and she wrote it as it fell from his lips. If now and then a tear, not quickly enough brushed away, fell on the paper, it only left its record of a wife’s grief and love, but did not blot out a word of the clear writing.
When the last word had been written, and the name signed, a long ray of white morning light had pierced through a chink in the shutter, and lay across the red lamp‐light.
Annette Gerald took the pen from her husband’s hand. “My poor Lawrence!” she said, “you and I have got to be saints now. There is no medium for us. Pleasure, ease, all hope of earthly peace—they are far behind us. We must go out into the world and do penance, and wait for death.”
“Annette,” he exclaimed, “let me go alone! Give me up now, and live your own life here. I will never come near you again.”
She shook her head. “That is impossible. The only consolation I can have is to stay with you and give you what little help I can. You could not live without me, Lawrence. Don’t speak of it. I shall stand by you.”
She opened the shutters and the window, and let the fresh morning light into the close room and over their feverish faces.
The town was waking up to a bright sunshiny day, its many smokes curling upward into the blue, its beautiful vesture of snow still clinging here and there, all its busy life beginning to stir joyfully again. They stood before the window a minute looking out, the same thought in both their minds. Then the wife leaned forward. “Good‐by, Crichton!” she said, and took her husband’s hand. “Come, Lawrence! we have no time to lose. The sword has been set over the gate.”
A Looker‐Back. III. The Temple.
“Those bricky towers, The which on Themme’s brode aged back do ride, Where now the studious lawyers have their bowers: There whilom wont the Templar Knights to bide.”
Perhaps there is no place in London that appeals to so many instincts of the soul as the Temple. Religion, valor, romance, and literature have all lent enchantment to the place. Built and inhabited by the Knights Templars, the resort of kings and nobles of highest lineage, the home of generations of law‐students and literary men like Burke, Johnson, Goldsmith, and Lamb, and associated with Shakespeare and many a romance, who could enter its quiet alleys, and ramble about its courts and gardens, without being stirred to the depths of his soul? Fact and fiction are here so mingled together that one is unable to disentangle them, and the visitor says, as he roams about: Here was the place of Lamb’s “kindly engendure”; yonder Eldon lived; up in that third story was Arthur Pendennis’ sick‐chamber, where his mother and Laura went to nurse him; in that court were Goldsmith’s chambers, where he loved to sit and watch the rooks; and in those gardens walked Sir Roger de Coverley, discussing the belles, with patches and hoops, strolling across the green once used by the Red‐Cross Knights for martial exercises; and yonder is the ancient church, patterned after that of the Holy Sepulchre at Jerusalem.
The church must be visited first, for it is the most beautiful and perfect in existence that belonged to the Knights Templars, and stood next in rank to their temple in the Holy City. Within half a century it has been restored to something of its ancient glory, and is substantially the same as when consecrated by Heraclius, Patriarch of Jerusalem, in the year 1185. The entrance is a beautiful Norman arch, deeply recessed, with elaborately wrought mouldings, and columns between which are figures of saintly forms, some with rolls in their hands, and some in the attitude of prayer. These stone faces at the entrance of churches are a wonderful check to worldly thoughts. They communicate something of their own solemnity and ineffable calmness. Through this door‐way used to pass the valiant knights of the cross who came here with their banner—the glorious Beau‐seant—to have their swords blessed on the altar before departing for
“Those holy fields Over whose acres walked those blessed feet Which, fourteen hundred years ago were nail’d For our advantage on the bitter cross.”
This is the entrance to the Round Church. A circular tower rests on six clustered columns of marble, each composed of four shafts, which run into each other at base and capital so as to form but one. And around these is a circular aisle. Six pointed arches spring from these beautiful pillars, above which is an arcade of Norman arches so interlaced as to form a combination of round and pointed arches—a fine example of the transition to the Gothic style of architecture. Parker says this Round Church is one of the best authenticated instances of the earliest use of the pointed arch in England, though the choir of Canterbury Cathedral is usually considered so. Over this arcade are six clerestory windows, between which rise slender shafts that support the groined ribs of the roof.
At the sides of the circular aisle are sedilia formed of masonry projecting from the wall, with slightly arched recesses, in the spandrels of which are grotesque faces in alto‐relievo, carven in stone, each of which has an extraordinary character of its own, and is well worth studying. Some are distorted with pain; some look up appealingly; here the tongue protrudes and the eyeballs are glaring; there is a look of unutterable horror; one sets his teeth hard as an unclean animal bites his ear; another shows two fang‐like teeth, while a vicious‐looking creature is gnawing the corner of his mouth, and the furrowed brow expresses awful agony; here is one with his long tongue run out sideways; there is another bellowing with his mouth wide open, the nostrils dilated and the forehead all puckered up; some have ultra‐Roman noses, some sharp, and others flat and broad, as if reflected from a convex surface. One grins and shows all his teeth broad and uniform. The sexton says these faces are supposed to depict the tortures of the suffering souls in purgatory. Grotesque as most of them are, there is a certain awful solemnity, even in the most hideous, that is impressive. Thank God! a few are calm and serene, with their crown of sorrow on their heads. An arcade, similarly decorated, has been found in the ruined Temple Church at Acre, and at the famous Castel Pellegrino, erected by the early Templars to command the shore‐road from Acre to Jerusalem.
The first thing that strikes the attention on entering this solemn church is the group of old Crusaders lying on the pavement with their legs crossed, in token that they had served in the Holy Land.
“The knights are dust, And their good swords are rust, Their souls are with the saints, we trust.”
These are not effigies of the Knights Templars—for they do not wear the mantle of that order—but knights associated with them in defence of the Holy Land. One of them represents William Marshall, Earl of Pembroke, and Protector of England during the minority of Henry III., one of the greatest warriors and statesmen of the middle ages. Matthew Paris describes his burial here in 1219. Here he lies, carven in stone, clad from head to foot in armor of chain‐mail, in the act of sheathing his sword. His legs are crossed, for he had borne the cross of Prince Henry, eldest son of Henry II., to Jerusalem. On his feet are spurs, and at his side a shield with the lion rampant of the Marshalls. This stout‐hearted supporter of the Plantagenets was one of the council appointed by Richard Cœur de Lion to govern the kingdom during his absence. It was he, together with Americ, Master of the Temple, who at last induced King John to sign the Magna Charta, and he accompanied the king to Runnymede.
He it was, too, that, while protector in the next reign, offered pardon to the disaffected barons, and confirmed the Magna Charta. He also extended its benefits to Ireland, and commanded the sheriffs to read it publicly at the county courts, and enforce its exact observance.
It was this same Earl of Pembroke whom Shakespeare represents pleading so eloquently for the enfranchisement of the unfortunate Prince Arthur:
“If what in rest you have, in right you hold, Why then your fears (which, as they say, attend The steps of wrong), should move you to mew up Your tender kinsman, and to choke his days With barbarous ignorance, and deny his youth The rich advantage of good exercise? That the time’s enemies may not have this To grace occasions, let it be our suit That you have bid us ask his liberty: Which for our goods we do no further ask, Than whereupon our weal, on you depending, Counts it your weal, he have his liberty.”
This great statesman was a benefactor to the Templars, and, when he died, his body was borne here in state and buried with great pomp on Ascension Day, 1219.
Here, too, are the monumental effigies of his sons—William Marshall, the younger, one of the bold barons of Runnymede, to whom we are indebted for the Magna Charta; and Gilbert Marshall, “the flower of the chivalry of that time,” who married a Scotch princess, and went to the defence of the sacred tomb.
Although the elder Marshall was just enough to extend the benefits of the Magna Charta to Ireland, we are told that, during his campaign in that country, he seized the lands of the Bishop of Fernes, and kept them, in spite of a sentence of excommunication. After the earl’s death, the bishop came to London, and laid the case before the king, who, alarmed for the weal of his old guardian’s soul, accompanied the bishop to his tomb.
Matthew Paris says that, as they stood by it, the bishop solemnly apostrophized the departed earl: “O William! who lyest here interred and held fast by the chain of excommunication, if those lands which thou hast unjustly taken from my church be rendered back to me by the king, or by your heir, or by any of your family, and if due satisfaction be made for the loss and injury I have sustained, I grant you absolution; but if not, I confirm my previous sentence, so that, enveloped in your sins, you stand for evermore condemned to hell!”
However alarmed the king might have appeared about his guardian’s soul, restitution was not made, and the stout old bishop, who seems to have been soundly orthodox as to the temporal rights of the church, denounced the earl and his race in right Scriptural phrase: “His name shall be rooted out in one generation; and his sons shall be deprived of the blessing, Increase and multiply. Some of them shall die a miserable death; their inheritance shall be scattered; and this thou, O king! shalt behold in thy life‐time; yea, in the days of thy flourishing youth.”
This fearful prophecy was fulfilled in a remarkable manner. The five sons of the protector died one after another without issue in the reign of Henry III., and the family became extinct.
There are eight of these monumental effigies lying in the centre of the Round Church. It is to them Butler refers in his Hudibras, speaking of the profanation of the place by the lawyers of his time and their clients—
“That ply in the Temple under trees, Or walk the Round with knights of the posts About the crossed‐legged knights, their hosts.”
In the round walk of this church there is on one side a coped tombstone, in the style of the XIIth century, of a prismatic, coffin‐like shape. On the other side
“You see a warrior carven in stone Lying in yon dim aisle alone, A warrior with his shield of pride Cleaving humbly to his side, And hands in resignation prest Palm to palm on his tranquil breast.”
This is Lord Robert de Ros, another of the bold barons of Runnymede—a knight whose career was one long romance. Beautiful in person, the successful wooer of the Princess Isabella of Scotland, and “one of those military enthusiasts whose exploits form the connecting link between fact and fiction, between history and the fairy tale,” one cannot look at his figure here without interest and emotion.
“O death! made proud with pure and princely beauty.”
In fact, there is a wonderful air of mystery and romance about the whole of this solemn church. Here the young aspirant to knighthood used to come to keep his long vigil before the altar, and here gathered the Crusaders before setting off for the tomb of Christ. And chief among them the valiant Templars, in their long, flowing mantles, “whose stainless white their hearts belied not,” with the mystic cross upon their breasts, which Pope Eugenius had authorized them to wear.
“And on his brest a bloodie crosse he bore, The deare remembrance of his dying Lord, For whose sweet sake that glorious badge he bore, And dead (as living) ever him adored. Upon his shield the like was also scor’d, For sovereign hope which in his helpe he had; Right faithful true he was in deed and word; But of his cheer did seem too solemn sad, Yet nothing did he dread, but ever was ydrad.”
We can never believe that, as a body, the early Templars were not worthy of their white garments. A bishop of Acre, who frequently accompanied them on their military expeditions, said of them: “Lions they are in war, gentle in the convent, fierce soldiers in the field, hermits and monks in religion; to the enemies of Christ ferocious and inexorable, but to Christians kind and gracious. They carry before them to battle a banner, half black and white, which they call Beau‐seant—that is to say, in the Gallic tongue, Bien‐seant, because they are fair and favorable to the friends of Christ, but black and terrible to his enemies.”
While this vision of the past was crossing the inward eye, a strain of music, as of some holy chant, came floating softly out from some inner recess, sweetly adding to the enchantment. It was only the choir practising in the vestry, but it was just far enough away to give a certain mystery and softness to their psalmody that was delightful at that vesper hour. One needs a service for such memories, and alone in this rotunda of the Templars, where
“Watching and fast, and prayer, and penance, And sternly nursed affections,”
once heavenward soared, the pilgrim knelt awhile in the dim round aisle to say a Requiescant for those that once worshipped here according to God’s appointed ordinances, and then went his way—in pace.
The next day brought him back to complete his survey. Churches like this, in imitation of that of the Holy Sepulchre, were frequently built in the time of the Crusades. The Milanese built one in their city after returning from the holy war. Peter Adornes made three journeys from Flanders to Jerusalem to obtain an exact copy of the Holy Sepulchre for the church at Bruges; and at Abbeville, the beautiful Church of the Holy Sepulchre was built on the very spot where Godfrey of Bouillon and the Crusaders assembled before going to Palestine. In it was built a tomb before which the solemn Office of the Holy Sepulchre was celebrated annually. Sometimes the Crusaders brought back with them some of the dust of the Holy City. At Pisa, and in Sicily, there were cemeteries filled with that sacred soil. It seemed less repulsive to lie for ever down in dust perhaps the Saviour’s feet had trod.
The London temple has therefore something of the sacred character of the Orient about it; that is, the Rotunda. And it was dedicated to that holy Oriental maiden whom all nations unite in calling Blessed. The following inscription is over the door of entrance:
“On the 10th of February, in the year from the Incarnation of our Lord 1185, this church was consecrated in honor of the Blessed Mary, by the Lord Heraclius, by the grace of God Patriarch of the Church of the Resurrection, who hath granted an indulgence of fifty days to those yearly seeking it.”
Heraclius had come to Europe to preach the Third Crusade. In Paris he was the first to officiate at Notre Dame. His special mission to England was to induce Henry II. to fulfil his vow of going to the succor of the Holy Land by way of penance for the murder of Thomas à Becket. Finding his efforts in vain, the patriarch at last said to the king: “Hitherto thou hast reigned gloriously, but hereafter thou shalt be forsaken of Him whom thou at this time forsakest. Think on him, what he hath given to thee, and what thou hast yielded to him again; how first thou wert false to the King of France, and, after, slew that holy man, Thomas of Canterbury, and, lastly, thou forsakest the protection of Christ’s faith.” The king, vexed at such frankness, said: “Though all the men of my land were one body, and spake with one mouth, they durst not speak to me such words.”
“No wonder,” replied the patriarch, “for they love thine and not thee; that is to mean, they love thy goods temporal, and fear thee for loss of promotion, but they love not thy soul.” And so saying, he bowed his head before the king, and continued: “Do by me right as thou didst by that holy man, Thomas of Canterbury; for I had rather be slain of thee than of the Saracens, for thou art worse than any Saracen.”
The king, restraining himself, said: “I may not wend out of my land, for mine own sons will rise up against me when I were absent.”
“No wonder,” responded the patriarch, “for of the devil they come, and to the devil they shall go;” and so departed, as Abbot Brompton records, “in great ire.”
In the wall of the Round Church is a winding staircase of stone leading to the triforium. Part way up it opens into what is called “the penitential cell”—a recess in the thick wall four feet and a half long, and two and a half wide, with two squints to admit air and light, and enable the penitent to witness the divine service. It would seem, however much an active knight might chafe in such restricted quarters, as if he had much to console and support him in looking down into such a church. In the triforium are gathered together monuments that were formerly scattered about the church. Among them is a tablet to Edmundus Gibbon, an ancestor of the historian, who died in 1679.
The Round Church opens by three lofty arches into the rectangular church, consisting of a nave and two aisles, formed by clustered pillars of marble, supporting a groined vault covered with rich arabesques. This church is a beautiful specimen of the early English style. The lawyers of Cromwell’s time whitewashed the pillars, and did all they could to obscure the beauty of the building; but now it is restored to somewhat of its former richness. It is paved with tiles bearing the arms of the Outer and Inner Temple, and on its triple lancet windows are emblazoned the arms of the Templars—the lamb and flag and the ruby cross. That red cross, in the very church where it gleamed seven hundred years ago, says volumes to the heart. Where are the Knights Templars now to assume it again, and go to the rescue of the Holy City, bereft of its sovereign lord? Do we not need a new S. Bernard to preach a new crusade in behalf of the captive daughter of Zion, that she may be delivered from the ungodly oppressor, and her anointed one set free?
It was an old English prelate—S. Anselm—who said: “God loves nothing in the world better than the liberty of his church.... He does not wish a servant for his spouse.”
This rectangular church was consecrated in 1240, in presence of the king and a vast number of nobles. In one corner is a beautiful old marble piscina, lately brought to light, where the priest, before the holy oblation, purified the hands that were to touch the Body of the Lord.
On a terrace to the north of the church is Goldsmith’s grave, marked by a coped stone. On one side is graven: “Here lies Oliver Goldsmith”; and on the other: “Born 10 Nov., 1728. Died 4 April, 1774.” The row of houses close by is marked “Goldsmith’s Buildings.” Perhaps on this very terrace he walked up and down in his bloom‐colored coat, dreading to have the bill sent in. There are Johnson’s buildings also. And in Inner Temple Lane, Lamb lived at No. 4, which “looks out on Hare Court, with three trees and a pump,” where he used to drink when he was “a young Rechabite of six years” of age. As he says, “it is worth something to have been born in such a place.” It was here the spirit of the past was infused into his mind, moulding it in antique fashion, and planting the germs of the quaint conceits and humorous fancies that so delight us all, and giving him a love for the old dramatists which we have all learned to share in.
Of course every one goes to drink at the fountain which Lamb, when a boy, used to make rise and fall, to the astonishment of the other urchins, “who, nothing able to guess at its recondite machinery, were almost tempted to hail its wondrous work as magic.” Miss Landon thus celebrates it:
“The fountain’s low singing is heard on the wind, Like a melody bringing sweet fancies to mind, Some to grieve, some to gladden; around them they cast The hopes of the morrow, the dreams of the past. Away in the distance is heard the vast sound. From the streets of the city that compass it round, Like the echo of fountains, or ocean’s deep call; Yet that fountain’s low singing is heard over all.”
And yonder are the sun‐dials, on which Lamb so sweetly moralizes—the inscriptions no longer half effaced, but bright with the gilding of 1872. “Pereunt et imputantur”; “Discite justitiam moniti”; “Vestigia nulla retrorsum”; and “Time and tide tarry for no man,” are some of the mottoes on them. It is rather a disappointment to find them looking so new and fresh, as if no longer “coeval with the time they measure.” There is something wonderfully poetical about a sun‐dial, which derives its revelations of time’s flight “immediately from heaven, holding correspondence with the fountain of light.” It has a kind of relationship to nature, and is, therefore, the very thing to have in gardens and groves and green fields “for sweet plants and flowers to spring up by, for the birds to apportion their silver warblings by, for flocks to pasture and be led to fold by.” It has a “heart‐language” not heard from a clock, with “its solemn dulness of communication.” When we give up modern artificial life, and return to our primitive relationship with nature, we shall only measure the flight of time by a sun‐dial, or an hour‐glass, or the opening and shutting of flowers.
It is delightful wandering around the Temple gardens, with their shrubbery and flowers and fountains, and especially along the terrace overlooking the Thames. Here one naturally looks around for the old benchers of Lamb’s time, half expecting to be greeted by the pensive gentility of Samuel Salt, or the quadrate person of Thomas Coventry, coming along with “step massy and elephantine, his face square as the lion’s, his gait peremptory and path‐keeping,” the terror of children, who flee before him as from an “Elisha bear.” One can also “fancy good Sir Roger de Coverley and Mr. Spectator, with his short face, pacing up and down the road, or dear Oliver Goldsmith in the summer‐house, perhaps meditating about the next Citizen of the World, or the new suit that Mr. Filby, the tailor, is fashioning for him, or the dunning letter that Mr. Newbury has sent. Treading heavily on the gravel, and rolling majestically along in a snuff‐ colored suit and a wig that sadly wants the barber’s powder and irons, one sees the great doctor, with Boswell behind him, a little the worse for the port‐wine they have been taking at the Mitre, to ask Goldsmith to come home and take a dish of tea with Mrs. Williams.”
It is in the Temple gardens that Shakespeare makes York and Lancaster pluck the red and white roses which became the badges of their rival houses. It is here Plantagenet says:
“Let him that is a true‐born gentleman, And stands upon the honor of his birth, If he suppose that I have pleaded truth, From off this brier pluck a white rose with me.”
Somerset.—“Let him that is no coward, nor no flatterer, But dare maintain the party of the truth, Pluck a red rose from off this thorn with me.”
Warwick.—“And here I prophesy—this brawl to‐day. Grown to this faction in the Temple garden, Shall send, between the red rose and the white, A thousand souls to death and deadly night.”
There are no red or white roses blooming here now, but quantities of chrysanthemums grow along the paths under the elms and lime‐trees. An enormous basket, overrun with ivy, handle and all, stands near the old Elizabethan Hall where Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night was performed during the author’s lifetime, and where the benchers of the Middle Temple now dine off long oaken tables in the light of emblazoned windows, and beneath the eyes of kings depicted by Vandyck and other great painters.
A company of volunteers are drilling on the green, perhaps in the same place where the Knights Templars had their military exercises; children are playing in the gravelled walks; and groups of gentlemen and ladies, and here a lone pilgrim, are sauntering about, enjoying the calm bright evening and the view of the Thames, with little steamers rushing up and down among all sorts of craft; and beyond, the great city with its countless spires, the bells of which seem to be all ringing. Perhaps the cheerful notes of that psalm come from S. Clement’s in the Strand, which Dr. Johnson used to frequent—notes that will sound as cheerfully when we are no more as they do now over the tombs of past generations who likewise have paced up and down this terrace listening to them.
“The boat, and the barge, and the wave have grown red, And the sunset has crimsoned the boughs overhead; But the lamps are now shining, the colors are gone, And the garden lies shadowy, silent, and lone.”
Was Origen A Heretic?
Origin has been pronounced by the verdict of ages a genius of the first order. But on this man there has also been pronounced another verdict of still greater importance: “No one has surpassed him either in good or in evil”—Ubi bene nemo melius, ubi male nemo pejus. Terrible words on a man who was the wonder of his age, and an uncompromising father of the church! We propose to set forth in this article some of the reasons tending to prove that this sentence is an unjust one, and that Origen was a faithful child of the church—faithful, too, at a time when fidelity was tried by the fire, the sword, or the cold, damp dungeon. We bring forward the reasons of our opinion, suppressing none of the accusations that have been brought against this great man at sundry times, but refuting them by arguments which are at least extremely probable, and have convinced some very eminent scholars.
The orthodoxy of Origen is presumptively established from the pure sources from which he received the rudiments of the Christian faith, from the soundness of the doctrines he is known to have taught during his public ministry, from his saintly associations, from his undoubted works, and from his heroic virtues.
Born in the bosom of the church, of noble and virtuous parents, in the year 185, he drank in with the nutriment of his infancy the pure and saving doctrines of Christianity. As his powers of reason expanded, the beauty and splendor of the new but persecuted religion were laid open before him by S. Leonides, his father, whose celebrity as a philosopher was only equalled by his proficiency in profane and sacred sciences. Under such fostering care and parental cultivation, Origen received the most careful training, the wisest instructions, and most virtuous examples. So deeply did this pious and excellently versed man plant the germs of Catholic truth in the heart of his eldest son that the most flattering promises of Roman governors, the most subtle reasonings of philosophers, were alike unable to entice him into the paths of error at an age when the passions are strongest and the glittering tinsel of worldly honors exerts so powerful an influence on the mind. S. Leonides, aware of the necessity and value of religious education in youth, took every precaution to instil virtue into the heart while profane learning entered into the mind. Each day he required Origen to commit to memory certain parts of the Old and New Testaments, and, after their recital and an invocation of the Holy Ghost, he explained the sense of the Scripture. A plant reared in such soil, and impregnated with an atmosphere so holy, must be beautiful to the sight in its maturity. Advanced in the liberal arts to a degree far beyond his years, Origen made those studies only accessories to a more complete attainment of sacred knowledge. His progress in the sciences was only rivalled by his increase in piety. What a deep root religion had taken in his nature may be known from his burning ardor to win the glorious crown of martyrdom when the bloody persecution of Septimius Severus raged with unequalled fury in his native city, Alexandria. Among its victims was his father. Deprived of the boon of losing his life for Christ in his company, he wrote letters of encouragement and exhortation that S. Leonides would endure his torments heroically, looking only to the future life and its incorruptible inheritance. It was painful for Leonides to leave behind him seven orphan children; but, to alleviate his sorrows in this direction, Origen, upon whom he looked as a living tabernacle of the Holy Spirit, sent him words of cheer: “Be sure, dear father, that on our account you do not alter your mind”; and in another part of the same letter we read words which appear almost incredible coming from one so young: “Have confidence, father; leave all for Jesus Christ; he will be your reward.” S. Leonides was beheaded, his property confiscated, according to the laws, and Origen, at seventeen years of age, found himself and the rest of his family reduced from abundance to poverty for the sake of Christ. Next to dying in the faith, there is no greater blessing than to have been born in it. From a martyr and a bishop(28) Origen learned the rudiments of the faith, and it grew with his growth and strengthened with his strength. Those who had charge of his education at the most critical juncture were still more eminent in letters and sanctity than Leonides.
He was placed under Titus Flavius Clemens, generally known as S. Clement of Alexandria, whom S. Jerome(29) considered “the most learned of our authors,” and who, Theodoret believed,(30) “surpassed all others in the extent of his learning.” The erudition of Flavius Clement found in Origen a worthy receptacle, and the Christian morality taught in his lectures and practised in his life were truly reflected in the rising glory of the East. Clement, drinking from the crystal fountain of truth that issued from the evangelist Mark, who had made, by the order of the prince of the apostles, Alexandria his apostolic seat, imbibed its saving waters in all their purity. In his Stromata, as well as on the authority of Eusebius, we learn that the immediate successors of the apostles, preservers of the true doctrine of S. James, S. John, S. Paul, were still in existence and teaching the Gospel in its entirety. “They have lived down to our times,” says Clement,(31) “and scattered in our hearts the seed of truth which they had received of their predecessors, the apostles.” It was from this beautiful and fertile garden that Origen culled the flowers of Christianity that ornamented his soul, that bloom in his luminous works, that preserve their fragrance and throw around sacred studies an imperishable lustre. While Origen was pursuing his studies under Clement, he did not fail to engraft upon himself the holiness and sanctity of his teacher—the Pedagogue of the master was transformed into the life of the scholar. The holy practices running through the Pedagogue, its inculcation of austere morals and inexhaustible charity, became to Origen, through his long and arduous career, hand‐posts pointing to solid grandeur, durable happiness, and supreme good.
On leaving this famous catechetical school, he perfected himself under Ammonius Saccas, whose celebrity among pagans for the reconciliation he effected between jarring philosophical systems was only eclipsed by the esteem in which he was held by the infant church, to whose cause he brought the aid of philosophy and the requirements of the times. Among all those who attended the lectures of Ammonius, the most remarkable was young Origen, though he had for rivals no less famous persons than Plotinus, the philosopher and teacher of Porphyry, and the critic Longinus. All eyes were centred on Origen, and his name was in every mouth—his mind a prodigy of letters, his soul a temple of the Holy Ghost. The vast amount of erudition now acquired by Origen, not only by reason of his extraordinary abilities, but also on account of his eminent preceptors, whose sanctity of life imparted to their expositions of religion the irresistible authority of example, attached him with unshaken firmness to the infallible truths which were sealed by his father’s blood. No other belief could satisfy his yearnings, no other creed answer to the wide comprehensions of his conceptions and the loftiness of his aspirations.
The completion of his studies found him versed in astronomy, the higher mathematics, thoroughly acquainted with the sentiments and theories of the different philosophical schools, and more or less familiar with the construction of languages and the leading issues of the times. Reduced to straitened circumstances in consequence of the persecution, he opened, on his own responsibility, an institution for dialectics, music, and profane sciences.
This was a dangerous enterprise for one so young, but it was the only alternative to avoid a life of dependency and association with heretics, as well as to assist a helpless mother and a large family. He felt bound to shun the enemies of the church; he refused to mingle in their company, save when the necessity of their spiritual welfare demanded it, or the exigencies of the occasion prevented his escape. Scrupulous even to the spirit of the apostolic teachings, rather than associate with the opponents of Christianity, he preferred to sacrifice the friendships of his youth and the liberality of his patroness, at a time, too, when he stood most in need of assistance. His reputation attracted large numbers to his lectures, and the applause he received, while it elevated him in popularity, was the source of interior humiliation, the antidote of pride. Demetrius, Bishop of Alexandria, moved by the superior attainments, the fervent piety and unswerving orthodoxy in faith, of the young Christian, appointed him regent of the famous catechetical school, A.D. 203. The course of studies taught in this institution comprised, aside from secular pursuits, theology and Scriptural expositions. Origen(32) was only eighteen years of age when he assumed this responsible charge—a charge that, in the history of the province, had never been committed but to persons of advanced years. This appointment, then, was an exception, strange in the extreme; but Origen was an exceptional scholar—so exceptional, indeed, that history has failed to record his compeer at that time of life in any other person. But, as St. Jerome(33) remarks, “From his childhood he was a great man.” And Bossuet, admiring the young Alexandrian, towering in intellect above those of his day, like Saul above his brethren, declares: “Il se rendit célèbre par toute l’Eglise des sa première jeunesse et enseigna de grandes vérités.”(34) The violence of the persecution under Septimius Severus had interrupted the Christian school of Alexandria, and forced its president, Clement, to fly from his murderers. It was during his retirement and under the uplifted sword that Origen assumed the regency—a position as precarious and laborious as it was honorable. It required varied knowledge, uncommon prudence, and unswerving adhesion to the traditions of Christ’s ambassadors.
For more than one hundred years Catholic blood, “the secret power and seed of Christianity,”(35) had flowed through the Roman provinces; Catholic heads been decapitated by the sword of the executioner. Every method of destruction and annihilation that human artifice and cruelty could devise was brought into play to sweep from the world the new religion; but the kingdom of Christ emerged from the contest more glorious and powerful, and asserted in bolder terms the divinity which was emblazoned on its standard. The saying of Gamaliel was verified: Man cannot stop the accomplishment of God’s designs. Then the pagans felt convinced that some other means should be employed against the Christians, whom the emperors and governors had in vain sought to extinguish in blood. To this end, they had recourse to the schools, to the philosophers, to men skilled in the oracles; the followers of the different systems of belief, to preserve the existence of their body, girded on their helmets of sophistry and raillery; the pagan writers dealt in flings of irony and the gall of mockery; wit and sarcasm, powerful weapons, were handled with remarkable ingenuity. The life‐blood of mythology, sanctioned for ages by the devotion of its victims, was on the eve of ebbing from its very arteries; polytheism, rooted in the manners of the multitude, supported by legislation, upheld in literature, protected by the sympathies of all, was losing ground at every step that Christianity was making upon its domains; idolatry saw its statues fall one by one, its members disappearing like vapor beneath the absorbing rays of light; and all these forms of superstition joined hands and allied their forces to impede the onward and irresistible march of Catholic truth. Alexandria, cradle of Eastern genius at that time, became the Christian Thermopylæ, and Origen the Christian Leonidas. It was he who headed the forces, and, by the splendor of his genius, prepared in his school illustrious men to lead on the van. He vindicated the truth from calumny, supported it by facts, disengaged it from the sophisms in which enemies had obscured it, and held it up to view in all its natural beauty and attraction. His learning became telling in a short time upon the prejudices of the people in regard to his despised religion, and gradually inspired a kinder feeling towards the misrepresented Christians in the minds of the cultivated. His fame drew to his auditory persons who had studied under other masters, desirous of listening to his wisdom, and of the honor of calling him their teacher. Heathens were delighted with his language, full of unction and charm, and the literati of the age, who had been lost in the intricacies of Aristotle, the obscurities of Plato, and the absurdities of Epicurus, wondered at the young Christian philosopher. His name was asked by authors for dedicatory purposes, and works were subject to his judgment for their circulation.
To give an insight into the system of education adopted by Origen, and which produced so many great men in the IIId century, we will quote from the writings of S. Gregory Thaumaturgus, who was under the direction of Origen for five years, the method employed by the philosopher to win him to Christ. The extract will also show the clearness of his ideas, the thoroughness and universality of his knowledge. The reader, if he chooses, may compare the plan of education followed by Origen with that pursued in our colleges and universities in the XIXth century, and judge for himself of the progress civilization has made in this direction. “Like a skilful agriculturist,” says S. Gregory,(36) “who examines in all its aspects the land which he intends to prepare for cultivation, Origen sounded and penetrated the sentiments of his disciples, making inquiries, and reflecting upon their replies. When he had prepared them to receive the seed of truth, he instructed them in various branches of philosophy—in logic, to form their judgment, by teaching them to discriminate between solid reasonings and the specious sophisms of error; in physics, to make them admire the wisdom of God, by an analytic knowledge of his works; in geometry, to habituate their minds to rectitude, by the rigor of mathematical propositions; in astronomy, to elevate and extend their thoughts, by giving them immensity for a horizon; finally, in morals—not those of the philosophers, whose definitions and sterile divisions give birth to no virtue, but practical morals, making them study in themselves the movements of the passions, so that the soul, seeing itself as in a mirror, may extirpate every vice, even to the roots. He then approached theology, or the knowledge of God. He made them read on Providence, which has created the world and governs it, all that has been written by the ancients, philosophers or poets, Greeks or barbarians, without otherwise minding their systems, their sects, or their particular opinions. In this labyrinth of pagan philosophy he served as their guide to discern whatever might be really true and useful, without allowing them to be fascinated by the pomp and ornaments of language. He laid it down as a principle, that, in whatever regards God, we must trust only God and the prophets inspired by him. And then he commenced the interpretation of the Scriptures, which he knew thoroughly, and which, by the grace of God, he had penetrated in all their most secret depths.”
The magnitude of his intellectual powers excited no less interest than his manner of life; and it is not without reason that his friends allege the sanctity of his life as the best interpreter of the few objectionable passages in his gigantic works, and no weak argument for the purity of his faith. Surrounded by eminent savants, and in correspondence with others in distant countries, he found himself hard pressed to accommodate the former and answer the communications of the latter. He was obliged to engage several secretaries to write out his discourses on the arts and sciences in conjunction with his explanations of Christianity. Their assistance afforded him better opportunities of enriching his stock of knowledge. He realized what Trithemius,(37) Abbot of Spanheim, repeated to himself every day: “To know is to love.” His insatiable thirst for learning left him plodding among manuscripts through the day into the long hours of the night; and when nature, succumbing under the severe stress of exhaustion, would demand rest, he would make the bare ground his bed, and the books his pillow. Simple in his dress, the mortifications he imposed upon himself on several occasions threatened his life. Temperate in all things, he was particularly so in drink. Wine he never used.
While his prodigious talents and able discourses brought within the true fold large numbers from among the most distinguished learned men and philosophers, his virtues and sublime renunciation of the world produced so many holy men that his school has been deservedly termed “the school of martyrs.” More than once he accompanied his disciples to the place of execution, and exhorted them, in the very face of the instruments of torture, to endure death with fortitude for the cause of truth and the eternal inheritance promised to those who wash their robes in the blood of the Lamb. He stood by at the martyrdom of S. Plutarch, brother of S. Heraclas, Bishop of Alexandria, both catechumens under himself, administering consolations and pouring into his soul words of hope and encouragement. A martyr’s crown he courted from infancy, and from sickness and infirmities contracted in the persecutor’s dungeon, it is reasonably supposed, his life went out. It could only have been divine interposition that rescued him from the numerous assaults made upon his life. When permission was refused him to visit the Christians in chains, he made incredible efforts to convey to them words of sympathy and articles of comfort. His solicitude and bearing on the eve of the martyrdom of his disciples, SS. Heron, Potamiæna, Herias, Sereni, and Heraclides, is conclusive proof of Origen’s ardor to seal with his blood the divinity of the cause he advocated with his eloquence, and evidence of the falsity of the notorious slander which represents him yielding to the wishes of the persecutors in the midst of his torments, and offering sacrifice to the gods. The first trace we meet with in history of this accusation is in the Treatise against Heresies,(38) by S. Epiphanius, Bishop of Salamis, and given to the world one hundred years after the death of Origen. This slander, never repeated by the learned—if we except Petavius, in the XVIIth century, while employed on the works of Epiphanius—has been wiped out of ecclesiastical history by the weight of such writers as Baronius, Halloix,(39) Raynaudet, Henry Valois, Vincent de la Rue, and Frederic Spanheim.(40) This defamation of his character, unfounded as it is, though so much like other insinuations against the noble Alexandrian, was not even alluded to in the Justinian age, in which he was so violently and bitterly opposed. Had S. Jerome credited this monstrous fabrication, had it rested upon anything but a sandy foundation, the literary war between the lifelong friends, Jerome and Rufinus, would have terminated at the first volley from the pen of the learned scriptural writer. It would have been a crushing argument against Rufinus, and S. Jerome was the person to turn it to advantage. In those times, it was a common thing to be reproached if one, arrested for the faith, escaped death. Some of the greatest saints, S. Cyprian, S. Gregory Thaumaturgus, and others, suffered not a little from calumnies of like import. Origen’s behavior, on the occasion to which the allusion refers, was honorable, heroic, and in entire harmony with his life‐long fidelity to principle. He was seized, and—whether it was the design of the magistrates to draw many Christians back to the gods of the empire by circulating the fall of Origen, or their admiration of the genius of their noble victim that prevented his summary decapitation—was thrown into a cold cell, bound in an iron collar, with heavy shackles to his feet, and his legs drawn apart to a painful degree.
It appears that during the first years that Origen filled the regency of the Alexandrian theological seminary, he experienced no small amount of inconvenience, in his controversial discourses with Jews and pagans, in consequence of the different versions of the Holy Scriptures. In their inspired pages he found true wisdom and spiritual life: “Oh! how have I loved thy law, O Lord! It is my meditation all the day.”(41) In this sacred department he stands without a rival, if we except S. Jerome, “the greatest doctor, divinely raised up to interpret the Sacred Scriptures.”(42) Yet to Origen the indebtedness of S. Jerome is very great. He borrowed(43) from him, studied him,(44) followed him,(45) admired him,(46) and then attacked him.(47) S. Jerome declares that in reading the Twelve Prophets by Origen, in the works of S. Pamphilus, he saw in them the wealth of Crœsus; and, as far as our judgment goes, we never read a higher eulogium than the one S. Jerome pays to the genius of Origen on his two homilies in Cantica Canticorum.
It was Origen’s love of the Scriptures that gave birth to the grand idea of compiling the sacred books of the different versions into one work—the Octapla, a legacy to posterity more than sufficient to support his reputation and endear it to all succeeding ages. For this purpose, he decided, in 212, to travel through different countries, and collect the most recognized and authentic copies of the Scriptures. Those travels opened to his view the pages of nature, on which he read the customs and habits of men, religions and governments, arts and sciences. Aside from those motives, he had another reason for travelling. He longed to see Rome, the chair of Peter,(48) “upon whom, as on a rock, Christ built his church”; he desired to pay his homage in the “principal church”(49) to the successor of S. Peter, “against whom the gates of hell shall not prevail.”(50) He arrived at Rome about the close of the pontificate of S. Zephyrinus, to whom his presence and devotion must have been a source of consolation, as the saintly pontiff, at that time, was pained to the heart by the fall of the great Tertullian and the deplorable perversions in the African Church.
The travels of Origen are full of interest and instruction. Each journey was a crusade against heathenism, and a glorious triumph for the Gospel; like S. Paul, he wandered over sea and land to make profit for Christ, strengthening the weak and marshalling the strong; the power of his pen was felt where his voice failed to reach. As a comet that illumines its course with darting rays of light, and obscures the flickering stars, such were the brilliant tours of Origen, leaving the light of faith and the fire of charity behind them. Wherever heresy raised its head in the church, there was Origen to batter it with reason and tradition; wherever the faithful were wavering, there was Origen cheering and rallying the forces; wherever the enemy made an onslaught on Christianity, it found Origen in the breach; like an Agamemnon or a Hector, wherever battle raged the fiercest, Origen took the front. Now he is in the presence of the governor of Arabia, enlightens him on scientific subjects, and gradually raises his mind to nature’s God; then he traverses through Palestine, expounding the Scriptures in the assemblies of the faithful; at one time he is at Antioch before the royal family, pleading for the liberty and free exercise of Christian worship; at another in Nicomedia, maintaining the canonicity of certain parts of the inspired writings; now he is in Greece, thundering against the Montanists; and again in Arabia, at Bozra, reclaiming fallen prelates, and defending the divinity and humanity of the second Person of the Most Blessed Trinity.
There is a point in the preceding sentence worthy of more than passing notice—namely, Origen’s visit to Mammæa, mother of Emperor Alexander Severus. This estimable lady, who afterwards, in all probability, embraced the Christian religion, desirous of seeing so illustrious a doctor as Origen, sent her retinue to escort him to her palace. She was pleased with her learned guest, and her son, the future ruler of the empire, listened with delight to the great prodigy of learning. The virtues that characterized the reign of Severus, in contradistinction to the licentiousness, cruelty, and extortion of his predecessors, have been, not without justice, attributed to the influence exerted on him by lessons of morality given in the discourses of Origen. It is not improbable that the law he presented, soon after his ascension to the throne, to the Roman senate for its sanction, whereby the religion of Christ would be incorporated among the others of the empire, had for its source Origen’s instructions to him about the divinity of the Catholic faith, its purity and sanctity. Dom Gueranger, in his Life of S. Cecilia,(51) adduces monuments of antiquity going to prove the protection and favors extended to the infant church by Alexander; and Origen himself,(52) in his Apology, chronicles the abatement of the persecution shortly after his return from the imperial court. On this part of his work a writer very felicitously adds: “If he modestly declines telling us the part he bore in it, we owe him so much the more honor the less he seems to claim.”(53)
During the comparative peace obtained under Alexander, the church made incredible efforts to fill up her shattered ranks, restore order, and produce scholars. She succeeded, for never was she more fruitful in great men than at this epoch. Origen had reconciled her, in the opinion of philosophers, to genius, adorned her with intellectual wealth, and introduced her to the occupants of the throne she was soon to fill with so much glory; and, what is still more, he had disciplined a galaxy of scholars, who were about to dazzle the world by the grandeur of their minds, and beautify the church by the holiness of their lives.
Origen’s brilliant career, like the career of all great men, was not allowed to end without its trials. Aside from the assaults of the professed enemies of the church, he met with severe annoyances from the jealousy of those whose interests he had studied to further. The trouble came from a quarter he least expected. Demetrius, Bishop of Alexandria, during the early part of his episcopate entertained for Origen the highest esteem; and there is no ostensible motive to believe that Origen, throughout all his relations with the patriarch, gave him any cause of offence, or else this prelate would not have retained him in the presidency of his theological school till the year 230—a period of twenty‐ seven years. The humility of the regent and his innate respect for authority held his tongue in silence, whatever may have been his opinion of the conduct of Demetrius as a prelate. Still, we may conjecture Demetrius was not far from the mind of Origen when, in speaking of disorders and irregularities in the church, he wrote of bishops: “We would almost have guards like kings; we make ourselves terrible and difficult of access, chiefly to the poor; we treat them who speak with us and ask for some favor in a manner which the most cruel tyrants and governors would not assume towards suppliants.”(54) It is not wrong to look upon Demetrius as a man who consulted with the general interests of Christianity his own popularity, the extension of his diocese, and the increase of his subjects; perhaps he was of the opinion that the advancement of religion in Alexandria and its suffragan dependencies, his own juridical district, was of more importance than its dissemination in other places. It was interested motives of this sort that led him to disapprove of Origen’s evangelical missions, by which his invaluable services were temporarily withdrawn from his native city. Origen, being a layman, free from any obligations to Demetrius, except in a spiritual point of view, possessed the individual right of travelling from country to country, and of delivering lectures without the permission of any authority. If he spoke before the congregations of the faithful, it was only at the urgent solicitation of the prelates, whose jurisdiction within their respective provinces was recognized and unquestioned; champion of the faith in the East, he was waited upon by delegations from pious bishops, entreating him to come to their dioceses. Those missions Origen, in his love for the glory of God, felt conscientiously bound to perform. On a journey to crush by his eloquence the heresy of the Valentinians, that had made lamentable ravages in Greece, he paid a visit to S. Alexander of Jerusalem and Theoctistus of Cæsarea, by whom he was ordained priest. This act, irreprehensible in itself, entailed upon Origen serious difficulties, and became the groundwork upon which his enemies fabricated the most severe accusations.
Demetrius, taking to heart the course of conduct of the great philosopher, and assured, by the aspect of things, of his speedy disconnection with the interests of Alexandria, sent letters to the bishops, containing bitter recriminations for imposing hands on Origen. He did not stop at this point. He also despatched to the prelates of Asia letters full of invectives and animosity, requiring them to hold no communion with Origen, who had violated the disciplinary canons. The respite that ensued on his return to Alexandria was of short duration. A council was “assembled by the care, and under the presidency, of Demetrius,” for the purpose of examining the legality and validity of Origen’s ordination. In this council we can only discover two things laid to his charge—namely, that he had made himself a eunuch, and had been ordained without the consent of Demetrius, his ordinary. Those charges, if we take into consideration the customs of the times and the imperfections of ecclesiastical discipline during the persecutions, contain in themselves very little upon which a grievous censure of Origen could be founded. In the language of the church, they are irregularities; one ex defectu, the other ex delicto. Let us for a moment concede that there were such canons in existence at the time of Origen’s ordination, by the violation of which irregularities were incurred, what then follows? In that age of the church, bishops enjoyed great privileges, discretionary powers—far more discretionary than even the bishops of the United States enjoy nowadays in this missionary country—and pre‐eminently so the Patriarch of Alexandria, the Patriarch of Antioch, and the Metropolitan of Palestine, who was Bishop of Cæsarea. These prelates could dispense, in nearly all emergencies, the violators of the ecclesiastical ordinances; other prelates in the East were more or less restricted in their functions, and in matters of moment could do nothing detrimental to those sees. What authority, then, prevented Theoctistus from pronouncing Origen released from the irregularities, and canonically qualified for the reception of orders? Had any other ordinary imposed hands on him except the Metropolitan of Palestine, the objections of the Patriarch of Alexandria would undoubtedly have carried with them more weight. But the Metropolitan of Cæsarea, while respectfully acquiescing in the priority of the See of Alexandria, through reverence of its princely founder, always exercised his own jurisdiction without the permission or consultation of Alexandria. Theoctistus of Cæsarea was not even under Demetrius, but under the Patriarch of Antioch, and these provincial and patriarchal boundaries as well as episcopal relations were only finally authoritatively adjusted by the Council of Nice.(55) In the second place, the Metropolitan of Cæsarea, who always exercised more than ordinary episcopal functions, which were afterwards approved and sanctioned by œcumenical councils,(56) deemed it not a usurpation of power to impose hands on Origen without the direct consent of his bishop, inasmuch as he was personally acquainted with the subject of the sacrament, morally certain of his piety and learning. If we add to those reasons the surrounding circumstances stated in the reply of S. Alexander of Jerusalem to Demetrius, it becomes patent that neither Origen was to blame in the premises nor Theoctistus for the exercise of his jurisdiction and powers. Demetrius had given Origen commendatory letters on his departure for Greece, and, on the strength of these commendations, Theoctistus and S. Alexander conferred on him holy orders. His services had been valuable as a layman; they would become still more valuable as a cleric, and, actuated by those pure motives, they ordained him.
Now, is it historically true that in the year 230, or previous to that time, there were any such canons framed by the church as excluded eunuchs from the reception of holy orders? It will be difficult to come across statutes of this nature in canon law or ecclesiastical history. We will find such acts of discipline framed years after the death of Origen, but none previous to that epoch.
The other accusation, that he was ordained without the permission of his bishop, has a weaker foundation even than the preceding one. According to the practice of the church in our day, every candidate for the sacred ministry who is not a religious must be ordained by his own bishop (titulo nativitatis, domicilii, beneficii, seu familiaritatis prout accidit), or possess the written consent of his own ordinary, if ordained by another. Origen, viewed from a modern stand‐point, contracted an irregularity ex delicto; but, judged in the century in which he lived—the only one in which he must be judged—was as regular in his ordination as the young men who are semi‐annually ordained in our provincial seminaries. Origen transgressed no ecclesiastical injunction by receiving orders at the hands of a foreign bishop, because it was only under S. Anastasius that this restriction was placed on aspirants to the priesthood. The Council of Nice, embodying the canons of Arles, Ancyra, and Gangres, passed laws prohibiting clerics from attaching themselves at will to different churches and dioceses; this prohibition affected clerics alone, and in no way referred to laics, who were at perfect liberty to be ordained by any prelate upon testimonials of worthiness. It was only during S. Ambrose’s time that this abuse became offensive, and that the Roman pontiff deemed it proper to eradicate it. To this end, in the year 400 a canon was enacted by the pope, which forbade any prelate ordaining the subjects of another, unless such subjects had permissive letters bearing the signature of the bishop who had authority over them. From this sprang dimissorial letters. Indeed, whatever view an impartial and competent person takes of the whole affair, Origen and the saintly bishops who ordained him appear innocent, and seem to have acted with the best intentions. Nevertheless, the decision arrived at by Demetrius’ council was that Origen should be dismissed from the theological school, upon which his learning had reflected so much glory, and that he should also withdraw himself from Alexandria, retaining, however, his priesthood.
Origen, anticipating the result of the council “assembled by the care of Demetrius,” quietly retired to Cæsarea. Matters did not end here. The immense amount of writings that the unwearied industry of Origen had contributed to the literature of the church offered a wide field in which his adversaries might search for something reprehensible. His works would form in themselves a rare library, had the fall of empires not entombed a large portion of them in their ruins. No less than six thousand books did his indefatigable application produce: “Sex millia Origenis tomos non poterant quipiam legere.”(57) In the copying, revision, and compiling of these manuscripts, he employed twenty, at other times twelve, but always more than eight, amanuenses. As this article has no reference to his writings, their merits, or the influence they exerted upon church learning, we must make this cursory allusion to his gigantic labors sufficient for our present purpose. It will lay before the reader the great mass of matter his enemies had at hand to examine, the possible mistakes that might have crept into his works by the carelessness of so many secretaries, the possible corruptions they might have suffered at the hands of heretics or jealous rivals. Not a finger could be raised against his spotless and ascetic life in the council; the teacher of martyrs and companion of saints, his character was irreproachable.
Demetrius, not unlikely hearing of the warm reception extended to Origen in Palestine, convened, after a short interval, another council. The works of Origen were subjected to the sharpest examination. One instinctively inquires why Demetrius, if he were simply actuated by zeal for the preservation of ecclesiastical discipline and the purity of revealed truth, did not introduce those serious charges in the former council. To resort to the non‐publication of the Periarchon and Dialogues at the time of the first convocation of bishops, in order to remove the suspicions that point to the malice of Demetrius, is an ingenious special plea, unsupported by facts and testimonies. S. Jerome, studying this question learnedly, defends Origen and censures Demetrius. Why did the Patriarch of Alexandria, next in hierarchical honor to the Bishop of Rome, permit Origen for over a quarter of a century to expound within his own hearing the sublime dogmas of Christianity, if his conceptions of those dogmas were radically false? Can we suppose that the few months between the assembly of the two councils were spent by the bibliophilist in composing a work that would give the lie to the glorious achievements of thirty years? Or can we allow the conviction to settle in our minds that he, so remarkable in virtue, would deliver in the pulpit one doctrine, and write in his books another? Will we find fault with saints and illustrious doctors of the church, who, by the nature of their high calling, are bound to avoid false teachers, for extending to Origen the warmest hospitalities, or acknowledge, with Eusebius of Cæsarea and S. Pamphilus, the severe and unjustifiable measures adopted by Demetrius? Whatever secret motives guided Demetrius in the prosecution of the inquisition, his course, disapproved of by his contemporaries, has never secured a sincere advocate of ordinary importance. The errors which he imagined he had detected in the writings assumed, in the eyes of Demetrius’ council, sufficient gravity to cause the deposition and excommunication of Origen.
Never did an imperial edict, suddenly proclaimed in the midst of peace, sanctioning the indiscriminate massacre of Christians, produce greater consternation in the church than the announcement of Origen’s deposition. The report of the fall of the great Tertullian had scarce died away, when the faithful were filled with alarm at the momentary expectation of its echoes being taken up by the fall of Origen, and resounding throughout Christendom. But there was a vast difference between these two great men. Quintius Tertullianus, while the superior of Origen in eloquence, style, and strength of language, was at the same time his inferior in the sacred sciences and in humility, the safeguard of Origen’s genius. The one blended with Christianity the elegance and wisdom of the pagans, the other the beauty and inspiration of the prophets. Both the brightest ornaments of the church in their day, they no less adorned her sanctity by their lives than enriched her treasures by their genius. Tertullian, a pagan by the prejudices of birth and education, unaccustomed to religious authority, could not endure the correction of superiors; and wounded pride, inflamed by impatience and an ambitious nature, gave way to impious belief, and Tertullian, the fallen genius, dwindles into a fanatical heretic. It was not so with Origen. Having received information of the action of the council, with real humility equalled only by that of the meek Fénelon, Origen wrote(58) to Alexandria that he had never taught such doctrine as was imputed to him, and, if contained in his works, it was through the machinations of heretics. Then follows, in the same document, a clear and orthodox exposition of his belief upon the contested points—an exposition that will satisfy a modern theologian, with all his precise distinctions and scholastic definitions. As long as this monument of antiquity, this spontaneous proof of his adhesion to apostolic truth, this undeniable evidence of the absence of all pertinacity, exists, so long will those to whom his memory is dear love to look upon him as sincere in his protestations and sincere in his faith. Here was the rule of his belief, and according to this rule his works should be interpreted: “That alone must we believe to be the truth which differs in nothing from the ecclesiastical and apostolical tradition.”(59) A noble rule of faith, truly Catholic and orthodox! Words appropriate for an Origen, who caught up, as it were, the traditions of the apostles, and echoed them into Nicene times. What cause have we of refusing credence to Origen when he tells us that the errors attributed to him were the interpolations of heretics? Every intelligent reader of history knows that his works were corrupted, shamefully corrupted, at the close of the IVth century. In substantiation of this, we have only to refer to the learned Rufinus and S. Jerome. Each of these translated into Latin the Periarchon of Origen and many other works of the same author; and what do we find? Why, S. Jerome accuses Rufinus of altering, inverting, suppressing the sense of the original; and, in turn, Rufinus charges Jerome with malicious perversion of the meaning of the learned Alexandrian, wilful corruption of the text, and personal jealousy of the fame of Origen. S. Augustine, an intimate friend of S. Jerome, used his influence to reconcile those two great personages disputing about Origen; and from his letter to S. Jerome, it appears to us that his sympathies were with Rufinus. Indeed, in the first ages of the church, it was no uncommon thing for great men to have not only their works interpolated, but entire books circulated under their name, S. Cyprian(60) complained that works that he had never seen were issued in his name. S. Jerome(61) testifies that the letters of S. Clement, Pope, were interpolated, as well as the writings of S. Dionysius and Clement of Alexandria; the same trustworthy author was very much annoyed that the people of Africa in his day were reading a supposititious volume bearing his name. We see no reason, then, why heretics would not tamper with Origen’s productions, when they had the audacity to corrupt such public and sacred documents as those we have mentioned, some of which were read in the religious assemblies of the people. It is the misfortune of exalted persons to be cited as authorities for opinions they never maintained. Indeed, when we perceive how the teachings of men amongst us are misrepresented, notwithstanding the assistance of the press, the telegraph, and other modern detectives, we can understand with what facility opinions could have been accredited to Origen which were not his. Well might S. Jerome with the works of Origen scattered around his room, perhaps under his very elbows, write: “O labores hominum! semper incerti; O mortalium studia! contrarios interdum fines habentia.”(62)
The acts of Demetrius’ council, we are informed, were forwarded to S. Pontianus, whose short pontificate of a few years spent in exile, as well as the still shorter reign of his successor, S. Anterus, which lasted only a month, was absorbed in the discharge of duties more vital to the church than the Alexandrian inquisition. Ere Rome took any steps in this matter, or sanctioned the proceedings by her silence, the discussion ended by the death of Demetrius, 231.
It is probable that Origen indulged in conceptions or hypotheses not altogether in accordance with Catholic doctrine; but we must keep before our minds the circumstances in which he was situated, the persons with whom he disputed, and the noble aim he had in view. The philosophy of Aristotle, whom Tertullian calls the “patriarch of heretics,” was very unpopular in Alexandria at the opening of the IIId century. The neo‐ Platonic system was the prevalent philosophy of the day at Alexandria. The issue of the day was, Is the religion of Christ philosophical? Can it with safety be subjected to logical rules? Does it not contradict the reasonings of Plato? To meet this issue, so important to the spread of the Gospel among the enlightened class, Origen had recourse as much as was possible to the tenets of the Platonic school for arguments. With Platonic philosophers he had his controversies; and his language, the more Platonic it was, the more power it exerted; the more he reconciled revelation with reason, in their estimation, the more entered within the pale of the church. Just as in our times able writers use the popular issues, because the most intelligible and taking, to dissipate the clouds of ignorance that bigotry has thrown around the public mind in regard to Catholicity, to show the natural compatibility of the church with all legal forms of government, her inexhaustible resources for meeting the requirements of society, and her sacred and impartial maintenance of true liberty; so, too, did Origen turn to advantage the doctrines of the schools in demonstrating the love of the church for sound philosophy, her adaptability to the sciences, and her divine mission as regenerator of the world. This tincture of Platonism pervading his early productions, combined with the mysterious figures under which Eastern nations convey sacred truths, the allegorical style, and the Discipline of the Secret, which was in active force, rendered Origen obscure, and his works susceptible of doubtful interpretation.
Though his admirers go so far as to exculpate him from every error, we are not prepared to accompany them to that distance. We are willing to concede that Origen may have advanced some erroneous opinions, but error without contumacy does not entail the sin of heresy, which is a wilful rejection of any revealed truth authoritatively proposed. “I may fall into a mistake,” says the learned S. Augustine, “but I will not be a heretic.” The fathers of the church were only men, subject to human weakness, liable to err. The doubtful and obscure speculative hypotheses of the Alexandrian’s fertile imagination, then, should in no way darken the splendor of his genius or belittle his devotion to Catholic truth. F. Petau, his declared enemy, followed by Huet, who gave his learning to this controversy, refuses to believe Origen obstinate. Halloix, Charles Vincent de la Rue, Tillemont, Witasse, Ceillier, and other erudite scholars, who studied with care and impartiality this whole matter, unite in the emphatic declaration that Origen “died in the bosom of the Catholic Church.”
This is the verdict of great men in modern times. It was also the verdict of the century in which he lived—the IIId—as may be seen in the apology of S. Pamphilus, composed in defence of Origen’s orthodoxy, and extant in the works of S. Gregory Nyssen; also in that beautiful monument of antiquity, the panegyric over Origen by S. Gregory Thaumaturgus, given in full in the works of Gerard Vossius. This verdict was confirmed in the IVth century by the catalogue of orthodox ecclesiastical writers, published by S. Gelasius, pope, among which is the name of Origen; and in the following century, in a profession of faith drawn up by Pope S. Hormisdas, and sent by Germanus, Bishop of Capua, to be signed by the Patriarch of Constantinople, the heretics condemned by the church are enumerated, but in this enumeration we can discover no allusion to the great Scripturist.
Indeed, it has always been a source of surprise to us how Origen, a fallible creature, a man like other men, unaided by any divine assistance, could have written in several thousand volumes so much truth, and so little error. There were but few Encyclical Letters, no Index, no decisions of Sacred Congregations, no Syllabus, in the days of Origen; and yet his enemies will measure the length of his definitions with theirs, compare his expressions with the theological niceties of the present, and, should a word be wanting or a synonymous one substituted, exclaim: “There is an error; Origen is a heretic!” The body of infallible definitions from popes and councils which we now possess did not exist at this early epoch; to write then orthodoxically, to justify the Christian belief in the Trinity, to explain the hypostatic union, the generation of the Son, and the procession of the Holy Ghost, to expound the Scripture and the other sublime mysteries of religion, and escape with one or two mistakes, was simply marvellous. Thus Origen, born in the true faith, reared in a religious atmosphere, educated under pious men, the intrepid defender of truth and meek retractor of error, the teacher and companion of saints, the prisoner for Christ, has impressed on his life, in golden letters, the best defence of his orthodoxy. And if the saintly Origen be distinguished from the abominable Origenians; if the allowances due to the age in which he lived be accorded him, an injustice to the works of Origen—a valuable legacy to posterity—will be removed, and the injury done to a reputation obscured by the malice of some and the misapprehension of many others will in part be repaired.(63)
Social Shams.
There is no axiom more fraught with meaning than the old Scripture promise, “The truth shall make you free.” But there is also no fact better authenticated in the civilized world of to‐day than the practical nullification of this very promise. We speak as regards things human; for in spiritual matters, the home of truth is, to our belief, a fixed one, and the road to it staked out by a divine leader, that has power to find an unerring path in what otherwise seems but an ocean of shifting sand. We propose to apply this axiom to social life, and it is our complaint that it is not free. The pivot on which “society,” properly so called, turns is conventionality—a polite term for untruth.
The original Christian ideal of society was of course based on charity. It has been truly said that a perfect Christian is instinctively a finished gentleman. Courtesy is but an adaptation of charity; and the height of good‐breeding (recognized as being the faculty of setting every one at his ease, and of saying the right thing at the right time to the right person) must answer to the Christian principle that to wilfully wound your neighbor in the slightest degree is a sin. But all this, call it tact or charity, as you will, is not in itself inconsistent with truth. The French have a proverb that Toute vérité n’est pas bonne à dire—“Every untruth is not necessarily expedient to all men;” but even that is not a declaration of war against the principle of truth in the main. Yet what is the reality, the thing constantly before our eyes, the fact of which no one can doubt who has ever lived beyond the strictest limits of home—nay, beyond the limits of his own mind? One in a thousand fulfils the ideal of Christian courtesy, while the other nine hundred and ninety‐nine wear the regulation‐mask prescribed by fashion. Some wear it of iron, so that, in the intercourse of a lifetime, you would never feel that you knew them any better than on the first day of acquaintance; some only of wire, so that the natural personality behind it is but partially hidden even from perfect strangers; some of silk, so cunningly painted that it betrays you into thinking it nature, until, by repeated experience, you discover the imposture. Again, some wear it as the women of Constantinople wear the yashmak, so filmy as only to veil, not to conceal, the features. Lord Lytton, in his romance, A Strange Story, speaks of the “three women” which exist in the single personality of every woman; this applies to men almost equally. There is, he says, the woman as she really is, the woman as she thinks herself to be, and the woman as she appears to the world—the conventional woman. This is by far the most curious product of natural history, or, more appropriately, of the history of mechanics. The human being under social manipulation is a study for philosophers. Conventional standards of human beauty, such as the compressed foot of the Chinese lady, or the artificially stimulated rotundity of form among the women of some of the Central African tribes, the staining of the finger‐nails with henna among the Persians, etc., are as nothing and involve no deformation or suffering compared with that among the wholesale machine‐products of civilized society.
Spiritual systems of penance have sometimes been impugned for aiming at subduing nature: taming the passions, restraining the expression of strong emotion, weaning the body from innocent indulgences, and so forth. But is there any more barefaced destroyer of nature than “society” as at present constituted? Are there any penances harder, any restraints stricter, than those imposed by our conventional code? The spiritual struggle with nature is voluntary, and aims at subduing our lower nature, only the more to honor the intellectual principle, and render its exercise freer from clogging and degrading influences. The conventional struggle with nature, on the contrary, is a compulsory one, into which you are thrust by others in early and unconscious childhood; it is, moreover, a deceptive one, as it tends to produce mere appearances—not to tame passion, but restrain its outward expression; not to elevate the mind, but to give it the semblance of those gifts most profitable in the social estimation of the day. It does not tend to make man supernatural, but unnatural. It takes from him even the freedom of the savage, without giving him in exchange the freedom of the Christian. It aims not at virtue, but at decorum. Its morality skips the whole of the Ten Commandments, but insists upon what facetious Englishmen sometimes call the eleventh—i.e., “Thou shalt not be found out.” It has rites and ceremonials of its own, more arbitrary than the law of the land, and, in the same breath, more lax; it has beliefs and formulas more binding outwardly than those of any religion; it has its own oracles, its own language, its own tribunals. It is a state within a state, condoning many moral delinquencies, exalting some into meritorious deeds, smoothing others over as pardonable follies. Where it is not wicked, it is inane or spiteful. Slander and gossip are its breath of life, except in the few instances where intrigue sweeps away such second‐rate passe‐temps.
Yet its wickedness is a subject that touches us less than its stupidity; for it is less of a daily experience, and has more denouncers to lash it. We also know less of its brilliancy than of its meanness; for the latter is visible in the smallest gathering and in the most insignificant place, while the former exists but in half a dozen great capitals, and even there only among one or two circles or strata of society. Paris and Vienna have their dull and respectable society, as well as other places, and they are by far the most numerous, and, we will venture to say it, the meanest. Downright license seems, strangely enough, to carry with it a certain reckless bonhomie which, while it is far from Christian charity, yet has many outward signs of it. The most abandoned are often found to be the most generous, or even philanthropic, while the pharisaical little‐ mindedness of many eminently “respectable” members of society is a constant reproach to the faith on which they pride themselves. The “milk of human kindness” is often scarce amid “saints” of a certain school. Noli me tangere is their motto, and an appropriate one, indeed; for you might tap their hearts till doomsday, and never draw from them one drop of the generous wine of sympathy.
Not that all persons whose path of life crosses your own by the chances bred of social conventionalities are of this type; many are generous, kind‐hearted, impulsive; but it is part of the indictment we bring against “society” that its rules so smother this amiable individuality as seldom to allow it to be revealed to you save by some chance occurrence. You may have a “calling acquaintance” with a woman apparently frivolous (though obviously good‐natured), and whose mind you judge to be probably as shallow as her conversation. Some sudden misfortune comes upon you, and, of all your acquaintances, this is, perhaps, the only one who will blossom into a friend. In emergencies, her native good sense and affectionate heart burst their artificial bonds, resume their proper place, and flow out in deeds of refined and considerate kindness. She will prove to have presence of mind, delicacy of heart, an active power of sympathy. This is the sort of woman you would choose to have by your dying‐bed, or to whom you would consign the care of your children under unhappy circumstances, whether of poverty or absence—the woman whose nerve would not fail her in a hospital, and who would march boldly into a prison with bright looks and cheerful words, ever thinking of others before herself. But had it not been for an untoward accident, you might never have distinguished her from the herd of ordinary morning‐callers. She goes through her part in society as glibly and cheerfully as your gray parrot, who is ever ready to repeat his lesson when the proper cue is given him, or as readily as your pet lap‐dog, which has no objection to stand on its hind legs in a corner, and beg as long as you choose to hold the titbit up before it. What chance have you of recognizing a soul behind all that mass of conventionality? About as much as you would have of seeing the “angel imprisoned in the marble” in a sculptor’s studio, or as much as Dante had of knowing the tormented souls hidden in the trunk of those grisly bleeding trees of the Inferno.
The more frequently and familiarly you mix with the world, the more your path is strewn with shattered ideals; for it is almost impossible to retain an ideal of anything which you see daily as a misshapen and blurred reality. Practical experience seems to coarsen and cheapen everything, and there never was yet a more melancholy truth than that of the old adage, “Familiarity breeds contempt.” Professional life as well as domestic furnishes lamentable instances of this. In commerce, where it is very difficult for poetry and ideals to find room, the reality is hardly obnoxious to the thoughtful looker‐on; for what refining influence could be expected from the perpetual jar and clash of engines, the constant chaffering, the feverish life, of the exchange? It is the realm of purely earthly, material influences, and naturally dwarfs the sympathies, while it concentrates the thoughts on one narrow point of selfish interest, if pursued for its own sake. But in the learned professions, whose aims are intellectually superior, and whose special province it is to elevate the human mind above selfish and individual interests, leading it, on the contrary, to the contemplation of abstract principles, and to the furtherance of the public weal, the ideal should be more apparent. And yet, in most cases, it is not so. There is no reverence left for a pursuit the trivial details of which are grown too familiar; petty jealousies take the place of scientific or philosophic emulation; man’s innate vanity soon narrows the circle of interest round the ego, and subordinates the progress of the world to personal advancement. There is scarcely anything less venerable in a man’s eyes than the particular branch of knowledge in which he is most proficient; and if it be with him a hobby, the love he bears to it is rather a shadow of the good opinion he holds of himself than a genuine devotion to science in the abstract. Of course, there are exceptions, numerous and honorable, but such are the plain facts in the ordinary, every‐day experience of which life is in the main composed. “No one is a hero to his valet.” Home life is another ideal destroyed by society, with its arbitrary rules and its hard, practical axioms. The peace and holiness of home are rudely jarred by the demands which fashion makes on the time of its members. We have sometimes been tempted to think that this would be a very pleasant world to any one who could go through it as a spectator only. To act a part in it yourself means to subject yourself to one disenchantment after another. You see a family group at a distance—say through a street‐window in a large city, or on the porch of a country villa. Old and young are mingled together; there may be beauty among the girls, there is refinement in their surroundings; they seem as thrifty as they are comfortable, for some are reading and some sewing: perhaps the tea‐table is spread and housewifely treasures displayed; as a picture, it is perfect. But as a drama? Are you quite sure that you would like to see the real state of mind of each person there? If so, prepare yourself for almost inevitable disappointment. It will not be a safe investigation, and the ideal you may have formed will probably come out of the trial as an angel might if he trusted himself to the rough handling of common men.
No real happiness can exist in a life of perpetual excitement; and this a fashionable life can hardly fail to be. There is an intoxication of the mind as well as of the senses. The whirl of so‐called pleasure never satisfies, but stimulates. More is required, and yet more, till, like the drunkard, you are a living paradox, never at peace unless in an atmosphere of excitement, just as he may be said to be never sober—or at least capable—unless when drunk. In the whirl of society, the mind withers; there is no time for thought, for study, for application. How many young girls there are who tell you candidly, “Oh! I have no time to practise my music. I used to do so four hours a day; but since I am in society, I can never find an hour to myself.” Then you inquire into this multiplicity of engagements, and you find—perhaps some religious occupation, some charitable work? Oh! no; only a call to be returned, cards to be left, a new toilet to be tried on, a little shopping, and a drive in the park. Pressing business, truly!
In great cities, during the season of balls and parties, a girl’s life is one unbroken round of dissipation two‐thirds of the day, and recuperation for coming “pleasure” during the remaining third. At the end of four or five months of this life, vitality is half extinct, the cheeks are pale, the mouth drawn, the eyes violet‐circled; and against all this what prize is there to set? A bubble burst, a shadow vanished! These continual festivities, beginning late, ending in the early dawn, when the poor are just waking to their toil, and servants of God are rising to praise him—these repeated gatherings called “society” entirely upset the routine of domestic life. Instead of the blithe, healthy face sparkling at the head of the breakfast‐table, there is a jaded, weary countenance, pale with a floury paleness, or flushed by late and disturbed slumbers; instead of the brisk tread and ringing voice that cheer the home, there is the listless step of the worn‐out dancer, the peevish tone that tells plainly of bodily fatigue. In the evening there is no time for a cosy gathering round the hearth, a quiet game or chat, the reading aloud of some interesting book, or the simple delights of old‐fashioned national airs. The dressing‐room absorbs all that time—the choice of flowers or jewels takes long; the last finishing touches to the toilet must not be given in a hurry. The event of the day is about to begin; and so it will be to‐ morrow and the day after, and for an interminable tread‐mill of days. If there is innate talent, there is no time to develop it; or, if it is cultivated at all, that, too, is distorted into a mere social “accomplishment,” the sole object of which is to add to the value of the possessor in the social market. The champion piece of embroidery is framed and pointed out as the work of the daughter of the house; the solitary basket of wax flowers is displayed in a conspicuous manner on an elaborate étagère; the water‐colors are studiously hung in the best‐lighted part of the drawing‐room; the overture of William Tell is invariably called for on the slightest provocation, and played off indiscriminately before the least appreciative as well as the most artistic of the family’s visiting list. And, by the way, what more egregious sham can there be than the conventional interest in music so universally professed? It is a matter of course to exclaim, “Oh! I dote on music”; and, on the basis of this broad assertion, what ludicrous exemplifications one is condemned to listen to! One will add, “Oh! yes, and I do so love Strauss’ valses”; another will tell you there is no music like the bagpipes, and no dance like an Irish jig or an old‐time Virginia reel. One gushing young lady will call the “Maud Valse” and the “Guards’ Polka” “perfectly divine,” while her sentimental friend will murmur that “Home, Sweet Home” is her favorite. With many people, a collection of ballads is identical with the whole science of music; their sympathies and comprehension can go no further.
To many, again, music stands for comic songs and Christy’s Minstrels. If an instrumental piece takes more than five minutes to get through, people begin to shift their feet and whisper to their neighbors; of course, when it is over, they will turn round and sweetly simper: “Oh! do play us something more; that last was so lovely.” In ninety‐nine out of a hundred houses where you are doomed for your sins to hear music, you hear trash. It is hardly worth criticising, either in the choice or in the execution, and, one would therefore think, hardly worth telling a lie for. And yet this conventional admiration, what is it but a lie pure and simple?
To return to our belles and their murdered home‐life. Not only is their time so mortgaged that they have none left for the joys of the family hearth, but they have none to spare for self‐culture. A woman’s education does not close on the threshold of the school‐room. Every advance made later by voluntary application to study is a greater stride than all the compulsory teaching she receives in her school‐life. If society materially interferes with this self‐development, it has a heavy responsibility to bear. Each mind thus stunted, crude, and unevenly balanced reduces the sum total of usefulness in this world, and adds to the dead‐weight of shiftless beings whose room would be decidedly better than their company in the scheme of human advancement. A frivolous, fashionable man or woman is a monster upon earth, a being whom nature certainly does not recognize, and whom religion reprobates.
The most satisfactory reflection whereby to dispel the effect of this dismal picture is this: the thing carries its antidote with it to all but hopelessly narrow minds. The pleasures of dancing within an area of a yard square, and of listening night after night to the same insipid gallantries and insincere congratulations, cannot fail to pall after a time. A French author says that after the age of thirty, a woman of any account does not dance; she leaves this pleasure to those who have no other.(64) As with all pleasures which address the senses rather than the intellect, a surfeit often proves a cure. You have tasted all the delights to be got from certain things, and the sameness at last begins to pall. There could be no more effectual check on the levelling spirit of the age than a voluntary renunciation for a time on the part of the possessors of wealth and power, and a temporary enjoyment of these honors on the part of those who envy them. How soon should we see the harassed artisan fly from the post he once coveted, the working‐girl tear off the finery she envied, the millionaire pro tem. entreat his coachman to change places with him! Those who, in the midst of their grinding toil, envy the man in broadcloth, the woman in her barouche, whom they pass and repass day by day, quite leave out of the scales the weight of inner anxiety, grief, or often only ennui, which burdens the rich and fashionable. If they could tell how this one’s heart is devoured by jealousy, how that one’s home is rendered gloomy by his too plodding ambition, or unhappy by his wife’s irritable temper! If they could guess how that sickly, white child, seated among its furs in that dark, handsome clarence, causes sleepless nights and heavy fears to that anxious mother in velvet robe and seal‐skin cloak! If they only knew the secret remorse for ever gnawing at the heart of this exquisite of the clubs, whispering the name of a girl once happy and innocent—a name now to him the synonym of a crime; or if they could tell the thoughts of the substantial merchant, as he turns away with heavy steps from a counting‐house which, the more astounding is its financial success, the more it resembles, in all but in name, a gambling‐den! And, above all, did they but know how often the sad votary of fashion, in some moment of long‐repressed but untamable natural emotion, cries out for the freedom of the poor and their robust health! That is the saddest part of this grim masque—no one is contented, no one believes in himself or in his fellow‐man; it is a drama in which the actors know full well that when the foot‐lights are put out and the curtain of night falls, they will no longer be what they seem. So the gigantic sham grows day by day, stifling nature, burying the intellect, blurring the moral sense, fossilizing the whole being. Outward shapes of humanity remain, but, by some fell enchantment, the spiritual essence is sucked away, and an automaton, skilfully contrived, represents what once was a man.
Even pleasure no longer lurks in its outward forms when “society” has thus worked its will on men. The real enjoyment is gone, but its dismal appearance must be assumed. Not to shock the world—your world—the flavorless fruit must be eaten with a good grace, the graceful draperies of social decorum must be hung on the skeleton. The wheel goes round, and it is so long since you have trusted to your own feet for guidance that you must needs keep hold of the conventional support. It is very difficult to win back your independence once it has been surrendered. The world—your world—is a pitiless task‐master, and does not pension off its former servants. If you leave it, you do so at your own risk; and if you can conquer no position which merit and your own individuality are enough to gain, you may resign yourself to the rôle of a dummy. We are not sure that some of the happiest people on earth are not, socially speaking, dummies. But when you come to think of it, what a strange, magnetic power has the little circle that forms your world! When a lady has crowded from five to six hundred guests in her narrow drawing‐rooms, she sees before her all the persons who, to her, constitute society. Of these, perhaps one‐third are of hazy position; they are but outsiders, candidates for the social honors which will only be bestowed fully and ungrudgingly on their grandchildren. Their opinion is not of much value. When you dissect the remaining thirds, you mentally check off many a respectable and amiable person as incapable of forming any independent opinion; others you secretly stigmatize as gossips, shallow‐minded, or spiteful; and the circle of responsible people becomes gradually narrower and narrower. Hardly a score do you credit with sound judgment and discriminating sense. But these are precisely the judges you do not fear, unless your conscience pricks you. They are generous and large‐minded; they stand apart from the crowd, with wider sympathies and larger appreciation; they see beyond the present, and unconsciously you find yourself classing them as exceptions to the rule. They do not form the impalpable social tribunal, then? It must be, therefore, the mediocre company of gossips. Search a little into your consciousness or your memory, and you will doubtless find it is so. A recent novelist gives an apt illustration of the relative proportion, in the eyes of an old English country gentleman, between his county, England, and the world. A diagram contains, first, a large, irregular outline representing the county; a round ball ten times smaller typifies England, and an infinitesimal point in space denotes the whole civilized world. This is the way we all look at things. No doubt it is instinctive. To us, “the world” consists of a hundred old women, eminently respectable and unctuously compassionate, who gossip about our private affairs over their tea and hot rolls. This is the core of that dread tribunal which we tremble to offend. It is indeed a hard tyrant, if it can succeed in chaining us to its car, after the pleasures which it dispenses have lost their flavor for us. But, unfortunately, half mankind acknowledge this species of bondage, and we must presume voluntarily, or at least passively.
Were it not that this thraldom is so unspeakably sad, it would seem such a farce, if looked upon dispassionately from without! One might almost liken a ball or great official reception in one of the capitals of fashion to the mediæval Dance of Death. The scene is brilliant with deceptive gaiety; the whole surface of society ripples with smiles; the maskers all wear their brightest garments and their stereotyped badges of mirth. There, in the doorway, stands a lovely woman, in rose‐color from head to foot—a cherub’s face enshrined in a sunset cloud, so perhaps an artist would fancy. She smiles bewitchingly, and coquets with her fan, while talking to a gray‐bearded hero from India. But she has made up her mind to sacrifice her honor to her love; tomorrow, at dawn, she will leave her husband’s home and her baby’s cradle; and, poor victim! she is panting under the weight of this wretched secret even while she listens to old‐world gallantry from her fatherly admirer. Not far from her stands another fair form, not more pure in outward semblance, hardly less beautiful—a gifted woman, a true wife, smiling and conversing as calmly as any one in the room; but she knows that she has a fatal internal disease, and that at any moment death might suddenly overtake her. Not to alarm her husband, she joins in every festivity, carrying her secret with her as the Spartan did the fox who was gnawing at his bosom. Amid the whirl of the dance, you perhaps single out that young girl, fair, fresh, seventeen. She is not as happy as she seems; her eyes roam shyly around; there is one whom she both longs and dreads to see, for she is not sure whether she will not find him by the side of her school friend, now her rival. And among the men, how many, beneath their masks, bear sorrowing or anxious hearts! That elderly man, so calmly listening to a fluent diplomate, knows that to‐morrow it will be noised abroad that he is bankrupt—utterly ruined. When he leaves this gay scene to‐night, it will be for the railway, which will bear him out of the country in a few hours. Yonder pale man, who wears his regulation smile so listlessly that you cannot help likening it to a garment loosely hung, is here in the interest of a friend, and is waiting an opportunity to speak a word of cordial recommendation to a ministerial acquaintance, formerly a college friend, now a power in the cabinet. His heart is heavy with a private grief; his child lies dangerously ill at home, and his poor distracted wife needs his comfort and support; but, true to his word, he forgets himself for an hour or two, that he may not miss the golden opportunity on which hang the hopes of his friend’s whole future. In the centre of the dance, the tall form of a Life‐guardsman is prominent; to‐morrow he will have disappeared from the world, and only his intimates will know that he had long determined to enter a Catholic seminary, and study for the priesthood. He did not want his decision discussed beforehand, and took the best means of silencing curiosity by appearing the gayest of the gay. Every one here to‐night has a long record oppressing his heart—something that makes the present scene quite secondary in his thoughts, and that causes in his breast a bitter feeling of reaction against the mockery of which he forms a part. And this is the thing called pleasure! How little we know of the people with whom we spend our lives—those that touch our hands daily, and speak to us commonplace words of courtesy! Surely the bees in their hive, the ants on their hill, the beavers and prairie‐dogs of a “village,” know each other better than we do our next‐door neighbors! We cut the thread of a guilty reverie by some observation about the weather, or we laugh the unmeaning laugh that supplies the place of an answer, perhaps inconvenient to ourselves, and this laugh jars on the tenderest memories of a sorrowful past uppermost just then in our neighbor’s mind. There is something appalling in all this—the tragedy lies so near the surface, and we tread upon it so often!
The trivial aspect of society is oftener still before us—the inanity of morning calls, the gossip of a provincial town, the petty local interests that absorb three‐fourths of mankind. Why, we wonder, should general conversation invariably breed gossip, while a tête‐à‐tête sometimes elicits real information and rational interchange of ideas? The same person who in a company of five or six has nothing but commonplace remarks to offer, often opens out in private though yet only ceremonial conversation, and startles you by original opinions and valuable suggestions. The French are perhaps the only people who shine in mixed conversation; they have the talent of causerie—a thing that with us hardly exists; the very word is untranslatable. A Frenchwoman can be sparkling where we can only be dull; she can dance on a cobweb, while we should break down on a cart‐rope. Gallic vivacity can make even the details of the kitchen amusing, while we should be insufferably prosy on the same subject.
How well we remember the ponderous magnates of our neighborhood in the county! The stately morning calls, the inevitable topics of local interest, the solemnity of that “quarter of an hour” which we were fain to liken to that rendered famous by an old author. Unfailing resources, O Court Journal! the royal visit to such and such a place, the marriage of so‐and‐so, etc., etc. Then the flower‐garden and the poultry‐yard (hereditary hobbies with English ladies), the agricultural show, the coming election. And then the formidable ordeal comes to an end, probably to the great relief of both parties. Neither of the two cared for the subjects discussed or for the interlocutor discussing them; but etiquette demanded the waste of fifteen minutes, and the laws of society are as those of the Medes and Persians. In a lower rank of life, the proprieties are perhaps still more rigidly enforced, and the only difference would be in the choice of topics. George Eliot’s inimitable gossip in The Mill on the Floss describes that to a nicety, and indeed, although written in England, might do duty almost as well anywhere else. The quality of the house linen, the antiquity of the silver spoons, the solemn conclave over a new bonnet, and the delinquencies of the maid‐servant—such would be the staple. In every case you see the mask is on, it fits close, and no form of “society” is disregarded!
Staying for a few days at a friend’s house is a terrible trial in polite society. You are never a moment off duty; you have to change costumes as often as an actress in a play where the “unities” are “nowhere”; and, above all, if you are a woman, you have the dismal prospect of three hours’ morning talk with a bevy of your own sex, your hands meanwhile engaged in some useless piece of fancy‐work. The topics of conversation may be guessed, their range not being very extensive; of course, somebody’s marriage or probable engagement is discussed, silks and laces are made up into imaginary toilets with surprising rapidity, the history of some refractory scholar and the details of the clothing club are next drawn upon, and it is very seldom that the talk glides into any interesting or rational channel. It really is a pity that people will persist in talking of each other and not of things. So much might be altered for the better in society, if conversation were not so exclusively personal. Mutual improvement is a thing altogether overlooked in the civilized world. Even men succumb to gossip; for what is the staple of club‐talk? So‐and‐so has “sold out,” and gone into a less expensive regiment; such an one seems very attentive to Miss So‐and‐so; such another was deeply offended because he was not asked to Lady So‐and‐so’s party; the shooting in Lord C——’s preserves is confoundedly bad this year; Mr. A—— thinks of contesting the next election at B——. Interminable waves of gossip flood the world from the club as from the boudoir, though the latter certainly does by far the most mischief.
We are told that “no man can serve two masters.” In all relations in life this is eminently true. Intellect and Mammon scarcely agree better than God and Mammon. The proper atmosphere of intellectual life is peace, and a student’s career should be blameless in morals as well as tranquil in experience. Fashion and society forbid this; they necessitate loss of time, and unsettle the even balance of the mind. For one who values his calmness of spirit and his health of body there is a golden rule, which, if he weigh all external pleasures by it, will infallibly secure him the peace he needs: No pleasure is safe but that which leaves no regret behind it on the morrow. Who has not felt the wretched sensation left by pleasures not fulfilling this condition? Who does not remember the feverish pulse, the troubled dreams, the vague uneasiness, the sickly apathy that follow on a night spent in violent and unnatural amusement? One wiser than our generation has said:
“The desires of sensuality draw thee abroad; but, when the hour is past, what dost thou bring home but a weight upon thy conscience and a dissipation of heart? A joyful going abroad often brings forth a sorrowful coming home, and a merry evening makes a sad morning.”(65)
These words, written centuries ago, contain volumes, and are not less applicable now than in the middle ages.
We often hear it said that man is a gregarious animal. He needs companionship, and clings to his kind. This it is that induces that more stirring life which distinguishes the city from the province; which quickens the perceptions and enlarges the sympathies. But the perfection of the intellectual life is not found in cities. The world‐wide influences that stir great centres have locomotive powers that are superior to the channels of human contrivance. It needs not the friction of mind with mind to originate great ideas or engender great deeds. The companionship needful for men of talent lies not in the social circle, but in the library. As Ruskin has said in one of his lectures, we should each of us be proud of being admitted to the friendship of some great poet, artist, or philosopher; and yet we neglect that inner communion which is open to us at any moment with the spirits of all the departed heroes of the mind, whose choicest thoughts are stored on the shelves of our libraries. It is true that the straitened circumstances of many a scholar keep him chain‐ bound within the limits of great, black, smoky cities; for, since he cannot possess individually the literary treasures that are the necessary food of his intellectual life, he is obliged to slake his thirst at the common fountain of the public libraries and lecture‐rooms. But we were speaking rather of the ideal, the perfect scholarly life, which implies a combination of pursuits. The mind which looks to the highest products of ancient and modern thought for its legitimate pabulum can never be but half satisfied with anything less than perfection in its accessory surroundings. Such a mind is naturally allied to a sensitive and imaginative organization, and the coarse contrasts between the peaceful study and the common street‐sights of every large city must necessarily be painful to it. Even so the petty gossip and “storms in a tea‐cup” of a rural centre; for all that is mean and small is foreign to that calm atmosphere in which sages and poets live. Those sages, those poets, in their day, may have lived, it is true, among the turmoil and strife of small interests; but death and the lapse of time seem to have bereft them, in our eyes, of any such disenchantments; we see them transformed and idealized, and we gladly aim at reproducing, not their commonplace lives, but their spiritual existence. This existence still survives, and it is to this that we wish to ally our own. For this perfection of lofty companionship, the solitude of a country life is most conducive, but it must be a solitude of leisure, of freedom from conventionalities, and, unluckily, of at least some degree of wealth. This latter condition is fulfilled in so few cases that our ideal remains but too often unrealized in this work‐a‐day world, yet none the less is it the true and only dignified ideal of the intellectual life. The instinct of those born with a spark of genius will bear us out in this assertion; no miser longs for wealth more thirstingly than a book‐worm. There is an innate sympathy with the outward beauties of nature which distinguishes the scholar even more than it does the gipsy.
But, as a crowning condition to the enjoyment of these beauties, he must be free from the common cares and interests of men; he must walk in a higher sphere than those whose sympathies cannot mingle with his; he must walk alone in spirit, even though his body may jostle the unthinking crowd. Have we made our scholar a misanthrope? Yes, if thereby is meant a hater of society, with its shams and its stage‐like scenery; no, if you understand thereby a hater of humankind. But be sure of one thing: a man learns to love men more the less he sees of them, and the more, by their absence, they leave him his charitable estimate of their probable good qualities. No doubt the earth itself looks fairer from the standpoint of a fixed star than it does to‐day to any toiling wayfarer on its rough pathway.
To S. Joseph: On The Day Of My First Mass.
Type of the Priesthood with its Virgin Spouse, The Immaculate Church, our Mother ever fair! Since even to me God’s wondrous grace allows An office more than seraphim may share, I kneel to thee, most gentle Saint, and dare To choose thee patron of the trust. Oh! make My evermore fidelity thy care, And keep me Mary’s, for her own sweet sake! Her knight before, and poet, now her priest (Nor less her slave—a thousandfold the more), I glory in a bondage but increased, And kiss the chain her dear De Montfort wore, With “Omnia per Mariam” mottoed o’er: Which seals me her apostle, though the least.
FEAST OF THE SEVEN DOLORS, March 31, 1871.
Odd Stories. VI.—King Ruli.
Once upon a time there was, on this side of the Hartz Mountains, a secret place, where, touching a hidden spring, you found yourself in a trice between immense walls of rock, whence a mysterious person, dressed in red from top to toe, took you into a great cavern, the first of a series of vast caves filled with hogsheads and tuns of wine and beer, and lighted up in such a manner that the brilliant stalactites with which it was hung sparkled and flashed like the most precious gems in a jeweller’s dream. The awe inspired by this scene hardly left you a moment to observe that the nose of your guide was even redder than his body, when you were ushered through another secret door into the domain of a grand old castle, the battlements of which, covered with moss, overlooked a pastoral valley and its white flocks, and seemed to rule the landscape, notwithstanding the presence of many other castles, as if it were the house of a monarch. And so it was. Here dwelt King Ruli, the patron of minnesingers and jolly cavaliers—that stalwart king whose brow, and beard, and port were the very signs of genial majesty. Pleasure ruled the board where he sat; and when the juice of the Weinberg warmed up in the blood of the lords and minstrels in Weinbergland, the ten noble companions of King Ruli swept the mystic chords of the harp, and with voices free sang in echoing strain their merry roundelay:
We’re rovers all, we’re singers five And rhymers five; come round, come round; Ye five shall give us honest rhyme, And we shall give you sound.
Let laurels crown his great gray head, A big arm‐chair his throne be made. Then sing: Ruli, King Ruli! And he shall be our king.
To sounds of cheerful thoughts like these each royal night wore on, while the castled lords of hill and valley feasted at the king’s table, and made merry over jest and story, to the clinking of many glasses and in the pleasant uproar of many voices. Seated in his chair at the head of the table, he drank from a great flagon of crystal, or smoked from a pipe as long as his body, the bowl of which required a page‐in‐waiting to support it, lest, in a drowsy moment, it should drop from the mouth of the king. Below him were ranged the ten minnesingers, who smoked from one immense bowl of tobacco, having long stems that led to all their mouths, whence issued a volume of smoke, which, as it rose around the great burning bowl, was like the fume of a conflagration; and thus betimes the merry minnesingers sang:
Ah! never once so jolly face In green old Arcady appeared; And as he drinks, the drink flows down His flowing, streaming beard. He’s six feet high, his beard is long, And broad his body is and strong. Then sing: King Ruli, King Ruli! He shall be our king.
No king could resist such flattery as this, and it was with truth that his minstrels pictured him standing, and, in a tone of majestic joviality, wishing the health of the whole company:
“True liegemen all, I give ye joy, For I am host and landlord here; Ho! varlets, bring me Rhenish wine, And flagons fill of beer!” Right red Rhine wine! right red Rhine wine! Was ever glass so clear and fine? So sing: Ruli, King Ruli! And he shall be our king!
Late in the night the sound of song and story made for the gentle monarch a lullaby, and his head rested on his bosom in slumber, as he laid down his flagon. Had his chief minstrel then tickled his great ear, it would not have waked him up; and so, seeing that the king had filled himself with slumber as with the drugs of Morpheus, his lieges sang:
But, hold! the monarch’s sleepy grown; His pipe has dropt, he’s drowsed and sped. Hark! how he snores! Wide open doors; We’ll bury him in bed. Then, while our loyal shoulders bear His burden, thus our burden hear: King Ruli! The king is dead; long live the king! And live again, King Ruli!
But as night after night of song and wine went by, the king grew older and older in his cups. Little he saw or cared that new revellers, new minstrels, new lords, had one by one taken the places of old ones, and that the speech of the new‐comers was loud and hoarse, and their song ribald and discordant. Those who remained with him of his old friends and retainers had gradually imbibed the character of the latest revellers, and their potations were deeper and their jests broader than ever. Once in a while the king groaned and complained that his beer was too bitter; but they so flattered his jokes, and praised his beard, and spoke of his noble brow, and his royal blood, and his glorious voice, that he sang and roared as of old, and swallowed his beer without further complaint. On such an occasion as this it required the cynical courage of the minstrel Knipfenbausenstein to sing, as he did, from the end of the hall, which he had just entered after a long absence:
There were ten vintners old and sick, And all their wine had gone to lees; Of empty casks they made them cells: Oh! very bitter folks were these. Misgives me now, good friends, to think A king should be a king of drink. But sing: Ruli, King Ruli! this night shall be our king!
The minstrel doubtless had in mind the ten companions of the king, who, being no longer able to keep up with the stalwart Ruli in the vigor of his potations, had cried out as with one voice against their sovereign, declaring that his beer was bitter beyond endurance, and his pleasures a gilded despotism. For this offence the king, swearing roundly that they were traitor knights, who knew not how to be moderate drinkers or loyal feasters, consigned them to his darkest wine caverns, where they were doomed to dwell in empty hogsheads for many a year.
Now, after a life of good living, the rare old king sat in his great velvet‐cushioned chair, warming his legs, which were rather swollen, and his feet, which were encased in large slippers, before a fire sufficient to cook an ox. Glided to his side his eldest child, the queenly Hermengilde, and said softly: “Alas! sire, and hast thou not heard that my first‐born has killed young Siegbert of Bierhalle, in a drunken brawl, and wilt thou persist in these foolish feasts?”
“Tut, tut, silly girl! This feasting hurts not thy fasting. ’Twere better to kill his man in drink than sober; and, tut, tut! we must not grieve for ever, child. Wine is for the drinking, and life for the living. Heaven send thee luck!” With this the jovial king took a draught from his flagon.
Ere he had smoked his pipe, the fair Joanna, second princess of the blood, whose wont it was to fill the king’s pipe with affectionate care, said to him musingly: “Methinks it is the night when our brother Max fell over into the chasm and was killed. Ill befits that its peace be marred by roysterers whom, say they, he had most to blame for his death.”
“What! and have ye turned dames of the cloister, that ye seek to make crows’ nests of my beard and gray hairs? Umph! my lady counsellors; and ye would have no more wine drank because rocks are steep! Did not sober Hans fall into the well, and ere thou wast born? Ay, but a brave lad was Max, and a merry one. A glass to his memory!”
The king was unaware, as he thus spoke, of the near presence of a reverend and noble matron, whose face bore marks of care and grief. It was the queen Roxalana. A child of tender years ran from her side to climb her grandsire’s knee, but, seeing that the royal flagon stood in the way, exclaimed: “O grandfather! that horrid drink!” The king, with a majestic motion, waved the child away, and she returned in tears to the side of the mute queen.
“So, my lady, queen of woebegones and nurse of whimperings, thou art here to tease thy lord and trouble his gout. ’Tis well. Train the brats of the land to do imps’ work to their fathers, and make your daughters have long faces; but have a care, goodwife, lest an old man’s patience be too weak for this old maid’s gossip. Pray, what new worm is in thy brain, that thou tellest we must not drink the cup of our fathers?”
Not long after this scene, a loud clash of arms was heard in the court, and the debauched minnesinger, Wittekind, staggered into the hall, his face stained with blood as with wine. The king’s guests had just drunk their tenth glass, when a crowd of rioters, armed to the teeth, rushed in upon them, and, breaking glasses right and left, proclaimed the downfall of King Ruli. With a bitter and heavy heart, the king recognized among the crowds who now drank to his perdition many of his old revellers; and, seizing a favorable moment, fled totteringly into the wine mountain. There, to his great surprise, he found that all the tuns and hogsheads of wine and beer which had been stored away were quite empty. Once more he joined his ten companions locked up in the wine caves, lamenting bitterly that the wine of his life had gone to lees, and much tormented by the man in red, whose nose was like fire.
Epigram. The Widow’s Mites.
Two mites, two drops—yet all her house and land— Falle from a steady heart though trembling hand. The others’ wanton wealth foams high and brave. The others cast away; she only gave.
—Crashaw.
Old Versus New.
One pleasant afternoon, in the autumn just passed, I lay stretched out lazily on a mow of new‐mown hay, in a large, old‐fashioned country barn.
It was still redolent with that odor peculiar to hay newly cut, having been placed in the barn but a few hours before.
In the work of cutting, raking, and storing, patent machines of every description had assisted; and, lying there cosily enjoying the effect, I had plenty of leisure to think upon the cause.
With my mind full of reflections on the wonderful improvements of the age, and vague thoughts of labor‐saving machines, it was not long until I was off in a sound slumber, to which a hearty dinner had by no means indisposed me. I was soon in the theatre of dreams, and the first actor whose voice I heard was an old scythe. Apparently, the peg on which he hung was rotten, and, giving way, let the old fellow fall with a shock that seemed to stir up what little life yet remained in him; for I soon heard, in a queer, cracked voice, the following complaint:
“Well, here I am at last! Hung up on the wall years ago, like an old coat that’s put aside for a rainy day, my master couldn’t even see to it that I had a safe peg; but, hanging me on that old rotten thing, I’ve got a fall that my poor bones won’t be the better of for a month to come.”
With that, one of the patent mowers, showing his polished teeth, gruffly asked: “What are you growling about? What’s that you’re saying about the master?”
“It ill suits you,” said the scythe, “to put on airs, though you are rubbed and polished, and, drawn by a dashing team, ride about on wheels. Upstarts always assume great importance, and the latest converts are the most zealous partisans; when you have served the master as long and as faithfully as I have, you may have some right to maintain his cause.”
“Why,” said the mower, “you’re quite a preacher, to be sure; pray tell us what cause you have for grievance? Is it, forsooth, because your peg gave way you are so highly incensed? Even if you did get a fall, I think you ought to be grateful that you are housed high and dry, and not left out in the rain to rust.”
“My fall is a small matter indeed,” said the scythe, “compared with my other wrongs. When I see you, with your gay paint and glittering teeth, eating up the food that I enjoyed for years; when I see fair meadows of clover, and valleys filled with golden grain, all given over to your rapacious maw, and I, I who once received all this as my just right, allowed but the little scraps that grow around a stump—when I see all this, my temper is tried to the utmost at the injustice that is done me.”
“Yes,” chimed in an old and well‐nigh toothless rake, “you may well complain of the scanty share that is doled out to you; I too, hang here neglected, and, when I am taken down, get equally tough morsels for my poor teeth.”
Whereupon several hoes, filled with deadly hate against their enemies of the plough family, now took courage, as they heard the boldly uttered words of their companions, and, speaking up with one voice, said: “We likewise have reason to complain of our master. There was a time when we were thought fit for any labor; we turned up the earth to support the potato‐vines; we loosed the earth around the corn; and that splendid vegetable, the cabbage, was tended by our trusty blades; now we are deemed fit for scarce anything but to clean out manure, to scrape offal from the yard, and, in fact, do all the dirty work of the place.” It seemed as if the spirit of rebellion was abroad; for at this, the flail that hung idly on a spike followed with a long speech.
“You have all,” said the flail, “good reasons for being indignant with the master of this farm; my friend, the scythe, may justly complain of the rich harvests given over to his rival, the patent mower; our old companion, the rake—an exceptional rake, by the way—may consistently inveigh against the master for giving him in his old age naught but the hardest morsels of food; and our worthy associates, the hoes, may well be indignant, and look with contempt and scorn on the foul legacy bequeathed to them—a legacy which hoes of their stamp should disdain to embrace. But he has treated none of you so cruelly as he has treated me; forced into a disagreeable union with what he calls my handle, battered almost to pieces in battering out his grain, I yet respected him for the care he took of me in the months when I was useless to him. But now he has new‐fangled machines to do his work, and, uncared for and unnoticed, dust covers me so completely that I can scarce open eyes or mouth. Base ingratitude has been my portion, and I certainly may be excused if I feel displeased, ay, enraged. I may be pardoned if I seek not simply redress, but revenge.” As the flail ended, a deep murmur of assent filled the whole place; and the patent mower, who had kept strict silence since his last question to the scythe, now spoke up.
“My worthy friends,” said he, “I am indeed very sorry to be, with my companions, the innocent cause of all your troubles. I have listened to your complaints, and cannot deny that they are, in the main, just. But you should know that the master seeks only his own comfort, and, whatever care he takes of us, it is only to relieve himself from labor. As I reflect upon your present position, I see myself similarly situated; for the time will come when I and my associates will have to stand aside for newer and more vigorous servants of toil.
“The master, too, will one day find himself in the same condition. He also will become old, and will look around on younger and heartier hands doing his work; and, as he grows still older, he must suffer many a slight, for the world wants nothing it cannot use.
“Now that the period of your usefulness has gone by, strive to become reconciled to your fate; murmur no more, accept your lot with resignation, be satisfied with the work you have done, and patiently wait for the end.”
Curious to hear how the malcontents would take this bit of philosophy, I leaned over to catch the first word; but, leaning too far, I slid off the mow, and falling, not on the floor, fortunately, but on some bundles of straw, was rudely awakened to find that I had been asleep some hours; for evening had come on, and it was now so dark in the barn that I could see nothing of the bold disputants of my dream.
Hastening to the house, I amused the family by the recital of this contest of the old against the new; and, profiting by my dream, I have since resolved to accept the mower’s advice, and be always reconciled to time’s changes.
THE LIFE OF THE BLESSED PETER FAVRE, S.J., First Companion of S. Ignatius. (Vol. VIII. of F. Coleridge’s Quarterly Series.) London: Burns & Oates. (New York: Sold by The Catholic Publication Society.)
The history of the Society of Jesus is rich in abundant materials of untiring interest. The Blessed Peter Favre’s apostolic career was short, having been but of seven years’ duration, yet crowded with astonishing results. The particular fact most strikingly brought into view in this Life is the one which of all others is the most shameful for the Reformation—viz., that it had no intellectual or moral origin or character, but sprang merely from the sins and vices which had so frightfully corrupted a vast number of all classes of Christians in the miserable XVIth century. F. Favre saw this clearly, and often said that if Luther himself could have been brought to sincere contrition and repentance for his sins, his errors in doctrine would have disappeared without any argumentation. Accordingly, he set himself to preach like a missionary, to exhort and win persons to a reformation of life, and to labor with wonderful success to convert sinners to God, as the shortest and surest way to check the progress of heresy.
The present volume is, like all those which have preceded it, carefully and neatly prepared as a book of choice reading for persons of cultivated spiritual and literary tastes.
THE PRIDE OF LEXINGTON: A Tale of the American Revolution. By William Seton, author of Romance of the Charter Oak, The Pioneers, etc., etc. New York: P. O’Shea. 1874.
Mr. Seton is a nephew of the celebrated foundress of the American branch of the institute of the Daughters of Charity, and a brother of the Rt. Rev. Monsignor Seton. He served with honor as an officer of one of our New York regiments during the late war, and since that time has especially devoted himself to the study of early New England history, which he has illustrated by his historical novels. Our first impression respecting the merits of a previous novel by Mr. Seton, in which he took great pains to depict the manners and customs of the early Puritan inhabitants of Connecticut and Massachusetts (the Romance of the Charter Oak), was not very favorable. We have since been disposed to think that we did not duly appreciate the skill and talent of the author, and have found other persons, well qualified to judge of such matters, who have considered the Charter Oak as a remarkably successful effort of its kind. Both that novel and the present one are characterized by a marked realism, like that of a certain Dutch and Flemish school of painting. Probably they do present a more correct and faithful picture of those old times than that given by writers who have more idealism and romance in their delineation, like James F. Cooper. We confess to a taste, nevertheless, for these more romantic authors. And, speaking in cool criticism, we think a novelist, in following the highest principles and ends of his art, ought to idealize more than Mr. Seton is disposed to do. He has a broad sense of the humorous and ridiculous in commonplace characters and actions. The absurdities and trivialities of common life are too faithfully represented in his pages, and there is frequently a degree of coarseness in the description of vulgar persons which is disagreeable. Yankee children, however, devour Mr. Seton’s stories with avidity, which is a good proof of their naturalness. And, putting aside the peculiarity which we have noticed, the story lately published, The Pride of Lexington, is, even more than the first one, a composition of real originality and power, establishing fully the author’s ability as a historical novelist. The battles of Lexington and Bunker Hill are well described; the heroes, and especially the heroine, of the story, with the plot of private incidents and events that make the filling up of the historical scenes, are interesting; there is much genuine comic humor in the by‐play, especially in the episode of Billy Smith and the black coon, called “the parson,” and we are quite sure that the genuine, unsophisticated children of the by‐ gone generation of New England forefathers, if they get hold of The Pride of Lexington, will pay the author the tribute of an oft‐repeated and delighted perusal.
CONFERENCES ON THE SPIRITUAL LIFE. By the Rev. Father de Ravignan, S.J. Translated from the French by Mrs. Abel Ram. London: R. Washbourne. 1873. (New York: Sold by The Catholic Publication Society.)
F. de Ravignan was undoubtedly an orator. The impression which he made upon his hearers is enough to justify us in making this assertion. The orator must be heard; when his words are written, their fire is gone, and they no longer burn. In the case of F. de Ravignan especially, there must have been much in the magnetism of the man, in his earnestness, in his deep religious feeling, in the firm conviction and strong love, shown in the manner in which he spoke; for in his printed conferences and sermons we do not find great eloquence or beauty of diction or depth of thought. There are none of those bursts of passion, of those profound thoughts and comprehensive views, in which a whole subject is condensed into a single phrase, as strong as it is striking, which we so often meet with in the conferences of Lacordaire. Nor yet is there that stately flow of language, at once simple and majestic, that evenness of style and unbroken sequence of thought, which characterize the discourses of F. Felix. And yet neither Lacordaire nor Felix excited greater enthusiasm or made a profounder impression in the pulpit of Notre Dame than De Ravignan.
If he had not the depth and comprehensiveness of thought of the one, or the sonorous diction and lofty manner of the other, he must have been, in some respects at least, a greater orator than either. The conferences contained in the volume now before us were preached to the “Enfants de Marie,” in the Convent of the Sacred Heart, in Paris, during the years 1855, 1856, and 1857. They were not written out by F. de Ravignan, but were compiled by one of his hearers from notes taken at the time of their delivery, and are, we think, equally as good as the conferences preached in Notre Dame from 1837 to 1846, which were published in four volumes shortly after his death. They are simply familiar discourses to ladies in the world on the most important subjects connected with their duties as Christians; in which we find all the best qualities that distinguished F. Ravignan as a preacher—sincere piety and much earnestness, united with delicacy and refinement both of thought and language. He does not inveigh against the vices of society, but rather seeks to describe the beauties of the Christian life; to show its dignity and responsibilities, its perfect harmony with the highest aspirations of the soul and the soundest dictates of reason.
The name of F. de Ravignan will of itself be sufficient to obtain a wide circulation for this English version of his conferences.
ECCLESIASTICAL ANTIQUITIES OF LONDON. By Alex. Wood, M.A. Oxon. London: Burns & Oates. 1874. (New York: Sold by The Catholic Publication Society.)
This book is quite a storehouse of curious and valuable information—just the kind of matter that would be overlooked by the civil historian, and which the reverent chronicler (alas! an almost extinct species, now) alone would be apt to take cognizance of.
It doubtless surprised many intelligent readers to find what interesting facts even a cursory investigation would bring to light, while reading what our “Looker‐Back” saw while in London. This work is a treat of a similar character. It is constructed on the plan of an itinerary, and divided into nine “walks,” in which the most notable localities are looked at from an archæological point of view, re‐peopled by the actors on the stage at the respective dates, and reanimated by the deeds then being performed.
NOTES OF THE WANDERING JEW; or, The Jesuits and their Opponents. Edited by John Fairplay, Esq. Dublin: McGlashan & Gill. 1873. (New York: Sold by The Catholic Publication Society.)
We are doubtless indebted to the famous romance of Eugene Sue for these notes of the Wandering Jew, in which this extraordinary personage, after his ceaseless journeyings for more than eighteen hundred years, finally turns up as an author, and, surprising as it may seem, a defender of the Jesuits.
The first part of the little volume is devoted to S. Ignatius. The Wandering Jew had seen him on two occasions—first in Spain, in his hot youth, with his light, graceful form clad in a page’s rich attire, with the plumed cap and velvet mantle, the hawk upon his wrist, the hounds following at his heels, whilst his foot seemed hardly to touch the ground as he walked; and again, at Rome, he saw him in his old age, arrayed in the flowing gown of the priest, with the calm of deliberate wisdom on his high forehead, advancing with a sweet and awful majesty to the altar.
“I loved and revered him then,” says the Jew, “albeit a stranger to his communion; and I cannot recall the memory of that marked and expressive countenance, whether in the gallant boy or the venerable and saintly old man, without feeling some interest in the fate of that illustrious order which he alone created, and which still bears the impress of his character and genius.”
The remaining chapters are devoted to The Spiritual Exercises, “The Constitutions of the Order,” “The Missions and Schools of the Jesuits,” and, finally, to answering some of the charges which Protestants and infidels have brought against the Society. There is a very good chapter on the Provincial Letters, in which Pascal, with a wit and power of sarcasm surpassed only by the artful unfairness with which he treats the subject, has sought to make the whole order responsible for the extravagant opinions of some few Spanish and Flemish Jesuits.
The author, who is evidently not a Catholic, has written with great fairness and good sense, and we most willingly recommend his book to our readers.
THE RED FLAG, AND OTHER POEMS. By the Hon. Roden Noel. London: Strahan & Co. 1872.
We have been asked to notice this book. But how are Catholics to regard it with favor, when, before they have read far in the poem of “The Red Flag,” they come upon a passage containing an insult too gross and slanderous, we should have thought, for even Exeter Hall? We forbear to quote the words. Suffice it to say that the author, ignoring the martyred archbishop and priests, represents the church as gloating over the execution of the communists in Paris.
Affectation, verboseness, and sensuous description characterize these poems as works of art; while the metre of “The Red Flag” is in the worst taste, and the lyrics are spoilt by all sorts of quirks and the clumsiest divisions of stanzas.
The Catholic Publication Society has in press, and will soon publish, The Life of St. John of the Cross, 1 vol. 12mo, and The Farm of Muiceron and Madame Agnes, in 1 vol. 8vo.
THE CATHOLIC WORLD. VOL. XIX., NO. 110.—MAY, 1874.
The Coming Transit Of Venus.
This year, 1874, bids fair to be memorable in the annals of astronomy. A subject which has long occupied our students of that venerable and now gigantic science is gradually passing from their closets and their scientific discussions into reviews and newspapers, and is forcing itself on the attention of the world at large. At first sight the matter seems a very trivial one. On the 8th of next December, keen eyes in certain parts of the world may, if the sky be clear, and if they look closely, notice that a small, dark spot, a mere speck, will flit across the face of the sun. Examined through a telescope, it is seen to have an appreciable diameter—about 1’. It is not half as interesting to look at as ordinary solar spots, with their jagged edges, their umbra and penumbra, their changing forms, and their whirling faculæ. It has not, as they seem to have, some vague connection with the magnetic disturbances, the auroral lights, or any other atmospheric changes of this sublunary world of ours. It simply passes across the sun in something less than six hours, leaving no trace behind, and producing, so far as would appear, no appreciable effect of any kind. It occurs but rarely—twice in a century; in some centuries, not at all. Small as it is, it can be foretold and calculated beforehand. Except as a verification of such calculations, ordinary minds might think it singularly unimportant—scarcely more important than the gleam in the heavens at night of an occasional and isolated falling star, which glides along its shining path for an instant, and then disappears never more to be seen.
Yet for the last ten—we might, with more truth, say for fifty—years back, the best astronomers have been preparing to observe, with unequalled care, the passage of that little black spot. Some have again and again gone over the records of the observations made in 1761 and 1769, when it was last seen, criticising what was then done, distinguishing what was well done from what they judge to have been faulty, and tracing these faults back to their sources—either to the imperfection of the instruments used, to personal errors, or to mistakes or omissions of the observers themselves. In the observations now to be made, all these sources of error will, as far as possible, be excluded. Others have spent years in patiently going over the long calculations connected with those observations, detecting and eliminating any errors they find, and introducing such corrections as the subsequent advance of astronomical science demands. The amended results thus obtained are ready for comparison, at their proper value, with the additional and, it is hoped, better results to be obtained from the observations of next December. Still others have used, and are now using, their utmost skill in constructing instruments of hitherto unequalled excellence for the great occasion. Besides great improvements in the instruments known in 1769, they have devised others, perhaps more valuable, and of a character then not dreamed of. Others, again, have devoted months to the nicest and most intricate calculations of the movements of the earth and the planets, in order to know in full time beforehand what special stations on the surface of the earth will, that day and at the required hours, afford the most eligible positions from which to make the desired observations.
Finally, governments have been appealed to, to aid in preparing the means and in bearing the expense; and they have responded. Every civilized nation is acting in the matter. Russia leads off with, as we are assured, twenty‐seven stations, mostly on her own territory, all duly provided with instruments and observers. France, England, and Germany will have ten or a dozen each. Austria will have her quota. Belgium, Holland, Denmark, and Italy will establish stations and send observers and instruments. Even distracted Spain is at least talking of it. From the Western World, the United States will send eight corps. Nor will Brazil, Peru, and Chili prove laggard. The whole civilized world seems to move in this undertaking with a singular unanimity, doing what only governments can do. Many of the stations must be in bleak and inhospitable lands beyond the confines of civilization. They will be furnished with all that is needful, and thousands of miles of telegraphic wires will be stretched to put them in connection with the observatories of Europe. Other stations will be on distant islands in mid‐ocean. Thither national vessels will bear the observers and their instruments. It were well for the world if governments would manifest such generous rivalry in doing good when other and more important interests than those of astronomy are in question.
What, then, is that little black spot which they are so anxious to examine as it passes across the sun next December? How comes it to be of such importance that all these mighty efforts are made to have it fully and correctly observed? To what great results, scientific or other, will a correct knowledge of everything about it lead the world?
That little black spot is the planet Venus, then passing directly between the earth and the sun, and producing an homœopathic solar eclipse, just as, under similar circumstances, the moon might produce an annular or a total solar eclipse. As ordinarily seen in her character of morning or evening star, Venus shines more brightly and joyously in the heavens than any other star. But on this occasion the whole of her illuminated half is turned towards the sun. Towards the earth she shows only her dark, unillumined half, which even looks darker by contrast with the bright face of the sun, on which it is projected. This passage across the sun is called the transit of Venus. If the observations are successfully made, they will give us the means of ascertaining with sufficient precision what as yet is not so known—the actual distance of the earth from the sun.
This knowledge is all‐important in a scientific point of view. From it we can deduce the distance of every other planet of the solar system. With it we can carry our survey beyond that system into the stellar world. The distance of our earth from the sun—the orbital radius of the earth, is, for the astronomer, his unit of measure—his yard‐stick, as it has been termed—when he would estimate or measure stellar distances or velocities. Any error in it is multiplied millions of times in such surveys. Any uncertainty or reasonable apprehension of error about it casts a cloud of embarrassment over almost every portion of the newly acquired domain of astronomy. No wonder, then, that no effort is spared to secure as soon as possible, and in the easiest and most certain way we know of, an accurate solution of the question. This, more than anything else, is the spring of the whole movement.
The earth, as all know, revolves, as do the other planets, round the sun, not precisely in a circle, but in an oval or ellipse not differing much from a circle. The length of our year, or time of one complete revolution of the earth around the sun, is 365 days, 5 hours, 48 minutes, 49.657 seconds.
Inside the earth, and next to us, among the planets, comes Venus, revolving around the sun in her elliptical orbit in 224 days, 16 hours, 48 minutes, and 42 seconds.
Were both orbits on the same level, in the same plane, Venus and the earth would come to be in the same direction or line from the sun as often as Venus, moving on her inner and shorter course, and more rapidly, would overtake the more sluggish earth. Such conjunctions would happen once in every 584 days nearly; and every such conjunction would show a transit, and Venus could be seen between the earth and the sun. But the orbits, though both around the same sun, are not on the same level. That of Venus is somewhat tilted up or inclined, so that one‐half of it lies above the level of the earth’s orbit, and the other half sinks correspondingly below. The line where the orbits cross or intersect each other is the nodal diameter, the only one common to both orbits. Venus overtakes the earth regularly, but ordinarily elsewhere than on or in the immediate vicinity of this nodal line. The planet then, in her apparent journeying from one side of the sun to the other, generally seems to pass near that luminary, either to the north or the south of it. But whenever, as sometimes happens, Venus overtakes the planet on the line of the nodes, either as she is descending on her orbit on one side, or ascending on the other, then the planet is seen to pass across the sun, and there is a transit. It is not necessary that Venus should be precisely on the line uniting the earth’s centre to the sun’s centre. The apparent size of the sun, 32’ in diameter, and the size of the earth, and the smallness of the angle of inclination between the orbits, all combine to give a little latitude in the matter. The earth arrives punctually every year at one end of this line in June, and at the other in December. The astronomical question is, When will Venus be there also at the same time? To answer requires a calculation which appalls. First, there is the planetary velocity proper of Venus, varying according as in the various parts of her elliptical orbit she is nearer to or further from the sun. Then there are the influences of planetary attraction—the earth and the other planets acting on Venus, accelerating or retarding her movements, and tending sometimes to draw her to one side of her orbit. Then there is or may be question of that nodal diameter shifting its position, and trying, as it were, to swing round the circle of the earth’s orbit. When all these calculations have been made, the diurnal movement of the earth must be taken into account, and the geography of her surface must be duly studied, to determine finally when the transit will take place, across what portion of the sun’s face the planet will be seen to travel, and from what portion of the earth’s surface that transit can be seen, and where in that portion stations for observing it can be placed with the greatest probability of success.
It is a fearful sight even to look over a seemingly endless series of pages all bristling with serried columns of figures, broken every now and then by mysterious formulas of higher calculus, like a group of officers commanding a brigade. Mathematicians and astronomers may delight in them; we shall be satisfied to take the results.
The transits of Venus go in pairs eight years apart. There can be only one pair to a century; some centuries will have none. The pairs occur alternately in June, as Venus descends from the upper to the lower half of her orbit, and in December, as she ascends again from it. Thus there were transits in December, 1631, and December, 1639. A second pair occurred in June, 1761, and June, 1769. A third pair is near at hand, in December, 1874, and December, 1882. The next century will have none. The fourth pair will appear in June, 2004, and June, 2012.
So much on the character of that dark little round spot, the passage of which across the sun hundreds of astronomers, with all manner of telescopes, spectroscopes, and photographic instruments, will watch, examine, measure, and record, as they see it sweeping on in its course on the 8th of next December. What will be the special purpose animating observers as they view the transits of 2004 and 2012—if, despite the prophetic and apocalyptic Dr. Cumming, the world lasts till then—no one can now tell. Astronomy by that time may be advanced as far beyond the present state of the science as the present state surpasses the state of two centuries ago. It is probable that new and, to that generation, most interesting questions may have then arisen, which they will strive to solve by their observations of the transits—questions now perhaps undreamed of. But at present our astronomical world is deeply impressed with the advantage and necessity of definitely ascertaining the distance of the earth from the sun. This is the paramount, though by no means the only, purpose of all this expenditure of time and skill and money in preparing for, in making the observations, and afterwards in laboriously working out the results.
How, by merely looking never so attentively at an object whose distance you do not know, as it stands in a line with, and perhaps far in front of, another, likewise of unknown distance, you can tell how far off that second object is, may seem as difficult as the king’s requirement of the prophet first to tell him the dream he had forgotten, and then to explain its meaning. It might seem almost an impossibility; but a few words will explain how the difficulty is turned by availing ourselves of other data.
When two planets, as is the case with the earth and Venus, both revolve in elliptical orbits around the sun, in virtue of the law of gravitation, then their respective times of orbital revolution are to each other as the cubes of their respective mean distances from the sun.
This is one of the laws of Kepler. It was announced by him as the wonderful result of seventeen long years of calculations. He took the data given by the observations of Tycho Brahe and of others, and those made by himself. He tried, by every imaginable form of arithmetical supposition, to combine them together somehow, and under the form of some mathematical law. This was his last result, perhaps the most surprising result of hard plodding, long‐continued labor in the field of science. All honor to his memory. There are few discoveries in the mathematics of astronomy to be compared to this and the other laws of Kepler. He established them as experimental facts. The mathematical reason of them he did not learn.
Since his day, gravity has been discovered to be the bond which binds the solar system together, and its laws have been studied out. The differential and integral calculus, also discovered and perfected since his day, has enabled the scholar to grapple with intricate questions of higher mathematics, which, without its aid, would have remained insoluble. Availing themselves of the laws of gravity and of the aid of the calculus, astronomers have been able to give us a mathematical demonstration of Kepler’s laws, which, from being mere isolated facts or numerical coincidences, have passed into the realm of scientific truths.
Now, we know the length of our own year—365.2422414 days; we know also the length of the year of Venus—224.70048625 days. If we divide the former by the latter, square the quotient, and then extract the cube root of this quotient, we shall obtain the number which indicates the proportion between the two mean distances. Applying this, we learn that if the distance of the earth from the sun be taken as 100,000,000 miles, the mean distance of Venus will be 72,333,240 miles. And consequently, when they are in the same direction from the sun, and supposing both to be at their mean distances from that luminary, the distance between them must be, according to the same proportion, 27,666,760 miles. It is obviously enough to know the actual value of either of those three distances to learn very easily the other two. The observations of the transit are intended to ascertain the last and smaller one. How this is done, and what difficulties are to be surmounted in doing it, we shall see further on. Just now we will remark that supposing the observer to have ascertained to the very furlong this distance, during the transit, between the planets, he must still do much before he can apply his proportion. That holds good only for the mean distances. There are only two points in the orbit or ellipse of each planet around the sun which are at the mean distance from that focus. Were those points for both planets to be found on the lines of the nodes, the matter would be easy. But it is not so. In June, the earth is approaching her greatest distance; in December, she is nearing her smallest distance from the sun. A similar embarrassment exists for the orbit of Venus. But the astronomer can bravely grapple with this double difficulty. He has learned the eccentricity and consequent shape of each ellipse, and he can calculate how far, proportionately, the actual distance of either planet, at any given point of its orbit, exceeds or falls short of the true mean distance. Such calculations have to be made for the earth and for Venus as they will stand on the 8th of next December. When this is done, the astronomer is at liberty to make use of the actual distance learned by observation, and to apply the Keplerian formula.
But perhaps the question suggests itself, why take all this trouble of a circuitous route? Why not measure the distance of the sun directly, if such things can be done at all? If it is possible to measure the distance of Venus by observations, surely the sun, which has an apparent diameter thirty times as great, and which can be seen every day, and from any accessible point of the earth’s surface, gives a far ampler field for such observations. If we have instruments so delicate as to disclose to us the presence in the sun of iron, copper, zinc, aluminium, sodium, manganese, magnesium, calcium, hydrogen, and other substances, surely it will be possible to determine that comparatively gross fact—its distance from the earth. And, in truth, what becomes of the lesson we learned in our school‐ days, that the sun was just ninety‐five millions of miles away from us?
And yet, strange as it may seem to those unacquainted with the subject, it has been found impossible to decide, by direct observations, the actual distance; and the distance usually accepted was not derived from such observations. As for our lately acquired knowledge of some of the constituent substances of the sun, that is derived from the spectroscope, which as yet throws no light on the question of distance.
How do we ascertain the distance of bodies from us? Practice enables us to judge, and judge correctly, of the distance and size of things immediately around us almost without any consciousness of how we do it. But if we analyze the process, it will be found that we do it chiefly by using both eyes at the same time. They are separated by an interval of two and a half to three inches. As we look at an object near to us, the rays from each visible point of it must separate, in order to enter both eyes. The images thus formed on the retina of each eye differ sensibly, and we instinctively take cognizance of that difference. Speaking mathematically, the interval is a base line, at each end of which a delicate organism takes the angle of the object viewed, and our conclusion is based on our perception of the difference between them. Ordinarily, we estimate distances by the cross‐sight thus obtained. When, however, the body is so far off that the lines of light from it to the eyes become so nearly parallel that the eyes fail to perceive the minute difference between the representations formed on the retina, then we must recur to the results of past experience, and judge, as best we may, of the distance from other data than that given us at the moment by our eyesight. Thus a sailor at sea judges of the distance of a vessel on the horizon from the faintness with which he sees her; for he knows that the intervening atmosphere absorbs some of the light, so that distant objects are dim. He judges from the fact that a vessel of the form and rig of the one he is looking at is usually of a given size, and a certain distance is required to cause the entire vessel to look so small, and certain portions, the size of which he is familiar with, to become indistinguishable. He is guided, also, by the amount to which, on account of the earth’s curvatures, the vessel seems to be sunk below the horizon. These are data from experience. It is wonderful with what accuracy they enable him to judge. A landsman by the seaman’s side, and without such aid, could give only the most random guesses as to the distance of the vessel.
That we really do make this use of both eyes in judging of the distance of bodies near us will be evident if we bandage one eye and try to determine their distances, only using the other. It will require caution to avoid mistakes. We knew an aged painter, who had lost the sight of one eye, but still continued to play, at least, with his brush. He had to use the finger of his left hand to ascertain by touch whether the tip of his brush, loaded with the proper color, was sufficiently near the canvas or not. If he relied on his eye alone, it often happened that when he thought it near, not the eighth of an inch away, it failed in reality by an inch and a half to reach the canvas. He would ply the brush, and, noticing that the color was not delivered, would smile sadly at what he called his effort to paint the air. So long as he had retained the use of both eyes, this mishap, of course, had never occurred to him.
When a surveyor desires to ascertain the distance of a visible object which he cannot approach, he must avail himself of the same principle of nature. He measures off on the ground where he is a suitable baseline, and takes the angle of the object from each end of it, not vaguely by his unaided eyesight alone, but with a well‐graduated instrument. It is, as it were, putting his eyes that far apart, and taking the angles accurately. From the length of the measured base‐line and the size of the two angles he can easily calculate the distance of the object. In taking such measurements, the surveyor must make his base sufficiently large in proportion to the distance sought. If the base be disproportionately small, the angles at the extremities will not serve. Their sum will be so near 180° that the possible errors which are ever present in observations will more than swallow up the difference left for the third angle, and the distance is not obtained. In our excellent Coast Survey, which, in exactness of working, is not surpassed anywhere in the world, the bases carefully measured may be five or seven miles long, and angles under 30° are avoided when possible.
From such measuring of distant objects on the surface of the earth, the passage was easy to an attempt to measure the distance of heavenly bodies. How far is the moon from us? It was soon found that a base of ten miles or of a hundred miles was entirely too short to give satisfactory angles. The moon was too distant. A far larger base was required. Suppose two places to be selected on the same meridian of longitude, and therefore agreeing in time, and situated sixty degrees of latitude apart. The distance between them will be equal to a radius of the earth. At each station, and at the same hours, the angles are taken which the moon makes with the zenith, or, better still, with some star near it, coming to the meridian at the same time. In such a case, the angles are, satisfactory. The base is large enough. The result of such observations, and of others which we need not dwell on, is that, when nearest to us, the centre of the moon is distant from the centre of the earth 222,430 miles; when at her greatest distance, 252,390 miles. These numbers are based on the fact that the equatorial radius or semi‐diameter of the earth is 3962.57 miles. This value, however, may in reality be a quarter of a mile too short. The mean distance of the moon is roughly stated at 60 semi‐diameters of the earth.
When observers essayed to apply to the sun the same procedure which had proved so successful in regard to the moon, they encountered disastrous failures, partly because the base, even the largest practicable one, was found to be comparatively very small; partly because, when the sun shines, no star is visible near by from which to measure an angle; and also because the atmosphere is so disturbed by the rays of solar heat that, when seen through a large telescope, the sun’s edge is quite tremulous. Hence a very large element of uncertainty is introduced when angles are taken with the zenith. No astronomer would look with confidence on the result obtained under such circumstances. Two hundred years ago, their instruments were much less perfect than those we now have; yet, even with our best instruments, to‐day, too much uncertainty remains. That mode of ascertaining the sun’s distance has been abandoned.
Ancient astronomers, long before the invention of telescopes, and before the discovery of the Copernican system, devised an ingenious method of getting some light on the distance of the sun. It is attributed to Aristarchus of Samos. They reflected that, when the moon appeared precisely half full, this arose from the fact that the sun and the earth were at right angles to her; the sun illumining the half turned to him, and the plane of division between the illumined and unillumined portions extended stretching directly to the earth. They conceived the three bodies to stand at the angles of a right‐angled triangle, of which the distance of the moon from the earth was the base, and the distance of the sun was the hypothenuse. Hence they had only to measure the angle at the earth, which they could do, and then take into account their estimate of the moon’s distance, to arrive at the result sought. The plan is ingenious, and taught them that the sun was at least twenty times further off than the moon. But their estimate of the moon’s distance was altogether wide of the mark. They had no means of correctly estimating it. Moreover, even keen eyesight is a bad judge of whether the moon is precisely half full or not. The error of half a dozen hours would give a large mistake. Even with instruments such as we have, it cannot be precisely determined by direct observations; for the surface of the moon, as developed in a powerful telescope, is so uneven, jagged, and volcanic that the division between light and shade is a line too uneven and broken to be determined except by guessing at its mean course.
Another method has been also used in these later centuries. Kepler’s law applies to all the planets. The planet next outside the earth is Mars, whose mean distance from the sun is about one‐third greater than that of the earth. It periodically happens that Mars is in opposition—that is, is precisely on the other side of the earth from the sun. In that case, he makes his nearest approach to our planet. Cannot his distance from the earth be then observed and determined, so that he will give us the means of calculating by Kepler’s formula the distance of the sun? It was tried, and with some success. The base‐line was found large enough; the observations were made at night, when the atmosphere is comparatively quiescent, and when fixed stars may be seen in the vicinity of the planet, to aid in taking the requisite angles. Yet, as in the case of Venus, there are, as we have stated, subsidiary calculations to be made on account of the eccentricity of his orbit and his varying velocity. In the case of Mars, these variations were too full of anomalies to allow confidence in the calculations. When afterwards these anomalies were understood to proceed from interplanetary attraction, they were so complicated that their numerical value almost escaped calculation. The whole subject has been gone over in our own day under the light of more perfect observations, and with the aid of the highest calculus. We doubt, however, if even now the results are sufficiently established to warrant a calculation as to the sun’s distance to which reasonable exception may not be taken.
Anyhow, this method cannot compare, either in facility of calculation or in accuracy of result, with the method of determining the solar distance by observations for the transit of Venus.
Of the theory and mode of such observations we will now say a few words.
In 1677, while Halley, the great English astronomer, was at St. Helena, for the purpose of observing and cataloguing stars south of the equator, he observed a transit of Mercury across the face of the sun, and, from his efforts to measure its positions and movements, was led to believe that a transit of Venus could be so accurately observed and measured as to yield a precise and definite determination of the sun’s distance. From the knowledge he had of the movements of Venus, he knew that there had been a transit of Venus in 1631, as Kepler had predicted, although no eye in Europe had seen it; and another in 1639, which had been observed, but, of course, not for this purpose, which in 1639 was yet unthought of. The next transit would be in 1761. He could not hope to live to see it. But he did the next best thing. He studied out all the conditions of the question, published his plans, and made all the preliminary calculations required, so as to aid in securing, as far as possible, good observations and good results when the time came.
As the year 1761 was approaching, the scientific world was astir, pretty much as it is now. Halley’s computations were again gone over, and such corrections and improvements were introduced as the advance of astronomy since his day warranted and required. Governments gave their aid and supplied means liberally. One hundred and twenty positions had been carefully chosen, and the best results were confidently expected. The grand problem was about to receive a final and definite solution. The error in the ultimate result would certainly not exceed one‐fifth of one per cent.
The astronomers were doomed to a sad disappointment. Wars then waging prevented some of the most important positions from being occupied by the observers. It was bitter for a well‐appointed party to sail for months and months over two oceans, only to see a hostile flag floating over the port they were about to enter. Sadly they sailed away, and could only see the transit from the rolling deck of their ship. Cloudy weather rendered other positions valueless. And even where everything seemed to promise success, an unforeseen phenomenon interfered to mar their work. The astronomer might have his best telescope duly mounted, and directed to the proper point of the heavens, and carefully adjusted; his eye might be glued to the instrument, as he watched on one side of his field of vision a portion of the circular edge of the sun’s disk, and on the other the round, black spot gradually approaching. As they drew near, his hand was raised to give the signal; his assistant stood ready to mark the very second when the two edges, coming nearer and nearer, would at last just touch. They hoped to seize the time of that first contact so accurately as to escape even the one second of error or doubt which Halley thought unavoidable. Vain hope! Before the contact, while Venus was still distant about two‐thirds of her own diameter from the edge of the sun, a dark streak or band seemed to interpose between them like a black cushion or wedge. As they pressed against it, the curved outlines of their edges seemed to be pressed back or flattened, as if by the resistance of the cushion, and to lose their normal shape. There was a pause in the onward movement, a quivering, a struggle, and then, by an irregular, convulsive jump, like that of two drops of water coalescing into one, Venus was seen to have already entered some way on the disk of the sun. The discomfited and astonished observer was forced to record that his uncertainty as to the precise time of the contact was not of one second only, but of at least twelve or fifteen seconds. Was it the defect of the instrument, or the fault of his own eye, over‐strained by long use, by the brilliant light, or by his intense anxiety? Or was there some unknown atmospheric cause at work producing this band? Anyhow, he might hope that other observers would be more fortunate than he had been. Again he was in error. Everywhere the same unexpected and puzzling phenomenon appeared. There was trouble in the astronomical world. The fault was generally thrown on the instruments. But whatever the cause of the mishap, there was some room for consolation. They would soon have another opportunity, and might make another trial. In 1769, only eight years off, there would be another transit, and by that time some means would certainly be devised for escaping the evil.
In 1769, the stations were as numerous, the governmental aid fully as great, the instruments, they said, more perfect, and the observers, we may be sure, as earnest and as careful as before. Perhaps they were more skilful because of their previous experience. But again all in vain. The same evil reappeared. The resulting uncertainty was even greater. It was held to reach fully twenty seconds. When they undertook to calculate, from such observations, the distance of the sun, some made it not more than 87,890,780 miles, while, according to others, it reached 108,984,560 miles, the majority finding intermediate values. On the whole, it did not appear that there was much improvement on the estimate made by Cassini a century and a half before, that it was not less than 85,000,000 miles. Again and again were the records of the observations studied, scrutinized, and weighed, and the calculations based on them repeated and criticised. Finally, in 1824, Encke, after several years of special study of them, summed all up, and gave, as the best result attainable, 95,274,000 miles. The scientific world, hopeless of anything better, seemed for a time to acquiesce. Some even upheld the estimate of Encke as “so successfully determined as to leave no sensible doubt of its accuracy.”
But, despite this, its accuracy has since been impugned, and on very strong grounds. It was known that light travels from the sun to the earth in about 8 minutes 13 seconds. Experiments carefully and ingeniously made by Arago, Foucault, and Fizeau show that light travels with a velocity of nearly 186,000 miles a second. This would give the distance of about 91,400,000 miles.
The irregularities of the moon and of Mars have been studied out and calculated on the theory of interplanetary attraction modifying the attraction of the sun. Though the results vary somewhat, yet they all tend in the same direction. Leverrier found 91,759,000 miles; Hansen, the Dane, found 91,659,000 miles; Airey, the Astronomer‐Royal of England, whose earlier opinion of Encke’s estimate we quoted above, has changed his opinion, and now proposes 91,400,000 miles.
A fact in practical optics, calculated to affect some observations rather seriously, has been discovered within the last few years. It is this: When a white body is viewed on a dark ground, its size is exaggerated by some illusion of our vision; and, on the contrary, a dark body seen on a bright ground appears smaller than it would were the ground of a dark color, differing from that of the body only as much as is required to render them distinguishable. Now, in the transit, a dark body is seen on an intensely bright ground. It becomes necessary, therefore, to bring in a correction which will compensate for the error arising from this optical illusion. This has been done by Stone, who studied out the whole matter, arrived at certain modes of correction, applied them to Encke’s calculation, and maintains that the true result of the observations of 1761 and 1769 should be 91,730,000 miles.
Thus all seem to agree that the sun’s distance must be less than 92,000,000 miles, and that Encke’s estimate was too great by 3 or 4 per cent.
This is the stage at which our astronomers now take up the question, and aim to obtain a yet more definite and precise result. Will they succeed? They are full of confidence now; what they will say after their observations we may know a year hence.
Some of our readers may like to know what is the course followed in making the observations and in calculating the results. We will give a slight account of the chief points, sufficiently detailed to enable one with an ordinary knowledge of trigonometry to understand how the conclusion is reached.
The astronomers will follow two methods, known as those of Halley and of Delisle. They each require two suitable stations, so far apart on the surface of the earth as to give a satisfactory base‐line. In fact, the further apart, the better, all things else being equal. For Halley’s method, the two stations lie as nearly north and south as may be. For Delisle’s, they lie east and west.
Let us suppose two such stations to be chosen on or nearly on the same meridian of longitude, and 6,000 miles apart. From each of these stations the planet is seen to traverse the disk of the sun, like a dark spot moving steadily across an illuminated circular dial‐plate. The lines as seen from stations so far apart are sensibly different. What the observers first seek to know is the apparent distance between these lines, the angle they form, when seen from the earth. Were both visible at once from the same station, through the same telescope, it would not be difficult for a skilful observer to measure the angle directly. But at each station only one line is seen, if, indeed, we may properly give that name to the course of the dark spot that passes on and leaves no trace behind. Each observer must determine correctly the position of his line on the face of the sun, in order that it may be afterwards compared with the other line similarly determined at the other, and the apparent distance between them is then determined by calculation.
How to determine the true position of such a line is the delicate and difficult task. One mode is to take the measurements in two directions on the face of the sun, northward and eastward, from the position of the planet to the edge of the solar disk. This must be done for a number of positions which the planet occupies successively as it moves onward. But such measurements are very hard to be obtained with the desired precision. The edge of the sun, viewed in a large telescope, appears always tremulous, on account of the action of solar heat on our own terrestrial atmosphere. The better and larger the telescope, and the brighter the day, the greater and the more embarrassing does this tremulousness appear. Such measurements are difficult, and are open to too much uncertainty.
There is another mode, which, if successfully used, is far more accurate. The lines or paths which the planet, viewed from the observatories, is seen to follow are chords across a circle—largest when they pass through the sun’s centre and become diameters, smaller as their course is more distant from the sun’s centre. Being both due to the motion of the same body moving at what we may hold to be a uniform velocity, their lengths must be proportional to the times required for tracing them. Being chords, a knowledge of their relative lengths determines with accuracy their position on the circular disk of the sun, and consequently their distance apart. Hence the importance of catching, with the utmost exactness, the beginning and the ending of the transit. The first exterior contact is noted when the circular edge of Venus just touches the circular edge of the sun; then the first interior contact when the entire little, dark circle of Venus is just fully on the sun. Midway between the two, the centre of Venus was just on the edge of the sun. Similarly, the second interior contact and the second exterior contact, if accurately and successfully observed, will show the instant of time when the centre of Venus passed off from the sun’s surface. It was, as we saw, in making these delicate observations, that the observers of 1761 and 1769 failed, to a great extent, on account of the mysterious appearance of the black band, of which we gave an account. Will this embarrassing phenomenon again make its appearance next December? If it be due, as some think, to an aberration of sphericity in the lenses of the instruments, it may not be seen. For our telescopes are far more perfect than those of 1769. If it is due, as others maintain, to an interference of light in the observation, a more delicate manipulation of the instrument may, it is hoped, avoid it. If it is due to some optical illusion in our own eye, it will, of course, appear again, and must be grappled with. The observers now being trained at Greenwich, in preparation for the grand day, have a facsimile of the sun and Venus, which are made to move in such manner as to give as exact a representation of the transit as is possible; and they practise observations on this artificial transit. It is said that even in this fac‐ simile the black band has shown itself, and that one important lesson now being learned is how to judge of the instant of contact, despite of this obstacle.
There is, however, a still better safeguard—the use of photography. The transit will record itself more minutely and more accurately than any ordinary observations for measurement could do. Various plans will be used. One proposed is to have one hundred and eighty prepared and highly sensitive plates along the circumference of a suitable wheel made to revolve regularly by clock‐work. During three minutes, these plates come, one every second, successively into position to receive and record the images of the transit, as the planet for those three minutes is entering on the sun. Other plates, at stated and accurately measured intervals of time, will similarly record its regular progress across the sun; and another wheel, with one hundred and eighty other plates, will record the successive changes each second for the three minutes occupied by its exit over the sun’s border. These are all, of course, negatives on glass. From them any number of impressions can be taken, in the usual way, for general distribution among the scientists. In order that such impressions may still serve for the finest measurements, despite of any variations of expansion, contraction, or warping which the atmospheric changes may produce, a system of fine, spider‐web lines is placed inside the telescope, producing on the photograph itself a network of fine lines, some running north and south, others crossing them east and west. These lines are at equal distances apart, and serve admirably for measuring the position of the planet on the solar face. If the photographic sheet should become quite distorted, these lines would show it; for they would of course follow the distortion, and yet, after that distortion, they would still guide us to accurate measurements. It is hoped that this means and the many other photographic devices to be used will secure a degree of accuracy far beyond what Halley anticipated and would have been satisfied with.
The spectroscope comes in also to aid in determining the contacts with the utmost precision. The light of the solar photosphere, or body of the sun, when made to pass through the prisms of a spectroscope, spreads into a continuous band of various colors, and crossed by many faint, dark lines. Other bodies, raised to a certain heat, and emitting light, give a spectrum of a totally different character. We see only bright upright lines. There is no continuous band or spectrum of prismatic colors. Now, just outside the solar photosphere, and between it and the chromosphere, is a layer of solar atmosphere which gives just such upright, bright lines. This was first discovered not many years ago during a total solar eclipse, when the direct light of the photosphere was cut off by the interposing moon. Knowing what to look for, the astronomers have since been able so to manipulate their telescopes as to catch these bright lines, even when there is no eclipse. They find them, of course, as they examine, a narrow ring apparently encircling the sun, and immediately around his circumference. Now, when the moment of the beginning of the transit is at hand, the spectroscope is turned to the precise point where Venus will touch the sun’s rim, and these lines are clearly brought into vision. So long as they shine, the way is open for the light of that narrow layer or belt to reach the earth. The instant their bright flash disappears, the observer knows that the planet has so moved as to intercept the rays of light, and is just in contact. Their reappearance, at the proper time, on the other side of the sun, will indicate the instant when Venus will have quitted the disk and the transit is over.
It is confidently expected that by some one or by all of these methods the uncertainties of 1761 and 1769 will be avoided, and that the instants of the commencement and the conclusion of each line of the transit may be so accurately determined that for neither of them will the error as to their duration exceed one second. Did the time occupied by Venus in making the transit, as seen from one station, differ from the time as seen at the other by only one minute, the uncertainty of one second would be less than two per cent. But, in fact, the times will differ by fifteen minutes, and, by skilfully choosing the places, a difference of twenty minutes may be obtained. In that case, the error or uncertainty would be less than one‐ tenth of one per cent. For the present, the scientific world will be satisfied with that degree of exactness.
Let us return to our supposition of two stations north and south, 6,000 miles apart. The two lines of transit, as seen from them, are separated about 35 of an arc. This is as the lines are seen from the earth. If we recur to Kepler’s proportion, as stated before—that the distance of the earth from the sun is to the distance of Venus from the sun as 10,000,000 is to 7,233,324—we can make use of a trigonometrical calculation, and easily ascertain that those same lines on the sun, seen by an observer on Venus, would appear about 48‐½" apart. Moreover, the lines from the sun to Venus, forming this angle, cross each other at the planet, and, if prolonged, will reach the two stations on the earth. Hence, since opposite interior angles are equal, this (48‐½") must be the angle at which the same observer on Venus, turning towards the earth, would see the two stations. We arrive thus at a triangle, in which the base is known—6,000 miles; the angle at the vertex on Venus is also known—48‐½"; and the angles at the base are easily ascertainable. A simple calculation leads to the distance of Venus from the earth—about 25,300,000 miles. Again, applying Kepler’s formula to this number, we obtain as the result, for the earth’s distance from the sun, about 91,450,000 miles. If we give here only rough approximations, we are, after all, as near the truth as the astronomers of to‐day can boast of being. In a minute calculation, subsidiary but important points are to be brought in, complicating the calculation and influencing the result.
After this statement of the general character of Halley’s method, we may be brief in our notice of the yet more beautiful mode of Delisle. He proposed it before the transits of the last century. But its efficiency so entirely depends on an accurate knowledge of the longitudes of the stations, and the longitudes of distant stations were then so uncertain, that it could not then be used with success.
In this mode, two stations are necessary, east and west, or, rather, along that line on the earth’s surface from all points of which the transit will show the same line on the solar disk. The further apart the stations are, the better; for the base between them will be larger. To know the distance between them, we must know their longitudes as accurately as their latitudes. From the longitudes we ascertain with precision the difference of time between them. At one of those stations, the first exterior contact is seen, and the exact time is noted. As Venus moves on, the shadow of this first contact flies along that line of the earth’s surface like the shadow of a cloud in spring traversing the fields. It is only after the lapse of a certain length of time that the contact is seen and timed at the other station. This certain length of time is the key to the solution. It may be determined by observations on any one or on all the contacts, or by the observation of any other points of the transit examined and timed at both stations. It is obvious that the contacts, being the most unmistakable in their character, will be all used to check and control each other; the more so, as they serve also, as we saw, for Halley’s method. The most careful use of the telescope will be supplemented by the photograph and the spectroscope.
Let two such stations be chosen which, by their longitudes and latitudes, we know to be 5,000 miles apart. It will be found that the transit, or any special point of it, will be seen at the second station about three minutes of time later than at the first. This means that the shadow of Venus travels 5,000 miles in three minutes on the earth’s surface or at the earth’s distance from the sun. Applying Kepler’s formula, we find that, to produce this effect, Venus herself must have travelled about 3,860 miles in those three minutes. There‐fore in 224.7 days—her solar year—she would travel about 416 millions of miles, supposing that, during the transit, she was moving at her mean velocity. This, then, is the length of her periphery of her orbit around the sun. Observations have determined its shape. Now that we know its size, it is not difficult to ascertain what her mean distance from the sun must be. It is about 66,300,000 miles. From this, the usual formula leads us to the earth’s distance from the sun—91,650,000 miles. We merely indicate the salient points of the process, and that with summary numbers. An astronomer would enter into minor questions: how far the earth had travelled in her orbit during those three minutes, and what had been the special motion of the second station during the same time, on account of the diurnal revolution of the earth on its axis. He would carefully establish the proportion of the distances between the sun and Venus and the earth, during the transit, to their mean distances as contemplated in Kepler’s law, and he would compare the velocity of Venus at that time with her mean velocity. Other points, too, would have to be brought in, complicating the whole process to an extent that would soften the brain of any one but a calculating astronomer.
In Halley’s method, the effort is to obtain two transit lines on the sun as widely apart as possible. For that purpose, the stations must differ in latitude as widely as possible. In Delisle’s method, on the contrary, the longitude becomes of primary importance. The latitude can be easily determined. Hence, in the last century, Halley’s method was almost exclusively adopted. But now we can use both; for we have better instruments and better star catalogues, and can determine longitudes by astronomical observations much more accurately than could ordinarily be done a century ago. In addition, we have now almost faultless chronometers. Besides all these means, we have, and will use to a great extent, the grand American invention of determining the longitude by the electric telegraph with an accuracy which leaves nothing to be desired.
While each method requires at least two stations, a greater number would support and control each other, and allow us to take the average result of a greater number of observations. Four stations at the corners of a large quadrangle on the surface of the earth might give two sets of stations for each method. But this year the stations may be nearer a hundred.
Careful preliminary studies have already determined on what portion of the earth the transit will be visible. The most available points will be turned to account for stations. We say available; for, unfortunately, much of that space is occupied by oceans, while astronomical stations must perforce be situated on firm land. Some of the best points, too, seem almost inaccessible. Still, there is a vast line of posts determined on in the northern hemisphere, and quite a number, to correspond with them, in the southern. Beginning at Alexandria, in Egypt, the line stretches northward and eastward through Palestine, Georgia, Tartary, Middle Asia, and Northern China to Yeddo, in Japan, perhaps to Honolulu, in the Sandwich Islands. Along a great part of this line, the Russian telegraphic wires will give exact longitudes, thus affording a fine field for the use of Delisle’s method. In the southern hemisphere, the line may be set down as commencing near the Cape of Good Hope, bending southeastwardly to the lately discovered Antarctic lands, passing south of Australia, then turning upwards towards the equator, and terminating at Nukahiva, in the Sandwich Islands, in the South Pacific Ocean. Along this line, at Crozet Island, at St. Paul’s, at Reunion, at Kerguelen Land—further south, if the southern summer will have sufficiently melted the snows and driven back the ice‐barrier to allow the observers to land and work—at Campbell Land, in New Caledonia, and in other places, stations will be established, between which and corresponding stations in the northern line Halley’s method may be used.
Time, learning, skill, energy, money, everything that man can give, will be devoted to ensure success in the astronomical work to be done on the 8th of December next. Such earnestness commands respect, and wins our sympathy and best wishes.
May the day itself—the festival of the Immaculate Virgin Mother—be an augury of success! Astronomers, as a body, are less infected with the virus of modern scepticism and materialism than any other class of our scientists of to‐day. On the contrary, not a few, standing in the front rank among them, are devout children of the church. Some of their chiefs are even numbered among her clergy. They will not omit on that day to invoke the blessing of heaven and the intercession of their Holy Mother. May their fervent prayers be heard, and may He who “has ordered all things in measure and number and weight”(66) bless and give success to their labors!
Yet they can only look for an approximation to the truth, not the truth itself. They will see more clearly than before how the heavens declare the glory of God. But there will remain obscurity and uncertainty enough to teach them humility in his presence. For “God hath made all things good in their time, and hath delivered the world to the consideration of the sons of men, so that man cannot find out the work which God hath made, from the beginning to the end.” This was true when the inspired Ecclesiastes wrote, and is still, and must ever be, true. The history of the progress of physical sciences is practical, tangible evidence of it. Each generation has to correct the mistakes and discard the errors of a preceding generation, and must acknowledge the uncertainty of much that it continues to hold or boasts of having discovered.
No greater absurdity is conceivable than that of a man puffed up with pride because of the little knowledge he has gained—little indeed, though he may think it a great deal—who sets his intellect against the infinite wisdom and the revelation of God. The more man really knows, the more conscious he becomes of his own failures in many things, and of the vast extent of his ignorance.
The Veil Withdrawn.
Translated, By Permission, From The French of Madame Craven, Author Of “A Sister’s Story,” “Fleurange,” Etc.
“The one thing worth showing to mankind is a human soul.”—Browning
I.
SEPTEMBER 1, 1871.
It was at Messina, July 15, 18—. I have never forgotten the date. It was just after my fifteenth birthday. The balcony of the room where I was sitting overlooked the sea. From time to time, but more and more faintly, could be heard the noise of the waves breaking against the shore. It was the hour called in Italy the contr’ ora—the hour when, in summer, the whole horizon is aflame with the scorching rays of the already declining sun, which are no longer tempered by the gentle wind from the sea that every morning refreshes the shore. The windows, that had been open during the earlier part of the day, were now shut, the blinds lowered, and the shutters half closed. Profound silence reigned within doors and without. For many, this is the hour of a siesta; and for all, a time of inaction and repose.
I was holding a book in my hand, not from inclination or pleasure, but simply through obedience, because I had a lesson to learn. But that was no task. I took no pleasure in studying, nor was it repugnant to me, for I learned without any difficulty. The chief benefit of study was therefore lost on me. It required no effort.
I had not yet even taken the trouble to open my book, for I saw by the clock I had ample time. At six I always went into the garden, which I was not allowed to enter during the heat of the day. There was still an hour before me, and I knew that a quarter of that time would be sufficient to accomplish my task. I therefore remained indolently seated on a low chair against the wall, near the half‐open shutter, motionless and dreaming, my eyes wandering vaguely through the obscurity that surrounded me.
The room I occupied was a large salon. The ceiling covered with frescos, and the stuccoed walls brilliantly ornamented with flowers and arabesques, prevented this vast apartment from seeming gloomy or ill‐furnished. And yet, according to the tastes I have since acquired, it was absolutely wanting in everything signified by the word “comfort,” which, though now fully understood in our country, has nevertheless no corresponding term in our language. A clumsy gilt console, on which stood a ponderous clock, with an immense looking‐glass above, occupied the further end of the room; and in the middle stood a large, round, scagliola table under a magnificent chandelier of Venetian glass. This chandelier, as well as the mirrors that hung around, not for use, but to ornament the walls with their handsome gilt frames and the figures painted on their surface, were the richest and most admired objects in the room. A few arm‐chairs systematically arranged, a long sofa that entirely filled one of the recesses, and here and there some light chairs, were usually the only furniture of this vast apartment; but that day a small couch stood near the window, and on it reclined my mother—my charming young mother!—her head resting on a pillow, and her eyes closed. On her knee lay a small book, open at a scarcely touched page, which, with the ink‐stand on a little table before her, and the pen fallen at her feet, showed she had been overpowered by sleep or fatigue while she was writing.
My mother at that time was barely thirty‐two years of age. People said we looked like sisters, and there was no exaggeration in this. I was already taller than she, and those who saw me for the first time thought me two years older than I really was; whereas my mother, owing to the delicacy of her features and the transparency of her complexion, retained all the freshness of twenty years of age. I looked at her. Her beautiful hair, parted on her pale brow, fell on the pillow like a frame around her face, which looked more lovely than ever to me. There was a deeper flush than usual on her cheeks, and her half‐open lips were as red as coral.... I smilingly gazed at her with admiration and love! Alas! I was too much of a child to realize that this beauty was ominous, and that I had much more reason to weep!...
My mother was left an orphan at fifteen years of age without any protector, and poverty would have been added to her other privations had not Fabrizio dei Monti, a friend of her father’s, and a celebrated lawyer, succeeded in snatching the young heiress’ property from the hands of a grasping relative who had been contending for it. This law‐suit had been going on several years, and the result was still doubtful when Count Morani, Bianca’s father, died.
He who rendered the young orphan so signal a service was then about thirty‐five years old. He was a widower, and the father of two children, to whom he devoted all the time left him by his numerous clients, whom his reputation for ability brought from all parts of Sicily—famed, as every one knows, for the most complicated and interminable law‐suits. Fabrizio, after his wife’s death, had given up all intercourse with society, except what was imposed on him by the obligations of his profession. With this exception, his life was spent in absolute retirement with an austerity as rare among his fellow‐citizens as his long fidelity to the memory of the wife he had lost.
But when, after advocating Bianca’s cause, he found himself to be her only protector, he at once felt the difficulty and danger of such a situation, and resolved to place her, without any delay, under the guardianship of a husband of her own choice. He therefore ran over the names of the many aspirants to the hand of the young heiress, and gave her a list of those he thought the most worthy of her.
“You have forgotten one,” said Bianca in a low tone, after glancing over it.
“Whom?” ... inquired Fabrizio in an agitated tone, not daring to interpret the glance that accompanied her words.
Bianca still retained all the simplicity of a child, and the timidity of womanhood had not yet come over her. Accordingly, she said, as she looked directly towards him, that she should never feel for any one else the affection she had for him; and if he would not have her, she would go into a convent, and never be married.
It was thus my mother became Fabrizio dei Monti’s wife, and, in spite of the difference of their ages, there never was a nobler, sweeter union. A happier couple could not have been found in the world during the fourteen years that followed my birth. But for several months past, my father had appeared depressed and anxious. Sometimes I could see his eyes blinded by tears as he looked at my mother, but the cause I did not understand. It is true, she often complained of fatigue, and remained in bed for hours, which became more and more prolonged. And now and then she passed the whole day there. But when she was up, as she had been that day, she did not look ill. On the contrary, I never saw her look more beautiful than while I was thus gazing at her with admiration and a love amounting to idolatry....
After remaining for some time in the same attitude, I at length took my book, and endeavored to give my whole attention to my lesson. But the heat was stifling, and, after a few moments, I was, in my turn, overpowered by an irresistible drowsiness, to which I insensibly yielded without changing my position, and soon sank into a profound slumber.
I had been asleep some time, when I was suddenly awakened by a remote, indistinct sound that seemed like the continuation of the dream it had interrupted. This sound was the footsteps of a horse....
I sprang up without taking time for a moment’s reflection. I raised the blinds, hurriedly opened the shutters and the window, and sprang out on the balcony.... The room was at once flooded with light and filled with the evening air. The sun had just disappeared, and a fresh breeze fanned my cheeks.... I heard my mother cough feebly, but did not turn back. I was overpowered by one thought, which made me forget everything else—everything!—even her!... I leaned forward to see if I was mistaken. No, it was really he!... I saw him appear at the end of the road that connected our house with the shore. He rode slowly along on his beautiful horse, which he managed with incomparable grace. As he came nearer, he slackened his pace still more, and, when beneath the balcony, stopped, and, taking off his hat, bowed profoundly, the wind meanwhile blowing about the curls of his jet‐black hair. Then he raised his eyes, of the color and tempered clearness of agate, and with a beseeching, passionate look seemed to implore me for some favor.... I knew what he meant.... Foolish child that I was! I snatched from my hair the carnation I had placed there an hour before, and threw it towards him!...
At that instant I heard a piercing cry—a cry that still rings in my heart, and the memory of which will never be effaced—“Ginevra!”.... Hurrying in, I found my mother standing in the floor, pale and gasping for breath, with her arms extended towards me.... I instantly realized I had been guilty of an indiscretion which had afflicted and displeased her. I was at once filled with sorrow, and on the point of throwing myself at her feet to beg her forgiveness; but before I had time to speak, or even reach her, she fell back on her couch in a semi‐unconscious state that I should have thought a swoon, had not a spasmodic groan from time to time escaped from her breast, and when I did prostrate myself, had she not seized one of my hands, which she continued to hold with a strong grasp in hers....
We remained thus for some minutes without my being able to leave her to call for assistance, though the frightful change in her face filled me with inexpressible terror as well as the keenest anguish. I withdrew my hand at last, and threw my arms around her neck, exclaiming repeatedly amid my sobs: “Forgive me! Answer me! Oh! tell me that you forgive me!...” She made no reply, however, but by degrees she returned to herself and grew calm. Then, taking me in her arms, she held me a long time closely embraced, as if she felt there was no safety for me anywhere else, and longed in some way for the power of taking me once more into her maternal breast, that I might live with her life, or die if she died!...
O Almighty God! the prayer that then rose from her heart in behalf of her poor child thou alone didst hear! But when I recall all the errors of my past life and thy wonderful mercy towards me, I feel it was in answer to that prayer thou hast bestowed on me so many benefits! I know that at that instant a new source of grace was opened to me never to be exhausted—a look of mercy vouchsafed that nothing has ever extinguished!...
My mother still remained speechless, but her respiration became more and more regular, though, alas! still too rapid, and her features resumed their usual appearance. But her bright color had given place to a deadly paleness, and a large dark ring encircled her sweet, expressive eyes, now fastened on me with a look I had never read there before. She bent down and kissed me, and I felt two great tears fall on my forehead, as her pale lips murmured these words:
“O my God! since it is thy will I should die and leave her behind me, I commit her to thy care. Watch over her, I pray thee, better than I have done.”
“Die!” ... my mother die!... I sprang up with a sudden, violent bound, as if smitten to the heart, and stood motionless like one petrified. A frightful vision appeared before me!... a vision I had not been prepared for by the slightest apprehension, or anxiety, or suspicion. Notwithstanding the too precocious development of my sensibilities, there was something child‐like in my peculiar temperament that had blinded my eyes, now so suddenly opened! I tried to recall the words I had just heard, but my mind grew confused, and was conscious of nothing but a sharp pang I had never yet experienced, but the cause of which had faded from my remembrance. I turned away, perhaps with the vague thought of calling assistance, perhaps to close the window, but staggered, as if dizzy, and fell to the ground behind the curtain of the window.
At that instant the door opened. I heard the mingled voices of my father and several other persons. Some one sprang forward, exclaiming: “The window open at this late hour!... Who could have been so imprudent?” Then I was conscious that they were gathering around my mother. My father took her up in his arms, and carried her out of the room.... No one had perceived me in the increasing obscurity, as I lay on the floor, half concealed by the curtain. I had not fainted, but I was in a partially insensible state, incapable of any clear notions except the wish to lose all consciousness of suffering in a sleep from which I should never awake!...
II.
I know not how long I remained in this condition. When I opened my eyes, the moon was shining so brightly that the room was as light as day. I rose up, and threw a terrified glance around. Everything in the moonlight wore an ominous aspect, and I shuddered as my eyes fell on the couch and the white pillow on which I had seen my mother’s face resting. What had happened?... A long time seemed to have elapsed, and I felt as if on the edge of an abyss—an abyss of sorrow into which I was about to be precipitated. O my God! was it a mere dream, or was it a frightful reality? I could not tell. I soon became conscious of an excruciating pain in my head, and my teeth began to chatter with a violent chill. I rose up to go out, but it was only with the greatest difficulty that I reached my mother’s couch, on which I threw myself in despair, burying my face in the pillow where she had reposed her dear head. I burst into sobs, and this explosion of grief afforded me momentary relief.
I then attempted to leave the room, and was proceeding towards the door, when my attention was attracted to something that had fallen on the floor. It was my mother’s little book, the silver clasp of which glittered in the light of the moon. I picked it up, and had just concealed it, when the door opened, and my sister Livia (my father’s oldest daughter) appeared with a light in her hand.
“Gina!” she exclaimed, “how you frightened me! What are you doing here, child, at this late hour? I thought you were in the garden. How long have you been here?”
I made no reply. I felt as if I should die of mortification, should any one learn what had taken place before my mother’s ill turn; but Livia did not repeat her question. She was pale and preoccupied, and her eyes were red with weeping.
What could have happened? My heart throbbed with suspense, but I had not courage enough to ask a single question. She had come for the pillow left on the couch, and seemed to be hunting for something she could not find. Perhaps it was my mother’s note‐book, which at night she always laid on a table beside her bed. But I did not give it to her. I wished to restore it myself, and, though generally frank with Livia, said nothing about finding it. Agitated as I was, I felt that this little book was a treasure that belonged solely to me—a treasure of which I must never allow any one to deprive me. She made me hold a light to aid her in her vain search, but, not finding it, she took the rest of the things on the stand, and left the room. I followed her, and we walked along together through the gallery that led to my mother’s chamber, which was at the end.
This gallery, or, rather, open loggia, looked down on the inner court of the old palace we lived in, and extended entirely around it. The landing of the principal staircase to the first story connected with the gallery, was precisely opposite the place where we were, when, all at once, we heard in that direction a sound—confused at first, and then more distinct—of chanting and the measured steps of several people, mingled with the constant ringing of a bell. Presently a bright light shone through all that side of the gallery, and through the arches we saw a long procession appear, and proceed around towards the door directly before us, ... the door of my mother’s chamber.... Livia knelt down, and made a sign for me to do the same, but I remained standing, my eyes staring wide open before me in a kind of stupor. I saw the long file of white penitents as they came with lighted torches in their hands; then appeared the canopy under which walked Don Placido, my mother’s aged confessor, carrying the Divine Host in a silver Ciborium.... I could see his long, white beard, his bowed head, his sad, recollected look, and that was all. In an instant the truth flashed across my mind; then everything vanished.
This new shock followed the other so quickly that it caused a deeper and more dangerous swoon; and when I was taken up senseless, and carried to my chamber, it was with the fear that this fatal night would be the last for the daughter as well as the mother....
I have no recollection of what took place for a long while after. I only remember that, opening my eyes one day, I saw Ottavia (my mother’s nurse, who had brought me up) beside my bed. I recognized her, and stammered a few words.... She murmured: “Blessed be God!” but did not add another word. A thousand thoughts rushed across my mind, but I could not analyze them, and the one which might seem of the least importance was that which I gave utterance to first.
“My mother’s book,” ... I said repeatedly.
Ottavia, without speaking, at once raised the lid of a large ebony coffer that stood on the table not far from my bed, and took out the little book with the silver clasp. She held it up, and then replaced it in the box, which she locked. Turning to me, she put her finger on her lips. I obeyed the sign, and remained silent, but I slept no more till evening. By degrees my mind grew clear, and my confused recollections distinct. The fever that had brought me so near to death’s door now abated, and from that day my convalescence was rapid. But the chief thing that renewed life and strength restored, was the faculty of suffering, and comprehending in all its fulness the reality of my misfortune.
My mother was no more. She did not live to see the morrow of the day when she embraced me for the last time. My father’s agitated face revealed this terrible fact more clearly even than the mourning he wore.... But I did not learn the details of her last hours till a long time after the day when, for the second time, he lost the light of his fireside. Knowing the keen impetuosity of my disposition, a violent explosion of grief had been anticipated. But it was not so. On the contrary, I fell into a state of gloomy silence that gave rise to fresh anxiety to those who had so long trembled for my life.
The physician, however, advised my father, my sister Livia, and Ottavia, who took turns at my bedside, to leave everything to time without attempting to oppose me. I therefore passed day after day without appearing to notice their presence. But on other days, I silently made some sign of gratitude, which would bring a smile to my father’s pale face. Then Livia would embrace me, saying: “Courage, bambina!(67) Try to love God’s holy will.” Or Ottavia, as she used to do when I was only four years old, would hold up the silver cross on her cornelian rosary, which I always looked at with pleasure. And when they saw me kiss it for the first time, they began to hope, in spite of my silence, for the return of my reason. But my eyes would become fixed again, and I would cease to recognize any one. And when my pillow was found wet with my tears, as was often the case, the physician would say: “That is a good sign; let her weep. It is a relief she needs.” But days passed, and my mental condition remained the same.
My strength nevertheless returned. I was able to get up, and several times I walked a few steps on the terrace leading from my chamber without any injury. But nothing could break the unnatural silence that transformed into an inanimate statue the girl whose excessive vivacity and unrestrained liveliness had sometimes disturbed, sometimes enlivened, the whole house, filling it throughout with the sense of her presence.
One day I was sitting on my terrace, looking off over the gulf, when Ottavia approached, and, as usual, began to talk with the vain hope of drawing forth some reply. I generally listened in silence, but that day a new train of thought came into my mind, which I felt the power of pursuing clearly, calmly, and with a certain persistence that proved my physical strength was at last beginning to triumph over the kind of mental paralysis which made my convalescence seem like a new phase of my disease.
Ottavia had placed a number of books on a small table beside me. She knew nothing of them but the covers, but she offered them to me one by one, hoping to induce me to read—a diversion it was desirable I should take to. At last I shook my head, and for the first time pushed away the book she offered me. Then I spoke, and the sound of my voice was a joyful surprise to my faithful attendant:
“No, Ottavia, not that one. I want another book, and that alone—the one you put away there,” with a gesture and glance towards the further end of my chamber.
Ottavia understood me, but hesitated between the joyful hope of my cure awakened by my reply, and the fear of causing fresh excitement which might bring on another relapse. But after all the means that had been used to rouse me from the state of apathy into which I had fallen, it did not seem prudent to oppose that which I had chosen myself. She therefore obeyed my request, and, without any reply, opened the ebony coffer where she had put my mother’s book, as if it were a relic, and placed it in my hands.
“Thank you, Ottavia,” I said. And putting my arms around her neck, I kissed her, causing big tears of joy to roll down her cheeks. “And now leave me, I beg of you; leave me alone for an hour.”
She hesitated a moment, and looked at me uneasily, but then complied as before with my wish, and, after seeing that I was sheltered from the sun and wind, noiselessly left the balcony through my room.
I then kissed the cover of the book I held in my hand, and opened it with awe. It seemed to me I was about to hear my mother’s voice from the depths of the tomb!
III.
MAY 15, 18—
——Ginevra! It is to her I consecrate these pages—the child that at once fills my heart with inexpressible anxiety and the tenderest affection—the child whom I love so dearly, but whom my hands perhaps are too feeble to guide. And yet I shudder at the thought of leaving her behind me. My strength, however, is rapidly failing, and I feel that my poor child will soon be left alone.
Alone! This word may seem harsh to you, Fabrizio mio, and, lest this should meet your eye, I will explain my meaning.
I know you have as tender a heart as mine, and your prudence is far greater; but, to tell you the truth, you likewise are too fond of her! You know how many times I have taken her from your arms to make room for poor Livia, so often grieved by your involuntary forgetfulness, but not offended with her little sister, because she too, like every one else, felt that Ginevra from her infancy had the power of charming every eye and heart around her!...
But though to Livia you were sometimes indifferent, you were never severe, whereas, though generally too indulgent to Ginevra, when you detected some fault in her, I have often seen you inclined to go from one extreme to another, and been obliged to beg you to leave the correction to time or to her mother.
She has grown up, as she is, in our midst, like one of the flowers of our clime which put forth their beauty almost without cultivation, rejoicing our hearts and our eyes, and intoxicating us all with the perfume of her grace and caressing affection.
O yes! it is nothing but intoxication, and I have perhaps yielded to it with too much delight; but I repeat it, it is I alone, among all who have loved her, whose delight has been unmingled with blindness.
Perhaps this was because (pardon me, Fabrizio) I loved her more than any one else, and because the affection of a mother has something divine in its clearness of vision. I see this charming child, to whom I have given birth, as she is. I understand her real nature. I look into her pure soul as into the limpid waters of some beautiful lake. But clouds are now passing over its surface. Others are rising and gathering, and I tremble to think a storm may some day rise up to overwhelm and crush her!
JUNE 1.
This is Ginevra’s fifteenth birthday. I will describe her, not only as she appears to me, but to every one else.
She is slender and graceful in form, and an inch or two taller than I. There is an habitual sweetness and languor in her large, brown eyes; but when they are suddenly lit up with surprise, wonder, or any other unexpected emotion, they glow with wonderful expression and brilliancy. Her hair, of a golden hue which is as beautiful as it is rare in our country, parts on a pure white brow which forms almost a continued straight line with a nose of perfect regularity, so that her profile would be quite faultless were not her mouth larger than is consistent with the standard of classical beauty. But this blemish is redeemed by the expression of her mouth, sometimes grave and thoughtful enough to excite anxiety, sometimes half open with a child‐like smile, and often extended with hearty laughter, like that of a peasant, displaying two beautiful rows of small, white teeth.
And now, O my child! I would with the same sincerity describe the lineaments of your soul, which is far dearer to me than your face—yes, dearer to me than my own life, or even than yours!
In the inner recesses of this soul—and I thank God for it!—is hidden, even from her, a jewel of purity and truth which it would be far easier to crush than deface. Then, like a strong wind that cannot shake this foundation, but seeks entrance through every pore, beats a loving nature that cannot be denied its food, which is the predominant trait in her character. Passing over her other good qualities and her defects, and speaking merely of her outward appearance, it must be confessed that she manifests the excessive vanity of a child, and a want of reflection that would be surprising in a girl of ten years old, mingled with a passionate ardor that would excite anxiety in one of twenty!
Such is my poor child—such are the attractive but alarming traits that constitute the peculiar nature she has inherited.
O Almighty God! ... two more years of life, ... that I may watch over her till the day I am able to entrust her to the care of some one she can regard with the true devotion of a wife!
Alas! this desire is consuming my life. It is shortening my days. It is hastening my end, which I regard with calmness when I merely consider myself, but which fills me with terror when I think only of her.
JUNE 15.
It was your wish, Fabrizio, and I yielded to it. But it was not without repugnance I saw her go to this ball. You say your sister will watch over her; but I know Donna Clelia better than you. She has no eyes but for her own daughters, and will think she has done her duty to Ginevra by seeing, when she arrives, that her dress has not been crumpled on the way, and, at her return, that she has lost none of her ribbons. She will separate her from her own daughters, you may be sure, lest she eclipse them, and leave her alone—alone in the gay world where she appears for the first time.... You smiled when you saw her ready to start. You whispered with pride that a lovelier creature never was seen.... Ah! Fabrizio, at that moment how I wished she were less charming, or, at least, that her beauty could be hidden from every eye!...
Do you remember the assertion of a queen of France about which we were conversing only a few days since? You thought it too severe, but to me it only seems reasonable; for it gives expression to the most earnest wish of my heart. O yes! like her, I would rather see the child I love so passionately—a thousand times rather—see her die than contract the slightest stain!...
The hours are passing away, and I must seek calmness in prayer. I feel as if in this way I shall still be able to protect her....
Clelia promised to bring her home at eleven. The clock has just struck twelve, and she has not yet arrived....
JUNE 25.
I have been ill for a few days past, and unable to write. To‐day I feel somewhat better, and, though my mind has been greatly disturbed, will try to collect my thoughts.
I was not deceived in my presentiment. I thought the day of the ball would be a fatal one, and I was not mistaken. As I said, at midnight she had not returned. I awaited her arrival with increased anxiety of mind, lying awake a whole hour after that, listening to every sound, and repeatedly mistaking the noise of the sea for that of the carriage bringing her home.... At last, about half‐past one, I heard the rumbling of the wheels, and presently recognized her light step in the gallery. She passed my door without stopping, and had arrived at her own chamber, when Ottavia, who had been sitting up with me, went after her to say I was not yet asleep, if she wished to come and bid me good‐night. As she entered the door, the light in Ottavia’s hand shone across her face. It was by no means the same as at her departure. The excitement of dancing, and the fatigue of remaining up to so unusual an hour, were doubtless sufficient to account for her disordered hair, her pale face, and the striking brilliancy of her eyes; but her troubled look, her trembling lips, and the care she took to avoid looking me in the face when she fell on my neck, showed there was something more which I must wait till another day to question her about....
JULY 1.
To continue the account interrupted the other day:
I know everything now, for she never deceives me. She is always as sincere as she is affectionate. Yes, she had scarcely entered the ball‐room before she was, as I foretold, separated from her cousins, and left in a group of young ladies, who, treating her as a mere child, immediately proposed she should take a seat at a table where there were sweetmeats and games. Just then the orchestra began a dance, and the two oldest of the group stationed themselves in front to attract the attention of those in search of partners, while a third kept Ginevra in her seat by showing her pictures, and patronizingly promising in a whisper to dance with her presently. But at the sound of the music, Ginevra could not be restrained from springing up and advancing to look at the preparations for the dance. This change of position attracted the observation of a young gentleman who was slowly entering the room with an absent air without appearing to wish to take any part in the dance.
“There is Flavio Aldini,” said one of the young ladies; “he will not condescend to come this way. He looks upon us as mere school‐girls, and only dances with those ladies whose elegance has already made them the fashion.”
“I never saw him before, but he looks very much as I supposed from the description I had of him. Is he not said to be engaged to a rich heiress?”
“He? No; he does not dream of marrying, I assure you. I tell you he never looks at us young ladies.”
“And yet, my dear, he seems to be looking rather earnestly in this direction now.”
She was right. At that very moment, the person of whom they were speaking eagerly approached the place where Ginevra was standing, and, without glancing at her companions, accosted her, begging she would give him the pleasure of being her partner in the quadrille about to begin.
This was a triumph for my poor Ginevra, and all the greater after the vexation caused by her companions’ patronizing airs. She went away radiant—intoxicated.... Hitherto she had been petted as a child; now she suddenly realized how much admiration a woman can inspire, and this knowledge, like a mischievous spark, fell from the look and smile of Flavio Aldini into her very heart!
Flavio Aldini! You will understand, Fabrizio, the terror I felt at the mere name of this presuming fellow; so well calculated, alas! to please young eyes like hers, and capable of taking advantage of the impression he could not help seeing he had made on her inexperience....
How agitated the poor child was in repeating all his dangerous compliments! And how flattering to her pride a success that attracted the attention of every one in the room, and made her an object of envy to those who had just humiliated her by their condescension!... I allowed her to go on.... I was glad, at all events, to see she did not manifest the least shade of deception—the usual consequence of vanity—but I trembled as I listened!
He begged for the little bunch of flowers she wore in her bosom. She was strongly tempted to grant his request, and was only prevented from doing so by the fear of being observed.
JULY 5.
I have not been able to continue. I have been growing weaker and weaker, and can only write a few lines at a time without fatigue. Since the 15th of June, I have been constantly worried and anxious. I cannot bear for her to leave me now for a single instant. I want to keep her constantly under my eyes and near my heart. Yesterday I saw her start at the sound of a horse passing under the balcony. To‐day she was standing there with her eyes dreamily turned towards the road that connects our house with the shore.... I called her, and she listened as I talked kindly to her, hoping to give a new turn to her thoughts, instead of trying to check them by remonstrances. She is easily influenced and guided by kindness but it is difficult to make her yield to authority. Oh! there never was a child who needed more than she the tender guidance of a mother!...
But let thy will, O God! be done. Help me to say this without a murmur. Let me not forget that my love for her is nothing—nothing at all—in comparison with that.
JULY 15.
It is only with great effort I can write to‐day. I do not know as I shall be able to write more than a few lines. But I wish to remind you once more, Fabrizio, of the conversation we had yesterday evening. Who knows but it was the last we shall ever have in this world! My time here is short. Do not forget my request. Lose no time in uniting her to some one she can love and will consent to be guided by. Though still young, he should be several years older than she, in order to inspire her with respect, which is so sweet when mingled with affection, as no one knows better than I, Fabrizio. Has not the mingled respect and love with which you have filled my heart constituted the happiness of my life? I would bless you once more for this, as I close. I have not strength enough to continue.... I must stop.... And yet I would speak once more of her—of my Ginevra—my darling child. I would implore you to be always mild and patient with her, and if ever....
Here the journal ended!... Oh! what a torrent of recollections rushed across my mind at the sight of this unfinished page! This little book falling from her hand, ... her slumbers, ... her terrible awakening, ... her incoherent words, her last embrace, my despair! All this I recalled with poignant grief as I pressed my lips to the lines written by her dying hand. I shed a torrent of tears, but this time they were salutary tears. I had already severely expiated my error, for it was only my deep sorrow for having embittered the last hours of my mother’s life, and perhaps, O fearful thought! of hastening her end, that had given so dark a shade to my grief, and filled me with a despair akin to madness. I was now stronger, calmer, and wiser, and felt I could yet repair my fault by fulfilling my mother’s wishes, and this thought brought the first ray of comfort that penetrated my heart. I made many new resolutions in my mind, and felt I had firmness enough to keep them.
The Principles Of Real Being. V. Intrinsic Principles Of Complex Beings.
The primitive beings of which we have treated in a preceding article imply nothing in their constitution but what is strictly necessary in order to exist in nature; and therefore they are physically simple—that is, not made up of other physical beings, though they are metaphysically compounded, because their intrinsic principles are so many metaphysical components. Those beings, on the contrary, the entity of which is not strictly one, besides the three principles common to all primitive beings, involve in their constitution other components, either physical or metaphysical. Such complex beings are either substantial or accidental compounds. We propose to investigate in the present article the general constitution of substantial compounds, then of accidental compounds; and lastly we shall inquire into the principles of the attributes and properties of complex, as well as primitive, beings.
Principles of substantial compounds.
By substantial compound we mean a compound of which the components are distinct substances uniting in one essence or nature. Such a compound is a physical one, inasmuch as it is made up of physical components; for substances are complete beings, and each of them has its own distinct and individual existence in the physical order of things.
This definition of substantial compound is very different from that which the scholastics drew from their theory of substantial generations. But since chemistry has shown, and philosophical reasoning based on facts confirms, that what in such a theory is called the “generated substance” is only a compound of substances, it must be evident that our substantial compound, as above defined, does not, in fact, differ from theirs, but is the same thing viewed under a different light. Perhaps, if the schoolmen had thought that bodies were possibly but the result of the composition of many permanent substances, they would not have called them substantial, but only natural, compounds; yet, since the epithet “substantial” has been originally adopted, and is still commonly applied to compounds which we know actually to contain many distinct substances, we cannot keep the word “substantial” without giving it such a meaning as will answer to the real nature of the things it qualifies. Nevertheless, should the reader prefer to apply the epithet “substantial” to that compound only which consists of matter and substantial form interpreted in accordance with the Peripatetic system, then the compounds of which we treat might be called natural, or essential, compounds, or compound natures. So long, however, as such compounds are called “substances,” we think we have the right to apply to them the epithet “substantial.”
The immediate principles of substantial compound are three, as in the primitive being: to wit, act, term, and complement; but they are of a different nature, as we are going to explain. Two cases are to be examined. For the physical parts, which unite to make one compound nature, sometimes rank all alike as material constituents of the compound, as in water, iron, silver, and other natural bodies; but at other times one of the constituent substances stands forth in the character of a form, as the human soul in the body, all the parts of the body remaining under it, and making up the complete material constituent of the compound nature.
In the first case, the physical components taken together constitute the adequate potential term or the compound nature; because, as they are all alike material constituents, they are all alike potential respecting their composition; and thus they are all equally liable to be tied together by physical action. The specific composition will be the act of the compound essence; for it is such a composition that formally binds together those physical components into one specific compound. Finally, the actual bond of the components, brought about by their composition, will be the actuality of the compound nature—that is, its formal complement.
That these three constituents differ very materially from those of a primitive being is evident: for, in a primitive being, the term is a pure potency that receives its first actuation; whilst in the compound nature it consists of a number of actual beings which are no longer potential respecting their first actuation, but only with regard to their composition, which gives them a second and relative actuation in the compound. Again, the act, in the primitive being, is a product of creation, calculated to give the first existence to its term; whilst in the compound nature it is the product of actions interchanged between the components, and gives them, not to exist, but to be united so as to form a new specific essence. Lastly, the complement, in a primitive being, is the existence of a thing absolutely one, whilst in the compound nature it is the existence of a thing whose oneness is altogether relative.
In all compounds of this kind—viz., whose form is their composition—the components are, of course, physical beings, as we have stated; but their composition is only a metaphysical entity. Indeed, we are wont to call it “physical composition”; but we do not mean that it is a physical being; we only mean that it is the composition “of physical beings.” We know that formal composition is that by which the components are formally bound with one another; and we know also that the components are thus bound in consequence of their mutual actions, and that such actions cannot be conceived to be complete in nature, except inasmuch as they are received in their proper subjects—viz., in the components themselves. And therefore the composition which is styled “physical” is, of its own nature, only an incomplete and metaphysical entity; and, in a like manner, the actuality of the physical compound is not a physical being, as it cannot be found outside of that of which it is the result.
But a compound of the kind just mentioned is sometimes intended for an end which cannot be attained without the concurrence of a higher principle. Then, by the introduction of this new principle, a second kind of substantial compound arises, in which one of the components (the higher principle) ranks as the formal, and the others as the material, constituent of the compound nature. Such is the case with our own bodies; which, to fulfil the ends for which they are organized by nature, besides their bodily constitution and organism, require the infusion of a distinct principle of life. Hence the formal constituent of man, and of all animals too, is the principle of life, or the soul; whilst his material constituent is the body, with its organic constitution.
That the body is a physical being and a substance there is no doubt; and that the soul also is a physical being and a substance distinct from the body is conclusively shown in all good treatises of anthropology. The soul and the body are therefore two physical components, and make up a physical compound. The animal life, however, which is the result of the animation of the body by the soul—and is, therefore, the complement of the compound—is not a third physical component, but a metaphysical entity; and thus of the three principles which constitute the animal, the first and the second only are to be reckoned as physical parts.
And now, since we have stated that the constituents of compound natures may have either a physical or only a metaphysical entity, we must further inform our readers that a great number of authors are wont to consider all the real constituents of physical beings as so many physical entities. But we would say that in this they are mistaken; for although it is evidently true that the constituent principles of a physical being have a physical existence in the being to which they belong, it cannot be inferred that therefore all such principles must be called physical beings; as some of them can neither have an independent existence nor be even conceived without referring to their correlative principles. Thus the act and the term of a primitive being are both entitatively less than physical beings; for the first being we find in the physical order is that which arises out of them. It is not, therefore, the same thing to say that a being is physically real, and to say that it is made up of physical realities. The first assertion may be true, and the second false; because a thing which is one has only one existence, and nevertheless implies three principles; whence it appears that it is impossible to conceive each of the three principles as having a distinct existence. And since that which has no distinct existence in nature is not a physical being, accordingly the principles of primitive physical beings are not physical, but only metaphysical, realities.
We have further to remark that the act and the term, even when they are complete physical entities, in their manner of principiating the compound nature always behave towards one another as incomplete entities, inasmuch as their principiation is always of a metaphysical, and never of a physical, character. To speak first of those compound essences whose form is composition, we observe that the physical components of such essences are indeed in act, absolutely speaking, but, with regard to the composition, they are simply in potency: and since it is in this last capacity that they enter into the constitution of the compound nature, it is evident that they contribute to its constitution only inasmuch as they have a claim to further actuation. For to be potential respecting any kind of composition means not only that the parts might be duly disposed to undergo such a composition, but moreover that they are already disposed and related to each other in that manner which imperatively calls for such a composition. Consequently, the components, when thus disposed, constitute a potency which needs actuation, and stands, with respect to the form of composition, in the same relation in which any term stands with respect to its essential act. It is, therefore, manifest that the said components, though they are physical entities, behave as metaphysical principles in their material principiation of a compound essence. As for the composition itself, we have already seen that it is always a metaphysical constituent.
In the same manner, the soul and the body are indeed physical beings, absolutely speaking, and, therefore, independent of one another so far as their existence is concerned; but the body is informed and vivified, not inasmuch as it exists in its absolute actuality, but inasmuch as it is potential respecting animal life—that is, inasmuch as its organic composition imperatively claims a soul. And similarly the soul is a vivifying form, not inasmuch as it is something absolute in nature, but inasmuch as it naturally requires completion in the body for which it is created and to which it is actually terminated. It therefore appears that the soul and the body, in their principiation of the animal, behave towards one another as metaphysical principles.
Hence all composition of act and potency is, properly speaking, a metaphysical composition; though, when the compound is resolvable into physical parts, the same composition may also, from the physical nature of the components, be rightly styled physical. The difference between a metaphysical and a physical compound does not, therefore, consist in the character of the composition itself, which is always metaphysical, but in this: that the latter can be resolved into physical parts which may and will exist after their separation, whereas the former can be resolved only into metaphysical constituents which are utterly incapable of separate existence.
What precedes refers to the immediate constituents of compound essences. It is evident that every immediate principle, which is a complete being, involves other principles. Hence all compound essences imply some principles which are proximate, and others which are remote. The remote are those by which every primitive component is itself constituted in its individual reality, and from which the components derive their real aptitude to become the material, the formal, or the efficient principle of the compound essence.
Principles of accidental compounds.
We have hitherto shown that all physical beings, whether physically simple or physically complex, involve in their constitution an act, a term, and a formal complement. Nothing more is required to conclude that no physical being can be conceived of as an act without its term, or a term without its act, or a formal actuality not resulting from the concurrence of an act and its suitable term. From this it immediately appears that accidents and accidental modes are not physical beings, and that their existence is necessarily dependent on the existence of some other thing of which they are the appurtenances.
An accident, properly so called, is an act having no term of its own, and, therefore, having no metaphysical essence and no possibility of a separate existence. Accordingly, the term of which it is in need must be supplied by a distinct being already existing in nature; and this is called the subject of the accidental act. Hence no accidental act can be conceived to be without a subject.
And here we must reflect that, as the first actuation of an essential term by its essential act has for its result the actual existence of the individual being, so also any second, or accidental, actuation of the term by an accidental act has for its result an actual mode of existing of the same individual being. From this plain truth we infer that a distinction is to be made between accidental acts, which are properly accidents, and accidental modes, which are only accidentalities. An accident, properly speaking, is that which causes the subject to acquire an accidental actuality, and is always an act; whilst the accidental mode is not an act, but an accidental actuality which results in the subject from the reception of the accidental act.
These general notions being admitted, let us inquire into the principles of accidental compounds. An accidental compound is either a compound of substance and accident or a compound of real essence with something superadded. In the first case, “accidental” means the opposite of “substantial”; in the second case, “accidental” means the opposite of “essential.” Thus a falling body is an accidental compound of substance and its momentum, the momentum being a real accident; whereas a man clothed is an accidental compound of individual human nature and dress; the dress being considered as something accidental as compared with the essence of man, though it is a real substance. And in the same manner a mass of gold is an accidental compound of golden molecules, because each molecule fully possesses the essence of gold independently of any other molecule; whence it follows that the addition of other molecules is accidental as compared with the essence of gold, and only increases the quantity without altering the specific nature of gold. Of course, these other molecules are substances, and it is only their concurrence into one mass that is accidental.
It is plain that the constituent principles of an accidental compound are three—viz., the accidental act which entails a modification of the subject; the subject which receives the modifying act; and the accidental mode of being, or the modification, which results from the reception of the act in the subject.
The subject is always a complete physical being, and, therefore, has its own essential act, term, and complement, independently of all things accidental. It becomes the subject of an accidental act by actually receiving it.
The accidental act which is received in the subject must proceed immediately from the action of some natural or supernatural agent. This is evident; for real receptivity is real passivity, and therefore reception is passion. Now, no passion can be admitted without a corresponding action. Hence all accidental act that is properly and truly received in a subject is the immediate product of action, and its production exactly coincides and coextends with its reception.
Lastly, the mode of being which results from the accidental actuation of the subject is only an accidentality, or an accidental actuality, as we have already remarked, and is predicated of the subject, not as something received in it, but as something following from the actual reception of the accidental act. Hence the substance, or the nature, which is the subject of such accidental modes lies under them, not on account of its receptivity, but on account of the resulting potentiality, which is a proper appurtenance, not of the material term, but of the formal complement of the substance. And, in fact, the complement of all created essence always arises from the actuation of a potential term, and therefore is itself necessarily potential—that is, liable to such accidental changes as may result from any new actuation of the essential term. This resulting potentiality is commonly styled mobility, changeableness, or affectibility, and may be called modal potentiality in opposition to the passive potentiality which is the characteristic of the essential term.
Hence a subject is said to receive the accidental act, but not the accidental mode; and, on the contrary, is said to be affected by the accidental mode, but not by the accidental act. We may say, however, that a subject is modified as well by the act as by the mode, because this expression applies equally to the making of the change (mutatio in fieri) and to the state that follows (mutatio in facto esse).
A subject has, therefore, two distinct manners of underlying: the one on account of its receptivity, the other on account of its affectibility; the one by reason of the passive potentiality of its term, the other by reason of the modal potentiality of its complement. Thus a body, according to its passive potentiality, underlies the act produced in it by a motive power, because it passively receives the motive determination, and, according to its modal potentiality, it underlies local movement, this movement being the immediate result of the determination received. And in a similar manner our soul, inasmuch as it is receptive or passive, underlies the act produced or the impression made in it by a cognizable object; and inasmuch as it is affectible, it underlies the feeling or affective movement, which immediately results from the cognition of the object.
We have said that every accident which is received in a subject and inheres in it must be produced by the action of some agent; and this being the case, it follows that the quantity of the mass of a body, and the quantity of its volume, which are not the product of action, cannot be ranked among the accidents received and inhering in the body; and generally all the accidental modes which arise in the subject, in consequence of the reception of accidental acts, are intrinsic modes indeed, but are not received, and do not properly inhere in their subject; they only result in the subject. Moreover, as all such intrinsic modes immediately arise from the intrinsic reception of accidental acts, it follows that those accidental modes which do not arise in this manner must be extrinsic; and therefore such modes, though they are predicated of their subject, do not inhere in the subject, but only in a certain manner adhere to it. All accidental connotations and relativities belong to this last class.
Hence we gather that predicamental accidents are of different species, and accordingly demand distinct definitions. The accidental act, or accident strictly, is an act received in the subject and inhering in it; the intrinsic mode is an accidental actuality or modification resulting in the subject; the extrinsic mode is a simple connotation or respect arising between the subject and some correlative term. Accordingly, accidental being in general cannot be defined as “that which inheres in a subject”—quod inhæret alteri tamquam subjecto—for this definition does not embrace all accidentalities, but should be defined as “that which clings to a subject”—quod innititur alteri tamquam subjecto, the phrase “to cling to” being understood in a most general sense. This last definition covers all the ground of predicamental accidentalities; for it is, in fact, applicable to all accidental acts, intrinsic modes of being, and extrinsic connotations.
For the same reason, the subject is not to be defined as “that which receives within itself an accidental entity,” but as “that to which an accidental entity belongs,” and, taking the word “subject” in its most general sense, we may also define it, as Aristotle did, to be “that of which anything is predicated.” It is only by this last definition that we can explain the general practice of predicating of everything, not only its accidentalities, but also its attributes and essential properties. Such predications would be impossible, if the notion of subject were restricted to that which receives on itself accidental entities; for attributes are not accidents, and are not received in their subject, but spring forth from its very essence, as we are going presently to show.
When the thing predicated of any subject is an accidental act, then its subject is a subject of inhesion. When the thing predicated is an intrinsic mode, no matter whether essential, substantial, or accidental, then its subject is a subject of attribution. And when the thing predicated is only a connotation or a respect (modus se habendi ad aliud), then its subject is a subject of mere predication.
As we have stated that natural accidents cannot exist without a subject, the reader may desire to know how we can account for the accidents which, in the Holy Eucharist, exist without their substances. As a lengthy discussion of this philosophico‐theological question would be here quite out of place, we will content ourselves with remarking that the Eucharistic species of bread, as described by S. Thomas and by the ancient scholastics, is not a natural and predicamental accident; and that, therefore, many things may be possible with the Eucharistic species which are not possible with natural accidents. It is not true, in fact, what some have maintained, that in the Holy Eucharist each of the accidents of bread exists without any subject. Theologians acknowledge that the quantity of the bread fulfils the duty of subject with regard to all the other accidents, and consequently that all the other accidents, after the consecration as before, cling to quantity. There is no need, therefore, of assuming color without a subject, or figure without a subject, or weight without a subject. This would simply mean color of nothing, figure of nothing, weight of nothing; which is not a miracle, but an absurdity. To account for the sacramental species, theologians need only to show that the quantity of the bread can exist miraculously without the substance of the bread. This is the only accident which remains without any subject whatever; for the Sacred Body, which ad modum substantiæ—that is, substantively, replaces the substance of the bread—is indeed under that quantity, but it is not affected nor modified by it, and therefore cannot be called its subject in the ordinary sense of the word, though some writers have called it a sacramental subject.
To show that quantity without the substance of which it is the quantity is not an impossibility, we must leave aside the idea that such a quantity is a form inherent in the substance. For the quantity of the mass which alone is destined to become the first subject of all the other accidents is made up of a number of material parts, and therefore is not a form, but a certain amount of actual matter, and fulfils the office of matter, as S. Thomas recognizes, and not that of form, as Suarez and others after him have erroneously assumed. Now, it is evident that as no number can be conceived without units, so neither can a quantity of mass be conceived without its parts; and that, if such parts or units are substances, the quantity of the mass will be nothing less than a number of substances. So long, then, as such a quantity remains, it cannot cease to be a number of substances, unless, indeed, each of the units of which it is made up, and which must always remain, be supernaturally deprived of that which places them formally in the rank of substances. This is, therefore, what must be done, and what is really done by transubstantiation. When, in fact, the words of the consecration are pronounced, and the Sacred Body of our Lord is constituted under the sensible symbol ad modum substantiæ (that is, not only substantially, but substantively), then the substantiality of every particle of the bread is superseded, and, so to say, supplanted by the new substance which lies under each of them, but which leaves intact the constituents of concrete quantity; for “the act and the power of substance,” and “whatever belongs to matter,” remains in each of them, as S. Thomas teaches, in accordance with the common doctrine of the ancient scholastics and of the fathers of the church.
Thus the quantity of the bread remains the same as before, and retains its formal and material constitution, notwithstanding the substantial conversion of the bread into the Sacred Body of our Lord. Had the modern scholastics paid more attention to this last point, they would have seen that the species of bread is none of those natural accidents, whether forms or formalities, which found a place in Aristotle’s categories, but is a supernatural accident as perfectly constituted, in its own way, as substance itself, and therefore capable of being kept in existence by God without the help of a natural subject. The reader may infer from these remarks that the philosophical questions about natural or predicamental accidents are altogether distinct from, and independent of, those concerning the sacramental species; and that therefore nothing that philosophers may say about natural accidents can have any direct bearing on the explanation of the Eucharistic mystery.
One thing remains to be said regarding the distinction between accidental and substantial compounds. We have defined the first to be a compound “of substance and accident,” or a compound “of essence and something accidentally superadded to it.” The second we defined to be a compound “of substances uniting in one essence or nature.” But, as we noticed, the authors pledged to the theory of substantial generations admitted of no “substantial” compound but that which was believed to consist of matter and substantial form; and accordingly all compounds the form of which was an accidental entity, say composition, were considered by them as accidental. We observe that composition, though an accidental entity, is nevertheless the “essential” form of the compound, and gives it its “first” actuality. If, then, the compound is a distinct essence, and has a distinct name, and is called a distinct “substance,” as water, iron, gold, etc., its form, though an accident, is an essential constituent of the specific substance.
We cannot at present discuss the question of substantial generations; we only remark that, to avoid all useless disputes about words, a physical compound, when it contains nothing but what is needed for the constitution of its specific nature, may be called Unum per se naturale—i.e., a being essentially one; and when it has something accidentally superadded, it may be called Unum per accidens—i.e., a being accidentally one. This distinction of names, which is familiar to all philosophers, expresses the distinction of the things without having recourse to the terms of “substantial compound” and “accidental compound,” taken in the Peripatetic sense of the words. Thus, whilst the Peripatetics based their distinction between these compounds on a presumed difference between their forms, we draw our own from the presence or absence of anything not belonging to the specific nature of the compound. This we do in accordance with the true spirit of scholastic philosophy, not to say compelled by a philosophical necessity; for we know that the constituent form of a purely material compound, though essential with respect to the compound itself, is only an accident received in the substance of the components, as we may hereafter have an occasion to show. And now let us come to the attributes of complete beings.
Principles of attributes and properties.
All complete beings possess attributes and properties called essential—that is, invariably following the essence to which they belong. It is therefore necessary for us to inquire whether, to account for them, any special principles must be admitted. We can easily show that no new real principle is required besides the principles of the essence, as all the essential attributes and properties(68) of a complete being are fully contained in the real essence of the same as in their fountain‐head, inasmuch as they are nothing else than the actuality of the essence considered under different aspects or connotations. It is known, in fact, that the essential attributes of things are said by all philosophers to emanate from the essence, to flow from the essence, to follow from the essence, without any other thing being ever mentioned as their principle; which shows the universality of the doctrine that the essence alone is the adequate source of all its attributes.
And here let us observe that the words principle and source are not synonymous; for a principle is not sufficient, of itself, to principiate anything without the concurrence of other principles, as it does not perfectly contain in itself the whole reality of which it is a principle. The source, on the contrary, contains totally and adequately within itself whatever emanates from it; so that any such emanation, taken separately, is only an imperfect exhibition of the reality from which it emanates, as it presents it only under one out of the many different points of view under which it may be regarded. To say, then, that the essence of a thing is the source of all its attributes is to say that the essence itself alone sufficiently accounts for their origin, their necessity, and their distinction.
That such is the case we shall easily understand by reflecting that all the essential attributes and properties of a thing express the being or actuality of the thing under some special aspect; as to be active, to be passive, to be one, to be simple, etc. Now, to be, or actuality, immediately results from the principles of the essence alone, as we have proved in our last article. Consequently, the essential attributes and properties of anything immediately result from the essential principles of the thing—that is, from its real essence. Thus a being is active inasmuch as the act by which it is can be further terminated; and therefore to be active is nothing more than to have in itself an act further terminable; and activity, or active power in the abstract, is nothing more than the further terminability of the same act. In like manner, a being is passive inasmuch as its intrinsic term is still capable of further actuation; and therefore to be passive is nothing more than to have in itself a term which can be further actuated; and passivity, or passive potentiality in the abstract, is nothing more than the further actuability of the same term. The like may be said of every other attribute. Meanwhile, if we inquire what does terminability, or actuability, add to the thing, we shall soon see that it adds nothing real, but only exhibits the reality of the thing under a special formality as connoting something either intrinsic or extrinsic to it. Thus the terminability of the act simply connotes some term capable of actuation, and the actuability of the term simply connotes an act by which it can be actuated.
From this it follows that the essential attributes of being are nothing but distinct abstract ratios having their foundation in the principles of the complete being, and presenting its actuality under different aspects. In fact, it is because such a being contains the foundation of all those ratios that our intellect, by looking upon it, is enabled to discover them, and to trace them distinctly to their distinct principles. It thus appears that the true reason why no new real principles are needed to account for the essential attributes of things consists in this, that the whole reality of the attributes already pre‐exists in the thing, and that nothing further is necessary, that they may be distinctly conceived, but intellectual consideration.
What we have said of the attributes that have their foundation in the essential principles of being applies equally to qualities which are the immediate result of accidental actuation. Thus, if a material point be acted on, the result of the determination it receives will be velocity. Of course, velocity is an accidental attribute, since it follows from the termination of an accidental act; yet it results as perfectly from that termination as the essential attributes result from the termination of the essential act.
In general, all the objective ratios which immediately follow the constitution of a concrete being need no additional principles, because they are already contained in the entity of the concrete being, in which the intellect finds its ground for their distinct conception. And here let us add two remarks. The first is that all such intelligible ratios identify themselves really, though inadequately, with the concrete entity of which they are predicated; so that between the attribute and its concrete subject there can be but the slightest of metaphysical distinctions. The second is that the essential attributes of a simple being are never really distinct from one another. The reason of this is evident; for such attributes are the simple actuality of a simple being, which does not cease to be identical with itself when it is viewed from different points of view. They admit, however, of a distinction of reason; for when the same thing is considered under different aspects, the distinct concepts that are then formed by the mind evidently exhibit distinct objective ratios, every one of which corresponds to one of those aspects without formally implying the others.
Though we have hitherto spoken of the essential attributes and properties of primitive beings, the doctrine we have expounded is also applicable to those of all substantial compounds. Thus the attributes and properties of a molecule of hydrogen, oxygen, or any other specific compound have the reason of their being in the essential principles of their respective compound, and nothing else is required to account for them, as is evident from the preceding explanations. It is to be observed, however, that in such compounds as owe their being to material composition only, as it is the case with all the molecules of natural bodies, the composition which is the essential form of the compound is not a substantial, but an accidental, determination of the components; and hence it is that each such molecule involves in its essential constitution both substance and accident, and therefore is not exactly a substance, but a natural compound essence. The consequence is that its essential attributes, too, owe their being not only to the component substances, but also to such accidents as are essentially implied in the constitution of the compound. Thus, porosity, compressibility, bulk, etc., which are essential attributes of each molecule as such, have the reason of their being partly in the elements of which they are made up, and partly in the specific form of their composition. Now, this specific form may undergo accidental changes without trespassing the bounds of its species; and those essential attributes which depend on the specific composition may consequently undergo a change in their degree; and since none of those changeable degrees are determinately required by the essence of the molecular compound, it follows that the essential attributes and properties of each molecule, in so far as their actual degree is concerned, are accidental; and accordingly such attributes and properties by their degree belong to the predicament of accidental quality. Such is the case with the attributes of every single molecule of a natural substance.
As for bodies made up of a number of molecules of the same kind, it is evident that all such bodies are accidental compounds, and none of them can have any other essential attributes besides those which are common to their molecules. For the union of equal molecules is the union of integrant parts, and gives rise to no new species, but only to accidental relations, quantity of mass, and quantity of volume; and consequently all the attributes and properties originating in the agglomeration of such integrant parts are simply accidental qualities. Thus liquidity is an accidental quality of water, because it exhibits only the mutual behavior of distinct molecules which, of themselves, and apart from one another, are not liquid, though they have all that is needed to unite in the liquid state. And indeed, if each molecule contains the true essence of water, and yet is not actually liquid, actual liquidity has nothing to do with the essence of water, and therefore is not an essential attribute of water, but an accidental mode resulting from mutual accidental action between neighboring molecules.
There are two cases, however, in which new essential attributes may be found in a body without being found in the component molecules. The first is when the component molecules undergo chemical combination; for in this case such molecules are not merely integrant but constituent, and by their combination a new essence is formed. Now, a new essence gives rise to new essential attributes. Thus sulphuric acid, for instance, has attributes which do not belong to its components.
The second case is when the whole body is only a part of the compound essence—that is, when the specific form of that essence is a distinct substance, as in man and all animals, whose bodies are informed by a soul. In this case, the whole body and all that belongs to its organic constitution is involved in the essence of the perfect compound of which it is a part; and therefore some among the essential attributes of the compound must depend on the very constitution of the body. Thus stature follows from the essential constitution of man, which includes a body having dimensions. But here, again, we must observe that, although to have some stature is an essential attribute of man, to have this stature rather than that is an accidental quality; it being evident that human nature can exist without this determinate stature.
By the preceding remarks we are led to conclude, 1st, that all essential attributes originate in the essential constituents of the nature of which they are the attributes; 2d, that all the accidental attributes or qualities originate in the accidental determinations of the nature of which they are the accidental qualities; 3d, that, in material compounds, those essential attributes which depend on the composition admit of different accidental degrees.
We have only to add that the abstract ratios, through which the attributes and properties of things are conceived, are very frequently styled formalities. Formalities are, generally speaking, either real or logical. A real formality is that which has its being in the reality of things; a logical formality, on the contrary, is that which has no being in real things, but only in our conception.
Real formalities are also called metaphysical degrees. Thus, in Socrates, animality, rationality, individuality, personality, etc., are so many metaphysical degrees. All such degrees express the being of the thing under some particular aspect; as to be animated, to be rational, to be an individual, etc., as we have above remarked.
Real formalities are either absolute or respective. The absolute are those which belong to the thing considered in itself absolutely; as substantiality, oneness, singularity. The respective are those which imply a connotation of something else; as terminability, passivity, cognoscibility. The absolute formalities correspond to the absolute attributes of beings; the respective correspond to the relative attributes—that is, to the properties and qualities of beings.
Real formalities are either positive, negative, or privative. The positive are directly founded on the act, term, and complement of the being; as activity, passivity, and inertia. The negative are real negations affecting the thing; as the mode of substance, which is a negation of sustentation. The privative are real privations, as blindness in man.
We may observe, by the way, that the logical formalities are likewise either positive, negative, or privative. The positive exhibit the thing as a positive element of logical thought; as when man is said to be the subject of a proposition. The negative exhibit the thing as affected by a negation which is not in the thing, but only in our conception of it; as when we say that God’s immensity and eternity are distinct; for distinction is a negation of identity, but the distinction in this case is only mental, because those two attributes are the same thing in reality. The privative exhibit the thing as mentally stripped of that which is due to it; as when we consider color, figure, velocity, etc., as formally universal, and therefore as deprived of a subject; for they cannot be deprived of a subject except in our conception.
This is what we had to say about attributes and properties. As we have here and there mentioned inadequate identity, metaphysical distinction, distinction of reason, etc., we will take care to have the meaning of these words accurately explained in our next article, in which we hope to end this our cursory survey of the principles of real being.
The Butterfly.
From The French Of Marie Jenna.
Why silently draw near And menace my joyous flight? What is there in my gay career That can offend your sight?
I am only a vivid beam, Flitting now here, now there, A wingéd gem, a fairy dream, A flower that the breeze may bear.
The brother of the rose, In her breast I shun the storm; On her soft bosom I repose, And drink her perfume warm.
My life is a transient thing, Why mar its glad estate? Answer me, O creation’s king! Art envious of my fate?
Nay, hear me while I pray: Elsewhere thy footsteps bend; Let me live at least one happy day, Thou that shalt never end!
From the Revue Du Monde Catholique.
XX.
That day was February 25, 1848. If you remember, there had never been seen, at that season, such mild weather and such brilliant sunshine. But that the trees were without leaves, it seemed like May; and in the orchards exposed to the south, the almond‐trees were even covered with big buds ready to flower.
This beautiful, early spring rejoiced all on the earth, both men and beasts; the peasants were heard singing in the fields, the horses neighing at the plough, the hens clucking, the sparrows chirping, the lambs bleating; and down to the babbling brooks, that flowed and leaped over the stones with more than ordinary rapidity, each creature, in its own way, appeared happy and glad.
The curé walked along slowly, a little fatigued by the heat, to which he was not yet accustomed. He closed his Breviary, and thought of the dear family he was about to rejoice with his good news, and doubtless, also, of the exile, who only waited for one word to return to his beloved home.
When he reached the right of the barns at Muiceron, he paused a moment behind the cottage to take breath and wipe his forehead. From that spot he could see into the courtyard without being seen; and what he saw, although very simple, moved him to the bottom of his soul.
Jeanne Ragaud was drawing water from the well; but, instead of carrying off the buckets already filled, she deposited them on the ground, and, resting her elbows on the curbstone of the well, covered her face with her hands in the attitude of a person completely overcome.
He knew she was weeping, and certainly her poor heart must have been full of sorrow that she should give way to such silent grief. The good curé could no longer restrain himself; he advanced gently behind her, and, when quite near, touched her on the shoulder, just as he had done in former days, when he wished to surprise her in some school‐girl’s trick.
Jeanne turned around, and he saw her pretty face bathed in tears.
“Oh! oh!” said the kind pastor, smiling, “what are you doing, my daughter? I wager you are the only one who is not rejoicing to‐day in the bright sunshine that the good God gives us.”
“Father,” said the little thing, who always thus addressed our curé when they were alone, “it is perhaps very wrong, but it is precisely all this joy I see around me that breaks my heart. When I reached the well, I thought how often Jean‐Louis had come to this very place to draw water for us, and how displeased he was when my mother wished to do it herself. Poor Jeannet! he was so gentle and kind! Oh! I am sure he is unhappy away from home.”
“That is not doubtful,” replied the curé; “but perhaps one day we will see him again.”
“I begin to despair of it,” said she. “He left heart‐broken, and perhaps now he detests me.”
“Perhaps? Perhaps, my daughter, can mean yes as well as no; why should it not be no?”
“Ah! if I only knew!” said she.
“Well, what would you do?”
“I would write to him that I love him,” she cried, clasping her hands; “and I would beg him to come and tell me that he pardons me, and take his place again at home; for the house will always be his, whether I live or die; and although I have done very wrong, he would listen to me, don’t you think so, father?”
“Yes,” said the curé, much touched; “he is a person who never cherished rancor against any one. Write to him, my child, and tell him all you wish; your letter will reach him.”
“Ah! you know where he is? I thought so,” said she joyfully.
“Yes, indeed! I know where he is, and I will now tell you, my dear daughter. He is in Paris, where he wants for nothing; and if you are good, if you will stop crying, I will read you some of his letters, which will make you happy.”
“Oh! I promise you that I will be good. I will not cry any more—never again,” cried the poor little creature, who instantly began to sob, by way of keeping her promise.
But they were tears of joy this time, and the curé let them flow without reproof. They entered Muiceron together, and Jeannette, without any preambulation, threw herself on her mother’s breast, crying out that Jeannet was coming back. Pierrette, who desired it as ardently as she, asked to be excused for one moment, that she might run off and tell Ragaud, who was sowing clover near the house. It was right that they should be all together to hear such welcome news; but scarcely had the good woman reached the door, than she knocked against Jacques Michou, who had just crossed the threshold.
“Jean‐Louis! Jean‐Louis is coming back!” said Pierrette, as she passed him. “Come in, Jacques Michou; I will be back in a second.”
Michou entered in his usual tranquil manner. He saluted the curé and Jeanne without showing the least excitement.
“Who says that Jeannet is coming back?” he asked.
“We don’t say he is coming back,” replied the curé, “but that he will return home.”
“All very well,” answered Michou; “but, for the present, that is not to be thought of.”
“My God!” cried Jeanne, “what has happened?”
“The revolution in Paris,” said Michou; “and this time it is real. Here is a letter from M. le Marquis, who tells me that in three days from now all will be fire and blood. He orders me to join him—Jeannet is with him—and I will take guns for everybody.”
Jeannette fell fainting in a chair. M. le Curé conversed with Michou; and, meanwhile, Ragaud and Pierrette entered, and learned, in their turn, the event, which was very true, as we all know. I leave you to think if there were ahs! and ohs! and exclamations of all kinds. For a full hour there were so many contradictory statements you would have thought the revolution at Paris transported to Muiceron. Several peasants, returning from the city, stopped at the farm, and reported there was agitation everywhere; that a great number of workmen in the factories had decamped; and, as under similar circumstances all sorts of stories are told and believed, it was added that half the capital was already burnt, and that smoke was seen in all the other parts of the city. At that, Michou shrugged his shoulders; but he was anxious about his master, whom he knew to be the man to do a thousand imprudent things, so he took a hasty farewell of his friends, and that very evening passed Muiceron in full rig, armed and equipped, ready for his post.
So once again everybody at Muiceron became gloomy and miserable, as each day brought its fresh contingent of sad news. For if, in the city and among learned men, where there is every chance of correct information, every one appears half crazy in time of public calamity, and in a fever to talk all kinds of nonsense, you can imagine what it is in a village, where one is obliged to listen to the neighbors and gossips, who always improve on the most absurd reports. It is true, also, that they never see a paper, and it is lucky if they preserve a few gleams of good sense; but what each one draws from his own private source amply suffices to bewilder everybody.
I, who speak to you, and who was very young at the time of this revolution, remember well to have heard it positively affirmed that the king, Louis Philippe, and his family had been crucified in front of their château, then cut in little pieces, boiled, and eaten by the people! And when, in addition, it was said that the waters of the Seine had formed a magnificent cascade from the heaped‐up corpses, and were red with blood as far as the bridge at Rouen, I did not think the thing incredible, and, with great simplicity, I always awaited still more extraordinary news.
I remember, also, that a band of our most respectable young men took turns every night in mounting guard around the château of Val‐Saint, because it was known, from a trustworthy source, that the cellars contained more than a hundred barrels of powder, ready to blow up at the shortest notice. Now, to ask how so many barrels, the least of which weighed as much as a tun of wine, could have been placed there without being seen, is what no person thought of; and the reflection, what man, sufficiently desirous of putting an end to his days by bringing that enormous building down upon him (a thing which could profit no one), would be capable of setting fire to the powder, still less entered their heads; and yet terror was at its height at the mere thought of an explosion so tremendous that it would have broken all windows for two leagues round. And thus it is that good people, without wishing it, lend their hands to the revolution.
It was not that all this was believed at Muiceron as readily as I swallowed it, but, in reality, they were very anxious, and ardently desirous of hearing news. A long week passed. M. Michou wrote a short letter, in which he said everybody was well, that M. le Marquis and Jean‐ Louis were always together, and cried out, “Long live the king!” in the streets while carrying a white flag, which made the boys of the street laugh, but at which no one took any exception. He added that King Louis Philippe was driven out, and that for the present the republic was much spoken of. Thereupon Ragaud declared that all was lost; for he, like all those of his age, only understood the republic as accompanied by scaffolds, drownings, and robberies, as in that of 1793, which he well remembered.
Jeannette, then, with the consent of M. le Curé, wrote a long and touching letter, which she addressed to Solange, in which she poured forth all the warmth and fire of her little heart. The poor child dared not write directly to Jeannet, in the fear that new events might prevent his receiving the missive; but she did not doubt that Solange would find means to read it to him who would receive so much consolation from its contents. The misfortune was that, in the midst of the fray, that good girl could hear nothing about her old friend; and, between ourselves, it was, I believe, because she had no permission to mix herself up in the affair, as she lived retired and absorbed in prayer with the other young sisters of the novitiate. It therefore followed that when Jeannet, in his turn, wrote to M. le Curé, it seemed, from the quiet, sad, and cold tone of his letter, that he knew nothing of this step of Jeannette’s, or, if he knew it, he attached no importance to it, and wished them to understand it was too late to repair matters.
It was this last idea which fastened itself in the child’s head as firmly as a nail in the wood. She became profoundly sad, which, according to her habit, she concealed as much as possible; and thus passed weeks and months without anything further being said of the return of the dear boy, so fondly desired by all at Muiceron.
So far affairs in Paris went on quietly, and the people who believed in scaffolds began to think they might sign the lease between their shoulders and heads. For now that all this fine story is over, it must be avowed the first part of the revolution was more laughable than terrible. I had it from Michou, who was present and witnessed many things in detail, which were served up for our amusement during many of the following winters. The good man never wearied of relating how the great city of Paris, that had driven off a king from a desire of giving herself a hundred thousand in his place, played at comedy for three months, for the sole purpose, I suppose, of affording other countries a perpetual diversion. Once, for example, in remembrance of spring‐time, a crowd of little trees were planted at all the corners, as signs of liberty; and as, for this amusement, each man became a gardener on his own hook, without ever having learned the trade, you can imagine what chance these precious emblems of freedom had of flourishing. It is not necessary to say that they fell down and were trodden under foot in a very short time, so that the beautiful green ornaments were renounced at the end of a few days!
Another time, the street‐boys assembled and formed the brilliant resolution that they would have a general illumination. And then—I really would not have believed it, if Jacques Michou had not vouched for the truth—these ragamuffins ran in troops through the streets, hand‐in‐hand, shouting out a song which had but two words, always sung to the same tune.
“Light up! light up!” they cried at the top of their voices; upon which, all classes, rich and poor, high and low, obediently placed candles in the windows, without daring to utter a word against the decree; and this lasted more than a fortnight.
I will only ask, if the king or our holy father, the Pope, had exacted such a thing even once, what would have been said? There was also the farce of the laborers, who were out of work, taking the air, and marching by thousands along the quays to the great château, where five or six fine men who were called the government resided, and who were very brave in words, but became half crazy when it was time to act; which must not be wondered at, as their task was none of the easiest. The men arrived, they would send one of their number to ask some little favor, which was sure to be promised for next day. Then they returned the same as they came, and so much the worse for those who were found in their way that day; for not a cat could have come out alive among so many legs. This amusement was called “a manifestation.” But to say what was ever manifested except want and misery in every house—for when such promenades are made, no work is done—is what you may learn, perhaps, sooner than I, if the day of discovery will ever come.
During this time, they pretended to make laws for the country, in a large building where a great number of men from the provinces talked themselves hoarse every day, insulting each other, and even, I have been told, flung whatever they happened to have near at hand at one another’s heads; so that he who appeared the master of all, and was called president, was forced to speak with a great bell, as he could no longer make his voice heard. For those who liked noise all this row was very amusing; but quiet people were obliged to shut their eyes and stop up their ears. In my opinion, instead of being contented with that, they should have descended into the streets, and enforced order with heavy blows of the cudgel; but, if they thought of that later, for the time being good people seemed asleep, which emboldened the rabble to such a degree they thought themselves masters of the situation.
You doubtless think our dear good master, M. le Marquis, was discouraged at seeing the republic established in place of his cherished hopes. Not at all. On the contrary, he was as ardent and fiery as ever, assured that it was “a necessary transition”—a phrase which I repeat as I heard it, without pretending to explain it, and which, probably, was profoundly wise. He was very busy coming and going with his friends, and arranging all, in words, for the approaching arrival of the young legitimate prince, who remained near the frontier with a large army, invisible for the time, but ready to march at a moment’s notice.
Jean‐Louis and Michou allowed themselves in secret to be rather doubtful of these fine assertions, but, respectful and devoted as they were to that excellent gentleman, they made the agreement to follow him about like his shadow, and to shield him whenever he might incur any risk. Thus, whenever M. le Marquis was seen, near him was always the handsome, brave Jeannet, with his pale, serious face, or the old game‐keeper, looking very jaunty, but with such fierce eyes and strong arms a man would think twice before attacking him. Dear mademoiselle, who was half dead with fear for her father’s life, confided him entirely to his village friends, and begged them every morning to be faithful to their trust. Besides, this good soul, formerly so desirous of seeing and living in Paris, yawned there almost as much as at Val‐Saint.
There was not much amusement going on in society. Rich people stayed at home, and guarded their money, which was carefully concealed in some secure place, ready to fly in case of necessity; as for out‐door amusements, none were thought of. M. le Marquis had something else to do than drive out with his daughter; and to circulate around among the manifestations was not the most pleasant performance—far from it. Poor mademoiselle seemed doomed to the miserable fate of always running after some distraction, fêtes, and other disturbances of that kind, without ever finding them. Add to all this, she was in a constant state of fear, as she was little accustomed to the cries, songs, patrols, and threats which filled the capital. Her only consolation was to hope that there would soon be an end of all this; and Dame Berthe encouraged her to be patient, showing herself all the while full of the idea of the near triumph of the cause, as she said. And mean‐time, while waiting for it, she embroidered little strips of white satin by the dozen, to decorate the belts of the king’s officers when the triumphal entry would be made into Paris.
Their happiest moment was in the evening, when these five persons, drawn together through friendship and devotion, were reunited to talk over the events of the day, and to plan for the next. M. le Marquis ordered the servants off to bed—for they were not sure but there might be spies among them—and, keeping Jeannet and Michou, he joyfully laid before them all his plans and hopes. Jean‐Louis listened with one ear; and fortunate was it that respect prevented him from joining in the conversation, as his remarks might have been very malàpropos. Can you guess why? He thought of other things; and while his master soared away in imagination to the frontier, where the invisible army of the king manœuvred, in heart and soul he was in the beloved spot, where he lived over again the happy days of his childhood.
And thus they advanced, without knowing it, to the terrible days which gave the death‐blow to the republic, in the midst of the blood of so many honest men, which flowed and mingled with that of the rabble, for love of good order, which could easily have been established without so much suffering. Alas! it was not the first time in our gay, beautiful France that things have begun with songs and pleasant jokes, and ended amid the noise of cannon and the cries and lamentations of the wounded.
Before relating this last part of my story, I must tell you that our curé, always in correspondence with Jean‐Louis, was much astonished at the uniform coolness of his letters. At last he thought best to ask an explanation during the month of May, advising him to go and see Solange, who for a long time had had good news for him. Do you think it was long before Jeannet ran quickly to the convent? When he read that Jeannette loved him and desired his return, he nearly became wild with joy. Solange let him have the precious letter, which he read and re‐read all one night, so as to be better able to reply to it. It was time for things to change, as Jeannette declined visibly from the pain she suffered in believing herself disdained.
It is always so with women (I must make the remark); they torture without mercy, or at least with very little thought, the poor hearts which become attached to them; and then the day they feel pain in their turn all must end in the quickest manner, otherwise they will die; and then, again, they will have all the pity and sympathy on their side. So our two dear children made up and became friends with a few words written on paper; and enchanted were they both, I can assure you. Now it was easy to wait. Jean‐ Louis, in his answer, showed the same heart, the same tenderness, as formerly. He wished no excuses from his sister, saying that all the fault was on his side—which was a big story, as every one could see but himself, and made them both laugh and weep at Muiceron. As for his return, it was not necessary to promise anything. They knew well that the day duty would no longer detain him he would take the first train and our good friends, the Ragauds, while not wishing him to leave M. le Marquis, commenced to prepare for the happy moment, so ardently desired by all.
Ragaud told the women it was not the time for economy, and the following week he called in the painters and the masons to replaster all the house, and to give it an air of freshness inside, which, I must acknowledge, was very much needed. Jeannette directed the changes in Jean‐Louis’ room, and I can assure you she spared nothing, and spent at least fifty francs of her father’s crowns in a splendid paper for the walls, which was yellow, covered with large bouquets of bright flowers that had the most beautiful effect. The month of June found them busily occupied; and then they began to count, not the days, but the hours, that would separate Jean‐Louis from the dear home that had adopted him.
His last letter announced his speedy departure. The joy at Muiceron, and its holiday look, was touching to see. Jeannette, pink and white, like an eglantine rose, had never looked prettier.
Suddenly, one morning, M. le Curé entered the farm, and, in the midst of all this happiness, pronounced these terrible words:
“My children, they are fighting in Paris, and we must pray to God, for the danger has never been greater; happy those who will come safe out of it!”
XXI.
I shudder when I speak of that horrible time. Alas! we all know about the fearful struggle of blood and tears called “The days of June, 1848.”
Never did the lowering storm‐clouds more quickly burst, and never did a great city, in all the pride of her beauty and wealth, come nearer complete ruin. Each quarter, each place, each cross‐way, were battle‐ fields. Houses were demolished, that barricades might be erected across the streets; and this time, if extravagant accounts went abroad, not one appeared exaggerated in face of the real truth.
For three long, weary days—why, no one ever knew—the army kept hidden; then the sovereign people were masters of the situation, and acted as best pleased their capricious will; and I rather think nobody but a fool could have helped being disgusted with serving such kings.
At the end of these three days, at last the cry was heard from all the barracks, “Forward!” And as in the time of the great Napoleon, generals in fine uniforms and waving plumes dashed about on horseback, and there was a terrific noise of cannon and musketry. How terrible was the anger of the Lord! For these enemies, who grappled in the fierce death‐struggle, were children of the same mother, and yet forgot it in the midst of their senseless fury and thirst for vengeance, when, in truth, they had nothing to avenge.
What more shall I tell you? You know it all better than I; perhaps you were there; and, besides, it is not so long ago that you cannot remember it; and when you recall it, pray fervently to the good God such a time may never again be ours.
When the battalions moved, every honest citizen left his bed, and armed, to be ready to assist the army. M. le Marquis was one of the first on the scene, accompanied by his two body‐guards. Mademoiselle, when she saw them leave, wept, and threw herself on her knees in her room, unwilling to listen to Dame Berthe, who still could have the heart to speak of “the triumph of the right,” so rooted in her head was this fixed idea. Leave these poor women, more to be pitied than blamed, lamenting and praying to God, while listening, with hearts half dead with agony, to the noise of the battle, and we will see what became of the combatants.
When they left the house, there was no appearance of extraordinary excitement, and even the quarter where M. le Marquis lived, very quiet at all times, seemed calmer even than usual, for the very good reason that, of all who occupied it, those that were brave ran elsewhere, and the cowards buried themselves, like moles, in the cellars. Our friends first went down one long street, crossed a second, a third, and only then, when coming up to a great bridge with a Prussian name very difficult to spell—and therefore I cannot write it—began to see and hear the horrors of the deadly combat.
M. le Marquis stopped.
“Friends,” said he, “let us make the sign of the cross; perhaps one of us will not return to sleep in his bed, but may be killed, wounded, or made prisoner. It is well to provide ourselves with a passport for the other world, and one more blessing for this one.”
And this excellent gentleman instantly put in practice what he preached, pronouncing aloud the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost.
“Come,” said he joyously, “I feel younger by ten years. Ah! while I think of it, have you white cockades in your pockets?”
“Faith! no,” said Michou; “I confess to M. le Marquis I did not dream of taking that precaution. But we need not worry about that; if we want them, I will tear off an end of my shirt.”
Jean‐Louis had been equally forgetful of the white cockades; M. le Marquis told them their heads were turned, but forgot to add he was in the same fix; for they had rushed to arms in such a hurry, each one had only taken time to dress quickly and seize his gun, so ardently desirous were they to see the end of the masters of Paris.
Soon they were in the midst of the troops and a crowd of volunteers like themselves.
The fight was hot. The height and solidity of the barricades, for the most part cemented with stone and mortar like ramparts, forced them to establish a siege; and the thick walls that sheltered the rioters were only destroyed with the aid of cannon, and after many deaths. I must be frank, and say it was not a war very much to the taste of our soldiers, who like to see the faces of the enemies at whom they aim; neither, as a first effort, was it very amusing for our friend Jeannet, who had never before seen any fire but that in the chimney at Muiceron. So when he found himself in the midst of the scuffle, surrounded with dead and wounded, smoke in his eyes, loud oaths and curses in his ears, without counting the whistling of the balls, which I have been told produces a very droll effect when not accustomed to it, he stopped short, and looked so stupefied Michou laughed at him. That old soldier had been present at the battle of Wagram, and, being very young at the time, was at first half crazy with fear, which did not prevent him from showing great bravery when he recovered his senses. He therefore understood from experience precisely how Jeannet felt, and, giving him a hard blow on his shoulder, shook the young fellow’s gun, which he was carelessly pointing at random.
“Are you going to let yourself be killed like a chicken?” he cried to him, swearing tremendously; “be quick, my boy; you can sleep to‐morrow.”
Jean‐Louis jumped; he drew himself up to his full height, and his handsome face reddened with shame, although he had done nothing dishonorable.
“Jacques,” said he, “I am afraid I am a coward.”
“Big mule!” gaily cried the game‐keeper; “on the contrary, by‐and‐by you are going to see how we will amuse ourselves.”
They were at the time before a barricade, which was most obstinately defended. The conversation could not last long, but Jacques Michou did not lose sight of the boy. He saw that he soon recovered himself, and kept out of the way of the balls as well as he could—something which required as much skill as coolness—and handled his gun with as firm a hand as though he were hunting.
Fighting went on there for a good hour. The soldiers began to be furious, and, notwithstanding the number of killed on both sides, no advantage was gained. Cannon were brought up; at the first fire, a large breach was effected, and it was seen that the insurgents were reduced to a small number, who attempted to escape.
At that sight, the soldiers and volunteers could not be restrained.
“No prisoners!” cried a hundred voices, hoarse with rage.
That meant death to every one. Our officers were no longer masters; the tide, once let loose, soon overflowed, and a horrible mixture of shots, cries, and oaths, frightful to hear, pierced the air.
Jeannet became as crazy as the rest. He fired so often, his gun was burning in his hands; his dishevelled hair, and his face, blackened with powder, changed his appearance so completely no one would have recognized him. He loaded and reloaded, fired at hazard, and no longer heard Michou, who, always at his side, cried, “Look out!” every moment. Suddenly the game‐keeper gave a yell that resembled the howl of a wolf. A man, covered with blood, had just leaped upon the ruins of the barricade, and aimed at Jean‐Louis, who was not three steps from his gun.
It is not easy to make you understand the rapidity with which old Michou threw himself before Jeannet to preserve his life. It was like a flash of lightning, but that flash sufficed; he had time to fire before the rioter, who rolled lifeless on the heaped‐up pavement.
All was ended. Five minutes afterwards, at least in that corner, it only remained to remove the dead, and carry the wounded into the neighboring houses, where the women were ready to dress the wounds. There was time to breathe.
Alas! the poor, blinded people paid dearly in that quarter for their folly and madness. All the unfortunate wretches who had raised that barricade were dead or dying.
Jacques looked around for his master and his friend. M. le Marquis, with his arm all bleeding, was seated leaning against a post, very weak and faint from his wound; but his eyes sparkled, and a smile was upon his lips. The game‐keeper rushed to him.
“It is nothing, old fellow,” said our master, “only a scratch on the wrist; lend me your handkerchief.”
By the mercy of God, it was really not much; and our dear lord quietly wrapped up his hand, while he asked about Jeannet.
“Heaven has worked miracles for that child,” said Michou proudly. “Ah! he is a brave boy, I tell you. He fought both like a fox and a lion!”
“I wish to see him,” said M. le Marquis. “Go bring him to me.”
Jacques willingly obeyed. It was some time before he found his pupil—for such he could be called. He was in the midst of a crowd that surrounded him and loaded him with congratulations and compliments on his bravery. His conduct had been noted, and the commanding officer was then asking him his name and residence, that he might inscribe them in his report. Jeannet, who shrank from observation, looked like a criminal before his judges. Michou, seeing him so timid and confused, told him he was a fool, and came very near being angry himself.
“Just see how frightened you are now!” said he to him, in such a cross tone the officer smiled. “Excuse him, colonel, he always looks sheepish when before people he don’t know. His name is Jean‐Louis Ragaud, and he comes from the commune of Val‐Saint‐sur‐Range, near Issoudun.”
“All right,” said the officer; “that is enough, my brave fellow. Jean Ragaud, Gen. Cavaignac will hear of you, ... and, if it depends on me, you will hear from him.”
Jeannet bowed as awkwardly as possible, which made the game‐keeper grumble again.
“Again I beg of you,” said he, “to keep that bewildered stare. You look like the head of S. John the Baptist, cut off and laid on a dish, that is painted in our church. I suppose it is because you are so unhappy! The general will no doubt send after you to have you hanged—unless he sends you the Cross of the Legion of Honor....”
“The cross!” cried Jeannet, seizing the game‐keeper by the arm.
“Yes indeed, idiot! I know how soldiers talk; would the colonel have said as much unless he was sure of the fact?”
“The cross!” repeated Jean‐Louis, with tears in his eyes. “O Jacques Michou! if it were true!”
“That would make you bold, eh? And it would be a fine present to take back to Muiceron.”
“Hush!” said Jeannet: “the bare thought makes me crazy.”
“I hope not,” replied Michou; “but I would be half wild myself. Come, now, let us be off; we have earned our dinner. M. le Marquis is asking for you.”
“Wait a moment, good, kind Jacques,” said Jean‐Louis. “I have not yet thanked you; and yet I know you saved my life.”
“What nonsense!” said Michou, who in his turn looked embarrassed. “In such a battle, do you think a fellow looks after any one’s skin but his own?”
“Oh! I saw you,” replied Jeannet. “You sprang before me, or I would have been killed.”
“Listen,” said Michou in a solemn tone, “before God, who hears me, and conducts all by his divine hand, it was not so much your life that I wished to save, ... it was another’s that I wished to take.”
“How?”
“We should not love revenge,” replied the game‐keeper; “but the temptation was too strong; faith! I am ready to confess it, if it was a sin—of which I am not sure. Jeannet, he who aimed at you from the barricade—didn’t you recognize him?”
“No,” said Jeannet, “I saw no one.”
“It was Isidore Perdreau. God have mercy on his soul!” said the game‐ keeper, blessing himself. “My poor Barbette in heaven will ask for my pardon....”
Fragment Of Early English Poetry.
To Those Who Get Their Lyvyne By The Onest Craft Of Masonry.
Knele ye both ynge and olde, And both yer hondes fayr upholde, And say thenne yn thys manere, Fayre and softe withouten bere; Jhesu, Lord, welcome Thou be Yn forme of bred as y The se; Now Jhesu for Thyn holy name, Schielde Thou me from synne and schame, Schryff and hosel, grant me bo, Ere that y schall hennus go.
—Christian Schools and Scholars.
Self‐Education.(69)
Words the most familiar, and which convey to the mind the most clearly marked associations of ideas, very frequently grow vague and obscure when we seek to limit their meaning by accurate and scientific definitions. When we attempt to define that which is complex, or to make a generalization of facts of diverse natures, we find it extremely difficult to avoid including more than we intend, or leaving out something that should be embraced.
This will become evident to any one who will take the trouble, for instance, to examine into the various definitions of life which have been given by philosophers and scientists.(70) Still, they all agree, however widely they may differ in their views concerning what life is in itself, that the law of growth applies to all living beings. This is true, not of physical life alone, but of intellectual and moral life as well. What I have to say on this subject at present relates more especially to intellectual life, which consists in the union of the intelligent principle with the objects submitted to it, and which it apprehends as true—that is, as being in reality what they seem to be, and resulting from this, as good or beautiful.
Truth is the harmony of thought with things.(71) Intellectual growth is a continual approach to the perfect harmony of thought with things, which, however, to the finite mind, is unattainable; and this fact constitutes one of the great charms of the cultivation of the mind.
The nature of the human intellect places limits to mental progress, though they are not assignable in any given case, but may be indefinitely extended. That there are limits, however, you will readily perceive by reflecting that we do not possess even one idea which does not, either in itself or in its postulates, contain something which transcends all human comprehension.
What, let us ask ourselves, is the law of intellectual growth? The condition of all growth is effort. Life is a struggle in which lesser forces are overcome by greater. This is true of the individual as of the race. It is only by effort, by the exertion of power, that we live and consequently grow. Labor, then, is the law of intellectual as of all progress.
Before going further, let us examine into the obstacles which tend to prevent improvement of mind.
These are to be sought for either in the circumstances which surround us or in ourselves. We are to such an extent the creatures of circumstances that, when these are unfavorable, it is almost impossible that we should make great head‐way.
As occasion makes the thief, it is also required to make the scholar. In the first place, leisure is essential to mental culture, since education is a work of time and of labor. We therefore look for little or no cultivation of mind in those who lead lives of manual toil, and who, during the brief moments allowed for recreation, are so fatigued as to be incapable of sustained mental effort.
Here and there an individual from this class, of remarkable gifts, and endowed with great energy and will, surmounts the obstacle, and, having risen to a higher level, succeeds, by perseverance and industry, in making very considerable intellectual progress. But, as a rule, all will admit that it would be absurd to look for much mental training in men who work ten or even eight hours a day in factories and mines, or in tilling the soil.
Intercourse with educated men is of the greatest advantage in the work of self‐education; and where this is wanting, intellectual progress will rarely be found. The presence of highly developed and gifted minds has a magnetic power which creates emulation, awakens admiration, and stimulates to effort. Hence we find the great men of the world, whether philosophers, poets, statesmen, orators, or artists, in schools and historic groups.
Books, too, are required; but to this part of the subject we shall return.
The obstacles to mental growth within ourselves are of various kinds. Some have their origin in the body, some in the intellect, others in the will.
Infirm health, the love of ease, and excessive fondness of eating and drinking are generally incompatible with intellectual growth; and yet some of the greatest minds have wrought through feeble bodies, whilst many literary men have indulged to excess in the pleasures of the table, though always to their own injury.
The literary man, it may be well to remark, is not necessarily the thoroughly educated man; very often, indeed, he has nothing of the true man except the talent for letters. Vain, selfish, conceited, restless, a fickle friend, an unfaithful husband, the mere man of letters, poet, novelist, or scribe, is too often a caricature on human nature.
There are in the mind itself obstacles to mental progress which vary with the peculiarities of the individual. There are weak minds, slow minds, inattentive minds; in fact, all minds are in different degrees subject to these defects, and it is only relatively and by comparison that some are said to be feeble, whilst others are strong. Education supposes these weaknesses, and it is its aim to correct them. Obstacles to intellectual growth may exist also in the will; since the mind, under the influence of inordinate passion, is incapable of the deliberation and sustained attention which are required for calm and serious thought.
These, briefly and imperfectly stated, are, it seems to me, the chief difficulties with which those who seek to improve their minds have to contend.
They are not imaginary, but they are not so great as to frighten men in your condition of life. For you, young gentlemen, the obstacles of circumstance do not, I may say, exist. Your occupations leave you a few hours out of the twenty‐four, which you are free to devote to study; you may enjoy, if such be your desire, the conversation of men of thought and learning, whilst books of all kinds are within your reach. I may add that, in a great metropolis like this, you possess special advantages. Here you have the best of everything. Where there is the greatest demand for the most perfect, thither will it gravitate by a law as universal as that of attraction. To this city, from two worlds, come the best orators, the most learned men of science, the finest singers, the most accomplished actors, for the same reason that the fattest beeves, the choicest wines, and the most costly fabrics are sent hither—that is, because there is a demand for them. On the other hand, life in great cities has its intellectual dangers. There is here so much of the mere noise of life that most men find it difficult to dwell within themselves, to receive as welcome guests thoughts that do not concern the business or the pleasure of the hour—difficult not to be drawn into the whirlpool of human passion, where men eddy round and round, shouting, rushing, struggling, in wild confusion, forgetful of themselves, forgetful of truth. In a great commercial centre, too, we are apt to become the victims of the prevailing opinion which attaches honor and respect to wealth before all things; and I know of nothing more hurtful to intellectual growth than the absorbing pursuit of riches or that narrow disposition of soul which causes men to fawn upon the rich, even though they have nothing but money. That it is of importance to every one to think correctly, to possess a trained and cultivated mind, I need not attempt to prove. The harmonious development of our faculties in accordance with the principles of eternal wisdom is, I may say, the great work of life; for the proper training of the intellect necessarily involves the cultivation of the moral faculties. Of the necessity and priceless value of such education there can be no diversity of opinion among enlightened, men. Nor wealth nor place can give to man the dignity which is derived from the perfection of his own powers. We are greater than whatever ministers to our wants and vanities.
Another consideration which you will permit me to present to your attention, as suggestive of salutary thought in connection with the benefits to be derived through an association like yours, is this: no man who has done nothing more than go through a college course, it matters not how brilliant he may have been, can rightly be called educated. Education is the work of the man, and not of the boy. The best that school‐training can do is to teach the boy how he should study when he has become a man. Though there will generally be found a certain refinement, correctness of expression, and intelligent appreciativeness in those who have made a collegiate course, yet, if this be not followed up by the study of the man, they will be found to possess neither mental strength nor logical accuracy.
Before entering upon the direct treatment of the proper method to be pursued by those who seek to improve their minds, allow me to say a word of the work of preparation, which is twofold, intellectual and moral.
We should prepare the mind for the reception of truth by freeing it from all those opinions which rest upon no other foundation than prejudice. There are personal prejudices, family prejudices, national prejudices, prejudices of childhood, prejudices of old age, prejudices of men, prejudices of women, all of which tend to prevent the view of things as they are in themselves, by directing the mind, in an undue manner, to their relations to ourselves.
Personal prejudice inclines each one to think too well of himself, his talents, his acquirements; it is that, in a word, which makes it almost impossible that any power should
“The giftie gie us To see oursels as ithers see us.”
It is the great obstacle to self‐knowledge and the fruitful source of error, warping the judgment and perverting the will. It creates within us a tendency to deceive ourselves concerning whatever we love or hate.
National prejudice is another very common phase of this universal weakness. How few men are capable of forming just and fair opinions of the manners, customs, and opinions of foreign nations! The infirmity of even great minds is, in this respect, lamentable; above all, this is an original sin of the English people; for they—if I be not myself under the influence of the prejudice which I condemn—are the most narrow and insular, in their self‐conceit, of all the peoples of the earth. It is next to miraculous that an Englishman should judge fairly of the Irish, the French, the Italians, or the Americans; and this unfortunate defect of the national mind has been stamped upon the literature of the country.(72)
Americans, more, probably, from the force of circumstances which were not under their control than from any other cause, are less narrow in their nationalism, though by no means free from prejudice. In the past, at least, we were too often guilty of the folly of looking upon our form of government as ideal, forgetting that no form of government should be considered in the abstract, or as good or better, except relatively to the circumstances to which it is applied.
Then, we, a young people, affect contempt for antiquity, and become superficial, and lose veneration.
It is not necessary that I should enter further into this part of the subject.
There is, I have said, a work of preparation which directly concerns the moral nature. As the mind is to be freed from prejudice, the will is to be taken from beneath the yoke of passion. It is through the will that the intellect is warped by prejudice. He who is the slave of passion will rarely have an honest desire to improve his mind; and, even where this exists, the tyrant into whose hands he has surrendered his soul will deprive him of the power. Sensual indulgence produces a deterioration of the nervous system, which, of course, causes a corresponding degeneracy in the intellectual faculties. How can there be a love of excellence without self‐respect, and how can a man who habitually violates the sanctity of his nature respect himself?
“Nothing,” says Cicero, “is so injurious, so baneful, as lust, which, were it stronger or of greater duration, would extinguish the very light of reason. It prevents thought, blindfolds the eyes of the mind, and can have no society with wisdom.”
“I will simply express my strong belief,” says Faraday, one of the greatest men of science of this century, “that that point of self‐ education which consists in teaching the mind to resist its desires and inclinations until they are proved to be right, is the most important of all, not only in things of natural philosophy, but in every department of daily life.”
The assent of the mind is, in a marvellous manner, subject to the power of the will. How readily we give credence to what flatters our vanity, or is, from whatever cause, agreeable to us!
We easily persuade a man that what he wishes to do is right, but usually labor in vain when passion pleads against us.
In this undoubted psychological fact is found the hidden cause of the infidelity of many young men. They do wrong, and passion seeks to justify their conduct to their intelligence, which becomes the tool of the perverted will.
Or, if you prefer to take another view of the subject, I will say that what the French call l’interiorité—the habitual dwelling with one’s own thoughts—is an essential condition of mental growth. But this is painful to the sensual man, who has violated the sanctuary of his soul, and can consequently no longer dwell there in peace.
What pleasure can the father find in the bosom of his family, when he has betrayed the wife whom he swore to love, and has brought shame upon the name which his children have received from him?
To him, then, who wishes to begin the life‐work of self‐improvement I would say: Seek to have a large mind, from which no narrowing prejudice shuts out the full light of truth; have a pure heart, with the strength to love all that is right.
Then, I ask of him the will to work and to persevere in labor. Labor is the great law of progress, the necessary condition of all improvement. He who wishes to be an educated man must have courage; he must consent to see himself forgotten for a time, overshadowed by the easy‐won reputations of those of his own age, who will wear their honors full‐blushing, whilst all his life is still concentred in the bud that wraps it close and nurtures it.
Is it easy, in the fresh‐blown flower of manhood, in the enthusiasm of a newly‐found liberty, when fair hands hold out the cup of pleasure, when bright eyes and smiling lips woo to indulgence—is it easy, then, to choose rather silence and solitude, a life of toil more earnest and not less regular than the enforced labor of the college? And yet this must be. There is no royal road to science.
“A king of feasts and flowers, and wine and revel, And love and mirth, was never king of glory.”
I have heard the question—you have asked it yourselves—Where are the young men who go forth year after year from our colleges? What becomes of them? We never hear of them. Is not something wrong? They cease to study, they cease to grow, and are lost in the crowd.
But your presence, young gentlemen, assures me that you have not ceased to labor, and that you do not intend to cease to grow.
Permit me, then, to present to you a few suggestions concerning the proper method of study. We do nothing well except what we do with system and order. Set apart, therefore, stated times for the improvement of your minds, and suffer not a slight circumstance to interfere with this arrangement. And now I feel that I must be brief, when the subject which I am treating most requires development. How to study and what to study are problems which engage the attention of the profoundest thinkers of our age, the adequate solution of which can be found only in a perfect philosophy of education, which possibly has not yet been written. Without aiming, then, to be either deep or thorough, I shall strive to be practical. To study, as I have already intimated, means to work with the mind. The mind grows by union with truth, by the assimilation of knowledge, which never takes place except by direct application of the thinking subject to the object thought. This continued application—in other words, attention—is difficult; it wearies the mind, it fatigues the body. To read is not to study. Some of the most indolent men I have ever known, intellectually indolent, were passionately fond of reading. To read requires no mental effort, and demands merely that sort of attention necessary to form a vague notion of each sentence as it passes through the mind. A man may read all the books in the Astor Library, and acquire hardly more knowledge than there will remain water in a sieve through which a stream has been pouring. Indiscriminate, inattentive reading confuses the mind, and, if persevered in, begets a mental habit incompatible with clear and accurate thinking; and the important thing, from an educational point of view, is not so much to get knowledge as to strengthen and develop the intellect, that it may be prepared to grapple intelligently and successfully with the problems which greatly concern or interest us as rational beings.
But you will readily understand that it is far from my thought to wish to dissuade you from cultivating a fondness for reading. On the contrary, this, if you have it not, you must acquire, if you hope to make progress in the work of self‐education. Read, then, but read intelligently, thoughtfully. One should read at his writing‐desk, pen in hand, taking note of new and striking thoughts, of graceful and forcible modes of expression; bringing the author’s ideas into the presence of higher truths, of principles that are fixed; rejecting what is false, assimilating what is just. Better still, write yourselves. Do not imagine that I have the faintest desire to encourage you to become authors; there would be fewer and better authors if men were in the habit of doing what I would have you do. Write, not that others may read your thoughts, but that they may become clear to your own minds.
“I confess,” said S. Augustine, “that by writing I have learned many things which nothing else had taught me.” You will recall to mind the apothegm of Bacon: “Reading makes a full man, talking a ready man, and writing an exact man.”
I have no hesitation in saying that, of all means of mental culture, writing is the best, as well for extending and deepening the intellectual faculties, as for giving them justness and polish.
Do I propose to you to go back to the drudgery of task compositions? Such is not my thought.
I suppose you to be interested in certain subjects, of which you wish to get at least a tolerably thorough knowledge. You take the authors who have treated most exhaustively of these matters; you read them, you study them; you apply your own minds, in sustained thought, to the facts and principles which they give you. And here precisely lies the difficulty; for you will find that, when you will have acquired the power of sustained thought, you will be able to master almost any subject.
Now, to get this mental habit, nothing will aid you like writing. I do not believe that any man who has never translated his thoughts into written language is able to think profoundly or correctly. Do not, however, misunderstand me. One may write negligently and thoughtlessly, as he may read with indolence and inattention. Put your hand to the pen, and begin to meditate upon the thoughts that fill your mind. Should you, for weeks and months, not write one sentence for every hour you hold the pen, do not be discouraged, and, above all, be persuaded that this time has not been lost. Think neither of style nor of the reader; give all your attention to truth and to your own soul. The style is the man. Write out the life that is within you. Keep what you have written, and after months and years, in looking back, you will perceive that you have grown steadily, increased day by day in intellectual vigor and refinement; and there will always be special worth in words written, not to please the vulgar crowd, not to propitiate a false and intolerant public opinion—written to gain neither applause nor gold, but for God and truth, and the dignity of the human soul.
“There is nothing,” says Seneca, “however difficult or arduous, which the human mind cannot conquer, and assiduous meditation render familiar. Whatever the soul demands of itself it obtains.” But how are you to learn the secret of assiduous meditation, to acquire the habit of retaining difficulties in mind, to be considered and reconsidered, to be taken up at the leisure moment, and laid down as deferred but not abandoned?
As the soldier takes the sword, the painter the brush, the musician his instrument, the mechanic the tools of his trade, each to perfect himself in his art, so he who wishes to learn how to think must take the pen and do honest work.
“But words are things, and a small drop of ink Falling, like dew, upon a thought, produces That which makes thousands, perhaps millions think.”
I shall conclude this part of my subject with a quotation from Sir William Hamilton: “The primary principle of education is the determination of the pupil to self‐activity—the doing nothing for him which he is able to do for himself.” This principle is applicable to every stage of the mind’s development, and in it will be found the secret of success in the great work of self‐education.
The student, I have said, should cultivate a fondness for intelligent and thoughtful reading; for in books chiefly all human knowledge is treasured up.
“Many a man lives a burden to the earth,” says Milton; “but a good book is the precious life‐blood of a master‐spirit, embalmed and treasured up on purpose to a life beyond life.” But only a few books are good. The great mass of those that are written fall upon the world dead, or at best survive but a short time.
We are about to celebrate the centennial anniversary of our national existence, and, in the hundred years of our life, we have made many books. How many of them will be read in the next century? A dozen? Hardly.
There is the Augustan age, the age of Leo X., the Elizabethan age, the age of Louis XIV., the age of Queen Anne, all remarkable for literary excellence and the number of great writers whom they produced, and yet you can count on your fingers the really good books that each has bequeathed to us. And this, too, is worthy of remark: a considerable portion of the books that survive are saved by style alone, and not on account of more solid worth. Books which have the inductive sciences as their object can, from the nature of things, live but a short time, since these sciences, being in a state of continuous development are constantly outgrowing their own conclusions, and the treatises of even the ablest observers are superseded by those of men who, with less genius, have more certain and numerous data.
Works of imagination, poetry and romance, may meet with temporary success, without possessing the higher qualities, from the fact that they describe a mental, moral, or social phase of existence whose chief interest lies in its actuality. When this is past, the literary efforts called forth by it die. In fiction, only the very best is worthy of study.
“Mediocribus esse poetis Non homines, non dî, non concessere columnæ.”
And here is a case in point, in which we should know how to rise above prejudice—the vulgar prejudice of the insipid and intellectually indolent society of our day, in which it is considered the proper thing for a man of culture to read each worthless production that happens to have a run.
Persons of intellectual aspirations should, as far as possible, associate with their superiors in knowledge and elevation of thought, and should exclude the common herd from intellectual companionship.
There is at least an aristocracy of mind, to which neither gold nor title can give admission, but only kinship of spirit, smitten with the love of high thinking. What Tennyson has written of a different union may be applied to that of mind with mind:
“Yet it shall be, thou shalt lower to his level day by day, What is fine within thee growing coarse to sympathize with clay. As the husband is, the wife is; thou art mated with a clown, And the grossness of his nature will have weight to drag thee down.”
Allow me, in this connection, to say a word of periodical literature.
A book can wait for success; the best books have not been understood by the generation for which they were written; but a newspaper or magazine must succeed at once, or fail utterly, since its life is necessarily ephemeral. Hence the great probability is that it will be guided, not by principle, but by policy; that it will aim, not to uphold truth, but to flatter the prejudices of its readers. If it is the organ of a party, it must defend its interests blindly; and hence, whenever argument is attempted, it will be found to consist of little else than special pleading and sophistry. But since the average newspaper‐reader is not fond of logic, the partisan organ will deal rather with men than with principles; and the whole basis of this procedure is double‐ dealing—untruth erected into the dignity of a principle. Its business will be to whitewash its friends, and besmear its enemies. When its party is out of office, it will swell with indignation at the public corruption, and will use what are called the argus eyes of the press to discover things which do not exist; but when the spoils are in the hands of its friends, it will devote itself to covering up their misdeeds. There is also what is called the independent press, which generally has less of principle than that which is avowedly partisan. It in turn affirms and denies everything, plays fast and loose, palters in a double sense, and, with a seeming honesty, is most unfair, lending all its influence to persuade men that there is no such thing as truth, and that morality is only cant.
There are yet other heads of indictment that may be brought, without injustice, against the press. Its columns are filled with details, more or less minute, of all the horrible and disgusting crimes which disgrace society, with sins against the decencies of life, with coarse personalities, and advertisements which are an opprobrium to human nature.
This, I must confess, is a one‐sided view of the question; it is, however, the view which my subject forces me to take in treating of the means of self‐education.
Though it would be absurd to ask you not to read newspapers, it would, in my opinion, be wholly unwise to counsel you to make use of them to any great extent as aids to true cultivation of mind. We grow, morally and intellectually, by association with that which is above us, and not by contact with what is low; and it is not by filling the mind day by day with what is startling, corrupt, sensational, or at best only of passing interest, but by lifting it up into the higher and serener atmosphere, from which the trivial and transitory value of these things is perceived, that it will gain in depth and power.
Except in the line of study which belongs to one’s profession, the wisest rule is to confine ourselves to the works of really great minds, which we should not merely read, but study.
In connection with practical self‐education, I consider the “conversation evening,” as described in your Report for 1872, excellent. In intellectual pursuits, as in other things, association gives increase of power and the means of progress. The contact of mind with mind develops the latent fire, and strikes into life the slumbering thought. Mind becomes supplementary to mind; and the intercommunion of souls, which constitutes the purest friendship, becomes also the source of the highest pleasure.
I know that the value of mere intellectual cultivation may be exaggerated, and that, in point of fact, the men who, in our day, deny God, insist most upon the developed mind’s self‐sufficiency.
“In the writings of our great poets,” says Strauss, after having rejected God and the soul, “in the performances of our great musicians, we find a satisfying stimulus for the intellect and the heart, and for fancy in her deepest or most sportive moods.”(73)
Indeed, there is a danger in polite education which we should be most careful to avoid. The love of poetry and music, of the fine arts in general, has, I think, a tendency to make us unreal and visionary, because it separates feeling from acting. We may have high thoughts, fine sentiments, and pleasurable emotions, and yet lie slothfully on our couch. But life is for action, and to this end thought, sentiment, and feeling should all conspire. If science and philosophy be our favorite pursuits, we may acquire inveterate habits of analysis which, by drying up the fountains of feeling, and isolating the intellect from the heart, will convert the mind into a storehouse for abstractions and lifeless formulas. This tendency of the study of science will give us a satisfactory explanation of many of the intellectual errors of the present day.
From abstraction, only the abstract, the unreal, can be inferred, and hence the new philosophy of atheism does not affirm being, but merely the phenomenon.
The exaggerated importance which this age has attributed to mere intellectual cultivation has, amongst other results, produced what may be called over‐education—an excessive activity of brain, which threatens to enfeeble the physical health of modern peoples by abnormally developing the nervous system.
I have referred to these dangers, not for the purpose of insisting on them, but rather that I might have an opportunity to say that they are not to be greatly dreaded by us. The church gives us fixed principles of faith, certain rules of conduct, which will prevent the love of literature from taking from us that deep and practical seriousness of mind which is inseparable from the true Christian character, whilst she guides us with an eye that sees the light of heaven through the dark mazes of philosophy; and the fear of over‐education should certainly not trouble us.
The educated Catholics of this country seem to be fast sinking to a low level of mediocrity, above which no man has the power or the courage to raise his head. Where are the men, lay or clerical, who give promise of becoming worthy to be the successors of Kenrick, of England, of Hughes, or of Brownson?
And yet never was there an age or country in which men of might, able to do battle for the truth, were more needed. If we sink out of the intellectual life of the American people, we shall be passed by and forgotten.
Permit me, then, young gentlemen, before concluding this hastily‐written address, to exhort you to be ambitious, not of success, but of excellence, which is its own reward. He who is worthy to succeed can despise success. After the noble resolve to be true to God, to one’s self, and to one’s fellowman, I know of no higher aim in life than to grow in intellectual strength.
Older men than you might say that my words smack something too much of the savor of youth, which is “a bubble blown up with breath, whose wit is weakness.” But with you, enthusiasm, I am sure, need not plead for pardon. Even to have dreamed of deeds of high emprise and noble endeavor, of victories won on the foughten field, is something; and to the young should belong hope, which is not only the charm of life, but also its strength.
Without the living hope of something better, man falls back upon himself, in impotence, like a bird whose wing is clipt. He who wishes to do much must hope for still more.
Hope gives the conviction of strength; it is confidence, and confidence is power. Have faith and hope in God and in yourselves; and, above all, believe that the highest wisdom consists in tender love for the religion of Jesus Christ. Guard yourselves against a life of indulgence, which is incompatible with generous ambition and is destructive of character. Yield not to the fascinations of a literature which flatters human weakness and pays court to the senses instead of speaking to the soul. Be not cynical, be large‐hearted, since the true view is the generous view. Give the homage of admiration to every great man, whether he be a hero, a genius, or a saint.
When you see Napoleon on the battle‐field, and look into his eye, and behold there the soul of the war‐god that looks and conquers, forget for the moment his tyranny and selfishness, and let your soul shout unto his presence a shout of living enthusiasm, even as the war‐cry of his own unconquered veterans when, in the battle, he rode amongst them in strength and majesty, like unto the archangel when he beat into hell the rebellious powers of heaven. When you stand in the Roman forum, and see Cicero arise and take into his hands the enchained hearts of his hearers, and play upon them, as the harper sweeps his fingers over the trembling chords of the lyre, till it shouts or laughs or wails, sighs like the zephyr, sings like the seraph, curses like the demon, let your soul also be attuned to the thrilling accents of his divine eloquence.
When you behold young Xavier, surrounded by the most brilliant audience that fame could attract, suddenly, after a burst of applause, stop, reflect a moment, then quit that scene of triumph, and, clothed in simple garb, turn his eager steps toward the East, where millions dwell who have never heard the name of Jesus, and there, strong in the power of divine love and super‐human self‐sacrifice, cause every knee to bend to Jesus and every tongue to bless his holy name, until at last, still seeking for some soul in darkness lying, on a barren isle, far from man or beast, alone, with the ocean before him, the desert around him, and God within him, he breathes out his great soul in the words of a confidence certain of itself: “In thee, O God! have I hoped; I shall not be confounded for ever”—when you behold all this, lift up your hearts to God, and ask him to give you, too, the strength to be Christians.
On The Wing. A Southern Flight. II.
“Io son Monaco; sopra un scoglio, Non seme, non coglie, E pure vuol mangiar.”(74)
It is true indeed that he does eat, the prince of the ancient name, and exquisitely beautiful little town, of Monaco. But it is food that would give an indigestion to any man with a conscience. The prince has reserved to himself of his lovely tiny principality very little more than his large palace and the surrounding gardens. The rest is let to the keeper of a gambling establishment built and organized on a very magnificent scale, and standing, with its hotel and several gay shops, in the most exquisite Italian gardens that imagination can picture—veritable gardens of Armida, with terrace above terrace, flights of white, gleaming steps, handsome balustrades, and all the glorious flowers and foliage of far‐distant and still more sunny regions. They command a view of unspeakable beauty. They are full of all the sweet, peaceful suggestions of lovely nature, heightened and enhanced by the order and arrangement of subtle art. As I wandered up and down the marble stairs, and from beneath the shade of eucalyptus, palm, mimosa, tamarisk, and cypress, into the sunny walks bright with flowers, my heart sank within me at the dreadful thought that all this had been brought together for no other purpose than to minister to human passions of the worst kind, and to accumulate sordid gains by trading on vice. Games of chance may not, in themselves, be wrong. Far be it from me to assert that they are. But if the chronicles of Monaco could be truly written for only one season, we should look on this beautiful scene, where God’s best gifts in bountiful nature have been used to decorate and adorn it to the utmost, as simply one of the gates of hell, and probably one of its broadest and largest. The moon was riding through a pure expanse of spotless blue, her reflection dancing on the rippling sea with silver footsteps, as we passed down the flights of broad stairs from terrace to terrace to join the night‐train to Mentone. The journey took us barely twenty minutes; and we were silent and depressed. We had seen no startling sight: all was perfectly decorous and calm. A slight click, click, very occasionally, as the heaps of gold had been piled on the tapis vert, and a subdued, muffled noise, hardly perceptible, as the croupiers dragged forward the gains and the losses of silent figures that sat or stood around the numerous gambling‐tables—that was all. Hours passed. People came and went with noiseless tread and controlled countenance. No man committed suicide in our presence. No woman shrieked at her loss or laughed at her success. Outwardly, it was calm, silent, and intense. But there is a wordless language which speaks from one human soul to another, and which, whether we will or no, reveals something of the inner state and the unspoken secrets. The very air teemed with these secrets. And as I passed out into the quiet night, I wondered whether perhaps in hell there will be the same decorous silence, without the exterior beauty, and all the fire of anguish be hidden beneath the outer garb—so entirely did it seem that, to many, it might be but one step from this to that.
“O tu che, siasi tua fortuna o voglia, Al paese fatal d’Armida arrive, Pensi indarno al fuggire; or l’arme spoglia, E porgi ai lacci suoi le man cattive.”(75)
—Gerusalemme Liberata, Canto 7, stanza 32.
The rusticity of Mentone was a relief after the sort of nightmare to which we had so needlessly subjected ourselves at Monaco. It was carnival time, and the peasantry were making merry. A motley crew came pouring down the only street worthy of the name, in fantastic dresses, making hideous sounds through huge horns, shouting and dancing. They had two bears with them, which, I afterwards heard, in their frolic they had let loose, to the alarm of quiet folks. For myself, I scrambled up a steep, narrow, and very dirty vicolo,(76) part of which was composed of broken steps, glad to be out of their way. And so, climbing higher and higher, I found myself at the parish church, where there was an Exposition of the Blessed Sacrament, and where the noise of the masks and merry‐makers could not penetrate.
As I am far from intending to give my kind readers anything of the nature of a guide‐book—a task for which I am utterly unqualified—I will not weary them with an account of how and by what route we found ourselves at the San Marco Hotel at Bologna, the City of Arcades, the capital of jurisprudence, whence came many an astute lawyer, reared in its celebrated university, which has also given the church six sovereign pontiffs, and amongst them the witty and learned Benedict XIV. To Bologna we owe the great school of painting founded by Francia, which boasts of the Caracci, Domenichino, Guido, and his pupil Guercino, besides many others. We thought ourselves unusually accurate and learned, when, on arriving at the Accademia, we asked the surly guardian which way we ought to turn to get to the Pinacoteca; and not till we had, in a more roundabout form, told him we wanted to see the pictures would he condescend from his stolid dignity to tell us where to go. The Francias alone, the S. Cecilia of Raphael, or the Martyrdom of S. Agnes by Domenichino, would be worth a yet longer journey to behold. And the Head of Christ Crowned with Thorns, drawn in crayons by Guido, with stains of damp on the paper, and some slight discoloration from age, leaves an impression on the memory surpassing, to my mind, all that artist’s finished paintings. Bologna has set an example our more liberal times, as we are apt to think them, seem unwilling to follow, and are doing so but slowly and grudgingly. The learned ladies who aspire to equality with the other sex might come here in a body, raise the now declining glories of the university, and fill those comparatively empty halls. Bologna has known female lawyers of eminence, and doctors, and at least one surgeon and anatomist of the gentler sex, and has done homage to their learning and merit. Might it not be as well to take advantage of a university so large‐minded, and once so celebrated?—convinced, as we are, that if the ladies took the lead, the gentlemen would follow.
We had had the honor many years ago of knowing Cardinal Mezzofanti, so celebrated as a linguist. He was a Bolognese, and had been librarian of the university here, and, when we knew him, occupied an important post in the Vatican library. At that time he had mastered something like forty languages. He told us that, a short time previous, he had been informed there was a poor sailor come to Rome from some out‐of‐the‐way part of the world—Lapland, I believe—who spoke a dialect no one could understand or make anything of; and that the man, being a Catholic, wanted to go to his Easter duties. The cardinal sent for him, and made him discourse in his presence. In two days his eminence was quite ready to hear his confession, and could talk with the man in his own tongue with fluency.
Through the cool, shady arcades of beautiful Bologna we wandered to the Piazza Vittoria Emanuel, which formerly was known by the more honorable name of Piazza del Gigante. The crowd was so great that we could hardly make our way past the groups of peasants and well‐to‐do farmers, in their warm, brown cloaks, all talking and gesticulating, with apparently nothing else to do. There was a market going on, but not one which seemed of sufficient importance to justify so large a crowd, and which probably collects there daily, about mid‐day, out of the abundant leisure which pervades Italian life, even in its most industrious forms. We visited the shrine of S. Dominic, and were long engaged in admiring its extraordinary beauty. The saint died at Bologna in 1221. He was in England when the vision was granted him which revealed to him that, before the next Feast of the Assumption, his earthly career would be closed, and, on arriving at Bologna, had forewarned the students at the university that he was about to leave them. Shortly after, he went to Venice on the affairs of his order. He returned to the monastery of S. Nicholas, at Bologna, in the great heats of the last days of July. The following morning he celebrated his last Mass, and said Office in choir. He then complained of headache, but refused to take any further repose than was obtained by sitting on a sack of wool which happened casually to be at hand. Finding his suffering increase, he sent for the novices, to give them his last exhortation, summing up all in these simple words: “Be filled with charity, keep humility, and observe voluntary poverty.” In the hope that a purer air might benefit their beloved father and founder, they carried him to the Church of S. Mary of the Mount. But the journey, brief as it was, proved rather to have aggravated his condition. Once again he addressed the assembled brethren; and finding that there was some idea of burying him there, instead of in his own monastery, he entreated to be taken back to S. Nicholas, that he might, as he expressed it, be buried beneath the feet of his brothers. They wanted to change his clothes, but discovered he had no others but those he wore. Brother Moneta therefore lent him a habit. He had received the last sacraments at S. Mary’s of the Mount; and finding that his disciples, in the excess of their grief, were delaying to read the prayers for the dying, he was the first to beg they would commence. While they prayed around him, his lips silently repeated the words; and when they came to the sentence, “Come to his assistance, ye saints of God. Come forth to meet him, ye angels of the Lord, receiving his soul, and offering it in the sight of the Most High,”(77) he lifted up his hands toward heaven, and at the same moment gave up his pure soul to God.
It was at noon, on Friday, the 6th of August. Thus he reached his home five years before his companion in arms in the warfare of the great church militant, S. Francis of Assisi, who was six years his junior. The last words of the holy dying are ever precious to the Christian world; and it is to be remarked that those of the canonized saints have most frequently been taken from Holy Scripture or from the liturgy of the church. S. Francis died repeating the 141st Psalm; thus his last words were, “Bring my soul out of prison, that I may praise thy name: the just wait for me, until Thou reward me.”
The greater part of our journey to Bologna from Genoa had been through a highly cultivated but flat and uninteresting country. The contrast was great on the railway from Bologna to Florence, with its forty‐five tunnels, its sudden turnings and windings, the beautiful valleys of the Apennines, and the mountains themselves looking as if the giant hand of nature had crushed them like rose‐leaves, and then flung them down with all the crinkles in them. You look below on fertile fields and beautiful little towns nestling on the sides of green hills, with gardens and meadows smiling in the sunshine. As you are attempting to realize the lovely scene before you, the relentless engine is bringing you nearer to rugged rocks, with hanging woods and fringes of the golden broom. A black cavern yawns in front of you, and in a second you are plunged in darkness. Away you are hurried, with grind, and puff, and roar, regretting the sunny picture from which you have so suddenly been snatched. Just as you are recovering from the shock, again you emerge on a scene as beautiful as the last; and again are you doomed to lose it, almost before your dazzled eyes have recovered from this unnaturally rapid succession of day and night, and which reminded me of a certain planet, where, as astronomers assure us, the inhabitants, if there be any, are exposed to the vicissitudes of several days and nights in the course of our comparatively leisurely space of four‐and‐twenty hours. I have always ventured to hope they were not also condemned to dress and undress each time; otherwise I think many of them must be tempted to follow the example of that poor gentleman who cut his throat, leaving a paper on the table in which he stated that it was the constant buttoning and unbuttoning which had been too much for him.
Nothing can exceed the beauty of the view as the plain of Tuscany opens before you. We had seen it two‐and‐twenty years ago, before any railroads were there to cut short the delights of travelling. We had gazed long and lingeringly from out the windows of our travelling‐carriage, while the setting sun left his last kiss on the mountain heights, and the evening mists gathered below. I, for one, had never seen it since. But sometimes in my dreams that view had come back to me, and, when I awoke, it Was still there. Sometimes the phantasmagoria of the mind had suddenly unfolded it before my memory without my being able to say when and where I had painted that picture on my brain. And now I saw it again; and suddenly all those broken recollections seemed to gather themselves together, and unroll before me, while my soul whispered, “Here is the reality of what for so many years has haunted you, and which you have so often been tempted to believe was a trick of your imagination. It is a fact; and you can recall it and put it together, piece by piece; as you will do, far more perfectly, the broken and half‐forgotten fragments of your life when the barrier of death is passed.”
The only other wide expanse which has left the same impression on my imagination, waking and sleeping, is the view from the beautiful viaduct at Aricia, as it first burst upon me—the vast campagna and the crimson lights of the setting sun.
This was our first visit to Florence since the government had taken possession of the Dominican church and monastery of San Marco, and opened the latter as a museum to the public in 1869; so that my old jealousy that Frank could gaze at those wonderfully lovely angels of Fra Angelico was now at an end. I do not think there is a cell without some exquisitely devotional painting by the monk‐artist, whose every picture is an embodied meditation and a prayer. We paused long in the two cells where Savonarola had lived and studied and suffered. The old question forced itself upon me as to what had been the real character of that grand, imposing figure, which fills so large a page in the history of Florence—the hard‐featured reformer, the man of relentless will and burning eloquence. Where was the little rift in the flute which jarred that celestial music? Where was the flaw in the gem which spoiled its intrinsic value? And which was the snare in his life which prevented his growing on into heroic virtue? His gifts and graces were immense, and, at one time at least, so supernatural that they seemed at once the guarantee and the pledge that he would die a saint in the highest acceptation of the word. Frank, who has read a great deal about him, written by all sides, is persuaded that it was a form of spiritual pride and dependence on himself that ruined all. Of course, at this distance of time, and judging only from existing documents, no one can say when precisely this began—when the annihilation of self first gave place to an inner complacency; when that heart, covered, as before, with the rude hair‐shirt, began to throb with a secret sentiment of personal satisfaction in the graces God had given. It must have been long, if ever, before those set, stern features began to betray that another spirit had entered into the soul of the ascetic monk, which gradually was tarnishing the purity of his spiritual life. But when the end came, and he bowed to death in its most dreadful form, hurried on by the malignity of his enemies—who, having once laid their hand on their prey, feared lest the mercy of Rome should be enlightened to arrest its own mandate—can any doubt that the man who had done so much in a holy cause, and had so decried the pomp and pride of life, found all the graces attached to a great and accepted sacrifice?
We hurry from Florence. And though I might linger over my pages, and make my story more full of information, and possibly of interest, I yet refrain from anything that may trench on the character of mere sketches, which alone I aim at. Frank forms one of a deputation to the Holy Father, and he was to reach Rome by a certain day. We arrived long enough before that date to establish ourselves in a house in the Ripetta, overlooking the yellow Tiber. Charon, mild, modern, and a Roman, ferries his boat just beneath our windows. The rope is fastened to a stake on our balcony, and makes a creaking noise as the boat crosses the river, to which we are so habituated that we think it musical. Charon wears a glazed hat, and affects a nautical air quite uncalled for, considering his limited navigation. For the moderate fee of one half‐penny he conveys his passengers to and fro across the classic river. Landed on the opposite shore, we pass along a narrow lane, on one side limited by a high wall, on the other by a green bank paved with violet‐leaves. Modern violet‐leaves, but doubtless descendants of those that fell beneath the coulter of Cincinnatus’ plough along these Quintian fields that early morn when the anxious senate went to call the half‐naked hero to another and less peaceful field, and bade him cross the Tiber (where we have done), and turn his plough‐share into a sword against those ever‐recurring Volsci and Æqui. Let the violets grow, O warrior ploughman! and in a few brief days thou shalt return to find the little purple flowers ready to hail thy triumph. Shall we see Racilia behind the tall vine‐poles, bearing the toga that is to cover the brawny shoulders of the noble laborer? Or have these familiar idyls of our early life lost their charm in the sterner and more assured memories of Christian Rome?
The narrow, violet‐bordered lane leads into wide fields and to the fortifications of the Castle of Sant’ Angelo. We are outside the gates of the city. The white walls of Rome stand glittering in the sunshine to our left; to our right lies the green, undulating Campagna; and before us are the heights of Monte Mario, pine‐crowned.
S. Michael, poised in mid‐air, sheathes his avenging sword above the huge round tower that was the tomb of Hadrian, and by turns the hiding‐place of the popes or the prison of their enemies.
Darkly looming against the blue‐white sky, the bronze figure of Rome’s guardian angel for ever holds his weapon half‐way out of his scabbard, like the suspended threat of an avenging power.
Dark‐browed Roman women are hanging out inconceivable colored rags that surely never can have served for human raiment, to dry on the wooden rails that mark our road. They are jabbering, in harsh and femininely shrill tones, their curtailed patois of the Roman tongue; and the lark, in advance of the season, is carolling overhead in the motionless air and in the quivering light of the mid‐day sun. We re‐enter the city by the Porta Angelica, and are standing on the fields of the Vatican, where stood Nero’s circus and Nero’s gardens. Of all the characters of the heathen Roman Empire, none comes more prominently forward as the very type of human depravity and accomplished wickedness than that of Nero. He seems the embodiment of evil heightened by a versatility of talent and varnished by the gloss of a false poetic sense that makes him the exact opposite to all that produces heroic virtue in its greatest charm, as well as its highest glory, among the Christian saints. His was the poet nature debased to the lowest sensuality and the meanest vanity. And in the mystic saints, is there not ever something of the poet nature carried to its most subtle expression and its utmost elevation in the ascetic purity and tender devotion of a S. Francis or a S. Gertrude? There is a wonderful sequence in the low‐lying, half‐hidden events of the church’s history. There is a marvellous counterbalancing of good against evil, as though the providence of God had (if we may use the expression) taken pleasure in substituting light for darkness, and beauty for ugliness; selecting in each the exact counterpart of the other, and placing them in juxtaposition. And so it is in this spot, which most brings to our recollection the lavish and foul luxury of Rome’s artist emperor, the degraded being who was by turns actor, poet, musician, wrestler, or coachman, but fiend always! There, where the horrid pomp of his midnight revels was lighted up by the living and burning forms of the meek martyrs of the church—there we now have the grandest monument of the faith for which those martyrs died that ever has been, or probably ever will be. And the great saints, the pillars of the church, the founders and foundresses of her armies of religious orders, stand now, sculptured in cool marble niches along the aisles of that gorgeous Basilica which stands on the very ground of Nero’s infamous gardens. There, too, was another “Potter’s Field,” in which to bury strangers; for the clay soil on which S. Peter’s is built had served in the old Roman manufactory of bricks and earthenware. The potters had excavated numberless caves on the slopes of the Vatican hills, where subsequently the Christians concealed themselves, and, as in the other catacombs of Rome, celebrated the divine mysteries and buried their dead. It is said that S. Peter himself, on his first journey to Rome, baptized many in these very catacombs—many, probably, who later on had received that other baptism of blood in the ghastly revels of Nero’s gardens, and whose remains were gathered together secretly by the brethren, and buried in the caves of the “Potter’s Fields.” And now the strangers have become possessors; the holy dead have consecrated what might well have been called another “field of blood”; and the successors of S. Peter sit in reverend state and govern Christendom on the very spot where the first Bishop of Rome celebrated in secret the first Masses Rome ever witnessed. The grain of mustard‐seed has indeed become a great and goodly tree, and the birds of all nations and all ages lodge in the beneficent shadow of its branches.
The whole history of the Basilica of S. Peter, whether the first that sheltered the relics of the apostles, or the present more magnificent one, built from the designs of Bernini, and completed by Michael Angelo, teems with facts of this nature.
The old roof of S. Peter’s was covered by Pope Honorius I. with the gilt bronze tiles that had roofed, some historians say the temple of Romulus, others that of Jupiter Capitolinus, possibly of both; as though the first founders of pagan Rome, the Romulus and Remus of history and legend, were to pay tribute to the founders of Christian Rome, the great apostles SS. Peter and Paul, whose blood cemented the walls of the early church, and over whose sacred relics that venerable roof was to hang; or, as if the false Jove, dethroned and vanquished by the fisherman, were stripped of his splendor to do honor to the true God. The tiles have been removed elsewhere now, but the fact still retains its touching import. And the like is carried out in the present Basilica; for the Pantheon, raised to the honor of its myriad of demon gods, gave up the bronze of its portico at the command of Urban VIII., that out of it Bernini might fashion that wonderful work, the Baldacchino over the high altar. Wonderful work! that, as we gaze at it, never weary and ever admiring, we ask ourselves in what way the mind of the architect(78) wrought when he brought forth this splendid design. Did it come to him at once, like the one grand idea ruling all the cadences of action in a Greek play? Or did he build it up, piece by piece, in his soul, and touch and retouch the beautiful image like the finished diversities of an idyl? We incline to the first, for that is most like inspiration, and the Baldacchino of S. Peter’s must have been an inspiration.
As we pass beneath the deep shadow of the great colonnade of S. Peter’s into the vast piazza facing the Basilica, it is like stepping from the mazes of a forest out into the sunny plain. Almost catching the diamond spray of these ever‐joyous fountains, we mount the easy steps, so dignified in their gradual ascent, and pass into the gallery of the façade with the same awe‐struck feeling we have experienced when suddenly we have found our frank glance come in unexpected contrast with the deep, scrutinizing gaze of a dark eye and the overhanging solemnity of a thoughtful and heavy‐laden brow. And first the bass‐relief before us tells us the history of the church. Christ delivers the keys to S. Peter, who, kneeling, receives the tokens of his high office. At either end of the long gallery are the equestrian statues of two great imperial defenders and benefactors of the church: Constantine the Great still gazes on the labarum that appeared to him in mystic form not far off on that very hill of Monte Mario, pine‐crowned, and where now stands a church in commemoration of the event—an event which turned the City on Seven Hills, the Babylon of the prophecies, the woman drunk with the blood of the martyrs, into the Eternal City, the port of the church’s bark, the patrimony of S. Peter, and the home of all Christian hearts—the city of which a great and royal sufferer once said; “J’ai trouvé que Rome est l’endroit où on peut le mieux se passer du bonheur.”(79) Here all sorrow is ennobled, all grief is sheltered. The great King of the church is himself “the Man of Sorrows,” and here his Vicar reigns!
At the very entrance we pause to ponder over as touching an elegy as ever was written in memoriam; and the grief it portrays is that of the other great defender of the church, whose equestrian statue meets us on the left end of the gallery—Charlemagne mourns for Adrian I.
“I, Charles, write these verses, weeping for my father! Yea, my father, my dear love! These verses are my lamentation for thy loss. Be thou ever mindful of me, whose memory seeks thee dwelling with Christ in the blessed region of heaven. The priests and the people loved thee with a great love, and all with one love, best of shepherds! Great friend! I mingle in one our names and our illustrious titles. Adrian and Charles—emperor, I; and father, thou!”
In the history of nations, as in the life of individuals, there is a not unfrequent repetition of events bearing the same type though not the same in fact. They give a characteristic coloring to the biography of the individual or the history of the people. The events and the man react on each other. But this is especially true, and in a far deeper sense, with the history of God’s church. When the Israelites came out of Egypt, they spoiled the Egyptians. They carried away as a tribute the treasures unwillingly conceded by their former masters. The Christian world, on the conversion of Constantine, stepped forth from the darkness and despotism of paganism, and Charlemagne, as if in commemoration of this antitype of that deliverance, endowed the church of S. Peter with rich tributes from Egypt for the benefaction of the clergy, and for the lighting and repairing of the great Basilica. Human governments are generally ungrateful; but the church is a divine government, though carried on through human agents, and gratitude is one of her virtues and one of her most distinctive attributes. Constantine and Charlemagne are not forgotten. Their statues guard the entrance of S. Peter’s, as erstwhile their power guarded and endowed the see of Peter. Nor shall even the weaker sex fail of the tribute liberally paid to loyalty and devotion. There is something sublime in the gratitude depicted in the monument to the Countess Mathilda, who holds in her hands the mitre and the keys, as though to suggest the idea of consigning them to the protection of the great mediatrix of the incorrigible Emperor of the West, Henry IV., and who had sheltered in her own dominions the great S. Gregory, and done so much to increase the patrimony of the church. A royal father giving his crown and sceptre into the hands of a favorite child could not more touchingly portray the loving appreciation of the sovereign pontiffs towards one who had been so true to the church’s cause. And time has no effect in diminishing the gratitude of that church which is built upon a rock, and where all is enduring, any more than it has in diminishing the glory of the saints; for it was Urban VIII. who erected the monument in S. Peter’s to the spiritual daughter of the great Hildebrand, Gregory VII.—a grateful memory of more than six hundred years’ standing!
We have often heard people complain of a sentiment of disappointment on first entering S. Peter’s. It has been accounted for by the fact that the perfect proportion and harmony of the whole, producing therefore no startling contrasts, fail to effect so sudden an impression on the mind as would be the case were the harmony less absolute. To this it may be replied that some minds are more alive to impressions of harmony, and others to those of contrast. We can best speak from experience, and we all agreed that nowhere had we felt such a sense of completeness and its consequent repose fall upon our souls as when we pushed aside that heavy leathern portal, and passed within the precincts of S. Peter’s. I do not remember ever to have done so, though I have probably been there fifty times, without an involuntary pause as I first entered; and before approaching the holy‐water stoups, supported by white marble boys of six feet high, who carry a large marble shell between them, and, everything being large in proportion, fail not to look like infants, in spite of their real size. The first chapel to the right as you enter is the one in which a large number of very valuable relics are kept in rich reliquaries, and which are only shown to the public on certain days. These are distinct from the great relics of the Passion, which are exhibited to the crowd from the loggia in the dome on either side of the high altar during Holy Week. I used to be attracted to that chapel, which is otherwise less striking than many of the others, by the Pietà of Michael Angelo. In my father’s house in England we have that same Pietà, said to be an original. It is on a smaller scale and unfinished; at least the head and features of Our Lady always gave me that impression. Not so the figure of Our Lord, which is full of the sad tenderness of death. The utter supineness of the limbs and of the arm, which has fallen off Our Lady’s lap, and hangs down; the beauty of the worn face; the wonderfully graceful and yet manly hands, pierced, like the feet; the general position of the whole body, like a broken flower flung on the Mother’s lap—are full of the deepest religious feeling and pathos. But it is difficult thoroughly to appreciate it where it stands in S. Peter’s. It is over the altar, and one had need do as I used to do at P——, when a child, to be able to appreciate all the details. I used to go alone, when I was sure of not being caught, down the dark, dreary passage which led to the dark, disused chapel, on the damp, marble pavement of which stood this supposed original of the Pietà. Then getting a chair from a bath‐room in the vicinity of the chapel, I stood upon that, so as to bring myself nearly on a level with the head of Our Lady, and thus be able to look down, as she does, on the dead Christ supported on her knees.
How often in S. Peter’s I have wished I could do the same with the undoubted work of Michael Angelo, and trace again in every line the pathetic beauty of suffering and death, as, with eyes full of tears, I had done in early life! The Pietà at S. Peter’s has the same absence of real beauty in the face of Our Lady with the one at P——; the same long upper lip and want of finish. It also gives a like impression with all other pietàs, in which the Mother is represented as holding her Divine Son on her knees—a thing which in reality would be impossible. No woman could support on her knees the dead body of a full‐grown man. Michael Angelo, whose idealism was always under the control of his marvellous anatomical drawing, was too conscious of that not to endeavor palpably to counteract what probably, as he was working at the group, he felt to be an invincible objection. He has certainly made it look possible in his Pietà, but he has done it at the expense of beauty and congruity. The Blessed Virgin’s lap is enormous; her whole figure looks powerful and gigantic, while that of the Saviour is undersized in proportion.
I have often paused in the space opposite this first chapel, across the nave, to watch some fifty little urchins learning their catechism. Merry little creatures they seemed to be, all more or less in the négligé attire of Italian beggar life, picturesque in color and dilapidated in texture. Sparkling black eyes and gleaming white teeth were their chief and never‐failing beauty. They sat on low forms, or rather they leant upon them, lay upon them, scrambled over them, waiting for their instructor, who always seemed long in coming. When at last he did arrive, a faint semblance of order was established. The little creatures shouted forth the answers in a sort of loud sing‐song, nudging each other all the time, swinging their little, naked, well‐bronzed legs, and keeping up some perennial jokes all the time with each other, but little in unison with the words they were repeating. I cannot say that their demeanor seemed at all to affect the stolid gravity of their priestly instructor, or even to try his patience. He simply ignored it. He appeared to have no eyes nor ears for any sound but the well‐known monotony of the responses. It is to be hoped something may come back to them of it all when they are old enough to think. For myself, I could only reflect on what a strange reminiscence it would seem to me to have learnt my catechism beneath the dome of S. Peter’s. To these little, careless mortals, it was only a part of their everyday life.
The niches, filled with colossal statues of the founders and foundresses of religious orders, embellish the walls on all sides; and probably all Catholics look out for some special saint as they wander through the Basilica. We used particularly to salute S. Teresa and S. Frances of Rome; the latter attended by her guardian angel. These statues produce a grand effect, being all of white marble, standing in niches of many‐colored marbles and rich carving, though they are far from all having artistic merit. There are still some niches empty. Who will fill them? What saintly founders or foundresses of new orders does the future of the church still reserve for us? Or will the last day come, and find those niches empty still? With the exception of the four statues under the dome, they are (and must always be) canonized saints and founders of orders.
I have heard of people whose great ambition was to be buried in Westminster Abbey. I knew one pretty bride, of high rank and youthful ambition, who was married in the Abbey because she was persuaded that her husband would be a great statesman, and that his grateful country would bury him there. But I never heard of any one who dreamed of filling one of the empty niches in S. Peter’s. On first entering the church, one sees the many lamps burning round the Confessional of S. Peter, as the high altar is called. They seem to pour an orange‐colored glow all around. You stand or kneel against the marble balustrade, and look down on the kneeling figure of Pius VI. before the tomb of his greater predecessor. It is a beautiful, restful image of perpetual prayer, and is one of the few works of Canova I have ever really admired. Against the marble balustrade there hang some wooden frames containing an indulgenced prayer and hymn to S. Peter and S. Paul in Latin. I once had a curious illustration of how a trifle may strike a stranger, while it escapes the notice of one in the habit of seeing it constantly. I never went to S. Peter’s that I did not say that prayer at the tomb of the apostles; for it must be remembered the relics (not all of them) of S. Paul lie here, as well as those of S. Peter. I had had occasion to insert them in a manuscript, which fell into the hands of a certain very learned Capuchin, who holds a high post in his order, and in connection, also, with the Sovereign Pontiff. He surprised me by asking me where I got those prayers and hymns. He had never read them before, in the many years he had lived at Rome in the venerable convent of his order, and might have seen them fastened by a small chain to the spot where he must so often have knelt. Perhaps the fact that in every church in Rome you will find an indulgenced prayer printed up somewhere as an incentive to devotion, may have led to his not particularly noticing the one at S. Peter’s.
Frank used to tell Mary he never knew any one so greedy of indulgences as she was. She always looked out for these short prayers; she never went to S. Peter’s without kneeling, as she passed the priests in their confessionals, to receive the little tap from the long wand they have in front of the confessional, and to the receiving of which an indulgence is attached. He used to tell her laughingly that he did not understand how she had the face to disturb the priest saying his Office, and oblige him to lift his eyes from his Breviary, and detach the long stick as she knelt a yard or two distant. We have seen her unblushingly obtain three raps in succession with all the devotion possible; and then, when she and I were looking another way, Frank would strive against his natural British undemonstrativeness, and kneel for the little blow, getting up again with a shy blush. Mary and I never took any notice. We knew that the small act of humility, which, among the childlike Italians, came almost as a matter of course, cost him far more than it did us, and therefore had more merit. The Romans have a harmless superstition that if you are leaving Rome, and are anxious to return, you will not fail to do so if you deposit some small coin in a safe place. I had done so the last time I had been there; and, sure enough, I was back again to claim my money. But though I could remember the part of the church beneath the statue of S. Juliana where I had dropt it into a crevice, I never could find it again. However, that did not matter, since the charm had worked successfully. A draught of the water from the fountain of Trevi is said to have the same effect. I drank a cupful once in pure jest, and have been to Rome four times since; but something more powerful than the hidden half‐pence or the fountain of Trevi has lured me back again. There is, I believe, no spot in the world where everybody gets to feel so at home as in Rome, outside the land of their birth and the roof that shelters all their domestic affections.
In the same place where I had hidden my little coin I remember a scene which filled my imagination with interest and admiration. It was Holy Thursday. The high altar was being stripped of all the ornaments, and washed with wine, to the mournful chanting of the choir; the daylight was fast declining, though still some rays of the setting sun stole through the yellow‐tinted windows below the dome; and the Grand Penitentiary was seated in his violet robes on a raised platform, in a crimson velvet chair, with no partition between him and the low stool to his right, on which the penitents were to kneel. There were several steps, covered with cloth, to mount from the pavement of the church to the seat of the prelate; and at some distance from these was a temporary railing to prevent the crowd from approaching within hearing of what should pass between the penitent and the priest. We stood among the crowd. The penitent was a man of about thirty years of age, with coal‐black hair and beard, deep, dark eyes, and regular features. It was very curious to hear the remarks of the bystanders; and they were very characteristic of Italians, born to the faith. Most of them were praying aloud, in brief ejaculations, that God would grant him perfect contrition. The women especially were exclaiming: “Ah! poverello, ma piange!”(80) Two priests passed through the crowd, and paused a moment, with a smile of indescribable benevolence and satisfaction that a big fish had been caught in Peter’s net, and was being drawn to land. The confession lasted a long time. The man never for a moment shifted his position; but by degrees the venerable prelate bent his ear closer and closer to the poor penitent, and his countenance showed a mixture of compassion and tenderness quite paternal. The man’s forehead almost touched the priest’s shoulder, as he poured forth his long history of error and shame. At length the priest’s hand was raised to give the absolution, and a murmur of relief and congratulation ran through the crowd of spectators. The hand rested on the man’s head before he rose from his knees. He came quickly down the steps. The crowd parted to let him pass. He can have seen none but smiling and happy glances all around him, if he cared to look up; but all silently made way for him, and in a moment he was lost in the multitude, absolved and released from the burden of some “reserved case.” Of course there were many conjectures as to who and what he might be. Some said he had been a bandit; others that he was a priest who had broken his vows, and made this confession in public as an act of greater humility; for of course it is not imperative to carry all reserved cases to the Grand Penitentiary, nor need the penitent wait for Lent to get absolution. Nevertheless, the prelate with power to absolve all reserved cases (of which murder is one) occupies that raised confessional throughout Lent for certain hours of the day. Mary was so overcome at the piety and charity of the crowd in the warm interest they evinced, and observed so often that it must be delightful to be thus prayed for while making one’s confession, that we began to apprehend she would mount the platform herself, had not Frank timely observed to her that, in all probability, she had no reserved case on her conscience!
By this time the shades of night were closing in. The lights were all extinguished. The altars stood bare and cold. The dark crowd swayed in dense masses towards the open doors. The light of the moon struggled pale and wan through the high windows where the setting sun had lately thrown a golden glow. The vast cathedral echoed to the steps of the departing crowd, and we turned towards home, more deeply impressed with the desolation expressed by the Holy Thursday ceremonies in S. Peter’s in the stripping of the altars than with many others more generally remarked.
It was night before we reached our apartment in the Ripetta.
Mary’s bedroom overlooked the river, and in the morning she could see S. Peter’s bathed in the rosy light of the rising sun, while flights of white sea‐gulls came up the river with the early tide to feed upon the refuse which had been thrown into the water. They came swooping down, with their glittering plumage flashing in the sunshine, and, dipping low, would snatch some dainty morsel from the swift water, and mount up, in graceful, curving flight, to repeat the same again and again. As the port was close to our house, no doubt it was an advantageous position for both the breakfast and supper of the gulls. They always returned in the evening, but at no other hour in the day. At night we could see lights in three windows of the Vatican. They were always there, and always at about the same hour they disappeared. One day, when Mary was calling on Cardinal Antonelli he asked her where we were living; and on her describing the position, and how she could see S. Peter’s and the Vatican, and specially those three windows, he told her the lights were from his own apartment. His eminence is very fond of flowers, and has a garden in Rome, in which he takes great pleasure. They were talking of flowers, and he observed to Mary that she would find very much the same flora throughout Europe, though not of course equally distributed. Mary objected that she had never seen the little common yellow primrose of our English woods, in that part of Italy. “Nevertheless, you will find we have it,” was his reply. And not long after, on our way to Viterbo, we saw its starry blossoms by the roadside, and hailed it as an old friend, dearer to our hearts than even the graceful pink cyclamen, which from the position of the petals reminds me of a pretty, blushing child with her hair all drawn back from her forehead.
What memories crowd upon me as I recall these trivial incidents! What happy hours have I spent beneath that deep‐blue but not unclouded sky, with the warm breeze perfumed by the breath of violets in the Doria Pamphili Villa! The great stone pines, with their soft, unceasing sighs; the large willows dropping their bright‐green flexible wands into the clear water; the violet anemones, with here and there a large crimson one, or a yellow tulip lighting up the soft green grass like a sparkling gem; the violets, not bashful and hidden shrinkingly beneath their leaves, as in our colder climes, but lifting their little dark‐purple heads high in the air, to drink the light and leave a perfumed kiss on every breeze that floats; soft masses of white cloud sailing slowly over the blue ether, and casting dappled shadows on the long grass. In the distance is S. Peter’s and the Vatican, with fields of broken ground in many tints of yellow and green and red between it and the stone balustrade against which we lean. It appears, from this point of view, to be quite outside the city, and to stand alone and untrammelled by meaner buildings. Behind us is a dense avenue of venerable ilex, and but now we were visiting the Colombarium, the other side of the road, and moralizing on the pagan practice of cremation, as compared with the hallowed Christian sepulture—it must have been so difficult to realize that the little handful of ashes in the urn had anything to do with the dead wife or child or father, that they had loved, embraced, and conversed with!
Again, I remember a day when we were living at Capo le Case. I took Ann with me, and we set out for a long walk regardless of the flight of time. We directed our course to S. John Lateran. On our way, we paused at San Clemente, where we had several times visited the subterranean church under the guidance of the kind and learned F. Mullooly. Few, perhaps, have ever noticed, in a church which presents so much else to interest them, a small picture, the head of S. Catharine of Sienna, over an altar at the bottom of the church, on the right hand. It is modern, and by a Dominican artist whose name is unknown to me, and probably to all save the brothers of his order. Nevertheless, I have never seen devotion more exquisitely depicted than in that sweet, sorrowful face, with the tears standing in the large, uplifted eyes. Through the open door of the church penetrated the scent of large masses of Banksia roses that hung over a wall in a garden nearly opposite. Untrained, untrimmed they flung long wreaths to the wind, and lay in cloud‐like bunches of soft, creamy white. As we passed by the door of the hospital of the Salvatore, two Sisters stepped out into the sunshine, on some errand of charity for their sick and aged patients. We then visited the Basilica of S. John Lateran, “the mother and head of all churches.” The gigantic statues of the apostles have a very imposing effect, in spite of their many artistic faults, more so, perhaps, than the equally faulty statues at S. Peter’s. Then we wandered into the large piazza in front of the cathedral, and looked beyond the gates and crumbling fortifications of Rome upon the Alban hills. The long avenue of trees leading to the church of Santa Croce di Gerusalemme were coming into leaf; so were the group of trees to our right, by the low wall of the piazza, on which grew tufts of fern and yellow‐blossomed oxalis. We sat on the steps, and ate some hot chestnuts I had bought by the roadside, getting, at the same time, a pinch of salt from a dark‐browed matron, with a yellow kerchief across her ample bosom, and a silver dagger in her hair, who sold cigars in a little wooden booth. It was enough to be alive on such a day and in such a scene, with the easy liberty of Italian life and the total absence of “Mrs. Grundy.” There was no one to see us (save a few beggar‐women) sitting on the steps of the grand portico, and scattering the skins of our chestnuts on the pavement at our feet, while we silently drank in the balmy air and rejoiced in the beauty of the view before us. Ere we returned, we visited the Scala Santa, and looked long on Giacometti’s beautiful group of the Kiss of Judas. The evening was closing in when, wearied but satisfied, we reached our home. But if these remembrances are full of light and warmth, not less pleasing are those of our moonlight drives the year that we remained in Rome till the middle of July, and every evening used to visit the Colosseum, or S. John Lateran and Santa Maria Maggiore, stopping to gaze long upon the cold silver light, so sharp and sudden on every curve and shaft, on architrave and entablature, on capital and plinth, while the dense shadows lurked behind like black stains of unfathomable darkness. Then we would drive to S. Peter’s, and after crossing the bridge of Sant’ Angelo between the angels, each holding an instrument of the Passion, we would look across the dark river to see the covered balcony of the house where Michael Angelo was an honored guest, and had introduced the young Raphael to the small circle of favored ones who met nightly under that roof. There, too, Vittoria Colonna probably came to increase the charm by her wit and beauty, while Michael Angelo nourished those sentiments of pure and profound veneration for her great merits which made him bitterly reproach himself after her unexpected death, because he who had never breathed one word of love to her while living, had dared to press a kiss on her marble brow when cold in death. What noble sentiments, what lofty times! And yet in many things how unseemly would some of their practices appear to us? For it was in the Church of San Silvestro al Quirinale that they used to meet after Vespers, to converse and laugh and jest together. We look across the river to mark that house. It is dark and silent now. No lights gleam from the windows. Half‐defaced frescos still cover some of the walls, but it is let from top to bottom to several families of the very poorest of the people.
But I must pause. Rome is inexhaustible, whether in her classic, her Christian, or her artistic treasures; besides the charm of social intercourse, the delight of varied society, and the equal ease and splendor which may be found in the interior life of her princely palaces. Nor can I close this chapter without speaking of one whose presence, though now confined within the walls of his own palace, makes Rome so doubly dear to the true Catholic. The days are gone when our afternoon drive might be gladdened by the pleasure of finding the well‐known crimson coach and magnificent black horses checking our progress, while we hastened to descend and kneel where he would pass, that we might catch a glance, perhaps a smile, and certainly the blessing, of the venerable old man in whom we recognize the Vicar of Christ. We had been admitted to more than one private audience, besides witnessing several of those receptions in which hundreds of people of many nations knelt to kiss his feet, and to hear that sweet, clear voice utter words of exhortation and encouragement. This last time we had entered the Vatican with sad and altered feelings. It was no longer a gala‐day, that on which we were to visit the universal father of Christendom. We were going to condole with an august prisoner, a father defrauded of his rights, a sovereign deprived of his possessions. We all felt depressed and inclined for silence. The Pope had been indisposed, and, as we were kept waiting a long time, we began to fear His Holiness would prove unable to receive us. Our spirits flagged with every second that we were left in expectation, till Mary began to look so pale I feared that she was ill. At length, however, we perceived a stir among the crimson‐liveried servants who were in attendance in the vestibule; presently the curtain at the end of the long gallery where we stood was drawn aside, and once again our eyes beheld him who is ever present to our thoughts, and whose name is breathed in so many prayers. The first feeling that filled our beating hearts, as we looked on his saintly and venerable face, was joy to feel that he was still amongst us; that despite increasing years, and the increasing malice and hatred of his enemies, his eye had not dimmed or his strength failed him. This impression was increased with every word he spoke. It was like the dawn which promises the perfect day, no matter how dark the night has been. “The people imagine a vain thing!” He is still with us—he, the father of his people! He may be ours for years to come. He may see the day‐spring of the church again. He may live to witness her triumph. And should it be otherwise—should that white head be laid low before the triumph of the church over her enemies—will he see it less, will he share it less, because he has gone before? Impossible! The church militant and the church triumphant are one. But our hopes go further; or rather, they are more human. We believe that Pius IX. will live to see the end of confusion and the beginning of peace; the downfall of falsehood and oppression, and the restoration of himself (and others) to all their rights. May God grant it!
There Was No Room For Them In The Inn.
No place for Him! So Him you drive away; You drive away your God, your God. Oh! stay. O height of human madness! wonders rare! No place for Him! without Whom no place were.
Antar And Zara; Or, “The Only True Lovers.” I.
An Eastern Romance Narrated In Songs.
By Aubrey De Vere.
Preface.
Who has not heard of those Christian communities which have held their own during so many centuries, on the citied slopes of the Lebanon, or on the adjacent plains? Several of them have existed from a period earlier than that in which the foundations of our oldest monarchies were laid. The Maronites derive their name from Maron, a hermit of the IVth century, whose cell, on the banks of the Orontes, gradually attracted a Christian population about it. In the VIIth and VIIIth centuries, when the sword of the False Prophet was carrying all before it, they retreated from the uplands of the Euphrates and Mesopotamia to the fastnesses of the Lebanon. The Melchites, a race of unquestionably Arab origin, and whose religious offices are still celebrated in Arabic, emigrated to Syria before the Christian era, and became Christian in the IVth century. Weakened by their hereditary feuds, they retain, notwithstanding, all the pride of their ancient stock, and not less all its heroism, its generosity, its hospitality, its sense of honor, and its passion for poetry and eloquence. The devotion of both these races to their Faith is sufficiently attested by their having retained it during so many centuries of wrong, and in spite of so many persecutions. In the massacres of 1860 alone about 12,000 of them perished.
Few subjects are more worthy of attention than the ways of a People which still keeps so much of what belonged to the feudal and monastic system of Europe in the Middle Ages, and combines them with the patriarchal traditions of the world’s morning. Much that we possess they lack; but, among them, some of the affections—Patriotism and Love, for instance—retain a meaning which appears to grow daily more rare amid the boasted civilization of the West. That meaning is illustrated alike in their lives and their poetry. It has been observed that the religious poetry of the East sometimes resembles love‐poetry. The converse remark may no less be made. Eastern love‐poetry is wide in its range; but its more characteristic specimens resemble the early poetry of religion or patriotic devotion, so full are they of elevation and self‐sacrifice. I know not how far the spirit of such poetry can make itself intelligible to the sympathies of the West. To many readers the present poem will be an experiment new, not only as regards its spirit, but its form also—that of a story narrated in songs. It was composed, in substance, some years ago, when the author was in the East.
Part I.
He Sang.(81)
O wind of night! what doth she at this hour In those high towers half lost in rock and brake? Where is she? Sits she lonely in her bower? If she is pensive, is it for my sake?
Perchance she joins the dance with other maids: With whom? By whose are those white fingers pressed? Perhaps for sleep her tresses she unbraids While moonbeams fill the chamber of her rest.
Tell her, O wind! that I have laid my head Here, on the rough stem of the prostrate pine Which leans across the dried‐up torrent’s bed, And dream at times her face, and dream it mine.
Once in the palm‐grove she looked back on me; A wild brier caught her zone: I saw it fall: Large is the earth, the sun, the stars, the sea— For me that rosy girdle clasps them all.
By night I crossed the tremulous poplar bound Which cools the south wind with its watery bower; I heard the river’s murmur, mid that sound, And smelt the fragrance of the trampled flower.
Where that pure crystal makes thy morning bath A white tent glimmered. Round it, rank on rank, The crimson oleanders veiled the path, And bent or rose, as swelled the breeze or sank.
I entered not. Beside that river’s brim I sat. Thy fawn, with trailing cord, drew near: When from my knee its head it lifted, dim Seemed those dark eyes, by day so large and clear.
Go back, poor fawn, and house thee with thy kind! Where, amid rocks and mountains cold with snow, Through forests sweep the branching hart and hind; Go back: go up: together let us go.
III
Tell her that boasts—that slender is and tall— I have a cypress in a sunny space: Tell her that blushes, by my garden wall A rose‐tree blushes, kindling all the place.
Tell her that sweetly sings and softly moves, A white swan winds all night below my trees; My nightingale attunes the moon‐lit groves— Can I not portion out my heart with these?
If I were dead, my cypress would lament, My rose‐tree shed its leaves upon my grave, My nightingale weep long in forest tent— She would not mourn me dead that scorns to save.
IV.
Thou cam’st, thou cam’st; and with thee came delight, Not mine alone. The little flowers and leaves Shook at the first gleam of thy garment white; And still yon myrtle thrills, yon almond heaves.
Thou spak’st! That voice, methinks, is heard on high! The buds and blooms in every amaranth wreath By angels worn expand in ecstasy; And in pure light a heavenlier fragrance breathe.
Hail, Land that gav’st her birth! Hail, precinct old! Hail, ancient Race, the Lebanonian crown! The Turk hath empire, and the Frank hath gold: Virtue and Beauty, these are thy renown!
V.
Thou wentest: with thy going came my night: As some deep vale when sudden sinks the sun, Deep, yet suspended on the mountain height And girt by snows, am I when thou art gone.
With death those hills, so late all amethyst, At once are clad: the streams are filmed with ice: The golden ether changeth into mist: Cold drops run down the beetling precipice:
The instant darkness cometh as a wind, Or falleth as the falling of a pall:— Return, my light of life, my better mind, My spirit’s day, my hope, my strength, mine all!
VI.
Breathe healthful zephyrs, airs of Paradise, Breathe gently on that alabaster brow; Shake the dark lashes of those violet eyes; Flatter those lids that such high grace allow.
Those cheeks, pure lilies, capture with sweet stealth, And warm with something of a rose‐like glow; Those tremulous smiles, costlier than miser’s wealth, Draw out; those magic tresses backward blow!
Thus much is yours. ’Tis mine where once she strayed To cull sad flowers that ne’er shall meet her sight; To watch, close shrouded in the tall rock’s shade, High up one little casement’s glimmering light.
VII.
Seest thou, O maid! some star by us unseen, Buried from us in depths of starless space? Know’st thou some joy of lesser joys the queen, That lights so sweet a mystery in thy face?
That face is as the face of them that bask In some great tidings, or the face of one Who late hath set his hand upon some task By God ordained, that shall for God be done.
That light is as the light of them who bent— That shepherd choir—above the Babe new born: Upward from Him thy day is ever sent, A lifelong kindling of the Bethlehem morn.
VIII.
Since that strange moment, Love was as a breeze, And I a leaf wafted by it along: Onward ’twixt magic heavens and mystic seas We passed. If I was weak, yet Love was strong.
On, ever on, through mountainous defiles, By Love sustained, upborne, on piloted, I wound o’er laughing lakes and happy isles; I asked not whither, and I felt no dread.
I breathed, methought, some everlasting spring: I passed, methought, in endless, aimless quest (A dew‐drop hanging on an eagle’s wing) Through some rich heaven and ever‐deepening West.
That dream had end. Once more I saw her face: No love it looked: the sweet lips breathed no sound: Then fell I, stone‐like, through the fields of space, And lay, dead bulk, upon the bleeding ground.
IX.
River that windest in thy jewell’d bed, The palms of her soft feet beside thee move: But gentleness and peace are round thee spread, And therefore I am gone from what I love.
Nightly on thee the stars thou lov’st shall gaze: Thee and thy heaven no envious cloud can sever: In vain to her I love mine eyes I raise; And therefore, happy stream, farewell for ever!
Pale passion slays or dies. I would die young, Live while I live; then sink without a sigh, As some swift wave, from central ocean sprung, Subsides into the flat tranquillity.
X.
O heart whereon her Name was graved so long! Heart pressed at last to hers, henceforth be snow! For love’s sake let me do to love no wrong: There are who watch her. To the wars I go.
There are that watch her: and in fields far off There are that wait my banner, name my name; My House was ne’er the upstart Moslem’s scoff: Its orphaned heir his fathers will not shame.
This is the grove where, by yon meeting streams, She too her love confessed—how falteringly! From that glad hour a Church to me it seems: I leave it: I must leave it though I die.
Here as I slept, an Angel, not to sense Revealed, above me traced the sacred sign: “Here is Love’s palace: Duty calls thee hence: Alone where Duty stands are Church and Shrine.”
F. Louage’s Philosophy.(82)
The design of F. Louage in compiling this little text‐book is most praiseworthy, and one which we are especially bound to commend, as it is an attempt to carry out a plan we have repeatedly and earnestly advocated in this magazine, of furnishing good text‐books of philosophy, written in the English language. The credit of originating this purpose belongs, so far as we know, to the Christian Brothers. The good work had, indeed, been begun by Mr. Brownson, in translating the Fundamental Philosophy of Balmes. Nevertheless, as this is not precisely suited for use as a text‐ book, the preparation of such a text‐book remained a desideratum; and our attention was first called to the practical need of one or more of these text‐books by a letter to the editor from the Superior of the Christian Brothers at Baltimore, urging the great necessity of translating some one of the Latin manuals, or preparing a new one. This demand was the occasion of our mooting the question in these pages, and since that time the demand has been supplied by three different publications. One of these is the translation of Balmes’ admirable Treatise on Logic, brought out under the auspices of the Christian Brothers; another, the first part of F. Hill’s Philosophy, which has been highly commended both in Europe and in this country, and a third is the work now under notice.
We have delayed noticing this text‐book by F. Louage for a long time, simply from a feeling of reluctance to express, without obvious necessity, the judgment which we formed on first perusing it—that it is very far from being a successful effort, and, moreover, that it contains a philosophical doctrine which cannot be safely taught in our Catholic schools. We shall proceed by‐and‐by to establish the justice of both these criticisms; but, beforehand, we wish to offer a few preliminary remarks explaining the past and present attitude of THE CATHOLIC WORLD in respect to soundness of philosophical doctrine.
It is well known that a number of doctrinal decisions on philosophical topics have been promulgated by the reigning Sovereign Pontiff, which have made the true sense and teaching of the church on several important points much more clear and definite than it had previously been to a large number of sincere and learned Catholics. For a long time, some of these decisions—those, namely, concerning ontologism—were not universally known, and their import had not been sufficiently discussed and explained to give a certain and distinct direction to those who, like ourselves, in this country, had not been au courant with the affairs which brought about these decisions. Philosophy has been generally, and more especially in England and the United States, in a miserable and chaotic state until a comparatively brief period, during which a more wholesome tendency has been awakened. The worst and most dangerous errors have been those which have sprung from the sensist school. As a natural consequence, those whose Catholic belief has led them to reject these gross errors, being unacquainted with the scholastic philosophy, have been inclined to throw themselves back on Platonism, and to welcome any system of philosophy which put forward a high ideological doctrine in which the necessary and eternal truths, the immutable principles of first and final cause, the being and attributes of God, and all natural theology, were professedly exalted to their due supremacy, and placed on a basis unassailable by a mean scepticism and materialism. The very same took place in the instance of Cardinal Gerdil, of Malebranche, and of others, at a former period; and F. Ramière, one of the most successful opponents of ontologism, has lucidly explained how this is precisely the reason that the said system has appeared in a captivating light, in our own day, to a number of minds to which scepticism and materialism are especially odious. This may explain the fact that we have taken a more decisive and explicit stand in regard to several important philosophical doctrines, since the more thorough examination of the differences between the ancient and received teaching of Catholic schools, and the various modern theories, have convinced us of the great importance of adhering closely, not only in respect to the substance of doctrine, but even in respect to form and the use of terms, to that philosophy which has a Catholic sanction. Within the limits defined by positive, explicit authority, this adhesion is, of course, obligatory on the conscience in the strictest and gravest sense. In a former article on Dr. Stöckl’s Philosophy, we have explained our position, which is that of the best and most approved European authors, in regard to this obligatory doctrine, so far as relates to ideology. Beyond this, we respect, of course, the liberty which the church concedes. Her positive sanction has been given to the scholastic principles, method, and doctrine, only in general terms. While, therefore, we advocate the adhesion to scholastic philosophy, as the only safe and really scientific way of procedure in education, we do not close our eyes to the fact that there are several important topics in respect to which discussion is not only allowable, but really necessary. The best philosophical writers living, who are in the main disciples of S. Thomas, differ very much from one another in regard to questions of this sort. Kleutgen, Liberatore, Sanseverino, Tongiorgi, Ramière, and Stöckl may be cited as the most distinguished modern expositors of the doctrine commonly taught in Catholic schools; and the differences among these are well known. A very able writer, who is now publishing a series of articles in this magazine, and who happily combines a profound knowledge of mathematics and physics with his deep metaphysical science, departs, in some instances, from all these, and strikes out a path for himself, in which we are sure that every philosophical reader will watch his progress with the greatest interest. Personally we are disposed to favor the stricter Thomistic doctrine so ably elucidated by Liberatore and Stöckl, and to prefer text‐books of a similar method and doctrine; yet we should not think we were authorized to censure as unsound, in a theological sense, any philosophical work, merely because it might deserve, in our judgment, to be criticised on purely scientific grounds, or to condemn as absolutely unsound, in a purely philosophical sense, a work essentially in accordance with the scholastic system, on account of any particular opinions of its author on topics of difference among Catholic teachers of acknowledged scientific eminence and authority.
We are sorry to be obliged to say that, in our judgment, F. Louage’s work cannot be exempted by the most impartial criticism from either theological or philosophical censure for radical unsoundness on most important points, and besides this, that it cannot stand the test of even literary criticism, and is, therefore, wholly unsuitable for use as a text‐book in Catholic schools. We give the author full credit for good intentions, and attribute his failure to accomplish his laudable undertaking simply to the fact that he has attempted a very difficult task, in which very few have achieved a remarkable success, without having duly estimated its arduous nature, and made the requisite preparation for coping with the formidable obstacles in the way of a happy issue.
We are bound to sustain the judgment we have pronounced by solid proofs and reasons, in view of the great importance of the subject to Catholic teachers and pupils, and this duty we shall now endeavor to fulfil, in accordance with the sentiment of the trite old philosophical adage:
Amicus noster Plato Sed magis amica veritas
And, first, we think that the author has underrated the average aptitude of our young men for philosophical studies. We have not the pleasure of knowing F. Louage’s pupils or their literary attainments; but we presume that they are not worse off than the pupils of other Catholic colleges, where the philosophical education receives a far greater development than his “text‐book for the use of schools” seems to warrant. We know, of course, that the literary instruction hitherto given in the public schools of this country is too light and superficial to serve as a fair preparation for philosophical pursuits; and we admit that even our Catholic schools and colleges, though certainly superior to most public institutions of a like kind, may yet complain in some measure of the same evil; but, notwithstanding this, we believe that those among our youths who feel any inclination to dedicate themselves to the study of philosophy have sufficient ability to master ten times as much of philosophical matter as F. Louage’s text‐book contains.
A book which pretends to embrace logic, metaphysics, and ethics within the narrow compass of about 220 small pages of clear type cannot be styled “a course of philosophy”; and when it claims to be “designed as a text‐book for the use of schools,” it tends to give abroad a very wrong idea of the present condition of Catholic education in America. If our boys cannot have anything better than the superficial philosophy the “text‐book” of the reverend author furnishes, we would say: Let them forsake philosophy, and be satisfied with the Catechism of the Christian Doctrine. Let them remain undisturbed in their humble simplicity, and do not foster in them the vain thought that they are superior to others, only because they have learned by heart a few philosophical phrases, which they would be embarrassed to defend, and even to explain.
The London Tablet, November 22, 1873, remarks that our author “does not go very deeply into anything.” This remark is true. Many important philosophical doctrines are not even mentioned by him; his book says nothing about universals, nothing about the essential constituents of being, nothing about real and logical distinction, nothing about simplicity and composition, nothing about quantity and quality. We do not think that any one can aspire to the honor of being a philosopher without a clear and distinct knowledge of these subjects, and of the many momentous questions connected with them.
Again, the “text‐book” is altogether silent about creation, its true notion, its possibility, its reality, and its final end—a silence which is all the more remarkable, as every one knows how pertinaciously this Christian and philosophical dogma is attacked every day by the adepts of the rationalistic schools. The “text‐book” ignores cosmology altogether; and therefore it does not even allude to any theory concerning the constitution of bodies, the nature of matter, the laws of physical causation, or the conditions of natural phenomena. Neither is anything said in particular about the origin of the human soul—a subject concerning which many ancient and modern errors should have been pointed out and refuted; nor anything about that important truth that the soul is the form of the body; nor anything about the scholastic view of the origin of ideas—a view which the author should not have silently passed over, but was obliged to refute before concluding, as he does, in favor of the exploded ontologistic system.
In his theodicy we have sought in vain for any mention of a positive conservation of creatures, or of God’s immediate concurrence with all creatures in their operations. We only found a few remarks, altogether unsatisfactory, on the “influence” of God over the free actions of man. The “text‐book” is equally deficient in ethics, where the whole discussion about the ultimate end of man is entirely forgotten, although it is unquestionably one of the cardinal points of moral philosophy. Natural rights are not even mentioned; habits, virtues, and passions are likewise absolutely ignored.
We might go on enumerating other deficiencies of the “text‐book”; but as we have other things more important to notice, we will only point out in general that scarcely any modern error is directly impugned, and scarcely any of the plausible arguments advanced by modern thinkers against such capital truths as divine providence, human liberty, etc., are answered or even hinted at. We cannot be surprised, then, that Dr. Brownson regards this “modest work” as “simpler and more easily understood by the English reader ignorant of Latin and the scholastics” than F. Hill’s work. It is clear that it must be so; for, when all things difficult are set aside, what remains must be just as easy as any “reader ignorant of Latin and the scholastics” can desire. But “the fact is,” as the London Tablet very wisely observes, “that such books as this are a mistake. We have had plenty such as this from France before, their use in schools and colleges being pernicious, as we can testify; because they create either a slovenly or a sceptical habit of mind. Either a lazy student sees difficulties and questions suggested, and he takes no trouble to get the things explained to him, or a clever, active‐minded boy is induced to dub logic and metaphysics humbug, and to ruminate on his own imaginings and wayward reasonings.”
An elementary course of philosophy, to be really useful, should be nothing less than an accurate summary of some complete standard work already accepted and recognized by good philosophical and theological authorities; so that the student may know that, in case of need, he can, by referring to the latter, solve the doubts and difficulties now and then arising from the incompleteness and brevity of the former. We have many such courses of philosophy in the Latin language. They are the work of patient writers, who carefully collected and methodically condensed in their books the learning and the wisdom of centuries for the benefit of those who needed an introduction to the philosophical discipline. Any student who can make use of such Latin books perceives, while going through his course of philosophy, that he is brought into constant relation with the most eminent thinkers of the classical philosophical ages, knows that their works are always accessible to him, and is gratified to think that their recognized authority affords him a solid guarantee against the subreption of fallacious doctrines. When such conditions as these are realized, it is evident that an elementary course of philosophy may be very useful indeed. But such is not the case with an English course of philosophy designed as a text‐book for those who do not understand Latin. Such a text‐book cannot refer the English student who knows nothing but English to other complete and approved works of philosophy; for we have none such in our language.
It seems to us that before we can employ a good English text‐book of philosophy for the use of schools to the best advantage, we must be provided with a great, sound, and exhaustive philosophical work in our own language, to which the student would refer for all those questions and difficulties which cannot be sufficiently explained in an elementary course. We think that even F. Hill’s English Elements of Philosophy, excellent as it is, needs to be supplemented by a higher English philosophical work. Those of his pupils who cannot consult the Latin volumes of the schoolmen may frequently remain in doubt as to the proper settlement of many important questions which their professor did not judge necessary or possible to examine thoroughly in his valuable book; and we have no doubt that all professors of philosophy will agree with us that such a great English work as we suggest—a very arsenal of good philosophical weapons—is one of the greatest necessities of our time and of our country. Without it, all our philosophical efforts are doomed to be more or less insufficient and unsuccessful.
And now, let us come to another consideration. If any book needs to be extremely correct in its expressions and definitions, surely elementary text‐books for beginners must be so; for, if the foundation is wrong, what is built upon it cannot be right. Now, we are sorry to say that F. Louage’s Course of Philosophy teems with false notions and incorrect expressions. Dr. Brownson openly rejects the author’s definition of philosophy, of being, of existence, of possibility, of essence, of science; and in the main he is evidently right. Yet, while we admit with Dr. Brownson that “the science of the supersensible” is not a good definition of philosophy, we do not adopt his own definition, “the science of principles”; because we know that the true definition of philosophy is “the science of things (supersensible or not) through their highest principles.” Nor do we agree with him that F. Louage’s definition of being—“that which exists or may exist”—is incorrect; for, although what may exist, but does not exist, is no thing in the real order, yet it is something in the ideal order, as an object of thought; and therefore F. Louage’s definition of being is perfectly correct.
His definition of possibility, as “the agreement of the attributes which constitute a being, in such a way that its existence does not involve any contradiction,” we do not approve, not exactly for the reason adduced by Dr. Brownson, that the non‐existent has no attributes, but because the definition considers the attributes as “constituents” of being (which they are not), and because the word “agreement” should either be replaced by “non‐repugnance,” or at least qualified by the epithet “intellectual,” referring to the divine intellect, in which all possibilities are ideally contained.
That “the essence of a being consists of the collection of its essential attributes,” as the author of the “text‐book” says (p. 7), is certainly a great error. The attributes of a being are not the material components of its essence, nor do they precede the essence; it is, on the contrary, from the essence itself that all the attributes flow. The essence of any given being is nothing else than “the ratio of a given act to its term,” as has been clearly established by a writer in THE CATHOLIC WORLD, March, 1874, and the attributes of any given being are nothing else than different aspects of the actuality of its essence.
It is no less erroneous to say that “a genus is a collection of beings having one or more attributes common to each” (p. 8). This definition might be admitted in natural history; but, in philosophy, genus is not a collection, nor is it conceived by composition, but by abstraction. Genus is usually defined to be “a ratio which can be found in many things, and be predicated of each of them when an incomplete answer is given to the question What is it?” To confound the universal with the collective is inexcusable, we think, in a “text‐book” of philosophy.
“A species,” says the author, “is a collection of beings belonging to one and the same genus, but having particular and constitutive properties” (p. 8). Same remark as above: Species, in philosophy, is not a collection, but is “a ratio which can be found in many things, and be predicated of each of them when a complete answer is given to the question, What is it?” Species, like genus, is a universal.
“Being, the most general genus, is divided into two species, corporeal and incorporeal beings” (p. 8). No philosopher of good reputation has ever considered being as a “genus.” It is known that “being” is above all genus, and accordingly is called “transcendental.” If “being” were a genus, nothing could save us from pantheism.
“Science ... is objective, when we consider it as existing in the object contemplated” (p. 9). Can science be considered as existing in the moon?
“Art is the application of science to external things according to determined rules” (p. 9). If so, then all artists and artisans should be men of science; which, unhappily, is not true. Art is usually and rightly defined as Recta ratio factibilium—“a right method of making anything” with or without the application of science.
“Logic is the first part of philosophy—the part which treats of the first efforts of the human mind to discover truth” (p. 17). We think that apprehension, judgment, and reasoning, which are the proper object of logic, are no efforts of the human mind, but very natural and spontaneous operations.
“An idea may be considered as existing either in the mind or out of it” (p. 18). It is very improper to give the name of idea to anything out of the mind, as words, gestures, and other outward natural or conventional signs.
“Ideas are, first, either true or false. They are true when they conform with their objects, false when they do not. But since this conformity is always with the objects as represented in our minds, and not as they may be in reality, we may, with this explanation, admit the opinion of those who pretend that there are no false ideas” (p. 20). This explanation has no grounds. Ideas are never compared with the objects as represented in our minds. Such a comparison would have no meaning; for the object as represented in our minds is nothing else than a subjective form identical with the idea itself. When philosophers say that there are no false ideas, they mean that ideas always conform to their object as it shows itself. This is the common and true doctrine. Even the author himself, probably forgetful of what he had said in this passage, teaches, a few pages later, that “we cannot err in perceiving or in feeling” (p. 23).
“An idea is distinct when it can be readily separated from any other idea, ... and is confused when the object cannot be distinctly determined” (p. 21). We believe that ideas are called “distinct,” not when they can be readily separated from one another (a thing which we cannot even conceive), but when they represent distinctly their object in all its particulars. In the contrary case, they are called “confused.”
“The extension of an idea signifies the whole collection of the individuals which the same idea embraces” (p. 21). This is false. The extension of an idea is the range of its universality; and we have already remarked that universality is not a collection of individuals. Moreover, it is comprehension that “embraces” whatever it comprehends, while extension embraces nothing, but only “reaches” potentially the terms to which it extends, inasmuch as the idea is applicable to them.
“When, in order to form a species, we collect several individuals having common properties, we perform an operation which is called generalization” (p. 22). This is very wrong. Generalization, says Webster, “is the act of reducing particulars to their genera”; and this cannot be done by collecting individuals, but only by leaving aside whatever is individual, and retaining that which is common.
“When the mind, after having compared two ideas, declares their consistency or their inconsistency, it makes a judgment” (p. 23). The mind properly compares, not the ideas themselves, but their objects as cognized. Two ideas may be found consistent, and yet no judgment be made. Thus, I see that the idea of whiteness is consistent with the idea of paper; but does it follow that my mind judges the paper to be white? Not at all. It might as well judge the paper to be green; for the idea of green is no less consistent with the idea of paper. It is therefore evident that the mind in judging does not declare the consistency or inconsistency of two ideas, but affirms the mutual inclusion or exclusion of two objective terms as apprehended.
“Nothing is more obscure or less useful than such classifications (of categories)” (p. 24). The author should have been loath to condemn what all great philosophers have praised. He might have considered that classification, as in all the other sciences, so also in philosophy, brings clearness, and that clearness is very useful.
“Reasoning is said to be immediate when no comparison is needed” (p. 30). How can there be reasoning without the comparison of two terms with a third?
“Method is that operation of the mind, etc.” (p. 44). Method is the order followed in the operation; the operation itself is the use of method.
“Induction ... is an operation of the mind inducing us to affirm, etc.” (p. 46). Why “inducing us”? It is the conclusion that is induced, not ourselves.
“The criterion of certitude is the sign by which certitude is perfectly distinguished from error” (p. 52). We remark, that there are criteria of truth, but not properly of certitude. Certitude is the firm adhesion of the mind to the truth made known to it, and needs no criterion, because it certifies itself by its very existence. The author says that “certitude is at the same time a state and an act of the mind. As a state, it may be defined to be a disposition by which the mind tends to adhere firmly to the known truth” (p. 50). But this is a great mistake. First, the act of adhering to truth is an act of judging, not an act of certitude. Secondly, the state of certitude is not a disposition by which the mind tends to adhere to truth. So long as the mind tends to adhere, there is no adhesion, and therefore no certitude. Certitude is the rest of the mind in the known truth.
“Reason is a perception” (p. 62). It is superfluous to remark that reason is a faculty, and no perception is a faculty.
“Consciousness cannot be deceived, although it may deceive” (p. 62). How can consciousness deceive? And if it can deceive, on what ground does the author immediately add: “Hence consciousness gives true certitude”?
“The evidence of senses is that invincible propensity which induces us to refer our sensations to the bodies which, according to our conviction, have been the cause of them” (p. 63). We observe, that our propensity cannot be our evidence. Our evidence must be objective, whilst our propensity is a subjective disposition. The evidence of senses is the evident perception of an object acting on the senses. The invincible propensity is nothing but the necessity of yielding to that evidence.
“Common sense is nothing else than that general knowledge of first notions or principles which is found in all men” (p. 65). Common sense, according to Webster, is that power of the mind which, by a kind of instinct or a short process of reasoning, perceives truth, the relation of things, cause and effect, etc., and hence enables the possessor to discern what is right, useful, or proper, and adopt the best means to accomplish his purpose. This definition, or rather description, is wonderfully correct. That kind of instinct, in fact, which the Scotch philosophers wrongly consider as blind, is really nothing less than a short process of reasoning, which carries evidence within itself. Reasoning, when formal—that is, when its premises and its conclusion present themselves distinctly and in a logical form, as in the scientific demonstration—carries within itself what may be styled reflex evidence; and, when informal—that is, when the conclusion and its grounds present themselves as implied in one another without assuming the formal shape of an argument—it carries within itself what may be called direct evidence; and because it is in this second manner that men commonly acquire their first convictions, this shorter and informal process of reasoning is called reasoning of common sense. Accordingly, common sense is not merely “a general knowledge,” but a source of general knowledge, extending to all conclusions that are evident but informal, and especially to moral dictates, such as “Good is to be done,” “Evil is to be shunned,” “God is to be honored,” etc., which in fact have ever been known by the special name of judgments of common sense—sensus naturæ communis.
“The laws of nature, considered individually, are contingent” (p. 76). Would they cease to be contingent if they were not considered individually?
“Metaphysics literally means above nature, and nature here signifies the material world” (p. 81). These two assertions do not agree with the common notion of metaphysics, and have been refuted in THE CATHOLIC WORLD for December, 1873.
“Special metaphysics has been called pneumatology” (p. 81). Pneumatology is only a part of special metaphysics. Every one knows that cosmology and anthropology belong to special metaphysics no less than natural theology.
“In this dissertation (ontology) we consider being as abstracted from existence” (p. 81). Ontology does not consider being as abstracted from existence, but considers being as such, and therefore as existing either in the order of things, or at least in the order of ideas. It is as impossible to conceive being as abstracted from existence as to conceive a circle as abstracted from rotundity.
“Some existence must have existed before any possibility” (p. 84). We do not like the expression “existence exists,” as we would not like this other, “velocity runs.” Moreover, possibilities are co‐eternal with God; it is therefore incorrect to say that some existence must have existed before them.
“Principle is that which contains the reason for the existence of something.... Cause is that which produces something, or which concurs in the production of something” (p. 85). These definitions are very vague and unsatisfactory, to say the least.
“The condition is the difficulty to be conquered in order to obtain the effect” (p. 86). By no means. Is the presence of the object a difficulty to be conquered in order to see it?
“The end ... has been improperly called the final cause” (p. 87). Why “improperly”?
“Modification ... is the substance appearing to us with such or such determined form” (p. 89). Quite absurd. Modification is not the substance, but the accidental form itself, no matter whether appearing or not appearing to us.
“Modification cannot exist without substance, nor substance without modification” (p. 90). This proposition is too universal. Would the author admit modifications in the divine substance?
“Some authors divide infinite into the infinite actu, or the actual infinite, ... and the infinite potentia, or the potential or virtual infinite, which can be infinitely increased or diminished. But certainly this division cannot be accepted, since the infinite and a substance which can be increased are two terms involving contradiction” (p. 91). What the author calls “some authors” are all the schoolmen. We put to him the following question: Will the human soul have a finite or an infinite duration? If finite, it must have an end; but, if it has no end, it cannot but be the contradictory of finite—that is, infinite. Yet this infinite duration is successive; it is therefore not actually, but potentially, infinite. Hence the division of the schoolmen can and must be accepted. The author thinks that the potential infinite is not infinite, but indefinite; but surely what has no end is infinite, not indefinite, although it is conceived by us indefinitely, because it transcends our comprehension. The indefinite is not that which has no end, but that of which the end remains undetermined.
“That we have in our mind the idea of the infinite is certain.... Evidently it has been placed in our mind by God himself, since the finite could not give the idea of the infinite” (p. 91, 92). We undoubtedly have a notion of the infinite; but the author gratuitously assumes that this notion is an idea placed in our minds from without, while the fact is that such a notion is not an idea, but a concept of our mind, or a result of intellectual operation. Of course, the finite cannot give us the idea of the infinite; but from the finite we can, and we do, form a concept of the infinite. This is the true and common doctrine. We cannot undertake to give in this place a refutation of ontologism; we only remark that the ontologistic theory is so generally repudiated that it should not find a place in a text‐book for the use of schools.
“A material being is one which is essentially extensive and inert” (p. 92). If so, how can the author consider as “more acceptable” the view of Leibnitz, that “a monad is essentially unextensive”? (p. 93).
“Spiritual substance is quadruple—namely, God, the angels, the human soul, and the soul of the beasts” (p. 93). The soul of the beasts spiritual!—a nice doctrine indeed for the use of schools. Nor is this an oversight of the author; for we find that he endows beasts with intellect also (p. 170). What shall we say, but that we live in an age of progress?
“The properties of a being are those parts which constitute the being” (p. 93). We have already observed that the being is constituted by its principles, and not by its properties.
“A being is true when it agrees with its own attributes” (p. 94). It would be more philosophical to say that a being is true when its constituent principles agree with one another.
“A bad action or a sin is something merely negative” (p. 95). False. The physical action is positive, and its sinfulness is not a negation, but a privation, as theologians know.
“We may define relation, in general, to be a property pertaining to a being when compared with another being” (p. 95). This is a wrong definition. Relation can hardly be called a property. Distance and time are relations; yet no one would dream of calling them properties.
“Identity is the perseverance of a being in the same state” (p. 96). The author should have said “in the same entity”; for a mere change of state does not destroy identity.
“Space is virtually (potentia) infinite, using the word infinite, as we have before explained, in the sense of indefinite. It is also immense and infinitely divisible” (p. 97). The author might have considered that immensity is infinity; and therefore, if space is immense, it is infinite, and not indefinite.
“Time is the duration of a being, or the permanence of its existence” (p. 97). Without successivity there is no time; and therefore the definition of time given by the author is essentially defective.
“Duration without an end ... is the same as immortality” (p. 98). If the earth is to last without an end, shall we call it immortal?
“Perfections are modifications of beings” (p. 107). This proposition, as understood by the author, who extends it to all the perfections of contingent beings, is evidently false.
“The Scotists teach that there is a real distinction among God’s attributes” (p. 115). By no means. The Scotists would never have taught such a gross error. They taught that the distinction between God’s absolute attributes was a formal, and not a real, distinction.
“For God, the interior acts are those whose object is himself” (p. 123). There are not many interior acts in God, as the author implies, but one permanent act only.
“It appears difficult to reconcile the immutability of God with his liberty. Three systems have been formed for this purpose, but they are not satisfactory” (p. 124). If the author had considered that God’s liberty is all ad extra, and not ad intra, he would have seen that he had no right to qualify as he does the theological solution of the present difficulty. Each of the three solutions is satisfactory, at least in this sense: that each of them sets at naught the objections of the opponents. This is all we need. As to which of the three solutions is the best, it is not our duty to decide.
“Immensity means the same as omnipresence” (p. 130). This is not true. Omnipresence is relative, and its range is measured by the actual existence of creatures, as it does not extend beyond creation; while immensity is absolute, and transcends all created things.
“S. Thomas says that God also sees future free and contingent things in their essence—that is, that he sees them in his eternal and immutable decrees” (p. 133). Does the author mean that S. Thomas considers the essence of contingent things as equivalent to the eternal and immutable decrees?
“But Molina and his disciples contend that with such a system (S. Thomas’s) it is impossible to defend human liberty” (p. 133). Here Molina and his disciples are represented as the decided adversaries of the Angelic Doctor. It is not fair. The author should have remembered that S. Thomas’s doctrine is variously explained by various writers, and that it is possible to be a follower of S. Thomas without being a Thomist in the usual sense given to this word.
“Veracity consists in this: that a being can neither deceive nor be deceived” (p. 134). Shall we deny the author’s veracity because he has been sometimes deceived?
“Justice is the attribute according to which we give to others what belongs to them” (p. 135). Justice with us is a virtue, not an attribute; with God, justice is an attribute, but does not consist in giving to others what belongs to them; it consists in giving to others what the order of reason demands.
“Providence is, therefore, a continuous creation” (p. 137). The mistake is evident. It is conservation, not providence, that is thus defined.
“The action of God upon us during life is constant, and this is what we mean by his providence” (p. 137). This is another mistake. The author confounds the notion of providence with that of concursus.
“In regard to its wrong use (of liberty), God cannot have an immediate, but only a mediate, influence on man’s actions, in the sense that he has granted liberty of which a bad use is made against his suggestions. His sanctity forbids that he should act immediately in that case” (p. 138). Not at all. God immediately concurs to all our actions, whether good or bad, as every theologian knows, inasmuch as they are physical actions; and concurs neither immediately nor mediately to their badness, because their badness is nothing but a privation, and therefore requires no efficient cause.
The author misrepresents (pp. 138, 139) the doctrine of the Molinists concerning the influence (concursus) of God upon our actions. He says that this influence, according to the Molinists, “is positive and direct, but not on our will,” and “consists in affording a concourse of circumstances the most suitable for the determination.” The author may have found this interpretation of Molina’s doctrine in some old book; but it is known that the Molinists have always admitted God’s influence “on our will,” though they never admitted the physical predetermination; and it is no less certain that none of them maintain that “a concourse of circumstances” suffices to explain God’s influence on our free actions.
We are afraid that the reader must be tired of following us in this enumeration of philosophical, theological, and historical mistakes, and we ourselves are tired of our irksome task. Indeed, the psychology and the ethics of our author are open to as much criticism as the rest of the work; but what we have said abundantly suffices to justify our opinion that F. Louage’s text‐book has no claim to adoption in Catholic schools. Accordingly, we shall omit the detailed examination of the last 86 pages of his work. But we cannot conceal the fact that we have been much surprised and pained at the open profession of ontologism made by the author in his article “On the Nature and Origin of our Ideas.” That Dr. Brownson, in his Review, should try to show that his own ontologism can be philosophically defended and does not fall under ecclesiastical condemnation, we do not wonder. He is not a priest; he does not write for school‐boys, but addresses himself to educated men, who can sift his arguments, and dismiss with a benign smile what they think to be unsound; and, after all, he takes great care to screen himself behind a newly invented distinction between ideal intuition, and perception or cognition, based on the assumption, honestly maintained by him, that “intuition is the act of the object, not of the subject.” But with our “text‐book” the case is very different. F. Louage makes no distinctions, and takes no precautions. He declares unconditionally that “God is present to our intellect, and seen by it,” and that “all rational ideas come into the mind by the intuitive perception of the simple being, or of God,” and that, “in a word, all rational ideas, after all, are nothing else than the idea of the simple being (God) considered in itself” (p. 156). Can the author be ignorant that this doctrine coincides with the doctrine which, on the 18th of September, 1861, the Roman Congregation of the Holy Inquisition has declared to be untenable (tuto tradi non posse)? The reverend author believes that “this doctrine has been held by S. Augustine, S. Anselm, S. Bonaventure, Bossuet, and many others”; but we doubt whether this fact, even if it were well established, would afford him sufficient protection against the Roman declaration. We presume, in fact, that S. Augustine, S. Anselm, etc., are better known and understood in Rome than in America. But, waiving all discussion on the subject, we cannot but repeat that a text‐book for Catholic schools must not teach as “the true doctrine,” and not even as a probable doctrine, what the Catholic Church shuns as unsound, unsafe, and untenable. This “true doctrine,” nevertheless, he says, is “a mere hypothesis”!
And here we stop. We have given sixty passages of F. Louage’s book, by which it is manifest that his course of philosophy is as sadly deficient in philosophical accuracy as it is glaringly incomplete in its survey of the philosophical topics. It is to be regretted that a man of his facility in writing has not devoted himself to some subject more congenial to his talents. Such books as this are a mistake. A philosophy which is not precise in its definitions nor deep in its bearings can only do harm. Such a philosophy will certainly not enable the young student successfully to uphold truth, nor make him proof against sophistry, nor afford him any guidance whatever in after‐life. It will, on the contrary, lay him open to temptation and seduction, as it will open his eyes to many objections which he has not the power to solve. Indeed, unpretending common sense is safer for individuals and for nations than a superficial philosophical training. A sad experience shows this to be a fact. It was shallow philosophy that most powerfully aided the spread of rationalism and infidelity in France, Germany, and other European nations. America needs no such thing.
We need thorough and comprehensive philosophical teaching in accordance with the tradition of the schools which have been formed and directed by the highest ecclesiastical authority, and which shall be conducted by men thoroughly competent for the task. The only fruit our youth can gather from any other system will be noxious in its effects both on their minds and their morals. Yet, as we cannot remain idly waiting and doing nothing until the perfect system of education descends from heaven, we cannot dismiss this important matter without a few more remarks upon the practical course to be pursued under our present disadvantages.
In the first place, we renew our recommendation of F. Hill’s text‐book for all classes which cannot make use of a Latin manual, and are capable of understanding the above‐mentioned treatise. Professors who understand the Latin language can prepare themselves to elucidate and supplement the text by their own lectures and explanations. Those who read French will find in the translation of F. Kleutgen’s Philosophie der Vorzeit into that language an exposition of scholastic philosophy, with a refutation of modern errors, which will be of the greatest utility. Those who read German are referred to the works of Dr. Stöckl, and those who read Italian to San Severino(83) and the admirable treatise of Liberatore—Della Conoscenza Intellettuale. It is a pity that these works of Kleutgen and Liberatore could not be at once translated into English, while we are waiting for the coming man who will give us a great original work. The Catholic Unions which are so devotedly pursuing “studies” in respect to education, or some other society of young men anxious to promote their own intellectual culture, could not do better than to provide for the necessary expense of making and publishing these and similar translations. The English language is poorly provided with works of this kind. If the study of Latin must be excluded from the education of so many of our intelligent and cultured young men, or so superficially pursued as to be practically useless, it cannot be too earnestly recommended to them to learn the French, German, and Italian languages, or at least one or two of them, that they may have access to their rich and abundant stores of Catholic literature, contained not only in books, but in the periodicals, which are conducted with an ability and extended over a range of subjects far beyond what our own have yet attained. This last remark applies especially to the French periodicals. The best works ought, however, to be translated into English, and the only obstacle to this desirable work is the expense, which at present effectually hinders its being done, except for very popular and salable books.
Something ought to be done to enable young men who discover at a later period, when they are already engaged in the business of life, the defects of their education, to supply these in some way. The manly and sensible letter of the alumni of the Dublin Catholic University to the Irish bishops expresses a want felt not only by young men in Ireland, but also in England and America. These young Irishmen point out two notable defects in their collegiate instruction—a defect of instruction in physical science, and a defect of instruction in the science of Catholic doctrine. The Irish bishops, and the English bishops also, are beginning energetic and wise measures for the improvement of higher education for Catholic young men. At present, there seems no immediate prospect of similar measures being undertaken in this country; but, as a practical substitute, we venture to suggest to Catholic Unions and other societies that courses of lectures would partly supply that lack, which is felt by so many, of the more regular and systematic instruction which they did not receive at college.
In respect to the actual instruction at present given in schools, there remains one other important point to be noticed. It is a regular part of the plan of study in our academies for young ladies, to give them lessons in philosophy during the last two years of their course. After a short course of pure logic, which presents no special difficulty, the pupils of the academies under the Ladies of the Sacred Heart—which may be taken as a specimen, we suppose, of other schools of similar grade—have two lessons a week in what is called “mental philosophy,” and another lesson in ethics, during two years. The early age at which the pupils graduate, which is usually about the completion of their eighteenth year, and the many branches of study they are expected to pursue, make it impossible to give more time to these lessons. F. Hill’s text‐book seems to be too difficult for use in these schools under the present circumstances. Some might think it would be better to drop the study of philosophy altogether in young ladies’ schools, and cite in their own favor what we have said above of the mischief of superficial instruction in this science. But, in the first place, if we were to give this counsel, there is no probability that it would be followed; and our own acquaintance with the intellectual condition and wants of this very interesting and important class of young people induces us to think, that they cannot be relegated entirely to the catechism class, and really require instruction in these higher branches of mental and moral science. We would like to see the experiment of using F. Hill’s Philosophy fairly tried with these classes, before it is rejected as too difficult. If an easier one is found to be necessary, the only thing to be done is to try to make such a text‐book, which shall be solid, accurate, sufficiently comprehensive, and yet written with a lucidity of style and explained with an appositeness of illustration, by examples, which will make it intelligible both to the teachers and the pupils. A difficult task, certainly, and requiring a very unusual combination of high intellectual capacity and science with tact and skill in the adaptation of style and manner to the condition of the juvenile mind. Yet is it not equally difficult to make a good catechism? If it is feasible to produce such a text‐book, we think there are classes of boys for whom it would be as useful as for female pupils. There are unquestionably women, as well as men, who need and are capable of a much higher intellectual discipline than that which is possible for the generality; but we see no way for such persons to obtain what they desire, except by their own private reading, aided by the advice of a learned and judicious counsellor, unless some change were made in the present system by providing a longer course and more advanced instruction for a select class of pupils.
This leads us to remark that the religious women who are dedicated to the work of higher instruction need themselves better preparation for their elevated and important task than they can at present receive in convents. Beyond their previous education in the convent‐school, which prepares them only to give what they have received, they can at present proceed no further, except by private study, for which both time and proper books are lacking. Lectures by learned priests, which advanced pupils might attend, would be the most effectual means of giving this training. And as the principal object of these higher studies is not a mere intellectual culture, but education in the principles and doctrines of the Catholic religion, there is need of more thorough doctrinal, and we might even say theological instruction in convent‐schools, from priests who can devote a large part of their time and labor to a truly pastoral care of this choice and precious portion of Christ’s flock—religious women and the young girls under their maternal care. There are many things to be amended and improved in all departments of Catholic education. Emendemus in melius quod ignoranter peccavimus.
Easter.
He’s risen: O stars! rejoice; O angels! sing; Though we stand dumb with awe, or doubting turn To probe the wound above that heart where burn Great flames of love. The saints with rapture fling Their crowns before the throne, and angels wing Their anthems through the air. Come, man, and learn Where crowns belong; thy God‐like soul should yearn For them thick‐set with every holy thing— Good deeds, prayers, penances, all shining bright With fire of charity. Rejoice again, O stars! O angels, saints, and man! a Light Is risen that floods the worlds with joy. No pain Is felt this day; earth’s moan may cease, and night Grow bright with stars of hope—’tis heaven we gain!
Grapes And Thorns. Chapter XI. A Harvest of Thorns.
One of the greatest severities in the imprisonment of a criminal is, probably, that he can no longer see the wide earth nor the free skies, so that not only is his body cramped, but his mind is thrown back on itself, and forbidden to send out those long tendrils which can sometimes shoot through the eyes, and fasten on distant objects, when those near by are repelling. Moreover, the universe itself becomes to him like another prisoner, and he can scarcely believe that the large, smooth creation sails uninterruptedly on its way when he sees of it but one little spot for ever shut in by the bars of his cell.
Mr. Schöninger’s window in the jail had been low, giving him a sight of the street not far away; but his cell in the prison was higher up, and separated from the window by a passage. Sitting or lying down, therefore, he saw only a small square of sky; and standing, the topmost line of a blue hill became visible. Only one other earthly object was in sight; and as time passed by that became still less and less of earth, and assumed a variable but always supernatural character: it was the stone Christ that stood on the church not far away. He could see all of it but the lowest hem of the robe; and as it stood there, surrounded by air alone, above the narrow line of the distant hill, it seemed an awful colossal being walking in over the edge of a submerged world. At morning, when the sky was bright behind it, it darkened, the lineaments of the face were lost in a shadow that was like a frown, and its garments and its hands were full of gloom. At one season there were a few days when the risen sun at a certain hour surrounded the head with an intolerable splendor, and then it was an image of wrath and judgment. It wore quite another character on bright evenings, when, the setting sun shining in its face, it came, white and glowing, down the hillside, with arms outstretched, full of irresistible love and invitation. To see this image, he had to stand at the grated door of his cell. When sitting or lying down, there was no view for the prisoner but a square of sky barred off by iron rods; and as the earth rolled, his view travelled with it, day after day going over the same track in the terrestrial sphere. At evening a few pale stars went by, afar off, and so unaware of him that they were like distant sails to the shipwrecked mariner, hovering on the horizon and disappearing, each failure a new shipwreck to him.
One morning, when he opened his eyes just as day was beginning to flicker in the east, he saw a large, full star, so brilliant that it trembled in the silvery sky, as if about to spill its brimming gold. It was so alive, so intelligent, so joyous, that he raised himself and looked at it as he would have looked at a fair and joyful face appearing at the door of his cell. Surely it was like good tidings, that glad star in the east! He got up, and, as he rose, there rose up whitely against the sky the Christ of the Immaculate Conception, seeming almost transparent in that pure light.
The prisoner knelt on the stone floor of his cell, and lifted his hands. “God of my fathers,” he said, “deliver me! for I am turned in my anguish whilst the thorn is fastened!”
It was the first prayer he had uttered since the night of his arrest, except those outcries which were more the expression of anger and a devouring impatience than of petition. Having uttered it, he lay down again, and tried to sleep. He dreaded the thronging thoughts and tormenting pains of the day, and there was a tender sweetness in this new mood which he would fain have kept and carried off into sleep. To keep it by him, he called up that story suggested by what he had just seen, the star in the east and the Christ. He did not believe it, but he found it soothing. It came to him like David’s song to Saul, and, though but a mythical story, as that was but a song, it kept down the tigers of anger and despair which threatened to rise and tear him.
It was his own Judæa, which he had never seen, indeed, but which was to him what the fountain is to the stream—the source of his being. How fair and peaceful was that silent night that overhung, unbarred by iron bolts, free from horizon to horizon! The holy city was sleeping, and by its side slept Bethlehem. Within a stable a fair young matron had just laid her newly‐born child on its bed of straw, while Joseph, his Jewish brother, ministered to both, feeling sad and troubled, it must be, that those so dear to him were so illy cared for at such a time. The ox and the ass looked on with large, mild eyes, and warmed the air with their breath. It was poor, but how peaceful, how tender, how free! The open door and windows of that poor stable were to him more beautiful than the barred and guarded portal of a Herod or a Cæsar.
Yet with what a blaze of glory the Christian church had surrounded this simple human picture! The poor man who had been able to give his family no better shelter than a stable was held by them more honored than Herod or Cæsar; and cherubim, bright and warm from heaven, like coals just from a fire, drew near to gaze with him, and burned with a still white light above his head. They called this matron a miraculous mother, they showered titles over her like flowers and gems, they placed the moon beneath her feet, and wreathed the stars of heaven into a garland for her head.
How terrible and how beautiful was this Christian legend! The Jew had abhorred it as a blasphemy, and his blood chilled as he suffered his thought to touch one instant the awful centre of this strange group—the Babe to whose small hand these idolaters gave the power to crush the universe, on whose tiny head they placed the crown of omnipotence. It was useless to try to sleep. The soothing human picture had blazed out with such an awakening supernatural glory that he could not even lie still. He rose again, and stood at the door of his cell. The star had melted from sight, the peaceful, cloudless morning was spreading over the sky, and where the feet of the Christ stood on the hill‐top the beams of the sun were sparkling. Beautiful upon the mountains were the feet of Him who brought good tidings.
“A Christian would call it miraculous,” he muttered, looking at that light; and he shuddered as he spoke. But that shudder did not come from the depths of his soul, where a new light and peace were brooding. It was like the clamor and confusion outside the doors of the temple when the Lord had driven forth the money‐changers, and was less an expression of abhorrence than a casting out of abhorrence.
The Jew did not know that, however, nor guess nor inquire what had happened in his soul. He scarcely thought at all, but stood there and let the light steep him through. Some dim sense of harmony stole over him, as if he heard a smooth and noble strain of music, and for the first time since his imprisonment he remembered his loved profession, and longed to feel the keys of a piano or an organ beneath his hand. His fingers unconsciously played on the iron bars, and he hummed a tune lowly to himself, without knowing what it was.
“How beautiful upon the mountains are the feet of Him that bringeth good tidings, that publisheth peace!”
Then, catching himself idle and dreaming, he turned away from the grating, took a book from the table, and began to read.
This book had been to Mr. Schöninger an intellectual substitute for that spiritual consolation which he had not. Finding early in his imprisonment that his mind was working itself into a frenzy over the horrors of his position, and injuring him physically more even than confinement did, he had begun the study of a language with which he was entirely unacquainted, and, whenever he found his thoughts accomplishing nothing profitable, he turned them resolutely to this study, and bent them, with the whole force of his will, to learning dry rules and regulations. The discipline had saved him much, but it had not prevented his growing thin and haggard, and loathing food, and almost forgetting how to sleep.
But on this morning study did not seem so much a refuge as a task. The prisoner lifted his eyes now and then from the book, and looked outward to the sky, and then dropped them again, still in a dream, and wondering at himself. So might the sea have wondered when its waves sank to rest beneath the divine feet of the Lord passing over.
How many times during those terrible months he had striven to produce a perfect calm in his own soul by calling up stoical thoughts, and all in vain; or, if not in vain, the only effect had been a temporary and enforced calm.
Nor was it unworthy a manly and reasonable character that such an effect as he now experienced should be produced by something which, apparently, appealed only to the artistic or the marvellous. Every soul has its beautiful gate; and if truth, walking about outside, should choose to enter by that vine‐wreathed portal, and reach the citadel by way of gardens and labyrinths, instead of approaching by the broad avenue of reason, who shall say that it is not as well? Besides, in the artist, that gate stands always open.
It was those same sunbeams, shining on the hill‐top, and speaking to the lonely prisoner of a dawn of hope and joy, which to Annette Gerald’s eyes had flashed like the two‐edged sword by whose lightnings the first sinners in the world had fled out into the desert. But this sorrowful daughter of Eve missed one of the consolations of our first mother; for Eve could lament aloud, and call on all creation to weep with her; but this later exile must take up her misery as if it were a delight.
She went about smilingly, making preparations for this little journey she had announced her intention of taking.
“But you needn’t put everything in order, just as if you were never coming back again,” her mother said. “I’ll see to things.”
She was sitting in Annette’s chamber, and watching her at work.
“Well, mamma, just as you please,” the daughter answered gently, and touched her mother caressingly on the shoulder in passing.
A lock of Mrs. Ferrier’s dark hair had fallen from the comb, and was hanging down her back. Annette paused to fasten it up, and, as she did so, caught quickly a pair of scissors near, and severed a little tress.
“What in the world are you cutting my hair for?” exclaimed Mrs. Ferrier, who had witnessed the operation in a looking‐glass opposite.
Annette laughed and blushed. She had not meant to be detected. “I’ll tell you when I come back, mamma. You shall see what I am going to have made. It will be something very wonderful.”
She turned quickly away, and bit her lip hard to keep down some rising emotion. She had seen a single thread of silver in that dark‐brown tress, and the sight, touching at all times—the mother’s first gray hair—brought with it the poignant thought that white hairs would come fast and thick when her mother should know what this journey meant.
“What are you taking all those common dresses for?” Mrs. Ferrier asked. “They are hardly fit to go to the mountains with.”
“Oh! we do not mean to be gay and fashionable,” was the light reply. “We want to have a quiet time by ourselves.”
“But you have got your jewel‐case,” the mother persisted. “I don’t see what you want of diamonds with a shabby black silk gown.”
In spite of the almost intolerable thought that after these few hours she would probably never see her mother again, Annette found this oversight irritating. Yet not for anything would she have spoken one word that was not dictated by respect and affection. The only way was to escape now, and make her preparations afterward, and for that she had an excuse.
“By the way, mamma,” she said, “I want to see F. Chevreuse, and this is just the hour to catch him at home. Won’t you take your drive now, and leave me at his house? Wouldn’t you just as lief go out before lunch as after? You and I haven’t had a drive together for a long time.”
And then, when she was alone, she made haste to put into her trunks all those common, useful articles which fitted her present needs, and the few souvenirs too dear to leave behind, and the valuables, which might some day be sold, if money should fail them. She had scarcely turned the key on them, when her mother came in again, pulling on her gloves. “I want to speak to F. Chevreuse myself,” she remarked, “and I will go in with you.”
Annette said nothing, but dressed herself hastily. It really seemed as though every obstacle were being placed in her way; yet how could she be impatient with her poor mother, whose heart was so soon to be smitten, through her, by a terrible grief, and who would soon recall in bitterness of soul every word and act of this their last day together? And, after all, she had no desire to talk with the priest. What could she say to him? All that was necessary was written, and she could not ask his blessing nor any service from him, nor even his forgiveness. The one thing he could do for them was to denounce them, set the officers of justice on their track, and make their lot worse than that of Cain, since the earth was no longer wide and wild, but close and full of watching eyes and prating tongues. The world seemed to her, indeed, oppressively small, having no least nook where the restless, curious traveller did not penetrate with his merciless pen, for ever ready to sketch all he heard and saw to gratify the equally restless and curious people at home.
“Is it a confession you have to make?” Mrs Ferrier asked, as they approached the priest’s house.
They had been driving along in silence, and at this question Annette started and blushed violently. “Dear me, mamma!” she said, in answer to her mother’s look of astonishment, “I was off a thousand miles, and you gave me such a start when you spoke. Yes, it is a confession. You can see F. Chevreuse first, and I will go in after. You need not wait for me. I am going to walk out to the convent to Sister Cecilia a few minutes. The walk will do me good; and afterward I would like to have you send the carriage there for me.”
The excitement under which she was laboring led her unconsciously to assume a decided and almost commanding tone, and her mother submitted without any opposition. Annette certainly did not look well, she thought; and, besides, she was going away. This last consideration was one of great weight with Mrs. Ferrier, for she looked on railroads and steam‐boats as infernal contrivances expressly intended to destroy human life, and never saw persons in whom she was interested commit themselves to the mercies of these inventions without entertaining mournful apprehensions as to the probable result. Moreover, Annette had been very sweet and fond with her all day, and was looking very beautiful, with that wide‐awake glance of her bright eyes, and the crimson color flickering like a flame in her cheeks.
“I think, dear, on the whole, I won’t go in to‐day,” she said. “It might take too long; for this is his busy time of day. To‐morrow will do as well.”
Annette only nodded, unable to speak; but in stepping from the carriage, she laid her small hand on Mrs. Ferrier’s, and gave it a gentle pressure.
“That girl grows prettier and sweeter every day,” said the mother to herself, as her daughter disappeared within the doorway. “And how black velvet does become her!”
Father Chevreuse knew well that no ordinary errand could have brought Annette Gerald to his house, and it was impossible for him to meet her with the ordinary forms of civility. Scarcely any greeting passed between them, as he rose hastily at her entrance, and waited for her first word. She was, perhaps, more collected than he.
“Are you quite alone here?” she asked.
He led her to the inner sitting‐room, and closed the door after them, and even then did not think to offer her a chair any more than she thought of taking one.
“We have told mamma that we are going away this evening for a little journey, and she expects us to return in four weeks. John knows all about our affairs. At the end of four weeks, he will say something to you, or you to him, whichever you please, and at that time you will open and use this packet.” She gave him an envelope carefully sealed, with the date at which it was to be opened written on the outside. “If anything should happen to you in the meantime, some one else must open it; but care must be used not to have it read before the time.” She paused for an answer.
“You need not fear,” the priest said, taking the packet and looking it over. He thought a moment. “I will write also on this that, in the event of my death, it is to be opened by F. O’Donovan or by the bishop of the diocese.”
He went to a table, wrote the directions, and then gave them to Annette to read.
“It is a private paper of mine,” she said, after reading and giving it back; “and I have the right to say when it shall be read. I give it into your hands only on the condition that my directions shall be complied with.”
He bowed, understanding perfectly that the words were intended as a future shield for him.
“At the same time, you will open this also, which is yours,” she added, and gave him a paper roll sealed and tied, but without any direction.
F. Chevreuse shrank a little, took the roll, then let it drop from his trembling hand. The cold and business‐like manner of his visitor and his sympathy for her had kept his thoughts fixed on her; but here was something which brought his mother’s image up before him with a terrible distinctness. It was impossible for him not to know that this little package was what she had died in trying to save. Tears blinded his eyes. The last evening he had spent with her came back like a vision; he saw her face, heard her voice, saw her kneeling before him for his blessing.
Making an effort to control and hide his emotion, he stooped to take up the package he had dropped; and when he looked up again, his visitor had left the room, and was walking quickly to the street door. For one moment he stood irresolute; then he hurried after her. But she had already gone out, and either did not or would not hear him call her back.
The sight of her going away so, wrung all thought of selfish grief out of his mind. He went back into the room, and watched her as she walked swiftly up the street. So innocent, so generous, so brave as she was, yet of all the sufferers by this miserable tragedy, with one exception, the most unhappy! The grief that must fall upon the mother of the guilty one no one could fathom; but the mother of a criminal can never hold herself surely innocent of his crimes, since a greater holiness in her own life, a wiser care in his training, and a more constant prayerfulness in his behalf might have saved him; but the young wife was, of all people in the world, the most innocent and the most wronged.
How light and graceful her step was. Who would not think that it betokened a light heart? She met an acquaintance, and stopped for a word of greeting, and the friend came along afterward smiling, as though at some merry jest. Passing the house of another friend, she nodded and kissed her hand to a child in the window, with how bright a face the priest, who had seen her self‐control, could well guess.
“Is there nothing I can do, nothing I can say, to help her?” he asked himself, turning away from the window. “It is cruel that one so young should bear alone such a burden! What can I do? What can I do?”
He searched in vain for some means of help. There was none. For what she should do her own wit or the advice of others must suffice; and for words of comfort, they were not for him to speak to her. Her manner had shown clearly the distance which she felt must lie between them, and there was no way but for him to accept that position. He could pray, and that was all.
By the time he had come to this conclusion, Annette Gerald had reached the convent, and was greeting Sister Cecilia.
“I have only two words to say to you, dear Sister,” she said, “and those may seem very childish, but are not so in reality. Lawrence and I are going to make a little journey, which may last about four weeks, and poor mamma will be lonely. Besides that, she will worry. She hates to have me go away from her. Will not you be very kind to her, if she should come to you? Oh! I know you always are that; but recollect, when you see her, that I am really all she has. A son does not count for much, you know, especially when he is a young man. Very few young men are much comfort to their mothers, I think. Tell F. Chevreuse the very first time you see him that I said this to you, but don’t tell any one else. And now, dear Sister, I have but a little time, for we start this evening. If there is no one in the chapel, I would like to go in a while. People have got so in the habit of wandering into the Immaculate, and looking about carelessly, that it is no longer pleasant to go there.”
The same air, as of a person gentle, indeed, but not to be detained nor trifled with, which had impressed F. Chevreuse in his visitor, was felt by the Sister also. She rose at once, saying that there was no one in the chapel, and would not be for some time, all the Sisters being engaged, unless Anita should go in.
“Anita has not been well?” Mrs. Gerald remarked with absent courtesy.
“No; she has not been the same since that terrible trial,” the nun sighed.
Annette Gerald’s face lost its absent expression, and took a somewhat haughty and unsympathizing look. “Is that all?” she inquired in a tone of surprise.
“But, you know,” expostulated the Sister, “Anita’s testimony was of the greatest importance. Besides, the scene was a most painful one for her to be dragged into. She is such a tender, sensitive creature.”
Annette had paused just inside the parlor‐door, and she had evidently no mind to let the subject drop indifferently.
“My dear Sister,” she said with decision, “I am truly sorry for your sweet little Anita; but I think it wrong to foster the idea that there are certain sensitive souls in the world who must be pitied if a breath blows on them, while others are supposed to be able to bear the hurricane without being hurt. A great deal of this shrinking delicacy comes from a selfish watching of one’s own sensations, and forgetting those of others, and a great deal from being pampered by others. You remember, perhaps, an old myth, which I have half forgotten, of a Camilla who was fastened to a lance and shot across a stream. She was a woman soft and weak, perhaps, but she had to go. Now, in this world there is many a woman who has all the miserable sensitiveness and delicacy of her kind, but with that there is also a will, or an unselfishness, or a necessity which transfixes her like a spear, and carries her through all sorts of difficulties.” For one instant a flash of some passion, either of anger, impatience, or pain, or of all mingled, shot into the speaker’s face, and seemed to thrill through all her nerves. “Oh! it is true in this world also,” she exclaimed, “that unto him that hath shall be given. The happy must be shielded from pain, and those who cry out at the prick of a pin must be tenderly handled; but the miserable may have yet more misery heaped on them, and the patient find no mercy.”
“My dear lady!” expostulated Sister Cecilia, when the other paused, quivering with excitement.
“Oh! I do not mean to speak harshly of your sweet little Anita,” interrupted Mrs. Gerald, recovering herself; “I was only reminded of others, that is all. But even to her I would recommend thinking more of the sufferings of others and less of her own.”
“It is precisely that which hurts her,” replied the Sister, a little displeased. “She thinks of the sufferings of others, and, fancying that she has caused them, breaks her heart about it.”
Annette made a motion to go, and had an air of thinking very slightingly of the young novice’s troubles. “She merely did her duty, and has no responsibility whatever,” she said. “The child needs to be scolded, and set about some hard, wholesome work. It would do her good to work in the garden, and spend a good deal of time in the open air. A person who has been taken possession of by some morbid idea should never be shut up in a house.”
Sister Cecilia suffered her visitor to pass on without saying another word. She was surprised and deeply hurt at the little sympathy shown their household flower and pet, yet she could not but perceive that, in a general way, much that had been said was quite true.
Passing by the chapel‐door shortly after, she saw Annette Gerald on her knees before the altar, with her head bowed forward and hidden in her hands. Half an hour afterwards, when Mrs. Ferrier’s carriage came, she was still in the same position, and had to be spoken to twice before she was roused. Then she started and looked up in alarm.
“Your carriage has come,” whispered the Sister, and looked quickly away from the face turned toward her, it was so white and worn. In that half‐ hour she seemed to have grown ten years older.
“Must I go now?” she exclaimed, with an air of terror, and for a moment seemed not to know where she was. Then murmuring an excuse, she recalled herself, and, by some magic, threw off again the look of age and pain. “You need not call Sister Cecilia, only say good‐by to her for me,” she said. “I have really not a moment to spare.”
This Sister was almost a stranger to Mrs. Annette Gerald, and was quite taken by surprise when the lady turned at the door, and, without a word of farewell, kissed her, and then hurried away.
“Drive to the office, John, for Mr. Gerald,” she said; and no one would have suspected from her manner that she trembled before the man to whom she gave that careless order.
Lawrence came running lightly down the stairs, having been on the watch for his wife, and John, holding the carriage‐door open, winked with astonishment at sight of the bright greeting exchanged between the two. He could maintain a cold and stolid reserve, if he had anything to conceal; but this airy gayety on the brink of ruin was not only beyond his power, but beyond his comprehension.
Stealing a glance of scrutiny into the young man’s face, he met a glance of defiant hauteur. “You need not go any further with us, John,” Lawrence said. “We shall not need you. Jack, drive round to Mrs. Gerald’s.”
And John, with his coat down to his heels—a costume in which nothing would have induced him voluntarily to take a promenade—was forced to walk home, comforting himself with the assurance that it was the last order he should have to obey from that source. Perhaps, indeed, he would not have obeyed it now, had they not driven away and left him no choice.
The sun was declining toward the west, and touching everything with the tender glory of early spring, when they drew up at the cottage gate, the sound of their wheels bringing Mrs. Gerald and Honora to the window, and then to the door.
“We can’t stop to come in, Mamma Gerald,” Annette called out. “We are going off on a little visit, and only come to say good‐by. Isn’t it beautiful this afternoon? The trees will soon begin to bud, if this weather continues.”
The two ladies came out to the carriage, and Mrs. Gerald caught sight of her son’s face, which had been turned away. It had grown suddenly white. She exclaimed: “Why, Lawrence! what is the matter?”
“Oh! another of those faint turns,” interposed his wife quickly, laying her hand on his arm. “He has no appetite, and is really fainting from lack of nourishment. The journey will do him good, mamma. We are going entirely on his account.”
“Oh! yes, it’s nothing but a turn that will soon pass away,” he added, and seemed, indeed, already better.
“Do come in and take something warm,” his mother said anxiously, her beautiful blue eyes fixed on his face. “There is some chocolate just made.”
“We have no time,” Annette began; but her husband immediately opened the carriage‐door.
“Yes, mother,” he said. “I won’t keep you waiting but a minute, Ninon.”
The mother put her hand in his arm, and still turned her anxious face toward him. “You mustn’t go to‐night, if you feel sick, my son,” she said. “You know what happened to you before.”
“But the journey is just what I need, mother,” he answered, trying to speak cheerfully. “Of course I won’t go if I feel unwell; but this is really nothing. I have not quite got my strength up, and, as Annette says, I have eaten nothing to‐day.”
Those little services of a mother, how tender and touching they are at any time! how terrible in their pathos when we know that they will soon be at an end for us for ever! How the hand trembles to take the cup, and the lip trembles to touch its brim, when we know that she would have filled it with her life‐blood, if that could have been saving to us!
“Sit here by the fire, dear, while I get your chocolate,” Mrs. Gerald said, and pushed the chair close to the hearth. “There is really quite a chill in the air.”
She stirred the fire, and made the red coals glow warmly, then went out of the room.
He looked round after her the moment her back was turned, and watched her hastening through the entry. The temptation was strong to follow her, throw himself at her feet, and tell her all. He started up from the chair, and took a step, but came back again. It would kill her, and he could not see her die. He would let her live yet the four weeks left her. Perhaps she might die a natural death before that. He hoped she would. At that thought, a sudden flame of hope and of trust in God rose in his heart. He dropped on his knees. “O my God! take my mother home before she hears of this, and I will do any penance, bear anything!” he prayed, with vehement rapidity. “Be merciful to her, and take her!”
He heard her step returning, and hastily resumed his seat, and bent forward to the fire.
“You look better already,” she said, smiling. “You have a little color now. Here is your chocolate, and Annette is calling to you to make haste.”
She held the little tray for him, and he managed, strengthened by that desperate hope of his, to empty the cup, and even smile faintly in giving it back. And then he got up, put his arm around his mother’s waist, in a boyish fashion he had sometimes with her, and went out to the door with her so. And there he kissed her, and jumped into the carriage, and was driven away. It never occurred to her, so sweetly obedient had he been to her requests, and so expressive had his looks and actions been, that he had not uttered a word while he was in the house nor when he drove away. He had accepted her little services with affection and gratitude, and he had been tender and caressing, and that was enough. Moreover, he had really looked better on leaving, which proved that her prescription had done him good.
How Annette Gerald got away from home she could not have told afterward. Her trunks were sent in advance, and she and her husband chose to walk to the station in the evening. Some way she succeeded in answering all her mother’s charges and anxious forebodings. She promised to sit in a middle car, so as to be at the furthest point from a collision in front or rear, and to have the life‐preservers all ready at hand in the steamer. She took the basket of luncheon her mother put up, and allowed her bonnet to be tied for her and her shawl pinned. And at last they were in the portico, and it was necessary to say good‐by.
“My poor mamma! don’t be too anxious about me, whatever happens,” Annette said. “Remember God takes care of us all. I hope he will take care of you. Whenever you feel disposed to worry about us, say a little prayer, and all will come right again.”
The darkness hid the tears that rolled down her cheeks as she ended, and in a few minutes all was over, and the two were walking arm‐in‐arm down the quiet street.
“This way!” Lawrence said when they came to the street where his mother lived.
It was out of their way, but they went down by the house, and paused in front of it. The windows of the sitting‐room were brightly lighted, and they could see by the glow of the lamp that it stood on a table drawn before the fire. As they looked, a shadow leaned forward on the white curtain. Mrs. Gerald was leaning with her elbow on the table, and talking to some one. They saw the slender hand that supported her chin, and the coil of her heavy hair. They saw the slight movement with which she pushed back a lock of hair that had a way of falling on to her forehead.
Annette felt the arm she held tremble. She only pressed it the closer, that he might not forget that love still was near him, but did not speak. There was nothing for her to say.
“Let’s go inside the gate to the window,” he whispered. “Perhaps I can hear her speak.”
She softly opened the gate, and entered with him. The moonless night was slightly overclouded, and the shadows of the trees hid them perfectly, as they stole close to the window like two thieves. Lawrence pressed his face to the sash, and listened breathlessly. There was a low murmur of voices inside, then a few words distinctly spoken. “And by the way, dear, I forgot to close the blinds. Oh! no, I will close them. Don’t rise!”
Mrs. Gerald came to the window, opened it, and leaned out so close to her son that he heard the rustle of her dress and fancied that he felt her breath on his cheek. She was silent a moment, looking up at the sky. “The night is very soft and mild,” she said. “Those children will have a pleasant journey.” One instant longer she rested there, her hand half extended to the blind, then she sent upward a word of prayer, which brushed her son’s cheek in passing. “O God! protect my son!” she said.
Then the blinds were drawn together, and the son was shut out from her sight and sound for ever.
“It is our signal to go,” Annette whispered to her husband. “Come! We have no time to lose.”
He held her by the arm a moment.
“Isn’t it better, after all, to stay and have it out here?” he asked desperately. “I’d rather face danger than fly from it. Running away makes me seem worse than I am.”
“You have no longer the right to consider yourself,” she answered, with a certain sternness. “I will not submit to have a convict for a husband. I would rather see you dead. And your mother shall not visit you in a felon’s cell. Besides, no one is to be profited by such a piece of folly, and you would yourself repent it when too late. Come!”
He said no more, but suffered himself to be drawn away. He could not complain that his wife treated his heroic impulses with a disrespect amounting almost to contempt, for he could not himself trust them.
After having closed the window, Mrs. Gerald returned to her place by the fire. A round table was drawn up there between two armchairs, in one of which Miss Pembroke sat, knitting a scarf of crimson wool. The shade over the lamp kept its strong light from her eyes, and threw a faint shadow on the upper part of her face; but her sweet and serious mouth, and the round chin, with its faint dent of a dimple, were illuminated, her brown dress had rich yellow lights on the folds, and the end of a straying curl on her shoulder almost sparkled with gold. Her eyes were downcast and fixed on her work, and crimson loop after loop dropped swiftly from the ivory needles scarcely whiter than her hands.
“As I was saying,” Mrs. Gerald resumed, “six months of the year they were to pass with Mrs. Ferrier have gone, and next fall they will have an establishment of their own. It will be better for both of them. I am sure Annette will make a good housekeeper. Besides, every married man should be the master of a house. It gives him a place in the world, and makes him feel his responsibilities and dignities more.”
“Yes, every one should have a home,” answered the young woman gravely. “It is a great safeguard.”
Mrs. Gerald leaned back in her chair, and gazed into the fire. There was a smile of contentment on her lips and an air of gentle pride in the carriage of her head. As she thought, or dreamed, she turned about the birth‐day ring her son had given her, and, presently becoming aware of what she was doing, looked at it and smiled as if she were smiling in his face.
“I never before felt so well contented and satisfied with his situation,” she said, her happiness breaking into words. “His marriage has turned out well. They seem to be perfectly united, and Lawrence is really proud of his wife; and with reason. She is no more like what she was when I first knew her than a butterfly is like a grub. She has developed wonderfully.” She was silent a moment, then added: “I am very thankful.”
She drew a rosary from her pocket, and, leaning back in her chair with her eyes closed, began to whisper the prayers as the beads slipped through her fingers.
Miss Pembroke glanced at her, and smiled faintly. It was very pleasant to see this mother happy in her son, yet how trembling and precarious was her happiness! This woman’s heart, which bruised itself in beating, was always ready to catch some fleeting glory on its springing tide; like the fountain, which holds the rainbow a moment among its chilly drops.
While one woman prayed, the other thought. She had often dwelt upon this subject of women’s lives being wrecked from love of friend, husband, or child, and the sight of Mrs. Gerald had been to her a constant illustration of such a wreck. These thoughts had troubled her, for she was not one to judge hastily, and she did not know whether to pity or to blame so ruinous a devotion. Now again the question floated up, and with it the wish to decide once for all before life should thrust the problem on her, when she would be too confused to think rightly. She was like one who stands safe yet wistful on shore, looking off over troubled waters, and Mrs. Gerald and Annette seemed to her tossing far out on the waves. She even seemed to herself to have approached the brink so near that the salt tide had touched her feet, and to have drawn back only just in time.
Gradually, as her fair fingers wove the glowing web, a faint cloud came over her face, and, if it had been possible for her to frown, that deeper shadow between the brows might have been called a frown. Her thoughts were growing stern.
“Were we made upright, we women, only to bend like reeds to every wind?” she asked herself. “Can we not be gentle without being slavish, and kind and tender without pouring our hearts out like water? Cannot we reserve something to ourselves, even while giving all and even more than our friends deserve? Cannot we hold our peace and happiness so firmly in our own hands that no one shall have the power to destroy them?”
Each question as it came met with a prompt answer, and resolution followed swiftly: “Never will I suffer myself to be so enslaved by any affection as to lose my individuality and be merged and lost in another, or be made wretched by another, or to have my sense of justice and right confused by the desire to make excuses for one I love. Never will I suffer the name which I have kept stainless to be associated with the disgrace of another, and never will I leave the orderly and honorable ways of life, where I have walked so far, to follow any one into the by‐ways, for any pretext. Each one is to save his own soul, and to help others only to a certain extent. I will keep my place!”
That resolute and almost haughty face seemed scarcely to be Honora Pembroke’s; and she felt so surely that her expression would check and startle her companion that when she saw Mrs. Gerald drop the rosary from her fingers, and turn to speak to her, she quickly changed her position so as to hide her face a moment.
Mrs. Gerald’s voice had changed while she prayed, and seemed weighted with a calm seriousness from her heavenly communion; and her first words jarred strangely with her young friend’s thought.
“How uncalculating the saints were!” she said. “Our Lady was the only one, I think, who escaped personal contumely, and that was not because she risked nothing, but because God would not suffer contempt nor slander to touch her. He spared her no pang, save that of disgrace; yet she would have accepted that without a complaint. How tender he was of her! He gave her a nominal spouse to shield her motherhood; it was through her Son that her heart was pierced, and the grief of a mother is always sacred; and he gave her always loving and devoted women, who clustered about and made her little court. She was never alone. But she is an exception. The others were despised and maltreated, and they seemed to be perpetually throwing themselves away. I do not doubt that those saints who never suffered martyrdom nor persecution were still, in their day, laughed and mocked at by some more than they were honored by others. They never stopped to count the cost.”
Miss Pembroke felt at the first instant as though Mrs. Gerald must have read her thoughts, and her reply came like a retort. “It is true they did not count the costs,” she said; “but it was God whom they loved.”
“Yes,” Mrs. Gerald replied gently, “that was what I meant.”
She was too closely wrapped in contentment to perceive the coldness with which her companion spoke. It seemed to her that all her cares had floated away, and left only rest and sweetness behind. She no longer feared anything. There comes to every one some happy season in life, she thought; and hers had come.
When, the next day, she received a note from her son, which he had written from their first stopping‐place, she was scarcely surprised, though it was an unusual attention.
It was but a hurried line, written with a pencil and posted in the station‐house.
“My darling mother,” he wrote, “if you should find your violet‐bed under the parlor window trampled, blame Larry for it. He saw his mother’s shadow on the curtain when he was on his way to the station last night, and took a fancy to go nearer and peep through the window. But he didn’t mean to do any harm then, nor at some other times, when he did enough indeed. Forgive him for everything.”
Mrs. Gerald immediately went out, letter in hand, to see what marks had been left of this nocturnal visit; and, sure enough, there, on the newly‐ turned mould, was the print of a boot—well she knew her son’s neat foot—and, on the other side, a tiny and delicate track where Annette had stood! But not a leaf of the sprouting violets was crushed.
Miss Pembroke smiled to see the mother touch these tracks softly with her finger‐tips, and glance about as if to assure herself that there was no danger of their being effaced.
“Such a freak of those children!” she said gaily. “Do you know what I am going to do, Honora? I mean to sow little pink quill daisies in those two foot‐prints, and show them to Lawrence and Annette when they come back. It was a beautiful thought of them to come to the window, and it shall be commemorated in beauty. The ground is nearly warm enough here now for seeds. When they come back, the tracks will be green. I wish flowers would blossom in three weeks.”
Mrs. Ferrier also heard that day from the travellers.
“I have a particular reason for asking you to be very careful about my letters,” Annette wrote. “Don’t let any one see or know of them. I will tell you why presently. We are very well. Write me a line as soon as you receive this, and direct to New York. We shall not stop there, but go right on out West, probably. And, by the way, if you should wish ever to hear from Mrs. Gerald’s relations, seek in New York for a letter directed to Mrs. Julia Ward. Say nothing of this now. I will explain.”
“And why should I wish to hear from Mrs. Gerald’s relations?” wondered Mrs. Ferrier. But she said nothing. The secret was safe with her.
Meanwhile, the travellers had lost no time on their way; and three days from their leaving Crichton, they were on the ocean. Every stateroom and cabin had been taken when “Mr. and Mrs. Ward” went to the office of the steamer; but the captain, seeing the lady in great distress on account of the sick friend she was crossing the ocean to see, kindly gave up his own stateroom to the travellers.
It was quite as well for him to do so, indeed; for the very day they started a storm started with them, and he was too faithful an officer to desert his post on deck. So all night long he watched, courageous and faithful, over the lives committed to his care, while underneath his two special guests lay helpless and miserable, counting his footsteps, as sleepless as he. The engine throbbed beside them, like a heavily‐beating heart, the long waves lashed the deck, the wind sang and whistled through the ropes, the steamer creaked and groaned.
“I have brought bad luck to the ship, Annette,” said her husband. “If I were overboard, the storm would cease.”
“In the first place, my name is Julia,” was the answer from the lower berth. “In the next place, there is nothing mysterious in this storm; it is simply the equinoctial gale, which has been threatening for days. I knew we should have it. In the third place, your being overboard would make no difference whatever in the weather. Are you sick?”
Annette knew well that a little chilly breeze would best blow away her husband’s vapors.
“I am sick of lying here,” he said impatiently. “The rain must be over, unless it is another flood. I wonder how it looks out?”
He drew aside the curtain, and opened the window. The rain had ceased, but the wind still blew, and a pale light was everywhere, shining up through the waves and down through the clouds. As the steamer rolled, Annette, lying in her lower berth, could see alternately the gray and tumbled clouds of air, and the gray and heaving sea, which was less like moving water than a ruined, quaking earth, so heavily it rose and fell.
Lawrence Gerald, closely wrapped in furs, knelt on the sofa, and looked out, humming a tune that seemed to be for ever on his lips since his wife had first sung it to him, so that she was sometimes half sorry for having suggested it to him. A few words broke out while she listened:
“For man never slept In a different bed, And to sleep, you must slumber In just such a bed.”
His thoughts seemed to be so haunted by the image of that cold and peaceful slumber that his wife trembled for him. He had not the enduring strength to bear a long trial, but he had that fitful strength which prompts to desperate deeds.
“I can see cities built and destroyed yonder,” he said. “There are white towns between dark mountains, and little hamlets up in the crevices; they grow, and then they are swallowed up. It is like a great earthquake. When the world is destroyed, it will perhaps look like that, pale and ashy.”
“Suppose we should go up on deck, and see what it looks like,” said Annette suddenly, anticipating the wish she knew he would have expressed. “It will be a change after our three days’ imprisonment, and we may think the stateroom a pleasant refuge when we come back.”
They escaped the crest of a wave that leaped over the rail after them, and reached the wet and slippery deck.
“We mustn’t speak to the officers,” Annette whispered, seeing the captain near them.
He passed them by without notice, and they hurried on to the shelter of the smoke‐pipe, where the heat had dried the planks; and here, holding by ropes, they could look over the rail and see the long streaks of pale blue, where the foam slid under the surface of the water; see the gigantic struggle of the sea, and how the brave ship pushed through it all straight toward her unseen port.
Nothing is so perfect a figure of life as a ship on the sea, and one can hardly behold it without moralizing.
“Suppose that this ship had a soul of its own, instead of being guided by the will of other beings,” said Annette; “and suppose that, finding itself in such a woful case, it should say, ‘I see no port, no pole‐star, no sun, nor moon, and I doubt if I shall ever see them again. I may as well stop trying, and go down here.’ Wouldn’t that be a pity for itself and for others?”
“But suppose, on the other hand,” returned her husband, “that the ship had got a deadly thrust from some unseen rock, and the water was running in, and it could never gain the port. What would be the use of its striving and straining for a few leagues further?”
“We know not where the haven of a soul is set,” said Annette, dropping the figure. “God knows, for he has set it, near or far; and it may be nearer than we think. It is scarcely worth while for a man to lose his soul by jumping overboard at ten o’clock, when he may save it, and be drowned too, at eleven.”
Lawrence drew back as a great wave rose before them. He had only been playing at death; the reality was quite another thing. Chilled and drenched with spray, they hurried down to their stateroom.
It was a weary journey. After the storm came head‐winds, and after the head‐winds a fog, through which they crept, ringing the fog‐bell, and stopping now and then.
Mr. and Mrs. Ward did not appear once among the passengers, even when everybody crowded up to catch the first glimpse of Ireland, and they were the last to appear when the passengers prepared to land at Liverpool. They had been a fortnight from home, the storm having delayed them two days, and they knew not what might have happened in that time. A telegram might have sped under the waves in an hour while they toiled over them, and just at the moment of escape their flight might be intercepted.
Dante Gabriel Rosetti.(84)
It is not difficult to understand the title which has been bestowed upon Mr. Rosetti of the “Poets’ Poet.” His volume is full of delicate rhythmical experiments—winding bouts of melody with subtle catches of silence interspersed—which alternately pique and satisfy. No brother of the craft could fail to obtain valuable hints from these studies. But Mr. Rosetti is no mere word‐poiser; he is an artist in the highest sense of the word, whose canvas teems with a thousand nameless lights, which as they cross and disappear make all the difference between the real and the unreal.
During the two years or more that Mr. Rosetti’s volume has been before the English‐reading public on both sides of the Atlantic, it has been frequently reviewed. Perhaps the best justification of the present review is that, over and above purely literary merits, Mr. Rosetti has peculiar claims upon the interest of Catholic readers, to which we would draw attention.
We gather from the brief notice at the beginning of the volume that many of these poems were composed twenty years ago, yet, if we except the occasional appearance of a single poem in the pages of a magazine, Mr. Rosetti has published nothing before. We can hardly believe that even the barbarians of twenty years ago can have combined against his publishing, like Mr. Bazzard’s friends in Edwin Drood, and so we must suppose that he was fain to wait for the severest of all criticisms—that passed by a middle‐aged man upon the productions of his youth. And now, having altered something and burnt more—had he waited, he would have found old age more indulgent—he publishes the remnant, all of which, he tells us justly enough, is mature, for which his mature age is sponsor.
It would be far easier to estimate Mr. Rosetti’s position as a poet had he written more. Nor is this precisely a truism; for one feels at once that what he has given us is most precisely and emphatically a selection. Every one of his poems, whatever else it may be, is at least a cunning piece of artist’s work in this or that particular style, with a distinct flavor of its own and true to itself throughout. If you know, and care for, the old Scots ballad, you will at once appreciate the specimen he gives you. If you object to the coarseness which shades the tenderness of “Stratton Water,” your criticism is unlearned. As well complain of the peat flavor of a “Finnan haddie.”
Poets who sing because they must sing, who pour into trembling ears great heterogeneous floods of song, the reflection of their many moods, things beautiful and rather beautiful, and plain and very plain; all the thousand‐and‐one scraps which have something clever in them, or illustrate something, or with the composition of which something interesting, whether pleasant or painful, is associated—take, for instance, any chance volume of Wordsworth or Browning—may be in the long run our benefactors, but they have no claim upon the ready‐money of thanks; they charm, perhaps, but they often also bore. If a man whose imagination has not been left out is bored by Mr. Rosetti’s volume, it is time for him, according to the Turkish proverb, to put his trust in God—his wine is running to the lees, his roses wither. And this is true although the generations of poetic taste are so short‐lived that almost before a man has reached the mezzo camino, and certainly before he has lost his sense of life’s enjoyments, he is apt to find himself somewhat out of harmony with the poetry of the day. Mr. Rosetti is no prophet of a new theory of art or master of a new phrase‐mint, but rather a merchant whose cargo tells a tale of every port at which he has touched.
It is natural to compare, even if only to contrast, any new poet with Mr. Tennyson, as the poet who has had more immediate, sensible influence than any other upon the taste of his day; and although there is a prejudice against comparisons, it is difficult to see how they can be avoided if one is to do something more than point and ejaculate. In the present case, there is at least sufficient resemblance to suggest comparison. Amongst living poets these two are pre‐eminently artist‐poets, who finish their work and hide well away all their literary shavings. They are almost the only living poets who never go on talking till they can find the right word, and who never stammer.
There is not a scrap of either of these poets that, for the refined work there is in it, it would not be a shame to burn. Again, they are like in this, that they have an intense sensuous appreciation of the medium which they use, which seems to belong rather to the art of the painter or the musician than to that of the poet. It would not be difficult to make a color‐box of Mr. Tennyson’s favorite words, literary formulas for cool grays and bits of scarlet. On the other hand, Mr. Rosetti’s art is rather that of the musician than the painter; he produces his effects rather by subtle changes of manner than by the color of single words, although his choice in these too is exquisite. His modulations remind one of Crashaw’s lines in “Music’s Duel”:
“The lute’s light genius now doth proudly rise, Heaved on the surges of swoll’n rhapsodies. Whose flourish, meteor‐like, doth curl the air With flash of high‐born fancies; here and there Dancing in lofty measures, and anon Creeps on the soft touch of a tender tone, Whose trembling murmurs, melting in wild airs, Run to and fro, complaining his sweet cares.”
And so, having drifted into points of difference, we will continue. They are unlike because, although both affect the quaintnesses of mediæval art, the laureate has done little more than utilize, for poetic purposes, the antiquarian and art knowledge of a gentleman of the period with a turn that way. But Mr. Rosetti is a mediæval artist heart and soul; and, though it may not be literally true that he has no end beyond his art, he would certainly feel that he was doing evil that good might come of it if he sacrificed a point of art to any object whatsoever.
Mr. Tennyson’s pictures of the middle‐age, beautiful and lifelike as they are, are the less true for their somewhat formal flourish of antiquity, whereby they give themselves, as it were, a modern frame. Of course, Tennyson’s knights are not modern gentlemen in the sense that Racine’s Greeks are French courtiers, but anyhow they are the realized aspirations of modern gentlemen of culture and refinement, and measures of fashionable reaction against the spirit of the day.
I think the consciousness that he wants a loosely‐fitting mediævalism, or, so to speak, the armor without any particular quality of man inside, makes Mr. Tennyson affect the hybrid mediævalism of the Round Table in preference to the genuine strain of the old chroniclers. His mail‐clad knights always remind us somewhat of a common scene in a marine aquarium—a whelk‐shell inspired with an energy not its own by the intrusion of a hermit‐crab, who, having disposed of the original occupant, manipulates the shell at his pleasure.
It may be urged, with some justice, that a poet is no mere collector of old china and old lace. He gathers to himself of all precious things, to frame for his thought such vehicle as he wants; but he has no duties to his materials that they should be in keeping with one another or with themselves, provided they minister to his design. Yes, but it must be remembered that both these poets belong to a school which owes its success to the religious observance of such duties, even though self‐imposed; and it must always remain true that the more a poet can afford to borrow wholes instead of parts or aspects, and these plead the poet’s cause each in its own tongue, not his, the greater is his triumph. I am not indicating any failure on the part of Mr. Tennyson when I speak of his Arthurian poems as a splendid masque. He knows where his strength lies. He has chosen his legend as a man might choose an antique wine‐cooler for his wine; but the liquor inside, though superlatively good, is not hippocras or metheglin, but port and sherry. On the other hand, if we turn to Mr. Rosetti’s treatment of mediæval subjects, “Dante at Verona,” “Sister Helen,” “The Staff and Scrip,” we find that his mediæval figures live, indeed, with the intensest kind of life, but that that life, from its woof to its outermost fringe, is stained with the color of its own day and country. It is this union of purism and vitality which is Mr. Rosetti’s distinguishing characteristic.
It is now time for us to examine some of Mr. Rosetti’s poems in detail. “The Blessed Damozel,” the first poem in the volume, were it not for its title, would be perfect; but we confess that the ultra quaintness of the title is the one point in the mediæval dress which does not, to our mind, harmonize with the Catholicity of the subject.
The subject would be trite enough in many hands. A young man has lost his love, and dreams of her night and day, until at length the soul of his imagination pierces that heaven into which she has been received ten years ago:
“Her seemed she scarce had been a day One of God’s choristers; The wonder was not yet quite gone From that still look of hers, Albeit, to them she left, her day Had counted as ten years.”
With the calm, unhesitating realism of Fra Angelico, he paints his lady leaning out towards him “from the gold bar of heaven,” with stars in her hair and lilies in her hand; and the outline is so clear and firm, so free from the mist of modern sentimentalism, that the paroxysm of doubt which breaks in at the end of the fourth stanza, and which for a moment makes the radiant vision tremulous, is really wanted to remind us of the abyss which the imagination is spanning:
“It was the rampart of God’s house That she was standing on, By God built over the sheer depth The which is space begun; So high that, looking downward thence, You scarce might see the sun.”
“The tides of day and night” alternate far down in the abyss beneath her feet, where the earth is spinning about the sun “like a fretful midge.” If any one is tempted to doubt if the heavens of modern science, with their vast distances and harmonious order, are more poetical than the star‐ spangled cope upon which the Chaldean shepherds gazed, let him read this poem. The simple imagery with which Mr. Rosetti clothes the abysses of heaven seems, without destroying their immensity, to render them visible:
“From the fixed place of heaven she saw Time like a pulse shake fierce Through all the world....”
Again:
“The sun was gone now; the curled moon Was like a little feather Fluttering far down the gulf.”
He sees that she is looking for him, and then she speaks, not to him, for she sees him not, but of him, of what their life in heaven will be when he has come—for he must come, she says. And again, as she talks of the life in heaven, it is Fra Angelico in words; lush meadow‐grass, so soft to road‐worn feet, and golden‐fruited trees, and tender intercourse from which all the acerbities and conventionalities of life are banished; an atmosphere in which the freshness of morning and the peace of evening are woven into one eternal day, which, as he says elsewhere, “hours no more offend.” How thoroughly Dantesque in its homely sublimity is the conception of Our Lady and her handmaids at their weaving:
“Into the fine cloth, white like flame, Weaving the golden thread To fashion the birth‐robes for them Who are just born, being dead.”
We hardly think that this poem of Mr. Rosetti’s strikes a single false chord even to Catholic ears. The utmost that can be said is that the blessed soul is too absorbed by her longing for her earthly love. But then the heaven of theology is an assemblage of paradoxes which faith alone can knit together; and, in its entirety, wholly without the realm of art. In this poem we have one aspect of the life of the blessed, “securus quidem sibi sed nostri solicitus,” as S. Bernard says, presented to us most vividly in the only colors an artist’s pencil can command—those of earthly love. But this love is serene and pure, and, despite its intensity, free from all pain and impatience. The passion is supplied by the refrain in the earthly lover’s heart, as in his touching commentary upon the confidence of her “we two” will do thus and thus when he comes:
“Alas! we two, we two, thou sayst! Yea, one wast thou with me That once of old. But shall God lift To endless unity The soul whose likeness with thy soul Was but its love for thee?”
Having ended her description of heaven’s mysterious joys:
“She gazed and listened, and then said, Less sad of speech than mild, ‘All this is when he comes.’ She ceased. The light thrilled towards her filled With angels in strong level flight. Her eyes prayed and she smiled.”
But soon the smile fades away as the angelic convoy glides past, for he is not there—
“And then she cast her arms along The golden barriers, And laid her face between her hands, And wept (I heard her tears).”
If it be objected that this is too gross a violation of the state in which all tears are wiped away, I answer, first, that there are tears and tears; secondly, that if anthropomorphism is allowable in our realizations of God, à fortiori is it allowable in our realizations of those who, although they are raised above the estate of humanity, are still human. Again, even the angels of Christian art have a prescriptive right to tears, and is it not written, Isai. xxxiii. 7, “Angeli pacis amarè flebunt?”
And now we will say what we have to say of perhaps the most wonderful of all Mr. Rosetti’s poems, which somehow, for more reasons than one, suggests itself as a pendant to “The Blessed Damozel.” He has called it “Jenny,” and Jenny is the name—neither French nor Greek will mend the matter—of a young prostitute. We freely confess that there are two or three lines in this poem which we heartily wish Mr. Rosetti had never written; but, take it as it stands, few will be disposed to deny that it is a very real sermon against lust, all the more impressive because it is indirect. The story, such as it is, is this: A man, young but not in his first youth, who has been for some years settling down to a student’s life, throws his work aside one evening, and goes off to one of his old haunts. Having spent half the night in dancing, and being smitten with Jenny’s youthful beauty, he goes home with her. She, poor thing, utterly tired, falls dead asleep at supper, and he, watching her, falls to moralizing, half cynically, half tenderly, upon innocence and lust and destiny, until at last the pity of it all wholly possesses him and kills every other thought. And so musing till early dawn, till
“Now without, as if some word Had called upon them that they heard, The London sparrows far and nigh Clamor together suddenly,”
he slips some gold pieces into her hair, and goes with the half‐expressed hope that, as God has been merciful to him, so he will be merciful to her also.
What first touches him is her evident longing for rest:
“Glad from the crush to rest within, From the heart‐sickness and the din, Where envy’s voice at virtue’s pitch Mocks you because your gown is rich, And from the pale girl’s dumb rebuke, Whose ill‐clad grace and toil‐worn look Proclaim the strength that keeps her weak And other nights than yours bespeak, And from the wise, unchildish elf, To schoolmate lesser than himself Pointing you out what thing you are.”
The girl herself, beyond her youth and beauty, is nowise better than her fellows, and so she individualizes a larger pathos, and is in some sense a more touching representative of the victims of man’s lust—
“Poor handful of bright spring water Flung in the whirlpool’s shrieking face.”
He is penetrated by the contrast between the fate of this poor girl and that of his cousin, just such another girl in natural disposition—
“And fond of dress, and change, and praise, So mere a woman in her ways”;
but in the guarded atmosphere of her home, with every point in her character blooming into good.
“So pure—so fallen! how dare to think Of the first common kindred link? Yet Jenny, till the world shall burn, It seems that all things take their turn, And who shall say but this fair tree May need, in changes that shall be, Your children’s children’s charity? Scorned then, no doubt, as you are scorned, Shall no man hold his pride forewarned Till in the end, the day of days, At judgment, one of his own race, As frail and lost as you, shall rise, His daughter with his mother’s eyes?”
Many a man would be fain to listen to such a sermon who would reject any other. For the preacher is no missionary in disguise, but a fellow‐sinner converted in the presence of his sin, if we may call it conversion; at least, beaten down and overwhelmed by the colossal horror and pity of it, as a wild beast is tamed by a prairie‐fire.
Many beautiful things have been said by non‐Catholic poets of Our Blessed Lady. Indeed, a very pretty book might be made of these Gentile testimonies, from Milton, Cowley, Crashaw (before his conversion), Wordsworth, Keble, and many others. It would seem that Parnassus is as one of the high places of Baal, where the Spirit of the Lord rushes upon the poet, whose eyes are opened and he must needs bless her whom he that blesseth “shall also himself be blessed, and he that curseth shall be reckoned accursed,” and he cries, “How beautiful are thy tabernacles,” O Mary, Mother of God, “as woody valleys, as watered gardens near the rivers, as tabernacles which the Lord has pitched as cedars by the water‐ side.” But with Mr. Rosetti it is something more than this. One is tempted to fancy that with his Italian name he must have really inherited an Italian’s devotion to the Madonna. His poem “Ave” is neither more nor less than a meditation upon the joyful, sorrowful, and glorious mysteries of Our Lady’s life, and it breathes a devotion as tender and sensitive—in a word, as Catholic—as though it had been written by F. Faber. We shall venture to transfer the whole of it to our pages, for we cannot otherwise justify what we have said, and part of its specific beauty is that it is in one breath:
Ave.
Mother of fair delight, Thou handmaid perfect in God’s sight, Now sitting fourth beside the Three, Thyself a woman Trinity, Being a daughter born to God, Mother of Christ from stall to Rood, And wife unto the Holy Ghost:— Oh! when our need is uttermost, Think that to such as death may strike Thou wert a sister, sisterlike! Thou head‐stone of humanity, Ground‐stone of the great mystery, Fashioned like us, yet more than we! Mind’st thou not (when June’s heavy breath Warmed the long days in Nazareth) That eve thou didst go forth to give Thy flowers some drink that they might live One faint night more amid the sands, Far off the trees were as pale wands Against the fervid sky; the sea Sighed further off eternally As human sorrow sighs in sleep. Then suddenly the awe grew deep, As of a day to which all days Were footsteps in God’s secret ways: Until a folding sense like prayer Which is, as God is, everywhere, Gathered about thee; and a voice Spake to thee without any noise. Being of the silence: “Hail,” it said, “Thou that art highly favorèd; The Lord is with thee here and now; Blessed among all women thou.”
Ah! Knew’st thou of the end, when first That Babe was on thy bosom nursed? Or when he tottered round thy knee Did thy great sorrow dawn on thee— And through his boyhood year by year Eating with him the Passover, Didst thou discern confusedly That holier Sacrament, when He, The bitter cup about to quaff, Should break the bread and eat thereof? Or came not yet the knowledge, even Till on some day forecast in Heaven His feet passed through thy door to press Upon his Father’s business?— Or still was God’s high secret kept?
Nay, but I think the whisper crept Like growth through childhood. Work and play, Things common to the course of day, Awed thee with meanings unfulfill’d, And all through girlhood, something still’d Thy senses like the birth of light, When thou hast trimmed thy lamp at night Or washed thy garments in the stream: To whose white bed had come the dream That He was thine and thou wert His Who feeds among the field‐lilies. O solemn shadow of the end, In that wise spirit long contain’d! O awful end! and those unsaid Long years when it was Finished!
Mind’st thou not (when the twilight gone Left darkness in the house of John) Between the naked window‐bars That spacious vigil of the stars? For thou, a watcher even as they, Wouldst rise from where throughout the day Thou wroughtest raiment for his poor; And, finding the fixed terms endure Of day and night which never brought Sounds of his coming chariot, Wouldst lift through cloud‐waste unexplor’d Those eyes which said “How long, O Lord”? Then that disciple whom he loved, Well heeding, haply would be moved To ask thy blessing in his name; And that one thought in both, the same Though silent, then would clasp ye round To weep together—tears long bound, Sick tears of patience, dumb and slow. Yet, “Surely I come quickly,” so He said, from life and death gone home. Amen: even so, Lord Jesus come!
But oh! what human tongue can speak That day when death was sent to break From the tired spirit like a veil, Its covenant with Gabriel Endured at length unto the end? What human thought can apprehend That mystery of motherhood When thy Beloved at length renew’d The sweet communion severèd— His left hand underneath thine head And his right hand embracing thee? Lo! He was thine, and this is He!
Soul, is it Faith, or Love, or Hope, That lets me see her standing up Where the light of the Throne is bright? Unto the left, unto the right, The cherubim, arrayed, conjoint, Float inward to a golden point, And from between the seraphim The glory issues for a hymn.
O Mary Mother! be not loth To listen—thou whom the stars clothe, Who seest and mayst not be seen Hear us at last, O Mary Queen! Into our shadow bend thy face, Bowing thee from the secret place, O Mary Virgin, full of grace!
Mr. Rosetti certainly does not affect classical subjects. There is nothing in his curious Treasury at all corresponding to those most exquisite of all Mr. Tennyson’s poems, “Ulysses” and “Tithonus.” In the few instances in which he does handle classical legend, it is always its quaint reflection in the mediæval mind that attracts him, as in “Troy Town,” but he is at home everywhere. “Eden Bower” and “Sister Helen” are like and unlike enough for comparison. They are both monologues of deadly sin; the first is spite, the second hate, set to music. The conception of Lilith in “Eden Bower” is a monstrous waif of rabbinical tradition. She is a sort of woman‐snake, supposed to have been Adam’s first wife before the creation of Eve, and in her jealousy of the wife who supplanted her is found the origin of her conspiracy with the king‐snake of Eden which brings about the Fall. The poem is one prolonged musical but most diabolical chuckle of Lilith over the immortal mischief she is about to perpetrate. She is indeed all the while coaxing the serpent to help her, but her tone throughout is one of assured triumph. The woman and the fiend are interwoven with marvellous subtlety—a fiend’s colossal blasphemy and a woman’s petty spite. The fiend does not shrink from declaring open war against heaven.
“Strong is God, the fell foe of Lilith (And O the bower and the hour!)— Naught in heaven or earth may affright him, But join thou with me and we will smite him.”
The woman thus in anticipation stabs her rival with her husband’s cowardice.
“Hear, thou Eve, the man’s heart in Adam (And O the bower and the hour!)— Of his brave words hark to the bravest, This the woman gave that thou gavest.”
How she wriggles and gasps and hugs herself at the thought of the woe she is to bring upon her victims, gloating over every detail of their desolate exile, and forecasting the death of one son and the damnation of another. Lilith after all is a fiend, and, as a creation of art, a fiend is a creature that lives and revels in wickedness as a salamander was supposed to inhabit fire, with a keen sense of pleasure and without moral responsibility; but in “Sister Helen” we have something much more dreadful because more human—“Hate born of Love”—hate that has devoured all love, even love of self—the hatred that is despair. A ruined girl, dwelling in a lonely tower with her little brother, seeks vengeance upon her seducer after the mediæval manner, by consuming his waxen image before the fire. And now upon the third night she is nigh upon its achievement, for the wax is wasting fast. The child takes a child’s interest in the little figure that was once so plump, but through which the flame is now shining red. He prattles about it, but understands nothing, nor yet that there is anything to understand. His sister coaxes him out into the balcony to look out and say what he sees, for she knows what must come. And one after the other the brothers and father of the dying man ride up in the wild night and implore her mercy, at first that she will save his life, and then that at least she will forgive and save him from his despair, that body and soul may not perish. There is something simply appalling in the way in which each entreaty, as it comes to her repeated by her little brother’s voice, is slain by the calm, ruthless, sometimes ironical comment in which she conveys her refusal.
“ ‘He calls your name in his agony, Sister Helen, That even dead love must weep to see.’ ‘Hate born of Love is blind as he, Little brother!’ (O mother, Mary mother, Love turned to hate, between hell and heaven!) ‘Oh! he prays you, as his heart would rive, Sister Helen, To save his dear son’s soul alive.’ ‘Nay, flame cannot slay it, it shall thrive, Little brother!’
(O mother, Mary mother, Alas, alas, between hell and heaven!)”
All entreaties are useless, the death‐knell sounds, and the riders turn their horses—
“ ‘Ah! what white thing at the door has cross’d, Sister Helen? Ah! what is this that sighs in the frost?’ ‘A soul that’s lost, as mine is lost, Little brother!’ (O mother, Mary mother, Lost, lost, all lost, between hell and heaven!)”
One is tempted to say of Mr. Rosetti as was said of his patron Dante, “Lo, he that strolls to hell and back at will.” We speak advisedly of his “patron Dante,” for his devotion to his great namesake is of the intensest kind. Almost the longest poem in the volume is “Dante at Verona,” in which every conceivable detail in the poet’s painful exile at that court is dwelt upon with a solicitude that reminds one of an early Christian sponging up a martyr’s blood. To appreciate the poem thoroughly, one ought to share with Mr. Rosetti in the intimacy of the great Florentine. There are, however, many exquisite bits of description in it that must come home to every one. Surely the Gran Cane’s jester will live for ever:
“There was a jester, a foul lout Whom the court loved for graceless arts; Sworn scholiast of the bestial parts Of speech; a ribald mouth to shout In folly’s horny tympanum Such things as make the wise man dumb.
“Much loved, him Dante loathed; and so One day when Dante felt perplex’d If any day that could come next Were worth the waiting for or no, And mute he sat amid the din— Can Grande called the jester in.
“Rank words with such are wit’s best wealth. Lords mouthed approval; ladies kept Twittering with clustered heads, except Some few that took their trains by stealth And went. Can Grande shook his hair And smote his thighs and laughed i’ the air.
“Then facing on his guest, he cried: ‘Say, Messer Dante, how it is I get out of a clown like this More than your wisdom can provide? And Dante: ’Tis man’s ancient whim That still his like seems good to him.’ ”
We cannot of course pretend to catalogue all Mr. Rosetti’s beauties. But for the sake of quoting one stanza, we must say a word of the “Staff and Scrip.” A knight vowed to defend wronged innocence, finds himself, whilst returning from Palestine, in the land of a fair lady, which her triumphant foemen are ravaging, and where all hope of resistance is dead. He goes out on her behalf, and conquers and dies. This is the description of his return on the night of his victory:
“The first of all the rout was sound, The next were dust and flame, And then the horses shook the ground: And in the thick of them A still band came.”
Nearly a third of Mr. Rosetti’s volume consists of sonnets. Now, a sonnet should be grave but not heavy. It must have a severity tempered by sweetness like the breviary character of the Venerable Bede. It must linger meditatively; it must not loiter, or fumble with its meaning. It must be sinuous, never headlong; feeling its rhymes delicately, not falling upon them; for these are less rhymes than the most prominent of many assonances, upon all of which the rhythm hangs. Indeed, the texture of the sonnet resembles more that of blank‐verse than that of any other metre we possess. Without denying the perfection of some two or three of Milton’s sonnets, and perhaps in a lesser degree of about as many of Wordsworth’s, we may be permitted to say that among our sonnet‐writers Milton, as a general rule, is too fierce and headlong, as Wordsworth says of him, in words of praise which to our ears suggest blame. In his hands, “the thing became a trumpet”; whilst Wordsworth has too poor a vocabulary for a composition in which every word ought to tell. Shakespeare’s sonnets are only sonnets in name. They do not fall into two, or rather one and a half, like an acorn and its cup, but are simply short poems of three independent stanzas of alternate rhymes, the whole concluding with a rhyming couplet. The Elizabethan writers who used the genuine sonnet—Sidney, Spenser, Drummond, especially the last—attained, we cannot help thinking, to a more exquisite use of the sonnet than either Milton or Wordsworth, although the beauty of their sonnets is somewhat marred by the twanging effect of the concluding rhyming couplet to which they persistently cling. Many of Mr. Rosetti’s sonnets strike us not only as beautiful poems, but as very finished specimens of the sonnet. He seems to have attained to the Italian delicacy of the best of the Elizabethan sonneteers, without loss of originality and force. He is, however, perhaps rather too fond of fretting the melody of his lines by a harsh emphasis, which, effective enough in a liquid medium like Italian, is rather trying to the naturally broken music of the English tongue. An example of this may be noted in the sixth line of the following very beautiful sonnet. He has called it “Inclusiveness”—a title with which we venture to quarrel, for the phenomenon described is not a quality of anything, but a fact or law; we would substitute, in spite of its technical flavor, “Introsusception.”
“The changing guests, each in a different mood Sit at the roadside table and arise: And every life among them in like wise Is a soul’s board set daily with new food. What man has bent o’er his son’s sleep, to brood How that face shall watch his when cold it lies? Or thought, as his own mother kissed his eyes, Of what her kiss was when his father wooed?
May not this ancient room thou sit’st in, dwell In separate living souls for joy or pain? Nay, all its corners may be painted plain Where Heaven shows pictures of a life spent well; And may be stamped a memory all in vain, Upon the sight of lidless eyes in Hell.”
Here is an exquisite vindication of one of the least popular of the condemnations in the Syllabus—that of non‐intervention.
It is called “On the Refusal of Aid between Nations”:
“Not that the earth is changing, O my God! Nor that the seasons totter in their walk,— Not that the virulent ill of act and talk Seethes ever as a wine‐press ever trod,— Not therefore are we certain that the rod Weighs in thine hand to smite the world; though now Beneath thine hand so many nations bow, So many kings:—not therefore, O my God:— But because man is parcelled out in men Even thus; because, for any wrongful blow, No one not stricken asks, ‘I would be told Why thou dost strike’; but his heart whispers then, ‘He is he, I am I.’ By this we know That the earth falls asunder, being old.”
Mr. Rosetti has adopted, as we have already indicated, more fully than a Catholic could approve, a principle which is obtaining a very dangerous prominence amongst the rising generation of English poets, that art is justified of her children—that to the artist all things are chaste. Thus inevitably there are some lines one could wish unwritten, and more that one would not have every one read. Yet for all this the ethos of the book is chaste and noble, nor do we know any poet by whom purity is more honestly appreciated and worshipped. The volume is a remarkable example of the extent to which a love of the Madonna and the ascetic inspiration of Dante can counteract and restrain the growing sensuousness of English poetry.
If Mr. Rosetti is sometimes obscure, it is not that his touch is ever otherwise than delicate and precise, but because his art is rather the art of the musician than of the painter. His changes of key, so to speak, are so swift and subtle, and the harmonies with which the theme is clothed are so manifold and so quaint, that his compositions have sometimes the difficulty of a sonata of Beethoven, and require considerable familiarity before their proportions can be grasped. Indeed, we must confess that there are passages the meaning of which we despair of ever grasping with any precision; we must be content to accept them as a sort of hieroglyphic, for splendor or purity, like the scroll and lily‐work of a mediæval goldsmith. This is the more provoking, as obscurity is not here, as often in Mr. Browning’s poems, covered by an oracular use of certain crabbed expressions, which at least indicate the nut that is to be cracked, but coexists with a diction consistently pure and flowing.
Although we have compared Mr. Rosetti’s art to that of the musician rather than to that of the painter, we have been told that he is a painter of a high order. Anyhow, his fondness for painting is proved by the number of sonnets which he has made upon pictures, ancient and modern. We cannot more fitly conclude our review than with his sonnet, “For our Lady of the Rocks, by Leonardo da Vinci”:
“Mother, is this the darkness of the end, The shadow of death? and is that outer sea Infinite, imminent eternity? And does the death‐pang by man’s seed sustain’d In Time’s each instant cause thy face to bend Its silent prayer upon the Son, while he Blesses the dead with his hand silently To his long day which hours no more offend?
“Mother of grace, the pass is difficult, Keen as these rocks, and the bewildered souls Throng it like echoes, blindly shuddering through. Thy name, O Lord, each spirit’s voice extols, Whose peace abides in the dark avenue Amid the bitterness of things occult.”
For Ever.
Those we love truly never die, Though year by year the sad memorial‐wreath— A ring and flowers, types of life and death— Are laid upon their graves.
For death the pure life saves, And life all pure is love, and love can reach From heaven to earth, and nobler lessons teach, Than those by mortals read.
Well blest is he who has a dear one dead: A friend he has whose face will never change, A dear communion that will not grow strange: The anchor of a love is death.
The blessed sweetness of a loving breath Will reach our cheek all fresh through fourscore years: For her who died long since, ah! waste not tears— She’s thine unto the end.
Thank God for one dead friend, Whose mother‐face no miles of road or sea Or earthly bonds can hold apart from me— First friend in life and death.
Visit To An Artist’s Studio.
I do not know if, outside his own small circle of patrons and acquaintances, any one has heard of the artist Van Muyden. Yet hidden talent is none the less a divine gift because few know it; it gives a more pathetic interest to a life to know that it is a life harassed with care, vexed by non‐appreciation, hampered with poverty. Perhaps Van Muyden is only obscure because he would not lower his art to suit the dealers’ terms or the public taste. When I visited his studio, he was settled in a small house in the suburbs of Geneva, Switzerland. His own appearance was striking: the supple form, not very tall, but very spare; the large eyes that seemed to dart through you and search your soul, the high forehead, wrinkled and bald, told of a man with an intellect higher than that of his fellow‐men, an ideal enthroned beyond the region of which they know the bearings, and of the cares with which they can sympathize. He was a man past the prime of life, eager and enthusiastic—eccentric, perhaps, as the world’s estimate goes; but who is not?—I mean amongst those whose characteristics are worth studying at all. He wore over his vest and trowsers an old brown dressing‐gown, suggestive of the appearance one is used to connect with mediæval scholars and seers. His forte is not landscape‐painting, and, indeed, he seemed lost at Geneva, despite the southern beauty of its environs, for Van Muyden’s predilections were evidently for the representation of the human kind. But then, if it was man that he loved to copy, it was not broad‐cloth man, sleek, respectable, decorous, well‐off, but man as you find him in Italy or Spain—picturesque as his scanty surroundings; an unconscious artist, a born model; man imbued with the spirit of the sun‐god; man carolling and trilling without effort, believing himself born to sing like the birds; man in himself a study, a picture, a statue, a marvel.
Van Muyden explained his theories very freely, and they were well worth listening to.
“In the north, you see,” he said, “an artist is forced, if he wishes to be truthful, to copy a thousand pitiful details of upholstery. Such pictures are called genre; and this realistic, mathematical accuracy, utterly destructive of the picturesque, is lauded to the skies; but, good God! could not a Chinese do as well with his wonderful imitative faculty, altogether apart from the feeling of art? The North makes up for the picturesque by the comfortable; what a compensation for the artist! But modern art has more to contend with than vitiated taste or the loss of that free and natural life which in simpler times was more conducive to artistic inspiration; we have to struggle on without a school or a standard of taste. We no longer have those centres where the traditions of art were religiously kept; those high‐priests who gathered round them numerous and docile disciples, as of old the Athenian philosophers in the groves of Academe. Even in Italy, in Rome itself, no such centre can be found. A young artist has to make his own solitary way, pursue his ideal alone, keep up his enthusiasm by his own unaided exertions, and probably find neither patron nor master to care for his works or guide his attempts.”
The artist was surely right; for the great schools of painting were to art what the religious orders are to the church—centres towards which a vague vocation may be directed and find its true mission, with brethren to share its enthusiasm and superiors to guide its aspirations. Most of his pictures were Italian scenes, some domestic, but mostly treating of the monastic life. The cool cloister, with its ilex or orange‐trees seen cornerwise through the railings; the old portico, with a monk seated in meditation on the fragment of a sculptured pillar: the noon‐day siesta; the begging friar coming home with his sack of food; the preacher starting meekly, staff in hand, for the distant station where he is to preach a Lent; the novice arranging the altar; the monk digging his own grave in the sunny cloister, or washing the altar‐plate in the sparkling fountain, etc. etc.—such were chiefly the subjects chosen. Why? He was not a Catholic, this artist; but it seems to have come to him intuitively that there is more room for artistic expression and artistic liberty in things pertaining to the old church. His own studio was as perfect a picture as any he could have painted; a treasure‐house of antiquities carelessly displayed. It was lighted by two immense windows, one of which was shaded by a sort of slanting tester, throwing the light on the easel in the middle of the room. Between these windows stood a nondescript piece of furniture in carved oak, very black and old—a species of secrétaire, with an “extension” holding a small washing‐bowl, surmounted by a dolphin’s head, which was crowned for the nonce with a scarlet berrétta. Large jars of old porcelain were placed here and there, either on the ground or on substantial étagères, and two corners of the room were filled with high chests equally carved, on whose capacious tops rested a medley of distaffs, horns, helmets, old swords, a spinning‐wheel, and a confused mass of tattered garments or drapery, dingy and time‐stained, crimson cloaks, blue tunics, purple veils, etc. An array of pipes, hooked into the wall for security, stood on the high mantel‐piece, together with one of those common brass kitchen lamps in use at Rome, with four projections enclosing wicks, and whose shape has never been altered since the days when Nero rode in the arena and the Christians went calmly to the stake. On the unoccupied spaces on the wall hung the artist’s pictures, some few representing touching family scenes (all Italian) strewed among the monastic subjects. Right in the centre of the ceiling hung a movable apparatus, in which was placed a lamp—modern, alas! This came down quite close to the easel, and gave all the light required for night‐work. A carved table with curiously‐twisted legs, and two high‐backed mediæval arm‐chairs covered with tapestry, completed the furniture, besides a green baize stage for the models. This reminded me of the palco used for preaching in Italian churches, even when there is a proper pulpit; some of my readers may remember these miniature stages, raised about five feet from the floor, and on which the excited orator can promenade like a lion in his cage while hurling his burning periods at his awe‐stricken listeners. Van Muyden has a wife and nine children, which fact we ascertained through the reply to a question prompted by the enormous quantity of under‐linen hung out to dry on the balusters outside the studio. We did not see Mme. Van Muyden, and were thankful we did not; for such a reckless display of household secrets must argue a woman whose appearance would frighten romance out of the veriest sentimentalist that ever lived. So we speculated in silence on this domestic guardian of the artist’s peace—an excellent and worthy woman, no doubt, a capital house‐ keeper, a careful mother, a faithful wife, but scarcely a help‐mate, a companion, a Beatrice, to her husband. How few men of sensitive nature, high‐strung character, aspiring organization, have fit wives! Why is it that they generally take a fancy to peculiarly unsuitable women? Is it that they are so soft‐hearted that they cannot resist the attraction of the first pretty face they see, or so rapt above the reach of common interests that they form, as it were inevitably, an incongruous union, and only wake up to find themselves irretrievably tied to a showy slattern, or a plodding, unappreciative housewife? What perverse fairy casts her spell on the poor artist’s marriage‐day, and makes of the chime of his wedding‐ bells the knell of his possible fame?
Poverty is the safest ladye‐love for an artist, as one of Dante’s friends was always telling him. Artists and scholars are the Francis‐of‐Assisiums of the intellectual world, and the same bride as that spiritually wooed by the heroic voluntary beggar, is the most fitting companion for them. With her, at least, they can enjoy the perfect freedom from care which alone makes want supportable; they can throw around their destitution that halo of romance which the prosaic details of a household invariably strangle out of existence. But in the early choice of a wife more hopes go down, more aspirations are smothered, than those whose aim is worldly success and the favor of the great. The ideal is the victim par excellence; for the struggling artist, tied by his own hasty imprudence to a woman of inferior mould, soon feels the spark of genius die within him; the incentive to “do and dare” has dwindled down to the necessity of “earning and eating.” A woman with uncomprehensive soul peevishly reminds him at every moment of the world of matter, without even offering him the compensation of a blind and admiring worship of his talents in his own peculiar sphere; in short, he is a living example of the adage, “A man that’s married is a man that’s marred.”
Far be it from me to bring this reproach on any particular individual; but such was the train of thought naturally induced by the unsightly array of house‐linen hung like delusive flags of truce on the balusters of the artist’s home. Early marriage is undoubtedly best for the generality of men in the world, but it is intellectual ruin to artists. Let us wish them the rare fortune of a wife that will be a real helpmate to their higher and better selves, a staff to lean on up the thorny road to Parnassus, and then recommend early marriage; but unless such exceptions be found, let them beware of the fate typified by the prosaic decoration of Van Muyden’s abode at Geneva.
Visions.
The white stars gleamed in the jessamine bush, And the bright stars up in the sky, And Gilfillan stood at the garden‐gate, And so at the gate stood I.
The apple‐boughs bent as we lingered there, And showered their rosy rain— Is it all that shall fall in that pleasant path, If we meet at the gate again?
O Gilfillan gay! why seek away From lady‐love, kith, and kin The world’s Well‐done, or ’neath foreign sun The golden spurs to win?
O womanly heart! be still, be still! It is threescore years to‐day— And thou canst throb with this wild, wild tide, And I all withered and gray!
And Gilfillan’s bones ’neath the kirk‐yard stones Of a foreign and far‐off land— No preacher so loud of the coffin and shroud, And the house that is built on sand!
Oh! a rare, rare castle of human hope We builded aloft in our pride! And, oh! woe betide so weary a dream; For my lover is by my side.
We have known no partings, no weary years, We have known no days of sorrow; For I am but seventeen to‐day, And we shall be married to‐morrow!
A Word For Women.
By One Of Themselves.
It has been urged that women should refrain from writing for the public, and busy themselves with interests more strictly within their own domain than those of literature. The demand might claim respectful notice, if all women would give heed to it. Since they will not, is there any reason why those who employ their pens in the production of sensational stories and other demoralizing works should have the field all to themselves? Or is it right that others of equal ability should shrink from entering it in defence of religion and morality?
The space is ample for all combatants. Our learned and venerable doctors, stern champions of truth, who keep their logical and polemical lances ever poised to strike the foe, to demolish error, and force conviction upon minds firmly closed against less cogent weapons, need not fear being jostled by humble handmaidens of the same mistress, who have ventured within the lists. These may do good service, also, with a large class whom their telling blows shall fail to reach.
Our women and youth, who will read and be influenced for good or evil by “feminine literature,” cannot be amused with metaphysical discussions that gain an attentive hearing from men of philosophical tastes, or even by moral essays and reflections, however excellent and edifying.
Unfortunately, it is not a question of forming the tastes of readers. Alas! these are already formed by a vitiated literature, flowing from a godless system of education, and carrying the poison through the whole length of its course.
The only question is, Where shall the antidote be found, and how administered? Certainly not in moral lectures that will not be read, or in fiction of the goody‐goody sort.
Our only hope—and it is a bright one—for the future of our young Catholics lies in the blessed awakening—effected by the clear tones of that infallible voice which never, in any age, gave forth an uncertain sound—that is causing schools for Christian culture to spring up through the whole length and breadth of our country. But what for our children of a larger growth, whose tastes are already perverted?
We think it is unquestionable that, as the daughters of the first Eve, according to the flesh, have aided powerfully in commending the forbidden fruit to the lips of a deluded public, so the daughters of the second Eve, according to the spirit, may do much to remedy the consequences of the fatal banquet.
There are certain influences exercised almost exclusively by women. There are certain subjects to the consideration of which the flexibility of her nature enables her to bend her efforts with graceful success, and to far better purpose than the “stern masculinity” of man’s heart, head, and pen can compass.
Well, then, if women may write, it behooves them to treat of such matters, and in such manner, as shall secure readers. For our people must and will read. Right or wrong, it is a necessity of the age. From the abodes of wealth and leisure, in the metropolis of fashion, to village homes and rural firesides, our people must and will read. Happy for them if the nourishment their fevered imaginations so morbidly crave be at least harmless! A highly‐seasoned sensational literature has stimulated the craving to a degree of frenzy, if not to actual organic disease; happy, indeed, for them could such mental pabulum, such agreeable viands and cooling fruits, be furnished and accepted as would gradually assuage the wild thirst for excitement, until wholesome correctives should become palatable!
To secure success in tilling the field from which so desirable a harvest is to be gathered, the most conscientious writers must be content, however they may deplore the necessity, to sharpen their plough‐shares in the camps of these Philistines of literature. With no blunt implement can the soil be compelled to yield such harvest.
We may furnish entertaining and edifying biographies, and gain a few readers. For this department women are by nature peculiarly fitted, if they will guard against the tendency to exaggeration which is their besetting sin. But for one reader of such a book there will be fifty, even among Catholics, who will prefer the demoralizing trash in cheap newspapers and dime novels to the best biography that can be produced.
Truth should be presented in a sharp and, to use a phrase of the times, taking way which shall compel a hearing. The popular absurdities and glaring depravities of this “enlightened XIXth century” should be set forth with vehement energy and convincing force.
It is no shadow, but a real, all‐pervading, soul‐destroying power with which the Christian athlete of this day is brought into close conflict. The foe must be met by an attitude as firmly hostile to its evil enticements as it assumes against all good influences. “Beating the air” will win no victory. Seeking to compromise or modify the stern principles of eternal truth held and proclaimed by the Catholic Church from first to last will only ensure defeat.
If our women join in the struggle to resist the forces of infidelity which threaten to overwhelm our sons and daughters in temporal and eternal ruin, and, in their zealous enthusiasm, step beyond the sphere of domestic privacy and humble retirement that is happily their own; if some literary Judith even throws off for the moment the delicate tenderness of her sex, and seems to pass the limits of female decorum to strike off the head a leading Holofernes, let us not cry, Out upon her for such unwomanly act! Let us reflect that it would have been more in accordance with her nature and inclination to have remained quietly in her sequestered home and at her ease, if she could have forgotten the fearful interests that were at stake.
What woman could look on with apathy when husband, brother, or child was exposed to certain death, from which her strongest effort might possibly snatch the dear one, or listen to the remonstrance that it was unbecoming and improper for a woman to put forth such effort, and that it must prove a very feeble and faulty one at the best? And shall we ask her to fold her hands in ease, and remain silent in fitting retirement, when the souls of her beloved are exposed to eternal death? No; it is her inalienable right to speak and act when by word or deed she may possibly rescue souls.
Should sentiments of mere human feeling, and affections from which it is most difficult to detach the heart of woman, enter into, imbue, and even control the means she uses to promote interests dearer than mortal life, she has nothing to fear but the critics. Her heavenly Judge will never condemn her for using such weapons as he has endowed her withal in his holy cause.
Honey is sometimes better than vinegar, feminine sentiment often more effective than masculine wisdom, and fervor always to be preferred to apathy.
We need not fear that the Catholic woman will be carried too far by her fervent zeal in resisting the “spirit of the age.” She can never be led into the mistakes of the so‐called “strong‐minded.” Our vigilant and loving mother, the Holy Catholic Church, arms her daughters with invulnerable shields against all fanaticism. She holds also in her hands the power to sanctify all influences by which souls are attracted to her embrace; to transmute all metals into gold.
If an appeal to the sentimental and emotional element in the heart of a stranger to her fold has drawn the wanderer to her maternal bosom, her gentle, all‐prevailing inspiration soon condenses feeling into principle, and the romantic visionary stands clothed in the panoply of a martyr.
If fitting words bravely spoken have called hither a soul from the slough of transcendentalism, spiritism, free love, or from the ranks of the “strong‐minded,” there is no fear that it may prove less docile to the genial influence than that of the dreamer, or fail to be speedily invested with all the delicate attributes and simple dignity of the true woman.
All honor to the Catholic women in our own country and in Great Britain who are striving, each in her own way, to promote the interests of a sound and truly Catholic literature. When there were but few of these in America, our sisters beyond the Atlantic reached their hands across the great waters to rescue souls. It will be known only at the great accounting day how many they first attracted to the consideration of eternal verities. From that time they have increased in number, and have continued to enrich British Catholic literature by their contributions, while encouraging their American co‐workers.
A feminine Catholic literature may not be faultless, and yet gain numerous readers, and prove a power for good, not only within the church, but beyond her pale. Women are human, and therefore liable to imperfection.
When we notice the faults of female writers, we must not forget the difficulties which encompass them. Few American women who write are exempt from a multitude of vexatious household cares, or even from kitchen drudgery. Many are oppressed with poverty, have no power to earn a subsistence but by the pen, with helpless families dependent upon their literary exertions. Among the most favored, scarcely one can be found who has not some invalid—a husband, parent, or child—who requires her attentions by night and day. It may be safely asserted that such literary leisure as men devoted to these pursuits ordinarily enjoy is unknown to American women. With all their disadvantages, the marvel is, not that their performances should be imperfect, but that they have really accomplished so much under the shadow of the crowding cares and duties which surround them in their various domestic relations.
Let them take courage, then, and persevere in their laudable efforts, striving diligently to make the productions of their pens more and more perfect. And to this end let them bestow their cordial smiles and most graceful bows of acknowledgment upon their best friends—the critics who will take the pains to examine and pass honest and intelligent verdicts upon their productions. Acute criticism is the purging fire of literature, without which it would soon become overburdened with nonsense. As the friend who kindly admonishes us of our faults is entitled to the warmest corner in our hearts, so the critic who frankly sets forth the defects of any production may justly claim the most sincere gratitude of its author.
STATE CHARITIES AID ASSOCIATION. Report of a Committee on a new Bellevue Hospital. New York: American Church Press Co., 4 St. Mark’s Place. 1874.
This pamphlet is worth reading by all who are interested in hospitals. The need of reformation in this branch of philanthropic work is only too well proved. The gentlemen and ladies who interest themselves in the care of the sick poor merit both honor and gratitude. All that is written or done, however, by the most zealous and disinterested persons who seek to accomplish their end outside of the Catholic Church only adds to the evidence that the church alone is competent to deal with great social evils and miseries. The state is cold, selfish, and merciless, except so far as it is Christianized. Mercenaries are always lacking in the qualities necessary to secure a truly faithful and charitable care of the sick and miserable. Division among those who are seeking to carry out the precepts of Christian charity, and the want of organization and of religious institutions among those who are out of the one true church, paralyze their efforts. It is only Christian unity which can give the proper remedy for this lamentable state of things, and without Catholic faith and obedience this unity is impossible. Religious orders are alone capable of carrying out great works of charity, and they cannot exist and flourish except in the Catholic Church. If modern society does not return to the bosom of the church, its evils are incurable, however much individuals may do in a partial way. Nevertheless, these partial and imperfect efforts ought to be encouraged; and during this past winter we have had occasion to admire and rejoice in the outflow of a stream of beneficence upon our suffering population in New York which has relieved an immense amount of misery. In so far as the special subject of this pamphlet is concerned, it is obvious that the erection of a new Bellevue Hospital is imperatively demanded, and we trust that it will be accomplished.
UNIVERSITE LAVAL. SIXIEME CENTENAIRE DE SAINT THOMAS D’AQUIN A S. HYACINTHE ET A QUEBEC. Quebec: Coté et Cie. 1874.
We are rejoiced to see that the six‐hundredth anniversary of S. Thomas was celebrated with due splendor and solemnity in at least these two places on the American continent. The same was done in private at the college of the Jesuits, at Woodstock. The Quebec pamphlet, besides the two excellent discourses of M. l’Abbé Bégin and the Rev. F. Prior Bourgeois, O.S.D., contains a very remarkable poem by a religious of the Congregation of the Precious Blood at S. Hyacinthe. We tender our thanks for the courtesy of the friend who sent us this interesting memorial of a religious fête which does honor to the taste and piety of the devout and cultivated Catholics of Lower Canada.
The two discourses contained in the pamphlet are of a high order of excellence in regard both to thought and diction. We have accidentally omitted to notice among the other discourses that of Professor Pâquèt, which is fully worthy of the brilliant occasion on which it was delivered, viz., the soirée which took place in the evening in the grand hall of the university.
TRUE TO TRUST. London: Burns & Oates. 1874. (New York: Sold by The Catholic Publication Society.)
This story, the epoch of which is placed during the reign of Henry VIII., is almost worthy of Lady Georgiana Fullerton, and its style frequently reminds us of that accomplished writer of fiction. The character of Catharine Tresize is truly beautiful and original. We recommend this story as one of the best which has lately appeared.
IN SIX MONTHS; OR, THE TWO FRIENDS. By Mary M. Meline. Baltimore: Kelly, Piet & Co. 1874.
The story of the two friends, who are two young Americans converted to Catholicity in Europe, has the advantage of appearing upon tinted paper, in a neat form, suitable to the polished, ornate diction and poetic fancy of the lady author, a near relative of the late Mr. Meline, who was one of our favorite contributors. Miss Meline has a cultivated literary taste and a decided talent for writing stories. She has, moreover, the genuine Catholic spirit of fervent devotion to the Holy Father, and in the present story describes some scenes connected with the invasions of Rome under Garibaldi and La Marmora. We trust Miss Meline will not suffer her pen to lie idle, but keep it busily at work.
DR. COXE’S CLAIMS TO APOSTOLICITY REVIEWED. Right Rev. Bishop Ryan’s Reply to the Attack of the Episcopal Prelate. Buffalo: Catholic Publication Co. Price 15 cents.
Dr. Coxe is a prelate who has always been conspicuous for arrogance and reckless assertion in maintaining the pretensions of the High Church party in the Protestant Episcopal denomination, and for his vituperative and defamatory assaults on the Catholic Church. In this temperate but severe criticism, Bishop Ryan has made an end of his claims to possess episcopal character and mission, and has refuted him out of his own mouth. We trust that this able and valuable pamphlet will not be permitted to go into oblivion, as pamphlets are wont to do, but be carefully preserved and made use of by clergymen and others who have to deal with Episcopalians searching after the true church, of whom there are so many in these days.
COUNT DE MONTALEMBERT’S LETTERS TO A SCHOOLFELLOW. 1827‐1830. Translated from the French by C. F. Audly. London: Burns & Oates. 1874. New York: Sold by The Catholic Publication Society.
Goethe somewhere remarks that many of an author’s best thoughts are to be found in his letters to his intimate friends; written, not for the public, not for fame but from the strong desire to communicate that which is most living within him to a kindred spirit.
In the confidential correspondence of great minds there is a yet greater charm. We feel a kind of personal interest in men who have exercised great intellectual power over us; they become our heroes, and we endow them with imaginary qualities, from lack of more certain information concerning them. The minutest details in their lives become to us affairs of moment. How they looked, how they dressed, what they thought about the most trifling subjects, seem to us to be matters worthy of becoming a part of history. There is a still higher interest in the story of the unfolding of a powerful intellect. It contains a lesson in psychology more instructive than any which can be learned from abstract treatises on this subject. This it is that gives the chief value to autobiographies of philosophers, poets, and theologians. Yet an autobiography can never be a mirror in which we may behold the workings of the human mind. It is an after‐ thought, a reflex judgment, the expression of what men now think they once felt or thought. It does not give us the process of intellectual growth, but a theory concerning what that process must have been; and a theory formed by the individual concerning the flux and reflux of the currents of his own life can never be wholly trustworthy. Autobiography is necessarily subject to all the vices inherent in special pleading.
The truest history of the intellectual and moral development of a man is to be found in his letters to his intimate friends. There we have, not what in after‐years he thinks he thought and felt, but what he really did think and feel; and in this view of the matter, the egotism which is always so prominent in letters to friends gives them an additional value. Instead of being offended with the writer for talking so much about himself, we are grateful for the weakness which gives us a truer insight into his character.
These considerations will prepare our readers for a favorable criticism upon the volume before us. Few men have lived to whom we more gladly give the homage of admiration and respect than to Charles de Montalembert; and though we strongly condemn certain words which he uttered when his mind was troubled by suffering and disease, and which, had he lived longer, he himself would have been the first to wish unsaid, he was yet so great a man that we willingly forget that he made this blunder.
These Letters, of which Mr. Audly has given us an excellent English translation, were first published in the Contemporain (June, 1872, to March, 1873).
They run from 1827 to 1830, and, as the work of a youth from his seventeenth to his twentieth year, are of course fresh, frank, and ardent; but they also reveal in the future orator and historian a depth of feeling and a command of language rarely to be met with in one of so tender an age.
They are addressed to M. Léon Cornudet, whom Montalembert calls the friend of his soul, his dearest friend; to whom he is bound by a common sympathy in every noble feeling and high aim; whom nor time nor absence can make him even for one moment forget. What chiefly strengthens him in his faith in the permanency of this friendship is the fact that it is based on religion, which becomes the immortal mediatrix between his soul and that of his friend.
When he travels and contemplates the beauties of nature, his only regret is that his friend is not near him; when he reads a poem, and his soul is borne aloft on the wings of inspiration, he exclaims, “Oh! if he were but here to share my delight.” He never dreams of the future, of battling for religion and freedom, of victories won and defeats nobly borne, that he does not behold his friend by his side; and when, picturing to himself the vicissitudes of life, he imagines that possibly, in spite of his high resolves and strong purposes, he may fail, may be doomed to obscurity and the contempt of the world, he seeks for consolation in the thought that in the heart of his friend he will find a better world.
His friend is, as it were, his other self, which gives to him a twofold life; making him feel always that “joy was born a twin,” and that all who joy would win must share it, and that sorrow, too, longs to pour itself into the heart of love.
This strong friendship—“the only impulse of the soul admitting of excess”—which, like a thread of gold, runs through all these letters, wins at once our sympathy and our confidence.
There is something noble and great in the youth who is capable of such pure and deep love. After all, it is the heart that reaches highest and deepest, and through it man attains to the best.
Of course there is in these letters much that is immature; were it not so, they would not be the letters of a mere boy; but the infinite faith in the possibility of divine realities even on earth, the lofty contempt for what is mean and ignoble, the self‐confidence that never doubts of itself, the restless activity that no work satisfies, the boundless craving for knowledge, the freshness of the heart that falls like dew upon every lovely thing, giving it health and beauty—all this so charms and delights us that we have no eye for defects.
“A contempt for life,” he writes to his friend, “is, in my opinion, the finest privilege of youth. As we grow older, the more we cling to a frail existence which becomes a burden to ourselves and to others.”
What has experience that can compensate for the loss of
“The love of higher things and better days; The unbounded hope, and heavenly ignorance Of what is called the world, and the world’s ways; The moments when we gather from a glance More joy than from all future pride or praise Which kindle manhood, but can ne’er entrance The heart in an existence of its own”?
Young Montalembert, with wealth and noble birth, which gave him the entrée of the highest circles, found no charm in what is called society. His mind was too serious, his ambition too lofty, to permit him to throw away the precious time of youth in frivolous amusements.
“People usually say,” he writes to his friend during the summer vacations of 1827, “that in youth we ought to give ourselves up to the pleasures of society. In my opinion, this amounts to downright absurdity. I should think that in youth we ought to plunge into study or into the profession we wish to embrace. When a man has done his duty towards his country; when he can come before the world with laurels won in the senate or on the field of battle, or at least when he enjoys universal esteem; when, again, he is sure of commanding universal esteem and respect, then I can understand that he has a right to enjoy himself in society, and to mix in it with assurance.”
Montalembert had a passion for labor, which is the only sure road to excellence and power, and which is also the greatest evidence of ability.
We find him, when not yet ten years old, shut up in his grandfather’s library, acting as his secretary, helping him in the designs of his geographical maps, and absorbed in the study of the great English orators; and later, at college, giving up his recreations, and devoting fifteen hours a day to the severest mental discipline. By saving five minutes every morning in his cell at Sainte‐Barbe out of the time allowed to the pupils for rising and dressing, he managed in one year to translate a whole volume of Epictetus. He spent a portion of the summer vacation of 1827 at La Roche‐Guyon, the country‐seat of the Duc de Rohan; and though the castle was filled with guests, for whom the duke provided every kind of amusement, this intrepid young worker is able to write the following lines to his friend:
“While you are idling your time away, pray just hear what I shall have read during my month’s residence at La Roche: in the first place, all Byron, which is no trifling job; Delolme, on the British Constitution—a capital and highly important work; the whole of the Odyssey, twenty‐four cantos, at the rate of one a day; Thomson, Cowper, Pliny’s Letters; the Lettres Provinciales; the Life of S. Francis Xavier, by Bouhours, which the duke obliged me to read; three volumes of the Mercure newspaper; and, lastly, the poetical part of the Greek Excerpta.”
Even in Stockholm, whither he went in 1828 with his father, who had been appointed French ambassador to the court of Sweden, he is able, in the midst of the endless and tiresome routine of court etiquette, to devote six or seven hours a day to study. “In the morning,” he writes, “I read Kant, whom I study deeply, not finding him over‐difficult in the beginning. At night I plod in detail over Northern history. In the afternoon I devote all the time I can catch to my correspondence, to reading a few German poems and novels, and to certain statistical or political studies.”
Not content with working himself, he seeks to rouse the flagging energies of his friend by pointing out to him’ what great things he may be able to do for God and his country. The ruling passion in Montalembert’s heart, in these early years as during his whole life, was the love of the church and of freedom.
“Religion, liberty,” he writes—“such are the eternal groundworks of all virtue. To serve God, to be free—such are our duties. In order to fulfil them, we must use every resource, every means, which Providence has placed in our hands.” And again: “I have succeeded in preserving my faith in the midst of one hundred and twenty infidels; I hope that God will not allow me to lose my independence of mind in the midst of half a dozen absolutists.”
And then he pictures to himself the great good which might be accomplished by a writer who, bidding defiance to the prejudices of youth and the public, would raise a bold and eloquent voice in defence of freedom and the church. “What a noble part he would have to play!” he exclaims. “What blessings he would confer upon mankind! What services he would render to religion! Ah! wherefore has not God deigned to give me talent? With what passionate ardor I would have embraced such a glorious future!” Who does not perceive here how the thoughts of the boy were father to the deeds of the man?
No author of our time has written more feelingly or eloquently of Ireland than Montalembert. He was drawn to her by a double attraction—he loved her for her faith, and he sympathized with her because she was wronged. The finest portion of his history of The Monks of the West is that devoted to the Irish saints. Nothing could be more beautiful or more consoling than the noble pages which he has devoted to this subject. As his Histoire de Sainte Elisabeth opened a new path across the vast field of Catholic history, his studies on S. Columba and S. Columbanus called attention to the wealth of religious poetry and Christian example which was suffered to remain buried in the archives of the early Irish Church. In these letters we perceive the first awakening of his love for Ireland, and are able to trace the causes which led him to study the history of that most interesting but unhappy land.
“By reading the admirable speeches of Grattan,” he writes in 1828, “I have discovered, as it were, a new world—the world of Ireland, of her long‐ sufferings, her times of freedom and glory, her sublime geniuses, and her indefatigable struggles. The universal interest now felt for Ireland, and the remarkable circumstances in which she is placed at present, have tempted me to unfold before the eyes of those Frenchmen who care for Ireland the highly interesting annals and the sundry revolutions of her history. My Irish parentage on my mother’s side, my deep knowledge of English, and my acquaintance with several families in that country have confirmed my first ideas on this matter, and I have determined upon writing a history of Ireland from the year 1688, and to do it as soon as possible, in order that it may be published, if that can be done, before the vital question of the emancipation is solved. There is perhaps no country presenting such a plentiful harvest of events equally interesting and unknown.”
Montalembert was in Sweden when he wrote this letter, and he at once sent to England for books, that he might without delay set to work on his proposed history of Ireland. In addition to this, he proposed at the end of the year to visit Ireland itself, that he might consult libraries and make a thorough study of the people and country. This somewhat ambitious project of the youthful Montalembert led to no other immediate results than an article on Ireland in the Revue Française, and a journey to the Emerald Isle in 1830; but to it we are no doubt in part indebted for the eloquent chapters on the Irish Saints in The Monks of the West. His first letter from Ireland to his friend is full of the enthusiasm with which the history of that country had inspired him:
“As for the Irishwomen,” he writes, “they are bewitching. They form the most beautiful female population I ever beheld. But I reserve all my remarks on the country and the people for our conversations in Paris. For the present I must simply beg of you to pray that my passion for Ireland may not become criminal, for it threatens really to lead me astray from the lawful object of my affections; and I am but too often tempted to turn away my thoughts from our France to a country so completely responding to my beliefs, my tastes, and even my most trifling prepossessions.”
He visited the county Wicklow in September, 1830, and wrote to his friend from the “meeting of the waters in the vale of Avoca.” “No, never,” he exclaims, “in France, England, the Netherlands, or even in Germany, have I met with anything comparable to the wild and picturesque defiles of this Wicklow County.... Only figure to yourself the grandest and yet the most lovely landscape; torrents abounding in numberless cascades, struggling to make their way through perpendicular rocks; forests of almost fabulous depths; meadows and swards full worthy of the Emerald Isle; and then old abbeys, modern residences, and lodges built in the purest Gothic style. Place, moreover, in such a landscape, the most pious, most cheerful, most poetical population in the world. Then, again, say to yourself that Grattan passed his childhood here; that he meditated his speeches along these torrents; that one of these residences was bestowed on him by his fatherland, and that therein he lived in his old age; that all these beautiful lands were sanctified and immortalized by the Rebellion of 1798. Well, figure to yourself all this, and you will still have but a faint idea of what I have felt for the last few days.”
As in his eyes Irishwomen were the most beautiful, and Irish scenery the most lovely, he was prepared to admire enthusiastically the men of the country. At Carlow College he dined with the celebrated Bishop Doyle and several of his professors, who, he says, received him with a truly Homeric hospitality.
“I really don’t know,” he writes, “which I ought to admire most, the people or the clergy. I feel confounded at the sight of this people, equally faithful—as I said in my article, whilst myself hardly believing it—equally faithful to its old misery and to its old faith, who, of all the possessions of their forefathers, have preserved nothing but their religion, the only relic snatched from the conqueror, without ever allowing themselves to be carried away by the invincible attraction of imitation.... As for the priests, they are all model priests—manly, open, cheerful, energetic. No hypocrisy, no assumed reserve, to be read on their candid and serene countenances; they talk of freedom with all the buoyancy of a Paris school‐boy, and of their country, of their dear and unfortunate Ireland, with an accent that would melt a heart of stone. One can see that over their hearts religion and patriotism hold equal sway. Indeed, in order to comprehend fully what patriotism is, one must hear an Irish priest talk of his country.”
It is a mistake to affirm, as has been done, that Montalembert made this journey to Ireland merely, or chiefly even from a desire to see O’Connell.
The great Liberator had indeed fired his young heart with enthusiasm, and he rode sixty miles through a dreary country to have the pleasure of talking with him; but from these letters it is evident that a feeling, higher and more general than any which could be inspired by an individual, however great, had drawn him to the Isle of Saints. At Derrynane he found O’Connell, surrounded by his twenty‐three children and nephews, looking like a plain country farmer. “I was struck,” he writes, “but not dazzled, by him. He is by no means the most interesting object in Ireland.”
He heard O’Connell speak, and, in spite of his enthusiastic and impressionable nature, was disappointed.
“He is but a demagogue,” he tells his friend, “and by no means a great orator. He is declamatory, inflated, full of bombast; his arguments are loosely strung together; his fancy is devoid of charm or freshness; his style harsh, rough, and choppy. The more I see of him, the more I hear him, the more I am confirmed in my first opinion—to wit, he is not stamped with the mark of genius or with true greatness. But he defends the finest of all causes. He has before him no mighty antagonist or rival, and circumstances—as is the case with many others—will stand him in lieu of genius.”
We have given our readers but a faint idea of the warmth, and glow, and freshness that pervade these letters; of the frank and unaffected candor with which their youthful author lays open his whole heart to his friend; of the deep spirit of religion and reverence which runs through them; of the noble sentiments and generous resolves which, as from an inexhaustible fountain, well up from young Montalembert’s heart. In reading them, we have felt our own heart grow younger and kindle with new fire; we have seemed to catch the accent of the olden time, when men lived for honor, and were glad to die for faith and truth, rather than the metallic tone of this age, “when only the ledger lives, and when only not all men lie.”
We know of no book which we would more gladly see in the hands of our Catholic youth who lack enthusiasm and are without the courage which a noble and high purpose in life can alone give.
They need the education which will lift them above low and petty aims, and cause them to take an interest in things of an unselfish kind. They must learn that worth is more than success, and honor better than wealth; they must be taught to outgrow the narrow, calculating spirit of the huckster and the shopkeeper, the disposition to sneer at enthusiasm and to depreciate high principles of action; and to this end we know of nothing that is likely to contribute more effectually than the example and writings of such men as Montalembert, who devoted the labor of a lifetime to high aims and noble purposes; who loved the truth for its own sake, and freedom, not for himself alone, but for all men; who never worshipped the rising sun or paid court to success, but fought for the just cause without stopping to reflect whether he would win or lose.
“Let us never forget,” said Montalembert, towards the end of his life, speaking to his friend—“let us never forget that Rio, when we were young, cultivated enthusiasm within our souls, and for such a blessing we must be bound to him by the deepest gratitude.” This is a debt which many a Catholic to‐day, not in France alone, but throughout the world, owes to Charles de Montalembert.
THE CONSOLING THOUGHTS OF S. FRANCIS OF SALES. Gathered from his writings and arranged in order by the Rev. Père Huguet. Boston: Patrick Donahoe. 1874.
This work is really beyond the scope of the reviewer or the critic, as it is made up wholly from the writings of a great saint. To every one who knows the works of S. Francis of Sales, it will be a fresh pleasure to see such well‐arranged parts of them in an English dress. Père Huguet has had the happy thought of choosing from the saint’s spiritual treatises everything that could console the sorrowful, strengthen the weak, and encourage the doubtful. The translator made it a labor of love to put these thoughts within the reach of many millions of English‐speaking people. S. Francis has been read and admired by every one, within or without the church; and there is between him and the modern mind a peculiar sympathy which makes him essentially welcome to men of our day. Non‐Catholics would call him a thoroughly reasonable saint. Everywhere his counsel will be found on the side of moderation. The “smoking flax” and the “bruised reed” need not fear him; his gentle touch is the very thing they require. The care with which Père Huguet has made this compilation is apparent; for though the sentences that compose one page may, as he says, have been taken from twenty various treatises, they all follow each other in admirable order. The author has also supplemented them with footnotes, consisting of appropriate passages from other spiritual writers, ancient and modern, bearing on the same subjects as those treated of by S. Francis. A few of these notes are signed with no name, and are probably the adapter’s own. S. Francis has a wonderful power of expressing spiritual truths in little terse sayings that might well be called proverbs. A few quotations will give an idea of this peculiarity of his style:
“Persecutions are pieces of the cross of Jesus Christ; we should scruple very much to allow the smallest particle of them to perish.”
“It is not with spiritual rose‐bushes as with material ones; on the latter, the thorns remain and the roses pass away; on the former, the thorns pass away and the roses remain.”
“It is necessary that all these sentiments should sink deep into our hearts, and that, leaving our reflections and our prayers, we should pass to our affairs sweetly, lest the liquor of our good resolutions should evaporate and be lost, for we must allow it to saturate and penetrate our whole soul; everything, nevertheless, without strain of mind or body.”
Some very beautiful thoughts will be found on death, and the sorrow of the living for the loss of their dear ones; also some merciful and encouraging conjectures on the number of the saved, which S. Francis thinks will be the greater number of Christians.
SERMONS, LECTURES, ETC., ETC., OF THE REV. MICHAEL B. BUCKLEY, (LATE) SS. PETER AND PAUL’S, CORK. Boston: Patrick Donahoe. 1874.
This volume, containing the literary remains of the lamented F. Buckley, will, we have no doubt, be well received by his numerous friends both here and in Ireland. Though a young man, he had earned a high reputation as a speaker and a writer; and the contents of this volume prove that his reputation was not undeserved.
The subjects of the sermons and lectures are varied and interesting, and are, for the most part, well handled. The memoir of the devoted young priest attached to the volume will be found edifying and instructive, and the whole book we deem well worthy the careful perusal of both clergy and laity.
NOVENA TO OUR LADY OF LOURDES; WITH AN ACCOUNT OF THE APPARITION. From the French Edition. Approved by the Bishop of Tarbes. Baltimore: John Murphy & Co. 1874.
The devotion to Our Lady of Lourdes has spread so rapidly, and miraculous favors coming from it have become so common, even in this country, that this little book is extremely welcome, and will, no doubt, be very popular. It cannot fail, also, to do much good by making the apparition more generally known, and increasing the love of the faithful for Our Lady, and their confidence in her intercession.
MEDITATIONS ON THE HOLY EUCHARIST. By Brother Philippe, Superior‐ General of the Brothers of the Christian Schools. Translated from the French. West Chester: New York Catholic Protectory. 1873.
All who are acquainted with other meditations by the lately‐deceased and much‐regretted Brother Philippe will not need to be assured of the excellence of the present work. We have eighty‐two meditations on the Eucharist, admirably chosen and thought out. Among them we are delighted to see one entitled “The Holy Eucharist and the Most Blessed Virgin,” and another upholding “Frequent Communion.”
Subjoined to these meditations are some on the Sacred Heart of Jesus, by the same author. These are twenty‐four in number, and will prove of service for instructions and conferences to sodalities of the Sacred Heart.
May our glorious Lady, to whom this volume is dedicated, secure it the reception it deserves. We have never seen anything to surpass these Meditations, which Brother Philippe has left us as a precious legacy.
SNATCHES OF SONG. By Mary A. McMullen (Una). St. Louis: Published by Patrick Fox, No. 14 South Fifth Street. 1874.
There are several reasons which incline us to speak favorably of this book of poems. The first, perhaps, is the appearance of its printed pages, which are neatly executed upon tinted paper. We notice, also, that the red on the edges does not rub off on our fingers, which is a great source of satisfaction to one who is obliged to handle new books. On turning the book over, it occurs to us that green muslin does not form a pleasant contrast with red edges; but as we notice a gilded harp and shamrock on the cover, the arrangement of color is perhaps intended to be typical of the sentiments of the authoress.
The book‐noticer—for we shall not claim the august title of critic—pauses with instinctive reverence at sight of the works of a poet, and, above all, of a poetess. The rhymes must be either good or bad. If good, how shall he condense the ecstasies, the harmonies, of one volume into the prosaic compass of a notice? If bad, how shall he run the risk of breaking by rude treatment the strings of a lyre which is perhaps just working into tune, or inflict a wound on those gushing hearts which sing with the birds or bubble with the brooks? In the present instance, we are glad to be able to say that the verses are not bad. The writer has talent. While there is no marked or striking originality in the subjects chosen, and not much of deep and moving pathos, there are many well‐turned and pretty stanzas, and at times quite a wealth of imagery and illustration. The lines on “The Nightingale,” “To Cashel,” “The Wayside Shrine,” will furnish instances of this; and the volume will be found agreeable to lovers of poetry. The writer deserves to be encouraged. We wish her success in the fortune of her volume.
There is, however, a tone in some of the strains which grates somewhat upon our ears. Although no one suffers from the abuse of arbitrary power as greatly as the holy church, it is not her spirit to seek relief by violence, nor is this permitted to her children, even under oppressive tyranny, excepting when it promises to be a true remedy. There is much more to be feared in these days from the spirit of lawlessness and rebellion than from intelligent submission to governments, even when imperfect in form and unjust in practice. Our Holy Father, while branding with his apostolic eloquence the iniquities of which he is the victim, has forbidden violent resistance, for the time being, to the oppressors of Italy. The Catholics of Germany, under the most diabolical tyranny, have not sought relief by agitating insurrection. And while we do not propose to submit to injustice, or to call bad things by good names, we will never wilfully stain our hands by unnecessary bloodshed. Under these circumstances, the “Hymn to Liberty,” page 39, strikes us as a piece of heated declamation.
Some lines which we have noted at intervals, and which seem to look forward to the emancipation of Ireland as the work of the sword, though highly gratifying to martial spirits, will not wholly commend themselves to those friends of Ireland who are now seeking it by peaceful means, and tread in the paces of the great O’Connell. There is no beauty without truth; and those who lose sight of it, even in minor details, run the risk of a false inspiration. We are glad to notice, on the other hand, several poems in the volume full of Catholic thought and piety. As for the melodies, harmonies, etc., before alluded to, those who wish for them must lay aside our notice and read the book.
THE PARADISE OF GOD; or, The Virtues of the Sacred Heart of Jesus. By a Father of the Society of Jesus. Baltimore: John Murphy & Co. London: R. Washbourne. 1874. (New York: Sold by The Catholic Publication Society).
The idea of this book is to show that the lovers of the Sacred Heart find in that “masterpiece of creation” an Eden more beautiful than that from which sin expelled us. The various chapters treating of the “Virtues,” will be read with delight by all who are capable of appreciating them. The book is one of the “Messenger Series,” and uniform with the Happiness of Heaven and God Our Father—two works which have been widely read.
Books and Pamphlets Received.
From D. & J. SADLIER & Co., New York: Sadliers’ Catholic Directory, Almanac, and Ordo for 1874. 12mo.
From the AUTHOR: The Anæsthetic Revelation and the Gist of Philosophy. By Benj. P. Blood. 8vo. pp. 37.
From J. MURPHY & CO., Baltimore: Circular of the Catholic Commissioner for Indian Missions, to the Catholics of the United States. Paper, 8vo, pp. 14.
From COMPTON & CO., Halifax, N. S. The Evil of our Day: A Lecture by Rev. A. Chisholm. 8vo, pp. 15.
From the AUTHOR: Speech of Hon. N. P. Chipman in the House of Representatives, Feb. 28, 1874. Paper, 12mo, pp. 31.
From METCALF & CO., Northampton: Sixth Annual Report of the Clarke Institution for Deaf Mutes. Paper, 8vo, pp. 40.
From C. LANGE & CO., New York: Fourth Annual Report of the Manhattan Eye and Ear Hospital. Paper, 12mo, pp. 34.
From J. LOVELL, Montreal: The Labor and Money Questions. By Wm. Brown. Paper, 24mo, pp. 58.
From J. A. MCGEE: Ireland Among the Nations. By Rev. J. O’Leary, D.D. 12mo, pp. 208.
From SCRIBNER, ARMSTRONG & CO., New York: The History of Greece. By Prof. Dr. Ernst Curtius. Translated by A. W. Ward, M.A. Vol. IV. 12mo, pp. 530.
From P. FOX, St. Louis: Snatches of Song. By Mary A. McMullen (Una). 18mo, pp. 203.
From J. MURPHY & CO., Baltimore: The Paradise of God; or, The Virtues of the Sacred Heart of Jesus. By a Father of the Society of Jesus. 18mo, pp. 365.
From The NEW YORK CATHOLIC PROTECTORY, West Chester: Meditations on the Holy Eucharist, and Meditations on the Sacred Heart of Jesus. By Brother Philippe. 12mo, pp. xvi., 508, 153.
From P. DONAHOE, Boston: Holy Week in the Vatican. By Thomas Canon Pope. 12mo, pp. xxiv., 416.
THE CATHOLIC WORLD. VOL. XIX., NO. 111.—JUNE, 1874.
The Principles Of Real Being. VI. Principles of Nominal Realities.
There are beings which are called real, not because they have any special reality of their own, but only on account of their objective connection with real beings. Thus possibilities are called “real,” although the things possible have no formal existence and no actual essence; relations are called “real” when they have real terms and a real foundation, although they are not found to possess (unless they be transcendental) any new and special reality; distinction, too, is called “real” from the reality of those things that are distinct, although distinction in itself is neither a new thing nor aught of any real thing. Hence possibility, relation, and distinction are to be looked upon as entities having only a conventional reality, from which their denomination of “real” has been desumed. Let us therefore inquire what are the principles on which these nominal realities depend.
Principles of possible being.
It has been proved, in one of our preceding articles, that every created being is constituted of an act, of a potential term, and of their formal complement. It is now to be observed that an act, when conceived as ready to be produced and to actuate its term, is called a “first act”—actus primus; whilst the same act, when already produced and existing in its term, is called a “second act”—actus secundus. In the same manner, the potential term, or the potency, when conceived as ready to be first actuated by an act and to complete it, is called a “first potency”—potentia prima; whilst the same term, when already actuated and completing its act, receives the name of “second potency”—potentia secunda.(85)
When treating of being as possible, it is evident that we cannot consider its act as really actuating a term; for such a real actuation would immediately be followed by the real actuality of the being. Yet the quiddity of a possible being is always conceived through the same principles and the same ratios through which the quiddity of the actual being is conceivable. For a being is adequately possible when an act is terminable or can give existence, when a term is actuable or can receive existence, and when, from the concurrence of the two, one complete actuality can result. The act, the term, and the complement are therefore implied in the possible no less than in the actual being; with this difference, however: that in the actual being the act and the term are actually existing in one another, whereas in the possible being the act and the term are not really existing in one another, but only mentally conceived as ready to conspire into one common existence. In other words, in the actual being the act is a second act, the term is a second potency, and the complement is a real and formal result; whilst in the possible being the act is a first act, the term is a first potency, and the complement is a mere resultability.
Hence the intrinsic possibility of a being may be regarded under two correlative aspects—that is either as the terminability of a first act, or as the actuability of a first potency. Under the first aspect, possibility involves a positive reality, because it implies a real entity which is eminently (that is, in a more perfect manner) pre‐contained in the entity and power of its cause. Under the second aspect, possibility does not involve anything positive—unless we speak of the possibility of accidents, which require a positive subject—but only connotes something positive, to wit, the first act by which the term is to be formally actuated. Possibility, under this second aspect, and with reference to primitive beings, is nothing else than the potentiality with which we clothe nothingness when we conceive it as a term out of which beings are educed by creation; for nothingness thus conceived connotes the act by which the non‐existing term can be brought into being.
Every possible being has, therefore, a twofold incomplete possibility—the formal and the material. The formal consists in the terminability of a first act; the material in the actuability of its term; while the complete and adequate intrinsic possibility of the being is a simple result of the concurrence of the two.
It must be manifest, as a consequence from the preceding remarks, that a possible being is not truly, but only nominally, real. For its material possibility, or its possible term, is only an entity of reason, since it means nothing more than a non‐entity conceived as liable to actuation; and its formal possibility, or its possible act, although involving, as we have said, the notion of a positive reality eminently contained in the entity of the Creator, is still nothing formally in that line of reality to which we refer when we speak of its possibility. Thus the possibility of man, so far as it is eminently contained in the entity of the Creator, is no human entity at all, but simply God’s entity and power; just as the possibility of velocity, so far as it is eminently contained in the entity of its cause, is no formal velocity at all, but simply the entity and power of the agent by which the velocity can be brought into being. Certainly, the velocity with which a drop of rain falls to the ground has no formal existence in the earth which produces it, but only in the drop itself; it being evident that the attractive power of the earth is not velocity, but the principle of its production. And the same is to be said of any other effect inasmuch as it is eminently contained in its efficient cause. Nothing, therefore, that is merely possible has any formal being in its cause; whence it follows that whatever is merely possible is nothing more than an entity of reason—that is, an unreality—whether we consider its material or its formal possibility. All entities, in fact, of which the act and the term are beings of reason, can have no actuality but an actuality of reason. Hence possible beings are themselves only beings of reason, and have no reality, either physical or metaphysical. Why, then, are they called real? Certainly not for what they are, but simply because their possibility is the possibility of real beings. Many philosophers are wont to style them metaphysical realities; but this is a mistake, for all metaphysical reality implies existence.
Possibles, as mere beings of reason, have neither actuality nor formal unity, except in intellectual conception; whence it follows that they do not constitute number, except in intellectual conception. This inference is evident. For every multitude is made up of distinct units; and therefore no real multitude can be conceived without real units really distinct. On the other hand, possible beings are not real, but conceptual, units, nor are they really, but only mentally, distinct from one another. As, however, they are distinctly conceived, and have a distinct ideal actuality in the intellect that conceives them, they constitute what may be called an ideal multitude. Such a multitude, as seen and exhaustively comprehended by God’s intellect, is absolutely and positively infinite; for possibilities are nothing but the virtual degrees of being which God’s infinite reality eminently contains, and which God’s infinite power can produce outwardly. The range of possibilities is therefore co‐extensive with God’s infinity, and thus actually comprises an infinite (not an indefinite) multitude of distinct terms.
This infinite multitude is distinctly and positively known to God in the perfect comprehension of his own infinite being, which is the inexhaustible source of all possible beings; to our intellects, however, which cannot comprehend infinity, the same infinite multitude is known only negatively, inasmuch as we understand that the multitude of possible beings admits of no limit whatever. We have, in fact, no positive intuition of the infinite, but acquire a notion of it by means of abstraction only, as we remove the limits by which any finite reality directly perceived by us is circumscribed. In other terms, our notion of the infinite is not an intuitive idea, as the ontologists assume, but only an abstract concept.(86)
Thus far we have spoken of what is called intrinsic possibility. Besides this possibility, which is theoretical and absolute, there is also a relative possibility which is extrinsic and practical. Extrinsically possible we call that which is in the power of some being to do. With regard to God, all that is intrinsically possible is also extrinsically possible; for his omnipotence has no bounds. With regard to creatures, whose power is confined to the production of accidental acts, the range of extrinsic possibility is very limited, since it is reduced to acts of a determinate species, and depends on extrinsic conditions. Still, as the efficient power of created substances is never exhausted by exertion, creatures virtually contain in their own power a multitude of possible acts which has no limit but that of the multitude of terms or subjects which can be placed within the sphere of their activity. This amounts to saying that the active power of creatures can be exerted, not only successively, but even simultaneously, in the production of any number of accidental acts of a certain kind. Thus the attractive power of the sun sufficiently accounts for the possibility of innumerable movements which can take place at any time and at all times in any number of planets, comets, or particles of matter around it; so that the multiplication of the effects does not require the multiplication of the power, but only that of the number of subjects, or potential terms, in which the acts proceeding from that power must be received.
From what we have just said of real possibility, it will be easy to determine in what real impossibility consists. Really impossible we call that which cannot exist in nature. Now, nothing can exist in nature which is not an act completed by a suitable term, or a term actuated by a suitable act, or an actuality resulting from the conspiration of an act and a suitable term, as we have shown in a preceding article. That, therefore, is absolutely and intrinsically impossible in which this essential law of being is not fulfilled. Thus passion without action is absolutely and intrinsically impossible, because a term cannot be actuated without an act; whiteness with nothing white is absolutely impossible, because no mode of being is conceivable where there is no being; a material form actuating an intellectual term is absolutely impossible, because the one cannot give that kind of reality which the other should receive, and thus they cannot conspire into one essence; rotundity and triangularity in the same subject are absolutely impossible, because they exclude and destroy one another. Generally, whenever the assumed principles of a thing do not conspire into one essential ratio, the thing will have no essence, and consequently no possibility of existence. Hence everything is intrinsically impossible which lacks some constituent, or of which the constituents cannot meet together.
Things intrinsically impossible are no beings, not even ideal beings; for since they have no essence, they have no objective intelligibility. Nevertheless, they are said to be really, truly, entitatively impossible, inasmuch as they are the opposite of possible entity, reality, and truth.
Besides this intrinsic and absolute impossibility, there is a relative impossibility, which is styled extrinsic, arising from a deficiency or limitation of extrinsic power. It is evident that a thing intrinsically possible may be extrinsically impossible to causes possessing limited power. To God nothing is impossible. When we say that God cannot sin or make a square circle, we do not limit his power, but only point out the intrinsic impossibility of the thing. And let this suffice with regard to possibles and impossibles.
Principles of real relation.
Relative we call “that which connotes something else”—id quod se habet ad aliud. Thus the greater connotes the less, as nothing can be styled “greater” except as compared with something less; and, similarly, the less connotes the greater, as nothing can be styled “less” except as compared with something greater. Hence greater and less are both relative.
That one thing may connote another, there must be some link between them—that is, a communication in something that reaches them both, and thus connects the one with the other. Hence, to constitute a relative being, three things are required: 1st, that which is to be related, or the subject of the relation; 2d, that to which it is to be related, or the term of the relation; 3d, that through which it is related, or the foundation or formal reason of the relation.
It is worth noticing that the word “relation” is used by philosophers in two different senses. Sometimes it is used as meaning simply “the respect of a subject to a term”; as when we say that the father by his paternity is related to his son, or that the son by his filiation is related to his father. Here paternity and filiation are simple relativities, which may be called “transitive relations,” as the one leads to the other. But sometimes the word “relation” is used as meaning “the tie resulting between two terms from the conspiration of their distinct relativities”; as when we say that between the father and his son there is a tie of consanguinity. Relation in this sense is nothing else than the actuality of two correlatives, inasmuch as connected by their distinct relativities, and may be styled “resultant relation,” or “intransitive relation,” as it does not lead from the subject to the term, but is predicated of both together.
The precise distinction between relativity and resultant relation is marked out by the two prepositions to and between. Relativity relates the subject to its term; resultant relation, or correlation, intervenes between two terms. Relativity needs completion in a term having an opposite relativity, as it is evident that paternity has no completion without a son; and thus one relativity essentially needs to be completed by the other; but correlation is perfectly complete, as it is the result of the completion of one relativity by the other. And, lastly, the formal reason or foundation of the simple relativity is that which induces the connotation, or the respect of one term to another; whilst the formal reason of the correlation is the conspiration of two relativities. Thus the foundation of paternity and of filiation is generation, active on the part of the father, and passive on the part of the son; but the formal reason of consanguinity is not the generation, but the conspiration of paternity and filiation into a relative unity. This shows that these two kinds of relation are entirely distinct, though they are essentially connected with one another in the constitution of the relative being.
Let us now inquire in what the reality of relations consists. Here again we have to make a distinction; for among the relations which are called real, some are real in fact, as the transcendental relations, and others are real by denomination only, as all the predicamental relations.
Transcendental relation is that which intervenes between the act and the term, or the formal and the material principles of one and the same being. Such a relation is called “transcendental,” because it transcends the limits of any particular predicament, and, like being, extends to all predicaments. This relation is truly real, whether we take “relation” as a simple relativity or as a resultant correlation. For the relativity of an act to its term is nothing less than the actuality of the act in the same term; in like manner, the relativity of a term to its act is nothing less than the actuality of the term in the same act. We know, in fact, that the common foundation of the two relativities is actuation, active on the part of the act, and passive on the part of the term; and from actuation nothing but actuality can result. And since by such an actuation the act and the term are really constituted in one another, hence their relativities need nothing extrinsic for their completion, but the one intrinsically completes the other in the same individual being, and both conspire into one absolute actuality, which is the formal complement of the same being, as we have shown in another place.
But with predicamental relations the case is different. The subject and the term of the predicamental relation do not communicate with one another through themselves immediately, but through something else, and are always physically distinct, as we shall see hereafter; whence it follows that the predicamental relativity always refers the subject to a term extrinsic to it, and thus needs something extrinsic for its entitative completion. But nothing which is extrinsic to the subject can complete anything intrinsic to it so as to form a real entity. Therefore the relativity of the subject to its term is not a real entity of the subject, but only a real denomination. The minor of this syllogism can be easily proved; for two things which are, and remain, extrinsic to one another cannot conspire into one real unity; but the subject and the term of predicamental relations are, and remain, extrinsic to one another; they cannot, therefore, conspire into one real unity. Hence they cannot give rise to any new real entity; for unity and entity are convertible terms.
Moreover, predicamental relations arise between two absolute terms without anything new being introduced into them. For if we have two real terms, A and B, possessing something which is common to both, their communication in this common thing will make them relative. Yet such a communication leaves A and B in possession of that reality which is said to be common, and adds no real entity to them. If A and B are both white, the whiteness which is in A is by no means modified by the existence of whiteness in B. The fact that A and B are both white, simply means that whiteness is not confined to A; but it does not imply any new real entity in A, and therefore A remains identically the same, whether there is another white body, B, or not; and if there were one thousand white bodies, A would become related to them all, and acquire a thousand relativities, without the least real modification of its entity.
Not even the relation between agent and patient, which is the nearest possible imitation of the transcendental relation between the essential constituents of absolute being, is a new entity. A being which acts is an agent; and a being which is acted on is a patient. Agent and patient are connected by predicamental relation, the act produced by the first, and received in the second, being the foundation of their relativities. Now, is the relativity of the agent to the patient a new real entity above and besides the substance of the agent and its action? By no means. For such a relativity arises from this only: that the act produced by the agent is received in the patient; and as the patient is a being distinct from the agent, the reception of the act in the patient cannot concur to the constitution of any new reality in the agent. Hence the whole reality of the agent, as such, consists in its substance and its action; while the reception of its action elsewhere can add no real entity to it, but simply gives it a real denomination desumed from the reality of the effect produced. For the same reason, the relativity of the patient to the agent is no new real entity above and besides the substance of the patient and its passion. This relativity, in fact, arises from this only: that the act received in the patient comes from the agent; and as the agent is a being distinct from the patient, the coming of the act from the agent cannot concur to the constitution of any new reality in the patient. Hence the whole reality of the patient, as such, consists in its substance and its passion, or reception of the act; while the coming of this act from a distinct being can add no real entity to it, but simply gives it a real denomination desumed from the reality of the causation.
From what precedes we may conclude that the reality of predicamental relations requires no new real entity superadded to the real terms and the real foundation of their relativity, and accordingly predicamental relations are only nominal realities.
Relations are either virtual, formal, or habitual. Virtual relativity is predicated of a subject which contains in itself virtually (in actu primo) something through which it can communicate with a distinct term. Thus everything visible has a virtual relativity to the eye before it is seen; because all that is visible has the power to make an impression upon the eye. Hence visibility is a virtual relativity, or, if we may so call it, a mere referability. In Latin, it is called ordo—“ordination”; and in the language of the schools, the visible would be said to have “a special ordination to the eye”—visibile ordinem habet ad oculum. In the same manner, the eye has a special ordination to the visible, the intellect to the intelligible, etc.
The formal relativity is predicated of a subject which is formally (in actu secundo) connected with its correlative by the formal participation of a common entity. Thus, when the visible object strikes the eye, the action of the one upon the other entails a formal link of relativity between the two, and it is thus that the previous virtual relativity of the one to the other becomes formal. This formal relativity in Latin is often called respectus—“a respect”; and the things thus related are said “to regard”—respicere—one another.
The habitual relativity is predicated of that which has been brought into relation with its correlative by something in which both originally communicated, but which, owing to the destruction of one of the two, has ceased to be common. This relativity in Latin is properly called habitudo—that is, “habitual connotation”; and the subject thus related is spoken of as habens se ad aliquid—a phrase which we do not attempt to translate, and which is used by philosophers in a more general sense to express all kinds of relations.(87) Thus a murderer is still habitually related to the man whom he has killed, although the man killed is no more a man; and, in the same manner, a son is habitually related to his father, even after his father’s death; for he is still the same son of the same father, and it would be absurd to pretend that he has lost his own relativity and ceased to be a real son only because his father is no more. It must be remarked, however, that this habitual relativity cannot be real, except when the relation has an intrinsic foundation. For when the foundation is extrinsic, there is nothing formally remaining in the subject which, after the suppression of the term, can keep up its relativity. Thus, if the moon were annihilated, the distance from the earth to the moon would totally vanish, as every one will easily admit.
Much might be said about predicamental relations, both intrinsic and extrinsic; but, in a general treatise like this, we cannot well enter into matters of detail. We will only state that relations are divided according to their foundations. Intrinsic relations are respectively founded on substance, on action and passion, on quality, and on quantity; and therefore may be reduced to four kinds. Extrinsic relations also may be divided into four kinds, as they are respectively founded on a common cause, on a common region of ubication, on a common duration, or on a common extrinsic term of comparison.
Substance, and everything else considered absolutely, founds the relations of unity and plurality. Action and passion found the relations of causality and dependence. Quality founds the relations of likeness or unlikeness. Quantity founds the relations of equality or inequality. All these relations are called intrinsic, because their foundation is something intrinsic to the terms related.
A common cause founds the relation which we may call of collateralness between two terms proceeding from it. Thus two brothers are connected in mutual fraternity, inasmuch as they are the offspring of the same parents. A common region of ubication and movement founds the relation of distance. A common duration founds the relation of succession. A common extrinsic term of comparison founds the relation of site or situation. All these relations are called extrinsic, because their foundation is extrinsic to the terms related.
Principles of real distinction.
Distinction is nothing but a negation of identity; and therefore there must be as many kinds of distinction as there are kinds of identity which can be denied. Hence we cannot properly determine the principles of real distinction without first ascertaining what are the principles of real identity.
Identity is a relative unity, or a relation founded on the unity of a thing. For the thing which is to be styled the same must be compared with itself according to that entity on account of which it is to be pronounced to be identical with itself; and it is evident that such an entity must be one in order to be the same. Thus if I say: “The pen with which I am now writing is the very same which I used yesterday,” the pen with which I am now writing will be the subject of the relation, the pen which I used yesterday will be the term of the relation, and the oneness of its entity will be the foundation of the relation and the formal reason of the identity.
As relations, like everything else, are specified by their formal reasons, it is clear that there must be as many kinds of identity as there are kinds of unities on which the relation of identity can be founded. Now, three kinds of unities can be conceived: first, the formal unity of a complete being, or a complete unity, which may be called physical unity; secondly, the unity of an incomplete or metaphysical reality, which may be called metaphysical unity; thirdly, the unity of a being of reason, which may be called logical unity. Accordingly, there can be three kinds of identity, viz., the physical, the metaphysical, and the logical. Let us say a word about each.
Physical identity is a relation founded on the unity of a physical entity, and is the most real of all identities. Some philosophers taught that this identity is merely a logical relation, or a relation of reason, because a relation cannot be real unless its subject be really distinct from its term—a condition which cannot be verified when the subject and the term are identical. But they did not reflect that a thing must be called really identical with itself then only when it cannot be really distinguished from itself, and inasmuch as it excludes real distinction from itself. It is therefore manifest that real identity excludes real distinction in that in which there is identity. Nevertheless, the thing which is substantially identical with itself may still really differ from itself in the manner of its being, and may, as the subject of the relativity, involve a real entity, which it does not involve as the term of the same relativity; and accordingly the substantial identity of a thing with itself does not exclude all real distinction. The pen with which I am now writing, although identical with the pen that lay on the table one hour before, is now in different accidental conditions, and has some real mode, which was wanting one hour ago. And this shows that there can be a sufficient real distinction between the subject and the term of the relation, even though they are substantially identical.
Physical identity may be divided into complete and incomplete. It is complete, or total, when a being is compared with itself through the unity of its physical entity, as in the preceding example of the pen. It is incomplete, or partial, when a physical part is compared with a physical whole, or, vice versa, as when we compare the whole man with his soul or with his body.
Metaphysical identity is a relation founded on the unity of a metaphysical entity, and possesses a metaphysical reality. It may be divided into adequate and inadequate. It is adequate when a being is compared with itself through the unity of some metaphysical reality which belongs to it. Such is the personal identity of John when old with John when young; for although he has undergone many physical changes in his body, and therefore has not preserved a perfect physical identity with himself, still his formal personality, which is wholly due to his soul, has not changed at all. The identity will be inadequate when any metaphysical constituent of a complete being is compared with the being itself, or vice versa. Such is the identity of the substantial act with the substance of which it is the act, of the matter with the material being, and of any property or attribute with the thing of which it is the property or the attribute. Such is also the identity of the divine Personalities with the divine essence; for, although the divine Paternity identifies itself perfectly with the divine essence, this latter requires further identification with the divine Filiation and with the passive Spiration; for it must be as whole and perfect in the Second and the Third Person as it is in the First.
Logical identity, or identity of reason, is a relation founded on the unity of a being of reason. It may be divided into objective and subjective. The objective has its foundation in the real order of things; the subjective has no foundation except in our conception. Thus the identity we conceive between a horse and its owner as to their animality is an identity of reason only, although it is grounded on a real foundation; for animality is indeed to be found really in both, but its unity is only a unit of reason; for animality, as common to both, is only a logical entity, which we call “genus.” The same is to be said of the identity between Peter and Paul as to their humanity; for humanity, though real in both, is not numerically, but only specifically, one, and its unity is therefore a unity of reason; for “species” is a logical being. On the contrary, when we say that “a stone is heavy,” the identity between a stone and the subject of such a proposition has no foundation except in our reason, and therefore is purely subjective; and the same is to be said of the identity of the verb is with the copula of the proposition, of heavy with the predicate, etc. It is evident, in fact, that the ground on which these last relations are founded is not a real unity, and not even a unity having anything corresponding to it in the real order; since subject, predicate, etc., are mere conceptions and creations of our mind.
We have thus three kinds of identity: the physical, which is either complete or incomplete; the metaphysical, which is either adequate or inadequate; the logical, which is either objective or merely subjective. Since distinction is the negation of identity, it is obvious that the distinction between two terms always results from the non‐unity of the same, and is conceived by the comparison of the one with the other according to something which can be affirmed of the one, and must be denied of the other. Those things, in fact, are said to be distinct of which the one is not the other, or in one of which there is something not to be found in the other.
First, then, to deny real physical identity is to assert real physical distinction. Physical distinction may be either complete or incomplete as well as physical identity. It will be complete, or major, when, comparing two complete wholes with one another, we deny that the one is the other; as when we deny that the sun is the moon. It will be incomplete, or minor, when, comparing together the whole and any of its parts, we deny that the whole is any of its parts, and vice versa; as when we deny that Germany is Europe, or that the roof is the house. It is evident that incomplete physical distinction always coexists with incomplete physical identity.
The true and certain sign of real physical distinction between two things is their separability or their state of actual separation. For when two things are completely distinct as to their physical entity, they are each in possession of their own distinct existence; and consequently the existence of the one does not depend on the existence of the other. On the other hand, although a physical whole cannot exist as a whole, if its parts be separated, yet each of its physical parts can exist separated, as each of them has its own existence independent of the existence of the whole.
Secondly, to deny real metaphysical identity is to assert real metaphysical distinction. Metaphysical distinction may be either adequate or inadequate no less than metaphysical identity. It will be adequate, or major, when, comparing together two metaphysical constituents, we deny that the one is the other; as when we deny that the act is the potency. It will be inadequate, or minor, when, comparing a metaphysical compound with any of its constituents, we deny that the constituent is the compound, and vice versa; as when we deny that existence is the thing existing, or that person is personality. The inadequate metaphysical distinction always coexists with an inadequate metaphysical identity.
Thirdly, to deny an identity of reason is to assert a distinction of reason. A distinction of reason may be either objective or merely subjective, no less than the identity of reason. It will be objective, or major, when, comparing together two entities which are really identical, we find in their identical reality a ground for denying their conceptual identity; as when we deny that God’s eternity is God’s immensity, or when we deny that in any given being one essential attribute, as animality, is another, as rationality. This distinction is objective, because its ground is found in the object itself; and yet it is not real, because each term represents the same thing under two distinct aspects. Thus, in man, animality really includes a rational soul, and therefore implies rationality. But the distinction will be purely subjective, or minor, when, comparing together two entities, we find no ground whatever for denying their identity, except in our subjective manner of viewing them. Thus, although man is identical with rational animal, we can distinguish man from rational animal as a subject from a predicate; and it is evident that this distinction has no ground but in our conception.
Accordingly, we have three kinds of distinction: the real physical, which is either complete or incomplete; the real metaphysical, which is either adequate or inadequate; the logical, or of reason, which is either objective or merely subjective. This division is exhaustive. Some will say that we have forgotten the modal distinction. But the fact is that we have abstained on purpose from mentioning it in connection with any special kind of distinction, because it may fall under the physical as well as the metaphysical distinction, according as it happens to be understood; for it is differently understood by different writers.
Some authors consider that there is a modal distinction between the spherical wax and its sphericity, between the soul affected by fear and its affection, between the finger inflected and its inflection, and generally between the modified subject and its mode. Others, as Suarez, seem to admit a modal distinction between the wax simply and its sphericity, between the soul simply and its affection, between the finger simply and its inflection, and generally between the subject simply and its mode. And others, again, admit a modal distinction between the wax having a spherical form and the same wax having a different form; between the soul affected by a movement of fear and the same soul affected by a different movement; between the finger inflected and the same finger not inflected; and generally between a subject having one mode, and the same subject having another mode.(88)
These different opinions have been occasioned by an imperfect analysis of distinction. Those who originally treated of this matter called real all distinction which was not a mere distinction of reason, and overlooked the necessity of subdividing real distinctions into physical and metaphysical. Hence the modal distinction was simply called real, without further examining whether it had a physical or a metaphysical character; the more so as it was assumed that real modes were physical entities—which would convey the idea that real modal distinction is of a physical nature. But the assumption is not to be admitted, because, as we have remarked in another article, modes cannot be styled “physical” entities, as they have no possibility of separate existence. This being premised, let us briefly examine the three aforesaid opinions.
The first admits a modal distinction between spherical wax and its sphericity. Sphericity cannot exist without a subject; and therefore it must be ranked among metaphysical entities. On the other hand, spherical wax is a metaphysical compound of wax and sphericity. Hence, from what we have said above, the distinction of the one from the other is an inadequate metaphysical distinction.
The second opinion admits a modal distinction between the wax simply and its sphericity. Sphericity, as we have stated, is a metaphysical entity, and so is “wax simply” also; for wax, as such, is not yet spherical, although, as a subject of sphericity, it excludes every other form. Such a wax therefore has no form, and, as such, it cannot exist; and accordingly it is an incomplete being. Hence the distinction between the wax simply and its sphericity is that which intervenes between two principles of a complete being, and therefore is an adequate metaphysical distinction.
The third opinion alone gives the true notion of the modal distinction. For if a piece of wax which is spherical happens to acquire another form, say the cubical, the comparison of the cubical with the spherical wax will involve two terms physically real; and as the substance of the wax is still the same, no distinction will be found between the two terms, except that which arises from denying the identity of the cubical with the spherical form. We have thus a real and physical modal distinction: real and physical, because the spherical wax really and physically differs from the cubic wax; modal, because the negation of identity falls on the two modes, and not on the substance.
From this we learn that neither the first nor the second opinion above mentioned gives the true notion of modal distinction. The first denies only the identity of the spherical wax with its sphericity; the second denies only the identity of wax simply with sphericity. Now, it is evident that neither spherical wax nor wax simply is a mode. It is evident, therefore, that neither opinion denies modal identity. But modal distinction cannot be anything else than a denial of modal identity. Therefore neither opinion gives the true notion of modal distinction.
As modes are accidental formalities, the modal distinction may also be called formal. The Scotist philosophers imagined a formal distinction of another kind, which, according to them, was to be admitted between the attributes of real being, and which was neither real nor a mere distinction of reason, but something intermediate. They called it “formal distinction arising from the nature of the thing”—distinctio formalis ex natura rei. We need not refute this invention. We have already given in full the general theory of distinction, and we have found no room for any formal distinction intermediary between real distinctions and distinctions of reason; and, as to the attributes of real beings, we have shown, in the article before this, that they are not really distinct from one another, but admit of a simple distinction of reason, which, however, has a real foundation in the thing.
Sometimes distinction is styled formal as contrasted with virtual. Thus we may say that there is a formal distinction between two terms formally existing—e.g., two existing men, and a virtual distinction between two virtual terms—e.g., two possible men. And generally, whenever one and the same thing virtually contains two or more, these latter, as thus contained, are said to be virtually distinct. Thus intellect and reason are only virtually distinct, as they are one concrete power of acquiring knowledge which can perform its task by two different processes. This virtual distinction is, of course, nothing but a distinction of reason.
Sometimes, again, distinction is called positive as contrasted with negative. It is positive when the two terms of which we deny the identity are both positive, and it is negative when one of the two terms is negative; as when we distinguish the existent from the non‐existent. Negative distinction is a real distinction; for the negation of real identity can be predicated not only of two real beings, but also, and with greater reason, of the existent as compared with the non‐existent.
It may be remarked that distinction, difference, and diversity are not synonymous. Diversity is most properly predicated of two things that are not of the same genus; difference of two things that are not of the same species, and distinction of two things that are not numerically identical. Nevertheless, the terms distinct, different, and diverse are very frequently employed for one another, even by good authors.
We observe, lastly, that distinction, as such, is not a relation; for all relation presupposes some distinction between the terms related, as a condition of its possibility. Yet two positive terms really distinct have always a certain relative opposition, inasmuch as there is always something common to both (at least their being) which may be taken as a foundation of mutual relativity.
And here we close our investigation about nominal realities. We have shown that possibles, relations, and distinctions are no special realities, but are called real from the reality of other things. Real possibility is only the possibility of a real being; real relation is only the actuality of two terms really communicating in something identical; and real distinction is only the existence of things of which the one is not really the other.
As this is our last article on the principles of real being, we beg to remind the reader that our object in this treatise has been only to point out distinctly, and to express with as great a philosophical precision as our language could permit, all that concerns the constitution of being in general. We may have failed to employ always the best phraseology, but we hope our analysis of real being is philosophically correct, and the principles we have laid down under the guidance of the ancients will be found to shed a pure and abundant light on all the questions of special metaphysics. But the student of philosophy should not forget that the greatest difficulty in the settlement of all such questions arises, not so much from the nature of the subjects investigated, as from the imperfect knowledge and mis‐application of philosophical language. And this is the reason why we did our best to determine the exact purport of the terms most frequently employed in metaphysical treatises.
Antar And Zara; Or, “The Only True Lovers.” II.
Part II.
She Sang.
I heard his voice, and I was dumb Because to his my spirit cleaved: He called to me from far. I come. Because I loved him, I believed.
He said, “Though love be secret yet, Eternity its truth shall prove.” It seemed not gift, but ancient debt Discharged, to answer love with love.
Thy herald near me drew and knelt: I knew from whom the missive came Ere yet I saw, ere yet I felt Thy sigil‐mark, or kissed thy name.
I read—’twas like a thousand birds, Music confused of Paradise: At last the words became thy words; Thy voice was in them, and thine eyes
Above them shone in love and power, And flashed the meaning on the whole: We were not severed, friend, that hour: One day shall blend us, soul with soul.
That face is valorous and grave: To it, despite thine unripe spring, Thy spirit’s might the painter gave: It is the countenance of a king.
Look down, strong countenance, strong yet fair, Through all this weak, unstable soul! Like stars sea‐mirrored, kindle there His virtues—truth and self‐control!
Not beauty, nor that youthful grace Uncareful girlhood’s natural dower, Suffice. A child of royal race, A hero’s wife should walk in power.
Like some great altar rises vast That rock whereon our City stands, With gray woods girt; with shade far cast At morn dividing distant lands.
Nor war she fears, nor summer drouth, By runnels pierced whose sparkling tide Is drawn from mountains of the South O’er myriad arches far descried.
Around her cliff‐like, stony zone, From tower to tower, from gate to gate, At eve, when sunset changes stone To gold, her princes walk in state;
And priests entoning anthems sweet, The people’s strength; and maiden choirs That, passing, make them reverence meet; And orphaned babes, and gray‐haired sires.
High up, with many a cloistered lawn, And chapelled gallery widely spread, Extends, flower‐dressed at eve and dawn, The happy “City of the Dead.”
There musing sit I, day by day; I sing my psalm; I pray for thee: “If men could love, not hate,” I say, “How like to heaven this earth would be!”
Love bound a veil above my brow; He wrapt it round me, o’er and o’er; He said, “My little nun art thou, My solitary evermore.
“Where hid’st thou when the falcons fly; The flung jereed in music shrills? When sweep the Arab horsemen by In valleys of the terraced hills?
“Where are thy childhood’s blithesome ways? The tales, the dances, and the sports? The bards that sang thy beauty’s praise Amid the hundred‐columned courts?”
Love took from me all gifts save one: The veil that shrouds me is his gift: Love! say to him I love, “Alone That veil of severance thou canst lift.”
On crimson silk, ’mid leaf and flower I traced thy name in golden thread; A harper harped beneath my bower: I rose, and brought him wine and bread.
He sang: methought he sang of thee! “My prince!” I cried—“how knew’st him thou? His victories in the days to be? His heaven‐like eyes, and king‐like brow?”
“O maid! I have not seen thy prince: Old wars I sang; old victories won In my far‐distant land long since; I sang the birth of moon and sun.”
He culled me grapes—the vintager; In turn, for song the old man prayed: I glanced around; but none was near: With veil drawn tighter, I obeyed.
“Were I a vine, and he were heaven,” I sang, “I’d spread a vernal leaf To meet the beams of morn and even, And think the April day too brief.
“Were he I love a cloud, not heaven, I’d spread my leaf and drink the rain; Warm summer shower, and dews of even Alike I’d take, and think them gain.”
“I would not shrink from wintry rime Or echoes of the thunder‐shock, But watch the advancing vintage‐time, And meet it, reddening on my rock.”
I often say, now thou art gone, “How hard I seemed when he was here!” I feared to seem too quickly won: Love also came at first with fear.
I sang me dear old songs which proved That many a maid had loved ere I: No secret knew I till I loved: I loved, yet loved reluctantly.
My heart with zeal more generous glowed When he I loved was Danger’s mate. Great Love in this his greatness showed— He lifted thee to things more great.
My childhood was a cloistered thing: No wish for human love was mine: I heard the hooded vestals sing The praises of their Love Divine.
The village maids with rival glee, Flower‐filleting their unclipt hair, Sang thus, “The meadow flowers are we”: I thought the convent flowers more fair.
Yet false I am not. Still I climb Through love to realms this earth above: And those whom most I loved that time Only for love’s sake fled from love.
Dear tasks are mine that make the weeks Too swift in passing, not too slow: I nurse the rose on faded cheeks, Bring solace to the homes of woe.
I hear the Vesper anthems swell; I track the steps of Fast and Feast I read old legends treasured well Of Machabean chief or priest.
I hear, on heights of song and psalm, The storm of God careering by: Beside His Deep, for ever calm, I kneel in caves of Prophecy.
O Eastern Book! It cannot change! Of books beside, the type, the mould— It stands like yon Carmelian range By our Elias trod of old!
The Farm Of Muiceron. By Marie Rheil. Concluded.
XXII.
During these terrible events, I dare say the combatants were not the most to be pitied. They, at least, were in action, in the midst of powder and noise; and if they fell, wounded or dead, they scarcely had time to know it. But think of the poor friends and relatives who remained without news, and almost without strength to seek any information! They were to be pitied.
Perhaps you may live in a city, which does not prevent you from sometimes going to the country; and so you can understand how certain villages are isolated from all daily communication. Our hamlet of Ordonniers, although near the large city of Issoudun, was, in this respect, worse off than many other places; for when M. le Marquis was absent from the château, there was no daily paper, none of the villagers being liberal enough to indulge in that luxury. The Perdreaux, in their time, subscribed for a paper, which came every other day, and gave the market prices and a jumble of news of people and things here and there about a month old. Even this resource no longer existed. M. le Curé was the only one who cared for what was going on; but as his means were very limited, he contented himself with a little paper which only came every Sunday.
Judge, then, of the terrible anguish at Muiceron; above all, when they saw all the able‐bodied men of the commune leave; for you remember that then, for the first time, the provinces showed their teeth at the news of the horrors in Paris, and rose en masse to go and punish the rebellious children of a city that, in her selfishness, disturbed the whole of France without any just right.
The women displayed great bravery. They fitted out their sons, husbands, brothers, and betrothed, and let them leave for the dreadful struggle without wincing. But the next day—but the following days! What anxiety and what tears!
It was touching to see them each morning run before the country stage or speak to the letter‐carrier, in hopes of hearing some words to reassure them. Generally, the stage drove rapidly on at a gallop; for stage‐drivers are not patient, and the poor creatures’ only information was an oath or rough word. As for the letter‐carrier, he knew nothing positive, and was content to give the flying reports, which were not enough to quiet those troubled souls.
Jeanne and her mother kept at home. They prayed to God and wept, poor things! It was the best way to learn patience; but their hearts sank within them. It was a hard blow to have been so near happiness, and then suddenly to see it fly, perhaps for ever.
Old Ragaud was miserable that he could not go off with the other men of the neighborhood. He was too old, and this only increased his vexation, as he was but three or four years older than Michou, and he was in the battle! The sadness and ill‐humor of the poor old fellow rendered Muiceron still gloomier, and the women neither dared stir nor sigh before him.
The little they knew was very terrible; and when the private letters began to arrive, all the families were plunged in despair and sorrow. Our commune alone lost three men; among them Cotentin, the miller, an honest peasant, and father of four children. He was shot dead, almost at the moment of his arrival; and the next day came the news of the death of Sylvain Astiaud, son of the head‐forester, one of our bravest boys. Each one trembled for his own at the announcement of these misfortunes, and at last silence was considered a sure sign that mourning should be prepared.
Jeanne felt all her courage fail. She could no longer either eat or sleep, and even feared to question the passers‐by. Certainly the good God, who wished to sanctify the poor child, and make her a perfect woman, did not spare her any suffering. He acted with her like a father who is tender and severe at the same time; who corrects the faults of his child, knowing well that they are more hurtful than death, and then recompenses her when petting can no longer spoil her.
Therefore this little Jeannette had to go to the end of her trial before relief came and her tears were dried. And this happened through that giddy, wild Pierre Luguet, who had left, like the others, singing and blustering, assuring the people around that he did not believe a word of the current rumors, and that, in one hour after his arrival in Paris, he would find out the whole truth, and send them all the news. But, behold! as soon as he was in the midst of smoking and bleeding Paris, he lost his senses, imagined himself killed before he had fired a shot, and wrote in pencil, on a scrap of blood‐stained paper, a letter to his parents, all sighs and tears. He bade them farewell, and begged them to pray for his soul, as he would be dead before night; for no one could live in such a terrible conflict. If he had only spoken for himself, it might have passed; but he added that M. le Marquis, Jean‐Louis, and Michou were certainly dead. He had sought for them everywhere, asked everybody, and no one could give him good news. To crown his stupidity, he added that, among the great heaps of corpses that lay yet unburied, he had recognized Jean‐ Louis’ blouse of gray linen bound with black; and therefore they must weep for the death of that good, brave boy.
Poor Mme. Luguet ran straight to Muiceron to show that foolish letter. If there had been the least degree of cool good sense among them, it would easily have been seen they were the words of a brain addled from fear; but in the mortal anxiety of the poor Ragauds, they took it all for good coin. Jeanne fell on her knees, sobbing aloud, and, losing the little courage she still possessed, wrung her hands in despair. Pierrette threw herself beside her daughter, trying to comfort her; and Ragaud wept bitterly, although he had said a thousand times a man in tears is not worthy to wear breeches. In the evening, the true religion which filled those poor hearts came to support them and give them some strength. They lighted tapers before the crucifix and around the Blessed Virgin, and all night this afflicted family prayed ardently for the repose of the souls of the supposed dead—who were never better.
The next day you would have been shocked to have seen the ravages grief had made on their honest faces. Jeannette, wearied out with weeping and fatigue, slept in the arms of her mother, paler than a camomile‐flower. Pierrette restrained her tears, from fear of awakening the child; but her hollow eyes and cheeks were pitiful to see; and the sun shone brightly in the room, without any one taking the trouble to close the shutters.
It was in this state that M. le Curé found the Ragaud family. His entrance at Muiceron renewed the lamentations; but Jeannette was calm, which greatly pleased the good pastor, as he saw that his lessons, joined to those of divine Providence, had borne their fruit.
He took the little thing aside, and, much affected by her deathlike appearance, spoke gently to her, and asked her to walk with him on the bank of La Range.
“My daughter,” said he, “it is not right to sink into such utter despair about news which is yet uncertain. Show a little more courage, for a while at least, until we hear something positive.”
“He is dead,” said Jeannette. “May the will of God be done! Alas! I should have been too happy, if I had seen him again.”
“Why are you so certain? As for me, I confess Pierre’s letter would not make me lose all hope.”
“They were three together,” said she. “Pierre has written; could they not have written also?”
This argument was not bad. The curé could not reply; for, without acknowledging it, he did think the silence very strange. He made the poor child sit down by the side of the swift‐running stream that glittered in the bright sunshine, and spoke to her for a long time in such soothing, touching words, Jeanne listened with profound respect and piety. He spoke of the happiness of this world, which is but for a short time; of the necessity of living and regaining her strength, that she might console her parents; of the beautiful day of eternity; of the heavenly home, where we will meet again the loved ones gone before us, never again to be separated.
At another time, Jeannette would not have understood these words, and perhaps might have even found them out of place; but now they fell upon her heart like soft caresses.
“Oh!” said she, “it is only now I understand how dearly I loved him. Father, tell me, can he see us from above?”
“You will have it, then, that he is absolutely dead,” said the curé, smiling.
Jeannette, in spite of her grief, smiled in her tears.
“That is true,” she said; “perhaps he is not dead.”
Hope had re‐entered her soul with the consolations of the holy priest. They walked down the road to the farm, and Jeannette thanked him with much tenderness, and remarked, as it was near sunset, he must return home.
“One moment,” said the good curé; “you are a little egotist. I can’t go without saying a word to father and mother.”
“Oh! yes,” said she, “of course you must; but, dear father, I will remain here, and say my rosary in the shade under the trees; the air will completely restore me.”
“Very well, dear child,” replied the curé; “and may the Blessed Virgin console you, my daughter!”
Jeanne retired under the heavy foliage, and really took her little rosary out of her pocket. But this wood recalled many sweet reminiscences. It was there Jean‐Louis had found her and saved her life on that stormy night the year before. She looked for the spot, near the woodman’s cabin, where he had taken her in his arms with a father’s care; and as the remembrance of all this past happiness, which she had then slighted, came back to her heart, she leant against a tree, and hid her face in her hands.
Whether they were tears of repentance, of regret, of love, or of prayer that fell from her eyes God only knows; and surely, in his infinite goodness, he waited for this moment of supreme anguish, which could not have endured much longer, to say to that heart‐broken child, “You have suffered enough; now be happy!”
For in that same hour Jean‐Louis, wild with joy, leaped from the imperial of the country stage on the highroad, and ran, without stopping to take breath, toward his beloved Muiceron.
He also remembered the stormy night, and, from a sentiment you can well understand, wished to see again the little hut, if only to throw a passing glance.
He reached the spot, and was soon near the tree where Jeannette leant motionless. He recognized her. The beating of his heart almost suffocated him; for, with a lover’s instinct, he immediately knew, if she had come to weep in that spot, it could only be on his account.
He advanced until he stood close behind her.
“Jeanne!” said he, so softly he scarcely heard his own voice.
Jeannette turned, and gave one scream. Her eyes wandered a moment, as if she had seen a phantom, and she fell half‐dead into his arms.
“Jeanne! dear, dear Jeanne! don’t you know me?” said he, pressing her to his breast. “I have caused you much sorrow, but it is all over—oh! it is all over; tell me, is it not?”
The poor child could not speak; her emotion and joy were too great. But such happiness don’t kill; and gradually she revived, although she still trembled like a leaf.
“O Jeannet!” she said at last, “they wrote word you were dead.”
“And was that the reason you were weeping here all alone in this wood, my poor, dear darling?” he tenderly asked.
“Yes,” said she, looking down; “I could not be consoled. Why did you not send us some news?”
“I wished to surprise you,” said he, with simplicity; “and now I see I did wrong.”
“One day more, and I would have been dead also,” said she, leaning on his arm. “Cruel boy, go!”
She looked so lovely, still pale with grief, and yet as lively and coquettish as before, Jeannet was obliged to clasp her once again in his arms, and even kissed her, for which I hope you will pardon him, as I do.
“How good God is,” said he, “to permit us to meet again in this very place! This is the second time, dear Jeannette, that I have saved you when in great trouble; and I hope it is a sure sign that poor Jean‐Louis will be able to comfort and assist you all the rest of his life.”
“You will never leave us again; you will promise that?” she replied. “When you are away, all sorts of misfortunes happen. Oh! how much we have suffered.”
And as these words suddenly recalled the sad events of the last six months, her flirtation, her thoughtless conduct, and the lamentable scenes that followed, she blushed, sighed, and leant her face, down which the tears were streaming, against Jean‐Louis’ shoulder.
“My own Jeannette,” said he, “you must no longer think of all that sorrow, now that God has made us so happy again. There is no misfortune which does not carry with it a profitable lesson when we recognize in it the hand of the Lord; and, for my part, although I have been nearly dead with grief, I say that my present happiness has not been too dearly bought, and I would consent to pass again through the same trials, on condition of possessing a second day like this.”
“Oh! no,” said Jeanne, “I have had enough. I have not your courage, and I will pray to God that I may be spared from such great trials. Come,” added she, taking Jeannet’s arm, “we must go and surprise our parents. And the dear curé is just now with them! He told me so—the good, holy man told me you were not dead.”
“But who set such a report afloat?” asked Jeannet. “For really I was not even in danger.”
“Oh! what a story,” cried Jeanne. “You were in the fight; it could not be otherwise.”
“Certainly,” said Jeannet, “I fought, and did my best; but I never for an instant imagined the good God would let me die without seeing you again.”
“It is very well to have such happy thoughts,” said Jeanne joyfully; “if I could have had them, I would not have been nearly dead with anxiety, and hopeless from such great fear. Now I regret my tears, and would like to take them back.”
“You would not be the richer for it,” said he, laughing; “but, Jeannette, don’t laugh at me. It was neither presumption nor carelessness made me think so. The good God put the faith in my heart; and then, didn’t I have round my neck the silver medal you gave me the day of your first communion? Wasn’t the image of the Blessed Virgin powerful enough to turn aside the balls?”
“What!” said Jeannette with emotion, “have you still my medal? Is it the very same one? Have you always worn it, in spite ... in spite of all.... Jeannet, show it to me; let me kiss it!”
“No,” said Jean‐Louis, blushing, “not now. I will show it to you later.”
“Right away; I won’t wait,” said she in the peremptory manner which so well became her. “I like to be obeyed.”
“But,” said Jeannet, much embarrassed, “I can’t, because....”
“Because what?” she replied. “Don’t think you are going to be master here! No, no, not more now than before, when, you remember, my mother said, ‘Jeannette is the boy....’ ”
“Really,” answered Jean‐Louis, “you have a good memory. Well, then, since Jeannette is the boy, and I am the girl, I must submit to her wishes.”
And as, in spite of all this talk, he made no attempt to show her the medal, another idea entered her head.
“You are wounded,” said she, “and you don’t wish me to see it.”
“That is not the reason,” he replied, unbuttoning his vest. “I don’t wish you to believe any such thing.”
On opening his shirt, he showed the medal on his breast, and then the curious Jeannette understood his resistance; for, near the blessed image of our dear Mother, she recognized the long tress of blonde hair which had been cut off during her illness.
“It has never left me,” said he; “but I dared not let you see it. Do you forgive me? Your poor hair! I said to myself, While it rests upon my heart, it is as though my little sister were watching over me. And in the fight, I thought that, as the medal of the Blessed Virgin and your precious souvenir were also exposed to the fire, I could not be killed; and you see I was not mistaken.”
“Oh!” cried Jeannette, with tears in her eyes, “my dear Jeannet, I do not deserve such love.”
They reached Muiceron, arm‐in‐arm. Oh! how refreshing was the shaded court‐yard and the fragrant hedges! And then, the dear house looked so gay in its new white coat, its green shutters, the fresh young vines that hung from the trellis, and its slate roof newly repaired, all shining in the soft rays of the sinking sun. The songs of the bullfinch and robin were more joyous than the trumpets and horns on a patronal feast; and it seemed as though the good God in heaven were well pleased, so beautiful was the blue sky, flecked with golden‐edged clouds! Was it really the house we saw six months ago? Jeannet, who had long loved it, scarcely recognized it; he was mute with admiration, and, although he had left it in despair, he accused himself of having neglected to look at it until now; for surely his memory did not recall anything as joyous and beautiful as he now beheld in his beloved Muiceron.
Shall we ask the reason? There is a great artist who can paint, with colors of unparalleled brilliancy, whatever he chooses to place before our eyes. He is called happiness; and God wishes him to walk beside us, both in this world and the other.
The two dear children began to run as soon as they entered the court‐yard of Muiceron. Jeannette was the first to spring across the threshold, and fell speechless into her mother’s arms. Jean‐Louis quickly followed her, and stood in the door‐way, holding out his hands to his parents. Then there were cries, and tears, and confusion of kisses, and questions without end and without reason. Their hearts overflowed. The little one, as they always called the tall, handsome boy, was covered with caresses, stifled with embraces quite overpowering; for country‐people drink in joy by the bucketful and don’t put on gloves when they wish to show their love. But you can imagine Jean‐Louis did not complain. M. le Curé alone kept aside, with clasped hands, from time to time putting his handkerchief to his eyes, and thanking God, while he waited his turn.
Gradually their happiness toned down a little; but the excitement was so great, each one showed his joy in some particular manner. Old Ragaud whirled around the room, took off his cap to smooth his hair, and replaced it, all the while laughing as though he did not know precisely what he was about; and Pierrette forgot to ask the children what they wished to eat, which was a sure sign her head was completely turned. As for Jeannette, I must tell you that, like all innocent, warm‐hearted young girls, she dared act, in presence of her parents and M. le Curé, as she would not have done alone with her brother; she threw her arms around his neck every half‐ second, and clung to him so closely he could not stir an inch. Jeannet did not show greater timidity; seeing her act with such naïveté, he neither frowned nor looked sour, but accepted willingly what was so sweetly offered him.
Fortunately, Marion, whom no one thought of, and who bellowed with joy in chorus with the others, came to her senses sooner than any of them, and thought of the supper. Jeannet smelt the butter frying on the stove, and acknowledged he was very hungry. This covered Pierrette with confusion. She felt very guilty that she had so neglected her duties, and asked a thousand pardons; but Jeannet laughed, as he kissed her, and told her not to be excited, as he could easily wait until the next day, being only really hungry to see and kiss her.
Ragaud would not let the dear curé go home. It was right that he should wait until the end of the feast; and as the good pastor, who always thought of everything, expressed a fear that old Germaine might be anxious about him, they despatched a stable‐boy, with the wagon and quickest mare at Muiceron, to fetch her.
What a fine supper that was! All these good people recovered their appetites, and ate and drank as they had not done for a long while. I leave you to imagine the stories that were told of the revolution. But Jeannet, not wishing to cloud their present joy, was careful to relate events as though all had been a kind of child’s play. Jeannette, however, paused more than once as she was about to take a mouthful. She felt that Jean‐Louis stretched a point now and then for love of her, and she showed her gratitude by looking tenderly at him, while she pressed his hand under the table.
At the dessert, they formed plans. They talked of re‐establishing the old order of things, of living together again in peace and harmony, and that there should be no more separations. Ragaud, especially, dwelt at length, and very particularly, upon the happy future in store for all of them; threw meaning glances right and left, in which could be remarked much hidden meaning and not a little white wine. Jeannette smiled, blushed, looked down; and, I fancy, Jean‐Louis’ heart beat high with hope and expectation of what was to follow.
The good man ended by being much affected, though he endeavored to pass it all off as a joke; for it was his wish always to appear deaf to any kind of sentiment.
“After all,” said he, tapping Jean‐Louis on the shoulder, “here is a boy upon whom we cannot depend. He is here now at this very moment; but who knows if to‐morrow he will not be out of sight as quickly as the stars fall from the sky on an August night? Isn’t it so, M. le Curé?”
“It is just as you say, Ragaud,” replied the curé. “ ‘He who has drunk will drink again,’ says the proverb; and as this little one went off once without giving warning, how can we know but he will do it again?”
“Oh! what nonsense,” said Jeannet. “My dear parents, I will never leave you again!”
“Hum!” replied Ragaud, “you said that a hundred times before, and then what did we see? One fine morning, no Jeannet!”
“We must tie him,” said old Germaine, laughing; “when Jeannette misbehaved in school, I used to tie her by the arm to an end of the bench.”
“I remember it well,” said Jeannette; “and more than once I broke the string.”
“Then we must find some other means, if that will not do; think of something, Germaine,” replied Ragaud, winking over at the children.
“Think yourself, M. Ragaud,” said she. “Are you not master here?”
“That depends,” replied Ragaud. “If I were master, I would say to Jean‐ Louis, Marry, my boy; when you will have a wife and children, they will keep you in the country more than all the ropes, even that of our well. But Jeannet has declared he will not hear of marriage; and here is Jeanne, who can’t be relied upon for advice, as she said the same thing not more than a month ago, in presence of M. le Curé; so we can’t sing that tune any longer.”
“But how do you know? Perhaps by this time they have both changed their minds,” said the curé, smiling.
“Let them say so, then,” replied Ragaud, his eyes beaming with paternal tenderness that was delightful to see.
“O father!” said Jean‐Louis, rising, “if I dared to understand you, I would be wild with joy!”
“If you can’t understand me, little one, Jeannette perhaps can be a little quicker. Speak, Jeanneton!”
The child instantly understood his meaning. In a second she was beside Jeannet, took his hand, and both knelt down before their father.
“My children, ask M. le Curé’s blessing before mine,” said Ragaud solemnly. “He is the representative of the good God, and it is God who has conducted all.”
It was a touching scene. The good curé extended his trembling hands over Jean‐Louis and Jeannette, who bent low before him, weeping; then Ragaud did the same with great simplicity, which is the sign of true piety, and then Pierrette took each of their dear heads in her arms, kissed them, and said:
“My poor darlings! May God protect you all the days of your life! You have wept so much, you deserve to be happy together.”
The poor children were overwhelmed with joy so deep and tranquil they could neither move nor speak. They kept close together, and looked tenderly at each other with eyes that said much. M. le Curé left them for awhile to themselves and their new‐found happiness. He knew enough of the human heart to understand that great display of affection, loud weeping, and noisy parade of words and actions are often marks of a very little fire in the soul; while love which has been proved by deeds, and which is scarcely seen, is always very ardent. As he had never doubted that Jeannet, hitherto so perfect, would show and feel sincere affection as a lover, he was glad to see he was not mistaken, and regarded with much pleasure this young couple, who were so well matched.
However, it was very easy to see our curé had something to say. Jean‐ Louis and Jeannette had softly retreated to the corner near the sideboard, a little out of sight of the parents; and we must imagine that, feeling themselves a little more at ease thus sheltered from observation, the faculty of speech returned to them, as they could be heard whispering and laughing like children at recreation. It was so charming to see them thus relieved from all their difficulties, and swimming in the full tide of happiness, like fish in the river, no one had the courage to disturb them.
But our curé had his own idea, and would not leave until he had made it known; so, as he saw Jean‐Louis and Jeannette might chatter away a long while, he rose, as if to say good‐night, which made all the rest rise; for, although intensely happy, they did not forget to be civil.
“My children,” said the pastor, addressing the old as well as the young, “I will go to sleep to‐night very happy. For forty years, come next All‐ Saints, that I have been your curé, never have I assisted at a betrothal as consoling as yours, for which I will return thanks to God all my life. You are going to marry as is seldom done in the world nowadays; that is to say, with hearts even more full of esteem than of love, which enables me, in the name of the Lord, to promise you as much happiness as can fall to the lot of mortals here below. You know already that a house built without foundation cannot stand, and that the grain sown in bad soil bears no fruit. It is the same with the sacrament of marriage, when it is received by a soul that is frivolous and vain, and feels neither regret for the past nor makes good resolutions for the future. Oh! how happy I am I cannot say this about you; and how my old heart, which has pitied all your sufferings, now is gladdened at your happiness, well deserved by the piety and resignation of the one and the sincere repentance of the other—this is for our betrothed. Great disinterestedness, and all the domestic virtues of a Christian life is the praise I unhesitatingly bestow upon you, the good parents! But if this reward is beautiful, if nothing can exceed it, since it is the pledge of a whole life of peace and happiness, know that the Lord will not be surpassed in generosity, and that he has prepared a delightful surprise by my mouth, which will be like the crowning bouquet on the summit of an edifice just completed.
“My dear Ragaud, I speak now to you. Twenty years ago, when your generous heart received, without the slightest hesitation, a poor, abandoned child, it was an honorable and religious act, which deserved the warmest praise; but to‐day, when you give your only daughter to this same child, from pure esteem of his noble qualities, without regard to the gossip of the people around, this second action surpasses the first in excellence, and deserves a special recompense from our good God.
“Well! you will soon have it. Jean‐Louis, my child, as it is generally said, there is no sky without clouds. Perhaps even at this moment your heart may have a little secret grief; for it is not forbidden to feel an honest wish to give the woman you love all possible honor; and that cannot be done when one comes into the world without family or name.
“Alas! for the name. I cannot repair that misfortune; but for the family, know, my friends, that the blood of him whom you call son and brother is equal to yours. In the name of my conscience, I here declare that Jeannet is the son of Catharine Luguet, who died in my arms sincerely repentant, and most piously giving me perfect license to reveal this secret, confided in confession, when I should judge it necessary. I have waited a long time, and I do not regret it. At no other time, I think, could you have been happier to hear me tell such good news. So, Ragaud, embrace your nephew; and you, my daughter Jeannette, in taking a perfect husband, you gain, at the same time, a good cousin. Too much happiness never hurts any one!”
“Ah!” said Germaine, wiping her eyes, “it was worth while staying so late to‐night. I have been tempted half a dozen times to tell what M. le Curé has just made known; for I also received the secret from poor dear Catharine, and even before my master, although I do not pretend to interfere with his rights.”
“M. le Curé,” said Ragaud, “if I am very happy to learn that our dear child belongs to us by nature as much as by friendship, believe me when I say that I am most grateful to God that, without my knowing it, he allowed me to repair the too great severity with which I formerly treated my niece. Alas! I well remember it, and most sincerely do I regret it; and if she gave us this handsome boy a little too soon, according to the laws of God and man, I have no right to blame her, as I was the cause, from want of gentleness and kindness! Come, my son,” added the good Christian, extending his arms to Jeannet—“come, that I may ask your pardon in memory of your poor mother.”
Jean‐Louis threw himself on his father’s breast, whom he could not yet call dear uncle, while Jeannette added her embrace, giving herself up to the full joy of cousining her future husband. Pierrette had her full share of kisses, you can well fancy. It was so delightful to feel that he really had a family, and was bound to the country by ties of flesh and blood, and also to know that he belonged to the best people in the neighborhood, the Luguets and Ragauds, that Jeannet, who in his whole life never had a spark of vanity, felt a little glow of excitement and satisfaction, perfectly natural, flame up in his heart. But his beautiful soul quickly drove out such a feeling, to which he already reproached himself for having listened, even for a moment, although it could be easily understood, and was honorable in itself. The remembrance of his unknown mother, dying in sorrow and want, and who would have been so happy could she have witnessed his present joy, surmounted any personal satisfaction. He questioned M. le Curé, and spoke in the most tender and respectful manner in memory of his poor mother, and wished to know every detail of her death, which was sad, but very consoling at the same time.
Every one listened with much emotion to poor Catharine’s story. I doubt not that God then permitted her to know something of the loving sympathy and compassion that filled those kind, good hearts, which most certainly must have added to her happiness; for, since the church commands us to believe that souls cannot die, can it be wrong to think that they see and hear us, when the Lord allows them?
Jeannette, while the curé spoke, was often much confused when she thought of the dangerous result of coquetry, wilfulness, and too great love of one’s own pretty face and fine dresses. She felt how kind God had been to her, that she had not gone the same way as Catharine Luguet; for she had walked down the same path, and had nearly fallen as low as she.
By way of recovering her spirits, she embraced Jeannet, and promised she would be a good housekeeper, and nothing else.
“And also a pretty little wife, that will make me very happy,” replied Jeannet, pressing her to his heart.
“Now,” said Pierrette, who for several moments had been very silent and thoughtful, “I have just found out something that makes me feel how stupid I am. I never before noticed that Jeannet is the living image of his dear departed mother.”
“It is fortunate, Mme. Ragaud,” said Germaine, “that you have just perceived it, after seeing him twenty years; for, in truth, the likeness is so striking it has caused M. le Curé and me much embarrassment. It was so easily seen that I prayed God would protect him in case of discovery; and if there is one miracle in the whole story, it is that such a strong resemblance did not sooner strike you.”
As it had just been mentioned, in the course of the story, that Catharine Luguet, in her day, was the most beautiful girl in the country, this declaration made Jeannet blush, and I dare not affirm it was not from pleasure. They discovered, also, that Solange had a strong family likeness, and Pierrette, more and more astonished, acknowledged it was true, and that she was as stupid as an owl.
They had to separate at last, although no one felt the least fatigued; but they had had enough for one day, and a little sleep after these heavy showers of happiness would injure none of them.
As the surprises were not yet over, Jeannet had another charming one when he saw his room newly painted and papered, and his bed, with white curtains, perfumed with the iris‐root that our housekeepers love to use in the wash. They installed him like a prefect on a tour of inspection, with a procession of lights, and wishes of good‐night, and what do you want, and there it was, and here it is; and if he slept quietly is something I cannot say positively; but, at any rate, you needn’t worry about his eyes, whether they were open or shut. What I can swear to is that his good angel watched joyfully by his bedside, and took care to drive off all bad dreams.
XXIII.
Now, I might make my bow, and wish you good‐night in my turn; for I think you are satisfied with the fate of the little ones, and need have no further anxiety on their account. But just as two beautiful roses in a bouquet appear still more beautiful when they are surrounded by other flowers and green leaves that rejoice the eye, so our friends will lose nothing if I represent them to you for the last time among the companions of their adventures who have served as an escort during the whole recital. Consequently, if you will be patient a moment and listen to me, I will tell you what became of the people and things that have remained in the background for some time.
In the first place, according to the proverb, “Give every man his due.”
So we will commence with our good master, M. le Marquis, whom we left, if you remember, wounded in the arm and seated on a log near the barricade in the bloody days of June.
This wound, which was believed to be nothing, became inflamed and very dangerous, owing to the great excitement of the patient and the extreme heat of the summer. The poor marquis was obliged to keep his bed for a long time, and they even feared they would be obliged to amputate the arm. When the physicians made the proposition, he sprang up with a start on his couch, and, weak and feverish as he was, did not hesitate to tell them, in the most emphatic manner, that the first one who mentioned it again would go out of the window with one turn of the hand that was still sound. They advised him to be quiet and calm himself, all the while giving him to understand there was no hope for him—which, in my opinion, was not the best means of soothing him; but doctors never wish to be thought in the wrong, and, without meaning to offend any one, I may say very many of us are doctors on that point.
Our master was brave. He contented himself with saying:
“I prefer to be buried with two arms, rather than to live with one.”
“That depends on taste,” replied Michou, who nursed his master with loving fidelity; “but he must not be contradicted.”
When the doctors left, M. le Marquis said to Michou:
“Come here, old fellow; these idiots of Parisians know as much about revolutions and medicine as planting cabbages. Send for Dr. Aubry. I can get along with him.”
M. Aubry was summoned by telegraph, and God so willed it that scarcely had he seen the wound of M. le Marquis than he shrugged his shoulders, and said he would answer for him; and added, with much satisfaction, that one had to come to Paris to find doctors that talked like asses and acted like butchers.
He made them bring him a quantity of pounded ice, which he applied to the wounded arm, and took care that our master always kept a piece in his mouth. In that way his blood was refreshed, and there was no longer danger of the flesh mortifying. He added to this remedy another potion not less wonderful, which was to distract the mind of the marquis by telling him night and day—for he never slept—all kinds of stories, sometimes lively, sometimes serious, but always suitable to his state; and so kept him constantly amused and interested, which prevented him from thinking of his poor arm. At the end of a week, he was out of danger, and he could get up, eat the breast of a chicken, and think of going out in a few days. If I would be a little malicious, I could tell you that the Parisian doctors were not very well pleased at the triumph of their country colleague, and perhaps would have been more content to see our master dead than their prophecies frustrated; but I had better be silent than wanting in charity, and therefore I prefer to let you think what you please about them.
Poor mademoiselle and Dame Berthe, during this painful time of anxiety, acted admirably and showed great devotion and love. It was then seen that, although they had their little defects on the surface, their souls were generous and good. The old governess forgot her scarfs and embroideries, and devoted herself to making lint, and no longer indulged in dreams of the king’s entrance into Paris, but constantly recited fervent prayers, which had not, I assure you, “the cause” in view. Mademoiselle received a salutary blow. She became, through this trouble, serious and recollected; began to see that in Paris nothing is thought of but pleasure and fine toilets, and that, after all, at Val‐Saint there were a thousand ways of passing her life in a pleasant way worthy of a Christian whom God had so liberally endowed with riches.
One day, when she had gone out to pray and weep in a neighboring church, she returned with her eyes radiant with joy, and said to Dame Berthe:
“All will be right. My father will be cured. I cannot explain to you why I am so confident, but I am sure of it. When I was in the church before the altar of the Blessed Virgin, the idea entered into my head to make a vow; and I have promised to return to the country, and remain there the rest of my life, to work for the poor, and to occupy myself with all other kinds of good works, as my mother used to. I have too long neglected to follow her example, and henceforth I will act differently. I depend upon your assistance.”
Dame Berthe nearly fainted with admiration of her pupil’s saintliness. As she was naturally very good, she was impressed with the beauty of the project, and promised to do all in her power to aid her.
After that, mademoiselle looked like another person. She visited churches and chapels, conferred with pious priests; and as monsieur improved every day, he could accompany her in the carriage; and she took great pleasure in confiding to him her new plans, proving to him that he could be much more useful to “the cause” by instructing the peasants in politics than by fighting the rabble in Paris; that, by his great wealth and the high esteem in which he was held, he could make himself still more beloved; and that, when they loved him, they would love the nobility which he represented; so that when the time came—and it would not be far off—for the triumph of his hopes, he could offer to the king a faithful population devoted to good principles, which was scarcely possible in the present state of affairs.
As she was in this happy frame of mind, you can imagine with what joy mademoiselle received the news of the engagement of Jean‐Louis and Jeanne. She immediately wrote a letter on the subject which deserved to be put under glass and framed in gold; for not only did she congratulate the Ragauds with the greatest affection, but she humbly accused herself of having nearly ruined the happiness of her god‐daughter, and thanked God he had directed all in a manner so contrary to her wishes. When you think that this high‐born young lady spoke thus to the little daughter of a farmer on her estate, we must admire the miracles of the religion which teaches us that those who humble themselves shall be exalted; and I add, for the benefit of those who fancy themselves lovers of equality, and talk all kind of nonsense about it, that there never would have been the slightest chance of planting a seed of it in the hearts of men, even though it were no bigger than a grain of millet, if they had not beforehand received instructions on that virtue from our dear mother, the church.
About a month afterwards, M. le Marquis being perfectly cured, they all returned to Val‐Saint; and it is unnecessary to say how universal was the joy. It is equally useless to tell you that their first occupation was the marriage of our children, which was so beautiful, so joyous, so enlivened with the music of violins and songs, it resembled that of a prince and princess in Mother Goose. During a whole week, the boys of the neighborhood beat tin pans and fired off guns under the windows of Muiceron, as signs of honor and rejoicing. With us peasants, joy is always rather noisy, but, at least, it can be heard very far; and, besides, as we don’t often have a chance of amusing ourselves, it is best to let us have our own way.
There remains very little more for me to say, except that mademoiselle persevered in her laudable resolutions, and became the angel of Val‐Saint. One of her first good acts was to buy the house of the unfortunate Perdreaux, which, since the sad end of its masters, had remained deserted and shut up, no one daring to put it up at auction. Mademoiselle sent for workmen, who soon transformed it into a fine school‐house, divided into two parts by a garden, where nothing was spared in fruit‐trees, flowers, and vegetables. The following year the school was ready for occupation, and the Sisters were placed in charge of the girls, and a good teacher over the boys. By good luck, they were able to obtain Solange, who came among the first. Thus all our friends met again, and formed one family, of which the good God was the true father.
M. le Curé was very old when he died, and Germaine soon followed him. This good pastor left many regrets which are not yet assuaged; but he departed from this world happy that he saw all his children around him leading good, holy lives; and at the moment he expired, they heard him softly repeat the Nunc dimittis servum tuum, Domine, secundum verbum tuum in pace—which is a prayer of compline, printed in all the Breviaries.
Muiceron continued to prosper under the management of good Jeannet and his dear wife. The Ragauds passed their old age in a dream of happiness, free from clouds, amidst the love and respect of the community. Pierrette, who had never sinned but from weakness of heart, was never cured of this defect. On the contrary, it increased; and she devoted herself so completely to spoiling the beautiful children that Jeanne gave her, that more than once the parents had to cry, Stop! But aside from these little troubles, which did not cause much difficulty, peace and concord never ceased to reign in this house of benediction.
As the last flower in the crown, I will tell you that M. Aubry, who was not remarkable for devotion, was taken in hand by Sister Solange, and quietly converted. He swore a little at first, as might have been expected, and said it was a shame, at his age, to fall into the net of a doctor in cornette and petticoats, at whose birth he had been present, and whom he had vaccinated; but the end of all was, the cornette led him by the nose to Mass and confession, where he was seen to weep, although he tried to be very firm. As he was a good man, frank and open in all he did, once the step was taken, he did not go back; and I knew him a long while, and never saw him act but like a perfect Christian.
And now, at this late hour, I pray that God may send down upon you, as well as myself, his choicest blessings, without which, you may truly believe, there is nothing worth living for here below.
Public Worship.
Few observing persons have failed to remark the great change which within a few years has been wrought in the ideas of people at large in regard to public worship. It is not confined to any one of the religious denominations around us. It pervades all, from the High‐Church Episcopalian to those who still cling to the law of Moses. Insensibly, it may be, but surely, the growth has all been in one direction, as surely as the germ in the earth pushes towards the light.
Time was when the plain, unadorned meeting‐house of the Society of Friends seemed the type all sought to attain in architecture; painting and decoration would have caused a thrill of horror; Gothic architecture, with groined roof and stained glass, were as far removed from the thoughts and ideas as the Crusades; and if the sister art of music was admitted within the portals of the room reserved for worship, the execution was of such a fearful character that Old Folks’ Concerts make it a sure guide to success, to mimic, for the amusement of this generation, the strange religious music of half a century ago.
Then religion, as expressed in public worship, was plain, stern, hard, unsympathetic, responsive to none of the finer feelings, the loftier aspirations, the panting hopes of human nature feeling its misery, but still looking heavenward.
Now the change has come. Insensibly, almost unconsciously, they have all more or less come to confess their error. Just as they are returning to the genuine Lord’s Prayer, after inflicting a spurious one on their votaries for three centuries; just as they are returning to the true reading of the Greek Testament, after three centuries’ bondage to the Received Text, so they are returning, after three centuries of dry, hard, formal worship, to something more in unison with man’s nature, man’s soul, and man’s heart.
But how? The Reformation, that stern, matter‐of‐fact revolt, not only stripped religion of all its poetry, whether manifested in the carven stone, the painted glass or canvas, the strains of more than earthly music, but it did more: it struck at the life of worship; and the present movement which has made synagogues into temples and meeting‐houses into churches—the work of men who “builded better than they knew”—yet is but a factitious life; it is placing artificial fruit and leaves and flowers on a dead trunk that has no vivifying sap to send through all the full, gushing tide of life.
What is public worship?
Is there really a question of the day that can be brought home to practical men like our American countrymen more distinctly than this? Long creeds and the discussion of their various points, the old controversies and chopping of texts, seem to have become singularly distasteful to the men of our day. But the divine worship is a point that, presented squarely and plainly, is easily grasped, and really involves in itself everything. It is the generating principle, the fountain of faith and works.
About a century ago, in London, the question of worship was debated by some of the leading ministers of the day, and the pamphlets form volumes. A more vague series of arguments on all sides can scarcely be found; all seemed to turn round and round the text that men were to “worship God in spirit and truth,” but in what precise way was a matter none seemed able to approach, even in the most remote manner. What constituted practically the public worship of the Almighty seemed to be a point that was utterly indefinite and indefinable.
Suppose, now, we were to ask the clergymen or laymen of the denominations around us, What is the essential element of public worship, as distinguished, on the one hand, from preaching, and on the other from family worship of prayer? What would the answer be?
Public worship has, in common ideas, come to be almost identical with preaching. The preacher makes the church; his popularity is its success; with his decline in health, vigor, or voice, the church begins to melt away, and a new preacher has to be evoked to give it life. But oral instruction of the people, laudable as it may be, is not public worship; it is addressed to the people, while worship is addressed to God. The prevailing confusion of ideas on this point has turned the extemporaneous prayers which in form are still addressed to the Deity really into appeals to the people; so that the reporter who spoke of a prayer as being the most eloquent ever addressed to a Boston congregation was correct in fact, though the form was against him.
Preaching does not constitute public worship. The object of preaching is the people; the object of worship is God.
What, then, is the essential element? Prayer recited or chanted—prayer extemporaneous or in forms grown venerable by use, is common alike to public and private worship, to the worship of the individual in his closet, the family, or the gathering of families. It cannot be the essential element of public worship. What, then, is the essential element, or, if there be none, how can this public worship have any claim on the individual that may not be satisfied by him alone, as in the case of Dr. Bellows’ preferring isolation on the steamer’s deck to joining in the religious exercises carried on below?
But there is certainly an obligation to render public worship to the Almighty. The Sabbath rest prescribed by the Mosaic law was negative and subsidiary to the positive command to worship God. It did not tell what was to be done; that was provided elsewhere with the most detailed injunctions.
Even as ideas have changed on one point, so they have on another.
With the Reformers of the XVIth century, faith was all and everything. Now we have reached a time when faith has lost its ground; and, in the thousands around us, nine out of ten will tell you that it makes no difference what a man believes; if his life is right, he is safe. But yet they make a distinction in works. It is not all works that have value in the eyes of the world; it is those of benevolence—the corporal works of mercy. They will shrug their shoulders and allow some little value to the spiritual works of mercy, but it will not be much. Yet these works of mercy, whether corporal or spiritual, have for their object our neighbor. There is, however, a higher class of works—those which have God for their object.
Good works towards God! some will exclaim; what need has God of our good works? The need may be on our side, and the question is not one of need, but of duty on our part.
Love is the fulfilling of the law—“he that loveth me keepeth my commandments.” The Commandments to be kept, the works to be done, are written on the two tables of the law; and the works to be done towards God form the first and greater Commandment, and foremost on it—first of the good works of which God is the object—is worship, public and private.
Have not common ideas, then, perverted the whole order? With the higher appreciation of good works that is growing so visibly will come a logical placing of them. The first table will reassert its rights; the great good work towards God, public worship, will take its rightful place, and be regarded as the great, imperative act on the part of man.
If so important, it must have its distinctive characteristics, its essential elements—some thymiama exclusively assigned to it, never given, we say, not to any mean use, but to high or holy use or honor of anything that is not God.
Should no one around us tell what this element is, we must go back to the past. The first Commandment, in its positive form, is: “The Lord thy God thou shalt adore, and him only shalt thou serve.” In what essentially does this adoration and service consist?
If we open the two oldest books we have—the Bible, record of a people who preserved their faith in God; Homer, describing the life of a nation fallen so early into idolatry that it preserved no tradition of the time when the unity of God was acknowledged—if we open these to see what in the earliest ages constituted divine worship, we find the answer clear and plain—Sacrifice.
Leave the shores of the Mediterranean, strike to India, China, the islands of the Pacific, and ask what constitutes public worship, the answer still is, Sacrifice. Reach the western shores of America, question every tribe, from the more savage nomads of the north and south to the more cultured Aztecs, to the subjects of the Incas, and the answer never varies; it is, Sacrifice.
Cross the Atlantic as you crossed the Pacific, the Celts of the Isles and of Gaul, Scandinavian and German, repeat the burden, Sacrifice, till you come again to the tents of the patriarchs on the plains of the Euphrates or Jordan.
And what was sacrifice? A rite cruel, repugnant to all our ideas—one that could not spring from man himself. It was the offering of an inferior life to the offended Deity as a substitute for man’s life forfeited by sin—a substitute deriving its value from a human life that was one day to appease the Almighty absolutely.
The whole system is strange, yet the whole is universal. Before man slew the beasts of the field for food, he slew them on the altar. Not Cain, unaccepted of God, offers this bloody sacrifice. Doubly the type of sinful man—sinful by descent and by act—Cain offers the fruits of the earth—badge of sin and toil and sweat of brow; while Abel, pure and gentle, slays the lamb that gambols affectionately around him—slays it to find favor with a God of love. It could not have entered into the heart of man to conceive this. Nothing less than a primitive revelation and command can explain sacrifice—that offering of domestic animals as a type of the great atoning sacrifice of the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world.
No matter how widely removed from the original seat of the race, no matter how low in the grade of civilization, every known tribe on earth has a worship and has sacrifices. The red men of our own land were long considered as an anomaly in this respect; but they really had the whole idea of sacrifice. One example will show it. When F. Jogues, the pioneer priest of New York, was taken by the Mohawks in 1642, and reduced to the condition of a slave, he attended a hunting party of the tribe. Ill success in war and hunt had befallen the Mohawks, and, ascribing it to their offended deity, they offered to this demon Aireskoi two bears with this prayer: “Justly dost thou punish us, O demon Aireskoi!... We have sinned against thee, in that we ate not the last captives thrown into our hands; but if we shall ever again capture any, we promise to devour them as we now consume these two bears”—recognizing the idea of substitution and the efficacy of human blood as the great means of reconciliation. And the missionary, to his horror, saw two women sacrificed and eaten in fulfilment of this vow.
While the temple of Jerusalem stood, the Greek, the Roman, the Egyptian, the Gaul, and the German would, on entering, have seen naught removed from their ideas in the sacrifice offered. They might have wondered at the size and beauty of the temple, the rich vestments of the sons of Aaron; they might have been filled with awe at the absence of the image of the deity worshipped there so grandly; but in the great rite of sacrifice, there was nothing that was not familiar to them. In this the pagan nations were still in harmony with the divine institution; and in default of the Mosaic revelation, its appositeness could be proved by the common consent of mankind in a matter inexplicable except on the supposition of a primitive revelation.
The nearer and more striking the resemblance between the pagan sacrifices and those of the people of God, the greater the evidence they bear to corroborate it. Error may be old, but truth is older.
What, then, is the meaning of this ancient worship? The answer is plain: “Jesus Christ, yesterday and to‐day and for ever”—“the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world,” whose death was, when once accomplished in act, to be thenceforward shown forth until he came.
The offering on Calvary alone gave life and efficacy to all the sacrifices of Adam, of the patriarchs before and after the Flood, of the sacrifices of Abraham, and those who, in his day, still believed in the true God, in the sacrifices of the law promulgated by Moses.
Their sacrifices were but types and figures—substitutes for that which was to be accomplished in the person of the Messias; when that was once accomplished, it became the act of public worship, to be offered by man to the end of time.
The public worship of the new law is the sacrifice of Calvary, not renewed, not repeated—for “Christ dieth now no more”—but “shown forth,” made sensible.
The essential element of public worship is the death of the Man‐God on Calvary; and under the new law, this must be shown in something higher and nobler than the types and animal sacrifices of the old law. It is the one sufficient act of worship, fulfilling all the intentions and designs of the ancient typical sacrifices—adoration, praise, thanksgiving, propitiation, and impetration. No public worship that does not directly connect itself with this great sacrifice can be at all a public worship acceptable to God.
The Almighty has certainly instituted a worship showing forth this death, and that alone will he accept.
Man cannot set up a public worship for himself. Worship is a debt which man owes to the Most High, and it is not for the debtor to fix the mode of paying that debt. In the discussion alluded to already, they frequently quoted the words of Jesus to the Samaritan woman, but overlooked the great lesson of that whole incident. When that erring woman, pressed hard on her moral delinquency, changed the subject, with womanly adroitness, to the great religious division between the Jews and Samaritans, she asked: “Our fathers adored on this mountain; and you say that at Jerusalem is the place that men must adore”—meaning, evidently, “offer the sacrifices of the law.”
Christ answered: “Salvation is with the Jews.” The Mosaic church was the ark, and out of it there was no salvation. And yet the Samaritans had, according to modern ideas, every requisite. They had the law of Moses, and revered and followed it closely; they had priests of the sons of Aaron, won to their side; they offered all the sacrifices commanded by the law, and as the law commanded; and they had and exercised the right of private judgment in the matter of the place. And precisely this last point vitiated the whole, and made their sacrifices utterly worthless in the eyes of God. They did not conduce to salvation. To be in the way of salvation, they must be in communion with the high‐priest at Jerusalem, and their sacrifices could not be vivified by man or angel. They were worthless. “Salvation was with the Jews.”
The essential element of public worship is, then, the sacrifice of Calvary; and the public worship of the new law must be connected with that act by divine institution. No institution devised by private judgment, however seemingly fit to human eyes, can have any real value. It is not for man to make, by his private judgment, a form of public worship that will avoid the sentence, “Salvation is not in it.” As the figurative sacrifices of the old law derived their value from divine institution as typical of Calvary, so the public worship of the new law must be connected with Calvary by divine institution.
Now, in the popular forms of public worship in our days, there is no essential element, either of divine or human creation, to connect it with Calvary. It is inferior even to the Samaritan worship, which Christ so decisively condemned. What claims, then, can it have?
The Catholic who is asked why he cannot attend a Protestant worship finds his answer here. “Why,” it will be said, “there can be no harm in it. Reading the Scriptures, singing psalms out of Holy Writ, and a moral explanation of some part of Scripture cannot but be good.” Even supposing the explanation to contain nothing contrary to faith, a Catholic cannot accept it. It is not of God’s institution, and, as unauthorized and human, must be rejected of God. There was no detail in the Samaritan worship that a Jew could condemn, yet he had to condemn it as a whole; for, by God’s institution, all this, done on Mount Sion, was acceptable to him and contributed to salvation; done elsewhere, was repugnant and availed not.
So absolute is the necessity of adhering to divine institution to give any value to our religious acts that we see in the Acts that the Jewish priests, whose authority had been so fully sustained, were, by the institution of the priesthood of the new law, superseded; and when they attempted to exercise functions under the new law, the very devils laughed them to scorn. If men of a priesthood instituted by God had thus lost power, how could men self‐constituted make themselves more acceptable, or create a form of worship that could be acceptable, to God?
Nor can any such power exist in the civil authority, be it emperor, king, parliament, or congress. Saul, usurping the headship of the church and the functions of the priesthood, only drew down judgment on himself, and his race ceased to rule over the people.
The only example in the old law that even remotely resembles the liberty assumed in the last centuries by men to form modes of worship is that of Michas in the Book of Judges, who made his own god, his own temple, his worship, and constituted one of his sons as priest till he was able to obtain an apostate Levite.
Man, of himself, would have as much right to make his god like Michas as to make his worship. He can make neither, and cannot give saving power to his form of worship any more than he can divinity to the deity his brain may devise.
Let us, then, see whether there exists under the new law an institution in which the one great sacrifice of Calvary is made perpetually present to the end of time. The Reformers, before introducing their own experimental forms of public worship, since so varied—now reduced to the plainest form, then more cheering, but all based on the synagogue service of the Jews, which was not divine worship, as the temple service was—rejected a form of public worship coeval and coextensive with Christendom, full of the spirit and echo of the temple service of Jerusalem, that was really and solely divine worship—they rejected the Mass.
The Jews even now recognize that their synagogue service is not worship; they still admit the necessity of a sacrifice, as witness one of the most common forms of prayer offered up in the synagogue: “O Lord, in the time when the temple stood, when a sin was committed the guilty one brought sacrifices, and it was atoned unto him; but now, through our sins, we have no temple, no altar, no priests to offer up sacrifices which shall atone for our sins. Let the remembrance of our prayers, of the many prayers we offer up, O Lord, be acceptable in the place of sacrifices.”
There had been heresies and schisms before the XVIth century. They had been almost countless; but Arian and Pelagian, Donatist and Nestorian, all retained the Mass, the authority of all tradition, in Asia, Europe, and Africa, making it too daring an attempt for any to endeavor to modify or abolish it. By the concurrent testimony of all Christians of every tongue and land the Mass was the public worship of God, instituted by the apostles under the command of Jesus Christ and the direction of the Holy Ghost; and to this day it is retained in the Oriental lands, where the apostles and their immediate successors preached, although many of those countries have for centuries rejected the spiritual authority of Rome, and would not adopt the slightest form or ceremony peculiar to the Latin Church.
A movement against the Mass could not arise in any of these lands. It could arise only in nations just emerged from the darkness of paganism, with its spirit still strong within them, and with no apostolic tradition to inspire them with reverence.
The German race, last to accept the Gospel, was the first to reject it. The Real Presence was denied, and with that dogma they cast aside the Mass as the great act of public worship, and the whole theory of the Christian priesthood. In England alone an attempt was made to keep a hollow form and a compromise which James I. sneeringly styled an ill‐said Mass.
In each country, government or individuals then attempted to get up something to take the place of the public worship which had for fifteen centuries gathered Christians around the altar of God, and, while all cried for liberty, made the new forms obligatory by civil law; and in England, the government, by fine and imprisonment, compelled men to go to the churches torn from Catholic worship, in order to follow the newly‐ devised common prayer; and in New England, men who turned with loathing from this, punished just as stringently all who dissented from the standing order or refused to attend the congregational form of worship. Yet both were confessedly mere human inventions, to which no more divine sanction could be ascribed than to the form of opening a court of justice.
Of course the first generation of the Reformed recollected the old Catholic worship, and kept up some resemblance to it; but as the memory died away, one point after another was cast aside, till every original trace was lost, and everything was made as bald and plain as possible.
Then a new great discovery was made. Satisfied with their own position, they looked at the Catholic worship, now become strange and wonderful in their eyes, and they discovered a striking analogy between it and pagan worship. Middleton, in the last century, expatiated wonderfully on the point; and our readers know how offensively our fluent, superficial Prescott, in his Conquest of Mexico, draws the comparison. But these men never seem to have thought that God might have his own views of his own worship, and that he could not have left the world without a guide on this point; they forgot that one fully explained type of worship of the ante‐ Christian era was before us to guide us in our search.
Take one of our average countrymen, from Prescott’s own State, and set him down in the temple of Jerusalem while the high‐priest was still offering the sacrifices of the law. What would his impressions be? He would certainly deem it a very pagan affair; the architecture would, in his eyes, be unsuited to a meeting‐house; the vestments heathenish or—what to him would perhaps be synonymous—popish; the incense clearly so; and a radical defect in the whole would be, in his eyes, that the congregation took no part, and that the building was not adapted to preaching.
If, at the morning hour of prayer, or when the shadow of Mount Sion fell lengthening towards the Mediterranean, he entered the sacred enclosure, and beheld the priest, in rich robe, enter, incense in hand, to offer it on the golden altar, while the people were kept rigorously without, he would have found it sadly at variance with his ideas.
If, as the sun began to gild the golden face of the tower, he saw a devout Jew coming with his wife and little ones, bearing in his arms a lamb, to have it offered in sacrifice for him or some sick child at home, and taking back part to eat as part of the religious rite, he would think all this needed reforming, and that it was very nearly as bad as the popish way of having Masses said.
The only question would be whether the Almighty was wrong, or whether his own stand‐point was utterly wrong.
Certainly, neither in the Jewish temple service nor in the worship of any pagan nation could he find the type of his own. The pagan had strong and striking resemblances with the Jewish; the worship of Christendom grew out of the Jewish temple service.
To this day chants echo through Catholic aisles that were first heard on Mount Sion. To the Catholic the old temple service would be intelligible; the edifice, the vestments, the incense, the priestly performing of a great act, would all be in harmony with ideas with which he had been imbued from youth; to him there would be the most natural of natural things in having sacrifice offered for him or his; he would kneel without in the crowd, offering, through the priest within, the smoking incense—offering it, as each one around him did, for his own wants of soul or body. In all the ideas of worship of the Jew he would be at home, and could join in the same spirit in every religious act that marked life from circumcision till the Kadisch, or prayer for the dead, poured forth beside the grave in the valley of Josaphat.
Those who find the Catholic worship too like the pagan would have condemned the divinely‐instituted worship of the Mosaic law as still more like it. That paganism bears its testimony to the Catholic worship is an argument in its favor, not against it; for the pagan worship was a divine institution, perverted more in its object than in its form. Had it been purely the coinage of man’s brain, of man’s private judgment—one of those ways that seem right unto a man, though the ends thereof lead to death—there would be no such resemblance.
Is it not a striking fact that the Catholic, trained to the worship of his church, would be at home in the temple of Jerusalem during that divinely‐ instituted worship, while to the Protestant it would be utterly repugnant?
The Mass in Latin, Greek, Coptic, Armenian, Abyssinian, Sclavonic, is almost identical, and in all rites claims to have been instituted by the apostles by divine authority. The form is the same, though varying parts have varied. The Jewish worship was simply action; the Christian worship has, from the earliest period, combined action and a form of words. The language of the Mass is older than any of the books of the New Testament. Is it unworthy of the great act? The answer will best be a challenge to produce anything, from the days of the Reformation, which can at all approach it in grandeur; in its recognition of all the attributes of God and of the nothingness of man in his sight; in all and everything that could embody the idea of worship. It has, perhaps, the most sublime thought ever written. Longinus quoted the “Let there be light, and there was light,” as a sublime thought that paganism admired. Yet this record of the creative act is less sublime than “We thank thee for thy great glory.” That man, the creature of God, should thank him for existence, for his intellect and body, for truth imparted, for life, health, happiness, for loved ones and their love, for all the blessings ever bestowed on him, or, soaring higher, ever bestowed on men and angels, might be admirable; but when man, losing sight entirely of himself and of all created things, looks up to God, and, overwhelmed with love, thanks him for his great glory, for his attributes, for being what he is, he soars from the depths of nothingness to the height of sublimity. One of the modern objections to religion is its selfish character; the Mass answers this by its utter abnegation of self, just as it formally disavows the sufficiency of human works.
The action is worthy of divine worship. A man stands at the altar, not self‐instituted, but called as Aaron and his race were—stands there with powers traced back through the apostles to Christ. He approaches as a sinner among sinners, acknowledging his unworthiness, striking his breast with the publican, not vaunting himself with the Pharisee. Then follow soon the glorious canticle, in which the sinner rises, in thought and hope, to God, prayer, lessons from the Old Testament or the New, a portion of the gospels, a solemn profession of faith. Then properly begins the Sacrifice, at which, in early days, only the baptized could be present, and not even such of them as were subjects of public penance.
Bread and wine appear on the altar. Even among the pagans, fruits of the earth were offered to inferior deities alone. In the Bible, they mark the sinful race, like Cain, or men without the chosen people, like Melchisedec. It is in itself an inferior offering, and bears the stamp of man’s fall. Bread and wine are doubly suggestive. It is not merely fruits of the earth raised by man’s toil and the sweat of his brow; it is food prepared by still further toil.
The priest stands there as the type of fallen man, with such offering as fallen man can give; but if this were all, his sacrifice would be but that of Melchisedec. His language shows that the sacrifice has, so to speak, no beginning or end; that it is one act, and that time is not regarded. The bread and wine are treated, not as what they are, but what they are to become. It is not that the sacrifice of guilty Cain may become that of the pious Abel, the sacrifice of the uncalled Melchisedec become that of Abraham the elect; not that this sacrifice of fallen man may become the Paschal lamb, but Christ our Pasch himself; and such it is in thought already when the priest offers the bread as an immaculate host, and the wine as the chalice of salvation—offers them for his own sins and those of all Christians; for the salvation of those present and that of the whole world. He offers it again in memory of the passion, resurrection, and ascension of our Lord, and in honor of all who have faithfully served him on earth.
He never separates himself from the people for whom he offers it. From the commencement to the end, it is their sacrifice and his; in fact, as if to prevent any forgetfulness of this, he turns, as the awful moment of consecration approaches, to say: “Brethren, pray that my sacrifice and yours may be acceptable to God, the Father Almighty.”
Then, with the Preface that sounds like the triumphant march of an approaching monarch, comes the consecration. The types of sinful man disappear, and Jesus Christ is all. He is the priest; he is the victim. He makes the only oblation that can take away sin. He offers the only victim which can render his Eternal Father due adoration, homage, and honor; which can alone call down graces and blessings.
The priest and people, adoring the divine High‐Priest and Victim, offer through him that sacrifice of Calvary for all mankind, for the living and the dead, for the church and all its members. Then, repeating the prayer he himself enjoined, the divine Victim is consumed, and the solemn rite hastens to a close.
Sublime in its conception, sublime in all its parts, sublime alike in action and in words, the world has never beheld a more adequate public worship of God. In itself, in its antiquity, its wide extent, it is one of the strongest arguments in favor of the church. Its wonderful adaptability to all nations and all conditions of social elevation are no less striking. A public worship, in which the most polished and cultivated minds of civilized nations can join, absorbed and taking part, while the poor peasant enters as well into its spirit, and offers it for all his wants; a sacrifice that can come home to the savage and the sage, to men of the frozen North and the parching tropics, which makes the church a home in all lands where not a syllable uttered in the streets falls familiar on the ear—such is the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass of the Catholic Church—a worship distinct from any other service, offered to God alone, and combining in the highest degree everything that can be conceived as fitting in that great act—divine institution, the character of sacrifice, identity with the oblation of Calvary—the only adequate worship ever offered to God.
The Answered Prayer.
“Mortal cannot make Conditions with the Creator.”—Schiller.
Into my broken heart Pour gracious balm, Where the deep waters start Breathe holy calm; Over my weary life Shed deep repose, Shelter me from the strife, Baffle my foes!
I have not shunned my task Early or late; I have not turned to ask “Wherefore?” of fate. Only one cry went up, Hopeless at length— “Father! to drink thy cup Grant me thy strength.”
Now at the last I stand Waiting from heaven, Patient, with outstretched hand, Alms never given! Grant me, O God! I pray, One answ’ring sign Ere I withdraw for aye! Speak! Am I thine?
Cometh the sign at last— Bolt hot and red, Falling to crush and blast Desolate head; Driving the cowering form Wildly across Life’s heath, through flood and storm, On—to the cross!
From that day I resumed my former habits, and, except the liveliness of my childhood, which had disappeared never to return, I became almost the same as before. This sudden and unhoped‐for restoration brought cheerfulness once more to our gloomy house, and a ray of joy to the sad, anxious face of my father. I say anxious; for it was more so, if possible, than sad. There was an anxiety in his look, whenever he turned towards me, that was quite inexpressible. Had he so trembled for my life, and afterwards for my reason, as hardly to credit I was restored to him? Perhaps so; but if his anxiety had really outlived its cause, though that might explain his profound solicitude, it could not account for the coldness of manner he now manifested, instead of the warm affection to which he had accustomed me from infancy. And when I endeavored to fathom the cause of this change, only one reason occurred to me, which I repelled with terror, and on which my mind utterly refused to dwell!...
I had not seen my brother (the elder of the two children by my father’s first marriage) since my illness. When I went to the supper‐table for the first time, he was not there. But this did not cause me any great regret, for I feared Mario more than I loved him. I was glad, therefore, to find no one present but my father, my sister Livia, and Ottavia, who, from a waiting‐maid, had merited, from her long services, to be promoted to a duenna. I say duenna, and not governess; for she would scarcely have been able to teach us to read and write. But she knew many things much more important. She was one of those good, simple souls, so frequently met with in Italy among people of her station, uncultivated from a human point of view, but wonderfully conversant with everything relating to the principles of the Christian religion, the practice of charity, and the grandeur of the Christian’s hopes. Sometimes thoughts came spontaneously from her heart and lips which were far more admirable than are to be found in any book. Therefore my father, notwithstanding her undeniable ignorance in many respects, did not consider her useless in the training of his children, but treated her with a consideration bordering on respect.
Hitherto my life had been surrounded by, and, so to speak, permeated with a mother’s love; and when I was suddenly deprived of this light and warmth, an overpowering grief, as has been related, took possession of my soul, which at first it seemed impossible I could survive. Now I was calmer; but there was still a void, a wretchedness, a grief in my heart, which, though not as violent as at first, had become fixed and permanent. I thought sometimes of young birds, whose mothers had been caught in the fowler’s net, left pining alone in their nests, or of poor little fish drawn out of the water and left on the shore in the heat of the sun. I seemed to be like them: my heart and soul were out of their element and deprived of their necessary food.
In this state, Ottavia and my kind sister Livia were the only persons in the house who afforded me any comfort. I always sought shelter beside them; for the sight of my father increased my depression, and I was afraid of my brother’s stern and penetrating eye.
Mario, at this time, was twenty‐seven years of age. He was remarkably handsome at first sight; but his stern, gloomy face, seldom expressive of kindness, and never of affection, greatly modified this first impression, and it was nearly impossible to feel entirely at ease with him. Nevertheless, he had many noble qualities, and in some respects resembled my father; but he had not inherited his kindness of heart.... My brother was unyielding and jealous, and, if not bad at heart, at least had an unpleasant disposition, and was often in an insupportable humor. He made me habitually feel that he regarded me as the child of a different mother, and could not forgive Livia, who was his own sister, for loving one who, according to him, had come to rob them of the full share of their father’s love.
At the time of Fabrizio dei Monti’s second marriage, Mario, then only twelve years old, had manifested so great a repugnance to it, and so much ill‐will towards her who was about to take his mother’s place at their fireside, that Fabrizio decided to send him away; and for several years Mario lived away from home, only returning from time to time for an occasional visit. It was only within a year he had become a permanent member of the household. At that time the malady that was to prove fatal to my mother had begun its ravages, and the remaining days of her life were already numbered. Whether it was this knowledge, or because he was softened and disarmed by the charm of her beauty and the angelic sweetness of her manner, it is certain he became quite a different person, and, in her presence at least, was never harsh or severe towards us. Perhaps this change would have been complete could he have remained longer under the sweet influence we were all so unhappily deprived of!
On the 15th of July—the day that ended so fatally—Mario was absent. He had left home the evening before, and, when he returned, he learned, at the same time, the calamity that had occurred and that which so speedily threatened to follow. I have been assured that he manifested a lively grief at my mother’s death, and had inquired about me, not only with interest, but even with anxiety. But the recollections of the past were still vividly impressed on my memory, and it was not to him my heavy, bleeding heart turned for consolation at such a time.
At the end of our gloomy repast, my sister was informed that there were several visitors in the drawing‐room. It was the hour when my father received his friends and the clients he had not been able to see in the morning. Livia immediately left the table, and I was about to follow her, when my father stopped me, and kept me beside him till he had looked over some documents which had just been brought him. He then gave me his arm to the salon. This was certainly done with kindness and an air of affection, but with a kind of gravity constantly perceptible as he kept me beside him the remainder of the evening. How gladly I would have exchanged this affectionate solicitude, that could not lose sight of me, for one such look as I used to receive!...
It was strange! but when I thought of my mother, no remorse was mingled with so affecting a remembrance. I felt as if a constant communication was maintained between her soul and mine; that she saw my repentance, was aware of my resolutions, and, to sum up my impressions—childish, perhaps, but so lively and profound that they have never been effaced—that peace had been made between us. But the thought that my father might be aware of all that took place during that hour of fearful memory, or the possibility of his knowing the foolish act I committed in my mother’s presence, alas! while she was dying, and that he might attribute the dreadful catastrophe that followed to that act, inspired me with genuine terror, which was only checked by a secret, constant conviction that my mother had not been able, during the few short hours of the following night, to divulge my secret to any one, even to him. But then, who could have told him, or what other reason could there be for the change that made me feel as if I had lost my father as well as my mother, and that the heavens were darkened on that side also?
The next day I was alone in my chamber, collecting my books in order to resume my studies, as if my mother were still alive to direct me, when my sister came in breathless, as if from running. She stopped to take breath, and locked the door before speaking.
Livia was two years younger than her brother. She was not handsome; but her form was noble and graceful, her eyes were strikingly beautiful, and her smile, though somewhat sad, was incomparably sweet. But a nose somewhat too long, a chin a little too short, and thick hair parted on a forehead a little too low, made her rather unattractive at the first glance, and perhaps caused the absurd notion I shall soon have occasion to refer to. But all who knew Livia regarded her as an angel of goodness, and forgot the defects of her face.
“Gina!” she hurriedly exclaimed, as soon as she could speak, “my dear little Gina! Mario has returned, and is coming up to see you. Listen to me,” embracing me as she continued. “I think he means to tell you something that will distress you—something I wish you could remain for ever ignorant of. But it is useless. He is determined you shall know it, and, after all, it may be as well. Only, carina, promise to be calm. If he scolds you, or speaks in his usual severe way, do not answer him. Control yourself. Let him go on, Gina mia! I beg of you. No matter if he distresses you for a moment; he will soon go away, and I will console you....”
I had no time to answer these incoherent supplications, for at that very instant I heard my brother’s steps in the gallery. He stopped at my door, and, finding it fastened, gave a low knock.
“You need not worry,” I whispered to Livia. “Remain here, and I will do as you wish, I assure you.”
Livia embraced me once more, and then opened the door. Mario entered. I advanced to greet him, and then stopped with surprise at seeing him so pale and altered. He looked as if he had been ill also. Neither of us spoke for a moment, for he likewise seemed to be astonished at my appearance. He must, indeed, have found me greatly changed since he last saw me. I had grown so tall during my illness that my face was nearly on a level with his, and the long black dress I wore made me appear even taller than I really was. I had lost the freshness of my complexion. The thick, fair hair of which I had been so proud no longer shaded my face, but was drawn back from my forehead, and confined under a black net. He had no reason now to chide me for too much attention to my appearance. He could not make any cutting jests about my hair, as he used to when I arranged it like a crown on my brow, or left it in long curls at the caprice of the wind, according to the whim of my vanity. He had left me a child—a child wilful and full of freaks, whom he only noticed in order to correct for some fault. He found me a young lady, whose sad, distressed, and somewhat austere look seemed the very reverse of the picture left in his memory. He seemed affected to find me so changed, and held out his hand with a cordiality much more affectionate than usual. Then, after a moment’s silence, he said with a kindness he had never before manifested:
“You have passed through a great trial, my poor Ginevra. I have felt for you, and participated in your grief, I assure you.”
I was touched by these words, and was about to reply, when he resumed:
“Yes, you have suffered, I see; but it seems also to have been a great benefit to you.”
My heart was ready to burst, and I at once drew myself up: “Benefit to lose my mother! O Mario! how can you say so?”
He frowned. “I do not mean in that sense, Ginevra, as you must be aware. But perhaps I am mistaken,” he continued, resuming his ordinary tone, which I only remembered too well. “It may be you have only changed exteriorly. I hope it is otherwise, my dear sister, and that your childish vanity and foolish coquetry....”
“Mario!” murmured Livia in a beseeching tone, scarcely raising her eyes from her work. This exclamation escaped her almost involuntarily; for she knew better than any one else that the least reply only acted as a stimulant when he was inclined to be ill‐humored or angry. Therefore this slight interruption only served to make him continue in a louder tone.
“Yes, it is possible her coquettish disposition may not be overcome, and it would not be right to spare it. I am only acting as a friend by speaking plainly about the misfortunes it has caused.”
O merciful heavens!... Did he know my fearful secret, and was he about to tell me what I dreaded more than anything else in the world to hear? My heart throbbed violently, but I breathed once more when he added:
“Thank God, Ginevra, in the midst of your tears, for having taken your mother out of the world without the least suspicion of your behavior.”
Though these words allayed my chief anxiety, they seemed far more insulting than I merited. A flush rose to my cheeks, and I haughtily drew up my head, as I replied: “I never concealed anything in my life from my mother, Mario. And now she is gone, who alone had the right to admonish me, it belongs to my father, and not to you, I beg you to remember, my dear brother.”
I sat down and leaned my head against my hand, that he might not perceive the heart‐felt anguish he had caused me. I was by no means prepared for what followed.
“You are mistaken, my charming little sister,” he said in a cool, ironical tone, “and it is well to tell you, as you seem to be ignorant of it, that when young ladies play a game that endangers their reputation and the honor of the name they bear, they often oblige their brothers to take a part in it.”
Notwithstanding my folly and defects, I was really nothing but a child at that time, and his words conveyed no definite meaning to my mind. I turned around and looked him in the face with an air of surprise that showed I did not comprehend him. The eyes that met mine were no longer full of mockery, but sad and stern.
“Look at that, sister,” he said in a grave tone, throwing on the table a small paper package that was sealed. “The contents of that paper may recall a circumstance you seem to have forgotten, and perhaps make you understand my meaning.”
I hesitated a moment. I was afraid without knowing why. But finally I took up the paper, and tore open the wrapper. A withered flower fell out, which I gazed at with surprise, but without the slightest recollection.
“Do you not recognize it?”
I shook my head.
“Nevertheless, that flower came from your hands.”
I shuddered. He continued in the bitterest tone:
“It is true it was then red, ... red as the blood that had to be shed to restore it to you.”
The horror with which I was filled at these words struck me dumb. I clasped my icy hands, and turned deadly pale, without the power of uttering a word! Livia sprang from her seat.
“Mario, you have no heart, or soul, or mercy! Go away. It was not your place to tell her about this misfortune.”
But Mario, excited as usual by contradiction, continued without any circumlocution, and even more violently than before.
“No, no. It is better for Ginevra to learn the truth from my lips; for I am the only person that dares tell her the real state of the case. And I will do it without any disguise, for it may cure her. She shall listen to what I have to say. It will do her good. And I shall conceal nothing....”
I will not repeat the words that fell from his lips like a torrent of fire!... Besides, I can only recall their import. All I can remember is that they met the very evening of that fatal day—where and how I do not recollect. Flavio was talking to several other young men, and, without observing Mario’s presence, insolently mentioned my name. My brother snatched the carnation from his button‐hole. The next day the encounter took place....
I felt ready to drop with fright and horror. “Oh!” I said in a stifled voice, “can it be that my brother has killed Flavio Aldini with his own hand? O my God. my God! My punishment is greater than I deserve!”
“No, no,” he eagerly replied, “it was not I who....” He stopped, ... and then continued in a calmer tone, but somewhat bitterly:
“Compose yourself, dear sister; it was my blood alone that was shed in this encounter.”
“May God forgive me!” I shudderingly exclaimed with the fervent, sincere piety I always manifested with the simplicity of childhood. “And may he forgive you, too, Mario; for you likewise have committed a deed forbidden by God.”
A faint smile hovered on Mario’s lips, but it immediately gave way to a graver expression; for notwithstanding his defects, he was by no means disposed to be impious.
“Forbidden by God! That is true, Ginevra; but it is, I would hope, a deed he sometimes excuses, especially when the person insulted gets the worst of the encounter.”
As he said this, he put his hand to his breast, as if suffering from pain. I was again struck with his extreme paleness, as well as other traces of illness in his altered appearance, and was penetrated with shame and remorse. A feeling more akin to affection than I had ever felt for him sprang up in my heart, and I said to him humbly:
“Mario, you have done right to be plain with me, and I thank you. What you have said will, I trust, effect my entire cure. At any rate, you have done your duty.”
He had never known me to yield to him before. I had always revolted against his ill‐humor and harshness, whether just or not, and sometimes replied with an impertinence that justified his resentment. He was touched at seeing me in this new attitude, and, for the first time in his life, clasped me in his arms and kissed me with real affection. He then left the room, making a sign for Livia to follow him. She did so, but returned in a few minutes. Tears were in her eyes, and her lips were slightly tremulous—a sure indication in her of some sudden and profound emotion.
Mario had not told me every thing. His anger had died away, and he left it for kinder lips than his to communicate the rest.
The affliction and repentance that so speedily followed the brief moment when I saw Flavio Aldini for the last time seemed to have effaced the transient impression produced at our only meeting, as a stream, suddenly swelled by a storm, washes away every trace left on the sand. I should have met him again with indifference, and perhaps even with aversion; for he would have been always associated with the first misfortune and first remorse of my life. Nevertheless, when Livia, after considerable hesitation, uttered the words, “Flavio Aldini is dead,” a cry almost of despair escaped from my lips; and the horrible thought at once occurred to me that Mario had deceived me—that he was the murderer, and that this flower, a thousand times abhorred, had cost the life of him who had obtained it through my vanity and thoughtlessness!...
The terrible lesson I had already received was not, however, to be carried to such an extent; but it was some minutes before I could be convinced of it. Livia herself had some difficulty in clearly relating the account she was charged with. At length I comprehended that Flavio, while pursuing a successful career of pleasure, was no less careful to improve every opportunity of repairing the inroads made on his fortune. Among these was the proposal to marry a wealthy heiress, which he acceded to without any scruple. But though he thus triumphed over a large number of suitors by means of his good looks and captivating manners, it was, in his eyes, only a lucky bargain and another light vow. He had been engaged only a few days, and the marriage was about to be publicly announced, when he met me at the ball. The sight of a new young face, and especially the naïve inexperience of a girl it would be easy to dazzle, inspired the wish to try his power once more. But he had been followed to the ball‐room, and watched, by one of the unsuccessful suitors of the beautiful heiress. His encounter with Mario a few days after confirmed his rival’s suspicions, and afforded him a pretext for gratifying his hatred and jealousy. Consequently, when Flavio, after leaving Mario wounded on the field, returned to the villa he occupied at a short distance from Messina, he found a new opponent to bring him to an account for his faithlessness to his betrothed, on the plea of a distant relationship that gave him the right to declare himself her champion. In this second duel, fortune was adverse to Flavio. He lived several weeks, however, and had only died that very morning from the effects of his wounds!... The news had just arrived.... And this was what Livia had been commissioned to tell me of....
If it is true that our souls are like precious stones that only reveal all their brilliancy after much cutting and polishing, it is certain that for both the first blow must be the most trying.... My soul, over which my mother had watched, and which she said was dearer to her than her own life, or even than mine, was now undergoing this painful process; or, rather, had undergone it. But during the last hour, it was no longer the knife, but fire, that had been applied to my bleeding heart!
Though I had no direct cause for self‐reproach concerning this new catastrophe, as I at first feared, I did not feel myself wholly irresponsible. This was sufficient to deepen the solemn gravity of my reflections, in which I remained absorbed so long—motionless and silent—that poor Livia was seriously alarmed.
“Speak to me, Gina, I implore you. Oh! why, tell me why, carina, you have kept all this secret from your poor sister? Who could have dreamed you loved this unfortunate man; that you loved any one unbeknown to us all? Could we imagine such a thing possible? You know, dear child, I have never found fault with you, and I will not now. So tell me if it is true that you eluded the vigilance of your mother and Ottavia, in order to meet Flavio in the garden? Was it there you gave him the flower you wore in your hair? And is it true that more than once....”
Excessive surprise completely roused me from my stupor, and I eagerly interrupted her with a face as red as fire:
“Never! never! never!...” I exclaimed in a tone that would have convinced the most incredulous, for it had the indubitable accent of truth. “I did not love Flavio Aldini, and I never met him alone in my life.”
Livia, in her turn, looked at me with astonishment. “Did not love him? Never met him alone? Never gave him a bouquet or a single flower?”
“I will tell you the truth, Livia: once, and then I did not speak to him, I threw him from a distance the carnation I wore in my hair.”
“Once? From a distance? Ah! then tell me when and where you did it?”
I made no reply. A thousand thoughts flashed across my mind with the rapidity of lightning.... It was evident that, by some wonderful chance, no one knew exactly what had taken place. A vague story had been circulated, founded on Flavio’s exaggerated boasts. My father, brother, and sister had accepted this version—so far from the truth—without understanding the real extent of that which had been alleged against me. I felt that they considered me guiltier than I really was. And yet I would not have undeceived them for anything in the world. They judged me more severely than I deserved, but of what consequence was it? Was I not sufficiently culpable to accept this injustice with humility? Was it not enough, without complaining of anything else, to be at last assured that my secret was safe with my mother in heaven? Ought I not rather to bear all their reproaches without a murmur? There was only one that would have overwhelmed me, and that I was spared. All others were easy to bear, and, moreover, were merited by what they were ignorant of, if not by what they supposed true.
Livia patiently waited for me to break my long silence.
“You know I am incapable of telling you an untruth,” I said to her at last.
“Yes, and therefore I always believe you.”
“Well, then, I implore you to believe me now, Livia, without asking me anything more. And, moreover,” I added in a supplicating tone, “do not repeat what I have just told you, and make no effort to justify me to any one.”
My good sister looked at me attentively for a moment, and then gently drew my head against her shoulder.
“Poor Gina!” she said. “It shall be as you wish. I believe everything you say, and love you too well to annoy you with any more questions.”
Livia knew me thoroughly; for, notwithstanding her apparent simplicity, she had an eye that could read one’s soul. She saw the sincerity and repentance of mine, and read in my pale face and distressed look the extent of my sufferings, and her kind heart melted.... I was, indeed, very young to experience such a variety of emotions, and was still too weak to endure them. The habit of duelling, so unfortunately prevalent in Sicily, had, of course, accustomed me more than would have been the case anywhere else to occurrences similar to that I had just heard about. But to have my name connected with so fatal an affair; to feel that I was the cause of the blood shed in one of these encounters, and that the other had resulted in the tragical end of one who had flashed for an instant across my path, like one of those meteors that are the ominous forerunners of misfortune and death, ... was more than my young heart and feeble frame could endure. Livia perceived it.
“Come, carina,” she said, “lean against me. You need rest.”
I attempted to make my way to an old sofa, covered with red damask, at the other end of the vast and scantily‐furnished room; but I had no sooner risen than my strength failed me, and I was obliged to lean against a table to keep myself from falling. Livia hastened to procure some cold water, with which she sprinkled my face. I soon recovered, but was still pale and agitated when Ottavia came in. She had left me quite well an hour before, and, finding me now in such a state, she exclaimed with mingled impatience and alarm as she advanced: “Good heavens! what has happened to her? She was so well this morning.”... And giving Livia a furtive, distrustful glance, she extended the index and little finger of her hand, closing all the others; turning around as she made this gesture, the meaning of which is only too well known in our country.(89) This was done so quickly that I hoped I was the only one to perceive it.
“How foolish!” I angrily exclaimed to Ottavia, seizing her hand and covering it with mine. “Are you going to treat me always as if I were an invalid or an old woman? Thanks to Livia”—and I emphasized these words—“I have entirely recovered.”
Ottavia, half angry, half sorry, was about to go away; but Livia made a sign for her to remain, and, pressing my hand as she embraced me once more, left the room without uttering a word.
The little incident I have just related will doubtless excite some astonishment, and be regarded as scarcely confirming what I have said before about Ottavia’s piety and good sense. But whoever has lived in the southern part of Italy knows there are hundreds of people in that region whose education, and even religious instruction, are in no way deficient, and who, nevertheless, are not exempt from the singular superstition I have just referred to.
I leave it to the erudite to prove that Magna Græcia derived it from classical Greece, the mother country; that remote antiquity made use of the same absurd gesture to avert the effects of what it was still more absurd to believe; and that in those days, as well as now, people multiplied this very sign under the form of protective amulets—not only as jewels to be worn, but in the objects that surrounded them. I likewise leave to them the task of explaining why this evil has resisted the influence of time and the progress of civilization, as well as the spirit of Christianity. All that can be said, it seems to me, is that in those regions this superstition takes the place of all those that abound in the North of Europe, and from which Italy is exempt. For instance, we do not hear people there, as in Ireland, Scotland, and Sweden, talk of strange, weird apparitions, fairies, or malign spirits, under the name of bogies or banshees. They are not afraid, as in Russia, of meeting people clothed in black, of the number thirteen, and a thousand other absurd notions which Catholicism has condemned without being able to eradicate, and which Protestantism has been much more powerless against. Nor are the ruins, as in Germany, associated with wild legends or haunted by spirits. But, to make up for all this, the jettatura holds there its baleful sway. Though frequently ridiculed, it is feared more than any one is willing to admit; and there is no one, even among the most reasonable, who would suffer this dreaded epithet to be applied to himself, or any one he loved, without manifesting his displeasure. It would be impossible to account for the cause of this prejudicial notion in individual cases, or explain why this fearful term is sometimes applied to men of special merit, and women who are young, lovely, and amiable, as well as to those whom a pretext is wanted to avoid, or whose appearance has something repugnant. Sometimes it is sufficient that a person has accidentally witnessed some misfortune, and, if the same thing is known to occur again, the word escapes from the lips, flies from mouth to mouth, and the foolish prejudice is established. This had been the case with poor Livia. An accident once happened to me in my childhood when she was with me; shortly after, she was present when another occurred to one of our young friends; and a third time, she happened, in one of her charitable rounds, to be in the house of a poor man at the time of his death. This was spoken of at first as a mere jest; but it gradually became a source of mortification and humiliation to her, though none of us were ever allowed to make the least allusion to it in her presence. The repeated troubles of the past few weeks had disturbed the faithful Ottavia’s equilibrium and good sense to such an unusual degree that when she found me, pale and agitated, leaning on my sister’s shoulder, the first thought inspired by her terror caused her instantly to make this involuntary gesture.
I was so vexed at this occurrence that for a moment I forgot everything else. I felt angry with Ottavia, and threw myself on the old sofa without speaking, in a fit of mingled sorrow and displeasure.
I had always been fond of Livia, and now all the repressed and pent‐up tenderness of my heart was poured out on her. She seemed to be the only person in the world that still loved me—the only one that stood between me and what appeared like a great void. Yes, my mother was right in what she said about the great necessity of my nature. As a flower dies, deprived of the sun, so without affection I should soon cease to exist. I placed no reliance on the durability of that which my brother had just manifested. As to my father, his love seemed extinct in comparison with that of former times. And now that I knew the reason of his coldness and severity, I had no hope of overcoming them; for I felt sure he would less readily excuse the truth, were it revealed to him, than the error which had caused such a change in his manner.
Therefore for any one to wound the feelings of Livia, my darling sister, my indulgent and faithful friend, was at this time like piercing my very heart. I remained with my head on the cushions of the old sofa, while Ottavia was bustling about the chamber, as if trying to divert my attention from what had taken place. At last she approached and tried to get hold of my hand. I withdrew it.
“Come, dear signorina,” she said, “forgive your poor old Ottavia. I did wrong.”
“Yes, very wrong, Ottavia,” I replied in a tone almost severe.
“I know it, and feel as if I were listening to the blessed spirit of Donna Bianca herself when I hear you and see you! You resemble her so much, signorina!...”
“Well, Ottavia, what would she say to you, if she had been present?”
“She would tell me that my fear of the jettatura is both foolish and wrong; and that is only what I know myself, what I believe and realize when I am on my knees before God!... Oh! at such times I really feel that his will alone is everywhere accomplished; I only love that holy will; I am afraid of nothing, because I am convinced that will must prevail. And yet, after all, ... when my dear signorina seems to be in danger, or I imagine some one is going to bring her ill‐luck....”
“Ottavia!... Ottavia!”... I cried, suddenly interrupting her with an outburst that almost frightened her, “it is I, it is I, and not she, who bring ill‐luck to all I approach....”
I burst into tears as I spoke. This sudden return upon myself effaced, with the mobility of youth, the impression previously received, and brought back, to my confusion and remorse, all the reality of the present.
Ottavia, like the rest, had been told of my supposed fault, and was ignorant of what I had really done; but she was by no means in a mood now to add any reproaches to those I had already received from my brother. On the contrary, she tried to soothe me, not by any direct reply, but by speaking of that which she could talk best about. I had always been more or less piously inclined from my earliest childhood. How could it be otherwise under the excellent influence that had hitherto been the life of my life?... This piety did not obliterate my faults, but it existed in spite of them, and was to exist through all the perils reserved for me in the future. But it was, if I may so speak, intermittent. Sometimes it grew dormant, if not absolutely extinct; at other times it was kindled to a lively and ardent degree. Therefore I frequently recited my catechism with indifference and ennui; but when it was explained by Ottavia in her peculiar way; when she spoke of the sacraments, or dwelt on the life and sufferings of our Saviour, and more especially on the life to come, I was filled with delight. The loveliness of the natural world around me seemed to assume an additional charm; and when I considered that this was only a faint image of a far more beautiful realm, I longed at once to exchange this life for the other....
It was by such means the good Ottavia now gently endeavored to divert me, by speaking of God, of heaven, and various other sacred topics. By degrees she came back to more indifferent subjects, and finally to Livia, promising to make her forget the mortification she had experienced, and almost persuading me she had not perceived what had taken place.
I allowed her to talk on in this way without interruption until her somewhat monotonous tone produced a drowsiness that was beneficial to my over‐excited nerves. As soon as she saw my eyes grow heavy, she placed one of the large sofa‐cushions under my head, closed the window‐shutters to exclude the dazzling light, and then, after remaining beside me till she was persuaded I was fast asleep, softly left the chamber.
I was not, however, asleep. But my attitude and the profound silence and solitude of the room were very soothing, and I remained a long time absorbed in a thousand complex thoughts. Long years have passed away since that day, and other and more dangerous temptations have assailed me, but I have never forgotten the reflections of that hour. My vanity had been for ever shattered like the congealed surface of some deep lake by some sudden blow. It had not really been a part of my inner nature, but rather on the surface, and therefore not the most dangerous trait of my character. During the remainder of my life, I can only recall a single hour—and only one! ... when it again blinded me.... But that hour was long after the one of which I have been speaking. At this time I could say with assurance that Mario’s wish was fulfilled—that I was effectually and radically cured of my vanity. Associated with so many poignant recollections, it had become horrible in my eyes.
My health was somewhat affected by the agitation I had undergone, and I took advantage of this to remain several days in my room, only leaving it to take the air on the terrace. I only saw my father for a moment, morning and night. The remainder of the day I passed with Livia. Whether she had forgotten what had distressed me so much, or it was owing to her self‐ control, or she really had not noticed it, it was impossible to tell from her manner, and I finally persuaded myself it was as I hoped.
Livia, in spite of her amiable disposition, had great firmness of character. She never allowed herself to be induced to tell anything she wished to conceal, or to do what was forbidden by others or by her own judgment. But what especially characterized her was her self‐ forgetfulness. This did not strike me at that time. When one is only fifteen years of age, one receives impressions without defining them: one is repelled or attracted by certain natures without being able to analyze them. But in looking back, not only over the events of my past life, but what transpired in the inner folds of my conscience, I clearly see the difference between my sister’s nature and mine. From her very childhood she had lived a life of self‐forgetfulness (sublime and simple way to heights but little known!), regardless of her own tastes and inclinations, and even of her own sufferings. Whereas, I was constantly endeavoring to fathom the workings of my heart and soul and mind, and to find food for them, as one tries to appease one’s hunger and thirst when importunate. Not but that I was capable of forgetting myself, and, so to speak, of being absorbed in the heart of another, as I had been in that of my mother, but solely on the condition of being to that other, in return, the object of an infinite predilection; ... for this word of such vast import does not seem to express more than my heart craved. But in spite of this difference, or rather on the very account of it, Livia and I were always at ease with each other, and it was not without regret I was at last obliged to resume my usual life. I regretted this the more because it had been regulated by my father in a way that indicated only too plainly how much he distrusted me. Nevertheless, I submitted with humility and docility to this unaccustomed surveillance, the cause of which was so evident.
I was only released from it during the early hours of the day, which I spent in my chamber with Livia. I was not allowed to go into the garden, except under Ottavia’s escort; and I was not permitted to leave the house, unless accompanied by my father or Mario. All the rest of my time I passed in my father’s cabinet, where he had a table placed for me near his own. There, for hours together, I read, wrote, or worked, varying my occupations according to my own tastes, but without any other liberty. To have passed my days in this way beside my father would have been delightful once; but now, though he was often kind and affectionate, there was a certain gravity in his affection that made me feel I was the object of unjust suspicion, and tortured me beyond expression. But I submitted to this torture without a murmur, acknowledging, as I did so, that it was only a merited chastisement.
This cabinet was like a vast hall in form, and, like all the other rooms of that old palace, grand in its proportions, but only furnished with what was absolutely essential. One side of the apartment was entirely lined with shelves filled with books and papers, and at each extremity stood a row of arm‐chairs. In the middle of the room, opposite two large windows, was my father’s writing‐table, near which was mine. Between the windows hung a large painting, which was the only ornament in the room; but, to compensate for this, the garden could be seen, and further off, beyond the verdure of the orange‐trees, stretched the blue outline of the sea.
My father received many of his friends and clients in the morning, but seldom admitted any of them into the room we occupied. A servant half opened the door to announce the visitors’ names, and my father went into the adjoining room to receive them. It was only on special occasions he gave orders for any one to be admitted where we were.
During the long hours I was thus left alone, I sometimes busily employed my time, but more frequently remained with my arms folded, plunged in a profound reverie. At such times I always avoided looking at the large painting that hung on the opposite panel between the two windows. This was a fine copy of Herodias’ Daughter, by Guido, the original of which I afterwards saw in the Palazzo Corsini, at Rome. The sweet, charming face of the girl who is holding with a smile the bleeding head of S. John had a kind of fascination for me. It seemed like the personification of vanity in a new form, giddy and thoughtless in its course and fatal in its results, and often inspired me with many silent, gloomy reflections.... I preferred looking at the foliage of the orange‐trees in the garden below, or gazing into the blue, illimitable heavens above. I often amused myself, likewise, before a cage, prettily painted and gilded, that hung in one of the windows, and contained a bird whose company was a great diversion in the life of disguised punishment I was condemned to. This bird, whose melody surpassed that of the nightingale in sweetness and power, was one of those called at Sorrento, where they are chiefly found, the passero solitario. I was so fond of its sweet music that my father had allowed me to hang the cage here, and more than once in the day I climbed up on a bench in the embrasure of the window to see there was no lack of the singularly copious and solid food which this bird of angelic notes daily requires.
One day, while I was thus perched at a considerable height from the floor, the door opened much wider than usual, and the old servant that announced the visitors said with a certain emphasis: “His Excellency the Duca di Valenzano.”
My first thought was to descend from the post I occupied; but before I had time to do so, the visitor entered the room, and stood regarding me with an air of surprise. My father rose to meet so unexpected a client; but the latter held out his hand to aid me in my descent, and followed me with his eyes, without speaking, as I hastily regained my usual seat, blushing with confusion. My father conducted him to the other end of the room, where stood the row of arm‐chairs, and both took seats. During the long conversation that followed, I could only hear the tones of their voices as they rose and fell. Sometimes my father’s predominated, and at other times the deep, sonorous voice of his visitor. I saw it was a question of business, for my father rose several times to search for different papers among the books arranged on the shelves of the library. Finally the conversation ended, and the new client proceeded towards the door. But when he arrived opposite the cage where my bird was singing, he said: “Really, one’s ears are charmed here no less than one’s eyes. It seems more like a palace of fairies than a rendezvous for all the contentions of Sicily....”
He was then standing directly before me.
“Don Fabrizio,” continued he, “is not this your daughter, Donna Ginevra, of whom I have so often heard? Do me the favor of presenting me to her.”
My father’s face assumed a severe, dissatisfied expression, and mine was covered with a livelier blush than before. “Heard of me so often?” Alas! he had probably heard me spoken unfavorably of! Perhaps this was the very thought that clouded my father’s brow. Nevertheless, after a moment’s hesitation, he said: “Rise, Ginevra, and pay your respects to the Duca di Valenzano.”
I rose, but without uttering a word; for I was disconcerted by the fixed, scrutinizing eye that seemed trying to read my face. I lowered my eyes, without being able to distinguish the features of this new acquaintance. I only remarked that he was tall, and had a noble air, in spite of his peculiar garb, that made him look more like a travelling artist than a person of high rank.
On The Wing. A Southern Flight. III.
“Vedi Napoli, e poi mori.”(90)
We left Rome in a storm of thunder and lightning. The rain poured in large, cold drops, pattering against the windows of the railway carriage, and adding considerably to the feelings of gloom and apprehension with which we thought of Rome—as Rome is now. When should we visit the Eternal City again? And would the veil of sadness which now falls on all that is dear and sacred to the Catholic be raised once more in our time? Mary was very silent for some hours of our long journey; and while I, with my habitual curiosity, was peering through the rain‐washed window to discover the beauties of the glorious country through which we were rushing, she lay back with closed eyes, absorbed in thought; while Frank, with a fixed frown on his face, was reading and rustling, and finally crumpling up, in paroxysms of anger, the numerous Italian papers that he had bought by handfuls at the station. Presently Mary opened her eyes once more, and condescended to recognize the great fact that we were travelling further and further to the glorious South. I do not think I felt less intensely than my sister the sorrow that attends all reflection on the present condition of the great centre of Christendom and the position of the Father of the faithful. But my grief is apt to take another form from that of Mary’s or Frank’s. Mary grows silent and outwardly calm. Frank becomes gloomy. I am more irritable; and irritability leads to activity. My mind was working with an incessant rapidity, and the impulse to catch sight once more of every shred that could carry me back to happier times, and recall once more the memories of the past, kept me straining my eyes to get a glimpse of Albano, where we had spent a long, happy summer when the Holy Father was at Castel Gandolfo. Should I catch sight of Lavinia, Æneas’ own city, the object of so many excursions in those happy days? Should I see those hills covered with chestnuts, bare of leaves now, beneath whose shade I had so often rested? Even Velletri, though not in itself a specially interesting place, had the charm of association. I remembered how I had gone to spend a long day there, and had wandered to the gates of some private house with a large garden. I had stood looking through the iron bars on a little paradise, but, as usual in Italy, a paradise in disorder. Stone vases stood on a balustrade, filled with bright flowers, but also with weeds. The fertile valley lay below, and beyond the blue and purple mountains rose in tiers one above another, with soft, violet shadows and dim blue mists; and here and there a peak of rugged rock, on which the sun struck bright and keen. A long avenue of shady plane‐trees was to my right. A solitary peasant drove his mule, with balanced panniers and pointed ears like two notes of admiration against the sky, far as my eye could reach down the green distance. I longed to wander on; to follow the flickering lights along that silent road, and know that it would lead me out to the Pontine Marshes, with the rugged Abruzzi beyond. Here, too, rests the body of Hyacinthe Mariscotti, a Franciscan nun, who died in 1640, and whose life, less known out of Italy than it deserves, is one of the most marvellous in its union of great graces and great sufferings.
The rain pelted hard; the lightning made me, from time to time, shrink back suddenly; but still I strained my eyes to catch sight of the shifting scene, and allowed memories to reawaken and imagination to throw its glamour over the past and the future.
Many of the stations along this road are at some distance from the towns whose name they bear; and this, of course, diminishes a little the interest of the journey. For instance, Aquino, the birthplace of the great father of the church, S. Thomas Aquinas, is about a mile off. Near here we were, for a time, to take leave of Frank. He had made up his mind to visit the cradle of the great saint before proceeding to Monte Casino, where he had made arrangements to spend at least a week. Our readers are no doubt well aware that Monte Casino is no longer what it was. Its glories have been shorn by the present government, as the rays of the sun are shorn by the twilight. There are comparatively very few monks of the order of S. Benedict still allowed to reside there. Amongst them, however, Frank had formed a real friendship; and for a month previous, at least, Mary and I had heard him descanting upon all the charms that he was to find in that wonderful retreat of learning and sanctity. Partly to tease him, and partly to be revenged for the fact that I must be for ever excluded, I generally replied to his enthusiasm by making a wry face and uttering the words, “Kid, rancid oil, and garlic.” Then he would toss back that tiresome stray lock which is always trying to shade his beautiful violet eyes, and reply, with a smile, “Oh! I shall not mind.” The train stops a very short time at San Germano, the station for the Monastery of Monte Casino, and we had a hurried leave‐taking. I was endeavoring to collect a few of his newspapers, which I thought he had not half read, and put them into his hand as he left the carriage. “No, no, dear Jane. Do you think I would pollute those sacred walls by carrying there all that blasphemous stuff.” And he leapt out just as we began to move on.
“O Mary!” I exclaimed, “how dreadful it would be, if Frank were to become a Benedictine monk.”
“What else do you want him to do?”
“Why, live at home, of course, as an English country gentleman should do, marry, and bring up a son to rule after him.”
“What a thorough conservative you are, Jane!” said Mary with a smile.
“I am not so sure of that. I have a dash of the liberal in me at times. But I do love the dirty acres; and I like to see them going down from father to son without a break.”
“You are right there. It is that permanence which is the back‐bone of England. I do not believe in the lasting stability of any country where there is a perpetual and ever‐recurring division of property. What a man has should always survive what a man is, in a sufficiently substantial form to make the cradle of a future destiny. And where no one is sure of inheriting a large fortune with the large leisure that it secures, it tends to make all men equally mercenary. There should always be a class apart who have no need to fret about making money, but can afford to spend it.”
“But what if they do not spend it well?”
“That is an answer which in one shape or another you may make to the laying down of any principle. What if it be abused? It does not prove the falsity of the principle, but only once more calls to mind the truism that everything is open to abuse.”
“I suppose you think there are so many objects on which wealth may be advantageously expended that it is well to have an hereditary body whose business it is to do so.”
“Yes; and I would certainly include the cultivation of hot‐house grapes, and the elysium of fat porkers who are washed and combed twice a week. It is every man’s business to produce the best he can of whatever he has in hand, including pineapples and pigs.”
“Well done, Mary. You are a worse conservative than I am. But do you really think that modern civilization, as it is called, has its uses?”
“By modern civilization, Jane, I conclude you really mean material improvements. Civilization is a term which is so misused that it has become hardly safe to use it at all. It ought to mean something much higher than increased railway facilities, more looking‐glasses and buhl, hundreds of daily newspapers, and a French cook.”
“Oh! of course. Civilization ought to mean the intellectual and spiritual development of mankind from out of the rough block of his animal nature and his uneducated mind. If you add to this the refinement which self‐ respect and a perpetual inner consciousness of a Being greater and higher than ourselves, keeping all the man’s actions in harmony with himself and with a higher law, you have a really civilized man as distinct from a savage.”
“That is not a bad description of what civilization ought to be. But that is very different from the idea most people have in their minds when they use the term.”
“In point of fact, Mary, I mean material progress. How far is it useful?”
“How people would stare at you, Jane, for that query!—people who think there is nothing more glorious than to have invented a new machine or a fresh adjunct to luxury.”
“Yes, those are just the people who would not the least know what I meant by my implied doubts about the value of material progress. But you know what I mean and why I question its nature and deprecate its increase.”
“It is a difficult question to solve. But I have long since come to the conclusion that there is never any very great and generally diffused advance made by mankind in any one direction without its having some definite purpose in the Eternal Mind for the ultimate good of his creation. The progress of science is only second in importance to the progress of religion; and after these two comes the progress of the useful arts, which are the offspring of science, and often seem only to pander to luxury, but are really subsidiary aids in that march, in the accomplishment of which man is to fulfil his destiny of possessing the earth and filling it. Mankind is in no way benefited by the discovery, for instance, of a new perfume, whereby some silly woman may add to the already exaggerated expenses of her toilet; but the process by which that perfume has been produced is, in itself, of the utmost value, and exhibits mechanical invention and scientific principles that are of the last importance to mankind. The perfume is an accident—a little of the golden dust scattered by the wheels of material progress.”
“Just so; and dust, albeit golden, is not a good atmosphere to breathe in.”
“Decidedly not.”
“Then do you think, dear Mary, that material progress, or what we generally call improvements, conduces, on the whole, to human happiness?”
“Ah! there lies the really difficult question, and one which I have again and again striven to answer satisfactorily to myself. Happiness is a term generally used to cover more than it has any right to do. There is only one real happiness, and that is what man finds in himself, in union with his God. That happiness is positive, and there is no other positive. We begin it here, but with great drawbacks and frequent interruptions. We complete it in the light of glory. But outside that, hanging on to the skirts and fringes of real happiness, there are contentment, pleasure, ease, and last, but not least, comfort. No one can impart happiness, pure and simple, to another. The nearest approach to doing so is in a reciprocal affection. But God alone can satisfy the soul of man. What we can confer on others and on ourselves are various degrees of those lesser goods which I have enumerated. Now, all these enter into the general plan of God’s dealings with his creatures. The animal world is susceptible of them in its degree, and we ourselves in a far higher degree. As they enter into the general scheme, I am at liberty to conclude, not only from my own sensations, which might delude me, but from that very fact, that they are of very great importance, and that everything which augments the sum of them is a blessing. They are the ore out of which we coin our charities to others. They are therefore essentially God’s gifts, to be given by us again.”
“I know what you mean, Mary. I shall never forget the pleasure I had in taking one of your air‐cushions to that poor woman at T——, who was dying of cancer, and to whom the slightest pressure of even an ordinary pillow was so painful. Now, air‐cushions are a comparatively modern invention. Dear mother used to say no one ever heard of mackintoshes and gutta‐percha in her day.”
“No, Jane, nor yet of lucifer matches. It was terrible work to have to nurse the sick through the night, with a flint and steel and tinder as the only way of striking a light. I think I see now my old nurse, with her large frilled night‐cap, hammering away for what seemed to us children a good three minutes, because the rush‐light had gone out, and baby was crying. I can remember I had for that flint and steel very much the same feelings an Indian has for his fetish. I used to wonder how the flint hid the fire in its cold bosom, and why sometimes it seemed to require so many more persuasive knocks than at others before it gave out its sparks. But for the matter of that, as a child I had secretly embraced the earliest form of religion, the animism of the lower races of savages—and I lent a soul to all inanimate, and even all inorganic, matter. I believe, if we could but find it out, all children do so more or less. The external world is so wonderful to them that they vaguely imagine a personality and a consciousness to exist in everything. There is not a little girl who does not, in her heart, believe that her doll is something more than wax and sawdust; and I would not give much for her, if she did not. The exuberance of faith leads to an exuberance of tenderness; and the girl who believes in her doll has the germ of a good mother in her.”
“You seemed just now to attach a great importance to comfort, Mary. I am surprised at that.”
“It arises, in a measure, from my own personal experience. Besides which, comfort may mean almost anything; for it is generally whatever we are used to. I remember so well, years ago, when the sorrows of my life first threatened to overpower me, how thankfully I felt the warm, soft arms of mere outward well‐being so closely round me. To me they were no more than comforts, because all my life I had been used to them. To others they would have seemed luxuries. When I used to go up to London alone to my father’s house, and find all ready to my hand—well‐appointed servants, large, warm rooms, and a good table, with nothing of meanness, or sparing, or pinching in the unextravagant but perfectly organized home that was open to me—I used often to lean back in my easy‐chair, and say to myself, ‘I am very unhappy; but, thank God, I am not uncomfortable!’ Later on, you know, it was not so. I was a Catholic, and doors that had been open to me before were closed for ever. Then came the time for discomfort. If I wanted to go to London, I had to go to a lodging. The furniture was shabby and dirty; the fires smoked; the food was badly cooked. I drove about in hired vehicles, perished with cold, and shaken to death. I knew I was in no way degraded by it all; but it was new and painfully strange to me, and I felt degraded by an amount of discomforts which in my youth I had never approached. It did not, in itself, make me unhappy, but it added a thousandfold to the suffering from real causes for unhappiness. I used to say they were the splinters of my cross, though not my cross itself. Ever since then, I never see a person in sorrow without being anxious to make them at least comfortable. There is nothing, you see, approaching to asceticism in my view, dear Jane; but, at any rate, one is not bound to be ascetic for others.”
Mary and I were sitting side by side in the railway‐carriage, I having come from my seat opposite in order the better to hear. But now I returned to my old place, just as we paused at the station of Caserta, and saw the largest palace in Europe, now empty and almost deserted, not far off.
The great object in our visit to Naples was to be as near as possible to our friends, the Vernons. We were to go first to a hotel, and then look out for a villa at Posilippo, near the one occupied by themselves, which was called Casinelli, from the family of that name to whom it belonged. We had written to Ida Vernon to beg she would choose our hotel and our rooms. She had lodged us at a very comfortable pension on the Chiaja, and wrote us word we must, on reaching the station at 10 o’clock at night, look out for their servant, Monica; and that she would wear a red handkerchief pinned across, gold earrings, and a blue skirt. We were not to expect the universal black hair and eyes of the Italian woman, as hers were soft brown. The station is very large and very badly lighted. But as soon as I got out, I ran to the grating—a high iron railing, behind which stood the crowd of people, friends, servants, porters, and mere lookers‐on, all pushing and squeezing to catch sight of those they expected by the train. I soon made out the blue skirt, and red kerchief, and the amiable, smiling face of Monica. She welcomed us exactly as if we had been old friends, and that it was a personal pleasure to herself that we had arrived. She had brought a carriage for us the size of a small house, but which refused (through the coachman) to take luggage. That was to follow in another kind of conveyance immediately after us. Every sort of injunction was given as to its destination, and, persuaded all was right, we rumbled over the large flags of the streets of Naples to the far end of the Chiaja, where we were to lodge. There were flowers in our room and a note from Ida; and the next morning we were to meet, after a separation of seven years. Meanwhile, our impedimenta was slowly grinding its way past our door, up the steep hill of Strada Nuova, on to Posilippo, where our friends reside—a good twenty minutes from our abode—down the hill, through the vineyard, and up to the door of the Villa Casinelli, where, arriving about midnight, they thundered and thumped till the tired Monica had donned once more the blue skirt, while Lucia was screaming that there were robbers. Ida came forth in a warm wrapper; Elizabeth’s tall figure was draped in white; Helen peeped out of the half‐open door; and the good Padre Cataldo, their chaplain, in beretta and soutane, had to emerge from his little sanctum, at the furthest end of the long, narrow house, before peace could be restored, and our mountain of huge black trunks, portmanteaus, and leather bags could be induced to retrace their needless steps, climb again that zig‐zag road up the steep tufa rock, and reach us, worn out with waiting and feverish with impatience for night‐gear, at about one o’clock in the morning.
Brilliant sunshine, streaming into the room the next day, woke us up to the sense of the joyous, bounding life of these delicious climes. O noisy Naples! what clamorous cries, what vibrating shouts, what shrill feminine voices, fill thy glaring streets through the livelong day and far into the unrestful night. The horses neigh as they do not neigh in any more tranquil climes. The usually silent ass is here a garrulous animal. The dogs bark and snarl in a dialect special to Naples. The women scream like cockatoos, and never address each other in lower tones than as if shouting a word of command on board a man‐of‐war in a gale of wind. Their habits are not conversational, but screamational; and the most cordial civility is communicated like a threat, while an affectionate compliment is conveyed in sounds sufficient to startle the most supine into lively attention. Young girls hiss and squeal; infants bellow and roar. It is noise, noise, all day long; and over all a remorseless sunshine on white, glaring pavements of flag‐stones a quarter of a yard square and more, like the pavement of the ancient Romans, such as we still see it in the Via Sacra near the Colosseum, and which resounds to the metallic tread of donkey, mule, and horse, or to the softer, shuffling pit‐a‐pat of the herds of bearded goats that traverse the city at early morn and eventide.
Mary’s bed‐room opened into a large loggia full of flowers—geraniums, petunias, and carnations in full blossom, though it was only the month of March; but so had they blossomed more or less all through the winter. A few orange‐trees in tubs were there with golden fruit and star‐like flowers. Then the blue sky and the bluer bay! Yes, it was the plenitude of life that one only knows in the South, with the delicious sense of the pleasure of mere existence, which tempts one to adopt the dolce far niente, and makes living and breathing seem a full accomplishment of the day’s duties.
Ida and Elizabeth Vernon came early to carry us off to Posilippo; first to call on Mrs. Vernon at Villa Casinelli, and then to decide on a lodging as near to them as possible. We found them living in a house whose foundations are washed by the sea, and commanding a view of wonderful beauty. The descent from the main road was too steep for any carriage, winding in and out through vines and fig‐trees, oranges and Japanese medlars, ending in a closely‐knit avenue of the white mulberry, which in the summer makes a dense shade.
Our friends wanted us to take the villa next to theirs, if only the proprietor, a poor and proud marchese, would let it to us. We went over to look at it, but came away in disgust. There was scarcely any furniture, and none that would have satisfied even the most modest requirements. I do not remember seeing any beds, although it is certain the family come there from time to time for a few days. I asked Ida where they slept, and she pointed to some roomy sofas and wide divans, on which had been flung the ashes and the ends of cigars, as the probable resting‐place of the proprietors. We could only shake our heads in horrified astonishment, and think what a lovely place might be made of this quaint old house. It stands partly on the rock and partly on arcades, through which the sea comes rushing when the waves are high, but where, when it is calm, you may sit on silver sands or on the stone steps that lead down from the house and the upper terraced gardens. We had been so fascinated by the appearance of this residence, which looks outside like the fragment of an old feudal castle, and inside is bright with sunshine and the glorious view it commands, that we had requested Padre Cataldo to write and ask the terms before we had gone over it. On our return from doing so, shocked at the dirt and disorder we had witnessed, we were amused to find a magniloquent reply to the effect that the titled owner would “condescend” to let us his dwelling for (and here he named an exorbitant price), solely out of an amiable desire to make himself agreeable; and that he would call the following morning to receive the ten weeks’ rent in advance! We finally decided on the villa next but one to that of our friends—the Villa R—— R——. We did not require more than one floor of the house. The rest was occupied by the family, and had a second entrance. We came into our part straight from the Strada Nuova, down a few steps, and in at a large folding door flanked by a Stone seat and two vases with huge aloes. We had a lovely view of the bay in front, a little garden on a sloping bank on one side, full of oranges and lemons, now in full fruit and flower; a loggia—that great desideratum of an Italian house—and a view of Naples and Mount Vesuvius. On our return to our apartments, we were met by the woman who attends upon us, telling us that Ann was in her room with a bad headache. Little did we guess what had befallen her! We went in to see what was the matter, and found her flung upon the bed, with her clothes on, in a profound stupor. In vain we called her and shook her; we could not rouse her. The landlady presently came and told us that an hour previous poor Ann had been brought home by a gendarme in a carriage; that she was unable to walk up‐stairs without assistance, and seemed completely dazed when spoken to. The gendarme said he had noticed a young person sitting on a bench in the Villa Reale, the long, narrow garden which runs for a mile along the Chiaja by the sea‐shore; that she looked extremely ill; and that, noticing she had valuables about her (alluding to her watch and chain), he had asked her address, put her into a carriage, and brought her home. It was a mercy he had done so. The Neapolitan police are not always so honest. But our dismay was increased when at length, having awakened her, she did not know any of us. She kept entreating Mary, who held her in her arms, to take her back to her own Mrs. Gordon, her good Mrs. Gordon. In vain Mary replied, “But I am Mrs. Gordon, Ann. Look at me; don’t you know me?”
“No, no; you look something like her, but you have not her voice. Oh! where is she. Where is Miss Jane, and where is Lulu?”
Fortunately, Lulu, Mary’s dog, was in her room, and the probability was that, though she failed to know us, she would recognize Mary’s Lulu from any other Lulu. I flew to fetch the little animal, and threw it into her arms, to poor Lulu’s great astonishment. It succeeded perfectly. She knew the dog, and thus recovered her memory of the faces around her, and her conviction that she was in her own room. Evidently she had a vague horror that she might have been taken to the wrong house, and that she had awakened among strangers. When she had entirely recovered herself, we found that no trace of what had happened to her remained on her memory from the moment that she entered the Villa Reale; yet she was found more than half way down it! She must have wandered on partially insensible; and it is a blessing that, when the gendarme found her, she had enough consciousness left to give the right address. She had already been out in the morning, and a second walk in the hot sun had been too much for her. It was a sun‐stroke; and strangers are more subject to such accidents than persons who have become habituated to the climate. It was, however, long before Ann really shook off the effects of gratifying her over‐curiosity to visit the beauties of Naples on first arriving.
In a very short time, we were comfortably settled at Villa R—— R——. The Vernons had arranged everything for us with a forethought for which we could not be too grateful. They lent us the services of Monica as cook, assuring us that, if we took a Neapolitan, we should be cheated and tormented out of our lives. Monica was a Piedmontese, and as good and simple‐hearted a girl as any one could wish to find. Her economical scruples were positively amusing. We could hardly induce her to buy the particular articles we desired for our dinner, because, in her estimation, they were at too high a price in the market; and she would beg and entreat of us to wait patiently a little longer until they should have gone down. If it had been her own money she was spending, she would not have been so economical; for, as we found out later, she was always ready to lend to those less well off than herself, and would give away more than she could afford. The name of the young lad whom the Vernons engaged to act as servant was Paolino, a boy of eighteen, with glorious, large brown eyes and bright complexion. It was some time before we taught him manners, as he had never been in a gentleman’s family before. His father was a vignaiuolo of the name of Camerota. He had several sons and daughters, some of them married. He rented the vineyards of the marchese whose dilapidated house we had declined to hire, and each of his children married from their home with a good substantial dower and a large trousseau. The eldest girl had not long been a bride when we arrived; and, after making the acquaintance of the other members of the family, we one day called upon her. Their dwelling was built against the tufa rock which skirts the Strada Nuova. She had three rooms, nicely furnished, with marble tops to the chest of drawers and the table, such as we in England should only expect to find in the houses of the rich, but which here are common enough. The bedstead was of walnut, and the sheets like the driven snow for whiteness. Ida, who had known the girl for years, told us that her trousseau contained a dozen of every necessary article of dress and house‐linen, even to a dozen pairs of stays!—enough to last a life‐time. There hung a crucifix at the head of the bed, and a few colored engravings ornamented the walls of the sitting‐room, in which also there stood a tiny altar with a statue of the Mater Dolorosa and a few flowers.
The lower classes here have what we should call strange notions with respect to the sacrament of marriage. It is treated as a deed of darkness. The bride is conveyed late in the evening, or by cock‐crowing, to church, by her mother and a few respectable matrons. No young girl, not even a sister, is allowed to be present, and would endanger her reputation were she to appear on such an occasion. A few days later, the bride once more puts on her wreath, and her veil, and her wedding‐dress. All the family and friends of both sexes are gathered together, and the women and men, in separate carriages, drive fast and furious along the Chiaja up the Strada Nuova, past Posilippo, by the hour, and finally pause at the Taberna del Capo di Posilippo, or some other house of entertainment, and have a merry feast. We held this said Taberna somewhat in horror. On Sundays—the day on which everybody seems to think his honor and reputation are engaged in galloping up hill and down dale at a break‐neck pace for the whole afternoon—this was the chief place of meeting; and in the lovely starlight evenings, the returning guests would come back with a sadly rollicking air, hat on one side, a long cigar in the mouth, and a leg hanging over the side of the frail vehicle, while the spirited little Sardinian horse, all blood and sinew, would fly along, with jingling bells and bright brass harness, as if his hoofs hardly struck the earth. The drivers of these cittadine, as the little hired open carriages are called, take great pride in their harness. The horse‐collar more resembles a yoke; and where it meets over the horse’s neck, there is often a little brass image of the angel guardian—a very necessary angel, indeed, considering the pace they go, and whose guardianship must be severely put to the test by the mad risks of the half‐inebriated coachmen. It is very rare to see a Neapolitan really drunk. The wine they take produces a light, joyous, but brief intoxication, which makes dare‐devils of them for the time, but soon loses its effects, and is rarely stupefying. It is the divine inflatus of the Bacchus of old, and not the coarse, heavy incapacity of the snoring Silenus. Nevertheless, though I have spoken so indulgently of the Taberna del Capo di Posilippo, it formed a not unfrequent subject of grave rebuke and expostulation in the discourses of our good Padre Cataldo to his little group of listeners in the chapel in the rock belonging to Villa Casinelli. And probably he knew more of its evil influences than we did. I remember, one Sunday afternoon, being particularly struck by a carriage full of merry‐makers, drawn by the most miserably thin gray mare my eyes had ever beheld. She was nothing but a bag of bones, and must have reached the utmost age that horse ever attains. I was horrified to see so old and pitiable an object driven so hard and fast, and could only console myself by thinking the gallop I then witnessed must surely be the last. But it was not so; far from it. Day after day, but on Sundays especially, my Rosinante might be seen flinging her wild hoofs into space, amid a cloud of dust, and generally in competition with a beautiful, wicked‐looking black horse, sleek and well cared for, in dazzling harness, with red ribbons in his mane—a perfect little devil, as he took the bit between his teeth, and seemed to enjoy the eagerness of his driver, albeit the lash fell often on his sleek and steaming flanks. I delighted in that little black horse. But to the last Sunday of our abode at Posilippo poor Rosinante held her ground. And I can see her now, awful to behold, neither fatter nor thinner—that she could hardly be—than the first day, devouring the ground beneath her, and flinging out her skeleton leg straight from the shoulder, so that I could hardly see she touched the ground.
The chief amusement on Sunday afternoons of our own humbler friends and neighbors, the vignaiuoli,(91) was a game of bowls by the side of the road, and in front of the wide‐gaping wooden doors of the strange dwellings cut in the rock where the inhabitants of Posilippo reside. Many of these are restaurants and taverns on a small and humble scale; and Padre Cataldo had been making vigorous efforts, not to discourage the game of bowls, but to induce the men to play in an open space near the Villa Casinelli, and consequently at some distance from the taverns. Like all Italians, and chief amongst them all, the Neapolitans are great gamblers. The tavern‐keepers encourage this, because it promotes their trade; and the games being carried on in front of their caverns (for such they really are) leads to incessant “treating.” In this way, what between entertaining his friends and losing his money at play, it often happens that the ill‐ advised vignaiuolo returns to his home with his pockets empty; and the next day the wife would come in tears to tell her sorrows to the good father. Even our Paolino was never contented without an hour or two at bowls on Sunday afternoon. And we did not like to refuse him, for we were obliged to take him somewhat on his own terms; and these involved a very small sense of servitude, and a very large one that he had put us under something of an obligation by coming to us at all. Had he been a year or two older, his parents would not have allowed him to enter service, thinking it a degradation. But as he was very young, and rather restless and wanting change, it was decided that he might be allowed to work off a little of the exuberance of boyhood in our service. Even this could not have been allowed had we not been friends of the Vernons; but as they are adored by all the vignaiuoli and the inhabitants of Posilippo generally, their request could not be overlooked. Accordingly, Paolino, blushing and grinning, was admitted to form one of our household. His father told us exactly what his son’s labor was worth to himself, and that we were to hand over to him. It was all to go to the making‐up of Paolino’s marriage‐ portion. We were then to pay the lad a little over for himself, as pocket money. And this was to be done with discretion; not to prove a temptation to lavish expenditure. This is the way in which the marriage‐portions of both boys and girls are made up. They work for their own parents, and the latter put by the wages for them. When old enough, they are at liberty to undertake other and more profitable work. And from time to time there comes a windfall—a little work to be done in addition; or a specially good harvest, when the parents add something of the surplus to the portion of the girl or boy then marriageable. There was a deep, dark‐eyed maiden, of the ripe age of fifteen, with wayward black locks and a furtive glance in her liquid eyes like a startled fawn, about whose conduct there was a slight demur. Venturella (for such was her name, and it struck me at the time as of evil omen) was at heart as innocent as a child of five. But there was something in her shy yet daring nature which caused a certain uneasiness as to the fate of the timid, impulsive girl in this evil world. Venturella was fond of leaning over the low parapet which divided her father’s vineyard from the highroad; and when the brief Italian twilight had sunk in the shades of night, and the brilliant stars, that seem so near in those southern lands, had spangled the dense blue heavens with their myriad fires, Venturella would pretend she did not hear her mother’s voice calling her to come home. With arms crossed, she would lean on the wall, just breast high, and her star‐like eyes would seek their sister‐ stars above with a vague, dream‐like wonder. What the stars—and perhaps even more the moon—said to Venturella we shall never know; but one of them must have carried a message to a certain youthful Franceschino, whose hyacinthine locks clustered low over a brow of ivory, beneath which lay two eyes like the evening sky Venturella was so fond of; and whose teeth gleamed in the soft light like the white sea‐foam. Nobody knew; and as the birds had all long ago gone to bed, none of them were there to whisper tales.
Franceschino was the son of a vignaiuolo who lived on the Vomero, the heights above Posilippo; and the little stolen interviews took place as he came back from the city, whither he had been sent on his father’s business. From time to time the mother wondered what made her son so late in coming home; and one night she thought she would find out for herself whether the dry bush hanging out before the wide doors of one of those cavernous taverns had tempted Franceschino to try the red wine within, and perhaps take a hand at cards with some other loiterers. Alas! for Venturella when the indignant matron found out the charm which had led to the boy’s delay. She was not likely to hold her tongue about it. Nor was his father, who beat and cuffed him well; for boys of nineteen at Posilippo will meekly bear a cuffing from a parent, when they would not tolerate a finger’s weight from any one else. Then came the rage of Venturella’s mother; and spite of Padre Cataldo’s having elicited the fact that no greater wrong had been done than a few silly promises and one shy kiss, all Posilippo was loud in crying, Fie for shame! on the fawn‐eyed Venturella. At length those older than herself and wiser than her mother took the matter in hand. Could nothing be done? Stern fortune answered, Nothing. Venturella’s marriage‐portion was far from being made up. She was an idle hussy, and only worked when she could not help it. The rest of the time she paddled with naked feet in the silver sands, tempting the tiny waves to kiss them, or gathered scarlet poppies from among the green corn and twisted them in her raven hair. Worse than all, Franceschino was equally behindhand with his fortune; and nineteen was too young for a lad to marry, though fifteen was none too soon for a Neapolitan maiden.
There was, however, something in the silent sauvagerie of the strange girl which made it evident to her betters that she could not be thwarted with safety. There was something deeper than words in the sudden flash of those wild eyes when they looked up fiercely, and then fell beneath the long, fringed lids, and lay in shadow like pools in some dense forest. Venturella shrank, half angry, half ashamed, at every breath of blame; while her eyes grew larger and deeper, and the round, full cheeks became pallid and sunken.
“What is to be done with that wayward girl?” was the ever‐recurring question among the Vernons, who seemed to take upon their own charitable shoulders every burden that weighed upon their numerous friends, the Posilippians. At length a suggestion was made that Venturella should be sent to school far away from present associations, where she would have numerous girls of her own age to divert her, and where she might learn fine needle‐work and embroidery—the only thing, besides paddling in the sea and weaving wreaths of wild flowers, for which she had ever shown any disposition. Meanwhile, a dot was to be thought of for her; not so very much was wanted to make up the necessary sum—about 4,500 francs. And then, when Venturella should be wiser and Franceschino older, who knows but what love’s young dream may turn out true at last?
It did not take us long to get intimate with the names and habits of the rural population around us. They were quite willing to receive us as friends, and seemed to expect a ready sympathy from us in all their concerns. Unlike the peasants of an English village, the best of whom, at least amongst the women, cultivate so little acquaintance with each other, here everybody knew everybody else; and though I do not pretend to say there was less gossiping among them, it always struck me that there was less of that sour ill‐nature which is apt to characterize the English cottager’s comments on her neighbors. No doubt this arises in a greater degree from the nature of the people than from acquired virtue. It is only in northern, damp climes, like the English, that the necessary ills of life are so heightened and intensified by the general sense of moral and physical discomfort which a heavy atmosphere and a gray sky produce. We all know what it is to wake in the morning with a vague sense of apprehension, as if the post were about to bring us a distressing letter which our imagination foresaw. We all know the ceaseless and unreasoning feeling of being out of spirits which also tempts us to be out of temper. We are acquainted with the blue‐devils, and we are generally taciturn and inclined to gloom. The Italian knows nothing of this. The very great and constantly‐pervading influence these feelings have over our daily life is absolutely beyond the limits of his experience, unless, of course, he is suffering from a deep sorrow or a real physical malady. To the age of eighty, he wakes in the morning with the same sensation of joyous energy or placid pleasure which we were beginning to lose before we were eight. He is passionate; but he is not irritable. He has paroxysms of despair, but he knows no constant gloom. Our impatience, our tendency to being “put out,” are enigmas to him. The small hindrances of every day and every hour are less a great deal to him than the swarms of his pestering southern flies are to us. Pazienza (patience) is for ever on his lips; and it is no vain word, for patient he is to a degree which is exasperating to behold. When he is waiting, he is not gnawing an invisible bit, as we are doing, and grinding his teeth to powder. He is simply enjoying the being alive; and it does not much matter to him whether he chews the delicious cud of existence waiting at your door or sitting in his own home. You may make him furiously angry; and as likely as not he will stab you in the back and in the dark. But you cannot make him cross, or fretful, or peevish, or low‐spirited. Depend upon it, if he is ever any one of these things, it is high time to call in the doctor, who probably will declare his case already hopeless. On the other hand, if anything—and it may often be a trifle—thoroughly rouses a Neapolitan, it is fearful. It becomes a rabbia (a rage), as they themselves express it; and then they are blind and deaf to reason and expostulation, and run amuck of all that comes in their way. It is possible that the extraordinary violence which seizes them is, in a measure, purely physical, and that that also in a measure diminishes their responsibility. Evidently, they think so themselves. Era una rabbia(92) is considered almost an excuse for the worst crimes, so long as these were committed in the heat of passion. And probably, in the long run, this has seriously affected the moral sense; so that good and reasoning people fail to be as much horrified at some murder committed in a brawl as we should be. They look upon an event of the kind almost in the light of a mutual misfortune between the murdered and the murderer. It is at least certain that the line of demarcation which separates inward resentment from the outward act of guilt is more easily crossed by these children of the sun, and does not presume the existence of so much previous demoralization as it would do with us. Yet I am far from intending to write an apology for the Neapolitan character. There is a great deal about them which is very graceful and very attractive; and when they are really good and refined, they are most lovable. But this is exceedingly rare. As a people, they are venal, deceitful, mercenary, and treacherous. But with it all, they are exactly like children; good or naughty, as the case may be, but always children.
Frank not being with us, the Vernons had undertaken to procure for us a carriage and a pair of horses, with a well‐conducted coachman, to hire by the month. Indeed, had Frank been there, he could not have done it half as well as they did; for all these transactions require you to be acquainted with the current charges and with the character of the people; and Frank had no experience in either. The Vernons concluded the bargain for us with Pascarillo, the man from whom they always hired a vehicle when they wanted one; and a fine, handsome‐looking fellow he was, with the reputation of being rather a gay Lothario, but, on the whole, an honest man as Neapolitans go. Our carriage was delightfully roomy. It held four with admirable ease, and five at a pinch, together with cloaks and cushions, luncheon and drawing materials, whenever we went on an excursion. In the evening, we could close it. We had two very fleet horses, not at all fine‐ looking, and rather undersized for the carriage, but the best little beasts to go I ever saw. Our coachman was a veritable son of Jehu. He was a miserable object, mean and despicable to look at, diminutive, with bleared eyes, a beardless chin, and the expression of a low coward. But never have I sat behind such a coachman as that. I believe he would have taken us up the wall of a house and down the other side in perfect safety. It did not signify what his horses did, or what evident peril we got into, he always managed quite quietly to bring us right again without any expression of vehemence or alarm. Suddenly, one day, our coachman vanished. An old man appeared in his stead, and a pair of grays, larger than the little brown horses. We made no remark, supposing it was an accident, and that our former equipage would return in time. That day we set out for the Vomero—the height above Posilippo, covered with beautiful villas, and commanding a superb view, or rather many views. The horses jibbed. We were greatly alarmed. They could not be got up the hill, and we had to go home. We sent an indignant message to Pascarillo, and hoped it would never happen again. But it did happen; not once nor twice only. And then Pascarillo was sent for in person to render an account of himself. There he stood, six foot two, with broad chest, a forest of hair, and an august presence. Ida, the universal spokeswoman, with her fluent Italian and her determined energy, left him in no doubt as to her opinion of his conduct. He heard her out silently and calmly, and then replied that the signorina was quite right; he was conscious that his conduct had been inexcusable, and that we had serious cause for displeasure. He had not kept to his bargain, and he was aware of it. It should not happen again; and with a polite bow, he retired. It did not happen again. He had tried to take us in, and he had not succeeded—just a little speculation that had failed, and that was all! As for any rancor at being scolded, or any humiliation at having to make an apology, such sentiments did not trouble the breast of Pascarillo for a second. He probably only said to himself, “Better luck next time.” Our little horses came back, and our impish young coachman with them. We had never again to complain. But the impression made on Mary’s imagination by our coachman’s face was such that she had scruples of conscience about Paolino being allowed to converse with him on the coach‐box. Paolino was, therefore, seriously informed that for a footman to talk to the coachman when the ladies were in the carriage was not good manners. And from that moment silence was maintained; and Paolino’s morals were left untainted, as he sat, radiant in clean white cotton gloves and a new necktie, enjoying the delights of drives and picnics at least as much as the persons on whose account they were undertaken.
The Female Religious Of America.
In this busy world of labor, where mankind seems exclusively bent on the acquisition of wealth, fame, or power, on fashion, folly, and empty pleasures, how seldom we pause to consider seriously the diversity and multiplicity of the elements of humanity by which we are surrounded! How few, in their headlong career after vain desires, ask themselves if this world were made for them alone; if the end and object of life, the first gift of a merciful Creator, is merely selfish enjoyment, or whether the social compact, as well as the laws of God, do not require of us to assist in every way possible our less fortunate or more afflicted fellow‐ creatures.
It requires little reflection or effort to distinguish the favorites of fortune—those whose lot having been cast in pleasant places, shine in the public regard like beings of a superior order. Worldly success is ever prominent, and its devotees are always ready to court its notice and extol its merits. To be fashionable is to be fawned upon; to be influential, sought after; to wield power is to be placated. Not so with the humble, the poor, the ignorant, and the obscure; the victims of physical affliction or of moral degradation. They are usually shunned, often despised, and, as far as possible, contemptuously ignored. They constitute the outcasts of “society,” and, when they come betwixt the wind and its nobility, are merely objects of contempt, barren pity, or downright loathing. Yet these very unfortunates comprise, even in our own favored land, a very large and, in an indirect sense, a potent constituent of our population. Always with us, no matter how much we may attempt to separate ourselves from them, they appeal to us for help in the name of all we hold sacred; and their supplications, no matter how mutely made, if unheeded, are certain to be followed, even in this life, by a blight on our souls as well as a curse to our bodies. The heart of man becomes hardened, the fine perception of fraternal love and charity with which he is naturally blessed withers and shrivels up, and he becomes a mere embodiment of self, an arid isolation, in proportion as he steels himself against the cries and sufferings of his kind. The very ignorance he will not help to remove, the want and squalor he refuses to alleviate, rise up in judgment against him, and, developing into crimes against life and property, haunt his footsteps, and but too often mark him for their prey.
As in all things else, if we want an exemplar for our conduct in relation to our fellow‐beings, we must look to the church. Following the teachings of her divine Founder, from the earliest ages she has recognized the existence of the vast amount of misery, poverty, vice, and ignorance which underlies the surface of civilization, ancient and modern, and has used every effort to mitigate it. While yet the successors of S. Peter were struggling with the effete though polished paganism of the dismembered Roman Empire, and the greater part of Europe was enshrouded in the darkness of barbarism, societies of holy men and pious women were established and sustained by the popes and the fathers of the church, to mitigate in some degree, by their prayers and good works, the evils which beset society in its earliest transition state. The principal evils to be combated at that time were the ferocity of heathenism outside the confined limits of Christendom, and, within, the mental obscurity of the barbaric catechumens and neophytes. Physical destitution, in our signification of the term, was but little known beyond the limits of a few great cities; for men’s wants were few and easily supplied before the increase of population and the unequal distribution of property became general in the Old World. Therefore we find that the monks and nuns of the IVth century, and for many hundreds of years afterwards, devoted themselves mainly to preaching and teaching, to the multiplication of copies of the Holy Scriptures, and to praying for the conversion of mankind. Thus the order founded by S. Basil, Archbishop of Cæsarea, in Cappadocia, Asia Minor, A.D. 362, and that of S. Benedict, Abbot of Norcia, in Italy, in 529, and the numerous cenobitic communities which sprang from them, all more or less strictly observing the rules laid down by those great lights of the church, considered prayer, humility, and obedience the essential principles of their foundation.
Congregations of women devoted to the worship of God, prayer, and poverty were coeval with, if not anterior to, those of men; for we find that S. Anthony, in the latter part of the IIId century, placed his sister in a “house of virgins,” of which she afterwards became abbess; and that on Christmas day, 352, in S. Peter’s Church in Rome, Pope Liberius conferred the habit and veil on Marcellina, enjoining on her a life of mortification and prayer. A little later, mention is made of SS. Marcella, Lea, and Paula as distinguished Roman women who forsook the world, and spent their remaining life in prayer and good works; the latter especially, who, with her daughter, built a hospital at Bethlehem, erected a monastery for S. Jerome and his monks, and founded in Palestine three convents for female recluses, of which she took personal charge. S. Basil found many such convents in existence, and established several more within his jurisdiction, one of which was presided over by his sister Macrina, at Pontus. S. Chrysostom, Archbishop of Constantinople, up to 407, writes that in Egypt the congregations of women were as numerous as the monasteries; and S. Augustine, Bishop of Hippo (396‐430), built a convent of nuns, of which his sister was superior, giving it, in 423, a written rule, still followed by the religious who bear his name. Four years after, S. Benedict founded his monastery at Monte Casino, the rules of which, having been approved by Gregory the Great, in 595, have been very generally adopted by many religious bodies of men and women in Europe and America.
At first these religious institutions were confined to Italy and the East; but as the light of the faith gradually extended over Europe, religious houses were multiplied; and though for a long time each convent was governed by its own inmates, and followed the ancient rules, modified in many instances by peculiar circumstances, it was eventually found judicious to form them into distinct orders or congregations, in which all the establishments of a particular foundation were governed by a general head or superior. The strict requirements of prayer, humility, and obedience were still observed; but to these were added the education of the children of the poor, alms‐giving, and other acts of external devotion. Wherever a church was built, a monastery planted, or a number of people gathered together to worship God, there was generally to be found a convent, wherein the ailing might find relief; the afflicted, consolation; and the ignorant of the female sex, enlightenment. There the young whose parents were scarcely out of the slough of barbarism were taught their catechism and the beautiful prayers and litanies of the church, as well as to weave, spin, and all the other duties of a civilized housewife. While the clergy, secular and regular, went among the adults, preaching, instructing, and baptizing, holy women were near at hand to pray for the success of their efforts, and to show, by their gentle charities and meek demeanor, the loveliness and beneficence of the Christian religion.
One of the greatest glories of the Catholic Church is that she, and she alone, freed woman from the grossest slavery, and placed her in her proper sphere of usefulness and influence. By the sacrament of marriage, woman was made the honored equal of man; by her commandments and precepts, the church guarded her liberty and her purity, exalted her authority in the family, and recognized in her, even in death, the loving protectress of her offspring. But the church did more than all this. She gave to woman a part in her divine mission, a share in the most glorious task ever allotted to humanity—the propagation of the law of the Most High; and the dispensation of his mercies and benevolence. We are not surprised, then, to learn that in past ages, “when faith was young,” the most gifted and high‐born of their sex in every Christian land, daughters of nobles and princes, abandoning all the fascinations of the world, even those of royalty itself, were to be found eager to take part in the great work of religion, and consecrate their lives to prayer, penance, and charity, for the sake of the poor and helpless.
Such humility and implicit faith in the goodness of God could not have been unavailing; and we who now enjoy the blessings of true morality, with the refinements and graces of true civilization, seldom cast a thought back to the days of semi‐barbarism among our forefathers, when the only light that illumined the gloom of the outer world proceeded from the lamp of the sanctuary, and the only asylum open to the affectionate and modest soul of woman was the humble convent, where she could surround herself with the innocent and unstained children of both sexes, and teach them the way of salvation. Beyond those sacred enclosures, in bygone days, were little but passion, grossness, and self‐indulgence; while within reigned peace, delicacy, and that knowledge which is justly called the beginning of wisdom. The world at length commences to acknowledge the incomparable services of the monks and doctors, the penmen and preachers of the so‐ called dark ages; but who shall count up the debt of gratitude we owe to the thousands upon thousands of holy women who, spurning every earthly allurement, abandoning home, friends, and country, have sought, generation after generation, to win an eternal reward by unceasing prayer and continuous acts of benevolence? Europe is still, as in the past, enjoying the benefits of the labors of her pious daughters; India, China, and the furthest confines of the eastern hemisphere are reaping the advantages of the missionary efforts of the good nuns and Sisters; but America seems destined to be in the future the field whereon the full effulgence of God’s goodness is to be made manifest in the persons of his chosen handmaids.
To us especially the presence of so many pious and educated women is of incalculable advantage. The Catholic body in the United States has to combat a much more insidious and dangerous foe than was ever arrayed against the church, even in her darkest days of persecution. Then Christianity had only to shatter the idol of imperial Rome, already tottering to its base; now we have to fight against what may be termed civilized paganism, energetic, unscrupulous, and worldly‐wise, which aims at mere sensuous enjoyments, cultivates the intellect at the expense of the soul, and even attempts to use the very evidences of God’s works as a justification for their contempt of his law, and as argument against his existence itself. At the worst, the rude pagan of Northern and Western Europe had a belief in a superior Being, and an acknowledged, innate dependence on his will; but the fashionable sceptic of to‐day, the learned doubter of our schools and academies, believes in nothing but himself, and obeys his own whims as his highest rule of morality. It is a melancholy fact, but none the less true, that, according to official authority, nearly one‐half of the people of this country, male and female, practically believe in no form of religion whatever. Disgusted at the perpetual wranglings and disagreements of the sects in the name of Christianity; trained into mere cultivated animals by a system of public tuition which ignores God, or recognizes his existence only to ridicule and travesty his word; and freed from all the restraints which the church so wisely throws around her children from their earliest infancy, is it wonderful that the majority of the youth of this nation should grow up in the actual deification of their own prejudices and passions? With so many instances daily and hourly presented to our eyes, are we to be surprised that persons thus reared should be so active in creating a public opinion among us which is not Catholic, nor even Protestant, but simply and absolutely heathenish, without the refinement of the ancient Greeks to soften its grossness, or the pride of the Roman to save it from cupidity and dishonor?
How all‐important is it, then, to parents to be able to find schools wherein their children—those loved ones whom they have been instrumental in bringing into the world, and for whose eternal welfare they are responsible—will be cared for and instructed, taught habits of industry as well as accomplishments, and in which bands of zealous, educated, and religious women are ever ready to plant and nurture the seeds of virtue in their hearts, while shielding their young minds from even the shadow of contamination. Such guardians of the female youth can only be found in the nunneries, convents, and schools of the Catholic Church. There their lives are wholly and exclusively devoted to works of benevolence, of which the religious instruction of the ignorant is by no means the least. The world for them has neither cares nor attractions; they move, live, and have their being in an atmosphere of order, prayer, and tranquillity, their very appearance being in itself a homily of obedience and cheerful reliance on the goodness of their Maker.
Even though the educational establishments of the nuns and Sisters are in their infancy, there are few parents who need deprive their children of the advantages to be gained only in them. A quarter of a century ago, we could only boast of sixty‐six such institutions, while now we have nearly four hundred academies alone. What excuse, therefore, is there for a piously‐inclined mother or a discriminating father to imperil the happiness and faith of her or his children by sending them to secular schools where the training they receive is worse than artificial? In the convents they can be taught every accomplishment that befits a young lady, no matter how high her station in life, without being made the shallow creature, the mere puppet of fashion, which we find so often “turned out” by the modern secular school‐mistresses of our time; without heart, feeling, and, we might almost say, with no fixed perception of right and wrong.
Then we have two hundred and forty select schools, or an average of four for each diocese, attended by boarders or those living with their relations. These differ from the academies only in degree, being intended for the benefit of children whose position in life does not demand the same elaborate mental culture, or whose school‐days are necessarily short. Still, they receive the same attention, and are subjected to precisely similar moral influences, as the others. But the poor—those whose parents are unable to pay for their education—are they to have none of the advantages so freely accorded their wealthy neighbors? Must they be thrust into the tainted atmosphere of our public schools, and left to shift for themselves? Not so. The poor have ever been the primary objects of the good Sisters’ solicitude; and though they count their academies by hundreds, the number of their free schools, parish, orphan, and industrial, may be reckoned by thousands, and the pupils by myriads.
In the Diocese of New York there are forty‐six of these female schools, with over twenty thousand children, whose tuition is gratuitous, besides some three thousand inmates of orphan asylums and other charitable institutions for juveniles. In the Philadelphia diocese there are thirty‐ five Sisters’ free schools, containing nearly ten thousand scholars, in addition to the orphans. In Cincinnati, where the school system has been brought to a state of great efficiency, the proportion of the attendants to the Catholic population is much greater. We have no means of ascertaining the total number of pupils in the entire country; but if we take the three dioceses above mentioned as a criterion, it will be found that in the United States there are nearly three hundred thousand girls daily receiving at the hands of the Sisters of various congregations a free, thorough, and practical Catholic education. The expense alone of this great work of charity, if not performed without compensation, would be, judging from the cost of the public schools of New York, at least eight millions of dollars annually. If we add to the number of girls in the free schools the fifty or sixty thousand pupils in the six hundred and forty academies and select schools, we will find that about three hundred and fifty thousand female children are, in this year of grace 1874, under the more than maternal care of the religious of the Catholic Church.
Who can estimate the immense amount of good which is accomplished in this manner? Who can measure the beneficent effects to the country produced by these institutions of learning, which annually send to their homes so many thousands of children to gladden the hearts of fond parents, not so much by their varied acquirements, as by their gentleness of disposition and unaffected piety? If we cannot gauge the merits of the Sisters by what we see before us, how much less capable are we of estimating the reward which their long years of devotion will receive from Him who said of little children, “Of such is the kingdom of heaven.”
As to the efficiency of the nuns and Sisters as teachers of the young people of their own sex, there is scarcely a second opinion, even among non‐Catholics. Many Protestants and unbelievers, while professing little or no religion themselves, but who would not see their fair daughters follow their example, are careful to place them under the charge of the daughters of the church, well knowing that, while their minds will be amply stored with useful and elegant knowledge, their impressionable hearts will be guarded against the follies and sins of the world. If all the communities in the country—in number about forty‐five—were to devote their entire labor alone to this great work of education, what a benediction would they deserve from untold millions!
But they do not stop here. They go much further, and, with some few exceptions, their charity takes a far wider range. There are the poor waifs, left deserted on the highways, to be rescued from impending death and nursed into consciousness; the orphan, who has been deprived of its natural guardians, to be cared for; the unfortunate pariah of her sex, to be consoled and encouraged to resume the path of virtue; the jails, where lie the agents of passion and crime, to be visited; the aged and infirm to be taken by the hand, and led down the slope of life with tender solicitude. Again, the deaf, the blind, the insane, the wounded, the sick, and even the incurable, are, according to their several needs, objects of unremitting attention. No evil is so deep‐seated, no affliction so bitter, no disease, whether of the mind or of the body, so loathsome, that the holy women of the church, with God’s assistance, cannot assuage or cure.
To teach children is doubtless a responsible and laborious occupation, but nevertheless not without attractions; but to walk day and night the wards of a hospital, and breathe the dire contagion of disease, or, in the reformatory, to have the ear filled with the blasphemies and ribaldries learned in the lowest dens of vice, are surely trials to appall the stoutest heart, and to test to the very utmost the constancy and zeal of delicately‐nurtured women. Yet the capacious bosom of the church has room enough, has rest and shelter, for all classes of unfortunates. In the sixty‐two dioceses and vicariates into which the United States is divided, there are nearly three hundred foundling, orphan, deaf, blind, and insane asylums, reformatories, protectories, industrial institutions, homes for the aged, houses of the Sisters of the Poor, as well as infirmaries and hospitals; the former numbering over two hundred, and the latter about ninety, or, collectively, an average of five charitable institutions for each ecclesiastical division.
What a load of human misery is thus presented to the eye and committed to the relief of the indefatigable followers of Christ! Who can imagine that has not experienced it the daily round of toil, of watching, and solicitude which constantly awaits the footsteps of the gentle Sister, as she goes among her helpless clients in the foundling asylum, listens to the tale of woe and crime from the still youthful lips of the repentant Magdalene, or comforts the outcast of his kind at the very foot of the scaffold. Watch how lovingly she hushes the deserted babe or the scarcely less pitiable orphan to sleep; how kindly she takes the hand so long stained by contact with the vicious and the guilty into her own soft palm, and breathes words of comfort and encouragement into ears long used only to curses and vile speech; how deftly she smoothes the pillow of the sick, and smiles on the second childishness of her protégés, the aged and infirm poor. At her approach, the suffering child forgets its pains and stretches forth its little arms for her aid; the hospital loses half its ennui and gloom, and even the condemned cell is illumined by a ray of sunlight when she enters it. In fact, wherever there is poverty, sickness, or suffering of any kind, there is the place for the devoted Sister, and there, in truth, she becomes “a ministering angel.”
The distribution of these asylums and hospitals is another interesting feature in their capacity for general usefulness. In dioceses having an estimated Catholic population of over one hundred thousand, they may be thus classified: In Buffalo there is one to every 8,000 Catholics; in Cleveland, St. Louis, and Louisville, one to 13,000; in San Francisco, one to 15,000; Albany, one to 18,000; in Pittsburg, Cincinnati, New York, Brooklyn, and Philadelphia, one to 23,000; Newark, Alton, and St. Paul, one to 25,000; Boston, one to 30,000; Milwaukee, one to 40,000; Chicago, one to 45,000; Galveston and Providence, one to 60,000; Hartford, one to 80,000; and in Springfield, one to every 150,000. Of the less populous dioceses, Oregon has 1, Burlington 1, Columbus 2, Covington 3, Erie 1, Fort Wayne 3, Grass Valley 3, Mobile 3, Monterey and Los Angeles 5, Nashville 2, Natchez 2, Natchitoches 3, Nesqually 4, Portland 2, Richmond 3, Rochester 5, Santa Fé 2, Savannah 3, Vincennes 4, Wheeling 2, Wilmington 1, Kansas 2, Nebraska 1, Charleston 2. Green Bay, Harrisburg, La Crosse, Little Rock, Ogdensburg, Arizona, Colorado, Idaho, and North Carolina, all small dioceses or sparsely‐settled vicariates, have none.
It is impossible to give anything like an approximate report of the vast number of persons of all ages and sexes who find relief, advice, and protection in these asylums and hospitals; for we are not aware that there is in existence any general or full returns from one‐half of the charitable institutions scattered so broadcast over the country. We can therefore only attempt to form an estimate of the whole by taking the statistics nearest us. For example, in this diocese there are 572 girls and very young boys in the female protectory, 1,297 in seven orphan asylums, 546 penitents in the House of the Good Shepherd; while in one of the four city hospitals, S. Vincent’s, 950 patients were received during last year. In Brooklyn there are 1,041 orphans, 208 penitents, 420 patients in two hospitals, in addition to nearly 3,000 externs who received medical and surgical attendance, and 229 old men and women under the charge of the Little Sisters of the Poor.
The care of these charitable institutions is not confined to any particular community, but, according to locality or peculiar circumstances, falls to the lot of different congregations. Thus of the asylums, 5 per cent. are under the charge of the Sisters of Notre Dame; 14 per cent. under the Sisters of Mercy; 34 per cent. under the Sisters of Charity; 8‐½ per cent. under the Sisters of the Good Shepherd; 6 per cent. under the Little Sisters of the Poor; 2‐½ per cent. each under the Sisters of Providence, Holy Cross, Sacred Heart, S. Teresa, and S. Dominic; 5‐½ per cent. under the Sisters of S. Francis; 10 per cent. under the Sisters of S. Joseph; 1‐½ per cent. under the Sisters of the Holy Name, S. Benedict, and the School Sisters of Notre Dame, besides a few others belonging to different communities. Of hospitals, the Sisters of Mercy have 18 per cent., the Sisters of Charity 37, Providence 2, Holy Cross 1, S. Francis 7, Little Sisters of the Poor 2, S. Dominic 5, S. Joseph 11, Sœur Hospitalières 2, Nazareth 5, and of all others 20 per cent.
Of the teaching orders and communities in the United States who devote themselves solely to the higher branches of education and, when possible, to the gratuitous instruction of poor children, we have the Ladies of the Sacred Heart, the Ursulines, the Visitation, the Immaculate Conception, Presentation, and the Sisters of the Precious Blood, Loretto, S. Clare, Our Lady of Angels, S. Ann, S. Mary, Sacred Heart of Mary, Poor Handmaids of Jesus Christ, Humility of Mary, S. Agnes, Incarnate Word, Holy Child, and Daughters of the Cross. The Carmelites, Servite Nuns, and Sisters of S. Anthony are contemplative communities, though, in some special instances, the poor are taught and assisted in their convents.
A short account of the origin and growth in this country of some of the most prominent orders and communities may be found acceptable to those who take an interest in the successive developments in the church of works of education and charity.
The first convent established within the present limits of the United States—if we except some, perhaps, that might have existed long years since in New Mexico and California—was that of the Ursulines, opened at New Orleans in 1727, when that city was a portion of French territory. For about sixty years, the nuns were either natives of France or of French descent, till 1791, when, on the occasion of the revolt of the French colonists in the West Indies, the convent, with its academy, hospital, and asylum, received large accessions from San Domingo. This house still exists, with an affiliation at Opelousas, and has branches in Pittsburg, Cincinnati, St. Louis, Alton, Cleveland, Galveston, Green Bay, Mobile, and several other dioceses; that of New York, situated in what was formerly a portion of Westchester County, being the principal, containing forty‐seven members. The Ursuline Order was founded in 1532, at Brescia, Italy, by S. Angela of Merici, and was approved by Pope Paul III., in 1544, as a religious congregation under the name of S. Ursula. Eighteen years after, at the request of S. Charles Borromeo, Archbishop of Milan, it was obliged to enclosure, created an order, and placed under the rule of S. Augustine by Pope Gregory XIII. Its special duty is the education of young ladies; but a poor school is, when necessary, attached to each house.
Next in point of time was the Carmelite Nunnery, erected in 1790, near Port Tobacco, Maryland, through the exertions of the Rev. Charles Neale. That zealous clergyman, having visited Europe in that year, returned with four nuns, of whom three are said to have been Americans and one English. On account of the difficulties surrounding their locality, the community was afterwards transferred to Baltimore, in 1831, and permitted to open a school, which, however, was soon after discontinued. There are now in all eight houses of this order in America, of which two—the mother‐house and one in St. Louis—are of the reform of S. Teresa; the others, following the less strict rule, add the care of outside schools, asylums, and hospitals to their other duties. The Carmelite order of monks was founded in the early part of the XIIIth century under the rule of S. Basil, which was exceedingly strict as regards mortification, prayer, and fasting. The order of nuns was not created for two centuries after, when John Lorett, twenty‐sixth general, founded a female institute under the rule of his order, and established several convents in France. In 1452, Pope Nicholas V. approved the foundation; and in 1457 Françoise d’Amboise, the widowed Duchess of Brittany, built the house at Vannes, in her own possessions, taking the veil and habit at the same time. A hundred years later, S. Teresa of Castile, finding that many innovations and relaxations had crept in, undertook the work of reform, and her efforts were eventually approved by Pope Pius IV. in 1562. Thus there became two branches of the order—the Mitigated Carmelites, whose rule is not so austere as those of the Discalceated, who follow the reform of S. Teresa. The latter are obliged to observe perpetual silence, abstain from the use of flesh‐meat, sleep on straw, and wear habits of coarse serge and sandals instead of shoes. Their habit is a brown gown, scapular, and hood, and in choir a white cloak and black veil.
Soon after the arrival of the Carmelites in Maryland, an effort was made by a few Catholic young ladies in Philadelphia to establish a religious community. The principal movers were Miss Alice Lalor and a couple of friends. Her companions, however, having died before anything tangible could be effected, Miss Lalor left Philadelphia for Georgetown, D. C., in 1798, and established herself there as a teacher. Gradually she drew around her young persons of similar views and tastes, and a community was formed, at first simply for the purpose of prayer and education; but when, in 1816, their rules had been approved by the Most Rev. Leonard Neale, Archbishop of Baltimore, and recognized by the Holy Father, they became a regular branch of the Visitation Order, and submitted to solemn vows and enclosure. Their houses now number about twenty, and are to be found in Baltimore, Brooklyn, St. Louis, Mobile, Covington, Dubuque, and several dioceses in the South and Southwest. The order dates back to 1610, when it was founded by S. Francis de Sales and S. Jane Frances, Baronne de Chantal. It was at first merely a congregation, but by permission of Pope Paul V. it was changed into a regular order, the essential principles of its rule being the education of the children of the rich, though many free schools for the poor are found attached to its convents.
While Miss Lalor was working silently in the District of Columbia, there was another pious woman—one whose name is destined to be for ever illustrious in the annals of the church in America—nobly struggling against innumerable difficulties in the same holy cause. This was Mrs. Eliza A. Seton, the foundress, in the United States, of the glorious Sisterhood of Charity. Like all men or women whom Providence selects for great ends, Mrs. Seton passed through a long novitiate of sorrow and trials before she was found qualified to lay the corner‐stone of an institution which, above all others, has made Catholic charity and womanly self‐sacrifice most useful, most respected and beloved amongst us. Born in New York on the 28th of August, 1774, of wealthy Protestant parents, her infancy and girlhood were passed amid all the scenes of pleasure and luxury that family position and affluence could command; and it was not till she had married and entered upon matronhood that she experienced her first great grief. This arose out of the death of her father, Dr. Bayley, who, in his devotion to the sick immigrants, at that time very numerous, fell a victim to ship‐fever. His daughter, it would appear, felt for him even more than filial affection and respect, and his sudden death made such an impression on her spirits and such inroads on her health that she was obliged to make a tour in Europe in company with her husband, also an invalid. Her mind had early been imbued with strong religious impressions, as well as cultivated by careful study and extensive reading; and during her stay in Southern Europe, where she had ample opportunities of visiting the churches and convents, and of seeing for herself the beauties and glories of Catholicity, she first began to long for that rest for the weary and doubt‐distracted soul which is only found in the bosom of the church. Her husband, dying in December, 1802, was buried in Italy; and she, now left the sole guardian of her children, returned to America. But the thoughts that had come to her in the solemn basilicas of the Old World followed her to the New, and would not be dismissed. She struggled much with them, prayed fervently, sought the spiritual advice of many pious friends, and finally, in 1805, entered the church. We of this generation can hardly conceive the sacrifices Mrs. Seton made in thus becoming a Catholic. So rife and uncompromising was the spirit of Protestant bigotry in those days that the moment it was known that she had become a convert, every friend and relative, the companions of her youth and the sharers of her blood, shrank from her with positive loathing, as if her touch was infectious. All forsook her except her children. But she was a woman of undaunted courage as well as of implicit faith. She resolved to leave New York, and take up her residence in Baltimore, then the only city in the country where Catholics had either influence or social standing. Here, by the advice of the archbishop, she determined to devote herself to teaching, and, to carry out her idea more fully, to establish a community. Accordingly, in May, 1809, we find her, with four companions, setting out for Emmittsburg to take possession of a log house and commence her grand enterprise. On the first of June, these pioneers of the Sisters of Charity in the United States arrived at their destination, and on the day following, the Feast of Corpus Christi, they appeared in the little church of the college in their habits—“white muslin caps with crimpt borders, black crape bands round the head and fastened under the chin, black dresses, and short capes similar to those of the religious of Italy.”
At first the community was called the Sisters of S. Joseph; but in 1810, it was agreed to assimilate it to the Congregation of Charity in Europe, and, through the influence of the Rev. F. Flaget, it was hoped that some Sisters might be induced to come from France to take charge of the little community. Owing to the disturbed state of the times, F. Flaget failed to procure the desired aid; but he brought with him the rule of the Sisters, which, having been adopted by the community, was approved by Archbishop Neale, January 17, 1812.
The growth of the new congregation was slow, for many unforeseen difficulties had to be encountered; but having been planted deep in the soil, it gradually grew strong and vigorous, and, when it once commenced to throw out offshoots in every direction, they took root and flourished with wonderful vitality. In 1814, some Sisters were sent to Philadelphia to take charge of the new Catholic orphan asylum; and in 1817, Mother Seton, with Sisters Cecilia O’Conway and Felicité Brady, came to New York, at the request of Bishop Connolly, to superintend a similar institution established by the New York Catholic Benevolent Society. They selected a small frame house on Prince Street, where now stands their noble asylum. How the houses of this illustrious community have multiplied during the last half‐century is truly astonishing, and can only be attributed to the help of a Power more than human. Nearly one hundred asylums and hospitals are now under their charge; about the same number of academies and select schools claim their care; free schools and scholars beyond computation enjoy the blessings of their pious instruction; and their convents and establishments dot the country in every direction. In New York alone, where the mother‐house of the province is situated at Font Hill, Yonkers, there are attached to it 409 professed Sisters, 92 novices, and 13 postulants, who conduct 72 different establishments in New York, Jersey City, Brooklyn, New Haven, Providence, and Columbia. In Newark, in the mother‐house of the diocese, at Madison, N. J., there are 190 members; and in almost every section of the country where Catholicity is at all known, the simple black dress and cape, and the small white collar, of the daughters of S. Vincent de Paul are familiar objects. This congregation, though dating only from March 25, 1634, when Louise de Marillac, widow of Antoine Le Gras, secretary to Marie de Medicis, the first mother of the Daughters of Charity, consecrated her life to God, has now, it is said, more than twenty thousand members throughout the world, all, like their sainted founder, Vincent, unremittingly employed in works of divine charity.
Next in order of usefulness, though not in age, come the Sisters of Mercy. This congregation is of Irish origin, having been founded in Dublin, as late as 1827, by Catharine McAuley, a native of that county. Miss McAuley was born September 17, 1787, of Catholic parents; but they dying when she was quite young, her guardianship was assumed by a Protestant family, who brought her up in their own faith—if faith it may be called; but the girl early developed a remarkable inclination towards Catholicity, and, when of proper age, reunited herself to the church of her fathers. At thirty‐four she found herself the possessor of a large fortune bequeathed to her by her adopted father, who had become a Catholic on his death‐bed; and this, with all her subsequent life, she resolved to dedicate to the service of the Almighty. She therefore built at her own expense, in the most fashionable part of the city, a magnificent convent, and, associating with herself several other ladies, commenced the work of instruction and the visitation of the sick poor in their homes and in the public hospitals. The Most Rev. Dr. Murray, Archbishop of Dublin, gave her all the assistance in his power, and, after consulting with the Holy See, approved the new foundation. In 1841, Pope Gregory XVI. confirmed the congregation, which is now so strong in the United Kingdom that it numbers 133 convents, besides numerous charitable institutions. Unlike the Sisters of Charity, this congregation has no superior‐general, each convent being independent and self‐governing.
Though introduced into this country by the late Bishop O’Connor, of Pittsburg, about thirty years ago, the Sisters of Mercy have spread rapidly over the United States. They have already nearly 50 asylums and hospitals, 80 academies and select schools, an immense number of free schools, convents almost as numerous as those of the Sisters of Charity, and considerably over 1,300 members. They are to be found in New York, the New England dioceses, Albany, Philadelphia, Louisville, Pittsburg, most of the old dioceses, and many of the newer ones.
There are other orders and congregations among us, if not so numerous, equally meritorious; for instance, the Ladies of the Sacred Heart, who conduct about 30 academies and select schools, in which the very highest order of education is imparted; the Sisters of Notre Dame, also a teaching order, having the care of 20 houses, in which there are 431 boarders and over 1,200 day scholars, besides about 14,000 pupils attending the free schools, half that number in the Sunday‐schools, in addition to those taught in evening schools and instructed in various other ways. This congregation, though founded in 1804, by Mother Julia Billiart, assisted by Marie‐Louise‐Françoise, Vicomtesse Blin de Bourbon, and Catharine Duchâtel, at Amiens, has so extended its labors that it now counts in Belgium, England, and Central America 68 establishments, 12,000 scholars in its boarding and day schools, and over 32,000 children gratuitously taught in its free schools. It was introduced into the United States, in 1840, by the Most Rev. Dr. Purcell, Archbishop of Cincinnati, and, in connection with its convents and academies, has charge of 70 asylums. The Sisters of S. Joseph, numbering about sixty communities, have, by the latest returns, 42 academies, 20 select schools, 20 asylums, and 9 hospitals. These latter are specially charged with the instruction of the colored children of the South. Then there are the congregations of the Third Order of S. Francis and of S. Dominic, whose duties are equally multifarious; the Sisters of the Good Shepherd, whose mission it is to receive and reform the very outcasts of female society, and to save young women from lives of vice and crime; and the meek Little Sisters of the Poor, who actually go about from door to door, from store to market‐place, begging, in the name of holy charity, for the crumbs of our tables to feed their aged and decrepit dependents who are tottering on the verge of the grave. Besides these, there are many other communities of pious women in our midst, quietly and unostentatiously pursuing their career of goodness, the history of whose foundation the limits of an article will not allow us to descant upon. Their actions are doubtless recorded in another world, where lie their trust and promised reward.
Thus we have seen how our glorious land is twice blessed by the presence of those pure‐minded, zealous, and meek followers of their Saviour. We are blessed in their prayers and in their active charity. No one is so rich as to be independent of their good offices; no one so poor, afflicted, or degraded that they cannot succor and console. The vilest dens of infamy in our crowded cities are made almost sacred by their tread; the far‐away prairies and forests resound with their chants and songs of praise; while the daintily‐nurtured daughter of the aristocracy is taught, in some convent of the Sacred Heart, or of the Ursulines, to shine in and adorn her social sphere without forgetting that she is a Christian; the poor little negro children of the everglades of Florida, or the savage Indian babes of the Pacific slope, are kneeling at the feet of some Sister of S. Joseph or of the Holy Names of Jesus and Mary, lisping their first prayer. Without exaggeration, it may be said that there is no ignorance so dense that they will not succeed in expelling; none of the many ills to which flesh is heir that they cannot assuage; and that they, and they alone, of all their sex, “can minister to a mind diseased, and pluck from the heart a deep‐rooted sorrow.”
And yet all this toil and pain and solicitude bring with them, even in this world, abundant rewards. Who that has ever entered a convent or a religious house has not been impressed by the gentle air of cheerfulness and inward peace that sits on the faces of its inmates? We look in vain for the anxious glance that betrays an unsatisfied mind, or the deep‐drawn lines that tell a tale of worldly struggle and discontent. No; every countenance is serene, placid, and healthful. This is the reward of noble works well performed, the luxury of doing good, to which the women of the outer world are for the most part strangers. But what shall be the eternal recompense for those who thus abandon kindred and home, friends and companions, the pleasures of the world and the passions of the heart, to follow in the footsteps of the Saviour who was crucified for us, and to carry out his precepts, regardless of all consequences, to the end? Such is the holy nun who storms heaven with her prayers for the salvation of mankind and the pardon of national crimes; such the humble Sister who devotes the energies of her mind, the years of her life, nay, her very life itself, to the service of God’s poor, helpless, and sinful creatures. Can a nobler ambition than this find place in the human mind? Can the glory, the charity, and the all‐absorbing beneficence of the Christian faith find brighter examples and purer exponents than within the convents which so numerously overspread and are continuing to increase on the soil of our young republic?
Switzerland In 1873.
“Going to Lyons to‐morrow! Impossible!” exclaimed Mrs. C——, whom my friend and I accidentally met in the hall of the Berner Hof Hotel at Berne this autumn. “You cannot surely go without seeing the Lake of Lucerne! I should be quite ashamed to confess that I had been so long in Switzerland and was leaving without having been up the Rigi. In fact, if you persist in this resolution, you will have to come back again next summer expressly for that, and for nothing else. Think what trouble that may be! And all from want of a little energy now; for I feel quite certain you have no appointment to take you to Lyons in such a hurry. I know you cannot have,” she added smiling, and noticing some hesitation on our part, “so you must just change your plans again and come off to Lucerne with our party this afternoon! You may go to Lyons later, if you like, but there will be time enough to think about that!”
It was quite true. There was no special reason for our starting for Lyons that day, no pressing necessity for our leaving Switzerland just then. The Lake of Lucerne, moreover, had originally a prominent place in our itinerary, and the weather was so fine that there seemed fair hope of the prescribed sunrise from the Rigi. But, if the truth were told, we were weary—weary not in body but in soul; and had taken such an aversion to the country, from a spiritual point of view, that a strong antidote—such as Lyons with its Notre Dame de Fourvières and general Catholic life would afford—had become to us absolutely essential.
Six weeks previously we entered Switzerland—two ladies overflowing with enthusiasm. The picturesque was certainly a main object in our journey; for where else can it be equalled, or found in such variety? Still, we had no intention whatever of leaving religion and devotion behind us, and never doubted for a moment that we should succeed in finding means of satisfying our desires.
It was our first visit to this region, and our knowledge of it, we are bound to confess, was most superficial. But how little does one know of a foreign country until either long residence or some special circumstance excites the curiosity or rouses the attention! Catholics even, who as a rule interest themselves more than all others about the religious state of countries outside their own—instigated by that principle of universal brotherhood, that bond of spiritual union, which the church so effectually promotes—seldom know, notwithstanding, the details of current ecclesiastical foreign events, unless accident brings them to the spot. A great commotion like the warfare going on in Geneva, and the fact that the attitude of the Catholic community in that town was most noble, and those willing “to suffer persecution for justice’ sake” neither few nor faint‐ hearted, had of course a large place in our view of the case. But except this, and the broad facts that Geneva, Berne, and Zurich were Protestant, Lucerne and its neighborhood Catholic, we are constrained to admit that our acquaintance with Swiss matters, geographical, historical, or ecclesiastical, was very limited. It is little wonder, therefore, that we lent a willing ear to the thoughtless assertions of fellow‐travellers, who told us we should find Catholic churches scattered all over these districts. Without further questioning, then, we proceeded, commencing by a few days at Lausanne and along the shores of the lovely Lake of Geneva. Thence we made our way to Bellalp, Zermatt, the Eichhorn, and, finally, passing round to the northern side of the great mountains, wandered on from the Faulhorn, Scheideck, and Wengern Alps to Mürren, where we rested for several days, having “done” sunsets and sunrises, peaks and glaciers, until our minds were filled with the most magnificent images. Still, despite all these wonderful beauties of nature, which seemed every day to draw us more closely and more humbly towards the Creator, an irrepressible dreariness had crept over us, from the absence of all visible signs of union with him or of grateful worship on the part of man. Certain it is that the result our present wanderings had produced by the time we reached Berne was a longing for a Catholic land and Catholic churches, where we might pour forth our praises, and give utterance to our thanksgivings for the glorious sights we had seen; a longing that had grown stronger than the mere love of the sublime and beautiful, for its own sake, of which we were, nevertheless, most ardent votaries.
It may be said that, coming to Protestant cantons as we did, we ought not to have expected a profusion of Catholic churches; the Catholic population is small, especially in the highland districts, and labors under many disadvantages. True, and after the first disappointment was over, we were ready to study our excursions, and often to shorten them, in order to hear Mass on Sundays. Yet even so, more than once we could not even accomplish this; and the difficulty of approaching the sacraments under these circumstances is most distressing to travellers. Besides, to an outside observer, piety does not seem to flourish; or, where it does, the Catholic congregations have that subdued look peculiar to all persecuted communities, so extremely depressing to witness. Many believe that, for this and other reasons, the battle now raging in Geneva and elsewhere will be productive of great gain, and that Switzerland and Germany will emerge from a life resembling that of the early Christians in the Catacombs, only with tenfold power and vigor. At the present moment, one is chiefly led to reflect on the false interpretation of that freedom so much boasted of by the Swiss Protestants—if one may so style the advanced liberals and free‐ thinkers who come to the surface nowadays—and remember how easily an American Catholic could make them blush by his report of how differently these matters are treated across the Atlantic.
Our path had nowhere, as yet, it is true, touched on a Catholic canton; and there all might be different, though everything we could glean led us to a contrary expectation. An old German who had been coming to Switzerland for the last thirty years, and whom we met en route, told us it was all the same. “No religion anywhere. Nothing can be more uninteresting than the people,” he asserted. “Bent only on money‐making and fighting about religion—religion, that is to say, in name, but not in deed; the disputes are purely party questions, and have no real, substantial foundation. Peaks and passes are alone worth a thought,” he added. On these he was inexhaustible, but always dismissed the other subject with contempt. Later, when our own observations in the Catholic cantons completely altered our opinions, we also ascertained that he, like so many of the summer tourists one encounters nowadays, was perfectly indifferent to all forms of worship, and blind to those signs and manifestations of the inner being which still abound in all that region. Meanwhile, however, his report, coming from one familiar with every part of Switzerland, carried conviction to our untutored minds, as, no doubt, happens in similar cases every day.
But it was not, perhaps, the difficulty about, and paucity of, Catholic service which so much roused our indignation, once we saw the small number of our co‐religionists, as the universal aridity, tepidity, nay, coldness, of all the inhabitants of these favored regions. Nor could we gain much knowledge about them. The ordinary tourist never meets a Swiss above the class of guides and hotel‐keepers; the former, in the Protestant cantons, are a stolid, uncommunicative race of men, with all their intellects apparently given to their horses and Trinkgeld; the latter too much engrossed in the feverish anxiety of drawing up large bills and providing for the passing crowd to give attention to any other matter during the summer season. Besides, the line of interest does not run in the direction of the “people”; if it did, these men would no doubt also labor to supply the demand; as it is, few have time, or, having time, inclination, for anything but scenery, and next to scenery—sometimes first—come food and lodging.
It was unreasonable, many observed, to aspire to more. “A thorough knowledge of a nation is not to be picked up in passing”; “One comes to Switzerland for the scenery only”; “The people cannot be judged by outward appearances,” were phrases which met us at every turn whenever we ventured to make a remark. “Doubtless the people may be excellent,” was our reply; “but outward appearances are an index to their minds. In the Tyrol, Bohemia, Brittany, and other Catholic lands, all who ‘run may read.’ ” Mountain chapels, wayside crosses, holy pictures inside and outside their dwellings, speak a language common to all Christian hearts; and the indifferentism and dryness of soul which their absence betokens in the Bernese Oberland, especially amidst its grandest scenes and greatest dangers, cannot fail to leave a most painful impression on every thoughtful traveller.
The only information we found it easy to gather related to everything connected with material subjects. In a surprisingly short space of time, we knew, from our guides, the names of all the peaks, and many, too, of the smaller summits, and, above all, could speak in an authoritative tone of the best hotels in different places, the price of pension in each, whether the Kellners were civil, the living better in one than another, Cook’s tickets an advantage or not, where the carriage‐roads ended and the riding or walking began—in fine, became very clever on all those points which form the staple of conversation at all Swiss hotels and halting‐ places. Yet we conscientiously employed our eyes and ears, so as to come to no wrong conclusion. The more one travels in Switzerland, the more necessary this precaution seems. Whatever efforts we made, however, brought about the same unfavorable result. The whole aspect of the country we traversed justified our German acquaintance’s harsh criticisms. Even the Protestant churches, which, if only from a pure spirit of opposition, one might expect to show a flourishing exterior, are in Switzerland more than usually bald and cheerless. Unlike English churches of the present day, they are completely innocent of the slightest approach to decoration, and very often without sign of communion‐table or anything even representing it. Sometimes a bare slab of marble, without altar‐cloth or covering, stands in the middle; but often this is brought out only at stated periods for the administration of the Lord’s Supper, and, as a rule, the seats are ranged round the pulpit—the only centre of attraction in these buildings. Of all nations, the English show the most tangible signs of life. They, at least, bring themselves more prominently forward; for the first paper that strikes the eye on entering every Swiss inn is the list of services and chaplains supplied to Switzerland for the season by the English Church Colonial Society. Churches they do not possess, except in a few favored spots; and many are the lamentations amongst the wandering Britons at being obliged to content themselves with the drawing‐ room or billiard‐room of a large hotel, where probably the evening before they had assembled amidst gaiety and laughter. It is an arrangement, too, often complained of by the other inmates—one which led to a serious dispute in one place, where the German visitors claimed their right to the billiard‐table at the hour appointed by the English chaplain for his service. Still, there they are, mindful, at least, of “Sabbath worship,” when the majority of their co‐religionists see no necessity for remembering it.
Crowds of Anglican clergymen were also found travelling, on their own account, in the Protestant cantons. Five‐and‐twenty were together one day at Mürren, of all shades and hues, too; from my Lord Bishop, with his wife and daughters, to the young Ritualist curate, in his Roman collar and otherwise Catholic dress, the highest ambition of whose heart is to be taken—or rather mistaken—for a true Catholic priest. And very hard it is to distinguish him, at first sight, from the genuine character, so exact has he made the superficial copy. After a little conversation, however, it is easy to know that such unmitigated abuse of the Episcopal dignitary who sits at the other end of the room, and of the whole bench of bishops, cannot belong to the true church, which not only enjoins but practises submission to authority. Intellectual these High‐Churchmen always are, and would make pleasant company but for the crookedness of their “opinions,” and their unconcealed exultation, too, at the assumed progress of the so‐ called “Old‐Catholic” movement, which they represent as undermining the whole of Switzerland. Catholic Switzerland they always meant; for even they could not blind themselves to the fact that in the Protestant districts there is little left to take away. One could only wonder how, with their hankering after Catholic things, they could in any way feel drawn towards those cantons; and it more than ever strengthened our conviction (though nothing offends them more than such a suggestion) that the sole binding link between these English High‐Churchmen and the miscellaneous companies which assemble at the “Old‐Catholic” meetings is their common ground of rebellion to mother church—which, as daily experience infallibly proves, gathers together all grades of belief and unbelief outside the Catholic fold, and induces them to ignore all their important differences in the bond of a hatred which is truly preternatural to the spouse of Christ!
Wet days at Swiss hotels are proverbially fruitful of talk and discussion; and nowadays these religious subjects are certain to be started by some new Ritualistic acquaintance, who evidently presumes on sympathy from English‐speaking travellers. Above all, should he or she discover that you are a “Romanist,” as they choose to call us children of the true church, it is most curious to observe what an irresistible secret attraction impels them to follow you, from morning to night, with their arguments and spiritual “views.” Oh! what days of annoyance continued rain has cost us on those mountain‐tops—days of true annoyance unmixed with good; for in no single instance did we find any permanent impression made on these Ritualists, who, of all Protestants, are the most hopelessly blinded and obstinate. And most fully do we agree with a high ecclesiastical authority who recently remarked to us that all other shades of churchmen, including the evangelical or Low Church, respond to the call of grace more readily than these men and women, whose stand‐point is that pride which obscures their spiritual vision. After two or three such discussions, we foresaw the point exactly when they would dogmatically assert that they, “too, are Catholics,” and that an irreparable breach was to be the immediate consequence of the solemn protest which it became our duty to make on each similar occasion. Before we reached Mürren, therefore, we had learnt to avoid them. By that time, too, we found that all their information about “Old Catholics” was derived either from the English newspapers or those foreign ones which, in rainy, stay‐at‐home weather, are studied in those places with persevering assiduity.
We ourselves endeavored to gather from this source some of that information unattainable elsewhere, but very soon indignantly threw aside these tainted productions. Our German friend was right on this point, certainly; for anything more shameful and less religious than the attacks on the priesthood in general, the false statements put forward, and the undisguised rationalism—not to give it a worse name—of most of these foreign newspapers which flood the reading‐rooms of Switzerland, it would be difficult to imagine. Not a single Catholic newspaper came under our eye in the pensions and hotels. If they were taken in, they were certainly hidden away; and the tone of the German press, in particular, perfectly justified the assertion which has been hazarded—namely, that it has altogether fallen into the hands of the once‐despised Jews. Alas! alas! the “Israelites” of the present day may well exult and lift up their heads in the remarkable and daily‐increasing manner so noticeable all over Europe, where the faith of Christians is so tepid and their sight so weak as no longer to distinguish the true from the false in these proud and “enlightened” days!
Disheartened by all we saw and heard, we frequently turned to the poor, in the hope of better feelings; and although no outward token of man’s habitual remembrance of his Maker met our observation, we tried to lead the guides and peasants to speak, now and then, on these subjects. In vain, however. They appeared to have no thoughts to communicate, no familiarity with the supernatural, nor other answer but the dry, curt one to give: Wir sind alle Reformirten im Canton Berne—“We are all Reformed in the Canton of Berne.”
This hard, unsympathetic tone of mind jarred on our highest and tenderest feelings; and the grander the surrounding scenery, the more painful its impression. It had reached its climax a few days before we met Mrs. C—— at Berne.
Having slept one night at Lauterbrunnen, and the next morning proving lovely, we determined to go on at once to Grindelwald. There had been no service of any kind at the village of Mürren; but here a bell rang early, and we had thus begun the day by lamenting that it did not summon us to Mass before starting on our journey. But this being a strictly “Reformed” neighborhood, it was foolish to nourish any such hope. The sparkling rays of sunlight on the Staabbart, however, the drive through the magnificent valley, the rushing torrent, and opening views of our favorite mountains, free from the veil of mist that had covered them on the previous day, the exhilarating air, and general brightness of a grand nature, gradually restored us to more contented dispositions. The day was splendid. The Wetterhorn, Finsteraarhorn, Eiger, and Jungfrau stood erect before and above us, as we drove up to the hotel, in all their grandeur, sternness, and soft beauty withal; their spotless snows and blue glaciers running down amongst and fringing the green, placid pastures below, whilst Grindelwald itself, the pretty village of scattered châlets, lay bathed in sunshine at their feet. It was the beginning of September; yet the visitors were so few and imperceptible that we felt as if we alone had possession of this wonderful scene. Nor was there a breath of wind or a cloud in the sky, in an atmosphere of transparent brilliancy—one of those rare days which seem lent to us from Paradise, when one’s only thought can be that of thankfulness; one’s only sigh, “Lord! it is good for us to be here.” We had been sitting for some time on a grassy slope, drinking in all this ethereal beauty, and gazing silently on those “great apostles of nature, those church‐towers of the mountains,” as Longfellow so beautifully calls them, when our thoughts wandered on to the perils peculiar to such a spot. Of the two glaciers right before us, one—the smaller one, it is true—had all but disappeared within the last four years. It had melted away gradually during an unusually hot summer, the guide had told us, though fortunately without causing any considerable damage in the valley underneath. Very different it would be if the larger one were to vanish; and we naturally reverted to a description we had recently read, by a well‐known dignitary of the English Church, of the appalling catastrophe near Martigny, in 1818, when the whole district was made desolate and villages swept away, in consequence of the breaking‐up of a similar glacier under the Lake of Mauvoisin. We had just said that if any people should “stand ready” it certainly was the Swiss, when suddenly, as if in response to our meditations, the silvery sound of a church‐bell came wafted to us through the balmy air. The building itself was out of sight, hidden behind a small knoll; so we hastened at once on a voyage of discovery in search of it. The day and hour were so unusual that a faint hope arose of finding some out‐of‐the‐way Catholic convent, forgotten, perhaps, by the old “Reformers.” It was only the small church of the village, however. The bell was still ringing, and the door open, but no one near; and, entering in, nothing was to be seen save an empty interior with whitewashed walls, where a few benches alone indicated that it served any purpose or ever emerged from its present forlorn and desolate condition. Perplexed for an explanation, we appealed to some villagers in the vicinity—old women who, had it been a Catholic church, were just the sort of bodies one would have found telling their beads in some corner of it at every hour of the day; but blank countenances were all we elicited by our first question of why the bell was ringing or what service was about to begin. “Service! What service?” they answered inquiringly. “Divine service”—Gottesdienst—we replied, making the question more explicit, the better to suit their capacities. “Divine service? Oh! that is only on Sundays, of course,” was their answer; and it never seemed to cross their minds that people ought also to pray on other days. In fact, no single person in the place could give any reason for the tolling of this bell (evidently the Vesper‐bell of old Catholic times), except that it rung regularly on every afternoon at 3 o’clock. A poverty‐stricken, unhealthy‐looking population they were, too—just the class that stand much in need of spiritual comforts—of those aids from heaven which the poor need more palpably even than the possessors of material wealth, in order to bring them through the troubles of this weary world, and to sustain their courage at every step. Both here and at Lauterbrunnen, despite all police prohibitions, our carriage was followed by numbers of sickly and deformed children, whose monotonous drone was unenlivened by one bright look, by any petition “for the love of God,” or any of those touching variations of the Catholic beggar in every part of the world, which, no matter what one may say at the time, do appeal to a Christian heart more than any one is aware of until made sensible of their impression by the chilly effects of their absence on such occasions.
But our spirits revived, as we returned to Interlachen, at sight of the old Franciscan convent standing embosomed in its stately trees. Hitherto we had only passed through the place on our way to and from the mountain excursions; but to‐morrow would be Sunday, and the Catholic service, we had ascertained, was in the convent church. Away, therefore, with our saddened hearts and dismal musings! The plain would evidently treat us more charitably than the highland country had hitherto done! Beautiful, lovely Interlachen! lying amidst its brown, flowery meadows, under its stately walnut‐trees; the white‐robed Jungfrau rising opposite in all her dignified beauty, unaccompanied by Monk or Eiger, or any of her snowy compeers. The sun was setting as we drove up to the hotel Victoria just in time to see its deep‐red, crimson farewell, thrown across the brow of the grand mountain, melt gradually into the most tender violet, as if in mourning for his departure. And as we sat on the balcony all that evening in the stillness of the autumnal air, watching the full moon shining on the “pale Virgin,” making her glitter like silver, and stand out, in all her majesty, from the dark, enclosing line of intervening hills, we felt once more how glorious is God’s creation in all its simple magnificence! How grand, how awful it can be! And again, at dawn, we beheld the same spotless peak receive with a tender, pink blush the first rays of the returning sun, to dazzle us henceforward during all that day by her transcendent loveliness through an ethereal veil of transparent delicacy, and to draw our thoughts heavenward, pointing upwards like a faithful angel guardian anxious to remind us that all this earthly beauty is as naught compared to the bright visions which await us beyond!
It was nine o’clock that morning before the church‐bell sounded; but then we sallied forth with full hearts, and made our way along the beautiful avenue of walnut‐trees towards the old convent. With elastic gait we ascended the ancient steps of the ivy‐mantled church, rejoicing in the sign‐post which boastfully pointed “à l’Eglise Catholique”! But vain were our illusions! How could we have been so sanguine! This fine old convent, as perfect as at the time of its suppression in 1527, is far too valuable, think the authorities, to be given up by an antagonistic government to the successors of its original owners. A large part of the dwelling portion, therefore, is used by the commune of Interlachen for its public offices, whilst the remainder is divided between the different foreign “persuasions” that visit Interlachen every summer. That high‐sounding title, “l’Eglise Catholique,” belonged only to a small chapel constructed out of one end of the church—the smaller end—and floored, moreover, up to half its height. The other and larger portion was given up for the English Church service, whilst the Free Kirk of Scotland and “l’Eglise Evangélique de France,” were installed here and there amongst the cloisters. Most correctly, then, did an old man, who was found sweeping out the passages, describe himself as employed by tous les cultes.
Nor was the Catholic congregation more permanent than the others. It appeared to consist chiefly of strangers, and the priest, a Frenchman, who spoke in feeling accents of the persecution going on throughout the country, announced that although the following day would be a holiday, there could be no Mass; for he had to quit Interlachen on that same evening.
As we came out from the convent, sad and gloomy, a pretty sight awaited us: hundreds of boys and girls, of all sizes and ages, marching to the strains of a band towards a large meadow hard by, where gymnastic and other games were about to commence. Orderly and bright‐looking they all were, accompanied by half the population of the town and neighborhood, chiefly attired in the picturesque Bernese costume, and including, evidently, the fathers and mothers of the young generation. It was a most brilliant yet soothing picture, as we beheld them passing on under the shade of the wide‐spreading, lofty walnut‐trees; the little maidens in their fresh summer dresses, embroidered muslin aprons, and hats crowned with masses of flowers, standing out against the green background of the nearer mountains, whilst the lovely Jungfrau beyond shone out resplendent beneath the rays of a dazzling sun. Long stood we watching them; for it was a scene to enjoy and treasure up in one’s memory. What a pity that the recollection should be darkened by the after‐knowledge that none of this merry crowd had begun the day by divine worship! And noteworthy was this fact, making all the difference between this and the Catholic practice in such matters. Nor shall we fail to remember, if ever again taunted by those Protestants who consider it a sin to be light‐hearted on the Sabbath, that this mode of keeping Sunday is not sanctioned by a Catholic, but by one of their own cherished “Reformed” cantons. Catholic the proceedings truly were, in being orderly, innocent, healthful, and rational; but most uncatholic in not having even allowed the time necessary for religion. No Catholic ecclesiastical authority sanctions such amusements on Sundays without the whole population having had the opportunity of hearing Mass first—a matter that is not left optional, but made obligatory on every member of the church. Here, on the contrary, there is only one service in the Protestant church, and that at 10 o’clock A.M.; so that, even had they wished it, none of these merry‐makers could have been present. Nor, during the whole of that day, did we hear any neighboring village‐bells summoning their flocks to prayer. Indeed, many of the villages are without any churches. There is none, for instance, at Mürren, nor in many of the hamlets along the Lake of Brienz, nor in various other spots which might easily be named. One hears a vast deal about Swiss “pasteurs,” and pretty stories are written wherein they figure largely; but it is only natural to conclude that if there are numberless villages without churches, they are equally without “pasteurs”; and one cannot help wondering how the sick and poor fare in these distant parts in the ice‐bound winter weather, nor avoid fearing that there is much truth in the dreary suggestions we often heard expressed, that they constantly die and are buried without any spiritual ministrations whatsoever.
And yet the Swiss, and especially the people of this neighborhood, did not always voluntarily abandon the ancient church, nor lapse of a sudden into the indifferentism now so general. But no doubt the present apathy is the inherited result of the mixed notions which actuated their forefathers, and the absence amongst them of that pure attachment to their faith and the unconquerable steadiness and manliness by which the adjoining cantons of Unterwalden and Uri have so eminently distinguished themselves up to the present hour.
Whilst meditating over all we had seen and heard, we accidentally opened Zschokke’s History of Switzerland at the page where he speaks of those mixed feelings which were perceptible in all the religious divisions between 1527 and 1528. The writer is a Protestant, and therefore his version is all the more interesting, as admitting the coercion it was necessary to use for the introduction of the new doctrines—doubly interesting, too, as read here, at Interlachen, on the spot and by the light of the similar system—for there is nothing new under the sun—at present in full operation in so many of these same cantons.
After speaking of various disputes, he says: “For of those who raised their voices against the new creed, thousands upon thousands were actuated, not by piety or love of the good and true, but by interested motives under pretence of religion. Amongst the country people, many expected greater liberties and rights by the introduction of the recent doctrines; and when these were not granted to them, they returned to the Catholic faith. The moment the town council of Berne suppressed the convent at Interlachen, and appointed preachers of the reformed church, the peasants, highly pleased, thought and said: ‘No convent mesnes, no taxes, no feudal service.’ But when the town only transferred the taxes and service to itself, the peasants, through pure anger, became Catholic again, drove away the Protestant preachers, and marched in armed bodies to Thun. Berne hereupon appealed to its other subjects, offering to leave the matter to their arbitration; for the town desired peace, knowing well that neither quick nor efficient aid could be counted on by them from the neighboring cantons, which were all Catholic. These subjects of Berne, flattered by the confidence reposed in them by the authorities, decided in their favor, saying: ‘The worldly rights of the convent go to the worldly authorities, and are in no wise the property of the peasants.’ On hearing this, the rebellious country‐folk of Grindelwald returned to their homes, but in no contented mood, although the town had relieved them from many burdens, in favor of their suffering poor.” And curious it was to note the tight hold still retained on these same worldly goods by the commune of Interlachen, and to see, after a lapse of three centuries, their bureaux administratifs still located in the cloisters; nor can it be supposed that the “suffering poor” of Grindelwald have reaped much benefit from their three centuries of secular masters, if we may judge by the numberless beggars who now over‐run that whole district.
Having then related that much discontent at the state of affairs was felt by the monks of Interlachen, the abbot of Engelberg, and the inhabitants of Oberhasli—a district which, though under the protection of Berne, held many rights and privileges independent of that town—Zschokke proceeds: “When the commune of Oberhasli, encouraged by the monks of Engelberg and their neighbors of Unterwalden, likewise drove away the Protestant parsons, and sent to Uri and Unterwalden for Catholic priests, those of Grindelwald did the same; Aeschi, Frutigen, Obersimmel, and other villages followed their example, and the Unterwaldeners even sent them military assistance across the Brunig. But Berne flew to arms at once, and her army marched on rapidly, before the secession had time to increase. The timid and discontented peasants fled in a panic, and even the Unterwaldeners retreated over the mountain. Berne then punished Oberhasli severely—took away its public seal and many other privileges for a long period; for ever deprived the valley of the right to elect its own landamman; had the ringleaders of the movement executed, and forced the others to plead for pardon on their knees, surrounded by a circle of armed soldiers. Frutigen, the Simmenthal, and others were also brought back by main force to the Protestant faith”—if “faith” that can be called, we may add, which shows no sign of life in all these places.
In no happy frame of mind we pushed on next day to Berne, half inclined to abandon the remainder of our Swiss tour—an inclination which had ripened to a determination by the time we met our friend in the hall of the Berner Hof on the following morning.
In Berne, as in other of the large Swiss towns, Catholicity has made itself both seen and felt of late years, and a handsome church has recently been built there, in place of the one which was formerly shared with the Lutherans in that extraordinary manner still in operation in one or two Protestant parts of Germany. Some friends of ours, who had passed through Berne about fifteen years ago, had been at Mass early one Sunday morning, and, returning at a later hour, found the same church in possession of the Protestants, the only difference observable being the “communion‐table,” then placed at the end opposite to the Catholic altar, and the chairs turned round in that direction. This anomalous state of things has now ceased, and the new Catholic church is both pretty and well served. But the week‐day congregation is very small, and the half‐past seven o’clock Mass we found but thinly attended. Still, there it is, even so, in striking contrast to the Protestant cathedral. In pleasing contrast, were more truly said; for this beautiful pre‐Reformation cathedral, with its splendid porch of the Wise and Foolish Virgins, its elaborately‐carved choir, and its old stained‐glass History of the Blessed Eucharist, is lifeless and colorless in its present aspect. Though we went there at an early hour, every door was closed, except one at the side, jealously guarded by a cross old woman, who hindered all entrance until we had each paid thirty centimes. Then we were handed on to another woman—between them they had charge of the church—who ran from one party of sight‐seers to another, showing off the different points in a loud voice, just as if it were a museum or any other secular building! Had it been an English cathedral church even, there would probably have been a daily service; but then such a pious practice seemed quite as unfamiliar as to the peasants of Grindelwald. The old guardian stared at us in blank surprise on our asking the question, and—seeming to imply that she detected we were “Papists”—proudly answered, “Certainly not! Only on Sundays, and then at nine o’clock.”
As usual, no communion‐table stood in the place of the high altar, but here, as in many other Swiss churches, a large black marble table which serves for this purpose stands right in front of the choir and pulpit, and the stalls immediately near were assigned to the “Guardian of the Holy Supper” and one or two other of the church functionaries. In the cathedral square outside, the town has recently placed the beautiful statue of Rudolf von Erlach, the great hero of Laupen, one of the starting‐points of its history, in 1339. It was impossible, as we passed it, not to remember that the most glorious victories of Berne were fought and won in those olden days of the true faith, when her sons knew how to unite the love of freedom with devotion to the church and obedience to her authority, and that one of the prominent causes of that great and victorious battle was their refusal to recognize the Emperor Louis of Germany, simply because the pope had recently excommunicated him. Those golden days of Bernese history! of which her Protestant historian, Zschokke, is constrained to say that “the town, which was threatened with entire destruction, became so victorious as henceforward to threaten destruction to all her enemies. Her citizens had fought with one thousand iron arms against ten thousand; all with one mind and one heart; no one for himself, but all for the good of the town. In this manner alone can wonders be effected.”
Full of sad thoughts on the degeneracy of her present children, who strive to use their powerful influence over the rest of their confederates for the persecution and suppression of their former faith, we turned to seek information at the railway station about the trains to Lyons or Mâcon, persuaded that a further stay on Swiss ground would only increase our discontent; and, truly, our wrath grew to fever heat when, passing by the book‐stall, we found it filled with the most shocking caricatures—and worse—of everything Catholic, nay, everything religious. Illustrated Lives of the Saints, Of the Pious Helen, and such like titles, got up in the most attractive form, first caught our eyes and rejoiced our hearts with the hope of better things; but anything more scandalous than the scenes there depicted, the low, disgraceful ideas put forward, in the coarsest style, by both pen and pencil, we never before beheld exposed in any civilized community. In England the police would at once have interfered and seized the whole establishment. Here they covered the book‐ stall; and the woman who presided showed us undisguisedly that they were written and printed in Germany, and sent here for sale. What hope is there for populations who, in the name of religion, can countenance such wickedness?
It was at this stage of our perambulations and in this condition of mind that, on returning to the hotel, we had encountered Mrs. C——. She was no Catholic, but, entering into all our feelings, she protested that we should find everything quite different in the Catholic cantons, if we only would make the experiment. She had been there often, and knew that we should be delighted with them. To every objection we made she had a ready answer. Besides, what is more magical than the bright faces and kind looks of friends—above all, of old friends, when met abroad? As a natural consequence, therefore, it was not surprising to us to find ourselves, after all, seated with this pleasant party in the train which that afternoon was leaving for Lucerne. Our equanimity, it is true, was disturbed at the junction at Olten—by the sight of that manufacturing town full of the “free thought” and advanced liberals of modern society, the head‐quarters of Old‐Catholic meetings, and the only place where, at that date, the parish church had been given up to one of the few rebellious priests, whilst its true pastor was obliged to live in a small private house, where he still ministered to his old flock as in the days of early Christian persecution. But we soon reached Lucerne and a Catholic atmosphere, and what befell us in that quarter, what we saw and heard from its people, shall be related in the following chapters to our kind and indulgent readers.
Epigram on Abraham Lincoln.
Scivit in extremis statuum defendere fœdus: Reddidit optatam collecto milite pacem.
Grapes And Thorns. Chapter XII. A Taper Lighted, And A Taper Blown Out.
By The Author Of “The House Of Yorke.”
Our two travellers did not know how far removed they were from the common ways of life till they were again on land. The strangeness of a sea‐voyage had made their own strangeness less apparent; but when they saw homes, and all the daily interests of life moving on as once they had moved for them, familiar things assumed in their eyes a certain grotesque appearance, and they scarcely knew themselves or each other. How hollow sounded the careless laugh they heard, how terrible the jest! How impossible they found it to comprehend how business and pleasure could absorb men’s souls! To them this gay and busy world was wandering recklessly on the brink of an unseen precipice which they alone could see.
Annette Gerald had adopted her husband’s inner, as well as his outer, life—had, as it were, stepped inside his guilt, and wrapped it round her, and his world was henceforth her world. With his eyes she saw a leafless and flowerless England sweep behind her as they sped onward to London; and she shrank, even as he did, when the thick fog of the great city took them in and shut them as if in walls of stone.
“We cannot stay here,” her husband said. “I should lose my senses in twenty‐four hours. This fog makes me feel like a smoky house. Are you too tired to go on? Do let us have sunshine, at least.”
No, she was never too tired to go on with him.
They had a compartment to themselves, and, weary as they were, started on again, a little relieved in mind. No one had accosted them in either of the great cities, and there seemed to be no immediate danger. Overcome with fatigue and loss of sleep, they both leaned back in the soft cushions, and slept soundly till some sound or a slackening of their speed awakened them.
The London fog was far away, and they found themselves passing slowly and smoothly through a cloud‐world of blue and silver. There was no land in sight. The window at one side showed them a cliff that might be alabaster, and might be an illuminated cloud. At the other side, a deep‐blue sea, foam‐flecked, and a deep blue sky half‐veiled in silvery mists, were so entangled with each other that only where the full moon rode could they be sure that it was sky, and only where the wave ran up and curled over in foam almost within their reach could they be sure that it was water.
“The fairies have taken possession of Dover,” Annette said. “I hope they have not whisked the steamer away. No; here it is. We will stay on deck, Lawrence. It is not cold.”
As they steamed out into the channel, another scene of enchantment took the place of the ordinary view. As they withdrew from the town, it showed only a crescent of lights; lights clustered all over the foamy water, and stars clustered in openings of the fleecy clouds above, so that they moved as if swimming through constellations.
“I hardly know which is up and which is down,” Lawrence said. “Is Europe made of clay and rock, like America?”
His wife was leaning on his arm, and they stood looking over the rail of the little steamer. “We might come this way a hundred times, and not see such a sight,” she replied. “But there is land beyond. That is France—that low, dark line. In a few hours we shall be in Paris. I shall be glad to rest when we get there.”
But when they reached it, Paris was as much too light as London had been too dark. In the one city a foe might stumble upon them at any moment; in the other, he might see them from afar. They went to a dingy little hotel in the old part of Paris, and stayed there one day, trying to find rest, but in vain. Every sound made their hearts beat more quickly; every glance and sudden step near them sent the blood to their faces. Besides, the quiet of the place afforded them no distraction from their thoughts. The noises in the narrow street on which the hotel was built were all shut out by the heavy portal, and the quadrangle was as still as a forest solitude. Ivy climbed about the windows, a tiny fountain overflowed and ran in a stream across the pavement, and the only persons who appeared were the clergymen who were the chief patrons of the house, and now and then the universal waiter and servant of servants, François, who shuffled across the view, a napkin over his arm, and his heavy head dropped forward, so that only a great ball of frowzy dark hair was visible.
“We cannot stay here,” Annette said, as they stood by the window the first evening after their arrival. “It is too much like a prison.” She felt her husband start, and made haste to add: “It is stupid, and I fancy the air is not good. Besides, Paris is too gay, if we go out into the city. We do not want gaiety, Lawrence. We want some earnest employment for our time.”
“We will go to Rome,” he said.
“Rome!” she hesitated. “One meets everybody there,” she said; “and there are so many idlers, too, who have nothing to do but talk of other people’s affairs. Are you sure you wish to go to Rome, dear?”
“I must go! I have an object in going there,” he exclaimed, excited by the first show of even slight opposition. “I stake all on Rome. Whatever happens to me, let it happen there.”
“We will go, then,” she answered soothingly. “And we may as well set out to‐night. Nothing is unpacked, and we have three hours before the train starts.”
He walked to and fro over the stone floor of their little sitting‐room, which allowed only half a dozen paces, so narrow was it. “Three hours!” he muttered. “It is too much! Cannot we go out? There must be a church near.”
“Yes; in France and in Italy there is always a church near.”
They went into the fading sunset, and soon found themselves entering the old church of S. Etienne du Mont. Inside, the pale gloaming was changed to a richly‐tinted gloom that grew every moment deeper. Here and there a lamp marked some picture or shrine held in special veneration, and far away in the apse of the church, where the shadows stretched off till they seemed reaching out to eternity, burned a single point of light, as small as a star.
Annette clasped her hands over her husband’s arm, and leaned her cheek close to his shoulder, as they stood near the door and looked at this little beacon. “O Lawrence!” she whispered, “it is like the light the mother sets in the window to guide her children home at night. O me! O me!” she cried pitifully. “What is to become of us!”
A crown of tapers burned about the shrine where the body of S. Geneviève had once lain, and an old woman sat near by with her prayer‐book, presiding over a table piled with tapers of different lengths, her white cap showing like a little heap of snow in the place.
“People buy tapers for a sou or two, and set them by the shrine to honor S. Geneviève and remind her of their needs,” Annette said softly as they approached this illuminated space. “Would you like to offer one?”
Lawrence Gerald had been wont to mock somewhat at such observances in the old time before life had been shattered about him and shown eternity between its gaps. Now he went eagerly forward, selected a taper, lighted it, and placed it, whispering a prayer while his fingers lingered on it. Annette followed his example, placing her offering beside his, and making her request also.
As they were turning away, a sacristan approached them from the next chapel, and asked if they had any article they would like to have touched to the inside of the shrine. Annette immediately gave him her rosary, which he laid an instant where the saint’s body had lain.
“Ask him if I can put my hands in,” Lawrence whispered.
She held the lid open, and her husband put both his hands in, and instantly drew them back, his eyes dilating and his color rising, as if he had put them into fire.
They walked on past the grand altar, and knelt in a nook by a confessional. The daylight faded, and the smouldering fires of the windows went out in black and ashen gray. But when no outer brightness was left to enter and show the glories of that house of God, the lamps and tapers inside burned with a clearer flame. They shed a faint illumination through the vast twilight; they spread a soft gilding up the height of the clustered pillars, and made tender the gloom brooding in the roof that arched over their capitals; they sparkled on the crowns of the saints, and touched marble faces with such a holy radiance that a soul seemed to shine through them.
A slight stir in the confessional near them showed that a priest was there. “Lawrence,” said Annette suddenly, “may I go to confession?”
“Certainly you can!” she answered with dignity, seeing the man look rather curiously at him.
“Wait a minute,” he answered. “I will go first, and then you will only need to say that you are my wife.”
His tone revealed a bitter pain; for unconsciously her question had shown that there was no weight on her conscience save that which he had placed there, and that she was more in need of consolation than of forgiveness.
She sank on to her knees again. “O my God!” she murmured, “has it come to this, that I must enter thy house without being able to find comfort there?”
It was nearly half an hour before Lawrence joined her, and they went out together. “I have no wish to go now,” she said when he offered to wait while she went to confession. “Besides, there is no time, if we are to start to‐night.”
“Do you know, Annette, what I prayed for when I put the taper up in honor of S. Geneviève?” her husband asked when they were again in the street. “I asked that my mother may die in peace before the month is out. That will be in less than two weeks.”
“My poor Lawrence!” she sighed.
“And can you guess the reason why I wish, above all things, to go to Rome, and don’t much care what may happen after?” he went on. “Of course you cannot. Well, I want to receive absolution from the Pope. I go to confession, and pour out my story there, and I feel no better for it; or, if I feel better than I should without confession, I am still not at peace. I don’t feel absolved. Yet I want to go to confession every hour of the day. I am like the Ancient Mariner, who had to tell his story to every one he met. I want to tell mine to every priest in the world.”
“But, dear Lawrence,” she said, “that will not be so easy to compass. Don’t expect such a privilege too confidently. You know we cannot have an audience, because we cannot go to him under false names. If we could, his blessing would satisfy you, would it not? But I see no way, dear, though I would not discourage you.”
For once her objections did not irritate him. “I have been thinking of it ever since we left America,” he said; “and in one way or another I shall succeed. Yes, his blessing would be enough; and if there were no other way, I could tell him my real name. Now, we must make haste. We have just time to reach the station.”
How many hearts have quickened in their beating as they travelled that road, drawing near to Italy! How many eyes have gazed eagerly at that first cross, set aloft on the mountain side, at the first shrine of the Virgin Mother! And then come the armies of poplars and solemn cypresses.
“They look as if the dead warriors, and prelates, and poets had risen from their graves, and were staring out over Italy to see what their degenerate sons were doing,” Annette said. “See how tightly they hold their cold green robes about them!”
Our travellers slept a few hours at Turin, and, resuming their journey before daylight, reached Florence in the evening. And here, having some time to wait, they wandered out, hoping to find a church open; but all were closed at this hour. Presently they found themselves standing on the bridge of the Holy Trinity, listening to a burst of wild music from many bugles, played by some unseen band. So loud and piercing was the strain, the very stars appeared to tremble as it went up. Then, as suddenly as it rose, it dropped again, and all was silent. The city was quiet, and the Arno gleamed across it like a jewelled cestus across a sleeping breast. Its waters seemed to have crystallized into a purple enamel about the golden reflections of the lights along its banks, not a ripple showing which way they flowed. Not far away, another bridge spanned the tide, its soft and dreamlike arches set roundly over the answering arches in the deeps below. A small boat, faintly seen, shot underneath this bridge, and disappeared. It was a vision of Florence as one sees it in history and poetry.
The two strangers leaned on the balustrade of the bridge, and, as they gazed, felt the curse upon them grow less sharp, as though they were ghosts, and their crime some old, old story, touched with a sad splendor by poet and painter, and half washed away by the tears of pitying generations.
Standing there, silent and half comforted, they became aware of a low, murmurous sound of many feet and voices; and then a long line of white‐ robed figures appeared, carrying torches. A bier was borne aloft in their midst, what it held covered with an embroidered pall that glistened with gold. These men recited prayers together as they went, and the river and bridge were for a moment bright with the glare of their torches. Then they disappeared, and a star‐lighted quiet reigned again over the city of flowers.
Annette touched her husband’s arm, and they reluctantly turned away from that spot where first they had experienced a feeling of peace.
And then, all night they plunged deeper and deeper into Italy, till morning and the Eternal City met their faces, and dazzled them.
“Thank God! I am in Rome at last,” exclaimed Lawrence. “Now nothing but death shall tear me away from it.”
Yes, there it was! the crumbling, stately city of the past, looking as if it had just risen from the bottom of the sea, after having been submerged for centuries. It was all a faded gold color, like autumn leaves, and its narrow streets were chilly, as though death had breathed through them. But its heights were warm and sunny, and its dusky trees and hedges were steeped in warmth, and over its magnificent decay the sky was fresh and blue, and the morning sunshine flowed bountifully.
“Now,” said Mrs. Gerald, becoming business‐like at once, “we must first engage an apartment, and get our luggage into it. I think I know Italian enough for that, thanks to the songs I have learned.”
“Do you propose singing an aria to call a cab?” her husband asked. “And will you engage an apartment to the tune of ‘Hear me, Norma’?”
He smiled, and for a breath looked like his old self. But the next instant his face changed. The thought of his mother was enough to banish the smile for ever.
That thought had taken full possession of him, filling him with a terror, sorrow, and longing that burned in his heart like consuming fire. His flight had been made with no feeling but fear for himself; but with the first breath of the air of the city of saints, he inhaled a penitence which was without taint of weakness.
While his wife, then, arranged their affairs, and attended to the preparation of their little ménage, he took in hand the one work possible for him—the study of his own soul. This anguish for his mother, whom he loved deeply, much as he had wronged her, was like a sword that cleft the selfish crust of his nature. His whole life came up before him with merciless distinctness—all its ingratitude, its pettishness, its littleness, its sinful waste, its many downward steps leading to the final plunge to ruin. He saw, as if it were before him, his mother’s loving, patient face; he heard, as if she were speaking at his side, her sad and tremulous voice; and more pathetic even than her sorrow were the brief moments of happiness he had given her, her smile of pride in him, her delight when he showed her some mark of affection, her eager anticipation of his wishes. As he went back over this past, the self‐pity, the blindness, the false shame, were stripped away from him, and he saw himself as he was.
“Nothing but utter ruin could have brought me to my senses,” he said to his wife one day, when he had been sitting for a long while silent, gazing out at a little fountain that sprang into air in a vain effort to reach the laden orange‐tree that overshadowed it.
She made no reply, and he needed none. She had let him go his own ways, keeping watch, but never interfering. She had nothing to do for him now but wait and see what sort of call he would make on her.
He wandered from church to church, and knelt at every shrine in the city of shrines. Wherever the signal lamp told that there some troubled soul had found help, he sent up his petition. He glanced with indifferent eyes past the rich marbles and gilding; but when a face looked from marble or canvas with an expression that touched his heart, there he made his appeal. The luxuries of life grew loathsome to him; fashion and gaiety were to him like a taunt of the evil one, who had used them as lures for his destruction. He hated the fineness of his own clothes, the daintiness of his food. None of the people he saw seemed to him enviable, save the poor monks in their coarse brown robes, with their bare feet thrust into rough sandals. In his own house he lived like an ascetic.
Now and then he would rouse himself from this stern and prolonged examen to think of his wife. She had claims on him which, perhaps, he was forgetting.
“You poor child!” he said, “we are not in India, that you should immolate yourself over my dead hopes. What can I do for you. I would free you, if I could.”
“You are not to think of me,” she replied quietly. “It is God who now commands you to think of yourself.”
“Yes!” he exclaimed, “I have made my own instruments of torture. Having thought of myself when it was a sin, I am forced to think of myself when it is a torment. And I escape that thought only to remember my victims. Annette, but one day is left of the four weeks. O my mother! if space could be annihilated, and I could be with you till it is over! If I could but know what has happened, what will happen, to her!”
He had spent the whole day in a church near by, sometimes praying before an altar, sometimes gazing at the pictures, in search of a divine meaning that might be hidden in them; but oftener, withdrawn to a dusky nook where only a single lamp burned before a head crowned with thorns, he gave himself up to grief.
“It is useless to wish and repine,” his wife replied sadly. “That is one of the weaknesses we must cure ourselves of. Since it is only a torment to imagine what may be taking place at home, let us try to banish the thought, leaving all in the hands of God. And now, Lawrence, do you know that you have eaten nothing to‐day? When you stay so long again, I shall go after you. In Rome, at this season, it is dangerous to allow the strength to fail. You will soon be ill, if you go on fasting so.”
“And what matter if I should?” he asked.
The wife waited till the servant had placed the dinner on the table and gone out before she spoke, and the moment of consideration had made her resolve on a stern answer, however willingly she would have given a tender one. She had long since discovered that her husband was one of those whom the flatteries of affection enervate instead of stimulating, and she was not sure enough of a radical change having taken place in him to yield to her own impulse to soothe and persuade when reproof might be more effectual.
“Of all the gifts which God has bestowed on you,” she said, “you have cast away every one but life; but with that life you may yet atone, and become a blessing to the world. It is your duty to watch over the only means left you of making reparation.”
He did not show the slightest displeasure at her reproof. On the contrary, there seemed to be something in it almost pleasant to him. Perhaps the suggestion that he might yet be a blessing in the world, incredible as that appeared, inspired him with an undefined hope. He dwelt thoughtfully on her words in a way that was becoming habitual to him whenever she spoke with peculiar seriousness, and Annette, seeing his humility, was half sorry for having put it to the test. With a confused impulse to give him at least some pitiful and perilous comfort, she poured a glass of wine, and placed it by him, well aware that for weeks he had not drunk any.
He put it away decidedly. “I would as soon drink poison, Annette,” he said reproachfully. “I did not think that you would offer it to me.”
She withdrew the glass immediately, ashamed of her weakness, and making a hasty apology. “If I had known you had made any resolution on the subject, I would not have offered it,” she said. “Forgive me! I never will again.”
“Oh! there was no resolution needed,” he said. “If you had been burned almost to death once, would you need to resolve not to go into the fire again? I fancy the sight of it would be enough. But I think I may promise never again to take wine, unless I should be commanded to by some one who knows better than I.”
His wife did not reply. This was a degree of asceticism which she had not expected and was afraid to trust. She had expected him to refuse indulgences, but not consolations. Indeed, she did not now understand her husband, and her hope of his redemption was but a trembling one. This self‐denial might be only another illustration of that instability which rushes from one extreme to the other, only to return to its first excess.
We all know how to rely on that natural firmness, which the sad experience of mankind has shown to be never so strong but it may fail at any hour; but the supernatural strength of the naturally weak who have cast themselves on God often finds no doubting. We miss the firm lips, the steady eyes, the undaunted brow—those signs of a resolute soul which the pagan shares with the Christian—and we forget that the tremulous mouth we distrust has sighed out its prayer to Him who is mighty, the shrinking eyes have looked upon the hills whence help cometh, the timid brow has been hidden beneath the wing of an angel guardian, and that, faltering though the soul may have been, and may be again, the shield of God is before it, and it can be conquered by no human strength.
This soul had made such an advance as to be conscious of some such fortitude infused into it. Lawrence Gerald had no fear of falling into his former sins. He might have the misery of seeing the destruction he had brought on others, might be himself destroyed by a sorrow and remorse too great to bear; but he had an immovable conviction that he could never again return to his old ways nor commit any grave transgression. It was this conviction which had made him say that nothing but destruction could have brought him to his senses.
“I like that church you took me to this morning,” he said, walking slowly up and down the room. “The others, many of them, seem to me fit only for the happy. They are all display and confusion and sight‐seers, with scarcely a nook in them where a person in trouble can hide. They do not give me any impression of sacredness. But this one is so quiet and sober, and there are no people standing about with guide‐books, talking aloud while you are praying or trying to pray. Then there is a little place, half chapel, half vestibule, between the church and the sacristy, where a side door enters the church, with an Ecce Homo in a little shrine; and there you can be quite private, without any one staring at you. I shall go to that church altogether.”
The church he spoke of was Santa Maria della Pace.
“It is Our Lady of Peace,” his wife said, “and was built to commemorate the peace of Christendom. I thought it would please you. Surely some special consolation and tranquillity should linger about a temple built and cemented with such an intention. I like it, too, better than most others we have visited, though it is not so splendid as many.”
She did not tell him that, after having left his side, when the early Mass was over, she had lingered in the church till it was closed at noon, not to watch him, but to be near him. Requesting the sacristan to withdraw the curtain covering the Four Sibyls of Raphael, she had seated herself before the chapel opposite, and divided her attention between that matchless vision and the unquiet figure that moved about the church. Once he had come near, but without seeming aware of her presence, and, standing at her side, had gazed with her. And while he gazed, she had seen the trouble in his face grow still for a moment. The noble serenity of that composition, so soothing to eyes wearied by the sprawling magnificence of Michael Angelo and the ever‐present, dishevelled, wind‐tossed figures of Bernini, lifted his soul to a higher plane. Even when he sighed and turned away, as if not willing to allow himself the pleasure of looking at so much beauty, he carried something of that spirit of harmony with him.
“Lawrence,” his wife said presently, when she had borne his restless promenade as long as she could, “I know that you did not sleep any last night. I wish that you would take a powder that I will give you, and try to sleep now. You look worn out. Lie down on the sofa here, and I will keep everything quiet.”
He shook his head. “I would rather not take anything to make me sleep, Ninon. And to‐night I would not sleep, if I could. But I will lie down here a little while; for I am tired, now I think of it.”
He threw himself on the sofa, and she placed a screen before him, and closed the window near his head, so that even the soft plashing of the fountain was shut out, and the small notes of birds that twittered in the great pine‐tree in the garden. And after a little while, finding him still restless, she went to the piano, and sang how God sent Elias to reassure and comfort a doubting and tempted soul. The notes flowed with a soothing murmur from under her fingers, and her voice, no longer the brilliant, ringing tones he had taken such pride in, was so low it might be a spirit singing:
“Tell him that his very longing Is itself an answering cry; That his prayer, ‘Come, gracious Alla!’ Is my answer, ‘Here am I!’ Every inmost aspiration Is God’s angel undefiled; And in every ’O my Father!’ Slumbers deep a ‘Here, my child!’ ”
Ending, she listened a moment, then stole across the room, and looked behind the screen. Lawrence was sleeping, with his head thrown back, his beautiful profile and moist, dark curls thrown out strongly by the garnet cushions and pillow.
She went to the window, and seated herself on a footstool near it, wrapping the long red curtains about her, and leaning against the wall. The sculptured marble of that stately salon was cold against her cheek; a flock of doves wheeling about over the garden caught some last rays of the sun on their wings, and threw them down over her, so that little white wings seemed to be fluttering all around the room; the casement slipped open, and the sound of tossing waters and twittering birds again became audible; but the watcher there took no note of these things. She was looking at the figure stretched on the sofa, and thinking that in all Rome there was no ruin so mournful and so terrible. He was like some fair column stricken from out a temple and cast aside into the dust; not touched by the hand of time, that, with its slow to‐and‐fro of days and nights, and seasons and years, lulls all the pain of decay to sleep, but broken and scathed, as if by lightning.
While she looked, he stirred, and opened his eyes; and the sympathetic pain with which she saw how he came back to a consciousness of his position almost drew an outcry from her. The first tranquil, half‐ wondering glance which saw, instead of the familiar surroundings of his childhood and youth, that immense room, with its profuse hangings and painted ceiling, and the long windows opening like doors; then the brief flash of startled questioning; lastly, the anguish of full recollection.
“O my God! my God!” he exclaimed, and hid his face in the cushions again.
She was at his side in a moment.
“Let us go out for a long drive, Lawrence,” she said. “There will be a bright moonlight to‐night, and we can see so many places by it. Come! I will send for a carriage at once. There is nothing else for either of us to do.”
Nothing could have shown more clearly the change in Lawrence Gerald than his manner of receiving this proposal. Instead of expressing at once his aversion, and reproaching his wife that she could believe it possible for him to go sight‐seeing at such a time, he stopped to consider if what she thought best might not be best, however it should seem to him.
“You must think for me now, Annette,” he said with a sort of despair. “You know I do not wish to seek pleasure nor distraction; but I suppose I must live.”
She sent for a carriage at once, and they went out under the full moon that was beginning to replace, with its pearly southern lights and northern shadows, the fading cross‐lights of the sun. They drove to the Colosseum, not yet despoiled of its sacred emblems, and, kneeling there in the dust, made the stations in their own way. Annette named each one as they reached it, then left her husband to make his meditation, or to utter the ejaculation that started up from his tormented heart, as sharp as a blade from its sheath.
At last they stood together by the crucifix, with the moonlight falling on them and through the great arches in a silvery rain.
Annette saw her husband wipe his forehead, though the night was cool. He breathed heavily, and looked at the earth beneath his feet, as if he saw through it, and beheld the martyr lying where he fell centuries before.
“O my dear!” she said, “I know that there is no lion like remorse. But is it no comfort to you that you are not alone?”
“It is both a comfort and a pain,” he answered gently. “I should be desolate without you, and I should have done something desperate, perhaps, if I had been alone. You must understand my gratitude and my regret without expecting me to express them. I cannot speak. I know I have wronged you bitterly, and that you are an angel of goodness to me; but I can say no more about it. If I were at my mother’s feet this moment, I should be speechless. I cannot pray even. I acknowledge the justice of God, and will endure whatever he sends. That is all I can say.”
He had forced himself to speak, she perceived, with a great effort. The season of complaints and outcries had gone past, and he had entered on the way of silence.
They went out, and left the ruin to its solemn tenants—the gliding shadows, which might be the troubled ghosts of the slayers, and the floating lights, which might be the glorified souls of the slain, visiting the loved spot where they had seen the heavens open for them.
The streets were nearly deserted when the two returned to them, their horses walking. They stopped at the fountain of Trevi, leaned awhile on the stone rail, and watched the streams that burst in snowy foam all along the front.
“What a heap of coals and ashes Rome would be without her fountains!” Annette said. “It would be like a family of patriarchs where no children are seen. And yet the waters do not always seem to me so childish. Theirs is the youth and freshness of angels. See how triumphant they look! They have been a long while in the dark, till they may have despaired of ever seeing the sun again. It is the way of souls, Lawrence. They walk in darkness and pain, they cannot see their way, and they sometimes doubt if light any longer exists. And at last they burst from their prison, and find themselves in the city of God.”
“Yes,” he said, “but they have not sinned; they have only suffered. I have always thought, Annette, that the saints have the easier life. You know we are told that the way of the transgressor is hard.”
“But the saints did not choose that life because it was the easier,” she replied. “They gave no thought to such a reward, but it was bestowed on them; and probably, when they chose, the other way seemed the easier, in spite of what the preacher says. The person who chooses a good life because it is the easier will never persevere in it; for the devil will always persuade him that he has made a mistake, and, since he chose from a selfish motive, God will owe him no help. The saints took what was hard, and what seemed the hardest because it was right, and left the consequences with God; and they had their reward. The sinner takes what seems the easiest, and thinks only of himself; and he, too, has his reward. Do not the waters look lovely? They are so fresh and new! How beautiful an image it is to compare divine grace to a fountain!”
They drove on through the town, across the bridge of S. Angelo, and saw the angel sheathing his sword—or was he unsheathing it?—against the sky, and, leaving their carriage at the entrance of the piazza of S. Peter’s, walked across it to that majestic temple, which, more than any other, and at that hour more than ever, seemed worthy of the Spouse of the Spirit. Golden and white, the mystical flood of moonlight veiled it, rippling along its colonnades, glittering in its fountains, setting a pavement of chalcedony across the piazza and up the wide ascent, and trembling round the dome that swelled upward like a breast full with the divine milk and honey with which the church nourishes her children.
Lawrence stopped near the obelisk.
“The first question the church asked of me when I was brought before her, an infant,” he said, “was what I had come to ask of her, and my sponsors answered for me, Faith. Now once again she asks the same question.”
He was silent a moment, looking up at the church, but with eyes that saw only the sacred Mother. Tears rolled down his face, and his lips trembled; but there was no sign of that desperate passion which had so worn him. “I ask for forgiveness and perseverance,” he said.
She observed that he did not ask for peace.
He went forward to the steps, and knelt there; and as he wept and prayed, his wife heard ever the same petition that God would have mercy on his mother, that in some way he would spare her the blow that threatened to fall upon her, and that she might know how he loved her and mourned his ingratitude.
Annette withdrew from her husband, and paced to and fro not far away. She, too, had a mother who was about to be stricken with grief on her account, and whom she might never again see in life.
She had almost forgotten her husband and how time was flying, when she heard his voice at her side.
“My poor Annette, I am killing you,” he said. “Come home. See! the day is breaking.”
The east was, indeed, growing pale with the early dawn, and the western colonnade was throwing long shadows as the moon declined. It was time for them to return. Chilled and exhausted, they entered their carriage, and were driven home.
The dawn of that same day, when in its course the sun rose from the Atlantic, and brightened the New England shore, saw Mrs. Gerald and Honora Pembroke go to early Mass together.
F. Chevreuse had visited them the morning before, and requested them to go to communion that day, and pray for themselves, their friends, and for his intention.
“I have a difficult duty to perform,” he said, “and I want all the help I can get. So make yourselves as saintly as possible, my dear friends. Confess and prepare yourselves for holy communion as if it were to be your last, and pray with all your strength, and do not allow a single smallest venial sin to touch you all day.”
F. Chevreuse often asked them to pray for his intention, and all they observed in this was his unusual earnestness. It had the effect of making them also unusually earnest in their devotion. Mrs. Gerald was, indeed, so absorbed that she failed to notice that when Honora came from the priest’s house, where she had been just before evening, she did not look quite well. F. Chevreuse had requested her to come there from her school, before going home, and she had been with him nearly an hour.
“So you have been to confession,” Mrs. Gerald said, arranging the tray for their tea. “I thought we would go there together this evening.”
She spoke in a very gentle, almost absent way; for she had been saying, as she went about, all the short prayers she could remember to the Blessed Virgin, and would resume them presently.
“So we will go together,” Miss Pembroke replied. “But I wanted to see F. Chevreuse this afternoon.”
She seated herself in a shady corner of the room, and opened her prayer‐ book; but it trembled so in her hand that she was forced to lay it aside, and pretend to be occupied with her rosary instead. Now and then she stole a glance at her companion, and saw with thankfulness that she was entirely occupied with her devotions. As she went about, preparing with dainty care their simple meal, her lips were moving; and sometimes she would pause a moment to bless herself, or to kiss the crucifix suspended from her neck, or to dwell on some sweet thought she had found hidden in a little prayer, like a blossom under a leaf.
And later in the evening, when the two returned from the priest’s house, there was nothing to attract attention in Miss Pembroke’s manner; for they sat reading and meditating till it was bed‐time. It was their custom, since they lived alone, to prepare thus strictly for the reception of the Holy Eucharist.
Mrs. Gerald stood a minute before the embers of the dying fire, when they were ready to go up‐stairs, the hand she had stretched for the bed‐candle resting on the edge of the mantel‐piece near it. “How peaceful we are here, Honora!” she said in her soft way, yet rather suddenly.
Miss Pembroke was bending to push the few remaining coals back, and her reply was indistinct, yet sounded like an affirmative.
“We have so much to be grateful for,” Mrs. Gerald went on. “I do not think that we could be more comfortable. I am sure that greater riches would disturb me. Indeed, I never wanted riches, except for Lawrence; and now he does not need them. I can truly say that I have all I desire.”
Miss Pembroke did not reply nor look up. She only stooped lower, and stretched her hands out over the coals, as if to warm them. Yet the two had always been so in harmony that her silence seemed to be assent.
“F. Chevreuse spoke beautifully to me to‐night,” Mrs. Gerald continued, still lingering. “He kept me some time talking after I had made my confession; and, what is unusual with him, he spoke of himself. He said that all the favors he has to ask of God are for others; but that when he comes to pray for himself, he can only say, ‘Amen.’ Now and then, he said, he thinks to ask some special favor; but when he lifts his eyes to heaven, only one word comes: ‘Amen! amen!’ I did not understand, while he spoke, how much it meant; but I have been thinking it over since I came home, and I see that the word may include all that a Christian need say.”
A murmured “Yes!” came from Honora, who turned her head aside that the candle might not shine in her face. “And now, dear Mrs. Gerald, since we are to rise early, we had better go to bed. Can I do anything for you? Is there anything to do to‐night?”
“Nothing, thank you, dear!”
They went up‐stairs together, and, when they parted, Miss Pembroke embraced her friend with unusual tenderness. “May you have a good night’s sleep!” she said; and, in the anguish of her heart, could almost have added, “And may you never wake!”
For F. Chevreuse had wisely judged it best to prepare her to sustain her friend when the hour of trial should come; and Honora, better than any other perhaps, understood what that shock would be.
“Go out in the morning and dismiss your school for the day,” the priest had said to her. “Then return home immediately, and make some excuse for it. You will easily be able to plead a headache, I fancy. Tell Mrs. Gerald that F. O’Donovan is coming to see her, so that she may not go out. And pray, my child, pray! What else is there for any of us to do in this terrible world but pray?”
Honora was obliged to make her excuses before going to school, for Mrs. Gerald at length noticed her altered looks, and almost insisted on dismissing the school for her. But she would not allow that.
“I shall feel better to go out than to sit in the house waiting,” she said, quite truly. “But I will come back at once. Pray do not be anxious about me. You know I am strong and healthy.”
When she returned, she found that Mrs. Gerald had, with motherly affection, made every preparation for her comfort. A deep sofa was pushed into a shady corner of the sitting‐room, pillows and a shawl were laid ready, and, as she entered the room, she perceived the pleasant odor of pennyroyal, their favorite remedy for colds and headaches.
Mrs. Gerald set down the steaming cup she held, and began to remove her young friend’s bonnet and shawl. “I thought you would rather lie down here than go up stairs by yourself,” she said. “I will keep everything quiet.”
Honora submitted to be made an invalid of, since this tender soul could have no greater pleasure than to relieve suffering; allowed herself to be assisted to the sofa; let Mrs. Gerald arrange the pillows under her head and cover her with the shawl; then drank obediently the remedy offered her. But all the while her heart was sinking with an agony of apprehension, and she listened breathlessly for a step which was to bring doom to this unconscious victim.
“Now what else can I do for you, dear?” her nurse asked, looking vainly to see what had not been done.
Honora answered, “Nothing”; but, recollecting that something might be needed, if not for her, added, “You might place a glass of water and the camphor‐bottle here where I can reach them.”
Mrs. Gerald brought them, from the mere pleasure of serving. “But you must not drink the water, for you are to be kept warm,” she said. “Your hands are quite cold now. And, you know, camphor never does you any good.”
She was about turning away when Honora took her hand, and detained her. She dared not look up, but she held the hand close to her cheek on the pillow. “Dear friend,” she said in a stifled voice, “it sometimes almost hurts me to remember how good and kind you have always been to me. I hope I have never seemed ungrateful; I have never felt so. But in future I want to be more than ever to you. Let me be your daughter, and live with you always. I do not want to go away with any one else.”
“My daughter!” said Mrs. Gerald, full of loving surprise and pleasure; and stooped to leave a kiss on the girl’s forehead.
“And now, dear mother,” said Honora, “do not fancy that I am very sick. In an hour, all will be over.”
Mrs. Gerald smiled at this promise of sudden cure.
“Then I will leave you quiet a little while, and go out to water my plants. The seeds have come up which I sowed in the tracks my other two children made; and in a day or two, when Lawrence and Annette come home, their footprints will be quite green.”
She spoke with a gentle gaiety, for she was happy. So much affection had been shown her, she seemed to be of such help and value to those she loved best, that life assumed for her an aspect of spring and; youth, and a gladness long unknown to her rose up in her heart.
As she left the room, Honora looked eagerly after her, raising herself on her elbow, as soon as she was out of sight, and listening toward the door. When she heard her step on the veranda, she started off the sofa, and ran to look out through a blind into the garden. Mrs. Gerald was on her knees by the precious tracks, which she had carefully enclosed with slender pegs of wood, and was sprinkling with water the tiny blades of green that grew thickly inside. A soft and tender smile played round her lips, and the wrinkles that pain and anxiety sometimes drew in her face were all smoothed away. The spring morning hung over her like a benediction, silent and bright, not a breath of wind stirring; and in that secluded street, with its cottages and embowering trees, she was as safe from public observation as she would have been in the country.
Honora glanced at the clock. It wanted five minutes of ten.
“Five minutes more of happiness!” she murmured, and, from faintness, sank on her knees before the window, looking out still with her eyes fixed on that quiet, bending figure.
Mrs. Gerald stretched her hand and slowly made the sign of the cross over each one of those precious footprints. “May all their steps be toward heaven!” she whispered. “May angels guard them now and for ever, and may the blessings of the poor and the suffering spring up wherever they go, like these flowers, in their path.”
She rose and stood looking off into distance, tears of earnest feeling glistening in her eyes.
“Two minutes longer!” murmured Honora, who felt as if the room were swimming around her, so that she had to grasp the window‐ledge for support. She could not see, but she heard a step on the sidewalk, and, though it was more measured than usual, there was no possibility of mistaking it. Only one step would come in that way and stop at their gate this morning. She heard F. O’Donovan’s voice, and presently the two came into the entry together.
“Perhaps you had better come into the parlor,” Mrs. Gerald was saying. “Honora is lying down in there. She has a bad headache this morning.”
“Nevertheless, we will go in and see her,” was the reply.
Miss Pembroke started up, frightened at her own weakness. It would never do to fail now, when all the strength she could show would be needed. She had only time to seat herself on the sofa when they entered the room.
“My dear child! why did you not lie still?” Mrs. Gerald exclaimed. “I am sure F. O’Donovan would excuse you.”
“I would rather sit up, if you will come and sit by me,” Honora answered; and, taking Mrs. Gerald’s hands, drew her down to the sofa, and sat there holding her in a half embrace.
The lady noticed with surprise that no greeting passed between the priest and Honora, and that he had not uttered a word of sympathy for her illness, nor, indeed, scarcely glanced at her. He went to the window, and opened one of the blinds.
“Allow me to have a ray of sunshine in the room,” he said. “Why should we shut it out? It is like divine love in a sorrowful world.”
Mrs. Gerald had hardly time to notice this somewhat unusual freedom of manner on the part of F. O’Donovan, for, as he came and seated himself near her, she was struck by the paleness and gravity of his face.
“Are you ill? Has anything happened?” she asked hastily; but he saw that in her anxiety there was no thought of danger to herself. It was a friendly solicitude for him; and she instantly glanced at Honora, as if connecting her illness with his altered appearance. That her young friend might have some cause of trouble seemed to her quite possible; for she had never been able to disabuse her mind of the belief that Honora had become more interested in Mr. Schöninger than she would own, and that she had never recovered entirely from the shock of his disgrace.
“I have great news to tell you,” said F. O’Donovan. “Mr. Schöninger is proved innocent, and will immediately be set at liberty.”
“How glad I am!” exclaimed Mrs. Gerald, who immediately believed that she understood all. “But how is it known?”
“The real criminal has confessed,” the priest went on; “and the confession and the circumstances are all of a sort to excite our deepest compassion. For it was not a deliberate crime, but only one of those steps which a man who has once consented to walk in the wrong path seems compelled to take. The poor fellow was deceived, and led on as all sinners are. He was in pecuniary difficulties, and yielded to a temptation to take F. Chevreuse’s money, intending to repay it. The rest followed almost as a matter of course. Mother Chevreuse defended her son’s property, and the poor sinner had to secure what he had risked so much to obtain, and escape the disgrace of detection. Others were approaching, and he was desperate. He gave an unlucky push, with no intention but to free himself, and the devil looked out for the result. But, if you could know how entirely that poor soul has repented, not only the fatal step in which his errors ended, but every smallest fault that led to it, you would have only pity for him. Mother Chevreuse died a good and holy woman, full of years and good works, and perhaps her death will be the cause of one man being a saint. He promises everything for the future, and that with a fervor which no one can doubt. He acknowledges the justice of any contumely and suffering and loss which may befall him. The only thought too hard for him to bear is that of the sorrow he has brought on his own family. If he could suffer alone, he would not complain; he would suffer tenfold, if it were possible, to spare those he loves.”
Mrs. Gerald had listened with intense interest to this story, and when it was ended she drew a long breath. “Poor man!” she sighed. “Has he a wife?”
“Yes; he has a wife who is all devotion to him, and who will follow him to the last. She will never be separated from him.”
“Will she go to prison with him? Will she be allowed to do that?” Mrs. Gerald asked in surprise.
“Oh! it is not a question of imprisonment,” the priest replied. “He has escaped, and will probably never be taken. His confession was written, sealed, and entrusted to a priest, to be opened at a certain time. It was opened this morning.”
The two watched Mrs. Gerald with trembling anxiety as she sat a moment with downcast eyes, musing over this strange story. Honora did not dare to breathe or stir, lest she should loosen the thunderbolt that hung suspended over their heads, ready to drop, and the priest was inwardly praying for wisdom to speak the right word.
“I hope he has no mother,” Mrs. Gerald said, without looking up.
“That is the hardest part of all,” said F. O’Donovan. “He has a mother. It is that which renders his remorse so terrible. But fortunately she is a Christian woman, who will know how to bend to the will of God, and leave her afflictions at his feet. She will be comforted by the thought that her son is a sincere penitent, and is by this awful lesson put for ever on his guard against sins which might otherwise have seemed to him trivial.”
“Oh! but think of her responsibility!” exclaimed Mrs. Gerald, raising her eyes quickly. “Think of her remorse and fear when she looks back on her training of that child, and thinks that all his faults and crimes may be laid at her door. I know a mother’s heart, F. O’Donovan, and I tell you there will be no comfort for that mother. You cannot have seen her. Where is she? I would like to go to her.”
“She does not yet know,” replied the priest, almost in a whisper, and stopped there, though other words seemed about to follow.
She gazed at him in surprise, and her look began to grow strange. She only looked intently, but said nothing; and in that dreadful silence Honora Pembroke’s arm closed tightly about her waist, and her breath trembled on the mother’s paling cheek.
“Cast yourself into the arms of God!” exclaimed F. O’Donovan. “Do not think! Do not fear nor look abroad. Hide yourself in the bosom of God! Sin and sorrow are but passing clouds, but heaven and hope and peace are eternal!”
Those beautiful violet eyes that had wept so many tears, now dry and dilating, were fixed upon him, and the face changed slowly. One wave of deep red had flown over it and sunk, and from pale it had grown deathly white, and over that whiteness had stolen a faint gray shade.
“Mother! mother! speak!” cried Honora Pembroke, weeping; but the form she clasped was rigid, and the face was beginning to have a blank, unnatural expression.
“Live for your son’s sake!” said F. O’Donovan, taking in his her cold hands—“live to see his repentance, to see him win the forgiveness of the world and of God.”
But that blankness overspread her face, and the light in her fixed eyes grew more dim.
The priest stood up, still holding strongly one of her hands, and with his other made the sign of the cross over her, giving with it the final absolution. Then he seated himself beside her, and, while Honora fell at her feet, put his arm around the rigid form, and touched the cheeks with his warm, magnetic hand, and pleaded tenderly and with tears, as if she had been his own mother, now a word of human love, now a word of divine hope; and suddenly he stopped, and Honora, with her face hidden in Mrs. Gerald’s lap, heard him exclaim, “Depart, Christian soul, out of the body, in the name of the Father who created thee, in the name of the Son who redeemed thee, and in the name of the Holy Ghost who has sanctified thee.”
She started up with a faint cry, and saw that Mrs. Gerald’s head had dropped sideways on to her shoulder, her eyes were half‐closed, and her relaxing form was sinking backward, supported by F. O’Donovan.
How it happened she did not know, but almost at the same instant Mrs. Macon entered the room followed by a doctor, and to Honora’s confused sense it seemed as though helpers were all about and she was separated from her friend. She heard F. O’Donovan’s voice repeating the prayers for the dead, and presently the weeping responses of the servant, but she was powerless to join them.
She roused herself only when she heard the priest speak her name. “Did I make any mistake? Did I do well, do you think?” he asked anxiously. “I did not know any better way.”
Honora opened her eyes and looked about.
“There was no better way,” she said. “The result would have been the same in any case, and she suffered only a minute.”
Tears were swimming in his fine eyes.
“She has, indeed, hidden herself in the bosom of God, where no harm can reach her, and it is best so. We can see that it is most merciful for her. But for that unhappy son....”
“Do not name him!” exclaimed Miss Pembroke, shuddering. “I cannot think of him without abhorrence! See what ruin he has wrought wherever he has been. What has escaped him? Nothing! Do you, can you, believe there is hope for one whose soul is such an abyss of weakness and selfishness? He has stripped from me my dearest friends; he has smitten those who loved him best....”
She stopped, half from the bitter weeping that choked her words, half because the priest had laid his checking hand on her arm.
“The silence of death is in the house,” he said gently. “Do not disturb it by anger. Leave Lawrence Gerald to the lashes of his guilty conscience. Believe me, it will be punishment enough. Forgive him, and pray for him.”
“Not yet! I cannot yet!” she protested. “He has been forgiven too much. But I will say no more. I am sorry I should have spoken so in her home.”
“Come out into the air of the garden a little while; it will refresh you,” the priest urged. “I must go directly to F. Chevreuse, but I will return. He went to Mrs. Ferrier more than an hour ago, and was to wait there for me or come this way to learn the result. Poor F. Chevreuse! he is sorely tried. Everything rests on him. Don’t sit here in the dark any longer. Come!”
“You had better go, Miss Pembroke. You can do nothing here,” Mrs. Macon said to her.
She went out and hid herself in a little arbor that had been a favorite retreat of Mrs. Gerald’s on warm summer days, and sitting there, too stunned for weeping, now that the first burst of tears was dried, tried to recollect and realize what had happened.
As she sat there she heard presently the trampling of horses and the roll of a carriage, and mechanically leaned forward to see who was passing, but without in the least caring. The bright bays and the sparkling harness were very familiar to her eyes, and she saw that Mrs. Ferrier herself was in the carriage. The woman’s face was red and swollen with weeping and excitement, and as she passed the cottage she put up her hand as if she would have shut it from her sight. Evidently her interview with F. Chevreuse had been a stormy one, and had left her in anything but a charitable frame of mind.
Miss Pembroke looked indifferently at first, but a moment after she rose and took a step forward to see better; for F. Chevreuse and F. O’Donovan had appeared in the street in front of the carriage and stopped it, and the elder priest was speaking sternly to Mrs. Ferrier.
“Where are you going?” he demanded.
“I am going to the prison to tell them to let Mr. Schöninger go free,” she answered defiantly. “I am going to take him to my house.”
“You are going to do nothing of the sort,” said the priest. “You have no right to, and will only do harm, and disgrace yourself.”
“I couldn’t be more disgraced than I am already, with that ...” she began in a loud voice, but F. Chevreuse stopped her.
“Silence!” he said authoritatively. “You are insane.”
“John, drive on!” she called out of the window.
“John, you will not drive a step further,” said the priest in a low voice.
“You’d better do what he says, ma’am,” said John, leaning down from the box. “And you’d better not talk so loud. People are beginning to notice.”
“I should like to know what you think of yourself for a priest, making my own servants disobey me,” the poor woman cried, relapsing into tears. And then, instantly recovering her spirit, she added, “If I cannot go to the prison, I will know where my poor daughter is. I believe Mrs. Gerald could tell. She must know where they are hid. I will have Annette back again.”
“You had better come in and ask Mrs. Gerald,” F. Chevreuse said calmly. “Do not hesitate! It will, perhaps, be better for you to see her.”
She shrank a little, yet could not bear to remain inactive. To her mind, she had been hushed, and imposed on, and silenced by everybody, in order that this worthless criminal might ruin her daughter’s happiness, and obtain possession of her money, and she was burning to pour her anger out on some one. F. Chevreuse’s authoritative interference, while she yielded to it, only exasperated her more. “I will go in and find where Annette is,” she said resolutely, and stepped out of her carriage, too much excited to stumble.
Honora Pembroke came forward and stood between her and the door, looking in astonishment at the two priests who followed her.
“Let her go in!” F. O’Donovan said.
She was obliged to, indeed, for Mrs. Ferrier’s strong hand set her aside as if she had been a feather.
The woman entered with a haughty step and a high head, her silks rustling about her through the solemn silence, and walked straight to the sitting‐ room. Mrs. Macon met her at the door, but she put her aside, and took a step into the room; only one step, and then she stopped short, and uttered a cry.
“See how that mother heard the news!” said F. Chevreuse in a low voice at her side. “Have you any questions to ask her?”
Mrs. Ferrier retreated a step, and leaned against the door‐frame. They all drew back and left her a full view of the silent form stretched on the sofa, and only Honora Pembroke’s weeping disturbed the silence.
“You don’t say that it killed her!” she exclaimed in a low, frightened voice; then, before they could answer, she threw up her arms, and ran across the room. “You poor dear!” she sobbed. “You poor, broken‐hearted dear!”
She flung herself on her knees beside the sofa, and embraced and wept over the motionless form there, all her anger, all thought of self, forgotten in a generous and loving pity and grief.
F. Chevreuse glanced at his brother priest with a faint, sad smile. “Her heart is right,” he said. “It is always right.”
Material Faith.
Give me a God whom I can prove By certain academic rules, Approved by all the learned schools; And if he fitteth not our groove, We’ll leave him for unscienced fools To idolize. But if his attributes should be All classed within high Reason’s bound— His origin and parts be found With analytics to agree— This God, whom we can solve and sound, We’ll patronize.
But still our right we will reserve— A sacred privilege of Science— To herald forth our non‐compliance With Scriptural accounts that swerve From our grand basis; such defiance We’ll not endure. We’ll rule out the creation chapter; ’Tis so absurd! and lacks support Of brilliant sages in our court Whose own hypotheses are apter. So exit Moses’ crude report For something newer.
The Bible we will not reject In toto; no, we’ll let it stand, Lest our fair fame should bear a brand; But when we’ve banished ev’ry sect, Then forth we’ll drag from Lethe’s sand Our fossil link! Completing the material chain By philosophic labor wrought, And beaten out by mighty thought! Eureka! what a motley train Of dry bones, labelled to a jot, Round Learning’s brink!
Such wondrous titles ne’er were heard In all the mythologic lore! We’ll drape in gloom of Stygian shore All held as truth; and at our word Darkness, in cloak of Light, shall soar To Reason’s throne! Then, when this wheeling globe is ours, We’ll send God forth a wand’ring myth Void, and bereft of son, or kith: And stone‐eyed fossils, robed in flowers, From sea of spice to frozen frith, Shall teach alone.
A Glimpse of the Green Isle. I.
“What the lady wants, sir, is hair,” said Edward.
“Hair!” I repeated scornfully, at the same time glancing at the wealth of dark‐brown hair which fell dishevelled over the shoulders of the Lady from Idaho. “Hair!”
It was evident that no comb had touched that wonderful chevelure for several days.
“I shall never be able to comb it out again,” said the Lady from Idaho in a weak, despairing voice. She lay on a sofa in a state‐room on board the transatlantic steamer Lima, from New York to Liverpool, calling at Queenstown. She had been terribly sea‐sick. During seven days she had not eaten enough to keep a buffalo‐gnat alive.
“I don’t mean ‘air,’ sir,” said Edward, raising his nose to an altitude of 45°, with the lofty dignity of your true English waiter. “I means hair—wentilation.”
“Ah! yes. I believe you are right, Hedward.”
Hedward was a steward on board the Lima, to whose fostering care the writer was entrusted.
The Lady from Idaho had reached that point of sea‐sickness when one does not want the trouble even of getting better. We carried her on deck, however, and laid her, well wrapped up, on one of the cushioned seats. The circular horizon of many days was being broken by the Irish coast just coming into view. The mere sight of land seemed to revive the fair Idaho traveller. As we neared the coast, and the green of the fields and trees could be seen, she said:
“Oh! what a goodly sight. What a beautiful country! I could chant its praises with the most enthusiastic Irishman of them all!”
We feasted our eyes on the beautiful coast until darkness fell upon it and its outline was marked for us only by the lights which traced the curves of the shore.
We exchange rocket‐signals with the shore and with other steamers lying in the bay. The land‐breeze has set the Lady from Idaho on her feet again. The tug comes alongside to take the mails and those passengers who wish to land at Queenstown. All is bustle and excitement. There are regretful leave‐takings between fellow‐passengers whom the traditional “stand‐ offishness” of English‐speaking people prevented from enjoying each other’s society until it was almost time to part. Among those who go on shore at Queenstown are the Lady from Idaho—poor seasick soul! she would have gone on shore days ago, if she could have found any shore to go on; a young Irishman bringing his American bride home for inspection by his friends in “the Black North”; some American ladies and gentlemen making their first European tour, evidently determined to be pleased with everything they see; some specimens of young and infant America, and the writer.
There’s not much provision for the comfort of passengers on board the tug. The night is rather moist, but the cabin is “stuffy” and ill‐ventilated, and we prefer remaining on deck.
The “Cove of Cork” is certainly a beautiful place by day or night. But the night effect is the finer, me judice. The rows of lights rising above each other, tier on tier, on the heights, cast a magic glamour over the scene.
The tug has reached her dock. The custom‐house officers have come on board. Horrid moment! Worse, however, in anticipation than in reality, everywhere except on the trans‐Atlantic docks of New York City.
“Have you any cigars or tobacco?”
“No.”
“Any firearms?”
“No, sir,” I answer, and inwardly bless my stars that my better and more sensible half has left behind, for lack of room, the “six‐shooter” which I carried for ten years in the free land of the West. What a piece of luck! I have been assured by Irish friends that had I brought that unhappy “six‐ shooter” with me, I should most undoubtedly have been arrested for some undefined bloody intentions with regard to that most susceptible animal, the lion of Great Britain. The lion would have been very much mistaken; for never were the Irish shores visited by any one whose heart was more full of peace and good‐will.
Ireland is not a safe place for any one who has a trans‐Atlantic odor about him during a Fenian paroxysm. The possession of a pocket derringer is sufficient evidence of belligerent intentions. New‐York‐made boots are objects of suspicion, and in times of excitement have been the cause of trouble to the wearer. As harmless and commercial an article as a wooden nutmeg, carried merely as a patriotic souvenir, may entail considerable annoyance on its possessor, and perhaps necessitate the good offices of his consul to enable him to pursue his tourist path of pleasure or business in peace. In such periods as anti‐Fenian frenzy, English ports are the safest and pleasantest; for in Ireland, then, the lion is rampant, roaring and seeking whom he may devour. It is better to keep away from his super‐serviceable retainers in Ireland.
But the political horizon is unclouded. The bloody‐minded revolutionists of the pen and inkstand are quiescent for the nonce. We find the officials kind and polite. They opened only one of our trunks. They gave its contents merely a cursory inspection, and chalked cabalistic characters on all our boxes, portmanteaus, satchels, etc. They fished for no fee, nor was any offered them.
It is nearly midnight when we leave the tug. We step ashore. After a quarter of a century of absence, my foot is upon my native heath. My name is not MacGregor, dear reader, nor is it Micawber.
I do not think people feel much at the moment that anything happens to them. It is either before or after; in anticipation or retrospection. In describing their sensations, they tell us what they suppose they are going to feel, or what they think they ought to have felt. I have stood bare‐ headed by the grave of Washington at Mount Vernon. I believe the man and his work to be among the greatest that ever blest the world. What did I feel? A kind of sorrowful, reverential, awe‐struck mental numbness; then a sad yet selfish pity for my kind, who, however good and great they be, e’en to this favor must they come at last. I could not have distinctly shaped a thought or given expression to any of the ideas which a visit to the grave of Washington might be supposed to suggest to a conventionally susceptible imagination. Yet my eyes were full of tears. In the evening, however, in a comfortable room at Willard’s, in an easy‐chair by a cheerful fire, in the pleasant ease of slippers and cigars, with a quire of thick, white, unglazed letter‐paper before me, any kind of steel pen (I hate a gold pen for literary work; it has a counting‐house suggestiveness that seems to disagree with the muses), with mayhap a modicum of vin chaud at my elbow, what pages of “Thoughts suggested by a visit to the grave of Washington” I could have “knocked off”! But unluckily Jones rushed in with the sad news that poor Thompson had been killed on the other side of the river, and drove all the intended “Thoughts” out of my head. There is no real present. We have only the past and the future.
The debarkation of a number of ladies, children, trunks, boxes, and carpet‐bags is not generative of the softer emotions. The night is damp and chilly. It has reached the wee sma’ hours. There is no omnibus or hack to take us to the hotel. Some night‐birds, with low, flat caps and Corkonian accents, offer to carry our luggage and show us the way to the hotel. It is “only a step or two.” The cortége sets out for the hotel. Corkonian youngsters—who ought to have been in their beds, if they had any beds to go to—come suddenly out of the darkness, and ask, with wonderful chromatic elocution, the privilege of carrying our satchels. It is useless to tell them we do not need their assistance. They will not be denied. They keep up their chromatics until we succumb. Well, it is sixpence each for them—a treble, or American, gratuity. An American, native or adopted, to whom, especially if he have lived in the West, “a quarter” seems the lowest gratuity that he can offer to the negro who blacks his boots in a sleeping‐car, feels an impulse of lavishness on touching Irish ground. He “feels good,” and wishes to make all around him partake of the feeling. Half a dollar seems the least that he can offer the waiter at the hotel with justice to his own dignity and that of the country he has the honor to represent. He is not always so generous when he returns at the end of his tour, and the gratuity system of Britain has disgusted him and helped to deplete his purse. Then he comes down to the smallest silver coin in his portemonnaie. He cannot offer coppers, and never gets as low as the Englishman’s “tuppence.”
The English and the Irish in Ireland inveigh bitterly against the American propensity to give extravagant douceurs. They say that Americans are spoiling their waiters, porters, servants, etc. They call this liberality snobbishness, desire to display! The fact is, it is partly a matter of habit, partly a want of knowledge of the comparative values of “tips” at home and abroad. What American from the further side of the Mississippi expects to get anything for a penny? Add to this, what I before remarked, that the American in Ireland “feels good,” and wants to scatter around all the good he can.
Well! here we are at the hotel. A somewhat stupefied porter receives us. He has to see somebody before he can inform us as to the probability of entertainment. He has not indicated any room where the ladies and children can sit and take the night‐chill off while we await the result of his conference with Mr. or Mrs. Boniface. We remain standing in the entry, our carpet‐bags and wraps in our hands. At length the comatose porter returns, and says that bed‐rooms are ready for us!
“Can we have any supper?”
“No, sir. The cook’s gone home, sir.”
“Not a cup of tea?”
“No, sir. It’s too late, sir.”
“At least, we can have some hot Irish whiskey‐punch?”
“No, sir. There’s no hot wather in the house, sir.”
“Is there any cold water in the house?”
“Of coorse there is, sir,” replies our negative Amphitryon, slightly roused by the question.
“Then bring me some Irish whiskey and cold water.”
“Yes, sir, I’ll thry, sir. I’ll see if the bar‐maid isn’t asleep, sir, and get the key from her, sir.”
We were then presented with one‐third of a tallow candle each, and marshalled to our respective sleeping‐apartments. No chance of a little pleasant chatter and some gentle exhilaration on our first night on Irish soil.
We sleep pretty well, however, and pretty long into the forenoon of the next day. Waiter comes to say that we can have breakfast in the coffee‐ room whenever we desire it. This is a delicate hint that we are not early risers. He wants to know when we wish breakfast and of what we wish it composed.
“Chops and tomato‐sauce, ham and eggs—”
“Yes, sir. Rashers and eggs, sir.”
“Beefsteak, tea, and coffee, in half an hour.”
Raining! The view of the bay is rather cheerless. Everything looks dankish, dingy, and dull.
“Can you realize that you are in I Ireland?” I inquire of the Lady from Idaho.
“Not in the least,” responds the most amiable of her sex. “Can you?”
“No, indeed.”
It is not a good morning for the interchange of ideas. Misty mornings never are. As for certain projected “Thoughts on touching Irish soil after twenty‐five years’ absence,” their suggesting themselves under such a murky sky is out of the question. They will have to wait for the bright, creative sun. Perhaps, after a good warm breakfast, one may be able to think some “Thoughts,” if the railway time‐tables will admit of it.
The “coffee‐room” of “the best hotel” is cold and cheerless. Smoke without fire is obtained from some wet coal‐dust, economically caked, according to the mode of thrifty housekeepers in the British Isles, in an infinitesimal grate in a remote corner of the room. Impossible to think any “Thoughts” here. Some solemn‐looking men, very particular about their chops—I mean their mutton‐chops—are enjoying—or, more correctly, consuming, for there is no evidence of enjoyment—their morning meal.
Our breakfast is not a bad one. The chops are excellent; the beefsteak, so‐so. I have eaten better beef in New York. The bread is hard and heavy, but white and not ill‐tasted. I wish the Irish and English waiters would adopt the short alpaca jacket and long white apron of the waiters of Paris and New York. It is a much neater and cleaner costume. The greasy full‐ dress coat and limp, whity‐brown neck‐cloth are not only absurd; they are often disgusting.
Still raining! The sidewalks are hid from view by the thickly‐passing umbrellas. Let us go and buy some umbrellas! Life seems to be impossible without them here. In the three kingdoms, umbrellas are indispensable to respectability.
“I hate respectability,” said the Lady from Idaho with a vicious emphasis.
I was rather astonished by this outburst, but I reflected that allowance must be made for ladies’ tempers on draggle‐tail mornings.
“Such weather,” I remarked, “is enough to make one hate anything.”
“It is not that,” she retorted. “I hate respectability, rain or shine.”
“Des goûts et des couleurs—you know the old proverb.”
“There is nothing more selfish, more hypocritical, more cowardly, than ‘respectability.’ ”
“My dear madam, I did not take the trouble of coming from the other side of the Rocky Mountains for the purpose of chopping logic. I must buy umbrellas.”
I bought me an umbrella. Thenceforward I was only separated from it during sleep and meals while I remained in the British Islands. It was almost always necessary. The wretch who sold it to me, however, saw that I wore overshoes, and charged me about three Irish prices. I feel certain that the day will come when he will be fitly punished. He will emigrate to the United States sooner or later, and the hackmen or restaurateurs of New York will avenge me!
Steam is a wonderful leveller. It is destroying national costume and toning down national peculiarities. The same round hat which was worn in New York when I left is worn in Queenstown; the same fashion of winter overcoat. The up‐and‐down‐the‐gamut intonations of the Cork brogue, however, bring you to a consciousness of your true latitude and longitude. The long, hooded cloth cloaks of the peasant women have some suggestions of nationality about them. Occasionally, too, a girl of seventeen or eighteen with bare feet and short kirtle is seen. This is characteristic.
“Buy a bunch of Irish shamrocks from me, sir? Now, do, sir, if ye plase.”
We cannot refuse. We lay in a plentiful supply of the chosen leaf of bard and chief.
“Long life to you, sir, and to the purty ladies and the beautiful childer, and all the blessings in the world on ye. May ye never know what it is to want anything for them!”
The shamrocks alone were not dear; but with such a prayer added, we felt as if we were taking the poor woman’s stock in trade for nothing.
As a matter of course, I expected to find Ireland rather backward as regards women’s rights and that sort of thing. I was somewhat surprised, therefore, on entering the telegraph office, to find a telegraphist of the gentler sex. She seemed to be quite a business young lady—quick, intelligent, and polite. With the least possible display of conscious superiority, she instructed me in the mode of filling those absurd British blanks for my first British telegrams. With the condescending gentleness of an amiable “school‐marm” instructing a good boy of unfortunately limited knowledge and capacity, she “posted” me in the names and location of streets in Dublin. She was industrious as well as intelligent. She had brought her knitting. During our conversation, she doubly improved the shining hour by rolling into a ball a skein of worsted which a most serious and attentive young lady of eight or nine summers held distended on her outstretched and uplifted hands.
The hotel at which we stopped was managed by women. I afterwards remarked, in my trip through the island, that the internal economy of most of the hotels in Ireland is under female direction. The post‐offices and postal‐ telegraph offices are very generally managed by women. There are numerous institutions for the care of aged, sick, or destitute women, or for the rescue and reformation of the poor erring sisters who have been led away from the paths of purity and peace.
“I really believe, after all,” said the Lady from Idaho to me one day, in conversation on this subject, “that they take better care of their women than we do.”
We take the cars for Cork. We ride to the “beautiful city” through the loveliest bit of landscape on which the sun ever shone, or, more appositely, on which the gentle rain from heaven ever fell. It is indeed a land of loveliness and song. The good‐natured guard, having remarked our overshoes doubtless, puts his face to the car‐window, and enthusiastically asks:
“Well, sir, an’ isn’t this a counthry worth fightin’ for?”
Confound the fellow! even though he be bright‐faced and seems good‐ natured. I wish those people who are eternally talking about fighting and never doing it—except among themselves—would stop talking, or, if they cannot do anything better, go out, take a good “licking” manfully, and be done with it. Daring and doing, even if one gets the worst of it, is better than loud talking and nothing doing. I hate the vox et præterea nihil. We have had too much of it.
“Faith,” says the guard, “it’s the fine, healthy‐looking childer ye’ve got. Shure, they don’t look like Yankee childer at all, at all.”
“If by Yankee you mean American, my friend, that they undoubtedly are,” replies the gentleman responsible for the little responsibilities who are too healthy‐looking to be like “Yankee childer”; “but they come from ayont the Mississippi, which may account in some degree for their hardy appearance.”
“What town is that on the other side of the water?”
“Passage, sir.”
Passage! Shade of “Father Prout”! How often have we rolled our tongues in luscious enjoyment around thy roaring lyric in praise of that wonderful borough!
“The town of Passage Is large and spacious, And situated Upon the Lay;
It’s nate and dacent, And quite convanient To come from Cork On a summer’s day.
Unfortunately, it is not exactly the kind of a day that one would like
“to slip in, To take a dippin’ Fornint the shippin’ That at anchor ride; Or in a wherry Cross o’er the ferry To Carrigaloe On the other side;”
for it still rains, and Carrigaloe is upon our side, as a sign‐board and the voice of the guard informs us: “Carrigaloe!”
We shall not have an opportunity of testing the reliability of the poet’s promise that
“land or deck on, You may surely reckon, Whatever country You come hither from, On an invitation To a jollification With a parish priest That’s called ‘Father Tom.’ ”
The guard blows his whistle. We leave Passage and its satellite, Carrigaloe, behind, and with them the pleasant vision of a cheerful evening with the hospitable and large‐hearted ecclesiastic of the inimitable song.
Not in this wide world is there a lovelier piece of landscape than that between Queenstown and Cork. Here the Lee is bordered by lovely lawns of the freshest green, sloping gently to the water’s edge. Further on it flows between verdurous walls of lofty trees. The leaves of their drooping branches kiss the rippling current as it passes. Yonder the Castle of Blackrock frowns over its gently‐flowing tide. The grass and the leaves are green with a vivid greenness that justifies all that the poets have sung about the Emerald Island. What glory in thy long, green vistas, beautiful Glanmire!
Our road is bordered on one side by the river; on the other, rich demesnes, bounded by trees, ivy‐covered walls, and moss‐covered rocks, from which fall miniature cascades and waves the green and graceful fern.
The landscape needs only one modest charm to make its loveliness complete. I miss the humble cottage, lowly yet lovely, where honest labor finds its comfort and repose. There are rich mansions and umbrageous groves and broad pastures, but no smoke ascends from cheerful hearths of tillers of the soil. The peasantry, whose cottages might grace these lovely glades, are building themselves new homes on the broad prairies of the West. The humble wooden sheds or the rough cabins on the brown and treeless plains, sacred to the Lares of independence and self‐reliance, are far lovelier in the eyes of the lover of his kind than thy greenest glades, beautiful Glanmire!
“A bold peasantry, their country’s pride, If once destroyed, can never be supplied.”
Here is the beautiful city. It does not do itself justice to‐day. The rain, which softens and freshens the beauties of the country, blackens and bedraggles the town. “God made the country, and man made the town.”
But what are those deep, soft tones that reach us through the humid air? Can it be? Yes, there is no doubt about it. We are listening to
“The bells of Shandon That sound so grand on The pleasant waters Of the river Lee!
“I’ve heard bells tolling Old Adrian’s mole in, Their thunders rolling From the Vatican;
“And cymbals glorious Swinging uproarious From the gorgeous turrets Of Notre Dame;
“But thy sounds are sweeter Than the dome of Peter Flings o’er the Tiber, Pealing solemnly.
“Oh! the Bells of Shandon Sound far more grand on The pleasant waters Of the river Lee!”
Cork, with its fine bridges crossing the branches of the Lee, might, under bright atmospheric effects, lay claim to its antique designation; but, amid mud and rain, the most enthusiastic traveller can see no extraordinary beauty even in Paris itself. Church spires and buildings darkened by the rain have a gloomy look. Even the church of S. Anne, which may fairly be said to have “two sides to it”—one being of differently‐ colored stone from the other—has had its peculiar claims to the traveller’s attention somewhat weakened by the effect of the rain.
We have concluded to wend our way quietly toward Dublin, taking in our route anything that may be of interest. The Great Southern and Western Railway runs through one of the most beautiful districts in Ireland. A long panorama of beautiful and characteristic scenes is unrolled as you steam along. Green hedges and slopes, furze‐covered fences, century‐old trees covered with moss and ivy, rippling streams, a ruined abbey or dismantled tower, bits of soft blue appearing through slate‐colored clouds—the humid atmosphere toning down all harsh lines, and yet spreading a sweet though melancholy softness over all—this limited by the gentle undulations of the ground, whose beautiful curves give life to the landscape, yet circumscribe its horizon, and you have the peculiar characteristics of an Irish landscape.
There is an air of solidity about the track and its accessories to an eye habituated to trans‐Mississippi railroads. Very pretty are those stations of stone, covered with green ivy, every foot of space in front of them devoted to the culture of some sweet, simple flowers. The Lady from Idaho, who has recently been dipping her gentle nose into the cryptogamia, is in ecstasies over the magnificent ferns we have passed at various points of our route.
For an excellent railway dinner, let me recommend Limerick station to the traveller. The best railway breakfast I have ever eaten—and I have eaten not a few in both hemispheres—I ate at Altoona, on the Pennsylvania Central. It was twelve years ago, however. The best railway dinner I have ever eaten I had at Limerick Junction. It would have done credit to many a pretentious hotel on either continent. It surpassed the menu of private hotels in London, “patronized by officers of both services and their families.” It was a better meal than I have had at what is considered one of the best hotels in Northern Germany, and did not cost half so much. It was well and comfortably served, malgré the ponderous solemnity of the British style of hotel attendance, which to me is a terrible bore. Plenty of time was allowed us to eat and enjoy our meal. Some jovial young gentlemen at the table politely caused champagne to be offered us, in compliment to our trans‐Atlantic character. They insisted, as far as politeness would admit, on regaling us; but we declined indulgence in the lively beverage. Sparkling wines are not good to travel on. One of the gentlemen was fascinated by a specimen of infantine America—a member of our party, and one of its most important members, by the way. The champagne, probably, had a softening effect on the gentleman. He lamented his childless condition, and expressed his readiness to give fabulous amounts for the little Columbian stranger. The father of the latter good‐ humoredly told the gentleman that Young America, white or black, is out of the market, and has been so for some years.
The bell rings. We resume our seats in the train. We have a carriage to ourselves. The guard told us, on leaving Cork, that he would try to keep us alone. This means that he wants a gratuity at the journey’s end; for your conductor, or “guard,” on European railways is not above taking a shilling or a sixpence. He shall have it, so far as we are concerned.
The manner of starting a train is good. The bell rings—signal to the passengers to take their seats. There are two guards, one in front and one in rear, each supplied with a whistle. They look along the train to see that the doors of all the compartments are closed. The forward guard, seeing all right at his end, blows his whistle. The rear guard, to make assurance doubly sure, glances along the entire train, and, finding everything in readiness, whistles. The second whistle is the signal to the engineer, who then sounds the steam‐whistle, and the train starts.
The trains generally exceed ours in rapidity, but are very much behind them in comfort and elegance. There is no drinking‐water in the English or Irish carriages. There are no stoves to keep one warm in cold weather or during the chilly hours of the night. If the weather is cold, tin foot‐ warmers, filled with water which is not always warm, are furnished in the proportion of one to two first‐class passengers. There is no luxurious sleeping‐car, where you can sleep comfortably, awake refreshed, find your boots ready blacked when you get up, and wash yourself at a marble wash‐ stand. No comfortable hotel‐car, into which you can step from the sleeping‐car in your slippers, and enjoy your beef‐steak and fried potatoes, or your quail on toast, at the rate of thirty miles an hour.
In consequence of the absence of arrangements for personal comfort on trains, the British traveller is obliged to weight himself down and half fill his compartment with rolls of railway rugs, bottles of water, and plethoric lunch‐baskets, to his own great inconvenience, as well as that of his fellow‐travellers. The trouble caused by the want of a proper system of baggage transportation compels the traveller to carry huge leather portmanteaus about five times as large as an ordinary American travelling‐satchel. As these are considered “parcels that can be carried in the hand,” the traveller is allowed to take them into the carriage with him. By this means he avoids the trouble of watching the “luggage‐van” at junctions, and the delay of waiting for its unloading at the terminus. Then come bundles of umbrellas and canes strapped together, and the leather hat‐box—that inseparable adjunct of British respectability. Behold the unprotected matron, surrounded by half a dozen family jewels, with any quantity of wraps and lunch‐baskets, and bottles and umbrellas, and band‐ boxes and multitudinous matters wrapped up in endless newspaper packages! How she glares at you when you step as carefully as you can among the formidable piles to three square inches of a seat in the interior corner! Woe be to him who displaces one of the parcels sacred to family use. I might be able to stand a Gorgon, but I could not stand that. Please do not put me in the carriage with the matron! Rather in the van with the untamable hyena, Mr. Guard, if you please!
Imagine a succession of Broadway omnibuses, with windows and doors at either end, placed laterally behind an engine, and you have an European railway train. Half the passengers necessarily sit with their backs to the engine. The first‐class carriages are upholstered in cloth or plush like hackney coaches. The benches are divided into two double seats on each side, giving seats for eight passengers in each compartment. The compartment is lighted by a small and generally dim and smoky oil‐lamp placed in the roof.
In the second‐class carriages the seats are not divided. Six persons are supposed to be accommodated on each bench. On some lines the seats are very thinly cushioned with leather; generally, they are not cushioned. In France and Belgium the second‐class carriages are cushioned and backed with gray cloth, and the difference in comfort between them and the first‐ class carriages is not worth the difference of fare. This is about one‐ third greater for first‐class tickets. Twelve persons, with a proportionate quantity of wraps, bundles, baskets, bottles, umbrellas, and portmanteaus, pack a compartment pretty closely. Your European traveller makes as much preparation for a trip of sixty miles as an American would for an all‐rail journey from New York to San Francisco. An American railroad car is quite a cheerful “institution”; whereas travelling seems to be a more serious business on the other side of the Atlantic. A compartment—first or second class—is a gloomy place. In first‐class carriages, the “swells” and snobs are afraid to imperil their dignity by risking intercourse with somebody who may be “nobody.” The result is silence and solemnity. In second‐class carriages you often find very pleasant people—clergymen, professional men, young tourists, artists, and students—who can talk pleasantly and well, and have no snobbish, conventional dread of doing so.
It is a common saying in England that only fools and Americans travel first‐class. I have heard of a crusty old Irish peer, who, being asked why he always travels third‐class, replied that he does so because “there is no fourth class.” I think the venerable lord was rather ostentatious of his humility. I would not advise any of my American friends to try third‐ class travelling in England or Ireland. A third‐class car is a cold, dirty, noisome place. It is full of tobacco‐smoke and the smell of strong drinks of various kinds. It is worse than the forward car on a prairie railroad, filled with immigrants and “railroad hands.”
Mail trains are generally composed of first and second class carriages only. Class distinctions meet us everywhere. We find a first and second class waiting‐room, first and second class restaurant, third‐class waiting‐room and third‐class restaurant. The waiting‐rooms are separate for each sex in each class. You are parted from your wife, sister, or sweetheart. If you have something of importance to communicate to your fair companion, and should appear near the door of the ladies’ waiting‐ room for that purpose, a pre‐Raphaelite female, armed with a broom, throws herself into the breach, and fiercely demands your business, while she reduces you almost to a jelly by a Gorgon glare.
Cora.
A flower of the pale, sad South: Yet pale nor sad is she; For she blooms on a wonderful tree That knows not blight or drouth— A certain miraculous tree Our Lady has planted down South.
A rose let me call you, dear girl— A fadeless and thornless rose; So richly your modesty shows Its blushes bejewell’d with pearl— And a dew‐drop of grace every pearl— That I think of the Mystical Rose.
I have seen, and must needs pass on; But this I bear with me away: A fragrance that will not be gone, But haunts me, and most when I pray. It comes like the memories of May From the pure, happy years that are gone.
Then the Lord of the sweet and the fair (For whom is all beauty alone), I pray him that floweret so rare No hand may dare cull but his own; That no other bosom may wear This rose of the South than his own.
Charles X. At Holyrood.(93)
By The Comte Achille De Jouffroy
From Paris Ou Le Livre Des Cent‐Et‐Un.
Several friends of the exiled royal family, having been led by devotion to their cause to visit Scotland, have published detailed accounts of the residence at Holyrood. These narratives have left but little untold concerning the august proscribed personages, their situation, their mode of life, and their habits, the uniformity of which no important circumstance occurred to modify during the two years of their abode in the ancient palace of the Stuarts.
The reader, therefore, must not expect to meet in the following sketch with descriptions which have already been given by others with much minuteness, and which have been repeated in various works. Here will be found merely a small number of observations, impartially collected, which may serve to combat prejudices of a diverse nature that have been called forth, as well by the assertions of an unjust and bitter hatred, as by the injudicious efforts of a flattering servility.
Certainly, any enemy of the royal family, unless he were insane or wicked, had he been admitted into the privacy of Holyrood, must at least have ceased to regard them with dislike. Their most prejudiced adversary, no matter to what distinguished rank of society he might belong, could not have learned to know the domestic virtues displayed by these princes in adversity without wishing himself to have a father, a son, a wife, a sister, or children resembling them. On the other hand, those who, through attachment, duty, or interest (for there are political situations which a well‐comprehended interest forces some to retain, even after the occurrence of disasters)—those, I say, who have made themselves the noisy apologists of this family have carried exaggeration so far as to attribute to them qualities and talents which would have been more than sufficient for ruling even in these difficult times; without reflecting that this blindness of zeal in regard to princes who met with so sudden a downfall while surrounded by a faithful army, and in the midst of devoted provinces, must diminish the confidence due to that portion of the eulogium which is really just. As private individuals, the Bourbons of the elder branch have never merited the smallest of the outrages which it has been their fate to endure; as sovereigns, it is well known they have been great chiefly in their fall, and have shown their courage and resolution less in their lives than in their deaths.
The writers of whom I speak, carried away by the feelings of their hearts, have poured them forth in eloquent descriptions. Identifying themselves, so to speak, with the misfortunes of which they have been witnesses, they have given us chiefly the recital of their own emotions. I shall not imitate them; the spectacle of an entire family, precipitated from the most brilliant of thrones into the miseries of exile, is of itself sufficiently touching; it has in it enough of sad sublimity to render it useless to overload the picture with the pretentious ornaments of the elegiac style. To put together sentimental phrases for the purpose of describing a misfortune like this is to place one’s self, no matter what talents one may possess or exhibit, very much beneath the level of the subject.
I have considered this preamble needful in order to avoid being taxed with coldness. To speak with a suitable calmness of the Bourbons may perhaps be permitted to one who for fifteen years has defended their cause, and who has followed them into banishment; who has never obtained from them either favors or places, and who also has never betrayed them.
In quitting France, Charles X. had only carried away with him, after so much splendor, a sum barely sufficient for a modest subsistence during a few years. The abode at Lullworth was expensive; its vicinity to France made it accessible to a crowd of travellers, many of whom came only to solicit from the king, in return for services past, or in view of services offered, the assistance which the unfortunate monarch was no longer in a condition to grant without reducing himself to want. In order to escape from these importunities, and to withdraw himself from the painful necessity of refusing, he asked and obtained from the British government the enjoyment of the asylum which he had already for a long time inhabited during the period of his first exile.
The capital of Scotland, in which is situated the palace of Holyrood, is in the same latitude as Moscow, but its vicinity to the sea renders its temperature much more endurable. Edinburgh is, in many respects, the most agreeable residence which a stranger can select in Great Britain. The liberal arts are there cultivated with a particular devotion. It is a large town, picturesque in the extreme, and sumptuously built. The seat of old Edinburgh is worthy of remark; in seeking for a comparison which may convey an idea of it, the device of the arms of the kingdom naturally occurs to furnish me with one. Imagine, at the entrance of a deep and narrow valley formed by the hills of Salisbury and Calton, an enormous lion, half couched. His head, which is turned towards the rising sun, and overlooks the plain, is a peaked rock, three hundred feet in elevation, and nobly crowned by the old castle. To the right and left, the houses are suspended from his flanks, like the waves of his mane. The ridge of his spine is represented by a long street, which, dividing the two opposite declivities, begins from the esplanade of the castle, and terminates at the Canongate in front of the portal of Holyrood. The new town occupies the plateau of Calton hill. Larger than the old town, it is also better built, and all the streets are laid out in regular squares.
This city, take it altogether, resembles none other with which we are acquainted. It is an assemblage of monuments of every age and in every style, built of beautiful stone, many of them very carefully constructed, and thrown, in the most picturesque manner, upon projections of rugged rocks, in the hollows of precipices, on the slopes of valleys. Magnificent bridges, gigantic causeways, unite the different parts of the city. The ancient and the modern are preserved without alteration of character. Here rise houses of eleven stories, the highest of which is on a level with the great street of which we have spoken. There, beside a Greek peristyle, the luxury of the boudoir is sheltered by embattled towers. At the sight of this singular town, of this variety of edifices, of these steep mountains, of the sea, and of the sky, we can more fully comprehend the genius of Sir Walter Scott. Everything here seems created to clothe with form and substance the conceptions of romance. Here we can walk, if we like, under Athenian porticos or in Gothic cloisters, and can pass from the sombre tints of a feudal habitation to drawing‐rooms freshly decorated in the modern style of luxury; we can leave the modest sidewalks of the bourgeois of the XVth century, above which the projecting roofs and gables are still in good preservation, to enter upon railways, those marvels of modern invention. At every step our eyes are met by objects less precious, perhaps, from the value they represent than from the associations they recall: the crown of gold enriched with jewels, the sceptre, and the sword of the ancient kings of Scotland, discovered, fifteen years ago, in a walled‐up room of the old castle; the furniture used by Mary Stuart; the embroidery which occupied the last happy leisure hours of this unfortunate queen; the tapestry raised by the assassins of Rizzio when they entered her apartment; the bed of crimson damask on which she used to sleep. Here we tread on the ashes of a long line of kings, of a multitude of celebrated personages; and the last circumstance worthy of note, in this abode so suggestive of mysterious traditions and royal misfortunes, is that the wreck of the court of the Tuileries have taken refuge beneath the ancient hereditary roof of James II.
The palace of Holyrood is nothing but a cold and gloomy cloister, flanked at the two extremities of its anterior front by towers. The apartments of Charles X., situated on the first floor, extend over one of the sides of the cloister, and over the angle opposite the principal entrance. After crossing a vestibule leading to the chapel, an ante‐chamber, an unfurnished gallery, a billiard‐room, we enter the dining‐room—a gloomy apartment with bare walls, containing only an oval table and chairs. From thence we pass into a drawing‐room twenty‐five feet square, opening upon a small, uncultivated enclosure called a garden, and furnished in the style of the drawing‐room of a Parisian bourgeois. It was in this apartment that receptions for strangers were held from eleven to twelve o’clock in the morning; and in the evening, all the royal family met here after dinner. The persons belonging to the household and the invited guests were admitted to these soirées, which lasted until about ten o’clock. The Duc de Bordeaux(94) and mademoiselle played games together; the king had a whist‐table; the dauphiness and her ladies worked at a round table. Frequently the conversation became general, and was almost always interesting. The French and English newspapers were read and commented upon. Sometimes the king and the dauphin would repair to the billiard‐ room, and play a few games together. In these soirées, there was no more etiquette observed than is usual in the house of a gentleman living on his estates.
At the left of the drawing‐room, a door led to an intermediate apartment, forming the private study of the king. Into this opened his bed‐chamber. With the sleeping‐room of the king communicated that of the Duc de Bordeaux, situated on the same floor, and looking into the courtyard. The Baron de Saint Aubin occupied a room at the side; the apartments of mademoiselle were on the upper floor.
The Duc de Blacas, when he was at Holyrood, had the superintendence of the household; when he was absent, the details of these functions were directed by the Baron de Saint Aubin. The suite was composed of about forty persons, lodged in the town in the vicinity of the palace.
The equipages of the king were limited to one carriage, hired by the month. When this was not sufficient, another coach was sent for; and three saddle‐horses sufficed for the rides of the king and his family. Charles X., having given up the amusement of hunting, and needing exercise to maintain his health, was in the habit of walking every day three or four miles around Holyrood. The table was supplied abundantly, but without luxury; the king usually invited two or three strangers, but the number of covers seldom exceeded fourteen or fifteen.
Such was the mediocrity to which fate had reduced this family, so lately surrounded by the greatest possible luxury and splendor. No sign of regret, no trace of vexation, could be perceived on the countenance of Charles X. Never did a word of bitterness escape from the lips of these illustrious sufferers. The dauphiness, whom some have dared to represent as a vindictive and fanatical woman, was gentleness itself. In vain would any one have sought, in the expression of her face, so full of goodness and resignation, for even the appearance of a pride which nevertheless her elevated rank would have sufficiently justified. As to the dauphin, so far did he carry his abnegation of all personal resentment that he was more than once heard to recall with commendation the talents and bravery of some officers whom he had overwhelmed with his favors, but who, nevertheless, had been the first to betray him.
Every one admitted to Holyrood could not but recognize and admire the presence of those virtues which form the charm of domestic life. They doubtless do not suffice for those upon whom Heaven has imposed the terrible task of governing men. The most marked trait in the character of Charles X. is indecision; in that of the dauphin, a pretension to acuteness, which has more than once discouraged his friends, without inspiring confidence in his enemies. As for the dauphiness, the intensity of her misfortunes in this world has led her to fix her hopes upon a better one. Pious, although tolerant, she herself feels that her counsels would be of little avail in this age of incredulity. In what she desires for France, she never can separate religion from legitimacy. When, at Holyrood, she heard of the pillage of the archbishopric, these words fell from her lips: “Alas! the French have cast off religion, and at length I begin to comprehend why it is they hate us.”
The Duchesse de Berri was a being apart in the royal family. Young, animated, full of regrets, of desires, and of hopes, she could not pardon those who had prevented her from presenting herself before the Parisians on the 30th of July, 1830, in order to claim from them the crown for her son. Confident in her adventurous courage and in her ability to create for herself another future, her irritation for the past and the projects she still contemplated, little agreed either with the calm resignation of the dauphiness or with the habitual prudence of the king. She could only endure for a few weeks the monotony of the residence at Holyrood. Besides, the rigor of the climate appeared to affect her health, and she repaired to the mineral waters of Bath. Here various speculators came to surround her, in a manner to take possession of her as of a pledge for their future fortunes, and induced her to borrow considerable sums of money on the property still remaining to her, in order to defray the expenses of the projected expedition. The duchess was brought to London, where the final arrangements for this loan were to be made. She was concealed in a small house, and not a single Frenchman, excepting those composing the circle by whom she was surrounded, knew what had become of her until the day of the embarkation.
The announcement of the departure of the duchess was received at Holyrood with a species of consternation. The expedition she was about to undertake was regarded as an act of extreme imprudence. To throw herself into France, in order to create an insurrection, without arms, without money, without the prospect of assistance from any European power; to give herself up to the chances of inconsiderate promises made by a few men without influence and without resources; to calculate chiefly upon the defection of an army, recomposed in part, and still agitated by the preceding defection into which the sudden departure of the king had precipitated it—this was, in the eyes of the exiles of Holyrood, to attempt an enterprise of which the success would scarcely have justified the temerity, and of which the success itself was considered impossible. Other reasons for fear, which we may now be permitted to recall, disturbed the heart of the old monarch. He distrusted the impetuosity of the duchess, her fiery temperament, her ardent and independent character, which, even should it not lead her to disregard conventionalities, might authorize those possessing her confidence and affection to overstep their limits in her affairs. He foresaw more than one disaster; he dreaded all sorts of misfortunes. The unfortunate princess was destined to experience them all. The Duc de Blacas was commissioned to follow her, and to oppose, as far as it might be in his power, the dangerous influence of her advisers; but the resolution of the duchess was too much in unison with her tastes and character. Soon the position of M. de Blacas towards her became no longer tenable, and he returned without having accomplished anything, to the great displeasure of the king.
Charles X. never approved of the projects for civil war. When these were proposed to him, he did not manifest that aversion which has been attributed to him by his flatterers; he simply replied that, in the times in which we live, civil war is a thing difficult to undertake and impossible to sustain. He had been a king; he was acquainted with the secrets of the government; he knew that all the forces of the kingdom being at the present day centralized, the provinces cannot withdraw themselves from the power of the telegraph and of the budget; and that nothing but a signal disaffection on the part of the army would be likely to produce a second 20th of March. The riots which took place in the capital at first excited his attention; but after the days of the 5th and 6th of June, he appeared to have ceased to fear, or rather to hope, for their success.
As for foreign war, Charles X. never could endure the idea of it. Never did it enter his thoughts to implore the armed intervention of other sovereigns. He believed that a third invasion of France, were it to take place, would lead to incalculable disasters; to the partition of the territory. Perhaps, also, he felt that he could not claim the assistance of his allies, in virtue of the treaties of 1815; since, during his reign, the government had always been inclined to throw off the yoke of those treaties. The late ministry, in its endeavors to restore France to her natural limits, had excited distrust in the cabinets of London, the Hague, Berlin, Vienna, and Turin. It was not, therefore, probable that these powers would assist in restoring a government which had placed itself in a hostile position to them all, without demanding, in return, ruinous sacrifices and humiliating guarantees.
It is needful to look at things from this point of view, in order to appreciate the policy which was followed at Holyrood. With foreign governments few or no relations were maintained; with the interior, various correspondences, the authors of which differed in plans, in principles, and in views. All were received, all were replied to, in accordance with their various ideas and modes of thinking. The object was to offend no one, to discourage no opinion, in the uncertainty as to which opinion would be the most useful.
Many excellent royalists, with the most praiseworthy disinterestedness, wrote to place at the disposal of the king their hearts, their fortunes, and their lives. If any means were sought for to utilize these generous offers, it was frequently discovered that these worthy people possessed neither money nor influence, and that many of them were advanced in years.
Others sent plans of conspiracies which included three‐fourths of France, but with lists of names for the most part unknown. They undertook, they said, to cause Henry V. to be proclaimed all over the kingdom, provided Charles X. would send them in advance sufficient sums of money.
Some personages, who still figure on the theatre of politics, took measures to remit, with great precaution, their offers of service. It is worthy of remark that such notes arrived each time there was any rumor of revolt or any prospect of war in foreign countries. These offers were not expressed in as precise terms as the preceding ones; they were always accompanied by conditions, of which the principal ones were that the direction of the movement in question should be confided to no one excepting the authors; that a provision should be made of entire approval of the measures upon which they might decide; and, above all, that the portfolios of the ministry of the restoration should be ensured to them. They alone, they asserted, understood the needs of France and the way to rule her. In a few missives of another kind, some old servants set forth the faults which, in their opinion, the king had committed during his reign, and ended by offering him advice in case he should regain the throne. Some of these, irritated by what they considered the oblivion of their former services, permitted themselves to utter bitter reproaches, without pity for misfortunes the sight of which should have been sufficient to disarm even a just resentment. These letters were received with perfect indifference. There were, however, demands which, by dint of their audacity, obtained greater success.
A person wrote from Paris to one of the servants of the king: “I am about to publish a work which will contain the account of various acts of the government of Charles X. You know that the offices I held afforded me opportunities of knowing many things; the revolution of July has deprived me of my situation and my pension; the public loves scandal; the publishers will pay a high price for it; and I will furnish it to them unless I receive thirty thousand francs, which I cannot do without.”
If these are not the precise terms of the letter, at least I am sure that I have not altered the sense. The author of this letter had been employed under the Restoration; he had received many favors from both the last two monarchs; a compromise was made with him. I do not know what was the sum sent, but I do know that the person employed to mediate in this affair was successful; the threatened work was never published. Among the offers of services which reached Holyrood, some deserve particular mention for their singularity.
A hero of July, famous during the fatal days, and furious at not having been able to obtain some office, proposed to rally all the republicans among his friends to the cause of Henry V., and concluded his epistle by announcing that he would repair in person to the sea‐coast, and with his own hands place the plank of debarkation beneath the feet of the legitimate heir to the crown.
A personage who has for a long time figured under the Empire had despatched to England a very active agent, who offered, at the same time, his services to the princes of Holyrood, to the Duchesse de Berri, and to the heirs of Napoleon; meanwhile, the personage in question was negotiating at Paris with the republicans. The result of this quadruple piece of diplomacy was that he obtained employment from the government of Louis Philippe.
Already, during the period of their former exile, had the august occupants of Holyrood had but too many opportunities to estimate the real value of the offers, the schemes, the demands, the pretext for which was furnished by a projected restoration, of a crowd of ambitious and intriguing men. Wearied, as it were, by the variety of sentiments expressed towards them, the obliging interest they manifested was merely the effect of an exquisite politeness. Unhappily, in this indifference they lost sight of real devotion to their cause; they did not appear to have made any very great progress in the art of estimating men—an art the ignorance of which had been the cause of their second downfall.
And, besides, in order to receive these propositions with profit, to give them a useful direction, it would, first of all, have been necessary that the most important political point—that of legitimacy—should be settled and proclaimed.
Those who have asserted that there existed on this subject a perfect unanimity of opinion among the royal family and among their advisers as to the right to the crown in the present situation of affairs, either have not known all the truth, or else have concealed a portion of it, in conformity with their own political views. During his residence at Holyrood, Charles X. addressed to the principal courts of Europe a confirmation of his abdication at Rambouillet; but, besides that this confirmation, being declared free, indicates that the abdication was always considered as forced, and therefore null, Charles X., in this second instrument, expressly reserves to himself the regency of the kingdom.
The dauphin, on the other hand, positively refused to give a similar declaration. “I sign nothing,” said he; “not that I desire to dispute with my nephew a crown of which I am far from envying him the possession, but, on the contrary, in order to preserve it for him, in case the follies which are being committed in his name should render my reappearance necessary.”
Lastly, in regard to the Duchesse de Berri, no law, no historical precedent, could have been found to authorize her to consider herself regent of the kingdom during the minority of her son. Had not the abdication of Charles X. been conditional, and, besides, where could there have been found a states‐general legally convoked to recognize madame in this capacity?
The uncertainty on this point became a source of discussion for the various members of the suite. The servants of the king, those of the dauphin, and those of the Duc de Bordeaux held many grave arguments over their respective pretensions to the title of the royal household; but we must add that these all ended in discussion. The royal family, who lived together in a sincere and patriarchal union, appeared to take but little interest in these various opinions; whether it were that these unfortunate princes believed it impossible for them at this time to recover the crown, or whether they regarded the possession of it as something little desirable, they frequently conversed upon this subject as if it had been a question of historic right foreign to themselves. One opinion, one feeling, however, united them all, and this was that all rights to the crown must one day centre upon the head of Henry V., and that it was necessary to educate him in such a manner as to prepare him worthily to sustain this high destiny in case Providence should call him to it.
Here we must speak of the education which is being given to the young prince under the direction of the Baron de Damas. Much good, and also some evil, has been said of him. In the first place, however, it appears to me that too great importance has been attached to his functions. In order that the character of the governor should have any decisive influence over that of his pupil, it would be necessary for the two to live in comparative isolation. Perhaps, surrounded by all the pomp of the Tuileries, the fetters of etiquette might have tended to produce such isolation; but in the greater freedom consequent upon exile, interruptions of all kinds prevent this species of influence. At all hours of the day the Duc de Bordeaux is receiving new and varied impressions. He receives them from his teachers, from his professors, from his servants, from the strangers who approach him, from the paternal solicitude of his grandfather, from the gentle piety of his aunt, from the companionship of his young and charming sister; he receives them from his studies, from his exercises, from his travels, from his recollections—in short, from his misfortunes; for he is of an age and of an intelligence to understand and to feel them. We must take into account the combined influence of all these diverse impressions, in order to draw probable deductions as to the profit he is one day to receive from his present education.
At all events, if the Baron de Damas does not possess very enlarged ideas, his character is firm and upright. For many things he deserves commendation: he endeavors to prevent all flatterers from approaching his pupil; from those by whom he is surrounded he exacts nothing but sincerity and cheerfulness. And then, he is careful to admit to the presence of the young prince, in unrestrained confidence, all strangers, and especially all Frenchmen, who desire access to him, unless their request should be prompted merely by the wish to gratify an impertinent curiosity.
The office of M. de Damas has been envied, and even sought after, by some of those persons who style themselves the courtiers of misfortune, but who are perhaps merely the courtiers of greatness expected, or at least hoped for. But it may reasonably be doubted whether this governor could be replaced in a manner advantageous to the young prince. Among the notabilities of the present epoch who might be designated for this important position, is there one who combines the necessary qualifications? Would we seek among the number of those who, by their interested counsels or by their calculated disaffection, contributed to the overthrow of the throne of Charles X., for men to teach his grandson the art of restoring and of preserving the throne? Can we confide in these system‐mongers at a period like this, when all systems have made shipwreck? No; all that can be done is to make of the young prince a man of learning without pedantry, of sincerity without indiscretion, of courage without temerity. In the present age, in which everything indicates the necessity of a power strong enough to restrain the elements of anarchy introduced by sophists into society, in which the overthrow of ancient institutions leaves to power only the force it can obtain from armies, what is chiefly to be desired in the king of a nation like ours is military qualities combined with liberality, enlightenment, religion, prudence, and justice. Now, none of these conditions are wanting in the education which is now being given to the Duc de Bordeaux—neither proper methods on the part of the preceptors, nor the disposition to receive on the part of the pupil.
M. Barande, one of the most learned men of our time, instructs the young prince, with admirable precision, in the facts of history, combined with chronology and geography. The Abbé de Meligny explains to him with simplicity the doctrines of religion. M. d’Hardivilliers inspires him with a taste for, and a knowledge of, the fine arts. The first elements of the science of war form the subjects of his games and of his recreations. Young Henri rides on horseback, practises fencing, shoots with the pistol, speaks and writes several languages. His memory is unusually excellent; his discernment is beyond his age. The regular distribution of his time gives him habits of order and of diligence. His health, watched over by Dr. Bougon, is robust; his frame, fortified by exercise, is strong and agile. In a word, he is an intelligent, sprightly, vivacious child, and yet, withal, a reasonable one. There is no mother who would not be proud of him; no father whose every wish would not be gratified by the possession of such a son. Having thus sketched his portrait, I do not intend to imitate the enthusiasm of those who have gathered up and published his most unimportant remarks, and have even, in their exaggerated admiration, attributed to him, possibly, speeches of their own.
At the sight of this royal child, proclaimed, at the hour of his birth, future monarch of a great empire, and now entering upon his adolescence in exile, this reflection naturally presents itself: How if he had never been born?
Had he not been born, probably France would not have been disturbed. The partisans of the younger branch, certain of one day attaining to power, would have had patience; the republicans of July would not have been able to enter by the breach opened by the Orléanists and the disaffected royalists. His grandfather and his uncle might have died upon the throne.
Had he not been born, and had the double abdication still become indispensable, Louis Philippe would to‐day be more firmly seated on his throne than any monarch in Europe; for in him would be found resolved the great problem of the union of fact and of right, of legitimacy and of force.
Had he not bean born, ... but he has been born, he is growing to manhood, and in him are being developed all the characteristic signs of the rejuvenescence of his race. In this age of tribulations and of wonders, who may venture to sound the abyss of the future?
This was what was said at Holyrood, and it was added: “Did not M. Odillon Barrot, when, in the drawing‐room at Rambouillet, he executed the task assigned to him of announcing to Charles X. the hard decree of exile, pronounce the memorable words: ‘Sire, watch well over this royal child; one day he will be of importance to the destinies of France?’ ”
THE LIFE OF S. JOHN OF THE CROSS. By David Lewis. New York: The Catholic Publication Society. 1874.
Mr. Lewis has certainly deserved well of the inhabitants of Mount Carmel. His translation of that incomparable gem, S. Teresa’s Autobiography; his truly splendid work, the translation of the writings of S. John of the Cross, and now his Life of the latter saint, make up a series of works for which English Catholic literature is deeply indebted to him. The devoted and enthusiastic interest which S. Teresa, the Queen of Carmel, has inspired in modern times is something wonderful, though it cannot seem strange or surprising to any one who is acquainted with her history and capable of appreciating her character. Happily for the world, S. Teresa has found among her devotees several both able and willing to make her life and works known with an intelligent and painstaking zeal for which we cannot be too grateful. F. Bouix and Canon Dalton are conspicuous among these devout admirers of the modern glory of Carmel who have labored so faithfully and with so much pious and scholarly learning and taste to diffuse the light and fragrance of her sanctity and doctrine. Mr. Lewis devotes himself more especially to S. John of the Cross; but it was really only a part of the great work of S. Teresa which S. John executed, both by his labors and his writings. He was her spiritual son, the chief instrument of carrying out the reform with which she was inspired among the friars of the order of Carmel; and in his works he was, so to speak, S. Teresa’s theologian and expositor. Every one who has been interested in S. Teresa’s life must have wished for a good life of S. John of the Cross; and whoever has tasted of the delicious fountain of divine doctrine in his works must have desired it still more. Such a life Mr. Lewis has undertaken to give us, compiling it from the older Spanish biographies. Mr. Lewis’s biography of the saint is short and succinct, but very precise, accurate, and complete in its narrative of facts and events.
So far, it is what was wanted; and to one who has learned to know the interior life of S. John in his writings it is sufficient. It is not, however, in itself, by any means such a complete and adequate portraiture of S. Teresa’s counterpart and companion as we possess of herself, thanks to the happy thought of her confessor, who obliged her to write her own life, and to the devoted and affectionate biographers who have supplied so fully all that she herself omitted. The number of those who will read this Life with pleasure and profit must necessarily be a comparatively small one. And we forewarn all its readers, even devout Catholics accustomed to reading the lives of saints, that it requires a robust faith to avoid being scandalized or frightened by this one. S. John was most cruelly persecuted and maltreated by his own brethren and superiors of the Mitigated Rule, and even by one unworthy prior of the Reform. Moreover, the austerity of his life and the additional sufferings which God sent upon him may easily frighten and dismay most of us, soft and effeminate Christians as we are, when they are looked at as presented in a dry historical narrative, and apart from the inward consolations, the supernatural graces, the high contemplation, which made trials and crosses sweet to this great and heroic soul. We cannot, therefore, expect this book to be a favorite with the common run of even pious readers. But those who are capable of enjoying and profiting by it will be greatly rejoiced that it has been written and published.
WHAT IS DARWINISM? By Charles Hodge, Princeton, N. J. New York: Scribner, Armstrong & Co. 1874.
There is a great deal of modest wisdom in this small volume from the pen of one of the most learned and accomplished of the Princeton gentlemen. Dr. Hodge chiefly aims at showing what the real virus of Darwinism consists in, and finds it to be the denial of final causes, or virtual atheism. There is also a very good summary of arguments against the theory of evolution, and there are careful, well‐studied criticisms upon various writers of distinction upon themes connected with the author’s topic. We are glad to see that Dr. Hodge affirms the infallibility of reason—that is, its possession of first principles which are unerring, and its capacity of attaining to the knowledge of truth or true science. We do not approve, however, of his definition of scientific evidence as that which is attained through the senses, or his distinction between science and theology. It is most important to maintain the rights of philosophy and theology as the highest and most certain of sciences, having supremacy over all others. We suppose that Dr. Hodge admits this in regard to the things themselves, but we consider it important to retain even the terms by which the things are properly designated, and to resist at all points the impertinent as well as futile attempts of modern scientists to dethrone the queen of the sciences. The style and tone adopted by Dr. Hodge in this volume are remarkably quiet and moderate, and we trust that this characteristic of his manner of arguing with persons who are disposed to lend an ear to the sophistry of modern infidels will give it a readier access to their minds. There is, however, an excess of amiability in the praise which is awarded to Mathilde Blind’s “excellent translation” of Strauss.
We recommend this book without hesitation as one which, so far as it goes, is satisfactory and likely to prove very useful.
MADAME AGNES. By Charles Dubois. Translated from the French by M. P. T. THE FARM OF MUICERON. By Marie Rheil. Translated from the French by Mrs. A. B. S. New York: The Catholic Publication Society. 1874.
This brace of French novels, under one cover, comes very opportunely at this time, when careful teachers are on the lookout for premiums which will be at once attractive and safe to put into the hands of their young charges, and summer tourists are in search of literary provender to stow away in their portmanteaus and saddle‐bags. Those who have watched the progress of the stories through these pages are aware that the French literature which comes out under Catholic auspices is very different from that which reaches the public through the secular press.
We are inclined to look on The Farm of Muiceron as somewhat unique among recent works of fiction. The writer, as well as most of her characters, speaks the language of the French peasantry; and, if a more learned interlocutor is introduced, the author frankly tells us “not to expect her to explain the meaning of the big words he uses.” Should the reader thence conclude that the plot is weak, and its evolution more so—in fact, that he has taken up a goody‐goody book—he will speedily get rid of that absurd idea before he proceeds very far; and he will also be convinced that the translation of such a work requires peculiar qualifications. A knowledge of classical French will not alone suffice. An intimate acquaintance with provincial modes of thought and expression, and of such English equivalents for the idioms as will best preserve their racy flavor, are essential. This advantage we are satisfied the present version has, as the translator unites to a thorough knowledge of her own tongue a practical familiarity with the dialect intended to be represented. Every linguist knows the wonderful capabilities of the French language in its delicate shades and modulations of expression; and if the translation fails to reproduce them, the fault must be laid at the door of our unyielding vernacular.
We do not intend to anticipate the pleasure of the reader by any attempt to analyze the contents of either story. Some of the scenes of the second are laid in the midst of the stormy days of July, 1848, and hence many of its descriptions read like a page of contemporary history, and its pictures of rustic life are full of simplicity and pathos.
Madame Agnes will suit readers of a more serious cast, or the same readers in a different mood; and the two combined may serve as light and shade to each other. The solidity and gravity of the one sets off the vivacity and naïveté of the other. Madame Agnes is decidedly a story of real life in its lifelikeness to everyday experience, and its lessons may, perhaps, the sooner find their way to the reader’s heart and conscience for that reason.
THE NEW MANUAL OF THE SACRED HEART. Compiled and Translated from Approved Sources. Baltimore: Kelly & Piet. 1874.
Confraternities of the Sacred Heart will welcome this additional manual. It contains every kind of devotion that lovers of the Sacred Heart can wish for. We hope it will have a wide sale.
SINS AND ITS CONSEQUENCES. By Henry Edward, Archbishop of Westminster.
WHO IS JESUS CHRIST? Five Lectures. By the Right Rev. Bishop Hedley.
THE POPE AND THE EMPEROR. Nine Lectures. By the Very Rev. J. N. Sweeney, O.S.B., D.D. London: Burns & Oates. 1874. (New York: Sold by The Catholic Publication Society.)
Archbishop Manning’s sermons are plain, practical discourses in his usual clear and masterly style. Bishop Hedley’s lectures give an exposition of the Catholic doctrine of the Incarnation and the principal heresies which have sought to corrupt and subvert it, with an explanation of redemption and the Real Presence. They are both theological and eloquent. Dr. Sweeney sketches graphically the contests between the head of the church and the imperial power from Jesus Christ to Pius IX. Each of the three volumes is of small size, but full of instruction.
THE FRENCH PRISONER IN RUSSIA. Translated from the French by P. S., a Graduate of S. Joseph’s Academy, Emmittsburg. New York: The Catholic Publication Society. 1874.
It has been said that a French novel is either very bad or very good, and we are glad to be able to place the one before us in the latter category. It is the story of a French family, the head of which, an officer in Napoleon’s grand army, with his son, is taken prisoner during the Russian campaign, and sent to Siberia. No tidings having been heard from them after the disastrous retreat from Moscow, they are supposed to be dead, and the mother and only daughter, a most amiable and gentle girl, are thrown upon the world in poverty and sickness. When years have elapsed, and the ladies have succeeded in winning an humble competence, news arrives that the lost ones are alive; so the mother and daughter set out on a long and dangerous journey to effect their release. How they fared in their noble mission, and what dangers they encountered on the way, will be best learned from the book itself. The original tale is written in excellent French style, which is ever simple and fluent, and the translation appears to have been carefully made with proper regard to the idiom of our vernacular.
S. JOSEPH’S ASCETICAL LIBRARY. Edited by Fathers of the Society of Jesus. No. IX.: MEDITATIONS FOR EVERY DAY IN THE YEAR AND THE PRINCIPAL FESTIVALS. By the Ven. F. Lancicius, S.J. London: Burns & Oates. 1874. (New York: Sold by The Catholic Publication Society.)
The fact that Jesuits edit this library is its best guarantee and recommendation in respect to the sound and solid character of the works which will be included in its series. The well‐known good taste and literary culture of the English fathers of the society is a warrant for the care and skill with which the editorial work is performed. The present volume is most carefully and tastefully published, and its contents are of the best quality. The work itself is an old and standard one by one of the best writers of the society. The volumes of this library cannot be too strongly recommended to all devout Catholics.
THE HISTORY OF GREECE. By Professor Dr. Ernst Curtius. Translated from the German by Adolphus Wm. Ward, M.A. Vol. IV. New York: Scribner, Armstrong & Co. 1874.
We have already given an extended notice of the previous volumes of this work, and we now simply repeat the judgment previously expressed. It is the most complete, and, in many respects, it is the best history of Greece yet placed within the reach of the English reader.
GLORY AND SORROW; and SELIM, PASHA OF SALONICA. Translated from the French by P. S. New York: The Catholic Publication Society. 1874.
Here are more stories for premiums. While the didactic purpose is not lost sight of, the narratives are sufficiently enlivened to hold the reader’s attention throughout. In the first tale the young student is warned against the consequences of an excessive ambition for wealth and power; and contentment with his position in life is inculcated as a necessary condition of happiness. Selim is a tale of the wars between the Christians and Turks in the East.
CATHERINE HAMILTON. A Tale for Little Girls. By M. F. S. New York: The Catholic Publication Society. 1874.
We have no doubt this will prove a very attractive book to the little folks, and would be glad to see it widely circulated among them.
MAY PAPERS. By Edward Ignatius Purbrick, S.J. London: Burns & Oates. 1874. (New York: Sold by The Catholic Publication Society.)
This pretty book, just received in this country, was prepared originally for the use of the boys at Stonyhurst College. It is the first attempt, we believe, in English to adapt the instructions for the month particularly to young people, and we therefore think it worthy of special mention.
A Criticism.
LAFAYETTE, IND., April 21, 1874.
The article “On the Wing,” in THE CATHOLIC WORLD for May, is one of unusual merit; but in the haste of composition, the writer, at page 216, makes a mistake in stating that S. Peter’s Church at Rome was “built from the designs of Bernini, and completed by Michael Angelo.” Bernini had nothing to do with the edifice proper. He only built the baldacchino over the high altar and the colonnade in the public square adjoining the church. Michael Angelo completed the piers of the dome, and made a wooden framework on which to construct a dome; but the dome was constructed by Giacomo della Porta from designs of his own. The edifice proper was finished by Carlo Maderno, and on the plan of a Latin cross, the suggestion of Bramante, overruling Michael Angelo’s suggestion of the form of a Greek cross.
It is very seldom that THE CATHOLIC WORLD is at fault, even in ecclesiology; but I think here is a plain case.
Having made S. Peter’s something of a study both in Rome and at home, I feel myself at liberty to make you these comments. Yours very truly,
J. A. WILSTACH.
The poem “For ever,” originally sent to this magazine, and published in our May number, was also published in Lippincott’s of the same month, the author concluding, from its non‐appearance in THE CATHOLIC WORLD, that it had been declined.
THE CATHOLIC WORLD. VOL. XIX., NO. 112.—JULY, 1874.
A Discussion With An Infidel.
Dr. Louis Büchner’s work, Kraft und Stoff, first appeared in Germany in the year 1855, and met with such a favorable reception by a numerous class of ignorant or wicked progressionists(95) that from that year up to the end of 1870 it passed through ten German editions, without counting the several translations into other languages. The present writer had lately the fortune, or the misfortune, to be presented with an English copy of this abominable work,(96) and was informed that the knights of the square and the trowel had taken a special interest in its propagation. It could not be otherwise; for the work itself is a masonic work. No one who knows the true character of freemasonry, and has read the book, can have the least doubt of its masonic origin. Only a mason of the blackest dye could have displayed such a cool effrontery, artful dishonesty, and diabolic malice as the author of Force and Matter did in almost every page of his little volume. Dr. Büchner is one of those dangerous men who have a great talent for perverting truth. He knows how to dazzle the simple with brilliant quotations, how to perplex the acute with unanswerable riddles, how to entangle the cautious in a web of plausible objections. He knows how to supplant reason by rhetoric; and the more embarrassing his case, the greater is his assurance and the higher his pretension. It is in the name of science that he pretends to speak. Such is the fashion just now. Secret societies began their open war against the church and against God in the name of philosophy; when beaten on this ground, they appealed to liberality, then to progress, then to civilization, and now to science. All these words, on their lips, were lies. Freemasons and their cognate societies have never been fond of real “philosophy,” and never had truly “liberal” views. The world never made any “progress” in the right direction when it followed them; their pretended “civilization” never meant anything else than the tyrannical subjugation of the church by “civil” powers. And now their “science,” so far as it is theirs, is only a travesty and prostitution of truth. The world owes nothing to them except the increase of crime, the loss of public honesty, and the threatened triumph of villany.
With Dr. Büchner, as with many others of the same ilk, science is a mere pretext. His real object is to attack God’s existence, a future life, human liberty, and all those truths which underlie sound philosophy, morality, and religious belief. A work so well calculated to do harm, and which has already infected with its poison a numerous class of readers, needs refutation, and we will engage in the unpleasant task. We hope we shall be able to show that Dr. Büchner’s Force and Matter, all its pretensions notwithstanding, is, in a philosophical point of view, a complete failure. One ounce of truth and a cartload of lies is just what the doctor dispenses to his benighted admirers throughout the pages of his baneful production.
To make things clearer, and to give Dr. Büchner the best opportunity of speaking for himself, we have thought of putting the whole discussion in the form of a dialogue between the doctor and ourselves. We know that a lengthy conversation with such a sworn enemy of truth may prove disgusting in a high degree, as he will utter nothing but sophisms or blasphemies. But the sophist must be unmasked and the blasphemer confounded. We hope our readers will excuse us for paying such attention to an infidel writer; we would have ignored him altogether, if his work were not as dangerous as it is unworthy of a doctor.
I. Flippancy And Scholasticism.
Reader. Indeed, doctor, I fear that your Force and Matter will make you a bad reputation. Our most esteemed philosophers say that you are a sophist, and that a man of your attainments cannot be a sophist but by deliberate choice. They evidently imply that you are a knave and an impostor. As for myself, I confess that I do not see the cogency of your reasonings; but, before declaring you a knave and an impostor, I should like to hear from your own mouth what you may have to say in your behalf.
Büchner. I am not surprised, sir, at anything said against me. When I published my work, “I knew that my attempt was bold, and that I should have to sustain a fierce struggle with the prejudices of the age” (p. viii.) But “things cannot be represented different from what they are; and nothing appears to me more perverse than the efforts of respectable naturalists to introduce orthodoxy in the natural sciences” (p. xvii.) You say that our most esteemed philosophers call me a sophist. You mean the schoolmen, of course; in fact, the scholastic philosophy, still riding upon its high though terribly emaciated horse, conceives that it has long ago done with our theories, and has consigned them, ticketed materialism, sensualism, determinism, etc., to the scientific lumber‐room, or, as the phrase goes, has assigned them their historical value. But this philosophy, my dear sir, sinks daily in the estimation of the public, and loses its ground (p. xviii.)
Reader. I would remark, with your permission, that the public is not nowadays a very acute judge of these matters. For what does the public know of scholastic philosophy?
Büchner. By the public I mean the scientific world, sir.
Reader. The scientific world, dear doctor, knows very little of scholastic philosophy. I am sure you will not deny the fact. Can you tell me where, when, for how many years, under what professors, and in what books, your scientific men had an opportunity of studying scholastic philosophy? They have, no doubt, heard something of it—just enough to realize the fact that there was a science in the world of which they were profoundly ignorant. But this gives them no right to pass a judgment. I venture to say that neither you nor Moleschott, Feuerbach, Darwin, Tuttle, Huxley, or any of your school, have ever studied, or consulted, or perhaps even so much as touched with your hands, a single volume of scholastic philosophy.
Büchner. This may be; but it is quite enough for us to know that “the singular attempts of the old school to construe nature out of thought instead of from observation have failed, and brought the adherents of that school into such discredit that the name of natural philosopher has become a byword and a nickname” (p. xix.)
Reader. No, doctor. This is not true. The name of natural philosopher is still much respected and revered; and I trust nothing will ever succeed in making it despicable, except, perhaps, the shameless usurpation of it made by your friends, the free‐thinkers, whose philosophy is nothing but a mean conspiracy against truth. It is their fault, indeed, if the name of natural philosopher is sneered at when connected with their own persons. Why should they put on a garb which fits them not? If you call Moleschott or Darwin natural philosophers, every one certainly will smile; but call Ampère or Faraday by this name, and you will see every one take down his hat in sign of respect and approbation. Then, you should not imagine that because a few discoveries have been lately made by our men of science (I say a few, because most of them are only new applications of old theories, while many others are mere hypotheses), you should not imagine that we have acquired the right to despise the discoveries and the wisdom of all past ages. It was our forefathers who created modern science. Where would you be without a Kepler, a Galileo, a Newton, and scores of others, who laid down the ruling principles of all the branches of science? If they knew less than we do about empirical manipulations, they knew a great deal more about the conditions of legitimate speculation. To construe nature “out of thought instead of from observation” has never been their method; if I wished to retaliate, I could easily prove that it is yours.
Büchner (defiantly). Try, sir.
Reader. Well, since you challenge me, I shall ask you whether it is from observation, and not out of thought, that you have construed your “uncreated” matter. I know, and you also know, that it is only “out of thought.” But we shall have time to do justice to this and other topics. The point I now insist on is, that what you say of the scholastic method of “construing nature” is a rank calumny. Understand me, doctor. Natural science has two objects in view: the first is to ascertain the truth about natural facts; the second is to discover the nature of the principles and causes to which such facts must be traced. As the first of these two objects is attained by observation and experiments, so is the second by thought—that is, by reasonings based on the positive results of observation and experiment. Now, you must admit that the duty of the metaphysician is not to make observations or experiments. This belongs to the physicist. The metaphysician accepts the facts as ascertained by the physicist; and it is from such facts, not from thoughts, that he starts his speculation on the nature of things. Of course, if the physicist be wrong in his statement of facts, the metaphysician will be led astray and build a theory without foundation; yet the fault will not be his. And if the physicist be ignorant of some important law of nature, the metaphysician will be compelled to supply for the law with a guess at a probable hypothesis. This is in the nature of things. With a mutton‐chop you cannot make roast beef, can you?
Büchner. No, indeed.
Reader. I mean that our forefathers had not at their disposal such an abundance of means for investigating the secrets of nature as we now possess. Certainly, the most important of such secrets, before the time of Copernicus, were inaccessible to the metaphysicians. I allow, then, that the theory of the scholastics remained incomplete, and was most imperfect so long as universal attraction was unknown and chemistry undeveloped. But this proves nothing. The imperfection of the old physics gives you no right to affirm that the schoolmen construed nature out of thought. Speculation always implies thought; but to start one’s speculations from the data of observation, as it was customary with the scholastic philosophers, is not to reject observation.
Büchner. I demur to this statement, sir. It is well known that the old school was all grounded on the à priori method.
Reader. Certainly not, my dear doctor. One cannot reason without abstract principles; but when such principles are the result of experimental knowledge, it would be folly to pretend that they constitute an à priori method of construing nature out of thought instead of from observation. Do you demur to this also?
Büchner. What I assert, sir, is that “the times of the scholastic bombast, of philosophical charlatanism, or, as Cotta says, of intellectual jugglery, are passing away” (p. xix.)
Reader. You are not serious, doctor. First of all, you know nothing about scholastic bombast. Were you to read one page of any of our great scholastic doctors, you would be amazed at the simplicity of their style, and at the utter recklessness of your allegation. In the second place, the times of bombast and charlatanism are not passing away. Read Huxley. Can you find anything more bombastic than his Lay Sermons? Read Darwin. Is he not a philosophical charlatan? Read your own Kraft und Stoff....
Büchner. Brilliancy is not charlatanism, sir. It is a fact that while the pretended high speculations of the old school are hopelessly unintelligible, our discoveries, “by directing investigation to facts, have compelled thought to leave the misty and sterile regions of speculative dreams, and to descend to real life” (p. xxii.) Can you condemn us for this? “It lies in the nature of philosophy that it should be common property. Expositions which are not intelligible to an educated man are scarcely worth the ink they are printed with. The philosophical mist which envelops the writings of scholars appears intended more to conceal than to exhibit their thoughts” (p. xix.)
Reader. It is all a mistake, doctor. If you reflect for a moment on your oracular sentences, you will see that they are mere nonsense. You say that it lies in the nature of philosophy that it should be common property. I wonder if this can be true. I fancy that philosophy, like any other science or discipline which is acquired by study, is the property of those alone who have studied it; and I hope that no man of sense will contest such an evident truth. You say that philosophical expositions should be intelligible to every educated man; but this is true only on the assumption that the education of which you speak includes a thorough training in philosophy; which, unfortunately, is not the case with a great number of so‐called educated men. You say that whatever is clearly conceived can be clearly expressed; but you forget that what is clearly expressed for the scholar may still be obscure to the uninitiated. Is it possible that a doctor like you, and a president of a medical association, should overlook the fact that every science has a number of technical terms and scientific phrases which must be learned in special books and by special study before its speculations can be comprehended? It is therefore supremely ridiculous to talk of “the mist that envelops the writings of scholars.” Everything is misty to the uninstructed. Let him study, and the mist will disappear; for it is not the doctrine that wants clearness, but it is the eye of the ignorant that is blurred.
And now, what shall I say of that pompous phrase of yours, that modern discoveries “have compelled thought to leave the misty and sterile regions of speculative dreams, and to descend to real life”? I hope you will allow me to call it “modern bombast” and “philosophical charlatanism”; for I cannot call it by any other name. If you mean by such words to denounce Kant, Hegel, Schelling, and other German dreamers of the same school, I have nothing to say in their defence; but if you intend thereby to stigmatize the Catholic schools, to which you Germans, no less than the rest of the civilized world, owe your intellectual education, I cannot help saying, dear doctor, that your hostile insinuations are dictated by malice and hatred of truth. Why do you defame what you know not? How can you call a sterile region that speculative philosophy which formed all our great men? or dreams those evident conclusions against which reason cannot rebel without slaying itself? Is not this very strange in a doctor? You were confident that “intellectual jugglery,” to use Cotta’s expression, would be stronger than historical truth; but we are quite prepared to meet you on this ground as on others; for we Catholic thinkers are not afraid of bombastic words. We do not even think that your “jugglery” is at all “intellectual.” For is it intellectual to make sweeping assertions when you can give no proofs? Or is it intellectual to sneer at your opponents, instead of replying to their arguments? I presume, dear doctor, that your freemasons alone would see anything intellectual in such a proceeding.
Büchner. You imagine, sir, that I must be a freemason. I shall not answer that, as it has nothing to do with my book. Yet I wish to inform you that freemasonry everywhere favors the progress of “modern science”; and therefore I would not object to being called a freemason, whether I am one or not. But as to making assertions of which I give no proofs, I defy you, sir, to substantiate the charge; and as to my not replying to my opponents, I am sure you will modify your judgment when you examine the prefaces to the various editions of my work.
Reader. I accept the challenge. It will not be more difficult to give you full satisfaction on these two points than it has been to rebut your flippant denunciations of the scholastic philosophy.
II. Tergiversation And Jugglery.
Reader. You say, then, that in the prefaces to the various editions of your work you have replied to your opponents.
Büchner. Certainly I do.
Reader. I have read all your prefaces. In the very first you make this declaration: “We will not be in want of opponents; but we shall only notice those who speak from experience and combat us with facts” (p. xx.) This amounts to saying: “When we shall be attacked with any sort of arms, arrows, pistols, knives, swords, guns, and sticks, we shall not defend ourselves except against sticks.” Against sticks, of course, you may defend yourself by the use of other sticks; but, if you are attacked with artillery, will your sticks be to you a sufficient protection? You knew very well, when publishing your book, that you were to be attacked with reasons. To declare that you would notice only those adversaries who would attack you with facts was to declare that you were not ready to meet your real opponents.
Büchner. Against fact there is no reasoning.
Reader. This is not the question. It is true that against fact there is no reasoning; but when we argue against your false conclusions, we do not attack your facts, but your sophisms only, most erudite doctor.
Then you add that “speculative philosophers may fight among themselves from their own point of view, but should not delude themselves into the belief that they alone are in possession of philosophical truth” (p. xx.) These words reveal your tactics, which are: “Let them fight among themselves, and not against me; but if one of their number attacks me, and I cannot hold my ground, let him know that, if he is right, I also am right; for he is not alone in possession of philosophical truth.” This is, doctor, the silly plan of defence you have adopted and carried out against the attacks of Catholic philosophers. How can you, then, pretend that you have answered your opponents? I mean your real opponents.
When the Frankfurter Katholische Kirchenblatt took you to task for your impious and absurd publication, what did you answer? Here are your words: “We shall pass over the fierce denunciations of the Frankfürter Katholische Kirchenblatt, conducted by the parish priest, Beda Weber. The melancholy notoriety which that individual has acquired, as one of the most eccentric of the ultramontane party, permits us simply to dismiss him. We shall only tell the reader that the Frankfürter Kirchenblatt carries its hatred against the modern direction of science so far as to recommend the application of the criminal law against its representatives. The public may thus learn what these gentlemen are capable of, should they ever become possessed of power. The same bloody hatred with which science was once persecuted by religious fanaticism would revive anew, and with it the Inquisition, and auto‐da‐fés, and all the horrors, with which a refined zealotism has tortured humanity would be resorted to, to satisfy the wishes of these theological cut‐throats. We must turn from these enemies, quite unworthy of a serious refutation, to another opponent” (p. xxiii.) Here, then, you confess that you have cowardly turned your back to the enemy.
Büchner. Cowardly?
Reader. Yes. If you do not like the word, I will say prudently. In fact, the reason you allege—that such an enemy was unworthy of serious refutation—is a miserable pretext. Whoever is not blind can see that your furious declamation against Beda Weber was an impudent attempt at crushing, if possible, by insults, the man whom you could not defeat with reasons. It is mean and disgusting. What can your readers say when you dare not even let them know Beda Weber’s objections, on the plea that the reverend priest “has acquired a melancholy notoriety as one of the most eccentric of the ultramontane party”? If such is the verdict of the masonic lodges, we cannot but congratulate Beda Weber for the compliment paid to him. His very “hatred against the modern (masonic and infidel) direction of science” shows that he is a man of sound and clear judgment; and his opinion that “the criminal law” should be applied against the atheists and the corruptors of youth recommends him to us as a man of order and a true friend of civil society; for nothing is more necessary for the preservation of order and the peace of society than the enforcement of law. When such men make denunciations, they should not be “simply dismissed,” dear doctor. Religious fanaticism, refined zealotism, tortures of humanity, persecution of science, and the rest, even if they were not thread‐bare lies, would not authorize you to “simply dismiss” a learned opponent as unworthy of serious refutation. I will say nothing about that malicious insinuation concerning “what these gentlemen are capable of, should they ever become possessed of power.” Were they capable of any monstrosity, this would not help your defence of Force and Matter. But those gentlemen have been possessed of power for ages, and the nations redeemed from barbarism, and enriched with monuments of art, and with scientific, literary, and charitable institutions, show “what they were capable of.” Of course freemasonry is capable of something else; a glance at the present deplorable condition of Germany suffices to show what you are capable of when you are possessed of power. But, I repeat, were we as wicked, in your opinion, as you are in fact, this would be no reason for not answering our arguments. Your book is an attack against religion. The professors of religion are therefore your natural opponents. It is to them, therefore, that you owe your explanations. And yet this is what you publicly profess yourself unable to do.
Büchner. I never made such a profession.
Reader. You made it very openly. “With regard to parsons and ecclesiastics,” you say, “who never cease to enlighten and to assail us with their eloquence, we beg to repeat that we cannot discuss with them” (p. lxiv.) Of course you endeavor to cover your retreat, as usual, by pretending that “these good people have, from the beginning of the world, had the privilege of using their zeal and ignorance in crying down everything that does not suit their business” (ibid.); but this vile language only betrays your inability to cope with them. You are so generous as “not to disturb them in their vocation,” because “no rational man doubts the total incapacity of these gentlemen to enter upon such questions” (p. lxv.)
Büchner. Why should I answer them? They are mere theologians; and I maintain that “there is no theological or ecclesiastical natural science, and there will be none so long as the telescope does not reach the regions where angels dwell” (p. lxv.)
Reader. This is a very poor excuse, dear doctor. Theologians are not debarred from dealing with natural sciences. To mention no others, Copernicus was a canon; Secchi is a Jesuit; Moigno is a priest. Moreover, the subject of the question is not natural science, but your sophistry; and you cannot deny that ecclesiastical studies make men competent to judge of logical blunders. But, leaving all this aside, did you not try to refute the Allgemeine Zeitung, though you pretend that “in struggling with such pen‐heroes, it seems to you that you are acting like Don Quixote” (p. xxviii.)? Did you not fight, also, against Mr. Karl Gutzkow, although he, “as is well known, has never impeded the daring flight of his genius by the ballast of science” (p. xxix.)? And, to omit others, did you not do your best to answer the Allgemeine Kirchen Zeitung, although it meets you, as you say, “with theological eccentricity and rodomontades” (p. xxxvii.)? It would appear, then, that you are not afraid of accepting battle when you have any hope of overcoming your adversary. And therefore, when you shrink from answering your Catholic opponents, it is evident that you do so only because with them you have no hope of success.
Büchner. You are quite mistaken, sir.
Reader. No, indeed. I am certain that you cannot hold your ground against a Catholic opponent, and I am ready to show you immediately that such is really the case. I have already told you that your Force and Matter is a book full of sweeping assertions, of which no proof is given. You challenged me to substantiate the charge, and I have accepted the challenge. I say, then, that your very first proposition, on which all the other arguments employed in your work are ultimately based, is one of those assertions of which no proof is or can be given. Do you accept the battle on this ground?
Büchner. I do.
Reader. Please, then, what do you consider to be the fundamental proposition of your work?
Büchner. It is this: “No matter without force, and no force without matter” (p. 2).
Reader. Is this proposition altogether universal, so as to admit of no possible exception?
Büchner. Yes, sir, absolutely universal, without any possible exception.
Reader. Then please tell me on what grounds such an absolute universality can be established.
Büchner. On many grounds. First, as Dubois‐Reymond profoundly remarks, “fundamentally considered, there are neither forces nor matter. Both are merely abstractions, assumed from different points of view, of things as they are. They supplement and presuppose each other. Separately they do not exist. Matter is not like a carriage, to which the forces, like horses, can be put or again removed from. A particle of iron is, and remains, the same, whether it crosses the horizon in the meteoric stone, rushes along in the wheel of the steam‐engine, or circulates in the blood through the temples of the poet. These qualities are eternal, inalienable, and untransferable” (pp. 1, 2).
Reader. I would remark that the qualities of matter are not eternal. Of course, as long as matter continues to exist, its essential constitution must remain intact; but to say that the qualities of matter are eternal is to assume not only that matter will last for ever, but also that it has existed from all eternity. Science has no right to make this assumption, since it has no means of ascertaining its truth; for evidently eternity does not come under observation and experiment. But leaving aside this question, which we may examine later, I say that your quotation from M. Dubois does not account for the universality of your proposition.
Büchner. Hear Moleschott: “A force not united to matter, but floating freely above it, is an idle conception” (p. 1).
Reader. This is a mere assertion.
Büchner. Hear Cotta: “Nothing in the world justifies us in assuming the existence per se of forces independent of the bodies from which they proceed and upon which they act” (p. 2).
Reader. This is no proof. It is quite clear that those forces which proceed from the bodies cannot be independent of the bodies. But your proposition is that no force whatever can exist without matter; and therefore you should prove that all forces, without exception, are dependent on matter.
Büchner. First of all, we must admit that there is no matter without force. “Imagine matter without force, and the minute particles of which a body consists without that system of mutual attraction and repulsion which holds them together, and gives form and shape to the body; imagine the molecular forces of cohesion and affinity removed; what then would be the consequence? The matter must instantly break up into a shapeless nothing. We know in the physical world of no instance of any particle of matter which is not endowed with forces by means of which it plays its appointed part in some form or another, sometimes in connection with similar or with dissimilar particles. Nor are we in imagination capable of forming a conception of matter without force. In whatever way we may think of an original substance, there must always exist in it a system of mutual repulsion and attraction between its minutest parts, without which they would dissolve and tracelessly disappear in universal space. A thing without properties is a non‐entity, neither rationally cogitable nor empirically existing in nature” (pp. 2, 3).
Reader. Very good so far. But this is no recent discovery; it is an old truth constantly taught, and much more exactly expressed, by those schoolmen whom you imagine to have been “the persecutors of science.” Thus far, then, you have only rehearsed the old doctrine. But now you have to show that, as there is no matter without force, so also there is no force without matter.
Büchner. Yes. “Force without matter is equally an idle notion. It being a law admitting of no exception that force can only be manifested in matter, it follows that force can as little possess a separate existence as matter without force” (p. 3).
Reader. Take care, doctor! You are now assuming what should be proved. You assume a law, admitting of no exception, that force can only be manifested in matter.
Büchner. The law is known. “Imagine an electricity, a magnetism, without the iron or such bodies as exhibit these phenomena, and without the particles of matter, the mutual relation of which is just the cause of these phenomena; nothing would then remain but a confused idea, an empty abstraction, to which we have given a name in order to form a better conception. If the material particles capable of an electric condition had never existed, there would have been no electricity, and we should never have been able by mere attraction to acquire the least knowledge or conception of electricity. Indeed, we may say electricity would never have existed without these particles. All the so‐called imponderables, such as light, heat, electricity, magnetism, etc., are neither more nor less than changes in the aggregate state of matter—changes which, almost like contagion, are transmitted from body to body. Heat is a separation, cold an approximation, of the material atoms. Light and sound are vibrating, undulating bodies. Electrical and magnetic phenomena, says Czolbe, arise, as experience shows, like light and heat from the reciprocal relation of molecules and atoms” (pp. 3, 4).
Reader. Have you done?
Büchner. Yes, sir.
Reader. Is this all your proof?
Reader. Then allow me to state that you have not shown what you promised. You have proved, indeed, that the forces of matter exist nowhere but in matter; but as every one admits this, there was no need of your proof. Your duty was to prove the universal proposition, no force without matter; and therefore you had to show that there are no other forces than the forces of matter.
Büchner. This is evident; as “force can as little exist without a substance as seeing without a visual apparatus, or thinking without an organ of thought” (p. 4).
Reader. I am afraid, doctor, that you do not speak to the point. The question is not whether a force can or cannot exist without a substance; it is, whether there is no other substance than matter. Before denying the existence of force without matter, you must conclusively show that all substance is matter.
Büchner. “Nothing but the changes we perceive in matter by means of our senses could ever give us any notion as to the existence of powers which we qualify by the name of forces. Any knowledge of them by other means is impossible” (p. 4).
Reader. I should be glad to know how you can infer from such a remark that all substance is matter. What you perceive in material objects proves, indeed, the existence of matter and of the forces of matter; but how does it prove the non‐existence of other substances and of other forces? You, surely, imagine that our senses are our only source of knowledge, and that the supersensible, as unknowable, must be consigned to the region of dreams.
Büchner. Certainly. “We maintain that human thought and human knowledge are incapable of discovering or knowing anything supersensual. This is the necessary general result of modern investigation” (p. xli.)
Reader. A curious result indeed! By which of your senses do you perceive abstractions, such as philosophy, morality, affirmation, veracity? I put you the alternative: either show that you touch, hear, smell, taste, or see, with your material eyes, any of such abstract notions, or confess, according to the general result of your ridiculous modern investigations, that you can have none of such notions, and are essentially incapable of reasoning.
Büchner. You try to draw me out of the real question, sir.
Reader. By no means. It is your denial of our capability of knowing anything supersensual that draws us out of the question.
Büchner. My object was to show that there is no matter without force, and no force without matter. This proposition can be established without any special reference to our mental operations.
Reader. You may try; on condition, however, that our knowledge of the supersensible be not called in question.
Büchner. The science of force is physics. “This science makes us acquainted with eight different forces: gravitation, mechanical force, heat, light, electricity, magnetism, affinity, cohesion, which, inseparably united to matter, form and give shape to the world” (p. 18). Any force which cannot be reduced to a combination of these forces is therefore to be looked upon as chimerical. Nothing is more evident.
Reader. Evident? I think, doctor, if I were you, I would be ashamed of uttering such a rank sophism. You beg the question altogether. What right have you to assume that there are no real forces in the universe but those mentioned in our physical treatises? To assume this is to assume that there is nothing in the world but matter—the very thing which you should demonstrate. And therefore you are as far as ever from having shown your universal proposition, no force without matter. Indeed, you will never show it. Truth is stronger than you.
Büchner. Then tell me, sir, on what ground do you base your belief in the existence of supersensual forces?
Reader. Excuse me, doctor. We were not discussing the question, “What are my grounds for believing their existence?” Our question was, “What are your own grounds for proclaiming their non‐existence?” When a man makes an assertion contrary to the common belief, it is his duty to give good reasons in its support. If he cannot, let him give up his assertion, and go back to the common belief. Common beliefs, on the contrary, are in no need of special demonstration so long as they are not attacked with plausible reasons. That there are supersensual forces is a common belief. As you have failed to adduce any serious proof to the contrary, this common belief remains unshaken. You ask on what grounds I base my belief. I might answer that I base it on the ground of universal consent, and I might show that this universal consent must have a universal foundation, which cannot be invalidated. But I will tell you a special reason for admitting supersensual forces. It is that there are facts which cannot be accounted for by the forces of matter.
Büchner. What fact? Do you mean the exploded fact of creation?
Reader. I will soon come to the fact of creation, if you wish, and compel you to swallow back your nasty epithet. But the fact I alluded to was that the phenomena of consciousness and of volition are unaccountable, if there is nothing besides material forces. This you cannot deny; for you say you “cannot but acknowledge that in the relation of brain and soul, phenomena occur which cannot be explained from the simple physical relation of force and matter” (p. lxiv.) As long, therefore, as you admit nothing but matter and material force, there are facts which, by your own confession, cannot be explained. Thus, you see, not only have you failed to substantiate your fundamental assertion, no force without matter, but you are constrained, on your own showing, to admit forces that transcend matter.
III. Creation.
Reader. You say, doctor, that creation is an exploded fact. May I ask why?
Büchner. “Those who talk of a creative power, which is said to have produced the world out of itself, or out of nothing, are ignorant of the first and most simple principle, founded upon experience and the contemplation of nature. How could a power have existed not manifested in material substance, but governing it arbitrarily according to individual views? Neither could separately‐existing forces be transferred to chaotic matter, and produce the world in this manner; for we have seen that a separate existence of either is an impossibility” (p. 5).
Reader. I beg to remind you that we have not seen the impossibility of force without matter. All your efforts to show it have been vain. It is childish, therefore, on your part, to pretend that those who talk of a creative power “are ignorant of a first principle founded upon experience and the contemplation of nature.” The contemplation of nature is, on the contrary, the ladder by which rational creatures ascend to the knowledge of the Creator. You ask: How could a power have existed not manifested in material substance? I answer by another question: How could the world have existed, if no such power exists? This is the real question at issue. And pray, doctor, do not speak of separately‐existing forces transferred to chaotic matter. This is not the way we account for the production of the world. We do not admit of chaotic matter before creation. And again, do not suppose that we can ever dream of a Creator producing the world out of himself. We are not pantheists; and we know that the world has been produced out of nothing. This is the true notion of creation according to both theology and philosophy.
Büchner. Very well. But “the world could not have originated out of nothing. A nothing is not merely a logical, but also an empirical non‐ entity. The world, or matter with its properties, which we term forces, must have existed from eternity, and must last for ever—in one word, the world cannot have been created” (p. 5).
Reader. These are bold assertions indeed. How can you make them good?
Büchner. “The notion ‘eternal’ is certainly one which, with our limited faculties, is difficult of conception. The facts, nevertheless, leave no doubt as to the eternity of the world” (p. 5).
Reader. What facts, if you please?
Büchner. Here is one fact: “That the world is not governed, as is frequently expressed, but that the changes and motions of matter obey a necessity inherent in it, which admits of no exception, cannot be denied by any person who is but superficially acquainted with the natural sciences” (p. 5). Now, if the world is not governed by a superior power, we cannot make it dependent for its origin on any superior power. This leaves no doubt as to the eternity of the world.
Reader. I wonder, doctor, if you have ever learned or understood the first principles of philosophy. Young students may teach you that, from the necessity to which matter is subjected of obeying certain laws of motion, it is absurd to infer the necessity of its existence. What is subject to obedience is not independent, and what has a necessity of obeying is essentially dependent. Moreover, do you not see that what is subject to change cannot be necessary, and cannot be eternal? You appeal to natural sciences. This is ridiculous. There is no need of modern sciences to know that the phenomena of the material world follow an invariable law. This was known in all past ages; yet no man in his senses has thought of concluding that therefore matter was a necessary being. Pagan philosophers, who had lost the primitive traditions of mankind, admitted uncreated matter without further examining the question; but none of them pretended to prove the eternity or necessity of matter from its subjection to definite laws of motion. The absurdity of such a deduction is manifest. Suppose a geometrician were to argue thus: What follows an invariable and necessary law exists from eternity; but every triangle follows this invariable and necessary law: that the sum of its angles equals two right angles; and therefore every triangle exists from eternity. What would you reply?
Büchner. I would reply that the laws of geometry are mere abstractions.
Reader. And so are all physical laws also. When a thing exists, it cannot but be what it is according to its essence. If it is a figure of geometry, it exists according to geometric laws, and has its geometric properties; and if it is a material substance, it cannot but have the properties of matter, and so long as it exists it cannot but retain the same properties. This is evident. But from the fact that a thing existing is necessarily subject to the laws of its nature you cannot conclude that it necessarily exists, unless, indeed, you are not even superficially acquainted with the laws of reasoning. Hence it is clear that your argument has no weight.
Büchner. “But that a power—taken for the once in its abstract sense—could only exist so long as it is active is no less clear. In assuming, therefore, a creative absolute power, a primeval soul, an unknown x—it matters not what name we give it—as the cause of the world, we must, in applying to it the notion of time, say that it could not have existed either before or after the creation. It could not have existed before, as the notion of power is not reconcilable with the idea of nothing or inactivity. It could not have been a creative power without creating something. We must, therefore, suppose that this power has for a time been inert in the presence of chaotic and motionless matter—a conception we have already shown to be absurd. It could not have existed after the creation, as rest and inactivity are again incompatible with the notion of force. The motion of matter obeys only those laws which are inherently active; and their manifestations are nothing but the product of the various and manifold accidental or necessary combinations of material movements. At no time and nowhere, even in the most distant space reached by our telescope, could a single fact be established, forming an exception to this law, which would render the assumption of a force external, and independent of matter, necessary. But a force which is not manifested does not exist, and cannot be taken into account in our reasoning” (p. 6). What do you answer, sir?
Reader. I answer that this pretended argument cannot entrap any one but an ignorant man, or one who desires to be cheated or to cheat himself. And first I observe that you begin by surmising that the Creator would be “an abstract power”; now, the surmise is an absurdity. Secondly, you suppose that we “assume” a creative absolute power—which is not the case; for we do not assume its existence, but we prove it. Thirdly, you call the Creator “a primeval soul, an unknown x”; and both expressions are very wrong indeed. Fourthly, you say that we must apply to the Creator “the notion of time”—which is sheer folly; as every one knows that time has no existence but in the successive changes of created things. Even you yourself say that “the mere application of a limited notion of time to the creative power involves a contradiction” (p. 7). And therefore, when you affirm that the creative power “could not have existed either before or after creation,” you commit a great blunder by assuming that before creation there should have been time. But leaving aside all this, and supposing that the phrase “before the creation” may be understood in a legitimate sense as expressing the priority of eternity and not of time, I will come directly to your argument.
You say that a creative power could not exist before creation, “as the notion of power is not reconcilable with the idea of nothing or inactivity.” This reason proves nothing, except, perhaps, your ignorance of logic. Try to reduce your argument to the syllogistic form, and you will see what it amounts to.
Büchner. The syllogism will run thus: A power can exist only as long as it is active. But the creative power before the creation was not active. Therefore the creative power could not exist before the creation. I hope this proves something else than my ignorance of logic.
Reader. And yet your logic is sadly at fault. Do you not see the equivocation lurking in the middle term? What do you mean by active? Does this word stand for acting, or for able to act? If it stands for acting, then your major proposition is false; for a power exists as long as it is able to act, although it is not actually acting. This is clear; for have you not a power of talking as long as you are able to talk, although you may actually be silent? If, on the contrary, the word active stands for able to act, then it is your minor proposition that will be evidently false; for the creative power, before the creation, was able to create the world, although we conceive it as not yet creating anything. Hence your nice syllogism is a mere sophism, and your conclusion a blunder.
Your other assertion, “It could not have been a creative power without creating something,” is likewise sophistical. For the epithet “creative” in your argumentation means “able to create”; and consequently it does not entail actual creation, but only its possibility. Thus the blunder is repeated.
But you proceed: “We must, therefore, suppose that this power has for a time been inert in the presence of chaotic or motionless matter.” In these few words I find three mistakes: First, you again introduce time where there can be nothing but eternity; secondly, you assume that a power not exercised is inert—which is false, because inertness means destitution of self‐acting power; thirdly, you put chaotic and motionless matter in the presence of the creative power before this power has been exercised—which is to assume that chaotic matter was not created, but only received movement. You understand, doctor, that in arguing, as you do, from the point of view of your adversaries, you cannot take such liberties. If you wish to refute creation, you must take it as it is understood and defended by its supporters; or else you will only refute your own hallucinations. But I will not insist on these latter remarks. I made them only that you may better realize how deficient and miserable is your method of reasoning.
Büchner (bitterly). Thank you for the compliment.
Reader. However, I have more to say; and I hope, doctor, that you will not lose your temper, if I proceed onward in the same strain. In the second part of your argument you say that the creative power “could not have existed after the creation, as rest and inactivity are again incompatible with the notion of force.” This is evidently a mere reiteration of the sophism just refuted. If the reason you allege had any weight, it would follow that, when you have ceased curing a patient, your medical power would vanish, and, when you have ceased talking, your talkative power would be extinct; in fact, rest and inactivity, according to you, are incompatible with the notion of power. I say “power,” although you here make use of the word “force,” which is calculated to mislead your readers. The word “force” is frequently used to express a quantity of movement; and, of course, rest and movement exclude one another; hence to designate the creative power by the name of “force” may be a dishonest trick, though a very clumsy one, to inveigle readers into the belief that rest and creative power are incompatible. Here, however, I must point out another great blunder, which a man of your talent should have been able to avoid. There is a truth, doctor, of which you seem to be quite ignorant, though certainly you must have heard of it more than once. It is that the creative power, after the production of creatures, does not remain inactive. Creatures need positive conservation, and would fall into nothingness were they not continually kept in existence by the same power by which they have been first brought into being. Hence the creative power is always at work. What is, then, your supposition of its inactivity but a new proof of your ignorance?
What you add concerning the motion of matter has no importance. I might admit with you that, prescinding from miracles (which you are blind enough to deny), “at no time and nowhere, even in the most distant space reached by our telescope, could a single fact be established which would render the assumption of a force external, and independent of matter, necessary.” This, however, regards only the stability of the laws of motion; and it would be absurd to infer that therefore the existence of matter and its conservation need not be accounted for by an external cause. But you again give a proof of your ignorance by adding that “the motion of matter obeys only those laws which are inherently active.” What does this mean? Try to understand the term “law,” and you will see that to call law “inherently active” is an unpardonable nonsense. And hoping that this suffices to show the absolute worthlessness of your pretended argument, I will let you go on with your other allegations.
Büchner. You do not reflect, sir, that in your theory the creative power must have been idle for an eternity; and this cannot be admitted. For “to consider the power in eternal rest, and sunk in self‐contemplation, is an empty arbitrary abstraction without any empirical basis” (p. 6).
Reader. Not at all, doctor. To consider God in eternal rest is not an empty arbitrary abstraction; it is a real and necessary conclusion from incontrovertible premises. Is it philosophical to assume, as you do, that creation would likely put an end to God’s eternal rest? God always rests unchangeably in himself, whether he actually exercises his creative power or not. He has in himself his happiness, and in himself he rests for ever independently of creation. This we say without thinking for a moment of your “empirical basis.” For we know that it is a silly thought, that of endeavoring to find an empirical basis for a purely intellectual truth. But if by the want of an empirical basis you mean a want of known facts from which to show God’s existence and infinite perfection, then your duty would have been to substantiate your assertion by showing that such facts are not real facts, or have no connection with the existence of a supreme being. This you have omitted to do, and thus all your argument consists of bold assertions, not only without proofs, but without the possibility of proof.
Is it not strange, then, that you fancy to have cornered your readers, and compelled them to resort to the most absurd fictions to uphold the existence of a creative power? You say, in fact, that they have no other resource but to admit “the singular notion that the creative power had suddenly and without any occasion arisen out of nothing, had created the world (out of what?), and had again, in the moment of completion, collapsed within itself, and, so to say, dissolved itself in the universe” (p. 7). Indeed, were we as stupid as any creature can be, we would still find it impossible to dream of such a foolish assumption. You add that “philosophers and others have ever cherished this latter notion, believing that they could, by this mode of reasoning, reconcile the indisputable fact of a fixed and unchangeable law in the economy of the universe with the belief in an individual creative power” (ibid.) I do not hesitate to tell you, doctor, that nothing but hatred of truth could prompt you to utter such a gross lie.
Büchner. Yet “all religious conceptions lean more or less towards this idea” (p. 7).
Reader. This I deny.
Büchner. Let me explain. Philosophers admit the idea, “with this difference: that they conceive the spirit of the world reposing after the creation, but yet, as an individual, capable of again suspending his own laws” (p. 7).
Reader. This explanation is not to the point. Your assertion implied that philosophers and others ever cherished the notion that the creative power had suddenly arisen out of nothing, and that all religious conceptions lean more or less towards this idea. This is what I challenged you to show. Does your explanation show it? On the contrary, it shows that the idea towards which religious conceptions lean is quite different.
Büchner. Be this as it may, “conceptions of this kind cannot concern us, not being the result of philosophical reasoning. Individual human qualities and imperfections are transferred to philosophical notions, and belief is made to occupy the place of actual knowledge” (p. 7).
Reader. I perceive, doctor, that you are persistently wrong. It seems as though you could not open your mouth without uttering some false or incongruent assertion. What are those conceptions which “cannot concern us”? Are they not the dreams you have just imagined? How, then, do you insinuate that the existence of a creative power does not concern us, because your dreams are not the result of philosophical reasoning? And pray, who ever “transferred individual human qualities and imperfections to philosophical notions”? Has this phrase any intelligible meaning? Lastly, it is evidently false that, in order to admit a creative power, “belief is made to occupy the place of actual knowledge.” The existence of God is a philosophical truth; now, philosophy is a method of knowledge, not of belief.
I trust I have sufficiently exposed your “intellectual jugglery” to let you see that you are at best a charlatan, not a philosopher.
Dante’s Purgatorio. Canto Fourteenth.
NOTE.—This canto, like the preceding (XIII.), illustrates the sin of envy, which Dante deems a special vice of the Florentines, against whom and the other inhabitants of Valdarno he inveighs with a bitterness that savors more of the style of the Inferno than of “the milder shade of Purgatory.”
In the Thirteenth Canto, Envy has been rebuked by voices of love and gentleness; as, for instance, the kindly comment of the Virgin at the marriage feast of Cana, “They have no wine.” These and similar words are the scourge which the envious have to endure. But the bridle, Dante says, are tones of a contrary import, such as the terrific voice of Cain, who passes by in a peal of thunder, but invisible, followed by the dreadful cry of Aglauros, described in the concluding paragraph of this canto.
“What man is this who round our mountain goes, Before that death has let his pinions free, Who doth at will his eyelids ope and close?” “I know not; but am sure not sole is he: Demand thou of him who the nearest art, And gently ask, that he may deign reply.” Thus to the right two spirits there, apart, Bent each toward each, conferred as I came nigh; Then turning up their faces as to speak, One said: “O soul! that still in mortal hold Art on the way thy home in heaven to seek, For charity console us, and unfold Whence comest, and who art thou? for the grace Accorded thee in us the wonder wakes Due unto things which ne’er before had place.” And I: “Through middle Tuscany there flows A brook whose founts in Falterona spring, Nor do an hundred miles its current close: From that stream’s banks this body of mine I bring: ’Twere vain to tell you how my title goes; For yet my name hath not much heralding.” “If well I probe the sense thou hast conveyed With intellect,” the first who spake replied: “Thou meanest Arno!”—and the other shade Said to the former: “Wherefore did he hide That river’s name as men are wont to do Of things most horrible?”—and then the one Whom that inquiry was directed to, Discharged him thus:
Guido Del Duca.
“Why he that name doth shun I cannot tell: but meet it is the name Of such a valley perish from the earth! Since from its head (where so abounds the same Great alpine chain which cast Pelorus forth, With springs that few spots are impregnate more) To where it seeks, arriving at the main, What the sky sucks from ocean to restore (Whence rivers have what waters they contain), Virtue by all is hunted for a foe As ’twere a snake;—whether from fault of place Or evil custom goading nature so: Wherefore that miserable valley’s race Have changed their kind to that degree ’twould seem Circe had pastured them. Among brute swine, More fit for mast than human food, the stream Winds its poor way; then, lower down its line, Finds curs that snarl beyond their power to bite, And turns from them his nostril as in scorn. Falling it goes, and more it grows in might, The curst ditch finds that of those dogs are born A pack of wolves. Through many a whirlpool then He comes to foxes in deceit so deep They fear no catching by more crafty men. What though o’erheard, no silence will I keep! And well for this man, if in mind he bear What my true spirit unfolds. One of thy blood Shall hunt those wolves. I see thy grandson there Harrowing the borders of that savage flood; All fly before him, all are in despair: He makes a market of their living flesh, Then, like old beasts for slaughter, lays them low: Staining his fame with many a murder fresh; He comes all bloody from that wood of woe, Leaving such wreck that in a thousand years To its primeval state it shall not grow.”
Like one whose visage alters when he hears Ill hap foretold, as ’twere in dread which way The blow may strike, I saw that other soul Stand turned to hear, disturbed and in dismay, Soon of those words as he had grasped the whole. His troubled air, and what the other said, To know their names wrought in me such a thirst That I with prayers direct inquiry made. Wherefore the shade who had addrest me first Began again: “Thou wouldest that I deign Do thee a grace I did in vain beseech; But since the will of God in thee so plain Doth favor show, I will not stint my speech; Therefore know this: Guido del Duca am I. My blood with envy was so burnt, so bad, Thou mightst have seen me livid grow and dry Had I but seen another’s face look glad. Such of my sowing is the straw I reap! O human race! why bring your wishes down To pleasures that exclude all partnership? This is Rinieri; this the prize and crown Of Casa Calboli, whereof no child Hath made himself an heir of his renown. Nor yet alone hath his blood been despoiled, ’Twixt Po, the Pennine, Reno and the shore, Of what best needs for truth and happiness; For through those borders there be plenty more Of stock so bad, to make their venom less By cultivation ’twere but vain to try. Where is good Lizio? and Mainardi? Where Pier Traversaro and Carpigna’s Guy? O Romagnuoles! what bastard shoots ye bear, When sprouts a Fabbro in Bologna, when Bernardin Fosco makes Faenza heir From coarse grass to a growth of gentlemen! No wonder, Tuscan, at my weeping thus While I recall, remembering them so well, Guido of Prata when himself with us, And Ugolin of Azzo, used to dwell: Frederic Tignoso and his goodly troop; The Traversara, Anastagi race; Now disinherited both houses droop! Ladies and knights, the toils repose and grace They wrapt us in of courtesy and love There where the best blood such bad hearts debase! “O Brettinoro! why dost thou not move From thy proud seat, thy family wholly gone, And many more, to shun corruption’s course? Bagnacaval does well to have no son, And Castrocaro ill, and Conio worse To breed such Counties taking further pains: And well enough too, when their devil is dead, May the Pagani do, though some remains Bear witness ’gainst them of impureness fled. O Ugolin de’ Fantoli! most sure Is thy good name, since no degenerate head Is looked for now its brightness to obscure. But go thy ways now, Tuscan! more delight I find in weeping than in words—too stirred By this talk of our country.” We were quite Sure those dear souls our way’s direction heard, And from their silence knew that we went right.
Soon as proceeding we became alone, A voice, like lightning when it strikes, did say, Rushing on tow’rds us with its thunderous tone, “Whoever findeth me the same shall slay!”(97) Then fled as thunder, when the bolt is thrown From the torn cloud, in rumbling dies away. When on our ears a moment’s truce there fell, Another crash came of like rattling shock As of a rapid thunder, peal on peal: “I am Aglauros, who became a rock!” On this, I drew back from my forward pace To cling for shelter close behind the bard, And when the air was hushed in all its space, He said to me: “That was the bit(98) full hard Which should each man within his limit stay. You take the bait so fondly that the small Hook of th’ old enemy makes you his prey, And bridle boots you naught, nor warning call. Heaven calleth to you, and the eternal round Shows you of beauties that about you roll, And still your eye is grovelling on the ground; Wherefore He smites you who discerns the whole.”
Translated, By Permission, From The French Of Madame Craven, Author Of “A Sister’s Story,” “Fleurange,” Etc.
Lorenzo, Duca di Valenzano, belonged to one of the noblest families of upper Italy; but his mother was a native of Sicily, and it was from her he inherited his title as well as the fortune already in his possession, which would be considerably increased if an important lawsuit (the usual accompaniment of a Sicilian inheritance), which brought a great part of it into litigation, should terminate successfully. His object in coming to see my father was to place this business in his hands; and, after his first visit, he usually came once or twice a week. At first he merely bowed to me as he passed, or, at most, addressed me a few words on leaving the room. The remainder of the time was spent in looking over voluminous documents with my father. Nevertheless, these visits soon became a little incident in my monotonous life, and I began to look forward to them with a certain impatience.
The duke, at this time, was scarcely more than thirty years of age; but he by no means seemed young in my eyes. A few premature wrinkles and an observant, thoughtful look imparted a gravity to his face which was not, however, its prevailing expression; for it was frequently ironical and sarcastic to the last degree, and so mobile that it was not always easy to decide on the impression it left. His general appearance, however, was noble and striking, as well as the tone of his voice, which involuntarily commanded attention to all he said.
Several weeks elapsed without any other variety than the few moments, more or less prolonged, which he passed at my table at the end of each visit. He generally made some unimportant remarks respecting my lessons, my bird, or my flowers, which he noticed I cultivated with a care somewhat unusual in our clime. In fact, he only spoke to me as he would to a child. I replied in a corresponding tone, and, very soon, not only without embarrassment, but with a pleasure I made no attempt to conceal. I had begun to be devoured by ennui in so inactive and solitary a life, and I eagerly welcomed any diversion that came in my way. My father, at such times, remained silent and grave, and seemed somewhat impatient when these brief conversations were prolonged a little more than usual.
One day, when the duke approached my table as usual, I had a large atlas open before me, and he noticed that I was examining the map of Asia. I was studying without any effort, and yet with a certain interest resulting from curiosity which, added to an excellent memory, made me an unusually good scholar. The duke looked at the map a moment, and, after some observations that excited my interest, he pointed to a place near the Himalaya mountains, and remarked: “One year ago to‐day I was there.” I knew his extensive travels had rendered him celebrated, as well as his success as a sculptor, doubly surprising in a man of his rank and so enterprising an explorer. I had acquired this information from conversations respecting the duke since his arrival at Messina, where his presence had caused a sensation.
On this occasion, seeing my interest strongly excited, he seemed to take pleasure in giving an account of that remote region, which I sometimes interrupted by questions that appeared to surprise him. The facility with which I was endowed made me really superior in many respects to most girls of my age; and as for information, I might have been considered a phenomenon in my own country.
The conversation that day might have been indefinitely prolonged had not my father found a pretext for abridging it by suddenly proposing to take the duke to the further end of the garden, in order to examine some ruins and a Greek portico on a height from which there was an admirable view. The duke looked at me, as if he wished I could join in the walk; but my father not seconding this mute suggestion, he was forced to accompany him, not, however, without giving me, as he left the room, a look that seemed to express compassion, interest, and respect.
As soon as I was alone, I abruptly closed my atlas, rose from my seat, and abandoned myself to a violent fit of irritation and grief, as I hurried with long steps through the extensive gallery, exclaiming aloud against the undue sternness and severity of my father.... He did not see that he was thus rendering the seclusion he had imposed upon me beyond my strength to bear—a seclusion that would have been transformed by one word of affection, sympathy, or even kindness. Instead of this, did he not even appear to be annoyed that I should receive any from this stranger?
It was impossible for me to resume my studies. I had an hour to wait before Ottavia would come, as she did every day, to accompany me to the garden—as if I were a mere child, instead of being allowed to wander at my own pleasure till sunset. Hitherto I had endured everything humbly; but my patience was now exhausted, and I felt a disposition to revolt which I only repressed with difficulty. Was this merely against a régime of such excessive severity, or was it the result of a slight return of confidence in myself inspired by the interest, and almost deference, which this stranger had just manifested? It was doubtless both; and the consequence was, I felt an agitation I could not subdue, and an irrepressible longing for any change whatever in a mode of life that had become insupportable. Tired of walking up and down, I at last took a seat by the window, where I could, at a distance, see my father and his client. I watched them with an attention that soon diverted my thoughts and ended by wholly absorbing me.
I at once noticed that, instead of proceeding to the end of the garden to see the ruin my father had spoken of, they had stopped in a broad alley leading from the house to a white marble basin, in the form of a vase, which stood in the centre. This alley, bordered with a clipped hedge of box, extended beyond the basin to a small grove of olive‐trees leading to the hill it was necessary to ascend in order to see the ruin. They seemed to have wholly lost sight of the proposed object of their walk; for when I first saw them, they had scarcely reached the basin, and were now slowly returning towards the house. The duke appeared to be listening to my father, every now and then striking the hedge they were passing with a stick he held in his hand. All at once he stopped, and, passing his arm through my father’s, he led him to a bench, on which they both sat down. I could see them distinctly, and, without hearing what they said, could distinguish the sound of their voices. It was the duke’s I now heard. At first he spoke with his head bent down, as if with some hesitation, but by degrees with more animation and fire, and finally with clasped hands, as if pleading some cause or asking some favor.... Once he raised his eyes towards the window where I was, though he could not see me. Was he speaking of me?... Had he ventured to intercede in my behalf?... I looked at my father anxiously. His face expressed the greatest surprise as well as extreme dissatisfaction, but it gradually changed. He became very attentive; and when at last the duke extended his hand, he took it in his, and seemed to be making some promise. Then they rose and resumed the way to the house, but by a shady path where my eyes could no longer follow them.
That day our dinner was less gloomy than usual. My father conversed with Mario as he had not done for a long time, and the latter, with satisfaction, attributed to himself this change (which, to do him justice, had been the object of persevering effort). But Livia, who had more penetration, saw there was some other reason; for she speedily observed that this change was especially evident towards me. In fact, for the first time since the fatal day that seemed like a dividing line in my young life, I once more saw in my father’s eyes the fond look I was formerly accustomed to; and this paternal and almost forgotten expression gave me new life and a sensation of joy and happiness that made me raise my head as a flower beaten down by the storm looks up at the first return of the sun.
The explanation was not long delayed. The next day my father sent for me at an earlier hour than I generally went to him, and after a preamble which I scarcely comprehended, and which by no means served to prepare me for what I was about to hear, he informed me that the Duca di Valenzano had asked for my hand. I remained stupefied with astonishment, and my father continued: “It was impossible to expect a proposal like this for one of my daughters; but however brilliant it may be, I should unhesitatingly decline it were not the duke personally worthy of love and esteem. As to this I am satisfied from all I hear respecting him. But it is for you to decide about accepting his hand. I will not impose my will on you. Consider the subject, Ginevra. The Duca di Valenzano will come this evening to receive your reply.”
My father might have said much more without my thinking of interrupting him. I was in such a state of utter amazement that I could hardly realize what he said, and the perspective thus suddenly opened before me conveyed no definite idea to my mind. It was easier to believe he was jesting with me than to suppose such a man as the duke would propose for me to become his wife!...
I returned to my chamber extremely agitated, and this feeling was not diminished by witnessing my sister’s emotion and Ottavia’s noisy demonstrations of joy when I told them of the proposal that had just been communicated to me. The Duca di Valenzano was not only a person of high rank, but he was thought to possess every accomplishment, and it was evident that every one looked upon my consent as a matter of course.
Un homme accompli! Before going any further, I cannot help stopping to remark here to what a degree the world, generally so severe, shows itself indulgent in certain cases; and how often this indulgence is shared even by those who try to think they are not influenced by external circumstances! Assuredly neither my father, nor my sister, nor the simple Ottavia attributed the favorable impression produced on their minds to the brilliant position of this unexpected suitor, or the special merit he had acquired in their eyes, to the mere fact of his having thought of sharing his lot with me.
It would have been difficult for me to express my own feelings, for I hardly understood their nature. I was flattered; I was touched; I was even very grateful, for it was evident that the duke had begun by pleading my cause with my father, and hitherto he had been by no means unpleasing to me. Why, then, could I not think of him now without a kind of repugnance, fear, and aversion? And why did I feel as if I should prefer never to see him again? I asked myself these questions, at first silently, and then aloud, as was often my habit when with Livia and Ottavia, who, though so different from each other, were nevertheless so alike in their affection for me.
“That is quite natural, carina,” replied Livia. “You scarcely know the Duca di Valenzano, and the very word marriage is one of serious import, and even fearful, when it falls for the first time on the ears of a young girl. But this will pass away.”
“Do you think so?”
“Oh! yes. I am sure of it. When you know him better, and especially when he, in his turn, comprehends the qualities of your mind, and heart, and soul, he will conceive such an affection for my dear Ginevra that she will soon love him in return, and not a little, I imagine.”
“I think so, too,” said Ottavia, laughing. “They say he is very captivating, to say nothing of his being one of the greatest and wealthiest noblemen of Italy. Ah! ah! what a different tone those wicked people will assume who say....”
Livia looked at Ottavia, who stopped short.
“Livia! do not stop her,” I exclaimed. “Go on, Ottavia; I insist upon it. I wish to know what wicked people you refer to, and what they say.”
Ottavia once more regretted her precipitation, and would rather have remained silent; but I continued to question her till she acknowledged some people had taken the liberty of saying I should never marry on account of “what had taken place.”
“What a vague, cruel way of speaking!” exclaimed Livia indignantly. “Everybody knows now there was nothing, absolutely nothing at all, in that gossip; that it was all a mere falsehood.”
“Everybody?” ... I said with sudden emotion. “But has not my father continued to treat me as if I were culpable?” Then after a moment’s silence, I added: “Do you think these falsehoods have come to the ears of the Duca di Valenzano?”
“How can I tell?” replied Livia. “And of what consequence is it? His proposal shows that he is sure, as well as we, that you have nothing at all to reproach yourself for.”
I made no reply. A new thought struck me, and I felt the necessity of being alone, in order to reflect on what had been suggested by her words. I therefore left my two companions abruptly, and took a seat at the end of the terrace on a little parapet that looked on the sea, and there I remained nearly an hour.
That night, when the Duca di Valenzano returned, my father, at my solicitation, told him that, before coming to any decision, I wished to have some private conversation with him. It was not without difficulty I induced my father to convey this message; but the duke immediately assented, and with so much eagerness that it might have been supposed my request had only anticipated a wish of his own.
I was in my usual place in the gallery, and alone, when the duke entered at the appointed hour. I rose, and extended my hand. He was astonished, I think, to find me so calm, and perhaps so grave, and looked at me a moment in silence, as if he would divine what I was going to say to him. Seeing that I remained silent, he at length said:
“Donna Ginevra, I thought myself skilled in reading the expression of your eyes; but in looking at you now, I cannot tell whether the word that is about to fall from your lips is yes or no.”
I found it difficult to reply; but overcoming my embarrassment at last, I succeeded in saying:
“Yes or no?.... If I only had that to say, M. le Duc, I could have charged my father with it.... But before speaking of the reply I am to make, I must make one request. You must tell me sincerely what you think of me, and I will afterwards tell you with the utmost frankness wherein you are mistaken.”
He looked at me with an attentive air, and then smiled, as he said:
“Tell you what I think of you?... That might lead me to say more than I have yet the right to say. But I will tell you, Donna Ginevra, what I do not think, and, in so doing, I shall, I imagine, comply with your request. Let me fully assure you I attach no importance whatever to the words of a coxcomb; and I would call any one a liar, and treat him as such, who would dare to repeat them!...”
He saw, by the expression of joy that flashed from my eyes, that he had guessed aright.
“Poor child! ... poor angel!” he continued, “it would be strange indeed if I took any other attitude than this before you.” And he was about to kneel at my feet, when I eagerly prevented him.
“Do not do that, I beg of you!” I exclaimed. “And say, if you like, that I am a child, but do not call me an angel.... Oh! no, never say anything so far from the truth! Listen to me, for I requested this interview only that you might know all—what is true as well as what is false.”
“What is true?” he said in a slight tone of surprise.
“Yes. Listen to me. I thank you for not having believed what ... what was said concerning me, for that, indeed, was false. I am, however, culpable, and it is right you should know it. Perhaps you will then change your mind, and think no more about me.”
He looked at me again, as if he would read the depths of my soul.
“Is it with this design,” he said, “that you speak so frankly?”
I knew not what reply to make, for I no longer knew what I wished. I found a charm in the mingled tenderness and respect of which I so suddenly felt myself the object. Besides, I had suffered greatly from my long seclusion, and my heart involuntarily turned towards him who was trying to deliver me from it.... My fear and repugnance vanished beneath his sympathetic look.
“No,” I said at last, “it is not for that reason.”
“Then speak frankly,” he said, “and let me hear this important revelation, whatever it may be.”
“And will you promise solemnly never to reveal my secret?”
“Yes, I solemnly promise.”
In spite of the solemnity of his words, I saw it was with difficulty he repressed a smile. But when he saw the agitation produced by the recollections thus awakened, his expression became serious. For a moment a cloud came over his face; but in proportion as I entered into the details of that last night of my mother’s life—my thoughtlessness, my shock, and, finally, my despair and repentance—he became affected, and listened with so much emotion that his look inspired me with confidence, and I finished without fear the account I had begun with a trembling voice.
As has been seen, I thought myself more guilty than I should have been had there been any truth in the vague, unmerited reproaches I had endured; for the slight fault I had really committed seemed indissolubly connected with the fearful calamity that followed!... That was why I thought myself unpardonable, and why I preferred to endure the most unfounded suspicions concerning me rather than reveal the truth to any one in the world—above all, to my father. But it seemed to me I ought not, for the same reason, to conceal it from him who had so generously offered me his hand, whatever might be the result. I therefore continued, and he listened without interrupting me. When I had ended, he spoke in his turn, and what he said decided the fate of my life.
I already felt relieved by the complete revelation of a secret I had hitherto kept with an obstinacy that was perhaps a little childish. And in listening to the soft accents of his sonorous, penetrating voice, my heart was more and more comforted, and soon allowed itself to be persuaded into what it was sweet and consoling to believe—that, as he said, I exaggerated the consequence of my thoughtlessness; that if I had afflicted my mother, I had time to ask and obtain her forgiveness; that I was ignorant of her dangerous condition, and, when I became aware of it, I supposed I had been the cause; ... but all this was unreasonable.... And as to the flower.... Here he stopped, and his brow darkened for a moment. “Answer me frankly,” he said slowly; “if Flavio Aldini were still alive, if he were here under this window to‐day, and implored you to give him that little sprig of jasmine I see in your belt....”
He had not time to finish.
“Is it possible,” I exclaimed, “you, who say you understand me, who pretend to have read my heart, can mention a name that has become so odious to me?...”
Then I continued, I imagine to his great surprise:
“You are the first to whom I have acknowledged the fault he made me commit, for I do not consider the ear of the priest to whom I confessed it as that of man. There I experienced the indulgence of heaven, and was forgiven by God as well as my mother.... But would you know what cost me the most that day? Not, certainly, my sorrow for the past; not my firm resolutions as to the future; nor even the humble acceptation of all the humiliations that have been inflicted on me.... No, what cost me the most was to promise to overcome my resentment, to subdue the bitterness awakened by the very name of Flavio, and to utter it every day in prayer for the repose of his soul!...”
I was, in speaking thus, very remote from the regions familiar to Lorenzo. While I was uttering these words, my face was lit up with an expression very different from any he had ever seen there. He gazed at me without seeming to hear what I said, and at length replied with evident emotion:
“I thank you for telling me this, though one look at you is sufficient to efface all doubt, as darkness vanishes before the approach of day.”
After a moment’s silence, he resumed: “And now, Ginevra, I implore you to delay no longer the reply I have come to receive.”
The recollections of the past had made me forget for a few moments the present; but these words recalled it, and I looked at him as if confounded. There was a moment’s silence. My heart beat loudly. At length I silently took from my belt the little sprig of jasmine he had just spoken of, and gave it to him.
He understood the reply, and his eyes lit up with gratitude and joy. I felt happier than I had anticipated. Was not this, in fact, what I had dreamed of, what I had longed for—to be loved? And would it not be easy to love in return such a man as this?
As these thoughts were crossing my mind, and I lowered my eyes before his, he suddenly said:
“Do you know how beautiful you are, Ginevra?”
At these words I frowned, and a blush rose to my forehead which once might have been caused by gratified vanity, but now was only occasioned by sincere, heart‐felt displeasure. “Never speak to me of my face, I beg of you,” I said to him, “unless you wish to annoy or displease me.”
He looked at me with the greatest astonishment, though he felt no doubt as to my perfect sincerity, and, taking my hand in his, said:
“You are a being apart, Ginevra, and resemble no one else in any respect. It will be difficult sometimes to obey your request, but I will do so.”
Had I been able to read Lorenzo’s heart, I should, in my turn, have been astonished, and perhaps frightened, at the motives that had induced him to link so suddenly his life with mine.
The beauty of which I was no longer vain; the talents I possessed without being aware of it; the strangeness of finding me in a kind of captivity, and the somewhat romantic satisfaction of delivering me from it and changing my condition by a stroke of a wand—such were the elements of the attraction to which he yielded; and if it had occurred to any one to remind him that the girl who was about to become his wife had a soul, he would very probably have replied by a glance of surprise, a sarcastic smile, or a slight shrug of his shoulders, as if to say: “Perhaps so, but it does not concern me.”
It happened in this case, as often happens in many other circumstances, that a word, a look, or the tone of a voice impresses, persuades, and influences, and yet (perhaps for the happiness of the human race) does not reveal the inner secrets of the soul.
My engagement was announced the next day, and the last of May appointed for the marriage. There was a month before the time—a month the remembrance of which still stands out in my life like a season of enchantment. The restored confidence of my father, joined to the thought of our approaching separation, had revived all the fondness of his former affection. Lorenzo had succeeded in making him regret the excess of his severity towards me. Indebted to him, therefore, for the return of my father’s love as well as the gift of his own, he seemed like some beneficent genie who had dispersed every cloud, and restored to my youth the warm, golden light of the sun. I thanked him for this without any circumlocution, and sometimes in so warm a manner that he must have been the most unpresuming of men to suppose me indifferent to the sentiments he so often expressed, though not so ardently as to disturb me. He respected the request I made the first day. He suffered me to remain the child I still was, in spite of having experienced such varied emotions. Perhaps the strong contrast he thus found in me formed a study not devoid of interest to a man blasé by all he had seen and encountered in the world.
The preparations for so brilliant a marriage completely filled up the time of the busy Ottavia, who was charged by my father to omit nothing in the way of dress requisite for the fiancée of the Duca di Valenzano. Mario, prouder than he was willing to acknowledge of an alliance that reflected lustre on the whole family, showed himself friendly and satisfied. Besides, the transformation that had taken place in my whole appearance within a few months, as well as in my way of life, had softened his manner towards me; and the more because he attributed the merit of it to himself, and often repeated that, had it not been for him, my father would not have had the courage to persevere in a severity that had had so salutary a result. He loved me, however, as I have had occasion in the course of my life to know; but as there are people in the world who are kind, and yet are not sympathetic, so there are also many who on certain occasions manifest some feeling, and yet are not kind. Mario was of the latter class. At certain times, on great occasions, he seemed to have a heart capable of affection and devotedness; but, as a general thing, it was rather evil than good he discovered in everything and everybody, without excepting even those with whom he was most intimately connected, and perhaps in them above all.
Livia alone, after the first few days, seemed to have a shade of thoughtfulness and anxiety mingled with her joy, and Mario, who observed it, unhesitatingly declared it was caused by the prospect of remaining an old maid, doubly vexatious now her younger sister was about to ascend before her very eyes to the pinnacle of rank and fortune. But I knew Livia better than he, and, though unable to read all that was passing in her soul at that time, I was sure that no comparison of that kind, or any dissatisfied consideration of herself, had ever crossed her mind.
But I did not suspect that her pure, transparent nature, as well as the instinct of clear‐sighted affection, enabled her to see some threatening signs in the heavens above me that seemed to every one else so brilliant with its sun and cloudless azure. But the die was cast, and it would have been useless to warn as well as dangerous to disturb me. She therefore confined herself to reminding me of all my mother’s pious counsels. She made me promise never to forget them, and she, too, promised to pray for me. But when I told her she must continue to aid me with her advice, and remain true to her rôle of my guardian angel, she shook her head, and remained silent.
One day, when I spoke in this way, she replied: “Do not be under any illusion, Ginevra. Marriage is like death. One may prepare for it, one may be aided by the counsels, the prayers, and the encouragement of friends till the last moment; but once the line is crossed, as the soul after death finds itself alone in the presence of its God, its heavenly bridegroom, to be eternally blessed by his love or cursed by its privation, so the wife finds herself alone in the world with her husband. There is no happiness for her but in their mutual affection. If this exists, she possesses the greatest happiness this world can afford. If deprived of it, she lacks everything. The world will be only a void, and she may still consider herself fortunate, if this void is filled by sorrow, and not by sin!...”
“What you say is frightful.”
“Yes, it is frightful; therefore I have never been able to covet so terrible a bondage. O my dear Gina! may God watch over you....”
“You terrify me, Livia. I assure you I should never have regarded marriage under so serious an aspect, from the way in which people around us enter into it.”
Livia blushed, and her eyes, generally so soft, assumed an expression of thoughtfulness and severity.
“I am nearly twenty‐six years old,” she said, “and am therefore no longer a girl, as you still are. But in a few days you will assume the duties of womanhood. You will place your hand in Lorenzo’s, and pronounce the most fearful vow there is in the world. Let me therefore say one thing to you, which I am sure is the faithful echo of your mother’s sentiments, and what she would certainly tell you likewise. Ginevra, rather than imitate any of those to whom you refer, rather than seek away from your own fireside a happiness similar to theirs, it would be better for God to call you to himself this very hour. Yes,” she continued with unwonted energy, “sooner than behold this, I would rather—I who love you so much—I would far rather see those beautiful eyes, now looking at me with so much surprise, close this very instant never to open again!”
I was, indeed, surprised. For were not these words, or at least the idea they conveyed, what I had found written in the little book Livia had never read, and was it not my mother herself who actually spoke to me now through the voice of my sister?...
This conversation left a profound and painful impression on me, but it was counteracted by the increasing attachment Lorenzo inspired. During this phase of my life I only perceived his charming, noble qualities, the unusual variety of his tastes, his mental endowments, and, above all, his love for me, which it seemed impossible to return too fully. It would have required a degree of penetration not to be expected of one of my age to lift the brilliant veil and look beyond. Therefore the natural liveliness of my disposition, which had been prematurely extinguished by successive trials of too great a severity, gradually revived. It was no unusual thing now to hear me laugh and sing as I used to. The influence of this new cheerful life counteracted the effects of the factitious life I had led the previous year. Under Lorenzo’s protection, and escorted by Mario, I was allowed to take long rides on horseback, which restored freshness to my cheeks, and inspired that youthful feeling which may be called the pleasure of living—a feeling that till now I had been a stranger to. My mind was developed by intercourse with one so superior to myself, and who endeavored to interest and instruct me. In a word, my whole nature developed and expanded in every way, and for awhile I believed in the realization here below of perfectly unclouded happiness.
A sad accident, however, occurred, which cast a shadow over the brief duration of those delightful days. It was now the last day but one before our marriage, and for the last time we were to make an excursion on horseback, which was also to be an adieu to the mountains, the sea, and the beautiful shore that had been familiar to me from my infancy. For, immediately after, we were to leave Messina; and though it was to go to Naples, I thought more of what I was about to leave than what I was to find, and the melancholy of approaching separation seemed diffused over all nature around me. Our horses were waiting at a gate at the end of the garden, which, on that side, opened into the country. Mario and Lorenzo had gone before, and I was walking slowly along to join them, holding my skirt up with one hand, and leaning with the other on Livia, who was going to see our cavalcade set off.
Mario had already mounted his horse, but Lorenzo, on foot beside Prima, my pretty pony, was waiting to help me mount. He held out his hand. I placed my foot on it, and sprang gaily up. As soon as I was seated, he stepped back to mount his own horse, while Livia remained beside me to arrange the folds of my long habit. Just then the wind blew off her light straw hat, to which was attached a long, blue veil, and both passing suddenly across my horse’s eyes before I had fairly gathered up the bridle, he took fright. I was unable to check him. He sprang madly away, bearing me along the narrow alley leading from the garden to the highway. I heard the screams of those who remained motionless behind, but nothing afterwards except a hum in my ears. A flash seemed to pass before my eyes, but I retained my consciousness. I realized that I was lost. The alley, like that in the garden, was bordered with a thick hedge of box extending to the road, which was here at an immense height along a cliff overlooking the sea and protected by a low parapet. My ungovernable horse was evidently about to leap over it and precipitate me below.... I recommended myself to God, dropped the bridle, gathered up the folds of my habit with both hands, and, murmuring the words, Madonna santa, aiutate mi!(99) I allowed myself to fall on the hedge which bordered the alley. I might have been killed in this way no less surely than the other; but I escaped. The thick, elastic box yielded to my weight without breaking, which prevented me from receiving any harm from the fall. I remained stunned and motionless, but did not lose my senses. I know not how many seconds elapsed before I heard Lorenzo’s voice. I opened my eyes, and smiled as I met his gaze. I shall never forget the passionate expression of love and joy that flashed from his pale, terrified face, which was bending over me! He raised me from the verdant couch where I lay, and pressed me in his arms with mute transport. I, too, was happy. I felt an infinite joy that I had been saved and was still alive. I leaned my head against his shoulder, and closed my eyes. My hat had been thrown off, and my hair, completely loosened, fell almost to the ground. In this way he carried me back amid cries of joy from those who had followed us. Nothing was heard but exclamations of thanksgiving to God and the Virgin when, escorted by a crowd swelled by all on the road or in the neighboring fields, who had perceived the accident, we arrived at the principal entrance to the house. There they made me sit down, and in a few moments I was sufficiently restored to realize completely all that had happened.
Lorenzo continued to support me, and poured forth his joy in tender, incoherent words. My father embraced me. Ottavia wept, as she kissed my hands. Mario himself was affected. In the first moment of confusion I did not notice that my sister alone was wanting. But this absence soon struck me, and I eagerly asked for her, calling her by name as I looked around me. There was a moment’s hesitation, and I saw two of the servants near me making the odious sign of which I have already explained the signification. And—must it be said?—Lorenzo’s hand that held mine contracted also, and I saw that he, likewise, was so absurd as to wish to protect me in this way. I rose.... I no longer felt the effects of the fall I had just had. I pushed them all aside, and him the first. The circle around me opened, and I saw my sister, pale and motionless, leaning against one of the pillars of the vestibule! I forgot everything that had occurred. I thought of nothing but her, and threw myself on her neck.
“Do not be alarmed, my dear Livia,” I said loud enough for every one to hear. “I assure you I have received no injury. I thought you were more courageous. It does not seem like you to be so frightened. The Madonna, you see, has protected me. I know you said a fervent Ave Maria for me when you saw me so swiftly carried away, and your prayer was heard....”
Livia pressed me in her arms without speaking, and tears began to flow from her eyes. Leaning on her arm, and refusing assistance from any one else, I started to go to my chamber. But just as I was leaving the porch a thought occurred.
“And my poor Prima,” I said. “What has become of her?”
The reply to this question made me shudder. The poor animal had sprung over the parapet, and fallen down the precipice into the sea!... Our delightful excursions had ended in a sinister manner, and more than one painful feeling mingled with my joy at having escaped so great a peril. My heart felt heavy and oppressed, and my first act on entering my chamber with Livia was to fall on my knees before a statue of the Madonna, which, in honor of the month of May, was brilliant with lights and flowers.... Livia knelt beside me, but her prayer was longer than mine, and I saw that she continued to weep as she prayed.
“Come, Livia,” I said to her at last, not wishing her to suppose I thought her sadness could have any other cause than my accident, “your distress concerning me is unreasonable. You weep as if I had been carried by my poor Prima to the bottom of the sea, instead of being here alive with you.”
Livia rose, wiped her eyes, and smiled.
“You are right, Gina,” she said in a calm tone. “I ought to profit by the few moments we have together, for we shall not be left alone long. I have something to tell you, dear child—something that will surprise you, perhaps—not about you, but myself.”
I looked up in astonishment.
“Let me first put up your long, thick hair, and take off your habit, so soiled and torn. Then you shall sit quietly down there, and I will tell you what I have to say.”
I allowed her to do as she wished, and obeyed her without reply or question. She appeared thoughtful and agitated, and I saw there was something extraordinary on her mind.
When I had, according to her injunction, taken the only arm‐chair there was in my chamber, Livia seated herself on a stool near me.
“Listen to me, Gina,” she said. “It will not take long for what I have to say. Do not interrupt me. You are really here before me,” continued she, passing her hand over my hair in a caressing manner, and looking at me affectionately. “God has protected you, and I bless him a thousand times for it. But say if, instead of this, the horror of seeing you disappear for ever had been reserved for me an hour ago—me who love you more than my own life—do you know to what the witnesses of this catastrophe would have attributed it? Do you know what, perhaps, they think now?...”
I blushed in spite of myself, but made a negative sign, as if I did not comprehend her.
“You shake your head, but you know very well what Lorenzo and Mario would have thought, and who knows but my father himself, and everybody else?... Was I not beside you this time also? Did I not bring you ill‐luck?... Did not every one around you just now have this idea in their minds, and were they not ready to exclaim, ‘Jettatrice’—‘Jettatrice,’ ” repeated she in a stifled voice—“a name harder to bear than an injury, more difficult to defy than calumny, it is really on her to whom it is applied, and not those she approaches, this fatal influence falls!”
“Livia!” I exclaimed, turning red once more, but trying to laugh, “is it really you, my pious, reasonable sister, who uses such language? The folly to which you allude has more than once vexed me to tears, and I must confess I cannot now bear that you should seriously speak to me in such a way.”
Livia smiled, as she embraced me, and I saw it pleased her to hear me reply in this manner. But she soon resumed more gravely:
“You know very well, Ginevra, what I think of this myself. Therefore for a long time I despised this folly, and endeavored to overcome the cruel impression it left upon me; for,” continued she, her voice trembling with emotion in spite of herself, “it is a peculiarly hard trial, you may suppose, to feel your heart full of tenderness, sympathy, and pity for others, and yet seemingly to bring them danger and misfortune.... For instance, to extend your arms to a child and see its mother hesitate to allow you to take it, or even to look at it. But let us change the subject. I have never alluded to this trial, and, if I speak of it now, it is not to excite your sympathy, but, on the contrary, to tell you I am no longer to be pitied. The hour that has just passed was horrible, it is true, but it put an end to my hesitation and doubt. I see my way clearly now, and peace has returned to my soul.”
Her eyes, though still full of tears, wore an expression of celestial joy. I looked at her with astonishment, but did not try to interrupt her. She continued:
“Gina, my darling sister, you have found your sphere, and I have found mine. May God grant you all the happiness, yes, all the joy, to be found in this world! But it will not equal mine. Pity me no longer, I repeat. It is to me he has given the better part.”
Her voice, her accent, and her looks expressed more than her words. I understood her, and was seized with strange emotion. Yes, very strange! and a feeling very different from what might have been supposed.
I loved Livia, and my approaching separation from her filled me with so much sorrow as to dim my happiness. Now I felt that a barrier even more insurmountable than distance was to come between us. It was not, however, affliction on my part, or pity for her, that I experienced. It was—shall I say it?—an inexplicable feeling of respect and envy—a vague, unreasonable wish to follow her; a mysterious aspiration for something higher, nobler, and more perfect than wealth, position, rank, and the éclat so soon to surround me, and more precious than the love itself that had fallen to my lot!
I remained a long time incapable of making my sister any reply, my eyes, like hers, fastened on the far‐off horizon, now tinged with the softest evening hues.
O my God! a ray of the same light fell on us both at that moment; but for her it was the pure, calm light of the dawn; for me it was like a flash of lightning which gives one glimpse of the shore, but does not diminish the darkness of the coming night or the danger of the threatening storm.
Anglican Orders.(100) I.
Canon Estcourt’s book is, in all respects, a most remarkable one, and can hardly fail to make an era in the controversy. It is a monument, not merely of successful research, but of that intimate acquaintance with a very complicated and difficult subject which nothing but the assiduous labor of years can give. It is perfectly calm and judicial both in its tone and in its conclusions; for learning, like charity, is long‐ suffering. It does not contain, we believe all parties will admit, a single instance of overstrained or ad captandum argument, whilst moving with measured pace to its unassailable conclusions. So studiously gentle has Canon Estcourt been throughout in his language, and so scrupulous in his choice of weapons, that we can hardly wonder if some of his Catholic readers are startled as though the trumpet had given an uncertain sound, and if Anglicans, like the executioner’s victim in the story, hardly know at first that the fatal blow has been struck.
The scope which Canon Estcourt proposes to himself (p. 3) is to ascertain the value of Anglican pretensions to orders as judged by the standard of Catholic theology. Anglicans have professed themselves anxious that the Holy See should reconsider their case. They insist that the practice of ordaining converts from the Anglican ministry who aspire to the priesthood is, upon Catholic principles, inconsistent with any real knowledge of the history of Anglican ordinations.
Few things, we suppose, would surprise a Catholic more than to find that the authorities of the church had been pursuing a course in regard to Anglican orders which, though morally justified by a host of suspicious circumstances, yet was not in accordance with the real facts of the case. Still, such a misfortune, however improbable, is not inconceivable. There is nothing incompatible with the principles of the Catholic faith in the supposition that the Holy See may have been practically misled in a matter of historical evidence, where such misleading could involve no misrepresentation of truth and no fatal mischief. It would have been otherwise had a formal decision been given upon any point of doctrine, as, for instance, the validity of this or that form; or, again, if the decision, though merely practical in its form, yet, like the admission of Greek orders at Florence, had held an integral portion of church life dependent upon its correctness.
We think Canon Estcourt has proved that Anglican orders, regarded in the light of the latest research into their documentary history, are thoroughly untrustworthy; and that any reconsideration of their case by the authorities of the church could only result in a confirmation of the ancient practice. He shows, 1st, that the consecration, under any form, of Parker’s consecrator, Barlow, is doubtful, and that it is exceedingly doubtful if the assistance of Bishop Hodgkin at Parker’s consecration would make up for the inefficiency of the consecrator. 2d. That, although certain deficiencies in the Anglican form for the priesthood, upon which various Catholic controversialists have laid stress, are not in se invalidating, yet that, regard being had to the genesis and context of the form, and to the theology of those who framed and first used it, it cannot be regarded as an implicit signification of the Catholic doctrines of the priesthood and the sacrifice—such as a form consisting of the same words might be, amongst Greeks or Abyssinians—but as an implicit denial of the same. Thus the Anglican form is substantially different from any form which the church has accounted as even probable, and is quite inappropriate for conferring the “potentiam ordinis.”
Before proceeding to examine Canon Estcourt’s treatment of the two main points of the question, the status of Parker’s consecrator, and the value of the Edwardine form, it will be well to consider an objection that may be brought against him from the Catholic side. It may be urged that, in his anxiety to do justice to his opponents, he has allowed them to assume a better position than they have any right to occupy. Anglicans owe the assumed assistance of a duly consecrated bishop at Parker’s consecration, and the assumed use of a form as Catholic as the Edwardine, to the assumed correctness of the Lambeth Register. This document records that on the 17th of December, 1559, Parker was consecrated at Lambeth, according to the rite of Edward VI., by Barlow, Coverdale, Scory, and Hodgkin. Of these, Coverdale and Scory had been consecrated by undoubted bishops, using the Edwardine rite; Hodgkin by an undoubted bishop, using the Catholic rite. This Register was first produced by Francis Mason in 1616; and even Canon Estcourt, whilst granting the truth of its main statements, denies that it can be accepted as “an authentic and contemporaneous account of the facts as they occurred.” On the other hand, there is a time‐honored account which has long passed current amongst Catholics, and which still finds able and zealous defenders amongst their number.(101) According to this account, at a meeting held at the Nag’s Head inn in Chepeside, Scory alone performed the ceremony upon Parker and sundry other ordinandi, by laying the Bible upon their head or shoulders, and saying, “Take thou authority to preach the word of God.” Here, whatever may be said of the consecrator, the form is confessedly insufficient.
Canon Estcourt, following Lingard and Tiernay, simply rejects the Nag’s Head account as controversially worthless, and accepts that given by the Lambeth Register as substantially correct. We think that he is amply justified in so doing. Of course, however, each account must stand upon its own basis, and the rejection of the one does not involve the admission of the other.
The Nag’s Head Story.
As Canon Estcourt, in his enumeration of sources of evidence (p. 11), remarks, “A story that has passed from person to person merely by verbal tradition, even if names are quoted as authority, but without written testimony, cannot be accepted as evidence, nor allowed to have weight as an argument, even it considered probable as an historical fact.” Now, it is notorious that the Nag’s Head story depends merely upon hearsay testimony, without a particle of documentary evidence. Whatever vague rumors may have been current, there is no proof that the story ever assumed a “questionable shape” until F. Holiwood (Sacrobosco) published it in 1604. Stapleton, one of our most learned and vigorous controversialists, in a work published only five years after the date assigned to the Nag’s Head consecration, does not mention it; and, moreover, says in so many words that the Anglican bishops were consecrated according to the rite of Edward VI. Neither has Saunders a word of it among all his well‐merited vituperation of the “Parliament bishops,” in his Clavis Davidica; nor Rischton, the continuator of his De Schismate. These writers certainly lacked neither information nor courage. It is true that when once the Nag’s Head story was brought out, controversialists on either side were apt to interpret the expressions of the earlier Catholic writers as referring to this particular charge; but when we turn to them, we find nothing more than the general charge of invalidity.(102)
Dr. Champneys, who wrote in 1616, relates the story upon the authority of F. Bluett, a prisoner in Wisbech Castle, who said he had it from Mr. Neale, the eye‐witness. This last‐named person, being at the time Bishop Bonner’s chaplain, was sent by him, so the story runs, to inhibit Kitchen of Llandaff from consecrating, and thus witnessed the whole irregular proceeding. All the threads of tradition—with one exception, which we shall notice further on—appear to centre in F. Bluett. He told Dr. Champneys; he told, so says Dr. Champneys, F. Holiwood, who printed the story, in a condensed form, in 1604. Dr. Kenrick thought he had discovered from Pitts(103) another mouth‐piece of Neale’s in Neale’s friend, Mr. Orton; but it is not so. Pitts, in his biographical notice of Neale, after stating that various particulars, which he gives, are upon the authority of Orton, proceeds to say of Neale: “This was the very same man who was sent by Bonner,” etc., emphatically marking off the Nag’s Head story as not being one of the things he had heard from Orton, though otherwise sufficiently notorious.
Of Bluett nothing is known, except that he was for a long while prisoner for the faith, which of course speaks volumes for his honesty. But a lengthened imprisonment is not unfavorable for delusions, especially of a religious character. When we come to consider the character of the reputed first‐hand in the line of tradition, Mr. Thomas Neale, we find ourselves upon very different ground. If F. Bluett’s lengthy imprisonment is deservedly reckoned in his favor, what shall we say of a man who was able, on the accession of Elizabeth, after having been Bishop Bonner’s chaplain, to take a public professorship in Oxford, and who, on his giving this up, was in a position to build himself a house opposite Hertford College, long known by the name of Neale’s Buildings? These facts, admitted on all hands, sufficiently bear out Anthony à Wood’s account of him: that his religion “was more Catholic than Protestant,” that he dreaded being called in question “for his seldom frequenting the church and receiving the sacrament.” À Wood is certainly not writing with a controversial purpose, and this is hardly the line that a Protestant depreciation of a hostile witness would take. The defenders of the Nag’s Head story have had to meet the objection that Bonner dared not, whilst a prisoner, have taken the bold step ascribed to him, by an appeal to his notorious fearlessness. On the other hand, every one admits that Neale was an arrant coward; “of a timorous nature,” says à Wood; “of a nature marvellously fearful,” says Pitts. Now, if Bonner showed his courage by inhibiting, what must have been the courage of the man who ventured into the lion’s den to execute the inhibition, and stood doggedly by to see how far it was obeyed? Surely we should have reason to be surprised if, after such an exhibition of courage, Neale had been afraid to put the matter on paper, or to breathe a word of it except to F. Bluett.
It has been attempted to establish the Nag’s Head story upon another line of tradition, independent, not only of Bluett, but of Neale. Mr. Ward, in his Nullity of the Protestant Clergy, when mentioning the well‐known examination of the Lambeth Register, in 1614, by certain Catholic priests then in confinement, at the request of Archbishop Abbot, continues: “But Mr. Plowden, yet living, does depose that he had it from F. Faircloth’s own mouth, with whom he lived many years an intimate friend, this ensuing answer of F. Faircloth’s to Abbot: My lord, said he, my father was a Protestant, and kept a shop in Chepeside, and assured me that himself was present at Parker’s and the four Protestant bishops’ consecration at the Nag’s Head in Chepeside,” etc. This is mere hearsay, but we confess that we see no grounds for doubting that F. Faircloth made just the answer attributed to him. He was doubtless a firm believer in the Nag’s Head story as related by Bluett, and his father, who had been a shopkeeper in Chepeside, was able to tell him that the Nag’s Head Inn was no myth; nay, that there had been a meeting of bishops there; that he, Faircloth senior, had seen them. Who does not know how often and how honestly ocular evidence for an unimportant item is accepted as evidence of the whole? If old Faircloth had been able to give any real confirmation of the story, surely more would have been made of him.
Even if it be admitted that a consecration of some sort did take place at the Nag’s Head, there is an important discrepancy in the versions given by Holiwood and Champneys of the Neale and Bluett story, which is fatal to it as an accurate account of what took place. Holiwood says that Scory “caused John Jewell to rise up Bishop of Salisbury, and him that was Robert Horn before to rise up Bishop of Winchester, and so forth with all the rest.” If this is to be taken as an exact account of what took place, no specific form at all was used; and F. Fitzsimon follows to precisely the same effect: “Scory orders them all to kneel down; then, taking the hand of Parker, says, ‘Rise, Lord Bishop of Canterbury’; in like manner to Grindal, ‘Rise, Lord Bishop of London,’ ” etc. But, according to Dr. Champneys, “Having the Bible in his hand, they all kneeling before him, he laid it upon every one of their heads or shoulders, saying, ‘Take thou authority to preach the word of God sincerely’ ”—a very distinct form indeed, however invalid.
We reject, then, the Nag’s Head story, 1st, as lacking all but hearsay evidence, and hearsay evidence is at the command of any cause; 2d, as exhibiting various notes of intrinsic improbability; 3d, as wholly irrelevant, in the present aspect of the controversy, to the question of Anglican orders. It is irrelevant, because, whatever was or was not done at the Nag’s Head, it is quite clear that the parties concerned, the government, and the bishops were no more satisfied with it than Catholics would have been, but continued to move for Parker’s consecration precisely as if nothing had been done. At the same time, we protest against the notion that the Nag’s Head story was a gratuitous lie. For, first, it is admitted that the bishops did meet at this identical inn for purposes convivial or otherwise, and to such meeting—viz., the confirmation dinner—both Fuller and Heylin, Strype and Collier, trace the story.(104) Secondly, the well‐known disbelief in orders prevailing amongst the Protestant party; their repeatedly shrinking from the Catholic challenge to produce their proofs; their insistence, when speaking of their episcopacy, that ordination by a priest was valid, when taken together, justified Catholics in the growing suspicion that there was a terrible flaw somewhere, an irregularity which even an Elizabethan conscience stickled at. No one who reflects upon the genuine horror and contempt which the sight of the hen‐pecked bishops of England, with their woman‐ pope, excited throughout Christendom, can regard the Nag’s Head story as an extravagant or gratuitous outcome of Catholic imagination.
The principal interest of the fable lies in the fact that it fairly got through the Anglican skin, and forced the production of the Lambeth Register. All the denials of their orders by controversialists like the Jesuit Harding, all Saunders’s taunts about petticoat government, affected them no whit. Orthodoxy and honesty might go to the winds, but one virtue they did set store by, and that was Christian gravity; and this tavern‐ story so stung them that they could keep their counsel no longer.
The Lambeth Register.
We shall now proceed, taking Canon Estcourt as our guide, to examine, in chronological order, the various documents connected with Parker’s consecration.
On the 19th of July, 1559, Elizabeth issued the congé d’elire to the Chapter of Canterbury, that see having been just seven months vacant after the death of Cardinal Pole. On the 9th of August the election took place. September 9, a royal commission was issued for the confirmation and consecration of Parker, to whom letters‐patent of the same date were addressed. The commission was addressed to Tonstall of Durham, Bourne of Bath and Wells, Pole of Peterborough, and Kitchen of Llandaff, being four out of the five remaining Catholic bishops, Turberville of Exeter being the only one omitted. But joined with the above four were the returned refugees, Barlow and Scory. Of the four Catholic bishops, the first three positively refused to consecrate, and were shortly after deprived. Kitchen of Llandaff, unfaithful though he was, somehow managed to get out of it; perhaps on the score of his weak sight—the excuse attributed to him in the Nag’s Head story.
Next in order comes a paper yet remaining in the State Paper Office, which may be called the programme of the consecration. Canon Estcourt gives a fac‐simile. It details the various steps to be taken for the consecration of Parker, and contains marginal notes in the handwritings of Cecil and Parker. Cecil’s notes are significant. Upon the direction in the text, in accordance with a statute of Henry VIII., that application should be made for consecration to some other archbishop within the king’s dominions, or, in default of him, to four other bishops, he remarks: “There is no archb. nor iiij bishopps to be had; wherefore quærendum, etc.” Upon the direction that King Edward’s ordinal be used, he remarks: “This booke is not established by parlement.”
The second commission, December 6, 1559, was addressed to Kitchen, Barlow, Scory, Coverdale; Hodgkin, the Suffragan of Bedford; Salisbury, Suffragan of Thetford; and Bale, who had been Bishop of Ossory. It concludes with the following dispensing clause: “Natheless supplying by our supreme royal authority of our proper motion and assured knowledge, if there be or shall be aught wanting (in those things which, according to our aforegiven mandate, shall be done by you, or any of you, for performing the aforesaid) of what is requisite or necessary, whether according to the statutes of this our realm or the laws of the church, the quality of the times and the pressure of circumstances demanding it.” Canon Estcourt produces a fac‐simile, “taken from the original draft extant in the Public Record Office, with the autograph signatures of the civilians giving their opinion that the commission ‘in the form pennyd’ may be lawfully acted on.”
The Lambeth Register testifies that, in accordance with the commission, “four of those named—viz., Barlow, Scory, Coverdale, and Hodgkin—did, on the 9th of December, confirm Parker in Bow Church, the elect appearing by his proxy, Nicholas Bullingham; and that, on the 17th, the same four bishops performed the ceremony of consecration in accordance, save in one particular, with the ritual of Edward VI. We thus summarize Canon Estcourt’s summary of the reasons for giving credence to the above facts recorded by the Register: 1. The official minute with Cecil’s and Parker’s notes. It was never used in the controversy until referred to by Lingard. It can be no forgery, for the forger would not have been such a fool as to forge Cecil’s remarks as to the illegality of the proceeding. This document shows the intention of the parties concerned to proceed as the Register says they did proceed. 2. The letters‐patent issuing the commission of December 6, 1559, are enrolled in Chancery on the patent‐ rolls, the highest official test of genuineness. The original draft of the commission is still preserved in the State Paper Office, with Cecil’s writing on it, and the autograph signatures of the civilians. This paper has never been produced in the controversy, and no forger would have taken such useless trouble. 3. In the recently discovered diary of Henry Machyn, a merchant tailor in London, we find the following entries: The xxiii day of June [1559] were elected vi new Byshopes com from beyond the sea, master Parker Bysshope of Canturbere, master Gryndalle Bysshope of London, docthur Score Bysshope of Harfford, Barlow [of] Chechastur, doctur Bylle of Salysbere, doctor Cokes of Norwyche.”
... Upper part of page burnt away.
“Parker electyd bishope of Canterbere.”
“The xvii day of Desember was the new byshope of [Canterbury] doctur Parker, was mad ther at Lambeth.”
“The xx day of Desember afornon, was Sant Thomas evyn, my lord of Canturbere whent to Bow Chyrche, and ther wher v nuw byshopes mad.”
The genuineness of these entries is beyond all suspicion. Had they been made for a controversial purpose, they would have been used earlier in the controversy. Although the diary contains various inaccuracies—e.g., the date assigned to Parker’s election, which is before the real date of his congé d’elire, and the loose use of the term “mad,” which, in regard to the bishops at Bow Church, should stand for confirmation, and in Parker’s case for consecration—still, it is evidence that on the date given in the Register something was done to Parker which could be described as “being made bishop.” Bow Church was the regular place for confirmation, Lambeth for consecration. The fact that the five, or rather six, bishops were consecrated on S. Thomas’s day, on the eve of which they had been confirmed, although this last was at Lambeth, and not at Bow Church, makes the confusion in their case not unnatural.
4. There is a detailed memorandum of the consecration, in a contemporary hand, preserved among the MSS. of Foxe, who died in 1587, “probably nearly of the same age as the Register itself, perhaps even older”—i.e., older than the Register in the condition in which we now possess it. This document has been but recently introduced into the controversy, and will be again appealed to when the actual condition of the Register is under consideration.
5. Stapleton’s assertion that “the Bishoppes were ordered, not according to the acte 28 (25) H. VIII., but according to an acte of Edw. VI., repealed by Queen Mary, and not revived in the first year of Q. Eliz.”
6. Act 8 Eliz., cap. 1, not only lays down the law for the future, but enacts that all acts done “about a confirmation or consecration, in virtue of the queen’s letters‐patent, were good and perfect; and that all persons consecrated bishops according to the order of 5 and 6 Edward VI. were rightly made and consecrated.” This is equivalent to an assertion that such consecration had actually taken place.
In addition to these proofs, there are various incidental references to Parker’s consecration on the 17th in contemporary works and letters, which have been carefully collected by Mr. Bailey in his Defensio, p. 19.
Altogether, there is no gainsaying the evidence for the substantial correctness of the Lambeth Register. At the same time, Canon Estcourt shows, we think, conclusively that the existing Lambeth MS., as we have it, is not the original record of what took place, but rather a glossed version thereof, in which certain important and awkward facts are, without being denied, carefully suppressed. Besides the Lambeth MS., there are two others; one in the State Paper Office, the other in Corpus Christi College, Cambridge. The former, to judge by its corrections, would seem to have been a rough draft, and was probably submitted to Cecil for approval before the registration. Canon Estcourt thinks that the Cambridge MS. was a transcript from that in the State Paper Office, inasmuch as they agree in giving the form, “Accipe Spiritum Sanctum,” in Latin, whereas that of Lambeth has it in English. Because of this and other variations, neither of these MSS. can be regarded as a transcript from that of Lambeth, or as tending to authenticate its present condition.
Canon Estcourt prints the Foxe MS., of which we have spoken, side by side with the Lambeth Register; and we see that, whilst in the former Barlow is distinctly stated to have been the consecrator, and the rite used that of Edward VI., the latter makes no distinction between Barlow and the other three, and makes no reference whatever to the ordinal of Edward VI.
Whether the Foxe MS. is a commentary upon the Register or upon the rough draft, or, as Canon Estcourt is inclined to think, is taken from the Register as it originally stood, it is, anyhow, the testimony of a contemporary ally of the parties concerned to the existence of important circumstances which the existing Register carefully suppresses.
It is difficult for us—as, indeed, it was for Catholics of the generation immediately succeeding that of Elizabeth’s accession—to understand the nervous anxiety that possessed the Protestant party lest they should give their enemies the slightest legal pretext against them. The completeness of Elizabeth’s triumph naturally tended to obliterate, in the minds of her victims, the precarious condition of parties in the beginning of her reign. There is, however, ample testimony that this nervousness did exist. When Horne, the Elizabethan Bishop of Winchester, tendered Bonner, a prisoner in the Marshalsea, the oath of supremacy, the latter demurred, on the ground that Horne was no bishop in the eye of the law, forasmuch as he had been consecrated according to the ordinal of Edward VI.—which had never been legalized after its proscription, 1 Mary, sess. 2, c. 2—and had also contravened the statute 25 Henry VIII., c. 20, requiring as consecrators either an archbishop and two bishops or four bishops. As it was notorious that Horne was consecrated by Parker and two other bishops, this last count was understood as tantamount to saying that Parker was not legally archbishop, on the ground that, of the bishops concerned in that ceremony, three had been deprived and the fourth deposed. This bold plea that, to use the words of one of Cecil’s correspondents, quoted by Canon Estcourt, p. 119, “there was never a lawful bishop in England, so astonished a great number of the best learned that yet they knew not what to answer him; and when it was determined he should have suffered, he is remitted to the place from whence he came, and no more said unto him.”
After this we can understand the persistency with which controversialists like Jewel, who were in the secret, shirked the challenge, so frequently addressed them by Catholics, to show the steps of their succession.
It is highly probable that the Protestant party, in the anxiety caused by Bonner’s onslaught, so far tampered with the Register as to gloss over the vulnerable points. It is noteworthy that this same paper of Foxe’s contains a summary upon Bonner’s case, showing the connection in the author’s mind. It would be unreasonable to admit the mere implication of the Register, that there was no distinction of consecrator and assistants, against the explicit statement of the Foxe MS.
The one point in which Parker’s consecration, according both to the Lambeth Register and to the Foxe MS., deflected from the Edwardine ordinal was this: that whilst the latter prescribes that the consecrator alone should hold his hands upon the elect’s head during the prayer of consecration, all four bishops are said to have held their hands upon Parker’s head.
But, as Canon Estcourt observes, we are not to suppose that, in acting as they did, Barlow and the others had devised something new and unknown before, and which therefore requires exceptional treatment. On the contrary, they were following the rubric of the Exeter Pontifical, which in this point agrees with the Roman rite.
Supposing, then, Barlow and his companions to stand in the relation of consecrator and assistants, would the incapacity, from want of consecration, of the consecrator be supplied by the capacity of an assistant? Mr. Haddan appeals triumphantly to Martène’s dictum that “the bishops who assist are for certain not merely witnesses but co‐ operators.”(105) But this goes but a little way. It is admitted on all hands that the assistants are something more than mere witnesses, although they emphatically fulfil that office. They are at least co‐operators by the official signification of their approval and support. Those who held up the arms of Moses did something more than witness to the marvels wrought by those up‐lifted hands. The comparatively small number of theologians who maintain the necessity of three bishops for a valid consecration are the only ones who maintain that the assistants are, properly speaking, consecrators. Anyhow, the action must be regarded as taking place per modum unius, for the opus is one, not manifold; but once annihilate the principal consecrator, and the ratio by which the assistants coalesce in unum opus is gone. If we may be forgiven a homely phrase in connection with a solemn subject, Tom is doing nothing; therefore those who are merely operative in virtue of their assistance of him are merely helping him to do nothing. We do not know any theologian who has said in so many words, or whose theory requires, that the assistant should be held as compensating for the inefficiency of the consecrator. Canon Estcourt, with characteristic moderation, urges that it is at least probable that no such compensation could take place, and therefore, according to Catholic principles, the safer side would have to be taken, and the ceremony repeated.
It is, then, of vital importance to the Anglican cause that there should be no doubt whatever about Barlow’s consecration. Canon Estcourt does not deny that it is probable he may have been consecrated. He does not pretend to do more than show that there are the gravest reasons for doubting the fact of his consecration. We wish to examine fairly the momenta on both sides.
Barlow’s Status.
William Barlow had been professed as an Augustinian Canon of S. Osith’s Priory, in Essex. He had been early distinguished as the protégé and obsequious servant of Anne Boleyn. “In October, 1534, he was sent as ambassador into Scotland, in conjunction with Thomas Holcroft, in order to persuade King James to renounce the Pope.”(106) In the early part of the next year, he was again in Scotland, “in company with Lord William Howard, who conveyed the garter to King James”; and January 22, 1536, for the third time went to Scotland, “on a joint embassy, again with Lord William Howard.” He had been elected to the bishopric of S. Asaph on the 16th, six days before. He was confirmed by proxy either on the 22d or the 23d of February. He remained in Scotland during February and March, and seems to have left in the beginning of April. On the 10th of April, Barlow was elected Bishop of S. David’s, and on the 21st was confirmed in person in Bow Church. “The archbishop’s certificate of the confirmation is dated on the same day, but makes no mention of consecration, nor is the fact recited, as usual, in the grant of temporalities which was issued on the 26th.” On the 27th, a summons to Parliament is sent: “Reverendo in Christo Patri W. Menevensi Episcopo.” On the 1st of May, he is installed at S. David’s, and before the 13th is writing a joint letter, with Lord William Howard, from Edinborough, addressed to the king and Cromwell, in which he signs himself Willmŭs Menev, the style of Bishop of S. David’s. He calls himself and is called Bishop of S. David’s on and after April 25, but not before. On this account, several of the defenders of his consecration have plausibly conjectured that he was consecrated on April 25, “which,” Mr. Haddan tells us, “was a Sunday, and when he was certainly in London.” Mr. Haddan himself, however, prefers to follow the order of precedence in the House of Lords and in the Upper House of Convocation, which places Barlow after the Bishops of Chichester and Norwich, who were consecrated, the latter certainly, the former probably, upon June 11, 1536. He assigns June 11 as the date of Barlow’s consecration. Lord William Howard left Edinburgh for England on or before May 23, and Barlow writes to Cromwell on that same day that he “has protracted his taryaunce somewhat after my lord’s departure,” “for a daye or twayne,” at the request of the Queen of Scots. From this Mr. Haddan concludes that on June 11, when a consecration was known to have taken place, he was in London. Canon Estcourt, however, has brought to light a warrant of Cromwell’s to the Garter king‐at‐arms, who had accompanied the embassy, and did not return until June 12, on which day he presented himself to Cromwell. The warrant is dated June 12. The king‐at‐arms would doubtless have returned, when the embassy was at an end, with Lord William Howard, and therefore before Barlow. But we are not left to conjecture; the warrant speaks of Barlow as “the bishopp then elect of S. Asaph, now elect of S. David’s.” Therefore, on the 12th, he was still unconsecrated.
Barlow’s episcopal register is wanting both at S. David’s, and at Bath and Wells (to which last he was translated in 1541); and at S. Asaph’s no register at all exists for the period when he nominally held the see.(107) The next consecration of which we have any record—after the 12th of June, when we know Barlow was unconsecrated—took place on July 2; but on June 30, Barlow took his seat in the House of Lords, and from that time acts and is treated as though he lacked nothing of the episcopal status.
We are now in a position to collect and estimate the momenta for and against Barlow’s consecration. On behalf of his consecration, it is urged, 1st, that it “must be regarded as certain until it can be disproved”;(108) for no adequate motive can be assigned for the omission of a ceremony which could not be omitted without incurring severe penalties, to which the archbishop who neglected to consecrate would be also subject. 2d. That he was acknowledged, both by Parliament and by his brother bishops, to be in all respects a bishop after June 30, 1530, when he took his seat in the House of Lords; and that no syllable was breathed against his consecration, either by friend or foe, from that date until Dr. Champneys first questioned it in 1614, forty‐eight years after his death, and eighty from the commencement of his episcopate. 3d. The fact that his consecration is not recorded in the archiepiscopal register is not much to the purpose, since out of thirty‐six consecrations, in Cranmer’s time eight exclusive of Barlow’s, in his predecessor, Warham’s, time, six out of twenty‐six are not entered.(109) 4th. His episcopal acts respecting the property of his sees would have been legally invalid in default of consecration; but although these acts were legally disputed, no one suggested the flaw of non‐consecration.
On the other hand, it must be remembered that the question is really not whether Barlow’s consecration can be “disproved,” but whether, in spite of what may be legitimately urged in its behalf, there are not sufficient grounds for suspecting that it never took place. 1. Neither Barlow nor Cranmer believed in consecration. In their answers to the “questions on the sacraments” which were submitted to the king, they say that, for making a bishop, “election or appointing thereto is sufficient.” Barlow, in a sermon delivered by him at S. David’s, November 12, 1536, is charged with having said: “If the king’s gr., being supreme head of the Church of England, did chuse, denominate, and elect any layman, being learned, to be a bishop, that he so chosen, without mention being made of any orders, should be as good a bishop as he is or the best in England.” 2. This doctrine was undoubtedly favored by the king; for in another part of this same paper on the sacraments, where the bishops are attempting to take a rather more Catholic line, we have notes in the king’s handwriting to this effect. The bishops having answered, “Making of bishopes hath twoo partes, appointment and ordering,” his remark is, “Where is this distinction fonde?” and they continuing, “Appoyntament, whiche the appostels by necessyte made by common election, and sometimes by their owne several assignment, could not then be doon by Christen princes, bicause at that time they were not; and nowe at these days appertayneth to Christen princes and rulers;” the king’s note is: “Now sins you confesse that the appostylles did occupate the won part, whych now you confesse belongyth to princes, how can you prove that orderyng is wonly committed to you bysshopes?”
3. Canon Estcourt (p. 69) shows that the other side has no right to assume that Barlow and Cranmer would have incurred any penalties by the mere pretermission of consecration; for the act 25 Henry VIII., cap. 20, declares: “If any archbishop shall refuse or do not confirm, invest, and consecrate, he shall incur a præmunire”; and there is no special mention of the bishop elect among the persons liable to penalties, the clause running in general words: if “any person admit or execute any censures, etc., or other process or act to the contrary or let of due execution of the act.”
The notion that the leases and other episcopal acts connected with diocesan property would not be legally valid in default of consecration is a gratuitous assumption. Certainly neither Mr. Haddan nor Mr. Bailey has attempted to produce any evidence. What the law really takes cognizance of in such questions is the possession of the temporalities, an indisputable right to which is given by the writ of restitution.
The recognition of Parliament, upon which so much stress has been laid, cannot be regarded as any proof of consecration, since it naturally and inevitably ensued upon the issue of this same writ. This is sufficiently proved by the fact that Parliament summoned Barlow to take his seat, and gave him his full episcopal title, when, as has been shown above, he certainly was not consecrated. Doubtless some of the more zealous of the Catholic party might have made a disturbance had they realized the omission; but, as Canon Estcourt observes (p. 78), Gardiner was absent as ambassador in Paris during the whole of 1536 and 1537.
As to Cranmer’s register, it is true that it was very carelessly kept; but of the nine unrecorded consecrations, Barlow’s would be the only one for which no collateral evidence whatever can be furnished. No document recites it, and every date that has been as yet conjectured for it has been exploded. Barlow’s contemporary, Foxe, in his record of the Lambeth consecration, whilst specifying accurately the dates of the consecration of the other bishops engaged, is only able to say of Barlow that he was consecrated “tempore Henrici VIII.”
Canon Estcourt points out that although there was no regular register kept at S. David’s—and we know that the breviaries and martyrologies which contained records of episcopal succession were burnt in the next reign as superstitious—yet that it is sufficiently odd that all the chapter books have been lost, and that the Liber Computi, still extant, has a break in it for several years before 1539.
But this is not all. Canon Estcourt has found out, on examining the original document first printed by Mason as the restitution to Barlow of the temporalities of S. David’s “out of the Rolls Chapel in Chancery,” that the enrolment had really been made in the office of the exchequer, as though the matter were purely secular, instead of on the patent rolls in chancery. Then, on examining the original form—which Mason reproduced imperfectly, so as to conceal its real character—and comparing it with the normal writ of restitution, it turns out to be, no writ of restitution, but “a grant of the custody of temporalities on account of the vacancy of the see,” with the extraordinary addition of “to hold to him and his assigns during his life.” These grants of the custody of the temporalities of a diocese which had accrued during a vacancy were common enough. The peculiarity of Barlow’s grant is that it is a grant of custody made to do duty for a writ of restitution. The grant of custody was ordinarily made as a preliminary to the writ of restitution. No limit was assigned to it, but it naturally and necessarily merged in the restitution, of which it was a gracious foretaste. In the case of Cranmer, indeed, as Canon Estcourt points out, the grant of custody was made after he had received the restitution of the temporalities in the usual form; but the grant is carefully limited to the profits accruing from the commencement of the vacancy to the date of restitution. Barlow’s grant is for life, and, by anticipating in its completeness all that the writ of restitution could give, it would preclude the crown from making restitution in the proper form without a surrender of the grant of custody. Before consecration, a bishop cannot sue out a writ of restitution, as the act requires, but the king sometimes ex gratia allowed it; the form, however, of such indulgence is well known, and is very different from that of the document in question.(110)
The form actually chosen “may be supposed to have saved the necessity of obtaining either the archbishop’s mandate or the archdeacon’s commission”; in fact, to have made Barlow free of his see at once without any official formalities, and to “secure him in the enjoyment of the temporalities of the see, whether his character of bishop was perfected spiritually or not.”
“The effect of the grant, both in Barlow’s own mind and in official quarters, may be seen from what followed. The next day a writ of summons to the House of Lords was issued, and Barlow himself immediately assumed the style and title of bishop.” “It seems highly probable that this special and novel form was deliberately adopted as suiting the views of all parties, and being highly favorable to any ulterior designs which the king might have upon the temporalities of the church at large.”
It must be remembered, too, that many of the arguments tending to show the unlikelihood of the omission, such as its unprecedented character, the want of apparent motive, or, again, the exceedingly imperfect character of the registration, tend to diminish the chances of detection. True, Barlow was not a man inclined to sacrifice much to his convictions; but he had a hearty hatred for sacerdotalism, a strong sense of humor, and, if we judge from his sermon quoted above, the impudence, if not the courage, of his opinions. A competitor for a tyrant’s favor must always risk something to keep a front place, and on this point he knew how the king was minded. Altogether, he would seem to be by no means an unlikely man to have played the part assigned to him.
We conceive that these momenta do amply justify grave suspicions of Barlow’s consecration, and consequently the repetition of any rites depending for their validity upon his consecration.
Grapes And Thorns. Chapter XIII.
F. Chevreuse had no time to linger in the house of mourning; for it was his duty to inform Mr. Schöninger at once of his deliverance. But that it was necessary to guard the unhappy mother from any chance of hearing the news too abruptly, even the claims of a supreme misfortune like hers could not have been allowed to take precedence of a wrong so deep as that from which he had suffered. After he was informed, silence would, of course, be impossible; for when Mr. Schöninger knew, the whole world must know.
Until the evening before, the priest had not permitted himself even to guess what might be the contents of the package entrusted to his charge. Humanly speaking, he knew nothing. Whatever he might have learned by virtue of his sacred office was hidden in the bosom of God; not even in his most secret thoughts did he suffer his mind to dwell upon it. The only action he had taken in the matter was such as might have seemed necessary to one who had no more than a faint suspicion of what was about to take place; he had requested F. O’Donovan to be with him that day, and he had made sure that Mrs. Gerald should have the only preparation possible for whatever might threaten her, in a well‐made communion.
For her sake he had opened the package the evening before, in order to be able to put Honora Pembroke on her guard. He did not read the confession to her, nor did he read it himself, but glanced over the letter which Annette had enclosed to him.
“A great misfortune is about to fall upon our dear friend,” he said, “and I trust to your piety and discretion to do what you can for her. Her son will not return home. He has fled from the country, and she may never see him again. To‐morrow she will know all, and the world will know all. Mr. Schöninger, who has been unjustly accused and condemned, will be released. You must be strong and watchful. See that nothing disturbs her tonight, or interferes with her making a good communion. Do not think of yourself, but of her. There is not much to do; perhaps there will be nothing to do, but simply to stand guard and see that nothing comes near to trouble her mind, and to have her at home in the morning at ten o’clock, and without visitors.”
“It will kill her!” said Honora when she could speak. “It will kill her!”
F. Chevreuse sighed. “I think it will; but there is no help for it. Justice must be done.”
It had indeed killed her, and more quickly, therefore more mercifully, than they had anticipated. And now F. Chevreuse, having been the messenger of disgrace and desolation, had to be the messenger of joy.
He wiped away resolutely the tears that started at sight of that pitiful victim of maternal love. “To‐day, at least,” he said, “I must have no feeling. I must do my duty faithfully, and only my duty. I cannot allow myself to sympathize with the slayer and the slain in the same hour.”
It was very hard for such a man not to sympathize with a true joy or sorrow whenever it came within his ken—him to whose lips, even in moments of care or sadness, the frank laugh of a child would bring a smile, and to whose eyes, even in moments of joy, the sorrow of a stranger would call the sudden moisture. But the very excess, and, still more, the contrast, of these contending emotions enabled him to hold himself in a sort of equilibrium. Like one who walks a rough path carrying a cup filled to the brim, and looks not to right nor left, lest he should lose its contents, so F. Chevreuse carried his full heart, and would not yield to any emotion till his work was done.
When he entered the corridor leading to Mr. Schöninger’s cell, he was somewhat surprised at meeting Mr. Schöninger’s lawyer coming out. The surprise was mutual, but they merely saluted each other, and passed on.
“He doesn’t give up yet,” remarked the turnkey confidentially. “His lawyer comes every little while, and the warden has given orders that they shall talk without a guard. He, the lawyer, is the only person who can talk alone with a convict, except the chaplain, and, of course, you, sir!”
F. Chevreuse had self‐possession enough to bow his acknowledgments. “But I wish to enter the cell this morning,” he said; “I don’t want to talk through the bars; and I wish to enter alone.”
The man looked embarrassed.
There was a limit even to the privileges of F. Chevreuse.
“You can lock me in with him, and go away,” the priest said, impatient of delay. “I will be responsible for you this time. I looked for the warden, but he is not about the house. Let me go in, and, as soon as the warden returns, say I wish to see him.”
The guard yielded, though unwillingly. There was something imperative in the priest’s manner which he did not venture to resist. Moreover, F. Chevreuse was so well known as a man who scrupulously upheld legitimate authority, and obeyed to the letter the regulations of any establishment he might enter, that it was evident there must be some urgent reason when he would set a rule aside.
The bolts were drawn back, the door grated on its hinges, and the priest stepped into the cell. He scarcely took any notice of the prisoner, who sat looking at him something as a newly‐caged lion may look when first his keeper ventures into the cage, but watched the guard while he locked the door again, and listened to the sound of his retreating steps as they echoed along the corridor.
The prisoner’s voice, deep and harsh, demanded his attention before he turned to him. “May I ask, sir, the meaning of this intrusion?”
F. Chevreuse almost started at the sound. His mind had been so occupied by sorrowful and pathetic images, and he had, moreover, so associated Mr. Schöninger with thoughts of joy and freedom, that the concentrated bitterness of those tones smote him discordantly. He had for the time forgotten that the prisoner could not even suspect that his visitor was one who brought good tidings. His surprise was so great, therefore, at this repelling question, that for a moment he looked at the speaker attentively without replying, and the look itself held him yet a moment longer silent.
Mr. Schöninger had changed terribly. It was as though you should take some marble statue of a superb heathen deity, and carve down the contours, sharpen the lines without changing them, carefully, with mallet and chisel, gnaw away the flesh from muscle and bone, and cut in the lines of anger, impatience, and hatred, and of an intense and corroding bitterness. Then, if the statue could be made hollow, and filled with a fire which should glow through the thin casing till it seemed at times on the point of melting it quite, and bursting out in a destroying flame, you would have some semblance of what this man had become after seven months of imprisonment.
F. Chevreuse was terrified. “Mr. Schöninger!” he exclaimed, “I have come to bring you liberty. Do not look so at me! Try to forgive the wrong that has been done you. All shall be righted. The criminal has confessed, and you are to go free as soon as the necessary steps shall be taken.”
Not a gleam of pleasure softened the prisoner’s face. Only his brows darkened over the piercing eyes he fixed on his visitor. “So Mr. Benton has betrayed me!” he said in a low voice that expressed more of rage and threatening than any outcry could have done.
“I do not know anything of your lawyer, nor have any communication with him,” the priest replied. “I do not know what you mean by betrayal. I repeat, I have come to bring you good news. Do not you understand?” He began to fear that Mr. Schöninger had lost his reason. “Your innocence is established. You are known, or will at once be known, to have been greatly wronged.”
“It is a trick!” the prisoner exclaimed passionately. “Benton has either betrayed me or bungled, and you think to offer me as a gift—for which I am to be grateful, and merciful too—what I have won for myself. I will not take liberty from your hands!” He started up, and, with a gesture of the hand, seemed to fling the priest’s offer from him. “Do you fancy, sir, that I have been idle here? Does a man sleep in hell? Did you fancy that I was going to wait for justice to come to me? No! I was shut into a cage; but I am not the sort of animal who can be tamed and made to play tricks for my keeper. I have been busy while the world forgot me.”
“I did not forget you,” hastily interposed the priest. “And others also have tried.”
“Tried!” echoed the prisoner scornfully. “Sir, when a clay‐bank falls on a poor workman, everybody runs to the rescue. Not a minute is lost. People rush in haste to dig him out before he is dead. That you call humanity. You do not even dignify it by the name of charity. A man would be a brute to do otherwise than help in such a case. But here am I, overwhelmed with a mountain of wrong and disgrace, shut in a cage that is changing me into a madman, and people pause to consider; they are politic, they are careful not to soil their fingers or inconvenience their friends in giving me liberty. I am a Jew, and, therefore, out of the pale of your charity. But, Jew though I am, priest, I take the side of the Christ you pretend to adore against your accursed and hypocritical Christians. If your doctrines were true, still I am a better Christian than any of those who have believed me guilty.”
He seemed to have quite forgotten the priest’s errand, or not to have understood what it meant.
“What you say may be all true,” F. Chevreuse replied calmly. “But that can be thought of another time. You have something more pleasant to dwell on now. Have you understood my errand here?”
In spite of the deep and wearing excitement under which he labored, Mr. Schöninger perceived that his visitor was trying to soothe him, and was somewhat alarmed at his violence. He controlled himself, therefore, and, as much from physical weakness as from a desire to appear self‐possessed, resumed his seat, motioning his visitor to another.
“From the time when Annette Ferrier came here and begged me to fly, I have known whose place I was occupying,” he said in measured tones, his gaze fixed steadily upon the priest’s face. “I sent for my lawyer the next morning, and put him on the track. I had not enough proof to prevent the fellow going away; but his every step has been followed. I know where he stopped in London and in Paris; and a despatch from Rome has come saying he is there. To‐morrow morning an answer will be sent to that telegram, ordering his arrest.”
F. Chevreuse was confounded. For a moment he knew not what to say.
“I think you will perceive that I do not need your assistance, sir,” Mr. Schöninger continued haughtily. “The power is in my hands, and I shall use it as seems to me best.”
“And so,” said the priest, recovering his speech, “you are willing, from pride and a desire for revenge, to stay here weeks, perhaps months, longer, and await the result of another trial, rather than accept the tardy justice which that unhappy man offers you, not knowing that you suspected him, and rather than permit me to be the medium of his reparation! I can make great allowances for the effect which your terrible wrongs and sufferings must necessarily have produced on your mind; but I did not expect to see you show a needless acrimony. I did not think that you would wish to strike down a man, even one who had injured you, in order to take violently what he offers you with an open hand, not knowing, remember, that you have the power to compel him.”
Mr. Schöninger still looked steadfastly at his companion, but with a changed expression. He looked no longer suspicious, but uncomprehending. Indeed, his mind was so preoccupied and excited that he had only half listened to the priest’s communication, and the only impression he had received was that Lawrence Gerald’s friends, knowing his danger, were trying to temporize, and that, while securing his escape, they would obtain the release of his substitute by some quibble of the law. He was not sufficiently recollected to perceive, what he would at any other time have acknowledged, that F. Chevreuse was not the man to lend himself to such a plot in any case, still less in this.
“Four weeks ago,” the priest resumed, “Lawrence Gerald and his wife gave me a packet which was to be opened and acted on to‐day. They were going away for a little journey, they said. I did not know where they were going, and I do not know, nor wish to know, where they are. I will not interfere with the course of the law, nor shield any offender from justice, especially at the cost of the innocent. But since, in this case, I have been the sufferer by that crime, I claim the right to forgive, and to wish, at least, that the criminal, whoever he may be, should be left to the stings of his own conscience. I would have said the same for you had I ever believed you guilty. That packet contains Lawrence Gerald’s confession. Only two persons have been allowed to know it before you, besides the two who had to prepare them for the reception of such news. The mothers had a right prior even to yours, and I needed two assistants. Now, whatever you may do, my duty is the same. I have to place that confession in the hands of the authorities, and testify that I received it from Lawrence Gerald and his wife, and that I signed without reading it. Then my work will be done. I do not know much of the technicalities of the law, nor what delays may be necessary; but I presume your further detention will be short and merely nominal.”
He paused, but Mr. Schöninger made no reply: he only sat and listened, and looked attentively at the speaker.
“If I could rejoice at anything, I should rejoice at your release from this wretched place, and from the still more wretched charge that was laid on you,” F. Chevreuse continued; “but I have witnessed too much sorrow to be able to say more than God speed you.”
Mr. Schöninger did not appear to have heard the last words. He stood up and drew in a strong breath, and shivered all through. The thought that it was to be for him no slow fight for liberty, but that liberty was at the threshold, had at length entered his mind.
“Let me out of here!” he exclaimed, almost gasping. “I cannot breathe! Open the door. You cannot hold me any longer. Open the door, sir!” he cried to the warden, who stood outside, looking at him in astonishment.
F. Chevreuse began a hasty explanation to the officer; but the prisoner seized the bars of the door in his delirious impatience, and tried to wring them from their places.
“Seven months in a cage!” he exclaimed. “I cannot bear it another hour. Open the door, I say! Why do you stand there talking?”
“With all my heart, Mr. Schöninger!” the warden said. “But you must try to be calm. You have borne confinement patiently for seven months; try to bear it a little longer till the formalities of the law shall have been complied with. We cannot dispense with them. There shall be no delay, I assure you, sir.”
Mr. Schöninger was too proud to need a second exhortation to control himself; was, perhaps, annoyed that he should have incurred one. He immediately drew back, and seated himself. “Allow me to say, sir,” he remarked coldly, “that I have not borne imprisonment patiently. I have merely endured it because I was obliged to submit to force. And now will you please to open the door? I will not go out till I may; but set the door wide. Do not keep me any longer under lock and key.”
The warden called to his guard, who were not far away. Indeed, several of them, curious to know what was going on, had gathered in the corridor, only just out of sight of those in the cell.
“Unlock the door of Mr. Schöninger’s cell,” he said in a loud voice. “He is no longer a prisoner.”
The bolts shot back, and the door clanged open against the stone casing.
“Let me be the first one to congratulate you, sir,” the officer added.
Mr. Schöninger did not see the hand offered him, though he replied to the words. He was looking past the officer, past the wondering faces of the guard who peeped in at the door, and his glance flashed along the corridor, through which a ray of sunlight shone from the guard‐room, and fresh breezes blew. A slight quiver passed through his frame, and he seemed to be resisting an impulse to rush out of the prison.
It was only for one instant. The next, he became aware of the eyes that curiously observed him, and, by the exercise of that habit of self‐control which had become to him a second nature, shut off from his face every ripple of emotion.
“I thank you, sir!” he said in answer to the warden’s compliments. “And perhaps you will be so good as to send those men away from the corridor, and to let Mr. Benton know that I want to see him here immediately.”
The guard disappeared at once, one of them as messenger to Mr. Schöninger’s lawyer; but the warden still lingered.
“You will want to change your clothes,” he said. “And after that, I shall be happy to place a room in my house at your disposal, where you may receive your friends and transact business till the time comes for you to go free.”
Mr. Schöninger glanced down with loathing on his prison uniform, remembering it for the first time since that day of horror and despair when he had waked from a half‐swoon to find himself invested with it and laid on the narrow bed in his cell.
Perhaps the officer, too, remembered that day when he had said that he would rather resign his office than receive such a prisoner into his care, when he had exhausted arguments and persuasions to induce him to submit to prison rules, and how, when at last he had felt obliged to hint at the employment of force, he had seen the strong man fall powerless before him.
“These clothes would hardly fit Mr. Lawrence Gerald,” Mr. Schöninger remarked, smiling scornfully. “But perhaps there will be no question of his wearing them.”
The warden uttered an exclamation. “Is it Lawrence Gerald? It cannot be!” He had not been told the name.
“And why not, sir?” demanded the Jew haughtily.
The officer was silent, disconcerted by the question, which he did not attempt to answer.
“Poor Mrs. Gerald!” he said, looking at F. Chevreuse.
Mrs. Gerald’s fondness for her son was almost a proverb in Crichton.
“Mrs. Gerald’s troubles are over,” said the priest briefly.
Mr. Schöninger went to the window, and stood there looking out, his back to his companions. To his hidden tumult of passions, his fierce, half‐ formed resolutions, his swelling pride, his burning anger and impatience, this news came with as sudden a check as if he had seen the cold form of the dead woman brought into the cell and laid at his feet.
He had been thinking of the world of men, of the bigoted crowd which had condemned him unheard, of the judge who had pronounced sentence, and the jury who had found him guilty—of all the cold outside world which has to be conquered by strength, or to be submitted to; and now rose up before him another world of pitying women, whose tenderness reversed the decisions pronounced by the intellects of men, or swept over them with an imperious charity; who were ever at the side of the sufferer, even when they knew him to be the sinner, and whose silent hearts felt the rebound of every blow that was struck. He saw the priest’s mother, a sacrifice to the interests of her son; the criminal’s wife, as he had seen her that night in his cell, with the only half‐veiled splendor of her silks and jewels mocking the pallid misery of her face; and now this last victim, more pitiful than all! A sighing wind seemed to sweep around him, far‐ reaching and full of mingled voices, the infinite wail of innocent and suffering hearts. How gross and demoniac in comparison were the bitter, warring voices of hate and pride and revenge! To his startled mental vision it was almost as though there appeared before him hideous and brutal forms cowering away from faces full of a pure and piercing sorrow.
He perceived that he had been taking low ground, and, with a firm will, caught himself back, setting his foot on the temptation that had been making him a companion for demons. Wronged he had been in a way that he could not help; but he could at least prevent their lowering him in mind. They should not induce him to yield to passion or to meanness.
He turned proudly toward his two companions, who still waited for him to speak. “If the arrest of Lawrence Gerald is not necessary for my release, then I hope he may escape,” he said. “It is bad enough to be shut up in this way when one has a clear conscience; but with such a conscience as he must have, imprisonment could lead only to madness or suicide.”
“Or to penitence,” added F. Chevreuse with emphasis.
Mr. Schöninger did not reply; this alternative was beyond his comprehension. But he glanced at the priest; and in doing so, his eyes were attracted to the doorway, which was quite filled by the ample figure of Mrs. Ferrier.
“I couldn’t help coming, father,” she said quite humbly. “And, besides, Honora Pembroke said she thought it right that I should. I sha’n’t stay long or say much. I only want to say that when Mr. Schöninger goes out of this place, my house and all in it are at his disposal.”
The scene she had witnessed had quieted her completely, and there was even a certain dignity in her submissive air. But when she turned to Mr. Schöninger, her tears burst forth again, in spite of her efforts to restrain them. “You’ll have to learn to forgive and forget,” she said in a stifled voice, which she vainly strove to render calm. “I’m the only one left to make amends to you.”
Mr. Schöninger came forward instantly, and extended his hands to her. “I have nothing to forgive in you,” he said warmly; “and I would not wish to forget your kindness. I thank you for your offer, but I cannot give any answer to it now. If I decline, it will not be because I am ungrateful. And now let me say good‐by to you till a more favorable time.”
She had had the discretion not to wait for this intimation, and had of herself made the motion to go.
“Try to forgive and forget,” she whispered hoarsely; and, pulling her veil over her tear‐swollen face, hurried away.
This was Mr. Schöninger’s first visitor, but not his last. Before an hour had passed, the news had overspread the whole city, producing a strange revulsion of feeling. There were, perhaps, those who were, at heart, sorry to know that the Jew was innocent. They had from the first expressed their belief in his guilt, and they had been loud in their opinion that he should be sentenced to the full extent of the law. This class were not only disappointed in their prejudices, but humbled in their own persons. They could not but feel that they had rendered themselves at once odious and ridiculous. But the majority of the people were disposed to render full justice. All the Protestant clergymen called on him, though but few of them had ever spoken to him. It was right, they said, that every man of dignity and position in the city should pay some respect to the stranger who had suffered in their midst such a cruel injustice, and the fact that he was a Jew should make them all the more anxious in doing so; for the public must see that they did not persecute any one for his religious belief. Judges, lawyers, bankers, professors, men of wealth, who were nothing but men of wealth—all came to express their regrets and to offer their hospitality.
He saw none of them, though he sent courteous messages to some. He was too much engaged in business that day to receive visitors. Only one received a decided rebuff. “As for the judge who sentenced me to be hanged,” Mr. Schöninger said, “no compliment which he can pay will ever render his presence tolerable to me.”
All the young ladies took their walk in the direction of the prison that day, and all the young gentlemen followed the young ladies; and, in passing, they lingered and looked, or cast sidelong glances, at the windows of the warden’s parlor, where it was understood Mr. Schöninger was. People who did not like to be suspected of romance or of curiosity had some excuse for going in that direction, and those who had business in the prison were esteemed fortunate. Probably one‐half the town took occasion that day to look at the windows of the warden’s house. But it cannot be said that they were wiser for having done so, for not a glimpse did one of them get of Mr. Schöninger.
But when the soft spring evening deepened, and all the curious crowd had withdrawn, and the same full moon which Lawrence Gerald and his wife had seen the night before, flooding with its radiance the melancholy splendors of Rome, was veiling with a light scarcely less brilliant the beautiful young city of Crichton, two men emerged from the warden’s house, and, taking a quiet by‐street, where the trees made a delicate shadow with their budding branches, climbed the hill to South Avenue. They walked leisurely, and almost in silence, only exchanging now and then a quiet word; but one who watched closely the taller of the two might have perceived that his quiet signified anything but indifference to the scene around him, and that he was full of a strong though controlled excitement. He stepped as though curbed, and every moment glanced up at the sky or at the branches over his head, and drew in deep breaths of the fresh spring air. A fine delight ran bubbling through his veins. All the feverish mass of humanity, with its petty hates and still more hateful loves, its jealousies, its trivial fears and despicable hopes, was put aside, and he was entering into a new and freshly‐blooming creation, where mankind, too, might partake of the nobility of nature.
They passed Mrs. Ferrier’s house, with its broad front and long gardens, looking very stately in that softening light, and, after a few minutes, reached the summit of the hill, where only a single tree stood guard, and all about them the world, of which they seemed to be the centre, lay spread in tranquil beauty, its hills and dales, its towns and forests, bound with a ring of mountains that showed with a soft richness against the sky. The city lay white beneath them, and the Saranac wound like a silver ribbon across the view. Where the hills dipped, one sparkling point, audible with dashing foam, told where the Cocheco danced day and night with white and blithesome feet.
F. Chevreuse, standing one silent moment to contemplate the scene, was startled to see his companion break from his side, and, running to the tree at a little distance, catch one of its branches, and swing himself into the air by it. The priest’s first glance was one of dismay; his second, a smiling one. He understood the abounding joy of which the act was an outbreak, and was pleased with the boyishness of it, and that the impulse should have been yielded to in his presence. Sad as he was, he could not help feeling glad to see another possessed by a full and unthinking happiness.
Mr. Schöninger laughed, as he returned to his companion.
“Don’t be afraid,” he said; “I am not a lunatic. I am free! Do you know what a delight it is to be in a place where you can swing your arms without hitting anything? I could run here half an hour, and neither turn nor be obliged to stop; and I can stand upright without feeling as though my head were going to strike.” While speaking, he was continually making slight motions, as though trying if he had the free use of his limbs; and when he stopped, he lifted his head to its full height, and drew in a long breath.
“How delicious the air is!” he exclaimed. “How fresh and pure! It comes here from the forests and the mountains and the sea. There is no smell of lime or close dampness or human breaths in it. Pah! F. Chevreuse, when you preach again, and tell your people what they have to be thankful for, in spite of sorrow and poverty, remind them of the air they breathe, the sun that shines on them, the sky above their heads, and the power to move about as they will. If this sky were gray, and pouring down rain, I should still think it beautiful; for it is the sky, and not a stone.”
He walked away again to a little distance.
“Instead of being obliged to give a reason for being happy, I think we should be obliged to account for being unhappy,” he said, coming back. “How many sources of delight we have which we overlook because we are accustomed to them! Mere motion, walking, running, any natural and unconstrained motion, is a pleasure; breathing is a pleasure; the eyes have a thousand delights. It is a source of pleasure to exercise one’s strength and overcome obstacles. I never went up a hill in the country or climbed any height but I felt like singing. Swimming, skating, riding, driving—how exhilarating they are! And for all these delights you do not need the companionship of man. Yourself and nature—these are enough.”
“I did not know you were so fond of nature,” F. Chevreuse said, smiling.
“I do not think I ever mentioned it to any one before,” remarked the other carelessly.
The priest was struck by this reply, and looked with astonishment on the man who for thirty years had loved nature, yet never said a word in praise of it. Could it be because of a reserved and unsocial disposition? Or was it that he had been too much isolated? The priest was almost afraid to speak, lest he should check a confidence at once so charming and so manly. He quite understood that it was the unusual and deep agitation of Mr. Schöninger’s mind which had brought this feeling to light, as the sea, in its agitation, may toss up a pearl.
He said nothing, therefore, but waited for his companion to speak again, not observing him, but looking up at the illuminated dome above.
“When one is free, and has the use of one’s limbs, and is happy, then one believes in a good God, who is a father to his creatures,” Mr. Schöninger resumed in a voice as gentle as he might have used when a child at his mother’s knee. He had been holding his hat in his hand; but in speaking, he covered his head. At the same instant, F. Chevreuse uncovered his, and the Jew and the Christian, each after his manner, acknowledged the presence of God in that thought, which was almost like a visible presence.
“To me,” said the priest, “the acknowledgment comes more surely when I am in trouble. It seems to me that if I were in chains and torments, he would be nearer to me than ever before.”
“That is because you have been taught to believe in a suffering God,” was the calm reply. “I have been taught to see in God a being infinitely glorious and strong, a mighty, shoreless ocean of deep joy. That he could suffer pain, that his puny creatures could torment and kill him, has always been to me a thought at once absurd and blasphemous. It is probably for this reason that you see him best in sorrow, and I in joy.”
He stood a little while thinking, then added quietly, as if speaking to himself: “Yet it is a sweet and comforting thought.”
F. Chevreuse blushed red with a sudden gladness, but said nothing. It was no time for controversy; and, besides, he had the wisdom to leave souls to God sometimes. That people are to be converted by a constant pelting of argument and attack he did not believe. His experience had been that converts of any great worth were not made in that way, and that the soul that studied out its own way helped by God, and teased as little as possible by man, was by far the most steadfast in the faith.
They went slowly down the hill together in the direction of the priest’s house, and stopped a moment to lean on Mrs. Ferrier’s gate in passing. That lady had just entered her house, having been all the day and evening at Mrs. Gerald’s. She would gladly have stayed all night had Honora allowed it.
The two men had, unseen or unrecognized, been near enough to hear the long sigh the good creature gave as she mounted the steps to her door, and the exclamation she made to the servant who followed her: “Little did I think last night at this time what horrible things were going to happen within twenty‐four hours.” Some persons have that way of dating backward from startling events, and renewing thus the vividness of their sensations.
She did not know what kind thoughts were following her in at the door, or she might have been comforted.
They went on, and soon came in sight of what had been Mrs. Gerald’s home. The blinds were all closed, and not a ray of light was visible. Under the vines and large, over‐hanging trees the cottage appeared to shrink and hide itself.
“I would like to go in for one minute, if you do not object to waiting,” F. Chevreuse said. “That poor girl means to sit up all night, and she is likely to have no one else in the room. It is a gloomy watch, and she may feel better, if I speak a word to her.”
“Pray do not think of me!” Mr. Schöninger exclaimed.
F. Chevreuse stepped into the yard, and, as he held the gate open for his companion, Mr. Schöninger followed, though with some hesitation. There were many reasons why he would not be willing to enter that house. Indeed, the priest well knew that it was no time to take him there openly; but for some reason he wished him to come near enough, at least, to feel the sorrow and desolation which had fallen upon it. Perhaps he wished to soften Mr. Schöninger still more toward the unhappy man the burden of whose guilt he had borne; perhaps he wanted to remind him how entirely that burden had been removed from him by showing how cruelly it had fallen elsewhere.
The priest tried the door before ringing, and, finding it not locked, stepped quietly into the entry, which was lighted through the open doors of rooms at either side. In one of these rooms sat three or four persons. He said a few words to them, and closed the door of their room before going to the other.
Mr. Schöninger held back a moment, but could not resist longer the temptation to approach. The outer door was still open, and a soft light shone over the threshold of it from the parlor. Drawn step by step, he went to the threshold, and stood just where the light and shadow met, and the door framed a picture for him. The room seemed to be nearly all white and flowers. White draperies covered the windows, the pictures, and the cabinets and tables, the coldness changed to a tender purity by flowers and green leaves, arranged, not profusely, but with good taste. On what appeared to be a sofa covered with black lay a motionless, white‐draped form lying easily, as one might sleep; but there needed not the covered face to show that it was the sleep of death. Candles burned at the head of the sofa, and a prie‐dieu stood before it. All this Mr. Schöninger took in at a glance; but his eyes rested on what was to him the principal object in the room—Honora Pembroke, sitting near the head of the sofa, with the light of the candles shining over her. She looked up, but did not speak, as F. Chevreuse came in and knelt at the prie‐dieu. Her eyes dropped again immediately to her folded hands, and she sat there motionless, an image of calm and silent grief. Her face was pale and utterly sad and languid with long weeping, her hands lay wearily in her lap, and her plain black dress, and the hair all drawn back together and fastened with a comb, showed how distant from her mind was the thought of personal adornment. Yet never had she looked more lovely or shown how little her beauty depended on ornament.
Mr. Schöninger, looking at her attentively, perceived that her face was thinner than when he had seen it last; and though the sight gave him a certain pain, it gave him, too, a certain pleasure. He would have thought her cruel had she been quite prosperous and happy while he was in torment.
F. Chevreuse rose from his knees, and Miss Pembroke looked up and waited for him to speak.
“Had you not better go to bed, and leave the others to watch?” he asked. “You will be exhausted.”
“I do not want to leave her, father,” she replied. “If she had had a long illness, it would have been different; but it is all so short, so sudden!” She stopped a moment, for her voice begun to tremble a little; but resumed: “She has no one left but me, and I want to stay by her till the last.”
“You will not be lonely?” he asked, dropping further objections.
“Oh! no. The others will sit all night in there, with the doors open between. At daybreak Mrs. Ferrier is coming down, and then I shall go to rest. I am glad you came in.”
“I was passing by with Mr. Schöninger,” he said, “and I asked him to wait for me a moment.”
Her eyes had dropped again while she spoke, seeming too heavy to be lifted; but as the priest said this, she glanced into his face; then, becoming aware that the street‐door was open, looked toward it.
Mr. Schöninger stood there motionless.
A change passed over her face, her sadness becoming distress. She rose from her seat and went to him, her hands clasped.
“Mr. Schöninger,” she said, “she was the last person who would have wronged you or any one.”
Then, seeing that he had not come as an accuser, she held out her hands to him.
The night before he had been like one buried alive, and his hand had been against all the world; to‐night life had crowded back upon him with its honors, its friendships, its pathos, and this last scene of sorrow and tenderness.
He bent, and kissed the hands she gave him, but did not utter a word, and they parted instantly. Honora returned to the prie‐dieu, and, kneeling there, hid her face and began to weep again, and Mr. Schöninger went out to the gate without giving a backward glance.
F. Chevreuse joined him immediately.
“All these wretched doings have left Miss Pembroke very lonely,” he said. “She has really no one left who is near to her, though she has a host of friends. But what, after all, is a host of friends, as the world calls them, worth? When a thunderbolt falls on you, people always gather round, and a great deal of kind feeling is struck out; but, perhaps, you have needed the kindness a great deal more in the long, dry days when there was no thunder. It is the constant, daily, intimate friendship that gives happiness. But there! it is of no use to abuse the world, especially when one forms a part of it, and is thus abusing one’s self. All of us feel our hearts warm towards people who are in great affliction, when we do not think of them in their ordinary trials. It is only God who is constant to all needs, who knows all. Mr. Schöninger, you are welcome.”
They had reached the house, and the priest turned on the threshold to offer his hand to the man whom he had so long courted in vain, and who had so many times refused his friendship. He knew that he had conquered when his hospitality was accepted.
He had conquered, in so much as he had won the Jew’s friendship and confidence; for, having renounced his distrust, Mr. Schöninger was, in an undemonstrative way, generously confiding. Hard to win by one whose circumstances were so alien to his own, when won, there was no reserve.
F. Chevreuse’s sitting‐room was never a very pleasant one, except for his presence. It had too many doors, was too shut in from outside, and had also the uncomfortable air of being the first of a suite. One never feels at rest in the first room of a suite. He felt the unpleasantness of the place, without in the least knowing the cause of it, and always took his special visitors into his mother’s room.
Mother Chevreuse had, woman‐like, known precisely what her son’s apartment lacked, and had given it a pleasant look by employing those little devices which can introduce a fragment of beauty into the most desolate place; but her mantle had not fallen on Jane, the housekeeper, and thus it chanced that the priest had, without knowing it, lost more than his mother.
Her sitting‐room was cheerfully lighted when the two entered it, and the table, prepared for supper, awaited them. It was the Thursday before Palm Sunday, and F. Chevreuse had eaten nothing since taking a cup of coffee and a crust of bread in the morning; and now, the work and excitement of the day over, and nothing worse than he had anticipated having happened, he felt like resting and refreshing himself. If Mrs. Gerald had been alive and mourning, he would have been tormented by the thought of her; but she was safe in the care of God, and he left her there in perfect trust.
Andrew, the man‐servant, sacristan, and factotum of the establishment, was lurking somewhere about when the priest entered, and came forward to make a crabbed salutation. If he ever felt in an amiable mood or was satisfied with anything, this man took good care that no one should know it; and not all the cheerfulness, patience, and amiability of F. Chevreuse could for a moment chase away the cloud that brooded over his face, or make him acknowledge that there was anything but tribulation in his life. The priest bore more patiently the constant, petty trial of such a presence about him because he believed that sorrow for the death of Mother Chevreuse had changed the old man from bad to worse, when the truth was that the lady had skilfully hidden much of their servant’s crabbedness, or had so displayed the comical phase of it that it had ceased to be an annoyance, and was often amusing.
“Tell Jane to give us our supper right away, Andrew,” the priest said. “And bring up a bottle of wine with it.”
“Jane is gone to bed, sir,” Andrew announced, and stood stubbornly to be questioned, his whole air saying plainly that all had not been told.
“Gone to bed!” echoed F. Chevreuse. “What is the matter with her?”
“She says she is sick.” The man suffered an acrid smile to show in the corners of his mouth.
“Jane sick!” said the priest, much concerned. “Is there any one with her? Has anything been done for her?”
In speaking, he took a step toward the door.
“Oh! don’t you trouble yourself, sir,” interposed Andrew quickly, finding that he must deny himself the pleasure of a long cross‐examination. “She says she doesn’t want anything or anybody. She’ll get well when she’s ready. She’s got the supper, and I can manage to bring it up. All the doctors and all the nurses in the world won’t make her well till she’s a mind to be.”
“Well, well!” said F. Chevreuse, rather mortified at this exposition of his domestic trials. “Bring up the supper.”
Jane had, in fact, one of those convenient illnesses sometimes indulged in by some women, and now and then by men, when they are seized by a fit of ungovernable ill‐humor which they dare not show in its true guise, or when they desire to appear very much abused, or to escape blame for some ill‐ doing. F. Chevreuse had not been home since early morning, and dinner had been prepared, had waited, and been put away—no small grievance to even a good‐natured housekeeper. Secondly, about noon, when all the rest of the city knew it, Andrew above all, the great news of the day had burst upon Jane. It was too much; and when, toward evening, Andrew had come home with an order that supper should be prepared for two that night, and a little extra preparation made, and that, moreover, the priest’s visitor would stay all night, the housekeeper’s cup ran over. News had started from the priest’s house, and made the circuit of the city, electrifying everybody, and she had been the last to hear it, and had heard it at last from Andrew! She would not have dared to hint such a thing; but she thought that F. Chevreuse should have told her before leaving the house, even if he had commanded her silence. It would have saved her the mortification of being taken entirely by surprise and displaying such utter ignorance.
While she mused, the fire burned. She would henceforth bear herself very stiffly toward F. Chevreuse. Since he thought that she was not to be trusted, that she was nothing but a servant, she would act like a servant. All those things which she had done for his comfort without being asked she would now wait to be asked to do. He should see the difference between a housekeeper, who should, according to her opinion, be in some sort a friend, and a mere hired servant. She would be very dignified, and immensely respectful and reverential; would be astonished if he should ask if anything was the matter; would do in great and anxious haste whatever he should command, and no more than he commanded; and she would go to F. O’Donovan for confession. In short, this woman, who knew that all the comfort of the priest’s home depended on her, marked out for herself a line of conduct which would have made that home a place of penance to him, and herself a minister of torment; while at the same time she could not only hold herself guiltless of fault, but even assume an air of unwonted sanctity.
To be frankly and honestly disagreeable or wicked, one does not need to study; but a pious hatefulness requires careful preparation.
Her plan of future conduct arranged, Jane perceived that a notable pivot was needed where it should turn from her past behavior; and what so suitable as a short illness? Besides, she did not feel equal to assuming her new rôle as yet. The temptation was too strong to give way to anger. She bewailed Mrs. Gerald, therefore, with many tears; Mrs. Gerald’s death, which might have happened from any other cause, being the only point in the whole story which she would recognize or hear anything about. Weeping brought on a headache, and the headache increased. At five o’clock in the afternoon Jane bound her head up in a wet linen band, and began to feel unable to stand or walk. Duty alone compelled her to keep about. What would become of the house, if she were to give up? What could a poor woman do who had no home or friends of her own, and was obliged to take care of a priest’s house? She must work and watch early and late, sick or well. Nobody but herself knew what a trial it was. And here the victim began to weep over her own misfortunes.
Presently, at six o’clock, Jane began to feel a pain in her back; but nothing would induce her to rest. F. Chevreuse had sent word that he would have some one to sup and stay all night, and she must get the bed‐room ready, and cook something extra. She didn’t see how she could do it, but it must be done.
When her gossips had gone home, after vainly offering their assistance, Andrew came in and found the housekeeper holding on to her head with one hand, while with the other she did work which there was not the least need of doing. He had been watching with great interest the progress of her malady, and perceived that it was near the crisis.
The supper‐hour had been casually mentioned in the priest’s message as about seven o’clock. At half‐past six Jane could not suppress an occasional moan of pain; and at ten minutes before seven she consigned the supper, which was all prepared, to the care of Andrew, and staggered into her own room, holding on by chairs and tables as she went. She would not, perhaps, have indulged in such violent symptoms had she seen the smiles with which her fellow‐servant beheld her tottering progress across the room. Fully persuaded that she had vanquished his scepticism, and half convinced herself that she was suffering severely, Jane set herself to listen for the priest’s coming.
Seven o’clock came, but not F. Chevreuse; half‐past seven, and still he had not appeared.
Jane stole out into the kitchen, scarcely able to stand, and renewed the spoiling dishes. She did not wish to leave anything to be complained of, meaning to be herself the only one ill‐used. At length she heard a foot on the door‐step, and, making haste to shut herself into her room, with only a very little opening left, Jane became a prey to grief and pain.
All these movements Andrew had listened to with great edification; but what Andrew did not know was that the invalid, skurrying out to stand at the foot of the stairs when she heard talking in the room above, had had the pleasure of listening to the whole conversation regarding her state of health.
Ten minutes after, F. Chevreuse, without much surprise, it must be owned, saw his housekeeper coming feebly into the room where he sat at table, her face red and swollen with laborious weeping, and expressing chief among its varied emotions and sentiments a saint‐like and anxious desire and determination to sacrifice herself to the utmost rather than omit the smallest possible duty.
It was an unwelcome vision. There was a point beyond which even he did not want to have his sympathies drained. He felt that he was human, and would like to rest both mind and body.
“I am afraid, F. Chevreuse,” she began, in a very sick voice, leaning against the side of the door—“I am afraid that your toast is too dry. I made it fresh three times....”
“Never mind, Jane,” he interrupted, rather impatiently. “It does very well. You need not trouble yourself.”
Jane came into the room a few tottering steps, and rested on the back of a chair.
“I don’t know how Andrew brought things up,” she said, very short of breath, but not so much so but she could fire this little shot. “I suppose they are all at sixes and sevens. But I wasn’t able to do any....”
“If you are not well, you had better go to bed,” said the priest quite sharply. “Andrew will do all I want done.”
Taken unawares by this unusual severity, Jane lost her discretion. “It is my place to look that things are properly done in the house, and I shall do it,” she said, half defiant, half hysterical, and took a step nearer to the table.
As she did so, her eyes fell on the pale and haggard face of their guest. At that sight she paused, transfixed with a genuine astonishment, for she had expected to see F. O’Donovan; and, after one wild glance, as if she had seen a ghost, uttered a cry and covered her face with her hands.
“Jane!” exclaimed the priest in a voice that told her he was not to be tried much further. “Have you lost your senses?”
“My heart is broken for Mrs. Gerald!” she cried, weeping loudly. “I haven’t been able to stand hardly since I heard about her. Oh! such a wicked world as this is. I shall be glad when the Lord takes me out of it. To think that I shall never see her again, that....”
F. Chevreuse laid down his knife and fork, which he had made a pretence of using. “You and Mrs. Gerald were by no means such intimate friends that her death should plunge you in this great affliction,” he said. “Her nearest friends bear their sorrow with fortitude. Your agitation is therefore quite uncalled for. I have no further need of you to‐night. If you want anything done for you, Andrew will go for some of your friends.”
There was no possibility of resisting this intimation, and the housekeeper retired speechless with rage and mortification.
“Mr. Schöninger,” remarked the priest gravely, when they were alone, “women are sometimes very troublesome.”
“F. Chevreuse,” returned his visitor with equal gravity, “men are sometimes very troublesome.”
“That is very true,” the priest made haste to admit. “I didn’t mean to say anything against women.”
And yet, at the woman’s first glance and cry of horror and aversion, Mr. Schöninger’s face had darkened. “Was he always to have these vulgar animosities intruded on him?” he asked himself.
It was one of those annoyances which a proud and fastidious person would like to have the power to banish for ever with a gesture of the hand or a word.
The two friends talked long together that night, and Mr. Schöninger told the priest quite freely all his plans.
“I shall stay here and take up my life where I left it off, except that I must now give up all contest for that disputed inheritance,” he said. “All I had has been thrown away in the struggle. Whether there would, in any case, have been a possible success for me I do not know. It is now too late. This infernal persecution—I shall never call it anything else, sir—has destroyed my last chance, and I have only to dismiss the subject from my mind as far as possible. I received to‐day a letter signed by all my former pupils, begging me to resume my instruction of them. They expressed themselves very well, and I shall consent. The Unitarian minister has invited me to play the organ in their church, but I have not decided on that yet.”
“I would like to have you play in my church,” the priest said. “Our organist is dead, and the singing is getting to be miserable. Our music would, I am sure, be more pleasing to you; but, if doctrines make any difference, you would find yourself more at home with the Unitarians. I don’t see any difference between them and the reformed Jews.”
“Doctrines do not make any difference, especially as I am not obliged to listen to them,” Mr. Schöninger replied with a dignity that verged on coldness. “In music I do not find any doctrines; and it is not necessary to believe in order to give the words their proper expression. Or rather, I might say that the artist has a poetical faith, a faith of the imagination, in all things grand, noble, or beautiful, and can utter with fervor, in his art, sentiments which have no place in his daily life; or, if they have a place, it is not such as would be assigned to them by the theologian. In his mind a pagan goddess and a Christian priest may have niches side by side, and it would be hard to say which he preferred. Your Raphael painted with equal delight and success a Madonna and a Galatea. Your Mozart wrote Masses and operas, and vastly preferred to write operas. He says that he wrote church music when he could do nothing else.”
“So much the worse for them!” said F. Chevreuse rather hotly. “Raphael would have painted better Madonnas—Madonnas which would have answered their true purpose of inspiring holy thoughts—if he had devoted his gifts entirely to God; and Mozart would have written better Masses, if he had done the same. When you see a thorough Christian artist, it will be one who will never lower himself to a subject contrary to, or disconnected with, religion. The others have been false, and consequently have had only glimpses where they might have had visions. Some of them were great, but they might have been immeasurably greater. No, I repeat, do not imagine that you are going to feel or play our music as you might if you were a good Catholic. But excuse me!” he said, recalling himself. “I have given you rather more of a lecture than I meant to. I still want you to take our music in hand, if you will.”
“I will with pleasure, if you will be content with my interpretation of it,” Mr. Schöninger said with a smile.
He was not in the least displeased with the priest’s lecture, and, on the contrary, decidedly liked it. He was stirred by anything which consecrated art as an embodiment of the divine rather than a mere expression of the human.
Surprise is but a short‐lived emotion; and when Mr. Schöninger was left alone that night, with the first opportunity in many months of thinking in an unobserved solitude, he wondered more at his own calmness than at anything which had happened to him. The hideous suffering from which he had but just escaped looked far away, and so alien that he could contemplate it almost with a cold inquisitiveness, as something in which he had no part. It was scarcely more to him than the delirious dreams of a fever which had passed away. Indignation and a desire to revenge himself might rise again, would rise again; but for the present they slept. The first joy of freedom, too, was over. Nothing remained but a feeling of quiet and security. Doubtless he had, without knowing it, been soothed by the many kind and regretful words that had been addressed to him that day, and felt less disposed to dwell on his own wrongs when he knew that so many others were thinking and speaking of them.
All round the room assigned to him hung the pictures that had belonged to Mother Chevreuse—an old‐fashioned portrait of her husband in the uniform of a French officer, a S. Ignatius of Loyola, a S. Antony preaching to the fishes, a print, on a gold ground, of the miraculous Lady of Perpetual Succor, and a Santa Prassede sleeping on her slab of granite.
Mr. Schöninger held his candle up to examine each of these, all but the portrait familiar to him in their originals; and as he looked, the places where he had first seen them, the stately palaces and the quiet churches, enclosed his imagination within their walls. He saw again the lines of sombre columns leading up to the glowing mosaics of the tribune, where the vision of S. John hung petrified in air; the dim lamp in the mysterious chapel of the Colonna Santa shone out again inside its grating, and the walls glittered dimly back. He saw the thickets of camellias mantled with bloom under an April sky, a little forest of white at the right hand, and a forest of rose‐red at the left, and ever the fountains sparkling through.
How strange it was! He set down his candle, almost impatiently, as if a beautiful vision were being melted in the light of it, and blew it out. How strange it was! When he was in Rome, he had hated it while he admired it; but now, as the thought of it came up, his heart yearned out towards it, and grew tender and full with longing for it. How strange that his dearest affections should cluster where his deepest hates had pierced, and that, whenever an accusing thought arose, an excusing one immediately answered it. The city of the Ghetto was becoming to him also the city of the silvery‐haired old man who had opened its gates. To remember him was like remembering a pure white star that had shone out one still evening long ago.
Mr. Schöninger put aside the curtain that hardly barred the full moonlight from the room, and leaned out into the night. Not many streets distant Honora Pembroke sat wakeful and mourning, alone with her dead. By what fatality was it that the silent woman lying there, and the weeping one beside her, should have the power to stand, with their softness and their pallor, between him and his remembrance of that gloomy mansion of hate and crime, the shadow of whose portal had but just slipped from him? The cold and trembling hands he had kissed that night had quenched for a time all anger in his heart.
He sighed, thinking of that sad household, and his gaze turned tenderly and steadily in its direction. He would have liked to call down a blessing on the head he loved had it not been so much nearer the source of all blessing than he was. She was right, no matter what she believed. All she held good was good, at least as far as she was concerned, and no blame of false doctrine could be imputed to her.
A ray of light stronger than that of the moon shining across his eyes attracted his attention. It came from F. Chevreuse’s sitting‐room, the one window of which was at right angles with the window where he leaned. A small, displaced fold of the curtain showed him the priest on his knees there before a crucifix, his hands clasped, his black‐robed form as motionless as if it had been carved out of ebony. Here, too! Could he have no other friend than a Christian priest for his hand and heart to cling to?
Yet all was sweet and peaceful, and everything conspired to soothe him. The air touched him with a breath too soft to be called a breeze, the city was still about him, and only a foamy murmur told where the sleepless river flowed.
Triumph, joy, and sweetness he had felt, and at last came gratitude to God and forgiveness of man. One of his last thoughts that night was of pity for Lawrence Gerald.
In that pity he was not alone; for nearly the whole of Crichton shared it. They had known the young man from his childhood, had blamed and petted him, had put every temptation in his way, and been ready to defend him when he yielded. In spite of his haughtiness and assumption, there was not a single person in the city, perhaps, who really disliked him. His captivating beauty and wayward sweetness won more affection than the highest virtues or the noblest gifts of mind would have won. When a stranger and a Jew was accused, they could believe him to have been actuated by the most cruel malignity; but it was impossible to impute such feelings to Lawrence Gerald. He was weak and imprudent, and had become involved, and so led on beyond his intention. Each one could imagine, even before the confession was made public, just how it had happened; and when they read the confession, the feeling was almost universal in favor of his escape. Only a few, sternly just, insisted on hoping that he would be brought to suffer the full penalty of the law. Fathers and mothers whose boys, scarcely more governable than he, had played and grown up with him, looked with terror on their own children; and young men who secretly knew themselves to have been preserved only by what they would have called chance from crimes as bad as his, shuddered at the thought of his being brought back among them to be tried for his life. A sort of panic seized upon all when they saw what horrors could grow out of that which had seemed to be mere youthful errors, and how criminal had been the leniency of public opinion and of the law. Mr. Schöninger’s case had held no moral for them, for he was an alien; but what Lawrence Gerald was some of their own might be. They were conspicuously generous, these people, in that charity which stays at home and makes excuses for its own little circle; and for this time, at least, they regretted that their charity had not gone beyond that boundary, and extended to the stranger within their gates.
“I confess before Almighty God, to the man who has been so wronged on my account, and to my friends and neighbors, whom I have deceived”—so Lawrence Gerald’s confession began—“that I am guilty in deed, though not in intention, of the death of Madame Chevreuse, for which Mr. Schöninger is now unjustly condemned. I had gambled, and was in debt to a man who threatened to expose me if I did not pay him at once. I knew that the exposure would ruin me. I should have lost my situation, my marriage would have been prevented, and my mother’s heart would have been broken. The debt was not a new one. I had not gambled for a good while, and had resolved never to do so again; and I have kept that resolution. If I would have broken it, and increased my debt, the man would have waited. I was tempted to, but I resisted. It seemed to me better to take the money—I did not call it stealing—when I could get it, and repay it privately after my marriage. I knew that I could have it then, a little at a time. I had known many men to be excused for such things—men who had used money that belonged to others, meaning to repay it some time, and the law had not punished them severely. Yet there was not a case where the need seemed to be as great as mine. I thought of it a long time before I felt as if I could do it, and then I didn’t resolve that I would. I only felt that I would take advantage of whatever chance occurred. I never arranged anything. F. Chevreuse dropped his latch‐key into the furnace register one day when he was at my mother’s. I got it out afterward, and kept it. I knew already that the key of our street‐door would unlock his. Those two helps I regarded as an intimation of what I was to do. I even thought them providential; and I promised God that if I should succeed in getting the money and paying my debts, I would lead a good life in future. I didn’t know that I was blaspheming. Afterward I heard F. Chevreuse say just how much money he had, and where he kept it. He was talking to my mother and me. I took that as another intimation. I said, Such a good man as he would not be permitted to help me along in this way, if I were not to do what I am thinking of. Then I knew that for one night he would be away; but still I did not resolve. I only followed wherever circumstances led me; and every circumstance led me straight on to crime. We were at Mrs. Ferrier’s that evening singing, and the night was dark. If it had been a bright night, I should not have ventured to go to the priest’s door. I said to myself that it was perhaps God who had made the night dark for me. I went home from Mrs. Ferrier’s, and went to my own room, taking the key of the street‐door with me. I stayed there till all were asleep; and I thought that if my mother had left her chamber‐door open, I would not go out, for she might hear me going down‐stairs. She usually left it open, but that night it was shut. I went down the back stairs, and got out of a little window at the back of the house; and even then I did not say surely to myself what I was going to do.
“It was necessary that I should have some disguise, and I had none; but I had seen Mr. Schöninger lay his shawl down in Mrs. Ferrier’s garden, and I thought he had left it there. I took that for another sign. If the shawl were not there, I would go home again. It was there, and I wrapped myself in it, and walked toward the priest’s house, ready to turn back at the least obstacle. The only person I saw was a policeman, and he was behind me, so that I was forced to go forward. A thunder‐shower was coming up, and the sound of it deadened my steps. When I reached the door, I stopped again, and, for the first time, made a plan. If any one should find me unlocking it, I would say that my mother was sick, and I had come for Mother Chevreuse. If Andrew or Jane should meet and know me as I entered, I would tell the same story, and would ask for Mother Chevreuse, and then confess the whole truth to her. I knew she would pity, and perhaps she would help, me. If Mother Chevreuse herself should come upon me, and recognize me, I would confess to her, and beg her mercy. Nobody saw or heard me till I had got the money into my hands, and was going away; and then it was too late to confess. All my irresolution had gone away, and I was desperate. It was no longer a question of confessing to one person, but of being exposed before three, and, of course, before the world. All the excuses I had made for myself before became as nothing, and I knew that I was a thief. The money was in my hands, I had earned it, and I meant to keep it. The rest is all like a flash of lightning. Why did she cling so to me? I told her twice to let go, or I might hurt her. My blood was all in my head. If those two servants had come and seen me there, I should have killed myself before their faces. I heard their steps coming, and I pushed her with all my strength. I did not stop to think where we were. She let go then; but I have felt her soft hands clinging to me ever since. It maddens a man to have a woman’s soft hands clinging to him when he wants to get away. After that, I ran back to Mrs. Ferrier’s garden, and left the shawl, and then I went home.
“When I was sick, and thought I was going to die, and couldn’t get another priest, I confessed to F. Chevreuse, and he forgave me; but he told me that I must consent to his telling all in order to clear Mr. Schöninger as soon as I should be dead. I consented; but I did not die, and so he could do nothing. I hereby give him leave to tell all that I then told him. I have not been to confession since, because I didn’t want to give him a chance to say anything to me. I forgot then to tell him that I had the money still, but I shall give it back with this. Of course I did not dare to use it. I told the man I owed to do his worst about it, and he did nothing, only said he would wait till I could pay him. I found I had gained nothing, and lost all.
“My wife found me out, I do not know how, and I never asked; and it is she who writes this from my dictation. John, my mother’s footman, found me out, and I have never asked him how. He will sign this, but without reading it. I think he has no proof against me. F. Chevreuse knows nothing except what he has learned in the confessional. This will be left with him, to be opened four weeks from to‐day. With him, also, I leave a letter to my dearest mother, whom I am not worthy to name, and a letter for Mr. Schöninger.”
The letter to his mother was buried with her. No one ever read it, unless those dead eyes could see. The letter to Mr. Schöninger was simply to beg the forgiveness which, the writer added, he scarcely hoped to receive.
The confession was written in a clear, even hand, with evident deliberation and painstaking on the part of the amanuensis; and if the writer’s heart had trembled, not a line showed it. Only here and there a large blister on the paper showed where a tear had fallen.
Mr. and Mrs. Grundy were shocked at the writer’s insensibility; but then Annette Ferrier always was queer, they added.
Perhaps only one of the many who read that confession was aware of the sting it contained for F. Chevreuse, or dreamed that those “soft, clinging hands” would be felt by him also, as well as by the criminal, for many a day. Mr. Schöninger shrank with a pang of sympathetic pain when he saw the words, and almost wondered that Annette Gerald could, even in that moment of supreme misery, have been unaware of their cruelty.
“I own to you,” F. Chevreuse confessed years afterward to F. O’Donovan, “that when I first read those words, I realized for one moment how a man might be willing to kill another. The image of him flinging off my mother’s clinging hands—well, well! The time will never come when I can speak calmly of it. Fortunately for me then, it was Holy Week, and I had my crucified Lord before me, and plenty of work on my hands. Mr. Schöninger helped me, too. I knew what he meant, though he made no explanation. He only said, ‘Your Christ is strong, if he can keep your hand from clinching.’ ”
Christ was strong, and the Jew was yet to feel his might.
Just at present, however, he had earthly things to think of, and a trial to endure particularly disagreeable to one of his temperament. He had to be a second time the lion of the hour, to be stared at, followed, observed in all he did, listened to in all he said—in short, to be the temporary victim of public curiosity.
Conquering his disgust and annoyance, he chose the best method of making this trial a short one, by showing himself quite freely. He took rooms at a quiet hotel frequented by business men, and very seldom visited by ladies. If the mood should take him to pace his room at night, he did not choose that any sympathizing heart should be counting his footsteps. He called on his former pupils, and made appointments with them, and listened with patience to their earnest, and often tearful, protestations of regret and indignation in his regard. He gathered up into his hands, one by one, the threads of ordinary life, and tried to interest himself in them again, and to renew some of his old pleasures; but he could not unite them and weave his heart in with them as before. A gulf, of which he only now became aware, lay between him and the past. It was not the sense of wrong and loss, it was not even that he had a greater distrust of mankind; it was at once higher and deeper than anything merely personal: it was a disgust and fear of life itself, as he had seen and felt it, a sense of instability and of hollowness everywhere. His desires for wealth and power and fame dropped into an abyss, and left no sound to tell that they were substances or had encountered any substance in their descent. Like one who, walking over a bridge, suddenly perceives that, instead of solid arches of stone beneath, there is only a thin and trembling framework between him and the torrent, he felt that he might at any moment fall through into the unknown world, or into nothingness.
This man had called himself a Jew, partly from an inherited allegiance, which ran in his blood, though it was no longer niched in his brain, partly, also, from a generous unwillingness to desert the unfortunate. He cherished the fragments of his ancient traditions as the poet and the antiquary cherish the ruins of an antique temple, in which the vulgar see only broken rocks and rubbish, but from which their imaginations can rebuild portico and sculptured frieze and painted ceiling. Their eyes can discern the acanthus leaf where it lies half choked in dust, and the dying glimmer of what once was gold, and, faintly burning through its encrusting soil, the imperishable color of that rare stone, blue as the vault of a midnight sky. In the ruin of his people Mr. Schöninger still beheld and gloried in that sublime race which, in the early world, had borne the day‐ star on their foreheads.
But it was only a memory to him, and the present was all vanity.
While in prison, he had thought that liberty was, of all things, the most precious. In his emptied heart it had been the one object of longing; and in the first moments of freedom he had found it intoxicating. But the joy it gave effervesced and died away like foam, and the emptiness remained. Looking back on that prison life, he almost wondered at the agony it had caused him, or even that the shameful death which had threatened him should have had power to move him so, or that the opinions and the enmities of men should have struck such bitterness from his soul. What was it all but motes in the beam? “Vanity of vanities, and all is vanity.”
But life must be lived, and work must be done; and he took up the duties that came to hand, and performed them almost as if he loved them.
One small pleasure, indeed, he gave himself. Escaping from the city, with as much care as if he had been flying from justice, he took a long, solitary walk in the pine‐woods where, nearly a year before, he had gone with a May party, and, searching there, he brought back handfuls of pale, nodding snow‐drops, and sent them by a trusty messenger to Honora Pembroke.
“They are for her or for Mrs. Gerald, as she may choose,” he said.
She made no answer, but the messenger saw her lay the delicate blossoms in the white hand of the dead, while her tears fell on them, drop by drop.
Mr. Schöninger’s generosity of feeling would have prompted him to attend the funeral, but his good taste prevented. He would have been too much observed there. He watched the procession as it passed by his window—an old‐fashioned, solemn, genuine New‐England funeral; no mourning carriages with laughing people inside, no hired bearers but a long line of friends and neighbors, who knew and lamented the dead, walking after her with downcast faces, to stand by her grave till the earth should have covered her in.
In a town like Crichton such a death for such a cause would create a deep impression; and crowds stood all about the cottage when the friends who were admitted came out from its doors, and a grave silence prevailed in all the streets as they passed through them.
It was Good Friday; and that evening, for the first time, the new organist was to take charge of the choir in the Immaculate Conception. There was but little to do, for the singers were not in training—only a hymn or two to sing before the sermon, and nothing after.
Mr. Schöninger was glad that he should thus be able to leave the church before the sermon without seeming disrespectful to F. Chevreuse, as he would have seemed in going out and coming in again when the sermon was over. He had not the least objection to hearing Catholic sermons, provided they did not bore him—had, indeed, heard many of them; but he did not wish to hear F. Chevreuse speak on the passion and death of Christ. To him, that had always been the weakest point in the Christian theology. He could reverence almost to the verge of adoration the sublime humility and sweetness and patience of that life which they called divine; but he shrank from the agony which crowned it as something weak and unfitting. A life so perfect ending thus was to him incongruous; as though the eye, travelling up a lofty and exquisite column, should see a rude block at the top instead of a perfect capital.
“If it does not prove the falsehood of the whole,” Mr. Schöninger said to himself, “it proves a great mistake somewhere; and I would rather not hear such a man as F. Chevreuse try to make it seem reasonable.”
But he would not be in too great a hurry to go. He lingered a little, arranged the music, and stopped at the door of the choir long enough to hear the priest announce his text: The Lord hath laid upon him the iniquities of us all.
“My Isaiah!” he thought. “I wonder what he meant in writing that?”
“Good Friday is, to my mind, not so much a day of sorrow as a day of remorse,” the priest began. “The Jews were ungrateful, and we are ungrateful.”
“That dear, just soul!” Mr. Schöninger muttered with a smile, as he went slowly out.
Going down the stairs, he caught now and then a sentence. “We sin, and are forgiven, and then we sin again; and we sin against a God whom we acknowledge; they sinned against a God in whom they did not believe.”
And again: “Peter sinned once, but he never denied his Master a second time; Magdalene was once a sinner, but never again.”
Mr. Schöninger stopped at a narrow pointed window near the foot of the stairs, and looked out into the night. He had half a mind to go back and listen to the sermon. There was something enchaining in the way F. Chevreuse preached. His were no cut‐and‐dried orations where the form is first laid out, and each part fitted in as exact as a mosaic, and where no fault can be found, except that there is such an absence of faults. He poured his heart out; he announced a truth, and then, in a few sentences, he threw a picture before their eyes to illustrate it; he walked the platform where he stood, and seemed at times so transported by his feelings as to forget that he was not talking to himself alone.
Mr. Schöninger paused in the lower door, and listened again, hating to stay, hating still more to go away, so empty did his soul feel.
The speaker gave a brief backward glance over what he had already said. They had seen the agony in the garden, and now they were going to see what it meant. They had seen the cup put aside by the hand of Christ, and now they were going to see him drink it to the dregs. They had seen him bear uncomplainingly the stripes and the thorns, now they were going to hear him cry out in the agony of desolation.
With a rapid touch he sketched the scene—the surging, angry crowd, driving and hurrying forward a man in the midst, who drags and stumbles under a heavy cross.
The priest wrung his hands slowly, walking to and fro, with that sight before him. “O my God!” he said, half to himself, “is it thus that I see thee? Thy divinity is reduced so small—so small that it requires all the fulness of my faith to discern it. This man is covered with dust and blood. He hath fallen beneath his load, and the dust of the street is on him, on his hands, and even his face, with the blood and the sweat. They buffet him, they laugh at him”—the speaker faced his congregation suddenly, stretching out his hands to them. “A God! a God!” he cried, and was for a moment silent.
Mr. Schöninger turned away, shuddering at this image of Divinity in the dust.
Yet he had not gone far when, in spite of him, his feet were drawn back.
F. Chevreuse stood beside the great black and white crucifix, to which he did not seem to dare to lift his eyes.
“The cup is at his lips at last! He has lost sight of the Father! The Lord has laid upon him the iniquities of us all. All the murders, all the adulteries of the world are on him; all the sacrileges are on him; all the brutality, the foulness, the lies, the treacheries, the meannesses, the cruelties—they are all heaped upon him. All iniquities, past, present, and to come, overclouded and hid his divine innocence out of sight. And the Father, seeing him so, relented not, spared him not, but poured on his head the full measure of his hatred of our sins, as if he were the criminal who was guilty of them all.”
Mr. Schöninger started back as if lightning had flashed in his face, uttered a faint cry, and hurried from the church.
He knew why the veil of the temple was rent and the face of the sun darkened; and he knew why the Son of God had bled at every pore.
He walked once rapidly round the square, baring his head to the tender coolness of the air. When he reached the church again, F. Chevreuse had finished speaking, and was just turning away. But he paused, as he saw Mr. Schöninger walk up the aisle as unconscious of the astonished congregation who gazed at him as if the church had been empty.
He knelt at the communion railing.
“F. Chevreuse,” he said in a voice that every one heard, so still were all, “I have not yet kissed the cross on which my God was crucified.”
F. Chevreuse drew the small crucifix from his girdle, and presented it, his hands trembling and tears rolling down his face; and all the congregation fell on their knees while the Jew kissed the cross on which his God was crucified.
The Jesuit Martyrs Of The Commune.(111)
In this little volume the Rev. F. de Ponlevoy has faithfully recorded the Acts, as he well entitles them, of five brave men of our own time, who went forth “rejoicing,” like the apostles of old, “that they were accounted worthy to suffer reproach for the name of Jesus.”
The author has not attempted a biography or any detailed account of the lives of these brave men previous to their arrest “in the name of the Commune,” but simply an exact statement, far more impressive, of their known words and acts from that moment which so plainly marked them as chosen ones of God.
These Jesuit fathers suffered in most saintly companionship, and the world will heartily echo the pious wish of our author that other societies may do for their martyred brethren that which he has so lovingly accomplished for his.
The Jesuits in Paris during the war of 1870 saw plainly the gathering signs of darker days yet to come for France; but it is not in their traditions to yield anything to fear, and so they were resolved, the moment the armistice was concluded, to open their school of S. Geneviève and College of Vaugirard. At the very beginning of the war with Prussia, these two establishments had been freely passed over to the military authorities for the use of the sick and wounded, hundreds of whom had been there received and tenderly cared for, many of the fathers attaching themselves to the ambulances and hospitals with the utmost devotion. Consequently these buildings now needed many repairs and to be almost entirely refurnished. The residence in the Rue Lafayette had fared better, as the greater part of the community were Germans who had been obliged to leave France at the beginning of the war, while the house fell under the protection of the American minister, charged by Prussia to watch over the interests of its people in Paris. Add to which this modest mission had the deserved reputation of being very poor—not much of a bait for the blood‐ hounds of the Commune. At the house in the Rue de Sèvres such measures were taken as prudence seemed to suggest, leaving the rest to Providence. Thus at first it had seemed best to keep some members of the order in Paris—men at once necessary and willing to stay. Some were sent to the provinces, and others remained scattered throughout the ungrateful capital. At the conclusion of the armistice the College of Vaugirard was hastily prepared for pupils, and its reopening fixed for the 9th of March, by which time nearly two hundred students had applied for admission. But on the 18th the long‐threatened revolution burst forth, and the rector, more anxious for the pupils than for the fathers, hurried both to the country‐house of the college, at Moulineaux, between Issy and Meudon. However, they were soon compelled to retreat precipitately, first to Versailles, and finally to Saint Germain‐en‐Laye; for, placed exactly in the narrow belt between the belligerent lines, they found themselves, upon the breaking out of hostilities between Paris and Versailles, veritably between two fires. The deserted College of Vaugirard was surrounded, occupied, and pillaged, but no one was there to be arrested.
The school of S. Geneviève required more time for repairs, and was to be opened on March 20; but the insurrection, coming in the interval, necessitated new delays, and parents were notified to await further announcements. The rector, F. Léon Ducoudray, born at Laval, May 6, 1827, a man of great spirit and energy, was not one to lose time or to be dismayed in the hour of trial. He at once sent out four of the fathers, one to negotiate a loan in England or Belgium to meet the exigencies of the moment, and the others to seek in the provinces an asylum for the exiled school, which was finally removed to a country‐house at Athis‐Mons, on the railway line to Orléans, not far from Paris. The pupils were notified that the school would open on April 12; the rector, who had remained in Paris to superintend the final arrangements, was to join his community on Monday, the third.
On Sunday, the second, F. Ducoudray perceived that F. Paul Piquet, a sick priest left at S. Geneviève, was rapidly sinking, and at a quarter‐past eight in the evening this good father had the happiness of leaving this world and its momentarily‐increasing trials. It was a great loss to the house, and at this time a very painful embarrassment. The next morning (Monday) the Commune issued a decree confiscating all the furniture and property belonging to religious houses, and at S. Geneviève they every instant expected a visit on the part of the new rulers of the city. Nevertheless, F. Ducoudray sent for several of the fathers to come up from Athis to attend the funeral ceremonies of the deceased priest, set for Tuesday, April 4.
All at once, just after midnight on Tuesday, before these fathers had returned to Athis, the buildings were encircled by a battalion of National Guards, armed to the teeth. The Rue Lhomond, the Rue d’Ulm, the Passage des Vignes, the very woodyard at the foot of the garden, all were guarded. There were repeated blows at the door of No. 18. The brother porter went at once to say that the keys, according to custom, were in the rector’s room, and that he would go and get them. But at this simple and reasonable answer the outsiders got into a rage; a summons was sounded three times at rapid intervals; the whole neighborhood was startled by a general discharge at all the windows of the Rue Lhomond; there were loud threats of bringing cannons and mitrailleuses from the Place de Panthéon near by. Presently the doors were opened, and the rector himself appeared, calmly requesting to be allowed to make some remarks in the name of common justice and of individual liberty. But the day for these things had gone by. For sole response the leader signified, revolver in hand, that he constituted the rector his prisoner in the name of the Commune, and should occupy and search the house for the arms and munitions of war therein concealed. But in reality they were here, as everywhere else, on a hunt for the cash‐box. “That which we most need,” said a member of the Commune, “is money.”
Right away every one in the house was on his feet, and each one followed his instinct; but first of all one priest hurried to the private chapel, where, for precaution, the Blessed Sacrament had been previously placed, and hastened to secure it against profanation.
The envoys of the Commune were in number and force enough to carry on several operations at once. They arrested everybody they could lay their hands on—priests, lay brothers, even the servants of the school—and, as fast as they found them, seated them in the entrance hall, and kept them there for several hours. They ransacked the entire house; the rector himself led them everywhere. The search was very long and very minute, without the desired result; for they found no arms and very little money. F. Ducoudray, without falsifying himself in the slightest, replied with so much unconcern, with such dignity and politeness, that they said to each other in astonishment: “What a man this is! What energy of character!” At last, after three painful hours, they took him to the hall; but even from the first moment they separated him from his brethren, and put him in a little vestibule of the chapel in front of the parlors. It is almost superfluous to add that the pillage of the house commenced almost at once, accelerated, and the next day completed, by bands of women and children.
At five in the morning the recall was sounded; it was the signal for defiling and departing for the préfecture of the police. The prisoners were ranged between two lines of National Guards. First came the rector, a little ahead of the others; behind him the Rev. FF. Ferdinand Billot, Emile Chauveau, Alexis Clerc, Anatole de Bengy, Jean Bellanger, Theodore de Regnon, and Jean Tanguy, four lay brothers, and seven servants.
“Well,” said F. Ducoudray, with a radiant countenance, to F. Caubert, who was nearest him. “Ibant gaudentes,(112) did they not?”
“What is he saying there?” asked the uneasy guards. F. Caubert repeated the sentence; God knows what they understood by it!
At the préfecture a major exclaimed: “Why have you brought me these rascals (coquins)? Why didn’t you shoot them on the spot?”
“Gently,” answered one of the guard; “it is necessary to proceed calmly, or you yourself might get it before the rest.”
The same officer then asked, revolver in hand, for the director.
“I am here,” replied F. Ducoudray, advancing.
“I know that you have arms concealed in your house.”
“No, sir.”
“I have it on certain authority.”
“If there are any, it is without my knowledge.”
“You have an iron will. We are going to see about that, we two; and if we do not find them, you do not get back here.”
Then followed a number of charges against the priests, such as poisoning the sick and wounded in the hospitals and ambulances, perversion of youth, and complicity with the government of Versailles. F. Ducoudray, following the example of his divine Master, made no reply, and, after being loaded with insults, was finally taken secretly and locked up in a cell of the Conciergerie prison. The others were confined in a common hall of the depot prison, intended for vagrant women.
In the meantime, two priests and one brother, who had escaped detection in the tumult, remained at S. Geneviève. The brother was an invalid confined to his bed, and the two priests, one of whom had been concealed all night in the garden, met in his room after the guards had left, and it remained for nearly two months virtually their prison.
The saintly president of the house of the Rue de Sèvres, F. Pierre Olivaint, had seen all his flock sheltered from the gathering storm, and on that Monday was alone in the house with one reverend companion, F. Alexis Lefebvre, and several devoted brothers, incapable of fear. All day long warnings and entreaties poured in upon him to cause him to fly in advance of the impending visit from the Commune. “But what would you have?” he answered tranquilly. “I am like the captain of a vessel, who must be the last to leave the ship. If we are taken to‐day, I shall have but one regret: that it is Holy Tuesday, not Good Friday.”
“Why, now, my child,” he said again, at six o’clock, to one who implored him to save himself while there was yet a moment, for it was certain there was to be a visit on the part of the Commune that very evening—“why, now, my child, why do you excite yourself? Is it not the best act of charity we can perform to give our life for the love of Jesus Christ?” And then he went to the lower floor, facing the hall door, and calmly went on with his office. “I am waiting,” he said to a friend who passed by, pressing his hand.
Just as they were assembling in the refectory for the evening collation, at the usual hour of a quarter‐past seven, the brother porter was summoned; a delegate of the Commune was at the door, behind him a company of National Guards. The brother was instructed to detain them in the vestibule or in the parlor until the superior himself should come. Brother Francis did so, in spite of the impatience and threats of the visitors. In anticipation of this visit, but two hosts had been left in the morning, and now each father hurried to his room, and each had his viaticum ready. F. Lefebvre returned the first, soon followed by F. Olivaint. The delegate announced the object of his mission—to look for arms and munitions kept in reserve by the Jesuits; but, being himself called away on important business, deputed citizen Lagrange to take his place. This man, well worthy of the deed, ordered every avenue of escape to be guarded, and then, followed by nearly half his force, began the tour of inspection, accompanied by F. Olivaint, and preceded by two brothers, one with a light, the other carrying the keys; two other brothers were stationed at the entrance with the guards, and, as each room was examined, Lagrange left two of his men to guard it. To have any idea of the shameless impiety and vulgar insolence of these functionaries of the Commune, one must have seen and heard them; for three hours the search continued, amid threats and mockery, through all which F. Olivaint remained calm and reserved.
The critical moment came while in the procurator’s chamber, where the cash‐box was discovered. “Hurry and open it,” they cried. “Where’s the key?”
“I haven’t it; it is not even here,” answered F. Olivaint. “Our father procurator, who is absent, has it with him.” Then came the tempest; one of the brothers was sent off with three guards, arms in hand, to hunt up the father procurator, and bring him back alive or dead. In the end, F. Caubert really did arrive, and opened the box. It was empty. Naturally, the siege had suppressed all receipts and increased all expenses; for a long time the Jesuits had lived only by borrowing. “We are robbed,” Lagrange exclaimed. “All right, the superior and the steward are my prisoners, in the name of the Commune. Off to the préfecture of police!” F. Lefebvre begged to be taken with his brethren. “No, no,” was the answer. “You stay here and hold this house in the name of the Commune.” And actually the sentence was prophetic; for the house guarded by F. Lefebvre was spared with him.
At about half‐past eleven o’clock the two prisoners departed, never to return; they sought in vain for a carriage, to make the long transit. As they passed out, F. Olivaint saw, in the crowd in the street, a group of compassionate friends; he saluted them with a smile, as if to say: “Weep not for me.”
Lagrange and his company quartered themselves at the Place Vendôme, as proud of their prowess that night as if they had captured Versailles; a single piquet of armed men took the prisoners to the préfecture, and there, instead of being placed with the others in the common hall, they were immediately and secretly locked up in the cells of the Conciergerie.
“FF. Olivaint and Caubert are in prison,” F. Lefebvre wrote to our author at Versailles. “They absolutely would not take me. I am alone at the house, with Brother Bouillé, both fearless, thank God! The others are dispersed, and come from time to time to see me. I have placed the Blessed Sacrament in the gallery near my room, and, when they return, I shall consume the sacred hosts. The church will be closed. They are arresting the priests. Monseigneur himself is at the préfecture of police; they say these are the hostages, I am told. Pray, pray for me, my father! Oh! how happy I should be to give my life for our Lord!”
F. Ducoudray accepted his imprisonment without any surprise. “Before long,” he had said, on March 19, to the Prince de Broglie—“before long our churches will be closed, our houses devastated, our persons arrested, and God knows who will regain his liberty. The things which are to be done will have a particular character of hatred to God, and—that which is very sad for a priest to say—there will prove to be no other argument for the miserable ones who are to be masters of Paris than the cannon. I have lived for seven months in the very midst of these men, and I have not met with one heart or one honest mind among them.”
“For six months,” he wrote under date of Feb. 20, “I have seen only grief and mourning.... My God! must I say to you that I can still hope? Paris has lost the last fibre of moral and religious sense. Its population is mad, delirious. Can we hope for the return of divine mercy when this immense city thinks only of founding a society based on the absence of religion and on the hatred of God? Only a miracle can help us out of the abyss in which we are plunged. I hold my peace.... My heart is too heavy, and my soul too gloomy.”
F. Olivaint, loving his country not less, was filled with joy from the very moment of his arrest. “Ibant gaudentes,” he said with sparkling eyes to the archbishop’s secretary, who passed his grating—“Ibant gaudentes; it is for the same Master!” “France,” he said, “like the world, requires to be ransomed by blood—not the blood of criminals, which sinks into the ground, and remains mute and barren, but the blood of the just, which cries to heaven, invoking justice and imploring mercy.”
“There must be victims,” said F. Caubert. “It is God who has chosen them.”
On the evening of Holy Thursday there came a change. The archbishop, the president, Bonjeau, FF. Ducoudray, Clerc, and de Bengy, each in a separate compartment of a prison carriage, were conveyed from the Conciergerie to the prison of Mazas. F. Olivaint and F. Caubert were left alone at the Conciergerie, in separate cells, debarred from all possible communication.
“And from this hour,” cries F. Ponlevoy, in tender remembrance,(113) “I seem to myself to be really writing an episode of the Catacombs. The church is ever fruitful in generous souls, but it is the hour of trial that more than any lays bare the depths of the heart; and if, on one side, there is in the martyrs a patience beyond all grief, there is in the Christian a charity stronger than death itself.”
A system of correspondence was organized outside those now hallowed prison walls, and continued to the very end, consoling and sustaining the captives, and laying up treasures for the faithful far and wide through the edifying little notes thus preserved. And finally, on Thursday, April 13, safe means were found to convey to the prisoners at the Conciergerie not simply a consolation, but the Consoler himself. Only a few hours after this was accomplished, FF. Olivaint and Caubert were removed to Mazas, whither three of their order, as we have seen, had preceded them.
The prison of Mazas, on the boulevard of the same name, is constructed on the system of cells. At its door all motion ceases; life itself fades out; the isolation is complete; the unfortunate detained there are buried alive. But the love and devotion of the faithful contrived to pierce even these gloomy walls, and letters were again carried back and forth between the imprisoned priests and their exiled brethren. These letters contained few facts, but, put together, make a most exquisite journal of the interior life of the saintly captives. F. Ducoudray opens this series of letters by a formal one to his superior, giving an account of the situation and of his own personal disposition. “You know our history and its sadness,” he writes.
“Here I pass much time in prayer, and a little in suffering. Isolation, separation, uncertainty, and, above all, the privation of not being able to celebrate Mass—this is indeed cruel!
“No possible communication cum concaptivis meis. They are there, near to me, in the same corridor; that is all I know.
“This is the part it is the will of God we should perform. For us, we have only to follow the apostle’s counsel: ‘In omnibus exhibeamus nosmetipsos, sicut Dei ministros, in multa patientia, in tribulationibus,... in carceribus, in seditionibus, ... per gloriam et ignobilitatem, per infamiam et bonam faman.’(114)
“Say to my friends,” F. Olivaint wrote to one of his brethren, “that I do not find anything to complain of; health pretty good; not a moment of ennui in my retreat, which I continue up to the very neck.... I know nothing of my companions.” “I thank you from the bottom of my heart,” to another, “for your charity to the poor prisoners. Here is a work I did not fully comprehend until I was in prison. How well you practise it—I might almost say too well!... No, the time does not seem long to me.” ... “In reality,” he writes again, “I do very well in body; and as for the spirit, it seems to me that I am making a retreat of benediction, Deo gratias.” ... Later on: “I am at the twenty‐fourth day of my retreat. I had never hoped that a retreat of a month would be granted me; and see, now I am touching that term. Well, if we do not regain our liberty by the end of the month, I shall not, I hope, lose anything in this way by the prolongation of the trial. You will understand that here we have no news to give. And those frightful cannon that never cease grumbling! But that, too, reminds me to pray for our poor country. If it were required to give my miserable life to put an end to its troubles, how quickly I would make the sacrifice!”
Those cannon jarred on the ears of the other captives. “We hear day and night the roar of cannon,” F. Clerc wrote to his brother. “I conclude that the siege and my detention will not end to‐morrow.... People talk of the cloister of religious houses; that of Mazas is not to be despised.... We have neither Mass nor sacraments. Never, I well believe, did prisoners more desire them. I pray to the good God, I study, I read, I write a little, and I find time goes quickly, even at Mazas.... Do not take further measures to see me; I fear further efforts would bring you annoyance, and I have little hope of the result. These gates will be opened by another hand than yours; and, if they open not, we know well that we must be resigned.... I am proud and happy to suffer for the name I bear. You know well the blow did not take me by surprise. I did not desire to evade it, and I wish to support it. I do not hope for the deliverance of which you speak.... The less I am master of myself, the more I am in the hands of God; there will happen to me what he wills, and he will give me to do that which he wishes I should do. Omnia passum in eo qui me confortat.”
F. Caubert writes in the same tone: “My health up to the present remains good. For the rest, I have all that is necessary, and even over. Besides, the moral serves to strengthen the physical in giving courage and strength. Now, this comes to me because I am full of confidence in God, and most happy to do his will in all that he really demands of me. For the rest, the prison rule, in spite of its stern and austere side, is not in itself injurious to the health. They have us take the air every day for an hour, solitarily, and each in his turn. The delicate stomachs can obtain the food they need. Twice a week they give us soup and a bit of beef. The house is conducted with propriety, order, and regularity.... We can visit the doctor or the apothecary daily. There is a library comprising a pretty good number of books of great variety, and any one can ask for them to pass the time. As for the details of the ménage, that which they bring me is quite sufficient, and I need no more. It simplifies matters not to have my cell encumbered, otherwise I should get things a little pell‐ mell.”
To hear these good fathers, everything was right, everybody good to them. Undoubtedly they suffer, but, as they are patient, they suffer less than others; as they have hope, they endure better than others; finally, as they love Christ crucified, their joy is greater than their pain. A Frenchman and a Jesuit conquered by hard treatment or most distressing privation! Never! Starving, dying by inches, in stripes and in prison, under the tomahawk, at the stake, in hunger and thirst, in burning India or the snows of Canada, at the mercy of Western savages or Paris revolutionists, it is ever the same thing—everything is right and nice and fine; much better than could be expected. The story, fresh in our minds, of our own early missionaries, exiles of the first Revolution, prepares us to hear the sweet patience of the American forests echoing to‐day in the prison of Mazas. God wills it. Ad majorem Dei gloriam.
M. Ponlevoy, who had the tender curiosity to visit the prison of Mazas on a holiday, when it could easily be inspected, says: “I saw those three stories of long corridors, with double galleries, radiating around a centre where lately there was a chapel—ah! if the Commune had but had at least the humanity to leave to the captives the divine Prisoner of the tabernacle—on both sides, on all the floors, the doors loaded with bolts and provided with regular gratings, and those narrow cells, of which the inventory could be made in a single glance! Facing the entrance, the grated window, which measured the air and light; in one corner the hammock; opposite, the little table, with just room enough for a straw chair; behind the door a plank for a cupboard, a broom, and some pieces of coarse crockery completed the furniture. As for the famous promenade so often mentioned in their letters, it was a little triangular prison‐yard, shut in by a grating in front, and walls on the sides, without shelter anywhere, and no other seat than a stone in one corner. During their solitary recreation the captives could absolutely see no one, unless the guard under the arch who held them in surveillance.”
But the human heart is still human, however resigned the will. Say what they would, the prison was still a prison, and Mazas certainly was more like Calvary than paradise. After all, Christians are not stoics, and the martyr himself feels the weakness of the flesh, that he may overcome it by the vigor of the spirit.
“This poor heart!” writes brave F. Ducoudray. “It sometimes will be tempted to escape and to bound. The imagination willingly takes its part. Neither lets itself be ruled as much by reason as I would wish. Thence come, at times, certain fits or impressions of weariness, the suffering of the soul, throwing it into languor, discouragement, uneasiness, and disgust. ‘Magnum est et val de magnum, tam humano quant divino posse carere solatio et pro honore Dei, libenter exilium cordis velle sustinere.’(115) There is matter in that one comprehends only when one feels it. I had the good thought, when leaving the house, to put into my pocket a small volume containing the New Testament and the Imitation. I have read S. Paul much. What a great and admirable heart! It expands my soul to read it, for it has been ‘in laboribus plurimus, in carceribusabundantius,’(116) as he writes himself. And I, though I am yet but a carcere uno, I boast of suffering somewhat. But if we are those of whom it is written: ‘Eritis odio omnibus propter nomen meum,’(117) how contemptible our tribulations in comparison with those of the great apostle!” “I am still,” he wrote at another time, May 5, “more ill omened than the greatest pessimist. You tell me they fix the 20th as the final term of the civil war. I much fear it will be prolonged even to the 30th. Military operations go slowly. The war beyond the ramparts offers difficulties; the war of the streets has its difficulties also—most bloody ones, alas!... We touch upon the week of great events, or, at least, the beginning of great events.... What a punishment! It was expected. It is here.”
Two or three human consolations were vouchsafed the prisoners, after a time. On May 5 they were permitted to read several of the daily papers approved by the Commune, and about the same time F. Ducoudray had the inestimable privilege of twice seeing and saluting, at a short distance, F. Clerc, and of once seeing far off F. Bengy, his beloved brethren and fellow‐prisoners.
In May another favor was vouchsafed. F. Clerc’s brother had been incessant in his attempts to obtain an interview with him, but without any success; at last a dear friend, a lady, received permission to visit the prisoner, and, as a French lady must needs have an escort, she took M. Clerc for hers. This was an inexpressible happiness to the noble‐hearted priest, and his thanks to God for the favor were boundless. F. Caubert, whose simple and exquisite letters, full of golden thoughts, we would gladly linger over if there were only space enough, received, May 11, a visit from the Minister Plenipotentiary of the United States, which was very agreeable to him. “It appears,” he said, “that I had been recommended to him by some person of his acquaintance. He came to inquire most cordially, in true American style, how I got along, and if I had need of anything.” Here, in uncertainty, inaction, and shut out from all the world, these brave men made light of all the trials and privations to which their bodies were so long and painfully subjected. The Communists knew too much, however, to think of breaking their spirit by bodily suffering; they had the means of creating cruel anguish in the heart of every priest within those prison walls, and well they knew how to use it. From every cell came a cry such as no rack or stake could draw from them.
On Easter Sunday, fifth day of their confinement, F. Clerc wrote to his brother: “To‐day is the feast of feasts, the Pasch of the Christians, the day the Lord has made. For us there is no Mass to say or hear.” Just at the hour of leaving the Conciergerie, FF. Olivaint and Caubert had the happiness, so longed for and so unexpected, of receiving the “Consoler himself.” Then came the long days at Mazas, and no such consolation possible. “Oh! if we could but soon ascend the altar!” cries F. Ducoudray in the early days at Mazas. “Here is a privation to which I can never become accustomed.”
“Here,” F. Clerc wrote May 5—“here no confession, no Mass, not even on Sunday. We are lodged, fed—it is enough for animals.”
“I pass my time,” F. Ducoudray again, “praying much, suffering some; for the privation of the Holy Mass, the isolation, the separation, are cruel, but I see not the end.”
On May 8 an order was promulgated which put an end to all visits; on that very day F. Ducoudray had expected to receive our Lord himself. “What a sacrifice!” he exclaims. “I have offered to our Lord this hard trial, incomparably more painful yesterday than ever, on account of the precious pledge of the love of the divine Master. I seek to make my poor heart the altar on which I sacrifice. I shall add that of yesterday as new fuel to the sacrifice.”
“Six Sundays passed in darkness,” writes F. Olivaint, May 14. “How many days without ascending to the altar!” And the next day: “I am at the forty‐first day of my retreat. After to‐day, I intend to meditate only on the Eucharist. Is it not the best means of consoling myself that I cannot ascend to the altar? If I were a little bird, I would go somewhere every morning to hear Mass, and then I would willingly come back to my cage.”
The fathers outside the prison walls, understanding well the longing indicated by these and similar expressions, had endeavored in every way to find means to answer their desires. But it required infinite precautions to secure the faithful and sure transmission through all the formalities of surveillance. What is there prudence and love together may not accomplish? At last the doors opened; the prisoners came not out, but the Redeemer entered. Towards mid‐day of the 15th the Long‐Desired arrived. That tells all. Only FF. Ducoudray, Olivaint, and Clerc could be reached at first. Each of these was given four sacred hosts, and each preserved and carried on his breast, as on a living altar, the God of his heart and his heritage for all eternity.
“There is no more prison,” F. Clerc wrote to his brother, “no more solitude; and I have confidence that if our Lord permits the wicked to satisfy their malice, and for a few hours to prevail, he will profit by them in that very moment to glorify his name by the feeblest and vilest of his instruments.”
Once again, May 22, an opportunity was found to reach the captives. Two feeble but intrepid women traversed the vast, deserted districts to Mazas. This time all measures had been taken, and each prisoner received a share—four sacred hosts wrapped in a corporal, as in a shroud, duly enclosed in a little box with a silk case and a cord, in order that it might be carried around the neck. Coming at that hour, the Saviour seemed to say again: “I return, not to live with you, but to carry you with me.” For the end was at hand.
We linger for a few moments over the last letters gathered here in a most fragrant, fadeless wreath. On the 16th F. Clerc wrote his last letter, truly his nunc dimittis:
“Ah! my God, how good thou art! How true it is that the mercy of thy heart will never fail!... I had not dared conceive the hope of such a blessing—to possess our Lord, to have him for companion of my captivity, to carry him on my heart, and to rest on his, as he permitted to his beloved John! Yes, it is too much for me, and my thought cannot compass it. And still it is. But is it not true that all men and all the saints together could not conceive the Eucharist? O the God of the Eucharist! how good he is, how compassionate, how tender! Does it not seem as if he made again the reproach: You have asked nothing in my name; ask now, and you shall receive? I have him now without having asked; I have him now, and I will never leave him more, and my desire, fainting for want of hope, is reanimated, and will only increase in the measure that possession lasts.
“Ah! prison, dear prison, thou whose walls I have kissed, saying, Bona crux, what happiness thou hast won me! Thou art no longer a prison; thou art a chapel. Thou art no longer even a solitude, because I am not alone; but my Lord and my King, my Master and my God, lives here with me. It is not only in thought that I approach him; it is not only by grace that he approaches me; but he has really and corporally come to find and console the poor prisoner. He wished to keep him company; and can he not do it, all‐powerful as he is?... Oh! lost for ever, my prison, which wins for me the honor to carry my Lord upon my heart, not as a sign, but the reality of my union with him.
“In the first days I demanded with great earnestness that our Lord should call me to a more excellent testimony to his name. The worst days are not even yet passed; on the contrary, they are coming near, and they will be so evil that the goodness of God will be obliged to shorten them; but, at all events, we are now drawing near to them. I had from the first the hope that God would give me the grace to die well; at present my hope has become a true and solid confidence. It seems to me that I am prepared for anything through Him who sustains me and will accompany me even unto death. Will he do it? That which I know is, that if he will not, I shall have a regret which nothing but submission to his will can calm.”
F. Ducoudray gives us his farewell letter also. It ends with alleluia in the heart and the fiat on the lips:
“I have received all. Tuesday what a surprise, what joy!... I am no more alone. I have our Lord for guest in my little cell.... And it is true, credo! On Wednesday I seemed to live over again the day of my first communion, and I surprised myself by bursting into tears. For twenty‐five days I had been deprived of the rich blessing—of my only treasure!
“I shut myself in the guest‐chamber,” he continued, referring to the room in which the Last Supper was eaten, and that “upper chamber,” in which the disciples remained concealed until the coming of the Holy Ghost, “and much I wish, after these ten days which separate us from Pentecost are passed, to see again the light of heaven. Between now and then what events may arise! We are near the crisis; but if it is prolonged, we have reason to fear that horrible events will take place. I cannot prevent myself at times from being greatly impressed at finding myself connected with such grave circumstances. But here we make a good retreat, which will facilitate our entrance into eternity. I have held myself, from the first day of my arrival here, ready for any sacrifice whatever; for I have the strong, sweet confidence that if God permits hostages and victims to be made of us priests and religious, it will truly be in odium fidei, in odium nominus Christi Jesu.(118)
“We pray, pray much, disposed to live if God pleases, to die if God pleases, as worthy children of our most happy father, S. Ignatius.”
Happy the pen that is broken after those last lines.
“It should be well understood,” wrote F. Caubert, “that it is really God who gives us courage in our trials; otherwise the courage would very soon exhaust itself. For me, I have to run often to prayer to renew mine, like a poor clock that has to be wound up every little while. In a life so isolated, sequestered and devoid of occupation, ennui comes quickly. One can easily make himself a rule, but we cannot always read or pray. I should have experienced much of this in myself during this my three weeks’ retreat had I not been sustained by this very dose of prayer. You understand that in this monotonous life, whenever the good God hides his presence (and that is usual, in order to make the trial greater), one must often feel the sinking of nature. But this feeling of weakness is precisely the very thing that drives us constantly near to God. The good God is most admirable in his manner of sustaining the soul through these very depressions. Our feebleness is as a chain binding us to his strength, and as an attraction drawing us to his infinite goodness.
“You say to me that it must be that I suffer. In a measure it is true; but if one had nothing to endure, the good God would find nothing in his account. He desires to show mercy to all, and, that he may do so, he wills that we should offer him some sorrows borne for love of him. Alas! if one were not a prisoner (I speak for myself), perhaps he would too easily forget that charity requires that we should have compassion on poor sinners, and offer something for their intention. And then is not the priest the friend of God, and should he not, by this title, devote himself to obtaining for his brothers reconciliation with God, the father of all—the father so full of goodness and so ready for indulgence—especially when he hears himself importuned by the voice of a friend?”
“I take little account of the time of my imprisonment,” he wrote later. “I prefer to leave all that in the hands of God, and to give up to him the care of all that concerns me. He knows better than I what is most useful for my soul. I seek to remember often that one glorifies him so much more, the more that one suffers for his love and to accomplish his holy will. In reality, in submitting to the trial, we practise in an admirable manner the annihilation of ourself.... Is it not also by the sacrifice of ourself that we best imitate our Lord? It is true that my soul has not yet reached to that perfection and to a love so pure and so detached. It is necessary to pass through trials to reach this union with God. He sends them, in his goodness, to purify the soul and to break down the obstacles which oppose themselves to this union. Pray for me, that I may draw this profit from my present trial.”
A few rapidly‐written words from F. Olivaint were the last greeting from one of the tenderest hearts and sweetest souls in the world. “What deplorable events!” he wrote, May 18, to F. Lefebvre. “How well I understand the weary souls of other days who fled to the desert! But it is worth much more to stay in the midst of perils and difficulties to save so many unfortunates from shipwreck. My health is always good, and, after forty‐six days, I am not tired of my retreat—just the contrary.” To F. Chauveau: “Thanks from my heart. Yes, we are nearing the end, by the grace of God. Let us seek to be ready for all that comes. Confidence and prayer! How good our Lord is! If you but knew how, especially for several days past, my little cell has become sweet to me! Forsan et hæc olim meminisse juvabit. Who knows that I may not regret it some day? I think just as you do—that Eugene [Count Eugene de Germiny] should not interfere; but in the end, if, by the favor of M. Urbain and his associates, I have need of help, I will ask for Eugene. In any case, thank him for me. Tenderest remembrances to Armand; many thanks to all; benedictions to our friends and benefactors. I believe that all of our own here are doing well. For me, I am perfectly sustained. Once more our Lord is good! Yours from the heart.... May 19, ’71.”
On Monday, the 22d, the order was given to proceed at once, and on the spot, to the execution of all the hostages confined at Mazas. This was kept concealed from the prisoners, but they could not help suspecting it, from the additional gloom growing every moment heavier and more ominous throughout that ever‐gloomy building. The guards came and went, exchanging mysterious words among themselves, replying to the questions of the condemned by threatening allusion, or by an affected silence even more significant. However, the director of the prison, moved by a sentiment of humanity, or perhaps of prudence, ventured to represent to the imperious Commune that an execution in a simple house of detention would be contrary to all forms and precedents; and consequently they were ordered to La Roquette, the prison for those condemned to death. It was on this day that the two pious women succeeded in reaching Mazas, and giving to each of the Jesuit priests there four sacred hosts, with conveniences for carrying them around the neck.
Nearly all were transferred to La Roquette late in the evening of May 22d; but there were so many, the wagons were not large enough to hold all, and some were left at Mazas until the next day. What a moment that must have been when the prisoners, so long in solitude, not even knowing who were their companions in misfortune, came from their cells, and, meeting in the office, beheld and recognized one another! Priests, religious, laymen, all surrounded the Archbishop of Paris.
The transit was long and painful. The prisoners, forty in number, were crowded into baggage‐wagons belonging to the railway of Lyon, and exposed to the gaze and the insults of all. They had to cross the populous quarters of the Faubourg Saint Antoine and the Bastile, where the insurrection was still mistress. The convoy went at a walk, between two lines of armed men, followed by the grossest insults and by a maddened multitude. “Alas! monseigneur,” said a priest, leaning towards the archbishop, “look at your people now.”
When they reached La Roquette that night, they were assembled at once, without any other formality, in the hall, called by name, and shown by a person with a lantern to a long corridor on the lower floor; and as each one passed on in the order named, a door opened and closed upon a captive. The darkness was intense; but it is good to remember that in some of the cells there was the Real Presence, shedding light and peace. The Commune was in desperate straits, and it was at first intended to execute the victims as soon as they should arrive at La Roquette; but a few hours were gained through the jealousy of the director. In the cells was a bed, and such a bed!—a pile of straw and a coverlet, and that was all; no tables, not even a chair. Still, Roquette was better than Mazas, for the cells were not vaults, and, though one was locked up, he was not entombed. And, besides, they were permitted to see each other by means of a window between every two cells, and at recreation, which they were allowed to take in a corridor together, and even in some unoccupied cell opening into the corridor. Food was scarce from the first; even bread was rare. F. Olivaint shared some little things which remained to him with the archbishop, and had the happiness, also, of giving him the Bread of the Strong, for which the prelate was overcome with gratitude.
Every hour the Commune was losing ground. It had only strength left for crime, and it hastened, with its dying breath, to order the execution en masse of the hostages of La Roquette. This was modified to sixty at first. At any price the Commune demanded the head of the priests—those hated men who had troubled the world for eighteen hundred years.
About eight o’clock in the evening of May 24, when the prisoners were in their cells, there was heard a confused noise in the distance—the voices of men and of children, a clamor and laughing that was still more terrible, mixing with the clash of arms. It came nearer and nearer, and some fifty rascals, Avengers of the Republic, Garibaldians, soldiers with all kinds of arms, National Guards with all sorts of costumes, gamins of Paris, poured into the prison, hungry for the blood of six victims, their share. They rushed the whole length of the corridor containing the cells of our dear prisoners, and ranged themselves at the head of a small spiral staircase which led to the chemin de ronde. As they passed, each prisoner was pelted through the grating of his cell with a running fire of insult and sentence of death.
Then some one, assuming the office of herald, summoned the prisoners to be ready and to respond each one as his name was called. After that, as each name was pronounced, a door opened, and a victim presented himself. M. Bonjeau, FF. Duguerry, Clerc, Ducoudray, Allard, and Archbishop Darboy were the six chosen. All were present, all were ready, and, in the order named, the procession began. The archbishop and his companions, preceded and followed by this frightful escort, descended the dark, narrow staircase one by one. So unrestrained was the insolence of the captors that their leader was obliged to interfere. “Comrades,” he cried, “we have something better to do than to insult them—that is, to shoot them. It is the command of the Commune.”
No place of execution had been fixed upon. They would have liked to have had it on the spot, but that would give too many witnesses; the first chemin de ronde was in view of the prison windows, and the occupants of the cells on every floor could see all, hear all. So they passed to the second, where they would be sheltered by high ramparts. The victims were ranged in a line at the extreme end of this path, at the foot of the great outside wall.
Those left behind knelt, prayed, and held their breath. The fire of a platoon was heard, followed by a few scattered shots, then cries of Vive la Commune! which told that all was over. There were martyrs now, not victims.
Towards morning the bodies were thrown into a hand‐cart and carried to Père la Chaise, where they were tossed into a ditch; no coffins, no ceremony of any kind. “What matters it,” F. Olivaint had said and proved—“what matters it to a Jesuit, who daily sacrifices his heart, once to sacrifice his head?”
Two days passed, and Friday came, rainy, and the prisoners were confined to their corridor. As they were taking their noon‐day recreation, a delegate of the Commune appeared, and, standing in their midst, called off fifteen names. F. Olivaint was the first. “Present,” he answered, crossing the corridor. F. Caubert was second, and F. de Bengy third. This last name was badly written, and worse pronounced. “If you mean to say de Bengy,” he replied, “it is I, and I am here.”
The condemned men asked to be allowed to go for a moment to their cells, as some had slippers on, and no hats. “No,” was the response, “for what remains for you to do you are well enough as you are.” New victims were added from other parts of the prison until there were fifty in all, the number required by the Commune.
These were taken a long road to Belleville, a faubourg at a great distance, in order, probably, to excite the passions of the mob, and rouse them once more.
The procession started at about four o’clock from La Roquette. First came a guard bareheaded, who loudly announced that these were Versaillais, made prisoners that morning. The escort consisted of five hundred armed men, National Guards, to whom were added, for this genial occasion, the Enfants Perdus of Bergeret and rowdies under various names. Presently the women, veritable furies, and the children joined in, howling, shrieking, imprecating, blaspheming. The crowd increasing in numbers and insolence, the guards were obliged to interfere to protect the prisoners, not from insult, but from extreme violence. The fury of the mob constantly demanded the moment of execution; a military band was added to the procession to drown the clamor and make the crowd more willing to wait. Finally they reached the entrance to the Cité Vincennes. The passage is narrow, the crowd was enormous, and growing ever more furious as they neared the end. An aged priest, who could not keep up, was shot and killed by a woman, and dragged to the place of general execution. After a time, they found some grounds laid out for country parties or picnics, and an enclosure, uncovered, which was intended for a dancing‐hall. The fifty prisoners were forced into this, jammed savagely against the walls, while the crowd showered maledictions upon them. Then, at about six o’clock, there took place a scene absolutely indescribable; not an execution, but a slaughter. They were not shot, but massacred. One discharge followed another; there was an attempt made to fire by platoons, but it was badly managed. The heroines of the Commune climbed the walls, urging on the men and insulting the priests. The tumult at its height lasted for about fifteen minutes. At seven o’clock all was ended. The bodies were left stretched upon the ground until the next day, when they were thrown into a cellar or vault.
It was the death‐throe of the Commune. The blood of the just had cried to heaven, and France lifted up her head. The next day was Pentecost; the Commune was crushed, the doors of Roquette were opened, the bodies of the martyrs were recovered, and on Wednesday, May 31, the Jesuit church, for two months closed like the rest, was opened once more, and the funeral ceremonies of the five of their order whose imprisonment we have so hastily followed celebrated with the utmost solemnity. Their remains now repose in the Jesuit chapel of the Rue de Sèvres.
“There must be victims; it is God who has chosen them.” They recognized the divine call, and went forth rejoicing. Ibaut gaudentes.
Antar And Zara; Or, “The Only True Lovers.” III.
Part III.
He Sang.
Beside the well she stood, and water drew: The bowl, high held in both her hands, I drained; She smiled, and sparkles showered of gelid dew On my hot hair, and brows with travel stained.
“O maiden! by thy lambs, and by thy kids, And by that holy, hospitable hand, Know’st thou her name whom Love to name forbids, That fairest fair one of the far‐off land?”
Her eyes grew large; in wonder half, half ruth She spake, like one who sorrowed, yet forgave “Our land a land of beauty is, O youth! Her maids are fair and good; her sons are brave.”
“O maiden! by those eyes, and quivering lids, Forgive! From thee Love hides not his sweet lore: Breathe it to none—not even thy lambs and kids—” Then whispered I thy name, but told no more.
How base the soldier’s revel o’er his wine! The tale around the encampment fire; the song! Would I might hear, O maid! no voice but thine, Or clash of swords that meet to right the wrong!
Why must his earthlier nature taint, or vex Man’s race? His heart is brave; his thoughts are large; Benigner angels guard thy happier sex, The angels that have innocence in charge.
The brightest of that band I saw in dream To thee make way: a lily stem she bore: She vanished, lost in thee, as gleam in gleam Is lost: thou glittered’st brighter than before.
Who shall ascend into thy realm, O Love? It is a garden on a mountain steep: From heaven it hangs, the woods, the clouds above; Sees many rivers into ocean creep.
Round it are icy spires; that vale they guard; But who can breathe the airs that o’er it blow? Within it blooms the rose, and drops the nard; But who can clasp the roses of the snow?
The bird that sings there sings as sings a bride; But who her mystic chaunt can understand? O maid, I saw thee ere we met, and cried, “The land she treads on is a virgin land!”
Gladdening, as if in founts of Eden dipped, Thy beauty cheers and strengthens hearts forlorn, Not like the shafts of Islam, venom‐tipt;— Dove’s eyes thou hast, the glances of the morn.
Thy father’s joy art thou, thy mother’s boast; Upon the dusty track by pilgrims trod Laugheth the cripple; and the warlike host Divides before thee, giving thanks to God.
The merchants praise thee, and the wandering guest— “Her veil down streams with such a humble pride, Fairer is that alone than all the West Irreverent boasts of charms that scorn to hide!”
“Is thy love fairer than each other maiden?” The young maids ask me. Answer find I none: I know but this;—she shines on hearts grief‐laden Like visitant from star more near the sun.
Above her vesture’s hem a lustre hovers: Whiter her veil than earliest white of dawn, Now lifted as on sighs of happy lovers, Around her now, like mist o’er Hesper, drawn.
Sweet is her voice, as though with saint and angel Her converse had been ever, and were still: With her she seems to waft some high evangel, So light her step, so frank with all good‐will.
Let her be child, or girl, or maid, or woman— I know not what she is. Alone I know She moves o’er earth like creature more than human, Missioned from God to spread his peace below.
When, travel‐worn, on thee I chance to muse, Breeze‐like the fragrance comes across my heart Of spring‐flowers breathing sweetness through their dews; So blissful and so bountiful thou art.
All light, the fields of duty round me spread; Beyond them honor sits, with thee beside: A heaven all glory flashes overhead; An earth all rapture trembles like a bride.
That hour I sing no song; but all my soul Inly with laughter loud of music rings: The anthems of a spirit o’er me roll; Of virtue, loveliness, and love he sings.
Changed is my love from what it was when first Forth from my heart that dream of fair and good, Like Eve from side of sleeping Adam, burst, And by me, when I woke, in glory stood.
That dream wert thou! A dream, and yet how true! Still, still I see thee oft beside that brook, Standing ’mid lilies in the evening dew, And in thy hand a little open book.
Dear are such memories; dearer far than these Art thou—now known; a lovely human soul Running on levels of some spirit‐breeze With wingèd feet to virtue’s glittering goal.
The songs and sufferings of our native land, The faith that lifts her high all griefs above, These, and thy daily tasks of heart and hand, Thee too have raised, and with thee raised my love.
My hand, made strong by years of manly strife, Has taught my heart to love in manly sort; I know thee now—a maid—one day a wife; No more a phantom from the fairy court.
Mine Arab sires their towers cross‐crowned had raised Like thine, on crag and peak, and dwelt therein, Hundreds of years ere first in scorn they gazed Far down on crescent flags of Saladin.
Seldom for us the unequal strife hath ceased: Age after age that martyr‐crown we bear, Here in our old untamed, inviolate East, The Church for three short centuries bore elsewhere.
Wife of our race must share the heroic mould: A mother ’mid our mothers with calm eye Must look on death: like that great heart of old Must give her own—if God so wills—to die!
From things that be around thee stand apart, For I thy lover am, and fight afar: A sword I send thee, that betwixt thy heart And alien things henceforth there may be war.
I send thee not the trophies I have won, Tokens of town redeemed, or rescued shrine: I send a sword; thy life is now begun: Look up! In heaven, too, hangs the sword, a Sign!
With this commandment have I bound thine eyes, That, fixed and set, henceforth no more they swerve: Mine are they. She my life who glorifies On me must gaze not, but that cause I serve!
In single fight we met: the invader fell; Two hosts stood mute, one gloomy, both amazed; His eyes, the eyes of one that hears his knell, On me, and not my lifted sword, were raised.
Forth from that shivered helm outstreamed afar His locks dust‐stained. Forth from those eyes there shone, Baleful in death, hate’s never‐setting star: He hoped no mercy, and he asked for none.
Then cried my heart, “A sister’s hands have twined, How oft! those locks; a mother’s lips have pressed: Perhaps this morn the cassia‐shaking wind Waved them, rich‐scented, o’er his true love’s breast.”
“Foe of my race,” I said, “arise; live free; But lift no more against the Faith thy sword!” Was it thy prayer, or but the thought of thee, That sentenced chieftain rescued and restored?
A Glimpse of the Green Isle. II.
After mature reflection, the Lady from Idaho pronounced the Dublin ladies the most beautiful in Europe. I consider the judgment an important one. If the fair arbiter had any prejudice, it could only be a general one against the recognition of beauty in others of her sex. I have been informed by young gentlemen of my acquaintance who profess a thorough knowledge of womankind that such a prejudice is not unusual in feminine minds. I think Madame Idaho was rather astonished at the result of her observations. It is possible that, before her visit to Ireland, she supposed that feminine beauty in Ireland offered only one style: that of the robustious or “Irish washerwoman” type. She did not say so, however. While I agreed with her, in general, in her estimate of the Dublin beauties, I ventured to ask if their lovely feet were not a trifle too flat and too large for perfect symmetry.
“Not at all,” was the reply. “It is the horrid, clumsy, broad‐toed English chaussure that makes the ladies’ feet look so broad and flat. If they wore American brodequins, their feet would look as small, in proportion, as—ahem!—as those of any other nation.”
No more on those feet.
Of the various manifestations of Irish beauty, the most engaging is the union of black or dark‐brown hair with soft blue eyes, a skin with the whiteness of milk, and cheeks with the bloom of the rose. It is inexpressibly soft and attractive. And that wonderful blush that decks the cheek of youth and age! Is it the soft moisture of the climate which makes the grass so green, even in the winter of the year, that causes the cheek to bloom so rosily, even in the winter of old age?
A magnificent jeunesse of the sterner sex may also be seen on promenade in Grafton Street every afternoon. Bright, intelligent‐looking, of splendid physique, well dressed, not “flashy,” the students of the university and the other colleges—the picked youth of the country—are not inferior in appearance to any class of young men in the great educational institutions either at home or abroad. They have an amiable weakness for light‐colored Jouvins and single eye‐glasses. You shall not find two out of twenty unprovided with a glazing for the left eye. They are armed with canes—for use as well as ornament. I witnessed a “Town and Gown” row in January of 187‐, in which the canes did vigorous service. A little snow had fallen. Snow is a very precious thing in Ireland. It does not last long, and must be used at once. The foolish janitors had swept the snow into little heaps. This was temptation too strong for undergraduates. Snow‐balling commenced. The young gentlemen paid their compliments to the town through the railings of College Green. The unwashed young gentlemen of the town replied vigorously. The fun grew fast and furious. In the delightful excitement of the moment some of the students, not having the fear of the board before their eyes, paid their compliments to some of the dons, who happened to cross the outer quadrangle in cap and gown, with snowballs of no contemptible solidity. The excitement increased. The gownsmen went outside the college grounds, and charged on the town ragabrashes who were collected outside. The police intervened in the interest of order, and were attacked by both parties. The policeman is the natural enemy of the student as well as of the ragabrash. The police proceeded to make some arrests among the leaders of the gownsmen, and began brandishing their clubs. Snowballs were thrown aside, and canes were used. It was a sight to see the canes go up and down. The gownsmen succeed in rescuing the prisoners from the police, and retire within the walls, taking a captive policeman with them, and cheering in triumph. The police invade the college precincts, and rush to the rescue of their captured comrade. They are driven out, and the victorious students follow them into the street. The police suddenly turn on their pursuers, seize one of the college leaders, and, by a pretty piece of strategy, lift him on an outside car, and drive off with him at full speed to the nearest police station. Rescue was out of the question, the coup was executed so quickly. Everybody rushes after the car, and the green is deserted.
“Et le combat cessa faute de combattants.”
After a week of “hearings” at the police court and intense excitement among the university men, the ringleaders were fined. The fines were paid at once. The captured policeman, who was a little battered and bruised, received ten pounds from the students for “sticking‐plaster.” The board wisely let off the offenders with a reprimand, and the trouble ended in a grand display of fireworks by the students.
Old Trinity is an imposing structure. Life‐size statues of Burke and Goldsmith are placed at either side of the principal entrance. The college grounds cover about thirty acres—a beautiful green spot in the heart of the city. In the centre of the outer quadrangle is a pretty campanile. The provost has a pleasant residence within the college limits. Entry into the grounds is free to all. A chief porter, in a swallow‐tailed coat and black‐velvet jockey‐cap, watches over the principal entrance. The examination‐hall, the library, the lecture‐rooms, the museum, etc., are each under charge of a special Cerberus in a jockey‐cap, who shows you the room or building under his particular charge. Each Cerberus expects a gratuity. He will be very obsequious if he gets what his modesty considers a sufficient douceur, and the reverse if he does not. The new museum building is a fine edifice. The entrance‐hall and principal stair‐case are remarkable for the splendid specimens of every variety of native marble they contain. The old rooms, where the museum now is, are damp and cheerless. There is an interesting collection of ancient Irish weapons, ornaments, etc. What is said to have been the harp of Brian Boroihme will be pointed out to you by the jockey‐capped janitor, who will also inform you that, though the public is admitted, the collection is intended for the use of the students, and not as an exhibition of curiosities.
Lectures, to which the public are admitted free, are given twice a week by the various professors during term‐time. I had the pleasure of attending some lectures by Sir Robert Stewart, the professor of music, and one by the professor of ancient history. The latter gentleman handled Mr. Froude in an eminently courteous and scholarly manner, but at the same time most decidedly “without gloves.” His lectures, however, were but poorly attended, while Sir Robert crammed the examination‐hall with the taste and fashion of Dublin, from the lady‐lieutenant down. All flocked to hear his comparison of the Scotch and Irish bag‐pipes, illustrated by performers on these instruments. Lady Spencer, it seems, has taken the Irish bag‐pipes under her patronage. Her ladyship seems to be a very amiable and charming person, but as to her taste in musical instruments—well! dêgustibus non.
Trinity College is on the east side of College Green. On the north is the principal façade of the old Parliament House. It was sold to the Bank of Ireland after the Union. The House of Commons is now the teller’s office. The principal façade is of the same order. It is grandly simple and impressive. The semi‐circular colonnades of Ionic columns produce a noble effect. This building is said to be the finest development of the order among modern structures in Europe. I am inclined to think that this pretension is not without foundation. The dingy appearance of all public buildings in Ireland and throughout the British Islands—the effect of smoke and almost continual rain—detracts greatly from their effect. A porter in livery, with a scarlet waist‐coat and a nose to match, shows you the House of Lords. A statue of George III. stands where the throne formerly stood. In all other respects the room remains as it was when Ireland had “a Parliament House of her own.” Tapestries of the Siege of Derry and the Battle of the Boyne are hung on the walls. If you give your red‐breasted conductor a sufficient gratuity, he will ask you to “take a chair,” that you may be able to say “you had a seat in the House of Lords.”
One must not leave College Green without paying his compliments to the equestrian statue of William III., which stands nearly opposite the Bank of Ireland. The king is costumed en Romain. The bronze representative of the glorious and pious Dutchman and his charger have suffered severely at the hands of their enemies. The steed’s fore‐leg, which is raised, as in the act of stepping, has been broken off more than once, and replaced in contempt of proportion. A curious critic has calculated that, if the leg were straightened out, it would prove to be about half a foot longer than the other legs. A gilded wreath on the brows of the statue gives it rather a “gingerbread” appearance.
At the end of College Street is a bronze statue of Thomas Moore. The Dublin critics call it “a gloomy horror that murders the memory” of the poet. The unrivalled songster is enveloped in a long cloak, and holds a tablet and pencil. He seems to be taking an inventory of the cabs and “outsides” that pass his station. The statue reminded me of that of Mr. Lincoln in Union Square. Both have the same weather‐beaten, “Ancient Mariner” appearance, even to the trowsers of truly nautical extent. At the end of Westmoreland Street—which is a continuation of College Street—is a statue of William Smith O’Brien, which is quite respectable in design, and does not lack spirit in execution. The artist saw that voluminous trowsers are incompatible with bronze or marble.
Two minutes’ walk brings us to the City Hall—formerly the Exchange—situated on Cork Hill. It is a fine building of Portland stone with a Corinthian portico of six lofty columns. It is surmounted by a cupola. In the hall is a statue of Grattan by Chantrey, one of O’Connell by Hogan, of Dr. Lucas by Rontilias, and of the Third George by Van Nost. If you wish to see the Council Chamber—which has nothing more attractive than portraits of the various lord‐mayors, O’Connell among the number—a gruff and crusty old porter in blue coat and brass buttons will admit you, moyennant finance. Even an extra obolus will not soften this rough old Cerberus.
We are now close by the Cork Hill entrance to “the Castle.” A figure of Justice, or Fortitude—I really forget which—surmounts the gate, and a private of the Coldstream Guards stands sentry. He will not stop you, as entry is free to all. About eleven in the morning is a good time to visit the castle‐yard. At that hour the guard is relieved, and a magnificent military band will delight your ears with most excellent music.
The castle is a rambling structure, situated in a poor quarter of the city. There are two quadrangles: the upper and the lower castle‐yard. In the upper are the apartments of the viceroy; in the lower, the offices and the castle chapel. The only portion of the original building now standing is the Record Tower, anciently known as the Ward Tower. Irish prisoners of state were here formerly confined. General Arthur O’Connor, I believe, was the last state prisoner who had to endure its hospitality.
The castle chapel is really a Gothic gem. It is built of Irish limestone and oak. The carving in the interior is exquisite. The windows bear the arms of the various lord‐lieutenants in stained glass. The verger—a patriarchal‐looking Englishman in a long, gray beard—was very polite and attentive. He looked so “respectable,” so venerable, that we hesitated to offer him a gratuity, lest we might offend him. He soon undeceived us on this point, for he accepted an English shilling; and pocketed it with an expression of thanks. The traveller through the three kingdoms never fails to discover a great many very respectable‐looking persons who are not above receiving gratuities of sums from a three‐penny piece upwards.
S. Patrick’s Cathedral is situated in a poor and squalid portion of the city. The poor buildings which cluster close around it mar its general effect. It was closed when we reached it, but a silver key will open S. Patrick’s, like most other buildings, at most hours. We were informed that in one of the dingy tenements hard by we should find a person who would admit us. We did find him—a man still young, dressed in very rusty black. He smelled very strongly of whiskey, entre nous. The interior of the cathedral is simple and grand. In the choir hang the helmets, swords, and banners of the Knights of S. Patrick. The spot where Swift and Stella sleep was the one most interesting to us, and thither our guide led us at once. Swift’s memorial is a plain slab of marble affixed to one of the pillars. He is buried in front of it. The church is damp and cold. Our guide seems to feel the need of another stimulant. His voice trembles as he reads the caustic dean’s inscription on Marshal Schomberg’s tomb; for our guide has picked up some Latin—off the tomb‐stones, probably. The dean made several applications to the descendants of Schomberg for funds to raise a monument to their deceased ancestor. But they never vouchsafed a reply to the dean. He finally put up a tablet at his own expense. The inscription, which was written by him, shows that he was very bitter on the subject. The place where Swift lies now needs a little care. Our conductor said he had called attention to it in vain; but, as I said before, he smelt strongly of the native beverage. There is a very fine monument to the officers and men of the 18th Royal Irish who fell in the Indian Rebellion. But the oldest and most remarkable monument in the church is that of Boyle, the first Earl of Cork. It is from twenty to thirty feet high, and represents the earl and countess lying side by side, surrounded by their children, thirteen in number, if I remember rightly. The figures are kneeling. They are life‐size, and are colored.
S. Patrick’s has been recently restored in its original style by a wealthy brewer of Dublin at a cost of seven hundred thousand dollars. It procured him a baronetcy. The grandeur of the interior is not marred by pews. The movable seats—such as one sees in Notre Dame and the Madeleine—are adopted. A pregnant notice is posted on each chair. It informs the public that “the future sustentation” of the cathedral depends solely on the voluntary contributions made by the public at the Offertory. Pity the sorrows of the disendowed Irish Church!
We were not able to visit Christ Church and the tomb of that ancient filibuster, Strongbow, as the church was closed for repairs. A wealthy distiller has undertaken the restoration of this cathedral at his own expense. It is said that he also expects to get a baronetcy for his money, like his rival, the manufacturer of “Foker’s Entire.” Money is a glorious thing, if one has plenty of it. Tom Stumps, who sells just enough of man’s brain‐stealing enemy to eke out a miserable living, is a low, disreputable fellow. Bob Shallow, who manufactures the liquid madness en grana and makes a fortune by selling it to Tom Stumps and his like, becomes a distinguished patriot, a public benefactor, and “Sir Robert Shallow, Esq., Justice of the Peace and coram.”
The cathedral in Marlborough Street is in the Grecian style, with a portico of Ionic columns, in imitation, as we are told, of the façade of the Temple of Theseus at Athens. Massive columns separate the nave and aisles. The interior decorations are of great richness. In my humble judgment, they trench on the florid.
The Four Courts, on Usher’s Quay, rise in solemn grandeur over the Liffey. This building stands on the site of the ancient Monastery of S. Savior. It was finished in 1800. The central front has a fine portico of six Corinthian columns surmounted by a rich pediment. On the left stands a statue of Moses. On either side are statues of Justice and Mercy. At the extremities of the façades are reclining figures of Wisdom and Authority. The main building is flanked by spacious quadrangles enclosed by arcades of stone. The quadrangles are entered by broad and lofty gateways. The main hall is circular in shape, and about seventy feet in diameter. The “Four Courts,” Chancery, Queen’s Bench, Exchequer, and Common Pleas, open into this hall. It is a busy, buzzing place in term‐time. Lawyers with plenty of briefs, and plenty of lawyers without briefs, may be seen there, the former having hurried interviews with their clients, the latter dawdling about with quizzing glasses on their eyes, exhibiting their wigs and gowns, and eating oranges and “currant‐buns.” The court‐rooms are small, uncomfortable, badly lighted, and ill ventilated. The hall is covered by a lantern and a dome supported by Corinthian pillars. In the spaces between the windows are allegorical alti‐relievi—Justice, Wisdom, Liberty, Law, etc., and medallions of Moses, Lycurgus, Solon, and other great law‐givers. During night sessions a colossal statue of Truth, holding a torch lit by gas, illuminates the hall. Over the entrances to the court‐rooms are bas‐reliefs of subjects in English and Irish history. The hall contains statues of Lord Plunkett and other legal celebrities.
The custom‐house is on Custom‐House Quay, four or five squares east of the Four Courts, and, like the latter building, looks upon the Liffey. The riverfront is about a hundred and thirty yards long. The portico is Doric. The Union of England and Ireland is allegorically represented in alto‐ relievo. The sister kingdoms are sailing in the same shell, while Neptune drives away Famine and Despair. The building is surmounted by a lofty dome which bears a statue of Hope.
Dublin is well supplied with means of locomotion at cheap rates. There are omnibuses, street‐railroads, outsides, insides, covered cars, and four‐ wheelers. The four‐wheeler is something the same as the New York coupé. The fares for cars or coupés are sixpence English per trip for two persons, sixpence for each additional person, and an additional sixpence for each stoppage or “set‐down.” The street‐cars, or “tramway cars,” have seats on the roof, which are a few cents cheaper than the seats in the interior. The “top seats” are much used by all classes in fine weather. The city ordinances are very strict regarding cabmen and car‐drivers, and the magistrates show the “jarveys” no mercy when they are proved to have made overcharges or illegal demands. The drivers are consequently very careful in their dealings with the general public. If you have a trans‐ Atlantic flavor about you, “jarvey” will expect a gratuity. You give him his exact fare. In order to keep within the law, he does not make a demand for a greater sum, but, allowing the coin to rest on his open palm, he looks at it with an air of superb disdain, and then, eyeing you with a sidelong glance, he asks with an air of primitive innocence:
“An’ what’s this for, sir?”
“For your fare,” you reply sharply, with a determination not to be imposed upon.
“Humph!” he says. “Shure it’s a mighty long dhrive for half a bob. Faith, it’s hard for a poor divil to make a livin’ nowadays.”
Ten to one you agree with him, and give him an additional threepence or sixpence, which he receives with enthusiastic wishes that your life may be prolonged to an indefinite extent.
Our party patronized the four‐wheelers extensively, but never had the hardihood to venture on an “outside” in daylight. We were averse to public display. During our stay in Ireland we tried the “outside” on one occasion only; then it was against our will. Fortunately, it was at night. We reached Dublin, from a visit to some friends in the south, by the 10 P.M. train. All the coupés and covered cars were engaged. Our lodgings were about two miles from the railway station. Walking, with the travelling “traps” necessary on British railroads, was out of the question. We were compelled to take an “outside.”
“How do you feel?” I asked the Lady from Idaho after we were seated and had started.
“Rather out of place,” she replied. “I feel as if I ought to be a little intoxicated.”
Her answer expressed my feeling exactly. It seemed to me that I was going “on the biggest kind of a spree.”
Railroads furnish rapid transit to suburban retreats where reside professional and commercial men whose business is in the city. One can live in the pleasant little village of Kingstown, the harbor of Dublin, six miles from the city, and reach Dublin in fifteen minutes. Trains run each way every half‐hour. It has taken me an hour and a half to come from Eighty‐sixth Street to the City Hall by the street‐cars. This was when we met with no accidents, and made a good trip. But New York has the worst locomotive arrangements of any city in the world, and immeasurably the dearest.
I had counted upon finding a great many beggars in Ireland. I expected, whenever I alighted from coach or car, to have to run the gauntlet of a crowd of hungry petitioners. I was most agreeably disappointed. During my stay in Ireland I was asked for charity in the public streets only once. It was in Dublin, by a wretched‐looking woman with a sick child.
A fine view of Dublin is obtained from one of the eminences in the Phœnix Park. It takes in the entire line of quays. This view has something of a reduced and smoke‐blackened effect of Paris. The Phœnix is one of the finest and most extensive parks in the world. It covers nearly eighteen hundred acres. It is true that art has not done much for it, but nature has done a great deal. It possesses some of the most beautiful characteristics of English park scenery—beautiful green lawns, dotted with clumps of trees. Large herds of deer course swiftly over the uplands, or stop in groups, half frightened, to reconnoitre, in a coy side‐glance, the intruder into their domain. Charming rides, drives, and walks invite the dwellers in the city to pure air and healthful exercise. A portion of the park is railed off into a “People’s Garden,” where poor as well as rich have free ingress, and can gladden their town‐weary eyes with the sight of growing shrubs and budding flowers, and graceful water‐fowl sailing on the pretty meres. A lofty monument to the Duke of Wellington—not possessed of any artistic grace, however—crowns one of the knolls. On the right of the main avenue is the Viceregal Lodge. Near it is the column, mounted by a phœnix, erected by the celebrated Lord Chesterfield, who first caused the park to be thrown open to the people. The English Government never sent to Ireland a viceroy who had less prejudices against the people he was sent to govern. Somewhere in his celebrated letters he speaks of “his friends the Irish,” and says: “They always liked me, and I liked them.” The Viceregal Lodge, with its dependent buildings, is a delightful summer retreat. I do not wonder that the viceroy should be glad to see the return of spring, that he might get away from the poor locality in which the castle is situated. The Hibernian school for soldiers’ children is situated at the lower extremity of the park.
The Zoölogical Gardens are not far from the King’s Bridge entrance. The collection is a fair one, but the damp climate does not agree with the animals, and they have the same woe‐begone appearance as their fellow‐ sufferers in the Regent’s Park. The elephants have a faded, mildewed appearance. The furred animals are suggestive of worn‐out hair trunks. In neither the Dublin nor the London Gardens do they look so bright and sleek as, under the brighter sky and more genial atmosphere of Paris, in the Jardin des Plantes and the Jardin d’Acclimatation. The collection of lions is good. Among them is a noble leo which the keeper informed us was born in the gardens.
“Why, he is an Irish lion!” said one of our party, hazarding a gentle joke. There was no response from the keeper. Not the merest ripple of a smile. Decidedly, the Irish in Ireland are becoming a serious people.
Between the Under Secretary’s Lodge and the Hibernian School is the historical tract known as “The Fifteen Acres.” It was a celebrated duelling‐ground in the old days, when a “crooked look” was followed by an invitation to pistols and coffee. There it was that “the Queen’s Bench went out with the Common Pleas,” and the “Chancery winged the Exchequer.” It was there that Daniel O’Connell met Mr. d’Esterre, and killed him. Beyond the park lie the famous “Strawberry Beds,” where the Dubliners crowd, in the season, to enjoy their “sweet strawberries smothered in cream.”
An omnibus plies regularly between the city and the Botanical Gardens at Glasnevin; but it is better to take a four‐wheeler, and suit your own time and convenience. Make your bargain with Jehu before you start, however. The gardens are about thirty acres in extent. The cemetery where lie the ashes of the great orators, Curran and O’Connell, is at Glasnevin. The monument to O’Connell is an imitation of that puzzle to antiquarians—the Irish Round Tower. The effect of the monument is not good. It seemed to me grotesque and out of place. I could not at first explain to myself why it produced such a harsh, unpleasing effect. A glance at the veritable Tower of Clondalkin enlightened me. The mock tower wants the mellowing touch of artist‐centuries to soften down its hard, new outlines, and make it seem in keeping with the repose that reigns in the City of the Dead.
A pilgrimage to the birthplace of Thomas Moore was a labor of love which we promised ourselves would be among the first performed after reaching Dublin. We learned that the spot where the bard first saw the light was in Anngiers Street, generally pronounced by the Dubliners Aingers Street. Everybody we asked professed to know all about it, yet nobody could tell us the number of the house. Anngiers Street is not a very long street. We concluded to go through it from end to end, and at either side, examining every house in detail. Anngiers Street commences at Stephen Street, in rear of the castle, and extends to Bishop Street. It is not a particularly clean street. It is only just to say, however, that it is no dirtier than continental, transatlantic, or Britannic streets of like degree. We began our pilgrimage at the wrong end, but our patient search was at length rewarded. The house is No. 12, at the corner of Anngiers Street and Little Longford Street. It was then occupied by “Thomas Healy, Wine and Spirit Merchant.” According to some of little Tom’s biographers, the old house has always been devoted to the sale of intoxicating beverages. His father was what Uncle Sam calls by the undignified name of “rumseller.” But “honor and shame from no condition rise,” and Tom’s muse may owe her seductive, anacreontic blush to his early associations.
A weather‐soiled and smoke‐blackened bust of the poet occupies a niche between the windows of the second story. The house has been recently painted and renovated. When these repairs were commenced, the bust was removed by the proprietor, and was not replaced at their completion. The worthy vender of wine and spirits who occupied the house, though he believed in filling bumpers fair, and their power of smoothing the brow of Care, was probably rather bored by the continual visits of votaries to the shrine of the poet. The sacrifices of these pilgrims to the rosy muse were most probably merely theoretical. They did not “send round the wine,” or order any of it sent to their address in the city. They took none of those “brimming glasses” generative of “wit’s electric flame.” A plague on such pilgrims! say I, marry and amen! The bust of the bard shall no longer be a beacon for them. But the statesmen and critics who sit at the base of Nelson’s Pillar soon noticed that the niche was empty. Their poetical ire was raised to an unpleasant degree. They brought such influences to bear on the proprietor of the Cradle of Genius that the bust was at once restored to its accustomed niche.
The Dubliners have a passion for flowers and rock‐work. Every available foot of ground in front and in rear of their houses is devoted to the cultivation of flowers and the building of miniature grottos. The city is spreading very fast, and rows of cottages are building in the suburbs on all sides. In general, the houses are not what we Americans would call comfortable. The fire‐places are very small; for coal is scarce and dear, and a bundle of kindling‐wood, composed of half a dozen chips not much larger than matches, is an object of purchase. The grates seem constructed to throw out smoke instead of heat. In this they are well seconded by the moist, heavy atmosphere. Living is good and cheap, however—about one‐ fourth cheaper than it is in our principal cities on this side of the Atlantic. Liquors are good in quality and moderate in price. Clothing of all kinds costs two‐thirds less than in New York, and is not “shoddy.” The English custom of wearing flowers in the button‐hole prevails in Dublin. The commerce in flowers is therefore extensive, and the shops devoted to that charming traffic make delightful displays of floral treasures. The Irish fruit, however, with the exception of strawberries, gooseberries, and currants, is inferior to ours. American apples are for sale at all fruiterers’, at prices very little greater than those of New York.
Carving in “bog‐oak” is quite an important trade in Dublin. Indeed, it may much more probably be called an art. I have seen some very artistic specimens of bog‐wood ornaments—statuettes, groups, etc. Ladies’ chains, brooches, and bracelets of Irish bog‐oak were very fashionable a year or two since. The fashion extended even to London and Paris.
The Dublin streets are dull at night. The quality of gas supplied the city is poor. Early closing is pretty general, and all the principal stores are closed at dark. Doubtless this is better for the clerks and shopmen, and more economical for their employers. But it is not so pleasant for that large class of the community who love to saunter along the lighted streets in the evening, and feast their eyes on the treasures in the illuminated shop‐windows. There is little to tempt the tourist into the Dublin streets at night. I should advise him—or particularly her—to avoid promenading on Saturday evening. I regret to say that evening is very generally observed by handicrafts‐men and laborers, and even by shopmen and clerks, as a Bacchanalian festival. The number of persons who sacrifice to the rosy god at the week’s end is lamentably great. Monday is a workmen’s holiday, and it is very hard to get mechanics to work on that day.
The unsavory localities of Dublin are designated by strange names. Here are a few by way of example: Bow Lane, near the Insane Hospital founded by Dean Swift, who, as he says or sings,
“Left the little wealth he had To build a house for fools or mad, To show, by one satiric touch No nation wanted it so much”;
Cook’s Lane, Paradise Row, Cuff Street, Bride Alley, Lung Lane, Smoke Alley, Black Horse Lane, Bull Alley, Pill Lane, Marrowbone Lane, Pig Town, and Stony Batter.
One Corpus Christi.
“Flowers? Are they for a bride?” he said, And wondered if that graceful head, Now bent to catch the soft perfume, Was soon to wear their tender bloom; But when she raised her modest eyes, And answered him in half surprise, “No, they are for our Lord,” he smiled, And thought: “This is indeed a child.”
“Give me the loveliest,” she said “Delicate white and rosy red, And heliotrope and mignonette, All that you know and I forget; And heap these crimson roses, so: Yes, they are costly, that I know; But what can be too fair or sweet To strew beneath His sacred feet?”
The light was fading; broken flowers Lay scattered through the aisles in showers; For all their fragrant wealth that day Had marked the Master’s glorious way, And now, before the altar‐rail, A girl knelt, motionless and pale.
A line of sunlight touched her hair, Her slender hands were clasped in prayer; In silent bliss the moments passed, For she had lingered to the last, Unconscious, in that holy spot, Of eyes that watched and wearied not.
“How beautiful!” the whispered thought, All human, all of earth, she caught; And reading what that thought expressed By the one key‐note in her breast, Uplifting her adoring head, “Is He not beautiful?” she said.
A thrill of awe, a flush of shame, He knelt, and named his Saviour’s name. Softly she glided from the place: He never looked upon her face; Low bent to earth his suppliant head, “O Lord! make me a child,” he said.
Relatio Itineris In Marylandiam.
Narrative of a Voyage to Maryland. 1633.
By F. Andrew White, S.J.
The most beautiful chapter in the colonial history of North America is that setting forth the colonization of fair Maryland, Terra Mariæ, or, as she was pre‐eminently called, the Land of the Sanctuary. And yet this is, strange to say, one of the least read and least known of the chapters of our early history. Every American knows all about the Puritan Pilgrim Fathers, and the Mayflower, and Plymouth Rock, and all the facts and fictions concerning the settlement of New England. Most Americans devoutly believe, upon the authority of New England orators and historians, that the Pilgrim Fathers aforesaid were the founders of the civil and religious liberty now organized in this great republic, mistaking a strife for sectarian ascendency and domination for a contest for the great principles of religious liberty. In point of fact, the Puritan Pilgrims held in intense horror the very principles now so generously assigned to them. They wanted, not equality, but supremacy. It was only in Catholic Maryland that religious equality was truly established, both by the design of the Catholic proprietary, Lord Baltimore, and by the legislative enactments of the freemen of the province, who cordially invited all persons persecuted for their religious belief to find not only a refuge in Maryland, but all the rights and privileges, civil and religious, enjoyed by themselves, the founders of the colony.
Here, and here only, then, do we see the first rays of true civil and religious liberty in the American colonies—a glimmer of light in old S. Mary’s like Portia’s candle:
“Portia—That light we see is burning in my hall. How far that little candle throws his beams! So shines a good deed in a naughty world.”
If now, indeed, the greater glory dims the less, we must not forget the light of the candle in the then surrounding darkness.
Everything connected with the early history of Maryland is, and ought to be, deeply interesting to every American of liberal culture or sentiment. We are pleased to see that the Maryland Historical Society is making earnest efforts to gather and save all the fragmentary lore pertaining thereto. The volume we now have in hand bears evidence of the fact. We give the title‐page in full, as a summary of its substance:
“Fund Publication, No. 7.”—Relatio Itineris in Marylandiam. Declaratio Coloniæ Domini Baronis de Baltimoro. Excerpta ex Diversis Litteris Missionariorum, ab anno 1635, ad annum 1638. (Seal of Maryland Historical Society.) “Narrative of a Voyage to Maryland. By F. Andrew White, S.J. An Account of the Colony of the Lord Baron of Baltimore. Extracts from different letters of missionaries, from the year 1635 to the year 1677. Edited by the Rev. E. A. Dalrymple, S.T.D. Baltimore, February, 1874. Baltimore: John Murphy & Co. (Printers to the Maryland Historical Society).”
The Historical Society gives us a neat octavo volume of nearly 200 pages, issued in a style that would do credit to any publishing house in America, or, for that matter, in Europe either.
The learned editor, Dr. Dalrymple, tells us in the preface where and how these valuable documents were obtained: “About the year 1832 the Rev. William McSherry, S.J., discovered, in the archives of the ‘Domus Professa’ of the Society in Rome, the originals of the MSS. which are named on the title‐page. He carefully copied these MSS., and placed the copies in the library of Georgetown College, D. C., of which institution (being at the same time the provincial of the society in Maryland) he afterwards became the honored president.”
Translations were made and printed of these manuscripts; but, copies being nearly exhausted, the Historical Society determined to make a new issue, accompanying the new translation with the Latin text, as far as that could be obtained, some pages of the original transcripts being unfortunately lost. The present volume is of the new issue, and it is little to say that its contents are intensely interesting.
It is quite charming to follow good F. White, missionary, saint, scholar, “vir non minus sanctitate vitæ, quam doctrina conspicuus,” in his humble and earnest and successful labors among the savage aborigines of Maryland. His great soul was given up to his holy mission. We follow the little fleet, the Ark and the Dove (what beautiful and significant names—the ark of Noah, and the dove sent forth by the patriarch!), over the waste of waters, where they had not only the dangers of the sea, but Turks and pirates, to dread, even from the British Channel onward over the whole Virginian Ocean.
On the 25th of March, A.D. 1634, the pious missionaries celebrated, as they believed, the first Mass ever said in Maryland. But it seems that some of their own order had preceded them on this field; for as early as 1570 F. Segura and other Spanish Jesuits from Florida were endeavoring to bring the Indian tribes on the shores of the Chesapeake into the Christian fold, when they were ruthlessly murdered before the rustic altar on which they had daily offered the Holy Sacrifice for the traitors who slew them (Woodstock Letters).
The colonists in S. Mary’s soon made friendly relations with the Indians, and the missionaries had the inexpressible happiness of bringing many over to the true faith. The fathers would often‐times leave the dwellings of the whites to abide entirely with the Indians, though the governor disapproved of remote excursions, on account of the treachery of hostile tribes, who were always hovering around the borders. The fathers, moreover, had no light duties in attending to the spiritual wants of the colonists themselves, who were largely, but by no means exclusively, good Catholics.
In those primitive days, when all the freemen of the province met in general assembly for the purposes of legislation, F. White and his colleagues were summoned to take part in the sessions; but they declined the honor, and, as “they earnestly requested to be excused from taking part in the secular concerns of the colony, their request was granted.” They could do their work more effectively, ad majorem Dei gloriam, in the rude Indian wigwam where they had established an altar, than in the hall of the legislative assembly.
Lord Baltimore obtained lands from the Indians by purchase, and not by conquest, and colonists and Indians and missionaries were usually upon the most friendly terms together. The Indians treated the strangers to their dishes, to pone and omini, and roasting ears, and game, and fish, and oysters; and, in return, during a season of famine, the Indians were supplied from the not over‐abundant stores of the colonists. The natives then were not inclined to strong potations: “They are especially careful to refrain from wine and warm drinks, and are not easily persuaded to taste them, except some whom the English have corrupted with their own vices.” Alas! from that day to this how many untold thousands of the children of the forest have been sent, body and soul, to perdition by the infusion and diffusion among them of English vices!
The missionaries give accounts of their labors with a naïveté that is charming. We can see them starting on the broad river in a little boat—a father, an interpreter, and a servant‐man of all work, with their supplies of bread and cheese, and dried corn and beans, with a bottle of wine for religious purposes, a casket with the sacred utensils, and a table as an altar for performing sacrifice, and another casket with trifles for the Indians—bells, combs, fishing‐hooks, needles and thread, and other such commodities. They take a tent to cover them when beyond the reach of English residents, and, after a weary day’s work, they lie down by the open fire to take their rest. “If fear of rain threatens, we erect our hut, and cover it with a larger mat spread over; nor, praise be to God, do we enjoy this humble fare and hard couch with a less joyful mind than more luxurious provisions in Europe.” In fact, they are so happy in their work that they think God gives them already a foretaste of the blessed life of the future.
Upon one of these excursions a friendly Indian was pursued by enemies and transfixed with a spear; they “pierced him through from the right side to the left, at a hand’s breath below the arm‐pit, near the heart itself, with a wound two fingers broad at each side.” Some of the man’s friends were converts, and they called in F. White to prepare him for death. The missionary gave him suitable instructions, taught him short prayers, and received him into the church, and, touching his wounds with relics of the most holy cross, took his leave, directing the bystanders, when he should breath his last, to take him to the chapel for the purpose of burial. The next day this same Indian, with a companion, followed the father in a boat, showed him the red spots where the wounds were of the previous day, exclaiming “that he is entirely well, nor from the hour at which the father had left yesterday had he ceased to invoke the most holy name of Jesus, to whom he attributed his recovered health.”
The people of the lower counties of Maryland have always had a reputation for culture, refinement, and good manners. They appear to have these traits by inheritance. “The Catholics who live in the colony,” writes a missionary (A.D. 1640), “are not inferior in piety to those who live in other countries; but in urbanity of manners, according to the judgment of those who have visited the other colonies, are considered far superior to them.”
We find we are extending what was intended for a brief notice into a regular article, for which the reader may or not thank us; an abiding and essential interest in the cause must be our apology. We will say but little more, though the theme admits of vast expansion.
In Lord Baltimore’s Declaratio, or account of the colony—which, by the way, is very much couleur de rose (“It is sad to contrast the glowing accounts of Maryland in the Declaratio and the painful experience of the missionaries,” says the editor with great justice)—we find him inviting his countrymen to go to his colony, not only to better their material interests, but also to spread the seeds of religion and piety—a work, he says, dignum angelis, dignum Anglis. This recalls to mind the happy witticism of the great pontiff who sent Augustine to perform the same work with the English themselves.
There is scarcely a page of this new issue of the Relatio, and the accompanying letters, that does not invite special interest. Surely those missionaries were men of God, living and dying to serve him only. “I would rather,” writes F. Brock, laboring in the conversion of these Indians, “expire on the bare ground, deprived of all human succor, and perishing with hunger, than once think of abandoning this holy work of God from fear of want.” Within a few weeks after writing that letter, worn out with privations, he went to rest from his labors.
Good F. White, seized by Claiborne’s rebel soldiers, was sent in irons to England, where he died like a saint, as he had lived. “His self‐denial, privations, and sufferings,” says Dr. Dalrymple, himself a Protestant minister, “and the touching patience and cheerfulness with which they were all endured, move our profound respect and admiration. F. White deserves a high place of honor amongst the many heroic missionaries of the Society of Jesus.” What wonderful men they were indeed, the old Jesuit missionaries! We of the present day could scarcely believe their lives possible but for the F. De Smets and kindred spirits who repeat them even in our own day. Laudamus viros gloriosos.... Omnes isti in generatione suæ gentis gloriam adepti sunt.—Eccles. cap. xliv.
We may repeat that the Maryland Historical Society has done a good work in bringing out this volume anew; and its agents, editor, translator, and publisher have all done their work in the most creditable manner. We observed in the translation, excellent as it is, some few points open to criticism; as, e.g., p. 10, “To the Very Rev. Father, General Mutius Vitelleschi.” The comma is misplaced between father and general. On p. 11 it is said, speaking of S. Clement, “who, because he had been tied to an anchor and thrown into the sea, obtained the crown of martyrdom.” A man is not a martyr because of his execution in any fashion, but because of the principles for which he suffers. We find, on p. 12, the word Sabbatum rendered Sabbath, instead of Saturday, which would convey the true idea in this case. There may be some other slight inaccuracies of the same or a similar kind, but, upon the whole, they are unimportant, and the translation is a fair and creditable rendering of the text.
Finally, we would say that if the reader would wish to spend a few hours, safely, profitably, and pleasantly in field and camp, with true soldiers of the cross, let him obtain and read the Relatio Itineris, with the accompanying documents.
On The Wing. A Southern Flight. IV.
“De Fil En Aiguille.”(119)
By the time we had been a fortnight at R—— R——, the sentiment of the dolce far niente(120) of the Italians seemed gradually to take possession of Mary and myself. I sketched a little, and Mary sat in the loggia, reading occasionally, and dreaming a great deal. Frank was still absent; having, in the most unjustifiable way, undertaken a complete tour in the Abruzzi, accompanied by his friend, Don Emidio Gandolfi, who had given him rendezvous at Monte Casino. One day, however, when I came home from a delightful ramble all over the gardens of the Villa “Mon Caprice,” Mary greeted me with the exclamation:
“Frank will arrive the day after to‐morrow, and Don Emidio is coming with him.”
“I thought it had been settled Don Emidio was to go back to Rome.”
“Settled by whom, my dear Jane? I conclude he has changed his plans.”
“Well! I know how it will be: we shall have none of Frank’s society; he will for ever be making excursions with Don Emidio where we cannot go.”
“Their distant excursions are over; and we want them for all the places we have to visit near Naples. Up to now we have been so taken up with the Vernons that I have not cared for much more than the walk backwards and forwards to their house and our own. But we have a great deal to see, and I am longing to begin.”
“Oh! Don Emidio has seen it already a dozen times. It would only bore him to go over it again.”
I cannot conceive what made me say this to Mary. I think I was cross. I know I was tired and hot with my walk. She made no answer for a few seconds; but I felt she was looking at me. And so I did that stupid thing which one always hates doing and cannot the least prevent—I blushed. Having thus made myself look like a fool, I glanced at Mary, and our eyes met.
“Do you dislike Don Emidio, Jane, that you speak in that way?”
“Dear me! no, not at all. I only did not suppose he would care to go over all the old places again.”
“It is not always the places; it is sometimes the company that is the chief attraction.”
“Oh! yes; I know Don Emidio is devoted to Frank.”
“I think he likes us all, Jane.”
“No one can help liking you, Mary; and I dare say he does not dislike me.”
“Is that all you think about it, my dear?”
“Of course it is. What more is there to think about it?” And then, as I knew I was blushing again, I went out of the room to take off my hat. But I did not care to go back to Mary directly, for fear she should say anything more to make me cross. So I ran down to Villa Casinelli to have a chat with the Vernons. I found them all in a state of very great excitement. Ida was looking anxious, her eyes glistening like diamonds, and a bright, hectic spot on each cheek—which I never like to see, knowing how delicate she is. Elizabeth, who is always calm and gentle, and rather slow in speaking and moving, was sitting opposite Ida, with her large, dark velvet eyes full of tears. As I entered, Ida started up, exclaiming:
“O Jane! what do you think those dreadful Casinelli have done now? This morning, before anybody was up, they cut down the chapel bell, which was hung outside the door on our floor, near the servants’ rooms, so that Lucia might ring it every morning. And now, to‐day, a feast‐day, on which the congregation was sure to be numerous, when Lucia went to ring the bell for the first time (you know we always ring it thrice), she found that the rope was left dangling, but no bell. After hunting about everywhere, one of the Camerota, the father of your Paolino, found it tied to a fig‐tree on the terrace just above the chapel. The contadini(121) are in a wild state of indignation, and I really am at a loss to imagine what will happen next; for what with the insult to religion, the annoyance to Padre Cataldo, and the constant anxiety to ourselves, I begin to think we shall have to throw it all up, and leave this place.”
I had already heard a great deal about the Casinelli and their extraordinary conduct. Indeed, ever since we had been near neighbors to the Vernons, the ins and outs of this intricate and truly Italian intrigue had formed one of the chief themes of our daily conversations. But to enable my readers to follow the plots and stratagems of this Macchiavelian family, I must give an account of the whole group. My story will represent a state of things not, I imagine, to be found anywhere out of Italy. Every nation has its characteristics, its qualities, and their corresponding defects. The peculiar finesse and acuteness of the Italians make them the best constructors of a plot that imagination can conceive, and give them a proportionate facility for carrying it on and working it out. They are natural born actors. And they can so identify themselves with the character they wish to assume that not only is it exceedingly difficult for the most diligent observer to detect the false from the true, but I doubt if even they themselves do not end in interiorly confusing the two so absolutely as to efface all moral lines of demarcation. They can make themselves a false conscience on a gigantic scale, and end in themselves believing the lies they have invented.
The Casinelli are a numerous family, consisting of seven daughters and two sons, all equally endowed with the faculty, of assuming a part, not for days or weeks, but for years or for a whole life. The one fixed and determinate object of the nine persons is, as is usual with Italians, to make money. To obtain wealth, and always more wealth, all means seem lawful to them, and no stratagem too low. The house, garden, and vineyards of Casinelli make altogether a nice and profitable little property, and, of course, it belongs to them all—that is, each has a share in it. They have wisely agreed that more will be gained by their all holding together, as regards the property, than by any division, especially as it is but small. They reserve a few rooms on the ground floor of the house for their own use, though their residence is principally in Naples. The other two sets of apartments in the house they let to strangers. But in order to make sure of all the fish that may come to the net, the elder brother is stated to be the owner of one of the suites of rooms, and one of the sisters of the other. The sister professes to be a very dragon of virtue, and will receive no tenants who do not bear an unspotted reputation, and who cannot also give evidence of a more than merely respectable position of life—they must be well, and even highly, connected. The brother, on the contrary, is quite ready to part with his rooms to anybody who pays his rent. “What does he care about who they are, or what they do, so long as he gets his money?” And in the case of the honest man happening to have a preference for the brother’s rooms, while the gay Lothario has set his heart on the spinster’s domain, ho! presto, the proprietorship is quickly changed; the brother owns the sister’s side of the house, while the sister is the fair possessor of the brother’s portion. If you are so ill advised as to look dubious and express an impression that it had been otherwise, you are met with a calm, indulgent smile at your evident deficiency of intelligence: “Dear me! no. Were you not aware it was nothing of the kind? Some repairs necessary to be made in my brother’s rooms had led to his holding mine for a time. He wanted them for a friend of his. I regretted the fact; but I was not acquainted with the character of the tenant when I conceded my rooms to my brother, because I was myself called from home” (or some such reason), “and was unable to attend to the letting. I deeply regretted the fact; but it was done without my knowledge.” And thus they turn about; always contriving to run with the hare, and hunt with the hounds. As a rule, it is the sister who comes forward and acts as padrona(122) when the parties wishing to hire either set of rooms are evidently respectable. If they are the reverse, the rooms are let nevertheless, but then it is the brother who meets the storm. And thus they enact the little man and woman who come out of the clock: the lady in fair weather, the gentleman in great‐coat and umbrella when it is wet.
I am not aware of what the Casinelli family motto is; but it ought to be, “Divide and govern.” For they adopt the same double‐surface process as regards politics. One brother is a staunch Bourbonist, the other a fervent Liberal. In public each bewails the opinions of the other. And thus, between the two, they catch the favor of both parties, and divide the spoils between them. If circumstances call for extreme measures in order to gain some end in view, the whole family will combine together to fall upon one particular member who, for the time being, represents some political view at that moment discredited. Their lamentations over the one black sheep are long and loud. Everybody’s sympathy is appealed to; everybody must lend an ear to the terrible calamity which has befallen their illustrious family, inasmuch as one of the race has been, or is, guilty of—, whatever the crime in question may be. Such grief, such indignation, expressed on the highest moral grounds, attracts attention, procures small favors from compassionating friends, creates at least an interest, and adds to their importance and consideration; while all the time the black sheep himself is privy to the whole affair, and receives, in the secrecy of the domestic circle, his full share of indemnification for having stood as whipping‐boy for the rest of the family. He keeps quiet for a little while, as being under a cloud. Then presently he reappears to enjoy the results of his own condemnation. The elder brother and sister, who are the prima donna and tenor of the domestic comic opera, are always said to be on bad terms with each other; not that they are so in reality, but because, if one has made a bad bargain or inconveniently offended anybody, the other can immediately step forward, pretending severely to blame the delinquent, and offering his or her services to repair the injury, or, in the case of a bad bargain having been made, insisting on a readjustment of the case; not from personal motives, having, as he or she states, no interest in the matter, but solely from a sense of justice. In short, they “hedge” in a way that would make their fortune a thousand times over at Epsom or Ascot. No matter what horse loses, they are sure to have made up their book in such a way that they must win something out of whatever happens. And, meanwhile, the member of the family who appears to the outsider to take his part against all his own kith and kin obtains the eternal gratitude of the deluded individual, who is not aware that he has been assisting at a family intrigue, based upon his own misfortune, and intimately and minutely combined by the whole set of them. When the Vernons wished to rent one of the suites of apartments, it was the elder sister who came forward with expressions of the warmest delight. What she had long desired had been that some family should reside there who had a chaplain, and that thus their pretty little chapel, entirely cut out in the tufa rock on the sands of the sea‐shore, which rock forms the foundation of the house, would again come into use. She was eloquent in describing how that formerly that chapel had been so useful to the numerous vignaiuoli and their families living on and near the premises. They themselves, she stated, were no longer rich enough to afford themselves so great a consolation, now that the one brother who had been in the priesthood was dead. She was quite certain that Padre Cataldo was a saint; and, for her part, no one but the Vernons should inhabit that part of the house, for their mere presence would bring a blessing on all the rest. She even talked of restoring whatever was wanting in the chapel, and doing it up. It had been sadly neglected, and the cobwebs hung in festoons from the rude but effective carving above the altar on the coved roof and the walls. The subject of the bas‐reliefs was the Assumption, and, though roughly done, it had a very good effect, scrolls and angels’ heads being intermixed with the principal figures, and the whole distempered in white picked out with bright blue. A great deal was said about the reparations, and the Vernons, who did not then know what sort of people they had to deal with, imagined all that was required for the use of the chapel would be found. They soon discovered their mistake, and, beyond a little cleaning done, they had to provide almost everything. As soon as the Vernons had prepared it, the eldest Casinelli brought all her friends to look at it, that they might admire the piety of her family, and learn the sacrifices they had made in order to afford this consolation to the neighborhood!
But wisely judging that unforeseen circumstances might occur which would show their interests and the way to make more money might lie in another direction, the eldest brother was directed to assume quite another tone. He was therefore deputed to act the sceptic on the occasion, and make supercilious remarks about his sister’s excess of piety, and the inconvenience and folly of these extremes of devotion. He shrugged his shoulders about it, and lamented that, not being master, he could do nothing to refrain her from so rashly committing herself to possible expenses, and even to probable difficulties with the present government, from the presence of a zealous and hard‐working Jesuit father. At the same time, he gave no handle against himself in the matter, but preserved an outwardly civil manner towards the Vernons, and a cold regret towards Padre Cataldo. As time went on, the Vernons discovered that there was an ever‐increasing difficulty about all that was requisite for the altar. The altar linen was withdrawn, and they had to find their own. The vestments were borrowed one day, and never returned. By the time we arrived, almost everything for the service of the altar was the property of the Vernons; and Ida’s active fingers had achieved the happiest results from very limited materials.
Meanwhile, there could be no doubt of the good that was being done in the neighborhood from the reopening of the little chapel and the active piety of Padre Cataldo. The parish church is a long way off, and up a very steep hill. The result is that few of the little children and women could get to church at all. There is a chapel, dedicated to Our Lady of Dolors, by the roadside at Posilippo, but it is very small. And there is another built by the Minutoli when, for love of the poor, they left their beautiful villa of “Mon Caprice,” and raised an asylum for the aged poor, and a house to which they themselves retired, giving away all they could spare from their own modest requirements. But this also is somewhat at a distance; and, moreover, the population is large, and the accommodation altogether but scanty.
I have seldom seen more fervor and devotion than in the little chapel at Casinelli, hewn out of a rock, with its simple decorations and a few natural flowers on the altar. There was no music, and I cannot for a moment pretend that there was the slightest approach to harmony in the loud, harsh, powerful shouting which the Italian peasantry are content to mistake for singing. But, at least, there was real devotion, as they sat with eyes fixed on the preacher, who so beautifully and so earnestly discoursed to them as a father might to his children. I have often seen the tears streaming down their cheeks; and then from time to time we would hear of first this and then that hardened sinner who came creeping back to his or her duties, and making us all glad. Several small boys served at the altar; and as the honor was highly prized, they had been made to come in rotation to obviate quarrels. One small creature of about four years of age, and who had quite the most marvellous eyes and the longest lashes I ever saw, was specially pertinacious about his rights. In short, there was something touchingly primitive and real about the whole thing which could not fail deeply to impress us who came as strangers into this little seaside sanctuary. As we sat waiting for the priest to arrive, or in the silent parts of the Mass, we could hear the waves lapping the yellow sands just outside the half‐closed door. This was the public entrance; and sometimes, in rough weather, I think it must have entailed a little sprinkling of salt water on the worshippers. We entered the chapel by a flight of marble stairs, in a tower which led from the inner court of the Villa Casinelli, and which stairs brought us into an aisle of the chapel, cut further in the rock, and consequently always somewhat dark. I remember Mary’s going to Mass before breakfast, and having desired Paolino to bring her coffee, and put it in one of the niches of the marble staircase; which he did, greatly amused and pleased at so unusual a proceeding. It was never, however, repeated, for the wind blew fresh and cold, and the Vernons were almost hurt at what might look like a mistrust of their ever‐ ready and abundant hospitality.
There was altogether something about the arrangement and position of the chapel so unlike the beaten ways of everyday life that, united as it is with the memory of the beautiful short addresses of the father and the devotion of the people, it remains in our minds heightened by a tinge of romance. And now there was the fatal apprehension that all this was to be destroyed.
It was some little time before Mary and I could quite make out what this suddenly‐developed though long smouldering hostility to Padre Cataldo and the Vernons could mean, the Casinelli had appeared so anxious to be civil to the latter, and had professed such delight at first that the chapel should be reopened. At length we learnt the facts of the case, which were as follows: The Vernons had been residing at Casinelli for about two years, and doing a great deal of good in their immediate neighborhood, when an Italian gentleman, a strong Liberal, and openly professing infidelity, applied for the set of apartments corresponding to those occupied by the Vernons. In this case it was the brother who appeared as the owner, and who, careless of all save his rent, let it at once to the Martorelli, as we will call the gentleman in question and the lady who accompanied him.
This, of course, was a grand opportunity for the sister to come forward in the family comedy, and enact her part. So with loud bewailings and great disturbance of the whole household, she took to her bed, and sent for all her acquaintances to come and bewail with her the wickedness of her brother, who had let the apartments to such people—not even respectable!—and so brought a slur on his father’s house. Everybody was entreated to pray that the brother’s hard heart might be touched and his conversion effected.
But, in the meanwhile, nothing was done by any member of the family to prevent the Martorelli from taking quiet possession, as tenants, of a property which belongs to all the Casinelli, and about the letting of which, therefore, every one had a voice. This case was so glaring a one, and was so likely to bring the Casinelli into disrepute, that it was found necessary to drill all the members of the family to act the part of outraged propriety. Therefore all the seven sisters refused acquaintance with the new‐comers, while they redoubled their attentions to the Vernons, wearying them with reiterated invectives against the Martorelli, and ostentatiously going the whole round of the garden, rather than run the risk of meeting them in the avenue which leads to the principal entrance.
Six months elapsed, and during that time the brother was a constant guest at the Martorelli’s, while more and more he evinced a marked absence of civility towards the Vernons, and especially towards Padre Cataldo. On one occasion, as the brother returned from dining with the Martorelli, he said something positively insulting to the Vernons, whom he met in the garden. This was overheard by some of vignaiuoli,(123) and was repeated to the seven sisters, who accordingly went in a body, the next day, to call on the Vernons, with redoubled regrets about their brother and about the vicinity of such objectionable people as the Martorelli, who, however, they rejoiced to add, would certainly vacate the apartment in another month. The Vernons, knowing no reason to doubt their statement, were naturally gratified to hear it, as the garden belonged equally to all the inhabitants of the house, except a very small portion assigned to each family, only sufficient for the cultivation of a few flowers. Time, however, wore on, and another six months had expired without making any difference as regarded the presence of the Martorelli.
Far from showing any signs of intended departure, Signor Martorelli was allowed to undertake several improvements in the house and garden at his own expense. About the same time some of the sisters called on Padre Cataldo, and, without making any allusion to the works that were being carried on by their tenant, they informed him, with every demonstration of zeal, that the lady who resided in the house with him had shown some signs of a better state of feeling than the gentleman; and that, in short, she was a very interesting person—one about whose welfare they could not but feel anxious. They added that, when she saw people going to and from the chapel, she was noticed to sigh deeply, and had actually expressed surprise that no one had ever invited her to enter the chapel; while, on the other hand, their brother was always taunting them with a want of real charity in having avoided any intercourse with this perhaps repentant sister. They had therefore, they asserted, after many misgivings, come in a body to consult his reverence as to what he would advise them to do. Personally, they could have no wish to know such people; but here, possibly, was a question of the salvation of a soul, and all selfish sentiments must be laid aside for that. Perhaps their knowing her might do good; did his reverence not think that, with such an end in view, they ought to sacrifice their natural aversion, and call on the interesting lady? Of course the only reply that a priest could make to such a question was that no consideration should stand in the way when any hope of doing good is in question. And then all the seven damsels, breaking forth in expressions of submission to his advice, and appearing to take it as if the initiative had come from him, with pious phrases and low courtesies, left his reverence’s presence. From that day the greatest intimacy and constant intercourse sprang up between the two families. The seven sisters and the young lady were inseparable. Signor Martorelli’s sentiments and principles were deeply bewailed; but if her husband, as he is called, and as we hope he is, showed so little religion, at least she was a promising subject; and whenever they saw the Vernons, it was always to relate the growing success of their happy manœuvre. Time, however, sped on his way, and no practical results followed. Signora Martorelli entered no church, while the man threw off the mask, and openly began to do the devil’s work among the pious contadini(124) of the place. He would send for two or three of the young lads at the hour of Mass on Sundays and feast days, and promise them a trifling sum, if, instead of going to church, they would execute some commission for him. When they hesitated, he would laugh at their scruples, and ridicule their attachment to the Jesuit father, and their caring to have objects of devotion like a rosary or the picture of a saint. By degrees his discourses to them became impregnated with positive blasphemy; he grew bolder in his expressions of hatred against religion, and more virulent in his attacks on the ministers of the church. At length he had messages conveyed to the Vernons, to the effect that the bell for Mass (which was never rung before 8 o’clock) was an intolerable nuisance to him; and he threw out hints of revenge if it was not discontinued. Whenever it was rung, suddenly furious sounds proceeded from his part of the house. And really it would seem as if the wretched man were seized with the rage of the possessed, and that, when that bell sounded, the devil entered into him. The Vernons’ servants became the objects of mysterious threats and of vile calumnies. A wretched peasant was bribed to frighten one of them at night; and a more daring sinner, but who afterwards repented with tears, was induced, by promises of money, to fire at Padre Cataldo one evening as he was entering the avenue where the man stood concealed.
At length the climax was reached which I have related at the beginning of this chapter, and the Mass bell was cut down in the night, and hung upon a fig‐tree. I remained a long time with Ida and Elizabeth, discussing what would be the best course to pursue; and as I have got so far in the history of the Mass bell, I think I had better carry it on to the end, though it will lead me beyond many of the other incidents of our stay at Posilippo. It was decided that Ida should write very civilly but very firmly to the elder sister, remonstrating at the bell being removed. The sisters rose up in a body, and all together intoned a loud lamentation over the wickedness of the world. It was their desire the bell should be replaced, and that in all things the reverend father should do whatever he thought proper. It was impossible to say who had removed the bell; no one could so much as guess who could be at the bottom of so much wickedness; but as it was quite overwhelming, the eldest sister, true to her traditions and habits, retired to bed, informed her friends of the circumstance, and gathered them round her couch for two days of sympathy and condolence. The bell was, of course, replaced by the still trusting Vernons; but the atheistic Martorelli only escaped condign punishment at the hands of the indignant contadini through the remonstrances and commands of Padre Cataldo, who, in this instance, had unusual difficulty in getting his orders obeyed, and in preventing the insults that had been heaped upon him from being revenged by his loving but hot‐headed Italian penitents.
The next Sunday morning Mary and I, who had far less faith in the possibility of any sincerity in the Casinelli than even the Vernons, listened anxiously for the first sound of the Mass bell. My watch was, I suppose, in advance of the right time; for it was five minutes past eight, and I had not heard a sound, when Mary came running in with the joyful exclamation that it was all right, and that the bell was pealing loud. The good Posilippians looked out of their cavernous houses, and peeped from their windows; and as we stood at our garden door, we could hear them calling to each other just as Mary had done to me—that the bad man had not dared again to cut down the bell in the night.
It was not long, however, before Martorelli, whose rage knew no bounds, began to express his threats against the Vernons, and especially against their chaplain, too loudly to escape notice. The father himself was well aware of these threats, because they never failed to be repeated by the people about the place, who were all devoted to him. Of course he avoided telling the Vernons, for three girls and one aged lady could do little in the matter, except feel very anxious for his safety. On the other hand, he was not the man to avenge, or even protect, himself. But as he was constantly out till late in the evening, preaching at different churches, giving retreats, and visiting the sick, several of the men who formed part of the congregation decided that he was never to be allowed to go down that treacherous winding path which leads from the Strada Nuova through the vineyards and garden to Casinelli, except accompanied by one of them. The terraces are admirably adapted for shooting down upon your enemy, as he passes just beneath you, while you lie concealed amongst the beans above. At length some of the wiser and more authoritative of the men, disgusted at the annoyances to which the females of the Vernon household were exposed, and at the threats against Padre Cataldo’s life, had Martorelli summoned before the magistrates as a disturber of the peace. This strong measure kept him quiet for some time; and it was during this happy interval that Frank and Don Emidio Gandolfi returned from their long wanderings, Frank, of course, to take up his abode with us, and Don Emidio to return to his Neapolitan villa, his principal residence being in Rome.
The day of their return we were all sitting in the loggia together watching the evening light, which, falling on the rocks of Sorrento and on the island of Capri, seemed to turn them into pink topaz set in a sapphire sea. I was eagerly relating the history of the bell to our two gentlemen, and, forgetting that Don Emidio was an Italian, I launched out in strong expressions against the cunning and intrigue of the whole nation. In the midst of my harangue I suddenly looked up, and there was Don Emidio leaning forward with his elbows on his knees, his hands loosely clasped, his deep, calm eyes fixed on my eager face, and a slight, sly smile curving his well‐defined mouth. I stopped dead short, and blushed to the eyes. We were so used to seeing him with us, and to hearing him talk in his perfect English, that, in the heat of my discourse, I forgot I was abusing his countrymen. Frank laughed outright when, looking at Don Emidio, he saw the expression which had so suddenly arrested me, and Mary alone looked sorry for me.
“O Don Emidio!” I exclaimed, “I forgot you were not one of us. I forgot you were an Italian.”
“It needs no apology, signorina. I agree with a great deal that you say. In the first place, you spoke chiefly of Neapolitans. I am only half a Neapolitan. And, secondly, whatever you may think of Italians you are too just not to believe there are many honest men amongst them.”
“You are very kind to let me off so easily. No one who knew Padre Cataldo, who is a Neapolitan, could fail to believe in the possibility of honest Italians.”
“Excuse me, signorina, if I say that you would be nearly as far wrong in taking Padre Cataldo as a guarantee for there being honest men amongst us as you would be in believing us all rogues because you have met with people like the Casinelli.”
“Why so?”
“Because saints are as much an exception to the generality as are accomplished Machiavellians like the Casinelli.”
“You are right,” said Mary. “But do you not think that just as the French are specially addicted to vanity, so the Italians are to intrigue?”
“I do. It is the reverse of the medal. The French are sanguine, and the drawback to that is self‐conceit. The Italians are astute, and the corresponding defect is cunning.”
“As Emidio is too sensible to be thin‐skinned at our speaking out our thoughts,” interrupted Frank, “I must say that I have always thought the Italians great in duplicity.”
“The Italian does not care to tell you an untruth about a trifle. If he did so, it would be from carelessness rather than from purpose. But when once he sees his way, or thinks he sees it, to accomplishing some distant and important end, then the full strength of his close‐knit mind and his marvellous faculty of mental investigation are brought to bear. He is unscrupulous because he is passionate. Not passionate only as a sudden burst, but condensed, sustained passion. The object he has in view, no matter what it be, becomes the object of his passion, and gradually he weaves around it the web of his whole being. With fixed, undeviating purpose, he bends all things to one point. If truth will serve him, he will employ truth; where that fails, deceit will be as readily adopted. He overlooks mountains and valleys, walls and barriers, in pursuit of his end; or rather he sees through them, as if they were merely a mist, and fixes his unflinching gaze on what he is resolved to obtain beyond them. So long as his purpose is unchanged, nothing will stay his progress. Once that changed, no matter how or why—out of his own will or through the will of others—and the whole fabric of deceit passes from him like a mantle loosely draped from his shoulders, only to be resumed when next required.”
“You seem to me to have made it out very clearly, Emidio,” said Frank. “Now, what is the good side of this disagreeable picture?”
“The good side is the strength of will and the power of sustained and concentrated thought and purpose. Turn all that in the right direction, and you will find it leads you to a long list of heroic saints, surpassed in no country, and equalled only in Spain, where some of the like characteristics exist.”
“But surely,” said I, “France also is a great land of saints.”
“No doubt. But, generally speaking (of course there are exceptions), they belong to a different category. The greatest contemplatives have been Italian or Spanish.”
“But, Don Emidio, I don’t like to think that nationality, which seems to include temperament, and even climate, can have anything to do with the making of God’s saints.”
“And why, signorina, should you object to it when He who makes his saints makes also the climate and the temperament? He has linked the outer and inner world too closely together for us to have any reason to be astonished that he should observe certain general laws in connection with the gifts of his highest graces.”
Mary started forward from the depths of her arm‐chair, and said eagerly: “Then do you really think that the slower temperament and depressing climate of England, for example, have prevented, and will prevent, our country from being honored by great saints?”
“I am very far from thinking it. On the contrary, and strange as it may appear at first sight, there are certain characteristics amongst the English which assimilate them, in my mind, to the Italians in a way I never could assimilate the French. I allude to your steadiness of purpose and to your reserved and silent habits. These qualities, when laid hold of by grace, tend to lead to contemplation and mystic holiness, much as do the qualities we have spoken of among Italians.”
“Then, I suppose, the extraordinary energy and versatility of the French are likely to make them more active than contemplative.”
“Just so, signorina, and yet there have been wonderful exceptions; and I should be wrong in making out anything like a rigid rule. In the first place, ‘the wind bloweth where it listeth’; and, in the next, the demarcations of national character are not sufficiently strong to necessitate any given development of even mere natural qualities, much less of spiritual qualities.”
“I suppose, in short, all you really mean, Don Emidio,” resumed Mary, “is that, when it pleases God to make a saint in the full acceptation of the term, he makes use of natural conditions blended with the supernatural.”
“God always works with a method, signora—by rule and measure. We cannot solve all the divine problems; but we know that they are according to truth and justice.”
Don Emidio’s last words seemed to shut us all up in silent thought. Frank went on puffing at his cigar in a way which set my wicked imagination wondering how far smoking was conducive to meditation. But then I never heard of a saint who smoked. Perhaps if any very holy man, whose canonization was in progress, had been given to smoking, the devil’s advocate would lay hold of it, and try to destroy the cause. I do not think tobacco was much in vogue when the great modern saints lived. S. Philip Neri, for instance, that large‐hearted, “large‐sleeved”(125) saint—I wonder if, in these days, he would have smoked? But then he was a priest. That makes a great difference. I think a layman might have an occasional cigar. There is that dear old Frank lighting his second. But Don Emidio has had only two tiny cigarettes. What nonsense runs in my head! And, meanwhile, the red lights have all died away. Capri lies like a large, dense cloud on the bosom of the sea; and though all the sunlight has faded from the sky, there is a strange color of mingled purple and orange that seems to flash upon the water, and that I never saw anywhere except in the Bay of Naples. Presently we are roused from our reverie by the sound of voices; and Ida’s tall figure stands by the open window looking out upon us, while Elizabeth and Helen are behind.
“How silent you all are!” exclaims Ida with a laugh. “I am afraid we shall disturb you.”
“Oh! it is only that Don Emidio has been talking to us so much about heroic sanctity that we are all in a state of depression from the consciousness that we have no hope of ever reaching it.”
“I am quite sure you never will, if you set about it in this melancholy fashion. Besides, nobody is a saint till he is dead; and who knows but what you may live to pray at my tomb yet?”
“Yours, Ida dear?” said Mary quite gravely.
“Why not? There are so many kinds of saints; and I may yet come out as quite a new variety. But that is not what I am come about. Padre Cataldo is gone to see the poor man I told Mary of this morning. He has got the fever, and, when he is delirious, he keeps calling so piteously for the padre that this is the second time to‐day he has had to toil up our hill to go to him, besides all his other toils. As soon as the man is pacified, he promised to come here. He told us at dinner that to‐morrow will be a free day, and that for once he could make an excursion with us, if we liked to go to Baiæ.”
It was soon all settled. I thought it strange the two gentlemen did not wish to ride, but preferred coming in the carriage with us. For my part, I longed to be on horseback, and, in their place, I would have ridden. Padre Cataldo looked in for a moment to learn our plans, and then Don Emidio took leave of us. He had a long way to drive home.
“Your villa is on the Vomero, is it not?” I said.
“No, signorina; it is at Capo di Monte. Do you prefer the Vomero?”
“Oh! dear, no. I think Capo di Monte very beautiful.”
He was holding my hand, as he wished me good‐night. I thought what an odd question it was to ask me. What could it matter which I liked best? I told Mary I thought Don Emidio was sometimes a little absent, and hardly knew what he was saying. But I suppose Mary did not agree with me, for she only smiled and made no answer.
The next morning I overheard Mary lamenting to Frank about the way in which Paolino disturbed her rest, beginning, as early as half‐past four, firing at the little birds in the garden. I used to envy that lad his faculty for early rising. The first streak of light through his shutterless window saw Paolino on the alert. And then he would go strolling out into the garden, leaning over the low wall that divided our entrance from the main road, hailing all his comrades on their way to their work, whistling and shouting to his sisters, who lived in a portion of the villa where we had originally thought of taking apartments but for its dirty and miserable condition. These noises so early in the morning, and close to our windows, were bad enough; but when to these the constant firing of a gun was added, Mary’s powers of endurance failed. It would have been a waste of feeling to compassionate the birds, who flew away from Paolino’s aim with perfect impunity. It was therefore from no apprehensions for the few songsters of a garden in Southern Italy that we complained. But all day long Paolino was absent at inopportune moments, attempting a hopeless massacre of sparrows and finches. He had often been scolded about it, but the instinct of sport in the boy was superior to any fear of being found fault with. When at length it reached such a pitch that Mary even was induced to complain, Paolino had to endure a sharp scolding from Frank. The result of which was that, a few hours after, he took the gun, with tears in his eyes, to Monica, requesting her to carry it to his father, that through him it might be returned to the friend who had lent him the fatal weapon. He alleged that he had not the moral courage to have the gun in his possession, and yet refrain from inordinate use of it; and thus, as he said, the only way was to put the occasion out of his reach. The little birds enjoyed peaceful matins ever after, and Paolino rose wonderfully in our esteem.
The roomy landau and the impish coachman were ready early to take us on our long excursion; while Pascarillo, the coachman’s master, and the owner of many carriages, provided another conveyance for the rest of the party. Don Emidio went with Mary, Ida, and myself; Padre Cataldo and Frank with Mrs. Vernon and the other girls. We took the Posilippo road, intending to return by the Grotto of Puzzuoli. Nothing can be more beautiful than the view which greets you at the top of the hill, and which, in a steep winding descent, brings you to the town of Puzzuoli. To the left is a high bank of verdure covered with flowering shrubs, and here and there a goat browsing on some almost inaccessible peak. The sea always seemed to me to be even bluer here than in the Bay of Naples. We drive past places bearing some of the grandest names of antiquity; Puzzuoli itself was once a “little Rome”; Cicero’s villa was here; here Sylla died. Temples unrivalled in beauty covered those hill‐sides, and villas with umbrageous trees were dotted all over those flat plains where the willows wave their long, yellow twigs amid rows of tall poplars, and here and there a plane‐ tree. Here are the market gardens that supply Naples, or rather a portion of them. But all the land is full of sulphur springs, and it is only in certain seasons of the year that Puzzuoli and its neighborhood is fit for habitation. Then Neapolitans and strangers come to take the sulphur baths, the hateful vapors of which catch our breath as we pass. I have a growing sense of everything being unreal around me; and no length of time or habit removes the impression. The sea has swallowed up one‐half of the spots sacred to classic memories. But where are the trees of Cicero’s villa that Pliny praises? What wild havoc or gradual but most obliterating change has availed to wipe away all but the faintest traces of what once was looked on as a paradise? Fire and water alike have combined to erase the last relics of that luxurious pagan time. The volcanic action in all this part of Italy and the encroaching ocean have sufficed to wipe out all but the faintest indications of a state of luxury, wealth, architectural beauty, and lavish decoration to which old Phœnicia, Greece, and Rome had lent their aid in the long course of ages. Never was ruin greater, perhaps, since the beginning of the Christian era. Sodom and Gomorrah, Nineveh and Babylon, have passed away more entirely. But in Puzzuoli, Misenum, Cumæ, and Baiæ the ruin is more pathetic, from the fact that enough remains to betray how vast those villas and baths and temples once were, and how absolutely the aggressive force of silent nature has overpowered and swept away or buried the proud achievements of man.
We proceed from one marvel of destruction to another. The Mare Morto is to our right, shrunk to a tiny lake; and yet this was to have been, when completed, the great port for Roman merchandise. The same melancholy feeling of utter destruction and radical change in the whole aspect of the country fills the mind wherever we turn; and through all the excursions we made in this neighborhood, I never found it less; while Mary, who had been here many years ago, recollected having experienced the same impression, and found that it returned upon her, if possible, with fuller force. It may be as well to remind my readers that the ancient name of Puzzuoli was Puteoli. And perhaps in no one place are crowded, within a circumference of about twelve miles around it, so many and such intimate associations with pagan Rome and the old classic life. The crumbling tufa‐banks by the road‐side are filled with rectangular Roman bricks, the remains of baths connected with the villa residences and temples of antiquity. Also, there are considerable remains of Columbaria and large tombs. We passed beneath the Arco Felice, and, clambering up a high bank, reached the cottage of a vignaiuolo, and rested beneath an elm‐tree while I made a drawing of Lago Fusaro and part of the Elysian Fields. We saw the Lake of Lucrinus, but the oysters are gone. We shuddered as we approached Avernus. The dense forest which once flung its black shadows on the waters has long ago been felled or died away. The wholesome mid‐day sun shot laughing beams on the clear surface, disarmed of all preternatural horror. The Elysian Fields are, indeed, a smiling plain of land partially cultivated, and partially covered with trees and brush‐wood, the king’s favorite hunting‐grounds. We women refused to enter the Sibyl’s cave, liking neither damp nor sulphurous smells. The horrors of the surroundings are all swept away. The little birds fly over the once deadly Lake of Avernus as safely as from Paolino’s harmless gun; and as we look back through the dim avenue of misty ages, it is curious to reflect that what is a dream of the past to ourselves was hardly less so to others who are now but shadowy representatives of a world gone by to us; for it was Agrippa whose engineering robbed Avernus of many of its terrors, and probably disturbed even the placid oysters of Lucrinus. Thus the sense of unreality grows upon us, as we visit one spot after another, and find the green tendrils of the young vine, the blue‐purple blossoms of the vetch, and bright scarlet poppies covering with gay garlands the few vestiges of a world that is dead and gone. Yet even here I am tempted to repeat, “Le passé n’est pas mort, il n’est qu’absent,”(126) and yet how far absent! How the old gods have died away from their own sylvan scenes, and the nymphs fled, shamefaced, from lakes no longer solitary! Victor Emanuel will scare no dryads from their leafy bowers, and is hardly the man to trace the small footprint of the chaste huntress on the yielding moss, as he pursues the wild boar through what were doubtless once her covers. No laughing Bacchante peeps behind the trailing vine, or dances, with light, flowing tresses and scanty tunic, to the trilling of double pipes. The goats are here, but the satyrs are absent. The vines show promise of rich grapes; but Bacchus, grape‐crowned, with the skin of the spotted pard across his sun‐bronzed chest, and the tragic melancholy of liquid eyes with sleepy lids, is nowhere found; for, be it remembered, the god of wine was no drunken lout, but rather one who, at least in his ripe youth, was but quickened and inspired by the blood of the red grape.
The myths and fables have long ceased. As myths, they held a divine truth, dimly shadowed forth. As fables, they degenerated, like all half‐truths, into wholesale errors. Then human depravity swept over them, and left its poisonous slime o’er all. We go back to the memory of those times with mingled feelings of wonder and of pain. But amid the decaying fragments of classic lore there shines forth one little incident which quickens our pulse, and bridges over all the succeeding ages with a touch of feeling that obliterates time and space. The words are few, but they are dearer to us than the epics of Virgil, or the letters of Cicero, or all else that may grace the memory of this lovely land: “The south wind blowing, we came the second day to Puteoli, where, finding brethren, we were desired to tarry with them seven days.”
“Finding brethren!” Yes, even here, beneath the shade of marble porticos, temple, and fane devoted to an infamous religion, the Name that is above every name was whispered by a few. The sign of the cross was secretly made by quiet inhabitants of Puzzuoli’s noisy streets, the Virgin Mother was revered, and the words of S. Paul and S. Luke listened to as a message from above. And how little the citizens of Puteoli knew of the divine mysteries which were going on among them! And now, as if the wicked city had been in every sense too near the gate of hell, the volcanic flames have penetrated the earth’s thin crust on all sides, and flung down and devoured the traces of brilliant, triumphant, and overbearing vice, leaving in its place a handful of Christian peasants and a few relics prized by the scholar and the antiquarian.
I must own to my readers that I am chiefly repeating Don Emidio’s words, and that, as we approached Baiæ, I with startling indecorum exclaimed: “But it must not be forgotten that we have come here to eat oysters, whether or not the Lake of Lucrinus produces them.” We did eat oysters. We alighted at the humblest little wayside inn close to the shore. We sat beneath the trellised vine that covered the vast loggia. The lemons were gathered, as sauce for the oysters, in the garden below; the ruins of the circular temple of Venus or Mercury shone, deep red, in the light of the setting sun. The merry landlord and a half‐dozen nondescript servants, men and maids, proposed to dance the tarantella for us. The women happened to lack beauty, and the men youth. But that was not our reason for declining the pleasure. The dance was doubtless innocent enough; but it was not often we were favored with the company of “Nostro Zio Prete,” our uncle priest, and we thought it more decorous not to order dances in his presence. I must explain to my readers that the peasantry in South Italy call a priest uncle when they do not call him father; and that in some of our excursions, when Padre Cataldo bargained about carriages or refreshment (and which must always be done if you do not want to be scandalously overcharged), they always protested that for no consideration would they attempt to impose on their uncle priest! Happily for us, our reverend uncle was a Neapolitan, and too well acquainted with the true value of the services we received for us to have any apprehension of being cheated in any expedition organized by him. Perhaps our host himself surmised our reason for declining the tarantella, for he did not press it; and returning to our carriage, we drove home by moonlight through the Grotto of Puzzuoli.
Lake Of Lucerne.
It was a lovely evening as we sailed away, a happy, lively party, from Lucerne. Our minds were full of the enthusiasm for his native land which Herr H——’s descriptions had excited, but for one characteristic of the Lake of the Forest Cantons we were as yet totally unprepared, namely, its unusual and wonderful variety.
Every traveller viewing it from Lucerne readily admits its extreme beauty. Its interest is acknowledged beforehand, according to the greater or lesser degree in which each one can clothe its shores with historic memories, but its remarkable diversity of scenery is a feature generally ignored until seen, although amongst Swiss lakes it is in this respect pre‐eminent. And this peculiarity is mainly attributable to its geographical formation. Consisting, as it does, of divisions completely distinct one from the other, they lead us on, as if designedly arranged in the most artistic manner, in a series of “surprises,” from one picture to another, on an ever‐increasing scale of beauty.
That part of the lake which is nearest to Lucerne may be said to resemble in shape a Maltese cross, so equal do its proportions appear to the passing observer. In characteristics and detail, however, it differs widely. The northern shores, though spreading round two of the arms in undulating hills, may decidedly be called flat compared to the magnificent line of Alpine peaks towering along the southern extremity. At one of the angles of the cross stands Mount Pilatus, 5,900 feet high—at the opposite one the Rigi, 5,541 feet above the sea—like two sentinels guarding the entrance to the territory beyond. The tourist sailing straight onwards from Lucerne is fain to believe that the lake ends where a spur of the Rigi seems to stretch across the southern bay, right before him. No other explanation appears possible until the spot itself is reached, when suddenly a channel, hitherto unperceived, opens to the right, between that mountain and the opposite shore—the two promontories thus disclosed rejoicing in the rather ignoble appellation of “Die Nasen,” or “The Noses.” What a beautiful and perfectly different view is then disclosed, as the steamer darts through the narrow strait to the village of Buochs, at the foot of its own Buochserhorn, the base of which is covered with comfortable farm‐houses, embosomed in their orchards, changing step by step into châlets as they ascend to the higher pastures! At once we have got into another country. A landlocked bay, that to the eye seems nearly circular, bordered on one side by the precipitous but wooded mountains of Unterwalden, and on the opposite by the southern peaks and slopes of the Rigi, between whose folds nestles pretty Gersau, not large enough to be called a town nor unimportant enough for a village. A sunny, peaceful picture—a “happy lake of Rasselas”—from which no exit is visible, nor, we might suppose, ever need be sought for! At the further end, towering in the distance, snow‐clad summits peer above the clouds; but, more striking than all, rise two curiously‐pointed peaks close by, which stand, we are told, right above the white houses of Schwyz. So here we are truly in the cradle of Switzerland—the genuine “Urschweiz”! And as we sail towards Brunnen (the port of Schwyz, three miles inland) we try to trace their resemblance to a bishop’s distinctive mark, which has given to these two bare rocks, nearly five thousand feet high, the familiar name of “The Mitres.”
But where is the land of Tell—Uri and the Rüti?—for again our course seems barred at Brunnen: valleys, meadows, and a background of mountains alone lie before us. Once more turn round on the quay of Brunnen, at a sharp angle to the right, and say, can a more exquisite picture anywhere be found! Here, in this bay of Uri—for so this part is named—instead of the great expanse near Lucerne, the lake has narrowed into a space not wider than a valley, whilst huge mountains jut forward, and, dipping perpendicularly into the green waters beneath, barely leave room in some spots for the road, which is an engineering achievement of recent years, whilst in others it must needs be carried on through tunnels and open galleries. Right in front, the Uri Rothstock rears its lofty head, with its glacier—a transparent wall of ice three hundred feet in height—sparkling in the sun. Tell’s home lies within its folds. But close by, just opposite, is the Rüti, almost undistinguishable until the steamer passes near it. At the head of the bay, on its broad, green meadows, lies Aldorf, below the Bristenstock, which alone, when we reach that spot, hides from us the mighty Gothard. A paradise it truly seems on a brilliant sunny day, with a people worthy of such a land and nurtured into excellence amidst this noble nature. But we have not reached them yet, and have to see and hear of others before we come to this quarter.
Like every other part of Switzerland, the shores of Lucerne Lake are thickly inhabited. No signs of poverty are anywhere visible, and an air of comfort is diffused over the whole district. The most fruitful portion, however, is pre‐eminently the strip of land lying at the base of the Rigi, where the straight wall of the mountain rises precipitately facing the north. So proverbial is its fertility that it is called the “Garden of Lucerne,” and through winter and summer that town is supplied with fruit and vegetables by the peasants of this neighborhood. The steamers which now navigate the lake carry them thither in numbers with their produce on every market‐day. Of its numerous villages, Weggis held the first place until the last three years, when the engineers of the wonderful Rigi Railway fixed on Vitznau, three miles further on, for their station. Up to that period, no one ever thought of this out‐of‐the‐way little village, lying in a sheltered nook close under the Rigi‐Nase. Weggis, on the other hand, was the starting‐point for all aspirants to sunsets on the Kulm: the chief place for horses and guides, and full, in consequence, of animation and importance. But the world marches on rapidly nowadays, and matters, therefore, are much changed; for few, except the timid, or the most determined seekers of the picturesque, think of choosing this route to the summit, when both time and trouble can be saved by the railway ascent to those hundreds of summer tourists whose excursions are made at high‐ pressure speed. Vitznau, consequently, is daily advancing in importance, and the price of land has risen in an incredibly short space of time from fifty centimes to five francs per metre. No buildings, however, have yet been attempted, except two pretty hotels; and it was to one of these, opened this season on the water’s edge, that we had telegraphed for rooms. But it was not large enough to accommodate all our party, so my friend Anna L—— and myself adjourned at night to the second one, situated further back near the church.
The evening continued fine, and as the moon shone on the calm waters whilst we supped under the veranda of the inn, every one was happy and contented. The young C——s declared they felt “most romantic,” we elders “sehr æsthetisch” (very æsthetic), as Heine calls it, and all looked forward with confidence to the morrow. The plan was, by sleeping here, to start in the first train, which is generally the least crowded, and, halting at Kaltbad, thence to explore the other parts of the Rigi. It had been devised by Herr H——“cunningly devised,” he secretly told Mr. C——, “in order to humor the nerves of the ladies, always stronger in the early morning, and which he knew, though he chose to conceal this fact from us, would be sorely tried by the alarming railway.” As to a change of weather, no one ever dreamt of it. There had been such a spell of fine days and lovely moonlights that nothing else was taken into account. But, alas for presumptuous confidence! What was our dismay on awaking to hear the unwelcome sounds of rain! Patter! patter! drop after drop, it fell against the window; and, rising in trepidation, the painful fact became evident that a steady downpour had commenced. There was no wind, but such thick clouds rolled down from the mountain and spread over the lake that the opposite shore was soon invisible. It might pass off, and we determined to have patience; so, when the bell tolled for Mass at half‐past seven o’clock, seizing our umbrellas we rushed across the cemetery, which separated our hotel from the church. This latter, as suited to so small a village, is not large nor rich‐looking—on the contrary; but all was very clean, the building solidly constructed, and the congregation, despite the rain, fairly large, and most attentive. Everything was arranged, too, on the same system as elsewhere. The cemetery full of holy‐water stoups, with a separate corner for the children, the church doors open all day long, the lighted lamp betokening the Blessed Sacrament, and men and women often, as we noticed, passing in and out, to say a prayer in its divine presence.
At half‐past nine the train was to start, but the rain grew heavier each minute, and no one, we supposed, could think of ascending the mountain in such weather. At the appointed time, however, the steamers arrived from both ends of the lake, with their ship‐loads of enterprising tourists. How we pitied them! To have come so far in this weather, only to be disappointed—for no one surely could land on such a day! But experience has since taught us differently, and shown that in no part of Switzerland, or perhaps of any other country, does this class so pertinaciously defy the elements as on the Lucerne Lake and the Rigi Railway. To‐day, from behind our hotel windows, we watched hundreds rushing on shore, in their water‐proofs, and with dripping umbrellas, to the railway station—adventurous spirits, who trusted to their good stars to drive away the clouds from the mountain‐top on their arrival; or, if the views should fail them, at least to go through the “sensation” of this singular railway. And, in this one respect, no one could be disappointed. A “sensation” it certainly would be: whether pleasant or terrifying must depend on each individual temperament.
And now the sloping engines emerged from their night’s hiding‐place, and we too began to share the general excitement. One by one our party ran to the pretty station, and there stood examining the proceedings. So fascinating did the attraction become, that every time there was an arrival or departure whilst we remained at Vitznau, books, writing, and all other occupations were hastily thrown aside to scamper off to the still novel sight. But a very unwise course this proved; for, instead of reassuring our feeble nerves, the disinclination to make a personal experience of the ascent visibly increased as the day wore on. And what wonder! The engines were unlike any we had ever seen; shaped in a slanting fashion to fit the mountain side. There were five, but of these each one was attached to only one carriage, which contains cross benches for fifty passengers (with an ominous printed request “not to move!”), and with open sides, so that nothing should obstruct the view to those whose nerves might retain their customary tranquillity. Five such trains compose each departure, hence, should the arrivals exceed 250, the unlucky “last” are left behind at Vitznau to wait patiently for the next trains—two or three hours later. And now we understood the cause of the rush on shore, and the violent squeezing between the rails of the ticket office, which had so much puzzled and amused us.
In mid‐season this constantly happens, it being a case of “first come, first served.” Even to‐day, all the carriages were full. As a rule, therefore, it is calculated that on an average between 1,100 and 1,200 tourists daily ascend the Rigi during the summer months from this point alone. Up they went at a short interval between each train; the engine not preceding, but pushing the carriage before it—mounting slowly to all appearances, but withal rapidly, for in less than five minutes they were lost to sight; climbing first high above the church‐tower, and then above the cottages, which one by one here overtop the village. It took away one’s breath to look at them: a seeming tempting of Providence thus scaling mountain walls and precipices at the measure of from 18° to 25°—perhaps all the more awe‐inspiring to day by reason of the weather and the mysterious cloud‐land they boldly pierced through.
As yet, no serious accident has happened. Let us hope none ever may! The principle of construction, with a central notched rail, tightly grasped by a cog‐wheel, besides the powerful brakes belonging to each carriage, seem to promise fairly. The trains, too, proceed in reality so slowly, and with such caution, that a man is always able to walk in front of the first carriage. Most striking was it to watch the down trains two hours later; the guard blowing a horn as they passed the height above the village, then marching into the station with a solemn countenance that seemed to tell of perils met and conquered, leisurely followed by the sloping engine, looking helpless and distorted once it reached the level ground. Steady and serious‐looking men these guards and engine‐drivers are, quite unlike the daring beings to whose care we so thoughtlessly entrust our precious lives in every‐day railway travelling. In walk and dress, too, they have a mountain air and bearing, at once telling us of the life to which they were “born and bred,” and reminding us of the intrusion of our material world into their hitherto simple sphere. So far, however, it does not appear to have interfered with Vitznau habits. Being what the French call a “cul de sac,” without even a road over the promontory to Gersau, there is no temptation to linger here, and the trains and steamers are made to fit in so exactly that, except in the case of undue numbers, or for a hasty luncheon, few travellers ever do remain. Nothing struck us so much during our enforced stay as the sudden relapse into its ordinary quiet which took place at Vitznau the moment train or steamer passed on.
The nature of its position will also prevent this pretty village from ever losing much of its original character. It consists of but forty or fifty houses situated on a narrow ledge, a small strip of land, between the precipitous Rigi cliffs on one side and the lake on the other, so that room does not exist for very large extension. Only this summer it narrowly escaped destruction from the effects of a thunder‐storm higher up, such as had not been known for years. The stream overflowed into a torrent, carrying all before it, and the villagers and railway officials had to turn out in the middle of the night to open channels and raise embankments, and only succeeded by great exertions in arresting destruction. Personally, I should fear the rocks rolling from above more, as they have often done at Weggis—but of this the natives seem to take no account. We were told that there is one point on the road between this and Weggis—to which larger village the Vitznau children go to school, three miles distant—where stones fall so constantly that the little ones are always on the look‐out, and make a run when they see them approaching. Yet this pretty spot has many attractions, especially for invalids. We met a gentleman lately who had passed a winter here, and was loud in its praises. Nothing can exceed the morality and sobriety of the people; the winter climate, too, is perfect—he and the parish priest had made observations together during one season, which proved that the temperature is as mild as that of Montreux and of other sheltered spots on this side of the Alps. Fruit grows here abundantly, even figs and melons, as in Italy, and flowers thrive equally well. One of the prettiest features in the place was the numberless girls in front of the station with small baskets of each—the grapes having just arrived from Italy over the St. Gotthard, and come hither by the steamers; but the “fresh figs” and “beautiful peaches” which they offer in excellent English are genuine Vitznau productions.
The day advanced, yet there seemed no cessation of the downpour, and all were in despair at being thus caught at such a spot, without the resources even of a large hotel. At last “a happy thought” suggested the idea of our abandoning the Rigi altogether! “Let us move on to Gersau,” said one—“just round the corner!” broke in another weather‐bound traveller, who gave a glowing report of its charms and comforts. Even the young people, who in the morning were so anxious for the railroad excitement, were worn out by waiting and the little likelihood of a change. “No sooner said than done” was therefore the result of our conversation, and the telegraph had ordered our rooms, and our luggage was on board the steamer, before we almost reflected on the consequences. But what matter if we never saw the Rigi! It was more than likely those travellers would never reach the top in that dreadful railway, and our vexed spirits refused to recognize the attractions of anything on such an afternoon but the prospective charms of comfortable salons and piles of the latest newspapers, which we prophetically beheld awaiting us at Gersau. In twenty minutes we had crossed to Buochs, tried in vain to discover the landscape thence—so lovely from this point in fair weather—through the heavy mist of rain and cloud hanging over the lake, and found ourselves lodged in “the palatial hotel” (as the prospectus calls it) at Gersau, close alongside the water’s edge.
No sooner were we fairly landed than the curtain of cloud began to rise, and we clearly beheld the opposite shore. Half an hour afterwards, we were discussing the possible return of fine weather, when a sudden commotion took place around us. Waiters rushed right and left closing windows, housemaids even shutting shutters, without any apparent reason, like demented beings, not giving themselves time to answer our questions. At last, they declared that a storm of wind was approaching, although we could perceive no symptoms of it, and truly, as they foretold, there soon came rushing by one of those sudden squalls against which kindly guide‐ books have so many words of warning. Small waves rose rapidly, and in less than half an hour, without one drop of rain, the whole surface of the lake was in commotion. Then came a great excitement!—half the village and all the travellers crowded to the shore, and every eye fixed on the centre of the lake told of a tiny boat in extreme danger. Had the clouds still continued, it could scarcely have been seen, but now a large, well‐manned craft pulled out to the rescue. It took a long time to reach the sinking boat, for the lake is wider here than it seems, but at last there was a cry of joy on shore when three men were seen to jump from one to the other, and so certain did we then feel of their safety that only a few remained to greet their arrival. The wind, too, subsided, and later that evening the moon struggled—though feebly—to reassert her empire.
The Gersau Hotel is certainly excellent, owing to the skilful direction of Herr Müller, one of the potentates of the place, as are the majority of hotel‐keepers in all these Forest Cantons. He also built the one at the Rigi‐Scheideck, on the peak above Gersau, equally celebrated for its comfort; but lately a company, which calls itself the Regina Montium (one of the supposed meanings of the word Rigi), has purchased it together with others on the mountain. We found the Gersau establishment full, many having come down from the higher “pensions,” and amongst the number two or three acquaintances who laughed at our fear of the railway and general lack of spirit. But nothing is so discouraging to tourists as rain, especially when nearer to the end than to the beginning of their rambles. We were all in bad humor at the trick the clouds had played us, and planless and annoyed we all retired early to bed that night.
But “la nuit porte conseil,” and there is no resisting a sunshiny morning! The Angelus‐bell once more awoke us, but this time to sun and brightness. Again the church was close by, its bell ringing for half‐past seven o’clock Mass. Anna and I quickly answered its bidding. It is a good‐sized parish church, of the solid, unarchitectural style of building usual in these parts, but making a pretty effect with its lofty tower seen rising against the high green hill behind it. To‐day, the Mass was for the dead, and the benches were all full, as at Lucerne; respectably dressed men on one side, while the women knelt on the other. What most struck us, however, were the children; the boys in front of the men, and about twenty girls in the two front benches opposite. These were in charge of a devout‐ looking young school‐mistress, whose sweet, placid countenance seemed to tell of pleasant hours for her youthful scholars. Later, we learned that the children, though obliged to attend school by law, are not compelled to attend Mass, but that, as a rule, they do so both by their own and their parents’ desire. Nothing could be tidier than the little maidens’ appearance; their frocks clean, and their hair neatly plaited round their heads, all according to the same pattern, probably as their mothers had done before them; and so attentive and reverential were they, that although we strangers knelt right behind them, not one ever turned to look at us. Each had her prayer‐book, which she read attentively, and, besides, her rosary wound round her hand when not in use, all in the same fashion and of the same pattern. This small incident carried our thoughts back swiftly to another land, recalling a sermon we had heard in London by the Archbishop of Westminster, when, after speaking of the olden days of the true faith in England, and the culpability of its first disturbers, he made allowance for the “invincible ignorance” of the mass of its people nowadays; “for,” exclaimed his grace, “who has there been since then to teach the little maidens their rosary, and to bring them to our Lord and his blessed Mother?” and we thanked God, as we beheld the Gersau children making their genuflections with serious little countenances, that there is still one nook at least left in this world where the demon of heresy and unbelief has not penetrated, and where piety and reverence are, from earliest childhood, taught to go hand‐in‐hand with modern life. At the offertory of the Mass another peculiarity occurred. Suddenly, an elderly woman rose, and, going forward, was followed by all the other women in the church, who, in single file, advanced towards the altar, walked round it by a passage at the back, laid an offering on the altar itself, and then quietly returned to their places. The oldest man, on the other side, now rose, and followed by all the men, in like manner proceeded through the same ceremony, only varied by their passing round the altar from the contrary side, and depositing, as did some of the women too, an offering besides on a small table in front of the choir. It was weeks before I could learn the origin of this custom, but then, opening by chance an old history of Switzerland, I found this rule quoted from an ancient document, which purported to regulate the relations between pastor and people some centuries ago. There it was stated that the offering for the priest should be laid on the altar itself, and that for the sacristan on a small table outside—so steadily and closely do these conservative‐republicans still keep, even in form, to the pattern of their ancestors.
The Mass being only one of commemoration and not of burial, the congregation soon dispersed to their different avocations. In this way tourists are so often deceived, when, coming in at a late hour, they find foreign churches empty.
I remember a Protestant lady who had passed three winters in Rome once asking me seriously if Catholics ever went to holy communion. I thought her mind must be wandering, but discovered on enquiry that she had never been inside a church, even in Rome, before eleven o’clock or later; therefore, though many were hearing Mass, she had noticed none at holy communion. It had never occurred to her that, contrary to her Protestant custom, Masses were begun, and devout Catholics received holy communion in those same churches, long before she probably was awake each morning. So in the present instance, the congregation, consisting of working‐men and women, might have been through half their daily occupations before any traveller at Gersau thought of looking in at the church, “wondering at its desolation!”
The sun was streaming in brightly through an open side‐door, inviting us to depart by that exit. What a beautiful sight met us on the threshold! The lake, placid and sunny, framed in by surrounding green slopes and peaks, lay close in front, separated only by the public road to Brunnen from a beautiful little cemetery belonging to the church. Here were a crowd of pretty monuments, the majority I in stone, but some in white marble, in excellent taste, bordered with flowers, or delicately twined round with creeping roses and ivy. The children’s corner lay to the right, and there an old woman was sprinkling holy water and arranging flowers on some of the poorer graves, which lay between them and the handsome tombs in the pathway from the church‐door to the road—a path that quite formed a “via sacra” of Gersau notabilities. Judging from these, the population would seem to consist of Camenzinds and Küttels. An occasional Müller figured on a tombstone, but otherwise it might safely be assumed that what was not Camenzind was Küttel—if not Küttel, Camenzind. The names, even if only seen once, would have attracted notice—Camenzind, especially, had a non‐local sound, and we willingly jumped at the conclusion that it may be one of those which, according to Herr H——’s theory, still exist in these cantons, and are equally to be found in Swedish and Northern valleys to this day. That they are the living autocrats of Gersau admits of little doubt, for every house above the common run is certain on enquiry to prove the property of this family. The manufactory, too, at the end of the village belongs to them. A beautiful resting‐place they certainly have between their church and the lake, which every Camenzind and Küttel must have been looking upon from their tenderest years, for many centuries past.
When our party met at breakfast, it was amusing to see what a complete change the sun and general brightness had effected. All were equally bent on retracing our steps at once, the railroad being the only drawback in the foreground. The juniors would not consent to give that up on any account, but the elders still hesitated, daunted by yesterday’s recollections. Opportunely, a casual acquaintance proposed a solution that conquered all difficulties. He suggested that the younger folk should take the railway, and the timid, going on to the next steamboat station—Weggis—get horses there, and thence ascend by road in the old‐ fashioned style. What we (for I was among the latter class) should lose in “sensation” he asserted that we should gain in interest and picturesqueness, and his plan, suiting all parties, was at once adopted.
Having an hour to spare before the steamer was due, we strolled through the village. No wonder that Gersau has an individuality of its own, for it is a rare specimen descended almost to our own day of those village communes Herr H—— had spoken to us of, which, taking advantage of the debts and embarrassments of their feudal lords, had purchased exemption from them early in the middle ages. Indeed, none of these small communities retained their independence down to late times with the exception of Gersau. “It was forgotten, hidden away in its beautiful retreat,” say some; “steady, self‐respecting, and not quarrelsome,” say others, with more likelihood of truth. At all events, the fact is undeniable that it owned obedience to none but its own local authorities. Tradition says, and the date is proudly recorded on the wall of the town‐ hall—a true peasant town‐hall, only one degree superior to the surrounding houses—that the peasants of Gersau, having put aside their savings for this purpose during ten years, bought their freedom from the Counts von Moos, for the sum of 690 “Pfund pfenninge,” in 1390. Years before, in 1359, they had made a treaty with the four Forest Cantons, and were acknowledged by them as confederates, which singular position this small community retained until the French invasion of 1798, since which time they have been incorporated with the Canton of Schwyz. The place is, literally, nothing more than a large village, said to contain only 2,276 inhabitants, but, seen from the lake with the animation given to it by the tourist life, and the manufactories of the Camenzinds along the shore, it makes the effect of a much larger population and of a very thriving town. Penetrating, however, as we did to the original background of houses, we found them of quite another character. Swiss peasant dwellings, in general, are more comfortable than those of almost any country, and so capacious as to be thoroughly patriarchal, often sheltering numberless children and grandchildren together under the one roof. These of Gersau look like true family strongholds; as if they contained in themselves the histories of many generations, and everything seemed so stationary, so unmoved and immovable, that we could not help thinking of Hawthorne’s description of an English country village, where he fancied he saw the grandfathers and grandmothers marrying over and over again in their descendants, so completely had the place and people a centenarian air about them. Pretty it was, too, to see these picturesque homes extending one above the other up the defile behind, amidst their orchards and fresh green pasture‐grounds, headed by the Rigi‐Scheideck Hotel, which crowns the summit and looks quite near, though it is not so in reality. The intercourse between the two now gives Gersau much stirring importance, but, as in the case of Weggis, the advance of “civilization” is likely to prove of permanent injury to it. Next year a railroad, branching off from Kaltbad, is to be finished along the brow to the Scheideck, when the stream of tourists will of course flow in that direction. And perhaps nowhere could there be more excuse for abandoning “picturesque old ways.” Although it seemed a short ascent, and we saw a merry party starting from the Pension Müller on horseback, intending to dine and sleep at the top, we found on enquiry that it would take them at least two and a half hours to reach the Scheideck, and between three and four hours for the unfortunate carriers who followed soon after laden with the ladies’ huge trunks. Nothing could be more painful than to see these men, some quite old, staggering under the weight, and to know what a stiff climb awaited them higher up. At present there is no road up the hill nor any other means of transport, and the whole supplies for that large establishment at the top have to be taken up by these carriers. It was fortunate for the ladies’ happiness that they had started before their luggage, for the sight would have completely spoiled the welcome one’s trunks always receive on their arrival when you are tempted to part with them even for a short time—tender‐hearted, as they certainly looked, the finery would doubtless have been left to repose quietly beside the lake below.
The thunder‐storm of which we had heard so much at Vitznau committed even greater mischief at Gersau this summer. Two small streams here unite, and an unusual mass of water rolling down from the hillside that night, increased them to a violent torrent, which broke down the strong embankment, carrying all before it—sweeping two houses into the lake and flooding the manufactory to the first floor. A poor woman and two children were also drowned; in fine, the damage done was very great. There had not been time for repairs when we visited it, and the broken walls and scattered stones told their own tale. “Appeals,” too, were hung up on all sides, but also many notices of “thanks” from the commune to every one who had helped on the occasion, worded in the same touching style we had noticed in the Lucerne papers—giving a most agreeable impression of the natural simplicity and dignity of this small community. As we steamed away back again round the Rigi‐Nase, the sun was resting on the pretty spot, inhabited by the descendants of the original hard‐working peasants, and it seemed as if the spirits of former Camenzinds, Küttels, and Müllers must look down approvingly on their posterity, who are not yet ashamed to profess their faith, nor unwilling to have their children still taught how to unite liberty with religion, and thus preserve the two treasures intact.
Certainly there is no magician like Apollo—and none who so well knows how to make himself valued by occasional fits of absence. Under his influence, Vitznau was to‐day another place, an ideal picture of the stir and movement of modern life, combined with a tranquil beauty which we could not have imagined, veiled in cloud and mist as it had been on the day before. It already looked like an old friend, though only the acquaintance of one day. There were the curious engines, showing themselves ready to brave the dangers of the ascent; the pretty station with its fruit and flower girls and photograph stall; the old church, and the two hotels, looking bright and clean—all standing out in relief against the precipitous cliff behind, and surrounded by luxuriant chestnut and walnut trees, and patches of green, freshened up by the recent rain. Even the Nase‐promontory was clothed with timber down to the shore, and the water reflecting the trees was only of another lighter shade, that beautiful transparent green which is now known as “Eau de Nil.” One felt too that the picture could never be much spoiled, there being no space for ugly buildings, or the factory life which, although it tells of employment with its own peculiar charms, rather mars the picturesque beauty of the landscape at Gersau. Moreover, the brightness was enhanced by the national flag of Switzerland floating over the hotel, looking more red and striking then ever against the green background. Yes! striking is the true word for it, not showy—nor flaunting its importance like the tricolor and many another particolored standard of our own days, but solemn and yet attractive, one quite impossible not to notice wherever or however seen. It had always suggested some history to my mind, with its white cross on the red ground, which could not have been adopted without a purpose, but since yesterday it had acquired a new and deep interest, for one of the pamphlets Herr H—— had bestowed on me in Lucerne treated of nothing but this same flag. It was a sermon preached before the “Pius‐Verein” or “Pius Union” of Switzerland, at the general meeting, which took place at Einsiedlen in the summer of 1872, entitled the “Wappenschild” or “coat‐of‐ arms” of the Swiss “Pius Union.” During the rain of yesterday I had read it through, and most interesting it was to note the very characteristics he had foretold that we should observe pervading all sermons in these parts: the constant allusions to their beautiful nature and uninterrupted reference to their past history.
It commenced by recording how the “Pius‐Verein” had been founded in 1854 by some devout Catholics who could not stand by quietly noticing the evil tendencies of the age without protesting, and who had, in consequence, “assembled on the shore of the tranquil lake of the Forest Cantons, where 500 years previously their forefathers had met together in order to shake off the hated yoke of the Austrian governors and imperial Vogts.” It then proceeded in most eloquent language to give the reasons why, amongst a variety of flags, none could be found which corresponded so completely to the sentiments of the associates as the national standard of Switzerland—the white cross on the red ground.
“The white cross had originally been chosen,” said the preacher, “as being the emblem of purity and innocence,” and the honesty, uprightness, and union of their ancestors in that distant age were forcibly dwelt upon for the imitation of their descendants, whilst he drew a lamentable picture of the divisions and ineffective schemes of the present day. The second part explained that these ancestors had placed this white cross on a red field—first, because red, being the color of blood, was the symbol of bravery, and was justly claimed by those same ancestors, who had made Swiss courage a proverb, and who had so often shed their hearts’ blood in defence of liberty and of their faith; for through Christian liberty alone could civil liberty be attained. New “Vogts” or “governors,” continued the preacher, “threaten our land nowadays, but let us manfully resist, and conquer them. The Lardenberg(127) of avarice which formerly seized the oxen of a poor man, and put his eyes out, to‐day tries to blind the poor by a godless press and scandalous literature, robbing them of their most precious possessions—of their churches, convents, priests, and schools. Let us fight against this vice in ourselves, in our families and our communes. Sundays and holidays displease them, and instead of church‐ services and hymns they wish to hear of nothing but labor on these days. Let us then be more strict than ever in the sanctification of the Sunday, and give our enemies the example of disinterested love and charity! The ‘Wolfenschiess’ of sensuality and self‐indulgence is more likely to bring our beloved land under the slavery of Satan now than 500 years ago—a worthy undertaking, therefore, for the ‘Pius‐Verein’ would be the establishment of temperance societies.... And let us courageously fight the third ‘Landvogt’—the Gessler of luxury, wealth, and despotism.... Commerce and industry are the sources of public prosperity, but let not the golden calf of gain become the god of our XIXth century. Let not our factories become modern Zwinglius, nor their proprietors force others to bend the knee to the hat of self‐interest, nor to offer up the sacrifice of their freedom and liberty of speech. The red field with its white cross will remind us in all this of our forefathers’ example.
“Red, too, is the color of fire, and symbolizes love of country. It reminds us of the fifty men of Schwyz, who decided the fate of that first fight for freedom, the great battle of Morgarten—of the love of fatherland shown by an Arnold von Winkelried, an Adrian von Bubenberg, a Nicholas von der Flue, and the many thousand others who left wife, children, trades, and home, to seek the death of heroes for love of country. Compare their conduct with the boastful toasts of the present day, and see the difference between deeds and words. They reproach us only because we do not boast with these boasters, and that we seek to give our ‘Union’ a religious character.... But history will judge us differently! Let us on our side show love and charity to all; to those also who differ from us in belief; love our confederates as fellow‐Christians; maintain every bond of union—and in this the red ground of the white cross may be the sign of fraternal love and harmony.”
Lastly, the preacher showed how “red typifies the aurora or the dawn of day,” alluding to the “battle near Murten, where, after a short prayer recited by the combatants, the sun broke through the heavy bank of clouds, lighting up the horizon in brilliant colors, and their leader, Hans von Hallwyl, exclaimed, Up, confederates, and forward, for God lights us to victory!—a prophecy which proved perfectly true. A firm trust and reliance on the Lord gave soul, courage, and strength to our ancestors, and never were they deceived. God has preserved our fatherland in a marvellous manner, and why should we despair? Great should be our hopes of a better future.... For every reason, then, ought we to choose the white cross on the red field as the flag of our Pius‐Verein. Let us show to our Lord and to the world that we seek nothing for ourselves, but, treading in the footsteps of our forefathers, only strive for the welfare of our fatherland.... God will be with us! and we shall have the intercession of the Blessed Virgin Mary, and of the patrons of our Union, S. Charles Borromeo and Nicholas von der Flue.... Let us hold firm to our glorious faith, and then, when the sign of the Son of God—our Holy cross, our ‘coat‐of‐arms’—shall appear amidst the clouds, may it lead us in triumph on that dreadful day into the eternal fatherland of heaven!”
Fresh from the impression of these eloquent words, it was impossible not to look on this beautiful flag to‐day with increasing admiration, nay affection. But my reveries were cut short by the young C——s, whose approaching railway ascent caused them intense excitement. George C——, the son, especially, became full of animation when he undertook to procure the tickets for his sisters at the office. Stationing himself close to the gangway, he bade them follow at their leisure, as he would jump on shore and put his experience of yesterday’s many long hours to profit. Accordingly, the instant the steamer came alongside the quay, he got ahead of all the other passengers, and giving one bound to the office, proudly flourished his tickets for the first carriage to us who remained on board, long before the untaught crowd thought of moving. A few who knew better, like himself, made a rush too, and one old man tripped and fell, whilst another leaped over him, without allowing himself time to help his companion—so selfish does excitement and locomotion make all ages and ranks! We likewise moved on, and so rapidly, that there was barely time to see the start of the first train containing our young friends, who were waving handkerchiefs to us, as their carriage seemed to creep above the church‐tower up the mountain, or to note the fruitful garden‐land stretching along the shore with the precipitous wall of rock above, extending the whole length of this side of the Rigi, when in a few minutes we reached our landing‐place at Weggis, and found ourselves sitting in the garden of the “Golden Lion.”
Odd Stories. VII. The Philosophers Of The Dragon’s Bower.
In the reign of King, and in the Dragon’s Bower of the beautiful tea‐ garden of the statesman Kung, had assembled the philosophers Tung, Bang, Sing, Lung, Wing, Hang, with the rich mandarins Bo and Sho. Sipping that exquisite beverage which, as yielded by a choice herb grown only in the flower‐sprinkled garden of Kung, has imparted to the Hi‐Tea philosophy the peculiar intellectual flavor which distinguishes it from the Lo‐Tea doctrine, they discussed the problems of existence. Only a vague, brief record has been preserved of that eventful meeting, so well called by Yung Sing, the poet, “the shock of minds,” and which, it was long maintained by the Hi‐Tea school, had solved the mysteries of preordained genesis and circumstantial fixture. The dialogue turned upon that profound saying of the old man of Chow, the wise Lautze—“The Tau which can be tau‐ed is not the eternal Tau.” Vainly having sought in his own poor wit the meaning of this sublime sentence, the mandarin Sho begged the six sages, in the grace of their princely hearts, and with the light of their shining minds, to make it clear to his benighted intelligence.
Tung: Tau is the unbounded entity.
Bang: Thunder without sound.
Sing: Unsung music of all things.
Lung: Breath of life without life.
Hang: Justice of accidents.
Wing: Eternal entity of non‐entity.
“In short,” added Tung, “the supreme principle Tau is the uncircumscribed limit of universes; the order of disorder; the contradiction which reconciles; the peace into which all storms subside; the mother and father of action; the source of the unworshipped unworshipping worship, and of power beyond dominion.”
The mandarin Sho acknowledged this to be a grand definition of Tau; but, being a collector of the imperial revenues, prayed to be informed of the use and value of Tau in the practical administration of the affairs of men; for to save his worthless life he could not see (begging the favor of the assembled wisdom) how Tau was of any use whatever. “It’s of no use,” said Wing; “and there’s the beauty of it.”
“Then what is the use of mentioning it?” tartly added Hang, a devoted admirer of the Tau theory. At this arose an admirable wrangle over the question of use and beauty, in that happy style of wit which only the great Hi‐Tea school of wisdom could boast. Its upshot was that matter resolved itself into the final irresponsibility of all things.
“But woe to that mortal,” said Tung, “who carries not about him the talisman of wisdom which imparts to everything its infinite magic, and who, groaning in the prison‐house of the senses, sees not the eternal day‐ beam in all things. With eyes he sees not; with life he lives not. He hath the six becloudings of Kungfootse.”
“The wise man,” said Bang, “fears no fate. Torrents, tempests, earthquakes, are but blustering fictions; nothing is true but his courage. Fixed in his will, his condition is victory; and if he falls, he finds in the elements his kindred, and in nature his home.”
Here the countenance of the philosopher Tung was observed to change from yellow to pale green, with signs of great agony caused by unknown interior workings; for, it was afterward told, his morning repast had been poisoned by an ignorant cook and a bad doctor. Lost in their thoughts, the sages heeded not his groans.
“Always should the sage rejoice,” said Sing. “His spirit should take part in the feast of events, the sublime comedy of life. Does fortune desert him? Let him be glad that it seeks another. Is his friend dead? Let him be glad that he is gone to joy. In every event we can as easily discover reason for cheer as for despair.”
Ere Sing had finished speaking, an ornamented tile from the roof of the Dragon’s Bower, loosened by one of those disturbances of the earth not unknown to the learned men of the East, fell upon the bare head of the philosopher Bang, who, after experience of a severe fright, was borne away helpless from the scene. Wing smiled, Sing laughed, and a perceptible scorn was on the lips of Hang.
Thus said Lung, he who had been called the gaunt thinker: “What think you? Is there anything better than life, friends? Here we live, responsible neither to be nor to do nor to die; life and fate stand pledged for us. Do we fall out of the charmed circle? We are caught up into another. Do we die? Then we live again; or, if we do not,” continued Lung, gasping, “so much the better. What so excellent as life; what so merciful as death?” Here a painful fit of coughing compelled the philosopher to pause.
But what now most drew the attention of the company was the entrance of the statesman Kung, who, in a voice of dignified emotion, informed the wise Sing that his brother had been suddenly seized and decapitated on a charge of conspiracy, and all his immense fortune confiscated to the state, save a portion awarded to his betrayer. Pangs and groans shook the bosom of the sage, as he left the tea‐table; for his brother’s bounty had been the mainstay of his life.
“O friends!” cried Kung, “the law is inexorable; it kills its child and devours its mother, and swallows the substance of its benefactors; but the state reigns and the king lives, and the land is happy. Praised be the king!”
“Praised be justice!” echoed Hang, who had counselled the astute Kung in the preparation of his criminal code. “Justice reigns in King, and acts through Kung. What is nature but justice, and what are her thousand‐fold accidents but executioners? Every man gravitates to his fate, and every fate is a judgment. The king makes death: he can do no wrong; let no man mourn.” Long after the piercing mind of Hang had perished under the terrors of that great instrument which his genius invented for the reform of mankind; long after the astute Kung had yielded up his life to the demands of state (for he had put to death by mistake the favorite dog of his imperial master), these sentences, which seem to tear to pieces the leading tenet of the Lo‐Tea doctrines as the dragon tears the bull, were remembered in the realm of King.
Spake at last that strange sage whose eyes are as starlight to the darkness of common minds, and whose vision seeks the abode of Tau. “Since we but dream we live,” said Wing, “let us live to dream well. In reason are the pillars of our temple; in imagination is its worship. Happy are ye who, out of the toils of vain science and hard action, take rest in the bower of fancy, the pavilion of dreams, the garden of poetry, or roam the royal hunting‐grounds of imagination to capture logic in the chase of pleasure, and find wisdom by seeking delight. Thrice fortunate ye,” continued the star‐eyed Wing, taking another whiff from his pipe of opium, “who, when the caprices of power have driven you from doctrine, can retreat upon your dreams. Life is a fiction; let us dream that it is the truth.” Such was the curious doctrine of that wonderful man, whose visions of demons and the powers of the air have so often filled the imperial stage, and who died in the frenzy of his powerful mind.
The refined mandarin Bo—he who, for his reticence, had been entrusted with so many affairs of state—heard all these words of the learned, and spoke not. “All men and things,” he said to himself, “serve him who listens, and resist him who talks. Shrewd is he who gains without giving.” Immersed in these thoughts, the silent mandarin could only nod his head to a remark of the mandarin Sho, that life was a business of profit and loss, and the best speculations were always practical. What man can foretell his fate? The frank and candid Sho, whose manners concealed his purpose, lost his head for speculating with the king’s money. The secret Bo, through his love of silence, forgot to send his kinsman Bang a physician who would have saved his life, and so was disinherited, and died a beggar.
The thinkers of Lo‐Tea, having taken the measure of these and other events subsequent to the great dialogue of the Dragon’s Bower, could not avoid the boast that their humble philosophy was better than a proud one; whereupon the infuriated statesman Kung sent a number of them into exile.
When the old philosopher of Chow heard of these sayings and doings, he murmured: “Half‐truths are contradicted, whole truths are verified. There is no courage without right fear; no good silence without true speech; no aspiration without reverence; no dignity without humility; no good without affection; and philosophy has no room for a cold heart and a vain mind. But life is not contradicted, though lives are slain. Tau reigns.”
O sages! how by thinking shall ye add a foot to your stature? And how shall it avail ye when a brick, as it were, dropped down by a tornado centre‐wise, so to speak, on a shaven head, shall fracture your systems of philosophy? What withstands the accidents of fate save the divine Truth, which is no accident?
LIFE AND DOCTRINE OF S. CATHERINE OF GENOA. Translated from the Italian. New York: The Catholic Publication Society. 1874. 1 vol. 12mo, pp. 418.
The Catherines are a wonderful group among the female saints. The one of Genoa was a married lady, and this circumstance will undoubtedly make her Life doubly interesting to those who are in the same condition, and sometimes are tempted to envy those who live in the cloister. The remarkable Life of this saint, accompanied by her Spiritual Dialogues, now first published in English, will have an additional interest, in the eyes of all its readers, on account of the introduction by F. Hecker, which is dated Annecy, Oct. 7, 1873. The translation was made several years ago, and left, in the state of a rough draught, by a lady well known for her high culture and virtues—the late Mrs. Ripley. It has been lately revised with care, and made as accurate as possible.
The work itself has long been very famous, and ranks next to the writings of S. Teresa among the spiritual treatises of female authors. Its spirituality is of a very high order, suited for those who, either from necessity or by their own free choice, are trying to climb the rugged heights of Mount Carmel.
THE CHRISTIAN CEMETERY IN THE XIXTH CENTURY; or, The Last War‐cry of the Communists. By Mgr. Gaume. Translated by the Rev. R. Brennan, A.M., with a preface by the Very Rev. T. S. Preston, V.G. New York: Benziger Bros. 1874.
Mgr. Gaume attacks, with his usual trenchant vigor and sarcasm, in this volume, the horrible travesty of funeral obsequies which atheists are wont to perpetrate at the burial of what they regard as mere clods of earth, the carcases of dead animals. These enemies of the human race are not content with the enjoyment of the civil right to live and die like beasts themselves, but they must needs attempt to desecrate the cemeteries of Christians, and to interfere with their right to live and die, and be buried like rational and immortal beings who expect a resurrection from the dead. It is highly important that the eyes of all men who have any glimmering of reason and religious belief left should be opened to the loathsome wickedness and brutality of the sect of atheists and communists who are everywhere conspiring for the destruction of society and the human race. This book will serve as an eye‐opener to all who read it attentively. We trust it will also act as an antidote to the heathenish and revolting notions respecting the burning of the bodies of the dead which have of late been so offensively presented in many newspapers.
The book has been well translated and neatly printed. We cannot, however, admire the grave‐yard view on the cover, which reminds us of the car‐doors on the Camden and Amboy Railway, with a grave‐stone and a weeping‐willow.
LIFE OF S. THOMAS OF VILLANOVA; with an Introduction by F. Middleton, O.S.A. Philadelphia: P. F. Cunningham & Son. 1874.
This is a reprint of one of the Oratorian Series, and gives a sufficiently good biography of the great Archbishop of Valentia, which is better translated than most of its companion volumes. The introduction is quite a learned and eloquently‐written paper, chiefly valuable on account of its information respecting learned and able members of the Augustinian Order who were champions of the faith against the modern heresies.
ON SOME POPULAR ERRORS CONCERNING POLITICS AND RELIGION. By the Right Hon. Lord Robert Montagu, M.P. London: Burns & Oates. 1874. (For sale by The Catholic Publication Society.)
The popular errors attacked and refuted in this collection of essays are such as relate to political ethics, the mutual bearings of religion and law, church and state, civil marriage, education—in a word, they are the errors of the party of revolution, the so‐called principles of 1789. Lord Robert Montagu has made a work by F. Franco, S.J., the basis of his own, which is neither, strictly speaking, original, nor yet a translation or compendium of F. Franco’s work. The Protestant and secular papers are just now peculiarly inquisitive about the doctrines of sound and instructed Catholics on these mixed questions. It is not very easy to satisfy them by mere newspaper and magazine articles written in haste and under the pressure of editorial labors. Here is a book where they may find the information they are in quest of, and where Catholics also may gain much instruction. We have no reason to wish to withhold the full, clear, and unreserved statement of our Catholic doctrines on any subject from our non‐Catholic fellow‐citizens. The great difficulty lies in the universal confusion of ideas on these subjects, and the general want of willingness to inquire and discuss thoroughly and fairly. The European Catholic press is fairly teeming with books and articles of the most consummate ability on these burning questions of the day, and we welcome every effort made by those who write in English to place these products of sound learning and thought before our own reading public. This book is an effort of that kind, and we hope it will be read by a great number of both Catholics and non‐Catholics who wish to inform themselves about the true issues between the church on one side, Cæsarism and revolution on the other.
This is the first volume of “S. Joseph’s Theological Library” Series, edited by the Fathers of the Society of Jesus, and is to be followed by several others.
THE SACRED ANTHOLOGY. A Book of Ethnical Scriptures Collected and Edited by Moncure Daniel Conway. New York: Henry Holt & Co. 1874.
As a specimen of the typographical art, this book is superb. The literary taste and skill exhibited in its preparation are also of a high order. Its contents are, moreover, specimens of the productions of genius and wisdom gathered from all time and all cultivated nations, including many passages from the inspired writings. So far, the book is one which may be valuable to one who knows how to use it, and is competent to discriminate between the truth and the error which it contains. Nevertheless, the intention of the author and the real scope of the volume are radically anti‐Christian and anti‐theistic. The very idea of presenting a conglomeration of the Divine Scriptures and of the sacred writings, legends, and philosophical works of heathens, is to place all religions on a common level. In the index the author, with the pert assumption of a neological sciolist, takes care to assert as a fact the want of genuineness and authenticity of a great part of the books of the Bible. As a mere opinion, this is in defiance of sound criticism, and has been often exploded. To put forward such an opinion, in defiance of the learning of the whole Christian world, as something certain and unquestionable, is simple impudence, and is as unscientific as it is irreligious. In the extracts on theism the author has adroitly given the whole a pantheistic issue.
The ignorant, the unwary, and those who wish to escape from the sense of responsibility to God may be deceived by this kind of art. But really, and in the view of a true and comprehensive science, all that can be gathered from false religions and imperfect philosophies, both in those things which resemble, and those which are partly or wholly dissimilar to, the divine philosophy of revelation and Christian theology, confirms and proves the divine truth of the Old and New Testaments and the concurrent religious tradition of the church of God from the creation of man. Proudhon was right when he said that a man who is logical must be an atheist or an ultramontane. Whoever stands by what is positive, and is ready to follow it to its consequences, belongs logically to the Catholic side. Whoever takes the negative belongs with atheists and materialists. One sad and startling proof that the great mass of those who reject the Catholic Church, and yet are not ready to renounce the name of Christian, are sliding downward, is the multiplication of books like this one, and much worse than this, published by our principal firms, and everywhere advertised along with works professedly Christian and pious. We suppose that most of these gentlemen profess to be Christians. Where is their conscience, then, when, for the sake of money, they disseminate the works of Renan, Strauss, Büchner, and other infidels and atheists, which are sapping the foundations of religion and morality, and poisoning the public mind? Where is the public conscience which tolerates this? And why do not the Protestant periodicals, newspapers, synods and conventions, pulpits and lecturing rostrums, resound with a cry of alarm, warning and denunciation? Have they lost all interest and all courage in the matter, or are they going over to the enemy?
DIALOGUES OF ST. GREGORY. London: Burns & Oates. 1874. (For sale by The Catholic Publication Society.)
Gregory the Great is illustrious among the popes, and even among the doctors of the church, for his genius. There is an exquisite flavor in his writings which is peculiar to them. Edited and published with the utmost care and the most perfect literary taste, like all the books of this series, this volume adds one more gem to the treasury of English Catholic literature which is now so rapidly filling up. The publication of entire works of the fathers presents the evidences of the Catholic religion in the most convincing form, and is therefore a way of propagating the faith in some respects superior to the ordinary method of controversy. It is also most valuable for Catholics as a means of increasing and deepening their knowledge of our holy faith. It is to be hoped that a taste for books of this description will become more general among reading Catholics, and that all who have the means of doing so will in every way promote their general circulation.
TIGRANES: A TALE OF THE DAYS OF JULIAN THE APOSTATE. Translated from the Italian of F. John Joseph Franco, S.J. Philadelphia: P. F. Cunningham & Son. 1874.
This historical romance, which is not literally translated, but condensed and abridged—judiciously, we think, for it is plenty long enough as it is—is much superior to the most of similar works of fiction founded on early Christian history. It is full of information which only a learned man could give with accuracy, and the events it describes are of thrilling interest. The Messenger of the Sacred Heart, from whose pages the translation is reprinted, we have already had occasion to say, is as distinguished for its literary excellence as it is for its edifying piety. We hope to see much more frequent and more important contributions to sacred literature in future from the learned and accomplished group of professors at the Woodstock College.
THE CATHOLIC CHURCH IN ITS RELATIONS TO HUMAN PROGRESS. A Lecture by the Rev. J. J. Moriarty, A.M., Chatham Village, N. Y. Albany: Van Benthuysen.
This pamphlet, which has as neat an appearance as if it had been printed in London or Boston, is a good specimen of a well‐written popular lecture, of just the sort to please and instruct an ordinary audience. Our familiar friend, the New Zealander, who is an indefatigable traveller, and whom we last saw in a French costume in the columns of a Paris newspaper, turns up again in the lecture. Lord Macaulay would have been astonished, when he drew the picture of this venerable personage sitting on a broken arch of London bridge, if he could have foreseen how many would make use of it to adorn their discourse. We can say nothing, however, to F. Moriarty, which does not recoil upon ourselves; for have we not done the same thing?
CATHOLICS AND ROMAN CATHOLICS. By an Old Catholic (Bishop Coxe). Buffalo: Martin Taylor.
This reply to Dr. Ryan’s pamphlet seems to have elated the spirits of our Episcopalian friends no little. It is receiving due attention at present in the columns of the Catholic paper at Buffalo, and no doubt the articles published in that paper will appear in a pamphlet form when they are completed. Etiquette will not allow us to interfere in this controversy until the principals have done with it. If anything is left for us to say after that, we may pay our respects to Dr. Coxe in this magazine.
THE BALTIMORE GUN CLUB. From the French of Jules Verne. Freely translated by Edward Roth. Philadelphia: King & Baird, Publishers, 607 Sansom St.
It is a daring attempt to improve on Jules Verne, but Mr. Roth has, on the whole, been successful in making his celebrated story of the great Columbiad and the shot fired from Florida to the moon even more American and more interesting to Americans than before. De la Terre à la Lune has been translated previously, but Mr. Roth has introduced some little points of his own, and local traits which it would have been almost impossible for a foreigner to seize.
THEOLOGIA MORALIS NOVISSIMI ECCLESIÆ DOCTORIS S. ALPHONSI, IN COMPENDIUM REDACTA, ET USUI VENERABILIS CLERI AMERICANI ACCOMMODATA. Auctore A. Konings, C.SS.R. Pars Prima. Bostoniæ: Typis Patricii Donahoe. 1874.
This is the first instalment of what promises to be a valuable work, and one which has been much needed. The treatises on moral theology hitherto in use in this country are, with the exception of Archbishop Kenrick’s, which is not in a very convenient form for a text‐book, of European origin, and are unsatisfactory in America both by excess and defect. In this first part of F. Koning’s work, containing the treatises, “De Actibus Humanis, de Conscientia, de Legibus, de Peccatis, de Virtutibus,” there is not, of course, so much opportunity for the introduction of matter peculiar to this country as in those which will follow. The objection may be made to the book that the various opinions of theologians are not always given on controverted points; but this is unavoidable in a treatise merely intended as an exponent of S. Alphonsus. The system advocated is that of equiprobabilism.
CHILDREN OF MARY. Baltimore: Kelly, Piet & Co.
Seven simple and interesting biographies of young pupils of the Maison des Oiseaux, Paris. The book is nicely bound and suited for a premium.
TWELVE TALES FOR THE YOUNG. London: Burns & Oates. (For sale by The Catholic Publication Society.)
This is the second volume of Mrs. Parsons’s “Twelve Tales for the Young,” the first volume having appeared several years ago. They are what the title indicates, and we may add are very good and instructive.
SILVIA, AND OTHER DRAMAS. By a Sister of Charity. New York: P. M. Haverty.
The plays performed by the young ladies in our convent schools are often very pretty and entertaining spectacles to those who can appreciate the charm of innocence and simplicity. Of course there is a great demand for dramas which are suitable for such occasions, and the supply is not always easy. It is a great flavor to those concerned in preparing these plays when the managers of the convent theatres publish some good dramas. Those before us are from Mt. St. Vincent. The author has shown a great deal of judgment and good taste, and no little dramatic and poetic talent. The publisher has brought them out in a pretty dress. They will do well for private family theatricals, as well as for schools, and make also a nice little volume for a present.
THE LETTER‐BOOKS OF SIR AMIAS POULET, KEEPER OF MARY, QUEEN OF SCOTS. Edited by John Morris, Priest of the Society of Jesus. London: Burns and Oates. (For sale by The Catholic Publication Society).
The heart of our late friend, Mr. Meline, would have leapt up at sight of this book, and his pen would have given our pages another racy article, had it appeared while he was still in this mortal coil. The letters in this collection are many of them newly discovered and now first published. They throw new light on the villainy of Walsingham, and thus really add something to the already numerous documents in the Marian controversy.
SCHOOL HYGIENE. By Dr. R. J. O’Sullivan. New York: D. Appleton & Co.
Dr. O’Sullivan’s pamphlet is a paper which all persons having the oversight of schools will find worthy to be carefully read and preserved.
BRIC‐A‐BRAC SERIES—PERSONAL REMINISCENCES. By Chorley, Planché, and Young. Edited by Richard Henry Stoddard. New York: Scribner, Armstrong & Co. 1874.
An agreeable volume of chat, gossip, and anecdote about many well‐known persons, with other miscellaneous bric‐a‐brac, very well printed, and having an uncommonly pretty binding. In this last department of art the recent efforts of publishers are enough to fill one with astonishment; but success is rare, unless they may be regarded as attempts to illustrate the metaphysical definition of ens rationis. Something really pretty is therefore always doubly welcome.
THE CATHOLIC WORLD. VOL. XIX., NO. 113.—AUGUST, 1874.
Matter.
Much as has been written on matter by ancient and modern philosophers, the last word about its constitution has not yet been said. The old school of metaphysicians, in spite of its high intellectual attainments, could not unravel this perplexing subject, because it had not a sufficient knowledge of natural facts. The modern scientist, on the other hand, in spite of his vast knowledge of facts, can never reach the ultimate consequences implied in them, because he is too little acquainted with the old principles of philosophical speculation. For, as all the questions connected with the constitution of matter are of a metaphysical character, purely experimental science cannot answer them; it can only supply materials to the philosopher for their solution. In the study of natural philosophy observation picks up the spontaneous revelations of nature, experiment verifies and controls the results of observation by compelling nature to act under definite conditions, and speculation discovers the relations intervening between effects and effects, as also between effects and causes, thus paving the way to the determination of the nature of causes from the nature of their effects.
We are of opinion that the scientific materials gathered from observation and experiment since the discovery of universal attraction are quite sufficient for the purpose of determining the constitution of matter; and we presume that, under the guidance of positive science, we may safely engage in a full philosophical investigation of this interesting subject. We are not ignorant that the treatment of this great question has always presented, and still presents, many difficulties and dangers, against which proper precautions are to be taken. Sometimes the phenomena on which our reasonings must be based are so complex that it might be doubted whether they reveal more than they mask the truths which we aspire to discover. Again, we are very easily misled by the outward appearance of things, and blinded in a measure by deep‐rooted prejudices of our infancy, which, besides being shared by all classes of persons, have in their favor the almost irrefragable sanction of the popular language. Moreover, many conflicting hypotheses have been advanced by philosophers of different schools in their attempt at solving the questions concerning the nature of material things; and thus the subject of our discussion comes before us with an accompaniment of many elaborate theories, old and new, which it becomes our duty to subject to a careful criticism, lest they overcloud the intellect and obstruct our vision of truth. Fortunately, however, as we shall see in the sequel, only three of those theories can be considered to have a real claim to the attention of the modern philosopher, and each of them, by proper management, can be made to yield a fair portion of truth.
We propose to commence with the consideration of those natural facts from which the true nature and the essential constitution of material substance can be most easily ascertained. We shall then determine accurately the essence of matter, examine its constituents in particular, and point out their necessary relations, according to the scholastic method. And, lastly, we shall inquire what, in the light of modern science, must be the philosophical theory of the generation and corruption of material compounds.
Existence of matter.
The first foundation of what we shall say hereafter is that matter, or material substance, really exists. By “matter” we mean a being which is the proper subject of local motion, or Ens mobile, as the ancient philosophers define it. Hence, if there is local motion, there is matter. And since local motion is undeniable, the existence of matter is equally undeniable.
It is all very well for the idealist to say that we perceive nothing but phenomena. Local movement, of course, is only a phenomenon; but evidently such a phenomenon would be impossible, if nothing existed which could receive local motion. But that which can receive local motion we call matter. And therefore what we call matter is something real in the world.
Origin of matter.
Democritus, Epicurus, and other pagan philosophers taught that matter is eternal and uncreated. This old error has been utterly dispelled by the light of Christian philosophy; yet it has been lately revived, and is studiously propagated in our own days by a set of infidel scribblers, who pretend, in the name of science, to do away with what they call the obsolete notion of a Creator. It may therefore be useful to say here a few words about the contingency and the creation of matter. We have already shown, in an article on the extrinsic principles of being,(128) that the changeableness of a thing is a sufficient proof of its coming out of nothing, inasmuch as nothingness is the true extrinsic principle of passivity and potentiality. As matter is evidently passive and potential, it directly follows that matter has come out of nothing.
But since unbelievers are not philosophers, though they call themselves so, and may not be able to realize the value of an argument based on metaphysical grounds, and since we hear them repeat without end that science—their degraded science—has done away with the old dream of creation, we deem it expedient to appeal to science itself, and bring forward from it a clear proof of the fact of creation. This proof is to be found in the very constitution of the primitive molecules of bodies, as Prof. Clerk‐Maxwell has recently shown in a very remarkable lecture on molecules.(129) His scientific argument is contained in the following passage:
“The molecule, though indestructible, is not a hard, rigid body, but is capable of internal movements, and, when these are excited, it emits rays, the wave‐length of which is a measure for the time of vibration of a molecule. By means of the spectroscope the wave‐length of different kinds of light may be compared to within one ten‐thousandth part. In this way it has been ascertained not only that molecules taken from every specimen of hydrogen in our laboratories have the same set of periods of vibration, but that light having the same set of periods of vibration is emitted from the sun and from the fixed stars. We are thus assured that molecules of the same nature as those of our hydrogen exist in those distant regions, or at least did exist when the light by which we see them was emitted.... Light, which is to us the sole evidence of the existence of these distant worlds, tells us also that each of them is built of molecules of the same kind as those which we find on earth. A molecule of hydrogen, for example, whether in Sirius or Arcturus, executes its vibrations in precisely the same time. Each molecule, therefore, throughout the universe, bears impressed on it the stamp of a metric system as distinctly as does the metre of the Archives of Paris or the double royal cubit of the temple of Karnac. No theory of evolution can be formed to account for the similarity of molecules; for evolution necessarily implies continuous change, and the molecule is incapable of growth or decay, of generation or destruction. None of the processes of nature, since the time when nature began, have produced the slightest difference in the properties of any molecule. We are therefore unable to ascribe either the existence of the molecules or the identity of their properties to the operation of any of the causes which we call natural. On the other hand, the exact equality of each molecule to all others of the same kind gives it, as Sir John Herschel has well said, the essential character of a manufactured article, and precludes the idea of its being eternal and self‐existent. Thus we have been led, along a strictly scientific path, very near to the point at which science must stop. Not that science is debarred from studying the internal mechanism of a molecule which she cannot take to pieces, any more than from investigating an organism which she cannot put together. But in tracing back the history of matter science is arrested when she assures herself, on the one hand, that the molecule has been made, and, on the other, that it has not been made by any of the processes we call natural. Science is incompetent to reason upon the creation of matter itself out of nothing.(130) We have reached the utmost limit of our thinking faculties when we have admitted that, because matter cannot be eternal and self‐ existent, it must have been created. That matter, as such, should have certain fundamental properties, that it should exist in space and be capable of motion, that its motion should be persistent, and so on, are truths which may, for anything we know, be of the kind which metaphysicians call necessary. We may use our knowledge of such truths for purposes of deduction, but we have no data for speculating as to their origin. But that there should be exactly so much matter and no more in every molecule of hydrogen is a fact of a very different order.... Natural causes, as we know, are at work, which tend to modify, if they do not at length destroy, all the arrangements and dimensions of the earth, and of the whole solar system. But though, in the course of ages, catastrophes have occurred, and may yet occur, in the heavens; though ancient systems may be dissolved, and new systems evolved out of their ruins, the molecules out of which those systems are built, the foundation‐stones of the material universe, remain unbroken and unworn. They continue to this day as they were created, perfect in number and measure and weight, and from the ineffaceable characters impressed on them we may learn that those aspirations after accuracy in measurement, truth in statement, and justice in action, which we reckon among our noblest attributes as men, are ours because they are essential constituents of the image of Him who, in the beginning, created not only the heaven and the earth, but the materials of which heaven and earth consist.”
Such is the verdict of true science as interpreted by the eminent English mathematician and natural philosopher. The whole is so instructive and interesting that we think we have no need of apologizing for the length of the quotation.
Essential properties of matter.
The constituents of things are revealed to us by their properties. For, as every being acts according as it is in act, and suffers according as it is in potency, from the activity and the passivity with which a being is endowed we can easily find out the special nature of the act and of the potency which constitute its metaphysical essence. Hence, if we wish to ascertain the essential constitution of material substance, we must first ascertain and thoroughly understand the properties which are common to all material substances, and without which no material substance can be conceived. In doing this we must guard against confounding, as many scientists do, the essential properties of matter with the general properties of bodies. Extension, impenetrability, divisibility, porosity, etc., are general properties of bodies; but it does not follow that they are essential properties of material substance as such, as they may arise from accidental composition. Those properties alone are essential which are altogether primitive, unchangeable, and involved in the principles of the substance; and such properties, as we shall see, are, so far as material substance is concerned, the three following: active power to produce local motion, passivity for receiving local motion, and inertia. These three properties correspond to the three constituents of material substance.
There are philosophers who deny that material things have any active power. They know that matter is inert, and they cannot see how activity can be reconciled with inertia. There are others, on the contrary, who, for a similar reason, being unable to deny the activity of bodies, deny their inertia. From what we are going to say it will be manifest that these philosophers have never known exactly what is meant in natural science by the inertia of matter.
Other writers, especially those of the old school, while admitting the three essential properties of matter which we have just mentioned, contend that material substance has a fourth important and connatural, if not essential, property—viz., continuous extension—without which, they say, nothing material can be conceived. They further teach, and would fain have us believe, that all material substance is endowed with extension and resistance; and many of them think that extension and resistance constitute the essence of matter. This last opinion is very common among philosophical writers, and deserves the most careful examination, as it bears very heavily on an essential point of the controversy in which we have to engage.
Let us see, then, first, what we have to think regarding the activity, the passivity, and the inertia of matter; and, when we have done with these, we shall take up the question of material continuity, of which we hope to give a full analysis and a satisfactory solution.
Activity, passivity, and inertia.
The special character by which the phenomena of the material world are recognized consists in their being brought about by local motion. For it is a well‐known fact that in things purely material no change takes place but through local movements; so that we cannot even conceive a change in the material world without a displacement of matter. Hence all the actions of matter upon matter tend to produce local movement, or to modify it; and all passion of the matter acted on is a reception of movement.
That all material substances possess activity, passivity, and inertia is quite certain on experimental grounds. No conclusion is better established in science than that all the particles of matter act on one another according to a fixed law, and receive from one another their determination to move from place to place, while they are incapable of setting themselves in movement or modifying the movement received from without. Now, it is clear that they cannot act without being active, nor receive the action without being passive, nor be incapable of modifying their own state without being inert.
This shows that activity and inertia do not exclude one another. A particle of matter is said to be active inasmuch as it has the power of causing the movement of any other particle; and is said to be inert inasmuch as it has no power of giving movement to itself. It is plain that these two things are very far from being contradictory. Those philosophers, therefore, who have apprehended an irreconcilable opposition between the two, must have attached to the term “inertia” a meaning quite different from that recognized by physical science.
Balmes remarks, in his Fundamental Philosophy,(131) that there is nothing perfectly still either on earth or in the heavens; and for this reason he expresses the opinion that all bodies have a constant tendency to move. And as he cannot see how such a tendency can be reconciled with the inertia of matter, he comes to the conclusion that bodies are not inert. But it is scarcely necessary to remark that the constant tendency to move which we observe in bodies is the result of universal attraction, and not of a self‐acting power inhering in the matter of which the bodies consist; and therefore such a tendency does not in the least interfere with the inertia of matter. A simple reference to the laws of motion suffices to convince the most superficial student that such is the case.
Malebranche goes to the other extreme. He supposes that bodies have no activity of any kind, and that accordingly all the phenomena we witness in the physical world are produced by God alone. This theory, as every one will acknowledge, is supremely extravagant and unphilosophical. It leads to idealism and to pantheism. To idealism, because, if bodies do not act, there is no reason why they should exist; as nothing can be admitted to exist throughout creation which has no aptitude to manifest in its own reality a reflex of the Creator’s perfections. And since manifestation is action, no created being can be destitute of active power. This argument drawn from the end of creation may be supplemented by another drawn from the impossibility of our knowing the existence of bodies if they do not act. For, if bodies do not act on our senses, we cannot refer to bodies for the causality of our sensations; and thus the only link by which we have the means of connecting our subjective impressions with exterior objects will be destroyed.
Hence, if bodies are not active, there is no reason why they should be admitted to exist, and we are accordingly condemned to an absurd idealism. Nor can we escape pantheism. For, if the impressions we receive from outside are caused by God alone, we cannot but conclude that whatever we see outside of us has no other objectivity than that of the divine substance itself appearing under different forms. Now, this is a pantheistic doctrine. Therefore the theory which denies the activity of bodies leads to pantheism. We will say nothing more about this preposterous doctrine and its absurd consequences. Plain common sense, without need of further argument, condemns whatever calls in question the reality and objectivity of our knowledge concerning the exterior world.
But, while we admit with all the physicists, and indeed with all mankind, that material substance is competent, through its natural activity, to cause local motion, we must guard against the opinion of the materialists, who pretend that the active power of matter is also competent, under certain conditions and through certain combinations, to produce thought. Nothing, perhaps, can be more inconsistent with reason than this assumption. Were matter not inert, the hypothesis might deserve examination; but an inert thinking substance is such an enormity that it cannot, even hypothetically, be entertained. The thinking faculty evidently implies self‐acting power, whereas inertia evidently excludes it; and therefore, so long as we keep in mind that matter is inert, we cannot, without evident inconsistency, extend the range of its activity to immanent operations, but must confine it to the extrinsic production of local motion. Let us here remark that, of all the arguments usually employed in psychology against the materialistic hypothesis, this one drawn from the inertia of matter is the most valuable as it is the most simple and incontrovertible.
The inertia of matter is so universally admitted that it is hardly necessary to say a word about it. No fact, indeed, is more certain in science than that matter, when at rest, cannot but remain so until it receive from without a determination to move; and likewise that, when determined to move with any velocity and in any direction, it cannot but move with that velocity and in that direction until it receive some other determination from without. This incapability of changing its own state constitutes, as we have already stated, the inertia of matter, and is the very foundation of mechanical science.
As to the natural passivity of material substance, we need only say that it consists in its capability of receiving, when it is acted on, any accidental determination to move in any direction and with any velocity. That matter has this passivity is an obvious experimental truth; and that matter has no other passivity except this one we shall prove in another place.
Meanwhile, it is evident from the preceding considerations that all matter is active, passive, and inert. The principle of activity, in every being, is its essential act, and the principle of passivity its essential term, which is a real passive potency;(132) hence the activity and the passivity of matter are a necessary result of the essential constitution of material substance, and are therefore essential properties of the same. The inertia of matter is also a necessary result of the essential constitution of material substance; for the only reason why an element of matter cannot give motion to itself is to be found in the mutual relation of its essential principles, which is of such a nature that the principle of passivity cannot be influenced by any exertion of the active principle, of which it is the intrinsic term. Now, this relation, for which we shall fully account hereafter, belongs to the essence of the substance as truly and as necessarily as the essential principles themselves. Hence the inertia of matter is an essential property of matter no less than its activity and passivity.
Action at a distance.
The activity of material substance is a very interesting subject of investigation; its nature, its mode of working, the law of its exertion, and the conditions on which the production of its effects depends, give rise to many important questions, which, owing to philosophical discords, have not yet received a satisfactory solution. The first of these questions is: Does material substance act at a distance, or does it require, as a condition sine qua non for acting, a mathematical contact of its matter with the matter acted upon?
Philosophers and scientists have often examined this grave subject, but their opinions are still divided. Those philosophers who form their physical views from the scholastic system, commonly hold that a true material contact is an indispensable condition for the action of matter upon matter, and think it to be an evident truth. But physicists, “with few exceptions,” as Prof. Faraday remarks, admit that all action of matter upon matter is an actio in distans, and he himself supports the same doctrine, although suggesting that it should be expressed in somewhat different terms. We propose to show that this latter solution is the only one consistent with the principles both of science and of philosophy. And as the opposite view owes its origin, and in a great measure its plausibility, to the known theory of kinetic forces as deduced from the impact of bodies, we shall argue from the same theory in support of our conclusion.
Here is our argument. When a body impinges upon another body, if any communication of movement is made by a true and immediate contact of matter with matter, its duration must be limited to that indivisible instant of time in which the distance between the struggling particles of matter becomes = 0. But in an indivisible instant of time no finite velocity can be communicated. And therefore no real movement can be caused in the impact of bodies by a true and immediate contact of matter with matter.
We think that this argument admits of no reply. Its major proposition is the statement of an obvious geometric truth. Nor can it be gainsaid by assuming that the duration of the action can be prolonged; for the action, in the opinion of those against whom we now are arguing, is supposed to require true material contact; and it is plain that two particles of matter coming into contact cannot remain in contact for any length of time, however inappreciable, unless in the very first instant of their meeting their velocities have become equal; it being evident that two particles of matter animated by different velocities cannot preserve for any length of time the same relation in space. To assume, therefore, that the contact can be prolonged, is to assume that from the very first instant of the collision the unequal velocities of the struggling particles have been equalized, or, in other terms, that the velocity imparted has been communicated in the very first instant of the impact. But if so, then the assumption of a prolonged contact, as a means of communicating the velocity, is altogether useless, and involves an evident contradiction. It is therefore necessary to concede that, if the velocity is communicated by a true and immediate contact of matter with matter, the communication must be made in an indivisible instant of time.
The minor proposition of our syllogism is equally evident. For it is one of the fundamental axioms of mechanics that actions, all other things being equal, are proportional to their respective duration; whence it is plain that an action of which the duration is infinitesimal cannot produce more than an infinitesimal effect. And therefore no finite velocity can be produced by true material contact.
Against this argument four objections may be advanced: First, that although in the contact of one point with another point no finite velocity can be communicated, yet in the case of a multitude of material points coming into collision the effect might be appreciable. Secondly, that a particle of matter may be carried straight away by another particle which impinges upon it with sufficient velocity. Thirdly, that a distinction is to be made between continuous and instantaneous actions, and that, although a continuous action produces an effect proportional to its duration, as in the case of universal attraction, yet instantaneous actions, as in the case of impact, may not necessarily follow the same law. Lastly, that even admitting the impossibility of producing finite velocity in an infinitesimal unit of time, yet finite velocity might still be communicated in an infinitesimal unit of time without any new production, as modern scientists assume.
To the first objection we answer that, if each material point cannot, in the instant of the contact, acquire more than an infinitesimal velocity, the whole multitude will have only an infinitesimal velocity; and thus no movement will ensue.
To the second we answer that a particle cannot be carried straight away unless it receives a communication of finite velocity; and such a communication, as we have already shown, cannot be made in the instant of the contact.
The third objection we answer by denying that there is any rigorously instantaneous action. When physicists speak of “instantaneous” actions, they mean actions having a finite duration, which, however, is so short that it cannot be appreciated or measured by our means of observation. And therefore what is called an “instantaneous” action is nothing but a continuous action of a short duration. Now, a difference of duration is not a difference in kind; and accordingly, if actions are proportional to their duration when their duration is longer, they are no less so when their duration is shorter.
The last objection takes for granted that there can be a communication of velocity without production of velocity; which amounts to saying that the velocity of the impinging body is transmitted identically to the body impinged upon. This is, however, a mere delusion. The velocity acquired by the body impinged upon has no previous existence in the impinging body; and accordingly its communication implies its real production, as we have proved in one of our past articles.(133)
The actio in distans can also be proved from the very nature of material activity. It is generally admitted that the active power of matter is either attractive or repulsive; for all men of science agree that the movements of the material world are brought about by attractions and repulsions. Now, attraction and repulsion do not imply a material contact between the agent and the patient, but, on the contrary, exclude it; and therefore all the movements of the material world are due to actions at a distance. That attraction excludes material contact is quite evident, for attraction produces movement by causing the approach of one body to another; and it is evident that no approach will be possible if the bodies are already in immediate contact. It is therefore an essential condition for the possibility of attraction that the agent be not in immediate contact with the patient. And as for repulsion, it is known that it serves to keep the molecules of a body distant from one another, and consequently it is exercised at molecular distances. This is especially evident in the case of elastic fluids. For repulsion obtains among the molecules of such fluids, whether the said molecules be pressed nearer or let further apart. And therefore repulsion, too, is exercised without material contact.
Some modern physicists try to do away with repulsion, and explain the pressure exercised by a gas against the vessel in which it is confined by saying that the gaseous molecules are continually flying about in all directions, and continually impinging on the interior surface of the recipient, where their excursions are intercepted, and that this continuous series of impacts constitutes what we call the pressure of the gas on the vessel.
But this new theory cannot bear one moment’s examination. It is wholly gratuitous; it disregards mechanical principles by admitting that the movement of the molecules can go on unabated in spite of repeated impacts, and it assumes that the momentum of a moving molecule is its active power; which is utterly false, as we will show later.
Other physicists have tried to get rid of attraction, also, by assuming that those effects which we ascribe to attraction are to be attributed to ethereal pressure. This hypothesis has no better foundation than the preceding one, and is equally untenable for many reasons which we shall explain hereafter.
The actio in distans can also be directly proved by the consideration of statical forces. We know that the action which tends to communicate movement in a given direction cannot be frustrated or neutralized, except by an action of the same intensity applied in an opposite direction. It is evident, on the other hand, that, if the first requires an immediate contact of matter with matter, the second also must be subject to the same condition. Now, this latter is altogether independent of such a condition. Accordingly, the former also—that is, the action which tends to communicate the movement—is independent of a true material contact.
The minor proposition of this syllogism may be proved as follows: Let a small cube of hard steel be placed on a smooth, horizontal plate of cast‐ iron lying on a table. The cube will remain at rest on the plate, notwithstanding the action of gravity upon it, because, while the cube tends to fall and presses the plate, the action of the plate frustrates that tendency, and keeps the equilibrium. Now, the cube and the plate do not immediately touch one another with their matter; for we know that they can be brought nearer than they are. We may place, for instance, a second cube on the top of the first, and thus increase the pressure on the plate, and cause the plate itself to react with an increased intensity. But it is obvious that neither of the two actions can become intenser, unless the cube is brought nearer to the plate; for the resistance of the plate cannot be modified, unless some of the previous conditions be altered; and since the two surfaces have remained the same, no other condition can be conceived to be changed except their relative distance. It is therefore a change, and in fact a diminution, of the distance between the cube and the plate that entails the change of the action. Whence we see that, even in the case of the so‐called physical contact, bodies do not touch one another with their matter. This shows that physical contact does not exclude distance; and therefore, when we say that two bodies touch one another, the fact we express is that the two bodies are so near to one another that they cannot approach nearer without their molecular arrangement being disturbed by their mutual actions. Therefore the hypothesis that a true material contact of matter with matter is needed for causing or for hindering movement is irreconcilable with fact.
As a further development of this proof, we may add that one of the necessary conditions for the equilibrium of the cube on the plate is, that the action of the plate have a direction opposite to the action of the cube. Now, no direction whatever can be conceived but between two distinct, and therefore distant, points. Accordingly, there cannot be the least doubt that all the points belonging to the surface of the plate are really distant from those of the neighboring surface of the cube. Whence we conclude again that their mutual action is exercised at a distance.
Other proofs of the same truth might be drawn, if necessary, from other considerations. Faraday, from the phenomena of electric conduction, was led to the conclusion that each atom of matter, though occupying a mere point in space, has a sphere of action extending throughout the whole solar system.(134) Boscovich,(135) from the law of continuity, demonstrates that movement is not communicated through material contact. And mechanical writers generally consider all dynamical forces—that is, all accelerating or retarding actions—as functions of distances; which shows that all motive actions depend on distance, not only for their direction, but also for their intensity. We have no need of developing these proofs, as we think that the preceding arguments are abundantly sufficient to convince all intelligent readers of the truth of our conclusion, viz.:
1. That distance is a necessary condition of the action of matter upon matter;
2. That the contact between the agent and the object acted on is not material, but virtual, inasmuch as it is by its active power (virtus), and not by its matter, that the agent reaches the matter of the object acted upon;
3. Hence that any material substance, which is anywhere by reason of its matter, has within itself a power prepared to act where the substance itself is not present by its matter.
As the actio in distans shocks vulgar prejudices, and has therefore many decided adversaries, it is plain that we must be ready to meet a great number of objections. For the present we respectfully invite those who consider the action at a distance as an obvious impossibility to examine carefully the arguments by which we have established the impossibility of the action by material contact. As to their own reasons for a contrary opinion, we hope to answer them satisfactorily as soon as we have done with the explanation of a few other preliminaries.
Power and velocity.
The question which now presents itself is the following: Is velocity the active power of material substance? This question has some importance in the present state of science, on account of the confusion generally made by physical writers between powers, forces, actions, and movements. We answer that, although active power and velocity are now generally considered as synonymous, they are quite different things. Here are our reasons:
In the first place, it is philosophically evident that the result of an action and the principle of the action cannot be of the same nature. But velocity is certainly the result of an action, whilst the active power is the principle of the action. And therefore velocity and active power cannot be of the same nature. But surely, if velocity has not the nature of an active power, it is not an active power, as every one must admit.
In the second place, the active power of creatures, be they material or immaterial, is the power by the exertion of which they manifest themselves and their natural perfection, thus leading us to the knowledge of the existence and the perfections of our Creator, such a knowledge being the end of creation. Active power is therefore not an accidental and changeable affection, but an essential, primitive, and permanent appurtenance of all created substances; nor does it come from interaction of creatures, but only from creation itself; so that we might well apply to it what S. Paul says of the power of kings and rulers: “There is no power except from God.” And accordingly velocity, which is an accidental and changeable affection of matter, cannot be the active power of the material substance.
In the third place, if velocity were the active principle of matter, matter would have no definite nature of its own. For “nature” is defined as the principle of motion; and material substance would be destitute of such a principle; for velocity, by which it is assumed that it would cause movement, has no part in the constitution of the substance itself. Hence we must conclude that either material substance has no definite nature of its own, or, if this cannot be admitted, the active power of matter is not its velocity.
In the fourth place, a mass of matter at rest acts on the body by which it is supported, and exercises a pressure against it; and therefore matter is active independently of actual movement; which conclusively shows that the active power of matter has nothing common with its velocity.
Lastly, velocity is an accidental mode; and nothing accidental possesses active power, as has been shown in one of our philosophical articles.(136)
Thus it appears that the active power of material substance is not its velocity. Those physicists who acknowledge no other powers but “masses multiplied by velocities” are therefore wholly mistaken. The product of a mass into its velocity does not represent an active power, and not even a dynamical force, but simply the quantity of an effect produced by a previous action. It is true that a mass animated by velocity can do work, which a mass at rest cannot do. But we have shown in the article just mentioned that such a work is done, not by velocity, but by the natural powers inherent in the body, the velocity being only a condition sine qua non. Nor does it matter that the work done by a body is a function of its velocity. This only proves that the greater the velocity of the body, the greater is the resistance required to exhaust it.
Sphere of action.—The next question is: Has matter a sphere of action? That is, Does a primitive element of matter act around itself with equal intensity on all other elements equally distant from it?
The answer must be affirmative.
And first, since the active principle of material substance is destined, as above stated, to produce local movement, it is evident that its action must proceed from a term marking a point in space, and reach other terms marking other similar points. Local movement, in fact, cannot be produced, unless the term acted on be determined by the agent to follow a certain direction; for the direction of the movement must be imparted by the agent which imparts the movement. Now, the direction of the movement, and of the action which causes it, cannot evidently be conceived without two distinct points, the one marked in space by the agent, the other by the patient. Hence the exertion of the active power of matter necessarily proceeds from a point in space to other points in space. Whether such points be rigorously unextended and mathematically indivisible we shall inquire in another article; our object at present is only to show the necessity of a local term from which the direction of the action has to proceed towards other local terms.
This being understood, we can now show that the point from which the action of a material element is directed is the centre of a sphere of activity, or, in other terms, that the primitive elements of matter act in a sphere of which they occupy the centre. This proposition implies that material elements not only act all around, or in every direction, but also that they act with equal intensity at equal distances. This we show in the following manner.
The earth, the planets, and the sun act in all directions, and the intensity of their respective actions, all other things being equal, depends on their distance from the bodies acted on; so that, all other things being equal, to equal distances equal actions correspond. That such actions really proceed from the earth, the planets, and the sun respectively there can be no doubt. For to no other sources can the actions be referred than to those bodies from which both their direction and their intensity proceed. Now, the action by which a planet is attracted is directed to the centre of the sun, and the action by which a satellite is retained in its orbit is directed to the centre of the planet to which it belongs. On the other hand, the intensity of all such actions varies only with the distance of the planet from the sun, and of the satellite from the planet. Whence we conclude that the actions which we attribute to these bodies are really their own.
Now, if such great bodies as the sun, the earth, and all the planets act thus in a sphere, it is manifest that every particle of matter in their mass acts in a sphere. For the action of the whole mass, being only a resultant of the particular actions of all the component elements, cannot but follow the nature of its components; and therefore, from the fact that the action of the whole mass is directed in a sphere, and has equal intensity at equal distances, we must conclude that all the component actions are similarly directed, and have equal intensities at equal distances. Hence every element of matter has a sphere of action, and acts all around itself with equal actions on all other elements equally distant from it.
This conclusion applies to all matter. For we have proved, on the one hand, that matter cannot act except at a distance, and, on the other, we can show by a general argument that the actions themselves must be equal at equal distances around each centre of activity. It is evident, in fact, that the actions of any material element on any other must be equal when the local relation between the elements is the same. But whatever be the position in space of the element acted on, its local relation to the other element remains the same whenever the distance between them is not altered; for so long as we consider two elements only, no other local relation can be conceived to exist between them than that of distance; and therefore a change of position in space which does not alter the distance of the two elements leaves them in the same relation with one another, however much it may alter their relation to other surrounding matter. Since, then, the elements which are arranged spherically around a given element are all equally distant from it, they are all equally related to it, and are all acted on in the same manner. And therefore all material element acts with equal intensity on all other elements equally distant from it.
The truth of this proposition being very generally acknowledged by astronomers and physicists, we need not dwell on it any longer. We must, however, mention and solve two objections which have been advanced against it. The first is, that the cohesion of the molecules in a certain number of bodies is more energetic in some directions than in others; as in crystals, which are cleavable only in definite planes. This would tend to show that material elements do not always act in a sphere. The second objection is, that the action of the sun and of the planets, on which the demonstration of our proposition is grounded, can be denied. Some modern physicists, in fact, hold that what we persist in calling “universal attraction” is not attraction, but only an ethereal pressure exercised on the celestial bodies; and if this be the real case, the action of matter in a sphere will be out of the question.
In answer to the first objection, we say that elements of matter and molecules of bodies are not to be confounded. The molecule is capable of internal movements, as we have already remarked; and therefore every molecule consists of a number of primitive elements having a distinct and independent existence in space. Hence the action of a molecule is not a simple action, but is the resultant of the actions proceeding from those distinct elements; and it is plain that, if such elements are made to approach the centre of the molecule in one direction more than in another, the resultant of their actions will be greater in one direction than in another, and the neighboring molecules will adhere to each other more firmly in one direction than in another. This inequality of molecular actions does not, however, extend beyond the limits of molecular distances; for, when the distance is great (and we can call great those distances in comparison with which the diameter of a molecule is of no account), all the distinct centres of elementary action may be admitted to coincide with the centre of the molecule, and all their spheres to coalesce into one sphere. And thus at such greater distances all molecules, no less than all primitive elements, act in a sphere.
The second objection rests on the singular assumption that the universal ether, owing to the centrifugal force called into existence by the rotation of the celestial bodies, is reduced, around each of them, to a density directly proportional to the distance from the centre of the rotation. Hence they suppose that the ether which surrounds and presses the earth must be denser on the hemisphere where there is night than on that where there is day, because the former is more distant from the sun than the latter; and they infer that on the former hemisphere the pressure of the ether must be greater than on the latter; which brings them to the conclusion that the earth must move towards the sun with a velocity proportional to the difference between the two pressures. Such is the theory by which some modern thinkers tried to supplant universal attraction. We need not go far to show the utter absurdity of this rash conception, as the most common phenomena and the most elementary principles of mechanics supply us with abundant proofs of its falsity. Centrifugal force is necessarily perpendicular to the axis of the rotation, and is proportional to the radius of the circle described. Hence its intensity, which is a maximum on the equator of the revolving body, diminishes from the equator to the poles, where it becomes = 0. If, then, the ether surrounding the earth (or any other celestial body) acquires by centrifugal force a greater density at a greater distance from the earth, the effect must be greater at the equator than in any latitude from the equator to the poles, and bodies must accordingly have a greater weight, and fall with greater impetus, at the equator than in any latitude. Moreover, all bodies should fall in the direction of the pressure—that is, perpendicularly to the axis of rotation, and not perpendicularly to the horizon. Then, also, the pressure of the ether being proportional to the surface of the falling body, of two equal masses having different surfaces, the one whose surface is greater should fall with a greater impetus. Now, all this is contrary to fact.
The preceding remarks suffice to annihilate the theory. We might add that centrifugal forces are not active powers, as the theory assumes, but only components of the rotatory movement, and affections of the rotating matter. Hence, if the ether surrounding the earth does not rotate with it, its condensation through centrifugal force is a patent impossibility; while, if the ether rotates with the earth, its condensation through centrifugal force will again be impossible, inasmuch as its centrifugal force will be greater and greater in proportion as its distance from the earth is greater. It is rarefaction, not condensation, that would take place in this latter hypothesis. One word more. If the mere difference of the pressures exercised by the ether on the two hemispheres of a planet is sufficient to communicate to it a considerable centripetal velocity, as the theory asserts, how can we escape the conclusion that all progress of a planet in its orbit should have been checked long ago by the total pressure of the same ether on its advancing hemisphere?
It is strange indeed that a theory so preposterous in its assumptions and so absurd in its consequences can have found favor with scientific writers in the full light of this nineteenth century!
Antar And Zara; Or, “The Only True Lovers.” IV.
Part IV.
It came: it reached me from afar: I kissed the seal, the cords unwove; Came wafted from the fields of war On all the odorous airs of love.
Close hid I sang; close hid I sighed In places where no echoes were, Where dashed the streams through gorges wide, And sprays leaned back on moistened air.
I sang a song, half sighs, yet proud, And smothered by those downward rills, A music proud, and yet not loud, As when her babe a mother stills.
Behold! for thee, and for thy love I fain would make my spirit fair: For this I strive; for this I strove: My toil, though late, shall blossom bear.
Before thy face the plant shall rise, In thy fair presence bloom and flower: O love me! Thou art great and wise:— Heart‐greatness is the woman’s dower.
Thou mad’st me as a warrior young That yearns to flesh a maiden sword, That burns for battle with the strong, That pants to crush some rebel horde.
Rebels I count all things in me That bear no impress of my King! “Fair is a great king’s jealousy; His worth he knoweth”; thus I sing.
I stood upon a rock what time The moon rushed up above the plain: The crags were white like frosty rime; Her beams upon me fell like rain.
It was her harvest month of might: The vales and villages were glad; I cried—my palms against the light— Like one with sudden pinions clad,
“Whom seek’st thou, O thou rising moon That broad’nest like a warrior’s shield? Whom seest thou? Thou shalt see him soon, My Warrior ’mid the tented field!
“He reaches now some gorge’s mouth; Upon his helmet thou shalt shine;— Seest thou, O moon, from north to south, Another loved one like to mine?”
No merchant from the isles of spice Who stands in hushed hareem or hall Who parts his goods, and names the price, Was I, O friend! I gave thee all.
When from me I had all things cast Except thy gifts, that hour I found A gift I, too, might give at last— The being thou had’st made and crowned!
I am not nothing since thy vow Enriched my heart. That wealth is mine: “Nothing” I call myself, that thou May’st hear, O love! and call me thine.
High on the hills I sat at dawn Where cedar caverns, branching, breathe Their darkness o’er the dewy lawn, While slowly bloomed in heaven a wreath
Of eastern lilies. Soon the sun Ascended o’er the far sea‐tide Smiting to glory billows dun And clouds and trees; and loud I cried,
“Thou too shalt rise, my sun—thou too— O’er darkling hearts in power shalt rise, And flame on souls, and flash on dew Of tears that dim expectant eyes.”
And every wind from vale and glen Sang loud, “He, too, shall rise and shine! A warrior he, a chief of men, A prince with might; and he is thine.”
Men praised my words. Thy spirit dwells Within me, strangely linked with mine: At times my mind’s remotest cells Brighten with thoughts less mine than thine.
A gleam of thee on me they cast: They wear thy look; they catch thy tone: A kingdom in my breast thou hast:— The words they praised were not mine own.
A chance was that—our meeting first? At morn I read a quaint old book That told of maiden palace‐nursed Who met a prince beside a brook.
“Beside our brook the lilies blow,” I mused, “green‐girt, and silver‐tipped”; And, dreaming of their bells of snow, At eve adown the rocks I tripped.
Sudden I saw thee!—saw thee take Toward me thy path! I turned, and fled: So swiftly pushed I through the brake My girdle dropped:—still on I sped.
Had I but guessed that past the dates That hour the stranger youth made way, I ne’er had left my maiden mates Beside that brook, alone, to stray.
Surely my thoughts, ere yet we met, Even then were loyal to their lord; The tides of all my being set Towards thee with blind yet just accord.
When first I kenned, through showers aslant The snowy Lebanonian line, When first I heard the night‐bird’s chant, Even then my beating heart was thine.
When minstrels sang the sacred strife, And thus I wept, “The land made free By warrior’s sword is as a wife Whose head is on her husband’s knee,”
How often, dimmed by grateful tears, I see that convent near the snow Wherein I lived those seven sweet years, And seven times saw the lilies blow;
Then, too, I nursed this hope sublime: My breast unconscious turned to thee: Let no one say there lived a time When thou wert nothing unto me!
There sent to couch on pavements cold, Fearless to suffer and to dare, And reverence learn from nuns dark‐stoled Who live in penance and in prayer.
There, too, of love they sang—there, too— Ah! not this love of maid and youth! To that first love oh! keep me true, Thou Who art Love at once and Truth!
Have I not heard of hearts that nursed This human love, yet wronged their troth? That first, great love they outraged first:— Falsehood to that was death to both!
Now glorious grows my Warrior’s name: The very babes his praises spread: But late released, this morn they came Around me, clamouring, “Give us bread!”
His light was on them! Freed by him, A land redeemed I saw them tread! I gazed on them with eyes tear‐dim: I blessed them, and I gave them bread.
“What man is this?” our ancients sought: “This chief we know not can we trust?” Thou gav’st them back, unbribed, unbought, Their towers far off, their state august.
Thou gav’st to warriors proved of yore Victory, by carnage undisgraced; To matrons hearts unpierced by war; To maids their nuptials high and chaste.
To others, these:—but what to me? I speak it not: I know it well: The fawn whose head is on my knee As well as I that gift might tell!
Livia was the first to return to herself and put an end to my singular and ill‐timed reverie.
“I hope, however, you do not imagine my resolution is to be attributed to the jettatura,” she said.
These words immediately recalled me to a sense of all that had taken place the previous hour. I reflected an instant, and then replied:
“No; I know too well what you yourself would think of a vocation that had such an origin.”
“And yet I cannot deny,” she said, “that it has had a certain influence on my destiny; for, thanks to the jettatura, I have had a heavy, mysterious cross to bear. It is not to get rid of this cross I wish to leave the world, but to embrace it more closely and experience more fully the blessings it has revealed to me.”
“That is above my comprehension, Livia. I no longer understand you.”
“You know very well, however, do you not, that love is the chief element of happiness?” said she slowly.
“Yes, I believe that. Happiness consists chiefly in loving and being loved, I imagine. Everything else is merely accessory.”
“And you know what is accessory loses all importance when the whole heart and soul are absorbed in some adored and adorable being?”
“Yes; ... but the difficulty is to love thus though I say this hesitatingly, lest it seem ungrateful to Lorenzo.”
“You are right, Ginevra. It is very difficult, and even impossible, in this world, as you will some day realize more fully than you do now.”
We were both silent for a few moments.
“And my father,” I at last resumed—“what will my poor father say to this separation?”
“What would he say, I beg to know, if a noble, wealthy man—in fact, a great lord like Lorenzo—should ask my hand on condition of carrying me away, like you, beyond the mountains and the sea? Do you think he would refuse? Well, neither will he refuse Him who demands my heart and life. For, after all, is not he alone great—the only Lord?... But of course my father will decide the matter. It will be when and as he wishes.”
This conversation gave me a glimpse of a world into which the hour had not yet come for me to penetrate, and I was diverted from the thoughts it awakened in my soul by the excitement and agitation that followed. But every word of this last conversation remained fixed in my memory; whereas the incidents and impressions of the following day only seem like a dream—yes, like a dream when I recall the confusion of that last day, the preparations both for my wedding and my journey (for I was to leave my father’s house and my native land nearly at the same time), Ottavia’s feverish excitement, and the quiet activity of Livia, who thought of everything, and arranged everything calmly and in order. Then there was a succession of calls from our young friends and relatives, who, according to the custom in our country, could not be present at the wedding, and therefore came to take leave of me on the eve, and admire at their leisure the rich presents of the bridegroom, especially the jewels, which were unusually splendid. Among these young girls I particularly remember my two cousins, Mariuccia and Teresina, who, as well as their mother, Donna Clelia, experienced many conflicting emotions on the occasion of their young cousin’s brilliant marriage. But interest and curiosity finally overcame the grain of ill‐humor which my aunt especially could not help feeling at seeing me attain a rank and position which her most ambitious flights could not hope for her daughters to obtain. Donna Clelia was my father’s sister, but she did not resemble him in the least. She was married to a wealthy man of an obscure family, and, as she was remarkable for nothing but her ability as a manager and her kind heart, she had passed her life in a different sphere from that my father had attained by his talents and celebrity. This sometimes caused a temporary feeling of spite, but she was in the main an excellent woman and a good mother.
At length the great day came and nearly passed away; for it was not till night came on—that is, about nine o’clock in the evening—that the ceremony took place. The large salon was illuminated with all the lights in the crystal chandelier, and at the farther end of the room an altar had been placed, adorned with lights and flowers. Before it stood good old Don Placido, awaiting those he was to unite. His long, white beard and Capuchin habit formed a singular contrast to the elegant toilets around him and the total lack of any religious aspect—as was proper at a wedding in the midst of a brilliant assembly like this, and in a place better fitted for worldly gayety than the celebration of a holy rite.
Don Fabrizio soon appeared, leading the pale, trembling bride clothed in white, and wearing on her forehead a coronet of diamonds whose fleurons indicated her new rank. Every eye was fastened on her, as she knelt beside the bride‐groom at the feet of the venerable old priest who had baptized her, and was now waiting to bless her marriage. I only remember that the very moment when Don Placido was joining our hands Livia’s words occurred to my mind: “You are going to pronounce the most fearful vow there is in the world,” and my voice failed me. Lorenzo, on the contrary, spoke unhesitatingly and with perfect distinctness. Don Placido then addressed us a few words that affected me to tears, for he spoke of her who was not here to accompany her child to the altar; and this sorrowful recollection, alluded to in language so touching, made me forget everything else, and for a few moments entirely absorbed me. I cannot recollect anything more till, leaning on Lorenzo’s arm, I descended the grand staircase, in order to go to the palace he owned at a short distance, and where he had lately resided. The night was glorious, the air soft and balmy, and I took a seat in the open carriage with nothing around me but my lace veil. My bridal dress was becoming, notwithstanding my paleness, and the diamonds I was covered with sparkled in the light of the torches borne by the attendants. A murmur of admiration ran through the crowd at my appearance; and when Lorenzo took a seat at my side, the air resounded with cheers and enthusiastic exclamations. We at last set off amid cries of “Evviva i sposi!” “Evviva il duca!” “Evviva la duchessa!”(137) ... We set off, but not alone. According to our custom, we were preceded, accompanied, and followed by a crowd of relatives and friends who thronged the house which I now entered for the first time. I was obliged to receive them all, listen to them, reply, and, above all, do the honors of a place more familiar to every one there than to myself!
This old palace had been very magnificent once, but it was now in the dilapidated condition into which all buildings for a long time uninhabited generally fall. On this occasion the walls were covered with rich hangings, and on every side there was a profusion of lights and flowers. It was brilliantly illuminated without, and through the open windows of the salon came the sound of ravishing music in the garden. For this evening, at least, they had succeeded in giving to this ancient habitation not only a sumptuous and cheerful aspect, but one really fairy‐like.
It will not seem surprising that, agitated and excited as I had been, the brilliancy of such a soirée was repugnant to my feelings. It may not even seem astonishing that, in spite of all that was apparently combined to intoxicate me with joy and pride, a scene so brilliant, so little in accordance with the solemn emotions of the day, should have produced an entirely opposite effect on me. The transition had been too sudden and abrupt. This was the first time but once I had ever been in the gay world, and the recollections associated with that occasion were the most terrible of my life, as well as the most deeply graven on my memory. It is not strange, therefore, that I felt a painful depression of spirits, as well as a fearful embarrassment and an irresistible desire to escape from them all—even from Lorenzo himself, whose radiant look seemed so unable to comprehend my feelings that I could not turn to him for the sympathy that had heretofore inspired me with so much confidence in him. I looked around in vain for a glimpse of my compassionate sister; but she had been made no exception to the custom forbidding young girls to be present at nuptial festivals. My father, after escorting me to the door of my new home, had returned, not being able to overcome his repugnance to mingle in the world. Mario that evening was cold and sarcastic. I felt, therefore, alone and frightened, and quite overcome by emotion and fatigue. In addition to this, I had a severe headache from the weight of the coronet I wore, and, feeling nearly ready to faint, I went to one of the balconies, when, perceiving some steps leading to a vast loggia, I hastily descended, and almost ran to seat myself on a stone bench at the end of the terrace which overlooked a part of the garden more retired and obscure than the rest. There I felt I could breathe freely. Away from the crowd and the dazzling lights, the sound of the music faintly heard at a distance, and looking up with delight through the foliage at the tranquil heavens brilliant with stars, I took off the rich diadem that burdened my head, and felt relieved as the evening wind blew back my hair and cooled my brow. I leaned my head against my clasped hands, and did what had hitherto seemed impossible—I collected my thoughts a moment: I reflected and prayed.
I was married. My past life was at an end. A new and untried life had begun. What had it in reserve for me? What lay in the future, seemingly so brilliant, but in reality so dark? I could not tell, and at this moment I felt a vague terror rather than joyful anticipations. For the second time that evening Livia’s voice seemed to resound in my ears, and this time to echo the words my mother had written. I seemed to make them some promise I hardly comprehended myself, and I murmured the words: “Rather die!...”
Lorenzo’s voice recalled me to myself. His eyes, which had never lost sight of me, immediately perceived my absence, and he was now at my side. He was alarmed at first at the sight of my tears, my disordered hair, and the coronet lying on the stone bench beside me, but was reassured when I looked up with an appealing expression, and understood me without giving me the trouble to speak.
“Poor Ginevra!” he softly said in a caressing tone of protection which he so well knew how to assume. “Yes, you are right. This display is foolish, this crowd is odious, and has been too much for your strength. And how absurd,” he continued, “to hide this golden hair, and burden so young and fair a brow with heavy jewels! You did not need them, my Ginevra. You were certainly charming with the coronet on, but much more so as you are.... Ah! do not shake your head. You must allow me to say what I please now. You no longer have the right to impose silence on me, and I am no longer bound to obey you....”
So saying, he led me slowly back to the house, but, instead of returning to the rooms still crowded with company, he took me another way leading to a boudoir of a circular form, which was ornamented with particular care. The gilding, the mirrors, and the paintings did not seem to have suffered from the effects of time like the rest of the house. Nothing was wanting that could give this little room a comfortable and sumptuous aspect. The soft light of a lamp suspended from the ceiling was diffused throughout the room, and perfect silence reigned.
“This is your room, Ginevra,” said Lorenzo, carelessly throwing on one of the tables the circlet of diamonds he held in his hands. “Here you can quietly repose undisturbed by the crowd. There is absolutely nothing to disturb you here; the music itself can scarcely be heard. I will leave you, my Ginevra, to explain your absence and endure till the end of the evening the fearful task it pleases them to impose on us, but from which, at least, they must allow me to deliver you.”
XI.
The following day, as the breeze declined, I was standing beside Lorenzo on the deck of the ship that was bearing us away. I had left behind me all I had hitherto known and loved, and my eyes were yet tearful from my last farewells. I stood looking at the receding shores of Sicily, and the magnificent amphitheatre of Messina rising up before us, which presents so imposing an appearance when seen from the sea. We soon passed between the two famous whirlpools which often afford a comparison for those among us voyageurs over the sea of life who escape one only to fall into the other—a comparison figuratively very apt, though in reality it is quite doubtful if in our day any navigator ever falls either into Scylla or Charybdis.
When nothing more was to be seen, and night came on with its serene and starry heavens, revealing only the outline like a silvery vapor which marked the coast of Italy, I consented at last to leave the place where I had been standing motionless, and took a seat under an awning Lorenzo had had put up for me on deck. During the hour of calm repose I enjoyed there—my first and almost only hour of perfect happiness!—I was inspired with renewed hope and confidence while listening to the penetrating accents of the husband whose idol I was, as he depicted the future in language whose magic charm seemed to open a whole life of pleasure before me. After a few days’ rest at Naples, we were to take a delightful journey through Italy and France. We should behold all the places and objects I had so often seen in imagination, and whose names were so familiar to my memory. The interest I was capable of feeling in every subject, the curiosity so natural to the young, and the undeveloped sense of the beautiful which Lorenzo knew so well how to draw out and gratify, the taste for art with which he was gifted—all these chords, as yet nearly untried, seemed to vibrate within me as I listened to him. I was like a docile instrument from which a skilful hand knows how to draw forth sounds hitherto unsuspected. As in certain compositions of the great masters, the same musical idea is persistently reproduced in the most varied modulations, so on all subjects and on all occasions he found means to lead my heart back to the certain conviction of being loved—loved as much as in my most ambitious dreams I had ever imagined it would be sweet to be loved. At that moment the vow so “fearful” seemed easy to keep; and if Livia’s words had occurred to me then, they would doubtless have excited a smile!...
One false note, however, or at least a doubtful one, disturbed for an instant the harmony that seemed to reign between us.
Every one who has crossed, on a beautiful summer night, the sea that washes those enchanted shores, has doubtless experienced the undefinable impression of mingled delight and peace, enthusiasm and dreaminess, that sometimes comes over one while watching the stars becoming more intense in their brilliancy, and the luminous sea like a widespread mirror reflecting the immensity of the heavens. We grew silent, and after a time I rose and went to the side of the ship to contemplate more fully the beauty of the night, and there, with uplifted face and clasped hands, one of those inarticulate prayers rose from my heart in which the happiness of the present moment is confounded with admiration for the wonders of the divine creation, and the soul truly feels itself greater than the entire universe, because it alone has the power to render thanks to Him who not only created it but the whole world.
Lorenzo had followed me, and taken a seat on the bench that ran along the side of the ship, where, with his head leaning on one hand, and his back to the sea, he sat intently gazing at me. Filled with devout thoughts, I took his hand, and, pressing it in mine, I said: “O my dear husband! let us offer up one short prayer together—a prayer of thanksgiving to God....” His only reply was to seize both of my hands, and kiss them one after the other, and then to laugh gently, as one would at the prattling of a child!... A sudden sensation of pain darted through my heart like an arrow; and if it had not been so dark, he might have seen how pale I at once turned. But he did not notice or suspect my emotion, though his eyes were fastened on my face. “Beatrice in suso, ed io in lei guardava,”(138) he said in his most caressing tone. Then he continued: “Your eyes are my heaven, Ginevra. I need not raise them any higher.”
The sentiment to which I had appealed was one so utterly unknown to him that he unconsciously destroyed the emotion I felt.
“Ah! Lorenzo,” I exclaimed in my anguish, “Dante had a different meaning, or Beatrice would not have allowed him to use such language.” Then I stopped, obeying for the first time the instinctive feeling, so painful but right, that checks every word on a woman’s lips which, as has been so well expressed, would be profaned if not understood.
But this was rather instinctive than the result of thought with me. And though the ray of truth that time was to reveal more fully was vivid, it was only transient, ... and my momentary disappointment left no permanent impression at the time, though I did not forget it, and the recollection came back at a later day.
Coming from Sicily, the sight of the Bay of Naples does not, of course, inspire the same degree of wonder and admiration felt by those who come from the north; but it was with a feeling of delight my eyes wandered around, after passing Capri, and beheld at the right the wonderful chain of mountains at whose foot lies the charming shore of Sorrento; at the left Posilippo and all the pleasant villas that crown its height; in front the marked outline of Vesuvius standing out against the majestic Apennines in the distance; and, finally, Naples, smiling and lovely, seated on the inner shore of its beautiful bay! Whatever may be said as to the possibility of finding anywhere else in the world a prospect as magnificent as this, and even if it is true that there is one, it would be impossible to remember it when the view I have just described is presented to the eye for the first time.
While we were thus rapidly crossing the bay, and I was gazing on every side with delight, Lorenzo pointed out the Villa Reale, beyond which stood the house we were to live in, surrounded by a large garden—a charming habitation which combined all the attractions of the country and all the advantages of the city, and which, when I entered it for the first time, seemed like a beautiful frame to the sunny picture of my future life.
On this occasion we only remained a fortnight at Naples; but this was sufficient to make me appreciate my new home, and the prospect of returning to it an additional pleasure in the journey before us. It is, in fact, only pleasant to travel around the world when we can see in imagination a place awaiting us where some day we are to find rest and deposit the treasures we have accumulated.... Happily for me, I was then far from foreseeing those I should have to bring back when I returned to this spot!...
The day after our arrival Lorenzo took me for the first time into his studio, where I was filled with astonishment at the exquisite perfection of the productions I found there. I had often heard him called a great artist, and I now realized it was no idle flattery. But I involuntarily turned my eyes away from many of them, and stood gazing with admiration at a statue which was incontestably the finest in the gallery. It represented a young girl whose flowing drapery was marvellous in execution and grace. Her face, though perfectly beautiful, had an expression of grief and terror. A lamp stood at her feet, but the light had gone out.
Lorenzo’s pride as an artist had never been gratified with a more lively or more naïve admiration than mine.
“O Ginevra mia!” he exclaimed, “if I have hitherto been considered an artist, what shall I be when I have you for my model and my judge?”
He then told me that this beautiful statue represented a vestal, but it lacked a pendant which he had never been able to execute.
“But now,” he added, “I am sure of succeeding. I have long sought a model for my second vestal, and at last I have found one.”
He put my hair back with one hand, and, examining me attentively with a thoughtful air, continued, as if talking to himself: “Yes, ... these faultless features, the noble, dignified air of the head, the profound expression of the eyes, and the gravity of the mouth, constitute the very type I want. I could not find a better combination of all I need for my noble, mysterious vestal—the vigilant, faithful guardian of the sacred fire. I will begin it to‐morrow.”
“Not here, will you?” said I, glancing uneasily at a Bacchante as unlike as possible to the statue I had been admiring, and which I could hardly believe came from the same hand. Lorenzo looked at me with astonishment, and hardly seemed to comprehend me. He only regarded such things from an artistic point of view—perhaps a valid excuse, but it was the second time within two days his uncommon penetration had been at fault. He was really skilful at reading a passing thought that had not been expressed, and in penetrating somewhat below the surface, but he was incapable of looking deeply into a soul, or of following it when it rose to certain heights. When I clearly made known my wishes, however, he immediately assented to them, and took me into an adjoining room that was smaller.
“Just as you please,” he said. “You shall come here to sit to me, and I promise you, Ginevra, that there shall be nothing in this studio except what you are willing to look at.”
XII.
During my first stay at Naples we made no visits, and our doors were closed against every one. It was our honeymoon. Lorenzo chose to pass it entirely alone with me, and I was far from wishing it otherwise. Every one respected our solitude. Nevertheless, as soon as my arrival was known, Lorenzo’s friends and acquaintances, with the proverbial courtesy of Neapolitan society, sent me their cards as a sign of welcome. We looked them over together in the evening, and I thus learned the names of the acquaintances I should soon have to make. Lorenzo sometimes laughingly made comments on them which were more or less flattering and diffuse. One evening, however, he excited a feeling of surprise and uneasiness. I had, as usual, taken up the cards that had been left that day, when I saw him change color at the sight of one, which he snatched hastily from my hand, and tore into a thousand pieces. The extreme suddenness of the act checked the question I was on the point of asking. I remained silent, but the name I had read on the card was graven ineffaceably on my memory in consequence of the occurrence. I shall never forget it. Lorenzo quickly recovered himself at seeing my surprise, and told me it was the card of a foreign lady who had left Naples, and whose call I never need trouble myself to return. Then taking up the next card, he read aloud:
“Stella d’Oria, Contessa di San Giulio.” “Ah! as for her,” he exclaimed, “you will like her, I know, and I am willing you should become friends. I used to consider her a little too perfect to suit me, but I am of a different opinion when it is a question of my wife....”
The new statue was begun without any delay. I sat to him two or three hours every day, and in the evening we took long walks on the heights of Camaldoli, where we were most sure of not meeting any one. He enjoyed my admiration for the wonderful aspect of nature around us, and took pleasure in giving me a fresh surprise every day. And he was not yet tired of entertaining me with the varied events of his past life, and of witnessing the interest his conversation invariably excited in one who possessed an intelligent but unstored mind. Complete harmony seemed to reign between us, and yet more than once during the brief duration of these happy days it was suddenly disturbed by some discordant note which caused the vague uneasiness I have already spoken of that seemed like one of those momentary shooting pains that are the premonitions of some fixed, incurable disease. In both cases they are experienced a long time before the cause is understood, and the disease is often far advanced before the tendency of these symptoms is clear and unmistakable.
The terrible chastisement that followed the gratification of my vanity on that one occasion had inspired me, as I have said, with a kind of repugnance, if not terror, to have my face praised. This repugnance on the part of a young girl who had reason to be proud of her beauty was an originality which had perhaps given me additional attraction in Lorenzo’s eyes. Now I was his wife, I could not, of course, expect him to obey me and keep up the same reserve in our intercourse. And yet how many times, especially during those long sittings in the studio, I longed to impose silence on him!... How many times I felt a blush mount to my forehead when, after arranging my drapery and attitude, unbraiding and putting my long hair to suit his own fancy, and making me change my position a dozen times, he would fall into an ecstasy against which my whole soul revolted! Was this the passion full of mingled tenderness and respect that I should have been as proud to inspire as to experience? Was this really being loved as I had longed to be? I sometimes asked myself if his admiration for the hands, arms, face, and whole form of a statue was of a different nature. I did not yet go so far as to wonder if some other woman, merely endowed with greater beauty than I, could not easily rob me of a love that had so frail a foundation....
Fortunately, we left Naples when the fortnight was at an end, though the statue was not half finished. Our long tête‐à‐tête had not proved to be all I had anticipated. I hoped more from the journey, and this hope was not disappointed. Lorenzo was capable of being the best and most intelligent of guides everywhere, and such he was during our rapid journey through Italy, where we only remained long enough in each city to admire the monuments and museums, though we did not follow the beaten track of ordinary tourists. Lorenzo thought himself versed in everything relating to art and history, and yet he did not seem to realize that the church had also had its rôle in the history of his country. Therefore one side of Italian history escaped him entirely, and I do not know if, even at Rome, it had ever occurred to him there had been any change whatever of religion between the building of the Temple of Vesta and the time when the dome of Michael Angelo was raised in the air. Both are worthy of admiration in a different degree, and he regarded them with the same eye. But I did not then perceive all he left unexpressed. My thoughts and attention were absorbed by all there was around me to see. I was astonished to find myself in a world so fruitful in sources of interest that perhaps there is no one man on earth able to investigate them all equally. One alone, independent of the rest, might really suffice for the study of a whole life‐time.
At length we arrived at Paris. Lorenzo, of course, had frequently made long visits there, and had a host of friends and acquaintances there as well as everywhere else. A few days after our arrival, I attended a large ball for the first time since my marriage, and the second in my life. I heard my name murmured on every side. I was surrounded with homage and overwhelmed with compliments. I was afterwards informed I had been the object of universal admiration; that nothing was talked of but the beauty of the Duchessa di Valenzano and her diamonds; and that a journal accustomed to give an account of the gayeties of the season had devoted a long paragraph to the description of my dress and person.
All this was reported to us by a young cousin of Lorenzo’s whose name, in reality, was Landolfo Landini, though his friends usually called him Lando Landi. He had lived in Paris several years, and considered himself almost a Frenchman. He had acquired the stamp of those people who have no aim in life—as easily imitated as they are unworthy of being so—and had wasted the natural cleverness and good‐nature which redeemed some of his faults. He prided himself particularly on using the language of polite society, and was under the illusion that he completely disguised his nationality. When he fell in with a fellow‐countryman, however, he allowed his natural disposition to reassert itself, and indulged in a flow of language that might have been amusing to some, but to me was frivolous and tiresome, and, after listening to the account of my grand success the previous evening with a coolness that seemed to astonish him, I fell into a reverie that had more than one cause. Why had Lorenzo watched me so attentively all the evening before? It was the first time we had appeared in society together, and he was anxious I should create a sensation. He himself had carefully selected the dress I was to wear, and I was pleased with the admiration with which he regarded me. On this point I had no hesitation: I was anxious to please him, but not to please; and as to the gay world into which he now introduced me, I entered it with the pleasure and curiosity of a child, and the lively interest inspired by everything that is new; but I had become strangely insensible to the pleasure of being admired, or even the gratification that springs from vanity.
In alluding once more to this fact, I will add that it was the effect of an exceptional grace; for at no remote period of my youth had my mother detected the germ of this poisonous plant which was to shed so baleful an influence over the simplicity and uprightness of my nature.
This plant had been swept away in a single tempestuous night, and a divine hand had plucked out almost its last root. Was this peculiar grace (the forerunner of a much greater one I was to receive at a later day) granted me in answer to the prayer of my dying mother? Or was it to the sincere repentance that had so overwhelmed my soul? These things are among the mysteries of divine mercy beyond one’s power to fathom. But it is certain I was thus preserved from one of the greatest dangers that await most ladies in the fashionable world. I was very far from being invulnerable on all points, as the future showed only too plainly; but I was on this.
Nevertheless, I had not been put to so decided a proof before. Never had I seen or imagined so brilliant a scene. I was delighted and charmed, and unhesitatingly gave myself up to the enjoyment of the evening; but the incense lavished on me added nothing to my pleasure. It only produced a certain timidity that lessened my ease and greatly diminished my enjoyment. I sincerely think if I had been less beautiful or more simply dressed—in a word, less admired—I should have been happier and much more at my ease.
In my embarrassment I was glad to find Lorenzo always near me, and the more so because I had no idea it was not absolutely the custom. But I noticed with some surprise that he observed every movement I made with a strange attention, and listened to every word I uttered when addressed. Perhaps others did not perceive this, but I understood his quick, observant glance and the expressive features he knew so well how to control, and I knew also the art with which he could seem occupied with what was going on at one end of a room, while his whole attention was absorbed in what was said at the other. In short, I felt he had not lost sight of me a single instant the whole evening, and that not one of my words had escaped him. I wondered if his affection for me was the sole cause of this constantly‐marked solicitude. This was the primary cause of my uneasiness. Another arose from the conversation that was actually going on in my presence, which I listened to with pain, and as a passive witness; for I could take no part in it.
How could Lorenzo take any pleasure in the trivial details, the unmeaning gossip, and the doubtful jests of Landolfo Landini?... How could he question him, reply to what he said, and encourage him to continue? And yet Lorenzo was a very different person from his cousin. He was very far from leading an aimless life. He had undertaken long, dangerous journeys that had entailed great exertion and incredible fatigue, in order to increase his extensive and varied knowledge. He was capable of continued application. Talents like his could only be acquired by profound study of a hundred different subjects, as well as by long, serious, persevering practice in the art in which he had become such a proficient. One can hardly conceive of frivolity in an artist, and yet this anomaly exists. I have since remarked it in others, as I observed it now in Lorenzo—a proof, doubtless, that to soar above the every‐day world, and keep at such heights, talent and genius, no more than the soul, should be separated from God!
The morning at length passed away, and about four o’clock we ordered the calèche for a long drive. The first hour was devoted to making numerous purchases. Lando Landi escorted us. Perfect familiarity with the shops of Paris was one of his specialties. Above all, he knew where to find those curiosities that are almost objects of art, and which have the gift, so precious to those who sell them, of inducing people who make the first purchase to continue indefinitely; for each new object of that class acquires additional value in the eyes of a connoisseur, and in such matters, more than any other, l’appétit vient en mangeant.(139)
We remained more than an hour in the first shop we stopped at. Lorenzo was in his element. He was a genuine connoisseur in everything. He examined bronzes, porcelains, furniture of every epoch, carved wood from all countries, and old tapestry, with a sure and experienced eye, and the merchant, seeing whom he had to deal with, brought out of his secret recesses treasures hidden from the vulgar, and multiplied temptations Lorenzo seemed very little inclined to resist. As for me, I took a seat beside the counter, and looked with indifference at the various objects that were spread out before me, but of which I was quite unable to perceive the value, which was somewhat conventional. I was a little astonished at the number and value of Lorenzo’s purchases, but, on the whole, the business did not interest me much, and I felt glad when it was at an end.
“Bravo! Lorenzo,” said Lando as soon as we re‐entered the carriage. “You don’t do things half way. That is the way I like to see other people spend their money. It consoles me for not having any myself to throw out of the window.”
“I have got to entirely refurnish my palace in Sicily,” said Lorenzo, “as well as to decorate my house in Naples, which is quite unworthy of her who is to live in it.”
“You are jesting, Lorenzo,” said I. “You know very well I think nothing is lacking.”
“That is the consequence of your extreme youth, my dear cousin,” said Lando. “Wait a while, and you will find out how much becomes indispensable to one who has lived in Paris.”
“At all events,” said Lorenzo, “now or never is the time for me to gratify my fancy. I am just going to housekeeping. I have barely spent a third of my present fortune, and am perfectly confident as to that I shall have; for everybody knows that a cause undertaken by Fabrizio dei Monti is a cause gained.”
At that instant a beautiful lady in a conspicuous dress passed us in an elegant calèche, and the conversation suddenly took a different turn. Lorenzo silently questioned his cousin with a look, and Lando began to give him in a low tone some information which an instinctive repugnance prevented me from listening to....
I began (perhaps unjustly) to conceive a strong dislike to this Cousin Landolfo, and I imagine he would have been very much astonished had he guessed with what eye I now looked at his face, generally considered so handsome. It was of a type often admired out of Italy, because somewhat different from that foreigners are accustomed to, who have no idea to what a degree it is common in that country. A dark complexion, rather handsome eyes, fine teeth, and curly black hair, formed in my eyes a most unpleasing combination, and, without knowing a word they were saying, I felt positively certain he had never in his life uttered a syllable I should think worth listening to.
At length we left the boulevards, drove through the Champs Elysées, and at last found ourselves in the shade of the Bois de Boulogne. While my two companions were conversing together in a low tone, I abandoned myself to the pleasure of being in a cool place where I could breathe more freely; for, unaccustomed to going out during the middle of the day in summer, the heat had seemed overpowering. Apart from this, there was nothing here to strike a person accustomed to the loveliest scenery in the world. Unused as I was to Parisian life, the charm of which often produces an impression that effaces all others, the things I saw had no other prestige in my eyes than what they were in themselves. Viewed in this light, the museums, churches, and palaces seemed less grand and magnificent than those we had seen before, and the promenades less picturesque and less varied. I missed particularly the lovely vistas which everywhere in Italy form the background of the picture, and attract the eye, and elevate the mind to something higher than the mere treasures of history and art that have accumulated in all old Italian cities.
And yet it cannot be denied that Paris has the power of making itself preferred to any other place in the world. It speaks a different language to every individual, and is comprehended by all. It is filled with treasures of every kind, and has wherewithal to gratify every taste indiscriminately, from that which is evil in its vilest form to an excess of goodness amounting to sublimity; from the most refined extravagance of fashion to the extreme renunciation of charity; and from pleasure in its most dangerous aspect to piety in its most perfect manifestations. It flatters vanity and vice more than would be dared anywhere else, and yet it prides itself on being able to produce examples of goodness, devotedness, and humility that are almost unparalleled. In a word, every one, for a different reason, feels more at home there than anywhere else in the world. He who once learns to love Paris finds it difficult to like any other city as well; and he who has lived there finds it hard to resign himself to live in any other place. It is the one city on earth that has been able to vie with Rome in the honor of being the home of all nations....
The Rock Of Rest.
S. MATTHEW xvi. 18.
Tossed on many a wave of doctrine, Restless, weary, ill at ease With beliefs that quiet others, But as vague to me as these; I have done with idly chasing Phantom lights, that rise and fall; Drift no more with drifting doctrines— Grown indifferent to them all!
Shall I long regret the visions Of a rest so inly wooed? Shall I long go on deploring Creeds, that but opinions proved? Quenched be every weak emotion! Bring my future weal or woe, Weal nor woe shall blight or bless me— Faith, nor creed, shall move me now!
Murmuring thus, there came a whisper From the Friend who knew me best: “Seek the rock on which I builded: On that rock alone is rest.” Suddenly, with light supernal, Faith, the higher reason, came, And my foot touched base eternal— Benedictions on his name!
R. S. W.
BRUSSELS, BELGIUM.
Anglican Orders. II.
The Validity Of The Edwardine Rite.
Before entering upon the theology of the question, we must meet an initial objection of Anglicans to our attempting to criticise the Edwardine rite. They insist that the question has been settled long ago, and in their favor, by no less an authority than the Holy See and its legate, Cardinal Pole. The cardinal, they say, in accordance with instructions from Rome, admitted all the schismatical bishops and clergy, who were not irreconcilables, in the orders they had received in schism, whether according to the Pontifical or according to the Edwardine rite. Great stress has been laid upon this by Anglican controversialists from Bramhall down to Mr. Haddan; and certainly, if it be a true statement of the case, the value of the objection can scarcely be overrated. Its truth must be decided by an appeal to the Papal briefs and to the official acts of the legate.
The bull of March 8, 1553‐4, granting full legatine faculties to Pole, authorizes him to deal with two classes of the bishops and clergy—viz., of the clergy, those who have not received orders at all, and those who have received them ill; that is to say, orders null and orders irregular (ordines quos nunquam, aut male susceperunt). The bishops, in like manner, who have received cathedral churches from Henry or Edward are divided into those on whom “the gift of consecration has been heretofore conferred,” and “those on whom it is not yet conferred” (munere consecrationis eis hactenus impenso vel si illud eis nondum impensum exstiterit). The cases in which the ordination or consecration had been validly though irregularly conferred are also described as “received from heretical or schismatical bishops, or in other respects unduly” (quod iis ab episcopis hæreticis et schismaticis aut alias minus rite et non servatâ formâ ecclesiæ consuetâ impensum fuit). By these last words power is given “to consider cases in which the ancient form of the sacrament had not been observed, and, if the form used was sufficient for validity, to admit it as such, and to admit a person ordained in such a manner to exercise the orders so received.”
Canon Estcourt shows that the “minus rite” cannot be intended to designate, as Mr. Haddan and others have maintained, the Edwardine orders. He appeals to the dispensations granted to no less than eight bishops, all ordained according to the Pontifical in Henry VIII.’s time, wherein their orders are referred to as received “ab episcopis hæreticis et schismaticis aut alias minus rite.”
In the faculties granted by Pole to his bishops for the absolution and rehabilitation of priests, he carefully explains their limitation to cases in which “the form and intention of the church have been preserved.” Thus it is clear “that though the cardinal had power to recognize ordinations in which some departure had been made from the accustomed form, yet that, on examination, he found no other form in use which could be admitted by the church as valid.” In the same faculties he permits the ordination, if they are otherwise fit, of those whose orders are “null.” He describes them as persons holding benefices without being ordained.
In 1554, Bonner, Bishop of Bath and Wells, gave a commission to his vicar‐ general “to deal with married laics who, in pretence and under color of priestly orders, had rashly and unlawfully mingled themselves in ecclesiastical rights, and had obtained de facto parochial churches with cure of souls and ecclesiastical dignities, against the sacred sanctions of the canons and ecclesiastical rights, and to deprive and remove them from the said churches and dignities.” It is impossible to conjecture who else these unordained beneficiaries can be, if they are not the Edwardine clergy.
Anglicans, on the other hand, have made a great deal of a certain testimonial letter granted by Bonner to Scory, which speaks of the latter’s sin and repentance, and of his subsequent rehabilitation by Bonner, and restoration to the public exercise of the ecclesiastical ministry within the diocese of London. As Scory is spoken of as “our confrère, lately Bishop of Chichester,” it is urged that the ministry to the exercise of which he was restored must have been that of a bishop. Canon Estcourt, after pointing out certain grounds for suspecting the authenticity of this letter, remarks that Bonner’s faculties only extended to the case of priests, “so that Scory must have acknowledged the nullity of his consecration, in order to enable Bonner to deal with him at all”; and, after all, “the letter does no more than enable him to celebrate Mass in churches within the diocese of London”—in fact, to exercise that office, and that office only, which he had received “servatâ formâ et intentione ecclesiæ.” So much for the Holy See’s approval of the Edwardine orders.
Anglicans have tried to make out a charge of inconsistency against the Holy See, on the ground that it did not recognize the episcopate of Ridley, Latimer, and Ferrer—who were all three supposed to have been consecrated according to the Roman Pontifical—but degraded them from the priesthood and inferior orders only. Canon Estcourt admits that Ferrer was treated merely as a priest, but he shows that his consecration had been a medley rite, in which the order of the Pontifical was not followed. As to Latimer, he remarks that there is no pretence for saying that he was not degraded from the episcopate; and that, with regard to Ridley, the great weight of authority makes for his having been degraded from the episcopate. Cardinal Pole, in his commission, ordered that both Ridley and Latimer should be degraded “from their promotion and dignity of bishops, priests, and all other ecclesiastical orders.” The Bishop of Lincoln, in his exhortation to Ridley, says: “You were made a bishop according to our laws.” Heylin says that they were both degraded from the episcopate. The only authority for the contrary opinion is Foxe, who makes the acting commissioner Brookes, Bishop of Gloucester, conclude an address to Ridley thus: “We take you for no bishop, and therefore we will the sooner have done with you.” Foxe then proceeds to describe the actual ceremony as a degradation from the priesthood. Canon Estcourt’s reviewer in the Dublin Review of July, 1873, maintains that Foxe was right. The reviewer thinks that Ridley and Latimer were not degraded from the episcopate, because the status episcopalis was not recognized in those who, though validly consecrated, had not received the Papal confirmation. Upon this we remark, 1st, that the ceremonies of degradation came into use when it was a very common opinion in the church that degradation destroyed the potestas ordinis. 2. That the form of degradation, in so many words, expresses the taking away the potestas ordinis—“amovemus a te,” “tollemus tibi,” “potestatem offerendi,” “potestatem consecrandi”—and this in contradistinction to another form of perpetual suspension—“ab executione potestatis.” The ceremony aims at effecting the destruction of orders, so far as this is possible. It may be called a “destruction of orders,” in the same sense that mortal sin is called the crucifixion of Christ anew. Indeed, in one place, the clause, “quantum in nobis est,” is introduced. 3. Degradation does not depend upon previous confirmation; for Innocent II. (1139) thus deals with those who had been consecrated bishops by the antipope Peter Leo, who therefore assuredly had never been confirmed or acknowledged in any way by the pope. After exclaiming, “Quoscunque exaltaverat degradamus,” etc., etc., “he violently wrested their pastoral staffs from their hands, and ignominiously tore from their shoulders the pontifical palls in which their high dignity resides. Their rings, too, which express their espousals with the church, showing them no mercy, he drew off.”(140) If the Bishop of Gloucester really acted as Foxe describes, he did so on his own responsibility, and in the teeth of ecclesiastical precedent.
Perhaps the most important and interesting portion of Canon Estcourt’s book is that in which he discusses the theological value of the Edwardine form. It is not merely of controversial importance, but is really calculated to throw light upon the theology of orders, which, as a Catholic contemporary well observes, is still in course of formation.
Canon Estcourt, following Benedict XIV., De Syn. Dioc., lib. viii. cap. 10, maintains, as the more probable opinion, 1, that, in the case of the priesthood, the second imposition of hands, with the prayer for the infusion “of the virtue of the sacerdotal grace,” is all that is really necessary for validity; although, in practice, we of the West must ordain again sub conditione, if the tradition of the instruments has been omitted. 2. That in the case of priests, the third imposition of hands, with the words, “Receive the Holy Ghost; whose sins thou dost remit, they are remitted unto them; and whose sins thou retainest, they are retained,” is not essential, and, if omitted, is to be supplied without repeating the rest. 3. That as to the episcopate, the “Accipe Spiritum Sanctum,” with the imposition of hands, is all that is essential; and, finally, he allows, in deference to the Holy Office (vide infra), that the form—i.e., the prayer immediately accompanying the imposition of hands—need not express the specific character or work of the order conferred, as, for instance, the Holy Sacrifice in the ordination of a priest.
Consistently with these principles, Canon Estcourt admits that, so far as words go, “Receive the Holy Ghost” is a sufficient form both for the episcopate and the priesthood. As regards the episcopate, this has been long a common opinion. As regards the priesthood, the Sacred Congregation of the Inquisition, in 1704, decided that certain Abyssinians had been validly ordained priests by imposition of hands and the words, “Accipe Spiritum Sanctum.” From this it follows that the Anglican forms for ordaining priests and bishops are, so far as words go, sufficient. They are as follows, from 1549 to 1662, for the priesthood: “Receive the Holy Ghost; whose sins thou dost forgive, they are forgiven; and whose sins thou dost retain, they are retained; and be thou a faithful dispenser of the word of God and of his holy sacraments, in the name of the Father, etc.” For the episcopate: “Take the Holy Ghost, and remember that thou stir up the grace of God which is in thee by imposition of hands; for God hath not given us the spirit of fear, but of power and love and soberness.” In 1662, certain changes were introduced by the High Church party. In the form for the priesthood, after the words “Holy Ghost” was added, “for the office and work of a priest in the church of God, now committed unto thee by the imposition of our hands.” For the form of the episcopate was substituted, “Receive the Holy Ghost for the office and work of a bishop in the church of God, now committed unto thee by the imposition of our hands, in the name of the Father, etc.”
Of course the value of Anglican orders “secundum formam” must depend upon the value of the form as it originally stood. The subsequent alterations are important as marking, 1st, the dissatisfaction of the High Church party with the forms upon which their orders depended; 2d, the low theological standard which satisfied them, after all.
So far as the material words of the Edwardine forms go, they are sufficient—i.e., they are words capable of being used in a sense in which they would be sufficient—but the words are ambiguous. The form of ordination, although it need not express, must signify or mean, the essential idea of the order. Where it does not carry its meaning on the face of it, we must look for it in the rite and liturgy of which it forms a part. This is not an appeal to the mere subjective intention of the minister, but to the objective meaning of the words. Upon this principle we must, in order to get at the value of the Anglican forms, discover, 1st, by an examination of the various admittedly valid rites of ordination, what such words should mean; 2d, by an examination of the Anglican rite, what these words, in the position which they occupy in that rite, do or do not mean.
Canon Estcourt examines the numerous rites which the Roman Church acknowledges to be valid, whether fallen out of use, and only to be found in the pages of ancient sacramentaries, or still living and operative, in East or West, among Catholics or among those who have separated from Catholic unity. He finds three qualities in which they all unite: 1st, a recognition of the divine vocation or election of the ordained; 2d, a recognition of the “virtus sacramentalis” of orders, as something quite distinct from and beyond the grace which is also given to the ordained to acquit himself worthily in the duties of his calling; 3d, a constant recognition of, and appeal to, the main scope and duty of orders—the offering of the Holy Sacrifice.
Canon Estcourt next proceeds to examine the Anglican liturgy and ordinal with special reference to these three points: 1. The divine election. 2. The sacramental virtue. 3. The Holy Sacrifice. And he finds that both the liturgy and the ordinal are the result of a deliberate manipulation of the ancient Catholic ritual previously in use, in order to the exclusion of these three points, which contain the essential idea of holy orders.
Ordination in the Anglical ritual no longer appeals to a divine election, of which it is the expression and the fulfilment. It is merely the public expression of the approval of the authorities of church and state. For the “virtus sacramentalis” it has substituted a mere grâce d’état. From this it only naturally follows that episcopal ordination cannot be of indispensable necessity, or more than a matter of regulation and propriety which, in an emergency, may be abrogated. This is the express teaching of many of the early Anglican reformers. Even when engaged in defending their episcopal succession, they are careful to say that they do not regard it as indispensable. Hooker, who is in many respects so much more orthodox than his predecessors and contemporaries, allows “that there may be sometimes very just and sufficient reason to allow ordination to be made without a bishop.”
Canon Estcourt prints considerable portions of the Anglican ordinal and liturgy in parallel columns, with the corresponding text of the Sarum and Exeter pontificals and missals. We see with what an unerring sacrilegious instinct everything bearing upon the Holy Sacrifice, and even upon the Real Presence, is either cut out or perverted.
As regards the Second Book of 1552, it is clear that it was the work of sacramentarians who disbelieved in the Real Presence in any sense, and was undertaken for the express purpose of purging the ritual of what previous handling had still allowed it to retain of the impress of that Presence. Mr. Cardwell, in his comparison of the “Two Books of Edward VI.,” pref. xxvii., admits that Cox and Taylor, who were probably the working members of the commission, appear to have looked upon the oblation of the Eucharist as consisting merely of “prayer, thanksgiving, and the remembrance of our Saviour’s passion.” Of Cranmer, the most influential member of the commission, we are told that “about a year after the publication of King Edward’s First Book, Archbishop Cranmer abandoned his belief in the Real Presence—a change which seems to have been very acceptable to the young king and his favorites.”(141) In the revision of 1662, an apparent attempt was made to attain to the expression of a higher doctrine, both as regards orders and the Holy Eucharist; but even if the expressions introduced were in themselves adequate, as Canon Estcourt fairly shows they were not, of what avail could have been so tardy a restoration? But if we examine these restorations and emendations, we can hardly avoid coming to the conclusion that they were not really dictated by any conception of, or aspiration after, a higher doctrine, but were the genuine fruits of a conservative reaction fired by controversial pique. The First Book substituted for the Catholic faith a hazy Lutheranism; the Second Book for this again a hazy sacramentarianism; and the revision of 1662, a hazy compound of the two, with the addition of a Catholic phrase or so in order to support claims to a wider sweep of church authority. Thus the revisers of 1662 introduced the words “priest” and “bishop” into the ordination form, whilst doing absolutely nothing toward restoring the idea of sacrifice to the liturgy.
But, it may be urged, there is one portion of the Anglican form for making priests which expresses the Catholic doctrine of priestly virtue—the power of forgiving sins. Unfortunately for Anglicans, whatever force may lie in this expression—and all precedents are against its being regarded as a sufficient form—is neutralized by the Lutheran new form of absolution which had been introduced in addition to the two Catholic forms. At best, one is left in doubt whether the mighty words have not shrivelled into a Lutheran sense, in which sins are not forgiven, but the forgiveness of sin is merely declared.
It is impossible to do justice in a review to the exhaustive completeness of Canon Estcourt’s treatment of this portion of his subject. His conspectus of the Catholic missals and the different editions of the Book of Common Prayer in parallel columns enables us, as it were, to detect the pulsations of each several heresy, and to appreciate its share in what may be called the passion of the Catholic liturgy in England. A quotation from each of his parallels may serve as examples of, 1st, the action of the Lutheran First Book upon the missal; 2d, the Zuinglian Second Book upon the First Book; 3d, the compromise of 1662.
The Sarum Missal.
We thy servants, and likewise thy holy people, do offer to thy excellent Majesty, of thy gifts and bounties, a pure victim, a holy victim, the holy bread of eternal life, and the chalice of everlasting salvation.
The Book Of Common Prayer, 1549.
We, thy humble servants, do celebrate and make here before thy divine Majesty, with these thy holy gifts, the memorial which thy Son hath willed us to make.
1549.
He hath left us in those holy mysteries, as a public pledge of his love, and a continual remembrance of the same, his own blessed body and precious blood for us to feed upon spiritually, to our great and endless comfort.
1552, Untouched In 1662.
He hath instituted and ordained holy mysteries, as pledges of his love, and for a continual remembrance of his death, to our great and endless comfort.
“The body of our Lord Jesus Christ [1549: which was given for thee] preserve thy body and thy soul unto everlasting life.”
1552.
“Take and eat this in remembrance that Christ died for thee, and feed on him in thy heart with thanksgiving.”
(This form was substituted for that of 1549, in 1552, and was appended to it in 1662.)
Canon Estcourt’s argument against the validity of Anglican orders is no argument from lack of sufficient intention on the part of Anglicans. Neither do we think that such an argument could be maintained, in accordance with the commonly‐accepted principles of theology. If it is a sufficient intention for valid baptism to intend to administer the form of Christian initiation, it is sufficient, in the case of orders, to intend to administer the form of Christian ordination, although the ceremony in either case may be regarded as merely an external form without any intrinsic value. It is only as a witness to the sense of the form that the intention of Anglicans is brought into court; and it is not the intention with which they ordain at which we demur, but the intention with which they have altered the ordination service and liturgy—i.e., the form of ordination and its context. Had these alterations been merely the result of an antiquarian leaning towards a more primitive though less perfect utterance of the same truth, or of a puritanic craving after simplicity, the irreverence would have been of the extremest kind, but still there would have been no grounds for disputing the orthodox sense, and so the validity of the form. But, on the contrary, the very object of the alterations, as Canon Estcourt has shown, was the elimination of the orthodox doctrines of priesthood and sacrifice, and therefore of the significance upon which the validity of the form depends.
The doubts which should beset the minds of honest Anglicans on the subject of their orders, if they have the least scruple as to the orthodoxy of their position, are simply overwhelming. If they turn to the early church, they find that there are at least as many precedents and authorities for regarding as null the ordinations of heretics and schismatics as for accepting them. Morinus’ opinion is that such ordinations are invalid, except where the church has thought fit to dispense with the impediment; and Morinus is a genuine student of antiquity, and no mere controversialist. True it is Anglicans may appeal to what is undeniably the more common doctrine in the Roman Church—viz., that such ordinations are valid—but then she unflinchingly condemns Anglicans, whereas she has never condemned Morinus. It is nothing to the purpose to say that the practice of the church prevents her using Morinus’ opinion against Anglicans—which is begging the question against Morinus; the point is, Can Anglicans escape using it against themselves? Again, when they direct their attention to the special facts of their own history, their view is to the last degree discouraging. Their latest antagonist, Canon Estcourt, has notoriously given up to them every point to which they could make the remotest claim, and has broken and thrown away every weapon to which the least exception could be taken; and yet it has come to this: that their only title to orders is a succession probably broken by the non‐ consecration of Barlow, and an ambiguous form which, when read in the light of their mutilated ordinal and liturgy, is unlike any that has been accepted as even probably adequate either by East or West.
Even if Anglicans could find their identical form, as far as words go, in approved ordinals, they could not argue from this the sufficiency of their own form. Mutilation and involution, although they contract within the same span, can never be identical. You might as well pretend that there is no difference between a stamen from which you have plucked the leaves and an undeveloped bud.
It is true that originally different portions of the church were allowed, in regard to orders, to give expression to the same truth in various forms with various degrees of explicitness; but this can afford no precedent to an individual church for mutilating a common form in order to deny a common truth.
The Abyssinian Decision.
We cannot conclude our review without noticing an important criticism made upon our author in the shape of a letter to the Month, November‐ December, 1873, by the Rev. F. Jones, S.J. F. Jones, whilst expressing his thorough concurrence with Canon Estcourt in every other particular, thinks that he has attached an undue force to the decision of the holy office upon Abyssinian orders.
Canon Estcourt has understood the Sacred Congregation of the Inquisition, in their decree in 1704, to have ruled that the form, “Accipe Spiritum Sanctum,” understood in the sense of the Abyssinian liturgical books, is valid for the priesthood, although, in the particular case, no further expression is given to this sense, at least no expression within the limits of the form strictly so called—i.e., the verbal formula synchronous with the matter. The decree which he so understands is as follows:
Question: “The ordainer passed hurriedly along a line of deacons, laying his hands upon the head of each, and saying, ‘Accipe Spiritum Sanctum’; are they validly ordained in tal modo e forma, and admissible to the exercise of their orders?” Answer: “The ordination of a priest with the imposition of hands and utterance of the form as in the question is undoubtedly valid.”
F. Jones, whilst allowing that Canon Estcourt’s interpretation is the natural one according to ordinary canons of criticism, insists that the decree, “when interpreted in the light of certain rules which arise out of what is called the stylus curiæ,” asserts, indeed, the sufficiency of the imposition of hands as matter, when used with the form, but does not define the sufficiency of the particular form, “Accipe Spiritum Sanctum.”
The rules in question are as follows: 1. The meaning of the answer depends upon the meaning of the dubium. 2. Nothing but what is directly stated is decided. 3. “If there is anything in the wording of a decision which appears inconsistent with the teaching of an approved body of theologians—such teaching as amounts to a true theological probability—the decision is to be interpreted so as to leave such teaching intact, unless the decision should itself show that it intended to condemn that teaching, and to take away that probability.” 4. Such decisions are formed on the presumption that every point except the one in question is correct, on the maxim, “Standum est pro valore actûs.” 5. When the validity of an ordination is the subject‐matter of a decision, it must be assumed that the decision has been made after an inspection of the ordinal. 6. “It is hardly safe to allege the authority of a decision (I speak merely of a curial decision), particularly when the details of the case are but imperfectly known to us, without having ascertained the sense in which, after its promulgation, it was understood by those who were most competent to measure its importance.” We shall examine these rules when we come to consider the worth of F. Jones’ application of them to the case in hand. But first it will be well to see what effect the elimination of the Abyssinian decision would have upon Canon Estcourt’s controversial position.
Pp. 158‐163. Canon Estcourt considers various objections made by Catholic controversialists to the Anglican form of the priesthood. He is considering the question of the form in its strict sense—viz., that portion of the ordination formulary which is synchronous with the matter, whether this last consist in the tradition of the instruments or in the imposition of hands. One objection urged by Lequien, amongst others, is grounded upon the very common doctrine that the form of priestly ordination must express the principal effect of the sacrament of order by making mention of the priesthood in relation to the sacrifice, which is its principal object. Now, if, as F. Jones suggests was the case, the unmutilated Coptic rite was in use in Abyssinia up to 1704, and the examples given by Ludolf and Monsignor Beb are merely imperfect copies; and if no decision as to the form was given in 1704, then, so far as anything has been shown to the contrary, Lequien’s objection holds good that no approved form for the priesthood fails to make an appeal to the Holy Sacrifice.
And now as regards F. Jones’ rules for interpreting the “stylus curiæ,” and their application to the Abyssinian decision. We have no criticism to make upon Rules 1 and 2. They are sufficiently obvious even to a non‐ expert. Rule 3 cannot, we think, be admitted without qualification. It is no doubt an important principle that the presumption is in favor of an interpretation which leaves intact a probable opinion, supposing that this is not the formal subject of the decision; but we must not do violence to the natural sense of words, and it is quite possible that such a decision might completely evacuate the probability of an opinion of which it took no direct cognizance whatever. The Council of Florence did not directly intend to condemn the opinion requiring as absolutely necessary the tradition of the instruments, yet effectively it has done so. As to Rule 4, “Standum est pro valore actûs,” its application to the case before us must depend upon whether the course indicated is equivalent to the introduction of a new “actus.” To ask, as the dubium does, concerning the validity of “tal modo e forma,” implies that this is given in its integrity. In the Abyssinian case, it was a question whether certain persons were to be allowed to say Mass and perform other priestly functions, and the Sacred Congregation allowed them. As to Rule 5, no doubt an inspection of the ordinals is to be presumed; but here the very contention of the questioner is that the ordinal had not been followed. Moreover, there was ample evidence, in the sacred books quoted by Ludolf and Monsignor Beb, accessible to the Sacred Congregation, and which, according to F. Jones’ principle, we may assume it had before it, that in Abyssinian hands the Coptic ritual had been seriously tampered with. The translation from the Abyssinian, as given by the above‐named writers, is certainly not an imperfect version of the Coptic, but a deliberate compilation from the Coptic form and that of the apostolic constitutions, which would hardly have been made except for ritual purposes.
If we may accept the earliest and most precise evidence as to actual practice in Abyssinia—that of the missionary Francis Alvarez (1520), the one prayer used by the Abuna, with the imposition of hands, is not the form “Respice,” but, in the Coptic tongue, the prayer “Divina gratia quæ infirma sanat.”(142) But these words, as Canon Estcourt points out, p. 181, “in the Coptic and Jacobite rites, are said by the archdeacon or one of the assisting bishops. In the Nestorian and ancient Greek, they are said by the bishop without imposing his hands; and only in the modern Greek, the Maronite, and the Armenian are they united with the imposition of hands.” This looks as if the Abyssinian ritual was a complete medley.
This view is borne out by F. Godigno, S.J. (De Abyssin. Rebus, p. 224), who tells us that the Jesuit Patriarch of Abyssinia, Oviedo, as long as he lived in Æthiopia, always doubted very much, and with good reason, if the Abyssinian priests had been duly and lawfully ordained, inasmuch as the forms of consecration used by the Abuna were so uncertain that they seemed to have been corrupted. On which account, in those matters which belong to orders, and which require in the minister a real character, he never could persuade himself to use their offices, lest haply the sacraments should be rendered void.
F. Jones thinks that Assemani would certainly have noticed these corruptions, had they existed, in his Controversia Coptica, composed for the information of Propaganda in 1731. But Assemani was not called upon to consider the corruptions of Abyssinia; for, as he tells us in his preface, the occasion of his writing was the conversion of two Egyptian monks of the Alexandrian Church, of whose reordination there was question.
As to Rule 6, obviously nothing can be more important than the estimate of a decision expressed by contemporary theologians; but it is very easy to misinterpret their silence. In his defence of the Coptic rite, urges F. Jones, Assemani ought to have quoted the authorization of a form which à fortiori authorized the Coptic. We reply that Assemani had no lack of far more obvious and splendid instances of the recognition of the Coptic rite; that he had no need of such indirect support. The examination of the Abyssinian monk Tecla Maria, in 1594, sufficiently shows that it was impossible to judge of Abyssinian ordinations by the Coptic rite. Assemani himself acknowledges, p. 227, that either Tecla Maria’s memory failed him, or his ordainers must have been “poco pratici del rito Coptico o l’avessero in qualche parte alterato.” F. Godigno (l. c.) says that the reason of Tecla Maria’s reordination was the corruption of the rite. On the other hand, it is clearly a great exaggeration to say that the missionaries made nothing of Abyssinian orders, and that the motive of reordination was the non‐tradition of the instruments. Of John Bermudes, the first of the Jesuit patriarchs, Ludolf (pars. ii. p. 473) tells us that he (Bermudes) has recorded in so many words, that he received all the sacred orders, including the episcopate, with right of succession to the patriarchate, from the Abuna Mark, under condition that the pope would confirm it, and that the pope confirmed and ratified all Mark’s acts. Again, the Portuguese De Francia, one of the negotiators for the Jesuits, tells the Abyssinian king that he had been taught that, if he is in danger of death, and cannot get a Catholic priest, he must ask the Abyssinians for communion.(143)
Certainly, this Abyssinian decision has not as yet made much mark in theology. Canon Estcourt is able to mention one work in which it occurs—a certain edition of the theology of Antoine, a Jesuit, and Prefect of Propaganda under Benedict XIV. But then there is a vast technical difference, anyhow, between a decision taking the shape of a practical rule of procedure and a speculative definition. For more than a century after the Council of Florence, its recognition of Greek orders had no perceptible influence upon the language of theologians concerning the matter of the priesthood. It takes time to translate from the language of action into that of speculation; but who can deny that in any fair controversy such action must be discounted.
It remains to be determined whether, everything considered, the decision of the Sacred Office admits of F. Jones’ interpretation; whether the dubium can be understood, as he suggests (p. 456), to turn exclusively upon these two points: the non‐tradition of the instruments and the deviation from the Coptic rite which prescribes that the bishop’s hands should be imposed upon each ordinandus during the whole of the form Respice, instead of during the one phrase, “Repleeum Spiritu Sancto,” which F. Jones thinks the missionaries paraphrased by “Accipe Spiritum Sanctum.” Now, we must say that it is hardly probable that in 1704 the missionaries should be seriously exercised about the non‐tradition of the instruments. Neither is it likely that they should have proposed, in the same breath, the two difficulties suggested by F. Jones; for why should deviation from a rite, the substantial validity of which they doubted, be a difficulty? They ask about the validity of a form and a manner of imposing hands, which they describe “talmo do e forma.” There may have been other prayers used in the service from the Coptic ordinal and liturgy, but the dubium excludes them from “tal forma.”
F. Jones’ notion that the “Accipe Spiritum Sanctum” is a mistranslation of the Coptic “Reple eum Spiritu Sancto”—which is not found in the Abyssinian version—is, we think, quite untenable. No distinction was more thoroughly appreciated on both sides than that between an imperative and a precatory form. The Patriarch of the Maronites, in 1572, informs the pope: “In our Pontifical, the orders are conferred without a form by way of prayer.”(144) In 1860, the missionaries inform the Sacred Congregation “that the Monophysites believe the essence of ordination consists in the expiration (insuflazione) the ordainer makes in the act of saying, ‘Accipe Spiritum Sanctum.’ ”(145) Amongst the various deviations from the Coptic rite which Assemani notes in the evidence of Tecla Maria, the Abyssinian says of his ordainer, “Insufflavit in faciem meam.” This “insufflatio” almost implies an imperative form, and so far isolates the words from any precatory formularies that may precede and follow them. Most probably this form was obtained from the missionaries with whom the Abyssinians had been so long in intercourse.
Doubtless the Sacred Congregation did not sanction the form “Accipe Spiritum Sanctum” taken by itself simply, but specificated in the sense of the Abyssinian liturgy; but this is exactly Canon Estcourt’s contention against Anglicans.
In spite of F. Jones’ shrewd and interesting observations, we are of opinion that Canon Estcourt’s appreciation of the Abyssinian decision is the true one. At any rate, his interpretation is sufficiently probable to make it most important to show that, even so understood, it cannot sanction Anglican orders.
Postscriptum
Since the above was written, the discussion has been continued in the Month by an answer from Canon Estcourt in January, and an elaborate rejoinder by F. Jones in February. Something of what we have written has been anticipated; but, on the whole, we have thought it better to leave our article as it stands, and content ourselves with appending such further remarks as may seem called for.
F. Jones, in his second letter, insists that Canon Estcourt has mistaken what the missionaries proposed as a solitary deviation from a well‐known and approved rite for the whole form used on the occasion. He proceeds to support his position by italicizing the concluding words of the answer of the Holy Office allowing the missionaries to admit the person so ordained “to the exercise of his orders according to the rite, approved and expurgated, in which he was ordained.” “The Holy Office, then,” he argues, “did not suppose that the Abyssinians were ordained with only the words, ‘Accipe Spiritum Sanctum,’ but presumed that some rite, and that an approved rite, had been followed.”
Now, it is quite certain that the schismatical Abuna did not make use of a rite expurgated and approved by the Holy See; therefore the word “rite” must refer to the sacerdotal rite to the exercise of which the person in question was ordained, which rite he might use in its expurgated and approved form; but whether the bare words, Accipe Spiritum Sanctum, were used, or the fuller Abyssinian or Coptic forms, the priest would have been ordained in that rite with a view to the exercise of which he had been ordained.
As to the question whether the Æthiopic liturgy, as distinct from the Coptic, was approved, we cannot admit that a conclusion in the negative can be drawn from the passage F. Jones quotes from the encyclical of Benedict XIV. The pope lays down that the Oriental churches in communion with Rome consist of four rites—Greek, Armenian, Syrian, and Coptic; but he is clearly only giving general heads. The Æthiopic, if approved, might well have been included under the Coptic. The Melchite and Chaldaic liturgies are approved; but in this enumeration they are not distinguished from the Syrian and the Greek, of which they are respectively slight variations. Further on in this encyclical, the pope says that “Greeks, Maronites, Armenians, Copts, and Melchites had been given churches in Rome, in order that they may perform their sacred offices each according to his rite.” We know that the Abyssinians also had a church in Rome, where we may assume that they were allowed the same privilege. The fact that an expurgated edition of the Æthiopic liturgy was brought out in Rome in 1549 goes some way to show that the liturgy was approved.(146) This was the first of the Oriental liturgies published in Rome, and may be found in various editions of the Bibliotheca Patrum (Paris, 1624, tom. vi.), together with the Æthiopic rite of baptism and confirmation. This rite of confirmation affords a curious example of the unprincipled variations of Æthiopic ritual. It is almost the same as the Coptic rite published by Assemani, to which F. Jones refers, but it carefully eliminates the direct form, “Accipe Spiritum Sanctum,” wherever it occurs in the Coptic.
We are inclined to believe that the Abuna sometimes ordained in the Coptic, sometimes in the Abyssinian, tongue; but we must confess that the only direct testimony we have met with on this point is in favor of the Coptic. Still, whatever was the language used, there is ample evidence to show that the Abyssinians were in the habit of materially diverging from the Coptic ordinal. To the testimonies of Oviedo and Alvarez, already quoted, we may add that of F. Soller. Referring to F. Bernat’s correspondence, he says that that father discusses “the different rite of ordination and other points of difference between the Copts and Abyssinians.”(147)
We submit that the Holy Office had no grounds for assuming the use of the Coptic, or, indeed, of any specific ritual in the case brought before them.
On The Wing. A Southern Flight. V.
“Les Dieux étaient alors si voisins de la terre Qu’ils y venaient souvent avec ou sans mystère.”(148)
“There is no sense of desolation greater than that produced by the sight of a dismantled palace and a deserted garden.” These were the words with which Don Emidio broke a long and somewhat sad silence which had fallen on our little party the day we went to Portici.
It is a long drive of four miles on the rough pavement of huge slabs common to Naples and its environs. We passed over the bridge where S. Januarius had gone forth with cross and banners, incense and choristers, to meet the torrents of burning lava from Mount Vesuvius, and arrest the destruction of the city by prayer. It made me shudder to think how very near that destruction we had then been. For, of course, if the lava had once gone so far, there was no natural reason why it should not do so again, and even pass on further still. That bridge is now hardly outside the town. Indeed, town succeeds town, and the whole way from Naples to Portici is one long street, chiefly consisting of villas and handsome palaces, now sadly neglected, but probably still containing many treasures, and all with more or less of garden ground attached.
Portici is a royal palace; but for years none of the royal family have resided there, and it is used chiefly for public offices. It is sad to see these magnificent buildings left nearly empty; and we can only wonder at the extraordinary wealth of the past when we reflect that Portici is one only of many other beautiful royal residences which are no longer kept up. Even Caserta, which is said to be the largest palace in Europe, is all but deserted. Don Emidio was telling us an anecdote in connection with it. Just before the revolution of 1860 the palace had been put in order, partially refurnished, and redecorated, for the reception of Francis II. and his bride, the ex‐King and Queen of Naples.
Amongst other valuable ornaments, in one room the walls had hangings attached with massive gold fleurs‐de‐lis. When the revolution broke out, a Neapolitan duke, one of the very few of the really noble families who turned traitor to their king, was appointed to adapt and readjust the palace for the usurper. The whole matter was put into his hands, in perfect confidence, no doubt, that he would see it properly carried out. For some time the palace was closed to the public. When again it was opened on certain days, and those who had known it before saw it again, they observed that all the gold fleurs‐de‐lis had disappeared. Of course the fact provoked enquiry; but no account of them was ever rendered, and all researches proved fruitless. No one doubted but that they had been “annexed” by the liberal aristocrat, but, equally, no one dared call him to task. For as annexation on a large scale was the order of the day, it did not answer to look too closely into minor examples of the same. Nevertheless, the story got whispered abroad, and his reputation, in consequence, was far less golden than the missing fleurs‐de‐lis.
One day the duke was standing at a window in his own palace overlooking the courtyard, when a poor artisan, who had already sent in his bill more than once, came to request payment. The duke, who thought, or pretended to think, the charges in the bill were exorbitant, began to upbraid and scold the man from the window. At the same moment the wife of one of the men‐ servants of the establishment was crossing the yard. The duke called to her, exclaiming, “It is a downright theft. But these artisans are all thieves, are they not, Donna Rafaele?”
“Your excellency is a better judge of that than I am,” was the reply, “since the greater ought to know the lesser.”
“I wonder how the duke took it?” said I.
Don Emidio gave me a knowing look, and shook his right hand under his left elbow. We all laughed; but no description can convey the inimitable drollery of Neapolitan pantomime. It is a thousand times more eloquent than words. What expression, such as “to make yourself scarce,” or “to skedaddle,” could convey what is indicated by that wagging of the straightened hand under the elbow? You see the thief escaping. It is the same in everything else. There is a gesture for all the emotions and most of the casualties of daily life. No beggar tells you he is hungry; but standing silently before you, with a perfectly immovable expression, he opens his mouth, and points downwards with his finger. A woman and half a dozen children gathering round you, and all doing the same thing, produces an effect so curiously divided between the ludicrous and the pathetic that it is far harder to refuse an alms than if the request were made in downright words. It is the same with the coachmen of the hired public carriages. You are driving rapidly along, and your coachman passes another whom he knows. In less than a second he has conveyed to his friend full information of where he comes from, where he is going, and how soon he will be back, probably concluding with the amount of the fare for which he has agreed to do the distance; and all without a word being uttered.
The Neapolitans carry the same extraordinary pantomimic power into all scenes and all places, including the pulpit, or, more likely, the platform, from which the priest delivers his Lenten or Month of Mary discourses. He walks to and fro in the heat of his argument, he sits down, and starts up again, he weeps, and he even laughs. It is often very striking; and it is so natural, it belongs so essentially to the genius of the people, that it is never ridiculous, nor does it seem out of place. Of course sometimes it is done less well and gracefully than at others; but it is too thoroughly in unison with the language and habits of the people ever to appear incongruous.
We were sitting on the low wall of the outer steps leading to the tower entrance of a building at the end of the Portici pleasure‐grounds when this conversation occurred. The tower belongs, I believe, to an observatory, and all around are the stables, the barracks, and the appurtenances of the palace, now empty and silent. The grass grew high and thick in the courtyard. The deep‐red blossoms of the wild sorrel, with the sunlight shining through them, looked like drops of blood among the grass. The ox‐eyed daisies boldly faced the blue, glaring sky. The low, long building used for stables was in front of us. Then a dark, dense wood of ilex and cork‐trees, like a strong, black line. And beyond that no middle distance was visible, but stark and sudden rose the seamed and barren sides of Mount Vesuvius. No beneficent and tender white cloud broke the intense, monotonous blue of all the wide heavens. The sky, the grim mountain, the black wood, and the deserted stables—that was all; bathed in sunshine, sparkling with intense light, silent with brooding heat, and unspeakably desolate with a broad, unmodulated, horrific beauty like the face of the sphinx.
Suddenly there came over me a dim, weird feeling of the ancient pagan world. There was an inner perception and consciousness that in some undefined way it was homogeneous to the scene around me and to unredeemed man. It was cruel in its beauty; as poetic, but not picturesque, beauty so often is.
I started up, and exclaimed, “Let us get back. The old gods are about this place, and I cannot stay.”
Time has not effaced the impression, and I can recall the inner vision at any moment. Frank declared we should come again, and have a picnic there with the Vernons. But I protested I would not be of the party. “By the bye, Jane,” said Frank, “why did Elizabeth not come?”
“Because little Franceschiella was buried this morning, and neither Ida nor Elizabeth would leave the poor mother; while Helen remained to keep Mrs. Vernon company.”
Franceschiella was a lovely child of six years who had died of a fever the day before. She was the only child, and that fact, added to her quite extraordinary beauty, had made the trial doubly hard to bear for her adoring parents. For, indeed, it was little less than adoration that Franceschiella received, not only in her own home, but from all her neighbors. We were very much struck in this instance by the poetic nature of the Italians. The father was a vignaiuolo, the mother did a little needle‐work, or took in washing; but no nobleman’s child was ever more carefully bathed and dressed and nourished than this one darling, and that partly in consequence of her angelic beauty and her infantine charm. The little creature ran every risk of being entirely spoilt by the amount of petting and flattery that she received on all sides. On Sundays and holidays they always dressed her in white with a red coral necklace; and the mother or the cousins would weave a wreath of flowers to crown her beautiful, golden hair, that fell below her waist. She had deep violet eyes with black lashes, and a milk‐white skin. She was very forward for her age, and singularly intelligent. But she was surely never meant to live long in this rough world. She came to it like a stranger, and she remained a stranger all the time of her brief sojourn—as though some princess from the distant lands of poetry and romance had come for a brief visit to dwell with common mortals. There was an inexpressible refinement in all the little creature’s ways which would have become a real cross to her and the occasion of endless trials had she lived long enough to find the harsh side of life ruffling her angel wings. It was in mercy the child was taken away before the period of white frocks and fresh flowers had come to an end. Life could have brought to her nothing but temptation and anguish. But of course in proportion to her exceptional nature was the despair of the poor parents in seeing her fading before their eyes. As little Franceschiella had been unaccustomed to restraint or coercion of any kind, it was exceedingly difficult, during her short illness, to induce her to take the necessary remedies. And nothing could be more touchingly beautiful than the arguments used by the distracted parents to persuade her to swallow the nauseous draughts. As usual, there was a crucifix near the bed, and an image of the Mater Dolorosa—the devotion of the Neapolitans being very specially to the Seven Sorrows of the Blessed Virgin. They would beg the poor little darling to take her medicine in honor of Our Lord’s thirst on the cross, or of Our Lady’s anguish when His dead form was laid in her arms. And these were not unmeaning or merely mystical phrases, to which the child could attach but little sense. They were as household words to her; familiar to her childish thoughts from the moment she could lisp, and woven into her life as the mysteries of the faith only are in lands altogether Catholic. But nothing was to avail to keep the pretty human flower from fading fast. And before a week had past little Franceschiella had taken flight ere any of the ugliness of mortal life had tarnished her sweet loveliness. They crowned her with roses, and laid her, dressed in white, in the little wooden coffin filled with flowers. Then they flung handfuls of colored sugar‐plums over her, and placed a white camellia between her still red lips, saying, as they did so, “She breathes flowers.” And so they carried her, in the open bier, the uncovered, lovely face turned towards the heavens, and thus laid their darling in the dark grave, but in the full hope of a bright resurrection.
The mother’s anguish was extreme. The Neapolitan women are an excitable and highly nervous race; which arises, no doubt, in great measure from the climate, as every stranger knows who finds the effect produced on his nerves by this intoxicating atmosphere, which I have heard compared to drinking champagne. As in the case of the peasantry much self‐control has not been inculcated, the result is the frequency of terrible nervous attacks producing convulsions—what we should probably designate as very aggravated hysteria. After Franceschiella’s death the mother became subject to these attacks, and seemed incapable of receiving any consolation till heaven granted her the hope of again becoming a mother. On the day we went to Portici the Vernons had hardly left her. And it was very charming to see the Christian sense of equality on their side, and the deference and gratitude shown them by their peasant neighbors on the other.
But why did Frank so particularly ask why Elizabeth had not come, instead of asking equally about Ida and Helen?
“You have, then, seen Medusa in the woods of Portici, Miss Jane?” said Don Emidio suddenly to me, as we were driving home in absolute silence.
I looked up out of my brown study to find his eyes fixed upon me. “Do you mean that I am changed to stone?”
“You are as silent as one.”
I laughed, and said, “At least, thank heaven, I am not malheureuse comme les pièrres,(149) as the French say, though I may be as silent as they. I did not, however, see anything in those dark ilex groves. I only suddenly felt the awfulness of nature when you look at her in all her inexorable beauty, with the rhythm of her apparently changeless laws and her sublime disdain of man. She breathes and blossoms, she burns and thunders, she weeps and smiles, utterly independent of us all. She knows no weakness; no decay touches her but such as she can repair. She embraces death, that she may produce life. She is ever fertile, ever lavish of herself and of her gifts. But she never cares. Her mountains are granite even to the feet of her Creator, as he climbs the heights of Calvary. Her noontide heavens are brass to the cravings of man’s heart in his midday toil. She will not pause in the twenty‐four hours of her inevitable day, though sundown should bring death to one and despair to many again and again. She treads her ever‐victorious march over ruined nations, buried cities, and broken hearts. Oh! I could hate her—cruel power, terrible Pythoness; mocking me with sunshine, scaring me with storms; ever rejoicing in her strength, ever regardless of me. I cannot explain why these thoughts came to me, as across the dark wood I traced the violet scars on awful Vesuvius, and heard the low whispers of the wind in the long grass at our feet. Suddenly faith seemed to die out of me. I forgot what I believe; and back came trooping the pagan gods and the pagan world, with the strong feeling that pantheism is the inevitable religion of the natural man, and that were I not, thank God, a Christian and a Catholic, some form of it would grow into my mind, as the impress left by the face of nature. For a moment a dark cloud overshadowed me while I looked into the depths of the old pagan belief; and it became so real to me that I shuddered. It has left me silent; that’s all.”
“That’s all!” repeated Don Emidio with a sly smile, and imitating my voice in a way that I half thought was rather impertinent. “Allow me to tell you that I think that is a great deal. I do not imagine there are many young ladies who come out for a day’s pleasuring to the gardens of Portici or elsewhere, and indulge in such profound reflections as you do.”
I looked round, and saw that Frank and Mary were listening.
Frank said: “I believe Jane is quite right; and she has so well described the effect which the aspects of nature produce on the mind of man that I am convinced her words embody and express the riddle of the sphinx. The laws of nature, taken without the doctrine of the Incarnation, which alone is the keystone to the whole creation, form the enigma which is put before us to understand and answer; failing which, we perish.”
“But all paganism was a falsified adumbration of the Incarnation; the gods for ever assuming a human form, and the men becoming gods,” said Mary. “It had that germ of truth in it which every system must have to be built at all, no matter in what monstrous form. But it required revelation to tell us that the ‘Word was made flesh and dwelt amongst men.’ And that alone explains nature. She is the herald, the servant, or rather the slave, of Him by whom and for whom all things were created. She speeds on her way in the full vigor of those laws which were impressed upon her as she first sprang from the hand of her Creator. She does not stop to share our griefs or our joys, for she has a higher mission. But she has ceased to be terrible to us, for faith has unveiled her face, and her harmonious forces no longer scare us by their inexorable relentlessness. Her one mission is to sing of God, and repeat to Time the refrain of Eternity.”
“Why, then, do we sometimes pine for her sympathy?” said I.
“Ah! Miss Jane,” exclaimed Don Emidio, “that is because we are for ever looking for sympathy in the wrong place and from the wrong people.”
“Not always,” I replied. What made me say so? And why did Don Emidio change color and look at me so fixedly? I was still wondering when we reached home.
Mary and I were, as usual in the evening, sitting in the loggia. But Frank was not with us, and I missed his genial talk and the odor of his cigar.
“What has become of Frank this evening, Mary?”
“He has gone down to see the Vernons, and said he should persuade them to come to us.”
“I hope he will succeed, for I do not like his spending his evenings away from us. This is not the first nor the fourth time he has gone to Casinelli as soon as he got up from dinner.”
“Ah! well, Jane, we must not be selfish. He has his life to live, as you have yours; and I must expect one day to lose you both.”
I felt my heart stop, and then beat violently. What did Mary mean? And why did some veil seem suddenly to fall from my eyes? It was some moments before 1 spoke; and then I tried to say in my ordinary voice: “You have some presentiment about Frank, Mary. What is it?”
“I have presentiments about both of you. But I do not want to force your confidence.”
In a moment I was kneeling by her side. “Dearest Mary, do you suppose I have any secrets from you? I tell you everything. If I do not tell you more, it is because I know no more.” It was a sudden impulse, dim but overwhelming, which made me add those strange words. Mary looked at me intently. “Has it never struck you that Frank has a reason for going so often to the Villa Casinelli, as Emidio has a reason for coming so often here?”
Our eyes met for one moment. Then I hid my face in my hands, and burst into tears.
“O Mary! what bitter‐sweet things are you saying? I do not want to lose Frank, and I do not want to leave you, or to tread in other paths than those I have known since my childhood. Are you sure it is so? Why have I not known it till now? And even now I doubt.”
“That is because you were not in the least looking out for it, and were absorbed in other thoughts, preventing that retrospection which would have shown you that Emidio’s manner towards you has been intensifying with every day of our stay here. And now what answer will you give when the time comes?”
“Do not ask me yet, dear Mary. I must have leisure to reflect. At this moment my heart is more full of Frank and Elizabeth than of anything else.”
“Ah! my dear, he could not have made a wiser choice; she is a girl after my own heart, so true, so tender, so good, and so utterly unselfish.”
“I only hope she will not spoil Frank.”
“I am not afraid of that, for she has a high sense of duty for herself and for all who approach her.”
“And what is to become of Ida and of you, Mary?”
“I cannot think,” said Mary with a sweet, sad smile. “But I suppose we shall both of us be happy in the happiness of those who are so dear to us. It is worse for me than for her. She loses a sister. I lose a brother and sister both.”
“You don’t know that, Mary. Nobody has proposed to me, and, if somebody did, I am not certain what answer I should give.”
“But I am,” rejoined Mary.
I clapped my hand over her mouth, exclaiming, “Don’t say it, Mary dear. Let me be free and feel free. I am frightened at the thought of promising myself to any one, even where I may feel I could love.”
“Be free, dear sister, until the moment has come when you are sure it is God’s will you should enter on another phase of woman’s destiny.”
“And may I never do so, except to accomplish his will!” I replied; and with one long kiss on dear Mary’s brow I turned away, for we heard approaching footsteps.
Frank and Elizabeth entered first. Ida and Padre Cataldo followed. I looked to see if there were a fifth figure behind, and was rather relieved to find Don Emidio was not there. I needed time to collect my thoughts before I saw him again. Perhaps, after all, Mary was mistaken, and attached more importance to this matter than was necessary. At any rate, I was in no hurry to see Don Emidio again.
Frank seemed in high spirits, and Elizabeth looked serenely, calmly happy. Her soft manner and her slow, graceful movements had long ago won for her the nickname of Pussy; particularly as her velvet ways were not unmixed with a playful slyness; so that from time to time she came out with some remark far more acute and incisive that at first you would have given her credit for. It was a relief to me when I heard Frank say that he had been particularly anxious to induce Padre Cataldo to join us, because he had promised to give us the account of an unfortunate man whose execution he had attended some years ago in the course of his priestly ministrations. Ida was looking as thoughtful as Mary; and I saw her eyes constantly wandering to where Frank and Elizabeth were sitting together. We were all too preoccupied to talk, but were very glad to listen to a long story.
“Frank tells us, reverend father,” began Mary, “that some twenty years ago you attended the execution of a poor criminal. It would interest us very much if you would give us the particulars. In what part of Italy did it occur?”
“It took place in the Basilicata,” replied the father, “and the whole province was filled with consternation; for the culprit did not belong to the lower ranks of life, but was a gentleman by birth, education, and position. He was the proprietor of a château and a considerable patrimony near one of the towns of the province, and his crime was the murder of his own brother. For many generations the family had had an undesirable reputation for deeds of violence and sudden acts of rage or revenge. It was not the first time that the history of the family chronicled some bloody act; though it was the first time, at least in modern days, that any member of this unfortunate house had suffered the utmost penalty of the law. I am unable to tell you what gave rise to the violent feeling of hatred which the elder brother entertained for the younger. There had been many quarrels and disputes between them from their boyhood upwards. Frank told me the other day you had been talking about the extraordinary power the Italian, and especially the native of Southern Italy, has of following out one design through all obstacles and difficulties, silently and secretly, for years. If they possess this tenacity of character in the search for wealth, I am afraid they have it equally in questions of revenge. And for some reason or other this had been the sentiment of Conte Falcone for his brother, Don Carlo. One day Don Carlo was found stabbed through the heart, and suspicion immediately fell on Conte Falcone. He was arrested, but the trial was a long one, and some months were passed in collecting evidence. At length he was convicted, and from the moment of his condemnation made no attempt to deny his guilt. At that time the prison at Potenza, where he was to await his execution, was under the direction of a Jesuit father, whose efforts were ceaseless for the good of the unfortunate criminals under his charge.
“Naturally, Conte Falcone was a special object of care and anxiety, from the enormity of his crime, and from the fact that his position and circumstances are generally in themselves a guarantee against offences of so deep a dye.
“No efforts were wanting on the part of the Jesuit priest. He was with his prisoner day and night, endeavoring to bring him to a true repentance of his sin against God and against humanity. And he succeeded. He found the count from the first overwhelmed with remorse, and his object was to prevent this remorse degenerating into despair, and thus excluding the light of faith. Happily, Conte Falcone, grievously as he had offended against the laws of God, had never given place to rationalistic or scoffing doubts. It needed but to transform the awful bitterness of human remorse into the tenderness of perfect contrition; and this great work in the culprit’s soul was happily accomplished in time to give him courage to bear the dreadful intelligence that all efforts made at the Court of Appeal to get the sentence commuted had entirely failed. This was an unusual and remarkable fact, for capital punishment is very rarely carried out in Italy; many would tell you not sufficiently for the protection of society. Probably in this case the judges were urged to unusual severity by the position of the criminal, lest it should appear that, being a nobleman, he was less severely dealt with than a common man might have been. Moreover, it was not forgotten that this was the third time one of his unfortunate family had taken the life of a relation, and it was thought necessary an example should be made. The priest accordingly announced to him that his fate was sealed, and that the next morning he must proceed on the terrible journey which was to be his last.
“In the kingdom of Naples, as well as in some other parts of Italy, it is the law that the execution of a criminal should take place on or near the spot where the deed was done.”
“What a terrible law of retribution!” exclaimed Mary.
“Yes, and one strictly in conformity with many passages of the Holy Scriptures, and with the Biblical spirit generally.”
“Has it not been supposed, father,” asked Frank, “that possibly after death the souls in purgatory, as also the lost, suffer for their errors there where they were guilty of them?”
“It is a common opinion, and it goes far towards explaining the accounts of strange noises and spectral forms in places where it is known there has been a murder. The very sound of the fatal blow is repeated through the hours of the night, as though the disembodied spirit were condemned for ever to re‐enact the semblance of that crime which has grown into one idea, one all‐absorbing memory of the past. The soul becomes, as it were, the personification and essence of its fatal crime.”
“What a fearful verification of the worm that dieth not!” said Mary.
“But surely,” I exclaimed, “we may have softer and happier feelings about the souls in purgatory?”
“Of course we may,” replied the father, almost smiling at my look of horror and anxiety. “If they frequent the scenes of their past, it is not to inspire us with fear; for of that dreadful passion they are now themselves no longer capable, the blessed security of their future annihilating all touch of apprehension. If they reappear to the living, it is either to remedy some evil or to solicit our prayers. I never could understand the terror people have of what they call ghosts.”
“It would be strange indeed,” said Mary, “not to wish to see again those we have loved and lost, even their disembodied souls.”
“And yet it is not lawful to desire it with ardor or to entreat for it; because it is outside the bounds of God’s usual dealings with his creatures to permit the dead to revisit the living, or rather to reappear to them; for I believe they revisit us constantly, and probably mostly dwell amongst us, unseen and, alas! generally forgotten.”
“Oh! no, not forgotten, dear father,” said Mary, the tears filling her eyes.
“Not forgotten by such as you, figlia mia.(150) But we have entered on a subject which might keep us discussing till midnight. I go back to my poor penitent.”
“Was he your penitent from the first, father? Were you the director of the prison?”
“You have robbed me of my disguise, cara figlia.(151) I meant to have told you a story, but not to talk of myself. However, it does not matter, and I will lay aside all disguise. The journey the unhappy count had to make to his native place was perhaps the most terrible part of his punishment. But I had the satisfaction of seeing him receive the announcement with the greatest resignation, once more offering it as an atonement for his crime. As he was a man of considerable refinement and education, his resignation arose from no lack of power to appreciate the dreadful contrast between his present position on returning to his home and that which he had once filled. It would be impossible to put into words what he felt on arriving to meet an ignominious death at the place where he had been the great man and the most influential person. Early in the morning of the dreadful day on which we began our long journey he was led out of the prison, and mounted on an ass—such being the law in that part of Italy. The slow paces of the beast added considerably to the torture of the count’s feelings, it being impossible to hasten a progress every hour of which seemed an age. He had made his general confession to me before that fatal morning, and constantly on the road he would turn to me for a word of consolation and encouragement, or to renew his frequent acts of contrition. I need hardly say I never left his side for a moment. Poor fellow! what an agony the whole journey was to him, and, from sympathy, hardly less so to me; for he was bound hand and foot, and the animal was led by one of the guards, the others following and surrounding him on horseback. You know enough of us Italians to be aware that, physically and morally, we are more sensitively constituted than any other European nation. Our feelings are extraordinarily keen, and our imaginative powers excessive; and these two qualities combine to give us a most intense love of life. All the incidents of our journey, which occupied the entire day, must have been, and indeed I can bear testimony that they were, the perfection of anguish to the count, such as seldom can fall to the lot of any man, taking his whole life together. The sun poured its scorching rays on his uncovered head; he, being bound, could not in any way help himself; and several times he turned so faint that the guards had to fetch water to revive him. I obtained permission at last for his poor head to be covered—all the more so as I apprehended a sun‐stroke. I held the cup for him to drink from, and sometimes supported him for a few seconds in my arms to relieve him as well as I could from the restraint of his painful position. It was nightfall when our awful and melancholy procession reached the prison of the count’s native town. His own château was not far distant! I had written to have a chapel prepared in the prison; and in that chapel, kneeling at the foot of the altar, he whom I had come to love as the very child of my soul spent the entire night. Naturally, his first thought on arriving was for his wife and his two little children. And he entreated to be allowed to see them once more. I was not then aware of what was the custom on such melancholy occasions, and I applied for permission to send for the countess and her children. But I found that they had been removed from their home by the order of the magistrates, and were already at a considerable distance. This had been done from motives of humanity, that the poor wife might not be almost within hearing of the dreadful event which was to take place on the morrow, or his children grow up with a full knowledge of their father’s fate. It was almost more than I myself could bear when I had to return to him in the prison, and tell him of the ill‐success of my request. It was the last drop of extreme bitterness. It was the vinegar and the gall; the absolute isolation from all that he had loved, the utter desolation of his human affections. A spasm of agony passed over his face; but the only words he spoke were, ‘The will of God be done.’ ”
“In the morning he again made his confession with the ardent contrition and fervor of a saint. He heard a Mass as preparation for his last communion. He received the Blessed Sacrament at the second Mass, and assisted at a third in thanksgiving.
“The dreadful moment was now at hand. The horrid black limbs of the fatal guillotine stood stark and rigid against the bright morning sky in the great public square of the town.
“Every church in the place was thronged with worshippers, praying and offering their communions for the salvation of the poor soul so soon to be wrenched from sweet life, and sent to its everlasting doom. The public square was also filled with spectators—a silent, awe‐struck throng, while occasionally a prayer would seem to quiver on the air from the suppressed voice of a hundred people.
“At length the count appeared, supported by the guards; for by that time he was in a very exhausted state. His last act was to press my hand in silence. It was the signal for me to give him the last absolution. I had just turned aside, hardly conscious myself from excess of feeling, when the fatal knife fell. A cry of horror ran through the crowd; and then immediately they dispersed, many of them repeating aloud the De profundis, as they retired to their homes.
“I always remember poor Falcone in my daily Mass; though I cannot say I think he is in any further need of prayers, but is, I hope, long since in a position to benefit me by his.”
“What is your opinion, father,” asked Mary, “of public executions?”
“In the present state of feeling in Italy they are beneficial rather than otherwise. I attended the execution of two soldiers a few years ago at Terracina. The whole town was crowding to the church the evening before, and at an early hour on the day itself, to pray for the poor men. It was like the general communion at the close of a mission; and those who actually witnessed the execution seemed to do so with no other object than to assist the poor criminals by their prayers. Many of the women were on their knees in the public place. And I do not believe but that such a fervor of devotion had a beneficial effect upon all. It is, or at least it was, the same thing in Rome. But where, as in London and Paris, that idea of intercessory prayer has died out with the faith of which it forms a part, and the vilest rabble collects from a brutal curiosity to see a man hung or guillotined, then I am convinced that public executions are demoralizing, and tend to increase the crimes they are meant to repress.”
“All I know is,” said Frank, suddenly starting up, “if a fellow could only have the good‐luck to be hung in the presence of a large Italian crowd, I think he would have a better chance of going straight to heaven than by any other death. I think I should like to go in for that sort of thing myself.”
“O Frank! what do you mean?”
“Why, this is what I mean: If you have a long illness, you get weak in mind and in the power of volition, as well as weak in body. I know, if I have only a headache, how difficult it is to say my prayers. Fancy, then, what it must be through a long, painful illness. Whereas, if you are going to be hung, you have all your faculties about you; you are in no doubt of when you are going to die; the time is fixed to the minute. You have made your last confession; and I can imagine being able then to make such an act of perfect contrition, with all the forces of one’s mind and soul, that would land one safe past the realms of purgatory. I often feel as if it would be my only chance, and not a bad one, either.”
Padre Cataldo looked amused. Elizabeth did not appear quite to like it, and I overheard her say to him: “I think you might manage to end an honorable life in a more honorable way, and secure heaven all the same.” I thought I heard something in reply about “with your help and your example”; but I did not listen, as I wanted to induce Padre Cataldo to tell us about his wonderful escape during the revolution of 1860. I said something to him about it; but he turned it off, and Mary whispered to me that he never liked to talk about it, but that Don Emidio knew all about it, and we could ask him to tell us the next time we met. Padre Cataldo now took leave, Frank accompanying him back, and promising to return for the Vernons later.
As soon as they had left, Ida told us that all their troubles and anxieties in reference to the Casinelli and the chapel bell had been renewed. There had been an interregnum of comparative peace, and we had entertained the hope that all was likely to go on quietly. But it turned out that one of the sisters some days previously had called on Mrs. Vernon and her daughters to explain that the bell ringing for Mass was such a cause of annoyance to the other lodgers that she really must request that it should be entirely given up. Of course Mrs. Vernon refused. The chapel had been conceded to them; Mass was said there daily by the express permission of the cardinal archbishop, and was of the greatest benefit to the neighborhood; and she and her daughters absolutely declined to sanction such an insult to religion. Signorina Casinelli proposed that the bell should be hung somewhere in the garden at a considerable distance. But this also was refused. It was not rung at an early hour. It was not a large bell, and it was absurd to have the chapel in one place, and the chapel bell an eighth of a mile away, to say nothing of the trouble of sending some one to ring it. Signorina Casinelli left the house in high dudgeon; and the next day she waylaid Padre Cataldo, as he was returning through the garden from visiting the sick. She flew into a violent rage the moment she saw him, and told him that, rather than offend their other tenants, they would, the house being their property, shut up the chapel entirely.
Unfortunately, no written agreement respecting the use of the chapel existed between the Vernons and the Casinelli; and it had never entered any one’s head that they could be guilty of such a transaction. The threat was, however, only too well carried out. That same evening the bell was cut down and carried away. The Vernons learnt from the vignaiuoli in their neighborhood that the Casinelli had had some difficulty in finding any workmen who would undertake the job. They had first sent for a mason in their own employ; but he had absolutely refused to have anything to do with a work which he considered as sacrilegious; and turning to the padrona, the eldest sister, he exclaimed, “Judas also sold his Master for money, but I will have nothing to do with conduct which resembles his. You may manage your own affairs in your own way.”
The following Saturday they completed their evil work by literally doing as they threatened. A message was sent to the Vernons to warn them that they had better take out of the chapel anything therein which belonged to them without loss of time, as that night it was to be locked and the keys withdrawn.
It was a sad office indeed for the Vernons to have to strip the little chapel of all its ornaments, the work of their hands and their hearts. They did it in silence, and in silence they bore the heavy trial; for had they allowed themselves any expressions which would have served as a cry for the peasantry around, it would have been difficult to restrain the grief and indignation of these poor people at finding themselves deprived of their Mass and of the instructions of a priest whom they all loved as a father. Ida’s delicate health made it very difficult for her to walk to any church up the high hill at the foot of which Casinelli is situated. Padre Cataldo had to go elsewhere to say his Mass, to the great inconvenience of himself and others. But that was as nothing compared to the grief of seeing all his little flock dispersed.
Signore Casinelli informed his tenant, in the presence of several persons, that henceforth he might consider himself master of the situation. And so he has remained. But the Casinelli have never since been able to command the slightest respect from the vignaiuoli and peasantry of the neighborhood. They have lost all prestige. And long before these pages see the light the Vernons will have left Casinelli to establish themselves in one of the many villas whose doors were open to them from that moment. All in the neighborhood wanted to let their apartments to them and Padre Cataldo; and if anything could console them for all they had had to sacrifice, it might be the amount of sympathy and respect which met them on all sides and from all classes; while the incident, far from diminishing Padre Cataldo’s field of usefulness, seemed to have opened out fresh spheres for him to work in, and to have extended his influence far and wide.
The garden in which our villa of R—— R—— stood led by steps and winding paths to a tiny bay and to a long series of rocks and large natural caves. There was more than one bath, fed by the fresh sea‐water, in whose limpid depths we not unfrequently saw brilliant sea‐anemones, and even small fish which sometimes forced their way through to the openings left in an artificial dike to supply the bath with water. Here and there a wooden bridge was thrown over some part where the water broke the communication from one cave to another. The views from the wide, arched openings of the caves were very lovely; Naples and the bay on one side, and the flower‐ clad, precipitous rocks of the coast of Posilippo on the other. At night the fishermen’s boats which had been moored in these caves, and in others like them, came gliding out with a lighted torch at the prow. And all through the night many of them might be seen, with the black figures of two or three fishermen dimly distinguished from time to time; though more generally all that can be seen is the dark, shadowy form of the boat and the flaring torch, intended to attract the unwary fish into the net.
I should have liked the caves better had they not been disfigured by the stuffed, gaunt forms of a hippopotamus and some alligators and similar monsters, which were placed in all sorts of unexpected places, and seemed to meet you round the corner with gaping jaws. These caves had formed part of a public place of resort some years ago, but were now deserted and forgotten, with all the monsters rapidly falling into dusty decay.
We had been for some time at the villa before my curiosity had ever led me to explore this strange place. When I did so, it was in company with Don Emidio. But as I protested that I did not like crocodiles and hippopotami, he suggested that we should climb the rock outside the cave to the pretty little pink and green kiosk which crowned it, and which commanded a lovely view from where it stood embedded in aloes and cacti, opuntias and zoccas, besides many varieties of climbing plants. Nothing could be prettier than the winding paths, protected on one side by a rustic fence, while every cranny in the rock on the other side bore some tuft of blossom or afforded roothold for the wild tresses of some flowering creeper.
Mary and Frank had remained in the lower garden, while we wandered into every nook and corner, and finally sat down to rest inside the kiosk, which, with windows all round, presented to us a wide and lovely scene.
It was here I consented to become Don Emidio’s wife.
That effected, no matter how or in what words—for those things seldom read wisely—I suggested that we should rejoin Mary and Frank. Don Emidio took the latter by the arm, and walked with him a little way apart. I remained silent, sitting at Mary’s feet. When Don Emidio joined us, it was without Frank. I asked where he was. “Gone down to Casinelli,” was the reply. I knew why. He was determined to have his fate also decided that same day, that same hour. I had no doubts for him. I knew that Elizabeth would consent; and I felt partly glad, and partly saddened at the thought that our life, hitherto so united and bound up in each other, was about to divide and separate, each following his or her own destiny, and weaving a new web of life’s joys and sorrows. Don Emidio left us soon. But long after, I saw him leaning over the parapet of the road, waiting for Frank to return from Casinelli, that he might learn whether his wishes also were to be crowned with success. I could see the meeting from my window, as the tall figures of the two friends stood dark against the deep blue of an Italian starlight night. I could have no doubt of the nature of the intelligence conveyed by Frank to his friend; for, to my horror, Don Emidio threw his arms around him and kissed him, as Italians do. Poor Frank! thought I, how will he put up with such an un‐English proceeding? No doubt it had happened to Frank before; for he did not, so far as I could judge at that distance, start with astonishment. But it set me thinking about my future husband’s foreign ways. And the next morning, when Frank and I had talked over the more serious questions in our affairs, I found myself drifting into that part of the matter. “I wonder, Frank, if I shall ever get quite reconciled to his Italian customs, so as either not to notice, or to prefer them?”
“It is to be hoped so, since he will be your husband. But what do you mean in particular?”
“Why, you know he will call me Miss Jane; any one else would say Miss Hamilton.”
“That is an evil which is already at an end. No doubt for the future he will call you simply Jane, and speak of you a short time hence as la Contessa Gandolfi.”
“Then I wish he would not embrace you, Frank.” Frank laughed aloud.
“He would be hurt if I repulsed him. They all do it. He will soon see that in England it is not the custom, and then he will give it up—at least while there.”
“Another thing is, I do not like his wearing a large ring—though I own it is a handsome one—on his forefinger. We think that vulgar in England.”
“And it does not happen to be vulgar here; that is all about it, my dear Jane. I am afraid I cannot help you in that matter. But possibly in time you will succeed in bringing him round to your views; though I doubt your ever being able to break him of occasionally transferring that ring from his finger to his thumb whenever he is particularly anxious to remember something. When you see his palazzo in Rome, you will find that he possesses a beautiful portrait, by Vandyke, of an ancestor on his mother’s side. That very ring is on the forefinger of the portrait. Emidio is the living image of that picture. And you can hardly blame a man for carrying out a likeness he has such reason to be proud of.”
“There is one other thing, Frank, which strikes me as odd. If he is sitting in the arm‐chair when Mary or I come into the room (and you know we are not rich in arm‐chairs here), he never gives either of us that chair, but fetches us another, and goes back to the arm‐chair himself.”
“Jane, you are a little fool. Do you not know that in Italy, at least in the south, it is the height of ill‐breeding to offer any one the chair you have just occupied yourself? A cool seat is always a desideratum in this climate, even though it may be a less luxurious one.”
“Shall I ever, do you think, be able to take back to England with me a husband with such a name as Emidio? What a pity he was not christened Paul, or Stephen, or even Anthony! But Emidio!” By this time we were both laughing—Frank at me, I at myself.
“You need never call him Emidio in public. We call him so because, when we have been travelling about Italy alone together, we found it convenient to drop his title. But you know he is il Conte Gandolfi. His mother was the only child of a noble Roman family, and consequently a great heiress. She married a Neapolitan Conte Gandolfi; and that is how it happens that with a Neapolitan name his chief residence is in Rome, in the palazzo that belonged to his mother. His father was not a man of very considerable fortune, and his only property here is his villa at Capo di Monte, where he spends the summer. A nobler heart and a finer nature I never saw. There is the simplicity of a child, the honor of a true‐born gentleman, the delicacy of a woman, the courage of a hero, and the piety of a saint.”
The tears stood in my eyes; and taking dear Frank’s hand in mine, I said, “Thank you, dear old fellow, for saying that. And, thank God, you too have drawn a prize!”
IV. Immortality Of Matter.
Reader. And now, doctor, what other argument do you allege against creation?
Büchner. The immortality of matter, and the immortality of force.
Reader. The immortality of matter?
Büchner. Yes, sir. “Matter is immortal, indestructible. There is not an atom in the universe which can be lost. We cannot, even in thought, remove or add an atom without admitting that the world would thereby be disturbed, and the laws of gravitation and the equilibrium of matter interfered with. It is the great merit of modern chemistry to have proved in the most convincing manner that the uninterrupted changes of matter which we daily witness, the origin and decay of organic and inorganic forms and tissues, do not arise, as was hitherto believed, from new materials, but that this change consists in nothing else but the constant and continuous metamorphosis of the same elementary principles, the quantity and quality of which ever are, and ever remain, the same” (p. 9). “The atoms are in themselves unchangeable and indestructible; to‐day in this, tomorrow in another form, they present by the variety of their combinations the innumerable forms in which matter appears to our senses. The number of atoms in any element remains, on the whole, the same; not a single particle is formed anew; nor can it, when formed, disappear from existence” (p. 11).
Reader. Do you say in the same breath that no particle of matter can be formed anew, and that, when formed, it cannot disappear? When is it formed, if it cannot be formed at all?
Büchner. The phrase may be incorrect, but the idea is sound, and the argument conclusive.
Reader. Poor doctor! the idea is as inconsistent as the phrase is incorrect; and the argument is not worthy of the name. Let us admit that matter, elements, and atoms have been observed to remain always and everywhere the same. Does it follow that matter, elements, and atoms are indestructible? By no means; it only follows that, be they destructible or not, they have not been actually destroyed. You say that by the destruction or addition of an atom “the world would be disturbed.” Let it be disturbed; what then?
Büchner. Then the laws of gravitation and the equilibrium of matter would be interfered with; which cannot be admitted. The laws of nature are unchangeable. What has been constantly true for the past must be true for ever.
Reader. You are utterly mistaken, doctor. The world may be disturbed by the creation or the annihilation of matter without the laws of nature being interfered with. I admit that the laws of nature are unchangeable; they have been true for the past, and they will be true for ever. But what is the object of these laws? Nothing but the mode of production of the phenomena of the material world. Hence you have a law of gravitation, a law of propagation of sound, a law of impact, a law of reflection and of refraction, and generally laws of motion, but you have no law of existence and no law of substance. Whence it is clear that all your laws of nature would remain exactly the same whether any new portion of matter were brought into being or any portion of existing matter annihilated. Suppose that your own body were annihilated; would any law of nature be upset? Would the sun cease to illuminate the earth? Would the earth cease to revolve round its axis or to attract bodies? Would the ocean cease rolling its waves to the shore? Would fire cease to burn? In one word, would any law of statics or of dynamics cease to be true?
Nor can you decline this supposition by saying that annihilation itself would be against the laws of nature. For all your laws of nature, as I have just remarked, regard the movements, and not the substance, of the material world. Your laws suppose the existence of matter in the same manner as civil laws suppose the existence of civil society; and as these latter are not modified by an increase or a decrease in the number of the individuals subject to them, so neither would the former be modified by any increase or decrease in the number of material elements. There would be, of course, a change in the phenomena themselves, because the execution of the laws would be carried on suitably to the new condition of the case; but the laws would remain the same. Consequently any amount of matter could be annihilated without the least change in the laws of nature. Let the moon be annihilated; the ebb and flow of the ocean will be altered, but the laws of motion will remain the same; for the ebbing and flowing of the waters will still be proportional to the action of the disturbing causes. Let a stone be annihilated in the act of its falling to the ground; the law of attraction will remain unaltered, as it will still be true that every falling body must acquire, under gravitation, a uniformly increasing velocity. Hence the unchangeableness of natural laws cannot be alleged as a proof of the indestructibility of matter; and your argument is worthless. The utmost you can be allowed to assume is that matter, whether destructible or not, has hitherto continued to exist, and no particle of it has ever been annihilated.
This last assertion, however, is admitted by natural philosophers, not because there is any scientific proof of it, but simply because science has no grounds for denying it. Science has no means of ascertaining, for instance, whether any remote star has been annihilated, or any new star created, in the last thousand years; and if the common belief is that no new matter has been created, and no portion of matter annihilated, we owe it, not to science, but to the teaching of the Bible, which represents the work of creation as long ago completed, and the conservation of all created substances as the effect of design. But you, who laugh at revelation, and pretend to substantiate all your assertions by facts, have no right to assume that no matter has ever been annihilated. Hence not only are you unable to show that matter is indestructible, but you cannot even maintain that no particle of matter has ever been destroyed.
But I will no longer insist on this point. I admit that no atom of matter can ever be lost to the world by natural processes. My reason is that the natural actions of bodies, whether physical or chemical, tend merely to the production, modification, or neutralization of movement, and that no amount of change in the movement of an atom can cause the atom to vanish. This is not, however, a discovery of modern chemistry, as you seem to believe. The scholastic philosophers had not the fortune to know modern chemistry; yet they never believed that new compounds were made of new materials, though you recklessly assert that “it was hitherto believed”; but they always uniformly taught that matter was ingenerable and incorruptible. There was therefore scarcely any need of modern chemistry to teach us that no portion of matter can be lost by natural processes. Yet this is not the real question. What we want to know is whether an atom, or any number of atoms, has a necessary existence and cannot be annihilated by God. This is your assumption; and this is what you are unable to show. Your argument is, in fact, nothing but a vicious circle. You say: “There is no God; and therefore matter cannot be annihilated”; and at the same time you say: “Matter cannot be annihilated; and therefore there is no God.” This is, in reality, the covert drift of your argumentation, when from the assumed indestructibility of matter you conclude, first, that matter could not have been created, and, further, that the existence of a Creator is a gratuitous hypothesis. On the other hand, you cannot make good your assertion that matter is indestructible without first denying the existence of a Creator. Such is your nice logic in what you probably consider to be one of your best arguments.
And let me here make a passing remark on the word “immortality,” which you have chosen to designate the pretended indestructibility of matter. Immortality is not simply “existence without end,” but “life without end.” Hence living beings alone can be immortal. Do you assume, then, that a grain of dust or an atom of matter is a living being? If you say yes, where are the facts that will lend a support to such an unscientific doctrine? If you say no, then the immortality of your matter is nothing indeed but a new form of what you would style “philosophical charlatanism.”
To conclude: the indestructibility of matter is a ridiculous invention of ignorant empiricists, who know neither what matter is nor what is philosophical reasoning. They make, indeed, a great deal of noise with their scientific publications; but their ephemeral celebrity is due to an organized system of mutual laudation and to Masonic support, as you know. Let only twenty years pass, and you may be sure that our children will laugh at your celebrities: and if your Force and Matter is to reach them, they will laugh at you too. Common sense cannot slumber for ever; and when it awakes, then will all your infidel scribes be pronounced designing knaves.
Büchner. I thought you would never end, sir; but, long as your answer has been, it has failed to convince me. The force of my argument lies in this: that what can have an end must have had a beginning. If, therefore, matter is not indestructible, it must have had a beginning.
Reader. Certainly.
Büchner. But a beginning of matter is inconceivable. For how could matter come into existence?
Reader. By creation out of nothing.
Büchner. This is what I deny. For out of nothing nothing can arise. This is an axiom. Hence “never can an atom arise anew or disappear; it can only change its combinations.... Matter must have existed from eternity, and must last for ever” (p. 12).
Reader. I am not in the least surprised to hear that my long talk did not convince you. It is always difficult to convince a man against his will. My object, however, was not to give you a positive demonstration of the fact of creation, but only to show that the reasons which you were parading against creation amount to nothing. Of this I hope I have not failed to convince you. But now you come forward with a new argument, which indeed is very old, consisting in a pretended axiom, that out of nothing nothing can arise. Suppose, doctor, that I deny your axiom. How would you show that I deny a truth?
Büchner. “How can any one deny the axiom that out of nothing nothing can arise?” (p. 12).
Reader. You must know, doctor, that what you assume to be an old axiom is only an old error. In fact, why do you say that out of nothing nothing can arise? Simply because natural energies can do nothing without pre‐ existing materials. Hence your argument amounts to this. “Natural energies never make anything out of nothing; therefore out of nothing nothing can be made.” That this conclusion is a great blunder I need not prove, I presume, as logic teaches that no conclusion can be more general than its premises. Where is, then, the ground of your pretended axiom?
Nor can you reply that the natural energies are the only energies known to us, and that, if these cannot make anything out of nothing, the axiom is unexceptionably true. This would be to assume what you are bound to prove, to wit, that there is no power above the natural forces; and to assume this is what logicians call Petitio principii. On the other hand, you cannot maintain that such natural forces are the only ones we know; for you cannot limit the range of human knowledge within the narrow sphere of mere empiricism without denying human reason.
Büchner. We have no notion of supersensible forces.
Reader. You talk without reflection, doctor. If you have no such a notion, what is it, then, that compels you to admit any demonstrated truth? Is it attraction, heat, electricity, or any of your physical or chemical forces? No; it is the force of demonstration, it is the force of truth. This is no vain theory; I appeal to your own experience. Your intellect is obliged to yield to the force of evidence and demonstration just as inevitably as the pendulum is obliged to yield to the force of gravitation. And since a real effect requires a real cause, hence whatever thus really compels your intellect to yield must have a real power, and that evidently supersensible.
But reverting to your pretended axiom, I have yet to remark that, strictly speaking, it does not even hold in the case of natural causes; in other terms, I say that nothing is ever produced by natural causes except out of nothing. Of course no tailor ever made a coat without cloth, and no carpenter ever built a ship without pre‐existing materials. This I admit; but if you closely examine the point, you will see that to make a coat or a ship is not to produce it, and that the action of the tailor and the carpenter wholly consists in modifying and arranging the materials so as to give them a form. It is, therefore, this form alone that is produced. Now, clearly, this form, before its production, was nothing; for it had no existence. And therefore the work of the tailor or the carpenter is a production of something out of nothing.(152) And thus either you must deny that anything is ever produced, or you must give up your axiom that nothing can be produced out of nothing.
Büchner. I cannot give up my axiom without inconsistency. I will rather deny that anything is ever really produced. In fact, “Those are children, or persons with a narrow sphere of vision, says Empedocles, who imagine that anything arises that has not existed before, or that anything can entirely die and perish” (p. 15).
Reader. These are empty words.
Büchner. On the other hand, “the immortality of matter is now a fact scientifically established, and can no longer be denied” (p. 13).
Reader. Indeed?
Büchner. Yes; “Its actual proof is given by our scales and retorts” (p. 13).
Reader. I thought I had already shown that your scales and retorts are incapable of giving such a proof.
Büchner. “Sebastian Frank, a German who lived in 1528, says: Matter was in the beginning in God, and is on that account eternal and infinite. The earth and everything created may pass away, but we cannot say that that will perish out of which matter is created. The substance remains for ever” (p. 14).
Reader. Do you endorse these words?
Büchner. Certainly.
Reader. Then you catch yourself in your own trap. For if matter is created, as your German writer says, surely there is a Creator.
Büchner. But if matter was in the beginning in God, and was eternal, it is plain that matter could not be created.
Reader. Perfectly true. And therefore, since matter, according to your German authority, has been created, surely matter was not in the beginning in God. But, after all, can you endorse Frank’s words without admitting a God? And can you admit a God and a Creator while fighting against creation and the existence of God? Be honest, doctor, and confess that bad indeed must a cause be which cannot be maintained but by clumsy sophistry and shameful contradiction.
V. Immortality Of Force.
Reader. In your theory, doctor, force is immortal. This I cannot understand. Would you tell me how you come to such a conclusion?
Büchner. “Indestructible, imperishable, and immortal as matter is also its immanent force. Intimately united to matter, force revolves in the same never‐ending cycle, and emerges from any form in the same quantity as it entered. If it be an undoubted fact that matter can neither be produced nor destroyed, but merely transformed, then it must also be assumed as an established principle that there is not a single case in which force can be produced out of, or pass into, nothing; or, in other words, can be born or annihilated. In all cases where force is manifested it may be reduced to its sources; that is to say, it can be ascertained from what other forces a definite amount of force has been obtained, either directly or by conversion. This convertibility is not arbitrary, but takes place according to definite equivalents, so that not the smallest quantity of force can be lost” (p. 16).
Reader. How do you account for this theory?
Büchner. “Logic and our daily experience teach us that no natural motion or change, consequently no manifestation of force, can take place without producing an endless chain of successive motions and changes, as every effect becomes immediately the cause of succeeding effects. There is no repose of any kind in nature; its whole existence is a constant cycle, in which every motion, the consequence of a preceding motion, becomes immediately the cause of an equivalent succeeding one; so that there is nowhere a gap, nowhere either loss or gain. No motion in nature proceeds from or passes into nothing; and as in the material world every individual form can only realize its existence by drawing its materials from the immense storehouse of matter, so does every motion originate from the equally immense storehouse of forces, to which sooner or later the borrowed quantity of force is again returned. The motion may become latent—i.e., apparently concealed; but nevertheless it is not lost, having merely been converted into equivalent states, from which it will escape again in some shape. During this process force has changed its mode; for force may, though essentially the same, assume in the universe a variety of modes. The various forms may, as already stated, be converted into others without loss, so that the sum‐total of existing forces can neither be increased nor diminished, the forms only changing” (pp. 17, 18).
Reader. What do you mean by “forms of forces”?
Büchner. Physics, as I stated to you on another occasion, “makes us acquainted with eight different forces—gravitation, mechanical force, heat, light, electricity, magnetism, affinity, cohesion, which, inseparably united to matter, form and give shape to the world. These forces are, with few exceptions, mutually convertible, so that nothing is lost in the process of conversion” (p. 18).
Reader. “With few exceptions”? I fear that any exception will prove fatal to your theory. But go on, doctor; I wish to hear more about your conversion of forces.
Büchner. “We may cite a few instances of transformation or convertibility of forces. Heat and light are produced by combustion. Heat again is converted into mechanical power in steam, and mechanical force can again by friction be reconverted into heat, and, as in the electro‐ magnetical machine, into heat, electricity, magnetism, and light. One of the most frequent conversions of force is that of heat into mechanical force, and vice versa” (pp. 18, 19).
Reader. What conclusion do you draw from these and similar facts?
Büchner. I draw the conclusion that in speaking of forces “the word lost is an incorrect expression; for in all these and similar cases there is not a minim of power lost as regards the universe, but merely as regards the immediate object. The expended force has in reality only assumed different forms, the sum‐total of which is equivalent to the original force. Innumerable examples may be adduced to establish this law, which is expressed in the axiom that force can neither be created nor destroyed—an axiom from which results the immortality of force, and the impossibility of its having a beginning or an end. The consequence of this recently‐discovered natural truth is the same as that deduced from the immortality of matter, and both form and manifest from eternity the sum of phenomena which we term world. The cycle of matter sides, as a necessary correlate, with the cycle of force, and teaches that nothing is generated anew, that nothing disappears, and that the secret of nature lies in an eternal and immanent cycle, in which cause and effect are connected without beginning or end. That only can be immortal which has existed from eternity; and what is immortal cannot have been created” (pp. 21, 22).
Reader. I have heard with great attention all you have said, doctor, and I am sorry to see that you are as wrong as ever. Your argument is altogether ludicrous.
Büchner. It is, however, a mere statement of known facts.
Reader. I question this very much. But even if the alleged facts were unquestionable, and could not receive any other interpretation than that which you give of them, your conclusion about the “immortality of force” would still be groundless. In fact, the forces of which you speak are all material, and have their existence in matter alone. It is therefore vain and preposterous to argue about the immortality of such forces when you have already failed to show the immortality of matter itself. You boast that your argument is a mere statement of facts; and so do all modern sciolists, more or less awkwardly, when pushed to the wall. But what are the facts? Is heat a form of force? Is it a form convertible into another form? I perceive from your style that you never studied this subject; you only repeat like a parrot what other parrots have learned to say, without the least notion of the true state of things. Tell me, what is a form of force? What is force itself?
Büchner. It is not my duty to define force. I accept the definition of the physicists.
Reader. This is exactly what I expected to hear. Yet when a man undertakes to philosophize on anything, he ought to know very distinctly what that thing is. Do you make any difference between “forces” and “powers”?
Büchner. No, sir, as is evident from my terminology.
Reader. Do you discriminate between “force” and “quantity of action”?
Büchner. No, sir.
Reader. Do you identify “force” with “quantity of movement”?
Reader. Then it is evident that you confound force, power, quantity of action, and quantity of movement.
Büchner. All these terms are substantially identical in science.
Reader. True, the lowest school of physicists considers them as substantially identical, and in this manner they succeed in persuading themselves and many others that the quantity of living force existing in the world is always invariably the same. But, after all, those physicists speak very incorrectly, and are not to be followed in their blundering terminology. A quantity of movement is not an action, but the result of action; and a quantity of action is not a power, but the exertion of power. In fact, the same power acts with different intensity in different conditions; and equal actions produce different movements in bodies actually subject to different dynamical determinations. Hence it is impossible to admit that powers, actions, and movements are synonymous.
And now, which of these three notions do you choose to identify with force? If you say that force is “a quantity of movement,” then it will be false that no force is ever lost; for any quantity of movement can be lost without compensation. Thus a stone thrown up vertically loses its quantity of movement without compensation.(153) If you say that force is “a quantity of action,” it will again be false that no force is ever lost; for all successive actions successively pass away, and continually change their direction and their intensity, according as the distances and positions of the bodies acted on are altered. Lastly, if you say that force is “power,” then it is false that forces are transformed or convertible; for the power of each element of matter remains unalterably the same, as you yourself acknowledge, throughout all the vicissitudes of time. “A particle of iron,” you say with Dubois‐Reymond, “is and remains the same, whether it crosses the horizon in the meteoric stone, rushes along in the wheel of the steam‐engine, or circulates in the blood through the temples of the poet.”
Büchner. Would you, then, repudiate science?
Reader. By no means. I love and respect true science. I only repudiate that false and presumptuous dogmatism which prompts a class of physicists to draw general conclusions from particular, and often questionable, premises.
Büchner. Do you, then, condemn the method of induction?
Reader. Not at all. I condemn the abuse of that method. What right have modern scientists of extending the principle of the “conservation of force” beyond the boundaries marked by observation and experiment? All they have a right to say is that in the impact of bodies an equal quantity of movement is lost by one body and acquired by another. This is the fact. But does it follow that therefore the movement lost by the one body passes identically into the other? This is what they imagine; and this is what cannot be proved, because it is absurd. Movement is an affection of matter, and has no independent existence, as you well know. It cannot, therefore, pass identically from body to body any more than a movement of anger can pass identically from man to man. And yet it is on this absurd notion of nomadic movement that the whole theory of the conservation of force, as now held by your advanced thinkers, has been raised. They say: “The quantity of movement which is lost by one of the bodies, and that which is acquired by the other, are perfectly equal; therefore a quantity of movement passes identically from one body to another.” In other terms they say: “There is equality; therefore there is identity.” Is this legitimate induction? Good logic would lead us to argue in the following manner: The actions of the two struggling bodies, being equal and opposite, must produce equal and opposite quantities of movement; hence the quantity of movement which is destroyed in the impinging body must equal the quantity of movement produced in the body impinged upon. Such is the only logical view of the subject; it agrees both with reason and with fact, and it strikes your theory at the root. For what is destroyed is no more; and what is produced had no existence before its production.
We might allow you to talk of the “conservation” and “conversion” of forces, were you reasonable enough to consider such expressions as mere conventional technicalities suited to explain the relations of effects to effects rather than of effects to causes. But you construe the technical phrases into real and absolute principles, and try to explain causation by substituting the effect for the cause; which is as ridiculous an abuse of the word “force” as if a carpenter pretended that his iron square is the square spoken of in the treatises of geometry. But this is not all. What right have you to apply such a theory, whether right or wrong, to gravitation?
Büchner. “The pendulum of every clock shows the conversion of gravitation into motion” (p. 21).
Reader. Indeed? What do you mean by gravitation? The attractive power of the earth, or its action, or the weight of the pendulum? Surely the attractive power of the earth is not converted into movement; for it remains in the earth, and it continues its work. Neither is the weight of the pendulum converted into movement; for the pendulum does not cease, while moving, to have weight, nor does it weigh more when, at rest; and at the end of its oscillation is not found to have expended or consumed any portion of its weight. You are therefore obliged to say that it is the action of the earth that is converted into movement. But such an expression can have no meaning; because the action is the production of an act, and it is the act itself, not its production, that constitutes the formal principle of the movement. On the other hand, a production which becomes the thing produced is such an absurdity that not even a lunatic could dream of it. Thus it is quite evident that in no imaginable sense can gravitation be considered as converted into movement. It produces movement, but is not converted into it. You see, doctor, that your so boasted theory has no foundation either in reason or in fact.
Büchner. But we cannot deny that mechanical movement is convertible into heat, that heat may become light, and that all other such forces can be transformed.
Reader. I repeat, and, on the strength of the reasons which I have brought forward, I maintain that the term “conversion of forces” may be admitted as a conventional phrase, but not as exhibiting a philosophical notion. A real conversion of mechanical movement into heat would require that a movement of translation should be transformed into a movement of vibration by being distributed among the molecules of the body which is heated. This I have already shown to be impossible. Things follow a different course. When the hammer falls upon the anvil, its action (and not its movement) shakes the first range of molecules which it encounters. These molecules are thus constrained to approach the following set of molecules lying immediately under them, and to trouble their relative equilibrium. These latter, in their turn, trouble the equilibrium of the following set, and so on till all the molecules of the anvil partake in the movement, each molecule undergoing alternate compression and dilatation, the first through the violent action of its neighbors, and the second by the reaction due to its immanent powers. The consequence of all this is that a rapid succession of vibratory movements is originated in each molecule; and thus, as soon as the movement of translation of the falling hammer is extinguished, the movement of vibration is awakened in the molecules of both the anvil and the hammer. Now, what is this but a case of impact? For just as the hammer impinges on the surface of the anvil does each molecule of the anvil impinge on its neighbor; and therefore what you call a transformation of mechanical into vibratory movement is not a real transformation of the one into the other, but the extinction of the one and the production of the other. Thus heat is generated by percussion; and in a similar manner it would be generated by friction and by other mechanical processes. Whenever heat is produced, molecules are set into vibrations of a certain intensity, and their relative equilibrium disturbed. Evidently, such a disturbance of the molecular equilibrium is due to interaction of molecules—that is, to molecular impact. Now, I have already shown, and you have understood it, I hope, that, in the case of impact, the movement never passes identically from this matter to that, but is produced in the one at the same rate as it is extinguished in the other.
I might say a great deal more on this subject, but here I stop, as I almost regret having said so much. Your theory of the conservation of force does not bear out your “immortality of force,” and is so destitute of proof that it does not deserve the honor of a longer refutation.(154)
VI. Infinity Of Matter.
Reader. How do you account, doctor, for your assertion that “matter is infinite”?
Büchner. In a very simple manner: “Whether we investigate the extension of matter in its magnitude or minuteness, we never come to an end or to an ultimate form of it. When the invention of the microscope disclosed unknown worlds, and exhibited to the eye of the investigator the infinite minuteness of organic elements, the hope was raised that we might discover the ultimate organic atom, perhaps the mode of its origin. This hope vanished with the improvement of our instruments. The microscope showed that in the hundredth part of a drop of water there existed a world of animalcules, of the most delicate and definite forms, which move and digest like other animals, and are endowed with organs, the structure of which we have little conception of” (p. 23). “We term the most minute particle of matter, which we imagine to be no longer capable of division, an atom, and consider matter to be composed of such atoms, acquiring from them its qualities, and existing by their reciprocal attraction and repulsion. But the word atom is merely an expression for a necessary conception, required for certain purposes. We have no real notion of the thing we term atom; we know nothing of its size, form, composition, etc. No one has seen it. The speculative philosophers deny its existence, as they do not admit that a thing can exist which is no longer divisible. Thus neither observation nor thought leads us, in regard to the minuteness of matter, to a point where we can stop; nor have we any hope that we shall ever reach that point” (p. 24, 25).
Reader. That point has been reached, doctor. The theory of primitive, unextended elements is well known and advocated by good scientists and thoughtful philosophers. But let this pass, as I long for your demonstration of the infinity of matter.
Büchner. “Like the microscope in respect to the minuteness, so does the telescope conduct us to the universe at large. Astronomers boldly thought to penetrate into the inmost recesses of the world; but the more their instruments were improved, the more worlds expanded before their astonished eyes. The telescope resolved the whitish nebulæ in the sky into myriads of stars, worlds, solar and planetary systems; and the earth with its inhabitants, hitherto imagined to be the crown and centre of existence, was degraded from its imaginary height to be a mere atom moving in universal space. The distances of the celestial bodies are so immense that our intellect wonders at the contemplation of them, and becomes confused. Light, moving with a velocity of millions of miles in a minute, required no less than two thousand years to reach the earth from the galaxy! And the large telescope of Lord Rosse has disclosed stars so distant from us that their light must have travelled thirty millions of years before it reached the earth. But a simple observation must convince us that these stars are not at the limit of space. All bodies obey the law of gravitation, and attract each other. In assuming, now, a limitation, the attraction must tend towards an imagined centre of gravity, and the consequence would be the conglomeration of all matter in one celestial body. However great the distances may be, such an union must happen; but as it does not happen, although the world exists from eternity, there can be no attraction towards a common centre. And this gravitation towards a centre can only be prevented by there being, beyond the bodies visible to us, others still further which attract from without—and so forth ad infinitum. Every imagined limitation would render the existence of the world impossible” (pp. 25, 26).
Reader. Is this the whole of your argument?
Reader. I should like to know how could the large telescope of Lord Rosse disclose stars so distant from us that their light must have travelled thirty millions of years before it reached the earth? Do you not know that in thirty millions of years light travels two million millions of times over the distance from the earth to the sun? And do you hope the world will believe that, thanks to Lord Rosse’s telescope, it has been possible to determine the parallax of a star two million millions of times more distant from us than we are from the sun? The world indeed is ignorant and credulous; but when the lie is too impudent, it is apt to cry you down as a charlatan. You are most imprudent, doctor. You had no need of Lord Rosse’s telescope for your argumentation; and your mention of the distant stars disclosed by it was therefore an inexcusable blunder. But the argument itself has no foundation. You imagine that, if the world were not infinitely expanded in all directions, all matter, by universal gravitation, would have conglomerated into one celestial body. But tell me, Does the moon gravitate towards the earth?
Büchner. Of course it does.
Reader. How do you account, then, for the fact that the moon has not fallen, nor is likely to fall, on the earth? Is it because the moon is attracted by some matter lying outside its orbit?
Büchner. It is on account of centrifugal force accompanying its curvilinear motion.
Reader. I am delighted to see that you can explain the fact without appealing to the infinity of matter. Let us go on. As the moon gravitates towards the earth, so do all satellites towards their planets, and all planets towards the sun. And yet none of the satellites have fallen into their planets, and none of the planets into the sun. Is this owing to the matter which lies outside of the planetary and solar system? I presume, doctor, that the enormous distance of fixed stars from us will not encourage you to believe that their attraction on any planet can cope with its gravitation towards the sun. On the other hand, this gravitation is not neutralized by the action of any exterior matter; for all planets actually obey the solar attraction, as their orbital movement conclusively shows. This same orbital movement implies also a centrifugal tendency; and this tendency sufficiently prevents the falling of the planets on the sun. This is unquestionable doctrine.
Büchner. I admit the doctrine.
Reader. Accordingly it is evident there is no need of infinite matter to prevent the celestial bodies from clustering into one central body. Centrifugal forces, in fact, are sufficient, even by your own admission, to remove all danger of such a catastrophe; and centrifugal forces are to be found wherever there is curvilinear movement around a centre of attraction, that is, throughout all the world, according to astronomical induction. Consequently your argument in favor of the infinity of matter is a mere delusion.
Büchner. “If we can find no limit to minuteness, and are still less able to reach it in respect to magnitude, we must declare matter to be infinite in either direction, and incapable of limitation in time or space. If the laws of thought demonstrate an infinite divisibility of matter, and if it be further impossible to imagine a limited space or a nothing, it must be admitted that there is here a remarkable concordance of logical laws with the results of our scientific investigations” (p. 27).
Reader. Your great scientific investigations give no result that favors the infinity of matter. This we have just seen. Logical laws give no better results. It is idle, doctor, to assume that there is any law of thought which demonstrates the infinite divisibility of matter; and it is as capricious to assert the impossibility of imagining that the space occupied by matter is limited. You say that outside that space there would be nothing, and therefore there would be no space except that occupied by matter; whence you conclude that space would be limited. Do not fear, doctor, for the fate of space. Outside the space which is occupied by matter there is yet infinite space unoccupied by matter. Space is not made up of matter. Move the matter; you will not move space. Remove all matter; space will not disappear. Of course you cannot understand this, because whoever blots God out of the world extinguishes the source of his intellectual light, and is therefore doomed to grope for ever in the dark. But we Christian philosophers, who admit a God infinite and immense, have no great difficulty to understand how there can be space not occupied by matter. Wherever God is, there is space which can be occupied by matter; for wherever God is, there he can create any amount of matter; and wherever matter can be placed, there is space; for space is nothing but the possibility of locating matter.
It is not my intention to dilate on this topic, nor is it necessary. To answer your difficulty I need only say that space, though void of matter, is always full of God’s substance, to whose immensity alone we must resort, if we desire to account at all for the existence of infinite space.
VII. Dignity Of Matter.
Reader. I scarcely expected, doctor, that you would devote a chapter of your book to such a trifling and unscientific subject as the dignity of matter. Is not matter, as such, the lowest of all known substances? What is the dignity of matter?
Büchner. You belong to the old school, sir. I will tell you what is the modern view of matter: “To despise matter and our own body because it is material, to consider nature and the world as dust which we must endeavor to shake off, nay, to torment our own body, can only arise from a confusion of notions, the result of ignorance and fanaticism” (p. 28).
Reader. You begin with a false assumption, doctor. We of the old school do not despise the body “because it is material.” God created matter; and whatever proceeds from God is very good. We, however, consider the body as of a lower nature than our rational soul, and try to put a check to its unruly appetites—a thing which you, being a physician, will surely approve and commend as conducive to the preservation of health, not to say of morality.
Büchner. “Matter is not inferior to, but the peer of, spirit; the one cannot exist without the other; and matter is the vehicle of all mental power, of all human and earthly greatness” (p. 28).
Reader. This is, doctor, the most abject and degrading materialism.
Büchner. I am not afraid of this word, sir. “We frequently hear those persons contemptuously called materialists who do not share the fashionable contempt for matter, but endeavor to fathom by its means the powers and laws of existence; who have discerned that spirit could not have built the world out of itself, and that it is impossible to arrive at a just conception of the world without an exact knowledge of matter and its laws. In this sense the name of materialist can nowadays be only a title of honor. It is to materialists that we owe the conquest over matter and a knowledge of its laws, so that, almost released from the chains of gravitation, we fly with the swiftness of the wind across the plain, and are enabled to communicate, with the celerity of thought, with the most distant parts of the globe. Malevolence is silenced by such facts; and the times are past in which a world produced by a deceitful fancy was considered of more value than the reality” (p. 29).
Reader. You commit blunders upon blunders, doctor. We do not call materialists those who do not share “the fashionable contempt for matter,” but those who deny the existence of a spiritual soul, or teach that matter is not inferior to, but the peer of, spirit, and that the one cannot exist without the other, just as you teach. And therefore your definition of materialism is your first blunder. Again, contempt for matter is not, and never has been, “fashionable”; second blunder. That materialists endeavor “to fathom the powers and laws of existence” is a third blunder; for they are not even capable of fathoming their own ignorance, as our present discussion shows very clearly. A further blunder is to speak of “the powers and laws of existence,” as if there were any law of existence. A fifth blunder is to give credit to the materialists for having discerned “that spirit could not have built the world out of itself.” This was discerned long ago by Christian philosophers; whereas your materialists have even failed to discern that spirit could create the world out of nothing. A sixth blunder is contained in your assertion that “it is to materialists that we owe the conquest over matter and a knowledge of its laws.” Indeed, you might as well say that we owe light to darkness, and wisdom to dolts. Go and study, O great doctor and president of the medical association of Hessen‐Darmstadt! and then tell us whether Newton, Volta, Galileo, Galvani, Biot, Ampère, Cuvier, Faraday, Liebig, and scores of other great scientists were materialists. To such men we owe modern science; but what does science owe to your materialists? What law did they discover? What conquests have they achieved? It is absurd for them to complain of “malevolence” when they are treated with the contempt they deserve. They are, in fact, mere plunderers and traitors of science.
But I wonder, doctor, whether your love of materialism is much calculated to show the dignity of matter. You have not adduced as yet any reason why we should think of matter very highly. You have said, indeed, that matter is “the peer of spirit”; but this is mere twaddle, as you admit of no other spirit than what would be a result of material combination. I want something better—something like a good argument—before I can appreciate the dignity of matter.
Büchner. “Pretended worshippers of God have in the middle ages carried their contempt for matter so far as to nail their own bodies, the noble works of nature, to the pillory” (p. 29).
Reader. What do you mean?
Büchner. “Some have tormented, others crucified themselves ...” (ibid.)
Reader. Who crucified himself? When? Where? Can any one nail himself to a cross any more than he can raise himself by his belt?
Büchner. “Crowds of flagellants travelled through the country, exhibiting their lacerated backs. Strength and health were undermined in the most refined manner, in order to render to the spirit—considered as independent of the body—its superiority over the sinful flesh” (p. 29).
Reader. The flagellants were a set of fanatics; but their excesses do not prove the dignity of matter. After all, had they been materialists, they would surely have done something worse than to scourge themselves. They may have undermined their strength and their health, as you remark; but how much greater is the number of materialists who shorten their lives by shameful disorders, since they have lost all hope of a future and better life? Do you pretend that what is done by your adepts for the sake of worldly or sensual pleasure cannot be done by Christians for the sake of eternal salvation? We believe in eternal salvation, and we know what we believe. Strength and health are goods of a lower order than morality, and no true man would hesitate to endanger them for a superior good. But on what authority do you assume that in the middle ages strength and health were undermined “in the most refined manner”?
Büchner. “Feuerbach relates that S. Bernard had, by his exaggerated asceticism, lost his sense of taste, so that he took grease for butter, oil for water” (p. 30).
Reader. You know that Feuerbach is no authority; and yet I should like to know, how can a man lose his sense of taste by asceticism? Does asceticism affect the tongue or the palate? S. Bernard lived sixty‐three years, in spite of continuous intellectual and corporal work, so that you can scarcely say that his manner of undermining his strength and health was “most refined.” As to grease and butter, I have the honor to inform you that S. Bernard seldom tasted either, as they were excluded from the Cistercian table. What do you say to that?
Büchner. “Rostan reports that in many cloisters the superiors were in the habit of frequently bleeding their monks, in order to repress their passions” (p. 30).
Reader. Bosh.
Büchner. “He further states that injured nature avenged itself, and that rebellion, the use of poison and the dagger against superiors, were by no means rare in these living tombs” (p. 30).
Reader. And you believe such lies? Of course there is no reason why they should not be circulated among the ignorant and superstitious. They are fond of believing such things, and they are served according to their taste. The supply always meets the demand. Oh! how truly right was S. Paul when he said that those who turn a deaf ear to truth are doomed to swallow fables! Those who do not believe the Catholic Church, the highest authority on earth, by just judgment stupidly believe the lies of a Rostan and of a hundred other charlatans of modern times. But let us not forget the real point at issue. Your object was to show the dignity of matter. Where are your proofs? Do you think that the dignity of matter can be established by defamation? Every intelligent reader will infer, on the contrary, that it is from lack of reasons that you are obliged to disgrace your work with libel and slander.
Büchner. I am not a forger, after all. I have cited my authorities. But the dignity of matter appears from the fact that it is to matter that we owe science. “Have those who start from God and not from matter ever given us any clue as to the quality of matter and its laws, after which they say the world is governed? Could they tell us whether the sun moves or is at rest? whether the earth is a globe or a plain? what was God’s design? No! That would be an impossibility. To start from God in the investigation of nature is a phrase without meaning. The unfortunate tendency to proceed in the investigation of nature from theoretical premises, and to construe the world and natural truths by way of speculation, is long abandoned; and it is by pursuing an opposite course of scientific investigation that the great advance of our knowledge of nature in recent times must be ascribed” (pp. 31, 32).
Reader. It is evident that all our knowledge begins in sensible representations, and therefore depends on matter. But how can you infer from this the dignity of matter? When you ascend a ladder, the first step is always the lowest; which shows the contrary of what you wish to prove. Matter is the lowest of all objects of knowledge, while the highest is God. From matter we start, and in God we must end. This every one admits; you, however, assume that some philosophers “start from God, and not from matter.” Who are they? Are they, forsooth, those who teach that matter has been created by God? Then you are unjust to them, and falsify the history of science, by giving us to understand that they could not tell us whether the sun moves or is at rest, and whether the earth is a globe or a plain. It was not the atheist or the materialist that taught us astronomy and geography. The materialist can only tell us, as you do, that “all natural and mental forces are inherent in matter” (p. 32), which is no science at all; and that “in matter alone forces can manifest themselves,” or that “matter is the origin of all that exists” (ibid.), which is the reverse of science. This they can prate; but as for the great laws of nature, they had to learn them from us—I mean from men who did not preach the dignity of matter with the foolish and ignoble purpose of dethroning God. You condemn those who “construe the world and natural truths by way of speculation.” This I have already answered; but I may remind you that by condemning speculation you condemn yourself. Experimental knowledge is very good; but it is by speculation alone that our knowledge acquires its scientific character. Hence your view of science without speculation is as absurd as your assumption of matter without spirit and without God. This may suit materialists, for they stop supinely at the lowest step of the ladder; but intellectual men have a mind to ascend the ladder to the very top. What is the use of knowing matter, if you know nothing else? Matter is the alphabet of science; to study matter, and to ignore the methods of rising from matter to spirit, and from the world to God, is to study the alphabet alone during all your life, and to die an abecedarian. This is what you crave; this is what you adorn with the venerable name of science; whereas we believers not only study the alphabet, but also read the great book of the universe, and know that the book has an Author, whose thoughts it reveals. You have vainly labored to establish the dignity of matter. Had you known how to read the book of nature, you would have discovered that matter has no natural dignity but that of being the lowest work of Him whose works are all perfect.
Who Will Remember?
Like as a pebble on the salt sea‐sands That some wave washes to an unknown shore, So shall we quietly be swept away From out the millions to be seen no more.
Who will remember, who will say “dear friend”? Who will walk sadly seeking yet a trace Of well‐known footsteps, of caressing hands, Of some remembrance of a lost, dead face?
Ask not too much of human hearts that wait; Fresh buds will blossom for their eyes at last, And flowers dead, however sweet they were, Are, like the whole of earth’s dead treasures, past.
Church Music.(155)
From the earliest times music has had a place in the public worship of all peoples—among the pagans, among the Jews, among Christians. Its use in this connection has been dictated by God himself in the act of constituting the human mind; it has, moreover, received his express sanction, as we learn from the ordinances of the Jewish people. In the new law it has even been consecrated by his own divine example, since we read that our Lord and his apostles sang hymns together. His birth was heralded to the world by the song of his angels, and heaven is represented to the Christian as a place where we shall sing for ever the praises of God.
Church music, therefore, dates from the origin of Christianity, and has constituted ever since an integral, though not an essential, part of public worship among Christians.
The church has her simple offices and her solemn offices, and she has made the use of music one of the chief marks by which they are distinguished.
Church music grew with the growth of the church. As Christians increased and prospered, music was more and more cultivated, and was more largely introduced into their solemn exercises of worship.
The extent to which sacred music was cultivated in the early church cannot be easily determined; we have no reason to think it was very great.
When Europe emerged from that sad state of confusion which came over it with the invasion of the northern barbarians, and music was revived as a science and an art, it was, like the other branches of learning, at first confined mostly to the clergy, and its productions were for a long time almost exclusively of a sacred character.
The church being an indestructible institution, her traditions are handed down by one generation of her children to another. It was thus that in a dark day of confusion and destruction she preserved for us the treasures of ancient learning and the arts; and the world to‐day owes to her not only the modern developments of poetry, painting, sculpture, and architecture, but also the beautiful and varied combinations of modern music.
At first, as we have just said, there was no music but that which was dedicated to holy purposes, except such rude melodies as nature in all ages teaches the most uncultivated.
The musical drama did not exist; and music does not seem to have made any essential part of the pageants or spectacles destined for the public entertainment.
It was from the church that music was introduced into the chamber, the hall, and the street, and in the beginning secular music imitated and borrowed the forms of that which was sacred.
The music used in the sacred offices at first and during many centuries was the plain chant. How much of this chant was taken from pagan or Jewish sources cannot be determined, for authorities differ widely; but in any case it was so modified and improved by the fathers of the Eastern Church, and afterwards in the West by SS. Ambrose and Gregory, when they adapted it to the purposes of Christian worship, that it is now frequently called the ecclesiastical chant, though it is oftener called Gregorian, from the pope just mentioned.
In the beginning it was what its name indicates—plain and simple. It was sung in unison, and its melodies did not exceed the compass of the most ordinary voices.
But unison was found monotonous, as also the uniformity of time or measure generally observed in plain chant. The first departure from the old and severe forms was made when, about the middle of the IXth century, they introduced a sort of rude harmony constructed on the chant.
But this did not satisfy the craving for change, and the love of novelty, once indulged, led the way to many excesses.
Baini gives us an example of the abuses that then became prevalent. “They would write, for example, a Mass,” he says, “taking as a subject the melody of the Gregorian Ave Maria. Three parts in the harmony would sing portions of the Kyrie, Gloria, and Credo at the same time, while a fourth would take up at intervals the entire Ave Maria.”
Not merely were the sacred words of the composition itself “shaken together in most admired confusion,” but, as we have just said, the words of other sacred pieces were foisted among them, so that they no longer expressed any one idea. Worse far, the gaps were even sometimes filled up “with snatches of old songs,” the ballads of the day, and those not always of the most unexceptionable character.
Attempts were also made to vary the stately measure of the chant.
Indeed, all sorts of devices were introduced in the search for novelty, and so great had become the abuse about the period of the Council of Trent that a celebrated cardinal declared that some of the church music of his day was so unfit to be offered to God that nothing but invincible ignorance could excuse from mortal sin those who offered it.
At this juncture arose the illustrious Palestrina.
Born in an age of the most vitiated taste, and himself not quite exempt from its unfavorable influences at the opening of his professional career, his exalted and discriminating genius was guided to disentangle the sweet spirit of song from the mazes in which it was well‐nigh lost, and to rescue his art from the merited reproaches which it was receiving on every side. He was encouraged and assisted in his task by two saints, S. Charles Borromeo and S. Philip Neri. When his celebrated Missa Papæ Marcelli was first heard in 1565, it at once banished from the churches all the profane novelties that had preceded it, and became the model for church compositions during the next hundred years, when with Carissimi began the change to what is modern.
When Pius IV., the reigning pontiff, heard it, he declared it satisfied all the requirements of sacred music; in fact, so charmed was he by its exquisite strains that he compared it to the melodies that the Apostle S. John had heard in the heavenly Jerusalem, saying that another John (Palestrina’s Christian name was John) had given us in the earthly Jerusalem a foretaste of the music in heaven.
From that day to this the use of Palestrina’s music has been retained in the Pope’s own choir, to the exclusion of all other except the simple plain chant, with which it is made to alternate. Even when the Pope officiates or presides at any celebration outside his own chapel, his choir accompanies him and sings the same music.
It is this music, alla Palestrina, that travellers go to Rome to hear, especially during Holy Week. One generation has thus followed another to Rome for three hundred years; and the harmonies of Palestrina, though ever ancient, are, like the beauty of divine truth, found to be ever new.
Though Palestrina has retained his hold on the Papal choir at Rome, music far different in character from his has been introduced into the other choirs, even of Rome.
The perfection of the organ and of other instruments used to accompany the voices of singers, and the consequent discovery of other and more scientific complications in the art of harmony, especially since the introduction of the natural discord, the development of melody, joined with much greater skill in execution and the incessant thirst for novelty, have led to the introduction into nearly all the churches of compositions in which the voices and instruments are heard together in every variety of combination.
Add to this that about two centuries ago the opera took its rise, and the dramatic style, followed in it and developed by it, made its influence felt in the church.
For kings and princes then began the practice of selecting the same musician to preside over the performances of their theatres and of their chapels; nay, the whole staff of the theatre was brought into the chapel on Sundays, as is done to‐day in Dresden. Nothing better and nothing different was required for the chapel, except the substitution of other words and a toning down of the measures of the drama, and thus the chapel became merely a sort of sacred concert‐room.
But the maîtres de chapelle at these courts were the first musicians of their day, and their success in operatic music, sounded over all Europe, caused their sacred compositions to be looked on with undiscriminating favor by the public. And as the weakness of human nature is such that inferiors naturally imitate their superiors, and sometimes even copy their faults, it became the fashion to sing in churches the sacred music used in court‐chapels, especially as this was more easily obtained, being printed at the expense of the courts.
Besides this, the modern composers of opera seem to have the ambition of composing also for the church. But they generally forget how very different the church and the theatre are, and they seldom care to follow a different method in the church from that which gains them applause in the theatre; and the public are frequently as forgetful in this matter as the composers.
It must be added that the directors of choirs seem to have a fatal habit of following, even in church, if they are allowed, the prevailing style set by the latest and most popular writers for the stage.
When the model so successfully set by Palestrina was first departed from, and instrumental music used in conjunction with vocal, there may have been a certain gain, as the chant became more melodious and less monotonous without losing its depth and solemnity. Gradually, however, the grave style of the older musicians disappeared, and the music of the church has become, at least in some places, almost as light and as airy as that of the theatre.
This music sometimes seems written in derision or contempt of the sacred words; as, 1, when a prayer of supplication, such as the Kyrie eleison and Dona nobis pacem, is set to numbers as lively as those of a jig (frequently the case with Haydn). 2. When the words are omitted, even though they be of importance; as the words of the Creed, qui ex Patre Filioque procedit (nearly always omitted, even in the longest Masses of Haydn). 3. When they are interminably repeated or senselessly inverted. In Mozart’s Twelfth Mass we have: Crucifixus, et homo factus est.
What shall we say of the operatic solos, duos, trios, etc., instrumental interludes, sincopations, etc., which, to any one who reflects, are in direct contradiction to all our notions of what is reverent and appropriate to the church?
From what has been said in the preceding pages, there are three general forms of church music: the plain chant, the music termed alla Palestrina, and modern figured music.
(a.) Plain chant is the old and original song of the church, of which the forms, like those of a dead language, are fixed and immutable. Long, long ago the secret of plain chant composition was lost, and it is probable that we have lost in great measure also the secret of its proper execution.
“The leading idea which is represented by plain chant,” says Canon Oakeley,(156) “and in no degree by any other style of music, except that which consists in bare recitative, is that in certain cases music best discharges her office by retreating, as it were, in despair before certain divine words, and contenting herself with merely providing a vehicle for their utterance, so simple as not by any studied beauty of its own to detract from their intrinsic majesty and power. This, I think, will be admitted to be the leading idea of plain chant, though I am far from denying that accidentally this idea produces some of the most attractive charms of the divine art in its results.... In many of these accidental instances plain chant not only excels other music, but absolutely sets it at defiance in its own particular line.” Hence a celebrated musician is reported to have said that he preferred the plain chant of the Preface and the Pater Noster to all he himself had ever written.
In the beginning this chant was not even harmonized. It was plain and unadorned, as its name implies—cantus planus.
(b.) The music of Palestrina is the last and triumphant result of the efforts that were made in his time and before it to vary, to modify, and to adorn the plain chant, which all had found too simple and too monotonous.
Pope John XXII., elected in 1316, complains of the novelties introduced into the execution of plain chant in his day. These innovations he condemns as unbecoming and undevotional, especially the attempts to vary the measure; but he immediately adds: “We do not intend by this to prohibit that occasionally, especially on festival days, either at the solemn Masses or the other divine offices, some harmonious combinations (consonantiæ quæ melodiam sapiunt), viz., harmonies of the octave, the fifth, the fourth, and such like, on the simple ecclesiastical chant, be sung; in such manner, however, that the integrity of the chant remain untouched, and nothing of this grave and stately music (musica bene morata) be changed, especially since these harmonies delight the ear, excite devotion, and prevent the spirit of those who sing to God from drooping” (torpere non sinunt). (Extr. Comm., lib. iii., cap. 1, Docta Sanctorum.) This Constitution is the earliest utterance of the popes concerning church music—at least since innovations were attempted—that we possess. The abuses of which Pope John XXII. complained continued to exist, and even to increase, till the time of the Council of Trent, when Palestrina produced that style of music which is known by his name, and which, though built upon the plain chant, is as unlike it as Grecian is unlike Italian architecture. It is equally unlike modern music. It differs from plain chant, being an unbroken series of artistically‐constructed harmonies, in which unison is unknown. It differs from modern music by the absolute disuse of instruments of any kind (even the organ), by the exclusion of all passages for soli, and by being written in plain chant tonality. “With the grave Gregorian melody, learnedly elaborated in rigorous counterpoint, and reduced to greater clearness and elegance without any instrumental aid,” says Picchianti, “Palestrina knew how to awaken among his hearers mysterious, grand, deep, vague sensations that seemed caused by the objects of an unknown world, or by superior powers in the human imagination.”(157)
(c.) Modern music differs essentially from all that went before it, and this difference is attributable to two principal causes: 1. The improvement in the manufacture and the use of instruments, and their introduction into the church; and, 2, The influence of theatrical music on that of the church, before alluded to. Modern music could not be in ancient times, for the want of modern instruments. As the perfection of the art of vaulting gave us that advance on the simple lines and heavy masses of Grecian architecture which we have in Gothic and Italian architecture, so the modern developments in orchestration have changed the whole character of music in the church and out of it.
The influence of operatic music on that of the church is seen in the attempt of modern composers of church music to make it dramatic. Church music, as Palestrina and the other great masters of the old Roman school had conceived it, had been treated as an emanation of pure sentiment, stripped of all human passion—as something ideal. The modern composers, on the contrary, pretend by their music to express dramatically the sense of the text. They say that, to be dramatic, it is not necessary to be theatrical, and they point to certain compositions of Cherubini, Beethoven, Hummel, and even Haydn, in which they say the contrary is practically demonstrated.(158)
It must, however, be confessed that modern composers, by trying to be dramatic, have more frequently fallen into the great fault of being theatrical than they have avoided it.
The use of instrumentation and of dramatic expression has given them immense scope, but their success bears no proportion to their talents, their opportunities, their numbers, and the immense quantity of their compositions.
Like the Athenians of old (Acts xvii.) spoken of by S. Paul, they incessantly crave something new, and, in their search for novelty, more often give us what is novel and strange than what is beautiful and appropriate, so that their compositions hardly ever continue to be used for a long time; they are soon thrown aside and forgotten; and, indeed, we think it no exaggeration to say that, if all their compositions, except a very few, were burned, or should otherwise perish, the church would suffer no loss.
In consequence of the failure of modern composers to meet the requirements of Catholic devotion, though their music has been introduced into our churches and given every chance of trial, complaints against it are heard on every side. We grumble about it in our conversations; we write against its excesses in the public journals; bishops complain of it in pastoral letters; provincial councils are forced to issue decrees about it; the Sovereign Pontiffs themselves not unfrequently raise their voices, sometimes in warning, sometimes in threats—in a word, the evil seems to have attracted general attention, as a similar evil did in the time of John XXII. and at the period of the Council of Trent, and a remedy is called for.
I. On account of the unsatisfactory character of most modern compositions, some have proposed that we should go back plainly and simply to the original or plain song. This was proposed in two able articles in THE CATHOLIC WORLD, Dec., 1869, and Feb., 1870, and the Paulists of New York have actually made the experiment.
The reasons in favor of the resumption of plain chant and the exclusion of all other music may be stated thus:
1. It is the original song of the church; it is of venerable antiquity; it was originated under ecclesiastical influences, and has been sanctified by having been always associated with what is best and holiest in the history of the church.
2. It is so dissimilar from the music of the world that it is recognized at once and by everybody as ecclesiastical, and can never be confounded with secular music.
3. It possesses, when well sung, an air of stateliness and solemnity which is never reached by all the refinements and artifices of modern music. If it is less dramatic than figured music, it is also more expressive, because in it the words of the ritual speak for themselves naturally and without affectation, and therefore most eloquently; whereas in figured music the words are made so subservient to the musical numbers, are so senselessly repeated and so jumbled together, that their meaning is disguised rather than conveyed, and they cannot speak intelligibly to the mind, especially of the uneducated. Now, S. Paul says that psalmody should speak to the understanding; and Benedict XIV., speaking of S. Augustine, who used to be moved to tears by the Ambrosian chants he heard at Milan, says: “The music moved him indeed, but still more so the words he heard. But he would weep now also for grief; for although he heard the singing, he could not distinguish the words.”
No one will dare to say that to the ninety‐nine one‐hundredths of every congregation the Requiem of Mozart, with all its beauty of melody and its wealth of harmony, would be as expressive and as provocative of the feelings proper to the funeral service as the old and ever‐charming plain chant Requiem.
4. Plain chant is the best safeguard against vainglorious display and its host of attendant evils, because it allows no scope for personal exhibition, and does not give undue prominence to individuals.
5. It is the only chant used in many places, and is found sufficient for the purposes of worship.
6. It alone has had the express authorization of the church.
This is a fair exposition of the arguments in favor of plain chant.
We admit the full force of the arguments derived from the venerable antiquity of plain chant, its Christian origin, its long and exclusive connection with the rites of religion, its dissimilarity with the music of the world, its simplicity, its impressiveness, and its incompatibility with individual display; but it must be remembered against it that it requires for its execution, especially here, where the knowledge of it and the taste for it are to be acquired, conditions not easily fulfilled; that its range is very limited; and that, however grand the impression it sometimes creates, its resources are soon exhausted; whence to those who for a long time hear it and nothing else it becomes extremely monotonous, and burdens the ear with a dull weight of sound not always tolerable. This will be admitted by all who in seminaries and monasteries have been most accustomed to hear it.
In those countries where plain chant is exclusively used every sort of device is resorted to on festival days to escape its monotony, e.g., by harmonies on the chant which are out of all keeping with it, as also by interludes on the grand orgue, by which one‐half of the words of the text are absolutely omitted, and the recollections of the world are frequently as vividly brought to mind as by any modern vocal compositions.
No one will deny the appropriateness and impressiveness of plain chant on certain solemn occasions, especially those of sorrow, but it is confessedly unequal to the task of evoking and expressing the feelings of Christian joy and triumph. If the plain chant Requiem is superior to Mozart’s, the Masses of Haydn are far more suitable to the joys of Easter‐ day than anything we can find in plain chant.
The writer in THE CATHOLIC WORLD before alluded to tells us that plain chant prays. Give me, he says, the chant that prays. But prayer is fourfold, like the Sacrifice of the Mass; viz., it is latreutic—that is, the homage of adoration; it is propitiatory, inasmuch as it tries to appease God’s anger; it is impetratory—that is, it asks and supplicates for what we need; but it is also eucharistic—that is, it gives God praise and thanksgiving. Now, if plain chant expresses better our feelings of adoration and supplication, it certainly must borrow from figured music the triumphant strains of praise and thanksgiving.
However, if the argument from authority for plain chant held good, notwithstanding all we have said, we should instantly waive further discussion. But the force of this argument we absolutely deny.
Dr. Burney has created the impression that the Council of Trent was at one time on the point of banishing figured music from the church. This was not the case. Benedict XIV. (l. xi., c. 7, De Syn. Diœc.), following Cardinal Pallavicini, the historian of the council, says: “It was proposed by some bishops, zealous for ecclesiastical discipline, that musical chant should altogether be banished from the churches, and the plain chant alone retained; [but] as others observed that this novelty [sic] would give rise to innumerable complaints and immense trouble, it was finally resolved, not that musical chants should be prohibited, but that they should be reformed, according to certain rules, to the requirements of piety and gravity.” And, in fact, the Council of Trent merely decreed that Ordinaries should banish from their churches that music in which, either by the organ or by the chant, “anything lascivious or impure is introduced, in order that the house of God may seem to be and may be a house of prayer” (Sess. xxii., Decr. de obs. et ev. in cel. Missæ.) The other decree (Sess. xxiv., cap. 12, De Ref.) adds nothing to this.
The teaching of the theologians is much more lenient than that of many of our modern dogmatists.
The great theologian, Suarez (De Orat. Voc., lib. iii., c. 8), arguing against Navarre, a rigorist of his day, says: “It is a sufficient argument that this use (of organic or figured music) is retained throughout the church, and that in the very church of Rome itself, and in the chapel of the Sovereign Pontiff, the divine offices are sung after this manner.” He then proceeds to comment as strongly as any one on the danger of excesses and abuses; only he does not seem to feel, either with the objectors of his day or with some writers of the present time, that figured music is intrinsically mischievous, any more than that it is ecclesiastically irregular.
A later and better authority, Benedict XIV., speaking as a theologian in his work De Synodo Diœc., loco cit., and as Pope, in his Constitution Annuus; 19th Feb., 1749, addressed to the bishops of the Pontifical States, says that it would be an extreme measure to banish figured music from the church, and that he considers it sufficient to banish such music as is theatrical (modi theatrales).
Much has been made of the plea that plain chant is the only chant that has ever been expressly authorized.
Now, it must be remembered, 1, that when plain chant originated, music was not used outside of the church, and that in the dark ages churchmen were the only ones who knew music, and that the church was necessarily its guardian; and, 2, that for three hundred years the church has treated her authorized version with strange incuria; for of this chant there is now no version commanded (though the differences of versions are very remarkable indeed), and till within a year or two there was no version to which any special authorization or even recommendation was given by the popes. Even the version now being prepared under the supervision of the Roman Congregation of Rites is merely recommended.
We must be excused for this long argument about plain chant, but we have been forced into it by the exaggerations of the advocates of this chant, who are, like some of the advocates of Gothic architecture, extremists, and in their zeal fear not to censure the whole church, and even the Pope himself.
They indeed censure the church; for the use of figured music has penetrated everywhere with episcopal sanction and Papal toleration, and, say what we may, it must be admitted that all the theories advanced for the exclusive use of plain chant have invariably fallen to the ground under the hand of practice.
We deny, then, the obligation of confining ourselves to plain chant, if we except that which is in the Missal and the Pontifical, and which contains what is sung by the priest or bishop at the altar.
But while we deny the obligation of using the plain chant exclusively, we would retain a large portion of it, 1, because there are parts of it so appropriate to special services that we can invent nothing better; such as the Requiem, the Lamentations, the Veni Creator, and many hymns, and the incomparable psalm tones, as charming to‐day as when heard by S. Augustine, who says of them: “As the voices flowed into my ears, truth was instilled into my heart, and the affections of piety overflowed in tears of joy.” 2. Because, like our vestments and other appendages of our ceremonial, it carries us back to the never‐to‐be‐forgotten past. 3. Because by being used alternately (as in the Papal choir) with music of a different and more modern character, it contributes most powerfully, by the effect of contrast, to the dignity and grandeur of church celebrations.
To Be Concluded Next Month.
Comparison Of Waves With Flowers.
Certainly, no more am I gladdened by the emulous reflections which the earth and sea, with dark shades and distant projections, form; when alike in charms and powers the sparkling foam competes with snow‐white flowers, for the garden, envious of the curling waves of ocean, loves to imitate their motion, and the amorous zephyr gives back the perfumes which it drinks in by blowing over the shining waters, and makes the waving leaves an ocean of bright flowers; when the sea, sad to view the natural beauties of the garden, while it tries to adorn its own realm, destroys its majestic mien, and, subject to second laws, blends with sweet effect fields of blue with waves of green; colored now like heaven’s blue dome, now plumed with various hues, the garden seems a sea of flowers, and the sea a garden of bright foam.—Calderon.
A Glimpse of the Green Isle. III—Concluded.
I return to some incidents in our journey to and arrival at Dublin. Goold’s Cross is the nearest station to the Rock of Cashel, from which it is distant about five miles. We alight here. We go to visit one who is kin and more than kind. His lares are enshrined at Mora House. An Irish conveyance, called a covered car, takes us thither pretty comfortably. There are three kinds of cars for the transportation of travellers in Ireland, not including the “low‐backed car” which is, or was, designed for the movement of farm produce, and, according to Sam Lover, of rustics on ante‐nuptial expeditions intent. Apropos, I did not see a specimen of the “low‐backed car” from Queenstown to Kingstown. That time‐honored and poetical vehicle seems to have given place to a modern box‐cart, in the East and South at least. The three varieties of car above mentioned belong to the genus known as jaunting‐cars. First, there is the “outside car,” on which the passengers are seated facing outward and back to back. The space between the backs of the sitters is railed off into a place for baggage—or, Anglicé, luggage—called the “well.” It is one of the wells in which truth is not always to be found. At the front end of “the well” is a raised seat for the driver. The “outside car” furnishes seats for from two to three persons on each side. When the seats are not full, the driver usually sits on a side “to balance the cyar.” The “inside car” is the converse of the “outside.” In the former the sitters face each other; their legs are in a space between the wheels, instead of outside them, as on the latter. It is entered by a small door at the back. The driver occupies a raised seat in front. The “covered car” is an “inside” with a high, square covering of black oil‐cloth. It is used in rainy weather. It has some disadvantages. You can see only through the curtain at the back. There are no openings at the sides, and the small glazed apertures in front are placed too high to admit even of an occasional glimpse of the face of Nature. You can only see the dame from behind. Both the “inside” and the “covered car” have a tendency to tilt backwards. You are eternally slipping down the seat toward the door. A sudden start may drop you out like a too well‐warmed plate from the hand of a greedy guest. I came near dropping out once or twice in a ride of a few miles. In one of these conveyances it is wise to take a double hitch around infant America.
A hearty welcome meets us at Mora House. It is situated in the heart of a most lovely country. The house is embowered in trees and shrubbery. The walls, offices, and outhouses are covered with ivy. Along the front of the house is a conservatory. Around it are parterres with evergreens and early flowers, and borders of dark‐green box. Broad pastures, spreading their green slopes into the distance, are relieved here and there by clumps of tall oaks. Cattle and sheep dot the landscape, giving it life without taking from its beautiful repose. In the background the Rock of Cashel, with its ruins and lofty round tower, rears its grim silhouette against the evening sky. The frame of the picture is completed by the mountains of misty blue in the far distance. Among them towers the peak from which, according to tradition, his sable majesty—in a very hungry moment doubtless—is said to have taken a “Devil’s Bit.” Over all this is spread a sky half blue, half cloud, with the softest of clare‐obscures. What a feeling of peace steals over my soul as I look upon this sweet landscape! What a lovely spot for that retirement, “friend to life’s decline,”
“To husband out life’s taper at the close, And keep the lamp from wasting by repose”!
Alas! there is no such gentle decline for us, poor nomads of the New World! We must work with tongue, or pen, or sword, or pencil by the failing light of the lamp until the last of its flickering rays dies into darkness for ever.
After luncheon our gentle cousin takes us to look at his horses and his dogs. One is a Mount St. Bernard, a colossal brute and a prime favorite. Then we visit his kitchen garden, and his cows, and his bee‐hives, and, in short, everything that is his. Next we examine the paintings and the photographs; among the former a life‐size oil‐painting, by O’Keefe, of an uncle, a university man, a brilliant scholar, who sat in more than one professor’s chair.
Thus we occupied the time until dinner was announced. Then we sat down to one of those long‐drawn‐out, old‐fashioned dinners which commence at six in the evening and end any time before midnight. Gentle cousin, having heard the Lady from Idaho express a desire to see an Irish turf‐fire, had one made in the dining‐room; and a bright, pleasant, cheerful, cleanly fire it is. We persuaded the ladies to honor in the breach, for this once, the absurd British custom of withdrawing from the table after the dessert. What a pleasant evening we spent!
Next morning we found rain still falling. It softened the atmosphere without obscuring it. The Rock of Cashel loomed up grimly but distinctly in the distance.
There is now little that is regal about “Cashel of the Kings.” It has its ruins, but nothing else. The approaches to the ruins show more of poverty and discomfort than I remember to have seen in any other town in Ireland. There is a majesty about the ruins. The rock on which they stand is about three hundred feet high. There is a lofty round tower in a good state of preservation. The frescos in one of the halls, said to have been the council‐chamber, are in a state of wonderful freshness. The floors of some of the apartments in the second story seem as perfect as ever they could have been. The carved stone‐work over the porch of one of the entrances—to Cormac’s Chapel, I think—is the admiration of connoisseurs. Every foot of this ground awakens a historical remembrance. I see the rude rulers of ancient Ireland assembled in their regal state. The second Henry and Edward Bruce pass before my mind’s eye. I see that fierce and unscrupulous nobleman, the eighth of the Geraldine earls of Kildare, and think of his astonishing ideas of right and wrong. When Mormon Harry took him to task for burning the Cathedral of Cashel, he pleaded as his excuse that when he fired the church he thought the bishop was in it! What a pleasant neighbor Lord Gerald must have been!
We have a delightful drive to the little old town of Thurles. The green of the fields and the hedges is enhanced by the contrast of thousands of soft, yellow primroses. How purely fresh those primroses look! Here bunches of violets peer forth bashfully, their modest little faces freshly washed by the gently‐dropping rain!
Thurles is a station on the Great Southern and Western Railway. There we take rail for Dublin. It is an old town with a quaint old ivy‐mantled tower which dates from the XIIIth century. The tower stands by a bridge, and watches over an infant stream that becomes a broad river before it reaches the sea. It is a relic of the time when Thurles was a walled town. Thurles is the seat of the Catholic Archbishop of Cashel. There are two convents, the Presentation and the Ursuline. The Sisters of the former institution devote themselves to the education of the poor. The Ursuline Sisters have an academy for young ladies of the wealthier and more aristocratic classes. The Presentation school gets a share of the Government educational fund, and is subject to the supervision of the Government inspectors. The mode of teaching in the Presentation school is very similar to that of the public schools in New York. The children sang in chorus remarkably well. There is also a collegiate institution for the education of candidates for the priesthood. We visited both convents, and were kindly and hospitably received.
Among the objects most worthy of a visit is the cathedral, which in taste and magnificence of decoration promises to surpass all modern ecclesiastical buildings in Ireland. It has rich marbles from Italy, fine specimens of native marble, lapis lazuli and verd‐antique, in stones that are worth their weight in gold. Some of the work on the altars is exquisite. The cathedral will be a superb memorial of the piety and taste of the present archbishop, Dr. Leahy. We had the pleasure of visiting, and being visited by, that distinguished ecclesiastic and most refined and courteous gentleman. Very kindly and hospitably did he entreat us.
About four or five miles from Thurles are the ruins of Holy Cross Abbey. Our ride thither was through a delightful country in all the humid beauty of an Irish spring. The ruins are not extensive. They have been so often and so minutely described that a detailed description is not necessary here. Besides, I am not writing a guide‐book. I must mention, however, a stone balustrade which is quite artistic in its effect. The principal window is a splendid piece of work. It is in excellent preservation. There are a number of tombs of considerable age in the abbey. Near the principal window is one to which a singular legend is attached. It was related to us by the guardian of the place, an old woman of eighty, but hale and hearty, chatty and cheerful—such a pleasant female Old Mortality as the immortal Sir Walter would have loved to study and depict. I have often wondered at the cheerfulness with which the old among the Irish poor bear the burden of lengthened existence. The tomb is of stone, and in its upper surface is a hollow. The old woman told us that it was worn by a rain‐drop which for many years fell unceasingly from the roof until the constant dropping wore into the stone the hollow that we saw. The drop began to fall on the commission of some crime, or some offence against the church—she did not recollect which—by “one of the family”—“perhaps some trouble with the priest of the parish.” It continued to fall, drip, drip, drip, rain or shine, year in and year out, until the crime was atoned for, or the offence pardoned, or the family sold out and left the country. Then the drop ceased to fall, and has never fallen since.
“Do you think the story is really true?” asked the Lady from Idaho of the old custodian.
“Do I think its thrue, ma’am?” said the old woman, giving her territorial ladyship a diplomatic look. “Shure, it isn’t for the likes o’ me to be denyin’ the likes of that. And shure, ma’am, can’t you see the hole for yourself?”
“Of course. There is no better proof than that.”
“And don’t you see, ma’am, that it’s rainin’ now at the very minnit that I’m talkin’ to ye?”
“There certainly can be no doubt about that,” replied the Lady from Idaho, glancing upwards at the umbrella which Cousin George held over her head.
“And don’t you see, ma’am, that niver a dhrop falls on the tomb where the hole is, now?” added the old woman triumphantly.
“I do indeed,” replied Mme. Idaho. “That last argument is conclusive. Even if it were not, I am of easy faith in such matters.”
“And wisely so,” chimed in Cousin George. “Doubting Thomas makes a miserable traveller. He loses the pleasures of travel in the search for proofs that he is not enjoying himself without proper warrant. If he finds evidence for us that our pleasures of association are not justified by fact, that we have no right to be pleased by legends he can disprove, we tell him he is a fool for his pains. We do not want his facts. We are determined to believe in our favorite legends, in spite of him and all the Gradgrinds in the world.”
The old woman looked at Cousin George with rather a puzzled air. She had listened most attentively, leaning her old head forward, and with withered forefinger pushing back her mob‐cap from her time‐dulled ear; but Cousin George’s harangue was evidently Greek to her. She instinctively divined, nevertheless, that George was talking on her side of the question; for she said, nodding her head approvingly the while:
“Faith, and shure it’s mighty right ye are, yer honor!”
A gratuity, calculated according to the American standard, resulted in a series of blessings and a succession of antique “dips,” known as “courtesies” by the Irish peasant women of a past generation.
We took the cars again at Thurles on our way Dublin‐ward.
There is an air of comfort and solidity about the few farm‐houses we notice on our route, but they were indeed few. The proportion of land under tillage was comparatively very small. The country seemed generally to be in pasturage. Large flocks of sheep and herds of cattle were to be seen. The small proprietors and farmers had disappeared. We saw a couple of women working in the fields. This annoyed the Lady from Idaho very much. She said that no matter how beautiful the landscape might be, that blot destroyed all her enjoyment of it. Our travelling companion, Viator, bade her season her admiration for a while until she reached the interior of Germany, where she would see many a team of wayward sisters harnessed to the plough and driven by a beery lord of the creation. Mme. Idaho said she did not want to go where such sights could be seen.
We pass Kildare, with its world‐famed “Curragh,” an extensive flat, on which a few thousand British troops were encamped at the time. At every station we find a policeman or two casting argus eyes over things in general. Physically, the policemen—the “Royal Irish Constabulary”—are among the finest specimens of the genus homo I have seen. They are tall, generally over six feet, and magnificently moulded. Their uniform, though somewhat sombre, is in good taste: a dark, green tunic and trousers, with a small, visorless forage‐cap ornamented in front with a harp in scarlet.
Clondalkin, which is within a few miles of Dublin, possesses a round tower in excellent preservation. It is about eighty feet high. The entrance is about twelve feet from the ground. It has four openings or windows some ten feet below the roof.
We are in Dublin, at King’s Bridge terminus, so called from being near the bridge erected over the Liffey to commemorate the visit to Dublin of the fourth of the royal personages so unflatteringly designated by the author of Childe Harold. A charming Irish landscape greets the eye as you approach the city; on the left the prettiest portion of the Liffey and the Phœnix Park; on the right a gently‐undulating expanse of green fields bordered by old trees and dotted with ancient churches and picturesque cottages, bounded in the distance by the soft outline of the Wicklow Hills.
One of our party expected to meet a brother whom he had not seen since they were both boys nearly a quarter of a century ago. Arrived at the terminus, and once more restored to liberty by the unlocking of the carriage‐doors, he looked around anxiously for the individual he expected to find waiting for him. He could pick out no one in the crowd whom he could claim as a brother.
“I do not think there is any one here,” said Mr. Hibernicus with an air of disappointment, after vainly peering into the faces of a dozen gentlemen, who seemed rather surprised by his close scrutiny.
“What kind of a brother do you expect, Mr. Hibernicus?” asked the Lady from Idaho.
“I assure you, my dear madam,” replied Mr. Hibernicus, “I have not the remotest idea what Jack looks like now. He was quite a boy when we parted, and I have not seen even a photograph of him since. I hoped that instinct would reveal to me, as to honest Jack Falstaff, the ‘true prince.’ ”
We stood irresolute for a moment, when a gentleman with a long beard à l’Américaine approached our group. Raising his hat, and acknowledging the presence of ladies by a bow, he said to Mr. Hibernicus, who was still endeavoring to bring his instinct into play:
“May I ask, sir, if you are looking for anybody?”
“I am looking for my brother, sir,” replied Mr. Hibernicus. “Permit me to inquire if you expect any one?”
“I expect my brother,” returned the gentleman.
“Are you Jack?”
“I am Jack.”
“How are you, Jack?”
And the brothers, after a vigorous hand‐shake and some inquiries after “So‐and‐so,” took things as coolly as if they had only been parted a quarter of an hour instead of a quarter of a century.
Decidedly, people born to the English tongue have a horror of anything approaching to demonstrative sensibility. They have nothing dramatic about them. What a scène two Frenchmen or two Italians would have made out of such a meeting after many roving years! During the days when a generous and romantic credulity gave me undeserved credit for burning the midnight oil over Homer and Horace, I had a French student‐friend named l’Orient—an ami intime of six months’ standing. L’Orient made a six weeks’ trip to England, and I was at the station to receive the great traveller when he returned.
“Te revoilà toi! Comment vas‐tu?” said I, putting forth my hand for a friendly shake. But l’Orient was not to be put off with anything so commonplace as the usual English pump‐handle reception.
“Enfin, je te revois!” he exclaimed, throwing his arms around me, “ce cher ami! Ce brave Jeem! Ce vieux de la vieille!” And putting a hand behind each of my ears, thus rendering escape impossible, he kissed me vigorously on both cheeks. Then we walked toward our hotel, l’Orient holding my hand in his. We met Jules; and l’Orient left me, and threw himself on Jules: “Ce cher Jules! Ce brave Jules!” etc., etc., and performed a double osculation on Jules. Next we met Victor, and then Benoit and several others, each of whom was accosted by l’Orient and embraced in the same effusive manner. Our two brothers meet after a separation of half a century with a simple “How are you, Jack?” and a hand‐shake. What demonstration would be lively enough for my old friend l’Orient under such circumstances? Yet l’Orient did not feel a tithe of what Jack and his brother felt. I often think it would be better for us if we were more demonstrative. We should perhaps be better satisfied with ourselves, and perhaps others would be better satisfied with us also.
I had directed my telegram from Queenstown to a wrong number, but the telegraph people took the trouble to find the person to whom it was addressed. I have had occasion frequently to use the postal telegraph. I have found its management admirable. The post‐office department is also excellently well conducted. If there is any possibility of delivery, a letter is sure to be delivered. One of my friends writes a hand so hard to decipher that I can generally achieve most success in unravelling its mysteries by turning his missives upside down and studying his hieroglyphics in an inverted position. He wrote to me at Dublin, and addressed me at a street unknown to the Dublin directory. In New York this would have been the last of the letter. The Dublin post‐officials referred the letter from one postal district to the other until the person to whose care it was addressed was found, and it was forwarded to Paris, where I happened to be at the time.
Dublin occupies both sides of the Liffey. The river runs through the city from east to west. The streets along its banks are subdivided into “quays.” The banks are faced with granite, of which the parapets are also constructed. The river is spanned by nine handsome bridges, seven of stone and two of iron. The river streets extend about three miles on either side. Each block, as we would say in New York, has a different name. Thus there is Usher’s Quay, Merchants’ Quay, Wellington Quay, etc., on the north side, extending from the Phœnix Park gate to the North Wall Lighthouse. On the south side are Arran Quay, King’s Inn Quay, where the Four Courts are situated, Upper Ormond Quay and Lower, Eden Quay, Custom‐ House Quay, etc. The entire street reaches from King’s Bridge to the end of the South Wall at Dublin Bar Lighthouse. The Liffey may be considered as the diameter of a circle in which Dublin is contained; the circular roads which run around it describe the circumference. West of Carlisle Bridge, which is the head of navigation, the Liffey is a dull and uninviting stream, especially at low water. It is not more than eighty yards wide. The mouths of the sewers which empty into it are some feet above low‐water mark. Their contributions to its by no means pellucid flood are not agreeable to contemplate either from an æsthetic or from a sanitary point of view. I should suppose the quays to be unhealthy places for residence. One must have the suicidal mania very strong indeed who would throw himself into the Liffey between King’s and Carlisle Bridges. Beyond King’s Bridge you get into the country, where the stream is not defiled by the filth of the city.
Sackville Street is the principal street of Dublin. It is about twice as wide as Broadway, but is not longer than from Canal Street to Houston Street. Its shortness takes away from its impressiveness. At the foot of Sackville Street stands Nelson’s Pillar, a Doric column about a hundred and twenty feet high, with a figure of the great admiral leaning against a capstan on the summit. A fine view can be had on a clear day (which is not always to be had) from the top of the monument, to which you may ascend by a spiral staircase in the interior on payment of a small fee. The steps at the base of the column are generally occupied by squatting idlers of all ages. On a fine day—i.e., when it does not rain—every inch of sitting space is occupied. Belated “squatters” may be seen waiting for hours until place is made by the retirement of some of the sitting members. Then a general rush is made for the vacant place. Here the politics of the nation and of the universe are discussed by the unwashed politicians of the Irish capital. I endeavored to ascertain how these squatters manage to live; but I was told that it is one of those mysteries which no one can penetrate.
The General Post‐Office and the Rotunda are near the monument. The Post‐ Office is a fine structure of stone with a portico of Ionic pillars five feet in diameter. Its pediment is surmounted by three statues: Ireland at the apex, Fidelity on the left, and Mercury on the right. In certain post‐ offices that we wot of Mercury would indeed be the right statue in the right place, and might be considered to have a double significance—as a celestial messenger and a patron of thieving post‐office clerks.
Certain tourists have claimed for Sackville Street the proud pre‐eminence of being “the finest thoroughfare in Europe.” I do not think the claim well founded. I do not consider it equal to some of the new boulevards in Paris, or even to some of those in Brussels. It is certainly grand and imposing as far as it goes, but it does not go far enough. Sackville Street, however, presents a lively scene on a fine afternoon. Beautiful women, well‐dressed gentlemen, rich toilets, and magnificent equipages may then be seen; the toilets superior to anything to be seen out of Paris, the equipages not to be equalled out of London. Nothing that I have seen on the Continent of Europe can compare with the “turn‐outs” and “cattle” driven in Dublin. The most beautiful equipage I have noticed, and at the same time the chastest in its elegant simplicity, was that of Earl Spencer, the present viceroy; four dark bays—blood‐horses—with postillions and outriders in a dark livery almost black, with white buckskin breeches and top‐boots. Not a brass button or strip of tawdry gold lace to be seen. Compared with this equipage, the state carriages at Buckingham Palace and those at Versailles looked like circus wagons.
Carlisle Bridge, the embouchure of Sackville Street, being considerably narrower than the street, is generally the scene of something like a “Broadway jam.” On a busy day it reminds one of the Fulton Street crossing—even to the policeman.
The élite of Dublin, however, will be found in Grafton Street about four P.M. This street, though narrow—narrower even than Broadway—is the brightest, cheeriest street in Dublin. It is laid with asphaltum, and is delightfully free from mud or noise. It is the fashionable shopping‐ street. Equipages in the very perfection of good taste may be seen in long lines at both sides of the street in front of the principal shops, while ranks of magnificent “Yellowplushes,” in rich liveries and powdered heads, wait, with the grand imperturbability of flunky dignity, to open the carriage‐door for madame or “my lady.”
I have already said that the Irish in Ireland are becoming a serious people. I did not meet a single specimen of the Irish joker, indispensable to the tourist in Ireland a quarter of a century ago. If he ever existed as they represented him, the railways have killed him. Now there is no time for display of wit, so called. I think the extinction of the genus “joker” is something to be grateful for. I did not see any evidence of suffering among the laboring classes or any more raggedness than in England, France, or Germany. Artisans are becoming scarce, and can command good wages. It is hard to get agricultural laborers; they can almost set their own terms. Those who may be obtained cannot be kept very long; they work merely to save enough to join their relatives and friends in the Land of the Free.
The traditional costume of the stage Irishman is as rarely seen in Ireland as the short‐waisted, long‐tailed coat, and striped trousers of the stage Yankee in the United States. I saw but one pair of “knee‐breeches” between Cork and Kingstown.
I did not encounter a single shillelah.
Grapes And Thorns. Chapter XIV—Uprooting Thorns.
“You are happy, then!” F. Chevreuse said to Mr. Schöninger the next evening when they were talking together.
His companion repeated the word with a doubting inflection. “I have always associated the idea of happiness with excitement,” he said; “and I am too calm for that. I should say that I am deeply satisfied.”
Mr. Schöninger had been rehearsing in the church the music for the next day, and F. Chevreuse had sat in the sanctuary listening, marking with what will and effect the leader accomplished his work. He showed small regard, indeed, for the vanity or the personal dignity of the singers he was training, but the success was admirable. If the men and women around him had been organ‐pipes or keys, he could scarcely have treated them with less ceremony. When the rehearsal was over, he dismissed them without a word, except the command to be promptly in their places the next morning. Knowing the touchiness of singers in general, and the peculiar touchiness of some of his own choir, the priest fully expected to see some manifestation of resentment among them; but they seemed merely surprised and a little awe‐struck, and, after a momentary hesitation, withdrew in silence, leaving the organist alone in the loft, with the soft gloaming painting the air about him, as he closed the instrument with tender care, and drew the curtain about it.
While waiting for him to come down, the priest perceived for the first time a lady dressed in deep mourning, who knelt near the door, and who quietly followed the singers from the church. Miss Pembroke had the habit of visiting the Blessed Sacrament at this hour; and she was, moreover, making a Novena, which she had begun the night before, with a special intention. In that Novena her dear Sisters at the convent had joined, only Sister Cecilia knowing what the intention was.
Mr. Schöninger went into the house with F. Chevreuse, and stood with him at an open window looking out in that exquisite hour when day and night meet in mid‐air, the sunset not yet relinquishing all its rose and gold, the night drawing only her tenderest film of purple across the sky, and crushing back her trembling stars like glimmering tears crushed between dark‐fringed eyelids.
The two men looked out, both unconsciously pleased because the evening was beautiful and spring in its freshness, and consciously thinking of other things.
“They are all taking their places again,” Mr. Schöninger said, after looking upward a moment in silence. “My patriarchs and prophets! I hated to see them discrowned, and growing dim, and fading away into myths. Now they burn out again with a greater splendor than ever. The church of the fulfilment has never shown such men as my prophetic church. The glory of the later ritual is theirs. When the church which sees would express her emotion, she borrows the song of the men who foresaw. They were a grand race. I would like to build a church, and dedicate it to King David, and have a stone statue of him playing on his harp over against the altar.”
F. Chevreuse smiled, but said nothing. He was watching with intense interest the development of this new Christian, who took his religion as he might have taken a crown. Mr. Schöninger had an odd way of performing what in any one else would have been acts of humility with a proud unconsciousness, or an unconscious pride that was a little puzzling. Of what is commonly called piety he showed not a sign; yet he did without hesitation or apparent effort what ordinary piety shrinks from. One might say that he possessed a sublime common sense, which, perceiving the relative importance of God and man, worshipped God as a matter of course, taking no thought whether man were pleased or not. Certainly, had any religious persecution threatened him, he would have taken it as a piece of astonishing impertinence.
F. Chevreuse had only just checked in himself an intention to compliment the convert on what he took to be the bravery of his profession of faith the evening before, finding that Mr. Schöninger had been as disregardful of the crowd who had listened to him as if they had been wooden posts; and he refrained also from referring to the cool “Oh! come to think of it, I do not eat meat to‐day,” with which he had that day, at the hotel table, sent his plate away in the face of a score of staring people, who, however, did not venture to smile.
If any one had exhorted him not to be ashamed of God, he would probably have asked simply, Do you think I am a fool?
Their conversation approached this topic after a while.
“One thing that has always astonished me is the mean spirit so many Christians have,” Mr. Schöninger said. “Their religion seems to degrade rather than ennoble their character. They make such grand, heroic talk because they overcome some contemptible temptation which a pagan should be ashamed to yield to, and seem to regard themselves as constant proofs of special divine interposition because they are not habitual liars, thieves, and robbers. They delight, apparently, in calling themselves miserable and worthless, which is a shame to them and a contradiction of God. If they had been so worthless, the Almighty would not have taken so great pains to be reconciled to them.”
“You are regarding the dignity of man, not that of God,” remarked the priest quietly. Then, seeing that his companion did not understand his meaning, added: “These expressions of humility and abasement come with sincerity only from those souls which, gazing heavenward, have seen so much of the glory of God that they shrink to nothingness in comparison. It is by looking at him that they grow small in their own eyes, and their little faults, if you would call them so, become so mountainous in appearance. There is, indeed, an immense dignity in man, but he loses in contemplating it; for there is sure to grow up in his soul as immense a pride and egotism. We are quite safe when we leave our honors to the guardianship of the God who gave them, and occupy our minds in caring for his honor, which was once so fatally lost sight of that all mankind were smitten with a curse. We are a fallen race. Adam and Eve could once walk with heads erect in the face of heaven, but no human being since.”
Seeing his pupil frown, F. Chevreuse added more lightly: “But I do not think it worth while to make the devil of too much consequence. Our Lord said, ‘Get thee behind me, Satan.’ Now, most people would be afraid to have the devil behind them. They would be continually peeping over their shoulder to see what he was about. His great strength is in our misconception of him. I don’t suppose any man ever yielded to him and consented to offend God but he was astonished afterward to see how easily he might have conquered, and how small was the bribe for which he had sacrificed so much.”
“The devil, too,” said Mr. Schöninger with an odd little smile. “Must I accept him?”
“No; you must reject him,” retorted the priest.
And then came question after question. How did the church explain this? What was the meaning of that? F. Chevreuse found his philosophy and theology somewhat tested by this searching questioner, who, without doubting, wished that all things should be made plain to him.
“I always had a tender feeling for Christ,” he said, “and sometimes a slight questioning if he might not be the Messias; but only last night were the needed links supplied which made my fragmentary acquiescences a single conviction. But though satisfied with Christ, I am not satisfied with religion as I see it. There are too many trumpery glozes and comments and complications. I like common sense in religion, and without it religion has no dignity in my eyes. Nothing, not even his humility and love, was more conspicuous in the character of Jesus Christ than his common sense and consistency. How honest he was! I say it with all reverence and adoration. How free he was from evasion and policy, and that prudence which is founded on an infinite number of small lies! He always detected a fallacy, and exposed it; and he was constantly appealing to the reason and good sense of his followers. When he propounded a mystery, it was not a mystery because it was involved and obscure, but because it was so great that we could not see all the parts of it. His mysteries hang like suns in space. How little there is in common between his transparent nobleness and the petty tricks of, I must say, the majority of Christians, their weights and measures for the offences they may dare against him, and those which are over the permitted guilt, their excuses, their compromises! Why, sir, there never was a time when I did not think, there never will be a time when I shall not believe, that the greatest foes to the Christian church are Christians themselves.”
“You are quite right,” F. Chevreuse answered with an air of sorrow and mortification. “There is a vast difference between Christ and Christians. He is God, and we are men. And it is the thought of this difference which makes us walk with that downcast face which so offended you a few minutes ago. Do not come to too many decisions at once. Wait, and learn by experience. Here in your reach now is all the splendor of faith, a free gift for you to work out your life by. Your privileges are peculiar. You have had no sacrament to misuse; and when you are baptized, you will stand as new and sinless a man as Adam was at his creation. In that instant, if your intention is pure, you will possess heaven in your soul. It does not often fall to the lot of a man to be sure of such happiness. Let us see how you will use the privilege. Show us, if you will, the ideal Christian, and we will be glad to see and imitate him. But beware of pride!”
“My dear friend!” exclaimed Mr. Schöninger, “I did not mean to be presuming nor to wound you. I am sure you do not wish me to say it, but to me you, at least, are perfect.”
F. Chevreuse laughed slightly. “Only wait and see,” he said. “And now a score or two of penitents are waiting to confess, and F. O’Donovan is wondering if I am going to let him stay in the confessional till midnight. I must leave you. Why do you not go up and see Mrs. Ferrier? She has been anxiously inquiring for you to‐day, and complaining a little. Go and make the good soul happy. Miss Pembroke will be glad to see you too, I am sure. She has gone to live with Mrs. Ferrier. They do not receive company; but send your name in, and you will be welcome.”
“I had forgotten them both!” Mr. Schöninger said with some compunction. “I will go at once.”
F. Chevreuse soon found that he had been mistaken in two of his assertions; F. O’Donovan was not in the confessional, and Miss Pembroke was not at that moment in Mrs. Ferrier’s house. Both had gone to the convent, one called there, the other hastening to follow when she knew his errand.
Little Anita was dying, killed by her first vision of the wickedness and agony of the world. She had heard of sin as one living far inland hears of the ocean, which he has never seen; and now the bitter waves of that wide, salt sea she believed so far away and alien had rolled in about her. It touched her feet and her garments, and left its poisonous rime there; it caught and strangled before her eyes those she had trusted and been near to; it tossed its sacrilegious foam on to the very altar of God. Her soul trembled within her, and she turned her face away from life, and hid it in the bosom of her Lord.
“O my God! my God!” she prayed. “Forgive me! but I cannot live.”
There was no physical malady; but the heart, which, like a busy shuttle, tosses to and fro its rosy threads, weaving soul and body together, faltered, and let slip link after link. The invisible folded wings detached themselves, trembling; the spiritual hands left the bodily hands cold, and stretched out into eternity, trembling, always trembling; the whole soul, still full of the fear and agony of the world, shrank outward.
The Sisters knelt about her, cruelly grieved. Was this delicate saint to be torn away from them thus, leaving them no consolation but the memory of her blameless life? Was she to go down to the grave without a sign of victory? Were they to keep for ever this last vision of her, prostrate in the shadow of that low portal?
And even while they prayed, just giving up hope, as the slight form grew cold and rigid, all at once it shone out like a marble statue on which a sudden sunbeam falls. The eyes flashed wide open, the shining soul stood tiptoe in them an instant, then parted softly.
It is not for us to follow, even in fancy, the flight of that innocent soul, nor to witness the tears of mingled sorrow and joy which the Sisters shed over their young companion, nor to listen to the prayers they said, nor the sacred communings they held together.
Our business is with earth, with Honora Pembroke, driving homeward soberly through the still evening.
“Drive slowly,” she said to the footman—not John now. “There is no haste.” And she added to herself: “I want a chance to think.”
There was, indeed, little chance to think in her new home; for good Mrs. Ferrier, who did her thinking with her tongue, could not conceive any need for solitude, and was constantly breaking in upon the few moments of retirement her young friend allowed herself to ask if she had “got through,” if she were ill, if she would please to come down, or if she objected to company. And then would come the recapitulation of her trials, her fears for her daughter, and lamentations without end. That Miss Pembroke herself might be sad and troubled, and stand in need of cheering and sympathy, did not seem to enter her mind.
So thus early in their intercourse the young woman was fain to seize every excuse for a moment of solitude. Whether she would have taken advantage of this had she known that a visitor awaited her return is doubtful.
The drive was not interminable, however, and it was still early in the evening when she reached the house and entered. She stopped at sound of a voice in the drawing‐room. It was Mrs. Ferrier who spoke, but her words were quite sufficient to tell whom she spoke to.
“I shall never, never get over your having been treated so—never!”
“Madam,” said Mr. Schöninger with a decision which scarcely covered his displeasure, “I request as a favor that you will never again mention this subject to me. I am sorry for your trouble in the matter, and grateful for the kindness you have shown me; but you must see that it is something of which I do not wish to be reminded.”
Miss Pembroke’s impulse was to go immediately up‐stairs. A kind of terror seized her at the thought of meeting him. What if he should know that she was making a Novena, and what it was for!
She stopped one moment, irresolute, then went into the bright drawing‐room where the two sat. Mrs. Ferrier uttered a little exclamation, not having heard her come; but Mr. Schöninger had heard the carriage, the door, even the step that paused at sound of their voices, and half divined that he had come near not seeing Miss Pembroke that night.
She gave him her hand with dignified and earnest friendliness. “I cannot tell you how happy you made us all last night,” she said. “You are welcome.”
He found something haughty in her mode of address, like that of a queen speaking to a subject, and looked at her intently to discern its meaning, if possible.
Alarmed at his searching expression, she turned abruptly away from him with unmistakable haughtiness this time. But no sooner had she done so than, smitten by a swift recollection of the folly and injustice of the act, she returned with a glance and gesture so full of mute, impulsive penitence that it more than atoned; it explained.
The proud surprise in his face melted to a quiet smile. He resumed his seat by Mrs. Ferrier, and began to talk with her, taking no further notice of Honora for a few minutes. But when he saw her sitting silent and pale, her momentary trouble forgotten in the recollection of the solemn scenes which she had witnessed in the last few days, he spoke to her.
“I hope you will take some interest in my choir,” he said; “for I wish to improve it very much. The material is bad, the greater part of it. Those persons seem to have been selected who had loud, blatant voices and a firm belief that they were excellent singers. They make noise enough, and are not afraid; but they are vulgar singers. I want a choir of boys in addition to them. You must know some good voices among the children.”
She brightened. It was a pleasant surprise to hear something in common life spoken of, and to have one who knew all assume that all was not lost.
“I know a good many such voices,” she said; “and I should be glad to help you. Could not I make the selection, and teach them the first lessons? It would be small work for you.”
“If you would be so good,” he replied, quite as if he had expected the offer.
And so, without more words, Miss Pembroke was installed as Mr. Schöninger’s musical assistant. It was a timely employment and interest in her changed life, and exerted a softening influence on his. He gradually relinquished the designs he had meditated, and looked on his sufferings in a more impartial light. Whatever prejudice had existed, he could not doubt, when he examined the subject calmly, that he had been condemned on a reasonable array of circumstantial evidence, and that, without prejudice, any other man would have been condemned on the same evidence. Besides, even had there been a chance of success in the attempt, he could not have received as much in legal reparation as was voluntarily given him by the public. The city was, in a manner, at his feet. The highest officials, both in private and in their public capacity, tendered to him their respect, their regrets, and offers of any assistance he might need. People felt that they could not do too much for him. It was quite true, as Mrs. Ferrier said to him: “Now is the time for you to break the law, if you want to. You could do anything, and no one would find fault with you for it.”
For the real criminal, who shall say how it happened that he was not brought to justice? There was certainly an immense activity in searching where he was not. The law put on its most piercing spectacles, then shut its eyes and looked in every direction. The spectacles saw nothing. If they were on the point of having a glimpse, they were instantly turned in another direction. We have all seen such justice when wealth and influence are on the side of the culprit. Letters came from Annette to her mother with only the smallest circumlocution, and answers were sent to them with the most transparent diplomacy in the world.
“When my poor Gerald heard of his mother’s death,” Annette wrote, “I thought for a while that he would die. He lay for hours almost insensible, and only revived from one swoon to fall into another. But he soon recovered from the first shock, and is, I think, glad to know that her sufferings were so short. But he says nothing, and I do not talk to him. I wait to see what God will do with his soul. He is like a frail building that has been overthrown so thoroughly that not one stone remains upon another, and is being built up again in a different shape. I can perceive a strength in the new foundations of his life which I had not believed him capable of. Indeed, he is not humanly capable of them. But this is the city of miracles, and ours is a miraculous faith. As I have told you, he says nothing. His life is almost an absolute silence, and, I might say, blindness to earthly things. I never see him looking at any beautiful or sublime object except the crucifix. Even I seem to be only a voice to him. He begins lately to show a disposition to be active, which is to me a sign that his mind is becoming settled.”
Annette did not think it best to describe the nature of the activity that her husband was showing, well knowing that it would have made Mrs. Ferrier believe herself to be, in addition to her other afflictions, the mother‐ in‐law of a maniac. For the work he did, here and there, wherever it could be quietly done without attracting attention, was menial. She had seen him help the poor man unload his cart of stones, or take the spade from his hands to labor in his stead, and he was constantly performing menial labors in the house. All this was done, not with any appearance of being an eccentric gentleman, but as one of the poor. For day by day his dress had been growing rude and his whole aspect changed. The sun had burnt his fair skin and faded his unshorn beard, and, by means best known to himself, his delicate hands had become dark and rough. Looking at the firm, silent lips and downcast eyes, Annette could scarcely doubt that the man she had called her husband was gradually and purposely effacing all the beauty and daintiness of which he had been so proud. He never went out with her, and if by chance they were likely to encounter in the street, he avoided the meeting. No one, except the people of the house where they lived, suspected that there was any acquaintance or connection between this dainty signora and this man, who grew every day less and less to be distinguished from the common laborer.
But in humbling himself Lawrence Gerald had not been unmindful of the one earthly duty remaining to him. “Are you willing to give me up entirely, Annette?” he asked her one day.
She answered with a brief affirmative. “Follow wherever God leads you,” she said; “and do not stop an instant to think of me.”
He was used to depending on her, and to being sure that she meant what she said, and could perform her promises. Yet he wished to make certain. “You have to go out alone, and have no protection but that of servants,” he said.
“I do not need any other protection; I am quite safe here,” she replied.
“You cannot marry again,” he went on.
“I have no wish to!”
Perhaps there could not have been a stronger proof of the purification which Annette Gerald’s character had undergone than the fact that this reply was made without a tinge of bitterness or regret. She spoke with gentle sincerity—that was all. As an absorbing affection had made her consent to be taken without love, so now a pity and charity yet more engrossing enabled her to find herself discarded without anger.
“Follow God, and think no more of me,” she said. “I remain here. Go when and where you will.”
It was the first time they had spoken together for several days, and was more by accident, apparently, than of their seeking. Passing through the room where Annette was, Lawrence had seen her trying to open a window that resisted her slight hands, and had opened it for her. Then the sweet clangor of the Ave Maria breaking out from all the towers at once, they had paused side by side a moment.
Perhaps he had wished to speak, and seized this opportunity.
At her answer he looked at her earnestly, for the first time in months, it seemed to her, and with a look she could not endure without emotion, so far‐away and mournful, yet so searching, was it. It was a gaze like that of one dying, who sees the impassable gulf widening between his eyes and what they rest upon. How many, many glances she had encountered of his!—laughing, critical, impatient, in the old days that now seemed centuries past; superficially kind, penitent, disregardful, careless, but never from the depths of his soul till now. Now she knew at last that his soul had depths, and that, as she stood before him, he was aware of her, and saw her as she was.
“Annette,” he said, almost in a whisper, “words cannot tell my sense of the wrong and insult which I have heaped upon you—on you more than all the rest put together.”
“Do not speak of that,” she said, trying still to be calm.
“Of all the women I have hurt or destroyed, you are the noblest,” he went on, seeming not to have heard her.
She drew her breath in quickly, and stood mute, looking down, and some strong band that had been holding her down—how long she knew not, perhaps for years, perhaps for her whole life—loosened, and she felt herself growing upright. She was like the graceful silver birch that has been bowed over by the snow, flake after flake, till its head touches the ground, when the warm sun begins to melt its burden, and it lifts a little, and feels itself elastic.
In days when Honora Pembroke was his ideal, “noble” was the word he applied to her, and Annette Ferrier always felt herself grow small when she heard him utter it.
“Of all women I have ever known, you are the noblest and most lovely,” he said slowly. “I was blind. Too late I have learned that. And if I had a wish left, it would be that God would reunite us in heaven.”
The snows had melted, and she stood upright at last.
There was a confused whispering in her brain. Since she was loved and honored, why need they part? She could comfort him, be at his side always, and help him to win back peace, if not happiness. They would perform works of charity together, and in humbling herself she would raise him.
She lifted her eyes, and opened her lips to speak some such word, but checked herself on seeing him turn away. His face was no longer calm and sad, but full of anguish. All the enticements of human life had assailed his soul, and were fighting against its one stern tenant, remorse. Silently, and with a feeling of unacknowledged disappointment, she awaited the result, scarcely doubting that he would yield. When had he not yielded? was the bitter question that rose in spite of her, only to be thrust down again under many excuses, as she called to mind his sufferings and his isolation.
He stood near the window, with his face turned to the light, and she watched the struggle without daring to move or to speak. What silent clash of warring passion held him thus rigid she could only guess; what voices sweet and pitiful were pleading, and what voices stern and terrible replying, who can say? It did not need that angels of darkness should be there; the human heart was enough. In that swift review when the soul, anticipating a privilege of eternity, can compress a lifetime into a moment, what visions of all that life might give could have presented themselves!—dusky eves and sunlighted mornings, when the singing of birds, mingled with the prattle of children, and quiet and elegant leisure, and smiling friends, made earthly existence seem like an Elysian dream; ever‐ present affection, with its excuses for every fault, its recognition, prompt and inspiring, of every virtue, its cheering word for the hour of sadness, its loving check, its sympathy, its silent tenderness; the freedom of earth which wealth can give, every portal opening as if by magic, existence a perpetual feast. They crowded upon him mercilessly, and tossed to and fro his grief and remorse as the sea tosses its dead, that are now but faint white outlines, half lost in froth, now cold faces starting clearly out of the thin, green wave.
How many times that soul was lost and won in those few minutes none but the invisible witnesses of the scene could tell.
He moved at length, and Annette stepped nearer with sudden alarm, as she saw him put his hand into his bosom slowly, as if with dread to draw forth what was there. The hand closed on what it sought, and with bitter shrinking, as if it were his heart he was thus uprooting, brought it to light. It was no knife, nor pistol, nor vial of poison, as she had feared, but a folded paper. She had seen it in his hands before, and wondered what he kept with such care.
He opened it and read; and she, leaning nearer, read also, without stopping to consider her right.
This was the breviary Lawrence Gerald carried in his bosom, written largely and clearly, and signed with his name in full:
“I am a gambler, a housebreaker, a thief, a sacrilegious liar, a murderer, and a matricide.”
“O my love! stand firm! stand firm!” the wife tried to say; but the words died in a whisper on her lips, as her heart fainted with pain and delight.
He did stand firm without having heard her admonition. She saw the unsteady lips close again, the gazing eyes droop, the whole face and form compose itself. That brief reminder, written to be a visible witness when the voice of conscience should fail, was more potent than poison or blade or bullet.
“I wish to take a room by myself in another part of the city,” he said. “Are you willing?”
“Certainly!” she replied. “But I would like to know where it is. Not,” she added quickly, “that I would intrude or trouble you in any way. But you cannot expect me to lose all interest in you, and I shall feel better to know where you are, and to go once to see your room and the people you are with.”
“I will let you know as soon as I find a place,” he said. “Of course I wish to support myself, to be removed from all society, except those persons whom I must see, and to wait my time in penance. You understand it all, Annette. I no longer exist in the ordinary life of men. I am either in purgatory or in hell—I do not yet feel sure which.”
He was going away, but turned at a little distance, and looked at her once again. “My dear,” he said faintly, “good‐by!”
She could not utter a word, could only clasp her hands over her face, and so lose his last glance. For as he spoke that farewell, and as she heard his retreating step, the door of her sealed and frozen heart burst open, and her dead love, stirring uneasily in its grave during these last days, rose up stronger than ever before, and resumed the throne it was never again to abdicate. There, at last, was a man worth loving!
The next evening she received his new address; and he added: “I shall be out to‐morrow, and the padrona will admit you, if you wish to come.”
Of course she went; but, what had not been to her a matter of course, the place pleased her. The house was in an old and crowded part of the city, where the streets swarmed with poor people; but the room was at the very top, in an odd corner quite removed from noise and communication with any other apartment, and had an eastern and a northern window that looked off over palace roofs and through towers and domes to the beautiful mountains. Close to its southern wall pressed a church tower, and on a level with its windows rose the sculptured façade, wreathed with angels. Once there, one might easily forget the steep, dark stair, the squalid street below, and even the bare walls and floor of the room itself.
Annette had not allowed herself to bring any article of comfort, still less of adornment, though her heart had ached with longing to do so. But she placed a beautiful crucifix on the one poor table, and left a volume of lives of saints beside it. A bunch of roses hung at her belt, and her fingers lingered on them in doubt for a moment. But she checked that impulse also. How much might roses breathe of woman’s presence there and all the graces and sweetnesses of life! But before leaving, she hung over an arm of the crucifix a single small bud, where the petals showed like a drop of blood oozing through the green.
As she was placing this last souvenir, her tears dropping over flowers and cross, there was a sound as though a hurricane should draw in its breath before blowing, the floor of the room trembled, then there came a tremendous and reverberating stroke. The great bell in the tower was striking the hour of noon, and the chamber shook as a bird’s nest shakes when a storm sweeps over the tree in which it is built. For the moment everything in the universe was obliterated but sound. She breathed its tremulous waves, she was enveloped and borne up by its strong tide; the very sunshine and the blue of the sky were like bright, resounding tones. Then the stroke ceased; and, circling round and round in fainting rings, the music of the bells went out to join the music of the spheres, perhaps to creep with a golden ripple up the shores of heaven.
The woman who had opened the door wondered much to see the pale signora come down with a face flushed with weeping; but a liberal gift disposed her to think the best of everything.
“You must be very good to him, and not allow any one to intrude,” Annette said to her. “I shall come to the church here below every morning at seven o’clock; and if he should be ill, or any accident should happen to him, I wish you to come there and tell me. But you must not talk to him. Speak to him only when he asks you to.”
That evening she wrote to her mother: “Lawrence has left me, and is in the arms of God. That is all I can say, except that I trust he has won a perfect forgiveness.
“I am sorry, dear mamma, if you are lonely, but I cannot return to America. I do not wish for society anywhere. Here in Rome is my place, with my religion and the poor to occupy my time. Try to be happy, and to think of me as peaceful and contented. And, mamma, if there should be any good, honest man whom you would like to marry, I shall be glad of it. Goodness is the chief thing.”
Mrs. Ferrier wept profusely over this letter, not doubting that Lawrence was dead.
“The poor fellow!” she said. “After all, he wasn’t so bad as he might have been.”
And then, bethinking herself, she wiped away her tears, and calmed her grief as much as possible; for it would not do to render herself unpresentable. It was necessary to go at once with the news to F. Chevreuse.
The way that Mrs. Ferrier took to the priest’s house was a roundabout one; it led in an opposite direction, and stopped before a new dry‐goods store of the most glittering sort. There was, in fact, no shop in Crichton so fine or so much frequented as this. People went there at first from curiosity, and were disposed to make themselves very merry regarding it; but there seemed to be nothing to laugh at, unless it might be certain erroneous notions in their own minds. Everything was well ordered and business‐like, the clerks attentive and respectful, and the proprietor perfectly dignified and watchful. Indeed, a slight excess of dignity and watchfulness had at first marked his conduct, and made his customers wary of giving offence.
We have already intimated that Mrs. Ferrier had a new footman.
This functionary, a slim and sentimental young man, let down the step for his mistress; but before she had made her majestic descent, the proprietor of the shop stood in the door, bowing to his wealthy customer. She beckoned him out, and motioned the footman away out of hearing.
“Poor Lawrence is dead, John!” she said plaintively, a smile tempering her grief. “And it’s best so, of course. I’ve just got a letter from Annette. And, John—”
The lady paused, and looked down, and laughed a little.
“Well, what is it?” asked the new merchant with an appearance of curiosity.
“She’s willing.”
John’s face expressed two contrary emotions at this announcement—one of pleasure, the other a dogged sort of resentment that Annette’s willingness should have been considered of consequence.
“It is pleasanter to have everybody pleased,” the lady said soothingly. “Of course, though, it doesn’t make one bit of difference with me so far as what I shall do; for you know, John, I’d stand by you through thick and thin. Now I must go to F. Chevreuse.”
“There isn’t a more respectable‐looking merchant in the city of Crichton,” said Mrs. Ferrier emphatically to herself, as she drove away.
“Beg y’r pardon, mum?” said the slim footman, leaning over.
“I wasn’t talking to you!” exclaimed his mistress indignantly.
It was, indeed, observed by everybody that Mrs. Ferrier was very high with this unfortunate man, who was humility personified, and only too assiduous in his obedience. She had assumed a trifle more of state with all her servants; but the footman was scarcely allowed to breathe freely.
“I shouldn’t wonder, now, if he might think he could marry Annette,” she muttered to herself, as they drove on.
Poor fellow! his ambition did not soar beyond Betty, and she was treating him with cruelty. However, with a story‐teller’s prescience, we are fully aware that his trials are only the little waves which are sending him nearer and nearer to his haven, and that before the year is over the day will be named. Already in our mind’s eye we see the fair Betty in her bridal robes, with her magnificent and patronizing mistress fastening on the veil, and giving her a kind and resounding kiss at the same time. We even hear the small whisper with which she silences her bridegroom’s last jealous misgiving when he comments on the salute given her by the master of the house:
“What! you think that I could ever have had a fancy for him—a man who drops his h’s?”
The withering contempt of this remark was decisive.
But we are anticipating.
Mrs. Ferrier found the priest at home, and gave him the letter to read. He read it attentively, but came to a different conclusion from hers. He did not tell her so, though, for it was evident that Annette wished them to think that her husband was dead. Her former letters had prepared him to suspect a state of things very near the truth.
After a long conversation, in which F. Chevreuse perceived that his visitor was lingering and hesitating in an unusual manner, Mrs. Ferrier at last called his attention to the concluding sentences of the letter.
He read it a second time, glanced up through his spectacles at his visitor, read it again, and gave the letter back, quite uncomprehending. He was, doubtless, the only person in Crichton who could have been unconscious of her meaning.
“You may think me foolish, father, at my time of life, to be thinking of marrying again,” she said deprecatingly. “But you have no idea how lonely I am. Honora will soon have a house of her own, anybody can see that; Annette won’t come back, and Louis won’t live here, after what has happened. I have nothing to do but wander from room to room of my great house, and think how awfully lonesome I am, and almost wish that I had a little cabin that I could fill. I don’t feel as if I were in a house, but as if I were out somewhere. Many a time I’ve gone and sat in my chamber‐ closet, just to feel my elbows hit something.”
She paused, and F. Chevreuse said, “Yes!” as sympathizingly as he could, wondering greatly what was to come.
“John is a decent man, and my equal in everything but money,” she went on.
“Oh! it’s John!” F. Chevreuse exclaimed, light breaking in.
Mrs. Ferrier dropped her eyes and smiled.
“I don’t see any harm in it, if you have got your mind made up,” the priest said, recovering from his first astonishment. “I suppose it would be of no use for me to try to break off the arrangement, even if I wanted to.”
“Well, John is pretty set,” the lady admitted modestly.
“I dare say,” was the smiling rejoinder. “When is it to be?”
“In a month, if you please. He is started in business now, and is doing well, and there’s no reason why he shouldn’t be a great merchant as well as any other man. He’s capable of it, if anybody is,” she said, becoming a little defiant.
“Certainly!” replied F. Chevreuse with perfect gravity. “There is not a law in the commonwealth which will prevent his being as great a merchant as he pleases. The world of trade is open to John, and I wish him all success in it. Do you put your property into his hands?”
Instantly the beautiful modesty of the bride‐elect gave place to the business‐like acuteness of the woman who knew perfectly well the value of money.
“No, father, we keep our accounts separate,” she said. “He had half enough to start in business with, and I lent him the other half. The income of the whole is to go toward our housekeeping, but he will have nothing to do with the rest of my property.”
F. Chevreuse nodded. “I see that you haven’t lost your head. You have managed your own affairs so well thus far, you may as well continue to do the same, for your children’s sake.”
A month later there was a quiet marriage at the priest’s house; and the only notice the Crichtonians had of it was when John appeared again in Mrs. Ferrier’s carriage, this time by her side, instead of in the dicky.
Everybody smiled except Honora Pembroke. She alone, perfectly polite, and refraining from all interference, felt haughtily indignant at the marriage. It was in vain that F. Chevreuse tried to reason away her prejudices.
“I do not object because he was poor,” she said. “Riches are less a distinction than a difference. But he has been a servant, and that is irreparable.”
The priest began to hum a tune:
“Ah! ça ira, ça ira, ça ira! Les aristocrats à la lanterne.”
Somewhat to his surprise, she blushed slightly, but did not smile.
“You may think me foolish, or even guilty of sinful pride,” she said with a certain stiffness; “but this is a feeling of which I cannot rid myself. I do not like to sit at table with a person who has once brought me my soup, nor on the same seat in the carriage with one who used to let down the step for me. Of course I recognize and submit to the situation; but I shall go to my own house again immediately.”
“Well!” said the priest, “it takes a good while to get acquainted with people. Here have I known you these ten years and more, have seen you simple, unpretending, humble, apparently, good to the poor, and going freely among them. I thought I knew you thoroughly; yet all at once I come upon the rock in that smooth stream. Have I ever caught a little gray shadow of it before, I wonder? Well, well! I won’t undertake to blast it out of the way at once. I am sorry, though, that you do not like John.”
“I like him in liveries,” said Miss Pembroke with dignity.
“I tell you,” persisted the priest, “they are going to be a very happy couple.”
“I haven’t a doubt of it,” she replied. “But that is no excuse.”
He laughed, and let her go. The haughty recoil of pride in the fibre was not to be reasoned away.
It was a clear afternoon in mid‐autumn; and when Miss Pembroke stepped from the priest’s door, she paused a minute on the sidewalk, and hesitated which way to go. She did not wish to return home, and she did not think of any other place where she would rather go.
And then, without looking, she was aware of a tall gentleman, who came down the street, and, still without looking, knew that he had crossed to her side of the street, and was approaching her. And then, with a perverseness which was scarcely natural to her, she turned quite coolly in the opposite direction, and walked from him, perhaps lest he might think that she wished for his company. Not but she and Mr. Schöninger were on the most friendly, and even cordial, terms—it was, indeed, taken for granted in Crichton that they were the best of friends—but—in short, she walked away from him. Perhaps she found his full and prosperous life a little discordant with her saddened one. She almost fancied sometimes that he had an air of triumphant pride, and that he was being spoiled by the adulation paid him on all sides.
She had been wishing lately that she could go to Annette; and, now that Gerald was dead, if the ambiguous letter they had received really meant that, perhaps Annette would like to have her. Miss Pembroke felt strangely lonely in her native town, where she knew everybody, and where she had not, certainly, to complain of any lack of attention. But she would be lonely for ever rather than Mr. Schöninger should think that she waited on F. Chevreuse’s step for him. He must have been at the end of the street when she came out, and—surely he would never dare to think that she saw him, and had been giving him time to overtake her!
Mr. Schöninger was meantime walking leisurely behind her quickening steps, intending to overtake her presently, but wishing first to watch her a little, and to think of some things. One was that he did not approve of her wearing black any longer. She was beautiful in anything, but too sad in this; and, besides, it interfered with certain plans of his. He made a slight reckoning, as nearly correct as the masculine mind could make it on such a subject. She might put on gray, or black and white, immediately. That would enable her to wear a rich purple in the winter. He liked to see her in purple. Some day, when she should be older, she must have a trailing robe of purple velvet with diamonds. Well, in the spring, then, she could change her deeper color for one of those delicate lavenders or lilacs that women know how to look pretty in; and then the way would be quite open for white, and rose, and blue, and all the fresh, gay colors a bride might wish to wear.
“We should be married by the first of May, at latest,” thought the gentleman very decidedly.
Miss Pembroke was quite right in fancying that there was something triumphant in Mr. Schöninger’s air; but she did not believe, and it was not true, her pettish charge that he was being spoiled by adulation. All was going well with him. Hosts of friends surrounded him—friends as sincere as any one can claim; he did not believe they would stand any great test, but, also, he did not believe that they were hypocrites. In his profession he was winning gold and reputation; and, what no one but himself knew as yet, the fortune for which he had vainly struggled so long was approaching him of itself. Two of those who had stood between it and him had died, and there remained now but a feeble old man. With his death all other claims would die. And not least in his cause of congratulation was his conviction that this fair woman, who walked before him with the black drapery fluttering back from her light foot, the braid of hair just showing its glossy bronze beneath the mourning veil, and, as she turned the corner of a street, the curve of her smooth cheek glowing like a peach, was his own.
What made her cheek so red now?
“Honora!” he said, quickening his pace.
She stopped with a start.
“Mr. Schöninger!”
“I beg your pardon!” he exclaimed, recollecting that he had never called her by her Christian name before. “I was thinking, and I forgot.”
She walked soberly by his side without asking what the subject of his thoughts had been. His exclamation may have revealed to her something of their nature; but she was far from suspecting that she was engaged, still less that her marriage‐day was fixed. She had, indeed, no reason to suppose that Mr. Schöninger had any intention of renewing the suit that she had once rejected.
“You are willing to take a walk?” he asked, and, when she nodded assent, added:
“Let us go up the Cocheco. Last night’s frost has added the finishing touch to the trees, and everybody is admiring them.”
A beautiful road, almost as wild as a country lane, led between the river‐ bank and the flowery cliffs beside it, and here at evening all the youths and maidens, and many of their elders in whom age had not chilled the love of nature, used to walk soberly in the soundless path, or climb the cliffs, or sit on the mossy rocks, or venture out on the rocks that studded the stream. Not a pleasant evening but found people strolling through this romantic avenue.
“Nowhere but in New England does nature dazzle, I think,” Mr. Schöninger said. “See this maple‐leaf! It is a fine scarlet, and as glossy as a gem, even when examined closely. And the elm‐leaf is as fine a gold. Everywhere else the autumn foliage is dingy when looked at so closely. The sky, too. Look at those long lines of fire that are beginning to stretch overhead, and at the gathering crimsons! In half an hour the heavens will be as brilliant as the earth. In Italy the colors are soft, like the colors in an old painting; they have great depth and richness, but they lack the fresh brilliancy of the skies in the New World. You must go to Italy soon, Honora.”
This time the name was used without an apology.
“I have been thinking of it,” she replied quietly, and began to feel as a stranded seaweed may when, after having lain awhile painfully on the dry sand, it finds the bright sea slipping under it, and lifting it from its hard resting‐place. Without a word of explanation she found herself claimed and cared for.
“I wish to go there again as a Catholic,” he continued, “and see with the eyes of faith what I saw before with the eyes of an artist. I shall always admire most the Catholicism of America, or what the Catholicism of America is going to be. It is more intelligent, noble, and reverent. It isn’t a sort of devotion that expresses itself in tawdry paper flowers. Indeed, I believe that America is destined to show the world a Catholicism morally more grand than any it has yet seen—a worship of the heart and the intellect, where children shall be delighted, and yet common sense find nothing to regret. Still, Rome is the sacred city of the martyrs, the popes, and the temples. I think we should go there in two years at latest.”
He had spoken earnestly, and had absolutely forgotten how much remained unsaid, so sure was he of her.
Honora’s glance of astonishment and incredulity reminded him. He bent a little nearer, smiling, and said softly: “But we shall be married long before that time, dear, shall we not?”
“It is the first I have heard of it,” Miss Pembroke managed to say with a certain degree of composure, after a moment.
“You surely are not vexed!” he said quickly, beginning to fear that he had assumed too much. “I asked you once in the proper, lover‐like fashion, and you refused me, not because you were indifferent to me—you never said that—but because you would not marry and would not love one who denied your Saviour. That obstacle no longer exists. You did not imagine that I had become indifferent to you? That is out of the question. Have I made a mistake?”
“No; it is I who have made a mistake,” she answered frankly. “I was afraid that you had given me up.” She hesitated a little, then, since he still listened, added: “I am very glad that you have not.”
“Thank you!” he said.
They walked slowly up the road between the foaming river and the glowing cliffs, praising the skies and the trees as they went, finding everything beautiful, finding each the other more beautiful than all else. And when the evening began to fade a little, they turned their steps, and went down again with the river, filled with that deep and quiet happiness which leaves nothing to wish for and nothing to tell.
The very next morning a little note was sped from Miss Pembroke to Sister Cecilia with the following mysterious announcement:
“My Novena has succeeded perfectly! I will come very soon and tell you all about it.”
Since the matter is settled, we may as well own at once that when Mr. Schöninger first announced himself a Catholic, Honora had said to her friend and confidant at the convent, “If I do not marry him, I shall never marry any one”; and that the result of this confession was a Novena, in which the young woman had asked that she might find favor in his sight.
“I told him about the Novena,” Miss Pembroke said when she made her explanatory visit to the convent. “And I told him that you and all the Sisters joined with me; and he bade me thank you for his part, and say that he hoped you would never be sorry for having done so.”
But Honora did not tell how astonished and touched her lover had been at this confession of what seemed to her the most simple thing in the world.
“I never thought of asking God for you,” he said; “and yet there is nothing in the world so well worth praying for. I am a very ignorant Catholic, Honora, in all except doctrine. You will have much to teach me. But, then,” he added, smiling, “we have all our lives for that.”
“The only blot on my happiness,” Honora said to her friends, “is the thought of Annette. A letter came from her last night which seems to shut us all out from giving her either society or comfort. She evidently does not wish to see any one she has ever known. She says that her time and thoughts are entirely occupied.”
Annette Gerald was fully occupied. She was like one who stands at the head of a long flight of winding stairs, watching another descend, and, beginning to lose sight of the object of her attention, begins to follow slowly, intent, at the same time, not to be too near or too far away.
It was necessary that she should keep Lawrence Gerald in sight without attracting attention either to him or to herself. As a rich lady, driving in her own carriage, she could not do this. She therefore gave up her carriage, and moved to an humbler apartment, where she lived with one servant. Still, the dainty elegance of the widow’s attire she had assumed, fastidious in her choice, not consciously, but from habit, pointed her out as of a different class from the people she went most among. To remedy this, it was necessary only to be passive; and in a few months Roman dust and mud and brambles had reduced her to a dinginess almost Roman, and she could go unremarked, could see Lawrence about his work, digging in the excavations, carrying stone and mortar for the masons, doing any rough labor that offered. She could see him in the church, where he spent an hour every morning; she knew that every Sunday he entered the same confessional, and, as she could well guess, told the same tale to the priest, who, when his penitent left him, leaned forward and looked after him with a sad and earnest gaze. More than once, late in the evening, she had looked up from the street where her close carriage stood waiting, and seen, out on the corner of the open roof, to which no one but he had access, his form drawn clearly against the transparent purple of the sky, and, after waiting as long as prudence would allow, had gone away to her lonely apartment, leaving him there in company of the marble angels that clustered about the church front, and the blessed bells, and whatever invisible spirits God should will and his own soul invoke. Never did she see a light in that lofty window; and, after a while, it occurred to her to ask the reason of the padrona, who often came to the church in the hope of receiving money from the lady.
“He never will have a candle,” the woman said. “I think he is very poor. And he never drinks wine or eats meat. And, signora, he is growing very pale.”
That night Annette Gerald extinguished the candles in her own apartment, and never lighted them again. She could weep and pray without light. The next day she dismissed her one servant, and thenceforward waited on herself. No ease or elegance must her life know while his was passed in such poverty. He ate the dry, sour bread of the poor; she ate it too. He discarded every luxury of the table; she also became an ascetic. If she put wine or fruit to her lips, tears choked her, and she set them aside. As he went down, so she followed him, unseen, weeping pitifully, watching constantly, loving utterly.
Without suspecting it, both became after a while objects of interest to those about them. No dinginess or apparent poverty could hide their refinement; and the extraordinary piety of both invested them with a certain sacredness in the eyes of these people, who had walked and talked with saints. The rude workmen ceased, not only to jest with, but to jest in the presence of this man who never smiled, or spoke without necessity, whose pale face was for ever downcast, and who, in the midst of Italian indelicacy, carried himself with the refinement of an angel. In the long noon rest of the hot summer days they withdrew from the place where he threw himself down, faint with fatigue and the heat, and left him to that solitude he unmistakably desired. Only little children ventured near the “penitent,” as he began to be called, and smiled wistfully in his face, and kissed the hand that now and then gave them a soldo.
Once, as he lay asleep on the grass, in the shadow of a ruined arch, an artist, who was just returning home from a morning’s sketching in the Campagna, paused to look at him. The other workmen lounged about at a distance, some asleep, some eating their noon luncheon of dry bread, others smoking and talking. This one seemed laid there apart for a picture. Thrown carelessly on his back, with his hand under the cheek turned a little aside, and the hat dropped off, his form and face were fully seen. It was not the form and face of a plebeian. The elegant shape was not disguised by its faded garments; the beauty of the face, delicately flushed with heat, and beaded with perspiration, was even enhanced by the unshorn and untended beard and the confused mass of clustering hair; and the expression of calm melancholy, which was not obliterated even by the unconsciousness of sleep, did not belong to a common nature.
The artist drew softly nearer, and opened his portfolio, too much engaged to give more than a passing glance to a woman who stood by the arch. With a rapid pencil he sketched his subject, trying to catch that hovering sadness and the weary bend of the head.
Drawing back presently to see if he could add anything to his sketch, he perceived that the woman who had been standing by the arch was at his side, watching his progress.
“Don’t let the shadow run off so,” she said, looking at the sketch, not at him. “Show how the sunshine comes, close to his feet, so that he has only a step to take to reach it. And do you see how those yellow flowers lean against his hair in the form of a crown? Put them in too; and the group of workmen yonder, and a corner of the excavation, with that beautiful pedestal half uncovered. As you have it, it is only a pretty poem without meaning; give the whole, and it will be a tragical story.”
The artist looked intently at the lady while she spoke. Surely she must be the sister of the sleeper! Their two faces would do to stamp on a coin, the man’s profile showing beyond the woman’s.
“Finish the sketch quickly before he wakes,” she said. “I will pay you whatever you want for it. Some day I will have you paint it. Don’t forget the red poppies at his feet. And can you see, can you show, that there is a blister on his hand?”
Wondering much at this strange sort of poor people whom he found himself among, the artist obeyed.
“But I want to keep the sketch,” he said. “I will make a copy for you, if you will come to my studio for it.”
“Certainly not!” she exclaimed, and for the first time looked at him with a clear and haughty gaze. “You have no right to keep it, for you took it without permission. It would be dishonorable and intrusive of you to show that to any person. We are not contadini!”
The artist rose and bowed.
“Madam, allow me to present my sketch to you,” he said with equal pride.
“Some day you will know, and then you will no longer be offended,” she said calmly, and took the sketch from his hand just as the sleeper stirred and began to awake. “And now, I beg you never to notice him again, or mention him to any one till I come to you for the picture.”
And so three years passed away, and there came an Easter morning such as Easters used to be in the days when the pope was King of Rome, and there was one city in the world where the business was religion.
Who can forget the scene, having once beheld it—the sky built up of sapphires, glitter on glitter of such blue as the queen of heaven might make her mantle of; the full, warm gold of the sunshine looking the sad ruins in the face till they smile, and revealing its hidden rainbows now and then, as the foamy columns of fountains sway in the light breeze, and catch it unawares; the birds, with long, pointed wings, that cut the air, and seem inebriated with the delight of flying. Then the crowd in the piazza of S. Peter’s, the millennial mingling of rich and poor, royal and plebeian, making in all a scene to be witnessed nowhere else.
“How familiar, yet how new!” said a lady who stepped from her carriage at the barrier. “It is all I could wish! I am glad, Max, that we did not come sooner to Rome. I would rather my first sight of it should be a festal one.”
This lady was richly dressed, and the black lace of her large Spanish veil was drawn back from a face like a fresh lily.
She was instantly addressed as principessa by all the beggars about.
“I am sorry I cannot give you the title, Honora,” her husband said, and smilingly dropped a coin into each outstretched hand. “So nothing disappoints you? I thought it would be so. Now, we must not linger outside.”
“Let us go slowly up; and please do not speak to me,” Mrs. Schöninger said. “No, I do not want your arm now. I must enter S. Peter’s the first time praying.”
They went slowly up the ascent, Honora with her hands clasped, and her eyes dilating as they entered the grand vestibule. Then Mr. Schöninger lifted the heavy curtain, and she crossed the threshold.
At that first step into S. Peter’s a Catholic feels as though he had touched the beating heart of mother church.
The crowd pressed in; but still another crowd remained outside, keeping their places for the papal benediction, and listening for the silvery burst of trumpets inside which should tell that the risen God stood on the central altar of Christendom.
Among this crowd was a group, for which they made way, as it crossed the piazza and approached the steps. Yet it was only two poor laborers who supported a sick man between them.
The thin and transparent face of this invalid, bathed now in the perspiration of weakness, showed that he was worn by consumption or by a long and exhausting fever. He was so weak, indeed, that his two assistants supported him in their arms; and when they reached the stone posts at the foot of the steps, he knelt there, and leaned against one of them, almost insensible.
A lady, following closely behind, wet her handkerchief in cologne‐water, and handed it over his shoulder to one of the men, but did not herself speak to them. He revived a little at that, and, still leaning against the central post, remained fixed in prayer.
A whisper began to creep among the poor people about. Some of them had seen this man, and knew what they conceived to be his story, and they told it in intervals of listening to the strains of heavenly music faintly heard now and then from the church.
“He is a penitent,” one whispered, “and has been doing penance here as a laborer, though he is so rich—so rich! Some say that he killed his own mother; but who knows? The beautiful signore! Look at his face! She must have provoked him; and perhaps she was a very wicked woman. Ah! I could tell stories of mothers. They are not all like the blessed Madonna.—There are the trumpets! Alleluia! alleluia! Blessed is he who cometh in the name of the Lord!—And so this poor signore has been living a hard life, and is about to die; and he has come at last to get the Holy Father’s blessing. He would not ask for it before. But, indeed, he might, for he is as holy as the blessed Labré, though he sleeps in a bed and works for his living, instead of begging it. The pale signora who stands behind him is his sister. She has been in Rome all these years, watching over him, without his knowing it. See! she stands out of his sight now. He worked up to a week ago, and then he fell one day in a faint. She was near by, and called a carriage to take him home. And since then she has had a room in the same house, but told the padrona not to let him know. She is rich, for all her poor clothes. She puts something into every hand that is held out to her. See the way she looks at him!—Ah! there they come.”
Mass was over, and the crowd in the church came pouring out. It was with difficulty that Lawrence Gerald’s protectors could keep his place in that pressure. But that he had revived, they could not have done so. With the first intimation that the moment for which he had so long waited was at hand, he had roused himself, and exerted his whole strength. Upright on his knees, with his arms clinging to the post against which he leaned, he fixed his eager eyes upon the balcony where the Pope would in a short time appear. He saw nothing else, not even two familiar forms and faces directly in front of him, which he could scarcely have seen even then with indifference.
“My God!” exclaimed Honora Schöninger, and clung to her husband’s arm. “Look, Max! It is Lawrence, and he is dying!”
Mr. Schöninger drew his wife aside. “It is no time to recognize him now,” he said. “And there is Annette behind him. Poor fellow! poor fellow!”
Annette pressed close to her husband, ready to catch him if he should fall. She knew that he had had an exhausting day. He had risen at early dawn to hear Mass and receive communion, though not really able to leave his bed, and had afterwards spent his remaining strength in the first careful toilet he had made for years. After having so long heaped every indignity on his own body, to‐day he had seemed desirous of treating it with respect as the temple of God. He still wore the dress of the laborer, but his face was shorn of its ill‐tended beard, his hair brushed once more into silken waves, and his linen snowy white. And more exhausting than these efforts had been the excitement of mind under which he labored, and his fear lest in some way he should miss the benediction he so longed for.
“I want to be placed directly in front of the balcony,” he had said, “where I can see the Pope’s face. I shall recognize his face at once. Who knows but he may look at me? If he should, then I shall think that at last God looks at me.”
The crowd hushed itself, as the golden cross came in sight, and after it the crowned and mitred heads, all in white save one. And that one, under its glittering tiara, wore a crown of snowy hair dearer to Catholic hearts than gold or jewels. On this central face the eyes of the sick man fixed themselves with a wide and imploring gaze, and his hands stretched themselves out, as if to beg that he might not be forgotten.
“Do not fear!” Annette whispered in his ear. “The Holy Father knows all your story, and pities you; and there is one standing beside him who will remind him that you are here. He will know just where you are.”
To the waiting and trembling penitent this was like a whisper from his good angel. He associated no other thought with the voice.
The silence deepened till nothing could be heard but the swift wings of a bird flying over the piazza, and the soft “zitti! zitti!” of the fountains, and the heart that each one in that vast crowd felt beat in his bosom.
Surely that mild and blessed face was turned his way! the penitent thought. Surely, surely, the Holy Father had looked at him, searching the crowd one instant with his eyes, and finding him!
Then a single voice was heard—the only voice in the universe, it seemed.
“May the holy Apostles Peter and Paul, in whose power and authority we confide, intercede for us with the Lord.”
“Amen!” chanted the choir, as though the world had found voice.
Again the single voice:
“Through the prayers and merits of blessed Mary ever Virgin, of blessed Michael the archangel, of blessed John the Baptist, of the holy Apostles Peter and Paul, and all the saints, may the omnipotent God have mercy upon you, may all your sins be remitted, and Jesus Christ lead you to eternal life.”
“Amen!”
“Indulgence, absolution, and remission of all your sins, space for true and faithful repentance, hearts ever contrite, and amendment of life, may the omnipotent and merciful God afford you.”
“And may the blessing of the omnipotent God, Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, descend upon you, and remain with you for ever.”
Every stain was washed away! Full and strong the blessing flowed, a divine river from the throne of God himself! On its tide were borne away, not only guilt, but the memory of guilt; not only fear, but the remembrance that fear had been. Supported in the arms of his wife and attendants, and of the old friends of whose presence he was unconscious, Lawrence Gerald lay back with his eyes half closed, and a smile of such peace and ecstasy on his face as could only come from God. His soul was gliding sweetly away on the echoes of that last amen.
The military bands began to play, the guns boomed from Sant’ Angelo, the bells of S. Peter’s rang out with a joyful clash on the air, and all Rome broke into music over the resurrection.
And there was joy before the angels of God over one sinful soul redeemed.
The End.
Madame Du Deffand.
“Men have died, and worms have eaten them, but not of love,” the poet tells us. And women too have died, and worms have eaten them, but not of ennui, although Mme. du Deffand for nearly fourscore years woke the echoes of Versailles and Paris with the pitiful lament: “I am bored! I am bored! I am dying of ennui!” If she eventually did die of it—which we stoutly deny—a malady that took eighty years to kill its victim can hardly be called a very cruel one. The vivacious, gossipping, wearied old lady contrived to extract a very reasonable amount of amusement, even of excitement, out of the existence whose wearisomeness she was for ever denouncing; and it is only fair to add that she contributed a very goodly share of amusement to other people. This renowned heroine and victim of ennui, Marie de Vichy‐Chamroud, was born into this wearisome world in the year of grace 1697, of a noble family of the province of Burgundy. The De Vichy‐Chamrouds were richer in parchments than in lands; so it fell out that Marie, young, lovely, accomplished, and teeming with wit, was condemned to marry an old man, and, what was still more terrible, a wearisome old man, who had not a single taste in common with her. Immediately on leaving the convent where she received what in those days was considered a liberal education, the beautiful young lady was presented to her future lord. If she bored herself as a young girl, free and happy, and with life before her, what must she have done as the wife of a querulous, stingy old man? All the revenge that was in her power Marie took. She bored her husband as much as he bored her, until at last, in sheer desperation, he agreed to give her an annuity, and let her go her way without him. As Marquise du Deffand, free and comparatively wealthy, the young wife began a new era. She opened a salon which soon became the centre of the wit and fashion of Paris. All that was eminent in war, arts, sciences, literature, and folly came there, and tried to chase away her eternal ennui. Amongst her many admirers, the President Hénault occupies the most conspicuous place, both from the dignity of his own character and the enduring nature of their mutual attachment. Hénault was one of the most remarkable men of his time. He was educated by the Oratorians, and had early the inestimable advantage of enjoying the advice, and almost the intimacy, of Massillon. He counted the scarcely lesser privilege of early personal acquaintance with the great poet Racine. As soon as he had completed his studies, young Hénault was introduced at court, where he at once made a favorable impression. “This is not to be wondered at,” says a chronicler of the times; “for, in truth, he was a youth of gracious parts, gay, witty, amiable, a good musician, and gifted with the art of making light and graceful verses.” While the Duchesse de Maine held her brilliant court, Hénault was a constant presence there, and one of its principal ornaments. He was so universally beloved that it was popularly said of him: “There is a man who has more friends than he can count, and not a single enemy.” And this lucky man was the devoted admirer of Mme. du Deffand for over fifty years.
He attained considerable fame as an author, and not the least remarkable feature in his works is that their authorship was vehemently contested, not only during Hénault’s life, but for many years after his death. Most of his books were first published anonymously—a circumstance which, in their early career, may have explained the doubts concerning their origin. But the Abrégé Chronologique, which Hénault regarded as his best, appeared with the author’s name at the outset, and this, strange to say, was the one which the world refused longest to believe was his, and persevered in long attributing to the Abbé Boudot. A copy of the book was found, in the abbé’s own writing, amongst his papers when he died, and this is the only piece of evidence on which Hénault’s detractors built their obstinate denial that he was the author of the Abrégé. Admitting that this fact looked suspicious, the book itself from first to last bears the stamp of Hénault’s composition in the most unmistakable manner; the choice of the subject, its style and treatment, all point emphatically to him as the author, while there is abundant explanation of the accidental presence of the compromising copy amongst Boudot’s papers. Hénault was in the habit of employing him to copy out his compositions. Voltaire, in one of his letters to the president, recommends the abbé as a very clever copyist, and also as a useful person to make researches for him at the Royal Library; and Grimm also recommends him for the same purpose, informing Hénault that Boudot had employment at the library, and was in charge of the literary and historical department. A man who held this subaltern post, and was treated as a mere scribe by such authorities, and who never pleaded guilty to writing even a pamphlet in his life, is, to say the least, a very unlikely person to be the author of such a work as Hénault’s Abrégé. Mme. du Deffand and Grimm, who both liked to sharpen their wits pretty freely at the president’s expense, never for an instant doubted the reality of his authorship, or suspected that any one had had a share in his books.
Unlike so many of his distinguished literary contemporaries, Hénault was a practical Christian. “His piety,” says the Marquis de Agesson, “was as free from fanaticism or bitterness as his books were from pedantry.”
Mme. du Deffand, who spared her friend on no other points, spared him on this. She never laughed at his religion. On that score alone he was safe from her irony and sarcasm. She even openly commended him for challenging Voltaire’s impious vituperation of the faith; and in her own correspondence with the infidel philosopher she speaks almost with enthusiasm of the clear intellect, the pointed wit, and irresistible goodness of his antagonist. When he was past eighty, Hénault wrote privately to Voltaire, imploring him, in the most touching terms, to retract some of his diabolical satires on religion; and this letter, which, unhappily, we know remained without effect, was found amongst Voltaire’s papers after his death. He, on his side, strove to win over Hénault to the “enlightened school,” and with artful flattery and subtlest sophistry urged him to change certain historical passages in the Abrégé Chronologique which strongly vindicated the influence of Christianity. But the Christian writer withstood these blandishments. In a literary point Voltaire contributed in no small degree to the reputation of Hénault, whose style he praised with creditable candor. It is strange to see the lively and bored old marquise holding steadily the friendship of these widely dissimilar men. Diderot, D’Alembert, and Montesquieu were also habitués of her brilliant salon. But none of them could do more than give her momentary deliverance from her life‐long enemy—ennui. She went on boring herself, in spite of the perpetual cross‐fire of esprit that the brightest wits of the age kept up around her, and she bored her friends almost to exasperation by the unceasing repetition of the complaint: Que je m’ennuie! Que je m’ennuie!
At the age of fifty‐four a terrible misfortune befell the marquise. She grew blind. It was soon after this that she became acquainted with Mlle. de l’Espinasse. The sprightliness and the energy of this young girl were an immense consolation to Mme. du Deffand, and cheered her for a time in that “eternal night,” as she pathetically described it, in which she now dwelt. But they did not agree for long. After living happily together for some few years, they quarrelled and separated. It is impossible to say whose fault it was. Each had violent partisans, who accused the other, but proved nothing. Mme. du Deffand was undoubtedly difficult to live with, as all people are who draw exclusively on those around them for amusement; but she was old and she was blind, and it is beyond doubt she was a kind benefactress to her young companion, and that, at the moment of separation, she wrote a most touching letter to her, asking forgiveness for all she had done inadvertently to pain her, and urging the young girl to remember how cruelly she was afflicted both by blindness and by ennui. To this Mlle. de l’Espinasse returned a curt and ungracious answer. Nor did she imitate the kindliness of speech of her quondam employer, who always spoke of her ever after their quarrel with the utmost good‐nature and forbearance.
Just as her home was resounding to these domestic discords, Mme. du Deffand made the acquaintance of Horace Walpole. They were spontaneously pleased with each other. Mme. du Deffand would have probably been still more so, if she could have foreseen how triumphantly this new friendship was destined to rescue her memory from oblivion. We know more of her and her salon through the voluminous correspondence that passed between her and that prince of gossips and most brilliant of scribblers than through any other source; although she comes in, it is true, for more ridicule at his hands than eulogy. He constantly reproaches her for making him the laughing‐stock of Paris and London by her absurd affection, and coarsely tells her he does not want to be the hero of a novel where the heroine is a blind octogenarian.
This correspondence was published at the beginning of the century, and was hailed as a valuable addition to the French literature of that period. On reading it, one feels transported into the society of the fascinating women and accomplished men whom it so cleverly depicts. Mme. du Deffand passes in review the authors and actors of her time with a graphic power of delineation rarely equalled. Unsparing in her criticism, she is in some instances no doubt too severe, and occasionally even unjust; it is nevertheless acknowledged that in her literary judgments she is rarely at fault; they are marked throughout by discrimination, taste, and delicacy.
Horace Walpole made Mme. du Deffand’s acquaintance when she had become quite blind; on his being presented to her, she drew her hand over his face, in order to ascertain whether he was plain or handsome, and what his age was. Her touch had acquired such sensitive delicacy in course of time that it enabled her to calculate people’s ages and looks with the greatest accuracy. In quite the latter years of her life Mme. du Deffand, who had never been avowedly an unbeliever, although practically so, turned her thoughts to religion, and sought in the teaching of the faith those consolations to her ennui that wit and philosophy had failed to secure her. She announces this change of sentiment, with her usual frankness, in one of her letters to Walpole. Her biographers throw but little light on the subject. La Harpe alludes to her having had many interviews with the celebrated Jesuit, F. Lenfant—an episode which is dismissed by Mme. du Deffand herself with the remark that “the Père Lenfant was very clever, and that she was much pleased with him.”
The Père Lenfant who is thus incidentally introduced to us in the memoirs of the lively French woman was one of the countless noble and touching victims of the Revolution—that raging torrent that drowned so many gentle voices in its roar. He was gifted with an eloquence that drew around him all the lovers of rhetoric and the most able men of his day. The poet Young heard him, and was so struck by his power and pathos that he entreated a Protestant clergyman of his acquaintance to go and hear him; the latter did so, and embraced the faith. Once, on coming out from a sermon of the Père Lenfant’s, preached at S. Sulpice during Lent, Diderot exclaimed to D’Alembert, who had been drinking in every word from beginning to end, with his eyes riveted on the preacher: “It would be hard to hear that man often without becoming a Christian.”
When the order of the Jesuits was disbanded in France, the Père Lenfant was thrown upon the world. He was then forty‐seven years of age. The decree which despoiled him of his religious garb could not rob him of its spirit. He continued his good works and his apostolate with fervor and wisdom. Several crowned heads tried to win him to their courts, but in vain. The son of S. Ignatius held steadily aloof from the tempting snare. He preached indefatigably at all times and places, at Lunéville, Vienne, Versailles, wherever he was called; and everywhere the great and the learned flocked round his pulpit. His contemporaries describe the effects of his eloquence as electrical. He captivated his hearers, not so much by the magnificence of his language, as by the pathos of his voice and the force of his own faith. Père Lenfant preached the Lent of 1791 before the court; but on refusing to take the oath of the clergy to the civil constitution, he was obliged to withdraw. Shortly afterwards he was taken prisoner and condemned to death. On being brought before his judges, the people cried out that his life might be spared, and, yielding to the cries, his jailers let him go; before, however, he had got free from the crowd, a woman called out: “There goes the king’s confessor!” At these words the thirst for blood, that had seemed for a moment satiated or suspended, rose up anew. The mob set upon him like tigers. The Père Lenfant uttered only words of love and forgiveness, and, raising his hands to heaven, exclaimed: “My God, I thank thee for allowing me to offer my life for thee, as thou hast offered thine for me!” And with this gracious sentence on his lips the Jesuit father fell and expired under the blows of the murderers.
This little sketch of the Marquise du Deffand would be incomplete without a passing mention of the author of the Esprit des Lois, who was one of the most distinguished of her numerous friends.
Her letters to Montesquieu have been preserved; they are, however, much less interesting than those to Walpole, and consequently much less known. Mme. du Deffand could be a staunch friend, though she was often a trying one; she proved herself such to Montesquieu. Amongst other good offices, she cleared him from the charge of avarice which was laid at his door so generally. History revoked the verdict, it is true, but only when the subject of it was gone beyond the reach of earthly rehabilitation. Montesquieu’s exceeding modesty and desire to have his benefits known only to the recipients was the real, and perhaps the only, cause of his reputed avarice. One example of his delicate generosity we cannot refrain from giving.
He was in the habit of visiting Marseilles to see his sister, Mme. d’Héricourt, who resided there. During one of these visits he happened one evening to be lounging on the quay; the weather was sultry, and it occurred to Montesquieu that he would take a boat, and have a row on the sea. His attention was drawn to a young man who was looking out for a customer. He hailed him, and got in. As soon as they were out a little at sea, Montesquieu perceived that his boatman was a novice at the work, and rowed with difficulty. He questioned him, and learned that he was, in truth, a jeweller by trade, and a boatman only on Sundays and holidays, in order to gain a trifle towards helping his mother and sisters, who were working to procure 4,000 crowns to ransom his father, who was a prisoner at Tetuan. Montesquieu was deeply touched by the story. He made a resolution on the spot, but said nothing. Before landing, however, he got from the boatman his father’s name and the name of his master. On parting, he handed him his purse, and walked away rapidly; great was the delight of the young man, on opening it, to find that it contained sixteen golden louis.
Six weeks after this the captive suddenly appeared in the midst of his wife and children. He saw, by the astonishment mingled with their joy, that it was not to them he owed his liberation; but the surprise and gratitude of all were increased on his telling them that not only was his ransom paid, but likewise his voyage home and his clothing; and, over and above this, a sum of fifty louis d’or had been handed to him on starting. The young boatman no sooner heard this fairy tale than he bethought him of the generous stranger who had presented him the purse and expressed such sympathy on hearing of his sorrow. He determined to seek him. For two years he did so, but in vain. The name of the benefactor to whom he and his owed such a sweet and magnificent debt of gratitude remained an impenetrable mystery. At last one day, while walking in the streets of Paris, he suddenly encountered Montesquieu face to face; the young man fell upon his knees, kissed the hand of his benefactor, and entreated him to come with him to the home he had blessed, and witness the joy that he had brought back to a desolate family. But Montesquieu feigned ignorance and surprise, declared he knew nothing of what the young man was talking about, and at last, wrenching his hand away abruptly, he disappeared in the crowd, nor did his pursuer succeed in finding him again.
This action would never have been discovered had not Montesquieu’s executor found among his papers a memorandum in his own handwriting, stating that he had sent 7,500 francs to Mr. Main, an English banker at Cadiz; on the latter being applied to for information, he replied that he had given that sum, by the order of M. de Montesquieu, for the ransom of a man named Robert, a Marseillais, detained as a slave at Tetuan. Inquiries were set on foot, and the Robert family told the rest.
This touching incident was made the foundation of many dramatic pieces. If it did no more than clear a noble character from the unworthy charge of heartlessness and avarice, the world would have been the better for its discovery.
Cain, What Hast Thou Done With Thy Brother?
By Ernest Hello.
By way of preface, I will relate a true story given by F. Agathon, a priest of the Monastery of Ruba, and preserved in the Lives of the Fathers of the Desert.
F. Agathon says: “One day I descended into the valley of Ruba to find the holy solitary, F. Pémeu, as I wished to consult him on a subject that weighed heavily upon my mind. We conversed until late in the evening, and then he sent me into a cavern to pass the rest of the night. Now, as it was winter, and the cold extreme, I was nearly frozen. The next morning, when the old man came in to see me, he asked: ‘How have you passed the night, my son?’
“ ‘Father,’ I answered, ‘I must say, in truth, I passed a terrible night, on account of the extraordinary severity of the cold.’
“ ‘And I did not feel it at all,’ he replied.
“These words filled me with astonishment, as he was nearly naked, and I said: ‘I beg of you, father, to tell me how that could have happened.’
“ ‘For the reason,’ he answered, ‘that a lion came and lay down beside me, and kept me warm. But nevertheless, my dear son, I can assure you that I shall be devoured by wild beasts.’
“ ‘Why do you say so?’ I asked.
“ ‘Because,’ he replied, ‘when I was a shepherd in our country (we were both from Galatia), I would have saved the life of a traveller, if I had accompanied him; but I did not show him that charity, and he was devoured by the dogs. Therefore I shall most certainly meet with a similar death.’
“And it really happened as he said. For three years afterwards he was torn to pieces by wild beasts.”
Dear Marie, cease to think of me; all is ended; I am lost. I do not tell you what will become of me; I know nothing myself. I only know that yesterday I received the fatal blow, from which I cannot recover.
I had just finished the last picture, of which I have so often spoke to you—The First Glance. It is the portrait of a young man, who awakens and looks around him, as though he saw everything for the first time.
Some of my friends thought the picture splendid, but added that it would not sell well, as my name was unknown to the public.
After innumerable attempts, all equally unfortunate, I showed it yesterday to a very rich amateur—Baron de Brienne. He examined the picture, thought it remarkable, and then asked if I had often exhibited my pictures.
On my replying in the negative, his expression changed.
“I thought,” said he, “I did not know your name. You must make yourself known. This picture has great merit, and this sketch also,” he added, throwing a rapid glance at my other picture just commenced—you know it, Marie—Cain after his Crime—“but, in fact, you are not known,” he concluded.
“But, sir,” I replied, “I am endeavoring to make myself known.”
“Well,” continued the baron, “you have talent, that I acknowledge; but I doubt if it is the kind of talent that will be appreciated by the public. If I bought your picture, I would be asked where I found it. As it stands there, it has a certain value; but if you were dead, it would be worth a hundred times as much, and perhaps would soon find purchasers, possibly myself among the first. You see I can’t change the world. So it is with men; they will pay the most ridiculous price for objects of art whose worth is guaranteed by a signature, but will not bother themselves to talk up unknown talent. I,” he added with a happy smile, “recently gave a hundred thousand francs for a picture which I do not place above yours; but it was a Murillo! I am a modest man, and always side with the majority. The majority is always right, and, for my part, I am not vain enough to think I know more than the entire human race. Make yourself known; everything is in that. Make yourself known; put your pictures in the exhibition; receive medals and decorations. But, above all, die; your pictures then will be worth so much gold. You see you are talking to a practical man, who don’t believe in neglected genius. Au revoir, monsieur. You really have talent; more even than that, I do not hesitate to say you have genius. Au revoir.”
This, Marie, was my last adventure. All the others were similar. I will spare you any further details. I have told you in a few words what in reality was a long agony. But despair is brief; it has not the courage to dwell on separate facts; it sums up the causes, and only shows the effects.
Now, my dear Marie, you know what happened yesterday. The day before there came another gentleman, who had not the time to examine my picture as it deserved. This he explained to me for two hours without looking at the picture. He really had no time; for example, every morning he visits his stables from ten to twelve, and in the afternoon rows on the lake from four to six.
As for Baron de Brienne, when he left, he assured me he held my talent in the highest estimation; that he would like to have a gallery of pictures all painted by me, as it would probably one day be very valuable; later, my pictures would sell splendidly, and he could make money by the operation.
If there is ever to be a later day for me, I shall find him, when I will no longer need him, and he will be the first to show me honor.
Adieu, Marie. I was so sanguine, so buoyed up with hope, it needed all this time—all this precious time, of which these gentlemen had so little to waste—to bring me where I am now.
I think the baron saw despair in my face, for he used a singular expression on leaving which I had not provoked by any remark.
“My dear sir, do not look so dismal and wretched. I am not the Don Quixote of budding genius. Make yourself known, make yourself known, and you will find me! But if your courage fails, you will commit blunders and spoil your talent, for which I will not be responsible; like Pilate, I wash my hands of you!”
I listened to them going down the stairs.
“No, no,” said he to his wife; “you see for my portrait I must have a master, a signature.”
“Perhaps,” replied the baroness—“perhaps we have done wrong to discourage the young man.”
“Discourage? What are you talking about? I told him he had great talent. Do you wish to know what I think?” he added, as he stood for an instant before her. “What ruins art in the present day is that it is gorged with gold, and that too few men of genius die in the hospital—that is the reason!”
Adieu, Marie.
Something else was said, which Paul did not hear.
The baroness paused, as she was about to enter the carriage.
“Well, what is the matter with you?” said her husband.
“I am not very well,” she replied.
“So much more reason for getting in the carriage. What ails you?”
“The face of that young man haunts me. Who knows what despair may drive him to? Who knows how terrible may be his hidden suffering? Let us go back. I feel as though we had just committed a crime. Let us go back. Thirty years ago I read a story which I had long forgotten, but that now returns vaguely to my memory as a warning. I no longer remember the whole, but the impression comes back vague and terrible after thirty years. Ah! let us go back.”
The baron stopped, and laughed immensely.
“Ha! ha! Are you crazy? Haven’t I the right to choose the pictures I wish to buy? Is there a law which compels me to buy pictures from this gentleman? I speak to you very seriously, my dear; such fancies as these will make you crazy. There is a great deal of insanity in our present day. Let us take care, let us take care!”
Marie, after reading her brother’s letter, was half frantic with terror, as she knew him thoroughly, and understood his bitter despair. She lost no time, but left in the first train. Arrived in Paris, she ran to the little house in the Quartier Latin where Paul lived. She was too excited to take a carriage. The rapid walk seemed to soothe her. In the cars she longed for quicker movement; in the street she wished for wings; at the door she would rather have been at the other end of the world. She dared not go up. She stopped, suffocated with the beating of her heart. If it was already too late—the thought nearly paralyzed her with horror. If she were a minute too late!
Finally, when on the stairs, she wept. Then she dared ring.
“I have wept,” she thought; “he is saved.” Taught by a long and singular experience, the young girl knew that tears were for her the mysterious and certain sign that her prayer was granted. She rang. A servant‐girl, without speaking, led her to a bed, and uttered a single word—“Dead”—and then added: “The funeral will take place in two hours. He threw himself into the Seine from the bridge of Austerlitz.”
“He is not dead,” said Marie.
“The registration of the death has been made,” said the woman.
Without replying, Marie looked fixedly at him, and said to herself:
“He is not dead. I have wept; he is not dead. Paul!” she called. Silence. “Paul!” Silence.
She seized a mirror, and held it to her brother’s lips. At the moment she took it in her hand she burst into tears. “You will see that he is saved!” she said.
The woman thought her crazy. Marie still held the mirror before Paul’s lips. Dead silence; her own poor heart nearly stopped—the mirror was tarnished!
Seven years afterwards M. le Baron de Brienne was conversing in a numerous and choice circle. It was at a grand dinner. The women were crowned with flowers and sparkling with jewels. The conversation turned upon a great crime which had recently been committed, the details of which filled two columns of every paper. Suddenly the Baron de Brienne became singularly agitated, and then, in a voice which he endeavored to keep calm, but whose trembling was still further shown by the effort to subdue it, said:
“It appears that the police have not yet discovered any trace of the assassin.”
“I don’t know,” replied a guest.
“I believe not,” said another.
“Excuse me,” replied a third person; “according to the latest accounts, the police, if not positively sure, had at least great hopes.”
The Baron de Brienne was as white as his napkin. He tried to overcome and conceal his excitement, and attempted to eat; but the effort was too great. He swooned, and fell heavily to the ground.
Every one rose and crowded around him. Water was thrown in his face, salts were held for him to inhale. The hostess neglected none of the ceremonies usual in such cases. Fortunately, there was a physician among the guests. Every attention was lavished upon M. le Baron. His carriage was called, and he was taken home.
The next day he was better; at the end of three days he was well. He made them bring any quantity of papers, and read them to him. Mme. la Baronne, who was the reader, suddenly paused, and said:
“Here is more of the horrid crime of which we were all talking when you were taken ill.”
“Well?” said the baron in a singular tone.
“Well,” continued the baroness, “the murderer has been arrested. But what a strange interest you take in the affair!”
“I?” replied the baron. “Oh! not at all; I can very truly say that. Why do you think otherwise?”
“Because you are so strangely excited whenever the subject is mentioned.”
“What do you mean, talking about my excitement?” he replied. “Can you possibly imagine, like those stupid people at dinner the other evening, that this affair interests me in the slightest degree? They were all there looking at me, looking at me ... with eyes ... with eyes.... Are you, too, going to stare at me now with those eyes ... with those eyes....”
Mme. la Baronne rose, and wrote two lines: “Dear doctor, come instantly.”
“Carry that to the telegraph office,” she said to the servant.
“She did not count the words,” muttered the man in astonishment, as he withdrew. “It must be something very serious.”
Three months had elapsed, and the baron had resumed his ordinary life, when one evening, in a salon in the faubourg Saint‐Honoré, a gentleman remarked, in the course of conversation, that it was astonishing the number of crimes one daily heard of. And he related the last murder that the daily paper had brought under his eyes.
Said the baron: “Why do you make such an assertion? Never were crimes so rare as to‐day; manners and customs are so much softened, we can almost say there are no longer any criminals. None can be found in the higher class of society; and when we speak of the aristocracy, it means the entire nation. Indeed, to speak the truth, I believe very little in the wonderful crimes with which the daily journals fill their columns when there is a dearth of political news.”
“You are very incredulous, M. le Baron,” replied the Comte de Sartigny. “Probably it is from kindness to the editors that the police seek the criminals, and the courts judge them.”
“You say,” answered the baron, “that the police seek the criminals. It is false, M. le Comte. In the first place, only one is guilty, and the police are not hunting him up; he is already found, and he has no accomplice. He has been found, I tell you, he has been found; and the man has no accomplice. Perhaps I don’t know it. Ha! ha!”
While the baron, pale as death, spoke these words, with terror imprinted on his face, the count looked steadily at him, and said:
“You say that I have spoken falsely, M. le Baron? Will you repeat that remark? I think those were your words, but perhaps I was mistaken.”
“I only say one thing,” replied the baron, “which is, that the criminal has been found and arrested.”
“But a moment ago you denied the reality of the crime.”
“I only say one thing, M. le Comte: that there is no doubt about the name of the assassin.”
The master of the house took the count by the arm, and led him to the recess of a window....
“Ah! very well, very well; I did not know it,” said the count, as he left the room.
While they were conversing together, the baron made several vain efforts to rise. He experienced the supreme anguish of a man who, while still in the possession of his faculties, feels they are leaving him—of a man who has not fainted, but who is about to faint, and who feels on his brow the first drops of cold sweat.
The baroness made her excuses for leaving so early, and, when alone with her husband, asked anxiously:
“What can be the matter with you?”
“And you too, you too,” he replied, pushing her from him, as he raised his blood‐shot eyes.
“We must,” said the doctor, “enter into his mania, so as to endeavor to discover the cause. We must make him talk without questioning him. Do you know, madame, in the life of M. le Baron, of any fact that may have left a disagreeable remembrance?”
“Doctor, do you mean a guilty remembrance?”
“No, madame; something terrifying.”
The baroness thought a long while.
“No,” said she, “not one. Our life has always passed most tranquilly. You know how people of the world live; well, so we live, and have always lived. My husband is a quiet man, who has never had a quarrel in his life with any one, and has never done an injury that I know of.”
“You have never seen in the baron any anxiety of conscience?”
“Any anxiety of conscience? He? Why should he have any? He has never in his life done anything to reproach himself with.”
“The baron,” replied the doctor, “has the reputation of being benevolent and kind‐hearted. I don’t think he is naturally very imaginative; do you, madame?”
“Not at all, doctor. I think he is just the contrary. I can even say he has very little faith.”
“But when and where did you first perceive the commencement of this mania?”
“It was one day when nothing strange had happened. Some one had been speaking of a young sculptor, who now is very famous. A friend told us that he owed his success to a rich banker, who had discovered his talents by some happy accident, and had aided him with his fortune and influence. When our guests had left, and we were alone, I thought he would kill himself; as now, without the slightest reason.”
“In his daily life does he show any eccentricity of which I am yet ignorant?”
“Not precisely eccentricity,” said Mme. de Brienne. “His tastes have changed very much, but that cannot be called eccentricity. He formerly spent quite a fortune in purchasing pictures, of which he has a very fine collection, that he admired extravagantly; now he never looks at them. But he has always been rather fickle.”
“Does he talk in his sleep?”
“No; but one morning (now that you make me think of it) he awoke terribly frightened at a dream. ‘Ah! what a dream I have had,’ he said to me. His face looked worn and haggard, and, as I begged him to relate it, he turned away his eyes, and refused peremptorily. I insisted, but he kept silent, and I have never been able to make him relate it.”
The doctor reflected.
“Perhaps that is the whole secret,” said he. “But if we were to ask him about it now, probably to‐morrow we would be obliged to confine him.”
“Confine him?” cried the baroness. “Do you think him so seriously affected?”
“Very seriously, madame, and more so as he is perfectly sane in relation to other affairs. His mania is confined to one point, and is what we call hallucination. My duty compels me to tell you, madame, that it is a case where science up to the present time has been very unsuccessful.”
“But, doctor, never was there a man less crazy. As for the pictures, which was the only passion I ever knew him to have, he prided himself on never having done a foolish thing; he only bought pictures of known value, with the signatures of the artists fully guaranteed. I, for instance, who am speaking to you, would have sometimes acted more unwisely than he. I remember once he even refused....”
“Nevertheless,” interrupted the doctor, “the case is very serious.”
The baron was alone in his room. His wife listened attentively at the door, and watched him through the key‐hole. He raised the curtains, shook the cushions on the sofa, searched around, and, when convinced that he was alone, spoke in a low voice; but his wife caught his words.
“No one suspects me. No one, not even she; and yet everything should warn them, everything.... The circumstances that accompanied the act are reproduced every instant. For example, the clouds in the sky have nearly always the same form as at that moment.... The clouds do it purposely; they have assumed since that day certain positions always the same. What do they resemble? What I do not wish to say, but I know well since my dream. Oh! that dream.... I am cold, frozen. Why is it no one ever speaks to me of that dream; that no one in this house remembers it? And yet they were all there ... in the dream.... My wife was there, and the other one also,” he added, lowering his voice.
And after a silence, occasionally broken by unintelligible words, and joined to a strange pantomime, he continued:
“It was frightful. How that man struggled for his life!”
And speaking always lower and lower, the baron gasped out:
“He clung to me, and, when I pushed him into the water, an expression passed over his face such as was never seen but then in this world. It was near the bridge of Austerlitz. How he glared at me as he disappeared the last time! How is it that in the street the passers‐by do not say on seeing me, ‘There is the man, there he is—the man who had the dream’? But was it a dream or reality? Men often pass me quickly in the street. Who knows but that they know or see something?”
The baron walked around the room, greatly excited, and then, pausing, he sighed, and said in a mournful tone:
“How do other men act—those who are not followed? They can take a step without hearing behind them another step that goes quicker or slower, according as they walk. Then there are men who do not hear steps behind them as they walk. Yet I always seek the noisiest places; but no noise ever deadens the sound of that step, so faint but so invincible. The noise of carriages, the roar of cannon—I have tried everything.... If possible I would live amidst thunder; but the lightning might fall near me, and cover me with ruins; still should I hear that faint, almost imperceptible noise, a foot that just touches the ground. I am cold! How cold it is! Fire no longer warms me! How lightly that foot touches the ground. It does not press heavily like ours. No, decidedly not; it was no dream—it was reality. That foot never is tired; but when I stop, it stops. It has a certain manner of stopping that makes me always feel that it is there, and that it will resume its walk when I do mine. Sometimes I would rather hear it, and I walk to make it walk; when it is silent, its menace is to me more terrible than the sound of the step.... If it would only change place!... But, no; always at an equal distance from me. Ah! how cruel. If I could but see some one, I think the most horrible spectacle would be less terrifying than this dreary void. To hear and not see!”
Here the baron rapidly jumped backwards, and put out his hand as though to grasp something in the air, then exclaimed:
“Gone! He has escaped—escaped, as ever!”
The course of the baron’s ordinary life flowed on as smoothly as ever. Nothing was changed, and those who were not much with him perceived no difference; to them he was the same as heretofore.
The following summer he wished to go to the sea‐shore.
They left for Brittany. They spoke of the pleasant walks and drives, and the baron, in an absent manner, asked on which part of the coast was the most sand. He would not hear of the cliffs; he wanted sand—only sand. Gâvre was recommended by a gentleman who was seated near them at the table d’hôte.
The baron instantly decided upon going to Gâvre.
“At what hour shall we leave?” asked the baroness.
The we evidently displeased the baron. He wished to go alone. He gave a thousand pretexts to prevent his wife accompanying him. As she would not admit them, he said, contrary to his usual custom, “I will” ... “I wish to go alone,” said he. “Am I in prison? Do you take me for a criminal?”
The baron left Port Louis in the steamboat. His wife followed him, without being seen, on another boat, and watched his movements through a spy‐ glass, as he paced up and down the shore at Gâvre.
First, according to his usual custom, he assured himself that he was alone. Then he would take several steps, and return quickly, seeing nothing; he searched in the sand, and, finding his own footsteps, he sought a little further on the trace of the other one. All in vain. Disappointed, he went to another spot, and recommenced his weary walk, always seeing his own footprints, never the other. He had hoped in the sand; the sand had proved false, as everything else.
Meanwhile, the doctor was in Paris, and one evening in a salon in the faubourg Saint Germain. The conversation was on madness; and the doctor, who was a celebrated alieniste, was asked many questions as to the causes of insanity.
“The causes of insanity,” said he, “are so profound and mysterious that to know them one must make the tour of the invisible world.”
“I have known,” said one gentleman, “insane persons who thought themselves guilty of crimes which they had never committed—innocent men, intelligent and good, incapable of harming a bird, and who thought themselves assassins.”
Among the guests that evening was a famous artist, M. Paul Bayard, whose most admired works, The First Glance, and Cain after his Crime, ranked with the chefs‐d’œuvre of the greatest masters of the day.
Said M. Bayard: “I have not studied, like you, doctor, from life. I don’t know any insane persons, and what I am going to tell you is not founded on fact. But this is what I think about this strange remorse felt by innocent people: who knows if they may not have committed spiritually the crime of which they think themselves guilty materially? In this hypothesis they have completely forgotten the real and spiritual crime, which they committed really and spiritually; they did not even know or feel it at the instant they committed it. But this crime real, spiritual, and forgotten is transformed, by virtue of madness, into a material crime, of which they are innocent, but of which they believe themselves guilty. Perhaps a man has betrayed his friend; instead of accusing himself of this treason, he accuses himself of another fault which resembles that one, as the body resembles the soul. I repeat, I cannot cite an example. It is purely hypothetical; but something which I cannot define makes me think it possible, nay, even probable. The guilty person deceived his conscience; conscience in turn deceives him. To make a child understand, we give examples of sensible things. Perhaps justice thus acts with these men, and, finding them insensible in the sphere of the mind, transports their crime into the sphere of the body.
“Perhaps it is a real crime, but too subtle to be understood by them, that descends to their level, and pursues them under the appearance of an external and sensible crime, the only one which they can understand. There are whimsical scruples which resemble madness, as exaggeration resembles falsehood. Who knows if these scruples are not the wanderings, or, if you prefer it, the transpositions of remorse? I say remorse. I do not say repentance, for repentance enlightens, and remorse blinds. Between repentance and remorse there is an abyss: the first gives peace, the second destroys it. Perhaps conscience, not being able to make itself felt by the guilty person on its own ground, speaks to him, by way of revenge, in language as coarse as himself, on his own domain. Through a terrible justice, it makes him reproach himself with what appears unjust on the surface, but which is a thousand times just at the bottom. Conscience, which spoke in vain at the moment of the crime, now arms itself against the criminal as a phantom. We are men here to‐night, as we appear to each other; but who knows if we are not for some one somewhere, at this moment, phantoms?”
The doctor rose, and, taking the artist’s hand, said: “I do not know how much truth there may be in your theory. I only know one thing: that you are a man of genius, and, if I had doubted it before, I am now convinced of it. I will reflect on your words; they open to me a new horizon.”
“I have always been pursued by the thought,” said the artist, “that there is a moment when a man understands for the first time what he has seen since his infancy. It is the day when the eyes of the mind open. It is this I have attempted to show in my picture—The First Glance. But as the horizon is constantly enlarging, I endeavor to throw upon everything, each time, a look which I may call The First Glance. In the other composition, Cain after his Crime, I wished to show in Cain, not the melodramatic assassin, but a vulgar, common man. The stigmata of anger, of which he received the visible mark, opens to him the eyes of the soul. He throws upon his crime a first glance. There are spiritual Cains whose arms are innocent. Perhaps there may be some among the insane, of whom we have spoken; and in that case there is more truth in their madness than in their previous security. Their insanity only deceives them about the nature of the crime; their security deceived them about the crime itself.”
The doctor was thoughtful. He took the artist aside, and in a low tone said: “Shall we leave together?” And they left.
After their departure the conversation turned on what had just been said.
“Were you always a materialist?” asked one person of his neighbor.
“It is scarcely fair or generous to choose this moment for such a question,” was the reply.
“As for me,” said a young lady, “I don’t like to hear M. Bayard talk. He is a great artist—that I admit; but when he commences in that style, he worries me!”
“Would it be indiscreet, madame, to ask you why?” timidly inquired a young man with a badly‐tied cravat.
“Because I am afraid he is right in his opinions. I wish to pass gaily through life; and if we believe what he says, life would be such a serious affair, we should have to think. Really, to hear him, we can imagine ourselves surrounded with mysteries.”
“I wish to see and study your picture of Cain. I was going to say your portrait of Cain,” said the doctor to the painter; “for it seems to me that you must have known him personally, from the manner in which you have spoken to me of him.”
“Perhaps I have known him,” said Paul. “At any rate, come!” And they entered the studio.
Arrived before the picture, the doctor started back in surprise.
The portrait of Cain was that of the baron, horrible in the resemblance.
There was on that face the coldness of the criminal and the horror of the cursed. The coldness did not impair the horror, nor the horror the coldness; and from the mouth of Cain the spectator might expect to hear the words that S. Bridget heard from the mouth of Satan when he said to God:
“O Judge! I am coldness itself.”
Indifference and despair were in those eyes, on those lips, and on that brow. But the despair was not heartrending, for repentance was wanting, and this despair even appeared expiatory, like justice eating its bread.
The doctor remained a long while motionless. The horizon opened before his eyes. His science sought new depths. He did not precisely reflect, but he remembered, and, perhaps for the first time in his life, passed an hour in profound contemplation.
“So you know him?” said he at last to Paul.
“Whom do you mean?”
“Why, my patient!”
“I don’t know any of your patients.”
Professional discretion arrested the name before it passed the doctor’s lips.
“But, really,” said he, “this head is a portrait. You could not have drawn it by chance.”
“Neither one nor the other,” replied Paul. “No one sat for me, and I did not draw it by chance. It appears to me, when I work, certain faces are offered to me without forcing themselves upon me. I perceive them interiorly; for my eyes are closed and I see nothing. Perceive is not the proper word, for the sense of sight is not needed. If I perceive them, it is with an unknown sense which is not that of sight, and in a peculiar condition, in comparison with which wakefulness is profound sleep. I think these perceptions correspond with some reality, either distant or future, whose photographic likeness at that moment passes before the eyes of the mind.
“This faculty, which may be called natural inspiration, has never abandoned me. The aptitude to surmise what I do not know is the highest form of the activity of my mind, and not only do I surmise what I do not know, but very often I do it, I realize it, without intention and without knowledge. It is as though I were an actor in a drama of which I was ignorant. I recite a part in a play that I do not know, and whose title and plot are equally unknown.
“Yet I feel myself free, and the profound sentiment of my liberty bursts forth, above all, in the remembrance of my faults. I wished to die, but death did not want me. I have sometimes asked myself if, having wished to lose my life, I might not lose inspiration, which would be for me a subtle and cruel manner of death. It has seemed to me that the question has been agitated somewhere, and that inspiration, which has compassion on the weak, came back to me gratuitously. If I had been criminal from malice, it would have abandoned me, perhaps, or have become in me the auxiliary of a future crime. It might have refused to help me, or have assisted me in doing wrong.”
Shortly after this interview the baron returned to Paris, apparently calmer than usual.
“He is much better,” said Mme. la Baronne. “The doctor alarmed me terribly; but I knew very well in reality there was no danger. My husband is a cold man, and I have nothing to fear for his reason.”
The following night the baron waited until the house was quiet, and then went on tiptoe, as though afraid of being surprised or disturbed. Once safely in his picture gallery, he cut each of the pictures with a penknife, and then one by one burst them open by placing his knee against the canvas; and, that accomplished, left the house toward morning. The porter saw him pass, but did not recognize him.
“Who is that old man,” said he to his wife, “who passed the night in the house?”
The baron’s hair, black the night before, was white as snow.
They waited for him at breakfast, they waited for him at dinner; he did not return. In searching his papers his wife found a note containing these words:
“This time I will not escape; the police are on my track.”
Said madame: “I always feared some misfortune would happen to me.”
The next day the baron’s body was found in the Seine under the bridge of Austerlitz.
“I am much distressed, but not astonished,” said the doctor to madame. “I always thought his madness absolutely incurable.”
“Ah! doctor, he destroyed all the pictures. I have not even his portrait.”
“You shall have it, madame,” said the doctor.
Eight days afterwards the doctor kept his promise. He brought the baroness a photograph.
Madame de Brienne was profoundly agitated, and nearly fainted.
“Oh! what a resemblance,” she gasped, “what a resemblance! Doctor, how was it done? This is not natural. It is not his portrait, it is himself. He is going to speak. I am afraid!”
There was horror in the astonishment of the poor woman. She threw upon her husband and herself a first glance.
“But tell me, doctor, where did you find it?”
“Allow me to keep the secret, madame.”
In reality, the thing was very simple: they had only photographed the picture of the great artist—Cain after his Crime.
The Legend Of Vallambrosa.
An ancient myth like ivied vesture clings About fair Vallambrosa’s cloistered walls, Telling that ’neath the roof sweet charity Has spread her soft, warm draperies within What time eight circling centuries have traced, In memories gray and green, her blessedness.
Of the fair, nestling valley here to sing, With sweet‐strung choice of cadenced synonymes, Could better music hold the ear, to note Its silver‐dropping streams and shadowy dells Than that wherewith Italia christened it, Calling it Aqua‐Bella, or the Val‐Ambrosa, liquid‐toned and clear? No ripple, Methinks, of happier tones or tenderer hues Could voice its lapsing falls and verdant vales Than lives within such naming! Hither came Long years agone—long years before the years That gave the legend birth—a prayerful priest, Bearing the cross where untamed beast and bird, Alone frequenting, poured in wildest notes The praise for life which lowest life uplifts! And here, as ever, man’s triumphant voice Leaped up above the brute’s, beseeching heaven To consecrate with holy dews, and bless, The heights which, cycles later, cradling held The hermitage of one so famed; and grew, As seed luxuriant in rich soil will grow, Because all teeming life must needs expand, These walls of generous hospice that outstretch Their sheltering arms to weary travellers.
If it be true, as we have often heard, That lukewarm sinners make but lukewarm saints, Perhaps the converse proof we hold in hand; For, mark! once lived in Florence, of the proud Gualberto house, one heir to all its pride, Giovanni named—he this same sinner‐saint.
Quickened by summers of some eighteen years, And flushed by southern suns to fervid warmth Of life impetuous, his youthful form Bore stamp already of the venturous will Of a gay, dashing cavalier outgiven To heedless coursings in the round of sense. And yet there dwelt adeep within his breast A living well of tenderness that flowed In gentle care for Hubert, his beloved And only brother. Hubert (a twelvemonth Scarce younger) stood between his tempted soul And much that might have swayed it past recall Over the margin of sin’s dread abyss. ’Twas not that Hubert was a chastened saint, But love within the brother’s ardent soul Invested him with raiment pure and white— Love holding from assoil the fabric fine Itself had wove, and still will choose to weave So long as life is life, or love is love. Thus, when unto Giovanni came a dawn That kindled to a conscious glow of health His own quick pulse, yet, warming, failed to melt The frozen current in pale Hubert’s veins, Because those veins had felt the frigid touch Of steel in duelling combat, there arose Within his anguished heart a stern demand Against the murderer of life for life— An unrelenting thirst of blood, to quell The ghostly phantoms of his fevered brain, And satisfy with feast of sweet revenge His brother’s manes. On one Good‐Friday morn, Followed by armed retainers, and slow bent Unto San Miniato to attend High Mass, in faithfulness to Hubert’s soul, He met unwittingly within a pass That leads to the Basilica this man, Of all men hated most. Close, face to face, Spell‐bound they stood a moment’s span; then flashed From out Giovanni’s sheath his gleaming sword, And by its glittering sign with one will rose From every trusty scabbard near at hand Sharp kindred swords that gleamed defiant fire Into the bright’ning day, and in his face Who stood unarmed, alone. The unsheathed sword Of pitiless Giovanni had well‐nigh Its rueful deed of deadly wrath made sure When he, the helpless foe confronted thus By certain death, saw in death’s pallid light The spectre of his sin as it must seem To disembodied spirits, and he fell Prone, horror‐stricken, at the avenger’s feet. There, graving on the ground with level arms The crucial sign, he prayed for pardoning grace, And grace of lengthened days for penitence, And all in name of Him whose agony Upon the cross he thus in dust recalled!
The sword is stayed, and in the tremulous pause Great waves of varying passions meet And battle in Giovanni’s breast. Through all A voice, as of faint music o’er the din Of tumult, whispers: “Who loveth brother more Than me, or any loved one more than me, Is all unworthy of me.” Quick, with ever Conquering motions of the Spirit’s power, As winds of peace the passionate waters calm, His sword is dropped, and, offering helpful hands, He cries: “Thou who hast slain my brother be As Christ doth will—a brother unto me.”
O’erwhelmed with gratitude, and filled with deep Contrition for his sin, the uplifted foe Lets fall his head upon Giovanni’s neck, And there with loosened torrent of remorse He pours the unguent of his tears, as once Another penitent poured costly balm Upon the Holiest One, growing therefrom Through mercy’s twofold grace to peace and joy.
While yet the day was young, the legend tells How both these humbled, contrite cavaliers Offered their thanks for comfort at the shrine Whither their steps together now were led; And how, while kneeling at the crucifix, Broke from the Saviour’s parted lips a smile Upon Giovanni, while the sacred head In gracious token bowed. O crowning joy! Too much to halo one poor human brow, And not the radiance divine extend To others all unconscious, even as once Himself had been of its illumining might! Henceforth no other smile was aught to him If for a passing moment it could hide The memory of that glory from his eyes.
Henceforth the impulse of his life was one Deep, passionate desire to shadow forth, In the best shadowy way a mortal can, The glowing flame of beatific fire That hallowed smile had kindled in his soul. And thence so perfect was his Godward walk That scarce five summers of devoted life Were added to his eighteen worldly years Before San Miniato’s brotherhood Decreed him to its abbacy. But, no! Nor stole nor triple crown had charm for one Too wholly Christ’s to care for stole or crown, Save for that lustrous crown of ransomed souls His earnest life might win to shine as stars. For this to Vallambrosa’s lonely height In rapt and silent vigil he withdrew; But even as sweetness bursts the seedling’s cell, So holiness from him exhaled in light That drew, to seek his counsel, devotees Led faithfully by his unswerving faith To live with him a life of prayer and praise. Or, if they came not cowled as lowly monks, Still hither fared the noble of the land, Even kings whose purple paled beside his gray, And royal ladies and most knightly knights, To pour their wealth of treasure at the feet Of one all saintly. Thus the order grew Of world‐famed Vallambrosa, where to‐day The weary find repose and welcoming cheer, And benison of heavenly graciousness. And thus of one soul’s overflow of light The Saviour’s smile is seen in saving love To stream adown the ever‐widening years That close and closer bring us to the day Of promised joy, when all our utmost need Shall in that glorious smile be satisfied.
Odd Stories. VIII. Snifkin.
There certainly was a time when dogs were more respected than now. Such a period in particular must have been the reign of Gigag, when the Odomites, who had once kicked, maimed, and starved their poor curs in a manner inhuman, now fed and fondled them with an affection that was almost canine. This revolution in sentiment was entirely due to what may be called a genius of instinct possessed by one extraordinary dog. His owner, who was none other than the goblin Gigag, had, in one of those journeys which he sometimes took through his underground thoroughfare, named his four‐footed companion, with a fond conceit, Snifkin; and when they emerged into the atmosphere of the king’s grounds, the latter was allowed the chief place at supper among the royal dogs. Some of this many‐colored pack were wont to bark, as others were to bite. Some were renowned for scent and vigilance, and others for speed and courage; still others for motley skins, lapping lips, great ears, and yelling, yelping, and howling. But the dog Snifkin united their best qualities with a sagacity that was almost diplomatic. He never barked till he was prepared to bite, and he sometimes bit without barking. He had a scent and sight which are only acquired by dogs who have seen a great deal of human nature. So various and cabalistic seemed the marks and colors upon him, that the vulgar ascribed them to the science of Gigag rather than to natural revelation. To crown all, the dog Snifkin showed his ivory teeth at times, sneezing, snorting, and laughing in a way next to human for its friendliness.
From a number of the faculties described arose two incidents which increased the fame and worth of all dogs, and which no man can sufficiently admire. A miser, in whom the sagacious Snifkin recognized a former oppressor of his kind, came to plead his cause at court, alleging his ownership of four hundred and ninety‐five thriving estates, and prosecuting his poor nephew for about as many cents. At a contrast so preposterous the knowing dog could not contain himself, and sniffed, snorted, and showed his teeth to such a degree that even his royal master, at whose side he sat during the hearing of the plea, was forced to join in the general guffaw which greeted the miser.
Another incident related chiefly to one of four malcontent noblemen, who, with bows and smiles, came to the royal presence. With no more ado the dog Snifkin jumped at his throat, bringing him to the foot of the king, when a concealed bodkin fell out of his bosom, and a number of poisons, which Gigag recognized as badly prepared, were strewn upon the floor. Without a word the king understood why it was that his dumb counsellor had not taken soup that day. While irons were being placed on the limbs of the malcontents, a collar made of the finest cloth of gold, adorned with precious stones, was put upon the neck of the loyal dog. By sovereign order it was decreed that, taking with him all the dogs in the kennels of the palace, the crown crier should go out and cry to all the people the patriotism of Snifkin, and the fidelity of dogs generally.
But it would require a million miracles to convince those whose unreason has placed them nearest to the brutes, that dogs and other animals, human and inhuman, exist for the trying and proving of the souls of men. As Snifkin was one day seated in the high easy‐chair of the barber who clipped and shaved for the king’s dogs, a commotion in the street provoked him to bark loudly, hazarding thereby the loss of his nose at the hands of the barber. Arrived in the street, what was his surprise to see fifty of the royal hounds yelping in the most distressful manner over the loss of his tail by the chief hound, who had provoked by impudent barking a slashing cut from the sword of a cavalier, who, it came to be known, was a conspirator against the life of King Gigag. Not being able to contend with swordsmen, Snifkin quickly seized upon the largest and finest specimen of the breed of curs who barked against the king’s hounds, and made short work of him.
This act, loyal though it was, became the signal for that factious state of feeling among the Odomites which eventuated in the famous war of tails. Most of the best dogs belonging to the houses which barked against the king having had their tails cut off, it grew to be a fashion with the malcontents of the realm to reject everything with a tail to it, even were it a shirt, or an entailed estate not already owned and occupied by one of their number, or a story which was not to be continued. In fact, it became a question whether they would give ear to any tale whatever, and hence it was truly said of the malcontent faction that their ears were longer than their tails. Of course the scientific king lost no time in improving the situation; indeed, of putting an end to it. He trained a pack of dogs, under the teaching of Snifkin, to scent out treason, and, when that was done, he managed to give the hydrophobia to a large number of rebellious curs, who afterwards bit their masters. The dog Snifkin barked against this measure in vain.
A war now broke out, assisted by the prince of a neighboring country, who had conceived a great hatred of the goblin Gigag. It was the habit of the royal dogs to discover supplies to their masters, and guard their camp at night, and, besides, to indicate in what direction were the princely headquarters and trains of the enemy, which they knew by the smell of many viands.
The same, perhaps, would have been the practice of those dogs without tails who barked for the malcontents and their ally, were it not that the poor fare they received compelled their flight to the better provisions of the enemy. Nevertheless, it would have gone hard with King Gigag if his rival’s device of drawing off the dogs by a concentration of savory meats in an ambushed ravine had succeeded; for the king, had it not been for the sagacity of Snifkin, would certainly have gone to the dogs. Despairing now of being able to foil their antagonists, the allies heard with growing dismay the general bark and howl in the king’s camp at night ere his warriors slept upon their arms. Only a low growl here and there, or perhaps the voice of some lonely hound who had strayed out of camp to bay the moon, broke the silence of the sleep of war.
While thus the silent avalanche was prepared that was to overwhelm the allies in the carnage of civil strife, a most unforeseen accident occurred. King Gigag was on his rounds through the camp when a dog taken with hydrophobia bit him in the leg. Returning mad to his headquarters, he saw the dog Snifkin laughing and wagging his tail, and, frenzied by the sight, he drew his sword, and at once cut off the whole of that pleasant appendage. Immediately the dog Snifkin became the most beautiful young prince you ever saw. Seizing an enchanted blade that hung up in the tent of the goblin, he defended himself with fury, and by an artful stroke put the unlucky Gigag out of his pains. When it became known throughout both camps that King Gigag had cut off the tail of the dog Snifkin, a reconciliation grew apace between those dogs who had tails and those dogs who had none; and, indeed, the royal hounds especially were anxious to have their tails cut off, so that they might turn at once into princes; but, unfortunately, this result never happened, two of these dogs at least having been curtailed, to their great shame and mortification, without so much as becoming scullions, or anything but unlucky dogs. It was then seen by the Odomites that the dog Snifkin was none other than their long‐lost Prince Gudood, who would have been devoured by the giant Googloom, had not the goblins got hold of him and changed him into a dog; in which character he served the excellent goblin Gigag, who, however, was not made aware of his identity by the evil goblins from whom he had escaped. By means of a birthmark on his right arm the allied lords were speedily brought to understand that this, indeed, was the long‐lost prince who had been affianced to the daughter of the neighboring king. And now with one heart and soul they hastened the marriage of the prince and princess, who ever afterwards lived happily in the joy and glory and union of both kingdoms. In the magnificent bridal procession nothing was more astonishing than the thousand trained dogs of all kinds, large and small, who marched in order, clad sometimes in variegated suits, and wearing rich collars. First came the royal hounds and mastiffs; second, a fine breed of mountaineer dogs as large as wolves; third, two or three hundred pointers, spotted all colors; fourth, as many setters, their backs streaked with colors like gold and snow; fifth, a battalion of mixed red, white, and blue dogs; sixth, a body of sky‐terriers, followed by the finest array of black‐and‐tan dogs that was ever known; sixth, a large number of dogs who looked like nothing so much as walking hearth‐rugs; seventh, a noble lot of shaggy water‐dogs as large as men; then a great many shepherd‐dogs, spaniels, poodles, pups; after these a battalion of dogs shaved to look like lions; and finally a rear‐guard of bull‐dogs with their tails cut off, walking as steadily as firemen on parade. A loud and harmonious barking at intervals interrupted the sound of the wedding bells, and five hundred terrier dogs at least stood up on their hind legs when the marriage ceremony was performed.
Thus the reign of humanity and utility succeeded to the reign of science and pelf. Only dogs were allowed to do the fighting, and they were treated so well that they did nothing worse than bark. The following conversation was one time overhead among them in a street near the king’s palace:
Royal Mastiff.—Bowoghowow! Bowgh!
Hound without tail.—Boowoogh! Boohoo! Wowoo!
Terrier dog.—Gr‐r‐r‐r‐row, r‐row!
Bull‐dog.—Hr‐r‐r‐um‐g‐r‐r‐u‐m. Bowowgh!
From these syllables it was conjectured by the knowing that the new King Gudood had no enemies, and that peace abode in the land.
DE L’AUTORITE; OU, LA PHILOSOPHIE DU PERSONNALISME. LETTRE AU REV. PERE J. F. HECKER, SUIVIE D’UN APPENDICE SUR LA SOUVERAINETE DU PEUPLE. PAR DWIGHT H. OLMSTEAD. Traduction approuvée par l’auteur. Genève: Japonnier et Steuder. 1874.
This pamphlet, the English original of which we have not seen, has been sent to us from Geneva, by the author, we presume. The Rev. F. I. T. (not J. F.) Hecker has been abroad, travelling for the restoration of his impaired health, for more than a year, and cannot, therefore, give his personal attention to Mr. Olmstead’s very courteous Letter, at least for the present, and in the columns of THE CATHOLIC WORLD. Moreover, the author is mistaken in attributing a certain article in THE CATHOLIC WORLD, with which he chiefly employs his pen in the Letter, to F. Hecker. The article in question is one of the numerous contributions with which Dr. Brownson enriched and adorned our pages during the interval of the suspension of his own Review. In our opinion, Mr. Olmstead has not dealt a very heavy blow upon the head‐piece of his veteran antagonist. In fact, we do not see that he has attempted any serious answer to arguments which he would find it no easy task to refute. Mr. Olmstead deals more in objections and assertions than in arguments, and his assertions are so general and vague that one would need to write a treatise on general and special metaphysics to refute them. They merely amount to this: that Mr. Olmstead agrees with Kant and J. Stuart Mill. F. Hecker’s works were written for persons who either believe in some sense in Christianity, or at least in God and in human reason and intelligence. It is not necessary to prove the premises admitted by the persons with whom you argue. If they are Protestants, you assume the truth of Christianity. Your only effort is then to prove that Catholicity is the genuine Christianity. If they are rationalistic theists, you prove that the truth of Christianity, and specifically the authority of the church as one of its essential doctrines and laws, is demonstrable from principles of reason and natural theology. When it is a question of arguing with an atheist or sceptic, these topics must be postponed, and the discussion turned upon the first principles of metaphysics. Even here something in common must be admitted as a starting‐ point for argument. If a man denies everything or doubts everything, the only thing which can possibly be done is to watch him closely until he asserts something, and then you can do no more than show to a bystander his absurdity. If we understand Mr. Olmstead correctly, he admits the reality of all that is contained within self‐consciousness, and considers all else, by the mere fact of its being exterior to consciousness, as an unknown quantity in respect to its reality. He merely holds this, however, as an opinion, and admits that the contrary is very probable. If he is in earnest—and it is fair to presume that he is—in searching for philosophical truth, the only way in which a Catholic philosopher could argue with him to any purpose would be by presenting a theory of the origin of ideas and knowledge, which would give him something objective as a primitive element in his very first act of intellectual self‐ consciousness. This is rather too serious a task to be performed in a hurry. Whatever we have to say on these great fundamental topics of philosophy has been already partly said in the elaborate articles which have appeared in our columns, and will be said hereafter in articles of a similar nature. We refer the author of the Letter and others in a similar position to THE CATHOLIC WORLD, passim, to get what modicum of light we are able to furnish them. If they wish for more light, they must go to the great works of great authors, and study them carefully. As for the great number of very excellent persons who do not trouble their heads with philosophy, and who complain that our philosophical articles are too dry and abstruse, we must beg them to content themselves with the lighter portions of the magazine, and allow us to give a reasonable amount of space to the few readers who have some taste and capacity for real science.
HOLY PLACES: THEIR SANCTITY AND AUTHENTICITY. By F. Philpin de Rivières, of the London Oratory. London: Washbourne. 1874. (New York: Sold by The Catholic Publication Society.)
F. De Rivières gives play both to reason and imagination in an instructive and agreeable manner in treating of the attractive topic of holy places. The book contains some interesting information about the recent explorations in Jerusalem.
THE MONTH OF MARY OF OUR LADY OF LOURDES. By Henri Lasserre. Translated from the French (23d edition) by Mrs. Crosier. London: Burns and Oates. 1874. (New York: Sold by The Catholic Publication Society.)
Henri Lasserre’s beautiful work—of which a translation, which the best judges have pronounced to be of the very highest literary merit as well as the most literal accuracy, appeared in this magazine—is abridged and divided into thirty‐one chapters for each day of the month of May, in this neat and pretty volume.
The Blessed Virgin pressed very hard on the head of the old serpent when she appeared at the rocks of Massabielle. The sympathizers with this “revolutionnaire malheureux,” as Renan calls him, in his warfare on the Queen of Heaven, frequently show their perplexity and vexation at the overwhelming proof of the miracles she has wrought, by an attempt at scornful ridicule, which is always unaccompanied by any argument, or any attempt at meeting the challenge so often addressed to them to rebut the evidence M. Lasserre has furnished. Louis Veuillot, probably the wittiest man now on the earth, once said of a certain Frenchman that he was a clever writer, but fort piqué contre le Saint Esprit. Dr. Coxe, who has formerly shown himself to be a clever poet, to say the least, in his recent pamphlet against Bishop Ryan, which is not at all clever, but only cunning, has exhibited a great pique against Our Lady of Lourdes. In this we see a fulfilment of the ancient prophecy, “I will place enmity between thee and the woman, between thy seed and her seed.” The vulgar and unmeaning jibes of the infidel and the heretic, as well as the pious writings and devout pilgrimages of the faithful, alike serve to make the wonderful event of Lourdes more and more widely known all over the world, to the greater glory of God, and his Blessed Mother.
A FULL CATECHISM OF THE CATHOLIC RELIGION (preceded by a short history of religion), from the creation of the world to the present time. With Questions for Examination. Translated from the German of the Rev. Joseph Deharbe, S.J., by the Rev. John Fander. Fourth Edition. London: Burns & Oates. 1874. (New York: Sold by The Catholic Publication Society.)
This is the most celebrated catechism of the century, has been most extensively approved and brought into use, and will be of great service to those who are employed in teaching young people the Christian doctrine, as well as for the instruction of converts.
THE COMMONITORY OF S. VINCENT OF LERINS. London: Washbourne. 1874. (New York: Sold by The Catholic Publication Society.)
There is no treatise of such small size as the Commonitory among Christian writings, so far as we know, which has been so universal in fame and influence, and has made its author so illustrious, as this one.
The neat little libretto, containing the translation, with some accompanying testimonies of eminent Protestant divines to the excellence of the work, is edited by the Rev. John Lynch, of Ballymena, Diocese of Down and Connor, Ireland. In the preface he mentions the fact that S. Vincent and S. Patrick were fellow‐students. The treatise can be easily read and understood by any intelligent person, and yet contains an amount of instruction and information on Catholic doctrine equal to that which is ordinarily spread through volumes.
MONASTICON HIBERNICUM. With Engravings in Gold and Colors, Maps and Views. By Mervyn Archdall, A.M. Edited by the Right Rev. Dr. Moran. Vol. I., 4to. Dublin: W. B. Kelly. 1873.
This well‐known historical work is now republished in the most splendid style. It is a history of religious houses and orders in Ireland, extensive, learned, and full of romantic and religious interest. The first volume contains two fine views of the exterior and interior of S. Patrick’s Cathedral, Dublin, one of the ancient episcopal palace, and several engravings, in gold, of different religious orders. The work is, of course, a costly one, and is only published by subscription. Every wealthy Irishman in the United States ought to subscribe for a work which is an honor to his country and the Catholic religion. The first edition is, however, limited to one thousand copies, and we presume that persons desiring to procure a copy will find it necessary to send on their names immediately.
CHERUBINI: MEMORIALS ILLUSTRATIVE OF HIS LIFE. By Edward Bellasis, Barrister‐at‐Law. London: Burns & Oates. (With a portrait.)
This is an elaborate biography of the great musical composer, edited and published with the greatest care in an attractive style of typography. It cannot fail to interest very much those who have a taste for musical literature.
LA SAINTE ECRITURE ET LA REGLE DE FOI. Par l’Abbé Bégin, de l’Université Laval. Québec: Coté et Cie. 1874.
With admirable precision and clearness the Abbé Bégin develops and defends in this volume the Catholic doctrine of the rule of faith in accordance with the soundest and most orthodox theology. We cannot sufficiently recommend his treatise to clergymen and other students of sacred science. There are some mistakes in the spelling of English names, as is very usual in French books. For example, we have Richard Buxter instead of Baxter. Whoever wishes to preach, lecture, or write for the press on the topics treated in this volume will find it even more available for use than the treatises contained in our dogmatic text‐books.
SKETCHES OF ILLUSTRIOUS SOLDIERS. By James Grant Wilson. New York. George P. Putnam’s Sons. 1874.
This work has a promising look, the author’s name reminding us that the military profession was for some time his own, and that he is a diligent student of the literature of his subject.
Military biography has a strange charm for most readers; indeed, it is doubtful whether fiction has an equal fascination at certain periods of our lives. Few of us have attained middle age without having had our cheeks frequently glow and our patriotism grow warm at the narration of deeds of prowess performed by our favorite heroes. Unfortunately, however, the production of this species of literature has fallen to a great extent into the hands of literary adventurers‐writers who looked only to making the most of a profitable enterprise. Hence the periodical eruption of lives of great captains, distinguished, indeed, as men count greatness, but whose most valid claim to eminence consisted in their ability to destroy whatever opposed the realization of the objects of their ambition, and the permanent maintenance of unjustly‐won crowns. To this cause we may partly attribute the fact that people have well‐nigh lost sight of the loftiest form of heroism—that which prompts a man to stake everything on the defence of a principle; to brave all dangers and sustain all privations, so that conscience be kept pure and the Christian character preserved unsullied.
The work under notice belongs to a different category. It is written, for the most part, in a calm, judicial spirit, the author evidently intending to avoid partisanship, and exhibiting a painstaking fidelity to the data before him. Occasionally, however, he betrays the hero‐worshipper in the case of individuals who appear anything but admirable to us. On such common ground as the sketch of Washington we are glad to express our agreement with the author. We also like his estimate of anecdotes as illustrations of character.
UNIVERSAL PRONOUNCING DICTIONARY OF BIOGRAPHY AND MYTHOLOGY. By J. Thomas, A.M., M.D. Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott & Co. 1874.
A COMPLETE PRONOUNCING GAZETTEER. Edited by J. Thomas and T. Baldwin, assisted by several other gentlemen. Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott & Co. (Sold at 25 Bond St., New York)
Next to a dictionary of the language we rank dictionaries of persons and places, as works of reference for those engaged in writing, and, indeed, for all intelligent readers as well. We hear of so many men of eminence, or of localities so nearly alike in orthography, that we never feel entirely at ease without reference to a good authority; so that, for the mere purpose of identification, books like these are worth all they cost. The period and country at and in which a given subject lived, his occupation, his contemporaries, and for what he was distinguished; the county, state, or kingdom in which a certain city or town lies, serve all ordinary uses. Should we desire more, we can at our leisure resort to the encyclopædias or individual biographies for fuller information. Of course these works would be more acceptable if written from our point of view; but that we cannot expect for a long time to come. Meanwhile, being reasonably impartial, as we have found them to be so far as we have examined, we accept them as the best attainable. Lest the fact that they are each in one volume should convey an inadequate idea of their extent, we may state that the Biographical Dictionary has 2,345 closely‐printed royal octavo pages, and the Gazetteer xviii.‐2,182 pages of the same size and compactness. We know of no works of the kind so convenient and full in all matters for which they are ordinarily consulted.
A DICTIONARY OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE. By Joseph E. Worcester, LL.D. Boston: Brewer & Tileston. 1874.
As it would be quite superfluous to advise any one to get a dictionary at the present time, we content ourselves with asking our readers to get the best—Worcester’s Unabridged. We have warmed towards this author, among other reasons, because he is less of an iconoclast than some of his fellow‐lexicographers. It has grieved us not a little to see our favorite words maltreated as if they had no personality about which to be sensitive, or pedigree whereof to be proud. We can scarcely recognize them in the new dress, or rather mask, in which they are often presented. Were we a boy again, not a hair of our head would rise at a specter, and we should have an additional reason for refusing allegiance to a sovereign who held only a scepter—though the sun should still refuse to set on her dominions.
In saying this we would by no means disparage a standard in spelling. When some new Ursa Major shall arise who will not only give us an uniform, harmonious system of orthography, but such substantial reasons in favor of it as will satisfy the learned and confound all opponents, we may yield to the general verdict. But we are not at all on the lookout for such a contingency while our language is in the process of formation, and expect to possess our Worcester Unabridged in peace for many long years to come. The work has lxviii.‐1,786 pages quarto, and is quite as full, we believe, as any other extant in the various tables, grammatical and other information having a bearing on the main purpose of the volume.
The same publishers also issue Worcester’s Comprehensive Dictionary, Worcester’s Primary Dictionary, and A Pocket Dictionary, compiled from the quarto and school dictionaries of J. E. Worcester, by Loomis J. Campbell; for those who desire inexpensive and portable manuals.
THE CATHOLIC WORLD. VOL. XIX., NO. 114.—SEPTEMBER, 1874.
The activity displayed by matter in the production of natural phenomena is twofold, viz., attractive and repulsive; and the question has been raised whether these two kinds of activity can reside in one and the same subject, or, owing to their opposite nature, require separate subjects. With regard to molecules, it is quite certain, though some have thought otherwise, that in all ponderable bodies each molecule is in possession of both powers; but with regard to the primitive elements which enter into the constitution of a molecule, the question needs a special treatment, as no direct evidence is supplied by experimental science for an affirmative more than for a negative solution, and different views have been advanced which it is important to examine in the light of philosophical principles, that we may ascertain which of them has the best claim to adoption both in philosophy and in molecular mechanics.
Attractive and repulsive powers.
Since it is well known that all the phenomena of the material order, whether physical or chemical, ultimately depend on attractions and repulsions, we are compelled to admit the existence in nature of attractive and repulsive powers. Neither attractive powers alone nor repulsive powers alone would afford us a rational explanation of natural facts. If the primitive elements of matter were all repulsive, and nothing but repulsive, then neither the cohesion of material particles nor the gravitation of bodies would be possible; no solid and no liquid would exist; and all matter from the very beginning of its existence would have vanished in a state of extreme attenuation through the immensity of space. If, on the contrary, the primitive elements of matter were all attractive, and nothing but attractive, no expansive power would be found in nature; for the expansion of bodies evidently depends on a repulsion prevailing between their molecules. All solid and liquid bodies likewise proclaim the existence of repulsive powers by the resistance they oppose to compression. This resistance shows that their molecules are endowed with powers whose exertion impedes their mutual approach as soon as they have reached a certain limit of distance. It is plain that the power which impedes the approach under pressure must be a repulsive one. Thus both attractive and repulsive powers exist in nature.
But do they exist together in the same primitive element of matter? Boscovich answers in the affirmative; but his answer is not supported by any cogent reason. Having found no other means of accounting for the impenetrability of bodies, he assumed that every element of matter is so constituted as to be attractive at all great distances, according to the law of universal attraction, but that each element, at molecular distances, becomes repulsive in order to resist pressure, and again attractive in order to exercise chemical affinity, and then repulsive again, these alternations going on a certain number of times, till at last repulsivity alone prevails, which indefinitely increases when the distance of two elements indefinitely diminishes.
Yet this theory is by no means needed to account either for the impenetrability of bodies or for any other phenomenon; as what Boscovich ascribes to elements may be, and is in fact, a property of molecules—that is, of a compound system of elements. On the other hand, the theory is unnaturally complex, and the alternation of the attractive and repulsive exertions looks as unscientific as the epicycles of the old astronomers and other hypotheses once admitted as plausible, and now superseded by a fuller knowledge of natural laws. To a mind which examines the question of attractive and repulsive powers in the light of philosophy, it must be evident that each primitive element of matter cannot possess them both. If an element is attractive at any distance, it must be attractive at all distances, whether enormously great or indefinitely small; likewise, if an element is repulsive at any distance, it must be repulsive at all distances.
This proposition can be proved as follows: Opposite actions cannot originate from one and the same simple principle when such a principle has no control over itself, but acts by inherent necessity. But in each primitive element of matter there is but one simple principle of activity, which has no control over itself, as it acts by inherent necessity. And therefore no primitive element can be both attractive and repulsive, but is either attractive at all distances or at all distances repulsive.
In this syllogism the major is evident. An active principle which, like the human soul, can, by immanent operations, assume at pleasure different attitudes towards the term of its action, and which masters the conditions and controls the intensity of its exertions, may perhaps be considered competent to originate actions of opposite kinds.(159) But a being which is destitute of immanent operations, and acts by an inherent necessity of its nature, has no power to modify itself or to alter its intrinsic determination; and its action is so ruled by its intrinsic determination that there is no chance of its being either transmuted into its opposite, or even partially suspended. Now, in a primitive being the principle of activity is nothing else than the simple act which formally determines its nature; and it is plain that wherever there is one simple formal act, there can be only one formal determination to act. And consequently a simple principle of activity which has no immanent operations cannot be the source of two opposite kinds of actions. Bodies and their molecules, on account of their physical composition, contain as many distinct principles of activity as they contain physical components or elements; hence we can easily account for their capability of originating opposite actions by admitting that among those elements some are attractive and others repulsive. But in a primitive element it is impossible to admit of two opposite active principles; for a primitive element is a being entitatively one, having only one essential act, and consequently only one active principle and one intrinsic determination to act. It would therefore be absurd to expect from such an element actions of such an opposite nature as are attraction and repulsion. For evidently, to enable the element to display two opposite powers, two opposite determinations would be necessary. Hence, if the intrinsic determination enables the primitive element to attract, such an element will always attract, and never repel; and if, on the contrary, the intrinsic determination enables the primitive element to repel, such an element will always repel, and never attract. In other terms, the attractive and the repulsive power cannot coexist in the same primitive element.
This conclusion, which affords the only possible basis for the speculations of molecular mechanics, is one of those which mere scientists cannot reach through their empirical and inductive method; but its truth is not less certain for that; it is rather all the more certain, as it is not founded on accidental facts, but on the unchangeable nature of things and the transcendental relation of the principles involved in the constitution of real beings.
Our proposition may be confirmed by reflecting that the change of attraction into repulsion, according to Boscovich, would depend on the diminution of the distance between the agent and the patient. Now, this view is inadmissible. For a change of distance, though necessarily accompanied by a change in the intensity of the action, cannot exercise any influence on the specific nature of the action. The intensity of the action is an accidental thing, and can change without in the least interfering with the nature of the agent; and for this reason it can, and must, depend on distance as a condition implied in the exercise of the active power. But the nature of the action always follows the nature of the substance from which it proceeds. Now, a change of distance does not change the nature of the substance. And accordingly the nature of the action must remain the same, even though the distance be indefinitely diminished.
Moreover, if there were any distance at which the action of a primitive element could change from attractive to repulsive, evidently the element, at such a distance, would be unable to exercise either attraction or repulsion, as Boscovich concedes; and therefore, at such a distance, the material element would have no activity. We may, then, ask: Whence does the attractive power emanate which is to have uncontrolled sway at all greater distances? Does it emanate from any point of space outside the element? Then it would not be the active power of the element, as it would have nothing to do with it. On the other hand, it is obvious that if it emanates from the element, it does not end at a distance from it. For, since the active power is really identical with the formal principle from which the primitive element receives its nature, it is as necessary for the elementary power to reach the very centre of the element as it is for the form to be intrinsically terminated to its matter. Whence it follows that the elementary power of attraction, which prevails at all great distances, must emanate from the very centre of the element. But if so, why shall it not prevail up to that very centre? Is it, forsooth, because in the neighborhood of the centre an opposite principle prevails? Were this the case, the same primitive being would have two formal acts, and it would be two beings and two natures; which is an evident contradiction. As long, therefore, as we adhere to the fundamental doctrine that a primitive being cannot have more than one simple principle of activity, we must admit that a primitive element, if attractive at any distance, is attractive at all molecular distances, and, if repulsive at molecular distances, is repulsive at all distances.
Against the existence of attractive and repulsive powers in distinct primitive elements some objections now and then have been made. It has been said, first, that what we call repulsion is only a result of certain vortical movements of the ether all around the molecules of ponderable bodies. This objection is based on a false supposition. We have already shown that the arbitrary theory of the vortices fails altogether to explain the great phenomenon of universal attraction; and we may easily show that it fails as completely in regard to molecular repulsion. In fact, the centrifugal forces which are developed by vortical movements, and which in this theory are assumed as the cause of the phenomena of molecular resistances, are not active powers. They are components of the vortical movements, and nothing more; that is to say, they do not efficiently produce movements, but are the formal principles of movements already produced. To ascribe to them the molecular resistances and the impenetrability of bodies is, therefore, to admit the effect without the cause.
Secondly, some authors object that the resistance called into play by pressure is not a real action, and requires no efficient repulsive powers. They consider it, according to the vulgar prejudice, as a merely passive resistance; for they imagine that a body, when pressed or impinged on, resists the progress of the obtruding body by its own inert matter, which with its materiality obstructs the way onward. This old explanation is still popular with the great mass of the uninstructed, but is scientifically and philosophically worthless. For whatever causes a real change really acts; now, a body resisting the advance of another body causes a real change in the rate of its movement; therefore a body resisting the advance of another body really acts. Its resistance is therefore active, and not passive; that is, it consists in an exertion of repulsive power, and not in a material obstruction of the path.
Hence what physicists call “force of inertia” is not a passive resistance proceeding from the inertia of matter, but an active exertion of the molecular powers, and has been so called only because, all other things being equal, its intensity is proportional to the mass of the inert body.(160) Evidently, inertia itself cannot resist or check the advance of an impinging body. Nothing but a positive action can do it; for nothing but a positive action can communicate to the advancing body that impetus in the opposite direction which alone is competent to neutralize the impetus of the advance. Physicists know this very well, though many of them, owing to the difficulty of analyzing and expressing certain things with philosophical accuracy, do not always use, in this particular, a very correct language—a thing which, after all, must not surprise us, as one can be well read in physics without necessarily being a profound philosopher.
The third objection is aimed at our argument against Boscovich’s theory, in which we have said that attraction and repulsion are actions of opposite kinds. Boscovich, on the contrary, maintains that attraction and repulsion differ only as the greater from the less, and therefore cannot be considered as actions of a different kind. He says: “Both actions are of the same kind; for the one, as compared with the other, is negative; and negative things do not differ in kind from positive ones. That the one, as compared with the other, is negative, is evident from this: that they differ only in direction. That the negative and the positive belong to the same kind is evident from the principle, More and less do not differ in kind. In fact, from the positive, by a continued subtraction or diminution, we obtain first some smaller positive quantities, then zero, and lastly, if we still go on in our subtraction, negative quantities.”(161)
This argument, notwithstanding its speciousness, is not difficult to upset. It is not true, in the first place, that attraction and repulsion differ only in direction; on the contrary, they differ in everything except in direction. Two points A and B being given, there is only one direction from A to *B*, whether A be attractive or repulsive. If A is attractive, its attraction is directed from A to B; and if A is repulsive, its repulsion is no less directed from A to B. This is quite evident, as the action must in all cases proceed from the agent to the patient. It is evident, therefore, that the two actions must have the same direction. The movements of B will indeed have opposite directions, according as B is attracted or repelled; but this does not show that the actions themselves have opposite directions; it shows, on the contrary, that those actions, though directed in the same manner from A to B, are of a different nature, and proceed from opposite principles. And this conclusion may be confirmed by remarking that the direction is always from a point to a point, or from matter to matter; and consequently it is not the active power or the action, but only the position of the material centres, that can determine any direction. Accordingly, so long as such a position is not inverted, it is impossible to conceive two opposite directions from A to B. It is therefore evidently false that attraction and repulsion differ in direction.
It is not true, in the second place, that attraction and repulsion differ only as the positive differs from the negative, or the greater from the less. In the mathematical expression of mechanical relations, if we consider a movement as positive, the movement which points to an opposite direction must, of course, be affected by the negative sign. The same we must do with regard to forces and actions; for we estimate the actions by the movements which they produce, and we express them only in terms of movement—that is, by their effects. But this does not mean that there is either any movement or any action absolutely negative; for a negative movement would be no movement, and a negative action no action. It is in a relative and conventional sense only that movements are considered as positive or negative; and, moreover, either of the two opposite movements can be assumed as positive or as negative, at will; which shows very clearly that the negative and the positive do not differ in this case as the greater differs from the less, as Boscovich assumes; for either of the two can, at pleasure, be taken as positive, whereas it would be absurd to pretend that either of the two can, at pleasure, be pronounced to be the greater. Thus, when a stone is thrown up vertically, and abandoned to itself, if its ascent is taken as positive, its descent will be considered as negative. Now, according to Boscovich’s reasoning, we should infer that the ascent is greater than the descent, though they are evidently equal. And in the same manner, if the ascent is taken as negative (which nothing forbids), the descent must be taken as positive; whence, according to Boscovich, we ought to infer also that the descent is greater than the ascent. Any argument which leads to such glaring contradictions must be radically false. And therefore it is false that attraction and repulsion differ from one another as the greater from the less.
It might be urged, as a fourth objection, that if an attractive and a repulsive power differ in kind, then a repulsive element and an attractive element will be two kinds of material substance; which is inadmissible. For we cannot admit two kinds of primitive material beings essentially different, as the essence of matter must be the same in all the elements.
To this we answer that although there are two kinds of elements, there are not two kinds of matter. In other terms, an attractive element differs from a repulsive one as to the principle of action, but not as to the matter itself. In fact, the essence of a material being as such requires nothing more than a form giving existence to matter; hence, wherever there is a form giving existence to matter, there also is the essence of matter. Now, matter is as much and as completely actuated by a form or act which is a principle of attraction as by a form or act which is a principle of repulsion. For the actuation of the matter by its form is not efficient, but formal; and its result is not to approach by attraction or to recede by repulsion, but to be simply and absolutely; so that neither attractivity nor repulsivity has any bearing on the essential constitution of a material element as such—that is, inasmuch as it is material. Accordingly, two elements of opposite natures differ in kind as agents, but not as material beings; and thus the essence of matter as such remains one and the same in all the elements. Matter, as we have already shown, is the centre of a sphere of activity; and it is evident that, by this activity of an attractive or of a repulsive nature, the centre remains a centre, and the sphere a sphere, without the least alteration. Gold and ivory differ in kind; but a sphere of ivory and a sphere of gold do not differ in kind as spheres, and their centres do not differ in kind as centres. In a like manner the sphere of activity of an attractive element does not differ from the sphere of activity of a repulsive element, nor the centre of the one from the centre of the other. And therefore two elements, however different in their nature as agents, do not cease to be of the same kind as material. Their form is different, but informs equally, and their matter is exactly the same.
We have stated that Boscovich was led to admit two opposite powers in the same element, because he thought this to be the only means of accounting for the impenetrability of bodies. We observe that, although the impenetrability of bodies peremptorily proves the existence of repulsive powers, it by no means proves that the repulsive power coexists with the attractive in the same primitive element. Hence Boscovich’s inference is not legitimate. Molecules, as we have already remarked, may possess both powers, as their composition involves a great number of elements, which can be of different natures. And this suffices to explain the impenetrability of bodies, and all other properties dependent on molecular actions, without need of arbitrary hypotheses.
A last objection against the doctrine we have established might be drawn from the difficulty of reconciling the existence of repulsive elements with universal attraction; for if we admit that repulsion can be exercised at astronomical distances, it will be difficult to see how the celestial bodies can attract one another in the direct ratio of their masses, as the law of attraction requires.
The answer is obvious. If all matter were repulsive, universal repulsion would be the consequence. But if bodies are made up partly of attractive and partly of repulsive elements, then will either universal repulsion or universal attraction prevail, according as the number and power of the repulsive elements is greater or smaller than that of the attractive ones. Hence, from the fact that in the solar system and elsewhere attraction prevails, it follows, indeed, that the attractive powers are the stronger, but it does not follow that they are the whole stuff of which bodies are compounded.
As to the law of attraction in the direct ratio of the masses, a distinction is to be made. The law is certainly true if by masses we mean the masses acted on; not so, however, if for the masses acted on we substitute the masses of the attracting bodies. The fact of universal attraction shows that two planets, all other things being equal, must be attracted by the sun in the direct ratio of their masses. This is an established truth. But to say that, all other things being equal, the sun and the earth would attract the moon in the direct ratio of their absolute masses, is to assume what no fact whatever gives us the right to assert. Physicists very commonly admit this second assumption, and consider it a part of the law of attraction; but they would be not a little embarrassed were they required to undertake its demonstration. They take for granted that all the particles of matter are equally and uniformly attractive. Now, this assumption has never been established by facts; it simply arises from an unlawful generalization—that is, from the extension of the law of kinetic forces to dynamical actions. The momenta of two bodies animated by equal velocities are proportional to the masses of the same bodies; but nothing justifies the inference that therefore the attractive powers must be proportional to the masses. Indeed, it is scarcely possible to believe that equal masses of lead, iron, and zinc possess equal powers. Their properties are, in fact, so different that we cannot assume their constitution to be the result of an assemblage of equal powers. Hence we maintain that, unless two bodies have the same molecular constitution, their attractions cannot be proportional to their masses.(162)
Universal attraction being also proportional to the inverse squares of the distances, as we are going to show, we may add that the existence of repulsive elements in the sun and in the planets by no means interferes with this law. In fact, the total action of one celestial body on another, on account of the great distance at which the law of universal attraction is applied, equals the algebraic sum of all the actions by which one body makes an impression upon the other. Hence, if all the elements of which the body consists, whether they be attractive or repulsive, act proportionally to the inverse square of the distance, it is evident that the resultant of all such actions will also be proportional to the inverse square of the distance, whenever the form of the body is spherical, or nearly so, as is the case with the celestial bodies. And thus it is plain that no valid objection can be drawn from universal attraction against the existence of repulsive elements.
Law of elementary actions.
We have now to establish the general law of elementary attraction and repulsion. We hold that the actions of every primitive element are always inversely proportional to the squares of the distances, no matter whether such distances be great or small, astronomical or molecular.
This proposition can be briefly proved in the following manner: Astronomy teaches us that the Newtonian law, according to which the actions are inversely proportional to the squares of the distances, is true for all the celestial bodies. Now, the total action of one celestial body upon another is a resultant of elementary actions, and arises from the algebraic sum of them all. Hence it follows that every element of matter, when acting from certain distances, obeys the Newtonian law; for it is evident, from the theory of the composition of forces, that the sum of the elementary actions cannot follow the Newtonian law unless these actions themselves follow it. But if the law is true in the case of astronomical distances, it must be true also in the case of microscopical and molecular distances. For as a primitive element cannot have two laws of action, so neither can it follow at molecular distances any other law than that which it follows at all other distances.
That a primitive element cannot have two different laws of action will be manifest by considering that the law which an element obeys in its actions results from the intrinsic determination of its nature—that is, from its formal constitution—inasmuch as the principle of action is, in every primitive substance, the formal principle of its very being: Principium essendi est principium operandi. Now, a primitive element has but one formal principle of being; for it is entitatively one, and therefore it has but one formal determination to act, which, as resulting from its essential constitution, is unchangeable and inviolable. But it is evident that from one formal determination to act only one law of action can possibly result. Two laws would be two formal results, and would require two formal principles giving two different determinations. Accordingly, since each primitive element has but one formal principle, it cannot have two laws of action. And therefore the Newtonian law, which primitive elements follow at astronomical distances, must prevail also at all other distances.
Let the reader observe that this conclusion regards the action of primitive elements, not the action of molecules. That molecular actions at molecular distances are not inversely proportional to the square of the distance is a known fact. Molecular cohesion, for instance, is immensely greater than it could possibly be by the Newtonian law; so also molecular repulsion. This is what prevented physicists from recognizing the applicability of the Newtonian law at molecular distances. As long as the primitive elements were confounded, under the name of atoms, with the molecules of the so‐called primitive bodies, hydrogen, oxygen, carbon, etc., it was impossible to recognize in the molecular actions any trace of the Newtonian law; hence came the division of attraction into universal and molecular, the first following a known law, the second following some other law or laws which physicists could never discover. Their embarrassment was a necessary consequence of an incomplete analysis of the material compound. The molecule of a given substance, though often called an atom, is a system of primitive elements; and elements acting according to the Newtonian law can give rise to molecular systems which, at very small distances, will act according to any other law that may be indicated by molecular phenomena. This other law depends entirely on the number, kind, strength, and geometrical arrangement of the primitive elements which enter into the constitution of the molecule; and since molecules of different primitive substances are very differently constituted, every kind of molecule must have its own peculiar law of acting at molecular distances—a fact on which the scientific explanation of the different physical and chemical properties of different substances entirely depends. Hence it is clear that all the attempts at finding a general law of molecular attraction were, from the very nature of the case, destined to fail. The only general law of action which all matter obeys is the Newtonian law; and what was once considered to form an exception to it is now acknowledged to be the result of its application to a complex system of attractive and repulsive elements.
From the fact that the actions of all elements are proportional to the inverse squares of the distances, it follows that the sphere of activity of material elements extends beyond any assignable limit. The intensity of the action cannot, in fact, become = 0 unless the distance becomes infinite. The objections to which this corollary of the Newtonian law may give rise will be answered in our next article, where all the difficulties concerning the actio in distans will be solved.
Mode of action.
A last question remains here to be examined respecting the action of primitive material elements—viz., whether such an action needs a medium through which it may be transmitted and communicated to distant bodies, or whether, on the contrary, it is exerted upon them directly without dependence on any material medium.
In answering this question we must be careful not to confound action with movement. Movement, though not properly transmitted, is propagated, as we shall explain; and this cannot take place where there is no movable matter. Those who are wont to identify movement with force, and force with action, as is unfortunately the fashion even in scientific treatises, will no doubt imagine that actions must be transmitted or propagated through a material medium, just as sound through air, or as light through luminiferous ether. But action is not movement; and therefore the question how elementary actions—that is, how attractions or repulsions—reach distant bodies has to be resolved on its own merit, as one altogether distinct from the question about the propagation of movement. This premised, we are going to show that the elementary actions are independent of all material medium of communication.
In the first place, there is no reason why we should assume that the elementary action (attraction or repulsion) depends on a medium of communication, except inasmuch as we may apprehend that the action itself, or the active power whence it proceeds, is in need of being transmitted to some matter located at a certain distance. But neither the elementary power nor the elementary action can be transmitted to the distant matter. And therefore neither the power nor the action can be dependent on a medium of communication.
In this syllogism the major is evident; and the minor can be proved in two manners: First, because the power and the action are, of their own nature, intransmissible. Secondly, because, prescinding from their intransmissibility, no medium can be assigned which would be capable of transmitting them. And as to the first, we know that nothing can be transmitted to a distant place except by local movement; but neither the active power nor the elementary action is capable of receiving local movement; for there is no other subject capable of local movement than matter alone, on account of its passive potentiality. Hence neither power nor action can be transmitted. And in the second place, even were they transmissible, what medium could be found for their transmission? If any such medium could be found, it would consist of some matter like ether or air, this being the view of those who admit the necessity of such a medium. On the other hand, a material substance is not a suitable medium for transmitting action or power. For whenever an active power is exerted upon matter, the result of the exertion is nothing but a determination to a change of place; as it is well known that matter cannot receive any other determination. And therefore it is not the power that is received in the matter acted on, but only the act produced by its exertion, which act is otherwise called a momentum either statical or dynamical. Strictly speaking, not even the action itself is received in the matter, although we are wont to tolerate such an expression; for the action properly so called is the production of an act, and the matter receives, indeed, the act produced, but not its production. And thus the action, properly speaking, is terminated to the matter, and not received in it. Hence we see that neither the power of the agent nor its exertion is received in the matter acted on; it is merely the produced accidental act, or, in other terms, the momentum, that is received. But evidently matter cannot transmit what it does not receive. And therefore matter cannot be a medium for transmitting either power or action. Whether it can transmit movement we shall examine at the end of the present question.
This argument would suffice to show that elementary actions are quite independent of a material medium. Yet as the prejudice against which we are fighting is ancient, popular, and deeply rooted, we think it will not be superfluous to confirm our proof by a few other considerations.
Those who maintain the transmission of forces admit a material medium, in which, by successive contact of particles with particles, the transmission of the force to a distant body is supposed to be carried on. By the word “force” they understand action as well as movement. Now, let us ask them whether the particles of their material medium come into mathematical contact or not. If they do not come into mathematical contact, then the action is not transmitted by the medium from one particle to another, for there will be a vacuum between them; and vacuum is not a material medium. If, on the contrary, the particles come into mathematical contact with their own matter, then, as we have already shown in our past article, they cannot by such a contact communicate any movement to each other; and since the transmission in question should be carried on by successive communications of movement, it is plain that no such transmission will be possible. And accordingly the theory of the transmission of actions through a medium must be rejected.
Moreover, elementary actions are either attractive or repulsive, and neither of them can be conceived without intensity and direction. Now, no direction is possible unless there be two points distinctly ubicated in space. And therefore the action, no matter whether attractive or repulsive, cannot reach any material point which is not distant from the matter of the agent. But if so, the action is independent of a medium of communication; for the material medium, if it were needed, should lie between the agent and the patient in such a manner as to link them together, and fill by its material continuity the gap by which they are separated; and if this were the case, the medium could not be set in motion, as its contact with the agent would exclude distance, and consequently the possibility of any direction from the agent to the medium itself.
Some will say that this argument proves nothing, as the direction of the action can be sufficiently accounted for by the direction of the impulse. But this conclusion is evidently wrong. For what impulse can they imagine to proceed from the sun to the moon? Uncultivated minds are easily deluded by unlawful generalizations. They apply to all actions what they imagine to agree with some special phenomenon; and because they see that in the case of impact there is an impulse in a certain direction, they hastily conclude that the direction of every action depends on the direction of some impulse. We may remark that, even in the case of impact, it is not safe to conclude that the direction of the movement will follow the direction of the impulse, unless the impulse be central, and the body impinged upon homogeneous. But leaving aside the theory of impact, which has nothing to do with the present question, what impulse can explain the continuous resistance of a body to statical forces? What impulse can account for the expansive tendency of gases, and for their continuous pressure against the recipients in which they are contained? What impulse, above all, can account for universal attraction?
We have mentioned this objection, not because it needed any scientific or philosophical discussion, but simply because it is one of those notions to which the prejudices of our infancy give easy admittance into our minds when we allow ourselves to be guided, as is often the case, by our senses and imagination, in matters pertaining in great part to the intellectual order. Our mistakes in the appreciation of the character and conditions of natural facts most ordinarily originate in the unwarranted assumption that, since the facts are sensible, our knowledge of them must wholly depend on our senses; whilst the truth is that our senses perceive the movements, but not the actions which cause them, and therefore do not see the entirety of the natural facts, but that portion only which is most superficial. “A fundamental fact, like an elementary principle, never fails us,” says M. Faraday, speaking of natural philosophy; “its evidence is always true; but, on the other hand, we frequently have to ask, What is the fact? often fail in distinguishing it—often fail in the very statement of it—and mostly overpass or come short of its true recognition. If we are subject to mistake in the interpretation of our mere sense impressions, we are much more liable to error when we proceed to deduce from these impressions (as supplied to us by our ordinary experience) the relation of cause and effect; and the accuracy of our judgment, consequently, is more endangered.”(163)
And now, let no one imagine that we have any intention of denying the existence of a material medium between the celestial bodies. We only deny that there is a medium for transmitting actions. Again, we do not deny that when the earth, for instance, acts upon the moon, the elements of matter lying between the earth and the moon exert their activity on one another. But we maintain that their actions are their own, and proceed from their own intrinsic and permanent power, and not from any extrinsic agent, and that such actions are not travelling from element to element till they reach the moon. Neither do we deny that the elements located between the earth and the moon are also acted on, for it is clear that gravity must tend to alter their position in space; but we hold that the whole possible effect of gravity on all such elements is movement, and that movement is a mere change of place, and not a transmission of the action by which it is produced. How the movements themselves are communicated from element to element we shall explain presently.
Meanwhile, from the fact that the elementary actions are independent of all material medium of communication, we infer that bodies, in attracting and in repelling, act with equal promptitude, and without loss of time, whether the distance of the body acted on be great or small. Time, in fact, follows movement; for without movement there is no succession. Now, the action of a body does not reach the distant body through movement—that is, through successive transmission; on the contrary, each element is, of its own nature, determined to act directly and immediately on every other element existing in the indefinite sphere of its activity. Hence a body will indeed act with a greater intensity at a less distance, but will not act sooner than at a greater distance. There have been scientists who surmised that the solar attraction may perhaps need time for reaching the earth and the planets, and therefore that the attraction may reach Mercury in a shorter time than Jupiter or Neptune. From what precedes it is manifest that the surmise is wholly without foundation. Light needs time for its propagation, because it consists in a kind of movement; but attraction, as we have just remarked, is not movement, and therefore is not dependent on time.
Propagation of movements.
We have shown that there is no material medium for the transmission of forces, if the word “forces” is taken to mean “actions”; but if the word is intended to express “movements,” then the material medium is quite indispensable. We read very frequently in scientific books that actions are transmitted; but as this is not true of the actions themselves, we must suppose that the phrase is intended to express only the fact of a progressive development of the effects resulting from those actions. In the same way, when we read that actions are conveyed through a material medium, we interpret this expression as meaning that a material medium is strictly required for the progressive development of the series of effects due to such actions. We will explain the fact by an example.
If, a mass of air being at rest, a string is stretched in order to elicit sound, the vibrations of the string will be communicated to the neighboring molecules of air by the action (not by the movement) of the string itself; these first molecules, being thrust out of their position of equilibrium, will, by their action (that is, by the exertion of a power residing in each of their component elements, not of a power coming from the string, nor by their movement, nor by transmitted action), put in movement a following set of molecules, and so on indefinitely; so that, in the whole series of molecular vibrations, each preceding molecule causes the motion of the following one, and causes it by the exertion of its own powers, not of any power transmitted. It is evident that the string cannot give activity to the molecules of air. These molecules, whether the string vibrates or not, have already their own activity and their own mutual action; only their actions balance each other as long as the mass of air is at rest. But when the string begins to vibrate, the equilibrium being broken near it, those molecules of air which first cease to be in equilibrium begin to act on the following molecules with a different intensity, according to the change of the molecular distance. Thus the movement by which the distance is altered is not the cause, but the condition, of the phenomenon.
What we say of air and sound applies to any other medium, as ether with its vibrations, whether luminous or calorific. The molecules of ether have their own powers, and exert them continually, whether there exists a flame determining a series of vibrations or not; but with the flame the first molecules of ether which are displaced from their position of equilibrium will acquire a new local relation with regard to the following, and their actions will be of a new intensity, sufficient to cause the displacement of the next set of molecules, and so on. The flame, then, causes the displacement of the first set of molecules; the first set displaced causes the displacement of the second; the second displaced causes the displacement of the third, etc.; each set producing its own effect by its own inherent powers, not by the exertion of any power communicated to them by the flame, and their displacement being not a cause, but only a condition, on which the intensity of the exertion depends.
Hence it appears that in phenomena of this description it is not the action, and much less the power, that is transmitted, but only the movement, or the formal perturbation of the equilibrium; and even the movement is not properly transmitted, but only propagated; because the movement of each following molecule is not the identical movement of each preceding one, but is a movement really produced in the very impact of the one on the other, as our reader must have easily gathered from our preceding discussion. And therefore one movement succeeds another indefinitely, the one being a condition for the existence of the other; which constitutes propagation, not properly transmission.
Antar And Zara; Or, “The Only True Lovers.” V.
Part V.
They Sang.
Sudden, in golden arms he came: I stood begirt with maiden bands: Sudden he came, all bright like flame; Upon my head he laid his hands.
“This day past victories I disown: This day I seek the battle‐field A stranger chief, a knight unknown, Without a blazon on my shield.”
“Not man, but He the worlds who made, My hope shall frustrate or approve”— I only bent my knee, and said, “Victor or vanquished, thee I love.”
They set me on a milk‐white horse; Our household tribe around me trod; Like rivers down a rocky course, On rushed the warriors vowed to God.
I rode, the victor’s destined prize, Last stake when hope was all but gone: The flashes from a virgin’s eyes Like music swept the warriors on!
’Twas theirs their maid elect to guard, The direful battle’s gentle guest: ’Twas mine to watch, inspire, reward; To honor all—to crown the best.
But who that stranger chief from far That like some brave ship tempest‐tossed Bore on o’er all the waves of war; Redeemed a battle all but lost?
I knew. The victor’s crown I dropp’d Upon thy brows, my future lord: That night thou satt’st—O boon unhoped— The first time by my father’s board!
The victory ours, the feasting o’er, The nameless victor gazed around; “Emir! I claim the prize of war, Thy daughter’s hand.” My father frowned.
“Uplift her in thine arms,” he said; “Then scale yon hillside smooth and dry: This done, my daughter thou shalt wed: To halt—forget not—is to die.”
I stood: my beating heart cried out, “Thou canst not fail!” That cry he heard: He raised me ’mid the warriors’ shout; Forward he rushed without a word.
His breath came quick: his brows grew dark: “My brother, lover, friend,” I cried: He reeled: his eyes were stiff and stark: I wept, “This day thou winn’st thy bride!”
He fell—but on the summit won, Amid the vast and wide acclaim: He lay, a dead man, in the sun: I kissed his lips, and felt no shame.
Round him the warriors stood amazed; His love—’twas that brought back his life: Down on him long my father gazed, Then spake, “My son, behold thy wife!”
On carpets heaped my mother sate: I sate, I nestled on her knee; We heard a murmur round the gate: My mantle, purple as the sea,
I drew about my little feet, And nearer sought my mother’s breast: He came; she spake, not slow to greet With courteous words the victor‐guest.
Slowly my veil my mother’s hands Lifted, to boast the battle’s prize;— “Prince! thou would’st give thy life and lands, If I but raised it to her eyes!”
I knew thee well when first we met; I knew thee well when seldom seen; When we had parted, plainlier yet I read thy nature—nay, thy mien.
Thine earliest glance my tremors stayed; Then softly, and by slow degrees, With thee my confidence I made, And, pleased, discovered I could please.
But now that we are drawn so near, I lose thee in thine own fair light; Vanish the outlines once so clear:— I know thee more by faith than sight.
Upon my shoulder, lightly as a bird, Her white hand lit: then back she fled, afraid; Beside my seat once more she stood, nor stirred, But loosed her hair, and round me dropped its shade.
Down to my feet it fell—a sudden night: She spake, “Thy darkness and eclipse am I; But thou my sunrise art, and all my light; Still to weak things love grants the victory.”
More dulcet than the viol rang her laugh; Low laughed her mother; laughed her nurse full loud: “Not thee I fear,” she cried, indignant half, And kissed, methought, the head o’er which she bowed.
My Lyre reproved my childish mirth: My Lute, remembering sad, old years, Complained, “Thy feet are yet on earth; Thou caroll’st in the vale of tears.”
I hung my head: ashamed I moved; I answered soft with whispering voice, “O Love! ’tis thou that stand’st reproved; The fault is thine, if I rejoice;
“Not less this covenant have I made: I will not fold my hands in sleep Till aid to those who cry for aid I stretch—have wept with them that weep.”
He sang, “I dreamed. Of thee, all night, one thought Shone like a white flower on a darkling mere Or like one star that flashes, rapture‐fraught, Through one blue gulf of heaven serene, and clear.”
She sang, “I dreamed not: happiest sleep is deep: I woke as wakes the young bird in the woods;— Thy spirit must have hung above my sleep, A bower balm‐breathing from a thousand buds.”
We strove in song; we sang, my love and I, Where laughed the streams, and where the rock’s broad breast Echoed the untaught, ecstatic harmony: We warred in happy songs; but hers was best.
Thou art not mine as I am thine: As great, or greater, is thy love; But loftier thoughts above thee shine, And lordlier aims before thee move.
The hand now clasping mine—that hand Let drop this hand to grasp the sword; It hurled in ruin from our land The impostor Prophet’s sons abhorred.
Manhood fell on thee with my tears At parting. With a woman’s joy I loved the warrior ’mid his peers— ’Twas girlish fancy loved the boy!
Mother of him I loved and love, My mother too, ere long, to be! With loving words his choice approve, And take thy daughter to thy knee:
So shall mine eyes, up‐gazing still, Thine eyes in filial reverence watch; My hand be subject to thy will; My heart from thine its greatness catch.
The young can learn, and I am young And labor to be good and true— Tell her, O thou that know’st! I long To give her age its honors due.
He sang, “Upon the myrtle’s silver stem Thy name I carved. Henceforth that tree is mine!” Low‐laughing ’neath her vine‐wrought anadem She sang, “Thy name I graved upon the pine!
“The slenderer hand the stronger bark subdued— Say, is it lordlier, bound and tamed to lead The forest‐monarch from his sunburnt wood, Or snare some little bird that took no heed?”
We sang in valleys where the spring flowers sprang To passionate life: the eagle o’er us sailed: Down plunged the torrents, and the gray cliffs rang: We clashed our songs in war; but hers prevailed.
Methought to thine my angel spake:— Near us he seemed, and yet above— “Two children these! their sport they take; They teach each other how to love.”
Thine angel answered thus to mine: “When Virtue, perfected by pain, Has changed earth‐love to love divine, Then, stooping, we will lift these twain
“From this dull cave of mortal life Low‐roofed, and dimly lit with spars, To realms with love’s whole glories rife, And over‐vaulted by the stars,
“Where souls that love their God are one; Where He who made them is their joy: Play on—too young for love—play on! Your sports are sport of girl and boy!”
XIII.
Two hands—they meet; they part—’tis better so; Parted, they meet to shape one coronal: Two feet—they meet; they part, now swift, now slow They pace to music through one palace hall.
Two eyes—they move in concord: wanderers long, At last they rest on one unmoving star: Two mouths, in kisses met, dispart in song— Sweet are our meetings; sweet our partings are.
XIV.
I come, I go; yet neither shall repine: Sad is the parting; the return is sweet: Once more the battle with a voice divine Decrees our severance. Soon once more we meet.
We part not, save in seeming. We are one, In spirit one; in spirit we rejoice; Two voices are we, blent in unison, Two echoes of one mountain‐thrilling voice.
Nearer we are than words, than thought, can reach; Nearer we shall be; nearest, met on high; Nearest as not belonging each to each, But both to Him—that Love Who cannot die.
That evening we went to the opera, the next night to the theatre; then came invitations without number to a series of dinners, matinées, and soirées that succeeded each other without intermission. I refrain from enumerating them, for I am writing the history of my soul rather than my exterior life. I will merely say, therefore, that after continuing this course several weeks, I found myself in a most singular and unhappy frame of mind. My thoughts, imagination, and whole mind became too much absorbed in the amusements and pleasures the young are often carried away with through curiosity and a superabundance of life and activity, which might be satisfied more completely, however, and in a less dangerous way, than by a career of pleasure, the almost inevitable effect of which is to produce a kind of intoxication. This intoxication overpowered me to a certain degree, but it left me, however, the faculty of realizing the change that had come over me, and I felt a painful desire to be what I once was. I had no peace of mind. I could not reflect or pray, even in my short intervals of leisure, and, in order to avoid the irksomeness of solitude, I gladly returned to the round of pleasure into which my husband liked to draw me. I had, it is true, the double safeguard of his love for me and my indifference to any other admiration but his. A vague uneasiness sometimes crossed my mind like an ominous cloud, but I did not dream there could possibly be any danger for either of us in the enervating atmosphere of flattery and frivolity which we breathed more and more constantly.
Lorenzo continued to hover around me in public, or, if he remained at a distance, to watch me with an attention that was disagreeable because it seemed inexplicable. Nothing could have pleased me more than to have his eyes always meeting mine, and to find him everywhere near enough to speak to; but this was quite a different thing, for, even when I was not looking towards him, I could feel his persistent eyes fastened on me, and as soon as I raised my head he would turn away as if to avoid encountering my glance. Was it with love or pride that his eyes thus followed me? Was it not rather as if he expected to take me by surprise, or was mistrustful of me? When this doubt occurred to my mind, I felt the blood rush to my face, and love and pride revolt in my heart.
One day we were invited to a large dinner‐party in one of those magnificent houses in Paris which have the now rare advantage of a fine garden. It was past the season for full dress, and I merely wore a white muslin trimmed with lace, and a wreath of flowers whose colors harmonized with that perfect taste shown in everything at Paris. When I made my appearance, the whole company united in exclaiming that my fresh toilet was wonderfully becoming. Perhaps they were right. I was of an age that flowers suited better than jewels, and my complexion could bear the light of day without any danger. The days were now at their longest, so, in spite of the interminable length of a grand dinner, the delicious twilight hour was not quite gone when we rose from the table, and all issued forth through the windows into the garden. If ever the sight of the green grass, the leaves on the trees, the perfume and brilliancy of the flowers, and the varied hues of the sky as day declines, are more attractive and grateful at one time than another, it is certainly when contrasted with the stifling atmosphere, the air impregnated with the odor of dishes, and the brilliant artificial light, at a grand dinner in mid‐summer. Therefore it was with inexpressible relief and an almost child‐like joy I flew down the steps into the garden as soon as the master of the house left my movements free, and strolled along the broad alley that divided the lawn, inhaling with delight the freshness of the balmy air.... My life of pleasure had never quenched the ardent love of solitude that sometimes came over me, and I now longed to be alone. I desired this the more because I felt uneasy about a new change in Lorenzo’s manner, and wished to reflect undisturbed on the inference I should draw from it.
For the first time since our arrival at Paris he had not, to my knowledge, watched one of my movements, though I had received more flattery that day, perhaps, than ever before.... During the dinner he appeared devoted to his neighbors—on one side, a lady who was still beautiful, though no longer in the bloom of youth; and on the other, a young gentleman with a thoughtful, striking face, who grew animated whenever Lorenzo addressed him, and seemed to reply with much interest. I was told that the former was Mme. de B——, the other the young Count Gilbert de Kergy, “a great traveller also,” added the master of the house, beside whom I was seated. “And it was solely the hope of meeting the Duca di Valenzano that induced him to accept my invitation to dine with us to‐day. He does not care for the grand monde; and when he returns from one of his extensive journeys, he shuts himself up at home, or plunges into the charitable world, which is another grand monde little suspected by strangers who only come to Paris for a time.”
All this might perhaps have interested me at some other time, but my mind was now occupied in trying to ascertain the reality of the change I had remarked. It was now my turn to give sly glances towards the other side of the table, but I did not once detect Lorenzo looking towards me. And yet it was not owing to the interest he took in the conversation. How many times I had seen him apparently absorbed in conversation, while a rapid glance of the eye convinced me he had been constantly attentive to every movement I made. There was nothing of this kind to‐day. I knew him too well not to perceive the difference, but I did not know what to think of it, or if I had any reason to rejoice at it.
These thoughts beset me during the trifling conversation that varies the ennui of a large dinner, and even prevented me from perceiving that our host was a gentleman of superior intelligence, and profiting by it. Before leaving the table, I stealthily turned my eyes once more in the direction they had so often taken within an hour. It was evident that Lorenzo did not trouble himself any more about me to‐day than any other husband about his wife in public. But this time I perceived his young neighbor looking at me rather attentively, though with a look of seriousness almost amounting to austerity, very different from the glances so often encountered in the world which always made me lower my eyes. His inspired me with a kind of sympathy, and did not give me the slightest embarrassment.
I had, however, no opportunity for reflection during my walk, for I was almost immediately surrounded by friends, and I soon turned back to hunt for Lorenzo. Daylight was almost gone, which made it difficult to recognize any one; but at last I discovered him on the steps by means of his lofty stature and noble features, which were distinctly defined against the light of the salon within. Near him sat his next neighbor at dinner, holding a fan in her hand, and talking in an animated manner. Lorenzo appeared to be listening without making any attempt to reply. Once or twice he turned his head towards the garden. He was looking for me, perhaps....
It had now grown entirely too dark to distinguish any one around me. I was standing motionless near a bench on which sat two or three gentlemen talking together.
“Mme. de B—— looks almost as handsome as ever this evening,” said one of them. “One would really think she was trying to regain her ascendency!...”
“It would be very difficult, however, to supplant that lovely, golden‐ haired Sicilian.”
“Impossible, certainly, in the eyes of any other man; but in those of her husband, who knows?”
This was one of those speeches that are always flying at random, and striking the ear on every side in the world—speeches which one hears without listening to, but which weaken the moral sense, as physical diseases are produced by breathing dangerous miasmata too frequently. Since I had lived in this atmosphere many things of a similar nature had been said in my presence. Alas! it was sufficient to hear Lorenzo and Lando’s conversation to learn how far light words of this kind can go. I therefore tried to attach no importance to the gossip I had thus accidentally overheard. Even if Lorenzo did formerly pay homage to this now somewhat faded beauty, why should I care? That did not trouble me for the moment. My only anxiety was to ascertain if his happening to meet her was the cause of the change I had observed, or if I must seek some other. In a word, ought I to be anxious or to rejoice?
Having escaped, in the almost utter darkness, from those who tried to detain me, I was slowly advancing towards the steps when I suddenly met Lorenzo.... He was in search of me, for he had on his arm my thin mantle of white cashmere, which he wrapped around my shoulders. I joyfully seized hold of his arm, and said in a low tone: “Pray do not go in yet, Lorenzo. Let us walk awhile in this beautiful covered alley.”
He began to laugh. “That would be very sentimental,” said he, “for people who are no longer in their honey‐moon; but no matter, I consent. Honi soit qui mal y pense. Besides, I see yonder an illuminated tent, where, I am told, they are preparing a musical surprise for us. Let us go in that direction.”
We walked a short distance without speaking. There was nothing absolutely calculated to wound me in what he said, but his light, indifferent tone was not what I longed to hear. Amid all the excitement of fashionable society, I felt that his love constituted the only happiness of my life; and if I had supposed that to be the only cause of his vigilance and anxiety concerning me, I should never have sought to escape from it. But I had been doubtful about this, and felt so still. And I was too open, too confiding, and perhaps too petulant, to remain in doubt any longer.
“Let us stop here, Lorenzo,” I said when we arrived at the end of the covered walk. “I see people coming this way. We can follow them into the tent, and it will be supposed we came with the crowd.”
In fact, a brilliant soirée succeeded the dinner. The salons and garden were filled with company. The light from the tent extended to the place where we were standing, though we were out of sight. I sat down on a bench against a tree, and Lorenzo took a seat beside me.
“I have a question to ask you,” said I suddenly. “Promise to give me a sincere reply.”
He seemed surprised. He raised his eyebrows slightly, and his smiling face became clouded.
“I do not much like to be questioned, Ginevra, I forewarn you.”
“But you always seem to like to have me answer your questions.”
“Yes, but without depending on it; for I know how to question and obtain an answer without giving you the trouble to reply.”
“And is that why you look at me instead of speaking, and your eyes are always following me so attentively?”
He smiled, and made no reply for a while.
“Perhaps that has been the cause of my doing so till to‐day.”
“Till to‐day?”
“Yes; since you ask me, I confess it without any hesitation. Love does not always, among its privileges, possess the faculty of seeing clearly. Therefore I have been mistrustful of mine, and have not allowed it to influence me in the least in studying you.”
I made a slight gesture of surprise.
“Listen, Ginevra. One never knows what a young soldier is till his first battle. Neither can one tell what a young woman of your age is till she appears on the terrible battle‐field of the fashionable world. But if I have any faculty, it is, I believe, that of not being deceived in a study of this kind. Be assured, Ginevra, that from this time I shall watch you no more.”
“Then, Lorenzo,” said I, somewhat hurt, “you really watched me through suspicion, and all this time was necessary to convince you I am to be trusted?”
“I wished to see you under fire,” said he, resuming his jesting tone. “Do not complain of this, ma belle Ginevra. You have come out of the trial victorious—victorious to such a degree that, though I thought you more charming to‐day than ever, I have not once thought of watching you. And yet,” continued he in a tone he tried to render playful, but which was bitter in spite of himself, “those flowers that are so becoming to you are not all calculated to reassure me.” And plucking a red carnation from my wreath, he held it up before me with a smile that seemed cruel, and was about to put it in his button‐hole when, pale as death, I snatched it from his hand, and threw it as far as I could.
“Lorenzo!” I said in a trembling voice, “you are ungenerous!... and you are very unjust!...”
I should have done better to say, as well as think, that he did not know what he was doing. No; he little knew what had taken place in my soul since the day he thus recalled, which was so sanguinary, so fatal in its results. No; he could not conceive the intolerable pain he gave me by thus suddenly reviving my regret, my sorrow, and my shame!...
He could read my heart to a certain extent, but how far he was—alas! how incapable he was—of penetrating to the bottom of my soul, and fully comprehending, or even suspecting, the radical change which that one day had wrought in my nature.
He saw with surprise and alarm my agitation and the sudden paleness of my face, and endeavored to calm me; but I noticed he was at once anxious and annoyed about the emotion he had excited.
I made a violent effort to regain my self‐control, and soon succeeded in allaying the throbbing of my heart. But I felt as if an icy wind had crossed my path, chilling too soon the opening flowers of my dawning happiness, and causing them to droop their heads.
From that day Lorenzo, as he promised, ceased to manifest any interest in what I did in society. But this apparent confidence afforded me no pleasure. I remained painfully wounded at what had passed between us. I considered his suspicions even more humiliating than those of my father, and began to feel that the fault I had so greatly deplored had not merited so long and cruel a chastisement.
Moreover, I was only relieved from the anxiety caused by his vigilance to experience another which was soon to increase and reveal to me at last my true destiny. It did not, in fact, require a long time to discover that Lorenzo’s new attitude was sometimes less like confidence than indifference. It frequently happened that I searched a long time for him in the different salons where we were accustomed to spend all our evenings, without being able to find him. One day I perceived him talking in a very animated manner with Mme. de B——, and, when I approached, I fancied there was a slight expression of displeasure in his face, which, though promptly concealed, was sufficient to cause me a painful sensation of embarrassment.
When we were alone, however, I found him unchanged. His manner towards me had lost nothing of its charm; he seemed as affectionate as ever, and yet an invisible barrier had risen between us, which was constantly increasing, and I began to experience a feeling of solitude that was especially painful in society, but from which I was nowhere completely exempt.
But the success of my first appearance in the world had now given way to that of fashion. The arrival of some foreign prince, whose name I no longer remember, prolonged the gay season at Paris this year, and one reunion succeeded another as if it were carnival time. There was not one to which I was not invited, and, though an undeniable need of rest began to overpower the feverish activity that for some time had come over me, I was unable to stop, for I began to perceive that a quiet, tranquil life was insupportable to Lorenzo unless in his studio. Out of that, he wished to be incessantly in motion, and, as he could not now seriously resume his artist life, he gave himself up entirely to that of the world, and was not yet indifferent to the pleasure of having me accompany him.
It was therefore impossible for me to extricate myself from the giddy round of which I had grown so weary, and I sometimes envied those who were satisfied with the mere pleasure of attracting attention. I felt astonished then, and I still am, at the wonderful part played by vanity in these gayeties, which are so different to those who participate in them from what they seem to the crowd who are excluded. The music, the dancing, the splendid apartments, the gayety of youth requisite to enjoy all this, and, to crown the whole, the pleasure of meeting those who are dear, are the chief attractions and keenest enjoyments which cause those who have the power of exhausting them to be envied by all who are deprived of them. If this were really all, such a life would be ennobled to a certain degree in my eyes, for its dangers and its pleasures would at least be commensurate with the love and the disapprobation of which they are the object. But the seductions of the world consist chiefly in the satisfaction of eclipsing others, and the intoxication it causes is almost always produced, not by the pleasure it gives, but by the vanity of those who mingle in it. This seems strange when we reflect upon it, and we can see, without rising very high, that not only happiness, but pleasure, and even amusement, can find a better source; and consequently those who really possess these envied blessings are the people who are supposed to be the most debarred from them.
As for me, I was no longer light‐hearted, but I tried to appear so in society; for the sad expression I could not always disguise had excited some observations that wounded my pride.
“What! the fair Ginevra really melancholy?” said Lando Landi, sitting down beside me one evening at a concert, and speaking in the familiar tone authorized by his relationship, but which was none the less displeasing. “I have always denied it, because you are so invariably cheerful when I see you out of this everlasting din, as I do every day. I only supposed you a little weary of so gay a life—a thing conceivable, even in your case, for one gets tired of everything, even of turning people’s heads; but this evening you really have the air of a tragic muse.”
“I am a little fatigued, that is all.”
“Listen to me, cousin, and do not treat me so badly. I see you do not like me, which proves I am not self‐conceited; and I am not angry with you, which proves I am not malicious. Moreover, I greatly admire and love you, and yet (give me some credit for this) I do not pay court to you.”
“Come, Lando, no more of such jests, but come to the point.”
“I was about to beg you to show some confidence in me. You are sad, and I will tell you why: you have heard some nonsensical gossip about Lorenzo. Now, cousin, let me tell you....”
“What gossip?” I asked, turning red with an air of displeasure.
“You understand me perfectly well. I am certain I tell you nothing new. It may seem presuming to speak of this, but I must justify Lorenzo. Believe what I say, and do not attach any importance to a passing politeness in memory of former times, which means nothing, and really does not, on my word of honor, merit such a flash from your beautiful eyes.”
He had indeed found the means of making them flame up.
“Really, Lando,” said I haughtily, “it would serve you right if I never spoke to you again.”
But he was evidently so seriously astonished that I saw I was wrong. He had been presuming without knowing it or intending it. I therefore continued in a milder tone:
“I assure you, you are absolutely mistaken. I am neither sad nor anxious, ... only a little ennuyée, that is all. And to‐night I am sleepy, and wish to return home as soon as possible. Give me your arm, and let us go in search of Lorenzo.”
“It is not much after midnight,” he said; “you must really remain a while longer to hear the last two pieces.”
“No, I tell you I have had enough of it. But if you wish to remain here, you need not feel obliged to escort me. The first person I meet will render me that service.”
“Ma cher!” said he, rising and shaking his head, as he concluded to give me his arm.
We began our voyage of discovery through the long row of salons, but could not find Lorenzo anywhere. Lando said nothing, but I noticed he cast a quick, mistrustful glance around every room we entered, and it occurred to me he had not told the truth, but merely wished to reassure me when he knew Lorenzo was having a tête‐à‐tête it was as humiliating for me to be ignorant of as to discover. Lando had touched a sorer spot than I was willing he should see. For in spite of an apparently very frank explanation on this point from Lorenzo himself a few days before, suspicion had entered my heart, and I was in constant need of being reassured. Was not this acknowledging I already had reason to tremble?
At length we arrived at the last salon. Lorenzo was not there. There was only a small room beyond, not as well lighted as the rest.
“That is the library,” explained Lando in his way; “or, at least, a cabinet full of books, where no one ever goes.”
An almost imperceptible movement of his arm made me feel he wished to prevent me from entering. This was enough to induce me to go straight to the door, where I stopped short, at once reassured and amazed. Four men were there by themselves, sitting around a card‐table with a green covering. Two of them were playing, and Lorenzo was one of them; the others followed the game with the most intense interest. I remained leaning against the door, motionless, and my eyes fastened on him. Was that really Lorenzo?... What a change in his countenance!... What a strange expression in his mobile face! He did not perceive me, and I felt that my voice would have sounded in his ear in vain. He neither saw nor heard anything around him. His looks, his attention, his mind, and his whole being seemed absorbed in the cards he held in his hand. He was calm, but his slightly‐compressed eyebrows showed that luck was against him.
In a few minutes he drew a roll of gold pieces from his pocket, and threw them on the table. His opponent rose, but Lorenzo remained in his seat, and began a new game with one of those who had been watching the old one.
“Take a seat here,” said Lando, leading me towards one of the sofas in the room where we were. “I am going to tell Lorenzo you are waiting for him. Do not go in yourself.”
I made a sign of assent, and for the first time gave Lando credit for some tact. His usually smiling face had, moreover, an air of anxious solicitude that not only surprised me, but redoubled the strange, unexpected shock I had just experienced. He went into the next room, and, after waiting a long time, I at last saw him come out; but he was alone.
“It is impossible to speak to him till the end of the game,” he said in a tone of vexation. Then, after a moment’s silence, he added with a forced laugh: “My dear cousin, you would have done much better to follow my advice and wait for Lorenzo in the concert‐room instead of coming here after him. But since you persisted in doing so, allow me to give you one bit of advice, now you have caught him falling into his old bad habit again.”
“Again?” I said with an air of surprise.
“Well, yes.... For a year he did not touch a card, he told me, for he well knew that for him the mere touch was like a spark that kindles a fire. He vowed—not to play moderately, for he is incapable of moderation in anything—but never to touch a card again, and he expressed great satisfaction some days since that he had kept his promise so faithfully. But to‐day he has broken it. Who knows what will happen to‐morrow? Make use, therefore, of the influence you still have over him; use all the persuasive powers you possess to induce him to resolve once more on a wise course. It is a thing, you may be sure, that threatens your happiness, as well as his, a thousand times more than all the fair ones in the past, present, or future who should attempt to rival you!”
In spite of all that was displeasing in Lando’s manner, language, and sentiments, and even in the expressions he made use of in giving me this advice, I felt it was dictated by sincere interest, and it touched me. I felt weighed down by this new trouble. This was a fear I had never experienced before. It was absolutely foreign to everything that had crossed my mind. Was this to live, love, and be happy? Everything around me looked dark, and the night seemed to penetrate to my very soul.
The time I had to wait seemed interminable. The concert was over, the rooms were growing empty, and we were to be the last. I rose with an impatience I could no longer control, and went again to the cabinet. Lorenzo was rising from the table just as I entered. I saw him slip another roll of money into his opponent’s hands. Then he came towards me with his usual expression. It was evident he had no suspicion of my having been so near him for more than an hour.
“Excuse me, Ginevra,” said he. “What! is the concert over? And you had to search for me?... It is unpardonable; but I had no idea they would get to the end of that interminable programme so early.”
“But it is nearly two o’clock,” said I.
He glanced towards the clock, and looked surprised. Lando, meanwhile, had hurried away to get my cloak; but he soon returned with it, saying the carriage was waiting for us. I entered it with Lorenzo, after giving my hand more cordially to his cousin than I had ever done before.
On the way home Lorenzo, after a long silence, thought proper to explain that he had got tired of the concert, and for amusement had had recourse to a game of écarté. Lando’s words were still in my ears. My heart, too, was filled with inexpressible anxiety and profound affection for this dear partner of my life who was so charming in manner, and whom it would have been so sweet to love in peace! I leaned my head against his shoulder, and, passing my arm through his, said:
“Lorenzo, if I take the liberty of giving you one word of advice, will you follow it? If I beg you to make me one promise—a promise that will render me happy—will you not grant it?”
He made so abrupt a movement that I was almost frightened. But he immediately resumed his self‐control, and, softly kissing my hand and forehead, said in a tone that was not rude, but which seemed to forbid all reply:
“Ginevra, I think I told you the other day that I do not like to be questioned, and I now tell you that I like advice still less, and, above all, I cannot bear to make promises. So let this warning suffice. Avoid these three shoals, if you wish to remain in my eyes what I now consider you—the most charming of women.”
XV.
The following day was Sunday. Notwithstanding so fatiguing an evening, the lateness of the hour when I retired, and the restless night that followed, I was ready for Mass at the usual hour. But for the first time since my marriage Lorenzo sent me word not to wait for him. Of course I had never been under any great illusion as to his religious sentiments. I supposed that habit, rather than piety, induced him to accompany me to church; but I was far from suspecting that he had hitherto made it a point to do so because he thought it necessary to keep an eye on me there as well as elsewhere. Above all, I little expected the habit to be laid aside as soon as he was reassured or became interested in something else. I consoled myself on this occasion by thinking he would go to a later Mass; and for the first time I went out alone and on foot, the distance being so short between our hotel in the Rue de Rivoli and the Church of S. Roch.
The life I had led for two months was not precisely adapted to dispose my soul for prayer. Besides, accustomed as I had been to the churches of Italy, those at Paris seemed destitute of all beauty, and I found it difficult to get used to so different an aspect. But other impressions soon modified this. The goodness and piety that so thoroughly impregnated the atmosphere which surrounded my childhood were rather the spirit of our family than of the land that had providentially given me birth. And yet there is, in Sicily, as well as all Southern Italy, a great deal of faith, though it cannot be denied that, at this time, great moral relaxation and religious indifference were too prevalent, especially among those who belonged to the upper classes. There, more than anywhere else even, holy souls led hidden lives, and edification was rather to be found in the obscurity of certain firesides than in the world at large, or even in the usages of public worship. All the religious exercises of our family were performed in the chapel of the old palace we occupied. This chapel was spacious, richly ornamented, and architecturally beautiful. We not only heard Mass there on Sundays, but every day, and two or three times a week Don Placido gave us an instructive, edifying discourse. My father, mother, Livia, Ottavia, Mario (who, in spite of his faults, retained his respect for holy things), and several faithful old servants constituted the attentive, devout congregation. My childhood was not wanting in any of those influences that have so powerful an effect on after‐life. Ottavia often took Livia and myself to the evening Benediction in one of the neighboring churches, and my heart still throbs at the remembrance of the pious transport with which I knelt before the illuminated tabernacle on which stood the monstrance. The church used to be filled solely by people of the humbler classes, even on festivals. It was a rare thing to find a single person belonging to the upper classes. What struck me, therefore, above all, at Paris, was the complete difference of the churches in this respect. I was at first even more surprised than edified. For if I had often remarked the absence of the wealthy in Sicily, here I was struck with the absence of the poor. I looked around for the people clothed in rags, whose fervor had so often redoubled mine, and did not like to feel that I was separated from them. This separation is much more marked where the custom of private chapels has been established. Christian equality calls the rich and great to the foot of the altar, no less than the poor and lowly; and if they do not all meet there, whether in France or Italy, we cannot blame those whose attendance at church is an example to the absent, whatever rank they may belong to.
But to return to this Sunday morning. I knelt down and heard Mass with much less distraction than usual. I was, it is true, rather sad than devout at the time, but I prayed more fervently than I had done for a long time, and, when I slowly and reluctantly left the church, the inner soul, that resounds like a lyre under the divine hand, had received a slight touch, and for the first time for a long while I felt the movement of one of those hidden chords that cannot be sounded without causing all the others to vibrate.
As I approached the door of the church, I noticed a young girl kneeling on a chair, whose face did not seem wholly unknown to me. She held a purse in her hand, and was soliciting contributions for orphans. I deposited my offering, and received her smiling thanks in return. As I passed on, I heard her whisper my name to a lady of noble and distinguished appearance beside her (whom I supposed to be her mother), who, with her eyes fastened on her book, had not observed me. As I went on, I recollected having met this pretty girl two or three times in company, but did not know her name. I felt surprised that she should know mine, though this often happens to strangers who are pointed out as objects of curiosity, while they only know a few of those around them.
I had no time, however, to dwell on this accidental meeting, or quietly enjoy the impressions left by the services at church; for Lorenzo’s first words immediately revived all the recollections of the morning.
“You are late, Ginevra,” said he. “It is half‐past eleven. Breakfast is waiting, and I am in a hurry.”
We took seats at the table in silence, but he soon resumed:
“You have scarcely time to dress. Have you forgotten that we are going to the races? Lando Landi is to come for us before one o’clock.”
Yes, I had completely forgotten it. I felt an earnest desire to withdraw from the engagement. I wanted one day of peace and quiet repose. I felt the need of drinking in more deeply the breath of pure air I had just tasted. Could I not have a few hours to myself? Must I at once go where I should inhale a different atmosphere? And what an atmosphere!...
Seeing that I remained silent and had a pensive air, he said in an impatient tone:
“Well, Ginevra, what is it? What have you to tell me or ask me?...”
I replied without any circumlocution: “I have nothing to say, except that I am tired to death of those races, and beg you to excuse me from accompanying you to‐day.”
His face immediately cleared up. “Is that all?” said he. “As to that, you are at perfect liberty to do as you please. You may be sure,” continued he, laughing, “that I shall only contradict you on great occasions.... But what will you do with yourself this afternoon, if you do not go to the races?”
“I shall do like everybody else in France—go to Vespers.”
He gave a derisive laugh that was horrible.
“Everybody else, do you say? It would be very difficult to tell how many in Paris even go to Mass!”
I looked at him, as he said this. He understood my meaning, and appeared displeased.
“Come, Ginevra,” said he in an ill‐humored manner, “are you going to insist that I must always agree with you?”
“By no means, Lorenzo, you know very well.”
“But you did not like it because you had to go to church without me this morning.”
I hesitated an instant, but at last replied with some emotion:
“Of course I love to have you with me wherever I go, and more especially there; but it would be better, however, for you to go to church always without me than ever to go solely for me.”
This reply increased his displeasure, and he said in a tone he had never used before:
“Unfortunately, the truth is, my dear child, if I should consult my own inclinations, I might perhaps never go at all.”
Tears came into my eyes, and my heart ached with the strongest feeling of grief I had ever experienced!...
O my God!... I must have had some love for thee, even at that time, since the very thought of any one’s not loving thee caused me so much pain!...
Lorenzo’s tone, look, and whole manner not only showed his utter indifference, but the complete incredulity he felt. I had never suspected it before, because it was something foreign to my experience. I knew it was possible to violate the law of God, but did not know it could be denied. I understood lukewarmness and negligence, for I had seen both in others as well as in him; but I had never before encountered lack of repentance and ignorance of duty. This cold denial of any love for God and of all belief in him Lorenzo, of course, had not expressly declared, but it had been betrayed by his manner doubtless even more than he would have wished. With all the inconsistencies of my character and the faults of my age, he must have seen that I had too lively and profound a faith not to be displeased at anything that jarred on it, and heretofore he had been circumspect without being hypocritical.
He saw the effect he had produced, and, as he had not become indifferent to me, he regretted it; but he knew he could not at once repair his mistake, and contented himself for the moment by trying to divert my mind from it by a change of subject. And I likewise felt it would be better to talk of something else. This prudence was by no means natural to my disposition, but I began to understand his. Besides, his injunctions of the evening before were still too recent to be forgotten.
The conversation did not last long, for Lando, punctual to his engagement, arrived at half‐past twelve with a beaming face, a flower in his button‐ hole, and in his hand an enormous bunch of violets destined for me.
“What!” he exclaimed when he learned my intentions for the afternoon.... “But that is impossible! Not go to the races? Why, you must. Remain at home when the weather is the finest in the world? I never heard of such a thing.... Deprive me of the pleasure of taking you in my calèche, and making everybody envy me?... That is the most cruel caprice that ever entered a woman’s head!...”
Here Lorenzo left the room an instant to look for his hat, and Lando suddenly began in another tone: “I am in earnest, cousin. You would do much better to go.”
What did he mean? I remained doubtful and troubled, but Lorenzo immediately returned, and I had no time for reflection. As they were leaving the room, my husband approached, and, taking me by the hand, looked at me with an expression his eyes now and then assumed, and which always dispersed, as by some enchantment, the clouds that rose too often between us. He slightly caressed my cheek with the glove in his hand, and whispered with a smile:
“Come, Ginevra mia, do not be angry. Let me see you smile again.”
Then turning towards Lando, “It is not yet one o’clock,” he said. “Let us start, and, before going to the Bois de Boulogne, we will stop at the Madeleine.”
His looks, as well as his words, allayed my anxiety; but a thousand different ideas crossed my mind, and after they were gone I remained thoughtfully leaning on the balustrade of my balcony, where I followed them with my eyes to the end of the street, wondering what Lando meant, and if I had really done wrong not to accompany them.
The weather at that time was fine. The clearness of the sky, as well as the verdure of the trees, attracted my attention more than the aspect of the street, and of the garden already filled with the crowd of animated, happy, and gayly‐dressed people, that give every pleasant summer day at Paris the appearance of a festival. But I was absorbed in my own thoughts, and looked at it all without noticing anything. I had a vague feeling that, among the dangers that seemed to encompass me in the new life into which I had been thrown, there were two I had special reason to dread. The first—the greatest—would have broken my heart, and on that I could not dwell for an instant.... The second threatened the loss of our property, and would diminish our income, if not absolutely ruin us. This, too was alarming, but much less so than the other in my eyes, though just the contrary in Lando’s estimation, if I read him aright. After considerable reflection, I concluded that he merely referred to something of the same nature he had alluded to the evening before, and I put it aside to ask myself with far deeper anxiety if I had really had a glimpse of Lorenzo’s heart, as he looked at me on leaving the room, or whether he was playing a part, and deliberately deceiving me. The heavenly expression that sometimes beamed from his eyes always inspired me with a confidence in him that was equal to my affection. I had just experienced its effect. The look, however, was so transient that it rather resembled the reflection of a distant light than any actual, real feeling. Whereas his mocking laugh and the tone that to‐day for the first time accompanied it were—alas! I could not doubt it—the expression of his real sentiments, and this contradiction terrified me.... He seemed to possess two natures, and my head grew weary in trying to decide which of the two was his real one—a question I frequently had occasion to ask afterwards, and to wait a long time for the reply—as doubtful to him then as it was to myself....
I left the window, and, buried in an arm‐chair, I allowed the time to pass away in reflections of this kind without opening the book I held in my hand, or noticing the gradual obscurity of the sky, that a short time before had been so clear. It was not threatening enough, however, to hinder me from going on foot to Vespers, which it was nearly time for, the hour not being as late at S. Roch’s as elsewhere. I started without any delay, giving orders for my carriage to be at the church door at the end of the service.
The salutary impressions of the morning and the excessive anxiety and sadness that I afterwards experienced had somewhat counteracted the more or less unhealthy influences that result from a continued life of pleasure. I was now in that frame of mind when it is easy to collect one’s thoughts; when the soul, so to speak, flies to the first place of refuge in which it is sure of repose.... Who has not experienced the strange, mysterious, refreshing influence of prayer, even when mute and inarticulate?... Who has not, in this way, laid down for an instant all his sorrows, all his fears, all his sufferings, and afterwards taken up the load again with a renewed strength that seemed to have lightened the burden?...
I had suffered but little at that time in comparison with what life still had in reserve for me. But after a while we learn to suffer, and in this science, as in all others, it is the beginning one always finds the most difficult. A fearful storm, it is true, had assailed the first flower of my spring‐time, and spread darkness and gloom over the heavens of my sixteenth year; but spring‐time and the sun returned, and at an age when others only begin life I was commencing mine the second time. But this new life of happiness was, I now felt, threatened in a thousand ways. Apprehension, a worse torture than sadness; a vague, undefined fear, more difficult to endure than the woes it anticipates; the uncertainty, doubt, and suspicion, so much more intolerable to one of my nature than any positive suffering, rendered my heart heavy and depressed, and I felt it would be a relief to weep as well as to pray.
I knelt on the only vacant chair in the church, and remained a long time motionless, my face buried in my hands, unable to give utterance to my wants, but knowing God could read my heart, as, when we meet a friend after a long separation, we are often silent merely because we have so much to communicate, and know not where to begin. In this attitude I heard Vespers sung for the first time in my life, this office of the church being, as is well known, much less frequently used in the south of Italy than in other places. I have already mentioned the public religious observances of my childhood. I had, therefore, never heard Vespers chanted in this way. The voices of the choristers were harmonious, and the responses were no less so. A large number of the congregation joined in the chant. There was something monotonous rather than musical in it, but it was more musical than reading, and it produced a strangely soothing influence on me. I laid aside all thought of myself, and attentively followed the admirable lines of the Psalmist; and when the Magnificat was intoned, I rose with the whole congregation to chant this divine hymn with a sensation of joy and hope that, for the moment, made me forget the painful impressions I felt when I entered beneath these arches now resounding with its words....
Benediction followed, recalling the earliest, dearest remembrances of my childhood, and increasing the emotion I already felt. When the monstrance containing the divine Host was placed above the altar, I lost all thought of where I was. I forgot whether it was Paris, Rome, or Messina, and whether the arches above me were those of some magnificent church, or some humble chapel, or a mere oratory like that in which I had prayed from my childhood. What difference did it make? The sun shines everywhere alike, and diffuses equal light in all places. How much more truly shines throughout the whole Catholic world the living, uncreated Light, present on all our altars! Time and place were forgotten. I was once more with my beloved mother, once more with Livia, my sweet, saintly sister, and the faithful Ottavia; and when, at the end of one of those hymns that are usually sung before the Blessed Sacrament, a young voice, pure and clear, uttered the word Patria,(164) it seemed at that moment to have a double meaning, and designate, not only my earthly, but my heavenly country.
Pius VI.
Those were terrible days. Even the faithful quailed, and asked each other timidly whether it was possible that God’s enemies had at last prevailed, and that the Rock had been shaken and the Word passed away. Voltaire had come and done his work, and gone, leaving a new generation behind him to fight the devil’s cause, to flaunt his standard over Christendom, to revile “the Galilean,” and wage war against his church—the subtle, deadly, persevering war of envious hatred, conquered impotence, malignant fury. There was a shout of hellish triumph throughout the ranks of Voltaire’s disciples; it seemed as if their victory was now secure; the old man of the Vatican, who for generations had remained unconquerable as fate, was in the power of the soldier who had conquered fate, who held Europe in the hollow of his hand, who raised up kings with a nod, and overthrew dynasties with a word. He had overcome the world, why should he not overcome the pope? He had demolished a score of thrones, why should he not annihilate this fisherman’s chair that for seventeen centuries had defied the combined forces of the world? Poor fools! Why not!
Jean Angelo Braschi was born at Cesena on the 27th of December, 1717, of a noble but poor family. His parents left him all the patrimony they had, a faith of the royal antique sort, and an education worthy of the name he bore. He was little more than a boy when Clement XIV. saw of what stuff the young cleric was made, and appointed him his secretary. This was Braschi’s first step on the ladder which was to lead him to the perilous heights of the purple—“the dye of empire and of martyrdom.”
When Clement XIV., pursued by the entreaties and threats of European potentates, yielded a weak concession to their cabals, and spoke of “reform” to the general of the Jesuits (who answered, Loyola‐like, in royal scorn of the implied calumny: Sint ut sunt, aut non sint), Braschi, then cardinal, took his stand by their side, resented every outrage offered to the sons of Ignatius, those courtiers of martyrdom in all ages, and thus vindicated his future claim to a place in the palm‐ bearers’ ranks. He opened his house to the persecuted Jesuits; he braved everything in his unswerving, uncompromising fidelity to their order. What else could befall him but the crown of the confessor or the martyr?
Europe hailed his accession with delight. The pulses of the rising monster, Revolution, were beginning to beat, and the nations were growing afraid, they knew not yet of what; but all eyes were turned to Rome, as to the rock where the safety of the world was anchored. The advent of a man like Pius VI., firm as adamant, who could brave death, not merely for the faith, but for every tittle of principle which the uttermost integrity of the faith included—a man whom his enemies likened to Moses for his meekness, and to Solomon for his strong wisdom; who lived like an anchorite and officiated with the splendor of the prophet king, who loved the beauty of God’s house and the place where his glory dwelt—the advent of a priest like this to the papal throne gave joy all over Christendom.
Pius VI. was elected on the 15th of February, 1775. Seldom has the weight of that unearthly crown fallen more heavily on its wearer’s brow than it fell on that of the new pontiff. In the temporal order he saw before him a mountain to be uplifted; in the spiritual order no far‐seeing eye could fail to detect the ominous signs of the coming storm. Pius lost not a moment in designing and carrying out vast schemes of material improvement in his dominions. In those days the Pontine marshes were swamps of poison that had hitherto defied all petty attempts at reclaiming them.
“How do you live in this dreadful place?” inquired a traveller of one of the inhabitants of the dismal soil.
“Signor, we do not live; we die!” was the answer.
Pius VI. declared that henceforth they should live. Colossal works were set on foot, and, if the pestilential marshes were not radically purified, they were so much improved as to justify the people in proclaiming the energetic pontiff as the worker of that miracle. During his pontificate the draining was so successful that Pius himself declared this alone was ample reward for all his sufferings. The port of Ancona was repaired, and its entrance adorned with a light‐house; works of art were sought for, revealed, and cherished. Spiritual works were founded and fostered with royal munificence and paternal care. The Christian Brothers were called to Rome and a noble school built for them, on the front of which was inscribed the title so glorious and so dear to the Vicar of Christ: “Pius VI., the Father of the Poor.”
But not even the wisdom and prestige of this ideal pontiff could suffice to shelter him from the tempest that was slowly but steadily travelling towards the Holy City. The infidel philosophers of France and Germany had done their work; they had sown, and now the time had come for reaping. Austria first showed symptoms of disaffection. Joseph II., who was too cowardly to rescue his own sister(165) from the hands of the torturers, had become the tool of his minister, Kaunitz, whose delight it was to worry the pope with the small artillery of a cunning and treacherous diplomacy. These weapons, however, were not the ones that could move Pius VI. They glided off from the shield of his unalterable patience, humility, and truth like arrows from a marble surface. Nor could the weak monarch withstand the charm of the saintly pope when he came within its influence. He rallied to his side when he visited Rome in 1783, and promised to be faithful to him. But it was a broken reed, the friendship of the vacillating Joseph.
Spain, Tuscany, and Venice next came to sadden the Holy Father’s heart and strengthen his growing fears. His gentleness held them captive for a time; but they too were of the tribe of broken reeds. When friends prove false, then is the time for the treason of foes to flourish. Catherine of Russia, the woman with the wily head of the snake joined to the cruel heart of the tiger, came with honeyed words of reverence to tender offers of service, nay, even of allegiance, to Pius. A far‐sighted woman, this tiger queen who was stealing into Poland, and sucking the nation’s blood, as she crawled into its heart. Then there was Frederick of Prussia, more honest than many a self‐styled son of the church in those days; he was grateful to the prince who first assigned him his title of king. Gustavus III. came to do homage to the man who had drained the Pontine marshes, and made a noble road through that region, so long the tomb of all who dwelt within its poisonous area. Pius received these marks of courtesy with his accustomed gentle grace; he knew what they were worth, and was grateful without being beguiled. They were, in truth, the last rays of the sun that was soon to set in darkness over his reign, and to close it in sufferings unparalleled for fourteen centuries in the annals of the church.
France was to give the signal, and she was now ready. France, that had so often raised the standard of the church, and defended it with the blood of her fairest chivalry—France was to sound the war‐cry hounding on the fanatics to the destruction of her own purest glory. The Reign of Terror was inaugurated. The Constituent Assembly had decreed the civil constitution of the clergy. Bishops were no longer to be what they had hitherto been; they were henceforth to be the nominees of an unbelieving mob; the beautiful structure of the spiritual hierarchy was to be destroyed. To legalize the crime, an oath was exacted from the priesthood; those who refused to take it—and their name was legion—were deprived of the pittance allotted them by the state, and turned away to starve. Sixty thousand preferred starvation to the bread thus bought at the price of perjury. Of one hundred and thirty‐eight bishops, four only took the oath. Monasteries were dissolved; scandals arose on all sides. The papal nuncio, Cardinal de Bernis, was insulted and compelled to fly from Paris. The pope was burned in effigy. Thus did France sound the tocsin that was to herald in the earthquake—“a great horror of darkness and shakings of the world, and a cup of trembling which all the nations shall drink.” Faith is being driven out, and “philosophy” is riding in like a conqueror on her ruins. Peace and the brave pageant of virtue and all goodly things are banished, and in their place enter decay and chaos and unbelief; and then the Revolution is ready. The world is wheeling round, humanity is going mad, nothing is stable on the earth—nothing but the rock of Peter, against which the storm beats in foolish and impotent rage. Pius raises his voice above the whirlwind, and those who hearken hear it: “God is unchangeable. Truth is immutable. The church can make no compromise. Let us stand faithfully by the cross. God will save his own and redeem his word.” Avignon exhibited a hecatomb of murdered priests. On the 24th of October, 1791, over two hundred were butchered in the Glacière of that city. In September of the following year three bishops and three hundred priests were on one day massacred in Paris. Numbers fled to Rome for protection. The fragments of the altar and the throne met in the Eternal City—Mesdames de France and the King and Queen of Sardinia, proscribed prelates and priests; and Pius opened his fatherly arms to all. This shelter was, however, soon to be torn from them.
On the 15th of February, 1793, the commandant of the French fleet at Naples walked into the Roman consulate, and ordered the consul to hoist the red flag and the cap of liberty over the building. The consul refused; a row ensued; blood was shed. The French government declared itself insulted, and threatened the pope in violent language. Meantime, the Directory succeeded to the Convention, and people drew a long breath, and hoped a change had come for the better. But, as Carnot said: “If now there was less blood shed, there were more tears.” The guillotine was still erect, and its work only slackened because the arms of the executioners were weary. The republican armies were progressing in their triumphal marches. Italy still remained to be conquered. Bonaparte was entrusted with the expedition. A series of victories brought him quickly to the gates of Rome. He proposed the most humiliating conditions to the Sovereign Pontiff. Pius was summoned to cancel every bull, brief, and pastoral that the Holy See had issued from the beginning of the Revolution to the present time. The pope firmly refused to comply. Bonaparte was at first full of insolent fury, and threatened to annihilate Rome and the Vatican. He relented, however, not out of deference to Pius, but to show his defiance of the home government, and drew up a treaty of his own invention, which, ruinous as it was, the Holy Father meekly signed, in order to save his people and prevent bloodshed. This treaty of Tolentino, as it was called, secured to Bonaparte the sum of thirty‐one millions of francs, sixteen hundred cavalry horses, and a portion of the Romagna. The Roman treasury was drained by this monstrous ransom; the people were starving, the misery was terrible. Pius was broken‐hearted, but his courage, fed by a faith that was anchored in God, never faltered. His conduct all through these dreadful days was that of a saint. He found his only solace in prayer and in fortifying the faith of his suffering flock. But he had as yet only tasted the first drops of his chalice. The Directory had resolved to get possession of Rome. A pretext must be created, since Pius would not furnish even the semblance of one, for breaking the iniquitous treaty, which had thus far secured to him the integrity of the Holy City. General Duphot was fired on by the Roman troops acting in discharge of their duty. Berthier was at once ordered to leave Ancona, where he was stationed with the French army, and to march on Rome and encamp under its walls. His first step was to issue a proclamation exciting the citizens to revolt, insulting and calumniating the pope and his government, and announcing himself as the liberator of an oppressed people. He entered the city next day, and took possession by placing seals on the museums and galleries, which were “henceforth the property of the grande nation that had come to set free the Roman people.” A tree of liberty was planted on the capitol; tricolor flags floated on the public monuments, and tricolor ribbons decked the ears of Marcus Aurelius’ horse. The Holy Father was outraged in his own house; his furniture was taken from him, and his jewels; he was despoiled even of his pontifical robes; his private library, a valuable collection of 40,000 volumes, was seized and sold to a dealer for 12,000 crowns. The deliverers of Rome crowned these proceedings by inviting their victim to wear the tricolor cockade by way of a badge of authority from France. Pius VI. replied with majestic meekness: “I can wear no livery but that with which the church has clothed me.” This answer was distorted into an insulting challenge to the French government, and Haller immediately received orders to convey the pope by force out of Rome. Pius gently pleaded his age and many infirmities, and entreated the poor grace of being allowed to die in the midst of his people. “Oh! for that matter, you can die wherever you are,” was the brutal retort, and measures were commenced for carrying him away by force, in case he made any resistance. This was not likely; but the old pontiff’s heart was breaking. “God’s will be done!” he murmured. “Let us bow to whatever he sees good to ordain!”
Forty‐eight hours were all that was allowed him to prepare for this sudden departure. He devoted the short time entirely to the affairs of the church and to the performance of his religious duties. The night of the 20th of February was fixed for the departure. It was late when Haller brusquely entered the Holy Father’s room, and found him prostrate before the crucifix, bathed in tears. “It is time to go,” he said, and the French escort entered and rudely hurried the old man down the Vatican stairs and into the carriage that was waiting for him. In it were seated his physician and his groom of the chambers, and two other officers of his household. The people followed the carriage, loudly lamenting, and invoking all blessings on their beloved pastor. At Viterbo many French priests flocked round him with the Italian crowds, and fell on their knees for a last benediction. The first halt of the travellers was in Tuscany. The Directory would fain have sent their august prisoner to Sardinia, but they were deterred in this by fear of the English government, and so proceeded to Sienna, where for three months the Augustinian convent had the privilege of harboring the persecuted Vicar of Christ. Whilst here the finger of Providence showed visibly its protecting care of him. The Holy Father had just left his room one morning when the ceiling fell in, and crushed everything beneath it; the house was violently shaken by an earthquake, and suffered much damage. This event forced Pius to seek hospitality at the Monastery of Chartreuse, in Florence, where he arrived on the 2d of June. Here some tender consolations awaited him. The Grand Duke of Tuscany came frequently to the feet of his venerated pastor, to assure him of his loyal attachment. The King and Queen of Sardinia also gathered round him, driven from Rome, where they had been so lovingly welcomed on being robbed of the throne which the saintly sister of Louis XVI. had adorned so nobly. Her husband had ever been a devoted son of the Holy Father, and now declared that the sight of his serenity in the midst of trials so overwhelming was enough to make him forget his own sorrows.
“I cannot regret my throne, for I find more than it gave me at the feet of your Holiness!” he once exclaimed.
All this time the captive pope devoted his whole mind to the government of the church and the strengthening of his afflicted children. He lost no opportunity of sending messages of encouragement to those who were at a distance, exhorting them to suffer cheerfully, pointing to the day of joy and of triumph that would soon dawn after the short night of darkness. His own serenity was a fountain of hope and sweetness to all who beheld it. Like the great apostle, he seemed in deed and in truth to glory in his infirmities and in Christ crucified.
A multitude of proscribed priests and prelates had fled to England, whence they wrote eloquent letters of condolence to their captive chief, protesting their allegiance to him and to the faith, and their readiness to die for both, if needful. These proofs of devout affection deeply moved the Holy Father, and consoled him for much. The Directory began at last to feel alarmed at the attitude of foreign cabinets towards the Holy See. England spoke in fearless condemnation of the cruelty of the French government towards Pius, and made no disguise of her sympathy with the exiled priests and royalists. France commanded the Grand Duke of Tuscany to drive the pontiff out of his states; but that prince replied with royal dignity: “I did not bring the pope here, and I certainly will not drive him away.” The grand duke paid for his boldness; his dominions were forthwith invaded, and Etruria added to the French territory. Austria was next appealed to, and requested to receive the pope into custody, a convent on the Danube being named as a suitable abode; but Austria haughtily declined. Spain lastly refused to become his jailer.
“Alas! beloved prince,” replied Pius, “all is vanity here below. What examples of this are we both! Let us look up to heaven; there await us those thrones that can never perish.” They entreated him to go with them to Sardinia the moment it was possible for themselves to return there; but Pius refused. He alleged his age and suffering health as a reason for remaining where he was; but the true motive was the fear that his presence in the generous king’s dominions might prove fatal to him and his people. They parted with many tears, never to meet again on earth.
Nothing, therefore, remained but to secure his person by bringing him to France. Humanity cried out against the barbarity of subjecting the venerable old man to so long and painful a journey in his present state; but France had no ears for the voice of humanity. Pius VI. was now partially paralyzed; he was covered with blisters, and unable to move without labor and acute pain. But what of that? He was dragged to Parma, where a few days’ rest was granted. The medical men even then declared they would not take the responsibility of proceeding with their prisoner, lest he should die on the road. The French commissioner, impatient of so paltry an obstacle in the way of his orders, burst into the pope’s room, flung down the bed‐clothes, and, seeing with his own eyes the truth of the report, turned on his heel with the remark, “Alive or dead, he must go on!”
The cortège started accordingly. All along the road the gentle martyr was cheered by the love and pity of the people. Multitudes ran for miles by the side of his carriage, bareheaded, weeping, and invoking the blessing of the Most High upon him. Pius was moved to tears at the sight of their courage in thus openly compassionating him, and with his suffering hand, almost disabled as it was, he made an effort to bless them again and again from the window.
On the 24th they reached Milan. The escort, in order to hide his presence from the people, and prevent similar scenes of enthusiasm and indignation, conveyed their prisoner into the citadel at three o’clock in the morning. On the 26th they hurried him out of his sleep in the dead of the night, and conveyed him secretly to Oulx, and the next morning they started to cross the Alps. Who shall describe the sufferings of Pius VI. during that transit? His body was now one wound; his feeble strength was almost spent; he seemed scarcely more than a breathing corpse. They placed him roughly in a sort of sedan‐chair, while the rest of the escort followed on mules. The road over the mountains was precipitous and stony; every step was agony to the suffering pontiff. The cold was intense. Some Piedmontese officers, touched with compassion, took off their warm pelisses, and begged him to use them; the Holy Father thanked them with emotion, but refused. “I do not suffer,” said he gently, “and I have nothing to fear; the hand of God is upholding me. Courage, my friends! Let us put our confidence in God, and all will be well with us.”
On the 30th the wayfarers reached Briançon. Pius was visibly moved on beholding the soil of France, that unhappy land where such fearful crimes were being perpetrated, but where God was already preparing miracles of repentance. He was taken to the hospital for a lodging. The people, horrified at the wretched, attenuated aspect of the Vicar of Christ, a prisoner in the hands of the men who had deluged their country in blood, were loud in expressing their pity and respect; they flocked in crowds round the hospital, calling out for the Holy Father to appear at the window and bless them. But the jailers forbade him to show himself, and forced the people to disperse. The few companions of his exile who had accompanied him so far were now taken from him, his confessor and valet being alone permitted to remain. This cruel isolation lasted for nearly a month, and would no doubt have been continued still longer if the progress of Soovorof’s army in Italy had not frightened the Directory, and decided them to send their prisoner further on to Grenoble, where he was rejoined by his faithful attendants. Watched and humiliated as he was, his journey hither was one long ovation in every village and town through which he passed. The people would not be beaten off, but flocked in thousands to greet him, falling on their knees round the carriage, rending the air with their cries, and calling down vengeance on those who persecuted Jesus Christ in the person of his vicar. The women everywhere were foremost in testifying their devotion to the Holy Father. They disguised themselves as peasants, as servants, or venders, and bribed the guards to admit them to his presence, where ladies of the highest rank were proud to perform any menial service for him.
At Grenoble a hundred young girls dressed in white came forth to meet him, singing canticles and strewing flowers in his path. Pius VI. smiled lovingly on them, and blessed them with tears in his eyes. Precautions were useless; no threats could restrain the hearts of the pastor’s children, and this sorrowful journey, in spite of its cruelties, resembled the triumphal march of a king amidst his people. They reached Valence on the 14th of July. The pope was lodged in the citadel. Close by, imprisoned in a Benedictine convent, were thirty‐two priests who had shared his hospitality in Rome, and been compelled to leave it when he had been taken away. They entreated on their knees to be allowed to go and ask his blessing; but the prayer was denied, and the Holy Father was strictly forbidden to go beyond the garden‐gate, which was guarded day and night, lest by showing himself he should excite disturbance amongst the people. All prohibitions were alike to Pius now, for he felt that the goal was at hand, and the journey would soon be ended. He was suffering terribly, and knew that the hand of death was upon him. Sweet came the summons to the pilgrim pontiff. “All journeys end in welcomes to the weary.” Pius had trod the stony path, cross‐laden like his Master, crowned, like him, with the thorny diadem of sacrifice and love, and now the promised land was in sight, and angel songs were breaking on the pilgrim’s ear: “Come, thou who hast suffered persecution for my sake; come and reign with me in my kingdom.”
For some days the Holy Father remained altogether absorbed in prayer, as if unconscious of everything around him. Often in the midst of his prayer he would break out into expressions of pardon towards his enemies, or pity for the sufferings of his children. “What are the sufferings of my body compared to what my heart endures for them?” he once exclaimed. “My cardinals, my bishops, scattered and persecuted, ... Rome, ... my people, ... the church, ... O my Saviour! in what a state am I forced to leave them all.”
The symptoms of final dissolution now rapidly increased, and the pains he endured were so terrible as to bring on long fainting fits.
On the 28th of August Pius asked for the last rites of the church. He insisted, in spite of the agonies he was suffering, on being dressed in full pontificals, and placed in a chair, so as to receive the Holy Viaticum with the greatest possible reverence. His supreme devotion all through life had been to the Blessed Sacrament. His desire was complied with, and then, placing one hand upon his breast, and the other on the Holy Gospels, he made with great solemnity his dying confession of faith according to the pontifical formula. He then repeated several times, in the most impressive tones, his free forgiveness of his enemies, invoking the mercy and pardon of God upon them; he prayed earnestly also for the conversion of France; this done, he received the Bread of Angels.
On the 29th, the following day, Extreme Unction was administered by the Archbishop of Corinth. The Holy Father seemed to rally slightly after this, and was able to turn his attention a little to temporal affairs. At midnight the palpitations of his heart and other symptoms gave warning that the end had come. The faithful little band of friends and fellow‐ captives gathered round their dying pastor, and kissed the hand that could no longer lift itself to bless them. The Archbishop of Corinth gave the papal absolution, which the Holy Father received with deep humility and fervor, and, after a faint effort to give a last blessing to those who were kneeling in tears at his feet, he breathed his last with the words of the benediction half finished on his lips. It was an hour after midnight on the 29th of August, 1799. Pius VI. was in his eighty‐second year, and had governed the church for twenty‐four years, six months, and fourteen days.
A cry of anguish and of exultation rang through Christendom when the news of his death went forth. The faithful mourned their shepherd, the brave pastor who had loved them and defended them even to death; the wicked rejoiced and clapped hands, exclaiming, “Now we have done with him! This old man is the last of the popes! He has died in a foreign land, hunted like a dog, without honors or followers. His court and his hierarchy are dispersed; we have done with Rome and Roman popes!” Short‐sighted fools, that knew not how to distinguish between defeat and victory, because they could not read the mystic scroll which the hand of God has traced above the cross: “In this sign thou shalt conquer!”
The remains of the venerable old man were exposed for several days; the crowds were so great, both day and night, that it was found impossible to remove them at once, as had been intended. The people proclaimed the martyr‐pope a saint, and flocked round the bier to gaze upon those worn and emaciated features where the majestic peace of death now sat like a golden shadow. For miles around Valence multitudes flowed in to see him, to touch the bier, to throw flowers upon it, and bear them away again as sacred relics. The authorities of the place did not even try to prevent these public demonstrations of respect and enthusiasm. The Directory thought fit to be silent regarding them, and even issued orders that the pope should be laid out with the state becoming a sovereign. Thus the victim who had been denied the commonest mercies of humanity when he was on his death‐bed was surrounded in his coffin with the pomp and paraphernalia of royalty.
The body was finally placed in the citadel of Valence, where it remained until Bonaparte, on being raised to the consulate, had it removed under a bombastic decree setting forth “the magnanimity of the grande nation to a good but weak old man who had for a while been the enemy of France, owing to perfidious advisers, etc.” This grandiloquent proclamation ended in the remains of the first sovereign in Christendom being transported to the common burial‐ground, where the charity of a Protestant courageously raised a small stone chapel over his grave. A few years later (1801) the body was brought back to Rome, and placed in the fitting shrine of a martyred pope—the Basilica of S. Peter. So does the King of Heaven overturn the designs of earthly kings, making sport of their power, and confounding their vain rebellion.
“Elias smote the waters of Jordan with his mantle, and with Eliseus passed over on dry ground.... And Eliseus said unto him: I pray thee let a double portion of thy spirit be upon me.”
And as the friends went on, behold a chariot of fire and horses of fire came and parted them both asunder, and Elias went up to heaven, and Eliseus saw him no more; but he took up the mantle of the prophet that had fallen from him, and went back and stood by the banks of the Jordan, and smote the waters with the mantle, and they parted, and he went over as before.
And who are these that we behold like a cloud travelling towards us from the West? Lo! they come, a grand procession, cleaving the waters, singing glad songs, and bearing in their hands gifts of gold and frankincense. Welcome, ye goodly company of pilgrims, who “have feared neither distance nor danger” to come from the furthest ends of the earth to lay the tribute of your love at the feet of Peter. Thrice welcome! ye sons and daughters of America, who have come to clasp hands with your brethren of the Old World, and to receive the loving embrace of our common father. May ye be blessed ten thousand‐fold for the joy your love has brought to his suffering heart!
One venerable figure shines forth amidst the band; the wisdom of nigh fourscore years is on her brow, the peace of a long life spent in the service of her Lord. She gazes on the wonders of the Holy City, on its glorious shrines, its stately temples, its monasteries and convents, its brave army of priests and monks and nuns, and, filled with holy envy at the sight, her fervent spirit exclaims: “Oh! if we could but carry this away with us. If we had these riches in America!”
“Nay, lady, grudge us not our treasure! Pray rather that this likewise may not be taken from us, and give thanks to God for the great things that are being accomplished in your own wonderful land. There the faith is like the sun at daybreak, scarcely yet above the horizon, but already powerful and splendid. What has become of that sun amongst us? Oh! I will not utter it.... Verily, there is One who will blow with his breath, and the cloud shall be scattered. Let us pray only that the day be hastened.”(166)
The mystic mantle which Christ first laid upon his apostle has descended through the ages, through evil times and persecutions, to the prophet of our own days, untorn, unstained, a garment of immortality and strength. Now, as then, it bears him in safety through the flood; now, as then, does he “throw salt upon the waters,” and cure them, so that all those who come and drink thereof have life and salvation. For God changes not, nor can those who love him and love one another in his love perish, nor their hope be confounded.
Assunta Howard.
I. Juxta Crucem.
The full moon was pouring a flood of light upon the marble pavement of S. Peter’s, and, by its weird influence, increased to an almost startling immensity the vastness of that mighty work of art, worthy offspring and expression of the faith which has subdued the world. The soft radiance in the nave seemed to throw into deeper gloom and an almost immeasurable space the ever‐burning lamps which, like fixed stars, surround the central point of Christendom—the tomb of the great apostle, to whom was first given the power of the keys. No one could remain unmoved in such an awe‐ inspiring scene; certainly not two, at least, of the three persons who alone stood within the church, silently receiving impressions which come but seldom in a life‐time. And yet, as the same sunbeam, falling upon different objects, will produce different colors, so on these three minds the impressions were stamped according to their preparation to receive them. To the man, in whom the moonlight, bathing him in brightness, revealed the appearance of gentle birth and refined culture, it was merely the human, the miracle of art, the power of man to design and execute; while the pure soul of the fair young girl at his side was struggling through the human up to the divine. The patient old sacristan standing apart, keys in hand, had dwelt for years in the midst of material and spiritual greatness with a faith so simple that he never dreamed it was sublime.
“How grand!” at length exclaimed Mr. Carlisle. “What a power there is in architecture; and how well those master‐minds understood and used this power for the elevation of man!”
“Yes,” replied his young companion; “and it seems to me that in church architecture every detail should be symbolic, and the whole should convey to the soul the impression of some one of God’s attributes. S. Peter’s is so truly the home of the Christian world, and draws the heart so lovingly to itself, that it always seems to express the paternity of God. But to‐ night there is more than this. It speaks to my very soul of the Father, but ‘the Father of an Infinite Majesty.’ ”
It was but a few days since she had become convinced that the guardian who had been to her both friend and father had come to feel for her a love which indeed might include that of father and friend, as the greater includes the less, but which was something more than either. And with the consciousness there came a strange yearning of her heart to go forth and meet his heart with an equal love, to trust herself to the protecting care she knew so well, to yield to the happiness which promised to gild her life with a radiance too dazzling to be all of earth. But there arose a barrier between them, and hence the struggle.
Strange how we play the devil’s advocate against our conscience! Must she respect that barrier? What if he were almost an infidel; would it not be her sweet mission to take heaven by violence, if need be, and by her importunate prayers obtain for him the light of faith? Dangerous sophistry! And yet on this quicksand how many women wreck themselves, instead of steering the bark freighted with the loved soul into the calm waters of truth!
They two, the guardian and his ward, had entered the church while yet the setting sun was irradiating column and statue with a glowing splendor; and they had continued to walk slowly and almost in silence up and down the long nave until the light had faded and darkness had succeeded the short twilight.
They were about to leave the calm influence and the majesty of repose which this vast temple of God ever inspires, when suddenly the moon, rising to a level with the window above the porch, poured its magic‐ working beams upon the pavement. They paused, and, turning to the sacristan, who was about to close the doors for the night, begged a few moments’ delay, which he, with unusual cordiality, granted.
The usual ready answer did not come; for any light conversation was out of harmony with the emotion inspired by such surroundings. Besides, the young girl was struggling with herself and against herself in a contest little suspected by her companion. The wonderful influence of the time and place had brought near the moment of defeat or victory. It is sometimes the way of God with the soul to prepare it gradually for some struggle, and then suddenly and unexpectedly to bring it face to face with the trial, and to permit its whole future to hang upon the decision of a moment. Thank God! to the faithful soul the strength is never wanting. It was such a crisis as this which clouded the bright face and darkened with doubt the mind of one in whom youth and innocence would seem to preclude the possibility of mental conflict.
Mr. Carlisle smiled. “Another of your pretty fancies, Assunta. One would hardly expect to find such grave thoughts beneath this shining hair, which the alchemy of the moonlight is fast turning into gold.”
And what were the busy thoughts which induced so prolonged a silence during that hour’s walk, until the gathering darkness and then the rising moon warned them how the time was passing, of which they had taken so little note? Suffice it to say that the mind of each was filled with the other. With Assunta Howard, the new sentiments kindled in her heart had conjured up the memory of a scene which, associated with her first sorrow, was a living picture to her imagination. Again, as if it were but yesterday, she, a little child, entered the room of her dying mother, and saw her lying pale and beautiful upon her bed, her crucifix in her hand, and beside her the little table covered with white linen, upon which were the exquisite flowers and the still burning candles placed there in honor of her divine Lord, whom she had just received as the Viaticum of her journey home. The little Assunta thought how much her mamma looked like the beautiful S. Catherine, borne in the arms of the lovely angels, which hung above her own bed; and she wondered if the angels would come before she had time to kiss her mother once again. It was almost with a feeling of awe that she whispered in the ear of the good priest who raised her in his arms, “Is mamma a saint now?”
“My precious child,” said the mother, strengthened for this bitter parting by the divine Guest who was reposing in her heart, “mamma must leave her little Assunta, her good little girl. But before long I hope that I shall be with the dear Jesus and his sweet Mother, whom you love so much. So you will be glad for mamma, and always remember how much she loves you. I am not very strong, my darling, but put your arms around my neck, and your curly head close to mine, while I say something to you. You will not understand me now, my poor child, but I know that you will try and remember all, and one of these days you will know what I mean. My darling, when you are grown up to be as tall as mamma, some one will perhaps find a way into that loving little heart. My little daughter, if divine love claims it, and our dear Lord wishes you to be all his own, do not hesitate, but gladly give your life as a sweet offering to him who has chosen you. Give him your whole heart without a fear. But if it is a human love which seeks to make my treasure all its own, think long and well and prayerfully, my child, before you give your heart into its keeping. And, O Assunta! remember, never marry one who does not cherish your faith as you do; who cannot kneel with you before the altar, and love you in God, even as you do him. I do not ask you to promise me this, for I feel that it would not be right to bind you by a promise which you cannot understand. Yet it is your dying mother’s wish. But I must kiss the wondering expression away from those dear eyes. One of these days dear F. Joseph will remind you of my request when you are old enough to understand—will you not, father? But my little girl can remember that she is to be poor papa’s dear comfort, and never forget the little prayer for him every day, that God will give to him—tell me what you ask for papa, my darling?”
The little Assunta answered through her sobs: “I want papa to love my blessed Mother Mary, and I ask God to make him. And, mamma, you said I must say faith; but I don’t know what that means, except when I say it in the catechism, and so I ask God to make him as good as mamma is, and a saint just like S. Joseph in my picture; and I think he will, mamma, because you know he heard me once when I asked him to let me go to school to Sister Rose.”
The mother smiled, as she replied:
“How earnestly I hope so, my daughter! And papa has promised me to leave you with the good Sisters for a long time; so you must please him by being his good, obedient child. And now, my dear, precious little girl, kiss me—once again, my darling. I am very tired, and must rest. Perhaps, when I wake up, I shall see, instead of my darling’s golden curls, the golden gates of the celestial city. When I am gone, Assunta, child of Mary, say every day: ‘Dear Jesus, take mamma home soon.’ Now call papa.”
The priest, who had stood by in silence, came forward and lifted the poor bewildered child down from the bed. He saw that the strength which had until now supported the mother in this time of trial was quite exhausted. She uttered aloud the words, “Thy will, not mine”—words which, since that night beneath the olives in Gethsemane, express both the bitterness of the chalice and the ministry of the angel—then her eyes closed; and though for a short time consciousness remained, they never opened until the resplendent majesty of the glorious humanity of her divine Lord burst upon her soul’s vision.
As the child turned away to obey her mother’s request, the priest began to repeat the Proficiscere, anima Christiana, with which the church so lovingly speeds her children on their last journey; and for the first time she realized that her mother was indeed going from her. She crept softly from the room, only to rush away to her own little chamber, where, kneeling before the picture of S. Catherine, evermore associated with that great, first sorrow, she poured out the grief of her loving, childish heart in sobs and tears.
And it was this scene which was again before the mental eye of the young girl as she stood there in the moonlight, herself so fair a picture. Her sainted mother, with her look of heavenly repose, and the angel‐borne S. Catherine, blended themselves into one image in her mind, while the Holy Spirit was guiding her innocent soul. Suddenly an impulse seized her; perhaps it was what mystic writers call an inspiration. Turning to her guardian, whose eyes had for some time been wonderingly fixed upon her, she hastily exclaimed: “One moment, my friend,” and then walked quickly towards the chapel, where hung the lamp which told of the divine Presence upon the altar.
Mr. Carlisle was quite accustomed to what he was pleased to call her “pretty, graceful piety,” and so, without surprise, he turned to exchange a few words with the patient sacristan, while, on her knees before her Lord, Assunta fought and conquered in the first real battle of her life. She realized fully now the love which seemed to offer her such human happiness, and she knew what it would cost her to refuse it. But then came the remembrance of her mother’s dying words—“Unless he can love you in God”—and her heroic soul gathered up its strength for the consummation of the act of sacrifice. With one appealing, heart‐breaking prayer for help, she bowed her head, and made to God the promise which her mother had not required from the child. And those alone who know what it is to offer up the crown and joy of life in sacrifice can understand the peace and rest which came to her troubled heart, even through the vision of a life robbed of its brightness.
Absorbed as she was, she had forgotten the world outside and its distracting claims until her guardian stood beside her.
“Petite,” he whispered, “in thy orisons be all my sins remembered. But since the list is somewhat long, I think you must not wait to recall them now. Your one moment has lengthened into fifteen by my watch, and I have exhausted my powers of eloquence in my endeavors to charm that good old man into forgetfulness of the flight of time. Can you not leave heaven for earth and us poor mortals? There are so many angels up in heaven, they can afford to spare us our only one.”
Rising hastily, Assunta exclaimed: “I have been very thoughtless, and you, as always, kind and patient. We will go at once.”
Her gentle apologies to the old sacristan added value to the gift she slipped into his hand; and as he closed and locked the door behind them, he muttered to himself:
“She is a saint anyhow, if she is an American.”
As they passed down the steps towards the carriage, Mr. Carlisle suddenly stopped, exclaiming: “Why, child, what is the matter? You have the real martyr‐look on your face. I read there, as in a book, that combination of suffering and triumph which we see in pictures, representing those times when men were not so chivalrous as now, and inflicted persecutions on account of a devotion which is so natural to your sex, and which,” he added, laughing, “is so particularly becoming where the woman is young and pretty. But,” he said uneasily, “I cannot see that expression in the face of my petite. Sunshine is her element; and the cloud which should cast a shadow upon her life would burst forth in thunder over mine. But what is it? Has the moonlight enchanted you?”
“No, dear friend,” replied Assunta, endeavoring to speak gayly. “Enough that you grant me the triumph. The laurel wreath is a woman’s ambition. You need not bestow the martyr’s palm until it is deserved. And now let us go home.”
“Indeed, that is the one thing in this world which I do not intend to do, at least at present. Thanks to my good sister’s well‐timed headache, we have a rare opportunity to follow out our own sweet will in the most unconventional manner. There is no respect for the world and the propriety Clara preaches left in me to‐night. I, for one, shall take advantage of the absence of that inconvenient third party and her friend Mrs. Grundy to drive to the Colosseum. If you decline to accompany me, I will just remind you that the walk home is somewhat long and the hour somewhat late.” Saying which, he gave his order to the coachman, and took his seat beside Assunta in the barouche. After a short silence, he continued:
“The cat‐is‐away sensation takes me back to my school‐boy days. Though I confess dear Clara to be the very best of the tabby race, still she does show her claws sometimes when I propose an escapade that shocks her sense of what is becoming at the advanced age of thirty‐five. To see the Colosseum to‐night is not to be resisted. There is no dampness whatever in the air, and the moon has risen just high enough to make the shadows perfect.”
“I think,” said Assunta, “that it must be a very guilty conscience that needs so many words in its justification. I, for my part, am so strong in innocence that I will meet Clara on my return with an unblushing brow—to speak poetically—as far as the Colosseum is concerned. The evening is certainly lovely enough to reduce even your friend Mrs. Grundy to a spirit of meek acquiescence. ‘How beautiful is night!’ Do you remember the first lines of Thalaba? It must have been just such a moon as this that suggested the opening of that remarkable poem.”
“Did you not read it to me? How can you ask, then, if I remember? However, I did not hear it then for the first time. The dogs, with their human eyes, made a great impression even upon my boyish mind. But here we are.” And jumping down from the carriage, he held out his hand to her.
One moment she hesitated; for, by that instinct which is the shadow of a coming event, she felt that her trial was not yet at an end. But if it must come, why not then? She might never again be so prepared to meet it. There is a fervor of heroism which immediately succeeds a sacrifice that makes us strong to endure. If there is a step to be taken, it is better not to wait until the inevitable reaction is upon us with its enervating influence.
The hesitation was too instantaneous to be remarked, and Assunta allowed her guardian to assist her to alight; and placing her arm within his, they passed the sentinel, and entered the vast amphitheatre. It was indeed a perfect Roman night; and, to an artistic eye, nothing could be more imposing than the strong contrast between the deep gloom beneath those bewildering arches, which threw their dark shadows across the open arena, and the brightness of a winter’s moon. The two walked towards the centre, and seated themselves upon the steps of the large cross which rises in the midst of this mighty relic of heathen Rome. Assunta almost shuddered, as if at an evil omen, when she observed that she had unconsciously placed herself so that the shadow of the cross fell directly upon her, and stretched out its unnatural length at her feet. But even had she been superstitiously inclined, she might well have felt that no place could be so safe and sure as beneath the shadow of the cross; it rested so protectingly on her young head, seeming to stand between her and evil. Soon she realized this, and checked the impulse which, alas! too many of us follow when suddenly we find ourselves close under Calvary—the mount whose crown is a cross, and whose cross is salvation—the impulse to move “out of the shadow into the sun,” out of the cloud which wraps us about in love into the sunlight with which the world seeks to dazzle us into forgetfulness.
Gradually they fell into a quiet conversation, the beauty of the scene, the many associations of the past which cling to these ancient walls, furnishing ample topics. At last Mr. Carlisle, turning suddenly to Assunta, said:
“And how many years is it since your poor father summoned me to his bedside, and told me of the troublesome charge I should find in the convent, to be transferred into my hands when the patience of the nuns had reached the limit of endurance, and my young lady the age of eighteen?”
“It is five years since, my most ungracious and ungrateful guardian. But you will soon be released from duty. The fifteenth of next August will be my twenty‐first birthday. It was because I came into the world on the Feast of the Assumption that my dear mother gave me the name, at which all her good, practical American friends wondered and held up their hands. Well, on that morning I shall offer you freedom, and I shall expect to hear you exclaim, quoting your favorite Shakespeare, ‘For this relief much thanks!’ ”
“And I suppose you will think,” said Mr. Carlisle, somewhat bitterly, “that it will be enough, after all these years, to say, ‘You have been kind to me, my guardian, quite like a father; I am very grateful, and hope that we may meet again’; and with a good‐by and a pretty courtesy shake off the shackles, and take yourself, with all your sunshine, out into the world to make bright the life of others, forgetting him whose life you alone have the power to darken by absence. Ah! child,” he said, his tone changing to tender earnestness, “do you not know with what tie I would bind you to me so that no age could have the right to separate us? Do you think that it is as a father that I love you? That might have been once; but now it is the love of a man of thirty‐five, who for the first time has found his ideal of woman realized. Assunta, do I ask too much? When that day comes of which you speak, will you not give me the right to devote my life to you? You were looking forward to the day which was to give you freedom; and you hesitate to put yourself under bondage? If you knew my love for you, you would believe that I ask but the right to love and protect you always. Have I been so severe a guardian that you dare not trust me as a husband? Assunta, you do not speak. If you cannot love me now, will you not at least let me try to win your love?” And as he looked into the face which she now turned towards him, he exclaimed with a mingling of doubt and triumph, “Child, you do love me!”
It was well for Assunta that she had fought her battle beforehand, else she could hardly have hoped to conquer now. “My dear, kind friend,” she said sadly, “I would have given much to spare you this. It seems indeed a poor return for all you have been to me to reject the love for which I am very grateful. But it must be so. I cannot marry you, Mr. Carlisle.”
The triumph in his face faded; but, fortunately for his diminishing hope, doubt remained.
“Petite,” he said, “I have taken you by surprise. Do not give me your answer now. Let me take home to‐night but a hope and your promise to reconsider your hasty decision, and I will try to be content. But you are so cold, so calm, Assunta. Can it be that I have entirely deceived myself, that perhaps some other”—He paused.
“I am calm, my friend,” she answered, “because there is no struggle of indecision in my mind. There is very great regret that I must give you pain, and it costs me more than you know to do so. I entreat you to be generous—more generous than I have been to you—and end this trying conversation.”
“I cannot end it without one question more; pardon me if I am wrong in asking it. Assunta, there is something that I do not understand. You do not say that you could not love me, but that you cannot marry me. Who or what is it, then, that comes between us?”
“God!” And she spoke the word so reverently that for one moment Mr. Carlisle was subdued and silent. Then the bitterness which was always latent in his nature gained the ascendency, as he replied:
“Some interference of your church, I suppose.”
Assunta was not a saint, and her previous emotion had weakened her powers of self‐control, for she spoke with unusual spirit.
“Yes, the church does interfere, thank God, to save her children, else were she no true mother.” Then, a little ashamed of her warmth of defence, she continued, without seeming to notice Mr. Carlisle’s ironical repetition of her words “save her children”:
“You will no doubt consider me fanatical, but you have a right to know why I refuse the love which I value so much, and which, at the same time, I must beg you to forget. I can never marry one who is not of my faith. I believe that, in a true marriage, there must be more than the tie of human love—there must be the union of soul and the blessing of the church. And more than this, there is the insuperable barrier of a solemn promise made to God in consequence of my dying mother’s last request. Need I say more? And must I lose my best friend because I can only respect and love him ‘as friends love’? I had not looked for so great a sacrifice.” And for the first time the tears stood in her eyes and her voice trembled.
She waited for a few minutes, but no reply came. Then, noticing that the moon had risen above arch and wall, and, pouring its light full upon the open arena, had sent the shadows back to their hiding‐places, she said gently:
“Mr. Carlisle, it is getting late. Shall we go home?”
He started from his moody silence, and, taking in his the hand that rested on the cross, he said:
“Assunta, you are a noble girl; but,” he added with a faint smile, “this conclusion does not make your words easier to bear. But you are shivering. Is it so cold? Come, we will go at once.” And as he led the way towards the carriage, he wrapped her shawl closer about her, saying, “My poor child, how thoughtless I have been!”
Once seated, there was again silence until they reached the entrance of the villa. As they ascended the long stair‐case, Mr. Carlisle paused. His old tenderness of manner had all returned, and he was her guardian, and nothing more, as he said:
“Assunta, I have not been generous. I have taken an unfair advantage of my position, and have told you what I had not intended you should know until you were released from all obligation to me. My child, will you trust your friend and guardian to be only that until next August shall make you free? I cannot promise to give up all hope, but I will not repeat what I have said to‐night. Can you forgive me so far as to go back to our old relations? Will you trust me?”
“Most gladly,” said Assunta. “I feel as if my friend, whom I had mourned as lost, has been restored to me. And, Mr. Carlisle, the day will come when we will both look back without regret upon the decision which was made to‐night under the shadow of the cross.”
“I hope so, even while I doubt, fair prophetess.”
But his thought was of the time when he might even yet win that stern conscience to his views, and then indeed he could afford to think without regret of a past disappointment; while she was thinking of that sweet providence of God which, in compensation for sacrifice, always lets us see in the end that all things are for the best to those who can wait and trust.
Mr. Carlisle opened the drawing‐room door, and entered an apartment which had the rare combination of elegance and comfort, of art and home. Mrs. Grey, his pretty, widowed sister, was fond of what she called the “dim religious,” and therefore the candles were not lighted; but a blazing wood‐fire contributed light as well as warmth, while the silver urn upon the side table hissed out an impatient welcome.
Mrs. Grey herself was lying upon the sofa in the most charmingly artistic costume and attitude; and the injured manner she assumed rather added to her fascination. She idolized her only brother; and when, after a short wedded happiness of two years, he had offered the childless widow a home with him, she had gladly accepted; and after a few months of becoming weeds and retirement, she was so far consoled as to mitigate her crape, and allow her brother’s visitors to gaze from a distance upon her charms. The mitigating process had gone on until she was now the gayest of the gay, except when an occasional headache reminded her that she was mortal, and others that amiability is not to be found in perfection in this world any more than any other virtue. She was too frivolous to satisfy her brother’s deeper nature, but he was as fond of her as her affection for him deserved. She had taken the orphan Assunta into her heart as if she had been a sister; though she insisted that the position of matron to a beautiful young girl was no sinecure.
“Really, Severn,” she exclaimed, as he seated himself beside the sofa, “you must have thought it very entertaining for me to stay alone five mortal hours with only my poor head for company.”
“Dear Clara, if I had dreamed you would be doomed to such a dearth of companionship, I should not have gone at all.”
“Hush! No impertinence,” she said. “Where have you left Assunta?”
“Here I am,” said the young girl, entering the room at the same moment, and answering for herself. “And how is your head, Clara? I hope you have not been suffering all this time.”
“Your sympathy is very pretty and pleasing, Assunta; but, indeed, it is of too mushroom a growth to be very consoling. Confess that this is the first time I have been in your thoughts since you left the house. But,” she exclaimed, suddenly recollecting herself, “you have been out alone all this time. Dear me! I hope you did not meet any one you knew, for what would they think? Where have you been?” And as she spoke, she rose from the couch, and went about the womanly occupation of making tea.
“We went to the Colosseum,” replied her brother; “and truly the night was so lovely that if it had not been for you and your head, who knows but we might have wandered about until the Roman police lighted upon us, and committed us to the care of the Holy Office as vagabonds?”
“Nonsense! I would risk you with Assunta anywhere, as far as that is concerned. She is Papal protection in herself. She is wrapped about in the yellow and white, metaphorically speaking. Besides, I believe it is not exactly the province of the Holy Office to deal with vagabonds, but with heretics.”
“And what am I?”
“Oh! I don’t know anything about religion. Has Assunta been calling you a heretic?”
“Assunta never calls me hard names,” he answered, and he could not forbear adding under his breath: “But she has made me count the cost of unbelief.”
“Has she been trying to convert you?” asked his persistent sister.
“She has offered me every inducement,” was his reply.
“Assunta, here is your tea,” called Mrs. Grey; for the young girl had been arranging her music in another part of the large drawing‐room during the conversation.
“Yes; and she needs it very much, poor child,” said Mr. Carlisle, placing a chair for her. “I was so selfish that I did not even notice it was cold until she was quite chilled through. You find your own head such poor company that you must go with us next time, Clara, and take better care of us.”
And then they relapsed into a quiet tea‐drinking; after which, and the removal of the various articles which constitute the tea service, Mrs. Grey returned to her sofa, while Assunta went to the piano, and played some of Mendelssohn’s “Songs without Words,” and Mr. Carlisle sat in deep thought before the fire.
It was a state of things which Clara could not endure long. Anything like constraint gave her the sensation of a caged bird, and she began at once to beat her wings against imaginary bars.
“I never knew such stupid people. Severn, do please light my candle. I am sure I trust my dreams will be more agreeable, or I shall die of ennui. Good‐night, dear Assunta. Do not fatigue me by your efforts to rival the larks in early rising, if you have any mercy.” And looking the very picture of lovely discontent—if so paradoxical an expression may be allowed—she retired to her own room.
Assunta extended her hand as usual to her guardian. He held it a moment, and then said: “Good‐night, petite; we will begin anew to‐morrow”; and then he returned to his arm‐chair, which he did not leave for many hours. Assunta was very tired; but it was rather with the weight of the cross she had lifted upon her shoulders than from any physical fatigue. She soon dismissed her maid, and, like a victorious soldier wearied with the conflict, she fell into a dreamless sleep, not, however, until she had returned thanks for the victory to the God of battles.
II. Cor Cordium.
It was an established custom of the household of Villa Moroni to be quite independent of each other until the twelve o’clock breakfast afforded occasion for an agreeable reunion. However pleasant an early family gathering may be in many home circles, where the habits and pursuits of all are entirely dissimilar and incongruous we escape much of the roughness of life by not attempting too early an interchange of forced courtesy. Indeed, in Mr. Carlisle’s family it would have been difficult to effect an earlier meeting than the one which suited all parties so well. Mrs. Grey declared that the morning hours with Morpheus were absolutely necessary to her peace of mind. And certainly the drowsy god must have been lavish of bright visions during those hours when the sun was so carefully excluded from the apartment of the fair sleeper; for when at last he permitted the pretty lady to awake from her dreams, she came from the hands of her maid into the outer world the very quintessence of amiability and freshness. Who would feel assured of such a result had she seen the sun rise? True, it might occur to some persons who take severe views of life to wonder what her soul was doing all that time; but it never did to her. The supernatural was to her a terra incognita. She had skimmed over her sorrow as sea‐birds over the waves of the ocean, scarcely bearing away a drop on their spread wings. The waters had never gone over her soul and forced her to cry from out of the depths to the God whom she acknowledged in theory, but persistently ignored in practice. Yet she was so lovely and affectionate, and besides, when she chose to exert herself, she had so much good sense withal, by all means let her enjoy life’s sunshine, and pluck its sweetest roses, carefully guarding her dainty fingers from contact with the hidden thorns. But why waste our time in moralizing over one who would smile in unconsciousness of our meaning if we uttered our thoughts aloud, and charm the frown from our brow by some pretty petulance?
Mr. Carlisle understood as little of the supernatural as his frivolous sister. But he had a deep, earnest nature, which could not be satisfied with the mere outside of life. Mental food he must have, though it may be a question whether the mind is ever fully nourished when the soul is starving. He therefore, after taking his coffee and smoking his cigar, devoted his morning hours to reading or writing in the cosey little room he used as a library.
The carriage was thus left at Assunta’s disposal; and she usually availed herself of it to assist at Mass, accompanied by her maid; and often an errand of mercy or charitable visit was accomplished before her return. It was her guardian’s wish that she should never walk about the city, unless accompanied by himself, else she would many times have preferred to show her American independence by taking a morning stroll with her faithful Marie.
The morning after the eventful visit to the Colosseum was Friday, and on that day Assunta was accustomed to make her confession and receive Holy Communion. She awoke with a stunned feeling, as if recovering from a blow. It was still very early, but, remembering the duties before her, she arose quickly. She was so glad that it was Friday; for good F. Joseph would certainly be in the confessional; as he always expected her, and she felt the need of his counsel. It was the same F. Joseph du Pont who had placed her beside her dying mother, but who had shortly afterwards returned to Rome. When, a few weeks since, she had arrived in the Eternal City, he had welcomed her as a dear child, and she loved and respected him as a true spiritual father. The sun was just rising when she entered the carriage and drove to the Gesù. Her confession was soon made, and after the Precious Blood had poured its healing drops upon her soul through the words of the absolution, she said: “Father, can you spare me a few minutes more this morning? I want your advice.”
“Certainly, my child,” answered the good priest. “It is nearly an hour before my Mass. How can I help you?”
“Last evening,” said Assunta in a low voice, “I did what I believed to be right; but the morning light has only confused my mind, and I see nothing clearly. Father, Mr. Carlisle, my guardian, asked me to marry him.”
“And you, my child?” questioned the priest somewhat anxiously.
“I had been prepared somewhat to expect it. I had thought of my mother’s request, and remembered that it was in accordance with the teaching of the church, and I was impelled to fortify myself by a promise to Almighty God to fulfil to the letter my dear mother’s wish. Therefore, when the question came, I could only refuse.”
“It cost you something to do this, I can see, my poor child, and this morning you are suffering from the revenge our human nature takes upon us when we have done it violence. Let us look at the matter calmly before God. I believe that you are right, but it will help you to look at both sides of the question. It is a reasonable service that God requires of us; and, be very sure, he never leads us to the altar of sacrifice without bestowing upon us the strength and generosity we need to place our offering upon it. Perhaps you were a little too impulsive in binding yourself by anything like a vow. We must always be very careful not to mistake impulse for inspiration. However, as I understand you, your mind was already decided, and the promise to God was to act as a protection to yourself against your own human weakness. Am I right?”
“Partly, father,” replied Assunta, “and yet, as I knelt before the Blessed Sacrament, I felt that the sacrifice was required of me in a way I thought I could not mistake.”
“Then, my child, doubtless the Holy Spirit has inspired it for some end that we do not now see. But, aside from that, without that additional and conclusive obstacle in the way of such a marriage, I think you acted rightly. Our holy mother, the church, is very wise, as well as very lenient; and it is with great reluctance that she risks the soul of one of her precious children by placing it under the constant influence of one without faith. It is very true that while there is wisdom in knowing how to keep a rule, there is still greater wisdom in knowing when judiciously to make the exception. And I confess that, from a human point of view, yours would seem to be an exceptional case. You are quite alone in the world; and your guardian has been, and no doubt would always be, a faithful friend. As a man, I esteem him highly for his many noble qualities. The world will unquestionably look upon such a marriage as eminently fitting; and so it would be, but for the one thing which is so important. We, however, cannot act upon human principles, as if this world were all. It was not without reason, my child, that your poor mother said those last words to you. When she was married, her faith was as strong, her life as true and pure, as yours. But your father’s intellect was powerful, and her love for him so great that she yielded to him until she nearly lost her soul. God be blessed for his mercy, she had the grace to die as a saint, and is now, as I hope, in heaven. But I have seen her in an agony of remorse such as I should grieve indeed to witness in this dear child of hers. The last two years of her life after her return to her faith were truly years of martyrdom, passed in the struggle to reconcile those duties which never should conflict—her love of God and duty to her husband. It was from the very depths of her own sad experience that she pleaded with her little girl. My child, that mother is praying for you now.”
“I believe it, father,” said Assunta, deeply moved by this story of her beloved mother, which she heard for the first time.
“So, my child, the past is all as it should be; and now for the future. May God grant you the grace to be always as good and brave as you were last night! I would not discourage you, and yet I must remind you that the sacrifice is only begun. It is not likely that your guardian, with only human motives to urge him, will give up so easily where his heart is engaged. He will, of course, do all he can to turn you from your purpose, and no doubt your own heart will sometimes plead on his side. Here lies your further trial. And yet I cannot, as under other circumstances I should do, advise you to shun the temptation. You cannot leave your guardian’s care until you are of age; therefore you must face the trial. But I trust you entirely, my child—that is, I trust to the purity of your heart and the power of grace that is in you to guide your actions, even your very thoughts. You must try to be as you have been before; try to forget the lover in the guardian. Avoid coldness of manner as a safeguard; for it would only place you in an unnatural position, and would inevitably strengthen in the end the feelings you would conquer. It is not easy to give an exact rule of conduct. Your own good sense will teach you, and God will be with you. And, my child, you must pray for your guardian, and at the same time it must be without any future reference to yourself in connection with him. Is this too hard for you? Do your best, and grace will do the rest. By remembering him before God you will learn lo purify your feelings towards him—to supernaturalize them; and by committing your future unreservedly to the loving providence of God, your prayer will be a constant renewal of the act of sacrifice you have made. Make it heroic by perseverance. Do I explain myself clearly, my child?”
“Yes, father, perfectly so; and I feel so much comforted and strengthened.”
“Well, these are but the words of your father, spoken out of his love for you. Go now, child, and prepare to receive your divine Lord, and listen for the words of peace and comfort he will speak to your soul. To him I commend you with all confidence. One thing more—remember that there is nothing which helps us so much in such a trial as acts of charity towards the poor and the suffering. I know that you never fail in this respect; but now especially I would urge you to forget yourself in sympathy for others as occasion offers, though you must always recognize those claims which your position in society entails upon you. Come to me freely whenever you feel that I can help you. God bless you! I shall remember you in the Holy Sacrifice.”
The good priest went to vest himself for Mass, while the young girl returned to the place before the altar where Marie was patiently awaiting her. She was herself a pious woman, and time spent in church never seemed long to her.
When the Mass was over and her thanksgiving ended, Assunta returned home with her heart lightened of its burden. She dressed herself for breakfast with her usual care and taste, and, finding that it still wanted half an hour or more before the great gun of Sant’ Angelo would boom out the mid‐ day signal, she seated herself at the piano, and song and ballad followed each other in quick succession. Her voice and manner were in harmony with herself. Her music soothed, but never excited. It had not the dangerous power to quicken the pulse and thrill the heart with passionate emotion, but it roused the better feelings, while it conveyed to the listener a restful, satisfied impression which ambitious, brilliant performers rarely impart. She was just beginning Cherubini’s beautiful Ave Maria when Mr. Carlisle entered the room.
“Here is our early bird welcoming us in true songster fashion. Do not stop yet, petite,
“My soul in an enchanted boat, Which, like a sleeping swan, doth float Upon the silver waves of thy sweet singing.”
But as Assunta had already left the piano to greet her guardian and his sister, he continued:
“By the way, Clara, my quotation has suggested to me an answer to your question. Assunta, my fickle sister, who a week ago was ready to live and die in a picture‐gallery, has just now assured me that the very mention of a picture or statue is a fatigue to her; and she has mercilessly compelled me to find some new and original bit of sight‐seeing for to‐day. We cannot, of course, visit any church, since the Holy Father is, unfortunately for her, not an iconoclast. But, Clara, what do you say to making a Shelley day of it? We will take Prometheus Unbound with us to the Baths of Caracalla, and there, on the very spot which inspired the poem, we can read parts of it. And when we are tired, we can prolong our drive to the cemetery, and visit Shelley’s grave, as a proper conclusion. How do you like the plan?”
“Oh!” said Mrs. Grey, “it will be deliciously sentimental; only breakfast is announced, and I am in a famished condition. I was up so early this morning. It must have been before eleven when that stupid girl called me, and it is an hour since I took my coffee.”
“Poor Clara!” said Mr. Carlisle, “your condition is truly pitiable. I should think you might find the almshouse a pleasant change.” Mrs. Grey seemed only amused at her brother’s sarcasm, when suddenly she checked her silvery laugh, and, springing from the table, at which she had just seated herself, she went towards Assunta with such a pretty, penitential air that she was quite irresistible.
“My dear child,” she exclaimed, “speaking of almshouses reminds me of something you will never forgive. Promise me not to scold, and I will devote myself henceforth to the cultivation of my memory.”
“What is it?” asked Assunta, smiling at her earnestness. “I am sure such a pleading look would force forgiveness from a stone.”
“Well, then, for my confession, since you absolve me beforehand. While you were out yesterday morning that miserable woman of yours sent word that she was sick, and something about not having a mouthful of bread in the house. I forget the whole message. My maid saw the girl who came, and I promised to tell you. But you remember my wretched headache. You forgave me, you know.”
Assunta looked both grieved and vexed for a moment, and then she controlled herself enough to say:
“I must attach a condition to my forgiveness, Clara. Will you let me drive to the house on our way to the baths? I will only detain you a few minutes.”
“Heavens! Assunta, you will not go there yourself?” exclaimed the astonished Clara. “I dare say it is some filthy hole, and perhaps the woman may have fever. Send a messenger with some money. I’ll give her five dollars.”
“Thank you. I will take the five dollars to her willingly,” replied the young girl; “but I will take myself too. I can easily walk,” she added, looking for permission to her guardian, as the occasion was exceptional.
Displeasure at his sister’s thoughtlessness was evident in Mr. Carlisle’s tone, as he said:
“You will go in the carriage, Assunta, and I will accompany you. We will return for Clara after the visit. Giovanni, order a basket of provisions to be put up before one o’clock, and be ready yourself to go with us and take charge of it; and now that the matter is settled, we will have some breakfast.”
Poor Mrs. Grey looked disconcerted; but she thought it her duty to make a further protest.
“You surely will not wear that dress, Assunta? It will never be fit to put on again.”
Mr. Carlisle laughed outright at this new objection, while Assunta said with a smile:
“Why, Clara, have you so soon forgotten your admiration of Mrs. Browning’s Court Lady, who put on her silks and jewels, and went to the hospital as to the court of the king? On the same principle I should be arrayed in purple and fine linen, for I am going to the court of the King of kings; and if I am not very much mistaken, this same poor woman, whose contact you fear so much, will find her place very near to the throne in the ranks of the celestial nobility. However, I should be sorry to ruin my new dress, as you predict, and I will be very careful.”
The breakfast was soon despatched, the carriage came punctually to the door, and Mr. Carlisle and his ward drove rapidly towards the miserable home of the poor woman, who, in the midst of her poverty, possessed a faith at which Assunta often wondered.
“You are very kind, Mr. Carlisle,” she said. “I am sorry I have given you so much trouble.”
“In this case,” he replied, “the trouble is not altogether disinterested. I must myself find out what the sickness is before I can allow you to enter the house. I cannot let you run the risk of fever or any other malignant disease. You see I came as a sort of police.”
“But,” said Assunta, touched by his thoughtful care of her, at the same time anxious not to be prevented making what amends she could, “I am so accustomed to visiting the sick, I do not think there can be any danger.”
“My child,” he said, “as long as your life can be guarded by me, it shall be done. You are under obedience still, you know.” She dared not insist; and, indeed, at the same moment they reached the wretched dwelling. After exacting from her the promise to remain in the carriage, Mr. Carlisle ascended the broken stair‐case. In a few moments he returned, and, without saying a word, he took the basket from Giovanni, and again went up the stairs. As he reappeared, he said to the coachman:
“Drive on slowly. I will walk a little. You must not go in, Assunta.”
He continued to follow the carriage at a quick pace for a quarter of a mile; then he hailed the driver, and took his seat beside the wondering girl, saying:
“I thought it would be best to give myself an airing after leaving that room. Petite, the poor woman died two hours since of a terrible fever. You could have done nothing, and, as usual, Clara was mistaken in the message. They sent word to their ‘guardian angel,’ as they are pleased to call a certain little friend of mine, of their suffering and need, but with the particular warning that she should on no account direct her flight that way, lest she should expose the unangelic part of her nature to contagion. I left the basket, and money enough to supply all the temporary wants of the children; but it was a dreadful scene,” he added with a shudder.
He had striven to speak lightly at first, because he saw the distress in Assunta’s anxious face and tearful eyes. But his own feelings were strangely stirred, and he forgot his self‐control, as he continued, in a voice low and husky from the very intensity of emotion:
“Child, I am in an agony of terror at the bare thought of what might have been the result had you been exposed to that atmosphere, whose every breath was poison. My God! when I think of the danger you have so narrowly escaped. Oh! if I might always shield this dear life at any risk to mine.”
“My life is in God’s hands,” said Assunta coldly, as she gently disengaged the hand which her guardian had clasped in his, as if he would show, by the action, the power of his love to avert any and every evil which might threaten her.
Poor child! she longed to ask more about the woman’s death, and especially to express her gratitude to Mr. Carlisle for his kindness; but she dared not face his present mood. However, as they again reached the villa, she said hurriedly and in a tone full of anxiety:
“Mr. Carlisle, you have exposed yourself to great danger, and I do not forget that it was for my sake. I shall not be satisfied unless you promise me that you will take every possible precaution to avoid any future evil consequences. I should never forgive myself if any harm came to you.”
Her eyes lowered beneath the look he for one moment fixed upon her appealing face; then, with the exclamation, “An unblessed life is of little consequence,” he sprang from the carriage, and, saying to Giovanni, “I will summon Mrs. Grey,” he dashed up the stone staircase.
Assunta sank back with a feeling almost of despair at the task before her. Even if she had not to struggle with her own heart, it would have been hard enough to steer the right, straight course between these contradictory moods in her guardian; one moment so tender and thoughtful, the next so full of bitterness. How could she reconcile them? How should she ever be able to bear her burden, if this weight were added to it day by day?
Assunta possessed the gift—which, advanced to a higher degree, might be termed the natural science of the saints—of receiving religious impressions and suggestions from the natural objects about her. Now, as in a listless manner she looked around, her eyes fell upon the snow‐crowned hills which bound the Roman horizon, and rested there. She had no thought of the classic associations which throng those mountain‐sides and nestle in the valleys. She needed strength, and instantly the words were present to her mind: “I have lifted up my eyes to the mountains, from whence help shall come to me.” And following out the consoling train of thought, she passed from those peaceful Roman hills to Jerusalem and the mountains which surround it, even “as the Lord is round about his people.” Then, by a natural transition, she turned her thoughts to the poor woman who had just left behind her poverty, privation, and suffering, and, accompanied only by that hope and love which had endured and survived them all, had entered, so she confidently hoped, into the possession of God—the Beatific Vision. What a contrast between the temporal and eternal!
Her silent requiem for the departed soul was interrupted by Mrs. Grey’s bright presence and merry voice.
“I cannot imagine what you have been doing to Severn,” she said; “but he is in one of his unaccountable conditions of mind, and declares that he will not go to drive—pressing business, etc. I am sure we can do without him very well, all but the reading part, which had been assigned to him. It is so late, at any rate, that perhaps we had better give up the baths, and drive at once to the cemetery. You see I have secured an excellent substitute for our recreant cavalier,” she added, as a gentleman emerged from the massive doorway. “Come, Mr. Sinclair, we are waiting for you.”
There was just a shade of stateliness in Assunta’s manner as she greeted the somewhat elegant man of the world, who seated himself opposite to her. She would gladly have been dispensed from the drive altogether, feeling as she did then; nevertheless, she submitted to the necessity which could hardly be avoided.
“Truly, Miss Howard,” said Mr. Sinclair, as they drove away, “I begin to believe the ancient goddesses no myths. Flora herself would find in you a worthy rival. It is not often that I have the happiness to be placed opposite two such lovely ladies.”
“Very good for a finale, Mr. Sinclair,” replied Mrs. Grey; “but if you were to speak your mind, you would be calling me Ceres, or something else suggestive of the ‘sere and yellow leaf.’ ”
“That is a gross injustice, not only to me, but to yourself,” answered Mr. Sinclair in his most gallant tone. “Have not the poets ever vied with each other in disputes as to the respective merits of spring, with its freshness, and the rich bloom of early summer? And permit me to add that neither has yet been able to claim a victory. In such a presence it would be rash indeed for me to constitute myself a judge.”
“Unwise, certainly,” rejoined Mrs. Grey, “to take into your hand such an apple of discord. Women and goddesses are pretty much alike, and the fate of Paris might be yours. Remember the ten years’ siege.”
“Ah!” said Mr. Sinclair, “there you do not frighten me. Welcome the ten years’ siege, if during that time the fair Helen were safe within the walls. After ten years one might perhaps be reconciled to a surrender and a change of scene, since even the lovely Trojan’s beauty must have lost the freshness of its charms by that time.”
“O faithless men!” said Mrs. Grey, very much as if she were pronouncing an eulogy.
“Miss Howard,” said Mr. Sinclair, “you are silent. Does our classic lore fail to enlist your interest, or are you studying antiquities?”
“Pardon me,” replied Assunta; “it was rude in me to be so abstracted. I must excuse myself on the ground of sympathy for suffering which I have been unable to alleviate.”
“By the way, Assunta,” exclaimed Mrs. Grey, “how did you find your protégée?”
“She is dead,” replied the young girl, softly.
“Oh! I am so sorry. How very sudden! Mr. Sinclair, you were telling me about the Braschi ball when Severn interrupted us. When did you say it is to be?”
“In about three weeks,” replied the gentleman. “I hope that you ladies will be there. Our American blondes are greatly in demand among so many black eyes. You are going, are you not?”
“Most certainly we shall,” answered Mrs. Grey with ready confidence, the future being to her but a continuation of to‐day. The cloud that might appear on her horizon must be much larger than a man’s hand to turn her attention to it from the sunshine immediately about her.
And so, between pleasantry and gossip, the time passed until the carriage stopped at the gate of the cemetery.
“You have chosen a very serious termination to your afternoon’s drive, Mrs. Grey,” said Mr. Sinclair, as he assisted the ladies to alight. “I always carefully avoid whatever reminds me of my latter end.”
“Let me play Egyptian coffin, then, for once,” replied Mrs. Grey, but with a merry laugh that belied her words. “I will lead you to a contemplation of the fate of genius. I dote on Shelley, and so we have made a pilgrimage to his grave.”
“You have every appearance of a pilgrim about to visit some sacred shrine,” said Mr. Sinclair with an echo of her bright laugh. “Lead on, fair pilgrim princess; we humble votaries will follow wherever your illustrious steps may guide.”
A small, horizontal slab, almost hidden beneath the pyramid of Caius Cestus—itself a tomb—is all that marks the resting‐place of the gifted, ill‐fated Shelley.
“Here is your shrine, my lady pilgrim,” said Mr. Sinclair, as he removed some of the green overgrowth from off the inscription.
“Somebody make a suitable quotation,” said Mrs. Grey. “You know we ought to be sentimental now.”
Assunta at once rejoined:
“ ‘How wonderful is Death— Death and his brother, Sleep!’
Poor Shelley! But I do not like the inscription, Clara; or rather, I do not like such an expression on such a grave.
“What do you mean, dear Assunta?” said Mrs. Grey, looking at her as if she were talking Sanscrit. “I think it is lovely. Cor cordium—the heart of hearts, is it not? I am sure nothing could be more appropriate.”
“It does not seem to me appropriate,” answered Assunta; “but then you know I always do have strange ideas—so you say. Why should Cor cordium be written over the ashes of one who was burned in true pagan fashion, and who, as I think, should rather be pitied for what he did not do, with his marvellous gifts, than loved for anything he has done?”
As she paused, a voice beside her exclaimed, “I am sure I cannot be mistaken. Is not this Miss Howard?”
Assunta turned and welcomed with a pleased surprise the young man who appeared so unexpectedly, then she presented him to her companions as Mr. Percival, of Baltimore, the brother of her only intimate school friend. He was tall and slender, not handsome, but with a manly and at the same time spiritual face. His eyes were his finest feature, but their beauty was rather that of the soul speaking through them. Assunta had not seen him since her school days at the convent, and then she had known him but slightly; so she was herself surprised at her ready recognition of him.
“And what has brought you so far away from my dear Mary?” she asked after the first greetings were over.
“I am on that most unenviable of expeditions—health‐seeking,” was his reply. “After graduating at college, the physician doomed me to a year of travel; and so we meet again at Shelley’s grave!”
“Yes,” said Mrs. Grey, “and Assunta and I were in the midst of an amiable quarrel when you found us out. I engage you on my side, Mr. Percival. It is about the inscription, which I like and Assunta does not, for reasons which are Greek to me.”
“I was just going to say,” said Assunta, “that Cor cordium seemed to me a sacred phrase wholly misapplied, though I have no doubt the irreverence was unintentional.” And turning to Mr. Percival with that sort of spiritual instinct which teaches us where to look for sympathy even in a crowd, she continued:
“I hope that I am not guilty of the same want of reverence in thinking that if those words are to be inscribed on any grave, they should be written upon that stone which was rolled against the opening of the new sepulchre in the garden, and sealed with the Roman seal; for there the true Cor cordium was enclosed.”
“Mr. Percival, I see that you have gone over to the ranks of the enemy,” said Mrs. Grey; “and if Mr. Sinclair deserts me, I shall never be able to stand my ground against two such devotees.”
“I am yours to command, Mrs. Grey,” replied Mr. Sinclair with an expression of contempt in his tone. “But perhaps it might be well to transfer our operations to another battle‐field. Allow me to offer you a souvenir of the occasion.” And he handed to each of the ladies a sprig of green from beside the marble tablet.
Assunta quite simply shared hers with Mr. Percival at his request, and then they retraced their steps. As they approached the carriage, Mrs. Grey very cordially begged Mr. Percival to occupy the fourth seat, which he reluctantly declined, as also the invitation to visit them.
“For,” said he, “to‐morrow I start for Jerusalem; and, Miss Howard, when I am kneeling, as I hope to do, in the Chapel of the Holy Sepulchre, I shall remember you and those suggestive words of yours.”
“You could not do me a greater kindness,” replied Assunta, “than to remember me there. And when you return, what do you intend to do in the way of a profession? You see I am interested for Mary’s sake. I know what her desire is.”
An hour before, if this question had been proposed to him, Augustine Percival would have been able to give a probable answer. Though he had not yet decided, his few days’ sojourn in Rome had stirred up within him a feeling which had been latent even in his boyhood, and from the depths of the Catacombs and beneath the lofty domes he had thought he heard an interior voice which whispered to him, “Follow me.” And now a fair young face had made him hesitate, though, in justice to him, it must be added that no mere charm of beauty would have touched him for a moment. It was the purity and beauty of mind and soul, which he read and appreciated, that caused him to reply to Assunta’s question:
“The matter of my future vocation will be left, I think, until my return.”
Then, with many pleasant farewell words, they parted; and, except to mention the meeting to her friend in her next letter, Assunta thought no more of the thread of another life which had for a moment crossed hers.
That evening there were guests at the villa; and, as usual, Assunta’s amiability was taxed by the repeated demands for music. As she sat absently turning over the leaves before her in one of the intervals, Mr. Carlisle came and stood beside her.
“Petite,” he said, “I have been to see the authorities about the family of that poor woman who died to‐day, and everything will be arranged comfortably for them; so you need feel no further anxiety!”
“How good you are, dear friend!” she replied. “God bless you for it!”
“It is your blessing that I want,” said he. “It was for you that I took the little trouble you are pleased to magnify into something deserving of gratitude.”
“Please do not say so, Mr. Carlisle,” said Assunta earnestly. “You do such noble acts, and then you spoil them by your want of faith.”
The word was unfortunately chosen.
“If by faith,” Mr. Carlisle replied, “you mean your Catholic faith, I cannot force myself to accept what does not appeal to my reason. I can respect an honest conviction in others when I am in turn treated with equal liberality; but,” he added in a low tone, “I could hate the faith, so called, which comes between me and the fulfilment of my dearest wish.”
There was a call for more music, and so there was no opportunity, even had there been inclination, for a reply. But as Assunta was passing wearily to her room after the last guest had departed, Mr. Carlisle stopped her, and, after his usual good‐night, he said: “Forgive me, child. I have not been myself to‐day.”
Two weeks afterwards, when her guardian lay prostrate on his bed in the delirium of fever, Assunta remembered those few words, which at the time had given her pain, with that agony of sorrow which can only be aroused by the knowledge that the soul of one beloved may at any moment be launched upon the immeasurable ocean of eternity, rudderless and anchorless.
Church Music. Concluded.(167)
II. (Continued.)
Having settled that plain chant should have a part, and indeed a large part, in our choral service, but that figured music should not be excluded, it remains for us to say what figured music is to be used in alternation with plain chant, or substituted when plain chant is completely set aside.
Some seem to imagine that no figured music is suitable for the church but that which is termed alla Palestrina. They urge the great fitness of this species of music for church purposes; for, like the plain chant, it is ancient, can boast a long and exclusive connection with the Catholic ceremonial, admits of no personal display, is dissimilar from the music of the world, never alters the words or does violence to them, is not only distinctly ecclesiastical but papal, and quite as solemn and grave as plain chant, while it is of wider range and of far more pleasing effect. Though written in strict measure, it follows the tonality of plain chant. Its origin is holy, since S. Charles and S. Philip were intimately associated with Palestrina. Then, again, it has the best possible authorization—that of having been used for the last three hundred years by the popes, to the edification of the whole world, non‐Catholic as well as Catholic.
We admit all these claims. But against the use of this species of music amongst us there is a fatal objection.
It was written to be sung without instrumental accompaniment, which, when used in conjunction with it, always mars its effect; and hence, though nothing more suitable can be imagined for Lent and Advent, when, according to the rubrics (too often slighted), the sound of the organ should not be heard, we cannot be expected to sing it at other times; for we absolutely need the organ to make amends for our scanty numbers, our lack of proficiency in execution, to support the voices, and to give variety to the service.
The organ is regarded by us as essentially a church instrument by its nature and the associations we connect with it; indeed it never fails to arouse in us deeper feelings of reverence and devotion, and we cannot do without it.
An attempt was made in several of the German cathedrals some years ago to revive music of the Palestrina style, to the exclusion of the more modern; but circumstances, we think, have already led to some modifications of the strict rules first proposed.
Practically, we can hardly hope ever to exclude from our churches modern figured music—as Benedict XIV. says, that would be an extreme measure; but we can exclude, and are bound, he says, to exclude, such compositions of it as are unsuitable for church purposes.
But how shall we determine what is suitable and what is not?
Music, it will be said, is a mere matter of taste, and the adage has it, De gustibus non est disputandum.
But there is bad taste as well as good taste. Moreover, church music is a matter of principle as well as of taste, and good taste in this case is closely allied to principle.
Taste is the instinct or habit, or rather the instinct following habit, and perfected by it, whereby we are enabled to discern and detect what is most proper and congruous in each province of art.
Now, the reason for employing music in the service of the church is religious or it is none. Unless the musical sounds, therefore, subserve the meaning of the text, they are better away. “Where the religious song is accompanied by musical instruments,” says Benedict XIV., “these must serve solely for adding to its force, so that the sense of the words penetrate deeper into the hearts of the faithful, and their spirit, being roused to the contemplation of spiritual things, be elevated towards God and the love of divine objects.” That style of music, then, will be the most religious which deals most reverently with its subject, and gives the least scope to the play of irreligious dispositions. Being the most suitable to its subject, it will also be in the truest taste.
Hence that music will be the most suitable and the best which in its construction will correspond most perfectly with the peculiar spirit of each festival and with the special character of each service; which will most naturally and reverently render the sense of the words without changing, inverting, or abridging them, or marring their sense by useless and tiresome repetitions,—which, in other words, will speak as distinctly and as religiously to the ear as the altar, the vestments of the priest, and the ceremonies speak to the eye. Music and ceremonies, and everything connected with them, should be in the most perfect harmony, reminding all that they are in the house of God, and assembled in his presence to pay him homage on earth like that rendered him by the members of the church triumphant in heaven.
Hence, 1, church music should not in any way recall the world, its temptations or its pleasures; and the prohibition made by popes and councils against the introduction into the church of compositions written originally for the theatre or the concert‐room, but with other words, or of compositions written for the church, but in a style suggestive of the stage, is so evidently just and proper that any one who objects to it must be wanting in common sense.
“Humana nefas miscere divinis” finds its application here. To carry the minds of worshippers in the church back to the theatre by the music is a crime, for it is a desecration.(168)
Hence, 2, not even the feelings of the congregation should ever tempt the director of the music of the church to admit what is not in every respect most suitable to the place, the time, and the occasion. Fortunately, we have no difficulty here in the United States with our own people. The only trouble is when we go out of our way to satisfy the expectations of non‐ Catholics who occasionally are present at our services, or of a few musicians not otherwise interested in the services.
Hence, 3, undue prominence should never be given to individual singers. It is, to say the least, very distracting.
Hence, 4, the director of the music should never be willing to sacrifice the liturgy, even the least part of it, to the exigencies of the music, whatever they may happen to be; but, on the contrary, he should be ever ready, if need be, to sacrifice even the most admirable musical numbers to the exigencies of the ceremonial.
In other words, he should never forget that music is one of the many accessories to our public worship—never the essential—and is never to be heard merely for its own sake.
This is brought out clearly and distinctly in two decrees that have for us in this section of country the full force of law—a decree of the Second Plenary Council of Baltimore, and another decree of the Third Provincial Council of New York:
“That all may be done according to prescribed order, and that the solemn rites of the church may be preserved in their integrity, we admonish pastors of churches to labor earnestly to remove those abuses which in our country have crept into the church chant. Let them therefore provide that the music be subservient to the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass and the other offices, and not the divine offices to the music. Let them also bear in mind that, according to the ritual of the church, it is not lawful to sing hymns in the vernacular languages at High Mass and at solemn Vespers.”(169)
“At solemn Masses singers are prohibited from so protracting the Offertory, the Sanctus, and the Benedictus that the celebrant is obliged to delay till they have made an end of singing.”(170)
The general principles we have laid down will be still better understood if we examine the declarations made by the church through several of the popes.
The most notable and the most precious of these are the brief of Benedict XIV. already mentioned, and the rules for composers given by Pius IX.
Pope Benedict XIV., in his Constitution Annus 19, February, 1749, begins by laying down the general principle that the music of the church must be so ordered that nothing profane, nothing worldly, and especially nothing theatrical, be heard in it. He repeats this principle again and again, and says that there is no one who does not detest operatic music in the church, and who does not look for and desire a difference between the music of the church and the music of the stage.
He then reminds us of the Constitution of Pope Innocent XII., by which it is forbidden to sing at solemn Mass and Vespers motets or hymns that are not a part of the Mass or the Vespers of the day; that is, at solemn Mass, the only pieces allowed to be sung besides the Kyrie, Gloria, Credo, Sanctus, Benedictus, and Agnus Dei are the Introit, Gradual, Offertory, and Communion of the Mass of the day (a single exception being made for Corpus Christi, when the O Salutaris! or other hymn of the office of the Blessed Sacrament may be sung at the Offertory), and at solemn Vespers only the Antiphons and the proper hymn with the Psalms.
He then proceeds to condemn frequent repetitions of the same words, and places the chief distinction between theatrical music and church music in this: that in the former the words are made quite subservient to the singing and the accompaniment; whereas in the latter the words are rendered intelligibly, and the music is made subservient to them.
He next instructs bishops to banish from the church absolutely all instruments except the organ; but with the organ he allows the use of violins, violas, violoncellos, contrabassos, and bassoons, because these add, he says, to the force of its tones; but he prohibits cymbals, horns, trombones, oboes, flutes—in general, all wind‐instruments, as also harps and guitars, because all these, he says, recall the theatre.
He directs that while the singing is going on the instruments must merely accompany, never take the place of, the voices.
He allows suitable symphonies when these are dissociated from the office proper—probably meaning the pieces played at the beginning and the end of service, and to fill up pauses when the choir is silent.
He closes by urging the Italian bishops to comply with these instructions faithfully, that foreign bishops coming to Rome may see in Italian, and especially in Roman, churches the public offices properly carried out, and thus be induced to imitate them.
The present vicar‐general of Pius IX., Cardinal Patrizzi, by order of the Pope, wrote two letters to composers of church music in Rome, on the 18th and 20th of November, 1856, and in them he so far supplements the directions of Benedict XIV. that we have wherewith to determine without much difficulty what music is, and what music is not, admissible in Catholic choirs.
In his first letter he says:
“The most sustained gravity is to be observed, and nothing introduced suggestive of theatrical pieces, either by the arrangement or by the melody; too many repetitions, and all changes and arbitrary inversions of the words are to be avoided.
“At Mass, Exposition, and Benediction of the Blessed Sacrament, and other sacred ceremonies, organists are forbidden to execute the whole or parts of theatrical pieces, or to play in a too florid or distracting style; and their music ought to be such as to promote the recollection and devotion of the faithful.
“As we consider an interruption between the various parts of the words of the liturgy very unbecoming, even when any verse is finished, as being an occasion of distraction and noise among the musicians and hearers, we order that every part of the offices, especially at Mass, shall be sung through continuously, so that the Kyrie, Gloria, and other parts may each have a unity of structure.”
In his second letter he teaches composers the necessity of their having for their object the praise of God and the devotion of the faithful, and shows how church music in its whole construction ought to differ from that of the stage.
“If all composers,” he says, “drew their inspirations from piety and religion, as some of them have the good spirit to do; if they always kept before their minds that their music ought to tend to praise God in his holy temple, and to excite the devotion of the faithful, there would have been but little need to make rules for musical composition. But it is only too true that, in some instances, to the great surprise of the truly religious among the faithful, there has been heard in the churches certain music unworthy of the house of God, and showing that the composer, far from having in view the service of the divine Majesty and the edification of his hearers, has only aimed at displaying his own imagination, and that he has forgotten the church and written for the theatre, not only by borrowing its style of melody, but also by introducing portions of theatrical music, to which he has sometimes violently adapted the words of the sacred liturgy. In order that so great a scandal may not be renewed, and that those who write music for the church may have a rule to keep them within due bounds, we prescribe as follows:
“1. Music destined for execution in the churches ought to be distinguishable from profane and theatrical music, not only in its melodies, but also in its whole character; hence
“2. Those movements are forbidden which would not be naturally inspired by the sacred character of the words, and which would be suggestive of the theatre.
“3. We forbid too lively or exciting movements; if the words require cheerfulness and joy, let it be expressed by the sweetness of religious mirth, and not by the unbridled liveliness of the dance.
“4. In all movements, whether slow or quick, the words of the sacred text must be pronounced clearly, and never more quickly than in ordinary discourse.
“5. The words must be put to music in the order which they occupy in the sacred text. When the sense has been entirely expressed, it will be allowable to repeat some word of it, or some phrase of it, as may be necessary, without inversion, without confusion of the sense, and with the required moderation.
“6. All the words must be sung, and none added nor any omitted. It is not allowed for one syllable of them to be changed.
“7. We forbid ariettas, duets, and trios in imitation of theatrical pieces. Recitative and everything approaching to it is forbidden; as also operatic finales, such as are known by the term cabaletta.
“8. As regards instruments, long introductions and long preludes are to be avoided, whether with full orchestra or with solos.
“9. Without depriving instrumental music of the grace and coloring which art and good taste suggest, an effeminate softness is to be avoided, as well as immoderate noise, which is always tiring and unbecoming in the house of God.
“10. The composer must not forget that the use of instrumental music in the churches is in a state of simple toleration; the object of it must be to sustain and enrich the singing, to be far from overpowering it, or from enfeebling and deadening it, or reducing it to a mere accessory.”
These rules, if adhered to, would give us music which would meet the requirements both of devotion and of art; nor do they exclude such variety as the diversity of our feelings calls for. It could, by its placid, quiet, and smooth‐flowing measures, soothe and subdue us into that mood which best fits us to offer to God reverential homage, and to make acts of resignation when we feel the hand of affliction bearing heavily upon us; but also, by more joyous and inspiriting strains, dispose us to praise God according to the immensity of his greatness, in joy and gladness, on loud‐ sounding cymbals (in cymbalis jubilationis), and send us back to the battle of life with renewed courage and strength.
But, it will be asked, can this style of music which we have just sketched be had? Most certainly.
It is true our organists do not know it; for they are lamentably ill‐read in musical lore. They seem to imagine that whatever is published as music for the service of the Catholic Church is to be regarded as “Catholic music,” and perfectly proper, and they scarcely dream of looking further than to the publications or importations of Ditson, Peters, and Novello, or of critically examining these to test their fitness for the purposes of divine worship. To take the two best composers of their class, how few organists have taken the trouble to study critically the Masses of Haydn and Mozart. Of the sixteen Masses composed by Haydn, there are only four in which the words are all correct. These are Nos. 4, 5, 6, and 9. All the others are consequently defective.
In Nos. 7, 8, and 11, although all the words are to be found in one or other of the voice parts, yet each voice is often singing different words at the same time.
In Nos. 1, 2, 3, and 16 the words Qui ex patre filioque procedit are altogether omitted. In Nos. 3 and 16 the words et in unum Dominum Jesum Christum, filium Dei unigenitum, are wanting. In No. 2 the words Qui cum Patre et Filio simul adoratur et conglorificatur are omitted. In No. 10 the words Domine Deus, Agnus Dei, Filius Patris, qui tollis peccata mundi miserere nobis, are omitted. In the Credo all the words from et in unum Dominum as far as per quem omnia facta sunt (inclusive), and again all the last part of the Credo from et in Spiritum to the end, are altogether omitted.
In No. 12 the words Qui tollis peccata mundi (secundo) are omitted.
In No. 13 the words Jesu Christe, Domine Deus, are omitted. The words Filius Patris are immediately followed by miserere nobis, quoniam tu solus, etc.
Again, in the Credo of this same Mass, after the words et invisibilium we find the text read thus: credo per quem omnia, etc., with all the intermediate part left out. No. 14 consists of a Kyrie and Gloria only. In the Gloria the words Qui tollis peccata mundi, suscipe, etc., qui sedes, etc., are omitted. In No. 15 the words Qui tollis peccata mundi (secundo) are omitted. In the Credo of this Mass, beginning with Et resurrexit, different words are sung simultaneously by each part, as remarked above of Nos. 7, 8, and 11.
While it cannot be denied that much of the Mass music of Haydn is the most beautiful in the world, some of it is trivial and undevotional, and it would seem as if, by some of his movements, he wished to
“Make the soul dance a jig to heaven.”
Concerning the sacred compositions of Mozart, a recent French author, M. Felix Clement,(171) makes the following startling assertion:
“The religious musical compositions of Mozart are much less numerous than is generally believed, and the catalogues of music publishers and the repertories of maîtres de chapelle are not to be trusted. Many of these musicians frequently take the liberty of stealing from Mozart’s operas, and even from his compositions for instruments, and of adapting them to a Latin text, let the adaptations be worth what they may.... The only authentic religious compositions of Mozart are the following:
“A Stabat mater for four voices, without instruments, and very short.
“A Veni Sancte Spiritus for four voices, two violins, two hautboys, two horns, a clarinet, tympanum, alto, and violoncello.
“A solemn Mass for four voices, two violins, two hautboys, two altos, four clarinets, and tympanum, 1768.
“A short Mass for four voices and the same accompaniment, 1768.
“A Grand Offertory for four voices and similar accompaniment, 1768.
“An Ave Verum Corpus, 1791.
“The Mass of Requiem.
“Two solemn Masses in C major.”
There are adaptations in many of Peters’ publications that are simply shocking, and even our most worthy Anthony Werner forgot himself while he was compiling the Memorare and the Cantate, and inserted a few compositions that are out of rule, and therefore out of taste.
Again, few organists amongst us have a sufficient knowledge of Latin, of the structure of the ritual, and of the traditions of the church to judge of the appropriateness of compositions; and the evil is aggravated to the last degree by the custom of making the organist the director of the music as well. Hardly any of them know either the theory or the practice of plain chant.
Music of the kind we have described as fit for church use abounds in Italy, but mostly in the condition of MS. The works of the Augustan age of Italian music, from the time of Carissimi to that of Jommelli, including those of Durante, Leo, Clari, Steffani, Martini, and Pergolesi, and even of later masters, like Terziani, afford inexhaustible treasures almost entirely neglected.
The new order of things in Italy has wrought and is working mischief there in more ways than one. Thus it has already been the occasion of the loss of a great number of valuable musical manuscripts, and unfortunately the end is not yet. The revolution of 1848 caused a great deal of wanton destruction, the result of that spirit of vandalism which seems to possess all revolutionists; and the recent suppression of so many churches by the Italian government has brought about the dispersion and consequent loss of the manuscripts of as many musical libraries—a loss that can never be repaired.
If we do not resume the execution of the compositions of the older masters, we must at least recur to them for the purposes of study. In no other way can we shake off the influence of the drama.
We have learned from the instructions of Benedict XIV. and the cardinal vicar of Pius IX. that there is a distinction between the music of the stage and that of the church, and that this distinction is based on the fact that in the latter the music must be written to suit the words of the sacred text, and that the music, whilst having that serious and chastened expression which befits the language of devotion, should be distinctively vocal and choral; whereas in the former the tendency is to make the words suit the modulations of the music, to subordinate the voices to the rich and powerful instrumental symphony which accompanies them, to flatter the popular ear by light and taking airs, and to display to the best advantage the voices of individual singers and their wonderful execution.
These characteristics of secular music, due to the influence first of Mozart and afterwards of Rossini more than to that of any other composers, have been too long felt in the music of the church, and to be rid of them we must lean more towards the past, and return to the study of those grave and solemn forms which existed prior to their day, and in which the instrumental accompaniment contained no suggestion of levity, and was used to support and enrich the vocal harmony without drawing attention from it.
The celebrated Robert Franz is now editing some of the works of Durante, who flourished not long after the departure from Palestrina was made, and whose piety and exclusive devotedness to church music have given a more ecclesiastical character to his compositions than to those of any other composer of his day.
In France the war between those who advocate the exclusive use of plain chant and those who plead that music may have some share in the divine service is waged fiercely, and the consequence is that both parties go to extremes, and both assert principles with regard to the respective merits of the two styles that are utterly untenable. There is no country in the world where plain chant is so much sung, and none where so much wretched stuff is palmed off as sacred music. Nevertheless, France has composers of merit, who might achieve great results if they had a public of broader views to write for, chief among whom is Gounod, who, in his Messe Solennelle and his Ave Verum, has struck the right chord, and proved himself able to write sacred music for great occasions, in which all the resources of modern art may be combined with a solemnity and an expression of piety not less remarkable than that which we find in the compositions of Palestrina.
In England the advocates of what we may call the canonical style of church music are not inactive.
The late Cardinal Wiseman had an excellent collection of Palestrina music, published in the most elegant style by Burns.
Years ago Monsignor Newsham, at the cardinal’s suggestion, composed for smaller choirs four chorus Masses, to be sung in unison or in parts ad libitum. They are easy, flowing, and very devotional, and strictly in rule. They are published by Novello.
Mr. Richardson, an excellent musician, has revised some of the Masses of Haydn and Mozart, and, without altering substantially the music of these two great composers, reset the words with rare skill; so that we have all the beauty of the music, while the text of the Mass does not suffer. They are published by Burns & Oates.
Of late years Archbishop Manning has had a series of six Masses composed by excellent musicians, chiefly for unison singing, but they may also be sung alternately in parts. They have a full and artistic organ accompaniment, and are so arranged that the effect produced by them is scarcely inferior to that of vocal part music, while they are not hard to learn, and do not overtax the voices.
He has also had other Masses published for four voices in the highest style of art. These are by eminent composers, and have organ obbligato accompaniment. They are full without being of inconvenient length.
In these, as in the preceding Masses, the Sanctus and Benedictus in no case exceed the proper limits.
They are published by Burns & Oates.
Other compositions of the same class are promised.
Of what is being done in Belgium we cannot speak so confidently; but at the last Catholic Congress of Mechlin the subject of church music received due attention; prizes were offered for compositions that would meet the requirements of devotion as well as art, and a concursus actually took place, and the works of the contestants published.
It is in Germany that the movement in favor of the reform of church music has been the most active and has made the most progress.
We have already mentioned the introduction of the Palestrina style of music into some of the German cathedrals, and four immense volumes of music of that class have been published by Pustet, of Munich; and, as we have just said, Franz is publishing and drawing attention to the works of Durante, who represents the style that came into vogue when Palestrina was first departed from.
But they have a large and able society, called the Cecilia, extending all over Germany, which last year numbered 7,000, and is ever increasing. They have at their head F. Francis Witt, an exemplary priest of Spire, whom the Germans call “the modern Palestrina.” He is trying to achieve in our day the success that Palestrina met in his.
The number of compositions for the church published by this society or under its own influence is immense.
A writer in the London Tablet stated recently that by means of S. Cecilia’s Society a thorough reform had been effected in the church music of Germany, and that frivolous compositions in the secular style have at last been banished from the churches.
The writer of this paper remembers hearing in the autumn of 1869, in the Cathedral of Munich, two Masses of this school, which contained no passages for soli, and in which the words were treated as respectfully as in the compositions of Palestrina and his school, none being repeated or inverted. The accompaniment of the organ and the orchestra, in which no wind instruments were heard—except, perhaps, the bassoon—was so fully subordinated to the voices and so perfect otherwise that his ear has been spoiled, as it were, and every similar performance heard since in other places has been a grievous disappointment. He never heard any music more pleasing artistically, and at the same time more devotional and proper. It showed that composers can give us the best music which modern art can furnish, and yet keep strictly within the limits marked by ecclesiastical authority.
The Cecilia Society of Germany has a branch in this country, which has recently begun to publish select music, and to issue a musical journal called the Cecilia. The editor is F. Singinberger, and the publishers Fisher & Brother, Dayton, Ohio.
The publications of sacred music amongst us have not been very numerous or very remarkable for excellence. Among the very best we feel bound to notice the publications,(172) and especially the elegant compositions(173) of Mr. Falkestein, who has shown that he knows how to unite in his skilfully‐constructed and charming yet devout compositions the depth and severity of the old ecclesiastical masters with the graceful and flowing melody and orchestral effects of the modern school.
There is no lack of good‐will and talent amongst our musicians, but the trouble is that they have not the models by the study of which they may form a true ecclesiastical style. A library is as necessary to the student of music who hopes to be a composer as it is to the student of literature who has the ambition of becoming an author. Our directors of church choirs need a larger acquaintance with the great masters, especially the older ones. Above all, they need to have a better knowledge of Gregorian chant. For this chant should not only form a part of our service, as was already stated in the first part of this paper, but it should also be the source of inspiration to those who wish to compose for the church, as it was to Palestrina and his followers, as it is to‐day to Gounod. The language of Mr. Ritter may be exaggerated, but it conveys a truth to be remembered:(174) “The Gregorian chant,” he says, “runs like a red thread through the musical part of the service of the Catholic Church; this really sacred song creates in Catholic countries the first impressions which touch the soul of the young Christian on his entrance into the church, and is, as such, the indestructible echo of his first sacred associations. As Holy Writ forms the invariable foundation of the religious and moral principles of the true Christian, so the Gregorian chant ought to form the ground and invariable theme of the true church composer; and as long as composers understood and valued this inestimable, noble, and really sacred practice their works composed for the church truthfully and appropriately fulfilled their solemn office; these works were thus imbued with the sacred character derived from the themes of the sacred songs; then necessarily a distinct line of demarcation was drawn between secular and sacred music.”
A Week In Wordsworth’s Haunts.
We had only a week to spare, but we were not long in choosing where to spend our holiday. At that time the Lake Country was accessible, but not yet crossed through and through, by railroads. The cars took us from London almost through to Windermere, but, that being the gate of the sanctuary, they went no further. We had to cross the “Black Country,” a weird region of coal‐mines and furnaces, where scarcely a blade of grass meets the eye; interminable plains, strewn with gaunt machinery and bristling with tall brick chimneys or low, wide, oven‐like buildings, stretch from the track of the railroad as far as the horizon; a muffled noise, rumbling and crackling, is the only sound besides the shrill whistle of the engine; the sky is black as with the promise of ten thousand thunder‐storms, the murky air hangs like a pall over the earth, and tongues of flame shoot up now and then from the mouths of the furnaces. At night the scene is gloomily splendid; everywhere lurid flashes leap up from these openings, for the work is incessant here; half‐ naked forms stalk from chimney to pit, wheeling giant barrows or pushing forward heavy trucks on tramways; no sound but the never‐ceasing rumble of wheels and crackle of flames—apparently a silent Pandemonium or Dantesque city of Dis; at any rate, a sight that one does not easily forget.
Windermere is the largest, the most fashionable, and the best known of the English lakes. It was Saturday night when we reached it and went to an inn overlooking the calm sheet of water. The moon was up, and streaked the shadows of the great mountains that lay across the lake with her shimmering silver pathway; the little boats moored by the various landings rocked to and fro in the gentle breeze, and the wavelets came with a “swish” against the pebbly shore. Next morning, on inquiring for the Catholic church, we were told that there was a private chapel in the house of a Catholic gentleman who lived on an island in the lake, and allowed any respectable tourist to come on Sunday. We rowed over to the island, and found it all a garden: smooth lawns to the water’s edge, broad gravel‐ paths through groves of elm and chestnut, a glowing parterre, rustic seats, fountains and marble balustrades, and by the boat‐house a little group of gay skiffs dancing up and down on the blue water. The chapel was up‐stairs, and there was an outside stair‐case leading to it, down which we saw a familiar figure coming slowly towards us. It was that of a London priest whom we knew, and who, like us, was spending a brief holiday among the lakes. He had come over to say an early Mass; the master of the house was not at home, he said, but the chaplain would be glad to welcome all Catholics, many of whom came during the touring season. After Mass we strolled for an hour about the garden, admiring the vistas contrived between the trees, at the end of which glimpses of the blue sky and sparkling water, with some gray or purple peak cleaving the line of the horizon, could be seen. From every point of the lake itself these mountains strike the eye; for the most part bare of trees, their lower ledges covered with green pasture‐land, and seamed here and there with the foamy streak of a beck or stream; their summits sheer rock. Their names all have a grand, free sound that suits their craggy, majestic beauty—Helm Crag, Hammar Scar, Silver How, Skiddaw. This one is the monarch of the lake country. Great How is a single, conspicuous peak rising at the foot of Lake Thirlmere, to the west of the lovely vale of Legberthwaite, near the high‐road between Ambleside and Keswick. Ambleside is a favorite resort of students; young men from the two universities often come to spend the long vacation here, where reading, walking, and boating can be combined. The scenery is very beautiful; the valleys are broken up into a thousand nooks where fern and heather grow, and some tiny rivulet trickles beneath the broad‐arched fronds of the bracken; every old wall wears a golden crown of celandine, or, in native dialect, pilewort; the “ghyll”—i.e., a short, steep, narrow gorge, a miniature cañon—is traversed by the foamy brook, leaping to the waterfall called in Cumberland a “force”; the birch, the rowan, the oak, cling to the rocky ledges that jut out over the little cataract, and everywhere above the greenery lies the shadow of the great lonely hills. Black Comb in Cumberland Wordsworth calls a spot fit for a “ministering angel” to choose, for from its summit, on a tolerably clear day, England, Scotland, and Ireland are all three visible. Many of the mountains, both in Cumberland and Westmoreland, have traces of inscriptions on the native rock which have by some learned men been supposed to be Runic, but which it is now generally agreed to call Roman. They are very rude, and much effaced by time and the action of the weather; hence the uncertainty.
It was by the shores of Windermere that a party of young men, all enthusiastic Tractarians, spent a vacation in one of the first years of that movement now called Puseyite and ritualistic, but then known as the Young England movement. In those days ladies washed and ironed the church linen, and wore their dainty fingers to the bone sewing surplices and embroidering altar‐cloths; while others would take it by turn to sweep the churches and dust the pews; and others again, intent on doing penance, would kneel for hours on stone floors, and even use the discipline unsparingly, until the doctor’s verdict put an end to their misguided zeal. Blindly they were beating about for the truth, and thought they had found it in practices of self‐denial. It was a touching blindness—one that God often and often enlightened during those fruitful years. Young men made a point of exercising bodily mortification, even in vacation time, and, when thrown by circumstances amid unsympathizing companions, would carry their zeal into the commonest actions, and make a silent boast of their new‐found faith. One Friday, for instance, a few young members of Parliament, assembled in the lobby of the House of Commons, called for “tea and toast” instead of the unfailing mutton‐chop of tradition, and the mild protest created quite a sensation. On going home they were received by their several households as champions of a holy cause who, from humble beginnings, were going to bring about a mighty revolution, a national awakening. It was very beautiful, this child‐like faith in their own ideal—so beautiful that God rewarded many of those who held it by leading them into the everlasting reality of the great universal, apostolic church. The athletic young hermits of Ambleside were not left out of the reckoning. One day one of them strayed out alone over the hills, with some old volume of the fathers under his arm, and his questioning young soul eager for the knowledge which the wonderful serenity of this mountain region seemed at the time to typify so well. He was out a long time, and, when he came home to his companions, he seemed to them transfigured. A new peace and yet a more ardent enthusiasm had come to him, and he spoke in words almost incomprehensible to them:
“I have found the man who has the idea!”
What had happened to him was this: In his walk he had met a young stranger, and spoken to him. Kindred thoughts and aspirations had led them into a long and eager conversation, wherein it soon appeared that the stranger, with his fair, girlish face and dreamy blue eyes, was the master, and his new friend only the humble disciple. They had talked on into the twilight, and the latter, entranced, at last asked the name of him who in a few short hours had taught him to see things in a clearer, diviner light than all the patristic reading had been able to do during his college course. The young man opened the book he had with him, and showed him his name written on the fly‐leaf. It was Frederick William Faber.
From Windermere we started on our real tour. The native conveyances are called “cars,” and hold four people sitting opposite each other, but sideways and parallel with the horses. From a rough, square box, painted dark blue or green, up to a real town‐made carriage in the same shape, this conveyance is universally in use over the north. Everywhere the same beautiful scenery—moist nooks, a natural fernery, tumbling waterfalls, walls covered with wild flowers; here and there an old‐fashioned inn with an old‐fashioned landlord, waiting himself on his customers, and sitting down to tell them at his ease all the gossip and the guide‐book lore of the neighborhood, the best time to go up the mountain, when it was safe to take a boat out on the mere, the accident in the lead‐mine last year, etc., etc. At such an inn, “The Swan,” we passed one night, and had an excellent and abundant rustic supper, not a hundred yards from the brand‐ new tourist hotel, “The Prince of Wales,” gas‐lighted and high‐priced, with saucy waiters and London upholstery, and each floor exactly the counterpart of the other, like a penitentiary.
Ullswater is a stormy lake, a sort of caldron enclosed in steep, forbidding rocks rising perpendicularly from the water. Above them is a wooded table‐land, with old houses hidden up the slopes beyond, one a ruined monastery, with a modern home fashioned out of a few available fragments of strong mediæval masonry, and a sort of museum or armory contrived among the standing arches of a less useful portion of the building. It was a steep climb to get to it, and for miles on either side of the pathway, that was half a natural staircase, there was no other road to it. The view over the dark lake was impressive; the waters, calm enough now, lay beneath us like a floor of black marble, with a fringe of heavy shadows along the edge where the cliffs overhung it.
Now and then we would pass detached hamlets with their sturdy, grave population all astir, the women fine specimens of their sex, with that frank expression and grand physical development which are bred of mountain training and open‐air life. Together with all the people of the north, they have many peculiar customs, and altogether form a race apart from the inhabitants of other English counties. The accents of their nervous, expressive dialect, the names of their mountains and lakes, the flavor of quaintness and individuality that hangs about their life, somehow suggest the old times of early Christianity when S. Wilfrid ruled in York, or struggled inch by inch for his invaded territory and ignored rights. Stopping to water your horses in one of these hamlets, you may see a knot of men standing silently and expectantly round the door of a clean, home‐ like cottage, and just outside, laid on the porch seat, a basin filled with sprigs of box‐wood. The men are waiting for a coffin to be borne out, and, when it comes, they will all fall into line behind it, and each, taking a sprig from the basin, will throw it into the grave after the prayers have been said. Of course this is a Catholic reminiscence of the days when the box sprigs were used to sprinkle the coffin with holy water, as they are now in most countries on the Continent; but, besides this, box‐wood is an evergreen, and therefore a symbol of the immortality of the soul.
Sometimes we would come to a little mountain tarn, across which we were ferried, car, horses, and all. The regular travelling in these regions is done by stage‐coaches, of which we availed ourselves for sending forward our slender baggage, so as to be quite independent and unencumbered in our movements. The mountain lakelets, that are never mentioned in guide‐books, are very beautiful with their fringe of rushes and boggy earth starred with white and golden flowers, and their flocks of teal and wild duck dwelling in peace in these undisturbed wildernesses.
Grasmere, a village on one of the larger lakes bearing the same name, was Wordsworth’s home for eight years, the first eight of this century. He was born in Cumberland, and the home‐passion that has gained him his title of Lake Poet never left him. Fortunate in his worldly circumstances, he went to Cambridge, and, though a desultory reader, took a fairly creditable degree after four years’ study. He made tours on foot through Wales and Germany, and published his poetical reminiscences, though with little success; but through their medium he gained the friendship of Coleridge, his fellow‐poet and life‐long companion. He settled at Grasmere in 1799 with his sister, who was throughout his life, even after his marriage, his guiding star—the kindred spirit whose approval and sympathy were the secret sources of his intellectual life. Of her he says, speaking of a peak which they could see from their “orchard‐seat”:
“There is an eminence, of these our hills, The last that parleys with the setting sun.
The meteors make of it a favorite haunt; The star of Jove, so beautiful and large In the mid‐heavens, is never half so fair As when he shines above it. ’Tis, in truth, The loneliest place we have among the clouds. And she who dwells with me, whom I have loved With such communion that no place on earth Can ever be a solitude to me, Hath to this lonely summit given my name.”
Of his wife he wrote, after three years of marriage, words contrasting his first impressions as a lover with the sweet, solemn experience of a husband. Then “a phantom of delight, ... a lovely apparition, ... a dancing shape, an image gay, To haunt, to startle, and waylay,” but now
“A being breathing thoughtful breath, A traveller betwixt life and death; The reason firm, the temperate will, Endurance, foresight, strength, and skill; A perfect woman, nobly plann’d, To warn, to comfort and command; And yet a spirit still, and bright With something of angelic light.”
Song seemed to gush from Wordsworth’s soul as naturally and copiously as water from a mountain spring. Some of his verses were written with a slate‐pencil on stones in lonely places; for instance, in a deserted quarry on one of the islands at Rydal, on a stone half way up the grim mountain of Black Comb, in Cumberland, or with a common pencil on a stone in an outhouse on the island at Grasmere. He lived poetry. Everything with him was a pretext for verse; neither the commonest household occurrence nor the sublimest spectacle of nature up there among those rocky fells and green valleys lying under awful shadows of coming storms, was a stranger to his ready pen. He says of himself that
“The sounding cataract Haunted me like a passion; the tall rock, The mountain, and the deep and gloomy wood, Their colors and their forms were then to me An appetite, a feeling, and a love.”
There are few places so thoroughly fitted for a poet’s home as the lake country of Cumberland and Westmoreland, yet more so then than now, when it has become the fashion to make a tour among the lakes, even as one does down the Rhine. England has wakened to the consciousness of her own beauty within the last forty years, and a home‐tour often takes the place of a foreign one; yet to those who first visited these Eden‐spots the rare charm is gone, for sight‐seers have taken the place of the “wanderer,” and regular guides usurp the simple escort of a stray shepherd whom in old times you might have happened to meet by some force, on the cool banks of which he would have told you, in his racy dialect, the old traditions and legends of the neighborhood—the legend of the horn of Egremont Castle, for instance, a Cumberland tale, telling how Sir Eustace Lucie and his brother Hubert rode away to the Holy Land, and the former, pointing to the “horn of the inheritance” that hung by the gate‐way, and which none could sound,
“Save he who came as rightful heir To Egremont’s domains and castle fair,”
said to his brother: “If I fall, and Christ our Saviour demand my sinful soul, do thou come back straight‐way, and sound the horn, that we may have a living house in thee.” And Hubert promised. But out in Palestine Sir Eustace disappeared, and, when the news was brought to Hubert that his elder brother lay “deep in Jordan flood,” he said darkly to the messengers: “Take your earnings. Oh! that I could have seen my brother die.” He went home, and whether he sounded the horn or not none knew; it was never heard, but Sir Hubert lived in glee for years, with wife and sons and daughters, until one day
“A blast was uttered from the horn Where by the castle gate it hung forlorn,”
and Sir Eustace came back safe and unsuspecting. Hubert rose up and fled in silence, and it was years before he was again heard of; then he came and asked forgiveness, and obtained it, and ended his penitent life in the cloister; so that Eustace’s “heirs of heirs, through a long posterity, sounded the horn which they alone could sound.” The same legend is told of the Hall of Hutton John, an old house of the Huddlestones in a lonely valley on the river Dacor, also in these parts.
Or it might be the tradition of Henry, Lord Clifford, the shepherd‐boy, whose father lost his title and estates during the wars of the Roses. Henry was restored, after twenty‐four years of shepherd life, in the first year of the reign of Henry VII., and it is recorded that, when called to Parliament, he behaved nobly and wisely, but otherwise came seldom to London or the court, and rather delighted to live in the country, where he repaired several of his castles, which had gone to decay during the late troubles. “There is a tradition,” says Wordsworth himself, “current in the village of Threlkeld (in Cumberland, where lay the estate of his father‐ in‐law, Sir Lancelot Threlkeld), that in the course of his shepherd life he had acquired great astronomical knowledge.” The poet clothed this incident (as he did every other that struck his fancy in that poetic land of the north) in verse, singing a lay of the Red Rose, revived at last, the flower of Lancaster, and weaving in the tale of the boy’s wanderings on “Carrock’s side,” in “Rosedale’s groves,” and “Blencathara’s rugged coves.” The common name of this last‐mentioned mountain is Saddle‐Back. Near Threlkeld, hidden in the gorges of the purple hills, lies Bowscale Tarn, where the people of the country still believe two immortal fish to dwell. Tarn signifies, in north‐country dialect, a small mountain mere, or lake. Wordsworth’s descriptions of scenery are exquisite; everywhere you find the traces of that personal love of the places he paints, that patient, detailed minuteness of touch which only comes of long gazing on a favorite scene, and of familiarity with its every aspect, in winter and summer, in storm and sunshine, in mist and rainbow. Every place has some tender associations in his memory; the stately fir‐grove whither he was wont
“To hasten, for I found beneath the roof Of that perennial shade a cloistral place Of refuge, with an unencumbered floor,”
reminds him of a dear friend, “a silent poet” but a sailor by profession, after whom he called the pathway to the grove, whence
“The steep Of Silver How, and Grasmere’s placid lake And one green island”
could be distinctly seen. That friend never returned, but perished by shipwreck in the discharge of his duty. Here, too, in this beautiful lake country, both at Grasmere and at his later and more celebrated home, Rydal Mount, in Westmoreland, Wordsworth lost others dearer yet—two of his children, who died young, and Dora, his favorite daughter, who died six years after her marriage. When on his own death‐bed, three years later, his wife, brave and self‐forgetting to the last, comforted him by whispering: “William, you are going to Dora.” His poems are so complete a guide‐book to the lake country, as well as a series of living sketches of the people of the north, that it is almost unavoidable to treat them as tourists in Scotland do The Lady of the Lake, or tourists at Rome Childe Harold. In his day, however, many popular traits were in full vigor which now have almost disappeared. For instance, he says himself that “the class of beggars to which the old man here described belongs will probably soon be extinct. It consisted of poor and mostly old and infirm persons, who confined themselves to a stated round in their neighborhood, and had certain fixed days, on which, at different houses, they regularly received alms, sometimes in money, but mostly in provisions.” In his verse he describes the “Old Cumberland Beggar” thus:
“Him from my childhood have I known; and then He was so old, he seems not older now.
He travels on, a solitary man— His age has no companion.”
The passing horseman does not throw him a careless alms, but stops, lingers, and drops a coin safely into the old man’s hat; the toll‐bar keeper sees him from a distance, and leaves her work to lift the latch for him; the post‐boy slackens his horse’s speed, and turns with less noisy wheels out of his path; the very dogs do not bark at him.
“But deem not this man useless. Statesmen! ye Who are so restless in your wisdom, ye Who have a broom still ready in your hands To rid the world of nuisances; ye proud Heart‐swoln, while in your heart ye contemplate Your talents, power, and wisdom, deem him not A burden of the earth.”
No; he is “a record binding together past deeds and offices of charity”; “a silent monitor” to those who sit sheltered “in a little grove of their own kindred”; an object to call forth that blessed feeling that you have, though “poorest poor,” been “the fathers and dealers‐out of some small blessings”; a prompter to “tender offices and pensive thoughts.” See this picture:
“Such pleasure is to one kind being known, My neighbor, when with punctual care, each week, Duly as Friday comes, though press’d herself By her own wants, she from her chest of meal Takes one unsparing handful for the scrip Of this old mendicant, and from her door, Returning with exhilarated heart, Sits by her fire, and builds her hope in heaven.”
And the poet, the lover of nature, the child of the mountain, ends by a warning and a prayer:
“Reverence the hope whose vital anxiousness Gives the last human interest to his heart. May never House, misnamed b‘of Industry,’ Make him a captive! For that pent‐up din, Those life‐consuming sounds that clog the air, Be his the natural silence of old age!”
Though we have quoted Wordsworth’s poetry, it is not as a poet but as a man that we speak of him here, not desiring to criticise his verse or to enter into discussions concerning the judgment given of it by critics of his own time. In the Lake Country his personality strikes you with the same sense of reality and continued presence as do the everlasting hills and the changeless lakes themselves. He died only a quarter of a century ago, though his principal poems all belonged to the first and second decades of this century. In 1814 The Excursion was published, and the poem which has made his chief fame was so severely criticised at the time that one of the reviewers boasted that he had crushed it. A brother poet, Southey, exclaimed: “He crush The Excursion! He might as well fancy he could crush Skiddaw!” If his verse was coldly received at first, it was chiefly because emotional, passionate poetry, such as Byron’s, Moore’s, Scott’s, and Campbell’s, was the fashion then. Wordsworth’s was calm as nature herself, and concerned itself little with man’s history, past or present. When he did mingle the deeds of men with the loving touches of his scenery descriptions, he would choose pure, white lives, such as would not jar with the calmness of lake and fell, of opal sky and shimmering water. Here is what the legend of the ruined hermitage on S. Herbert’s Island, on Lake Derwentwater, suggested to him. The story of the holy friends is told also in Montalembert’s Monks of the West.
“This island, guarded from profane approach By mountains high and waters widely spread, Is that recess to which S. Herbert came In life’s decline, a self‐secluded man, After long exercise in social cares And offices humane, intent t’ adore The Deity with undistracted mind, And meditate on everlasting things.
But he had left A fellow‐laborer whom the good man loved As his own soul; and when within his cave Alone he knelt before the crucifix, While o’er the lake the cataract of Lodore Peal’d to his orisons, and when he paced Along the beach of this small isle, and thought Of his companion, he would pray that both (Now that their earthly duties were fulfilled) Might die in the same moment. Nor in vain So prayed he; as our chronicles report, Though here the hermit number’d his last day, Far from S. Cuthbert, his beloved friend: Those holy men both died in the same hour.”
Derwentwater is the most picturesque of all the lakes in point of smiling landscape. It has several little wooded islands dotting its surface; its waters are clear and more blue than those of the other lakes, and the mountains round the shore are less abrupt and naked. Lodore Force tumbles almost perpendicularly into it from the steep, shelving rocks that jut out from the dense forest growth, like the backbone of a huge black snake wriggling through the underbrush. These are the same waters whose sound swept over the lake and smote the ears of the hermit‐saint twelve centuries ago. It is, except one, the most romantic waterfall in the Lake Country. Below this wooded hill, and on the very margin of Derwentwater, stands a little old‐time inn, as clean as a Dutch house, with a rustic porch and a little lawn before it, ringed in with chains hung in festoons from four or five low posts. In the middle is a miniature gun, which is fired off every now and then for the amusement of the tourists. The echoes thus awakened among the surrounding hills are almost endless.
This beautiful North Country has another interest not so romantic—that of its mines, which are mostly of lead. Just across Derwentwater there is a fine mine, which, from its convenient position, is often visited. We rowed across the lake to see it; but if you have seen one mine, you will scarcely care to see a second—at least if you have no better motive than curiosity. To us on that first expedition it was simply fun. Luckily, there was no proposition made to don male attire for the only woman of the party; a huge oilskin coat with an ample hood quite wrapped her up and protected her for the downward journey. We got into a rough box or “basket,” preferring this quicker and more adventurous mode of descent to the species of chair contrived for the visitors to the mine, and were shot down in an incredibly short space of time to the second “level” of what we saw there is really very little to tell. The lodes or veins of metal looked like irregular lines of shining moisture drawn on the rocky walls; there was a tramway occupying the whole of the narrow gallery that formed the level, and up and down this tramway, at a tremendous rate, and with a noise like thunder, came the trucks loaded with ore. We had to squeeze up against the wall as they passed. The path was more than half submerged; we splashed into pools and puddles at every third or fourth step, and the moisture dropped persistently from the glistening roof. We should have gone to the third and lowest “level” had it not been so thoroughly under water that the miners had to wear long waterproof boots mid‐way up their thighs when they worked there. On going up again we stopped at the first level, which looked exactly like the other. We did not gain much information by our excursion, but it was a rare frolic, and we were greatly excited. Our clothes came out of the “basket” in a soaked and streaky condition; but nobody cared, the achievement was enough to make up for anything. Some years later we tried the same sort of experiment, and did not find it nearly so exciting. It was at an iron‐mine in Monmouthshire, near the river Wye, famed in the legends of the Round Table; we were let down the shaft in a kind of iron cage (the miners’ regular conveyance), which swung unpleasantly to and fro, grinding against the sides of the narrow opening, and bumping us roughly down at the bottom, where, as their time was nearly out, the men were gathering, ready to go up. Here there was literally nothing to see. The work was done a long way off, and there was no time to go there; besides, the place was several inches under water. The interest of this expedition consisted simply in going down and coming up again, and in the feeling that we could “say we had done it.” What was really interesting on this same occasion was the sight of the iron‐works and furnaces at nightfall. The metal was put into the furnaces at one end, and came out at the other in a continuous stream of intensest light; blindingly white it poured out, running slowly and spreading itself into a network of grooves all parallel with each other, ready fitted for its reception, where it was left to cool. Few things so truly realize one’s idea of light as molten metal. There seemed no color in this beautiful stream, and one could fancy just such an intense glow as that to be the very radiance round the throne of God. It was impossible to stand near it for more than a second, the heat was so fierce, and we had to watch the calm, uninterrupted lustre from a respectful distance. This work was going on in a kind of open shed, sheltered above to protect the furnaces and machinery, but open at the sides, where in the darkness all kinds of strange groups and forms succeeded one another. The commonest circumstances took on solemnity and mystery in this half‐light, the red flashes from inside darting like tongues into the fading light, and making of it all a wonderful, living Rembrandt.
To return to our lakes. We had seen all the great ones, and driven across the country in all directions—through mountain passes where the bare crags and bowlders lay heaped together, as if the Titans had flung them there to bar the passage to their fastnesses; through smiling pastoral valleys where the summer stream bubbled peacefully enough, hiding its secrets of roads washed away and trees uprooted by its anger in early spring; by Esthwaite Lake with its solitary yew‐tree celebrated by Wordsworth; out into a bleak region of gray stone walls and hungry‐looking pastures to Westdale (valley) and Wastwater. Lonely and silent lies the black mere under its frowning cliffs; no house, no inn, near it; tourists seldom pass it, and tradition says that its depths have never been plumbed. We got a boat at a fisherman’s hut; it was not often he used it for anything but the necessities of his craft. And yet, in spite—or rather because—of this desolation, Wastwater has made a more lasting impression on us than the show‐lakes with their pretty activity and cheerful bustle of tourist‐life. Westdale would be just the place to live in if the mind needed bracing and restoring; few places within the pale of civilization can so truly boast of being absolute solitudes. We trust it is not changed even yet. Quite close, but you would not suspect it from the grim, rocky aspect of the scenery, is a little waterfall. It is in a narrow gully, a mere cleft in the rock, but alive with a thousand varying shades of green—ferns in abundance and in every stage of development, broad, dark, glossy leaves of water‐plants, and waxy spikes of rockwort. The incline of the waterfall is so gentle, and so many bowlders jut out from the stream, that you could almost climb up this natural staircase; the snow‐white spray dashes all over the banks, turning to diamonds in the hearts of the tiny flowers, and to rainbows on the broad surface of leaves; and the noise of the waters—their plash, their gurgle, or their trickle, as they strike moss, pebble, or little hollows round the big bowlders—seems like a living voice.
Our week was nearly up, and we were to meet the noonday train at a station several miles beyond Wastwater. The road lay through rocky passes, and was reckoned a bad one. Our car‐driver was doubtful as to whether we could make the distance in the time that remained; for we had been tempted, by the rugged beauty of the lovely vale, to overstay our appointed time for exploration and natural‐history collections. The drive was sufficiently exciting, a last bit of “fun” to end our holiday, and we jolted over the rough road, crossing the worn channels of mountain streams, and noticing on the steep sides of the hills what looked like moving bowlders, but what were in reality small, sure‐footed sheep, white, brown, and black. The country grew bleaker as we went on, till at last we reached the primitive railway station just in time. We were very sorry to part with our North‐ Country driver and his car, and return to the civilized mode of rapid locomotion; the more so as the scenery through which we flew for two or three hours was as barren and as desolate as the shores of the Dead Sea. Gray stone walls made a sort of magnified chess‐board of the level country, enclosing small fields of forlorn‐looking stubble or bits of dark‐red ploughed land. It was inexpressibly dreary, and a marvellous contrast to the beautiful region, bold and rocky, or wooded and smiling, which we had left behind us.
At last we reached Furness, our last halting‐place. Here there was a coquettish little station, gay with ornamental wood and wire‐work, and with autumn flowers and late climbing roses, while beyond the trim lawn stood an inviting hotel—modern, it is true, but decked out in villa style, full of bay‐windows and gables, with green Venetian blinds and long French windows opening into a garden. There was no trace of a village near, or of any human dwelling but these two buildings. The reason was that both of these were subservient to the ruins of S. Mary’s Abbey, which stood, as it were, within the hotel‐garden. S. Mary’s, Furness, is one of the three most stately and most perfect ruined abbeys in England; the others are Fountain’s Abbey in Yorkshire, and Tintern on the Wye, Monmouthshire. It is built of red sandstone, the warm hue contrasting beautifully with the luxurious growth of evergreens all round and inside its arches and cloisters. The tracery of the great pointed windows is almost intact, but here and there the tracery of delicate climbing plants is so interwoven with it that the marvel of carving is lost in the wealth of each summer’s renewed growth. The church is built in the shape of a cross. The walls and windows of the nave are untouched, and down the centre are the two rows of columns that divided it from the aisles—round Saxon pillars, alternating with clustered Gothic shafts, a sheaf of colonnettes forming one support. The bases of all of them remain, though every one is broken more or less near the base, none being more than two or three feet high. Of course the roof is gone, and everywhere around shaft and pillar grow tall flowering grasses, shrubs with bright berries and spear‐like leaves, while a carpet of grass as green as an emerald covers the stone floor. There were seven altars in the church, and the steps to the smaller ones are even now marked by the gradual ascent of the turf. Poking into the earth with a walking‐stick, we soon came to the stone steps, not more than three inches under ground. The chancel and sedilia are very perfect, and everywhere the piscinæ are visible in the walls. The chapter‐room preserved its stone groined roof up to twenty or thirty years ago, when it fell in. On the walls are the remains of lovely, intricate diaper‐work. The refectory is a long hall with a row of columns (only the bases exist now) down the centre, and the principal dormitory is said to have been exactly above this. The whole is now open to the sky. The quiet cloister, with some of the old graves of dead and gone Cistercian monks, is still traceable, and beyond is a little enclosed and railed‐in stone chamber, contrived out of the ruined walls, but carefully roofed in, and used to stow away such fragments of sculpture as have been found within the precincts of the abbey. They are thus preserved from the rapacity of tourists. There are bones and skulls among them, too. The North of England was once called the garden‐land of the Cistercians; their abbeys abounded in that region, and their power, temporal and spiritual, was paramount. The abbots at the head of those religious corporations of early days had episcopal jurisdiction and claimed episcopal privileges, and were far more powerful than the wandering bishops who had no abbey to back their authority. They had tracts of land and many serfs. In many respects the “villeins” of the church were a happy and a privileged set of people. They were not obliged to serve in the king’s armies, as were the serfs of secular lords, and they could not be sued for debt or trespass, or any other local offence. They were immediately and solely under the jurisdiction of the abbot, which superseded, in their case, that of the common law. In return for their service, agricultural and otherwise, the abbot gave them shelter, food, clothing, and protection—not an unequal bargain, even for our days; but when we transport ourselves into the conditions of life in the middle ages, it will be easily seen how desirable a fate it was to be “made over to the church.” In those days protection was a greater boon than even food, lodging, or clothing; it was then what “habeas corpus” and the right of inviolability of domicile are now; and so long as the substance existed, it is idle to quarrel with the garb in which it was clothed.
The ruins were thronged all day; that was the only drawback to our enjoyment, but we remedied that at night. Every train came laden with tourists to see Furness Abbey; they walked about with guide‐books and luncheon‐baskets, and popped champagne‐corks in the cloisters, and strewed chicken‐bones among the bases of the great Saxon pillars, chatting, laughing, and joking, and evidently enjoying themselves as they would at a country fair or a cattle‐show. This went on all day long; but towards night, after a late dinner at the hotel, they subsided, and scarcely a soul was to be seen in the garden. The men were in the billiard‐room, and the women probably packing their things for the morrow’s journey; so we slipped out, two of us, and went over to the deserted ruins. The moon was up, not quite at her full, but bright enough to make the scene very beautiful, and there were many stars as well. It is not easy to describe the impression this night‐view of the old Catholic abbey made on us; one might as well try to catch a moonbeam, and examine it and find out what it is made of. Every one can sketch the picture for himself; every one with a love of the beautiful, the spiritualized, will understand what was its solemn charm. We roamed about in silence from nave to cloisters, from refectory to chapel‐room, and then, hand‐in‐hand, went with something of awe in our hearts into the old chancel, where in the days of the monks none ever went but the cowled, white‐robed Cistercians themselves—an angel and virgin choir meet to sing the praises of the Lamb. By the sedilia, in the beautiful carved recesses of which scarcely a stone is out of place or an ornament broken off, we knelt down and said the rosary together for the conversion of England.
Presently a strange green light flashed before our eyes, right above the place where the high altar had stood of old; it was gone in a minute, and the calm radiance of the moon was still undisturbed. Seen, as it was, in this dim, silent place of song and worship, it was very impressive; and had it been nothing but what we first took it for—i.e., a railway signal—even then it would have remained in our imagination, idealized into something symbolic. Green is the color of hope, and where is there more room for hope than under the arches of a ruined abbey, once the pride of a Catholic country, the home of learning and charity, the representative of a nation’s civilization? We stayed a long while yet, lingering about the dusky arches, catching sight of the starry sky through the Gothic tracery of the windows, repeopling the place in fancy with its silent, prayerful denizens in their white robes and hoods, and wondering what that fitful flash might have been. Next morning we saw in the newspaper that just at that very hour a meteor of greenish hue had appeared and been observed in many places all over England. You may imagine how glad we were to find that it had been no railway signal that had cleft the white moonlight while we were praying in the chancel. It was a beautiful remembrance to carry away from the Abbey of S. Mary at Furness. God does not forget the places where his feet have rested, and there are heavenly, undying flowers yet in the gardens of Paradise which the angels fling down on those consecrated spots which princes once endowed, because they humbly acknowledged that “the roses and flowers of kings, emperors, and dukes, and the crowns and palms of all the great, wither and decay, and that all things, with an uninterrupted course, tend to dissolution and death.”(175)
So we took leave of the beautiful North Country, its lakes, its solemn mountains, its abbeys, and its hardy, independent people, whose character has in it yet all the elements out of which God, infusing into them his grace, moulded the great Northumbrian saint, Wilfrid of York, the Thomas à Becket of the VIth century.
On The Wing. A Southern Flight. VI.
“An evil spirit swept the land, Of ruin and unrest.”
Not far from the villa we occupied there stood an uninviting house, as it appeared to me, the loggia of which was surrounded on three sides with green trellis‐work, and commanded a fine view of Naples and the bay. Outside the door I had noticed barrels of oysters, as indicative of what we might find inside. This was the Caffe Frisio, renowned in Naples, spite of its unattractive appearance. I was somewhat surprised when, a few days after our engagement, Don Emidio suggested to Mary that we should all dine there, including, of course, the Vernons. I remonstrated. I did not see the fun of leaving our own quiet, cool house, with a modest but sufficiently well‐cooked dinner prepared by Monica and served with the honest awkwardness of our unpretending Paolino, for the hurry of noisy waiters and the click‐clack of other people’s plates and glasses. I stood up for my point with my usual undiscerning obstinacy until I thought I saw a puzzled and half‐pained expression come over the usually serene brow of my future master. Of course I yielded instantly, and, before I had stammered out a dozen words, found I had gone the length of declaring that my appetite for that day would fail me unless I dined at the Caffe Frisio. That point gained, Don Emidio hurried off (no! I am wrong there; I never as yet have seen him hurry about anything) to press the Vernons to be of our party. From thence he went, no doubt in his usually leisurely style, to order dinner for us. He was no sooner gone out of the room than I turned to Mary a bewildered face of inquiry, and asked her if she could at all understand Emidio’s being so anxious we should dine at a caffe. Mary’s reply was an indirect one. She look my hand in hers, and said with a smile:
“I sometimes wonder, my dear girl, whether you will quite easily take to the foreign ways of your intended husband.”
“Do you doubt it, Mary? I think, on the contrary, there is something so charming in that strange mixture of childlike simplicity and manly generosity which is so remarkable in the really good and noble Italians. Emidio always reminds me of a high‐bred school‐boy.”
“That is even more the characteristic, perhaps, of a thoroughly consistent Catholic life from childhood upwards than of any particular nation; though I agree with you that it is generally evident amongst Italians. Joy is the attribute of childhood, as distinct from any other period of life; and a joyful spirit is one of the marks of hidden sanctity. But I was not thinking of anything so serious as this. I mean that I wonder whether you will take easily to the out‐of‐door, unprivate life which is engendered amongst Italians by their beautiful climate, and which makes it not only a simple, but almost a necessary, thing that Don Emidio should immediately think of celebrating your engagement by dining at the celebrated Caffe Frisio.”
“I certainly wondered why he wished it, but I suppose it is the custom, and I am quite content.”
“You will doubtless, as you go on, find many customs which you will have to comply with. At Capo di Monte you will sit in the open loggia of your husband’s house, instead of in your drawing‐room with closed doors, as you would do in England. When you want your man‐servant, you will call for him at the top of the stairs at least quite as often as you will ring a rare and occasional bell. You will order your dinner, from the balcony, of the cook below, just starting for his marketing. And I am afraid you may very possibly see your maid surreptitiously laying out your fine linen to dry on the trim‐cut box hedge which surrounds the geometrical divisions of your garden. Of course in your palazzo in Rome you may succeed in keeping up a little more state. But even there, and certainly in Villegiatura(176) at Naples, you may have to make up your mind to your chef calling your attention to an unusually fine piece of beef in its uncooked state which he designs for your dinner that day.”
“Do you remember, Mary,” I replied, laughing, “the man‐servant one day in Rome bringing you in a beautiful pigeon with an ever‐varying purple breast that reminded me of the shot silks or stuffs in Raphael’s pictures? You asked the man if he supposed you could by any possibility eat it an hour after you had fondled it.”
“I had to go without meat for luncheon that day, and the pigeon’s life was spared. I fed it with rice, and it used to sit on my chest and pick the grains from between my lips.”
“At last it got too bold, and, mistaking your teeth for grains of rice, pecked at your lips till they bled.”
What a mischievous bird it was! When we came home, after leaving it at liberty in the house, we found all the heads of a bouquet of violets that stood in water picked off and strewed on the table, and all the pens taken from the pen‐tray and laid on the floor. Finally one day the pins had been extracted out of the pin‐cushion and put on the table, and the long, black hair‐pins taken out of Mary’s silver toilet‐box and laid on the bed. At last we noticed a black pigeon that used to come often and sit on the water‐pipe of the house opposite. We never closed the windows on account of our purple pigeon, as it had shown no disposition to leave its human friends for others of its own kind. But blood is stronger than water; and no doubt the black pigeon had wonderful tales to tell of the many roofs of Rome as presenting eligible habitations, and of the daily markets in the Piazza Navona and beneath the shadow of the Pantheon as affording an easily‐obtained repast among the refuse. So one day, when we came home, the window was open, and the pigeon nowhere to be found. Nor did we ever again see the black seducer sitting on the neighboring water‐spouts.
After all we were very much amused at our dinner at Frisio. We ate frutti di mare,(177) and macaroni dressed with pomi d’oro.(178) Of the meat the less said the better. I rarely thought any of it good at Naples; though no further off than Sorrento the beef is excellent. All provisions are, in fact, better there than at Naples. Our supply of butter came from Sorrento, and was obtained for us by Pascarillo, our coachman’s master; so that frequently, as we passed his door returning home from our drive, his wife would hail us, and hand into the carriage the fresh butter wrapt up in green vine‐leaves.
When dinner was over, and we sat looking out on the sea, I remembered that Emidio had promised to tell us the story of Padre Cataldo’s escape at the time of the Italian revolution in 1860, and I asked him to give us the particulars.
“This will be a very good time to do so, Miss Jane,” was his reply, “because we are quite safe at Frisio from the father’s presence. He does not like talking of it. You very probably have heard of the earthquake in Italy that took place in 1857; though I dare say the devastation it caused was hardly noticed in the English papers. The Jesuit Fathers had a college at Potenza which was partly thrown down at the time, and consequently the boys had been sent home to their parents and most of the fathers dispersed. Padre Cataldo and one other alone remained. You are aware that Potenza is the principal town of the Basilicata, and is the see of a bishop. There were forty villages in the same province destroyed at the same time. The king (of course I mean Francis II.) had obtained that Padre Cataldo should be sent on a mission to the inhabitants of these unfortunate villages, not only to preach in the different places, but to carry relief to the inhabitants, and to organize the proper burial of the dead, who lay neglected among the ruins at the imminent risk of breeding a pestilence. He was also to encourage the poor people to rebuild their habitations, and to aid them once again to gain their livelihood and resume the cultivation of the land. He was engaged in this arduous labor for a period of about fifteen months, during which he lived amongst the people with the affection of a father and almost the authority of a ruler; for there was nothing they would not do at his bidding.”
“The work accomplished, he returned to the half‐ruined college at Potenza. There was but one other priest in residence with him there, and Padre Cataldo had hardly joined him when the revolution broke out. The Jesuits were far from apprehending any violence at first from the inhabitants of Potenza, a great many of whom were much attached to them. But at that time they had not had personal experience of the insidious ways by means of which the revolutionists instil their doctrines into the minds of the unsuspecting. They soon, however, began to notice that the caffes were thronged with noisier guests than usual, and who remained till late into the night discussing and disputing over their wine or coffee. The few shops where books or newspapers could be found in the not highly‐educated or literary town of Potenza began to display pamphlets with brilliant‐ colored covers and dubious titles. The men frequenting the churches were fewer, and those that came were less respectful in their demeanor. At night the young men wandered about in file, arm‐in‐arm, walking rapidly with what no doubt they thought a military step, a flower stuck behind the ear, the hat on one side, and singing revolutionary songs in a loud and often inebriated voice. The symptoms were all bad. And the fathers were not surprised when one morning, having noticed an unusual agitation in the streets and the piazza, they received a secret message to the effect that they would do well to leave the town as quickly and as quietly as possible, for the one simple reason that where there is a Jesuit the revolutionist is his enemy. The persons sending this message to the fathers added that if their advice were not forthwith taken, acts of violence might follow.
“Not very far from the Jesuit college there lived a priest who had known Padre Cataldo for many years, and who, though himself corrupted by revolutionary principles, and not in any way an honor to his sacred calling, maintained a great friendship and regard for the father. He had gone on from one thing to another in his own downward course until at this time he was actually one of the leaders of revolutionary principles in the Basilicata. He had nevertheless always told Padre Cataldo that in case of need he would befriend him. And he kept his word; for one night, when Potenza was getting too hot for a Jesuit to remain in safety, and the only question seemed to be what kind of violence against the college would be attempted, the apostate priest arrived in his own carriage, to fulfil his old promise, and safely conveyed Padre Cataldo to a house at some distance where he could lie hidden for the night. The flight had been so sudden that Padre Cataldo, who was not likely at any time to be cumbered with wealth, had come away without a franc in his possession. The next morning he despatched three messengers to various friends in the neighborhood to say where and in what condition he was; and they, in return, sent him the money he needed. With this he procured for himself the disguise of lay clothes, and set out to join the Jesuits residing at Bari. When he arrived, he found the Jesuits had already left; and the condition of the country was such that he was unable to proceed with any hope of safety to Noci, his native place, where his parents lived.
“For many days he had to fly from place to place disguised as a layman, and with a false beard. But even so there was something in his whole appearance which betrayed him. One day he was walking along the street, swinging a walking‐stick, when he heard one man say to another, as they passed him, ‘There goes a Jesuit in disguise.’
“A lady residing at Bitonto concealed him in her house for one night. He left the house before dawn; but already the rumor had spread that a Jesuit was in hiding there, and early in the morning the brother of the lady, who was a liberal and the syndic of the town, came to tell her the people were in such a state of excitement that if she did not give up the father, they would burn the house to the ground. And it was not till she had taken him into every hole and corner of the place that she could persuade him there was no one concealed there, and that his assertions to that effect calmed the mob. ‘The foxes have holes, and the birds of the air nests,’ but, like their Master, the priests of the Son of man had not where to lay their heads. Thus driven from place to place, and hunted down like a wild beast, Padre Cataldo at length reached Venosa, where, as he had once preached a very successful mission, he was well known and much respected. He took up his abode at the house of some friends, and the next morning, which was the Feast of S. Ignatius, the founder of his order, he went to the church to say Mass. While he was vesting in the sacristy he received a message that the intendente or governor of the place wanted to speak with him. It so happened that the intendente was the brother‐in‐law of a man who had been condemned to death for murder a short time previous. Padre Cataldo had been acquainted with the case; and as he considered it had been attended with extenuating circumstances, and that the crime was not premeditated, he had used his influence with success to get the sentence commuted to a term of years’ imprisonment at the galleys. He also obtained permission for the man, who was a jeweller, to work at his trade during his incarceration. Padre Cataldo had not happened to see any members of the family since that event, in which he had saved them from so great a calamity. Very naturally, therefore, on hearing that the brother‐in‐law of the criminal wanted to see him, he thought he had come to thank him for saving his relative from the guillotine. But on going to the door to receive him he found the governor surrounded by soldiers, who, at a word from him, seized the father as their prisoner. He was at that time suffering from fever brought on by exposure to all weathers in his endeavor to elude his enemies; creeping into some sheltering house late at night, when the evening damp, so fatal in Italy, was falling; making his way over fields and mountains in the noon‐tide heat, and getting from place to place through by‐ways, as he dared not take the frequented road; and of course often without sufficient food. He was put upon a horse, and conducted by a guard of soldiers to a small place called Rionero. It was a long day’s journey, and his sufferings were intense. Having been seized before he had begun his Mass, he had not tasted food. When they reached Rionero in the evening, they found a terrible scene. The revolutionists had entire possession of the town. It is said that the piazza—the large open place in the centre of every Italian town—literally ran with blood. Strange to say, many persons connected by family ties with the intendente who had so cruelly betrayed Padre Cataldo perished in the massacres of that night. I know a man who saw the father brought into the town in the midst of the guard. The insane fury of the mob at the sight of a Jesuit knew no bounds. It was the Ecce Homo over again in the person of one of his servants. He was taken through the piazza on horseback, and the soldiers did nothing to restrain the people. They flung at him every missile they could lay their hands on; and as it was evening, a band of masons were returning from their work, and, transported with rage, actually threw their tools at him, and beat him with them as he passed. To all this ill‐usage he made no other reply than by blessing them. Some of the most violent cried out, ‘Here is the King of the Basilicata.’ Did they know they were parodying the cry of ‘the King of the Jews’? At length the prison‐doors shut him in from his persecutors; and as he lay there, bruised all over, and severely cut about the head and face, he could hear them crying out that they would yet get at him to burn him alive, while actually they began building up a pile in the centre of the piazza for that purpose.
“The liberal priest who had been his friend in the first instance, and had brought him away from Potenza, had by this time heard of his arrest, and immediately came to the rescue. This, however, was no easy matter. He was himself one of their leaders; and, lest they should accuse him of infidelity to their cause, he was obliged to begin by pretending that he shared their views with respect to Padre Cataldo. It was only in this way that he could succeed in getting himself heard. By degrees he induced them to consider whether, on the whole, the burning alive of a well‐known Jesuit priest in their piazza would be altogether a wise proceeding. It might get them into trouble at some future day. It might be considered an extreme measure. At length he gained sufficient influence for them to propose that the question should be decided by an appeal to the people. The general inhabitants of the town were not a bad set of people. They were probably not very courageous in a good cause, and they were overwhelmed by the noisy and daring wickedness of the revolutionists. But when thus appealed to, their real sentiments found expression; and Padre Cataldo, whose prison‐cell overlooked the piazza, could hear the shouts of Noi lo vogliamo salvo.(179) Soon after his prison‐door was unlocked, and in the dead of the night he was conducted by two guards to a distance from the town, where they left him. Faint with loss of blood, bruised, and weary, he managed to reach the house of some friends. He lay there for a fortnight, ill from fever and the cruel treatment he had received. And it was not till some time after, when the troubles had calmed down, that he was able to return to Naples in safety.”
We sat silent for a few seconds at the end of Don Emidio’s account. It seemed to bring the nature and qualities of revolution keenly before us when we thus heard of what it had done to one so well known and so beloved by us all. Ida was the first to speak; and she told us that not long after they had settled at Posilippo with Padre Cataldo, a gentleman had called to see him on some business, accompanied by a young man. Ida remarked that when the latter came into the room, as soon as his eyes fell on Padre Cataldo, he turned deadly pale. As he was only in attendance on the other gentleman, he sat a little back, and no one paid much attention to him, while she watched him. She saw he was greatly overcome and trembled very much. She tried to enter into conversation with him, but he seemed too absent to talk. When at length the gentleman had concluded what he came to tell Padre Cataldo, the latter turned towards the younger man, who got up and approached him, exclaiming, “O father! how is it I find you here? I thought you had died at Rionero. I witnessed the treatment you received there, and I and many others believed you were dead. By what miracle did you escape?” When the conversation became more general, the young man, who could hardly recover from his emotion, told Ida that he should never forget the father’s countenance, as he sat silent and calm on his horse, with stones, sticks, and missives of all sorts flung at him. The blood poured from his head; but there seemed to be a celestial light beaming from his face which reminded him of the pictures he had seen of the martyred saints.
We finished our evening on our own loggia. It was a lovely night, and we felt we could never weary of watching the moonbeams on the sea, and, when the moon had gone down, the fishermen’s little boats, noiselessly sailing one by one from the dense, dark shadow of the caves where they are moored, and then, each with a burning torch at the prow, casting anchor and waiting for the fish to rise to the light. From time to time the fishermen utter a soft, monotonous cry to each other in a minor key, which comes floating through the darkness on the still night‐air like an echo from another world. There must be a strange fascination in this life of the fisherman, whose occupation begins as other men are laying aside theirs, and is continued through the silence of the night on the vast solitude of the ocean.
Don Emidio drew his chair near to where I was sitting, leaning on the low wall of the loggia and looking down upon the plain of waters, which so mysteriously appear to flash an unreal light from their dark bosom, as if the sea itself gave out sparks. Presently I heard a voice asking me if I thought I could learn to love the world‐famous beauty of the Bay of Naples.
“I have learnt to love it from the first moment I saw it; for I love all that is beautiful. And when the beauty of this glorious land comes to be wound up with the duties of my life, I shall love it doubly.”
“Say with life’s affections too, dear Jane.”
“Why should I not say it? Of course I mean it.”
“Will you never tire of this unmitigated beauty? Will you never, cara mia, have a pining for a soft, gray day, with the perfumed damp that comes up from the velvet moss and dense greenery of an English copse? Will you heave no sigh for the pale but varied and most abundant wild flowers of your chilly springs, a lapful of primroses, a wealth of cowslips? Shall I have you longing after a narrow lane of yellow sand, the trees meeting overhead, the meadow‐sweet growing lavishly in the moist hedge, and the ripe nuts hanging just within reach, crisp and sweet in their slippery brown shells? Shall I hear you reproaching me that the mushrooms are dotting the Sussex downs all round the fairy rings, and that you long to tread the close, fine grass where the sheep are browsing, with the little hillocks of purple thyme scenting the breeze with its aromatic breath? When your nerves are overstrung by the continuous dry heat and the brisk air of our joyous land, will not your Saxon nature long for one of the short autumn days of old England, when you might walk through the fields to the edge of the western hill, and watch the sun sink amidst yellow and red clouds painted on a pale blue sky, and then, returning in the soft wind of evening redolent with nameless perfumes, feel the damp like a creamy balm uncurl your locks and bathe your cheek as if with moist kisses? It will be almost dark when you reach home; there is a low wood‐ fire flickering on the hearth, and the steam of the urn curling up with a scent of new‐made tea. Papers, pamphlets, magazines, and new volumes by the dozen from the London library are there to greet you. And day by day, hour by hour, in that land of rapid thought and universal intelligence, the latest news from pole to pole finds its way with every post into the remotest depths of the I country. Cara mia, it will not be so here.”
There had been a choking sensation in my throat as Emidio described the dear old land of my birth, and brought so vividly before me exactly those little touches of home and country life which I should most certainly not find in my future Roman palazzo or in the villa at Capo di Monte, beyond the garden of which I could not stray into any wild woods and barren but ever‐beautiful heaths, as in England. But there was something in the close of the vision he called up before me which turned the current of feeling and made me smile. Strange as it may seem, I felt it was the newspapers and the I rapid intelligence that I could spare the more easily.
“There are good old books I have never read, Emidio, and which you have in your library. From time to time we will get a few new ones from the teeming British press. I am none the happier in England for tracing day by day the progress of modern ideas. I will turn my thoughts upon the past. I may sometimes sigh for the shady lanes and breezy downs of England; but I think the imperious beauty of Italy will hold quite as much sway over my heart in time. Are you satisfied?”
“I am satisfied as much as my jealous Italian nature will allow me to be.”
“Are all Italians jealous?”
“Nearly all, especially husbands.”
“But I shall never give you cause.”
“I am quite sure of that. But it will not prevent my being jealous. Do not look frightened, carissima.(180) I am not going to prove a regular Bluebeard, like some of my countrymen. But it would sound strange to your English ears to know the intense sense of appropriation which an Italian has with regard to his wife. It is true he adores her; but it is an adoration which would exclude the remotest homage of the merest stranger. He waits upon her, watches her, serves her. But it is possible to have too much of that, particularly when it is done with an evident intention to prevent the approach of any other human being. I had an acquaintance—for I cannot exactly call him a friend; he was too great a fool for that—who would not allow his wife to set her foot outside the door unless he accompanied her. She was not permitted to look out of the window, if he could prevent it; and he actually one day consulted me on the possibility of running a railing in front of his windows inside the rooms to prevent her getting near enough to look out.”
“And they did not shut him up as a madman?”
“Not at all; though I think the generality allowed he was eccentric. The poor woman had a melancholy time of it; for of course, if he would not allow her to look out, neither would he allow any one else to look in.”
“Well! and how did it end?”
“The only way any man of sense could expect it to end. She got out of the window and over the wall one fine night, and left him. The poor thing went no further and to no other place than her father’s house. But nothing would ever persuade her to return to her husband, who grew yellower and greener every day until he finally died—of jealousy.”
“Serve him right,” was all I deigned to reply, being too indignant to be grammatical.
“I knew a young girl,” continued Don Emidio, “who had made up her mind she would marry a certain Neapolitan duke of immense wealth. Her parents did not object (which they ought to have done). But her confessor, that Padre Cristoforo whom you heard preaching through the month of May at Santa Catarina, did everything he could to dissuade her. The only answer she would ever make to his remonstrances was that she should have a carriage. All life seemed to résumé itself in her mind in the possession of that one luxury, with just the addition of gowns from Paris. She was married to the old duke, and very soon after came to Padre Cristoforo to complain of her hard lot. He could only repeat that he had warned her how it would be, and recommend her to take a drive in her carriage, and ever more and more to drive in her carriage, reminding her that it was for that she had married. Alas! she had to confess that even that consolation was denied her, as her husband was too jealous of the passers‐by to allow of her being seen driving out, and that for the most part she was kept to the house. It is true he was constantly making her magnificent presents of that other great object of her ambition—dresses from Paris; but, as she represented to him, they were quite useless to her, as she could not wear them shut up alone with him in the house. Now, are you not frightened by this peculiarity in us Italians, carina, or are you prepared for it?”
Emidio was laughing, and so was I, when he more gravely added:
“The other day we were talking of the reverse of the medal, as regards the good or bad qualities of different people and nations. And I think I can promise you, cara mia, that as my respect for you, and I hope my own good sense, will always preserve me from this ludicrous excess of a national characteristic, so the only form which it will take will be in making me more observant that you should receive from my hands alone those little attentions, and what the French call petits soins,(181) which are so necessary to a woman, and which make up so large a share in the lesser enjoyments of her life. I hope never to bore you. But I hope always to wait upon you.”
I looked over my shoulder as we came to this point in our discourse. Frank and Elizabeth were discussing their future also in another part of the loggia. And I thought to myself, if we could have compared notes, we should no doubt have traced many differences characteristic of English and Italian future husbands. But I am convinced that both English maidens were equally content with their prospects.
We paid more than one visit to the great museum of Naples, now called the Museo Nazionale, but which Mary and Frank remembered as the Museo Borbonico. Since they were last here, the dynasty being changed, the name of the collection and the arrangement of the objects have also changed. Mary, who is very decided in her artistic preferences, had her favorites here, as I have always found she had in every collection of pictures or statues she had once visited; and faithful to her old loves, she never could rest or look at other objects till she had revisited those that had already struck her imagination. I do not know whether it may arise from the fact that in Rome the attention is naturally more turned, in the collections at the Vatican, to those which have reference to the life and customs of the early Christians, in preference to the indications of pagan life; but certainly the objects in the museum at Naples brought before me, with a vividness I had never felt elsewhere, the very minutest details of old Roman existence. And I believe, in point of fact, no collection equals that at Naples, enriched as it is by the treasure‐trove of Pompeii and Herculaneum. It would be quite easy to furnish a house with every requirement of life from roof to kitchen out of the abundance of these interesting relics of the long ago past. And as I wandered about the large chambers filled with kitchen utensils, lamps, vases, and female ornaments, and then passed into the halls where are the frescos that decorated the walls of their dwellings, I felt I could realize to myself the many differences in the external forms of their life and our own.
The first conclusion I arrive at is that there was more sameness and less multiplicity. For instance, there was a certain received form for lamps. You had your choice, in the ornamental parts, of the heads of lions or of griffins, but the shape was the same. In the kitchen the like shape reigned as in the triclinium or the œci—the dining‐room and drawing‐ rooms of the ancients—minus the ornaments.(182) The same absence of diversity is observable among the jewels. There could be very little difference, except in size and weight, between one lady’s necklace and another’s. The houses, judging from the discoveries at Pompeii, and borne out by the classic writers, were all built on the same model, some large and magnificent, others small and mean, but alike in structure. I pause, and ask myself how life went on without modern china in the houses of the great. Though much of their glass was beautiful, yet what a difference between their earthenware pots and our Sèvres and Dresden, Worcester and Minton! Everywhere the tables and seats and chairs were alike. The difference lay in the draperies and the cushions, never in the shape. It sounds bald and trite to register these remarks; but if we carry out the thought, and try and place ourselves where the men and women of Rome and its subject provinces stood, and in imagination sleep in a cubiculum(183) six feet long and four wide, sit on a marble representation of a camp‐stool, and lay our work or our book—which latter will be in the inconvenient shape of a long roll of papyrus—on a round marble table with three lion’s paws for legs; if we fancy our rooms divided one from the other by portières, or hangings, instead of doors, artistically draped in longitudinal folds, and fastened with cords by the fashionable upholsterer of the day; if to this we add an almost entire absence of washing‐basins, and, instead, a lavishness in the article of marble baths, all more or less taken in public; if from vestibule and atrium,(184) from hospitium(185) and exedra,(186) we dismiss all notion of knicknacks, all glass‐fronted cabinets, all buhl and marqueterie, all enamelled snuff‐boxes, china pug‐dogs, and filigree; with no Berlin‐wool work and no miniatures; a few severely beautiful bronze figures, some busts, some heathen goddesses in tinted marble, standing cold and naked in a niche; an ever‐plashing fountain like the pattering of incessant rain—if we bring all this vividly before us, we shall soon feel that the minute yet all but infinite circumstances of external life having been so different from our own, the whole flow of thought and fancy must have been different.
We owe more than we are aware, both for good and evil, to the way we furnish our houses. And if we decorate them according to our own ideas, we must remember that those decorations are for ever throwing back our ideas upon ourselves in a perpetual reflection until a sort of moral identity is established.
My impression is that the greater simplicity of form, combined, as was the case with the ancients, with a very high though but slightly varied style of decorative art, may have left a greater solidity, unity, and intensity in the old‐world characters, as compared with what we find in modern minds, distributed amongst such an endless variety of objects.
It is a great thing to be elevated by noble desires and high Christian aims above the trivialities of modern life. But if those high aspirations are absent, it is perhaps a safeguard to take to old china, old lace, and Louis Quinze furniture. It breaks up the thoughts into a kaleidoscope of fancies; and that, on the whole, is decidedly preferable to the restlessness of youth, health, and idleness, leading to a craving for gladiatorial fights and scenes of bloodshed and cruelty. In those days the virtuous were nobly virtuous, and were very rare. The vicious were horribly vicious, and formed the generality. It always struck me that an old Roman house must have been a dull home. And ennui is the mother of naughtiness quite as surely as the devil is the father of lies. There are minds which cannot be great, as there are lives which never are much more than harmless. Surely for these the multiplicities of modern times, the toys of fashion, the novelties of the day, in dress, furniture, and ornament, are safety‐valves and almost godsends! At least they are better than the arena, with its brutalizing scenes of blood and horror, where a vestal had but to turn her thumb to take the life of the victim bleeding before her eyes!
These results of modern civilization are not Christianity; and I am taking a very low standard in all I am now saying. But they are the dross of a civilization leavened by Christianity, and they are very different from the poison that found its way into the daily life of Roman men and women from the seething wickedness of the great heathen empire.
Nothing can exceed the interest of the paintings taken from Pompeii. Of course I was intimately acquainted with them from engravings, and had been all my life. One of the early impressions of my childhood was the delight of finding that the grave old Romans (and therefore the Greeks before them), for whom I had a very pagan admiration, were capable of appreciating humor as expressed in the movements and attitudes of animals. I was overjoyed at this touch of sympathy with a dead past; and I recommend all visitors to Naples to look out for certain cocks and hens and other creatures among the lesser mural decorations taken from Pompeii. The well‐known dancing girls I had never properly admired until I saw them being copied by a Neapolitan artist in the Museum. He had not deviated one hair’s breadth from the original outline; but the mere restoration of vivid coloring had imparted to them an airy, floating grace which I had failed fully to detect in the scratched and faded originals, but which I at once felt must have belonged to them when they decorated some rich Pompeian’s house.
While I was wandering about, trying to live for an hour the inner homespun life of a Roman maiden by gazing long on the walls she must have looked on, Mary had gone in search of the Farnese Bull and the exquisite half‐ head and figure of the Psyche, that wonderful embodiment of virginal grace and feminine delicacy which makes one long to have seen the statue in its unmutilated condition. She had stood for a good quarter of an hour before the Aristides (for we insist on believing it is Aristides), and was, as she told me afterwards, growing more and more in the consoling belief that many of the old pagans will have found a place among the thrones of the blest through the mercy of Him who never asks for more than he has given, and who since the creation has never left the world without a witness of himself. Then she visited the Farnese Flora, that wonderful triumph of art over matter, where in a statue of above twelve feet such floating grace is expressed that she seems to be skimming along the ground, while the light wind plays in the drapery.
I found Mary lost in thought before a beautiful bronze statue of Mercury in repose. The lithe figure has just sat down to rest on the edge of a rock. The tension of the muscles is gradually relaxing. One foot as yet only touches the ground with the heel. Wait a moment, and the foot will yield and rest. Never was fatigue gradually giving way to repose more exquisitely depicted. Then Mary turned to the dead Amazon with the death‐ wound beneath her breast, and finally declared that having satisfied herself by revisiting these, that for one reason or another had haunted her for twenty years, she was ready to admire the others. It is curious how the long lines of statues and busts seem to give out cold. The same stone walls covered with pictures could never be so severely cold. The old gods and heroes seem to breathe upon you with an icy breath from out of the grave of the old classic world.
The best pictures in the Naples Museum are not very numerous, but are admirable specimens of the Italian schools. They are collected into one or two rooms, deserving time and study. A cursory view of the others will be sufficient to satisfy most people. There is much more to be seen besides the relics from Pompeii and Herculaneum, the statues and pictures. It is all worth visiting, and, to be fully appreciated, requires many hours to be spent on each different class of objects.
I had a very distinct and not altogether a pleasant recollection of the mysterious grotto of Pozzuoli, which had haunted my imagination ever since I was here as a child. Ida and I had made an engagement to visit Astroni, Victor Emanuel’s happy hunting‐grounds, one day when we were to have the carriage to ourselves; and accordingly we were to pass through the grotto. You approach it by a deep cutting in the rock, the sides of which are draped with ivy and hanging plants, with bright tufts of wild flowers wherever a few grains of earth give them a roothold. There is a small oratory to the right as you enter, of a most simple and rustic kind, and kept by a Capuchin, whom I cannot call a venerable hermit, as he happened to be of rather youthful appearance. On festas his little altar was covered with flowers, and a few votive candles burnt before the obscure picture of the Madonna within the dark recesses of the cave. When the poor Capuchin heard a carriage approaching, he would hurry forth with a little tin box, which he held up to us for an alms. We seldom failed to give him some, and from time to time it would be silver instead of the more frequent copper; and then his gratitude became eloquent, and many a blessing followed us down the murky gloom of the long, unsavory grotto. Certainly, this strange road, which it appears dates from the middle of the first Christian century, is not calculated to leave a pleasant impression, though in many ways it presents picturesque bits which reminded me of some of Salvator Rosa’s pictures. It would be quite dark but for the yellow, faint light of gas‐lamps, not sufficient in number to dispel the gloom, which is greatly increased by the clouds of dust the numerous carts, carriages, and herds of goats are constantly raising, the latter adding thereto their own peculiarly suffocating odor. It is paved in the same way as the Neapolitan streets, and the noise reverberates from the roof. It has a curious effect when you lean forward to see the bearded goats just visible through the dusty air, and further on, perhaps, a cabriolet laden with people—six inside, four out, and one boy at least, after the Neapolitan fashion, hanging in a net beneath the vehicle—drawn by one horse, always equal to his load, no matter how starved and miserable he may be. On it comes, the merry inmates singing, shouting, piercing the darkness, but compelled thereby to slacken their pace a little, lest there should be a collision in this Erebus. We were always silent and a little uncomfortable in the din, the dust, and the darkness. Yet it had to be passed through again and again, as being the only road out into the country, unless we went all round by the Strada Nuova and Nisida. At the entrance of the grotto from Naples is the supposed tomb of Virgil, hidden beneath ivy and acanthus leaves‐just as a poet would have wished! We came out from the grotto on the busy, picturesque village of Fiorigrotta, where the whole population seem to live out in the one long street. Astroni is an extinct volcanic crater, the sides of which are clothed with ilex and other trees. It is circular, and a wall runs along the upper rim to prevent the escape of the deer and wild boar that are kept there for the king’s pleasure. There are two carriage‐roads through the dense forest. At the bottom of the basin there are a few open spaces, marshy land, and water. The solitude and silence are intense; for, as usual in Italy, there are not many singing birds, and what there are do not give song during the heat of the day any more than in our northern climes. I never shall forget the silence that reigned, nor the feeling of solitude induced by peering through the trees, looking down on the small lakes of intensely blue water below, and knowing that in those dense thickets myriads of wild animals were hiding in their lair, while we were the only human beings. The gates are kept locked, and it requires a special order to penetrate this sylvan scene. It does not seem to me a very satisfactory way of sporting. You are too sure of your game, walled in as it is all round. After visiting the extinct crater, we saw the emptied lake of Agnano, once notorious for malaria, now drained off and leaving a wide plain more or less adapted for agriculture. At present it seems in a rather neglected state, of which nature has taken advantage to cast her unsolicited gifts of flaunting bright wild flowers broadcast over the whole space.
One of our most interesting excursions was to the Solfatara, not far from the Lago Agnano. This also is an extinct crater; and yet so barely extinct that we feel, as we tread the sulphur‐checkered soil, and hear the hollow reverberation if we stamp on the ground, as if at any moment it might again burst forth.
From time to time our nostrils were disagreeably met by a puff of steam redolent of sulphur; and occasionally these puffs grow stronger and more threatening. The stones you pick up are tinged with yellow. The vegetation is sparse and dwarfed. At the further end of the plain is a cave, from whence at regular intervals rush clouds of hot steam, while a roaring, boiling sound surges within. The aperture is large enough for a person to enter by stooping a little. Most of our party peeped in, but instantly retired from the suffocating and horrible stench and great heat.
The rocks are covered with sulphur and alum; and in my eagerness that we should all equally benefit by the sight, I wanted to persuade Ida just to take one peep. It would, however, have been a risk to do anything which even for a second might embarrass the action of her delicate lungs and weak heart. She tried to approach, but turned back with the feeling that one puff more would have suffocated her.
I think we all felt as if we were standing in one of the outer halls of a region never to be mentioned “to ears polite,” and almost too “Dantesque” to be pleasant. We gladly breathed a purer atmosphere as we passed out of the gate (inside which is a fabric of sulphur‐works), and bent our steps between white walls on which the green lizards basked, and between fields of unripe corn and mulberry‐trees, till we reached an open space commanding a fine view of the Gulf of Pozzuoli and the hills beyond. From thence we turned into the Capuchin church dedicated to S. Januarius, and said to be built over the spot where he suffered martyrdom in 305. There is a stone, on which he is believed to have been beheaded, let into the wall, and protected with an iron grating. It is seamed with red marks as of blood. It is very probably a stone on which he knelt and on which the blood fell. But a block, whether of stone or wood, for the purposes of beheading, is a modern invention. The Romans used a sword—as the Turks use a scymitar for that ghastly purpose to this day—and the patient knelt upright.
It was pleasant to rest in the cool church, which, humble as it is, is not without its quota of beautiful marbles, and is kept exquisitely clean, with fresh flowers on the altar, and all care taken of it as if the community were still there. We found only a lay brother left in charge. I think he said he had a companion. All the poor fathers were dispersed by Victor Emanuel’s government, and Mass is only said on feast‐days; though it seemed to be the only church in that immediate neighborhood, and the poor of the district must greatly miss the presence of the Capuchin fathers, those special friends of the poor.
As we came down the hill, we were met by peasant lads, who wanted us to buy lumps of sulphur and the skeletons of the pretty little fish called the sea‐horse, which abound in this part of the Mediterranean, and which are just like the knights among chessmen. They may be seen alive in quantities in the aquarium at Brighton. They twist the tapering end of their tails round a fragment of sea‐weed, or indeed, as the buoyancy of the water keeps them up, they need but to touch something stationary. And there they stand in groups, motionless, and looking for all the world like a grave assembly of horses’ heads of the most delicate race, and with noses slightly turned up. Nothing can be more graceful than the way they hold themselves. Their heads are not bigger than those of ordinary‐sized chessmen.
As the Vernons had been at Posilippo all through the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in April, 1872, they were naturally anxious we should see something of the devastation it had occasioned. We determined, therefore, to drive to San Sebastiano, a village which was almost entirely destroyed. As we approached the spot, it seemed as if we were driving into the kingdom of chaos, where “the earth was void and empty.” On either side lay wide plains of gray‐black lava, looking as if a dead, unfertile earth had been furrowed with the burning shares of some gigantic and infernal plough, and had remained calcined and sterile for ever after. We left the carriage and climbed up a large mound of lava. I found myself nearly on a level with the low roof of the small church, round which the lava had crept, but had spared it. I looked down into the basement of a house below me. The lava had poured in and filled what once were rooms, but had left the walls and the roof standing. There was part of a street left, the lava having, with seeming caprice, turned off to the left, as it poured down the mountain, just in that spot. Our friends told us that as they used to sit by the hour and watch the progress of the burning stream through glasses, they could see the small white houses, with the fiery flood approaching, when suddenly each house seemed to leap into the air like a lighted straw, and then was seen no more. A cat ran past me, in haste to save her paws. We could not stand still long, for, though more than a year had elapsed, the land was still too hot to be pleasant; and when we reached home, we found our feet were blistered. The poor creatures whose homes have thus perished approach you timidly with bits of lava to sell. They still have a scared look in their faces. But nothing will persuade them to shift their quarters and leave their grand but dangerous neighbor. They are trying to rebuild their village, and are deaf to all the remonstrances of the great scientific philosopher(187) who lives a hermit’s life in the observatory half‐way up the mountain. He has a Capuchin priest as a companion; and the latter was able to give the last rites of the church to about forty of the unfortunate people, who, actuated by curiosity, had attempted to climb the mountain during the eruption. It seems they had never calculated upon the effect of the burning heat from a distance. They thought if there were a certain space between them and the lava, they should be safe. They forgot that actual contact was not needed; and they were scorched to death long before the stream reached the spot where they stood. Not one of those thus licked up by the breath of the volcano ever recovered, or even lived long enough to quit the place.
Signor Palmier and the Capuchin saw a carriage full of people, coachman and two horses, advancing up the mountain. Suddenly the whole was submerged. They could only tell where it had been arrested by the carrion birds hovering over a certain spot for many days after!
VIII. Laws Of Nature And Miracles.
Büchner. We differ very widely in many points, sir; but there is one point about which we shall have no difficulty in agreeing—the immutability of natural laws. In fact, you have already conceded that the laws of nature are unchangeable.
Reader. Yes, I admit the unchangeability of the laws of nature; but I most strongly protest against your rash inference that therefore miracles are impossible.
Büchner. Yet my reasoning is very plain. “The law of nature, observes Moleschott, is a stringent expression of necessity. There exists in it neither exception nor limitation; and no imaginable power can disregard this necessity. A stone not supported will in all eternity fall towards the centre of the earth; and there never was, and never will be, a command for the sun to stand still” (p. 33).
Reader. Is this what you call “reasoning”?
Büchner. Yes. “The experience of thousands of years has impressed upon the investigator the firmest conviction of the immutability of the laws of nature, so that there cannot remain the least doubt in respect to this great truth” (p. 34).
Reader. This I grant.
Büchner. “Science has gradually taken all the positions of the childish belief of the peoples; it has snatched thunder and lightning from the hands of the gods ...” (ibid.)
Reader. It was Christianity, not science, that conquered the gods.
Büchner. “The eclipse of the stars and the stupendous powers of the Titans of the olden times have been grasped by the fingers of man” (ibid.)
Reader. How can the fingers of man grasp the eclipses and the Titans?
Büchner. “That which appeared inexplicably miraculous, and the work of a supernatural power, has, by the torch of science, proved to be the effect of hitherto unknown natural forces” (ibid.)
Reader. You dream, doctor. Has “the torch of science” made known those hitherto unknown forces? No scientific work has yet explained how, by an act of the will, water can be changed into wine, how the deaf and dumb can be instantaneously cured, how the blind can be made to see, the paralytic to walk, and the dead to rise, at the sound of a voice, four days after burial, and when already in a state of advanced putrefaction. You may of course deny these facts, as you deny that the sun ever received a command to stand still; but to say that “the torch of science” has shown these facts to be the effect of unknown natural forces is to tell us the most stupid lie that can be uttered. Lies, you know, should at least be credible.
Büchner. “We have the fullest right, and are scientifically correct, in asserting that there is no such thing as a miracle. Everything that happens does so in a natural way—i.e., in a mode determined only by accidental or necessary coalition of existing materials and their immanent natural forces. No revolution on earth or in heaven, however stupendous, could occur in any other manner” (p. 34).
Reader. These are mere words. I deny that science gives you the least right to suppress miracles. How can you establish such a right?
Büchner. “Wherever fire and water meet, vapors must arise and exert their irresistible power. Where the seed falls in the ground, there it will grow; where the thunderbolt is attracted, there it will strike. Can there exist any doubt as to these truths?” (p. 35).
Reader. Please, doctor, come to the point.
Büchner. “How is it possible that the unalterable order in which things move should ever be disturbed without producing an irremediable gap in the world, without delivering us and everything up to arbitrary power, without reducing all science, every earthly endeavor, to a vain and childish effort?” (p. 36).
Reader. All this rhetoric is most absurd, doctor. “The order in which things move” is not unalterable; and He whom you call an “arbitrary power” can alter it when he pleases without asking your permission, or without reducing science to a childish effort.
Büchner. What? You contradict yourself, sir. For, if the order in which things move is changeable, the laws of nature cannot be unchangeable.
Reader. Not at all. You sophistically confound two things entirely different—the law of nature, and the course of nature. The first is unchangeable, because it is connected with the essence of things; but the second is changeable, as a constant and universal experience compels us to admit. However much you may hate “arbitrary power,” you cannot deny that, besides necessary causes, there are others which are free in their exertions. Can you deny, for instance, that a stone may be thrown upwards in spite of gravitation, or that we can catch hold of the stone from the window, and, in spite of gravitation, we can prevent it from falling back to the ground? Now, if we do this, we do not change the law of nature, and nevertheless we modify the course of nature by freely producing a phenomenon which nature would not produce.
Büchner. Would you call this a miracle?
Reader. The question is impertinent. I call it a change in the course of nature. Now, if the course of nature can be modified without the law of nature being altered, it is absurd to pretend that there is contradiction in holding the unchangeableness of the latter and the changeableness of the former. This being evident, let us go a step further, and draw an obvious conclusion. We can, when we please, catch the stone from the window, and prevent it from falling; and cannot God do the same? We are free to exert our power; but is not God free, or has he less power than we have? If you are honest, you will own that what can be done by us can be done by our Creator and Lord. Now, if he stops the stone in the air, a miracle will be wrought, and no law of nature violated. You cannot deny the possibility of miracles without denying God.
Büchner. “A spirit independent of nature cannot exist; for never has an unprejudiced mind cultivated by science perceived its manifestation” (p. 36).
Reader. Are you not ashamed, doctor, to repeat such a nonsensical assertion? You have already failed to prove it, and I have shown its absurdity in a preceding discussion. Must I answer it anew? The only answer you now deserve is that “The fool has said in his heart, ‘There is no God.’ ” Fools, in fact, deny God in their hearts, but cannot deny him in their minds, because atheism is not the result of intellectual knowledge, but of moral depravity. Our present question, however, is not theism or atheism, but the possibility of miracles without any breach of natural laws. Surely, if there were no God, no miracle would be possible; but your argument was that if the laws of nature are unchangeable, no miracle is possible; and this I have shown to be false. If there is a God, as we must now assume, miracles are possible. In the same manner, if a single true miracle has ever been wrought, there is a God.
Büchner. “Apparent exceptions from the natural order have been called miracles, of which there have been many at all times” (p. 36).
Reader. You should know better, doctor. The church is not satisfied with “apparent” exceptions from the natural order; the exception must be rigorously proved.
Büchner. “We should only waste words in our endeavor to prove the natural impossibility of a miracle. No educated, much less a scientific, person who is convinced of the immutable order of things can nowadays believe in miracles. We find it rather wonderful that so clear and acute a thinker as Ludwig Feuerbach should have expended so much logic in refuting the Christian miracles. What founder of religion did not deem it necessary, in order to introduce himself to the world, to perform miracles? And has not his success proved that he was right? What prophet, what saint, is there who has not performed miracles? The miracle‐seeker sees them daily and hourly. Do not the table‐spirits belong to the order of miracles? All such miracles are equal in the eye of science; they are the result of a diseased fancy” (pp. 36, 37).
Reader. This is miserable logic, doctor. Why do you speak of the natural impossibility of miracles? Have we ever taught that miracles are naturally possible? We know that nature works no miracles, and that all miracles are supernatural. It is therefore either a mean trick or a logical blunder on your part to pretend that the natural possibility of miracles is the point in question. That no educated or scientific man can nowadays believe in miracles is not only an empty boast, but also a disgraceful calumny. We Christians believe in miracles, and yet, I venture to say, we need not resort to you for lessons in science or education. As a reason for not believing in miracles, you allege “the immutable order of things”; that is, you assume what is to be proved. The order of things is so far from being immutable that we see it modified at every moment. It is the laws of nature, not the order of things, that are immutable. That Feuerbach “expended so much of logic in refuting Christian miracles” I will not deny; I only say that his logic, like your own, is mere sophism and cavil. Of course you call him “so clear and acute a thinker”; but we know what this means on the lips of Freemasons. If he was “so clear and acute a thinker,” why did he not furnish you with at least one good argument against Christian miracles?
Besides, you pretend that all founders of religion deemed it necessary to perform miracles. What then? Were it true, the fact would scarcely help your cause; for it would only prove that there have ever been impostors, as there have been quacks and coin‐forgers. Now, who would think of selling counterfeited articles, if there had existed none genuine? Would there be quacks, had there been no doctors? And yet your reasoning leads to the conclusion that, because there are so many quacks, there can be no doctors. Are you, then, a mere quack yourself?
You say with a malicious sneer that all prophets and saints performed miracles. Yes; they performed miracles, or rather, to speak more correctly, God wrought miracles through them. Yet, in the teeth of sacred and ecclesiastical history which testifies to an infinite number of unquestionable miracles, you are shameless enough to conclude that no miracle has ever been performed, on the plea that miracle‐seekers, table‐ spirits, and diseased fancy must have conspired to deceive the world. Is it necessary to refute such a silly assertion? Was Elymas the magician a miracle‐seeker when S. Paul, to punish him for his opposition to Christianity, struck him blind with a word in the presence of the Roman centurion? Was it a trick of table‐spirits that made the blind see, the lame walk, or the dumb speak? Was it diseased fancy that impressed on an immense crowd the belief that they had been miraculously fed by Christ in the desert, where no provisions were at hand? No, doctor, you are not silly enough to believe anything of the sort.
Büchner. But what do you answer to the following difficulties? First, if we admit miracles, “science will be reduced to a vain and childish effort” (p. 36). Secondly, how can we conceive “a supreme legislator who allows himself to be moved by prayers and sobs to reverse the immutable order which he himself has created, to violate his own laws, and with his own hand to destroy the action of natural forces?” (p. 38). Thirdly, “every miracle, if it existed, says Cotta, would lead to the conviction that the creation is not deserving the respect which all pay to it, and the mystics would necessarily be obliged to deduce from the imperfection of the created world the imperfection of the Creator” (p. 38). Fourthly, “is it a view worthy of God to represent him as a power which now and then gives a new impulse to the world in its course, and puts on a screw, etc., like the regulator of a watch? If the world has been created by God perfect, how can it require any repairs?” (p. 39). Fifthly, we see that nature works without superior control; “its action is frequently quite independent of the rules of a higher reason, now constructing, now destroying, now full of design, then again perfectly blind and in contradiction with all moral and rational laws. That in the formation of organic and inorganic bodies, which are constantly being renewed, there can be no direct governing reason at work is proved by the most striking facts. The nisus formativus inherent in nature is so blind and so dependent on external circumstances that the most senseless forms are frequently engendered, that it is often incapable of obviating or overcoming the slightest obstructions, and that frequently the contrary of what according to reason should happen is effected” (pp. 41, 42). These are serious difficulties, sir.
Reader. I hardly think them to be serious, doctor. The first entirely disappears when you reflect that the conclusions of physical science are all hypothetic, inasmuch as they regard phenomena which must take place under the action of given powers, to the exclusion of any other power extraneous to those taken into account. Such conclusions, therefore, imply the condition that no extraneous agent and no disturbing cause interferes with the production of the phenomena. If an extraneous power interferes, the conditions are changed, and with them the phenomena; but science is not upset. A stone not supported must fall. Not supported; such is the condition. Now, whether you, or I, or the roof, or God, or an angel support it, the consequence will be that the stone will not fall. Now, I ask you, is science “reduced to a vain and childish effort” because you or I or the roof prevent the stone from falling? I presume, doctor, that if such were the case, science would long since have disappeared from this world. Why, then, should science become a vain and childish effort as soon as God would do himself what we can freely do without destroying science? Take another example. Nature builds no stately palaces, no fine steamers, no locomotives, no railroads. All such things are our free creations. Yet surely you will not maintain that by building palaces or by boring mountains we destroy science, although we may interfere very materially with the works of nature.
Now, if our free action upon nature does not destroy science, why should God’s free action destroy it? Answer me in the name of reason: What theory of natural science would be falsified were God to send angels to build you a palace, or devils to dig you a grave?
And now I come to your second difficulty. You assume that the supreme legislator cannot work a miracle without destroying the action of natural forces and violating his own laws, thus reversing the immutable order which he himself has created. But you are mistaken. The order of things is not immutable; this I have already shown. On the other hand, we have just seen that no law of nature is ever violated by a miracle. Lastly, God’s action does not destroy the action of natural forces, but produces an effect superior to and independent of them. Nor is this strange; for we ourselves can do the like within the range of our limited powers. When we go up‐stairs, do we destroy the action of gravity that urges us downwards? By no means. The action of gravity continues its work, but our contrary exertion prevails; and thus our body obeys the resultant of the two opposite actions, both of which obtain their effect. You see, therefore, that there is no need of destroying the action of natural forces in order to produce an effect which natural forces cannot produce. After these remarks, nothing remains of your second difficulty but “the prayers and sobs” which you cruelly ridicule as useless and superstitious. But our Father who is in heaven listens to such prayers and is moved by those sobs. This is abundantly proved by innumerable authentic facts; and this suffices for us.
Your third difficulty is based on Cotta’s notion that the creation deserves respect on account of its perfection. Cotta may be one of your great men, but surely he does not know what he is speaking about. What “respect” do we owe to creation? Benighted barbarians thought, indeed, that the sun, the earth, and the stars deserved respect; but how can a man who pretends to be a philosopher, and who professes himself an enemy of superstition, adopt such a stale pagan view, unless he blinds himself and renounces reason by bestowing upon matter the worship which he refuses to the living God? To say that the world is “perfect” is a mere equivocation. The world is perfect after its own manner, inasmuch as it serves all the purposes for which it has been made; it is perfect in the same sense in which we say that a thermometer, a telescope, or an engine is perfect; it is a perfect instrument in God’s hand for the attainment of a determinate end; and therefore its perfection is relative only, and might be greater and greater without end. Now, Cotta’s argument overlooks this obvious restriction, and presents the world as absolutely perfect. If the world is imperfect, says he, God is imperfect; but miracles would show that the world is imperfect; and therefore miracles would show that God is imperfect. Now, is not this, doctor, asinine logic? We might as well argue thus: If an engine is imperfect, its maker is imperfect; but the opening of a turning‐cock for admitting more steam shows that the engine is imperfect; and therefore that opening shows that the engine‐maker is imperfect. And this leads me to your fourth difficulty, which is nothing but a repetition of the third.
You ask: “Is it a view worthy of God to represent him as a power which now and then gives a new impulse to the world in its course?” I answer, Yes; it is quite worthy of God to exercise his power in the world in the way he thinks fit. Shall we say, then, that God, “like the regulator of a watch, puts a screw on the world”? Why not? The watchmaker is not degraded by regulating his work. But, then, “the world requires repairs”? I say, Yes. And if you conclude that the world “has not been created perfect,” I reply that although it came out relatively perfect from the hands of the Creator, it has gradually and most sadly deteriorated by the malice of man. Moreover, the world, whether more or less perfect in itself, without a constant active intervention of its Creator can neither work nor last for a moment. The world is, therefore, constantly “repaired,” to use your expression, and has “screws put on it,” as history testifies; and other “screws” are undoubtedly ready for further “repairs” when they will be wanted.
Your last difficulty arises from your assumption that nature works without being controlled by a superior power. But how do you know that nature is not controlled? What are the “striking facts” which prove that “there is no direct governing reason at work” in the formation of organic and inorganic bodies? Your nisus formativus proves nothing. You say that the nisus is “blind.” You may well call it blind, inasmuch as it is a work of secondary causes; but you cannot deny that it is ruled by a superior reason. What does it matter if “most senseless forms are frequently engendered”? You yourself admit that the nisus formativus depends very much “on external circumstances,” which may mar or spoil the work of organization, and which nothing obliges the superior reason to alter or improve. On the other hand, such senseless forms are not so “frequently” engendered as you pretend; and if a few such senseless or monstrous forms can move you to doubt whether their formation is controlled by a superior reason, I do not see why the immensely greater number of other forms perfectly constituted should not constrain you to banish the doubt, and to recognize that matter not controlled and not directed by reason cannot co‐ ordinate its efforts towards the formation of an organism of which it knows neither the plan nor the object.
I trust, doctor, that these remarks suffice to solve your difficulties, and to show that the world is governed by a superior reason.
Büchner. It may be; yet “what this or that man may understand by a governing reason, an absolute power, a universal soul, a personal God, etc., is his own affair. The theologians, with their articles of faith, must be left to themselves; so the naturalists with their science. They both proceed by different routes” (p. 43).
Reader. This is no reply, doctor, and your remark is misplaced. The existence of a personal God, the possibility of miracles, and many other such truths, are proved by natural reason. Had I refuted your objections by quoting “theologians” and “articles of faith,” your reply might have some meaning. But since your allegations have been answered by reason, what does it avail to say that “theologians, with their articles of faith, must be left to themselves”? Moreover, you unwittingly condemn your own tactics. For if theologians are to be left to themselves, why do you, then, who are no theologian, and not even a philosopher, invade the province of theology, and fight against faith?
If you have any desire to know the truth about the reality of miracles, I will tell you what you have to do. M. Artus, a Frenchman, on the 23d of July, 1871, publicly challenged all the free‐thinkers of the world to show the falsity of any two out of the many miracles registered in M. Lasserre’s book entitled Notre Dame de Lourdes, and staked 10,000 francs upon the issue of the contest. This money was safely deposited by him in the hands of a notary‐public in Paris; and fifty judges were appointed, some of whom were members of the French Institute, and others fellows of other celebrated institutions and academies, or members of the bar, including even a Protestant; so that there could be no suspicion of fanaticism, ultramontanism, or mysticism about them. Now, incredible as it may appear to you, none of your great braggarts has dared from that day till now to accept the challenge. It is for you, who are so peremptory in denouncing miracles, to come forward, and to blot out by an act of philosophical valor the stain which the cowardice of your enlightened friends has left on the glory of free‐thinkerism. It is for you, I repeat; for if a man of your standing and reputation quails before the challenge, the world will most reasonably conclude that you have no faith whatever in your own doctrines.
IX. The Heavens.
Reader. The laws of nature are universal. Such is the subject of the seventh chapter of your Force and Matter. I need hardly say that, while admitting with you the universality of the natural laws, I cannot but condemn the materialistic spirit which disgraces your explanation of that obvious truth. But in the chapter which follows you speak of the heavens in a most objectionable style.
Büchner. “Every school‐boy knows that the sky is not a glass shade covering the earth, but that, in contemplating it, we behold an immense space interrupted by infinitely distant and scattered groups of worlds” (p. 51).
Reader. This I grant; but I am at a loss to understand how the contemplation of the heavens can furnish you an argument against the existence of God. Is it not strange that what has hitherto been considered to proclaim most loudly the existence, and magnify the power, of God, has become, in your hands, an evidence in support of atheism?
Büchner. The heavenly masses “are in constant motion—a motion singularly combined and complicated, yet in all its modifications merely the result of a single universal law of nature—the law of attraction.... All these motions may be determined and predicted with mathematical exactness. As far as the telescope of man reaches, the same law, the same mechanical arrangement, according to the same calculated mechanical formula, is found. Nowhere is there a trace of an arbitrary finger which has ordered the heavens or pointed out the path of comets. ‘I have searched the heavens,’ says Lalande, ‘but have nowhere found the traces of God.’ And when the Emperor Napoleon asked the celebrated astronomer Laplace why there was no mention of God in his Mécanique Céleste, he replied, ‘Sire, je n’avais pas besoin de cette hypothèse.’ The more astronomy progressed in its knowledge of the laws and motions in the heavens, the more it repudiated the idea of a supernatural influence, and the easier it became to deduce the origin, grouping, and motions of the heavenly bodies from the properties inherent in matter itself. The attraction of atoms rendered the bodies compact, whilst the law of attraction, in combination with their primary motion, produced the mode of their reciprocal rotation which we now observe” (pp. 51, 52).
Reader. Waiving the more than problematic plausibility of your premises, and setting aside the blasphemies which you have diligently copied from the books of the French unbelievers, and which are too stolid to need an answer, I reply, doctor, that you are always too hasty in drawing your conclusions. Why did you not reflect that the matter of which the celestial bodies are formed must have had an origin, that the revolutions of those bodies cannot be ruled by an abstract law, and that their enormous distances, as well as the expanse of their orbits through the immensity of space, compel the admission of an infinite being ranging infinitely above matter and necessarily prior to it? You should not have overlooked the fact that the heavens proclaim God’s existence by their immensity far more eloquently than by the revolutions of the celestial bodies. You speak of movements ruled by a law. I admit the movements and the law which rules our calculation of the movements. But without space there is no movement, and without God there is no space; therefore without God there is no movement. Extricate yourself, if you can. Do you concede that without space there is no movement?
Büchner. It is evident.
Reader. Do you admit that without God there is no space?
Büchner. This I deny.
Reader. Then what do you mean by “space”?
Büchner. I fancy that space is nothing but the volume of bodies.
Reader. How is this possible? A body moves through space. Now, does a body move through its own volume, or does it move through the volume of other bodies? On the contrary, the body cannot move without pushing away before it all other bodies and volumes whatever from the space they occupy. It is therefore evident that space, as such, is not the volume of bodies.
Büchner. Then I shall say that space is the capability of bodies and motion.
Reader. This definition of space may be admitted if properly understood. But what is such a capability? Is it, in your opinion, a real and positive entity?
Büchner. I should not think so, unless, indeed, it be occupied by bodies.
Reader. I know that many are of this opinion, that the reality of space depends on the presence of bodies; but I say that, if such were the case, then empty space would be mere nothing. Now, if you admit this, you will be compelled to admit also the absurdity that a mere nothing can be greater or smaller. For between two neighboring atoms there may be a greater or smaller interval of space; and such an interval, by the hypothesis, would be nothing. Hence it is evident that space, no matter whether occupied or unoccupied, must be something real.
Büchner. Then I say that space is a mere relation of material objects.
Reader. There are relations of bodies in space; but all such relations presuppose the existence of absolute space, and therefore space itself is none of those relations. Moreover, since all real relations have their reason in something real, which is the foundation of the relativity, it follows that space, as that through which one body is really related to another, is in itself a reality, independently of the relations which may result from the existence of bodies in it. And again, before bodies can be considered as related through space, they must be each located in space. But, evidently, they cannot be located in space if there is no space. And therefore there must be space before any local relation of bodies can be imagined as possible. Hence you cannot maintain that space is a mere relation.
Büchner. Perhaps I shall be obliged to say with Kant that space is only a subjective form of the mind.
Reader. Then you will entangle yourself still more. The assumption would imply the denial of all real distances, of all real volumes, of all real movements, of all real phenomena, and of all natural laws. For if space is only a subjective form of our mind, then there is no space out of the mind; and consequently there are no real distances and no real movements in the outside world, and science becomes an array of lies.
Büchner. What is, then, your notion of space?
Reader. Space is the region of all possible ubications and movements. Do you accept this definition?
Büchner. Why not? It is substantially the same as that which I have given by saying that space is the capability of bodies and motion.
Reader. Very well. Then, since I have shown that this capability of bodies and motion is a positive reality, space is a positive reality. Moreover, space is neither matter nor any of the forces of matter, nor dependent on matter, but prior to it, and is prerequired as a necessary condition for the existence of matter. Lastly, space is independent of time and motion, and therefore is absolutely and strictly eternal and unchangeable. Do you object to these conclusions?
Reader. Then you concede that space is an infinite, eternal, unchangeable, independent reality, prior to matter and above matter, and therefore, according to your own theory, prior to the world and above it. Now, to concede so much, and then to deny God, would be an evident contradiction. For you must admit that absolute space is either a substance or not. If it is a substance, then it is an infinite, eternal, independent, unchangeable substance, embracing and transcending with its immensity all imaginable worlds; and a substance having such attributes is what we call GOD. If space is not a substance, it must still have the reason of its reality in a substance from which it borrows its infinity, its eternity, its immutability, and of which it is the extrinsic manifestation. Hence the contemplation of the heavens and of “the immense space interrupted by infinitely distant and scattered groups of worlds” affords an irresistible proof of God’s existence, and leaves no room for your pretended “scientific” objections. If there is no God, there is no space; and if there is no space, science is a dream and scientists mere visionaries.(188)
Büchner. I cannot fight on this ground, sir. Space is a mystery which our reason has no power to explain; and I decline to argue about anything that transcends reason. The strongest argument in favor of the existence of a personal God was ever drawn from the necessity of a first mover, in order to account for the movement of the celestial bodies. But such a necessity has never been proved; and therefore “even in this remote position a personal creative power cannot hold its ground” (p. 52).
Reader. You cannot cover your retreat by pretending that space is a mystery; for if space is a mystery, then science also is a mystery—a conclusion which you do not accept. But while you thus implicitly acknowledge your defeat, you try to secure a safer position by alleging that the movement of the heavenly bodies may have originated in the powers of matter itself without any exterior impulse from a first mover. I wish you to remark that the words “first mover” can be understood in two manners; for not he only who directly imparts the first movement, but he also who governs the exertions and establishes the conditions on which the first movements depend, can be called “first mover.” The old philosophers, who did not know the fact of universal gravitation, proved the existence of God by affirming the necessity of a first mover—that is, of a first cause—giving the first impetus to the heavens, and governing their revolutions. But since gravitation became known philosophers have acknowledged that all matter could receive motion through the action of other matter, and therefore that the first movements in the material world could arise from matter itself, with no need of a special impulse from without. This, however, does not mean that we can dispense with a “first mover.” However great your effort to convince yourself that “matter is eternal, and the motion of matter as eternal as matter itself” (p. 53), you will not succeed. Matter is created; and He who created it placed it in definite conditions, that it could exert its powers in a definite manner and give rise to definite effects. To him, therefore, as to a first cause, are to be traced all the movements arising from his production and arrangement of all the proximate causes. Now, the first cause of all movements is a “first mover.” What can science object against this evident truth?
Büchner. “Why matter assumed a definite motion at a definite time is as yet unknown to us; but the investigations of science are as yet incomplete, nor is it impossible that we may get some clue as to the period of the first origin of individual worlds. Even at this day astronomers give cogent reasons that some of the nebular spots are worlds in embryo, which, by gradual condensation and rotation, will become worlds and solar systems. We have, therefore, concluding from analogy, a right to say that those processes through which the existing solar systems have arisen can have formed no exception to the general laws inherent in matter, and that the cause of the first definite motion must have existed in matter itself” (p. 53).
Reader. This is possible; but is it true?
Büchner. “We are the more justified in asserting this, as the many irregularities, contingencies, etc., in the economy of the universe and individual bodies, exclude the thought of an external personal activity” (ibid.)
Reader. What? Are you serious?
Büchner. “If it were the object of a personal creative power to create worlds and dwelling‐places for men and animals, why, we may ask, these enormous, waste, useless spaces, in which but here and there suns and planets swim, floating about as imperceptible points? Why are not all planets of our system so formed as to be inhabited by man? Why is the moon without water and atmosphere, and consequently adverse to every organic development? Wherefore the irregularities and enormous differences in the size and distances of the planets of our solar system? Why the deficiency in order, symmetry, and beauty? Why have all comparisons, analogies, speculations, in regard to the number and forms of the planets, proved idle fancies? Why, asks Hudson Tuttle, did the Creator give rings to Saturn, which, surrounded by its eight moons, can have little need of them, while Mars is left in total darkness? And again, the moon’s rotation round its axis is, in relation to that of the earth, such that it always presents to it the same surface. What is the reason of this? If there be design in this arrangement, it must be admitted that it is very imperfect. Why did the Creator not impart to the celestial bodies that order from which the intention and the design could irresistibly be inferred?” (pp. 53, 54).
Reader. Unfortunate man that you are! You have already received the just punishment of your rebellion against truth; you have been struck with blindness. The thing is evident, say what you will. You make a fool of yourself, as your preposterous queries prove nothing but your arrogance, ignorance, and malice. You will never be cured of your blindness till you lower your tone and humble your pride before the God whose works you disregard, and whose wisdom you call in question. You are a smoky little candle challenging the sun thus: “Why these enormous, waste, useless spaces?” Is it necessary to inform you that those spaces are not waste and useless? We have just seen that the expanse of the heavens reveals the infinity of the Creator; accordingly, the enormous spaces which you arrogantly call waste and useless proclaim most eloquently the highest truth, the necessary truth, the source of all truths. “Why are not all planets of our system so formed as to be inhabited by man?” In return let me ask you, Why is not the atmosphere so formed as to be inhabited by fishes? Indeed, if God has no need of peopling the air with fishes, it would be hard to say on what principle he can be obliged to people the planets with beings exactly similar to us in their organization. It is plain that man, though the best creature on earth, is not the last effort of Omnipotence; there can be rational beings made according to other patterns, having a different organization and different needs. But whether there are or not, it is not for you to ask why the planets are not so made as to be inhabited by man. It is no less preposterous to ask, “Wherefore the irregularities and enormous differences in the size and distances of the planets of our solar system?” If the planets were all alike, and their distances equal, would you not pronounce the world monotonous, and the plan of creation a limited conception of an unintelligent mind? But now it is variety that offends your æsthetics; and you denounce it as being “irregularity.” Did you never hear that variety is a source of beauty? To me, the musician who always harps on the same chord is a nuisance; and I am sure that you too would prefer a full orchestra, with all the “irregularities and enormous differences in the size, etc.,” of the instruments employed. You find in the heavens “a deficiency in order, symmetry, and beauty.” This only shows your bad taste. Do you think that symmetry is indispensable for beauty? An oak is beautiful, though its branches are not symmetrical. The sea‐shore, the hill, the valley, the mountain, would lose much of their beauty, were they to be reduced to symmetrical forms. Then you speak of a want of “order.” What do you imagine order to be? Look on a chess‐board when the game is going on. Is there any order? If you are no chess‐player, you will not perceive order, but confusion; and yet there is order. Order is a suitable disposition of things in pursuance of an end, and must be different when it has to lead to a different end. He who has no knowledge of the end pursued cannot judge of the suitableness or deficiency of the arrangements made in view of such an end. When you think that the pieces are most disorderly mixed up on the chess‐board, then perhaps they are in the most perfect order, and the intelligent player already knows that he is about to checkmate his adversary. So do not speak again of the order of the heavens until you are called into the secret council of Divinity. I thought, doctor, that you had some ability; yet how dull that man must be who asks “why all comparisons, analogies, speculations, in regard to the number and forms of the planets, have proved idle fancies”! The why is evident. It is because men are ignorant, and yet presumptuous. But does our ignorance show that there is a deficiency of order in the heavens? No; our ignorance only shows that the best thing we can do is to hold our tongue. As to the rings of Saturn, what do you know besides their existence? And how could you show that, because Saturn has eight moons, the rings can have no duty to perform? But then, you say, “Mars is left in total darkness.” I reply that twelve hours of darkness are not a total darkness. Moreover, the dense atmosphere and the small diameter of Mars are calculated to afford it a long crepuscle, which may shorten very sensibly the length of its night. And, after all, what need is there that Mars should have a moon? Could we not do on earth without our moon? But you are scandalized that our moon “always presents to us the same surface,” and never deigns to show its other side. What a disorder! What an evidence of a want of design! This it is that causes you to exclaim that “if there be design in this arrangement, it must be admitted that it is very imperfect.” I remark that you here admit with Tuttle that there may be design in this arrangement. But if there is a design, there is a designer. Who is he? Is he not the Omnipotent? For how can he fulfil his design if he does not hold the heavens in his hand? The design, however, in your judgment, is imperfect. Why? Only because your ignorance can put a question to which it cannot make an answer. You say: “Why did the Creator not impart to the celestial bodies that order from which the intention and the design could irresistibly be inferred”" Your curiosity, doctor, lacks modesty. What right have you to be instructed in detail of the intentions of the Creator? Is he not the Master? Is he obliged to discover his secrets to you, rebel and arrogant being, who disregard the most clear evidence of his very existence? Would you be able to understand his plan if he were willing to reveal it? The heavens proclaim God’s existence and attributes; they glorify him by their beauty, variety, and harmony; they reveal the general scope of creation; but they withhold the secrets which God has reserved for himself. God’s providence and his government of the world are infinitely wise, but they are inscrutable.
Büchner. Although you treat me with little regard, and apply to me very hard epithets, I wish to make a short remark on what you call “providence”: “Some perceive in the position and relations of the earth to the sun, moon, and stars a designing providence; but they do not consider that they confound cause and effect, and that we should be differently organized if the inclination of the ecliptic were different or not existing” (p. 55).
Reader. I think that you would have done better if you had withheld your remark. That I treat you with little regard I do not deny; but, in truth, I believe that if you deserve respect as a doctor, you deserve only contempt as the author of Force and Matter. Freemasons praise your person and extol your book; be satisfied with this. To us you are nothing but a blind and obstinate sophist. If we apply to you some hard epithet, you gave us the fullest right to do so; for remember that you have called our great men “charlatans.” We, at least, when we call you ignorant, arrogant, presumptuous, take care to prove that such epithets are well applied; whilst you make denunciations, and give no proofs.
And now as to your remark about Providence. “Some,” you say, “perceive in the position and relations of the earth to the sun, moon, and stars, a designing providence.” Indeed, all great philosophers, nay, all mankind, perceive that designing providence; but, from your words, it would seem that this is only a peculiar bias of a few obscure and eccentric thinkers. Hence those words, “some perceive,” are calculated to conceal or disguise a great historical truth—the testimony of mankind in favor of divine providence. This may be called a trick. But what follows is a real blunder. Those who recognize a providential order “do not consider,” according to you, “that they confound cause and effect.” Where is there confusion? Do you mean that what we call “Providence” is an effect of natural laws?
Büchner. Exactly so.
Reader. Natural laws are abstractions, and abstractions can produce nothing. Did you ever imagine that a law of geometry could make a circle, or that a law of harmony could write a quartetto? Laws do not produce facts, but are gathered from facts of which they exhibit the general expression. Thus the natural laws are not natural causes, but abstract formulas, and do not rule the world, as scientists too often assert, but only our calculations and scientific inductions. Your blunder is evident. But is it true, at least, that “we should be differently organized if the inclination of the ecliptic were different or not existing”? No, doctor, you are not happy in your illustration. A change of inclination of the ecliptic would only alter the distribution of heat on the terrestrial surface without altering its amount; and as now men can live under different latitudes and in different climes without being differently organized, so also they would live and thrive under some different inclination of the ecliptic without acquiring a different organization. And if so, it would appear that your physical knowledge is as limited as your philosophical attainments.
Büchner. Of course I am a doctor in medicine, not in physics or in philosophy; but this I know: “that empirical philosophy, wherever it may search for it, is nowhere able to find a trace of a supernatural influence, either in time or space” (p. 55).
Reader. Quite true. Your “empirical philosophy” is unable to find anything supernatural, wherever it may search for it. But are you so simple as to believe that, if there is a God, you should be able to reach him with the telescope, or to detect him by the microscope, or to get by the balance an indication of his presence, or to find him in a retort, as a residue after some chemical manipulation? Shame! shame! Is this your method of convincing yourself that there is no God? Then, by shutting yourself in a dark cellar, you should be able also to convince yourself that the sun does not exist. Is it not a mockery to pretend that there is nothing supersensible, because it cannot be reached by experimentation upon sensible things? I cannot but repeat that you have received the punishment of your rebellion against truth. A man of your ability would never fall into such absurdities from want of light; it is your hatred of truth that distorts your reason and instigates you to heap sophism upon sophism, and blasphemy upon blasphemy. You need not search for God; you know him, and try in vain, like Cain, to fly from his face.
Büchner. You make a sermon rather than a discussion.
Reader. But whose fault is it if your assertions are so openly incongruous as not to bear discussion? Even your “empirical philosophy” is a myth. Are you not ashamed to appeal to a science which has no existence? Chemistry is empirical, and other parts of physics may be empirical; but empirical philosophy is nothing but a bombastic word without meaning, a fit conclusion to a chapter wherein you try to make the heavens bear witness against their Maker.
X. The Earth.
Reader. After the heavens you try to enlist the earth also among your witnesses against God. But what can the earth say in your favor?
Büchner. “The investigations of geology have thrown a highly interesting and important light on the history of the origin and gradual development of the earth. It was in the rocks and strata of the crust of the earth, and in the organic remains, that geologists read, as in an old chronicle, the history of the earth. In this history they found the plainest indications of several stupendous successive revolutions, now produced by fire, now by water, now by their combined action. These revolutions afforded, by the apparent suddenness and violence of their occurrence, a welcome pretext to orthodoxy to appeal to the existence of supernatural powers, which were to have caused these revolutions in order to render, by gradual transitions, the earth fit for certain purposes. This successive periodical creation is said to have been attended with a successive creation of new organic beings and species. The Bible, then, was right in relating that God had sent a deluge over the world to destroy a sinful generation. God with his own hands is said to have piled up mountains, planed the sea, created organisms, etc.” (p. 56).
Reader. And so he did. But mark that these Biblical expressions are metaphorical.
Büchner. “All these notions concerning a direct influence of supernatural or inexplicable forces have melted away before the age of modern science” (p. 57).
Reader. Melted away? Indeed? And how?
Büchner. “Like astronomy, which with mathematical certainty has measured the spaces of the heavens, so does modern geology, by taking a retrospective view of the millions of years which have passed, lift the veil which has so long concealed the history of the earth, and has given rise to all kinds of religious and mysterious dreams” (ibid.)
Reader. To call our views “religious and mysterious dreams” is no argument, doctor. We have a history of the earth far more certain than all your modern geology; and that portion of geology which is not fiction and charlatanism not only does not contradict, but rather completes and confirms, the Mosaic history.
Büchner. This is what I cannot admit. “It is now known that there can be no discussion about those periodic creations of the earth of which so much was said, and which to this day an erroneous conception of nature tries to identify with the so‐called days of creation of the Bible; but that the whole past of the earth is nothing but an unfolded present” (ibid.)
Reader. You say, “It is known.” No, sir, it is not known; it is only wished. You infidels pretend to know a great many things of which you are ignorant. If you know that geology refutes the Bible, how does it happen that you cannot impart to us such a knowledge in a rational manner—that is, by proving what you assert?
Büchner. “Geology, supported by the knowledge of surrounding nature and its governing forces, is enabled to trace the history of what has happened in infinite periods of time with approximating exactness, frequently with certainty. It has proved that everywhere and at all times only those material and natural forces were in activity by which we are at present surrounded” (p. 59).
Reader. This cannot be proved by geology.
Büchner. “Nowhere was a point reached when it was necessary to stop scientific investigation, and to substitute the influence of unknown forces” (ibid.)
Reader. Not even for the origin of life?
Büchner. “Everywhere it was possible to indicate or to conceive the possibility of visible effects from the combination of natural conditions; everywhere existed the same law and the same matter” (ibid.)
Reader. Of course. But this does not exclude the intervention of a superior cause.
Büchner. “An enlightened intellect no longer requires the aid of that powerful hand which, acting from without, excites the burning spirits of the interior of the earth to a sudden rebellion, which pours the waters as a deluge over the earth, and shapes for its designs the whole structure like soft clay” (p. 60.)
Reader. This is openly false. All enlightened intellects acknowledge that He who declared his intention of desolating Sodom by fire and the world by the Deluge must have had a hand in the fulfilment of his menace.
Büchner. This is your Bible history, which we reject.
Reader. But can you refute it?
Büchner. “How curious and whimsical is not the conception of a creative power, which conducts the earth and its inhabitants through various transitions and immense periods of time to a more developed form, in order to make it finally a fit dwelling‐place for the most organized animal—man! Can an arbitrary and almighty power require such efforts to attain its object? Can it not immediately and without delay do and create what seems good to it? Why these roundabouts? The natural difficulties alone which matter meets with in the gradual combinations and formations of its parts can explain to us the peculiarity of the origin of the organic and inorganic world” (p. 60).
Reader. It is ridiculous to speak of “efforts” of the Almighty; for no one but a fool could dream of such an absurdity. Moreover, you confound creation with formation. By creation matter received existence immediately, without “roundabouts”; for creation is not movement, and therefore needs no time. This creation of matter was the work of God alone; but the formation of the earth was successively brought about, according to God’s plan, through the exertion of the natural powers, which were not created to remain idle, but to carry on the objects intended by their Creator. Now, the exertion of natural powers could not give rise to a perfect order of things “immediately and without roundabouts.” Hence your argument is worthless; and it is worthless precisely on account of the “difficulties which matter meets with in the gradual combinations and formations” of complex things. But matter meets with a much greater difficulty, which you omit to mention. The difficulty is that matter does not know how to form a molecule of hydrogen; and yet there is hydrogen.
Büchner. It chanced to be formed by nature.
Reader. Indeed? Chance might form one molecule, or two, but could not form millions of millions of them all perfectly equal to one another, for chance excludes uniformity. Nor does it avail to say that their formation is the work of nature; for nature, according to you, is only matter, and consequently it cannot do more than matter itself is capable of doing.
Büchner. Science is still imperfect; we cannot as yet explain everything. But geologists refute the Bible as to the six days of creation. “The so‐called coal formation alone required, according to Bischof, 1,004,177; according to Chevandier’s calculation, 672,788 years. The tertiary strata, about 1,000 feet in thickness, required for their development about 350,000 years; and before the originally incandescent earth could cool down from a temperature of 2,000 degrees to 200, there must, according to Bischof’s calculation, have elapsed a period of 350 millions of years. Volger finally calculates that the time requisite for the deposit of the strata known to us must at least have amounted to 648 millions of years! From these numbers we may form some notion as to the extent of these periods of time. They give us, moreover, another hint. The enormous distances in the universe which stagger our imagination, in combination with these almost unlimited periods of time, lead us to acknowledge that both time and space are infinite and eternal” (p. 61).
Reader. You are always the same. Your conclusion that time is infinite is pinned on the statement that the periods of geology are almost unlimited—that is, not altogether without limit. I need not show that such a rash conclusion is contradicted by your very calculations. And again, as to the geological periods themselves, their length does not clash with the six days of creation as described by the Bible. The word “day” is often used in the Bible to express a great interval of time, and may be interpreted as an “epoch,” or, as you say, a “period.” This is, in fact, the interpretation of the word now accepted by our writers when explaining the days of creation. Only our writers, more prudent than you, do not pretend to determine the length of those epochs or periods; for they do not indulge in wild calculations or imaginary data. When we see a difference of 331,389 years between the results of two calculations regarding the period of the coal formation, we may well suspend our judgment, and not commit ourselves by the premature choice of either opinion. But we admit the periods, nor are we afraid of identifying them with the days of creation. The Bible has nothing to fear from geology or any other science. We might, on the contrary, prove from geology the truth and divine inspiration of the Mosaic narrative. Moses was no geologist, and could not know the order of the events which took place before the creation of man, except by supernatural revelation. Now, in his cosmogony we observe not only the description of an order of events like that deduced from modern geology, but “a system in the arrangement, and a far‐ reaching prophecy,” as Prof. Dana well remarks,(189) “to which philosophy could not have attained, however instructed.” You see, doctor, that your geological periods, instead of refuting the Bible, furnish us with a new argument in support of its divine origin. Have you anything to reply?
Büchner. Your explanation of the Bible is quite new.
Reader. Be it so. Our ancient doctors, however, knew very well that the word “day” in the Bible frequently means a great length of time. Had they known geology, they would have unanimously interpreted the six days as six great geological periods, just as we do.
Büchner. But I have still other arguments deduced from the primeval generations.
Reader. I am ready to meet them. But I really think it is scarcely worth the trouble to continue the discussion, as you have hitherto uniformly failed in every point you have tried to establish.
(To Be Continued).
Hymn Of The Flowers.
A Memorial of the First Mass of ——, One of Eleven Young Jesuits Who Said Their First Masses at Woodstock on the Feast of S. Aloysius, June 21, 1874.
Chosen from many, Tenderly nurtured, We budded to sunlight, Our fragrance we scattered; Queens of the garden, Languishing beauties, Reserved for high favor— Fair flowers! fair flowers!
Emblems of purity, Fitting for virgins, Our sisters are gathered To grace the blithe maidens Who go to their bridals— Oh! fair be their fortune. Glad flowers! glad flowers!
Emblems of innocence, Fondly we’re sought for: Young mothers will scatter The blossoms just budding, Will scatter our sisters, Kept still fresh and dewy, With sad pearls of affection, O’er the vanishing image Of the lost darling— Ah! kindred with blossoms. Sad flowers! sad flowers!
Emblems of triumph, Emblems of glory, The nations will cull them, Will cull from our sisters To honor their true ones. Mingling with life, Mingling with death, The flowers will crown the hero’s brow, Or wreathe the stone that marks his grave. Frail flowers! frail flowers!
But we—O glad fortune! O blest among flowers!— We have been chosen High o’er our sisters:
Culled for the altar, We gave all our beauty, We spent all our perfumes, When God’s priest in oblation Pronounced his first fiat. How we trembled with rapture When the Christ was descending! Oh! our bloom caught new glory From the priest’s face all radiant, As he held for adoring His God in his hands, And our odors were mingled With prayer from his lips.
And, oh! the pale mother Who guided his lisping, Who gave up her peerless, The one jewel left her, Robbed her breast for God’s warfare, The gift ne’er recalling— How her heart is now pealing, Ringing out unto heaven Glad chimes that are drowning The dull whispers of sorrow!
And the prayer of th’ Anointed, The heart‐voice of the mother, The breath of the flowers, Triple incense, are wafted Up, up to God’s footstool.
Ah! such incense is treasured; Our odors shall die not. They give fragrance in heaven To that glad first oblation Of God’s priest at the altar. Blest flowers! blest flowers!
Kathleen Waring.
The loveliest of autumn days shed its warmth and brightness over magnificent Rome, while the bells from many towers announced the hour of twelve, and a still more emphatic reminder of mid‐day boomed from Castle Sant’ Angelo, the firing of whose cannon frequently startles strangers, though even they soon become unconscious of its loud report. Citizens meeting complained of the horrible sirocco day; visitors congratulated one another upon such beautiful weather for the fulfilment of their plans; and a very perceptible thing was that not even in the Eternal City can every individual be satisfied. In no way could an unbeliever be better convinced of this solemn truth than by a peep into the principal parlor of the Hôtel d’Angleterre, where a travelling party had just arrived. An elderly gentleman stamped up and down the apartment, furiously gesticulating, and undoubtedly making use of rather forcible language, consigning hotels in general, and the Hôtel d’Angleterre in particular, to pretty uncomfortable quarters. At every approach to a small tête‐à‐tête placed near the window he fiercely glared upon a lady, evidently his wife, whose sweet, smiling face served to exasperate her husband beyond endurance. A large fan, plied industriously, stirred not only the black feathers of her own bonnet, but the scarlet ones jauntily stuck in a dark gray hat that persistently drooped, for no reason in the world but to conceal a very amused countenance which might have added fuel to the fire of the gentleman’s anger. Though for a time he is denied the gratification of a peep at so winning a face, we will take it ourselves, and see what is under that gray hat with the scarlet plumes: A pair of dark eyes sparkling with fun, which all those curling black lashes cannot hide, while a few saucy rings of hair, lying here and there on the forehead, cause a surmise as to whether they are the result of nature and warm weather or curl‐papers nightly twisted up. It would be difficult to form an estimate of a mouth whose under‐lip is being held in bondage by two rows of exceedingly white teeth, but we will imagine it a rose‐bud, and hasten to make the acquaintance of yonder thunder‐cloud, who pouts so abominably, and is still so like her of the mischievous aspect. Agathe Waring leaned on the back of her chair, and, when her father stamped his feet, she did likewise; when his frown deepened and voice waxed louder, her pout became more decided, and very beautiful hands doubled into fists that shook defiantly at invisible landlords. Mrs. Waring, observing this, remarked: “I think, Agathe, you have chosen a dangerous employment for hands so valued as yours. Do you not fear your vehemence will be the cause of a sprained wrist or finger? Then where will be our delightful evening music. A young lady who, at the faintest suspicion of danger ahead, generally clasps her hands behind her, is to be wondered at when seen bravely challenging our most dreaded enemies.”
“It may be very amusing to you and Kathleen, mamma; but I confess to not perceiving the joke,” replied Agathe, glancing complacently at her formidable weapons. “How you can see papa so worried, and be perfectly unconcerned, is more than I understand.”
“But, my dear, would it mend matters in the least were your sister to weep tears of vexation, and I to vociferate against the unfortunate people of this hotel, who were never less in fault than now? If your father had taken my advice, and telegraphed for rooms, this occasion for trouble would have been avoided; but, as he considered such a precaution unnecessary, we need not regard ourselves as dreadfully‐injured travellers.”
“Am I not sufficiently annoyed, madam, by this turn of affairs,” shouted the elderly gentleman, “that you should consider it essential to remind me what your advice was in Florence? I have never yet met the woman who did not delight in being able to say, ‘I told you so.’ ”
“Now, papa,” said Kathleen with a merry glance from her bright eyes, “I look upon that speech as a calumny and an injustice to Agathe. When all our luggage was left in Paris, simply because you would not heed her injunction to be very careful in looking after it, she did not gratify herself by any such malicious words as ‘I told you so.’ Indeed, her sympathy was far greater than ours, as we only felt indignant at having nothing to wear.”
This boldly‐uttered sentence proved quite soothing to Mr. Waring, who ceased his restless walk to twine an arm about his daughter’s waist, whose head leaned fondly against the dusty sleeve, and desired no sweeter resting‐place.
“Yes, whatever my faults, whatever my grievances, this little daughter is ready and willing to share them,” said he, gently patting Agathe’s cheek. “It has always been a wonder to me that a brute like myself should possess three treasures such as my wife and daughters. But the more valuable the treasure, the more difficult its keeping. If that atrocious landlord will only give us an apartment for this afternoon, I’ll go in quest of permanent quarters, and leave you to rest until my return.”
An immediate ringing of the bell brought the attendant, who was requested to inquire into the possibility of procuring at least a single room for the remainder of the day, during which time other accommodations might be sought. An answer, to the effect that there was a small chamber, engaged by a party who would arrive that night, which until then was at the service of the American gentleman, caused a gathering together of bags, boxes, and baskets, an ascent of several stairs, and a happy entrance into the nicely‐furnished and exceedingly pleasant apartment. The waiter, before his departing bow, made many apologies for the crowded condition of the house having rendered it impossible to receive monsieur, and hoped their inability to please would be forgiven. Mr. Waring’s wrath, until then on the wane, appeared gradually gaining ascendency, and a convenient lunch‐basket would certainly have made the acquaintance of the waiter’s head had not the latter prudently withdrawn. “The impudence of that dog in presuming to beg my pardon! What do I care how crowded the house may be or how impossible it is to accommodate us? I don’t suppose this hotel is the only habitable place in Rome; if so, I’ll just take up my abode in the Colosseum, and be done with it.”
Neither Mrs. Waring nor Agathe could resist smiling at this outburst, while Kathleen laughed outright.
“I shall consider it my first duty, on entering the Colosseum, to set you up as a statue of Perversity, surrounded by imps of contradiction. During the last half‐hour you have been in a towering passion because the Hôtel d’Angleterre could not contain you. Now the poor waiter humbly laments the numerous visitors and non‐elastic material of the house, and you are ready to annihilate him for supposing us anxious to remain in it.”
“Are you not ashamed of yourself, Kathleen Waring?” cried Agathe. “Were I papa, you should not speak to me in that rude manner. You surely do not approve of it, mamma?”
“My dear Agathe,” said her mother, “I cannot disapprove when I so fully appreciate the spirit in which your sister thus addresses her father. Do not imagine you are alone in your affection for him, and that the sole mode of expressing that affection is by unvarying respectfulness in language and constant caressing. We all know you to be more dignified than Kathleen, and to possess much greater stability of character; then how can you expect her to be otherwise than more thoughtless and much saucier than yourself?”
This last sentence, accompanied by a meaning smile, brought a crimson flush to Agathe’s cheek and an angry retort to her lips, the utterance of which was stayed by a kiss from her sister, who whispered:
“Never mind, Aggie; just be as firm and stable and dignified as you choose. I’ll be your admiration‐point for ever, and I am sure mamma is as proud of her model of strength and her impersonation of sauciness as she can be; then why need we quarrel?”
“Well, it would be a waste of ammunition, mavourneen,” replied Agathe; “so, instead of letting loose my tongue, I’ll exercise my arms. Be good enough to get me the clothes‐brush from your bag, that I may dust papa’s coat.”
By plentiful application of soap and vigorous use of towels Mr. Waring now appeared resplendent, and announced his intention of at once going in search of rooms. “In my absence,” said he, pausing at the door, “I desire the three treasures to repose, and hope to find them bright and sparkling this evening.”
The ladies did retire, and slept soundly several hours, while Mr. Waring made every effort to obtain a suite of rooms, first at the different hotels, which were all full, next at two or three casas recommended by his banker. At last in a small house, opening on the Piazza di Spagna, he succeeded in engaging five bright, cheerful apartments, though at quite a high price, since the number of visitors at Rome increased rents far beyond their usual rate. Leaving orders with his padrone to secure a man‐servant as soon as possible, he next made arrangements with the proprietor of the nearest restaurant to supply him with the necessary breakfast and dinner, which must be daily occurrences to sustain the vitality of even the most enthusiastic tourist. With a sigh of relief that his preparations were complete, Mr. Waring returned to the hotel, and found his wife and daughters radiant in their fresh toilets and expectant eagerness. There is nothing so destructive of beauty as fatigue added to the dust and soot of railway travelling; and an individual emerging from this double ordeal deserves the congratulation of friends. Mr. Waring bestowed a gaze of admiration upon each lady in turn, kissed his wife, pulled one of Agathe’s curls, and whirled Kathleen round and round to the tune of a cracked hand‐organ stationed beneath the window, which just then ground out a very fine waltz. Breathless and panting, Kathleen soon sank on the sofa, while her mother came to the rescue with a fan, and Agathe opened the window to throw the musician some coppers.
“There is little need to inform us of your success,” said Mrs. Waring, “as this emphatic greeting tells its own tale. I am really glad you were able to return before dark, as we feared you might be detained later.”
“Well, you cannot fail to like the rooms,” said Mr. Waring; “for they are five in number, quite handsomely furnished, and two overlook the Piazza di Spagna. I think, as it is a mere step from here, we had better walk, and have our luggage sent by these people. If you are half as tired riding as I am, you will infinitely prefer proceeding to our destination on foot.”
“We should like nothing better!” cried the three ladies, and immediately began to collect their scattered property. This being duly disposed of, the black bonnet and gray hats donned, our party set out. The Ave Maria was ringing, and the sweet sound of many bells penetrated the hearts of even these Protestants, who understood so imperfectly its beautiful significance. Dusk was fast changing into darkness, while black clouds chased each other over the sky, and the rising wind betokened the sure approach of a storm. Our travellers hastened their footsteps, and only reached their parlor when a terrific flash of lightning poured through the windows, and the rain fell in torrents. Mr. and Mrs. Waring at once went on a tour of investigation, in which neither of the girls could be induced to join. Agathe approached the window and gazed upon the outdoor fury, with only clasped hands and awe‐stricken countenance to betoken her feeling. Kathleen buried a miserably pale face in the cushions of her armchair, and sobbed most piteously; for the poor child dreaded nothing so much as thunder and lightning. After a short lapse of time, Agathe turned impatiently from her post of observation, and exclaimed:
“Without exception, Katy, you are the greatest goose I ever met, to be sitting there crying when you might have the benefit of yonder magnificent panorama. It is too absurd that the least sign of a storm must send you into hysterics. Do you not suppose there is quite as much danger for me as for you? Yet let me sob as you are doing, and how foolish you would think me! Do control yourself this once, or your eyes will be red and ugly to‐ morrow, and you not presentable.”
Agathe had intended simple expostulation; but anger got the better of her, and her last words were very commanding—so much so as to rouse Kathleen, who cried:
“I am sure I don’t care for eyes, or appearance, or anything else, and I wish you would let me alone. Because you have a reputation for courage and firmness, you imagine you are justified in persecuting me; but I tell you you are not. I cannot see any great courage and firmness in facing that lightning. If there should ever be a call upon me for such qualities, I will beg the good Lord to give them to me, but not for the purpose of staring at a storm.” With this the dark head again took refuge in the cushions, and Agathe returned to her former position. The scene was indeed magnificent, and fully compensated for any uneasy feeling she might have experienced in thus exposing herself. The entire sky within range of vision seemed one dense, black cloud, hanging but a few feet above the house‐tops, every moment sending forth flashes of light, at times sharp, forked, fearful, again soft, widespread, and of sufficient duration to illumine the entire piazza beneath. The pouring rain could not conceal surrounding objects, but rather served to enhance their beauty, since they appeared through a mist that served to screen the hard, substantial reality. High up, beyond the fine steps which are a prominent feature in this piazza, rose the church and convent of the Trinità di Monte, looking, in its elevation and noble strength, a fit emblem of a religion so true and sublime. Inclining from its height to the level beneath, the aforesaid steps were lonely and deserted, deprived of their lounging idlers, but nevertheless beautifully reflecting from their wet surface the brightness above. One might have imagined the piazza, with its brilliant shops, caffes, hotels, and booths, to be the noisy, bustling world, having in its midst those steps so numerous, so difficult of ascent, but in the end leading to rest, peace, heaven! How pitiful, then, to see no foot ascending! And if this little picture be one of sorrow, how much worse the great, real world, where so few mount the stairs within reach of all! Some walk round, others glance up and promise a beginning to‐morrow; but how many heed the warning? Now, now is the time; to‐morrow may never come!
It is not probable, however, that such thoughts found favor with Agathe, whose Protestant mind was in no way addicted to pious musing, since her church furnishes such meagre food for heart and brain. Her eyes, roving restlessly about, suddenly became fixed upon the tall, muffled figure of a man hurrying through the rain with bent head and quickening speed. Devoid of fear, of suspicion, she watched until he neared the piazza’s centre, when, after one long, blinding streak of lightning, a fearful crash followed, and she distinguished the object of her curiosity lying prostrate on the ground. A sharp cry from her lips brought Mrs. Waring, to whom, with trembling limbs and horror‐stricken face, she pointed out the prostrate form. Kathleen, who had crept up behind her mother, no sooner beheld it than she ran from the room, and, meeting her father in the hall, breathlessly exclaimed: “O papa! do go quickly.... There is a poor man lying in the street who has been struck, ... and nobody seems to know it. Please go to him.... Bring him here. Get some one to help you; for he may not be quite dead.”
Before she had ceased speaking her father was down‐stairs ordering a servant to follow him; and from their position Mrs. Waring and Agathe saw the two rush into the driving rain, gently raise the body, and carefully bear it towards the entrance. Kathleen had hastily arranged pillows and blankets on the sofa; so there was no delay in fixing something on which to lay the poor fellow, and very soon the entire family were making a desperate effort to restore animation, as Mr. Waring declared there was life in the body. His assertion was verified when, after a while, the young man drew a long breath, and opened such bewildered, astonished eyes as made every one smile.
“Ah! my fine fellow,” cried Mr. Waring, “I’ll wager you you are on the road to life again, and we are spared the trouble of attending your funeral—a thing, I candidly assure you, I had expected to do not very long ago.”
“O papa!” whispered Kathleen, glancing timidly at the pale face, blue eyes, and curling brown hair, “don’t talk to the poor fellow about funerals when he has been so near the grave; it cannot be pleasant.”
“Never mind, Miss Puss, I will set him straight,” replied her father. “Now, my friend, I have always heard, and there is an indistinct idea of my having read it, that people struck by lightning never feel it. As you are a living witness to the truth or falsehood of this statement, I would like to have your views on the subject.”
This, delivered with the air of a man thirsting for knowledge, brought a smile to the patient’s mouth, and caused a general laugh.
“I am truly grieved,” replied the lightning‐struck, “that my knowledge is of questionable authority, because I cannot tell whether I felt a blow on the head or not, though there is a half‐defined recollection of some one pounding me there, and producing about five hundred simultaneous sensations; whether really so or the fruit of my active imagination I am unable to avow.”
“Well, for our own satisfaction, we will believe you did have five hundred feelings jumbled together, and take it as a warning to avoid like strokes.”
“Such profanity shall not be allowed!” said Mrs. Waring; “and I really think, Mr. Waring, you should conduct our patient to a comfortable room where he may sleep away his weakness. Kathleen will share Agathe’s apartment, that he may occupy hers.”
All protestations to the effect that he could walk to his hotel being indignantly denied, the young man was immediately consigned to bed, and commanded to sleep as long as he could. For about half an hour the family sat up discussing the accident, and did not separate until its victim was unanimously pronounced handsome, elegant, charming!
The sun was many hours high next morning before our friends thought of stirring, and the two girls were yet sound asleep when their mother came tapping at the door. Her knock was so slight as to be scarcely perceptible, and, receiving no response, she entered. The change from bright sunshine to this darkened room at first made it impossible to distinguish clearly; but opening the blind a very little way, Mrs. Waring smiled to herself, as, glancing about the apartment, she murmured: “Those careless, careless girls! What is to be done with them?” Evidently, the careless girls had taken small trouble to arrange their things before retiring, and now a somewhat confused picture greeted the despairing mother’s eye. The bureau appeared the favorite receptacle for almost all articles. A colossal brush, instead of properly supporting the rightful partner of its joys and sorrows, made desperate love to an ink‐stand, a red bow, and a bottle of cologne, whose stopple had stepped over the way to consult an oracle of a watch about the probable comfort of the poor, deserted comb that patiently reposed on a prickly pin‐cushion. The oracle, unwound and unmoved, refused utterance, and sullenly stared at a crowd of rings, bracelets, belts, reticules, hair‐pins, false curls, and handkerchiefs indiscriminately gathered together. They were not interested in the watch, but bemoaned the sad fate of a coquettish gray hat with a scarlet plume, one string of which had caught in a tightly‐shut drawer, and cruelly hung its fair possessor. A grand civil war had transpired in other parts of the room; the washstand implements were horribly mutilated and dashed about; the four shoes and stockings had taken leave of each other, and angrily stationed themselves in different corners; and, last, a huge trunk had brutally emptied itself of its contents, that now lay limp and helpless, here, there, everywhere.
Had not Mrs. Waring been well accustomed to such a display, it is possible she might have been dismayed; but as nothing is equal to habit, she preserved her equanimity, and, approaching the nearest bed, her attention was at once arrested by a tiny pair of beads which she perceived dangling from Kathleen’s wrist. With a dark frown she retreated to the door, and cried:
“Girls! girls! it is time to get up. You have slept long enough even for weary travellers, and your patient has been waiting an hour to see the young ladies before taking leave. Do hurry and come at once to the parlor.”
“Yes, mamma, we will,” answered two very lazy voices.
“Yes, my dears, I do not doubt it,” said Mrs. Waring; “but let me see you well out of those two comfortable beds, as you cannot be trusted in my absence.”
In the midst of the commotion which followed Mrs. Waring escaped, and, slowly walking along the hall, murmured:
“Is it possible Kathleen still retains those absurd convent notions, and am I ever to regret having sent her to Mt. de C——? Surely, in three years she must have forgotten those ridiculous impressions; yet what does that rosary mean, and why should she sleep with it encircling her arm? Well, it will only make matters worse to discuss them, and, until I am certain what the poor child intends, I shall say nothing.”
By this time the drawing‐room was reached, and, entering, Mrs. Waring found her husband and their guest in hot dispute as to the best manner of sight‐seeing in Rome. Mr. Waring expressed abhorrence of guide‐books and his resolution never to use them. The stranger intimated such a resolve rash. Mr. Waring inquired why. The young man said guide‐books being absolutely essential in a place so filled with objects of interest as Rome, he was willing to wager Mr. Waring would have three or four in his possession by the end of the week. Mr. Waring indignantly repudiated this idea, and the argument might have continued indefinitely had not the girls made an opportune appearance. In their wake came a delicious breakfast, after partaking of which the young man rose to depart.
“I cannot,” said he, “pretend to thank you for such kindness to a stranger, for words are inadequate to express my gratitude. My obligations will be increased tenfold if you only permit me to continue an acquaintance so happily begun.”
“My dear fellow,” cried Mr. Waring, “don’t mention gratitude; and as for an acquaintance happily begun, if you choose to consider as such one brought on by lightning, we are at your disposal, and nothing will delight us more than receiving you as our friend. But friends should know what to call one another, and, though my name is Alexander Waring, yours is still a dead secret.”
“A thousand pardons!” exclaimed the stranger. “My negligence is truly shocking; but it is Mr. and Mrs. Waring, with their lovely daughters, who have charmed me into a forgetfulness of Howard Lee, and it is they who must forgive him.”
Of the two lovely daughters, Kathleen pouted bewitchingly at the foregoing speech, while Agathe gracefully inclined her head. The gentlemen shook hands most heartily, and Mrs. Waring cordially invited Mr. Lee to return often, assuring him of a sincere welcome. Thus, amidst compliments and acknowledgments on both sides, Howard Lee took leave of his friends, promising to see them very soon again.
It is scarcely necessary to add that the promise was observed, and during the next month or two he was almost constantly one of the gay little party which roved among the grand old ruins of Rome, wandered about its art‐ galleries and into its temples and churches, always consulting guide‐books with a faith in, and a dependence on them that undoubtedly made Mr. Lee winner of his wager. It is very remarkable what wonderful things can transpire in a little while, though we are not certain whether you consider it remarkable that Mr. Lee soon manifested extraordinary interest in the movements of Miss Kathleen. If that young person chose to stare an old statue out of countenance, she would not be long without the assistance of another pair of eyes that had suddenly remembered some never‐before‐known merit about the image, and were instantly intent on it. If Kathleen thought proper to sit among the ruins, he, completely overcome by fatigue, would rest by her side. We are much afraid this was not all that happened; for there were certainly some very ardent glances sent from his eyes to her sparkling black ones, that softened and glowed as they drank in the language of the blue ones. And at every new approach of the tall, manly figure didn’t the gray hat with the scarlet plume droop lower and lower; didn’t the round, dimpled cheeks beneath rival the feather in color; didn’t the little hands clasp each other tightly, that their trembling might not make too bold a confession of her happy agitation? You cannot be surprised that, standing together by the beautiful Trevi fountain one moonlight night, to her was told in eloquent tones the old, old story which every woman hears once in her life, be she ever so poor, so ugly, so disagreeable. But this woman was lovely, bewitching; and the tale seemed exquisite harmony when softly, beseechingly it fell upon such ears. Long after the low voice had ceased telling what was music to her soul Kathleen stood silent. The water dashed from and over rocks in playful sport, defying the peaceful glance of the moon, which bade it be quiet. The church‐bells rang out the hour of ten, and from the distance sounded Agathe’s laugh, with the accompanying expostulation from several ladies and gentlemen who were begging her to sing. At last clear and full to these lovers came the sweet old song, “Kathleen Mavourneen.” Howard waited till the music died away, then whispered,
“Why art thou silent, Thou voice of my heart? Oh! why art thou silent, Kathleen Mavourneen?”
“Oh! spare me, spare me,” cried Kathleen. “I cannot, cannot answer! If you but knew!”
“And do I not know you are what I love with all my heart, what I long to call my own? Have you not encouraged me? allowed me to believe you cared for me?”
“Oh! I never meant it. I would not have had you know that I cared for you. Have pity on me, Mr. Lee, and do not ask why! I can give no answer to your kind words. Believe me that it is best as it is.”
“Miss Waring, your friends are coming—will interrupt us in one minute; can you give me no hope? Is there nothing you will say to comfort my yearning heart?”
“All I can say is, Wait; in a little while you will cease to wish for my affection when you have learned what it is essential you should know before I can give an answer to your question.”
“Nothing can change my desire,” pleaded Howard, gazing upon the tear‐laden eyelashes and trembling lips. “Only tell me now what you think I must know, and then see if it makes the slightest difference.”
“No, Mr. Howard,” said Kathleen, regaining composure, “wait a few days; then I will either send for you or write what I have to communicate. With you will rest the decision. Remember always that I have cared for you, and that now it is a sad good‐night I wish you, knowing it may be my last.”
Here they were joined by their party, and Kathleen flying to the protection of her mother’s arm, Mr. Lee took his place by Agathe’s side, and thus they returned home. Poor Kathleen passed a miserable night, and awoke next morning with head aching so badly as to prevent her appearance at breakfast. Towards noon she improved, and by three o’clock presented herself in the drawing‐room, where were her mother and sister. Telling them she was going out for a little fresh air, and to feel no uneasiness if she did not immediately return, she left the house, ran across the piazza, up the steps, and stood in front of the Trinità di Monte. Pausing a minute, “This is the 8th of December, the Feast of the Immaculate Conception, so certainly there must be Benediction here this afternoon, as they tell me the church belongs to the Ladies of the Sacred Heart. I’ll try, anyhow.”
The little portress, in her very ugly cap, informed la signorina, “Yes, benediction would be given in one hour from that time. Would she walk into the chapel now and wait, or would she prefer going away to return?” La signorina would wait; so she was shown into the church, and there left to her own reflections, which were one long struggle with feelings so contrary that to make them agree was impossible. The poor child had, ever since leaving the convent of Mt. de C——, been praying for courage to avow a faith which she knew would anger her father, distress that darling mother, and call forth words of bitter ridicule from Agathe. Now to these considerations was added the fear of losing Howard Lee’s affection.
“Ah! Jesus, Mary, and Joseph,” she cried, “help me in this my agony. Send down upon me your blessing, that I may be strengthened in the path which has become so difficult to my faltering feet! Endow my heart with that courage I once boasted I would ask for when its need should be discovered. O my Father in heaven! look upon thy child with pity, and heed her earnest supplication.”
For an entire hour she wavered between the earthly devotion that awaited but a word to be hers, and the higher Love, that requires many crosses and sacrifices before it recompenses the heart. It will never desert, never wound. The sun sank lower in the heavens, and the light in the chapel took a soft, mysterious tone that lent supernatural quiet and stillness to the place, greatly soothing Kathleen’s restless mind. Her head leaning on the railing in front of her, her lips moving in unconscious prayer, she fell into a deep, dreamless sleep that was only disturbed when over her senses stole the faint sound of music, gradually, gradually unclosing those delighted eyes shining with blissful wonder, as she supposed it all must have been a dream, from which she waked to find herself safe in the dear old convent. Surely, there was the beautiful altar, the Blessed Sacrament exposed, many candles burning amid vases of exquisite flowers, the venerable priest kneeling at the altar’s foot; above all, the convent girls, in blue uniforms and white veils, entering two by two, making their genuflections, and standing in their places till all were ready, when tap! from the Sisters’ bench, and down they sat. From the organ‐loft the sweet litany she knew so well came pouring into her ears just as of yore; as of yore the priest, the Sisters, and convent girls sang in familiar tones:
“Mater Christi, Mater divinæ gratiæ, Mater purissima.”
With happy heart and tearful eyes she sang out the Ora pro nobis, while many looked to see from whence came the joyful notes, so splendidly swelling their chorus. Through the litany, the O Salutaris! and the Tantum Ergo her strong, young voice was clear and sweet, and none guessed that in the girl’s heart a fearful struggle had taken place, and that there the good Lord had come and left a gift which would never decay, never be worthless, but ever bright and glorious. A last prayer for strength was uttered during Benediction, and Kathleen felt half her difficulties were overcome when she stood up at the Laudate Dominum.
That night she confessed to her parents her intention of becoming a Catholic, and besought their permission to take the step. Mr. Waring was furious at first, and vowed she shouldn’t—not if he knew himself; but three days’ fussing and fuming brought him to the conclusion she might do as she chose, “but, for heaven’s sake, never expect him to love her as much again,” and enforced his resolution by hugging and kissing her on the spot. Mrs. Waring was very sad at the aspect of affairs, but had so long anticipated it as to be little surprised. Deeming a refusal of her sanction worse than useless, she also said her daughter might do as she pleased. Only Agathe was inexorable; for, having begun by condemning her sister’s course, she considered it incompatible with firmness ever to change.
“How you can have allowed yourself to be so wound about the little fingers of those priests and nuns I can’t divine,” she cried. “It indicates such contemptible weakness to turn from the religion in which you were born to that of a Papist—above all things, a Papist! Were I to live a hundred years, I could not do it.”
“No, my poor sister,” thought Kathleen; “with all your character, I fear you have not the daring courage required to combat the distress of parents, the anger of friends, the loss of a beloved object. No; it is a precious gift of God, and must be prayed for.”
Next Kathleen wrote to Mr. Lee, informing him of all that had taken place, of her intention to become a member of the Catholic Church in a few weeks, and renewed her request that he would forgive the pain she had caused him in remembering the grief she herself endured; with many wishes for his future prosperity, she remained his true friend. No answer came to this at all, and the Warings saw nothing more of Howard Lee. Delicacy prevented their asking an explanation from Kathleen, and, as she proffered none, his name was never mentioned among them.
The days passed on, and Kathleen, being at last considered sufficiently instructed, had prevailed on the Sisters of Trinità di Monte to allow her retreat to be made with them, and her baptism and first communion to take place in their church. Christmas was the time appointed for the consummation of Kathleen’s desire. The chapel had been beautifully decorated by the nuns and girls; and a little Bethlehem, removed some slight distance from the altar, was the emblem of the glorious feast. A new Mass had been learned, and, while the organ pealed forth its first tones, the white‐robed girls filed in, followed by Mr. and Mrs. Waring and Agathe, who, by dint of persuasion, had been induced to appear on the occasion. Last entered Kathleen, and knelt in front of the altar. She was faint and trembling, but did not lose a syllable of the words that made her a Christian, a Catholic, and soldier of heaven. She was baptized, of course, before the celebration of Mass, and during it received for the first time the Holy Communion. Mr. Waring seemed much moved, his wife cried outright, and Agathe’s flushed face and shining eyes belied the unconcern she tried so hard to assume.
No one noticed the tall, dark figure standing in the furthest corner of the church, nor saw the gaze riveted upon the fair, sweet girl at the altar. As everything here must have an end, so did the music, the lights, all that had brightened the chapel. The dark figure had hurried away, the girls in white had disappeared, the Warings were gone; only the little Babe of Bethlehem still lay in the manger, and one lamp shed its faint lustre in honor of that Blessed Sacrament which is for you, for me, for all who but seek it.
On the evening of the same day Kathleen was playing soft chords on the piano, and indulging in waking dreams, when she was greatly disturbed by the entrance of a man bearing in his arms a huge package of something very delicate, to judge from the care with which said package was deposited on the table. Before Kathleen could frame a question concerning the matter the man was gone. Approaching the very remarkable bundle, she perceived a card suspended bearing these words:
“A Christmas gift for Miss K. Waring.”
Still wondering, she gently detached the paper cover, and there, delighting her eyes, was a tiny Christmas‐tree literally filled with bon‐ bons, colored candles, and children’s toys, while two or three small papers concealed some more valuable presents no doubt. In perfect amazement she ran to the door and called father, mother, and sister, who, hastening to the room, uttered exclamations of pleasure at the sight. The candles were instantly lighted, and the tree admired from every point, though a thorough mystification ensued as to the donor. Each surmise only seemed to make the matter worse; so they instituted a search among the separate parcels. The first opened displayed a gold locket with the initials A. W. in pinheads of pearls; the next contained a handsome silver tobacco‐box for Mr. Waring; the next, a musical work‐box with Mrs. Waring’s name; yet still there was nothing for Kathleen. More astonished than ever, they examined once again; and right on the very top of the tree, buried deep in its branches, was a round pasteboard box about the size of a lady’s watch. Being opened, it disclosed a knot of hard‐twisted note‐paper, which Kathleen unwrapped and unfolded until she came upon an old, worn medal of the Immaculate Conception, from which hung a blue ribbon. As the paper in her hand had something written on it, she made haste to read, and here is the secret:
“Will my dear one take for a Christmas gift the little medal herein enclosed, which was put around my neck by my mother when I made my first communion eighteen years ago? I have kept away from you, that you might have a pleasant surprise for this Christmas day, though I went to communion for you this morning, and also saw the triumph of your brave spirit in the Church of the Trinità di Monte. If, when I come to you this evening, my little medal is about your neck, I shall know you accept me as your devoted HOWARD LEE.”
Kathleen stood looking at the words through gathering tears, and was not conscious of the quiet withdrawal of her parents and sister until the door opened gently to admit Howard, who, glancing quickly at the blue ribbon on her bosom, advanced eagerly, and, bending low, exultantly murmured:
THOMAS GRANT, FIRST BISHOP OF SOUTHWARK. By Grace Ramsay. With two portraits. London: Smith, Elder & Co. 1874. (New York: Sold by The Catholic Publication Society.)
The late Bishop Grant was remarkable for learning, ability, and sanctity. The events of his life, both before and after the period of his ordination, are interesting. As rector of the English College in Rome, and as bishop, his administration was successful and filled with great services to the Catholic Church in England, particularly in respect to the re‐establishment of the regular hierarchy. The story of his life is told in a lively and pleasing manner, and the publisher has issued the volume in a style which makes it attractive, though somewhat costly. The author, whose nom de plume is Grace Ramsay, is one of the best of our English Catholic writers. We have been indebted to her graceful pen for some of the most agreeable articles in our magazine, and we are pleased to learn that some remarks in THE CATHOLIC WORLD on the character of the late illustrious Bishop of Southwark first suggested to her the idea of writing his biography.
BLESSED MARGARET MARY ALACOQUE. A brief account of her life. To which are added a selection from her sayings and the Decree of her Beatification. By the Rev. Charles B. Garside, M.A. London: Burns & Oates. 1874. (New York: Sold by The Catholic Publication Society.)
This tiny and pretty little book costs only fifty cents. We make its small size and price thus prominent, in order to encourage those who have not money or time to bestow on large books to buy this one and to help its circulation. It contains the substance of the larger biographies of a saint who has done one of the most wonderful works of modern times, and has become justly the object of an extraordinary devotion among the faithful.
The devotion to the Sacred Heart of our Lord has become the great devotion of our day, to the incalculable benefit of the church and the promotion of the most solid piety among the faithful. Pius IX. has constituted himself the Superior‐General of the Congregation of Missionaries of the Sacred Heart, and has expressed to several of its members his desire to consecrate the universal church to the Adorable Heart of our Lord, if he is asked to do it. We trust that the petition to the Holy See will not long be delayed, and that it will be made in such a way as to show most conclusively how ardent is the sympathy of the members of the church with their august head in his pious sentiments. It is most natural that all who love this devotion should desire to know something of the favored recluse of Paray‐le‐Monial who was chosen by our Lord as the medium of his revelation, making known his will that it should be universally promulgated and cherished. There can be no doubt of the real, supernatural, and divine character of the extraordinary graces conferred upon her for this intention. The Sovereign Pontiff, in his Decree of Beatification, declares that “whilst she devoted herself day and night to continuous prayer, being often rapt in ecstasy, the gifts of divine grace were most plenteously showered upon her” (p. 89). Again, that “it was now, as she was praying before the august Sacrament of the Eucharist, that Christ our Lord intimated to her that it would be most pleasing to him if the worship of his most Sacred Heart, burning with love for mankind, were established, and that he wished the charge of this to be consigned to her” (p. 90). When the Pope speaks in this manner, and the most learned and holy bishops, theologians, and other sound and judicious Catholic writers everywhere re‐echo, amplify, and confirm by solid reasoning and evidence the calm and cautious statements of the supreme authority, hesitation, criticism, and doubt are out of place. Infidels and heretics may scoff; we expect them to do it. But devout Catholics do not need to wait for a positive command under pain of sin in order to believe readily and joyously; and to let their hearts take fire with the devotion that burns everywhere among the faithful, kindled by a spark from heaven which fell into a virgin bosom, and has been communicated from her, under the fanning of the wings of the divine Dove, until it has enkindled the whole world. We trust the time may soon come when the canonization of the Blessed Margaret Mary will give to the whole church the privilege of celebrating Mass in her honor, and make her day a universal feast.
In the meantime, we welcome and most earnestly recommend the little book of F. Garside, and wish for it the widest possible circulation.
THE SPIRITUAL CONFLICT AND CONQUEST. By Dom J. Castaniza, O. S. B. Edited with Preface and Notes by Canon Vaughan, Monk of the English Benedictine Congregation. Reprinted from the Old‐English translation of 1652. London: Burns & Oates. 1874. (New York: Sold by The Catholic Publication Society.)
Vast numbers of Catholics have read the treatise which in English has been known by the title of The Spiritual Combat, and has been widely circulated in many other languages besides the Italian, from which the English translation was made. It has been always attributed to F. Scupoli, a Theatine, who in reality only translated and adapted it, with alterations and additions, from the Spanish of Dom Castaniza, a Benedictine who lived at the same time with S. Teresa. In this altered form it has been generally esteemed as second only to the Imitation of Christ, which, by the bye, has lately been conclusively proved not to be the work of Thomas à Kempis, Gerson, or any other writer to whom its authorship has been ascribed. The complete work of Dom Castaniza, which was translated into English in 1652, is now once more brought to light, and republished in the most perfect manner, with a preface and notes, increasing its value very considerably, by a member of the remarkable Vaughan family, a brother, we presume, of our illustrious and highly‐ honored friend, the Bishop of Salford. We are disposed to regard this treatise in its present complete form as decidedly the best spiritual guide in the English language for the great majority of devout Catholics. This is very high praise, but it is, in our opinion, not exaggerated. Let our readers examine for themselves, and we are inclined to think they will find our judgment correct.
We ought to say that even now, as it stands, a considerable portion of the first part of the book is made up of Scupoli’s additions. In the main, we have no fault to find with the translation. We like that old‐fashioned, terse, strong English which is found in Old English writers. But it is sometimes rude and even coarse, and in the present work there are a few passages which are revolting to the more correct modern taste, and which therefore become really irreverent.
The Month has a very severe, though, as is always the case in that periodical, a courteous and polite, critique on the preface and notes of Canon Vaughan. It accuses him of boasting too much of his order, and of “girding” at other people. We have looked through the book with this criticism in our hand, and we must say that we find it overstrained. We cannot see any evidence that Canon Vaughan is disposed to undervalue other orders different from his own, or that his remarks upon methods of direction used in other societies are intended to censure anything except indiscretion and exclusiveness in their application.
GRAPES AND THORNS. By M. A. T., Author of The House of Yorke. New York: The Catholic Publication Society. 1874.
Another story from the pen of the author of The House of Yorke. Turning as the interest of the tale does on the discovery of a criminal in whose stead an innocent man is imprisoned and actually condemned, it is yet so skilfully conducted that none of the disgusting realistic details of what is known as the sensational school are brought in to mar the work. It really is a case of touching pitch, and yet not being, in a literary sense, defiled. The circumstantial evidence on which the supposed murderer is condemned is very well managed, and, until the facts are thrust upon the reader, there is no chance of his discovering the real criminal. This is a very great attainment in novel‐writing, and, in this day of hackneyed “situations,” one very seldom reached. It is difficult nowadays to take up any book, especially one referring to such events as are treated in Grapes and Thorns, without at once seeing through the conventional skeleton of the story, and picking out the main points in it beforehand. As to style, we can only say of this book what all the literary world said of The House of Yorke—that it alone would recommend even the flimsiest web of story. The author has, in addition to this rare charm of style, a faculty, so far as we know peculiar to herself among current novelists, of investing with poetical grace the most commonplace things of every‐day life, even such hopelessly prosaic subjects as the engine and engine‐ driver of a night‐train, and, worse still, a grocer’s shop and a palette full of syrups! The descriptions of Rome are a feature of the book, but so are the delineations of New England scenery, in snow‐storm and autumn glories as well as in its summer dress of fresh greenery and moistness, which is so delicately sketched in the picture of the Pond farm, the water‐lilies, and the strong, beautiful young boat‐woman.
But to come to the chief point, the characters; for of the story itself we say nothing, hoping that every reader of this notice has either read the book or will immediately do so. Annette is unquestionably the only heroine of the tale, although in the beginning one may be induced to consider the beautiful, conscientious, high‐principled Honora Pembroke as entitled to that place of honor.
Mrs. Gerald is another well‐drawn female character in the story. The most touching thought in the whole story is contained in her gentle words after she has found her son’s footsteps on the fresh mould of the violet‐bed under her window: “I mean to sow little pink quill daisies in those two foot‐prints.... When they come back, the tracks will be green.” Anita, the little convent‐flower, is a very beautiful conception; she is like one of the ethereal angels of Fra Angelico, not a common mortal. Mrs. Ferrier is the very reverse, but her generous championship of Max Schöninger goes far to redeem the vulgarity that shocks one in the early part of the book, where she constitutes herself spy over Lawrence’s actions, and lectures him to the verge of insanity.
We have now mentioned the name of the hero of the story, Schöninger, the Jewish musician, on whom falls the false accusation of murder. His character is all but faultless, the only exceptions, perhaps, being his rather uncontrolled and fierce burst of joy when released from his seven months’ imprisonment, and his general attitude towards F. Chevreuse. The latter is more excusable than the former; but if the hero of a book were faultless, he would be unnatural as a man. Schöninger is a wonderful conception; so self‐reliant, self‐contained, and yet not harsh, not repulsive even, in his defiance. The opinion of the world is nothing to him; he has his own standard of right and wrong, and he lives up to it; he would think martyrdom a trifle, if endured for the truth; he sees straight to the core of things, and will be as uncompromising a Christian after his conversion as he was an earnest Jew before it. We think, however, that the author has made a mistake in making him a Reformed Jew. Doubtless it was meant to enable him to parade the superior spirituality which was the only form of religion possible for such a man; but the Reformed Jews are no nearer to a high spiritual standard, as contrasted with the orthodox Jews, than the Lutheran or Calvinist sects are as contrasted with the true Church. They are mere secessionists from the old faith, and, like all branches divided from the parent trunk, are more or less withering into atheism and infidelity. An orthodox Jew is much more likely to be converted to Catholicity than a Reformed Jew.
F. Chevreuse is a very beautiful character, especially after the scene in Lawrence’s room, where the priest and his penitent are alone with their solemn secret, and face to face with God. Some one once said of The House of Yorke that there was an undefinable “something” wanting in the character of the priest of that story, and that doubtless it was not given to any one to be able to delineate truly a perfect priest. Perhaps it is so, for it is most difficult to portray a life in which the supernatural mingles with and effaces the natural to such an extent as it does in the life of a true priest; but in F. Chevreuse the author has gone as near to the ideal as any one could well go. Lawrence Gerald is a very difficult character to analyze—a peculiar product of American civilization (this assertion would be very hard to prove categorically, but every one who has read the book will understand what we mean); a man for whom our feelings change, during the progress of the tale, to a degree that almost gives him at the last the moral pre‐eminence which at the beginning would have been difficult to award even to saintly F. Chevreuse. Truly, in his case, as he himself says, “Nothing but utter ruin could have brought him to his senses.” There are souls whose salvation God works in this way, and Lawrence’s penance certainly reads like some biography of a mediæval sinner gradually turning into the life of a grand saint. The human element is not absent, either, in this picture, of a most unusual expiation, and no scene in the book will be read with more emotion than that of the artist sketching the sleeping Lawrence, and adding, at the eager suggestion of the “woman under the arch,” the “cluster of yellow flowers which touched his head in the form of a crown.” We venture to say that nothing short of the influence of a sojourn at Rome and the personal contact with a life of exuberant, all‐pervading Catholicity, such as that of the Italians, could have suggested such a remarkable ending to Lawrence’s career. Of the subordinate characters of Grapes and Thorns—John, the shrewd, hard, honest footman; Jane, the faithful but exasperating housekeeper of F. Chevreuse; Dr. Porson, the Crichton cynic and man of the world; F. O’Donovan, the fast friend at need of his brother‐priest; Mother Chevreuse, the bright, tender, brave woman, of whom we get but a glimpse; Sister Cecilia, a counterpart of Honora—we can only say that they show the varied acquaintance of the author with many and widely different types of mankind. The pettiness and prejudice of “liberal” Crichton are well defined in the hue‐and‐cry which soon follows Schöninger’s arrest, and the equally intemperate revulsion in his favor when he is proved innocent. It is remarkable that no one but F. Chevreuse and Mrs. Ferrier believed firmly in his innocence while circumstances all pointed so suspiciously to him as the murderer, except, of course, those who already knew the miserable secret.
In spite of the great merits of this story, it has, nevertheless, like The House of Yorke, one great defect which mars its excellence, not perhaps as a work of art, but as a specimen of the Catholic ideal in art. Annette, the heroine, acts foolishly, unreasonably, and against the sense of personal dignity and worth which the perfect Christian maiden must cherish, as next to her faith and honor, in marrying the unhappy Lawrence Gerald. This shows that the author’s ideal woman is not the highest type of her sex, and that she fails to appreciate the lofty, Christian idea of conjugal love and of marriage. Honora Pembroke ought to have been the heroine, and although she has not been fortunate enough to win the sympathy of critics and readers generally, especially of the fair sex, we are glad to see that the author has given us at least one specimen of a woman who is governed by conscience and reason, and not by sentiment.
Another fault, against which we beg leave here to caution all our writers of light articles and stories for the magazine, is the introduction of the writer’s private and personal opinions on matters connected with religion and the church. We request, once for all, that such matters may be left to the editor of the magazine and those whom he judges competent to treat of them expressly.
AN ESSAY CONTRIBUTING TO A PHILOSOPHY OF LITERATURE. By B. A. Philadelphia: Claxton, Remsen & Haffelfinger. 1874.
The aim of this essay is to give such principles as are calculated to counteract the false and baneful ideas proposed in our text‐books on English literature. The author, one of the Brothers of the Christian Schools, who modestly conceals his name, is a worthy confrère of Gerald Griffin. Evidently, his reading is extensive, his taste fine and accurate, and his mind truly philosophical. The unassuming book he has put forth is one which teachers in the department of English literature and intelligent students of the same will find to be of great service.
AMELIA; OR, THE TRIUMPH OF PIETY. Translated from the French. Philadelphia: P. F. Cunningham & Son. 1874.
This is a story quite romantic and sensational in its character, but withal very pious, and showing very dramatically high virtue in contrast with great wickedness, and triumphing over it. In one part of it Amelia makes a promise which a Catholic could not make without grievous sin. She promises, namely, her supposed parents, who were Protestants, that if they will listen to a discussion between a priest and a minister, she will embrace their religion, provided they declare their conviction that the minister has the best of it. The use of the word “Catholicism” to express the Catholic religion, though sometimes allowable, is awkward and unsuitable as it occurs in the story. Critically speaking, this story is not much, but it may amuse children, who are generally not very critical if there are plenty of remarkable incidents to excite their emotions. There are hosts of stories like this in the French language, many of which are much better. It is a pity that more care and taste are not sometimes shown in selecting among them for translation.
THE CHURCH AND THE EMPIRES, HISTORICAL PERIODS. By Henry William Wilberforce. Preceded by a Memoir of the Author by J. H. Newman, D.D. With a portrait. London: Henry S. King & Co. 1874. (New York: Sold by The Catholic Publication Society.)
The essays contained in this volume are reprints of articles from the Dublin Review. The memoir, by the dear friend of the author, Dr. Newman, though brief, is a complete little biography of a justly distinguished and most estimable man, who honored the illustrious name of Wilberforce by his sacrifices, his virtues, and his valuable literary labors.
ALEXANDER THE GREAT. A DRAMATIC POEM. By Aubrey de Vere, Author of “Legends of S. Patrick.” London: Henry S. King & Co. 1874. (New York: For sale by The Catholic Publication Society.).
A dramatic poem by Aubrey de Vere could not be other than noble in theme and thoughtful and delicate in execution. Almost alone among the poets of the day, not many of whom equal, and not one of whom surpasses, him in the higher qualities of insight and subtle imagination, he seems never to have felt the debasing touch of that materialism which in one department of letters seeks to elevate science at the expense of faith, and in another to degrade poetry to be the beautiful but shameless minister to all that is lowest in man’s nature. Religion, which he has served so faithfully, has rewarded his devotion by lifting him into a clearer atmosphere than can be breathed by men devoid of faith, and has made him worthy to be ranked with those true poets who sing not alone for the busy, itching ears of their contemporaries, but for a wider, because a more enduring, audience.
Nevertheless, Mr. de Vere’s lyric poetry, subtle and delicate as it is, could hardly, we should say, have prepared his readers for the power shown in his conception and delineation of the hero of his drama, Alexander, the greatest of the great conquerors whom the world has seen. His poem is absolutely simple in aim and in detail, and gains interest, if not solely, yet almost solely, from the manner in which he has strongly though briefly expressed his idea of what a great conqueror, a man with aims truly imperial, swayed by no mean passion, and filled with the idea of welding into one all peoples, and informing them by the highest purely human intelligence, should be. What literal truth there is in the picture—how nearly the Alexander of the play resembles him who died at thirty‐three, the master of half the world—is not a question of any special interest. It is enough that Mr. de Vere’s hero is a noble and intrinsically true conception, and a fit measure by which to estimate the true proportions of those lesser men whom the world once in an age sees filled with the lust of empire, but void of the skill and quick insight which should make them avoid its perils. In his play, indeed, Mr. de Vere, who follows the tradition of Josephus, and makes Alexander visit once the temple at Jerusalem, and pay to its high‐priest such reverence as he had never shown to mortal man, makes him listen there to the warning that his power must have its “term and limit,” and that he who would indeed wear the world’s crown “should be the Prince of Peace.” And yet the errors and mistakes by which great men seem blindly to throw away at last the fruits of their long toil seem to the on‐looker as if they might have been so easily avoided that it is always necessary to remind one’s self how little is truly in the power of man, and how surely God controls even the crimes and follies of those who seem to rule the world.
Aside, however, from the fine scenes in which Mr. de Vere brings out his idea of his hero, the play has many subsidiary beauties of a different kind.
What poet but himself could have written the two lovely scenes between Hephestion and Arsinoë, and made his readers see so well the love which either felt, but of whose return neither was aware? The minor characters, indeed, are drawn throughout with the hand of a master who never wastes a stroke, and who has the art of showing his readers what he wills by lifting them and not by lowering himself. Who has painted in our day a lovelier picture than that in which Hephestion shows us Arsinoë’s mother?
“Who knew your mother Till death shall reverence woman’s race! In her, Though doubly‐dower’d, a mother and a queen, There lived a soft, perpetual maidenhood, An inexperienced trust, timid, yet frank, Shy, yet through guilelessness forgetting shyness. She seem’d a flower‐like creature come to fruit; She moved among her babes an elder sister; Then, wakened by an infant cry or laugh, Full motherhood returned.”
Some qualities of Mr. de Vere’s work, which are more generally known than the virile force displayed in his grasp of the characters of his play, are shown at their best in the two or three lyrics which occur in it. Let us end an inadequate notice, which may send our readers to the poem itself, by quoting his exquisite paraphrase of one of the most beautiful of the Psalms:
“We sate beside the Babylonian river: Within the conqueror’s bound, weeping we sate; We hung our harps upon the trees that quiver Above the rushing waters desolate.
“A song they claimed—the men our tasks who meted— ‘A song of Sion sing us, exile band!’ For song they sued, in pride around us seated; How can we sing it in the stranger’s land?
“If I forget thee, Salem, in thy sadness, May this right hand forget the harper’s art! If I forget thee, Salem, in my gladness, My tongue dry up, and wither, like my heart!
“Daughter of Babylon, with misery wasted, Blest shall he be, the man who hears thy moans; Who gives thee back the cup that we have tasted; Who lifts thy babes, and hurls them on the stones!”
ADELINE DE CHAZAL; OR, FIRST EXPERIENCE OF THE WORLD AFTER LEAVING SCHOOL. Translated from the French by a Sister of S. Joseph. Philadelphia: P. F. Cunningham. 1874.
A great number of young graduates are just now beginning this “first experience,” after receiving their medals, crowns, and premiums, and listening to the valedictories with which good‐by is said to academic halls and groves. Miss Adeline de Chazal’s experience, and her remarks upon the same, will probably come home to this class of young ladies with more interest than to any other set of readers. They will find it edifying and instructive, and, if they act upon the advice it contains, they will certainly take a safe course. The list of books for reading is good, so far as it goes, but might receive a considerable increase.
THE HELPERS OF THE HOLY SOULS. By the Rev. C. B. Garside. London: Burns & Oates. 1874. (New York: Sold by The Catholic Publication Society.)
The Helpers of the Holy Souls are a religious congregation of women in France, whose special devotion is to aid the souls of the faithful departed in purgatory by their prayers, good works, and other suffrages. F. Garside gives an account of their foundress and a history of their institution, with suitable reflections on the great utility of the special object which they have undertaken to promote.
ROSEMARY. By Lady Georgiana Fullerton.
SHORT STORIES. By the same.
THE NEPTUNE OUTWARD BOUND. By Winnie. New York: P. O’Shea. 1874.
The first two of these pretty books for children are reprints from the English editions already noticed in this magazine; the third is a lively, wholesome story imitating Oliver Optic.
[Transcriber’s Note: Obvious printer’s errors have been corrected.]
FOOTNOTES
1 “Essentialis ratio substantiæ ut sic non consistit in esse per se, quatenus per hæc verba describitur ipsum subsistere in actu, sed in hoc quod habeat talem essentiam, cui debeatur subsistentia, seu quæ ex se sit sufficiens principium illius.”—Suarez, Metaph. Disp. 34, sect. 8, n. 11.
2 Τὸ ἐν ἑατῷ ὃν, καὶ μὴ ἐν ἑτέρῳ ἔχον τὴν ὔωαρξιν.—Dialect., c. 4.
3 Ἐπὶ πάντων τῶν ὄντων, τὸ ἐν ἑαυτῷ, καὶ μὴ ἐν ἑτέρῳ ἔχον τὸ εἶναι, οὐσία ἐστί.—Dialect., c. 4.
4 Ὀυσία ἐστι πᾶν ὄτιπερ αὐθυπόστατόν ἐστὶ, καὶ μὴ ἐν ἑτέρῳ ἔχει τὸ εἶναι.—Dialect., c. 39.
5 “Quod in suo maneat, nec ope subsistat aliena (Deus), appellatur substantia.”—De Incarn., c. 10.
6 This absence is a real negation—a negation of imperfection, so long as we speak of God, who cannot admit of an inferior nature being inserted in the plenitude of his reality; but a negation of further perfection when we speak of created things, which are potential, and can be raised supernaturally above their natural condition.
7 Contra Gent., lib. 1, c. 25.
8 “Substantia non addit supra ens aliquam differentiam, quæ significet aliquam naturam superadditam enti: sed nomine substantiæ exprimitur specialis modus essendi” (De Verit., q. 1, a. 1). Hence this special mode does not constitute the nature or essence of the thing itself, and for this reason it is not mentioned in its definition, as S. Thomas says, Quodlib. 9, q. 3.
9 “Prima substantia est quædam natura sensibilis, quæ nec de subjecto dicitur, nec in subjecto aliquo est.”—In Logic. Arist., c. 5, De Substantia.
10 “Non est de essentia eius subsistentia, sed modus substantiæ.”—In 3 part, q. 77, a. 1.
11 Lib. xi. c. 14.
12 Vol. 2, q. 1, de accident.
13 “In substantiæ rationem redeuntes, tria quoad ipsam considerare possumus: primum, quod existat, et quidem in se; alterum, quod tali potius quam alia realitate constat, seu essentia, ex qua determinatæ vires operandi dimanant; tertium, quod se possideat, sitque sui juris in existendo. Primum proprie et præcise constituit notionem substantiæ; alterum conceptum offert naturæ; postremum denique, ... ideam suppositi præbet.”—Metaph. Gen., n. 64.
14 “Ex duobus, nempe ex re prædicamenti, et ratione essendi ejus, quæ est ratio prædicamenti, constituitur ipsum prædicamentum, et diversificatur unum prædicamentum ab alio.”
15 De Verit., q. 1, a. 1.
16 “Non propter defectum alicujus quod ad perfectionem humanæ naturæ pertineat, sed propter additionem alicujus quod est supra humanam naturam, quod est unio ad divinam Personam.”—Summa Theol., p. 3, q. 4, a. 2.
17 “Persona divina sua unione impedivit, ne humana natura propriam personalitatem haberet.”—Ibid.
18 “Existere ex se solum dicit habere entitatem extra causas, seu in rerum natura; unde de se indifferens est ad modum existendi innitendo alteri ut sustentanti, et ad modum existendi per se sine aliquo sustentante.”—Metaph. Disp. 33, sect. 4, n. 24.
19 It is known that this analogy has been erroneously interpreted by some old and modern heretics, who taught that Christ’s body is in the Holy Eucharist by impanation or by consubstantiation, and not by transubstantiation. The heresy of impanation asserts that the Eternal Word in the Holy Eucharist becomes bread by assuming hypostatically the substance of bread. The heresy of consubstantiation assumes that in the Holy Eucharist the substance of Christ’s body is united with the substance of the bread, and that therefore the Eucharist contains both substances. These heresies are, of course, mere corruptions of the traditional doctrine. The first corrupts it by confounding the substantive sustentation with the personal assumption, and by substituting the latter in the place of the former. The second corrupts it by supposing that a thing substantively supported by an underlying substance continues to exist as a substance; which is against the traditional definition of substance, and against the very analogy of which it pretends to be the interpretation; for, in virtue of such an analogy, it is as impossible for a thing thus supported to be a substance as it is impossible for the human nature assumed to be a human person. Hence what logically follows from the analogy of the two mysteries is neither impanation nor consubstantiation, but real and proper transubstantiation—that is, a real substitution of one substance for another under the remaining sensible species.
20 “Subsistere dicit determinatum modum existendi per se et sine dependentia a sustentante; unde illi opponitur inesse vel inexistere; dicitque determinatum modum existendi in alio.”—Disp. Metaph. 33, sect. 4, n. 24.
21 At the consecration of a church to the Sacred Heart.
22 What, sir! you bring us all those pretty ladies! You will revolutionize our poor curate.
23 According to Gov. Dix’s report for 1874, our “evangelical” state church will have to draw the sum of $8,600,000 (eight million, six hundred thousand dollars!) out of the public treasury to erect two “evangelical” asylums, one “evangelical” hospital, and one “evangelical” non‐sectarian state reformatory! From the same report we learn that our “evangelical” system of public education cost the state for the year ending September 30, 1873, the sum of $20,355,341 (twenty million, three hundred and fifty‐five thousand, three hundred and forty‐one dollars!); and that our “evangelical” state church owns twenty‐seven millions, seventy thousand, three hundred and ten dollars’ worth of school property! Remember that Catholics pay their proportion of the taxes, and that most of the public schools are not only “evangelical” in their religion, but some even formally Methodist by the “hymns” and prayers taught in them!
24 How little publicity the “Evangelical” press have given to this letter, because it favored the Catholics!
25 One of our judges—an ex‐Methodist minister—lately in open court violated the parental right over offspring by sending a Catholic child to a Protestant establishment in spite of the respectable father’s opposition.
26 The following are the words of our State constitution in regard to religion:
“The free exercise and enjoyment of religious profession and worship, without discrimination or preference, shall for ever be allowed in this State to all mankind.”—Art. 1, sec. 3.
Now, it is known that the “free exercise” of the Catholic religion is not “free” in most of our state institutions; and in most of them there is “preference and discrimination” in favor of “Evangelical” clergymen and against the Catholic Church. The writer could prove by affidavits that in the very city of New York there is religious persecution in some of the state institutions, if the general scope of his remarks permitted him to go into many details. Where is the Catholic priest living near a state institution but knows that there is “discrimination” made against him?
27 Will Gov. Dix, therefore, tell us by what right of “eminent domain” Victor Emanuel robbed the Pope and confiscated the church property? Does Gov. Dix forget that he was one of those who approved this confiscation at the great “Italian unity” meeting?
28 S. Leonides was also a bishop. See Euseb., Hist. 6, c. 12; also S. Jerome, Catal., c. 54.
29 Catal. et Ep. ad Magn.
30 Hæret. Fab., l. 1, c. 8.
31 Stromata, 1, 1.
32 S. Jerome, Catal., c. 54.
33 Ibidem.
34 Hist. Univ. Douzième Epoque.
35 Tertullian.
36 General History of the Catholic Church, Darras. American translation, vol. i. p. 218.
37 Monks of the West, vol. ii. p. 33.
38 Hæres., 64.
39 Orig. Defens., l. 4, note p. 35.
40 Preface, Bellamy’s Translation of Origen’s Apology.
41 Ps. cxviii.
42 Preface to Vulgate.
43 Pref. ad Ephes.
44 Pref. in Pentateuch.
45 Pref. in Job.
46 Introd. in Cantica, etc., translated by Jerome from Origen.
47 Lib. 2 adv. Rufinus et passim.
48 In c. 6 Ep. ad Rom.
49 Tract. in Matt.
50 Apud Euseb., l. 6, hist. c. 19.
51 Life of S. Cecilia, pp. 9 and 10.
52 Cel., l. 3.
53 Butler’s Saints, vol. ii. p. 141.
54 Leviticus, hom. 9.
55 See Acts of the Council of Nice for proof of this line of reasoning—“Apostolic Canons.”
56 Can. de Hierarchia Ecclesiæ Con. Nicenem.
57 Apud Hieron., adv. Theophilus.
58 Apud Hieron., 2 lib. “adv. Rufinus,” et opera S. Gregory Nyssen.
59 De Principiis, lib. i. 4.
60 See Life in Butler, note vol. iii.
61 Lib. 2. adv. Rufinus.
62 Apud Hier., lib. 2. adv. Ruf. p. 217.
63 The question of Origen’s orthodoxy turns principally on the Periarchon. The violently heretical character of that book, as it now stands, contradicting the most fundamental doctrines of Christianity, is the best defence of Origen. It is altogether contrary to the teaching of his undoubted works, and, if it had been acknowledged and defended by him, there would never have been any controversy at all about his orthodoxy. He would have been at once and universally condemned as the grossest of heretics.—ED. C. W.
64 Christine. Par Louis Enault.
65 Following of Christ, b. i. c. xix. v. 7.
66 Wisdom xi. 21.
67 Little girl.
68 Attribute and property mean the same in reality; but we usually call them attributes with respect to the thing absolutely considered as a being, and properties with respect to the thing considered as a principle of operation.
69 A paper read before the Xavier Union, of this city.
70 S. Thomas says (Summa Contra Gentiles, l. 4, c. xi.): “Nam viventia sunt quæ seipsa movent ad agendum; illa vero quæ non nisi exteriora movere possunt omnino sunt vita carentia.” This, however, is rather a description of a vital phenomenon than a definition of life itself. Fichte says: “Life is the tendency to individuation;” which, like most of the phrases of the German pantheists, means nothing or anything you please.
According to Richerand, “Life is a collection of phenomena which succeed each other during a limited time in an organized body”; but this applies equally to the succession of phenomena which takes place in the body after death. Herbert Spencer defines life to be “the co‐ordination of actions”; but what is anything but a co‐ ordination of acting forces, consequently of actions? This definition is as applicable to sulphuric acid as to life.
71 Kant defined truth to be the harmony of thought with thought, not of thought with things.
72 It may be well to quote the testimony of two Englishmen on this subject.
Buckle, in his History of Civilization, vol. i. page 158, says: “Thus, for instance, the miserable and impudent falsehoods which a large class of English writers formerly directed against the morals and private character of the French and—to their shame be it said—even against the chastity of Frenchwomen, tended not a little to embitter the angry feelings then existing between the two first countries of Europe: irritating the English against French vices, irritating the French against English calumnies. In the same way, there was a time when every honest Englishman firmly believed that he could beat ten Frenchmen—a class of beings whom he held in sovereign contempt, as a lean and stunted race, who drank claret instead of brandy, who lived entirely off frogs; miserable infidels, who heard Mass every Sunday, who bowed down before idols, and who even worshipped the Pope.”
“I did not know,” says John Stuart Mill, in his Autobiography, “the way in which, among the ordinary English, the absence of interest in things of an unselfish kind, except occasionally in a special thing here and there, and the habit of not speaking to others, nor much even to themselves, about the things in which they do feel interest, cause both their feelings and their intellectual faculties to remain undeveloped, or to develop themselves only in some single and very limited direction, reducing them, considered as spiritual beings, to a kind of negative existence.”
73 The Old Faith and the New, p. 120.
74 “My name is Monaco, A rock my seat: I neither reap nor sow, And yet I eat.”
75 “O thou, whom chance or will brings to the soil, Where fair Armida doth the sceptre guide, Thou canst not fly; of arms thyself despoil, And let thy hands with iron chains be tied.”
—Fairfax’s Translation.
76 A street‐lane.
77 The above passage is really in the Prayers for the Dead. The Dominican ritual differs in some respects from the ordinary ritual; whether it includes any difference in the Prayers for the Dying I have been unable to ascertain. The above account is taken from some passages in Lacordaire’s life of the saint. Lacordaire was himself a Dominican.
78 The Baldacchino at S. Peter’s is by Bernini.
79 “I have found that Rome is the place where one can enjoy the most happiness.”
80 Ah! poor fellow. Why, he is weeping!
81 Throughout this poem the lover’s songs are in the longer metre; the lady’s in the shorter. In the 1st and 3d parts, the songs are all his; in the 2d and 4th, all hers; in the 5th and 6th, the two classes are mixed.
82 A Course of Philosophy; embracing Logic, Metaphysics, and Ethics. Designed as a text‐book for the use of schools. By Rev. A. Louage, C.S.C., Professor in the University of Notre Dame. Baltimore: Kelly, Piet & Co. 1873.
83 The principal work of this author is in Latin. We believe that some of his treatises are in Italian. There are similar works noticed in the Civilta Cattolica.
84 Poems. By Dante Gabriel Rosetti. London. 1871.
85 These expressions are frequently employed in philosophy, but are not applied in a uniform manner by several writers. It is known that “first matter,” or materia prima, usually means matter without form, or potency without act; and nevertheless it is not rare to find the denomination of materia prima applied to the matter which is in the bodies, and which is certainly not without a form. We cannot enter here into a discussion about this subject; but it is obvious that, if we wish to be consistent and avoid equivocation, we must carefully guard against applying to anything actual the very epithet we employ to characterize its contrary.
86 See CATHOLIC WORLD, July, 1873, page 471.
87 The general definition of relation is, Id. cuius totum esse est ad aliud se habere.
88 There are philosophers who do not admit any real distinction between a thing and its mode. Thus Tongiorgi (Ontol., n. 148) says that “the mode of any being is really nothing else than the being itself considered in a different manner.” This view deserves no discussion, as it is evidently false. If the mode of a thing were the thing itself, then the sphericity of the wax would be the wax, the joy of the soul would be the soul, and every affection would be the subject of the affection. The author seems to have confounded being, the participle, with being, the substantive.
89 It is well known that the people of Southern Italy think they can, by this gesture, avert the effects of the jettatura, or evil eye, which they attribute to some persons.
90 See Naples, and then die.
91 Vine‐dressers.
92 It was a fit of rage.
93 This chapter is taken from a work published soon after the date of the occurrences narrated, as was the previous one (CATHOLIC WORLD, Dec., 1873), on account of the interest which recent events impart to it.—ED. C. W.
94 Afterwards Comte de Chambord.
95 In fact, Stultorum infinitus est numerus.
96 Force and Matter: Empirico‐philosophical studies intelligibly rendered by Dr. Louis Büchner, President of the Medical Association of Hessen‐Darmstadt, etc., etc. Edited by J. Frederick Collingwood. Second English edition. London: Trübner & Co. 1870.
97 Of these two unseen spirits, the first voice is that of Cain; the second, that of Aglauros, changed to stone for envy of her sister Herse, as told by Ovid.
98 The meaning of this bit or bridle is explained in the preliminary note.
99 Holy Madonna, assist me.
100 The Question of Anglican Orders Discussed. By E. E. Estcourt, Canon of S. Chad’s Cathedral, Birmingham. 1873.
On the Decision of the Holy Office on Abyssinian Orders. By the Rev. J. Jones. Letter to the Month, November‐December, 1873.
101 See the pamphlet, A Few Remarks on the Recent Work of Canon Estcourt, and the letter, signed “English Catholic,” to the Tablet of May 3, 1873.
102 This is true of F. Kellison’s Survey of the New Religion, 1603, to whom Canon Estcourt attributes the first publication of the Nag’s Head story.
103 De Illust. Angliæ Script., p. 770. Paris, 1619.
104 See Kenrick’s Anglican Ordinations, p. 81, and Tiernay’s Dodd, append. No. xlii.
105 De Antiq. Eccles. Rit., lib. 1, pt. iii. c. viii. art. 10, § 16.
106 Estcourt, p. 62.
107 Note to Haddan’s Preface to Bramhall.
108 Haddan, Pref. to Bramhall.
109 See Pref. to Bramhall; but in Apost. Succession, p. 209, Mr. Haddan says nine out of forty‐nine.
110 Estcourt, p. 76.
111 Actes de la Captivité et de la Morte des R.R. P. P. P. Olivaint, L. Ducoudray, J. Caubert, A. Clerc, A. de Bengy, de la Compagnie de Jésus. Par le P. Armand de Ponlevoy de la même Compagnie. Paris: G. Tegui. 1871.
112 “They went forth rejoicing.”
113 P. 46.
114 “But in all things let us exhibit ourselves as the ministers of God, in much patience, in tribulation, ... in prisons, in seditions, ... through honor and dishonor, through infamy and good name.”—2 Cor. vi. 4‐8.
115 “It is a great, a very great virtue to know how to lack all consolation, human as well as divine, and to endure willingly for the glory of God the exile of the heart.”—Imit., i. 2, c. ix.
116 “In many more labors, in prisons more frequently.”—2 Cor. xi. 23.
117 “And you shall be hated by all men for my name’s sake.”—Matt. x. 22.
118 From hatred of the faith, hatred of the name of Jesus Christ.
119 French proverb: From thread to needle.
120 The pleasure of doing nothing.
121 Peasants.
122 Mistress.
123 The keepers of the vineyards.
124 Peasantry.
125 Literal translation of an Italian term meaning without narrow prejudice.
126 The past is absent, but not dead.
127 See Zschokke’s History of Switzerland, page 45, for all these characters in the uprising against Austria in 1307.
128 CATHOLIC WORLD for February, 1874, p. 584.
129 A lecture On Molecules, delivered before the British Association at Bradford, by Prof. Clerk‐Maxwell, F.R.S. Nature, September 25, 1873.
130 It is competent, however, to furnish the philosopher with all the materials of such a reasoning, as this very passage clearly shows.
131 Book 10, ch. 15.
132 See CATHOLIC WORLD, March, 1874, p. 827.
133 CATHOLIC WORLD, March, 1874, page 759.
134 See A Speculation touching Electric Conduction and the Nature of Matter.
135 Theoria Philosophiæ Naturalis p. 1, n. 18.
136 CATHOLIC WORLD, March, 1874, page 766.
137 “Long live the spouses! Long live the duke! Long live the duchess!”
138 “Beatrice upward gazed, and I on her.”
139 The appetite comes with eating.
140 Ex Chron. Mauriniac. ap. Harduin Concil., tom. 6, p. 1214.
141 Wilberforce, Holy Euchar., p. 438.
142 See M. Le Grand, Dissert. de Ord. Abyss., p. 361, translated by S. Johnson.
143 Godigno, 1 c. p. 327.
144 Assemani, Controv. Copt., p. 185.
145 Estcourt, Append. xxxiv.
146 See Le Brun, Explic. Miss. (Venice, 1770 tom. ii. p. 273).
147 Act. Sanct. Junii., tom. v. p. 128.
148 Montesquiou.
149 As unhappy as the stones.
150 My daughter.
151 Dear daughter.
152 Such forms are usually said to be produced “out of the potency of matter”; but this makes no difference. For what is only in potency to exist is still nothing: hence what is to be drawn out of the potency of matter is still nothing. Its production, however, is not a creation, because it implies a real subject.
153 This has been shown in THE CATHOLIC WORLD for March, 1874, pp. 764, 765.
154 We are not unfrequently imposed upon by the infidel phraseology and the bold assertions of modern scientists. We should remember that bold assertions in science may be as false as they are bold. The theory of the indestructibility of force is one of such assertions; and yet it is trumpeted about as a demonstrated truth. It is time for us to awake. The seed of atheism is sown everywhere under cover of positive science; but the fraud may be easily detected. Infidel theories are usually mere trash; and if we were to look into them a little more sharply, we would find that they bear no examination. It is the duty of our Catholic professors of physics and mechanics to raise their voices in earnest, and expose the fraud instead of gobbling it down. We have only pointed out some of the reasons why the new mechanical theory must be rejected; but its pretensions may be more effectually crushed by thorough scientific and mathematical analysis, as pure philosophical arguments are unfortunately above the comprehension of most modern students.
155 A paper read before the CATHOLIC UNION of Boston, Mass., June 4, 1874.
156 A Few Words on Church Choirs and Church Music.
157 Apud Bellasis, Memorial of Cherubini.
158 Cf. Bellasis, loco cit.
159 The only efficient actions of our soul are those by which the will carries its desires into execution. This is done by the will, not as the faculty of willing, but as a moving power, and consequently by means of a truly efficient action. The immanent operations of the soul are, on the contrary, formal acts, not efficient actions. The intellect and the will are moved by their objects in a manner analogous to that in which a material element is moved by physical agents. If an element could treasure up all the momenta it receives from different agents, and were not under the necessity of following their resultant, but had the faculty of yielding at pleasure now to this and now to that determination, then such an element would give us a true image of what our soul is competent to do by immanent operation. The soul treasures up the species impressed by intelligible objects, that is, its intellectual momenta, and fields or not to the attraction of any of them as it chooses. And the like occurs with regard to the object of the will. To think and to will is therefore nothing more than to let one’s self be carried by an object or in the direction of an object. Accordingly, the soul, when understanding or willing, is indeed actuated by the object, and therefore is in act; but this act is resultant, not efficient. In other terms, immanent acts are not efficient actions, but formal attitudes formally resulting from either spontaneous or free movements of the appetitive potency.
160 On this subject see THE CATHOLIC WORLD for March, 1874, p. 768.
161 Boscovich’s Theoria Philosophiæ Naturalis, part i. n. 108.
162 Cavendish in 1798 made his celebrated experiments concerning terrestrial attraction, in order to determine the density of the earth; but his calculations were grounded on the assumption that all the material particles of the earth were equally attractive; and therefore the result of such calculation cannot be implicitly relied on. M. Reich in 1837, and M. Bayly in 1842, repeated the same experiments, and calculated the density of the earth according to the same assumption. It did not occur to either of them that the assumption itself might have been subjected to a crucial test by successively substituting spheres of zinc, iron, copper, silver, etc., instead of the leaden ones which they uniformly employed. Had they tried these substances in a proper manner—that is, with a suitable modification of the apparatus—we have little doubt that they would have discovered a difference of action for equal masses of different substances. The experiment may yet be made, and we hope it will, as it is of great scientific importance; but it should be encouraged by the help of some powerful scientific body, as the cost of the new apparatus would probably exceed the ordinary means at the command of unaided individuals.
163 A Lecture on Mental Education, London, 1855.
164 In the O Salutaris Hostia!
165 Marie Antonette.
166 Words of Monsignor Nardi to Mrs. Peter.
167 A paper read before the Catholic Union of Boston, Mass. June 4, 1874.
168 Third Prov. Council N. Y.
169 Second Plenary Council of Baltimore, No. 361.
170 Third Provincial Council of New York, decree the third. Since this latter decree has been issued many organists have acted in the most senseless manner. Instead of composing or arranging music to which the words of the Sanctus might easily be sung within the prescribed time, they have retained what they had, and thus are frequently obliged to interrupt the Sanctus in the middle of a movement, and before half the words have been pronounced. Sometimes they continue the movement, and resume the same words after the Elevation, and then they find it impossible to sing the Benedictus, which should, as is evident, immediately follow the consecration. It is true that at the High Mass the celebrant is expected to make a longer memento than usual, both for the living before the consecration and for the dead after it, to give the singers time to sing all the words, but not that they may indulge in useless and tiresome repetitions.
171 Histoire Générale de la Musique Religieuse.
172 Musica Sacra. Boston: Carl Prüfer.
173 Ave Verum, and other Pieces. Boston: Oliver Ditson.
174 History of Music. Boston: Oliver Ditson & Co.
175 From the introduction to the foundation‐charter of the Abbey of S. Mary at Furness.
176 A country‐house.
177 “Sea‐fruit.” The name given at Naples to star‐fish, etc., which they eat fried.
178 Tomatoes, called apples of gold.
179 We will have him safe.
180 Dearest.
181 Little cares.
182 There are some exceptions, such as the beautiful candelabra of the Villa Diomed.
183 Bed‐chamber.
184 Court.
185 Reception‐room.
186 Room for guests.
187 Signor Palmier.
188 The above doctrine concerning the reality of absolute space is taken from Lessius’ magnificent work, De Perfectionibus Moribusque Divinis (lib. ii. c. 2), where he shows that absolute space is the virtuality of God’s immensity. We cannot here develop this doctrine, nor discuss the objections of those who hold a different opinion. This would lead us too far from our present object, and give to our dialogue with Dr. Büchner a higher metaphysical character than his arguments deserve.
189 J. D. Dana’s Manual of Geology. See also Pianciani’s Cosmogonia Naturale Comparata col Genesi, Rev. Gerald Molloy’s Geology and Revelation, and Card. Wiseman’s Twelve Lectures on the Connection between Science and Revealed Religion.
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