The Project Gutenberg eBook of The Catholic World, Vol. XI, 1870, by The Paulist Fathers.

In our third article on the Abbé Martin's exhaustive work on the future of Protestantism and Catholicity, we disposed of the pretension of Protestants that the Reformation created and has sustained civil and political liberty in modern society. We proceed in the present and concluding article to dispose, as far as we can, of the pretension that it has founded and sustained religious liberty, or the freedom of conscience.

No fact is more certain than that the Reformation has the credit with non-Catholics, if not even with some half-instructed Catholics themselves, of having originated religious liberty and vindicated the freedom of the mind. Here as elsewhere the formula of the age, or what claims to be enlightened in it, is, Protestantism and freedom, or Catholicity and slavery; and it is to its prestige of having founded and sustained religious liberty that Protestantism owes its chief ability in our times to carry on its war against the church. Protestantism, like all false religions or systems, having no foundation in truth and no vital energy of its own, lives and prospers only by availing itself of the so-called spirit of the age, or by appealing to the dominant public opinion of the time and the place. In the sixteenth century, the age tended to the revival of imperialism or cæsarism, and Protestantism favored monarchical absolutism, and drew from it its life, its force, and its sustenance.

The spirit or dominant tendency of our age, dating from the middle of the last century, has been and is the revival of the pagan republic, or, as we call it, democratic cæsarism, which asserts for the people as the state the supremacy which under imperialism is asserted for the emperor. Protestantism lives and sustains itself now only by appealing to and representing this tendency, as we may see in the contemporary objections to the church, that she is "behind the age," "does not conform to the age," "is [2]hostile to the spirit of the age," "opposed to the spirit of the nineteenth century."

Every age, nation, or community understands by liberty, freedom to follow unrestrained its own dominant tendency; we might say, its own dominant passion. In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, liberty meant the freedom of temporal sovereigns to govern according to their own good pleasure, unrestrained by the church, on the one hand, and estates, diets, or parliaments, on the other. Liberty means now the freedom of the people, unrestrained either by the rights of God or the rights of princes, to govern as they or the demagogues, their masters, judge proper. Hence, liberty, as the world understands it, varies in its meaning from age to age, and from nation to nation, and, indeed, from individual to individual. Whatever favors or is in accordance with the dominant tendency or passion of an age, nation, community, or individual, favors or is in accordance with liberty; and whatever opposes or impedes it is opposed to liberty—is civil, political, or spiritual despotism. Protestantism never resists, but always follows, and encourages and echoes the dominant tendency of the age or nation. The church, having a life and force derived from a source independent of the age or nation, seeks not support in that dominant passion or tendency, does not yield or conform to it, but labors unceasingly and with all her energy to conform it to herself. Hence, in the estimation of the world, Protestantism is always on the side of liberty, and the church on the side of despotism and slavery.

The attempt to deny this, and to prove that the church favors liberty in this sense, is perfectly idle; and to seek to modify her position and action, so as to force her to accept and conform to the dominant or popular tendency or passion of the age or nation, is to mistake her essential character and office, and to forget that her precise mission is to govern all men and nations, kings and peoples, sovereigns and subjects, and to conform them to the invariable and inflexible law of God, which she is appointed by God himself to declare and apply, and therefore to resist with all her might every passion or tendency of every age, nation, community, or individual, whenever and wherever it deviates from that law of which she is the guardian and judge. The church is instituted, as every Catholic who understands his religion believes, to guard and defend the rights of God on earth against any and every enemy, at all times and in all places. She therefore does not and cannot accept, or in any degree favor, liberty in the Protestant sense of liberty, and if liberty in that sense be the true sense, the Protestant pretension cannot be successfully denied.

But we have already seen that liberty in the Protestant sense is no liberty at all, or a liberty that in the civil and political order is identified with cæsarism—the absolutism of the prince in a monarchy, the absolutism of the people or of the ruling majority for the time in a democracy. This last might be inferred from the ostracism practised in democratic Athens, and is asserted and defended, or rather taken for granted, by almost the entire secular press in democratic America. The most conservative politicians among us recognize the justice of no restrictions on the will of the people but such as are imposed by written constitutions, and which a majority or three fourths of the voters may alter at will and as they will. It is the boast of our popular orators and writers that there are with us no restrictions on the absolute will of the people but such as the people voluntarily[3] impose on themselves, which, as self-imposed, are simply no restrictions at all. It is evident, then, if liberty means any thing, if there is any difference between liberty and despotism, freedom and slavery, the Protestant understanding of liberty is not the true one.

Nor is the Protestant understanding of religious liberty a whit more true. We have found that the basis or principle of all civil and political liberty is religious liberty, or the freedom and independence of religion—that is to say, the spiritual order; but from the point of view of Protestantism there is no religion, no spiritual order, to be free and independent. According to Protestantism, religion is a function, not a substantive existence or an objective reality. It is, as we have seen, on Protestant principles, a function of the state, of the community, or of the individual, and whatever liberty there may be in the case, must be predicated of one or another of these, not of religion, or the spiritual order. With Protestants the freedom and independence of religion or the spiritual order would be an absurdity, for it is precisely that which they began by protesting against. It is of the very essence of Protestantism to deny and make unrelenting war on the freedom and independence of religion, and the only liberty in the case it can assert is the freedom of the state, the community, or the individual from religion as law, and the right of one or another of them to adopt or reject any religion or none at all as they choose, which is irreligious or infidel, not religious liberty.

Protestantism, under its most favorable aspect, is not, even in the estimation of Protestants themselves, religion, or a religion; but the view of religion which the reformers took, or which men take or may take of religion. At best it is not the objective truth or reality, but a human doctrine or theory of it, which has no existence out of the mind that forms or entertains it. Hence, Protestants assert, as their cardinal doctrine, justification by faith alone; and which faith is not the truth, but the mind's view of it. Hence, too, they deny that the sacraments are efficacious ex opere operato, and maintain that, if efficacious at all, they are so ex opere suscipientis. They reject the Real Presence as a "fond imagination," and make every thing in religion depend on the subjective faith, conviction, or persuasion of the recipient. The church they recognize or assert is no living organism, no kingdom of God on earth, founded to teach and govern all men and nations in all things pertaining to eternal life or the spiritual end of man, but a simple association of individuals, with no life or authority except what it derives from the individuals associated, and which is not hers, but theirs.

Some Protestants go so far as to doubt or deny that there is any truth or reality independent of the mind, and hold that man is himself his own teacher and his own law-giver; but all concede, nay, maintain, that what is known or is present to the mind is never the reality, the truth, or the divine law itself, but the mind's own representation of it. Hence their Protestantism is not something fixed and invariable, the same in all times and places, but varies as the mind of Protestants itself varies, or as their views, convictions, or feelings change, and they change ever with the spirit of the age or country. One of their gravest objections to the church was, in the sixteenth century, that she had altered the faith; and in the nineteenth century is, that she does not alter it, that she remains inflexibly the same, and absolutely refuses to change her[4] faith to suit the times. They hold their own faith and doctrine alterable at will, and are continually changing it. Evidently, then, they do not hold it to be the truth; for truth never changes: nor to be the law of God, which they are bound to obey; for if the law of God is alterable at all, it can be so only by God himself, never by man, any body of men, or any creature of God. There is no Protestant ignorant or conceited enough to maintain the contrary.

This fact that Protestantism is a theory, a doctrine, or a view of religion, not the objective reality itself, not the recognition and assertion of the rights of God, but a human view or theory of them, proves sufficiently that it is incompatible with the assertion of religious liberty. All it can do is to assert the right or liberty of the state to adopt and ordain any view of religion it may take; of the community to form and enforce its own views, convictions, or opinions; or of the individual to make a religion to suit himself, or to go without any religion at all, as he pleases. In none of these cases is there any religious liberty; and in them all religion is subjected to a purely human authority—the authority of the state, of the community, or of the individual, one as human as another. Protestantism is really in its very nature and essence an earnest and solemn protest against religious liberty, and for it to assert the freedom and independence of religion, or the spiritual order—that is, of religion as law to which all men are bound to conform—would be to commit suicide. Even the supremacy of the spiritual order, which our old Puritans asserted, was only the assertion of the authority of their interpretation of the written word against the divine authority to interpret it claimed by the church, and against the human authority of the civil magistrate claimed by Anglicanism, from which they separated, while it subjected it to the congregation, the brotherhood, or to the ministers and elders, no more spiritual than the civil magistrate himself.

In the beginning Protestantism made religion in nearly all Protestant nations a function of the state, as it is still in Great Britain, Prussia, the several Protestant German states, in Norway, Denmark, Sweden, Holland, and the Protestant cantons of Switzerland. The progress of events, and the changes of opinion, have produced a revolt among Protestant nations against this order, and Protestants now make, or are struggling to make, it a function of the community or the sect, and the more advanced party of them demand that it be made a function of the individual. This advanced party do not demand the freedom of religion, but the freedom of the individual from all religious restraints, from all obligations of obedience to any religious law, and indeed of any law at all, except the law he imposes on himself. Dr. Bellows, of this city, a champion of this party, proves that it is not the freedom of religion, nor the freedom of the individual to be of any religion he chooses; for he denies that he is free to be a Catholic, though he is free to be any thing else. He tells Catholics they are only tolerated; and threatens them with extermination by the sword, if they dare claim equal rights with Protestants, and insist on having their proportion of the public schools under their own control, or on not being taxed to support schools to which they cannot with a good conscience send their children.

Evidently, then, the pretension that the Reformation has founded or favored religious liberty is as worthless as we have seen is the pretension that it has founded or favored civil and[5] political liberty. It has, on the contrary, uniformly opposed it, and asserted only the liberty of its contradiction. To assert the liberty of the state, the people, or the individual to control religion, or to assert the liberty of infidelity or no-religion, surely is not to assert the liberty of religion. Protestantism yields always to the spirit of the age, and asserts the right of that spirit to modify, alter, or subject religion to itself. There can be no religious liberty where religion must follow the spirit of the times, and change as it changes. Religion, if any thing, is the supreme law of conscience, and conscience is a mere name if obliged to obey as its supreme law the dominant passion or tendency of the age or nation. The freedom of conscience is not in the emancipation of conscience from all law, for that were its destruction; but in its being subjected to no law but the law of God, promulgated by divine authority, and declared to the understanding by God himself, or a court appointed, enlightened, and assisted by the Holy Spirit. Under Protestantism there is and can be no freedom of conscience; for under it conscience is either destroyed by being subjected to no law, or enslaved by being subjected to another law than the law of God.

This conclusion, which we obtain by a simple analysis of Protestantism, is confirmed by all the facts in the case. Every student of the history of Protestantism knows that the reformers never made the pretension now put forth in their name. No man was ever farther from proposing the emancipation of the mind from what is called spiritual thraldom than Martin Luther, and no man ever showed less respect for human reason. His aim was to emancipate the church from the authority of the pope; and in this laudable work he engaged the princes of the empire, who were ready to assist him, because in doing so they could also emancipate themselves, make themselves pontiffs as well as princes, and enrich themselves with the spoils of the church. But Luther substituted for the authority of the pope and councils that of the written word, as amended and interpreted by himself. He never recognized the so-called right of private judgement, and never asserted the right of every man to interpret the written word for himself. The Bible as interpreted by himself, Martin Luther, was to be taken in all cases as the supreme and only authority, and he would tolerate no dissent from his interpretation. He assumed for himself more than papal authority; for he confessedly assumed authority to alter the written word, which assuredly no pope ever did. He never admitted any right of dissent from his dicta, and wherever he could, he suppressed it by the strong arm of power.

John Calvin was not more tolerant, as the burning of Michael Servetus over a slow fire made of green wood, and his pamphlet justifying the burning of heretics, amply prove. Henry VIII. of England put to death Catholics and Lollards, beheaded Cardinal Fisher and Sir Thomas More, because they refused to take the oath of the royal supremacy, except with the qualification, "as far as the law of Christ permits." In Sweden, the peasants were entrapped into the support of the Reformation by the infamous Gustavus Vasa, under pretence of recovering and reëstablishing the national independence; and after the prince had regained by their aid his throne and been crowned king, were massacred by thousands because they wished still to adhere to the Catholic Church, and resisted its abolition. In Geneva, Protestantism gained a footing[6] in much the same way. Protestants came from Berne and other places to assist the citizens in a political rebellion against their prince, who was also their bishop, and afterward drove out the Catholics who could not be forced to accept the Reformation.

We need not pursue the history of the establishment of Protestantism, which is written in blood. Suffice it to say, that in no country was the Reformation introduced but by the aid of the civil power, and in no state in which it gained the mastery did it fail to be established as the religion of the state, and to obtain the suppression by force or civil pains and penalties of the old religion, and of all forms even of Protestant dissent. The state religion was bound hand and foot, and could move only by permission of the temporal sovereign, and no other religion was tolerated. We all know the penal laws against Catholics in England, Ireland, and Scotland, reënacted with additional severity under William and Mary, almost in the eighteenth century. James II., it is equally well known, lost the crown of his three kingdoms by an edict of toleration, which, as it tolerated Catholics, was denounced as an act of outrageous tyranny. The penal laws against Catholics were adopted by the Episcopalian colony of Virginia, and the Puritan colony of Massachusetts made it an offence punishable with banishment from the colony for a citizen to harbor a Catholic priest for a single night, or to give him a single meal of victuals. It was only in 1788 that the Presbyterian Assembly of the United States expunged from their confession of faith the article which declares it the duty of the civil magistrate to extirpate heretics and idolaters—an article still retained by their brethren in Scotland, and by the United Presbyterians in this country.

Indeed, toleration is quite a recent discovery. Old John Cotton, the first minister of Boston, took care to warn his hearers or readers that he did not defend "that devil's doctrine, toleration." Toleration to a limited extent first began to be practised among Protestants on the acquisition of provinces whose religion was different from that of the state making the acquisition. The example was followed of the pagan Romans, who tolerated the national religion of every conquered, tributary, or allied nation, though they tolerated no religion which was not national, and for three hundred years martyred Christians because their religion was not national, but Catholic. It is only since Voltaire and the Encyclopædists preached toleration as the most effective weapon in their arsenal, as they supposed, against Christianity, or the beginnings of the French Revolution of 1789, that Protestants have taken up the strain, professed toleration, and claimed to be, and, in the face and eyes of all history, always to have been, the champions of religious liberty and the freedom of conscience. It was not till 1829 that the very imperfect Catholic Relief Bill passed in the British parliament, and the complete disestablishment of Congregationalism as the state religion in Massachusetts did not take place till 1835, though dissenters had for some time previous been tolerated.

Yet in no Protestant state has complete liberty been extended to Catholics. The French Revolution, with its high-flown phrases of liberty, equality, brotherhood, and religious freedom, suppressed the Catholic religion, and imprisoned, deported, or massacred the bishops and priests who would not abandon it for the civil church it ordained. We ourselves,[7] though very young at the time, remember the exultation of our Protestant neighbors when the first Napoleon dragged the venerable and saintly Pius VII. from his throne and held him a prisoner, first at Savona, and afterward at Fontainebleau. "Babylon is fallen," they cried; "the man-child has slain the beast with seven heads and ten horns." The revolutions, ostensibly social and political, which have been going on in the Catholic nations of Europe, and are still in process, and which everywhere are hostile to the church, have the warm sympathy of Protestants of every nation, and in Italy and Spain have been aided and abetted by Protestant associations and contributions, as part and parcel of the Protestant programme for the abolition of the papacy and the destruction of our holy religion.

Protestants now tolerate Protestant dissenters, and allow Jews and infidels equal rights with themselves; but they find great difficulty in regarding any outrage on the freedom of the church as an outrage on religious liberty. She is Catholic, not national, over all nations, and subject to none; therefore no nation should tolerate her. Even in this country Protestants very reluctantly suffer her presence, and the liberal Dr. Bellows, a Protestant of Protestants, warns, as we have seen, Catholics not to attempt to act as if they stood on an equality with Protestants. It is only a few years since the whole country was agitated by the Know-Nothing movement, got up in secret lodges, for the purpose, if not of outlawing or banishing Catholics, at least of depriving them of civil and political citizenship. The movement professed to be a movement in part against naturalizing persons of foreign birth, but really for the exclusion of such persons only in so far as they were Catholics. The controversy now raging on the school question proves that Protestants are very far from feeling that Catholics have equal rights with themselves, or that the Catholic conscience is entitled to any respect or consideration from the state. Public opinion proscribes us, and no Catholic could be chosen to represent a purely Protestant constituency in any legislative body, if known to be such and to be devoted to his religion. Our only protection, under God, is the fact that we have votes which the leaders of all parties want; yet there is a movement now going on for female suffrage, which, if successful, will, it is hoped, swamp our votes by bringing to the polls swarms of fanatical women, the creatures of fanatical preachers, together with other swarms of infidel, lewd, or shameless women, who detest Catholic marriage and wish to be relieved of its restraints, as well as of their duties as mothers. This may turn the scale against us; for Catholic women have too much delicacy, and too much of that retiring modesty that becomes the sex, to be seen at the polls.

But the imperfect toleration practised by Protestants is by no means due to their Protestantism, but to their growing indifference to religion, and to the conviction of Protestant and non-Catholic governments, that their supremacy over the spiritual order is so well established, their victory so complete, that all danger of its renewing the struggle to bring them again under its law is past. Let come what may, the spiritual order can never regain its former supremacy, or Cæsar tremble again at the bar of Peter. Cæsar fancies that he has shorn the church so completely of her Catholicity, except as an empty name, and so fully subjected her to his own or the national authority, that he has no longer any need to be[8] intolerant. Why not, indeed, amnesty the poor Catholics, who can no longer be dangerous to the national sovereign, or interfere with the policy of the state?

For ourselves, we do not pretend that the church is or ever has been tolerant. She is undeniably intolerant in her own order, as the law, as truth is intolerant, though she does not necessarily require the state to be intolerant. She certainly is opposed to what the nineteenth century calls religious liberty, which, we have seen, is simply the liberty of infidelity or irreligion. She does not teach views or opinions, but presents the independent truth, the reality itself; proclaims, declares, and applies the law of God, always and everywhere one and the same. She cannot, then, while faithful to her trust, allow the truth to be denied without censuring those who knowingly deny it, or the law to be disobeyed without condemning those who disobey it. But always and everywhere does the church assert, and, as far as she can, maintain the full and perfect liberty of religion, the entire freedom and independence of the spiritual order, to be itself and to act according to its own laws—that is, religious liberty in her sense, and, if the words mean any thing, religious liberty in its only true and legitimate sense.

The nineteenth century may not be able to understand it, or, if understanding it, to accept it; yet it is true that the spiritual is the superior, and the law of the temporal. The supremacy belongs in all things of right to God, represented on earth by the church or the spiritual order. The temporal has no rights, no legitimacy save as subordinated to the spiritual—that is, to the end for which man is created and exists. The end for which all creatures are made and exist is not temporal, but spiritual and eternal; for it is God himself who is the final cause as well as the first cause of creation. The end, or God as final cause, prescribes the law which all men must obey, or fail of attaining their end, which is their supreme good. This law all men and nations, kings and peoples, sovereigns and subjects, are alike bound to obey; it is for all men, for states and empires, no less than for individuals, the supreme law, the law and the only law that binds the conscience.

Now, religion is this law, and includes all that it commands to be done, all that it forbids to be done, and all the means and conditions of its fulfilment. The church, as all Catholics hold, is the embodiment of this law, and is therefore in her very nature and constitution teleological. She speaks always and everywhere with the authority of God, as the final cause of creation, and therefore her words are law, her commands are the commands of God. Christ, who is God as well as man, is her personality, and therefore she lives, teaches, and governs in him, and he in her. This being so, it is clear that religious liberty must consist in the unrestrained freedom and independence of the church to teach and govern all men and nations, princes and people, rulers and ruled, in all things enjoined by the teleological law of man's existence, and therefore in the recognition and maintenance for the church of that very supreme authority which the popes have always claimed, and against which the Reformation protested, and which secular princes are generally disposed to resist when it crosses their pride, their policy, their ambition, or their love of power. Manifestly, then, religious liberty and Protestantism are mutually antagonistic, each warring against the other.

The church asserts and vindicates the rights of God in the government[9] of men, and hence is she called the kingdom of God on earth. The rights of God are the foundation of all human rights; for man cannot create or originate rights, since he is a creature, not his own, and belongs, all he is and all he has, to his Creator. God's rights being perfect and absolute, extend to all his creatures; and he has therefore the right that no one of his creatures oppress or wrong another, and that justice be done alike by all men to all men. We can wrong no man, deprive no man of life, liberty, or the pursuit of happiness, without violating the rights of God and offending our Maker. "Inasmuch as ye did it to the least of my brethren, ye did it unto me." Hence, the church in asserting and vindicating the rights of God, asserts and protects in the fullest manner possible the so-called inalienable rights of man, opposes with divine authority all tyranny, all despotism, all arbitrary power, all wrong, all oppression, every species of slavery, and asserts the fullest liberty, political, civil, social, and individual, that is possible without confounding liberty with license. The liberty she sustains is true liberty; for it is that of which our Lord speaks when he says, "If the Son makes you free, ye shall be free indeed." The church keeps, guards, declares, and applies the divine law, of which human laws must be transcripts in order to have the force or vigor of laws. Man has in his own right no power to legislate for man, and the state can rightfully govern only by virtue of authority from God. Hence, St. Paul says, Non est potestas nisi a Deo. "There is no power except from God."

The church in asserting the supremacy of the law of God or of the spiritual order, asserts not only religious liberty, but all true liberty, civil, political, social, and individual; and we have seen that liberty, the basis and condition of civilization, was steadily advancing in all these respects during the middle ages till interrupted by the revival of paganism in the fifteenth century and the outbreak of Protestantism in the sixteenth. The Reformation did not emancipate society from spiritual thraldom, but raised it up in revolt against legitimate authority, and deprived it of all protection, on the one hand, against arbitrary power, and, on the other, against anarchy and unbounded lawlessness, as the experience of more than three centuries has proved. There is not a government in Europe that is not daily conspired against, and it requires five millions of armed soldiers even in time of peace to maintain internal order, and give some little security to property and life. To pretend that the authority of the church, as the organ of the spiritual order, is despotic, is to use words without understanding their meaning. Her authority is only that of the law of God, and she uses it only to maintain the rights of God, the basis and condition of the rights of individuals and of society. Man's rights, whether social or individual, civil or political, are the rights of God in and over man, and they can be maintained only by maintaining the rights of God, or, what is the same thing, the authority of the church of God in the government of human affairs. Atheism is the denial of liberty, as also is pantheism, which denies God as creator.

There is no liberty where there is no authority competent to assert and maintain it, or where there is no authority derived from God, who only hath dominion. The men who seek to get rid of authority as the condition of asserting liberty are bereft of reason, and more in need of physic and good regimen than of argument. Liberty is not in being exempt from obedience, but in being held to obey[10] only the rightful or legitimate authority. God's right to govern his creatures is full and perfect, and any authority he delegates or authorizes to be exercised in his name, is legitimate, and in no sense abridges or interferes with liberty—unless by liberty you mean license—but is the sole condition of its maintenance. God's dominion over man is absolute, but is not despotic or tyrannical, since it is only his absolute right. The authority of the church, however extended it may be, and she is the judge of its extent and its limitations, as the court is the judge of its own jurisdiction, is not despotic, tyrannical, or oppressive, because it is the authority of God exercised through her.

The pretension of Protestants that Protestantism favors liberty, and the church despotism, is based on the supposition that authority negatives liberty and liberty negatives authority, that whatever is given to the one is taken from the other; a supposition refuted some time since, in the magazine for October last, in an article entitled An Imaginary Contradiction, and need detain us no longer at present. Just or legitimate authority, founded on the rights of God, and instituted to assert and maintain them in human affairs, confirms and protects liberty instead of impairing it.

Yet there is no doubt that the church condemns liberty in the sense of the Reformation, and especially in that of the nineteenth century. Protestantism denies infallibility to the church and assumes it for the age, for the state, for public opinion—that is, for the world. The most shocking blasphemy in its eyes is to assert that the age is fallible and cannot be relied on as a safe or sure guide. We differ from the Protestant; we attribute infallibility to the church, and deny it to the age, even though the age be this enlightened nineteenth century. We do not believe it is always wise or prudent to suffer one's self to be carried away by the dominant tendency or passion of this or any other age. It is characteristic of every age to fix upon one special object or class of objects, and to pursue them with an exclusiveness and a concentrated passion and energy that render them practically evil, even though good when taken in their place and wisely pursued. Even maternal affection becomes evil and destructive, if not guided or restrained by wisdom and prudence. Philanthropy is a noble sentiment; yet men and women in our own age, carried away, dazzled, and blinded by it, only produce evils they would avoid, defeat the very good they would effect. The spirit of our age is that of the production, accumulation, and possession of material goods. Material goods in their proper measure and place are needed; but when their production and accumulation become with an individual or an age an engrossing passion that excludes the spiritual and the eternal, they are evil, and lead only to ruin, both spiritual and material, as daily experience proves.

The church, then, instituted to teach the truth and to secure obedience to the law of God, directed always by her divine ideal, is forced to resist always and everywhere the age, that is, the world, instead of following its spirit, and to labor for its correction, not for its encouragement. Hence always is there more or less opposition between the church and what is called the spirit of the age, and their mutual concordance is never to be looked for so long as the world stands. Hence the church in this world is the church militant, and her normal life one of never-ending struggle with the world—spirit of the age, der Welt-Geist—the flesh, and the devil. It is only by this struggle that[11] she makes conquests for heaven, and prevents civil governments from degenerating into intolerable tyrannies, and society from lapsing into pagan darkness and superstition.

We have, we think, sufficiently disposed of the Protestant pretension, and if any of our readers think we have not fully done it, we refer them to the work before us. There is no doubt that the boldness, not to say impudence, with which the Protestant pretension is urged, and the support it receives from the rationalistic journalism and literature which form contemporary public opinion in Catholic nations, coupled with the general ignorance of history and the shortness of men's memories, accounts for the chief success of Protestant missions in unmaking Catholics, which, though very limited, is yet much greater than it is pleasant to think. Yet gradually the truth will find its way to the public; even Protestants themselves will by and by tell it, piece by piece, as they are now doing. They have already refuted many of the falsehoods and calumnies they began by inventing and publishing against the church, and in due time they will refute the rest.

The abbé shows very clearly that the toleration now accepted and to some extent practised, and the liberty now allowed to the various sects, will most likely have a disastrous effect on the future of Protestantism. It must sooner or later, he thinks, lead to the demolition of the Protestant national establishments. National churches cannot coexist with unlimited freedom of dissent. The English Church must soon follow the fate of the Anglican Church in Ireland. Its disestablishment is only a question of time. So it will be before long in all Protestant nations that have a national church. The doctrine of toleration and freedom for all sects and opinions not only tends to produce indifference to dogmatic theology, but is itself a result of that indifference; and indifference to dogmatic truth is a more formidable enemy to deal with than out-and-out disbelief or positive infidelity. A soul breathing forth threatenings, and filled with rage against Christians, can be converted, and became Paul the apostle and doctor of the Gentiles; but the conversion of a Gallio, who cares for none of these things, is a rare event.

With the several sects, doctrinal differences are daily becoming matters of less and less importance. Who hears now of controversies between Calvinists and Arminians? Even the New School and the Old School Presbyterians, though separated by grave dogmatic differences, unite and form one and the same ecclesiastical body; Presbyterians and Methodists work together in harmony; Orthodox Congregationalists show signs of fraternizing with Unitarians, and Unitarians fraternize with Radicals who reject the very name of Christian, and can hardly be said to believe even in God. One need not any longer believe any thing, except that Catholicity is a gross superstition, and the church a spiritual despotism, the grand enemy of the human race, in order to be a good and acceptable Protestant. A certain inward sentiment, emotion, or affection, which even a pantheist or an atheist may experience, suffices. The dread presence of the church, hatred of Catholicity, the zeal inspired by party attachment, and the hope of finally arriving at some solid footing, may keep up appearances for some time to come; the eloquence, the polished manners, the personal influence, and the demagogic arts and address of the preacher may continue for a while to fill a few fashionable meeting-houses; but when success depends on the personal character[12] and address of the minister, as is rapidly becoming the fact in all Protestant sects, we may take it for granted that Protestantism has seen its best days, is going the way of all the earth, and soon the place that has known it shall know it no more for ever.

Protestantism, with all deference to our author, who pronounces it imperishable, we venture to say, has well-nigh run its course. It began by divorcing the church from the papacy and subjecting religion to the national authority, subordinating the spiritual to the temporal, the priest to the magistrate, the representative of heaven to the representative of earth. It constituted the national sovereign the supreme head and governor, the pontifex maximus, after the manner of the Gentiles, of the national religion, or the national church, and punished dissent as treason against the prince. It was at first, and for over two centuries, bitterly intolerant, especially against Catholics, whom it persecuted with a refined cruelty which recalled, if it did not surpass, that practised by paganism on Christians in the martyr ages.

Tired of persecution, or finding it impotent to prevent dissent, Protestantism tried after a while its hand at civil toleration. The state tolerated, to a greater or less extent, at first only Protestant dissenters from the established church; but at last, though with many restrictions, and with the sword ever suspended over their heads, even Catholics themselves. From civil toleration, from ceasing to cut the throats and confiscate the goods of Catholics, and of Protestant recusants, it is passing now to theological tolerance, or what it calls complete religious liberty, though as yet only its advanced-guard have reached it.

The state, unless in the American republic, does not, indeed, disclaim its supremacy over the church; but it leaves religion to take care of itself, as a thing beneath the notice of the civil magistrate, so long as it abstains from interfering with state policy, or meddling with politics. To-day Protestantism divorces, or is seeking to divorce, the church from the state, as it began by divorcing both her and the state from the papacy; it divorces religion from the church and from morality, Christianity from Christ, faith from dogma, piety from reason, and it resolves into an affection of man's emotional or sentimental nature. We find persons calling themselves Christians who do not believe in Christ, or regard him as a myth, and godly, who do not even believe in God. We have men, and women too, who demand the disruption of the marriage tie in the name of morality, and free love in the name of purity. Words lose their meaning. The churl is called liberal, things bitter are called sweet, and things profane are called holy. Not many years since, there was published in England, and republished here, an earnest and ingenious poem, designed to rehabilitate Satan, and chanting his merits as man's noblest, best, and truest friend. In the mean time, every thing regarded as religion loses its hold on the new generations; moral corruption of all sorts in public, domestic, and private life is making fearful progress throughout the Anglo-Saxon world, the mainstay of Protestantism; and society seems tottering on the verge of dissolution. Such is the career Protestantism has run, is running, or, by the merciless logic to which it is subjected, will be forced to run. What hope, then, can Protestants have for its future?

As to the future of Catholicity, we are under no apprehensions. We know that never can the church be[13] in this world the church triumphant, and that she and the world will always be in a state of mutual hostility; but the hostility can never harm her, though it may cause the spiritual ruin of the individuals and nations that war against her. The Protestant world have for over three hundred years been trying to get on without her, and have succeeded but indifferently. Sensible and earnest-minded men among Protestants themselves boldly pronounce that the experiment has failed, which most Protestants inwardly feel, and sadly deplore; but like the poor man in Balzac's novel, who has spent his own patrimony, his wife's dower, the portion of his daughter, with all he could borrow, beg, or steal, and reduced his wife, his children, and himself to utter destitution, in the recherche d'absolu, they are buoyed up by the feeling that they are just a-going to succeed. But even this feeling cannot last always. Hope too long "deferred maketh the heart sick." It may be long yet, and many souls for whom Christ has died be lost, before the nations that have apostatized learn wisdom enough to abandon the delusive hope, and turn again to Him whom they have rejected, or look again, weeping, on the face of Him whom they have crucified. But the church will stand, whether they return or not; for she is founded on a rock that cannot be shaken, on the eternal truth of God, that cannot fail.

The Protestant experiment has demonstrated beyond question that the very things in the Catholic Church which are most offensive to this age, and for which it wages unrelenting war against her, are precisely those things it most needs for its own protection and safety. It needs, first of all, the Catholic Church—nay, the papacy itself—to declare and apply the law of God to states and empires, to sovereigns and subjects, kings and peoples, that politics may no longer be divorced from religion, but be rendered subsidiary to the spiritual, the eternal end of man, for which both individuals and society exist and civil governments are instituted. It needs the church to declare and enforce the law, by such means as she judges proper, that should govern the relation of the sexes; to hallow and protect marriage, the basis of the family, as the family is of society, that great sacrament or mysterious union, typical of the union of Christ with the church, which is indissoluble; to take charge of education, and to train up, or cause to be trained up, the young in the nurture and admonition of the Lord, or in the way they should go, that when old they shall not depart from it; to teach maidens modesty and reserve, and wives and mothers due submission to their husbands and proper care of their children; to assert and protect the rights of women; to train them to be contented to be women, and not to aspire to be men, or to usurp the functions of men, and to bid them stay at home, and not be gadding abroad, running over the country and spouting nonsense, free love, infidelity, impiety, and blasphemy, at suffrage conventions and other gatherings, at which it is a shame for a woman to open her mouth, or even to be present; and, most of all, to exercise a vigilant censorship over ideas, whether vented in books, journals, or lectures, and to keep from the public those which tend to mislead the mind or corrupt the heart, as a prudent father strives to keep them from his children.

The age needs for this the Catholic Church. A national church cannot do it; far less can the sects do it. These all depend on the public opinion of the age, the nation, or the sect, and have no power to withstand that[14] opinion. This is perhaps better understood here than elsewhere. The sects, being creatures of opinion, have no power to control it, and their tendency is invariably to seize upon every opinion, excitement, or movement that is, or is likely to be, popular, and help it on as the means of swelling, when it is at flood-tide, their own respective numbers. A national church has undoubtedly more stability, and is not so easily wrested from its moorings. But it has only the stability of the government that ordains it, and the most absolute government must sooner or later yield to the force of opinion. Opinion has disestablished and disendowed the state church in Ireland, and will, as is most likely, do it ere long in both England and Scotland. The Protestant sects have no alternative; they must either yield to the dominant opinion, tendency, or passion of the times and move on with it, or be swept away by it.

It is only a church truly catholic, that depends on no nation, that extends to all, and is over all, that derives not its being or its strength from the opinion of courts or of peoples, but rests on God for her being, her law, and her support, that can maintain her integrity, or have the courage to stand before an age or a nation, denounce its errors, and condemn its dominant passion or tendency, or that would be heeded, if she did. It was only the visible head of the Catholic Church, the vicar of Christ, that could perform the heroic act of publishing in this century the Syllabus; and if, as we are confident they have, the prelates assembled in the Council of the Vatican have some share of the courage of their chief, their decrees will not only draw the attention of the world anew to the church, but go far to prove to apostate nations and truculent governments that she takes counsel of God, not of the weakness and timidity of men.

A few more such acts as the publication of the Syllabus and the convocation of the council now sitting at Rome, joined to the manifest failure of Protestantism, will serve to open the eyes of the people, disabuse non-Catholics of the delusions under which they are led away to their own destruction. The very freedom, though false in principle, which is suffered in Protestant nations, while it removes all restraints from infidelity, immorality, and blasphemy, aids the victory of the church over her enemies. It ruins them by suffering them to run into all manner of excesses; but she can use it without danger and with advantage where there are minds to be convinced or hearts to be won; for she can abide the freest examination, the most rigid investigation and scrutiny, while the indwelling Holy Ghost cannot fail to protect her from all error on either side. The present delusions of the loud-boasting nineteenth century must give way before her as she once more stands forth in her true light, and her present enemies be vanquished.

DION AND THE SIBYLS.
A CLASSIC, CHRISTIAN NOVEL.

BY MILES GERALD KEON, COLONIAL SECRETARY, BERMUDA, AUTHOR OF "HARDING, THE MONEY-SPINNER," ETC.

DEDICATION.

I dedicate the following work to Edward Bulwer, Lord Lytton, not only in appreciation of one of the most searching, comprehensive, independent, and indefatigable thinkers, and one of the truest and highest men of genius, of whom it has ever been the lot of his own country and of the English-speaking races to be proud, and the fate of contemporary nations to feel honorably jealous; not only in admiration of a mind which nature made great, and which study has to the last degree cultivated, whose influence and authority have been steadily rising since he first began to labor in literary fields more varied than almost any into which ONE person had previously dared to carry the efforts of the intellect; but still more as an humble token of the grateful love which I feel in return for the faithful and consistent friendship and the innumerable services with which a great genius and a great man has honored me during twenty years.

INTRODUCTION.

The historical romance of Mr. Keon, now republished with the author's most cordial permission and his latest corrections, was first printed in London, in 1866, by Mr. Bentley, publisher in ordinary to the Queen. The edition was brought out in a very handsome style, and sold at the high price of a guinea. Notwithstanding the heavy price at which the work was furnished to our transpontine kinsfolk, (or at least to the "upper ten thousand" of them,) it is at this moment out of print, and an effort made about two years ago to procure copies for sale in this country was unsuccessful. The copy kindly sent us by the author was accidentally mislaid for several months, and this circumstance, together with the desire to give our readers the opportunity of perusing the work as soon as their attention should be directed to it by a notice such as its high merit demands, caused us to delay the proper public acknowledgment to the author until the present moment. Its success in England, in spite of the nationality and religion of the writer, is no slight proof of its intrinsic excellence, especially when we consider that he ventured into a field which the subject-matter of the book would turn into the very home and headquarters of English prejudice.

To every effect adequate cause; and, in this instance, to those who take up the story of Dion, one cause of its success will, before they have gone half way through its events and adventures, speak for itself. Yet, however light to read, the work has, we feel convinced, been in the last degree laborious both to plan and to execute. "Easy writing," said Thomas Moore, "very often makes fearfully hard reading." We believe the converse has often proved equally true.

We are glad to learn that Mr. Keon has recently received a far more gratifying recognition of his distinguished merit than any other to which a Catholic author can aspire. At a private audience granted him by Pius IX., His Holiness complimented him on his services to literature and religion, and gave him a beautiful rosary of pearl as a token of his august favor.

One word more, and we shall let the story itself begin to be heard. The epoch of Dion was the turning-point of all human history—the hinge of the fateful gates, the moment of the mightiest and most stupendous transition our world has ever known, the transition of transitions; the moment on this earth of a superplanetary, supercosmic drama. There were two suns in the heavens; one rising, never to set; the other going down to rise no more. At no epoch had human genius blazed so luminous, or human pride poised itself on wings so wide, in a sphere so sublime; but this genius was for the first time confronted in its own sphere by divine inspiration and a supernatural authority. The setting of a classic though pagan day saw the dawning day of Christianity. There were two suns[16] in one sky at the same moment. The doubtful cross-lights of two civilizations over-arched the world with a vault of shifting, contending, contrary, and awful splendors—those of one order in the utmost intensity of their radiance, those of the other in their first, glimmering beginnings; a seeming confusion; an internecine war; a hazy mingling of embattled glories as full of meaning as it was of mystery.

CHAPTER I.

It was a fair evening in autumn, toward the end of the year eleven of our Lord. Augustus Cæsar was a white-haired, olive-complexioned, and somewhat frail-featured, though stately man of more than seventy-three. At the beginning of the century in which this was written, the face of the first Napoleon recalled to the minds of antiquaries and students of numismatic remains the lineaments, engraved upon the extant coins of Augustus. Indeed, at this moment there is in the Vatican a beautiful marble bust in excellent preservation, representing one of these two emperors as he was while yet young; and this bust almost invariably produces a curious effect upon the stranger who contemplates it for the first time. "That is certainly a beautiful artistic work," he says, "but the likeness is hardly perfect."

"Likeness of whom?" replies some Italian friend. "Of the emperor," says the stranger. "Sicuro! But which emperor?" asks the Italian, smiling. "Of course, the first," says the visitor; "not this one." "But that represents Augustus Cæsar, not Napoleon Bonaparte," is the answer. Whereupon the stranger, who, a moment before had very justly pronounced the resemblance to Bonaparte to be hardly perfect, exclaims, not less justly, What an amazing likeness to Napoleon! That sort of admiring surprise is intelligible. Had the bust been designed as an image of the great modern conqueror, there had been something to censure. But the work which, at one and the same time, delineates the second Cæsar, and yet now after 1800 years recalls to mind the first Napoleon, has become a curious monument indeed.

The second Roman emperor, however, had not a forehead so broad and commanding nor so marble smooth as Napoleon's, and the whole countenance, at the time when our narrative begins, offered a more decisively aquiline curve, with more numerous and much thinner lines about the mouth. Still, even at the age which he had then reached—in the year eleven of our Lord—he showed traces of that amazing beauty which had enchanted the whole classic world in the days of his youth. Three years more, and his reign and life were to go down in a great, broad, calm, treacherous sunset together.

After the senate had rewarded the histrionic and purely make-believe moderation of its master—and in truth its destroyer—by giving to one who had named himself Princeps the greater name of Augustus, the former title, like a left-off robe, too good to be thrown away, was carefully picked up, brushed into all its gloss, and appropriated by a second performer. We allude, of course, to Drusus Tiberius Claudius Nero, the future emperor, best known by his second name of Tiberius. The first and third names had belonged to his brother also. Tiberius was then "Prince and Cæsar," as the new slang of flattery termed him; he was stepson of Augustus and already adopted heir, solemnly designatus. He was verging upon the close of his fifty-third year of cautious profligacy, clandestine vindictiveness, and strictly-regulated vices. History has not accused him of murdering Agrippa Vespasianus;[17] but had Agrippa survived, he would have held all Tiberius's present offices. Ælius Sejanus, commander of the prætorian guards, was occupied in watching the monthly, watching even the daily, decay of strength in the living emperor, and was pandering to the passions of his probable successor. Up to this time Sejanus had been, and still was, thus employed. More dangerous hopes had not arisen in his bosom; he had not yet indulged in the vision of becoming master of the known world—a dream which, some twenty years afterward, consigned him to cruel and sudden destruction. No conspirator, perhaps, ever exercised more craft and patience in preparing, or betrayed more stupidity at last in executing, an attempt at treason on so great a scale. It was forty-six years since Sallust had expired amid the luxuries which cruelty and rapine accumulated, after profligacy had first brought him acquainted with want.

Ovid had just been sent into exile at Temesvar in Turkey—then called Tomos in Scythia. Cornelius Nepos was ending his days in the personal privacy and literary notoriety in which he had lived. Virgil had been dead a whole generation; so had Tibullus; Catullus, half a century; Propertius, some twenty years; Horace and Mæcenas, about as long. The grateful master of the curiosa felicitas verborum had followed in three weeks to—not the grave, indeed, but—the urn, the patron whom he had immortalized in the first of his odes, the first of his epodes, the first of his satires, and the first of his epistles; and the mighty sovereign upon whose youthful court those three characters—a wise, mild, clement, yet firm minister, a glorious epic poet, and an unsurpassed lyrist—have reflected so much and such enduring lustre, had faithfully and unceasingly lamented their irreparable loss. Lucius Varius was the fashionable poet, the laureate of the day; and Mæcenas being removed, Tiberius sought to govern indirectly, as minister, all those matters which he did not control directly and immediately, as one of the two Cæsars whom Augustus had appointed. Velleius Paterculus, the cavalry colonel, or military tribune, (chiliarch,) a prosperous and accomplished patrician, was beginning to shine at once in letters and at the court. The grandson of Livia, grandson also of Augustus by his marriage with her, but really grand-nephew of that emperor—we mean the son of Antonia, the celebrated Germanicus, second and more worthy bearer of that surname—a youth full of fire and genius, and tingling with noble blood—was preparing to atone for the disgraces and to repair the disasters which Quintilius Varus, one year before, amidst the uncleared forests of Germany, had brought upon the imperial arms and the Roman name. Germanicus, indeed, was about to fulfil the more important part of a celebrated classic injunction; he was going to do things worthy to be written, "while the supple courtier of all Cæsars, Paterculus, was endeavoring to write something worthy to be read." Strabo had not long before commenced his system of geography, which, for about thirty years yet to come, was to engage his attention and dictate his travels. Livy, of the "pictured page," who doubtless may be called, next to Tacitus, the most eloquent without being set down as quite the most credulous of classic historians—I venture to say so, pace Niebuhr—was over sixty-eight years of age, but scarcely looked sixty. He was even then thoroughly and universally appreciated. No man living had received more genuine marks of honor—not even the emperor.[18] His hundred and forty-two books of Roman history had filled the known world with his praises, a glory which length of days allowed him fully to enjoy. Modern readers appreciate and admire the thirty-five books which alone are left, and linger over the beauties, quasi stellis, with which they shine. Yet who knows but these may be among the poorest productions of Livy's genius? A very simple sum in arithmetic would satisfy an actuary that we must have lost the most valuable emanations of the Paduan's great mind. Given a salvage of five-and-thirty out of a hundred and forty-two, and yet the whole of this wreck so marvellous in beauty! surely that which is gone for ever must have included much that is equal, probably something far superior to what time has spared.

There is a curious fact recorded by Pliny the younger, which speaks for itself. A Spaniard of Cadiz had, only some five months before the date of our story, journeyed from the ends of the earth to Rome merely to obtain a sight of Livy. There were imperial shows in the forum and hippodrome and circus at the time; there were races on foot, and on horseback, and in chariots; fights there were of all kinds—men against wild animals, men against each other; with the sword, with the deadly cestus; wrestling matches, and the dreadful battles of gladiators, five hundred a side; in short, all the glitter and the glories and the horrors of the old classic arena in its culminating days. There was also a strange new Greek fence, since inherited by Naples, and preserved all through the middle ages down to this hour, with the straight, pliant, three-edged rapier, to witness which even ladies thronged with interest and partisanship. But the Spaniard from Gades (Cervantes might surely have had such an ancestor) asked only to be shown Titus Livius. Which in yonder group is Livy? The wayfarer cared for nothing else that Roman civilization or Roman vanity could show him. The great writer was pointed out, and then the traveller, having satisfied the motive which had brought him to Rome, went back to Ostia, where his lugger, if I may so call it, lay, (I picture it a kind of "wing-and-wing" rigged vessel;) and, refusing to profane his eyes with any meaner spectacle, set sail again for Spain, where his youth had been illumined with the visions presented to a sympathetic imagination by the most charming of classical historians. The Spaniards from an immemorial age are deemed to have been heroes and appreciators of heroes; and no doubt this literary pilgrim, once more at home, recurred many a time, long pondering, to the glorious deeds of the Fabia Gens.

How many other similar examples Livy may have recorded for him we moderns cannot say. Before his gaze arose the finished column from the fragments whereof we have gathered up some scattered bricks and marbles. Niebuhr had to deal with a ruin, and he who ought to have guessed at and reconstructed the plan of it, has contented himself with trying to demolish its form.

Long previously to the date of our tale, Augustus, trembling under the despotism of his wife Livia, had begun to repeat those lamentations (with which scholars are familiar) for the times when Mæcenas had guided his active day, and Virgil and Horace had beguiled his lettered evenings. Virgil, as is well known, had been tormented with asthma, and ought possibly to have lived much longer but for some unrecorded imprudence. Horace, as is likewise well known, had been tormented with sore eyelids—and with wine; he was "blear-eyed,"[19] (lippus.) Augustus, therefore, used to say wittily, as he placed them on each hand of him at the symposium, which had been recently borrowed in Italy from the Greeks, but had not yet degenerated into the debauchery and extravagance into which they afterward sank more and more deeply during successive reigns, "I sit between sighs and tears." In suspiriis sedeo et in lachrymis. But he had long lost these so-called sighs and tears at either hand of him. The sighs and tears were now his own.

CHAPTER II.

Our chronicle commences in Campania, with the Tyrrhenian Sea (now the southerly waters of the Gulf of Genoa) on a traveller's left hand if he looks north. It was a fair evening in autumn, as we have remarked, during that age and state of the world the broad outlines of which we have briefly given. Along the Appian, or, as it long afterward came to be also called, the Trajan Way, the queen of roads, a conveyance drawn by two horses, a carriage of the common hackney description, not unlike one species of the vettura used by the modern Italians, was rolling swiftly northward between the stage of Minturnæ and the next stage, which was a lonely post-house a few miles south of the interesting town of Formiæ—not Forum Appii, or the Three Taverns, a place more than fifty miles away in the direction of Rome, and upon the same road.

Inside the carriage were a lady in middle life, whose face, once lovely, was still sweet and charming, and a very pale, beautiful female child, each dressed in a black ricinium,[2] or mourning robe, drawn over the top of the head. The girl was about twelve years old, or a little more, and seemed to be suffering much and grievously. She faced the horses, and on her side sat the lady fanning her and watching her with a look which always spoke love, and now and again anguish. Opposite to them, with his back to the horses, wearing a sort of dark lacerna, or thin, light great-coat, of costly material, but of a fashion which was deemed in Italy at that day either foreign or vulgar, as the case might be, sat a youth of about eighteen. The child was leaning back with her eyes closed. The youth, as he watched her, sighed now and then. At last he put both hands to his face, and, leaning his head forward, suffered tears to flow silently through his fingers. The lacerna which he wore was fastened at the breast by two fibulæ, or clasps of silver, and girt round his waist with a broad, brown, sheeny leather belt, stamped and traced after some Asiatic mode. In a loop of this belt, at his left side, was secured within its black scabbard an unfamiliar, outlandish-looking, long, straight, three-edged sword, which he had pulled round so as to rest the point before his feet, bringing the blade between his knees, and the hilt, which was gay with emeralds, in front of his chest.

The Romans still very generally went bare-headed,[3] even out of doors, except that those who continued to wear the toga drew it over their heads as the weather needed, and those who wore the penula used the hood of it in the same way. But upon the hilt of the sword we have described the youth had flung a sort of petasus, or deep-rimmed hat, with a flat top, and one black feather at the side, not stuck perpendicularly into the band, but so trained half round it as to produce a reckless, rakish effect, of which the owner was unconscious.

"Agatha," said the lady, in a low, [20]tender voice, the delicate Greek ring of which was full of persuasion, "look up, beloved child! Your brother and I, at least, are left. Think no more of the past. The gods have taken your father, after men had taken his and your inheritance. But our part in life is not yet over. Did not your parents too, in times past—did not we too, I say, lose ours? Did you not know you were probably to live longer than your poor father? Are you not to survive me also? Perhaps soon."

With a cry of dismay the young girl threw her arms round the lady's neck and sobbed. The other, while she shed tears, exclaimed:

"I thank that unknown power, of whom Dionysius the Athenian, my young countryman, so sublimely speaks, that the child weeps at last! Weep, Agatha, weep; but mourn not mute in the cowardice of despair! Mourn not for your father in a way unbecoming of his child and mine. Mourn not as though indeed you were not ours. My husband is gone for ever, but he went in honor. The courageless grief, that canker without voice or tears, which would slay his child, will not bring back to me the partner of my days, nor to you your father. We must not dishearten but cheer your brother Paulus for the battle which is before him."

"When I recover my rights," broke in the youth at this point, "my father will come and sit among the lares, round the ever-burning fire in the atrium of our hereditary house, Agatha; and therefore courage! You are ill; but Charicles, the great physician of Tiberius Cæsar, is our countryman, and he will attend you. He can cure almost any thing, they say. And if you feel fatigued, no wonder, so help me! Minime mirum mehercle! Have we not travelled without intermission, by land and by sea, all the way from Thrace? But now, one more change of horses brings us to Formiæ, and then we shall be at our journey's end. Meantime, dear child, look up; see yonder woods, and the garden-like shore."

And having first tried in vain to brighten the horn window at the side of the vehicle, specular corneum, (glass was used only in the private carriages of the rich,) he stood up, and calling over the hide roof of the carriage, which was open in front—the horses being driven from behind—he ordered the rhedarius, or coachman, to open the panels. The man, evidently a former slave of the family, now their freedman, quickly obeyed, and descending from his bench, pushed back into grooves contrived to receive them the coarsely-figured and gaudily colored sides of the travelling carruca.

"Is parvula better?" he then cried, with the privileged freedom of an old and attached domestic, or of one who, in the far more endearing parlance of classic times, was a faithful familiaris—that is, a member of the family. "Is the little one better? The dust is laid now, little one; the evening comes; the light slants; the sun smiles not higher than yourself, instead of burning overhead. See, the beautiful country! See, the sweet land! Let the breeze bring a bloom to your cheeks, as it brings the perfumes to your mouth. Ah! the parvula smiles. Fate is not always angry!"

"Just now, mother, you waked me from a frightful dream. I thought that the man who has our father's estates was dead; but he came from the dead, and was trying to kill Paulus,[21] my brother there; and for that purpose was striving to wrest the sword from Paulus's hand; and that the man, or lar, laughed in a hideous manner, and cried out, 'It is with his own sword we will slay him! Nothing but his own sword!'"

The old freedman turned pale, and muttered something to himself, as he stood by the side of the vehicle; and while he kept the horses steady, with the long reins in his left hand, glanced awfully toward Paulus.

"Never mind the name now," said Paulus; "a dead person cannot kill a living one; and that man is not in Italy who will kill me with my own sword, if I be not asleep. Look at the beautiful land! See, as Philip tells you, the beautiful land where you are going to be so happy."

The river Liris, now the Garigliano, flowed all gold in the western sun; some dozen of meadows behind them, between rows of linden-trees, oleanders, and pomegranates, with laurel, bay, and long bamboo-like reeds of the arundo donax, varying the rich beauty of its banks: "Daphrones, platanones, et aëriæ cyparissi." A thin and irregular forest of great contemplative trees; flowerless and sad beech, cornel, alder, ash, hornbeam, and yew towered over savannahs of scented herbs, and glades of many-tinted grasses. Some clumps of chestnut-trees, hereafter to spread into forests, but then rare, and cultivated as we cultivate oranges and citrons, stood proudly apart. A vegetation, which has partly vanished, gave its own physical aspect to an Italy the social conditions of which have vanished altogether; and were even then passing, and about to pass, through their last appearances. But much also that we in our days have seen, both there and elsewhere, was there then. The flower or blossom of the pomegranate lifted its scarlet light amidst vines and olives; miles of oleander trees waved their masses of flame under the tender green filigree of almond groves, and seemed to laugh in scorn at the mourning groups of yew, and the bowed head of the dark, widow-like, and inconsolable cypress. All over the leaves of the woods autumn had strewn its innumerable hues. In the west, the sky was hung with those glories which no painter ever reproduced and no poet ever sang; it was one of the sunsets which make all persons of sensibility who contemplate them dumb, by making all that can be said of them worse than useless. A magnificent and enormous villa, or castellum, or country mansion—palace it seemed—showed parts of its walls, glass windows, and Ionic columns, through the woods on the banks of the Liris; and upon the roof of this palace a great company of gilt, tinted, and white statues, much larger than life, in various groups and attitudes, as they conversed, lifted their arms, knelt, prayed, stooped, stood up, threatened, and acted, were glittering above the tree-tops in the many-colored lights of the setting sun.

"Ah! let us stop; let us rest a few moments," cried the child, smiling through her tears at the smiles of nature and the enchanting beauty of the scene; "only a few moments under the great trees, mother."

It was a group of chestnuts, a few yards from the side of the road; and beneath them came to join the highway through the meadows, and vineyards, and forest-land, a broad beaten track from the direction of the splendid villa that stood on the Liris.

Paulus instantly sprang from the carruca, and, having first helped his mother to alight, took his sister in his[22] arms and placed her sitting under the green shade. A Thracian woman, a slave, descended meantime from the box, and the driver drew his vehicle to the side of the highway.

While they thus reposed, with no sound about them, as they thought, save the rustle of the leaves, the distant ripple of the waters, and the vehement shrill call of the cicala, hidden in the grass somewhere near, their destinies were coming. The freedman suddenly held up his hand, and drew their attention by that peculiar sound through the teeth, (st,) which in all nations signifies listen!

And, indeed, a distant, dull, vague noise was now heard southward, and seemed to increase and approach along the Appian road. Every eye in our little group of travellers was turned in the direction mentioned, and they could see a white cloud of dust coming swiftly northward. Soon they distinguished the tramp of many horses at the trot. Then, over the top of a hill which had intercepted the view, came the gleam of arms, filling the whole width of the way, and advancing like a torrent of light. The ground trembled; and, headed by a troop or two of Numidian riders, and then a couple of troops or turmæ of Batavian cavalry, a thousand horse, at least, of the Prætorian Guards, arrayed, as usual, magnificently, swept along in a column two hundred deep, with a rattle and ring of metal rising treble upon the ear over the continuous bass of the beating hoofs, as the foam floats above the roll of the waves.

The young girl was at once startled from the sense of sickness and grief, and gazed with big eyes at the pageant. Six hundred yards further on a trumpet-note, clear and long, gave some sudden signal, and the whole body instantly halted. From a detached group in the rear an officer now rode toward the front; a loud word or two of command was heard, a slight movement followed, and then, as if the column were some monstrous yellow-scaled serpent with an elastic neck and a black head, the swarthy troops which had led the advance wheeled slowly backward, two instead of five abreast, while the main column simultaneously stretched itself forward on a narrower face, and with a deeper file, occupying thus less than half the width of the road, which they had before nearly filled, and extending much further onward. Meantime the squadrons which had led it continued to defile to the rear; and when their last rank had passed the last of those fronting in the opposite direction, they suddenly faced to their own right, and, standing like statues, lined the way on the side opposite to that where our travellers were reposing, but some forty or fifty yards higher up the road, or more north.

In front of the line of horsemen, who, after wheeling back, had been thus faced to their own right, or the proper left of the line of march, was now collected a small group of mounted officers. One of them wore a steel corselet, a casque of the same metal, with a few short black feathers in its crest, and the chlamys, or a better sort of sagum, the scarlet mantle of a military tribune, over a black tunic, upon which two broad red stripes or ribbons were diagonally sewn. This costume denoted him one of the Laticlavii, or broad-ribboned tribunes; in other words—although, to judge by the massive gold ring which glittered on the forefinger of his bridle hand, he might have been originally and personally only a knight—he had received either from the emperor, or from one of the two Cæsars then governing with and under Augustus, the senatorial rank.

The chlamys was fastened across the top of his chest with a silver clasp, and the tunic a little lower down with another, both being open below as far as the waist, and disclosing a tight-fitting chain-mail corselet, or shirt of steel rings. The chlamys was otherwise thrown loose over his shoulders, but the tunic was belted round the corselet at his waist by a buff girdle, wherein hung the intricately-figured brass scabbard of a straight, flat, not very long cut-and-thrust sword, which he now held drawn in his right hand. In his belt were stuck a pair of manicæ or chirothecæ, as gloves were called, which seemed to be made of the same material as the girdle; buffalo-skin greaves on his legs and half-boots (the calcei, not the soleæ or sandals) completed his dress. He was a handsome man, about five-and-thirty years old, brown hair, an open but thoughtful face, and an observant eye. He it was who had ridden to the front, and given those orders the execution of which we have noticed. He had now returned, and kept his horse a neck or so behind that of an officer far more splendidly attired, who seemed to pay no attention whatever to the little operation that had occurred, but, shading his eyes with one hand from the rays of the setting sun, gazed over the fields toward the villa or mansion on the Liris.

He was clad in the paludamentum, the long scarlet cloak of a legatus or general, the borders being deeply fringed with twice-dyed Tyrian purple, (Tyria bis tincta, or dibapha, as it is called by Pliny;) the long folds of which flowed over his charger's haunches. This magnificent mantle was buckled round the wearer's neck with a jewel. His corselet, unlike that of the colonel or tribune already mentioned, was of plate-steel, (instead of rings,) and shone like a looking-glass, except where it was inlaid with broad lines of gold. He wore a chain of twisted gold round his neck, and his belt as well as the hilt of his sword, which remained undrawn by his side in a silver scabbard, glittered with sardonyx and jasper stones. He had no tunic. His gloves happening, like those of his subordinate, to be thrust into the belt round his waist, left visible a pair of hands so white and delicate as to be almost effeminate. His helmet was thin steel, and the crest was surmounted by a profuse plume of scarlet cock's feathers. But perhaps the most curious particular of his costume was a pair of shoes or half-boots of red leather, the points of the toes turned upward. These boots were encrusted with gems, which formed the patrician crescent, or letter C, on the top of each foot, and then wandered into a fanciful tracery of sparkles up the leg. The stapedæ, or stirrups, in which his feet rested, were either of gold or gilt.

The countenance of the evidently important personage whose dress has been stated was remarkable. He had regular features, a handsome straight nose, eyes half closed with what seemed at first a languid look, but yet a look which, if observed more closely, was almost startling from the extreme attention it evinced, and from the contrast between such an expression and the indolent indifference or superciliousness upon the surface, if I may so say, of the physiognomy. There was something sinister and cruel about the mouth. He wore no whiskers or beard, but a black, carefully-trimmed moustache.

After a steady gaze across the fields in the direction we have already more than once mentioned, he half turned his head toward the tribune, and at the same time, pointing to our travellers, said something. The tribune, in his turn, addressed the first centurion, (dux legionis,) an officer whose[24] sword, like that of the legatus, was undrawn, but who carried in his right hand a thin wand made of vine-wood. In an instant this officer turned his horse's head and trotted smartly toward our travellers, upon reaching whom he addressed Paulus thus:

"Not a quarter of an hour," answered Paulus, wondering why such a question was asked.

"And have any persons passed into the road by this pathway?" the centurion then inquired.

Meanwhile, Paulus and his mother and the freedman Philip had not been so absorbed in watching the occurrence and scene just described as to remove their eyes for more than a moment at a time from their dearly-loved charge, the interesting little mourner who had begged to be allowed to rest under the chestnut-trees. It was not so with Agatha herself. The child was at once astonished, bewildered, and enraptured. Had the spectacle and review before her been commanded by some monarch, or rather some magician, on purpose to snatch her from the possibility of dwelling longer amidst the gloom, the regrets, and the terrors under which she had appeared to be sinking, neither the wonder of the spectacle, nor the amenity of the evening when it occurred, nor the loveliness of the landscape which formed its theatre, could have been more opportunely combined. She had not only never beheld any thing so magnificent, but her curiosity was violently aroused.

Paulus exchanged with his mother and the old freedman a glance of intelligence and of intense satisfaction, as they both noted the parted lips and dilated eyes with which the child, half an hour ago so alarmingly ill, contemplated the drama at which she was accidentally assisting.

"That's a rare doctor," whispered Philip, pointing to the general of the Prætorian Guards.

"No doctor," replied Paulus in the same low tones, "could have prescribed for our darling better."

"Paulus," said Agatha, "what are these mighty beings? Are these the genii, and the demons of the mistress-land, the gods of Italy?"

She looked from her brother to the lady, and then to the freedman, and this last, with a healing instinct which would have done honor to Hippocrates, began to stimulate her interest by the agency of suspense and mystery.

"Master Paulus, and Lady Aglais, and my little one too," he said, in a most impressive and solemn voice, "these be the genii and these be the demons indeed; but I tell you that you have not yet seen all the secret. Something is going to happen. Attend to me well! You behold a most singular thing! Are you aware of what you behold? Yonder, Master Paulus, is the allotted portion of horse for more than three legions: the justus equitatus, I say, for a Roman army of twenty thousand men. Yes, I attest all the gods," continued Philip in a low voice, but with great earnestness, and glancing from the brother to the sister as if his prospects in life were contingent upon his being believed in this. "I was at the battle of Philippi, and I aver that yonder is more than the right allotment of horse for three legions. Observe the squadrons, the turmæ; they do not consist of the same arm; and instead of being distributed in bodies of three or four hundred each to a legion,[25] they are all together before you without their legions. Why is that, Master Paulus?"

"Ah!" resumed the freedman, "you know not, but you will know presently. Mark that, little Mistress Agatha, and bear in mind that Philip the freedman has said to your brother that he will know all presently."

The child gazed wonderingly at the troops as she heard these mysterious words. "Who are those?" asked she, pointing to the squadrons of those still in column. "Who are those in leather jerkins, covered with the iron scales, and riding the large, heavy horses?"

"Batavians from the mouths of the Rhine and the Scheldt," answered the freedman, with a mysterious shake of the head.

"And those," pursued she, with increasing interest; "who are those whose faces shine like dusky copper, and whose eyes glitter like the eyes of the wild animals in the arena, when the proconsul of Greece gives the shows? I mean those who ride the small, long-tailed horses without any ephippia (saddle-cloths,) and even without bridles—the soldiers in flowing dress, with rolls of linen round their heads?"

"They are the Numidians," replied Philip. "Ah! Rome dreaded those horsemen once, when Hannibal the Carthaginian and his motley hordes had their will in these fair plains."

As he spoke, a strange movement occurred. The general or legatus dismounted, and, giving the bridle of his horse to a soldier, began to walk slowly up and down the side of the road. No sooner had his foot touched the ground than the whole of the Numidian squadron seemed to rise like a covey out of a stubble field; with little clang of arms, but with one short, sharp cry, or whoop, it burst from the high road into the meadow land. There the evolutions which they performed seemed at first to be all confusion, only for the fact that, although the horsemen had the air of riding capriciously in every direction, crossing, intermingling, separating, galloping upon opposite curves, and tracing every figure which the whim and fancy of each might dictate, yet no two of them ever came into collision. Indeed, fantastic and wild as that rhapsody of manœuvres into which they had broken appeared to be, some principle which was thoroughly understood by every one of them governed their mazy gallop. It was as accurate and exact as some stately dance of slaves at the imperial court. It was, in short, itself a wild dance of the Numidian cavalry, in which their reinless horses, guided only by the flashing blades and the voices of their riders, manifested the most vehement spirit and a sort of sympathetic frenzy. These steeds, which never knew the bridle, and went thus mouth-free even into battle—these horses, which their masters turned loose at night into the fields, and which came back bounding and neighing at the first call, were now madly plunging, wheeling, racing, and charging, like gigantic dogs at sport. Presently they began to play a strange species of leap-frog. A Numidian boy, who carried a trumpet and rode a pony, or at least a horse smaller and lower than the rest of the barbs, ("Berber horses,") suddenly halted upon the outside of the mad cavalry whirlpool which had been formed, and flung himself flat at full length upon the back of the diminutive animal. Instantly the whirl, as it circled toward him, straightened itself into a column, and every horseman rode full upon the stationary pony, and cleared both steed and rider at a bound, a torrent of cavalry rushing[26] over the obstruction with wild shouts.

"That is Numidian sport, Master Paulus," said the freedman; "but there is not a rider among them to be compared to yourself."

"Certainly I can ride," said the youth; "but I pretend not to be superior to these Centaurs."

"Be these, then, the Centaurs I have heard of?" asked Agatha; "be these the wild powers?"

The hubbub had prevented her, and all with her, from noticing something. Before an answer could be given, the Numidians had returned to the highway as suddenly as they had quitted it, and the noise of their dance was succeeded by a pause of attention. The general was again on horseback, and our travellers perceived that two litters, one of carved ivory and gold, the other of sculptured bronze, borne on the shoulders of slaves, were beside them.

Two gentlemen on foot had arrived with the litters along the broad pathway already noticed, and a group of attendants at a little distance were following.

This new party were now halting with our travellers beneath the far-spreading shade of the same trees. In the ivory litter reclined a girl of about seventeen, dressed in a long palla of blue silk, a material then only just introduced from India, through Arabia and Egypt, and so expensive as to be beyond the reach of any but the richest class. Her hair, which was of a bright gold color, was dressed in the fashionable form of a helmet, (galerus,) and was inclosed behind in a gauze net. She wore large inaures, or ear-rings, of some jewel, a gold chain, in every ring of which was set a gem, and scarlet shoes embroidered with pearls. The lady in the bronze litter was attired in the stola of a matron, with a cyclas, or circular robe, thrown back from the neck, and a tunic of dark purple which descended to her feet. Her brown hair was restrained by bands, vittæ, which had an honorable significance among the Roman ladies, ("Nil mihi cum vitta," says the profligate author of the Ars Amandi.) She seemed somewhat past thirty years of age; she had a very sweet, calm, and matronly air; her countenance was as beautiful in features and general effect as it was modest in its tone and character.

Her companion,[4] in the litter of ivory and gold, was not more than half her age, was even more beautiful, with an immense wreath of golden hair, and with large blue eyes, darkening to the likeness of black as she gazed earnestly upon any object. But she had a less gentle physiognomical expression. Frequently her look was penetrating, brief, impatient, sarcastic, disdainful. She had a bewitching smile, however, and her numerous admirers made Italy echo with their ravings.

Lucius Varius, said the fashionable world, was at that very time engaged upon a kind of sapphic ode, of which she was to be the subject.

Scarcely had these litters or palanquins arrived and halted, when the general officer dismounted once more, and walked quickly toward the spot with his helmet in his hand. At a few yards' distance he stopped, and first bowed low to the elder of the two gentlemen who had accompanied the litters on foot, and then, almost entirely disregarding the other gentleman, made an obeisance not quite so long or so deep to the ladies. The man whom so splendid a personage as the legatus, wearing his flaming paludamentum, and at the head of his troops, thus treated with so obsequious [27]a veneration, did not return the salute except by a slight nod and a momentary, absent-minded smile. His gaze had been riveted upon our travellers, and chiefly upon the youth and his young, suffering sister, upon both of whom, after it had quickly taken in Philip the freedman, the Thracian woman, and the Athenian lady, it rested long—longest and last upon Agatha.

"I never saw them until just now, my commander and Cæsar; they were here when we halted, and while we waited for our master, the favorite of the gods, these travellers seemed to be resting where you behold them."

"As those gods favor me," said the other, "this is a fine youth. Can we not edit[5] him? And yonder girl—have you ever seen, my Sejanus, such eyes? But she is deadly pale. Are you always thus pale, pretty one, or are you merely ill? If but ill, as I guess, Charicles, my Greek physician, shall cure you."

Before this man had even spoken, the moment, indeed, when first his eyes fell upon her, Agatha had sidled close to her mother; and while he was expressing himself in that way to Sejanus, she returned his gaze with panic-stricken, dilated eyes, as the South American bird returns that of the reptile; but when he directly questioned her, she, reaching out her hand to Paulus, clutched his arm with a woman's grasp, and said in an affrighted voice,

Paulus, in a manner naturally easy, and marked by the elegance and grace which the athletic training of Athens had given to one so well endowed physically, first, merely saying to the stranger, "I crave your pardon," (veniam posco,) lifted Agatha with one arm, and placed her in the travelling carriage. Then, while the freedman and the Thracian slave mounted to their bench, he returned to where his mother stood, signed to her to follow Agatha, and, seeing her move calmly but quickly toward the vehicle, he took the broad-rimmed petasus from his head, and bowing slowly and lowly to the stranger, said,

"Powerful sir, for I observe you are a man of great authority, my sister is too ill to converse. You rightly guessed this; permit us to take her to her destination."

The man whom he had thus balked, and to whom he now thus spoke, merits a word of description. He appeared to be more than fifty years old. The mask of his face and the frame of his head were large, but not fat. His complexion was vivid brick-red all over the cheeks, with a deeper flush in one spot on each side, just below the outer corners of the eyes. The eyes were bloodshot, large, rather prominent, and were closely set together. The nose was large, long, bony, somewhat aquiline. The forehead was not high, not low; it was much developed above the eyes, and it was broad. A deep and perpetual dint just over the nose reached half-way up the forehead. His hair was grizzled and close cut. His lips were full and fleshy, and the mouth was wide; the jaws were large and massive. His face was shaven of all hair. The chin was very handsome and large, and the whole head was set upon a thick, strong throat, not stunted, however, of its proper length. In person this man was far from ungainly, nor yet was he handsome. In carriage and bearing, without much majesty, he had nevertheless something steadfast, weighty, unshrinking, and commanding. His outer garment, not a toga, was all one color and material; it was a long, thick wadded[28] silk mantle, of that purple dye which is nearly black—the hue, indeed, of clotted gore under a strong light. He wore gloves, and instead of the usual short sword of the Romans, had a long steel stylus [6] for writing on wax thrust into a black leathern belt. This instrument seemed to show that he lived much in Rome, where it was not the custom, when otherwise in civilian dress, to go armed.

As the reader will have guessed, this man was to be the next emperor of the Roman world.

"Permit you to take her to her destination?" he repeated slowly. "My Greek physician, I tell you, shall cure her. I will give directions about your destination." A slight pause; then, "Are you a Roman citizen?"

"I am a Roman knight as well as citizen," answered Paulus proudly; "and my family is not only equestrian, but patrician."

The man in the black or gore-colored purple glanced at Sejanus, who, still unconcerned, stood with his splendid helmet in the left hand, while he smoothed his moustache with the right; otherwise perfectly still, his handsome face, cruel mouth, and intelligent eyes all alive with the keenest attention.

"And the destination to which you allude is—?" pursued the man in black purple.

"What relation or kinship exists between you and Marcus Æmilius Lepidus, formerly the triumvir, who still enjoys the life which he owes to the clemency of Augustus?"

Paulus hesitated. When he had given his name, the younger of the two ladies had raised herself suddenly in the litter of ivory and gold, and fastened upon him a searching gaze, which she had not since removed. The other lady had also at that instant looked at him fixedly. We have already stated that, when Sejanus approached the group, he had not deigned in any very cordial manner to salute or notice the second of the two gentlemen who had accompanied the litters on foot. This gentleman was very sallow, had hollow eyes, and a habit of gnawing his under lip between his teeth. He had unbuckled his sword, and had given it, calling out, "Lygdus, carry this," to a man with an exceedingly sinister and repulsive countenance. The man in question had now taken a step or two forward, and was standing on the left of Paulus, fronting the Cæsar, his shoulders stooping, his neck bent forward, his eyes without any motion of the head rolling incessantly from person to person, and face to face, but at once falling before and avoiding any glance which happened to meet his. He looked askant and furtively at every object with an eager, unhappy, and malign expression. Paulus did not need to turn his head to feel that this man was now intently peering at him. Behind the two courtly palanquins, and beyond the shade of the trees, was a third litter still more costly, being covered in parts with plate gold. Here sat a woman with a face as white as alabaster, and large prominent black eyes, watching the scene, and apparently trying to catch every word that was said.

Paulus, as we have observed, hesitated. The training of youth in the days of classic antiquity soon obliterated the inferiority of unreasoning, nervous shyness. But the strange catechism which Paulus was now undergoing, with all this gaze upon him from so many eyes, began to be a nuisance, and to tell upon a spirit singularly high.

"I have heard it," replied Paulus; "and have heard and answered several others, without knowing who he is that asks them. However, the former triumvir, now living at Circæi, about forty thousand paces from here, is my father's brother." (Circæi, as the reader knows, is now called Monte Circello, a promontory just opposite Gaeta.)

When Paulus had given his last answer, the ladies glanced at each other, and the younger looked long and hard at Tiberius. Getting some momentary signal from him, she threw herself back in her palanquin and smiled meaningly at the stooping, sinister-faced man, who had stationed himself in the manner already mentioned near Paulus's left hand.

"Your father," rejoined Tiberius, after a pause, "was a very distinguished soldier, and, as I always heard when a boy, he contributed eminently to the victory of Philippi. But I knew not that he had children; and, moreover, was he not slain, pray, at Philippi, toward the end of the battle, which he certainly helped to gain?"

"I hope," said Paulus, somewhat softened by the praise of his father, "I hope that Augustus supposed him to have died of his wounds, and that it was only under this delusion he gave our estates—which were situated somewhere in this very province of Campania, with a noble mansion like the castellum upon the river yonder—to that brave and able soldier Agrippa Vespasianus."

At this name a deep red flush over-spread the brow of Tiberius, and Paulus innocently proceeded.

"Certainly, the noble Agrippa, who was to have been Cæsar, had he lived, never would have accepted so unfair a bounty had he known that my father really survived his wounds, but that—despairing of the generosity, or rather despairing of the equity of Augustus—he was living a melancholy, exheridated exile, near that very battle-field of Philippi, in Thrace, where he had fought so well and had been left for dead."

"You dare to term the act of Augustus," slowly said the man in the gore-colored purple cloak, "so unfair a bounty, and Augustus himself ungenerous, or rather unjust?"

At this terrible rejoinder from such a man, the down-looking person whom we have mentioned passed his right hand stealthily to the hilt of the sword which he was carrying for his master, and half drew it. Paulus, who for some time had had this person standing at his left, could observe the action without turning his head. He was perfectly aware, moreover, that, should the other draw his weapon upon him, the very act of drawing it would itself become a blow, on account of their respective places, whereas to escape it required more distance between them, and to parry it in a regular way would demand quite a different position, besides the needful moment or two for disengaging his own rather long blade. Yet the youth stood completely still; he never even turned his head. However, he just shifted the wide-rimmed hat from his left to his right hand (the hand for the sword) and thereby seemed to be only more encumbered, unprepared, and defenceless than before. His left hand, with the back inward, fell also meantime in an easy and natural way upon the emerald haft of the outlandish-looking three-edged rapier, which, as he played with it, became loose in the scabbard, and came and went some fraction of an inch.

"I never termed him so," said Paulus. "I said not this of Augustus. I am at this moment on my way to Augustus himself, who is, I am told,[30] to be at Formiæ with his court for a week or two. I must, therefore, again ask your leave, mighty office-bearer, to continue my journey. I know not so much as who you are."

"I am Tiberius Cæsar," said the other, bending upon him those closely-set, prominent, bloodshot eyes with no very assuring expression. "I am Tiberius Cæsar, and you will be pleased to wait one moment before you continue the journey in question. The accusation against your father was this: that, after Philippi, he labored for the interests first of Sextus, the son of Pompey, and afterward of Mark Antony, in their respective impious and parricidal struggles; and the answer to this charge (a charge to which witnesses neither were nor are wanting) has always been, that it was simply impossible, seeing that Paulus Lepidus, your father, perished at Philippi before the alleged treasons had occurred. Wherefore, as your father had done good service, especially in the great battle where he was thus supposed to have fallen, not only was his innocence declared certain, but, for his memory's sake, Marcus Lepidus, the triumvir, your uncle, was forgiven. Yet now we learn from you, the son of the accused, that the only defence ever made for him is positively false; that your father, were he still living, would probably merit to be put to death; and that your uncle, at the same time, is stripped of the one protecting circumstance which has preserved his head. I must order your arrest, and that of all your party, in order that these things may be at least fully investigated."

As this was said, the lady in the litter of ivory and gold contemplated Paulus with that bewitching smile which she was accustomed to bestow upon dying gladiators in the hippodrome; while the other lady gazed at him with a compassionate, forecasting and muse-like look.

"I mean no disrespect whatever to so great a man as you, sir; but I will," said Paulus, "appeal from Tiberius Cæsar to Cæsar Augustus; to whom, I again remind you, I am on my way."

No sooner had he uttered the words, "I appeal from Tiberius," than, before he could finish the sentence, the malign-faced man on his left with great suddenness drew the sword hew as carrying for Cneius Piso, and, availing himself of the first natural sweep of the weapon as it left the scabbard, sought to bring the edge of it backward across the face of Paulus, exclaiming, while he did so, "Speak you thus to Cæsar?"

Had this man, who was the future assassin of Drusus, and slave to Cneius Piso, who was the future assassin of Germanicus, succeeded in delivering that well-meant stroke, the sentence which our hero was addressing to Tiberius could never have been said out; but said out, as we see, it was, and said, too, with due propriety of emphasis, although with a singular accompanying delivery. In fact, though not deigning to look round toward this man, Paulus had been vividly aware of his movements, and, swift as was the attack, the defence was truly electrical. Paulus's rapier, the hilt of which, as we have remarked, had been for some time in his left hand, leapt from its sheath, and being first held almost perpendicularly for one moment, the point down and the hilt a little higher than his forehead, met the murderous blow at right angles; after which the delicate long blade flashed upward, with graceful ease but irresistible violence, bearing the assassin's weapon backward upon a small semi-circle, and remaining inside of it, or, in other words, nearer to Lygdus's body than Piso's own sword,[31] which he carried, was. It looked like a mere continuation of this dazzling parry, but was, in truth, a vigorous deviation from it, which none but a very pliant and powerful wrist could have executed; when the emerald pommel fell like a hammer upon the forehead of Lygdus the slave, whom that disdainful blow stretched at his length upon the ground, motionless, and to all appearance dead. As Piso was standing close, the steel guard of the hilt, in passing, tore open his brow and cheek.

The whole occurrence occupied only five or seven seconds, and meanwhile the youth finished his sentence with the words already recorded, "From Tiberius Cæsar to Cæsar Augustus, to whom, I again remind you, I am on my way."

An exclamation of astonishment, and perhaps some other feeling, escaped from Tiberius. Sejanus smiled; the woman with the pale face and black eyes, who sat in the unadorned plate-of-gold palanquin, screamed; and the other ladies laughed loudly. Among the prætorian guards, who from the road were watching with attention the group where they saw their general and the Cæsar, a long, low murmur of approbation ran. At this, Tiberius turned and looked steadily and musingly toward them. Paulus, instantly sheathing his weapon, said,

"I ask Cæsar's pardon, but there was no time to obtain his permission for what I have just done. My head must have been in two pieces had I waited but one moment."

"Just half a moment for each piece," said Tiberius; "but your left hand seems well able to keep your head. Are you left-handed?"

"No, great Cæsar," said Paulus; "I am what my Greek teacher of fence used to call two-handed, dimachærus; he tried to make all his pupils so, but my right remains far better than my left."

Paulus heard a sweet voice here say, "As a favor to me, do not order the arrest of this brave youth;" and, turning, he beheld the beautiful creature in the litter of ivory and gold plead for him with Tiberius. The large blue eyes, darkening as she supplicated, smote the youth, and he could hardly take away his gaze.

"Young man, go forward with your mother and sister to Formiæ, under the charge of Velleius Paterculus, the military tribune whom you see yonder upon the road. Remain in Formiæ till I give you leave to quit it. Report your place of residence to the tribune. Go!"

The last word was pronounced harshly. Tiberius made a signal with his hand to Paterculus. Then passing his arm through that of Sejanus, and speaking to him in a low tone, he led the general aside into the fields to a little distance; while—with the exception of two mounted troopers, (each leading a horse,) who remained behind, but considerably out of hearing—the prætorian guards, the three litters, and the travelling biga began to move toward Formiæ, leaving the road to silence, and the evening landscape to peace.

MARY QUEEN OF SCOTS.[7]

There is, after all, but slight exaggeration in the old saying, that a lie travels leagues while truth is putting on boots to pursue and overtake it. And even when overtaken, caught, and choked, how hard it dies! In our daily experience, how often does truthful exposure utterly extinguish false and evil report? Certainly not always, and probably but very seldom. In the intercourse of society, one may partially crush out a calumny by going straight to those who should know the truth and compelling them to listen to it.

But the lie historical cannot be so met. People in this busy world have no time to spend in reading long documents in vindication of men or women long since dead. But they have read the calumny? Certainly. The calumny is not so long as the refutation, and is more readable. It is attractive; it is piquant. Mary Stuart as an adulteress and a murderess is an interesting character. People never tire of hearing of her. But Mary Stuart, the upright queen, the noble and true woman, the faithful spouse and affectionate mother, has but slight attractions for the mass of readers. To hear her so proven must be dull reading. Nevertheless, with time comes truth; for although

which we take to be only a modern, heathenish way of saying, as we chant every Sunday at vespers,

Look at the Galileo story. Galileo died more than two hundred years ago. Yet it is only within a lifetime that the truth concerning him began to dawn upon the English mind.

Mary Queen of Scots surrendered her soul to God and her head to Elizabeth nearly three centuries ago, and the combat over her reputation to-day rages as hot as ever. In the case of the Florentine astronomer, there has been no strongly decided hereditary transmission of the falsehood. In that of the Queen of Scotland every inch of ground is obstinately fought, because her innocence means the shame of England, the disgrace of Knox, the condemnation of the ornaments of the Anglican and Puritan churches, and the infamy of Elizabeth.

These enemies of Mary yet live in transmitted prejudices and powerful hereditary interests. The very existence of all the boasting, pride, false reputation, hypocritical piety, and national vanity represented by the familiar catchwords of "Our Noble Harry," "Glorious Queen Bess," "The Virgin Queen," "Our Sainted Reformers," has its inspiration and life-breath in the maintenance of every calumny against Mary Stuart and the Catholic Church of that day; and we must do these supporters the credit of admitting that they are instant in season and out of season, and never weary in their work.

But their case was long since made up. They have said their last word, and shot all the arrows of their quiver. With each succeeding year Elizabeth's reputation fails, and is rapidly passing into disgrace. With the same rapidity Mary's fame grows brighter.

The books and pamphlets written in attack or defence of Mary would of themselves form a library. For the attack, the key-note is to be found in Cecil's avowed principle concerning the treatment of the dethroned queen, that their purpose could not be obtained without disgracing her. Hence, the silver-casket letters, and the so-called confessions of Paris. Hence, the issue, during every year of her long imprisonment of eighteen years, of some vile pamphlet, under Cecil's instructions, calculated to blast her character. Two men in particular powerfully contributed to defame the Queen of Scots—John Knox and George Buchanan. Knox by his sermons, in which, says Russel, (History of the Reformation, vol. i. p. 292,) "lying strives with rage;" Buchanan, by his writings, which have been made by Mary's enemies one of the sources of history. Buchanan was an apostate monk, saved from the gallows by Mary, and loaded with her favors. An eye-witness of her dignity, her goodness, and her purity, he afterward described her as the vilest of women. He sold his pen to Elizabeth, and has been properly described as "unrivalled in baseness, peerless in falsehood, supreme in ingratitude." His Detection was published (1570) in Latin, and copies were immediately sent by Cecil to Elizabeth's ambassador in Paris with instructions to circulate them; "for they will come to good effect to disgrace her, which must be done before other purposes can be obtained."

This shameful work has been the inspiration of most of the portraits drawn of Mary. De Thou in France, Spotiswoode, Jebb, and many others in England, have all followed him. Holinshed too was deceived by Buchanan; but it is doubtful if he dared write otherwise than he did, between the terrors of Cecil's spies and Elizabeth's mace.

An English translation of Buchanan was first published in 1690, being called forth by the revolution of 1688. Jebb's two folio volumes appeared in 1725.

Two additional lives of Mary, by Heywood (1725) and Freebairn, were little more than translations from the French. In 1726, Edward Simmons published Mary's forged letters as genuine. Anderson's voluminous collection of papers (four large volumes) appeared in 1727 and 1728. Meantime, from the accession of a new dynasty and the rebellion of 1715, there arose in Edinburgh a sort of society having for its principal object the work of supporting Buchanan's credit and vilifying the Scottish queen. Later came the well-known and widely published histories of Scotland and of England by Robertson and Hume, which, read wherever the English language was known, may be said to have popularized the culpability of Mary. Until within comparatively few years, Hume's work was the only history of England generally read in the United States. Then came Malcolm Laing, who imagined he had closed the controversy against Mary in his bitter Dissertation. Mignet, in France, went further than Laing, while Froude, in his history of England, distancing all previous writers, portrays Mary in the blackest colors as one of the most criminal and devilish of women. For his material there is no statement so absurd, no invention so gross, no lie so palpable, no calumny so vile, provided only that it be to the prejudice of Mary Stuart, that does not find favor in his eyes. In his blind hatred of the Catholic queen, forgetting all historic dignity and even personal decency, he showers upon her such epithets as "panther," "ferocious animal," "wild-cat," "brute;" her persecutors being white-robed saints, such as "the[34] pious Cecil," and "the noble and stainless Murray," and the virgin Queen Elizabeth appearing "as a beneficent fairy coming out of the clouds to rescue an erring sister."

But Mary's cause has not wanted defenders. Among the best known are, John Leslie, Bishop of Ross; Camden and Carte, the English historians; Herrera, the Spanish bishop; Robert Keith; Goodall, (1754,) who made the first searching analysis of the silver-casket letters, showing that the French text of the pretended Bothwell love-letters, until then supposed to be original, was a poor translation from the Latin or Scotch. William Tytler (1759) and John Whitaker (1788) proved that the letters were forged by those who produced them. Stuart, in his history of Scotland, (1762,) and Mademoiselle Keraglio, in her Life of Elizabeth, (1786,) both protested against the conclusions of Hume and Robertson. In 1818, George Chalmers took up Laing's book, and proved conclusively, with a mass of newly-discovered testimony, that the accusers of Mary were themselves the murderers of Darnley. Then followed the learned Dr. Lingard, Guthrie, and H. Glassford Bell. But all these works were either too heavy and cumbrous for popular reading, or too narrow in their scope; most of them being better prepared for reference than for reading, and of but slight effective service in the field occupied by Hume and Robertson. Miss Strickland's work is well known to all our readers, and has done much good. In 1866, Mr. McNeel Caird published Mary Stuart, her Guilt or Innocence, in which he effectively defends Mary and seriously damages Mr. Froude's veracity.

A most valuable historical contribution is the late work (1869) of M. Jules Gauthier. The first volume is out and the second will be issued in a few months. M. Gauthier says that after reading the work of M. Mignet, he had no doubt that Queen Mary had assassinated her husband in order to avenge the death of Riccio. "I was, therefore, surprised," he continues, "on arriving at Edinburgh, in 1861, to hear Mary warmly defended, and reference made to documents recently discovered that were strongly in her favor. I then formed the resolution to study for myself this historical problem and to discover the truth. I had no idea of writing a book, and no motive but that of satisfying my own curiosity. I have devoted several years solely to this object in Scotland, England, and Spain." M. Gauthier then gives a formidable list of authorities and manuscripts not usually quoted, acknowledges the aid of the librarians of the legal library at Edinburgh, the learned Mr. Robertson of the Register House, Robert Chambers, and the archivist of Simancas, Don Emanuel Gonzalez, and announces the result to be a complete change of opinion. He goes on to say that, before examining all the documents of the trial, he had no doubt of the guilt of Mary Stuart; but after having scrutinized and compared them, he remained and still remains convinced that it was solely to assure the fruit of their shameful victory that the barons, who had dethroned their queen with England's help, sought to throw upon her the crimes of which they themselves were the authors or the accomplices, and in which their auxiliaries were Elizabeth and her ministers.

But what is of far greater importance, M. Gauthier announces the discovery among the Simancas MSS. of documents that prove beyond all question that the silver-casket letters were forgeries. This important revelation he promises for the second[35] volume. Preceding M. Gauthier in time, M. Wiesener, another French writer, had, in an admirable critique, demolished the foundations on which rest most of the calumnies against Mary Stuart.

And now we have Mr. Hosack's work. There is a beautiful poetic justice in the fact that the most effective defences of Mary Stuart, in the English language, come from Protestant pens, and that in Scotland among the sons of the Puritans are found her most enthusiastic advocates. Mr. Hosack is an Edinburgh lawyer, and a Protestant.

His book, written in a tone of legal calmness and dignity, stands in refreshing contrast with Mr. Froude's savage bitterness and repulsive violence, and seriously damages any credit that may be claimed for the latter as a historian. Entirely at home in the customs, localities, laws, and history of Scotland, he throws unexpected light on a hundred interesting points heretofore left in obscurity by foreign, and even English historians. Mr. Hosack also produces many valuable documents never before published. Among these are the specific charges preferred against Mary at the conference at Westminster in 1568. The "Articles" produced by Mary's accusers before they exhibited their proofs to the commissioners of Queen Elizabeth, although constantly referred to by historians, are nowhere to be found among all the voluminous collections heretofore published on the subject. Mr. Hosack discovered this valuable paper in the collection known as the Hopetoun Manuscripts, which are now in the custody of the lord clerk register. Another most interesting document presented by Mr. Hosack is one long supposed to be lost, namely, the journal of the proceedings at Westminster on the day upon which the silver casket containing the alleged letters of Queen Mary to Bothwell was produced. Then comes the inventory of the jewels of the Queen of Scots, attached to her last will and testament, made in 1566, when Mary was supposed to be dying. This paper has been but recently discovered in the Register House, Edinburgh. It is of high importance, as throwing light on a disputed point concerning Darnley. Finally, with the aid of Professor Schiern, of Copenhagen, Mr. Hosack has succeeded in ascertaining the date of the capture of Nicholas Hubert, commonly called "French Paris." This point is also weighty in connection with the question of the authenticity of the deposition ascribed to him. The English critics of Mr. Hosack's book—many of them partisans of Froude, and armed in the triple steel of their national prejudice—are unanimous in praise of his research, and the able presentation of his argument. Mr. Hosack distinctly charges Mr. Froude with "inventing fictions," and, moreover, sustains the charge. The aim of Mr. Hosack's work is not so much to write the life of Mary Stuart as to demonstrate that her accusers were guilty of the very crime (the murder of Darnley) of which they charge her, and that she was innocent, not only of that, but of any intrigue with Bothwell. Passing over in silence the period of Mary's residence in France, our author rapidly glances at the salient points in the administration of Mary of Lorraine, the mother of Mary Stuart, an admirable character, whose energy, integrity, resolution, and fortitude would have adorned the character of the greatest sovereign that ever reigned. Mr. Hosack thus speaks of her death:

Knox alone, adds Mr. Hosack, sought by means of the most loathsome slanders to vilify the character of this excellent princess; and it was no doubt at his instigation that the rites of Christian burial were denied to her remains in Scotland. Mr. Hosack then takes up the history of Mary from the period of her arrival in Scotland, and ends with the commencement of her imprisonment in England.

Mary came to reign over a country virtually in the power of a band of violent and rapacious lords, long in rebellion against their king. Of the five royal Jameses, three had perished, victims of their aristocratic anarchy. The personal piety of these rebellious lords was infinitesimal; but they had an enormous appreciation of Henry VIII.'s plunder of the monasteries and division of the church lands among the nobles, and desired to see Scotland submitted to the same regimen—they, of course, becoming ardent reformers. The young queen soon won the hearts of the people of Edinburgh by her sweetness and grace. One of her first experiences was the remarkable interview with Knox, in which he bore himself as properly became "the ruffian of the Reformation," while Mary, a girl of nineteen, utterly overcame him in self-possession, logic, and command of citation from the Old Testament. The man was brimful of vanity. The wound rankled, and from that moment he was Mary Stuart's personal enemy.

Long before Mary's arrival, Knox and his friends had obtained full sway. The reformers had destroyed the monastic establishments in the central counties, and, under the influence of Knox, had an "act" passed for the total destruction of what they called "monuments of superstition;" the monuments of superstition in question being all that Scotland possessed of what was most valuable in art and venerable in architecture.

"The registers of the church, and the libraries," says Spotiswoode, "were cast into the fire. In a word, all was ruined; and what had escaped in the time of the first tumult, did now undergo the common calamity." In his sermons, Knox openly denounced Mary, not only as an incorrigible idolatress, but as an enemy whose death would be a public boon. In equally savage style he fulminated against the amusements of the court, and dwelt especially on the deadly sin of dancing. And yet Knox—we must in candor admit it—was not totally indifferent to some social amenities, for he was then paying his addresses to a young girl of sixteen, whom he afterward married. Mary had freely accorded to her Protestant subjects the privilege of worshipping God according to their own creed; but it did not enter into the views of Knox and his co-religionists that the same privilege should be accorded to Mary in the land of which she was sovereign, and with great difficulty could she obtain the right to a private chapel at Holyrood—even this being interfered with, and the officiating priest afterward insulted, beaten, and driven away. And these Christian gentlemen did not stop here. They had the insolence and inhumanity to present to the queen what they called a "supplication," in which they declared that the practice of idolatry could not be tolerated in the sovereign any more than in the subject, and that the "papistical and blasphemous mass" should be wholly abolished. To this, Mary's reply was that, answering for herself,[37] she was noways persuaded that there was any impiety in the mass, and trusted her subjects would not press her to act against her conscience; for, not to dissemble, but to deal plainly with them, she neither might nor would forsake the religion wherein she had been educated and brought up, believing the same to be the true religion, and grounded on the word of God. She further advised her "loving subjects" that she, "neither in times past nor yet in time coming, did intend to force the conscience of any person; but to permit every one to serve God in such a manner as they are persuaded to be the best." On this, Mr. Hosack remarks, "Nothing could exceed the savage rudeness of the language of the assembly. Nothing could exceed the dignity and moderation of the queen's reply."

The enemies of Mary Stuart always seek to find excuse for the rebellious outrages of the lords and the kirk in the design attributed to Mary Stuart of introducing Catholicity to the exclusion of Protestantism. Mr. Hosack handles this portion of his subject with great ease and success, showing conclusively the admirable spirit of toleration that animated Mary throughout. Then follow the marriage of Mary with Darnley; the rebellion of Murray, Argyll, and others to deprive the queen of her crown; the energy, ability, and admirable judgment of Mary in dealing with them, and the consummate hypocrisy and falsehood of Elizabeth in feigning good-will to Mary while furnishing the rebels money and assistance. The French ambassador in London had discovered that six thousand crowns had been sent from the English treasury to the Scotch rebels. The fact was positive. He mentioned it to Elizabeth in person; but she solemnly assured him, with an oath, (elle nia avec serment,) that he was misinformed. There were strong reasons why Elizabeth would not have it believed that she had lent the rebel lords any countenance, and she therefore got up a remarkable scene for the purpose. The French and Spanish ambassadors had charged her in plain terms with stirring up dissensions in Scotland, and she desired to reply to the imputation in the most public and emphatic manner. Murray and Hamilton were summoned to appear, and in presence of the ambassadors and her own ministers she asked them whether she had ever encouraged them in their rebellion. Murray began to reply in Scotch, when Elizabeth stopped him, bidding him speak in French, which she better understood. The scene was arranged beforehand. Murray fell on his knees and declared "that her majesty had never moved them to any opposition or resistance against the queen's marriage." "Now," exclaimed Elizabeth in her most triumphant tone, "you have told the truth; for neither did I, nor any one in my name, stir you up against your queen; for your abominable treason may serve for example to my own subjects to rebel against me. Therefore get you out of my presence; ye are but unworthy traitors." This astounding exhibition of meanness, and falsehood, and folly, which it is certain, says Mr. Hosack, imposed upon no one who witnessed it, is without a parallel in history.

Mary's energy and prudence in suppressing this dangerous rebellion sufficiently refute a prevalent notion that she was indebted to the counsels of Murray for the previous success of her administration. Even Robertson admits that at no period of her career were her abilities and address more conspicuous. And more remarkable than her ability in gaining success was the moderation with which she used it. Not one of the rebels[38] suffered death, and her speedy pardon of the Duke of Chatelherault, a conspirator against her crown, of which he was the presumptive heir, was an instance of generosity unexampled in the history of princes.

The accusation against Mary of having signed the Catholic League, put forward by so many historians—Froude, of course, among them—is clearly shown by Mr. Hosack to be utterly untrue. She never joined it. By this refusal she maintained her solemn promises to her Protestant subjects—the chief of whom remained her staunchest friend in the days of her misfortune. She averted religious discord from her dominions, and posterity will applaud the wisdom as well as the magnitude of the sacrifice which she made at this momentous crisis.

Then comes the murder of Riccio, which is generally attributed to the jealousy of Darnley and the personal hatred of the nobles. These motives, if they ever existed at all, were but secondary with the conspirators who contrived Riccio's death.

Their main objects were the restoration of the rebel lords, the deposition of the queen, and the elevation of Darnley to the vacant throne, on which he would have been their puppet.

Mr. Hosack traces, step by step, the progress of the conspiracy, and the bargaining and traffic among the conspirators for their several rewards. There was a bond of the conspirators among themselves, a bond with Darnley, and one with the rebel leaders who waited events at Newcastle. Elizabeth's ministers in Scotland were taken into their confidence and counsels, as was also John Knox, while Elizabeth was advised of and approved it. Many years ago, a Catholic convent was burned in Boston—with what circumstances of atrocity we do not now desire to recall. On the Sunday preceding the outrage, exciting sermons were delivered on the horrors of popery from more than one Protestant pulpit. So, also, on the Sunday preceding the murder of Riccio, the denunciations of idolatry from the pulpits of Edinburgh were more than usually violent, and the texts were chosen from those portions of Scripture which describe the vengeance incurred by the persecutors of God's people. The 12th of March was the day fixed for the parliament before which the rebel lords were cited to appear, under pain of the forfeiture of their titles and estates. This forfeiture the conspirators were resolved to prevent, and chose the 9th of March to kill Riccio. They could have assassinated him at any time on the street, in the grounds, in his own room; but the lords selected the hour just after supper when Riccio would be in attendance upon the queen, in order to kill him in her presence, doubtless with hope of the result of her death and that of her unborn babe from the agitation and affright that must ensue from such a scene. The contingency of Mary's death was provided for in the bond. We need not here repeat the horrible details of the scene in which, while a ruffian (Ker of Faudonside) pressed a cocked pistol to her breast until she felt the cold iron through her dress, the hapless victim of brutal prejudice and bigotry, whose only crime was fidelity to his queen, was dragged from her presence and instantly butchered. Nor need we describe the fiendish exultation and savage conduct of the assassins toward a sick, defenceless woman.

For two days the noble assassins appeared to have been entirely successful. Riccio was killed, the parliament was dissolved, the banished lords recalled, and the queen a prisoner. But her amazing spirit and resolution scattered all their plans to the winds. The poor fool Darnley began to see the treachery of the men who had made him their tool, and Mary fully opened his eyes to his danger. At midnight on the Tuesday after the murder, the queen and Darnley crept down through a secret passage to the cemetery of the royal chapel of Holyrood and made their way "through the charnel house, among the bones and skulls of the ancient kings," to where horses and a small escort stood waiting for them. Twenty miles away Mary galloped to Dunbar, where, within three days, eight thousand border spears assembled to defend her.

The assassins, Morton, Ruthven, and their associates, fled to England, where, under Elizabeth's wing, they were of course safe. Maitland went to the Highlands, and Knox, grieving deeply over the discomfiture of his friends, took his departure for the west.

was not known, and he was pardoned his rebellion, and again received by Mary into her confidence. This is the Murray constantly referred to by Mr. Froude in his History of England as "the noble Murray," "the stainless Murray"—a man who, for systematic, thorough-going villainy and treachery has not his superior in history.

Darnley, with an audacity and recklessness of consequences which seem hardly compatible with sanity, made a solemn declaration to the effect that he was wholly innocent of the late murderous plot.

The indignation of his associates in the crime knew no bounds. He alone, they said, had caused the failure of the enterprise; he had deserted them, and now sought to purchase his safety in their ruin. From that moment his fate was sealed.

Buchanan's famous lie concerning Mary's visit to the Castle of Alloa, which, to his shame, Mr. Froude substantially repeats, is disposed of effectually in a few words by Mr. Hosack.

The ride from Jedburg, too, as recounted by Buchanan in his own peculiar style, repeated by Robertson and by Froude, as far as he dares, in the teeth of the testimony on the subject, also receives its quietus at Mr. Hosack's hands.

Then follow the dangerous illness of Mary, the aggravating and fatal misconduct of Darnley, the poor queen's mental suffering and anxiety, the preliminary plotting by Murray, Maitland, Argyll, and Huntly to put Darnley out of the way, the signing of the bond among them for the murder of the "young fool and tyrant," and the insidious attempt by these scoundrels to entrap the poor heart-broken Mary into some such expression of impatience or violence against Darnley as would enable them to set up the charge of guilty knowledge against her. The conspirators themselves have put on record the noble and Christian reply of Mary Stuart, "I will that ye do nothing through which any spot may be laid on my honor or conscience; and therefore, I pray you, rather let the matter be in the state that it is, abiding till God of his goodness put remedy thereto."

Following upon the baptism of the infant prince, who afterward became James VI. of Scotland, came the unfortunately[40] too successful endeavors of Murray, Maitland, Bothwell, and Queen Elizabeth to obtain the pardon of the Riccio murderers.

Poor Mary's political success would have been assured if she had possessed but a small share of Elizabeth's hardness of heart and vindictiveness. Always generous, always noble, always forgiving, she allowed herself to be persuaded to grant a pardon to these villains—seventy-six in number—excepting only George Douglas, who stabbed Riccio in presence of the queen, and Ker of Faudonside, who held his pistol at her breast during the perpetration of the murder. This ruffian remained safely in England until Mary's downfall, when he returned to Scotland and married the widow of John Knox.

It was about this period that Buchanan was extolling to the skies, in such Latin verses as those beginning

the virtues of a sovereign whom he afterward told us every one knew at the time to be a monster of lust and cruelty! His libel was written when Mary was a fugitive in England, to serve the purposes of his employers, who had driven her from her native kingdom. The most assiduous of her flatterers as long as she was on the throne, he pursued her with the malice of a demon when she became a helpless prisoner. His slanders were addressed not to his own countrymen, for whom they would have been too gross, but to Englishmen, for the great majority of whom Scotland was a terra incognita. His monstrous fictions were copied by Knox and De Thou, and later by Robertson, Laing, and Mignet, who, while using his material, carefully abstained from quoting him as authority. Mr. Froude, the author of that popular serial novel which he strangely entitles The History of England, with delicious naïveté declares his belief in the truth of Buchanan's Detection, and makes its transparent mendacity a leading feature of his work.

According to Buchanan, the Queen of Scots was, at the period above referred to, leading a life of the most notorious profligacy. Mr. Hosack, in his calm, lawyer-like manner, shows conclusively that at that very time she never stood higher in the estimation both of her own subjects and of her partisans in England. Considering the difficulties of her position, he adds, Mary had conducted the government of Scotland with remarkable prudence and success; and her moderation in matters of religion induced even the most powerful of the Protestant nobility to regard her claims with favor.

And still the plotting went on. Motives enough, for them, had Murray, Morton, Maitland, and the rest to seek the destruction of Darnley—revenge and greed of gain. These men had imposed upon the generous nature of the queen in the disposal of the crown lands, and they well knew that Darnley had made no secret of his disapproval of the improvident bounty of his wife. These grants of the crown lands, under the law of Scotland, could be revoked at any time before the queen attained the age of twenty-five. That period was now at hand, and the danger of their losing their spoils under the influence of Darnley was imminent.

He had just been taken down with the small-pox at Glasgow, and the conspirators, well knowing Mary's forgiving temper, feared, as well they might, that his illness would lead to a reconciliation between them.

Although Bothwell had shared less in the bounty of the queen than the others, his motive was no less powerful for seeking the death of Darnley.[41] He aspired to Darnley's place as the queen's husband, and his ambition was no secret to Murray and the others. Full willingly they lent themselves to aid him, knowing that, if successful, his plans would be fatal both to the queen and to himself.

Queen Mary went from Edinburgh to Glasgow, to visit Darnley on his sick-bed. On this visit hinges a mass of accusations against Mary by her enemies. We regret that the passages of Mr. Hosack's book in which he dissects and analyzes all the evidence covering the period from the journey to Glasgow down to the explosion at Kirk-a-field are too long to be copied here. They are masterly, and more thoroughly dispose of the slanders than any statement we have seen. He moreover demonstrates that the queen's journey to Glasgow, heretofore relied on as a proof of her duplicity because she went uninvited, was undertaken at Darnley's own urgent request. It is during this visit to Glasgow that Mary is charged with having written the two casket letters, which, if genuine, certainly would prove her to be accessory to the murder of her husband. With thorough knowledge of Scotch localities, language, customs, and peculiarities, and with a perfect mastery of all the details of testimony, pro and con, in existence on the subject—a mastery which Mr. Froude is far from possessing—Mr. Hosack makes the examination of this question of the genuineness of the Glasgow letters with an application of the laws of evidence that enables him—if we may be permitted the homely phrase—to turn them inside out. Contrasted with the sweet, trusting, child-like confidence with which the letters are received by Mr. Froude, Mr. Hosack's treatment of them is shockingly cool. In commenting upon Hume's opinion that the style of the second Glasgow letter was inelegant but "natural," Mr. Hosack remarks that human depravity surely has its limits, and the most hardened wretches do not boast, and least of all in writing, of their treachery and cruelty. Even in the realm of fiction we find no such revolting picture.

Of the third letter, the historian Robertson long since remarked that, "if Mary's adversaries forged her letters, they were certainly employed very idly when they produced this." And this remark may correctly be applied to the fourth letter. The difference between the two first and the two last is the most striking. The Glasgow letters breathe only lust and murder; but these are written, to all appearance, by a wife to her husband, in very modest and becoming language. She gently reproaches him with his forgetfulness, and with the coldness of his writings, sends him a gift in testimony of her unchangeable affection, and finally describes herself as his obedient, lawful wife. This is not the language of a murderess, and these simple and tender thoughts were not traced by the same hand that composed the Glasgow letters. They are the genuine letters of Mary, not to Bothwell, but to her husband Darnley, and they are here by result of an ingenious device to mix up a few genuine letters of Mary with those intended to prove her guilty of the murder. The only letters of importance as testimony against the queen are the two first, and they were conclusively proven by Goodall, more than a century ago, to have been written originally in Scotch.

Concerning Paris, whose testimony is strongly relied on by Mary's enemies, Mr. Hosack has made a very important discovery. According to a letter of Murray to Queen Elizabeth, Paris arrived in Leith (a prisoner) about the middle of June, 1569.[42] But Professor Schiern, of Copenhagen, in compliance with a request made by Mr. Hosack to search the Danish archives for any papers relating to Scotland, found the receipt of Clark, Murray's agent, acknowledging the delivery to him of the prisoner Paris on the 30th of October, 1568. So that Paris was delivered up nearly a year before his so-called deposition was produced. The authenticity of his deposition, monstrous though it be, has been stoutly maintained by several of Mary's enemies. Even Hume remarks upon it,

Mr. Hume is an attractive writer, but as a historian it is long since people ceased to rely upon him for facts. The passage here quoted is a characteristic exemplification of his extraordinary carelessness. According to Mr. Hosack, the short sentence cited contains three distinct and palpable mistakes. In the first place, the paper containing the depositions of Paris was authenticated by no judicial authority. Secondly, it was not given in regularly and judicially; for it was secretly sent to London in October, 1569, many months after the termination of the Westminster conferences. Lastly, it was impossible that it could have been canvassed at the time by those whom it concerned; for it was not only kept a profound secret from the queen and her friends during her life, but it was not made public for nearly a century and a half after her death. The depositions of Paris were first given to the world in the collections of Anderson in 1725.

It did not at all suit Murray's purpose to produce Paris in open court. So, after being tortured, he was executed, and in place of a witness who might have told what he saw and heard, was produced a so-called deposition professedly written by a servant of Murray, and attested by two of his creatures, Buchanan and Wood, both pensioners of Cecil, and both enemies of the Queen of Scotland. Buchanan, of course, had full cognizance of the Paris deposition, for he subscribed it as a witness; and yet we have the singular fact that, although he appended to his Detectio the depositions of Hay, Hepburn, and Dalgleish, that of Paris is omitted. Again, in his History of Scotland, published subsequently, although he refers to Paris in several passages, he is still silent as to his deposition. The solution of this seeming singularity is simple. He rejected it for its manifest extravagance and absurdity, which, he wisely concluded, could not impose on the worst enemies of the queen.

Fable and fiction answering Mr. Froude's purpose just as well as authentic history, he of course accepts the "Paris" paper as perfectly true. A successful writer of the romance of history, Mr. Froude deserves great credit for his industry in gathering every variety of material for his novel without any absurd sentimental squeamishness as to its origin.

And now, little by little, the truth begins to come out. For full two years after the murder of Darnley, no one was publicly charged with the crime but Bothwell and the queen. And this because it was the interest of the ruling faction in Scotland, (themselves the murderers,) to confine the accusation to these two persons. But as in time events develop, we find the leaders of this faction, quarrelling among themselves, begin to accuse each other of the crime, until the principal nobility of Scotland are[43] implicated in it. Mr. Hosack's conclusion, from a searching analysis of all the evidence on record, is, that the mysterious assassination of Darnley was not a domestic but a political crime; and it was one which for many a day secured political power to that faction which from the first had opposed his marriage, and had never ceased from the time of his arrival in Scotland to lay plots for his destruction.

As might be expected, Mary's enemies accuse her of a criminal degree of inactivity after the death of her husband. But what could she do? Who were the murderers? No one could tell. The whole affair was then involved in impenetrable mystery. Her chief officers of justice, Huntly the chancellor, and Argyll the lord-justice, were both in the plot; Bothwell, the sheriff of the county, on whom should devolve the pursuit and arrest of the criminal, had taken an active share in the perpetration of the murder, and Maitland, the secretary, who had first proposed to get rid of Darnley, was probably the most guilty of all. In a memorial afterward addressed by Mary to the different European courts, she thus describes the situation: "Her majesty could not but marvel at the little diligence they used, and that they looked at one another as men who wist not what they say or do."

And now calumny ran riot. Slanderous tongues and pens were busy. Since Mary had dismissed the insolent Randolph from her court, Elizabeth had maintained no ambassador there, so that the usual official espionage could not be carried on. Instead thereof, Sir William Drury, stationed on the Scotch border, transmitted day by day a current of scandalous stories. Mary was a woman, and her enemies might effect by slander what they could not accomplish by force. Then, too, a bigoted religious prejudice made the work easy. No matter, says our author, what was the nature of the accusation against a Catholic queen; so long as it was boldly made and frequently repeated, it was sure to gain a certain amount of credit in the end. Here follows, in Mr. Hosack's pages, an able presentation of contemporary testimony going to show the falsehood of the accusations that the queen was at this time on a footing of intimate understanding with Bothwell. Under the circumstances his trial was, of course, a farce.

The most powerful men in Scotland were his associates in guilt. One of his noble accomplices in the murder rode by his side to the Talbooth. Another accomplice, the Earl of Argyll, hereditary lord-justice, presided at the trial; and the Earl of Caithness, a near connection of Bothwell by marriage, was foreman of the jury. The parliament which met soon after did little, besides passing the Act of Toleration, but enact statutes confirming Maitland, Huntly, Morton, and Murray in their titles and estates. As we have seen, this was precisely the main object sought by these men in the murder of Darnley, an object passed over in silence by most historians, and not understood by others. Their common interest in his death was the strongest bond of union among the noble assassins. If Darnley had lived, he would have prevented the confirmation of these grants; for he had made significant threats on that subject, especially as to the gifts to Murray. Murray and the others wanted the lands and titles. They obtained them. Bothwell had his own designs, and these were insolent in their ambition. He wanted the queen's hand in marriage as a step to the throne. It was but just that his companions should help him[44] as he had aided them. On the evening of the day on which parliament rose, (April 19th,) Both well gave an entertainment at a tavern in Edinburgh to a large party of the nobility. After wine had circulated freely, he laid before his guests a bond for their signatures. This document recited that it was prejudicial to the realm that the queen should remain a widow; and it recommended him, (Bothwell,) a married man, as the fittest husband she could obtain among her subjects. With a solitary exception—the Earl of Eglinton—all the lords present signed this infamous bond, and thereby bound themselves to "further advance and set forward the said marriage," and to risk their lives and goods against all who should seek to hinder or oppose it. It is claimed by Mr. Froude that his special saint, "the noble and stainless Murray," did not sign this bond; but it is now made plain that he did. Meantime calumny had free scope, and no invention was too gross for belief by many, if it but carried with it some injury to Mary's reputation. Thus, she is accused of journeying to Stirling for the express purpose of poisoning her infant son. Poor Marie Antoinette in after years, as we know, was accused of something worse than taking the life of her child. The answer of these two Catholic queens, great in their sufferings, and grand in their resignation, was, in each case, an eloquent burst of nature and queenly dignity. "The natural love," said Mary Stuart, "which the mother bears to her only bairn is sufficient to confound them, and needs no other answer." She afterward added, that all the world knew that the very men who now charged her with this atrocious crime had wronged her son even before his birth; for they would have slain him in her womb, although they now pretended in his name to exercise their usurped authority.

On the 23d of April, while travelling from Linlithgow to Edinburgh, with a few attendants, the queen was stopped by Bothwell, at the head of one thousand horse. Bothwell rode up, caught her bridle-rein, and assured her that "she was in the greatest possible danger," and forthwith escorted her to one of her own castles, Dunbar. Here she was kept a prisoner. Melville, who accompanied her, was sent away, having heard Bothwell boast that he would marry the queen, even "whether she would herself or not." No woman was allowed near her but Bothwell's sister.

Although our readers are familiar with the horrible story, the best account of it is, after all, Mary's own simple and modest narrative of the abominable outrage. It is found in Keith, vol. ii. p. 599, and in Hosack, p. 313. After referring to the great services and unshaken loyalty of Bothwell, she says that, previous to her visit to Stirling, he had made certain advances, "to which her answer was in no degree correspondent to his desire;" but that, having previously obtained the consent of the nobility to the marriage, he did not hesitate to carry her off to the castle of Dunbar; that when she reproached him for his audacity, he implored her to attribute his conduct to the ardor of his affection, and to condescend to accept him as her husband, in accordance with the wishes of his brother nobles; that he then, to her amazement, laid before her the bond of the nobility, declaring that it was essential to the peace and welfare of the kingdom that she should choose another husband, and that, of all her subjects, Bothwell was best deserving of that honor; that she still, notwithstanding, refused to listen to his proposals,[45] believing that, as on her former visit to Dunbar, an army of loyal subjects would speedily appear for her deliverance; but that, as day after day passed without a sword being drawn in her defence, she was forced to conclude that the bond was genuine, and that her chief nobility were all in league with Bothwell; and finally, that, finding her a helpless captive, he assumed a bolder tone, and "so ceased he never till, by persuasion and importunate suit, accompanied not the less by force, he has finally driven us to end the work begun." Forced to marry Bothwell Mary was, to all who saw her, an utterly wretched woman, and longed only for death. The testimony on this point is very ample, and her behavior at this crisis of her history, concludes Mr. Hosack, can only be explained by her rooted aversion to a marriage which was forced upon her by the daring ambition of Bothwell and the matchless perfidy of his brother nobles.

But already a fresh plot was on foot. Melville wrote to Cecil concerning it, on the 7th of May; and on the following day, Kirkaldy of Grange sent to the Earl of Bedford a letter intended for Elizabeth's eye. Kirkaldy, the Laird of Grange, an ardent Protestant, who, at the age of nineteen, was one of the men who murdered Cardinal Beaton, enjoyed among his fellow-nobles the reputation of being a man of honor, and the best and bravest soldier in Scotland. He advised Bedford of the signing of a "bond" by "the most part of the nobility," one head of which was, "to seek the liberty of the queen, who is ravished and detained by the Earl of Bothwell;" another, "to pursue them that murdered the king." The letter concludes by asking Elizabeth's aid and support for "suppressing of the cruel murtherer Bothwell." But Elizabeth had lost not only much money, but all credit for veracity, by her last interference in Scottish affairs, and refused to have any thing to do with this plot.

For three weeks after her marriage the queen remained at Holyrood; the prisoner, to all appearance, rather than the wife of Bothwell. She was continually surrounded with guards; and the description of her situation given by Melville, who was at court at the time, agrees entirely with that of the French ambassador. Not a day passed, he says, in which she did not shed tears; and he adds that many, even of Bothwell's followers, "believed that her majesty would fain have been quit of him." The insurgent leaders—Morton, Maitland, and Hume—were busy, and soon in the field with their forces. Bothwell raised a small levy to oppose them, and the two armies met at Carberry Hill on the 15th of June, 1567, exactly one month after the marriage. There was no fighting. Dangerous as it was, Mary preferred to trust herself to the rebel lords than to remain with Bothwell. She received their pledge—that, in case she would separate herself from Bothwell, they were ready "to serve her upon their knees, as her most humble and obedient subjects and servants"—through Kirkaldy of Grange, the only man among them whose word she would take. They kept their pledge as they usually observed such obligations. What followed is too horrible to dwell upon. It is wonderful that any human being could have lived through the physical exhaustion, the insults, and the brutal treatment this poor woman was subjected to during the next two days. The people of Edinburgh grew indignant; and Kirkaldy of Grange swore the lords should not violate their promises. But they quieted him by[46] showing a forged letter of the queen to Bothwell. It was not the first time some among them had forged Mary's signature. With every circumstance of force and brutality, Mary was then imprisoned in Lochleven, whose guardian was the mother of the bastard Murray.

And now, while the friends of Mary, numerous as they were, remained irresolute and inactive, the dominant faction made the most strenuous efforts to strengthen itself. In the towns, where its strength chiefly lay, and especially in Edinburgh, says Mr. Hosack, the Protestant preachers rendered the most valuable aid. By indulging in furious invectives against the queen, and charging her directly with the murder, they prepared their hearers for the prospect of her speedy deposition, and the establishment of a regency in the name of the infant prince. It is clear that Murray was not forgotten by his friends the preachers.

Strange as it may appear, there can be but little doubt that Elizabeth was sincerely indignant on hearing of the outrageous treatment of Mary by the lords. In her whole history, she never appeared to so much advantage as a woman and a queen. She would not stand tamely by, she said, and see her cousin murdered; and if remonstrances proved ineffectual, she would send an army to chastise and reduce them to obedience. Such conduct, and her messages to Mary while a prisoner at Lochleven, no doubt inspired the Scottish queen with the fatal confidence which induced her, a few months afterward, to seek refuge in England. Unfortunately for Elizabeth, and perhaps more unfortunately for Mary, the Queen of England's reputation for duplicity was now so well established that no one but her own ministers believed she was now sincere. Maitland, for the Scotch nobles, plainly told Elizabeth's ambassador that, after what had occurred in times past, "they could place no reliance on his mistress;" and the King of France said to Sir Henry Norris, "I do not greatly trust her." Meantime, the ministers daily denounced Mary as a murderess in their sermons, and demanded that she should be brought to justice like an ordinary criminal. Elizabeth's ambassador tried to induce the confederate lords to restrain the savage license of the preachers; but we cannot doubt, says Mr. Hosack, that they were secretly encouraged by their noble patrons to prepare the minds of the people for the deposition, if not for the murder, of the queen. Throgmorton's opinion was that, but for his presence in Scotland, she would have been sacrificed to the ambition and the bigotry of her subjects.

Still a prisoner at Lochleven, Mary had to suffer the brutality of the ruffian Lindsay, and the infamous hypocrisy of Mr. Froude's "stainless Murray," who, with money in both pockets from France and England, now came, with characteristic deceit, to defraud his sister of her crown. Mr. Hosack thus estimates his performance:

Murray was proclaimed regent on the 22d of August. Soon afterward began the machinations for accusing Mary of Darnley's murder; and Murray's first care was to put out of the way every witness whose testimony could be of any importance. Hay, Hepburn, and Powrie and Dalgleish, on whom the queen's letters were said to have been found, were all[47] tried, convicted, and executed on the same day. It was remarked that the proceedings were conducted with extraordinary and indecent haste. Hay and Hepburn, from the scaffold, denounced the nobles who had "made a bond for the king's murder." Public confidence was shaken in the regent, and the discontent of the people was expressed in plain speech and satirical ballads. Murray began to feel the need of Elizabeth's assistance. Mary, in her trusting confidence, had voluntarily placed all her valuable jewels in Murray's hands, for safe keeping. From among them he selected a set of rare pearls, the most valuable in Europe, which he sent by an agent to Elizabeth, who agreed to purchase what she well knew he had no right to sell. Under such circumstances, as is the custom among thieves and receivers, she expected a bargain, and got it. It was a very pretty transaction. In May, 1568, Mary escaped from Lochleven castle, and in a few days found herself at the head of an army of six thousand men. Of the ten earls and lords who flew to her support, nine were Protestants; and our Puritan historian finds it remarkable that, in spite of all the efforts of Murray and his faction, and in spite of all the violence of the preachers, she—the Catholic Queen of Scotland, the daughter of the hated house of Guise, the reputed mortal enemy of their religion—should now, after being maligned as the most abandoned of her sex, find her best friends among her own Protestant subjects, appears at first sight inexplicable. A phenomenon so strange, he adds, admits of only one explanation. If, throughout her reign, she had not loyally kept her promises of security and toleration to her Protestant subjects, they assuredly would not, in her hour of need, have risked their lives and fortunes in her defence.

Against her better judgment, Mary was induced to fight the battle of Langside, and lost the field. And now the queen made the great mistake of her life. Instead of trusting to the loyalty of the Scotch borderers, she determined to throw herself on the hospitality of the Queen of England. In vain did her trusty counsellors and strongest supporters seek to dissuade her. The warm professions of friendship and attachment made to her by Elizabeth, when she was a prisoner at Lochleven, had completely captivated her; and, insisting on her project, she crossed the Solway, in an open boat, to the English shore. She was received by Mr. Lowther, deputy warden, with all the respect due to her rank and misfortunes. Although she did not yet know it, Mary was from this moment a prisoner. Here Mr. Hosack, in a few eloquent passages, sets forth the reasons why the forcible detention of Mary, independently of all considerations of morality and justice, was a political blunder of the first magnitude. As the inmate of an English prison, she proved a far more formidable enemy to Elizabeth than when she wore the crowns both of France and Scotland. Never did a political crime entail a heavier measure of retribution than the captivity and murder of the Queen of Scots entailed on England.

Mary was first taken to the castle of Carlisle. Here Queen Elizabeth was represented by Lord Scrope, the warden of the marches, and Sir Francis Knollys, the queen's vice-chamberlain. These noblemen appear to have been more impressed with the mental and moral qualities of the Scottish queen than with her external graces. They describe her, after their first interview, as possessing "an eloquent tongue and a discreet head, with stout courage and a liberal[48] heart;" and, in a subsequent letter, Knollys says, "Surely, she is a rare woman; for as no flattery can abuse her, so no plain speech seems to offend her, if she thinks the speaker an honest man." All this was written to Elizabeth, to whom, of course, it was gall and wormwood. A more remarkable passage of their letter is that in which, speaking in simple candor as English gentlemen and men of honor, they ask their royal mistress whether

To a sovereign whose policy was synonymous with fraud, the unconscious sarcasm of this honorable advice must have been biting.

Elizabeth pledged her word to Mary that she should be restored to her throne. She at the same time pledged her word to Murray that Mary should never be permitted to return to Scotland. Then began the long nineteen years' martyrdom of Mary. The conference at York and the commission at Westminster were mockeries of justice. It was pretended there were two parties present before them—Murray and his associates on one side, Mary on the other. Mary was kept a prisoner in a distant castle, while Murray, received with honor at court, held private and secret consultations with members of both these quasi-judicial bodies, showed them the testimony he intended to produce, and obtained their judgment as to the sufficiency of his proofs before he publicly produced them; these proofs being the forged letters of the silver casket. These letters were never seen by Mary Stuart, and even copies of them were repeatedly and persistently refused her. Mr. Froude makes a lame attempt to show that some one secretly furnished her copies; but even if his attempt were successful, it does not affect the fact that the copies were officially refused her. By the time the scales had fallen from Mary's eyes, Elizabeth's art and duplicity had woven a web from which she could not be extricated. Her remaining years of life were one long, heart-sickening struggle against treachery, spies, insult to her person, her reputation, and her faith; confinement, cold, sickness, neuralgic agony, want; deprivation of all luxuries, of medical attendance, and of the consolations of religion. At every fresh spasm of alarm on the part of Elizabeth, Mary's prison was changed; frequently in dead of winter, and generally without any provision for the commonest conveniences of life. More than once, taken into a naked, cold castle, Mary's jailers had to rely on the charity of the neighbors for even a bed for their royal prisoner. At Tutbury, her rooms were so dark and comfortless, and the surroundings so filthy—there is no other word for it—that the English physician refused to charge himself with her health. But enough. We all know the sad story, and we trustingly believe the poor martyred queen has her recompense in heaven.

Mr. Hosack's treatment of the question of the authenticity of the silver-casket letters is exhaustive. More than a century ago, Goodall fully exposed the forgery, and he has never been satisfactorily answered. Mr. Froude, of course, accepts them without discussion. The conferences at York and the proceedings at Westminster are presented as only a lawyer can present them. Mary's cause gains by the most rigid scrutiny. Mr.[49] Froude does not know enough to analyze and intelligibly present serious matters like these. He prefers a series of sensational tableaux and highly-colored dissolving views, producing for authorities garbled citations and his own fictions. Mr. Hosack's testimony, independently of its great intrinsic merit, is valuable because of his nationality and of his religion, and we hope to see his work republished in the United States. His closing page concludes thus:

STABAT MATER.

THE BRIGAND'S GOD-CHILD.
A LEGEND OF SPAIN.

Once upon a time, as the legends say, there lived in good old Spain a poor workman, to whom destiny had given twelve children, and nothing for them to live upon. Now his wife was expecting a thirteenth, and perhaps with it would appear a fourteenth also, to run about loved but unclothed and unfed, as the others had before them. The bread was almost gone, work not to be had, and the poor man, to hide his sighs and his misery from the patient partner of his misfortunes, wandered far from home and into the woods, calling upon paradise to assist him, until he came to the ill-reputed cavern and stronghold of the bandits.

He almost fell over their captain, and came very near receiving a sabre-thrust for his pains; but his extreme misery made him no object for a robbery, so he was simply catechised as to his condition.

He told his story, moved even the brigand heart to pity, and was invited to supper; a bag of gold and a fine horse were given him, and he was sent home with the assurance that, be the[53] new-comer boy or girl, the robber-chief would stand as god-father. The poor man, in ecstasy at such good fortune, flew rather than rode to his well-filled dwelling, and arrived there just in time to welcome number thirteen.

A boy! He gave his wife the money and a caress, and, although the night was far advanced, mounted his charger and galloped back to the cave. The brigand was astonished at his speedy return; but true to his word, appeared with him in the neighboring church in disguise of a rich old gossip, made every requisite promise for the new-born babe, and disappeared, leaving a bag of golden crowns and another purse of gold.

The angels, however, claimed the baby, and the brigand's god-child flew to paradise on golden wings, and in the splendid swaddling-clothes that his charity had provided for it.

St. Peter, porter at the gates celestial, stirred himself to welcome the little fellow to heaven; but no! he would not enter unless accompanied by his god-father.

"My poor little innocent," said the saint, "you know not what you ask! Come in yourself; but heaven was not made for such as he."

The child sat down by the door resolved not to enter, and planning in his little head all sorts of schemes to accomplish his purpose, when the Blessed Mary passed that way.

"I would be ungrateful," he answered, "to partake of heavenly joys if my good god-father did not share them with me."

"If he had only been a wax-carrier! but this man, Satan's own emissary—impossible! An incarnate demon; a robber, healthy and robust, who has taken every opportunity to do mischief! Holy Mother! could such a thing be thought of?"

But the god-child insisted, bent his pretty blonde head, joined his little hands, fell on his knees, prayed and wept. The Virgin had compassion on him and bringing a golden chalice from the heavenly inclosure, said,

"Take this; go and seek your god-father; tell him that he may come with you to heaven; but he must first fill this cup with repentant tears."

Just then, by the clear moonlight, reposing on a rock, and fully armed, lay the brigand. In his dream his dagger trembled in his hands. As he awoke, he saw near his couch a beautiful winged infant. With no fear of the savage man, it approached and presented the golden chalice. He rubbed his eyes, and thought he still dreamed; but the infant angel reassured him, saying,

"No; it is not a fancy. I have come to invite thee to go with me. Leave this earth. I am thy god-child, and I will conduct thy steps."

Then the little fellow related his marvellous story: his arrival at heaven's gate, St. Peter's refusal, and how the Blessed Mother, ever merciful, had come to his assistance and granted his request. The bandit listened, and breathed with difficulty, while, bewildered he gazed on the angelic figure, and held out his hand for the golden chalice.

Suddenly his heart seemed to burst, two fountains of tears gushed from his eyes. The cup was filled, and the radiant infant mounted with him to the skies.

Into heaven the little one entered, carrying the well-filled cup to St. Peter—who was astonished to see who[54] followed him—and proceeded to offer it at the feet of the beautiful Queen.

She smiled on the sinner who through her compassion had been saved, while he threw himself in reverence at her feet. God himself had acquitted the debt of the child. Besides, we know that to the repentant there is always grace—and the infant had declared it would not enter alone.

MOLECULAR MECHANICS.

Among the theories proposed to explain the constitution of material substance, and to account for the facts relative to it disclosed by modern science, one developed in a recent work with the above title, by Rev. Joseph Bayma, of Stonyhurst, is specially worthy of notice for its ingenuity and the field which it opens to the mathematician. Whether it be true or not, it is at any rate such that its truth can be tested; and though this may be somewhat difficult, on account of the complexity of the necessary formulas and calculations, still the difficulty can probably be overcome in course of time, should the undertaking seem promising enough.

It is briefly as follows. Matter is not continuous, even in very small parts of its volume, but is composed of a definite number of ultimate elements, each of which occupies a mere point, and may be considered simply as a centre of force. This force is actually exerted by each of them following the law of gravitation as to its change of intensity with the distance; but is attractive for some elements and repulsive for others, which is obviously necessary to preserve equilibrium. These elements are arranged in regularly formed groups, in which the balance of the attractive and repulsive forces is such that each group, as well as the whole mass, is preserved from collapse or indefinite expansion; these are what are known chemically as molecules; and in the simple substances they probably have the shape of one of the five regular polyhedrons.

The simplest possible construction of a molecule would be one of the polyhedrons, with an element at each vertex, and one at the centre, whose action must be of an opposite character to that of those at the vertices; for these last must all exert the same kind of action, attractive or repulsive, for any kind of equilibrium to be maintained, and the centre must act in the opposite direction to prevent collapse or expansion of the mass. Furthermore, the absolute attractive power, or that which the molecule would have if all collected at one point, must exceed the repulsive, slightly at any rate, since the force exerted at distances compared with which its dimensions are insignificant is known to have this former character.

This system admits of two varieties, according as the centre is attractive or repulsive. In either case, for the maintenance of equilibrium the force of the centre must always be less than half that of the vertices combined, as the author shows, (giving the values for each polyhedron;) and it would seem that the first supposition[55] would therefore be untenable, since the attractive force in each molecule, as just stated, necessarily exceeds the repulsive. Equilibrium certainly cannot be maintained in this case; but this will not involve the permanent collapse of the molecule, but merely a continual vibration of its elements back and forward through the centre.

The second hypothesis, on the other hand, requires either a centre so weak as to produce very little repulsion outside of the molecule, or else a continual tendency to expand under a central power too great for equilibrium. Both will tend to bring the molecular envelopes near to each other, and produce adhesion or mixing among them; also, it may perhaps be added, that the envelopes themselves will, on account of the mutual attraction of their elements, be unstable.

Of these two constructions, then, the first would seem most probable; but both are open to objection on account of there being no internal resistance in the individual molecules to a change of diameter proportional to a change produced by external action in that of a mass of them; and if such a change should take place, the mass would be in just the same statical conditions as before, only differing in the relative dimensions of its parts, and the resistance to pressure which is exhibited more or less by all matter would not be accounted for. But it does not seem quite certain that pressure or traction of the mass would operate upon the separate molecules in the same sense.

We are not, however, restricted to such a simple structure; for there may be several envelopes instead of only one, and of these some may be attractive and others repulsive; the centre also may be repulsive. There would have to be an absolute predominance of attractivity, of course, as in the previous more simple supposition. It seems probable that in this supposition the envelopes would be all tetrahedric, or that either the cube and octahedron, or the other two, which are similarly counterparts of each other, would alternate. Many of these forms are examined mathematically by the author, as to their internal action.

The exact discussion of their external action, however, would be exceedingly intricate, and would not be worth undertaking without a more definite idea than we yet have of the actual shapes presented by the molecules of the various known substances. The forms of crystallization may throw some light upon this, and they seem to indicate, as the author acknowledges, that the elements are not always grouped in regular polyhedrons; if they are not, they must have unequal powers, and this may be sometimes the case. But irregular crystalline forms are not impossible, or even improbable, with regular molecules. He also suggests and applies a method for obtaining the forms of the simple chemical substances by considering what combinations with others each polyhedron is capable of, and comparing these results with the actual combinations into which these various substances are known to enter, and deduces the shapes, with some plausibility, of the molecules of oxygen, nitrogen, carbon, hydrogen, phosphorus, chlorine, sulphur, arsenic, and iodine. Whether we shall ever be able to obtain more positive proof of these interesting conclusions remains to be seen; but if any molecules have really the number of envelopes that would be indicated by their chemical equivalents, the perfect determination of their exact mechanical conditions of combination, and even of their separate construction,[56] will probably, as F. Bayma remarks, be a problem always above the power of the human mind. If mathematicians are at all inclined to plume themselves on having unravelled the complications of the solar system, they can find sufficient matter for humiliation in not being able to understand the status of a material particle less than the hundred millionth of an inch in diameter; for to this extent subdivision has actually been carried.

One of the most remarkable points in this theory is that part of it which relates to the ethereal medium which seems to pervade all space, if the undulatory theory of light is true, as is now perhaps universally believed. Instead of assuming it to be extremely rare, as is usually done without hesitation, the author regards it as excessively dense; "immensely denser than atmospheric air," to use his own words. Of course this seems absurd at first sight, as such a medium apparently would exert an immense resistance to the movements of the heavenly bodies, and in fact to all movements on their surfaces or elsewhere. This would certainly be the case if it were similar to ordinary matter; and to avoid this difficulty, it is assumed to be entirely attractive. The reason for supposing a great density for this substance is its immense elasticity and power of transmitting vibrations; which seems incompatible with great distances between its particles, unless these particles are extremely energetic in their action, which comes to the same thing; and this argument has considerable force.

But it does not seem evident that an attractive medium would not also interfere with the passage of bodies through it, though not in the same way as a repulsive one; and the oscillation through its centre necessary for its preservation complicates the theory somewhat. Also, any marked accumulation of a powerfully acting medium round the various celestial bodies would cause, if varied in any way by their changes of relative position, perturbations in their movements. The very fact, however, that its own action was so energetic might make the disturbance in its arrangement produced by other masses small, especially if it penetrates those masses, as is probably generally maintained. The subject is, of course, one of great difficulty, and objections readily suggest themselves to any hypothesis regarding it; still, it would appear that on some accounts it might be better, instead of assuming the medium to be wholly or predominantly attractive or repulsive, to suppose it to have the two forces equally balanced in its constitution; and if it be, like other matter, grouped in molecules, the balance would naturally exist in each molecule, making it inert at any but very small distances, and exerting at these very small distances a force the character of which would vary according to the direction.

We have said that the discussion of the exterior action of the molecules—that is, of their action on each other, or on exterior points in general—would be exceedingly complicated. The only way in which it seems practicable is that in which the mutual actions of the planets have been investigated, namely, a development of the force in the form of a series; but this cannot be done advantageously unless the distances between the molecules are considerably greater than the molecular diameters. If, however, we make the development of the ratio of the attraction (or repulsion) exerted by the vertices of a regular polyhedron in the direction of its centre, to what it would exert if concentrated at that centre, in a series of the powers of the ratio of the molecular radius to the distance of[57] the point acted on from the centre, it will be found that the coefficients of the first and second powers vanish in all cases; and that in all, except that of the tetrahedron, those of all the odd powers also disappear, as well as that of the fourth in the dodecahedron and icosahedron. If, then, the absolute attractive or repulsive power of any envelope is very nearly compensated by that of an opposite character prevailing in the rest of the molecule, (as seems probable,) the whole series can be reduced, at any distance which is very great compared with the molecular diameter, to two terms—one a constant with a very small value, and the other containing the third, fourth, or sixth power of the small quantity which the ratio of the diameter to the distance has now become. This should have a negative multiplier, in order that the force should become zero; and this it will have for a considerable distance around the vertices of all the polyhedrons, the negative value always covering as much as two fifths of the spherical surface about the centre of the molecule, and compensating even in this case for its less extent by a greater intensity, as the mean of this coefficient over the whole surface is always exactly zero. Within this distance of no action, for some space about the centre of the prevailing polyhedric face, attraction would prevail till the higher powers became sensible, and even (as it would seem) quite up to the centre in the case of a single envelope, the repulsive action of which, when combined with the slight force of the centre, would apparently be limited to quasi-ellipsoidal spaces extending out from each vertex, and having a longer axis equal to this outer distance of no action. But this limitation of the repulsive action will be still greater if the excess of the absolute attractive power in the molecule is more considerable, as long as the distribution of the force in the different envelopes remains unaltered; and though the molecules can approach within tolerably short distances of each other in certain directions, this is not objectionable, since such an approach may even be required for chemical union and cohesion. Introsusception would hardly be probable, unless they were very different in size. The compound molecule once formed, whether its components were of the same or of different substance, might exercise a repulsive force at a considerable distance in all or nearly all directions; nevertheless, it might still admit of further increase or of disruption by an agitation among the molecules, due to heat, light, or electricity. Of course, even on this theory, for the maintenance of physical equilibrium the mean distance of the molecules would have to be considerably less than that of no action, in order that a repulsion should be produced to balance the attraction of those beyond this distance. Still, if the excess of attractive force in each molecule, and consequently the size of each, be made small enough, their dimensions may still be small compared even with this mean distance; so that in no case, except that of chemical union, would it be necessary to take account of the higher powers. Any motion communicated from one molecule to another would then probably be by means of an actual relative movement of the centres of gravity, instead of by internal vibrations.

It may be worth noticing that a regular polyhedron—the elements of which exert a force not varying at all with the distance, and in which the absolute energy of the centre is precisely equal to that of the vertices combined—gives a resulting force following the law of gravitation, at any distance compared with which its own[58] dimensions can be neglected; and within this distance the force will change its sign under the same conditions of direction as specified in the previous case. But, as the intensity of this force will change with the size of the molecule, it does not appear that a system of this kind would be admissible, since, besides the periodical change due to its own internal vibration, it would probably be changed in size, or even in shape, which would be worse, by compression or expansion of the mass; which would be the more likely, as the molecules could approach much nearer than in the former supposition. The law followed by gravitation also seems to be almost or quite necessary for forces radiating from a point.

The author's theory seems, on the whole, extremely plausible. That each element of matter exerts a force following the law of gravitation, is almost demonstrable à priori; that the elements are mere points, will also generally be admitted; that some of the actions should be repulsive, is obviously necessary; that each molecule is composed of a definite number of atoms, is suggested by chemical laws; and the polyhedric forms seem certainly the most reasonable, though crystalline forms would indicate that others may be occasionally found. The possibility of the construction of irregular molecules out of elements of unequal powers seems, by the way, to be worth examining.

Further developments of the theory may have recently been made; of course, the author does not claim in this work to have laid down more than its first principles. At present, it seems, to say the least, to furnish the best basis for the mathematical investigation of the internal constitution of matter that has been suggested, and such investigations would be almost certain to lead to valuable results, whether confirmatory or otherwise.

THE HOLY-WEEK OF 1869 IN HAVANA.
PALM-SUNDAY. THE TENEBRÆ. MAUNDY-THURSDAY.

So much had been told me of the antiquated observances of the Holy-Week in Havana, of the religious processions presenting to us of the nineteenth century an image of the naïf faith of the middle ages, of the rare spectacle of a whole city in mourning for the death of the Saviour, that even had my duty not called me to the church, my curiosity would have carried me thither. As it was, I resolved this Lent that, although I resided at an inconvenient distance from town, and ladies who have no carriage of their own find it sometimes unpleasant to go on foot in a country where walking is unfashionable, and considered even unfeminine, yet I would disregard disagreeables of every kind, and attend all the impressive ceremonies of this great week in the cathedral.

PALM-SUNDAY.

On Palm-Sunday, then, at six o'clock in the morning, I got into the nice, clean, well-managed cars[59] that pass our door every few minutes all day long. The blessing of the palm branches was not to commence until a quarter after eight; but I like to "take time by the forelock," and I also feared that, as the "superior political governor of Havana" had invited "the grandees of Spain, the titled of Castile, the knights grand crosses, the gentlemen, (gentiles hombres,) and civil and military functionaries to contribute their assistance to render the religious acts more solemn," there might be somewhat of a crowd, and so I determined to arrive betimes and secure for myself a seat where I could both see and hear well.

The early morning in Cuba is always delightful, and this 21st of March was very bright and lovely, the sky intensely blue and without a cloud, and a cool breeze gently waving the tall tops of the cocoa-nut trees, and rustling the light, feathery sprays of the graceful bamboos. The white colonnaded houses of the Cerro looked very pleasant among their palms and laurels. La Carolina was in full bloom in some of the gardens, its spreading, leafless branches covered with great plumy tufts of rose-colored filaments; honeysuckle vines and the yellow jasmine climbed about the railings, and the large, brilliant flowers of the mar pacifico completed the floral landscape with that bright "bit" of scarlet so agreeable to the artistic eye.

As we approached the city, however, the pretty houses became fewer, and the mean suburban shops and fondas appeared more grimy than ever in the bright sunlight; their dirty awnings hanging in rags over the badly-paved, broken sidewalk. The houses, all of one or two stories, their exteriors washed with blue, yellow, lilac, or apple-green, wore a general look of never being repaired, and their gay coloring was faded, spotted, stained, and smeared by the exceeding dampness of the climate. I had glimpses, too, as we passed, into narrow streets so frightfully gullied and filthy that they made me shudder. The population of this part of extra-mural Havana was not more prepossessing in appearance than its haunt.

In about half an hour we reached the Campo de Marte, (Field of Mars,) a fine square which would be handsomer if it were bordered with shade-trees. Now it is an arid plain, with a few straggling blades of grass in patches here and there. On one of the sides of this place stands the magnificent mansion of the Aldamas, one of the richest families in the island; on another side, the principal railway station. A great number of volunteers, fine, stout, strong-looking men generally, dressed in a blue and white striped drill uniform, and armed with short swords and bayoneted muskets, were mustering in the middle of the Campo, and a great rabble of little blackies surrounded them, gaping with admiration. At the eastern extremity of the square we cut across the commencement of what used to be called the Parque de Ysabel Segunda; but her statue has been pulled down from its pedestal, and the promenade has now no name. Here again, around the pretty fountain that represents Havana under the form of an Indian maiden supporting a shield that bears the arms of the city, and surrounded by tropical fruits and graceful plants, were plenty of flowers; the blue, crimson, and purple morning-glories, that had just opened their radiant petals to the sun, were the most vividly-colored I have ever seen.

Passing the Tacon Theatre, we soon reached the breach in the city walls by which the cars enter. These old fortifications, built by the Spaniards[60] to keep out the Indians and the English, are being slowly demolished. A very fine white stone church is in progress of erection close by.

The streets within the walls are well paved and clean; the houses mostly large and very strongly built. They usually form a hollow square, the centre being an open yard, containing a few shrubs. The windows of all the rooms reach from the floor to the ceiling; they are without glass and protected by iron bars; thick inside shutters, into which two or three glazed panes are inserted to admit the light, close out any very bad weather, wind or rain. The sidewalks are usually not more than a foot and a half wide; they look like ledges running along the sides of the houses, and are exceedingly uncomfortable for pedestrians, as I found when I descended from the car at its stopping-place in front of the church San Juan de Dios, and proceeded on foot to the cathedral.

San Cristóbal de la Habana, the metropolitan cathedral, is a large and handsome edifice; it dates from 1724, and although it has at the present moment a very time-worn appearance, it was repaired and beautified only a few years since. Two towers and three doors give an imposing air to the front; the arched nave within is lofty and spacious, and separated from the aisles by massive pillars of masonry. The whole of the interior is painted in fresco, but is much deteriorated by the excessive humidity of the climate. The high altar, constructed of beautiful jasper, under a dome of porphyry, supported by columns of the same material, was built in Rome. On the gospel side of the chancel is the tomb of Christopher Columbus, whose ashes, inclosed in a leaden box, rest within the very wall of the sacred edifice.

Few persons had yet assembled in the church, and I quickly obtained a seat on one of the benches that are placed along each side of the nave. I was much pleased to find myself exactly opposite to the crimson velvet-covered arm-chair and reading-desk reserved for the captain-general, and to the less imposing but handsome seats intended for the governor, grandees, and municipality. I was also just behind a row of arm-chairs allotted to the civil and military functionaries.

In the chancel, concealing from view the honored tomb, was raised a purple velvet dais; beneath it stood the purple velvet-covered throne and reading-desk of the bishop. A great black flag with a blood-red cross in its centre leaned against the side of the altar, on which was seen the emblem of our faith swathed in violet crape. An immense white curtain, very artistically draped, was suspended across the southern transept.

As the time passed, colored servants made their appearance every now and then, bringing their mistresses' small low chairs and little carpets; for the Havana churches, like the Catholic churches of the European continent, have no pews. These servants wore the most brilliant liveries, such as orange-tinted indispensables, bright green waistcoat, and red swallow-tail coat, forcibly reminding one of the parrots of the Cuban woods. A complete canary-colored suit, surmounted by a round, woolly, black head, produced a very droll effect. The little chairs were placed and the little carpets spread wherever it was possible, so that the marble floor of the space between the official seats was soon nearly covered. The greater number of ladies, however, had no chairs, but knelt, sometimes three on the same carpet, during the whole of the ceremony; that is, from eight till[61] twelve, only changing their posture occasionally to sitting on the ground, with their feet doubled up on one side.

A little before eight o'clock, the ladies began to arrive. Each one, after she had knelt down and arranged the folds of her voluminous train to her satisfaction, dotted herself over rapidly with a great number of little crosses, and ended by kissing her thumb. This ungraceful performance is only a hasty, careless way of making the three signs taught by the church, which ought to be done thus: The thumb of the right hand is placed across the middle of the index, to represent the cross. The first sign is then made with it on the forehead, Por la señal de la Santa Cruz—"By the sign of the holy cross;" the second on the mouth, De nuestros enemigos—"From our enemies;" the third on the heart, Libra nos, Señor, dios nuestro—"Deliver us, Lord, our God." The sign as it is made usually with us, and a kiss on the cross represented by the thumb and index, terminate this Spanish process of blessing one's self.

The toilettes of some of the fair Spanish and Cuban ladies present on this occasion were of rich black silk, with a black lace mantilla over the head, half shading the face and shoulders. There was an elegant simplicity in this costume that seemed to me to make it fit to be adopted in all countries as a dress for public worship. But the great majority were attired in showy, expensive materials, quite devoid of taste, especially in the choice and harmony of colors. Black grenadine and lace dresses, with light belts, were numerous; satin stripes of the deepest orange color were worn by tall, slender, sallow damsels; vert d'eau, that delicate water-green which demands so imperiously the contrast of lilies and roses, was donned by a stout dame, couleur de café au lait; and one lady displayed an ample, sweeping robe of that bright hue the French call Bismark content, which imparted an unearthly lustre to her natural green tinge that made my flesh creep. Lace mantillas over the head were universal. Most were black; but some young girls wore white ones, fastened to their hair with a bunch of rose-buds. There were a great many blue silk bodices, of the style affected by Swiss maidens; and I remarked that the fat ladies were very partial to low dresses and short sleeves, with handsome necklaces and bracelets. No one wore gloves, and every one carried a fan.

There was a great majority of expressive, intelligent faces among these belles, and there were plenty of large black eyes, some very beautiful; and there were pretty lips, which disclosed with every smile two even rows of pearly teeth; but there was also a total absence of that fresh, healthy look which, when united to youth, constitutes beauty, whatever be the shape of the features, and without which no woman can be truly lovely. As I contemplated, from my somewhat high bench, the colorless cheeks of the maidens, and the sallow, withered skins of the matrons kneeling on the marble floor before me, I remembered the temperate zone with heart-sick longing. "It seems," thought I, "very delightful, when one reads of it, to inhabit a clime where the trees are ever green, and the flowers in perpetual bloom; where snow and ice are unknown; but look at these pallid girls and their faded mothers—poor, enervated victims of continual heat! And oh! the many physical miseries arising from want of active exercise, and the sluggish torpor that seems to invade the soul as well as the body." And then the days long gone by came back to me; the days[62] when "life went a-Maying with nature, hope, and poesy;" the days when I was young. "How I pity you," I murmured, "pale Cuban girls, who have never run free in the daisied meadows to gather spring violets and primroses; who have never rambled with laughing youths and maidens in the leafy woods of summer, or sported among the dried fallen leaves in the cool, bright days of autumn, or made one in a merry evening party around the sparkling, crackling, glowing winter fire!"

A startling yelp, accompanied by the whistling sound of a well-applied whip, recalled my wandering thoughts. The perrero, in the exercise of his duties, was ejecting a recalcitrant dog, which had contrived to reach the chancel unobserved. This functionary, the perrero—anglicé, dog-man—is peculiar to the cathedral. In all the other churches of Havana, the faithful are constantly grieved by the unseemly spectacle of dogs roaming at will within the sacred precincts, even on the very steps of the altar. The perrero is distinguished by a dark blue serge robe, descending to his feet, and very much resembling a gentleman's dressing-gown in form. Around his neck he wears, as a finish, a wide white frill. He carries, concealed in the folds of this unpretending and rather unbecoming costume, a serviceable cowhide, which he uses with a will upon all canine intruders; and if he can, he concludes his admonishment with a kick, it being generally believed that a dog which has received this final humiliation eschews the cathedral for the rest of his days.

In the mean time, a considerable number of persons had assembled in the church, and the preparations for the blessing of the palms were completed. The highly ornamented branches had been brought in, piled up on great trays; the bishop's pastoral crook had been placed leaning against his throne, and the wax tapers were lighted. The clergy, hastening in procession to the great central door, which was presently thrown wide open, letting in a flood of light and warm air, announced the arrival of the prelate. It was rather difficult to make a passage for him up to the altar; for some good nuns had come with a shoal of little girls, who had been arranged so as to fill up every interstice left by the occupants of the chairs and carpets; but it was done at last, and he advanced slowly and with great dignity up the nave, blessing all as he passed.

The prelate had scarcely taken his seat under the dais, when the doors, opening wide again, gave entrance to the grandees, the municipality, and a number of military and civil functionaries. They were ushered to the places assigned to them by four mace-bearers, habited in the Spanish mace-bearing costume of three hundred years ago, and much resembling in general appearance the tremendous Queen Elizabeth's beef-eaters, who seemed to my childish eyes the most wonderful sight in the Tower of London. They wore loose red velvet tunics, trimmed with gold lace and fringe; the castles of Castile were embroidered on the breast, and the lions of Leon adorned the sleeves; an immense double ruff around the throat; big, high, black boots and buckskin small-clothes, and a wide-brimmed hat turned up on one side, with a red and yellow feather, completed the costume.

The military and civil officers were in full uniform, wearing their orders and decorations; the noblemen and gentlemen in evening dress, and displaying on their breasts numerous ribbons and brilliant stars. They were nearly all venerable-looking, gray-haired men, with that pensive, dignified[63] gravity of demeanor peculiar to the Spaniard.

The religious ceremony now began. The palm-branches blessed were all curiously plaited and lopped, until they were but little more than a yard high, only two or three small leaves being left at the top. They were ornamented with bows of bright-colored ribbons, bunches of artificial flowers, and gold and silver tinsel butterflies. That intended for the prelate was covered with elegant gold devices and arabesques. Each of the grandees in turn ascended the steps of the altar, and, kneeling, received one from the bishop, whose hand he kissed, and then retired. When all had been distributed, the procession was formed; but I must confess that it disappointed me exceedingly. I had expected to see a grove of green, waving palms moving along amidst the hosannas of the multitude; but, as it was, all devotional and picturesque effect was totally wanting. I have since been told that in the poorer churches, which cannot afford to buy the plaited, lopped, and gilded sticks that the bad taste of the people prefer, the simple branch, so exquisitely graceful, is perforce adopted, and the procession, consequently, a very pretty sight.

In the cathedral, the whole ceremony was cold and unimposing. There was no summons from the outside, with response from within. There was no triumphal burst from the organ when the Victor over sin and death made his entry; no anthem to remind us how the chosen will be welcomed to heaven. The procession descended by the southern wing, and went out into the church porch, where the psalms appointed were sung; the great central door was then opened, and it returned up the nave to the altar.

The mass followed, and the bishop delivered a short sermon. His voice was very agreeable, and his manner impressive.

As soon as the service concluded, every one hastened away. There were no loiterers—not even to see the prelate leave the cathedral, which he did on foot, his violet silk train borne by one of the priests. It is, however, but just to remark—if excuse be needed for the haste with which the church was cleared—that it was twelve o'clock, and no one had breakfasted.

I was pleased to meet a friend at the door, who insisted on my going home with her, and I gratefully accepted the invitation; for I felt tired and faint. We accordingly got into her quitrin, and in a few minutes reached the welcome door.

The quitrin, the private conveyance of Cuba, and an improvement on the well-known volante, is a carriage somewhat resembling the victoria, but with two immense wheels; it is swung, too, so easily that a person not accustomed to the vehicle finds it difficult to enter. The shafts are exceedingly long, and the horse in them trots, while a second horse, upon which the calesero rides, canters. This second horse is attached to the carriage by long traces at the left side, and a little ahead of the shaft-horse. The effect produced by the different paces of the animals is very curious.

The calesero, or driver, is always a colored man; he is usually dressed in a blue jacket, (though green, yellow, and red are not unfrequent,) white drill waistcoat and trowsers, and high black leathern leggings, hollowed out under the knee and standing up stiff above it, resembling, in fact, the great boots worn by French postilions, minus the feet. These leggings are fastened down the sides with straps and silver buckles, and ornamented with large silver plates. No stockings, but low-cut shoes, leaving visible the[64] naked instep, heavy silver spurs and a stove-pipe hat, and the calesero is considered an elegant turn-out.

The breakfast was waiting; a Creole one, composed of soup made of the water in which beef-bones, and especially beef knee-caps, had been boiled, flavored with onions fried in lard; of vaca frita—fried cow—little pieces of beef of all shapes, fried also in lard; of ropa vieja—old clothes—slices of cold meat warmed up with sauce; of aporeado—beef torn into shreds of an inch and a half long and stewed with a little tomato, green peppers, garlic, and onions, (this dish looks very like boiled twine;) of picadillo—meat minced as fine as possible and scrambled in eggs, chopped onions and peppers; of rice cooked with little pieces of fat pork and colored with saffron; of very nice pork-chops, the best meat in Cuba, and very different and far superior to Northern pork; of boiled yucca, and ripe plantains, very delicious to the taste, resembling in flavor a well-made apple charlotte. The bread was very good, and more baked than it usually is in the United States. Claret and water was the general beverage, and the meal finished with a cup of hot coffee enriched with creamy milk, boiled without the salt and aniseed that Creoles almost invariably put into it. We were waited on at table by two admirably-trained Chinese, a people much and justly esteemed in Havana as house-servants and cooks.

It was nearly three o'clock when I at last reached home; but not until the next day did I hear of the four unfortunate men shot that afternoon in the streets, during the embarkation of the two hundred and fifty political prisoners for Fernando Po.

THE TENEBRÆ.

The following Wednesday morning, I reached the cathedral just as the gospel was commenced. At the conclusion of the mass the service of the Tenebræ was very impressively chanted. As I listened, my heart realized all the grief and desolation of that sad time. I could hear David bewailing his outraged Lord and Son; Jeremias lamenting over the ruins of Jerusalem, over the crucified Victim; dear mother church calling her children to repentance in supplicating, tender strains; and the three devoted Marys sighing and weeping as they climbed the steep of Calvary among the crowd that followed our blessed Saviour to the cross. At the termination of this mournful music, just as the confused murmur that recalled the noise of the tumultuous masses who, led on by Judas, came armed with sticks to seize Jesus, died away, a number of priests, completely enveloped in ample black silk robes with long pointed trains, their faces entirely concealed beneath high-peaked black silk hoods, advanced to the front of the altar and knelt in a row on the step before it. After a short, whispered prayer, one of them arose, and taking the black banner with the blood-red cross, which I have already mentioned, waved it for several minutes in silence over his companions, while they prostrated themselves on their faces before the altar. It is impossible to imagine a scene more lugubrious; the black-robed figures lying motionless, the mysterious hooded form that seemed to tower above them, the sinister flag, the deep silence—all contributed to inspire a sentiment of undefinable fear. Every one present knelt, and in unbroken silence the black banner was waved over us. When we raised our heads, the sombre assembly had disappeared and the chancel was empty.

This, I was told, is a ceremony that has been handed down from the[65] time of the primitive Christians of Rome; but no one was able to explain the meaning of it to my satisfaction.

MAUNDY-THURSDAY.

Maundy-Thursday found me bright and early in the cathedral, and well placed; for I was again just opposite the seats reserved for the captain-general and the governor, and just behind those intended for the military and civil officers.

With the exception of the bishop's dais, throne, reading-desk, and cushion, which were now of white damask and gold, every thing was the same as on Palm-Sunday. But the great white curtain had been removed from before the southern transept, and there was now to be seen a magnificent golden sepulchre, under a white and gilded dome supported by columns. The statue of a kneeling angel adorned each side of this monument, to which the officiating priest ascended by six carpeted steps. Innumerable wax tapers in silver candlesticks were arranged on each side, their soft light reflected by the silver and gold drapery that lined the vault.

As on Palm-Sunday, the floor of the nave was soon covered with carpets and little chairs, all occupied an hour before the mass began by women and children, white and colored, of every social grade, from the delicate marchioness to the coarse black cook. Not even the most elegant lady present seemed in the slightest degree annoyed by being elbowed, and her satin dress rumpled, by some pushing, saucy morena, (colored woman,) who planted her chair or stool just where she could contrive to squeeze it in, with the most perfect assurance that no one would question her right to do so. I remarked, too, that in the crowd of men who stood in the aisles, the whites and blacks, the rich and the poor, were on the same terms and acting in precisely the same manner toward one another; and I felt convinced that nowhere on earth was such social equality to be met with as I witnessed in the cathedral church of Havana.

I was admiring this absence of all invidious distinctions in the house of God, and rejoicing in the thought that here, at least, the master had to confess himself weak and humble as the slave, the rich powerless as the poor, when two men forced room for themselves on my bench and by my side. One had the look of a low grog-shop keeper, the other of a whining street-beggar; both were shockingly, disgustingly filthy; both snorted and spat in the most frightful manner, and in the discomfort they caused me, I arrived at the conclusion that all men are equal—yes, except the clean and the dirty; and I fretted and fumed against the church officials who thus abandoned the faithful washed to the inroads of the faithless unwashed. Faithless unwashed!—it is written wittingly; for I cannot credit that piety will exist with filthiness of its own free will. No, sin and dirt are too often bosom friends; but cleanliness goes hand in hand with godliness.

I had, however, to bear and forbear with my unpleasant neighbors, whose propinquity induced a train of thoughts somewhat at variance with the solemnity I had come to witness. I remembered, among other discrepant subjects, the nickname given to the Spaniards by the Cubans, Patones—"Big-Feet"—which appellation has frequently been used in skirmishes between the insurgents and the Spanish troops as a battle-cry. Viva Cuba, y mueren los Patones! "Long live Cuba, and death to the Big-Feet!" the rebels would shout, and the soldiers, very naturally enraged at a personal defect being alluded to in such[66] terms, would fight like insulted heroes. So I improved this opportunity, having a long row of Spaniards before me, to examine their lower extremities and judge for myself what truth there was in the discourteous designation. After a careful and impartial investigation, I believe that I can say with justice that, though they do not possess the exquisitely-formed, fairy-like little feet with which every Cuban, male and female, trips into this world, they yet cannot be accused of having large or clumsy ones. Most of the Spanish feet I saw were certainly much smaller than those of the English or Germans, resembling, perhaps, those of the French.

The toilettes of the ladies were even more ball-like than on Palm-Sunday; nearly every one wore low-necked dresses and short sleeves, and many white kid gloves. Rose-colored, pale blue, yellow, and white silk robes trimmed with lace and a multitude of bows, and sometimes disfigured by preposterous paniers, were general. The hair was artistically dressed and adorned with flowers, golden fillets, and bright ribbons, and the white or black lace mantilla thrown over the head was as small and transparent as possible.

At a quarter past eight, the bishop arrived with a numerous suite of clergy: as on Sunday, it was with difficulty he made his way through the sitting, kneeling, becrinolined, and betrained crowd that encumbered the centre of the church.

Very shortly after, a flourish of trumpets outside announced the coming of the captain-general. The great door was again thrown open, and he entered, preceded by the mace-bearers, and attended by Señor Don Dionisio Lopez Roberts, superior political governor of Havana, and a brilliant cortége of noblemen, gentlemen, and military and civil chiefs. When all were seated, the scene as viewed from my bench was very striking. The resplendent sepulchre; the illuminated altar, at which the mitred prelate and his assistant priests were officiating, all robed in white and gold; the long row of handsome uniforms on each side of the nave; the gay parterre of fair ladies, and the crowd of spectators of every shade of color from white to black that filled the spaces between the massive pillars and served as a background, all contributed to form a whole most picturesque and unique.

The beautiful service of Maundy-Thursday now commenced; during the celebration of it, the ceremony of blessing the holy oils was performed; and when the Gloria in excelsis was chanted, the bell was rung for the last time until Holy Saturday. At the elevation, I heard the silver staff of the pertiguero resound several times upon the pavement. The pertiguero is, like the perrero, a functionary peculiar to the cathedral; his duty is to enforce kneeling at the elevation on all strangers visiting that church at the moment. He carries a long silver staff, called a pertiga, which he strikes with a clang upon the marble floor when he perceives any one inattentive to the strict rule of the church—prostration in presence of the host.

After the mass, the blessed sacrament was carried in solemn procession to the sepulchre, the captain-general and the governor bearing the banner of the Agnus Dei, and all the grandees and municipality joining in it. The staves and cross-rods of the banner and of the magnificent dais held over the holy sacrament were all of silver, and appeared to be very heavy. The host was deposited in the sepulchre, which was then locked, and the golden key fastened to a chain suspended by the bishop around the neck of the captain-general, to be[67] brought back to the church by him on Good-Friday. The beautiful hymn, Pange lingua, was sung very sweetly the whole time; the Latin, which seems so hard and harsh in our English pronunciation, sounding very grand and harmonious in these Spanish mouths.

The church cleared very rapidly after the mass; and when the last carriage had conveyed its last occupant home, no vehicle of any kind was permitted to pass through the streets of Havana. The soldiers now carried their arms reversed, and all Spanish flags were at half-mast. The city was in mourning.

I was taken possession of by some kind friends as I left the cathedral, and accompanied them to their house close by, where we found a welcome breakfast awaiting us. It consisted of fish and vegetables. We commenced with turtle-soup; but not of the kind so loved by Cockney aldermen, redolent of spiced force-meat balls and luscious green fat; this was an orthodox meagre soup, incapable of doing harm. Then came a nice fried fish called rabi rubio—red tail, and fried lobster, all hot, which, however, I did not like as well as boiled lobster cold with a mayonnaise sauce. To these succeeded shrimp fritters, roast turtle, and a very delicate fish, the pargo, the best in these seas, and sometimes caught as large as a large salmon, which it is not unlike in form. Our vegetables were white rice, eaten with black Mexican beans stewed; yam, yucca, and slices of green plantain fried of a fine gold color, and very delicious. Good bread, excellent claret, and native coffee with an aroma resembling that of the best Mocha, completed this agreeable repast, which had been enlivened by the pleasant conversation of an intelligent, generous-hearted Spaniard, and the smiles and jests of his pretty Cuban wife and children.

Breakfast over, my friend Pepilla and I, with the two eldest girls, Dolores and Luisita, sallied forth into the silent streets to visit some of the churches, previous to attending the ceremony of the Lavatorio—washing of feet—which was to be performed in the cathedral at three o'clock.

The quaint old church of San Juan de Dios was the first we entered. Its floor of hard-beaten earth was encumbered with kneeling worshippers, mostly colored, in earnest prayer before a figure as large as life, representing our blessed Saviour dressed in a dark purple velvet robe, embroidered with gold; his hands tied together with a rope; his head crowned with a gilded crown of thorns. Long black ringlets of shiny hair shaded his emaciated cheeks and fell far down on his shoulders behind.

The high altar, which is a curious work of bad taste, decorated with little carved wooden angels wearing black Hessian boots, was screened by hangings of gold and silver tinsel; and a gilded sepulchre, surrounded by a great number of wax tapers, to be lighted in the evening, was placed in front of it.

As we came out of the poor little church, a dirty negro boy, followed by a dozen others, ran by us in the street, making a great noise with a matraca, to the delight of his suite. This matraca is a piece of wood about eighteen inches long and ten wide; on each side of it are affixed one or two thick iron wires of the usual size and shape of those old-fashioned metal handles to drawers and trunks, which always used to slip out of their sockets when one gave a strong pull. When the instrument is shaken, these rattle against the wood, and in the hands of an adept, and all colored boys are such, made a terrible clatter. From the Gloria on Maundy-Thursday until the Gloria on Holy Saturday,[68] matracas are employed instead of bells and clocks, and boys from the churches run through the streets with them, to announce each hour of the day.

The sepulchre at San Felipe, a church whose interior is remarkable for its air of bright cleanliness, was very tastefully arranged with flowers and tapers, and promised to look very brilliant when lighted up. There also was an image of our Saviour similar to that we had just seen.

At Santo Domingo, a large, handsome edifice, we found a magnificent sepulchre, in severer taste than the two we had visited. In one of the aisles, also, there was a group large as life, and painfully life-like. It represented our blessed Lord on the cross, the blood streaming from his nose and down his pale, thin cheeks from the wounds inflicted by the cruel thorns of his crown; a ghastly gash in his side; his hands tom by the dreadful nails; his wrists bruised and cut by the cords with which he had been bound; his knees so horribly scarified by being dragged over the rough ground that the bones of the joints were visible; his feet mangled, his whole body cut and scratched and discolored by stones and blows. At the foot of the cross stood the holy Virgin, tearless, but with so heart-broken an expression that to look at her was to weep. St. Mary Magdalen, her face pale, her eyes swollen and red, was kneeling near her. I could not bear the sight of this agony, and turned away, saying to myself, "Yes, it must have been like this!"

In each of these three churches a nun was sitting at a small table with a tray before her, to collect the charitable, voluntary offerings of visitors. This was the first time I had seen the slightest approach to money-asking in the Cuban churches. During the rest of the year there never are collections of any kind made in them. Nevertheless, the ladies of Havana are very ready to contribute, and do contribute liberally toward all religious and charitable purposes; but privately, not publicly. Indeed, both Spaniards and Cubans are remarkably compassionate and generous to the begging poor, whom they gently style Pordioseros—"For-God-sakers;" and whom they never send harshly away when unpleasantly importuned or unable to give, as we Anglo-Saxons so often do; but refuse with a soft Perdone, por Dios, hermano—"Pardon me, for God's sake, brother;" or, Perdone, por Dios, hermanita—"Pardon me, for God's sake, little sister."

It was now time to return to the cathedral to secure places to see the Lavatorio. We found but few persons there yet, and consequently had a choice of seats. Some colored men were busy placing an image of our Saviour, similar to that we had seen in the church of San Juan de Dios, on one of the altars in the southern aisle, and it was touching to see the veneration and love with which one or other of them would raise from time to time a ringlet of the shiny black hair and kiss it.

Just before three o'clock two long benches were set on the epistle side of the altar, and presently a large number of youths, attired in dark red robes, entered the chancel—students from the Seminario de San Carlos, the theological college attached to the cathedral.

The beautiful anthem that is chanted during the ceremony of the washing of feet, Mandatum novum do vobis, "A new command I give unto you," contains the distinctive precept of our pure and holy religion, "Love one another;"[69] and I could not help thinking, when the Bishop of Havana girded himself with a linen napkin and knelt humbly to do his lowly task, that he looked as if it were to him a real labor of love, so charitable an expression was there in his eyes, such venerable grace in his manner. He was assisted by several priests, one of whom carried a large silver basin, another a silver ewer full of water. The water was poured over one foot only; the prelate knelt as he wiped it, and then kissing it, rose and passed to the foot of the next boy, and so on. When all were washed and wiped, the bishop, looking heated and tired, resumed the white and gold chasuble he had laid aside, and, crowned with his mitre, took his seat in front of the high altar, surrounded by his clergy.

The sermon then commenced; the subject was, as always on this day, the institution of the holy eucharist. The preacher was a rather young man, of agreeable aspect, earnest in gesture and manner. His voice was loud and clear, and the magnificent Spanish language resounded in harmonious and eloquent periods through the vaulted nave. I remembered, as I listened admiringly, the old Spanish boast that theirs is the tongue in which the Almighty can be least unworthily addressed, and it did not seem to me so vain and unmeaning as I once deemed it.

With the conclusion of the sermon, all the joy and love that had marked the first part of the services of Holy Thursday disappeared, and grief and mourning now began again. Vespers and the Tenebræ were chanted, and then the faithful withdrew.

In the evening all the inhabitants of Havana poured into the streets: the captain-general, attended by his staff; the bishop, followed by his clergy; the governor and the municipality; the various corporations; large family parties, and bands of young men and boys; all went from one illuminated church to another, seven being the prescribed number, to kneel before the splendid sepulchres, and pray with more or less devotion. And having accomplished this duty, all adjourned to the Plaza de Armas, a handsome square, on one side of which is the palace of the captain-general, for the retreta; that is, to promenade while they listened to the military band, which played some sacred music very finely, and to eat ices, the pious taking care that theirs were water-ices.

The brilliant moon of the tropics lighted up the scene, making all visible as in the day, but with softer tones; beneath her beams the beautiful eyes of the ladies seemed of a more velvety black, and their white teeth glistened whiter between their smiling lips. A gentle breeze, laden with the sweet odors peculiar to night in Cuba, sighed in the leafy boughs of the Laurel de India, and all seemed to me peace and good-will among men, until I overheard one Creole lady say to another, "Your husband was a Spaniard, I believe?"

"I have been the wife of two Spaniards," replied the Cubana; "but I am happy to say that I have buried them both!"

So I returned to my home deeply meditating on the loveliness of nature and the perversity of mankind.

GOULD'S ORIGIN AND DEVELOPMENT OF RELIGIOUS BELIEF.[11]

In this book the author considers what are the natural religious wants of man's soul; he shows how these cravings have given birth to various religious systems; he considers to what extent these systems are capable of satisfying man's moral nature, including in this survey every ancient and modern belief except Christianity; and proves that they have all failed in a greater or less degree. In a second volume he intends "to show how that Christianity by its fundamental postulate—the Incarnation—assumes to meet all these instincts; how it actually does so meet them; and how failure is due to counteracting political or social causes." (P. 6.)

In other words, we have here a treatise on religion from the à priori, rationalistic or philosophic stand-point. The work is done as well as we could expect from a non-Catholic author. But like most other books of the same stamp, written by those outside of the church, it contains many errors and false statements of facts. As it has attracted no little attention, and may be considered as a type of a large class, we will give some quotations from it, to show how cautiously these books are to be read, and how little confidence can be placed in their assertions.

In his preface, the author says that, besides the historical revelation, "We have a revelation in our own nature.... On this revelation the church of the future must establish its claims to acceptance." (P. 6.) If Christ was God, as we firmly believe, or even an inspired teacher sent by God, the first and only thing necessary is to know what he taught. We must examine extrinsic evidence which bears on the inspiration, authenticity, and genuineness of the historical documents in which his teaching is contained. Intrinsic evidence derived from the examination of that teaching, and the consideration of its complete harmony with man's spiritual nature, must be assigned a second, not a first place.

In the following passages, which are certainly not a little ridiculous, we have naturalism and materialism:

"Pantheism," we are told, p. 292, "is the philosophy of reason—of reason, it may be, in its impotence," (most assuredly!) "but of such reason as man is gifted with here."

On page 319, speaking of Kant, he says, "All the arguments advanced by metaphysicians to prove the existence of God crumbled into dust beneath his touch." The truth is precisely the opposite. Kant has "crumbled into dust," and "all the arguments adduced by metaphysicians to prove the existence of God" remain as unshaken as before he was born.

We are told, on page 79, that the chief reason why all men have believed in the immortality of the soul, is because they could not form even a conception of its annihilation. On the contrary, any one who has ever slept soundly can conceive its annihilation without any difficulty, though he might experience a good deal in endeavoring to picture to himself an existence without end. The doctrine of the immortality of the soul, however, even in philosophy, does not rest on any such weak arguments.

That most wonderful fact of history, in which the finger of God evidently appears, namely, the preservation of the Jewish people and their belief for the past eighteen hundred years, in the face of causes which, according to every natural law, ought long ago to have destroyed both creed and nation, is accounted for (p. 205) simply by their possession of "the Talmud, which is a minute rule of life," etc. Credat Judæus Apella.

"A man of thought will not steal, because he knows he is violating a law of sciology." (P. 278.) Were all the men in the world "sciologists," and "men of thought," we would not be in the least inclined to trust our property to the slender protection afforded by a law of "sciology."

Every native of the "Gem of the Ocean" will be delighted to learn that "The suffering Celt has his Brian Boroimhe, ... who will come again ... to inaugurate a Fenian millennium," (p. 407;) and students of history will be surprised to know that

Marie Antoinette was not alive when Robespierre was executed. The above incident occurred in the life of Josephine Beauharnais.

On pages 133-134, we are told substantially that for the first three or four centuries after Christ, God governed the Christian world directly! Then, for a time, through the priests alone! Afterward, for several centuries, through kings alone! Now the whole Christian world is ruled solely by "the open Bible!" This is a good example of how most non-Catholic writers, when speaking of religion, are always ready to sacrifice historical truth for the sake of a generalization or a rhetorical flourish.

"Its primitive organization (that is, of the church) was purely democratic. It recognized the right of the governed to choose their governor." (P. 201.) We never knew before that the people of Ephesus elected Timothy to be their ruler, or the people of Crete, Titus. We thought St. Paul appointed both of them, and that he told Timothy, "The things which thou hast heard from me before many witnesses, the same commend to faithful men who shall be fit to teach others also," (Epis. to Timothy ii. 2;) and that he wrote to Titus, "... ordain priests in every city, as I also appointed thee." (Epis. to Titus i. 5.)

In the Arabian Nights, if any difficulty occurs to interfere with the plot of a story, genii or fairies are straightway introduced, perform very coolly some astounding act, and presto! all goes smoothly again. So, when Protestant authors, in writing history, come across any fact that stands in the way of their preconceived anti-Catholic theories, and logic cannot remove it, they introduce "priestcraft," "Hildebrand," "the cunning[72] Jesuits," etc.; these prodigies shoulder the difficulty, walk off with it, and then "it is all perfectly clear." "Priestcraft," for instance, invented the whole sacramental system and foisted it on the church, no one knows when, where, or how. "Hildebrand" created the papal power. It did not exist before his time. "The cunning Jesuits"—ah! it would require more than a Thousand and One Arabian Nights to recount all the wondrous achievements of these mythological characters. Their latest act has been the convocation of the present œcumenical council, which they rule with an iron hand. In fact, the editor of this magazine, who is a member of the council, has written to us privately that now their power and tyranny have become so great that when the council is in full session you have to ask a special permission of "the cunning Jesuits" if you desire to sneeze or even wink! (Isn't it awful, reader? But this, you know, is strictly entre nous. You mustn't mention it to any body on any consideration, unless, of course—as is not at all impossible—you should hereafter learn the same thing from the Atlantic Cable!)

The saints of the Catholic Church in modern times, we read, (p. 362,) "are ecstatics, crazy nuns, and sentimental boys." Such, therefore, were Sts. Alphonsus Liguori, Ignatius, Francis Xavier, Vincent de Paul, Charles Borromeo, Francis of Sales, Theresa, Jane de Chantal, and the two Catherines! Well, we live to learn!

Mr. Gould, in order, it would appear, to give an air of originality—or, more correctly, aboriginality—to his book, chooses to employ the term idol as signifying any representation of the Deity, (whether it receive divine worship or not,) even the intellectual conception or purely philosophic idea! "Idolatry, then, is the outward expression of the belief in a personal God." (P. 176.) According to this new nomenclature, we must style all Christians idolaters!

"A fetish is a concentration of spirit or deity upon one point." (P. 177.) So with sticks, stones, and snakes, he ranks the Sacred Host—the Catholic fetish!

"The attribution to the Deity of wisdom and goodness is every whit as much anthropomorphosis as the attribution of limbs and passions." (P. 175.) So all worshippers of the Deity (for the impersonal "God" of pantheism is simply no God at all) are anthropomorphists as well as "idolaters"!

The last remark we have quoted from the author is not true. The soul alone is not the man; neither is the body alone; but soul and body together. Whoever, therefore, attributes to God only the spiritual attributes of man, cannot be properly termed an anthropomorphist. In any case, however, we most decidedly object to any one's applying to sacred things terms rendered opprobrious by long and correct usage. The effect of such an act is to confuse the reader, and its tendency is to bring what is holy into contempt. Perhaps this was the author's intention.

As might easily be supposed from the foregoing examples, the writer of this book is one of the nineteenth century illuminati, and in favor of "unrestrained freedom of thought," etc., (the chief enemies of which are historical facts, sound logic, and common-sense.) We will now listen for a moment while, in good orthodox Protestant fashion, he is "shouting the battle-cry of freedom."

What a pity that we poor "Romanists" are so "benighted," etc., etc., that we don't in the least appreciate these modern Solons, who seem to think that every one should be "progressive;" that is, spend his life in dragging himself out of one humbug only to fall into another; or, as the wise critic of The Nation put it a short time ago, in speaking of a story in The Catholic World, a young man ought to be like a ship, and devote his existence to sailing about—on the boundless ocean, we suppose, of infidel nonsense![12]

We shall only remark that, were religion to spend her time in pinning her faith to all the "novel," "scientific," "progressive" systems that spring up every day and straightway begin to crumble, even while these learned "sciologists" are tossing high their caps in air and shouting out in impressive chorus, "Where now is theology?"—it would, we think, be even stranger still.

We have devoted this much space to showing up some of the falsehoods in this book because it is not all false nor all stupid; it is a philosophic and, to some extent, a learned work; it is written in a brilliant and attractive style. This class of works dazzle; but when written by non-Catholics, they are not to be trusted. The only deep, and, at the same time, sound scholarship in the world is in the Catholic Church. Those who protest against her protest against the truth; even the most learned among them, on many most essential matters, are surprisingly ignorant; but what they want in knowledge they make up generally in flash rhetoric and humbug novelty, and that suits this enlightened age just as well.

Too many persons, however, when they see much that is true in a book, are inclined to believe it all true; and so with a considerable amount of food they will swallow a great deal of poison. This is a mistake. No author is ever wholly wrong. The falsest say many things that are true.

To show how error and truth may be found side by side in the same work, we will give some quotations from our author in which his ideas are sufficiently, or even strikingly, correct.

The doctrine of Zwinglius, he tells us, was simply pantheism, and that of Calvin he considers undeserving the name of Christianity.

He is not in line with those, so numerous in this age and country, who hold to the Chinese notion that intellectual and material progress is every thing.

Nor does he appear to believe in the Protestant method of converting people, and causing them to "experience religion." We read on page 358 that, while Wesley was preaching at Bristol,

We remarked before that the author of this book displays considerable learning. Here is a specimen which gives some pleasant information about the old Saxon laws:

He thinks that the idea of compensation, which is here certainly clearly set forth, gave rise to the religious idea of sacrifice.

We have given these quotations at length, partly because they are a little remarkable as coming from such a source, but chiefly to show that a book may be excellent in some respects, and nevertheless contain very many most false things. Our end will have been attained if we have shown that whatever comes from non-Catholic pens, even the best, is not to be trusted, whenever, directly or indirectly, matters pertaining to philosophy, theology, or ecclesiastical history are treated of. These books at best are half-blind guides; and such are never desirable, and generally dangerous.

PLANGE FILIA SION.

UNTYING GORDIAN KNOTS.

"I have been playing the part of a peri at the gates of paradise. I have been watching Mary Vane with her child. My life looks to me unbearable. I am a blunder on the part of nature. I have the passions of a man and the follies of a woman. This is the last entry I shall make in this book. Once for all I will put my agony into words, and then throw this wretched record of three months into the canal, to rot with the other impurities thrown daily into the sluggish flood.

When first I allowed myself to exercise my power over Vane, it was from mere coquetry and love of excitement. I wished to reassert my sway and punish his former cruelty. Later I dreamed of a Platonic love, à la Récamier and Chateaubriand. True, one pities Mesdames de Chateaubriand, viewing them as a class; but they must suffer for their bad management. I did not recognize, I do not recognize the claims of so-called duty; I lack motive. Virtue as virtue does not attract me; neither does sin as sin attract me. I want to have my own way. Gratified self-will has afforded me the only permanent enjoyment of my life; but it has this disadvantage. While you rule your will and indulge it for fancy's sake,[78] the pleasure is unquestionable. When your will begins to rule you, there is no slavery so galling. I had not thought of this; I know it now.

Once for all, I put my torture into words. I love him. Ten years ago I buried my heart—in sand or sawdust, or something else, where grass and flowers cannot grow. It has risen now in an awful resurrection, and taken possession of me. He might have been all mine. I wish to hate his wife, and am forced to honor her profoundly. I cannot leave this place. My will refuses to let me go. Oh! if I stay here and do not say one word, where is the harm? And if he should utter the word I dare not say—"

Amelia paused shuddering. "O subtle—O inexorable horror!" she said. Then, enveloping the book in paper, she carried it out onto the balcony, and dropped it into the canal, and heard the splash, and marked with satisfaction its disappearance beneath the dull green water.

"There—that's gone!" she said, and reëntered the room. Her face, which reflected every change of mood, grew very white.

"It is not gone!" she cried; and pressing her hands to her breast exclaimed, "It is here; it is my double—my bosom serpent! O God! how it gnaws!"

She went to a press, and pulling open drawers and slides, sought something eagerly. Then, as if forgetting the object of her search, paused in deep thought, and finally rang the bell violently.

Josephine came promptly, but unsurprised, being used to vehemence on the part of her mistress.

The maid proceeded to take out dress after dress and fold them. When one trunk was packed, Lady Sackvil who had been standing on the balcony in the blazing sun, looking down into the water, glanced over her shoulder.

"You may pack the other boxes another day," she remarked calmly; "I shall not go to-morrow. Your dinner-bell is ringing; you can go."

She locked the door behind Josephine, and then returned to her researches in the press. At last she produced a small vial of laudanum, and, sitting down before the toilette-table, poured a little into a glass and paused. "I wish I knew how much to take," she said ponderingly; "it would be so tiresome to take too little or too much." Then she fell to considering herself in the mirror—looked anxiously at the faint commencement of a wrinkle between her eyebrows; and pushing back her hair, revealed a gray hair or two hidden beneath the dark locks so full of sunny gleams. "I will do it," she said, and then took a few drops; then paused again. "I can't—I won't!" she said violently. "I'm afraid; I'm afraid of hell—I'm afraid of that horrid, clammy thing they call death! I'm afraid of making poor, good little Flora miserable! Oh! I'm afraid of myself, dead or alive," she moaned, rocking herself to and fro, in a passion of regret and pain.

At last the paroxysm passed. She poured back the laudanum, washed the glass, replaced every thing accurately, and threw herself on the couch. There, overcome by the drug, to which her healthy frame was wholly unaccustomed, she fell into a heavy sleep.

The plea of weariness afforded an excuse for going early to bed. When she awoke the second time, the Campanile clock was striking two. A rain was falling, pattering on the canal, dripping and trickling from the eaves and from the pointed traceries[79] above the windows. She got up, put on a white wrapper, and went out onto the balcony. The rain felt cool on her burning head. It drenched her to the skin, and dripped from her hair. Yet still she stood there, crying bitter tears that brought no relief, shaken with sobs that she with difficulty prevented from becoming cries. She wrung her hands with grief, and passion, and pain. Night added nothing to the darkness in her soul; dawn brought neither light nor hope of change; and when at last she went in from the cold, gray morning light, to change her wet clothes and creep into bed, it was to a second dose of laudanum that she owed the temporary bliss of oblivion.

XI.

"If you're looking for Mr. Nicholas, Miss Vane, he's gone down to the first floor," said Deborah, the morning after Lady Sackvil's visit.

Mary went to Mr. Holston's writing-room; no one was there; passed on through drawing-rooms, dining-room, and ante-chambers, without meeting a soul, and at last found herself standing outside Lady Sackvil's music-room. Knocking and receiving no answer, she opened the door, which moved noiselessly on its hinges, and lifted the heavy crimson curtain. Her husband was standing with his back to the door, leaning against the mantel-piece. Lady Sackvil stood before him, her face buried in her hands. He spoke, but in a voice so hoarse and dissonant that Mary fancied for an instant there was a third person with them.

"Be satisfied with your success, Amelia," he said. "You have lighted the fire of hell in my heart. You have turned my affections away from my wife, who is too pure for things like you and me to love. It may add to your satisfaction to know that there is one person on earth I despise more than Lady Sackvil, and that person is myself."

"How much have you heard?" he asked calmly, without showing either surprise or annoyance.

"Amen," he said, and left the room. Mary was about to follow him, when a look of entreaty from Lady Sackvil checked her. In another instant Amelia was crouching on the ground, her face buried in the folds of Mary's gown. There was dead silence in the room. The ticking of the Louis Quatorze clock on the mantel and the flap of a window-curtain were the only sounds to be heard. Charity pleaded for the wretched woman kneeling at her feet. Nature cried, "Follow him; tear from him some consolation; make him wake you from this nightmare, and say he loves you!" Charity conquered. Mary bent over Lady Sackvil to raise her from the ground; but at the first touch, Amelia lifted her head, exclaiming, "I will never rise; I will die here unless you say you forgive me!"

"How can you ask pardon," replied Mary "for an injury you have only just completed?"

"So help me heaven!" she said in a voice of agony, "I never meant to speak. He came to-day—oh! you who possess him, can't you see how it happened; how I forgot every thing—resolutions, dignity, decency—and spoke?"

"Why do you say I possess him?" asked Mary bitterly. "You heard him say that you had turned away his heart from me."

"I have not turned it toward myself. He repulsed me like a dog. Oh! if there were a hole underground where I could hide, I would crawl into it." And she flung herself on her face with a despairing groan.

Mary knelt down beside her. "We are both in the presence of God," she said; "and I forgive you now even as I hope to be forgiven."

Amelia rose with difficulty, made an effort to reach the bedroom door, tottered, and would have fallen but for Mary's assistance, who unlocked the door and helped her to a sofa. Then, looking round the room for some restorative, her eye rested on a little vial standing in a crimson wine-glass. She took it up and saw that it was labelled "laudanum."

"Only yesterday—never before," Lady Sackvil answered feebly. "It would make me sleep now and do me good. You might give me a few drops; or rather, no, leave it with me," she said, holding out her trembling hand. "I can take it, if necessary, myself."

"Wait a moment," said Mary, and going to the window, she threw the bottle over the railing. Then sitting down beside Amelia, she took the feverish hand in both her own. "Promise me, swear to me, that you will not take that or any other narcotic or stimulant."

"You have prevented me from doing you the only kindness in my power," said Amelia, sitting up and pushing the hair back from her crimson temples. "You have forgiven me; you have treated me like the Christian you profess to be. I meant to repay you by taking myself out of this loathsome world."

"Repay me by living and repenting," answered Mary earnestly. "Promise me not to make an eternity of this passing anguish. There is work for you to do; there is heaven for you to win. Promise me to live, and to live for God."

Lady Sackvil looked at her silently for several minutes. Then she said, "I acknowledge one thing—I acknowledge that you are good, in spite of circumstances." She lay down and turned her face to the wall. "I will live," she said wearily, "if you will help me to live; otherwise I shall die."

"No. If Flora can come, I will have her; otherwise, I would rather be alone. I feel wretched and heavy, and shall fall asleep presently."

Mary found Mrs. Holston in her sitting-room. "Lady Sackvil is ill, and wants you," she said breathlessly; for, now that her duty was done, every minute seemed an age until she could see Nicholas. "Don't stop me, please; I must go." As she put her hand on the hall door, Mr. Holston opened it from outside. She brushed by him without a word; but he saw her blanched face, and followed her with his eyes as she ran up-stairs. "The blow has fallen," he said to himself, as he hung his hat in the hall. "Poor, poor child!"

She went to the study door and turned the handle. It was locked. She paused a moment, thinking her husband would admit her; then walked on through the gallery to her own room, shut the door, and sat down in her little sewing-chair. She was stunned; mercifully stunned. It all seemed a dream, from which there would soon be an awakening. Of course, it could not be true that her husband had shut her out from his confidence. She felt too dull to understand all this. "God knows what it means," she said half-aloud; "I[81] don't." How far from her eyes seemed the tears, crowded back, as it were, to make the weight on her heart more unbearable. "Some women faint or cry out when they are hurt," she thought idly; "I wonder why I don't? I feel so dumb, so gray, so smothered."

A knock came at the nursery door. Dragging one foot after the other, she went and opened it. Deborah started at sight of her face, but made no comment. "It is time to take baby," she said cheerfully. "The cap'n's asking for you. He can't think what's become of you." Mary darted past her and ran out into the gallery.

XII.

Nicholas was sitting at the study table, looking over papers. He rose and drew forward a chair for her, and then sat down again.

"The best thing that could happen, under the circumstances," he said, "has come to pass. I am appointed to join the French army in the Crimea, for purposes of study. Here is the appointment. These are letters from General Scott and from the Secretary of War. Just glance at them, if you please."

"Yes, the best under the circumstances," she repeated after him. He looked at her anxiously, but said nothing.

"What are you to take with you?" she asked, rising from her chair. "I must go and look over your clothes."

"All the military traps I have here, of course; not much besides, for I would rather buy what I want. Don't trouble yourself, my—" He paused. "I will see to every thing."

"I must go and speak to Holston about your money matters while I am gone. He will do every thing a brother could do."

"Every thing," she said. He looked at her again uneasily, and seemed about to speak; then left the room. "I've killed her," he thought; "but words are mere insults now."

He was gone, and without one word of explanation. It was, then, no nightmare, to be dispelled by a change of posture. There was no awakening for her. It was all true!

XIII.

Mary was alone with the baby. Georgina's tiny hand was clasped around her mother's finger; rosy cheek and dewy lip invited many a loving maternal caress. At least here was love, without anxiety or heart-ache. "My love for this child, to whom I have given life, is faint in comparison to God's love for his creatures," she thought. "My soul shall rest on him, as Georgie rests in my arms. He knows the way out of this blackness. I will follow him trustfully."

The day was hard to bear; wife's work without wife's consolation. Sewing, sorting, packing, filled the hours too closely to leave much time for active grief. They were services that could easily have been performed by a servant; but Mary, amid the perplexity which clouded her life, kept one purpose clearly before her—to fulfil her duties thoroughly toward her husband, and even toward the unhappy woman who had poisoned her happiness, and thus prevent further entanglement.

The dinner hour, whose claims prevail[82] over every other external circumstance in life, was lived through, thanks to the presence of Italian servants, who do not expect friends to look happy on the eve of separation, and are ready to melt into tears of sympathy at a moment's warning. Vane passed the evening in his study, transacting business with Mr. Holston and a lawyer; Mary in his dressing-room, attending to "last things."

At intervals through the weary night she heard him moving about in the library. About five o'clock, the peculiar click of the hall door told her that he had gone out. Then came two hours of sleep, and memory's dreadful reckoning when she awoke.

Breakfast was served at nine o'clock. After going through the dismal form which represents eating on such occasions, Nicholas went to the window to watch for the gondola. "Will you come here, Mary?" he said.

She went to him, and measured despairingly, as he talked to her, the gulf which separated them spiritually while they stood side by side.

After giving various directions as to material arrangements during his absence, he said, "I went to confession this morning, and to your Padre Giulio." She looked up eagerly into his sad face, stern with the rigidity of repressed emotion. "After confession, I saw him in his own room, and told him all the circumstances of the last three months, out of the confessional, in order that you may feel free to seek from him the advice and consolation I have shown myself unfit to give you."

"I have no right to urge you," he said; "but you will oblige me very much by speaking to him once, at least, upon the subject. I cannot tell you the weight it added to my self-reproach to find him ignorant of the wrongs you have suffered, knowing as I do the entire confidence you repose in him personally. You have been very loyal to me, Mary; I shall never forget it."

"I have another favor to ask, which I should not ask if you were like other women."

He took a note from his desk, and gave it to her unfolded. "After reading that, I beg you to give it to Lady Sackvil."

She flushed, and a slight trembling passed over her. Then she folded the note and put it into her pocket. "I will give it to her without reading it. I trust you."

Nicholas looked at her with an expression of reverence in his face. "I will earn the right to tell you how deeply I honor you," he said. "Any thing I could say now would appear like a new phase of moral weakness; but I will earn the right to speak."

As Mary met his eyes, fixed upon her with a look of reverential tenderness, her heart cried out for him. She longed to throw herself upon his breast; to urge him to put off this dreadful parting, and treat the wretched delusion he had yielded to as a dream. But something unanswerable within her soul warned her to let him leave her, that his resolutions might grow strong in solitude; that he might learn by aching experience the worth of the love and sympathy he had slighted. Therefore, she only said, "All will be well; I know it, I feel it." And he answered, "I accept your words as a prophecy, and thank God for them. One favor still I must ask. Mary, you will write to me?"

"God bless you. Holston will find out when the mails go. It[83] will be the one happiness of my life to look forward to your letters, which must give me every detail about yourself and about our child. Mary, it will be my one earthly hope to look forward to the time which shall end my exile."

The gondola was at the door, and George Holston had already taken his place in it. Vane clasped his wife's hands in his, kissed them passionately, and rushed from the room.

XIV.

"I never knew her to faint before," Deborah's voice was saying, as Mary emerged from an abyss of peaceful oblivion, to find herself deluged with eau de Cologne, and lying on the bed in her own room.

"Poor little soul!" answered Mrs. Holston's gentle voice. "It was a terrible shock, his going so suddenly. But, hush now, she is coming to herself."

No, not to herself; to a consciousness of nameless agony; to a sense of restlessness, without physical strength for action; to a crushing weight of misery which she must ask no living soul to share.

After some minutes, which seemed like hours of struggling to recover breath, and voice, and senses, she succeeded in thanking her kind nurses, and asking them to leave her alone for a little while.

An hour's solitude had restored her to complete consciousness, when a servant knocked on the door and asked whether she had any further occasion for the gondola, which had returned from carrying Captain Vane to the steamer. Her husband's request that she would see Padre Giulio occurred to her. Life must be taken up somewhere; why not in the performance of that duty, which would become harder with every day it should be deferred?

If she called upon Deborah for assistance, she would be prevented from leaving the house; so her preparations must be made alone. Giving orders for the gondola to wait, she put on hat and shawl with trembling hands, and walked down the long flights of marble stairs, holding on to the balustrade for support. It was useless to attempt her mission in that condition; perhaps an hour's row that soft, gray, overshadowed morning might restore her nerves to equilibrium. "Put up the awning and row on the lagoon for an hour," she said to the gondoliers. "Then take me to the Piazza San Marco without my giving you any further directions."

Through the open windows of the ducal palace she could see tourists wandering about, Murray in hand. Soldiers were lolling under the arcades; sight-seers were hurrying through to and fro, taking advantage of the cool day to get through a double amount of work. A sacristan was cleaning down the steps of Santa Maria della Salute, flinging away the broom, and sitting down to rest after the labor of sweeping each step.

Then came a long period of quiet, broken only by the steady dip of oars, and an occasional remark in gondolier slang made by the two boatmen. Pearly sky and pearly sea, a soft breeze and monotonous motion exercised a soothing influence over poor Mary, who never resisted comfort, no matter in how homely a form it might come. On the steps behind the Armenian convent sat a monk, looking over the lagoon. He was a commonplace old man enough in appearance, some insignificant lay brother resting from his labors in the garden. He saw the boat approach, and noticed probably the expression of suffering[84] on Mary's face; for as she passed, a look of kindness, that was in itself a benediction, came into his wrinkled, brown face, and sank into her poor wounded heart, never to be forgotten. From that day she remembered the old Armenian in her prayers as one who had helped her in the sorest trial of her life.

XV.

In the afternoon came Mrs. Holston, for once in her life in a hurry. "I am ashamed to disturb you," she said to Mary. "I am ashamed to say why I have come. Amelia is behaving in the most extraordinary manner. She refuses to get up, and refuses to see the doctor. She says no one can do her any good except you. I told her she was very selfish, and she said she didn't care; so now I can only ask you, for charity's sake, to come down and speak to her."

"Certainly," said Mary, by a stupendous effort speaking in a natural tone; "I will come in a few minutes. I have a little note for your sister from my husband that she may be glad to get. Did he find time to come and bid you good by?"

"Yes, indeed, but he looked dreadfully worried and unhappy, of course. I think it extremely ill-natured of the War Department to make him leave home so suddenly. That must have been what made you look so frightfully ill yesterday morning. I was very much alarmed about you."

"I will follow you directly," said Mary, escaping to her own room for a moment of preparation before facing the enemy of her peace.

But that her peace was hopelessly shaken, she no longer feared. The interview with Padre Giulio had been full of consolation; for to this impartial listener Vane had said many things that the fear of seeming insincere had prevented him from expressing to his wife. It was plain that delicacy toward herself and compassion for Lady Sackvil had made him leave Venice. She now felt that it would show a lack of faith to doubt that the future would bring happiness to them both; that their reunion would be one such as death itself confirms instead of severing.

She found Lady Sackvil looking enchantingly lovely. Her hair, dark brown, with golden red lights in it, was plaited in two great braids; her cheeks were flushed; her eyes were closed, showing their long lashes and large, full lids to advantage. By the quivering of her lips, Mary knew that she felt who was with her; but it was some minutes before she opened her eyes.

"It was kind in you to come," she said at last, looking up into Mary's face. "I am very grateful. Flora says I'm horribly selfish to send for you, and no doubt I am; but it is better than going crazy, I suppose."

Mary laid her hand on the throbbing forehead, and felt the quick pulses. "Do you feel really ill?" she asked; "or is this merely a state of nervous excitement?"

"I'm not ill. I was never seriously ill in my life. I am only going distracted. I had an idea you might do something for me."

"The first thing to be done is to quiet your nerves and reduce the fever. Then we will think of other remedies. I will get Flora's little medicine-chest, and see what its resources are."

The morning passed quietly in tending Lady Sackvil, varied by occasional visits to the nursery. It was hard to bear, "but no harder than any thing else would be now," thought Mary. "If I can save this poor soul, it will be worth suffering great as this."

By two o'clock, Amelia was physically[85] more tranquil. Her health had always been excellent, and her temperament, though utterly undisciplined, by no means inclined to morbid excitability.

Mary read it through to herself; then, mastering her voice, read aloud the following words:

"I was unjust to you yesterday. I treated you with cruelty. For what has happened, I am more responsible than you, because I have been under better influences. We shall never meet again. God bless you, and grant us both genuine repentance!"

Amelia made no comment or reply. A quarter of an hour later, she said, "You go to confession very often, I suppose?"

"I should like to see him. I don't suppose that I intend going to confession, but I want to talk with such a man. Has he had much to do with making you what you are?"

"He has given me good advice, and I have tried to follow it, if that is what you mean."

"I made up my mind, a short time ago," she said, "that the thing most likely to convince me of the direct influence of God would be to see a Christian whose character would bear scrutiny under the severest test. I have seen such a Christian in you. Most women would have spurned me away in disdain; you have treated me like a sister. I thank you for it, and I should like to believe what you believe."

Mary smiled at the reasoning, but thanked God for the conclusion. "You would find Padre Giulio very sympathizing," she said; "I think it would soothe you to see him. Shall I send for him to come here?"

"On no account. I will go to him if you will come with me. Do come with me; I will bless you all my life," she added pleadingly.

"Of course I will go, but not to-day. If you were to take cold now, it might be the death of you. To-morrow morning we will go to St. Mark's, and I will send him word, that we may be sure of finding him at home."

Lady Sackvil looked disappointed. "I would rather go to-day. I want to have it over."

"There's no occasion to wish to have it over," said Mary soothingly. "An experienced confessor is too well used to dealing with mental suffering to wonder at it, no matter in what shape it comes."

Lady Sackvil lay with her eyes shut a long time. At last she said, "I've not been much of a Bible reader, but I remember well that it required only the sight of one miracle to convert sinners in those days. I suppose sinners are very much the same in the nineteenth century that they were in the first."

"Your conduct toward me is, in my opinion, a greater miracle than the raising of the dead. Nothing but supernatural strength could have sustained you."

"If I have done any thing remarkable, it has certainly been God's doing, not mine."

Lady Sackvil lay still some time longer. Then she said abruptly, "I am clever, I know, but I am not intellectual; and intellectual satisfaction is not what I demand in order to become a Christian. If you were to lay before me all the tomes of all the theologians, they would not convey to my mind one single definite idea."

"Yes, after a fashion. I was carefully prepared for confirmation in a convent school, where I spent six months, while my aunt was in Europe."

"Then you feel more inclined toward Catholicity than to any other form of religion?"

"Certainly. If I am going to be good, I mean to be decidedly so. The church demands more than any sect, and I respect her for that reason. Like St. Christopher, I wish to serve the strongest master. Then, too, the teaching at the convent made a deeper impression on me than I supposed; and now that I need support, it all comes back to me. Last, and not least, I wish to believe as you do. You are the best Christian I have ever seen."

"Your experience in Christians must have been limited, I think," said Mary, smiling.

"Perhaps so; but I am quite satisfied to have you for my standard. Why, are you going? Oh! please don't leave me. I can't bear to be alone."

"I must go now. I will come to-morrow at eleven o'clock, and if you feel equal to the effort, we will go to San Marco."

"I shall feel equal to it physically," said Lady Sackvil. "It's very provoking. I meant to have a brain-fever and die, and I feel better every minute. I wish you had not come to take care of me."

"This is the beginning of your heroic virtue, I suppose," said Mary; "these are the first fruits of conversion. Good-by, neophyte! Disturb yourself about nothing; remember only that God loves us with a love too deep to be fathomed."

And then she went home, and sat down by the ashes that Lady Sackvil had left on her domestic hearth.

XVI.

In the morning, she found Lady Sackvil taking breakfast in her own room, looking pale and worn from the effects of reaction from fever and excitement. "How do you feel?" she asked.

Amelia laid down her egg-spoon, and sank back in her chair. "I wish," she remarked, "that it had pleased Heaven to make some variety in the shape of hen's eggs. I am so tired of seeing them always oval."

"You don't want any of these things, do you?" asked Mary, surveying the rather solid repast on the table.

"Rest on the couch until I come back." And Mary arranged the cushions with a skilful hand, and left the room noiselessly.

Presently she returned, bearing on a pretty little tray a glass filled with some frothy preparation, and two transparent wafers. Amelia revived at the sight. "I have dreamed of such things," she said. "This is the very apotheosis of breakfast!"

XVII.

Mary left Lady Sackvil with Padre Giulio, and went into the church to pray for the happy result of the interview. She had passed some time at the Lady chapel, with its brazen gates and oriental lamps, and before the jewel-incrusted high altar, and was kneeling in the chapel of the Blessed Sacrament, when she heard the door of the confessional behind her open. She looked round. Padre Giulio had entered the confessional; Lady Sackvil was kneeling at the grating.

She was sitting within the railing of the chapel when Amelia joined her. Mary looked at the beautiful creature; there was a peaceful smile on her lips, a holy light in her eyes; the pride, the caprice, the egotism were not there; she looked like a penitent child.

As they passed through one of the sombre side aisles, Amelia paused before the crucifix hanging on the wall. "I have confessed my sins and received absolution," she said; "are you willing to kiss me?"

And so the sign of peace was exchanged before the image of the great reconciler; and they passed out from the shadows of those grand old arches into the sunshine of the Piazza.

THE IRON MASK.

Through an oversight, the article on the Iron Mask in our March number, which had been lying on hand several months, was sent to the printer without its necessary complement, which we now publish.

In January, 1869, it was announced in the Moniteur Universel that M. Marius Topin, a young author who had already distinguished himself by a work of remarkable historical research, had succeeded, by dint of laborious examination and the intelligent study of a mass of old official documents, in unearthing the secret of that sphinx of history—the Man with the Iron Mask.

M. Topin did not at once make known the result of what he claimed to be his entirely triumphant solution of the enigma, and publish his work in book form. He doubtless reflected that, as the world had waited in patient expectation more than a hundred and fifty years for the revelation of the mystery, it might readily summon up sufficient resignation to wait a few months longer. He accordingly announced that the successive chapters of his work would appear from time to time in Le Correspondant, a highly respectable Paris semi-monthly. The first number of his series was published on the 25th of February, 1869, and the last, making seven in all, on the 11th of November. We have received, as they appeared, all the numbers of the Correspondant, and are therefore enabled to present from the author's own articles the following statement of the result of what he has written.

M. Topin could not deny himself that universal enjoyment of the story-teller—to hold his auditors in suspense and on tiptoe of expectation by proposing a varied succession of solutions of the mystery in hand, and dismissing them in turn with a—"Well, that's not it." He takes up, one after the other, the various prétendants to the honor[88] of the Iron Mask's living martyrdom, discusses all the claims in their favor, presents the objections, demonstrates that their position is untenable, orders them off the stage, and passes on to the next; thus successively eliminating them until he reaches his objective point.

M. Topin's first article is preceded by a sort of device, or motto, in the shape of a short extract from an order of Louis XIV.: Il faudra que personne ne sache ce que cet homme sera devenu, (no one must know what has become of this man.) It was noticed that the date of the order is not given. The article opens with a statement of the arrival of M. Saint Mars at the Bastille (Paris) at three P.M., on the 18th of September, 1698. St. Mars was the newly-appointed governor of that prison, and came accompanied by a prisoner whose face was concealed by a mask of black velvet. This prisoner died, and was buried on the 20th of November, 1703, under the name of Marchialy. The extraordinary precautions taken after the death of Marchialy are narrated in our previous number. The dates above given are important in determining the claims of other candidates, inasmuch as the facts and dates connected with the arrival, death, and burial of a masked prisoner at the Bastille are established beyond controversy by official documents, and must be considered in any case presented.

Our author then dilates upon the difficulties of the question, the fact that it has been unsuccessfully treated by fifty-two authors, and finally abandoned as hopeless by historians like Michelet, with the conclusion that the problem of the Man with the Iron Mask will never be solved. Betraying no anxiety whatever to make haste, M. Topin then discusses the merits of several of the most prominent theories and the manner in which they have been presented. The claim that longest held its ground, and enlisted in its advocacy the greatest number of writers, was that made for a supposed and, as has been shown, entirely imaginary twin-brother of Louis XIV., the son of Anne of Austria, wife of Louis XIII. It is easy to understand why, in France, such a version as this should be the favorite one. It possessed every possible element of popularity, intrigue, mystery, illegitimacy, crime, a rightful heir defrauded of his throne, and the association of illustrious names. All these lent their fascinations; and from Voltaire to Alexander Dumas, from the Dictionnaire Philosophique to the Vicomte de Bragelonne, all the resources of writers of their tendency and calibre were called into play to give it currency.

M. Topin devotes nearly the whole of his first article to the demonstration of the fact that the prisoner of the Iron Mask was not and could not have been a son of Anne of Austria. The discussion is thorough, and the demonstration complete. Outside of the question of the Mask one good result is thus obtained. The innocence of Anne of Austria is fully established.

Time brings roses—and justice. Marie Antoinette was first vindicated from the foul aspersions of the "progeny of Voltaire." Now, Anne of Austria is acquitted; and going further back in time—the most distant case being, of course, the most difficult—next comes the turn of Mary Stuart, and her day, we believe, is not far distant.

The claim made for the Count of Vermandois, a son of Louis XIV. and Louise de la Vallière, is next taken up. As all the details of the last illness, death, and burial of the Count of Vermandois are matters of profuse official record, M. Topin has very little trouble in disposing of this case. Then we have the Duke of Monmouth,[89] a natural son of Charles II. of England. Defeated at the battle of Sedgemoor, where the forces under his command were arrayed in armed rebellion against James II., and afterward taken prisoner, he was beheaded in the Tower of London July 15th, 1685. The dispatches of various foreign ministers in London at the time fully establish the fact of his death.

To Monmouth succeeds Francis of Vendôme, Duke of Beaufort. As grand admiral of France, Beaufort commanded the naval expedition sent out to aid the Venetians in their defence of Candia against the Turks in 1669. As in the cases of the two sons of Louis XIV., and Monmouth, the surrounding circumstances give M. Topin the fullest opportunity of indulging in court anecdotes, intrigues, and festivities, mingled with biographical sketches of distinguished personages, so in the case of Beaufort, his history warrants our author in going into all the details of the siege and military and naval operations against the army of the sultan. Beaufort is believed to have been killed in an attack upon the enemy's works, and was last seen in the thickest of a hand-to-hand struggle in the intrenchments. As his body was never recovered, this fact gave the mystery-mongers an advantageous margin. But Beaufort was born in 1616, and the Iron Mask was buried in 1703. Supposing him to be the "Mask," this would make him eighty-seven years old at his death, which, of itself, puts him out of the question.

In his third number, M. Topin introduces the so-called Armenian Patriarch, Avedick. Why he did so is best known to himself; for the case of Avedick has never been presented as one that would give him any right to rank among the claimants for the distinction of the Iron Mask. Taules, and the German historian Hammer, are referred to as authorities for Avedick's claim; but on being examined, they are found totally insufficient as warrants for such a theory. The essential pivot of the question of identity of the Iron Mask is the death and burial of its wearer in 1703. Now, Avedick was still in Turkey in 1706, and that settles his claim beyond question. Avedick was seized by order of the Marquis of Ferriol in the Grecian Archipelago, May, 1706, carried forcibly to France, retained in confinement in various places until September, 1710, when he was liberated. He died in Paris in July, 1711. This was most certainly a case of shameful violation of the law of nations, of power, and of humanity. A case of abominable personal cruelty it also certainly was—but it was not a case of "Iron Mask." Two such outrages as those on the persons of Marchialy and Avedick are quite enough of themselves; to say nothing of certain diplomatic arrangements with the Grand Turk which endangered Christianity and the public peace in Europe—to settle one's opinion as to the genuineness of the glories of the reign of Louis XIV., a Grand Monarque who was not great.

But to return, M. Topin's chapter on the Avedick case, appearing in Le Correspondant of the 10th June, 1869, was followed by an article from the pen of Rev. Father Turquand, S.J., in the September (10th) number of the same periodical, severely attacking the statements of Avedick's case by M. Topin, and vindicating his (Turquand's) society from certain imputations cast upon it in connection with the seizure of Avedick.

In his fourth number, (Oct. 10th,) M. Topin takes up the claim made for Fouquet, whose case differs from all the others in the fact that he was a prisoner of state by sentence of a judicial tribunal. Fouquet's claims were[90] warmly pressed by a very able literary advocate, Paul Lacroix, (Bibliophile Jacob,) in a work published in 1830. But here again the difficulty of dates is insurmountable. Fouquet died in 1680, and there is no proof of the appearance of the Man with the Iron Mask until after that period.

We pass on to another. In the year 1677, the Duke of Mantua was Charles IV. of the illustrious house of Gonzaga. He was young, careless, dissipated, and extravagant. Spending most of his time in Venice, he seldom visited his duchy, except for the purpose of raising money. He gradually fell into the hands of usurious lenders, and continued to obtain the sums he wanted by anticipating, through them, the receipt of the taxes and imposts of his duchy by several years. The Marquisate of Montferrat was among his dependencies. Its little capital, Casal, a fortified place on the Po, fifteen leagues east of Turin, was a point of great strategic importance, and essential to the safety of Piedmont. The court of Turin would not, of course, consent to its possession by France. But to France it was of the highest value, as with Pignerol and Casal it would be master of the situation. This place Louis XIV. wanted to buy, and Charles IV. was perfectly willing to sell it. Ercolo (Hercules) Antonio Mattioli, a young nobleman of the court of Mantua, at this time thirty-seven years of age, was high in favor with the reigning duke. Through Giuliani, an Italian journalist, D'Estrades, Louis XIV.'s ambassador at Venice, sounded Mattioli, and finally, through him, succeeded in opening a negotiation with the duke for the sale of Casal to France.

All three met at Venice in March, 1678, discussed terms, and agreed upon one hundred thousand crowns as the price of the cession. Mattioli then went to Paris to sign the treaty in the name of his master the duke. The treaty was completed in December, 1678, and after its signature, Mattioli was received by Louis XIV. in secret audience, presented by the king with a rich diamond ring and four hundred double Louis d'or, with the promise of a far greater amount of money, the appointment of his son among the royal pages, and a valuable endowment for his mother. The intrigue and negotiation had been admirably managed and crowned with perfect success. Of all who had any interest opposed to the French possession of Casal, not one had the slightest suspicion, and it would have been difficult to imagine the existence of the smallest element of failure in the enterprise.

But the best-laid schemes of men, mice, and monarchs here below oft come to naught. Two months after Mattioli's visit to Paris, the courts of Turin, of Madrid, and of Vienna, the Spanish governor of the Milanese provinces, and the state inquisitors of the Venetian republic—that is to say, all and every one most interested against the execution of the treaty—not only knew of its existence, but were fully advised of every detail concerning it, the names of the negotiators, the date of the instruments, the price of cession, when it was to be made, etc. In short, they knew every thing concerning it. Well they might. Mattioli himself had told them! His motive is a subject of dispute. One theory is, interested motive; another, patriotism. Certain it is he had more to gain—as a mere question of interest—by keeping than by betraying the secret. On this point, though, we do not undertake to judge him. In February, 1679, the Duchess of Savoy advised Louis XIV. that she was in[91] possession of Mattioli's information. The disappointment, the mortification, and the anger of the French king can easily be imagined. He was placed in a position not only dangerous; but what was almost worse, ludicrous. Mattioli had the king's signature to the treaty in his possession, and it was all-important to recover it. The king in Paris, and his minister D'Estrades, both conceived the same idea for remedy in the matter. On the 28th of April, 1679, Louis sent the order to have Mattioli arrested, and on arrival of the order, Mattioli had already (May 2d) been carried off a prisoner. D'Estrades had managed to decoy him across the frontier, at a point where he had a detachment of dragoons waiting, and in a few hours the Italian was a prisoner at Pignerol, the commencement of a captivity that was to endure four and twenty long years. M. Topin then continues the discussion of Mattioli's case, and closes the article, leaving the reader under the impression that he decides against the claim of Mattioli.

Indeed he goes further; for he more than intimates that there is very little probability of ever penetrating the mystery surrounding the Man with the Iron Mask.

The case made for Mattioli has always been the strongest, even before the publication of the work of Mr. J. Delort, which was mostly appropriated by Ellis in his True History of the State Prisoner. Mr. Loiseleur has also discussed the Mattioli claim with great force; so successfully, indeed, that a very large number of critical scholars were satisfied with his adverse demonstration.

M. Topin discusses at great length the facts and the reasoning of Mr. Loiseleur, and, as we have just stated, concludes his sixth article by a decision against Mattioli. But in his concluding chapter (Correspondant, Nov. 10th) he comes to a right-about face, takes up some of Mr. Loiseleur's proofs, adds some new dispatches, and decides that—Mattioli is the French prisoner of state known as the Man with the Iron Mask.

We fear that after all the solution of M. Topin is no solution, and that the only result of his labor is to narrow the discussion down to the claims of Mattioli and another prisoner of unknown name.

THE SCHOOL QUESTION.[13]

The number of The Christian World, the organ of the American and Foreign Christian Union, for February last is entirely taken up with the school question, and professes to give "a carefully digested summary of the views and reasonings of all parties to the controversy." The views and reasonings of the Catholic party are not misstated, but are very inadequately presented; those of the other parties are given more fully, and, we presume, as correctly and as authoritatively as possible. The number does not dispose of the subject; but furnishes us a fitting occasion to make some observations which will at least set forth correctly our views of the school question as Catholics and American citizens.

It is to the credit of the American people that they have, at least the Calvinistic portion of them, from the earliest colonial times, taken a deep interest in the education of the young, and made considerable sacrifices to secure it. The American Congregationalists and Presbyterians, who were the only original settlers of the eastern and middle colonies, have from the first taken the lead in education, and founded, sustained, and conducted most of our institutions of learning. The Episcopalians, following the Anglican Church, have never taken much interest in the education of the people, having been chiefly solicitous about the higher class of schools and seminaries. The Baptists and Methodists have, until recently, been quite indifferent to education. They have now some respectable schools; but the writer of this was accustomed in his youth to hear both Baptists and Methodists preach against college-bred parsons, and a larned ministry. In those States which had as colonies proprietary governments, and in which the Episcopalians, Baptists, and Methodists have predominated, universal education has been, and still is, more or less neglected. Even the Presbyterians, while they have insisted on a learned ministry and the education of the easy classes, have not insisted so earnestly on the education of the children of all classes as have the Congregationalists; and, indeed, it is hardly too much to say that our present system of common schools at the public expense owes its origin to Congregationalists and the influence they have exerted. The system, whatever may be thought of it, has undeniably had a religious, not a secular origin.

The system originated in New England; strictly speaking, in Massachusetts. As originally established in Massachusetts, it was simply a system of parochial schools. The parish and the town were coincident, and the schools of the several school-districts into which the parish was divided were supported by a tax on the population and property of the town, levied according to the grand list or state assessment roll. The parish, at its annual town meeting, voted the amount of money it would raise for schools during the ensuing year, which was collected by the town collector, and expended under the direction of a school committee chosen at the same meeting. Substantially the same system was adopted and followed in New Hampshire and Connecticut. In Vermont, the towns were divided or divisible, under a general law, into school-districts, and each school-district decided for itself the amount of money it would raise for its school, and the mode of raising it. It might raise it by tax levied on the property of the district, or, as it was said, on "the grand list," or per capita on the scholars attending and according to the length of their attendance. In this latter method, which was generally followed, only those who used the schools were taxed to support them. This latter method was, in its essential features, adopted in all, or nearly all, the other States that had a common school system established by law. In Rhode Island and most of the Southern States, the inhabitants were left to their own discretion, to have schools or not as they saw proper, and those who wanted them founded and supported them at their own expense. In none of the States, however, was there developed at first a system of free public schools supported either by a school fund or by a general tax on property levied by the State, though Massachusetts contained such a system in germ.

Gradually, from the proceeds of public lands, from lots of land reserved[93] in each township, especially in the new States, for common schools, and from various other sources, several of the States accumulated a school fund, the income of which, in some instances, sufficed, or nearly sufficed, for the support of free public schools for all the children in the State. This gave a new impulse to the movement for free schools and universal education, or schools founded and supported for all the children of the State at the public expense in whole or in part, either from the income of the school fund or by a public tax. This is not yet carried out universally, but is that to which public sentiment in all the States is tending; and now that slavery is abolished, and the necessity of educating the freedmen is deeply felt, there can be little doubt that it will soon become the policy of every State in the Union.

The schools were originally founded by a religious people for a religious end, not by seculars for a purely secular end. The people at so early a day had not advanced so far as they have now, and did not dream of divorcing secular education from religion. The schools were intended to give both religious and secular education in their natural union, and there was no thought of the feasibility of separating what God had joined together. The Bible was read as a class-book, the catechism was taught as a regular school exercise, and the pastor of the parish visited the schools and instructed them in religion as often as he saw proper. Indeed, he was, it might be said, ex officio the superintendent of the parish schools; and whether he was chosen as committee-man or not, his voice was all potent in the management of the school, in the selection of studies, and in the appointment and dismissal of teachers. The superiority in a religious and moral point of view to the schools as now developed may be seen by contrasting the present moral and religious state of New England with what it was then.

The religion, as we Catholics hold, was defective, and even false; but the principle on which the schools were founded was sound, and worked well in the beginning, did no injustice to any one, and violated no conscience; for Congregationalism was the established religion, and the people were all Congregationalists. Even where there was no established religion and different denominations obtained, conscience was respected; for the character of the school, as well as the religion taught in it, was determined by the inhabitants of the school district, and nobody was obliged to send his children to it, and those only who did send were taxed for its support.

But in none of the States is there now an established religion, and in all there are a great variety of denominations, all invested with equal rights before the state. It is obvious, then, the Massachusetts system cannot in any of them be adopted or continued, and the other system of taxing only those who use the schools cannot be maintained, if the schools are to be supported from the income of public funds, or by a public tax levied alike on the whole population of the district, town, municipality, or State. Here commences the difficulty—and a grave one it is, too—which has as yet received no practical solution, and which the legislatures of the several States are now called upon to solve.

Hitherto the attempt has been made to meet the difficulty by excluding from the public schools what the state calls sectarianism—that is, whatever is distinctive of any particular denomination or peculiar to it—and allowing to be introduced only what is common to all, or, as it is called,[94] "our common Christianity." This would, perhaps, meet the difficulty, if the several denominations were only different varieties of Protestantism. The several Protestant denominations differ from one another only in details or particulars, which can easily be supplied at home in the family, or in the Sunday-school. But this solution is impracticable where the division is not one between Protestant sects only, but between Catholics and Protestants. The difference between Catholics and Protestants is not a difference in details or particulars only, but a difference in principle. Catholicity must be taught as a whole, in its unity and its integrity, or it is not taught at all. It must everywhere be all or nothing. It is not a simple theory of truth or a collection of doctrines; it is an organism, a living body, living and operating from its own central life, and is necessarily one and indivisible, and cannot have any thing in common with any other body. To exclude from the schools all that is distinctive or peculiar in Catholicity, is simply to exclude Catholicity itself, and to make the schools either purely Protestant or purely secular, and therefore hostile to our religion, and such as we cannot in conscience support.

Yet this is the system adopted, and while the law enables non-Catholics to use the public schools with the approbation of their consciences, it excludes the children of Catholics, unless their parents are willing to violate their Catholic conscience, to neglect their duty as fathers and mothers, and expose their children to the danger of losing their faith, and with it the chance of salvation. We are not free to expose our children to so great a danger, and are bound in conscience to do all in our power to guard them against it, and to bring them up in the faith of the church, to be good and exemplary Catholics.

Evidently, then, the rule of allowing only our supposed "common Christianity" to be taught in schools does not solve the difficulty, or secure to the Catholic his freedom of conscience.

The exclusion of the Bible would not help the matter. This would only make the schools purely secular, which were worse than making them purely Protestant; for, as it regards the state, society, morality, all the interests of this world, Protestantism we hold to be far better than no religion—unless you include under its name free-lovism, free-religion, woman's-rightsism, and the various other similar isms struggling to get themselves recognized and adopted, and to which the more respectable Protestants, we presume, are hardly less opposed than we are. If some Catholics in particular localities have supposed that the exclusion of the Protestant Bible from the public schools would remove the objection to them as schools for Catholic children, they have, in our opinion, fallen into a very great mistake. The question lies deeper than reading or not reading the Bible in the schools, in one version or another. Of course, our church disapproves the Protestant version of the Bible, as a faulty translation of a mutilated text; but its exclusion from the public schools would by no means remove our objections to them. We object to them not merely because they teach more or less of the Protestant religion, but also on the ground that we cannot freely and fully teach our religion and train up our children in them to be true and unwavering Catholics; and we deny the right of the State, the city, the town, or the school district, to tax us for schools in which we are not free to do so.

We value education, and even universal education—which overlooks no[95] class or child, however rich or however poor, however honored or however despised—as highly as any of our countrymen do or can; but we value no education that is divorced from religion and religious culture. Religion is the supreme law, the one thing to be lived for; and all in life, individual or social, civil or political, should be subordinated to it, and esteemed only as means to the eternal end for which man was created and exists. Religious education is the chief thing, and we wish our children to be accustomed, from the first dawning of reason, so to regard it, and to regard whatever they learn or do as having a bearing on their religious character or their duty to God. Mr. Bulwer—now Lord Lytton—as well as many other literary men of eminence, have written much on the danger of a purely intellectual culture, or of the education of the intellect divorced from that of the heart, or sentiments and affections. We hold that education, either of the intellect or of the heart, or of both combined, divorced from faith and religious discipline, is dangerous alike to the individual and to society. All education should be religious, and intended to train the child for a religious end; not for this life only, but for eternal life; for this life is nothing if severed from that which is to come.

Even for this world, for civilization itself, the religious education which the church gives is far better than any so-called secular education without it. The church has not always been able to secure universal secular education for all her children; but there can be no question that the illiterate classes of Catholic nations are far more civilized and better trained than are the corresponding classes of Protestant nations. There is no comparison in personal dignity, manliness, self-respect, courtesy of manner, refined feeling, and delicate sentiment, between an unlettered Italian, French, Spanish, or Irish peasant, and an unlettered Protestant German, English, or American. The one is a cultivated, a civilized man; the other is a boor, a clown, coarse and brutal, who perpetually mistakes impudence for independence, and proves his self-respect by his indifference or insults to others. The difference is due to the difference of religion and religious culture; not, as is sometimes pretended, to difference of race. The church civilizes the whole nation that accepts her; only the upper classes in Protestant nations are civilized.

Of course, we do not and can not expect, in a state where Protestants have equal rights with Catholics before the state, to carry our religion into public schools designed equally for all. We have no right to do it. But Protestants have no more right to carry their religion into them than we have to carry ours; and carry theirs they do, when ours is excluded. Their rights are equal to ours, and ours are equal to theirs; and neither does nor can, in the eyes of the state, override the other. As the question is a matter of conscience, and therefore of the rights of God, there can be no compromise, no splitting of differences, or yielding of the one party to the other. Here comes up the precise difficulty. The state is bound equally to recognize and respect the conscience of Protestants and of Catholics, and has no right to restrain the conscience of either. There must, then, be a dead-lock, unless some method can be discovered or devised by which the public schools can be saved without lesion either to the Protestant or the Catholic.

Three solutions have been suggested: 1. The first is to exclude the Bible and all religious teaching, or recognition, in any way, shape, or[96] manner, of religion, from the public schools. This is the infidel or secular solution, and, so far as Catholics are concerned, is no solution at all. It is simple mockery. What we demand is, not that religion be excluded from the schools, but schools in which we can teach freely and fully our own religion to our own children. It is precisely these purely secular schools, in which all education is divorced from religion—from the faith, precepts, services, and discipline of the church, as well as education combined with a false religion—that we oppose. Nor will this solution satisfy the more respectable Protestant denominations, as is evident from the tenacity with which they insist on reading the Bible in the schools. They do not believe any more than we do in the utility, or even practicability, of divorcing what is called secular learning from religion. All education, they hold, as well as we, that is not religious, is necessarily anti-religious. This is a case in which there is and can be no neutrality. We find this conclusively shown by some remarks in The Christian World before us, credited to Professor Tayler Lewis, the most learned and able thinker we are acquainted with among our Protestant contemporaries. The professor's remarks are so true, so sensible, and so much to our purpose, that, though not so brief as we could wish, our readers will hardly fail to thank us for transcribing them:

Neither Catholics nor Protestants who believe at all in religion will consent to be taxed to support infidel, pantheistic, or atheistic education; and all so-called purely secular education is really nothing else. The temporal separated from the eternal,[98] the universe from its Creator, is nothing, and can be no object of science. The first suggested solution must then be abandoned, and not be entertained for a moment by the state, unless it is bent on suicide; for the basis of the state itself is religion, and is excluded in excluding all religious ideas and principles.

2. The second solution suggested is to adopt in education the voluntary system, as we do in religion, and leave each denomination to maintain schools for its own children at its own expense. We could accept this solution, as Catholics, without any serious objection; but we foresee some trouble in disposing of the educational funds held by several of the States in trust for common schools, academies, and colleges, and in determining to whom shall belong the school-houses, and academy and college buildings and fixtures, erected, in whole or in part, at the public expense. Besides, this would break up the whole public school system, and defeat the chief end it contemplates—that of providing a good common education for all the children of the land, especially the children of the poorer classes. Catholics, Presbyterians, Congregationalists, and Episcopalians would establish and support schools, each respectively for their own children; but some other denominations might not, and the infidels, and that large class called nothingarian, most certainly would not. Only they who believe in some religion see enough of dignity in man, or worth in the human soul, to make the sacrifice of a penny for education. The Darwins, the Huxleys, the Lyells, and other unbelieving scientists of the day, were never educated in schools, academies, colleges, or universities founded by infidels. They graduated from schools founded by the faith and piety of those who believed in God, in creation, in Christ, in the life and immortality brought to light in the Gospel; and if they have devoted themselves to severe studies, it has not been from love of science, but in the ignoble hope of being able to dispense, in the explanation of nature, with God the Creator, and to prove that man is only a monkey developed, a condensed gas, or, as Dr. Cabanis defined him, simply "a digestive tube open at both ends."

Moreover, though we deny the competency of the state to act as educator, we hold that its duty toward both religion and education is something more than negative. We hold that it has positive duties to perform in regard to each. It cannot decide what religion its citizens shall accept and obey; but it is bound to protect its citizens in the free and full enjoyment of the religion they adopt for themselves. We cannot, for the sake of carrying a point which we hold to be true and certain to be of great importance, ally ourselves with infidels, or lay down as a universal principle what our church has never approved, and what we may in the change of the tide be ourselves obliged to disavow. The state, with all its powers and functions, exists for religion, and is in all its action subordinated to the eternal end of man. As the church teaches, and as the New England Puritans held, this world is never the end; it is only a means to an end infinitely above itself. We will never dishonor truth so much as to concede for a moment that the state is independent of religion; that it may treat religion, as a coördinate power with itself, with indifference, or look down upon it with haughty contempt, as beneath its notice, or to be pushed aside if it comes in its way. It is as much[99] bound to consult the spiritual end of man, and to obey the law of God, which overrides all other laws, as is the individual.

We, of course, deny the competency of the state to educate, to say what shall or shall not be taught in the public schools, as we deny its competency to say what shall or shall not be the religious belief and discipline of its citizens. We, of course, utterly repudiate the popular doctrine that so-called secular education is the function of the state. Yet, while we might accept this second solution as an expedient, we do not approve it, and cannot defend it as sound in principle. It would break up and utterly destroy the free public school system, what is good as well as what is evil in it; and we wish to save the system by simply removing what it contains repugnant to the Catholic conscience—not to destroy it or lessen its influence. We are decidedly in favor of free public schools for all the children of the land, and we hold that the property of the state should bear the burden of educating the children of the state—the two great and essential principles of the system, and which endear it to the hearts of the American people. Universal suffrage is a mischievous absurdity without universal education; and universal education is not practicable unless provided for at the public expense. While, then, we insist that the action of the state shall be subordinated to the law of conscience, we yet hold that it has an important part to perform, and that it is its duty, in view of the common weal, and of its own security as well as that of its citizens, to provide the means of a good common school education for all its children, whatever their condition, rich or poor, Catholics or Protestants. It has taken the American people over two hundred years to arrive at this conclusion, and never by our advice shall they abandon it.

3. The first and second solutions must then be dismissed as unsatisfactory. The first, because it excludes religion, and makes the public schools nurseries of infidelity and irreligion. The second, because it breaks up and destroys the whole system of free public schools, and renders the universal education demanded by our institutions impracticable, or unlikely to be given, and in so far endangers the safety, the life, and prosperity of the republic. We repeat it, what we want is not the destruction of the system, but simply its modification so far as necessary to protect the conscience of both Catholics and Protestants in its rightful freedom. The modification necessary to do this is much slighter than is supposed, and, instead of destroying or weakening the system, would really perfect it and render it alike acceptable to Protestants and to Catholics, and combine both in the efforts necessary to sustain it. It is simply to adopt the third solution that has been suggested, namely, that of dividing the schools between Catholics and Protestants, and assigning to each the number proportioned to the number of children each has to educate. This would leave Catholics free to teach their religion and apply their discipline in the Catholic schools, and Protestants free to teach their religion and apply their discipline in the Protestant schools. The system, as a system of free schools at the public expense, with its fixtures and present machinery, would remain unimpaired; and a religious education, so necessary to society as well as to the soul, could be given freely and fully to all, without the slightest lesion to any one's conscience, or interference with the full and entire religious freedom which is guaranteed by our constitution to[100] every citizen. The Catholic will be restored to his rights, and the Protestant will retain his.

This division was not called for in New England in the beginning; for then the people were all of one and the same religion; nor when only those who used the schools were taxed for their support. It was not needed even when there were only Protestants in the country. In demanding it now, we cast no censure on the original founders of our public schools. But now, when the system is so enlarged as to include free schools for all the children of the state at the public expense, and Catholics have become and are likely to remain a notable part of the population of the country, it becomes not only practicable, but absolutely necessary, if religious liberty or freedom of conscience for all citizens is to be maintained; and it were an act of injustice to Catholics, whose conscience chiefly demands the division, and a gross abuse of power, to withhold it. It may be an annoyance to Protestants that Catholics are here; but they are here, and here they will remain; and it is never the part of wisdom to resist the inevitable. Our population is divided between Catholics and Protestants, and the only sensible course is for each division to recognize and respect the equal rights of the other before the State.

One objection of a practical character has been brought against the division by the New York Tribune. That journal says that, if the division could be made in cities and large towns, it would still be impracticable in the sparsely settled districts of the country, where the population is too small to admit, without too great an expense, of two separate schools, one Catholic and one Protestant. The objection is one that is likely to diminish in force with time. In such districts let each school receive its pro rata amount of the public money: if too little, let Catholic charity make up the deficiency for the Catholic, and Protestant charity for the Protestant school. Besides, in these sparsely settled districts there are few Catholics, and their children are far less exposed than in cities, large towns, and villages.

The more common objection urged is, that if separate schools are conceded to Catholics, they must not only be conceded to the Israelites, but also to each Protestant denomination. To the Israelites, we grant, if they demand them. To each Protestant denomination, not at all, unless each denomination can put in an honest plea of conscience for such division. All Protestant denominations, without a single exception, unless it be the Episcopalians, unite in opposing the division we ask for, and in defending the system as it is, which proves that they have no conscientious objections to the public schools as they are now constituted and conducted. The division to meet the demands of the Catholic conscience would necessitate no change at all in the schools not set apart for Catholic children; and the several denominations that are not conscientiously opposed to them now could not be conscientiously opposed to them after the division. We cannot suppose that any denomination of Protestants would consent to support a system of education that offends its own conscience for the sake of doing violence to the conscience of Catholics. Do not all American Protestants profess to be the sturdy champions of freedom of conscience, and maintain that where conscience begins there the secular authority ends? If the present schools do violence to no Protestant conscience, as we presume from their defence of them they do not, no Protestant[101] denomination can demand a division in its favor on the plea of conscience; and to no other plea is the state or the public under any obligation to listen. If, however, there be any denomination that can in good faith demand separate schools on the plea of conscience, we say at once let it have them, for such a plea, when honest, overrides every other consideration.

But we are asked what shall be done with the large body of citizens who are neither Catholic nor Protestant? Such citizens, we reply, have no religion; and they who have no religion have no conscience that people who have religion are bound to respect. If they refuse to send their children either to the Hebrew schools or the Catholic schools, or, in fine, to the Protestant schools, let them found schools of their own, at their own expense. The constitutions of the several States guarantee to each and every citizen the right to worship God according to the dictates of his own conscience; but this is not guaranteeing to any one the freedom of not worshipping God, to deny his existence, to reject his revelation, or to worship a false God. The liberty guaranteed is the liberty of religion, not the liberty of infidelity. The infidel has, under our constitution and laws, the right of protection in his civil and political equality; but none to protection in his infidelity, since that is not a religion, but the denial of all religion. He cannot plead conscience in its behalf, for conscience presupposes religion; and where there is no religious faith, there is, of course, no conscience. It would be eminently absurd to ask the state to protect infidelity, or the denial of all religion; for religion, as we have said, is the only basis of the state, and for the state to protect infidelity would be to cut its own throat.

These are, we believe, all the plausible objections that can be urged against the division of the public schools we demand; for we do not count as such the pretence of some over-zealous Protestants that it is necessary to detach the children of Catholics from the Catholic Church in order that they may grow up thorough Americans; and as the public schools are very effectual in so detaching them, and weakening their respect for the religion of their parents, and their reverence for their clergy, they ought on all patriotic grounds to be maintained in full vigor as they are. We have heard this objection from over-zealous Evangelicals, and still oftener from so-called Liberal Christians and infidels; we have long been told that the church is anti-American, and can never thrive in the United States; for she can never withstand the free and enlightened spirit of the country, and the decatholicizing influence of our common schools; and we can hardly doubt that some thought of the kind is at the bottom of much of the opposition the proposed division of the public schools has encountered. But we cannot treat it as serious; for it is evidently incompatible with the freedom of conscience which the state is bound by its constitution to recognize and protect, for Catholics as well as for Protestants. The state has no right to make itself a proselyting institution for or against Protestantism, for or against Catholicity. It is its business to protect us in the free and full enjoyment of our religion, not to engage in the work of unmaking our children of their Catholicity. The case is one of conscience, and conscience is accountable to no civil tribunal. All secular authority and all secular considerations whatever must yield to conscience. In questions of conscience the law of God governs, not[102] a plurality of votes. The state abuses its authority if it sustains the common schools as they are with a view of detaching our children from their Catholic faith and love. If Catholics cannot retain their Catholic faith and practice and still be true, loyal, and exemplary American citizens, it must be only because Americanism is incompatible with the rights of conscience, and that would be its condemnation, not the condemnation of Catholicity. No nationality can override conscience; for conscience is catholic, not national, and is accountable to God alone, who is above and over all nations, all principalities and powers, King of kings and Lord of lords. But the assumption in the objection is not true. It mistakes the opinion of the American people individually for the constitution of the American state. The American state is as much Catholic as it is Protestant, and really harmonizes far better with Catholicity than with Protestantism. We hold that, instead of decatholicizing Catholic children, it is far more necessary, if we are to be governed by reasons of this sort, to unmake the children of Protestants of their Protestantism. We really believe that, in order to train them up to be, in the fullest sense, true, loyal, and exemplary American citizens, such as can alone arrest the present downward tendency of the republic, and realize the hopes of its heroic and noble-hearted founders, they must become good Catholics.

But this is a question of which the state can take no cognizance. We have under its constitution no right to call upon it to aid us, directly or indirectly, in unmaking Protestant children of their Protestantism. Of course, before God, or in the spiritual order, we recognize no equality between Catholicity and Protestantism. Before God, no man has any right to be of any religion but the Catholic, the only true religion, the only religion by which men can be raised to union with God in the beatific vision. But before the American state, we recognize in Protestants equal rights with our own. They have the same right to be protected by the state in the freedom of their conscience that we have to be protected by it in the freedom of ours. We should attack the very freedom of conscience the state guarantees to all her citizens, were we to call upon it to found or to continue a system of public schools, at the public expense, intended or fitted to detach Protestant children from the religion of their parents, and turn them over to be brought up in the Catholic religion. We should prove ourselves decidedly un-American in so doing. Yet, we regret to say, this is precisely what the non-catholic majority, inconsiderately we trust, are doing; and, if the popular ministers of the several sects, like Dr. R. W. Clark, Dr. Sheldon, Dr. Bellows, Henry Ward Beecher, and the sectarian and secular press have their way, they will continue to do to the end of the chapter to us Catholics. They probably are not aware that they belie the Americanism they profess, and abuse the power their superiority of numbers gives them to tyrannize over the consciences of their fellow-citizens. This strikes us as very un-American, as well as very unjust.

We place our demand for separate schools on the ground of conscience, and therefore of right—the right of God as well as of man. Our conscience forbids us to support schools at the public expense from which our religion is excluded, and in which our children are taught either what we hold to be a false or mutilated religion, or no religion at all. Such schools are perilous to the souls of our children; and we dare avow,[103] even in this age of secularism and infidelity, that we place the salvation of the souls of our children above every other consideration. This plea of conscience, which we urge from the depth of our souls, and under a fearful sense of our accountability to our Maker, ought to suffice, especially in an appeal to a state bound by its own constitution to protect the rights of conscience for each and all of its citizens, whether Protestant or Catholic.

One thing must be evident from past experience, that our children can be brought up to be good and orderly citizens only as Catholics, and in schools under the supervision and control of their church, in which her faith is freely and fully taught, and her services, discipline, and influences are brought to bear in forming their characters, restraining them from evil, and training them to virtue. We do not say that, even if trained in Catholic schools, all will turn out to be good practical Catholics and virtuous members of society; for the church does not take away free-will, nor eradicate all the evil propensities of the flesh; but it is certain that they cannot be made such in schools in which the religion of their parents is reviled as a besotted superstition, and the very text-books of history and geography are made to protest against it; or in which they are accustomed to hear their priests spoken of without reverence, Protestant nations lauded as the only free and enlightened nations of the earth, Catholic nations sneered at as ignorant and enslaved, and the church denounced as a spiritual despotism, full of craft, and crusted all over with corruption both of faith and morals. Such schools may weaken their reverence for their parents, even detach them from their church, obscure, if not destroy their faith, render them indifferent to religion, indocile to their parents, disobedient to the laws; but they cannot inspire them with the love of virtue, restrain their vicious or criminal propensities, or prevent them from associating with the dangerous classes of our large towns and cities, and furnishing subjects for the correctional police, our jails, penitentiaries, state prisons, and the gallows.

We are pointed to the vicious and criminal population of our cities, of which we furnish more than our due proportion, as a conclusive argument against the moral tendency of our religion, and a savage howl of indignation, that rings throughout the land, is set up against the legislature or the municipality that ventures to grant us the slightest aid in our struggles to protect our children from the dangers that beset them, though bearing no proportion to the aid granted to non-Catholics. Yet it is precisely to meet cases like ours that a public provision for education is needed and supposed to be made. Protestants make the great mistake of trying to cure the evil to which we refer by detaching our children from the church, and bringing them up bad Protestants, or without any religion. The thousand and one associations and institutions formed by Protestant zeal and benevolence for the reformation or the bringing up of poor Catholic children, and some of which go so far as to kidnap little papist orphans or half orphans, lock them up in their orphan asylums, where no priest can enter, change their names so that their relatives cannot trace them, send them to a distance, and place them in Protestant families, where it is hoped they will forget their Catholic origin, all proceed from the same mistake, and all fail to arrest, or even to lessen, the growing evil. They necessarily provoke the opposition and resistance of the Catholic pastors, and of all earnest Catholics, who regard the loss[104] of their faith as the greatest calamity that can befall Catholic children. So long as faith remains, however great the vice or the crime, there is something to build on, and room to hope for repentance, though late, for reformation and final salvation. Faith once gone, all is gone.

It is necessary to understand that the children of Catholics must be trained up in the Catholic faith, in the Catholic Church, to be good exemplary Catholics, or they will grow up bad citizens, the pests of society. Nothing can be done for them but through the approval and coöperation of the Catholic clergy and the Catholic community. The contrary rule, till quite recently, has been adopted, and public and private benevolence has sought to benefit our children by disregarding, or seeking to uproot, their Catholic faith, and rejecting the coöperation of the Catholic clergy. The results are apparent to all not absolutely blinded by their misdirected zeal.

The public has not sufficiently considered that by the law excluding our religion from the public schools, the schools as established by law are Protestant schools, at least so far as they are not pagan or godless. We do not suppose the state ever intended to establish Protestantism as the exclusive religion of the schools; but such is the necessary result of excluding, no matter under what pretext, the teaching of our religion in them. Exclude Catholicity, and what is left? Nothing of Christianity but Protestantism, which is simply Christianity minus the Catholic Church, her faith, precepts, and sacraments. At present the state makes ample provision for the children of Protestants, infidels, or pagans; but excludes the children of Catholics, unless we consent to let them be educated in Protestant schools, and brought up Protestants, so far as the schools can bring them up.

Now, we protest in the name of equal rights against this manifest injustice. There is no class of the community more in need of free public schools than Catholics, and none are more entitled to their benefit; for they constitute a large portion of the poorer and more destitute classes of the community. We can conceive nothing more unjust than for the state to provide schools for Protestants, and even infidels, and refuse to do it for Catholics. To say that Catholics have as free access to the public schools as Protestants, is bitter mockery. Protestants can send their children to them without exposing them to lose their Protestantism; but Catholics cannot send their children to them without exposing them to the loss of their Catholicity. The law protects their religion in the public schools by the simple fact of excluding ours. How then say these schools are as free to us as they are to them? Is conscience of no account?

We take it for granted that the intention of the state is that the public schools should be accessible alike to Catholics and Protestants, and on the same risks and conditions. We presume it has had no more intention of favoring Protestants at the expense of Catholics, than Catholics at the expense of Protestants. But it can no longer fail to see that its intention is not, and cannot be realized by providing schools which Protestants can use without risk to their Protestantism, and none which Catholics can use without risk to their Catholicity. As the case now stands, the law sustains Protestantism in the schools and excludes Catholicity. This is unjust to Catholics, and deprives us, in so far as Catholics, of all benefit to be derived from the public schools supported at the public expense. Were[105] the law to admit Catholicity, it would necessarily exclude Protestantism, which would be equally unjust to Protestants. Since, then, Catholicity and Protestantism mutually exclude each other, and as the state is bound to treat both with equal respect, it is not possible for it to carry out its intention and do justice to both parties, but by dividing the schools, and setting apart for Catholics their proportion of them, in which the education shall be determined and controlled by their church, though remaining public schools supported at the public expense, under the provisions of a general law as now.

This would be doing for its Catholic citizens only what it now does for its Protestant citizens only; in fact, only what is done in France, Austria, and Prussia. The division would enable us to bring all our children into schools under the influence and management of our pastors, and to do whatever the church and a thoroughly religious education can do to train them up to be good Catholics, and therefore orderly and peaceful members of society, and loyal and virtuous American citizens. It would also remove some restraint from the Protestant schools, and allow them more freedom in insisting on whatever is doctrinal and positive in their religion than they now exercise. The two classes of schools, though operating separately, would aid each other in stemming the tide of infidelity and immorality, now setting in with such fearful rapidity, and apparently resistless force, threatening the very existence of our republic. The division would operate in favor of religion, both in a Catholic sense and in a Protestant sense, and therefore tend to purify and preserve American society. It would restore the schools to their original intention, and make them, what they should be, religious schools.

The enemy which the state, which Catholics, and which Protestants have alike to resist and vanquish by education is the irreligion, pantheism, atheism, and immorality, disguised as secularism, or under the specious names of science, humanity, free-religion, and free-love, which not only strike at all Christian faith and Christian morals, but at the family, the state, and civilized society itself. The state has no right to regard this enemy with indifference, and on this point we accept the able arguments used by the serious Protestant preachers and writers cited in the number of The Christian World before us against the exclusion of the Bible and all recognition of religion from the public schools. The American state is not infidel or godless, and is bound always to recognize and actively aid religion as far as in its power. Having no spiritual or theological competency, it has no right to undertake to say what shall or shall not be the religion of its citizens; it must accept, protect, and aid the religion its citizens see proper to adopt, and without partiality for the religion of the majority any more than the religion of the minority; for in regard to religion the rights and powers of minorities and majorities are equal. The state is under the Christian law, and it is bound to protect and enforce Christian morals and its laws, whether assailed by Mormonism, spiritism, free-lovism, pantheism, or atheism.

The modern world has strayed far from this doctrine, which in the early history of this country nobody questioned. The departure may be falsely called progress, and boasted of as a result of "the march of intellect;" but it must be arrested, and men must be recalled to the truths they[106] have left behind, if republican government is to be maintained, and Christian society preserved. Protestants who see and deplore the departure from the old landmarks will find themselves unable to arrest the downward tendency without our aid, and little aid shall we be able to render them unless the church be free to use the public schools—that is, her portion of them—to bring up her children in her own faith, and train them to be good Catholics. There is a recrudescence of paganism, a growth of subtle and disguised infidelity, which it will require all that both they and we can do to arrest. Fight, therefore, Protestants, no longer us, but the public enemy.[14]

THE NEW ENGLANDER ON THE "MORAL RESULTS OF THE ROMISH SYSTEM."[15]

The reply of the New Englander to our articles of September and October last is bristling with the most palpable and absurd mistakes. We call them "mistakes" through the utmost stretch of Christian charity, for there is really no excuse to be made for them. We cannot excuse them by allowing either their author or the editors of the New Englander the benefit of the plea of ignorance; for they were bound to inform themselves on a grave matter which they profess to treat of; nor that of haste and carelessness. They have had at least three months for a reply, and were at liberty to take three months more, if necessary; and to plead carelessness in such a matter is equivalent to a confession of culpable negligence and want of moral principle. They were bound by the principles of the Christian religion not to exaggerate or convey in any way a worse impression of their fellow-Christians than the exact truth would warrant, according to the words of St. Paul, "Charity is kind, thinketh no evil, ... is not puffed up;" which we might paraphrase in this way: Is not pharisaically inclined to exalt one's self at the expense of one's neighbor, or at the sacrifice of the truth. The New Englander has made use of every artifice; and, trusting to the unsuspecting ignorance or uncritical spirit of the community, of a shameful perversion of the truth to effect this unworthy and unchristian object. We speak severely because it[107] is time the public, both Catholic and Protestant, should frown upon such practices, and endeavor to approach Christian unity by the practice of the most ordinary Christian virtues. We shall now proceed to make good our allegations against the New Englander.

1st. The New Englander makes a comparison of the provinces of Catholic and Protestant countries, prefaced by the following introduction:

Would our readers credit it, that he has done nothing of the kind? He has not compared the Protestant and Catholic provinces of Protestant Prussia and Roman Catholic Austria, between which, and which alone, the parallel comparison of cities was made; but substituted another comparison, entirely his own, introducing provinces belonging to other countries to weigh down the Catholic scale, and excluding half the Catholic provinces of Austria for the same purpose. This we will show to a demonstration. Here is the table of the New Englander:

We repeat, the question as put by the New Englander itself is not about German provinces, but of the Protestant and Roman Catholic provinces of Prussia and Austria. Moreover, the table as it stands is grossly untrue. The rate of illegitimacy of the province of Prussia is 9 instead of 6.7, which materially alters the general average.

The true averages found by balancing the populations and the rates, according to the rules of arithmetic, are:

Besides these grave blunders, the New Englander, professing to give a statement of the German provinces by taking Germany, "province by province," has omitted many German provinces, which omission very materially affects the result. We take the liberty of putting them in to show how "economical" of truth the New Englander has been.

We shall now proceed to do what the New Englander professed to do, but merely shifting the question, has not done, namely, compare the Catholic and Protestant provinces of Protestant Prussia and Roman Catholic Austria, province by province, as they existed previous to the last war, to correspond to the comparison of the cities of these countries which were contained within these limits. Milan, as well as Lemburg and Zara, are put down among the Austrian cities. We shall give the corresponding provinces:

We have thus shown, by a mathematical demonstration, that the words which the New Englander found convenient to put in our mouths, though we really said nothing of the kind, that "if the returns of the provinces were brought into the account, they would more than redress the balance of the cities," are sufficiently made good. We are glad he "proceeded to put our proposition to experiment," and we caution him when he makes any more experiments of this kind to reflect that, whatever may be the judgment of an uncritical public prepared to take his statements without examination, his artifices, misstatements, and false conclusions are sure to be detected by any well-informed reader who will take the trouble of examining them. The result of the comparison of the Protestant and Roman Catholic provinces of Austria and Prussia sums up in this fashion:

We have thus finished this part of our task, strictly confining ourselves to the provinces in question; but as it seems more complete to add the other German provinces on both sides, of which returns are given, we do so with the following result:

We dismiss the New Englander from the examination of provinces with the conviction that he ought now to become a wiser if not a better man.

2dly. The New Englander gives us another division of his work, entitled thus, "3. Comparison of mixed populations," the object of which seems to be two-fold: 1st, To show the wonderful effect of a little Protestant salt in a mass of Catholic corruption; and 2dly, to push up the rate of Catholic Austria to a high figure by excluding the best half of it, and thus to come out with flying colors in the grand tabular statement of all the European countries. He commences with the following round but very novel statement: "The empire of Austria includes a population of 31,655,746; of these, 21,082,801 or two thirds, are non-Romanists, belonging to the Protestant church or Greek Church."

by which specimen we may form a [109]good judgment of the general accuracy of the New Englander.

He goes on, "In nine of the Austrian provinces the population is almost exclusively Roman Catholic. In seven, the Roman Catholics are, on an average, in a minority of 46 per cent." He proves these assertions by a table of

accompanied by the following remark: "This falling of the rate of illegitimacy from twenty-one to six, when the proportion of Romanists to the population falls off from ninety-seven to forty-six, indicates the salutary effect of Protestant Christianity, not only on its own followers, but also on the working of Romanism itself." But suppose the population does not fall off from ninety-seven to forty-six per cent, and that in most of these provinces, and where the rate of illegitimacy is the lowest, there are no Protestants at all, and a small proportion in the rest; what is shown, then, unless it be the ignorance and bad faith of the New Englander, which professes to be the "recognized exponent of those views of religious life which have given character to New England, and its essays to be among the best fruits of thought and opinion which the education given at Yale is adapted to foster"? Alas! Messrs. Editors, you have unceremoniously dropped nearly 4,000,000 of Roman Catholics from your computation. Are you not aware that the United Greeks are Roman Catholics? If you are not, we beg leave to enlighten you, and correct the table you have so ostentatiously paraded before the public:

The "salutary effect of Protestant Christianity in" Galicia, Bukowina, Dalmatia, Militärgrenze, Croatia, etc., is wonderful, and indeed little short of miraculous, considering how exceedingly small the quantity of it is. If the presence of one per cent of Protestants can so ameliorate the condition of things in Galicia, what a land of heavenly purity Connecticut must be! But we arouse ourselves to finish our task, or we shall become entirely absorbed in these sublime reflections.

The New Englander's "experiment" with mixed populations is an entire failure. We will give a much more reliable table, to show the influence of the Catholic and Protestant religion among people of the same race, and living together in the same communities, and under the same laws. The census of illegitimacy has been taken in Prussia according to the religious faith of the people.

We take our leave of the "comparison of mixed populations." If the New Englander is satisfied with our treatment of the subject, we are sure we are with his; for it enables us to put this matter once more before an enlightened public, leaving them to form their own opinions about it.

We now come to the New Englander's final division of the subject: "4. Comparison of nations."

Here is the grand extinguisher of all Catholic pretensions. The whole question is to be put in a nut-shell in the following table, and that according to the very criterion proposed by The Catholic World.

What strikes us first of all is the richness of these averages. Dear New Englander, you will be the death of us with your averages. Not that we shall literally be killed off by them; but when we think of the "best fruits" of the scholarship of Yale College producing such averages, by adding up a lot of rates of all sorts of countries, big and little, and dividing the sum by the number of countries, the idea is absurd enough to kill any one with laughter. Exuberance of fancy has evidently exercised an unfavorable influence on the mathematical ability of the author of this article, and neutralized the effect of the excellent mathematical course given at Yale College.

We find in the table Italy and Spain marked with a note of interrogation, as much as to say, "What business have you here with such low averages? You ought to look a great deal worse than that, being such black and benighted Romanist countries as you are." And after them the word "defective" in brackets. No doubt the best of reasons will be given for this. Let us see. "The returns for Italy and Spain are utterly defective and untrustworthy. Assuming the ordinary birth-rate, the returns show that in Italy more than one fourth of the births fail to be registered." Why does not the New Englander give the figures, that we may judge for ourselves? What he has not done we will do for him:

The population of Italy is 24,231,860, and the birth-rate of Europe, according to the New Englander, is 1 to 28. Dividing the number of the population by 28, we get 865,608. The number of actual births exceeds the number expected, instead of being defective by "more than a fourth." As the reason alleged proves to be utterly false, we shall strike off the marks of interrogation from Italy, and leave out the "defective" in the brackets.

In like manner, the returns for Spain are treated. "As for Spain, its census returns, if quoted at all among statistics, are quoted at even a larger discount than its financial securities. The sum of the Spanish censuses for the last forty years has been up and down after the following zigzag fashion:

Not having found our friend of the New Englander very precise heretofore in his figures, we did not exactly take them on trust this time, but looked in our "Handbuch," and found the following

The following table of births does not show any mark of being either untrustworthy or defective, but is uncommonly complete and steady:

So much for the romancing of the New Englander, which we might appropriately designate as building "castles in Spain."

We beg our readers' pardon for these long lists of figures, but they are really necessary for the correct understanding of the matter. As to Austria, we shall take the liberty to bring down her figure from 18.1 to 11.1; not that it would make so very much difference in the general average of the nations, except in the clap-trap mode of calculation adopted by the New Englander, but because justice, as we have amply shown, demands it.

We shall now present a true table of the European countries, slightly modifying some of the rates, to correspond to later and better information, and inserting all the omitted countries of which returns are given:

The New Englander has been quite hard on us for classing Holland and Switzerland, in which there are very large Catholic minorities, as mixed countries, and remanded them with an air of injured innocence forthwith into the Protestant column, where it will be observed they present an uncommonly good appearance, being the lowest on the list. We have shown by documentary evidence that in Prussia in 1864, when there was a Catholic minority of thirty-eight per cent, the rate of illegitimacy was brought down by it from 10 to 8.46, or, in other words, if all the Catholics could be removed at once out of the land, the rate of Prussia would stand 10, whereas it appears now 8.6. For this reason we thought fit to make some distinction, lest there should be any strutting around in borrowed plumes, and to form a table of mixed countries. We shall, therefore, carefully avoiding any further wounding of the delicate susceptibilities of the New Englander, append a table, making allowances for the minorities on both sides, coming [112]just as near to the exact truth as it is possible:

Here we are glad to end the general investigation, and to show that, if we are not very much better than our neighbors, we are not any worse, and are not to be hounded down with the cry of vice and immorality by a set of Pharisees who are constantly lauding their own superiority, and thanking God they are so much better than we poor Catholics.

We must notice, before we conclude, some minor points of the New Englander's reply to The Catholic World. He insists that it is highly improbable that any of the foundlings received into the hospital at Rome come from the provinces, and says we have not adduced a particle of proof to the contrary. Well, as far as the readers of the New Englander are concerned, what is the use of adducing any proof?—for that very Christian journal takes no notice of any refutations of its statements, nor concedes any point, however strongly proved, but is solely occupied in showing, by fair means or foul, our "total depravity," as if the very life and breath of the Protestant religion depended on maintaining a deep and bitter hatred and contempt of Catholics. To our own readers, we do not think it worth while to adduce any particular proof of a self-evident proposition. If there be a foundling hospital, receiving infants left at its door, it requires no proof that it will serve the adjacent country as well as the city. We have documentary evidence to prove this point; but the New Englander contains so many errors which require our attention, that we have not space for so trivial a matter. We would like, however, to ask our friend of the New Englander whether he believes any of the three thousand infants received in the foundling hospital of Amsterdam come from the country.

2d. The New Englander says, "But where do the infants come from that are received in the multitudes of country nunneries that abound throughout the rural districts, and commonly have each its crèche, or cradle, in which the child of shame may be dropped in secret with a ring of the bell, and left?"

It is time enough to answer this question when any proof of its truth is brought forward; but we can assure our friend that if any infants are so received, they all find their way to the hospital in short order.

3d. We find the following unique and highly gentlemanly insinuation in the New Englander:

Weakness in arithmetic and a prurient imagination have, no doubt, given rise to the above elegant extract; but we rebut it by informing our friend of the New Englander that there is a difference between 28.3 to the thousand and 1 to 28.3. Had he noticed this difference, he would not have digged this pit for himself. The figures prove nothing more than his own ignorance, putting the most charitable construction on it.

Well, as probably most people have not heard of the countries of Carinthia, Styria, etc., we confess we were "erudite" enough to know and to point out that they were slices of Austria carved for the occasion, and we were a little indignant at the carving operation.

"Show me a bad Protestant country where you please, and I will show you a Roman Catholic country still worse." Hence, we have, according to Mr. Seymour:

We suppose this is all fair enough; but we cannot see it, our moral vision being so infirm.

"But these regions seem to have been selected for their approximate equality in population." So it seems, and our friend, Mr. S., has made it seem so in this fashion: "We compare Protestant Norway with 1,194,610, and Roman Catholic Styria (Austria) with 1,006,971. Again, we compare Protestant Sweden with 2,983,144, and Roman Catholic Upper and Lower (Austria) with 2,244,363." All very good; but now let us go on: "We compare Protestant Saxony with its population, and Roman Catholic Carinthia with its population. And we compare Hanover with its Protestant population, and Salzburg with its Roman Catholic population." "'Of course these countries are selected for their approximate equality in population.'" In order that our readers may see how much equality there is in the populations of these countries, we give the following

Saxony is only seven times greater than Carinthia. Hanover only twelve times greater than Salzburg. Very excellent is Mr. Seymour in "anticipating the tu quoque of the Roman Catholics."

We now desire to call the attention of our readers to one very remarkable phenomenon of the statistics. In Protestant England the cities have a lower rate of illegitimacy than the country, while in France the case is reversed, the countries are low and[114] the cities high. The following table will show this:

From this we draw the conclusion that for Protestants city life is decidedly the best, and it will be the duty of ministers to crowd as many of their flocks as possible out of the polluted air of the country into the moral atmosphere of the cities, and in England to endeavor to concentrate them particularly in the very virtuous communities of London and Liverpool. But we are sorry the gospel trumpet gives such a feeble sound in the country districts, and we hope some of the city clergy will get a call to go into these benighted districts, (abjuring the brown-stone fronts and high salaries,) and bring them back at least to the level of the city population, where there are so many and varied temptations, and such surprising purity. Our Catholic people seem to flourish better in the country, and we sincerely hope that those who come over from Europe will get farms out West, instead of settling down in New-York or other cities. We did have an idea that the influence of religion was best exerted in the country, where the pastor knows each one of his flock, and would rather have compared the country people in Protestant lands with the country people in Catholic lands, to test the influence of religion upon them; but as the New Englander seems to think the comparison is best made in the cities, we leave every reflective person to form his own judgment. If the New Englander is right, we fear our Lord was wrong in asking us to pray, "Lead us not into temptation;" but Protestants should rather pray, "Lead us into temptation," because it is precisely in temptation they are most virtuous.

We did not intend to say a single word on the subject of murders, etc., because we have not any complete statistics on the subject, and because we do not like the labor of hunting them up, just at present; but as this thing is paraded before us like a red rag before a bull, we will just make one dash at it, and, giving it a blow sufficient to dispatch it, leave the rest of the matter until we find it convenient to take it up. Mr. Seymour gave the following items in his book:

We give the latest returns on the subject from the "Handbuch" for France and from Thom's Official Directory for England and Ireland, 1869.

It will not require much ingenuity to see where the truth lies. "Ex uno disce omnes."

We advise the New Englander to subject in future the articles of its unfortunate correspondent, of whom it is evidently ashamed, to the revision of a professor of mathematics.

TO THE RAINBOW.

THE FIRST ŒCUMENICAL COUNCIL OF THE VATICAN.
NO. THREE.

The second month of the Vatican Council has seen no interruption of its labors, nor of the intense interest which these labors seem to excite on every side. In truth, the intensity of this interest, especially among those who are not friendly to the council, would be inexplicable, did we not feel that there is in reality a struggle involved therein between the cause of religion and the cause of irreligion. The meetings of the prelates are private and quiet. The subjects under discussion are, at best, only vaguely known outside. The names of the speakers may be learned. You may ascertain, if you persist in the effort, that one bishop has a fine voice, and was well heard; that another has an exceedingly polished delivery; that a third is remarkable for the fluency, and a fourth for the classic elegance with which he spoke in Latin. But all your efforts will fail to elicit a report of the substance of the speech of any prelate. These speeches are for the council itself—for the assembled fathers to whom they are delivered—and are not for the public at large, nor for Buncombe. They are under the guard of the honor of the bishops and the oath of the officials, and are to be kept secret until the acts of the council are lawfully published. And[116] yet "own correspondents," "occasional correspondents," "special correspondents," and "reliable correspondents" from Rome have failed not, day after day, to fill the columns of newspapers—Italian, French, English, German, Belgian, and Spanish, and doubtless others also, if we saw them—with their guesses and suspicions, their tiny grains of truth and bushels of fiction. Ponderous columns of editorial comments are often superadded, as it were, to increase the amount of mystery and the mass of errors. Even the brief telegraphic notices seem to be often controlled or made to work in this sense. The telegrams from Rome itself ought to be, and we presume are, correct. The author of a flagrant misstatement sent from this city could be identified and held responsible. But it is said that, outside of the limits of the Pontifical States, there is a news-agent who culls from letters sent him for that purpose most of those wonderful statements about the council which the telegraph wires are made to flash over Europe, and even across the Atlantic to America. The result of all this on the mind of one in Rome is ofttimes amusing. During our civil war, we once found ourselves in a railway car with an officer who had lost an arm. "Colonel," asked some one, "in what battle were you wounded?" The colonel laid down the papers he had been reading, sighed heavily, as if wearied, at least in mind, and answered, "At the time, I thought it was at the battle of Chancellorsville; but since I have been reading these newspaper accounts of that battle, I have come to the conclusion that I was not there at all." The newspaper reporters of the council labor under far greater difficulties than did the army correspondents, and are proportionately inaccurate.

Meanwhile, the council moves on in its direct course, like a majestic steamer on the ocean, undisturbed by these winds blowing alternately from every point of the compass, and unheeding the wavelets they strive to raise. Within the council, every thing is proceeding smoothly and harmoniously, some think more slowly than was anticipated. But the fathers of the council feel they have a great work to do conscientiously, and they are engaged earnestly and in the fear of God in its performance.

As yet, a third public session of the council has not been held, nor has any public announcement been made of the day when it may be looked for. But the time is busily employed. We stated in our last number that a schema or draft on some doctrinal points had been given to the prelates early in December, and had been learnedly discussed, no less than thirty-five speakers having canvassed its merits. At the conclusion of the discussion, the schema was referred to the Deputation, or Committee on Faith. All the discourses had been taken down and written out by stenographers, with an accuracy which astonished and elicited the commendation of such bishops as examined the report of their own speeches. These reports were likewise handed over to the committee, that no remark might be overlooked or forgotten. All will be taken into consideration and duly weighed, together with further remarks before the committee, by the theologians who drew up the schema in the Preparatory Committee. The committee is charged to present the matured result to the assembled congregation at the proper time, when it will again be considered, perhaps discussed, and finally voted on.

On January 14th, the fathers again assembled in a general congregation in the council-hall, altered and restricted as we have already described[117] it. Mass was celebrated at nine A.M., as is always done, by one of the senior prelates. At its conclusion, the five presiding cardinals took their place. Cardinal De Angelis, the chief one, took his seat for the first time, and recited the usual opening prayer.

At the previous congregations, five of the deputations of the council had been filled by election. The sixth—that on oriental rites and on missions—still remained to be filled. Twenty-four members were to be elected by ballot.

The election was held in the usual form. The bishops had brought with them their ballots already written out. Several attendants passed, two and two, along the seats of the prelates, one of them bearing a small wicker-work basket. Each prelate deposited therein his ballot. In a few moments all had quietly voted. The baskets were borne to the secretary's table in the middle, in front of the presiding cardinals. The ballots were placed in boxes prepared to receive them. The boxes were closed and sealed, to be opened afterward before the regular committee for this purpose, when the votes would be counted, and the result ascertained.

No one in Rome, or elsewhere, could be found better qualified for this position than this eminent and well-known cardinal, who has for so many years, and so ably, presided over the congregation specially charged with superintending the world-wide missions of the Catholic Church. Born in the year 1798, he was in his early boyhood when Napoleon annexed Italy to his empire. When the conqueror, in order to bind the country to him, ordered that a number of the sons of the noble and most respectable families of Italy should be sent to the Ecole Polytechnique at Paris, to be educated, as it were, under his own eye, the bright-eyed Alessandro Barnabò was selected with others. He continued in that school until the fall of Napoleon restored Pius VII. to Rome. The lad could soon return[118] home likewise, and devote himself, according to the aspirations of earlier years, to the service of God in the sanctuary. He pursued his ecclesiastical studies with distinction under De Rossi, Finotti, Graziosi, Palma, and the giant professors of those years in Rome; became priest; and naturally, with his learning, his energy, his amiability, was soon selected to give assistance in the congregations for the transaction of ecclesiastical business of the church in Rome. In due time he became secretary to the Congregation of the Propaganda, and made himself familiar with the affairs and men of the church throughout the world. Subsequently raised to the cardinalate, amid the applause of Rome, he succeeded Cardinal Fransoni in the prefectship of the same Congregation of the Propaganda where he had been secretary, and over which he, for many years, presided with an executive ability not equalled since the days of Cardinal Capellarò, afterward Gregory XV.

This election having been finished, the bishops then entered on the examination of matters of ecclesiastical discipline, several schemata, or draughts, on which had been presented to them for private study some time before. It is the ordinary usage of councils to examine matters of faith and matters of discipline as nearly pari passu as can conveniently be done. It seems this usage will be observed in the Vatican Council. There is a fundamental difference between matters of faith and matters of discipline.

The faith of the church is ever one—that originally delivered to her by the apostles. A council cannot alter it. The errors or heresies prevailing at any time, the uncertainty in some minds, or other needs of a period, may render it proper or necessary to give a fuller, clearer, and more definite expression of that faith on points controverted or misunderstood. The question always is, What has really been the faith held in the past, from the beginning, by the church on these points? The answer is sought in the words of Holy Writ, in the past declarations of the church, whether in the decrees of her councils or in the authoritative teachings of her sovereign pontiffs, and in her traditions, as shown in the liturgies and forms of prayer, in the testimony of her ancient doctors and fathers, and in the concurrent teachings of the general body of her pastors and her theologians. The whole field of evidence is searched, and the answer stands forth in noon-day light; and the council declares what really and truly has been and is the belief and teaching of the Catholic Church on the question before it. And that declaration is accepted by the Catholic world, not simply on the word of men, however great their knowledge or accurate and scrutinizing their research—nor simply on account of their holiness of life, their sincerity of heart, or the impartiality of their decision. These are, indeed, high motives, such as the world must always respect, and perhaps enough ordinarily to satisfy human minds. But, after all, they are but human motives. The Catholic is taught to base his belief on a higher motive—the divine assurance of our Saviour himself that he would always be with his church until the end of time, that he would send the spirit of truth to teach her all truth and to abide with her for ever, and that the gates of hell should never prevail against her. Our ears catch the words of the Saviour, "Whosoever heareth you, heareth me;—whosoever despiseth you, despiseth me;" and we know that the church is thus made the pillar and ground of truth, and that he that will not hear the church is like the heathen and the[119] publican. Hence on his divine word, which must stand though the heavens and the earth pass away, we accept the declarations and teachings of the church, through her councils, as the continuation of the teaching of Christ himself.

Such was the examination made in the Council of Nice, A.D. 325; such was the spirit of faith in which its words were received when it declared the original and true belief of the church on the doctrines of the trinity and incarnation, and condemned the novelties of Arius and his followers. Such was the examination made in the councils of Ephesus, Constantinople first and second, and of Chalcedon; such the filial faith in which their decrees were received as they declared more and more fully and explicitly the true Catholic doctrine of the incarnation, and condemned successively the errors of the Nestorians, the Monophysites, and the Monothelites. Such was the course pursued in the various œcumenical councils which followed, down to and including the Council of Trent. Such was the spirit in which their declarations of the faith have ever been received. To us, the Catholic Church of Christ is a living church, possessing, by the gift of her divine Founder, authority to teach in his name all that he taught, and ever guarded by his divine power from so falling under the assaults of hell as to teach error to man in his name, instead of the divine truth which he established and commissioned her to teach. Her authority is ever the same—the same in the first and second centuries as in the fourth and fifth, in the tenth and twelfth, in the sixteenth, and in this nineteenth century; and it will continue the same until time shall be no more.

It is thus that the Vatican Council takes up matters of faith, not to add to the faith, but to declare it and to establish it, where it has been impugned or doubted or misunderstood. The question is, What are the points on which the errors and the needs of this age render it proper and necessary to give a renewed, perhaps a fuller, clearer, and more emphatic declaration of the doctrine of the church; and in what form of words shall such declarations be expressed? To all these questions the bishops are bringing their calmest and maturest judgment. There will be, as there must and should be, a free and frank interchange of views and arguments, in all sincerity and charity, even as in the council of the apostles at Jerusalem there was a great discussion before the definitive result was declared with authority: It hath seemed good to the Holy Ghost and to us. When, after such a discussion, the council shall give forth its decisions and decrees, they will be accepted by the children of the church. They will not be new doctrines. The Catholic heart and conscience will recognize them as portions of that faith which has heretofore ever been held. So true will this be, that we feel certain that one of the points which many of the enemies of the church will bring against this council, after its conclusion, will be, that it has done comparatively nothing, that all that it taught was known and believed among Catholics before it was convened. But the same thing was said at the time of former councils, even of those which proved to be the most important and influential in the history of Christianity.

But if faith is one and unchangeable, ecclesiastical discipline, at least in most of its details, is not. The church has received power to bind and to loose, and necessarily has authority to establish a discipline, not simply for the purpose of securing order within her fold, but to reach the further[120] and higher purpose for which she herself has been established and exists. Men must not merely believe the truth speculatively and with a dead faith. They must, by practical obedience to the law of God, by avoidance of sin through the assistance of divine grace, by practice of virtue and by holiness of life, be guided to keep the word which they have heard, and so come to be saved. This practical guidance is her discipline. The general principles on which her action is based are the maxims and precepts of our divine Lord himself, the character of the holy sacraments which he established in his church to be the channels of grace, the institutions which came to her from the apostles, and which she will ever preserve, and those principles of right and morality which God has planted in the heart of man, and of which her divine commission makes her the highest and the most authoritative exponent. These principles are sacred and unchangeable. But in applying them to men there must be a large body of laws and regulations in detail. These are of her own institution, and form her ecclesiastical discipline. She can revoke some, amend or alter others, and add still others, as she judges such action to be best adapted, under the ever-varying circumstances of the world, to secure the great end for which she must ever labor—the salvation of souls.

As in all previous councils, so in this Vatican Council, these matters of discipline have naturally and unavoidably come up for consideration.

We said that, in the General Congregation, held on the 14th of January, immediately after the election of which we have spoken, the discussion of them commenced. It was continued in other congregations held on January 15th, 19th, 21st, 22d, 24th, 25th, 27th, 28th, 31st; February 3d, 4th, 7th, 8th, 10th, 14th, and 15th. It is not yet closed. So far, ninety-five prelates have addressed the council on the various points of discipline that came under examination.

If the discussion on matters of faith, of which we spoke in our last number, was worthy of admiration for the vast learning it displayed, and the intellectual powers of the speakers, this one on discipline was even more interesting for its practical bearing and the personal experience, so to speak, which it recorded. The questions came up whether this or that law of discipline, established eight hundred or five hundred or three hundred years ago, however wise and efficacious at the period of its institution, could now be looked on as sufficiently accomplishing its original purpose; or whether, on the contrary, some new law, proposed for the consideration of the prelates, might not now be wisely substituted for it. Bishops from every part of the world brought the light of their own experience to illustrate the subject. They bore, as it were, personal testimony to the good effects and to the inconveniences of those rules and laws in their respective dioceses. It was indeed most touching; and it is said that the assembly was moved to tears as an eloquent bishop, burning with zeal for the house of the Lord, told, with accents of apostolic grief, of the woes of religion, and of disorders that almost broke his heart—disorders against which he struggled, seemingly in vain, because they arose from, or were supported by, the intermeddling and abuses, and tyranny of the civil government, which claims to be "free and progressive," but is ever grasping at things ecclesiastical, ever striving to wield ecclesiastical power, and at times pretending to uphold and defend such intrusion by pretext of the laws and privileges of other times,[121] when rulers and people alike professed to fear God and to respect his church.

Every portion of the world was heard from. The East, through Chaldeans, Maronites, and Armenians. The West, through Italian, French, German, Hungarian, Spanish, Mexican, Peruvian, Brazilian, English, Irish, and American bishops. The past was interrogated as to the reasons and motives on which the olden laws were based, and the special purposes they were intended to effect; and the present, as to their actual observance and effects in this century. Even the future was examined, so far as men may look into it, to conjecture what course the world was taking; and what, on the other hand, would be the most proper course for the church to pursue in her legislation, in order to secure the fullest observance of the laws of God, and the truest promotion of his glory.

We might well be assured that, even humanly speaking, such abundance of knowledge and experience, such careful examination of all the past and present bearings of the subjects, such a keen, calm scrutiny of the future, would secure to the church from such men an ecclesiastical legislation of the highest practical wisdom, as well in what is retained as in what is changed or added as new. But, as Catholics, we should never lose sight of that higher wisdom with which the Holy Ghost, according to the words of Christ, and in answer to the prayers of the Catholic world, will not fail to guide the fathers of the council.[19]

It will thus be seen that during this month the council has steadily pursued the even tenor of its way, without any public session. In fact, no day has as yet been assigned even as the proximate date of the third public session. No one outside the council seems able to say precisely what progress has been made in discussing and disposing of matters. Still less can we say when the council will close. There seems to be a feeling that the discussions will continue until June, when the almost tropical heat of a Roman summer must set in. This will, of course, necessitate an adjournment until the close of October, when the bishops would probably reassemble to continue their work. Time only can show whether there is any truth in this prognostication. Some of the bishops, of a more practical turn of mind, or more desirous of returning soon to their dioceses, are striving to find a mode of conciliating the most perfect freedom of discussion with a more rapid progress in the matters before the council. The most sacred right in a council is freedom to state one's views on matters in controversy, and to uphold them by all the arguments in one's power. This right has so far been most fully enjoyed and freely used. No plan that would take it away would be entertained.

Every day in Rome now convinces a sojourner more and more strongly of the unity, the catholicity, and the sanctity of the church of Christ. Faith that heretofore was almost extinct beneath the ashes of worldly thoughts, here glows again and bursts into a bright flame. Elsewhere we believed these truths; here we seem to behold with our eyes, and to touch[122] with our hands their reality. No one can be privileged to mingle with the bishops here without being impressed with their perfect unity in all things declared and taught by the church, and with the undisguised readiness or rather firm intention of all, to accept and to hold and to teach all that, under the light of the Holy Ghost, shall be declared of faith in this Vatican Council. If, during the discussion and examination, they may take different views, this does not disturb the cordial affection among them. They can array their strongest arguments without ever descending to personalities. They are chary of indulging even in witticism calculated to relieve the solemnity of the debate by a smile. In all the discussion there is not only the highest gentlemanly courtesy, but also that true charity and union of hearts which must accompany that unity of faith which they solemnly professed to hold, and which must, if possible, be confirmed and strengthened in this Vatican Council.

To be fully impressed with this perfect unity, one must be privileged to mingle somewhat with the bishops. But even the cursory glance of a stranger sees the evidence of the catholicity of the church presented by the gathering of so many bishops from so many portions of the world around the central chair of unity. We have already spoken of this in our former articles. We will now give a summary, almost official, which has just been made out, classifying the prelates who have attended, according to their nationalities and dioceses:

Truly, it is such a gathering as no human power could assemble. Only the Catholic Church could effect it. No wonder that strangers from every clime, especially devout Catholics, have flocked to Rome these months as they never flocked before.

The splendor of the ceremonies of our holy church, as celebrated in Rome, especially in St. Peter's, is unequalled in the whole world. A gray-haired ambassador was present some years ago in St. Peter's at the celebration of high mass by the sovereign pontiff on Easter-Sunday. He had been present at two imperial and several royal coronations, where every effort was made to give a national magnificence to the ceremony; had witnessed several royal marriages, and grand court celebrations of every character. But he declared that every thing he had ever seen sank into insignificance before the grandeur and the sublime magnificence of that high mass. Never were the religious celebrations of Rome so magnificent as they have been and are during this council, when the sanctuary is filled with more than half a thousand prelates, Latin and oriental, in their rich and varied vestments. Strangers and Romans alike crowd the grand basilica. Yet the stranger often fails to see, what the Roman feels, as it were, by instinct, that all this effort at splendor and magnificence is purely and wholly a tribute of man to honor the religion which God in his love and mercy has given, and that no part of it is for man's own honor. If the stranger would realize this truth, which is the soul of the ceremonial of the church, he has but to follow these prelates from the sanctuary to their homes, and witness the simplicity and self-denial of their private lives. Perhaps he will be shocked at the unexpected discovery of what he would term discomfort and poverty.

In such personal simplicity and self-denial the sovereign pontiff himself gives the example in the Vatican. The palace is large—very large; but the libraries, the archives, the various museums, and the galleries and halls of paintings, of statuary, and of art, occupy no small portion of it. Other portions of it are devoted to the vast workshops of the unrivalled Roman mosaics, others still to the mint. The offices of the secretary of state, and the bureaus of other departments are there. The Sixtine, and Pauline, and other chapels are found in it; and the various officers and attendants of the court have many of them their special apartments. The pontiff has his suite of rooms, as well those of state as those that are private. You enter a large, well-proportioned hall, rich with gilding and arabesque and fresco paintings. A company of soldiers might manœuvre on its marble floor. It is large enough to receive the fullest suite of a sovereign who would visit the pope. Just now, eight or ten soldiers in a rich military uniform are lounging here, as it were, for form's sake. In the next room—a smaller and less ornamented one, yet in something of the same style, and with a few benches for furniture—a servant will take your hat and cloak. In a third room, you find some[124] ecclesiastical attendants. You pass through a fourth room of considerable size. It is now empty. At times a consistory or meeting of the cardinals for business is held here; at other times, an ascetic Capuchin father, with his tonsured head, his long beard, his coarse brown woollen cassock fastened around the waist by a cord, and with sandalled feet, preaches to the cardinals and bishops and officials of the court, and to the pope himself. With the freedom and bravery of a man who, to follow Christ, has given up the world, and hopes for nothing from man, and fears nothing save to fail in his duty, he reminds those whom men honor of their duties and obligations, and in plain, ofttimes unvarnished language, will not shrink from speaking the sternest, strongest home truths of religion. You pass through the silent hall in reverence. A fourth hall, with a better carpeting, (for it is winter,) and tolerably warmed, is the ante-chamber proper, where those are waiting who are to be admitted to an audience of the pope. In another smaller room, opening from this one, those are waiting whose turn it will be to enter next; or perhaps a group is assembled, if the pope will come out hither to receive them, as he sometimes does, when the audience is simply one not of business, but simply for the honor of being presented to him and of receiving his blessing. All these which we have enumerated are the state or ceremonial apartments. From the last one, you pass to the private office or sitting-room of the sovereign pontiff. It is a plain room, about fifteen feet by twenty, not lofty, lighted by a single window, and without a fire-place. Two or three devotional paintings hang against the walls; a stand supports a small and exquisitely chiselled statue of the Blessed Virgin. At one side of the room, on a slight platform, is the pope's arm-chair, in which he is seated, clothed in his white woollen soutane. Before him is his large writing-table, with well-filled drawers and pigeon-holes. On it you see pens, ink, sand, and paper, his breviary, perhaps, and one or two volumes, and an ivory crucifix. A small case in the corner of the room contains some other books, some objects of vertu, medals, and such articles as he designs to give as mementoes. There is a thin carpet on the floor, and a couple of plain wooden chairs are near the table. Here Pius IX. ordinarily spends many hours each day, as hard worked as any bank clerk. He is exceedingly regular in his habits. He rises before five in summer, at half-past five in winter. In half an hour he passes to his private chapel and gives an hour and a half to his devotions, and to the celebration of two masses; the first by himself, the second by one of his chaplains. A cup of chocolate and a small roll of bread suffices for his breakfast. He at once passes to his office, and works for one hour alone and undisturbed. Then commence the business audiences of the heads or secretaries of the various departments, civil and ecclesiastical; a long and tedious work, in which he gives a conscientious attention to every detail. By half-past eleven A.M., he commences to receive bishops and ecclesiastics or strangers from abroad. This usually ends by one P.M., when he retires for his midday devotions, and for his dinner, and repose. This may be followed by more work, alone in his office. At half-past three in winter, at half-past four in summer, if the weather allows it, he gives an hour and a half to a drive and a walk. Returning home, he takes a slight repast, and again the audiences for business or for strangers commence, and last until after eight. At nine punctually he retires, to commence[125] again the same routine the next day. Such are his regular days. At other times he must be in church, or must visit one institution or establishment or another in the city, spend an hour or two in ceremony or business, and hurry home. Near this sitting-room is a smaller room where he takes his meals alone; for the pope neither gives nor accepts entertainments. His table does not cost more than thirty cents a day. Not far off is his sleeping chamber, small as the other, with a narrow bed and hard couch. Truly, his is no life of ease and pampered indulgence. There is a stern meaning in his title, Servant of the Servants of God.

The same simplicity and austereness marks the private life of the cardinals. There is now, indeed, an outward show, for they rank as princes of the blood royal. There are the richly-ornamented carriages drawn by brilliantly-harnessed horses, and attended by servants in livery. There are the decorated state ante-chambers and halls. All these things are for the public, and are prescribed by rule. If a cardinal has not himself the means to support them, he would be entitled to a state salary for the purpose of keeping them up. But back of all these may be found a plain, almost unfurnished room, in which he studies and writes, and a bed-chamber—we have seen some not ten feet by twelve, carpetless and fireless. Oftentimes, too, the cardinal lives in the religious house of some community, and then much of the state can be dispensed with. But for the red calotte which he wears on his head, you often could not distinguish him from the other clergymen in the establishment.

The same spirit seems to characterize the bishops who are now gathered together in Rome. All their splendor is in the church and for religion. In their private life they certainly do not belong to that class of strangers from whose lavish expenditures in fashionable life the Romans will reap a rich harvest. They live together in groups, mostly in religious houses or colleges, or in apartments, which several club together to take at moderate rates. Thus the Chaldean patriarch, a venerable, white-bearded prelate, near eighty years of age, with the other bishops of his rite, and their attendant priests, all live together in one monastery, not far from St. Peter's. Whatever the weather, they go on foot in their oriental dress to the council, and when the meeting is over, return on foot. Their stately, oriental walk, their calm, thoughtful countenances, the colored turbans on their heads, the mixture of purple and black and green and red, in their flowing robes, set off by the gold of their massive episcopal chains, and their rich crosses sparkling with diamonds, never fail to attract attention. But one should see them in their home, which they have made as Eastern as they could. The orientals are exceedingly temperate in their meals, and as regards wine, are almost "teetotalers." But they do love to smoke. As the visitor is ushered into a room, where the only piece of furniture is a broad cushioned seat running round along the walls, on which are seated a dozen or more of long-bearded men, their feet gathered up under them in oriental fashion, and each one smoking a pipe a yard long, and filling the atmosphere with the clouds of Latakia, he almost thinks himself in Mossoul. The pipes are gravely withdrawn on his entrance, that the right hand may go to the forehead, and the heads may bow. The welcome, schalom, "peace," is gravely spoken, with perhaps a smile. He takes a seat on the divan and is asked to take a pipe, if so minded. From time to time, the silence is interrupted[126] by some remark in a full, sedate voice, and intensely guttural words of Chaldee or Arabic, whether on the last debate of the council or on some new phase of the Eastern question, it is probable the visitor will never learn. But he has caught a glimpse of quiet Chaldean life. Fourteen or fifteen of the Armenian prelates, with their patriarch, live in a not very dissimilar manner. But the Armenians are much more akin to Europeans in their education and character of thought. They are good linguists. All of them speak Italian fluently, many of them French, and some a little English. Their society is agreeable and instructive, and is much sought.

In like manner eighteen of the American bishops are domiciled in the American College. Some others are with the Lazarists at their mother house, others again are at St. Bridget's or St. Bartholomew's, or with the Dominicans. Those that have taken apartments have contrived with a very few exceptions to live together in groups. The English, the Irish, in fact, nearly all the bishops, have followed the same plan. Some laughingly say that their college days have come back to them, with their regularity and their accommodations. But these are not quite as agreeable at fifty or sixty as they were at the age of twenty. Yet all feel, and none more thoroughly than the bishops themselves, that this life of comparative retirement, of quiet and study, and of continued and closest intercourse with each other, must tend to prepare them, and to qualify them for the great work on which they are engaged.

Another special feature of Rome in this season, dependent on the council, is the frequency of sermons in various languages, and of various religious services in the churches. Rome as the centre of Catholicity is never without a certain number of clergymen from every nation of Europe. Each winter, too, sees thousands of visitors, Catholics, Protestants, and unbelievers, crowding her streets, drawn hither by motives of religion, of science, of curiosity, or of fashion. It was natural that visitors should be enabled to listen to the truths of our holy religion preached in their own languages. This year it could be done much more fully, and the opportunity has not been allowed to pass by unregarded. For example, "The Pious Society for Missions," an excellent community of priests, established in this city over thirty years ago by the saintly Abbate Pallotta, has the custom of celebrating the festival and octave of Epiphany each year by appropriate religious exercises, and introducing sermons in several languages. This year they selected the larger and noble church of San Andrea della Valle, and continued their exercises for eleven days. The following was the programme which they followed: At 5.30 A.M., mass; at 6 A.M., Italian sermon and benediction; at 9 A.M., high mass of the Latin rite; at 10 A.M., high mass in an oriental rite, (Armenian, Greek, Copt, Chaldean, Roumenian, Melchite, Bulgarian, Maronite, Armenian again, Syrian, Ambrosian;) at 11 A.M., a sermon in some foreign language—that is, Polish once, German twice, Spanish twice, English six times, (Archbishop Spalding, Father Hecker, and Bishop McGill, Bishop Moriarty of Kerry, Bishop Ullathorne, and Archbishop Manning were the English preachers.) At 1.30 P.M. each day, a French sermon by a bishop; at 3.30 P.M., an Italian sermon and benediction; at 6 P.M., another sermon in Italian with benediction. The sermons were all, of course, of a high order of merit.[127] The church was crowded morning, forenoon, afternoon, and evening.

French sermons have been continued ever since, mostly by the eloquent Bishop Mermillod, of Geneva, and English sermons on Sundays and Wednesdays by F. Burke, an eloquent Dominican of St. Clement's, and by Monsignor Capel. During Lent there will be an additional series of English sermons, to be delivered by the American bishops.

On the 20th of January, the American episcopate and the American College received from the Holy Father a very signal and agreeable mark of his good will. It was meant, one might almost think, as a return visit on his part, in the only way which court etiquette allows. He chose the church of the college as the place where he would pronounce a decree in the cause of the venerable servant of God, John Juvenal Ancina, Bishop of Saluzzo, in Northern Italy. In that church he would, of course, be surrounded by the American prelates, priests, and students, and from the church would pass to the college.

John Juvenal Ancina was born in Fossano, in Piedmont, in 1545. Having finished his course of collegiate studies, he graduated in medicine, and for years practised that profession with great ability, and greater charity toward the poor, to whom he devoted himself. In course of time he lost every near relation except one brother. Both determined with common accord to enter the sanctuary, and came to Rome for that purpose, and there joined the Oratorians under St. Philip Neri. John spent years in the priesthood, honored for his learning, and still more for his piety and sweetness, and zeal in the ministry, which he exercised in Rome, in Naples, and in Turin. Much against his will, and only after repeated injunctions from the pope, he was forced to accept the charge of the diocese of Saluzzo. He had been the intimate and dear friend of St. Francis de Sales for years of his priesthood, and their friendship continued until the close of his short and fruitful episcopacy. He died in 1604, and St. Francis preached his funeral eulogy. He is the one with whom the saint had the oft-cited exchange of puns complimentary, "Tu vere Sal es." "Immo, tu Sal et Lux." The reputation of the virtues of such a man could not die with him. Not long after his death, the episcopal authority of Saluzzo allowed and directed that full testimony should be taken under oath, from those who lived with him and knew him well, as to the truth of his holy life. This was fully and searchingly done throughout the diocess of Saluzzo. Similar investigations were instituted, under similar authority, in Rome, in Naples, and in Turin, where at different times he had lived, and wherever such testimony could be found. The original depositions—and they are a large mass, and are still extant—were sent to Rome. The pontiff directed that they should be laid before the proper tribunal—the Congregation of Rites. They were found to fulfil the requirements of the canons, and to present such a primâ facie case as would authorize that congregation to proceed. This meant that, after a certain lapse of time, during which affection and human feelings might die out, and any hidden truth might work its way to the light, the congregation should go over the ground a second time, taking through other persons a second and independent mass of testimony. This was done, and its results were compared with those of the first mass of testimony. There was no contradiction; but on the contrary, full and ample confirmation. Still, the opinion and belief of the witnesses was[128] not yet deemed of itself sufficient. Taking the facts of his life, his words and writings, and acts and habits, as they were thus proved, they were all studied out and carefully weighed in the scales of the sanctuary. There was no hurry—there never is at Rome, as this council fully shows—and the decision of the congregation was not given until the year 1767. Then came many political vicissitudes; first of northern Italy, as it passed from the domination of one power to that of another, and later, the convulsions of all Europe consequent on the French revolution. The whole matter slumbered until 1855, when it was again taken up. The examination of the life and acts was gone over again as before. Step by step matters advanced until last November, at a general meeting of the Congregation of Rites, held in the presence of his holiness, it was decided That the servant of God, John Juvenal Ancina, had in his lifetime practised the theological virtues of faith, hope, and charity, toward God and his neighbor, and the cardinal virtues of prudence, justice, fortitude, and temperance, and their accessory virtues, in an heroic degree. It was to announce this decision, in a formal decree, that the pontiff came on the 29th January, the festival of St. Francis de Sales, to the church of the American College. He arrived at ten A.M., and was received at the portal of the college by the rector of the college, and all the American bishops now at Rome, and by a dozen others, Irish, English, Scotch, and Italian. He proceeded at once to the church, which, though small, is one of the handsomest in Rome for its beautiful marbles and fine statuary. The pontiff knelt, while one of his chaplains celebrated mass. The bishops, all the American priests in the city, the students of the college, and many Catholics from the United States, and some other strangers, filled the little church. After the mass, the pontiff ascended to the throne prepared for him. Cardinal Patrizi, prefect of the Congregation of Rites Cardinal Capalti, who had special charge of this case, and Cardinal Barnabò, protector of the college, stood next to him. The formal decree was read, proclaiming the decision in virtue of which we shall henceforth say, "the Venerable John Juvenal Ancina."[20] The superior general of the Oratorians, to which community, as we have said, he belonged, returned thanks in an eloquent and brief discourse in Latin. The pope then, taking his theme from the life of the VENERABLE bishop, addressed to the prelates present a short and feeling discourse, in Italian, on the character and virtues which should adorn a bishop. Though he did not mention the council, it was evident that the thought of it filled his heart. He spoke of the servant of God whom he had just declared venerable as imitating the apostles. They, from being fishermen, were called to be fishers of men; and he too, from being a physician of the body, was called to be a physician of souls. This holy man he showed to be a model of bishops, and enlarged on the text of St. Gregory the Great, that a bishop should be "in thought, pure; in deeds, eminent; in silence, discreet; in word, useful; in the contemplation of heavenly things, elevated." "Who will ascend to the mountain of the Lord? Let him be of pure hands and clean heart." Let him be single-minded, doing every thing for the [129]glory of God, without any admixture of human motives. Let him be first in all good works, so as to be a pattern to his flock. He did not speak of that silence which means cowardice, or indifference to whatever evil goes on in the world. There is a time to speak, as well as a time to be silent. The bishop must be useful in words, speaking out boldly whenever it is for the advantage of the Christian people. He must be a man of prayer. What is the origin of the evils which we see in the world? The prophet answers, "Because there is no one who thinketh in his heart." The pontiff dwelt for a few moments on all these points, and in conclusion quoted St. Gregory again, who said, "I have given you a beautiful picture of a bishop, though the painter be bad." "What the saint says out of humility, I must say," he added, "of myself in truth. But pray for me that God may give me strength to bear the heavy weight he has laid upon me. Let us pray for each other. Do you pray for me; and I call on the Almighty to bless you, and your dioceses, and your people."

The words of the pontiff were simple, because full of devotion and truth; and the delivery was exquisitely perfect, in the earnest, heart-felt, subdued tones of his voice, and the chaste dignity of his gesture. All felt that the pontiff spoke from his paternal heart.

The Bishop of Saluzzo, the successor in this century of the VENERABLE Ancina, returned thanks; and all proceeded from the church to the grand hall of the college. The cloister of the court-yard and the broad stairways and corridors were adorned with drapery, tapestry, and evergreens. A splendid life-size portrait of his holiness, just painted by the American artist, Healy, for the exhibition about to be opened, had been sent to the college for the occasion, and was placed in a prominent position. In the hall, the pontiff again spoke a few kind and paternal words, and Archbishop Spalding, in the name of the American church, clergy and laity, made an address to the pope in Latin. The discourse was excellent in language and happy in thought. His grace referred to the fact that Pius VI. had given us our first bishop, (Dr. Carroll, of Baltimore;) Pius VII. had multiplied dioceses, and given us our first archiepiscopal see; and he, Pius IX., had established six other archiepiscopal sees. So that in a country where sixty years ago there was but one bishop, there are now sixty, three fourths of whom are here in Rome to attend the general council. Toward the end of his discourse, the good archbishop brought in a few touches of true American wit. This is what Italians would scarcely venture on, on such an occasion, and it was to them unexpected. Even the pope looked for a moment puzzled, as if he could not conjecture what was coming; but as he caught the point, a smile spread over his countenance, and the smile developed into a hearty laugh. As for the Italian prelates, at first they wondered—as who would not, at an American joke in the language of Cicero?—but at last not all their stately dignity could resist its force, and they laugh yet, as they repeat it.

The bishops, the superiors, and students of the college, the priests who were present, and the laity, approached to offer their homage to the pontiff and receive his blessing. This over, he departed, but not until he had declared that he was delighted, more than delighted, with his visit.

FOREIGN LITERARY NOTES.

For the sake of making a point against the Catholic Church, Protestants and indifferents are frequently so poverty-stricken in authorities as to quote Voltaire. When told that they cite the authority of a man who was unprincipled, cynical, and impious, they answer that such an estimate is simply the result of a bigoted and narrow-minded prejudice, and that the great French philosopher was liberal, honorable, and conscientious.

An incident has lately occurred in France to call forth the deliberate opinion of a body of men eminently fitted from superior education, elevated position, and freedom from any possible suspicion of Catholic bias, to form an estimate which to our friends above referred to must be looked upon as authoritative and decisive, although open to the objection of being too mild and qualified.

Some fifteen years ago, a proposition was started in a Paris daily newspaper for the popular collection, in small sums, of a sufficient amount to erect a statue to Voltaire in the French capital. When the success of the subscription seemed sufficiently assured, petition was made to the government to grant a site on some public square on which to place the statue. After long delay, and some appearance of unwillingness, the petition was finally granted; but the announcement of this fact was immediately followed by the presentation of a large number of protests against the erection of the statue, which came in from all parts of the empire. One of these protests, signed by a thousand inhabitants of the departments of Le Gard and the Drôme, and the city of Nîsmes, and addressed to the senate, was referred to a committee of senators for consideration and report. The committee has made a report, which is understood to be written by M. Silvestre de Sacy, well known as former chief editor of the Journal des Débats, and a distinguished member of the French Academy. From it we learn something of the petition, but not as much as we would like to know. After a recital of the facts we have stated, the report goes on to say: Undoubtedly, the government had authority to refuse the permission asked, and still has the power to withdraw it. The right of private persons to award statues to whomsoever they please, and to meet and raise money to pay for them, is certainly lawful. But the public streets and squares are not their property. The number of these persons does not increase their right. They act, in such a matter, solely for themselves, and not for the whole country, of which they have no right to pretend to be the representatives. Among the serious considerations which might have made the government hesitate, is the very name Voltaire, which has two significations: the one glorious for the human intellect and for French literature; the other for which Voltaire himself would now blush, dragging down as it does the great historian and great poet to the miserable calling of an impious and cynical pamphleteer. But it appears that the subscribers have obtained the permission asked for. The site has been selected, and the statue will be erected in one of the squares of the new Rue de Rennes. The petition before us protests against this permission, and prays the intervention of the senate with the government to obtain the withdrawal of a permission which it characterizes in the strongest terms. These petitioners see but one Voltaire—an impious, immoral Voltaire, hostile to all religion; a Voltaire who conspired with all the enemies of France for the humiliation and ruin of his country; a Voltaire who, Prussian at Rosbach with King Frederick, Russian with Catherine II., against unfortunate Poland, the violator of our purest glory in his poem Jeanne d'Arc, the enemy of liberty, equality, and fraternity, as may be shown from a hundred[131] passages in his correspondence and writings, an abject courtier and a servile adulator of kings. "I ask," says the first petitioner, speaking for all the others—"I ask that the image of this man shall not appear upon our public squares, to cast insult in the face of the country. I ask that this disgrace be spared France." The senatorial report then goes on to say that there are two Voltaires—the Voltaire described in the petition, and the Voltaire who wrote La Henriade, who, by various masterpieces in poetry and the drama, placed himself near Horace, Corneille, and Boileau; Voltaire the historian, to whom we are indebted for Le Siècle de Louis XIV., the essay Sur l'Esprit et sur les Mœurs des Nations, and that perfect model of rapid and lively narration, L'Histoire de Charles XII.; the Voltaire, in fine, whose name could not be covered with oblivion without obscuring some of the glories of French literature. No, continues the report, whatever may be asserted to the contrary, all of Voltaire is not in some shafts of satire which fell from the ill-humor of the partisan and the angry writer, in pamphlets against religion, as poor in good taste and good sense as in true science, in a poem in which it is most sad to see wit and talent pressed into the disreputable service of ornamenting the wretched obscenity of the argument; all of Voltaire is not in single passages selected from a correspondence of sixty years. If in these were the whole of Voltaire, his memory would long since have been accursed or dead, his works long since have been without readers or publishers, and the idea of raising a statue in his honor would have occurred to no one. Although the avowal is a painful one, it must be confessed that Voltaire has himself and the deplorable errors of his genius alone to blame for the bitterness of the recriminations which injure his brilliant fame. He has too often been unjust to others not to expect that others should be unjust to him. It is his own fault if his name recalls to pious thinkers, to timid hearts, to the faith of ardent souls, only the writer who would not respect in others the noble hopes he himself had lost. Voltaire desired to be the leader of incredulity. He was; and now he pays the penalty for it. Something equivocal remains, and will ever remain associated with his fame. Respectable people can consent to award him eulogies and statues only with distinctions and reserves. The declared enemy of disorder and demagogism, he is sometimes invoked as a seditious tribune, as a burner of churches; and one of the most elegant minds has left in his writings, along with a great many marvellous works, food for passions which, in his better days, his good taste and his good sense would energetically condemn. The report concludes against asking the revocation of the permission granted by the government, on the ground that it will be understood by all that the honor of a statue is conceded not to the Voltaire with reason petitioned against, but to the author whose works are subjects of legitimate national pride.

In the year 400, a Buddhist priest, Fah-Hian, commenced the long journey from China to India and back, and left a narrative of his travels. A century later, a similar journey was made by another Buddhist priest, Sung-Yun, who also left an account of his foreign experiences. Singularly enough, these works have survived all these centuries, and have long been objects of great interest to the oriental scholars of Europe. Remusat and Klaproth published a translation of Fah-Hian at Paris in 1836. This work, in quarto, was soon followed by an English translation by Laidley. Many serious errors, especially in geography, were pointed out in these translations by St. Julien, and Professor Neumann also gave a translation of the two Buddhist works, in the Zeitschrift für historische Theologie, vol. iii., 1833. Meantime, additional light had been thrown upon the subject by such publications as Edkin's Notice of Buddhism in China, and General Cunningham's work; and a full and amended version of the Buddhist priests' travels, together with an interesting treatise on Buddhism, is now published in London by Trübner & Co. Its title is, [132]Travels of Fah-Hian and Sung-Yun, Buddhist Pilgrims, from China to India, (400-518 A.D.,) translated from the Chinese by Samuel Beal.

The completion of Alfred von Reumont's History of the City of Rome, (Geschichte der Stadt Rom,) which has now reached its third volume, is looked for by European scholars with great interest. It is universally praised as a work of remarkable research, learning, and unusual impartiality.

Testamenta XII Patriarcharum, ad fidem Cantabrigiensis edita; accedunt lectiones cod. Oxoniensis. The Testaments of the XII. Patriarchs; an Attempt to estimate their Historic and Dogmatic Worth. By R. Sinker, M.A., Chaplain of Trinity College. Cambridge: Deighton, Bell. London: Bell & Daldy. 1869.

An elegant edition of this apocryphal work, carefully revised and annotated from manuscripts preserved at Cambridge and Oxford, with a learned and judicious treatise. Ecclesiastical antiquity has left us but little positive information concerning these testaments. We are certain that the testaments of the twelve patriarchs were known to Tertullian and to Origen, but we do not know who wrote them. Was the author a Jew, a Christian from among the Gentiles, or a Christian of Jewish race? Was he an Ebionite or a Nazarene? Is the work all from one hand, or is it interpolated? On all these points there is a difference of opinion. Equally in doubt are the points, When was the book written? for what class of readers was it specially intended? and what was the author's object in writing it? Mr. Sinker discusses the subject with great firmness, and concludes, but without any dogmatism, that the author was a Jewish Christian of the sect of the Nazarenes, and that the work was composed at a period between the taking of Jerusalem by Titus and the revolt of the Jew Barcochba in 135. One of the most important portions of Mr. Sinker's work is on the Christology of the Testaments, (pages 88-116.) He is satisfied that the author expresses his belief in the mystery of the incarnation, and he sets forth the doctrine of the Testaments on the Messiah, king and pontiff, descendant of Juda and Levi, priest and victim, Lamb of God, Saviour of the world, etc. etc. The work really merits a longer notice, and should be in the hands of all who can profit by its perusal. Many important questions concerning the primitive history of Christianity, obscured by the fallacious conjectures of anti-Christian critics, may have much light thrown upon them.

Some of the English periodicals are not especially brilliant or profound in their appreciation of and comments upon foreign literature. Take the London Athenæum, for instance, the same periodical which last year approved with such an air of wisdom the author who undertook to revive the old exploded fable of a female pope. It informs its readers, (number of 6th November last,) "The Man with the Iron Mask continues to occupy the learned in search of problematical questions. M. Marius Topin has come to the conclusion that Lauzun was the man. We believe this theory has already been advocated." Now, from the most superficial reading of M. Topin's work, (provided the reader knows a little more French than the Athenæum,) it is perfectly clear that, although M. Topin speaks of Lauzun as a prisoner at Pignerol, he expressly says that it is impossible to think seriously of him as a candidate for the iron mask, for the simple reason that Lauzun was set at liberty some years before the death of the masked prisoner.

A Scripture Concordance, prepared and written by a lawyer, is something of a novelty in Catholic ecclesiastical literature. And the concordance is not an ordinary one of words and names. It is exclusively of texts of Scripture and words relating to our ideas and sentiments, our virtues and our vices, our duties to God and our neighbor, our obligations to ourselves, thus strikingly demonstrating the grandeur of its precepts, the beauty of its teachings, and the sublimity of its moral. Texts purely doctrinal are rigorously excluded, and but one name is retained—the divine[133] name of the Saviour. The book is entitled, SS. Scripturæ Concordantiæ Novæ, seu Doctrina moralis et dogmatica e sacris Testamentorum Codicibus ordine alphabetico desumpta, in qua textus de qualibet materia facilius promptiusque quam in aliis concordantiis inveniri possunt, auctore Carolo Mazeran, Advocato. Paris and Brussels. 1869. 8vo.

Two distinguished Catholic artists have lately died at Rome, Overbeck the painter, and Tenerani the sculptor. Overbeck's graceful and inspired religious compositions are too well-known to need comment here. Tenerani was a pupil of Canova and of Thorwaldsen. His "Descent from the Cross," in the church of St. John Lateran, and his "Angel of the Last Judgment," sculptured on a tomb in the church of St. Mary of Rome, have been often admired by many American travellers.

S. Clement of Rome, the two Epistles to the Corinthians. A revised Text, with Introduction and Notes, by J. B. Lightfoot, D.D., Hulsean Professor of Divinity and Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge. London: Macmillan. 1869. 8vo. Professor Lightfoot appears to have suspended the publication of his commentaries on the epistles of St. Paul, and to have taken up the apostolic fathers. The first epistle of St. Clement, addressed to the Corinthians, is of well-settled authenticity from the testimony of Hermas, Dionysius, Bishop of Corinth, Hegesippus, (cited by Eusebius, iv. 22,) and numerous others. Although not classed among the canonical books, this epistle has always been highly prized as what may be called a liturgical document. St. Jerome bears testimony that it was read publicly in the churches, (in nonnullis locis publice legitur.) So also does Eusebius. Dr. Lightfoot's task is well performed. In his preface he develops the statements above mentioned, enumerates the various writings ascribed to St. Clement of Rome, and in speaking of the recognitiones, relates the history of the false decretals. In this work, as in many others on very ancient manuscripts, the art of topography has been of the greatest service. The codex from which these two epistles of St. Clement are taken, is the celebrated one presented by Cyril Lucar to Charles I., and now preserved in the British Museum. The authorities of the museum had it carefully photographed, so that the author could make use of it at his own pleasure, and at his own house, as, of course, no such manuscript would be allowed to leave the museum even for an hour. A second volume of this work of Professor Lightfoot is promised, which will contain the epistles of St. Ignatius and St. Polycarp.

A Comparative Grammar of Sanskrit, Greek, and Latin, by William Hugh Ferrar, Fellow and Tutor of Trinity College, Dublin. Vol. I. London: Longman. 1869. 8vo. Studies in philology and comparative grammar appear to be on the increase in Great Britain, and are now pursued with great industry. Mr. Ferrar freely uses the labors of Bopp, Schleicher, Corssen, Curtius, and Max Müller, but by no means slavishly. He criticises their various systems with great freedom and intelligence, and produces a really meritorious work.

We remark the publication in Paris of a French translation of the first volume of the History of the United Provinces, by our countryman, John Lothrop Motley, the work to be completed in eight volumes.

We see announced, and as soon to appear, the first part of a work entitled, Alexandre VI. et les Borgia. The author is the reverend Father Ollivier, of the order of Fréres Prêcheurs.

L'Histoire de la Restauration, vol. vii., is the last work of M. Alfred Nettement, a distinguished, conscientious, and talented journalist and historian, who lately died in France, regretted and honored by men of all parties. He was sixty-four years of age, and had been an industrious author for forty years. Count Montalembert called him the type of the journalist and historian, sans peur et sans reproche.

The result of the chronological researches of M. Zumpt concerning the year of the birth of our Saviour (Das Geburtsjahr Christi. Geschichtlich-chronologische Untersuchungen) is rather severely commented upon by the German critics, notwithstanding his high historical reputation. They claim that he has not solved the problems presented by himself.

Volume iii. of the series of Lives of the Archbishops of Canterbury, by Dr. Hook, dean of the cathedral of Chichester, contains a biography of Cardinal Pole. It is said to contain much new material on the subject, from the MSS. collections of Simancas and the Record Office.

The readers of Sir Walter Scott are aware that he made frequent use of an old poetical history of Robert Bruce. Traces of it are frequent in his Lord of the Isles, and he gives an analysis of it in his Tales of a Grandfather. The poem was written in the fifteenth century by John Barbour, Archdeacon of Aberdeen, and is lately published in Scotland, The Bruce; or, The Metrical History of Robert I., King of Scots. By Master John Barbour, Archdeacon of Aberdeen. Published from a MS. dated 1489; with notes and a memoir of the life of the author. 8vo. Glasgow, 1869.

A very remarkable work is one lately published at Milan, Della Schiavitù e del servaggio e specialmente dei servi agricoltori. Milano. Two vols. in 8vo. It is by the learned Count Cibrario, and treats of slavery from the period of the Romans down to that of the rebellion in the United States. His researches among old collections of MSS. at Venice and Genoa develop the fact that slaves were held in those cities down to a much later period than is generally supposed.

Giovanni Michiel was ambassador of Venice at the court of England from 1554 to 1557, that is to say, during the reign of Mary. His dispatches were written in cipher, and during all these years it has been impossible to copy or use them for want of a key to the cipher. M. Pasini, an employee in the Venetian archives, has long been engaged on a complete history of the different ciphers used by the Venetian ambassadors, and has succeeded in deciphering the letters of Michiel, which he has lately had published, I dispacci di Giovanni Michiel, Ambasciator Veneto in Inghilterra. Venezia, 1869.

Here is a work of remarkable erudition, and unusual interest for the classical scholar: Notices sur Rome. Les Noms Romains et les Dignités mentionnées dans les Légendes des Monnaiés Impériales Romaines. Par L'Abbé I. Marchant. Paris, 1869. Imperial 8vo. It is a learned dissertation upon the origin and signification of the titles, dignities, and offices mentioned in inscriptions on imperial Roman coins, the names, surnames, filiation, adoption, and dignities of emperor, Cæsar, Augustus, censor, pontiff, grand pontiff, princeps juventutis, proconsul, etc., etc.; the surnames taken from vanquished nations, Britannicus, Germanicus, Dacicus, Pannonicus, Parthicus, Sarmaticus; titles seldom merited, and grossly exaggerated, bestowed upon emperors by the servile flattery of senate or people, such as Pater Patriæ, Dominus Noster, Senior, Pius, Felix, Felicissimus, Beatissimus, Nobilissimus, Optimus, Maximus, Deus, Divus, Æternus, Invictus, Triumphator Gentium, Barbararum, etc. For empresses, Augusta, Diva, Felix, Nobilissima, Fœmina, Mater Castrarum, Mater Augustorum, etc., etc. Then follow the subordinate titles of Questor, Triumvir, Prefect, etc., etc. The work is by no means one of dry nomenclature, and the author, by his fulness of illustration and attractive style, has produced an admirable work.

NEW PUBLICATIONS.

Conversations on Liberalism and the Church. By O. A. Brownson, LL.D. New York: D. & J. Sadlier & Co.

This is the first production of the pen of Dr. Brownson which has appeared under his own name for several years. During this time he has been a constant contributor to this magazine, and has furnished a considerable number of valuable articles to other periodicals, particularly the Tablet, of which he has for some time past had the principal editorial charge. Those who are familiar with the leonine style of the great publicist cannot have failed to recognize it even in his anonymous productions, or to admit, whether with good or with ill grace, that he still remains facile princeps in that high domain which he has chosen for himself. We welcome the venerable author most heartily on his reappearance upon the field of intellectual combat with his visor up, and his own avowed recognizance upon his shield. He appears as the champion of the encyclical of Pius IX. against that conglomeration of absurd and destructive errors which its advocates have decorated with the name of liberalism, and as the defender of the true, genuine principles of liberty—that liberty which Catholic training and Christian civilization prepare the greatest possible number of men to enjoy, to the greatest possible extent, with the least possible danger to themselves and society.

The volume is small in size, but weighty and precious in matter, like a lump of gold. There is enough precious metal in it to keep an ordinary review-writer a-going for three years. The wretched, flimsy sophistries and falsehoods with which we are bored to death every day by the writers for the daily papers, screaming like macaws the few changes of their scanty vocabulary, Railroads, railroads! progress, progress! mediæval fossil! nineteenth century! are all summed up by Dr. Brownson in a few sentences much better than one of themselves can do it. These expressions of the maxims of our soi-disant liberal editors are put into the mouth of an imaginary representative of the class, who is supposed to be conversing with a Catholic priest at an unfashionable watering-place. The author, by the mouth of the priest, answers him fully, and makes an exposition of his own views and opinions. The editor has nothing to say in rejoinder, except to repeat over his tiresome, oft-refuted platitudes, ignoring all his antagonist has alleged and proved against him. Perhaps it will be said that the doctor has purposely put a weak defence into the editor's mouth. Not at all. It is no sport to such an expert swordsman to run a tilt against any but an expert and doughty antagonist. Give him his choice, and he would prefer to contend with one who would make the best possible fight for liberalism. In this case, as the doctor has been obliged to play both sides of the game, one hand against the other, he has carefully avoided the common fault of collusion between the right and left hand. He has made his imaginary editor say all that the real editors can say, and in better fashion than they can say it. Any person who has taken the trouble to read the comments of the writers for the press on the massive arguments of Dr. Brownson's articles, or their other lucubrations on the subjects treated in this book, will perceive that its author has not diluted them at all, but has rather infused some of his own strong tea into their tepid dish-water.

The errors of the liberalists have been to a certain extent already discussed in our pages, and will be probably discussed more fully and to greater advantage after the decrees of the Council of the Vatican are published.

We therefore confine ourselves at present to a particular notice of one point only in Dr. Brownson's argument, to which we desire to call special attention. We allude to his exposition of his[136] views in regard to the relation of the Catholic religion to the principles of the American constitution. Dr. Brownson is a thorough Catholic and a thorough American. As a Catholic, he condemns all the errors condemned by the syllabus of Pius IX. As an American, he accepts all the principles of the constitution of the United States. As a philosopher, he reconciles and harmonizes the two documents of the ecclesiastical and political sovereignties to which he owes allegiance. If he were wavering or dubious in obeying the instructions of the encyclical, his exposition of the relation between Catholic and American principles would have no weight whatever; for it would be merely an exposition of his own private version of Catholicity and not of the authorized version. If he were not thoroughly American, his exposition of the Catholic's ideal conception of the relations of the church and civil society might be very perfect, but it would rather confirm than shake the common persuasion that there is a contrariety between the principles of our political order and those of the Catholic Church. If he were not a philosopher, he might present both his religious and his political doctrines, separately, in such a way as to satisfy the claims both of orthodoxy and of patriotism; but he would not be able to show how these two hemispheres can be joined together in a complete whole. It is one of his greatest merits that he is perpetually aiming at the construction of these synthetic harmonies of what we may call, for the sake of the figure, the different gospels of truth, and is perpetually approximating nearer and nearer to that success which perhaps cannot be fully achieved by any human intellect. We think he has substantially succeeded in the task undertaken in the present volume, and we commend it to the perusal of all Americans, whether Catholics or non-Catholics, in the hope that it may strengthen both in the determination to do no injustice to each other, and to remain always faithful to the allegiance we owe to the American republic. We recommend it also to Dr. Brownson's numerous admirers and friends in Europe as a valuable aid to the understanding of what are commonly called American principles.

So far as the exterior is concerned, this is one of the very finest books which the Sadliers have yet published.

The End of the World, and the Day of Judgment. Two Discourses preached to the Music Hall Society, by their minister, the Rev. William Rounseville Alger. Published by request. Boston: Roberts Brothers.

Considering what are the contents of these "discourses," for which, naturally, the preacher failed to find any text, their title seems like a dismal jest. There is nothing, however, too absurd for the Music Hall of Boston, not even the amalgamation of puritanism and pantheism. We have two palmary objections to the argument of these discourses, which is, of course, intended to disprove the Christian doctrine respecting the last judgment and the end of the world. The first is, the boundless credulity which underlies the whole series of assumptions on which it is founded; the second is, its total want of scientific method and accuracy. Mr. Alger has an extensive knowledge of certain departments of literature, a vivid imagination, a certain nobleness of sentiment, and a considerable power of graphic delineation and combination of his intellectual conceptions; but no logic or philosophy, very little discriminative or analytic skill, and nothing of the judicial faculty. Wherever his imagination leads, his intellect follows, and willingly lends itself to clothe all the visions which are met with on the aerial journey with the garb of real and rational discoveries. Therefore, we say that his argument in these discourses rests on credulity, a basis of vapor, like that which supports a castle in the clouds. We proceed to give some instances. Mr. Alger has fashioned to himself a conception of what our Lord Jesus Christ ought to have been, and ought to have said and done. Throughout these discourses, and his other works, he explains every thing recorded of the sayings and doings[137] of our divine Lord in the New Testament according to this à priori conception of his own, without regard to common sense or sound criticism. This is credulity, and nothing more. As well might we say, Mr. Alger is a man of sense and honesty, and therefore he can never have meant any of the absurd things he seems to say against the Catholic doctrine. Another extraordinary instance of credulity is the theory of accounting for the similarity to the principal Catholic dogmas which is seen in the religious beliefs of heathen nations. It is a fanciful conjecture, and, as a philosophical theory, untenable, that the same myths had an independent origin and development among distinct races. There must have been a common cause and origin of religious traditions, as well as of languages. Another instance of credulity is found in the following passage: "It is confidently believed that within twenty years the views adopted in the present writing will be established beyond all cavil from any fair-minded critic." Here is a heavy strain indeed on our faith, worse than that which Moses makes upon poor Colenso! Worse than all is the following, which we will not credit to the author's credulity any further than he himself warrants us in doing by his own language, which we will quote entire, that the reader may judge for himself of the extent to which it shows in the author a penchant for the marvellous, provided that the marvellous is in no way connected with revelation. "A brilliant French writer has suggested that even if the natural course of evolution does of itself necessitate the final destruction of the world, yet our race, judging from the magnificent achievements of science and art already reached, may, within ten thousand centuries, which will be long before the foreseen end approaches, obtain such a knowledge and control of the forces of nature as to make collective humanity master of this planet, able to shape and guide its destinies, ward off every fatal crisis, and perfect and immortalize the system as now sustained. It is an audacious fancy. But, like many other incredible conceptions which have forerun their own still more incredible fulfilment, the very thought electrifies us with hope and courage." (P. 18.)

This is indeed brilliant! It surpasses the famous moon-hoax of Mr. Locke, and the balloon-voyages of that wild genius Edgar A. Poe, from whom we have some recent and interesting intelligence, contained in a volume which we recommend to the congregation of Music Hall; the volume being entitled Strange Visitors, by a Clairvoyant. In those days, probably, our Congress will have a committee on comets, and make appropriations for a railroad to the Dog-star.

The second objection to Mr. Alger's argument runs partly into the first. It is, we have said, totally wanting in scientific method and accuracy. This is true of the entire process by which the thesis of the discourses is sustained. This thesis is, that the present constitution of the world and the human race will endure for ever, or at least for an indefinitely long period. If there were no light to be had on this point except the light of nature, the opinion maintained by the author would be at best only a conjecture. It could not be made even solidly probable, unless some rational theory were first established concerning the ultimate destiny of the human race, and the end for which the present miserably imperfect constitution of the world had been decreed by the Creator, and the perpetuity of the existing order on the earth were shown to have a reason in this final cause of man's creation. The author has not done this, and we do not believe that it is possible to do it, even prescinding all question of revelation. Even on scientific grounds—that is, reasoning from all the analogies known to us, and from purely rational and philosophical data—it is far more probable and reasonable to suppose that the present state of the world is merely preparatory to a far higher and more perfect state, and will be swept away to make place for it. But when we consider the universality and antiquity of this latter belief, and the solid mountain of historical, miraculous, and moral evidence on which rests the demonstration that this belief proceeds from a divine[138] revelation, it is the most unscientific method that can be conceived to ignore it, or leap over it by the aid of fanciful hypotheses, as Mr. Alger does. The manner in which the Catholic doctrine is distorted and misrepresented, in extremely bad rhetoric, is also unscientific. Nearly all the pith of this so-called argument consists in a violent invective against the notion of a partial, unjust, vindictive Divinity, who rewards and punishes like an ambitious tyrant, without regard to necessary and eternal principles of truth, right, and moral laws. So far as this invective is directed against Calvinism, considered in its logical entity, and apart from the correctives of common sense and sound moral sentiment which practically modify it, we give the author the right of the case. But it is palpably false, as the author has had ample opportunity of knowing, as respects the Catholic doctrine. He is unscientific, moreover, in confusing the substance of the doctrine that the generation of the human race will cease, all mankind be raised from the dead in their bodies immortal, the ways of God to man be openly vindicated before the universe, and each one assigned to an immutable state according to his deserts or fitness, this visible earth also undergoing a corresponding change of condition; with the scenic act of proclaiming judgment and inaugurating the new, everlasting order, which is commonly believed in, according to the literal sense of the New Testament. If Mr. Alger can show good reasons for substituting a figurative, metaphorical interpretation of the passages depicting this last grand scene in the drama of human history for the literal sense, he is welcome to do it; but he has not touched the substance of the Catholic dogma which he gratuitously denies. Mr. Alger tells us, (p. 46,) "Loyalty to truth is the first duty of every man." It is also one in which he himself signally fails, by a persistent misrepresentation of Catholic doctrines, by disregarding the evidence which has been clearly set before him of their truth, subjecting his intellect to his imagination, and preaching as "truth" opinions which he cannot possibly prove, in the teeth of arguments which he cannot possibly refute. One who wilfully sins against "the first duty of man," by rejecting the faith and law of his Sovereign Creator when sufficiently proposed to him, must surely be condemned by divine justice; and it is only such who, the Catholic Church teaches, will be condemned for infidelity or heresy at the tribunal of Christ. "The judgment of God," says the author, "is the return of the laws of being on all deeds, actual or ideal." (P. 66.) God, therefore, will judge all men by acting toward them throughout eternity in accordance with that revealed law which is the transcript of his own immutable nature, and which assures us that beatitude is gained or lost by the acts which every responsible creature performs during the time of probation, and that every merit or demerit has its appropriate retribution in another life. Perhaps the most foolish thing in these discourses is the gleeful assurance to the congregation of Music Hall that the world will not come to an end because it has gone on so long already, although many people expected the end before this. A great pope has already cautioned us against this error, in an encyclical of the first century, beginning Simon Petrus, Servus et Apostolus Jesu Christi. "In the last days there shall come scoffers with deceit, walking according to their own lusts, saying, Where is his promise, or his coming? For since the fathers slept, all things continue so from the beginning of the creation," (2 Pet. iii.)

The good people of the Boston Music Hall who requested the publication of these discourses, no doubt because they were so much delighted to think that the world may stand for ever, have been a little premature in their exultation. The publication of Mr. Alger's manifesto against St. Peter only gives another proof that the first of the popes was also a prophet. Who is more likely to be infallible, Mr. Alger or St. Peter?

This book contains many good things, and is written in a very pleasing, literary style. The portions of it which treat of moral and religious duties are likely to be useful to a certain class of persons who seldom or never read a book containing so much sound doctrine and wholesome advice. The author, no doubt, wrote with a good intention, and endeavored to teach what he sincerely thinks to be Catholic doctrine, and, of course, the publishers have issued the book in good faith, without any suspicion that it contains any thing erroneous. The author has, however, made a great mistake in supposing that he is sufficiently learned in theology to be able to distinguish, in all cases, sound Catholic doctrine, from his own imperfect, and frequently incorrect, opinions, or that he is authorized to teach the faithful in doctrinal and spiritual matters, without first submitting his book to revision by a competent authority. He has, in consequence, made some very grave mistakes in doctrine, or at least in his manner of expressing himself on matters of doctrine, and also said a number of things which are very rash and unsuitable in a Catholic writer. On page 13 he says, "It is doubtful whether any human being has ever passed through a life of ordinary duration without an occasional violation of them"—that is, of the commandments of God. If this refers to grievous sins, it is contrary to the universal sentiment of Catholics, that very many persons have passed through even a long life without committing any grievous sin; if it refers to venial sin, it is false, at least as respects the blessed Virgin Mary, who was wholly sinless. The phraseology employed respecting the sacraments of penance and extreme unction is altogether deficient, diverse from that which is sanctioned by ecclesiastical usage, and suggestive of errors. The sacrament of penance is called, "repentance, acknowledgment, reformation," without express mention of sacramental absolution, and extreme unction is designated as "prayer for the sick," whereas the holy oil is the matter of the sacrament which was prescribed by the command of Jesus Christ. The fathers, doctors, and scholastic theologians, and the methods of scholastic theology, are criticised with an air of superior wisdom unbefitting any Catholic writer, but especially a tyro in theological science. After saying that the disbelief of the real presence is partly due to the neglect of religious teachers "to make such clear and just explanations as the Holy Scriptures authorize them to make," (p. 250,) the author undertakes to correct the method of St. Thomas, Suarez, Bellarmine, and the other theologians who have hitherto been considered as our masters and teachers, to supply for their defects, and to explain the mystery of transubstantiation in such a clear manner as to remove all difficulty out of the way of believing it. The good doctor has unfortunately, however, proposed a theory which subverts the Catholic doctrine of the incarnation, and that of the resurrection of the body. So far as we can understand his meaning, he holds that the spiritual or glorified body is the same thing with the spirit or soul. In other words, the spirit or soul is an ethereal substance which is called spirit, inasmuch as it is intelligent; and body, inasmuch as it is visible and subsisting under a certain configuration. This is the doctrine of the spiritists, and not that of the Catholic Church. The Catholic doctrine is, that soul and body are distinct, diverse substances; that the souls of the departed are existing now in a separate state, and that they will receive again their bodies at the resurrection. The author of course explains the resurrection and present state of our Lord in harmony with this notion; but in contradiction to the Catholic doctrine that our Lord raised up, glorified, and elevated to heaven that same flesh and blood which he took of the Virgin in the incarnation. He moreover confuses the human with the divine nature of Christ, by affirming, with the Lutherans, the ubiquity of the sacred humanity of Christ, whom he calls the "spirit Christ," and affirms to be everywhere by virtue of his divine omnipresence.[140] This again is erroneous doctrine. The way is prepared by these statements for an explanation of the presence of Christ in the eucharist, and transubstantiation. It is not difficult to believe that God annihilates the bread and wine, but still causes a miraculous appearance to make the same impression on our senses which the bread and wine made before the consecration. Christ, being everywhere present, imparts the special effects of his grace at the time of consecration and communion. The only trouble in the matter is, that the theory is not true or orthodox. The body and blood of Christ are made present under the sacred species by the force of the consecrating words, not his soul or divinity. The soul and divinity of our blessed Lord are present by concomitance; but transubstantiation is the change of the substance of the bread into the body, and of the wine into the blood of Christ, and here is the chief mystery of the dogma which the author, in endeavoring to explain, has explained away. It is possible that the author's sense is more orthodox than his language, and no doubt his intention is more orthodox than either. His language, however, bears on the face of it the appearance of a sense which is, in itself, contrary in some points to definitions of faith, and in others to the common doctrine of theologians.

It is very necessary that all Catholics should understand that they are not at liberty to interpret either the scripture, tradition, or the definitions of councils in contradiction to the Catholic sense and acceptation made known by the living voice of the pastors and teachers who are authorized by the church. Those who desire to feed on the pure milk of sound doctrine will find their best security against error in selecting for their theological or spiritual reading those books which they are well assured have the sanction and approbation of their pastors.

The Visible Unity of the Catholic Church maintained against Opposite Theories. With an explanation of certain passages in Ecclesiastical History erroneously appealed to in their support. By M. J. Rhodes, Esq., M.A. Dedicated by permission to the Right Rev. William Delany, D.D., Lord Bishop of Cork. London: Longmans, Green & Co. New York: The Catholic Publication Society.

The superb exterior of this book, published in the best English style, leads the reader to expect something unusually excellent in the contents. Nor will he be disappointed. This work is no mere repetition of other books. It is learned, original, carefully prepared, well written, and has undergone an examination by competent theologians, not only in England, but also at Rome. The genuine doctrine of Catholic unity, as opposed to the pseudo-catholicity of Anglicans, is exposed in it, with a refutation of the objections of Bishop Forbes, Dr. Pusey, and others. The questions of the Easter controversy, the dispute between St. Cyprian and Pope St. Stephen, the dispute between Paulinus and St. Meletius of Antioch, the Celtic controversies, etc., are fully discussed. The only criticism we have to make is concerning the manner of treating the question of the divided obediences at the epoch between the pontificate of Urban VI. and that of Martin V. The author thinks that the adherents of Peter de Luna, called Benedict XIII., were really in schism, although most of them were innocent of any sin. We think otherwise, and our opinion has been derived from the most approved Catholic authors. Without doubt, the authors of the division were formal schismatics. Yet they were able to make out such a plausible case against Urban and in favor of Benedict, that for the time being Urban's right was doubtful in a large portion of Christendom. Those who refused to recognize him were not therefore guilty of rebellion against the Roman pontiff as such, any more than those would be who should refuse to obey a papal rescript of doubtful authenticity. After the election of Alexander V. there was much greater reason to doubt which of the three rival claimants, Gregory XII., Benedict XIII., or Alexander V., was the true pope. It is now perfectly certain that Gregory[141] XII. was canonically elected, and we suppose it is by far the more probable opinion that he remained in possession of his right as legitimate pope until his voluntary resignation at the Council of Constance. Nevertheless, his claim, at the time, was a doubtful one, and the majority of the cardinals and bishops adhered, after the Council of Pisa, to Alexander V. and his successor John XXIII. Peter de Luna was a schismatic in the fullest extent of the word. But what shall we say of Alexander and John? Their names still appear on the lists of popes, and some maintain that they were true popes. They undoubtedly believed that a council could depose doubtful popes, and that therefore the Council of Pisa could deprive both Gregory and Benedict of whatever claim either of them might have to the papal throne. They believed themselves lawfully elected, and were not, therefore, schismatics, even though they were not lawful popes. If the author maintains that two of the three obediences which eventually concurred at Constance in the election of Martin V. were in a state of schism until that time, we cannot agree with him, and we think we have the best authorities on our side. For, if these obediences were in schism, they were no part of the true church, the jurisdiction of their bishops and priests was forfeited, and the Catholic Church was limited to the obedience of the legitimate pontiff. This theory would involve the author in considerable difficulties, and we wonder that it was allowed to escape the notice of his Roman examiners. The case is very plain, to our thinking. Neither of these three parties rebelled against the Roman see, or refused to obey the laws of any pontiff whose legitimacy was unquestionable. It was a dispute about the succession, not a revolt against the principle of authority. There was, therefore, no schism in the case; all were equally members of the Catholic Church, and jurisdiction remained in the bishops of all the contending parties. Those who wilfully promoted this dissension were grievously culpable, but the rest were free from sin, as long as they acted in good faith. The author devotes only a short space to this question, and with this exception his work is most admirable, and worthy of a most extensive circulation.

The Evidence for the Papacy. By the Hon. Colin Lindsay. London: Longmans & Co. For sale by the Catholic Publication Society, New York.

Mr. Lindsay was president of the Anglican Union when, after long study, he submitted to the authority of the holy Roman Church. His conversion made a great sensation, and called out the usual amount of foolish, ill-natured twaddle. In this volume he has given a masterly, lawyer-like, and extensive summary, richly furnished with evidences and authorities, of the scriptural and historical argument for the supremacy of St. Peter and his successors. We welcome and recommend this admirable work most cordially. The author is a convert of the old stamp of Newman, Wilberforce, Oakeley, Faber, and Manning; that is, a convert to genuine and thorough-going Catholicity; and not one of those who has been spoiled by the fatal influence of Munich. The spurious coin which dealers in counterfeit Catholicism are seeking just now to palm off on the unwary is distinguished from the genuine by its faint delineation of the pope's effigy on its surface. A primacy in the universal church similar to that of a metropolitan in a province is all they will admit the pope to possess jure divino. The true Catholicity brings out the divine supremacy of the successor of St. Peter into bold relief. This is just now the great question, the criterion of orthodox belief, the touchstone of faith, the one great fact and doctrine to be insisted on against every form of anti-Catholic error, from that of the Greeks to that of the atheists. The pope is the visible representative of Christ on the earth, of God's law, of revealed religion, of the supernatural, and of moral and political order. The one question of his supremacy in the true and full sense of the word being settled, every thing else follows as a necessary[142] consequence, and is established. It is very important, therefore, that books should be multiplied on this topic, and that the utmost pains should be taken by the clergy to indoctrinate the people and instruct fully converts concerning that loyal allegiance and unreserved obedience which all Catholics owe to the vicar of Christ. This book will be found to be one of the best. We have received also from London a very clever critique on "Janus," by F. Keogh, of the Oratory, and are glad to see that the learned Dr. Hergenröther, of Würzburg, is preparing an elaborate refutation of that mischievous production. The second part of F. Bottalla's work on the papacy is also announced as soon to appear.

Geology and Revelation; or, The Ancient History of the Earth, considered in the Light of Geological Facts and Revealed Religion. By the Rev. Gerald Molloy, D.D., Professor of Theology in the Royal College of St. Patrick, Maynooth. London: Longmans, Green, Reader & Dyer. 1870. For sale by the Catholic Publication Society, New York.

The author discusses in this volume two interpretations of the Mosaic account of creation: 1st, that a long interval may have elapsed between the creation and the work of the six days; 2d, that the six days themselves may be long periods of time; and shows that they are both admissible, and that the last corresponds pretty well with the present state of geological science. In a subsequent work, he proposes to discuss the question of the antiquity of man.

Though he does not claim to have written a manual of geology, the first and larger part of the work is in fact an excellent compendium of the science, and is written in a remarkably interesting and readable style. A few such books would do much to remove the dislike and distrust of geology which still prevails to some extent among religious people, and perhaps also to convince scientific unbelievers.

Reports on Observations of the Total Eclipse of the Sun, Aug. 7, 1869. Conducted under the direction of Commodore B. F. Sands, U.S.N., Superintendent of the United States Naval Observatory, Washington, D.C. Washington: Government Printing Office. 1869.

This volume contains the reports of the parties sent from the Naval Observatory to Des Moines, Iowa, Plover Bay, Siberia, and Bristol, Tennessee; as well as those of Mr. W. S. Gilman, Jr., and General Albert J. Myer, at St. Paul Junction, Iowa, and Abingdon, Va., respectively, who also communicated their observations to the superintendent. The latter saw the eclipse from the top of White Top Mountain, 5530 feet high; the effect was, of course, magnificent. The papers of Professor Harkness on the spectrum, and of Dr. Curtis on the photographs which they obtained at Des Moines, are specially interesting. One hundred and twenty-two photographs were taken in all, two during the totality, fac-similes of which last are appended, together with other representations of the total phase, and copies of the spectra observed, etc. Professor Harkness observed what appears to be a very decided iron line in the spectrum of the corona, which was otherwise continuous, and he considers it quite probable that this mysterious halo is to a great extent or even perhaps principally composed of the vapor of this metal. He saw magnesium and hydrogen in the prominences, and the unknown substance which has been elsewhere observed.

Professor Hall, who went to Siberia, was unfortunate, the weather being cloudy during the eclipse, though clear before and afterward; but he made what observations were practicable under the circumstances.

A Text-Book of Practical Medicine. By Dr. Felix Von Niemeyer, Professor of Pathology and Therapeutics; Director of the Medical Clinic of the University of Tübingen. Translated from the seventh German edition, by special permission of the author, by George H. Humphreys, M.D., and Charles E. Hackley, M.D. In two volumes octavo, 1500 pp. New York: D. Appleton & Co.

These books place at once before the[143] American practitioner the most advanced scientific knowledge on the general practice of medicine possessed by the German school, of which Professor Niemeyer is considered, and justly, one of the most erudite and brilliant ornaments.

Each subject treated shows the profound and masterly manner in which its details have been garnered by him from the only reliable source of such knowledge, the hospital clinic.

The rapidity with which it has passed through seven German editions, the last two of triple size, and the fact that it has been translated into most of the principal languages of the old continent, afford ample proof of its appreciation in Europe.

The medical student is here presented with a solid, comprehensive, and scientific foundation upon which to rear his future superstructure of learning, while the over-worked practitioner will find a never-failing source of gratification in the work for casual reference and study.

Nothing can so much advance truly Catholic science and literature as the free interchange of national ideas and opinions, expressed through the master minds of the various professions and pursuits.

Life Pictures of the Passion of our Lord Jesus Christ. Translated from the German of Rev. Dr. John Emmanuel Veith, formerly Preacher of St. Stephen's Cathedral, Vienna. By Rev. Theodore Noethen, Pastor of the Church of the Holy Cross, Albany, N. Y. Boston: P. Donahoe.

The various personages connected with the sufferings and death of our Saviour—Judas Iscariot, Caiaphas, Malchus, Simon Peter, etc.—receive each a chapter in this book, in which their characters are portrayed with appropriate reflections and illustrations drawn from history, religious and secular.

The author is one of the most distinguished preachers in Europe. The translator is a clergyman well and favorably known for the many excellent translations of German religious books which he has given to the American public.

Health by Good Living. By W. W. Hall, M.D. New York: Hurd & Houghton. 1870. Pp. 277.

This work is intended to show that good health can be maintained, and many diseases prevented, by proper care in eating. The doctor does not use the phrase "good living" in its ordinary meaning; he defines it to be a good appetite followed by good digestion. His rules for obtaining this two-fold blessing are generally sensible; but a few of his statements are somewhat exaggerated. We have no doubt that the health of the community would be improved by following the common-sense directions of Dr. Hall; but unfortunately, as the doctor himself remarks, not one person in a thousand of his readers will have sufficient control over his appetite to carry out these suggestions, which require so much self-denial. We are glad to see the doctor recommends a strict observance of Lent.

A General History of Modern Europe, from the Beginning of the Sixteenth Century to the Council of the Vatican. Third edition, revised and corrected. By John G. Shea. New York: T. W. Strong, (late Edward Dunigan & Brother.)

The merit of this history as a text-book has been long and widely recognized. The correction, revision, and addenda do not call for any special notice.

The Ferryman of the Tiber. An Historical Tale. Translated from the Italian of Madame A. K. De La Grange. New York: P. O'Shea, 27 Barclay street. 1870.

This is a beautiful story of the early days of the church, when the effeminacy and luxury of the pagans made the noble virtues of the Christians shine with the greater splendor; when St. Jerome lived in Rome, and the Roman matrons and virgins, following his instructions, gave to the world such beautiful examples of virtue, and to the church so many saints. It is a book that should be read now; for though we do not live in a pagan age, we surely are not living in an age of faith; and the example of a Jerome, a Melania, and a Valeria are as necessary as when the light of Christianity had but just begun to shine upon the world.

This is a treatise on the science, not the art of logic, with application to religious belief and faith in the divine revelation. We have only had time to glance at its contents, and must, therefore, postpone any critical judgment upon them. What we have seen in looking over the leaves of the advanced sheets sent us by the kindness of the author is enough, however, to show that in this book Dr. Newman has put thought and language under a condenser which has compressed a folio of sense into a duodecimo of size.

The Earthly Paradise. A Poem by William Morris. Part III. Boston: Roberts Brothers. Printed at the Cambridge University Press.

An extremely beautiful book, which it is a luxury to handle and look at. Every body knows, long before now, that Mr. Morris is a true poet, and there is no need of our saying what will be no news to any one who loves poetry. We will only say, therefore, that we like Mr. Morris, because he is antique, classical, and pure, and it is refreshing to get away from the dusty, hot highway of recent literature into his pages.

The Double Sacrifice; or, The Pontifical Zouaves. A Tale of Castelfidardo. Translated from the Flemish of the Rev. S. Daems. Baltimore: Kelly, Piet & Co. Pp. 242.

A well-deserved tribute to those gallant youths who cheerfully offered up their all, home, friends, life itself, for Peter's chair, and in defence of holy church. As a story it has no particular merit.

CHURCH AND STATE.[21]

Il Signor Cantù is one of the ablest men and most distinguished contemporary authors of Italy. He is a layman, and has usually been reckoned among the better class of so-called liberal Catholics, and certainly is a warm friend of liberty, civil and religious, a sincere and earnest Italian patriot, thoroughly devoted to the holy see, and a firm and fearless defender of the rights, freedom, independence, and authority of the spiritual order in its relation to the temporal.

We know not where to look for a truer, fuller, more loyal, or more judicious treatment in so brief a compass of the great and absorbing question in regard to the relation of church and state, than in his article from the Rivista Universale, the title of which we give at the foot of the page. He is an erudite rather than a philosopher, a historian rather than a theologian; yet his article is equally remarkable for its learning, its history, its philosophy, its theology, and its canon law, and, with slight reservation, as to his interpretation of the bull Unam Sanctam of Boniface VIII. and some views hinted rather than expressed as to the origin and nature of the magisterium exercised by the popes over sovereigns in the middle ages, we believe it as true and as exact as it is learned and profound, full and conclusive, and we recommend its careful study to all who would master the question it treats.

For ourselves, we have treated the question of church and state so often, so fully, and so recently, in its principle and in its several aspects, especially in relation to our own government, that we know not that we have any thing to add to what we have already said, and we might dispense ourselves from its further discussion by simply referring to the articles, Independence of the Church, October, 1866; Church and State, April, 1867; Rome and the World, October of the same year; and to our more recent articles on The Future of Protestantism and Catholicity, especially the third and fourth, January, February, March, and April, of the present year; and also to the article on The School Question, in the very last number before the present. We can do, and we shall attempt, in the present article, to do, little more than bring together and present as a whole what is scattered through these several articles, and[146] offer respectfully and even timidly such suggestions as we think will not be presumptuous in regard to the means, in the present emergency, of realizing more perfectly at home and abroad the ideal of Christian society.

We assume in the outset that there really exist in human society two distinct orders, the spiritual and the temporal, each with its own distinctive functions, laws, and sphere of action. In Christian society, the representative of the spiritual order is the church, and the representative of the temporal is the state. In the rudest stages of society the elements of the two orders exist, but are not clearly apprehended as distinct orders, nor as having each its distinct and proper representative. It is only in Christian society, or society enlightened by the Gospel, that the two orders are duly distinguished, and each in its own representative is placed in its normal relation with the other.

The type, indeed the reason, of this distinction of two orders in society is in the double nature of man, or the fact that man exists only as soul and body, and needs to be cared for in each. The church, representing the spiritual, has charge of the souls of men, and looks after their minds, ideas, intelligence, motives, consciences, and consequently has the supervision of education, morals, literature, science, and art. The state, representing the temporal, has charge of men's bodies, and looks after the material wants and interests of individuals and society. We take this illustration from the fathers and mediæval doctors. It is perfect. The analogy of church and state in the moral order, with the soul and body in the physical order, commends itself to the common sense of every one, and carries in itself the evidence of its justness, especially when it is seen to correspond strictly in the moral order, to the distinction of soul and body in the physical order. We shall take, then, the relation of soul and body as the type throughout of the ideal relation of church and state.

Man lives not as body alone, nor as soul alone, but as the union of the two, in reciprocal commerce. Soul and body are distinct, but not separate. Each has its own distinctive properties and functions, and neither can replace the other; but their separation is death, the death of the body only, not of the soul indeed, for that is immortal. The body is material, and, separated from the soul, is dust and ashes, mere slime of the earth, from which it was formed. It is the same in the moral order with society, which is not state alone, nor church alone, but the union of the two in reciprocal commerce. The two are distinct, each has its distinctive nature, laws, and functions, and neither can perform the functions of the other, or take the other's place. But though distinct, they cannot in the normal state of society be separated. The separation of the state from the church is in the moral order what the separation of the body from the soul is in the physical order. It is death, the death of the state, not indeed of the church; for she, like the soul, nay, like God himself, is immortal. The separation of the state from the church destroys its moral life, and leaves society to become a mass of moral rottenness and corruption. Hence, the holy father includes the proposition to separate church and state, in his syllabus of condemned propositions.

The soul is defined by the church as the forma corporis, the informing or vital principle of the body. The church in the moral order is forma civitatis, the informing, the vital principle of the state or civil society, which has no moral life of its own,[147] since all moral life, by its very term, proceeds from the spiritual order. There is in the physical order no existence, but from God through the medium of his creative act; so is there no moral life in society, but from the spiritual order which is founded by God as supreme law-giver, and represented by the church, the guardian and judge alike of the natural law and the revealed law.

The soul is the nobler and superior part of man, and it belongs to it, not to make away with the body, or to assume its functions, but to exercise the magisterium over it, to direct and govern it according to the law of God; not to the body to assume the mastery over the soul, and to bring the law of the mind into captivity to law in the members. So is the church, as representing the spiritual order, and charged with the care of souls, the nobler and superior part of society, and to her belongs the magisterium of entire human society; and it is for her in the moral order to direct and control civil society, by judicially declaring, and applying to its action, the law of God, of which she is, as we have just said, the guardian and judge, and to which it is bound by the Supreme Law-Giver to subordinate its entire official conduct.

We note here that this view condemns alike the absorption of the state in the church, and the absorption of the church in the state, and requires each to remain distinct from the other, each with its own organization, organs, faculties, and sphere of action. It favors, therefore, neither what is called theocracy, or clerocracy, rather, to which Calvinistic Protestantism is strongly inclined, nor the supremacy of the state, to which the age tends, and which was assumed in all the states of Gentile antiquity, whence came the persecution of Christians by the pagan emperors. We note farther, that the church does not make the law; she only promulgates, declares, and applies it, and is herself as much bound by it as is the state itself. The law itself is prescribed for the government of all men and nations, by God himself as supreme law-giver, or the end or final cause of creation, and binds equally states and individuals, churchmen and statesmen, sovereigns and subjects.

Such, as we have learned it, is the Catholic doctrine of the relation of church and state, and such is the relation that in the divine order really exists between the two orders, and which the church has always and everywhere labored with all her zeal and energy to introduce and maintain in society. It is her ideal of catholic or truly Christian society, but which has never yet been perfectly realized, though an approach to its realization, the author thinks, was made under the Christian Roman emperors. The chronic condition of the two orders in society, instead of union and coöperation, or reciprocal commerce, has been that of mutual distrust or undisguised hostility. During the first three centuries, the relation between them was that of open antagonism, and the blood of Christians made the greater part of the world then known hallowed ground, and the Christians, as Lactantius remarks, conquered the world, not by slaughtering, but by being slaughtered. The pagan sovereign of Rome claimed, and was held to unite both powers in himself, and was at once imperator, pontifix maximus, and divus, or god. The state, even after the conversion of the empire and of the barbarians that overturned it and seated themselves on its ruins, never fully disclaimed the spiritual faculties conceded it by Græco-Roman or Italo-Greek civilization.

All through the middle ages, Kenelm[148] Digby's ages of faith, when it is pretended the church had every thing her own way, and the haughty power of her supreme pontiffs and their tyranny over such meek and lamb-like temporal princes as Henry IV., Frederick Barbarossa, and Frederick II. of Germany, Philip Augustus of France, Henry II. and John Lackland of England, have been the theme of many a school-boy declamation against her, and adduced by grave statesmen as an excuse for depriving Catholics of their liberty, confiscating their goods, and cutting their throats—all through those ages, we say, she enjoyed not a moment's peace, hardly a truce, and was obliged to sustain an unceasing struggle with the civil authority against its encroachments on the spiritual order, and for her own independence and freedom of action as the church of God. In this struggle, the struggle of mind against matter, of moral power against physical force, the church was far from being, at least to human eyes, always victorious, and she experienced more than one disastrous defeat. In the sixteenth century, Cæsar carried away from her the north of Europe, as he had long since carried away the whole east, and forced her, in the nations that professed to recognize her as representing the spiritual order, to make him such large concessions as left her little more than the shadow of independence; and the people and their rulers are now almost everywhere conspiring to take away even that shadow, and to render her completely subject to the state, or representative of the temporal order.

There is no opinion more firmly fixed in the minds of the people of to-day, at least according to the journals, than that the union of church and state is execrable and ought not to be suffered to exist. The words cannot be pronounced without sending a thrill of horror through society, and calling forth the most vigorous and indignant protest from every self-appointed defender of modern civilization, progress, liberty, equality, and fraternity. What is called the "Liberal party," sometimes "the movement party," but what we call "the revolution," has everywhere for its primum mobile, its impulse and its motive, the dissolution of what remains of the union of church and state, the total separation of the state from the church and its assertion as the supreme and only legitimate authority in society, to which all orders and classes of men, and all matters, whether temporal or spiritual, must be subjected. The great words of the party, as pronounced by its apostles and chiefs, are "people-king," "people-priest," "people-God." There is no denying the fact. Science, or what passes for science, denies the double nature of man, the distinction between soul and body, and makes the soul the product of material organization, or a mere function of the body; and the more popular philosophy suppresses the spiritual order in society, and therefore rejects its pretended representative; and the progress of intelligence suppresses God, and leaves for society only political atheism pure and simple, as is evident from the savage war-whoop set up throughout the civilized world against the syllabus of condemned propositions published by our holy father, December, 1864. This syllabus touched the deep wound of modern society, probed it to the quick, and hence the writhings and contortions, the groans and screechings it occasioned. May God grant that it touched to heal, exposed the wound only to apply the remedy.

But the remedy—what is it, where shall we seek it, and how shall it be applied? The question is delicate[149] as well as grave, let it be answered as it may. The principles of the church are inflexible and unalterable, and must be preserved inviolate; and even the susceptibilities of both statesmen and churchmen, in regard to changes in old customs and usages, even when not unchangeable in their nature, are to be gently treated. The church is not less bound by the law of God than is the state; for she does not, as we have said, make the law, she only administers it. Undoubtedly, she has in a secondary sense legislative authority or power to enact canons or rules and regulations for preserving, carrying out, and applying the law, as the court adopts its own rules and regulations, or as does the executive authority, even in a government like ours, for executing the law enacted by the legislative power. These may no doubt be changed from time to time by the church as she judges necessary, proper, or expedient in order the better to meet the changing circumstances in relation to which she is obliged to act. But even in these respects, changes must be made in strict conformity to law; and although they may be so made and leave the law intact, and affect only the modes or forms of its administration, they are not without a certain danger. The faithful may mistake them for changes or innovations in the law itself, and enemies may represent them as such, and sophistically adduce them against the church as disproving her immutability and infallibility.

There have been, and no doubt are still, abuses in the church growing out of its human side, which need changes in discipline to reform them; but these abuses have always been exaggerated by the best and holiest men in the church, and the necessity of a change in discipline or ecclesiastical law, as distinguished from the law of God, is seldom, if ever, created by them. When evils exist that menace both faith and society, it is not the church that is in fault, but the world that refuses to conform to the law as she declares and applies it. It was not abuses in the church that were the chief cause of the revolt, the heresy, and schism of the reformers in the sixteenth century; for they were far less then than they had been one, two, three, or even four centuries previous. The worst abuses and greatest scandals which had previously obtained had already been corrected, and Leo X. had assembled the Fifth Council of the Lateran for the purpose of restoring discipline and rendering it still more effective. The evil originated in the temporal order as represented by the state, and grew out of secular changes and abuses. It was so then, it is so now, always was and always will be so. Why, then, demand changes or reform in the church, which cannot reach them? The church causes none of the evils at any time complained of, and offers no obstacle to their removal, or the redress of social grievances. It is for the temporal to yield to the spiritual, not for the spiritual to yield to the temporal. Very true; and yet the church may condescend to the world in its weakness for the sake of elevating it to harmony with her own ideal. God, when he would take away sin, and save the souls he had created and which he loved, did not stand aloof, or, so to speak, on his dignity, and bid the sinner cease sinning and obey him, without stretching forth his hand to help him; but made himself man, humbled himself, took the form of a servant, and came to the world lying in wickedness and festering in iniquity, took it by the hand, and sweetly and gently led the sinner away from sin to virtue and holiness.

For four hundred years, the church has sought to maintain peace and[150] concord between herself and the state by concordats, as the wisest and best expedient she found practicable. But concordats, however useful or necessary, do not realize the ideal of Christian society. They do not effect the true union of church and state, and cannot be needed where that union exists. They imply not the union, but the separation of church and state, and are neither necessary nor admissible, except where the state claims to be separate from and independent of the church. They are a compromise in which the church concedes the exercise of certain rights to the state in consideration of its pledge to secure her in the free and peaceable exercise of the rest, and to render her the material force in the execution of her spiritual canons, which she may need but does not herself possess. They are defensible only as necessary expedients, to save the church and the state from falling into the relation of direct and open antagonism.

Yet even as expedients concordats have been at best only partially successful, and now seem on the point of failing altogether. While the church faithfully observes their stipulations so far as they bind her, the state seldom observes them in the respect that they bind it, and violates them as often as they interfere with its own ambitious projects or policy. The church has concordats with the greater part of the European states, and yet while in certain respects they trammel her freedom, they afford her little or no protection. The state everywhere claims the right to violate or abrogate them at will, without consulting her, the other party to the contract. It has done so in Spain, in Italy, and in Austria; and if France at present observes the concordat of 1801, she does it only in the sense of the "organic articles," never inserted in it, but added by the First Consul on his authority alone, and always protested against by the supreme pontiff and vicar of Christ; and there is no foreseeing what the present or a new ministry may do. Even if the governments were disposed to observe them, their people would not suffer them to do so, as we see in Spain and Austria. Times have changed, and the governments no longer govern the people, but the people, or the demagogues who lead them, now govern the governments. The European governments sustain their power, even their existence, only by the physical force of five millions of armed soldiers.

There is evidently, then, little reliance to be placed on the governments; for they are liable, any day, to be changed or overthrown. The strongest of them hope to sustain themselves and keep the revolution in check only by concessions, as we see in the extension of suffrage in England, and the adoption of parliamentary government, under a constitutional monarch, in Austria, France, North Germany, and elsewhere. But as yet the concessions of the governments have nowhere strengthened them or weakened the revolution. One concession becomes the precedent for another, and one demand satisfied only leads to another and a greater demand, while it diminishes the power of the government to resist. What is more, the closer the union of the church with the government the more helpless it becomes, and the greater the hostility it incurs. The primum mobile of the movement party, as we now find it, is not the love of honest liberty, or a liberty compatible with stable government, or the establishment of a democratic or republican constitution; and it is not hostile to the church only because she exerts her power to sustain the governments it would reform or revolutionize, but rather, because it regards them as upholding[151] the church, which they detest and would annihilate. The primum mobile is hatred of the church. This is the reason why, even when the governments are well disposed, as sometimes they are, the people will not suffer them to observe faithfully their engagements to the church.

Here was the mistake of the brilliant but unhappy De la Mennais. He called upon the church to cut herself loose from her entangling alliance with the state, and throw herself back on the people; which would have been not bad counsel, if the people were hostile to her only because they supposed her allied with despotic governments, or if they were less hostile to her than the governments themselves. But such is not the fact at present. The people are to-day controlled by Catholics who care little for any world but the present, by Protestants, rationalists, Jews, infidels, and humanitarians; and to act on the Lamennaisian counsel would seem very much like abandoning weak, timid, and too exacting friends, to throw one's self into the arms of powerful and implacable enemies. When, in the beginning of his reign, the holy father adopted some popular measures, he was universally applauded, but he did not win those who applauded him to the church; and his measures were applauded by the outside world only because believed to be such as would tend to undermine his own authority, and pave the way for the downfall of Catholicity. The movement party applauded, because they thought they could use him as an instrument for the destruction of the church. In the French Revolution of February, 1848, originating in deep-seated and inveterate hostility to the church, the ready acceptance of the republic, the next day after its proclamation, by the French bishops and clergy, did not for a moment conciliate the hostility in which the revolution had its origin. They were applauded indeed, but only in the hope of making use of them to democratize, or secularize, and therefore to destroy the church as the authoritative representative of the spiritual order. The bishops and priests, all but a very small minority, showed that they understood and appreciated the applause they received, by abandoning the revolution at the earliest practicable moment, and lending their support to the movement for the Establishment of imperialism; for they felt that they could more safely rely on the emperor than on the republic.

These facts and the reminiscences of the old French Revolution, have created in the great majority of intelligent and earnest Catholics, wisely or unwisely, we say not, a profound distrust of the movement party, which professes to be the party of liberty, and which carries in its train, if not the numerical majority, at least the active, energetic, and leading minds of their respective nations, those that form public opinion and give its direction, and make them honestly believe that Catholic interests, which are not separable from the interests of society, will be best protected and promoted by the church's standing by the governments and aiding them in their repressive measures. Perhaps they are right. The church, of course, cannot abandon society; but in times like ours, it is not easy to say on which side lie the interests of society. Is it certain that they lie on either side, either with the governments as they are, or with the party opposed to them? At present the church neither directs the governments nor controls the popular or so-called liberal movement; and we confess it is difficult to say from which she and society have most to dread. Governments without her direction want morality,[152] and can govern only by force; and popular movements not inspired or controlled by her are blind and lawless, and tend only to anarchy, and the destruction of liberty as well as of order, of morality as well as of religion as a directing and governing power. We distrust both.

For ourselves personally, we are partial to our own American system, which, unless we are blinded by our national prejudices, comes nearer to the realization of the true union as well as distinction of church and state than has heretofore or elsewhere been effected; and we own we should like to see it, if practicable there, introduced—by lawful means only—into the nations of Europe. The American system may not be practicable in Europe; but, if so, we think it would be an improvement. Foreigners do not generally, nor even do all Americans themselves fully understand the relation of church and state, as it really subsists in the fundamental constitution of American society. Abroad and at home there is a strong disposition to interpret it by the theory of European liberalism, and both they who defend and they who oppose the union of church and state, regard it as based on their total separation. But the reverse of this, as we understand it, is the fact. American society is based on the principle of their union; and union, while it implies distinction, denies separation. Modern infidelity or secularism is, no doubt, at work here as elsewhere to effect their separation; but as yet the two orders are distinct, each with its distinct organization, sphere of action, representative, and functions, but not separate. Here the rights of neither are held to be grants from the other. The rights of the church are not franchises or concessions from the state, but are recognized by the state as held under a higher law than its own, and therefore rights prior to and above itself, which it is bound by the law constituting it to respect, obey, and, whenever necessary, to use its physical force to protect and vindicate.

The original settlers of the Anglo-American colonies were not infidels, but, for the most part, sincerely religious and Christian in their way, and in organizing society aimed not simply to escape the oppression of conscience, of which they had been the victims in the mother country, but to found a truly Christian commonwealth; and such commonwealth they actually founded, as perfect as was possible with their imperfect and often erroneous views of Christianity. The colonies of New England inclined, no doubt, to a theocracy, and tended to absorb the state in the church; in the Southern colonies, the tendency was, as in England, to establish the supremacy of the civil order, and to make the church a function of the state. These two opposite tendencies meeting in the formation of American society, to a great extent, counterbalanced each other, and resulted in the assertion of the supremacy of the Christian idea, or the union and distinction under the law of God, of the two orders. In principle, at least, each order exists in American society in its normal relation to the other; and also in its integrity, with its own distinctive nature, laws, and functions, and therefore the temporal in its proper subordination to the spiritual.

This subordination is, indeed, not always observed in practice, nor always even theoretically admitted. Many Americans, at first thought, when it is broadly stated, will indignantly deny it. We shall find even Catholics who do not accept it, and gravely tell us that their religion has nothing to do with their politics; that is, their politics are independent of[153] their religion; that is, again, politics are independent of God, and there is no God in the political order; as if a man could be an atheist in the state, and a devout Catholic in the church. But too many Catholics, at home and abroad, act as if this were indeed possible, and very reasonable, nay, their duty; and hence the political world is given over to the violence and corruption in which Satan finds a rich harvest. But let the state pass some act that openly and undisguisedly attacks the rights, the freedom, or independence of the church, in a practical way, it will be hard to find a single Catholic, in this country at least, who would not denounce it as an outrage on his conscience, which shows that the assertion of the separation of politics from religion so thoughtlessly made, really means only the distinction, not the separation of the two orders, or that politics are independent, so long as they do not run counter to the freedom and independence of religion, or fail to respect and protect the rights of the church. Inexactness of expression, and bad logic do not necessarily indicate unsound faith.

Most non-Catholics will deny that the American state is founded on the recognition of the independence and superiority of the spiritual order, and therefore, of the church, and the confession of its own subordination to the spiritual, not only in the order of logic, as Il Signor Cantù maintains, but also in the order of authority; yet a little reflection ought to satisfy every one that such is the fact, and if it does not, it will be owing to a misconception of what is spiritual. The basis of the American state or constitution, the real, unwritten, providential constitution, we mean, is what are called the natural and inalienable rights of man; and we know no American citizen who does not hold that these rights are prior to civil society, above it, and held independently of it; or that does not maintain that the great end for which civil society is instituted is to protect, defend, and vindicate, if need be, with its whole physical force, these sacred and inviolable rights for each and every citizen, however high, however low. This is our American boast, our American conception of political justice, glory. These rights, among which are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, are the higher, the supreme law for civil society, which the state, however constituted, is bound to recognize and obey. They deny the absolutism of the state, define its sphere, restrict its power, and prescribe its duty.

But whence come these rights? and how can they bind the state, and prescribe its duty? We hold these rights by virtue, of our manhood, it is said; they are inherent in it, and constitute it. But my rights bind you, and yours bind me, and yet you and I are equal; our manhoods are equal. How, then, can the manhood of either bind or morally oblige the other? Of things equal one cannot be superior to another. They are in our nature as men, it is said again, or, simply, we hold them from nature. They are said to be natural rights and inalienable, and what is natural must be in or from nature. Nature is taken in two senses; as the physical order or the physical laws constitutive of the physical universe, and as the moral law under which all creatures endowed with reason and free-will are placed by the Creator, and which is cognizable by natural reason or the reason common to all men. In the first sense, these rights are not inherent in our nature as men, nor from nature, or in nature; for they are not physical. Physical rights are a contradiction in terms. They can be inherent in our[154] nature only in the second sense, and in our moral nature only, and consequently are held under the law which founds and sustains moral nature, or the moral order as distinct from the physical order.

But the moral law, the so-called law of nature, droit naturel, which founds and sustains the moral order, the order of right, of justice, is not a law founded or prescribed by nature, but the law for the moral government of nature, under which all moral natures are placed by the Author of nature as supreme law-giver. The law of nature is God's law; and whatever rights it founds or are held from it are his rights, and ours only because they are his. My rights, in relation to you, are your duties, what God prescribes as the law of your conduct to me; and your rights are, in relation to me, my duties to you, what God prescribes as the rule of my conduct to you. But what God prescribes he has the right to prescribe, and therefore can command me to respect no rights in you, and you to respect no rights in me, that are not his; and being his, civil society is bound by them, and cannot alienate them or deny them without violating his law, and robbing him of his rights. Hence, he who does an injury to another wrongs not him only, but wrongs his Maker, his Sovereign, and his Judge.

Take any of the rights enumerated as inalienable in the preamble to the Declaration of Independence. Among these is the right to life. This right all men and civil society itself are bound to treat as sacred and inviolable. But all men are created equal, and under the law of nature have equal rights. But how can equals bind one another? By mutual compact. But whence the obligation of the compact? Why am I obliged to keep my word? Certainly not by the word itself; but because I should deprive him of his right to whom I have pledged it. But I have given my word to assist in committing a murder. Am I bound to keep it? Not at all. Why not? Because I have pledged myself to commit a crime, to do a wrong or unjust act. Evidently, then, compacts or pledged words do not create justice, they presuppose it; and it is only in virtue of the law of justice that compacts are obligatory, and no compacts not conformable to that law can bind. Why, then, am I bound to respect your life? It is not you who can bind me; for you and I are equals, and neither in his own name can bind the other. To take your life would be an unjust act; that is, I should rob justice of its right to your life. The right to life is then the right of justice. But justice is not an abstraction; it is not a mental conception, but a reality, and therefore God; and hence the right for you or me to live is the right of him who hath made us and whose we are, with all that we are, all that we have, and all that we can do. Hence, the right to life is inalienable even by myself, and suicide is not only a crime against society, but a sin against God; for God owns it as his right, and therefore he has the right to command all men to hold it in every man sacred and inviolable, and never to be taken by other men or even civil society, but at his order. So of all the other rights of man.

If the rights of man are the rights of God in and over man as his creature, as they undeniably are, they lie in the spiritual order, are spiritual, not temporal. The American state, then, in recognizing the independence, superiority, and inviolability of the rights of man, does recognize, in principle, the independence, superiority, and inviolability of the spiritual order, and its own subordination to it, and obligation to consult it and conform to it.[155] It then recognizes the church divinely appointed and commissioned by God with plenary authority to represent it, and apply the law of God to the government of the people as the state no less than to the people as individuals. This follows as a necessary consequence. If God has made a supernatural revelation, we are bound by the natural law to believe it; and if he has instituted a church to represent the spiritual, or concreted the spiritual in a visible organism, with plenary authority to teach his word to all men and nations, and to declare and apply his law in the government of human affairs, we are bound to accept and obey her the moment the fact is brought sufficiently to our knowledge. This shows that the true church, if such church there be, is sacred and inviolable, and that what she declares to be the law of God is his law, which binds every conscience; and all sovereigns and subjects, states and citizens are alike bound to obey her. He who refuses to obey her refuses to obey God; he who spurns her spurns God; he who despises her despises God; and he who despoils her of any of her rights or possessions despoils God. Kings and the great of the earth, statesmen and courtiers, demagogues and politicians are apt to forget this, and because God does not instantly punish their sacrilege with a visible and material punishment, conclude that they may outrage her to their heart's content with impunity. But the punishment is sure to follow in due course, and so far as it concerns states, dynasties, and society, in the shape of moral weakness, imbecility, corruption, and death.

That the American state is true to the order it acknowledges, and never usurps any spiritual functions, we do not pretend. The American state copies in but too many instances the bad legislation of Europe. It from the outset showed the original vice of the American people; for while they very justly subjected the state to the law of God, they could subject it to that law only as they understood it, and their understanding of it was in many respects faulty, which was no wonder, since they had no infallible, no authoritative, in fact, no representative at all of the spiritual order, and knew the law of God only so far as taught it by natural reason, and spelled out by their imperfect light from an imperfect and mutilated text of the written word. They had a good major proposition, namely, the spiritual order duly represented is supreme, and should govern all men collectively and individually, as states and as citizens; but their minor was bad. But we with our reading of the Bible do duly represent that order. Therefore, etc. Now, we willingly admit that a people reverencing and reading the Bible as the word of God, will in most respects have a far truer and more adequate knowledge of the law of God than those who have neither church nor Bible, and only their reason and the mutilated, perverted, and even travestied traditions of the primitive revelation retained and transmitted by Gentilism, and therefore that Protestantism as understood by the American colonists is much better for society than the liberalism asserted by the movement party either here or in Europe; but its knowledge will still be defective, and leave many painful gaps on many important points; and the state, having no better knowledge, will almost inevitably misconceive what on various matters the law of God actually prescribes or forbids.

The American state, misled by public opinion, usurps the functions of the church in some very grave matters. It assumes the control of marriage and education, therefore of all[156] family relations, of the family itself, and of ideas, intelligence, opinions, which we have seen are functions of the church, and both are included in the two sacraments of marriage and orders. It also fails to recognize the freedom and independence of the spiritual order in refusing to recognize the church as a corporation, a moral person, as capable of possessing property as any natural or private person, and therefore denies to the spiritual order the inalienable right of property. The American state denies to the church all possessory rights unless incorporated by itself. This is all wrong; but if no better, it is no worse than what is assumed by the state in every European nation; and the most that can be said is, that in these matters the state forgets the Christian commonwealth for the pagan, as is done everywhere else.

But except in these instances, the American state is, we believe, true to the Christian principle on which it is based, as true, that is, as it can be in a mixed community of Catholics, Jews, and Protestants. The state has no spiritual competency, and cannot decide either for itself or for its citizens which is or is not the church that authoritatively represents the spiritual order. The responsibility of that decision it does and must leave to its citizens, who must decide for themselves, and answer to God for the rectitude of their decision. Their decision is law for the state, and it must respect and obey it in the case alike of majorities and minorities; for it recognizes the equal rights of all its citizens, and cannot discriminate between them. The church that represents for the state the spiritual order is the church adopted by its citizens; and as they adopt different churches, it can recognize and enforce, through the civil courts, the canons and decrees of each only on its own members, and on them only so far as they do not infringe on the equal rights of the others. This is not all the state would do or ought to do in a perfect Christian society, but it is all that it can do where these different churches exist, and exist for it with equal rights. It can only recognize them, and protect and vindicate the rights of each only in relation to those citizens who acknowledge its authority. This recognizes and protects the Catholic Church in her entire freedom and independence and in teaching her faith, and in governing and disciplining Catholics according to her own canons and decrees, which, unless we are greatly misinformed, is more than the state does for her, in any old Catholic nation in the world.

This is not tolerance or indifference; it only means that the state does not arrogate to itself the right to decide which is the true church, and holds itself bound to respect and protect equally the church or churches acknowledged as such by its citizens. The doctrine that a man is free before God to be of any religion, or of no religion as he pleases, or the liberty of conscience, as understood by the so-called liberals throughout the world, and which was condemned by Gregory XVI. of immortal memory, in his encyclical of August 15th, 1832, receives no countenance from the American state, and is repugnant to its fundamental constitution. Heretical and schismatic sects have, indeed, no rights; for they have no authority from God to represent the spiritual order, and their existence is, no doubt, repugnant to the real interests of society as well as destructive to souls; but in a community where they exist along with the true church, the state must respect and protect in them the rights of the spiritual order, not indeed because they claim to be the church, but because they are[157] held to be such by its citizens, and all its citizens have equal rights in the civil order, and the equal right to have their conscience, if they have a conscience, respected and protected. The church of God exacts nothing more of it in this respect than to be protected in her freedom to combat and vanquish the adherents of false churches or false religions with her own spiritual weapons. More she might exact of the state in perfect Christian society; but this is all that she can exact in an imperfect and divided Christian society, as is the case in nearly all modern nations.

This is the American system. Is it practicable in the old Catholic nations of Europe? Would it be a gain to religion, if suffered to be introduced there? Would the government, if it were accepted by the church, understand it as implying its obligation to respect and protect all churches equally as representing the spiritual order, or as asserting its freedom to govern and oppress all at will, the true church as the false? There is danger of the latter, because European society is not based on the Christian principle of the independence and inviolability of the rights of man, that is, the rights of God, but on the pagan principle of the state, that all rights, even the rights of the church, and society emanate from the state, and are revocable at its will. Hence the reason why the church has found concordats with the secular powers so necessary. In the sense of the secular authority, these concordats are acts of incorporation, and surrendering them by the church would be the surrender of its charter by a corporation. It would be to abandon all her goods to the state, leave her without a legal status, and with no rights which the state holds itself bound to recognize, protect, or enforce through its courts, any more than she had under the persecuting Roman emperors. This would be the farthest remove possible from the American system. Before the American system could be introduced into European states in the respect that it affords freedom and protection to the church in the discharge of her spiritual functions, the whole structure of European society would need to be reconstructed on the Christian foundation, or the basis of the inherent rights and supremacy of the spiritual order, instead of its present pagan or Græco-Roman basis of the supremacy of the city or state.

Undoubtedly, the liberals, or movement party, are, and have been, for nearly a century, struggling by all the means in their power, fair or foul, to overthrow European society, and reconstruct it after what they suppose to be the American model, but in reality on a basis, if possible, more pagan and less Christian than its present basis. They assert the absolute supremacy of the state in all things; only, instead of saying with Louis XIV., "L'état, c'est moi," they say "L'état, c'est le peuple," but they make the people, as the state, as absolute as any king or kaiser-state ever pretended to be. The church would, in their reconstructed society, not have secured to her the rights that she holds under our system, by the fact that it is based on the equal and antecedent rights of all citizens, really the rights of God, which limit the power of state, of the people in a democratic state, and prescribe both its province and its duty.

Even with us, the American system has its enemies, and perhaps only a minority of the people understand it as we do, and some of the courts are beginning to render decisions which, if in one part, they sustain it, in another part flatly contradict it. The Supreme Court of Ohio, in the recent[158] case of the School Board of Cincinnati, has decided very properly that the board could not exclude religion; but, on the other hand, it maintains that a majority of the people in any locality may introduce what religion they please, and teach it to the children of the minority as well as to their own, which is manifestly wrong; for it gives the majority of the people the power to establish their own religion, and exclude that of the minority when, in matters of religion, that is, in matters of conscience, votes do not count. My conscience, though in a minority of one, is as sacred and inviolable as it would be if all the rest of the community were with me. As in the Polish Diet, a single veto suffices to arrest the whole action of the state. The American democracy is not what it was in 1776. It was then Christian after a Protestant fashion; it is now infected with European liberalism, or popular absolutism; and if we had to introduce the American system now, we should not be able to do it.

There are serious difficulties on both sides. The church cannot confide in the revolution, and the governments cannot or will not protect her, save at the expense of her independence and freedom of action. They, if we may believe any thing the journals say, threaten her with their vengeance, if she dares to make and publish such or such a dogmatic decision, or to define on certain points which they think touch them, what her faith is and always has been. This is a manifest invasion of her right to teach the word of God in its integrity, and simply tells her, with the sword suspended over her head, that she shall teach only what is agreeable to them, whether in God's word or not. This insolence, this arrogant assumption, applauded by the universal sectarian and secular press, if submitted to, would make the church the mere tool of the secular authority, and destroy all confidence in her teaching.

We know not how these difficulties on either side are to be overcome. The church cannot continue to be shorn of her freedom by the secular governments, and made to conform to their ambitious or timid politics, without losing more and more her hold on the European populations. Nor can she side with the revolution without perilling the interests of society from which her own cannot be separated. We see no way out of the dilemma but for her, trusting in the divine protection, to assert simply and energetically her independence of both parties alike, and confide in the faithful, as she did in the martyr ages, and as she does now in every heathen land.

We do not assume the propriety or necessity of trying to introduce the American system into the old world, nor do we urge the church to break either with the governments or with the people; but we may, we hope, be permitted to say that what seems to us to be needed is, for the church to assert her independence of both so far as either attempts to control her in the free discharge of her functions as the church of God; and we think the faithful should be prepared for the consequences of such assertion, whatever they may prove to be. The church cannot fulfil her mission, which is not confined to the Catholic nations of Europe, but embraces the whole world, if she is thus denied her independence and crippled in her freedom of action. If the assertion of her independence in face of the temporal order deprives her of her legal status, and places her out of the protection of the civil law, it perhaps will, in the end, prove to be no serious calamity, or at least a less evil than her present cramped and crippled[159] condition. She has held that position heretofore, and, aided by Him whose spouse she is, and who hath purchased her with his precious blood, she in that very condition conquered and subdued the world against the hostility of the most powerful empire that ever existed. What she has done once, she is no less able to do again. The worst that the state can do is to strip her of her temporalities, and forbid her to preach in the name of Jesus. The worst the revolution can do is the same, and in its fury to massacre bishops and priests, monks and nuns, men and women, because they choose to obey God rather than men.

Well, all this has been more than once. We have seen it in Ireland, where the church was despoiled of her revenues, the people of their churches, schools, colleges, and religious houses, and only not of the use of the graveyard; where Catholic worship was prohibited under pain of death, and armed soldiers hunted and shot down as a wild beast the priest who ventured to say mass in a private house, in a remote morass, or a cave in the mountain, and the faithful were slaughtered as sheep by fiery zealots or the graceless myrmidons of power; where not only the church was despoiled and left naked and destitute, but her children were also despoiled of their estates and reduced to poverty, while laws were devised with satanic ingenuity and enforced with savage ferocity to degrade and debase them, and to prevent them from escaping from their poverty or their enforced secular ignorance. Yet we have seen the faith in spite of all live and gain on its enemies, the church survive and even prosper; and only the last year, when offered freely a government subsidy for her clergy and her services, we have seen the noble Irish hierarchy, without a dissenting voice, refuse it, and prefer to rely on the voluntary offerings of the faithful to coming under any obligation to the temporal power.

In this country the people were, in the outset, as hostile to the church as they could be anywhere or in any age, and they are not even yet converted, very generally, into warm and eager friends; yet without any public provision, relying solely on the alms of the faithful at home and abroad, principally at home, the missionaries of the cross have been sustained, the widow's handful of meal and cruse of oil have not failed; and yet we have founded and sustained schools, colleges, universities, erected convents for men and for women, and are erecting throughout the whole country churches, the finest in it, and some of which may be regarded as architectural ornaments; and nearly all this has been achieved within a single lifetime.

Men who sit at their ease in Zion, and find their most engrossing occupation in solving an antiquarian problem, or disserting on some heathen relic just dug up, though the world is breaking up and falling to pieces around them, may be frightened at the prospect of being deprived of comforts they are used to; but let governments and peoples do their worst, they cannot do worse than heathen Rome did, worse than France did in the revolution of 1789, or England has been doing in Ireland for three hundred years. Fear! What is there to fear? If God be for us, who can be against us? The danger seems great, no doubt, to many; but let Catholics have the courage of their faith, and they will no longer fear him who can kill the body, and after that hath no more power. The danger before men of Christian courage will disappear as the morning mist before the rising sun. Can a Catholic fear poverty,[160] want, labor, suffering, torture, or death in His cause who for our sakes became poor, and had not where to lay his head; who took the form of a servant, and obeyed unto death, even the death of the cross? Know we not that Catholic faith and Catholic charity can weary out the most cruel and envenomed persecutors, and in the end gain the victory over them? If the church finds it necessary, then, in order to maintain her independence, to incur the hostility of kings or peoples, and the loss of her goods, there need be no fear; God will not forsake her, and the charity of the faithful never faileth.

DION AND THE SIBYLS.
A CLASSIC, CHRISTIAN NOVEL.

BY MILES GERALD KEON, COLONIAL SECRETARY, BERMUDA, AUTHOR OF "HARDING THE MONEY-SPINNER," ETC.

CHAPTER III.

Tiberius, when all had disappeared along the road, suddenly stopped in his walk.

His companion, toward whom he had turned, did the same, and looked at him with an air of expectation.

"I leave all details to you," said the Cæsar; "but what has to be done is this—that youth who calls himself Paulus Lepidus Æmilius must be produced as a gladiator either in the Circus Maximus or the Statilian Amphitheatre,[22] as the number of victims may dictate. Men of noble birth have been seen ere now upon the sand. We will then make him show against the best swordsmen in the world—against Gauls, Britons, and Cappadocians—what that Greek fence is worth of which he seems a master. The girl, his sister, must be carried off, either beforehand or afterward, as your skill may dictate, and softly and safely lodged at Rome in that two-storied brick house of Cneius Piso and his precious wife, Plancina, which is not known to be mine; (I believe and hope, and am given to understand, that it is not known to be theirs neither.)"

Tiberius paused, and Sejanus, with an intent look, slightly inclined his head. He was a keen man, a subtle man, but not a very profound man. He observed,

"I have heard something of this Greek widow and of her son and daughter. They have (it seems to me as if I had heard this) friends near the person of Augustus, or, at least, in the court. I can easily cause the girl to be so carried off that no rumor about the place of her residence will ever more sound among men. But the very mystery of it will sound, and that loudly; and her mother and brother will never cease to pierce the ears of Augustus with their cries.[161] But, before I say a word more, I wish to know two things—first, whether this youth Paulus is to be included in one of those great shows of gladiators which are rendering you, my Cæsar, so beloved by the Roman people?"

"The master-passion of the people is for the shows, and, above all, the fights of the amphitheatre," answered Sejanus. "Whoever has, for a hundred years and more, obtained the mastery of the world, has thus won the Romans; each succeeding dictator of the globe, from Caius Marius, and Sylla, and Pompey, and the invincible Caius Julius, and Mark Antony, to our present happy Emperor Augustus, has surpassed his predecessors in the magnificence of these entertainments given to people, populace, common legionaries, and prætorians; and in exact proportion also, it is remarkable, has each surpassed his forerunners in permanent power, until that power has at last become nearly absolute, nearly unlimited."

"You say true," replied Tiberius; "and I excel all former examples in the extent, splendor, and novelty of my shows. Augustus has abandoned that department; but even when he was courting the Romans, he never edited like me. People would now smile at the old-fashioned meanness of the spectacles which he formerly made acceptable to them. He is breaking very fast in health too, I fear, my Sejanus."

"He is, I fear, drawing toward his end," replied the commander of the prætorians.

"As to your question concerning this youth," resumed Tiberius, "my object is partly to add a novel and curious feature to the fight—this strange sword-play. Yet, why should he not afterward be included in some great slaughter-match, three or four hundred a side, care being taken that he should be finished? We might first pit him fairly against six or a dozen single antagonists in succession. If he conquer them all, it will be unprecedentedly amusing; the people will be in ecstasies, and then the victor can be made to disappear in the general conflict. I shall thus have the undisturbed management of his sister's education."

"He is a proud youth, an equestrian, a patrician, son of an eminent warrior, nephew of one who once shared in the government of the whole globe. Well, not being a slave, if he found himself in the arena by virtue of having been violently seized and trepanned, I firmly believe that, either before or after fighting, he would make a speech, appealing to the justice of the emperor and the sympathy of the people, not to say any thing about the soldiers.[23] The plan you propose, my Cæsar, seems like furnishing him with an immense audience and a gigantic tribunal, before which to tell that pathetic story about his father and the battle of Philippi, and those family estates which are now in the possession of the two beautiful ladies whose litters have just preceded us on the road to Formiæ."

Tiberius smiled, as with his head bent down he looked at the speaker, and thus he continued stooping, looking, and smiling for a moment or two, after which he said,

Sejanus said, "Let the girl first be carried away; let the mother and brother break their hearts for her; then let the Lanista Thellus, who is not known [162]to be one of your men, but is supposed to hire out his gladiators on his own account, invite the youth to join his familia,[24] or company, and when Paulus refuses, as he will refuse, let Thellus say that he knows money would not bribe Paulus, but that he has seen Paulus's sister; that he can guide him to her, if Paulus consents to fight in the next great forthcoming shows. And, in short, in order to make all this more specious, let Thellus have formed the acquaintance of the half-Greek family, mother, sister, brother, before the girl is abducted, in order that Paulus may think he speaks the truth when afterward saying that he has seen the sister and knows her, and can guide Paulus to where she is detained. If this plan be adopted, Paulus will fight in the arena of his own accord, and will make no speeches, no disturbance, but will disappear for ever in a decorous and legitimate manner."

"You are a man of immense merit, my Sejanus," replied the personage in gore-colored purple, "and I will some day reward you more than I can do while merely the Cæsar of an Augustus, whom may the gods protect. The mother perhaps we can let alone, or she could be put on board a corsair as an offering to some god, to procure me good fortune in other things. We shall see. Meanwhile, execute all the rest with as little delay as the order and priority of the several matters, one before the other, will allow, and report to me punctually at every step."

Beckoning to one of the troopers, who approached with the spare horse, Tiberius now mounted. The soldier immediately withdrew again, and Tiberius said to the prætorian commander, "Be upon your guard with Paterculus; he is doubtless devoted to me, but is a squeamish man; clever, indeed, too. Still there are clever fools, my Sejanus."

Then waving his hand, he rode slowly away, but came to a halt at a distance of twenty paces, and turned his horse's head round. Sejanus strode quickly toward his master.

"You know, of course, that the Germans, encouraged by the slaughter of Varus and his legions, are swarming over the Julian Alps into the north-east of Italy from Illyricum.[25] How many legions are there available to meet them?"

"We have within reach, at this moment, twelve," said Sejanus, "besides my prætorians."

"Half the present forces of the whole empire," replied the other. "Germanicus is to drive back the barbarians. He will become more popular than ever with the troops generally. But the prætorians do not care for him, I suppose?"

"They foolishly think that, since the day when Caius Julius was murdered, no such soldier—"

"Enough! Foolishly, say you? Remember my instructions. Vale!" And Tiberius galloped north, his face ablaze with a brick-red flush deeper than ordinary.

CHAPTER IV.

Sejanus, when left alone, motioned to the two troopers. He who had brought Tiberius his horse rode furiously after the Cæsar; the other attended the general, who slowly mounted his own steed, and, pursuing the same direction, began to trot leisurely toward Formiæ. The sun had gone down; the short twilight had passed away; clouds had gathered, and the moon, not having yet risen, the night was very black. In a few minutes Sejanus slackened his horse's pace from a trot to a walk, and the orderly, as his military attendant would in modern times be called, nearly rode against him in the dark. The man made some natural excuse, and fell back again about thirty paces.

"At present," he muttered, when again alone, "Tiberius, though a Cæsar, needs me; Germanicus is Cæsar too, and may become emperor. If Germanicus wished it, right or wrong—if per fas et nefas—he would win. He has much of the genius of Caius Julius and his defect of overtrustfulness; but none of his many vices. I doubt if he will ever be emperor; he is too Athenian, and also too honorable, too disinterested. Somehow I feel, too, as if he were going to be assassinated; he believes readily in men. Tiberius has smaller abilities, worse qualities, and better chances. He will rule the world, and Ælius Sejanus will rule him."

As Sejanus said these things to himself in an indistinct murmur, of which none could have heard the precise words, a voice at his elbow astonished him. Said the voice,

The prætorian chief turned with a start, and saw that the speaker was a mounted traveller, attended by two servants, also on horseback; but there was so little light that he could not distinguish the stranger's features, nor more of his dress and appointments than that they were not, as it seemed, Italian.

"About five thousand paces," he answered. "However, there is no inn at Formiæ. Some eight hundred paces from here is a good wayside tavern, (mansio.) But you call me general, for I wear the dress. You do not, however, know me."

"Not know the distinguished chief of the prætorians? Not know the happy and unhappy, the fortunate and unfortunate Sejanus?"

"Happy and unhappy," reëchoed the latter, "fortunate and unfortunate! What means this jargon? You could use that language of every mortal. What you say you unsay."

While thus replying, he endeavored to discern the dim features of his new companion.

"Think you so?" said the man. "Then, pray, would it be the same if I were to say, for example, unhappy and happy, unfortunate and fortunate?"

"What!" said Sejanus. "The happiness is present, the good fortune is present, but the misfortune and unhappiness are to come. Is this your meaning?"

"As I always say what I mean," rejoined the other, "so I never explain what I say."

"Then at least," observed Sejanus, with great haughtiness of tone and manner, "you will be good enough to say who you are. As the Prætor Peregrinus,[26] especially charged to look after foreigners, I demand your [164]name. Remember, friend, that six lictors, as well as twenty thousand soldiers, obey Sejanus."

"I am the god Hermes," replied the other, riding suddenly ahead, followed by both his attendants.

The movement was so unexpected that the figure of the stranger had become almost indistinguishable in the obscurity, before Sejanus urged his fleet Numidian steed forward at a bound in pursuit.

"Take care," said a voice in his front, "that your horse do not throw you, impious man!"

At the same time, the prætorian leader heard something roll upon the paved road, and immediately a vivid flash blazed under his horse's eyes, and a sharp report followed. Nearly thrown, indeed, he was, as the voice had warned him. When he had recovered his balance and quieted the startled beast he was riding, he halted to listen; but the only sound he could now hear was that of the mounted trooper trotting after him along the Appian Way. He waited for this man to come up, and inquired what he had observed in the three strangers who had previously passed him on the road.

Then Sejanus remembered what he had not at the moment adverted to, that neither when first accosted by the stranger, nor afterward while this person with his two attendants rode by his side, nor finally when they all galloped forward and were lost in the darkness, had any clatter of hoofs been audible.

He resumed his journey in silent thought, and soon arrived, without further adventure, at the large and famous post-house, standing in those days four or five miles south of Formiæ.

CHAPTER V.

The post house, or mansio,[27] to which allusion has been made, situated about four or five miles south of Formiæ, on the Appian road, was a large, rambling, two-storied brick house, capable of accommodating a vast number of travellers. It was not, therefore, merely one of the many relay-houses where the imperial couriers, as well as all who could produce a special warrant for the purpose, from a consul, or a prætor, or even a quæstor, were allowed to obtain a change of horses; still less was it one of the low canal-town taverns, whose keepers Horace abused; but it was a regular country inn, where man and beast found shelter for the apparently infinitesimal charge of one as, (or not quite a penny,) and good cheer at proportionably moderate cost. It was well supplied from its own farm-yards, olive-groves, orchards, vineyards, pastures, and tilled fields, with vegetables, beef, mutton, poultry, geese, ducks, attagens, and other meats; eggs, wine, butter, cheese, milk, honey, bread, and fruit; a delicious plate of fish occasionally, an equally delicious array of quail, produced upon table in a state aromatic and frothy with their own fat juices.

This excellent and celebrated house of entertainment for belated or way-worn travellers, as well as for all who desired a change from the monotony of their usual life, was kept by a remarkably worthy old couple, formerly slaves, a freedman and freedwoman of the illustrious Æmilian family. The reader will have noticed that the youth whom it is necessary, we suppose, to acknowledge in the capacity of our hero, has been called Paulus [165]Æmilius Lepidus; that his father had borne the same style; and likewise that his father's brother, the former sovereign magistrate or triumvir in the second and great triumvirate, was named Marcus Æmilius Lepidus. In all these names, that of Æmilius occurs; and Æmilius was the noblest of the patronymics which once this great family boasted. Now, theirs had been the house in which Crispus and Crispina, the good innkeeper and his wife, at present free and prosperous, had been boy and girl slaves. The wife, indeed, had been nurse to a son of Marcus Lepidus, the triumvir.

That son, some years before the date of our narrative, had been engaged in a conspiracy against Augustus; and the conspiracy having been discovered by Mæcenas, the youth had been put to death. Marcus Æmilius Lepidus, the father, was exculpated from all knowledge of this attempt on the part of his son, but had ever since lived in profound retirement at a lonely sea-shore castle some twenty or thirty miles from Crispus's inn, near Monte Circello; a silent, brooding, timid man, no longer very wealthy, entirely without weight in the society which he had abandoned, and without any visible influence in the political world, from which he had fled in some terror and immense disgust.

As Sejanus rode slowly up to the inn-door, a centurion came out of the porch with the air of one who had been waiting for him. Saluting the general, this officer said that he had been left behind by Velleius Paterculus to say that the sister of the youth whom Tiberius had placed under the charge of Paterculus had fainted on the road; that being unable to proceed, she and her mother had taken a lodging in the inn; that the youth had at once begged Paterculus to allow him to remain instead of proceeding to Formiæ, in order that he might attend to his poor sister, for whose life he was alarmed, giving his promise that he would faithfully report himself, and not attempt to escape; that Paterculus considered himself justified, under the circumstances, in acceding to so natural a request; consequently, that the young man was now in the inn, along with his mother and sister; and that he, the centurion, had been ordered to await Sejanus's arrival, and inform him of what had occurred, so that he might either confirm his subordinate's decision, or repair the mistake, if it was one, and cause the youth to go forward at once to Formiæ according to the letter of Tiberius's original command.

"It is well," said Sejanus, after a moment's reflection. "This is not the sort of lad who will break his word. Carthaginians, and rubbish like them, knew long ago how to believe a Roman knight and patrician, and this lad seems to be of the Regulus breed. Does the Cæsar himself, however, know of this?"

"I had no orders to tell him," answered the centurion; "and if I had had, it would have been difficult; he passed at full gallop a quarter of an hour ago, his head down, not so much as looking aside."

"No god, unless he be a god, and he had no attendants," said the astonished centurion.

"I certainly thought I saw three figures on horseback, but I could not be sure. It was on the farther side of the way, general, which is broad,"[166] continued the man apologetically, "and there was no sound of hoofs; my impression, too, was gone in a moment. As to a flash of bluish light, there are several flashes of red and white light inside the inn kitchen, and they make the road outside all the darker; but there has been no flash in the road."

And Sejanus rode on in the direction of Formiæ, the centurion and the soldier behind him.

CHAPTER VI.

The inn, it is well ascertained, never became a common institution in classic antiquity. It was utterly unknown in any thing like its modern shape among the Greeks; one cause being that the literary Greeks gave less care to their roads and communications than the administrating, fighting, conquering, and colonizing Romans always did. Even among the Romans the army trusted to its city-like encampments from stage to stage. Centuries passed away, during which the private traveller found few indeed, and far between, any better public resting-houses along the magnificent and stupendous highways, whose remains we still behold indestructible, from England to Asia Minor, than the half-day relay-posts, or mutationes. At these the wayfarer, by producing [28] his diploma from the proper authorities, obtained a change of horses.

Travelling, in short, was a thousand-fold less practised than it is among us; and those who did travel, or who deemed it likely they ever should, trusted to that hospitality which necessity had made universal, and the poetry of daily life had raised by repute into one of the greatest virtues. Years before any member of your family, supposing you to belong to the age through which the events of this narrative are carrying and to carry us, years before any of your circle quitted your roof, you knew to what house, to what smoky hearth in each foreign land, to what threshold in Spain, Gaul, Syria, Egypt, Greece, the wanderer would eventually resort. A certain family in each of these and other lands was your hospes, and you were theirs; and very often you carried round your neck, attached to a gold or silver chain, a bit of elder or oak (robur) notched and marked by the natural breakage, the corresponding half of which hung day and night round the neck of some friend living thousands of miles away, beyond rivers, mountains, wild forests, and raging seas. These tokens were the cheap lodging-money of friendship. Very often they were interchanged and put on in boyhood, and not presented till advanced age. He who had thrown the sacred symbol round the curly head of his playmate on the banks of the Tiber, saw an old man with scanty white hair approach him, half a century afterward, at Alexandria, or Numantia, or Athens, and offer him a little bit of wood, the fracture? of which were found to fit into those of a similar piece worn upon his own bosom. Or the son brought the father's token; or a son received what a father had given. And the stranger was forthwith joyfully made welcome, and took rank among dear friends. Forthwith the bath and the supper introduced him to his remote home amid foreign faces. To be once unfaithful to these pledges, was to become irreparably infamous. The caitiff who thus sundered the lies of traditionary and necessity-caused and world-wide kindness, became an object of scorn and reprobation to all.[167] It was enough to mention of him,[29] tesseram confregit hospitalem, ("that man has broken his token-word of hospitality;") with that all was said. Traces of this touching custom appear to survive in some of the ceremonials of rustic love, amid many a population ignorant that the ancient Romans ever reigned over Europe.

But if inns, in year eleven, were not what they have been in mediæval and modern Europe, nevertheless a few existed even then, (cauponæ;) and a more notable establishment of this kind never flourished in any part of the Roman empire than that to which our story has now brought us. It was the exception to manners then prevalent, and the presage of manners to come long afterward. It used to be commonly called the Post-House of the Hundredth Milestone, or, more briefly, Crispus's Inn.

The public room of this place of entertainment was not unlike the coffee-room of a good modern inn, except that it was necessarily far more full of incident and interest, because the ancients were beyond comparison more addicted to living in public than any modern nation has ever been.

An Englishman who makes a similar remark of the French, in comparison with his own countrymen, has only to remember that the modern French as much excel the ancient Romans in fondness for retirement and privacy and domestic life as the English believe themselves to excel the French in the same particular.

An inn did not trouble itself much with the triclinium, a chamber seldom used by its frequenters. Even the manners of the triclinium were out of vogue here.

In Crispus's public room, for instance, there was one and only one table arranged with couches around it, upon which some three or four customers, while eating and drinking, could recline according to the fashion adopted in the private houses of the rich and noble. All the other tables stood round the walls of the apartment, with benches and settees on each side, offering seats for the guests. The inner seats at these tables were generally preferred, for two reasons; the occupants saw all that passed in the room, and besides, had the wall, against which they could lean back.

When Velleius Paterculus, having left Tiberius and Sejanus in the meadows near the Liris, took charge of the prætorian squadrons and of Paulus, he directed a Batavian trooper to dismount and give his horse to the prisoner. Paulus willingly sprung upon the big Flemish beast, and rode by the side of the obliging officer who had given him that conveyance. Thus they proceeded at an easy amble until they reached the post-house, to the porch of which the noise of four thousand hoofs, suddenly approaching along the paved road, had brought a group of curious gazers. Among these was the landlord, Crispus himself.

A halt, as the reader must have inferred from a former incident, was occasioned at the door by the intimation conveyed to Paterculus that Paulus's sister had fainted, that she and her mother intended to seek a lodging at the inn, and that the mother and brother of the invalid would both feel grateful to the commanding officer if he could permit Paulus, upon pledging his word not to make any attempt to escape, to remain there with them.

"As to the ladies," said the urbane literary soldier, "I have neither the wish nor any orders to interfere with their movements. But you, young sir, what say you? Will you give me your word to regard yourself as[168] being in my custody till I expressly release you? Will you promise not to abire, evadere, excedere, or erumpere, as our friend Tully said?"

"What, you a half Greek and not know who Tully was! Is this the manner in which Greek youths, or at least youths in Greece, are educated! Is it thus they are taught in Greece, to which we go ourselves for education! In that Greece which has forbidden gladiatorial shows, and diminished the training of the body to have more time for that of the intellect!"

Paulus blushed, seeing he must have betrayed some gross degree of rusticity, and answered,

"I know I am ignorant: I have been so much occupied in athletic sports. But I will give you the promise you ask, and keep it most truly and faithfully."

"I will trust you, then. Go a little, my friend, into the athletic sports of the mind, which are precisely those Greece most cultivates. You are of a great family now fallen down. The muscles of the arm, the strength of the body, a blow from a cestus, never yet raised that kind of burden off the ground. You fence astonishingly well—I noted your parry just now; but the fence of the mind is every thing, believe me. By the way, I see the excellent Piso, whom you hammered down after the parry, as one puts a full stop to a pretty sentence, is being carried into this same post-house."

"By your leave, illustrious sir," interposed the innkeeper, rather nervously, "it is scarcely the custom, is it, to drop guests at Crispus's door, without first asking Crispus has he room for them? The expected visit of the divine Augustus to the neighboring palace of the most excellent and valiant knight Mamurra, in Formiæ, has choked and strangled this poor house. There is no place where the multitude of guests can lodge in the town, so they come hither, as to a spot at a convenient distance. Troops of players, troops of gladiators, troops of fortune-tellers, troops of geese, pigs, beeves, attagens, alive and dead, night and day, for the last week, with mighty personages from a distance, make the road noisy, I assure you, even after my house is full. I believe they would wish me to put up the very oxen intended for sacrifice."

"I did not say that, most excellent sir; vacant is one thing, disengaged is another. I have received an express letter from Brundusium, to say that a certain queen out of the East, with her son and her train, are coming to pay their homage to the emperor: and here we have already the servants of that Jew king, as they say, one King Alexander, who wants his cause to be heard and his title settled by Augustus himself, and I am obliged to listen to loud outcries that he, too, must have apartments."

At this moment, the travelling carriage carrying poor Agatha and her mother had been drawn nearly opposite to the porch, but a little in rear of the tribune, so as not to intercept his conversation with the innkeeper. Paterculus threw a quick glance at the beautiful pallid face of the girl, and the anxious and frightened look of her mother.

"By what you tell me, worthy Crispus," he replied, "you are so far from having your justly celebrated house full, that you are keeping two sets of apartments still vacant, in expectation, first, of some queen from the east, with her son and train, and[169] secondly, of this Jewish king, one Alexander. Worthy Libertinus,[30] the fair damsel whom you see so pale, is very sick, and has just swooned away from sheer fatigue. Will you turn such a daughter in such health, with her noble mother, from your door? A queen can take care of herself, it seems to me. But what will become of these excellent Roman ladies, (your own countrywomen,) if you now bid them begone from your threshold? You have assured me that they can obtain no shelter at all in Formiæ. Look at the child! She seems likely to faint again. Are you to let this daughter of a Roman knight die in the fields, in order that you may have room for a barbarian queen? You have a daughter of your own, I am told."

"Die!" groaned the innkeeper: "all this did not come into my mind, most illustrious tribune and quæstor. Come, little lady, let me help you down. This lady and her daughter, sir, shall have the queen's own apartments—may all the gods destroy me otherwise! Here, Crispina."

Velleius Paterculus smiled, and having whispered some order to a centurion, who remained behind in watch for Sejanus, the tribune waved his hand, crying out vale to whom it might concern, and rode forward with the prætorians at a much smarter pace than they had come.

CHAPTER VII.

Meanwhile the innkeeper's wife, Crispina, had appeared, and had led Aglais and her daughter through the group in the porch into the house, and passing by a little zothecula,[31] behind the curtain of which they heard the sound of flutes,[32] as the carvers carved, and many voices, loud and low, denoting the apartment called dieta or public room of the inn, they soon arrived at the compluvium, an open space or small court, in the middle of which was a cistern, and in the middle of the cistern a splashing fountain. The cistern was railed by a circular wooden balustrade, against which some creeping plants grew. This cistern was supplied from the sky; for the whole space or court in which it lay was open and unroofed. Between the circular wooden balustrade and the walls of the house was, on every side, a large quadrangular walk, lightly gravelled, and flashing back under the lantern which Crispina carried, an almost metallic glint and sparkle. Of course this walk presented its quadrangular form on the outer edge, next the house only; the inside, next the cistern, was rounded away. This quadrangular walk was at one spot diminished in width by a staircase in the open air, (but under an awning,) which led up to the second story of the large brick building. Around the whole compluvium, or court, the four inner faces of the inn, which had four covered lights in sconces against the walls, were marked at irregular intervals by windows, some of which were mere holes, with trap-doors (in every case open at present;) others, lattice-work, like what, many centuries later, obtained the name of arabesque-work, having a curtain inside that could be drawn or undrawn. Others again with perforated slides; others stretched with linen which oil had rendered diaphanous; others fitted with thin scraped horn; one only, a tolerably large window, with some kind of mineral panes more translucent than transparent—a lapis laminata specularis.

At the back, or west of the inn, an irregular oblong wing extended, which of course could not open upon this court, but had its own means of light and ventilation north and south respectively.

Crispus had followed the group of women, and our friend Paulus had followed Crispus. In the compluvium, the innkeeper took the lantern from his wife, and begged Aglais and Agatha to follow him up the awning-covered staircase. As he began to ascend, it happened that Crispina, looking around, noticed Paulus, who had taken off his broad-rimmed hat, under one of the sconces. No sooner had her eyes rested on him than she started violently, and grasped the balustrade as if she would have fallen but for that support.

"Are you ill?" said Paulus, "or—or—out of your mind? Why do you clutch my arm and look at me in that fashion?"

"Too young," said she, rather to herself than to him; "besides, I saw the last act with these eyes. Truly this is wonderful."

Then, like one waking from a dream, she added, "Well, if you want lodgings, you shall have them. You shall have the apartments of this king or pretender—the rooms prepared for the Jew Alexander. Come with me at once." And she unfastened the lamp in the nearest sconce, and led Paulus up the staircase.

Thus the wanderers, Aglais and her daughter, had the queen's room, with their Thracian slave Melana to wait upon them, while the prisoner Paulus had the king's, to which Crispina herself ordered old Philip, the freedman, to carry his luggage.

A few moments later, the innkeeper, who had returned to the more public parts of the house to attend to his usual duties, met Philip laden with parcels in one of the passages, and asked him what he was doing.

"You can carry," said the innkeeper, "whatever the ladies require to their room; but your young master has no room at all, my man, in this house. And why? For the same reason that will compel you to sleep in one of the lofts over the stables. There is no space for him in the inn. You must make him as comfortable as you can in the hay, just like yourself."

"Humanity is something," muttered Crispus; "but to make a queen one's enemy on that score, without adding a king, where no humane consideration intervenes at all, is enough for a poor innkeeper in a single night. These tetrarchs and rich barbarians can do a poor man an ugly turn. Who knows but he might complain of my house to the emperor, or to one of the consuls, or the prætor, or even the quæstor, and presto! every thing is seized, and I am banished to the Tauric Chersonese, or to Tomos in Scythia, to drink mare's milk with the poet Ovid."[33]

"Go on, freedman, with your luggage," here said a peremptory voice, "and take it whither you have taken the rest."

"Go on, freedman," she repeated; and then taking her husband aside, she spoke to him in a low tone.

"Have you remarked this youth's face?" she asked; "and have you any idea who he is?"

Crispus looked, and as he looked his eyes grew bigger; and again he looked until Paulus noticed it, and smiled.

"Alas! I am not illustrious, good landlord, (institor,) but hungry I am. And I believe we all are, except my poor sister, who is not very strong, and for whom, by and by, I should like to procure the advice of a physician."

"The poor young thing," said Crispina, "is only tired with her journey; it is nothing. She will be well to-morrow. Supper you shall have presently in the ante-chamber of your mother's apartments; and your freedman and the female slave shall be cared for after they have waited upon you."

"All this is easy and shall be seen to forthwith," added Crispus; "but the doctor for your dear sister, per omnes deos, where shall we find him?"

"Understand," said Paulus, "my sister is not in immediate danger, such as would justify calling in any empiric at once rather than nobody. She has been ailing for some time, and it is of no use to send for the first common stupid practitioner that may be in the way. Is there not some famous doctor procurable in Italy?"

"The most famous in Italy is a Greek physician not five thousand paces from here at this moment," said the landlord. "But he would not come to every body; he is Tiberius Cæsar's own doctor."

"You mean Charicles," replied Paulus; "I almost think he would come; my mother is a Greek lady, and he will surely be glad to oblige his countrywoman."

When he proposed to his mother to dispatch this message to Charicles, she hesitated much. Agatha was better, he found her in comparatively good spirits. It would do to send for the doctor next day. An urgent summons conveyed at night to the palace or residence of the Cæsar, where Charicles would probably of necessity be, would cause Tiberius to inquire into the matter, and would again draw his attention, and draw it still more persistently to them. He had already intimated that he would order his physician to attend Agatha. They did not desire to establish very close relations with the man in black purple.

It is wonderful even how that very intimation from Tiberius had diminished both mother's and daughter's anxiety to consult the celebrated practitioner, to whose advice and assistance they had previously looked forward. There were parties in the court and cabals in the political world; and among them, as it happened, was the Greek faction, at the head of which his ill-wishers alleged Germanicus to be. Græculus, or Greek coxcomb, was one of the names flung at him as a reproach by his enemies. What the Scotch, and subsequently the Irish interest may have been at various times in modern England, that the Greek interest was then in Roman society. Of all men, he who most needed to be cautious[172] and discreet in such a case was an adventurer who, being himself a Greek, owed to his personal merit and abilities the position of emolument and credit which he enjoyed; who was tolerated for his individual qualities as a foreigner, but who, if suspected of using professional opportunities as a political partisan, would be of no service to others, and would merely lose his own advantages.

"Let Tiberius send Charicles to us," continued Aglais; "and our countryman and friend may be of service to us, even in the suit which we have to urge at court. But were we now to show the Cæsar that we confide in Charicles, we should only injure our countryman and not benefit ourselves."

"Thus," replied the Greek lady. "If your claim for the restitution of your father's estates be not granted for justice sake, I must make interest in order that it may be granted for favor's sake. As a Greek I shall be likely to induce no powerful person to take our claims under his protection except Germanicus, the friend of Athenians. Now, it is a fact which I have learned for certain that Tiberius hates Germanicus, whom he regards as his rival; and that whoever is patronized by Germanicus, him Tiberius would gladly destroy. Behold us in a short while the clients and retainers of this same Germanicus, and let Tiberius then remember that his own physician has been, and continues to be, intimate and confidential with this brood of the Germanicus faction. Would not Charicles be damaged, perhaps endangered? But if we wait until the Cæsar himself sends us the doctor, as he said he would, we may then gain by it, and our friend not lose."

"Mother, you are indeed Greek," said Paulus, laughing; "and as Agatha is in no actual danger, be it as you say. Do you know, sister, there is nothing the matter with you but fatigue and fright? I am sure of it. You will recover rapidly now, with rest, peace, and safety."

"Mother," says Agatha, smiling, "we have forgotten, amid all this consultation about my health, to tell brother the curious discovery I have just made."

"Why, brother," says Agatha, "we found you in this large sitting-room, when we entered, though we had left you below-stairs, near the cistern."

"I will not leave you in suspense any longer," said the young girl, laughing. "Look here." And she led him to a table behind the bench on which she had been sitting, and directed his attention to a bust, or rather a head of Tiberius, modelled or moulded in some sort of pottery.

"That," said she, "when I first sat down, stood upon yonder table opposite to us. I recognized the face of the man who had spoken to me under the chestnut-trees, just before you assisted me back to the carriage. I abhor the wicked countenance; and not choosing to let it stare at me like a dream where it was, I rose and went to remove it to the stand where you now see it, behind my bench. Well, only think! I took it, so, with my hands, one under each ear, and lifted it; when, lo! it came away, and left your own dear face looking at us, thus!"

As she spoke, she again lifted the terra cotta face, and beneath it a much smaller and more elegant piece of sculpture in white marble was disclosed,[173] presenting the lineaments and image of Paulus himself. He started, and then his sister replaced the mask of Tiberius with a laugh.

"Was I not speaking true when I said that Tiberius had concealed you here?" said his mother.

At that moment the door opened, and Crispina entered to ask whether the letter for the physician was ready. They told her they had changed their minds, and would not, at least that night, send any letter, Agatha felt and looked so much better.

"Then I will at once order your supper to be brought," said Crispina; "and as you are evidently people of distinction, would you like music while the meats are carved?"

"Not a carver neither, mother?" interposed Agatha; and, turning to the hostess, she begged that they might be treated as quietly and let alone as much as it was possible.

"In that case," replied the hostess, "my own daughter, Benigna, shall attend to you. Nobody shall trouble you. You are in the rear or west wing of the house, far away from all the noise of our customers, who are sometimes, I confess, sufficiently uproarious. But Crispus is not afraid of them. When to-morrow's sun rises, you will be glad to find what a beautiful country extends beneath your windows, even to the waters of the Tyrrhenian Sea. You will behold, first, a garden and bee-hive; beyond these are orchards; beyond them fields of husbandry and pleasant pasture lands, with not a human figure to be seen except knots and dots of work-people, a few shepherds, and perhaps an angler amusing himself on the banks of the Liris in the distance."

"Oh!" said Agatha, "I wish soon to go to sleep, that we may set out quickly toward that beautiful country to-morrow morning."

"Will you not like a little bit of something very nice for supper first, my precious little lady?" quoth the good hostess; "and that will make you sleep all the better, and from the moment when you close your pretty eyes in rest and comfort under poor Crispina's roof, to the moment when you open them upon those lovely scenes, you won't be able to count one, two, three—but just only one—and presto! there's to-morrow morning for you!"

Agatha declared that this was very nice; and that supper would be nice; and that every thing was comfortable; the rooms particularly so.

"Then a delicious little supper shall be got ready at once," said Crispina. "I'll call my brisk Benigna to help me."

Before quitting the room, however, the landlady, whose glance had rested chiefly upon Paulus during the conversation, threw up her hands a little way. She then composed herself, and addressing Aglais, asked,

A MAY CAROL.

SIR JOHN MAUNDEVILLE.

"Of Paradise I cannot speak properly, for I was not there. It is far beyond, and I repent not going there; but I was not worthy." So wrote, more than five hundred years ago, an honest English knight who had spent some ten years journeying through that "most worthy land, most excellent and lady and sovereign of all other lands," which was "blessed and hallowed with the most precious body and blood of our Lord Jesus Christ;" visiting portions of Africa and Asia; and picking up from all accessible sources legends and marvels, and scraps of the geography and history of distant countries. For something like two centuries the travels of Sir John Maundeville enjoyed a tremendous popularity; and though time can hardly be said to have improved the good gentleman's reputation for veracity and judgment, it has perhaps heightened rather than diminished the interest of his narrative. Alas! we can never know such travellers again. Men who go to Palestine in a steamboat, and are whirled by locomotives into the very presence of the Sphinx, bring us back no wonderful stories of the mysterious East, with its dragons and enchanters, and its sacred places miraculously barred against profane footsteps. Travel has no mysteries now. What is the earthly paradise but a Turkish pashalic? What is Prester John but a petty negro chieftain? And for dragons and chimæras dire, has not any good museum of natural history specimens of them all, nicely stuffed and labelled, or bottled in alcohol? In the days of Sir John, however, wonders were plenty; and if he did not see very many himself, he heard of men who had seen no end of them, and he described them all the same. It was from hearsay, and not from personal observation, that he learned of the Lady of the Land, in the island of Cos, then called Lango. This wonderful lady was the daughter of Ypocras or Hippocrates, in form and likeness of a great dragon which is a hundred fathoms in length, "as they say," adds Sir John, "for I have not seen her." She lies in an old castle in a cave, appearing twice or thrice in a year, and condemned "by a goddess named Diana" to remain in that horrible shape until a knight shall come and kiss her on the mouth; then she shall resume her natural form, and the knight shall marry her and be lord of the isles. Many have tempted the adventure, but fled in affright when they have seen her. And every knight who once looks upon her and flees, must die anon.

At Ephesus the traveller beheld the tomb of St. John the Evangelist, and heard the familiar story that the apostle had entered the sepulchre alive, and was still living, in accordance with the saying of our Lord, "So I will have him to remain till I come, what is that to thee?" "And men may see there the earth of the tomb many times openly stir and move, as though there were living things under." To say nothing else of this story, it is not fully consistent with Sir John's other statement, that the tomb contains nothing but manna, "which is called angels' meat," for the body was translated to paradise. Quite as great are the wonders of Joppa, "which is one of the oldest towns in the world; for it was founded before Noah's flood." Strangely[176] confusing the legend of Perseus and Andromeda, our traveller relates that in a rock near Joppa may still be seen marks of the iron chains "wherewith Andromeda, a great giant, was bound and put in prison before Noah's flood; a rib of whose side, which is forty feet long, is still shown." Sir John spent a long time in the service of the sultan of Egypt, where he seems to have anticipated modern researches into the source of the Nile; for he confidently assures us that it rises in the garden of Eden, and after descending upon earth, flows through many extensive countries under ground, coming out beneath a high hill called Alothe, between India and Ethiopia, and encircling the whole of Ethiopia and Mauritania, before it enters the land of Egypt. To the best of our belief, the travels of Dr. Livingstone have not fully confirmed this interesting geographical statement. The sultan dwells at a city called Babylon, which is not, however, the great Babylon where the diversity of languages was first made by the miracle of God. That Babylon is forty days' journey across the desert, in the territory of the king of Persia. The Tower of Babel was ten miles square, and included many mansions and dwellings; "but it is full long since any man dare approach to the tower, for it is all desert, and full of dragons and great serpents, and infested by divers venomous beasts." Sir John, therefore, is probably not responsible for the extraordinary measurement of its walls. Whether his account of the phoenix is based upon his personal observations, we are not told; but it is highly interesting. There is only one phoenix in the world. It is a very handsome and glorious bird, with a yellow neck, blue beak, purple wings, and a red and yellow tail, and may often be seen flying about the country. It lives five hundred years, and at the end of that time comes to burn itself on the altar of the temple of Heliopolis, where the priests prepare for the occasion a fire of spices and sulphur. The next day they find in the ashes a worm. On the second day the worm becomes a live and perfect bird; and the third day it flies away. A plenty of fine things, indeed, Egypt could boast of in those days, far before any thing she has now. There were gardens bearing fruit seven times a year. There were the apples of paradise, which, cut them how you would, or as often as you would, always showed in the middle the figure of the holy cross. There was the apple-tree of Adam, whose fruit invariably had a mouthful bitten out of one side. There is a field containing seven wells, which the child Jesus made with one of his feet while at play with his companions. There are the granaries in which Joseph stored corn for the season of famine, (probably the Pyramids.) And passing out of Egypt across the desert of Arabia, Sir John tells of the wonderful monastery on Mount Sinai, whither the ravens, crows, and choughs and other fowls of that country, assembling in great flocks, come every year on pilgrimage to the tomb of St. Catharine, each bringing a branch of bays or olive, so that from these offerings the monks have enough to keep themselves constantly supplied with oil. There are no such foul venomous beasts as flies, toads, lizards, lice, or fleas in this monastery; for once upon a time, when the vermin had become too thick there to be endured, the good brethren made preparations to move away, whereupon our Lady commanded them to remain and no pest of that sort should ever again come near them. On Mount Mamre, near Hebron, Sir John saw an oak-tree which had been standing since the creation[177] of the world. Oaks nowadays don't live to such a great age. This tree had borne no leaves since the crucifixion, (when all the trees in the world withered away,) but it had still so much virtue that a scrap of it healed the falling-sickness, and prevented founder in horses.

Armed with a letter under the sultan's great seal, Sir John went to Jerusalem, and was admitted to all the holy shrines from which Christians and Jews were usually excluded. He saw, or believed he saw, the spots sanctified by almost all the great events narrated in the Gospel; and though his credulity, as may be inferred from what we have already seen of his narrative, often got the better of his judgment, his piety, at any rate, deserves our genuine respect. We pass over his legends of this holy city, some of them poetical, some merely grotesque, and some really sanctioned by the general voice of the church, and go with him eastward to the valley of Jordan and the Dead Sea. Of this mysterious body of water he mentions that it casts out every day "a thing that is called asphalt in pieces as large as a horse," and neither man, nor beast, nor any thing that hath life may die in that sea, which hath been proved many times by the experiment of criminals condemned to death who have been left therein three or four days, and yet taken out alive. If any man cast iron therein, it will float; but a feather will sink to the bottom; "and these things," truly remarks Sir John, "are contrary to nature." Not more so, perhaps, than an incident of which he speaks at the city of Tiberias. In that city an unbeliever hurled a burning dart at our Lord, "and the head smote into the earth, and waxed green, and it grew to a great tree; and it grows still, and the bark thereof is all like coals." Then, near Damascus there is a church, and behind the altar, in the wall, "a table of black wood on which was formerly painted an image of our Lady which turns into flesh; but now the image appears but little." As a compensation, however, for its loss, a certain wonderful oil, as Sir John assures us, drops continually from the wood and heals many kinds of sickness, and if any one keep it cleanly for a year, after that year it turns to flesh and blood. In this same region of marvels he tells us of a river which runs only on Saturday, and stands still all the rest of the week, and another which freezes wonderfully fast every night, and is clear of ice in the morning. These rivers are not known nowadays, or at any rate must have changed their habits.

After finishing the description of the Holy Land and Babylon, and reporting a conversation with the sultan, in which the vices of the Christians, such as drinking at taverns, and fighting, and perpetually changing the fashion of their clothes, were sharply satirized, and giving a synopsis of the Mohammedan creed, which we fear is not altogether authentic, our worthy traveller adds that now is the time, if it please us, to tell of the borders, and isles, and divers beasts, and of various peoples beyond these borders. Accepting his invitation, we bear him company first to the land of Lybia, which must have been a most uncomfortable region in those days, for the sea there was higher than the land, and the sun was so hot that the waters were always boiling. Why the country was not, therefore, soused in a steaming, hissing flood, we do not know; 'Sir John himself evidently thinks it strange. In Little Ermony which we take to be Armenia, he found something almost equally strange. That was the Castle of the Sparrow-hawk, where a sparrow-hawk[178] perpetually sat upon a fair perch and a fair lady of fairie guarded it. Whoever will watch the bird seven days and seven nights without company and without sleep, shall be granted by the fairy the first earthly wish that he shall wish; but if sleep overcome him, he will never more be seen of men. This, adds the careful traveller, hath been proved oftentimes, and he mentions several persons who performed the long task and got their wishes. Mount Ararat is another marvellous feature in this wonderful region; for it is seven miles high, and Noah's ark still rests upon it, and in clear weather may be seen afar off. Some men say that they have been up and touched the ark, and even put their fingers in the parts where the devil went out when Noah said "Benedicite," (unfortunately we do not know the legend to which this refers;) but our traveller warns us not to believe such things, because they are not true! No man ever got up the mountain except one good monk; and he was miraculously favored, and brought down with him a plank which is still preserved in the monastery at the foot of the mountain. It is inexpressibly gratifying to observe that Sir John did not accept all the stories that were told him, but exercised a little judicious discrimination; and we shall therefore pay more respectful attention to the extraordinary things he tells us about the diamonds of India. They are found most commonly, he says, upon rocks of the sea, or else in connection with gold. They grow many together, male and female, and are nourished by the dew of heaven, so that they engender and bring forth small children that multiply and grow all the year. "I have oftentimes tried the experiment," he continues, "that if a man keep them with a little of the rock, and wet them with May-dew often, they shall grow every year, and the small will grow great.... And a man should carry the diamond on his left side, for it is of greater virtue than on the right side; for the strength of their growing is toward the north, that is the left side of the world; and the left part of man is, when he turns his face toward the east." Sir John was not by any means singular in his views of the nature of diamonds in his day, however much he may be at variance with modern authorities; and he is only repeating a popular superstition of the middle ages when he ascribes many wonderful virtues to this gem, which he says preserves the wearer from poison, and wild beasts, and the assaults of enemies, and the machinations of enchanters, gives courage to the heart and strength to the limbs, heals lunatics, and casts out devils. But it loses its virtue by sin.

From stories of eels thirty feet long, and people of an evil color, green and yellow, and the well of Perpetual Youth, from which Sir John avers that he drank, and rats as great as dogs, which they take with huge mastiffs, because the cats feel unable to manage them, we pass to a passage of a very different kind, which, considering the time when it was written, is certainly curious. One hundred and seventy years before the time of Columbus we find Sir John Maundeville arguing that "the land and sea are of round shape, because the part of the firmament appears in one country which is not seen in another country," and predicting that "if a man found passages by ships, he might go by ship all round the world, above and beneath." A rather elaborate essay is devoted to an estimate of the size of the world, and to the story of an Englishman—name unknown—who sailed around it once and never knew it; but coming to a country where the people spoke his own language,[179] was so much amazed that he turned around and sailed all the way back again. After this, Sir John gets back without unnecessary delay to the rosy realms of eastern fable.

We next find him in Java and among the isles of the Indian Ocean, where he tells us of rich kings, and splendid palaces where all the steps are of gold and silver alternately, and the walls covered with plates of precious metals, and halls and chambers paved with the same; of trees which bear meal, and honey, and wine, and deadly poison wherewith the Jews once tried to poison all Christendom; of snails so big that many persons may lodge in their shells; of men who feed upon serpents, so that they speak naught, but hiss as serpents do; of men and women who have dogs' heads; and of a mountain in the island of Silha where Adam and Eve went and cried for one hundred years after they were driven out of paradise—cried so hard that their tears formed a deep lake, which may be seen there to this day, if any body doubts the story. He tells of giants having only one eye, which is in the middle of the forehead; people of foul stature and cursed nature who have no heads, but their eyes are in their shoulders; people who have neither noses nor mouths; people who have mouths so big that when they sleep in the sun they cover the whole face with the upper lip; people who have ears hanging down to their knees; people who have horses' feet; and feathered men who leap from tree to tree. Passing to India and China, Sir John describes the fair and fruitful land of Albany, where there are no poor people, and the men are of very pale complexion and have only about fifty hairs in their beards. He speaks of having personally visited these regions; but we are sorry to say that his narrative is palpably borrowed in many places from Pliny and Marco Polo. As the great town called Jamchay he seems to have found the prototype of Delmonico, and he gives an impressive account of the good custom that when a man will make a feast for his friends he goes to the host of a certain kind of inn, and says to him, "Array for me to-morrow a good dinner for so many people;" and says also, "Thus much will I spend, and no more." And Sir John adds, "Anon the host arrays for him, so fair, and so well, and so honestly that there shall lack nothing." Of the great Chan of Cathay, (Emperor of China,) and his wealth and magnificence, Sir John writes at considerable length, but with an evident expectation that men will not believe him. "My fellows and I," he says, "with our yeomen, served this emperor, and were his soldiers fifteen months against the King of Mancy, who was at war with him, because we had great desire to see his nobleness and the estate of his court, and all his government, to know if it were such as we heard say." How many his fellows were, or what route they followed in their eastern wanderings, we cannot tell. Sir John gives us no particulars; we only learn that he must have combined in curious perfection the characters of a pilgrim and a military adventurer; and how much of the world he saw, how much he described from hearsay, we can only determine from the internal evidence of his book. There is no reasonable doubt that he did spend some time in the dominions of the great chan; for his description of the country, the manners of the people, the magnificence of the sovereign and the ceremonies of the court, though exaggerated sometimes to the heights of the grotesque, if not of the sublime, keeps near enough to the probable truth. We cannot say that we are glad of it; for Sir John is vastly[180] more entertaining when he does not know what he is talking about.

He skips about with the most charming vivacity from Tartary to Persia, to Asia Minor, and back again to India, and sometimes it is certain that he tells us of wonders which he did not see with his own eyes. In Georgia, for instance, there is a marvellous province called Hanyson, where once upon a time a cursed Persian king named Saures overtook a multitude of Christians fleeing from persecution. The fugitives prayed to God for deliverance, and lo! a great cloud arose, covering the king's host with darkness, out of which they could not pass, and so the whole province remains dark to this hour, and no light shall shine there and no man shall enter it till the day of judgment. Voices may sometimes be heard coming out of the darkness, and the neighing of horses and crowing of cocks, and a great river issues from it bearing tokens of human life. Somewhat similar to this story is the account of a region on the borders of the Caspian Sea, where "the Jews of ten lineages who are called Gog and Magog"—namely, the lost tribes—have been shut up for ages behind impassable mountains. The legend is that King Alexander drove them in there, and prevailed upon his gods to close the mountains with immense stone gates. In the days of Antichrist a fox shall burrow through where Alexander made the gates, and the imprisoned Jews, who have never seen a fox, shall hunt him, and following the burrow break down the gates and come out into the world. Then they shall make great slaughter of the Christians; wherefore Jews all over the world learn the Hebrew language, so that in that day the ten tribes may recognize them by their speech. Somewhere in this part of the world Sir John saw and tasted "a kind of fruit like gourds, which, when they are ripe, men cut in two, and find within a little beast, in flesh, bone, and blood, as though it were a little lamb without wool." Both the fruit and the beast are good to eat. Sir John confesses that this was a great marvel; but not to be outdone, he told his entertainers that in England there were trees bearing a fruit which becomes flying birds, right good for man's meat, whereat, he says, his listeners had also great marvel, and some even thought the thing impossible. Sir John, however, was not purposely cramming the Persians; he only repeated the popular fable of the barnacle-goose, which was anciently believed to be hatched from the barnacles growing on ships' bottoms and logs of wood, just as an ordinary goose is hatched from an egg.

The great mystery and marvel of the age in which Sir John Maundeville wrote was the Christian empire of Prester John, supposed to extend over central India, and to be in reality a vast island, separated from other countries by great branching rivers which flowed out of Paradise. Many a traveller went in search of this mythical and magnificent potentate; many a doubtful story of his power and designs was brought back to Europe; and even a pretended letter from his majesty to the pope was widely published in Latin, French, and other languages. Except the Chan of Cathay, there was no other monarch in the world so great and so rich. The chan, therefore, always married the daughter of Prester John, and Prester John always married the daughter of the chan, which naturally made confusion in the genealogical records of the reigning families. Of course, Sir John Maundeville was too gallant a traveller to go home without a full account of the empire of Prester John. He says he went to[181] it, and the catalogue of things he saw and the history of things he did are wonderful enough to satisfy the most exacting reader. As it is quite certain that no potentate ever existed who bore even a resemblence to the Prester John of mediæval legend, it is more than usually difficult to estimate the honesty of Sir John in these particular portions of his narrative, wherein fable and superstition seem to reach their climax. The glories of the Indian court are almost beyond enumeration. The precious stones are so large that plates, dishes, and cups are made of them. There is a river, rising in paradise, whose waves are entirely of jewels, without a drop of water, and it runs only three days of the week, flowing to the Gravelly Sea, where it is lost from sight. The Gravelly Sea has billows of sand without a drop of water. It ebbs and flows in great waves, like other seas, and contains very good fish; but, adds Sir John, "men cannot pass it in ships." The emperor lives in unspeakably gorgeous state, in a palace of gems and gold, and upon the top of the highest tower of the palace are two huge carbuncles which give great light by night to all people. He is served by seven kings, seventy-two dukes, and three hundred and sixty earls. Every day he entertains at dinner twelve archbishops and twenty bishops; and all the archbishops, bishops, and abbots in the country are kings. There is a gorgeous artificial paradise in the dominions of Prester John, the legend of which seems to have been used by Tasso long after Sir John's time in his famous description of the enchanted gardens of Armida. In this false Paradise "a rich man named Gatholonabes, who was full of tricks and subtle deceits," had placed the fairest trees, and fruits, and flowers, constructed the most beautiful halls and palaces, all painted with gold and azure, with youths and fair damsels attired like angels, birds which "sung full delectably and moved by craft," and artificial rivers of milk, and wine, and honey. When he had brought good and noble knights into this place, they were so captivated by the charming sights and sounds, so deceived by the fair speeches of Gatholonabes, and so inflamed with a certain drink which he gave them to drink that they became his willing henchmen, and at his bidding went out from the mountain where this garden stood and slew whomsoever the impostor marked out for slaughter. To the knights who lost their lives in his service, he promised a still fairer Paradise and still more enticing pleasures. Our readers will not fail to trace the resemblance between this fable and the history of the Old Man of the Mountain, with whose extraordinary fanatical sect of Assassins the crusaders had recently made Europe acquainted. Sir John's story is probably founded upon exaggerated accounts of this famous personage.

To his description of the perilous Vale of Devils we fear no such respectable origin can be attributed. "This vale," he says, "is full of devils, and has been always;" and horrible noises are heard in it day and night, as though Satan and his crew were holding an infernal feast. Many daring men have entered in quest of the gold and silver which are known to abound therein; but few have come out again, for the devils strangle the misbelieving. We regret to say that Sir John assures us that he actually saw this vale and went through it with several of his company. They heard mass first and confessed their sins, and, trusting in God, fourteen men marched into the valley; but when they came out at the other end they were only nine. Whether the[182] five were strangled by devils or turned back, Sir John did not know; he never saw them again. The vale was full of horrible sights and sounds. Corpses covered the ground, storms filled the air. The face and shoulders of an appalling devil terrified them, belching forth smoke and stench from beneath a huge rock, and several times the travellers were cast down to the ground and buffeted by tempests. Our author unfortunately was afraid to pick up any of the treasures which strewed the way; he did not know what they might really be; for the devils are very cunning in getting up imitation gems and metals; and besides, he adds, "I would not be put out of my devotion; for I was more devout then than ever I was before or after."

When one has passed through the Vale of Devils, other marvels are encountered beyond. There are giants twenty-eight or thirty feet in height, and Sir John heard of others whose stature was as much as fifty feet; but he candidly avows that he "had no lust to go into those parts," because when the giants see a ship sailing by the island on which they live, they wade out to seize it, and bring the men to land, two in each hand, eating them all alive and raw as they walk. In another island toward the north are people quite as dangerous, but not quite so shocking; these are women who have precious stones in their eyes, and when they are angry they slay a man with a look. Still more marvellous and incredible than any of these tales is the account of that country, unnamed and undescribed, where kings are chosen for their virtue and ability alone, and justice is done in every cause to rich and poor alike, and no evil-doer, be he the king, himself, ever escapes punishment. There is an isle besides, called Bragman, or the Land of Faith, where all men eschew vice, and care not for money; where there is neither wrath, envy, lechery, nor deceit; where no man lies, or steals, or deceives his neighbor; where never a murder has been done since the beginning of time; where there is no poverty, no drunkenness, no pestilence, tempest, or sickness, no war, and no oppression. All these fine countries are under the sway of the magnificent Prester John.

Here, on the borders of that Land of Perpetual Darkness, which stretches away to the Terrestrial Paradise, we take leave of our good knight, now near the end of his travels. "Rheumatic gouts" began to torture his wandering limbs and warn him to go home. He has, indeed, a few more stories to tell; but they are dull in comparison with the wonders we have already recounted. Much more, indeed, he might have written; but he gives a truly ingenuous reason for checking his pen:

HOME SCENES IN NEW ENGLAND.

CHAPTER I.
MY AUNT AND THE CATECHISM.

"There sister! I told you what would come of letting that dear child hear little Mary Ann recite the Romanist catechism. Here we have our little Kitty setting herself up as a judge in matters of religion, and quoting the answers she has learned by hearing them repeated! Not but that she is as good a child as her auntie or her mother could desire; but her brain is too thoroughly American, too much given to going to the bottom of any subject it is once interested in, to stop half-way in a matter of this kind. I knew all the time how it would end."

Here my maiden aunt paused, more in sorrow than in anger, and little Kitty remarked playfully,

"If truth lies at the bottom of a well, as you once told me, auntie, how could we ever reach it without going to the bottom?" While Kitty's mother replied to her sister in a half-apologizing manner,

"Why, Laura, I consented to let her hear Mary Ann's catechism, simply because Kitty told me that the poor mother was so much occupied in striving to earn a living for her little fatherless ones that she could not hear it herself; and then the priest was expected to come here soon, to prepare the children for confirmation, which is to be given shortly by the bishop. So there was no time to lose. I certainly did not think there could be any danger in a mere act of kindness."

"Danger!" exclaimed grandmamma, in defence of her little pet. "If there's danger in a little knowledge of the Catholic catechism, it must be because our house is built on a sandy foundation, and hence we fear it will be destroyed by a little outside religious information. For my part, I have no objection to full examination in these matters; nor have I any fear for the result."

A long-drawn sigh and an ejaculation of grief from the corner of the room called our attention to where grandmamma's sister—"Aunt Ruby," the widow of a Congregational minister—sat knitting, removed from the light of the evening lamps because of the weakness of her eyes.

"O sister! sister! how can you talk so. The old adversary goeth about everywhere like a roaring lion. He lies hid even in that dish of meal. If he can only get our folks to questioning and examining, then the mischief is done; and we shall have popish priests coming here, carrying on their crossings and their blessings, offering to sell pardons for our sins, and making us all bow the knee to Baal, and pray to their graven images. I shudder to think of it!"

"They do not pray to graven images, Aunt Ruby; the catechism expressly forbids it!" replied Kitty.

"There comes that old catechism again!" exclaimed Aunt Laura. "If Mary Ann's catechism forbids it, then the book was trumped up to deceive American children, and is entirely different from the catechisms used in Ireland or France."

"As for that, auntie, Mary Ann's mother has one she brought from Ireland many years ago, and it teaches just the same things. But there is one thing in both that you will acknowledge[184] as binding—'Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbor;' and the catechism explains that it forbids 'all false testimonies, rash judgments, and lies.' It seems to me that good people should be careful not to accuse the Catholic Church—"

"Well, the Roman Catholic Church, of things they do not know to be true; and I see no harm in inquiring what is true, and what false, in all that is brought against it. Here is our neighbor across the road, a pious Methodist, will not let her little girl, who was my best friend, play with me any more, because I said I thought lies about Catholics were just as bad as lies about Methodists. But I shall always think so, if I lose the friendship of every body."

A sigh and a groan were heard from the dark corner, and a voice, "O poor child! the poison is beginning to work, and there's no knowing where it will end. If things are to go on in this way, it is just as likely as any thing in the world that we shall have the Pope of Rome and all his cardinals down among us before we know it, letting folks out of purgatory, selling indulgences to commit sin, and doing so many other awful things!"

"Ha! ha!" laughed Kitty's father, who had just come in. "Never mind, Aunt Ruby, the pope will never take you, so you need not stand in fear of him. You are too much in the dark, and I fear never could bear the light sufficiently to become one of the children of holy church."

Kitty's eldest brother, who had been educated in a Catholic college, had come in with his father, and now whispered slyly to grandmamma,

"I don't know about that; I have great hopes for Aunt Ruby yet. When she left the Episcopal Church, and was propounded for admission into the Congregational, before she married the minister, you remember how the old deacons groaned in spirit over her because they could not get her to say she was 'willing to be damned.'[34] They insisted that the 'old carnal heart' was still too strong in her, and they protested with one voice that it would never do for their minister to marry a woman who was not 'willing to be damned.' Perhaps the dear old lady remains yet of the same mind. If so, she may escape, after all."

CHAPTER II.
WHAT OUR NEIGHBORS THOUGHT OF IT.

"So you have all heard of this affair! Then I suppose it must be true. Well, for my part, I never could have thought it possible here in New England, and in the light of this nineteenth century!" exclaimed a grave-looking, elderly lady, who sat in the centre of a group of women who had met together to spend the afternoon in chatting and knitting. "I never could have believed that a woman so well-informed and so good as Mrs. S—— would allow her child to be ensnared and deceived by these wicked papists. I was perfectly astonished when I heard of it."

"And so was I," rejoined another and younger individual of the group. "I called to inquire of Mrs. S—— herself, to ask if the report was true. She said it was true; and, what do you think? she even went so far as to say that she hoped her Kitty would never read a worse book than that awful Romanist catechism! What is to become of us when good people and professing Christians talk in this way? [185]I am afraid the poor woman is in great danger herself."

"Of course she is," said another; "but if she has a craving for error herself, she has no right to expose her child to the influence of it. I am told she openly maintains, and in Kitty's presence too, that good works are necessary to salvation, and even dares to talk about penance and all those popish abominations. Only the other day, Kitty told me she thought lies about Catholics were just as bad as lies about Methodists. I informed the young lady that I should have no more visiting between her and my daughter. I was sorry to grieve poor Kitty, she is such a good little girl; but I could not have the mind of my child poisoned by such dangerous doctrines."

A little woman, whose knitting-needles had been clicking with marvellous rapidity and energy, and whose countenance had indicated the most earnest attention and interest during this colloquy, here ventured to remark that she thought Kitty's opinion was very just, and she would really like to know what there was so very dangerous in the Catholic catechism. She had become acquainted with many Catholics while visiting her friends in Canada, and they seemed to be as good people as there are anywhere. She wished she could be informed as to the particular and alarming errors taught by this church.

All voices were raised at once in expressions of surprise at such astounding ignorance. "Is it possible there is any one who does not know that the Roman church is a mass of errors, corruptions, superstitious mummeries and idolatries? that Romanists pray to saints and graven images instead of praying to God? that the priests keep the people in darkness and ignorance in order to domineer over them at their pleasure. Errors, to be sure!"

The minute individual whose remarks had raised this storm of indignation, here interposed by saying emphatically, "I confess I do not know much about this church, except that in this country it is everywhere denounced in the strongest terms. But it is not necessarily as bad as its enemies represent it to be, any more than the primitive church was. I do not dare to condemn any body of Christians—"

"Christians!" interrupted an old lady with more acid than honey in her aspect and manner; "Christians!" with an unmistakable sneer.

"Yes, Christians!" resumed the other; "for I am told they believe in our Lord Jesus Christ; and, as I was saying, I would not dare to condemn them without knowing from themselves, instead of their enemies, what their doctrines are."

The conversation was here interrupted by the entrance of Kitty's mother, who was received with a cold reserve that revealed to her at once what the subject of their discussion had been. Being of a frank and fearless disposition, and possessing much of that American candor of soul which insists on fair play in every contest, she opened the subject without hesitation, by saying,

"I have been informed, ladies, that my neighbors are greatly alarmed because I allowed my little girl to hear a Catholic child recite the catechism. I have examined the little book carefully, and cannot find any thing in it to justify such fears. I am not at all afraid it will hurt my child."

A solemn silence followed this declaration, when an excited individual inquired with much vehemence, "What does it say about priests pardoning sins, about praying to saints, and praying souls out of purgatory?"

"As to the power of the priests to pardon sins, it merely repeats the words of our Lord, 'Whose sins ye shall forgive, they are forgiven;' and I confess I never before noticed how very clear and decisive they were, especially when he added, 'And lo! I am with you always, even unto the end of the world.' As to praying to saints, it asserts that the saints in glory pray to God for us, and help us by their prayers, and that the souls in purgatory are assisted by our prayers for them."

"There's no such place as purgatory!" indignantly exclaimed an old lady. "I don't believe a word of it."

"Unfortunately for you, my dear friend," replied Kitty's mother, "your believing or disbelieving does not make the least difference in this matter. If there is a purgatory, as was always held by the Jewish church and has been by many Protestants, your opinion will not change the fact or abolish the institution. I really think the Catholic doctrine, that the church triumphant prays for the church militant, (for what is the true Christian but a soldier of Christ engaged in a life-long conflict with the world, the flesh, and the devil?) and that the church militant supplicates the mercy of God on behalf of the church suffering, is a beautiful and a consoling one. It is a golden chain that binds the souls of the redeemed in holy communion with each other. The grave that has closed over the precious form of a dear friend no longer places an inseparable barrier between us and the departed soul, but serves rather to bring us into closer and more tender sympathy with it. Whether true or not, I think it is a beautiful idea."

"And so do I," added the energetic little knitter; "and I would like to know more about this doctrine."

The gentleman of the house, an able lawyer of the place, who had entered during this conversation, here declared his intention of procuring from the priest on his next visit some books explaining Catholic doctrines.

"For," he remarked, "it certainly is not just to hear all the accusing party has to say, and then refuse to listen to the defence."

Countenances expressive of indignation and alarm, with sighs and groans from most of the party, were the only remonstrances offered to this bold proposition.

CHAPTER III.
THE OPINION OF THE SEWING-CIRCLE.

"I am sure I don't know what will happen next in our village! What would have been said thirty years ago of such outrageous performances?"

These were the words that greeted my ears as I entered the sewing society at Mrs. B——'s, on a fine afternoon in August, 18—. The speaker, who was an energetic middle-aged lady, continued, "First there was the S—— family, with their Romish catechism and their inquiring into forbidden things, all going on the broad road to destruction as rapidly as possible, with ever so many more fascinated and entangled in the same net; and now here Mr. W—— and his whole family have fairly rushed through the gate and joined those children of perdition, the Romanists. It is too bad; too much for human patience!"

"Nothing more than might be expected of those Episcopalians!" exclaimed a prim-looking young lady. "It is but a step from their church to Rome. I am not at all surprised."

"I am not so sure of that," remarked Mrs. J——. "I suspect the Episcopalians differ just as much from the Romanists, after all, as the Congregationalists[187] or any other Protestant sect. They are Protestants, you know, as well as we. You remember Miss E——, who was the principal of our female seminary for some time, a lady of remarkable intelligence and rare culture, and a very dear friend of mine in Massachusetts, before she came here. She was always a devoted Congregationalist from the time she first experienced religion; but she has lately become, I am sorry to say, a Romanist; and, what is still worse, she is about to join their Sisters of Charity! I received from her, not long ago, a letter explaining her reasons, and speaking of what she calls our 'misapprehensions of Catholic doctrine.' She says she has not laid aside any part of her former belief; but has only made such additions as complete the system, and render portions which before were dubious, discordant, and perplexing fragments the clear, harmonious, distinct, and necessary members of a perfect whole. I assure you she has more to say for herself than you would believe possible, and she knows how to say it, too, in a most impressive manner. She told me, also, of many others of our persuasion who will probably join the Catholic Church. So the Episcopalians are not alone, you see, in this movement."

"True," said Mrs. G——; "for there is Mrs. H—— and her daughter, who were leading Methodists. They have joined this popish rabble, and are so very happy in their new home that it is past belief, and quite amusing to people of common sense. I don't believe it makes any difference what body of Protestant Christians folks belong to; if they once get to pondering on these things, they are almost sure to follow their noses into the Roman Church before they stop. When the mind gets fairly waked up, it does not seem possible to quiet it in any other way. And then, as you say, they are all so perfectly contented and joyous when they have once entered the 'fold,' as they call it, that it is a puzzle to sober-minded Christians! I think this new priest who has lately come among us is doing immense mischief already."

"Of course he is!" chimed in another lady with much asperity. "He is so very agreeable and polite, so gentle and easy to get acquainted with, that every one is attracted by him. Then he is an American, and knows so much better how to make himself acceptable to our people than the other one did, that he is a great deal more dangerous on that account. My son George, who would not speak to Kitty S——, Jennie H——, and the W——s, you know, after they began to patronize Romanism—though he thought every thing of them before—is already quite at home with this new priest; takes long walks with him, and even went to the church last Sunday, just to see how they get on over there."

"Oh! yes, he told me all about it," said Miss Mary B——. He said it was perfectly astonishing to see Mr. W—— singing and chanting with those shabby Canadians; and there were the W——s, the H——s, and the S——s, kneeling right in the midst of that rabble, and to all appearance as intent on their prayers, and as much absorbed in what was going on, as any one present. They seemed quite at home, and to understand every thing as well as if they had been accustomed to it all their lifetime. George said he placed himself where they couldn't help seeing him; but they were not disconcerted in the least. Even the girls never seemed to notice him at all. He said they doubtless understood the service, but he didn't. I think, Mrs. G——, that it will not be very safe[188] for George to go there often; for he told me that there was a wonderful solemnity and fascination about the place—which is not much better than a mere shanty—and about the service, though he didn't understand a word of it. He never felt so solemn in all his life, he said; and that was a great deal for such a scatterbrain as George to say."

"I have heard others older and wiser than he say the same," remarked a thoughtful-looking widow with a sigh. "My brother, who is a deacon, and a man of very cool temperament and calm judgment, says he never was in a Catholic place of worship but once, and then he was almost frightened at the sensation of awe that came over him. He said it seemed to him that the impression it made was what one would naturally expect if their doctrine of the real presence were true, and the sight of the solemn assurance which a great many apparently devout and good people evidently possessed of their near approach to their Redeemer, really present in that place, affected him so sensibly that he could not shake the feeling off. It was a very plain little chapel, by no means equal to our churches; but he said it seemed as if something whispered to him that he was standing on holy ground. He has been very painfully exercised about these matters ever since, and he says that the sixth chapter of St. John's Gospel, which never troubled him before, now appears to be all in favor of their doctrine."

"For my part, I don't see why Protestants want to go near them at all!" exclaimed another indignantly. "It only brings about mischief; and the only way to put down such things is to set our faces resolutely against every one that countenances any thing pertaining to Romanism. We must be determined that we will have nothing to do with such people in any way. We must keep entirely aloof from Romanists and from Romanizers."

"Well, I confess that I am very much puzzled about all these matters," quietly observed a lady of very gentle manners, in a low voice. "I cannot help having misgivings that a system which carries into its minutest circumstances and details such almost irresistible power may perhaps, after all, owe it to the force of truth. It is certainly sustained and animated by some principle not possessed or exerted by Protestantism in any of its branches."

"It is a principle of evil, then," cried the former austere speaker. "The Prince of Darkness knows how to appear as an 'angel of light'!"

"Ah!" resumed the other; "but you know our Lord said, 'If they have called the Master of the house Beelzebub, how much more those of his household!' We ought to be careful how we bring such accusations against a church which certainly numbers some very good people among its members. One thing may be said of it, that the poor are tenderly cherished and cared for within its pale; and I can never believe that the evil one is the dispenser or instigator of so many charities as are instituted and supported by this church."

"All done for effect, and to lead poor Protestants astray! Take care, my dear friend; for these misgivings are the beginning of danger, and if you follow them, they will surely lead you into the Romish Church. That is the way all those who have lost the light of Protestantism have been ensnared."

"If it should prove that they gave up an ignis fatuus for the light of the star that guided the wise men of old to the crib of the Infant Redeemer,[189] did they not do well rather than ill?" suggested the quiet speaker, and was answered only by a murmur of indignation at her bold conjecture, as the party withdrew to another room where the tea-table was spread for their refreshment.

CHAPTER IV.
WHAT HAPPENED AT THE DONATION-PARTY.

"Did you go to the donation party at our minister's last night, sister C——? I was so sorry that I couldn't go! My little girl had such a bad cold, I did not dare to leave her."

"Yes, I was there; and, don't you think! Mrs. H—— was there too, with her daughter. Would you have believed she would dare to show her face among the Methodists, after what has happened?"

"As pleasant and gentle as ever; and just as much at home as if she had never left us to join the Catholics. Sister J—— would not speak to her at first, or look at her; and our good old brother L——, who used to be her class-leader, you know, quite turned the cold shoulder upon her; but she was not to be put off so easily; and after a little while, her kind and winning ways had thawed all the ice, and we couldn't help being pleasant with her."

"Well, I always did love sister H——; hence I don't want to meet her now. I am glad I was not there! Did any one speak to her about her change?"

"Yes; brother L—— could not help telling her how sorry we were to lose her; and she said, 'You have not lost me, brother L——; I shall never forget my dear Methodist friends, and shall never cease to love and pray for them!' 'Pray for them!' brother L—— said with great contempt; 'we don't thank people for praying to the saints for us; we can pray to God for ourselves. Ah Sister H——! if you would only pray to him as you used to, when you were a warm-hearted Methodist, that would do!' Her answer to this was what puzzled me. I remember every word of it, she looked so grieved, and so sweetly earnest, while the tears fairly came to her eyes as she said, 'Pray to God as I used to, Brother L——! Why, I never knew the meaning of the word prayer until I was a Catholic! I then entered the very atmosphere of prayer! My life, my breath, my every thought, my every action, became one continual prayer to an ever-present God from that hour. The saints united with me, assisted me—at my request prayed for me—and for those for whom I desired their prayers in union with my own; and of that perfect union and communion with them, I can give you no idea. O brother L——! believe me, there is no home for a 'warm-hearted Methodist' but the Catholic Church! Don't you remember, in our class conferences, how I used to say I was happy, but not satisfied; I felt that I was still a seeker. I had been first a Congregationalist, then an Episcopalian, and at last a Methodist; but had not found all I was seeking for. You thought I never would until I reached heaven; but'—and how I wish, dear friend, you could have seen and heard her as she said it, for I cannot describe her impressive manner—'but brother, I have found it all in the Catholic Church! The blank is filled. The yearning of my soul is satisfied so entirely that there is nothing left to desire!'

"'All a delusion, sister H——!' exclaimed brother L——. 'You'll wake up some time and find it so,[190] and then you'll come back!' She looked perfectly dismayed at the very thought, as she replied, 'Come back to what? To content myself with the shadow, when I have possessed the substance? to satisfy my hunger with the husks of the stranger, when I have feasted at the continual and overflowing banquet of my Father's table! O my Methodist friends! if you could but taste for once the sweetness and fulness of that banquet, you would never cast one backward look upon what you had left, except to mourn for those who remain contented there, when they might be feasting on the bread of angels!' I confess to you, Mrs. M——, that I could not help being moved by her earnestness to wish that I was even as she is! No one can doubt her entire sincerity who listens to her. Brother L—— asked her if it could be possible that she believed all the absurdities taught by the Romish Church? She replied that she believed no absurdities, and that he had not the slightest idea as to what the Catholic Church really did teach; a tissue of absurdities had been invented by its enemies, and palmed off upon the too credulous Protestants as its teachings, when they were entirely foreign to it, and baseless misrepresentations. 'But,' she added, 'I believe all that my church really does offer to my belief, as firmly as I believe that there is a sun in the firmament of heaven!'"

"Well, how strange it all is, to be sure! Now, I met Mrs. L—— the other day, and I was so provoked at the way they are going on, that I could not for my life help asking her why, in the name of common sense, if they wanted to be Romanists, they didn't all go together like sensible people, and not string along, one to-day, another to-morrow, and so on, as they do? And what do you think was her reply? 'Why, you know, Mrs. M——,' she said; 'that we read of the olden time that, "The Lord added daily unto the church of such as should be saved"!' There is one thing, as you say, that cannot be doubted or denied: right or wrong, they are solemnly in earnest, and heartily sincere. You know little Kitty S—— had a terrible fit of sickness before they became Catholics, (some think her sickness hastened that event,) and has been a great sufferer ever since. Sister W—— has taken care of her through it all, and I should not wonder if she should go off on the same road. She is all taken up with it now, and justifies their course; says all the evils we have been accustomed to hear of the Catholic religion are slanders, and that if the S——s, and especially little Kitty, are not Christians of the true stamp, she does not rightly understand the gospel of Christ."

CHAPTER V.
REMINISCENCES OF THE PAST.

After an absence of over twenty years, we returned to the pleasant village in New England which had formerly exercised over us the charm that pertains to the magic name of HOME.

Seeking out one of the few old neighbors who were left, on the morning after our arrival, I was met with the surprised and joyful exclamation,

"Why, my dear Mrs. J——! can it be possible that this is your own self? I had no hopes of ever seeing you again in this world."

"It is indeed myself," I replied. "We have long been wanderers by 'field and flood;' but have at length returned to remain a short time among the scenes of other years. If you are at leisure, I want to settle down into my own cosy corner of the dear old[191] sitting-room, just as if I had never been away, and ask you as many questions about village affairs and those of the olden time as you will want to answer."

"You could not furnish me with a greater pleasure, I assure you! But O my friend! what changes have taken place since you left! Very few of those who were with us then still remain. Many have died, some have gone 'West,' and some have found their way to San Francisco and other parts of California."

"They removed to another place some years ago, and their family is widely scattered; but they remain united in spirit, and steadfast in the faith."

"Only three of them are living. One has gone to the far West, and the others have left this place. Little Kitty, after years of patient suffering, during which she never ceased to thank God for having permitted her to find in the holy Catholic Church 'the path over which so many saints and martyrs have passed to heaven'—as she expressed it—at length meekly and joyfully resigned her youthful spirit to her Maker; leaving the light of a beautiful example to shine around the lonely home, and console the bereaved family. Her grandmother, who embraced the faith soon after her granddaughter made profession of it, followed her to the other world in a few months, consoled by all the rites of the church, in which, though she entered its blessed inclosure late in life, she had in a 'short space,' by her good words and works, acquired the merit of many years. Then 'Aunt Laura' and Kitty's younger sister joined them, 'rejoicing in hope.' 'Aunt Ruby' survived them some years, and was often heard to wish, with a sigh, that she could be sure she was as well prepared to leave the world as her Catholic sister; but she never had the courage to brave the ill-opinion of her own little world of Congregationalism—over the modern innovations and delinquencies of which she never ceased to mourn—by following that sister into the only 'ark of safety.'"

"Ah!" I exclaimed; "how many changes indeed. Then I shall never see those dear friends whom I had so fondly hoped to meet again. And where is Mrs. L——, our energetic little knitter, who was so true to every impulse of divine grace and truth?"

"She has long slept in the village cemetery. 'Faithful unto death!' might well have been the inscription upon her grave. She passed through severe and bitter trials, and was made to feel that there are tortures as cruel as those of the rack or wheel, to a sensitive spirit, in the cold contempt and neglect of those who should have been her protectors, as they were her only earthly support. But she never wavered for a moment in her firm trust, or ceased to rejoice that she had been called to the profession of the true faith, which abundantly sustained her under all her griefs and sufferings."

"And dear, gentle Mrs. N——? I felt sure she would forsake the ignis fatuus of Protestantism at last for 'the light of the star that guided the wise men' of old, though she was so long in making up her mind."

"The daughter died some years ago, and was laid near little Kitty S——, whom she tenderly loved, and regarded as the chief instrument of her conversion. Her mother has removed[192] to some distance; but is as fervently thankful to-day for the great gift of faith as she was on that memorable one when she first accepted it, and turned from old and dear associations to find the 'only home for the warm-hearted Methodist,' in the bosom of the Catholic Church."

"Yes; and very faithful and fervent children of the church they were; illustrating the beauty of Catholic truths by the shining virtues of their lives. But, alas! of the whole family—father, mother, and five children—but one survives. They departed followed by the prayers and benedictions of the whole Catholic congregation, to whose service they had devoted their best efforts."

"Then there were the B——s, the K——s, and the C——s, who were deeply interested in Catholic truths when I left. Did they follow out their convictions?"

"No; they were 'almost persuaded' to cast in their lot with the happy band of converts; but the storm of obloquy and reproach which soon gathered around the devoted company—without in the least disturbing their peace—so appalled those outside, that they did not dare to follow the inspiration, or ever again to seek its aid. Some became Spiritualists, some Second Adventists, and those who remain nominally as they were before, have fallen into hopeless indifference to all religion, and intense worldliness; seeking in petty ambitions and trifling pursuits the comfort they are no longer able to find in the bosom of any sect. The glimmering of Catholic light which they accepted had served only to reveal to them the utter emptiness of Protestantism, when they steadfastly closed their eyes to any further illumination. While life remains there is hope; but such cases as these seem as nearly hopeless as any in this world can be."

We visited the cemetery, where reposed the mortal remains of so many friends who had been the theme of our conversation; and I found familiar names more numerous there than were familiar faces among the living. We also sought together the spacious church which had been erected during my absence, and which is a beautiful and enduring evidence of the active zeal of a congregation which is richer in holy memories, and in faith, hope, and charity, than in the goods of this world.

SONNET.
TO ITALY.

IRELAND'S MISSION.

Few persons expected that the passing of Mr. Gladstone's disestablishment bill would have immediately introduced a golden age into Ireland. The leading promoters of that measure never regarded it as one which was final and complete; but rather as a necessary prelude to certain reconstructive measures more powerful and important than itself. The abolition of the ascendency of an alien church did not restore—and did not affect to restore—to the Catholic Church its ancient status and endowments. The attempt would be entirely vain to regather the disjecta membra of the great body of Irish church temporalities long since dispersed and broken up by successive spoliations and alienations. The property dealt with by the recent legislation is but a small fraction of what once belonged to the Irish Church. Restitution, unhappily, is often impossible to the statesman. He may build up an edifice upon ruins, and create new empires out of revolutions. But he can no more give back to outraged nationalities their unsullied honor, or to plundered kingdoms their squandered treasures, than he can restore to those fallen from purity their virgin crown or reëndow criminals with a conscience void of offence and free from sear of guilt. And therefore the removal of the alien church led to no replacement of the old Catholic Church in the position vacated[194] by its Protestant rival; but merely paved the way for the introduction of constructive measures upon the nature of which will depend the future, not of Ireland merely, but of the British empire. Amidst these constructive measures the statesman will not reckon any provisions for the maintenance or aggrandisement of the Catholic Church in Ireland. A church which withstood calamity and survived the loss of its possessions, and flourished under three hundred years of bitter persecution, may safely be left to itself. State patronage, in any extended form, might corrupt, but could not strengthen, Irish Catholicism. Catholics in many countries are beginning to feel that freedom of action and development is of far greater value than endowments to the church. In Ireland, Catholics have long since perceived and acknowledged that liberty—not the enervating influence of court favor—is the true bulwark of Catholic worship.

Legislators have, in fact, no occasion to take into their consideration the Irish Catholic Church, except in so far as its power and interests intermingle with the educational and other social and political problems which demand deep and impartial inquiry. Whoever examines, without prejudice or passion, the actual position of Ireland as an integral part of the British empire must confess that Ireland forms at this time, more than at any other, the cardinal point of English policy. Gibraltar was once the key to the Mediterranean and to political supremacy in Europe. Ireland is to England another Gibraltar, on whose rock British power must be either consolidated or riven. The Ireland of 1870 is rapidly entering on a new phase of existence, which is none the less worthy of the statesman's study because it is the result of causes altogether beyond his control. Ireland is no longer an island lying within a few hours' sail of the English navy, inhabited by men whose interests may be disposed of without reference to the wishes of any save the inhabitants of Great Britain. The people of Ireland are by no means confined within the territorial limits of that country. The Irish nation has two homes. The one is in Ireland, the other is in America. Misgovernment sent half Ireland into exile, and those exiles have prospered and multiplied to an extent far exceeding any known examples of similar transmigrations. But although there are two homes, there is but one nation of Irishmen. Five millions of men occupy Irish soil, but far more than twice five millions of Irishmen dwelling in foreign lands not only claim but exercise an ever-increasing influence on Irish politics. Some few among the ultra-conservative statesmen of England—and among them one no less distinguished than the great chief of the late Tory administration—looked with eyes of cruel satisfaction on the exodus which wiser men regarded with awe as a hemorrhage draining away the life-blood of their kingdom. The famine was to these bigoted men a God-gift, which swept off what they flippantly termed a superabundant population. Emigration was, in their eyes, a more tedious and costly process for the decimation of Irish Catholics. Protestants, belonging chiefly to the dominant and richer class, were in proportion to their numbers less exposed than Catholics to the severity of the famine and the necessity of expatriation. Famine and emigration, if only Providence would prolong and intensify their action, would alter—so they thought—the numerical proportions between Catholics and Protestants make Ireland a Protestant country and render the church establishment less anomalous. Let a few[195] more years pass—so argued these reasoners—and instead of having to legislate for a Catholic, discontented, Ireland, over-populated and half-pauperized, we shall have to deal with one comparatively Protestant, which will be prosperous, happy, and loyal to the British crown. It is recorded of an English statesman that he once expressed a wish—in jest, no doubt—that Ireland were for an hour submerged in the Atlantic, that it might rise again stripped of its inhabitants, a fresh field for the importation of English Protestant colonists. The folly of wishing for either a flood or a famine to repair the defects of English legislation for Ireland, is now as apparent as the cruelty. Even though the island of Ireland were reduced to such a tabula rasa as some bigots would desire, England must take into account the thousands and millions of Irishmen in various lands who constitute part of the Irish nation, and who think, plan, and pray for the happiness of their traditional fatherland. And fortunately for the interests of England, no less than of Ireland, a policy has of late been adopted by the leaders of the great liberal party which professes to deal with Catholic Ireland, not as with a venomous thing to be guarded against, kept down, and, if possible, crushed, but as a country to be tenderly regarded, carefully cherished, and legislated for with a view to the contentment and preservation of its Catholic people. The policy of Mr. Gladstone, Mr. Bright, and the party of which they are now the recognized chiefs, is at present but partially developed, yet has already produced good fruits. Righteousness exalteth a nation, and England has risen immensely in the opinion of wise and good men in Europe and America by that great though tardy—the greater, perhaps, because so tardy—act of righteousness, namely, the abolition of an English Protestant church establishment for Irish Catholics. The sympathies of all honest men in every quarter of the globe are with the English government in its endeavor to stay the tide of Irish emigration, and retain Irishmen upon their native soil as contented occupiers and owners of farms. But admiration and sympathy are not the only rewards which England may reap by steadily following out the policy begun by Mr. Gladstone. The integrity of the British empire may be shown to depend upon the continued development of the principles which carried the Irish church bill of 1869 and introduced an Irish land bill in 1870. If it be too presumptuous to attempt to forecast a triumphant progress for those principles, it will yet be not wholly profitless to denote the perils and obstructions which beset the way.

The disturbances and outrages which in Ireland preceded and followed the passing of the disestablishment bill, were the natural result of the violent harangues uttered by the fanatic debaters of the Church Defence Association, many of whom announced to their excited auditors that the land bill of Mr. Gladstone would confiscate the property of Protestant land-owners in Ireland. The evil passions of men thus deceived into a belief that a wrong was intended not only to their church but to their lands, found vent not merely in hard words and cruel threats, but in merciless deeds. Some Protestant landlords withheld the accustomed local charitable contributions which, as owners of property, they had hitherto given to various institutions. Others issued notices of ejection against their tenants, and these attempted ejections produced—as capricious injustice is certain to do—ill-will and resistance. Outrages, even assassinations, occurred.[196] But such offences against public order may be expected to cease when the causes of them are removed. Time will allay the heat of bygone party conflicts. Agrarian outrages will, if the land bill be good for any thing, occur as rarely in Ireland as in America. Industrious laborers will, it is to be hoped, find it easy to rent or purchase small holdings on which they may expend their toil, and in which they may invest their savings without fear of their being appropriated to the use of felonious landlords by means of notices to quit. It is when the excitement of the land and church questions shall have yielded to the pressure of other momentous questions, that the real danger will threaten the onward march of those principles which, in the opinion of many, can alone safely guide the mutual relations between England and Ireland. The education question will be a highly perilous one. If the liberal party put forward a scheme for compulsory, or secular, or sectarian education, which shall, on whatever pretext, either nominally or practically, tend to withdraw the education of Catholic children from the immediate control of the priests, the result will be disappointment and disaster. Free education, in the sense of an education independent of religion, has great charms in the eyes of English and Irish liberals. Some Catholics are inclined to favor any scheme which would place a superior system of secular instruction within the reach of the great bulk of the poorer and middle class, even though it should not provide for that religious training which is a characteristic of a strictly Catholic education. But the Catholic clergy of Ireland, to a man, and those members of Parliament who represent Irish Catholic constituencies, will give strenuous and effectual opposition to undenominational or secular education under its open guise, although they may prove unable to resist the employment, in a modified shape, of the principle which they regard as pernicious. It will be much to the advantage of Great Britain if the education of Catholics in England, as well as in Ireland, be made thoroughly Catholic. The vast, and in many respects admirable system of national education in Ireland, which, twenty or thirty years ago, was favorably regarded by very many of the Irish Catholic bishops and clergy, has long since been declared unsatisfactory by the Catholic hierarchy. The elementary national schools are now merely tolerated. The national model schools are loudly denounced. The national system aimed at giving to all children a combined secular instruction and at affording opportunities for separate religious instruction. The priest and the parson were invited to become joint patrons of schools. The board of education were to supply school-rooms, teachers, books, and requisites for a secular instruction in which all the pupils were to share. The ministers of various denominations were to supply, either personally or by deputy, a religious teaching to their respective pupils. Thus an hour or more was to be set apart for religious teaching. During that hour the Catholic children were to be taught the Catholic religion by the priest, or by one of the masters under the priest's direction, and the Protestant children were similarly to be taught the principles of Protestantism in another room by the parson, or by one of the teachers under his control. It was supposed that all ministers of religion would join in carrying out a system which thus provided for the general education of the poor, without interfering with the conscientious discharge of that part of the ministerial duty of clergymen which relates to[197] the religious teaching of the young. The idea of instructing Catholic and Protestant children together and bringing them up in habits of mutual affection and esteem, was specious and captivating. Who could withhold his quota of aid toward realizing the prospect thus held out of future generations of educated Irishmen of various creeds, each respecting the religious principles of the others while strong in his own, and all loyal to the impartial government of the British crown? Yet, at its very outset, the clergy and bishops of the Protestant establishment held aloof from the national board. They refused any partnership with Catholic priests in the management of schools, and declared that their consciences would not permit them to consent to support a system which set limits to the free use of the holy Scriptures during secular instruction. In vain was it shown that in Protestant universities, colleges, and higher schools, nay, that in the very order for divine service according to the ritual of the establishment, a limit was actually set to the use of the holy Scriptures by the appointment of fixed times and places for the study and reading and exposition of the sacred word. In vain was it demonstrated that neither insult nor disparagement was intended by regulations which might be looked on as scarcely different from those which prevented a lecturer in mathematics from giving his class a dissertation upon Isaiah, and denied a clergyman of the establishment the privilege of interpolating his reading of the litany with a chapter from the Apocalypse. The establishment clergy, with a few notable exceptions, asserted it as their right and duty to use the Scriptures at all times in their schools, and declared it to be a sin to consent to suspend, even during the hours of combined secular instruction, their office of teachers of divine truth. By adopting this course they lost whatever claim to public estimation they might otherwise have had as helpers of education, and hastened, undoubtedly, the fall of their establishment. It has lately, through the publication of Archbishop Whately's biography by his daughter and of the journals of Mr. Senior, been fully disclosed that a desire for proselytism, although in his lifetime he publicly professed the contrary, was at the bottom of that able prelate's energetic support of the national system. The religious and moral teaching of the books used for combined secular instruction had, so argued Whately in private, a strong tendency to implant truths which must lead to the reception of Protestantism. Give free scope, so reasoned the archbishop, to the national system, and, although the priests may not perceive their danger, Ireland must cease to be a Catholic country. When publicly advocating the national system, Whately's language was, of course, far different. Then he maintained stoutly that the books were thoroughly impartial, he repudiated with affected loathing any dishonorable desire to make converts to Protestantism, and he professed the most scrupulous respect for the consciences of those who differed from him in religion. The posthumous publication of Whately's real sentiments—destructive as that publication is of much of his reputation, and especially of his character for straightforwardness—forms a valuable vindication, not merely of the behaviour of those more honest commissioners of education whose refusal to adopt the Whately tactics led to Whately's retirement from the board, but also of the conduct of the Catholic bishops and clergy who have found it necessary emphatically to demand a radical change in the system[198] of national instruction so far as Catholics are concerned.

It is, however, for the interests of Protestantism and of Great Britain, as well as of Catholicism, that the education of Catholics should be carried on more perfectly in accord with the desires of the Catholic people. The principle of religious neutrality in education has been tried in Ireland, and found wanting. It has not resulted in bringing into the same school-rooms the young of various creeds, and educating them in mutual love. Three or four Protestants may be found in the same school with a hundred Catholics; or three or four Catholics may attend a school frequented by a hundred Protestants. But nowhere in Ireland is it possible to find a school where one half of the pupils are Protestants and the other half Catholics, or where the Protestant clergyman and the Catholic priest, as joint patrons, superintend their respective classes. It is true, indeed, that proselytism is discouraged by the rules of the board, and that no favor is shown to one denomination more than to another. But with all this endeavor after impartiality by its administrators, the system inflicts a serious wound upon Catholicity. The authority of the board is substituted for that of the Catholic Church. The national school teacher, when in training for his office, learns his duties from men of various religious denominations, who are not permitted, even were they desirous, to impart a devotional color to what they teach. The virtues must be commended on moral, not on religious grounds. Patriotism may take root in ignorance; for no book of Irish history is to be found in the list of Irish national school books. When the trained teacher is set over a school, he still regards himself as dependent upon the board which is his paymaster. Catholic teachers may, and sometimes do, hold opinions different from those of the priest, and even upon occasions refuse to carry out the priest's directions in the matter of religious teaching. The influence of the priest upon his flock is weakened by that very separation between secular and religious instruction which is the basis of the system of national education. Protestantism may flourish under the impartiality, neutrality, and secularization of education at which the originators of that system aimed; but Catholicism must inevitably become deteriorated.

It was in past years the almost universal belief of Protestant governments, that an Irish Catholic, in proportion as he ceased to be loyal to his spiritual, would advance in loyalty toward his temporal sovereign. Toleration was offered, even under Elizabeth and James, to Catholics who would abjure the spiritual supremacy of the pope. In modern times the same spirit of distrust shows itself in the endeavor, on the part of some Protestant statesmen, to offer to Catholics educational and other advantages upon conditions inconsistent with Catholic practices. Those greatly err who thus fancy that Great Britain will gain—either politically or religiously—by the undermining of the influence of the Catholic priesthood, or by leavening the education of Catholics with the spirit of secularization. The Irish Catholic may be taught to unlearn his faith, to neglect confession, and disobey the injunctions of his priest; but no one will say that thereby he becomes, necessarily, either a better Christian or a better subject to his sovereign. Such a one may, or may not, become a Protestant or an infidel. When the influence of the priest is weakened or destroyed, the Irish Catholic becomes an easy victim to those who[199] teach disloyalty and rebellion. But his lapse into treason should be ascribed to the fact not of his being a Catholic, but of his being a bad one. No good Catholic who values the sacraments, and respects the precepts of his church, could possibly join the treasonable brotherhoods denounced by the Catholic priest from the altar, by the bishops in pastorals, and by the pope himself. There are, however, too many Irish Catholics whose obedience to their church is partial, or but nominal. Perhaps these men first learnt in Irish national schools the lesson that religion, like every thing else, has its appointed time and place; that Catholic devotion forms no indispensable portion of secular studies, and that priestly intervention in affairs not strictly religious is intrusive and impertinent. The want of a truly Catholic training in early life doubtless has led many an adult Catholic to hold that a priest out-steps the proper sphere of his office, when he cautions his flock against revolutionary excesses.

If misdirected and uncatholic teaching occasions many Irish Catholics to become rebels in thought if not in deed, their education has advanced and is advancing in another point, so as to render their treason more dangerous. Irishmen in former years were prompt to seize occasions for the overthrow of British rule, but lacked certain qualities requisite for permanent success. They seemed incapable, for any length of time, of combined action and resolution in the field or the cabinet. They carried into battle the dissensions and jealousies of their divided council-chambers. Brilliant displays of military valor served only to mark more distinctly the fatal effects of indecision and insubordination. Victory itself was often the prelude to that demoralization of forces which is the worst consequence of defeat. But now the Irish are swiftly learning to acquire those qualities of organization and self-government which will render their revolts more formidable and disastrous to England than hitherto they have proved. Irishmen have shown themselves in American campaigns not soldiers merely, but generals, and not merely skilful tacticians in handling masses of troops before the enemy, but also able organizers, clever in moulding and disciplining untrained materials into effective battalions. Habits of promptitude, self-control, and self-reliance belong to the Irish-American in perhaps even a higher degree than to the Anglo-Saxon. The number is rapidly increasing of Irishmen who, having acquired those habits in America, repair to Ireland and communicate them in some degree to their brethren at home. The peasantry of Ireland—already familiarized with trans-Atlantic ideas of independence and republicanism—are apt to become Americanized. Their sympathies are with the United States rather than with England. If war broke out between Great Britain and the States, no one doubts but that the first American army flung upon Irish shores would find Ireland one vast recruiting field, and that swarms of soldiers of Irish descent would fly from distant lands to Ireland to lend their aid in rendering it, throughout its length and breadth, a garrison impregnable to British attacks. And no one doubts but that England—even though eventually victorious by land and sea—would depart from such a conflict crippled in half her strength. Ireland, alienated irrevocably, would be to England like a paralyzed limb to the combatant, both a sign and a source of weakness. At no very distant period from the termination of such a war, Ireland would virtually become an American outpost,[200] and would cease to be an integral part of Great Britain. Without Ireland to rely upon, England could scarcely be expected to maintain a position as a first-class power in the event of war among European nations. Mercenary troops might, indeed, for a time supply the want of Irish soldiers and sailors. But the nation which has to hire foreign troops to fight its battles is already in decay.

It is possible, however, that Ireland, instead of becoming the occasion of ruin and dismemberment to the British empire, may prove its mainstay and the bond of its integrity. If Ireland shall become prosperous and contented under the changed policy of England, if its population shall increase under prosperity, and if its nationality shall be recognized and fostered—then no combination of European foes, unaided by America, can hope to prevail against the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland. But why should America withhold her hand, when opportunity shall have presented itself for dealing a blow in repayment of old wrongs aggravated by recent disputes? France may demand the armed assistance of the States, whose existence as an independent government she so powerfully helped to create. He reads ill the face of nations who fails to perceive that the great body of Americans desire to see the pride of England humbled, and that they are treasuring up their wrath against the day of wrath. The native-born Americans are moved by the transmitted rancor of past injustice. Those of Irish and Catholic descent have the wrongs of Ireland and of the Catholic Church to avenge. All the traditions of faith and patriotism are now arrayed against England, and the influence of the Irish and Catholic population of the States is sufficient to decide the political action of Congress in the eventuality of the reasonableness of war with Great Britain becoming a subject for discussion. Yet the Irish and Catholic element in the American population might, under circumstances to be created by English policy, prove the means of restraining from an almost fratricidal contest the two great empires. Ireland may become so linked to England that any blow struck against England would equally harm Ireland. An enlightened legislation concerning the soil of Ireland may lead to the break-up of absentee landlordism, and substitute tens of thousands of owners and occupiers in place of the few hundred feudal proprietors who now exact rack-rents from an impoverished tenantry. The multiplication of resident working farm-owners may afford remunerative and permanent occupation to numerous agricultural laborers for whom there now offers only an intermittent and precarious employment. The agricultural prosperity of Ireland is a powerful bond of union with England, the nearest and best market for Irish produce. Another bond of union may be found in the grant of legislative independence, or such a modification of the present parliamentary system as may place the disposal of purely Irish interests in the hands of Irish representatives, satisfy the just desires of the patriotic, and leave no room for sentimental grievances to fester into international feuds. The Catholic religion, subjected to no disabilities in either kingdom, and overshadowed by no hostile establishment—for Englishmen themselves in a few years will remove their present church establishment in the interests of their church and of Protestantism—will form another tie between the countries. English Catholics have always been loyal to the British government. Irish Catholics may become just as[201] loyal. Education may render the rough Irish laborers, who frequent the centres of English commerce and manufacture, as loyal as the most loyal in England, and a valuable counterpoise to the ultra-democratic semi-infidels who form the dangerous mobs of London, Liverpool, and other vast trading and industrial cities. And if the social and political interests of Catholic Irishmen and of Catholics in England become recognized as identical with those of English Protestants, then the union between Great Britain and Ireland will be completely consolidated, and the Irish party in America will have neither excuse nor opportunity for joining any other party which may desire, disregarding the welfare of Ireland, to inflict a wound upon Great Britain. On the contrary, the Irish and Catholic element in the States will be both able and willing to throw its effective influence into the scale upon the side of peace and good-will, whenever the differences between the cabinets of London and Washington demand settlement. Ireland will thus indirectly become the mediator between the contending empires—the arbiter to reconcile the angry parent and the aggrieved son. But Ireland, to be enabled to act this part, must be cherished as Irish and Catholic, with its nationality unimpaired and its faith untrammelled. And if the political interests of Great Britain shall be served by the flourishing condition of Irish Catholicism, the religious interests of Protestant England will not necessarily be damaged. Nay, it may prove an advantage to Protestantism to be brought upon equal terms into close and harmonious relations with the fervent faith of the Catholic Church, which nowhere appears to greater advantage than in Ireland. Rationalism and scepticism are on the increase in Great Britain and elsewhere, and will prove far more dangerous neighbors than the Church of Rome to the Church of England. Infidelity is an enemy against whom both would do well, if not to unite their strength, at least to direct their separate attacks. As rivals in opposing vice and unbelief, they may learn to respect each other, and, alas! have before them a field only too ample for their most vigorous exertions.

MARY.

EMERSON'S PROSE WORKS.[36]

Mr. Emerson's literary reputation is established, and placed beyond the reach of criticism. No living writer surpasses him in his mastery of pure and classic English, or equals him in the exquisite delicacy and finish of his chiselled sentences, or the metallic ring of his style. It is only as a thinker and teacher that we can venture any inquiry into his merits; and as such we cannot suffer ourselves to be imposed upon by his oracular manner, nor by the apparent originality either of his views or his expressions.

Mr. Emerson has had a swarm both of admirers and of detractors. With many he is a philosopher and sage, almost a god; while with others he is regarded as an unintelligible mystic, babbling nonsense just fitted to captivate beardless young men and silly maidens with pretty curls, who constituted years ago the great body of his hearers and worshippers. We rank ourselves in neither class, though we regard him as no ordinary man, and as one of the deepest thinkers, as well as one of the first poets, of our country. We know him as a polished gentleman, a genial companion, and a warm-hearted friend, whose kindness does not pass over individuals and waste itself in a vague philanthropy. So much, at least, we can say of the man, and from former personal acquaintance as well as from the study of his writings.

Mr. Emerson is no theorist, and is rather of a practical than of a speculative turn of mind. What he has sought all his life, and perhaps is still seeking, is the real, the universal, and the permanent in the events of life and the objects of experience. The son of a Protestant minister, brought up in a Protestant community, and himself for some years a Protestant minister, he early learned that the real, the universal, and permanent are not to be found in Protestantism; and assuming that Protestantism, in some or all its forms, is the truest exponent of the Christian religion, he very naturally came to the conclusion that they are not to be found in Christianity. He saw that Protestantism is narrow, hollow, unreal, a sham, a humbug, and, ignorant of the Catholic Church and her teaching, he considered that she must have less of reality, be even more of a sham or humbug, than Protestantism itself. He passed then naturally to the conclusion that all pretensions to a supernaturally revealed religion are founded only in ignorance or craft, and rejected all of all religions, except what may be found in them that accords with the soul or the natural reason of all men. This may be gathered from his brief essay, entitled Nature, first published in 1836. We quote a few paragraphs from the introduction:

These extracts give us the key to Mr. Emerson's thought, which runs through all his writings, whether in prose or poetry; though more fully mastered and better defined in his later productions, essays, and lectures, than it was in his earliest production from which we have quoted. In studying these volumes, we are convinced that what the writer is after is reality, of which this outward, visible universe, both as a whole and in all its parts, symbolizes. He seeks life, not death; the living present, not the corpse of the past. Under this visible world, its various and ever-varying phenomena, lies the real world, one, identical, universal, and immutable, which it copies, mimics, or symbolizes. He agrees with Plato that the real thing is in the methexis, not in the mimesis; that is, in the idea, not in the individual and the sensible, the variable and the perishable. He wants unity and catholicity, and the science that does not attain to them is no real science at all. But as the mimesis, in his language the hieroglyphic, copies or imitates the methexic, we can, by studying it, arrive at the methexic, the reality copied or imitated.

We do not pretend to understand Plato throughout, nor to reconcile him always with himself; but as far as we do understand him, the reality, what must be known in order to have real science, is the idea, and it is only by ideas that real science is attained. Ideas are, then, both the object and the medium of knowledge. As the medium of knowledge, the idea may be regarded as the image it impresses on the mimetic, or the individual and the sensible, as the seal on the wax. This image or impression is an exact fac-simile of the idea as object. Hence by studying it we arrive at the exact knowledge of the idea, or what is real, invariable, universal, and permanent in the object we would know. The lower copies and reveals the next higher, and thus we may rise, step by step, from the lowest to the highest, to "the first good and the first fair," to the good, the beautiful, or Being that is being in itself. Thus is it in science. But the soul has two wings on which it soars to the empyrean, intelligence and love. The lowest form or stage of love is that of the sexes, a love of the senses only; but this lowest love symbolizes a higher or ideal love, rising stage by stage to the pure ideal, or the love of absolute beauty, the beautiful in itself, the love to which the sage aspires, and the only love in which he can rest or find repose.

We do not say that Mr. Emerson follows Plato in all respects; for he occasionally deviates from him, sometimes for the better, and sometimes for the worse; but no one not tolerably well versed in the Platonic philosophy can understand him. In his two essays on Plato, in his second volume, he calls him the Philosopher, and asserts that all who talk philosophy[204] talk Plato. He also maintains that Plato represented all the ages that went before him, possessed all the science of his contemporaries, and that none who have come after him have been able to add any thing new to what he taught. He includes Christianity, Judaism, and Mohammedanism in Plato, who is far broader and more comprehensive than them all. Plato of all men born of woman stood nearest the truth of things, and in his intellectual and moral doctrines surpassed all who went before or have come after him.

We find many things in Plato that we like, and we entirely agree with him that the ideal is real; but we do not agree with Mr. Emerson, that nothing in science has been added to the Platonic doctrine. We think Aristotle made an important addition in his doctrine of entelechia; Leibnitz, in his definition of substance, making it a vis activa, and thus exploding the notion of passive or inert substances; and finally, Gioberti, by his doctrine of creation as a doctrine, or rather principle, of science. Plato had no conception of the creative act asserted by Moses in the first verse of Genesis. Plato never rose above the conception of the production of existences by way of formation, or the operation of the plastic force on a preëxisting and often intractable matter. He never conceived of the creation of existences from nothing by the sole energy or power of the creator. He held to the eternal existence of spirit and matter, and we owe to him principally the dualism and antagonism that have originated the false asceticism which many attribute to Christian teaching; but which Christianity rejects, as is evident from its doctrine of the Incarnation and that of the resurrection of the flesh. Gioberti has shown, as the writer thinks, that creation is no less a scientific principle than a Christian dogma. He has shown that the creative act is the nexus between being and existences, and that it enters as the copula into the primum philosophicum, without which there could be no human mind, and consequently no human science. There are various other instances we might adduce in which people talk very good sense, even profound philosophical and theological truth, and yet do not talk Plato. We hardly think Mr. Emerson himself will accept all the moral doctrines of Plato's Republic, especially those relating to marriage and the promiscuous intercourse of the sexes; for Plato goes a little beyond what our free-lovers have as yet proposed.

Aristotle gives us, undoubtedly, a philosophy, such as it is, and a philosophy that enters largely into modern modes of thought and expression; but we can hardly say as much of Plato. He has profound thoughts, no doubt, and many glimpses of a high—if you will, the highest order of truth; but only when he avowedly follows tradition, and speaks according to the wisdom of the ancients. He seems to us to give us a method rather than a philosophy, and very little of our modern philosophical language is derived from him. Several of the Greek fathers, and St. Augustine among the Latins, incline to Platonism; but none of them, so far as we are acquainted with them, followed him throughout. The mediæval doctors, though not ignorant of Plato, almost without an exception prefer Aristotle. The revival of Platonism in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries brought with it a revival of heathenism; and Plato has since been held in much higher esteem with the heterodox and makers of fanciful systems than with the orthodox and simple believers. We trace his influence in what the romancers call chivalry,[205] which is of pagan origin, though some people are ill-informed enough to accredit it to the church; and we trace to his doctrine of love, so attractive to many writers not in other respects without merit, the modern babble about "the heart," the confusion of charity with philanthropy, and the immoral doctrines of free love, which strike at Christian marriage and the Christian family. The "heart," in the language of the Holy Scriptures, means the affections of the will, and the love they enjoin as the fulfilment of the law and the bond of perfection is charity, a supernatural virtue, in which both the will and the understanding are operative, not a simple, natural sentiment, or affection of the sensibility, or the love of the beautiful, and dependent on the imagination.

Mr. Emerson is right enough in making the sensible copy or imitate the intelligible, what there is true in Swedenborg's doctrine of correspondences; but wrong in making the mimetic purely phenomenal, unreal, a mere sense-show. The mimetic, the mimesis, by which Plato means the individual and the sensible, the variable and the transitory, is not the only real, nor the highest real, as sensists and materialists hold; but is as real in its order and degree as the methexic or ideal. Hence, St. Thomas is able to maintain that the sensible species, or accidents, as he calls them, can subsist without their subject, or, as we would say, the sensible body without the intelligible body; and therefore, that the doctrine of transubstantiation involves no contradiction; for it is not pretended that the sensible body undergoes any change, or that the sensible body of our Lord is present in the blessed eucharist. So St. Augustine distinguishes the visible—the sensible—body and the spiritual—intelligible—body, and holds both to be real. The individual is as real as the species—the socratitas, in the language of the schoolmen, as the humanitas—for neither is possible without the other. The sort of idealism, as it is called, that resolves the individual into the species, or the sensible into the intelligible, and thus denies the external world, is as unphilosophical as the opposite doctrine, that resolves the species into the individual and the intelligible into the sensible. Even Plato, the supposed father of idealism, does not make the mimesis absolutely unreal. For, to say nothing of the preëxistent matter, the image, picture, which is the exact copy of its ideal prototype, is a real image, picture, or copy.

But Mr. Emerson, if he recognizes the methexis at all, either confounds it with real and necessary being, or makes it purely phenomenal, and therefore unreal, as distinguished from real and necessary being. Methexis is a Greek word, and means, etymologically and as used by Plato, participation. Plato's doctrine is, that all inferior existences exist by participation of the higher, through the medium of what he calls the plastic soul, whence the Demiourgos of the Gnostics. His error was in making the plastic soul instead of the creative act of God the medium of the participation. Still, Plato made it the participation of ideas or the ideal, and, in the last analysis, of Him who is being in himself. Hence, he made a distinction, if not the proper distinction, between the methexis and God, or being by participation and the absolute underived being, or being in itself.

Mr. Emerson recognizes no real participation, and either excludes the methexis or identifies it with God, or absolute being. He thus reduces the categories, as does Cousin, to being and phenomenon, or, in the only barbarism in language he permits himself,[206] the ME—le moi—and the NOT ME—le non moi—the root-error, so to speak, of Fichte. He takes himself as the central force, and holds it to be the reality expressed in the NOT ME. The NOT ME being purely phenomenal, only the ME is real. By the ME he, of course, does not mean his own personality, but the reality which underlies and expresses itself in it. The absolute Ich, or ego, of Fichte is identical in all men, is the real man, the "one man," as Mr. Emerson says; and this "one man" is the reality, the being, the substance, the force of the whole phenomenal universe. There is, then, no methexis imitated, copied, or mimicked by the mimesis, or the individual and sensible universe. The mimesis copies not a participated or created intelligible, but, however it may be diversified by degrees, it copies directly God himself, the one real being and only substance of all things. If we regard ourselves as phenomenal, we are unreal, and therefore nothing; if as real, as substantive, as force, we do not participate, mediante the creative act, of real being, but are identically it, or identical with it; which makes the author not only a pantheist, but a more unmitigated pantheist than Plato himself.

Neither Plato nor Mr. Emerson recognizes any causative force in the mimesis. Plato recognizes causative force only in ideas, though he concedes a power of resistance to the preëxistent matter, and finds in its intractableness the cause of evil; Mr. Emerson recognizes causative or productive force only in the absolute, and therefore denies the existence of second causes, as he does all distinction between first cause and final cause; which is the very essence of pantheism, which Gioberti rightly terms the "supreme sophism."

We have used the Greek terms methexis and mimesis after Plato, as Gioberti has done in his posthumous works, but not precisely in Gioberti's sense. Gioberti identifies the methexis with the plastic soul asserted by Plato, and revived by old Ralph Cudworth, an Anglican divine of the seventeenth century; but though we make the methexis causative in the order of second causes, we do not make it productive of the mimesis. It means what are called genera and species; but even in the order of second causes, genera are generative or productive only as specificated, and species only as individualized. God must have created the genus specificated and the species individualized before either could be active or productive as second cause. The genus does not and cannot exist without specification, nor the species without individualization, any more than the individual can exist without the species, or the species without the genus. For instance, man is the species, according to the schoolmen, the genus is animal, the differentia is reason, and hence man is defined a rational animal. But the genus animal, though necessary to its existence, cannot generate the species man, any more than it could have generated itself. The species can exist only as immediately individuated by the first cause, and hence the pretence of some scientists—more properly sciolists,—that new species are formed either by development or by natural selection, is simply absurd, as has been well shown by the Duke of Argyll. God creates the species as well as the genera; and it is fairly inferred from the Scriptures that he creates all things in their genera and species "after their kind." Furthermore, if God had not created the human species individualized in Adam, male and female, there could have been no men by natural generation, any more[207] than if there had been no human species at all.

This, as we understand it, excludes alike the plastic soul of the Platonists and the Demiourgos of the Gnostics, and teaches that the mimesis is as directly created by God himself as the methexis. Mr. Emerson, indeed, uses neither of these Platonic terms, though if he had, he would, with his knowledge of the Christian doctrine of creation, have detected the error of Plato, and most likely have escaped his own. The term methexis—participation—excludes the old error that God generates the universe, which is rather favored by the terms genera and species. We use the term mimesis because it serves to us to express the fact that the lower copies or imitates the higher, and therefore the doctrine of St. Thomas, that "Deus est similitudo rerum omnium," or that God is himself the type or model after which the universe is created, and which each and every existence in its own order and degree strives to copy or represent. The error of Plato is, that he makes the methexis an emanation rather than a creature, and the plastic power that produces the mimesis; the error of Mr. Emerson, as we view the matter, is, that he makes the mimetic purely phenomenal, therefore unreal, sinks it in the methexic, and the methexis itself in God, as the one only being or substance, the natura naturans of Spinoza.

With Plato, the mimesis is the product of the methexic, but is itself passive, and the sooner the soul is emancipated from it the better; though what is the soul in his system of ideas we understand not. With Mr. Emerson, it is neither active nor passive, for it is purely phenomenal, therefore nothing. With us it is real, and, like all real existences, it is active, and is not a simple image or copy of the methexic or the ideal, but is in its order and degree a vis activa, and copies or imitates actively the divine type or the idea exemplaris in the divine mind, after which it is created.

Mr. Emerson says, in the introduction to his essay on Nature, "Philosophically considered, the universe is composed of nature and soul." But all activity is in the soul, and what is distinguishable from the soul is purely phenomenal, and, if we may take his essay on the Over-soul, not republished in these volumes, is but the soul's own projection of itself. The soul alone is active, productive, and it is myself, my own ego; not indeed in its personal limitations and feebleness, but in its absoluteness, as the absolute or impersonal Ich of Fichte, and identically God, who is the great, the absolute I am.

The error is obvious. It consists in the denial or in the overlooking of the fact that God creates substances, and that every substance is, as Leibnitz defines it, a force, a vis activa, acting always from its own centre outward. Whatever actually exists is active, and there is and can be no passivity in nature. Hence, Aristotle and the schoolmen after him call God, who is being and being in its plenitude, actus purissimus, or most pure act, in whom there are no possibilities to be actualized. Mr. Emerson errs in his first principles, in not recognizing the fact that God creates substances, and that every substance is an activity, therefore causative either ad intra or ad extra, and that every created substance is causative in the order of second causes. What we maintain in opposition both to him and Plato is, that these created substances are at once methexic and mimetic in their activity.

It were an easy task to show that whatever errors there may be, or may be supposed to be, in Mr. Emerson's[208] works grow out of the two fundamental errors we have indicated—the identification of soul, freed from its personal limitations, as in Adam, John, and Richard, with God, or the real being, substance, force, or activity, and the assumption that whatever is distinguishable from God is purely phenomenal, an apparition, a sense-show, a mere bubble on the surface of the ocean of being, as we pointed out in our comments on the proceedings of the Free Religionists, in the magazine for last November, and to which we beg leave to refer our readers.

Yet, though we have known Mr. Emerson personally ever since 1836, have held more than one conversation with him, listened to several courses of lectures from him, and read and even studied the greater part, if not all of his works, as they issued from the press, we must confess that, in reperusing them preparatory to writing this brief notice, we have been struck, as we never were before, with the depth and breadth of his thought, as well as with the singular force and beauty of his expression. We appreciate him much higher both as a thinker and as an observer, and we give him credit for a depth of feeling, an honesty of purpose, an earnest seeking after truth, we had not previously awarded him in so great a degree, either publicly or privately. We are also struck with his near approach to the truth as we are taught it. He seems to us to come as near to the truth as one can who is so unhappy as to miss it.

We regard it as Mr. Emerson's great misfortune, that his early Protestant training led him to regard the Catholic question as res adjucata, and to take Protestantism, in some one or all of its forms, as the truest and best exponent of Christianity. Protestantism is narrow, superficial, unintellectual, vague, indefinite, sectarian, and it was easy for a mind like his to pierce through its hollow pretensions, to discover its unspiritual character, its want of life, its formality, and its emptiness. It was not difficult to comprehend that it was only a dead corse, and a mutilated corse at that. The Christian mysteries it professed to retain, as it held them, were lifeless dogmas, with no practical bearing on life, and no reason in the world for believing them. Such a system, having no relation with the living and moving world, and no reason in the nature or constitution of things, could not satisfy a living and thinking man, in downright earnest for a truth at least as broad and as living as his own soul. It was too little, too insignificant, too mesquine, too much of a dead and putrefying body to satisfy either his intellect or his heart. If that is the true exponent of Christianity, and the most enlightened portion of mankind say it is, why shall I belie my own understanding, my own better nature, by professing to believe and reverence it? No; let me be a man, be true to myself, to my own reason and instincts, not a miserable time-server or a contemptible hypocrite.

If Mr. Emerson had not been led to regard the Catholic question as closed, except to the dwellers among tombs, and to the ignorant and superstitious, and had studied the church with half the diligence he has Plato, Mohammed, or Swedenborg, it is possible that he would have found in Christianity the life and truth, the reality, unity, and catholicity he has so long and so earnestly sought elsewhere and found not. Certain it is, that whatever affirmative truth he holds is held and taught by the church in its proper place, its real[209] relations, and in its integrity. The church does not live in the past nor dwell only among tombs; she is an ever-present and ever-living church, and presents to us not a dead historical Christ, but the ever-living and ever-present Christ, as really and truly present to us as he was to the disciples and apostles with whom he conversed when he went about in Judea doing good, without having where to lay his head, and not more veiled from our sight now than he was then from theirs. Does she not hold the sublime mystery of the Real Presence, which, if an individual fact, is also a universal principle?

The Christian system, if we may so speak, is not an after-thought in creation, or something superinduced on the Creator's works. It has its ground and reason in the very constitution of things. All the mysteries taught or dogmas enjoined by the church are universal principles; they are truly catholic, the very principles according to which the universe, visible or invisible, is constructed, and not one of them can be denied without denying a first principle of life and of science. Mr. Emerson says, in a passage we have quoted, "All science has one aim, namely, to find a theory of nature," and seems to concede that it has not yet succeeded in finding it. The church goes beyond even the aim of science, and gives, at least professes to give, not a theory of truth, but the truth itself; she is not a method, but that to which the true method leads. She is the body of Him who is "the way, the truth, and the life;" she gives us, not as the philosophers, her views of the truth, but the truth itself, in its reality, its unity, its integrity, its universality, its immutability. At least such is her profession; for the faith she teaches is the substance—hypostasis—of the things to be hoped for, and the evidence of things not seen—substantia sperandarum, argumentum non apparentium.

Such being her profession, made long before Protestantism was born, and continued to be made since with no stammering tongue or abatement of confidence, the pretence that judgment has gone against her is unfounded. Many have condemned her, as the Jewish Sanhedrim condemned our Lord, and called on the Roman Procurator to execute judgment against him; but she has no more staid condemned than he staid confined in the new tomb hewn from the rock in which his body was laid, and far more are they who admit her professions among the enlightened and civilized than they who deny them. No man has a right to be regarded as a philosopher or sage who has not at least thoroughly examined her titles, and made up his mind with a full knowledge of the cause.

In the Catholic Church we have found the real presence, and unity, and catholicity which we sought long and earnestly, and could find nowhere else, and which Mr. Emerson, after a still longer and equally earnest search, has not found at all. He looks not beyond nature, and nature is not catholic, universal, or the whole. It is not one, but manifold and variable. It cannot tell its origin, medium, or end. With all the light Mr. Emerson has derived from nature, or from nature and soul united, there is infinite darkness behind, infinite darkness before, and infinite darkness all around him. He says, "Every man's condition is a solution in hieroglyphic of those inquiries he would put." Suppose it is so, what avail is that to him who has lost or never had the key to the hieroglyph? Knows he to interpret the hieroglyph in which the solution is concealed? Can he read the riddle of the sphinx? He has tried his hand at it in his poem of the[210] Sphinx, and has only been able to answer that

It avails us little to be told where the solution is, if we are not told what it is, or if only told that every solution is false as soon as told. Hear him; to man he says,

The answer, if it means any thing, means that man is "a clothed eternity," whatever that may mean, eternally seeking an answer to the mystery of his own being, and each answer he can obtain is a lie; for only eternity can comprehend eternity and tell what it is. Whence has he learned that man, the man-child, is "a clothed eternity," and therefore God, who only is eternal?

Now, eternity is above time, and above the world of time, consequently above nature. Catholicity, by the very force of the term, must include all truth, and therefore the truth of the supernatural as well as of the natural. But Mr. Emerson denies the supernatural, and does not, of course, even profess to have any knowledge that transcends nature. How, then, can he pretend to have attained to catholic truth? He himself restricts nature to the external universe, which is phenomenal, and to soul, by which he means himself. But are there no phenomena without being or substance which appears or which shows itself in them? Is this being or substance the soul, or, in the barbarism he adopts, the ME? If so, the NOT-ME is only the phenomena of the ME, and of course identical with myself, as he implies in what he says of the "one man." Then in me, and emanating from me, are all men, and the whole of nature. How does he know this? Does he learn it from nature?

Of course, Mr. Emerson means not this, even if his various utterances imply it. He uses the word creation, and we suppose he intends, notwithstanding his systematic views, if such he has, contradict it, to use it in its proper sense. Then he must hold the universe, including, according to his division, nature and soul, has been created, and if created, it has a creator. The creator must be superior, above nature and soul, and therefore in the strictest sense of the word supernatural; and as reason is the highest faculty of the soul, the supernatural must also be supra-rational.

Does the creator create for a purpose, for an end? and if so, what is that end or purpose, and the medium or means of fulfilling it, whether on his part or on the part of the creature? Here, then, we have the assertion of a whole order of truth, very real and very important to be known, which transcends the truth Mr. Emerson professes to have, and which is not included in it. We say again, then, that he has not attained to catholicity, and we also say that, by the only method he admits, he cannot attain to it. How can he pretend to have attained to catholicity, and that he has already a truth more universal than Christianity reveals, when he must confess that without the knowledge of a supernatural and supra-rational truth he cannot explain his origin or end, or know the conditions of his existence, or the means of gaining his end?

There is here a grand mistake. If he had said the Creator instead of creation, there would have been truth and great propriety in the author's assertion. Nature—and we mean by nature the whole created order—excites us to ask many very troublesome questions, which nature is quite incompetent to answer. The fact that nature is created, proves that she is, both as a whole and in all her parts, dependent, not independent, and therefore does not and cannot suffice for herself. Unable to suffice for herself, she cannot suffice for the science of herself; for science must be of that which is, not of that which is not.

Mr. Emerson, we presume, struck with the narrowness and inconsistencies of all the religions he had studied, and finding that they are all variable and transitory in their forms, yet thought that he also discovered something in them, or underlying them all, which is universal, invariable, and permanent, and which they are all honest efforts of the great soul to realize. He therefore came to the conclusion that the sage can accept none of these narrow, variable, and transitory forms, and yet can reject none of them as to the great, invariable, and underlying principles, which in fact is all they have that is real or profitable. To distinguish between the transient and permanent in religion was the common aim of the Boston movement from 1830 to 1841, when we ourselves began to turn our own mind, though very timidly and at a great distance, toward the church. Mr. Emerson, Miss Margaret Fuller, A. Bronson Alcott, and Mr. Theodore Parker regarded the permanent elements of all religions as the natural patrimony or products of human nature. The present writer differed from them, by ascribing their origin to supernatural revelation made to our first parents in the garden, universally diffused by the dispersion of the race, and transmitted to us by the traditions of all nations. Following out this view, the grace of God moving and assisting, we found our way to the Catholic Church, in which the form and the invariable and permanent principle, or rather, the form growing out of the principle, are inseparable, and are fitted by the divine hand to each other.

The others, falling back on a sort of transcendental illuminism, sunk into pure naturalism, where such of them as are still living, and a whole brood of young disciples who have sprung up since, remain, and, like the old Gnostics, suppose themselves spiritual men and women in possession of the secret of the universe. There was much life, mental activity, and honest purpose in the movement; but those who had the most influence in directing its course could not believe that any thing good could come out of Nazareth, and so turned their backs on the church. They thought they could find something deeper, broader, and more living than Christianity, and have lost not only the transient, but even the permanent in religion.

THE HOLY-WEEK OF 1869 IN HAVANA.
GOOD-FRIDAY. HOLY-SATURDAY. EASTER-SUNDAY.

GOOD-FRIDAY.

Sad indeed was the aspect of all things within the cathedral on Good-Friday morning. Black draperies covered the pulpit, reading-desks, and seats reserved for the authorities, and every one was attired in mourning. Instead of the rose-color and blue of Holy-Thursday, the ladies now wore black or violet silks and satins with jet ornaments.

All the personages of the preceding day were present, and the religious services were in nowise different from those of the Catholic Church in other lands, with the exception that, in the reading of the passion, at the words "gave up the ghost," all knelt, but did not kiss the ground, as is the custom in France.

During the adoration of the cross, in which the captain-general, apparently almost too ill to stand, and the other gentlemen took part, the choir sang the beautiful hymn Pange lingua, with its tender burden of Crux fidelis. Never did it sound to me more touching.

The adoration terminated, the procession was formed, exactly as on the day before, to bring back the Blessed Sacrament from the sepulchre. On reaching the foot of the steps, the captain-general delivered up to the bishop the key he had worn suspended from his neck since the preceding morning. As the procession returned, the noble strains of the Vexilla regis resounded through the great church.

The communion made, vespers were chanted in grave and mournful tones, and the service was concluded. As the bishop descended the nave to leave the cathedral, the little girls of the nuns' schools crowded around him to kiss his hand; and it was very pretty to see them clasp his fingers, and look up in his kind face with a confiding smile.

As it had been officially announced that the meditation on the seven words of Jesus on the cross, with the ceremony of the descent from the cross, to be followed by the procession of the interment, were to take place, as is usual every year, that afternoon in the church of San Juan de Dios, I determined to be present.

At three o'clock, accordingly, I stationed myself in a shady corner, not far from the principal entrance of San Juan, among a crowd of soldiers, volunteers, and colored people. All gazed at me inquisitively. I looked like a lady; but my somewhat Andalusian physiognomy, shaded by the black lace mantilla, put them out a little. I heard them at last decide that I was an estranjera, (stranger,) and consequently considered capable of, and permitted, any eccentricity, without derogating from my claim to[213] respect. Twenty minutes passed away thus; a south wind was blowing, and great water-laden clouds were fast covering the sky; the heat was very oppressive, and soon heavy drops of rain began to fall, and every one rushed to shelter. I ran back to the cathedral, my nearest refuge. The Tenebræ had just commenced, and I sat there and listened to the doleful lamentations of Jeremiah, and the wails of the holy women, mingling with the thunder-crashes and the noise of the pouring rain, which fell as it only falls within the tropics. It was a combination of sounds not easily to be forgotten.

At half-past four, the storm was over, and the sky clear and blue once more, so I determined to hasten to San Juan, and, though too late to hear the meditation, still witness the descent from the cross. To my surprise, on going to the door I found it impossible to leave the church; the whole place in front of the cathedral was knee-deep in water, and all the streets leading from it looked like swift-flowing rivers! Not until five o'clock did the water subside sufficiently to permit me to cross the street conducting to San Juan, where, however, I fortunately arrived in time for the ceremony I so much wished to see.

The high altar had been removed, and in its place, on an elevated platform, were erected three great crosses, the centre one bearing the image, large as life, of our Saviour, the other two those of the thieves crucified with him; the face of the repentant sinner was turned lovingly toward his Lord, that of the unrepentant looked away with a scowl.

The figure of the victim was fearfully natural—the pallor of death was on his blood-stained brow, the gash in his side, and his mangled hands and feet were livid. Two priests, mounted on ladders placed against the arms of the cross, were in the act of taking down the writing when I got near enough to see well. At the command of the preacher, who had just finished the meditation, and who directed them from the pulpit, they then proceeded to draw out the nail from the right hand; when loosened from the tree, the arm fell stiffly and as if dead; before the other was freed, long and wide linen bands were passed under both, and around the body, to sustain it and prevent it from falling forward. Llorad lagrimas de sangre—"Weep tears of blood," cried the preacher while this was being done amid the breathless silence of the spectators, "he died for you!" So solemnly, so tenderly did the priests perform their office, that it seemed no representation, but dreadful reality, and my cheeks grew cold, and my heart throbbed painfully when the pale, bruised body was gently lowered and borne to the bier waiting to receive it.

Yes, this cruel death He died for us; but, O true and loving women! one sweet and proud remembrance will be ours for all eternity—our kiss betrayed him not, nor our tongue denied—

The preacher now descended from the pulpit, and quitted the church in company with the other assistant priests; and the direction seemed to be left in the hands of a fraternity called los Hermanos de la Soledad—the Brethren of Solitude—a set of tall, fine-looking black men, many with thin lips and almost Roman noses. They were dressed in robes of black glazed calico, with white lace tippets.

A quarter of an hour elapsed; the church remained crowded, but there were no signs of preparation for the[214] procession. Presently a handsome, authoritative-mannered personage, evidently a Spaniard, entered hastily, and, pushing his way unceremoniously through the people, sought the members of the brotherhood, to whom he evidently gave some orders, and then went away. A great silence prevailed, and every one seemed to be waiting for something. I at last mustered up courage to ask a brother when the procession would commence.

No hay procesion hasta el año que viene—"There will be no procession until next year"—he answered in a very loud voice.

Pero, señor, en el diario—"But, sir, in the newspaper—" I began. "No hay procesion hasta el año que viene," he repeated louder still.

The women broke forth in murmurs; but not a man spoke, though compressed lips and scowling brows showed sufficiently what was passing within. I must not omit to remark that the congregation consisted almost entirely of colored creoles.

By dint of soft but firmly continued pushing, and a pleasant smile when the individual I elbowed looked grimly at me, I forced my way out of the disagreeable pack of volunteers and negroes, men and boys, that surrounded me, to the chancel, where I found a number of well-dressed and respectable-looking colored ladies seated on the platform. There the discontent was louder, and I understood distinctly that the disappointment was attributed more to the ill-will of their rulers than to the bad state of the weather. One woman, particularly, exclaimed angrily several times, and sufficiently loud to be heard by all in that end of the building, Hay procesion para los Españoles, pero no para nosotros—"There are processions for the Spaniards, but not for us."

However, there was nothing to be done but to submit; so a few persons went quietly away, and I at last succeeded in obtaining a close view of the bier. It was in the form of a sarcophagus with open sides, placed on a trestle concealed by black velvet drapery spotted with silver stars; the upper part very tastefully decorated with white and lilac flowers. The image lying within was covered with a cloth of silver tissue, the head and feet left bare. Close by stood another trestle, also covered with ornamented black velvet, and supporting a small platform, on which stood the figures of the Blessed Virgin, in deep grief, holding in her hand a very handsome lace pocket-handkerchief, and of St. John, with a profusion of fair ringlets, sustaining her in his arms. The bier, followed by the Virgin and St. John, carried by the members of the black Hermandad, escorted by soldiers and military music, and accompanied by a vast number of people, constitutes the "procession of the interment," which every Good-Friday (when permitted) leaves the old church of San Juan de Dios, passes through many streets of the city, and before the palace of the captain-general, and stops at the cathedral, into which it enters, and where the images are finally deposited with great solemnity. This year, as we have seen, the procession did not take place.

While examining with interest these curious remains of the piety of the first settlers in the island, I heard some one cry out, No deja ninguno salir—"Let no one go out"—and at the same moment saw some soldiers lifting up and looking under the velvet draperies as if searching for some one. Five very uncomfortable minutes followed; the door by which I had entered was blocked up with soldiers and volunteers, every one was frightfully silent—and I am not a heroine! At last the people were allowed to go out by one door, while[215] the soldiers and volunteers slowly filled up the church by the other.

Exceedingly great was the relief I felt when I found myself safely seated in the cars, (which in consequence of the rain had been permitted to enter the city and station themselves in their usual place,) and on my way home, where I arrived very tired and almost disgusted with sight-seeing.

HOLY-SATURDAY.

At seven o'clock in the morning of the "Sabado de Gloria," the "Saturday of Glory," as the Spaniards beautifully and expressively call this great day, I was already established in my usual place in the nave of the cathedral, though the religious ceremonies were not to commence until eight. The attendance of the public generally was less than on Maundy-Thursday and Good-Friday, and none of the superior authorities of Havana, nor military and civil functionaries, were present.

The new fire was lighted and blessed precisely as is done with us, and the five grains of incense placed on the paschal candle; which, however, was not a tall, thick taper, as in other countries, but a veritable pillar of wax, about a yard high and six inches in diameter; transmitting to us most probably an exact resemblance of that column of wax upon which the patriarch of Alexandria used to inscribe the paschal epoch and the movable feasts, and which in progress of time was employed as a torch during the paschal night, and at last came to be regarded as the symbol of the resuscitated Saviour, the true light of the world.

After reading the prophecies, the deacon, preceded by the holy cross and the paschal candle, and accompanied by the clergy and many of the faithful present, went in procession to bless the new water and the baptismal fonts. This ceremony also was performed exactly as it is with us. At its conclusion the deacon returned to the high altar, and after sprinkling it and the congregation with the newly-blessed water, the short mass of the day commenced.

Scarcely had the officiating priest begun to intone the Gloria, when the central door of the church burst open, letting in a flood of golden light; the cannon fired, the drums beat, the bells rang out, and the loud organ pealed forth a triumphant strain, while voices that seemed to come from heaven repeated high and clear, with delicious harmony, Gloria in excelsis Deo!

We all simultaneously fell on our knees; for myself, I can say that never in my life before had I experienced such rapturous emotion. Never before had I so perfectly realized the triumph of life over death! Never before, O my God! had I felt so deeply what it was to praise thee, to bless thee, to adore thee, to glorify thee with my whole heart. Gloria in excelsis Deo!

The Alleluia was chanted in the same spirit of joy and exultation, and the services concluded.

Without the church all was now gayety and bustle. The streets were crowded as if by magic with vehicles of every description. The shops were all open; the sweetmeat and fruit-sellers at their posts, looking as if they had never been absent; the lottery-ticket venders in full cry. The horses and mules had their heads decorated with bows and rosettes and streamers of bright-colored ribbons, and their tails elegantly plaited and[216] tied up to one side of their saddle or harness, with scarlet braid. Even the quiet, patient oxen sported a bit of finery, and wore flowers on the ponderous yoke that weighed down their gentle heads. Crowds of busy men hurried hither and thither; gayly-dressed ladies drove about in their stylish quitrins; loud talking and laughing was the order of the day among the colored population; a riff-raff of little blackies pervaded the city, happily without the squibs, crackers, and fire-arms permitted them until this year, but quite sufficiently boisterous to be intolerable; while the church-bells kept ringing out, adding their clang to the noisy confusion, and not with that merry musical chime we are accustomed to hear in England, the land of the scientific, well-trained bell-ringer. But, indeed, nowhere since I listened years ago to the bells of Saint Mary's in dear old smoky Manchester have I heard a regular triple bob-major!

EASTER-SUNDAY.

The sun was not yet up when I started for town on Easter morning. The procession of the resurrection—called, to distinguish it from other processions of the resurrection, del encuentro, "of the meeting"—was to commence at six o'clock, and I was determined that no tardiness on my part should prevent my seeing the whole of this singular relic of bygone ages. The transition from darkness to light is so wonderfully sudden, however, in these latitudes, that it was broad day when I reached the cathedral, which I found brilliantly illuminated with wax tapers, and hung with crimson damask draperies. Mass had just begun, and there was a considerable number of persons present, most of them ladies, as is always the case in the churches of Havana. How the sight of the men-crowded churches of the United States would astonish these Cubans, who seem to believe that religion is made for ignorant women and children, and that the less they profess to have, the more enlightened they appear! As if the really enlightened man were not he who most deeply feels the necessity of his Maker's care and love—the consolation of addressing him in prayer!

As soon as the service was ended, I hastened to the Calle Empedrado, the street leading directly from the cathedral to San Juan, and took up my station on the edge of the sidewalk, about half-way between the two churches. The balconies of the houses and the sides of the great barred, glassless windows were hung with red and yellow draperies; and gayly-dressed ladies and children, and crowds of colored people, with the inevitable volunteers, thronged the streets. While thus waiting, I was struck by the appearance of the dresses of the greater part of the colored creole women; nearly all wore red, white, and blue, the antagonistic colors to red and yellow. Their wearers, in all probability, intended by this show of their political opinions to revenge themselves upon the Spaniards for the loss of their much-loved procession on Good-Friday.

There was soon a murmur of expectation in the crowd around me, and presently there appeared coming toward us from San Juan the image, large as life, of St. Mary Magdalen, dressed in a skirt of silver tinsel, and an open dress of blue satin, trimmed with silver lace. A profusion of long auburn ringlets flowed down each side of the smiling face, and a very elaborate gilded glory was affixed to the back of the head. The arms were slightly raised, and the hand held out. This figure stood on a small platform supported on the shoulders of four of the Brethren of Solitude, such tall[217] men that the saint, as she advanced rapidly, her curls streaming out behind her, seemed to be running over the heads of the spectators. As she passed, all the men took off their hats respectfully. The bearers halted just in front of me, the Magdalen being supposed to look toward the sepulchre; after a few minutes' pause, she suddenly turned and ran back to the church of San Juan. In order, probably, to give a more natural appearance to the image, the men who carried it, and who evidently took extreme delight and pride in the duty, waddled as they ran, and so communicated a most ludicrous deportment to the saint. Every one laughed loud as they watched her roll from side to side, plunging forward from time to time, and then recovering herself with a jerk, her hair flopping up and down or streaming out on the air.

Que bien corre, meneandose—"How well she runs, shaking herself!"—was the admiring exclamation of several persons near me, and they laughed; yes, men, women, and children, black and white, roared with laughter, and yet, I verily believe, not one among them all laughed in derision, or felt the slightest sentiment of disrespect. "Perfect love casteth out fear," says the apostle; and it never entered into their heads that the good saint could be displeased because, like simple children, they laughed at so artless a representation of her. The grotesque movements excited their hilarity, and they were hilarious on the impulse of the moment, and without arrière pensée. The Latin race is sometimes remarkable for a child-like simplicity in its actions which too often is mistaken by colder temperaments for a lack of veneration and propriety.

In a little while the saint came running down the street again, saluted respectfully again by the merry crowd. A halt of five minutes, while she looked earnestly in the direction of the sepulchre, and then she turned and rushed back, more violently agitated than before, and amidst reiterated shouts of laughter, to San Juan de Dios, to tell the Blessed Virgin the good tidings that her Son was alive again.

And now the loud strains of martial music reached our ears, and we saw emerging from the square in front of the cathedral, and slowly advancing toward us, a high, handsome structure carried on the shoulders of a member of the black Hermandad. In the centre of it stood the image of the risen Saviour, crowned with a radiant glory; his right hand extended as if to welcome, his left grasping a white and gold banner, which displayed, when the breeze unfurled its folds, a blood-red cross. A little angel with outspread wings seemed to hover in front of the gorgeous fabric, as if to herald the coming Lord. A regiment of colored soldiers, wearing white drill uniforms with red facings, escorted this triumphal car, the band playing its gayest airs.

At the same moment the Holy Virgin, attired in gold-colored silk damask, with a magnificent halo around her head, appeared at the opposite end of the street coming to meet him. She was followed at a short distance by St. Mary Magdalen, now more subdued in manner. The Virgin's arms were raised as if about to clasp them around her beloved Son, and her face wore an expression of ecstatic joy.

The two processions met where I stood, and after a short pause, St. Mary Magdalen, who was the nearest to the church of San Juan de Dios, turned round and led the way thither, the Virgin turning also, and the two processions now forming but one. Slowly, but to the liveliest music, in which mingled the strains of Riesgo's hymn, the whole mass of us—for we[218] spectators fell into the ranks—moved onward, every one looking glad and gay, and so we at last reached the old church, which was far too small to contain one half of us, and the images entered one after the other with all the assistants who could force their way in. We weaker vessels, left outside, seeing it hopeless to try to get in, soon dispersed. I have since learnt that no kind of religious ceremony took place; the images were simply set down, and after a while the church was cleared of the people and closed for an hour or two.

There are processions of the resurrection from a great number of churches perambulating the city every Easter-Sunday; but this one "of the Meeting," is by far the most curious and interesting. That of the church of the Espiritu Santo is considered one of the prettiest, because of the children in fancy dresses that take part in it. This year, I was told, a great majority of them wore volunteer or cantinera (canteen-women, or sutler) costumes, to the great disgust of Cuban mothers.

There was, of course, much festivity going on in the city and suburbs all that day. There were family meetings and the pleasant retreta in the evening for some; the theatre and public balls for others; and, I am sorry to say, there was cock-fighting for that brutal minority which in all countries seems to seek its greatest enjoyment in the contemplation of bloody strife.

Yet, in sad truth, there had been strife enough in the streets of Havana during the past week to have contented the most sanguinary temper, and sorrow enough to have softened the hardest. Palm-Sunday had witnessed the farewell to all that was dear to them of two hundred and fifty unfortunate men; had witnessed, also, the wretched end of the two youths about to embark with the other prisoners, and the noble death of the courageous commissary of police, shot down while he sought to protect them from the vengeance of the volunteers, whom their mad bravadoes, as they were marched down to the ship, had infuriated. In the course of the week a colored man had been killed in the streets for seditious cries, and several others stabbed at night by unknown hands. And as if to keep up the constant anxiety and fear that overcast Havana like a lurid cloud, the Cubans by every possible covert insult, and only just avoiding the most terrible consequences, had shown their hatred of their Spanish rulers.

One trifling incident became a subject of interest and excitement that would have been absurd under any other circumstances than the present. On Good-Friday a gorrion (sparrow) was found dead in the Plaza de Armas by a volunteer. Some say, though others contradict the report, that the poor little bird had its eyes torn out, its heart transfixed with pins, and a paper attached to one of its feet containing the words, Asi mueran todos los gorriones—"May all sparrows die thus!" Now, it must be understood that gorrion is another of the appellations bestowed on the Spaniards by the Cubans. A few sparrows having been brought from Europe to the island by some ship-captain, they prospered and multiplied in such a degree that they soon outnumbered and domineered over the Bijirita, a native bird somewhat smaller, but much resembling the sparrow in form, color, and habits. An analogy being imagined between the Spaniards and the new-comer—the name of gorrion was given to all the natives of the peninsula of Spain, while the Cubans adopted that of Bijirita.

The little dead gorrion found on[219] Good-Friday was placed with much ceremony in a glass coffin, and laid in state in a room of one of the barracks, on a lofty catafalque, with velvet pall and lighted tapers and a guard of honor. Crowns of fresh flowers, and of red and yellow "everlastings," were suspended around and above the remains of the typical bird, and two exquisite nosegays, each more than three feet high, and as much in circumference, the gifts of the captain-general and of the generala his wife, stood one at the head, the other at the foot of the mimic tomb. All the volunteers paid their respects with much ceremony to the little representative of their race, and so many people crowded to visit it on Holy-Saturday that it was at last determined to utilize public curiosity.

On Easter-Sunday every person who wished to see the gorrion was obliged to pay ten cents, which were to go to the fund destined to aid the volunteers disabled in the present terrible struggle. On Easter morning the sum received amounted to three hundred and fifty-one dollars!

A great number of songs, sonnets, and odes were composed in honor of the poor little bird, and the manuscripts were tied by colored ribbons to the crowns suspended above it. They have since been collected and printed, and sold for the benefit of the same fund. Many of them were published in the Diario de la Marina, the official daily paper of Havana. The following are specimens of the effusions:

The gorrion was buried, and Havana left once more without other thought than that which had occupied Spaniards and Cubans for the several months previous. It is said that in former days ships which approached the tropic of Cancer, knew when they were nearing the shores of Cuba by the sweet odor of flowers and honey borne to them on the breeze; now, alas! the beautiful island is recognized from afar rather by the light of her burning plantations—by the smell of gunpowder and of blood! To all who have lived in Havana and who have friends among both parties; to all who know and appreciate the proud sense of honor and unshrinking courage of the one, and the quick intelligence and high aspirations of the other, the present struggle must and does give the deepest pain.

But while they sympathize sincerely with those who sorrow, they believe that "behind a frowning providence God hides a smiling face," and that, the strife ended, Cuba will rise again from her ashes, purified and regenerated; for it is written that "they who sow in tears shall reap in joy"!

THORNS.
HOMAGE TO THE CROSS, GOOD-FRIDAY, 1870.

MARY STUART.

It is at once a remarkable fact and a striking exemplification of the vitality of poetic justice in history that, from among modern Scotch Puritans, from the spiritual descendants of John Knox, should have come three of the noblest and most effective modern vindications of Mary Stuart.

We refer to the work by Mr. Hosack noticed in our last number, to that which we make the subject of the present article,[37] and to the poem of Bothwell,[38] one of the finest in the entire range of English literature. Professor Aytoun's poem is accompanied by a body of historical notes, which are in themselves a model of legal argument and dialectic power, covering the entire period of the history of Mary Stuart in Scotland. And yet these three writers are very far from being looked upon by their countrymen as the holders of singular opinions. It may be news to many persons, but it is, nevertheless, the fact that they merely reflect the prevailing feeling in Scotland concerning its unfortunate queen of three centuries agone, murdered in an English prison. The sentiment of the great body of the Scotch people, gentle and simple, Puritan and Catholic, is to this day decidedly in her favor, and the superficial reader who, trusting to a superficial Froude, sneers at Mary Stuart, is safer from reproof in New York than in Edinburgh.

Mr. Caird's work, of which the second edition was published last year, appears to be made up of the material of a series of lectures delivered by him in some of the Scotch cities, and, like Mr. Hosack's work, is marked with evidences of great research, ability, and a thorough knowledge of the country, the people, and the times under discussion.

Like Mr. Hosack, Mr. Caird convicts the late English historian, Froude, of numerous disgraceful blunders, and several—well we can find no term properly to describe the performance but—palpable falsehoods. Mr. Caird does not undertake to write a full and connected history of Mary Stuart or of her reign in Scotland. He seeks mainly to unravel the mystery of the intrigues, plots, and conspirations by which that unfortunate queen was surrounded and pursued from the moment she set foot in her kingdom. And he does it successfully. In all history, there is no record of a band of greater villains than the nobles who surrounded Mary's throne, or of more devilish abettors than their English allies. The time is not far off when, in spite of falsified history, Mary Stuart must be held innocent of the crimes of which her very accusers themselves were alone guilty. Mr. Caird enters gracefully on his subject. Three centuries ago, a French fleet sailed up the Frith of Clyde, and cast anchor at Dumbarton. It took on board a little girl, six years of age—a merry creature who had not a care in the world—hoisted the flag of Scotland, and bore her away to the coast of France. There passed with her in the same ship a stripling of seventeen, her illegitimate brother, (afterward known as the Earl of Murray,) who, though incapable of inheritance, was brought up in the most intimate family intercourse with[222] her; young enough to engage the sisterly affection of her warm heart, old enough to be already her trusted counsellor and guide. His life was to be a continued betrayal of her confidence. But whatever wild thoughts may have passed through his busy brain, neither of them could have dreamed in those early days of the frightful tragedies in which they were to become the chief actors. In the yet distant future he was to usurp her place and power, she to become his miserable prisoner; and it was all to end at last in his being shot down, without law, at the summit of his greatness, and in her being doomed to die, under the forms of law, on an English scaffold. Yet, though their hearts were light on this summer voyage, it was not without its dangers.

Twelve years later, a fleet sailed from sunny France, again bearing the same girl, now budding toward womanhood. It steered for the Frith of Forth. There is no laughter now. Her first great sorrow has come upon her early. She is deeply clothed in mourning—a widow at eighteen. Again an English fleet watched to intercept her. Again she escaped narrowly, losing one of her vessels. She has been queen of France. One blow has deprived her of a husband and a crown. She claims to be queen of England. That claim rests on strong grounds of law. It is to be the dream of her life, and she is never to realize it. She is the acknowledged queen of Scotland; but she lands on her native shore with sad forebodings and a heavy heart. No one has ever charged her with having misconducted herself before that time; yet such was the distracted state of her country, such the weakness of her authority, that she said before she set out on this voyage, "Perhaps it were better for me to die than to live."

Less than six busy years of troubled government and we see her again—on the Frith of Solway. She has been despoiled of her Scottish crown. She is flying for her life in a fishing-boat. "For ninety miles," she writes, "I rode across the country without lighting or drawing bridle; slept on the bare floor; no food but oatmeal; without the company of a female; not daring to travel except by stealth at night." And now the die is cast, and, in spite of many warnings, she this time throws herself on the generosity of England.

At last we see a long hall in the old castle of Fotheringay; a platform laid with black—the actors and spectators all clothed in black. There comes in, unsupported, to die, a lady of noble presence. She has been wickedly denied the aid of her spiritual comforter, and, alone with God, has administered to herself the last sacrament of her religion, without the blessing or counsel of a minister. Even her latest moments are disturbed by theological dispute. But she is calm, and resigned to God's will. She lays her head on the block. The executioner strikes and makes a ghastly wound. She does not even stir. He strikes again, but his work is incomplete; and with a third blow the life and sorrows of Mary Stuart are brought to an end.

It is one of the great problems of history, says Mr. Caird, whether these terrible calamities were brought upon her by her own wickedness or by the contrivance of others.

We have reason to believe that the child is now living who, as man or[223] woman, will hear and see the last mention in history of Good Queen Bess.

Of all the humbugs of history, the reputation manufactured for Elizabeth, the daughter of Henry VIII. and Anne Boleyn, is at once the most insolent and the most disgusting. We do not care to give a personal opinion of this woman, and will accept, for the present, her character as mildly described by the historian Robertson, which is to the effect that she was an habitual and mean liar, a peevish, bad-tempered, vacillating, untrustworthy sovereign, whose parsimony, and variableness, and small economy would have ruined herself and her kingdom but for the fact that she had a great statesman by her, and that good luck continually picked her out of the imbroglios into which she had fallen. She was a vain, bad-tempered, irresolute, deceitful old woman. And this is as lenient a view of Elizabeth as could be taken of her with the historic lights possessed by Robertson.

But, compared with what we now know her to have been from the results of modern discoveries among official and state paper records, Robertson has here painted an angel of loveliness.

And just in proportion as Elizabeth has fallen on the historic page, Mary Stuart is elevated by every fresh discovery of original documentary evidence. She was, indeed, as Mr. Caird writes, a winning, gentle-hearted woman, and the correspondence of her own time, before men's hearts were hardened against her by passion, bears much testimony to her virtues.

Throckmorton, the English ambassador in France, even during her war with England, wrote of "her great wisdom for her years, her modesty, her judgment in the wise handling of herself and her matters." And another of the English ambassadors, who became one of her deadliest enemies, says of her only a few months before her grievous calamities were brought upon her, "There is one cheer and one countenance always on the queen." Even after she was imprisoned in Lochleven, Throckmorton wrote of her to Elizabeth, "The lords speak of the queen with respect and reverence." Lord Scrope said, "She has an eloquent tongue and a discreet head, stout courage, and a liberal heart." And Sir Francis Knollys reported of her, "She desireth much to hear of hardiness and valiancy, commending by name all approved hardy men of her country, although her enemies, and she concealeth no cowardness, even in her friends." Lethington wrote of her soon after her return to Scotland, "She doth declare a wisdom far exceeding her age."

After she was uncrowned, Murray and his council recorded of her, that "God had endowed her with many good and excellent gifts and virtues;" and he spoke of her in the same way in private.

The Earl of Shrewsbury, after having had the custody of the Queen of Scots during fifteen years of her imprisonment in England, was consulted by Elizabeth on the subject of a treaty for her liberation. She desired especially to know from him for her guidance, whether Mary's promises could be relied on if she were free. Shrewsbury's answer was, "I believe that if the Queen of Scots promises any thing, she will not break her word."

Her frequent and earnest pleadings with foreign powers for justice and mercy to her subjects cannot be read without interest and admiration. Her letters have been gathered from every corner of the earth, and every page of them marks the elegance and simplicity of her thoughts. If any man who has a prejudice against her will sit down and read that correspondence, in which she treats of all the[224] incidents of life, he will rise from the perusal with a different notion, not of her mind only, but her heart. These are the records which we can read now, exactly as they dropped from her pen, untainted by the bitterness of party, as so little else which concerns her was permitted to be. And we can see her there as she disclosed herself to her most confidential friends, whether in the highest business of state or in the trivial affairs of daily life.

Mr. Caird's plan does not embrace a connected narrative of Mary's reign, and we regret that he has found it necessary to omit a narrative of the treacherous manner in which the destruction of the Earl of Huntly was brought about. On Mary's arrival in Scotland, every one was surprised that Mary should select for her chief state councillor her half-brother, the Lord James, instead of the Earl of Huntly. No one knew that Mary had been craftily persuaded by James that Huntly was not loyal. The plan of her brother was as wicked as it was deep. It was at once to deprive Mary of a loyal adviser and a powerful friend, and to raise his own fortunes on Huntly's ruin. It is curious to see how all this affair is ingeniously misrepresented by Mr. Froude in his so-called history. Yielding to James's solicitations, begun years before, Mary, after creating him Earl of Mar, created him Earl of Murray. But this latter title he did not wish to assert until he could obtain the lands appertaining to the title, which he had procured while living in ostensible friendship with the man he had doomed to ruin. The lands were in Huntly's possession, and Murray made up his mind to have them. "But Huntly," says Mr. Froude, "had refused to part with them." Who was Huntly? He was earl chancellor of the kingdom, a man aged fifty-two, a powerful Catholic nobleman, who could bring twenty thousand spears into the field. He had done good service for Mary's mother against the English. English gold had not stained his palm. He was a man marked for saying that he liked not the "manner of Henry VIII.'s wooing." He had wanted Mary to land at Aberdeen, was at the head of the loyal party on Mary's arrival, and had sought to warn her of her brother's craft and ambition. Mr. Froude thus describes him, (vol. vii. p. 454:)

What depravity! Would not change his religion, nor even have the decency to affect to comply! Positively an atrocious character! Nevertheless, so perfect is the command of a philosophical historian over his feelings that these dreadful facts are recorded without comment. It is evident that the lands of such a wretch as Huntly ought to be given to one so "God-fearing" as Murray. "A number of causes combined at this moment to draw attention to Huntly." But, all counted, the number is just two—one of them utterly frivolous, and the other, "he had refused to give up the lands." Mr. Froude is now candid, and tells us that Murray "resolved to anticipate attack, (none was dreamed of,) to carry the queen with him to visit the recusant lord in his own stronghold, and either to drive him into a premature rebellion or force him to submit to the existing government."

"Murray's reasons for such a step," continues Mr. Froude, "are intelligible." [225]Perfectly. "It is less easy," he continues, "to understand why Mary Stuart consented to it." And then Mr. Froude proceeds to wonder over it with John Knox's guesses, and his own "if," "perhaps," and "may be." Less easy indeed! It is utterly impossible, unless one consents to look at Mary Stuart as she was—a young woman easily influenced through her affections, and with a sincere sisterly attachment for the man in whom she failed to recognize her worst enemy. Difficult indeed to understand the suicidal measure of ruining the most powerful Catholic nobleman in Scotland, and strengthening the hands of the most powerful Protestant leader. "Huntly's family," says Mr. Froude, "affirmed that the trouble which happened to the Gordons was for the sincere and loyal affection which they had to the queen's preservation," (vii. 456.) And they were right. We leave Mr. Froude to speculate on the malicious motive Mary Stuart must have had for thus lopping off her right hand. Murray now manages to draw the queen and her attendants over moor and mountain two hundred and fifty miles to Tarnway, within the lands of the earldom of Murray. She was entirely guided by him, and he used her authority to compass his personal ends and weaken her throne.

Alexander Gordon at first refused to open the gates of Inverness Castle to the queen, but complied the next day, on the order of Huntly. Murray had Gordon immediately hung, and his head set on the castle wall. Mr. Froude describes this brutal murder as "strangling a wolf-cub in the heart of the den," (vol. vii. p. 457,) all that Murray does being of course lovely. Mary was now surrounded by Murray and his friends, who poisoned her mind against the Huntlys with stories that the earl meant to force her into a marriage with his son, and had other designs against her person and royal authority; and Mary believed them. "Whereupon," writes Randolph to Cecil—for Murray had brought his English friend, Elizabeth's servant, along with him—"whereupon there was good pastime." Huntly yielded all that was demanded of him. His castles and houses were seized, plundered, stripped, and he was a ruined man. Lady Huntly spoke sad truth when, leading Murray's messenger into the chapel of the house, she said to him before the altar, "Good friend, you see here the envy that is borne unto my husband; would he have forsaken God and his religion, as those that are now about the queen, my husband would never have been put as he now is," (vol. vii. p. 458.) Mr. Froude reports this incident, and very properly spoils its effect by the statement that Lady Huntly was "reported by the Protestants to be a witch." Huntly was driven to take up arms. "Swift as lightning," says Mr. Froude, with yellow-cover tinge of phrase, "Murray was on his track." And now "swift as lightning"—sure sign of mischief meant—Mr. Froude moves on with his narrative, omitting essential facts, but not omitting a characteristic piece of handiwork. News came from the south that Bothwell had escaped out of Edinburgh Castle; "not," glides in our philosophic historian—"not, it was supposed, without the queen's knowledge," (vol. vii. p. 459.) After a wonderful victory of his two thousand men over Huntly's five hundred—a mere slaughter—Murray brought the queen certain letters of the Earl of Sutherland, found, he said, in the pockets of the dead Earl of Huntly, and showing treasonable correspondence. They were forgeries; but they answered his purpose. "Lord John, (Huntly's son,) after a full confession, was beheaded in the market-place at Aberdeen,"[226] (vol. vii. p. 459.) There was no confession but that which Murray told the queen he made, and Mr. Froude forgets to tell us that Murray caused young Gordon's scaffold to be erected in front of the queen's lodging, and had her placed in a chair of state at an open window, deluding her with some specious reason as to the necessity of her presence.

When the noble young man was brought out to die, Mary burst into a flood of tears; and when the headsman did his work, she swooned and was borne off insensible. Here is Mr. Froude's short version of these facts: "Her brother read her a cruel lesson by compelling her to be present at the execution." Mr. Froude also forgets to tell us that Murray had six gentlemen of the house of Gordon hung at Aberdeen on the same day. But a few pages further on, he has the insolent coolness to tell us of a prize that Mary "trusted to have purchased with Huntly's blood"! (vol. vii. p. 463.) After all, you thus perceive that it was not Murray, but Mary, who wrought all this ruin.

THE RICCIO MURDER.

Mr. Caird presents with great force the result of modern discoveries in the State Paper Office touching the details of the Riccio conspiracy, and shows conclusively that Murray was its real head, and also the chief organ of communication between the conspirators and the English government. The previous knowledge of the intent to murder Riccio, and the probable danger to Mary's life, is brought home to Elizabeth. She could not have been accounted guiltless, even if she had remained passive, merely concealing from her royal sister the bloody tragedy which was being prepared for her with the knowledge of her agent in Scotland. This agent (Randolph) she supported vehemently, protected the assassins, negotiated and trafficked until she got them restored, supplied Murray with large sums of money immediately before and immediately after Riccio's death, and took the first opportunity to gratify her vindictiveness against Darnley by open insult.

In the conspiracy for the murder of Riccio, no one was more deeply implicated than Darnley. He had allowed himself to be flattered and tempted by Murray, Maitland, and the rest with the prospect of a royal crown. But while these crafty men used him in this way for their own ends, they had not the slightest idea of allowing him to be more than a puppet in their hands. The knowledge of Darnley's complicity in the murder had wrung Mary's heart; but after the first burst of grief, she saw clearly that he was the dupe and tool of others. Her respect for him could not be otherwise than shaken; but her affection preserved him from the punishment which he richly merited. And for his sake she spared his father (Lenox) also, whom she justly blamed most; but she never permitted him to enter her presence again. Considering that she had released him from the consequences of treason only twelve months before, and that he had now repeated the offence under such aggravated circumstances, and had beguiled his son into the same evil course, bringing misery upon her household, her forbearance can be attributed only to surviving tenderness for her husband.

Mr. Caird places in a very clear light the development of the contempt and hatred of the conspirators for Darnley, which gradually hardened and intensified into the conspiracy to murder him; and as we watch its growth, it is sad to witness the suffering, sacrifices, and self-denial of a noble-hearted woman all wasted in[227] vain, and upon a most unworthy object. And yet more sad is it when we see, in such falsifiers of history as Mr. Froude, the very clearest and highest proofs of womanly goodness and wifely devotion wrenched and perverted into evidence of crime and murder.

In connection with this subject, Mr. Caird draws attention to the record of the Scotch Privy Council—an account the more valuable because the very men composing the council attempted at a later period to cast discredit on the queen. Here is their testimony: "So far as things could come to their knowledge, the king (Darnley) had no ground of complaints; but, on the contrary, that he had reason to look upon himself as one of the most fortunate princes in Christendom, could he but know his own happiness." And they added, "That although they who did perpetrate the murder of her faithful servant had entered her chamber with his knowledge, having followed him close at the back, and had named him the chief of their enterprise, yet would she never accuse him thereof, but did always excuse him, and willed to appear as if she believed it not; and so far was she from ministering to him occasion of discontent, that, on the contrary, he had all the reason in the world to thank God for giving him so wise and virtuous a person as she had showed herself in all her actions."

There are few points in the history of this period on which writers are so thoroughly agreed as the utter worthlessness and incapacity of Darnley, and there are also few cases which so completely as that of Darnley exemplify the too common weakness of the superior woman for the inferior man who possesses her affection. Trafficking on her affection, and seeking to wring from her a consent to his demands, he came very tardily to what was by all supposed to be her dying-bed at Jedburg. His bearing shocked all beholders. It was at this time Mary made her will, the inventory attached to which is a modern discovery. She left Darnley twenty-five jewels of great value, and opposite one cherished ring wrote with her own hand, "It is the ring with which I was betrothed. I leave it to the king who gave it to me." And yet Mr. James Anthony Froude informs us that Mary was then planning this husband's murder!

THE MURDER OF DARNLEY.

The author shows conclusively, from an array of original testimony which cannot be disputed, the precise nature, extent, and composition of the conspiracy to effect this assassination, and presents the whole question in an entirely new light.

As revealed by Mr. Caird, the conspiracy, by the time the moment was reached for execution, had trebled itself. That is to say, there were in the field on the eventful night of the murder, three separate and independent bands of assassins, one of which most certainly acted independently of the other two. Bothwell and his party, thrust forward to do the work by associates quite as guilty as he, but possessed of more brains, were, materially, innocent of Darnley's killing, although fully guilty in intent. They blew up the house at Kirk o' Field, supposing that Darnley went with it. There can now be but little doubt that when the explosion took place Darnley was already a dead man, smothered or burked by a special band.

For some hours after the explosion,[228] no trace of Darnley's body could be found; but as morning dawned, it was discovered in a garden eighty yards from the house. The attendant who slept in the room with him was lying dead at a short distance further away. Each had on a night-shirt. There was not a fracture, contusion, or livid mark, nor any trace of fire on their bodies, and the king's clothes were lying folded beside him. A fur pelisse, open as if dropped, was lying near him. Now, if we are to suppose that Darnley was blown up in the air, we must believe it possible that a human body could be thrown a distance of eighty yards without any marks of violence; that another body was thrown the same distance with the same results; and—stranger than all—that Darnley's fur pelisse and slippers were also blown uninjured to his side by the explosion, while five other inmates of the house were buried in the ruins.

ELIZABETH'S GUILTY KNOWLEDGE.

One fact of equal importance and interest is well established by modern investigation. It is the guilty knowledge, and actual or implied association of Queen Elizabeth of England in all the secret plots set on foot by the nobility of Scotland against Mary and her interests.

She was fully advised of the murder of Riccio three weeks before it took place, and Mr. Caird establishes, we think, conclusively, that she was quite as well advised concerning the Darnley murder.

Fourteen years after the occurrence, one of the first acts of King James, on his freedom from tutelage, was to commit the Earl of Morton to the Castle of Edinburgh, charged with the murder of Darnley.

Morton was one of the very few surviving conspirators. Bothwell was dead in exile; Maitland had poisoned himself, and Murray had been shot down in the streets of Linlithgow.

As soon as Queen Elizabeth heard of Morton's arrest, she made the most frantic efforts to prevent his trial. She endeavored to stir up insurrection in Scotland; she threatened war; she moved an army to the frontier; she sent back to Scotland as her ambassador, Randolph, so thoroughly familiar with all its murderous plots. Leicester, her lover, wrote to Randolph with a suggestion scantily veiled that the young king might follow his father—"He will not long tarry in that soil. Let the fate of his predecessor be his warning." And close on the heels of that, came official notice that Elizabeth would assist and maintain the Scots in protection of Morton. But James owed a debt to the memory of his murdered father, to the name of his captive mother, who was then pining in her English prison, and, in spite of Elizabeth's threats and violence, Morton was brought to trial, found guilty, and sentenced to death. Mr. Caird cites and refers to a mass of dispatches connected with Elizabeth's movements in this Morton matter which we have never seen elsewhere alluded to, and adds Queen Elizabeth's violence before Morton's trial and execution was not more remarkable than her sudden attitude of acquiescence as soon as his mouth was shut. "Did he hold some terrible secret whose disclosure she feared?"

The murder of Darnley occurred on the 10th of February, 1567. A full fortnight before, Mary's ambassador in Paris wrote to her that he had received a hint from the Spanish ambassador that the queen should take heed to herself, for there was a plot on foot to her injury. The letter reached Mary twelve hours too late to be of any service as a warning. But even if she had received it, to[229] whom could she have turned for aid or information? All the lords were in the plot, and she was surrounded by conspirators. The question is asked, Why did she not bring to justice the murderers of Darnley? Her situation was such that it was simply impossible for her to get at the knowledge of any fact dangerous to the conspirators. Denunciatory placards were issued in Edinburgh. But if shown, she would there find herself charged with being an accomplice with Bothwell and others in the murder. Knowing this to be an outrageous slander on herself, she would naturally conclude that it was equally so on them. And if herself innocent, Bothwell was the very last of her lords whom she could suspect of having cause of quarrel with the king. He was almost the only man who had supported Darnley, and it is certain he was not of those to whom Darnley had demonstrated antipathy. The wild scheme of ambition which Bothwell afterward pursued had probably not clearly developed itself even in his own mind till after Darnley's death. Dreams he may have had. But the scheme which he finally executed seems to have been the growth of opportunity.

After the murder, Mary shut herself up in a dark chamber, and kept it until her physicians compelled her to go to Seaton. A month after the murder, when Killigrew, the English ambassador, saw her, she was still in a dark chamber, and seemed in profound grief. Two such tragedies as had befallen her within a twelve-month were more than enough to shatter the nerves of any woman.

And now came a fresh warning from Paris that some new plot was in progress. The Spanish ambassador, by whom the warning of the Darnley murder had been given, said,

No explanation was given, and the poor queen was of course bewildered. She had heart and nerve enough for her own risk; but she at once took precautions for the safety of her child, the heir to the crown. She at once placed him in charge of the Earl of Mar, and lodged him in the strong castle of Stirling. And this fact is more than answer to the assertion that Mary was at this time under the influence of Bothwell. If any such influence had existed, he would not have permitted the disposition that was made of the child. His first effort on coming to power was to get the young prince into his hands. The Earl of Mar justified Mary's confidence, and withstood the efforts not only of Bothwell, but of Murray, to get possession of the child.

Then came the distribution of the crown lands among the conspirators by the ratification of parliament.

This matter was at once the main cause of Darnley's murder and the bond of union among the murderers. On the evening of the adjournment of parliament, its members were entertained at a supper by Bothwell. After the feast, a bond was produced by Sir James Balfour, by which they bound themselves to sustain Bothwell's acquittal, recommended him as the fittest husband for the queen, and engaged to support him with their whole power, and to hold as enemies any who should presume to hinder the marriage. They all signed but one, the Earl of Eglinton. It was at this time that Bothwell began to manifest his intentions to Mary, and a letter of hers relates that he tried "if he might by humble suit purchase our good-will, but found our answer nothing correspondent to his desire."[230] Mary then went to Stirling to visit her child. She probably wished, says Mr. Caird, by leaving Edinburgh at this juncture, to indicate to Bothwell that her rejection of his approaches was decisive; and he acted as if he thought so. His next step was that of a desperate man.

BOTHWELL CARRIES OFF THE QUEEN.

On her return from Stirling, three days later, he suddenly met her on the road with a large armed force, seized her, made her escort prisoners, and carried her off to his castle at Dunbar. He kept her there for eleven or twelve days. When she resisted his insolence, he produced the bond granted to him by the nobility, and she there found the signatures of every man from whom she could have expected help. Not one moved a finger in her defence. Huntly and Lethington, who were there with Bothwell, would not fail to remind her of the calamities which she had brought upon herself by opposing the policy of her nobles in her former marriage. Day after day she held out, but no help came. Sir James Melville, who had been taken prisoner with her, records that such violence was at last used that she no longer had a choice. Bothwell, in his dying confession, said that he accomplished his purpose "by the use of sweet waters." Morton's proclamations charged him with using violence to the queen, "and other more unleisum means." It seems not unlikely, therefore, that he employed some sweetened potion. Mary herself says that "in the end, when she saw no hope to be ridd of him, never man in Scotland ance making a mint for her deliverance, she was driven to the conclusion, from their hand-writes and silence, that he had won them all." He partly extorted and partly obtained her consent to marriage. Bothwell then conveyed the heart-broken queen, surrounded by a great force, to the Castle of Edinburgh. He next carried her before the judges, after lining the streets and crowding the courts and passages with his armed retainers. She there submitted to make a declaration that she "forgave him of all hatred conceived by her for taking and imprisoning her;" and also that she was now at liberty. The necessity for such a declaration implies previous coercion. Mr. Caird explains that, under the then existing law, Bothwell had committed an offence punishable with death if he had not obtained this declaration. A marriage was formally solemnized, and so little was her will consulted that it was in the Protestant form. Fettered by their bond, the nobles all looked on and lent no aid. One honest man there was, though, the Protestant minister Craig, who boldly told Bothwell that he objected to the marriage because he (Bothwell) had forced the queen. Called upon to proclaim the banns, Craig denounced it from the pulpit, and afterward publicly testified in the next general assembly that he was alone in opposing the marriage, and that "the best part of the realm did approve it, either by flattery or by their silence."

The Silver Casket Letters are treated by Mr. Caird as they must be by every fair-minded man. He says, "These letters, in truth, were as gross and clumsy fabrications as ever were put forward." His thorough analysis of the longest letter—a love-letter of fourteen quarto pages of print—is the most successful we have seen.

Mr. Caird closes his work with two scenes so effectively portrayed that our readers will thank us for transcribing them:

Mary Stuart had gone long before, destroyed and done to death by this woman; sent to the scaffold in a land where she had been wrongfully kept a prisoner, to whose law she owed no allegiance, and by virtue of a law which was passed to compass her death. On her way to execution, she was met by her old servant, Andrew Melville. He threw himself on his knees before her, wringing his hands in uncontrollable agony.

"Woe is me," he cried, "that it should be my hard hap to carry back such tidings to Scotland!"

"Weep not, Melville, my good and faithful servant," she replied; "thou shouldst rather rejoice to see the end of the long troubles of Mary Stuart. This world is vanity, and full of sorrows. I am Catholic, thou Protestant; but as there is but one Christ, I charge thee in his name to bear witness that I die firm in my religion. Commend me to my dearest son. May God forgive them that have thirsted for my blood."

She then passed to the scaffold. She surveyed it, the block, the axe, the executioners, and spectators undauntedly as she advanced. She prayed to God to pardon her sins and forgive her enemies.

"I forgive you and all the world with all my heart; for I hope this death will give an end to all my troubles." She then knelt down and commended her spirit into God's hands, and the executioners did their work.

The sad tale is told. All the actors have been nearly three centuries in their graves; but their story shall stir the hearts of men till the world's end.

A BRIDEMAID'S STORY.

A bridemaid! I had become a necessity. A sense of such importance was novel to me. It was a pleasant awakening to a consciousness that I had attained womanhood. To have been a bride would not have filled me with such unmingled joy; for then I might have been thinking over the possibilities of the future. Now I had only to play my part in the bright and bewildering present.

That there had been bridemaids before my time, of the loftiest and of the lowliest degree, from the jewelled princess to the humble dairy-maid, rendered my position none the less novel and refreshing. Then, too, the circumstances of the case were not to be lightly passed over—I had been chosen from among so many whose claims to consideration were far above mine.

An imaginative child always seeks and finds some object in which to concentrate its thoughts and its loves; something real to serve as an embodiment of its ideal fancies. Hence, all the wealth of my fervent nature had centred on Marian Howard.

From earliest childhood I had watched and wondered at her rare and high-born beauty. Every feature in her face seemed to have a distinct and separate fascination, while every adornment of dress that could enhance her varied charms was brought into requisition. To look upon her was a feast of pleasure to my eyes.

The quiet dignity of her manner kept a distance between us, so that she was a sort of far-off idol, after all. In her company we never gave way to our outgushing school-girl nature. I sometimes thought she would be happier if she were only more like us, or if we should welcome her with a girl's free and fervent greeting. But who dared try the experiment?

As we grew older, our paths in life diverged. Soon after leaving school, Marian went to live and to love in a foreign land, while I returned to the quiet pleasures of a rural home.

Four years passed, and then the fine old house which had so long remained silent again showed signs of life. They had returned—the widowed aunt and her beautiful niece.

The preparations for the wedding were immediately commenced, and Marian repaid my early devotion by offering me the highest mark of her confidence and regard.

The old tenderness came rushing back when I again beheld her more stately and more beautiful than ever. She told me it would be a quiet wedding—only a few friends, and I her only bridemaid. My arrangements were soon completed, and I awaited anxiously the appointed time. Soon it was the day before the marriage. I went over to assist in the final preparations, and was to spend the night with Marian. The morrow would witness, in the case of my friend, the great event of a woman's life—to be given away in marriage. I say of a woman's life, because marriage can hardly have the same significance for men; they are not given away.

The distinguished stranger who was so soon to call Marian his wife was certainly unlike any of the men I had ever known; but I had known so few, and my knowledge of the world was so limited, that I did not feel competent to pass judgment on him. Then there were such method, such calmness and system about the man, about the unbending[233] aunt, about Marian, and about the whole house, that I felt cold with a chilling sense of not being able to get warm again, though it was a lovely summer afternoon. More of nature and less of art, I thought, might have warmed the approaching festivities.

The evening shadows were falling. We had just finished arranging and rearranging the costly bridal gifts, when Marian was summoned to attend her aunt.

Among the other presents was that grand conception, Gustave Doré's Wandering Jew. This work of human genius seemed a strange companion for the rare articles of luxury that surrounded it.

I took up the book and went out upon the balcony. The softly-fading twilight, the subdued spirit of the house, the reflective turn my own mind had taken, prepared me for impressions of the awful and sublime.

It is said that "real genius always rises, and in rising it finds God." Surely the force and truth of this thought were here exemplified; for who could look upon these scenes, so truthful and intense, without a feeling of awe and reverence?

I was thus occupied, I know not how long, when suddenly Mr. Gaston recalled me to myself. "How absorbed you are, Miss Heartly! I have been watching you with much interest. Pray, has the book any bearing upon the coming events of to-morrow? Court beauties, I suppose," he continued carelessly, as he came toward me.

"Why!" said I, "you have returned early, Mr. Gaston. You cannot have taken that delightful drive Marian proposed to you?"

"No," he answered; "I have no inclination for solitude; but you ladies are so occupied with these time-killing nothings, these endless little arrangements so indispensable to your happiness, that we lonely mortals are entirely ignored and forgotten."

"I think, sir, that calamity seldom befalls you," I replied, thus adding, perhaps, to vanity already sufficiently great.

"But the book?" he continued, opening it listlessly. "Oh! the old fable in a new dress. It is strange how women cling to the marvellous and impossible. They seem to have but two absorbing ideas—love and religion. Extremes in either usually lead to the same pernicious result. I suppose an idol is a necessity to them, and it matters little in which they find it."

"I do not understand you," I replied. "Are you in jest, or are you seriously denouncing revealed religion?"

"Revealed religion!" he repeated. "Is it possible that, at this stage of the world's advancement, you still cling to that antiquated idea of Christianity?"

The modern methods of fashioning a god to suit the impious desires of vain and conceited mortals was then unknown to me. I looked at the man with wonder and distrust. He read my confusion and hastened to explain himself.

"Religion," he said, "as you accept it, makes us cowards instead of men. My reason is my religion; I acknowledge no other guide."

"Ah! then," I exclaimed, "how often must you stumble by the way." I turned to the most effective picture in the book. "Here is an instance of the vanity of human pride. Here we can see the end of man's boasted strength—the anguish of a lost soul hopelessly looking for repose and peace."

"An imposing fable," he replied, "wanting only a woman's faith to give it substance and reality."

I was rising to put an end to this[234] unprofitable and distasteful conversation, when Marian joined us. My disturbed manner plainly annoyed her, and she evidently suspected its cause; for she addressed Mr. Gaston in German quite earnestly. Soon turning to me he said, "Pray, excuse me, Miss Heartly; I was not aware that you were a Catholic. I know your people feel most keenly what they profess. Of course you have already stamped me a condemned heretic."

"It is not for me to pass judgment on you," I replied; "and if I did, my opinion could be of very little value."

"Come, come!" said Marian, "this is a most unapt and gloomy subject for my marriage eve; and the sun, too, has gone down sullenly. I hope there is nothing prophetic in all this."

"What! growing serious now?" I said, as I drew her arm within mine, and we went to look for the fiftieth time at the final arrangements for the morrow's festivities.

I could not, however, throw off the feeling of uneasiness that my interview with Mr. Gaston had left. He had a way of cheapening one, so that, without knowing why, you fell immeasurably in your own estimation. This is never a comfortable condition to find one's self in, and it takes a good deal of nice logic to bring one back to one's normal state.

Perhaps it was the loftiness of his style that awed me; for he had a magnificent way of carelessly throwing the world behind him and walking forth in a sort of solitary dignity. "His manners are courtly," Marian's aunt said, and certainly they possessed all the cold stiffness that characterized her particular circle; still, I felt I had no real grounds for this feeling of distrust and aversion to Mr. Gaston, and I began to think it was rather ungenerous to hold him in so unfavorable a light. I could not shake off, however, an undefined dread of the approaching marriage. The apathy and indifference which had always been peculiar to my young friend did not forsake her even now, when apparently on the very threshold of happiness. I thought that intensity of feeling perhaps kept her thus silent, for overpowering happiness has this effect sometimes. The delusion was, however, speedily dispelled.

That night a sealed chapter in Marian's life was laid open to me, and I saw her as I had never seen or thought of her before.

After locking the chamber-door, she seated herself by my side, and said, "This is the first time in my life that I have known perfect freedom; I mean a liberty to do and say what I like with a feeling of security.

"You remember the 'Greek Slave.' Well, I am not unlike that delicate girl chained in the market-place. Every inclination of my heart has been chained down and locked, and my aunt has kept the key.

"I was an uncomplaining, passionless child. In my cradle I received my first lessons in self-control. As I grew older, I learned another lesson, too unnatural for even a thoughtful child like me to understand. I was not needed here; I was considered only as a desirable ornament for this great house. I might as well have been placed upon a pinnacle and petrified at once, for all the childhood that was allowed to take root within me.

"My aunt's domestic misfortunes had embittered her, and she had no children to soften the natural austerity of her soul. My mother, who was her only sister, had, contrary to my aunt's wishes, married where her heart inclined. This was never forgiven or forgotten until she lay dead, and I was a wailing infant at her side.

"My father soon afterward perished[235] at sea, and my aunt took me to her home.

"She was not designedly cruel; but she knew nothing of a child's requirements. The freezing system seemed to her the most effectual method of crushing out a young, impulsive nature. There was danger I might become rebellious, and hence she required the utmost meekness and submission.

"As soon as I came to understand the power of beauty, I saw that it was to mine I owed food and raiment; for it fed the exhaustless vanity of my aunt, with whom display was then, and still is, the moving spring of her existence.

"I was a drawing-room child, kept for exhibition at stated intervals. The tiny jewels on my neck and arms were hateful to me. My embroidered robe was a costly thing. I had given a young life for it.

"I had a mortal fear of losing my beauty. Our gardener's daughter—a comely, cheerful-looking girl, whom I was always glad to see, for she made the morning brighter with her fresh young face—had caught that loathsome disease, the small-pox. When she recovered, the change that had come upon her so terrified me, that I was seized with a sensation as of coming danger. I shrank from the girl, as if she would be the cause of some future misery to me.

"She had a mother to whom she seemed infinitely more dear now than she had ever been. But I, a lonely waif, what would become of me if I should be transformed like her?

"It was not altogether for my own gratification that I desired to retain this beauty. It was not my own beauty. It belonged to my aunt, and was all I had to give her in return for what she gave me.

"I was not a child that saw angels in the skies, or that expected manna to come down from heaven to feed me.

"Artificial and unsatisfying as my life has always been, I have a clinging desire to remain with it.

"At times I have had a vaguely conceived notion of one day getting away from it and of being free; but the bending and breaking system has so subdued me that I might lose myself if left to the guidance of my own free-will.

"Marriage is a solemn thing. Would you like to change places with me to-night, Mary?"

I could not say yes, and I dared not say no; for I saw that she was losing courage, and beginning to hesitate about the important event so soon to transpire.

"That is a strange question, Marian dear," I replied. "To-morrow ought to be, and I hope will be, the happiest day of your life. Surely you must love this man when you have promised to be his wife?"

"Oh! yes," said she, "as well as I understand what it is to love. I sometimes tremble for fear I have not the qualities that make woman lovable and attractive. You forget how little I know of Edward Gaston.

"Our acquaintance began in a little German town, where he was stopping, for the purpose of establishing his claims to a disputed inheritance. He is an American by birth and education. He soon became a constant visitor with us. My aunt and he were on the best of terms. My own interest in him had never passed beyond the civilities of an ordinary acquaintance until he again joined us at Naples, where he lost no time in making known the state of his feelings.

"My aunt seemed to have had some previous knowledge of his preference; but its announcement was to me a complete surprise.

"She was proud of her nice discrimination[236] in the selection of her friends, and Mr. Gaston had come into our circle labelled and indorsed a gentleman.

"Her gracious consideration, however, of his offer, in no wise obscured her caution. Satisfied as to his worldly affairs, and well assured of his position at home, there was nothing wanting but my consent, which was really the most trifling part of the arrangement. I accepted this marriage engagement as I would have accepted any other condition so mapped out for me.

"Business of a pressing nature which could be delayed no longer, called Mr. Gaston to America, and I did not see him again until our return a month ago.

"You see how little I know of him. Can you wonder that I am constrained in his presence? Of course, every thing will be different when I come to know him better.

"But I have one cause of feverish anxiety. I am not above the petty subterfuges almost incidental to a life like mine. A desire to hide mistakes committed through childish ignorance made me unscrupulous, as any member of a household who is watched and suspected must naturally be. Habit may have made these little irregularities almost a second nature, but my blood recoils from a wilful and deliberate deception. I am afraid Edward is misled with regard to my aunt's pecuniary condition.

"This life of seeming affluence, which has become as necessary to her as the air she breathes, drains heavily on her slender resources. Such portion of her time as is not spent in her handsome carriage, or in drawing-room entertainments, is passed in a most frugal and even parsimonious mode of living, and it is only by an economy painful to contemplate that she has kept things floating thus far.

"I cannot acquaint Edward with my aunt's existing embarrassments. She is my only kinswoman; and misguided as she is, I have a tender affection for her. I hope to be able to offer her a home with us, when, as soon must be the case, the last act in this miserable farce shall have been played.

"Now, perhaps, you can understand why I thus passively submit to a marriage that I would turn from if I could. I cannot openly say to Mr. Gaston, 'I have no fortune, I hope you expect none;' even to covertly approach the subject would be to impugn his motives, and I certainly have no right to suspect him of harboring mercenary ones. Still, I wish he were acquainted with the truth; for the world, you know, looks upon me as sole heiress of my rich aunt.

"I have no knowledge of what passed between Edward and my aunt at Naples, when our marriage was agreed upon; but I have a constant dread least he may have been deceived. I once mentioned to him, in conversation, that he would claim a portionless bride; but he seemed to take no notice of what I said, and I fear he still thinks my aunt's circumstances to be in reality what they seem."

"In giving way," I replied, "to such groundless fears, dear Marian, you underrate your own worth. Think how many noble and honorable men would be proud to call you wife, and in giving you a life of happiness make amends for the past." Yet as I looked in the silver starlight upon that lovely face, which had so attracted me in my childhood, I could not but regret deeply and sadly that she was not of my faith; for then she might receive wiser counsel than I could give from one of those whom Christ in his mercy has ordained to be a guide and a staff to weak and wavering souls.

The wedding breakfast was all that[237] even Marian's fastidious aunt could have desired. The few favored guests were of the most approved type. It would seem as if a judicious instructor had given each of them a select number of words, which they used with exemplary caution, and then retired to the contemplation of their own individual greatness.

As to Marian, the despondency of the night before had quite left her, and there was a high and noble resolve in her manner that made me truly happy to behold, while it calmed, if it did not entirely dispel, my own gloomy forebodings. The serene expression of her sweet face would have drawn me nearer to her, if that were possible.

How I loved her, as she stood before me, beautiful in the purity of her white robe, and infinitely more beautiful in the chastened security of her firm and lofty purpose—to be a true and honorable wife to Edward Gaston; to meet the conditions of her new life, whatever they might be, with a woman's trust and confidence, and better still, with a woman's hope in the never-failing reward of duty faithfully performed.

I could have been positively gay through desire to sustain Marian, and to let her know, without telling her in words, how thoroughly I appreciated and how heartily I approved her noble intentions, her courage and confidence; but as measured words and actions alone were allowed, I had to restrain myself. Still, the cooling process did not diminish my ardor, and when I got Marian all to myself, in her room, I kissed her so approvingly, and was so extravagant in the expression of all that I felt, that she folded me with loving tenderness to her breast, and kept me there so long that I felt with the quick beating of her warm heart she was giving me some of her own newly-found courage.

"Whatever happens to me, Mary dear, in the extremity of any darkness that may come upon me, I shall always know that you are true to me, that you are still my friend."

The tears that fell upon her hand as she gently raised my head, were my only answer, and she accepted them in the spirit in which they were shed.

In returning to my ordinary duties, I had much to reflect upon, much that made me still uneasy for Marian and her future, where so many doubts and fears seemed hanging on the will of one human being.

Vague rumors of Mr. Gaston had reached us, that he was a man wholly without fortune, drifting on the surface of events; darker things, too, were whispered with an indirectness which gave them an uncertain coloring. In my love for Marian, and in my fear for her, I could not credit these suspicions; yet my anxiety to again see her, and discover for myself the truth or fallacy of these reports, was intense. Indeed, my state of anxious doubt was becoming intolerable when I received a letter from Marian, telling me she was already tired of travelling, and would return soon to make a last visit to her old home before leaving for her future and distant one.

It was agreed that they should spend the day after their arrival with us. I was so happy and so occupied in preparing for their reception, that I had almost forgotten my previous anxiety in my present desire to have every thing ready and in perfect order.

The pleasure I felt in the prospect of having my darling with me so soon was dreadfully toned down by the consciousness of my own inability to satisfy her aunt's critical taste. I trembled as I thought of her scrutinizing glance; but I had a never-failing source of hope in my mother. Her good-natured hospitality was of[238] such a melting kind that I dared hope that even the rigid aunt might thaw under it, which she really did, greatly to my relief and comfort.

The dinner passed off creditably. My tranquillity was now entirely restored, and I had time to devote to Marian.

Up to this moment I had viewed her through the medium of my excited condition; now I was calmed, and, so far as the affairs of the day went, contented.

Marian's manner was restless and uneasy. My perception was keenly alive to the slightest difference between what she did and said now and to what she did and said formerly. So solicitous was I, that I think the most trifling modulation in her voice had a significance for me.

Much as I had looked forward to this reunion, much as I had desired it, now that Marian was with me, I shrank from being alone with her. I think if we had been that summer evening even in the solitude of a mountain fastness, an intuitive delicacy would have kept both of us from speaking one word upon the only subject that filled our hearts.

My mother's humanizing influence was having its effect on the stately old lady. She was captured without knowing it. Mr. Gaston had gone out for a walk; so Marian and I were left alone. I tried to talk about her new home, and repeated some things Mr. Gaston had told me before the wedding.

"Edward has changed his mind," said Marian, "and has found it necessary to make some different arrangements; so I really cannot tell much about our home. It is very far away; don't you think so, Mary?" I saw that her feelings were beginning to get the upper hand, and I did not dare trust myself to reply. I turned from her immediately on the pretext of having forgotten some household duty. She strolled out to the garden in a spiritless way.

Every thing was revolving itself in my mind, and I was beginning to reproach myself; perhaps if I had encouraged her to speak, it might have lifted the load from her heart; another opportunity might not be permitted us; and yet, bowed down as the poor girl was, it would not have raised her in my esteem had she even with me disparaged her husband. To cover him with a wife's forbearance was now one of her hard but imperative duties, and I knew she would not shrink from it. This must be a check to our confidence, a bridge over which my kindliest sympathy must never pass.

Unmistakable evidences of a storm close at hand made me run to the arbor where I had last seen Marian. She was not there. While deliberating where I should next go, I heard Mr. Gaston's impatient tread. He stopped by a clump of trees near me, and in tones of suppressed anger commenced upbraiding his defenceless wife.

"What did you mean by suggesting such a thing as that?" he began; "have you any right to dispense hospitalities, to propose or consider them in that grand style of yours?"

"In expressing the wish," replied Marian, "that my aunt would be able to spend the winter with us, I had no intention of doing any thing beyond a natural act of gratitude; and I was not aware, Edward, that your feelings had so changed toward her. I am sure she has done nothing to merit your displeasure."

"Nothing to merit my displeasure? You are a most creditable disciple! She has made you like herself, truly. Is it nothing in your eyes that she has always lived a life of nicely-arranged deception? Your accomplished aunt[239] has conducted a forlorn hope with a woman's tact, and the victims of her trickery are expected to bow to her superior sagacity. In a burst of universal sympathy you propose to take this wreck of decayed grandeur to my house. This was a part of the plot, I suppose."

"Edward," interrupted Marian, "how dare you speak in this way of my aunt, who has shown you so many marks of sincere regard? That she has not husbanded her resources, I grant; but that misfortune rests entirely with her, she is the only sufferer. She made you no promises, gave you no reason to expect a fortune with me; this I have learned since our marriage. Have no fear of the incumbrance. Dear as she is to me, I would rather let her beg from door to door than see her a recipient of your bounty!"

"Oh! you are proud now," he replied in a voice of withering scorn. "Take care," he continued; "you have not seen the end yet. Make yourself ready to depart. I want to leave this house instantly."

"Edward," she said, "however you choose to afflict me, whatever tortures you have in store for me, do not, I beseech you, subject me just yet to the pity of those I love, of those who love me. These people are my truest friends. I would not make them sharers of my misery. Spare me a little longer."

"Your fine speeches and these people are alike objects of indifference to me. Make yourself ready; I am going."

She made a movement to obey him; but turning round again, she said, "Edward"—the voice and tone I shall never forget; it was as if all she had ever valued in life had whispered a last farewell—"Edward, as I had hoped to give you a wife's unfailing duty, to be trustful, loving, and true; so I had hoped you would give me a husband's protection, and perhaps a husband's love."

"I am not fond of scenes," he interrupted; "your requirements are of so nice and delicate a nature that I would be quite incapable of gratifying them; so I shall not trouble myself to make the attempt; and for the future, spare yourself any unnecessary display of sentiment."

I could not have left the arbor without being seen. Marian passed by slowly, not to the house, but in an opposite direction, and Mr. Gaston started for the lower end of the garden. I caught a glimpse of him as he turned an angle of the walk. A wicked look had settled on his handsome face, as if dark spirits were urging him on.

A peal of thunder, prolonged and terrible, startled me. I ran to the house. The lightning was truly awful, and peal following peal of thunder made one shudder and long for human companionship. I had lost Marian in the gloom and darkness. She was not in the house; I did not see her in the garden. I went out into the storm in search of her.

I found her standing quite alone in sad and listless silence. Can it be, I thought, that death has no terrors for one so gifted and so young? She seemed imploring that doom which the most abject and miserable would flee from if they could. I knew then, as well as I knew afterward, that she would have welcomed death that night without one single regret.

"Marian, dear," I said, approaching her, "how can you remain alone, and exposed in this manner, when every thing about you is quaking with fear?"

"Come, come, darling! Why, the rain has drenched you," I replied,[240] putting my arm about her and leading her to the house.

The storm had set in furiously. There was no leaving the house that night. I resolved that Marian should sleep with me; so I went to Mr. Gaston and told him I regretted our limited accommodations obliged me to offer him a temporary bed in the parlor.

When I told Marian of this arrangement, she seemed relieved. "I am glad to spend the night here and with you, Mary," she said. "All is so quiet and peaceful."

Quiet and peaceful! The greater storm in her own breast made her forget the contending elements without.

My aversion to Mr. Gaston was, I believe, heartily reciprocated, and he must have chafed at my influence over Marian. He took her away from her home, never to return, on the very next day. They sailed for Cuba shortly afterward.

The crisis Marian had feared for her aunt soon came, and she went, with the remnant of her fortune, to live in some western town.

Seven years had rolled by since all this, and Marian was fast passing into the shadows we like to call up when the world is hushed around us and, we are thinking—thinking.

I was married, and laughing children were crowding out these earlier remembrances.

An affection of the throat, from which my husband was suffering, rendered the best medical advice necessary. I accompanied him to New York, where I found—let me pause in telling it, to do reverence to the unseen hand that led me there—Marian.

In this lonely stranger how little do I behold of my childhood's earliest pride!

"From Clifton?" said the physician thoughtfully, after examining my husband's case. "I have a patient, a strange case; she is paralyzed, and her mental faculties are stunned. A Cuban family brought her here and placed her under my care. Her husband had committed a forgery, and had fled the country to escape arrest. She is an accomplished lady, I should judge. She was left in Havana quite poor and friendless. I have been led to speak to you about her because she is always writing two words—Mary and Clifton. The Spanish lady who brought her here knew nothing of her former history."

I was silent during this recital, and so white that the doctor offered me water. I thanked him, and expressed a wish to go to my friend immediately.

"I cannot return to the hospital this morning," he said; "but I will give you my card, which will admit you to the lady at once."

There I found her, a silent, faded figure, sitting still, and for all purposes of life quite dead.

I was awed as I stood before her. I sat down and took her poor, neglected hand in mine. She looked at me and made a feeble attempt to gather back her hair which had fallen in great disorder about her shoulders. I rose to do this for her. It was still glossy and beautiful as ever. I began to arrange it in the fashion she had worn it seven years before. She took my hand from her head, laid it in her lap, chafed it, then reverently raised it to her lips. I could restrain my tears no longer, and I hid my face in the folds of her faded dress. She turned me toward her and wiped the tears from my cheek.

"You are going home with me, Marian darling," I said; "to live always in our own old home."

"I know it," she whispered; "I have been waiting for you so long, so very long."

This was the first time she had[241] spoken to me. The nurse had told me that she spoke occasionally, but always in an absent and incoherent manner.

Sea-bathing was recommended; but the doctor was of the opinion that her mind would never recover its original vigor.

I would like him to see her as she left me this morning, calm and beautiful, when the bell of the convent, where she is teaching German, summoned attendance.

My religion is no longer strange to her. She has accepted it as the crowning blessing of her life, and with a thankful spirit she speaks of the chastening hand that led her to this security and peace.

EXULTENT SION FILIÆ.

MR. GLADSTONE AND THE IRISH FARMERS.

The long-expected bill for the settlement of the land question in Ireland was introduced into the British Parliament a short time ago by Mr. Gladstone in an explanatory speech of rare perspicuity and methodical statement. So fascinating, indeed, is the premier's eloquence, so candid his confessions of the injustice of English law as at present existing in Ireland, and of the baleful consequences which have flowed from its operations in the agricultural interests of the people of the sister island, that for the time we forget how far short are the measures he now proposes, in the form of an act of parliament, of the necessities of the case before him, and to which all his logic, rhetoric, and pathos form but the graceful prelude. Turning from the speech and carefully looking over the sixty-eight clauses of the proposed act, we are forcibly struck by the inadequacy of the proposed remedy for the terrible and manifold evils which have so long afflicted the tillers of Irish soil; and if, as Mr. Gladstone asserts, his object is not only to do justice to this long-oppressed people, but to silence for ever the clamors and pacify at once the almost chronic discontent of the country, it requires very little acumen to foresee that his scheme, even if not modified for the worse in its passage through either house, will be a failure, particularly as regards the latter results.

The head of the British cabinet, with all that ability and knowledge of public affairs which justly entitle him to be ranked foremost among living English statesmen, seems to have failed alike to comprehend the magnitude of the abuses he would correct and to appreciate the wishes and expectations of the great majority of the Irish people. Whether through that obliquity of mental vision which has always characterized English public men when attempting to deal with Irish grievances, or from a dread of failure if he attempted to inaugurate a more radical change in the present relations between landlord and tenant—and from a remark in his late speech, the latter cause would seem to be the[243] most probable—he has been led into a course of policy which, while gaining him no allies in the opposition ranks, will undoubtedly lessen his influence with a large portion of the liberal party in both kingdoms. "By fixity of tenure," says Dr. Taylor, "is now clearly understood, in Ireland, that the right of the tenant to his land is to continue as long as the rent is paid, and that the rent is to be adjusted at fixed periods, according to the average price of produce;" a statement fully indorsed by the Irish press and reiterated by the people at their recent numerous public meetings. But the present bill contemplates no such thing, either in expression or by implication; and lest it might so be understood, the premier in his speech devoted much of his time to demonstrate the fallacy and danger of such doctrines.

Here then is the issue at once raised, and as Mr. Gladstone's views will receive the sanction of Parliament, we apprehend that the proposed act, no matter how impartially executed, will fail to satisfy the popular wants in Ireland. It cannot be denied that the great underlying principle of the tenant-right agitation is the conviction among the masses of the farmers and peasants of that country that the soil whereon they expend their labor, that others may reap the profits, was and is rightfully their own; that it was forcibly and treacherously wrested from their ancestors by a foreign and hostile faction, whose descendants now claim to possess it, and who wring from them the fruits of their toil, justly belonging to the cultivators and their families. They do not, however, desire a reconfiscation of this property; but they do demand a guarantee from the laws, under which they are content to live, that as long as they pay a fair rent they shall not be disturbed in their holdings. The question of leases for a term of years and compensation for improvements, though very important in itself, is merely secondary to fixity of tenure. That once guaranteed, in the Irish and not in Mr. Gladstone's sense, the impetus which would be given to the farming industry of the country would be so great that time and economy only would be required to establish a large class of small land owners in fee, thus virtually undoing the spoliations of former days, and dividing up the large estates now devoted principally to pleasure or pasturage, and held by a few persons who neither reside in, know, or care for the nation from which they draw such exorbitant rents. The entire land of Ireland consists of nearly sixteen million acres of arable land, and five millions more[244] susceptible of cultivation, owned absolutely by less than six thousand persons, thus giving to each proprietary an average of thirty-five hundred acres, independent of mountain, bog, and riparian lands, all more or less useful for the sustenance of human life. Then the majority of those owners, including the representatives of the very large estates almost without exception, are absentees who in the aggregate draw from the soil an annual revenue estimated at forty millions of dollars; not a tithe of it is ever returned to the country in any manner, except in the form of receipts. We find that the tenants from whom this large foreign tribute is exacted number over six hundred thousand heads of families, representing at least three and a half million of souls, only one in thirty of whom holds a lease of any sort, the remainder being entirely dependent politically and socially on the will of the landlord, or his agents and bailiffs. This anomalous state of affairs in a country supposed to be at least comparatively free is heightened by the fact that the views and aims of the landlord class and those of the tenantry, which ought to coincide on all matters affecting the national good, are decidedly the reverse of each other. As a whole, the religion, politics, and traditions of the owners of the soil have always placed them in opposition to their tenants and dependents; so firmly, indeed, that even the demands of patriotism and the allurements of pecuniary gain, powerful for most men, have failed to swerve the Irish landlord from his blind and bigoted purpose of repressing the laudable enterprise, and of ignoring the commonest rights, of the people from whom he derives his wealth and position. In countries like Belgium, Scotland, or Switzerland, where manufactures are encouraged and capital is abundant, this slavish relationship between landlord and tenant would be a secondary grievance; but in Ireland, which is essentially an agricultural country, the enormity of the evil cannot well be over-estimated. "About two thirds of the population of England," said the late W. Smith O'Brien, "are dependent on manufactures and commerce, directly or indirectly. In this country (Ireland) about nine tenths of the population are dependent on agriculture, directly or indirectly." "An ancient vassal," said Van Raumer, a distinguished German traveller, who some years ago visited Ireland, "is a lord compared with the present tenant at will, to whom the law affords no defence;" and a recent decision in chancery declares that "if a tenant holding from year to year makes permanent improvements in the lands which he holds, this raises no equity as against the landlord, though he may have looked on and not have given any warning to the tenant."

But we have a more recent authority on the condition of the Irish farmers of to-day in the person of the special commissioner of the London Times, who certainly cannot be accused of over-partiality in describing the condition of that much oppressed class. Writing from Mullingar under date September 14th, 1869, he says, "By far the largest portion of the country is still occupied by small farmers, who legally are merely tenants at will, though they have added much to the value of the soil by building, draining, fencing, and tillage, and though they have purchased their interests in numerous instances, and it is probable they will long maintain their ground, though the area they hold is being diminished. The existing law is not a rule of right to this body of men in their actual position; it exposes what in truth is their property, the benefits they have added to the land, to be[245] confiscated by a summary process; it sets at naught the equitable right acquired by a transfer for value with the assent of the landlord." From Cork, after a month's further investigation, he again writes, "As for the landed system of the country as a whole, it is, in its broadest outlines, essentially the same as that which I have so often described, except that its vices are very prominent. Speaking generally, the same religious differences divide the owner and the occupier of the soil; the absenteeism is too prevalent; there is the same wide-spread insecurity of tenure; the law in the same way upholds the power of the landlord, and disregards the just claims of the tenant; there is the same creation of vast rights of property in the form of improvements, by the peasantry, unprotected by the least legal sanction, and liable, nay, exposed to confiscation; vague usage similarly is the only safeguard against frequent and intolerable injustice." Conceding to Mr. Gladstone and his colleagues the greatest honesty of intention in the introduction of the present bill, and aware of the powerful and not over-scrupulous opposition which any remedial measure advocated by them must encounter from the tory and landed classes, yet in view of such patent abuses as stated, as well as from the assurances of Mr. Bright and others—supposed to be in the confidence of the ministry, we had a right to expect a measure more general, emphatic, and sweeping in its reforms. Still, as the bill will be passed substantially as presented, with perhaps the addition of a few unimportant amendments likely to be offered by the Irish members, it is important to examine in detail its main features as far as they relate to what is defined in the preamble as "security of tenure."

The first subdivision of the bill provides for the loaning of public moneys to landlords and tenants on the following conditions: Where the landlord is willing to sell and the tenant to purchase a particular farm, then in his actual occupancy, at a price agreed upon between the parties, the government will advance the tenant the necessary funds; and when the landlord is only willing to part with his estate in bulk, the actual occupiers of four fifths, and any person or persons not occupiers joined with them, may become purchasers of the whole, and a similar advance will be made. In other words, the government takes the place of the selling landlord, pays him indirectly the price agreed upon, and reimburses itself by annual instalments from the tenant, now become the owner, until the entire purchase money is paid off. This seems favorable enough for the enterprising tenant, and to any other than Irish landlords would offer strong inducements to dispose of a portion, at least, of their unwieldy and often heavily encumbered estates, and would promote the multiplication of moderate sized and better cultivated farms; but as we are aware of the hostility of that unpatriotic class to every thing tending to the elevation of their tenantry to a position of comparative equality, we have little hope of the efficacy of this provision. Indeed, Mr. Gladstone seems also of this opinion; for in his late speech in allusion to the subject, he says, "I myself have not been one of those who have been disposed to take the most sanguine view of the extent to which a provision of that kind would operate." Purchasers of reclaimed land not occupied are to have the same privileges as occupiers of cultivated lands. The landlord likewise is to have his share of the public money for the purpose of reclaiming waste lands adjoining his estate, and[246] in some instances, for paying off the compensation claims of his out-going tenant. All these loans, securities, repayments, and annuities are to be under the direction of the Irish Board of Works at Dublin.

The legal machinery for carrying these and subsequent clauses of the bill into effect will consist of two classes of courts. One of arbitration, consisting of appointees of the parties interested, whose decision shall have all the force of law, and from which there shall be no appeal. The other will be a regular court of law, with very extensive equity jurisdiction, composed, in the first instance, of a civil bill court, presided over by an assistant barrister of sessions; an appeal court, composed of two judges of assize, who may reserve important cases for trial before the court for land cess in Dublin. Taking into consideration the relative wealth and personal influence of the parties litigant, we might hope for a less expensive and complicated mode of procedure; but as the law's delays are still as proverbial on the other side of the Atlantic as on this, it is perhaps the least objectionable plan that could be devised. Much certainly will depend on the independence and humanity of the courts; for while they will be bound by the principles laid down in the bill, it is authorized—

The bill then proceeds to secure and define the tenure of all holders of agricultural land, dividing them into four classes: holders by the custom of Ulster, by customs analogous to that of Ulster in the other provinces, tenants from year to year and at will, and lease-holders generally.

The custom of Ulster, derived strangely enough from the terms of James I.'s charter to the undertakers in 1613,[40] as well as from traditional usage, consists mainly of the right of the out-going tenant to compensation from his landlord for all permanent improvements he may have made on the land, or that he has actually paid for to his predecessor, whether with or without the consent of his landlord; or the tenant may elect to sell the same with his good-will of the farm to the best purchaser. This custom, covering about a moiety of the 3,400,000 acres of Ulster, is to be formally recognized as law only in that portion of the country, and in each individual case where it now actually exists. But when "the landlord has, by a deliberate and formal arrangement with an occupier, bought up the Ulster tenant right, it shall not be pleaded against him;" and where the tenant has so sold to the landlord or to the incoming tenant his right, he shall be debarred from all other compensation under the act. The value of this custom, though heretofore only partially recognized, will be perceived from the fact that, though Ulster is by no means the most fertile section, the average annual value of its lands is from four to four and a half dollars per acre greater than the other portions of the country. Why this custom, so manifestly beneficial to all classes, should only be made general in Ulster, but not throughout the island, it is difficult to determine.

There are also customs in other [247]parts of the country which have become traditional, and are said to resemble somewhat that of Ulster; but to what extent they prevail, or of their exact nature, we are not informed. They are commonly supposed to include the right of compensation for improvements of a certain sort, and the sale of the good-will by the out-going tenant. These, however, are not regarded with the same degree of fairness; for they can only be pleaded when the landlord by his own act severs the relation between himself and tenant; and when pleaded, all arrears of rent or damages to the farm may be claimed as an off-set; they are forfeited by ejectment for non-payment of rent, or by sub-letting or subdividing the holding, and are extinguished by the acceptance of a lease of thirty-one years or upward. This is the first attempt we notice in the bill to induce the landlords to grant leases, and we regret to find that throughout its entire length, with the exception of one clause, there is nothing at all prohibitory in its provisions. What good reason can exist for the preservation of the custom of Ulster under a lease, while those of the other three sections are bartered away for that privilege? Is this not another evidence of the partiality of a reform which should be as comprehensive as the evils to be eradicated are wide-spread?

The most important part of the bill is that which relates to the yearly tenant and tenant at will; for it affects by far the largest and most defenceless class of Irish farmers. Out of six hundred thousand heads of families who derive their existence directly from the soil, five hundred and eighty thousand, or nearly ninety-seven per centum of the whole, are of this class, and are liable at any time to be thrown on the charity of the world by the edict of a landlord or his agent, deprived not only of their sole means of livelihood, but of whatever benefits they may have conferred on their little holdings by their hard labor and well-earned money. It is useless now to dwell on the horrible calamities which have resulted from the wholesale evictions of these unfortunate people, or on what famine, pestilence, death, and too frequently agrarian crime, have year after year flowed from the uncontrolled barbarities practised on them by Irish landlords, armed with the terrors of law. The wailings and maledictions of the homeless and expatriated have so long resounded through both hemispheres, that their very echoes have startled the ears of their persecutors into something like attention. "We have," says Mr. Gladstone from his place in the House of Commons, "simplified the law against him, [the tenant,] and made ejectment cheap and easy."[41] This large class, therefore, if not receiving that adequate protection to which they are justly entitled, will, under the operation of the proposed act, have their interests placed beyond jeopardy in such a manner as, compared [248]with their present practical outlawry, will commend Mr. Gladstone to their gratitude. Having no custom to plead, and consequently very little probability of obtaining leases, the landlord can still eject them; but he must do so on a year's notice, duly stamped and dated from the previous gale day, and for proper cause, such as non-payment of rent or the refusal of the tenant to accept another holding equal in value to the one desired by the landlord. If the landlord acts without such cause, the tenant will be entitled to damages against him at the discretion of the court, exclusive of compensation for improvements and reclamation of land. The maximum measure of damages for wanton ejectment is set down in the bill as follows:

In any case the tenant upon ejectment will be entitled to compensation for improvements, from which arrears of rent may be deducted. It is the wise and beneficent intent of the bill to place this helpless class under the special protection of the court, and make it the object of large equity jurisdiction conferred; and it even holds out a release to the landlord of these penalties, providing he gives to his yearly tenant a lease of at least twenty-one years' duration.

The regulation of the tenure of lease-holders generally is most judicious, and the only compulsory one in the bill. In future all leases shall be submitted to, and the terms, as regards rents and covenants, approved by, the court, before their validity will be recognized. Heretofore, Irish leases have been made exclusively for the benefit of one party, and the ingenuity of the lower grade of the legal profession seems to have been taxed to the utmost to devise restrictions on husbandry. We have copies of several of those instruments of recent execution before us, and they certainly smack more of the pre-magna-charta era than of the present enlightened century. A petition presented to the House of Commons at its last session, from the inhabitants of the parish of Clonard, county of Meath, set forth that tenants there "are charged with a penalty of £5 for every tree, and every perch of hedge cut, injured, or destroyed;" they are to break no land without permission of the landlord, and even then only such land and in such manner as the landlord specified; a fine of £10 is exacted for "each acre or part of acre assigned, let, underlet, or let in con-acre or otherwise, or meadowed without formal written permission;" they are not to remove or cause to be removed any top-dressing, compost, or manure of any sort, nor any hay, straw, corn in the straw, holm, or fodder of any sort, nor any turnips, mangel-wurzel, or other green crop of any kind, under penalty of £5 per load or part of load; and the top-dressing, manure, etc., are to remain on the land at the termination of the tenancy, and are to be the property of the landlord. The Earl of Leitrim, a very large landed proprietor in the north, probably not considering the above restrictions sufficiently onerous, has had inserted in his numerous leases clauses whereby the tenants are required to preserve his fish and game; and without his permission in writing they are not to make any new roads, fences, or drains, nor to build up or alter houses or buildings, nor to grow two white grain crops in succession, nor to have beyond a certain maximum of tillage, nor to break up permanent grass-fields, nor to set potatoes where there has been grass the year before,[42] nor to cut turf, etc.; [249]and to surrender their leases at any time at six months' notice, or in case any of them be imprisoned by any civil or criminal process for a term exceeding fourteen days! But Edward Henry Cooper, who is supposed sometimes to honor Markie Castle with his presence, requires not only the observance of all the above conditions on the part of his serfs, but binds them to become informers and prosecutors in their own names against any poachers who may be found in the leaseholds; and they are also to procure evidence (how is not stated) against their neighbors who might kill a hare or spear a salmon on their premises. The farmers who have the happiness of living under this philanthropist are required "to submit all disputes and differences touching trespass or measuring to, and abide by the final award of"—Edward Henry Cooper or his agents; a very impartial tribunal, no doubt! The above extracts may be taken as specimens of the restrictions which surround even the most favored class of Irish farmers of the present day, and which, being made with all the forms of law, backed by the certainty of the strict enforcement of the penalties, must have a direct and ruinous tendency to check improvement and limit the scope of improved cultivation of lands.

The term improvements, so frequently met with in the bill, is defined to mean such as are suitable to the character of the holding and add to its letting value, such as buildings, reclaimed land, manures, and tillage, and the old rule of law, which presumed all improvements made by the landlord unless proved to the contrary, is reversed in favor of the tenant. No existing improvement will be paid for if not made within twenty years previous to the passage of the act, except permanent buildings and reclaimed land, nor where by the terms of a lease the holder agreed to make the improvements at his own expense. In the future no claim will be allowed for improvements made contrary to the terms of the letting, or for such as are not required for the due cultivation of the farm, nor when the landlord agrees to make them and does not neglect to do so, nor where the tenant, as part of the consideration of the lease, agrees to do them at his own charge. But whatever the tenant pays to the out-going tenant for compensation, with the sanction of his landlord, he shall be reimbursed on the termination of his tenancy.

Such, in brief, is an outline of the law under which the farmers of Ireland will have to live for some years to come. Although not all they demand and have a right to expect, it is nevertheless a great improvement on the present system, if system it may be called, under which they have so long tried to exist. Whatever is valuable in the local customs will be substantially preserved and legalized; the tenant will have some remote prospect of becoming a purchaser, and the tenant at will, a leaseholder. Compensation for improvements is guaranteed to every one capable of paying his rent, and the luxury of evictions, if not destroyed, is made an expensive one for landlords. We cannot expect that this measure, if passed in its best form, will wholly stop agitation in Ireland, but we trust and believe that it will largely conduce to the wealth and industry of her people.

THE ASSOCIATION FOR BEFRIENDING CHILDREN.

A new association has entered the field of charitable labor in this city bearing the modest title at the head of this article. It has been organized and is recommended to the public by ladies whose names are a guarantee of its success. The sphere of its charitable work is among poor children of degraded parents. It is not known, except to the few practical workers among the poor, that there exists in New York a pauper class nearly if not quite as destitute and degraded as that which is found in the great capitals of Europe. There are persons here who are born in this lowest social stratum, and will never rise from it without help. Their lives begin, are passed, and end in what seems to be hopeless degradation. The portions of the city where this class of its population will be found are those bordering on the rivers, on either side, extending as far north as Fifty-ninth street. Children born in this class inherit the vices and diseases of their parents, as well as their poverty. They exhibit a precocity in debauchery which no one can appreciate who has not been brought into contact with them. They inhale with their first respiration a fetid atmosphere. They have an instinct for vice and crime. Many of them escape the penalties of the criminal code simply because they are so young that the law overlooks them. They come into the world with the child's instinct to look to its parent as the source of authority, and a model for imitation. This authority is, for the most part, exerted to compel the commission of offences, and the model is a finished example for the grossest sins. With such influences from without, coöperating with natural and inherited tendencies to vice, it is easy to see with what fearful rapidity the child will be driven along in evil courses. If education begins, as is claimed, with the first outcry of the infant, what a training is inaugurated here!

There is another class of our population, not strictly a pauper class, but which is raised but little above it. The persons who compose it earn a scanty living by fitful labor, and are exposed to all the temptations which beset extreme poverty. They easily fall into vicious habits, squander their earnings, and their children are left without care, to subsist as best they may. These children, equally with those of the class still lower, are in need of every thing which a judicious charity can supply. The section of the city where more of these little outcasts, and their wretched parents, may be found than in any other of equal dimensions, is that bounded by Bank street on the south, Sixteenth or Seventeenth street on the north, the Ninth avenue and the river. Out of this section St. Bernard's parish has been carved, and it was here that, a few months ago, the small beginning was made from which the new organization has sprung. On the seventh day of September last, a few ladies met at St. Bernard's church, to open an industrial school for girls. Notice that the school would be commenced on that day had been given in the church on the Sunday preceding. No children came at the hour named, and the ladies, with one of the priests of the parish, went out into the lanes and alleys to compel them to come in. About twenty-five girls were gathered in the large upper room in the church[251] edifice during the forenoon. They presented a pitiful spectacle of extreme poverty and degradation. They were clad in filthy rags, and, young as they were, the faces of many of them bore traces of a course of vice and crime in which sad progress had already been made. It was clear from this first day's experiment that there was an instant and urgent duty to be performed, in reaching and reclaiming children of this class. The ladies, therefore, resolved to hold the school on Tuesday and Friday mornings in each week, from ten to twelve o'clock. The large room in the church was placed at their disposal. On the second school-day, fifty girls attended, and the number soon reached one hundred. The character and magnitude of the work which these ladies had, almost unconsciously, undertaken began to dawn on them. The school had filled up with hardly any effort on their part. The children were in need of every thing. They must be clothed and fed. They must be gently led away from evil practices and taught the very alphabet of new and better lives. A few dollars were collected at once and materials for clothing purchased. Garments were cut out, and the children soon taught to assist in making them, and the articles were distributed as they were needed. This has been continued until every child who has attended the school has received a complete outfit, including a new pair of shoes. But the girls came hungry as well, and must be fed. At the close of the school on each day, a substantial meal was served; and on Thanksgiving and Christmas days, generous dinners were given to two hundred children, for which turkeys in abundance were provided. The first step in any efficient charitable work among the destitute is, of course, to provide for physical wants. We must begin with the body. "First the natural," and "afterward that which is spiritual," is the divine order. The soul is to be reached through the body, or rather, so closely united are the two, that they are both acted upon by the care bestowed upon either. The normal cravings of the body, when unsatisfied, become diseased and the fruitful source of vicious indulgences. The hunger which demands but cannot get proper food, will demand and get sustenance hurtful to body and soul. The little child who leaves a miserable shelter in the morning, cold and hungry, will spend the first penny bestowed in charity by a careless giver at a rum-hole made familiar by errands for liquor at the command of a drunken parent, where even a penny will buy what, for the moment, answers for both food and clothing. Little girls of twelve, and even younger, have come to this school in the morning whose only breakfast has been the liquor which they could buy for a cent, and who had already contracted intemperate habits.

With children of this class, then, the first step toward moral improvement is the self-respect which they put on with their first warm, clean dress, and the satisfaction which follows a meal of wholesome food. This first step, however, leads to the next, direct religious instruction; the "line upon line and precept upon precept" by which the child's soul is to be instructed and purified.

It is hardly necessary to say that these children are virtually heathen in the midst of a Christian civilization. They have received little or no religious instruction. They are the offspring of parents who, for the most part, are Catholics in name, but who have long since lost grace and abandoned the sacraments of the church. And yet they readily take religious impressions, and are not without those first Christian ideas[252] which expand rapidly with patient teaching. It has been the practice at the school to spend a little time each morning in instructing the girls in the catechism; in repeating appropriate verses of Scripture, in committing simple hymns to memory and singing them in unison. The ladies who opened, and have conducted this school for the past six months, have not been discouraged because they have not already achieved magnificent results. They knew when they began that the salvation of these children, for this world and the next, was to be "worked out;" that moral improvement comes by "little and little;" that no sincere charitable effort is ever lost; that nothing can be lost but opportunities; and that even a cup of cold water given to one of these little ones will not fail, either of its reward or of its effect for good. So far from being discouraged, what has already been accomplished with limited means and in a casual way has far exceeded their expectations. The work has been growing under their hands from the start. The little company of ragged girls, who came reluctantly the first morning, has expanded into a school numbering one hundred and fifty, who are eager for the instruction offered to them. They manifest the utmost affection for their teachers. They show signs of improvement in every way. Many of them give unmistakable evidence of having commenced a new and useful career. One girl who was found wandering in the street on the first day was asked by one of the ladies if she ever went to mass; she said "No." "Why not?" said the lady. She replied with a bold stare, "Oh! I am a bad girl." On being told by the lady that she did not believe she was so bad, the girl replied, her eyes filling with tears, "Well, I would go if I had any thing to wear but these rags; but we've been awfully knocked about since father died, and mother says we're all going to hell, soul and body." This Maggie is now one of the best and brightest in the school, and an efficient assistant of the teachers. Others are emulating her example. In fact, so much has already been done, that the ladies who commenced are irresistibly committed to a more efficient prosecution of the work. They see in it possibilities for good which do not allow them to stop short of the more thorough organization which they have attempted in forming "The Association for Befriending Children." They feel that a necessity is laid upon them to make secure the good already attained, and that they would be recreant to their duty as Christians if they did not go on to the more perfect results plainly within their reach. The necessity of such an organized charity has been shown in the rough outline which has been given above of the destitution of these children. Notwithstanding all the charitable associations for children, under the names of "Industrial Schools," "Protectories," "Orphan Asylums," etc., there are at least twenty thousand children in the city outside of any such institution, whose necessities are even greater than those within them. In its circular the association says that it

The first step toward realizing them has already been taken. Aided by the liberality of a few gentlemen, the association has rented the building No. 316 West Fourteenth street, which is admirably adapted to the purposes of a home for those who may be received as inmates, for a longer or shorter term, combined with a day-school for others. There is room for fifty of these inmates, and for at least three hundred more day-scholars. The house is under the charge of a matron and assistants in every way fitted to care for, control, and teach the children, who find their highest reward in this opportunity to rescue and elevate these little girls. The new and most important feature of this charity is that it combines an asylum, a protectory, an industrial school, and common school in one institution. It encircles in its arms those who are so low that they are overlooked by all other charities. It finds, after all, that "the ninety and nine" have gone astray, and it seeks to bring them back to the fold. It completely removes from evil influences those who are most exposed, and shelters and fosters them till new habits are formed, and seeds of good are implanted and germinate. It gives to all food and clothing. It instructs all in the rudiments of knowledge. It gives the girls such industrial instruction as will enable them to enter on the various employments which society offers to their sex. Such a home-school the association plants in the midst of these utterly necessitous children. There should be one or more of them established in every parish in the city; and if the Christian liberality of Catholics be not found wanting, such a result will be accomplished. At present the association must be sustained in the immediate attempt which has been made. Responsibilities have been assumed which must be met by generous donations. Surely the ladies who are willing to give their best energies to this glorious work, as well as their portion of the money needed, will not appeal to the public in vain.

FRA BERNARDINO OCHINO.

The blessed Bernardine, the glory of Sienna and of the Franciscan order, had a sad counterpart in him who forms the subject of this sketch. Fra Bernardino Ochino, one of the conspicuous scandals of the sixteenth century, was a son of Domenico Tommassino, of Sienna. He received his surname from the Via del Oca, which contained the residence of his obscure parents. Having taken the habit of the Observantines, he left his convent to study medicine at Perugia. He there formed a friendship with Giulio de' Medici, afterwards Clement VII. Returning to his order, he received successive places of dignity; but whether dissatisfied with these, or really seeking a more perfect life, he again left it to embrace the austere rule of the Capuchins, then for the first time established in Sienna. Few details remain of this portion of the life of Ochino, and historians differ[254] in explaining the motives of this change. Whatever they might have been, it is certain that his fame as a preacher was acquired shortly after his entrance in the Capuchin order. His reputation grew daily. The most exacting critics gave him unqualified praise. Sadoletus ranked him with the greatest orators of antiquity. The Bishop of Fossombrone addressed him the most flattering sonnets, and Charles V. was heard to exclaim that the spirit and unction of Fra Bernardino could melt the very stones. The over-fastidious Bembo had said of the preachers of his day, "Why should I go to listen to their sermons? One hears nothing but the subtle doctor disputing with the angelic, and, finally, Aristotle called in to settle the question."

Nevertheless, Ochino stood even the test of Bembo's criticism. For the latter wrote from Venice to the Marquis of Pescara, April 23d, 1536:

This last remark of Bembo reveals to us something of Ochino's way of life at that time. He had, indeed, adopted those severe austerities which, according to the unanimous doctrine of the saints, though often the means of advancement in the supernatural life, yet, when undertaken or persevered in from an ill-advised spirit, generally lead to ruin, and become at once food and clothing for the most diabolical pride. The famous preacher travelled always on foot, bare-headed and unshod. He slept at night beneath the trees that grew on the wayside, or, if under the roof of some noble host, on the pavement of the guest's chamber. As he begged from door to door, in the crowded cities, the throng knelt, awed by his wan features and fiery eye, and the thin emaciated frame, which seemed barely to support the coarse brown habit of his order. At the tables of the nobility he did not vary the least detail of his penitential abstinence, eating from only one dish, and never even tasting wine.

When he preached, says a contemporary, the churches could not contain his hearers, and a great crowd followed him wherever he went. Nor was his preaching without fruit. The infamous Aretino either underwent or feigned a conversion, and wrote to the pope, at the instance of Ochino, begging pardon for his libels against the papal court. In the same letter, dated from Venice, April 21st, 1537, he says that Bembo "has sent a thousand souls to paradise by transferring from Sienna to this Catholic city Fra Bernardino, a religious as humble as he is virtuous."

While at Venice, Ochino procured a convent and installed there a community of Capuchins. In June, 1539, by invitation of the municipal assembly, he preached at Sienna. This he did again in the following year, with great success and fruit. It was on this occasion that he introduced the devotion of the Quarant' Ore. It appears, however, that instead of the blessed sacrament, the usual object of this devotion, Fra Bernardino exposed for veneration the crucifix. In a letter to the confraternity of St. Dominic, preparatory to the introduction of this pious practice, he writes:

The remainder of the letter sets forth in detail the arrangements for carrying out the public ceremonies of the Quarant Ore, all breathing the fragrance of Catholic piety. Yet it is more than probable that the first plague-spots had already become visible in his character. Boverio, the Capuchin annalist, still praises him, thus sketches this portion of our history, and says that Fra Bernardino was

To this we may add that when three years, his term of office, had expired, Fra Bernardino was reëlected. Yet, despite all this fair appearance, things had not gone well in his heart. His passions, restrained from sensual outbreaks and left more free in other things, developed pride, and confidence in his own judgment, to the contempt of others. The desire of gaining souls yielded slowly and almost imperceptibly to the ambition of the orator. Moreover, he drew from the works of Luther that fatal tendency to find in Holy Writ a response to the dictates of private passion and prejudice. It is said that, while preaching at Naples, in the church of San Giovanni Maggiore, he had been incited by Valdes to insult Paul III., because the holy father had not decorated him with the purple. Certain it seems to be, that Valdes was intimately associated with the friar, and helped to fill his heart with ambition and his head with the doctrines of the Swiss and German heretics. The viceroy, Pedro de Toledo, being informed that he was teaching the Lutheran novelties, complained to the ecclesiastical authorities; but Ochino either fairly stood the test of inquiry, or concealed his real opinions under astute forms of speech. The latter is probably the case; for the Dominican Caracciolo, in his MS. life of Paul IV., says,

Caracciolo further narrates that systematic means were secretly taken to spread these doctrines of Ochino, and that clandestine meetings of those infected contributed to this end. Yet Fra Bernardino still kept his fair fame, and maintained perfectly his Catholic exterior; for the ensuing year witnessed the public devotions at Sienna to which we have before alluded. It was at Venice, in 1541, that he was for a time suspended from preaching. This was not due to any plain and palpable errors of doctrine. For, although accusations against him had been made by several persons, he had in a private interview relieved the nuncio's present suspicions, if not his forebodings of the future. The temporary prohibition to preach was caused by the distrust of the nuncio, which was greatly aggravated by an allusion on the part of Ochino to the arrest of Giulio Terenziano. The latter was a theologian of Milan, an avowed and contumacious preacher of heresy, whom the nuncio had silenced in the previous year. From the pulpit Ochino appealed to the Venetians against such an exercise of authority. He placed himself on the same footing with Terenziano, and cried, "What have we done, O Venetians? What plots have we arranged against you? O Bride and Queen of the Sea! if you cast into prison, if you send to the gallows, those who announce the truth to you, how shall that truth prevail?" Nevertheless, in three days the nuncio restored to him his faculties, owing to the pressure brought to bear by the friends and admirers of the monk.

After the close of Lent in 1542, Ochino gathered at Verona many of the Capuchins of the Venetian province, and taught them his errors with all that subtlety of argument and eloquence of persuasion which seems to have characterized both his private and public speaking.[43] He had now passed the zenith of his career and was fairly started on his downward course. The luxury which he had ordered Fra Angelo to use in rebuilding the convent at Sienna, was so openly against the letter and spirit of his rule that many devout persons looked for his speedy punishment. St. Cajetan Tiene had prevented him from preaching at Rome. Among the number of those greatly alarmed for his safety was Angela Negri de Gallarate, a friend of the Marquis del Vasto, the latter at this time an intimate friend and private correspondent of Ochino. This excellent lady, after hearing Fra Bernardino at Verona, where he commented on the epistles of St. Paul, predicted that he would fall into heresy. It soon became only too manifest. His disgust for prayer, his absence from the choir, his weariness in assisting at the sacred mysteries shocked his brethren, so long edified by his pious bearing and assiduity in these good works. Among others, Fra Agustino, of Sienna, gently reproved him, saying, "When you go to administer the sacrament without prayer, you remind me of a rider setting forth without stirrups; take care that you do not fall." Fra Bernardino, whose soul was withering for want of that celestial dew which falls only in the calm evening stillness of prayer, all [257]worn and jaded as he was with earthly labors, and, alas! success, could only answer, that he did not cease praying who kept on doing good.

He was now engrossed with secular things, giving counsel in the affairs of princes; and so completely was his time occupied, that he requested the holy father to be relieved from the daily recitation of the divine office. At this same period he entered into friendly relations with the heretics, and eagerly read all their works.

The pope still had hopes of holding him back, invited him to Rome, and even dreamed of giving him the purple. This brought affairs to a crisis. Before accepting or rejecting the invitation, Ochino took council with his friends. Giberti, the holy Bishop of Verona, sent him to consult Cardinal Contarini, at Bologna. The latter was too ill to hold a long conversation, and Ochino left him immediately to seek Peter Martyr Vermigli, at Florence. This visit to Peter Martyr, who, already rotten to the core, was shortly to fall, convinced the Capuchin that his doctrines could not stand the censorship of Rome, and that, if he went there, he must be prepared to renounce them. This conviction and the urgent advice of Peter Martyr decided him to leave Italy immediately. On the 22d of August, 1542, he writes to the Marquis of Pescara, detailing his anxieties and the causes of his flight.

Further on he shows consciousness of the sensation he is creating. "These men," he says, "tremble before a poor monk."

Flight being determined upon, he took refuge, first, with Catharine Cibo, Duchess of Camerino. Thence he fled to Ferrara.

Here he received letters of introduction to the principal heretics of Geneva. On his way across the Apennines he had taken with him Fra Mariano, a saintly lay-brother, of whose dove-like tenderness and simplicity sweet anecdotes are told, recalling the early memories of Assisi. Mariano, under the impression that they were going to preach to the heretics, agreed to lay aside the religious habit; but, on learning the fraud which Ochino had practised on him, sought to recall his unfortunate superior. The haughty orator was proof to the tears and entreaties of his humble brother, and the latter finally turned back alone, carrying the seal of the order, which the apostate had kept to the last.

Calvin wrote to Melancthon, "We have here Fra Bernardino, the famous orator, whose departure has stirred Italy as it has never been moved before." Prayers for him, indeed, were offered throughout Italy. Among the Capuchins—who, it is said, came near being suppressed—great pains were taken to eradicate the evil germs sown by Ochino; and Fra Francesco, vicar of Milan, renouncing his heresies, expiated them by a severe penance. Cardinal Caraffa, who, a few years later became Paul IV., publicly lamented the apostasy of Ochino in most eloquent terms, contrasting the austere Capuchin with the unfrocked preacher, and calling on the erring son to return to his mother. He promised in this case, moreover, kind treatment from the pope, who had always shown great favor to Ochino.

In a letter from Geneva, in April,[258] 1543, the apostate sought to justify his career and to explain his later course of action. This letter, addressed to Muzio, begins with that allusion to youthful enthusiasm, which has since become the threadbare apology of those who fling away the cowl. He describes his life among the Observantines in the words of the apostle, "I made great progress in the Jews' religion, above many of my equals in my own nation, being more zealous for the traditions of my fathers." (Galat. i. 14.) But very soon he was enlightened by the Lord to the following effect: "That it is Christ who has satisfied for the sins of his elect, and has merited for them paradise, and that he alone is their justification; that the vows pronounced in the religious orders are not only invalid but impious; and that the Roman Church, although of an exterior splendid to carnal eyes, is none the less an abomination in the sight of God." This, he would have us believe, took place before his entering the Capuchin order. This doctrine of the vanity of good works, of the sinfulness of monastic vows, his excuse for abandoning both, was rooted in his mind during those years of rugged asceticism, while he still preached prayer and penance, as we have seen at Sienna! A liar or a hypocrite? Perhaps neither. For the remainder of the letter is full of that fanatical declamation against Antichrist and the harlot of Babylon, and all that railing cant in which weak brains and over-excited imaginations have, ever since, found expression and relief. The magistrates of Sienna also received a pointed letter, in which Ochino set forth his doctrine on justification. The letter is in very much the same style as that to Muzio.

Poor, despised Carlstadt, when he saw his hopeful pupil upset (as he then supposed) the pope and cast the church to the winds, thought that surely Luther would not assume to himself infallible authority and supreme jurisdiction. In this he was mistaken, as he found to his cost. For men who aid in rebellion against lawful authority too often find themselves a prey to usurpers; and the Bible, torn from the anointed hands of its only rightful interpreter, became simply a slave; its sacred text an exordium for every fanatic and an accomplice to every scoundrel. The position which Ochino took was the same as that of all other heresiarchs, from him whom St. Polycarp addressed as "the first born of Satan," down to the very latest. He constantly applied to himself the language which only one apostle dared to use. Although he did not profess to have seen the third heaven, yet he did profess to be thoroughly competent to teach and determine the Christian revelation. Under these circumstances, it is not strange that he soon found himself in bad odor at Geneva, where an authority, equally respectable, and likewise acknowledging the right of private examination, nevertheless burned alive poor wretches who were so unfortunate as not to agree with it. After founding the Italian Church at Geneva, and there publishing several works, so outrageous in their character as to draw condemnation even from some Protestant historians, Ochino became embroiled with the Calvinists. The natural result of these quarrels was his excommunication and banishment by the latter. He fled with a woman to whom he had been sacrilegiously married. At Basle, he published his sermons. Thence he was called to preach at Augsburg, where he enjoyed great popularity and a salary, until the invasion of Charles V. compelled him to flee with Stancari of Mantua. Having met, at Strasburg,[259] his old friend, Peter Martyr, who, meanwhile, had openly apostatized, he journeyed with him to England, and there preached to the Italian refugees. On the death of Edward VI., he returned to Switzerland, and was chosen pastor of the exiles of Locarno, who had obtained from the Senate the use of a church and their native language. But as at Geneva, so at Zurich, the right of private judgment involved not merely the right to believe as one might list, but also the right, if one were able, to force every body else to believe in like manner. Ochino was accused of anti-trinitarianism and also of sanctioning polygamy, and obliged to swear that he would live and die in the faith of—what? who? The Catholic Church, whose demand on the human intellect is at once a command to believe and a reason for believing, backed by the pledged word of Jesus Christ? No! Ochino had rejected her authority. He now swore to live and die in the teaching of Zwinglius. This oath, however, seemed to lose its force in a few days. For he shortly attacked what he had sworn to defend, and, in his Laberinto, denied almost every article of the Christian faith. Banished from Switzerland, he fled, in the dead of winter, with his four children, into Poland, where he soon afterward earned universal contempt, by publicly countenancing King Sigismund in a projected bigamy. Bullinger, whom Ochino had called the "pope of Zurich," says of him, "He is far advanced in the science of perdition, and an ungrateful wretch toward the senate and the ministers, full of malice and impiety." Beza also characterizes him as "Bernardinum Ochinum, monachum magni nominis apud Italos, et auctorem ordinis Capucinorum, qui in fine se ostendit esse iniquum hypocritam. Bernardino Ochino, a monk of great name among the Italians, founder of the Capuchins," (this a mistake,) "who finally showed himself to be a wicked hypocrite."

From these words of Beza, Boverio has sought to infer that the apostate finally repented and was restored to the Catholic communion. He has also introduced testimony to prove that Ochino was poniarded at Geneva, after professing the Catholic faith and confessing to a priest. But historians seem to favor the tradition recorded by Graziani, who says, "Ochinus Polonia excessit, ac omnibus extorris ac profugus, cum in vili Moraviæ pago a vetere amico hospitio esset acceptus ibi senio fessus cum uxore ac duabus filiabus, filioque una peste interiit. Ochino died in Poland a universal outcast, after having accepted the hospitality of an old friend, in an obscure village of Moravia. Here, worn out with age, he perished, together with his wife, two daughters and son, in one pestilence."

To rehearse the various opinions of Ochino would be a difficult and thankless task. Like most of the reformers, he taught the total depravity of human nature and human reason, and, in order to establish the motives of faith, appealed to private illumination, assuming for the disciple what he denied to the teacher.

Besides this miserable travesty of the Christian distinction between the natural and supernatural orders, there is in his doctrine scarcely one point of resemblance to the Catholic faith. Having cast away the ballast that had steadied his earlier years, the power which had carried him on such a brilliant course proved his ruin. His ignominious death did not excite enough pity to cause itself to be remembered. He disappeared a lonely and abandoned wreck.

OLD BOOKS.

Let the world run after new books; commend me to the enduring fascination of old ones—not old only in authorship, but old in imprint, in form and comeliness, or perhaps uncomeliness!

What value is there in gilded edges and Turkey leather, which must be handled so gingerly, compared with the sturdy calfskin, ribbed and bevelled, which has outlived generations of human calves? and what is tinted hot-press to the page grown yellow in the atmosphere of centuries? The quaintly spelt word, the ornamented initial which begins each chapter, and the more elaborate ornamentation of dedication and title-page—all so poor now as works of art, yet in their day masterpieces of handicraft—there is a spell in them! till from that olden time

A heavy quarto lies here bearing impress on its exterior, Workes of Lvcivs Annævs Seneca. Both Morall and Naturall. Translated by Thomas Lodge, D. of Physicke; and within is a long Latin dedication to the Illvstrissimo D. Thomæ Egertono, Domino de Ellismere, etc., etc. London, 1614.

Not so very old either; but within that time what changes have passed over the world! How often has ambition or popular discontent, or perchance honest resistance, revolutionized nations, and swept away the boundaries of kingdoms! How often some power, seemingly inadequate to the effect, has changed the currents of human thought, and exalted or degraded not only individuals, but aggregate masses of humanity, as effectively as the earthquake convulses, and then depresses or upheaves the visible surface on which they dwell!

What changes also in the especial surroundings of this individual volume! What improvements in the petty affairs of domestic life, the little arrangements of the household; in the union of science and mechanical art to produce necessaries and superfluities; in refinements of sentiment and manners; in a better relation between rulers and the ruled; and, to sum up all, in a more just appreciation by each individual of what he owes to himself and to his fellow-creatures!

All through the wide extent of this past time history and legends stretch back their ramifications, like paths through some vast extended landscape. In some places clear and well defined, and easily followed; again, leading through tangle and uncertainty, and at more than one point brought to an abrupt termination, beyond which all vestige of a way is lost. We tread here in thought a space of time which has been passed over by millions and millions—that countless throng of the nameless whose steps have left no foot-print—and where to a few only has been accorded the privilege of marking, by deed or word, the spot whereon they stood. It is the buried city of the immaterial world—where is uncovered to us noble deeds, and lofty aspirations, and holy purposes; and in darker spots are wrecks of hopes, and hearts, and immortal souls, to which all the wealth gone down in ocean counts as nothing.

To retrace again and again these[261] paths, so often indistinct and so often awakening an interest they fail to gratify; to remove with patient toil here the doubt and there the untruth which encumber them, and anon to clear away some obstacle and open to sight a new vista, has been at all periods the occupation and the richest intellectual enjoyment of some of the most gifted minds, who accepted their ample reward in the simple success of their labors. Even the more humble wanderer through the mazy labyrinth, whose limited scope it is only to gaze and wonder, finds a charm in such investigations widely different from any other mental pursuit. It is the charm of a common humanity—the recognition and acknowledgment of a chain, invisible and intangible, and in a measure undefinable, but too strong ever to be broken, which unites each to the other the whole human family. It is not religion—neither philosophy; for in many a land, despite the barbarous precepts of a so-called religion, and where philosophy was never heard of, it vibrates in the savage heart to the necessities of the stranger. Its first link is riveted in our common origin; and its mysterious existence widely and wisely asserts itself in the interest with which, for human creatures, is ever invested the affairs of human kind.

Furthermore, it is this great social bond which attracts us to the personages of fiction, and always precisely in proportion as they assimilate to real life; and since even the most successful creations of fancy can hardly fail to fall short, in some point, of realities, so truth itself, properly presented, will always possess attractions beyond any fiction.

But it is not in battle-fields and conquests, nor yet in the impassioned eloquence or astute wisdom of senates and council chambers, that we hold closest communion with the buried of long ago; it is in that homely every-day life which we are ourselves living; in the little pleasures, regrets, and loves; in the annoyances, successes, and failures; in the very mistakes and imprudences which made up the ego ipse so like our own that we find companionship. How they return to life again in all these things! and we enter into their most private chambers—the doors are all open now—and read their most private thoughts. We know them better than did their contemporaries; and they suffer a wrong sometimes in this ruthless unveiling which our heart resents. Now, it is proper that truth should ultimately, even on earth, prevail; and that the traitorous soldier and unscrupulous courtier, after having lived their lives out in ill-gotten wealth and undeserved honor, should wear in history their true colors; that even a woman's misdeeds, when they touch public interest, should be brought to meet a public verdict; but then these little private endurances—the life-long struggle with poverty here, the unavailing concessions to unreasonable tyranny by home and hearth there, the martyrdom of life, as it may be called, which they so carefully guarded from sight—how it is all paraded now to the world, and passed from book to book!

And yet it takes all this to make up the entire truthful portrait. Indeed, so very far does it go to modify our opinions of them, that the judgments formed without it must be oftentimes very erroneous.

II.

Had our old book but a tongue, what tales it might tell of the life after life which has passed before it!

Since the date of its printing, 1614, twelve sovereigns have worn the English crown; for in that year James[262] I. was upon the throne of his mother's enemy. Eleven years before, when a messenger was sent to him in Scotland with an announcement of the death of Elizabeth and his own accession, the tidings found him so poor that he was obliged to apply to the English secretary, Cecil, for money to pay his expenses to London. His wants multiplied rapidly. From his first stopping-place he sent a courier forward to demand the crown jewels for his wife; and a little further on another messenger was dispatched for coaches, horses, litters, and, "above all, a chamberlain much needed."

This journey of James was a very unique affair. Honors were scattered so lavishingly that knighthood was to be had for the asking; and a little pasquinade appeared in print, advertising itself—A Help to Memorie in learning Names of English Nobility.

And so began at the very outset the spirit which said afterward, "Do I make the lords? Do I make the bishops? Then God's grace—I make what likes me of law and gospel!" So outspoke the king; who is described by those who went to meet him as "ill-favored in appearance, slovenly, dirty, and wearing always a wadded dagger-proof doublet."

These eleven years of his reign had been fruitful in troubles of all kinds. The death of his son Henry, and the alleged, but never proven schemes of Lady Arabella Stuart to gain the throne, made a portion of them; and all were aggravated by that spectre, conjured up by his reckless extravagance, and which haunted him to the last moment of his life—an empty purse. When his daughter Elizabeth was married to the Palatine of Bohemia, the fireworks alone of London cost seven thousand pounds; and when my Lord Hargrave accompanied the bride to the Rhine and brought back a bill of thirty thousand pounds, the king, having neither gold nor silver to pay with, gave him a grant to coin base farthings in brass.

King James, in a book which he wrote on Sports, advocates all active exercises, and one of his own greatest pleasures had always been hunting. When so engaged, every thing else was forgotten, and hence arose a grievance by no means trifling to his English subjects—he and his courtiers, his companions in the chase, not unfrequently quartered themselves in some district where game abounded, until the provisions of the locality were absolutely exhausted. There is a story told of him that, while hunting at Royston, his favorite hound Jowler was missed one day, and the next he reappeared with a paper fastened on his neck, upon which was written—

How much further he might have been led to hunt, is unknown; for there Lord Hay, who loved hounds, and horns also, promised no more to importune his majesty, and his more sedate counsellors succeeded in getting him back to business. In the mean time, in the more weighty matters of politics and religion, where the ambitious [263]nobles of two countries intrigued and plotted for power over a monarch easily imposed upon, discord and contention reigned, until in 1614 they seem to have reached their height.

And so stood the world, old book! into which thou wert launched. Guy Fawkes and his crew had been swept from the earth; but in the Tower of London this year lay a more noble company, accused of the same crime—treason. There was Earl Grey, and Lord Cobham, and Sir Walter Raleigh, besides some others. These three had been tried, convicted, sentenced to die, and taken to the scaffold; and at the last moment reprieved and committed to the Tower. At the last moment it was, and it came near being a minute too late; for James wrote his order in such haste that he forgot to sign it, and the messenger was called back; then when this one man on horseback reached the place of execution, the great crowd gathered there prevented his being seen or heard for a long time, and the axe was just ready for the fatal stroke. On what a chance hung three lives! But what availed their added years? Earl Grey is dying now in that Tower; and Lord Cobham, never very strong in intellect, has grown weaker still in captivity; and so, after a little time, he is suffered to wander out; and he goes to a miserable hovel in the Minories, and climbs a ladder to a loft, and lies down on straw—to die of very destitution.

Three years hence King James will want money even more than he does now; and he will call Sir Walter Raleigh from his cell, and place him at the head of a fleet; for Sir Walter—who has been to the new world in years long gone by—insinuates that there gold is to be had for the digging. He fails to get it, though; and on his return to England, he is seized, and, with only the shadow of a just trial, executed; partly on the old sentence, but more to please the Spaniards, whom he came in conflict with abroad.

Another life is this year pining itself away in that Tower—the Lady Arabella Stuart; a woman descended from royalty, Henry VII., in the same degree as King James himself, and therefore to be feared. Many years ago charges of conspiracy against the government were brought against her, and she was placed in confinement. She contrived to escape, and with her husband, Lord Seymour, attempted to reach France. By some mischance they were separated in their flight; he reached the coast of Flanders in safety, but the little vessel in which she had embarked was pursued, overtaken, and the unhappy fugitive compelled to return. Love and hope bore her up bravely for a time; but she is sinking at last, and it is recorded that September 27th, 1615, she died there.

High above all this misery merry notes were heard; for in 1614, was a grand marriage and banqueting such as London had not seen—no, not even at the bridal of the king's own daughter. The story is sadder than any fiction, a "sad o'er true tale"—as follows:

Some years before this, the Lady Frances Howard, daughter of the Earl of Suffolk, beautiful and accomplished, though still a mere child of thirteen years, was married to the Earl of Essex, a few years older. The ceremony was merely to secure the alliance; for the young countess returned to her home and her embroidery, and the earl to the university. Four years after, he went to claim the bride whose image had doubtless oftentimes stolen between him and his books; "but (says the chronicle) his joy was overcast: he found her cold and contemptuous, and altogether averse to him."

A change had come over the lady. She had met her evil genius in the unprincipled favorite of King James, the Lord Rochester, who on his side was vain of his conquest. At this point Lady Frances is an object of pity; for she was the victim of a usage of courts which makes and mars the most solemn of all contracts without the least regard to individual bias; a usage which is responsible for some of the blackest crimes of history; but, O woman! from thy first steps downward how rapid is the descent; wandering thoughts, folly—crime! Such was the story of Lady Frances. Pity changes to horror at her subsequent career, and the unscrupulous vindictiveness which she displayed toward all those who strove to arrest her course. Most conspicuous among such was Sir Thomas Overbury, the bosom friend of Lord Rochester himself. He had more than once aided their meetings, and—so said gossip—had even penned the epistles which won her; but he became alarmed at the length to which their ventures were carried; and when the next step proposed was a divorce from the Earl Essex, he gave Rochester much good advice and solemn warning that he withdrew his aid in future. This was reported to the countess, and his doom was sealed. She failed in several attempts to involve him in individual disputes, whereby, as she hoped, a duel might have closed his life; she failed in having him sent in a public capacity abroad; she succeeded, however, in having him implicated in disloyalty and committed to the Tower, when shortly after he suddenly died. A divorce was now sought on some trifling pretext; and as no remonstrance was offered by Earl Essex, it was soon obtained; and in order that she might not lose rank, King James created Rochester Earl of Somerset.

And now, with nothing to mar their felicities, London was ablaze with bonfires over their marriage celebration.

A brilliant triumph, soon to meet with a dark reverse. Scarcely a year had passed, when a new candidate for the king's favor appeared in Villiers, afterward created Duke of Buckingham; and the weak monarch, readily attracted by a new face, was very soon anxious to rid himself of Somerset. Enemies of the still beautiful countess were not slow to avail themselves of the royal mood; nor was it difficult to find in her questionable career a pretext for suspicion. With consent of the king, they were conjointly accused of having caused the death of Sir Thomas Overbury by poison, and sent to the Tower. It is recorded that Earl Somerset was hunting with the king at Royston, and actually sitting beside him when the warrant was served; and when he appealed to his royal master to forbid the indignity, King James only answered,

After the examination of some three hundred witnesses, Sir Edward Coke reported that the countess had used unlawful arts to separate herself from Earl Essex, and to win the love of[265] Rochester, and that they had together plotted the death of Sir Thomas Overbury. Some of the inferior actors in the tragedy were condemned and executed; among them Mrs. Turner, who had in former years been governess to the countess, and who had once persuaded her to consult a wizard or fortune-teller—from whence came the charge of "unlawful arts." The unhappy principals were repeatedly questioned, and exhorted to confess; but with no avail. The countess at times made some admissions, but none which implicated the earl or seriously convicted herself; and we are fain to believe they arose rather from her unmitigated misery, and the harassing importunities of her judges, than from conscious guilt. They were at length restored to liberty—at least to the liberty of banishment from court; liberty to return to their country-seat and remain there; and there, a writer of that day tells us, "they lived in the same house many years without exchanging a word with each other."

King James seems to have devoted no small portion of his time to advancing the interests of Cupid—if love it could be called, where love there was none. Sir Edward Coke had himself an only daughter, whom the king assigned to Viscount Purbeck, brother of the Duke of Buckingham. The wife of Coke, Lady Hatton, was a very Xantippe; and the eloquence of the great jurist, which could sway multitudes, and check or change the course of political events, was totally powerless within the walls of his own castle. Lady Hatton wisely opposed this match, to which her daughter was averse; but in this case the king as well as Sir Edward had decided, and for once she was obliged to yield; "the king doing the matter (says an old writer) as if the safety of the nation depended on its completion." Lady Hatton had one retaliation within her reach, and she took it; she gave orders that at the wedding "neither Sir Edward Coke nor any of his servants be admitted."[46]

How fared at last the hapless Lady Purbeck, the heiress of thousands and thousands? She had the misery to see the husband not of her choice become in a short time hopelessly insane; while his brother, under pretence of looking after his affairs, left her, at times, almost penniless. Her letters to this unprincipled miscreant, written oftentimes under bodily as well as mental suffering, are truly touching. In one of them she says,

III.

The career of King James and his son after the insolent and unscrupulous Buckingham appeared to lead or drive them, as the case might be, seems scarcely the actual history of sane men. When the downfall of Somerset left him supreme master, he seems to have taken possession of both king and palace. He soon sent for his kindred from all parts of the country; and their arrival is thus described:

The most amusing event—or rather the most amusing absurdity in the annals of that period, or one might say of any other period—was the expedition of Prince Charles to Spain, in 1623, to bring home a wife.

Lord Bristol was at the court of Philip IV., negotiating a marriage between the infanta, his sister, and Prince Charles, and endeavoring to secure for him her magnificent dower; when Buckingham, thinking he was gaining too much credit by his labors, felt desirous of going himself to the spot and taking a part in the matter.

How was this to be accomplished? His wits never failed him. He approached Charles with a general lamentation over royal marriages, where the parties meet first at the altar—too late to retreat—and suggested to him the advantages and romance of presenting himself in person to the infanta, and bringing her home a bride. Charles was charmed with the quixotic notion, and they adjourned to the palace to obtain the king's consent. He at first flatly refused; then consented. The next day he fell into a passion of tears, and prayed to be released from his promise; for he feared the dangers of the journey, and the false reports and suspicions it might give rise to among his subjects. Charles was persuasive, the duke indignant and insolent, and once more the king told them to go. In the words of a historian—

After another storm of words, it was decided that they should go in disguise, with only these two attendants. Their incognito was very poorly carried out; for at Gravesend they were suspected by giving gold coin, and at Canterbury they would have been arrested, had not Buckingham taken off his false wig and privately made himself known to the mayor. Finally they reached Dover, where they found Cottington, who had gone on before, in readiness with a vessel, and they set sail for the French coast.

In Paris, a Scottish nobleman who had somehow received intimation of their being there, called late one night on the English ambassador, and asked if he had seen the prince. "What prince?" "Prince Charles," was the reply; but it was too incredible for belief. Yet while in Paris, although not considering it worth their while to visit the British ambassador, they contrived to gain admission, without being recognized, to a court dancing-party, where Charles saw for the first time the fascinating Princess Henrietta.[47]

The consternation in England when their departure, so unbefitting royalty, was discovered, can scarcely be imagined. The king ordered prayers to be offered for their safe return; but no allusion made to their destination. A gentleman of that day, named Meade, writing to a friend, tells this story:

Meanwhile these two knights-errant, or, as the king said, "sweet boys and dear venturous knights, worthy to be put in a new romanzo,"[48] continued their journey. At last, at the close of an evening in March, two [267]mules stopped at the house of my Lord Bristol in Madrid, and the riders alighted. Mr. Thomas Smith went in first with a portmanteau under his arm—then Mr. John Smith was called in; and before the amazed diplomatist stood the heir to the British crown and the Marquis of Buckingham. He stared as if he had seen two ghosts; but he presently took Prince Charles to a bed-chamber, and dispatched a courier to inform his father of his safe arrival.

The Spanish court took the matter in its most chivalrous light, as the impulse of a lover; although rather puzzled how to arrange a reception in a case which certainly had no precedent. The Spanish people were enthusiastic. The infanta blushed charmingly at such unheard-of homage, and began to study English. King James sent over a troop of courtiers for a retinue, who proved a rough set—"jeering at the cookery and the religion, and making themselves odious."[49] The Spanish prime minister was soon disgusted with Buckingham, and would have been still more so if he could have understood all his swearing words—"which fortunately he cannot, (says a contemporary,) because they are done in English."

The letters which passed between this precious couple and the king at home are amusing. A want of money was his majesty's normal condition; and the pitiless way in which they seemed to ignore it, by making constant requisitions on his purse, is surprising and amusing effrontery. Prince Charles writes,

King James found consolation in believing that they would soon return with the infanta and her dower; so he strove his best to supply them, and touched on smaller matters. He besought baby Charles and Stenie not to forget their dancing, though they

Difficult as it was for the king to satisfy their pecuniary demands, and desirous though he was to act on Prince Charles's frequent suggestion, to "consult no counsel, but leave all to Stenie and me," he received from them some proposals which rather exceeded his powers of acceptance; one of which was nothing less than that, to please Spain, he should acknowledge the pope's spiritual supremacy![50] Probably at this point some little vision of the people of England flitted over him; for he replied that he had made a great many concessions already, and added—

The end of their expedition, and of the negotiations with Spain, are well known. After meeting the most honorable hospitality, they raised objections which they never intended to have removed, and made promises which they never meant to fulfil; and returned home without the infanta, and without her dower, to reject with insult the Spanish alliance and lay the blame on Spain.

King James died like any common mortal, in the most literal acceptation of the phrase. The same slight cold passing into mortal sickness, the household called up in alarm at day-dawn, the same hugging on to the dear old life. The countess, mother of Buckingham, "ran with a draught and a posset;" he took the draught and applied the posset, but it was too late—and the prince, as Charles I., succeeded him.

Charles had married the sister of the French king, the Princess Henrietta, whose dancing had captivated his youthful fancy on his way to Spain; but some little discord and confusion had crept into the music and dancing of their English home. He had promised religious freedom for herself and her household. Her retinue was very numerous, and, with different religious creeds and widely different social habits, it is not surprising that year by year a sort of estrangement seemed to grow up between them. His majesty ascribed this to foreign influence; and he resolved to rule his own household, and in that very expressive phrase—make a clean sweep.

Buckingham was charged with their transportation and shipping at Dover; and his master wrote—

The civil wars which desolated the kingdom under Charles I., and stained the soil of England with English blood, are familiar to all. Buckingham fell by the knife of an assassin. Whether sadly unwise or fearfully criminal, the king expiated his mistakes with his life. He was seized and imprisoned; and after a trial condemned and executed. His queen, Henrietta, with her children, all except one, were in France for safety. His little daughter, the Princess Elizabeth, was in England, and at his request was conducted to him the last evening of his life. Then, says Whitlock,

There is preserved, in several collections of old poetry, a long and pathetic elegy, written by King Charles at Carisbrook Castle, where he was imprisoned; it is entitled, An Imploration to the King of Kings, and he sadly says therein—

The Commonwealth of England, whose first grand state seal dated 1648, came virtually to its end at the death of its founder in 1658; and a few years later Charles II. was called from exile to the throne of his fathers.

He is called the merrie monarch; but very far from merrie was the nation under his rule—dissensions and discontent pervaded it in every direction. The truth is, that the prominence given in brief histories to this epithet, the madcap frolics of his court, the witty and unprincipled nobles, and the uncommon array of female beauty which made up the surroundings of his own indolence and love of pleasure, lead to a sort of general idea that all England was one grand carousal. A nearer view changes the scene. The religious contests between conformists and non-conformists, which began in 1662 and lasted some twenty-six years—the fruitful harvest planted in preceding years of anarchy and fanaticism—present pictures of persecution and suffering such as enter only into religious warfare; and which, perhaps, it is most charity to refer to the importance which the opposing parties attach to their subject. During these twenty-six years it is computed that the penalties which were inflicted amounted to between twelve and fourteen millions sterling, and the sufferers for conscience' sake numbered 60,000. Homeless, and hungry, and penniless, they wandered about or were immured in jails; and contemporary writers (Defoe, Penn) assert that from 5000 to 8000 perished "like sheep, in those noisome pest-houses." Surely that was not the day of merrie old England, beyond the precincts of the court.

Charles was succeeded by his brother, James II., who was soon deposed, and William, Prince of Orange, who had married his daughter Mary, was invited to the throne. Next to these came another daughter of James, Queen Anne; and with her expired the line of the Stuarts. The dark fortunes of Mary Stuart rested in some form on all her descendants.

IV.

In what quiet library, in what lordly mansion, was this old book safely stored away through all these changing scenes of pageantry and splendor, of riot and bloodshed? Who was he that first received it, new and comely, from the hands of William Stanly, printer, (who is saved to fame in a little corner of the title-page,) and what name is this, written on the margin in ink, embrowned now and almost obliterated, which evidently was once intended to establish ownership? The dedication to my Lord of Ellismere bespeaks for it a place with the noble and learned; who among them found time then to seek

What statesman, by lamplight perhaps, when the toils of the day were over, turned these very pages, and drew a rule for his steps from the maxims of the Roman? Hadst thou but a tongue, old book, what tales thou mightest tell! Where wert thou when that pestilence, the plague, swept from London 100,000 of its inhabitants? or where when its career was checked by that other horror, the great conflagration? when the bells from a hundred steeples tolled their own requiem, and the number[270] of houses in London was diminished by 13,000.

One hundred years had passed over it when George I. ascended the English throne; then came Georges II., III., and IV., King William and Queen Victoria. Under the two first, no small portion of the troubles, both at home and with foreign nations, were traceable to the plots and intrigues of the last solitary scion of the house of Stuart; and with George III. a new war boomed over the Atlantic. At last it was finished; and at the somewhat mature age of two hundred and fifty-six years, but still in good condition, our time-honored volume has crossed the ocean to find a new home under the stripes and stars. One more exponent, in its silent eloquence, of that

THE VATICAN COUNCIL.
NUMBER FOUR.

Another month of the Vatican Council has passed by without any public session. There has not been a general congregation since February 22d, when the twenty-ninth was held. This absence of grand public ceremonials has driven some of the newspaper correspondents to turn elsewhere in search of sensational items. We are no longer inundated, and at times amused, by column after column of newspaper accounts narrating speeches and events in the council that had scarcely any existence, except in the fertile imaginations of the writers. The outward calm in Rome has produced its effect in no small extent in the newspaper world.

This calm, however, is by no means the calm of inaction. Quite the contrary. At no time were the fathers so assiduously engaged in the deep study of the matters before them, or more earnestly occupied with their conciliar labors.

We stated in our last number that they were then engaged in the discussion of the subjects of discipline, on which several schemata, or draughts, had been drawn up by preparatory committees of theologians, in anticipation of the council. The discussion was continued, on February 19th, with six speakers, on the 21st with seven speakers, and was closed on the 22d with seven other speakers, when the fourth schema, or draught, on discipline, was referred, as the preceding ones had been, to the appropriate committee or deputation on matters of discipline.

Thus, within two months, since the congregation of December 28th, when the discussion began, one schema on faith and four on discipline had come up before the bishops; and there had been in all one hundred and forty-five speeches delivered on them. The experience of those two months had made several points very clear:

First, the schemata, or draughts, as prepared by the theologians, did not prove as acceptable to the bishops as perhaps their authors had expected. On the contrary, the bishops subjected[271] them to a very searching examination and discussion, criticising and weighing every point and every expression; and seemed disposed, in measure, to recast some of them entirely.

Secondly, the mode in which this examination had so far been conducted might, it was thought, be improved, both in its thoroughness and in the length of time it occupied. So far, all the prelates who wished had spoken one after another. The sittings of the congregations usually lasted from nine A.M. to one P.M., and became a great trial of the physical endurance of many of these aged men. The prelates could not refrain from asking each other, What progress are we making? How long will this series of speeches last?

Again, many of the speakers, unwilling to occupy the attention of the congregation too long, strove to condense what they wished to say, and sometimes omitted much that might have thrown additional light on the subject, or would be material for the support of their views. Yet how could this be avoided without extending the discussion beyond the limits of endurance.

Still more, many prelates, whose mature and experienced judgments would have been most valuable, would not speak; some, because they were unwilling to increase the already large number of speakers; others, because their organs of speech were too feeble to assure their being heard throughout a hall which held over a thousand persons in by no means crowded seats.

These points had gradually made themselves manifest, and, as we intimated in our last article, the question had been raised, how these difficulties could be met. Some suggested a division of the prelates into a number of sections, in each and all of which the discussions might go on at the same time. But, after much consideration, another method was resolved on, and was announced in the congregation of the 22d of February as the one to be followed in the examination and discussion of the next schema, or draught, to be taken up by the council.

The main points of these additional regulations are the following: When a schema comes before the council for examination, instead of the vivâ voce discussion, which according to the first system would take place in the congregations, before sending it to the proper committee, if necessary, the cardinals presiding shall fix and announce a suitable time, within which any and every one of the fathers, who desires to do so, may commit his views on it to writing, and shall send in the same to the secretary of the council. Any amendments, additions, and corrections which he may wish to make must be fully and clearly written out. The secretary must, at the end of the appointed time, transmit to the appropriate committee, or deputation of bishops, all the remarks on the schema. The schema will be examined and remodelled, if necessary, by the committee, under the light of these written statements, precisely as would be done if the members had before them the full report of speeches made in the former style before the congregation. The reformed schema is again presented to the congregation, and with it a summary exposition of the substance of the remarks and of the amendments proposed. "When the schema, together with the aforesaid summary, has been distributed to the fathers of the council, the said presidents shall appoint a day for its discussion in general congregation." In parliamentary usage, this corresponds to having the discussion, not on the first, but on the second reading of a bill.

This discussion must proceed in the strict order of topics, first generally; that is, on the schema wholly or in part, as it may have been brought before the congregation; then on the several portions of it, one by one. The speakers who wish to take part in the discussion must, in giving in their names as before, state also whether they intend to speak on the schema as a whole, or on some special parts of it, and which ones. The form of amendment, should a speaker propose one, must be handed in, in writing, at the conclusion of his speech. Of course, the speakers must keep to the point in debate. If any one wanders from it, he will be called to order. The members of the reporting committee or deputation will, moreover, be free to speak in reply, during the debate, as they judge it advisable.

It is already evident that the first provision of these by-laws or regulations is attaining its purpose. At the congregation of February 22d, when they went into force, a certain portion of a new schema, or draught, on matters of faith, was announced as the next matter regularly coming up for examination, and the space of ten days was assigned within which the fathers might write out their criticisms, and propose any emendations or amendments to it, and send such written opinions to the secretary. There was no limit to hamper the bishops in the fullest expression of their sentiments. They might write briefly, or at as great length as they deemed proper. Moreover, in writing, they would naturally be more exact and careful than perhaps they could be in speeches often made extempore. There would also be less liability of being misunderstood. Moreover, many more could and probably would write than would have spoken. It is said over one hundred and fifty did so write on this first occasion; so that, in reality, as much was done in those ten days as under the old system would have occupied two months. The second portion, touching the debate before the congregation, will of course be effective and satisfactory. And it is confidently hoped that the third portion, as to the mode of closing the debate and taking the vote, will, when the time comes for testing it, be found equally satisfactory.

In our previous numbers we have avoided falling into the very error of the correspondents which we have repeatedly blamed; we have not pretended to have succeeded in getting a[273] glimpse behind the curtain which veils the council, and so to have qualified ourselves to speak without reserve of the matters treated by the fathers in their private debates. Even had circumstances brought some knowledge of this to us, it would be under obligations which would effectually prevent our touching on it in these articles. But we can be under no such obligation in regard to questions which, if we are correctly informed, have not come, at least up to the present time, before the congregations of the council. There is one such question which excites universal attention, perhaps we should rather say universal talk, outside the council—the infallibility of the pope. It has become in Europe the question of the day. Books have been written on it, pamphlets discussing it are issued every week, and England, France, Germany, and Spain have been deluged with newspaper articles upholding it or attacking it—articles written with every possible shade of learning and of ignorance, and in every degree of temper, from the best to the worst. The articles are what might be expected when the writers are of every class, from erudite theologians down to penny-a-liners, and when, if some are good and sincere Catholics, many are by no means such. Protestants have written on it, some in favor of the doctrine (!), most of them against it. The bitterest and most unfair articles, however, have been and are those written by the political opponents of the church; though how this precise question can come into politics, any more than the existence of religion, the divinity of the Saviour, the infallibility of the church, or any other point of doctrine, we cannot see. But in Europe, if religion does not go into politics, politics, or at least politicians and political writers, have no scruples in going into religious matters. In fact, the most advanced party of "progress, and enlightenment, and liberty" proclaim that there should be no religion at all, that it narrows the intellect by hampering freedom of thought, and enslaves man by forbidding him to do much that he desires; and as they think mankind should, on the contrary, be free from all its trammels; and as they hold it to be their special mission to effect this liberation, they systematically omit no occasion of attacking religion. For them, one point is as good as another; the infallibility of the pope will do as well as the discovery that a crazy nun, subject to furious mania, was confined in a room so small that the sides of it only measured twenty feet one way and twenty-three the other, and so low that one had to stand on a step to reach the window. Any thing will serve this class of writers. And, unfortunately for religious news, much of what appears in the press of Europe, and must gradually be infused, in part at least, into the press in the United States, is from such pens, and is imbued or is tinged with their spirit.

We would not do justice to Rome and the council if we omitted to mention a very interesting event with which the council is connected, if only as the occasion. We mean the Roman Exposition of Arts, as applied to religious purposes. It was opened by the pope three weeks ago.

The traveller arriving in Rome by the railway cannot fail to be struck with wonder at the view which opens before him the instant he steps out of the door of the central station. Just across the square, huge dark masses of rough masonry rise before him. Some are only twenty or thirty feet high, and their tops are covered with the herbage or bushes that grow on the soil, wafted thither by the winds of centuries. Others are still higher, and are connected by walls equally[274] old, some broken, some nearly entire. Here and there immense arches of masonry, a hundred feet high in the air, still span the space from pier to pier, and bear a fringe of green herbage. Every thing tells you of the immensity of the building, or group of buildings which men erected here in ages long gone by. But even still, as you see, portions of these walls and arches are used. Not every pier is a mere isolated ruin; not under every arch can you look and see through it a broad expanse of blue Italian sky. Modern walls are joined to these piers; the ancient walls too are turned to account; irregular roofs, some high, some low, come against them. Here, through the high openings in the original wall, men are busy taking in or delivering bundles of hay from the store-house they have constructed. There, through doorways and windows of more modern shape, you see that another portion is made to serve as barracks for soldiers. Other buildings stretch away northward and westward, schools, orphanages, and a reformatory, as you see by their various inscriptions. But though of more recent date, they have not lost all connection with the ruins; for the ground all along shows traces of the original constructions in the fragments of broken columns and in patches of the ancient masonry, which between and beyond them continues ever and anon to rise in outlying masses. But in the centre, where the strong masonry rises higher than elsewhere and is best preserved, there spreads a wide roof surmounted by crosses at the gables. To the eastward, the ruins seem to die away in a long and not very high line of buildings, evidently cared for and inhabited. The walls are covered with plaster, and the windows are glazed, and protected by shutters. Over the ridge of the roof you may see the lofty summits of some cedars that are growing in a court-yard or garden within.

These are the mighty remnants of the Baths of Diocletian, commenced by that emperor in the year 302. Built at the period when Rome was at the zenith of her wealth and luxury, it far exceeded all other buildings of its class in the seven-hilled city, both in vastness and in grandeur. It was undertaken in a time of the most cruel persecution of the church, and the Christians who were condemned to imprisonment and hard labor, because they would not deny their Lord, were brought here day after day from many a prison, and fettered like convicts, and were made to labor in erecting this pile devoted to pride, and luxury, and debauchery. Many an account of the martyr Christians of that age tells of old and young men and women, condemned for their faith, and sent to die here a lingering death of martyrdom. Many a soul passed from this spot straight to heaven. For who hath greater love than he who giveth his life for his friend? Many a prayer of Christian faith, of holy resignation, of ardent hope of a better life, was here uttered day after day, and hour after hour, all the years the work lasted. The antiquarian still finds here and there the bricks which believing hands marked with a cross, the outward expression of the prayer of their hearts, offering their labors and sufferings, endured for his sake, to Him who for their sakes labored and suffered on the cross. It is estimated that more than forty thousand Christians toiled at the work. It was in these ruins, if we mistake not, that was found one of the marble tablets inscribed with an encomium of Diocletian, for having purged the world of that vile and hateful superstition called Christianity.

In this vast pile of buildings, thirteen hundred feet from east to west,[275] and twelve hundred from north to south, there were halls, court-yards surrounded by ample porticoes, pools for swimmers, thousands of baths, libraries, galleries of painting and sculpture, portions set aside for philosophic discussion, other portions for gymnastic exercises and games, and every thing that Roman luxury or Roman debauchery called for, and Roman wealth could provide.

The first dismantling and partial destruction of the buildings seems to have occurred when Alaric sacked Rome. Yet even a century later portions of them were still used for the original purpose as baths.

It is needless to say how they suffered still more, by alternate violence and neglect, for many centuries afterward. Often it was occupied by soldiers as a stronghold, and it suffered at their hands, as by alterations here and there they strove to make the place more defensible. Often it was assailed and taken, and then suffered still more, as whatever could be was toppled over in anger. And when the soldiers left it quiet, rain and winds and storms continued the work of destruction. In the sixteenth century all this property was owned by Saint Charles Borromeo. He gave it to the pope, Pius IV., who determined to construct a church, if possible, in the midst of these ruins, and so put them under the guardianship of that very religion which gave so many martyrs toward their construction. The pontiff committed the task to Michael Angelo, who executed it in a manner which won an admiration next to that gained by his great work at St. Peter's.

Amid the ruins there stood a vast hall, three hundred and twenty-five feet long and sixty feet broad. Its massive walls were perfect, and the vast arch of masonry that covered it, at the height of over one hundred feet, though weakened by the exposure of centuries, still stood unbroken. The Caldarium stood near by on one side, and the old natatio, or swimming room, joined it on the other. Both still preserved their vaulted roofs. Michael Angelo united them, and, preserving the walls and the massive monolith columns of red Egyptian granite, which were all standing, skilfully produced a noble church in the form of a Greek cross, which is known as St. Mary of the Angels. One loves to pass an hour in that vast, quiet, and attractive church, under the olden arch, now protected from the weather by an additional tiled roof, viewing the exquisite statues of saints, and the masterpieces of painting, the originals, some of them, of the mosaics over the altars of St. Peter's, or listening to the Cistercian monks who serve the church as they slowly and reverently chant the divine office at their stated hours of day and night.

On the eastern side, toward the Pretorian Camp, war had done its most destructive work. Here Michael Angelo found the ruins so entirely beaten down that most of the space had been devoted to gardens, though encumbered indeed by sundry picturesque mounds of masonry. Here, using the materials at hand so far as they would serve, he erected a monastery for the Cistercians, a plain quadrangular building, inclosing an open space about four hundred feet square. To each side of this the building presents a portico, or arcade, which thus forms a cloister, supported by twenty-five columns of travertine. No work of that great architect and artist exceeds this cloister in its simplicity, and the exquisite beauty of form and proportion in all its parts. In the centre of the yard is a majestic, ever-flowing fountain, throwing its stream of water aloft. This falls into an ample marble reservoir beneath, whose waters ripple and sparkle in the sunlight[276] as the gold-fish are darting to and fro into the shade of water-lilies or out to court the beams of the sun. By this basin the architect planted with his own hand four young cedars, which throve apace. Three of them are still standing, historic trees. Two are strong and vigorous, though three centuries old; a third is in the decrepitude of old age, shattered and broken by the winds, but still bravely struggling to the last to raise its topmost branches upward toward heaven. The fourth perished some years ago, and has been replaced by another, younger one, which a good Cistercian, they say, obtained by securing in time and carefully nursing a young shoot of the old tree itself.

Around the cloister are the cells of the brethren. They seem to have a curious fancy of fastening placards on their doors. You can see half a dozen of them of different sizes. On some doors the sheet of paper is apparently fresh and clean, and is still securely fastened by four tacks, or by wafers under the corners. On other doors some of the tacks have fallen out, or the wafers have lost their hold, and the paper hangs dangling by a single corner. The winds have blown it until it is torn. The rain has moistened and caused it to curl. The upper portion hangs loosely over, half hiding the writing on it. You approach and stretch out your hand to lift it up, that you may read what a Cistercian had placarded on the door of his cell. It is all a delusion! There is no paper! Some painter, quitting the world, retreated to this community. In its quietude and silence, and in its penitential life, he found again peace and tranquillity of soul, and the gayety of his youth came back to him. He took a boyish pleasure in playing this clever artistic practical joke on the strangers whom curiosity, or other motives, from time to time, brought to look at the interior of a Carthusian monastery. He died peacefully and piously years ago, but the brethren have not ceased to enjoy the joke he perpetrated.

What a practical lesson of the power with which God rules the world! In this spot where a cruel and sanguinary emperor persecuted and martyred Christians by the thousands, and boasted that he had exterminated the Christian church, the ruins of his vast work owe their preservation to the sacred power of a Christian church. Where luxury, and the pride of the world, and every form of sensuality were wont to seek their gratification, now meek and humble white-robed Cistercians who have renounced the world and its pomps and sins, and are vowed to poverty, chastity, and obedience, work and study in silence, fast austerely, and make the hours of day and the hours of night holy by prayer and chanting of psalms. The heathen empire of Rome has passed away, but the church it tried to destroy lives in perpetual youth. Rome has lost her heathen power of ruling with the sword the bodies of men from the Pillars of Hercules. But through that very Christianity Rome has received and wields a far higher power than the sword could give. She guides the consciences and minds of men, not only through the provinces of her olden temporal empire, but beyond their limit, in lands where the eagle of a Roman legion was never raised, and in countries of whose existence the Roman emperors never dreamed. To the thoughtful mind the Cistercian monastery and the noble church of St. Mary of the Angels but typify the glory of Christian Rome, built amid the ruins of her olden heathen power.

The proposal, made originally by whom we know not, of opening an exposition of religious art at Rome during the sittings of the council, was[277] immediately taken up with enthusiasm. His Holiness assigned the garden of this noble cloister as the best adapted site to be found in Rome, except at a large expense. The Cistercians withdrew temporarily to other buildings close by, and gave up their own beautiful place to architects and workmen. The cloister, or broad open arcade, which runs round the square garden was chosen to form the outer gallery or halls, altogether about twelve hundred feet long by twenty broad. Within this outer gallery, and just touching each side in the middle, is a series of sixteen rooms, all of the same size, and of the same irregular, or rather rhomboidal, shape, forming, as it were, a broad polygon of sixteen sides. Within this polygon is the central portion of the garden, still unoccupied, with its gravelled walks, its green sward, its rose-trees and flowering plants, its ever-gushing fountain, the ample basin receiving the water, the glistening gold-fish, and the majestic cedars of Michael Angelo. The arcade has, of course, its own covering. The sixteen rooms of the polygon are roofed with glass, to let in the flood of light, and a few feet below the glass is another roofing, or awning, to soften its intensity and to mitigate the heat of the direct rays of the sun. Large openings in the partition walls allow free passage from room to room, all around the polygon; and where it touches the arcade or outer halls, other doors allow you to pass to them, or by opposite doors you may pass out to walk in the garden.

The exposition was opened on the 17th of February by the pope himself, in the presence of the commission for the exposition, a number of cardinals, some three hundred of the bishops, and a large concourse of clergy and laity. He made an impromptu discourse, touching chiefly on the true progress which art has made under the inspiration of religion and the patronage of the church, and in illustration referred to some of those unrivalled works of religious painting and sculpture which are found in Rome.

Nothing could be more appropriate to the assembling of so many bishops and priests and pious laymen in Rome, drawn by the council, than this exposition. Go when you will, you will find many of all these classes spending hours in studying a collection of religious works of every kind, such as most of them have never seen. In size and extent this exposition cannot, of course, compare with those vast ones of London and Paris. They sought and received objects of every kind. This admits nothing that is not devoted to, or in some way connected with, religion. It would correspond, therefore, with one section of the Paris Exposition of 1867. Considered in this light, it does not, as a whole, fall below it; in several respects it is superior.

We have not the space now to enter into a detail of the many and multifarious objects offered for examination. Every art seems represented. For what is there that cannot be made to give glory to God? Still, we may glance at a few of the chief groups.

The exterior arcade is chiefly devoted to sculpture and paintings. Of the former there are here and elsewhere in the exhibition over two hundred and fifty pieces, in marble, in plaster, or metal, or wood. I do not count the hundreds of sweet little things in terra cotta, nor the many objects in ivory. Tadolini, Benzoni, Pettrich, and a hundred other artists from Rome, and other parts of Italy, Germany, and France, have sent the work of their chisels. As a whole, this group of subjects stands far higher in point of good art than was looked for. Some of the statues are of a high order. We may instance a group[278] of heroic size by Tadolini, representing the Archangel Michael overcoming Lucifer, after the painting by Guido, and two life-size Madonnas by Pettrich, all of which, we understand, will be forwarded to the United States. There is in one of the French rooms a plaster copy of the statue of the holy Vianney, curate of the village of Ars, near Lyons, in France, who died a few years ago in the odor of sanctity, and who, the Catholics of France are confident, will in due time be canonized. He is robed in soutane, surplice, and stole, and is kneeling in prayer, his face turned upward toward heaven. I do not speak of the style and execution, which are good; but of the face, which attracts every one. It is said to be a perfect likeness. Thin, gaunt, with features sharp and exaggerated by the lack of flesh, rather ugly than otherwise, there is an expression of simplicity, of piety, of kindness, of earnestness, which makes it far more than beautiful, a face that grows in sweetness as you look on it. And yet study the individual features, forehead, eyebrows, nose, mouth, chin, cheek-bones, the chief lines and wrinkles. They are precisely the same as on the repulsive face of Voltaire! What different expressions were given to the same features by the calm piety, the love of God and our neighbor, the spiritual peace dwelling in the soul of the saintly priest, and the pride, and envy, and passions, and the bitter, hopeless or despairing unbelief of the apostle of evil.

As we examine these statues, so good in their execution and so truly religious in their type, one cannot but feel a regret that in the United States we are such strangers to the use of them in our churches and chapels and oratories. Here and there are found, indeed, casts in plaster of Paris, sometimes in papier-maché. But how few real works of merit in materials and in style! If the clergy who are at work building our churches, and some of the laymen who are seconding them in this work, could only see those statues of our Lord on the cross, or bearing the cross and sinking under its weight, or healing the blind, or blessing little children; or those sweet ones of the Mother and Divine Child, in various positions; or of the Blessed Virgin, of St. Joseph, of Saint Cecilia, Saint Agnes, and of so many other saints and groups representing religious subjects; surely among them, in marble, in iron, bronzed, silvered, gilt, or illuminated with polychrome, and such a variety in size and in cost, they would understand the void in our churches, and would each do his part to supply it.

Especially would this be the case with the stations of the way of the cross. No devotion is more tender and consoling, and at the same time none more strengthening to true piety and the practice of virtue, than this pilgrimage of faith, in which we accompany our Lord, and, as it were, stand by his side, during the several scenes of his sufferings down to his death on the cross and his burial. No devotion is more popular, because none better suited to the faithful of every condition and class. Would it not be well if the engravings of those different scenes, so often found—we had almost said, disfiguring the walls of our churches, could give way to some of those basso-relievos and alto-relievos of France, of Italy, and of Germany, such as we see here? The love of the beautiful and striking is innate in man. Even the child feels it; and in manhood, use and education but develop and increase the satisfaction it gives. While we smiled, we could not but sympathize in some measure with the Italian sculptor who, on his dying-bed, pushed away a crucifix which a pious attendant[279] wished to place in his hands. "Not that, not that! it makes me angry," he said; "it is horrid! Give me the other one; it is well made. That will excite devotion." Let children be taught, in a way they will love, to think often, to know, to realize, even from their tenderest years, what the loving and merciful Saviour suffered for man. Lessons well learned at that tender and innocent age seldom fade from the mind and heart in after years. And no way of teaching that lesson is more effectual than the one we indicate.

There are more than five hundred paintings in the exposition. Of these perhaps two hundred are by the old masters, and have been placed here by their owners.

These embrace paintings by the divine Raffaele, as the Italians call him, Domenichino, Annibale Carracci, Correggio, Maratta, Carlo Dolce, Salvator Rosa, Murillo, Leonardo da Vinci, Guido Reni, Rubens, Vandyke, Ribeyra, Del Sarto, and a host of other old masters, Italian, German, Flemish, and Spanish, whom we need not name. There we may gaze with rapture on the excellence of art inspired by religious thought. It is a fact not to be overlooked or forgotten, in these days of irreligion, that the best paintings which the best artists ever painted were all produced when they brought their powers to represent a religious subject. In painting, and in other things too, he works best who works in the spirit of religion and the fear of God.

The larger number of the paintings are of later date, many of them by living artists. To our eye, certainly not trained to criticism, many of them appear worthy of high praise. But we believe the general verdict is not so favorable to them as to the statuary. Still, we must remember that here they have to compete side by side with those old paintings of the highest order. The contrast between their freshly laid colors and the colors of older paintings, toned down by age, if not somewhat faded, is so strong and striking that this very difference, often no real difference on the part of the painters, is set down as a defect to be censured. The portrait of the pope, by our American artist Healy, is undoubtedly the best likeness of the Holy Father in the exposition.

What we said of the statuary we may repeat with equal reason of religious paintings. How easy it would be to adorn our churches and chapels with these books of the eye, one glance at which often teaches more than a sermon. The artists at home capable of producing a religious painting worthy of being placed in a church are few, perhaps might be counted on one's fingers. European painters capable of giving an original ask such prices for their work as generally to put them as far beyond our means as if they were to be painted at home. Even at that, their conception and treatment of a subject will scarcely stand comparison with approved works of the best masters who have already treated the same subjects. But there is a large class of painters here who devote themselves to copying and reproducing those old paintings, on every scale as to size. The execution of many of them is good, and the prices for which the artists are willing to work seem very low. It is wonderful how much painting, and good painting, five hundred dollars well laid out in Rome will obtain. Several of our clerical friends, who have visited Rome this winter, carry back with them evidences of this fact.

Next to the paintings should come the stained glass, which is superb, and is offered at a price which seems[280] really astonishing—about five dollars a square foot for the richest kind, with life-size figures.

The large windows, from several competing manufacturers, are so mounted that the light shines through them, and you can examine at full leisure and carefully the wondrous effects of united brilliancy and softness in these works of peculiarly Christian art. The art of painting on glass, which many, up to a recent period, thought entirely lost, has revived in this century, and seems fast approaching the perfection which it attained in the middle ages. There is one marked difference observable between the old windows and some of the work here. The ancients displayed their skill in combining together thousands of minute pieces of glass of different colors, so as to make up a picture in its proper colors and its lights and shadows. The modern artists have attempted the task of producing the picture on a single large sheet of glass. This would free it from the single defect almost unavoidable in this work—the stiffness of the figures. But the earlier attempts presented such variation in the perfections of the several colors used as to be failures, in point of that brilliancy and play of light which constitute the charm of this work. The source of the defect was to be found in the laws of nature, on which every work, and this work directly, depends. The general mode of procedure in which glass is colored is this: The subject is painted on the surface of a sheet of glass with metallic paints. The glass is placed in an oven and slowly and carefully raised to that point of heat at which it grows soft. The particles of metal constituting the colors sink into the glass and become portions of its substance. The difficulty was found to spring from the great difference in the rate and manner in which the colors would sink into the softened substance. What would give some colors perfectly, would leave others imperfect; and continuing the work until these were perfect, would often destroy the first. But patient study and careful work have overcome these difficulties to a degree which we did not expect. There are full-size figures here in stained glass rivalling those of the middle ages in brilliancy, and possessing the freedom of a painting on canvas.

The perfection of the Gobelins tapestry is almost incredible. A large canvas, twenty-five feet by ten, presents the Assumption by Titian, and near it is a life-size figure of our Lord in the tomb. It is a sermon but to look on the cold, rigid body of him who bore our transgressions. There are specimens of photography, some showing life-size figures, of oleography, lithography, chromo-lithography, engravings on copper, for which Rome cannot be excelled, on steel, and on wood. In many of these branches France and Germany rival, if they do not surpass Italy. But Rome stands unrivalled in mosaics, of which there are here exquisite specimens.

In architecture, we find plans of churches and colleges, very full and clear, but not striking; designs for the interior of chapels and sanctuaries, of a far higher order of art, several miniatures of churches; a fac-simile in white marble of the front of St. Peter's, and another in wood, on the scale of about one inch to ten feet, showing the entire exterior of the church front and dome in all its details, the colonnades, fountains, and square before it, and so constructed that it can be opened in several ways, in order to give an equally correct and minute view of the interior with all its ornamentation. You may recognize every painting and statue in the basilica.[281] It took years of patient labor to make this model, and it is said to have been sold to an Italian prince for twenty thousand dollars. What a pity such a work should be shut up in some palace in the city where every one can go to the real St. Peter's. It should rather be sent to distant countries, where thousands, who will never go to Rome, might be able to obtain from it a far clearer conception than any books can give of the form and splendor of this great temple, which is deservedly the pride and the glory of the Christian world.

In music, there are organs with the latest and best improvements, harmoniums, Alexandre organs of various powers and many stops, and chimes and church-bells hung on a new patent system, by which a mere boy can swing easily and ring loudly a bell of nearly a ton weight. As for texts of church music, you may turn over the parchment leaves of huge folio graduals and antiphonaries, in which the good old monks of past ages wrote the Gregorian notes and the words so large and so clear as to be easily read in the choir, even at the distance of ten feet. There are later ones printed nearly as large, and collections of modern church music from Italy, Germany, and from France.

Ecclesiastical vestments abound in the exposition. Rome, Milan, and other cities of Italy are represented by the most celebrated of their manufacturers. France has sent a multitude from Paris, Lyons, Grenoble, Montpellier, Nismes, and elsewhere. Others have come from Germany and from Spain. Here are copes and chasubles, dalmatics, antipendiums, and veils, of the richest material and exquisite workmanship. You can examine the ample yet light and pliable vestments of Italy, the rich and stiffer ones of France, the narrow and scantier form of Austria, and the heavier ones from Spain, that ought never to wear out. In the matter of vestments you are taught a lesson of history. For here, carefully preserved in large glass wardrobes, are shown the vestments used six hundred and eight hundred years ago, if not a thousand years ago, in St. Peter's, in St. Mary Major's, in St. John Lateran's, and in the cathedral of Anagni.

The emperors of the Holy Roman Empire, as it was called, which sprung into existence in the ninth century, and died in the convulsions of Europe consequent on the French revolution, were bound to come, if circumstances allowed it, to Rome, to receive their royal consecration in St. Peter's at the hands of the pope. On such occasions, the emperor was admitted for that time into the sanctuary, wore a deacon's dalmatic, and chanted a gospel. Here you may look at the identical dalmatic which they wore a thousand years ago. It is of silk, and the figures which decorate it were worked with the needle, in gold thread. Near by are copes, and chasubles, and mitres faded and worn; which still give evidence of the art and care in making them, the richness of the materials used, and of the skill of the embroidery and painting which decorated them. What will the modern chasubles and copes around us, now so fresh and splendid, look like in A.D. 2500?

Church vessels of every class are equally abundant. Chalices, pixes, cruets, censers, incense-cups, crosses, crucifixes, ostensories, croziers, every thing that can be thought of, are here, often in their richest forms. There are chapelles for priests, and chapelles for bishops. Altar candlesticks and candelabra of every size and graceful form tempt you. Perhaps the most interesting in a scientific and also a pecuniary view, is the large collection of all those vessels made of bronze[282] aluminium, of a light gold color, and not liable to tarnish. The weight is light, and the prices low.

There are altars of marble, of cast-iron, of bronze gilt, and of wood colored and illuminated, the last-named truly beautiful, and they would well replace some of those far more costly constructions sometimes to be met in our churches.

Altars lead us to candelabra, candlesticks, and chandeliers; and here they are displayed in every size, from an immense chandelier to be suspended in a church, of metal gilt, ornamented with angels and religious emblems, and bearing sixty-five lights, down to the tasteful bongie, or tiny candlestick which an acolyth holds in his hand when he attends a bishop at the altar. Altar candlesticks and candelabra seem a specialty with the French artists. The graceful curve of the outlines, the appropriateness and suggestiveness of the decoration, and the ease with which all these pieces may be combined to produce on the altar a whole simple and tasteful, or rich and splendid, can scarcely be conceived. They bring to their work the spirit of the children of Israel in the desert, offering their gold and jewels to Moses for the ornamentation of the tabernacle of the Most High. Man can never do too much to testify his homage and his loving obedience to God.

In Christian bibliography the chief Catholic publishers have done well. The polyglott press of the Propaganda exhibits many of its late publications; among others an accurate fac-simile of the Codex Vaticanus of the Scriptures, and a volume containing the Lord's Prayer in two hundred and fifty languages, in the proper characters of each language, where it has any. The volume presents one hundred and eighty different forms of type. Salviucci, of Rome; Pustet, of Ratisbon; Dessain, of Malines, and many others exhibit well printed and richly bound copies of their chief publications. Vecco & Co., of Turin, show the eighteen volumes they have already printed of the new edition of the Magnum Bullarium. Victor Palmé, of Paris, displays an enormous line of folio volumes, the Acta Sanctorum of the great Bollandists, the republication of which he has just finished in fifty-eight volumes. To this he adds his edition of the Ideologia, by the professors of Salamanca, his Gallia Christiana, his edition of Annales Baronii, and the introductory volume of a new edition of the Collectio Maxima Conciliorum, which he has just commenced.

It was sad not to find the veteran Migne here, and to think of that sad conflagration which consumed the work of a lifetime. He had undertaken, and after fifty years of steady persevering labor, was finishing the greatest bibliographical achievement of the publishers of this century. The twelve or thirteen hundred large volumes he had published in his collection, embracing all the fathers, Greek and Latin, ample courses of Scripture, theology, and canon law, encyclopædias, history, theologians, preachers, etc., would have presented the largest and most imposing array of volumes—almost a complete theological library in itself. Great as was his loss, that to the clergy was greater.

We mention last a collection which every visitor to the exposition hurries to see first, as most deserving of his attention, the collection of articles which the Holy Father himself directed should be sent here from the Sixtine Chapel: 1. The famous tiara presented to him by the Queen of Spain. The three crowns on it are of brilliants and pearls, the roses are rubies and emeralds, the ball on the summit is of rubies, and the cross above of[283] diamonds. As a work of art, it is considered a chef-d'œuvre of grace and elegance, and does honor to the artists of Spain. 2. A chalice of gold covered with brilliants and diamonds. These diamonds and brilliants were a present from Mehemet Ali. 3. A large golden ostensory, of Byzantine style, the rays of which are studded with brilliants, from the same donor. 4. A large processional cross of gold, the staff of silver gilt. The cross is of an elegantly flowering Gothic form, and is adorned with precious stones and enamel. It was made to order in France, and is a present from the Marquis of Bute. Chalices, mitres, vestments, cruets, an ancient MS. missal, exquisitely illuminated and richly bound, with many other objects, make up a large list of articles which His Holiness has sent to give additional interest to the exposition. Others have acted in the same spirit; and certainly, if the number, the richness, and the exquisite taste and elegance of the articles displayed can effect it, the exposition is a success. The attendance has been pretty fair, and as the governmental outlay has been but small, may prove remunerative. The exhibitors will certainly succeed in introducing their works to the religious world far more generally than they could have ordinarily looked for. And the visitors seem all satisfied that each repeated visit to the exposition is a renewed and increased pleasure. We may perhaps endeavor next month to be able to write more at length of the more prominent articles in the exposition, with reference to the needs of our American churches.

NEW PUBLICATIONS.

An Essay in Aid of a Grammar of Assent. By John Henry Newman, D.D. 1 vol. 12mo. New York: The Catholic Publication Society. 1870.

It would be quite impossible without exceeding proper limits to give any thing more than an incomplete sketch of the plan of this able work; it must, of course, be read in full to be appreciated.

At the outset three states of mind are distinguished, assent, inference, and doubt, corresponding to the external actions of assertion, conclusion, and interrogation, though not necessarily accompanying them. The subject of the essay is, as its name implies, principally the first of these; doubt being merely alluded to, and inference treated in its relation to assent, and only that species being considered at length which is not strictly demonstrative. The various modes in which assent exists, and in which it is formed, are the first objects of examination.

The division made here of assent, and which recurs throughout the work, is into real and notional, the former relating to propositions whose terms, in the words of the author, "stand for things external to us, unit and individual," the latter "for what is abstract, general, and non-existing;" and this last is distinguished under the names of profession, credence, opinion, presumption, and speculation, which terms are necessarily used in senses somewhat different from those ordinarily attached to them.

The strength of real assents in comparison to notional ones is shown, and the difference in this point of view between assent and inference; the latter being clearest in purely abstract matters. Not but that assent is always unconditional or absolute; still, its material, when real, is so much more vividly apprehended that the assent elicited[284] is much more energetic and operative. Thus also when notional assents become real, as they may in consequence of some special circumstances, their hold upon the mind and control upon action is much increased.

This subject is illustrated by a discussion of religious assents, with special reference to the being of God, and to the Holy Trinity; it is shown that the former truth, and the constituent parts of the latter, can be, and usually are, the objects of real assent, though the latter in its completeness or unity can only be notionally apprehended; and though the definition of the Divine Being may give only a notional idea. The implicit assent which unlearned Christians give to all the definitions of the church is also explained.

The absolute and unconditional character of assent is next treated, and it is shown that it has this character even when given without good grounds, or when those grounds are forgotten; and that it is not necessarily conceded to convincing proofs, and may disappear while the inference which led to it still remains. Without this character the act is not assent at all, or at least is only that notional form of it called by the author opinion, which he defines as assent to the probable truth of a proposition. The possibility and continual occurrence of full assent without intuition or demonstration is defended against those who, though really they have no doubt about some theoretically uncertain matters, yet "think it a duty to remind us that, since the full etiquette of logical requirements has not been satisfied, we must believe those truths at our peril."

The distinction is drawn between simple or unconscious assent and the conscious, reflex, or complex assent, as the author calls it, which, when the thing believed is true, has the name of certitude, and is irreversible or indefectible. In simple assent we do not give any place, or in any way incline mentally to the opposite belief, though we may examine the grounds of our own for various reasons; but when we are certain, we explicitly refuse to admit any thing opposed to it. The occurrence of false or supposed certitudes does not suffice to prove the non-existence of real ones; and certitude is not to be confounded with infallibility, which is a faculty applicable "to all possible propositions in a given subject matter," while certitude is "directed to this or that particular proposition."

The next part is the discussion of the act of inference. In its most perfect or formal state it can be used without limitation only upon abstractions; it "comes short of proof in concrete matters, because it has not a full command over the objects to which it relates, but merely assumes its premises." Hence, even when what we do assume is true, as shown in an earlier part of the work, processes of inference in concrete matters may easily end in mysteries. In many cases it cannot profitably be used, owing to the labor required for taking account of all the circumstances, as well as the real difference of the first principles from which our syllogisms proceed. We are, therefore, obliged to resort to informal inference, in which arguments and probabilities are estimated in the mass, and have a different force to different individuals, according to the character in them of what Dr. Newman calls the illative sense. He concludes by treating of the exercise of this combining and directing faculty in its application to religious inferences, both in natural and revealed religion, and shows that by means of it we may fairly arrive at certitude regarding Christianity, and that such a method is at least as likely to succeed as more formal demonstrations. The lawfulness and reasonableness of assent in religious matters, as well as in others, without such demonstrations, may be regarded as one of the main objects of the work, though by no means its only one.

De l'Unité dans l'Enseignement de la Philosophie au Sein des Ecoles Catholiques d'après les Recentes Decisions des Congregations Romaines. Par le P. H. Ramière, S.J. Paris, 1862.

F. Ramière is well known as the head[285] of the admirable confraternity of "The Apostleship of Prayer," and the author of a number of excellent works on spiritual subjects, and also on the great religious questions of the day. We have recently been indebted to him for some extremely able essays in defence of the rights of the Holy See, for which he has received the eulogium of the Holy Father himself. The work whose title is given above has been sent to us by the reverend father himself, we presume on account of the article translated, with some preliminary observations of our own, from F. Vercellone, on the ideology of St. Augustine, which appeared in a recent number; and we beg to thank him for his kindness. We had not before had the pleasure of reading it, although it has been eight years published. We have read it with attention, and, we are happy to say, with much satisfaction. The learning and logical force of the author command our respect, and his calmness, candor, impartiality, and truly Christian charity win our esteem, throughout the whole course of his argument. The argument is divided into three parts. In the first part, the author sustains the possibility and the great importance of unity in philosophical instruction, and lays down the conditions by which it can be obtained. In all that he says under this head we fully and cordially concur with him. In the second part, he discusses traditionalism; and here again we find ourselves in perfect agreement with all his positions. In the third part, he attacks the grand difficulty of the origin of rational cognition, and, of course, discusses the vexed question of ontologism. It would be a futile effort to attempt a critical appreciation of this part of F. Ramière's work in a brief critical notice, and we will not attempt it. An opinion on these very grave and much controverted topics, in order to be worth attention, must be supported by elaborate arguments, and based on deep and patient study of all the principal authors, ancient and modern, whose works are the great sources of philosophical knowledge. We agree perfectly with F. Ramière, that thorough discussion, carried on in the spirit of moderation, directed by a pure love of truth, and regulated by obedience to the authority of the church, is the only road by which we can attain to that degree of unity in philosophical doctrines which prevails among all truly orthodox theologians in respect to dogmatic and moral theology. We desire to see this discussion go on, and hope for a good result from it; and as a necessary preparation, we cannot too earnestly insist on the necessity of a more thorough study of scholastic philosophy than has been common among those who have written on these subjects in the English language. Both in theology and philosophy, we hold it as certain that we must follow the great fathers and doctors of the church as our guides and masters, or go astray and lose our labor. The essential truths of philosophy must be contained in that system which the church authorizes, and in which she trains up her clergy.

As we understand them, there is no difference between F. Vercellone and F. Ramière on this point. We are not authorized to speak for Dr. Brownson, who is the great philosophical writer among American Catholics; but we think he would agree with us fully in this judgment; and that the passage in a contrary sense, quoted by F. Ramière, is to be regarded as one of those obiter dicta which his mature, deliberate wisdom would not ratify. We cheerfully acknowledge that the doctrine which F. Ramière so lucidly exposes as the Thomistic doctrine of the origin of cognition is sufficient as a basis of rational certitude and natural theology, and we are perfectly agreed with him that this is the main point to be secured. As for the profound and difficult, and therefore intensely interesting and attractive, questions which relate to the nature of the intellectual light itself, and the objective truth seen by its aid, it does not seem to us that they have yet been as thoroughly discussed as they need to be, in order to bring the various schools into a closer agreement. This is certainly so as respects philosophy in the English language, which is yet in its cradle, and we think it is true universally. Of course, the great question to[286] be settled at the outset is, how far the boundary of philosophical doctrine, as rendered certain by the consent of the great doctors, intrinsic evidence, and the decisions of the supreme ecclesiastical authority, extends; and where opinion begins. The true understanding of the famous decisions of 1861 is absolutely necessary to this end, so far as ideology is concerned; and F. Ramière has given an explanation of their sense and intention which perfectly agrees with that of F. Vercellone in a supplement to the article which we translated. It is, namely, the intuition of the essence of God, and created things in that essence, as the natural, intellectual light of reason, which we are forbidden to affirm.

Are we, therefore, required, as an only alternative, to adopt the Peripatetic philosophy as taught by the Thomists? It would seem that this has not yet been sufficiently proved. The works of Gerdil, Vercellone, and others, who profess to find in Plato, St. Augustine, St. Bonaventure, St. Anselm, and other great authors, a philosophical wisdom which supplies a want not fully satisfied by St. Thomas, have not yet been marked by any note of disapprobation. It is true that F. Ramière tells us that Gerdil changed his opinions in his later years. But F. Vercellone denies this, on the authority of Cardinal Lambruschini. F. Ramière is extremely tolerant of opinions differing from his own, where he thinks he has only a greater probability on his side. He does not censure the following of these great authors, or discourage the study of them; but he thinks they are misunderstood, and that a better study of them would result in making us all Peripatetics and Thomists. Let us by all means, then, especially those who have youth, strength, and leisure, study the old masters of philosophy more deeply than we have done, and truth and unity will be the gainers. F. Ramière protests strongly, however, against the high esteem which some Catholic writers have expressed for Gioberti. As it happens that one of our correspondents has done the same in the present number, we feel bound to assure F. Ramière, and our readers generally, that we detest, as much as any one can, the rebellious conduct of Gioberti toward the sovereign pontiff, that we have no sympathy with his hatred of the Jesuits, and condemn every thing in his works which the Holy See intended to censure when they were placed on the Index. Nevertheless, as F. Perrone has had the generosity to place his name on the list of illustrious Catholic writers, we do not think it improper to give him credit for the genius he undoubtedly possessed, or the true and elevated teachings which his works may contain. Even if the worst things said against him be true, there is no reason why we should not make use of every thing good in his works, as we do in those of Tertullian, Photius, and the Port Royal divines.

In conclusion, we recommend and applaud F. Ramière's essay as a specimen of that kind of discussion which he so strongly advocates, with the most ardent sympathy in his desire that sound philosophy may go hand in hand with theology, to deliver the world from the destructive influence of scepticism, sophistry, and every species of error.

Guyot's Geographical Series. By Professor Arnold Guyot. New York: Charles Scribner & Co.

Since Humboldt gave his scientific facts to the world, and Ritter generalized upon them, the study of geography has been converted from an exercise of the memory upon unrelated facts to a science whose laws of mutual dependence of cause and effect hold good in common with other physical sciences. But it has remained for the American mind to generalize the later scientific discoveries of Maury, Hugh Miller, Livingstone, Kane, and others, and, adding them to former achievements, give the results in the modern school geographies. The very number of these text-books presented by aspiring authors and publishers to the public is an encouraging symptom to the lover of improvement in knowledge, though sadly annoying to the practical teacher, who is so frequently urged to change the text-books in the hands of his pupils.

The series before us is evidently the result of the profoundest research united to a practical knowledge of the best manner of presenting facts to young minds. None but an enthusiast in physical science, a good expounder of original ideas, and a polished English scholar could have given so complete a series of text-books to our schools and teachers. The language in which the facts are presented is one of the chief recommendations of the books; for nothing more certainly impresses itself upon the youthful mind than the language of the text-books used in schools, affecting the habits of thought and expression in all after-life. With a view also to the varied peoples among whom these books would be adopted, and in answer to the demands of the age and period, a world-wide and catholic spirit seemed to animate the author when treating the subject of the governments and religions of different sections and political divisions. Facts, as generally understood, are fairly stated. Opinions based upon those facts judiciously withheld. Some improvements might be made in the execution of the maps, and also in the text of the primary book, the style of which is weak and careless compared with the rest of the series. But the illustrations, and print, and style of getting up are equal, if not superior, to any books of the kind published.

Statutes of the Second Synod of the Diocese of Albany. 1869. Troy: Scribner & Co. Received from P. J. Dooley, 182 River street, Troy.

We have read this beautifully printed document with great pleasure, and we will cite several of the statutes, which have in our opinion a special importance, giving, however, only their import in our own language, without quoting verbatim the Latin text, which is easily accessible to those who are interested in ecclesiastical matters.

1. Confessors and pastors are commanded to teach their spiritual children the evil and danger of attending the sermons and religious exercises of sectarians, and not to permit it under any pretext.

2. The faithful, especially heads of families, are admonished to exclude non-Catholic versions of the Bible, and all kinds of noxious books and papers, from their houses, and to make use of good and Catholic books and periodicals.

3. All who are concerned in the publication of books relating to religion and the divine worship are admonished not to venture to publish any thing without the license of the ordinary. The desire is also expressed that clergymen will not publish any thing whatever without the previous consent of the bishop. It is announced that several members of the episcopal council will be designated as censors of books. In the recent bull of Pope Pius IX., abrogating all previous laws inflicting the censure of excommunication reserved to the pope, and promulgating anew the causes of incurring this censure, the authors and publishers of books de rebus sacris, who put forth such books without the permission of the ordinary, are declared to incur the censure of excommunication latæ sententiæ. It is, therefore, of the utmost importance that regulations should be made and published in every diocese, prescribing to authors and publishers the conditions under which the ordinary permits the publication of books de rebus sacris, and the Bishop of Albany has given an excellent example, which we hope will be universally followed.

4. The faithful are to be seasonably exhorted to sustain the sovereign pontiff in maintaining his temporal authority by their contributions.

5. Pastors are earnestly exhorted to use earnest efforts to extirpate the vice of intemperance, which is the cause of such immense scandals.

6. The necessity of sustaining Catholic schools, and the dangers of theatrical exhibitions, immodest dances, and festive amusements or exhibitions intended for the benefit of pious causes, such as picnics, fairs, and excursions, are noticed.

7. Priests will be subjected to an annual examination in scriptis, before theological examiners, during the first five years after their ordination.

8. The faithful are to be sedulously warned and exhorted not to contract mixed marriages.

These are only a few of the great number of excellent statutes, entirely in accordance with the decrees of general councils, the plenary and provincial councils of the United States, and the decrees of the Apostolic See, enacted by this admirable synod, which is indeed worthy of the best days of the church.

The Sun. By Anedee Guillemin. From the French, by A. L. Phipson, Ph.D. With fifty-eight illustrations.

Wonders of Glass-making in all Ages. By A. Sanzay. Illustrated with sixty-three engravings on wood.

The Sublime in Nature; compiled from the descriptions of travellers and celebrated writers. By Ferdinand de Lanoye; with large additions. New York: Charles Scribner & Co. 1870.

The above are the titles of three beautiful volumes, the latest additions to the "Illustrated Library of Wonders," now being published by Messrs. Scribner. These little books must prove highly interesting, especially to the young, and are very well adapted for premiums. The illustrations are well executed, and give additional value to the books.

Natural History of Animals. By Sanborn Tenney and Alby A. Tenney. Illustrated by five hundred wood engravings, chiefly of North American animals. New York: Charles Scribner & Co. 1870.

A very useful book, well adapted to aid parents and teachers in interesting the young in the delightful and important study of natural history.

Dialogues from Dickens. For School and Home Amusement. Arranged by W. Eliot Fette, A.M. Boston: Lee & Shepard.

The dialogues contained in this volume have been selected for the most part, and we think very judiciously, with a view to thorough, unalloyed amusement. There are, doubtless, other portions of Dickens's works no less characteristic, full of tenderness and pathos, over which we fain would linger, and to which we gladly return again and again; these, however, we prefer to peruse alone, and at leisure. But for an evening's entertainment in company, commend us to the good fellowship the compiler has here selected for us—the Wellers, Dick Swiveller, Bob Sawyer, Mark Tapley, Sairey Gamp, etc., etc.

MR. FROUDE'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND.[52]

If we accept general encomium and popular demand as criteria of excellence, it is evident that Mr. Froude must be the first historian of the period. That, with a vivid pen, he possesses a style at once clear and graphic; that his fulness of knowledge and skill in description are exceptional; that his phrase is brilliant, his analysis keen, and that with ease and spirit, grace and energy, pictorial and passionate power, he combines consummate art in imagery and diction, we have been told so often and by so many writers that it would seem churlish not to accord him very high merit. Then, too, Mr. Froude is very much in earnest. Whatever he does he does with all his might, and in his enthusiasm often fairly carries his reader along with him.

But, in common with those who seek, not literary excitement, but the facts of history, we go at once to the vital question, Is the work truthful? Is it impartial? If not, its author's gifts are perverted, his attainments abused, and their fruits, so bright and attractive to the eye, are filled with ashes.

Impartial! Difficult indeed, is the attainment of that admirable equilibrium of judgment which secures perfect fairness of decision, and whose essential condition precedent is the thorough elimination of personal preference and party prejudice. And here is the serious obstacle in writing a history of England; for there are few, very few, of the great historical questions of the sixteenth century that have not left to us living men of to-day a large legacy of hopes, doubts, and prejudices—nowhere so full of vitality as in England, and in countries of English tongue. Not that we mean to limit such a difficulty to one nation or to one period; for it is not certain that we free ourselves from the spell of prejudice by taking refuge in a more remote age. It might be thought that, in proportion as we go back toward antiquity, leaving behind us to-day's interests, the historian's impartiality would become perfect. And yet, there are few writers of whom even this is true. Reverting historically to the cradle of[290] Christianity, it cannot be asserted of Gibbon.

Nor can it be said even of modern historians of nations long extinct, in common with which one might suppose the people of this century had not a single prejudice. Take, for instance, all the English historians of ancient Greece, whose works (that of Grote being an honorable exception) are so many political pamphlets arguing for oligarchy against democracy, elevating Sparta at the sacrifice of Athens, and thrusting at a modern republic through the greatest of the Hellenic commonwealths. If Merivale is thought to treat Roman history with impartiality, the same cannot be said of many modern European writers, who, disguising modern politics in the ancient toga and helmet, cannot discuss the Roman imperial period without attacking the Cæsars of Paris, St. Petersburg, and Berlin.

The great religious questions which agitated England in the sixteenth century are not dead. They still live, and for the Anglican, the Puritan, and the Catholic have all the deep interest of a family history. It might, therefore, be unreasonable to demand from Mr. Froude a greater degree of dispassionate inquiry and calm treatment of subjects that were "burning questions" in the days of Henry and Elizabeth, than we find in Milman and Gillies, when they discuss the political life of Athens and Lacedæmon. So far from exacting it, we should be disposed to be most liberal in the allowance of even a strongly expressed bias. But after granting all this, and even more, we might yet not unreasonably demand a system which is not a paradox, a show at least of fairness, and a due regard for the proprieties of historical treatment.

Mr. Froude's first four volumes present the history of half the reign of Henry VIII., a prince "chosen by Providence to conduct the Reformation," and abolish the iniquities of the papal system.

The historical Tudor king known of all men before the advent of Mr. Froude with his modern appliances of hero-worship and muscular Christianity, "melted so completely" in our new historian's hands that his despotism, persecution, diplomatic assassinations, confiscations, divorces, legalized murders, bloody vagrancy laws, tyranny over conscience, and the blasphemous assumption of spiritual supremacy are made to appear as the praiseworthy measures of an ascetic monarch striving to regenerate his country and save the world.

There was such a sublimity of impudence in a paradox presented with so much apparently sincere vehemence that most readers were struck with dumb astonishment. A fascinated few declared the deodorized infamy perfectly pure. Some, pleased with pretty writing, were delighted with poetic passages about "daisies," and "destiny," "wild spirits" and "August suns" that "shone in autumn." Many liked its novelty, some admired its daring, and some there were who looked upon the thing as an enormous joke. All these formed the great body of readers.

Others there were, though, who declined to accept results which were violations of morality, and verdicts against evidence obtained by systematic vilification of some of the best, and the elevation of some of the worst men who ever lived, and by a blind idolatry incapable of discerning flaw or stain in the unworthy object of its worship; who saw Mr. Froude's multifarious ignorance of matters essential for a historian to know, and his total want of that judicial quality of mind, without which no one, even[291] though possessed of all knowledge, can ever be an historian. They resolved that such an historical system as this was a nuisance to be abated, and that the new and unworthy man-worship should be put an end to. Accordingly the idol was smashed;[53] and in the process, the idol's historian left so badly damaged as to render his future availability highly problematical.

The Scotch treatment was of instant efficacy; for we find Mr. Froude coming to his work on the fifth volume in chastened frame of mind and an evidently corrected demeanor. He narrates the reigns of Mary and Edward VI. with style and tone subdued, and in what musicians designate as tempo moderato.

With the seventh volume we reach the accession of Queen Elizabeth. We opened it with some curiosity; for it was understood from Mr. Froude, at the outset of his historical career, that he intended to present Elizabeth as "a great nature destined to remould the world," and that he was prepared to visit with something like astonishment and unknown pangs all who should dare question the immaculate purity of her virtue. It is not improbable that the contemplation of the strewn and broken fragments of the paternal idol materially modified this purpose—a change on which Mr. Froude must more than once have fervently congratulated himself as he gradually penetrated deeper into the treasures of the State paper collections, and stared with stiffened jaw at the astounding revelations of Simancas.

We need not wonder that the historian altered his programme; and that instead of going on to the "death of Elizabeth," to record the horrors of that most horrible of death-bed scenes, he should close his work with the wreck of the Spanish Armada.

The researches of our American historian, Motley, were terribly damaging to Elizabeth; and in the preparation of his seventh volume, Mr. Froude comes upon discoveries so fatal to her that he is evidently glad to drop his showy narrative and fill his pages with letters of the Spanish ambassador, who gives simple but wonderfully vivid pictures of scenes at the English court.

Future historians will doubtless take heed how they associate with the reputation of the sovereign any glory they may claim for England under Elizabeth, remembering that she was ready to marry Leicester notwithstanding her strong suspicion, too probably assurance, of his crime, (Amy Robsart's murder,) and that in the language of one of Mr. Froude's English critics, "She was thus in the eye of heaven, which judges by the intent and not the act, nearer than Englishmen would like to believe to the guilt of an adulteress and a murderess."

But Mr. Froude plucks up courage, and, true to his first love, while appearing to handle Elizabeth with cruel condemnation, treats her with real kindness.

We have all heard of Alcibiades and his dog, and of what befell that animal. Mr. Froude assumes an air of stern severity for those faults of Elizabeth for which concealment is out of the question—her mean parsimony, her insincerity, her cruelty, her matchless mendacity—while industriously concealing or artistically draping her more repulsive offences.

But we have not started out to treat Mr. Froude's work as a whole. A chorus of repudiation from the most opposite schools of criticism has so effectually covered his attempted apotheosis of a bad man with ridicule and contempt that no further remark need[292] be made on that subject. As to Elizabeth, the less said the better, if we are friendly to her memory.

Careful perusal of Mr. Froude's first six volumes will convince any competent judge that he is not a historian, but, as yet, only in training to become one. He plunged into a great historical subject without the requisite knowledge or the necessary preparation. In his earlier volumes his very defective knowledge of all history before the sixteenth century led him into the most grotesque blunders—errors in general and in details, in geography, jurisprudence, titles, offices, and military affairs. So far from meriting the compliment paid him, of accurate knowledge, acquired in the "course of his devious theological career," of the tenets and peculiar observances of the leading religious sects, it is precisely in such matters that he seriously fails in accuracy.

With a half-grasp of his material, Mr. Froude totally fails to make it up into an interesting consecutive narrative. He lacks, too, the all-important power of generalization, and, as has been aptly remarked, handles a microscope skilfully, but is apparently unable to see through a telescope. Heroic and muscular, his over haste to produce some startling result came near wrecking him in the morning of his career.

While his work was in course of publication, our historian wrote from Simancas a sensational article for Fraser's Magazine, in which he announced some astounding historical discoveries, which only a few weeks later he was only too glad to recall. The trouble was that he had totally misunderstood the Spanish documents on which his discovery was grounded.

Along with his apparent incapacity for sound and impartial judgment, there is an evident inability in Mr. Froude to distinguish the relative value of different state papers, and the most striking proof that he is still in his apprenticeship as a writer of history, is his indiscriminate acceptance of written authorities of a certain class. Historical results long since settled by the unanimous testimony of Camden, Carte, and Lingard, the three great English historians of the seventeenth, eighteenth, and nineteenth centuries respectively, are thrust aside by Mr. Froude and made to give way to some MS. of doubtful value or questionable authenticity. The term "original document" magically invests every writing falling into his hands with all the attributes of truth. When he finds a paper three hundred years old, he gives it speech and sets it up as an oracle. Nor can the simile be arrested here; for, treating his oracle with the tyrannic familiarity of a heathen priest, the paper Mumbo Jumbo must speak as ordered, or else be sadly cuffed. It is a puerile idea to imagine that when the historian has found a mass of original historical papers, his labor of investigation is ended, and he has but to transcribe, to put his personages on the stage, let them act and declaim as these writings relate, and thus place before the reader the truthful portrait of bygone times. Far from it. It is at this point that his work really begins. He must ascertain by comparison, by sifting of evidence, by many precautions, who lies and who speaks truth. In matters of Elizabethan diplomacy, for instance, the truth floats not on the surface. A royal dispatch gives orders, but it does not give motives. And even if the motives are stated, is it certain they are truly stated? A minister is explicit as to what he wishes done; but he does not say why he wants it done, nor what results he looks for. Cases numberless will suggest themselves as to the difficulties[293] of such documents. Very few of these difficulties have any terrors for Mr. Froude. Commencing his investigation with his theory perfected, it is with him a mere choice of papers. Swift is the fate of facts not suiting his theory. So much the worse for them, if they are not what he would have them to be; they are cast forth into outer darkness.

Mr. Froude has fine perceptive and imaginative faculties—admirable gifts for literature, but not for history. Precious, if history depended on fiction, not on fact. Invaluable, if historic truth were subjective. Above all price, where the literary artist has the privilege of evolving from the inner depths of his own consciousness the virtues or the vices wherewith it suits him to endow his characters. But alas! otherwise utterly fatal, because historic truth is eminently objective.

It is well said that to be a good historical student, a man should not find it in him to desire that any historical fact should be otherwise than it is. Now, we cannot consent to a lower standard in logic and morality for the historian than for the student; and thus testing Mr. Froude, it is not pleasant to contemplate his sentence when judged by stern votaries of truth. For we have a well-grounded belief that not only is it possible for Mr. Froude to desire an historical fact to be otherwise than it is, but that he is capable of carrying that desire into effect. It is idle to talk of the judicial quality of an historian who scarcely puts on a semblance of impartiality.

In matters of state, Mr. Froude is a pamphleteer; in personal questions he is an advocate. He holds a brief for Henry. He holds a brief against Mary Stuart. He is the most effective of advocates, for he fairly throws himself into his case. He is the friend or the enemy of all the personages in his history. Their failure and their success affect his spirits and his style. He rejoices with them or weeps with them. There are some whose misfortunes uniformly make him sad. There are others over whose calamities he becomes radiant. He has no unerring standard of justice, no ethical principle which estimates actions as they are in themselves, and not in the light of sympathy or repulsion.

It must be admitted, nevertheless, that Mr. Froude makes up an attractive-looking page. Foot-notes and citations in quantity, imposing capitals and inverted commas, like little flags gayly flying, all combine to give it a typographical vivacity truly charming. Great as are his rhetorical resources, he does not despise the cunning devices of print. Quotation-marks are usually supposed to convey to the reader the conventional assurance that they include the precise words of the text. But Mr. Froude's system is not so commonplace. He inserts therein language of his own, and in all these cases his use of authorities is not only dangerous but deceptive. He has a way of placing some of the actual words of a document in his narrative in such a manner as totally to pervert their sense. The historian who truthfully condenses a page into a paragraph saves labor for the reader; but Mr. Froude has a trick of giving long passages in quotation-marks without sign of alteration or omission, which we may or may not discover from a note to be "abridged."

Other objectionable manipulations of Mr. Froude are the joining together of two distinct passages of a document, and entirely changing their original sense; the connection of two phrases from two different authorities and connecting them as one; and the[294] tacking of irresponsible or anonymous authorities to one that is responsible, concealing the first, and avowing the last.

Then his texts, and the rapid boldness with which he disposes of them; cutting, trimming, clipping, provided only that he produce an animated dialogue or picturesque effect which may cause the reader to exclaim, "How beautifully Mr. Froude writes!" "What a painter!" "His book is as interesting as a novel!" And so it is; for the excellent reason that it is written precisely as novels are written, and mainly depends for its interest upon the study of motives. A superior novelist brings characters before us in startling naturalness—his treatment, of course, being subjective, not objective; arbitrary, not historical. Mr. Froude, with his great skill in depicting individual character and particular events, follows the novel-writer's method, and may be said to be the originator of what we may designate as the "psychological school" of history. This power gives him an immense advantage over all other historians.

While they are burning the midnight lamp in the endeavor to detect the springs of action by the study of every thing that can throw light upon the action itself, he has only to look through the window which, like unto other novelists, he has constructed in the bosom of every one of his characters, to show us their most secret thoughts and aspirations. One may open any of Mr. Froude's volumes at random and find an exemplification of what is here stated. Here is one:

Here are depicted the tumultuous workings of a wicked heart; its hopes, fears, passions—nay, even the very images that float before the mind's eye. And this Mr. Froude asks us to accept for history—ascertained fact.

Our historian takes unprecedented liberties with texts and citations. Now he totally ignores what a given person says on an important occasion. Now he puts a speech of his own into the mouth of the same character. Passages cited from certain documents cannot be found there, and other documents referred to have no existence. In a word, Mr. Froude trifles with his readers and plays with his authorities, as some people play with cards.

There are not many passages of Mr. Froude's work free from some one of these serious objections. To specify them would require at least as much matter as he uses; for he offends as often in suppression as in assertion. Nevertheless, to the extent of our limited space we will point out a few, and as Mr. Froude's early volumes have been so amply commented upon, we will confine our examination to the latter half of the work, with special reference to his treatment of

MARY STUART.

Most historians begin at the beginning. But our latest historical school has resources heretofore unknown, and quietly anticipates that ordinary point of departure. Mary Stuart is formally brought on to Mr. Froude's historical stage in the middle of the seventh volume, and the reader might be supposed to take up her story without a single preconceived opinion. Doubtless, the average reader[295] does so take it up, unsuspicious of the fact that his judgment is already fettered and led captive. In volume iv. p. 208, Mary of Guise is described as lifting her baby out of the cradle, in order that Sir Ralph Sadlier "might admire its health and loveliness."

There is nothing very startling in this. The reader's mind absorbs the statement, and goes on. In the next volume, (vol. v. p. 57,) while deeply interested in the military operations of the Duke of Somerset, we are told en passant:

The reader has not yet reached Mary Stuart; her history is not yet commenced; he supposes his mind, as regards her, to be a mere blank page, and yet our historian has already contrived to inscribe upon the blank page two facts, namely, she was the murderess of Darnley, and she was guilty of adultery with Bothwell. No evidence has been offered, no argument presented. With graceful and almost careless disinvoltura, Mr. Froude has merely alluded to two incidents, one of which is a fable, and lo! the case against Mary Stuart is complete. For these are the two great accusations upon which the entire controversy hinges, a controversy that has raged for three centuries. Very clever! Very clever indeed!

Give but slight attention to Mr. Froude's system and you will find that his treatment of the historical characters he dislikes is after the recipe of Figaro: "Calomniez, calomniez, il en reste toujours quelque chose;" and that under the sentimentality of his "summer seas," "pleasant mountain breezes," "murmuring streams," "autumnal suns," patriotic longings, and pious reveries, there is a vein of persistent and industrious cunning much resembling that of Mr. Harold Skimpole, who is a perfect child in all matters concerning money, who knows nothing of its value, who "loves to see the sunshine, loves to hear the wind blow; loves to watch the changing lights and shadows; loves to hear the birds, those choristers in nature's great cathedral"—but, meantime, keeps a sharp look-out for the main chance.

Indirection and insinuation are effective weapons never out of Mr. Froude's hands. In an allusion or remark, dropped apparently in the most careless manner, he will, as we see, lay the foundation of a system of attack one or two volumes off and many years in historical advance of his objective point. In like manner, at page 272, vol. i., we are told "three years later, when the stake recommenced its hateful activity under the auspices of Sir Thomas More's fanaticism." Thus the way is prepared for the accusation of personal cruelty, which Mr. Froude strives, in vol. ii., to lay at More's door. More's greatness and beautiful elevation of character are evidently unpleasant subjects for our historian, and he grudgingly yields him a credit which he seeks to sweep away in the charge of religious persecution, specifying four particular cases: those of Philipps, Field, Bilney, and Bainham.

These cases have been taken up seriatim by a competent critic, (the reader curious to see them may consult the appendix to the October number Edinburgh Review 1858,) who demonstrates that Mr. Froude's pretended authorities do not tell the story he undertakes to put in their[296] mouth, and that he is guilty of such perversions as are exceedingly damaging to his reputation.

In introducing Mary Stuart, Mr. Froude vouchsafes no information whatever concerning her mind, manners, disposition, or education. It is certainly desirable to know something of the early years and mental development of a character destined to fill so prominent a part in the great events of the period, and to become one of the most interesting personages in history. She is thus presented: "She was not yet nineteen years old; but mind and body had matured amidst the scenes in which she passed her girlhood." (Vol. vii. p. 268.) This is at once a very remarkable statement and a mild specimen of Mr. Froude's command of ambiguous language. Very close and philosophical observers have, we think, already noticed the phenomenon indicated; and although it might not at once occur to every one that young girls usually mature amidst the scenes of their girlhood, yet it was hardly worth the effort of a philosophic historian to give us information so trite. But we suspect Mr. Froude of a deeper meaning, namely, that mind and body were then—at eighteen years—matured, and had attained their full growth. It means that, or it is mere twaddle.

Thus, we are to understand that Mary Stuart, at the tender age of eighteen, was abnormal and monstrous.

Mr. Froude drives his entering wedge so noiselessly that you are scarce aware of it, and in the development of the story he strains all his faculties to paint the Queen of Scots, not only as the worst and most abandoned of women, but as absolutely destitute of human semblance in her superhuman wickedness. That such is the effect of his portraiture, is well expressed by an English critic—a friend of Mr. Froude, but not of Mary: "A being so earthly, sensual, and devilish seems almost beyond the proportions of human nature." (London Times, September 26th, 1866.)

Mr. Froude then gives us a portrait of the young Scottish queen, in which he says, "In the deeper and nobler emotions she had neither share nor sympathy;" and herein, Mr. Froude explains, "lay the difference between the Queen of Scots and Elizabeth." Again we must regret that our author has told us nothing of Mary Stuart's youth, so that we might judge this matter for ourselves. Her life in France was by no means devoid of interest. She was admired and beloved by all. She had reigned there as queen, and young as she was, her opinions were respected in high councils.

Throckmorton, a clever and experienced diplomatist, was near Mary in France, for many years, and, with the fullest means of information, advised Elizabeth day by day concerning her. She is the subject of scores of his dispatches, with none of which, however, are we favored by Mr. Froude. Throckmorton thus announces to Cecil Mary's condition after the death of King Francis:

But Mr. Froude, who is ready to reveal for our entertainment the inmost thoughts of this "dolorous wife," enlightens us with the sole information that "Mary was speculating before the body was cold on her next choice." Throckmorton, all unconscious of the annoyance he must give a nineteenth century historian, again writes to Cecil:

As a general rule, Mr. Froude is not economical of "birth, parentage, and education" essays. Yet, while managing to bestow them on very secondary personages, he has none for Mary Stuart. Latimer and John Knox are favored in this respect, and even to the bastard son of Henry VIII.—"the young Marcellus," as Mr. Froude proudly calls him—are devoted nearly three full pages of gushing enthusiasm concerning his youthful dispositions and early studies. He was, alas! "illegitimate, unfortunately;" "but of beauty and noble promise." (Vol. i. 364-6.)

Soon we see the resources of the psychological school. Mr. Froude informs us (vol. vii. p. 369) that Mary was going to Scotland "to use her charms as a spell;" "to weave the fibres of a conspiracy;" to "hide her purpose until the moment came," and "with a purpose as fixed as the stars to trample down the reformation."

Had it been possible for Mr. Froude to produce one word of testimony from France concerning Mary Stuart's youth that was not of respect, praise, and admiration, from friend or foe, he surely would not have failed to cite it.

In this dilemma, he quotes Randolph, (vol. vii. p. 369,) to show "her craft and deceit;" adding, "Such was Mary Stuart when, on the 14th of August, she embarked for Scotland."

But Randolph at that time had never seen Mary Stuart, and the date of his letter cited by Mr. Froude is October 27th. Under these circumstances it becomes interesting to know what Randolph's opinion of Mary really was before she left France. Randolph writes to Cecil, August 9th, referring to Mary's preparations for departure, "That will be a stout adventure for a sick, crazed woman."

Even for a sea voyage, Mr. Froude continues to prefer a microscope to a telescope. The consequence is, that out of an escort of Mary's three uncles, all her ladies, including the four Marys, more than a hundred French noblemen, the Mareschal d'Amville, Brantôme the historian, and other distinguished men, a doctor of theology, two physicians, and all her household retinue, he can discern no one but Chatelar, who was, as a retainer of d'Amville, in that nobleman's suite. And so we read, "With adieu, belle France, sentimental verses, and a passionate Chatelar sighing at her feet in melodious music, she sailed away over the summer seas." Which we must in candor admit to be a sweetly pretty passage. But in the next paragraph Mr. Froude puts away sentimentality, means business, and throws a bright light on a previous line: "Elizabeth could feel like a man an unselfish interest in a great cause." Here is the paragraph, it is admirable in every respect.

Of course, it would have been "well done;" because "in the deeper and nobler emotions Mary had neither share nor sympathy;" whereas Elizabeth and Catharine de' Medicis had.

The undisputed record of Mary's arrival in Edinburgh is, that her surpassing beauty and charm of address, arising not so much from her courtly training as her kindly heart, created a profound impression on a people who already reverenced in her the daughter of a popular king, and of one of the noblest and best of women.

Mr. Froude thus renders this record: "The dreaded harlot of Babylon seemed only a graceful and innocent girl." (Vol. vii. p. 374.) In common fairness, Mr. Froude should have given some adequate idea of the condition of the country this inexperienced young queen was called to rule. This he fails to do. It was such that the ablest sovereign, with full supply of money and of soldiers—and Mary Stuart had neither—would have found its successful government almost impossible. The power of the feudal aristocracy had declined in Europe everywhere but in Scotland; and everywhere but in Scotland royal power had been increased. For centuries the Scottish kings had striven to break down the power of the nobles, which overshadowed that of the crown. One of the results of this struggle is quaintly recorded in the opening entry of Birrel's Diurnal of Occurrents:

"There has been in this realm of Scotland one hundred and five kings, of whilk there was slaine fyftie-six."

Another result was greater aristocratic power and increased anarchy. The Scotch feudal nobles had never known what it was to be under the rule of law, and there was as yet no middle class to aid the sovereign. Among their recognized practices and privileges were private war and armed conspiracy; and the established means of ridding themselves of personal or public enemies was assassination. In all history we find few bands of worse men than those who surrounded the throne of Mary Stuart. Cruelty, treachery, and cunning were their leading characteristics. Some of them were Protestants in their own peculiar way, and, as John Knox says, referring to the disposition of the church lands, "for their own commoditie."

Personally, they are thus described by Burton, the latest historian of Scotland, a bitter opponent of Mary Stuart:

In view of the picturesque statement that Mary Stuart went to Scotland with a "resolution as fixed as the stars to trample down the Reformation," her first public acts are of great interest. Mr. Froude states them so imperfectly (vol. vii. p. 374) that they make but slight impression. The friends of her mother and the Catholic nobles expected to be called into her councils. Instead of them, she selected the Lord James (her half-brother) and Maitland as her chief ministers, with a large majority of Protestant lords in her council. She threw herself upon the loyalty of her people, and issued a proclamation forbidding any attempt to interfere with the Protestant religion which she found established in her realm. She did not plead, as Mr. Froude states, that she might have her own service in the royal chapel, but claimed it as a right expressly guaranteed. "The Lord Lindsay might croak out texts that the idolater should die the death." (Vol. vii. p. 375.)

That was a truly energetic "croak"! Listen to it, (not in Froude.) When service in the queen's chapel was about to begin, Lindsay, clad in full armor and brandishing his sword, rushed forward shouting, "The idolater[299] priest shall die the death!" The almoner fortunately, for himself, heard the "croak," took refuge, and after the service was protected to his home by two lords; "and then," says Knox, "the godly departed with great grief of heart."

The interview between Queen Mary and John Knox is narrated by Mr. Froude in such a manner as to tone down the coarseness of Knox's conduct, and lessen the brilliancy of the dialectic victory of the young Scotch girl over the old priest and minister. She first inquired about his Blast against the Regiment of Women, in which he declares—

Mr. Froude describes Knox as saying, "Daniel and St. Paul." He ought to know that a Scotch Puritan could not have said Saint Paul. Macaulay never makes such mistakes. "Daniel and St. Paul were not of the religion of Nebuchadnezzar and Nero." (Vol. vii. p. 376.) Incorrect. Knox having first modestly likened himself unto Plato, thus states his own language:

"I shall be alse weall content to lyve under your grace as Paull was to lyve under Nero." It is hard to say which is greater, the man's vanity in comparing himself to St. Paul, or his intolerable insolence in likening, to her face, the young queen to the bloodiest of all Roman tyrants. William Cobbett, a writer of sturdy and unadulterated English, in referring to some such performance as this on the part of Knox, calls him "the Ruffian of the Reformation." We strongly suspect, though, that Knox did not use language so gratuitously offensive. His account of the interview was written years afterward. He was self-complacent and boastful, and in other places says that he caused the queen to weep so bitterly that a page could scarce get her enough handkerchiefs to dry her eyes. Before Mary, Knox claimed that Daniel and his fellows, although subjects to Nebuchadnezzar and to Darius, would not yet be of the religion of the one nor the other. Mary was ready with her answer, and retorted, "Yea; but none of these men raised the sword against their princes." Mr. Froude, of course, reports this reply in such a manner as to spoil it; adding, "But Knox answered merely that 'God had not given them the power.'" Not so; for Knox strove by logical play, which he himself records, to show that resistance and non-compliance were one and the same thing. "Throughout the whole dialogue," says Burton, "he does not yield the faintest shred of liberty of conscience." But Mary kept him to his text, repeating, "But yet they resisted not with the sword." And then, this young woman, who, Mr. Froude assures us, came to Scotland with "spells to weave conspiracies," "to control herself and to hide her purpose," blunderingly tells Knox that she believed "the Church of Rome was the true church of God."

One would think it no very difficult task for a man of age and experience to see through an impulsive girl of nineteen, whose face mirrored her soul. And yet, Mr. Froude informs us triumphantly, three separate times, that "Knox had looked Mary through and through." In this connection we have one of our historian's best efforts, to which we ask special attention.

Pray notice the cause of this estrangement. Mr. Froude is very explicit here. Look at it. This innocent Murray is under a spell. All heart himself, he saw no guile in his sister. But Knox warned him against the sorceress, and that was the cause of the coolness between them. On this point there can be no mistake, and we now propose to place John Knox on the stand and with his eyes to look Mr. Froude "through and through." In the parliament of 1563, Murray had the "Act of Oblivion" passed, in which he managed to reserve for himself and his friends the power to say who should or should not profit by its provisions. With this act he was dangerous to all who opposed him, and was consequently all-powerful. Under these circumstances, John Knox pressed Murray, now that he had the power, to establish the religion, namely, pass in a constitutional manner the informal act of 1560, and legalize the confession of faith as the doctrine of the Church of Scotland.

Thus, if we may believe Knox himself, it was Murray's preference for his own "singular commoditie" over the interests of the kirk of God which caused that "they spake not familiarly together for more than a year and a half." Of "spell" and "enchantress" no word. We refrain from comment.

One remark as to the "spell" Mary had flung over Murray. Even from Mr. Froude's pages may be wrung the unwilling admission that "the stainless Murray" was neither more nor less than the paid and pensioned spy of Elizabeth. Here is another dispatch of Throckmorton, (Elizabeth's ambassador at Paris,) not referred to by Mr. Froude:

This business call of Lord James was made during Mary's preparations to leave France for Scotland. He followed it up with a confidential visit of some days to Elizabeth, who allowed him not to depart empty-handed. Unsuspicious of his treachery, Mary heaped honors and riches upon him, made him her first lord of council, and created him successively Earl of Mar and Earl of Murray. And we are asked by Mr. Froude to believe that over such a personage as this "spells" might be successfully flung by the victim of his treachery.

THE MURDER OF RICCIO.

The introduction of Riccio by Mr. Froude (vol. viii. p. 120) is a good specimen of his best art. There is an accusation in every line, an insinuation in every word; yet when he is through, the reader is left in total ignorance of the Italian's real position. Mr. Froude calls him Ritzio, which is a piece of affectation. The name has heretofore been written Rizzio and Riccio. Ritzio, to the English eye, it is true, very nearly represents the Italian pronunciation of Rizzio. The man's name was Riccio, as is well determined by one letter of his, and[301] two of his brother Joseph, all still in existence and perfectly accessible to Mr. Froude.

His age, variously stated from thirty to forty, is never put at less than thirty. Mr. Froude gives no figure, and calls him "the youth;" by which you may, if you choose, understand eighteen or twenty. His real employment is concealed, and at p. 247, vol. viii., he is called "a wandering musician." Riccio was a man of solid acquirements, able and accomplished. He succeeded to the post formerly held by Raulet—that of secretary for the queen's French correspondence—and was thoroughly versed in the languages as well as in the troubled politics of the day. He was, moreover, devotedly loyal, and inspired Mary with entire confidence in his integrity. Sir Walter Scott (History of Scotland) says that a person like him, "skilled in languages and in business," was essential to the queen, and adds, "No such agent was likely to be found in Scotland, unless she had chosen a Catholic priest, which would have given more offence to her Protestant subjects," etc.

"The queen," says Knox, "usit him for secretary in things that appertainit to her secret affairs in France and elsewhere."

"That he was old, deformed, and strikingly ugly, has been generally accepted by historians," says Burton.

Having, it appears, no access to these three Scotch historians, Mr. Froude is thrown on his own resources and evolves, "He became a favorite of Mary—he was an accomplished musician; he soothed her hours of solitude with love-songs," etc., etc.

In his statement of the circumstances of the plot for the murder, Mr. Froude dwells complacently on every injurious insinuation against Mary Stuart. Referring to a calumnious invention, falsely attributed to Darnley, (vol. viii. p. 248,) he is of opinion that "Darnley's word was not a good one; he was capable of inventing such a story;" that "Mary's treatment of him went, it is likely, no further than coldness or contempt;" but nevertheless he strives to convey the worst impression against her. If Mr. Froude has a "vivid pen," he also has a light one. He glides delicately over the character of the conspiracy to kill Riccio, and manages to veil the real motives. Riccio was assassinated on the ninth of March. Nearly a month previous, on the thirteenth of February, Randolph writes to Leicester, for Elizabeth's eye, (the letter need not be sought for in Froude,)

Randolph is an authority against whom objection from Mr. Froude is impossible. Nevertheless, he ignores this letter and many others fully confirming it, (vol. viii. p. 254,) thrusts out of sight the real motives, which were political, and industriously works up notorious inventions aimed at Mary Stuart's character.

Looking at it as a mere work of art, and without reference to the facts, the murder scene is admirably described by Mr. Froude. (Vol. viii. p. 257, et seq.) One serious drawback is his insatiable desire for embellishment. For the mere purpose of description none is needed. The subject is full[302] to overflowing of the finest dramatic material. The result of Mr. Froude's narration is very remarkable. He skilfully manages to centre the reader's sympathy and admiration on the assassin Ruthven, and, with device of phrase and glamour of type, places the sufferer and victim of an infamous brutality in the light of a woman who is merely undergoing some well-merited chastisement. The whole scene as pictured rests on the testimony of the leading assassin, (Ruthven,) from a London editio expurgata; for Chalmers shows (vol. ii. p. 352) that the account given by Ruthven and Morton, dated April 30th, is the revised and corrected copy of what they sent to Cecil on the 2d of April, asking him to make such changes as he saw fit before circulating it in Scotland and England. Their note of April 2d still exists; but Mr. Froude does not allude to it. Thus we have the story from the chief murderer, corrected by Cecil and embellished by Mr. Froude, who, while admitting that "the recollection of a person who had just been concerned in so tremendous a scene was not likely to be very exact," (vol. viii. p. 261,) nevertheless adopts the version of that person in preference to all others. Why not exercise the most rudimentary prudence and plainest judgment by controlling Ruthven's recital by that of another?—for there are several. And if, after all, we must perforce have Ruthven's, why not give it as it is, sparing us such inventions as "turning on Darnley as on a snake," and "could she have trampled him into dust upon the spot, she would have done it." Mr. Froude is all himself here. "Catching sight of the empty scabbard at his side, she asked him where his dagger was. He said he did not know. 'It will be known hereafter; it shall be dear blood to some of you if David's be spilt.'" This is a specimen of able workmanship. According to Keith, Mary's answer was, "It will be known hereafter." According to Ellis, Mary had previously said to Ruthven, "It shall be dear blood to some of you if David's be spilt." Now, let the reader observe that Mr. Froude takes these two phrases, found in two different authors, addressed separately to two different persons, reverses the order in which they are spoken, and puts them into one sentence, which he makes Mary address to Darnley! Do you see why so much industry and ingenuity should be exerted? Because in this form the phrase is a threat of murder; and thus the foundation is laid broad and deep in the reader's mind for the belief that from that moment Mary has a design upon Darnley's life.[56]

One thing Mr. Froude does state correctly. We mean Mary's words when told that Riccio was dead. In her fright, anguish, and horror she ejaculated, "Poor David! good and faithful servant! May God have mercy on your soul!" To those who know the human heart, this involuntary description of the precise place poor David occupied in Mary's esteem is more than answer to Mr. Froude's indecent note at page 261, and his malevolent insinuations on all his pages. Mary struggled to the window to speak to armed citizens who had flocked to her assistance. "Sit down!" cried one of the ruffian lords to her. "If you stir, you shall be cut into collops, and flung over the walls." A prisoner in the hands of these brutal assassins, after the unspeakable outrages to which she had been subjected, Mr. Froude yet has [303]the admirable art of placing her before his readers in the light of a wicked woman deprived of her liberty for her own good. When night came, Ruthven called Darnley away, and the queen was left to her rest in the scene of the late tragedy; and, adds Mr. Froude with beautiful equanimity, "The ladies of her court were forbidden to enter, and Mary Stuart was locked alone into her room, amidst the traces of the fray, to seek such repose as she could find." This is true, and in that blood-stained place she passed the night alone.

"They had caged their bird," goes festively on our historian; but they "knew little of the temper which they had undertaken to control." ("Undertaken to control" is here positively delicious!) "Behind that grace of form there lay a nature like a panther's, merciless and beautiful." (Vol. viii. 265.) We have seen a panther's skin admired, but we never before heard that the animal had a beautiful nature. Such are the reflections suggested to Mr. Froude's sympathetic mind by the horrible scenes he has just described.[57] One instinctively trembles for those lambs, the lords, with such a "panther" near them. All this time Mr. Froude takes no further notice of Mary's physical condition than to treat the necessary results, which, almost miraculously, were not fatal, as "trick and policy." (Vol. viii. 266.) The queen was then in the sixth month of her pregnancy, and the possible consequences of the horrible tragedy thus thrust suddenly before her eyes were not unforeseen. The conspirators in their bonds had expressly provided for the contingency of her death. When Mary escapes from the band of assassins, Mr. Froude would have been utterly inconsolable but for the fact that her midnight ride gives him (vol. viii. p. 270) the opportunity of executing (tempo agitato) a spirited fantasia on his historic lyre in his description of the gallop of the fleeing cavalcade.[58] It sounds like a faint echo of Bürger's Lenore. Then he gives credit without stint to Mary's iron fortitude and intellectual address. He is entirely too liberal in this regard. Instead of riding "away, away, past Seton," she stopped there for refreshments and the escort of two hundred armed cavaliers under Lord Seton, who was advised of her coming. Then, too, the letter she "wrote with her own hand, fierce, dauntless, and haughty," to Elizabeth, and which Mr. Froude so minutely describes—"The strokes thick, and slightly uneven from excitement, but strong, firm, and without sign of trembling!" This insanity for the picturesque and romantic would wreck a far better historian. The prosaic fact is, that although, as Mr. Froude states, the letter may be seen in the Rolls House, Mary Stuart did not write it. It was written by an amanuensis, the salutation and signature alone being in her hand. This question was the subject of some controversy, during the past year, in Paris and London, and Mr. Wiesener, a distinguished French historical writer, requested Messrs. Joseph Stevenson and A. Crosby, of the Record Office, to examine the letter and give their opinion. Their reply was, "The body of the document is most certainly not in Mary's handwriting." But, after all, there was no occasion for controversy, and still less for Mr. Froude's [304]blunder. If he had ever read the letter, he would have seen that Mary wrote, "Nous pensions vous écrire cette lettre de notre propre main afin de vous faire mieux comprendre, etc. Mais de fait nous sommes si fatiguée et si mal à l'aise, tant pour avoir couru vingt milles en cinq heures de nuit etc., que nous ne sommes pas en état de le faire comme nous l'aurions souhaité." It was her intention to have written this letter with her own hand, but on account of fatigue and illness could not as she would have desired. "Twenty miles in two hours," says Mr. Froude. Twenty miles in five hours, modestly writes Mary Stuart. Fortunately, we have been warned by Mr. Froude against testimony from that "suspected source!"

We close, for the present, with one specimen (not by any means the worst) of Mr. Froude's historical handicraft, which exemplifies his peculiar system of citation. He professes to give the substance of a letter of Mary Stuart published in Labanoff. (Vol. vii. p. 300.) Here is the letter, side by side with Mr. Froude's version of it. We select this out of numerous cases, for the reason that Labanoff is here more readily accessible than other authorities treated in like manner by Mr. Froude.

of the contents of a letter of April 4th, 1566, from Mary Stuart to Queen Elizabeth. (See vol. viii. p. 282.)

"In an autograph letter of passionate gratitude, Mary Stuart placed herself, as it were, under her sister's protection; she told her that, in tracing the history of the late conspiracy, she had found that the lords had intended to imprison her for life; and if England or France came to her assistance, they had meant to kill her. She implored Elizabeth to shut her ears to the calumnies which they would spread against her, and with engaging frankness she begged that the past might be forgotten; she had experienced too deeply the ingratitude of those by whom she was surrounded to allow herself to be tempted any more into dangerous enterprises; for her own part, she was resolved never to give offence to her good sister again; nothing should be wanting to restore the happy relations which had once existed between them; and should she recover safely from her confinement, she hoped that in the summer Elizabeth would make a progress to the north, and that at last she might have an opportunity of thanking her in person for her kindness and forbearance.

"This letter was sent by the hands of a certain Thornton, a confidential agent of Mary Stuart, who had been employed on messages to Rome. 'A very evil and naughty person, whom I pray you not to believe,' was Bedford's credential for him in a letter of the 1st of April to Cecil. He was on his way to Rome again on this present occasion.

"The public in Scotland supposed that he was sent to consult the pope on the possibility of divorcing Darnley, and it is remarkable that the Queen of Scots at the close of her own letter desired Elizabeth to give credit to him on some secret matter which he would communicate to her. She perhaps hoped that Elizabeth would now assist her in the dissolution of a marriage which she had been so anxious to prevent."

[The opening paragraph of formal compliment acknowledges reception of Elizabeth's "favorable dispatch" by Melville.]

"When Melville arrived, he found me but lately escaped from the hands of the greatest traitors on earth, in the manner in which the bearer will communicate, with a true account of their most secret plot, which was, that even in case the escaped lords and other nobles, aided by you or by any other prince, undertook to rescue me, they would cut me in pieces and throw me over the wall. Judge for yourself the cruel undertakings of subjects against her who can sincerely boast that she never did them harm. Since then, however, our good subjects have counselled with us, ready to offer their lives in support of justice; and we have, therefore, returned to this city to chastise some of its people guilty of this great crime.

"Meantime, we remain in this castle, as our messenger will more fully give you to understand.

"Above all other things, I would especially pray you carefully to see that your agents on the Border comply with your good intentions toward me, and, abiding by our treaty of peace, expel those who have sought my life from their territory, where the leaders in this noted act are as well received as if your intention were the worst possible, (la pire du monde,) and the very reverse of what I know it to be.

"I have also heard that the Count (Earl) of Morton is with you. I beg of you to arrest and send him to me, or at least compel him to return to Scotland, by depriving him of safeguard in England. Doubtless he will not fail to make false statements to excuse himself; statements which you will find neither true nor probable. I ask of you, my good sister, to oblige me in all these matters, with the assurance that I have experienced so much ingratitude from my own people that I shall never offend by a similar fault. And to fully affirm our original friendship, I would ask of you in any event (quoique Dieu m'envoie) to add the favor of standing as godmother for my child. I moreover hope that, if I should recover by the month of July, and you should make your progress as near to my territory as I am informed you will, to go, if agreeable, and thank you myself, which above all things I desire to do. (Then follow apologies for bad writing, for which, she says, her condition must excuse her, the usual compliments in closing a letter, and wishes for Elizabeth's health and prosperity.)

"Postscript. I beseech your kindness in a matter I have charged the bearer to ask you for me; and furthermore, I will soon write you specially, (et au reste je vous depécherai bientôt exprès,) to thank you and to know your intention, if it pleases you, to send me some other minister, whom I may receive as resident, who would be more desirous of promoting our friendship than Randal [59] has been found to be."

We leave the reader to form his own estimate of this method of writing history. Instead of a letter of "passionate gratitude," written spontaneously, as insinuated, it turns out to be the answer to a dispatch (whether written or verbal, it matters not) transmitted by Elizabeth through Melville. Mary's attitude and language are dignified and independent, and the missive, so far from having any prayer for forbearance in its tone, is plainly one of complaint and warning to Elizabeth, couched, it is true, in terms of politeness. The main subject, "above all other things," is the hospitable reception accorded to Riccio's murderers in England, and Elizabeth is delicately but emphatically reminded of her duty and of the violation of it by her border agents. The passages of Mr. Froude's version marked in italics have no existence in Mary's letter, and are of his own invention. Mary Stuart says that she has experienced so much ingratitude from her own (people) that she would never offend any one by similarly sinning. (J'ai tant eprouvé l'ingratitude des miens que je n'offenserai jamais de semblable péché.) Mr. Froude makes of this that she had experienced too deeply the ingratitude, etc., "to allow herself to be tempted anymore into dangerous enterprises."

What dangerous enterprises? The murder of Riccio? Was she guilty of that too? Was it her midnight escape? Mr. Froude alone has the secret! And then the postscript? Randolph [306]had not only offended, but deeply injured her, and she wishes Elizabeth to understand that he must not be sent back to Scotland.

It is found "remarkable" that Mary, in her postscript, desires Elizabeth to receive communication of some verbal matter (not secret, as Mr. Froude states) from the messenger. But the same request occurs twice in the body of the letter. Mr. Froude is, of course, accurately informed as to the hidden meaning of the postscript, and settles the matter with what "public opinion supposed," and his usual "perhaps."

This is also an invention of Mr. Froude. He supposes the supposition! Then, too, his "evil and naughty person" is uncalled for; for we know that it was Bedford's business, as it is Mr. Froude's calling, to judge any messenger of Mary Stuart to be "evil and naughty." In all this, the intelligent reader will see that, as at page 261, vol. viii., Mr. Froude lays the foundation of a plan of revenge by Mary against Darnley, so he here strives to fasten upon her the resolution of obtaining a divorce, all going to make cumulative evidence to be used when we come to the Darnley murder. "Deep, sir, deep!"

But there is a more serious aspect to this matter. For three centuries this Mary Stuart question has been a vexed one among historians, and the never-ending theme of acrimonious controversy. What prospect is there of reaching any solution if the subject continues to be treated as we find it in the work before us?

So far from settling any question in dispute, or even solving any of the numerous secondary problems underlying the main issue, Mr. Froude, by his violent partisanship, tortured citation, paltering with the sense while tampering with the text of authorities, attribution of false motives and a scandalous wealth of abusive epithets, greatly grieves the most judicious of those who condemn Mary Stuart, inspires with renewed confidence those who believe that she was a woman more sinned against than sinning, and begets the conviction that the cause must be bad indeed which needs such handling.

DION AND THE SIBYLS.
A CLASSIC, CHRISTIAN NOVEL.

BY MILES GERALD KEON, COLONIAL SECRETARY, BERMUDA, AUTHOR OF "HARDING THE MONEY-SPINNER," ETC.

CHAPTER VIII.

"Let us show her the marble likeness," suggested Paulus, in an eager whisper, with the air of a child devising mischief.

While they were discussing this topic, a gentle knock was heard at the door, and then a very pretty girl of about fifteen, with an open, sweet countenance, and a remarkably modest, cheerful bearing, presented herself, carrying a sort of tray with various articles for supper arranged thereon.

"Come in," added Agatha, in Latin,[307] but by no means with so good an accent as her mother's. "You seem like your name; you seem to be Benigna."

The girl looked at the beautiful child with a sweet, grateful smile, and immediately proceeded to prepare a table and three covers for supper.

"No, lady," replied the daughter of the house. "My father is quite a scholar; he was one of the secretary slaves in the great house before he got his freedom, and my mother has learnt much from him; but I have been brought up to help mother in the inn, and never had time to learn high things."

"I thought Latin came naturally to one, like the rain, and that it was Greek which had to be worked out, and made, just as wine is."

The landlady, carrying various articles, entered as her daughter uttered this valuable observation, and she joined heartily in the laugh with which it was greeted. Benigna gazed round for a moment in amazement, and then resumed her work, laughing through sympathy, but very red from the forehead to the dimples round her pretty mouth.

Paulus, at whom the hostess had frequently looked wistfully, now remarked that they all felt much gratitude for the kindness they were receiving, and never could forget it. Crispina, who was going out at the moment, did not reply, but lingered with her hand upon the door; the other hand she passed once across her eyes.

"Good hostess, these are the apartments you intended for some barbarian queen, I believe?"

"Yes, my lady; for Queen Berenice, daughter-in-law of King Herod the Idumæan, called Herod the Great, with her son Herod Agrippa, a wild youth, I understand, about eighteen years old, and her daughter Herodias."

"I heard the tribune quæstor, who commands the prætorians, plead for us with your husband," continued Aglais; "and I suppose that the quæstor's generous eloquence is the cause of our being received into your house at all. But this does not account for your extraordinary kindness to us. We expected to be barely tolerated as inconvenient and unwelcome guests, who kept better customers away."

"Inconvenient and unwelcome!" said Crispina, who seemed ready to cry, as, looking around the little group, her glance rested again upon Paulus.

"Whereas," resumed Aglais, "you treat my dear children as if you were their mother. Why are we so fortunate as to find these feelings in a stranger?"

The hostess paused a moment. "Honored lady," said she, "the reason is, that I once was the nurse of a youth whom I loved as if he were my own child; and it seemed to me as if I saw my brave, beautiful, affectionate nursling again when I saw your son; but so long a time had passed, I nearly fell with fright and astonishment."

Agatha went to the bust of Tiberius, lifted it, and, pointing to the marble image, said in a low, tender voice,

"No one ever thought of looking beneath," said she. "My daughter and I arrange and dust the room. I must remove my poor boy's image. He is indeed forgotten by most people now; but it might harm us, and alas! alas! could not help him, if this silent face, that never smiles at me, never talks to me any more, were to be discovered. Do not speak of this to any body, I beg of you, good lady, and my pretty one. You will not?" added she, smiling, but with tears in her eyes as she looked at Paulus. "I feel as though I had reared you."

They said they would take care not to allude to the subject at all, except among themselves, and then Aglais remarked,

"Eheu! lady, he is dead nearly twenty years; but he was just about your son's age when they put him to death."

"Hush! Mæcenas and the emperor ordered it to be done. Oh! do take care. The whole world swarms with spies, and you may be sure an inn is not free from them. Things have been more quiet of late years. When I was young, I felt as if my head was but glued to my shoulders, and would fall off every day. As for Crispus, did I not make him cautious how he spake?"

"Ah poor boy! Poor young knight! He was mad about the ancient Roman liberties; a great student, always reading Tully."

The hostess wiped her eyes with the sleeve of her stola manicata, and said, in a tone little above a whisper, looking round timidly, and closing the door fast,

"Why, Augustus came suddenly one day into a triclinium, where he caught a nephew of his trying to hide under a cushion some book which he had been reading. Augustus took the book, and found that it was one of Tully's. The nephew thought he was lost, remembering that it was Augustus who had given up Cicero to Mark Antony to be murdered. There the emperor stood, fastened to the page, and continued reading and reading till at last he heaved a great breath, and, rolling up the book on its roller, laid it softly down, and said, 'A great mind, a very great mind, my nephew;' and so he left the room."

"My foster-son was not Augustus's nephew, you see; but eheu! how different a case!—the nephew of a former rival of Augustus. Nor used the emperor's nephew to talk as my poor child would talk. My foster-son used to say that for Augustus to have given up Tully, his friend and benefactor, to be murdered by Mark Antony, in order that he, Augustus, might be allowed to murder somebody else, and then to discover that neither he nor the human race could enjoy justice, nor see peace, nor have safety, till this very same Antony should be himself destroyed, was not a pretty tale. Cicero had sided against, and had resisted Julius Cæsar; yet Julius had given back his life to a man of whom Rome and the civilized world were proud. The same Tully had sided with, not against, Augustus, and had been the making of him; yet the life which a noble enemy had spared and left shining like a star, a[309] base friend stole, and suffered to be quenched; and this for the sake of a monster who, for the sake of mankind, had to be very soon himself destroyed. This was not a nice tale, my poor Paulus used to say."

"Nor was it; but your Paulus?" cried Aglais. The travellers all held their breath in surprise and suspense.

"What! the youth whom that bust represents, and whom Augustus put to death, was called Paulus?"

"Yes. They said he had engaged in some conspiracy, the foolish dear! But now, lady, I have been led, bit by bit, into many disclosures, and I beseech you—"

"Fear not," interrupted Aglais; "I cannot but cherish a fellow-feeling with you; for, although I have something to ask of the emperor, it is justice only. I, too, look back to experiences which are akin to yours. My son yonder, whom the marble image of your foster-son so strikingly resembles, bears the same name, Paulus; and the name of his father was that which headed the first list of those who, the Triumvirate agreed, should die."

"Permit me, now, to ask once more who you are, lady?" said Crispina. "I know well the names upon that list."

"The triumvir was our master," answered the landlady; "and alas! it is too true that he, the triumvir, was timid and weak, and his son, about whose image you have asked me, knew not, poor youth, when he so bitterly blamed Augustus for sacrificing Tully to Mark Antony, that his own father had given up a brother—that brother whom you married—in the same terrible days, and just in the same kind of way."

"The bust of your son's first cousin, lady. My foster-son's father was your husband's brother."

"No wonder," cried Agatha, "that my brother should be like his own first cousin!"

"No," said Aglais; "but it is as surprising as it is fortunate that we should have come to this house, and have fallen among kind persons disposed to be friends, like our hostess, her good husband, and little Benigna yonder."

"There is nothing which my husband and I would not do," said Crispina, "for the welfare of all belonging to the great Æmilian family, in whose service we both were born and spent our childhood; the family which gave us our freedom in youth, and our launch in life as a married couple. As for me, you know now how I must feel when I look upon the face of your son."

"Your former master, the triumvir, wrote to my husband asking forgiveness for having consented to let his name appear in the list of the proscribed, and explaining how he got it erased. Therefore, let not that subject trouble you."

"I happen, on my side, to know for a fact," answered the hostess, "that the one circumstance to which you refer has been the great remorse of the triumvir's life. The old man still mumbles and maunders, complaining that he never received a reply to that letter. He would die happy if he could but see you, and learn that all had been forgiven."

Before Aglais had time to make any answer, the landlord appeared, carrying a small cadus, or cask, marked in large black letters—

Benigna had previously set upon a separate mensa, or table, according to custom, fruits, and fictile or earthen cups.

"I thought so!" cried good Crispus. "Women (excuse me, lady, I mean my wife and daughter) will jabber and cackle even when ladies may be tired, and, as I sincerely hope, hungry. Do, Crispina, let me see the ladies and this young knight enjoy their little supper. This Alban wine, my lady, is nearly fifty years old, I do assure you; look at the consul's name on the cask. Benigna, young as she is, might drink ten cyathi of it without hurt. By the by, I have forgotten the measure. Run, Benigna, and fetch a cyathus (a ladle-cup) to help out the wine."

"Jabber and cackle!" said the hostess. "Crispus, this lady is the widow, and these are the son and daughter of Paulus Æmilius Lepidus."

The landlord, in the full career of his own jabber, was stricken mute for a moment. He gazed at each of our three travellers in turn, looking very fixedly at Paulus. At last he said,

"This, then, accounts for the wonderful likeness. My lady, I will never take one brass coin from you or yours; not an as, so help me! You must command in this house. Do not think otherwise."

And, apparently to prevent Aglais from answering him, he drew his wife hastily out of the room, and closed the door.

Benigna was left behind, and, with winning smiles and a flutter of attentions, the young girl now placed the chairs, and began to cackle, as Crispus would have expressed himself, and to entreat the wanderers to take that refreshment of which they stood so much in need. They all had the delicate and graceful tact to feel that compliance with the kindness which they had so providentially found was the only way to return it which they at present possessed.

It is historical to add that appetite gave the same advice. Their hunger was as keen as their tact. During supper the mother and son spoke little; but Agatha, both during the repast and for some time afterward, kept up a brisk conversation with Benigna, for whom the child had taken an inexpressible liking, and from whom she drew, with unconscious adroitness, the fact that she was engaged to be married. That sudden affection of sympathy which knit the soul of David to that of Jonathan seemed to have bound these two together. The landlady's considerate daughter at length advised Agatha to defer further communications until she should have a good night's rest. Paulus seconded the recommendation, and left his mother and sister with their Greek slave Melena and with Benigna, and retired to his own bedroom. This chamber overlooked the impluvium, or inner court, whence the incessant plash of the fountain was heard soothingly through his lattice-window, the horn slide of which he left open. The bedroom of the ladies, on the other hand, overlooked the garden and bee-hives, to which Crispina had alluded. The sitting apartments, opening into each other, in one of which they had supped, stood between; all these rooms being situated in the projecting west wing, which they entirely filled. Thus closed the day which had carried to their destination the travellers from Thrace.

CHAPTER IX.

Next morning when they met at the jentaculum, or breakfast, there was[311] a marvellous improvement in Agatha's looks. She had been the earliest out of bed; had seen from her window, under a brilliant sunshine, the beautiful landscape unroll itself in the various forms which the landlady had truly though inadequately described; and she then had run down into the garden.

In due time—that is, very soon afterward—she had been chased by the bees, had fled, screaming and laughing, with the hood of her ricinium drawn completely over the head by way of helmet against the terrible darts of her indignant pursuers, and had been received in the arms of Benigna, who had heard the cry of distress and had flown to the rescue, brandishing a long, reedy brush, like the mosquito brushes of modern times. Rallying in a bower of trellis-work covered with ivy, whence a wooden staircase led up to the first floor of the house, by way of a landing or platform, over which rose another bower clad in the same ivy mantle—facing round, I say, upon her enemy at the foot of this staircase, she had soon ventured once more into the garden with Benigna, and the two girls, jabbering and cackling much, had gathered a large nosegay of autumnal flowers. With this booty, which Benigna had made so big that Agatha could hardly hold it in her small and elegant hands, the latter damsel had returned to the bower, had seated herself upon a bench, and had begun to sort the flowers in the relative positions which best showed their tints. Here she relied upon gradation, there upon contrast. Her delicate Greek taste in the performance of this task drew exclamations of delight from Benigna.

"There!" the innkeeper's daughter would cry; "how pretty! That is the way! That so, and then that, and that! They look quite different now! Exactly! I never imagined it!"

When Agatha had finished the arrangement to her own satisfaction, an exploit which was nimbly achieved, "Now, Benigna," said she, with her pretty foreign accent, "sit down here; just do, and tell me all about every thing."

"So you are engaged to become the wife of a very good and handsome youth, who in himself is every thing that can be admired, except that, poor young man! he is not very courageous, I understood you to say. Now, that is not his fault, I suppose. How can he help feeling afraid if he does feel afraid?"

At this moment the voice of Crispina was heard calling her daughter to help in preparing the breakfast, and Benigna, whom Agatha's last words had thrown into some confusion, as the same topic had done the previous evening, made an excuse and ran away, with the light of roses vivid in her cheeks.

Agatha remained, and looked out upon the garden, and beyond it upon the sweet country, with its varied beauty. She remained listening peacefully and dreamingly to the hum of bees, the twittering of birds, the voices and footsteps in the inn, and inhaling the perfumes of the nosegay which she had arranged, and the cool freshness of that pleasant morning hour, when the sun behind her and behind the house was throwing the shadows of buildings, sheds, trees, and cattle in long lines toward the Tyrrhenian Sea. While thus calmly resting, admiring, and musing, a lady in a dark robe of poil, (gausapa,) with a very pallid face and large black eyes, stood suddenly in the doorway of the bower, and blocked out the lovely prospect. The stranger smiled, and, holding out a bunch of flowers, said,

"My pretty young lady, I see that the offering I have been culling for[312] you has lost its value. You are rich already. May I sit down in this pleasant shady place a moment to rest?"

"I suppose," resumed the stranger, "that you belong to this house, my little friend? I am a stranger, and merely lodging—"

"Mother is," replied Agatha; "but brother calls himself a Roman knight, and even noble."

"I knew it!" cried the lady; "you have it written in your countenance. I, too, am a noble lady; my name is Plancina. Have you ever seen Rome?"

"Ah! how you will be enchanted. You must come to see me. I have a house in Rome; such a pretty house, full of such curious things! Ah! when you see Rome, you will hold your breath with wonder and delight. I will make you so happy when you come to see me in my pretty house."

"You are a very kind, good lady, I should think," quoth Agatha, looking up from her flowers, and gazing long at the pallid face and the large black eyes; "and if we go to Rome, I and my mother will visit you, perhaps."

"My house is among the willows and beeches of the Viminal Hill," said the lady. "Remember two things—Viminal Hill, with its beeches and its willows, and the Calpurnian House, where the Piso family have lived for generations. My husband, Piso, has had great losses at dice. I am rich enough to spend a fortune every year for half a century, and we have still at our house all the pleasures that can be thought of. What pains I will take to amuse you! You cannot conceive the splendors, dresses, games, sports, shows, and beauties of Rome; the theatres, the circus, the combats, the great wild beasts of all sorts from all countries, the dances—"

As she pronounced the word "dances," a youthful male voice was heard at a little distance, saying, "While they change horses here, we will stretch our limbs by a stroll in the garden behind the inn. Make haste, worthy innkeeper; order your servants to be brisk."

And almost at the same moment a brilliantly beautiful, dark, eastern-looking girl, in a Syrian costume, appeared at the entrance of the bower. Behind her came sauntering the youth whose voice had been heard. He was of about Paulus's age, had an olive complexion, was sumptuously dressed, and exhibited a strong family likeness in face to the girl. Last followed a woman in middle life, appareled in costly robes, suited to travel, haughty, languid, and scornful of mien.

Plancina and Agatha looked up and surveyed the new-comers. The brilliant damsel remained at the entrance of the bower examining its occupants with a hardy, unabashed glance; whereupon Plancina, after a moment's pause, occasioned by the interruption, resumed and concluded her sentence thus,

"No, you can form no idea of the gayeties of Rome; the games, the shows, the theatres, the glories, the pleasures, the jests, the dances."

"But all your good dances come from foreign lands—from the east, indeed," interrupted the damsel, nodding her head repeatedly and sneeringly; "you must admit that."

"Not all our good alone," answered Plancina sternly, noticing that the woman in middle life smiled approvingly at the girl who had obtruded the remark; "not all our good alone, but all. The office of the outside world is to try and amuse Rome."

"Come away, Herodias," said the haughty, languid, and scornful-looking woman; and the two strolled down the middle walk of the garden. The youth who had come with them lingered a moment or two behind, standing in the middle of the gravel-walk and gazing straight into the bower, while he flirted a sort of horse-whip around the heads of one or two tall flowers which were growing outside along the border of the walk.

Plancina looked steadily at him, and he at her. The lad withdrew after a few moments, without a change of feature.

"They have a talent for it, indeed," said Plancina. "A hardy family, putting one thing with another. I think I know who they are. The mother, if she were the mother, called the daughter, if she were the daughter, Herodias. My husband thinks of going to Syria, and indeed Tiberius has offered him the procuratorship of Judea; but he would not condescend to go in any smaller capacity than as prefect of Syria. An acquaintance of ours, young Pontius Pilate, wants to get the procuratorship. The minor office would be a great thing for him. But my husband, Piso of the Calpurnians, cannot stoop to that. I may meet yonder family again."

"Those people are looking back," observed Agatha, who had paid very little attention to her companion's speech.

Plancina rose, and, going to the entrance of the bower, honored the strangers with a steady glance. The scornful-looking foreign woman in sumptuous apparel met it for a moment, and then turned away. Her son and daughter turned away at the same time.

"Ah! they are gone," murmured Agatha; "they do not like you to gaze so at them."

"It is but a Roman," returned Plancina, "looking at barbarians. They always shrink in that curious manner. And why this Greek lunacy?" muttered she; "and why this Attic mania?"

"Nothing, my dear," replied Plancina; "only you are not Greek, you know; your father's race and the name you bear settle that question; your very mother is now, and has long since become, a Roman citizen; you must always prefer Rome to Greece; never forget that rule, or you and yours will perish."

Agatha opened wide the ingenuous young eyes, and seemed to be most seriously alarmed.

Plancina smoothed her pale brows, which had been frowning; and continued with a stern smile,

"I am only giving you a friend's warning. Your mother and brother have a suit to urge at court. There exists a pestilent Greek faction which are all doomed to destruction; tell your mother that you must all beware of being mixed up with them, and you will escape their perdition. A Greek, like your mother, with something to ask, is peculiarly liable to make the mistake of seeking Greek friends. If she do, she is utterly lost, however powerful may seem the prince who patronizes the accursed cabal."

Agatha shrank and trembled, murmuring like an echo Plancina's last adjective—exitiabilis.

"Do not stare at me so, my little dear," continued Plancina. "There is the Prince Germanicus. Only for him—every body knows it, and every body says it; the thing is no secret—Piso,[314] my husband, would be now prefect of Syria; and like Crispus Sallust, when I was a little girl, would have recovered ten times the fortune out of which he has been cheated at dice. I am called a rash, violent, and an untamable woman. The moment, however, that any body gives you any information about court parties and political factions, every thing I am saying will be mentioned. I do not hide my disgust. Foreign barbarians of all sorts swarm; they creep through postern doors; they privately influence all the destinies of that world of which Romans have the name publicly of being masters. We are trodden under the feet of Greeks, Jews, and Chaldeans; the first beat us by genius, by eloquence, and artistic skill, by general intellectual force and subtlety; the second by superstition-inspired obstinacy, by incredible and unspeakable importunity, by steadfastness in sordid servility, by sorcery, divination, necromancy, and delusion; not all delusion, I grant you; for I myself have seen the demons of Thrasyllus, the Babylonish Greek."

"A man who calls demons and spirits of the air, as you would call your pet birds, and they come to him."

"May the unknown God love me!" cried Agatha, shuddering. "What are the demons like?"

"Not like our sculptures, believe me," answered Plancina. "I dare not tell you; I have seen what no words can say."

"Some forms were like the human, with red fire in the veins instead of blood, and white fire in the bones instead of marrow; eyes they possessed that had no comfort in them. They had the air of being utterly without interest in any thing, only that their eyes were filled with fear; yet it seemed to me with knowledge, too: unspeakable fear, immense knowledge; wells and pools they appeared, full of fear and knowledge. When they glanced upon you, there were pale rays of hatred strangely combined with an expression of indifference, fear, knowledge, and hatred. If you looked at the eyes, when they looked not at you, you saw nothing but an expression of fear and knowledge; but when they did look at you, you saw fear, knowledge, and hatred too. All these faces mocked without smiling, and scoffed without enjoyment. Something, I thought, was dripping down the wan cheeks, and there was a look of fixed surprise long ago, of long-past astonishment—the trace left, and the feeling gone. The emotion of boundless amazement had once been there; the signs of it were left all over the countenance, but, if I may so speak, petrified—an immedicable scar, an ineffaceable vestige. The character of the countenance was that of a dead astonishment—the astonishment was dead; it was no longer an active sentiment. It had been some boundless wonder; the greatest which that creature had ever experienced, and the event which had caused it had apparently been the most serious which that being had ever known."

The other made no reply; and before any further conversation could occur between them, a young man, in the dark-brown habiliments of a slave, entered the garden from the inn, and after a hasty glance in various[315] directions, approached the bower. His features were very good; he was well made, of a pleasing address, and had a look of uncommon intelligence. He possessed, in a small degree, and a humble way, that undefinable air of elegance which mental culture sheds over the countenance; but with this advantage he betrayed certain symptoms of awkwardness and timidity. Standing at a little distance from the door of the arbor, he made a low bow to Plancina, and said he was the bearer of some commands.

Plancina instantly rose, and took leave of Agatha, enjoining her not to forget the warnings and counsels she had given. Agatha then saw her hastily reënter the hotel, followed by the handsome slave. Thereupon, buoyantly recovering her spirits, which the presence and the words of this woman had depressed, she ascended the staircase to the landing overhead, where she was joined by her mother from the room within.

Agatha immediately told Aglais every thing which had passed between her and Plancina.

"I don't think, my dear child, we shall be likely to trouble her in her nice house among the willows and beeches of the Viminal Hill," said Aglais; and as Paulus now came out upon the landing, a second edition of the narrative was produced for his information.

"Germanicus," said he, "is more like the last of the Romans than in any sense reprehensible or degenerate in his tastes. His love for Greece and his admiration for Athens are an honor to his understanding. They are nothing else. This has nothing to do with preferring barbarians and barbarous influences. My education, edepol! has to be completed; but I am educated enough to know that Rome goes for schooling to Greece as much as ever she did. Was not Julius Cæsar himself what they call a Græculus? I rather think he was even deeper than Germanicus in Greek lore; but, therefore, all the more fitted for Roman command. The Romans continued to be barbarians long after the Greeks had become the teachers of the world; and were it not for Greece, they would be barbarians still. As for warning us not to dare to make friends for ourselves of this person or that, or of any who appreciate intellect—for this means to appreciate Greeks—it is like warning us to remain friendless, in order that we may the more easily be crushed. It is the wolf's advice to the sheep, to send away her dogs; but I am more dog than that myself. This pale, beetle-browed lady ought to have enjoined those to be timid who know how. Dare do this! Dare do that! For my part, I am not afraid to do any thing that I think right."

His mother pressed Paulus's hand affectionately, and his sister's high spirit, which had cowered under the dreadful conversation of Plancina, shone in her eyes as she smiled at him.

CHAPTER X.

Meanwhile, in the large room within, breakfast had been prepared for the wanderers on a table drawn opposite to and near the open folding-doors of the arbor where they were conversing; and the landlady now summoned them to partake of that repast.

After breakfast, at which Crispina herself waited on them, Agatha asked where Benigna was.

The landlady smiled, and stated that a friend of her daughter's had called, and was doubtless detaining[316] her, but she would go at once and bring the girl.

"On no account," interposed Aglais; "Benigna, I dare say, will unfold to my daughter all about it by and by. Unless you have some pressing business to take you immediately away, will you kindly inform us of the news, if there be any, and let us sit in the arbor while you tell us?"

Accordingly they went into the bower on the landing overlooking the garden, and Crispina told them the news.

In the first place, she told them that the emperor's expected visit to Formiæ was delayed on account of the state of his health. It was now thought he would not arrive for two or three days more, whereas he was to have entered Formiæ that very morning. Crispina added, that it would not surprise her if he did not come for a week yet.

In the second place, Queen Berenice with her son, Herod Agrippa, and her daughter Herodias, who were to have occupied those very apartments, had arrived at the inn, but had now gone forward.

"Mother," said Agatha, "those must have been the persons who, an hour ago, looked into the arbor below this one, when that pale woman was talking to me. The elder called the younger Herodias."

"The same," continued the landlady. "Finding that they cannot be accommodated in my house, young Herod has proposed to proceed with all their train to Formiæ, where—royal though they be—they will be nobody's guests; and as there is not a place of public entertainment in that town, and the weather is delightful, he says they will pitch two or three tents, and one splendid pavilion of silk, on the verge of the green space outside of Formiæ, where the games are to be held."

Thirdly, Crispina told them, with fifty gossiping details, that the entertainments to be given in honor of the emperor and the opulent knight Mamurra, from whom the town took its name, would be stupendous. Formiæ, we may mention, was frequently called Mamurrarum, or urbs mamurrana, from the colonel or chiliarch Mamurra. This gentleman had devoted his boyhood and youth to the cause of Julius Cæsar, and afterward of Augustus in the civil wars; had gained considerable military reputation, and, above all, had amassed enormous wealth.

He had long since returned to his native Formiæ, where he had built a superb palace of marble, good enough for an emperor. In that palace the emperor was now to be his guest. He and Agrippa Vipsanius, the founder of the Pantheon, had long before been among those by whom, in compliance with the often-announced wish of Augustus, not peculiarly addressed to them, but generally to all his wealthy countrymen, Augustus had expended incalculable sums in adorning Rome with public edifices, for which costly materials, and the science and taste of the best architects, had alike been employed. As Augustus himself said, (for himself,) "They had found it of bricks, and were leaving it of marble."

"So you have, my lady," replied Crispina. "Well, he has just knocked up a circus in the fields adjoining Formiæ, and is preparing to exhibit magnificent shows to his neighbors and to all comers, in honor of the emperor's visit to the town of the Mamurras and the Mamurran palace. Tiberius Cæsar, who is also to be the knight's guest, promises to use this same circus, and to give entertainments[317] of his own there, and Germanicus Cæsar, before marching north to fight the Germans, and drive them out of north-eastern Italy, is to review at Formiæ the troops destined for that expedition, as well as the great bulk of the prætorian guards under Sejanus. The guards are uncertain what portion of them the Cæsar may take with him northward."

"Oh! and I am so slow. There is another ingredient yet in my wallet of tidings," exclaimed Crispina; "and only think of my almost forgetting to remember it."

"Remember not to forget it," said the Greek girl, holding up her finger with an admonishing and censorious look at the landlady. "What is this particular which you have, after all, not forgotten to remember?"

"My charming little lady, it is a particular which concerns the land of your mother, and the people of Greece; for seldom, say they, has that land or people sent to Rome any body like him."

"This Athenian, gifted as his countryman Alcibiades, eloquent as our own Tully, acute and profound as Aristotle, honorable as Fabricius, truthful as Regulus, and O ladies! with all these other excellencies, beautiful as a poem, a picture, a statue, or a dream!"

"Yet sufficiently precise," added Aglais, "to leave us in no doubt at all who is meant by it. It must be young Dionysius; it must be Dion."

"My mother knows him," said Paulus. "My sister and I have often heard of him; so have thousands; but we have not seen him. It is he who carried away all the honors of the great Lyceum at Athens on the left bank of the Ilissus."

"The right bank, brother," said Agatha; "don't you remember, the day we embarked at the Piræus somebody showed it to us, just opposite Diana Agrotera, which is on the left bank?"

"Mother, just tell Paulus if left and right are all the same," said Agatha. "That is like Paulus. They are not the same; they never were the same."

"All the ladies at the Mamurran palace," resumed the hostess, "make toilets against him."

"Yes, toils," continued the hostess. "They are intended as toils for him; they are great toils and labors for the poor girls; the ornatrius and they are toilers for the fair dames themselves."

"They tell me he is not aware of the admiration he excites—is totally indifferent to it."

"Base, miserable youth!" cried Paulus, laughing. "These Roman dames and damsels ought to punish him."

"By pursuing him with their blandishments," answered Paulus; "that is,[318] if they can muster sufficient ferocity. But I fear the women are too kind here in Italy. I am told that even in the midst of the most furious passions, and while the deadliest agonies are felt by others around them, their natural sweetness is so invincible that they smile and send soft glances to and fro; they look more bewitching at misery (such is their goodness) than when they see no suffering at all. Yes, indeed! and as the gladiators fight, they have a lovely smile for each gash; and when the gladiator dies, their eyes glisten enchantingly. We have not these entertainments in Greece, and the Greek Dion must soon feel the superiority of the Roman to the Greek woman. Pity is a beautiful quality in a woman; and the Greek ladies do not seek the same frequent opportunities of exercising it as the Italian ladies possess, and, eheu! enjoy."

"Talking of wit, my lady," pursued the hostess, "none but our dear old Plautus could have matched this young Athenian, as Antistius Labio, the great author of five hundred volumes, has found to his cost."

"Labio! Why, that must be the son of one of those who murdered Cæsar," exclaimed Paulus. "My father met his father foot to foot at the battle of Philippi; but he escaped, and slew himself when Brutus did so."

"That was indeed this man's father," said Crispina. "The son is a very clever man, and a most successful practitioner in the law courts. Wishing to mortify Dionysius, he said in his presence, at a review of the troops at Formiæ yesterday, that he was grateful to the gods he had not been born at Athens, and was no Greek—not he!

"'The Athenians also entertain,' replied Dionysius, 'the idea which you have just expressed.'

"'That their gods watch over them,' replied Dionysius. Ah my lady! you should have heard the laughter at Labio; the very centurions turned away to conceal their grins. Some one high at court then took the Athenian's arm on one side, and Titus Livius's on the other, and walked off with them. Labio did not say a word."

"Pray can you tell us, good Crispina, whether Germanicus Cæsar is to be a guest of the knight Mamurra?" asked Paulus.

The landlady said she believed he would be for a day or two, and that she thought it was even he who had taken Dion's and Livy's arm, and walked with them apart.

"It is some time," said Aglais, "since Catullus indited those epigrammatic verses against the hospitable and opulent knight. This Mamurra must be very old."

"Yet, my lady," replied Crispina, "he has a ruddy face, a clear complexion, and downright black eyebrows."

"Ah! but," cried Crispina, laughing with no less knowing a look, "that makes the hair yellow; and the brows of the knight are as black as the jet ornaments in your daughter's hair."

"You can tell us, no doubt," said Paulus, "who those ladies must be that came with Tiberius Cæsar yesterday from that splendid mansion on the Liris. They were in beautiful litters; one of sculptured bronze, the other of ivory, embossed with gold reliefs."

"I know who they are, of course,"[319] said the landlady; "they are half-sisters, the daughters of the late renowned warrior and statesman, the builder of the Pantheon, Agrippa Vipsanius, but by different mothers. One of them was the wife of Tiberius Cæsar."

"She is, nevertheless; her husband has another wife," said the landlady; adding, in a low voice, "a precious one, too; the emperor has required him to marry the august Julia."

"The august!" murmured Aglais contemptuously, with a shrug of the shoulders; "getting old, too."

"I am sure," resumed the landlady, "no one can describe the relationships of that family. Agrippa Vipsanius, you must know, married three times. His second wife was Marcella, daughter of Augustus's sister, Octavia; and this Marcella became the mother of the elder of the two ladies whom you saw. Well, while this Marcella was still living, but after she had had a daughter called Vipsania, Augustus made Agrippa put her away to marry, mind you, this very same august Julia, Augustus's own daughter, and therefore Marcella's first cousin. This Julia, who had just become a widow, having lost her first husband Marcellus, is the mother of the other lady whom you saw, who is called Julia Agrippina, and who thus came into the world the second cousin of her own half-sister. Well, Agrippa, the father of both girls, leaving the august Julia a widow for the second time, Tiberius Cæsar marries Agrippa's eldest daughter Vipsania, and has a son by her, called Drusus; and now, while Vipsania is still living, Augustus makes Tiberius put her away to marry the aforesaid august Julia, the mother of the younger daughter, Julia Agrippina, who is Tiberius's first and likewise second cousin."

"No one can, my lady, except those who make a study of it," said the landlady, laughing; "but it's all true. Julia, Augustus's daughter, is the wife of the father of both these girls, first cousin to the eldest of them, mother and cousin-in-law of the younger, and has now also been made wife to the husband of the elder, her own first cousin, and become the sister-in-law of her own daughter and cousin-in-law to the younger."

"Medius fidius!" cried Paulus, staring stupidly, "what a tremendous twisted knot! Julia's daughter, half-sister, and second cousin is put away, that the half-sister's husband may marry the half-sister's stepmother and second cousin, or something like that."

"Or something like that," continued Crispina; "but there is no end to it. Tiberius Cæsar is now father-in-law and brother-in-law to one woman, and the husband and stepfather-in-law to another, while the mother of the younger half-sister becomes the sister-in-law of her own daughter."

At this moment Agatha, who was opposite the outer door of the embowered landing, leading down by a flight of stairs into the garden, through the other arbor before mentioned, suddenly exclaimed, "There's Benigna walking in the garden with a man!"

They all looked, and saw Benigna and a young man, wearing a brown tunic and slippers, in a distant alley of fig-trees, talking earnestly as they strolled together. Crispina smiled and said, "I must really tell you that my Benigna's betrothed lover came here unexpectedly at daybreak. He has obtained a week's holiday, and will spend it, he vows, in the inn. We have had to use some skill, I promise you, in finding room for him. He is to sleep in a big trunk with the lid off, stowed away in the angle of a[320] corridor behind a curtain. He is a very good and well-instructed youth, knows Greek, and is severely worked as one of the secretaries of Tiberius Cæsar, whose slave he is, as I think Benigna has mentioned to my little Lady Agatha yonder."

"Of course the poor young man," replied Crispina, "cannot marry until he gets his freedom. Whenever Tiberius Cæsar allows him to shave his head, and put on the pileus, (cap of liberty,) we shall have a merry wedding."

The landlady said she was thankful she did not personally know him; but she had never heard any complaint of him made by Claudius, her future son-in-law.

"Your future son-in-law, Claudius!" exclaimed Agatha in amazement. "Then it was your future son-in-law who had something to say to that Dame Plancina, with the pale face and black eyebrows?"

"Ah! but he had, though," persisted Agatha. "He came to the arbor door, and distinctly stated, with a low bow, that he had commands for that lady; and then she said from whom; and he said, my name is Claudius; that is what he said; and then she jumped up in a remarkable fluster and went into the house, and he followed her. But then why she should jump up in a fluster, because a slave said his name was Claudius, I can't imagine," concluded Agatha, pondering.

"I think it could not be because a slave's name was Claudius," she said; "nor do I understand it."

"Is that your demon-seeing dame, Agatha?" asked Paulus, stretching himself; "for I have a notion that when I parried the fellow's blow who wanted to cut me down in so cowardly a fashion, you know—"

"Well, I have been thinking the woman who screamed was a woman whom your description of that fierce dame in the arbor exactly fits. If so, she was in the train of Tiberius, and of those ladies of whom our good hostess has just given us such an interesting genealogical and matrimonial account."

"Then perhaps the commands for Plancina were from Tiberius Cæsar," quoth Agatha.

Crispina shook her head, but appeared a little serious. A short silence followed. Paulus broke it by asking the landlady to get a letter forwarded for him to the military tribune, Velleius Paterculus, at Formiæ. "I wish," he said, "to take advantage of the delay in the emperor's visit, and to see the country, to fish in the river, to move about far and near; provided Paterculus, to whom I have given a promise to report myself, has no objection."

The hostess brought him some liviana, or second-class paper, the best she had, some cuttle-fish ink, and a reed pen, told him to write his letter, and undertook to transmit it at once by a runner belonging to the hostelry. She then left the room.

CHAPTER XI.

The letter was sent, and in the course of the forenoon the tabellarius, or letter-carrier of the inn, returned from Formiæ. Crispina brought him to Paulus, who was in an avenue of[321] the garden watching some players as they contested a game of quoits or discus. This avenue connected the garden proper with the open country westward, terminating in a cross-hedge of myrtle, through which a little wicket or trellis gate opened. "The man has brought no letter back," the hostess said, signing at the same time to the messenger to deliver the particulars of his errand.

He had found the tribune, he said, and had given him the letter and asked for an answer. The tribune was at the moment inspecting a body of troops. He read the note, however, and immediately took out of his belt both his stylus and pugillaria, or hand-tablets; when the prætorian prefect Sejanus, happening to pass, entered into conversation with him, and the messenger then saw Velleius Paterculus hand to Sejanus Paulus's letter. After reading it, the general gave it back, said something in Greek, and went away. The tribune thereupon told the bearer that he would send an answer during the day by a messenger of his own. Paulus thanked the man, who then withdrew.

Our hero, who had prepared his fishing-tackle, a portion of which he had in his hand, remarked that it was vexatious to lose so fine and favorable a day. "Moreover, why should I be a prisoner?" he suddenly exclaimed. "I have a triple right to my personal liberty, as Roman citizen, knight, and noble. And what have I done to forfeit it? What have I done except parry the blow of an assassin whom I neither injured nor provoked?"

"Hush!" murmured Crispina; and just then Cneius Piso, having a bandage round his head, and leaning on the arm of Plancina, was seen passing into the inn before them from another part of the garden.

The landlady stood still a moment, till the two figures had disappeared, when she said, with a slight motion of the thumb in the direction of Piso, "He reports himself quite well now except for a headache. He and his lady leave us in an hour for Rome, and I hope I may say both vale and salve. You ask what you have done. Have you not come to Italy to claim rights which are indisputable?"

"It is a thousand reasons, and another thousand, too. Alas! do not deceive yourself, as your namesake and cousin did, about the character of the world."

At the door of the inn they separated, she to attend to the multifarious business of her household, and he to loiter purposelessly. After a little reflection, he went quite through the house by the impluvium, and the central corridor beyond it, and looked into the public room, or atrium. At one table a couple of centurions sat playing dice with the tesseræ, and shouting the names of half a dozen gods and goddesses, as their luck fluctuated. At another table a powerfully built, dark, middle-aged man, having a long, ruddy beard streaked with gray, upon whom Asiatic slaves waited, was taking a traveller's repast; his slaves helping him to costly wine, which he drank with a grimace of dissatisfaction, but in formidable quantities. Other groups were dotted round the large apartment. In order not to draw needless notice, for all eyes turned to him for a moment, except those of the two dice-throwing and bellowing centurions, Paulus seated himself behind an unoccupied table near the door. While idly watching the scenes around him, he thought he heard his name pronounced in the passage outside. He listened, but the noise in the room made him uncertain, and the voice outside was already[322] less audible, as of one who had passed the door while speaking.

Presently he heard, in a much louder tone, the words, "Why, it is not our carriage, after all. Let us return and wait where we can sit down." And the speaker again passed the public room, coming back, apparently, from the porch.

Paulus happened to be sitting close to the door, which was open; a curtain, as was common, hanging over the entrance. This time, in spite of the noise in the dieta, a word or two, and a name, though not his own, struck him. He fancied some one said, "No harm to her; but still, not the brother—the sister, my trusty Claudius."

Where had Paulus heard those tones before? In itself, what he had overheard was a sufficiently harmless fragment of a sentence. Nevertheless, Paulus rose, left his table, lifted aside the door-curtain, and went into the corridor, where he saw Cneius Piso and Plancina, with their backs to him, walking toward the end of the passage opposite the porch, but he nearly stumbled against a young man going the other way. This person, who was good-looking, in both senses of the word, wore the sober-colored exomis, or tunic, the long hair, and the slippers of a slave. He had in his right hand a stylus; in his left, tablets of citron-wood, open and covered with blue wax, on which he was reading, with his head bent, some note which he had made there.

"It is my fault, noble sir," said he; "I was stooping over these and did not observe you; I beg you to pardon my awkwardness." And he bowed with an air of humility.

"It is I, rather, who am to blame," said Paulus, scanning steadily the features of the slave, who had made his apology with a look of alarm, and in exaggerated accents of deprecation.

Shortly after this incident, while Paulus, who had not returned to the atrium, was leaning dreamily over the balustrade of the inn's central court, and watching the fountain in the impluvium there, he was struck heavily on the shoulder from behind by an open hand. Turning round slowly, he beheld a man in the very prime of life, who was entirely a stranger to him.

Paulus took in, at a glance, his dress and general appearance. He had a thick brown beard, neatly trimmed, and open, daring, large blue eyes, in which there was nothing whatever sullen or morose; yet a sort of wildness and fierceness, with a slight but constant gleam of vigilance, if not subtlety. On the whole, his face was handsome; it was conspicuously manful, and, perhaps, somewhat obdurate and pitiless.

His stature was good without being very lofty. He had broad shoulders, rather long, sinewy arms, a deep chest, and, altogether, a figure and person not lacking any token of agility, but more indicative of huge strength.

He wore sandals, the laces of which crossed each other up his mighty legs, which were otherwise bare, and a white woollen diphera covered his shoulders, and was belted round his waist.

"And who told you that you would find me here?" asked Paulus; "for a few minutes ago I did not know I should find myself here."

"There goes the youth who told me," answered the other pointing, and at the same moment Paulus saw the slave, against whom he had walked in the passage, cross on tiptoe an angle of the court-yard, and vanish through a door on the opposite side.

"Claudius," continued the stranger, "is an acquaintance of mine, and chancing to meet him as I entered the hostelry, I asked for you."

"And pray who are you, and what do you want with me?" asked Paulus, after the slave, who must, he now felt sure, be the Claudius to whom Benigna was betrothed, had disappeared.

"Who am I?" returned the stranger; "a good many people know my name, and my person, too. But that matters not for the present. Your second question is more immediately important. 'What do I want with you?' To deliver to you a letter; nothing more. Understanding that I meant to stroll out in this direction, the distinguished tribune, Velleius Paterculus, requested me to hand you this."

And he produced from a fold in the breast of his white woollen tunic a letter, having a written address on one side, and a thread round its four ends, which thread was knotted on the side opposite to that bearing the superscription. The knot was secured by a waxen seal, upon which the scholarly writer had, in imitation of the deceased minister Mæcenas, impressed the engraving of a frog.

"To the noble Paulus Æmilius Lepidus, the younger, Velleius Paterculus sends greeting:

"Go where you like, amuse yourself as you like, do as you like—fish, ride, walk, read, play, sing—provided you sleep each night at the Post House of the Hundredth Milestone, under the excellent Crispina's roof. Be careful of your health and welfare."

"So far so good," said Paulus; "I am a prisoner, indeed, but with a tolerable long tether, at least. I am much obliged to you for bringing me the letter."

"Imprisonment!" observed the other. "I have heard a knot of centurions, and also soldiers unnumbered, talk of your imprisonment, and of the blow with which it seems to be connected. You are a favorite, without knowing it, among the troops at Formiæ. One fierce fellow swore, by quite a crowd of gods, that your blow deserved to have freed a slave, instead of enslaving a knight; that is, to have freed you had you been a slave, instead of enslaving you, who are already a knight."

"I feel grateful to the soldiers," said Paulus. "You are doubtless an officer—a centurion, perhaps?"

"Well, they do speak freely," replied the stranger, "and so do I; therefore you have made a fair guess; but you are wrong."

"One word," persisted the other. "I am a famous man, though you do not seem to know it. The conqueror in thirty-nine single combats at Rome, all of them mortal, and all against the best gladiators that ever fought in circus or in forum, stands before you. At present I am no longer obliged to fight in person. I keep the most invincible familia of gladiators that Rome has hitherto known. You are aware of the change of morals and fashions; you are aware that even a senator has been seen in the arena. Some day an emperor will descend into our lists." (This, as the reader knows, really happened in the course of time.) "Join my family, my school; I am Thellus, the lanista."

"What!" cried Paulus, his nostrils dilated, and his eyes flashing. "In Greece, where I have been bred, gladiatorial shows are not so much as allowed by law, even though the gladiators should be all slaves; and because some senator has forgotten the respect due to the senate and to himself, and has no sense either of decency[324] or humanity, you dare to propose to me, the nephew of a triumvir, the son of an honorable and a famous soldier—to me, the last of the Æmilians, to descend as a gladiator into the arena, and to join your school, mehercle! of uneducated, base-born, and mercenary cut-throats!"

The lanista was so astounded by this unexpected burst of lofty indignation, and felt himself thrust morally to such a sudden distance from the stripling, at least in the appearance of things, that he uttered not one word for several instants. He glared in speechless fury at the speaker, and when at length he found voice and ideas he said,

"Do you know that I could take you in these unarmed hands, and tear you limb from limb where you stand, as you would rend a chicken—do you know that?"

"I do not," said Paulus, in slow and significant accents, facing round at the same time upon the lanista with deliberate steadiness, and looking him fixedly in the face; "but if you even could, it would suit my humor better to be murdered where I am by a gladiator than to be one."

"By the Capitoline Jove!" cried Thellus, after another rather long, doubtful pause, laughing vehemently, "when I place your skill of fence, about which I have heard a particular account, by the side of your high spirit, you really do make my mouth water to number you among my pupils. I have not a man in my familia whom you would not, when a little addition to your years shall have perfected your bodily vigor, stretch upon the sand in ten minutes. But what mean you, after all? You do not wish to hurt my feelings, because I make you a friendly offer in the best shape that my unlucky destiny and state of life afford me the means of doing? Do you, then, so utterly despise the gladiator? Have you reflected on it so deeply? Who, nevertheless, displays in a greater degree many of the severest and highest virtues? Do you despise the man who despises life itself, when compared with honor in the only form in which honor is for him accessible? Answer that. Do you despise abstemiousness, fortitude, self-control, self-sacrifice, chastity, courage, endurance? Answer that. Who is more dauntless in the combat, more sublimely unruffled when defeated, more invincibly silent under the agony of a violent death, accompanied by the hootings of pitiless derision, and whose derision, whose mockery, is the last sound in his ears? Let that pass.

"But who pays a dearer price for the applause of his fellow-men when it is his? Who serves them more desperately in the way in which they desire to be, and will needs be, served? Who gives them the safe and cruel pleasures they demand more ungrudgingly, or under such awful conditions? Who comes forward to be mangled and destroyed with a more smiling face, or a more indifferent mien? Who spurns ease, and sloth, and pleasure, and pain, and the sweet things of life, and the bitter things of death, in order to show what manhood can dare and what manfulness can do, and in order to be thoroughly the man to the last, with the same constant and unconquerable mind, as the very gladiator whom you thus insult? Women can often show heroism in pain while shrinking from danger; and, on the other hand, amidst the general excitement and the contagious enthusiasm of an army in battle, to fight pretty well, and then to howl without restraint in the surgeon's hands, is the property of nearly all men. Some who face danger badly endure anguish well; and many, again, who cannot support pain will[325] confront danger. But if you wish to name him who does both in perfection, and who practises that perfection habitually, you will name the gladiator. Nor is it pain of body alone, nor loss of life alone, which his calling trains him to undergo with alacrity. Are you sure that our motives are simply and solely that grovelling lust of gain which you imply? Mercenary you dare to term us? Mercenary! The gambler is mercenary. Is the gladiator like your high-born voluntary gambler? Is the gladiator deaf to praise? Indifferent to admiration? Reckless of your sympathy? Is he without other men's human ties and affections, as the gambler is? Has the gladiator no parents whom he feeds with that blood which flows from his gashes? No wife whom he is all the time protecting with that lacerated and fearless breast? No children whom his toils, efforts, and sufferings are keeping out of degradation, out of want, and out of that very arena which he treads with a spirit that nothing can subdue, in order that those whom he loves may never enter it?"

While Thellus thus thundered with increasing and increasing vehemence, the clear-faced youth whom he addressed, and who had confronted his words of menace without any emotion except that of instinctive and settled defiance, was and appeared to be quite overwhelmed. Had Paulus been struck bodily, he could not have felt any thing like the pain he suffered. The words of the gladiator smote the lad full to the heart, like stones shot from a catapult.

Thellus gazed thoughtfully at him during the pause which ensued, and then resumed by exclaiming,

"Mercenary! that is, he takes pay. Does the author take pay? answer that. Do the lawyer and soldier take pay? Does the magistrate take pay? Does, or does not, the emperor take pay? Does the vestal virgin herself take pay? If the gladiator did, and suffered, and was all he does, all he suffers, all he is, in mere sport, and at his own personal expense, I suppose you would respect him. But I, Thellus—I, the gladiator—I, the lanista—would scorn him, and spurn him, and spit upon him. Blame the community who go to these sports, and sit in shameless safety; blame the hundreds of thousands who succeed other hundreds of thousands to applaud us when we kill our beloved comrades, and, at the same time, to howl and hoot over those same brave friends whom we kill; blame those who, having cheered us when we slew our faithful companions, yell at us in our own turn when we are slain; blame men for taking us when we are little children, and rearing us expressly to be fit for nothing else; blame men for taking the little ones of captured warriors who have in vain defended their native lands against the discipline and skill of Rome; blame men for mingling these poor infants in one college with the foundlings and the slaves to whom law and positive necessity bequeath but one lot in this life; blame those who thus provide for the deadly arena. Blame your customs, blame your laws, blame your tyrannous institutions, against which the simplicity and trustfulness of boyish years can neither physically nor mentally struggle; blame, above all, your fine dames, more degraded—ay, far more degraded and more abased than the famishing prostitutes who must perish of starvation, or be what they are; blame your fine dames, I say, who when, like the august Julia, they import the thick silks of India, are not satisfied till they pick them thin and transparent before wearing them, lest their garments should conceal their shame; and thus attired,[326] pampered with delicacies, gorged with food, heated with wine, surfeited with every luxury, reeking and horrible, know not what else to do to beguile the languid intervals of systematic wickedness, than to come to the arena and indulge in sweet emotions over the valiant and virtuous fathers of homes and hopes of families, who perish there in torture and in ignominy for their pleasure."

"Well may you," cried Thellus, "be filled with horror. Ah! then, when will a god descend from heaven, and give us a new world? I have one child in my home, a sweet, peaceful, natural-hearted, conscience-governed, loving little daughter. Her mother has gone away from me for ever to some world beyond death where more justice and more mercy prevail. The day when I lost her I had to fight in the arena. Eheu! She was anxious for me, she could not control her suspense; she saw the execrable Tiberius. Bah! do you think I'm afraid to speak? Of what should I be afraid? Thellus has been at the funeral of fear; yes, this many a day," continued Thellus, raising his voice; "she came to the Statilian amphitheatre against my express command; she saw the execrable Tiberius, contrary to every custom, after I had been victor in four fatal encounters, when I was worn out with fatigue, order me to meet a fresh antagonist; and looking up among the hundred thousand spectators, I beheld the sweet, loving face. I beheld the clasped and convulsive fingers. But, lo, who came forth to fight against me? Whom had the accursed man provided as my next antagonist? Her only brother, poor Statius, whom Tiberius knew to be a gladiator, and whom he had thus selected for the more refined excitement of the spectators to fight against Thellus; but, above all, for his own more refined enjoyment, for the monster had tried and found my poor Alba incorruptible; and this was his revenge against a wretched gladiator and his faithful wife. Statius was no match for me; I tried to disarm him; after a while I succeeded, wounding him at the same time slightly. He fell, and his blood colored the sand. I looked to the people; they looked to Tiberius, waiting for the sign of mercy or execution. I was resolved in any case not to be the slayer of Statius.

"The prince turned up his thumb, to intimate that I was to kill my wounded opponent. The amphitheatre then rang with a woman's scream, and the people, with one impulse, turned down their hands. I bore Statius in my own arms out of the arena; but when I reached home, I found my wife was near childbirth, delirious, and raving against me as the murderer of her brother. She died so, in my arms and in her brother's. She left me my poor little Prudentia, who is dearer to me than all this globe."

"Oh! forgive, forgive, forgive my words," exclaimed Paulus, stretching out both hands toward the gladiator.

"Why, I love you, lad. I love you like a son. I am not high-born enough to be father to the like of you; but it is not forbidden me to love a noble youth who hates baseness and is ignorant of fear. I'll tell you more; but first answer me—are you of opinion, from what has passed between us, that Thellus is an uneducated man?"

"In any case," replied Thellus, "I am ready to confess that the qualities[327] and virtues exercised by gladiators are exercised for a wrong purpose, and in a wrong way. But tell me, why is bread made? You will not say because bakers bake it. That would be a girl's answer; it would be saying that a thing is because it is, or is made because it is made. Why is it made? Because it is wanted. Would bakers bake it if nobody ate it? If nobody wanted to live in a house, would masons build any? or would there even be any masons? You could not, I grant, have music if there were no musicians, if none wanted music. It is the gladiator, unquestionably, who does the fighting in the arena; but if none wanted the fighting, you would have no gladiators. I have told you how we are trepanned in helpless infancy; and not only reared, prepared, and fitted for this calling, but hopelessly unfitted for every other. We supply the spectacle—but who desires the spectacle? It is not we; we are the only sufferers by it; we detest it. But whatever in so dreadful and wicked a pastime can be noble, courageous, unselfish, heroic, we the same, we the victims, give and exhibit; and all the selfishness of it, all that is cowardly in it, all that is cruel, base, despicable, execrable, and accursed, sits on the benches, and applauds or yells in the wedges;[61] this you, you, who go thither, and bring thither us, your victims, this you produce, this is your contribution to it. Ours is honor, valor, skill, and dauntless death; yours, inhumanity, cowardice, baseness, luxurious ease, and a safe, lazy, and besotted life."

"It is true," said Paulus. "Hideous are the pleasures, detestable the glories of this gigantic empire; but unless, as you say, a God himself were to come down from heaven, how will it ever be reformed?"

Little did they dream who a certain Child in Syria was, who had then entered his eleventh year!

THE POPE AND THE COUNCIL, BY JANUS.

Since the apostolic bull convoking the General Council of the Vatican, now in session, has been issued by Pius IX., an immense literary activity has manifested itself in most countries about the great and important questions which are supposed to claim the attention of that august assembly of the Catholic Church. Not only Catholic, but also Protestant reviews have engaged in various ways in the discussion of matters relating to the council. Very numerous, indeed, are the pamphlets—nay, books and volumes of greater import—that have been published within the last ten months in Italy, Belgium, France, England, and Germany. It is particularly in this latter country that publications concerning more or less the present council have been most numerous, and prominent reviews have given able and elaborate notices of most of them. Several publications, of this character have been rendered accessible to Italian, French, and English readers, thus exhibiting the importance attached to them outside of Germany.

It is our present purpose to enter upon a closer examination of a work which we have already briefly noticed in a former number, we mean the book, The Pope and the Council, by Janus, of which an authorized translation appeared both in England and in this country.

We adduce this fact as a very peculiar one, which will cause still greater surprise to the reader when he is informed that an authorized French translation appeared but a short time after the original itself.

The reader has already been told what he is to think of the orthodoxy of Janus, when his doctrines are judged by the criterion established by the church. But let us state here at once that we have a right to apply the Catholic test to the doctrine set forth by Janus. For they, namely, the authors (p. 14,) expressly profess to be in communion with the Catholic Church, though "inwardly separated by a great gulf from those whose ideal of the church is an universal empire." The translator, too, presents Janus as "a work of Catholic authorship," and declares "the authors members of a school, morally if not numerically strong, who yield to none in their loyal devotion to Catholic truth!"

In view of such declarations, we may proceed to inquire, What is the aim of Janus? The authors can best answer this question; for, in their opinion, since the forgery of the Isidorian Decretals, about the year 845, the primacy has been distorted and transformed.

Moreover, Janus boldly asserts à priori that the approaching council will not enjoy that freedom of deliberation necessary to make it truly œcumenical.

These extracts would be quite sufficient to show the aim of Janus, and his view of the "pope and the council." How such harsh and preposterous language may be reconciled with loyal devotion to Catholic truth, and that commendable piety which the authors of Janus profess, we ask candid and impartial readers to decide.

Janus considers it to be true piety "to expose the weak points of the papacy, denounce its faults, and purposely exhibit their mischievous results;" appealing to a saying of St. Bernard, Melius est ut scandalum oriatur, quam ut veritas relinquatur. It is this intense love of truth which prompts Janus "to oppose, frankly and decisively, every disfigurement" (p. 20) which the church has undergone for nearly a thousand years. "To ward off so fatal a catastrophe," with which the church is now threatened by the council, the authors have attempted in this work to contribute to the awakening and direction of public opinion, (p. 27,) and have entered this "protest, based on history," and appeal to the "thinkers among believing Christians," and are modest enough to hope that their "labors will attract attention in scientific circles, and serve as a contribution to ecclesiastical history." (Preface.)

We cannot, therefore, be surprised that a work with such a scientific programme should have caused some sensation, even among Catholic theologians, many of whom were not slow to unmask the historical representations,[329] and "direct reference to original authorities," of which Janus makes such great parade. That Janus was hailed with great delight, not only abroad but also in this country, by an anti-Catholic press, and nearly all reviews or periodicals, cannot be a matter of wonder, when we know that such allies as Janus within our own pale are welcome to the enemies of the church.

In England, Janus was heralded by a grand preliminary and concomitant flourish of trumpets. Every thing was done by a certain very small but very zealous clique to give this book as great a publicity as possible.[62] The North British Review, the Saturday Review, and the Academy, have joined in one chorus of eulogy, exulting over the victory which they think Janus has achieved. Among the many admirers of Janus in our country, suffice it to say that one writer has been so fascinated by this "work, so entirely made up of facts," that he triumphantly exclaims, "No one can help feeling convinced of its veracity." Nay, more than this, the same reviewer pays a compliment to Janus which, considering the source it comes from, involves a strange contradiction. It runs thus,

Without further comments, we propose to meet Janus and his admirers upon equal grounds, since it is their earnest wish

We have no reason to dread that facts and "original authorities" must and can speak for themselves, and we too shall hope to see where the saying of Pope Innocent III. is verified, "Falsitas sub velamine sanctitatis tolerari non debet."

In presence of such a vast amount of matter as Janus gives to his readers, and we might say en passant with such little semblance of order and system, it becomes necessary to confine our examination to three leading points: 1. To the manner in which the investigation is conducted, or the scientific character of the work; 2. To the orthodoxy which the authors profess; 3. To the historical and critical parts of the book.

1. As is correctly stated in the "Translator's Notice," the substance of the volume already appeared in a series of articles in the Allgemeine Zeitung, or Gazette of Augsburg, in March, 1869, under the heading of "The Council and the Civilta." In these articles, "historical facts" were brought forward, which called forth prompt and sharp answers from the Catholic reviews of Germany, where several falsehoods were exposed and denounced as gross misrepresentations. When these articles were issued in their present form, the authors of Janus took no notice of the exposure, but quietly dropped from their book these three mendacious statements. Not a word of apology or retractation was offered. An able theologian [63] has pointed out these tactics of Janus; but, to our knowledge, no reply was given.

Indeed, the new name of Janus, [330]assumed by the authors, has also a figurative meaning, inasmuch as a different face may be exhibited, just as the case may demand. Janus declares his love and attachment to the church and the primacy, and regards it as a complete misapplication of the term piety "to conceal or color historical facts and faulty institutions." (P. 20.)

Hence the inference will be legitimate to stigmatize as impious a mode of investigation which misstates and distorts historical facts, shaking at the very foundation both the church and the primacy. And this is precisely what Janus would accomplish, even contrary to his own avowed intention. For, according to him, "The primacy rests on divine appointment;" and still it has been transformed, and has become destructive to the church, rending asunder that unity which to uphold and represent it had been instituted. (Pp. 18, 21.)

If such is the case, where, may we ask, is that primacy of divine institution to be found?—that primacy ever-living and indefectible as the church herself. And yet, we have the word of Janus for it, the primacy, divinely instituted as the centre of unity, has virtually become extinct, and has failed to be the source and centre of unity. Did Janus himself dare to face this inevitable and logical conclusion?

How is this profession to be reconciled with the following one, "that the form which this primacy took depended on the concessions of the particular local churches"?

What the privileges were which Christ himself bestowed on the primacy, Janus nowhere attempts to state. Where, then, is his reason for asserting that the form which the primacy took depended on concessions? Wherein consist the privileges inherent in the primacy by divine right, and which are those conceded by the local churches? Until Janus has distinctly defined these respective limits, with what show of logic and scientific process can he pronounce that for eight centuries the primacy was legitimately developed, and since the ninth century so fatally transformed and totally disfigured? Truly, if he had committed himself to any precise theory,[64] he would have exposed himself to an inglorious refutation; as it is now, he has taken refuge in silence. And yet, in justice to himself, and in order to save his scientific reputation, Janus was obliged to define these divine rights of the primacy before he could venture to say that they had been fatally transformed; thus he is able to bring forward "a very dark side of the history of the papacy." Superficial minds may be ensnared by this deceitful procedure, but fair and scientific thinkers will rise indignantly and enter their solemn protest against such an abuse of logic and history. Moreover, it is obvious that a primacy whose form, that is, rights inherent to it, are made dependent upon the consent of those over whom it is to be exercised, is illusory, and is a mere shadow. It is very difficult to understand how such a novel mode of reasoning should have escaped our authors, who have "written under a deep sense of anxiety," and we fear that, by pledging their faith to such dogmas as the infallibility of the church, and the divinely [331]appointed primacy of St. Peter and his successors, in the person of the bishops of Rome, they have either deluded themselves or hoped to delude others by hollow professions of faith and a hypocritical show of piety.

The authors, having thus left a wide and open field in which to lead astray and bewilder the minds of their readers, do not hesitate to assert, "No one acquainted with church history will choose to affirm that the popes ever exercised a fixed primatial right in the same way" over the churches in different countries. Quite a captious and vague affirmation in each and every particular. Are we to understand that, because the same primatial rights were not everywhere and uniformly exercised, there were no acknowledged rights of the primacy? And yet to this conclusion, however illogical, such a proposition would lead. If the Roman bishops have not at all times exercised the same rights over the churches in Egypt as over those of Africa or Gaul, it is simply owing to the different condition of the various churches, where the exercise of such rights was not necessary, and by the very nature of things varied to meet the exigencies of the churches. What opinion would we form of a writer—we may be permitted to use a familiar illustration—who, from the fact that Congress did not at one time enforce the same article of our constitution in the State of Ohio as it did in Virginia, concluded that this legislative body possessed not, or was not conscious of possessing, the same rights and power granted by the constitution in Ohio as in Virginia? This is precisely what Janus would induce his readers to believe regarding the rights of the primacy. That the popes throughout the first centuries of the church exercised primatial rights, Janus readily grants, and must grant from the position he assumes. Now, if the exercise of such rights over the various churches at different periods of the ancient church, taken collectively, involve all those prerogatives which the papacy has since claimed and enjoyed, we must of necessity infer that the rights of the primacy, as understood and exercised at the present period, are identical with those of the first eight centuries.

This we could prove by a "work entirely made up of facts, and supporting all statements by reference to the original authorities." Yes, this has already been done by able and judicious historians; among the more modern ones we may appropriately challenge a careful perusal of the history of Dr. Döllinger,[65] in which a complete enumeration of the prerogatives exercised by the bishops of Rome over the whole church, both in the east and in the west, may be found, together with a direct reference to many and unexceptionable historical facts. Under the present head we merely refer to the action of Pope St. Victor, in the second century, against the churches of Asia Minor concerning the question of paschal celebration against the Quartodecimans; St. Stephen, against the Anabaptists in Africa; St. Cornelius, against Novatus and Felicissimus; St. Dionysius, in the case of Paul of Samosata, Bishop of Antioch, when the Emperor Aurelian himself would not sustain him, and referred to the Bishop of Rome for a final decision; all these statements attested by such writers as Eusebius,[66] Socrates,[67] and Theodoret.[68] How about the appeal of the Montanists to the Bishop of Rome, mentioned by Tertullian [69] himself? Did not Marcion repair to Rome to obtain a reversal of the sentence passed against [332] him?[70] Did not that illustrious champion of faith, St. Athanasius of Alexandria, appeal to Pope Julius I. against the Arians, when the Council of Sardica was convoked at the request of the pope in the year 343, and the supremacy of the Roman bishop solemnly acknowledged, to whom all must appeal for final sentence?[71]

Janus, however, with this most conspicuous incident of history before him, says,

Having produced one most remarkable instance of the application of this canon of Sardica, we now must inform our readers that this same canon of the Synod of Sardica was inserted in a Latin version of a collection of canons known by the name of "Prisca Collectio,"[72] as early as the fifth century, and regarded as a code of laws attesting the tradition of the ancient church, according to the maxim of St. Vincent of Lerins, Quod semper, quod ubique, quod ab omnibus creditum est. In like manner did St. John Chrysostom, that great doctor of the eastern church, appeal to Pope Innocent I., although his adversary, the usurper Theophilus, had sent delegates to Rome to gain the pontiff, who annulled all the acts of Theophilus and his party against the illustrious patriarch. The letter which St. Chrysostom [73] wrote to the pope adds great strength to our argument. St. Cyprian, too, by whose authority our adversaries would fain triumph, sent the acts of synods held by himself to the Bishop of Rome for confirmation, and also asked St. Stephen to depose Marcion, Bishop of Arles, as being a partisan of Novatian, and to appoint another in his place. But we must ask pardon of the reader for having already been too long in these references—though as yet we have said nothing of the many acts and letters of Pope St. Leo the Great—all of which demonstrate beyond the shadow of doubt that the most ample exercise of all primatial prerogatives was made in nearly all the churches of the Christian world. A rapid glance over the discourses and letters of the distinguished pontiff, in the voluminous work of Ballerini, will corroborate our assertion in its whole extent. What are we to think of these words of Janus, "No one acquainted with church history will choose to affirm that the popes ever exercised a fixed primatial right"? To us, it would seem nothing less than an appeal to the ignorance of his readers. A similar proceeding we notice in the following paragraph:

We do not attribute such a confused and inaccurate knowledge to Janus, that he is not fully aware what all these collections comprise. These collections or codes of law are pretty numerous,[74] both in the Greek and in the Latin churches, and some of them contain besides the "Canones Apostolorum," not only many decrees of the councils, both particular and œcumenical, that were held during the third, fourth, and fifth centuries, but also the decretals of the early popes. Thus, for instance, the collection made by the monk Dionysius [75] comprises, in a chronological order, the decretals or decrees of all the popes from St. Siricius, [333]in the year 395, to St. Anastasius II. in 486. Another Spanish collection of canons, called the Liber Canonum, is very comprehensive,[76] embracing the decrees of all the synods that were held in the eastern and western churches, together with the decretal letters of twenty popes from St. Damasus to Gregory the Great. A similar collection of canons in Africa was approved by the Synod of Carthage in 419. Now, according to our authors, in all these collections "no mention is made of papal rights, or any reference to a legally defined action of the Bishop of Rome in other churches." Truly! we need but challenge an examination of many decrees of synods, and of the official letters of the popes contained in these collections, and we shall find all primatial rights fully exercised and universally acknowledged. Who does not know the splendid testimonies of the fathers in the councils of Ephesus and Chalcedon, both of which acknowledged in their acts the supremacy of the see of Rome! As to the many decretal letters of the popes, there are no more celebrated documents in early history than the professions of faith given by Pope Celestine I. to the bishops of Gaul against Semipelagianism,[77] St. Boniface to the bishops of Illyria, St. Gelasius in a decree on canonical Scripture and the well-known formula of Pope St. Hormisdas,[78] subscribed to by the eastern bishops. By far the greater number of these pontifical letters constituting those collections imply one or another prerogative exercised by the bishops of Rome, who were ever conscious, even in those early ages, of being the supreme teachers and guardians of faith appointed by Christ himself. With what mien of self-sufficiency and confidence Janus can style a "well-known fact," something of which just the very opposite results from an inspection of historical records, is more than unintelligible in authors who make such ado about their scientific fairness. With a desire to save Janus's reputation as a learned canonist and faithful historian, we must presume such a grave misstatement wilful, and naturally enough he must have reckoned on readers who have little or no knowledge of the "ancient collections of the canons." Yet we must not fail to enter an energetic protest against these self-proclaimed "scientific labors and contributions to ecclesiastical history." Is it by such unblushing assertions, without proof to sustain them, that the authors show their "love and honor for an institution" which forms an essential part of the constitution of the church?

The whole introduction of this work, covering nearly thirty pages, exhibits a programme with summary indications, whence Janus infers that with the present council the system of absolutism is to be crowned, and the church to come within the grasp of a "powerful coalition." This great danger to the church the anonymous authors feel in duty bound to avert, and to oppose this "advancing flood-tide," in which we may discover another characteristic mode of warfare, since Janus deems it necessary to "assail a powerful party, with clearly ascertained objects, which has gained a firm footing through the wide ramifications of the Jesuit order." And this party he can only attack by "bringing forward a very dark side of the history of the papacy." Indeed, a singular mode of warfare, but one which presents no feature of novelty. Have not the Reformers of the sixteenth century, like most of their forerunners, concealed their true aim by attacking ostensibly the Curia,[334] or some religious body, as Luther did the Dominicans, and in the seventeenth century did not the Jansenists resort to a similar stratagem? Now, with such a clear profession before us, why these assaults on the hierarchy and the church in general for the last thousand years? Why make the whole church accountable for the misdeeds and menacing coalition of a party? Why, as faithful Catholics, appeal, not to the council nor to the hierarchy, but "to the thinkers among believing Christians"? Reformers before Janus usually appealed from the popes to general councils, but he surpasses them all by appealing neither to the one nor to the other, but to the laity, who may even pronounce on the "reception or rejection of the council or its decisions." Assuredly no further arguments need be brought forward to satisfy candid and discriminating minds that Janus has ill succeeded in masking his true purpose; nor can his professions of loving truth and justice stand the test of criticism, or the dignity of scientific investigation tolerate the insolent treatment it has suffered at the hands of Janus and his school. For those among our readers who must be shocked at seeing names of men distinguished for their learning and piety at a very critical period in Germany, quoted in support of the opinions of this school of traitors, (pp. 16, 17,) we can say that Janus, by attributing to such men a similarity of views with himself, makes a gratuitous and bold assertion, corroborated by no reliable authority; only one name, that of the eccentric Baader, lends any probability to this impudent statement. But such names as Walter, Philipps, Hefele, Hagemann, Gfrörer, and even Döllinger up to a certain time, renowned for their profound researches and contributions to ecclesiastical history and jurisprudence, are studiously omitted by Janus; nor would it have served his purpose, since the eminent theologians just mentioned have undermined and exploded whatever scientific or historical basis Febronianism and Gallicanism could boast of, and which Janus would reëstablish. In summing up our considerations on this point, we fully concur in the remarks of an able writer, that Janus

This serious apprehension has been fully verified by the many admirers Janus has found in the hostile camp; nay, the apostate Froschhamer has even complimented Janus publicly,[79] with only one restriction, namely, that he has only gone half-way, and finds fault with this inconsistency.

2. We did not propose to content ourselves with the gratuitous assertion that Janus is not "throughout a thorough Catholic and earnest Christian;" but we shall make it clear that he has already seceded from well-established points of doctrine, and even rendered his scheme of reforming the church an impossible hypothesis. As we have already stated, Janus directs his attacks against a "party"—ultramontanism—which, he says, is "essentially papalism." (P. 34.) But while professing to oppose an "ultramontane scheme," he finally arrives, by a very promiscuous array of historical facts and scientific investigations, at the conclusion that the entire church, led by the popes during the last thousand years, has been dragged into this gross error and devastating torrent of ultramontanism. By means of a huge forgery [335]the "whole constitution and government of the church has been changed"—that is, has become a human institution, and lost its divine character. What, then, is the result the writers of Janus arrive at as to their own position? "Inwardly a great gulf separates" them from such a church and its chief pastor—that is, from Pius IX. and the episcopacy. For in another place (p. 3) he affirms that the doctrines he attacks are "identical with those of the chief head." Does it not follow from these premises that Janus excludes himself from this "centre of unity," as the see of Rome has been called by St. Cyprian, Bishop of Carthage? Likewise St. Jerome, in his book against Rufinus, asks the latter, "Is your faith the faith of the Church of Rome? If so," he adds, "we are both Catholics." During the pontificate of St. Hormisdas, from the year 514 to 523, two hundred and fifty bishops signed a formulary sent them by the pope, in which they declared that they who were not in all things in union with the apostolic see were cut off from communion with the Catholic Church.[80]

By what right, then, or by what interpretation, we demand, can Janus be called a "thorough Catholic"?

The unity and indefectibility of the church of Christ are essential doctrines, most clearly and distinctly embodied in the sacred Scriptures. But Janus no longer admits them, as the following passages will show:

According to Janus, a "great and searching reformation of the church is necessary;" and, let it be understood, not in matters of discipline, which can vary, but in matters of faith—yes! in the most important points touching the divine constitution of the church.

Confront these assertions with the few but remarkable facts already given from history, and what becomes of them?

Janus then proceeds to give examples of such autonomous churches, and we confess that it has seldom been our lot to see any thing more vague and evasive.

In the first place, we refer to the letter of the Syrian bishops, which was read in the fifth session of the synod held in Constantinople in the year 536, by the Patriarch Mennas; moreover, the profession which the Archimandrites and other Syrian monks sent to Pope Hormisdas, in which they plainly acknowledge and invoke the Bishop of Rome as supreme guardian of the entire flock of Christ.

If the churches in Persia, in Armenia, and in Abyssinia, before they were commingled and entangled with[336] the different Gnostic sects and Monophysites, or Jacobites, were in union with the churches of Alexandria, of Antioch, and Constantinople, who, in their turn, recognized the supremacy of the see of Rome, in what possible sense can they be called autonomous? Frumentius had been ordained Bishop of Axuma, in Abyssinia, by St. Athanasius, Archbishop of Alexandria, toward the year 326.[82] Will Janus claim St. Athanasius as his partisan respecting this autonomy? His attempt to claim the same autonomy for the early Irish and British churches is no less hazardous, and we refer to Dr. Döllinger's history [83] for a refutation of such claims. In this connection, however, it was only our purpose to prove from Janus's own admission that the "unity of the church was broken up." Quite natural, too, since the "centre of unity" no longer preserved its divine mission and character!

We hasten to another grave charge against the orthodoxy of Janus, namely, that he denies the primacy both in its divine institution and in its rights. The true primacy he reviles as "papalism," and would substitute a mere primacy of honor or "presidency." For it was only during a few centuries that the primacy had a sound and natural development; since then it has become disfigured by human "fabrications," and consequently exists no longer. Such being the case, we are unable to discover even a supremacy of honor, lawfully exercised by the pope. We solicit a careful examination of the primacy as it appears in the Ancient Constitution of the Church, and in the Teachings of the Fathers, (pp. 63-75,) and the inevitable conclusion derived from those assumptions, sounding like oracles of Delphi, will be this, the plenitude of power assumed and exercised by the Bishop of Rome over the whole church has no foundation whatsoever, neither in the Scriptures, as interpreted by the fathers, nor in ancient tradition, but has been and still is an encroachment on the privileges of the particular churches, a usurpation exercised by force and oppression—in fine, an innovation on the divine constitution given to the church by Christ. Every thing that is advanced by Janus purporting to trace historically the origin and causes of papal power and its "unnatural development," even with that illustrious pontiff St. Leo the Great, (p. 67,) taking up nearly two thirds of the volume, proves, if any thing, that no special prerogative was given to St. Peter by Christ, and hence could not, of course, be "hereditary in the line of Roman bishops." (P. 74.) The great nightmare of Janus is, indeed, the pope's infallibility, or the supremacy of the Roman see in doctrinal decisions; but while assaulting the former in a pêle-mêle warfare, he utterly destroys the primacy itself; though it would seem that infallibility properly understood is but a corollary of the primacy itself. While professing to reject the doctrine of the "papacy," Janus discards a truly apostolic doctrine of the Catholic Church, and we cannot but suspect him of well-calculated dissimulation when he says that the "authors of the book profess their adherence to the conviction that the primacy rests on divine appointment." Contrast this with the statements quoted, and we can hardly refrain from sentiments of abhorrence and indignation at such duplicity, as, on the one hand, we find it stated that "the ancient church found the need of a bishop possessed of primatial authority," and, on the other hand, "nothing was known of definite rights," and the[337] "same powers were exercised by the bishop of Antioch, Jerusalem, or Alexandria."

The orthodoxy of Janus and his abettors is impeachable in another no less serious point. The church has ever been conscious of her own infallibility, whereby she is protected from all error in teaching "all truth to the nations;" in other words, it has ever been firmly believed among Catholics that the ecclesia docens, or teaching church, succeeded to the divinely bestowed privilege of apostolic infallibility, and, whether congregated in council or dispersed throughout the world, is a true exponent of "unity in faith and grace" with her divine Founder. If this were not so, in what possible sense could the church be called "a pillar and ground of truth"? Where would the assistance and guidance of the Holy Spirit have any visible action or influence, if it be not to preserve her "immaculate, holy, and pure"? Hence, those beautiful images employed by the Apostle St. Paul, of the "union of the body with the head," of this truly spiritual alliance of Christ with his spouse, that is, the church, through whose ministry the life of Christ descends from the head to the members, Christ's life being nothing else but truth and grace.

But if we adopt Janus's idea of the church, she has become as the "harlot of Babylon," a depositary of falsehood and iniquity. For he denies the unerring authority of œcumenical councils under the conditions in which it has always been received as a dogma by Catholic theologians. The oath of the bishops toward the apostolic see, prescribed for many past centuries, is pronounced by Janus as incompatible with "that freedom of deliberation and voting" which are essential to such an assembly. But, we may ask, does this oath interfere in the least with the strict obligation of keeping the faith intact and inviolable? Does this oath imply any violation of Catholic conscience? You might as well assert that the oath taken by a member of Congress, or of a particular legislature, to support and abide by the constitution, interferes with his liberty of speaking and voting. In keeping with this hypothesis of Janus, all the councils that were held in the west, and universally acknowledged as œcumenical, "were perverted, and mere tools of papal domination—shadows of the councils of the ancient church." (P. 154.) But the councils held in the east were truly œcumenical, because the popes had nothing to do with them, (pp. 63, 64;) but the emperors, on the contrary, exercised all those prerogatives which the popes afterward usurped; hence the councils in the west were but a "sham and mockery" when compared to the genuine œcumenical councils held by the emperors, "who sometimes trenched too closely on this freedom." (P. 354.) Yet the weight of imperial power and domination does not do away with that essential condition of an œcumenical council. But with the popes the case is quite the reverse! Truly admirable logic of our Janus! He is not content with unprincipled expositions and illogical hypotheses, but resorts to positive falsification of history when he says,

What is the verdict of history on these points? That very Latrocinium of Ephesus, in 449, which Janus so adroitly would put among those councils that were regarded as œcumenical, called forth a protest not only from Pope Leo the Great, but also from the eastern bishops, because the ambitious Dioscorus assumed to himself the right of presiding, and, as Prosper and Victor remark in their chronicles, "usurped the prerogative of the supremacy." The most ancient historians, Socrates, Sozomenus, and Theodoret, who continued the church history of Eusebius, attest unanimously those prerogatives of the Roman bishop, which our authors would so boldly deny. Thus, Sozomenus, in the third book of his history, chapter 10, says,

Socrates, alluding to the Arian Synod of Antioch in "Encæniis," in 431, by the adherents of Eusebius, Patriarch of Constantinople, and which pronounced the deposition of St. Athanasius, observes,

When, therefore, St. Athanasius, together with Paul of Constantinople, Marcellus of Ancyra, and Asclepas of Gaza, sought the protection of Pope Julius, the latter had their cause examined in a council held at Rome in 343, at which a great number of eastern bishops were present. Whereupon the pope declared the accused bishops innocent, restored them to their sees, and severely censured those who had concurred in the sentence of deposition against Athanasius and the other bishops. Let it be understood that the Arian bishops, too, on their part, had appealed to the same pope. The action taken by the Pontiff Julius in this grave affair is designated by the historian Socrates [85] as a "prerogative of the Roman Church." In like manner, Pelagius appealed to Pope Innocent I.; Nestorius, to Pope Celestine, to whom St. Cyril of Alexandria had already reported.

Cælestius, a disciple of Pelagius, already condemned by the Synod of Carthage, invoked the arbitration of Pope Zosimus;[86] Eutyches, having been excluded from the communion of the church by Flavian, Patriarch of Constantinople, appeals to Pope St. Leo, who in his turn calls upon Flavian to give an account, which the latter does without delay. The correspondence between Leo and Flavian on this point shows the falsehood of Janus's assertion, that the "fathers had given the see of Rome the privilege of final decision in appeals," (p. 66,) and that the "bishops of Rome could exclude neither individuals nor churches from the communion of the church universal." Who does not know the remarkable words of St. Augustine, when Pelagius had been condemned by the synods of Milevis and Carthage in 416, and still persisted to hold communion with the church? Pope Innocent ratified the decrees of the synods, and the illustrious champion against Pelagianism exclaims,

Vain, too, is the attempt of our authors to give dark colors to the transactions between the fathers of [339]the Council of Chalcedon and Pope St. Leo I. (P. 67.) Let us see what the fathers of this council say to the pope, when they request him to sanction that famous twenty-eighth canon, which the legates of Leo had refused to sanction. They say, "Knowing that your holiness hearing (what has been decreed) will approve and confirm this synod and close their petition thus,

Leo I. did not sanction this twenty-eighth canon, for the very reason that it implied, though in equivocal terms, that Rome obtained the primacy on account of its political dignity.

Nor is it true that the fathers by this canon claimed "equal rights" for the see of Constantinople; but merely patriarchal rights and exemption from subordination to Alexandria and Antioch, as the sixth Nicene canon had ordained. Pope Leo I. in his letter [89] to the Emperor Marcian affirmed that Constantinople was indeed an "imperial," but no "apostolic city." Compare this with the words of Janus, "But when Leo had to deal with Byzantium and the east, he no longer dared to plead this argument." Anatolius, Patriarch of Constantinople at that period, previous to the Council of Chalcedon was obliged to hold a synod in the presence of the papal legates, in which Leo's letter to Flavian was read and signed, and Eutyches sentenced and deposed. Even at the Council of Ephesus, in 431, St. Cyril presided as plenipotentiary of Pope Celestine, who, upon a report sent him by St. Cyril, had condemned the Nestorian errors in a synod held at Rome in 430, and summoned Nestorius to retract within ten days under pain of excommunication. How trivial, then, and calculated to confuse the reader, must this remark of Janus seem, "At the two councils of Ephesus others presided." It is a well-known fact that the papal legates at the Council of Chalcedon declared that it was a high misdemeanor of the second assembly of Ephesus, in 449, and a crime in Dioscorus of Alexandria, that it was presumed to hold a general council without the authority of the apostolic see; and Dioscorus was accordingly deposed.

The Council of Chalcedon was not convoked before Pulcheria and Marcian had requested and obtained the consent of Pope Leo I., and at its termination the fathers said in their letter to the pope that he had presided over them by his legates as the "head over the members;" and that the emperor had been present for the maintenance of decorum.

Why, then, allege such examples as the despotic actions of Constantius, against whom such great and distinguished bishops as St. Athanasius, St. Hilary of Poitiers, and Lucifer, raised their pastoral voice, when this same emperor so harassed the bishops at Rimini and Seleucia in 359, aided by the cunning of Ursacius and Valens, that they subscribed to an ambiguous but not heretical formulary. Wherefore, St. Jerome exclaims, "Ingemuit totus orbis et Arianum se esse miratus est." The purpose of Janus in placing these assemblies among other councils universally regarded as œcumenical, appears, to say the least, suspicious! (P. 354, and Translator's Notice.)

We might yet quote many examples to exhibit what must be styled gross misrepresentation and falsification[340] of history on the part of Janus, when he thus plainly states that the popes were never consulted when councils were convoked, nor allowed to preside, personally or by deputy—and "it is clear that the popes did not claim this as their exclusive right," (p. 63.) If any thing were wanting to corroborate our argument, we need but allude to the declaration of the Patriarch Mennas of Constantinople, and many other eastern bishops. When the Emperor Justinian would continue the council which was convoked with the express consent of Pope Vigilius, who withdrew his permission after the emperor issued an edict on the three articles, (tria capitula,) the pope fled to Chalcedon, whence he directed a letter to the whole church,[90] giving an account of the deplorable state of things, adding that he had deposed the haughty bishop, Theodorus of Cæsarea, and suspended Mennas of Constantinople, with the bishops who took his part. The declaration made by Mennas and other bishops, professing their entire submission, affords a most striking example of the supreme authority of the apostolic see in the midst of such turmoil and religious disputes, the pope being an exile and the bishops enjoying the protection of the emperor; and hence not a vestige of coercion in their unqualified declaration, which we may be pardoned for subjoining here. It is as follows,

A circumstance which gives greater weight to this whole exposition is, that these councils were chiefly attended by eastern bishops, among them the patriarchs of Constantinople; and that the Roman pontiffs, though not personally present, still by their representatives, who were not all bishops, exercised such high prerogatives. The emperors themselves recognized these rights of the see of Rome both by their laws and public acts.[93]

We have been rather prolix, and have carried our examination further than we intended; but it seemed necessary to sustain our charges against Janus and his admirers by various and most unexceptionable authorities from history, and the canons of the early councils. The supremacy of the Bishop of Rome in teaching and governing the universal church, could not be exhibited in a more resplendent light than in connection with general councils, those grand assemblies of the hierarchy of the church. Nothing, therefore, was better calculated than the futile essays of the anonymous authors of Janus to depreciate and obliterate, if possible, these prerogatives of the Roman pontiffs in connection with œcumenical councils, in order to lay the foundation of their hypothesis, that since the ninth century papal usurpation and ambition held high sway in the church, "hindering and decomposing the action of its vital powers." How far Janus has succeeded in finding such a basis for his edifice in history and in ancient canonical collections, how far his statements are supported by "reference to original authorities," the candid and judicious reader of church history will have been able to decide. [341]If Janus asks the verdict of history for his "Ancient Constitution of the Church," that verdict cries aloud against such a miserable caricature, and his appeal to past tradition is an appeal to ignorance or wilful prejudice. We have impeached his orthodoxy on points of the very first importance, and in vain do we look for those "original authorities" which should verify his hypothesis of the "ancient church."

Before summing up our arguments on this head, we will be allowed to point out another serious and most pernicious error of Janus. He says,

Yet we must examine what is meant by this consent of the church; here is his theory:

What a precious theory indeed of our authors! The teaching body in the church, or the hierarchy, are mere witnesses in giving testimony to the truth. But this testimony may ultimately be rejected; for whether such a testimony has been rightly rendered or not, is left to the decision of the church—consisting of the clergy and laity. Whence by a rigid conclusion it follows that the highest tribunal of "acceptance or rejection" of the decisions of a general council, is with the great mass of the faithful or "thinkers among believing Christians." In view of such plain propositions, we should like to be informed how inerrancy or infallibility can be attributed to an œcumenical council? We may then select any council and doubt, as thinking Christians, "whether freedom and unbiassed truthfulness have prevailed among the assembled bishops." All certainty is excluded by such a theory, where the decisions of a general council are only binding when accepted by the church outside of the council. This is nothing less than a complete negation of traditional and sound Catholic doctrine—it is simply proclaiming the broad Protestant dogma which grants the widest scope to the private judgment of the individual. In one direction have the authors of Janus been consistent; for they purpose by their labors "to contribute to the awakening and direction of public opinion," which is the tribunal charged by Janus to reject in advance the decrees of this council. (P. 345.) He himself makes an extensive use of this great privilege; for, according to him, since the ninth century there were no truly œcumenical councils; the whole church has been forced and cajoled into giving a wrong testimony. All councils since the period just named have proclaimed the views and tenets of a party as the constant belief of all Catholic Christendom. Such an issue Janus would fain declare impossible. Alas! for his beautiful theory, destroying with one hand what he would build up with the other.

There is precisely the dilemma in which Janus has involved himself. The whole work from beginning to end is intended to show that the church has sunk into a labyrinth of[342] errors, that she has radically changed her ancient and divine constitution, that her centre of unity has become disfigured and sickly, that her vital powers are in a state of decomposition. Does all this not imply false doctrine? Has the church not thereby fallen away from Christ and the apostles? Perhaps Janus will say that it is only the hierarchy that erred, not the "thinkers among believing Christians," himself, of course, among the latter.

Well may we inquire of Janus and his admirers, What has become of the promises made to the church by her divine Founder? Where is that spirit of truth to guide her through her pastors, the bishops united with the supreme Head? Where is that firm rock against which the gates of hell shall not prevail?

These questions are so intimately connected with the whole divinely reared edifice of the church of Christ, that to deny what the authors of Janus have done is heresy in its worst form, as much as Arianism, Pelagianism, or Nestorianism. We cannot withhold from our readers the appreciation of a candid and thoughtful outsider on the position Janus has followed throughout his work:

THE LITTLE WOODEN SHOE.

Jacques was a fisherman—a lucky one too. He had a little house, all his own, and, in it Jeanne who had been for seven years his wife, and Ange, the jolliest little scamp that ever romped about a fisherman's cottage. But these are not all his treasures. He has, besides, a store of nets and a boat called the Fine-Anguille. The sea was never yet too rough for either. For it never stormed until the Fine-Anguille had come with her crew, snug and dry, to her mooring. The captain of this frigate was Jacques; the mate—and what a mate he was!—was Fanor, a Newfoundland, peer and prince of all dogs. Every body knew the Fine-Anguille. Every body knew Fanor. And well it was for many of them that they did. They had made his acquaintance under memorable circumstances. For, when Fanor looked from his kennel at night along the dark coast, he could see the glow of many a fireside which would have long been dark and cheerless if he had not rescued from the waves the strong arms that earned its fuel. Many a mother felt something queer in her throat and in the corners of her eyes when she saw the great shaggy brute, and thought of a certain little head that might long ago have been pillowed in the sea-weeds.

But when the feast of our Lady of Larmor came, ah! then Fanor was in his glory. Did he walk in the procession? Of course he did! Did he not know what was the proper thing for a respectable dog to do and where his right place was, after the banners? "Ah!" said Jacques, "he's a Christian. He's no dog; he is almost a man."

After Jacques, and Fine-Anguille, and the sea, Ange was the dearest friend of this dog. Fanor paid the most delicate attentions to this little fellow. He kept back his strength and refrained from those boisterous leaps; he gave Ange a thousand tender caresses with his great cold nose and with his paw; and, when he licked his hands, he scarcely moistened them. It was plain that he was in love with this baby. And as for Jeanne, she loved nothing in the world besides Jacques and Ange and the dog.

For you and me, and the thoughtless or busy world, what a grand sight to watch the sea in September! so deep, so dark, it falls and rises with ever-increasing majesty. There is a menace in its ceaseless roll, its beauty is terribly grand, and from the shore we admire its strength and its immensity. But how differently it appears to the poor fisher's wife! For her there is nothing to admire in the ocean. For her it is only a source of anxiety and dread. How gloomy to her is the evening as it settles over this ever-tossing plain; how her heart starts at the vague threats of the wind! This blue and white-crested mass is perhaps a shroud. Is there no moaning save that which the listless water makes? And, when the horizon lowers, is the wild call of the sea-bird the only strange cry that can be heard? And, as the wind sweeps from the stormy offing, we perhaps think it beautiful. But to the fisher's wife it is dreadful. She fears for him who toils in the abyss. What can a little shell like Fine-Anguille and a man and a dog do against the ocean?

We may say, "How beautiful!" But she cries, "Holy Virgin! the sea is too high! Sweet Jesus! it blows too, too hard."

One day Jeanne was with Ange on the beach and Jacques was preparing Fine-Anguille for fishing. Jeanne sat, knitting, by the water's side. Ange had kicked off one of his little wooden shoes, and with his rosy little foot was playing in the water. He laughed, he shouted, he splashed the little waves that ran softly upon the sand. Ah! what grand fun he was having.

It was evening. The setting sun bathed the entire coast in purple, and the water, still and peaceful, reflected this scene of splendor.

"Mamma," said he, "look! see my Fine-Anguille! In a minute I am going to make a storm."

The little shoe tossed from one side to another; finally it filled with water. Jeanne looked up and said. "Naughty boy! put on your shoe. Quick!"

Just then, somebody touched her shoulder. It was a stranger, from Paris, perhaps. This seemed probable from the haughty air, which people from the city always have, and also from his cold, harsh look and his pale countenance.

"I want a boat," said this strange person, "to go out into the offing." Jacques approached. "If you like, sir, I am ready. Here, Fanor!"

"What! take that brute along with us? Horrid cur! He is filthy and smells of old fish. I can't bear him for a companion."

"Come!" said the stranger, "this beast is of no use. I will give you a louis to leave the dog." Jacque looked at his wife hesitatingly. Jeanne was pale. The stranger tossed the louis in his hand.

Just then Ange cried, "My shoe has gone to the bottom!" And Jeanne said, "Don't go without the dog."

Soon the Fine-Anguille left the shore, and, breaking through the rosy water, disappeared in the distance, like a faint cloud.

Jeanne turned again toward the house, carrying her child, whose little foot hung bare over her dress.

When she reached the heights, she turned to scan the horizon. She saw a thick gray band stretched along it. Seized with anxious foreboding, she paused.

"Will it be fair?" she asked of Father Lucas, the cow-herd. "What sort of a night will they have over by the Thunder Rocks and the White Mare, and in the offing?"

Father Lucas, in turn, scanned the horizon. "Fine-Anguille is a good sea boat!" said he; and passed on with his cows.

"It is the wind!" thought Jeanne, as Ange by an unconscious movement covered his foot with her apron. "It is the wind! God be merciful to us!" Then she entered the house.

At ten o'clock gusts began to blow. The waves moaned piteously. Jeanne could not sleep. But neither the moaning of wind nor wave could disturb Ange as he lay wrapped snugly in his cradle. His mother struck a light. One is not so much frightened when one can see clearly. Then it seems as if one could do any thing; but what can one do against the wind?

"The wind! O my God! the wind," cried Jeanne. "But, at any rate, Fanor is with him!"

Then, as every thing creaked and moaned around her, she fell into a light slumber. She saw the great sea[345] with its frightful gulfs, its white yawning mouth and threatening rocks, and its deceitful shoals. She saw her child on the beach, splashing the water with his naked foot. She saw the little wooden shoe which had been ship-wrecked. Then she heard the voice of Ange murmuring, "I'll make a storm!"

Then, as the roof of the cottage moved and creaked, she remembered how the waves had entered the little shoe.

All at once she rose up and took Ange, fast asleep, in her arms. She threw her cape over her shoulders. It was raining hard and the wind blew strongly. She lit a lantern; a sudden gust put it out, and she was left in the black darkness. But the surf made so much noise that it served as a guide. She reached the beach in safety.

The belfry of Larmor stood black in the sombre night, and the sea dashed its white foam at the very steps of the church.

Jeanne seated herself on the damp sill, and, wrapping Ange in her cloak, waited with longing eyes, counting every wave.

Slowly the day broke, and the storm abated as the sun rose. It shone first on the fortress of Port-Louis, then along the rest of the coast; and Jeanne saw the little wooden shoe broken among the pebbles—"Broken! and yet so light! It ought to have floated!"

Then Jeanne saw the Fine-Anguille. Her sail was rent and tattered. Her broken mast hung half in the water. All that could be hoped was that she might come in with the tide, and that Jacques would be able to avoid the rocks. Perhaps they still preserved their oars! As she listened, she thought she heard them striking on the row-locks; but no, it was the wind. The broken mast might still serve to hold them off the rocks. Already she could hear Fanor's voice. But on the heaving plain her glance could barely follow the little craft. Finally, as a sudden gust blew afresh, it disappeared altogether.

Jeanne closed her eyes. And, when they reopened, Jacques and Fanor were beside her. Jacques was pale; Fanor with red, distended nostrils, and panting, shook the water from his shaggy coat.

"Wife," said Jacques, "we have been very unlucky! We beat all night against the wind. I wished to come in last evening after we had doubled the citadel; I knew it would blow. But that fool of a Parisian would see the offing! He is dead now. God have mercy on him! I have never worked so hard in all my life! To lighten the boat he wanted to drown Fanor. And when he saw the breakers, he would jump overboard to swim. Fanor went after him and brought him to the gunwale; and, while I was lending him a hand, puff! we were all in the water together. Holy Mother! how I did lay about me. I caught a plank. 'Hold on, Fanor!' said I. But Fanor had left the stranger and had seized me by the collar. And so I made the shore. O the brave beast! he's no dog; he is almost a man!"

CARDINAL POLE.

Cardinal Pole was a representative man. As Archbishop of Canterbury he stands in direct contrast to Cranmer. Each of these primates was at the head of a host during a period of mortal conflict. They led respectively the forces of the old and of the new faith. Pole represented the Catholics of England, especially the wiser and better part of them. Cranmer was one of the feeblest and worst specimens of the reformers. He had not even the unenviable merit of being true to his own principles. He could not stand the shock of battle, and though a standard-bearer, he surrendered his colors in the hope of saving his life. Pole, on the contrary, suffered persecution for righteousness' sake, and the cruel fate of his mother and his near relatives warned him but too plainly of the end that awaited him if he should ever come within reach of the tyrant. Let us trace his history, though but in outline; for we shall find it full of interesting matter, food for reflection, and lessons of piety. There are many men of less importance and less merit whose lives are better known than his. One who enjoyed his friendship during many years—Ludovico Beccatelli, Archbishop of Ragusa—has left us a record of his acts, and painted his character with a faithful hand. To him principally, and to Cardinal Pole's own writings, we are indebted for what we have learned respecting him; for though much is to be found on the subject of his career in the pages of Lingard, Strype, Flanagan, Hume, Strickland, and Froude, it is to those higher sources especially, together with the state papers of the time, that every one must remount who would obtain reliable information.

It was when Henry VII. had passed the middle of his reign, and Alexander VI. filled the papal chair, that Reginald Pole was born at Stowerton Castle in Staffordshire. His father was Sir Richard Pole, (afterward Lord Montacute, or Montague,) a Welsh knight, and his mother was Mary, Countess of Salisbury, daughter of that Duke of Clarence whom Edward IV. drowned in a butt of Malmsey. He was the cousin also of Elizabeth, Queen of Henry VII. and mother of Henry VIII. He had thus all the advantages which people attach to high descent, and no pains were spared to give him an education suited to his rank and prospects. The monasteries were then schools for the instruction of boys of good family, and to one of these Reginald was sent when a child. It was the Carthusian monastery at Shene, from whence he was removed in time to Magdalen College, Oxford, where he laid the foundation of his future learning, and was taught by the celebrated Linacre, the preceptor of Prince Arthur, and physician to Henry VIII. and the Princess Mary.[94] His education was carried on at the cost of Henry; for which reason he often in after life spoke of the king with gratitude. He was but a boy when he obtained his degree of B.A., and might (like Wolsey, who graduated at Oxford when fourteen years old) have been called the "Boy Bachelor." He was also admitted very early into deacons' orders; at seventeen he was made Prebendary of Salisbury; and at nineteen [347]Dean of Wimborne and Exeter.

The reformation had not yet broken out. England was ruled without a parliament by the all-powerful minister Cardinal Wolsey; and Henry VIII., who had in 1513, when Pole was at Oxford, won the battle of the Spurs and taken Tournay, appeared for a moment as a competitor for the imperial crown on the death of Maximilian. It was part of his good pleasure that Reginald Pole should be highly educated, and accordingly about the year 1520, when the youth was twenty years old, he caused him to repair to the University of Padua to complete his studies. Reginald resided in that seat of learning in great splendor. A numerous retinue attended him, and he enjoyed the society and esteem of many eminent persons, such as Bembo [95] and Sadolet.[96] His morals were pure, his manners graceful, and his amiability made him much beloved.

After five years of university life, he returned to England, and was received by Henry with many marks of royal favor. But he shunned the splendors and seductions of the court, and retired to a house that had belonged to Dean Colet within the Carthusian monastery at Shene. Henry's erratic career had begun; and he was seeking to obtain a divorce from his faithful and virtuous wife, Catharine of Aragon. Reginald earnestly desired to escape the complications that were likely to ensue. He knew that a storm was gathering; and after two years of retirement at Shene, he obtained Henry's permission to pursue his studies at the University of Paris.[97] He was not yet priests' orders, neither had he taken monastic vows. For this a curious reason was assigned.

All the contemporaries of Queen Catharine affirm that she earnestly desired a union in marriage between her daughter, the Princess Mary and Reginald Pole. His mother, the Countess of Salisbury, had always resided with Mary, and the biographers of Pole with one voice declare that Mary had regarded him with favor from earliest childhood. We ought not, however, to lay too much stress on this fact, since the disparity of their ages was too great to admit of their being lovers at an early period of life. Reginald was sixteen years older than Mary, yet it is not surprising that, when her proposed marriage with the Emperor of Germany was broken off, and Reginald, having returned to England, appeared at court in his twenty-fifth year conspicuous for the culture of his mind and the beauty of his person, the queen should wish to see him become the husband of her child. He was of royal blood, and very nearly resembled his ancestor Edward III. and his great-uncle Edward IV. His portrait was taken by Michael Angelo for that of the Saviour of men in the grand painting of the Raising of Lazarus. He revived, therefore, in his carriage and features the memory of the heroic Plantagenets from whom he descended. Already renowned for learning, and with a mind enriched with travel and residence in foreign lands, he had frequent opportunities of seeing the lovely Mary who would probably one day be Queen of England. Lady Salisbury still lived with her, and she was both her relative and friend. The princess showed great partiality for the noble and accomplished Reginald; and at a much later period a marriage was proposed between them as[348] a matter of state convenience, but without its being very long or seriously entertained.[98]

Reginald was not suffered to remain long in peace at the University of Paris. An order arrived requiring him to procure opinions favorable to the divorce, in concert with Langet, the brother of the Bishop of Bayonne. The task was ungrateful to him, full of danger, and hardly to be executed with a clear conscience. He resigned it to his colleague, and was soon recalled. He might have succeeded Wolsey in the see of York, and possibly Warham in that of Canterbury, had he been willing to pander to the vicious inclinations of his royal master. He wavered, indeed, for a moment, and fancied he had found an expedient by which he might satisfy Henry without wounding his own conscience. He repaired to Whitehall Palace, and there, in the stately gallery, he stood before the anti-christian king. He loved that king in spite of his wickedness; for he owed to him his education, together with many dignities and splendors. He loved him too well to deceive him. The truth could not be suppressed. It wrought within him like a pent-up fire. His feelings overcame him, and he burst into tears. It was enough to stir the king's displeasure. It revealed the secret workings of Reginald's mind. The divorce would be a crime—a horrible crime. The reasons assigned in its favor were flimsy deceits. The helpless queen and her daughter would be victims moving all hearts to pity. Henry frowned, and his hand often sought the dagger's hilt; but though Reginald wept, it was not likely a Plantagenet should fear. Upon quitting the gallery, Reginald was loaded with the bitterest reproaches by his brothers, and especially by Lord Montague. He was induced to write to the king. He explained his motives in language equally firm and temperate; and Henry, into whom the demons had not yet fully entered, took the letter, or professed to take it, in good part. He declared that he loved Pole in spite of his obstinacy, and that, if his opinion were only favorable to the divorce, he should love him more than any man in the kingdom. History has taught us how much his love was worth; for his embraces were sure pledges of ruin and destruction. He did not, however, withdraw Reginald's pension of five hundred crowns, but allowed him to leave England again.

Having emphatically declared his dissent from the resolutions of parliament and convocation, Pole found his position more and more uneasy. He turned his face again to the south, and in 1532 took up his residence for a time at Avignon. During his absence the fatal divorce was completed, and the doom of England as a Catholic country was sealed. The thought of returning to it became distasteful; and he retired to the monastery of Carpentras, and subsequently to his old quarters at Padua. His leave of absence was extended. He was enabled to visit Venice. His pension was duly paid; he received the revenues of the deanery of Exeter, and was specially exempted from the obligation of swearing allegiance to the children of Anne Boleyn. So far forbearance was shown toward him, and he was not insensible to the indulgence. He always in after life retained the same feelings, and even his bitterest invectives were softened with notes of love.

In the year 1535, when he was in his thirty-fifth year, (for, being born in 1500, his years run with the century,) Pole was requested to send in his[349] opinion on the authority claimed in England by the see of Rome. A similar request was made to all other English noblemen and gentlemen; for Henry in his worst deeds endeavored to fortify himself by public opinion; and when doctors at the universities resisted his will, he overcame their scruples by the help of menacing letters.[99] Mr. Starkey, a personal acquaintance, was commissioned to correspond with Pole, and he advised him to avoid his previous errors. He was to say distinctly and honestly whether he approved the divorce and the separation from Rome—whether they were, in his opinion, right or wrong in the abstract, and not whether they might be defended on grounds of expediency. He insisted the more on this distinction, because, as we have seen, when Pole was first consulted by Henry about the separation from Catharine, he had hesitated, requested time for consideration, and tried to discover reasons for complying with his sovereign's wishes.

But years had passed since that trying occasion. The germs of evils had rapidly developed. Henry's character had unfolded; Pole's had matured. Their divergence had become antagonism; and Pole was in no way disposed to let the opportunity now afforded him escape. It was the time to write what contemporaries widely scattered, and even posterity, might read. Brief answers to brief questions would do for the king; but a volume would do better for Rome, the courts of Europe, the people of England, and the angry glances of the lawless prince himself. He intended it, no doubt, for Henry's perusal in the first instance; but he could hardly doubt that what he might speak in secret chambers would be proclaimed from the house-tops. He showed the manuscript in parts to Cardinal Contarini. The language was impassioned and almost violent. The cardinal advised discretion, and ended by protesting against what he considered fruitless invective. To this Reginald replied that he knew the king's character well. He had been too much flattered. No one had durst tell him the truth. He could not be moved by gentleness. His eyes ought to be opened by the plainest speaking, and the censures of the church ought long ago to have fallen upon him. It was not for his sake only that Pole wrote; he had the welfare of the flock of Christ in his heart. He was determined to expose the matter fully, that king and people might be thoroughly warned.

In the mean time the emperor's designs on England were abandoned; and the quarrel between him and Henry seemed likely to be brought to a peaceful issue. Thus one hope which Pole entertained of seeing divine judgments fall on the king of England was blighted. Yet his book must be completed. The king must have the first reading of it. He would not even submit it to Pope Paul III. through Cardinal Contarini. Perhaps he feared that his holiness would think it ill-timed or intemperate. We certainly find him lamenting that the pope did not convince the emperor how much more blessed it would be to fight with Henry than with the Turks—to be the champion of the Christian faith in Europe, and drive back the fearful encroachments of heresy.[100]

At length, in May, 1536, Pole's De Unitate Ecclesiæ, was completed. His ardent disposition and his indignant piety found vent in this composition, and it rolled along like a river swollen by rains. The very passages in it which Mr. Froude holds up to reprobation [350]and scorn are those which Catholics in general will regard with the most pleasure; they will strike upon their ears as the voice of one crying in the wilderness, and denouncing in just and measured terms the crimes of a royal heresiarch. It will appear to them instinct with affection rather than hatred. "I will cry in your ears," he says, "as in the ears of a dead man—dead in your sins. I love you—wicked as you are, I love you. I hope for you, and may God hear my prayer. I should be a traitor did I conceal from you the truth. I owe my learning to your care." He draws a hideous picture of Henry's guilt and presumption, and then proceeds to dissect a book which Henry had sent him on the supremacy by Dr. Sampson, Bishop of Chichester. He inveighs against the abuse which Henry made of his regal power, maintaining that the king exists for the people, not the people for the king. He makes the people the source of kingly power; and his words, populus regem procreat, "the people make the king," involve a distinct denial of

He subordinates the regal office to that of the priest, and in language singularly modern, he asserts that sovereigns are responsible to their people, and that Henry, by breaking his coronation oath, has forfeited his right to the crown, and justified the rebellion of his subjects.

The third and most important section follows. It is addressed to Henry VIII., to England, to the emperor, and to the Spanish army. He accuses the king of intriguing with Mary Boleyn before his marriage with Anne, and brands the "supreme head of the church" as the "vilest of plunderers, a thief, and a robber." He relates in forcible language the story of the martyrdom of Sir Thomas More, Bishop Fisher, and the Charterhouse monks. He calls on England loudly to rebel.

No trumpet of revolt could blow louder, yet Pole did not stop even here. He proclaimed his intention of exciting the Emperor Charles to invade England, and to assemble under his banner all those English who remained true to God and his holy church. This part of the treatise, when printed, was circulated as a pamphlet in the German States. It protested that Pole acted in the love of his country, and "in that love of the church which was given him by the Son of God." The Spaniards above all men were bound in his view to vindicate the honor of the noble daughter of Isabella of Castile, whom Henry had divorced. The king of France, he believed, would make peace with the emperor, and at the pope's bidding undertake the chastisement of the towering enemy of God and man.

But the address is not all rebuke and menace; the tones of wrath melt into tenderness at the last, and die away in exhortation to repentance and promises of mercy. It effected little. Catharine of Aragon died in Kimbolton Castle in the same year in which it came to hand, and Anne Boleyn, four months later, passed from the bridal-chamber to the scaffold. Henry had broken for ever with the holy see, and England, torn from the centre of unity, sank and wandered in an abyss. The book was sent to England from Venice on the 27th of[351] May, 1536. It was accompanied by two letters, one to the king, the other to Tunstall, Bishop of Durham. The bishop was to read for the king what was intended for his majesty only. By which we must understand that, if the treatise produced the desired effect on Henry's mind, it would be considered as a secret communication; but if it failed, the author would then be at liberty to publish it to the world. It is not certain that Henry ever read it. He heard reports of it, however, from Tunstall and Starkey, and made no mystery of his displeasure to those around him. To Pole himself he wrote briefly, requiring him to return to England and explain his ideas more fully. Starkey and Tunstall wrote also, pointing out Reginald's presumption, which, they said, if persevered in would become a crime, and urging him to return to England, and seek the king's pardon. Pole was far too astute to obey this summons. Other letters were addressed to him, and finding that he would not venture on the English shore, Henry's agents tried to persuade him not to publish the work, and to give up or burn any copies of it which he might have retained. But this request was as fruitless as the former. Pole continued for a time to receive his pension, and his book, the effects of which were likely to be formidable, was reserved in manuscript till a fitting occasion for publishing it should arise.

Being an English subject, in the enjoyment of certain emoluments and dignities, Reginald Pole was not altogether free in his movements abroad. He could not accept an invitation from the pope to visit him at Rome without first obtaining Henry's permission, or without, at least, expressing a hope that his majesty would not be offended if he repaired to the eternal city. Henry did not deign to reply, but he induced Reginald's mother and brothers, Cromwell, and his friends at home, together with some members of both houses of parliament, to endeavor to deter him from the journey and from accepting any office that might be offered him in Rome. For a time, therefore, he resisted the importunities of his friend Contarini, and declined the purple held out to him by Pope Paul III.; for he knew that in accepting it he should make the king his implacable enemy and expose his family to cruel persecution. But other circumstances arose, which made the cardinalate appear desirable; and he accepted it about Christmas, 1536,[101] and trusted that it might in the issue aid him in accomplishing the main purpose of his life. That purpose was the recovery of England, in part at least, if not entirely, to the Catholic faith. The rising in England which he had predicted had taken place. The suppression of the monasteries had filled the faithful in the north with indignation, and from the Wash to the borders of Scotland the people in general flew to arms. They bore on their standards the emblems of faith, and the image of Christ crucified was carried in their front. The revolt was styled the "Pilgrimage of Grace," and its object was not the overthrow of the throne or the sovereign, but the removal from him of all evil counsellors and "villein's blood." It is deeply to the disgrace of Englishmen that they did not rise to a man and support the cause of freedom and religion against the worst of tyrants. Pole was anxious to afford the insurgents all the assistance in his power, and to remove from them and from the English in general any pretext for acquiescence in the changes forced upon them. A legate's commission was granted him, and he was instructed to land in England, or to hover [352]over its coasts in France or Flanders as circumstances might require.[102] He knew not whether the insurrection were crushed, or whether Henry, on the contrary, were in the power of the rebels. He therefore manœuvred with the English government till things should take a decisive turn, and executed his commission with delicacy and dexterity. His professed object was to receive in Flanders such commissioners from the king as he might think proper to send for the purpose of discussing the points at issue between the government and the pope. He brought with him as credentials five letters; one to the Catholic people of England; a second to James of Scotland; a third to Francis King of France; a fourth to the Regent of the Netherlands; and a fifth to the Prince Bishop of Liege. He was ready to treat with Henry on any reasonable terms, and hopes were still entertained at Rome of England's being reconciled to the holy see. He was instructed to exhort the emperor and the King of France to cease hostilities against each other, and to turn their arms against the Turks. By this means they would forward the supreme pastor's design of convening a general council for the reformation of manners and the reconcilement of nations which had fallen from the faith to the unity of Christendom.

No sooner had Pole entered France than the English ambassador there required that he should be delivered up, and sent as a prisoner to England. The lengths to which Henry VIII. had gone altered the position of his Catholic subjects, and to be faithful to God and the holy see was to be nothing less than a traitor. Reginald Pole especially had incurred this charge, and as soon as it suited Henry's purpose, he preferred it against him without scruple. The king of France refused to deliver him up, but he requested Pole not to ask for an audience, and to prosecute his journey as speedily as possible. A treaty with England obliged the French government to give no shelter to political offenders, and Pole was compelled to turn aside from Paris and repair to Cambray. His welcome there was no warmer than in France. The Regent of the Netherlands had been terrified by Henry, and Pole was conveyed under an escort to Liege. A price of fifty thousand crowns was put on his head by the king of England, and four thousand auxiliaries were offered to the emperor to aid him in his campaign against France, provided he would deliver up the person of the cardinal into Henry's hands. The hatred of the king became implacable, and he pursued Pole ever after with the most murderous intentions.

From his watch-tower at Liege, Reginald beheld with bitter regret the failure of every attempt at insurrection in England. Alternate hopes and fears preyed on his mind. Conspiracy against the king seemed to offer the only chance of averting the triumph of Protestantism in England. Rebellion assumed in his eyes a sacred character, and every insurgent who fell wore the glory of martyrdom. He would willingly have seen his relations plotting against the author of untold evils to mankind. But a rumor was spread abroad of his life being in danger; that assassins were employed by Henry to murder him; and the holy father, anxious to preserve so valuable a life, recalled him to Italy. He was bent on publishing his book in defence of the church's unity, and desired to do so under the pope's auspices. In a letter to his secretary, Michael Throgmorton, Cromwell, who was then Henry's chief adviser, heaped reproaches upon Pole for his treason, dared him to[353] publish his book if he thought fit, defended his master's resistance of papal authority, and intimated that Henry could find means to avenge himself on Cardinal Pole, even though he should be "tied to the pope's girdle." The times, it must be confessed, were most painful and trying; wickedness in high places forced many persons from their allegiance against their will who would have been, under happier circumstances, the most loyal and devoted of subjects. The mind of Cardinal Pole was deeply imbued with a love of the Catholic religion, and wherever he might be, whatever he might be doing, his unique object was its reëstablishment in his beloved and native land.

In June, 1538, we catch a glimpse of Cardinal Pole among the orange-groves that skirt the water's edge on the beautiful bay of Nice. Hither he came as attendant on the pope in a congress which resulted in a truce between France and Spain. But the name of Henry VIII. was not mentioned in the treaty on which the sovereigns agreed. The pope and the princes were left free to act toward him or against him as they might think fit.

In the beginning of the year 1539 Pole's book was printed, and sown broadcast over Europe. Many additions had been made to it, and the excesses into which King Henry had rushed increased the vehement indignation of the author. The pope, also, at the same time, issued his bull of deposition against the apostate prince. His crimes could no longer be endured; the putrid member must be lopped off from the body of the church. Cardinal Pole himself was despatched on another mission, the object of which was to arouse the Emperor Charles V. to an invasion of England. He addressed an apology to the emperor explaining his conduct, lest his majesty should fail to see how fealty to the King of kings may sometimes oblige a subject to disown allegiance to an earthly sovereign.

Meanwhile, another rising was meditated in England. The Pilgrimage of Grace had failed, but the moment was propitious for another attempt. The Catholic forces of the empire would be stirred against Henry by the pope and Cardinal Pole, and the pacification of Nice had brought Europe into the condition most adverse to the schismatic king. The plot was discovered by the government, and suspicions fell on the relatives of Pole. He was believed to have been in correspondence with them, and to have excited them to conspire and rebel. His brother, Sir Geoffrey Pole, turned king's evidence, and his accusations were accepted as truthful; though the word of a traitor to his own party is as much to be despised as himself. Knowing, as we do, that the heart of Cardinal Pole was burning with a desire of Henry's overthrow, it will be to us a question of small interest whether he really instigated his friends to revolt or not. Neither shall we be very careful to inquire into the validity or invalidity of the charges against his kinsfolk. If faithful to the king, they were unfaithful to God; if rebels against his authority, they were valiant for the truth. The evidence obtained in their disfavor was presumptive only; it proved, indeed, something as to their general tendencies; but it was not sufficient for their just condemnation. They had one crime which could not be pardoned; they were near relations of Reginald Pole. The king had not a more dangerous enemy than he beyond the seas; and the accused persons were all of them more or less of royal blood; all capable, on occasion, of setting up a rival claim to the throne, and making their descent, titles, property, and influence means[354] of supplanting the reigning prince. The Marquis of Exeter, Lord Montague, and Sir Edward Neville were beheaded on Tower Hill, December 9th, 1538.[103] Lady Salisbury was made to endure a cruel imprisonment, and deprived of all her property; nor could she even purchase a warm garment to protect her aged limbs.[104] When more than seventy years of age, she was brought to the block. "Blessed are they that suffer for righteousness' sake," were her last words. The effect of these judicial murders on Cardinal Pole's mind may easily be conceived. Other injuries may be forgotten or forgiven, but this shedding of the blood of innocent and beloved relatives is a crime that never ceases to cry to heaven for vengeance.

Pole's mission to Charles V. produced little effect. Some warlike demonstrations were made against Henry, but the emperor soon assured the legate that it was impossible for him at that time to proceed further. Reginald Pole was bitterly disappointed. Again his hope of the church's triumph and Henry's discomfiture was blasted. He saw the wicked in great prosperity and flourishing like a green bay tree. But his strength and consolation was in the inner life. "For me," he wrote, "the heavier the load of my affliction for God and the church, the higher do I mount upon the ladder of felicity."[105] There were those who accused him of nourishing a hope that he should one day be king of England; but perhaps they have ascribed to him what was only the foolish dream of some fond admirers.

This legation was a mockery and a cross. He was bandied about from Toledo to Avignon; from Charles V. to Francis. Neither sovereign could be induced to unite against the king of England. Francis refused to receive the legate unless he brought with him some written pledge of the emperor's sincerity, and Charles refused to give that pledge unless the cardinal had first been received by Francis. Pole saw that he was cajoled by both.

Once more he vacated diplomatic functions. Once more he retired within the cloister at Carpentras,[106] to hide his face in mourning and prayer, to ponder the torments of his saintly mother, and fix his weeping eyes in solitude on the image of his crucified Lord. The emperor had tamely declined to fight the battles of Jehovah, and his supineness added wormwood to Pole's bitter cup. Paul III. had compassion on his distress, and need of his counsels. He recalled him from his retreat near Avignon—from the ruins of the Temple of Diana at Carpentras, to the life and energy of Christian Rome.

The hatred of Henry toward Cardinal Pole was increased by this last attempt to band the most powerful princes of Europe against him. "Judgment of treason" was pronounced on him in England; and efforts were made to induce foreign governments to deliver him up. His steps were tracked by spies; his goings in and out were watched; and he believed the poniards of assassins to be often brandished near him. His aged mother, the venerable Countess of Salisbury, was brought to the block,[107] as we have already mentioned. No examination had extracted evidence of her guilt; no ground for a criminal prosecution could be discovered. She was attainted without previous trial or confession; for Henry and his abject minion, Cromwell, were as indifferent to the forms of law as to the substance of justice. Her name, together [355]with that of Pole's nephew, the son of Lord Montague, and that of Gertrude the Marchioness of Exeter, was introduced into a bill of attainder, though neither of them had confessed any crime or had been placed upon trial with means of defence. The marchioness was pardoned in six months; of the fate of the young man no record remains; but the aged countess, who was the last in a direct line of the Plantagenets, who was the nearest relation in blood that Henry had, and of whom in former days the king had often said that she was the holiest woman in Christendom, was dragged from the tower to the scaffold after a confinement of two years, and commanded to lay her head on the block.

"My head," she replied, "never committed treason. If you will have it, you must take it as you can."

The executioner performed his office while the head was held down by force. Reginald Pole ever after regarded himself as the son of a martyr, and accounted that a higher honor than to be born of a royal line.[108]

His long residence abroad after his mother's death was not marked by events of sufficient importance to require very special record. At Rome, the pope granted him a guard, that he might be protected from plots against his life contrived by the revengeful Henry. He corresponded largely with persons of distinction in various countries, and his letters, which were published at Brescia (Brixia) in five volumes quarto, in 1754-57, under the editorship of Cardinal Quirinus, are highly circumstantial, and contain abundant matter of historical interest and closely connected with the lives of Pope Paul III., the Emperor Charles V., the King of Scots, Edward VI., Mary, and Elizabeth. In 1562, a work of his appeared, entitled, De Concilio Liber; and in the same year, at Rome, edited by P. Manutius, Reformatio Angliæ, ex decretis Reginaldi Poli Cardinalis. Two volumes, quarto. The book on councils was written by Pole as president of the Council of Trent in 1545; and Phillips, in his life of him,[109] speaks of it as

Cardinal Pole's life of exile, therefore, was neither idle nor fruitless. The labors which his hand then wrought remain to this day, and are highly prized by all who love to trace the stream of history to its fountain head. The year after Cromwell's disgrace and death (1541) Pole was appointed Governor of the Province of the Patrimony of St. Peter—the only part of the States of the Church which is now left to the Bishop of Rome. By this kindness on the part of Paul III., the cardinal was relieved of a disagreeable dependence on foreign princes for his daily expenses. His government was marked by wisdom, gentleness, and moderation. He always discouraged severity, though he held firmly the right of the church to punish offenders. His leisure hours were devoted to literature, and in the writings of ancient and modern poets and sages he often forgot, for a time, the miseries of his country, and the dangers which, even in Italy, beset his own person.[110]

Disorders among the clergy, a general corruption of morals, the schism of Luther, and the excesses of Calvin conspired to make a general council the obvious and only remedy that could be applied. Cardinal Pole and two other legates were nominated by Pope Paul III. to preside at the Council [356]of Trent in the year 1542. But the sittings were suspended amid the din of arms, and renewed three years later in the same city. Cardinal Pole then presided again, having on his journey been tracked from place to place by ruffians employed by Henry VIII. to dispatch him at all hazards. Such atrocity, however, did not exasperate Pole unduly, nor cause him to forfeit his character for clemency and moderation. It was, on the contrary, objected to him in Italy, as afterward in England, that he was too lenient. It was even laid to his charge, and made an argument against his being raised to the popedom, that during his administration as governor two persons only had been put to death. He lived, alas! in an age when laws were sanguinary, and human life was comparatively of trifling account.

Cardinal Pole rendered valuable assistance in the early stages of the Council of Trent; but in 1546, he was obliged to discontinue his sittings and retire, first to Padua, and afterward to Rome, in consequence of ill health. The decree of the council concerning justification,[111] as it now stands, was revised and completed by him. It is a monument of luminous and concise statement of scriptural truth, and perfectly reconciles passages at first sight discrepant in the epistles of St. Paul and St. James.

When Henry VIII. was gone to his account, and the young Edward mounted the vacant throne, Cardinal Pole made two unsuccessful efforts to incline the thoughts of that young prince favorably toward the true and ancient religion. But Edward VI. in his tender years was surrounded by persons who made it their business to misrepresent every thing connected with the Catholic Church. The boy-king was thus made the tool and victim of crafty and ambitious men, who reared the structure of their own fortunes out of a pile of sacrilege.

When Paul III. died in November, 1549, Cardinal Pole was at the head of his council, and governor of Viterbo. The larger part of the cardinals were desirous of electing him to the vacant chair; but the number of votes required being two thirds, the choice did not ultimately fall on him. It was not the design of Providence that he should either be pope of Rome or king of England; yet he was very near being the successor of Paul III. on one occasion, and the husband of Mary, Queen of England, on others. During the sitting of the conclave he wrote an essay, which was afterward published, on the duties of the papacy. But the period was not without its trials. Envious detractors arose, and charged him not only with being too lenient in the government of Viterbo, but also with favoring the modern errors. It often happens that when good men avoid severity, their clemency is blamed; when they are gentle and charitable toward heretics, their orthodoxy is impugned.

There was near the lake Benacus, (now Garda,) in the neighborhood of Verona, a spot named Maguzano, where stood, in Cardinal Pole's time, a monastery of Benedictine monks. To this retreat the cardinal turned when, in 1553, he obtained the pope's consent to resign his government of the province of Viterbo. His duties as governor had compelled him frequently to visit Rome, and that city, which should have been the abode of peace and piety, was filled with tumult and discord, in consequence of the dissensions between Julius and Henry II. of France. Many of the cardinal's dearest friends were no more. Contarini, Bembo, Sadolet, Cortesius, Badia, and Giberti, Bishop of Verona, slept the sleep of death, while Flaminius and Victoria Colonna, Marchioness of[357] Pescara, had also gone down to the grave. Cardinal Pole, therefore, was fain to retire beforehand from a transitory world, and seek once more in the shade of the cloister the peace that passes all understanding and the prospect of a heaven near at hand.

But it was with him as with so many others who have betaken themselves to a spiritual retreat, and bidden farewell to the busy world at the very moment when Providence intended to call them into greater publicity and more active service than ever. Edward VI. died on the 6th of July, 1553, the same day of the same month on which his father had stained his hands in the blood of Sir Thomas More. The Princess Mary ascended the throne. She was a zealous Catholic, and if she had only understood the temper of her subjects; if she had not attempted to annihilate a too powerful minority; if she had been content to encourage the ancient faith without persecuting the adherents of the new religion; if she had married an Englishman, or indeed any one but a Spaniard, to whom, on account of his nationality, her people were unalterably averse, she might have prolonged her life and made her reign happy; she might have been one of the greatest sovereigns of her age; she might have established Catholicity in England on a permanent footing; she might have bequeathed to her sister Elizabeth a system of tolerant government, and have taken it out of her power to persecute Catholics in her turn, and to supplant and vitiate entirely the old religion of the land.

No time was lost by the holy father, Julius III., in sending Cardinal Pole to England as legate. Before setting out on his journey, he entered into correspondence with the queen, in order to be certified of her good dispositions, and received from her the warmest assurances of welcome and support.[112] She was, in fact, in the early part of her reign, too eager to announce her future policy, and would have done more wisely if she had followed the counsel of the Emperor Charles V., who warned her "not to declare herself too openly while the issue of affairs was yet uncertain." The successive rebellions of Northumberland in favor of Lady Jane Grey, and that of Sir Thomas Wyatt, ought to have made her be prudent, and avoid above all things pressing matters to extremity. She knew how deeply the nobles and rich men of her realm were implicated in the crime of sacrilege, and how tenaciously they clung to the spoils of abbeys and church lands of which they had become possessed. Scarcely a day passed without some indication of the insecurity of her tenure of power—without some warning of the necessity of ruling with impartiality and moderation.[113]

Cardinal Pole was on his way to England, when he dispatched from the Tyrol two messengers, one to the King of France, and the other to the emperor, informing them of his instructions to negotiate, if possible, a peace between them in the name of the pope. Charles V., however, was by no means disposed to let Pole proceed quietly on his journey. He was bent on marrying his son Philip to Mary, and he feared that the cardinal might be either a rival of his son or an adversary of the match. He refused, therefore, to see the legate, stopped him in the heart of Germany, and caused him to return to Dillingen, on the Danube. Here he received instructions from Rome to wait until circumstances should clear his path; and here too he learned that the articles of the queen's marriage [358]had been agreed to, and the rebellion of Sir Thomas Wyatt suppressed. But the chief obstacle to Pole's presence in England being removed, the emperor consented to receive him at Brussels,[114] and Mary consulted him by letter as to the bishops whom she should appoint to fill the sees of those whom she had removed. The new prelates were carefully selected; and when the Catholic religion was again proscribed in the succeeding reign, one of them only, Kitchin of Llandaff—the calamity of his see—who had changed with every change of the court, abjured the faith of Christ and adopted that of Queen Elizabeth.

Pole was still unable to obtain the emperor's permission to cross over to England, because the marriage of Mary with Philip had not yet been celebrated. The delay was truly afflictive to the cardinal and the queen, and the negotiations carried on by Pole between the emperor and the king of France produced little effect. At last the emperor yielded to Mary's entreaties; Pole's legatine powers, though already very ample, were enlarged; and he was permitted to accept the invitation of the Lords Paget and Hastings, with a train of gentlemen, sent to Brussels for the purpose of escorting him to his native country. He was empowered to reconcile England to the holy see on such conditions as he should think proper and feasible, particular faculties being given to him to dispense with the restitution of church property and ecclesiastical revenues. His agreeable manners and amiable address pointed him out as the fittest man in the world to execute so difficult a commission; and the English ambassador at Brussels, writing of him to Mary, said,

The bill required for the reversal of Cardinal Pole's attainder was passed in November, 1554. It stated that the only reason for the attainder had been the cardinal's refusal to consent to the unlawful divorce of Queen Mary's father and mother, and its repeal restored him to all the rights which he had forfeited through his probity. The legate having taken leave of the emperor, set out the next day in princely style, accompanied by one hundred and twenty horse. A royal yacht and six men of war were in readiness to receive him at Calais. The wind itself was propitious to his voyage, and, having been rough and contrary for several days, suddenly changed its direction, and wafted the apostolic messenger safely to the British shore.

The legate, when he landed at Dover, was received and welcomed by his nephew, Lord Montague. He was treated as one of the royal family, and on his arrival at Gravesend, he was met by the Earl of Shrewsbury and the Bishop of Durham. They presented him with the act by which his attainder was reversed; and in his character as legate he proceeded with them up the Thames in a royal barge, at the head of which shone conspicuously his silver cross. Masses of spectators lined the banks, and a large number of smaller barges followed him up the river till he arrived at Whitehall, then the residence of the court. The chancellor with many lords, the king, and the queen with the ladies of her court, welcomed him with affectionate joy. The palace of Lambeth, which Cranmer had exchanged for a prison, was richly furnished for his use, and on the [359]morrow, the 28th of November, the lords and commons assembled expressly to hear from the legate's own lips the object of his coming. The address which he delivered was long and impressive; it dwelt on the dismal condition of nations cut off from the unity of the church; and it set forth the abundant blessings which would follow from the purpose of the holy see and the queen being accomplished in the formal reconciliation of England to the communion of the Bishop of Rome. On the next day, which was the feast of St. Andrew, the parliament met again, together with the king, the queen, and the legate. The nation, like a scattered and harried flock, was received once more into the fold of the church by general consent, amid deep emotion, praises, and tears of joy. Yet many who were present had misgivings about the permanence and solidity of the union thus affected. They remembered the recent rebellion in favor of Lady Jane Grey, the rising of Sir Thomas Wyatt, the countenance supposed to be given to the rebels by the Princess Elizabeth, the extreme unpopularity of the Spanish alliance, and the haughty, violent character of Gardiner, the chancellor, and of Bonner, the Bishop of London.[116] Events unfortunately justified these apprehensions, and made the short reign of Mary, for reasons which we shall presently enumerate, a dismal failure and an instalment of endless disaster.

The day after the reconciliation, the lord mayor and other civic authorities waited on the legate, and requested him to honor the city with a visit. Accordingly, on the first Sunday in Advent he went by water from Lambeth, landed at St. Paul's wharf, and proceeded in great pomp to the cathedral, where high mass was celebrated in presence of their majesties and the court. The sermon was preached by Gardiner, the Bishop of Winchester, who took occasion to confess the share which he had in the national guilt, and to implore his hearers, who had been influenced by him when he went astray, to follow him now that he had recovered the right path. It was certainly asking a good deal, since Gardiner himself had sat with Cranmer and pronounced the sentence of divorce between the king and Catharine. He had also maintained the royal supremacy, and sold his pen to Henry's caprice.[117]

The bill which was framed to effect the restoration of the Catholic religion in England was very comprehensive and carefully worded. It distinguished minutely between the civil and ecclesiastical jurisdictions, and guarded against what legists are accustomed to consider the encroachments of the latter.[118] It secured to the owners of church lands the undisturbed possession of their property wherever it had been legally conveyanced; and without this concession the legate's mission would have proved fruitless. It was followed by a release of state prisoners, and by an embassy being sent to the Roman see. Before it had reached its destination, Pope Julius III. died,[119] after a pontificate of five years. He was succeeded by Marcellus, who reigned only three weeks, and by his decease opened the door for renewed exertions to raise Cardinal Pole to the papal chair. It was the third time that Pole's friends had used all their influence in his behalf. In the conclave which elected Julius III., Cardinal Farnese had nearly succeeded in procuring his election; in the proceedings which issued in the choice [360]of Marcellus, the same cardinal had obtained letters from the king of France in Pole's favor; and now again, when Caraffa was chosen and took the name of Paul IV., it was not the fault of Philip, Mary, or Gardiner that the tiara did not light on the head of Reginald Pole.

Having mediated a peace successfully between France and the emperor, Pole was appointed, by Philip's special request, chief of the privy council. He was to be absent from the queen as little as possible, and nothing of importance was to be undertaken without his concurrence. Pope Paul IV., however, did not look favorably on Cardinal Pole, and had, even at this time, some thought of recalling him to Rome. Meanwhile the legate with Gardiner made a slight attempt to arouse the University of Oxford from its lethargy in respect to human learning, and a short time afterward, before the end of the year 1555, Gardiner being dead, the cardinal convoked a national synod to consider the disorders of the period, and the best means of stemming the torrent of depraved morals and strange forms of unbelief.

It is not our purpose to enter into the history of the severe measures which were adopted for the extirpation of heresy in England, and which we may, with the light which subsequent events have cast upon them, with reason suspect to have been extreme and injudicious. We are concerned only with the history of Cardinal Pole, and every thing goes to prove that he always preferred lenient to severe measures, so far as he considered it compatible with the welfare of religion and the safety of the throne. As for Cranmer, Latimer, Ridley, and other principal personages who were put to death, they deserved their fate on account of the numerous treasons and crimes which they had committed, or to which they had been accessory; and Elizabeth herself might with perfect justice have been brought to the block, from which she was saved only by the influence of Gardiner, for conspiring against the crown of her sister. The whole number of victims brought to the scaffold was only from two to four hundred, and numbers of those who escaped into Ireland were sheltered and concealed from legal pursuit by the Irish Catholics, who have suffered death by thousands for the sake of religion, but have scarcely ever inflicted it on others. The fanatics and demagogues, who with the cowardly and blood-thirsty instincts of their species are seeking to stir up the American people, "who will not rise, in spite of their prayers and their prophecies," against the Irish Catholics of the United States, will do well to remember this fact, or rather, as such persons always forget what does not suit their purpose, the intelligent and honest citizens of this republic will do well to remember it, when these mischief-makers attribute to their Catholic fellow-citizens any ulterior design or hope of ever seeking to propagate their religion in this country by violent means.

As for Cardinal Pole himself, even Mr. Froude acknowledges that he was "not cruel." Burnet testifies that he rescued the inhabitants of his own district who were condemned to death from the hand of Bonner.[120] His secretary, Beccatelli, informs us that "he used his best endeavors that the sectaries might be treated with lenity, and no capital punishment inflicted on them;"[121] and he himself declares that he approved of putting heretics to death only in extreme cases.[122] Rigorous and severe punishments [361]upon all classes of offenders, coercive measures and the stern exercise of authority were, however, according to the spirit of that age in every country, and it is not strange that the milder counsels of the gentle Pole were over-ruled, and that he was unable to hinder the executions desired by those who had the supreme power of the law in their hands. The administration of Mary was severe and despotic. Yet it is false to say that in her spirit and intentions she was cruel or tyrannical. What appears to us like an unnecessary and even impolitic rigor and vindictiveness against those who, by the laws of England, were rebels against both the civil and ecclesiastical authorities of the realm, was to a great extent due to the importunate counsels of the lay-lords. Even Bonner and Gardiner would gladly have pursued a milder policy, and the majority of the bishops and ecclesiastics, notwithstanding the atrocious persecutions to which they had been subjected under Henry and Edward, would have cordially sustained their primate if he had been left free to exercise his authority unimpeded by the interference of the civil power. Yet, though Mary's policy was severe, it was mercy itself compared to that of Henry, Elizabeth, and their Protestant successors. It is not only an atrocious calumny; it is a grim and dismal jest for the panegyrists of Elizabeth, and the exculpators of the hideous massacres of Cromwell, to affix the epithet of "bloody" to Queen Mary.[123] Moreover, it is not a mere question of a greater or lesser amount of bloodshed which should govern our award of justice in respect to the two cases. There is a difference of principle in the case, which an impartial Jew, Mohammedan, infidel, or even Protestant can and ought to admit, as some have admitted. Those persons who, in England or elsewhere, have been put to death by the civil power for the crime of heresy under the Catholic law, have been condemned for abjuring that religion in which they had been brought up, and which had been part of the law of the land, as well as the universal and traditional belief of the nation, from the beginning of its formation, or at least for centuries. Even if the principles of law by which they were condemned are pronounced tyrannical and unjust, it is plain that there is no parity between the case of a ruler acting on such principles, in common with other rulers of the time and of past ages, and according to maxims universally approved by jurists and statesmen, and one who compels his subjects to renounce their ancient laws and religion, and to abjure the faith in which they have been educated, at his individual whim and caprice. But although we are not disposed to abandon Queen Mary to her calumniators, we may give to Cardinal Pole the high honor of having been wiser than she was, or than her other counsellors were, and of having been in advance of the general spirit of his age in regard to the wisest and best method of treating religious errors, which had taken too deep a root to be summarily plucked up by a violent effort; and with these few remarks upon a topic which requires much greater space for a satisfactory discussion, we proceed with the personal history of the cardinal.

After Cranmer's execution, Cardinal Pole, who had hitherto been in deacons' orders, was ordained priest, consecrated bishop, and invested with the pallium as Archbishop of Canterbury. His works of piety were numerous; he founded religious houses,[362] preached, prayed, and watched for souls in all respects as one that must give account. He was made chancellor of the University of Oxford, by the resignation of Sir John Mason, and chancellor of that of Cambridge also, on the death of Gardiner.

To a sensitive mind there is no greater anguish than that which springs from the hostility of those whom it has faithfully served. This suffering it was Cardinal Pole's lot to incur. His whole life had been devoted to God, the church, and the holy see. For these he had endured exile, persecution, and the loss of all things. For their sakes he had seen his mother and his dearest relatives dragged to the scaffold. In their cause he had studied, written, toiled, prayed, and wept till his hairs were gray. As their defender and champion he had been welcomed to England by his cousin and sovereign, raised to the head of the English church, and made the chief instrument in bringing back the ancient religion. But having done so, having given every proof a prelate could give of his devoted attachment to his religion, having twice been on the very steps of the papal throne, with what agony must his spirit have been tortured when he found, as he did find, that he was in disfavor with Paul IV.; that he was superseded as legate; that he was recalled to Rome; and that, to crown the cup of bitterness, he and his friend, Cardinal Morone, were to answer to a charge of heterodoxy before the Inquisition.[124]

Happily for the cardinal, Mary and Philip took his part. They remonstrated with the pope on the loss which they and their subjects would sustain if Pole were recalled, and they prevailed with the holy father so far that he consented to the cardinal's retaining the see of Canterbury, while he appointed Peto, the Greenwich friar, to supersede him as legate. Quite in the spirit of her father, Mary caused the nuncio who brought this decision to England to be arrested, and interdicted Peto from accepting the legatine office. He never received any official notice of his appointment, nor Pole of the papal decision. He was, however, too loyal a subject of the pope to avail himself of this regal interference. He ceased to act as legate, and sent his chancellor to Rome with entreaties and protests. Again the pope required that Pole should appear in Rome to clear himself from the charge of heresy; and Peto was summoned there also to assist the pontiff with his advice. Proceedings against the English cardinal were already commenced, and the distressing state of things was set at rest only by the death of some of the principal actors. Peto, the rival legate, died, and while the affair was still in suspense the grave closed over the disappointed, despairing queen, and the broken-hearted [126] cardinal. He was attacked by a quartan ague, and, feeling conscious of his approaching [363]end, he made a will, in which he protested his attachment to the Church of Rome and especially to Pope Paul IV., from whom he had experienced treatment which seemed equally inexplicable and unkind. His last hours were passed in acts of devotion, and it was probably with supreme satisfaction that he laid his aching head on the pillow of death on the morning of the 18th of November, 1558. His friend, cousin, and sovereign had preceded him in the dark valley by only twenty-two hours, and he felt, no doubt, that his most powerful if not his best friend was no more. Elizabeth was already queen, and her Protestant tendencies were well known. There was every reason to suspect that she would reverse the religious system restored by her sister, and take advantage of the general unpopularity which Mary by her severity had incurred. There was one object only for which Cardinal Pole could reasonably wish to prolong his life, and that was to clear himself from the extraordinary charge which had been brought against him by calumniators. But it was the will of Providence that his fair and unspotted fame should be vindicated only after his death.

During forty days the palace at Lambeth was hung with black. An altar was placed in the apartment of the deceased cardinal, and masses were said constantly for the repose of his soul. His body was then conveyed to Canterbury with great pomp, and his funeral was followed by large numbers of citizens and clergy. The exalted rank of Cardinal Pole, the important part he had played in the history of his time, and the high offices he had filled made him an object of reverence to the multitude, who knew not, and did not even suspect, the intrigues of which he was the victim and the humiliating charge under which he lay.

We shall not endeavor in this place to follow the example of his indiscriminating panegyrists. Suffice it to say that he was a devoted son of the church, and that he did all in his power to resist the impious will of the tyrant with whom Providence had brought him face to face. His zeal for the conversion of England was laudable, though not crowned with the success which it deserved.

In his youth he had written a commentary on Cicero's works; but this was never printed, and the manuscript was lost. He excelled in exposition of the Scriptures, which were his constant study and delight. "His character," Mr. Froude allows, "was irreproachable; in all the virtues of the Catholic Church he walked without spot or stain."[127] He was honored with the friendship of men of great distinction, such as Sir Thomas More, Erasmus, Sadolet, Bishop of Carpentras, Bembo, Friuli, Paul III., and Ignatius Loyola. His forgiving disposition may be gathered from the fact that when three English ruffians came to Capranica to murder him, were arrested on suspicion, and confessed that they were emissaries of Henry VIII., he would only allow them to be condemned to the galleys for a few days. His clemency, as we have seen, in a relentless age, caused him to be suspected; and we have the testimony of Bishop Burnet, the Protestant historian of the Reformation,[128] to assure us that

THE YOUNG VERMONTERS.

CHAPTER I.
DUTY AND TEMPTATION.

"Hollo! George and Henry, where are you going in such a hurry? Can't you stop to speak to a fellow?" cried Frank Blair to his two school-mates, George Wingate and Henry Howe, whom he was trying to overtake in their walk on a fine afternoon in June.

"Yes," said George. "We can stop to speak, but not to stay long, for we are on our way to the church."

"What are you going to church for? You'd better come with me; for I can tell you there's lots of fun going on that you'll be sorry to lose!"

"Oh! I can't tell you unless you join us; all the fellows have agreed not to tell any thing about it, only to those who promise beforehand to go in and keep the whole secret."

"Ah! then," said George, "we could not agree to any such thing; for it would be wrong for us to make a promise like that beforehand. So we couldn't go with you, if we were not bound for the church."

"Because," answered George, "to-morrow will be a festival, and we are going to help prepare the church, and then prepare ourselves for celebrating it."

"Well, I declare! I never did see any thing like you Catholic boys! You're a real puzzle to me; as pious as deacons, and take to religion as naturally as a duck does to water, and yet I know you love fun just as well as any of us. What are you going to do to prepare for this festival?"

"Oh! we shall help the sacristan, who is an infirm old man, to make the church neat and tidy, in the first place. Then we shall assist in getting evergreens ready for the decoration; and we expect our mothers and sisters with flowers to be arranged in vases for the altar, while we are twining and putting up wreaths. We hope to make the church very beautiful for the great feast of the Blessed Sacrament. After we get this all done, we shall prepare for holy communion, which we hope to receive to-morrow."

"First of all, we make our examination of conscience, and say our prayers in preparation for confession."

"You go to confession! Why, I thought none but sinners confessed to the priest."

"Of course not! How can we boys be sinners? I never thought of such a thing. I don't believe I'm a sinner at all! I only love a frolic once in a while; and I hate religion, because it's such a gloomy kind of business. So you think you won't join us, eh?"

"Well, then, good-by; but you'll be sorry you didn't go with us, I can tell you!"

He left them, and the two boys walked on in silence for some time. At length Henry said with a sigh,

"Don't you wish we could have gone with them, George? I'll warrant[365] you there's some grand fun up. I wonder what it is?"

"No matter what it is, Henry. We have only to do what is right, and what we know we ought to do first, and then we shall find ways enough to enjoy ourselves; and have more enjoyment, too, than we should if we neglected duty for pleasure."

"I suppose you are right," said Henry sadly; "but I can't help thinking there's more sport in going off with a lot of boys for a frolic than there is in being good, and helping the women fix up the church. It don't seem to me like boys' work, to be fussing with wreaths and bouquets."

"Ah my fine fellow! you are really getting very smart. What do you think of our fathers, and of Mr. A—— and Mr. S——, two of the most active business men in the place—and yet they take as much interest in having the church made beautiful for the divine offices as the women do. Don't you remember how Mr. A——, when he couldn't leave court during the trial of an important case, sent one of his students, and his man with a ladder, to help put up the wreaths last Christmas? Mighty smart for us boys to think it is too small business for us, to be sure! Then, as to the fun, we'll wait and see how the boys come out with their frolic. I have my own notion that there'll be more mischief than sport, and that we may hereafter be glad we had no part in it. Frank Blair is a pleasant, good-natured fellow; but he is a reckless chap too. He had learned a great many city tricks before they came here to live, and will do any thing for fun, without thinking of the consequences. Any way, we know there's nothing like duty first and play afterwards to make boys happy."

CHAPTER II.
RURAL PLEASURES.

The church was situated in the very shadow of a wood that skirts the pretty village of M——, in northern Vermont. When the two boys reached it, they found quite an assemblage of their school-fellows awaiting the arrival of the sacristan, who soon appeared, and sent some into the woods with axes and hatchets to cut the evergreens, dispatched others with pails for water, and kept George and Henry to help him in the church.

They had just finished arranging all in order and dusting the sanctuary, when their mothers and sisters arrived with the flowers, which they took to a little room adjoining the sacristy, where the pails of water were left. Very soon some of the boys came in with the evergreen trees; the beautiful trailing pines of several varieties, and graceful feathery foliage of brilliant green, together with a profusion of other wild-wood treasures, which they had collected. The village girls also came bringing wild flowers and other contributions for the decoration.

Young Catholics in country places need not be told how pleasantly the time passed with this company in the varied occupations of tying wreaths, arranging bouquets in the vases, putting up the festooned garlands, winding the pillars, and executing other devices, with which they are already so familiar as to need no information. But it is certain that the young people of cities, losing all these true and natural enjoyments, as well as the developments of taste and ingenuity to which they lead, lose a valuable aid to devotion. They who cannot participate in the adornment of the material temple for the worship of[366] God, by bringing the simple offerings of the woodlands and the valleys for its embellishment, lose a very important incentive to the due preparation of the spiritual temple for his reception.

Before the arrival of the priest, the work of decoration was completed, and each pious heart was gladdened to see how beautiful the altar looked, smiling through a profusion of flowers, whose fragrance hovered around the tabernacle of the Lord like a breath from paradise, and embowered in wreaths prepared from the "glory of Libanus," together with tributes from "the fir-tree, the box-tree, and the pine," which youthful hands had collected to "beautify the place of his sanctuary, and to make the place of his feet glorious."

When all was finished, the cheerful crowd quietly sought their places in the church, to prepare for the holy sacrament of reconciliation.

While these busy performances were in progress, George had looked in vain among the young people assembled to discover two lads who were near his own age, and in whom he felt a special interest—Michael Hennessy and Dennis Sullivan. He feared they had been drawn away into the expedition of their school-mates mentioned by Frank Blair.

On the following morning, the priest announced during the mass that there would be no vespers that afternoon, as he was going to visit another parish. After mass, Mr. Wingate and Mr. Howe told George and Henry that they intended taking the two families out to Mr. Howe's farm, a few miles distant, that afternoon, and that they might invite some of their young friends to accompany them. They were delighted; for there was nothing they enjoyed so much as their occasional visits to the farm. So they sought among the crowd at the church door their friends Mike and Dennis; but they were not to be found. They invited Patrick Casey, and a few other boys, to come to their homes after dinner and join the excursion.

Soon after dinner the large family carriages were brought up, and such a bustle ensued, stowing away in the vehicles baskets filled with buttered biscuits, cold ham and tongue, sandwiches, cakes, and sundry other delicacies, with a package of table-cloths and napkins, as betokened a grand supper in the woods, which was of all things the most delightful to the boys.

The party were soon comfortably packed into the capacious carriages, and set off in high glee. When they arrived at the farm-house, Mrs. Howe made arrangements for a plentiful supply of milk, fresh strawberries and cream, and other things, to be taken to a certain place in the woods at a time appointed, and the merry company set out in quest of the quiet nooks and shady dells of the forest.

There was no end to the pleasant incidents that here met our young people at every turn. They had scarcely entered the shadowy domain, when a partridge whirred up from their very feet into a tree over their heads, and they soon discovered she had left a brood of her young below. Such a scramble as took place in pursuit of the shy little beauties!—the girls holding their aprons, that the captives might be deposited in them as fast as caught. It was funny to see how the wise little creatures would hide under every chip, bit of bark, or dead leaf, and, when these were lifted, how still they would lie, as if lifeless—so near the color of the ground that it was hard to distinguish them—and allow themselves to be taken.

After sufficiently admiring their tiny prisoners, they set them at liberty,[367] and resumed their exploration of the forest. Very soon one of them came across a night-hawk's nest on the ground, and called all the party to admire it, with its treasure of curious brown eggs. Then they discovered a blue-bird's nest built with rare skill in a hole in the trunk of a tree. And now a splendid gray squirrel attracted their attention; he ran up a tree and out to the end of a limb, where he sat calmly defying all their efforts to frighten or knock him off. A discussion upon squirrels and their habits ensued, and "Grandma" Howe told them she once saw a large gray squirrel by a small sheet of water, where a dashing mountain brook had subsided into a quiet basin, which he wanted to cross. He stood on the margin for some time, as if considering the matter—turning himself to ascertain the direction of the wind, which happened to be favorable—then, seizing a chip that lay near him, threw it into the water, and springing aboard of his little craft, raised his tail to catch the wind, and sailed across swiftly and safely. When he gained the other shore, he jumped off, and did not even have the politeness to pull his boat ashore after him.

All this time Mr. Squirrel sat eying his guests of "the green-wood" very composedly, occasionally stamping his little foot with pretty pettishness, and at length fell to nibbling a last year's beech-nut which he had carried up to his perch for a lunch with so much coolness that his young observers were quite charmed, and determined to leave him to munch his nut in peace. They now sought a bright little brook that danced gayly over shining pebbles near by, and the murmur of whose waters, mingling with the rustle of leaves stirred by the breath of June, whispered in sweet harmony the song of the woods. They soon reached a fringe of graceful willows marking its course, and dipping their pendent limbs to kiss the crystal flood.

Just then Mr. Howe overtook the party and called out, "Boys, who would like to try some trout-fishing in the brook?"

Of course the boys were all eager for the sport; but where was the necessary fishing-tackle?

"Ah!" said Mr. Howe, "you see I have provided for that," producing a case filled with jointed rods, flies, lines, and all needful appliances for trout-fishing.

Each boy was soon supplied, and started off in search of the deep pools and sequestered waters favorable for their sport; while the girls rambled on, delighting themselves with the beautiful June flowers, peeping into each shaded recess for the modest feathered orchis—queen of its tribe, and most fragrant flower of the woods—and exploring the more open spaces near the brook, for the several varieties of elegant and fantastic "ladies' slippers," which abound in the woodlands of northern Vermont. Then the splendid lichens and ferns attracted their admiring notice; and before the hour for their repast arrived, they had accumulated a wealth of sylvan treasures wherewith to embellish their homes, and keep alive pleasant recollections of their brief sojourn in those woody solitudes.

At length an envoy from the farm-house arrived laden with refreshments—cards of pure white honey-comb filled with transparent sweets, cream of the richest, field strawberries in profusion, and milk fresh and abundant The girls soon spread the snow-white cloths on the turf at the foot of an ancient oak by the brook-side, and, under the direction of the elder ladies, emptied the baskets and prepared an ambrosial banquet, while Mr. Wingate called in the stragglers, and the[368] young fishers of the party, to partake of it. They were reluctant to leave sports which they were enjoying so much, and saw the day drawing to a close with regret. Each boy brought a fine string of trout for the Friday morning's breakfast, and appetites sharpened by their green wood scramble to the luxurious and plentiful repast.

At the close of their meal they prepared to return, and were soon on their homeward course; the young people all declaring that they had never passed an afternoon more delightful. George and Henry were very sure, as they remarked to each other, that Frank Blair and his companions could not have had so pleasant a time on their frolic of the evening before.

CHAPTER III.
THE TEMPTER AND HIS VICTIMS.

On the eve of the festival, as Frank Blair was sauntering down the street, after he had left George and Henry, he met Michael Hennessy and Dennis Sullivan.

"Hurrah boys! you're the very chaps I wanted to find," said he. "I say, don't you want to go in with a lot of us for a real tip-top time?"

"What is it?" they both inquired eagerly, when Frank said something in a low voice, to which they responded, "Yes, yes! we promise;" and he went on in the same tone to explain the plan.

"But we can't," said Michael; "our pockets are as empty as a last year's bird's nest, and this requires money."

"Oh! never mind that," was Frank's reply, "I'll plank the tin;" which announcement was met by a merry shout and, "We'll go!" from them both.

"Well, then," said Frank, "meet us at the depot within the hour," and passed on.

Now these boys had been on their way to the church; but after they parted with Frank, they turned their course toward the depot. As they were walking silently and leisurely along in that direction, Dennis spoke:

"I say, Mike, it seems to me that this is not just the right thing we are doing; our mothers think we are at the church, and I'm afraid no good will come of our turning away in this fashion."

"O you fool!" said Mike, "they'll never know but we are at the church, and fun's better than religion any day. I hate such humdrum ways, going along every day alike, and never a scrape of any sort; and so do all the boys."

"Not all of them; for there's George Wingate loves fun as well as any of us, and a grand hand to help it on too; but he never leaves better things for it," said Dennis sadly.

"George is a regular brick and no mistake. He takes to fun and religion, each in its own time, as if there were nothing else in the world; but we can't all be like him, and there's no use in trying. I warrant you now that, if he could only have the chance, there's Henry Howe would a great sight rather pitch in for fun in a scrape like this, than go George's roads."

"Perhaps he would," and Dennis paused a moment sighing; "but I'm afraid it isn't right, especially for catholic boys. It's a poor preparation for to-morrow."

"Nonsense! boys can't be saints. We'll leave that to our mothers, they can say prayers enough for us and themselves too; so we may enjoy ourselves while we can. But I wonder where Frank gets all his money; his father is a stingy old curmudgeon, they say, and I don't understand it."

"Don't you know that his father's maiden sister, who lives with him, is rich, and she fills Frank's pockets.[369] He told me so. He said that when he could get his father's permission, as he did to go to these shows this afternoon, his aunt furnished all the money he wanted."

In this way they chatted until they reached the depot, where a multitude of wildly excited boys soon absorbed their attention, and drowned the whispers of conscience for poor Dennis.

Meantime, as Frank was on his way home to replenish his purse for the evening, he met Patrick Casey and Johnny Hart, and accosted them much as he had Michael and Dennis. They objected that they were going to the church and could not join his party.

"O fol-de-rol!" said he; "there'll be chances enough to go to church, but you won't often have such a chance as this for a frolic. Mike Hennessy and Dennis Sullivan are going—"

"No, I won't!" said Pat resolutely. "If Mike and Dennis choose to do wrong, is that any reason why we should? Come along Johnny, and don't be a fool!"

Johnny hesitated as Patrick passed on, and Frank said the fools were those who'd lose all the sport for the sake of being as dull as beetles, and making old women of themselves; adding,

But why did Frank Blair say nothing of those who refused to go, while he baited his snare with the names of those who consented? It was because boys understand fully the force of example, and can wield it with great power to secure their ends. When we consent to act contrary to the still small voice of conscience, we never know how far the consequences of that act may extend. Evil examples attract more imitators than good ones—but woe to him who furnishes them; while firm adherence to the right may win some wavering soul to the path of duty, which will shine as one of the brightest jewels in our crown of rejoicing hereafter!

Johnny had hardly reached the depot before Frank arrived, and presently a train of cars came thundering up, the boys hastening to secure seats for the little village of H——, a short distance from M——, where they soon arrived, and upon leaving the cars found a great crowd gathered around an immense tent, awaiting the opening of the exhibition. This was announced in astounding illustrated hand-bills as the most remarkable one ever witnessed, embracing more unheard-of enormities in the brute creation, and wonders of the human race, than were ever before congregated in one assemblage.

When the tent was opened, the rush that ensued baffles description; during the progress of which Mike's elbows came in closer contact with the ribs of a boy near him than was at all comfortable, while Dennis Sullivan's fist went very innocently into the face of a lad who was pushing his way more sharply than was agreeable to his neighbors, leaving, in its unconscious energy, a "black eye" in his visage.

While the crowd was slowly entering the tent, the boys from M—— indulged themselves in dealing out a series of these little jokes, more to their own satisfaction than to that of the recipients. At length it was suspected they were not wholly accidental or unintentional, when a general row ensued, and cries of "Hustle[370] them out!" "Give them fits!" "Pitch into the boys from M——!" were wildly shouted from all sides. Our heroes stood their ground with a coolness worthy of a better cause, giving as many hard blows as they received and shouting, "Don't you H—— boys want to come to M—— to see the elephant again? Don't you wish you could, now? We'll show you we know how to return small compliments, we will!"

In truth, as it turned out, the M—— boys were in so much "better training," as the pugilists say, that those of H—— were in a fair way to get soundly pommelled, when some men interfered to stop the fight and inquire the cause. Frank spoke for his party.

"Well, gentlemen, these youngsters came to M—— the last time we had a menagerie and circus there, and behaved themselves so outrageously that a company of us determined we would pay them the first chance we had. And I think we have; grand fun it has been too!"

"Precious fun it must have been!" said a plain, farmer-like man; "and a beautiful pack you've made of one another out and out! Torn clothes, broken shins, bleeding noses, black eyes, and more bumps on your tarnal heads than the old frenologer feller that goes round lectering with a skull ever thought of! A pretty lookin' set of picters you are, an't you?"

"You bet!" said Frank; then turning to his companions, "but boys, I say, didn't we pepper them, though? I don't believe they'll want to come to M—— the next show-day. If they do, we'll be ready for them, eh, boys?"

A wild hurrah was the reply, and they sought a neighboring brook to wash off such traces of the conflict as water could efface. At Frank's invitation they then gathered around a booth where pies, cakes, gingerbread, lemonade, candies, and a variety of other delicacies were dispensed, where they refreshed themselves heartily after their exertions.

Before they had concluded their repast, the crowd had all disappeared within the capacious tent, and the shadows of evening were gathering fast. Not caring to go in directly, our young adventurers amused themselves by performing numerous pranks in which mischief was more conspicuous than sense or wit.

A young lawyer of the place, being quite devoted in his attentions to the merchant's daughter, they took the sign from his office and placed it on the front door of the merchant's residence. They removed a sign from one of the shops, on which was marked, "Codfish, salt and fresh; herrings, pickled and smoked; Boston cured hams—for sale here. N.B. Deacon's skins taken in exchange,"[129] and fastened it over the "meeting-house" door, writing under it with chalk, in large letters, "Inquire within."

Seeing a donkey quietly munching his nettles in a corner of the village green, they captured him, and with great exertion succeeded in imprisoning him within a back shed attached to a cottage where a maiden lady resided alone. When they tired of these and similar foolish exploits, too numerous to mention, they entered the tent. Unfortunately, their mischievous propensities entered with them. Frank soon began to amuse himself by tweaking the whiskers of a peevish old monkey, which forthwith sprang to the top of his head, and, holding on by his hair, planted its teeth so firmly in his ear that the young gentleman was fain to cry out for the keeper. At the same moment, Dennis had placed a piece of tobacco on the extremity of the elephant's trunk, [371]and not dodging instantly, as he intended, was seized by the enraged animal and tossed to the top of the tent, coming down upon the bald head of an elderly gentleman, who, catching him with one hand, shook him until his teeth chattered, at the same time administering telling blows with the disengaged hand upon the sorely bruised urchin within his grasp.

While this was going on in one part of the tent, another of the enterprising company had ventured to cross the forbidden inclosure before the lion's cage, and was glad to escape from the claws of the animal with a coat badly torn, and scratches upon his face which he carried for many a day.

After a series of similar mishaps, the party took the down-train for home, each bearing unmistakable marks of the fun, and protesting they never before had such a "tip-top time," though Frank's misgivings found utterance in a low voice to Mike,

"My father's awfully severe, and I don't know what the old trump will say to all this when he hears of it; but it can't be helped now!"

He was not the only one of the company who was haunted by secret fears as to how the proofs of the affray, which each one carried on his person, would be regarded by their home circles.

CHAPTER IV.
THE CONSEQUENCES.

Very quietly did the party of young pleasure-seekers retire to their beds, after they arrived at their homes that evening, fatigued and exhausted with the excitement of the past few hours. Nor were they in any haste to make themselves visible on the following morning.

Mrs. Sullivan called Dennis early to bring some water and assist her, that they might go to church in good season; but her calls were unheeded. So she sought his room, exclaiming, "Why, what ails you, Dinnie, my boy, that you cannot awaken for my calling?"

The mother's eye was quick to detect that something was wrong the moment it rested on the countenance of her hopeful son, and she added,

Dennis made an awkward and blundering apology which entirely failed to satisfy his mother, who soon drew the whole story from him.

"It's all along of that dirty Frank Blair!" said she. "I wish to goodness he was across the sea, with his rogue's tricks and monkey pranks! It's no use trying to rear Catholic children to respect their religion, and attend to their duties, among these Yankees! They'd entice the very priest at the altar! A pretty shindy you've cut up now! But get up, and let us see how you are entirely."

Poor Dennis attempted to obey; but his head ached so cruelly, he was so lame and bruised and sore, that he became faint the moment he tried to sit up; and one of his eyes was swollen to such a degree that he could not open it.

"Bad luck to the mischief of these boys!" said his mother. "I see he'll never be able to go with me to church this day; so he may as well keep to his bed."

Mike Hennessy and Johnny Hart were not in so bad a plight, but they were unable to go to church.

As the boys were lying through the long hours oppressed with the languor that follows such wild excitement, and[372] with aching bones, their reflections upon the frolic and its consequences were by no means consoling. Nor did the comparisons they drew between the lawful sports of the play-ground and the reckless turbulence of "tip-top times" fail to decide the question in favor of the more quiet enjoyments.

Was it a pale phantom that sat by the bedside of each during those hours—while the joyful bells of the great feast were sending forth their jubilant peals—and searching his very soul with reproachful eyes pointed an uplifted finger from the painful realities of the now to the calm vision of what might have been, had he followed the voice of conscience and the requirements of duty, until he shrunk affrighted from the picture? Ah! no, my boys; it was no phantom; it was the only reality in the sight of which these mortal frames of ours subside to dust, and in comparison with the permanence of which they become—with all their importunate sensibilities, their worldly ambitions, their earthly cravings, and their fleeting pleasures—but the "baseless fabrics of a dream!" It was the tender, vigilant, and ever-present friend of the sinner; his best friend, his other self—his conscience! destined to be the crowning joy of his home in heaven, or to be exchanged at the portals of death for remorse, the gnawing "worm that never dies," in the regions of "eternal despair"! Woe to that boy who sins, and who fails to receive, in his first solitary hours, a visit from the reproving monitor, or to profit by its awakening and warning voice!

The next morning they were so much better that they could go to school, and meeting George Wingate in the yard, he exclaimed, "Why, boys, where were you yesterday, that you did not come to church? Henry and I looked for you through the whole crowd, to invite you to go with us to the farm. Pat Casey went, and we had the best kind of a time; we were so sorry you were not with us!"

They replied that they were not well, and had to stay at home. George noticed their embarrassment, and that the face of Dennis betrayed bruises about the eye, while Mike's forehead and Johnny's nose displayed traces of a similar nature, and he conjectured the cause of their absence from church.

After school, as he and Henry were walking home, Henry remarked, "I suspect, George, that wherever the boys went that afternoon, they had a rousing fight, for ever so many of them show the marks of it. I heard a man telling that there was a great row among the boys at the show in H—— that night; and I shouldn't wonder if our fellows were among them."

"We need not trouble ourselves about it," George replied; "but I thought at the time it was very likely we might be thankful we were called another way, and had nothing to do with their frolic. I've noticed that when boys go off by themselves in pursuit of fun, they seldom come out the better for it; and as for enjoyment, there is just none at all. I wouldn't give one hour of such pleasure as we found in the woods for the wildest frolic they can get up."

"Nor I either," said Henry; "I'm determined I won't have any part in their scrapes hereafter. If no other trouble followed, the shame of going to confession after a wild row is enough to destroy all the pleasure."

"Yes," George rejoined; "and I don't see how our boys who mean to go regularly to their confession can join heartily in these mad pranks. As for those who have no such intention, why, the less we have to do with them the better."

CHAPTER V.
AN OUTSIDE GLIMPSE.

As Frank Blair had expected, his father was very much offended at the share he had taken in the performances at H——, and the assault upon the boys, of which he was informed the next morning by a man from H——, who told him all about the fright, and the tricks that had been played at that place: also, that the maiden lady, Miss Merton, whose bedroom happened to be in a part of the house adjoining the shed where the donkey was imprisoned, had been frightened almost to death by the braying of the animal in the night. Under the firm impression that the lion had escaped and was attacking her house, she rushed out in her night-dress, and, espying a light in a small shop near by, broke in upon three little French shoemakers, who were sitting up to finish some job-work that must be ready for morning. Now, one of these had been whiling away the time by stories of a ghost in a Canadian village, that had visited several families, and could assume the guise of different persons, living and dead. He was just reciting one of the most harrowing of these incidents when the sudden apparition of the lady in a long white dress, with a face of ghastly pallor, and eyes distended with affright, burst upon their astounded vision! Not for a moment doubting its unearthly nature, one of them jumped through an open window, another sprung up a ladder and out upon the roof, while the third took refuge under a dry-goods box in the cellar.

The unfortunate lady, thinking that the lion was in close pursuit, and that a glimpse of it through the open door had caused the sudden stampede of the shoemakers, dared not turn back; but betook herself to screaming at the top of her voice, in which she was joined by the affrighted sons of Crispin in so vigorous a chorus that the whole village was soon aroused.

When the cause of all the disturbance was revealed, and the harmless animal released from captivity, it was almost impossible to persuade the lady that her life was not in danger; and there was such serious question of sending to M—— and arresting the juvenile offenders, that Mr. Blair was advised to go immediately to H—— and settle the matter.

As for the shoemakers, we may be permitted to add—somewhat in advance of our story—the fact that their terrified imaginations had so far misled their reason that they could never again be persuaded to work in the shop after night-fall, or be led to believe fully in the identity of Miss Merton with their ghastly midnight visitant.

The man who communicated these details gave Mr. Blair the names of all the boys of the party whom he knew, among them those of Michael, Dennis, and Johnny.

"Those pestilent Irish boys!" Mr. Blair exclaimed indignantly. "They are always drawing our Yankee boys into fights and mischief! Some measures ought to be taken to make examples of them, and prevent these outbreaks."

He intimated the same to Frank that day while lecturing him severely for "following such ringleaders" into disgraceful riots. Frank had too much honor to permit his father to remain in this error, and protested stoutly that it was himself who persuaded them into it; but it was evident enough that he failed to convince his father of that fact. Mr. Blair was not an ill-natured man, and did not intend to be unjust; but he unfortunately indulged the prejudices against[374] foreigners into which too many Americans fall without pausing to examine whether they are just. They take a few bad specimens upon which to found a sweeping sentence against the whole class, not reflecting that the vices of the wicked serve to render them conspicuous, while the modest virtues of the good only withdraw them from public notice.

After he had given Frank a very stern admonition, Mr. Blair proceeded to inform him that a certain fowling-piece which had long been the object of his most ardent desire, and of which he had hoped to gain possession before the Fourth of July, would not now be purchased for him, on account of his misconduct; and that immediate steps would be taken to secure a place for him in the naval school at A——, in the fall.

These were severe blows to Frank. The disappointment of his cherished hopes in connection with the much-coveted fowling-piece, and his dread of the naval school, where he knew the discipline was so strict as to prevent the possibility of mischief, combined to make him take a very desponding view of life in general, and of what he regarded as the bondage to "old fogyism," in particular. He resolved, however, to behave in so exemplary a manner from that time as to induce his father to relent, if possible; for he knew present remonstrance or pleading would be in vain.

He became so very quiet and regular in his deportment that he soon won "golden opinions" on all hands, much to the delight of his aunt, with whom he was a special pet, and who hoped her brother might yet allow him to remain at home.

It was an unusually warm summer, and a Mrs. Plimpton, a friend of the Blairs from the city where they had formerly resided, came to pass the warm season with them, bringing her family—a son about the age of Frank, and two daughters younger.

Soon after she came, Mrs. Wingate and Mrs. Howe called to see her, and brought George and Henry to call upon the young strangers and Frank.

When they left, Mrs. Plimpton remarked, "What very agreeable people! And those young lads—so sociable, modest, and gentlemanly! I do not wonder that Frank's manners are so genial and quiet, since he has such associates."

"Frank does not associate much with them; and though Mrs. Wingate and Mrs. Howe are very agreeable, as you say, yet we have but little intercourse with them," Mrs. Blair replied, dryly and frigidly.

"And why not, let me beg to know?" inquired Mrs. Plimpton with evident surprise. "In so small a place I should think you would want to cultivate sociability with all people of intelligence and refinement!"

"We would be glad to, and they would be a valuable acquisition to any society, if they were not Romanists. But when enlightened Americans, who should and do know better, see fit to plunge themselves into that abyss of superstition and exploded absurdities, they ought to be avoided by all sensible people."

"And is that all?" said Mrs. Plimpton, laughing. "Why, my dear friend, I had hoped better things of you! I supposed by your solemn manner that there was some serious moral delinquency on their part. Really, I must be permitted to dissent entirely from your theory and practice in this matter. I am sure you cannot be aware of all that is going on in our cities. Many of my dearest friends are Catholics; some Americans and some foreigners; and the dear Sisters—now, don't look so shocked! I entreat of you—are my special favorites, and best counsellors. I have quite taken them[375] into my entire confidence on some most important affairs. 'Romanists,' indeed! Why, if we were to proscribe all the Catholics, we should lose a charming portion of our society. We 'liberal Christians' do not feel disposed to carry religious prejudices into the social circle, or to avoid pleasant people on account of their preferences or peculiarities in this respect. I shall only seek the acquaintance of these ladies the more earnestly for this reason. Do you know how their change of faith was brought about?"

"I can tell you!" said Miss Blair. "I heard the whole story from one of their particular friends, who has followed their example. It seems Mr. Wingate, who is a gentleman of wealth and leisure, had amused himself by devoting much time and attention to studying the principles of architecture—especially the ecclesiastical branch, for which he had a great taste. When it was proposed to build a Catholic church in the place, he begged permission to furnish a plan, which was accorded. This was so entirely satisfactory—combining exquisite artistic proportions with the close attention to economy in all the details, which is indispensable where the resources are limited—that he was urged to superintend the progress of the building, which he consented to do. Soon after operations were commenced, one Patrick Hennessy, an excellent mechanic, came to the place, having recently emigrated from Ireland, and was employed to aid in the work. Mr. Wingate had frequent conversations—controversies, if you will—with him on religious subjects, and was surprised to find, not only that Hennessy was perfectly acquainted with all the points at issue between Catholics and Protestants, but that his own preconceived opinions in relation to these questions were many of them false. He borrowed and read Hennessy's books, and the result you know. His wife, a highly cultivated and thoughtful woman, went with him heart and hand. Their children were then quite young.

"Mrs. Howe was a very different person from her sister, Mrs. Wingate. She was a fashionable lady, and, though not as wealthy as her sister, aspired to lead the ton in our little village. She assumed many airs, established intimacies and exchanged visits with stylish city ladies, which were more gratifying to her vanity than creditable to her good sense. When Mrs. Wingate became a Catholic, she entirely discontinued all intercourse with her, and uttered many sharp remarks upon the subject. She had never been as much beloved as her sister, and her course had provoked many envious and ill-natured comments, to which was now added the remark that she had not so much religion herself that she need be disturbed by the religious preferences of others. To tell the story in few words, she was finally taken suddenly very ill. The first person she called for was her discarded sister, who came and watched over her early and late with devoted tenderness—never leaving her bedside. When the physician pronounced her case all but utterly hopeless, she begged that the priest might be sent for; this had been the object of her sister's most fervent and constant prayers, but she had not dared even to mention it. Mr. Howe, after great hesitation, at length yielded to the wish of his idolized and dying wife. The priest came, baptized and received her into the Catholic Church. She lingered a long time, as it were, between life and death; but a strong natural constitution prevailed, and she recovered. After her recovery, the[376] change in her character was so marked and entire as to be apparent to all, and she came to be regarded as even more lovely than her sister. Mr. Howe soon followed her example, and their circle has since been increased by the addition of converts from time to time. I entirely agree with you as to the folly of abstaining from intercourse with them, and have become quite familiar with that coterie—a delightful one it is, too!"

"How long will it be before you follow such interesting examples? It strikes me, I have seen a lady reading books lately that I should not once have thought could claim a moment's attention from her; but wonders will never cease, I believe!"

"Well," said Mrs. Plimpton, "I have never thought it worth while to trouble myself much about these matters; but I always read whatever I choose on any subject, and I think every one has a right to do so."

A MAY CAROL.

CATHOLICITY AND PANTHEISM.
NUMBER NINE.
UNION BETWEEN THE INFINITE AND THE FINITE—CONTINUED.

In the preceding article we unfolded the nature of the hypostatic moment, the solution which the Catholic Church gives to the problem of the highest sublimation of the cosmos. In the present article we shall point out the consequences which flow from that moment, in order to put in bolder relief the nature of the exaltation which has thereby accrued to the cosmos.

For the sake of perspicuity, we shall bring those consequences under the following heads:

1. Consequences of the hypostatic moment, viewed in reference to the external action, as the effective typical and final cause of the cosmos.

2. Consequences of the hypostatic moment, considered respectively to the nature, properties, and action of the cosmos, as abridged in the human nature of the Theanthropos.

4. Those which affect the Theanthropos himself, in relation to the other moments and persons of the cosmos.

With respect to the consequences of the first class, it is evident that the efficient typical and final cause of the external works is absolutely and simply infinite. No real distinction can be made between God's essence and his action, between his interior and exterior action. Any distinction between these things would imply potentiality and imperfection, and would throw us back into pantheism.

God's essence therefore, his interior and external action, are, ontologically speaking, one and the same. Now, God is absolutely infinite; the effective typical and final cause of the cosmos is thereby absolutely infinite. In other words, the cause which calls the cosmos to being is endowed with infinite energy; the cause which serves as its exemplar and pattern, and which the cosmos must delineate and express, is the infinite perfections of God; the cause which inclines God to effect it is the infinite and transcendental excellence of his being, as capable of being communicated. Now, a cause infinite in every respect would naturally claim a term corresponding to the intensity of the action. It is upon this principle that pantheism has been framed. An infinite cause claims a term also infinite. Now, an effect infinite in its nature is a contradiction in terms; therefore the work is and can be nothing more but a phenomenon of the infinite.

If pantheists had paid attention to the Catholic theory, that the action of God, because infinite, is distinct in two moments, the one immanent and interior, the other transient and exterior; that the same action in the first moment is absolute and necessary, and gives rise to the eternal originations which constitute infinite life; that the same action in the second moment is absolutely free, and consequently master of the intensity of its energy, free to apply as much of that energy as it chooses; they would have seen that the above principle applies to the first but not to the[378] second moment, and that therefore their theory rests on a false assumption.

However, though pantheism rests on a false assumption, it cannot be denied that there is a certain fitness between an infinite cause and an effect, as much as possible corresponding to the infinite energy of the cause; and that consequently the external action of God, because infinite, is for that very reason inclined to effect the best possible cosmos, a cosmos almost infinite in its perfection; an infinite energy has a tendency to effect an infinite term; an infinite typical perfection, to realize an infinite expression; an infinite yearning of communication, to impart itself in a manner the most exhaustive possible.

This fitness of proportion between cause and effect is so evident as to baffle all doubt; yet the necessary distinction implied by the very nature of cause and effect, a distinction of infinite superiority on the part of the one and infinite dependence and inferiority on the part of the other, in the present case is that which gives rise to the problem which may be formulated as follows: given the infinite superiority of the cause of the cosmos, and admitting the essential inferiority of the effect, how to exalt the effect to a perfection almost absolute, and draw it as near the perfection of the cause as possible, without destroying the absolute and necessary finiteness of the effect.

The hypostatic moment is the sublime and transcendental answer which God has given to the problem. For in that mystery the cosmos, as abridged and recapitulated in human nature, without ceasing to be what it is, without losing its essence and nature, is exalted to the highest possible perfection, by a union of subsistence with the Infinite himself. Nay, the infinite subsistence and personality of the Word is the subsistence and personality of the human nature assumed; so that the human nature, though real and finite, is at the same time the nature of the person of the Word, and consequently partaking of all the dignity, perfection, and excellence of the Word. In other terms, the cosmos, as abridged in the human nature of Christ, is deified, not indeed by a change of its ontological being, but by the highest, strictest, and closest communication and union with the Godhead. For, next to the identity of nature, we can conceive of no closer union or communication than that which exists between two distinct natures completed and actualized by the same identical subsistence. Now, this identity of subsistence communicates to the inferior nature all the worth and dignity of the superior; and consequently the human nature of Christ, and hence the cosmos which it abridges, are, as it were, deified in such a manner as to exchange the denomination of attributes, and we can call man God, and God man.[130]

Thus the tendency of the infinite cause of the external works is fully satisfied. The infinite energy of the efficient cause has for its term an object perfectly corresponding to the intensity of its energy; since it terminates in an object absolutely infinite—the Word completing the two natures, the divine and the human; an individual who is very God as well as very man.

The typical cause is even better satisfied, so to speak. It tends to express itself exteriorly, as perfectly as it exists interiorly. By the hypostatic [379]moment, the same identical type of the cosmos, its intelligible and objective life enters to form part of the cosmos, the interior logos or schema is wedded to its exterior expression in the bond of one subsistence, and is at the same time type and expression, objective and subjective life. Unlike other artists, who must necessarily regret the impossibility of their impressing on the external work, be it marble or canvas, the interior conceptions of the mind, as fully and as perfectly as they conceive them interiorly, the divine artist of the cosmos found a means whereby to unite, to bring together type and expression, the intelligible and the subjective, the original and the copy, in one identical person; so that in the person of the Theanthropos, as you admire the art so exquisitely divine in the copy, you are dazzled by the effulgence of the type which dwells and shines forth in it; as you wonder at the exactness of the created expression, you can see the original conception also, blended together in one common subsistence. The end also of the external work is fully attained. For in the hypostatic moment the infinite and transcendental excellence of God is communicated in a manner beyond which you could not go; God in this moment yielding himself so far as to make his own subsistence common to human nature, and thus making it share in his infinite dignity, attributes, and the very name of God.

We shall allude to one consequence only of the second class; those having reference to the sublimation of the cosmos; and that is the life of the cosmos.

Life is action and movement. Those beings which act not exist but do not live. If, therefore, the action of the cosmos has been elevated to the highest possible perfection by the hypostatic moment, it follows that its life also has been exalted.

Now, though action originates in the nature, which is the first principle of action in a being, yet its ontological worth and dignity it receives from the subsistence or person, because the nature would be an abstraction, a possibility, without the subsistence.

In the case, therefore, of an individual in whom the nature is inferior, and the subsistence, which actualizes and completes the nature, is superior, in the scale of being, the actions primarily originating from nature as their first root have all the ontological worth of the subsistence, and not of the nature.

Consequently, all the human actions of Christ, primarily originating in his human nature, partake of the ontological dignity and value of his person, and not of his human nature; just because his human nature is completed by and subsists in the personality of the Word.

Now, this personality is infinite; infinite, therefore, is the ontological worth of the human actions of Christ.

And if we consider, as we have already remarked, that human nature is a recapitulation of all the elements of the cosmos, since it shares spirit, intelligence, and will with the angelic nature, sensible apprehension with animal nature, life with the vegetable nature, and locomotion with inorganic nature, it follows that all the actions of the cosmos are recapitulated in human nature, and that consequently they are exalted to an infinite worth and dignity in the human nature of Christ, which is completed by his infinite personality.

The consequences of the third class will better explain and develop this exaltation of the life of the cosmos. The object of the external action consists in manifesting the infinite excellence[380] and perfections of God. This creation does in two different ways: 1st, ontologically, the very nature of the cosmos being an expression, a likeness of the infinite. This function is discharged indistinctly both by intelligent and unintelligent beings.

2d. But this function, by which unintelligent creatures unconsciously manifest in their nature and properties the excellence of God, in intelligent creatures is necessarily a moral act, and gives rise to the virtue of religion; because intelligent creatures cannot possibly fail to perceive the relation which binds them to their creator, and to feel the duty of acknowledging it.

Hence, religion is an absolute duty for intelligent beings; so necessary and absolute that the opposite assertion would be a contradiction in terms.

To say a creature, is to affirm a being created by God with the express purpose of manifesting his perfections; to say intelligent, is to affirm a creature able to perceive this relation, and able to fulfil the purpose which it perceives was intended by the creator. To absolve, therefore, intelligent creatures from the duty of religion, is to affirm and deny in the same breath that they are intelligent creatures.

Hence, they must necessarily perceive and will the relation in which they stand to their creator, and consequently be religious by force of their very nature and existence.

The whole cosmos must pay to God, its creator, the homage of religion; unintelligent creatures by unconsciously portraying his perfections; intelligent creatures, by acknowledging the same with their intelligence and will.

Now, this first function of the cosmos, this primary act of its life, is elevated to the highest possible perfection through the hypostatic moment. For through this moment the external religion of the cosmos is elevated to the dignity and grandeur of the internal religion.

Philosophers and theologians do not treat of the existence of the eternal and objective religion, as often as they do of that religion which expresses the relations between the creator and his creatures, and might be styled external and temporal religion. But every thing temporal is the counterpart of something eternal; every subjective existence has an intelligible objective existence in eternity, a type without which its subjective existence were inconceivable.

Religion, then, must have its type in God; in his infinite essence must be found those eternal laws which render temporal religion possible.

What is there in the essence of the infinite which constitutes religion, and establishes its laws?

The eternal religion is the life of God, its laws the laws of the genesis of his life.

God is a living, personal being. He is unborn, unbegotten, intelligent activity; first termination of the Godhead. By one eternal, immanent glance of his intelligence he searches, so to speak, and scrutinizes the innermost depths of his essence, and thus comprehends himself, that is, conceives and utters himself interiorly.

This infinite, most perfect utterance and intelligible expression of himself is a second termination of the Godhead; the Word, who portrays and manifests the Godhead intelligibly; as the first person is the actuation of the Godhead under the termination of intelligent, primary, independent activity and principle.

This duality of terminations is brought into harmony by a third person, the result of the action of both. For between the intelligent principle,[381] uttering himself intelligibly, and the utterance, the term of that intellectual conception, there passes necessarily an infinite attraction, a blissful sympathy, an unutterable complacency.

The Father beholds as in a bright, clear stream of infinite light the unspeakable beauty and loveliness of his infinite perfections, and utters them to himself, and delights in that utterance. The Son beholds himself as the most perfect, the consubstantial representation of the sublime excellence of the Father, and takes complacency in him as the principle of his personality.

This common complacency, sympathy, attraction, love, bliss, is the third termination of the Godhead, the Holy Spirit, the breath of the love of both, the personal subsisting attraction of the Father and of the Son, the person who closes the cycle of God's infinite life.

This is the eternal, immanent, objective religion. For what is religion in its highest metaphysical acceptation? It is the intelligible and loving acknowledgment of the infinite nature and attributes of God. Now, the Word is the infinite, substantial, and intelligible acknowledgment of the Father; the Holy Ghost is the infinite, substantial, loving acknowledgment of both. Therefore, the eternal mystery of the life of the infinite, the Trinity, is also the eternal objective religion by which God acknowledges, appreciates and honors himself.

It might be objected to the soundness of this doctrine, that one of the relations, which is the principal and fundamental in religion, the relation of dependence, is wanting in the life of the infinite, and that consequently that life cannot be taken as the eternal type of religion.

In the metaphysical idea of religion, dependence is necessary as the fundamental relation upon which all others rest. Because religion is essentially an acknowledgment of one person from another. Therefore, the person who acknowledges himself as indebted to another for something must, by that very fact, be dependent upon him. The intelligible acknowledgment means that one intelligent being perceives with his mind that he stands indebted to another for something, and consequently depends upon him for that thing. The practical or loving acknowledgment conveys the idea that the person who has perceived his standing indebted to another for something, acts in such a manner as to express by his action his sense of the dependence. Religion is therefore an intelligible and practical dependence of one person upon another.

But this relation of dependence does not necessarily imply the idea of inferiority in the hierarchy of being upon the part of the person who is dependent, and a like superiority on the part of the person who is acknowledged. A dependence of origin or procession, without including any inferiority on the part of him who is dependent, is fully and absolutely sufficient in the metaphysical idea of transcendental religion.

The reason of this lies in the very nature of transcendental religion or acknowledgment. By this we seek the highest possible, the most perfect idea of acknowledgment, which necessarily implies an equality between the person who acknowledges and the person who is acknowledged. Otherwise, without the equality the acknowledgment would fall short of the perfection of the object acknowledged. Now, an inferiority of nature and attributes in the person who acknowledges would destroy the equality and imply an inferiority of acknowledgment, and consequently would not represent the idea of the highest, most perfect acknowledgment and religion.

The Son, therefore, depending upon the Father as to his origin, though absolutely equal to him in nature and attributes, and being the intelligible, infinite expression of the perfections of the Father, is, by force of his very personality, the subsisting, living, speaking acknowledgment of the Father.

The Holy Ghost, depending upon the Father and the Son as to origin, though perfectly equal to them as to nature, and being the loving expression of the infinite goodness of both, is, by force of his very personality, the living, practical recognition of the Father and of the Son.

The eternal life of God, therefore, is the eternal typical religion. It is the only true religion in the transcendental meaning of the term. Because the more perfect is the recognition, the more adequate it is to the object, and the more it approaches to metaphysical truth, which lies in the equation of the type with its expression. It is the only religion worthy of God. For religion, as we have said, is the intelligible and practical recognition of God. Now, every one can see that such recognition, to be worthy of God, must be absolutely perfect. The intelligible recognition must imply such an idea of God as to be absolute utterance of his nature and perfections; the loving recognition must love God in the most perfect and absolute sense of the word. Now, God being infinite, an infinite, intelligible recognition, an infinite, practical, loving acknowledgment only can be worthy of him. He alone can know and love himself as he deserves. Now, to draw nearer to our subject, we inquire, Is temporal religion worthy of God? And we observe, before answering the question, that by temporal religion we do not mean that recognition of God which results from the ontological essence of all the beings of the cosmos, but that voluntary and reflex acknowledgment which created spirits, whether men or angels, are bound to pay to their maker. We ask, therefore, is the acknowledgment which created spirits pay to God worthy of him, worthy of his infinite and transcendental nature and perfections? Evidently not. Because the intelligence of the cherubim, however high and lofty, and soaring as far above the intelligence of inferior created spirits as the eagle's flight over all the feathered tribes; the love of the seraphim, however intense, however deep, however tender, however ardent, are merely and simply finite. On the other hand, what is the intelligence and love of men compared with those of the heavenly spirits, who are so near the supreme intelligence and love, when compared to us, and yet so far from it, when compared with God?

The religion, therefore, of all created spirits is not proportionate to its object; it falls infinitely short of the merits of God. Hence the cosmos, of which created spirits form the best part, with the exclusion of the Incarnate Word, cannot properly discharge the first and paramount duty of the creature, the homage of acknowledgment and adoration to its creator.

But let the Word, the eternal mediator between God and the cosmos, let the intelligible and objective life, the type of the cosmos, enter into it, and the worth of the nature and the acts of the cosmos shall be exalted, elevated, changed, transformed; and it can then pay to God a tribute of recognition fully, perfectly, and absolutely worthy of him.

For the Theanthropos—the God-Man, who is possessed of infinite intelligence, and can comprehend God as far as God is intelligible, who is possessed of infinite will, and can love God as far as God is amiable, can recognize him, acknowledge[383] him, theoretically and practically, as perfectly as he deserves, with absolute equation. And the human nature of the Theanthropos, though in itself finite in its essence and in its acts, can likewise render to God a homage fully and perfectly worthy of him. First, because the acts of the Word of God, honoring the infinite majesty theoretically and practically in an infinite manner, are acts also belonging to human nature, are its own acts, so to speak; because they are acts of its own personality, and human nature can say to God, I honor thee with the acts of my own person, and they are infinite. Secondly, because even the acts springing immediately from human nature, and consequently in themselves finite, in force of the union of these same acts with the divine personality in whom they subsist, acquire an infinite worth and dignity because of the person in whom they subsist; and human nature can say to God, I honor you with my own acts of worship and acknowledgment. In both cases, therefore, whether we look at the acts of the Theanthropos springing from his divine nature, or at those proceeding from his human nature, they are of infinite value, by force of the unity of his divine person; and consequently the Theanthropos can recognize God in an infinite manner, a manner absolutely worthy of God.

The cosmos, then, recapitulated in the human nature of Christ, is enabled to worship God as he deserves; the temporal religion of the cosmos is wedded to the eternal; and the Godhead is worshipped in his cosmos with the same perfect homage of recognition as he receives from eternity in the bosom of his interior life. The Word, as infinite recognition of the Father, is the eternal mediator of religion between the Father and the Holy Ghost. The Word incarnate is the mediator of religion between God and his cosmos.

All angels and men, and to a certain degree all creatures, all persons, all individualities, from the highest pinnacle of creation down to the farthest extremities thereof, united in a particular manner, which shall be hereafter explained, with the Theanthropos, and partakers of his mind, of his will, of his affections, of his heart, of his life, can raise to God a canticle of acknowledgment fully worthy of him, perfectly equal to that which rose up silently in the bosom of the infinite, when, in the day of his eternity, he uttered his infinite word, and breathed his spirit and recognized himself very God.

Who will not admit a dogma which elevates the cosmos to such a height of dignity? And what can pantheism offer in its stead? It can destroy both temporal and eternal religion, by identifying both terms, the cosmos and the infinite, and thus rendering a true acknowledgment of God impossible. But it can never impart that true exaltation, that high dignity to the cosmos, which the Catholic doctrine of the hypostatic moment affords. God acknowledges himself infinitely from all eternity, by uttering a perfect intellectual expression of himself, and by both aspiring a loving recognition of themselves. We creatures are enabled to acknowledge him as he acknowledges himself; the only recognition worthy of him. The Word, by becoming incarnate, enters into the choir of creation, and takes its leadership; brings into it the harmonies of the bosom of God, and on a sudden the music and the songs of the cosmos rise up to the height of its leader, and mingle with the harmonies of eternal life.

Before we pass to other consequences of the incarnation, we shall point out a corollary, among all others,[384] which follows from the doctrine above stated, and which, though of the highest importance, is lost sight of both by apologists and rationalists.

This corollary is, that the Christian religion, as Christ founded it, is cosmological law, and can no more be lost sight of by the philosopher than by a Christian himself.

For according to the actual plan of the cosmos, the plan which God selected, God was not satisfied with that finite, imperfect, natural acknowledgment which created spirits might render to him. But, as he was pleased not to leave the cosmos in its natural conditions, but raised it to the highest possible dignity by a union with the divine personality of the Word, so he was not satisfied that the acknowledgment which is due to him as the creator should be that natural, imperfect, finite acknowledgment which created spirits could, with their natural force, render to him, but willed that their acknowledgment should, by a union with the Theanthropos, be exalted to the dignity of the infinite acknowledgment which he renders to himself from all eternity.

This is a law of the actual cosmos which God selected, and it is as much a law, an integral part of its constituents, as any natural law which we may discover. God selected such a cosmos that we might pay to him a recognition true and worthy of him.

Now, Christianity, as Christ founded it, is the religion of all created persons in time and space, who, united to the Theanthropos by a particular mode of union, worship God with and through the Theanthropos; that is, worship God as he deserves. Consequently Christianity is a law of the cosmos, an integral constituent of that cosmos which God selected, and hence true, elevating, and imperative.

True, because it is a religion the acts of which are fully adequate to the object, since in it God is worshipped as perfectly as he deserves.

True, because, religion implying a knowledge of God, in Christianity knowledge is imparted to the minds of its followers fully adequate to the object known, in its origin, in its mode of communication, and its end. In its origin, being derived from the Theanthropos; in its mode, being imparted by a peculiar operation of the Theanthropos; and in its end, as tending to gradual development, until it has reached the fulness of knowledge, which may be imparted to a pure creature in palingenesia.

True, because, religion implying operation and action, action is imparted in the same manner as knowledge.

Elevating, because it is evident that that aim of Christianity is to raise human persons from their natural state, from their natural operation, to a superior state and operation through the Theanthropos.

Imperative, because, God having made Christianity a law of the cosmos, which he selected, it is not free to a moral agent to accept or reject it, but all must accept it as a law of the cosmos which no one may contravene.

Hence rationalists, and infidels, and indifferentists, in rejecting Christianity or in being indifferent to it, reject a law of the cosmos, a law which is as essential to the entirety of the cosmos, which God chose, as the law of gravitation or locomotion; and in reasoning upon the cosmos, after rejecting Christianity, rationalists and indifferentists should say, "I do not reason on the actual cosmos that God has selected; I reason on a cosmos of my own creation; I limit it, I contract it, I debase it, as it pleases my fancy; and yet, after that, I insist on retaining the name of philosopher."

We pass to the other consequence. The tendency of the exterior act is to[385] form the cosmos, and especially created intelligences, into a universal society. We could prove this by the consideration of the efficient, typical, and final cause of the external act; but prefer to show it only from the typical cause, or objective life of creation.

The objective life of the cosmos is the life of the infinite intelligibly expressed in the Word. Now, God's life is essentially one, absolute, most perfect, universal society. One is the nature of the infinite terminated and concreted by three distinct subsistences—the Beginning, the Word, the Spirit. One and identical is their intelligence and will; because intelligence and will, being an attribute of nature, as the three divine personalities partake of the same nature, they are at the same time endowed with the same identical intelligence and will.

One and identical is likewise their life and bliss; because the life and bliss of the infinite consists in knowing and loving himself, in which operation the three divine personalities share, in force of the identical absolute intelligence and will with which they are equally endowed. They are finally one by their common and reciprocal indwelling in each other; because the beginning is Father, inasmuch as his eternal Son dwells in his bosom. The Son is such, inasmuch as he is related to the Father, and dwells in him. The Spirit is such, inasmuch as he is related to both, and dwells in both.

The Trinity, therefore, is the type of one universal perfect society, because the three divine persons are associated by the unity and identity of nature, of attributes, of life, of happiness, and by a common indwelling in each other.

Now, the Trinity, as intelligibly mirrored in the Word, is the objective life of the cosmos, or its typical cause. On the other hand, we have shown that the plan which God has chosen in his works ad extra is that which draws the subjective cosmos as near in perfection to its intelligible and objective life as possible.

The cosmos, therefore, in force of its typical cause, is called to represent the one most perfect universal society of the three divine persons as perfectly as possible.

This were impossible except by the admission of the existence of the Theanthropos into creation. For, once admitting the existence of the Theanthropos, we see that the eternal society of the three divine persons, as mirrored intelligibly in the Word, the very typical cause of the cosmos, has come in contact with the cosmos itself, by the closest, most intimate society—the same identical subsistence: the eternal and interior society is externated, and the cosmos and the infinite society of God form one single society in the identity of the person of the Word. Man and God are one single society in Christ. Unite now all created spirits and persons to this externation of the typical cause, by a principle of which we shall speak in the next article; unite their nature to his nature, their intelligence to his intelligence, their will to his will, their life to his life, their bliss to his bliss; and we shall have one universal society, partaking of the nature, the intelligence, the will, the life, the bliss, of the Theanthropos; and thus not only united with each other, and meeting each other in one common medium and centre, but also presenting a divine society whose bond of union is the intelligence, will, life, bliss, of the Theanthropos communicated to them all; and through him and by him ushered into the eternal society of the Trinity.

This is the idea expressed in the sublime prayer of our Lord, when he said, Father, keep them in thy name[386] whom thou hast given me, that they may be one as WE also are. And not for them only do I pray, but for them also who through their word shall believe in me; that they all may be one, as thou, Father, in me, and I in thee; that they also may be one in us, I in them, and thou in me, that they may be made perfect in one: that the love wherewith thou hast loved me may be in them, and I in them.[131]

This consequence of the hypostatic moment affords the cosmological reason of the truth, the divinity, the imperative necessity of the Catholic Church.

For the Catholic Church is nothing else but the society of all the persons of the cosmos elevated in Christ and through Christ to the eternal typical society of the Trinity, by a community of supernatural intelligence, will, life, bliss, imparted to them by the Theanthropos, to whom they are united, travelling centuries and generations to add new members to this universal society of all ages, until the number of members being complete, it shall cease its temporal action, and rest in eternity. This is the only true view of the Catholic Church. Men imagine it to be an after-thought, a thing begun nineteen centuries ago. The Catholic Church is a cosmological law; and hence necessary, universal, imperative. God in acting outside himself might have chosen to effect only substantial creation; but having once determined to effect the hypostatic moment, to cause the Theanthropos to form the exalting principle, the centre, the mediator of the cosmos, he could not but carry out to their fullest expression those relations which result from that moment. Now, the Catholic Church is the necessary consequence of the hypostatic moment. The Word, the type of the universe, is united to its expression in the unity of his divine personality, and is thus placed at the very centre of the universe, as that in which all things are consolidated. It follows, therefore, that all created persons must hover round about their centre, must be put in communication with him, united to him as their centre and mediator by a communion of intelligence, of will, of life, of bliss, and thus be associated with each other, and united with the eternal archetypical society—the Trinity.

This gives as a result a society of all created persons united by the bond of the same theanthropic intelligence, will, life, and bliss.

Now, such is the Catholic Church. Therefore it is a cosmological law in the present plan of the exterior action of God; and as a cosmological law is universal, extending to all times and places, divine in its origin and action, and imperative, so the Catholic Church is essentially universal in time and space; divine in its origin and action; imperative, enforcing its acceptance and adhesion on every intellect which can contemplate the plan of the exterior works of God.

Hence Protestantism is not only a theological error, but a philosophical blunder.

God effects the hypostatic moment, and makes the Theanthropos the centre of the cosmos, and of the best part of the cosmos—men. He could not be their centre unless they were united to him by intelligence, will, and life. And they could not be united to him unless they were united to each other by a common theanthropic intelligence, will, and life, etc.[132] And the question being of incarnate spirits, this union of intelligence, will, and life could not be possible, except it were visible and external.

Hence, it is a necessary consequence of the hypostatic moment that men should be united in one universal, visible, and external society. Protestantism, admitting the hypostatic moment, denies the consequence which so evidently flows from it, and denies by its fundamental principle a society of intelligence, and of will, and of life, and also the visibility, the externation of such society, and takes refuge in an individual union between himself and Christ, and says, by the same principle, "I have a right to form an intelligence of my own, in no way connected with the intelligence of other created persons. I have a right to follow laws which I shall individually find out and proclaim. I have a right to have a life exclusively my own, and no interchange shall pass between me and others."

Hence the absolute falsehood of Protestantism, which ignores the existence and qualities of this supreme cosmological law.

The cosmological law is one. Protestantism is multiform. The cosmological law is universal. Protestantism is individual. The cosmological law is communicative and expansive. Protestantism is egotistical.

What is more remarkable still is the astounding pretension of Protestantism to having enlightened and elevated mankind. Enlightened mankind by ignoring the plan of the universe in its beauty, in its harmony, in its whole! Elevated mankind by proclaiming individualism and egotism in the face of the one great life-giving law of a common universal society!

Is it true that God made Christ, the Word incarnate, the centre of the cosmos, and hence the centre of all created persons?

Is it true that, in consequence of this, created persons should be united to him by partaking of his intelligence, will, and life?

Is it true that, in force of this union, all created persons become united to each other in force of the principle that two things united to a third are united to each other?

Is it true that God has effected all this in order to elevate human society to the society of his eternal life?

Then the Catholic Church is cosmological law, one, divine, universal, imperative.

We pass to the fourth class of consequences, those which regard the Theanthropos in relation to all the moments and persons of the cosmos.

Every one is aware that an intellectual agent, in effecting his works, follows a different order from that which he pursues in planning them; in other words, the order of execution which an intellectual agent follows is in the inverse ratio of the order which he follows in idealizing them. In an architect's mind the end and use of a building is first in order, and he idealizes and shapes his building according to the object intended. In the execution of the work the order is inverted, the building is effected first, the object and use are attained afterward.

The order followed in idealizing a work is called by schoolmen the order of intention; that which is pursued in executing the work, the order of execution. When we say, therefore, that the hypostatic moment and the Theanthropos are the first of God's[388] external works, we mean, of course, in the order of intention; we mean that they were intended by God first and before every other work when he resolved to act outside himself;[133] so that the incarnation was determined upon, not only independently of the sin of man, but would have taken place even if man had never fallen.[134]

The metaphysical reason of this consequence is found in the relation which means bear to the end. It is absolutely necessary that an intellectual agent should intend primarily and chiefly that object which is best calculated to attain the end he has in view in his action; which best fulfils his intention and is the most appropriate and nearest mean.

Now, the hypostatic moment, and consequently Christ, attains better than any other moment or individual the object of the external action of God, as we have shown. Therefore Christ was intended by God first and above every other work.

This consequence is poetically described by the inspired author of the Proverbs, in those beautiful lines so well known:

For, in a series of means necessary to the end, that which is first and chief is also end in respect to the other means. Christ, therefore, being the first and chief means to attain the end of the external act, is also end in reference to the other moments, and consequently the secondary end of the cosmos. "All things," said St. Paul to the Corinthians, "are yours; and you are Christ's, and Christ is God's."

3. Christ is the secondary type of the cosmos. Ontologically speaking, the end determines and shapes the nature and perfections of the means, and bears to the means the relation of type and exemplar. Now, Christ is the secondary end of the cosmos; he is, therefore, the secondary model and type of the exterior works; in other words, he is the best and supremest expression of God's infinite excellence, the archetype of the cosmos; therefore he is also the secondary type of the cosmos.

As in the bosom of God the Word is the medium in the genesis of his eternal life, the link which connects the Father and the Spirit; so, outside of God, the incarnate Word is the mediator, the medium universal and absolute, between God and his works, the link connecting the infinite and the finite.

For, in the first place, the very nature of the hypostatic moment makes him such. He is the Word, that is, the very Godhead, with his infinite nature and perfections, under the termination of intelligibility.

He is man, comprehending in his human nature all the various elements of substantial creation. Both the Godhead and the human nature subsist[389] of that one termination of intelligibility. It is evident, therefore, that the incarnate Word is essentially, by the very nature of the hypostatic union, the medium between the infinite and the finite.

Moreover, every intellectual agent is linked to his work by the type of it existing in the intelligence, without which knowledge the agent could never communicate with his work. The divine Artist of the cosmos, therefore, is in communication with it by the eternal cosmic type residing in his essence—the Word. Now, Christ is the Word incarnate, and, as such, is the type of the cosmos hypostatically united to its expression, the intelligible and objective life personally linked to the subjective. He is, therefore, the medium between the objective and subjective cosmos, and consequently between the cosmos and God.

Hence Christ is essentially the mediator of creation, both in the natural and supernatural moment; inasmuch as by him and through him all things were made in both orders.

He is essentially the mediator of the continuation of existence in both orders; since the same action, by which all things were made, through him continues to hold them in existence.

He is essentially the mediator of the action of creatures in both orders; since the same action by which all things are made to exist, and to continue in existence through him, incites them to action and aids them to develop their faculties. He is essentially the mediator of perfection and beatitude; because the same action, which incites and aids all existences, both in the natural and supernatural order, to develop their faculties, must also perfect them, and bring them to their final completion. And in the very act of beatitude, when the dawn of the vision of God shall flash before the mind of created spirits, the Theanthropos shall be the mediator between them and the superabundant and dazzling effulgence of the infinite, by aiding and invigorating their intellect with the light of glory.

"In him (Christ) were all things created in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible. He is before all, and by him all things consist."[136]

5. Christ is the supreme universal objective science; the supreme universal objective dialectic.

In the ontological order intelligibility and reality are one and the same thing; every thing real being by the very fact intelligible, and vice versa.

Now, Christ is the infinite and finite reality, hypostatically united together. He is, therefore, the infinite finite intelligibility, and consequently the universal objective science.

He is also the supreme universal objective dialectic; for he is essentially the type and the form of all reasoning. The form of all reasoning consists in the comparison of two terms with a third, with a view of deducing their agreement or disagreement. Christ is at once the infinite universal term, and the finite and particular term; both terms agreeing together in the oneness of his divine personality. He is, therefore, the type and form of all reasoning, and the objective dialectic.

6. He is the light of all finite intelligences. Because, in the first place, he is the space of essences, so to speak; being the subsisting intelligibility of the Godhead.

Secondly. Because in his individuality there is the ontological agreement of all the problems of the human mind, and the solution of all the questions relative to the infinite and the finite, to time and eternity, to the absolute and the relative, to immutability [390]and movement, to cause and effect, etc.

Thirdly. Because he is the incarnate Word, creating, supporting, elevating and perfecting all created intelligences, in force of his essential office of universal mediator of the cosmos.

The moral perfection of the cosmos consists in the voluntary realization of the final perfection to which it is destined by its archetype.

Now, Christ is the archetype of the cosmos. Therefore, he is the supreme objective morality. He is also supreme morality in the sense of his inciting and aiding the cosmos in the voluntary reproduction and realization of the type, in force of his office of mediator. Therefore, etc.

The beautiful lies in variety reduced to unity by order and proportion. Christ is the infinite and finite, the two beings most distant, brought together into the unity of his divine personality by order and proportion, as it is evident to every mind that has grasped the nature of the hypostatic moment.

For he is the medium of the creation, preservation, and action of the cosmos; he is its secondary end and exemplar; he is the type and light of intelligence, the law of morality and of the beautiful.

The cosmos, therefore, is subject and dependent upon him for so many reasons, and consequently he is the supreme ruler of it.

10. He is the centre of all the other moments and persons of the cosmos; all things gathering around him as their chief, their exemplar, their mediator.

BRITTANY: ITS PEOPLE AND ITS POEMS.
SECOND ARTICLE.

More than a year has elapsed since we expressed a hope to present our readers with some further specimens of the ancient poetry of Brittany. We then gave, translated from their rendering into French by M. de Villemarqué, a portion of bardic poems, for example, The Prophecy of Gwench'lan; The Submersion of the City of Is; The Changeling, and The March of Arthur. These, as well as the dialogue between a Druid and a child, (which is perhaps too long for insertion here,) The Plague of Elliant, and portions of Lord Nann and the Fay, retain much of their scientific and often alliterative form, a part of which is their arrangement in tercets, or strophes of three lines rhyming together.

We now proceed to fulfil our promise with regard to the ballad of Lord Nann, which, however, it may be well to preface with some remarks upon that portion of Breton mythology which it illustrates.

The principal supernatural agents in the popular poetry of Brittany are the dwarfs and the fairies.

The common appellation of these elfish beings is Korrigan, whether masculine or feminine, from korr, little, (diminutive, korrik,) and gan or gwen, genius.

The Goddess Koridgwen is said by the Welsh bards to have had nine attendant virgins, called the nine Korrigan. This also was the name of the nine priestesses of the Isle of Sein.

The Breton fairies not only bear the same name as the Keltic goddesses and consecrated virgins, but are accredited with the same powers of foretelling future events, of curing by magical charms diseases otherwise incurable, of transporting themselves from one end of the world to the other in a moment of time, and of taking whatever forms they please.

Every year, at the return of spring, they hold, on the green turf near some fountain, a grand nocturnal feast. In the midst of the most delicate viands there sparkles a cup of crystal, of which the splendor is so great that there is no need of torches, and like the magic vase of the British Keridgwen, containing a marvellous liquid, one single drop of which conveys the knowledge of all sciences, and of all events, past, present, and to come.

The favorite haunts of the Korrigan are always by springs of water, especially those which are in lonely places in the neighborhood of Druidic remains called dolmens, and from which the Holy Virgin, who is said to be their especial enemy, has not yet chased them. Their traditional aspect is much the same as that of the other fairy races of European nations; their delicate and aerial frames being about two feet in height, perfect in symmetry, and clad in the very thinnest of ethereal textures. But all their beauty is nocturnal only. By the light of day, which they hate above all things, they are hideous, red-eyed, wrinkled, and old; their whole appearance betokening fallen intelligences. The Breton peasants assure us that they are great princesses who were struck by the curse of heaven for refusing to embrace the Christian faith when the first missionaries preached it in Armorica. The peasants of Wales declare them to be the souls of Druidesses, condemned to do penance.

Their breath is deadly. Should any wayfarer trouble the waters of their fountain, or, near their dolmen, come upon them suddenly, he is almost sure to perish; particularly if it be on a Saturday, the day consecrated to the Blessed Virgin, against whom they bear an especial hatred. They also have a great aversion to any token of religion, fleeing at the sound of a consecrated bell or at the sight of a soutane.

Like certain of their European cousins, the Korrigan have a decided penchant for stealing the infant offspring of the human race, with the object of regenerating their own. Therefore does the peasant mother of Brittany place round the neck of her babe a scapular or a rosary, that he may be secured against every elfish device, under the protection of Our Blessed Lady.

The changelings whom the Korrigan are accused of leaving in the place of the children whom they carry away are of the race of dwarfs, and also bear the name of korr, korrik, and korrigan; as well as kornandon, gwanzigan, or duz. This last name is that of the father of Merlin, and of an ancient divinity worshipped in that part of Britain which is now the county of York.

These dwarfs, we are told, are little, black, and hairy monsters, with[392] the claws of a cat, the hind legs of a goat, and a voice harsh and broken with age. They it was who, ages ago, raised the huge stones of the menhir and dolmen, and hid beneath them untold hoards of treasure. Around these, when the stars are out, they are fond of dancing, to the primitive song which consists in an incessant repetition of the names of all the days of the week except Saturday and Sunday, of which they studiously avoid all mention. Wednesday, the day of Mercury, is always observed by them with especial festivities. It was they, say the peasants, who engraved the mystic characters on the Keltic stones of the Morbihan, and especially those at Gawr-iniz, or the Isle of the Giant. He who, like Taliessin, could read them, would learn all the places of their hidden treasure, and to him all the secrets of science would be revealed.

The dwarfs are less dreaded by the country people than the fays, as being rather comically mischievous than wholly malicious. The peasant who has taken the precaution to sprinkle himself with holy-water passes fearlessly by the lonely dolmen in the solitudes which they haunt.

We were taught in our early youth that it is to her white cliffs that Albion owes her name; but M. de Villemarqué suggests that she is more probably indebted for it to the god Mercury, the Keltic Hermes, who was the chief divinity worshipped by the insular Britons, under the name of Gwion. Their island was especially placed under his protection, and called for that reason the Isle of Gwion, or of Alwion. The same learned author remarks upon the apparent identity of the Gwion of Britain and the Gigon of the Tyrians and Phoenicians, the divinity being in each case revered as the god of commerce, the inventor of letters, and the patron of all the arts, and represented in each case by the figure of a dwarf carrying a purse.

The dwarfs of Brittany possess all the attributes of Gwion, the heavy purse included, and are evidently a part of the Keltic mythology. It is often difficult, and sometimes impossible, to determine the date of poems of which they form the subject. The burden of the ballad of Lord Nann comes down from the cradle of the Indo-European nations, and, in numerous localities, finds expression in various forms. The one of which we here give a translation probably dates from the fifth or the sixth century.

The foregoing ballad is reproduced under no fewer than fifteen different variations in Sweden and Denmark, where it is entitled, Sire Olaf and the Dance of the Elves. In its Servian form of Prince Marko and the Wila, the latter, instead of taking the life of the hero, exacts both his eyes and the four feet of his horse.

Numerous as are the traditions relating to the dwarfs, the songs of which they are the subject are very rare. The one we are about to give is apparently intended as a satire upon the tailors, that ill-used class which in all warlike nations has been condemned to ridicule. In Basse-Bretagne, no one pronounces their name without raising the hat, and adding, "Saving your presence."

It will be remarked that the name of Duz (diminutive, duzik) is, among others, given to the dwarfs, which, M. de Villemarqué observes, was that borne by the genii of Gaul in the days of St. Augustine, who speaks of them as "Dæmones quos Duscios Galli nuncupant."[137]

It is said that a traveller being upon one occasion drawn into their circling dance, and finding the refrain of "dilun, dimeurs, dimerc'her," etc., somewhat monotonous, ventured to add the words Saturday and Sunday, when the sudden explosion of outcries, threatenings, and rage among the assembly was so great that the rash adventurer was half-dead with fear. We are told that if only he had added, "And so the week is done," the long penitence to which the dwarfs are condemned would have ended.

The Plague of Elliant commemorates a frightful pestilence which, in the sixth century, desolated not only Armorica, but the whole of Europe. Those who were attacked by it lost their hair, their teeth, and their sight; became yellow and languid, and speedily died. The parish of Elliant, in Cornouaille, was one of several from which the whole population perished. The neighboring country, especially that around Tourc'h, was preserved from the scourge by the prayers of a hermit named Rasian.

We are told by M. de Villemarqué that the ballad of The Plague of Elliant is never sung without the addition of the following legend:

"It was the day of the Pardon (the feast of the patron saint) at Elliant; a young miller, arriving at the ford with his horses, saw a fair lady in a white robe seated on the bank of the river, a little staff in her hand, and who requested him to convey her over the water. 'Oh! yes; assuredly, madame,' replied he, and already she was on his horse's crupper, and soon deposited on the other side. Then the fair lady said to him, 'Young man, you know not whom you have brought over: I am the Plague. I have just made the tour of Brittany, and I go to the church of the town, where they are ringing for mass; all whom I strike with my staff will quickly die; as for yourself, fear nothing; no harm shall happen to you, nor yet to your mother."

"And the Plague kept her word," adds the Breton peasant; for does not the song itself say that none but

There is no surer remedy, in the estimation of the Breton peasantry, against an epidemic than to make a song about it. "The Plague, finding herself discovered, fled away." Thus, as one among many examples of the practical utility of the popular poetry, we find that when, some years ago, Brittany was severely visited by the cholera, no attention was paid to the printed circulars which were issued by medical and magisterial authority; all the preparation made by the people to meet it was to dig an extra number of graves, until a popular poet put into verse the good advice concerning preventives and remedies which, when placarded in official prose, had been passed by with no more notice than a grave and incredulous shake of the head. But a week after the composition of the "Song upon the Cholera" it was heard in every remote hamlet or farm throughout Brittany. The verses in themselves were detestable, in the way of poetry; no matter, the cholera, finding itself the subject of a song, would take flight. From the power attributed by the people to poesy arises the Breton proverb, "Poesy is stronger than the three strongest things: stronger than evil, than tempest, or than fire." And again, "Song is the calmer of all sorrow." All the Keltic poems, which, like The Plague of Elliant, are written in strophes, are sung throughout to some national air, however lengthy they may be. "I remember," writes M. Émile Souvestre, "that one day, arriving at the Pardon of St. Jean du Doigt, near Morlaix, I heard a blind man who was singing Breton verses on the Nativity: in passing by again in the evening, I found him still in the same place, continuing his subject, which was by no means concluded, and which, he informed me, it required an entire day to get through, though he did not yet know the whole."

It is impossible to compute the number of the popular poems of Brittany. The author just quoted considers that eight or ten thousand would not reach the reality; and he proceeds to describe the manner in which they mingle with the very air of the country, as follows:

We will close our present article with a translation of the Sône of Per Cöatmor, as promised in our last; hoping in a future one to conclude our notice of the more ancient and "learned" poetry of Brittany, that is, that which was composed according to the bardic rules, with some curious fragments relating to Merlin the Magician and Merlin the Bard; to be followed by specimens of the historical poems of Brittany.

LINES.
FROM THE LATIN OF THEODULPHUS, BISHOP OF ORLEANS, A.D. 820.

GERALD GRIFFIN.

In October, 1823, there arrived in the city of London a young man from the south of Ireland, unknown and without a friend in that vast metropolis. A stranger in a strange land, he brought with him nothing but a cultivated mind, a fresh, vigorous constitution, a pleasing address, a spirit of self-reliance amounting almost to a morbid dislike for every thing savoring of patronage, a slender purse, and a few manuscript plays, the labor of boyhood's leisure hours. His experience of life had been confined to his own peaceful household on the banks of the Shannon, and the society of a few intimate friends of his family. His contributions to literature amounted simply to some sketches published in the newspapers of his native city, Limerick, and the, to him, precious burden he bore with him in this his first adventure into the unknown world. Thus provided, he aspired with all the glorious confidence of youthful ambition to no less a mission than the reformation of the modern drama, and the infusion of moral sentiment into works of fiction, even then fast acquiring those deleterious qualities which so thoroughly permeate them in our day.

This young literary knight-errant was Gerald Griffin, who, born on the 12th day of December, 1803, had not yet completed his twentieth year. The story of his early life, as told by the pen of an affectionate brother, is remarkable principally for the calm, holy atmosphere of parental love by which it was surrounded, and the judicious mental training to which he was subjected even from his earliest infancy. His father, Patrick Griffin, a descendant of an ancient Irish family, seems to have occupied a social position equally removed from penury and affluence; such a one, at least, as enabled him to support his large family with comfort, and provide each of his children with an education not only suitable to their condition, but more extensive and varied than at that time was considered necessary for the sons and daughters of the middle class. He was a man of robust constitution, facile temper, an ardent nationalist, and well read in the history and antiquities of his country. His mother, a woman of more than ordinary cultivation and great religious fervor, was entirely devoted to her household duties and the moral training of her children, and we cannot better convey an idea of the character of this admirable woman[399] than by transcribing the following extract from one of her letters to her son:

Gerald united in himself the leading characteristics of both parents in a remarkable degree. His love of home forms the constant theme of his letters, while his attachment to country and delicate moral sense may properly be said to have tinged every page of his prose, and inspired every line of his poetry. His brothers and sisters, eight in number, were equally worthy of such progenitors, and of the author of The Collegians; the former becoming distinguished members of the liberal professions, and the latter, in most instances, adopting the habits and worthily fulfilling the duties of a religious life.

When the young Gerald was about seven years old, his father, abandoning business in Limerick, removed some miles from that city, and settled on a farm pleasantly situated near the confluence of the little river Oavaan and the Shannon. Here the future novelist and poet spent ten of the happiest years of his life. Surrounded on all sides by scenery the most picturesque, wood, mountain, lake, and river, his youthful imagination, so susceptible of impressions of physical as well as moral beauty, found ample scope. Reserved in manner even with his playmates, he was wont to shun their society, and wander alone for hours through the fields or by the riverside, his gun or fishing-rod unused, and his whole being drinking in the beauties of the ever-varying landscape, or gazing wonderingly on the distant "lovely hills of Clare," the boundary of his world. His love for the supernatural and his fondness for fairy lore were early developed in this sylvan retreat, where every ruin had its tragic history, every graveyard its especial ghost, and every rath and cairn its appropriate legend. How far such constant communings with nature had a tendency to disqualify him for the stern battle of life which he was destined afterward to wage with such varying fortune, we cannot undertake to say; but doubtless often, when in poverty and exile, the recollection of those years so tranquilly and innocently spent must have brightened many a solitary hour, and it is certain that to this early development of a taste for moral beauty we are indebted for some of the most vivid and truthful of his word-paintings.

But his mind was not altogether occupied in contemplation. His education, begun in Limerick, was assiduously continued in the country under the direction of a visiting tutor and the older members of his family, until at an early age he had mastered not only the rudiments of the French language, but had acquired a comparatively extensive and accurate knowledge of the English classics. He was especially fond of poetry, and was accustomed, even when a child, to copy out passages from Goldsmith and Moore; and his application to his studies of all kinds was so intense that he is described by his relatives[400] as being invariably in the habit of sitting at his meals with a book open before him, and two or three in reserve ready to his hand. Goldsmith's Animated Nature was one of his favorite books, and he endeavored to turn it to practical account by copying its illustrations, and rearing with his own hand numbers of the little song-birds to be so plentifully found in the neighborhood. In the year 1814, we find him for a short time at the school of a Mr. O'Brien, in Limerick, deep in the fascinating pages of Horace, Ovid, and Virgil, the latter of whom, as might be expected, was his favorite poet, and so earnestly did he explore this, to him, new mine of poesy that he is said to have attained a remarkable proficiency in the Latin tongue at an age when other children are but imperfectly acquainted with their vernacular. Though soon deprived of the valuable supervision of Mr. O'Brien, he continued his readings of the classics for several years at a neighboring school, and in maturer years evinced in conversation and composition a decided preference for this branch of his early studies.

In 1820, the delightful family circle at Fairy Lawn was broken up. Mr. Griffin, senior, his wife and several of their older children, emigrated to this country, and settled near Binghamton, in the State of New York. Gerald, with one older brother and two younger sisters, was left under the protection of the oldest remaining brother, Dr. William Griffin, then a practising physician in Adare, a pretty village a few miles from Limerick. The separation from the two beings he loved best on earth was a sad calamity for the affectionate lad; but hope, that star which always shone brightly for him no matter how cloudy the horizon, consoled him for what he believed to be only a temporary bereavement. "Gerald," says one of his sisters in a letter to America, "has a biscuit from your sea store, which he says he will produce at the first meal we eat together in Susquehanna." The change of residence had one advantage, however; for while it did not interfere with his home studies, or even with his rambles in search of fresh scenery and old traditions, it gave him an opportunity of often visiting the city, and forming the acquaintance of young men of congenial tastes, principal among whom was John Banim, one of the authors of the celebrated Tales of the O'Hara Family. He became also a frequent attendant at such theatrical performances as the place at that time afforded, and even contributed reports, sketches, verses, and leading articles to the local journals, which, if they were not very profitable or widely known, "obliged him," he tells us, "to write with quickness, and without much study." But the young man had already drunk too deeply of the unpolluted waters of English and Latin lore to be satisfied with the superficial nothings of provincial journalism, or to relish the crudities of the dramatic pieces with which the wandering players were then accustomed to regale the unsophisticated people of second-class cities. The modern drama seemed to him flimsy in its construction, and, if not positively immoral, certainly in tendency falling far short of its legitimate object, which, as the great dramatist tells us, "is and was to hold the mirror up to nature," etc. He reflected seriously on the possibility of its reformation, and, like a true reformer, zealously set to work to accomplish this desirable purpose, encouraged no doubt by the applause which greeted the appearance of his young countryman's Damon and Pythias. He wrote about this time three or four plays, none of which[401] were ever presented to the public; and of the names and plots of all but one we are ignorant. That was called Aquire, and being a production of considerable merit, judging from the favorable opinion of it expressed by Banim and other theatrical critics to whose inspection it was confidentially submitted, would very probably have met with success on the stage had not the author's over-sensitiveness induced him to withdraw it altogether, after endeavoring two or three times to procure its representation. His next step was to leave Ireland for a wider sphere of action; but it was only after repeated and urgent solicitation, and upon reading over this drama, which seemed to contain many excellences, that his brother and guardian, Dr. Griffin, consented to gratify his longing to visit London, where he felt he would have unlimited scope to develop his idea of reform. The consent gained, Gerald left home for the first time, radiant with hope and confident of success.

A youthful aspirant for literary honors could not have made his début at a more unpropitious time. London was then, as now, the great maelstrom which drew into its vortex most of the enterprise and genius of the three kingdoms, and, alas! proved the grave of too many overwrought and unappreciated minds. The fame of Byron, Moore, and a host of contemporary poets was then in its zenith, and the refulgence of their genius eclipsed the light of all lesser stars which might have shone brightly in any other atmosphere. The stage was so completely neglected or debased that the legitimate drama had given place to spectacular frivolities, and hundreds of plays of merit were offered every year to the London managers only to be rejected. The wonderful success of Sir Walter Scott as a novelist had produced a crowd of plagiarists, as inferior in ability as they were formidable in prolixity, who had filled the shelves of the booksellers with the veriest trash, and satiated ad nauseam the public taste for romance. Even the field of Irish fiction was apparently fully occupied. Maria Edgeworth's justly admired tales were in every household, and the stronger and brighter imagination of Banim had already plumed its pinions, and tried its first flight with marked success. The era of patronage, when the great and wealthy of the land esteemed it a privilege to throw the ægis of their protection over the artist and man of letters, had passed away, perhaps happily, for ever, and that of Bulwer and Dickens, Thackeray and Lever had not arrived; men whose magic pens seem to have realized the alchemist's dream, and turned every thing they touched into gold. It was well for the young adventurer that these difficulties did not at once present themselves, or, if discerned at all, it was through that enchanting halo with which youth surrounds the future.

On Gerald's arrival in London, his first step was to procure respectable lodgings; his next to place in the hands of some person connected with the stage, but whose name has not transpired, a copy of one of his plays for criticism and acceptance. This person, though the only one to whom the friendless lad was able to procure an introduction, took the piece with warm professions of friendship, and promised it his early consideration; but, after retaining it for some three months, sent it back, "wrapped up in an old newspaper," without a word of comment, explanation, or apology. The interval was one of painful suspense for the aspiring writer, somewhat relieved by the genial and unselfish kindness of Banim, whose residence in London he soon discovered. Although having had but a slight acquaintance[402] with Gerald, and being himself very few years his senior, and still on the threshold of fame, John Banim, to his immortal credit be it said, extended to his junior countryman the hospitality of his house, and, what was much more grateful, the sunshine of his genial conversation and the refuge of his cheerful fireside. He went even further: with a total absence of professional jealousy, he took Aquire, read it over carefully, commended its best passages, pointed out the errors to be erased, the superabundant metaphor and mere poetic imagery to be pruned, and used all his efforts to procure its representation. Gerald was deeply grateful. "What would I have done," he writes to his brother, "if I had not found Banim? I should never be tired of talking about and thinking of Banim." It was at the suggestion of this invaluable friend that, in the early part of the following year, he wrote Gisippus, and many of its most striking scenes owe something to the matured judgment of the author of Damon and Pythias. This play, written, as he tells us, on little slips of paper in coffee-houses, though one of great merit, for originality of conception, dignity of language, and startling incidents, was not acted till two years after the author's death; and when Macready at length introduced it to the public, it was received with great favor, and still, to use a theatrical phrase, "keeps the boards."

But months passed wearily away in the strange city, and Gerald's hopes were as far as ever from fruition—months spent in fruitless efforts to obtain some sort of employment that would enable him to support himself, while he waited the pleasure of managers and danced attendance on theatrical committees. Again and again he applied for the position of reporter on the press, but was answered that the places were all filled. He might have become a police-news reporter, but he was told that it was "hardly reputable." He wrote for the literary weeklies, but was cheated by every one of them; he contributed to the larger magazines, and his articles were inserted; but when payment was requested, "there was so much shuffling and shabby work" that he left them in disgust; he commenced the study of Spanish, with a view to coöperate with Valentine Llanos in the translation of Spanish dramas; but Colburn and the other publishers told him that it was "entirely out of their line." At last he undertook with avidity to translate from the French a volume and a half of one of Prevot's works for two guineas—about ten and a half dollars. It is no wonder, then, that in the bitterness of his extremity he wrote to his sister, "If I could make a fortune by splitting matches, I think I would never put a word in print." Though practising the most rigid economy, the occasional remittances he received from his brother, many of them unsolicited, did not suffice for his ordinary wants; he was compelled to give up his first lodgings and seek others in a more obscure part of the city, and was even obliged to refuse the pressing invitations of his friend Banim to meet Doctor Maginn and other celebrities, at the house of the former, for want of proper apparel. "The fact is," he writes home at this time, "I am at present almost a complete prisoner. I wait until dusk every evening to creep from my mouse-hole, and snatch a little fresh air on the bridge close by."

Staggering under the weight of disappointment and poverty, he was yet to encounter the additional torture of ill health. Stooping constantly over his desk, he contracted an affection of the lungs, the unaccustomed dampness of a London fog had given him rheumatism, and he was occasionally[403] attacked with violent palpitations of the heart, which endangered life itself. The joyous spirit which had soared like a bird beneath its native skies on the banks of the Shannon, drooped its wings in the heavy miasma of the Thames; fagging, unrequited labor made his days a burden and his nights sleepless; his wardrobe was so threadbare that for months at a time he would not stir abroad in the daylight, and consequently did not meet the face of an acquaintance, and his supply of food so meagre that he was often obliged to dispense with the commonest necessaries of life. Indeed, so reduced had he become in circumstances at this time that a friend of his relates that, having lost sight of him for several days, and apprehending the true cause of his absence, after long searching he discovered him in a veritable garret, and, though it was past midnight, still endeavoring to work on his manuscripts. But what must have been his astonishment when he wrung from Gerald the unwilling but unostentatious confession that he had been without food for three consecutive days? It is unnecessary to say that his immediate wants were supplied by the kind friend who had thus timely visited him, though not without some hesitation on the part of the recipient of the favor. Still, nothing could daunt his indomitable will, no misfortune could lessen the self-consciousness of his ability to achieve ultimate success, or break down his proud, too proud, spirit of personal independence. He might easily have obtained money from his relatives in Ireland; but he forebore to accept from them what his susceptibilities led him to suppose they could ill afford, and even his true friend Banim, upon incidentally discovering his situation and tendering him in the most delicate manner some pecuniary assistance, was met with a decided and not over courteous refusal. His enforced poverty likewise had a very injurious effect on his prospects as a dramatic author; for, unable to mingle on an equality with men connected with the stage, he lost all chance of personal intercourse with managers and critics, and finally conceived such a distaste for or indifference to his first affection, the drama, that he relinquished for ever the design of reforming the stage, the hope that had lain nearest to his heart and had prompted his self-imposed exile from his native country. Though few men loved literature more for its own sake, or are, fortunately generally called upon to offer more sacrifices at its shrine, the vital question with him had now become narrowed down to the very one of existence itself; for, to use his own expression, "he preferred death to failure."

Thus nearly two years passed away in London, and, sick at heart and enfeebled in body, he felt thousands and thousands of times, as he writes to his parents, that he could have lain down quietly and died at once, and been forgotten for ever. But in this his darkest hour a ray of hope unexpectedly crossed his gloomy path, and with all the hopefulness of a rejuvenated spirit he hailed it as the harbinger of a new and more prosperous epoch. A Mr. Foster, having accidentally become acquainted with his almost hopeless condition, procured him employment at fifty pounds a year as reader and corrector for a publisher, and his gifted countryman Maginn, immediately upon hearing of his reduced circumstances, obtained for him a situation on The Literary Gazette, which soon led to a profitable connection with other journals of a like character. To all these he contributed articles in prose and poetry on every imaginable topic, and displayed[404] such an adaptability and versatility of talent that his services were not only well rewarded by their respective publishers, but very generally appreciated by the reading community. Many of the tales and sketches which at this time came from his pen were sent in and published anonymously, or simply signed "Joseph," his name in confirmation, so strictly did he endeavor to preserve his incognito, and trust to the intrinsic merits of his contributions for their acceptance. Though he wrote to his mother that by reason of his new employment he was enabled to pay off all the debts he owed at the close of the year 1825, his varied productions could not have been very remunerative, certainly not in proportion to the labor expended on them; for we find him during the next session of Parliament engaged as a reporter in the House of Commons.

The vehemence with which he seized hold of this opportunity, and the ardor with which he pursued his new calling as reporter and journalist, show that he felt he had at last discovered a clue that would lead him out of the labyrinth of his difficulties, and his success fully justified the confidence in his own powers which had never forsaken him. Opportunity, so much desired by all young men of ability, which comes to some unsought, and as persistently flies the approach of others, had at length presented itself to Gerald Griffin, and he lost no time in profiting by the occasion. Association with authors whose works he was obliged to examine, criticise, and sometimes revise, naturally led him to compare his own capacity for production with theirs, and to arrive at the conclusion that he also was able to produce works of prose fiction equally meritorious, and as worthy the commendation of moralists as epic poetry or the drama. Satisfied on this point, he at once relinquished his dramatic aspirations, and prepared himself with all the enthusiasm of his nature to enter the lists as a novelist. In his "small room in some obscure court, near St. Paul's," he called up the recollections of past days, of the lovely Shannon, the mountain ranges of Clare, the wakes, fairs, and festivals of the Munster peasantry, the humor, shrewdness, pathos, and frolic he as a child had witnessed, and perhaps to some extent shared, and he resolved to essay an Irish novel illustrative of these familiar scenes. Having first tried short stories for the literary weeklies, and found them eagerly read and highly appreciated, he commenced a series of tales to be published in book form, which he designed to call Anecdotes of Munster, but which were afterward known under the general title of Holland-Tide.

Pending the appearance of this his first continued effort, his labors were as varied and as unremitting as ever—correcting for the press the lucubrations of unskilled writers, reviewing in the weekly papers the various books that the metropolitan publishers were constantly inflicting on the public, writing theatrical criticisms, sketches, poetry, and political articles—doing any thing and every thing, in fact, no matter how foreign to his tastes, as long as they honorably secured him present competency and a reasonable prospect of finally accomplishing his grand purpose. At one time he describes himself as busy revising a ponderous dictionary; at another, collecting materials for a pamphlet on Catholic emancipation. Now he is promised £50 for a piece for the English opera, and again he acknowledges the receipt of several pounds for reports furnished a Catholic newspaper recently started. His leisure moments, if he can be said to have[405] had any, were devoted to versification, while his parliamentary duties kept him out of bed till three, and sometimes five o'clock in the morning. His brother William, who visited him in London in 1826, thus describes his altered appearance and his methodical manner of life:

The series of tales, published by Simpkin and Marshall late in this year brought Griffin £70 sterling, and at once established his reputation as a powerful and original writer, and an accurate delineator of Irish peasant character. Its reception by the public and the gentlemen of the critical profession was so generally favorable that, feeling assured he had at length entered on the right road to distinction, and that his future was no longer doubtful, Griffin gave up his various engagements with the press, and not unwillingly, it is to be presumed, laid down for ever the load of literary drudgery which had so long bowed his spirit to the earth. His fortitude had been severely tested, not by one great calamity, but by a series of trials, harder to be borne, and had remained unshaken; his constancy of purpose had been proof against all allurements to swerve from the honorable pursuit of letters; and it is not too much to affirm, on the authority of many who knew him intimately, that his moral character remained unsullied amid all the temptations which usually beset a young man of his isolated condition in every large city. His first success was naturally followed by a desire to revisit his home, a wish in which he had long secretly indulged, but which was now strengthened by intelligence of the dangerous illness of a favorite sister. He arrived at Pallas Kenry, his brother's residence, in February, 1827, but unfortunately a few hours after the death of this young lady, an event which, coupled with his feeble health, destroyed for a time the pleasure which he had anticipated from a trip to Ireland, and the renewal of his acquaintance with those peaceful scenes the remembrance of which had so cheered his absence.

The unremitting attention of his relatives, however, at length assuaged his mental grief and bodily sufferings, and his mind, naturally resigned, gradually resumed its wonted tranquillity. He spent the summer months at Pallas Kenry in the undisturbed enjoyment[406] of home, but still industriously occupied with his pen.

The result of this diligent application was the first series of Tales of the Munster Festivals, embracing The Half-Sir, The Card Drawers, and The Shuil Dhuv, with which he proceeded to London, and which he disposed of to his publishers for £250, a price that would now be considered totally inadequate, but which forty years ago was looked upon as ample remuneration for that species of labor. The work, though decidedly superior to Holland-Tide, was much less favorably received by the critics, and Griffin had now to pay the penalty of success by having the children of his brain held up to public censure, as not being formed true to nature, or as acting in a manner contrary to the canons of London society. Though such strictures generally emanated from persons who either would not or could not understand the peculiarities of the people of Ireland, he felt keenly alive to their praise or censure, particularly the latter; nor does he seem to have exhibited that callousness which his long acquaintance with the press, and the class of men who are sometimes permitted to sit in judgment on their superiors, might have taught him.

Having remained long enough in London to superintend the publication of the tales, he gladly returned to Pallas Kenry, where he spent nearly a year in the undisturbed society of his relatives and a few friends living in his neighborhood. These latter must have been few indeed, for he is described as still of a very shy and reserved disposition, except when among intimate friends; and though shown every mark of esteem and hospitality by his countrymen, he had so great an abhorrence of being lionized that he seldom accepted invitations, save such as could not in ordinary politeness be rejected. Not that his temper was soured or that his conversational powers were deficient, but home was to him the centre and only object of attraction. "Would you wish to view at a distance our domestic circle?" asks his sister in one of her letters to America. "William and I are generally first at the breakfast table, when, after a little time, walks in Miss H——; next Mr. Gerald, and, last of all, Monsieur D——. After breakfast our two doctors go to their patients; Gerald takes his desk by the fire-place and writes away, except when he chooses to throw a pinch or a pull at the ringlets, cape, or frill of the first lady next to him, or gives us a stave of some old ballad."

Under such sweet influences, so different from his wretched life in London, the greater part of his best work, The Collegians, was written. Two or three subjects for a successor to Shuil Dhuv had been selected and partly developed; but having the fear of the critics[407] before his eyes, he laid them aside unfinished. The spring and summer of 1828 thus passed away fruitlessly; but at length a theme presented itself that satisfied his judgment, and he set about writing on it with all possible expedition. The Collegians was originally published in three volumes, one and a half of which Griffin brought with him to London in November. The remaining portion was written in that city in such hot haste that he was obliged frequently to deliver his sheets of manuscript without having time to reread or revise them. This work, on its first appearance, was received with the greatest favor; it placed the author at once at the head of the novelists of his own country, and gave him a high rank among the writers of the English language—a verdict which the experience of posterity has fully confirmed.

Of the writers of that day Griffin's favorite, as might be expected, was Sir Walter Scott. He had a profound respect for the historical romances of that great man, and, with an ambition honorable to his patriotism, he resolved to abandon for a time the portraiture of local and modern life, and attempt to do for his native country what the author of Ivanhoe had so admirably done for Great Britain. Accordingly, in the spring of 1829, he removed to Dublin, where he spent several months in the study of ancient history and in visiting on foot several parts of Ireland, the topography of which he designed to introduce into his new work. The fruit of his antiquarian labors was The Invasion, which appeared during the winter of the same year, a short time after the publication of a second series of Munster Festivals. But though it had an extensive sale and was highly praised by the more learned, it did not, from the very nature of the subject and the remote epoch treated, establish itself in the affections of the public so generally as his previous and subsequent writings. While in the Irish capital, he was introduced to Sir Philip Crampton and other distinguished scholars, from all of whom he experienced the most flattering attention. His fame, indeed, had preceded him among all classes of his countrymen, and their warm and discriminating encomiums, diffident as he was to a fault, must have fallen pleasantly on his ear, and not the less so when they were expressed in the mellifluous accents he was accustomed to hear from his infancy. A closer intimacy with the congenial spirits of his own country appears to have worn off a great deal of his natural reserve; for we now find him mentioning that he had met Miss Edgeworth, and was anticipating the pleasure of an introduction to Lady Morgan and other contemporary celebrities. In the latter part of this year he also formed the acquaintance of a lady residing in the south of Ireland, which soon ripened into a lasting friendship, founded upon similarity of tastes and mutual esteem. The name of the lady is not given in his life, and we know her only as the recipient of several pleasant gossiping letters, addressed to her by the initial "L.," and by the many beautiful poems dedicated in her honor. A married lady, the mother of a numerous family, and Griffin's senior by several years, she exercised a wholesome and judicious influence over a mind naturally sympathetic but peculiarly sensitive, such as none of his own sex could or would have attempted. In company with her husband and relatives he made a prolonged visit to Killarney, the romantic beauty of whose lakes filled him with the most intense delight.

In the winter of 1829, he was again in London, which city he was obliged to visit each succeeding year till 1835, to attend to his subsequent works; [408]The Christian Physiologist, The Rivals, The Duke of Monmouth, and Tales of My Neighborhood, appearing in nearly regular annual succession. The intervening time was generally spent in acquiring material for these works, or at the watering-places enjoying his well-earned repose. It was on the occasion of one of those flying trips across the channel, in 1832, that, being requested by the electors of Limerick to present, on their behalf, a request to Moore that he would consent to represent them in Parliament, Griffin deviated from his route and called on that celebrated poet at Sloperton Cottage. In a playful account of this ever-memorable interview, addressed to his friend "L.," he says: "O dear L——! I saw the poet, and I spoke to him, and he spoke to me, and it was not to bid me to 'get out of his way,' as the king of France did to the man who boasted that his majesty had spoken to him; but it was to shake hands with me, and to ask me, 'How I did, Mr. Griffin,' and to speak of 'my fame.' My fame! Tom Moore talk of my fame! Ah the rogue! He was humbugging, L——, I'm afraid. He knew the soft side of an author's heart, and perhaps had pity on my long, melancholy-looking figure, and said to himself, 'I will make this poor fellow feel pleasant, if I can;' for which, with all his roguery, who could help liking him and being grateful to him?"

In 1838, he projected a tour on the continent; but was induced to change his purpose for a shorter one in Scotland, from which he derived not only great pleasure, but restored health. His diary of the trip, originally taken in short-hand notes, has been published, and abounds in good-natured criticisms on the manners and customs of the people he met on his journey, and some very fine descriptions of the scenery of the Highlands, which fell under his observation.

Gerald Griffin's last novel, as we have intimated, appeared in 1835, when only in the thirty-second year of his age. He had succeeded in the fullest sense as a novelist, in giving to the world in half a score of years some of the healthiest and most fascinating books in our language; had won the applause of the gifted and good alike, and, in a pecuniary point of view, had secured himself against all probability of dependence. Still, in a certain sense, he was not content. The pursuit of fame, as he had on more than one occasion predicted, had alone given him pleasure—its acquisition brought him no permanent satisfaction. Whether in abandoning the drama he had departed from his true path, or that his early insight into the mysteries of authorship had led him to underrate the labors of those whom the world is allowed to know only at a distance, or that his mind, naturally of a serious and religious turn, now fully developed, instinctively arrived at the conviction that only in the performance of those duties and sacrifices imposed on the ministers of the Gospel could be found his real sphere of action, or whether all these causes acted upon him with more or less force, certain it is that he now began to contemplate a radical change in his life. We know that he relinquished writing for the stage with reluctance, and that as early as 1828 he commenced the study of law at the London University; but it was not for two or three years afterward that his friends noticed his growing inclination for the life of a religious. From that time his poems, those beautiful scintillations of his soul, began to exhibit a higher fancy and a purer moral power than could be drawn[409] even from patriotism, or the contemplation of mere natural objects. His conversation assumed a graver tone, and his letters to his friends, formerly so pleasantly filled with gossip and scraps of comment on the persons and literature of the day, were mainly taken up with graver topics.

This change, we are satisfied, was the effect of grave and due deliberation, and not the result of caprice or disappointed ambition. It had been remarked that his letters to the different members of his family during his residence in London, while filled with minute details of his literary labors, fears, and aspirations, seldom touched on religious matters, and hence it has been inferred that during his sojourn there he had neglected the practical duties of the faith of his boyhood; but this supposition is altogether gratuitous. In familiar intercourse with men of his own age and pursuits, he may have given expression to crude or speculative opinions without that proper degree of reverence which older minds exercise in dealing with such important questions; but we have the assurance of his nearest relatives and of those few who enjoyed his friendship that this weakness was seldom indulged in. However, Griffin in a spirit of self-condemnation, which we cannot help thinking disproportionate to the supposed offence, inaugurated his new mode of life by endeavoring to remove from the minds of his former associates any wrong impressions such conversations might have produced. In an admirable letter written to a literary friend in London, under date January 13th, 1830, he says:

With a short visit to Paris and his tour in Scotland, Griffin practically bade adieu to the outside world, and, retiring to Pallas Kenry, prepared himself for admission into the order of the Christian Brothers. We learn from one of his letters to friends in America that he had at first designed to offer himself as a candidate for the holy ministry, and had even commenced a preparatory course of theological study; but distrust of his vocation for a calling requiring so many qualifications led him to select the more quiet but highly meritorious sphere of a humble teacher of little children.

Having destroyed all his unpublished manuscripts, including Matt Hyland, a ballad of considerable merit of which only a fragment remains, and taken affectionate leave of his friends, the author of Gisippus and The Collegians, in the prime of his manhood and the fulness of his[410] fame, left his home for ever, entered as a postulant the institute of the Brothers of the Christian Schools in Dublin, September 8th, 1838, and on the 15th of the following month, the feast of St. Teresa, was admitted to the religious habit.

Gerald Griffin, or, as we must henceforth know him, Brother Joseph, entered on the performance of his new duties with his characteristic ardor and in a spirit of unostentatious obedience, which elicited the admiration of the community to a greater extent than the display of mere intellectual accomplishments could have done. "Nothing," said the superior general of the order, "could exceed the earnestness with which he discharged every duty; nothing was done by halves; nothing imperfectly; he seemed as if he had nothing else to do but that which he was doing." The following extract from a letter written soon after his removal to the North Cork monastery, the succeeding year, while it shows a touch of his old playful style, illustrates also that cheerfulness of spirit which so preëminently marks the character of the members of all the religious orders of the church, the result of the consciousness of useful labor well done:

From this time till his death, which took place a year after his removal from Dublin, Brother Joseph remained in the North Cork monastery, his time divided between teaching the children of the poor and in that inner preparation for the end so unexpectedly near at hand, and to which he no longer looked forward, as he once had done, with apprehension. Until a very short time before his demise, he was in excellent health, and his conduct was marked by that serenity of manner and cheerfulness of speech which showed that the tempest-tossed spirit had at length found a haven of refuge. He visited his home but once, and then for a brief period, returning without pain or regret to his prayers and studies, among the latter of which was the compilation of a series of pious tales, intended for the use of the Brothers' schools, but which were never completed. His death, the result of typhus fever which set in on the 31st of May, and terminated fatally twelve days after, is thus simply but tenderly described by the director of novices, who was one of the witnesses of the edifying scene:

Thus lived and died one whom it would be faint praise to call one of the brightest and purest ornaments which this century has given to English literature. The various creations of his fancy will long hold a high place in the hearts of all who admire the beautiful and revere the good; but the moral of his own life is the noblest heritage he has left us. True to the instincts of his Catholic birth and training, he passed through the temptations of sorrow, poverty, and vanities of a great city for years, preserving his faith unshaken and his morals unsullied; with courage and tenacity of purpose, the attributes of true heroism, he surmounted obstacle after obstacle, which might easily have daunted older and stronger men, till he reached a proud position in the literature of his country; and when surrounded by all that is supposed to make life valuable—personal independence, devoted friends, and worldly applause—he gently and after mature self-examination took off his laurels, laid them modestly on the altar of religion, and, clothed in the humble garb of a Christian Brother, prepared to devote his life to unostentatious charity. Even his very name, that he once fondly hoped to write on the enduring tablets of history, he no longer desired to be remembered; for on the plain stone that marks his last resting-place in the little graveyard of the monastery is engraved simply the words,

THE UNFINISHED PRAYER.

THE FIRST ŒCUMENICAL COUNCIL OF THE VATICAN.
NUMBER FIVE.

For another month the Vatican Council has pursued the path originally marked out for its labors with a calmness and steady perseverance which no outside influences can disturb. In the beginning of its sessions sensational correspondents described what they saw and what they did not see—praised, mocked, or maligned as their humors led them or as their patrons desired, and poured forth abundant streams of amusing anecdotes, acute guesses, and positive assurances. The correspondence of one week was found to contradict that of the preceding week, and was itself contradicted the week following. Now, though wit, and drollery, and sarcasm may please for a time, human nature, after all, desires truth. And as men saw these contradictions, they came to understand how thoroughly untrustworthy were these correspondents; and the writers, ever on the alert to catch the first symptoms of popular feeling, have, in great part, dropped the subject. The only influence which such writings as these have had on the prelates of the council was to supply them with abundant topics for amusement in their hours of relaxation.

Another class of writers have all along treated, and still continue to treat, of the council and its action with earnestness of purpose, and are making strenuous efforts to guide and control or to check its course on subjects which they believe to have come or which may come up before it. We speak of those who are moved by religious or political feelings. Day after day and week after week, Italian, French, German, and English newspapers are taking one side or the other on these subjects, and write on them, if they do not always discuss them. At times you may find an article learned, well written, replete with thought, and suggestive, perhaps instructive. But generally the articles are only such as may be looked for in a newspaper—superficial and with an affectation of smartness. However their brilliancy, ofttimes only tinsel, may please their world of readers, among the bishops in the council they have, and can have, no weight whatever. It would, indeed, be surprising if they had.

Beyond the papers, there come pamphlets, many of them ably and learnedly written. It is to be lamented that too often the writers have allowed themselves to be carried away by excitement, and to use language which calls for censure. Still, they profess to discuss the questions gravely, and to present the strongest arguments in favor of their respective sides. We will not say that such writings are not privately read and maturely weighed by the fathers, and in fact carefully studied, so far as they may throw light on subjects of doctrine or discipline to be examined. But they certainly have not had the power to accelerate or retard, by a single day, the regular course of business before the council.

Some weeks ago, the papers of Europe were filled with articles announcing the approaching action of several governments, and the measures they would take to influence the pope and the bishops, so as to control their action[413] by the apprehension of possible political results. What precise amount of truth and what amount of exaggeration there was in the vast mass of excited utterances on this subject, we are not yet able to say. Perhaps it may hereafter be discovered in sundry green books, red books, and yellow books. This much is certain: the council was not even flurried by it. We are assured that in all the debates not the slightest reference was ever made to the matter. As we write the whole subject seems to be passing into oblivion. Even those who spoke most positively only a few weeks ago, seem to have forgotten their assertions about the intended interference of this, that, or the other government.

There is a majesty in this calm attitude of the sovereign pontiff, and of the council, which does not fail to command the respect even of worldlings and unbelievers. They can with difficulty, if at all, comprehend the great truth on which it is based and which produces it. The Catholic would scarcely look for any other attitude from our prelates. The bishops of the Catholic Church, assembled in council, are not politicians or servants of the world, seeking popularity or fearing the loss of it. They fear not those who can slay only the body, but Him who can slay both body and soul. They are assembled, in the name of Christ our Lord, to do the work to which he appointed them. They must proclaim his doctrines and his precepts; they must promote the extension of his kingdom, and must zealously and unceasingly seek the welfare and salvation of souls for whom he shed his blood on Calvary. They are men, and, as subjects or citizens, they are bound to give, and each in his own home does give, unto Cæsar all that is Cæsar's. But they are Christian bishops, and they must not fail to give, and to instruct and call on all men to give, unto God the things that are God's. Assembled in the Holy Ghost, they do not seek to discover what is popular—what may be pleasing or what contrary to the opinions, or prejudices, or passions of to-day, whether in the fulsome self-adulation, because of our vaunted progress, or in the intrigues and plans of worldly politics and national ambitions. They stand far above all this folly, and are not plunged into this chaos. They have to set forth clearly the one divine truth of revelation, which has been handed down from the beginning, and which they see now so frequently impugned and controverted, or set aside and forgotten. It is precisely because the world is setting it aside, that this council has met and will speak.

Our divine Saviour himself declared that the world would oppose the teachers of his truth as it had opposed him. The history of the eighteen hundred years of her existence is, for the church, but a continuous verification of that prophecy. The fathers of the Vatican Council cannot lose sight of the lesson thus given. It should purify their hearts and strengthen their souls. For they, of all men, must believe most truly and earnestly in the truth and the reality of Christianity and the greatness of the work in which they are engaged. Hence, when the murmurs or the clamors of the opposition of the world come to their ears, they are not filled with fear or with surprise. Of all miracles, they would look on this as the greatest, that, as the Vatican Council speaks, the passions and earthly interests and prejudices of men should at once die out or grow mute, and that no voice should be heard in opposition, no arm be raised to arrest or thwart, if it could, the work of God. This they do not look for. Opposition must[414] come, and they must not fear it, nor shrink from encountering it while at their post of duty. As they become conscious of its approach, they can but gird themselves the more energetically to their work, and seek the guidance and strength of which they have need from on high.

When we closed our last article, the prelates of the council were busily engaged, in accordance with the new by-laws, in writing out their observations and criticisms on several draughts that had been put into their hands. This work, so far as then required, was finished on March 25th. But on the 18th, the meetings of the general congregations, or committees of the whole, were resumed, and have been held since then on the 22d, 23d, 24th, 26th, 28th, 29th, 30th, and 31st of March, and April 1st, 4th, 5th, 6th, 7th, 8th, 12th, and 19th.

The business of the council has entered on a new stage. Our readers will remember that early in December last the first draught or schema on matters of faith was placed in the hands of the bishops; and that after some weeks of private study it was taken up for discussion in the general congregation held on the 28th of December. In our second article we gave some account of the character of this discussion, in which no less than thirty-five of the prelates took part. At its conclusion the draught was referred for emendations to the special committee or deputation on matters of faith, to which were also sent full reports of all the discourses in the discussion. This committee held many meetings, and went over the whole matter two or three times with the utmost care, hearing the authors of the draught and weighing the arguments and observations made in the general congregations. They divided the schema or draught into two parts, and now reported back the first part amended, containing an introduction and four chapters, with canons annexed.

This new and revised draught or schema, so presented to the bishops—in print, of course, as are all the conciliar documents—was again to be submitted to a renewed discussion and examination, first in general on its plan as a whole, and then by parts, first on the introduction, and then successively on each of the four chapters which composed it. A member of the deputation or committee on faith opened the discussion by speaking as the organ of the committee, and explaining and upholding what they had done. Many other fathers took part in the lively discussions which followed. The speeches were very brief and to the point, only one of them exceeding half an hour, and several not lasting more than five minutes. Those who wished to speak sent in their names beforehand to the presiding cardinals, as on former occasions, and were called to the pulpit in their regular order. The spokesman of the committee, or, in fact, any other member, might, during the course of the debate, take the pulpit to give some desired explanation or to reply to a speaker. All who wished to propose further amendments or changes were required to hand them in in writing. This the speakers generally did at the conclusion of their discourses. When at length the discussion on any special part—for example, on the introduction—was terminated, that portion of the schema and all the proposed amendments were referred again to the committee. The amendments were printed, and a few days after, in a general congregation, the whole matter would come up for a vote. The committee announced which of the amendments they accepted. They stated briefly the reasons for which they were unwilling to accept the others. The fathers then voted on[415] each amendment singly, unless, indeed, as sometimes happened, the author, satisfied with the explanation or replies given, asked leave to withdraw it.

This chapter or portion of schema, or draught, was then again printed, introducing into it the amendments that had been thus adopted; and it was again submitted as a whole to the vote of the fathers.

All these votes were taken without unnecessary expenditure of time. When a question was proposed, all in the affirmative were called on to rise, and to remain standing until their number was ascertained. They then sat down, and all in the negative were in their turn summoned to rise, and to remain standing until they were counted.

As there are usually over seven hundred prelates present and voting, it is clear that if the numbers on each side are nearly even, there might be some difficulty in settling the vote. But the evil did not occur. It so happened that on every vote the majority was so preponderating in numbers that an actual count was not necessary. It is said that only on one occasion they were nearly evenly divided. The important question happened to be whether the insertion of a certain comma between two words in the text before them would make the sense more distinct or not. The division of sentiment on so small a matter caused some amusement; but it was evidence of the painstaking care with which even the minutest points are scrutinized and cared for.

When the introduction and each one of the chapters with its accompanying canons had been thus separately passed on, the entire schema as a whole was submitted to the fathers for a more solemn and decisive vote. This was done in the general congregations held on April 12th and April 19th. The vote was taken, not, as in deciding on the details, by the act of rising, but by ayes and noes.

This was first done in the congregation of the 12th, in the following manner: The secretary from the lofty pulpit called the prelates one after the other, according to their ranks and their seniority in their several ranks, naming each one by his ecclesiastical title. The cardinals presiding were called first, the other cardinals next, then the patriarchs, the primates, the archbishops, the bishops, the mitred abbots, and the superiors of the various religious orders and congregations having solemn vows. As each prelate was called, he rose in his place, bowed to the assembly, and voted. The form was Placet, if he approved entirely; Placet juxta modum, if there were any minor point which he was unwilling to approve; or Non placet, if he disapproved. In the second case, he handed in a written statement of his opinion and vote on that point, and assigned the reasons which moved him to this special view. The assessors of the council immediately received these manuscripts, and delivered them to the presiding legates. As the name of each one was called, if not present, he was marked absent; if present and voting, two or three of the officials, stationed here and there in the hall, repeated with clear bell-like voices the form of words used by the prelate in voting, so that all might hear them, and that no mistake could be committed as to any one's vote. The whole procedure occupied about two hours. When it was over, the votes were counted before all, and the result declared. This was in reality the most solemn and formal voting of the bishops on the matter so far before them. Each one's judgment is asked, and he must give it. It was[416] evident the bishops voted after mature study, and with an evident singleness and simplicity of heart before God.

The special matters urged in the written and conditional votes were again, and for the last time, examined by the committee or deputation on matters of faith, they reported the result of their discussion in the congregation of April 19th, and the precise form of words was settled, to be decreed and published in the third public session, which will be held on Low-Sunday.

It thus appears that nothing will be put forth by the council without the fullest study and examination.

1. The schemata, or draughts, as presented to the council, are the result of the studies and conferences of able theologians of Rome, and of every Catholic country.

2. The schema is subjected to a thorough debate before the general congregation or, committee of the whole, or under the by-laws, it is placed in the hands of each one of the bishops, and every one who thinks it proper gives in writing his remarks on it, and proposes his emendations.

3. The schema, and these remarks and proposed amendments, are carefully considered by the deputation or committee to whom they are referred, whose office it is to prepare for the council a revised and amended draught. The twenty-four members of the deputation are picked men, and the examination and discussion of the subjects by them has proved to be all that the fathers looked for—most thorough and searching.

4. Again, on their revised report, the matter is a second time brought before the general committee, and is again discussed by the fathers, who are at liberty still to propose further changes and amendments. As a matter of fact, these turn mostly on minute details and on forms of expression.

5. Again, in the light of those proposed amendments, it is examined and discussed by the committee, who make their final report, accepting or not accepting the several amendments, and assigning to the congregation the reasons for their decision on each point. They thus enjoy the privilege of closing the debate.

6. Then follows the voting. One portion of the schema is taken up. The amendments touching it, so reported on by the committee, are one by one either adopted or rejected, and then the whole portion is passed on. One after the other the remaining portions are taken up, and acted on in the same manner. The amendments are first disposed of one by one, and then each portion is separately voted on. Finally, all the parts as separately adopted are put together, and on the whole schema so composed a more solemn vote is taken by ayes and noes.

This concludes the, so to speak, consultative action of the council on that schema. It is now ready for a solemn enactment and promulgation in the next public session of the council. (This session was held on Low-Sunday.—Ed. C. W.)

The time is approaching when the first portion of the decisions and decrees of the Vatican Council will be given to the world in the third public session, to be held on Low-Sunday. Already enough has come to light, in the better informed presses of Europe, to let us know the general tenor of what we shall soon hear. As it has become a matter of notoriety, we may speak of the subjects so said to be treated of.

The state of the world, and the errors and evils to be met and condemned in this nineteenth century by[417] the Vatican Council, are very different from those which all previous councils were assembled to resist. The heresies then to be encountered denied this or that doctrine in particular, and erred on one or another point. But they all admitted the existence of God, the reality and truth, at least in a general way, of a revelation from heaven through Christ our Lord, and the obligation of man to receive it, and to be guided by it in belief and practice. Now, the world sees but too many who go far beyond that. Then, so to speak, the outposts were assailed. Now the very citadel of revelation is attacked. Schools of a falsely called philosophy have arisen which, with a pretended show of reasoning, deny the existence of God, of spiritual beings, of the soul of man, and recognize only the existence of physical matter. Or if they speak of God, it is by an abuse of terms, and in a pantheistic sense, holding him to be only the totality of all existing things, a personification of universal nature; or else, if they wish to be more abstruse or more unintelligible, God is, according to them, the primal being, a vague and indefinite first substance, by the changes, evolutions, emanations, and modifications of which all existing things have come to be as they are. Many are the phases of materialism, pantheism, and theopantism in which German metaphysicians revel, and call it high intellectual culture. The pith of all of them is atheism, the denial of the real existence of God.

The English mind is, or believes itself to be, more practical and matter-of-fact. It does not wander through the dreamy mazes of German metaphysics. It has no taste for such excursions. But there is a school in England which, under the pretence of respecting facts, reaches practically the same sad results. It tells its disciples of what has been termed the philosophy of the unknowable and unintelligible, and declares that man, possessed only of such limited powers of knowledge as experience proves us to have, cannot conceive, cannot really know, cannot be made to know, any thing of God, the self-existent and absolute, eternal, infinitely wise and infinitely perfect, and that these words are merely conventional sounds, in reality meaningless, and conveying no real thought to the mind. Hence, he is to be held at once the wisest philosopher and most sensible man who discards them altogether, who throws aside all these useless, cloudy, unintelligible subjects, and occupies himself with the immediate and actual world around him, of which alone, through his senses, his experiments, and his experiences, he can obtain some certain and positive knowledge. This they call independence and freedom of science. In many minds it would be pure atheism, if pure atheism were possible; in many others, it has produced and is producing a haziness of doubt, and an uncertainty on all these points touching the existence and the attributes of God, as in practice leads to almost the same result.

The French mind is active, acute, sketchy, imaginative, logical, and practical. On a minimum quantity of facts or principles it will construct a vast theory. If facts are too few to support the theory, imagination can readily supply all that are lacking. The theory, if logically consistent, must be reduced to practice; opponents must stand aside or be crushed down. The theory must rule. From the days of Voltaire, if not before, France has seen men deny religion under the guise of teaching philosophy. The sarcasms, and at times the brilliancy of their writings, have made French authors the store-house from which infidels in other nations draw their weapons. It was in France that a national decree[418] enacted that there is no God, and it is in France and in Belgium that the societies of so-called Solidaires exist, the members of which solemnly bind themselves to each other to live and die, and be buried, without any act of religion. Too full of confidence in their powers of mind to accept the English system, and to acknowledge there is any subject they cannot master; too impressionable and practical to live in the cloud of German metaphysical pantheism, the French philosophers are prone to deify man, instead of universal nature. Whether they follow Comte in his earlier theories, or Comte in the very different theories of his old age, or whether they devise some other theory, it is generally man they place on the throne of the Deity. This worship of man, this spirit of humanitarianism, and this belief in the progressive and indefinite perfectibility of mankind, which they hold apart from and in antagonism to the belief which worships God as the Creator and Sovereign Lord, and places man the creature subject to him, runs practically through many a phase of their character in modern times.

These three systems—of course more or less commingled in their sources—have been extended to every portion of the civilized world. The German system has passed into Denmark, Holland, and Sweden; the French into Italy, Spain, and Portugal, and in some measure through them into Southern America. In the United States, we have been comparatively free from them. We owe it, probably, to the fact that with us all men are so busy trying to amass fortunes that they have little time and less taste for such abstruse speculations. True, through the vast German immigration, we have received some portion of the German system. But so far it has scarcely spread among our citizens of other nationalities. The English system, strange to say, scarcely exists except in its vaguer influences. The French system, introduced years ago, has struck deeper roots, and has a wider influence. But, on the whole, the mass of our people has a firm unshaken belief in the real truth of Christianity as a revealed religion. Although very often men are exceedingly puzzled to know what are the specific doctrines, still they have not lost the traditions of their fathers, and have not fallen into positive unbelief. How long these words will remain true, who can tell? Luxury and the general demoralization becoming so familiar, and the systematic godless education of our youth, will soon perhaps place us in the van of those nations who seem to have been given up to the foolishness of their hearts.

Meanwhile the church knows that she is debtor to all—that her mission is to preach the Gospel of Christ to all nations. Seeing in what manner so many are going astray, so far as even to deny the God that made them and redeemed them, and knowing that he has sent her as a messenger from him to them, she raises her voice, and, in clear, steady, clarion tones that will ring through the world, she proclaims again that he is the one true God, eternal and almighty, the Creator whom all men must know and must serve, and unto whom they will all have to render a strict account. This assembled council is itself evidence, clear as the noon-day light, of her existence, and her office in the world. Men may not shut their eyes to the fact. Her words are clear: "He whom ye deny exists, and speaks to you through me. He whom ye scoff at is your Creator and Lord, from whom ye have received all that ye have. He whom ye deride is long-suffering, and wills[419] not your death, but that ye repent and come to him. Through me he admonishes, he invites, he warns you." Will these men hearken to her voice, or rather, the voice of God through her? Does not the God they would deny give, as it were, sensible testimony of his existence, his power, and his authority, evidence which they cannot ignore or overlook save by a wilful and deliberate effort on their part? They cannot fail to see the church claiming to be his. Her unbroken existence through eighteen centuries and her continued growth and advance despite opposition, and, still more, despite the quiet natural force of all human agency, external and internal, which under the ordinary laws of human things would have sufficed to disrupt and to destroy her a hundred times, an existence and a growth which could have proceeded only from a supernatural power, and which constitute a standing miracle in the history of the world, demand their attention and their respect. Her claim to be divinely founded and divinely supported, they must not scout with flippancy. They must at least receive it with respect, and examine its grounds. The most solemn assembly of that church, the most imposing assembly the world has looked on, an assembly authorized by the organization which he gave to that church, and therefore authorized by him, speaks to them in his name and by his authority. Will they receive the message, or will they turn away? Some there are who would not believe, if one rose from the dead. But we may hope and pray that others will hearken to the words of the Lord, and learn that to know and fear the Lord is the beginning of true wisdom. Above all, we may hope that many who have not yet advanced too far on the dangerous road may become aware of their danger and their folly, and return to the paths of true and salutary doctrine.

Next to those who, following the systems we have indicated, or on any other grounds pretend to do away with the existence of God, come those who admit his existence, but do not admit that he has given a revealed religion to mankind. It is unnecessary to go over the various groups into which they may be divided. There always have been and will be men who will try by one huge effort to throw off the yoke of religion. And what is there for doing which men will not try to assign some reason? In the last century, and the early portion of the present one, men sought such reasons in the alleged contradictions of the Scriptures, in the mysteriousness of Christian doctrine and the inability of the human intellect to comprehend them, in the procrustean systems of ancient history which they invented, or in alleged defects of the evidences of Christianity, or, finally, in their pet theories of metaphysics. At present the tendency is to base the rejection of revealed religion on its alleged incompatibility with the discoveries of natural sciences in these modern days. Geology, anthropology, in fact, the natural sciences with scarcely an exception, have been in turn laid under contribution or forced to do service against the cause of revelation. We have men appealing to this or that principle or fact as an irrefragable evidence by modern science of the false pretensions of Christianity.

To all such the church, the pillar and ground of truth, the organ of Christ our Lord on earth, will speak. It is not her office to enter into the detailed discussion of scientific studies, and to make manifest the errors of fact into which these men have[420] fallen, or the fallacy of their deductions. This she leaves to scholars who, in their pursuit of earthly knowledge, do not cast away the knowledge they have received of divine truth. Such Christian scholars have replied to the sneers, and gibes, and sarcasms of the last century, and have shown the utter worthlessness and absurdity of the arguments then brought forward against Christianity by men who claimed to speak on the part of science; and there are now others answering with equal fulness the more modern objections. The church might, indeed, have left it to time and the progress of learning and science to vindicate her course and to refute the objections raised against her teaching. For, as a matter of fact, the grand difficulties brought forward half a century ago excite but a smile now, as we see on what an unsubstantial foundation they rested. And a very few years to come will, we may be sure, suffice to overturn many a pet theory of to-day, with their vaunted arguments against revelation. New discoveries will lead to new theories, that may or may not give rise to a new crop, a new set of difficulties, for man's mind is limited and cannot reach the truth on all sides, but they will consign the present difficulties to the tomb of the Capulets. To that tomb generation after generation of these so-called scientific objections are passing. The church does not undertake to teach astronomy, geology, chemistry, or physics. Natural sciences are to be studied by man, in the use of his own reason and the exercise of his natural faculties. These things God has left to the disputations of men. The church does not despise these discussions and researches. She does not repress them nor oppose them. Quite the contrary. She has ever protected and fostered science. One of the most beautiful and instructive chapters in her earthly history would be that which tells how, from the school of Alexandria, in the days of persecution, down the entire course of ages, she has ever sought to promote and foster science. She may with pride point to her canons and laws enacted for this purpose in every century. She may recount the long catalogue of schools, colleges, and universities established by her in every civilized land of Europe, and wherever she planted her foot; and to the religious houses of her clergy, throughout the stormy middle ages the chief, almost the only safe homes of learning. Many of the universities which she founded have in the course of ages been destroyed by kings and nobles, who filled their own purses, or repaired their wasted fortunes, by the seizure of endowments given for the free education of all that might come to drink of these fountains of learning; even as this very month the progressive, liberal government of the kingdom of Italy is discussing the propriety of suppressing one half of the older universities they found existing in the portion of the Papal States, and in other parts of Italy, which ten years ago they annexed to the kingdom of Sardinia. When did the church ever do such an act? Never. What university was ever suppressed by any act of hers? None. She encourages science. But at the same time she says, "God has given to man reason and understanding to seek after and to attain knowledge. It is a great and noble gift, to be prized and used rightly, and not turned to an evil purpose. If a father place in the hands of his son, as a gift, a weapon keen and bright, shall that son, with parricidal hand turn the blade against his father? Beware not to turn these gifts of God against God himself. Use them not as pretexts to deny his[421] existence, or shake off his authority, or to impugn his truth when he speaks."

In giving this admonition, the church is acting in her full right. She is in the certain possession of that higher divine truth which her heavenly Founder has placed in her charge, to be carefully guarded and preserved until the end of time, and to be ever faithfully preached. Who ever denies it, she must oppose him. Whatever teaching would make it out to be false, she must condemn. The church, holding with certainty this divine deposit of the revealed truth, must not be compared, either in theory or in practice, with any private individual or society of individuals, who hold and profess religious doctrines on the authority of their own reason and judgment, or of their private interpretation of the Scriptures. In such a case as this, these doctrines are simply beliefs, opinions of men avowedly liable to error in this very matter. They therefore stand on the same level, as to certainty or uncertainty of being true, with the other human judgments in the fields of natural science or human knowledge which may rise up in opposition to them. The two sides are fairly matched, and either may ultimately prevail.

But, on the contrary, the church claims not merely to hold opinions, but, under the guiding light of the Holy Ghost, to have certain and infallible knowledge of the truths of divine revelation. Nothing that contradicts these established and known truths can she admit to be any thing else than error. In the contest between them, the truth must prevail. This is the theory on which the Catholic Church stands, and in which, in reality, all Christianity is involved. The experience of eighteen centuries confirms it fully in practice. Never once in all that period has the church of Christ had to revoke a single doctrinal decision, on the ground that what was believed to be true when uttered has since been proved to be false as the progress of science has thrown fuller light on the subject. In the early days of her existence, Celsus and the other philosophers of that classical period raised manifold objections from reason and such knowledge of nature as they possessed. Their objections accorded well with the public opinion of the time, and were hailed with applause. But the time came when they were felt to be of no force, and now they are entirely forgotten; and the truth they impugned, and were intended to overthrow, stands stronger than ever. The Gnostics, with their varied and fanciful systems of conciliating the power and goodness of God with the presence of evil in the world, and guided, if we listen to their boasts, by the highest light of man's reason, brought forward many objections, then deemed specious. They and their arguments too have passed away, and the Catholic truth stands. So it has been in every age until the present time. One only instance in all history has been alleged, seemingly, to the contrary—the condemnation of Galileo for holding and maintaining the Copernican theory. But there is no real ground of objection here. The facts of the case are misunderstood or misstated. The trial of Galileo, which was in truth more of a personal than a doctrinal issue, was simply before the congregation, or committee, of the Holy Office in Rome, and the sentence was by that congregation and not by the church. The difference between the sentence of such a tribunal and a decision of the church is world-wide. And, as if to mark that difference the more distinctly, that sentence, which, according to the usual[422] course, and at least as a matter of form, should have been countersigned by the reigning pontiff, that it might be put into execution, never was so signed. Why, in that case, the formality was omitted, whether it was not deemed necessary, which, considering the usage, would be very strange, or whether, which we think much more probable, it was in due course of procedure presented to the pontiff for his signature, and he abstained from signing it for reasons in his own mind, cannot now be known. But the original official manuscript copy of the sentence is extant, and there is no signature of the pontiff to it. Even had he signed it, that would not have made the document a doctrinal decision of the church. It would have remained simply the regular sentence of a special tribunal; but the absence of the pope's signature, perhaps its studied absence, entirely and unequivocally removes the objection usually brought forward.[139] Here, as in every other case, Christ has protected his church, so that she shall make no false decision as to faith. It is only in virtue of that protection that she claims the paramount authority to speak. Under it she had been appointed to speak, and must speak, if she would not be recreant to her duty. She does not repress science; she saves it. She does not shackle reason; she preserves it from error and ruin. How often is the way of science a narrow ridge, with deep gulfs on either side! Feeble man walks along the narrow crest with trembling limbs, or crawls on, dubiously and slowly, in the dark. The church of Christ cheers him on. She does not bear him over the perilous path; but holds aloft the torch of revealed truth to guide him as he advances, and warns him to proceed by its light, and not to rush heedlessly on, lest he fall into the abyss. And yet should we not expect that the same spirit of insubordinate pride which leads reason to deny the existence of God, or his Divine Providence, or the fact of divine revelations, or emboldens feeble, ignorant man to measure, as it were, his feeble intelligence against the infinite wisdom of God, should also not refrain from charging the Catholic Church with being an incubus on the human mind, with narrowing the intellect and fettering the reason, with restricting our liberty of thought, narrowing the field of science, and dwarfing the whole intellectual man?

But time does her justice. She can point to Origen, Clement of Alexandria, St. Jerome, St. Augustine, St. Thomas of Aquin, St. Anselm, Duns Scotus, Suarez, Vasquez, and the mighty minds of the past. She may point to her children, clergymen and laymen, now standing in the front ranks of every branch of science. What the past ages gave, what the present gives too, the future will as surely not fail to give.

We add to the communication of our Roman correspondent the report of the peroration of an eloquent speech by Signor d'Ondes-Reggio, in the Italian Parliament, as given by M. Chantrel, in his "Chronique du Concile," published in the Revue du Monde Catholique for April 10th.

FOREIGN LITERARY NOTES.

The Gospel in the Law. A Critical Examination of the Citations from the Old Testament in the New. By Charles Taylor. Cambridge and London: Bell & Daldy. 1869. The relative positions of the Mosaic law and the new law may be studied from a great many points of view. That chosen by Mr. Taylor, in the volume before us, adds additional interest to his very remarkable work.

The selection and study of citations from the Old Testament found in the New give rise to many questions which, properly elucidated, throw much light on the connection which exists between Judaism and Christianity. Mr. Taylor does not so much occupy himself with that question as with the manner in which the Bible is connected with the Testament. Not that he undertakes to demonstrate that the germ of the new law may be found in the Old; for that no one denies, and the title he has selected shows the object of his work, "the Gospel in the law." Not every thing in the work is new; but the previously accumulated erudition of the subject is admirably résuméd, and several chapters are marked by originality—the thirteenth, for instance, on Jewish and Christian morality.

Varieties of Irish History. From Ancient and Modern Sources and Original Documents. By James J. Gaskin, Dublin. A handsome volume, illustrated with four chromo-lithographs, and an excellent map of the environs of Dublin. The work appears to be made up of a series of lectures delivered at Dalkey, a well-known charming suburb of Dublin, and of articles published at various times in the Irish newspapers concerning the history of the principal environs of Dublin—Howth, Kingston, Dalkey, Bray, and Killing. The beautiful bay of Dublin and its picturesque shores, of course, come in for their share of notice, and as the author gives himself the amplest verge, he manages, in his numberless digressions, to throw into his pages a reflex of the intellectual history of Dublin during the last century.

One of the most remarkable and eventful missionary fields of the Catholic Church was, unquestionably, Japan. There are few more admirable pages in its history than those which recount the constancy and faith of its first martyrs under one of the most bloody persecutions the world ever saw. M. Léon Pages has just published a work giving the history of Catholicity in Japan from 1598 to 1651: Histoire de la Religion Chrétienne au Japon, depuis 1598 jusqu'à 1651, comprenant les faits relatifs aux deux cent cinq martyrs beatifiés le 7 Juillet 1867, par Léon Pages. This volume, published separately, will form the third volume of a large work in four octavo volumes, to be entitled, L'Empire du Japon, ses origines, son église chrétienne, ses relations avec l'Europe.

The so-called Truce of God of the middle ages, under which a suspension of arms and hostilities was so often obtained, has too frequently been so imperfectly understood and treated by historians and writers as to be confounded by them with the Peace of God—two things essentially different in origin and in application. In 1857, a work on the subject was published at Paris by M. Ernest Semichon, who by his judicious research threw an entirely new light on this question. M. Semichon has just presented the literary world with a new edition of the work of 1857, largely augmented in fresh matter and in historical documents, in which he clearly establishes the distinction between these two institutions, and fixes the origin of the Peace of God at about A.D. 988, and that of the Truce of God at 1027. He follows their development step by step through the eleventh, twelfth, and thirteenth centuries, examining them from the judicial and political stand-points,[425] until the period when Louis le Gros took hold of the movement. After this period, the "Truce of God" becomes the Quarantaine le Roi. In treating his subject, M. Semichon presents most interesting views of the great institutions of the middle ages, its associations and customs, and also of the chevaliers, the arts, and the Crusades. His work is entitled La Paix et la Trève de Dieu.

Until within a few years there were known to be in existence but three Biblical manuscripts of high antiquity. These were, First, the celebrated Vatican manuscript; second, that of London, called the Alexandrine; third, that of Paris, known under the designation of the Palimpsest of Ephrem the Syrian. The first dates from the fourth century, the other two from the fifth. None of them are complete, however. In that of Paris the greater part of the New Testament is wanting. That of London is deficient in nearly the whole of the first gospel, two chapters of the fourth, and the greater part of the second Epistle of St. Paul to the Corinthians. From the Vatican manuscript, the oldest of all, are missing four epistles, the last chapters of the Epistle to the Hebrews, and the Apocalypse. M. Constantine Tischendorf, a distinguished Russian scholar, known in the scientific world for his superior Hellenic and paleographic acquirements, has the glory of having given to the Christian world, by his discoveries, numerous sacred manuscripts of the highest antiquity, and, above all, the famous Codex Sinaiticus, which has over the three MSS. we have enumerated the great advantage of being complete. It dates from the same epoch with that of the Vatican. M. Tischendorf has told the story of its discovery, and of the long and difficult negotiations required for its acquisition, in a work just published, Terre Sainte, an octavo volume of 307 pages. The volume also contains an interesting account of his oriental travel in company with the Duke Constantine, and his visit to Smyrna, Patmos, and Constantinople. A fac-simile edition of the new Codex is in preparation in Russia, and a German translation of that portion of it which contains the New Testament will shortly be made.

A noteworthy work is Le Juif, le Judaisme, et Judaisation des peuples chrétiens, par M. le Chevalier Gougeuot des Mousseaux. Paris, 8vo, 568 pp. The career of Judaism is here historically traced from the early ages of the church, when it spread through Egypt, Alexandria, and Rome the Gnostic theories of Simon the Magician, down to the present day. The author presents successively all the traditions upon which the belief of the modern Jew is founded. Their Bible is the Talmud, a tissue of absurdities and immoralities. There exists a gulf between the ancient law of Moses and the Talmudic reveries so great, indeed, that the Jew can hardly call his law a religious law without flying in the face of the history and the faith of his fathers. Following these researches comes a keen analysis of the Pharisaical spirit. Concerning the synagogue, the Sanhedrim, the Talmudic rites, and system of education, the work gives the fullest details, with copious extracts from writers all favorable to Judaism, such as Prideaux, Basnage, and Salvador. The result of the author's revelations is to show that the Jewish belief of to-day is absolutely different from that of which Moses was the legislator. Modern Jews are divided into three classes—orthodox, reformers, and free-thinkers. The reformers are the Protestants of the Mosaic law. Nowadays, for the majority of Jews, the coming of the Messiah is no longer understood in its ordinary acceptation. For them the "desired of nations" is merely an abstraction. The author dwells at some length on the spreading influence of Judaism in worldly matters, and sounds a note of alarm that gives his work something of a pessimist tone.

NEW PUBLICATIONS.

Dr. Newman's Essay in Aid of a Grammar of Assent. By John Henry Newman, D.D., of the Oratory. 1 vol. 12mo. New York: The Catholic Publication Society, 9 Warren street. 1870.

We have not yet given to this book, destined to become so celebrated and the theme of so much controversy, the careful examination it deserves, and we will not, therefore, pay the poor compliment to the illustrious author of pronouncing a superficial judgment upon it. We have given an analysis of its contents in our last number, which may aid the reader to understand and master its scope and course of argument for himself. At present, we will merely take note of one or two salient points bearing on some questions of lively controversial interest at the present moment. The great subject of controversy in regard to the philosophy of the work has already proved to be what we anticipated at the first glance upon its pages—whether it is, or is not, in contradiction to the scholastic doctrine of the reality of universals. We give merely our impression, and not our judgment upon this point, when we say that it appears to us that Dr. Newman rather leaves aside the pure metaphysics of the question, than either contradicts or affirms any scholastic doctrine of this higher sphere of science. He appears to take the common English axioms of reasoning as they are assumed in every-day life and made the basis of those inductions and illations which make up the opinions of intelligent persons on all sorts of subjects, and the conclusions of practical, scientific men in regard to the inductive sciences. He appeals to the common sense of those who are not sophisticated by any false, sceptical maxims in relation to common things, but who are simply puzzled by an apparent want of the same certitude in religion which they hold as unquestioned in lower branches of knowledge. He undertakes to show that the principles of assent which all men act on in the affairs of this life lead logically to the same certitude of the infallibility of the Catholic Church, and the truth of every thing she proposes to belief, that a man has that Great Britain is an island. If any one thinks there is a break or a weak spot in his chain of reasoning, let him pull it apart and throw the fragments aside, and he will have accomplished a considerable feat in logic. We think that, on account of this manner of approaching the subject, this book is likely to prove extremely useful in convincing sincere, well-intentioned doubters, whose minds have been educated under the same circumstances and in the same intellectual atmosphere with those of the author. As for the analysis of certitude itself, and the metaphysics of the ultimate question how we know, and what is that which we know first, the author may be criticised; but we think, as we have said, that he did not have it in view to propose a theory. We do perceive and know; we do exist, and we know that other things exist, and we are certain of these things, and no pretended sceptic really doubts. We may start from this, therefore, as a fixed base of operation, without waiting for a metaphysical theory. If the theory which we hold is incorrect, we can change it without hurting our argument, just as a person who lives in a regular and sensible manner, and is in good health, can change a physiological doctrine which he finds to be erroneous without changing his practical rules of living. Whether Dr. Newman's statement respecting real and notional assents be correct or not, every candid and honest man will acknowledge that he does assent with certitude to the truth of those things which the author calls notions. We suspect, moreover, that the illustrious author in his affirmation that nothing really exists except individuals, means that there are no other spiritual or material[427] substances; or, in other words, that every substance is a simple monad existing in itself and separate from every other. We do not apprehend that, in denying that time, space, relation, etc., are real, he intends to affirm that they are mere subjective affections of our minds without any foundation in objective reality, but only that they are not either spirits or bodies, and would be nothing if there were no spirit or body in existence. We suspect that the nominalism attributed to Dr. Newman is merely in the phrase, and that his difference from the realism of St. Thomas is only in the terminology.

The other point we desire to notice is theological. Our Episcopalian neighbors, and some others also, are accustomed to refer to Dr. Newman as an instance in proof of their frequent assertion that men of genius and learning in our communion chafe under the yoke of Rome, and, if they are converts, feel themselves disappointed in the expectations with which they entered the church. The recent letter of Dr. Newman to Dr. Ullathorne is, of course, a lucky windfall for them, and is interpreted as a proof that they were not mistaken. The volume we are noticing will, for every candid and sensible reader, completely scatter to the winds any false and calumnious attempts to class Dr. Newman with Mr. Ffoulkes, Mr. Renouf, the translator of Janus, and the rest of that clique in England, or to impeach the integrity of his faith and loyalty as a Catholic priest and theologian. The letter itself shows that Dr. Newman holds what his writings show he has always held, as the more probable doctrine, that the judgments of the pope in matters of faith are infallible. The utmost extent of his expressions of repugnance to a definition of this doctrine is, that he considers the weakness of faith, the lack of knowledge, and the deficiency of the reasoning faculty in a number of Catholics to be so great, and the bewilderment of mind so extreme in persons outside the church who are seeking the truth, that they cannot bear to have the light too suddenly and brightly flashed into their eyes. The great and holy Oratorian father pities these souls, and wishes to have them cautiously and gently led into the truth; and he is afraid that the pope, sitting in the effulgence of the divine Shekinah in the temple of God, does not appreciate the state of those who are living in the fainter light or the clouded climates of a remoter region. The chapter of the volume under notice entitled, "Belief in Dogmatic Theology," will show beyond a question what we have asserted of Dr. Newman's theological soundness, and we quote one passage as a specimen.

The church "makes it imperative on every one, priest and layman, to profess as revealed truth all the canons of councils, and innumerable decisions of popes, propositions so various, so notional, that but few can know them, and fewer can understand them." (P. 142, Eng. ed.)

In the chapter on the "Indefectibility of Certitude" occurs this passage: "A man is converted to the Catholic Church from his admiration of its religious system, and his disgust with Protestantism. That admiration remains; but, after a time, he leaves his new faith; perhaps returns to his old. The reason, if we may conjecture, may sometimes be this: he has never believed in the church's infallibility; in her doctrinal truth he has believed, but in her infallibility, no. He was asked, before he was received, whether he held all that the church taught; he replied he did; but he understood the question to mean, whether he held those particular doctrines 'which at that time the church in matter of fact formally taught,' whereas it really meant 'whatever the church then or at any future time should teach.' Thus, he never had the indispensable and elementary faith of a Catholic, and was simply no subject for reception into the fold of the church. This being the case, when the immaculate conception is defined, he feels that it is something more than he bargained for when he became a Catholic, and accordingly he gives up his religious profession. The world will say that he has lost his certitude of the divinity of the Catholic faith; but he never had it." (P. 240.)

We do not desire to have a party tolerated[428] in the church whose principles are precisely those here condemned by Dr. Newman, or to have the way open for converts to be received who lack the "indispensable and elementary faith of a Catholic." We look with dismay upon the audacious and heretical attitude of that fallen angel F. Hyacinthe, the scandalous position assumed by Huber, Döllinger, and Gratry, and we anticipate greater impediment to the progress of the faith from a miserable counterfeit and pseudo-catholicity, which is nothing else than the base metal coined by Photius, than from the difficulties hanging about the history of the popes, which are no greater than those that beset councils, tradition, or the holy Scripture itself. Whatever definitions are promulgated by the Council of the Vatican, no one pretending to be a Catholic can hesitate to receive them because they are "more than he bargained for." Those who have chafed under the doctrinal authority of the popes have been crying out for a council for two centuries. Those who are bona fide in any doubt or uncertainty respecting questions not yet defined have the way open for their doubts to be settled. If there are persons in the communion of the church who have not the principle of faith in them by which they are prepared without hesitation to believe whatever the Council of the Vatican proposes, we desire that they should leave their external connection with the Catholic Church, which they have already inwardly abandoned. And we think it most necessary that the duty of unreserved submission to the infallible authority of the church, and to the Roman pontiff, as her supreme teacher and judge as well as ruler, should be most distinctly placed before those who seek admission into her fold. We are grateful to Dr. Newman for the clear and unmistakable tones in which he has spoken on the obligation of believing whatever the church commands us to believe through the mouth of the sovereign pontiff; and as for the question what definitions are necessary and opportune for the present time, we confide absolutely in the divinely assisted judgment of Pius IX. and the Catholic episcopate.

Since writing the above, we are glad to see that Dr. Newman has written another letter, in which the following passage occurs: "I have not had a moment's wavering of trust in the Catholic Church ever since I was received into her fold. I hold, and ever have held, that her sovereign pontiff is the centre of unity and the vicar of Christ. And I ever have had, and have still, an unclouded faith in her creed in all its articles; a supreme satisfaction in her worship, discipline, and teaching; and an eager longing, and a hope against hope, that the many dear friends whom I have left in Protestantism may be partakers in my happiness." (Tablet, April 16th.) We are glad, we say, to see this, not on our own account, for we have the honor of a personal acquaintance with the illustrious Oratorian, and know him too well to have the need of any such assurance of his firm and ardent Catholic faith and piety; but in order that the mouths of cavillers may be stopped, and those weak brethren who tremble like aspen-leaves in every light breeze be reassured.

The Origin, Persecutions, and Doctrines of the Waldenses; from Documents, many now for the first time collected and edited. By Pius Melia, D.D. London: James Toovey, 177 Piccadilly. 1870. For sale by the Catholic Publication Society, 9 Warren street, New York.

In the year 1868, a London daily newspaper produced editorially one of those statements so frequently made concerning the Waldenses, and which, by dint of repetition, end by passing for recognized facts. It was as follows:

As the author mildly presents it, these statements not being in accordance with his knowledge of the subject, he was moved to undertake a thorough investigation of the history of the Waldenses. To this end, in addition to the perusal of a long and formidable list of works given in the preface, and which is valuable as presenting the bibliography of the subject, he made thorough investigation in the great libraries of England, Rome, and Turin, which last collection was found very rich in MSS. referring to the Waldensian period. Fresh stimulus and efficient aid were given to his efforts by the appearance of a very important work by Professor James Henthorn Todd, Senior Fellow of Trinity Church, Dublin, entitled, The Book of the Vaudois; The Waldensian Manuscripts, which gives a notice of the long-lost Morland manuscripts lately discovered by Mr. Henry Bradshaw, M.A., Fellow of King's College, Cambridge, and librarian of that university. These MSS. are undoubtedly "the oldest extant relics of the Vaudois literature," and the most important documents relating to their history.

The author forcibly presents in extenso, and in separate chapters, the testimony of Richard, Monk of Cluny, Moneta, De Bellavilla, Abbot Bernard, Reinerius Sacco, Archbishop Seyssell, Eneas Sylvius Piccolomini, Casini, and many others, and in the fifteenth section addresses himself to prove that the dates which Leger and Morland have assigned to the Waldensian MSS. are counterfeit. Leger assigns A.D. 1100 as the date of the Nobla Leyçon and the Catechism of the MSS. Our author shows that these writings are of the fifteenth, not the twelfth century, and that the date assigned by Leger involves the contradiction of proving that the Waldenses existed as a sect before the period of its founder, Peter Waldo.

One long chapter is devoted to the supposed cruel Waldensian massacre of the year 1655, as related in the often-quoted Histoire Véritable des Vaudois, and to the particular murders described by Leger. These are confronted with the legal testimony touching the same facts.

The work closes with an exposition of the Waldensian theological tenets, each one being presented separately with a statement of the Catholic doctrine on that tenet upon the same page.

The book is a beautiful specimen of typography, and is illustrated with several photographs of pages of the Morland manuscripts.

The Charlestown Convent; Its Destruction by a Mob, etc. Compiled from authentic sources. Boston: P. Donahoe. 1870.

We remember distinctly the Ursuline Convent at Charlestown, as it appeared forty years ago, crowning a gentle summit with its grave and dignified buildings, and attractive grounds laid out and cultivated with taste; a retreat of piety and a school of religious and solid education. We have often enough since that time looked upon its ruins, a perpetual monument of disgrace to Boston and Massachusetts, a token of shame in close proximity to that other monument, a monument of imperishable glory, which crowns the site of the battle of Bunker Hill. This pamphlet describing the atrocious and barbarian outrage perpetrated on the night of August 11th, 1834, with the train of preceding and succeeding events connected with it, presents a page in our history which many persons would do well to ponder attentively. The outrage was occasioned by the publication of Six Months in a Convent, one of a class of vile publications which, for a time, were widely circulated and swallowed with credulity, but afterward universally scouted with that scorn and loathing which the American people always feels when it discovers[430] that it has been duped by the wicked and designing. There would be no need of reviving the memory of these things, if the same style of attack upon Catholics had not been renewed at intervals, and were not adopted at the present moment by restless fanatics, who, knowing that they are incapable of coping with us in fair argument, are fain to resort to these criminal methods of appealing to prejudice, bigotry, ignorance, and passion, hoping to stir up the populace to a crusade against the Catholic religion. The abettors of Rebecca Reed and Maria Monk in the pulpit and the press have had successors to the present time. The Massachusetts Legislature has had its "smelling committee;" Missouri has passed its outrageous laws; other legislatures have attempted to lay their hands upon the property of the Catholic Church; the most infamous laws are even now in consideration before the Legislature of Pennsylvania; we have had the archangel Gabriel, and Judson, and Gavazzi, and Leahy, and we have now Bishop Coxe, Bellows, Hepworth, and Muller. The same firm of publishers which formerly was so active and conspicuous in putting forth the most vulgar and violent attacks upon the Catholic religion, although in one instance it found it expedient to hide itself under an alias, continues its work under the guise of a more pretentious literature, embellished by offensive caricatures of the most venerable and sacred objects of the religious veneration of Catholics. The spirit of falsification, the intention to stir up popular passion, the intolerance disguised under the name of liberalism, the determination to treat the Catholic clergy as the heads of a faction with ulterior treasonable and revolutionary designs, and the Catholic religion as a nuisance which ought to be extirpated by violence, are the same in the modern agitators that they were in their predecessors, and are in their English compeers, the Newdegates and Whalleys of the British Parliament. They tend to similar results with those which similar agitators have heretofore produced. The same train is laid, the same spark applied, and the chance of a similar explosion depends on the fact of the existence or non-existence of a similar magazine of slumbering popular prejudice and inflammable passion. We say, therefore, that it is well for considerate persons who desire the peace of the community to read and reflect upon this pamphlet. It is necessary that some very important questions should arise, where Catholics and non-Catholics form important elements in the same political community, with equal rights. It is impossible that peace and good order should be preserved, unless these matters can be discussed and arranged calmly and amicably. Therefore we say that the agitators who appeal to a violent solution, in case Catholics are not content with a simple toleration under a Protestant domination, are enemies of the public peace, and ought to be regarded as such by all good citizens. The Catholic clergy will never be agitators. If the effort is made by demagogues to pervert the Catholic or Irish sentiment into an impetus of illegal, revolutionary movements, like the riot of 1863 and the Fenian plot against Canada, the whole authority of the church and all the influence of the clergy will be put forth against it. It is for the present and future advantage and interest of this country that the influence of the Catholic clergy over their people should be as great as possible, and that of clerical agitators and demagogues reduced to nothing.

Life of St. Charles Borromeo. Edited by Edward Healy Thompson, A.M. Philadelphia: Peter F. Cunningham. 1870.

St. Charles Borromeo was one of the greatest of the true reformers of the sixteenth century. During the lifetime of his Uncle, Pius IV., he held many of the highest offices in the Roman court, possessed the pope's entire confidence, and exerted a powerful influence in favor of whatever was for the good of the church. To his exertions were due, in no small degree, the reassembling of the Council of Trent, and the successful completion of its labors eighteen years after its opening.

At the death of Pius IV., St. Charles returned to his diocese, and straightway entered upon the work of its reformation, in accordance with the decrees of Trent. He succeeded in effecting a complete reform, and the example which he thus gave had a most salutary effect.

The Life before us is well written; it gives not only the facts, but likewise in some degree the philosophy of history; and it is free from that religious mannerism, so to speak, which is not unfrequently met with in books of this class. The typography and binding are in keeping with the contents. There are, however, a great many very serious errors of the press defacing this otherwise well printed volume.

This elementary treatise upon botany is arranged in an entirely new manner. The book is intended to cultivate the child's natural powers of observation. In ordinary text-books, the beginner is expected to master a great number of definitions and distinctions before he ventures to go into the fields and study for himself. We have always considered this method irksome, and we know it to be fruitless of result. We therefore very heartily welcome Miss Youmans's little work. We hope that she has inaugurated a reform in the teaching of the natural sciences. We confidently recommend the book to all Catholic schools where botany, or any of the natural sciences, form a portion of the course of studies.

The Wise Men: who they were, etc. By Francis W. Upham, LL.D. New York: Sheldon & Co. 1869.

A book written with sound and solid learning, and originality of thought; pervaded also by a spirit in harmony with Catholic teaching, so far as the topics are concerned upon which it treats.

The Monks before Christ; Their Spirit and their History. By John Edgar Johnson. Boston: A. Williams & Co. 1870.

This is one of the most shallow and stupid productions we have met with in a long time. The author met with some rather poor specimens of the monastic order in Europe, and breaks out into the exclamation, "Great heavens! and these are the men who had the exclusive manipulation of our Scriptures for several hundred years!" (Page 18.) One who is so extremely weak in the reasoning faculty as this passage indicates has no business to write a book on serious topics, and is unworthy of refutation. The author informs us that monasticism is based on the Manichæan doctrine of an evil principle in matter. This shows an inconceivable ignorance which we cannot think is invincible or excusable, since the author resided several months at the University of Munich, and was well acquainted with the learned Benedictines of that capital, over whom the celebrated Haneberg is abbot.

The Flemmings; or, Truth Triumphant. By Mrs. Anna H. Dorsay. New York: P. O'Shea. 1870.

The author of this volume has given us a pleasant story, interesting both to Catholics and Protestants, as tales of conversions to the true faith cannot fail to be when founded, as this appears to be, on fact. The pictures of natural scenery are fresh and life-like, and the moral and religious teaching unexceptionable. It is carelessly written, which will prevent the book from taking rank as a first-class story, though it will interest and profit certain minds, who would not prize it more highly if it were thoroughly cultivated and refined.

A moment's thought would have prevented mistakes in local customs, such as introducing a hay-tedder into farming operations forty years ago, and making our Puritan forefathers go up to their communion, whereas they had not reverence[432] enough for the symbols to rise or kneel at their reception, but remained seated in their pews, even as their descendants do to this day.

The blunders in spelling which mar many pages of the book would disgrace a third-rate proof-reader, and we are certain the author never saw the proofs. Both paper and type are of inferior quality. These faults are the more inexcusable, as the beautiful covering, with the choice gilded medallion and precious motto, led us to look for something very nice in the way of print and paper.

Wonders of Italian Art. By Louis Viardot. Illustrated. New York: Charles Scribner & Co. 1870.

An interesting book spoiled by careless expressions and incorrect assertions. Such expressions as "the worship of images," (page 28,) instead of "veneration," etc.; the assertion that the "policy of the popes always was to foster disunion in Italy, in order to profit by it," (page 35,) and styling Savonarola "the Italian Luther," (page 111,) make it unfit for introduction among Catholics. It is to be regretted that a book like this, containing as it does so much that is great and good in the history of Catholic art in Italy, should be marred by statements which are not historically true, and have nothing whatever to do with such a work.

It is quite refreshing, after the floods of impassioned sensational novels that have poured from the press on all sides for the last ten or fifteen years, to know that there is a call for the purity and high-toned sentiment that flow from the pen of Miss Aguilar.

Twenty years ago, her works afforded interest and instruction, the present volume to mothers especially, and though her children and grown people are sometimes stiff and priggish, and are wont to talk like books, they are always well-bred and refined, never descending to irreverence or slang, as they too often do in stories of to-day.

It was formerly a criticism on her works, that they favored Judaism (the creed of their author) at the expense of Christianity; but no such charge can be brought against Home Influence with any truth.

This volume presents an attractive exterior, and if the works of this author take again with the novel-reading public, it will be a symptom of returning health in the community.

Missale Romanum, ex decreto sacrosancti Concilii Tridentini restitutum, S. Pii VI. jussu editum, Clementis VIII. et Urbani VIII. Papæ auctoritate recognitum, et novis missis ex indulto apostolico hucusque concessis auctum. Mechliniæ: H. Dessain.

This Missal, from the house of the Messrs. Benziger Brothers, is printed in good, clear type, pleasant to the eye; contains the last new masses enjoined by the Sacred Congregation of Rites, and is illustrated with excellent full-page engravings. It is besides, as a book, both serviceable and cheap.

The Catholic Publication Society has in press, and will publish, May twenty-fifth, a work by James Kent Stone, D.D., late President of Kenyon and Hobart Colleges, entitled, The Invitation Heeded: Reasons for a Return to Catholic Unity. As the title implies, Mr. Stone will, in this volume, give his reasons for becoming a Catholic.

Messrs. John Murphy & Co. announce as in press, The Paradise of the Earth; or, the True Means of Finding Happiness in the Religious State, according to the Rules of the Masters of Spiritual Life. Translated from the French of L'Abbé Sanson, by the Rev. F. Ignatius Sisk, of the Cistercian Community, Mount St. Bernard's Abbey. Also, Devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus. From the Italian of Secundo Franco, S.J.

A DOGMATIC DECREE ON CATHOLIC FAITH.
CONFIRMED AND PROMULGATED IN THE THIRD PUBLIC SESSION OF THE VATICAN COUNCIL, HELD IN ST. PETER'S, ROME, ON LOW-SUNDAY, APRIL 24, 1870.

	[This translation has been carefully revised for The Catholic World by some of the bishops attending the council.]
PIVS EPISCOPVS SERVVS SERVORVM DEI SACRO APPROBANTE CONCILIO AD PERPETVAM REI MEMORIAM.	Pius, bishop, servant of the servants of god, with the approbation of the holy council, for a perpetual remembrance hereof.
Dei Filius et generis humani Redemptor Dominus Noster Iesus Christus, ad Patrem coelestem rediturus, cum Ecclesia sua in terris militante, omnibus diebus usque ad consummationem saeculi futurum se esse promisit. Quare dilectae sponsae praesto esse, adsistere docenti, operanti benedicere, periclitanti opem ferre nullo unquam tempore destitit. Haec vero salutaris eius providentia, cum ex aliis beneficiis innumeris continenter apparuit, tum iis manifestissime comperta est fructibus, qui orbi christiano e Conciliis oecumenicis ac nominatim e Tridentino, iniquis licet temporibus celebrato, amplissimi provenerunt. Hinc enim sanctissima religionis dogmata pressius definita uberiusque exposita, errores damnati atque cohibiti; hinc ecclesiastica disciplina restituta firmiusque sancita, promotum in Clero scientiae et pietatis studium, parata adolescentibus ad sacram militiam educandis collegia, christiani denique populi mores et accuratiore fidelium eruditione et frequentiore sacramentorum usu instaurati. Hinc praeterea arctior membrorum cum visibili Capite communio, universoque corpori Christi mystico additus vigor; hinc religiosae multiplicatae familiae, aliaque christianae pietatis instituta; hinc ille etiam assiduus et usque ad sanguinis effusionem constans ardor in Christi regno late per orbem propagando.	Our Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of God and the Redeemer of mankind, when about to return to his heavenly Father, promised that he would be with his church, militant on earth, all days even to the consummation of the world. Wherefore, he has never at any time failed to be with his beloved spouse, to assist her in her teaching, to bless her in her labors, to aid her in danger. And this his saving providence, unceasingly displayed in countless other blessings, is most clearly made manifest by those very abundant fruits which have come to the Christian world from œcumenical councils, and especially from that of Trent, although it was held in evil days. For thereby the holy doctrines of religion were more distinctly defined and more fully set forth; errors were condemned and restrained; thereby ecclesiastical discipline was restored and more firmly established; zeal for learning and piety was promoted among the clergy; and colleges were provided for the training of young men for the sacred ministry; and finally the practice of Christian morality was restored among the people by more careful instruction and a more frequent use of the sacraments. Hence arose, likewise, a closer union of the members with the visible head, and renewed strength to the entire mystical body of Christ; hence the increased number of religious communities, and of other institutions of Christian piety; hence, also, that unceasing zeal, constant even to martyrdom, to spread the kingdom of Christ throughout the world.
Verumtamen haec aliaque insignia emolumenta, quae per ultimam maxime oecumenicam Synodum divina clementia Ecclesiae largita est, dum grato, quo par est, animo recolimus; acerbum compescere haud possumus dolorem ob mala gravissima, inde potissimum orta, quod eiusdem sacrosanctae Synodi apud permultos vel auctoritas contempta, vel sapientissima neglecta fuere decreta.	Nevertheless, while with becoming gratitude we call to mind these and the many other remarkable benefits which the goodness of God has bestowed on the church chiefly through the last œcumenical council, we cannot suppress our bitter sorrow for the grievous evils which have chiefly sprung from many having despised the authority of the aforesaid sacred council, or having neglected to observe its most wise decrees.
Nemo enim ignorat, haereses, quas Tridentini Patres proscripserunt, dum, reiecto divino Ecclesiae magisterio, res ad religionem spectantes privati cuiusvis iudicio permitterentur, in sectas paullatim dissolutas esse multiplices, quibus inter se dissentientibus et concertantibus, omnis tandem in Christum fides apud non paucos labefactata est. Itaque ipsa sacra Biblia, quae antea christianae doctrinae unicus fons et iudex asserebantur, iam non pro divinis haberi, imo mythicis commentis accenseri coeperunt.	For it is known to all that the heresies which the fathers of Trent condemned, and which rejected the divine authority of the church to teach, and instead, subjected all things belonging to religion to the judgment of each individual, were, in course of time, broken up into many sects; and that, as these differed and disputed with each other, it came to pass, at length, that all belief in Christ was overthrown in the minds of not a few. And so, the sacred Scriptures themselves, which they had at first held up as the only source and judge of Christian doctrine, were no longer held as divine, but, on the contrary, began to be counted among myths and fables.
Tum nata est et late nimis per orbem vagata illa rationalismi seu naturalismi doctrina, quae religioni christianae utpote supernaturali instituto per omnia adversans, summo studio molitur, ut Christo, qui solus Dominus et Salvator noster est, a mentibus humanis, a vita et moribus populorum excluso, merae quod vocant rationis vel naturae regnum stabiliatur. Relicta autem proiectaque christiana religione, negato vero Deo et Christo eius, prolapsa tandem est multorum mens in pantheismi, materialismi, atheismi barathrum, ut iam ipsam rationalem naturam, omnemque iusti rectique normam negantes, ima humanae societatis fundamenta diruere connitantur.	Then arose and spread too widely through the world that doctrine of rationalism or naturalism, which, attacking Christianity at every point as being a supernatural institution, labors with all its might to exclude Christ, who is our only Lord and Saviour, from the minds of men and from the life and the morals of nations; and so to establish, instead, the reign of mere reason, as they call it, or of nature. And thus, having forsaken and cast away the Christian religion, having denied the true God and his Christ, the minds of many have at last fallen into the abyss of pantheism, materialism, and atheism; so that now repudiating the reasoning nature of man, and every rule of right and wrong, they are laboring to overthrow the very foundations of human society.
Hac porro impietate circumquaque grassante, infeliciter contigit, ut plures etiam e catholicae Ecclesiae filiis a via verae pietatis aberrarent, in iisque, diminutis paullatim veritatibus, sensus catholicus attenuaretur. Variis enim ac peregrinis doctrinis abducti, naturam et gratiam, scientiam humanam et fidem divinam perperam commiscentes, genuinum sensum dogmatum, quem tenet ac docet Sancta Mater Ecclesia, depravare, integritatemque et sinceritatem fidei in periculum adducere comperiuntur.	Moreover, as this impious doctrine is spreading everywhere, it has unfortunately come to pass that not a few even of the children of the Catholic Church have wandered from the way of true piety; and as the truth gradually decayed in their minds, the catholic sentiment grew fainter in them. For, being led away by various and strange doctrines, and wrongly confounding nature and grace, human science and divine faith, they have perverted the true sense of the doctrines which our holy mother the church holds and teaches, and have endangered the integrity and the purity of faith.
Quibus omnibus perspectis, fieri qui potest, ut non commoveantur intima Ecclesiae viscera? Quemadmodum enim Deus vult omnes homines salvos fieri, et ad agnitionem veritatis venire; quemadmodum Christus venit, ut salvum faceret, quod perierat, et filios Dei, qui erant dispersi, congregaret in unum: ita Ecclesia, a Deo populorum mater et magistra constituta, omnibus debitricem se novit, ac lapsos erigere, labantes sustinere, revertentes amplecti, confirmare bonos et ad meliora provehere parata semper et intenta est. Quapropter nullo tempore a Dei veritate, quae sanat omnia, testanda et praedicanda quiescere potest, sibi dictum esse non ignorans: Spiritus meus, qui est in te, et verba mea, quae posui in ore tuo, non recedent de ore tuo amodo et usque in sempiternum.[140]	Now, looking at all these things, how can the church fail to be moved in her innermost heart? For inasmuch as God wills all men to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth, inasmuch as Christ came to save that which was lost, and to gather together in one the children of God that were dispersed; so the church, established by God as the mother and mistress of nations, feels that she is a debtor unto all, and is ever ready and earnest to raise up the fallen, to strengthen the weak, to take to her bosom those that return, and to confirm the good, and carry them on to better things. Wherefore, at no time can she abstain from bearing witness to and preaching the all-healing truth of God; knowing that it has been said to her, "My spirit that is in thee, and my words that I have put in thy mouth, shall not depart out of thy mouth, from henceforth and for ever." (Isa. lix. 21.)
Nos itaque, inhaerentes Praedecessorum Nostrorum vestigiis, pro supremo Nostro Apostolico munere veritatem catholicam docere ac tueri, perversasque doctrinas reprobare nunquam intermisimus. Nunc autem sedentibus Nobiscum et iudicantibus universi orbis Episcopis, in hanc oecumenicam Synodum auctoritate Nostra in Spiritu Sancto congregatis, innixi Dei verbo scripto et tradito, prout ab Ecclesia catholica sancte custoditum et genuine expositum accepimus, ex hac Petri Cathedra in conspectu omnium salutarem Christi doctrinam profiteri et declarare constituimus, adversis erroribus potestate nobis a Deo tradita proscriptis atque damnatis.	Wherefore, following in the footsteps of our predecessors, and in fulfilment of our supreme apostolic duty, we have never omitted to teach and to protect the catholic truth, and to reprove perverse teachings. And now, the bishops of the whole world being gathered together in this œcumenical council by our authority, and in the Holy Ghost, and sitting therein and judging with us, we, guided by the word of God, both written and handed down by tradition, as we have received it, sacredly preserved and truly set forth by the Catholic Church, have determined to profess and declare from this chair of Peter, and in the sight of all, the saving doctrine of Christ; and in the power given to us from God to proscribe and condemn the opposing errors.
CAPUT I. DE DEO RERUM OMNIUM CREATORE.	CHAPTER I. OF GOD THE CREATOR OF ALL THINGS.
Sancta Catholica Apostolica Romana Ecclesia credit et confitetur, unum esse Deum verum et vivum, Creatorem ac Dominum coeli et terrae, omnipotentem, aeternum, immensum, incomprehensibilem, intellectu ac voluntate omnique perfectione infinitum; qui cum sit una singularis, simplex omnino et incommutabilis substantia spiritualis, praedicandus est re et essentia a mundo distinctus, in se et ex se beatissimus, et super omnia, quae praeter ipsum sunt et concipi possunt, ineffabiliter excelsus.	The holy, Catholic, Apostolic, Roman Church believes and confesses that there is one true and living God, Creator and Lord of heaven and earth, almighty, eternal, immense, incomprehensible, infinite in understanding and will and in all perfection; who, being a spiritual substance, one, single, absolutely simple and unchangeable, must be held to be, in reality and in essence, distinct from the world, in himself and of himself perfectly happy, and unspeakably exalted above all things that are or can be conceived besides himself.
Hic solus verus Deus bonitate sua et omnipotenti virtute non ad augendam suam beatitudinem, nec ad acquirendam, sed ad manifestandam perfectionem suam per bona, quae creaturis impertitur, liberrimo consilio simul ab initio temporis utramque de nihilo condidit creaturam, spiritualem et corporalem, angelicam videlicet et mundanam, ac deinde humanam quasi communem ex spiritu et corpore constitutam [141]. Universa vero, quae condidit, Deus providentia sua tuetur atque gubernat, attingens a fine usque ad finem fortiter, et disponens omnia suaviter [142]. Omnia enim nuda et aperta sunt oculis eius [143], ea etiam, quae libera creaturarum actione futura sunt.	This one only true God, of his own goodness and almighty power, not to increase his own happiness, nor to acquire for himself perfection, but in order to manifest the same by means of the good things which he imparts to creatures, did, of his own most free counsel, "from the beginning of time make alike out of nothing two created natures, a spiritual one and a corporeal one, the angelic, to wit, and the earthly; and afterward he made the human nature, as partaking of both, being composed of spirit and body." (Fourth Lateran Council, ch. I. Firmiter.) Moreover, God, by his providence, protects and governs all things which he has made, reaching from end to end mightily, and ordering all things sweetly. (Wisdom viii. 1.) For all things are naked and open to his eyes, (Heb. iv. 13,) even those which are to come to pass by the free action of creatures.
CAPUT II. DE REVELATIONE.	CHAPTER II. OF REVELATION.
Eadem Sancta Mater Ecclesia tenet et docet, Deum, rerum omnium principium et finem, naturali humanae rationis lumine e rebus creatis certo cognosci posse; invisibilia enim ipsius, a creatura mundi, per ea quae facta sunt, intellecta, conspiciuntur [144]: attamen placuisse, eius sapientiae et bonitati, alia, eaque supernaturali via se ipsum ac aeterna voluntatis suae decreta humano generi revelare, dicente Apostolo: Multifariam, multisque modis olim Deus loquens patribus in Prophetis: novissime, diebus istis locutus est nobis in Filio [145]. Huic divinae revelationi tribuendum quidem est, ut ea, quae in rebus divinis humanae rationi per se impervia non sunt, in praesenti quoque generis humani conditione ab omnibus expedite, firma certitudine et nullo admixto errore cognosci possint. Non hac tamen de causa revelatio absolute necessaria dicenda est, sed quia Deus ex infinita bonitate sua ordinavit hominem ad finem supernaturalem, ad participanda scilicet bona divina, quae humanae mentis intelligentiam omnino superant; siquidem oculus non vidit, nec auris audivit, nec in cor hominis ascendit, quae praeparavit Deus iis, qui diligunt ilium.[146]	The same holy Mother Church holds and teaches that God, the beginning and end of all things, can be known with certainty through created things, by the natural light of human reason; "for the invisible things of him, from the creation of the world, are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made," (Romans i. 20;) but that nevertheless it has pleased his wisdom and goodness to reveal to mankind, by another and that a supernatural way, himself and the eternal decrees of his will; even as the apostle says, "God who at sundry times and in divers manners spoke, in times past, to the fathers by the prophets, last of all, in these days hath spoken to us by his Son." (Heb. i. 1, 2.) To this divine revelation is it to be ascribed that things regarding God, which are not of themselves beyond the grasp of human reason, may, even in the present condition of the human race, be known by all, readily, with full certainty and without any admixture of error. Yet not on this account is revelation absolutely necessary, but because God, of his infinite goodness, has ordained man for a supernatural end, for the participation, that is, of divine goods, which altogether surpass the understanding of the human mind; for "eye hath not seen nor ear heard, neither hath it entered into the heart of man, what things God hath prepared for them that love him." (1 Cor. ii. 9.)
Haec porro supernaturalis revelatio, secundum universalis Ecclesiae fidem, a sancta Tridentina Synodo declaratam, continetur in libris scriptis et sine scripto traditionibus, quae ipsius Christi ore ab Apostolis acceptae, aut ab ipsis Apostolis Spiritu Sancto dictante quasi per manus traditae, ad nos usque pervenerunt.[147] Qui quidem veteris et novi Testamenti libri integri cum omnibus suis partibus, prout in eiusdem Concilii decreto recensentur, et in veteri vulgata latina editione habentur, pro sacris et canonicis suscipiendi sunt. Eos vero Ecclesia pro sacris et canonicis habet, non ideo quod sola humana industria concinnati, sua deinde auctoritate sint approbati; nec ideo dumtaxat, quod revelationem sine errore contineant; sed propterea quod Spiritu Sancto inspirante conscripti Deum habent auctorem, atque ut tales ipsi Ecclesiae traditi sunt.	Now, this supernatural revelation, according to the belief of the universal church, as declared by the holy Council of Trent, is contained in the written books and in the unwritten traditions which have come to us as received orally from Christ himself by the apostles, or handed down from the apostles taught by the Holy Ghost. (Council of Trent. Session iv. Decree on the Canon of Scripture.) And these books of the Old and New Testament are to be received as sacred and canonical, in their integrity and with all their parts, as they are enumerated in the decree of the same council, and are had in the old Vulgate Latin edition. But the church does hold them as sacred and canonical, not for the reason that they have been compiled by human industry alone, and afterward approved by her authority; nor only because they contain revelation without error, but because, having been written under the inspiration of the Holy Ghost, they have God for their author, and as such have been delivered to the church herself.
Quoniam vero, quae sancta Tridentina Synodus de interpretatione divinae Scripturae ad coërcenda petulantia ingenia salubriter decrevit, a quibusdam hominibus prave exponuntur, Nos, idem decretum renovantes, hanc illius mentem esse declaramus, ut in rebus fidei et morum, ad aedificationem doctrinae Christianae pertinentium, is pro vero sensu sacrae Scripturae habendus sit, quem tenuit ac tenet Sancta Mater Ecclesia, cuius est iudicare de vero sensu et interpretatione Scripturarum sanctarum; atque ideo nemini licere contra hunc sensum, aut etiam contra unanimem consensum Patrum ipsam Scripturam sacram interpretari.	And since those things which the Council of Trent has declared by wholesome decrees concerning the interpretation of divine Scripture, in order to restrain restless spirits, are explained by some in a wrong sense; we, renewing the same decree, declare this to be the mind of the synod, that, in matters of faith and morals which pertain to the edification of Christian doctrine, that is to be held as the true sense of the sacred Scripture which holy mother church, to whom it belongs to judge of the true sense and interpretation of the sacred Scriptures, has held and holds; and therefore that no one may interpret the sacred Scripture contrary to this sense, or contrary to the unanimous consent of the fathers.
CAPUT III. DE FIDE.	CHAPTER III. OF FAITH.
Quum homo a Deo tanquam Creatore et Domino suo totus dependeat, et ratio creata increatae Veritati penitus subiecta sit, plenum revelanti Deo intellectus et voluntatis obsequium fide praestare tenemur. Hanc vero fidem, quae humanae salutis initium est, Ecclesia catholica profitetur, virtutem esse supernaturalem, qua, Dei aspirante et adiuvante gratia, ab eo revelata vera esse credimus, non propter intrinsecam rerum veritatem naturali rationis lumine perspectam, sed propter auctoritatem ipsius Dei revelantis, qui nec falli nec fallere potest. Est enim fides, testante Apostolo, sperandarum substantia rerum, argumentum non apparentium.[148]	Forasmuch as man totally depends on God as his Creator and Lord, and created reason is wholly subject to the uncreated truth, therefore we are bound, when God makes a revelation, to render to him the full obedience of our understanding and will, by faith. And this faith, which is the beginning of man's salvation, the church declares to be a supernatural virtue, whereby, under the inspiration and aid of God's grace, we believe to be true the things revealed by him, not for their intrinsic truth seen by the natural light of reason, but for the authority of God revealing them, who can neither deceive nor be deceived. For faith, as the apostle witnesseth, is the substance of things to be hoped for, the evidence of things that appear not. (Heb. xi. 1.)
Ut nihilominus fidei nostrae obsequium rationi consentaneum esset, voluit Deus cum internis Spiritus Sancti auxiliis externa iungi revelationis suae argumenta, facta scilicet divina, atque imprimis miracula et prophetias, quae cum Dei omnipotentiam et infinitam scientiam luculenter commonstrent, divinae revelationis signa sunt certissima et omnium intelligentiae accommodata. Quare turn Moyses et Prophetae, tum ipse maxime Christus Dominus multa et manifestissima miracula et prophetias ediderunt; et de Apostolis legimus: Illi autem profecti praedicaverunt ubique, Domino co-operante, et sermonem confirmante, sequentibus signis.[149] Et rursum scriptum est: Habemus firmiorem propheticum sermonem, cui bene facitis attendentes quasi lucernae lucenti in caliginoso loco.[150]	To the end, nevertheless, that the obedience of our faith might be agreeable to reason, God willed to join unto the interior grace of the Holy Spirit external proofs of his revelation, to wit, divine works, and chiefly miracles and prophecies, which, as they manifestly show forth the omnipotence and the infinite knowledge of God, are proofs most certain of divine revelation, and suited to the understanding of all. Wherefore both Moses and the prophets, and above all, Christ our Lord himself, wrought many and most evident miracles, and uttered prophecies; and of the apostles we read, "But they going forth preached everywhere: the Lord working withal, and confirming the word with signs that followed." (Mark xvi. 20.) And again it is written, "We have the more firm prophetical word; whereunto you do well to attend, as to a light that shineth in a dark place." (2 Pet. i. 19.)
Licet autem fidei assensus nequaquam sit motus animi caecus: nemo tamen evangelicae praedicationi consentire potest, sicut oportet ad salutem consequendam, absque illuminatione et inspiratione Spiritus Sancti, qui dat omnibus suavitatem in consentiendo et credendo veritati.[151] Quare fides ipsa in se, etiamsi per charitatem non operetur, donum Dei est, et actus eius est opus ad salutem pertinens, quo homo liberam praestat ipsi Deo obedientiam, gratiae eius, cui resistere posset, consentiendo et coöperando.	Yet although the assent of faith is not by any means a blind movement of the mind; nevertheless no one can believe the preaching of the Gospel in such wise as behoveth to salvation without the light and inspiration of the Holy Ghost, who giveth unto all sweetness in yielding to the truth and believing it. (2 Council of Orange, Can. 7.) Wherefore faith in itself, even though it be not working by charity, is a gift of God; and an act of faith is a work tending to salvation, whereby man renders free obedience to God himself, consenting to and coöperating with his grace, which he hath power to resist.
Porro fide divina et catholica ea omnia credenda sunt, quae in verbo Dei scripto vel tradito continentur, et ab Ecclesia sive solemni iudicio sive ordinario et universali magisterio tamquam divinitus revelata credenda proponuntur.	Now, all those things are to be believed of divine and catholic faith which are contained in the word of God, whether written or handed down by tradition; and which the church, either by solemn decree or by her ordinary and universal teaching, proposes for belief as revealed by God.
Quoniam vero sine fide impossibile est placere Deo, et ad filiorum eius consortium pervenire; ideo nemini unquam sine illa contigit iustificatio, nec ullus, nisi in ea perseveraverit usque in finem, vitam aeternam assequetur. Ut autem officio veram fidem amplectendi, in eaque constanter perseverandi satisfacere possemus, Deus per Filium suum unigenitum Ecclesiam instituit, suaeque institutionis manifestis notis instruxit, ut ea tamquam custos et magistra verbi revelati ab omnibus posset agnosci. Ad solam enim catholicam Ecclesiam ea pertinent omnia, quae ad evidentem fidei christianae credibilitatem tam multa et tam mira divinitus sunt disposita. Quin etiam Ecclesia per se ipsa, ob suam nempe admirabilem propagationem, eximiam sanctitatem et inexhaustam in omnibus bonis foecunditatem, ob catholicam unitatem, invictamque stabilitatem, magnum quoddam et perpetuum est motivum credibilitatis et divinae suae legationis testimonium irrefragabile.	And whereas without faith it is impossible to please God, and to come to the fellowship of his children, therefore hath no one at any time been justified without faith; nor shall any one, unless he persevere therein unto the end, attain everlasting life. And in order that we might be able to fulfil our duty of embracing the true faith, and of steadfastly persevering therein, God, through his only-begotten Son, did establish the church and place upon her manifest marks of his institution, that all men might be able to recognize her as the guardian and teacher of his revealed word. For only to the Catholic Church do all those signs belong, which have been divinely disposed, so many in number and so wonderful in character, for the purpose of making evident the credibility of the Christian faith; nay more, the very church herself, in view of her wonderful propagation, her eminent holiness, and her exhaustless fruitfulness in all that is good, her catholic unity, her unshaken stability, offers a great and evident claim to belief, and an undeniable proof of her divine commission.
Quo fit, ut ipsa veluti signum levatum in nationes,[152] et ad se invitet, qui nondum crediderunt, et filios suos certiores faciat, firmissimo niti fundamento fidem, quam profitentur. Cui quidem testimonio efficax subsidium accedit ex superna virtute. Etenim benignissimus Dominus et errantes gratia sua excitat atque adiuvat, ut ad agnitionem veritatis venire possint; et eos, quos de tenebris transtulit in admirabile lumen suum, in hoc eodem lumine ut perseverent, gratia sua confirmat, non deserens, nisi deseratur. Quocirca minime par est conditio eorum, qui per coeleste fidei donum catholicae veritati adhaeserunt, atque eorum, qui ducti opinionibus humanis, falsam religionem sectantur; illi enim, qui fidem sub Ecclesiae magisterio susceperunt, nullam unquam habere possunt iustam causam mutandi, aut in dubium fidem eamdem revocandi. Quae cum ita sint, gratias agentes Deo Patri, qui dignos nos fecit in partem sortis sanctorum in lumine, tantam ne negligamus salutem, sed aspicientes in auctorem fidei et consummatorem Iesum, teneamus spei nostrae confessionem indeclinabilem.	Whence it is that she, as a standard set up unto the nations, (Is. xi. 12,) at the same time calls to herself those who have not yet believed, and shows to her children that the faith which they hold rests on a most solid foundation. And to this, her testimony, effectual aid is supplied by power from above. For the Lord, infinitely merciful, on the one hand stirs up by his grace and helps those who are in error, that they may be able to come to the knowledge of the truth; and, on the other hand, those whom he hath transferred from darkness into his marvellous light he confirms by his grace, that they may persevere in that same light, never abandoning them unless he be first by them abandoned. Wherefore, totally unlike is the condition of those who, by the heavenly gift of faith, have embraced the catholic truth, and of those who, led by human opinions, are following a false religion; for they who have received the faith under the teaching of the church can never have a just reason to change that faith or call it into doubt. Wherefore, giving thanks to God the Father, who hath made us worthy to be partakers of the lot of the saints in light, let us not neglect so great salvation, but looking on Jesus, the author and finisher of our faith, let us hold fast the confession of our hope without wavering.
CAPUT IV. DE FIDE ET RATIONE.	CHAPTER IV. OF FAITH AND REASON.
Hoc quoque perpetuus Ecclesiae catholicae consensus tenuit et tenet, duplicem esse ordinem cognitionis, non solum principio, sed obiecto etiam distinctum: principio quidem, quia in altero naturali ratione, in altero fide divina cognoscimus; obiecto autem, quia praeter ea, ad quae naturalis ratio pertingere potest, credenda nobis proponuntur mysteria in Deo abscondita, quae, nisi revelata divinitus, innotescere non possunt. Quocirca Apostolus, qui a gentibus Deum per ea, quae facta sunt, cognitum esse testatur, disserens tamen de gratia et veritate, quae per Iesum Christum facta est,[153] pronuntiat: Loquimur Dei sapientiam in mysterio, quae abscondita est, quam praedestinavit Deus ante saecula in gloriam nostram, quam nemo principum huius saeculi cognovit: nobis autem revelavit Deus per Spiritum suum: Spiritus enim omnia scrutatur, etiam profunda Dei.[154] Et ipse Unigenitus confitetur Patri, quia abscondit haec a sapientibus et prudentibus, et revelavit ea parvulis.[155]	Moreover, the Catholic Church has ever held, as she now holds, that there exists a two-fold order of knowledge, each of which is distinct from the other both as to its principle and as to its object. As to its principle, because in the one we know by natural reason, in the other by divine faith; as to the object, because, besides those things to which natural reason can attain, there are proposed to our belief mysteries hidden in God which, unless by him revealed, cannot come to our knowledge. Wherefore the same apostle, who beareth witness that God was known to the Gentiles by the things that are made, yet when speaking of the grace and truth that came by Jesus Christ, (John i. 17.) says, "We speak the wisdom of God in a mystery, a wisdom which is hidden; which God ordained before the world unto our glory; which none of the princes of this world knew; but which God hath revealed to us by his Spirit. For the Spirit searcheth all things, yea the deep things of God." (1 Cor. ii. 7, 8, 10.) And the only-begotten Son thanks the Father that he has hid these things from the wise and prudent, and has revealed them to little ones. (Matt. xi. 25.)
Ac ratio quidem, fide illustrata, cum sedulo, pie et sobrie quaerit, aliquam, Deo dante, mysteriorum intelligentiam eamque fructuosissimam assequitur, tum ex eorum, quae naturaliter cognoscit, analogia, tum e mysteriorum ipsorum nexu inter se et cum fine hominis ultimo; nunquam tamen idonea redditur ad ea perspicienda instar veritatum, qua proprium ipsius obiectum constituunt. Divina enim mysteria suapte natura intellectum creatum sic excedunt, ut etiam revelatione tradita et fide suscepta, ipsius tamen fidei velamine contecta et quadam quasi caligine obvoluta maneant, quamdiu in hac mortali vita peregrinamur a Domino: per fidem enim ambulamus, et non per speciem.[156]	Reason, indeed, enlightened by faith and seeking with diligence and godly sobriety, may, by God's gift, come to some understanding, limited in degree, but most wholesome in its effects, of mysteries, both from the analogy of things which are naturally known, and from the connection of the mysteries themselves with one another and with man's last end. But never can reason be rendered capable of thoroughly understanding mysteries, as it does those truths which form its proper object. For God's mysteries, of their very nature, so far surpass the reach of created intellect, that even when taught by revelation, and received by faith, they remain covered by faith itself as by a veil, and shrouded as it were in darkness as long as in this mortal life "we are absent from the Lord; for we walk by faith, and not by sight." (2 Cor. v. 6, 7.)
Verum etsi fides sit supra rationem, nulla tamen unquam inter fidem et rationem vera dissensio esse potest: cum idem Deus, qui mysteria revelat et fidem infundit, animo humano rationis lumen indiderit; Deus autem negare seipsum non possit, nec verum vero unquam contradicere. Inanis autem huius contradictionis species inde potissimum oritur, quod vel fidei dogmata ad mentem Ecclesiae intellecta et exposita non fuerint, vel opinionum commenta pro rationis effatis habeantur. Omnem igitur assertionem veritati illuminatae fidei contrariam omnino falsam esse definimus.[157] Porro Ecclesia, quae una cum apostolico munere docendi, mandatum accepit, fidei depositum costodiendi, ius etiam et officium divinitus habet falsi nominis scientiam proscribendi, ne quis decipiatur per philosophiam, et inanem fallaciam.[158] Quapropter omnes christiani fideles huiusmodi opiniones, quae fidei doctrinae contrariae esse cognoscuntur, maxime si ab Ecclesia reprobatae fuerint, non solum prohibentur tanquam legitimas scientiae conclusiones defendere, sed pro erroribus potius, qui fallacem veritatis speciem prae se ferant, habere tenentur omnino.	But although faith be above reason, there never can be a real disagreement between them, since the same God who reveals mysteries and infuses faith has given to man's soul the light of reason; and God cannot deny himself nor can one truth ever contradict another. Wherefore the empty shadow of such contradiction arises chiefly from this, that either the doctrines of faith are not understood and set forth as the church really holds them, or that the vain devices and opinions of men are mistaken for the dictates of reason. We therefore definitively pronounce false every assertion which is contrary to the enlightened truth of faith. (V. Lateran Counc. Bull Apostolici Regiminis.) Moreover the church, which, together with her apostolic office of teaching, is charged also with the guardianship of the deposit of faith, holds likewise from God the right and the duty to condemn "knowledge falsely so called," (1 Tim. vi. 20,) "lest any man be cheated by philosophy and vain deceit." (Col. ii. 8.) Hence all the Christian faithful are not only forbidden to defend as legitimate conclusions of science those opinions which are known to be contrary to the doctrine of faith, especially when condemned by the church, but are rather absolutely bound to hold them for errors wearing a deceitful appearance of truth.
Neque solum fides et ratio inter se dissidere nunquam possunt, sed opem quoque sibi mutuam ferunt, cum recta ratio fidei fundamenta demonstret, eiusque lumine illustrata rerum divinarum scientiam excolat; fides vero rationem ab erroribus liberet ac tueatur, eamque multiplici cognitione instruat. Quapropter tantum abest, ut Ecclesia humanarum artium et disciplinarum culturae obsistat, ut hanc multis modis iuvet atque promoveat. Non enim commoda ab iis ad hominum vitam dimanantia aut ignorat aut despicit; fatetur imo, eas, quemadmodum a Deo, scientiarum Domino, profectae sunt, ita si rite pertractentur, ad Deum, iuvante eius gratia, perducere. Nec sane ipsa vetat, ne huiusmodi disciplinae in suo quaeque ambitu propriis utantur principiis et propria methodo; sed iustam hanc libertatem agnoscens, id sedulo cavet, ne divinae doctrinae repugnando errores in se suscipiant, aut fines proprios transgressae, ea, quae sunt fidei, occupent et perturbent.	Not only is it impossible for faith and reason ever to contradict each other, but they rather afford each other mutual assistance. For right reason establishes the foundations of faith and by the aid of its light cultivates the science of divine things; and faith, on the other hand, frees and preserves reason from errors, and enriches it with knowledge of many kinds. So far, then, is the church from opposing the culture of human arts and sciences, that she rather aids and promotes it in many ways. For she is not ignorant of, nor does she despise the advantages which flow from them to the life of men; on the contrary, she acknowledges that, as they sprang from God the Lord of knowledge, so, if they be rightly pursued, they will, through the aid of his grace, lead to God. Nor does she forbid any of those sciences the use of its own principles and its own method within its own proper sphere; but recognizing this reasonable freedom, she only takes care that they may not by contradicting God's teaching, fall into errors, or, overstepping their due limits, invade and throw into confusion the domain of faith.
Neque enim fidei doctrina, quam Deus revelavit, velut philosophicum inventum proposita est humanis ingeniis perficienda, sed tanquam divinum depositum Christi Sponsae tradita, fideliter custodienda et infallibiliter declaranda. Hinc sacrorum quoque dogmatum is sensus perpetuo est retinendus, quem semel declaravit Sancta Mater Ecclesia, nec unquam ab eo sensu, altioris intelligentiae specie et nomine, recedendum. Crescat igitur et multum vehementerque proficiat, tam singulorum, quam omnium, tam unius hominis, quam totius Ecclesiae, aetatum ac saeculorum gradibus, intelligentia, scientia, sapientia: sed in suo dumtaxat genere, in eodem scilicet dogmate, eodem sensu, eademque sententia.[159]	For the doctrine of faith revealed by God has not been proposed, like some philosophical discovery, to be made perfect by human ingenuity; but it has been delivered to the spouse of Christ as a divine deposit to be faithfully guarded and unerringly set forth. Hence all tenets of holy faith are to be explained always according to the sense and meaning of the church, nor is it ever lawful to depart therefrom, under pretence or color of more enlightened explanation. Therefore as generations and centuries roll on, let the understanding, knowledge, and wisdom of each and every one, of individuals and of the whole church, grow apace and increase exceedingly, yet only in its kind; that is to say, retaining pure and inviolate the sense and meaning and belief of the same doctrine. (Vincent of Lerins. Common. No. 28.)
CANONES. I. DE DEO RERVM OMNIVM CREATORE.	CANONS. I. OF GOD THE CREATOR OF ALL THINGS.
1. Si quis unum verum Deum visibilium et invisibilium Creatorem et Dominum negaverit; anathema sit.	1. If any one shall deny the one true God, Creator and Lord of things visible and invisible; let him be anathema.
2. Si quis praeter materiam nihil esse affirmare non erubuerit; anathema sit.	2. If any one shall unblushingly affirm, that besides matter nothing else exists; let him be anathema.
3. Si quis dixerit, unam eandemque esse Dei et rerum omnium substantiam vel essentiam; anathema sit.	3. If any one shall say that the substance or essence of God, and of all things, is one and the same; let him be anathema.
4. Si quis dixerit, res finitas, tum corporeas tum spirituales, aut saltem spirituales, e divina substantia emanasse;	4. If any one shall say that finite things, both corporeal and spiritual, or at least spiritual things, are emanations of the divine substance;
aut divinam essentiam sui manifestatione vel evolutione fieri omnia;	Or that the divine essence by manifestation or development of itself becomes all things;
aut denique Deum esse ens universale seu indefinitum, quod sese determinando constituat rerum universitatem in genera, species et individua distinctam; anathema sit.	Or, finally, that God is universal or indefinite Being, which, in determining itself, constitutes all things, divided into genera, species, and individuals; let him be anathema.
5. Si quis non confiteatur, mundum, resque omnes, quae in eo continentur, et spirituales et materiales, secundum totam suam substantiam a Deo ex nihilo esse productas;	5. If any one do not acknowledge that the world, and all things which it contains, both spiritual and material, were produced, in all their substance, by God, out of nothing;
aut Deum dixerit non voluntate ab omni necessitate libera, sed tam necessario creasse, quam necessario amat seipsum;	Or shall say that God created them, not of his own will, free from all necessity, but through a necessity such as that whereby he loves himself;
aut mundum ad Dei gloriam conditum esse negaverit; anathema sit.	Or shall deny that the world was created for the glory of God; let him be anathema.
II. DE REVELATIONE.	II. OF REVELATION.
1. Si quis dixerit, Deum unum et verum, Creatorem et Dominum nostrum, per ea, quae facta sunt, naturali rationis humanae lumine certo cognosci non posse; anathema sit.	1. If any one shall say that certain knowledge of the one true God, our Creator and Lord, cannot be attained by the natural light of human reason through the things that are made; let him be anathema.
2. Si quis dixerit, fieri non posse, aut non expedire, ut per revelationem divinam homo de Deo, cultuque ei exhibendo edoceatur; anathema sit.	2. If any one shall say that it is impossible, or inexpedient, for man to be instructed by means of divine revelation, in those things that concern God and the worship to be rendered to him; let him be anathema.
3. Si quis dixerit, hominem ad cognitionem et perfectionem, quae naturalem superet, divinitus evehi non posse, sed ex seipso ad omnis tandem veri et boni possessionem iugi profectu pertingere posse et debere; anathema sit.	3. If any one shall say that man cannot, by the power of God, be raised to a knowledge and perfection which is above that of nature; but that he can and ought of his own efforts, by means of constant progress, to arrive at last to the possession of all truth and goodness; let him be anathema.
4. Si quis sacrae Scripturae libros integros cum omnibus suis partibus, prout illos sancta Tridentina Synodus recensuit, pro sacris et canonicis non susceperit, aut eos divinitus inspiratos esse negaverit; anathema sit.	4. If any one shall refuse to receive for sacred and canonical the books of holy Scripture in their integrity, with all their parts, according as they were enumerated by the holy Council of Trent; Or shall deny that they are inspired by God; let him be anathema.
III. DE FIDE.	III. OF FAITH.
1. Si quis dixerit, rationem humanam ita independentem esse, ut fides ei a Deo imperari non possit; anathema sit.	1. If any one shall say that human reason is in such wise independent, that faith cannot be demanded of it by God; let him be anathema.
2. Si quis dixerit, fidem divinam a naturali de Deo et rebus moralibus scientia non distingui, ac propterea ad fidem divinam non requiri, ut revelata veritas propter auctoritatem Dei revelantis credatur; anathema sit.	2. If any one shall say that divine faith does not differ from a natural knowledge of God, and of moral truths; and therefore that for divine faith, it is not necessary to believe revealed truth, on the authority of God who reveals it; let him be anathema.
3. Si quis dixerit, revelationem divinam externis signis credibilem fieri non posse, ideoque sola interna cuiusque experientia aut inspiratione privata homines ad fidem moveri debere; anathema sit.	3. If any one shall say that divine revelation cannot be rendered credible by external evidences; and therefore that men should be moved to faith only by each one's interior experience or private inspiration; let him be anathema.
4. Si quis dixerit, miracula nulla fieri posse, proindeque omnes de iis narrationes, etiam in sacra Scriptura contentas, inter fabulas vel mythos ablegandas esse; aut miracula certo cognosci nunquam posse, nec iis divinam religionis christianae originem rite probari; anathema sit.	4. If any one shall say that no miracles can be wrought; and therefore that all accounts of such, even those contained in the sacred Scripture, are to be set aside as fables or myths; or that miracles can never be known with certainty, and that the divine origin of Christianity cannot be truly proved by them; let him be anathema.
5. Si quis dixerit, assensum fidei christianae non esse liberum, sed argumentis humanae rationis necessario produci; aut ad solam fidem vivam, quae per charitatem operatur, gratiam Dei necessariam esse; anathema sit.	5. If any one shall say that the assent of Christian faith is not free, but is produced necessarily by arguments of human reason; or that the grace of God is necessary only for living faith which worketh by charity; let him be anathema.
6. Si quis dixerit, parem esse conditionem fidelium atque eorum, qui ad fidem unice veram nondum pervenerunt, ita ut catholici iustam causam habere possint, fidem, quam sub Ecclesiae magisterio iam susceperunt, assensu suspenso in dubium vocandi, donec demonstrationem scientificam credibilitatis et veritatis fidei suae absolverint; anathema sit.	6. If any one shall say that the condition of the faithful, and of those who have not yet come to the only true faith, is equal, in such wise that Catholics can have just reason for withholding their assent, and calling into doubt the faith which they have received from the teaching of the church, until they shall have completed a scientific demonstration of the credibility and truth of their faith; let him be anathema.
IV. DE FIDE ET RATIONE.	IV. OF FAITH AND REASON.
1. Si quis dixerit, in revelatione divina nulla vera et proprie dicta mysteria contineri, sed universa fidei dogmata posse per rationem rite excultam e naturalibus principiis intelligi et demonstrari; anathema sit.	1. If any one shall say that divine revelation includes no mysteries, truly and properly so called; but that all the dogmas of faith may, with the aid of natural principles, be understood and demonstrated by reason duly cultivated; let him be anathema.
2. Si quis dixerit, disciplinas humanas ea cum libertate tractandas esse, ut earum assertiones, etsi doctrinae revelatae adversentur, tanquam verae retineri, neque ab Ecclesia proscribi possint; anathema sit.	2. If any one shall say that human sciences ought to be pursued in such a spirit of freedom that one may be allowed to hold, as true, their assertions, even when opposed to revealed doctrine; and that such assertions may not be condemned by the church; let him be anathema.
3. Si quis dixerit, fieri posse, ut dogmatibus ab Ecclesia propositis, aliquando secundum progressum scientiae sensus tribuendus sit alius ab eo, quem intellexit et intelligit Ecclesia; anathema sit.	3. If any one shall say that it may at any time come to pass, in the progress of science, that the doctrines set forth by the church must be taken in another sense than that in which the church has ever received and yet receives them; let him be anathema.
Itaque supremi pastoralis Nostri officii debitum exequentes, omnes Christi fideles, maxime vero eos, qui praesunt vel docendi munere funguntur, per viscera Iesu Christi obtestamur, nec non eiusdem Dei et Salvatoris nostri auctoritate iubemus, ut ad hos errores a Sancta Ecclesia arcendos et eliminandos, atque purissimae fidei lucem pandendam studium et operam conferant.	Wherefore, fulfilling our supreme pastoral duty, we beseech, through the bowels of mercy of Jesus Christ, all the Christian faithful, and those especially who are set over others, or have the office of teachers, and furthermore we command them, by authority of the same our God and Saviour, to use all zeal and industry to drive out and keep away from holy church those errors, and to spread abroad the pure light of faith.
Quoniam vero satis non est, haereticam pravitatem devitare, nisi ii quoque errores diligenter fugiantur, qui ad illam plus minusve accedunt; omnes officii monemus, servandi etiam Constitutiones et Decreta, quibus pravae eiusmodi opiniones, quae isthic diserte non enumerantur, ab hac Sancta Sede proscriptae et prohibitae sunt.	And whereas it is not enough to avoid heretical pravity, unless at the same time we carefully shun those errors which more or less approach to it; we admonish all, that it is their duty to observe likewise the constitutions and decrees of this holy see, by which wrong opinions of the same kind, not expressly herein mentioned, are condemned and forbidden.

THE CATHOLIC OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY.

The Catholic, like the church, is one and the same in all ages and all times. As she came forth from the hands of her Architect finished, complete, and perfect in every particular of solid structure and exquisite adornment, in like manner the individual member, if he be faithful to her tradition, practice, and direction, is, with the allowance of human infirmity, perfect and complete in one age as well as another, without regard to local circumstances of civil government, education, exterior refinement, occupation, complexion, or race.

Religion in its interior nature and intention has reference to the life to come. The life to come is the complement of the present; as the religion of the Catholic Church is perfect, the future life which grows from the seeds planted in time must necessarily be absolute perfection and unending satisfaction. The temporal fruit must likewise become true material well-being, if its growth and perfection be not interrupted by adventitious causes.

The assertion of the absolute perfection of the Catholic religion, with reference to time as well as eternity, is made with precisely the same significance with which we assert the perfection of God. It is made simply and boldly, without hesitation, qualification, or reserve, and it will be the basis of our argument, and the starting-place for the views and opinions we propose to put forth. It is intended for Catholic eyes. The defence of the proposition is no part of our concern.

When they who deny or dispute it shall have vanquished a single one of the great champions of our faith from Athanasius to Archbishop Kenrick, from Cyril of Alexandria to Archbishop Spaulding of Baltimore, picked up the glove which Dr. Brownson has flung down upon the field of controversy, replied to Wiseman, refuted Manning, and silenced Newman, it will be time enough for us to begin to consider the measures necessary for making good the position we have chosen.

Placing ourselves distinctly upon the proposition, we invite attention to certain relations which the Catholic of to-day holds toward his race, his country, his age, and the particular order and condition denominated progress, and the spirit of the nineteenth century.

It becomes necessary under these[434] aspects to consider him as a dutiful subject of the head of the church, and a loyal citizen of an independent state; as a freeman, and one bound by supreme authority; as recognizing and obeying reason, and, in the free exercise of that royal faculty of the soul, surrendering certain prerogatives of private judgment to infallibility; as subject and at the same time sovereign, both obeying and commanding; submissive to the laws and acknowledging the supremacy of a higher law, which he is prepared to vindicate with property, liberty, and life, if the two come in conflict upon any vital point in which he or the church is concerned, in the nineteenth century, precisely as he did in the first, the second, or the third century.

The most obvious, interesting, and important view of the Catholic in his relations to the century is that of voter. Suffrage, or the privilege of voting for our rulers, and indirectly making the laws by which we are to be governed, is not a natural right. It is an acquired privilege, and only becomes a right when conveyed and acknowledged by competent authority. Once obtained, it cannot be abrogated, and can only be lost by revolution, the fruit of gross political misconduct, or by voluntary neglect and disuse.

The right of suffrage bestows special prerogatives upon its possessors. It superadds legislative and magisterial functions to the obligations of private obedience; it communicates grace and dignity to the manly character, imposes definite and heavy responsibilities upon each individual, requires the humblest citizen to participate in the dignity of the highest offices, and holds the most exalted personages to a distinct accountability to the people. It permits every Catholic to share actively in the plans, policy, and beneficent enterprises of the church, and enables him in some sense to take part in the divine government of the universe, physical and moral.

It is a specific and precious gift bestowed on Catholics in this age and country, and we are compelled to stand in the full blaze of the light of the nineteenth century, which is rolling out its illuminated scroll before our dazzled eyes and almost bewildered understandings, charged with the manifold blessings or curses which must flow from the use or abuse of this momentous, one might almost say holy and hierarchical function.

An offer and promise are as distinctly made to the Catholics of this age as they were to the chosen people when released from the Egyptian bondage. A land of promise, a land flowing with milk and honey, is spread out before them, and offered for their acceptance.

The means placed at their disposal for securing this rich possession are not the sword, or wars of extermination waged against the enemies of their religion, but instead, the mild and peaceful influence of the ballot, directed by instructed Catholic conscience and enlightened Catholic intelligence.

A careful consideration of this subject is particularly important at the present epoch and century.

The nineteenth century is interesting to us because it is ours; because it is the expression and exponent of much that has been dark and obscure in the past, because it is the most fruitful and bountiful in material resources and advantages of any of which we possess authentic knowledge, because it shines glorious amidst the centuries by its own intrinsic light, and by the light derived from modern discoveries, investigations, and interpretations thrown back upon the past, and by it reflected in turn upon the[435] present. It is especially important to us as Catholics, inasmuch as it seems to be a critical era in the religious history of the human race, and to have been selected by Providence as a new point of departure in many important particulars of his dealings with mankind.

The radical questions of the relations between the supernatural and the natural, faith and reason, Rome and the world, justice and injustice; between the material and transitory, and the immaterial and permanent; between that which is unchangeable in principle and those things which are progressive in action; between church and state, God and man, are sharply defined, boldly stated, pushed to their ultimate, logical, and practical extremes, and presented with all the arguments, inducements, promises, and threatenings of the most learned and eloquent advocates of the opposing causes to each individual Catholic for his election.

The issue is as distinctly placed before his mind as it was in the case of our first parents in Eden, of Europe in the religious revolution of the sixteenth century, of England in the days of Henry VIII. and his anti-Catholic successors.

It is a question of instant and pressing importance, which demands an immediate and definite answer. It must be met and answered by the Catholic of to-day, since to him are committed the obligation and business of perpetuating and regenerating society, purifying legislation, enforcing the administration of the laws, and setting an example of private and public virtue, justice, moderation, and forbearance. He has been furnished with an omnipotent weapon with which to accomplish this great work, and he is provided with an unerring guide to direct him in the administration of these important trusts. We do not hesitate to affirm that in performing our duties as citizens, electors, and public officers, we should always and under all circumstances act simply as Catholics; that we should be governed and directed by the immutable principles of our religion, and should take dogmatic faith and the conclusions drawn from it, as expressed and defined in Catholic philosophy, theology, and morality, as the only rule of our private, public, and political conduct. Those things which are condemned by Catholic justice, we should condemn; those things which are affirmed, we should affirm.

There can be no circumstance, condition, or relation in which the Catholic is left without his guide, and there is absolutely no excuse if he fail in the performance of this duty, upon which rests the future prosperity of civilized society.

While insisting on the dignity and obligations of suffrage, it may perhaps be necessary to observe that the church prescribes no specific form of government. Government itself is required under some form, for the reason that we are created and fulfil our allotted destiny under the operation of an organic law which we have the power, and under certain circumstances the disposition, to violate.

We have no power to annul or abrogate the organic law, and its violation in virtue of its own nature, and our responsibility entails specific penalties in time, and, as it is eternal in its origin and action, eternity. The superiority of the human race, and the merit and honor of obedience, reside in the power of choice, and the ability which we possess to decide our temporal and eternal destiny, and renew and perfect, or reject and obliterate our relations with the Creator. A happy, prosperous, and peaceful temporal condition is not guaranteed, nor is it essential to true well-being[436] but these most desirable concomitants of earthly existence necessarily accompany and flow from the enforcement of the requirements of the organic law upon our own conduct and that of others less disposed to obey them.

All human government rests upon this basis, whether of patriarch, prophet, priest, king, chieftain, pope, bishop, emperor, or people in organized assembly.

The principle underlying every form of government is that of command and obedience, because the government of the universe is one of law. Both command and obedience are of the same nature and alike honorable, because there can be but one source of law, and that is God; and he in his humanity obeyed the laws of his own creation in his divinity, and personally fulfilled the obligations of his own imposition. Who is he who despises obedience, when the Son of Man became obedient to the death of the cross?

All legislation in harmony with the organic law is theocratic and divine; all in violation or opposition, precisely in the measure and degree of departure, unjust, cruel, tyrannical, false, vain, unstable, and weak, and not entitled to respect or obedience.

Since justice and our honor and dignity require that we should obey God, and not man, we are compelled by every reasonable motive to ascertain his will. He does not communicate personally and orally with creatures.

Unless we have the means of ascertaining with certainty what his wishes are on a given subject, whether of the private practice of virtue or the administration of a public duty, we are left to the direction of opinions, interests, and passions more or less superficially instructed and enlightened, and tend inevitably toward barbarism, despotism, and social and political disorganization. The Catholic Church is the medium and channel through which the will of God is expressed. The chain of communication, composed of the triple strand of revelation, inspiration, and faith, stretches underneath the billows of eternity to the shore of time, from the throne of God to the chair of Peter. The finger of the pope, like the needle in the compass, invariably points to the pole of eternal truth, and the mind of the sovereign pontiff is as certain to reflect the mind and will of God as the mirror at one end of a submarine cable to indicate the electric signal made at the other.

The will of God is expressed as plainly through the church as it was through Moses and the tables of the law. It is distinct, definite, intelligible, and precise, and we are bound to execute the will thus expressed, and act in the light of the intelligence thus supplied.

All legislation which has stood the test of time has flowed from the divinely-inspired fountain of natural justice, illuminated by her wisdom, corrected by her experience, interpreted by her theology and philosophy. All tyranny, injustice, force, cruelty, violence, and oppression follow as the result of violation of the organic law as interpreted by the church, or from systems of legislation in opposition to, or abrogation of, her eternal principles.

While immunity from temporal suffering is nowhere promised, it is nevertheless true that the greater portion of evils and sorrows are capable of prevention or relief.

Wealth can be deprived of its satiety, poverty of its sting, labor of its pain, ease of its slothfulness, learning of its pride, power of its arrogance, ignorance of its stupidity.

But though we expect no natural Utopia or earthly paradise, we are no less bound to oppose and correct vices, sorrows, evils, dangers, and oppressions,[437] as they spring, ever fierce and relentless, with their countless heads, whether personal, social, national, or legislative.

The Catholic armed with his vote becomes the champion of faith, law, order, social and political morality, and Christian civilization, no less—in fact, a greater degree, for our present enemies are more dangerous—than his ancestor who hung a wallet over his leathern jerkin, and, shouldering his halberd, followed the lord of the manor to Palestine; than he who aided the Catholic Ferdinand and Isabella to drive the Moor from the soil of Christian Spain, or, under John Sobieski, rolled back the tide of Mohammedan invasion from the European shores of the Mediterranean.

He goes forth furnished with this weapon, which, faithfully and honorably employed, must become invincible, arrest the swollen current of corruption, crime, and lawlessness which threatens to sweep away religion, morality, and liberty, insure the preëminence of law, order, and republican institutions, preserve and perfect the results of material and natural science, put an end to poverty in its abject and hopeless forms, and banish suffering from unrelieved want, and develop and complete a system of jurisprudence which shall sustain what the world has not yet seen, a pure republic of equal rights, exact justice, and assured temporal prosperity, presided over, influenced, and informed by true religion.

The great and undeniably wonderful and valuable fruits of human genius and materialistic science, may be utilized to meet the ends of ideal justice, and true individual and national prosperity and happiness.

With the means of instant intelligent communication and rapid transportation, it is not an impossibility to hope that the head of the church may again become the acknowledged head of the reunited family of Christian nations; the arbiter and judge between princes and peoples, between government and government, the exponent of the supreme justice and highest law, in all important questions affecting the rights, the interests, and the welfare of communities and individuals.

Under such a system, force would give place to reason; the nations would learn war no more, and a general disarmament could be safely imposed. The door of the temple of the demon god of war, which has stood open since Cain imbrued his fratricidal hands in the blood of Abel, would be closed for ever.

Although we are far from expecting a result grand, glorious, and wonderful, realizing in the highest degree the promise made to the human race if faithful to the object of their creation, still we do not hesitate to assert that it is within the power of the ballot, wielded by Catholic hands and directed by Catholic conscience, to accomplish as much and more.

It is no more than the church has a right to expect from her subjects; it is no more than they owe her and themselves; it would be a triumph worthy of the nineteenth century, and worthy of a fallen race deemed worthy to be redeemed by the blood of a God.

The two great questions of marriage and education present themselves in a discussion of the relations which the Catholic sustains toward civil society, as elements of prime and indispensable importance. There[438] can be no permanent Christian society, no civilized and enduring government, which are not perpetuated by Catholic marriage, elevated, instructed, and disciplined by Catholic education. The great civilizations which have arisen and flourished independently, vitalized by the tradition of primitive revelation, are wanting or have forfeited the characteristics of true civilization. Many have perished; others have reached their term, and the hour of their destruction is at hand. The ancient and most remarkable social, civil, and religious polity of India is withering under the remorseless touch of English rule, and China is destined to succumb to steam, machinery, railroads, and sewing-machines.

Nothing but the pure gold of Catholicity can withstand the material flame which burns brightest and hottest in the nineteenth century, and it may only survive stripped of every earthly and human quality, attribute, and advantage.

It is not in our power at this time to follow the line of reflection suggested by the great unchristian and anti-christian civilizations, the Indian, the Persian, the Chinese, and the Mohammedan; but we must confine ourselves to the proposition which their history, brilliant, startling, and splendid though it be, and, to superficial human views, does not in any degree invalidate, that true civilization rests for its foundation upon Catholic marriage and Catholic education.

In contradistinction from suffrage, which is an acquired privilege, marriage is a natural right. Its regulation and control belong exclusively to the church, and are particularly her care and prerogative under the supernatural order.

Marriage is the sacrament of nature, as well as one of grace, and the church insists upon her rightful control, because she depends upon this sacrament not only for perpetuity on earth, but for her eternal representation. She regulates the conditions of marriage and witnesses the contract in whose fulfilment she has such a vital interest, and she becomes the arbiter between the contracting parties in the subsequent stages of their career. She claims its offspring at their birth, and immediately impresses upon them the seal of her proprietorship in baptism; she accompanies them throughout their lives, and dismisses them with unction and benediction; she follows them into the unseen world, and does not relax her grasp till they attain their fruition and become in turn protectors and benefactors of the mother who has given them both natural and supernatural birth. Marriage is the crystal fountain on earth whence flows the perennial living stream which fertilizes and makes glad the plains of heaven.

The Catholic view, or Christian idea of marriage, implies by necessity the Catholic view of all the relations and obligations growing out of it: the education of the young, the custody of foundlings and orphans, and all measures of correction and reformation applicable to youthful offenders and disturbers of the peace of society.

The same view would consign to her care the permanent infants of society, the idiotic, those defective in important organs or senses, the insane, the criminal, the sick poor, and the helpless and wretched of every class. The church is capable, through her orders and congregations of men and women, of undertaking these trusts. There is in this work occupation for all who have not definite vocations, and for the aid and assistance of those who have. It is a species of labor which has never been efficiently and completely performed,[439] and can only be accomplished by those who undertake it under the direction of religion from the motive of heroic and supernatural charity. No compensation, no hope of human reward or praise, can procure such service, tenderness, and succor as that which the unpaid and nameless religious bestows upon the poor and nameless cast-away, for the sake of the humanity of Christ.

The function of education is most closely connected with the authority claimed and exercised over marriage. The custodian of the tree has certainly the right to the fruit of the tree, and to protect it from wayfarers and robbers.

The control and prevention of poverty is an example of the profound science of political economy which is manifested by the church. No state can flourish where hopeless poverty becomes an institution.

A godless system of education, or, what is the same thing, an uncatholic system, is the more refined and elegant but not less certain method of modern times of offering our children to Moloch, and causing our sons to pass through the fire. The right which the church exerts over education does not in any manner impair or contravene the legitimate authority of parents; but, on the contrary, strengthens and supports it, since it is an assertion of the principle of authority and the final obligations toward God due from both parents and children. It asserts the rights of parents and the right which children have to Christian education. Every human creature born into the world has the inalienable right of knowing and obeying the truth, and seeking to attain its own eternal happiness.

While parents have rights over their children, children, in turn, have rights as respects their parents, and the chief of these is Christian education.

The church asserts and defends these principles, and she flatly contradicts the assumption on the part of the state of the prerogative of education, and determinedly opposes the effort to bring up the youth of the country for purely secular and temporal purposes. The state is in its nature godless and material, and, in accordance with its nature, seeks only material ends. No state or nation as such has a supernatural destiny; its rewards and punishments are temporary and finite, and its views, policy, and conduct short-sighted, corrupt, and selfish. While the state has rights, she has them only in virtue and by permission of the superior authority, and that authority can only be expressed through the church, that is, through the organic law infallibly announced and unchangeably asserted, regardless of temporal consequences. The church yields, however, to temporal conditions as far as she can without departing from her organic principle. She resembles a mighty tree tossed by the winds, and apparently yielding to the tempest from whatever quarter it comes, but never giving up its roots, firmly fixed in the ground, and stretching their fibres far out under the surface of things. If she could be moved from her position, torn up by the roots, rifted from her organic basis on the rock of Peter, she would cease to be the church, become a human and fallible institution, and entitled to no more consideration than any other human organization or voluntary society. The hostile and opposing forces recognize distinctly the value and importance to us of the two fundamental institutions, marriage and education. Their efforts are particularly directed at the present time, and in this country, to corrupt and undermine the one and usurp complete control over the other. The attitude of the church on these questions is[440] the cause of nearly all the opposition she encounters, of the secret and open attacks she suffers, and of most of the great persecutions she has experienced. She is attacked in respect to marriage by sensuality, and in regard to education by the arrogance of the state, and the jealousy which human power always manifests of the divine authority.

The order, regularity, charity, and chastity required in marriage by the church—and of which she is the emblem—are repudiated by the world.

This repudiation is manifested by sensuality in its protean forms, from platonic love and sentimental and religious melancholy, all through the descending scale of folly, vice, and crime to the lowest depths, whither the mind refuses to follow and where demons veil their faces, and by legislation the result of this opposition, such as is expressed in the laxity of divorce laws, and a public sentiment which sanctions and countenances divorce and the marriage of divorced parties. It is more or less boldly or covertly expressed in almost the whole range of anti-catholic and uncatholic literature, and in the increasing license of conversation, manners, and amusements. Marriage has lost its dignity and sanctity by being divested of its sacramental character, and its manifest and natural duties and obligations are shunned, despised, and disregarded by a large proportion of those living in outward regard for decorum and morality. The spirit of the nineteenth century, unchastened by Catholicity, by whatever sounding title it may be called—progress, liberty, emancipation of the intellect, dignity of the race, independence of science—is a spirit of gross, cruel, and irrational sensuality, which tends directly and inevitably toward ignorance, bondage, anarchy, and barbarism, and consequent stupidity.

Stupidity may, perhaps, be considered the lowest hell of a creature originally constituted active and intellectual.

It is directly against these elements, whose consequences she distinctly foresees, that the church opposes her laws of marriage, and the absolute supernatural chastity of her priests and religious.

It is not that she forbids marriage, as she is sometimes accused, that she offers to certain persons the privilege of electing a superior state and beginning on earth the life of heaven, but in order to provide herself with angels and ministers of grace to do her will, accomplish her work, perform her innumerable acts of spiritual and corporeal mercy, and be literally the godfathers and godmothers to the orphaned human race, while they obtain for themselves and others countless riches of merit. The spirit which we reprobate substitutes lust for love, philanthropy for charity. By subtracting charity from marriage, it virtually divorces the married, and leads directly to the destruction of the species. The children whom it permits to survive it educates for material and temporal objects alone, and the most noble destiny it has to offer is death on the field of battle; its highest reward, a short-lived, temporal honor, and a brief posthumous reputation. The pursuits of honor, of science, literature and art, are noble, and in some degree satisfying. They are, when true and real, Catholic in their nature, and the growth of Catholic soil. Whenever—as in pre-Christian times—they become detached from original revelation, or, in modern, divorced from or hostile to Catholic inspiration, they incline toward cruelty, false science or incomplete science, and in literature and art to decay. The inevitable tendency of incomplete science, that is, imperfect from a radical defect,[441] like a defective formula in mathematics, is to error, obscurity, and confusion. The absence of the supernatural element is the radical defect in all uncatholic natural and metaphysical science; and every superstructure erected upon it, however splendid in appearance, is built upon the sand.

The reason why civil marriage, state religion and education, natural society, and material science do not become more rapidly corrupt, and manifest more speedily their inherent defects, is on account of the vast amount of latent Catholicity which they retain, and without which they could not survive a single day.

It is the tendency of the natural to consume the supernatural, in its efforts to attain its destiny, and, unless fed by new infusions of the divine element, to sink lower and lower toward the abyss.

It is the function of the supernatural society, that is, the church through her ministry and sacraments, to furnish continual supplies of this divine element, to antagonize the decomposition which followed close upon the steps of the terrible twin brethren, sin and death, when they entered the world; renew the almost exhausted life of the soul, and enable it to rise higher and higher, till it is absorbed once more into the source of life eternal, from whence it sprang.

The more respectable and conservative of the uncatholic institutions, which retain most of the latent Catholicity not yet expended in three centuries of separation from the parent fountain, preserve many Catholic ideas, customs, and forms of speech and action.

Such publications as the New-Englander, the Princeton, Mercersburg, and North British Reviews, advocate to a great extent the Christian doctrines of marriage and education, and the superiority of religion in all temporal and secular affairs, and deprecate, without the power to remedy or arrest, the evils which they acknowledge to exist.

The advanced portion of the opposing forces, they who have expended their latent Catholicity, denied the faith and impugned the truth, and sunk to the lowest level compatible with life, do not seek to defend their position by any hollow appeals to religion or conscience, but boldly deny all authority excepting their own depraved wills.

Red-republicanism, Fourierism, communism, free love, Mormonism, the Oneida community, the false sciences of mesmerism and phrenology, spiritism and sentimental philanthropy, are exemplary expressions of the forms which sensuality and the denial of authority assume in their retrograde metamorphoses.

The woman's rights movement is the most subtle, dangerous, and treacherous of the later manifestations of the evil spirit of the nineteenth century.

It is more threatening to the public peace than the abolition agitation was at its commencement, and is fostered and fomented by the same or kindred influences, and under some one or other of its forms and phases comprehends every falsehood, error, delusion, and heresy, from the original lie uttered in Eden to the last invented and promulgated by the Satanic press. It has a certain, irresistible tendency to vitiate suffrage, degrade legislation, disturb society, abolish religion, superinduce crime, disease, insanity, idiocy, physical decay, deformity, suicide and early death, abrogate matrimony and extinguish the race.

Every count in this terrible charge is capable of being sustained by the most abundant evidence in history,[442] analogy, facts of daily experience, the declarations of religion, and evidences of the legal and medical sciences.

It is absolutely anti-catholic and unchristian, and could not exist, much less flourish, in an age not far gone on the road to ruin.

It is the Catholic Church, and she alone, which guarantees the rights, freedom, and honor of women. She raises them to a participation in her ministry and apostleship, and pledges herself and all the power of heaven to the protection of the humblest as well as the most exalted of the sex, in her rights and dignity as woman, wife, and mother. She has suffered persecution and dismemberment rather than yield an iota of the vested rights of helpless woman; she has decreed the immaculate conception, the most perfect testimony of the exalted function of maternity and the crowning human glory of the sex, and raised one of their number to be queen of heaven, the crowning superhuman glory.

All that woman can claim is accorded to her by the church, and asserted as her indefeasible right. The only security for woman, her only refuge from the artifice of men and the undeniable oppression of society, is in the church, and the legislation deduced from the original organic law; in the inviolability of the marriage contract, and the sacramental character of marriage.

The difficult and vexed question of mixed education obtrudes itself upon our attention at every step of a discussion like the one in which we are engaged. It is not our purpose to enter upon its details at present. The chief pastors in solemn council assembled will undoubtedly decide upon the line of conduct most expedient for us to follow. While asserting the absolute dependence of natural science for its truth and perpetuity upon divine illumination, we do not intend to disparage human learning and the pursuits of philosophy and science. Philosophy on the intellectual and natural sciences is the most elevating and ennobling of human employments. As truth is simple in its nature and essence, every truth discovered, learned, and elaborated tends to draw the soul toward God. There is and can be no quarrel or discrepancy between revelation and science. The truths of revelation and the truths of science tend infallibly toward mutual illustration and final unity. It is only the effect of false science or imperfect science to divert the mind from God, the origin of truth, or truth itself, and enter upon the path which leads to error, doubt, ignorance, and darkness.

The supremacy asserted for the church in matters of education implies the additional and cognate function of the censorship of ideas, and the right to examine and approve or disapprove all books, publications, writings, and utterances intended for public instruction, enlightenment, or entertainment, and the supervision of places of amusement.

This is the principle upon which the church has acted in handing over to the civil authority for punishment criminals in the order of ideas.

It is the principle upon which every civilized government acts in emergencies, and it was asserted rigorously and unsparingly North and South during the recent revolution. It is the principle upon which a father would act in expelling summarily and ignominiously from his house a person detected in corrupting the minds, manners, and morals of his children. It is in fact nothing more than the principle of self-preservation, which is the first law of nature. It is not necessary to raise the question whether this principle has been abused[443] by individuals for mistaken or corrupt objects. It is safe to say that it has been. The admission in no way invalidates the right and obligation involved. There are few good things which men have not abused.

Crimes, cruelties, oppressions and persecutions (especially in the order of ideas) are laid at the door of the Catholic Church, which are the fruit of human passion, avarice, ambition, and resentment, and that strange and devilish infatuation of cruelty which sometimes seizes upon a whole community, and which is analogous to the destructive and suicidal insanities of individuals. The church, however, in her official and organic character, has never abused this principle or any other, whether of discipline or policy. These moral and political catastrophes are wholly independent of Catholicity, are in direct violation of religion, and in disobedience to the commands and entreaties of the church.

Government and legislation informed, directed, and guided by Catholic justice is the most humane, benignant, equal, just, merciful, and forbearing of any that can possibly exist, and the temporal government of the head of the church is to-day the best in the world.

These subjects bring us back to the question of suffrage, and to the Catholic as voter. It is necessary that we should have just laws, primarily and immediately in regard to education and marriage, and that they should have the sanction of sound public opinion, without which the best laws are inoperative.

These laws must grow out of the Catholic conscience of the community, if they are to grow at all.

The labor of strengthening these foundations of society belongs to the Catholic voter, and to him we must look for future safety, peace, and permanence. Every principle of justice is assailed, every bulwark is undermined.

Social eminence, literary ability, exalted political station, and so-called religion combine to give public sanction to unblushing and monstrous adultery, and brand the scarlet letter upon a soul already crimson with guilt as it trembles on the verge of eternity.

Every species and form of vice, crime, and corruption are paraded and presented under disguises, more or less specious or flimsy, of science, literature, religion, or art.

The old are divested of gravity and reserve, and the young have lost the freshness, the sweetness, the innocence, the candor, and the bloom which should belong to youth.

The burlesque is invoked with horrid incantation to degrade the reason, paralyze the understanding, and brutalize the imagination, and oriental lasciviousness to apply the torch of passion to the intellectual and moral ruins.

Current literature is penetrated with the spirit of licentiousness, from the pretentious quarterly to the arrogant and flippant daily newspaper, and the weekly and monthly publications are mostly heathen or maudlin. They express and inculcate, on the one hand, stoical, cold, and polished pride of mere intellect, or, on the other, empty and wretched sentimentality. Some employ the skill of the engraver to caricature the institutions and offices of our religion, and others to exhibit the grossest forms of vice and the most distressing scenes of crime and suffering.

The illustrated press has become to us what the amphitheatre was to the Romans when men were slain, women were outraged, and Christians given to the lions to please a degenerate populace.

It is obvious, then, if what we have said be true, that there is a great work for the Catholic voter to perform.

The Constitution and Declaration of Independence guarantee life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. The Catholic values his life that he may devote it to the service of the church, and, if required, offer it for her safety and honor; liberty, to be and remain Catholic, enjoy freedom in the exercise of his religion, and transmit this priceless inheritance unimpaired to his descendants; the pursuit of happiness, that he may attain the happiness of heaven!

The Catholic voter meditates no invasion of vested rights. The constitution and government of the United States have the approval of the holy see. The Catholic is satisfied with the laws of his country, and only dissatisfied with local legislation, which contravenes the implied pledges of the constitution and the common law, based upon the canon law.

He demands nothing that natural justice and the legitimate interpretation of the constitution do not guarantee him. Freedom in religion entitles him to protection against open and secret attacks upon what he holds most dear, under the guise of state education, and which are invariably made in every system of uncatholic or infidel education. The great majority of English-speaking Catholics have had a personal and national experience of the bitter fruit of systems of education divorced from the control of the church, and in the French revolution they recognize the results of infidel science, literature, and sentiment practically applied to the reformation of society. France gave the world a terrible illustration of the violent, frantic creed and futile efforts which humanity makes when it would be sufficient for itself and become its own redeemer. France almost expired. Her Catholicity alone saved her. The Goths and Vandals entered Paris, but were compelled to retire. They entered ancient Rome, and remained.

With these truths, lessons, and experiences before his mind, the Catholic anxiously considers the subject of public education, and is resolved when the question is adjudicated to sustain the decision of the church. If he cannot peacefully enact legitimate, equal, and just regulations, he will consent to bear, as he has done before, a double burden; but he, for his part, will make sure that his children are taught to discriminate between the specious and false assertions which are put forth as history and history itself, between human philanthropy and divine charity, between communism and the communion of saints, between spiritism and those things which are spiritual, between pure, noble, and lovely sentiments and a rotting sentimentalism, between the false and the true, injustice and justice, the human and the divine.

By an extraordinary example of divine justice, and the operation of the law of compensation, the men and their descendants who uprooted Catholicity in England and Ireland; who extinguished, as far as they were able, Catholic literature and tradition; who destroyed the venerable seats of learning and charity, sacked the monasteries and despoiled the abbeys, were compelled to prepare a home for Catholics, and establish a political order most acceptable to them, and capable under Catholic auspices of attaining the highest degree of temporal happiness and prosperity.

The men who composed the Protector's famous Ironsides levelled the New England forests and subdued the savage, and now in every city, village,[445] and hamlet of this fair land the cross which they tore down again rises aloft, the first to kindle in the saluting beams of the morning sun, the last to detain his parting lingering rays, and thousands of happy, prosperous people the descendants of those whom Cromwell's dragoons trampled under their bloody hoofs, assemble around that altar and assist at that mass which he could not abide.

The grim old regicide who sleeps his last sleep on the green behind Centre church, in New Haven, if he could rise from his grave some pleasant Sunday morning, would believe that time and old ocean had both been rolled away, and that he was in merry, happy Catholic England of five hundred years ago.

The uncompromising defence of the rights of Queen Catharine is justified. The Goddess of Reason, in the person of a prostitute, enthroned on the high altar of Notre Dame, has given place to a Catholic lady, wife, mother, and queen, who reigns enthroned in the hearts of her people, the type of every royal, womanly, and Christian virtue.

Absolute Cæsarism itself, touched by Catholic justice, has voluntarily conceded constitutional government, and the successor of him who was both the child and the victim of the revolution, who dragged Pius VII. from the chair of Peter to a French prison, upholds the chief of the apostles as he sits to-day enthroned prince and patriarch and apostle of the assembled and united episcopate of the world.

It is time for Catholics to cease complaining. The church is vindicated. They are vindicated. Reason, science, and religion are united in a species of intellectual trinity, capable of presiding over and directing all human, temporal, and eternal destinies. All that remains is for the individual Catholic, the Catholic voter, to play well his part in the drama whose acts are realities, whose curtain will never fall, and where the only change of scene will be when the vault of the heavens parts in twain and the splendor of the eternal world bursts upon his enraptured vision.

It is in the power of the Catholic voter of the nineteenth century to achieve a consummation such as perhaps saints and prophets have dreamed, but never seen. It is your part, Catholic freemen and electors, to perpetuate the latest and most perfect effort in the human science of government—the constitution of our glorious and beloved country; to check the current of corruption in literature, manners, and politics.

It is in your power to arrest the progress of demoralizing and disintegrating legislation on the subject of marriage and suffrage, and to provide the means for the permanent endowment of colleges, seminaries, and universities. It is in your power to elect able, honest, and virtuous men to office, and to reunite the principles of government with the principles of religion.

Will you respond to the offer which is made you in this country and the nineteenth century, and perfect and complete what may not unlikely be the last opportunity for achieving temporal prosperity in harmony with Catholic justice?

DION AND THE SIBYLS.
A CLASSIC, CHRISTIAN NOVEL.

BY MILES GERALD KEON, COLONIAL SECRETARY, BERMUDA, AUTHOR OF "HARDING THE MONEY-SPINNER," ETC.

CHAPTER XII.

A short silence followed the concurring exclamations of Thellus and our hero, recorded in the last chapter; and then the lanista said,

"Before I leave you, I will speak one word which came of the chance of uttering while I brought you that letter, but which I would not have pronounced had I found you to be a person of a different sort. You are really Tiberius's prisoner, remember, although it is to Velleius Paterculus you have given your parole. I know, by personal experience and much observation, the men and the things of which you, on the other hand, can have only a suspicion. Now, I conjecture, it is hardly for your own sake that you are in custody. Beware of what may happen to those dear to you; and as they have given no parole, send them to some place of safety, some secret place. There is no place safe in itself in the known world. Roman liberty is no more; secrecy is the sole safety remaining. Vale."

With these words the lanista departed, leaving our young friend buried in thought. As he left the court of the impluvium to seek his mother, he remarked that Claudius had returned thither, and was occupied in watering some flowers in pots at the opposite angle. "I wonder," thought he, "can that fellow have overheard Thellus?"

Other and more important matters, however, were destined to invite his attention. We have said enough to justify us in passing over with a few words every interval void of more than ordinary daily occurrences of the age and land. What has been related and described will sufficiently enable a reader of intelligence to realize the sort of life which lay before Paulus, his mother, and Agatha during the next few days passed by them together at the inn of the Hundreth Milestone.

Of course, Paulus detailed to his mother what he had observed or heard, especially Thellus's warning. Further, he propounded thereon his own conclusions. The family thought it well to summon Crispina and Crispus to a council; and it was finally resolved that Aglais should at once write to her brother-in-law, Marcus Æmilius Lepidus, the ex-triumvir, and ask a temporary home under his roof for herself and Agatha, with their female slave Melena. Old Philip and Paulus could remain at the inn for some time longer. Aglais, Paulus, and the worthy couple who kept the inn consulted together, carrying their conferences rather far into the night, when the business of the hostelry was over, upon the question what would be the best course to pursue, should the triumvir, from timidity or any other motive, refuse shelter to his brother's widow and child? During these conferences Agatha and Benigna went to sit apart, each engaged in some kind of needle-work.

It did not seem to the little council probable that Lepidus would refuse the request submitted to him, and if he acceded to it, Crispina assured Aglais that the castle of Lepidus at Monte Circello, covering both the summit and the base of a cliff upon the edge of the sea, was sufficiently capacious, intricate, and labyrinthine to conceal a good part of a Roman legion in complete security.

Moreover, it had escapes both by land and by water; nor could any one approach it without being visible to the inmates for miles. "Considering," reasoned Crispina, "that there is no pretext for ostensibly demanding the surrender of the ladies, who have not committed any offence, and are not, or at all events are not supposed to be, under any supervision, this retreat will afford all the security that can be desired. But Master Paulus must never go near you when once you leave this roof."

Aglais admitted the wisdom of the suggestion. A letter, a simple, elegant, and affecting composition, was written by her, and intrusted to Crispus for transmission. However, as it was the unanimous opinion of all concerned that the family ought not to be detected in any communications with Lepidus, or even suspected of any, it was necessary for Crispus to observe great caution in forwarding the document. Several days, therefore, passed away before an opportunity was presented of sending a person who would neither be observed in going, nor missed when gone, and who could at the same time be implicitly trusted; none but old Philip could be found.

Crispus had been on the point of employing Claudius for the purpose, when Crispina resolutely stopped him. "I have a high opinion of that youth," said she, "or I would not consent that Benigna should marry him; but at present he is a slave, and a slave of the very person against whom we are guarding. Moreover, Claudius is young and very timid; he has his way to make, and all his hopes are dependent on this tyr—I mean the prince. I do not wish even Benigna to know any thing about the present business. The more honest any young people are, the more they betray themselves, if cross-questioned about matters which they know, but have been told to conceal. If they know nothing, why, they can tell nothing, and moreover none can punish or blame them for not telling.

"A silent tongue, husband, like mine, and a simple heart like yours, make safe necks. There, go about your business."

During the delay and suspense which necessarily followed, Paulus fished, and took long walks through that beautiful country, many aspects of which, already described by us, as they then were, have for ever disappeared. He used to take with him something to eat in the middle of the day, but always returned toward evening in time to join the last light repast of his mother and sister. Each evening saw them reassembled. Four tall, exquisitely tapering poles, springing from firm pedestals, supported four little scallop-shaped lamps at the four corners of their table. The supper was often enriched by Paulus with some delicious fresh-water fish of his own catching. Benigna waited upon them, and, being invariably engaged by Agatha in lively conversation, amused and interested the circle by her mingled simplicity, good feeling, and cleverness. After supper, Agatha would insist that Benigna should stay with them awhile, and they either all strolled through the garden, whence perfumes strong as incense rose in the dewy air, or they sat conversing in the bower which overlooked it. Then after a while Crispina would ascend[448] the garden-stairs to their landing; and while she inquired how they all were, and told them any news she might have gathered, Benigna would steal silently down to say good-night, as Agatha declared, to some shadowy figure who was dimly discernible standing not far away among the myrtles, and apparently contemplating the starry heavens. Such was their quiet life, such the tenor of those fleeting days.

One evening—the sweet evening of a magnificent autumn day—Paulus was returning across the country, with a rod and line, from a distant excursion upon the banks of the Liris. The spot which he had chosen that day for fishing was a deep, clear, silent pool, formed by a bend of the river. A clump of shadowy chestnuts and hornbeam grew nigh, and the water was pierced by the deep reflections of a row of stately poplars, which mounted guard upon its margin. There seated, his back supported against one of the trees, watching the float of his line as it quivered upon the surface of the beautiful stream, he heard no sound but the ripple of the little waves lapping on the reeds, the twittering of birds, and the hum of insects. There, with a mind attuned by the peaceful beauties of the solitary scene, he had traversed a thousand considerations. He thought of the many characters with whom he had so suddenly been brought into more or less intercourse or contact. He thought much of Thellus, and of his poor Alba, so cruelly sacrificed. He was puzzled by Claudius. He mused about Sejanus, about Tiberius, about Velleius Paterculus, about the two beautiful ladies in the litters; he thought of the third gold-looking palanquin and its pallid occupant; of the haughty and violent, yet, as it seemed, servile patrician and senator, who had attempted suddenly to kill him, out of zeal for Cæsar; of the singular reverse which had awaited the attempt; of Queen Berenice, and Herod Agrippa, and Herodias; of the various unexpected incidents and circumstances which had followed. He thought of his uncle Lepidus; of the fate, whatever it might be, now to attend his mother, his sister, and himself. He revolved the means of establishing his rights and his claims. Ought he at once to employ some able orator and advocate, and to appeal to the tribunals of justice? Should he rather seek a hearing from the emperor in person, and, if so, how was this to be managed?

From recollections and calculations, the spirit of his pastime and the genius of the place bore him away and lured him into the realm of day-dreams, vague and far-wandering! Up-stream, about a mile from where he was sitting, towered high a splendid mansion. On its roof glittered its company of gilt and colored statues, conversing and acting above the top of a wood.

On one of the streams lay ancient Latium, where he sat, teeming with traditions—a monster or a demigod in every tree, rock, and river; the cradle of the Roman race, the seed and germ of outspreading conquest and universal empire. On the opposite banks was unrolled, far to the south, the Campanian landscape, where Hannibal, the most terrible of Romish enemies and rivals, had enervated his victorious legions, and lost the chances of that ultimate success which would have changed the destinies of mankind.

Suddenly, among the statues on the roof, Paulus beheld, not bigger than children by comparison, moving figures of men and ladies in dazzling attire. He perceived that salutations[449] were exchanged, groups formed and groups dispersed. Happening, the next moment, to cast his eye over the landscape, he saw in the distance some horsemen galloping toward the house, through the trees in the distance. Losing sight of them behind intervening clumps of oleander, myrtle, and other shrubs, he turned once more to watch the groups upon the roof. In a short time new figures seemed to arrive, around whom all the others gathered with the attitude and air of listening.

Paulus felt as if he was assisting at a drama. A moment later the roof was deserted by its living visitors, the statues remained alone and silent, gesticulating and flashing in the sun. Tidings must have come. Something must have happened, thought Paulus; and, as the day was already declining, he gathered up his fishing-tackle and wended homeward. On the way he met a man in hide sandals, carrying a large staff and piked with iron. It was a shepherd, of whom he asked whether there was any thing new. "Have you not heard?" said the man; "the flocks will fetch a better price—the emperor has come to Formiæ."

Full of this intelligence, and anxious at once to consult Aglais whether, before Augustus should leave the neighborhood, he ought not to endeavor by all means now to obtain a hearing from him, Paulus mended his pace; but while he thought he might be the bearer of news, some news awaited him. He passed through the little western trellis gate into the quoit-alley, and so by the garden toward the house. A couple of female slaves, who were talking and laughing about something like the impudence of a slave, and depend on it a love-letter it is, but it's Greek, which seemed to afford them much amusement, stood at the door of the lower arbor, which inclosed the foot of the stairs leading up to the landing of his mother's apartments. Noticing him, they hastily went about their business in different directions, and he ran up the stairs, and found his mother and sister talking in low tones, just inside the open door of the upper arbor in the large sitting-room, which, as the reader knows, was also the room where they took their meals.

"I am glad you have returned, Paulus," said his mother. "Look at this; your sister found it about half an hour ago on the landing in the arbor."

And Aglais handed him a piece of paper, on which was written, in a clear and elegant hand, in Greek:

"When power and craft hover in the air as hawks, let the ortolans and ground-doves hide."

Our hero read the words, turned the paper over, read the words again, and said, "I don't see the meaning of this. It is some scrap of a school-boy's theme, perhaps."

"School-boys do not often write such a hand," said Aglais; "nor is the paper a scrap torn off—it is a complete leaf. And, again, why should it be found upon our landing?"

"What school-boys could come up our stairs? There are none in the inn, are there? Have you been in all day?" asked Paulus.

"No; we were returning from a walk across the fields to see the place near Cicero's villa of Formianum, where the assassins overtook him, and as Agatha, who ran up-stairs before me, reached the landing, she observed something white on the ground, and picked it up. It was that paper. Some stranger must have been up-stairs while we were away."

"Crispus or Crispina would not have said this to us by means of an anonymous writing. They have given[450] us the same warning without disguise, personally."

"But they spoke only according to their own opinion," returned Paulus. "Coming from some one else, the same advice acquires yet greater importance. Some unknown person bears witness of the danger which our host and hostess merely suspect, and at which Thellus, the lanista, hinted, as perhaps impending, but which even he did not affirm to be a reality."

"That is," added Paulus, "if this bit of paper has been intended for us—I mean for you and for Agatha, because I am not a ground-dove."

"Well, I do not see," said the lady, musing, "what more we can do for the moment. Our trusty Philip is on the way with my letter to your uncle; he may be by this time on the way back. Till he returns, what can we do?"

"We waited first to consult you," said Aglais; "and," added Agatha, "there is another singular thing—we have not seen Benigna all day, who was so regular in attending upon us. The hostess told us that Benigna was suffering with a bad headache; and when I wanted to go and tend her, Crispina hindered me, saying she had lain down and was trying to sleep."

"He has gone away all of a sudden, though his holiday has not expired. I really suspect that Benigna and he must have had a quarrel, and that this is why he has left the place, and why Benigna is so ill."

The clepsydra, or water-clock, on the floor in a corner, showed that it was now past the time when their evening repast was usually prepared. They were wondering at the delay, when Crispus, first knocking at the door which led from the passage, entered. He seemed alarmed. They put various questions to him which the circumstances rendered natural, showing him the paper that had been dropped on the landing. He said that he thought he could make a pretty good surmise about that matter; but inasmuch as Benigna, who had been crying out her little heart, was much better, and had declared she would come herself when they had supped, and tell them every thing, he would prefer to leave the recital to her, if they would permit him.

Meantime he confirmed the news that the emperor had arrived at the neighboring town, that the festivities had begun at the Mamurran palace, and that in a day or two the public part of the entertainments, the shows and battles of the circus, which would last for several successive mornings and evenings, would be opened. He said it was usual to publish a sort of promissory plan of these entertainments; and he expected to receive, through the kindness of a friend at court, (a slave,) some copies of the document early next morning, when he would hasten to place it in their hands. While thus speaking to them with an air of affected cheerfulness, he laid the table for supper. Actuated by a curiosity in which a good deal of uneasiness was mingled, since he would not himself tell them all they desired to know, they requested him to go and send Benigna as soon as possible; and when at last he retired with this injunction, they took their supper in unbroken silence.

Benigna came. The secret was disclosed, and it turned slow-growing apprehension into present and serious alarm.

"What! Claudius a spy! The[451] spy of Tiberius set as a sort of secret sentry over us! Who would have thought it?"

Benigna, turning very red and very pale by turns, had related what she had learnt, and how she had acted. Little knowing either the secret ties between her mother and this half-Greek family, or the interest and affection she had herself conceived for them, her lover had told her that she might help most materially in a business of moment intrusted to him by his master; adding that, if he gave the Cæsar satisfaction in this, he should at once obtain his liberty, and then they might be married. She answered that he must know how ready she was to further his plans, and bade him explain himself, in order that she might learn how to afford him immediately the service which he required. But no sooner had she understood what were his master's commands, than she was filled with consternation. She informed him that her father and mother would submit to death rather than betray the last scions of the Æmilian race, and that she herself would spurn all the orders of Tiberius before she would hurt a hair of their heads. She mentioned, with a little sob, that she had further informed Claudius that she never would espouse a man capable of plotting mischief against them. Upon this announcement Claudius had behaved in a way "worthy of any thing." He there and then took an oath to renounce the mission he had undertaken. He had neither known its objects nor suspected its villainy. But Benigna, whose mind he thus relieved, he filled with a new anxiety by expressing his conviction that Tiberius Cæsar would forthwith destroy him. However, of this he had now gone to take his chance.

"Did Claudius," asked Paulus, "intend to tell the Cæsar that he disapproved of the service upon which he had been sent, and would not help to execute it?"

"No, sir," said Benigna. "We were a long time consulting what he should, what he could say. He is very timid; it is his only fault. He is going to throw all the blame upon me, and thus he will mention that I, that he, that we, were going to be married, and that, in order the more effectually to watch the movements of ladies to whom he personally could get no access under this roof, the bright notion had occurred to him to enlist my services, so as to render it impossible that these ladies should escape him; or that their movements should remain unknown, when lo! unfortunately for his plan, he finds I love these ladies too well to play the spy upon them; that I refused, and even threatened, if he did not retire from his sentry-box forthwith, not only to break off my nuptial engagement with him, but to divulge to the family that they were the objects of espial."

"Which you have done," said Aglais, "even though he has complied with your demands."

Poor Benigna smiled. "Yes," said she, "I was bent upon that the instant I knew; but what my dear, unfortunate Claudius had to say to Tiberius Cæsar was the point. The Cæsar is not to be told every thing. My head is bursting to think what will happen."

Here she broke into a fit of crying. They all, except Paulus, tried to comfort her. He had started to his feet when he first understood the one fact, that this young girl had sacrificed not only her matrimonial hopes, but the very safety of her lover himself, to the claims of honor and the laws of friendship. He was now pacing the width of the room in long strides with an abstracted air, from which he[452] awaked every now and then to contemplate with a thoughtful look the anguish and terror depicted in the innocent face of the innkeeper's little daughter.

"That is no security," said poor Benigna, shaking her head and wringing her hands.

"That ought to be a security," said Aglais; adding in a mutter, "but often is a danger."

"It is not even allowed by people that it ought to be a security," returned the girl.

"Until it is so allowed, and so practised too, the earth will resemble Tartarus rather than the Elysian Fields," said Aglais with energy.

"It was so like the Elysian Fi-fields yesterday, and now it is like Tar-tartarus! They will kill him."

"For supper, do you mean?" asked Paulus, laying his powerful, white, long-fingered hand upon Benigna's head, while Agatha embraced her. "But then, how will they cook him? How ought a Claudius to be cooked?"

"I think I half suspect him," answered Paulus. "But the red-faced, big, divine beast, as you call him, will reward Claudius, instead of being angry with him, and this I will show you clearly. Was it not a proof both of zeal and of prudence, on Claudius's part, in the service of his master, to endeavor to enlist your assistance? And again, upon finding, contrary to all likelihood—as Tiberius himself will admit, and would be the first to contend—that you preferred virtue, and truth, and honor, and good faith, to your own manifest and immediate interests, and to success in love—upon finding this extraordinary and unlikely fact occurring, was it not clearly the duty of Claudius to his master to hasten away at once and tell him the precise turn which events had taken? Now, what else has been his conduct, young damsel? What, except exactly all this, has Claudius done? Will he not, then, be rewarded by his master, instead of being eaten for supper?"

"Ah noble sir!" cried Benigna with clasped hands, "what wisdom and what beautiful language the gods have given you! This must be what people call Greek philosophy, expounded with Attic taste."

CHAPTER XIII.

Next morning at breakfast, Paulus announced that he had resolved to go to Formiæ and seek an audience of the emperor himself.

"How will you get one?" asked Aglais; "and if you get one, what good will it do you?"

"It will depend upon circumstances," he replied; "for, whether I fail to get speech of the emperor, or, succeeding in that, fail to get justice from him, process of law remains equally open, and so does process of interest. Both means are, I suppose, always doubtful, and generally dilatory. I spoil no chance by trying a sudden and direct method of recovering our family rights; while if I succeed, which is just possible, I shall save a world of trouble and suspense."

After some discussion, his mother yielded to her son's impetuous representations, more with the view of undeceiving him, and reconciling him to other proceedings, than with any hope of a good result.

Paulus had taken his broad-brimmed hat, saying that in three or four hours he expected to be back again at the inn; but that if he did not reappear, they were to conclude that he had found a lodging at Formiæ, and that he was remaining there for some good reason; when the door was flung open, and breathless, radiant, holding an unfolded letter in her hand, Benigna rushed into the room.

"Well, I am even now going," said Paulus; "and if you intend to walk, I will guard you from any annoyance either on the way or at Formiæ, a town which you know is at present swarming with soldiers."

A few moments after the foregoing conversation, Paulus and Benigna left the inn of Crispus together. The roads were full of groups of persons of all ranks, in carriages, on horseback, and on foot. Some of these were bound countryward, but not one for every score of those who were bound in their own direction. No adventure befell them, and in less than two hours they arrived at their destination. It was easy to find the Mamurran palace, to the principal door of which, guarded by a Prætorian sentry on either hand, Paulus forthwith escorted Benigna.

There was no footway on either side of the street, and as they approached the door they heard the clang of the metal knocker resound upon the inside. At the same moment the sentinel nearest to them shouted "linite," (by your leave.) Two or three persons at this warning shrank hurriedly into the middle of the road; a Numidian rider made his horse bound aside, and the large folding-doors were simultaneously flung open outward.

Immediately appeared the very man in the dark-dyed purple robe of whom the little damsel was in quest, and upon whose personal aspect, already minutely described in a former place, we need not here dwell. A handsome gentleman, in middle life, with an acute and thoughtful face, who wore the Greek mantle called χλαῖνα, (læna,) but differently shaped from an augur's, followed. Both these persons moved with that half-stoop which seems like a continued though very faint bow; and when in the street, they turned, stood still and waited. Then came forth, leaning on a knight's arm, and walking somewhat feebly, a white-haired, ancient, and majestic man, around whose person, in striking[454] contrast with the many new fashions of dress lately become prevalent, a snowy woollen toga, with broad violet borders, flowed. Under this toga, indeed, was a tunic richly embroidered with gold, and having painted upon it the head of the idol called the Capitoline Jove, half hidden by a wide double stripe of scarlet silk.

When this personage had come into the street, all those who chanced to be there uncovered. Tiberius, the gentleman in the Greek mantle, and the knight himself upon whose arm the object of all this reverence continued to lean, did the same; and it was thus that Paulus, who had already guessed from frequent descriptions formerly received, knew for certain that he beheld for the first time Augustus Cæsar, sovereign of three hundred million human beings, and absolute master of the known world. In a moment those who formed the personal company of the emperor resumed their head-gear; some soldiers who happened to be passing did the same, and proceeded upon their respective errands; but the inhabitants remained gazing until the group began to move on foot up the street in the direction of the temporary circus which had been completed by the knight Mamurra in some fields north-west of the town.

Paulus turned to Benigna and said, "You perceive the red-faced—ehem! the great man. He does not know you, though you know him. Shall I tell him who you are? Indeed, I have not come hither merely to stare about me; so wait you here."

He thereupon left her, and quickly overtaking, and then passing before, the group in which was Augustus, turned round and stood directly in their way, hat in hand; but all his sensations were different from what he had expected. He grew very red and shamefaced, and felt a sudden confusion that was new to his experience. As it was impossible to walk over him, they, on their part, halted for a moment, and looked at him with an expression of surprise which was common to them all, though indeed not in the same degree. The person who seemed the least astonished was the emperor; and the person who seemed more so than any of the rest was Tiberius. Some displeasure, too, seemed to flash in the glance which he bent upon the youth.

But Paulus, though abashed, did not lose presence of mind to such an extent as to behave stupidly. He said,

"I ask our august emperor's pardon for interrupting his promenade, in order to report to Tiberius Cæsar the execution of an order. Yonder is Crispus's daughter, illustrious sir," he added, turning toward Tiberius; "she has come hither according to your own commands."

"True," said Tiberius; "let her at once seek the prefect Sejanus, who will give the necessary instructions."

Paulus's natural courage and enterprising temper had carried him thus far; but his design of accosting and directly addressing Augustus Cæsar now seemed, when he had more speedily found an opportunity of doing so than he could have dared to hope, a strange and difficult undertaking. How he should procure access to the emperor had been the problem with him and his family heretofore; but now, when the access was already achieved, and when he had only to speak—now when his voice was sure to reach the ears of the emperor himself—he knew not what to say or how to begin. He had thought of splendid topics, of deductions which he would draw, certain arguments which he would urge—a matter very plain and easy: in fine, a statement simple, brief, and conclusive; but all this had[455] vanished from his mind. There before him, holding back the folds of his toga with one white hand, upon the back of which more than seventy years had brought out a tracery of blue varicose veins—a modern doctor would call them—with the other hand, which was gloved, and grasping the fellow glove, laid upon the arm of the knight already mentioned, stood the person who, under forms, the republican semblance of which he carefully preserved, exercised throughout the whole civilized and nearly the whole known world, over at least two if not three hundred million souls, a power as uncontrolled and as absolute for all practical purposes as any which, before him or after him, ever fell to man's lot; enthusiastically guarded and religiously obeyed by legions before whom mankind trembled, and whose superiors as soldiers had not been seen then and have not been seen since; the perpetual tribune of the people, the prince, senator, perpetual consul, the supreme judge, the arbiter of life and death, the umpire in the greatest concerns between foreign disputants travelling from the ends of the earth to plead before him; the dispenser of prefectures, provinces, proconsulates, tetrarchies, and kingdoms; treated by kings as those kings were themselves treated by the high functionaries whom they had appointed or confirmed, and could in an instant dismiss; the unprincipled, cruel, wicked, but moderate-tempered, cold-humored, cautious, graceful-mannered, elegant-minded, worldly-wise, and politic prince, who paid assiduous court to all the givers and destroyers of reputation—I mean, to the men of letters. There he stood, as we have described him, holding his toga with one hand and leaning upon Mamurra's arm with the other; and Paulus stood before him, and Paulus knew not what to say; hardly, indeed—so quickly the sense of bashfulness, confusion, depression had gained upon him—hardly how to look.

Paulus, who, while Tiberius was speaking, had looked at him, now glanced again toward the emperor, and still hesitated, made a shuffling bow, and stood partly aside.

"What is it you wish to say?" asked Augustus, in a somewhat feeble voice, not at all ungraciously.

"I wish," said Paulus, becoming very pale, "to say, my sovereign, that my father's property in this very neighborhood was taken away after the battle of Philippi and given to strangers, and to beg of your justice and clemency to give back that property or an equivalent to me, who am my dead father's only son."

"But," said Augustus smiling, "half the land in Italy changed hands about the time you mention. Your father fought for Brutus, I suppose?"

"Singular!" exclaimed Augustus; "but this is not a court of justice—the courts are open to you."

At this moment Sejanus and one whom Paulus presumed to be in Rome, Cneius Piso, attended by a slave, appeared from a cross street. The slave approached quickly, holding a pigeon; and having caught the eye of Augustus, who beckoned to him, he handed the bird to the emperor.

Paulus withdrew a little, but lingered near the group. Augustus, disengaging a piece of thin paper from the pigeon's neck, said,

"From Illyricum, I suppose. We shall now learn what progress those Germans have made. O Varus, Varus!" added he, in words which he had of late often been heard to repeat, "give me back the legions, 'redde legiones! redde legiones!'"

A breathless silence lasted while Augustus perused the message taken from the neck of the carrier-pigeon. As he crushed the paper in his hands, he muttered something; and while he muttered, the scorbutic face of Tiberius (perhaps scrofulous would better render the epithet used by Tacitus) burned ominously. In what the emperor said Paulus caught the words, "danger to Italy, but Germanicus knows how."

"Varus lost the legions a thousand times, a thousand paces westward of this irruption," said Tiberius.

"A calamity like that," said Augustus, "is felt far and near. The whole empire suffers, nor will it recover in my time. Ah! the legions."

Paulus perceived that he himself was now forgotten; moreover, looking back, he saw the poor young damsel, left by him at the door of the Mamurran palace, still standing alone and unprotected; but some fascination riveted him.

In a moment a great noise was heard, which lasted a couple of minutes; a mighty roar, indistinct, blended, hoarse, as of tens of thousands of men uttering one immense shout. It was, had it lasted, like the sound of the sea breaking upon some cavernous coast.

Upon a look of inquiry and surprise from the emperor, Sejanus sent the slave who had brought the carrier-pigeon to ascertain the cause, and before the sound had ceased the messenger returned, and reported that it was only Germanicus Cæsar riding into camp. Augustus fixed his eyes on the ground, and Tiberius looked at Sejanus and at Cneius Piso.

The emperor, after a second or two of musing, resumed his way toward the rustic circus and the camp, attended by those around.

Paulus felt he had not gained much by his interview. He now touched the arm of Sejanus, who was about following the imperial group, and said, pointing toward the spot where Benigna still stood waiting,

"Good," said he; "she has come to announce the fine news to her betrothed. Let her tell him that he has only to break a horse for Tiberius Cæsar to obtain his freedom. I have no time to attend any more to slaves and their mates. She has now but to ask for Claudius at that palace. He has orders to expect her, and to receive from her mouth the pleasing information I have just given you."

Our hero conceived some undefined misgiving from these words, or rather from the tone, perhaps, in which the prefect had uttered them. Unable to question the speaker, he slowly returned to poor little Benigna, and said, "Well, Benigna, I have ascertained what you have to do; and, first of all, Claudius expects you within."

As he spoke, he knocked at the door. This time only one leaf of it was opened, and a slave, standing in the aperture, and scanning Paulus and his companion, demanded their business; while the sentries on either hand at the sculptured pillars, or antæ of the porch, looked and listened superciliously.

Before the porter could reply, steps and voices resounded in the hall within, and the porter sprang out of the way, flinging almost into Paulus's face the other leaf of the door, and bowing low. Three gentlemen, two of whom apparently were half-drunk, their faces flushed, and their arms linked together, appeared staggering upon the[457] threshold, where they stood awhile to steady themselves before emerging into the street.

"I tell you, my Pomponius Flaccus," said he who was in the middle—a portly man, with a good-natured, shrewd, tipsy look—"it is all a pretty contrivance, and there will be no slaughter, for the beast is to be muzzled."

"And I tell you, my Lucius Piso," returned he on the left, a wiry drinker, "my governor of Rome, my dedicatee of Horace—"

"I am not the dedicatee of Horace," interrupted the other; "poor Horace dedicated the art-poetical to my two sons."

"How could he do that?" broke in Pomponius. "You see double. Two sons, indeed! How many sons have you? tell me that. Again, how could one man dedicate a single work to a double person? answer me that. You know nothing whatever about poetry, except in so far as it is fiction; but we don't want fiction in these matters. We want facts; and it is a fact—a solemn fact—that the slave will be devoured."

"Then I appeal to Thrasyllus here," rejoined the other. "O thou Babylonian seer! will not Claudius the slave be devoured in the circus before the assembled people?"

At these words our hero looked at Benigna, and Benigna at him, and she was astounded.

He who was thus questioned—a man of ghastly face, with long, black hair hanging down to his shoulders, and sunken, wistful, melancholy eyes—wore an Asiatic dress. He was not intoxicated, and seemed to have fallen by chance into his present companionship, from which he appeared eager to disengage himself.

Gently shaking off the vague hand of Pomponius Flaccus, he acted as the oracles did.

"You are certainly right," he said; but he glanced at Lucius Piso while speaking, and then stepped quickly into the street, which he crossed.

Each of the disputants naturally deemed the point to have been decided in his own favor.

"You hear?" cried Flaccus; "the horse is to paw him to death, and then to devour him alive."

"How can he?" said Piso. "How can he, after d—d—death, devour him alive? Besides, Thrasyllus declared that I was right."

"Why," shouted Flaccus, "if we had not been drinking together all the morning, I should think you had lost your senses."

"Not by any means," said Piso; "and I will prove to you by logic that Claudius the slave," (again at this name our hero and poor little Benigna looked at each other—she starting and turning half-round, he merely directing a glance at her,) "that Claudius the slave will not and cannot be devoured by Sejanus—I mean that beast Sejanus."

Paulus, chancing to look toward the two prætorian sentries, whose general he supposed to be mentioned, observed them covertly smiling. More puzzled than ever, he gave all his attention to the tipsy dispute which was raging in the palace doorway.

"Have I not a thumb?" resumed Lucius Piso; "and can I not turn it down in the nick of time, and so save the wretch?"

"Ho! ho! ho!" laughed out the other; "and what notice will a horse take of your thumb? Is this horse such an ass as to mind whether your thumb be up or down, though you are governor of Rome?"

"Perhaps you think," retorted Piso,[458] in a tone of concentrated bitterness, "with your rules of logic, that the horse is not properly trained to his manners?"

"Have I not told you," said Flaccus, "in spite of your rules of thumb, that the horse is not an ass?"

The rudeness and coarseness of Pomponius Flaccus had succeeded in sobering Lucius Piso. He here remained a moment silent, drew himself up with dignity to the full height of his portly person, and at last said,

"Enough! When you have drunk a little more, you will be able to understand a plain demonstration. But whom have we here? Why, it is our glorious Apicius, whose table no other table rivals for either abundance or delicacy. Who is your venerable friend, Apicius?"

This was addressed to a dyspeptic-looking youth, magnificently attired, who, in company with a person in the extreme decline of life, approached the door. Paulus and Benigna stood aside, finding themselves still constrained to listen while waiting for room to enter the blocked-up door of the palace.

"Is it possible," replied Apicius, "that you forget Vedius Pollio, who, since you mention my poor table, has often kindly furnished it with such lampreys as no other mortal ever reared?"

The old man, whose age was not redolent of holiness, but reeking with the peculiar aroma of a life passed in boundless and systematic self-indulgence, leered with running, bloodshot eyes, and murmured that they paid him too much honor.

"Sir, you feed your lampreys well," said Pomponius Flaccus, "in your Vesuvian villa. They eat much living, and they eat well dead."

"I assure you," said Pollio, "that nothing but humorous exaggerations and witty stories have been circulated upon that subject. I can, with the strictest accuracy, establish the statement that no human being ever died merely and simply in order that my lampreys should grow fat and luscious. On the other hand, I do not deny that if some slave, guilty of great enormities, had in any event to forfeit life, the lampreys may in such cases, perhaps, have availed themselves of the circumstance. An opportunity might then arise which they had neither caused nor contrived."

"The flavor, in other words, never was the final cause of any slave's punishment," said Lucius Piso.

"You use words, sir," said Pollio, "which are correct as to the fact, and philosophical as to the style."

"Talking of philosophy," said Apicius, "do you hold with this young Greek, this Athenian Dion who has lately visited the court, that man eats in order to live? or with me, that he lives in order to eat?"

"Whenever there is any thing to eat with you, my Apicius," said Lucius Piso, "unless there be something to drink with my Pomponius here, may I be alive to do either the one or the other."

"To the camp for an appetite," said Pomponius Flaccus, descending the steps out of the palace hall into the street, and reeling against Paulus, who held him from staggering next against Benigna.

"I am accompanying," replied Paulus, "this damsel, who comes hither by Cæsar's order."

He naturally supposed that this formal-sounding answer would have struck some awe into the curious company among whom he had so unwittingly alighted with his rustic charge.

The astonishment of Paulus and Benigna knew no bounds. Was it possible that in the very precincts of Cæsar's residence for the time, at the door of an imperial palace, within hearing of two prætorian sentries, in the public street and open daylight, persons should be found, not reckless outcasts maddened by desperation, but a whole company of patricians, who, correcting each other as they might do in reciting a popular proverb, or an admired song, should speak thus of the man to whom gladiators, having not an hour to live, cried, "As we die we salute thee?" The man at whose name even courageous innocence trembled?

"Drunk but once," added Lucius Piso, who had evidently quite recovered from his own inebriation.

A general laugh, in which all present joined save Paulus and Benigna, greeted this sally, and, in the midst of their hilarity an elegant open chariot of richly-sculptured bronze, the work being far more costly than the material, drawn by two handsome horses, and driven by a vigorous and expert charioteer, came swiftly down the street in the contrary direction of the camp, and stopped opposite the door.

As the horses were pulled back upon their haunches, a youth, tall, well made, and eminently graceful, sprang to the ground. He had a countenance in the extraordinary beauty of which intellect, attempered by a sweet, grave, and musing expression, played masterful and luminous. He was neatly but gravely dressed, after the Athenian fashion. The four personages at the door, who were, by the by, far more floridly arrayed, and wore various ornaments, nevertheless looked like bats among which a bird of paradise had suddenly alighted. No gayety of attire could cover the unloveliness of their minds, lives, and natures, nor could the plainness of his costume cause the new-comer to be disregarded or mistaken anywhere. In the whole company Lucius Piso alone was a man of sense, solid attainments, and spirit, though he was a hard drinker. Even the others, drivelling jesters as they were, became sober now at once; they uncovered instinctively, and greeted the youth, as he passed, with an obeisance as low as that performed by the ostiarius, who stood ready to admit him. When, returning these salutes, he had entered the palace, Piso said, for the information of Vedius Pollio, who had come from Pompeii, "That is he."

"Yes. Dionysius, young as he is, I am told that he is certain to fill the[460] next vacancy in their famous Areopagus."

"Augustus would swear by him," said Flaccus. "It is lucky for all of us that the youth has no ambition, and is going away again soon."

"Say? Why, what does he ever say of any one, at least of any distinguished man?"

"Not lovingly, I suspect. Their spirits, their geniuses, would not long agree. If he was emperor, Dionysius of Athens would not have so brilliant a reception at court."

"But is it then really brilliant? Does one so young sustain his own part?" asked Pollio.

"You never heard any person like him; I will answer for that," replied Lucius Piso. "He is admirable. I was amazed when I met him. Augustus, you know, is no dotard, and Augustus is enchanted with him. The men of letters, besides, are all raving about him, from old Titus Livy down to L. Varius, the twiddler of verses, the twiddle-de-dee successor of our immortal Horace and our irreplaceable Virgil. And then Quintus Haterius, who has scarcely less learning than Varro, (and much more worldly knowledge;) Haterius, who is himself what erudite persons rarely are, the most fascinating talker alive, and certainly the finest public speaker that has addressed an assembly since the death of poor Cicero, declares that Dionysius of Athens—"

"Ah! enough! enough!" cried Apicius, interrupting; "you make me sick with these praises of airy, intangible nothings. I shan't eat comfortably to-day. What are all his accomplishments, I should like to know, compared to one good dinner?"

"You will have long ceased to eat," retorted Piso, "when his name will yet continue to be pronounced."

"You know," said Piso, "that all over the east, from immemorial time, some great, mysterious, and stupendous being has been expected to appear on earth about this very date."

"Not only in the east, good Piso," said Pollio; "my neighbor in Italy, you know, the Cumæan sibyl, is construed now never to have had any other theme."

"You are right," returned Piso; "I meant to say that the prevailing notion has always been that it is in the east this personage will appear, and then his sway is to extend gradually into every part of the world. Old sayings, various warning oracles, traditions among common peasants, who cannot speak each other's languages and don't even know of each other's existence, the obscure songs of the sibyls, the dream of all mankind, the mystical presentiments of the world concur, and have long concurred, upon that singular subject. Moreover, the increasing corruption of morals, to which Horace adverts," added Piso, "will and must end in dissolving society altogether, unless arrested by the advent of some such being. That is manifest. Haterius and others, who are learned in the Hebrew literature, tell me that prodigies and portents, so well authenticated that it is no more possible to doubt them than it is to doubt that Julius Cæsar was murdered in Rome, were performed by men who, ages ago, much more distinctly and minutely foretold the coming of this person at or near the very time in which we are living; and, accordingly,[461] that the whole nation of the Jews (convinced that those who could perform such things must have enjoyed more than mortal knowledge and power) fully expect and firmly believe that the being predicted by these workers of portents is now immediately to appear. Thus, Haterius—"

"No," said Pomponius Flaccus, shaking his head, looking on the ground, and pressing the tip of his forefinger against his forehead, "that is not Haterius's argument, or rather, that is only the half of it."

"I now remember," resumed Lucius Piso; "you are correct in checking my version of it. These ancient seers and wonder-workers had also foretold several things that were to come to pass earlier than the advent of the great being, and these things having in their respective times all duly occurred, serve to convince the Jews, and indeed have also convinced many philosophic inquirers, of whom Dionysius is one, studying the prophetical books in question, and then exploring the history of the Hebrews, to see whether subsequent events really correspond with what had been foretold—that seers who could perform the portents which they performed in their day, and who besides possessed a knowledge of future events verified by the issue, were and must be genuinely and truly prophets, and that their predictions deserved belief concerning this great, mysterious, and much-needed personage, who is to appear in the present generation. And then there is the universal tradition, there is the universal expectation, to confirm such reasonings," added Piso.

The astounding character, as well as the intrinsic importance and interest of this conversation, its reference to his half-countryman Dionysius, of whom he had heard so much, and the glimpses of society, the hints about men and things which it afforded him, had prevented Paulus from asking these exalted gentlefolk to make room for him and Benigna to pass, and had held him, and indeed her also, spell-bound.

"But how all this accounts, most noble Piso, for the visit of the Athenian to the court of Augustus, you have forgotten to say," remarked Pollio.

"He obtained," replied Piso, "the emperor's permission to study the Sibylline books."

"What a pity," said Flaccus, "that the first old books were burnt in the great fire at Rome."

"Well," resumed Lucius Piso, "he brought this permission to me, as governor of Rome, and I went with him myself to the quindecemviri and the other proper authorities. Oh! as to the books, it is the opinion of those learned in such matters that there is little or nothing in the old books which has not been recovered in the collection obtained by the senate afterward from Cumæ, Greece, Egypt, Babylon, and all places where either the sibyls still lived, or their oracles were preserved."

"But, after all," said Pollio, "are not these oracles the ravings of enthusiasm, if not insanity?"

"Cicero, although in general so sarcastic and disdainful, so incredulous and so hard to please," answered Piso, "has settled that question."

"He has, I allow it," added Pomponius Flaccus, "and settled it most completely. What a charming passage that is wherein the incomparable thinker, matchless writer, and fastidious critic expresses his reverential opinion of the Sibylline books, and demonstrates with triumphant logic their claims upon the attention of all rational, all clear-headed and philosophic inquirers!"

"I am not a rational, or clear-headed, or philosophic inquirer," broke in Apicius, "Come, do come to the[462] camp; and do pray at last allow this foreign-looking young gentleman and rustic damsel to enter the doorway."

The atriensis had meanwhile summoned the master of admissions, who beckoned to Paulus, and he, followed by Benigna, now entered the hall, which was flagged with lozenge-formed marbles of different hues, and supported by four pillars of porphyry. The adventurers passed the perpetual fire in the ancestral or image-room, and saw the images of the Mamurras, dark with the smoke of many generations; they crossed another chamber hung with pictures, and went half round the galleried and shady impluvium, inclosing a kind of internal garden, where, under the blaze of the sunlight, from which they were themselves sheltered, they beheld, like streams of shaken diamonds, the spray of the plashing fountains, the statues in many-tinted marble, and the glowing colors of a thousand exquisite flowers. Near the end of one wing of the colonnaded quadrangle they arrived at a door, which they were passing when their guide stopped them, and as the door flew open to his knock, he made them a bow and preceded them through the aperture.

They noticed, as they followed, that the slave who had opened this door was chained to a staple. Several slaves, who scarcely looked up, were writing in the room which they now entered.

The master of admissions, glancing round the chamber, said, addressing the slaves in general, "Claudius is not here, I perceive; let some one go for him, and say that the daughter of Crispus, of the One Hundredth Milestone, has been charged to communicate to him the pleasure of Tiberius Cæsar touching his immediate manumission; and that I, the master of admissions in the Mamurran palace, am to add a circumstance or two which will complete the information the damsel has to give. Let some one, therefore, fetch Claudius forthwith, and tell him that he keeps us waiting."

During this speech, which was rather pompously delivered, Paulus noticed that, close to a second door in the chamber at the end opposite to that where they had entered, a young slave was seated upon a low settle, with a hide belt round his waist, to which was padlocked a light but strong brass chain, soldered at the nether link to a staple in the floor. This slave now rose, and opening the door, held it ajar till one of the clerks, after a brief whisper among themselves, was detached to execute the errand which the steward had delivered. The slave closed the door again, the clerks continued their writing, the steward half-shut his eyes, and leaned against a pillar in an attitude of serene if not sublime expectation; and Paulus and Benigna waited in silence.

During the pause which ensued, Paulus beheld the steward suddenly jump out of his dignified posture, and felt a hand at the same time laid lightly on his own shoulder. Turning round, he saw the youth who had a few minutes before descended from the bronze chariot.

"Ought I not to be an acquaintance of yours?" asked the new-comer with an agreeable smile. "You are strikingly like one whom I have known. He was a valiant Roman knight, once resident in Greece; I mean Paulus Lepidus Æmilius, who helped, with Mark Antony, to win the great day of Philippi."

"You and a sister, I think," returned the other, "had been left at home, in Thrace, with your nurse and the servants, when some business a little more than three years ago brought[463] your father and his wife, the Lady Aglais, to Athens. There I met them. Alas! he is gone. I have heard it. But where are your mother and your sister?"

"Well, I request you to say to them that Dionysius of Athens—so people style me—remembers them with affection. I will visit them and you. Do I intrude if I ask who is this damsel?" (glancing kindly toward Benigna, who had listened with visible interest.)

Paulus told him, in a few rapid words, not only who she was, but with distinct details upon what errand she had come.

He had scarcely finished when Claudius, the slave, arrived breathless, in obedience to the summons of the magister.

"The orders of Tiberius Cæsar to me," observed this functionary in a slow, loud voice, but with rather a shamefaced glance at Dion, "are, that I should see that you, Claudius, learnt from this maiden the conditions upon which he is graciously pleased to grant you your liberty, and then that I should myself communicate something in addition."

"O Claudius!" began Benigna, blushing scarlet, "we, that is, not you, but I—I was not fair, I was not just to Tib—that is—just read this letter from the illustrious prefect Sejanus to my father."

Claudius, very pale and biting his lip, ran his eye in a moment through the document, and giving it back to Benigna awaited the communication.

"Well," said she, "only this moment have I learnt the easy, the trifling condition which the generous Cæsar, and tribune of the people, attaches to his bounty."

There was a meaning smile interchanged among the slaves, which escaped none present except Benigna; and Claudius became yet more pallid.

"The prefect Sejanus has just told Master Paulus," pursued the young maiden, "that you have only to break a horse for Tiberius Cæsar to obtain forthwith your freedom, and fifty thousand sesterces too," she added in a lower voice.

Paulus Æmilius, naturally penetrating and of a vivid though imperfectly-educated mind, discerned this much, that some mystery, some not insignificant secret, was in the act of disclosure. The illustrious visitor from Athens had let the hand which lay on Paulus's shoulder fall negligently to his side, and with his head thrown a little back, and a somewhat downward-sweeping glance, was surveying the scene. He possessed a far higher order of intellect than the gallant and bright-witted youth who was standing beside him; and had received, in the largest measure that the erudite civilization of classic antiquity could afford, that finished mental training which was precisely what Paulus, however accomplished in all athletic exercises, rather lacked. Both the youths easily saw that something was to come; they both felt that a secret was on the leap.

"Break a horse!" exclaimed the slave Claudius, with parched, white lips; "I am a poor lad who have always been at the desk! What do I know of horses or of riding?"

There was an inclination to titter among the clerks, but it was checked by their good-nature—indeed, by their liking for Claudius; they all looked up, however.

"Your illustrious master," replied the magister or steward, or major-domo, "has thought of this, and, indeed, of every thing;" again the man directed the same shamefaced glance[464] as before toward Dion. "Knowing, probably, your unexpertness in horses, which is no secret among your fellow-slaves, and in truth, among all your acquaintances, Tiberius Cæsar has, in the first place, selected for you the very animal, out of all his stables, which you are to ride at the games in the circus before the couple of hundred thousand people who will crowd the champaign."

"At the games!" interrupted Claudius, "and in the circus! Why, all who know me know that I an arrant coward."

Like a burst of bells, peal upon peal, irrepressible, joyous, defiant, and frank, as if ringing with astonishment and scorn at the thing, yet also full of friendliness and honest pitying love for the person, broke forth the laugh of Paulus. It was so genuine and so infectious, that even Dion smiled in a critical, musing way, while all the slaves chuckled audibly, and the slave chained to the staple near the door rattled his brass fastenings at his sides. Only three individuals preserved their gravity, the shamefaced steward, poor little frightened Benigna, and the astonished Claudius himself.

"In the second place," pursued the magister or steward, "besides choosing for you the very animal, the individual and particular horse, which you are to ride, the Cæsar has considerately determined and decided, in view of your deserved popularity among all your acquaintances, that, if any acquaintance of yours, any of your numerous friends, any other person, in fine, whoever, in your stead shall volunteer to break this horse for Tiberius Cæsar, you shall receive your freedom and the fifty thousand sesterces the very next morning, exactly the same."

A rather weak and vague murmur of applause from the slaves followed this official statement.

"And so the Cæsar," said Claudius, "has both selected me the steed, and has allowed me a substitute to break him, if I can find any substitute. Suppose, however, that I decline such conditions of liberty altogether—what then?"

"Then Tiberius Cæsar sells you to-morrow morning to Vedius Pollio of Pompeii, who has come hither on purpose to buy you, and carry you home to his Cumæan villa."

"To his tank, you mean," replied poor Claudius, "in order that I may fatten his lampreys. I am in a pretty species of predicament. But name the horse which I am to break at the games."

Dion turned his head slightly toward the steward, who was about to answer, and the steward remained silent. A sort of excitement shot through the apartment.

"Name the horse, if you please, honored magister," said Claudius. Even now the steward could not, or did not, speak.

Before the painful pause was broken, the attention of all present was arrested by a sudden uproar in the street. The noise of a furious trampling, combined with successive shrieks, whether of pain or terror, was borne into the palace.

Dionysius, followed by Paulus, by Claudius, by the steward, and Benigna, ran to the window, if such it can be termed, drew aside the silken curtain, and pushed open the gaudily-painted, perforated shutter, when a strange and alarming spectacle was presented in the open space formed by cross-streets before the left front of the mansion.

A magnificent horse of bigger stature, yet of more elegant proportions, than the horses which were then used[465] for the Roman cavalry, was in the act of rearing; and within stroke of his fore-feet, on coming down, lay a man, face under, motionless, a woollen tunic ripped open behind at the shoulder, and disclosing some sort of wound, from which blood was flowing. The horse, which was of a bright roan color, was neither ridden nor saddled, but girt with a cloth round the belly, and led, or rather held back, by two long cavassons, which a couple of powerfully-built, swarthy men, dressed like slaves, held at the further ends on opposite sides of the beast, considerably apart, and perhaps thirty feet behind him. One of these lines or reins—that nearest the palace—was taut, the other was slack; and the slave who held the former had rolled it twice or thrice round his bare arm, and was leaning back, and hauling, hand over hand.

The animal had apparently stricken on the back, unawares, with a fore-foot play and a pawing blow, the man who was lying so still and motionless on the pavement, and the beast, having reared, was now trying to come down upon his victim. But no sooner were his fore-legs in the air than he, of course, thereby yielded a sudden purchase to the groom who was pulling him with the taut cavasson, and this man was thus at last enabled to drag him fairly off his hind-legs, and to bring him with a hollow thump to the ground upon his side. Before the brute could again struggle to his feet, four or five soldiers who happened to be nigh, running to the rescue, had lifted, and carried out of harm's way, the prostrate and wounded man.

"That is the very horse!" exclaimed the magister, stretching his neck between the shoulders of Dion and Paulus, at the small window of the palace.

"I observe," said Paulus, "that the cavasson is ringed to a muzzle—the beast is indisputably muzzled."

"Yes," quoth the steward; "the horse is priceless; he comes of an inestimable breed; that is the present representative of the Sejan race of steeds. Your Tauric horses are cats in comparison; your cavalry horses but goats. That animal is directly descended from the real horse Sejanus, and excels, they even say, his sire, and indeed he also in his turn goes now by the old name. He is the horse Sejanus."

At these words Paulus could not, though he tried hard, help casting one glance toward Benigna, who had been with him only so short a time before at the top of the palace, listening to the conversation of the tipsy patricians. The poor little girl had become very white and very scare-faced.

"Tell us more," said Dionysius, "of this matter, worthy magister. We have all heard that phrase of ill omen—'such and such a person has the horse Sejanus'—meaning that he is unlucky, that he is doomed to destruction. Now, what is the origin and what is the true value of this popular proverb?"

"Like all popular proverbs," replied the steward, with a bow of the deepest reverence to the young Athenian philosopher, "it has some value, my lord, and a real foundation, although Tiberius has determined to confute it by practical proof. You must know, most illustrious senator of Athens, that during the civil wars which preceded the summer-day stillness of this glorious reign of Augustus, no one ever appeared in battle-field[466] or festive show so splendidly mounted as the knight Cneius Sejus, whose name has attached itself to the race.

"His horse, which was of enormous proportions, like the beast you have just beheld, would try to throw you first and would try to eat you afterward. Few could ride him: and then his plan was simple. Those whom he threw he would beat to death with his paws, and then tear them to pieces with his teeth. Moreover, if he could not dislodge his rider from the ephippia by honest plunging and fair play, he would writhe his neck round like a serpent—indeed, the square front, large eyes, and supple neck remind one of a serpent; he would twist his head back, I say, all white and dazzling, with the ears laid close, the lips drawn away, and the glitter of his teeth displayed, and, seizing the knee-cap or the shinbone, would tear it off, and bring down the best horseman that ever bestrode a Bucephalus. What usually followed was frightful to behold; for, once a rider was dismounted, the shoulder has been seen to come away between the brute's teeth, with knots and tresses of tendons dripping blood like tendrils, and the ferocious horse has been known with his great fat grinders to crush the skull of the fallen person, and lap up the brains—as you would crack a nut—after which, he paws the prostrate figure till it no longer resembles the form of man. But the present horse Sejanus, which you have just beheld, excels all in strength, beauty, and ferocity; he belongs to my master Tiberius."

"Ah gods!" exclaimed poor Benigna; "this is the description of a demon rather than of a beast."

"What became of the first possessor, who yields his name to so unexampled a breed of horses? what became of the knight Sejus?"

"A whisper had transpired, illustrious sir," replied the steward, "that this unhappy man had fed the brute upon human flesh. Mark Antony, who coveted possession of the horse, brought some accusation, but not this, against the knight, who was eventually put to death; but Dolabella, the former lieutenant of Julius Cæsar, had just before given a hundred thousand sesterces (£800) to Sejus for the animal; therefore Antony killed the knight for nothing, and failed to get Sejanus; at least he failed that time. Dolabella, however, did not prosper; he almost immediately afterward murdered himself. Cassius thereupon became the next master of the Sejan horse, and Cassius rode him at the fatal battle of Philippi, losing which, Cassius in his turn, after that resolute fashion of which we all have heard, put an end to his own existence."

"This time," continued the magister, bowing, "Mark Antony had his way—he became at last the lord of the Sejan horse, but likewise he, in his turn, was doomed to exemplify the brute's ominous reputation; for Antony, as you know, killed himself a little subsequently at Alexandria. The horse had four proprietors in a very short period, and in immediate succession, the first of whom was cruelly slain, and the three others slew themselves. Hence, noble sir, the proverb."

By this time, the magister had told his tale, the street outside had become empty and silent, and the parties within the chamber had thoroughly mastered and understood the horrible truth which underlay the case of the slave Claudius, and this new instance of Tiberius's wrath and vengeance.

The magister, Claudius, and Benigna had returned to the other end of the room, where the slaves were writing, and had left Paulus and Dion still standing thoughtfully near the window.

Claudius exclaimed, "My turn it is at present; it will be some one else's soon!"

He and Benigna were now whispering together. The magister stood a little apart, looking on the ground in a deep reverie, his chin buried in the hollow of his right hand, the arm of which was folded across his chest. The slaves were bending over their work in silence.

Says Paulus in a low voice to Dion, "You have high credit with the emperor, illustrious Athenian; and surely if you were to tell him the whole case, he would interfere to check the cruelty of this man, this Tiberius."

"What, Augustus do this for a slave?" replied Dion mournfully. "The emperor would not, and by the laws could not, interfere with Vedius Pollio, or any private knight, in the treatment or government of his slaves, who are deemed to be the absolute property of their respective lords; what chance, then, that he should meddle, or, if he meddled, that he should successfully meddle, with Tiberius Cæsar on behalf of an offending mance? And this too for the sake, remember, of a low-born girl? Women are accounted void of deathless souls, my friend, even by some who suspect that men may be immortal. By astuteness, by beauty, not beauteously employed, and, above all, by the effect of habit, imperceptible as a plant in its growth, stealthy as the prehensile ivy, some few individual women, like Livia, Tiberius's mother, and Julia, Augustus's daughter, have acquired great accidental power. But to lay down the principle that the slightest trouble should be taken for these slaves, would in this Roman world raise a symphony of derision as musical as the cry of the Thessalian hounds when their game is afoot."

Paulus, buried in thought, stole a look full of pity toward the further end of the apartment. "Slaves, women, laws, gladiators," he muttered, "and brute power prevalent as a god. Every day, noble Athenian, I learn something which fills me with hatred and scorn for the system amid which we are living." He then told Dion the story of Thellus and Alba; he next laid before him the exact circumstances of Benigna and Claudius; relating what had occurred that very morning, and by no means omitting the strange and wonder-fraught conversation at the door of the palace, after which he added,

"I declare to you solemnly—but then I am no more than an uninstructed youth, having neither your natural gifts nor your acquired knowledge—I never heard any thing more enchanting, more exalted, more consoling, and to my poor mind more reasonable, or more probable, than that some god is quickly to come down from heaven and reform and control this abominable world. Why do I say probable? Because it would be god-like to do it. I would ask nothing better, therefore, than to be allowed to join you and go with you all over the world; searching and well weighing whatever evidences and signs may be accessible to man's righteously discontented and justly wrathful industry in such a task; and I would be in your company when you explored and decided whether this sublime dream, this noble, generous, compensating hope, this grand and surely divine tradition, be a truth, or, ah me! ah me! nothing but a vain poem of the future—a beautiful promise never to be realized, the specious mockery of some cruel muse."

"In the mean time, listen further," added Paulus. "What would the divine being who is thus expected, were he in this room, deem of this transaction before our eyes? You have heard the steward's account of the horse Sejanus; you have heard Claudius's allusion to Vedius Pollio's lampreys. Now, you are a wise, witty, and eloquent person, and you can correct me if I say wrong—in what is the man whom the horse Sejanus, for instance, throws and tears to pieces better than the horse? In what is the man whom the lampreys devour better than the lampreys? I say the horse and the lampreys are better than the man, if mere power be a thing more to be esteemed and honored than what is right, and just, and honorable, and estimable; for the lampreys and the horse possess the greater might, most indubitably, in the cases mentioned. The elephant is stronger than we, the hound is swifter, the raven lives much longer. Either the mere power to do a thing deserves my esteem more than any other object or consideration, and therefore whoever can trample down his fellow-men, and gratify all his brutal instincts at the expense of their lives, their safety, their happiness, their reasonable free-will, is more estimable than he who is just, truthful, kind, generous, and noble—either, I say, the man who is strong against his fellows is more good than he who is good—and the words justice, right, gentleness, humanity, honor, keeping faith in promises, pity for poor little women who are oppressed and brutally used, virtue, and such noises made by my tongue against my palate, express nothing which can be understood, nothing in which any mind can find any meaning—either, I again say, the lampreys and the Sejan horse are more to be esteemed, and valued, and loved than my sister and my mother, or it is not true that the mere power of Tiberius, combined with the brutish inclination to do a thing, terminates the question whether it is right to do it. The moment I like to do any thing, if I can do it, is it necessarily right that I should do it? The moment two persons have a difference, is it right for either of them, and equally right for each of them, to murder the other? But if it was the intention of this great being, this god who is expected to appear immediately among us, that we should be dependent upon each other, each doing for the other what the other cannot do for himself—and I am sure of it—then it will please him, Dion, if I consider what is helpful and just and generous. Or am I wrong? Is virtue a dream? Are contrary things in the same cases equally good? Are contrary things in the same cases equally beautiful?

"Are my brutish instincts or inclinations, which vary as things vary round me, my only law? Is each of us intended by this great being to be at war with all the rest? to regard the positive power each of us may have as our sole restriction? to destroy and injure all the others by whom we could be served, if we would for our parts also serve and help? And must women, for instance, being the weaker, be brutally used? Tell me, Dion, will it please this great being if I try to render service to my fellow-men, who must have the same natural claims to his consideration as I have? or does he wish me to hurt them and them to hurt me, according as we may each have the power? Is there nothing higher in a man than his external power of action? Answer—you are a philosopher."

The countenance of Dion blazed for one instant, as if the light of a passing torch had been shed upon a[469] mirror, and then resumed the less vivid effulgence of that permanent intellectual beauty which was its ordinary characteristic. He replied,

"All the philosophy that ever was taught or thought could not lead you to truer conclusions."

"Benigna," said Paulus, "your kindness to my sister and mother, and your natural probity, had something, I think, to do with beginning this trouble in which you and your intended find yourselves. As you were not unmindful of us, it is but right that we should not be unmindful of you. Tiberius permits any friend of Claudius the slave to be a substitute in breaking the horse Sejanus; and Claudius is to have his freedom and fifty thousand sesterces, and to marry you, whom I see to be a good, honorable-hearted girl, all the same as if he had complied with the terms in person. This was thoughtful and, I suppose, generous of Tiberius Cæsar."

"Would any of these youths who hear me," added he turning round, "like to break the fine-looking steed at the games, before all the people, instead of Claudius?"

"Then I will do it myself," he said. "Magister, make a formal note of the matter in your tablets; and be so good as to inform the Cæsar of it, in order that I, on my side, may learn place and time."

The magister, with a low bow and a face expressing the most generous and boundless astonishment, grasped his prettily-mounted stylus, and taking the pengillarin from his girdle drew a long breath, and requested Paulus to favor him with his name and address.

"I am," replied he, "the knight Paulus Lepidus Æmilius, son of one of the victors at Philippi, nephew of the ex-triumvir. I reside at Crispus's inn, and am at present a promised prisoner of Velleius Paterculus, the military tribune."

While the steward wrote in his tablets, Benigna uttered one or two little gasps and fairly fainted away. The slave Claudius saved her from falling, and he now placed her on a bench against the wall.

Paulus, intimating that he would like to return to Crispus's hostelry before dark, and having learnt, in reply to a question, that Claudius could procure from Thellus, the gladiator, a vehicle for Benigna, and that he would request Thellus himself to convey her home, turned to take leave of Dion.

The Athenian, however, said he would show him the way out of the palace. They went silent and thoughtful. In the impluvium they found a little crowd surrounding Augustus, who had returned from his promenade to the camp, and who was throwing crumbs of bread among some pigeons near the central fountain.

Two ladies were of the company, one of whom, in advanced age, was evidently the Empress Livia, but for whose influence and management Germanicus—certainly not her ungrateful son Tiberius—would have been the next master of the world. The other lady, who was past her prime, had still abundant vestiges of a beauty which must once have been very remarkable.

She was painted red and plastered white, with immense care, to look some fifteen years younger than she truly was.

Her countenance betrayed to a good physiognomist, at first glance, the horrible life she had led. Paulus,[470] whose experience was little, and, although she fastened upon him a flaming glance, which she intended to be full both of condescension and fascination, thought that he had seldom seen a woman either more repulsive or more insanely haughty.

It was Julia, the new and abhorred wife of Tiberius. Not long before, at the request of Augustus, who was always planning to dispose of Julia, Tiberius had given up for her the only woman he ever loved, Agrippina Marcella.

Tiberius so loved her, if it deserves to be termed love, that when, being thus deserted, she took another husband, (Asinius Gallus,) he, mad with jealousy, threw him into a dungeon and kept him there till he died, as Suetonius and Tacitus record.

"Ah my Athenian!" said the emperor to Dionysius, placing a hand affectionately on the youth's shoulder, "could you satisfy me that those splendid theories of yours are more than dreams and fancies; that really there is one eternal, all-wise, and omnipotent spirit, who made this universal frame of things, and governs it as an absolute monarch; that he made us; that in us he made a spirit, a soul, a ghost, a thinking principle, which will never die; and that I, who am going down to the tomb, am only to change my mode of existence; that I shall not wholly descend thither; that an urn will not contain every thing which will remain of me; and all this in a very different sense from that which poor Horace meant. But why speak of it? Has not Plato failed?"

"Plato," replied Dionysius, "neither quite failed nor is quite understood, illustrious emperor. But you were saying, if I could satisfy you. Be pleased to finish. Grant I could satisfy you; what then?"

"Satisfy me that one eternal sovereign of the universe lives, and that what now thinks in me," returned the emperor, while the courtly group made a circle, "will never cease to think; that what is now conscious within me will be conscious for ever; that now, in more than a mere poetical allusion to my fame—and on the word of Augustus Cæsar, there is no reasonable request within the entire reach and compass of my power which I will refuse you."

"And what sort of a hearing, emperor," inquired Dion, "and under what circumstances, and upon what conditions, will you be pleased to give me? and when? and where?"

"In this palace, before the games end," replied Augustus. "The hearing shall form an evening's entertainment for our whole circle and attendance. You shall sustain your doctrines, while our celebrated advocates and orators, Antistius Labio and Domitius Afer, who disagree with them, I know, shall oppose you. Let me see. The Cæsars, Tiberius and Germanicus, with their ladies, and our host Mamurra and his family, and all our circle, shall be present. Titus Livy, Lucius Varius, Velleius Paterculus, and the greatest orator Rome ever produced, except Cicero" (the old man 'mentioned with watery eyes the incomparable genius to whose murder he had consented in his youth)—"I mean Quintus Haterius—shall form a judicial jury. Haterius shall pronounce the sentence. Dare you face such an ordeal?"

"I will accept it," replied the Athenian, blushing; "I will accept the ordeal with fear. Daring is contrasted with trembling; but, although my daring trembles, yet my trepidation dares."

"Oh! how enchanting!" cried the august Julia; "we shall hear the eloquent Athenian." And she clasped her hands and sent an unutterable[471] glance toward Dion, who saw it not.

"Better for once than even the mighty comedy of the palace," said Lucius Varius.

"Worthy of Augustus's time," subjoined Tiberius, who was leaning against one of the pillars which supported the gallery of the impluvium.

"Worthy," said a handsome man, with wavy, crisp, brown locks, in the early prime of life, whose military tunic was crossed with the broad purple stripe, "worthy of Athens in the days of Plato; and as Demosthenes addressed the people after listening to the reporter of Socrates, so Haterius shall tell this company what he thinks, after listening to Dion."

"You may live," said Augustus, "to be a hundred, but you will never be old; just as our Cneius Piso here never was young."

There was a laugh. The Haterius in question was he to whom Ben Jonson compared Shakespeare as a talker, and of whom, then past eighty, Augustus used, Seneca tells us, to say that his careering thoughts resembled a chariot whose rapidity threatened to set its own wheels on fire, and that he required to be held by a drag—"sufflaminandus."

Dion now bowed and was moving away, followed modestly by Paulus, who desired to draw no attention to himself, when the steward, or magister, glided quickly up the colonnade of the impluvium to the pillar against which Tiberius was leaning, whispered something, handed his tablets to the Cæsar, and, in answer to a glance of surprised inquiry, looked toward and indicated Paulus.

Tiberius immediately passed Paulus and Dion, saying in an under tone, "Follow me," and led the way into a small empty chamber, of which, when the two youths had entered it, he closed the door.

"You are going to break the horse called Sejanus?" said he, turning round and standing.

"Then you must do so on the fourth day from this, in the review-ground of the camp, an hour before sunset."

"The muzzle will be snatched off by a contrivance of the cavasson, after you mount him," replied Tiberius, looking steadfastly at the other.

"Then, instead of a whip, may I carry any instrument I please in my hands?" demanded Paulus; "my sword, for example?"

"Yes," answered Tiberius; "but you must not injure the horse; he is of matchless price."

"But" persisted Paulus, "your justice, illustrious Cæsar, will make a distinction between any injury which the steed may do to himself and any which I may do to him. For instance, he might dash himself against some obstruction, or into the river Liris, and in trying to clamber out again might be harmed. Such injuries would be inflicted by himself, not by me. The hurt I shall do him either by spear, or by sword, or by any other instrument, will not be intended to touch his life or his health, nor likely to do so. If I do make any scars, I think the hair will grow again."

"He will not be so scrupulous on his side," said Tiberius; "however, your distinction is reasonable. Have you any thing else to ask?"

"Certainly I have," said Paulus; "it is that no one shall give him any food or drink, except what I myself shall bring, for twenty-four hours before I ride him."

"That is not my meaning, sir," answered Paulus quietly. "I will give him as much corn and water as he will take. I wish to prevent him from having any other kind of provender. There are articles which will make a horse drunk or mad."

"I agree," replied Tiberius, "that he shall have only corn and water, provided he have as much of both as my own servant wishes; nor have I any objection that the servant should receive these articles from you alone, or from your groom."

The youth admitted that he had not; and, seeing the Cæsar move, he opened the door, held it open while the great man passed through, and then taking a friendly leave of Dion, hastily quitted the palace.

"We have got rid of the brother! You must have every thing ready to convey her to Rome the fifth day from this. And now, enough of private matters. I am sick of them. The affairs of the empire await me!"

THE ANCIENT IRISH CHURCHES.

It was proposed, in the first draught of Mr. Gladstone's bill for the disestablishment of the Irish Church, to erect some of the cathedrals into national monuments, and to set apart toward the cost of their future repair a portion of the fund derived from the sale of church temporalities. This clause, however, was set aside; but even if it had been retained, it would not have given satisfaction. If it be the sincere desire of Mr. Gladstone to do justice to Catholic Ireland, and to conciliate her people, but one course remains open to him in regard to the ancient shrines of Catholic worship, namely, to restore them to their original owners. Many of these cathedrals and churches are altogether unsuited to the requirements of Protestant religious service. Some of them are too large to be maintained by the tiny congregations which occasionally visit them. Others require a costly annual outlay too great to be undertaken at the expense of the few families[473] in whose neighborhood they lie. Would it not, then, manifestly tend to the benefit alike of Catholics and Protestants, that the latter, on terms advantageous to themselves, should yield to the former the possession of those buildings which Protestants do not require for bona-fide ends, but which possess, in the eyes of Catholics, a peculiarly sacred, and, at the same time, a perfectly legitimate value?

Some ancient Catholic temple is perhaps situated in a district inhabited by twenty or thirty Protestants, and five thousand or ten thousand Catholics. The Protestants cannot fill a corner of the spacious fabric. They attach no value to it as the shrine of a venerated saint. Its very capabilities for an ornate and splendid Catholic ritual render it only the less fit for the simple requirements of Protestant worship. Protestants can gain nothing by retaining such a temple, save the privilege of keeping it as a trophy of a bygone and ill-omened ascendency. But if the British Parliament were to ordain that such temples should be purchased from Protestants, who scarcely require them, and given to Catholics to supply their evident wants, then a visible proof would at once be afforded to the Irish nation that disestablishment was no coldly conceived or niggardly administered instalment of justice, but a ready instrument for cordial reconciliation of creeds and nationalities.

It is ridiculous to urge as an objection, that Protestants in general attach a value, other than a pecuniary or political one, to the sites of the shrines of ancient Irish saints. Few Protestants have any veneration for St. Patrick, St. Brigid, or St. Nicholas. Not one Protestant in a thousand has so much as even heard of the names of St. Elbe, St. Aidan, St. Colman, or St. Molana. Irish Protestant bishops often deny the sacredness of holy places, and, when consecrating a site for the erection of a church, take the opportunity to explain such consecration to be a mere form of law. Some Protestant bishops entertained objections to the selection of any titles for churches, save those of Christ and his apostles. They thought it allowable to celebrate divine service in a building called Christ church, or St. Peter's, or St. John's, but conceived it to be scarcely tolerable and semi-popish to dedicate an edifice for worship under the invocation of St. George, St. Patrick, or St. Michael. In some dioceses in Ireland, during the last century, the consecration of Protestant churches was on several occasions designedly omitted in deference to such scruples of conscience. But the very names of the ancient Irish saints are precious household words with Catholics, who dearly prize the holy shrine, the sacred well, the hallowed ruins consecrated by the lingering memories of the virgins, confessors, and martyrs whose lives were devoted to the conversion of Ireland. The Catholic peasant, as he sorrowfully gazes upon the desecrated remains of some fallen abbey, or upon the mouldering walls of a roofless oratory, often breathes a hopeless prayer that an unexpected turn of fortune would once again fill with robed monks the arched and pillared cloisters, and replace the solemn solitary hermit in his peaceful cell. The reconsecration of their sacred shrines and temples, long defaced and profaned by neglect, would realize one of the fondest dreams of Irishmen. Why do not British statesmen utilize, for the general benefit of their country, the pious sentiments which, in a religious point of view, they as Protestants may fail to appreciate, but which, in a political aspect, it seems a criminal blindness to disregard? The legislators who freely vote imperial[474] funds to provide Catholic priests and altars for Catholic soldiers, sailors, convicts, and paupers, cannot possibly entertain religious scruples against applying a portion of the ancient Catholic endowments of Ireland towards the purpose of restoring to their original uses some of the sites and shrines whose traditions are still potent enough in Ireland to sway the national sympathies.

No injury can result to Protestantism from the adoption of a course which would not merely increase the pecuniary resources of their church, but also tend materially to promote peace and good-will between men of different creeds. There are many ancient churches in Ireland which could be specified as almost useless to Protestants, but yet most precious and valuable if placed in the hands of Catholics. Many of the old Irish cathedrals are entirely, and some are almost entirely deserted. Ardagh, founded by St. Patrick, was reckoned among "the most ancient cathedrals of Ireland." Its first bishop—St. Mell—was buried "in his own church of Ardagh," wherein worship a few Protestants who care but little either for St. Mell or St. Patrick. The entire Protestant population of Ardagh parish is less than one hundred and fifty, while the Catholics number nearly two and a half thousands. There is but a scanty congregation of Protestants at Lismore, where St. Carthage, or at Leighlin, where St. Laserian was interred. At Howth, near Dublin, are the ruins—still capable of restoration—of a beautiful abbey and college. The college is occupied by poor tenants. The abbey is roofless, standing in a graveyard, choked with weeds and filth, of which the Protestant incumbent of the parish is custodian. St. Canice—the patron saint of Kilkenny—was buried, toward the end of the sixth century, at Aghadoe. "Aghadoe"—so wrote the Rev. M. Kelly, Professor of Ecclesiastical History in Maynooth, in his Calendar of Irish Saints—"at present is a ruin, its walls nearly perfect, but, like too many similar edifices in Ireland, all profaned by sickening desecration. Around it still bloom in perennial verdure its far-famed pastures, in a plain naturally rich, and improved by the monastic culture of a thousand years. The buildings are now used as ox-pens which were once the favorite home of the pilgrim and stranger." There are a score of other ruined temples like Aghadoe, which in their present condition are a disgrace to civilization; and yet are possessed of traditions which render them sacred in the eyes of Catholics, who would gladly rescue them from further decay and restore them to their ancient use.

Every tourist in Connemara has doubtless visited the famous collegiate church of St. Nicholas, in Galway. It is a vast temple, capable of containing six or seven thousand worshippers. Its size, the style of its architecture, and its historical traditions combine to render it eminently suitable to be the cathedral church of the Catholic population of Galway. It anciently was, not precisely a cathedral, but the church of the Catholic warden—a dignitary who possessed episcopal jurisdiction, being only subject to the visitation of the Archbishop of Tuam. It is now the church of the Protestant warden, or minister, who performs divine service, according to the Anglican ritual, in a portion of the transept, for the benefit of those members of the Anglican Church who inhabit the immediate neighborhood. There is now no Protestant bishop resident in Galway, nor has any such functionary since the era of the Reformation made Galway his headquarters. So that this once splendid building is absolutely thrown away upon Protestants,[475] being above ten times too large for a parochial church, and being utterly useless to them for a cathedral. The fabric of this grand relic from Catholicity has been allowed to fall into decay to such an extent that about five thousand pounds are now required to restore it or put it into permanent repair. It is unlikely that the Protestants of Galway will contribute this sum, or take steps to prevent this noble national monument from sinking, at no distant period, into hopeless ruin. The population of the entire county of Galway consisted, in 1861, of 261,951 Catholics and 8202 Anglicans, only a few hundred of the latter being residents in the town of Galway and its suburbs. The Catholic wardenship was changed into a bishopric by Pope Gregory XVI., in 1830, when Dr. French, who was then Bishop of Kilmacduagh and Kilfenora, and also Warden of Galway, retired to this diocese. In the same year, Dr. Browne who was subsequently translated to Elphin, became the first Bishop of Galway. Neither Bishop Browne, nor his successor Bishop O'Donnell, nor Dr. McEvilly, who became Bishop of Galway in 1857, were able to provide a suitable cathedral for the Galway Catholics. The present pro-cathedral affords accommodation to about four thousand persons, and upon the occasion of missions is thronged to a dangerous excess. The Catholics of Galway would gladly avail themselves of any opportunity which would render it possible for them to obtain St. Nicholas, the church of their forefathers, for a cathedral. The restoration to Catholic purposes of that edifice, which is a world too wide for Protestant wants, would confer a singular benefit upon an immense number of Catholics, without inflicting the least injury upon Protestants. The present Anglican Warden of Galway is not young enough to enable him, by means of commutation under Mr. Gladstone's bill to do much toward providing an endowment for his successors. The payment of a few thousand pounds, out of the funds of the Commissioners of Church Temporalities, to the Galway Protestants, in compensation for the loss of a fabric which they find too large for use and too costly to repair, would enable them not only to obtain a more convenient place of worship than the corner of the spacious transept they now occupy, but also would help them to provide the nucleus of a local endowment for Protestant ministrations after the decease of the present warden.

The inhabitants of "the city of the tribes" entertain no higher veneration for the church of St. Nicholas than is felt by the men of Munster for the celebrated Rock of Cashel of the Kings. In ancient years the "Rock" was a natural fortress, standing high over the surrounding plain, and proudly overlooking the thronged city which lay beneath its shelter. Upon the elevated plateau which crowns the submit of the "Rock," now stand the ruins of the former cathedral, and other ecclesiastical buildings, including the famous chapel of King Cormac, all of which, to the infinite discredit of England, have long since been deliberately abandoned to decay. The Protestants of Cashel ceased, somewhat more than a century ago, to occupy the old Catholic cathedral as a place of worship. Their archbishop, an Englishman named Price, disliked the fatigue of ascending the gradual incline which leads to the "Rock," and removed his throne to the present cathedral, a barn-like edifice which stands on the level ground near to the episcopal palace. In 1838, Dr. Laurence, the last Protestant Archbishop of Cashel, died, and the see being reduced to a bishopric in union with three other dioceses, the Protestant[476] bishop selected for his residence the city of Waterford in preference to Cashel. The beautiful cathedral, left roofless by Archbishop Price, and exposed since his time to the ravages of more than a hundred winters, is nevertheless still capable of restoration. The fabric, and the site whereon the cathedral and the other ruins stand, are at present vested partly in the Protestant dean and chapter, and partly in the Vicars Choral of Cashel. Upon the death of these officials, their rights will revert to the Commissioners of Church Temporalities. But these disestablished functionaries may perhaps find it to their personal advantage, as well as to that of their church, to make an earlier surrender of their territorial privileges. Whenever the Commissioners of Temporalities shall have become the owners of the Rock of Cashel, they will have to consider what they will do with it. They may determine to sell it, or else may transfer it as a burial-ground to the local poor-law guardians. Either alternative will be in the highest degree discreditable to British legislation. There is something atrocious in the idea of offering by public sale the temple whose almost every stone was marked by the pious workmen with the mystic tokens of their craft, and upon whose decoration kings were wont to lavish their choicest treasures to make it worthier for the worship of the Most High. It will be sacrilegious to submit to auction the soil wherein lies the mouldering dust of countless priests and prelates, chieftains and princes. On the other hand, it will be miserable and pitiable in the extreme to consign what may be termed the Terra Sancta of ancient Ireland to the care of a pauper burial board. The zeal of rural guardians guided economically by the country squire, or his bailiff, would be worse even than the scornful vandalism of Archbishop Price. If the dead themselves could speak or feel, they would doubtless shudder in their tombs at the ring of the salesman's hammer, and protest with equal horror against the indignity of including the repair of their graves amongst the items of the county poor-rate. They would accept, in preference to such degradation, the rude guardianship of the elements. Nature, even when she destroys, is reverent, flinging a green pall of ivy around the tower which her disintegrating arms encircle, and spreading a rich carpet of moss over the dust of those whom she draws with the embrace of death to her bosom. The winds and waves, the floods and storms, may bring a more rapid dissolution upon deserted monuments of heroes, but at least they inflict no dishonor.

But why should the British Parliament suffer the national memorials of Ireland to perish without an effort to preserve them? It can be no gratification to the vanity of Great Britain thus to perpetuate, so long as a trace of the ruined temple or broken altar may be spared, the tokens of a policy able, indeed, to insult and to hinder, but powerless to supplant or destroy the faith of the Irish people. It cannot, alas! be denied that England seized by force upon that Catholic church of Cashel, banished its priests, and employed, for three centuries, its revenues to teach a hostile religion. That policy has been reversed. It would be a mode, no less honorable than wise, of confessing the folly and guilt of such a policy, were England to give back the ruins which have survived it, and allow the Catholic archbishop and clergy to restore and reconsecrate their ancient cathedral and celebrate again Catholic worship upon the Rock of Cashel.

Let us turn from Galway and Cashel to the metropolis of Ireland. It was felt, so far back as the reign of[477] Elizabeth, that two Protestant cathedrals were too many for Dublin. "Here be in this little city"—so wrote the lord-deputy to Walsingham in 1584—"two great cathedral churches, richly endowed, and too near together for any good they do; the one of them, dedicated to St. Patrick, had in more superstitious reputation than the other, dedicated to the name of Christ, and for that respect only, though there were none other, fitter to be suppressed than continued."[161] And a few months later, the same chief governor of Ireland again reminded the queen's secretary of state of the uselessness of retaining St. Patrick's as a cathedral. "We have beside it," remarked Perrott, "in the heart of this city, Christ church, which is a sufficient cathedral, so as St. Patrick's is superfluous, except it be to maintain a few bad singers to satisfy the covetous humors of some, as much or more devoted to St. Patrick's name than to Christ's."[162] The rabid Puritanism of Lord-Deputy Perrott, who hoped that "Christ would devour St. Patrick and a number of his devoted followers too,"[163] was not utterly devoid of truth and common sense. The maintenance of the cathedral of St. Patrick has rather proved a hinderance than a benefit to Protestants. Its revenues have not been sufficient to keep up a separate choir of singers; for most of the St. Patrick's choirmen belong also to Christ church, and their efficiency is impaired by being divided between two cathedrals. But whatever may be the value of St. Patrick's as a place for the performance of church music, its inutility as a place for Protestant worship is notorious. Its situation is remote from the fashionable quarter of Dublin and from those streets which Protestants inhabit. Many Protestants flock to St. Patrick's to hear the choral music, or, as they sometimes profanely term it, "Paddy's Opera;" but very few, if any, attend that cathedral for the purposes of prayer or worship. In fact, St. Patrick's, in 1870, is what it was three hundred years ago, not only a superfluous cathedral, but one whose atmosphere is unsuited to the genius of Protestantism. There is no place in the Anglican ritual for the apostle of Ireland. His memory is not an object of religious veneration; nor was any day set apart for his honor by the compilers of the Protestant liturgy. His name, like that of any other saint, acts as a repellant, not as a stimulant, upon the devotion of Protestants. Sir Benjamin Guinness, who rescued from ruin the fabric of St. Patrick's, preferred to say his prayers and hear sermons elsewhere.

Now that disestablishment has come upon the Protestant church, the evil of having two cathedrals in Dublin appears greater than ever. How, possibly, can funds be provided by Protestants to maintain both churches, Christ church and St. Patrick's? The latter had nearly fallen to decay but for the munificence of an individual. The former is now in want of substantial repairs, absolutely necessary to preserve it from ruin. Yet it is clearly the pecuniary interest of Protestants to give up St. Patrick's rather than Christ church, because the money value of Christ church, such is its present condition, is insignificant; while that of St. Patrick's is considerable enough to defray the charge of restoring Christ church, and to leave over and above a wide margin of surplus, which the church body may employ as a Protestant endowment fund. The sum expended by the late Sir Benjamin Guinness on St. Patrick's is said to have been £100,000; and, according to a recently printed estimate of Mr. Street, a London architect of eminence,[478] the sum of £8000 will be sufficient to rebuild one of the side aisles of Christ church, and put the rest of the building into a condition of permanent repair.

But there are other and more important considerations which make Christ church the more desirable cathedral for Protestants to retain. It is the old Chapel Royal of Dublin, the place where the deputies and chief governors were formerly sworn into office, and where the state sermons were preached before the lords and commons of the Irish parliament. The lord-lieutenant's pew is at present frequently attended by members of the viceregal staff and other government officials. The situation of Christ church in the immediate vicinity of the castle renders it suitable to be preserved as the state church in Dublin for the accommodation of royal visitors and Protestant viceroys. Christ church, moreover, is beyond question the chief cathedral of the Protestant archbishop and clergy of Dublin. The members of its chapter are few in number, consisting of a dean, archdeacon, treasurer, chancellor, and three prebendaries. The Protestant church body, if it determines upon supporting cathedral functionaries at all in Dublin, may find it practicable to do so with efficiency and some show of dignity in Christ church, without breaking up, or materially altering, the present constitution of the chapter. It is likely, moreover, that the Duke of Leinster, the head of the Protestant nobility of Ireland, who will receive a considerable sum of money under the church act, in compensation for the loss of his church patronage, will be glad to contribute toward the support of Christ church as the Protestant cathedral, especially as it is the ancient burial place of many of his ancestors, so famous in Irish annals under their historical title of Earls of Kildare.

To Catholics the gift of St. Patrick's would be precious, as the restoration to them of a cathedral which from its traditions has surpassing claims to their veneration. Their present pro-cathedral is regarded only as a temporary one, and possesses no historical memories to stir the feelings of its congregation. The constitution of the Catholic diocese of Dublin follows the model of St. Patrick's as far as regards the number and titles of the prebendaries; and little, if any, change would be necessary to render that cathedral fully answerable to the requirements of Catholic worship. And very glorious, truly, are the memories and traditions which cluster around the spot whereon St. Patrick himself erected a church, and hallowed it by his name. Near it was the fountain in whose waters the apostle baptized Alphin, the heathen king of Dublin. Usher, the learned Protestant antiquary and divine, tells us that he had seen this fountain; that it stood near the steeple; and that, a little before the year 1639, it was shut up and inclosed within a private house. The temple, built by Archbishop Comyn, on the site of the ancient church of Patrick, was styled by Sir James Ware "the noblest cathedral in the kingdom." It was dedicated to God, the Blessed Virgin Mary, and St. Patrick. It was the burial-place of many Catholic prelates. In it were interred Fulk de Saunford and his brother John, and Alexander de Bicknor. Richard Talbot, brother to the famous earl, had his last resting-place before the high altar. Near the altar of St. Stephen lay Michael Tregury. Three other Catholic archbishops, namely, Walter Fitzsimons, William Rokeby, and Hugh Inge, were entombed in St. Patrick's in the early part of the sixteenth[479] century—the last-named prelate dying in the year 1528. When the Reformation came, and when Henry VIII. attempted to force it upon Ireland against the will of the hierarchy and people, the cathedral of St. Patrick became exposed to the hostilities of the English despot and of Archbishop Browne, his agent. The new doctrines were urged in vain by that prelate, who is described by Ware as "the first of the clergy who embraced the Reformation in Ireland." The king's commission was as little respected as the homilies of Archbishop Browne, who advised the calling of a parliament to pass the supremacy by act, and wrote to Lord Cromwell, in 1638, complaining that "the reliques and images of both his cathedrals took the common people from the true worship, and desiring a more explicit order for their removal," and for the aid of the lord-deputy's troops in carrying out his unpopular designs. The clergy of St. Patrick's made so vigorous a stand against the reforming archbishop, that many of them were deprived of their preferments, and the cathedral itself was suppressed for nearly eight years, during Browne's incumbency. On Queen Mary's accession, St. Patrick's again resumed its Catholic splendor and dignity, but only to lose them once more when her successor, Elizabeth, thought it necessary for the security of her throne to remove utterly, if possible, the Catholic faith from her dominions. Thus the fortunes of St. Patrick's cathedral were, in a measure, identified with those of the Catholic religion in Ireland.

"The name of no apostle or evangelist," as was well remarked by Dr. Manning, the Archbishop of Westminster, in his sermon at Rome on the anniversary of St. Patrick, "carries with it a wider influence than that of the Apostle of Ireland, if we except only St. Peter, the prince of the apostles. No apostle or saint—Peter excepted—has so many millions of spiritual followers as Patrick. The Catholic hierarchy in England owes its origin to Patrick, through the Irish immigrants into Liverpool, Bristol, Birmingham, London, and other great manufacturing and commercial cities. The vast Catholic hierarchies in America, Australia, New Zealand, and other colonies of Great Britain, trace, in like manner, their spiritual lineage to Ireland and St. Patrick. Within the hall of the great Council of the Vatican St. Patrick counts more bishops for his children than any other saint, save Peter; for the prelates deriving their faith from Ireland are more numerous than those of any other nationality. And no apostle (Peter always excepted) has his anniversary celebrated in so many countries and with such demonstrations of joy as Patrick." Such indeed is the magic power, if the expression be permitted, which the very name of St. Patrick exercises over Irish Catholics in all parts of the world, that the restoration of St. Patrick's cathedral would be regarded by them as something far greater than the mere donation of a cathedral to the Dublin diocese. It would be received as a convincing sign that the demon of envenomed distrust has been exorcised, and that thenceforth English Protestants, as they have already long ceased to persecute Irish Catholicism by penal laws, would likewise abandon the indirect mode of persecution which consists in suspicion, falsification, and slander, in withholding cordiality, and in retaining, after the dog-in-the-manger fashion, what is useless to Protestants, for no apparent reason but to manifest a dislike to Catholics. It is with nations as with families or individuals. Two families, formerly at enmity and but lately reconciled,[480] can hardly be said to enjoy a solid or thorough friendship so long as one of them causelessly keeps back the family pictures or sacred heirlooms of the other. France and England never could have entertained mutual sentiments of respect, if England had been so foolish or so malicious as to keep in St. Helena the body of Napoleon. The heirlooms whose restoration would have the happiest effect in bringing about amity between the English and Irish nations, are the ancient sacred places of Ireland.

A LEGEND OF THE INFANT JESUS.[164]

PHASES OF ENGLISH PROTESTANTISM.

A man with the peculiar turn of Dr. Temple [165] for finding results of the past in the present, might perhaps be inclined to trace the time-honored cry of the English Protestants, "No popery!" to the temper of Henry VIII., who retained the whole of the Catholic doctrine in his creed except the supremacy of the pope. A Catholic will with good reason see in it a testimony from enemies to the unity of the church through the successor of St. Peter. The historian will point to the fact that Protestants have from the beginning agreed only in one thing, hostility to the church. The Protest of 1529, from which they take their name, is the first example we have in history of a thing with which modern times are familiar—an arrangement on the part of those who, as the phrase goes, "agree in essentials," to act together for a time in order to accomplish some common end. In a similar way we saw Dr. Pusey take [483]part in 1865 with the liberals, in order to promote the election of Mr. Gladstone as member for the University of Oxford. He afterward coquetted unsuccessfully with the Methodists. And last year he offered to join with the evangelicals in a protest against the elevation of Dr. Temple to the see of Exeter. Yet whatever may have been the case in times past, we should have supposed that the futility of such coalitions in these days had been long sufficiently evident. Dr. Pusey, we imagine, now feels little pleasure at having Mr. Gladstone at the head of affairs; and if the evangelicals had accepted his offer instead of rejecting it, he would have found out in the end that he had paid much for their help, and got very little by it.

By looking back to the circumstances in which Protestantism began, we find an explanation of its marked features—the variety of its differences, the fact that these find some common ground in the cry, "No popery!" and the inevitably logical tendency of Protestantism to dissolve into latitudinarianism. Of these the first two scarcely require to be illustrated; yet we may notice one singular illusion which has done more than any thing else to give a fictitious unity to the Protestant sects, and to invest their protest with a certain air of virtuous indignation; we refer to the common belief that the Bible is in some sense their peculiar possession, which springs from the doctrine that, so long as a man professes to get his creed out of the Bible, and the Bible only, it matters little of what articles his creed consists. This fiction has done good service in its day; but the Protestants are now likely to be worried by the fiend with which they used to conjure. They received the Bible from the church, and they turned it against the church. Now they find it in the hands of the modern critical school turned against themselves.

That the Protestants who separated from the church should have been able to accept Scripture as binding upon them, is not strange; although to a philosophical mind at the present day, the Protestant theory must present insurmountable difficulties. When men break off from a system in which they were born and bred, they cannot, if they would, make of their minds a tabula rasa, freed from all prejudices and associations, ready to receive whatever can be proved purely a priori. To attempt this would be to attempt to move the world without a fulcrum. The question, What can be proved a priori? is one which requires the course of many generations only for its statement; as for its solution, that may be said to have proved itself impossible. Men are obliged, when they change their opinions in some respects, to allow their conduct to be influenced by those opinions which they do not change; and in some cases it happens that it is impossible, upon any a priori ground whatever, to draw the line between what they keep and what they reject. So it was at the foundation of Protestantism; and the effects of the modern "universal solvent" are due to what we have just stated, that, taking what a priori ground you will, there is none which will support the Protestant without landing him at last in contradiction or absurdity. Thus, men in the sixteenth century could easily accept theories of Scripture interpretation which are now found to be untenable; and the result is fatal to those who are so deeply committed to the untenable theories that the loss of them involves the loss of their whole intellectual groundwork.

For the Protestants cannot, as the Catholic can, point to the striking fact of a general agreement extending[484] over many centuries. We know that the Protestant critics profess to pick holes in the Catholic claim to general agreement; but what a beggarly appearance these attempts present when they are contrasted with the whole extent of the subject! What is the value of the few specks they point out in the vast current of ecclesiastical history? They find so little to say, that what they say is proved to be the exception and not the rule. But if we turn to their own case, what a difference do we find! There we have no question of pointing out flaws here and there; it is all one mass of flaws. Protestants may attack the claim of the church; but they themselves are not able so much as to put forward a claim. Nor do they venture to claim unity; some even avow their preference for diversity. Yet in practice we find them all acting as though each thought himself infallible.

This is the result of a very common human weakness. Just as the founders of Protestantism could quietly acquiesce in many things which they had imbibed from the Catholic world in which they were educated, so their successors quietly acquiesce in what comes to them from their fathers; and in both cases there is much which cannot be systematically exhibited without contradiction. But very few men care to set about the systematic exhibition of all that they profess to believe or to act upon. If it were otherwise, the Protestant theories of Scripture would never have been set up; and they are now falling before the exertions of men who insist upon having a clear view of what they are called upon to believe. When the reformers made their appeal to Scripture, it was impossible for men of different tempers, habits, and associations to agree upon matters of interpretation, even if the appeal had been made in good faith. As it was, the appeal was made subject to certain foregone conclusions, none of which, perhaps, could have been deduced from the mere text by any scientific process of exegesis. Servetus could not find the doctrine of the Holy Trinity in the Bible; and though he was little if at all to blame, according to Protestant principles, Calvin thought this failure worthy of death. Luther found in the Epistle of St. James much more than he wanted, and therefore he ejected it from the canon. Thus the appearance of an appeal to a common standard is an appearance only. It has been found to cover the widest variations both of doctrine and ritual. The only result of professing to be bound by the Bible is, that the text is wrested to mean any thing. No single system of exegesis, strictly applied throughout and deprived of all external suggestion or comment, will elicit a consistent whole from the declarations of Scripture. All sects can produce some texts in their favor, and all find some texts which they are obliged to explain away. Inquirers are supposed to bring to the task of examination a previous reservation in favor of the doctrines of their peculiar sect. If they do not, they are denounced as traitors and unbelievers, in spite of the ostentatious demand for a free inquiry. When Mr. Jowett proposed to use for the elucidation of Scripture those aids and methods which scholars have applied with great success to the profane classics, he was met with something more than outcry; he was actually persecuted. Yet his persecutors, who kept his salary as professor of Greek down to forty pounds per annum when the other similar professorships were raised in value to four hundred pounds, had nothing to offer by way of reason against his[485] proposal. They stooped to effect their object by using the blind prejudices of country clergymen.

While the name of Scripture has always commanded respect, and in this way a sort of pretended unity has seemed to bind together the sects of Protestantism, every generation has seen less and less ground for establishing any thing like real visible communion. Scripture is useless to this end, because every party insists that it has Scripture on its side. Since Luther and Melancthon conferred at Marburg with Œcolampadius and Zwingli, the futility of conferences has been growing more and more manifest. But so soon as men despair of establishing union by convincing their opponents, they are driven, if they desire union, to propose compromise as the basis upon which to found it; and in religious matters, compromise means the surrender of faith to expediency. Many attempts have been made to induce the sects to coalesce by declaring only that to be obligatory in dogma which is common to all, leaving every thing else in the region of pious opinion; but a very natural and even laudable party obstinacy has always brought these attempts to nothing. The only persons who can approach such compromises with a safe conscience are latitudinarians, whose fundamental principle is the denial that any dogma is of necessity to salvation; and to the latitudinarian this privilege is useless, because his overtures are superfluous if made to latitudinarians, while they are sure to be rejected by the dogmatists. Yet it is hard for the dogmatic Protestant to justify the religious scruple which makes him unwilling to treat with the latitudinarian; for he is cut off from the appeal to the "faith once delivered to the saints," and forced to take up his position on ground which can equally well be claimed by his opponents. The scruples of either side are called prejudices by the other; and neither can rebut the accusation upon solid grounds of reason. A position like this is unstable; and though habit will enable a given set of men to hold their ground firmly against mere argument, yet argument does tell in the long run, and an unreasonable position cannot with security be handed on to the next generation. For the next generation is not born under the same circumstances as the former; and so it often happens that the habit which swayed the fathers is not formed in the children. Bit by bit the ill-established creed rots away, as the "universal solvent" is brought to bear upon the whole; and thus successive generations of Protestants are apt to be pushed nearer and nearer to latitudinarianism, sometimes without any notice being taken of the change. At length, perhaps, we see matters culminate in some portentous vagary, like that society which now exists, or existed not long since in London, which proposes to unite upon the basis of assenting to nothing at all.

The connection between faith and reason, and the influence which intellectual processes may lawfully exercise upon religious belief, are questions of profound difficulty. But without attempting to draw the line exactly between what is right and what is wrong, it may be possible to assert with confidence of particular cases that they lie on this or that side of the line. We would not rashly encourage persons who have been brought up in any dogmatic system, however ill-grounded or erroneous we may think their belief, to set about mocking their hereditary faith upon the strength of a shallow scepticism; still less would we employ ridicule against errors which cannot be ridiculed without shocking deep convictions; because we think that[486] the cause of truth, in the long run, loses more than it gains by such means. But the logical weakness of the Protestant position is made apparent by the fact that it always does give way before reason. England has passed through many phases, and one of these was a phase of rationalism, that is, of appealing to reason only as the ultimate ground of religious belief. During that period the popular religion sank into a vague deism, together with a practical code of moral decency. Yet, during that time—the eighteenth century—the Church of England was peculiarly rich in men whom she esteemed great divines; but theology is excluded from the pages of these theologians. We find little beyond exhortations to the practice of virtue, grounded upon appeals to good feeling and the hope of reward; and what ought to be the dogmatic side of their teaching is occupied with proofs of the reasonableness of Christianity, or with statements of the evidences of Christianity—a Christianity which, in the popular mind, had lost all hold upon the divinity of Christ. Here, then, the old Protestant dogmatic position had gone down before reason; and its fall is the more notable because reason was not polemically directed against it. The men who had renounced the dogmatic position were the champions of the church, nor had they the least suspicion that they had surrendered every thing to the other side except an empty title. Circumstances had forced them to take their stand upon reason; and dogma was quietly and instinctively dropped out of sight, simply because it could not be defended by them in their position upon that ground. We shall see presently how close, at this time, was the resemblance between the orthodox and the deist.

But in the change of circumstances, which is the result of the course of time, there is something to compensate for this sinking and loosening of the dogmatic foundations of the Protestants. Something is gained in the greater ease with which later generations can shut their eyes to the presence of certain troublesome facts; and this is what Catholics mean when they speak of the children of schismatics as being less responsible than their fathers for the schism in which they find themselves. While the old Protestants were quite ready to take the Bible upon trust, they felt the force of certain texts which do not at all trouble their successors. No modern evangelical or Presbyterian feels any qualm of suspicion when he reads the words, "This is my body," nor does he trouble himself to seek out a plausible explanation. Macaulay said that "the absurdity of a literal interpretation was as great and as obvious in the sixteenth century as it is now." But, at all events, there is this great difference between the two centuries: that in the sixteenth, men felt bound to give some meaning to the text, while now, in the nineteenth, they feel able to pass it over without giving to it any meaning at all. Œcolampadius and Zwingli were at the head of the two principal sections of the sacramentarian party, who denied all real presence, and reduced the eucharist to a mere commemorative rite. There stood the text, and they felt bound to explain it somehow, so that it might agree with their opinions. They assigned the same general meaning to the whole, but they could not agree on the question whether "is" or "body" must be interpreted by a kind of metonymy, that is, saying one thing and meaning another. The subject is not a fit one for laughter; but it is hard to read without laughing that[487] Andrew Carlstadt thought our Lord pointed to his natural body, when he uttered the words of the text. Men must be sore pressed before they will execute such wrigglings as these; and there are many signs of the existence of similar pressures at that day, from which modern Protestants are more or less relieved. Thus, Calvin was obliged for the sake of consistency to declare that Scripture shines by its own light; while the moderns can act as if it did without being obliged to say so. Again, when Archbishop Heath and his fellow-sufferers protested against their deprivation by Queen Elizabeth, she felt bound to make some attempt to argue from the fathers against the supremacy of the pope, though she could have found no pleasure in the task, because she had so little to say for herself. Now, when a modern Protestant uses arguments of this sort, it is only to satisfy his own private whims or scruples; but Elizabeth was peremptorily called upon to defend herself against adverse public opinion.

Nothing seems simpler to a modern Protestant than that a man should take his stand on "the Bible, and the Bible only;" nothing seems more strange to any one who has considered the various ultimate grounds and hypotheses upon which religious belief may be supposed to rest. It is not necessary to be always obtruding the question of ultimate grounds upon men's notice, because it is not required that all who believe shall be able to produce an accurate statement of the true ultimate grounds of their belief. But such grounds must be supposed to exist, and to be capable of accurate statement; and the statement of them is, at any rate, fatal to the Protestant position. We have seen how dogmatic theology disappeared from the popular mind under the rationalism of the eighteenth century. And at the time of the French revolution, it was found that when men deserted the church, they did not take their stand upon the Bible, but on atheism; and that when they ceased to be atheists, they became Catholics again, not Protestants; nor has Protestantism ever made any large number of converts, except in the sixteenth century. This was a sore puzzle to Macaulay, as he himself declares; but it is easily explained on the principles we have laid down. In the sixteenth century, men had no thought of inquiring about ultimate grounds of belief; they were determined to believe something, and they looked about for any proximate ground which was near at hand and plausible in appearance. At the end of the eighteenth century, the question of ultimate grounds had occurred to many, and they had answered that there were ultimately no grounds for believing any religion at all. When they changed this opinion, and determined to have a religious belief, they did not take up the Protestant position, because it was exploded; and the proof that it was exploded lies in the fact that they did not take it up. They could no longer play the part of arbitrary eclectics, selecting what they chose and rejecting what they chose from the Catholic system. They could not follow the example of Calvin, who first stopped short where he did, and then helped to burn [166] Servetus for going a few steps further. The French revolutionists were without any of those convenient traditional drags which hamper movement, and enable men to stop short at arbitrary points. They ruthlessly carried out their principles into the wildest and most ferocious [488]excesses, things for which no logical consistency will compensate; but they did carry them out. Therefore they were in some sense incapacitated for becoming Protestants, because they had once known what it was to carry out principles, and there is no set of principles whatever, which, if vigorously carried out, will land a man in Protestantism.

Men who found their belief upon the Bible alone, have first to determine the canon, then to settle the text, and lastly to interpret it. They have three questions to answer: 1. How is it known that the Bible is, as a whole, the word of God? 2. How is it known that the text is free from material corruption? 3. When men differ about its meaning, as they notoriously do, who is to decide between them? Until a reply is found to these questions, their position is open to attacks which cannot justly be stigmatized as the result of a shallow scepticism; and the best proof of this is the fact that it always goes down before reason. One or two men of learning and ability may be found to abide by the ancient ways; but they are deserted by the great majority of their fellows, and therefore they are the exception and not the rule. Who can pretend to doubt in what direction the whole of the learning and ability among the undergraduates of Oxford has been moving of late years? With hardly an exception, all the most promising among the young men have been moving away from those stand-points which Dr. Pusey finds necessary to his position as a Protestant; and if there be any exception to this general movement, he only marks the motion of the stream by standing still himself. This is because our three questions remain unanswered, while those who attempt to find such an answer as shall be acceptable to a rational mind, are denounced and persecuted. Yet these so-called liberals have a right to demand to be heard, and to be allowed to make out what they can by fair argument; nor has Dr. Pusey any right to be shocked when they find things in Scripture which he does not, except upon grounds which, if he would rigorously carry them out, would make him a Catholic. In his present position, we cannot guess how he would attempt to answer Charlotte Elizabeth, that great departed light of the extreme evangelicals. An acquaintance once suggested a doubt about the inspiration of the book of Revelation in these words: "You are a person of too much sense to believe that the binding up of certain leaves between the covers of the Bible makes them a part of it." This, in fact, raised the question how the canon is to be determined; and Charlotte Elizabeth was staggered for a moment, as she herself tells us. But the battle was turned by the following reply, which she piously believed to be dictated by God: "If you can persuade me that the book of Revelation is not inspired, another person may do the same with regard to the book of Genesis; and so of all that lie between them, till the whole Bible is taken from me. That will never do," etc. Having thus determined the canon, she promptly provides the interpreter. "Man can tell me no more than that God has clearly revealed" the Calvinistic doctrine of election and reprobation; "therefore, man cannot strengthen a belief founded on the sure word of God; or if he tells me it is not revealed, I know that it is; because I have found it so, and relinquish it I never can." (Personal Recollections of Charlotte Elizabeth, third edition, p. 134. The other passage quoted is at p. 130.) Charlotte Elizabeth, upon[489] the strength of this, deals out the most uncompromising damnation to those who have found that it is not. And Dr. Pusey's estimable friend, Mr. Burgon, is equally ferocious toward those who doubt whether every syllable, point, jot, tittle, and full stop in the Bible is the express act of God. It would be impossible, we suppose, to convert the wood-and-leather man of Martinus Scriblerus, even though he "should reason as well as most of your country parsons."

Political circumstances have given such peculiar interest to the career of the Church of England that it deserves to be placed in a class by itself, apart from the other schismatical bodies which sprang up at the Reformation. Amid the storms of theological controversy she has always found a dubious sheet-anchor in the state, which secured to her a certain stability of political position, while it allowed her to drift through many widely different doctrinal phases. The tameness with which she veered about at the bidding of successive sovereigns, and the ease with which great changes were effected in her constitution, show that, in puritan phrase, her heart was not in the work. Historians are equally astonished at the power of the crown and the pusillanimity of the people. And there is ground for astonishment, though the facts are often described in terms of exaggeration. We are not to suppose that the passing of an act of parliament, or the "devising" of an ordinal by Cranmer, made a change in religion which was instantly felt through all corners of the kingdom. Multitudes had very vague notions of what was going on, and the only people who were thoroughly well informed, the courtiers, had their eyes fixed on church lands, not on theology. In some parts of the country, as in Lancashire, the change was little felt, and the Catholic religion remains there to this day a common heirloom. But in the mass of the people we quite miss that delicate spiritual sense, so keenly alive to the slightest variation from the faith, which gives such interest to the struggles of the church with the early heretics. When all has been said in their favor, it cannot be denied that the English have always shown themselves somewhat supine and spiritually sluggish. It is only the "right to tax themselves" which appeals to their energies with force enough to stir up a rebellion. The Scots took their religion into their own hands; but the English were contented to be led like sheep by Cecil and Parker.

The fundamental profession of faith of the Church of England, the Thirty-nine Articles, labors under this disadvantage, that it has never secured to the Established Church any closer union or more uniform dogmatic tradition than has been secured to Protestants in general by their common possession of the Bible. Very significant are those words in the King's Declaration prefixed to the articles, in which his majesty finds so much comfort from the fact that nobody refuses to sign the articles, in spite of "some differences which have been ill raised;" and that, when they differ, "men of all sorts take the articles of the Church of England to be for them." What is the value of a formula which has been found compatible with the primacy both of Whitgift and of Sancroft? Only once did the spirit of the nation question the right of "men of all sorts" to "take the articles to be for them;" and that was when Dr. Newman took them to contain the Catholic faith. But this was due to the national hatred of popery, not to the stringency of the articles. Their weak blast has never blown either[490] hot or cold. They look like the offspring of a union between inconsiderate haste and the latitudinarian hankering after conversions made by compromise. They limit their confidence like the sagacious Bottom. "Masters, I am to discourse wonders; but ask me not what; for if I tell you, I am no true Athenian."

The Elizabethan pacificators were of that sort who turn a country into a wilderness, and then boast that peace has been happily restored. Their Established Church was not a religion, but a machinery for enabling men to dispense with religion in their daily lives; and every attempt to graft religious feeling upon its sapless stock has ended in discord. Having no efficient discipline, no central authority, no energetic corporate action, no audible dogmatic voice, and no intelligible symbols of faith, and receiving its hierarchy from the state with abject submissiveness, it has never got so far as to attempt to fulfil any of the functions of the church. Its usual condition has been that of a bundle of differences held together by some fleeting economy or the presence of the state. Scarcely had it settled down into any thing like an organized polity, when the Puritan schism became formidably apparent; and by the accidental bias of political association, the Churchman and the Puritan became the champions respectively of prerogative and of liberty. The church rallied round the monarchy, because the favor of the crown was the breath of its nostrils; and persecution made the Puritans ripe for rebellion, and therefore ready to fight for the cause of liberty in any shape. The men who began the Great Rebellion were politicians, not religious enthusiasts; but they gained the day by enlisting on their side that religious enthusiasm which afterward declared that "the Lord had no need" of the Rump Parliament. When the intolerable government of the saints had made inevitable the restoration of Charles, the Established Church came back with the crown almost as naturally as the court of chancery and the privy council. Nothing could be more in keeping than that the ecclesiastical loyalty which had blossomed into the divine right of kings under the earlier Stuarts, should bear its fruit in passive obedience after the restoration. This much had been claimed by Henry VIII. in that edifying manual, The Pious and Godly Institution of a Christian Man; and it now became the touchstone of Anglican orthodoxy, almost to the exclusion of dogmatic considerations. It is true that Archbishop Laud had long before begun what he meant to be a theological reaction; but in his scheme the position of an altar or the use of a vestment counted for more than the gravest doctrinal questions, and he did not scruple to act cordially with men whose theological views differed very widely from his own. Whatever claim the Established Church may seem to have made to doctrinal infallibility or to magisterial decision, we think that it will be found on closer inspection to resolve itself into this, that every preacher was allowed to propound his own crotchets as infallibly true, provided only that his fidelity to the great dogma of passive obedience was beyond suspicion. Yet the prominence of this one proposition, and the vehemence of the clergy in preaching it, gave a certain aspect of unity to the church, and somewhat resembled the energy with which divine truth should be taught. The establishment has grown up into a great and conspicuous edifice, imposing from its majestic appearance and the apparent solidity of its foundation, and endeared to many by the recollection of sufferings endured in a cause with which[491] it seemed to be inseparably bound up. Her ministers "agreed in essentials;" that is to say, in the fundamental rules of morality and passive obedience. It was the very strength of the church's position which made the violence of James II. so disastrous to her influence. The clergy found themselves before the horns of a fatal dilemma, when they were compelled to choose between their church and their king. The people, long used to hear that passive obedience was the first duty of a Christian, saw with a sceptical shock the defection of the clergy from their most sacred tenet. The non-jurors set up a fresh schism, and the shattered establishment could offer no effectual resistance to the phlegmatic William and his latitudinarian primate.

By the revolution the Anglican was finally and for ever cut off from all appeal to the living authority of the church; and it is well worthy of note that when the high Anglicans of this century, after the tractarian movement had set in, began to appeal to authority, they could find no living authority whither to carry their appeal, and were forced to set up the dead authority of books and records. At the close of the seventeenth century, there would seem to have been a good opportunity for anticipating by a hundred and fifty years the tractarian revival; and perhaps we may regard the career of the non-jurors as a proof that Sancroft and his brethren were utterly removed from every breath of the Catholic spirit. Cut off at that time from all appeal to authority, yet forced to lay down some ground of belief, it remained for the establishment to choose between reason and the witness of the Spirit, or the purer light manifesting itself to the separate conscience of the individual. This latter had been the basis of independency, and of those still darker sects which sprang from independency during the commonwealth. It had appeared that this guidance might be made to lead anywhere, except in any direction that a sane man would choose, and therefore it remained to put reason on its trial. Thenceforth the appeal of the Anglican was addressed to the reason of his hearers, and the reasonable was the basis of argument between parties. Different men believed different things; but each admitted that his creed must stand or fall according as it should or should not approve itself to reason. That knowledge of God and of his will which could be discovered by unaided reason was styled natural religion; and this was the whole of religion, according to the deists. According to the orthodox, natural religion was an outline, true as far as it went, the details of which were to be filled in by revelation. It was an obvious consequence of this view, that such parts of Christianity as could not easily be foisted in upon natural religion, came to be rejected as popish corruptions; and thus the distinction between the orthodox and the deist became at last very shallow. Bishop Butler, a man of fervid piety and with a natural bias toward asceticism, whose disposition made him an exception in many ways to the common tendency of the age in which he lived, complains that religion had in his day become too reasonable to have any connection with the heart and the affections. The least deviation in any direction from the surrounding dead-level was looked upon with suspicion; and Butler's Durham Charge caused him to be accused of "squinting" toward the superstition of popery. After his death, it was said by many that he had died a Catholic; and Secker came forward with indignant zeal to defend his memory from the "calumny."

The depressing results of this prevailing[492] tone are well shown by its effect on the religious views of such men as Sydney Smith. A touch of fanaticism has great claims upon our respect, when it is seen in contrast to the heathenism which regards a good education and gentlemanlike manners as the most necessary qualifications for the spiritual guide. Those evangelicals, the "patent Christians" of Sydney Smith, were the representatives inside the Church of England of the feelings and aspirations which animated the Methodists outside; and if the church had been the same in the days of Wesley that it was in the days of Wilberforce, there would have been no separation. We remarked that the close of the seventeenth century seems to have presented a good opportunity for anticipating the tractarian movement; but the times were not ripe for it, and the attempt was not made. Wesley did attempt to anticipate the evangelical movement; but the times were again not ripe, and the attempt ended in extensive schism. The evangelicals were the true forerunners of the tractarians; and perhaps the Methodists had opened the way to both. And as the Church of England first drove out the Methodists, but acquired by the process a certain capacity to endure Methodism, so, perhaps, she drove out the Tractarians, and acquired thereby a certain leaven which enables her now to endure with comparative equanimity the presence in her bosom of men who profess Catholic doctrine. The church had no fixed spirit; she was put in motion by the clamors of unstable popular opinion; and popular opinion is liable to be modified by the views with which it is brought into contact, even when it attacks them most fiercely. Yet we think we see signs that a time is coming when the comprehensive shelter of the establishment will no longer be open to all who choose to stand under it.

During this century three great movements have at different times made inroads upon the dead-level bequeathed by a former age. The evangelical movement has had its day, and its force is now spent; it no longer does active work, but only serves as a protest and drag. The tractarian movement has passed into a second phase; but it is still so far vigorous that it makes progress; that is, it increases continually the number of exoteric members who hang upon its skirts, while the esoteric members become more and more thorough-going in their assertion of Catholic doctrine and practice. The third and last movement is the critical, which is an attempt imported from Germany, and in England supported with great ingenuity and learning, to set up a criterion of religious truth and error apart from the reception of the Catholic scheme. For a long time there was room enough for all these parties to exist together; and if they quarrelled, it was rather because they had a taste for quarrelling than because they were brought into collision. But now there is no longer room for them, and collision is imminent. We may expect soon to see the battle fought out between them; nor would it have been delayed so long had there been any ground solid enough for pitting one against another. The English ecclesiastical law is so vague that men hardly dare to invoke it, even when they hope to find it on their side; for it is impossible to predict its course with certainty, when once it is set moving. But recent decisions have tended more and more to bring out this much, that an exact compliance with the present law, so far as it can be fixed, would be equally distasteful both to the evangelicals and to the[493] tractarians. It is, in fact, a compromise constructed with unusual clumsiness, which is now for the first time being exposed to a searching examination; and it is likely to meet with the just fate of compromises, by being found equally hateful to both of the parties whom it was meant to reconcile. The critical school, who greatly outweigh the two others in learning and ability, are more evidently outside the letter of the present law, though its machinery is too clumsy to be used against them with any great effect. But the matter will not long be left in the hands of the present law; and it is hard to foretell the legislation of the future. Nobody, we think, can now doubt that a few years will see some great change, either of secularization, or at least of redistribution, in the ecclesiastical revenues. A large section of the tractarian party now cries out for disestablishment, as the only way open to them by which they may keep the Catholic faith.

When the catastrophe to which we are looking forward does come, no doubt there will be some splitting up of parties. Some, we hope many, of the tractarians will be received into the Catholic Church; and then it will be seen whether the remainder will be able to set up a free church, according to their darling scheme. Many of the evangelicals will doubtless join the various dissenting bodies; and some, perhaps, will coalesce with the liberals, (whom we called the critical school,) and it is possible that these latter may be left for a little while in possession of the whole of the temporalities of the church. This, however, we do not think likely; it is probable that disestablishment will be itself the occasion of a general dissolution. But the liberals have this great advantage on their side, that they are under no temptation whatever to split up. The agreement which holds them together is an agreement to differ; and their bond of union is a protest against all persons who consider dogmatic opinions of any kind to be a sufficient ground for breaking communion. Upon this understanding they are ready to shake hands with the whole world. And the opinions which are held by the esoteric members of the party (for some of them have opinions) are always embraced subject to the admission that they may possibly be false. They find truth everywhere, and close resemblances between things which are totally different. A bigot, according to the old joke, is a person who says that he is in the right, and that every body who differs from him is in the wrong; but a liberal is afraid to say that he is in the right, lest he should be obliged to say that somebody else is not. They avoid mistakes by saying as little as possible, and by using the vaguest terms they can find; and, above all, by cheerfully admitting that there is always a great deal to be said on both sides. As certain of their own poets have said,

But it is only fair to say that here they are seen in their weakness, not in their strength. This vague and undecided habit of mind is the result of the circumstances in which they had their beginning. The spectacle of a great number of sects, each in practice arrogating to itself infallibility while they teach incompatible doctrines, produces different effects upon different minds. Its natural effect upon the shallow, who are just deep enough to find out that other sects exist beside the one in which they were brought up, is to breed scepticism. They know that two contradictory[494] propositions cannot both be true, and they think that the one is as well supported by evidence as the other; and out of these premises, by the help of bad logic, they draw the conclusion that both must be false. But sounder intellects set about investigating more closely the criterion of truth and falsehood; and to such we owe the critical theory, which is not only ingenious, but even true so far as it goes. Something of the indecision of men who have seen so much of error that they now hardly believe in the existence of truth, clings to these critics; and this makes their proceeding seem to be sceptical when it is not really so. Their theory may be briefly summed up as follows: "Interpret the Scripture," says one,[167] "like any other book." This in his mouth was a brief way of bidding us measure religious truth by the same tests, while we seek it by the same methods, as other truth. It is well known that the labor of successive generations of scholars, following the same main rules of criticism, has made a great approach to uniformity in the interpretation of profane authors; and nobody doubts that the common consent of the critics, if it could be obtained, would be the best possible evidence to the unlearned of the true meaning of an obscure passage. It is inferred that the same critical methods may be applied to the Bible, and that the same approach to uniformity of interpretation may thus be secured.

This is a plausible theory; and it is sound so far as it goes. But it completely ignores the Catholic theory of the interpretation of Scripture. Its authors evidently suppose, for example, that if a text quoted by the Council of Trent in support of a doctrine could be critically proved irrelevant to the purpose, then the doctrine would be seriously shaken in the minds of Catholics. But this opinion rests on a profound misapprehension of the Catholic view. We accept the doctrine on the authority of the council, as the voice of the church, without criticising the source from which the words are drawn; and although the church in her decisions is guided by her unalterable tradition, yet it is a possible case that she might be quite assured of the fact of the tradition, and yet (to speak reverently) erroneously quote a document in evidence. A Catholic would be very cautious about attributing critical errors of this kind to a general council; but no theologian will deny that such a thing might happen. The function of the church in interpreting Scripture is by no means limited to ascertaining what the words written represented to the mind of the writer; the question is much wider than this, including all that was intended by God to be conveyed or suggested by the written words to the church at large. It does not follow that, because a given meaning is the only sense which the words could appropriately bear at the time when they were written, therefore no other additional sense was intended to be conveyed at some future time. In proportion as we exalt the degree in which a passage or a book is supposed to be inspired, so much the more probable does it become that its words will bear more than one meaning. In the higher sense of the word inspiration, the human agent becomes a mere instrument to convey a message,[495] which he himself may possibly not understand at all. The meaning then lies wholly in the mind of God; and it is to be sought out by the divinely appointed interpreter. Hence is apparent the reasonableness, when they are taken together, of the two elements which make up the Catholic theory of Scripture—the inspiration of the written word, and the commission of the church to interpret. Both these things are ignored or denied by that school of criticism about which we have been speaking. Their view is quite incompatible with the Catholic view of inspiration, and they at the same time naturally deny the right of interpretation to the church, in order to give it to the scholar. And they therefore limit the function of interpretation to that which the scholar can reasonably attempt—the discovery of the meaning appropriate to the circumstances under which the words were uttered.

The theory, as it stands by itself, is a plausible hypothesis, much better able to bear examination than any other theory which Protestants have ever put forward. We do not think that it will fulfil the hopes of its friends, by securing the wished for uniformity of interpretation. And we cannot help thinking that its adherents ought to be on their guard against their peculiar faculty of finding out likenesses in dissimilar things, lest they should deceive themselves by fancying that they have secured uniformity when they have not. At present, they are rather apt to mistake the progeny of their neighbors for their own—

A few years ago, one of them placed on record his pious delight at the closeness with which Dr. Pusey's theological system resembled that of Mr. Jowett. He seemed to think that we are all of us getting year by year into closer agreement, and that the golden mean toward which all are gravitating is that hazy creed which looms vaguely upon the inner vision of Dean Stanley.

THE SAGACIOUS WIG.

A wig may be said to have two lives—the one with its own head, the other with its adopted head, or rather the head which adopts it; it has, therefore, a double chance for wisdom, and might be expected to profit accordingly. Generally speaking, this is the case, and wig and wisdom are almost synonymous.

Such wonderful tales had been told in a certain shop, by wigs that came back to be fixed a little, of the glory of their new abodes—wigs shorn from the very dregs of the people—from heads that had never been combed or petted or cared for—from heads houseless and hatless, that had been rained on and hailed on, and now in their second life dwelt in splendor unmitigated—that their discourses fairly curled up tighter every wig in the place. The shop had proved but a stepping-stone to blissful companionship with wits and statesmen; they reposed on the brows of sages and philosophers, shared the applauses of the multitude with popular orators, listened to the eloquence born of[496] champagne and gaslight, and won the smiles and flirted with sweet ladies on Turkish divans and velvet fauteuils; all this and more, the wigs who came back had to relate. No wonder hopes were raised in each that went forth—hopes often delusive.

II.

If the few hairs which made a kind of rim round the head of Martin Tryterlittle had chosen to speak when he first clapped a wig on his bald crown, (bald though not yet old,) they could have told a long story, or rather a succession of many stories, of hope, expectation, and disappointment in the three great walks of life—money-making, love-making, and fame-making. Striving, ever striving, he hardly paused to look back at the profitless path he had trodden. The meeting accidentally with an old school-chum in fine broadcloth, or the ultra urgency of his landlady or some other disagreeable creditor, gave him occasionally more vivid views of things, and at such times he indulged in indignant and certainly very disrespectful language toward mankind in general and some individuals in particular; but generally his mood was patient endurance.

Success in life was an enigma. There was Job Lovemee, who began his career by ridiculously marrying a girl as poor as himself, and blessed since with six children, was getting as rich as a nabob; "while I," said Martin, "with no such drawbacks, am as poor as a church mouse."

It was a pleasant bright spring morning when Martin Tryterlittle suddenly resolved to turn over a new leaf in his book of life and mend its story.

"No wonder I cannot succeed," said he; "look at me!" So, as no one was by, he looked at himself, bit at a time, in the little cracked mirror which adorned his attic lodging-room. As the fortunes of Martin had been gradually sinking in the scale of social existence, he had physically been rising; that is, from occupying the first floor handsomely furnished, as the advertisement set forth, he had ascended to the attic, so nearly unfurnished that a bed, a table, a chair, and a broken mirror comprised its whole inventory.

"Look at me!" said Martin to himself, "threadbare and bald! No wonder I find nothing to do and no one to woo, and stay lagging behind in this march of mankind! I'll buy a wig to-day if I have to sell something to pay for it; for every body can see my head, but nobody—well, I'll button up my coat!"

It was no one's business how it was accomplished, as Martin truly said, but it was done; the wig was bought and paid for, and rested now on his table in happy anticipation of the triumphs of the ensuing day. "No one will know me," said he. "I hardly know myself! O my wig! how happy we shall be; to thee shall I owe friends and fortune!"

It may startle some old-fashioned people to hear me assert that there was a responsive chord in the wig which answered to all this; but those familiar with modern metaphysical speculations will easily credit it. The wig, be it remembered, was once part and parcel of a sentient being; nor have we any reason to suppose that baking and boiling, in the process of wig-making, could in any way touch the spark immortal and invisible which once pervaded it. It is true that counter arguments might be advanced, and so there is no end to controversy; but there is a shorter way—and having demonstrated how the thing might have been, we are satisfied to believe that so it was. Martin felt that his wig understood him. He was no longer alone in the world; companionship[497] is something even with a wig, and he realized it as he laid his purchase carefully on the table and betook himself to his bed.

It was a long night; but day dawned at last, and, in the mean time, the whole future had been mapped out in the mind of Martin Tryterlittle. He rose early, made a careful toilette of such materials as were to be had, and sallied forth in thoughtful mood.

"Fame, wealth, love"—he conned them over in the order of valuation. "Fame (said he) I must first secure, and then I can command my own price in every thing else. Wealth will follow; and as for love, I need not go after that. Lord! there is no end to the love that comes tumbling in upon fame and money!"

C'est le premier pas qui coute—the problem was, how to be famous. There was a military and a civil career. There was invention in all the arts subservient to human needs. Could any wheels anywhere be made to go faster or smoother or with less smashing up? Well, as far as he saw, every thing was as good as it could be. Literature? Ah! that is a long track; besides, publishers are "lions in the way"—they cannot or will not always appreciate merit; fame seldom comes to the scribe till after he is beyond the reach of earthly pain or blame. "No," said Martin, "I must be famous living; what matters it after one is dead?"

"What is all this jabber about?" thought the wig; "surely my master has so many ways before him he cannot tell which to choose; but so jauntily I sit on his brow, he cannot fail of success whichever he takes."

This cogitating mood brought them step by step to a corner—one of those comers peculiar to great cities; where, while down one wide avenue the mighty human tide goes rushing and roaring, the narrow side street, like a little sluggish stream with scarce a perceptible ripple, joins it and empties its trifle into it. At this moment the usual tide in the great thoroughfare was swollen to a torrent; in plain words, at the corner Martin encountered a mighty mob. Hark! what a rabble shout! pell-mell—something had happened. Somebody had sinned, and very vindictive seemed the sufferers. Martin was caught in the current and twirled into their midst. Then was heard, "Oh! the man had a wig on!"—"wig!" "man!" "man!" "wig!" It went from mouth to mouth. Well, here was a man with a wig on in their midst; this must be he. The logic was conclusive; so Martin was seized and hurried along.

"Oh! yes, you know what you've done; and we know what you've done," shouted a dozen tongues. So, pinioned close, he was borne onward to the halls of justice, or injustice, as the case might be.

"Well, well!" thought the wig; "I little expected to get in such a fix with my gentleman, or I should have clinched his bald pate till he would have been glad to leave me for some other customer. It is disgraceful!"

Now came a medley of questions and cross-questions, and ejaculations, and assertions, and confirmations, and contradictions, and, in short, the usual path of law and order was trodden over, till they settled down to unanimity on one point: the evil deed, whatever it was, (and very few seemed to know exactly what it was,) had been done by a man in a wig; but then it was a yellow-white, frowsy, sunburnt sort of a wig. Who could ever suspect that mass of dark, glossy curls of concealing a rogue? No one. So Martin was dismissed with the[498] galling consciousness that for the great wrong done him there was no redress. A great wrong, too, he felt it; for what was he henceforth? Why, the very boys in the street would point to him as "the one wot was took up." He shrank from being seen; he had been too famous already.

"This comes of a wig," said he; "a wig is deception, deception is rascality. A man guilty of one deception must not take it in dudgeon that he is suspected of another. I scorn fame! I go for money; and money shall make me famous. I began at the wrong end."

"Yes," (chimed in the wig,) "we'll be rich and loved; and the rest is all bosh."

It took Martin Tryterlittle a long time to put himself again in presentable order; one more such adventure, and he would be obliged to cease intercourse with that portion of creation who walk in sunlight, and join the human owls who, from choice or necessity, fly only by night. Their ways are not so widely different as a casual observer might suppose. Money is dear to both, and both are fond of taking short roads to it. Only in one thing they differ vastly—the day-worker sighs and seeks for notoriety, and often fails to obtain it; the night-prowlers have it thrust upon them, though they shun it. Martin had shared their hapless luck, and his ideas were changed; henceforth he scorned fame in all its phases, and exalted that other idol—money.

III.

A second time day-dawn called up Martin and his wig for new projects. It was a glorious morning. There was something exhilarating in that yellow flood of light which promised success. It was so cosmopolitan—that sunlight! It gave to all things such a gloss of delicate beauty. First, it just touched with gold the spires, and tallest trees and chimney-tops; then it slid down the house-side to peep in my lady's chamber; then it poured a glow all over the pavement, and made merry and warm all the little things, animate and inanimate, which but for that would have been dark and cold. Into this atmosphere of joyousness walked forth now Martin Tryterlittle to find something to do, some fellow-creature with a want unfilled.

It is surprising that any one ever begins to do any thing in this world, where every avenue to success is crowded, every necessity supplied, and every evil surrounded by a belt of antidotes; it takes immense penetration to discover where there is left any thing to be done.

"I must find a want," said he. And he turned to that dragon ever watchful of human interests—a newspaper. The wanted there were many—workers for metals, accountants for wealth, delvers for the riches of earth; but all these anticipated a certain previous training. Wanted, a teacher. "That's it," said Martin. "I think I am fitted for that." So he moved on to the field of action—the institute.

The building was easily found—a large brick pile surrounded by grass, or rather, what would have been grass had juvenile footsteps permitted. To point the searcher for knowledge to the proper entrance, its name was displayed there in conspicuous letters.

The master was not so accessible; and he sat a long time in the parlor with several other visitors, and listened to the tinkling of sundry little bells, and saw passing in the distance sundry[499] little processions armed with books and slates, until they were all properly impressed with an idea of the extent of the establishment and the awful responsibility of conducting it. At length, slowly and with dignity, entered Mr. Pushem.

So, as Martin announced himself au fait on all subjects, and the salary, without decided specification, was declared by the dignified principal to be unquestionably liberal, and the duties could not well be defined until he entered upon them; and as the only positive point was that he was to be niggard never in either time or labor, for the reason that time and labor were dust in the balance compared with the progress of immortal minds, the applicant was regularly enlisted under the banner of the Institute. He was to pay his board and lodging of course, said Mr. Pushem; and, of course, Martin did not expect to board and lodge without pay, though he had some remembrance of having done so occasionally; and so the matter was settled, and he returned home.

It took him small time to pack his bundle. His trunk had been detained a long time ago by a savage old dame for rent; and, knowing that the same gulf yawned ever for all succeeding trunks, he had never replaced it. So, packing his little bundle, I say, and leaving a kind message for his landlady with a fellow-lodger, to the purport that he would come back and pay her as soon as he could, he vanished from his old abode as effectually as if he had gone to another planet.

Loving parents tell us there is nothing so delightful as watching the daily progress of children in learning the alphabet of life. Not that villainous regiment called A B C, which merits execration as the first herald of toil and sorrow to the infantile heart, but that beautiful alphabet of rosy hues and rainbow colors, stamped on leaf, and flower, and fruit, and wave, and hill-side, and which, in conning over, the little eye learns to see, and the ear to hear; and the touch refines itself, and fragrance grows to be an idea; and the little gourmand makes its first essay in luxurious living on peaches and berries. Every little incident here is delightful. But not so pleasant is it to note the later wanderings of human beings in quest of that vague thing—a living. The traveller on the highway of life has grown weary now, and stumbles and plunges ankle-deep in all things disagreeable. He has heard the bird of promise sing so falsely, he knows how little the song is worth—he has grown sad while growing wise; and thus plodded on Martin Tryterlittle.

Some months had passed now since the roof of the institute first sheltered him; and the bread and bones and watery tea of the institute first nourished him; and the boys harassed him, and made fun of him; and twigged his wig, and put nettles in his bed in more than a metaphorical sense. His master had kept him like a toad under a harrow, (to use an inelegant but expressive phrase,) always doing, never done; the salary was yet unsettled, and the duties undefined, when one night the wig claimed a hearing.

Not that these words were uttered in an audible tone, but the thought passed to Martin and was comprehended.

"You are growing shabby," sighed Martin, ruthfully gazing, "and I am no richer."

"O master mine!" quoth the wig, "do you see how you are walking on? You are growing poorer, not richer! What is to you all the glory of this concern, when you own not even a nail in the wall? You are just the stone they step on who mount up over you. What do you get for it? O master mine! you are an ass to stay!"

Martin was not inaccessible to reason; he was impressed daily more and more with the good sense of his old friend Horace.

His rusty garments and diminished bundle told him that the wig spoke truth, and he prepared, not for a hegira, but for an official resignation. It took no long time for this, and his little hard bed in its windy corner was left empty the very next night. The boys felt that a great source of amusement had departed, and sincerely regretted his loss; and Mr. Pushem, after due astonishment at such blindness to advantages, disbursed to him the smallest possible sum as balance due, and advertised for another teacher.

O gold, gold! Slave of the dark and dirty mine! what need to record how often thou didst beckon on luckless Martin Tryterlittle, only to flit from him further than ever? What matters how he slept in back offices and front basements, dreaming of mines somewhere at the antipodes, of which he was to have such a glittering slice—or of lovely landscapes away off in the vast wilderness of which he would one day be landed proprietor?—that is, as soon as he could persuade certain people into certain projects which seemed in theory mighty attractive, but proved in practice to have no attractions whatever—suffice to say that at last, quite desponding, he invested most part of his few remaining coin in the prepayment of an attic, and seated himself sadly at its window.

"I shall never be rich," quoth he; "fame and fortune!—well, let them go." His heart threw a sigh to the other one of the trio, and the wig took it up. "I was born for love," said the wig; "the first sweet words I remember came from the rosy lips of our pretty shop-girl, What a love of a wig! I have never yet had a fair chance in life. What care those bankers and old money-scrapers for good looks? They are all gray and bald and wrinkled before their time. Put me on my own field, master, and SEE what I can do!"

Perhaps this prompted Martin to lean further out of his window, and thus give his wig the full benefit of sunlight and the chance of making acquaintances; at least he did so; and doing so, he glanced across the street to a window nearly as high as his own, and saw there—what? Why, two bright eyes looking intently at him! He drew back; for Martin was diffident with the fair sex, and being, besides, innately a gentleman, it did not occur to him to embarrass the damsel with a rude stare. So he retreated; and the bright eyes also retreated and what was worse than all, a little, plump, white hand came out and closed the shutters.

Nothing more was seen all day; but he had ample occupation in conjecturing who it could be. No toil-worn seamstress ever had such a laughing glance and such a plump little hand; no, it was evidently a maiden quite above care for the morrow. Most anxiously he awaited the following morning, when about the same hour—that is, early day—could he believe his senses?—again the shutter was opened, and the bright eyes glanced up at[501] him as if they too remembered. The little fairy was evidently a household fairy engaged in some fairy-like duties about the chamber, and ever and anon, as these brought her near the window, she glanced up at Martin.

That any loving and lovable woman should bestow a thought on him was a leaf of paradise painted in dreams sometimes on the far-off days to come, when he should be rich and renowned; but that such bright, happy eyes should seek and rest on poor Martin Tryterlittle was hardly credible; as soon would he have expected Luna to step down from her orbit, peep into his attic, and say, "Good evening to you, Martin;" but so it was.

One day was the story of the next, and the next, and several more beyond. It is surprising how much may be learned of the inhabitants of a house from its exterior. As the beatific vision lasted but a short time each morning, a long day and night was left him to study its surroundings, and in a brief space of time he read the whole plain as a book. It was a handsome mansion, and a private one. There was a sensible housekeeping mistress there; for the railings were black and the knocker bright, and the steps were clean and the housemaids tidy; even the pavements were a pattern to the neighbors. There were order and industry throughout the establishment, evidently. All this and more besides he deciphered by processes whose intricate premises laughed to scorn quadratic equations, and yet he was never tired.

Martin had done, here and there and everywhere in his lifetime, a deal more head-work than he had ever been paid for, rather by compulsion; but now he labored con amore on the loveliest subject life affords; and so far from wearying him, his wits grew brighter, his ideas received a new impetus, and, strange to say, the beneficial influence extended to his purse.

"I must have some honest occupation now," cried he; "it will never do to introduce myself as lounger in an attic window!" Yes! he really dreamed of an introduction.

"Let me see," (and he picked up his old dragon friend the newspaper;) "wants, wants—small salary, etc.; well, I will try." So he speedily bargained himself away to—no matter what, so it was honest, and went to work with a good-will.

It was pleasant, too, (strange he had never thought of it before;) it was pleasant to have a defined place among his fellow-mortals, and to feel that he could not now, as heretofore, be blown away on some windy day, and no one miss him.

Great changes are not wrought in a day. It took him some time to straighten out his line of existence and untie all the knots he had always been tying in it; to settle up scores with the past, and open accounts with the future—but it was all accomplished; and see now the life of Martin Tryterlittle.

He rose betimes, drank an elixir from those bright eyes perfectly intoxicating, and speeded to business. At eventide—where think you he spent his evenings? Why, in the back-parlor of that same handsome mansion, with little household fairy at his side, and papa smiling approval. He was no longer threadbare and shabby, and the only bit of deception about him—his wig—had been long ago confessed and forgiven.

"I'm a deal better than any hair that ever grew on any man's head," said the wig; "for if you live to be a hundred years old, I shall never be bald or gray."

On a certain evening about a year after this, Martin and his wig sat down for the last time to their dual converse; the next day a little lady was to be admitted, and the partnership would be a trio. Martin reclined on a sofa in his own domicil this night, and looked on a soft, bright carpet. His purse had filled up; nor was he unknown to fame—at least to a holy fame born of benevolence, which in after years lighted up many a desolated heart and hearth, and carved his name on structures where the homeless were sheltered and the hungry fed.

"Master mine," said the wig, "we mistook our track. Human life was not bestowed for the hoarding up of money—or men would have been all born with pockets; nor yet for a chase after fame. There are innate, loftier, and purer aspirations to be satisfied—the living soul craves something to love, and craves to be loved; and like sunshine to earth, that brings forth golden grain and sweet flowers, so pure love, the household sunshine, calls out wealth of thought and energy of action; and so comes fame, and so comes money!"

THE POPE AND THE COUNCIL, BY JANUS.
II.

As the reader will have seen in our previous article, it became necessary to interrogate history at some length in order to elucidate and substantiate our arguments on the two points we have already set forth, namely, the real purpose of Janus, and the orthodoxy which the authors of this work profess. We have thus prepared the way for our examination of the historical and critical parts of Janus, for which he has found so many ardent admirers who would assign him a "position in the very front rank of science."

Janus is principally hailed as a work of history, and as such, makes by no means ordinary or modest pretensions. That promiscuous array of matter presented to the reader in the third chapter, subdivided into thirty-three paragraphs with those numerous references to "original authorities," has dazzled so many eyes and overpowered so many minds, that they could not "help feeling convinced of its veracity." He has been held up as a "thorough Catholic" and a "learned canonist," and whether or not by any legitimate and scientific criterion Janus merits these encomiums, the reader can infer from the unexceptionable authorities we have advanced.

We now ask the simple question, Has Janus shown himself to be "a faithful and discriminating historian"? Having already appealed to the verdict of history on points of the very first importance, we may confine ourselves exclusively to the historical merits of Janus's work. It cannot be expected that, within the space allowed[503] to such an examination, we can touch upon every point; yet we trust to be able to make such selections as will be sufficient to clear up the most important historical questions upon which Janus himself lays most stress. The following extract gives the key to the historical edifice of Janus:

To take away all historical basis from "ultramontanism," the authors go over the whole field of ecclesiastical history, and particularly the lives, both private and public, of the popes, together with their acts of administration, whether referring to the religious or civil government; in short, any thing and every thing is gathered "to bring forward a very dark side of the history of the papacy." The authors pledge themselves to oppose what they term the "ultramontane scheme," to which they will never submit, and hence their appeal to history, which should show that, since the ninth century, the constitution of the church has undergone a transformation neither sound nor natural, because in contradiction with that of the "ancient church." But the question which naturally suggests itself is, Who is responsible for this movement in the church, "preparing, like an advancing flood-tide, to take possession of its whole organic life"? A "powerful party which, in ignorance of past history or by deliberately falsifying it," is now about to complete its system and surround itself with an "impregnable bulwark," by the doctrine of infallibility. To ward off so fatal a catastrophe, Janus enters this protest, based on history.

We have thus fairly stated the whole issue. True enough, the ultramontanes were not wise when they did not give over to the flames all libraries, with the exception of the Isidorian decretals, as the Mohammedans are known to have done with the library of Alexandria. Yet we are happy to say that such an expedient measure has not been resorted to, being thereby enabled to trace the truth or falsehood of this "mighty programme" of ultramontanism which Janus is pleased to honor with the name of "Papalism."

We can easily dispense with the alleged historical misconceptions of the middle ages, and draw upon the very same historical documents with which Janus so confidently proclaims his victory. Attention has already been directed to the peculiar mode of warfare pursued by Janus, namely, to its purely negative and destructive character. The third chapter bears the title of "Papal Infallibility," (pp. 31-346,) and hence we are led to expect a clear, authentic, and fair exposition of the doctrine in question, and then all other arguments which, either from scripture and patristic authority or from history, could be brought to bear against such a doctrine. No reasonable man, much less a theologian, could object to such a mode of proceeding. The authors of Janus, wishing to cede to none in their loyal devotion to Catholic truth, could make ample use of that liberty of scientific discussion and historical investigation for or against the question of infallibility, and no charge of "radical aversion," as they seemed to apprehend, could be brought against their work.

Since Janus openly avows his purpose[504] of disproving the doctrine of infallibility, why does he not give such an explanation of it as is taught by its most able and acknowledged defenders? What right has he to produce a version of it to suit his own fancy? Why bring up arguments militating, indeed, against his own theory, but in nowise conclusive against the doctrine as laid down by its own exponents? That it may not appear as if we made unfounded charges against Janus, we will subjoin his own definition and development of the doctrine he sees fit to attack:

Apparently, our authors would make this the ultramontanist tenet: henceforward the "l'église c'est moi" would be the genuine expression of papal infallibility. We know of no theologian who sustains any such thesis as the above, and we had expected a reference to the authorities quoted; but none is given, and we little heed the utterances attributed to them. Nothing, indeed, is easier than to place a question in a false point of view, either by exaggeration or misrepresentation, in order to make it appear ludicrous and absurd.

There is no treatise on the church in which any such definition is to be found, or any author who declares the pope alone to be the church, in any possible sense or conception. Janus delights to cite Bellarmine as one of such ultramontane view. Now, we confidently assert that nowhere in his elaborate treatises on the Roman Pontiff or the Church Militant any similar definition to the one alleged can be found. Who is there who does not know that clear and concise notion given by Bellarmine, in which he has been followed by all standard works? For he says,

The following passages would exhibit the ultramontane doctrine of infallibility and its consequences:

We have been rather copious in our extracts from Janus in order to give him a fair hearing. The question which first presents itself to a candid mind is, Has Janus given a just and authentic explanation of the doctrine of infallibility? We answer most emphatically, No! Never has a doctrine been more unfairly represented than this "ultramontane" one by our authors. No one will choose to call it fair and equitable to disfigure and distort in divers ways the doctrine of an opponent, how much soever it may be against our own convictions. Those who make parade of their "scientific criticism" can least resort to such tactics with a view to seek popularity and win the smiles of the uninformed and ignorant among their readers, as the authors of Janus have done. Who would fain recognize this doctrine under the colors and shades of this portrait sketched by Janus? Bellarmine is the great champion of infallibility. (P. 318.) Yet, nowhere does this eminent divine teach that a papal decision is the result of divine inspiration, nor does he attribute to the pope any power of dogmatic creativeness—much less that he can erect his own thoughts into universal belief binding the church. "The sovereign pontiff," says Bellarmine,[170] "when he teaches the universal church, cannot err either in his decrees of faith or in moral precepts which are binding on the whole church, and in such things as are necessary to salvation and in themselves, that is, essentially good or evil." Another authority well known has the following clear exposé of this question: "The subject-matter of such irreformable judgments of the sovereign pontiff is limited to questions of dogmatic and moral import. We distinguish a two-fold character in the pope, namely, considering him as a private individual or doctor privatus, and by virtue of his office as chief pastor and as the universal doctor and teacher of all the faithful, appointed by Christ. The pope is considered as universal teacher when, using his public authority as the supreme guide of the church, (supremus ecclesiæ magister,) he proposes something to the whole church, obliging all the faithful under anathema, or pain of heresy, to believe the article thus proposed with internal assent and divine faith. The pope when teaching under these conditions is said to speak ex cathedra. We do not here speak of the pope as an individual teacher, (doctor privatus,) since every one agrees on this, that the pope, just as well as other men, is liable to err, and his judgment may be reversed."[171]

Now, Janus does away with this distinction by comparing it to "wooden iron" invented merely as an expedient hypothesis, whereas all theologians of repute agree on this difference, as well as on the essential conditions of the ex cathedra decisions. If there be some difficulties and minor differences among theologians on papal decrees, this by no means affects the value of this important and necessary [506]distinction itself. Even the decrees of an œcumenical council may give rise to similar differences among theologians. It is nothing less than a falsehood on the part of Janus that the cause of this inerrancy claimed for the pope as universal teacher is due to direct divine and plenary inspiration. All theologians are unanimous in asserting merely a divine assistance to guard against error, just as the church herself is divinely guided by the Holy Spirit, promised by Christ to reside with her for ever. There cannot be any necessity for substituting inspiration or a new revelation, since the infallible magisterium in the church is exercised in the two-fold duty of teaching and preserving all those truths which she has received as a sacred deposit from her divine Founder. Moreover, it is supposed that the pope when issuing such decrees to the universal church, binding all the faithful, proceeds with that caution and prudence which such weighty acts demand, that he has full liberty to assure himself of all human counsel and human means to find the true and genuine sense of Scripture and tradition. Alluding, therefore, to ignorant popes making use of their power of dogmatic creativeness and erecting their "own thoughts" into dogmas of faith, is an appeal to prejudice and commonplace mockery wholly unworthy of writers who would be admired for their calm and dignified scientific labors. Other opponents of papal infallibility have never gainsaid that at least this doctrine has always found many and able adherents, who have advanced strong arguments claiming the serious consideration of every theologian and thinking Christian, and therefore recommended by most respectable authority. But Janus comes forward to stamp this "ultramontane doctrine" with the stigma of absurdity and ridicule, and declares its advocates to be miserable sycophants, devoid of all learning or honesty of intention. (P. 320.)

The references we have given exhibit the doctrine of infallibility in such colors as scarcely to be recognized, and all advocates of the doctrine will repudiate such an unfair and arbitrary statement. The cunning insinuation that infallibility invests the popes with personal sanctity and integrity of morals, is no less captious and shallow. To what purpose those tirades on the private lives of the popes, or the extravagances of the Curia, and the administrative measures of the civil government, etc.? The supposition as though the whole church, that is, all the faithful, would have to accept falsehood for truth, vice for virtue, is a play of Janus's imagination. For those who uphold papal infallibility exclude the possibility of such an issue on account of the intimate union necessarily existing between the church and its spiritual head. According to the promises of Christ, that union—eminently one of faith—will never be severed, since Christ himself commanded this obedience of the flock to Peter and his successors. It cannot for a moment be supposed that the wise Lord of his vineyard sanctioned an obligation to accept falsehood for truth, or vice for virtue. The infallible magisterium of the church would be fatally compromised if the faithful were commanded by lawful authority to give interior assent to a false doctrine. So much for the intrinsic falsehood of the hypothesis of Janus. Yet he attempts to surround it with an authoritative garb by citing Bellarmine as maintaining "that if the pope were to err by prescribing sins and forbidding virtues, the church would be bound to consider sins good and virtues evil, unless she chose to sin against conscience." (P. 318.)

Who does not at once see this terrible alternative by which Janus triumphantly proves from the author quoted "that whatever doctrine it pleases the pope to prescribe, the church must receive"? Having the work of Bellarmine before our eyes, with the above passage in the context, we were greatly amazed, to say the least, to see how the entire proposition conveys just the very opposite meaning of what Janus would induce his readers to believe. Here is the argument in question:

Bellarmine's meaning evidently is that such an issue becomes impossible. This reductio ad absurdum, or showing to what contradiction a denial of his thesis would lead, has been exhibited by our authors as a bona fide tenet of Bellarmine! The passage itself is partly transcribed with minute reference, so that it is beyond the courtesy of even a mild critique to exonerate Janus from the charge of deliberate dishonesty in this instance.

Hitherto we have confined ourselves to a critical examination of a doctrine against which Janus directs his assaults. In the first place, we submitted his version of the same, and afterward the authentic explanation by those whom our authors acknowledge to be its most able exponents. The inevitable conclusion which forces itself on every mind is, that Janus has developed the doctrine of infallibility to suit his own fancy, and consequently the arguments he brings forward, supposing them true for discussion's sake, would indeed undermine the position assumed by himself, but in no way affect the genuine one propounded by his opponents. In order to make good his arguments from church history and canonical sources against the stand-point taken by the acknowledged advocates of infallibility, these three conditions must be verified, 1st. That the pope acted in his capacity of universal teacher, using his public authority as supreme head of the church; 2d. That his judgments appertain to matters of doctrinal belief and moral law necessary to salvation. 3d. That he proposes such things to the faithful, under pain of heresy, to be believed with interior assent as of divine faith, that is, a revealed truth. There is the simple issue between Janus and his adversaries. Has he advanced one single decree of any pope, invested with these essential conditions, obliging to believe falsehood and heresy or commanding to commit an evil and absolutely vicious action under the name of virtue? We doubt whether any candid and discriminating historian will maintain that Janus has accomplished any such task. However, that the reader may not suspect us of narrowing the domain of papal infallibility, we will quote a passage from an able and warm adherent of this doctrine, whose writings are well known as by no means liable to any suspicion of under-statement:

As we have already insinuated, Janus makes this infallibility extend to the private conduct of the popes, to their particular sayings and to all other things which were merely preliminary steps to their official measures. Now, it is certain, as is frequently urged by ultramontanes, that the pope, in becoming pope, does not cease to be a man, and to have his own private opinions, and not being infallible in these, by the very force of terms, they may be erroneous.

What we might thus far have conceded to Janus without great injury to the doctrine he opposes, we now proceed to question, and examine this "history of the hypothesis of papal infallibility, from its first beginnings to the end of the sixteenth century." He has indeed resuscitated weighty questions, and not unfrequently antiquated difficulties which we could point out from works printed for three hundred years and more. In order to be brief and clear, we shall begin with the alleged "forgeries" upon which Janus insists throughout his book, and thereafter interrogate history as to the many "papal errors," usurpations, and encroachments.

Note.—The terms "faith," "heresy," and "under anathema," in the foregoing article, must be understood in their general and not their restricted sense. That is to say, whenever the pope declares or defines any thing which is to be believed with absolute interior assent, this is to be considered as belonging to faith, whether it be technically a proposition de fide, or one which is only virtually and implicitly contained in a dogma. So, also, when he condemns an opinion which is indirectly and virtually contrary to a dogma of faith, this condemnation is of equal authority with the condemnation of an opinion technically called heretical. The anathema need not be formally expressed, or a special censure annexed, if it is made manifest that all Catholics are forbidden to hold the opinion condemned under pain of grievous sin. The monition of the Council of the Vatican at the end of the decree on Catholic faith expressly enjoins on all Catholics the duty of rejecting not only all heresies, that is, opinions in point-blank contradiction to the dogmas of Catholic faith, but all errors approaching more or less to heresy which are condemned by the holy see.—Editor of Catholic World.

THE YOUNG VERMONTERS.

CHAPTER VI.
A NEW ADVENTURE.

All went on quietly with our young Vermonters for a long time. They were engaged in close attention to their studies, in the regular routine of school duties and recreations of the play-ground, until late in August, when the peaceful current was again disturbed by the restlessness of Frank Blair; and it happened in this wise.

In the vicinity of the village lived a farmer whom the boys had named Old Blue Beech, from his fondness for using a rod of that description over the backs of lawless juveniles whom he caught trespassing on his premises. Now, this farmer was very skilful in cultivating choice fruit, and spared no expense or labor in that department; rejoicing in an orchard which he held in higher estimation than any other earthly possession, and which was an object of greedy envy to the village urchins, who indulged an inveterate spite and aversion against him, without really knowing why or stopping to inquire. They seemed to imagine that his keeping guard over his cherished treasures justified them in making frequent incursions, and waging a perpetual warfare of petty annoyances against him.

It so happened this year that he had several early pear and apple-trees, of rare and excellent varieties, in bearing for the first time, and well laden with most tempting fruit, now nearly ripe.

Frank Blair set his wits about inventing some plan by which he and his comrades could possess themselves of this fruit without detection. He formed and dismissed many schemes, at length devising one that he thought could be safely carried out. Accordingly, on a certain cloudy evening an assemblage of the boys—among whom I am sorry to say were Mike Hennessy and Johnny Hart—met by appointment in a grove near the farm, and from which to the orchard a strip of woodland extended, furnishing a convenient hiding-place, to accomplish the project.

It never entered their heads that stealing this fruit was just as much a theft as to steal one of the farmer's horses. Nothing could have tempted one of their number to steal, and any confectioner in the village might have spread his most tempting stores unguarded before them without losing so much as a comfit; so sacredly would they have held his right to his own. But boys have a most perverse and wicked mode of reasoning about fruit. They cannot be made to regard it as the property of the person who has expended much money and many years of patient labor to produce it; and while these boys would have shuddered at the thought of purloining the farmer's gold watch or his silver spoons, which, perhaps, he would sooner have parted with, they did not scruple to rob him of what he had taken infinite pains to cultivate for his own benefit.

On this occasion our young marauders had furnished themselves with bags and baskets, in which to deposit their plunder; and as the night advanced, they proceeded through the woods to the orchard very cautiously, pausing every few steps to listen if[510] any movement was to be heard. As all was quiet, they hoped the family in the farm-house were asleep. After they had gathered most of the pears and a large portion of the apples, they were startled by the low growl of a dog at some distance.

"I wonder if the old chap keeps a watch-dog?" said Frank. They listened in perfect silence for some time, hardly daring to breathe; but hearing nothing further, set about their task with renewed energy, and were all engaged in stowing away the apples, when suddenly a glare of light from a large dark-lantern was thrown full upon the faces of the whole party, at the same moment revealing the burly form of farmer Brown, and his Frenchman, leading a powerful watch-dog by a chain. At the instant the farmer turned the light upon them, he said sternly, "Any boy that attempts to stir from the spot, I will let the dog loose after him, and I warrant he'll be glad to come back in a hurry!"

The boys needed no such warning. They were taken so entirely by surprise that they could not move. The farmer made a low bow, and said with mock courtesy,

"I am very much obliged to you, young gentlemen, for your kind assistance in gathering my fruit, though you selected rather an unseasonable hour for performing the service. Your bags and baskets will repay me, however, for my broken rest. It is a pity such friendly labors should go unrewarded, and I shall take pains to inform your fathers of them to-morrow morning, that they may bestow the recompense you have so well earned."

With that he gathered together the bags and baskets of fruit, saying, "Good-night, you young dogs! The next time you undertake to steal fruit, I advise you to find out first how the orchard is guarded, and whether there's a dog on the premises stronger and swifter of foot than yourselves!" and departed.

A more chap-fallen crew than he left behind him cannot well be imagined! They started for the village by the most direct route, as there was no further need of concealment, and for a long time the silence of their rapid homeward march was unbroken. At length the wrath of Frank Blair found utterance.

"The mean old hunks! who would have thought of his keeping that sneaking Frenchman on guard that way? If it hadn't been for the dog, I would have shown fight, and they shouldn't have carried off the prize without some broken noses; but I knew it was no use to pitch into a fight with that fierce dog against us! He's an old milksop to depend on a dog for help."

The boys made no reply, and Frank saw he had gained no renown by this adventure. He felt heartily ashamed of the whole affair, while an innate sense of justice assured him and his companions that the farmer had a right to defend his own property by any means within his reach.

They all betook themselves to rest with no enviable feelings. Some of them, who feared to disturb their families, were glad to lie on the hay in the barn.

In the morning they trudged off to school in good season, with many gloomy forebodings as to what was in store for them. About the middle of the forenoon, Mr. Blair made his appearance accompanied by the farmer, and informed the teacher of the attempt to rob the orchard, and that he had requested Mr. Brown to come with him to identify the culprits.

Mr. Brown selected them one by one, and, as each was pointed out, he[511] had to rise and take his place in the middle of the school-room.

When they were all arranged there, with Frank at their head, Mr. Blair delivered a sharp reprimand to them, not failing to intimate that nothing but future ruin was in store for the country if Yankee boys allowed themselves to be drawn into disgraceful rows and thieving expeditions by a set of Irish blackguards, and winding up by severe threats against those of this company in particular, and all "foreign scum" in general.

After a short consultation between the teacher and Mr. Blair, it was announced that the punishment of the offenders would be left to Mr. Brown.

The farmer then stated that he had advised with his wife, and, as he had been pretty severe upon such culprits hitherto, without much effect, they had decided to take another course now.

"So, young gentlemen," he added, "she has authorized me to present her compliments to the school, and request all but the boys who were engaged in this transaction to come with the principal early on Saturday morning next, to pass the day with us. I have two boats engaged, with abundant fishing-tackle, for those who prefer the water, and fowling-pieces for the woods, where game is plenty; so you can take your choice of sports on land or water. I promise you a plentiful feast of the fruit which these youngsters kindly gathered."

The teacher politely accepted the invitation on behalf of himself and the scholars, and the farmer, after again reminding them to come early in the day, departed with Mr. Blair.

The feelings of the excluded boys may be imagined, and the teacher gave them such touching advice in relation to the enticements and temptations of boyhood—speaking like one who remembered he had himself been a boy—that they doubted more than ever the fun of "tip-top times," and the wisdom of following leaders like Frank Blair.

CHAPTER VII.
AN UNWELCOME INTRUDER.

The next morning as the scholars collected, they found Frank Blair and several of the excluded boys in the play-ground, grouped together in close discussion. When they approached, Frank called out exultingly,

"I give you fellows joy of your select party to-morrow! Joe Bundy is to be one of the company."

This Joe Bundy, whose mother died in the poor-house some years before, was a vile, depraved boy, somewhat older than the subjects of our narrative, who never came to school, leading an idle, vagabond life, and so heartily despised by the boys on account of his vagrant habits and thievish propensities that they would have nothing to do with him. They heard with great surprise and indignation, therefore, that he was among the invited on this occasion, for his character was well known to the farmer.

In explanation of this singular circumstance, a fact, not made known to them until long after these events, may as well be communicated here. On the night when our heroes set out to rob the orchard, it so chanced that Joe Bundy had entered upon a similar exploit on his own account, and was concealed in the grove where he overheard their conversation, and, suddenly relinquishing his own plan, hastened to inform the farmer, the result of which report has been already related. Mr. Brown was so well pleased that he included the informer among the invited, though he knew he was a bad boy and disliked by all the others.

At noon on that day, Joe saw Michael Hennessy, and called out, "Hallo, Mike! don't you wish you was going to the farm with the rest of us? Such precious fun as we shall have, and sights of good eating, too! An't you sorry you can't go?"

Joe turned off, muttering something in a sullen undertone, and casting a malignant glance at Michael.

At the close of school in the afternoon, the teacher told the scholars to meet him at the school-house the next morning, that they might all set out together. Bright and early on as fine a morning as could be desired, did the merry company gather, with nothing but the absence of those who were generally foremost in their frolics, and the presence of Joe Bundy, to mar their pleasure.

After a delightful walk, they were greeted at the farm-house with a hearty welcome, and found every possible arrangement made for their enjoyment.

Some betook themselves to the boats provided with means for fishing. Others, armed with fowling-pieces, sought the woods in quest of partridges, squirrels, and other game of the season; while a few strolled off to a sequestered pond, where wild ducks abounded, and where a small duck-boat was provided to aid in securing the spoils.

At the proper time they were summoned to partake of an excellent dinner; and so swift had been the flight of the hours that they could hardly believe the forenoon was gone. At the close of a sumptuous feast and dessert, they were regaled with an abundant supply of the captured fruit, to all of which their fine appetites prepared them to do ample justice.

The whole day was so replete with mirth, frolic, and sunshine that they saw the time for their return drawing near with regret.

When they left, Mrs. Brown distributed to each a portion of the fruit for their mothers and sisters, and Mr. Brown invited them to come again late in the fall, to gather nuts that abounded in the woods.

They could talk of nothing on their way home but the kindness of good Mr. and Mrs. Brown, and the incidents and pleasures of the day; the teacher taking occasion to contrast such innocent and simple delights with the wild excitements and lawless frolics in which boys are too apt to seek for enjoyment.

CHAPTER VIII.
MISFORTUNE AND GRIEF.

When the scholars assembled on Monday morning, the first news they heard was that Mr. Brown's splendid and valuable watch-dog had been poisoned, and died on Saturday night.

Mr. Brown had obtained evidence so convincing against Michael Hennessy as to cause his arrest.

Great was the indignation of his young friends, and unanimous their declarations that they knew Michael did not do it.

"Oh! it couldn't be him," said another; "for he was one of the party, and of course it wasn't he. If he hadn't been invited, he might have done it out of spite; but now he had no object."

Various were the conjectures and discussions at school and in the whole neighborhood.

The trial was on Tuesday, and Mr. Blair was the prosecuting attorney. The village apothecary testified that on the Friday previous Michael Hennessy[513] purchased some poison of him, representing that his mother sent him for it to poison rats. A neighbor of Mr. Brown's alleged that he saw Michael passing his residence in the road on Saturday afternoon, and Joe Bundy averred that he saw him prowling around the farm buildings about the time indicated by the last witness.

Mrs. Hennessy testified that she sent Michael for the poison to kill the rats that infested their premises. Mr. Hennessy said he had mended a hand-reel for a person who lived just beyond Mr. Brown's, and sent Michael home with it on Saturday afternoon.

Mr. Blair accepted the evidence of the parents, and urged the probability that a portion of the poison had been reserved by the lad as an instrument of his spite against Mr. Brown, for the application of which the errand upon which he was dispatched furnished an opportunity.

He set forth every circumstance unfavorable to poor Michael in the strongest possible light, blending with his argument such reflections and assertions upon the character and training of the children of foreign parentage as could not fail to influence a prejudiced jury.

Notwithstanding an able defence, the jury, after a short consultation, returned a verdict of "guilty," and Michael was sentenced for twelve months to the reform-school.

Nothing could exceed the grief and indignation of his comrades, or the sympathy of the whole village with poor Mr. and Mrs. Hennessy. Michael stoutly protested his innocence, and there were but very few who doubted it; but his father, whose health was very poor and his family large, was not able to risk an appeal to a higher court, which would probably, after all, confirm the decision, and Mike was not willing to have him. So they prepared, with heavy hearts, for the separation.

"Indeed!" said Mrs. Sullivan to her neighbor Mrs. Mellen—"indeed, it's a sore thing to be put upon two such decent people, through the hatred of that miserable old Blair against an Irishman's boy, and him as innocent as the child in his mother's arms!"

"You knew them before they came here, I have heard," said Mrs. Mellen, who had not lived long in the place.

"They came over on the vessel with us, and were from the next county at home; and this was the way of it:

"The two brothers, Pat and Mike Hennessy, married two sisters, Mary and Bridget Denver. They were decent tradesmen as any in the two counties, and were well enough to do until the hard times came, when old Ireland saw her poor children starving on every side so that it would melt the heart of a stone, or any thing softer than an English landlord's, to hear tell of it. Well, in the midst of the famine, Mike agreed that he'd come to America, and prepare a place against Patrick should come with Mary and Bridget. So when he left them, Pat set to get all he could together by selling his bits of furniture and things, and when times grew worse and worse, he would not delay, but took Mary with her baby of a week old, and Bridget, and came, as I said, on the vessel with us; and, by the same token, the ship's name was the Hibernia. A good name with a rough fortune, like the dear old land; for the weather was boisterous from first to last, and when we had been out four days, the most awful storm arose, that you'd think heaven and earth was comin' together. And in the midst of it what does poor Bridget do but sicken and die with the fright, leaving her[514] little baby; but it followed its mother that same night which was God's blessing on it, poor motherless thing, seein' it was baptized by a priest we had on board, and who attended Bridget at the last.

"When we reached Boston, no tidings was to be heard of Mike; so Pat staid there hopin' to get news of him, and we came on to Vermont, where Sullivan's sister's husband came the year before.

"After a while Pat heard that the vessel Mike sailed on was struck by an iceberg, and went down with all on board; and it was called the Polar Queen, a name no knowledgeable man would have put on a vessel, in respect of them same icebergs, that would naturally enough claim their own.

"So when Pat heard these news, and he not finding such work as he wanted, seein' it was very costly living in the city, they started for the West; but hearing at Albany that the cholera was ragin' there, they turns and they follows us to Vermont, thinking, poor creatures! that it would be some comfort to be near those who knew of all their troubles. The church was then a building, and Mr. Wingate gave him work on it, and has been the best of friends to him ever since, and he has never wanted for employment; but lately his health is poor, and I'm afeered this grief will kill him entirely, and indeed my heart is scalded for them, bein' that we're all as one family, and their sorrow is our sorrow."

CHAPTER IX.
AFFLICTED AND CONSOLED.

When the morning appointed for the departure of Michael arrived, the whole school assembled to accompany him to the depot, and take leave of him. The teacher gave him much good advice, and exhorted him to conform closely to all the rules of the institution, adding, "And I have no doubt you will, Michael; for you have always been a good, attentive, and obedient scholar."

The parting with his parents and the children was inexpressibly painful; but for their sakes he bore up manfully under it, cheering them with brave words, and suppressing his grief until the dear home with all its cherished associations was no longer in sight. Oh! how bitterly and dismally did the heavy grief he had so struggled with, and tried so heroically to smother, then press upon him; he still choked it down until he was ready to suffocate, and then the weary sense of desolation, of cruel injustice, and of a homesickness which made the sight of a year's separation from all he loved, that was now staring him in the face, seem an age of insupportable sorrow, rushed upon him with overwhelming power, and found relief in floods of tears.

The officer who had him in charge tried to soothe and cheer him; assuring him that it was a very pleasant place to which he was going, and that he would be treated with the utmost kindness if he behaved well. But what was the kindness of strangers to the tenderness of dear parents from whom he had never before been separated? What could the place be to him, though ever so comfortable, to which he was consigned, in his innocence, as a disgraced felon?

No! there was no comfort for him! and again the convulsive sobs shook his whole frame, and the pride of his honest Irish heart rebelled against the injustice of his cruel fate; when suddenly he remembered the words his dear mother whispered softly, amidst sighs and tears, at parting, "Remember, darling! remember the loving Jesus! and how he suffered, being innocent,[515] for our sins. When you are tempted to despair, fly to the wound in his sacred heart, ever open to receive and comfort the broken-hearted, and you will surely find comfort and peace." From that moment he became calm. He sought that dear refuge, and hid himself there from the storm that was raging within and without.

He had always been a warm-hearted boy, an affectionate, generous, and dutiful son and brother; but now he reproached himself that he had never prized his dear ones at half their value, or loved them with any thing approaching to the degree of affection which they deserved. Oh! if he could only be with them again, how would he strive to show his love by the most entire devotion, and the most diligent efforts to assist and sustain them.

Then how did the memory of the wild frolics in which he had joined, and for which he had even neglected his religious duties, come back like accusing spirits to whisper to his afflicted heart that it was just he should be punished.

After a few hours' ride, they reached the place of their destination, and the principal, a venerable old man with a most benevolent countenance and manner, received Michael very kindly, even tenderly.

With strong efforts the poor lad was able to maintain his composure until he prepared for his bed at night, when the same dark sense of desolation overwhelmed him, as recollections of his dear home, and the kneeling circle, where his place was to be so long vacant, pressed upon him; but the thought of how fondly he would be remembered in their united prayers this and every other night poured a ray of light upon his stricken soul. Again recalling his mother's words, he knelt by his bedside, commending himself and all his beloved and afflicted ones to his Saviour, and to the prayers of the tender Virgin Mother who never forsakes her children; and then slept the peaceful sleep of a tired, exhausted child on that maternal bosom.

The next morning he was duly instructed in the routine of his present position, and soon found that the most diligent attention to its duties served to relieve the crushing weight which seemed to be pressing the very life-blood from his young heart. After a few days, he won approving smiles from the principal, who was as ready to appreciate the merits of those under his charge as he was to reprove their faults.

The Saturday after Michael's arrival, the devoted bishop of the diocese visited the institution, and heard the confessions of the Catholic members. This was an unspeakable consolation to Michael; and his heart felt lighter than he had thought it ever would again after he had poured the tale of all its sins and all its sorrows into that paternal ear. The bishop had obtained permission for the Catholic boys to attend mass at their own chapel in the place, and at his recommendation they were placed under Michael's care to and from the church.

Some of these were very wild, reckless boys, hardened in vice and iniquity, and disposed to "poke fun" at the "new prig," as they called Michael.

At first, when he was saying his prayers, they would shoot peas at him, flip buttons in his face, and even repeat portions of prayers in mocking derision. But he paid no heed to them. After a few days, two or three others knelt to their prayers at night and morning, and then he obtained permission from the principal to recite the beads with these at night. It was not long before they were joined by every Catholic boy in the dormitory.

There is a wonderful vigor and tenacity in the life our Catholic Mother—our[516] Mighty Mother, ever ancient, ever new—imparts. When, by our own fault, we seem to have quenched the last spark of living fire which she kindled upon the altar of our hearts, a passing breath from heaven wafted gently through a fitting word kindly spoken, or the voice of hymn or prayer over the dying embers on the almost abandoned shrine, will awaken the flame anew, and draw the wanderer back to the forsaken source of life, of light, and of warmth.

It was very consoling to Michael to witness this returning vitality in the hearts of his unfortunate companions; and they soon became so fond of him as to seek his advice and confide all their troubles to him. The influence he thus acquired was a great relief to the principal. It was no longer necessary for him to exercise unceasing vigilance over these, who had been among the most turbulent boys under his care, to prevent violent outbreaks; for they were now the most diligent, attentive, and orderly members of the establishment.

And Michael's efforts brought their own reward to himself. The consciousness of being useful to others brought cheerfulness to his heart, and lent new wings to old time, whose flight had at first been so heavy and slow; so that at the end of the first month he was surprised to find how swiftly it had flown.

CHAPTER X.
THE DYING PENITENT'S DISCLOSURE.

There were many sad hearts in the village of M——, outside of Michael Hennessy's home, on the day of his departure. The event cast a gloom over the whole village; for his bright, sunny face was a joy to many of its residents, and there seemed to be a ray of light stricken out when he departed.

His young companions could no longer enjoy the sports of the play-ground; but might be seen gathered in quiet groups discussing and lamenting the loss of their joyous comrade. None mourned for him more than Frank Blair; for his grief over the absence of a loved school-mate was increased by the part his father had taken in bringing it about. He saw the time approaching for his own departure, to take his place in the naval school, with a sullen apathy that alarmed his mother and aunt, and repeatedly expressed his indifference as to whether he should ever return to M——.

When Michael had been absent about two months, Joe Bundy returned to M—— from one of his frequent distant rambles; and soon after his return was taken very ill. The physician pronounced it a very malignant case of the small-pox, and had him removed to a building quite out of the village. He was so generally disliked that it was difficult to find any one to take care of him; but when Mrs. Hennessy heard of it, she offered to go if Mrs. Sullivan would look after her house; her oldest daughter, Jane, being old enough to get along with a little direction. She accordingly went, and found him much worse than she expected, and suffering intensely. As soon as he saw her, he became so violently agitated that she thought he was delirious, and the impression was confirmed by his pleading in the most moving terms for her forgiveness, and that she would send for the priest, when he had always been a Protestant. She tried to soothe him; but he only begged the more earnestly, and assured her that he was not delirious. So when the physician came, she requested him to send Mr. Hennessy for the priest.

Upon the arrival of the reverend father, the young man, to his great[517] surprise, begged to be admitted into the Catholic Church.

The priest, having satisfied himself as to his dispositions, and imparted the necessary instruction, administered conditional baptism, and then heard his confession. At its close Joe repeated a portion to Mrs. Hennessy; and the fact was then disclosed to her that he had poisoned the dog and perjured himself to gratify his anger at Michael's scornful remark, and his spiteful feelings toward a boy who was so generally beloved.

The physician coming in soon after, the same information was conveyed to him; and he made no delay in communicating it to Mr. Hennessy, that he might act upon it at once.

The news flew like wild-fire through the village; and great were the rejoicings on every hand. The school-boys were frantic with joy; and the teacher announced that the day of Michael's return should be celebrated by a holiday of triumphant exultation and welcome to their returning friend.

Measures were instituted for Michael's immediate release; and the people could hardly await the necessary course of legal formalities.

Meantime poor Joe grew worse; and after improving those last few days of suffering by manifesting such penitence as the time and the circumstances would allow, and receiving from the priest those consolations which the church extends to penitent sinners, he died.

Upon examining his few effects, a roll of counterfeit bills was discovered; and it was conjectured that his last journey was made to procure them, as he had told Mrs. Hennessy that he supposed he took the small-pox on a recent visit to Canada.

When the papers were ready, Mr. Blair claimed the privilege of going after Michael. He reproached himself so bitterly for his own injustice that he could not do enough to manifest his regret.

A larger crowd was never assembled in the village than met at the depot in M—— on the evening of his arrival with his young companion. They were greeted with joyful cheers, repeated again and again; and Mr. Blair led Michael to his father, saying, "Let me congratulate you, Mr. Hennessy, on being able to claim such a son. During the short time he has been away, among strangers and under most unfavorable circumstances, he has established a character that any young man might envy; and it was truly touching to witness the grief of his unfortunate young companions at parting with him. The principal also passed the highest encomiums upon his conduct. Allow me also to express to this assemblage of my fellow-townsmen my sincere regret that I should have had any part in his unjust conviction, and allowed myself to be governed by prejudices, too common in our country, which I now lay aside for ever. There are good and bad people among natives and foreigners; and the man exhibits but little good sense who passes sweeping condemnations upon either."

The school-boys, with their teacher at the head, formed a procession to escort Michael to his father's house; and a happier circle was not to be found in Vermont than the one that knelt around Mr. Hennessy's family altar that night, to return fervent thanksgivings to heaven for having permitted the separated to be again and so speedily reunited!

TEN YEARS IN ROME.[174]

Rome, the city of the soul! Who is there that does not nowadays feel his thoughts turning almost involuntarily to the seven-hilled city? To her many ordinary claims on our minds, there has of late been added one of startling interest—the Œcumenical Council—which has not failed to excite the attention of the world. It is the daily theme of prayer and of hope for the devout child of the church. To the worldling, it is a theme of curiosity and idle speculation. To the enemies of the church, the council is a subject of alarm and of vague apprehensions. In Europe, where men curiously mix politics and religion, their opposition takes the hue of odium politicum; and journals, reviews, and pamphlets are filled with the most outré accounts of what the writers assert has been done or will be done in the council, adverse to liberty, progress, and civilization. In America, where as yet men have not lost the habit of separating politics from religion, such effusions as these would be looked on as simply stupid, unreadable nonsense. Here, however, as also in England, the odium theologicum retains its olden character and makes use of its olden weapons. It is worth while to note the apparently systematic efforts made to repeat old calumnies, and to coin new stories after the old pattern, and to force them on the public attention, on occasion of this universal interest, in the evident expectation that they will now be swallowed as credulously as they might have been fifty years ago. No greater tribute, we think, could be paid to the real advancement of the public mind than to say that this expectation has in very great measure proved vain. There are things and stories which nowadays most men instinctively feel to be too absurd for belief. Hence it is scarcely worth while to take up such stories for serious examination. They are simply to be put in a class together, and to be properly labelled, and to be ranked below the sensational tales in the Ledger. This is especially the case when they appear in organs specially devoted to the cause which such stories are intended to support.

Now and then, however, it may be allowed to dissect such a production, that the evidence of facts may occasionally confirm and strengthen the true instinct which we already possess. More especially is this allowable, when the story is peculiarly bold and prominent, and comes before the public through a channel in which we are not prepared to look for an exhibition of the old and unscrupulous hatred.

Such an instance has been presented in several articles in the Galaxy, a monthly periodical published in this city, and aiming to be a literary and instructive magazine "of value and interest."

Among the writers engaged for the pages of the Galaxy is one who is represented as having been a Roman Catholic ecclesiastic, and who contributes a series of articles under the title, "Ten Years in Rome."

According to these articles, the writer is an Englishman, and was at one time a Catholic priest in Rome. He went to Rome in 1855-56, bearing letters of introduction, was received at once into the Propaganda College, increasing the number of Irish, Scotch,[519] and English students in that college to nine, passed from there to the Vatican, to live "under the same roof with the pope," became assistant-librarian to the Congregation of the Index, and subsequently was the confidential and trusty secretary of the late Cardinal d'Andrea, whose private papers—or at least some of them—he claims still to possess. The Galaxy does not give the name of this writer. But the daily papers informed us, some time ago, that a reverend gentleman of England delivered a lecture at the lecture-room of Plymouth Church, Brooklyn, on Rome and its religion and society; and was qualified to do so, because he had been formerly "an official of the Roman court, secretary to the late Cardinal d'Andrea, and assistant librarian in the Index Expurgatorius." The lecturer was evidently the same individual as the writer for the Galaxy. The papers gave his name, which, we are sorry to say, smacks far more of the Green Island than of England.

Now, it so happened that we were in a position to test at once and fully the accuracy of these statements in regard to the past history of the lecturer and writer; and we reached the following results:

1. No young English youth or clergyman of that name ever was received into the College of the Propaganda at Rome. This is shown by the records of the college, and is corroborated by the assurances of the present rector, who, in 1855, had been for several years vice-rector, and has ever since been connected with the college, and also by the recollection of half a dozen Irish and American students, who were then in the college, and would have been his companions.

2. During the last twenty-five years there never was an officer of the Roman court, or an English or Irish ecclesiastic connected with it, in any way, of that name. The list of all such officers is regularly published every year. This name has never figured there. Officers of twenty years' standing in the Vatican have no recollection of him. An Englishman could scarcely have been entirely overlooked. And at least his brother Englishmen, who are officers of the court, would have known and remembered him.

3. During the same period, no person of that name has filled the office of librarian, or assistant-librarian, of the Index Expurgatorius, or of the Congregation of the Index. The officials of that congregation are all Dominicans; and the writer does not pretend that he ever joined that order. We may add the other insignificant fact, that no such library is known to exist at all, much less to be so large as to require the services not only of a librarian, but of one, perhaps of several, assistant-librarians.

4. The late Cardinal d'Andrea never had a secretary of that name. This is the assurance unanimously given us by the friends and intimate acquaintances of the cardinal, and by the members of his household, who had lived with him for twenty years. There can be no doubt on this fact. We may add one little item. Cardinal d'Andrea had no secretary. The secretary of a cardinal is an ecclesiastic. When a layman is chosen to fill the place, he is called, not the secretary, but the chancellor of the cardinal. Cardinal d'Andrea, from 1852, when he was made cardinal, down to his death, employed as chancellor an estimable and well-educated gentleman, whom he had known well, and had been intimately associated with for years before, and who still lives in Rome.

5. Although, considering that forty or fifty thousand strangers visit[520] Rome every year, it may be possible that the writer in The Galaxy did, at some time or other, enter that city, yet we are pretty certain that he never spent any considerable time there—much less, ten years—as an ecclesiastic. We have made inquiries of a number of clergymen, Englishmen and Irishmen, resident in the Eternal City for thirty years, who from their positions must have heard of such a one, and could not have escaped becoming acquainted with him under some circumstances or other. One after another, they assured us that they had never met, and could not remember ever having heard of such, an ecclesiastic.

It is unfortunate that, in such striking and important matters of his own personal history, concerning which he ought to be perfectly well-informed, the memory of our lecturer and writer fails so entirely to agree with the recollection and knowledge of so many others. If this is the case here, what may we look for when he undertakes to remember what happened to others?

Our writer makes his bow to the readers of The Galaxy in the number of December last, in the character of "Secretary of the late Cardinal d'Andrea," concerning whom he gives an article of nine pages, intended to be sensational and artistic. He opens thus:

To be sure, the description of the edifice which follows is rather misty, to one who knows it, and some things, we suspect, are introduced which no architect ever saw there. But then, "in the centre of the church," stands "the chief object of interest," "a gorgeous catafalque," "entirely covered with black velvet, very tastefully festooned with silver." "Escutcheons were placed at intervals, bearing the arms of the deceased. On the bier lay a cardinal's hat, a pastoral staff, and a mitre. Six gigantic candles of yellow wax were burning around it." The pope and the cardinals were to come to the funeral. As the cardinal-minister (Antonelli) "stepped from his carriage" in front of the church, "there was a deep hum" from the crowd. For they suspected him of having compassed the death of the only cardinal they honored, who was to be buried that day. "His face was very pale;" "he played nervously with the jewelled cross hanging from his neck." "He could read his doom in hundreds of scowling faces; the curses, not loud but deep, he well interpreted. As he ascended the steps of the church, a shrill voice cried out, 'Down with the assassin!'" "The French guards clinched their rifles," and "closed in" at a sign to their captain; and so Cardinal Antonelli entered the church. After praising the exquisite requiem mass of Mozart, with selections from Palestrina, and the perfect choir of voices, rendering any instrument superfluous, the writer places the pope at the head of the catafalque. "He was visibly moved." "There was a tremor in his clear, harmonious voice." "He whose requiem was being sung had been a friend and a counsellor." When at length the services were over, and the pope and the cortége of cardinals had departed, "the people rushed into the church to render the only service they could to the departed; and strong men, unused to prayer, uttered their fervent requiescat in pace!"

"This was the funeral of Cardinal d'Andrea, Abbot of Santa Scolastica, statesman, politician, and patriot. It[521] occurred on the 22d day of March 1865."

Now all this may be a very artistic method of introducing a story. The chief objection that we have to it is that the writer makes such a parade about the funeral of Cardinal d'Andrea. We think he rather overcharges the picture. Had it been any body else's funeral, we might possibly let it pass. But in the case of this cardinal, we object; for, to our own knowledge, on this 22d day of March, 1865, Cardinal d'Andrea was not lying dead on that bier in San Giovanni in Laterano, as described, but, on the contrary, was alive, if not perfectly well, in Sorrento, near Naples, whither he had gone over nine months before for his health. Nor did he die about this time; but he lived on, and wrote some letters from time to time, which were published in the papers, and one, if not several, pamphlets, which were very acceptable to editors in Italy and France, in quest of themes for their leading articles. As late as the autumn of 1867, the papers were discussing what step Cardinal d'Andrea would next take. And they chronicled his return to Rome in December, 1867. Yes, we decidedly object. We do not think that this writer, however extraordinary his powers of memory may be, has a right to bury Cardinal d'Andrea alive, to say nothing of bringing the venerable pontiff to grief, of frightening Cardinal Antonelli, of making the French guards clinch their rifles and go through a military manœuvre, and, last of all, of so terribly exciting a Roman crowd about the death of one who had not died at all.

Having commenced the performance by this tour de force before his public, our "secretary of the late Cardinal d'Andrea," like a skilful actor as he is, jumps a somersault backward two years and a half, (carrying us to about September, 1862,) and undertakes to give us some inkling of how Cardinal d'Andrea and Cardinal Antonelli came to be opposed to each other. There was a plan entered into by several cardinals and monsignori to induce the pope to recommend Cardinal Antonelli to resign his office as Cardinal-Minister and Secretary of State. The "secretary" omits to inform us distinctly whether Cardinal d'Andrea was a party to the plan or not. But we are left to infer that he was. It failed. And ever after, Cardinal d'Andrea did not enjoy the confidence of the pope to the degree he had done before; and Cardinal Antonelli and his followers hated him. The recollection of this intrigue, and its failure, is followed by an exposition of the political sentiments of the cardinal. "He became the leader of the liberal policy of Cavour, in Rome."

Now, here again we object. That a number of cardinals or monsignori should think that it would be well if a cardinal secretary of state, for the time being, should resign; and that affairs would be better managed, if another incumbent filled the place, is possible; perhaps, considering the variety of opinions among men, is not improbable. In the case of Cardinal Antonelli, the matter is complicated, perhaps we should say, simplified, by the fact that they would find very few indeed to agree with them. But that a number of cardinals and monsignori did really entertain such an opinion on the subject, and did, in September, 1862, or thereabouts, combine in an effort to oust Cardinal Antonelli, is vouched for, so far as we know, only by the recollections of our writer. The plan itself was not dreamed of in well-informed circles in Rome, and the bold and adroit measures by which Cardinal Antonelli is said to have foiled it failed to attract attention at the time, or to leave any trace afterward,[522] either in the diplomatic records of Rome, or in the memory of any one else besides our writer. It is one other additional instance of the perversity of the world, which will not remember what he recalls so distinctly.

As to Cardinal d'Andrea, he had been, since 1860, Cardinal-Bishop of Sabina, and was also Prefect of the Congregation of the Index. His health had begun to fail some time before the date we are examining, and within a few months afterward he was forced, much to the regret of the pope, to resign the latter office, and to restrict himself to the duties of his diocese and his private affairs, and could take but a light share in the work of a cardinal. To make him at that time a prime mover in the scheme, is as gratuitous as, under the circumstances, it is absurd.

The statement of his political principles is equally in contradiction with facts. Cardinal d'Andrea had all his life been a most strenuous and active supporter of the temporal power of the pope, and was not a man to change his position and his principles at the close of his life. He was as uncompromising, and a far more outspoken opponent of the policy of Cavour, than even Cardinal Antonelli himself, who, as befits his office and his character, never violates the reserved and strictly temperate expressions allowed by diplomatic courtesy. All that our writer "remembers" concerning Cardinal d'Andrea's connection with and influence over the Roman committee, is a pure effort of his memory, which, by the by, on this point has played him false. He remembers, "To his counsel it was due that no revolt occurred on the withdrawal of the French." Why, the French troops were withdrawn from Rome in December, 1866, to be sent back in October, 1867, on the occasion of Garibaldi's attempted invasion of the Papal States. How could Cardinal d'Andrea, who had died, as the secretary "remembers," and whose funeral obsequies had been so pompously celebrated in the cathedral church of San Giovanni di Laterano, on the 22d day of March, 1865, be alive to give counsel and use his influence with the Mazzinians and the party of action a year and nine months afterward? Has the writer's own memory proved traitor to him, and joined the crowd of contradictors?

In point of fact, Cardinal d'Andrea was not in Rome in December, 1866, nor for months before and for months afterward. He was at Naples, or its neighborhood, seeking to restore his shattered and sinking health.

Our secretary takes a second leap backward, and "endeavors to give a slight sketch of the Cardinal d'Andrea, necessarily imperfect as pen and ink sketches always are." The incompleteness we might readily excuse. But we cannot excuse its utter incorrectness in the details, an incorrectness so unnecessarily excessive that we can only explain it on the theory he is entirely guided by that wonderful memory, of the powers of which we have had such evidences. Especially is this seen when, leaving generalities aside, the writer ventures to make a precise and definite statement.

Thus, we are informed that, in his early life, the cardinal "had been bred for the army, and served in the Noble Guard for three years." Whereas the cardinal was not born in Rome or the Roman States at all, and never had any connection whatever with the Noble Guard or any other military corps. He was born in Naples. His father, the Marquis Giovanni d'Andrea, was treasurer of the kingdom of Naples. His elder brother,[523] the present Marquis d'Andrea, is still living near Naples. Jerome d'Andrea, the future cardinal, at an early age showed an inclination for the church, and in due time went through the ordinary course of ecclesiastical studies. At its conclusion, he came to Rome, and entered the Accademia Ecclesiastica, a college for the higher and more thorough education of such ecclesiastics as wish to enter the carriera, as it is called, that is, who aspire to become ecclesiastical officials at Rome. There was nothing military about the cardinal. He simply had the dignified bearing and the polished manners of an Italian nobleman.

"He viewed the Jesuits as the foes of reform; his scheme was to destroy their influence in the public schools." "The mendicant orders met no favor with him." "He did approve of the dissolution of their monasteries." This posthumous revelation of the cardinal's sentiments will undoubtedly astonish the Jesuits and the mendicant orders at Rome, if they ever hear of it, unless indeed they are foolish enough to trust their own memory of the words and acts of the cardinal in life, rather than the wonderful memory of this "secretary." The Jesuits will remember how often and regularly he would visit their father-general, or Father Perrone, or the more illustrious and learned members of their society; how fond he was of having some of them to visit him frequently; how he would invite their counsel and aid, and how he was careful to omit no proper occasion of publicly showing his friendship and esteem for them. The members of the mendicant orders will call to mind their perpetual intercourse with one who was always a kind father to them. As one of the cardinal's household expressed it to us, Era sempre attorniato da lore—He always had these friars around him. We fear that, with such cherished memories in their hearts, they will pay very little regard to the recollections of our "secretary."

"The cardinal generally rose at six, and spent three hours in reading ere he said mass and breakfasted. He then received, and at twelve rode out, except when his presence was required by the pope. The afternoon was spent in a siesta until six. At half-past nine he retired."

What a sleepy-head this affectionate and reverential "secretary" would make the cardinal to be. Retire at half-past nine, and rise at six. Here we have eight hours for a good night's sleep; ample allowance, one would think. But no. Each day, after his noon-day drive, the afternoon until six is spent in a siesta; that is, at least four hours more given to sleep—twelve hours, on an average, out of every twenty-four! And this was the ordinary course of things, only interrupted when his presence was required by the pope! Was he in any way related to Rip Van Winkle, or is it the secretary who is dreaming? Certainly Cardinal d'Andrea bore all his life the reputation of being a remarkably wide-awake, clear-headed, and active business man.

We presume that he usually rose about six—a little later in winter, somewhat earlier in summer—such being the custom of Italians of his standing. By half-past eight, mass and breakfast were over; for business hours commence at nine, and the cardinal gave the forenoon to business, whether in the consistories or in the meetings of congregations or at his own residence, where secretaries, theologians, and other officials, and all interested parties, would see him. At half-past one, or at two, as business allowed, he dined. In summer, he[524] took a siesta for half an hour or so. An hour or more was given to reciting his breviary and to private study. At four in winter and five in summer, if the weather allowed, he would drive out, and when outside the city might indulge in half an hour's active walk on foot. Reëntering his carriage, he reached home about sunset. Until nine, he received those who called on him, whether on business or as friends. Then came his supper, after which he loved to spend an hour or two in lively conversation on the topics of the day with his more intimate and esteemed friends. About eleven, he usually retired to rest; but, too frequently for his health, he would, if he had what he deemed important business on hand, stay up until one or two in the morning, studying or writing.

"In his meals he was sparing, attached to the French cuisine, and drank the light native vintage of Monte Fiascone.... He never went among French society. He gave the French no countenance, regarding them as witnesses of his country's serfdom."

What the writer means by this last phrase, or how the English and Germans visiting Rome are not as truly witnesses to things there as the French can be, we do not understand, and shall not stop to inquire. The important statements are before us. The cardinal was attached to the French cuisine and avoided French society. Now, the truth was just the reverse on both these points. The cardinal was an excellent linguist and a well-read scholar. He delighted in the company of educated Frenchmen, ecclesiastics, laymen, and military, and was quite intimate with many of them. But as to his food, he remained a true Neapolitan to the day of his death, and stuck to macaroni, vermicelli, and pollenta, as an Englishman sticks to his roast beef and good mutton.

"The Cardinal d'Andrea was fond of theatricals; indeed, private representations were among the few enjoyments he had. He relished them amazingly."

When we repeated this statement to the member of the cardinal's household to whom we are indebted for our information on the preceding points, he turned on us a look of bewildered astonishment which we shall not soon forget. "Poesie! poesie!" he exclaimed. "All an invention; all an invention."

Even in his early life, when, as a layman, he could have frequented the theatre without any breach of decorum, he had avoided it. As a clergyman, of course he could not go without losing caste. It might have well happened that, in his travels in France, Switzerland, Germany, and various parts of Italy, he had at some time or other chanced to be a guest where courtesy called on him to be present at private theatricals held in the family. Of this our informant could not speak, for he had not always been with him on these journeys. But since he had been made cardinal he had been with him, and could not recall a single instance where the cardinal had attended such a private representation. In his own palace he could not have had them. His own character did not run in that line of amusement; and even if he had desired it, the size and form of the apartments would have rendered them impossible.

But such effusions of our "secretary's" poetic or inventive memory are of themselves too slight and trivial to merit a place in The Galaxy. There must be something of graver import to come. And in fact these things have only been the preliminaries for[525] the grand events which are to be recorded of Cardinal d'Andrea; his escape from Rome by the active aid of this secretary; the espionage over his words and acts when he returned—an espionage which this secretary detected, though he could not foil it; the finding of the cardinal unexpectedly and mysteriously dead in his bed one morning; and finally, the saving of his important private papers, by this secretary, from the clutches of Cardinal Antonelli—papers which he has persistently guarded and still retains, and which hereafter, we may be allowed to conjecture, can serve to refresh and stimulate his wondrous powers of memory, if any stimulation be needed.

The scene opens some time during the course of those two years, to the beginning of which the first jump backward brought our writer. The plan to oust Cardinal Antonelli from office had been formed, as we were told, and failed; and Cardinal d'Andrea had lost somewhat of the pope's favor, and had incurred the bitter enmity of Cardinal Antonelli and of the Jesuits and ultramontanes. We may reasonably allow some months for so much. When time had brought things to this pass, "there was a party in the Piazza di Spagna, given by a Russian princess, at which the élite of Roman society was assembled. Among the guests was Cardinal d'Andrea. Madame C——, the wife of Captain C——, of the French army, was, as usual, coquetting with the Cardinal di C——a, a prince of the most ancient of Roman houses, with one of the finest palaces in Rome." The secretary loiters to describe Captain C——, of the French army, and Madame C——, his young and handsome wife, and to tell his readers of her notorious intrigue with the above-named Cardinal Prince di C——a, of the ancient family and with the fine palace. "Four days after this party, Captain C—— appeared at his wife's apartments. He was cool and deliberate. He upbraided her in unmeasured terms. She bitterly resented.... His rage became terrible. Ere she could utter a prayer or a cry, he seized the miserable woman and shot her; then shot himself! The affair created some little sensation."

We should think it would, especially in peaceful, slow-going, decorous Rome. Even in New-York, or in London, or in Paris, such a tragedy, in which persons of that social standing were concerned, would have created quite a sensation.

The Prince di C——a, "of one of the most ancient of Roman houses, with one of the finest palaces in Rome," can of course be none other than the Prince Colonna. The Roman princes are few in number, and can easily be counted. No other has a surname to suit. The ancient family and the fine palace are earmarks also. He means Colonna. But then, many, many years have passed since there was a cardinal of that family. In fact, take the list of cardinals since 1850, and the only one whose name the designation C——a could fit is Cardinal Cuesta, a Spaniard, who at the date of this party, (somewhere, if we follow the "secretary," in the winter of 1862-63,) was an aged septuagenarian bishop, zealously ruling his diocese in Spain; moreover, he was not then a cardinal. He was made cardinal two years afterward. Furthermore, he resides not in Rome but in Spain, whence he was lately called to Rome for the present council. He obviously cannot be the man. And so the Cardinal Prince di C——a vanishes into thin air, like a poetic phantom, as he is.

Captain C——, of the French army, and his wife, Madame C——, seem disposed to follow him into empty space.[526] No French officer then in Rome, and we have consulted several, can remember any French captain who killed his wife and then committed suicide. The police never got wind of the double tragedy. It escaped even the keen-scented newspaper itemizers. The "little sensation" is a feat of memory.

Decidedly our "secretary" is as unlucky at tragedies as he is at funerals, even though he assures us "the incidents of that reunion have fixed themselves very much on my memory, for it was the last time the Cardinal d'Andrea appeared at such assemblies." In fact, he proceeds to narrate how that very night, by his skilful planning, the cardinal was able to get out of Rome. This gives us, for the first time, we may say, in this article, the slightest soundings of truth. Cardinal d'Andrea did once leave Rome for Naples without the regular permission which was required for one in his position. We will speak further on of the motives and circumstances of that departure. Here we will only state the fact, that he left Rome on the 16th of June, 1864. The writer of this article was in Rome at the time, and, for peculiar reasons, no such tragedy as that "remembered" and the sensation it created could have escaped his knowledge. We may add that in Rome such parties are given in winter and never in summer. The strangers who visit Rome in winter, and leave after Easter, are in June in Switzerland or some other cool place. As for the élite of Roman society, they are "out of town."

But let us leave facts aside, and enter on that dream-land, the incidents of which are so firmly fixed on the memory of our secretary. Hear him:

"The cardinal retired early, and, it being moonlight and very fine, resolved to send back the carriage and walk home. He walked in company with his secretary, a servant, as usual, attending at a little distance. He had passed into the Corso, when a man suddenly started out of the small and dark Via Fontanella di Borghese.... It was a celebrated politician, who dared not have open intercourse with any one for fear of compromising them, and he conveyed the unwelcome intelligence that the cardinal's life was in imminent danger.... Every moment was of importance. A plan was speedily devised. The Honorable Mr. K—— was leaving at two o'clock in his private carriage for Civita Vecchia, to catch the French steamer touching at Civita Vecchia at half-past twelve next day, on her way to Naples." The secretary disguised himself, and stealthily sought an interview at once with this Englishman bearing an American title, and briefly "told his errand." "The generous Englishman proposed that the cardinal should accompany him, disguised as a friend whose name appeared in his passport. The friend, on being consulted, agreed, and the secretary left, promising to be ready at a certain street with the cardinal, where the carriage was to take him up.... His eminence put on the beard and moustache our English friend had given us, and, with the aid of a large Inverness cape and white wide-awake, was splendidly disguised. It wanted two hours and a half of the time. The cardinal never lost his presence of mind, but was gloomy and foreboding. At last we called the valet, devoted to his master, and informed him of the plan. He was to pretend illness on the part of the cardinal. He listened carefully to his instructions, and exclaimed, 'Eminence, your shoes and stockings!' We looked down, and saw that the patent-leather, low, clerical shoes with[527] gold buckles and the red silk stockings were very obvious betrayals of the rank of the disguised. No lay shoes and stockings were at hand, until the valet bethought him of his own. Hastily effecting the change, the cardinal passed out of the place alone, not suffering any one to accompany him." Whereby, we presume, he ran some risk of blundering as to the appointment, and moreover forced the zealous secretary to break his promise of being "ready at a certain street with the cardinal, where the carriage was to take him up." "The whole of the next day passed heavily, but no inquiries were made for his eminence. As his valet only waited on him, the other domestics easily believed that he was indisposed. Two days after, the secretary hastily scanned the Giornale di Roma, where he saw the departure of Mr. K—— announced, and that of his friend. The valet, poor fellow, though somewhat obese and awkward, executed an eccentric pas seul, in token of his satisfaction at the news, and then broke out into a fervent Ave Maria for his master's safety. Four days elapsed, and a summons came to attend the consistory. Then it was announced that the cardinal had left for Naples."

Now, we confess to having enjoyed this passage of our "secretary's" reminiscence more than any other. We think it his best effort. Still, it lacks some touches. He should not have omitted the matter of the exchange of the cardinal's knee-breeches for the valet's pantaloons. For obviously, if the cardinal put on the lay shoes and stockings of the valet, and retained his own knee-breeches, a space of ten inches at least on each leg would necessarily have been left bare and uncovered. Such an arrangement, however conducive to coolness, would have been a very remarkable feature of his costume, especially noticeable in contrast with the large Inverness cape which warmly enveloped the upper part of his person, and that in the month of June. Such an outfit would certainly attract every eye. Surely the cardinal and the valet must have then and there exchanged the knee-breeches of the one against the pantaloons of the other, regardless of how they fitted. Again, the "secretary" ought to have given us some inkling of how the valet felt and demeaned himself next morning when he appeared before his fellow-servants rigged out in the patent-leather, low, clerical shoes with gold buckles, the red silk stockings, and the knee-breeches of his master, instead of his own proper habiliments. Could not our secretary have adorned the Galaxy with some of the brilliant things then said and done?

The Honorable Mr. K——, too, acted very strangely. He might have taken his rest like a sensible man that night, and have left Rome by the accommodation train starting at six A.M. next morning, reaching Civita Vecchia at nine; or he might have waited for the express train, starting at ten A.M., reaching Civita Vecchia at twelve, and making connection with the steamers, whether bound to Naples or to Leghorn or to Marseilles. But no. He must lose his night's rest, and start at two A.M. in a private carriage to travel fifty miles, and reach a French steamer touching at Civita Vecchia at half-past twelve.

But if our secretary, in his recollections, can spurn facts, it would be superfluous to ask him to respect mere probabilities.

The real method of the cardinal's departure from Rome and his journey to Naples was the following very prosaic one:

On the 16th of June, 1864, he drove in his own carriage from his own residence, the Palazzo Gabrielli, to the railway[528] station in Rome, and took a ticket for Velletri, to which city he was accustomed to go, from time to time, to attend to the interests of the estate Girgenti, of which the family had requested him to become the administrator during the minority of the heirs. His valet alone accompanied him. The carriage was ordered to be at the station in the afternoon, as he might come back by the returning train. At Velletri, the cardinal was met by his man of business in that city, who had possibly made the necessary arrangements, and both proceeded in the same train to Isoletta, on the Neapolitan frontier. The cardinal continued on to Naples. The agent came back to Rome, found the carriage at the station, rode in it to the Palazzo Gabrielli, and informed the cardinal's chancellor and the household that the cardinal had gone to Naples for his health, and was not able to say when he would return.

This is the plain, matter-of-fact occurrence which the secretary's memory has changed into something like a chapter from one of Mrs. Radcliffe's novels sixty years ago.

We have already said that Cardinal d'Andrea took this step without the permission which, according to the rules of the Sacred College, he should have previously obtained. He had asked for that permission, and it had not been granted. When he publicly violated the rule on this point, the Italian enemies of the temporal power of the pope hoped that they had unexpectedly found a cardinal in such a position that they might, by degrees, make him their tool, and use him against Pius IX. Voices were heard hinting that it might be proper even to make him an anti-pope. The wiser ones among them saw from the beginning how absurd such hopes and plans were; for they knew the past history and the real character of the cardinal; and they rightly judged that whatever might be the motives of his present unexpected and most unusual proceeding, they must be personal. The step could not spring from any policy opposed to that of the court of Rome. They knew too well that he had always been a strenuous defender of the pope; they had often found him their active and energetic opponent. Later events proved to all that this judgment of theirs was correct.

We have spoken of the birth and early education of Girolamo d'Andrea, and his coming to Rome and entrance into the Accademia Ecclesiastica in that city. Soon after finishing his course of studies there with considerable reputation, he was made, in 1841, ponente, or judge, in an inferior ecclesiastical court, commencing thus his carriera at the bottom, but with distinction. He was afterward (1843) made delegate, or governor, of the province of Viterbo; and three years later went as nuncio or ambassador to Lucerne in Switzerland, which office he filled at the time of the Sonderbund war. Toward 1849, he returned to Rome, and was elevated to the very responsible position of Secretary of the Congregation of the Council. When Pius IX., after the public assassination of his prime-minister, Rossi, and the threats of violence to himself, escaped to Gaeta, Monsignor d'Andrea of course followed him. He was the prominent and most active man in reëstablishing the papal government in Umbria and the Marches and the patrimony. After two years of successful labor, he returned to Rome, to receive the thanks and the reward due to a delicate task zealously and satisfactorily accomplished. He was still Secretary of the Congregation of the Council, one of the highest posts he could hold, without being cardinal. On the 15th of[529] March, he was made cardinal-priest, with the title of Sant' Agnese fuori delle Mura. He had thus, in eleven years, reached the highest step of the Roman carriera. All acknowledged, even those whom he had passed, that the cardinal's hat was, in this case, most fittingly bestowed on learning, talents, experience, and as the well-deserved reward of zealous and efficient services. The new cardinal was soon named Prefect of the Congregation of the Index and Abbate Commendatario of Santa Scolastica, which last title he retained to his death. In 1860, he became Cardinal-Bishop of Sabina; and, by the firm and wise administration of his diocese, was looked on as a model bishop. In 1862, his health began to fail. Slow fevers seemed to undermine his constitution, stronger in appearance than in reality. At times a racking cough and a copious expectoration harassed him, and he seemed sinking into consumption. Rallying from this, he would suffer excruciating pains in the intestines; and, at times, he was subject to fainting fits. Still he struggled against all this, and kept on at his work. His friends noticed that he gradually became more silent and despondent. They observed, too, another effect of this long-continued indisposition. He became inclined to take up fixed ideas, and, perhaps, crotchets, and to adhere to them the more tenaciously if opposed. He evidently was not, at all times, the man he had formerly been. Of course, it took time for all this to be suspected and reluctantly admitted.

In the spring of 1864, the cardinal took up the idea that his health would be restored if he went to Naples, his birth-place. He asked permission to do so.

Special circumstances made the request one to be considered very maturely. The government at Rome was in a critical and delicate position, which required it to avoid most carefully any step capable of a doubtful interpretation, or liable to be made a pretext for certain false charges then current against it. The ex-king of Naples was a refugee in Rome. Dethroned sovereigns generally seek and find an asylum there. His friends and adherents in Naples were busy concerting measures to get him back on his throne. The Italian government and the Italian papers charged the court with assenting to and aiding in these plans. Even France seemed to be growing cold, and to be manifesting those dispositions which, a few months after, culminated in the iniquitous convention with Victor Emmanuel for the withdrawal of the French troops from the duty of protecting Rome. All these things made the court of Rome trebly cautious to commit no mistake.

It was felt that for a Roman cardinal to go then to Naples, even under the pretext of ill-health, more especially a cardinal like Cardinal d'Andrea, whose family had been for several generations closely connected with the dethroned royal family, and whose personal antecedents had been those we have recited, would be too dangerous. No explanations, however sincere, no disavowals, however explicit, could silence the charges or avert the troubles that might follow. Hence the permission asked for was refused, the more readily as the idea was looked on as the cardinal's own fancy, and was not based upon the advice of physicians. The pope himself explained the matter to the cardinal, and offered him permission to go to Malta, to Spain, to Pau, in France, to Nice, in Savoy, or anywhere else that the physicians would advise, or he desire. But to Naples, under the circumstances, it would not do for him to go. The cardinal seemed to assent[530] at the moment, and to acquiesce in the decision. But, some time after, he returned to the fixed idea, repeated his request, waited some weeks, and, not receiving any reply, started on the 16th of June, 1864, without permission, and, in the manner we have stated, went to Naples. At first, he spent several months, perhaps a year, at Sorrento, well known to all who visit southern Italy for their health. After some time, he moved to the city of Naples itself, and lived there until his return to Rome.

Concerning the cardinal's stay in Naples, our "secretary" remembers only two points: "He was located in ill-furnished lodgings on the Chiaja, at Naples, sorely distressed for money. More than this, his good name was suffering"—suffering, he means, in the opinion of the Mazzinians, the followers of the policy of Cavour and "the party of action." The Roman Committee seems to have been particularly exercised in reference to him.

Now as to the money matters. In Naples the cardinal kept a suite of apartments in the Hôtel Crocelles, one of the best in that city. Moreover, he also kept up his full establishment in the Palazzo Gabrielli, in Rome. He paid every body and every thing punctually; as, indeed, he might well do, considering the position of his family and his own private resources. If his health failed, his purse did not—which is more than can be said of most men, be they laymen, ecclesiastics, or even cardinals. When he died, his will gave legacies to friends and servants, and to religious and charitable purposes, and returned something to his family.

As to the second point, undoubtedly the cardinal's good name did suffer. The step he had taken was public; and the newspapers, after their style, had not failed to herald it over the world as something striking and important, from which, perhaps, vast results would follow. Catholics everywhere were pained that a cardinal should take so false a step, and place himself in a position apparently so equivocal; perhaps, too, some apprehended ulterior and more painful results. On the other hand, the Italianissimi waited, and cajoled him, and hoped. But when he had been away from Rome more than two years, and they found that they were not succeeding, as they desired, in making him their tool, they commenced to depreciate and ridicule him. This last point we rather think to his credit.

The mode of Cardinal d'Andrea's departure from Rome naturally set all Rome a-talking. His friends tried to explain and to excuse it in the mode we have stated. The excuse was probably felt to have some force. Anyhow, it was evident that the mode of his departure prevented the court of Rome from being compromised by his presence in Naples. Time and patience are held to be golden remedies at Rome. No official notice was taken of Cardinal d'Andrea's absence. True, friends and counsellors and his brother cardinals wrote to him privately, remonstrating with him and urgently advising him to return without delay. Had he listened to them, and returned within any reasonable time, we are satisfied no notice would have been taken of the affair, and the whole matter would have dropped into oblivion.

But when he had been away two years, it was felt that some official steps must be taken. Accordingly, the cardinal dean wrote him officially, rehearsing the law of the church about the residence of bishops, warning him that he had now been too long absent without permission, and inviting him to return. Thrice the[531] monition was given, as required, and given without effect. The diocese of Sabina was consequently withdrawn from his charges and confided to an administrator ad interim, until other provisions should be made in regard to it. Still the cardinal declined or delayed to come. Other official letters warned him of possible further consequences, even to ejectment from his dignity as cardinal. His friends, also, renewed their private remonstrances and entreaties more urgently than ever. And, finally, on the evening of December 14th, 1867, Cardinal d'Andrea returned to Rome.

Three days later, he had an audience of the holy father, from which he returned to his palace in a very cheerful mood, and spoke to his attendants of the kindness of the pope, and declared that every thing had passed off most satisfactorily.

His long stay in Naples had not benefited his health. He still coughed, and still, at times, had severe crises of pain in the abdomen. But he was able in some measure to take up the ordinary work of a cardinal. The charge of the diocese was not restored to him; time was required for that. Rome is slow to act, and slow to undo what has been legally done.

After having fatigued our readers by this long stretch over humdrum realities, it may be well to seek a little relief in some more of the wondrous feats of the wondrous memory of "the secretary of the late Cardinal d'Andrea."

He does not remember that audience at all. Nay, he remembers that there was none. "Daily," after his return, the cardinal "expected a summons to the presence of the pope. Then he resolved to assert his right to an audience, and repaired to the Vatican. He was informed that all his communications to the pope were to pass through the hands of the cardinal secretary. To sue to his worst foe—this was the climax of bitterness. The high spirit of his eminence never recovered this indignity. The holy father was all this time informed that the cardinal had returned; but was recusant, and refused all overtures of reconciliation. After his last repulse, the cardinal made no further efforts; but it was easy to see that he suffered acutely."

All bosh! The "secretary" might have ascertained that the papers of the day announced the return of the cardinal to Rome and his audience; for the cardinal was then a notoriety. But he is strong on his powers of memory; or, perhaps, as he had killed the cardinal and buried him, as we saw, two years and nine months before this—in March, 1865—he now ran his eye over a file previous to that date; and, as the papers were published while the cardinal was at Sorrento, there was no mention then of an audience. But we are loth to believe the "secretary" has even that little regard for what others remember which would make him think it at all necessary to look even at a file of newspapers either for dates or facts.

"The cardinal's enemies," he tells us, "were far too wary to resort to open acts." They remained so quiet that all suspicion was lulled to rest, except in the cardinal and his secretary. "It is remarkable that we sometimes find an idea dart suddenly into the mind without cause or ramification."(!!) ... This was the case with the secretary, probably also with the cardinal. The idea took this shape: "The favorite mode of obtaining secret information in Rome is by eaves-dropping and espionage. This palace has been for two months at the bidding of those who knew the cardinal[532] would return to it. They are anxious to know all he says and does; if possible, all he thinks. They will study the revelations of his countenance in moments of abandon. And if they have designs"—here the idea seemed going into extravagance. We decidedly agree with him; we even think the idea shows signs of ramification.

One pièce of the cardinal's apartments was a breakfast-room, in which there hung a picture of St. Francis meditating. "I was reading in that room; and the twilight had deepened as I sat thinking over my book. As I looked up, by the faint red glow of the wood-fire, I fancied that picture—a St. Francis meditating—had a peculiar expression about the eyes. The rapt saint looks upward, ignoring mundane vanities; this looked downward and steadily at me. I felt inclined to cut it open; but dared not. After all, I imagined the gloom had deceived me."

Again, two days later, "I was sitting at breakfast with the cardinal, when he dropped his cup of chocolate, and, rising, went to the picture, and carefully examined it.... We looked at each other; and I felt the same idea pass through his mind.... I resolved to make him understand that I followed his thoughts. 'Do you think,' said I, 'that St. Francis in his meditations became sometimes a little distrait? that his eyes wandered from heaven, for example, to some worldly object, say, as to the quality of your eminence's breakfast, or became suddenly diverted by our conversation.' He looked steadily at me, then at the picture, which faced him as he sat, but was behind me. Then, after a moment, replied, 'It is a fatality.' I saw no more of him that day. I heard from the valet that he was anxious not to be disturbed."

Here we have espionage of the most wonderful kind caught in flagranti delicto. Is not the "secretary" afraid he has imparted a new and important lesson to the burglars of New York? Just think of the details! During the cardinal's absence, his enemies enter his apartments in the Palazzo Gabrielli freely, notwithstanding the establishment is kept up, and all the servants are there save the valet, who is away with his master. No eye sees them, no ear hears their stealthy footsteps nor any noise they make. No trace of their work is discovered. They go everywhere, they examine every thing, and make their preparations. What they did elsewhere we are not told. But they paid special attention to this breakfast-room, because the picture hung there. If the wall behind it were of thick masonry, they must have cut in it a niche deep enough and big enough to hold a man. That they should do this in an inhabited house without any one finding it out, is proof of their ability. But what if, as is most likely, the painting hung on a partition wall only six or eight inches thick, where could the man stand? What did they do in that case? We cannot imagine. We think the burglars would be nonplussed, and would turn for further instruction to the memory of our "secretary." Beyond this, they provided themselves with means of entrance and passage from room to room, and of exit, quite irrespective of ordinary doors and public stairways.

The cardinal returns to his palace, and these means are put in use. One spy, entering when or how no one knows, and mounting to his place in an equally mysterious manner, stands behind the picture of St. Francis meditating, which hangs on the wall of the breakfast-room. The canvas eyes of the picture have, of course, been cut out; and the spy fixes his own living eyes in their place, so that[533] he can see all that is to be seen, as well as hear all that is to be heard. Ordinarily, we suppose, the eyes are kept turned toward heaven, ignoring mundane vanities, because such was the original position of the painted eyes in the picture. But fatigue and duty combined, from time to time, to call for a change of their position. The eyes looked down on the breakfast-table, (perhaps longingly; for even spies behind pictures may get hungry,) or gleamed with intelligence in response to witticisms of conversation, or unguarded and important revelations. Yet all was so artistically and naturally done that the secretary one day imagined the gloom had deceived him; and two days afterward, the cardinal, after a careful examination and after looking at it a second time attentively, exclaimed, "It is a fatality!"

Now, there is a mystery about this espionage which quite puzzles us, and which we should like to see explained. While the spy held his eyes thus glued to or inserted in the painting, where were his eyebrows? And what did he do with his nose?—his big Roman nose. For who can conceive a keen Roman spy without a large and penetrating Roman nose? How did he manage to keep that nose from coming in contact with the painted canvas—from pressing against it and causing a very prominent bulge, and even pushing the canvas away from the eyes? This is a point that merits elucidation.

Unfortunately the cardinal, it seems, at once left the room in which the "fatality" was, shut himself up, and would see no one. The "secretary" was as wanting in pluck on that occasion as he had been on another two days before. He felt inclined to cut the painting open to see what it was; but dared not. If he had had the presence of mind of a little boy ten years old, he would have ventured to draw the bottom of the painting a few inches out from the wall, and would have looked behind to discover the secret. Had he done so, our mystery would doubtless have been solved, and a very interesting question would have been answered. What a pity the idea did not assume this practical "ramification"!

In regard to the death of the cardinal the memory of the "secretary" is brief, but terribly explicit and pointed.

"Four days" after the fatality-scene, "I was informed that the cardinal desired me to spend the evening in his private apartments.... We had dined at five"—a change of hour; it used to be six. "His eminence had confined himself to his favorite and insipid Chablis, of which he drank one little flask," (Monte Fiascone has slipped from the secretary's memory;) "I to a more generous vintage of Burgundy. The subject of our conversation was exceedingly important. With the idea upon us like an incubus, we conversed in low tones; and ever and anon the cardinal rose and examined the outer door.... The conversation ended by my being intrusted with certain documents to place in safe keeping.... Knowing the importance of the documents, I hesitated to keep them in my possession. Sealing them in a packet, I put on a street dress and hastened to an English gentleman, who cheerfully undertook their keeping.... Cardinal Antonelli asked me for the papers I had received on that fatal night.... I rejoice to say—though strenuous exertions were made to obtain the papers—they were as persistently guarded; and I have them now."

The secretary says that, on the[534] morning after confiding the aforesaid sealed packet to the English gentleman, "I rose early and repaired to the palace. The valet had orders to wake his master at seven. It wanted but a few minutes. I retired to my own room. Scarcely a quarter of an hour had elapsed ere the valet rushed in, pale with affright, exclaiming, 'His eminence is dead!' I followed him quickly to the apartment, having alarmed the household. The disposition of the chamber was as ordinary. The cardinal's dress lay on a chair, as the valet had placed it. His breviary was open at vespers. The bed was the only thing disturbed. There were certain indications of a struggle, although very slight. The usually placid countenance of the cardinal was flushed and discolored. The two hands grasped the bed-clothes convulsively. A physician was hastily summoned, who pronounced life to have been extinct some hours. 'From what cause?' I asked. He whispered, 'They will probably say apoplexy.' For himself, the secretary has no doubt it was a murder perpetrated by the enemies of Cardinal d'Andrea."

These are the recollections of the soi-disant secretary. They are well entitled in the whole and in the several details to stand with his precise recollections of the place and date of the funeral that followed in San Giovanni in Laterano, on the 22d day of March, 1865.

The papers announced that Cardinal d'Andrea died in Rome, on the 14th of May, 1868. For the details of his last hours, we are indebted to those members of his household who were with him and closed his eyes. It will be seen how different is the account they give from that of the writer who, if elsewhere he amused us, here fills us with astonishment at the boldness of his assertions, and sorrow for his motives.

On Thursday, May 14th, 1868, the cardinal, who had spent the forenoon in his usual occupations, dined in his usual health, or ill-health, at half-past one. After dinner he continued to transact business with his chancellor for a while, and then arranged to resume it on his return from the usual afternoon drive. He drove out from the Palazzo Gabrielli at about half-past four. His coachman drove, at the usual staid gait of a cardinal's carriage, by the Foro Trajano, on by the Colosseo and San Clemente, to St. John Lateran's, and out of the city gate near that church, along the Via Appia Nuova. When he had passed the first mile-stone from the gate, he was surprised by an order to return. He noticed that the cardinal, who was alone in the carriage, seemed to be suffering. He accordingly turned and retraced his steps at the same gentle gait. On the square of St. John's, he received a second order to go faster; and awhile after, before he reached the Colosseo, the cardinal ordered him to hurry. A fast trot brought them to the Palazzo Gabrielli by about half-past five. The chancellor was there, and assisted the servants to take the cardinal out of the carriage, and to assist him up to his chamber. He was suffering very much from a difficulty of breathing, and seemed otherwise in pain. It was a crisis such as he had had before, but it seemed more severe than usual. The cardinal sent word to the chancellor not to leave. He expected the spasm to pass away in a little while, and when it would be over, they might resume their work as arranged.

The chancellor waited until near seven, when, learning that the attack still continued, he entered the sickroom.[535] He was not only the official, but a devoted and confidential intimate friend of nearly twenty years' standing. He found the cardinal suffering to a degree that filled him with alarm. A physician was sent for, but was absent from his residence. An assistant came and prescribed some remedies. By eight, the physician arrived, and took charge of the case, and did not leave the patient. About nine, he was asked if it were proper to administer the sacrament of extreme unction. He replied that, so far, he did not see sufficient danger to warrant it. Meanwhile the cardinal lay on his bed tossing restlessly in pain, and panting for breath, but joining in, as best he could, with the prayers for the sick, which had been begun, at his request, by his chaplain and the attendants between seven and eight o'clock. At ten, he asked to be placed in a large chair in his room. They bolstered him up in it. In half an hour he began to sink. The chaplain hastily administered the rites of the church, and by eleven, Cardinal d'Andrea was no more.

Thus, as is not unfrequently the case, death came somewhat suddenly and unexpectedly, even after years of ill-health.

An autopsy took place, as is customary, we believe, in Rome in the case of cardinals. It appeared that the immediate cause of his death was congestion of the lungs. The right lung was found to be nearly destroyed by tubercles. On one side of the brain a clot or indurated portion, seemingly of long standing, was discovered. In this lesion some of the cardinal's friends thought they found a physical cause of those disordered peculiarities of mind of which we spoke as having been manifested in his later years.

We may add that, after the official autopsy, the body lay in state in the Palazzo Gabrielli until Monday, May 18th. On the evening of that day, it was conveyed in procession to the neighboring parish church of St. John of the Florentines, near the Castel Sant' Angelo. In that church, on Tuesday, 19th May, 1868, the funeral obsequies of Cardinal d'Andrea were celebrated, the pope and the cardinals assisting, as required by the etiquette of the court when a cardinal dies in Rome.

By the cardinal's own directions, his mortal remains were interred at the church of Sant' Agnese fuori delle Mura, of which, as we said, he had been titular cardinal before becoming Bishop of Sabina.

We have thus followed this soi-disant secretary of the late Cardinal d'Andrea all through his article. We have overlooked, for brevity's sake, many minor points. But we have seen fully enough to establish the character of the article. We have seen that he blunders as to the date of the cardinal's funeral by three years and two months. He has blundered as to the church where it was performed by at least a mile and a half. San Giovanni in Laterano and St. John of the Florentines are unlike in shape and in rank, and are nearly at opposite points of the city.

As to the private habits, the acts, and the opinions of the cardinal, he makes a series of blunders such as we might well look for in one who gives himself out as having been the confidential secretary of the late Cardinal d'Andrea, and yet whom no one remembers to have ever had any connection with the cardinal.

As to the charges of enmity, of espionage, and even of murder, and the tragedy of the French captain, and various other remarks and comments en passant throughout the article, by no means to the honor of[536] the ecclesiastical dignitaries at Rome, and of the tone and character of society there—are these things only spice to give a certain piquancy to the article? or is the whole article written merely as a vehicle to convey these charges to the attention of the readers?

We incline to the latter opinion. We are led to it by the clearer and more undisguised tenor of later articles by the same pen in the Galaxy. We may, hereafter, if we find time, pay our respects to one or more of those articles.

For the present, we will only say that if the proprietors of the Galaxy have intended to bargain with a writer of fiction, they are getting the worth of their money in matter and quantity, if not in quality and style. If, however, they expected to secure a series of articles instructive because truthful, the case is decidedly the reverse.

HYMN OF ST. PAUL'S "CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE SOCIETY."

LOTHAIR.[175]

Lothair is both a novel and a pamphlet. Two distinct currents of thought are apparent, running through the work, variously intertwined and blended, but from time to time asserting definite individuality. This phenomenon is explained by the two-fold character of the writer, who is a novelist and man of letters, and at the same time a man of the world and a statesman. The novel is written apparently to reassert his powers and demonstrate to the literary world that his genius is undimmed by age, perhaps also to indulge the exercise of a favorite and successful art, by which he has raised himself from an obscure position to one of influence and renown. The pamphlet is evidently intended for political effect; to throw discredit upon eminent persons, to disparage the value of conversions among the higher classes of society, and, through the thin veil of fiction, inflict all the damage possible upon the court of Rome and the Roman Catholic Church. It reveals the political character of its writer, his utter want of principle and consistency, and enables us to comprehend how he has overcome all the obstacles to his career, by great industry, acute intelligence, and absolute unscrupulousness in turning men and women, things and events, to his own personal advantage. As a novel it adds nothing to the established reputation of the author. It is rated at a high figure, commercially speaking, and will no doubt be a remunerative investment for its publishers.

It purports to be a picture of the habits, manners, and mode of life of people of the highest rank in England, with sketches of persons of diverse culture and foreign birth, to heighten the contrasts and bring out the lights and deepen the shadows. Natural scenery, stately dwellings, ancient trees, sunlight, flowers, music, and fresh air give life and animation to the varying scenes, and form the appropriate basis, background, and accompaniment for the living panorama. Lothair is a youth of pure blood and fair education, the heir of immense estates and a lofty title. He is good-looking, athletic, kind-hearted, shy, sensitive, and sentimental.

He has suffered the depression and discouragement of a sour Presbyterian system of education, from which he was happily rescued by the honest and determined efforts of one of his guardians, Cardinal Grandison.

He emerges just before he comes of age, and appears before us in the midst of an elegant family, in which, fortunately, all the daughters are married excepting one, who has great beauty and a remarkably fine voice. He immediately, as in duty bound, falls desperately in love, and in the most honorable manner possible confides the state of his feelings to the mother of the object of his affections, who is, by the way, a fine specimen of a thorough-bred English lady.

The mother wisely and tenderly counsels delay, and we would recommend her conduct in this interesting occasion to all the middle-aged ladies of our acquaintance when placed in a similar situation. Lothair accepts her decision, and in the mean time becomes more and more intimate with the cardinal, and forms the acquaintance of a Catholic family distantly[538] connected, and becomes somewhat smitten with the real heroine of the tale, Clare Arundel. The objective point of the story now develops itself. A struggle for the rich and titled youth commences between the English Establishment and the Church. Political and mercenary motives are, with great impartiality, ascribed to both the contending powers. The combat between the rough and honest Scotch Presbyterian uncle and the accomplished and fascinating cardinal is wisely dropped.

No imagination could suggest the thought that one who had escaped from evangelicalism could ever return to it. It is, in the author's mind, simply a political squabble for the influence and vote of the future peer. His soul is of no account.

The conduct and development of this contest gives the right honorable romancer an opportunity to introduce the lords and ladies, the dukes and bishops, cardinals and monsignori, artists, wits, and men about town, with whom he delights to fill his pages. They all speak in character, and in the main with artistic consistency, and their conversation is certainly sprightly, often witty, sometimes wise, and never offensive on the score of taste and morality. It affords him the opportunity to flatter and praise, and at the same time exhibit a power of sarcasm and ridicule, the effective methods of his earlier writings, by which he climbed to his present position. He exhibits talents and a knowledge of life which would have made him equally successful in the role of banker, picture-merchant, diamond-broker, or even old clo'man. He gloats over the splendors which he describes; and beauty, rank, fashion, fine clothes, crystal, porcelain, pictures, jewels, "ropes of pearls," castles, palaces, parks, and gardens, are dwelt upon with the cherishing fondness of the gentlemen of keen eyes, hooked noses, and unctuous touch. Character, conduct, motives, principles, sentiments, affections, passions, and religion are mingled in admirable confusion, are estimated at the same value and weighed in the same balance.

There is for him as novelist or pamphleteer no principle but expediency, no rule of conduct but temporal advantage. He worships a golden calf. These be thy gods, O Israel! At a critical period, while our hero is wavering between his Anglican and Catholic mistress, and the cardinal is striving to acquire a wholesome influence over his somewhat unstable relative, while he is sailing on the summer sea of high life and elegant society, he goes to Oxford to see his horses. He has wisely left those useful animals at the university, while he is pursuing his studies of life and manners in London. At Oxford, he meets Colonel and Mrs. Campian, and is taken completely off his feet. Presbyterianism, Anglicanism, Corisande and Clare Arundel, the Establishment, and Catholicity disappear at once, and Madre Natura in the splendid physique of the divine Theodora, claims an unresisting captive and victim.

This is either an inspiration of a romancer's imagination or a study. If the latter, there is no hope for the right honorable author's salvation on the score of invincible ignorance.

Lothair basks in the splendor of Theodora's beauty, and surrenders his reason to the fascination of her false political principles. The lower or transient good is preferred to the higher, the permanent good. He chooses the lower, as did Lucifer and Adam, Judas and Luther, and multitudes have done and are doing. Naturally and artistically there is no way out of this scrape excepting through a catastrophe; religiously,[539] excepting through penance. Theodora is the ideal of Greco-Roman heathenism, and the artist Phœbus is its high-priest. They are fine creations from an artistic point of view.

They enable the author to introduce some clever writing about art, and some speculations regarding the Aryan and Semitic races, evidently with the intention of associating revealed religion with the idea of superstition. The effect left upon the mind is something like that produced by a certain class of sermons which we read on Monday morning in the New-York Herald. The novelist is hurried on at this stage by the necessities of the pamphleteer. Political events succeed each other so rapidly that he was obliged to send Lothair as rapidly as possible to the field of battle (his heathen destiny) against the church.

With exceeding facility the money which was going to build a cathedral, to please a pious girl, is diverted to aid in blowing up St. Peter's, and Lothair finds himself as Captain Muriel, in the field, on the staff of one of his former acquaintances, Captain Bruges, the red republican general advancing against Rome. Theodora and Colonel Campian are also with him, the former disguised in male apparel, and acting as secretary to the general. We suppose her prayer uttered under the depressing intelligence of the embarkation of the French troops to assist the holy father, is an expression of the religion of nature. Why she should pray to God instead of Jupiter, we confess we do not see, unless in deference to the opinion of most of the author's readers. He might have fulfilled all the indications by quoting Pope, and at the same time complimented the memory of a poet who is getting rather out of date.

However, she hears the French have disembarked, and accordingly suspends her prayers and recovers her spirits. The impending catastrophe comes. The tragic is accomplished, and the divine Theodora is slain. Madre Natura and the secret societies are hurled against the rock of Peter, and shivered. Theodora is mortally wounded, and dying, impresses a chaste kiss upon the lips of Lothair, and exacts the promise never to conform to the Church of Rome.

The next step finds him severely wounded by a French chassepot, the guest of Lord St. Jerome in his palace in Rome, carefully attended by Sisters of Charity and Clare Arundel. Nature has perished and grace triumphs. The venom of the anti-Catholic novelist and the malice of the statesman of the establishment are now revealed in a popish plot, which is supposed to be hatched by Lothair's Roman Catholic friends, the prelates of Rome, and, by implication, the holy father.

The object of the conspiracy is to impose upon Lothair and the world that he was wounded while fighting for the defence of the holy see, instead of in the ranks of its determined enemies, and to convince him that the Blessed Virgin Mary personally appeared to rescue him from inevitable death. These pages enhance the claims of the work as one of fiction, but detract very much from its reputation as a specimen of art. The plan is thoroughly un-English, and incompatible with the characters of the actors as previously portrayed. It is by no means impossible for the Blessed Virgin or any saint or angel to appear, and we should be bound to believe the fact if vouched for on credible testimony.

It is, however, naturally, politically, and religiously impossible for priests, bishops, and prelates to combine to make any human being believe a lie,[540] or to palm off a false miracle for any purpose whatsoever. We are charitably left in doubt as to who believed or who did not believe in the apparition, but we are treated to a conversation in which Cardinal Grandison endeavors to make Lothair believe a lie, and to abuse the enfeebled condition of his brain to reduce him to a condition of mental and moral imbecility.

Mr. Disraeli evidently expects no advantages from Catholic voters, or, perhaps, counts on the charity which he abuses.

These passages are the only dangerous ones in the book; they are skilfully contrived to crystallize wavering minds, especially of young men of high rank, into determined opposition to the holy see. They are intended to awaken sympathy for Lothair's helpless and almost hopeless captivity, and to call forth sentiments of satisfaction and pleasure at his adventurous escape. He does escape, and falls into the arms of high-priest Phœbus and two inferior divinities of Madre Natura. They have little power, however, the divine Theodora being dead; and our hero, growing blasé if not wiser and better, subsides into an æsthetical but harmless admiration of external nature and Euphrosyne. Previously to his quitting Rome, the author invents a scene which is either a sop to spiritism, or an insult to his readers' intelligence.

The appearance of the Blessed Virgin, under any circumstances, is treated with derision; but Theodora, like the Witch of Endor, is summoned to interview Lothair in the Coliseum, and remind him of his fatal promise. Perhaps he only means to illustrate a phenomenon of an over-excited brain, whose circulation is enfeebled by a long illness and a severe wound. We are left purposely in doubt on this point, as on many others. This portion of the book contains vivid and beautiful sketches of camp-life and fighting on a small scale, of Rome and Italy, the Tyrrhenean Sea and classic isles. Under the auspices of the Phœbus and Euphrosyne, he is wafted in the yacht Pan to Syria and the Holy Land, and sinks into a pleasing and self-satisfied reverie on Mount Olivet.

The descriptions of Judea and Jerusalem, Calvary and Sion, Galilee and Jordan, Lebanon and Bashan, could be penned only by one who has the traditions of the Jew, the Roman, and the Christian. There is the mournful regret of the Jew, the proud remembrance of the Roman, and the weak and sickly sentimentality of a very doubtful sort of Christian. They want depth and pathos, and leave the mind disturbed and dissatisfied. They profane rather than hallow those sacred places which inspire terror or love in every human breast.

The habits of his English friends whom he meets in the Holy Land, who made excursions which they called pilgrimages, and feasted, made love, and hunted, express about the degree of sympathy which fashionable High-Church Anglicanism has with Calvary. The noble and gentle Syrian now appears to put the finishing touch to Lothair's religious experiences. He is a new figure in fiction, a specimen of oriental Turveydrop, and the patriarch of a new school of Israelitish evangelicalism. In the absence of authentic data, we should presume he had descended from a highly respectable family of Pharisees, which had, in process of time, intermarried with the Sadducees, and perhaps suffered some slight admixture with the heathen round about. He happily succeeds in removing all distinct and vivid religious impressions from the mind of Lothair, and prepares the way, after a final interview with his[541] former Mazzinian general, who speaks in a cheerful and airy manner of his failure to blow up St. Peter's, and consoles Catholic readers with the assurance that the old imposture is still firmly seated, for his return to England, the arms of Lady Corisande, and the bosom of the church by law established. Here we leave him married to an heiress and laid up in lavender, to grow old, fat, and gouty.

While we may speak with some degree of complaisance of this novel as a work of art merely, and a picture of life and manners, in which it is far inferior to similar novels of Bulwer and several other contemporary writers of fiction, we are compelled to discuss this production in its political and moral significance in a very different spirit. Mr. Disraeli must have some powerful motive to induce him to attack the church and outrage the feelings of Catholics throughout the world while he himself has no settled and strong religious convictions of any kind. That motive must be the only one which would operate upon a mind like his—the desire to get back to power. He starts the "No-popery" hue and cry, and invents a most contemptible, shallow, and flimsy plot to influence what he supposes to be the radical hostility of the English people to the Church of Rome, and to throw contempt and discredit upon the conversion of Englishmen of rank, and especially that of the Marquis of Bute. We think he has not only committed a moral crime, but made a gross political blunder. We believe there is a profound sympathy throughout the world in the hearts of simply honest and good people with the holy father, and that if the question could be tested by vote to-day, Who is the best man living? Pius IX. would receive an overwhelming majority. While denouncing in the strongest terms the baseness of the attempt to impute fraud, chicanery, and political trickery to the policy and plans of the church, we have reason to thank the right honorable and learned author for the revelation he has made of the secret societies. He has had ample means of learning and understanding their operations, and his implied conclusion is, that the two great forces arrayed against each other in the modern world are the Roman Catholic Church and the secret societies, of whom Masonry is the mother. This is a conclusion which we accept. It is the everlasting antagonism between the church of Christ and the church of the devil. We hope the glimpse thus afforded will cause some of our clergy to reconsider the lenient opinions they sometimes express in regard to Masonry and its offshoots, and to recognize the supernatural wisdom that has directed the unwavering opposition which the church has manifested toward these works of darkness. As a whole, we do not think Lothair will do much harm. It will provoke much conversation and discussion. It will be praised, ridiculed, admired, and contemned, and speedily sink into oblivion, to be read only by students of literature and those who seek for the light that works of fiction throw upon contemporary history. It reminds us of something which occurred a long time ago, and which cannot be offensive to the right honorable gentleman, who finds a pleasure in insulting cardinals and bishops, inasmuch as the chief personages in the transaction are prototypes of himself and his book. It is the story of Balaam and Balaam's ass. He has attempted to curse, and in fact he has blessed, and the ass which he is riding only speaks like a human being when it meets the angel in the Catholic girl Clare Arundel.

THE INVITATION HEEDED.[176]

The above is the title of one of the best and most effective controversial works which we have had the pleasure to read for some time. For those who believe in any historical Christianity, the argument contained in it is direct and unanswerable. We pray God it may have a wide circulation and reach the numerous friends of its gifted author, who thus seeks, as many converts have done before him, to show to those he loves the blessed lights which guided him to the home of truth and peace.

Mr. James Kent Stone is the son of the Rev. Dr. John S. Stone, a highly respected minister of the Protestant Episcopal Church, favorably known for many years in Brooklyn as the rector of Christ's church, and now, we believe, at the head of an Episcopalian seminary in Cambridge, Mass. He received his academical education at Harvard College, and afterward spent two years at one of the universities of Germany. Returning to this country in 1862, he was appointed professor of Latin in Kenyon College, Ohio, in which office he remained until 1867, when he was made president of the institution. He was ordained a minister of the Protestant Episcopal Church in 1866, and shortly after received the degree of D.D. from Racine College, Wisconsin.

In the year 1868, he was elected to the presidency of Hobart College, Geneva, New York, where he remained only one year. In September, 1869, he resigned his position and his ministry, to seek retirement and prepare for his reception into the Holy Catholic Church. The 8th of December, 1869, the feast of the Immaculate Conception, was the happy day of his entrance into the communion of Christ, in obedience to the call of its chief pastor.

In the prefatory chapter the author gives us some insight into the trials of his own mind. Accepting what he had taken for granted as the high Anglican position, he felt himself master of the Roman question. Anglicans were, in his mind, true Catholics, the only true Catholics, and the Reformation was a return to primitive truth on the part of a favored few, who were to him the only witnesses of God upon earth. His intellect was too logical not to see that ritualism, with which he never allied himself, was inconsistent with any possible degree of Anglicanism.

In this position, to any unprejudiced eye, he stood upon an assumption of theology and history which it would seem that the slightest investigation should destroy. A church which begins by denying the faithfulness of Christ to his promises, and asserts for itself claims which render all antiquity a fable, ought not long[543] to hold the love of an honest heart. It would be hard for any one to know what the English church really teaches; and if it teaches any thing, it certainly does so upon human authority, since infallibility is denied in itself, and in every other communion. When our eyes are once opened, we wonder we were so long deluded. The real reason why High-Churchmen do not become Catholics is, that they do not sincerely wish to know the truth, which calls to sacrifices and sad trials of the heart.

"If any man love father or mother more than me, he is not worthy of me." We believe that one earnest prayer for light, with a full determination to follow it at every cost without hesitation, would lead to the one home of truth every Anglican, and even every ritualist. But the misfortune is, that they will not offer any such prayer. The world of honor or affection in which they move is too dear to be renounced. Let us hear what Dr. Stone so feelingly tells of his own experience:

The pages which follow this preface are a brief but cogent exposition of the convictions which forced themselves upon the mind of the author. He develops the argument which proved so availing in his own case, and which, it seems to us, should be satisfactory to any earnest inquirer. He commences by viewing the Catholic Church in its historical aspects, as the human eye beholds it, and without any necessary reference to its supernatural character. The attitude of the world toward it in the present and in every age is a proof of its greatness, for men neither fear nor attack an enemy which they despise. Its wonderful life, in spite of opposition which would long ago have destroyed any merely human organization, is so striking a fact that no honest mind can fail to feel its force.

But it is not only as a living body, with a vitality unknown to any other society, that it impresses our intellects; in its wonderful life it has been the guardian of morals, and the author of every high virtue. Civilization owes its very existence to its creed and its fostering care. And while Protestantism, of only recent origin, has failed to accomplish any thing but destruction, there is no sign of decay or feebleness in the ancient and unchanging church.

In the second part of the work the author gives the reasons in full for this wonderful vitality, and shows how the "Word made flesh" is the source of life to that body which he fills, and which the Paraclete sent by him ever animates. The facts of Christianity are clearly drawn out, and the necessary notes of the church are tried by the appeal to holy Scripture and tradition. From the conclusion of this argument there is no escape, and it is well demonstrated that the religion of Christ stands or falls with the Catholic faith.

In the concluding portion of the book, Dr. Stone looks carefully at the essential features of that body which the incarnate God, as a master-builder,[545] framed with one head, and all the needful constituents of a perfect organism. The office of St. Peter was not simply an ornamental appendage to the company of apostles, but an integral and essential part in the complex of visible Christianity. The church is Christianity in the concrete, and can no more exist without St. Peter than the human body can live without a head. And to that head all the functions of the body are subordinated. There is no fear of any unjust preponderance, or that any member of the body will lose its activity or honor; for the Holy Ghost lives in the body, and speaks through the mouth of its head. The functions of the primacy are displayed with beautiful clearness in this work, which without any unnecessary words refutes the arguments of objectors, and cuts to pieces their vain appeals to history or antiquity. We are much pleased to see how an honest mind, which had no reason to seek for Catholic truth except for its own sake, has been able to see how all the functions of the papacy are involved in the very constitution of the church.

The infallibility of the sovereign pontiff as "the father and the teacher of all Christians" is directly deduced from the position he holds in the ecclesiastical body, and the needs of his office. We earnestly commend this work to those who are searching for truth, and are willing to embrace it when it presents itself. While there is no new argument, there is great freshness in the manner in which it is conducted. There are very many who would not become Catholics even if Almighty God were to work miracles before their eyes. We say this advisedly and from sad experience. They are too attached to the circles in which they move; and even when divine light urges them keenly, they are willing to take the risk. So they compound with their consciences by assuming a great spiritual activity in their own spheres, and the noon of their day of grace passes away. They will never see again the freshness and life of the morning.

There are others who deal with truth as they would be ashamed to deal with any affair of human life. They ask that every difficulty, historical or theological, shall be removed from the vast field of controversy ere they will yield assent to a proposition they are forced to admit, which is the key of the whole position. To those who will not be guided by the light of faith, this is an unending task. They are worse than the Jews, who would not believe "unless they saw signs and wonders." The Catholic Church does not offer any more trials, to the understanding than did the meek and lowly Man of Sorrows in his sojourn upon earth. All difficulties cannot be removed at once, nor before the shadows of error have given way to the bright sun of truth. We cannot see perfectly in the night; yet there is really but one question to be asked and answered, Did Jesus Christ, my divine Redeemer, found the Catholic Church, and promise it perpetuity? If so, then I am bound to accept it as I find it; for I cannot make a church for myself, nor could he allow the communion which he formed and vivified to fall into error. If I will not accept this church, I may wander on the waste without a guide, for there is no such thing as Christianity for me.

Another thing which this book impresses upon us is very important, and it is a truth which we have had occasion to know from long acquaintance with Protestantism. There is only one way of dealing with those whom we believe to be in error, and that is by always maintaining with, consistency the principles of our creed.[546] Any attempt to compromise with Protestants, as if there were not a diametrical opposition between truth and falsehood, will be disastrous to their conversion. Men will not give up the associations of years, renounce position and hopes, and even break family ties, unless they believe it necessary to their salvation. Nothing less than this motive can be held up to the wanderer who seeks in vain from his own intellect the lights that will guide him to a happy eternity. And any converts that come into the church from any lower motive are unfit for the graces of faith, and will never imbibe the spirit of a true Catholic. There is one God and one church, and this church is a necessity to all to whom its message of mercy comes. It can stand upon this ground alone as a divine organization, and here only can demand the obedience of mankind.

There are many souls sadly in need and without a religion, which is the first want of our nature. There are many who are trying to gain time against the Spirit of God by postponing the hour of sacrifice. There are those who, in hollow mockery of their highest aspirations, are playing with shadows, and deceiving themselves with counterfeits of the truth. We pray God that this book may fall into their hands, and be a messenger from on high, bidding them look well to foundations which are built on the sand, and can never abide the tempest of human passion, much less the storm of God's judgment.

THE FIRST ŒCUMENICAL COUNCIL OF THE VATICAN.
NUMBER SIX.

Holy-Week in Rome! How many Christian hearts have yearned for it, have looked forward to it in hope! How many recall it among the sweetest and most precious memories of the past! In this sacred city, and in this most solemn season, a spell is thrown around the faithful pilgrim; or rather, he is released in a great measure from the delusive spells of the world. Mind and heart, and, we might almost say, the body too, seem to live in a new world, in which the all-absorbing thought and affair is the grand mystery of what God has done in his infinite power and love to redeem this fallen race of man.

What emotions must fill the catholic heart as, after perhaps a long and weary journey, one is rapidly borne on by the train from Civita Vecchia, and knows at last that within one hour he will be in Rome. The yellow Tiber is flowing by the railway track, sluggishly and silently, on to the sea. At intervals, antique-looking barges, with high-peaked prows and high sterns, are floating down, heavily laden with boxes of statuary and of marbles, or of other works of art—it may be, of books or of baggage. A couple of oars suffice to keep the vessel in mid-channel, or to accelerate its motion. Perhaps, if the course of the sinuous river allows it, a huge lateen-sail on a heavy stump of a mast helps it onward. Perchance, too, a tiny steamer meets him, puffing its[547] way downward; or the train overtakes another breasting the stream and towing up three or four barges, each larger than itself. The eye travels across the classic river, and roams over the rolling surface of the campagna, and takes notes of the many ruins that dot its surface, mostly relics of the mausoleums and massive tombs with which the Romans of old were wont to line their roads leading from the city, for miles and miles. At length Rome is at hand; across the Tiber you see the new St. Paul's extra muros, rising like a phœnix after the ruinous conflagration of 1823, and not yet entirely finished. The great apostle was buried here after his martyrdom. Here his body has ever been venerated. Some day, and soon, you may come hither, and in the splendor of that church look down into the confession to catch a glimpse of the interior of the underground crypt, and the sarcophagus within it, in which lie his mortal remains, and read the large letters on it, Paullus Apostolus Martyr, "Paul, the Apostle and Martyr." On the lofty summit of the front, plainly visible, is the gigantic statue of the apostle himself, bearing the emblematic sword—as if standing sentinel and guarding the approach to the Holy City, which he consecrated by his preaching and his death. Soon you are on the bridge over the stream, and all eyes are turned to the left, where above the city walls, now visible, and the roofs of houses, and the cupolas of many churches, you see for a moment or two the majestic dome of St. Peter's towering over all. The road runs around the walls of the city for some distance before entering, and St. Peter's is soon shut out from view, only to be replaced by the majestic front of St. John of Lateran's, near at hand. But on the other side, you see more clearly than before the campagna with its multitude of ruins, and the Sabine and Alban Mountains. In the clear atmosphere you can distinguish the vineyards and olive groves, and dark forests, and cities and towns and pleasant villas. Along the campagna, from the foot of these hills, there stretches for miles on miles, like a huge centipede, a long line of dark and jagged masonry, borne aloft on massive piers and arches. It is an old aqueduct, or, as your guide-book tells you, three aqueducts in one. You dash through one of those arches, and the panorama is changed. Other mountains in the distance, with other cities and towns, other ruins on the campagna—the ancient basilicas of St. Lawrence and St. Agnes near at hand. At length you pass through an archway of the wall into the city. St. John of Lateran's is again before you. Not distant is the church of Santa Croce; and St. Mary Major's, with its cupolas, its mediæval belfry, and its obelisk, is even nearer. The balmy breeze of the afternoon brings to your ear the sweet chime of its many bells. You are on the Quirinal hill, and can look over some portion of the city, with its belfries, and cupolas, its red-tiled roofs, and many-windowed houses. Near by are massive ruins. The excavations of the railway track have unearthed broken columns, frescoed walls of ancient rooms, and masses of travertino masonry, belonging to the walls which Servius Tullius, the fifth king of Rome, built around the city. Issuing from the depot to seek your hotel, you are at once before the ruins of the baths of Dioclesian, and the Cistercian Abbey, and the church of St. Mary degli Angioli. Your way leads by churches, palaces, ruins, obelisks, statues, and ever-gushing fountains, through a maze of narrow streets with sharp turns. You understand that these streets were not laid[548] out, and the houses built on clear ground. The houses stand more or less on the foundations of older buildings that have perished, and follow, to a limited extent, the course of those foundations. As for the streets, they do as they can, under the circumstances, and seldom have the same breadth and direction for three hundred yards at a time. Every thing tells you of olden heathen Rome that has perished, and of a new Rome that has arisen in its place, not to be compared to its predecessor in size or in earthly magnificence, but infinitely superior in spiritual and moral grandeur.

Without an hour's unnecessary delay, you seek St. Peter's. A glance of wonder at the vastness and majesty of its approaches, of its front, and its portals, is all you will give now; for the heart is filled with a sense of that glory of which all this, great as it is, is but a figure. You pass through the vestibule, large as a magnificent cathedral, push aside the heavy curtain before the inner door, and you are within the grand basilica. The light is evenly diffused and soft, and comes through unseen windows. The temperature is pleasant. If outside you found the day cold and unpleasant, here the atmosphere seems warm and agreeable. If outside it was hot, here you feel it cool and refreshing. As you look at the vast expanse of the building, you wonder at the solitude. It seems almost vacant; although, if you could count them, there are hundreds moving about, or kneeling here and there in silent prayer, and scores are entering or going out. As you advance up the broad and lofty central nave, there come from a chapel on the left the rolling sounds of an organ, and the chorus of many voices, as canons are chanting the daily vespers in their own chapel. Further on, from the other side, you hear the murmuring of many voices. A long line of pilgrims, or the members of some confraternity, have come in procession to pray in St. Peter's; and as they kneel before the altar, perhaps a hundred devout men and women from the parish, or of those accidentally in the church, have gathered around them, and have knelt and join in their chanted hymns and prayers. On still you proceed, until you are beneath the lofty dome itself, and have approached the oval railing of marble which is united to the grand altar, and on which ever burn a hundred and forty-two lamps. You look over into the opening in the marble pavement, which is called the confession of St. Peter's, and you see below the floor of the ancient church, and immediately under the present high-altar stands the chief altar of that ancient church. Though you do not see it, you know that still deeper, and below that altar, is a small chamber in the earth, whose floor and sides and arched roof are all of large blocks of dressed stone—travertino—and that in that vaulted chamber stands the marble sarcophagus which contains the remains of St. Peter, the chief of the apostles, the founder and the first Bishop of Rome, who was crucified under Nero, in the year 67, on the hill near by, and whom pious Christian hands reverently buried in this very spot, ever since sacred to the followers of Christ. Then it was an obscure spot, outside the city, near certain brickyards on the Aurelian Way. Now it is covered by the grandest temple which the world ever saw, on which all that man can do or give of most precious is offered and consecrated to the service of religion and the glory of God.

A poor, humble, simple-minded fisherman on the Lake of Genesareth, in Galilee, whom men called Simon, was chosen by our Lord; his name[549] was changed to Peter, a rock—for on that rock the church of Christ would be built; to him were given the keys of the kingdom of heaven, and he was charged with the duty of confirming his brethren in the faith. At the command of his Lord, and in the power of the divine commission, he went forth to his work of zeal and of trials. Like his divine Master, poor, persecuted, crucified, he was the instrument of God for mighty things. Empires and kingdoms have perished; but the church still stands. Dynasties have succeeded dynasties, and have passed away like the shadows of clouds in spring; but the line of successors to St. Peter continues unbroken. The intellect and study, the passions, the violence, and the inconstancy of men have changed all things human, again and again, within eighteen centuries; but there remaineth one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one church of Christ, against which the gates of hell cannot prevail. And here, to-day, you stand at the earthly centre of that spiritual kingdom, by the tomb of him to whom Christ gave promises which must ever stand true, though heaven and earth pass away. You can but kneel and pray with all the fervor of your heart, taking no account of others near you, nor of the passage of time. And when at length earnest prayer has brought calm and holy joy to your soul, you may rise and look up into the dome, rising four hundred feet above you, with mosaics of evangelists, and prophets, and angels, archangels, and all the grades of the celestial host, until in the summit, amid a blaze of light, the "Ancient of Days" looks down from heaven, in power and majesty, blessing the worshippers of earth, and bending forward to receive the prayers of all who come to this holy and consecrated temple to pour forth their supplications and entreat his mercy. You may examine the grandiose proportions of nave and transept and aisle, the mosaics, and marbles, and statues, and saints; you may go forth into the vast vestibule, guarded at one extremity by an equestrian statue of Constantine, and at the other by one of Charlemagne; you may linger, as you look again at the mighty square in front of the basilica, with its magnificent ever-flowing fountains, so typical of the waters of life, its colonnades stretching away hundreds of yards on either side, like arms put forth to embrace the multitudes of the children of men, and the lofty, needle-formed Egyptian obelisk in the centre, pointing toward heaven. On its summit is a bronze casket, containing a portion of the true cross on which the Saviour suffered death; and at the base is an inscription, brief in words, and here most sublime in its appositeness. Your heart takes in the full meaning as you read, Christ reigns. Christ rules; Christ has conquered. May Christ defend us from every ill.

This is the spirit, the key-note, as it were, of Christian life in Rome. We might say, also, that it is the animating principle of her temporal existence. For, save as the centre of the Catholic Church and the see of Peter, Rome would quickly perish. On the hills of the campagna and on the slopes of the mountains around, may still be seen faint vestiges of cities and towns that were illustrious centuries before Rome was founded. They have utterly perished. Others of the same class seem to drag out a lingering existence, as obscure villages, of no importance, whose names no one mentions, and whose ancient history is known only to antiquarians. Many a desert, forest, or plain can show ruins to rival those of the seven hills. Florence, and many a modern city, can boast[550] of galleries of the fine arts and museums to rival, if not to surpass, most of those in Rome. No, it is not for her antiquity, nor for her grand ruins of past ages, nor for her paintings and sculpture, her marbles and mosaics, that Rome stands unrivalled in the world. These are but accessories. Neither they nor any mere human gift can suffice to explain the mystery of her survival, despite so many convulsions and shocks, and her continued and prosperous existence, where all around her has sunk into decay and ruin. Were there no other source of life, these would soon fail her. The treasures of art and antiquity in her galleries, and museums, and public buildings would soon be shattered by spoliation or conquest, and she would be left desolate and stricken like her crumbling ruins. It is the moral power of Christianity which gives her a life and a strength beyond that of the sword. It is the presence of that pontiff who is the visible head of the church, and the centre of Catholic unity and of spiritual authority, which saves her from the fate of other cities. Her true source of life is her religious position. When, centuries ago, the popes, wearied out by the tumults of the people and the turbulence of the barons, withdrew for peace' sake, and abode for seventy years in Avignon, Rome dwindled down to be little better than a village of ten or fifteen thousand souls. The Romans spoke of that time as a Babylonian captivity. With the return of the pontiffs, prosperity was again restored. When, in the early part of the present century, Pius VII. was borne away and held captive for years in France, and Rome was annexed to the French empire, the population of the city quickly sank to one hundred and thirteen thousand, and was rapidly diminishing. When he returned, in 1814, it began to rise again, and to-day Rome has nearly double that population. Were the sovereign pontiff to be driven into exile to-morrow, as Garibaldi and Mazzini, and the Italianissimi of Florence desire, Rome would again, and at once, enter on a downward career of misery and ruin. In twenty years she would lose all her treasures and half of her population. All this is clear to the Romans themselves; all the more clear from the fate which has overtaken those cities of the states of the church which were annexed to the kingdom of Italy eight or ten years ago. No wonder that, in 1867, neither the artful emissaries of Ratazzi nor the military parade of Garibaldi was able to gather recruits to their attempt, either from the country around or from the city itself. The Romans would shudder at the thought of a renewal of that attempt, as at a terrible calamity.

But we must not wander away into such considerations. This theme, though most important to the Romans and often on their lips, is of too worldly a character. For this month, at least, we leave it aside, and join that immense crowd of strangers who have filled Rome, drawn hither to look on the council, and to unite in the solemn offices of Holy-Week, more solemn and imposing this year than perhaps ever before, on account of the vast number of bishops uniting in their celebration. Once, the German element used to stand prominent before all others, in the crowd of strangers that flocked to Rome for Holy-Week; afterward the English, and laterly the Americans, became conspicuous. This year, although they were probably as numerous as ever, they seemed to sink into the background before the vast number of French who filled the holy city, and who, almost without exception, had come in the spirit of earnest, fervent Catholics. They were fully as numerous and fully[551] as demonstrative as at the centenary celebration in 1867. Their coming was announced by the ever-increasing numbers who, each day that a general congregation of the council was held, gathered at St. Peter's at half-past eight A.M., to see the bishops enter, or at one P.M., to see them come forth from the council hall.

In ordinary times, the pope and cardinals celebrate nearly all the offices of Holy-Week, not in St. Peter's, which is left to the canons and clergy of that basilica, but in the Sixtine chapel, which is the pope's court chapel, so to speak, within the Vatican palace. It is as large as a moderate American church. About one half is railed off as a sanctuary for the pontiff, and the cardinals and their attendants, and for the other clergymen who are required or are privileged to attend the services in this chapel. The remaining half, assigned to the laity, will hold four or five hundred seated or standing, as the case may be. The number desiring to enter is so great that often a seat can be obtained only by coming two or three hours before the time for commencing the services. This year, if the bishops were to be present, the whole chapel would have to be used as a sanctuary, and no room would remain for any of the laity. To avoid this embarrassment, and the consequent disappointment of thousands, it was settled that this year the papal services of Holy-Week should be celebrated, not in this Sixtine chapel, but in St. Peter's itself, where, besides all the bishops, ten thousand others might attend, and seem only a moderate-sized crowd grouped close to the sanctuary.

To St. Peter's, then, on Palm-Sunday morning, came the papal choir, and half a thousand bishops, archbishops, primates, and patriarchs, the cardinals with their attendants, and the holy father himself, for the blessing of the palms and the other services of the day. They were substantially the same as the services in ten thousand other churches of the Catholic world that day. But here, there were of course a splendor and magnificence that could be rivalled nowhere else. The palms to be blessed lay in masses regularly arranged near the throne of the pontiff. They seemed scarcely to differ from the branches of our southern palmetto. On many of them the long leaves were fancifully plaited, so as to represent a branch surrounded by roses, lilies, leaves, and crosses. The Catholic negroes that came to the United States from San Domingo years ago used to do something similar. There is an interesting story about these palms. On the tenth of September, 1586, Fontana, the architect and engineer of St. Peter's, was to lift to its present position in the middle of the square before St. Peter's, the immense unbroken mass of stone which formed an Egyptian obelisk that had been erected in the amphitheatre of Nero, and still stood not far off, its base buried in the earth that centuries had accumulated around it. It was a mighty, a perilous work, to transport this obelisk, three hundred yards, ever keeping it in its upright position, and at the end to lift it up and plant it on the lofty pedestal. Pope Sixtus V. and all Rome were there to look on. In default of steam-engines and hydraulic rams, not then invented, Fontana used a huge scaffolding, ropes, blocks and tackle, and windlasses, and hundreds of operatives. Any mistake or confusion as to orders or delay in executing them might overthrow the immense pillar, and prove disastrous to the work, and fatal perhaps to scores of lives. In view of the emergency, a kind of military law was proclaimed, whereby all lookers-on were to keep silence, under[552] penalty of death. Fontana, standing aloft, gave his orders, the wheels were turned, the ropes tightened, the mighty mass slowly moved on, the pedestal was reached. The obelisk was lifted up. Hours rolled on, and still it rose gradually but truly. At length it stood within a few feet of its destined position. But it would go no farther. The ropes, bearing the strain of the weight for so many hours, had stretched, and some were threatening to snap. Fontana stood pale and speechless at the impending disaster, which he now saw no way of averting. Suddenly a clear, manly voice was heard from out of the crowd, "Wet your ropes! wet your ropes!" Fontana at once seized the happy thought. The ropes were wetted, swelled and contracted to their original state, and soon the huge obelisk stood upright and firm on the solid pedestal, and the daring work was crowned with complete success. Meanwhile, the officers had seized the man that cried out; he was brought before the pope, who thanked him and embraced him. He was asked who he was, and what reward he desired. His name was Bresca, a sailor from San Remo, near Nice. His family owned a palm-grove there, and the reward he asked was the privilege of supplying St. Peter's every year for ever with the palm-branches to be blessed and used on Palm-Sunday. It was granted. Nearly three centuries have passed, but the family of Bresca is still at San Remo, has still palm-groves, and every year there comes a small vessel from that port, laden with the palm-branches for St. Peter's. May it continue to come three hundred years hence!

The holy father, in that clear, sweet, and majestic voice, for which he is remarkable, chanted the prayers for the blessing of the palms. To the blessing succeeded the distribution. One after another, the cardinals gravely advanced, the long silk trains of their robes rustling on the carpet as they moved forward; each one received a palm-branch; the oriental patriarchs, the primates, and a number of the archbishops and bishops, as representatives of their brethren, followed after the cardinals, and received each his branch. Meanwhile the choir was singing the exquisite anthems, "Pueri Hebræorum," appointed for that occasion. It was a simple, yet a most effective and thrilling scene. The cardinals stood in their long line, the rich gold ornamentation of their chasubles shining brightly on the violet silk, on their heads the mitre or the red calotte of their rank. Before each one stood his chaplain in dark purple, holding the decorated palm-branch, like a lance. In the middle, as the lines of Oriental and Latin prelates in their rich and varied robes approached the holy father, or retired, each one bearing his palm-branch, there was a perpetual changing and shifting and intermingling of colors, as in a kaleidoscope. Near the pope, stood the senator and other civil officers of Rome, in their mediæval mantles. The Swiss guard, in a military dress of broad stripes, red and yellow, or black and yellow, some of them wearing steel corselets and breastplates, and all wearing the plumed Tyrolean military hat; they stood motionless as statues, holding their bright halberds upright. The Noble Guard, in their rich uniform, stood here and there; and on both sides, line after line of bishops, robed in cappa magnas, formed a massive and imposing background. Add to all these, the religious orders, Carmelites, Dominicans, Franciscans of every family, Augustinians, Benedictines, Cistercians, Canons Regular, Theatines, Servites, Crociferi, and many others, each in the costume of his order or[553] congregation, and all bearing branches of blessed palm. Add still the continuous chanting of those unrivalled voices and the indistinct bass murmur or rustling of the vast crowd. It was a scene which carried one away. You did not strive to catch every note of Palestrina's beautiful composition. It was enough to drink in the sound. You scarcely thought of reciting the words of a prayer—there are none assigned for the time of distribution specifically—you found it easier to indulge a train of devotional thought, and to unite with it something of pious admiration.

Next followed the procession in commemoration of the solemn entry of our Saviour into Jerusalem, five days before his Passion. Leaving the sanctuary, the long lines of singers, of the religious orders, of bishops and prelates, and of cardinals, and finally the pope with his attendants, passed down the nave of the church, out by one door into the vestibule, and, returning by another into the church, again came up the nave and entered the sanctuary. The strains of the "Gloria, Laus, et Honor," the hymn for that procession, always beautiful, and infinitely more so when sung to-day by this choir, swelled as the procession approached you, became fainter and sweeter as it passed on. You caught but a faint murmur of melody while they were in the vestibule, and the notes rose again as the procession entered the church and moved slowly onward to the sanctuary.

Then came the high mass, which an archbishop celebrated, by special permission, at the high-altar. Without such permission, no one save the holy father himself celebrates there. During this mass the entire history of the Passion of our Lord, as given in the Gospel of St. Matthew, is sung. On Good-Friday, the same history is sung, as given by St. John. Perhaps no portion of the chants of the church in use at the present day is as ancient and venerable as the mode in which the Passion is chanted. The old classic Greek style is preserved, and, fundamentally at least, the melody must be Grecian, although perhaps somewhat changed to suit our modern gamut. The ordinary mode is to distribute the whole among three singers, one of whom chants all the narrative or historical portion. Whenever the Saviour speaks, a second singer chants his words. A third singer comes in at the proper times to chant whatever is said by others. In the Sixtine chapel, and here in St. Peter's to-day, there is a slight change made, which from its appropriateness and effective character we cannot but look on as in part, at least, a return toward the original idea of such a chant. One singer, an exquisite tenor, took up the narrative portion in a recitativo, closing each sentence with the modulations with which many of our readers must be well acquainted. A baritone voice, one of the richest, smoothest, most majestic, and most plaintive and sympathetic we ever heard, chanted the Saviour's part. There was not in it a note that we had not heard before scores of times, but never as they were now chanted. One could, it seemed, listen to him for ever; when he closed one sentence, your eye ran along the page to mark the verse, at which you would hear him again. As he uttered the words, you drank them in, in their sense rather than in the music, realizing something of their pathos and majesty. It was as if in truth you stood near him in Gethsemane, before Annas, and Caiaphas, before Pilate; as if you walked with[554] him along the sorrowful way, as if you stood so near the cross on Calvary that every word he spoke, every tone of his voice, entered your heart. Years cannot efface from our minds the memory of that wondrous chant. It seems still to ring in our ears. The portions usually assigned to a third singer are here distributed among several, who chant singly, or together, as the words are spoken by one, or by several, or by a multitude. Thus, a soprano and a contralto unite to sing the words of the two false witnesses. The mutual contradiction of the witnesses is indicated by the irregularity of the time, and the discords that are repeatedly introduced. When the crowd cries out, "Away with him; crucify him; we will have no king but Cæsar," the whole choir bursts forth. You hear the trembling shrill tones of age, the hissing words of irate manhood, the shrill trebles of excited women, the full incisive words of the priests, and the clamors of the unthinking rabble. When they cry, "His blood be upon us and upon our children," the voices, full at the beginning, grow tremulous and weaker as they proceed, and some are silent, as if reluctant to pronounce the terrible words of the imprecation. And when the soldiers, after scourging the Saviour, and putting on his head the crown of thorns, place the reed in his hands and kneel before him, saluting him, Hail, King of the Jews, the words are sung by three or four voices with a softness, a sweetness, and an earnestness which would make you think that, for the moment, and in spite of themselves, they felt the divine truth of the words they intended to utter in mockery.

In the entire cycle of music there is nothing so sublime and so touching as the Passion of our Lord, sung by the papal choir in St. Peter's.

On Tuesday, in Holy-Week, a general congregation of the council was held in the usual form. As we stated in our last number, the fathers voted on the entire draught, then before them, either placet, placet juxta modum, or non placet. We need add nothing to the account we then gave.

On Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday afternoons the bishops attended in St. Peter's at the office of the Tenebræ. On each occasion, twenty-five or thirty thousand persons about half-filled the church, to hear the lamentations, and, above all, the far-famed Misereres heretofore only to be heard in the Sixtine chapel.

The papal choir is composed of about twenty-five singers. Basses, baritones, contraltos, tenors, and sopranos, all chosen voices of the first quality, and all trained for years in the special style of singing of this choir, different from that of any other we ever heard, and in the peculiar traditions as to the precise style in which each of their principal pieces should be executed. They say themselves, that without this special training the mere notes of the score would by no means suffice to guide another choir, at least so as to produce the marvellous effects which they attain. They have in their repertory over forty Misereres, composed by their different maestri, or chiefs, during the last three centuries. Not more than four of these are placed by them in the first rank. On Wednesday, that by Baini was sung; on Thursday, that of Allegri, and on Friday, one by Mustafa, the present leader of the choir.

That of Allegri is acknowledged to be the best. He was born in Rome in 1560, and became a celebrated composer and singer. In 1629, he entered this choir, at the age of sixty-nine, and was its leader for twenty-three years, dying in 1652 at the ripe[555] age of ninety-two. His Miserere is of such incontestable merit that it is always one of the three sung each year, and not unfrequently it has been sung twice in the same year.

Baini was born in Rome in 1775, entered the papal choir at about the age of thirty, became maestro or leader in 1824, and died about twenty years ago. He was the most learned musical scholar of Italy in his day, and published a number of works. As a composer, he ranked very high. His Miserere is esteemed next to that of Allegri. There is a difference between them. The older composer was filled with a sense of the full meaning of the psalm as a whole, and varies the expression in each verse according to the sense of the entire verse. Baini, on the contrary, is disposed to dwell on the special sense of each word and minor phrase, bringing these points into higher relief than Allegri would. To many, on this account, his Miserere is more intelligible and more pleasing than the other. But a longer familiarity with both invariably reverses this decision.

Mustafa, the present maestro of the papal choir, was likewise born in Rome, and entered the choir thirty years ago, as a soprano singer. On Baini's death, he succeeded to his post. No one in Italy has a more thorough and scientific knowledge of vocal music than he has; and his compositions are among the choicest morceaux of the choir here. His Miserere has several advantages. It was written for the voices now in the choir, and its execution is directed by the composer himself. There is more of the modern style about it than we find in the other two. Hence it is always most pleasing, for style, and the precision and brilliancy with which it is sung.

But besides the artistic excellence which the few trained to analyze and examine such compositions can alone discover and discuss suitably, there is a something about these Misereres which all can feel, and which is far more religious in its character. Once enjoyed, it is never forgotten. As the long office of matins and lauds is slowly chanted, psalm succeeding psalm, and lamentation following lamentation, the lighted candles on the triangular candelabrum are all gradually extinguished, save one, and then, one by one, those on the altar. The shades of evening are coming on. The light of day has become almost a twilight, adding a mysterious indefiniteness to the immensity of the vast edifice. Only through the glory, or circular stained window in the apsis of the basilica, there comes in a golden light from the western sky. The cardinals and bishops are all kneeling in their places, the multitude of twenty-five thousand that have waited two hours for this moment are hushed to deadest silence. A wailing voice is heard—faint, sad, almost bursting into sobs—Have mercy on me, O God! Another and another joins in the entreating cry. It swells and rises, sometimes in passionate, loud supplication, sometimes lowered to broken tones, scarce daring to hope, until an angel voice leads on, According to thy great mercy. Verse after verse the wailing, pleading prayer continues, in combinations of matchless voices, and in harmonious strains never heard or dreamed of before. The multitude listen, suppressing their breathing lest they may lose a single one of the silvery tones. Some are kneeling, others who have not room to kneel, in that closely packed crowd, stand with their heads sunk on their breasts. All are silent, yet many a moving lip tells you they are repeating the words with the singers, that they may more fully drink in the sense and the appropriateness of the music. When the last verse closes,[556] there is a sigh, as if they waked from a trance and found themselves in this life again.

On Thursday, Friday, and Saturday there were the usual services in St. Peter's, in the forenoon. On the first day, the bishops were required to attend in white copes and mitres. A cardinal sang high-mass, after which came the usual procession of the blessed sacrament, which is conveyed from the main altar to a repository prepared to receive it. This year the chapel of the canons was used for the purpose. Cross and candles and incense led the way. The canons and beneficiaries and other clergy of St. Peter's followed, each one bearing a lighted waxen candle, and responding to the chanted hymns of the choir. A certain number of archbishops and primates came next, and after them the cardinals, all likewise with their lighted tapers. The pontiff himself bore the blessed sacrament, under a rich canopy of gold cloth, upheld on eight staffs of silver gilt, borne by his attendants. Cardinals and clergy, Swiss Guard and Noble Guard, walked slowly on either side; the heads of religious orders followed, bearing their lights; and after them, not two and two, as the regular procession had walked, but more closely pressed together, came the hundreds of bishops. The church, at least the half of it toward the altar, was packed and jammed. Not without some effort had the Swiss and the lines of soldiers kept a small passage-way clear for the procession from the main altar to the chapel of the canons. As the sound of the well-known hymn, the "Pange lingua," was recognized, and the procession started, all who could knelt; those who had not room to do so bowed reverently until the pontiff had passed and had entered the chapel, and the amen of the closing prayer rang through the church.

At once there was a rushing to and fro of the thirty thousand people in the church, one half seeking to pass out to the square in front or to ascend to the broad summit of the colonnade on each side of it; for the pontiff would, in a few minutes, give the solemn pontifical blessing from the loggia or balcony over the main door of St. Peter's. The other half took the occasion to occupy the vacant space closer to the main altar, striving to secure the best positions, from which to witness, as well as they could, the ceremonies to follow in the sanctuary, after the blessing, and trusting that on Easter-Sunday they might be able to behold and to receive the blessing with grander ceremonial than to-day. The holy father and the cardinals came forth from the chapel, and, leaving for a time the basilica by a side-door, passed into the Vatican palace, and from thence to the vast hall immediately over the vestibule of St. Peter's. Borne in his curule chair, he advances to the loggia, or open balcony projecting in the middle toward the square, and looks out on the city, and on the thousands below, that kneel as he stands erect, and, raising both arms aloft toward heaven, calls down on them the blessing of God the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost. The solemn and sweet tones of that majestic voice ring through the square, and the words are heard distinctly by the multitudes. A cardinal reads and publishes the indulgence, and the pontiff and the cardinals retire.

Back into the church the mass of people come, a living torrent. In twenty minutes the cardinals and the bishops are again in the sanctuary, while the movement and rustling of the moving and struggling crowd fills the church with the sound as of a deep, continuous, and subdued bass note. At one side of the large sanctuary,[557] which is about one hundred and thirty feet deep, and seventy-five feet broad, an ascent of eight or ten steps leads to a broad platform visible to all. On this platform attendants move about, preparing all that is necessary for the next portion of the ceremony, the mandatum, or washing of feet. Soon a line of thirteen figures, dressed as pilgrims in long white woollen robes reaching to the instep, ascend to the platform, and the attendants conduct them to the seats that are prepared. They are priests from abroad who have come to Rome and all eyes are turned to inspect them as they stand ranged in a line. One is an old man stooped with age, with large, piercing dark eyes, and heavy eyebrows, long aquiline nose and high cheek-bones, and ruddy cheeks. The olive tint of his skin looks darker by contrast with his ample flowing beard of patriarchal whiteness. He is from the east. Perhaps those two other younger ones, with full black beards, are from the east likewise. To judge by his almond eye, the long and regular features, and the darkish skin, another was an Egyptian. Of a fifth there could be no mistake. He was from Senegambia in Africa, and his surname was Zamba, or, as we call it in America, Sambo. His jet black skin, his negro features, the blue spectacles he wore, and his instinctive attitude of dignity made him the most conspicuous in the number. They entered, wearing tall white caps, in shape something like stove-pipe hats without any rim, and with a tuft on the summit; long white dresses of the shape you may see in the miniatures of illuminated manuscripts written a thousand years ago; and even, their stockings and shoes were white as their dress. As all were ready, the pontiff enters, and the choir intones the antiphon, "Mandatum novum"—"A new command I give you." Some preliminary prayers are chanted, and the pontiff, putting off the cope, but retaining his mitre, is girded with an apron, and ascends the platform. An attendant unlaces the shoe on the right foot of the first pilgrim, and lets down the stocking. Other attendants present the ewer of water and the towels; the pontiff, stooping down or kneeling, washes the instep, dries it with a towel, and kisses it. While the attendants raise the stocking and lace the shoe, the holy father gives to the pilgrim a large nosegay, which in former times contained a coin to aid him on his journey homeward. He did the same one by one to all of them. During this touching ceremony the choir continued to sing anthem after anthem; but few present did more than listen vaguely and enjoy the sound, so preoccupied, or rather so fascinated, all seemed to be by a ceremony so rarely used in the church, and so fully recalling our divine Saviour's act and instruction before the Last Supper. Few have ever seen it in church, save as to-day here in St. Peter's, on Holy-Thursday. It may be said to be carried out, too, on a larger scale and in a practical way, all these days in Rome. There is a large institution here called La Santissima Trinità dei Pellegrini, where, during Holy-Week, thousands of poor pilgrims, who have come on foot, and reach Rome weary and foot-sore, are received, and supplied with two meals a day and beds for three days and nights. There is one department for the men, and another for the women and children. Each evening, after the conclusion of the services in the churches, they return to the institution. Cardinals, bishops, priests, and laymen in numbers, nobles and private individuals, are there, and wash their feet (thoroughly) and wait on them at the table. In the female department princesses, duchesses, and ladies of[558] every degree and station, titled and untitled, are there to perform the same offices for the women and children. All these ladies belong to several charitable confraternities and associations in the city; and by one of their rules no one of them is allowed the privilege of uniting in this work in Holy-Week unless she has, during the past year, paid at least a stated number of charitable visits to the prisons and hospitals. We do not know whether the men have the same admirable rule.

After the washing of the feet in St. Peter's, the pope retired, and the pilgrims followed. The services in the church itself were over. But there was something else, which as many as could wished to see. The pope was to serve the pilgrims at table. In the large hall mentioned above as being situated over the vestibule of the church, and from which the pope went out to the loggia to give the blessing, a long table had been prepared and decorated. Soon the pilgrims entered and stood at their places; and the hall was filled with thousands of spectators. The pontiff came in, attended by three or four cardinals, his own attendants, and a number of bishops. He said the grace, and a monsignore read a portion of the Scriptures, and then continued to read a book of sermons. Meanwhile, the pope was passing to and fro, from one end of the table to the other, helping each one to soup, to fish, and to wine; and finally, giving them his special blessing, he retired. The services had commenced at nine A.M. It was now two P.M.

The holy oils were blessed, not in St. Peter's, but in St. John Lateran's; for St. Peter's is the cathedral of the pope as Pope and Bishop of the Catholic Church. St. John's is his cathedral as Bishop of Rome.

On Friday morning the offices in St. Peter's were precisely the same as in every other cathedral, differing only in the presence of the sovereign pontiff and the cardinals, and the large number of bishops, who attended robed in purple cappa magna. The "Improperia," sung while the pope, the cardinals, and the bishops approached to kneel and kiss the cross, is accounted the master-piece of Palestrina. It is unequalled in its expression of tenderness and of sorrowful reproach. Sung as it was by that unrivalled choir, on this day, when the church is desolate and stripped of all ornament, and the ministers at the altar are robed in sombre black; when burning lights and the smoke of incense are banished from the sanctuary; when one thing only is presented—the image of the crucified Redeemer; one theme only fills prayers, anthems, and hymns alike—the sorrows and death of our Lord on Calvary—its effect seemed overpowering. You thought not of the wondrous charm of the voices; you heeded not the antique melody or the skilful harmonies, as word after word, clearly and distinctly uttered, fell on your ear; the music but rendered more clear and emphatic their sense as it sunk into your heart. You felt that the reproaches of the loving and forgiving Saviour were addressed to you personally, and you bowed in sorrowful confusion as well as in adoration, while you saluted him in the words of early Christian worship, Agios o Theos.

During the service, that portion of his Gospel in which St. John narrates the history of the Passion, was chanted in the same manner as had been the narration by St. Matthew on the preceding Sunday. Prepared as all were, by the services of the days past and by the sublime "Improperia" we had just heard, words cannot express the awe which came on them as they listened to this vivid recitation in music[559] of that grand drama of Good-Friday on the summit of Calvary. It is on such occasions, and with singing like this, that one realizes what force and truth and majesty there is in perfect music, inspired and consecrated by religion.

On Saturday, the bishops were divided between St. Peter's and St. John's. In the latter church, besides the usual services, there were also the instruction of catechumens, the baptism of converts with the form for grown persons, and at the mass a grand ordination, at which tonsure, all the minor orders, subdeaconship, deaconship, and priesthood were conferred on those who had been examined and found worthy of the grades to which they aspired. In all, they were about sixty.

In St. Peter's, the services were only the usual ones of the church for this day—the blessing of the font, the chanting of the prophecies, the blessing of the paschal candle, and the solemn high-mass celebrated by a cardinal. The pope was present. One would have thought that, at his age, after the fatigues of the days past, and in view of the long functions of the morrow, it would be proper that he should have one day of quiet, or at least of comparative quiet. But Pius IX. never thinks of sparing himself. Many of the bishops were at St. John's. But those who were in St. Peter's heard the grand mass "of Pope Marcellus," as it is called, by Palestrina. This is the mass which was composed and sung in 1565, and which, it is said, won from the pope and cardinals the reversal of an absolute prohibition they had almost determined on, of all music and singing in church save the Gregorian chant, on account of the bad taste and abuses of musicians and singers, who introduced profane and worldly music even into the mass. No one who heard those grand religious choral strains could fail to see how solemnly, and fully, and appropriately they expressed in music the sublime character of the service. Such music does not distract; on the contrary, it fixes the thoughts, and soothes and guides the feelings into a channel of devotion. It would have been impossible for the cardinals, after listening to this exquisite mass, to arrive at a different conclusion.

From Thursday until Saturday, all the bells of Rome had been silent. There was a visible shade of sorrow on the city, a public grief, as it were, for the tragedy of Calvary. But in view of the joyous resurrection close at hand, this silence of sorrow is soon to pass away. It was near eleven A.M. when the high-mass commenced at St. Peter's. At the Gloria, a signal was given, and the gigantic Bourdon and the other bells of the basilica broke into a grand peal. The guns of St. Angelo answered, and, quick as sound could travel, all the thousand bells of all the steeples and belfrys of Rome, without exception, joined in the clamorous yet not unpleasant or unmusical chorus. The rooks, and ravens, and doves, and swallows flew to and fro, frightened from their nests, half-stunned, and utterly distracted. When the pealing chorus ended—and it lasted for a full half-hour—Rome had put off her sadness, and friends were exchanging the happy salutations of Easter.

In the afternoon an Armenian bishop celebrated high-mass, according to their rite, at four P.M. in one church, and, at the same hour, a Chaldean prelate celebrated high-mass, according to his rite, in another. In the earlier centuries, this mass of the resurrection was celebrated by all after midnight, on Saturday night. The Orientals have brought it forward[560] to Saturday afternoon; the Latins have gradually advanced it to the forenoon. Sunday dawned, a bright, clear, pleasant, cloudless Italian spring day. At an early hour carriages of every kind were pouring in long lines over every bridge across the Tiber, and hurrying on to St. Peter's, and tens of thousands were making their way thither on foot. By nine o'clock, the sanctuary is filled with bishops robed in white copes and mitres, and with cardinals in richly adorned white chasubles. Soon the Swiss Guard take their places, and the Noble Guard appear in their richest uniform. Lines of Pontifical Zouaves and the Legion of Antibes, and other soldiers, keep a lane open up the middle of the church, through the immense crowd of, it was estimated, forty thousand persons, from the door of the sanctuary. One tribune on the south side of the sanctuary was filled with members of various royal families now in Rome, some on a visit, some staying here permanently. On the other side was a tribune for the diplomatic corps, which was filled with ambassadors, ministers resident and envoys, in their rich uniforms and covered with jewelled decorations.

A burst from the band of silver trumpets over the doorway of the church told us that the holy father was entering. Down the lane through the vast crowd might be seen the cross slowly advancing. Then was heard the voice of the choir of the canons, welcoming the pontiff to the basilica, and then aloft, higher than the mass that filled the church, he was seen slowly borne on in the curule chair, robed in a rich cope of white silk, heavy with gold embroidery and wearing the tiara. Slowly advancing, and giving his blessing to the multitudes on either side, he reached the chapel of the blessed sacrament, descended from the chair, and, with the cardinals accompanying him, and his other attendants, knelt for some moments in adoration. Then, rising, he ascended the chair again, and the procession pursued its way through the crowd, now more closely packed than ever, to the sanctuary. Here the pontiff descended again to his robing throne at the epistle side of the altar. The choir commence the chanting of the psalms of terce and sext. Meanwhile the pontiff was robed for mass, and the cardinals, the patriarchs, and primates, and a certain number of the archbishops and bishops, as representatives of their brethren, paid him the usual homage. This over, solemn high-mass commenced in the usual form. After incensing the altar at the Introit, he passed to his regular throne at the end of the sanctuary, just opposite the altar, and fully one hundred and twenty feet distant. There beside him stood a cardinal priest and two cardinal deacons; the senator of Rome, in his official robes and cloak of yellow and gold, with his pages of similar costume, the conservatori of the city; and on the steps, around the throne, stood, or were seated, some twenty assistant bishops; on either side six lines of seats stretching down to the altar were occupied by the cardinals and by a great mass of prelates, Latin and Oriental, all in the richest vestments appropriate to this the greatest festival of the church.

Never was solemn high-mass celebrated with more splendor in St. Peter's than on this Easter-Sunday. To be privileged to assist at it amply repays many a one for all the time and all the fatigue of a journey to Rome. The holy father officiates with a fervor and intense devotion which lights up his countenance. The venerable Cardinal Patrizi, who stood by his side,[561] was the very personification of sacerdotal dignity. The mitred prelates in their places, many of them gray-haired or bald, or bent with age and labors, seemed radiant with the holy joy of the occasion. The masters of ceremony and the attendants moved gravely and reverently, as their duties called them from one part of the sanctuary to another. Even the vast crowd of forty or fifty thousand that filled the church were penetrated with reverent awe, and sank almost into perfect stillness. Nothing was heard save the noble voice of the sovereign pontiff chanting the prayers, and the responding strains of the choir. Yet, in comparison with the music we had heard during the week, the Gloria and the Creed, super-excellent though they were, seemed in some measure to belong to the earth. After the subdeacon had sung the epistle in Latin, a Greek subdeacon, in the robes of his Greek rite, sung it in Greek; and similarly a Greek deacon followed the Latin deacon in chanting the Gospel. A musical antiquarian would have found in the peculiar modulations of their chant traces of the ancient eastern style of music, going back, perhaps, in those unchanging people to the days of Greek classic civilization. The most impressive moment in the mass was certainly the elevation. At a signal, you heard the voice of the officers giving the command, and the thud on the floor as the companies of soldiers simultaneously grounded arms, and every man sank on one knee. The Noble Guard, too, sank on one knee, uncovered their heads, and saluted with their bright swords. The Swiss Guard stood erect and presented arms. In the sanctuary, of course, all were kneeling. There was a sound like the rushing of a wind through a pine forest as the vast multitude strove to sink down too. And then came a dead silence over all. As the pontiff raised aloft the sacred host, turning toward every quarter of the church, there came, faint, and soft, and solemn at first, and gradually stronger and more emphatic, the thrilling tones of those silver trumpets placed over the doorway and out of sight. Their slow, majestic melody, and their rich accords, and the repeated and prolonged echoes of those notes of almost supernatural sweetness, from chapels and nave and dome, produced an effect that was marvellously impressive. As if fascinated by them, no one moved from his kneeling position, or even raised his head, until the last note of the strain and its receding echoes had died away, and the choir went on to intone the "Benedictus qui venit."

At the conclusion of the mass, the pope unrobed, put on his cope and tiara again, and retired in the same manner as he had entered. At once the vast mass of people began to pour forth from St. Peter's, to make their way to the front; for the pope would soon give his solemn benediction urbi et orbi—to Rome and to the world. We have already described the square before St. Peter's. It is about fifteen hundred feet long, and averages nearly four hundred feet in breadth. All during the mass it had been gradually filling up, and when now new torrents of men came pouring out of the church, the whole place became so packed that one standing on the lofty colonnade on the side of the Vatican and looking down on the square, perceived that only here and there even small portions of the ground remained visible, such was the closeness with which men and women stood packed together. Especially was this true on the vast esplanades more immediately before the church, and the broad steps leading[562] up to it. Here were gathered all who wished to be as near as possible to the pope during the blessing, or to get a sight from this elevation of the vast basin of the square thoroughly packed with human beings. Nor was the multitude confined to the square alone; on the colonnades, on either hand, stood thousands and thousands, as in favored positions. Every window and balcony looking out on the square was thronged. Every roof had its group, and away down the two streets leading up the square from the bridge of St. Angelo the crowd appeared equally dense. A military man present, whose experience had qualified him to estimate large masses, judged that there were present at least one hundred and twenty thousand persons. Mingling among them, you heard every language of Europe, many of Asia, and, it was said, half a dozen from Africa. It was a representation of the world which the pontiff would bless. From all this multitude, standing in the bright sunlight, which a north wind rendered not disagreeable, came up a roar, as it were, of rushing waters, mingling the hum of so many voices with the blaring of an occasional military trumpet from the troops, and the neighing of horses.

Soon the regimental bands are heard to salute the approach of his holiness, invisible as yet to the crowd. A score of mitred prelates appear at the large Balcony of the Blessing. They look out in wonder and admiration at the scene below, and retire to allow another score to view it; a third group does the same. These are the bishops who have accompanied the pope from the sanctuary to the Vatican, and from the Vatican hither. Of the others, some are down on the square with the people, more are on the colonnades, in places reserved for them. After the bishops, the cardinals are seen to fill the balcony once or twice, and then the pontiff himself comes in view, borne forward on his curule chair. He is out on the loggia itself. Ordinarily, besides the ornamental drapery which we see decorating the columns and architrave and tympanum, and the railing in front, there projects overhead a large awning to screen him from the sun. But to-day the north wind does not allow it to stand. Fortunately, the weather hardly calls for it. He is scarcely inconvenienced by the rays of the sun as they are reflected from his rich gold-cloth mitre, studded with precious stones, and from the massive gold embroidery of his cope. The military music has ceased, and there is the silence of awe and of earnest expectation. Those that are near hear the tones of some one chanting the Confiteor beside the pontiff. Two bishops hold the large missal from which he chants the prayers in a clear, rotund, and musical voice. The people are kneeling, and twice is heard the response of united thousands—Amen. The book is laid aside. The pontiff rises and stands erect, looks up to heaven, and, with a majestic sweeping motion, opens wide his arms and invokes on all the blessing of heaven. His voice is given forth in its very fullest power, and even at the furthermost end of the square the kneeling crowd sign themselves with the sign of the cross as they distinctly hear the words: "Benedictio Dei omnipotentis, Patris, et Filii, et Spiritus Sancti, descendat super vos et maneat semper." May the blessing of Almighty God, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost, descend upon you and abide with you for ever. And there came up a swelling Amen. As the pontiff sank back on his chair, the kneeling crowd arose, and there burst forth from every portion of it a loud acclaim of vivas, of good wishes, of[563] acclamations, that died away only as the pontiff retired from view, and as the cannon of St. Angelo commenced the national salute.

It was a ceremony fitted by its majesty and its magnificence to close the grand ceremonies of Easter-Week. Art cannot do justice to it. Painting, tied down by the laws of perspective, cannot portray what the eye sees on every side, and does not pretend to give the words of solemn prayer, of impressive benediction, and the outburst of acclamation which we heard. Words must fail to convey the emotions that filled thousands of hearts that day, at the sublime and moving spectacle. It was a sensible testimony of the holiness, the authority, and the unity of the church of Christ, a testimony to which not even an unbeliever, if present, could remain indifferent.

It took nearly two hours for that crowd to depart. The cardinals, royalty, the nobles, and many of the bishops in carriages, made their way, at a snail's pace, along the streets leading to the old Roman Elian Bridge across the Tiber, now known as the Bridge of St. Angelo. They could scarcely get on as fast as the foot passengers that filled the street on either side up to the very wheels of the single line of carriages allowed. Others, more in a hurry, went out by the Porta Angelica, so as to cross the Tiber at the Ponte Molle, two miles north of the city, and then reënter by the Porta del Popolo; and others again turned southward, following the streets along the river, and crossing it at the suspension bridge, or at some of the bridges lower down. And so, within two hours, all reached their homes without a single accident, without a single quarrel, without a single call for the interference of the police.

But it was for many of them only to return within a few hours. On Easter-Sunday evening occurs the grand illumination of the façade and dome of St. Peter's. As the shades of evening fell on the city, silvery lights began to mark the lofty cross, and to glow along the huge ribs of the mighty dome, and to map out the lines of the windows and doors, the columns, and cornices, and tympanums, and architectural ornaments and projections, to illuminate the clock-faces and the coats of arms above them, to sparkle along the minor domes, and to stretch away on either side in regular lines along each colonnade, diffusing everywhere a gentle light, and bringing into prominence, with a fairy-like witchery, all the lines of the pile before you. There are about five thousand two hundred of these lights. They are made of broad shallow plates of metal or earthenware, containing a certain amount of prepared tallow and a lighted wick, and surrounded by a cylinder of paper, colored and figured. From this lantern, as it may be called, the light comes diffused, subdued, and white; hence the Romans call this the silver illumination. The square was filled, though by no means as in the morning, with crowds looking, wondering, and admiring. At a quarter past eight, the large bell of St. Peter's began to chime. As the very first stroke came to our ears, a tiny blaze was seen to dart up a guiding wire to the top of the lofty cross, and a clear bright flame burst forth, glowed on the summit; downward the tiny flame flew, lighting two others on each arm of the cross, and then downward lighting still others along the stem. Invisible hands caused other such little flames to flit rapidly hither and thither, like glow-moths, all along the dome, the front, and both colonnades around the square. Wherever they seemed to alight for an instant, there a bright flame sprung into existence.[564] In just twenty-three seconds, and long before the clock had half struck the hour, eight hundred of those bright yellow flames had almost eclipsed the first ones, and the building stood forth in the golden illumination. It was a sight, once seen, never to be forgotten. Whoever first conceived the idea of this instantaneous change of illumination was a poet in the truest sense of the word.

On Easter-Monday evening, the festive celebrations were continued by giving the Girandola, or exhibition of fireworks on Monte Pincio. On entering Rome from the north, by the Porta del Popolo, as before the days of the railways the great majority of travellers did, you find yourself at once in a large oval square, called the Piazza del Popolo, in the centre of which stands an ancient Egyptian obelisk, its base surrounded by modern Egyptian lions and fountains. On the south side, three streets radiate into the heart of the city. For a wonder, they are straight; you may look down the central one, the Corso, for full three quarters of a mile. Massive palatial buildings stand around this square; to the west there rises a line of lofty evergreen cypresses, near the Tiber. Through the interstices of their branches and dark foliage you may catch glimpses of St. Peter's. On the east rises the Pincian Hill, the Mons Hortulanus of the olden Romans, then outside and to the north of the city, now within its walls, and forming its beautiful promenade. The hill is about one hundred and fifty feet high, and toward the square is quite steep. Broad carriage-ways, sweeping from right to left, in zigzag courses, give access from the square to the promenade above; and immense walls of masonry, with arches and porticos, and columns, rising in stories, back of and above each other, prevent any landslides, and give an architectural finish to the whole hill-face which the trees and exotic plants growing in the spaces between only embellish and do not mar.

For ten days before Easter-Monday, the public had been excluded from the promenade. As they passed through the square, they could see a lofty scaffolding in the process of erection on the brow of the hill, and other scaffolding interlacing with the architecture of its side. The opposite oval curve of the square was occupied by a line of covered galleries of wood erected for the occasion. On this Monday night, the air was balmy, the sky clear but moonless. At least twenty-five thousand spectators stood in the square. The Roman municipality had assigned the galleries to the bishops and some thousands of other invited guests. Four military bands whiled away the time of expectation with sweet music. At last the appointed hour struck on a neighboring church clock, and a rocket shot up into the air, the sound of its explosion was reëchoed from the mouth of a cannon; and the pyrotechnic display at once commenced. The art of pyrotechnics has been cultivated at Rome with more skill and good taste than in any other city of Europe. We might, indeed, expect this from a people trained as no other is to recognize and appreciate the beautiful and fitting in form and color. The grand features and characteristics of those displays were settled centuries ago. They say that Michael Angelo himself did much toward perfecting them. On each occasion some able artist gives the specialties to be introduced, always in subservience to those general principles. This year, the plan was given by the distinguished architect Vespiniani. At one time, the entire face of the hill and the scaffolding was ablaze with lines of variegated light,[565] representing a vast mass of buildings with towers and cupola, and gigantic gateways, on which there streamed down from above continuous beams of still brighter and purer light. In the distance stood the figure of an apostle, and by him an angel with outstretched arm; and we understood that we were looking at the celestial Jerusalem, revealed in vision to the apostle in Patmos. We marked the gates of precious stones, perfectly represented by the various hues of fire, and the foundation stones bearing in letters of light the names of the apostles. Too soon it seemed to fade away, but only to be renewed with change of colors. For a while we might still study it. Again it faded, again was renewed with still another exquisite arrangement of colors, and then faded away into darkness. Then figure after figure burst out afterward, without any delay or tedious waiting. At one time, a gigantic volcano, amid the booming of cannon that caused the ground to tremble beneath the foot, belched forth thousands of burning rockets, which ascended in streaks of fire and burst over head, seeming to fill the sky with myriads and myriads of many-colored falling stars. At another, the whole hill-side stood before us as a group of majestic triumphal arches, decorated with immense wreaths of roses, lilies, dahlias, and bright-colored flowers. In a niche was seen the bust of the pontiff surrounded by a brilliant frame, and below we read the inscription, in which Senatus Populusque Romarins, the municipal authorities of the city, offered to Pius IX. their homage and congratulations on the near approach of the twenty-fifth year of his pontificate. All the minor devices of pyrotechnics, of course, abounded. When, after three quarters of an hour, the brilliant and almost continuous display seemed to be closed, a little fiery messenger started from the hill-side, on an invisible wire, to the summit of the obelisk in the centre of the square, and lighted a bright flame on its point. Soon lines of flame decorated its sides. From its base ten little messengers started out, not very far over the heads of the people, reaching as many pillars around the square, and lighting up simultaneously ten bright Bengal lights. It was as if day had come back to us. The lights on the pillars changed from white to purple and red, and other messengers, this time seemingly still nearer the heads, rushed madly back to the central obelisk and clothed that too in many-colored fire. At last, from obelisk and pillars alike shot up rocket after rocket, bursting loudly in the air, and for the last time casting their bright hues of white, and scarlet, and orange, and green, and purple on the hill-side, the palaces and hotels around, and on the crowd beneath in the square. All was over, and at an early hour the mighty mass was slowly moving like living torrents down the three streets leading from the square into the city. So great was the crowd that it was full half an hour before the careful police would allow the carriages, which filled the by-streets in the neighborhood, to enter those thoroughfares. Gorgeous and artistic as the spectacle was, it had not cost beyond a thousand dollars.

On Tuesday, the fathers were at work again. A general congregation was held, as usual. The last speeches were spoken, the last explanations were heard; the last touches were given to the schema, and the last vote was taken, and every thing was ready to declare and promulgate the schema, as a dogmatic constitution or decree of faith, in the next public session, which, it was announced, would be held on Low-Sunday.

The Girandola on Monday night[566] was the celebration of the municipal authorities. On Wednesday night, the people had theirs—a general illumination of the city. The proper day would have been April 12th, the anniversary of the pope's return from Gaeta, and also of his wondrous escape from all injury in an accident by the falling of a floor at St. Agnes, outside the walls, something like the late disastrous one in the capital at Richmond. Though many were injured, cardinals, priests, and laymen, none, we believed, were killed. But the chair in which the pontiff was seated came down with him through the breaking floor without even being overturned, and he was preserved from even the slightest shock. Since then, he ever keeps that day religiously sacred, and the Romans have fallen into the custom of celebrating it by a general illumination of the city. This year, as the day fell in Holy-Week, the celebration was put off until the 20th of April, Wednesday in Easter-Week.

Each householder illuminated his own building with lines of lampioni, as they call the plates of earthenware or metal, filled with tallow and a lighted wick, and surrounded by a cylindrical screen of colored paper, through which the light shines as a huge diamond. The wealthier ones affected some ornamental design in a profuser arrangement of such lights. Some used multitudinous cups of colored glass, holding oil, and a lighted taper swimming in it. In each parish, the inhabitants clubbed together to erect one or more special designs of superior artistic taste and brilliancy. The city was all aglow; nobody save the sick staid at home; the streets were filled with streams of people all moving in the same direction; for some one had, with happy thoughtfulness, got up an itinerary or route guide through the city, and all seemed to follow it. It took three hours to walk through the choice parts of the fairy scene, if you went on foot; and more, if you took a carriage. The lines of mellow light, faintly shining from windows and cornices along all the buildings, even the poorest, in the narrowest, and darkest, and crookedest streets of Rome, broken occasionally by a brighter burst from the doorway of some shop well illuminated in the interior; the blaze that rose from the lights more numerous and brighter in the squares, or shone from the fronts of wealthier and larger houses and palaces, from the arches of triumph, and from the temples of Gothic or classic style, constructed of wood and canvas, but to which painting and colored lights lent for the hour a fairy beauty like that of Aladdin's palace; every thing united to charm, to dazzle, and to bewilder the spectator. The pope had gone that afternoon as usual to St. Agnes, to be present at a Te Deum for his escape, and returned only after night-fall. As he reached the square of St. Peter's, a number of rockets shot up into the air, and burst into a thousand stars of every hue. It was a signal. Instantaneously the colonnades on either side and the front of the church were all lighted up with Bengal fires. The columns in front and the walls glowed in a white or golden light; the interior recesses were made mysterious in a rich purple. After a few moments, the tints were interchanged; the bright purple light was in front, and seemed to change the buff travertino into alabaster and precious marbles, and the trembling tints of white and light gold within imparted a supernatural beauty to the interior recesses. Change followed change, until the pope, amid the enthusiastic acclamations of the vast crowd, moved on, and at last disappeared in the rear of St. Peter's,[567] to reach the grand gateway of the Vatican palace. The crowd too passed elsewhere, to wander along streets converted into arcades, roofed by lines of soft and many-colored lights; to admire the triumphal arches, where in niches the Saviour stood as "the way, the truth, and the life," attended by the Evangelists or the Blessed Virgin Mother, to whom David and Isaiah bore testimony; to look on the cross of jewelled light shining in the dark recesses of the front of the Pantheon, or to examine and criticise the temples of light at the Minerva, the Santi Apostoli, or Monticilorio; to rest themselves at times, listening to the music of the bands, which ever and anon they encountered; to look with delight on the illuminated steamers and barges on the river, bearing (for the nonce) the flags of every Christian nation, and to study the play of light reflected on the rippling surface of old Father Tiber; to wonder at the obelisks converted into columns of fire, or the grand stairway of Trinità di Monte, made a mountain of light, and a glorious grand stairway seeming to reach the heavens, or to watch the changing colors of Bengal fires, illuming the statues of old Neptune and his tritons and sea-horses, and the wild cavernous rocks and dashing waters of the exquisite fountain of Trevi; or, after all, to stroll through some square, where yellow gravelly walks led you between beds of green herbage, where tiny fountains were bubbling, where trees were laden with fruits of light, and where flowers filled the air with sweet perfumes. All Rome was in the streets, and in their orderly, calm, and dignified way enjoyed the scene hugely. Not a loud voice or an angry word was heard, not the slightest symptom of intoxication was seen. Everywhere the hum of pleasant talk of friends and family groups arose, made sparkling and brilliant to the ear, rather than interrupted, by the low but hearty and silvery laughs of men, of women, and of delighted children. The Romans were out, all in their best apparel; and not they alone, but thousands from the villages of the campagnas and the neighboring mountains, in their bright colors and quaint mediæval traditional costumes. All these were a study to the sixty thousand visitors then passing through the streets of Rome, not less interesting and instructive than the gorgeous illumination itself. Among those sixty thousand strangers there was but one decision—that nowhere else in Europe could there be an illumination so spontaneous, so general, so perfectly artistic, so exquisitely beautiful and grand as this was, and nowhere else could such a vast crowd walk these narrow streets for hours with such perfect order, such good humor, and such universal courtesy.

There were other celebrations during these two weeks, both ecclesiastical and social, but it will suffice to have spoken of the chief ones. The repositories or sepulchres of Holy-Thursday evening, the services of the three hours' agony in many churches about noon on Good-Friday, and the sermons and way of the cross in the ruins of the Colosseum, the scene of so many martyrdoms, on Good-Friday afternoon, would all deserve special mention; but we have not the space, and must pass on to the third public session of the Vatican Council.

This, as we have already stated, was fixed for Sunday, April 26th—Low-Sunday. At nine A.M., the cardinals, patriarchs, primates, archbishops, bishops, mitred abbots, and superiors of religious orders were in their places. The council hall had been restored to the original form in which we had[568] seen it on the day of the opening. All the changes to fit it for the discussions of the general congregations were removed. The Noble Guard and the Knights of Malta were on duty as custodians of the assembly. Cardinal Bilio celebrated a pontifical high-mass, as had been done in each of the previous sessions. At its termination, the Gospel was enthroned on the altar. The holy father intoned the "Veni Creator Spiritus," and the choir and united assembly of prelates sung the strophes alternately to the conclusion of that sublime hymn. The pontiff chanted the opening prayers, and all knelt when the litany of the saints was intoned in the varied and well-known antique melodies of Gregorian chant. At the proper place, the pontiff chanted the special supplications for a blessing on the council, and the chanters and the assembly, and, in fact, thousands of the audience, joined in the swelling responses. The effect seemed even to surpass that which we described in our first article, giving an account of the opening of the council. Other prayers followed, prescribed by the ritual. At their conclusion, the special work of this session commenced.

According to the olden time ritual of councils, all in the hall, not belonging strictly to the council, should at this point be sent away, and the gates should be closed, that in their voting the fathers might be free from all outside influence, and each might speak his mind, unswayed by fear or favor. But if, in stormier times, when clamorous mobs might invade a council hall, such precautions were necessary, here, to-day, they are certainly unnecessary. There is no need to close the wide portals against these thousands and tens of thousands who have gathered to look with reverence and rapture on this venerable assembly. Let the doors then stand open to their widest extent, that all may see.

And it was a scene worth coming, as many had done, across oceans and mountains to look on. The pillars and walls of the noble hall were rich with appropriate paintings, with mosaics, and statuary, and marbles. At the furthest end, on his elevated seat, sat the venerated sovereign pontiff, bearing on his head a precious mitre, glittering with jewels, and wearing a cope rich with massive golden embroidery. On either hand sat the venerable cardinals, arrayed in white mitres, and wearing their richest robes of office. In front of them sat the patriarchs, mostly easterns, in the rich and bright-colored robes of their respective rites, and wearing tiaras radiant with brilliants and jewelry. Down either side of the hall ran the manifold lines of primates, archbishops, bishops, and other prelates, all in white mitres, and in copes of red lama; all save the oriental prelates, who wear many-colored copes and vestments, and rich tiaras, ever catching the eye of the spectator as they sat scattered here and there in that crowd, and excepting also the heads of religious orders, who wear each his appropriate dress of white, or of black, or of brown, or mingle these colors together. The contrast and play of various colors in all these vestments give a brilliancy to the whole scene, much beyond what the uniform white of the first two sessions had yielded.

But what mattered the color of their vestments, when one considered the venerable forms of the bishops themselves. They sat still, and almost as motionless as so many marble statues. Now and then some aged prelate, with bald head and snow-white locks, would lay aside for a few moments the heavy mitre, that perhaps was pressing his aged brows too heavily. All else seemed motionless. Their countenances, composed and thoughtful, told how thoroughly[569] they, at least, were impressed with the importance and the solemnity of their work.

In the middle stood the altar, rich and simple, on which lay enthroned the open book of the Gospels. Near by stood the light and lofty pulpit of dark wood.

Into this pulpit now ascended Monsignor Valenziani, Bishop of Fabriano and Matelica, one of the assistant secretaries, and in a voice remarkable for its strength and distinctness, and not less so for its endurance, read with most appropriate emphasis, and with the musical intonations of a cultivated Italian voice, the entire Dogmatic Constitution, from the beginning to the end. It occupied just three quarters of an hour.

At the conclusion he asked, "Most eminent and most reverend fathers, do you approve of the canons and decrees contained in this constitution?"

He descended from the pulpit, and Monsignor Jacobini, another assistant secretary took his place, to call for the votes of the fathers, one by one.

"The Most Eminent Constantine Cardinal Patrizi, Bishop of Porto and Santa Rufina!"

The venerable cardinal arose in his place. We heard his answer, Placet;—I approve. An usher standing near him repeated, Placet; a second one on the right hand side repeated, Placet; a third on the other side repeated aloud, Placet.

"The Most Eminent Aloysius Cardinal Amat, Bishop of Palestrina!" The aged cardinal rose slowly, and in a feeble voice replied, Placet. And from the ushers again we heard echoing through the hall, Placet! Placet! Placet!

Thus there could be no mistake as to the vote, and not only the notaries but all who wished could keep a correct tally.

Cardinal after cardinal was thus called in order and voted; then the patriarchs, each one of whom, rising, declared his vote, and the ushers repeated it loudly. Placet! Placet! Placet!

Then on through the primates, the archbishops, and bishops, the mitred abbots, and the heads of religious orders, admitted to the right of suffrage. Where a vote was given, the three ushers invariably repeated it. Sometimes when a name was called the answer was given, Abest—he is absent. In all, six hundred and sixty-seven votes were cast, all of them in approval, not a single one in the negative. Not a few of the bishops had obtained leave to go to their dioceses for the Holy-Week and the Easter festivities, and had not yet been able to return to the council. We knew of one who, after two weeks of hard work at home, had travelled all Saturday night, on the train, and had reached Rome only at nine A.M. Sunday morning. He had at once said mass privately in the nearest convenient chapel, and, without waiting for even the slightest refreshment, had hurried to St. Peter's, that he might take his place among his brethren and record his "Placet." The whole form of voting occupied about two hours. It was, in truth, a solemn and most impressive scene. There was a pause at the end, while the notaries counted up the votes, and declared the result. This done, the pope spoke aloud, "The canons and decrees contained in this constitution, having been approved by all the fathers, without a single dissentient, we, with the approbation of this holy council, define them, as they have been read, and by our apostolic authority we confirm them." It was the official sanction sealing their force and truth.

The pontiff paused for a moment, evidently struggling with the emotions[570] of his heart, and then continued in an impromptu address in Latin, which we caught as follows:

The bishops were moved, many of them to tears, by the dignity and the paternal affection with which the simple words came from his heart. He was himself deeply moved.

Other prayers were chanted. The pontifical blessing was given, and the pope intoned the Te Deum. The choir, the bishops, and the thousands of priests and laity in the church, who had looked on this solemn act of the church just executed, joined in with their whole heart and soul, and swelled the grand Ambrosian melody, making it roll throughout the church, and calling echoes from every chapel and arch, from nave and transept and dome. And with this concordant song of gratitude to God, the third session of the Vatican Council was appropriately closed.

The pontiff departed, accompanied by some of the cardinals, by the senator and conservatori of Rome, the masters-at-arms of the council, and the attendants of his pontifical household. Soon the cardinals and prelates moved slowly from the council hall into the vast church, unrobed in a chapel set apart for the purpose, and wended their way homeward, and the third public session of the council was over.

We were able, in our last number, to present to our readers the original text, in Latin, of the constitution promulgated in this session, and also a correct translation of it in English. It will be seen on examining the subjects treated of, and by the absolute unanimity of the votes given, how far astray "our own correspondents" were, both as to the matters under discussion in the council, and as to the divisions which they imagined to exist among the fathers.

Since Low-Sunday, the general congregations have resumed their sittings, and the committees on matters of faith and on matters of discipline have been busily engaged. Matters from the latter committee have already been rediscussed, and some preliminary votes have been taken. It is understood that ere long the committee on matters of faith will report back to the general congregation another schema on the church, in the course of which the question of the infallibility of the pope, of which so much has been written and said, will at last come formally before the council. Should this be the case, we may be sure the whole subject will be examined with the care and research which its importance requires, and which the dignity and the learning of the fathers demand. The result will be that decision to which the Holy Spirit of truth will guide them.

Note.—We may add to this announcement of our correspondent, that the discussion of the schema on infallibility was begun on the 10th of May, and is expected to be finished before the 29th of June.

NEW PUBLICATIONS.

An American Political Economy; including Strictures on the Management of the Finances since 1861. With a chart showing the fluctuations in the price of gold. By Francis Bowen, Professor of Natural Religion, Moral Philosophy, and Civil Polity in Harvard College. New York: Scribner & Co. 1870. 16mo, pp. 495.

We took up this book with an old prejudice against the author of some thirty years standing, as well as with an inveterate dislike to almost all works on political economy, which it has ever been our misfortune to read; but we have been pleased and instructed by it. Professor Bowen is not a philosopher; has not, properly speaking, a scientific mind; but he has great practical good sense, and a wide, and we should say a thorough, acquaintance with the facts of his subject, and the ability to set them forth in a clear and strong light. He is no system-monger, is wedded to no system of his own, and aims to look at facts as they are. It is a great merit of his book that it recognizes that each country should have its own political economy growing out of and adapted to its peculiar wants and circumstances. Free-trade or protection may be for the interest of one country and not for another, and no universal rule as to either can be laid down.

The author, a follower of John Locke in philosophy, is of course not good at definitions, and his definition of wealth is rather clumsy, but he contrives as he proceeds to tell us what it is. All wealth is the product of labor, and a man is wealthy just in proportion to his ability to purchase or command the labor of others. Hence the absurdity of those theorists who demand an equal division of property or an equality of wealth, as well as of the legislation that seeks to ameliorate the condition of the poor by making them rich, or furnishing them with facilities for becoming rich. If all were wealthy, all would be poor; for then no one would sell his labor; and if no one would sell his labor, no one could buy labor, and then every man would be reduced to the necessity of doing every thing for himself. All men have equal natural rights as men, and this is all the equality that is practicable or desirable.

The reader will find the professor has treated the question of banks with rare lucidity, as also that of paper money, and even money itself. But the portion of his work that most interests us is his strictures on the management of our national finances since 1861, and especially Mr. Secretary Chase's pet scheme of national banks. According to his showing, it would exceed the wit of man to invent and follow a more ruinous financial policy than that pursued by the national administration since the inauguration of the late Mr. Lincoln as President. He shows that the Northern States could have met and actually did pay enough during the civil war to meet all the expenses of the war without contracting a cent of debt, and consequently the two or three thousand millions of dollars' debt actually contracted was solely due to our national financiers. There never was any need of resorting to any thing more than temporary national loans if the government had had in the beginning the wisdom or the courage, or indeed the confidence in the people, to adopt the scale of taxation subsequently adopted. There never was any need of compelling the banks to suspend specie payments, or for it to issue legal-tender notes, but what was created by its own blunders. The people could have paid as they went for the war, and been richer at its close than at its beginning.

As if creating paper money for all purposes except customs dues, demeritizing gold and silver, depreciating the currency, and enormously inflating the prices of all commodities, was not enough, it[572] must needs create the national banks, and make them a free gift of $300,000,000 of circulation, and that without the least relief to the government, but to its great embarrassment, still more inflating the currency, and running up gold to a premium of 285. Even since the war it continues its blunders, and does all in its power to increase the burdens of the people. It seems from the first to have proceeded on the principle of securing the support of the people by enabling individuals to amass huge fortunes at the public expense. Why, if it must have national banks, need it make them banks of circulation? Why not compel them to bank on its own legal tenders instead of their own notes, and thus save to itself the profits on $300,000,000 of circulation? It would have run no risk it does not now run; for the treasury is responsible for the redemption of the notes of the national banks, and the security it holds from them would be perfectly illusory in any monetary crisis. But we have no room to proceed. We, however, recommend this part of the work to the serious consideration of our national financiers. There are in political economy deeper problems than Professor Bowen has grasped; but upon the whole, he has given us the most sensible work on the subject that we are acquainted with.

The Day Sanctified. Being Meditations and Spiritual Readings for daily use. London: Burns, Oates & Co. 1870. Pp. 318. For sale by the Catholic Publication Society, 9 Warren Street, New York.

This volume consists of a series of meditations drawn from the Holy Scripture and modern spiritual writers. It is not, however, a book containing meditations for the entire year, as one would be led to imagine from its title. The number of meditations is only ninety. So it is supposed—and the plan is a good one—that the subjects will be selected according to each one's devotion. A word may very fitly be said in praise of the composition of these spiritual readings. They appear to be really addressed to the reader. Moreover, they contain no foolish exaggerations. These two merits are not unfrequently wanting in books of meditations. The present volume relates to the duties and doctrines of our holy faith. Another series is promised, which will contain suitable meditations for the ecclesiastical year, and the feasts of the Blessed Virgin and the saints.

Cæsar's Commentaries on the Gallic War. With Notes, Dictionary, and Map. By Albert Harkness, LL.D., Professor in Brown University. New York: D. Appleton & Co.

This edition of Cæsar's Commentaries is altogether the best we remember to have seen. Besides the advantage of a copious and accurate dictionary, the notes are ample without being extravagant. There is an introductory sketch of the great Roman's life, which is interesting, and the map of Gaul is excellent.

Reflections and Prayers for Holy Communion. London: Burns, Oates & Co. 1869. Pp. 498. New York: For sale by the Catholic Publication Society, 9 Warren Street.

When Archbishop Manning says that "this volume is a valuable addition to our books of devotion," it needs no further recommendation. But, in addition to his opinion, it comes to us sanctioned by the approbation of the Archbishop of Lyons, and the Bishops of Aix, Nancy, and Redez. Still, we will not forbear to give it our mite of praise. The book abounds in beautiful methods of learning to love Jesus in his sacrament of love. Yet the meditations are not merely beautiful, they are also very practical. In our reading, we have never met so touching and so useful a thanksgiving, after communion, as the exercise which, in this volume, is called "The Hem of our Lord's Garment." If good use is made of the suggestions and reflections in these pages, they will certainly[573] accomplish their author's intention of "gently drawing the soul entirely to our Lord."

A Treatise on the Christian Doctrine of Marriage. By Hugh Davey Evans, LL.D. With a Biographical Sketch of the Author, etc. New York: Hurd & Houghton. 1870.

Dr. Evans was a friend of ours in days long gone by, and we used frequently to contribute articles to the magazine which he edited, one of which, entitled "Dissent and Semi-Dissent," has been incorrectly attributed to him by his biographer. We have always cherished a sentiment of respect for the quaint and learned old gentleman, whose portrait has been drawn in the brief biographical sketch prefixed to this volume with singular fidelity and accuracy. Dr. Evans was a regular old-fashioned High-Churchman, after the model of Hooker and Wilson, and consequently imbued with many soundly Catholic principles and sentiments, mixed up with many other incongruous English and Protestant prejudices. In the work before us, he has with masterly learning and ability defended the Christian doctrine of marriage in a manner which is in the greater number of essential respects sound and satisfactory. Unfortunately, having only his own individual judgment as his tribunal of last resort in defining Catholic doctrine, instead of councils and popes, he has sanctioned one most fatal error, the lawfulness of divorces a vinculo, and subsequent remarriage, in the case of adultery on the part of the wife. We are glad to see that his editor dissents from him in this respect, and has republished the admirable little treatise of Bishop Andrews sustaining the opposite side of the question. It is a wonder that any person can fail to see how utterly worthless is any pretended church authority which leaves such an essential matter as this open to dispute. We are glad to see works circulated among Protestants which advocate any sound principles on this subject, even though they are incomplete. They have much more influence than the works of Catholic authors; they form a "serviceable breakwater" to the inflowing tide of corruption, and prepare the way for the eventual triumph of the Catholic doctrine and law, which alone can save society from dissolution. The Atlantic Monthly, which is the favorite magazine of a very large class of the most highly cultivated minds in New England and in other portions of the United States, has descended to the lowest level of the free-love doctrine, and thus fixed on itself the seal of that condemnation which it has been earning for a long time past, as the most dangerous and corrupting of all our literary periodicals. We hope that it will be banished hereafter from every Catholic family, and receive no more commendatory notices from the Catholic press. We are glad to see the strong and manly refutation of its immoral nonsense given by The Nation, although its argument fails of the sanction which is alone sufficient to compel assent, and efficiently control legislation and public opinion in a matter where so severe a curb is placed on passion and liberty to follow the individual will. We are happy to welcome such sensible and valuable aid to the cause of social morality as that given by The Nation, but we must disown entirely another champion of monogamy, to wit, the Methodist preacher, Dr. Newman, as more dangerous than an open antagonist. We see that this conspicuous declaimer intends to maintain in a public discussion, to be held in the Mormon temple, the irreligious and scandalous thesis that the holy patriarchs of the old law who practised polygamy were adulterers and sinners against the divine law. This is quite consistent with Luther's immoral doctrine that men totally depraved and steeped in deadly sin can be friends of God through a legal fiction of imputed righteousness; but it is equally shocking to piety and common sense, and as completely subversive of Christianity as the superstitious imposture of Joe Smith. We predict an easy victory of Brigham Young over Dr. Newman. Dr. Evans, as corrected by his editor and Bishop Andrews, advocates the sound Christian doctrine of marriage, and the circulation[574] of his work must therefore have a most beneficial influence.

Criminal Abortion; its Extent and Prevention. Read before the Philadelphia County Medical Society, February 9th, 1870, by the retiring President, Andrew Nebinger, M.D. Published by order of the Society. Philadelphia: Collins. 1870.

This exhaustive essay, read before the Philadelphia County Medical Society, by its able president, Dr. Nebinger, will, we trust, have a great influence toward remedying the present loose domestic morals of our country. We suppose the exposé here made had much weight with the Pennsylvania Legislature, which has recently passed a bill making it a penal offence for any one to advertise the vile nostrums which are now exposed for sale in our drug-stores with such unblushing effrontery.

Recent statistics, published by Dr. Storer and others, prove the fearful prevalence of the crime of fœticide among the native population; and the next census will no doubt show an absolute decrease of that class in the New England States. We hope when thus placed officially before the eyes of the Protestant clergy, they will awaken to the necessity of at least informing their congregations of the enormity of this sin; so that the plea of ignorance, now urged to extenuate their guilt, can no longer be used.

Physiology has definitely settled that vitality begins from the moment of conception. Theology pronounces the destruction of human life to be murder, and consequently the Catholic Church impresses in every possible way upon her children the fearful retribution that will be visited upon those who in any way tamper with the helpless unborn. We commend the paper to the careful perusal of our medical readers.

Conferences of the Rev. Pere Lacordaire. Delivered in the Cathedral of Nôtre Dame, in Paris. Translated from the French by Henry Langdon. New York: P. O'Shea, 27 Barclay street. 1870.

Mr. O'Shea deserves our thanks and those of the entire body of educated Catholics in the United States for his republication of this great work. F. Lacordaire was a genius, a great writer and a great orator; one of those shining and burning minds that enlighten and enkindle thousands of other minds during and after their earthly course. In the graces of writing and eloquence, he far surpassed that other popular preacher at Nôtre Dame who has proved to be but an ignis fatuus. In originality of thought, intellectual gifts, and sound learning, he was eminent among his compeers. Better than all, he was a holy man, a true monk, an imitator of the severe penance of the saints, and a devoted, obedient son of the Holy Roman Church.

His conferences are well adapted both to instruct the minds and to charm the imaginations of those who desire to find the solid substance of sound doctrine under the most graceful, brilliant, and attractive form. We recommend them especially to young men, and hope they will have a wide circulation.

The translation, however, we regret to say, though expressing the ideas of the author, is very defective in a literary point of view.

A Noble Lady. By Mrs. Augustus Craven. Translated, at the author's request, by Emily Bowles. London: Burns, Oates & Co. 1869. Pp. 148. For sale by the Catholic Publication Society, 9 Warren Street, New York.

Both the author and translator of this volume are favorably known to our readers. Their reputation will be much increased by this pleasing biography. Our "Noble Lady" is Adelaide Capece Minutolo, an Italian of rank. Accomplished, refined, and devout, she is a perfect picture of the Christian lady. Her life presents nothing extraordinary. She did not become a nun. She never married. Yet she was very beautiful, and could have married suitably to her station.[575] She preferred the love and companionship of a younger sister to the uncertainty of marriage and the keener joys and splendors of the world. Early in life these sisters mutually resolved to seek nothing further than to live together; nor did either ever feel a regret, or doubt the wisdom of their choice, till, at the end of eight and twenty years, death dissolved their union. It is only in Italy that religion, art, and literary pursuits have met together, inspired, as it were, by the most glorious scenery, and where man's soul and heart, the understanding and the eye, are completely satisfied. Perhaps it is only the daughters of Italy who unite great simplicity, wonderful sweetness, and charming tenderness to heroic courage and capacity for such studies as usually are interesting only to men. Such was the character of the Noble Lady. No person of refinement can read this book, without repeating the touching exclamation of a poor Neapolitan woman, who, while she was praying by her coffin, was heard to exclaim, "Go, then, go to thy home, thou beautiful bit of Paradise!"

Pilgrimages in the Pyrenees and Landes. By Denys Shyne Lawlor, Esq. London: Longmans, Green & Co. 1870.

It is indeed seldom than one will meet with a more charming and interesting book than this. It contains accounts of visits made by the author to various sanctuaries of the Blessed Virgin in that favored region in the south of France which she seems to love so much; the most recent proof of this being her apparition at the Grotto of Lourdes, to the description of which a considerable part of the work is devoted. The account is hardly if at all inferior, except in its necessary brevity, to that of M. Henri Lasserre on the same subject, and contains some additional events which have recently occurred, such as the cure of the celebrated Father Hermann. Besides the description and history of the sanctuaries, the lives of several of the saints which this region has produced are given, and an account of their shrines; among these is one of St. Vincent of Paul. The book would be well worth reading for the pictures which are given of the magnificent scenery of the Pyrenean valleys; and its appearance and type are so beautiful that they would make even indifferent matter attractive.

Felter's Arithmetics—Natural Series: First Lessons in Numbers; Primary Arithmetic; Intellectual Arithmetic; Intermediate Arithmetic; Grammar-School Arithmetic. By S. A. Felter, A.M. New York: Charles Scribner & Co.

A sketch of the science of numbers through its various progressive stages to its present almost perfect development would be of much interest, but our limited space forbids us entering upon it. Of the many series now before the public, much can be said by way of commendation; we think, however, that Felter's, while in nowise inferior to the best, has some peculiar features which give it a decided superiority. Of these may be mentioned the very large number of examples given under each rule, and the test questions for examination which are found at the close of each section. These cannot fail to secure to the pupil a thorough understanding of his subject before he leaves it. We also note with pleasure the entire absence of answers from the text-books intended for use by the pupils. A high-school arithmetic now in course of preparation will soon be added to the series, and will then form a curriculum of arithmetical instruction at once gradually progressive, and hence simple, thoroughly practical, and complete. The author has evidently a full knowledge of the needs of both pupil and teacher, and has admirably succeeded in supplying their respective deficiencies.

The Life of St. Stanislas Kostka. Edited by Edward Healy Thompson. Philadelphia: P. F. Cunningham. 1870.

Mr. Thompson's lives of various saints are well written, both as regards their completeness and accuracy of detail and their literary style. This is much the best life of the lovely, angelic patron of novices we have ever read. Is it necessary to inform any Catholic reader of the exquisite beauty of the character and life of this noble Polish youth? We hope not. This volume presents a life-like portrait of it, which must rekindle the devotion already so widely-spread and fervent toward one who seems like a reproduction of the type of youthful sanctity which would have been seen in the sons of Adam, if their father had never sinned. Every father and mother ought to make it a point to have this book read by their children, that they may fall in love with virtue and piety, embodied in the winning, lovely form of Stanislas Kostka.

Album of the Fourteen Stations of the Cross in St. Francis Xavier's Church. New York: P. O'Shea, 27 Barclay street.

These photographs of the stations are very well executed. They are gotten up, as we imagine, for private chapels and oratories. Indeed, they would be suitable for any room which is set apart for quiet reading or devout exercises. These pictures are somewhat larger than a carte-de-visite, and they are printed in such a way that they may be readily hung upon the wall.

Fasciculus Rerum, etc. Auctore Henricus Formby. Londini: Burns, Oates, Socii Bibliopolæ.

This is an ably-written pamphlet, containing what appears to us a singularly happy and valuable suggestion. The author's intention is concisely expressed on his title-page, namely, that "the best arts of our modern civilization" be called into the service of God for once, (as they are daily done into that of Satan,) to furnish a "life of our Lord Jesus Christ" for all the nations of Christendom, a work which shall be for three chief ends: "first, as a symbol of the true unity of all peoples in the church; secondly, as a beautiful memorial of the Œcumenical Council of the Vatican; and thirdly, as a very sweet solace and ornament for the daily life of all Christians."

The arts in question are typography, engraving, and photography; the last to be used for furnishing views of the various spots and regions throughout Palestine hallowed by the steps of Jesus Christ; and this would necessitate a committee of competent men being sent to explore the Holy Land.

The expense of the entire undertaking is to be defrayed by public subscription and the patronage of the rich, and, of course, it is for the holy father to inaugurate and supervise the matter. Wherefore the author humbly submits his pamphlet to the consideration of the holy see and the council.

For ourselves, we repeat our belief that such a work as this projected life of Christ would indeed be an inestimable boon to Christendom. Father Formby's hopes appear to us not at all too sanguine; and he has our cordial wish that the holy see may be pleased to take up the work he so ably advocates.

Mr. P. O'Shea, New York, has in press the following books: Attributes of Christ, by Father Gasparini; Lacordaire's Conferences on Jesus Christ; The Malediction, a tale, by Madame A. K. De La Grange.

MR. FROUDE'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND.[177]
SECOND ARTICLE.

In our first article [178] we referred in general terms to the fact that Mr. Froude had plunged into a great historical subject without the requisite knowledge or the necessary preparation. This judgment was presumed to be so well established by the concurrent testimony of the most opposite schools of criticism, both English and French, that it was not thought necessary to cite examples from his pages. In that notice we merely undertook to state the general results of criticism as to Mr. Froude's first six volumes, reserving particular examination for the latter half of the work, with special reference to his treatment of Mary Stuart.

Since, however, it has been said that we charge the historian with shortcomings, and give no instances in support, we will, before proceeding further, satisfy this objection. This could be most easily and profusely done by going into his treatment of questions of the contemporary history of foreign countries, or of general history preceding the sixteenth century, in both of which Mr. Froude is deplorably weak. But we prefer a more decisive test, one that leaves the historian without excuse, and will, therefore, not only confine it to English history, but to English history of the period of Elizabeth, with which, according to his late plaintive appeal to the Pall Mall Gazette, Mr. Froude has labored so diligently and is so entirely familiar.

And the test proposed illustrates not only his imperfect mastery of his own selected period of English history, but his total unconsciousness of the existence of one of the most peculiar laws of England in force for centuries before and after that period. A clever British reviewer, in expressing his surprise at our historian's multifarious ignorance concerning the civil and criminal jurisprudence of his country, says that it is difficult to believe that Mr. Froude has ever seen the face of an English justice; and the reproach is well merited. Nevertheless we do not look for the accuracy of a Lingard or a Macaulay in[578] an imaginative writer like Mr. Froude, and might excuse numerous slips and blunders as to law pleadings and the forms of criminal trials—nay, even as to musty old statutes and conflicting legislative enactments, (as, for instance, when he puts on an air of critical severity (vol. ix. p. 38) as to the allowance of a delay of fifteen days in Bothwell's trial, claiming, in his defective knowledge of the Scotch law, that it should have been forty days;) but when we find his mind a total blank as to the very existence of one of the most peculiar and salient features of English law, we must insist that such ignorance in one who sets up for an English historian is far from creditable.

Here is the case. During the reign of Elizabeth, one Thomas Cobham, like unto many other good English Protestants, was "roving the seas, half-pirate, half knight-errant of the Reformation, doing battle on his own account with the enemies of the truth, wherever the service of God was likely to be repaid with plunder." (Froude, vol. viii. p. 459.) He took a Spanish vessel, (England and Spain being at peace,) with a cargo valued at eighty thousand ducats, killing many on board. After all resistance had ceased, he "sewed up the captain and the survivors of the crew in their own sails, and flung them overboard." Even in England this performance of Cobham was looked upon as somewhat irregular, and at the indignant requisition of Spain, he was tried in London for piracy. De Silva, the Spanish ambassador at the court of Elizabeth, wrote home an account of the trial. We now quote Mr. Froude, who being—as a learned English historian should be—perfectly familiar with the legal institutions of his country, and knowing full well that the punishment described by De Silva was never inflicted in England, is naturally shocked at the ignorance of this foreigner, and thus presents and comments upon his letter.

It would not be easy to state the case in fewer words and more accurately than De Silva here puts it. Cobham was called upon to answer in the usual form, and "answering nothing" or "standing mute," "was condemned," etc. A definition of the offence and a description of its punishment by the well-known peine forte et dure were thus clearly presented; but even then Mr. Froude fails to recognize an offence and its penalty, perfectly familiar to any student who has ever read Blackstone or Bailey's Law Dictionary, and makes this astounding comment on De Silva's letter:

This unfortunate performance of Mr. Froude was received by critics with mirthful surprise, and, as a consequence, although the passages we have cited may be found, as we have indicated, in the London edition of 1863, they need not be looked for in later editions. On the contrary,[579] we now learn from Mr. Froude (Scribner edition of 1870, vol viii. p. 461) that "Cobham refused to plead to his indictment, and the dreadful sentence was passed upon him of the peine forte et dure;" and thereto is appended an erudite note for the instruction of persons supposed to be unacquainted with English law, explaining the matter, and citing Blackstone, "book iv. chap. 25."

But, possibly it may be suggested, this dreadful punishment was rarely inflicted, and that fact may serve to excuse Mr. Froude? Not at all. Other instances of the peine forte et dure occurred in this very reign of Elizabeth, with whose history Mr. Froude is so very familiar. Here is one which inspires us with a feeling of compassion for the much-abused Spanish Inquisition, and proportionately increases our admiration of the "glorious Reformation."

Margaret Middleton, the wife of one Clitheroe, a rich citizen of York, was prosecuted for having harbored a priest in quality of a schoolmaster. At the bar (March 25th, 1586) she refused to plead guilty, because she knew that no sufficient proof could be brought against her; and she would not plead "not guilty," because she considered such a plea equivalent to a falsehood. The peine forte et dure was immediately ordered.

This question of the peine forte et dure naturally brings us to the consideration of a kindred subject most singularly treated in Mr. Froude's pages. If the constant use of

TORTURE AND THE RACK

had been a feature of Mary Stuart's reign, and not, as it was, the daily expedient of Elizabeth and Cecil, what bursts of indignant eloquence should we not have been favored with by our historian, and what admirable illustrations would it not have furnished him as to the brutalizing tendencies of Catholicity and the superior humanity and enlightenment of Protestantism? Nothing so clearly shows the government of Elizabeth to have been a despotism as her constant employment of torture. Every time she or Cecil sent a prisoner to the rack—and they sent hundreds—they trampled the laws of England under foot. These laws, it is true, sometimes authorized painful ordeals and severe punishments, but the rack never. Torture was never legally authorized in England. But the trickling blood, the agonized cries, the crackling bones, the "strained limbs and quivering muscles" (Froude vol. vi. p. 294) of martyred Catholics make these Tudor practices lovely in Mr. Froude's eyes, and he philosophically remarks, "The method of inquiry, however inconsonant with modern conceptions of justice, was adapted excellently for the[580] outrooting of the truth." (Vol. vii. p. 293)

We can hardly believe that any other man of modern enlightenment could possibly entertain such opinions. They are simply amazing in their cold-blooded and crude ignorance. Torture is not only "inconsonant" with modern conceptions of justice, but also with ancient; for it is condemned even by the sages of the law which authorized it. If Mr. Froude had any knowledge of the civil law, he might have learned something of this matter from the Digests, (Liber xviii. tit. 18.) The passage is too long to cite, but one sentence alone tells us in a few words of the fallacy, danger, and decaption of the use of torture: "Etenim res est fragilis et periculosa, et quæ veritatem fallat."

So much for ancient opinion. And modern justice has rejected the horrible thing, not only on the ground of morality, but because it has been demonstrated to be a promoter of perjury and the worst possible means of "outrooting" the truth.

To return: the case of Cobham is not the only one in which Mr. Froude has prudently profited by criticism, and hastened, in a new edition of his work, to repair his blunder. Even a slight comparison of his first with his last edition will show him to be under deep obligations to his critics, and it would be wise in him to seek to increase his debt of gratitude by fresh corrections.

THE CHATELAR STORY

is told by Mr. Froude in his characteristic way, and, while acquitting Mary Stuart of blame, "she had probably nothing worse to accuse herself of than thoughtlessness," (vol. vii. p. 506,) manages to leave a stain upon her character. He prefaces the story with the statement that "she was selfish in her politics and sensual in her passions." Serious historians generally use language with some reference to its value; but one epithet costs Mr. Froude no more effort than another, although there is not a shadow of pretext thus far in his own version of Mary's history to justify so foul an outrage as the use here of this word "sensual." We pass on. Chatelar was a young Huguenot gentleman, a nephew of the noble Bayard, gifted and highly accomplished. He had accompanied his patron D'Amville to Scotland, and returned with him to France. D'Amville was a suitor for Mary's hand, and, after some time, dispatched Chatelar to Scotland with missives for the queen. Randolph was present when Chatelar arrived, and describes D'Amville's letter as of "three whole sheets of paper." Yet Mr. Froude, perfectly aware of all this, writes,

The remainder is of a piece with this. Supernaturally penetrating in reading Mary Stuart's most hidden thoughts, Mr. Froude is blind to the vulgar envy of the parvenu Randolph, who, writing to Cecil, (Froude, vol. vii. p. 505, note,) has the mendacious impudence to speak of Chatelar as "so unworthy a creature and abject a varlet."

Of the rules that govern the admission of evidence in ordinary courts of law, Mr. Froude does not appear to have any knowledge, and at every page he manifests a total unconsciousness of the most rudimentary test to be applied to the testimony of a witness in or out of court. It is to see whether the witness has not some powerful motive to praise or to blame. Thus, when he desires to establish a high character for "the stainless Murray," he gives us the testimony of—his[581] employers Elizabeth and Cecil! In telling us what Mary Stuart was, he most freely uses the hired pamphleteer Buchanan, although ashamed—as well he may be—to name his authority.[179] So also in the case before us, although the mean envy excited in Randolph by the accomplished and nobly-born young Frenchman is perfectly clear, Mr. Froude gives us the English envoy's dispatches as testimony not to be questioned.

MARY STUART AND JOHN KNOX.

An interview between the queen and Knox in December, 1562, in which Mr. Froude describes Knox's rudeness as "sound northern courtesy," (vol. vii. p. 543,) is passed over by him with commendable rapidity. And of yet another interview he says not a word.

Under the statute of 1560 proceedings were taken in 1563 against Mary in the west of Scotland for celebrating mass.

The wilds of Ayrshire, in later years the resort of persecuted Presbyterians, were the resort of persecuted Catholics. "On the bleak moorlands or beneath the shelter of some friendly roof," says Mr. Hosack,[180] "they worshipped in secret according to the faith of their fathers." Zealous reformers waited not for form of law to attack and disperse the "idolaters," when they found them thus engaged. Mary remonstrated with Knox against these lawless proceedings, and argued for freedom of worship, or, as Knox himself states it, "no to pitt haunds to punish ony man for using himsel in his religion as he pleases." But the Scotch reformer applauded the outrage, and even asserted that private individuals might even "slay with their own hands idolaters and enemies of the true religion," quoting Scripture to prove his assertions.[181] Shortly afterward forty-eight Catholics were arraigned before the high court of justiciary for celebrating mass, and punished by imprisonment.

At page 384 (vol. vii.) we are told by Mr. Froude that the Protestant mob drove the priest from the altar, (royal chapel,) "with broken head and bloody ears," and at page 418 that "the measure of virtue in the Scotch ministers was the audacity with which they would reproach the queen." "Maitland protested that theirs was not language for subjects to use to their sovereign," and there really appears to be something in the suggestion; but Mr. Froude is of the opinion that "essentially, after all, Knox was right," clinching it, with—"He suspected that Mary Stuart meant mischief to the reformation, and she did mean mischief." And this is the key to Mr. Froude's main argument throughout this history. Whoever and whatever favors the reformation is essentially good, whoever and whatever opposes it is essentially vile. And the end, (the reformation) justifies the means.

Far be it from us to gainsay the perfect propriety of an occasional supply of sacerdotal broken heads and bloody ears, if a Protestant mob sees fit to fancy such an amusement; or to question the measure of virtue in the Scotch ministers; or to approve of the absurd protest of Maitland; or, least of all, not swiftly to recognize that "essentially" Knox was [582]right. Not we indeed! But then we really must be excused for venturing to suggest—merely to suggest, that, in the first place, if we assume such a line of argument, we deprive ourselves of weapons wherewith to assail the cruelties of such men as Alva and Philip of Spain. Surely, the right does not essentially go with the power to persecute! And in the second place—that this was rather rough treatment for a young and inexperienced girl, against whom thus far nothing has been shown. But here Mr. Froude meets us with "Harlot of Babylon," and we are again silenced.

Maitland absurdly hinted to Knox that if he had a grievance he should complain of it modestly, and was very properly hooted at by Knox in reply. And thereupon comes a fine passage from Mr. Froude, admirably exemplifying his psychological treatment of history. (Vol. vii. p. 419.)

We do not know how this may affect other people, but "air-drawn crowns" did the business for us, and we proceed to make it the text for A LESSON IN HISTORICAL WRITING.

Mr. Froude may or may not have transferred the contempt and hatred of France of the sixteenth century, which throughout his book he loses no opportunity of manifesting, to France of the nineteenth century; but we venture to suggest to him that he may find in France models and principles of historical treatment which he might study with signal profit. Specially would we commend to his lection and serious perpension the following pithy passage from the very latest published volume of French history. We refer to Lanfrey's Histoire de Napoleon I. The author describes the meeting of Napoleon and Alexander at Tilsit, and, referring to the absurd attempt made by some writers to explain the motives which actuated the French and Russian emperors at their private interview on the Niemen, makes this sensible reflection:

"Il est toujours dangereux et souvent puéril de vouloir interpréter les sentiments secrets des personnages historiques."[182] (Lanfrey, vol. iv. p. 403. Paris, 1870.) Mr. Froude's attention to this teaching would rapidly suppress "air-drawn crowns" and such like stage properties, so freely used by him for dramatic effect.

SOME OMISSIONS.

Mr. Froude appears to have no knowledge of the important proceedings at Mary's first Parliament, May, 1563, when the corpse of the late Earl of Huntly, kept for the purpose since the previous October, was brought in for attainder. Forfeiture was declared mainly for Murray's benefit, and at the same time the forfeitures of the Earl of Sutherland (the evidence against him being forgeries) and eleven barons of the house of Gordon were passed. In vain the Countesses of Huntly and Sutherland endeavored to petition the queen; they were, by Murray's intervention, denied access to her. Nor does our historian appear to have heard of the circumstances attending Murray's surreptitious procuring of the queen's signature to the death-warrant of young Huntly. It is a most interesting episode, but we have not room for it. Some three weeks later, we find a curious letter of Randolph to [583]Cecil, which need not be sought for in Froude. It is important as showing the peculiar esteem in which Murray was held at the court of —— Elizabeth. A packet addressed to Queen Mary had been stopped and opened by the English officials at Newcastle. Mary, not recognizing her position as the vassal of Elizabeth, complained of it to Randolph. Whereupon Randolph writes to Cecil, (June, 1563,) advising, "If any suspected letters be taken, not to open them, but to send them to my Lord of Moray, of whose services the Queen of England is sure." And good reason there was to be sure; for all the world, except Mr. Froude, knows that the "stainless," from first to last, was the bribed and pensioned agent of Elizabeth.

KNOX AND THE COUNCIL.

Here again Mary seems to fall away from the high standard of "consummate actress;" but, on the other hand, Mr. Froude is fully up to his own standard of consummate historian; for the passage is clever, even for him. Here is what it all means: Cranston and Armstrong, two members of Knox's congregation who were afterward among the murderers of Riccio, had been arrested and thrown into prison for raising a riot in the chapel royal at Holyrood, to prevent service there. And why should they not? A Catholic queen had no rights which her Protestant subjects were bound to respect. Knox thereupon sent a circular throughout Scotland convening his brethren to meet in Edinburgh on a certain day—in other words, to excite tumult and inaugurate civil war. Let Randolph, Mr. Froude's favorite authority, tell the rest.

Murray and Maitland sent for Knox and remonstrated with him. But Knox showed no respect for either of them. Nothing came of the interview, and they had him summoned before the queen and her privy council. Seriously ill as she was, she attended. Now compare these facts with Mr. Froude's statement above, (vol. vii. p. 549,) and see if it is possible to crowd into three lines more misrepresentation and malevolence. Note quarrelled. Mary knew nothing of the affair until after the action of the lords and the attempt of Murray and Maitland to persuade Knox. Mr. Froude says Mary attempted to imprison him, and the lords interfered. "Anger and disappointment made her ill." Now, this Knox affair occurred while Randolph was waiting to have audience of Mary, but was delayed on account of her illness. To return to the council. Knox's seditious letter was produced. He boldly avowed it, and significantly observed, referring to certain reported practices of Murray and Maitland, that "no forgeries had been interpolated in the spaces he had left blank." A week after this event, Randolph describes Mary as still sick, although compelled to confer with her council.

MARY'S MARRIAGE.

All this time Mary has been waiting Elizabeth's good pleasure as to whom she shall marry. Elizabeth finally decided to bestow upon her Scottish sister her own lover Leicester, who "was, perhaps, the most worthless of[584] her subjects; but in the loving eyes of his mistress he was the knight sans peur et sans reproche; and she took a melancholy pride in offering her sister her choicest jewel." (Vol. viii. p. 74.) But Mr. Froude spoils the "melancholy pride" at the next page by telling us that Elizabeth "was so capable of falsehood that her own expressions would have been an insufficient guarantee for her sincerity."

Murray's opposition to Mary's marriage with Darnley was bitter. His ascendency in her councils had culminated in his proposition to have himself legitimated, and that the queen should lease the crown to him and Argyll. Mary's marriage to any one would end all such hopes, and Darnley, moreover, was personally obnoxious to Murray because he had been heard to say, looking at a map of Scotland, that Murray had "too much for a subject." Elizabeth's instructions precisely tallied with Murray's inclinations and interest. He withdrew from court, and would not attend the convention at Perth.

PLOT TO IMPRISON MARY.

And now comes the plot of Murray and his friends to seize Darnley and his father, (Lennox,) deliver them to Elizabeth's agents or slay them if they made resistance, and imprison the queen at Lochleven. In a note at page 178, vol. viii., Mr. Froude, with a sweet and touching melancholy, says, "A sad and singular horoscope had already been cast for Darnley." The magician of this horoscope was Randolph, who fears that "Darnley can have no long life amongst this people." Certainly not, if Mr. Randolph understands himself; for his letters of that period are full of the details of a plot to stir up an insurrection in Scotland, place Murray at the head of it, kill Darnley and his father, and imprison the queen at Lochleven. Elizabeth sent Murray £7000 for the nerve of the insurrection, and her letters to Bedford instructing him to furnish Murray with money and soldiers are in existence. The programme was at last carried out eighteen months later, when Darnley was killed and Mary a prisoner.

On the 30th of June, 1565, at ten in the morning, the queen, with a small retinue, was to ride from Perth to Callendar house, to be present at the baptism of a child of her friends Lord and Lady Livingstone. Murray's party were to take her prisoner at this time. The Earls of Rothes and Argyll, and the Duke of Chatelherault were to be stationed at three different points on her route with an overpowering force. Murray was to wait at Lochleven, which he had just provisioned and provided with artillery. As usual, he managed to have the overt act done by others.

All these arrangements were made in concert with Randolph and Cecil, and were so apparently perfect that success was considered certain. So sure was Cecil of it that an entry in his private diary of July 7th, runs, "that there was a rumor that the Scottish Queen should have been taken."

During the night of the 29th, a warning was conveyed to Mary of the plot. Instead of waiting until ten, the hour fixed for her departure, she was in the saddle at five in the morning, and safe at Callendar by eleven. It is very singular, but Mr. Froude seems never to have heard of this exciting ride, while the "stainless" Murray was keeping bootless watch and ward at Lochleven. We regret it exceedingly, if for no other reason than the loss of an animated picture in Mr. Froude's best style, running somewhat thus:

Upon this, Mr. Froude's cool comment is, "Both stories were probably true"! Yes, with the difference that the proof against Murray was overwhelming; for Mr. Froude admits that "Murray's offer to Randolph was sufficient evidence against himself," whereas there was none against Darnley. At page 182, Mr. Froude makes Mary "return from Perth to Edinburgh." This renders it quite clear that he has never heard of her hurried ride to Callendar.

QUESTION OF TOLERATION.

Randolph strangely finds fault with Mary for her toleration in religious matters. "Her will to continue papistry, and her desire to have all men live as they list, so offendeth the godly men's consciences, that it is continually feared that these matters will break out to some great mischief." And lo! the mischief did break out. The Assembly of the Kirk presented, under the singular garb of a "supplication," a remonstrance to the queen, in which they declared that "the practice of idolatry" could not be tolerated in the sovereign any more than in the subject, and that the "papistical and blasphemous mass" should be wholly abolished. To whom the queen:

"Nothing," remarks Mr. Hosack, "could exceed the savage rudeness of the language of the assembly; nothing could exceed the dignity and moderation of the queen's reply." Of all this, in Mr. Froude's pages, not one word! Indeed he at all times religiously keeps out of sight all Mary says or writes, admitting rarely a few words under prudent censorship and liberal expurgation. Sweetly comparing the assembly to "the children of Israel on their entrance into Canaan," he dissimulates their savage rudeness, and adds, almost pensively, that Murray, though he was present, "no longer raised his voice in opposition." Randolph fully confirms what Throckmorton reported four years before—that she neither desired to change her own religion nor to interfere with that of her subjects. Mary told Knox the same thing when she routed him, by his own admission, in profane history, and his own citations from the Old Testament. Where she obtained her familiarity with the Scriptures we cannot imagine, if Mr. Froude tells the truth about her "French education."[586] "A Catholic sovereign sincerely pleading to a Protestant assembly for liberty of conscience, might have been a lesson to the bigotry of mankind," (vol. viii. p. 182;) "but," adds Mr. Froude, "Mary Stuart was not sincere." When Mr. Froude says Mary Stuart is intolerant, we show him, by a standard universally recognized, her words and actions, all always consistent with each other and with themselves, that she was eminently tolerant and liberal. But when he gives us his personal and unsupported opinion that "she was not sincere," he passes beyond the bounds of historical argument into a realm where we cannot follow him.

Still greater than Mr. Froude's difficulty of quoting Mary at all, is his difficulty of quoting her correctly when he pretends to. Randolph comes to Mary with a dictatorial message from Elizabeth, that she shall not take up arms against the lords in insurrection. Mr. Froude calls it a request that she would do no injury to the Protestant lords, who were her good subjects. Mary replied, according to Froude, (vol. viii. p. 188,) "that Elizabeth might call them 'good subjects;' she had found them bad subjects, and as such she meant to treat them." Mary really said,

The truth is, Mary's unvarying, queenly dignity and womanly gentleness in all she speaks and writes is a source of profound unhappiness to Mr. Froude, refuting as it does his theory of her character. Consequently it is his aim to vulgarize it down to a standard in vogue elsewhere.

Mr. Froude is most felicitous when he disguises Mary, as he frequently does, with Elizabeth's tortuous drapery. Thus:

"Uncertain twilight" is pretty. But where were Mary's conspiracies? Had she Randolphs at Elizabeth's court, and Drurys on the border, plotting, intriguing, and bribing English noblemen? Had she two thirds of Elizabeth's council of state pensioned as paid spies? Had she salaried officials to pick up or invent English court scandal for her amusement? Truly it is refreshing to turn from Mary's twilight conspiracies to the honest and noble transactions of Elizabeth, Cecil, and Randolph. But of the malicious gossip of Elizabeth's spies one might not so much complain, if Mr. Froude had the fairness to give their reports without his embroidery of rhetoric and imagination. Thus, when Randolph writes, "There is a silly story afloat that the queen sometimes carries a pistol," Mr. Froude considers himself authorized by Randolph to say, "She carried pistols in hand and pistols at her saddle-bow;" and, as usual, reading her thoughts, goes on to tell us that "her one peculiar hope was to destroy her brother, against whom she bore an especial and unexplained animosity." The personal intimacy between Randolph and Murray more than sufficiently explains the source of the information given in Randolph's letter of Oct. 13th. (Vol. viii. p. 196.) Mr. Froude has a moment of weakness when he says that the intimacy between the queen and Riccio was so confidential as to provoke calumny. That any thing said of Mary Stuart could possibly be calumny is an admission for Mr. Froude[587] only less amazing than that "she was warm and true in her friendships." The queen's indignation against Murray is sufficiently accounted for by the existence of the calumnies, and the fact that Murray's treasons sent him at this time a fugitive to his mistress Elizabeth. A few pages further on, we have Mary riding "in steel bonnet and corselet, with a dagg at her saddle-bow," (vol. viii. p. 213,) for which Mr. Froude quotes Randolph. But Randolph wrote, "If what I have heard be true, she rode," etc., questionable hearsay where Mary Stuart is concerned, answering Mr. Froude's purpose somewhat better than fact.

Through Randolph, Elizabeth announced to Mary that one of the conditions on which she would consent to the Darnley marriage was, that "she must conform to the religion established by law." Upon this, the singular comment is, "It is interesting to observe how the current of the reformation had swept Elizabeth forward in spite of herself." (Vol. viii. p. 187.) Mary's answer was, she "would make no merchandise of her conscience."

MURRAY'S INSURRECTION.

At page 198, vol. viii., after the armed rebellion of Murray and his friends, popularly known in Scotland as "The Runabout Raid," we have Mary

It must be clear to every one how reprehensible Mary was for showing any feeling at all in defence of her crown, her liberty, and her life, and with Mr. Froude's premises and logic, Murray gave a signal proof of affection for his sister in arraying himself against her legitimate authority as the head of an insurrection. Mr. Froude can see, in the just indignation of the queen against domestic traitors in league, with a foreign power, nothing but the violence of a vengeful fury. His anxiety to possess his readers of the same view has brought him into a serious difficulty, which has been exposed by M. Wiesener in his Marie Stuart. At p. 211, vol. viii., Mr. Froude quotes a letter of Randolph to Cecil of Oct. 5th, "in Rolls House," by which he means Record Office, to show that Mary "was deaf to advice as she had been to menace," and "she said she would have no peace till she had Murray's or Chatelherault's head." This letter appears to be visible to nobody but Mr. Froude; and we have the authority of Mr. Joseph Stevenson, who is more at home among the MSS. of the Record Office than Mr. Froude, and who, when he uses them, has the merit of citing them in their integrity, for stating that this letter of the 5th October, referred to by Mr. Froude, is not in the Record Office.[183] But there is a letter there from Randolph to Cecil of the 4th October, in which Randolph represents Mary

This does not sound like "deaf to advice," and Mr. Froude can arrange this little difficulty with the dates and Mr. Stevenson at his leisure. Meantime, we all anxiously wait to hear from Mr. Froude where he found his authority for stating that Mary [588]said she would have no peace till she had Murray's or Chatelherault's head.

At page 205, vol. viii. the account given by Mauvissière of his interview with Mary is travestied by Mr. Froude. Mauvissière counselled her to make peace with the insurgents. Mary saw through the device; for it was the counsel of Catherine de' Medici, whose enmity to Mary was only surpassed by that of Elizabeth; and, although without advisers—for Murray was in rebellion, Morton had withdrawn himself, and Maitland was suspected—she rejected it instantly.

It is amusing to observe how the loyal attachment of the citizens and merchants of Edinburgh to Mary annoys Mr. Froude. During Mary's absence, the rebels swept into the city with a large force; but, notwithstanding the appeal of the kirk, the "Calvinist shop-keepers," as Mr. Froude witheringly styles them, would not lift a finger to aid them. We call it amusing, because Mr. Froude everywhere so undisguisedly manifests his strong personal sympathy that, as an historian, he becomes simply absurd.

Mary marched against the rebels with eighteen thousand men. As she approached, they fled into England, and the rebellion was over.

"The Queen of Scots, following in hot pursuit, glared across the frontier at her escaping prey." (Vol. viii. p. 214.) The amount of precise information in Mr. Froude's exclusive possession concerning the expression of Mary Stuart's eyes as something wonderful. Here her eyes "glare;" elsewhere, (vol. viii. p. 365,) there is an "odd glitter in her eyes," while at p. 161, they are "flashing pride and defiance."

It is this imaginative power and talent for pictorial embellishment which lend to Mr. Froude's work such peculiar attraction for the general reader. And to give expression to this natural appreciation, such testimonials as the following are seriously produced as evidences of the merit of the work.

"What a wonderful history it is!" says Mrs. Mulock Craik; "and wonderful indeed is it, with its vivid pictures of scenes and persons long passed away; its broad charity, its tender human sympathy, its ever present dignity, its outbursts of truest pathos."

All this is in keeping with the eternal fitness of things. This excellent lady, a somewhat successful writer of novels, really means what she says, and expresses herself in all sincerity. Her admiration is genuine. It is that of a pupil for her master, and she ingenuously admires one who has attained excellence in his art. We have not the slightest doubt that many will say with her, "What a wonderful history it is!"

IN THE GREENWOOD.

For three consecutive mornings of a certain month of May not far distant, Blanch and I had opened our diaries to write, "Wind E. N. E."

Every body knows what that means in Boston. It means chill and grayness and drizzle; it means melancholy-shining sidewalks and puddles à surprise just where the foot is most confidingly planted; it means water dripping over gutters, flowing frothily from spouts, and squishing from shoes of poor folks at every step they take; it means draggled skirts, and cross looks, and influenza, and bronchitis, and a disposition to believe in the total depravity of inanimate things.

Yes; but also it means an effervescence of spirit in those rare souls, like incarnate sunshine, kindred in some sort of "Epictetus, a slave, maimed in body, an Irus in poverty, and favored by the immortals."

On the first day, Blanch and I glanced approvingly skyward, and said, "A fine rain!" then went about that inevitable clearing out of drawers and closets and reading of old letters, which a rainy day suggests to the feminine mind.

On the second morning, we donned water-proofs and over-shoes, and boldly sallied forth, coming in later breathless, glowing, drenched, and with our hair curled up into kinks. Then, subsiding a little, we drew down the crimson curtains, lighted a fire, lighted the gas, and, shutting ourselves into that rosy cloister, read till we were sleepy.

But sometimes water looks a great deal wetter than it does at other times; and on the third morning it looked very wet indeed. The damp, easterly gloom entered between our eyelids and penetrated to our souls. We struck our colors. Like the Sybarite who got a pain in his back from seeing some men at work in the field, we shivered in sympathy with every passing wretch.

That prince of blunderers, Sir Boyle Roche, used to say that the best way to avoid danger is to meet it plumb. Acting on that principle, Blanch and I took each a chair and a window, and, seating ourselves, stared silently in the face of the enemy.

"Blanch," said I, brightening, "let's go on a lark down to Maine, to the northern part of Hancock County, to a place I know."

Blanch turned her small, white face toward me, gave me a reproachful glance out of her pale-blue eyes, then drew her shawl closer about her throat, and resumed her gaze in the face of out-doors.

I waited a moment, then pursued, "Rain in town and rain in the country are two reigns, as the histories say. Lilies shrugging up their white shoulders, and roses shaking their pink faces to get rid of the drops; trees lucent green jewels in every leaf; birds laughing and scolding at the same[590] time, casting bright little jokes from leafy covert to covert; brooks foaming through their channels like champagne out of bottles—"

"Never compare a greater thing to a less," interrupted Blanch, severe and rhetorical.

"At this time the apple-trees are pink clouds of incense, and the cherry-trees are white clouds of incense, the maples are on fire; there are fresh light-green sprouts on the dark-green spruces; the flaky boughs of the cedars have put forth pale, spicy buds; and the silver birches glimmer under hovering mists of green. Deer are stealing out of the woods to browse in the openings, and gray rabbits hop across the long, still road, (there is but one road.) The May-flowers are about gone; but dandelions, "spring's largess," are everywhere. Here and there is a clearing, over which the surrounding wildness has thrown a gentle savagery, like lichen over rocks. The people (there are two) live in a log house. They never get a newspaper till it is weeks old, perhaps not so soon, and they know nothing of fashion. If we should appear to them now with our skirts slinking in at the ankles, and puffing out at the waist, with chignons on our heads and hats on our noses, they would run into the house and button the doors. Every thing there is peaceful. Rumors of oppression, fraud, and war reach them not. I should not be surprised if that were one of the places where they still vote for General Jackson. Their most frequent visitors are bears, and wolves, and snappish little yellow foxes. In short, you have no idea how delightful the place is."

"I am not like the Queen of Sheba," says Blanch. "Though the half had not been told me, my imagination would have out-built and out-hung and out-shone Solomon in all his glory. Who are these people?"

"Mr. Thomas and Mrs. Sally Smith. Sally lived with my mother as help when I was a little girl. On my tenth birthday, she gave me my first smelling-bottle, purple glass with a silver-washed screw-top. The season was July, and the day very warm. After holding my precious present in my hand awhile, I opened it, and, in the innocence of my heart, took a deliberate snuff. The result beggars description. When I became capable of thought, I believed that the top of my head had been blown off. You remember in the Arabian Nights the bottle out of which, when it was unstopped, a demon escaped? Well, that was the same bottle. Sally used to boil molasses candy for me; and she has braided my hair and boxed my ears many a time. But mother didn't allow her to box my ears. Thomas lived in our town, and tried to support himself and make a fortune by keeping a market, but with slight success. He was always behindhand, and never got the dinner home till the cook was at the point of distraction. They called him the late Mr. Smith. By and by he and Sally got married, after a courtship something like that of Barkis and Pegotty, and went into the woods to live. My mother made and gave Sally her wedding-cake, one large loaf and four smaller ones. The large one would have been larger if my brother Dick and I hadn't got at it before it was baked and ate ever so much. Did you ever eat raw cake? It is real good. I paid Sally a visit long ago, and she made me promise to come again."

"To pack my trunks for a visit to[591] Sally Smith," answered Blanch from the doorway.

Resistance was useless. Blanch is one of those gentle, yielding creatures who always have their own way. And I love to be tyrannized over. I followed her up-stairs, repeating ruefully,

That very evening a letter was mailed to Sally Smith, announcing our coming; and in less than a week we started, lingering over the first part of our journey, that due preparation might be made for our entertainment. The last day and a half were to be an allegro movement.

The drive from Bucksport to Ellsworth was delightful; not the beginning of it, where twelve persons were crowded into a nine-passenger coach; where Blanch, looking like a wilted flower, sat wedged between two large, determined women; where my neighbor was a restless man who was constantly trying to get something out of the coat-pocket next me; and an aesthetic man, who insisted on looking past my nose at the prospect; and a tobacco-chewing man, as his breath in my face fully testified: all this was not delightful. But after we had entreated the driver, and been assisted to a perch on the coach-roof, then it was glorious.

Then we got airy tosses instead of dislocating jolts; saw the road unwind, turn by turn, from the woods; saw how the grating brake was put to the wheel while we crept over the brow of a steep pitch, then let go while we spun down the lower part and flew over the level.

The afternoon sun was behind us, and gilded the hills; but the hollows were full of transparent dusk with the crowding, overhanging woods. As we came up out of them, our horses strained forward to trample on a giant shadow-coach, with four shadow-horses, a shadow-driver, and two fly-away shadow-women in advance of every thing else.

Presently the boughs ceased to catch at our veils, the woods thinned and withdrew, houses appeared and multiplied, and we came out on to a long steep hill dipping to a river, whence another long steep hill rose at the other side. And built up and down, and to right and left, was a pretty town with all its white houses rose-red in the sunset. Well might it blush under our faithful eyes!

"Blanch," I said, "behold a town where, sixteen years ago, a Catholic priest almost won the crown of martyrdom. On the hill opposite, toward the south, stood the Catholic church that was burned, and the Catholic school-house that was blown up with gunpowder. There is the cottage where the priest lived. One August evening, when the sky was like a topaz with sunset, and the new moon was out, he baptized me there, and a little while after they broke his windows with stones. Further up the hill is the house from which, one rainy Saturday night, a mob of masked men dragged him. Ah well! that story is yet to be told."

II.
HE AND SHE.

The next morning early, we started on our last day's journey, and were driven through a rough country, the road dwindling till it seemed likely to[592] imitate that avenue which narrowed till it turned into a squirrel-track and ran up a tree. At five o'clock, we stopped at a farm-house, which was also post-office; and there we got a man to take us to our journey's end.

"May be you'll take this letter with you," the postmaster said. "It's for Miss Smith."

I took that letter, and gazed at it a moment in wrathful silence. There was my annunciatory epistle written to Sally Smith more than a fortnight before!

"Allah il Allah!" sighed Blanch resignedly when I held up the letter to her view.

The road over which we now drove was streaked with grass that tempted the lowered nose of our Rozinante, and graceful clusters of buttercups brushed the slow spokes of our wheels. The forest primeval shut down, solid and precipitous, at our left, and at our right the scrubby spruces clambered and straggled over the ledges with the appearance of having just stopped to look at us; and in a little while we saw through their tops a log house that stood at the head of a rocky lane. A thin wreath of smoke curled from the stone chimney, curtains of spotless whiteness showed inside the tiny hinged windows, and a luxuriant hopvine draped all the wall next us. Not a rod back from the house, and drawn darkly against the sunset sky, was a picture very like Doré's bringing of the ark to Bethsames. A group of cattle stood there motionless, two low-bending spruce-trees unfurled their plumy branches over a square rock, and, as motionless as either, stood a tall, gaunt woman staring fixedly at us.

Following her glance, I espied a tow-headed urchin of ten, may be, whom our coming had petrified in the act of getting through the bars at the foot of the lane. Against the lower bar rested his rifle, the muzzle looking us directly in the eye.

"You have come four miles through the woods to borrow a darning-needle?" I demanded.

"Yes, ma'am!" he answered, eagerly pointing to a huge needle with a blue yarn which was sewed into his blue drilling shirt-front.

"Well, set your rifle down here in the corner of the fence, and look out how you aim it another time. There! now take this letter and carry it up to Mrs. Smith, and give her my compliments, and say that we would like a reply at her earliest convenience. We may be addressed at the foot of the lane, sitting on our trunks."

As I released his arm, he shot wildly up the lane, and tumbled headlong in at the weather-porch that guarded the northern door.

In a few minutes, a woman's head appeared and took an observation, while her two hands were visible smoothing her hair and rapidly adjusting an apron. Then the whole long figure emerged. At first she walked warily, stopping once or twice[593] as though about to turn back; then she gave a long look, and hurried down the lane, a broad smile breaking out, token of recognition. Her voice reached me first, "Well, I do declare, I'm tickled most to death to see you!"

With the last words came a mighty grip of the hands, and Sally looked at me with eyes overflowing with tears and gladness.

Most exquisite and dignified reader, didst thou ever think, when raising to thy lips the cut-glass goblet of iced water, poured from a silver pitcher filled at a faucet supplied through a leaden pipe that in its turn is fed by miles of underground aqueduct, that thou wouldst like rather to slake thy thirst at some natural spring bubbling over mossy stones and prostrate grasses? For once or twice, may be? If so, all hail! for thou art not quite a mummy. Underneath thy social swathings still beats a faint echo of the bounding pulse of some free-born ancestor, a sheik of the desert, a dusky forest-chief, a patriarch of the tents. Trampled on, thou wilt not turn to dust, but to fire; and the papyrus is unfinished on which shall be written the story of thy life.

There have been times, too, in which thou hast thought that not only thy drink was far-fetched and no sweeter for the fetching, but that the smiles, the welcomes, the fare-wells, the friendships were all stale and unrefreshing. Thou hast longed for the generous love, which, while it will bear nothing from thee, will bear all things for thee; for the honest hate that carries its blade in sight, and lurks not in sly and sanctimonious speech and downcast eyes; for the noble tongue that knows not how to tell the spirit of a lie and save the letter.

Here now before me were all these. Refreshing, n'est ce pas? and very delightful—for a time.

Blanch and I were whirled into the house in the midst of a tornado of welcomes, apologies, regrets, wonderings, and questions innumerable. But as we were whisked through the kitchen, I had time to see all the old landmarks; the great stone fire-place, with a mantel-piece nearly out of reach, the bed, with its bright patch-work quilt, the broom of cedar-boughs behind the door, the strip-bottom chairs, the large blocks to eke out with when more seats were needed, the rough walls, the immaculate neatness.

There were two rooms in the house, and we were suffered to sit only when we had reached the second. This was glorious with pictorial newspapers pasted over the log walls, with a Job's patience quilt on the bed, with two painted wooden chairs, and a chintz-covered divan, a rag mat on the floor, two brass candlesticks on the mantel-piece, a looking-glass six inches long, and a gay picture of a yellow-haired, praying Samuel, dressed in a blue night-gown, and kneeling on a red cushion.

Sally was so delightedly flustered by our coming that, as she said, she did not know whether she was on her head or her heels, a doubt which so sensibly affected her movements that she was every moment making little inconsequent rushes where she had no need to go, and repeating the same things over and over.

Presently she sat still with a start, and listened to a heavy step that came through the porch and into the kitchen.

In fact, I had already caught a glimpse through the chimney-back of a man in his shirt-sleeves, who[594] hung up a tattered straw hat, and took down from its nail a tin washbasin with a long handle, like a skillet.

"Boarders? What for?" came in a tone of amazement; and through a chink in the rock chimney I could see his wet face turned, listening for her answer, and his dripping hands suspended.

Such an astounding announcement required immediate explanation, and Mr. Smith was coming in a dripping state to demand one, when his wife jumped up to intercept him.

"Mary!" says dear Sally, with a little burst of gladness that brought tears to my eyes.

"You don't say so!" exclaimed Mr. Smith, and as he spoke, his face, with wide-open eyes and mouth, appeared over Sally's shoulder, then disappeared instantly at sight of Blanch. Nor would our host permit me to come to him, nor make himself visible again till he had gone through a tremendous scrubbing and brushing, all of which was perfectly audible to us. Then he came in, sleek and shining, and gave us a hearty though embarrassed welcome, bowing before Blanch with a movement like the shutting up of a pocket-knife, and greatly confused on finding himself obliged to take her small hand.

I am bound to say that Blanch behaved exquisitely. She could not help being dainty and delicate; but she showed herself so unaffectedly delighted with every thing and every body that her daintiness was not remembered against her. Besides, she had the good taste not to try to imitate their rough ways, but remained simply herself.

Sally disappeared presently, and in a surprisingly short space of time returned to tell us, with a very red face, that supper was ready.

There was a momentary cloud of doubt over Blanch's face; but I went unfearing, and the event justified my confidence. The coarsest of delf, to be sure, and a cotton cloth, and steel forks, and a tin coffee-pot. But whatever could be polished shone like the sun, and whatever could be white was like snow. As to the supper, it was worthy of the pen of Mr. Secretary Pepys. The traditional delicacies of a country table are taken for granted; but the coffee was a glorious work of supererogation, and delicious enough to be handed about in the paradise of Mohammedans. Besides this, Sally, with a recollection of one of my mother's pretty ways, had laid a sprig of fragrant sweet-brier beside each plate, and with mine a drowsy dandelion just shutting its golden rays.

"You must excuse me for giving you deer meat," said our hostess with great humility; "I haven't any other kind on hand to-day; but to-morrow—"

She stopped short in the act of setting the dish on the table, unspeakably mortified by the incredulous stare with which Blanch regarded her.

We immediately explained that Blanch was simply astonished at an apology being offered with venison, whereat Sally grew radiant.

Mr. Smith did not appear at the table. He insisted that he had been to supper, but abstained from mentioning the day on which he last partook of that meal. Indeed, during all the time Blanch and I were in that house we never saw the master of it eat one mouthful.

"He never will sit down with folks," Sally whispered privately to me as we left the table.

When Sally said "he," pure and simple, she always meant her husband. She had a dim consciousness that there were other, nebulous masculines in the world; but to her mind Mr. Thomas Smith was the bright particular HE.

At eight o'clock we went to bed by the pure, pale twilight of June, and sank up to our eyes in feathers.

"Never mind!" I said encouragingly, "to-morrow we will put this absurd puff-ball underneath, and promote the straw-bed."

"Yes! pretty, yellow, shining straws, such as you suck mint-juleps through. Well, don't get excited! Straws such as your brother Tom sucks mint-juleps through. Good-night, honey!"

I heard her whisper a prayer. Then we dropped asleep peacefully; while with steadfast eyes of holy fire our angels kept watch and ward.

III.
BIPEDS WITH FEATHERS.

The next morning the unaccustomed stillness woke us early; and there was a long, golden beam of sunlight stretched across the bare floor. The hop-leaves hanging over the eastern window were translucent, and more gold than green, and all round their edges hung radiant drops of dew, slowly gathering and falling.

Blanch smiled, but said nothing, scarcely spoke a word to God, even, I think, but knelt and let her prayer exhale from her, like dew from the morning earth.

The kitchen was all in order when we went out. It was shaded, exquisitely clean, swept through by a soft draught, and finely perfumed by the new cedar broom which Thomas had made that morning. In the fire-place lay a heap of hard-wood coals in a solid glow, but the heat of them all went up chimney. The table was set for two, and breakfast ready all but cooking the eggs. Sally held a bowl of these in her hand, while, outside, the hens were making loud affidavit to their freshness.

After breakfast, Blanch put on a little scarlet sack, took her parasol, and went out to reconnoitre. Sally and I staid in the house and talked over old times, while she washed the dishes and I wiped them. Old times, even the happiest, are sad to recall, and we soon fell into silence. In that pause, Sally wrung out her dish-cloth, gave it a scientific shake that made it snap like a whip-lash, and hung it up on two nails to dry. Then she wiped her eyes on her sleeve.

"Land sakes!" she exclaimed, "what's that?" and rushed out doors, catching the broom on her way. I followed with the shovel, for "that" was a scream which unmistakably came from Blanch.

There was neither savage nor wild beast in sight, nor was Blanch visible; but there was a great commotion in the poultry-yard, and a large turkey-gobbler of a military appearance was[596] strutting about in full feather and declaiming in some foreign language. It sounded like low Dutch. What he said seemed to make a great impression on the hens and geese, for they looked awe-struck.

Presently we espied Blanch at the very top of one of the highest board fences that ever was built, clinging for dear life.

"I don't know how I ever got here," she said piteously. "The last recollection I have is of that horrid creature ruffling himself all up and coming at me. Then I came right up. And that's all I know. But I can't get down again."

I got a little ladder and helped Blanch down from her dangerous perch, while Sally kept the turkey-gobbler at bay, standing, broom in hand, in that position called in heraldry rampant-regardant.

"He doesn't like scarlet very well," she remarked. "It isn't his favorite color."

Then we went to see Mrs. Partington, a large gray hen, which was that morning taking her first airing with a new brood. She had been set on goose-eggs, which had, naturally, hatched out goslings; but she did not know it.

There was a duck-pond near, and some instinct in the goslings led them that way. Mrs. Partington yielded, like a fond, indulgent mother, and clucked along full of naïve consequence and good-nature. But at a little distance from the margin she paused, called her brood about her, and began to talk to them in a gray, comfortable, complacent voice. I suppose she was telling them how dangerous water is. They listened first with one side of their heads, then with the other, and two of them winked at each other, and made little irresistible shies toward the pond. They looked like green eggs on two sticks. The hen left off her lecture, clucked loudly, spread her wings, and ran after them. But the next instant a shriek broke from her bill; for, as every body knows, of course, the goslings all plunged headlong into the pond.

Poor Mrs. Partington was, indeed, an astonished hen. She was more: she was a transfixed hen. She stood gazing at them in horror, evidently expecting to see every one of them keel over and go to the bottom. But no; the little voyagers floated about quite at their ease, striking out with their tiny paddles, their downy backs and absurd little heads shedding the water beautifully.

"Goslings? Not she!" answered Sally. "Ten to one she thinks that she is a goose. No, that hen will go down to the platter without finding out that she has been cheated."

We had a busy day. We went to see the frame-house that Mr. Smith had begun to raise, and Sally's dairy in the cellar of it; we promoted our straw-bed, filled our fireplace with pine boughs, thus cutting off the view through the chimney-back; unpacked our trunks and set up our graven images; and, when sunset was near, went out into the woods at the foot of Spruce Mountain to get a pail of water from a little Johannisberger of a spring there. The mountain was between us and the sunset, and the woods were in shadow; but up over the lofty tree-tops the red and golden lights floated past, and every little pool, among its treasures of reflected foliage, airy nest of bird, and bending flower, held warmly its bit of azure sky, and crimson or golden cloud.[597] Presently we came to where, at the foot of a spruce-tree, our spring lay like a fire-opal, with that one spark down among its haunting shadows. A cool green darkness fell into it from the overhanging boughs, velvet mosses growing close rimmed it with a brighter emerald, gray of trunk, branch, and twig melted into it, milky little flowers nodded over at their milky little twins below, and in the midst burned that live coal of the sunset. When we plunged our tin pail into this spring, it was as though we were going to dip up jewels. But instantly we touched the water, it whitened all over with a silvery-rippled mail, the colors disappeared, and we brought up only crystal clearness. The next moment, though, the throbbing waters subsided, and the many-tinted enchantment stole tremulously back again.

When we went to bed that night, a shower was prowling about the horizon, and over on Spruce Mountain the wolves were howling back defiance to the thunders.

What a lovely, savage week it was that followed! Somewhere in it was dissolved a Sunday; but we were scarcely aware of it, there was so little to mark the day.

In that week we learned one fact that was new to us, and that was the profound melancholy that reigns in the woods. Looking back, we could recollect that the impression had always, though unconsciously, been the same. Is it that in the forest Pan alone is the chosen god? and that there is still mourned that day when

Or is the sadness because He who once came down to walk among the trees, and call through the dews, comes no more?

IV.
A DIAMOND-WASHING.

On one of those days, Blanch and I, after a severe dispute on the subject with Sally, did a washing. Sally said we shouldn't; but wash we would, and wash we did.

We rose at early white dawn, kilted up our wrappers, shouldered our clothes-bag, took soap, matches, and kindlings, and started. A path led us past the new frame-house and a grove beyond it to the wash-room. This was a noble apartment about forty rods long by thirty wide, and was walled in by cedar and pine columns with the branches and foliage left on, a great improvement on Solomon's building. The cornice was delicately traced against a pale-blue ceiling frescoed with silver, the most beautiful ceiling I have ever seen. The carpet was a green velvet pile, thickly diapered with small gold-colored and white flowers in an irregular pattern, and beaded all over with crystals. Near the door by which we entered was one of the most charming imitations of rustic scenery to be found at home or abroad. A huge granite boulder, broken and hollowed roughly, had a thread of sparkling water bubbling up through a rift in it, and overflowing its basin in a rivulet. Near this stood two forked poles with a large copper kettle suspended from a cross-pole. Underneath the kettle were the ashes of more than one fire. Countless birds flew about, singing as well as if they had been sent to Paris. On the whole, it was a picture which would have drawn a crowd at any exhibition.

Wood was there, covered from the dew with green boughs. We placed our kindlings, lighted them with a match scraped inside Blanch's slipper,[598] and soon a blue column of smoke was rising straight into the morning air, and the flames were growing. Then we filled the great kettle with water from the fountain of Arethusa, and, as soon as it was warm, began to wash. For one hour there was nothing but silence and scrubbing; then a loud war-whoop through Sally's hands announced that breakfast was ready. By that time our clothes were all washed and bubbling in the boiler. Looking about then, we saw that every cedar pillar had a golden capital; cloth of gold was spread here and there in long stretches, and the frescoes had changed their shape, and, instead of silver, were rosy and golden.

Poor Sally, looking at us ruefully when we went in, asked to see our hands. They were worth looking at, all the skin being off the backs of them, and the insides puckered up into the most curious and complex wrinkles. We ate with glorious appetites, though, had another engagement with Sally, who wanted us to lie down to rest, and have our hands bandaged, and went back to find our clothes wabbling clumsily, but quite to our satisfaction. We upset our tubs and rinsed them, then set them up and filled with cold water again. Next we took each a clothes-stick, fished something from the kettle with it, ran with it boiling hot at the stick's end, and soused it into one of the tubs. We had to run a good many times, probably a mile in all. We squeezed the clothes out of this pickle, called by the initiated "boiled suds;" refilled our tubs, and performed that last operation "of rinsing," which took the puckered insides quite out of our hands, leaving them almost innocent of cuticle.

"My dear," said Blanch, as we spread our washing out on the green, "every woman on earth ought to do one washing. It would do their souls good, though it should temporarily damage their bodies. My laundress is a new being to me from this day. I mean to double her wages."

"Oh!" she exclaimed suddenly, and held up the bleeding forefinger of her left hand. "My ring! I have lost it; it is washed away."

The poor child looked distressed, and no wonder; for the missing cluster was a souvenir.

We set ourselves to search, but in vain. On each side of our grassy bench, three tubs of water had been spilt, and had wandered in devious ways, and to some distance. We sawed our sore fingers on the notched edges of the grass-blades, to no purpose.

"It was careless of you, Blanch," I said austerely. "You should have recollected that the ring was loose—"

A twinkle appeared in Blanch's eyes, if not on her finger. I followed the direction of her significant glance, and behold! where the lambent solitaire had burned on my hand, was an aching void!

V.
A MISS IS AS GOOD AS A MILE.

When Sunday came round a second time, we were aware of it. Every day had been to us like a crystal brimming cup overflowing to quench the day's thirst; but looking out into this Sunday, we saw only a golden emptiness.

Tears hung on Blanch's long eyelashes. "Think of all the blessed open church-doors," she said. "It makes me homesick. I want to go to mass. Even a fiddling, frescoed, full-dress mass would be better than none."

I quoted my friend, Sir Boyle Roche, "'Can a man be like a bird, in two places at once?' Besides, little one, if you were in town, it is not unlikely that you might stay at home all day because your new hat was not becoming, or because of the hot sun, or the east wind, or the mud, or the dust."

The dear child blushed. "But then one likes to know that one can go," she said meekly.

Sally and her husband were going five miles to meeting that day. They started early; and we watched them go soberly off in single file till the trees hid first the large brim of Sally's preposterous bonnet, then the crown of Mr. Smith's antique hat. Then we went in and prepared a little altar, with a statuette of the Virgin, a crucifix, candles and flowers, and, lifting up our hearts in that wild solitude, assisted at some far-away mass. There was no interruption, only a group of deer stood without, at the distance of a stone's throw, as motionless as gray marble statues, and watched us with soft, intent eyes. After we had got through and were sitting silently, the candles still burning, some Roman Catholic hummingbirds dashed in and sucked the honey out of the wild roses we had given our Lady, but left a sweet thought instead. When the buzz of their wings was gone, we heard robins and a bobolink outside, and a chorus of little twitterers singing a Laudate. "Amen!" said Blanch. The unclouded sunlight steeped the surrounding forest in sultry splendor, and clouds of perfume rose, like incense, from pine, and fir, and hemlock, from thousands of little blossoms, from plots of red and white clover, heavy with honey, from censers of anemones, and, threading all these sweets of sound, perfume, and sight together, was the bubbling voice of a brook murmuring Paters and Aves over its pebbles.

When Sally and Mr. Smith came home that afternoon, they were accompanied by a tall, stiff, severe man in black, at the first sight of whom Blanch and I got our hats for a walk. It was Elder Samson, come up to convert the idolaters. We knew well what hydra-headed discourse he had prepared to devour our patience, our charity, our civility even. Discretion was the better part of valor, we concluded, and fled, leaving, alas! the statuette of our Lady, with the candles burning beside her, and the wild roses clinging about and kissing her feet. If we had but known! But we did not then, nor till long afterward. When we came back, every thing was, apparently, as we had left it. But, when Sally came to town in the fall, she told how, the moment the elder saw our graven image, he flew into a holy rage, flung it, roses and all, out the window, and would[600] have flung the candles after it, if she had not rescued them by main force. The result was an illustration of the church militant, in which rather high words passed between Sally and the elder. Mr. Smith, feebly interposing to take the part of his clerical visitor, was routed utterly.

But meantime, in happy unconsciousness, Blanch and I walked down the road, and down and down the road, a mile, and another mile, and again a mile, through the green and flowery solitude, flecked and flickering with sunlight and shadow, the silence only softly stirred by a multitudinous rustling of leaves. Now and then we saw a deer by the road-side; and far away in the woods the foxes snarled and barked.

Our walk ended on a long log that bridged a brook, and there we stood and looked up to see the waters come down to us. Presently, instead of their flowing down, we seemed to float up. We were going up to the cradle of this dancing stream, to some enchanted land where the baby rivulet first saw the sun. We were going back, also, to our own childhood, floating up and up to careless days, leaving the heavy years behind.

When we came back from that far-away country, a little sea-sick with our journey, I turned to see Blanch looking at me with great attention.

"My dear," she said, "you are the most absurd figure I recollect to have seen in the whole course of my life. If it were not deplorable that human taste should be so perverted, I should find you ludicrous."

"So you have found it out," I replied, highly edified. "I have been thinking the same of you this week past. Of course any one with eyes can see that Sally in her straight gown and big apron, with her hair in a pug, is better dressed than we."

Blanch had brought Mr. Smith's pistol with her. She always took it when we went into the woods; for she considered herself a pretty good shot. She had at home a pasteboard target full of little holes, the best one about six inches from the centre, all made by shots fired by her at a distance of twenty feet.

She felt safer to take the pistol, she said; for if any animal were to attack us, she could be sure to wound if not to kill it. "No animal," she argued very sensibly, "could be dangerous at a distance of twenty feet or more. And if he should come within that, I could not fail hitting pretty near his head or heart. You see, I missed only six inches in the shooting-gallery, and a bear or a wolf would be much larger than my target."

When you want to convince others, always speak as though your proposition is unquestionable. Every body knows that the majority of persons in the majority of cases find it troublesome to think for themselves, and that if you are positive enough, you can make them believe any thing. If Blanch had been a shade less logical and decided, I might have submitted that a pasteboard target does not pounce upon you and hug you to death, or tear you into inch pieces while you are taking aim, and that with a wild live creature to glare back with two great threatening eyes into her one blue eye looking at him, like a murderous violet, over the pistol-barrel, her nerves might be shaken to the extent of another six inches from the mark. But her air was one of such perfect conviction that my subjunctive case expired without a sigh.

The tree-tops were still full of sunshine when we started to go home, but the road was shaded. Blanch seemed a little uneasy.

"I believe we'd be awful good to eat," she said apprehensively.[601] Even in speaking, she stopped short, I stopped, we stopped all two, as the French say. Directly in front of us and not far away, sitting with an air of deliberation in the middle of the road, was a large, clumsy, shaggy beast that looked at us with an inexplicable expression. I had never had the pleasure of an introduction to this animal, but none was needed. I had seen his portrait on the outside of hair-oil bottles. The resemblance was striking.

Her hand was trembling like a leaf in the wind; but she took beautiful aim, and I am bound to confess that her pasteboard target could not have received the attention with more unmoved tranquillity. The pistol went hard, though, and the pull she had to give the trigger brought the muzzle down, so that instead of the shot striking within six inches of the bear's heart or brain, it struck up a little puff of dust, and took off the devoted head of a buttercup about five feet from us.

"Have I hit him?" she asked breathlessly, opening her eyes. She had shut them very tight on firing.

She had not hit him; but he took the hint, and got himself clumsily out of the way. I thought he acted as though his feelings were hurt.

I have forgotten whether we ran. I am inclined to think that we did not. But we were not long in getting home, and then the elder was gone.

VI.
HOMESICK.

A pathetic little incident happened that week, which suggested many thoughts to us. Passing by a cleared space in the woods one afternoon, Mr. Smith saw a deer family quietly grazing there. Plentiful as these creatures were in that region, they never suffered a near approach; but this group looked at the intruder peacefully and showed no sign of alarm.

Is there on earth an animal more fierce and cruel than man in deed if not in intention? This man did not deliberately mean to perpetrate a fiendish act; but no otherwise could what he did be characterized. He did not want the venison, the skins, the graceful antlers; but he fancied it rather a fine thing to have that bounding target still for a moment. His rifle was over his shoulder; he lowered it, and took aim at the stag's stately front. There was a report; the creature gave one leap into the air, then fell, shot through the forehead.

Not even then did the others fly. While he loaded his rifle again, they bent over their prostrate companion, touching him, moved by what mute, incredulous grief, who can say? The marksman gleefully took aim again, and the doe fell with a bullet through her heart, and sobbed her life away. When Mr. Smith saw the young one put its head down to the mother's, for the first time some compunction touched his coarse, unsympathetic soul. But he had gone too far to retreat, and in a few minutes the fawn lay dead beside its mother.

Sally reproached her husband passionately when he told her the story of his wonderful feat.

"If dumb creatures were like men," she said, "the wild beasts would get up a mob to-night, and come here and lynch us; and not be to blame either!"

Blanch and I left Mr. Smith meekly taking his castigation, and went out to see his victims.

They lay where they had fallen, on the greensward, poor creatures! a[602] sad blot upon the peaceful scene, their innocent, happy lives quite ebbed away. We stood by them a little while in the sunny silence, and it seemed as though every thing living shrank from us. We had never before been out without seeing some form of that wild animal life with which the woods were teeming. But now there was no sound of skittish steps evading us, no glimpse of shadowy figures among the trees. All was silent and dead.

We went to the road-side, and, seating ourselves on the moss under an aspen-tree, mourned silently. And thinking of the slaughtered deer, I thought of the first death in Eden; and from that, of the first sin in the world; and from that, of all the sin and sorrow that is in the world; and from that, of Him who came to restore us to the true Eden, the city of real peace, and how he stays here unseen, and watches lest we kill or are killed; and then I thought, "The nearer one keeps to the place where he is, the better."

Blanch half reclined, leaning on her elbow, and her face looked like a pale flame in the flickering shadow of the tree above us. She stretched her hand and touched tenderly a lovely spray of partridge-berry that trailed over the moss, but did not break it. Then she looked up.

THE "ADAM" OF ANDREINI.

Voltaire, in his life of Milton, mentioned the fact that in his youth the poet witnessed at Milan the representation of a drama entitled, Adam; or, Original Sin, written by "a certain Gio. Battista Andreini," a Florentine, and dedicated to Marie de' Medici, Queen of France. The French writer stated that Milton must have taken with him to England a copy of the work. His account was repeated by other biographers of the great English poet, some of whom alluded to the Italian poem as "a farce." In consequence of their unfavorable judgment, the impression has prevailed that Milton was not indebted to Andreini for the conception of his Paradise Lost, but that the grandeur and sublimity of the invention belong solely to him. Andreini's work fell into oblivion soon after its production, and has remained unappreciated even by the author's countrymen; so that it is not surprising that the honors due the Catholic poet have not been rendered by English or American critics or readers.

The mystery, tragedy, or sacred drama of Adam, composed by Andreini, was represented at Milan early in the seventeenth century, and was received with such enthusiasm that the author was invited to the French court by Queen Mary, and was there loaded with honors. A splendid edition of his work, dedicated to the queen, illustrated with plates and a portrait of the author, was issued at Milan in 1617. Such a reception[603] shows the estimation in which his production was held at the time. Defects which did not interfere with the grandeur of the original design impaired its popularity afterward. The author was numbered among the Seicentisti, and belonged to a school noted for its departure from simplicity; for false refinements and extravagant conceits. Under the influence of such writers as Marini, Lappi, Redi, etc., in an age of pedantry, poetry was removed from nature, and dragged from her proper sphere. But though Andreini lived amidst the prevalence of a corrupt taste, and his style was in some degree tainted, it could not have been expected that any succeeding school, however correct, should trample under foot the substance of his work, and slight its sublimity of conception, to which a more enlightened age should have done justice. Such justice, nevertheless, has been denied him.

After it had been forgotten more than two hundred years, a tardy acknowledgment of Andreini's merit was paid by a few Italian critics, and a small, unadorned edition of his work was again published at Lucano; but in such an unattractive form that it seems to have awakened little attention. A few copies of the first edition were sold as a great literary curiosity. One, purchased at a large price, affords us an opportunity of examining the claim so long buried in obscurity, and to see how much the author of Paradise Lost has really borrowed.

It is well known that Milton's first idea, in treating the subject, was to write a tragedy; and that he had actually composed some scenes before he finally resolved to transfer his pencil to a vaster canvas. The difference between the epic and dramatic form gave a great advantage to the English poet. All the ornaments of description, in which Paradise Lost is so rich, were denied to Andreini, since they could not be admitted into dialogue. That Milton saw and profited by Andreini's tragedy, can be proved not only by external testimony, but by evidence contained in almost every page of his work. We must look to the conception and to the expression of thought, in drawing the comparison between the two, which will conclusively show Andreini to be in truth the precursor of Milton, the original author of the design elaborated in Paradise Lost. We will give an analysis of the drama, with extracts faithfully translated, rendering the literal sense of the original.[184]

The scene of the tragedy is in the terrestrial paradise. The interlocutors are the Eternal Father, Michael and a chorus of angels, Adam and Eve, Lucifer, the Prince of Hell, Satan, Beelzebub, the Seven Deadly Sins, besides various allegorical personages, such as the World and the Flesh, Hunger, Fatigue, Despair, Death, and Vainglory, with a chorus of infernal messengers and spirits of the elements. The author's own summary will give the most accurate idea of the piece. A chorus of angels in the prologue sing the glory of the eternal God, calling upon the new creation to praise him. The future advent of the Incarnate Word is dimly predicted. The Almighty is completing his vast work by the formation of man; the new being is welcomed in strains of jubilee and rejoicing by the shining choir about him, and the scene proceeds with solemnity and magnificence, in language elevated and sublime. The ecstasy of the newly created at the glory revealed to his senses by the celestial train who "cleave heaven with their wings of gold," and his [604]devout aspirations of love and homage toward his Creator, are admirably expressed. Adam adores the ineffable mysteries of the Trinity and the coming Incarnation. The verse throughout this scene is in lyrical measures adapted to the subject, and to the emotions uttered.

Adam falls into sleep, and Eve is created and named "woman" by the eternal Father. A resemblance may be discovered by the curious between the ascent of the heavenly train from Eden, after the blessing is pronounced and the work completed, and a similar description in the seventh book of Paradise Lost. Adam then points out to Eve the wonders of the new world, rehearses the divine command and prohibition, and inspires her with love for the beneficent Being who gave them all:

In the second scene, Lucifer rises from the abyss; and at the first glance we recognize the conception which is one of the chief glories of Paradise Lost. The apostate of this piece, like Milton's Satan, is a majestic being, stem, defying, and dreadless, even in despair. Pride, indomitable pride, is still his master passion; in the midst of his blood-chilling irony and impiety, we lose not the awe inspired by a mighty nature, still mighty and commanding, though perverted to evil; nor forget that his "faded splendor wan" is but

In a bold and haughty strain, well befitting the "lost archangel," "vaunting aloud, though racked with deep despair," he gives vent to the envy and hatred of his rebellious spirit:

The partners of his guilt and punishment, who join him in the garden, now surround him; and we have a vivid picture of hell in the midst of Paradise:

The remainder of the picture, in its minuteness of horror, partakes too much of the prevailing want of taste which disfigured the best productions of the Italians of the seventeenth century. We select, of course, some of the striking passages of the poem, though we by no means include all its beauties in our extracts.

Can we not discover in the above passage the same spirit that animates Milton's lines?

Lucifer, the chief, then discovers himself to his companions in iniquity, and addresses them:

Satan then darkly alludes to the future incarnation of the Son of God; and Lucifer answers:

The conspiracy to draw man into sin and prevent the incarnation is then entered into.

His plan for the destruction of man is hailed with joy; and Lucifer next calls up the Seven Deadly Sins to assist him in his infernal work. To each of these mysterious impersonations a different task is assigned, and detailed at length in the piece. They are severally commissioned to assail his intended victims with every variety of temptation. Pride and Envy are directed to fill the soul of Eve with discontented thoughts, and awaken vain imaginations of superiority; to suggest regrets that she was not formed before Adam, as every man hereafter must receive his being from woman.

Dulciato, who personates Luxury, declares the heart of woman peculiarly open to his fascinations.

In the beginning of the second act we have a scene quite different. The angelic train descends to hymn the goodness of the Creator and the happiness of man.

The picture of the first pair, in their primeval innocence and enjoyment, full of gratitude to heaven and love for each other, is so captivating in its simplicity and beauty that it would alone be sufficient to redeem more sins against taste than the whole book contains. We do not imagine we are saying too much in calling it the original of Milton's delineation, as that of the infernal chief undoubtedly is. The same graceful and feminine qualities blend in the exquisite character of Eve; the same superiority of intellect, protecting gentleness, and exalted devotion are seen in Adam. They are surrounded by invisible spirits, the emissaries of Lucifer, who "with jealous leer malign," mock at the peaceful purity and happiness that blasts their envious sight, and hurl vague threats against the beings who, while innocent, are safe from their hostility. Eve weaves for Adam a garland of flowers, which he places on his brow as a chain of love. In reference to this Lurcone says,

At the prayers of Adam and Eve, offered with thanksgiving for their blessings, the evil spirits precipitately fly—the agonies of hell burning in their hearts. Adam gives names to the various animals, passing in review before him.

Scene third is occupied by Lucifer, in the form of a serpent, Vainglory, a gigantic figure, magnificently attired, and his attendant spirits. The arch-demon exults over his expected success, the ruin of so smiling a scene:

Volano acquaints Satan with the decision of the infernal council, and Vainglory and the serpent hide themselves under the tree of knowledge. Eve enters; the wondrous beauty of the tempter, gorgeously described, fascinates her admiring gaze. He is half-hid in the clustering foliage. Unconscious of evil, she approaches nearer, surprised at his aspect; for the fiend exhibits a form like the fabled inhabitants of the sea, human to his breast, the rest of his body enveloped in scaly folds. Vainglory is invisible, but is supposed to be secretly exerting his influence. The serpent, accosting Eve in the accents of flattery, enters into conversation with her, informing her that he was placed in Eden to take charge of its fruits and flowers, and gifted with superiority over the brute creation. He boasts of his knowledge, which he vaunts as superior even to hers and Adam's, notwithstanding that he occupies a lower rank in the scale of the creation. He intimates that her knowledge and Adam's is far from corresponding to their superior excellence of form and high capabilities. Eve inquires how he can regard Adam's knowledge as trifling. "Doth he not know," she cries, "the hidden virtue of each herb and mineral, each beast and bird, the elements, the heavens, the stars, the sun?" The serpent replies:

The Serpent then enters upon the immediate object of his design, employing his subtle and persuasive eloquence to overcome Eve's scruples and induce her to eat of the forbidden fruit, whose taste is to impart to her heavenly wisdom. The whole scene of the temptation is admirably managed. The advances of the arch deceiver—now cautiously sounding her, now eagerly urging her to disobedience—the unsuspecting credulity, the increasing curiosity of Eve, are drawn with the pencil of a master.

The Serpent speciously insinuates that man is degraded by being compelled to seek his food from the same source with the inferior creation:

The temptation takes place necessarily in dialogue. The thoughts are natural and elevated, and the language even magnificent. Eve asks the Serpent what is the cause of his apparent anxiety that she should eat of the prohibited fruit; he explains it by informing her that he will be lord over Eden when she and her partner, by means of the mystic food, shall have ascended to mingle with deities. This is a [608]new and remarkable trait, of which Milton has not availed himself.

Here occurs an exquisite touch. Eve, having never before experienced a painful moral emotion, is ignorant of its meaning. The tempter, with consummate art, interprets her very fear into encouragement.

In evil hour her rash hand plucks the fruit; and the act closes with the exulting gratulations of the Deceiver and Vainglory.

In the succeeding interview with Adam, in Act iii., the intoxicated Eve has not begun to taste the consequences of her crime; she comes to persuade her companion to partake her guilt.

Death, in the eyes of Adam, is more welcome than separation from his beloved; as in Paradise Lost, he rushes on his fate voluntarily, without partaking in any of those dreams of greatness which had beguiled his frail consort. When the mortal sin is completed by his participation, Volano with his trumpet summons the infernal spirits, who crowd the scene with shouts of exultation expressed in lyrical measures. The Serpent and Vainglory are worshipped for their success. The evil spirits vanish before the voice of the Eternal, who descends with his angels to pronounce sentence upon the guilty pair. The solemn account to which the Judge calls them, their guilty evasion and detection, and the stern malediction on the earth cursed for man's sake, with the punishment denounced on the human offenders and on the serpent, are described in the scriptural language, and with a simplicity which is in itself sublime. No concetti are here allowed to mar the impressive greatness of the scene. An angel remains after the departure of the Almighty, and clothes the shivering[609] pair with the skins of wild beasts, reminding them that the roughness of their new raiment signifies the suffering they are to sustain in the journey of life. Then the stern Archangel Michael, the minister of divine vengeance, appears and commands them to leave paradise, while the cherubic host, who had hitherto hovered round them, forsake their accustomed charge and reascend to heaven. The flaming sword of Michael chases the unhappy fugitives from their lost home, and his lips confirm their own apprehensions:

The chant of the departing angels mingles with lamentation over the fall an intimation of peace in the future.

The poem does not end with the expulsion from Eden; a second part, as it were, is contained in the last two acts, in which the dim promise of a Redeemer is shadowed forth, the triumph of hell is turned to rage and shame, and penitence is comforted with hope. This completion of the great plan gives a new grandeur to the piece, since it is thus made to embody the most solemn and striking of all morals.

In Act iv. Volano summons the spirits of the elements to meet Lucifer, who calls a council. The spirits still utter their songs of triumph over the fall of man; but the mien of their leader is deject, his clear-sighted vision already discerns in the just wrath of God against the human offenders the latent promise of mercy. He foresees the pardon of man, and his restoration through a Redeemer to the heavenly blessings from which his destroyer vainly hoped his transgressions had cut him off. He is racked with anguish at the prospect of his work being undone; but it is no time now to pause; he must build up still higher the edifice of his own greatness and his defiance of Omnipotence. The deep pride of his character is further illustrated in the infernal council. He causes to issue from the earth four monsters hurtful to man: Mondo, Carne, Morte, and Demonio—World, Flesh, Death, and Devil.

Adam and Eve appear in their fallen condition, the prey of a thousand fears and ills, haunted by miseries before unknown. They bitterly deplore the changes that have passed on the creation. The animals manifest terror at their presence. Four monsters beset Adam—the impersonations of Hunger, Thirst, Fatigue, and Despair, that threaten to follow him unceasingly. Death menaces them with mortal peril; the heavens grow dark, thunders roll, and the air is convulsed with tempest. The scene closes in gloom and horror.

In the fifth act, Temptation, in alluring forms, invites the fallen pair to new crimes. Flesh, in the figure of a lovely young woman, accosts Adam, showing him how all things breathe of love; and Lucifer, in human shape, persuades him to yield to her enticements. Here occurs one of the most exquisitely delicate and beautiful touches in the poem, and one that none but a true poet could[610] have conceived. The guardian angel of man yet hovers, unseen, at a distance; when he sees him thus sore beset, he comes to his assistance. The protector is invisible; but his warning voice, soft as the promptings of a dream, sounds in the sinner's ear:

Following the promptings of the angel, which are continued through the scene, Adam proposes that Lucifer and his companion shall kneel with him in prayer. Thus he escapes the temptation and danger. Lucifer and his demons refuse to pray, and, assuming their proper shape, next assail him by force; but from this peril he is also guarded.

We then behold Eve wandering desolate and desponding, affrighted at all that meets her eyes. Her lamentation has much simple beauty.

She also is assailed by a new temptation personified under the name of World. This allegorical personage, arrayed in rich and gorgeous vestments, crowned with gold and gems, endeavors to captivate her imagination by artful flatteries; by visions of splendor and regal power reserved for "the queen of the universe." From a visioned palace comes a troop of nymphs laden with ornaments, with which they offer to adorn their mistress, dancing and singing around her; but Eve, deaf to World's flatteries, resists and flies from him; both she and her consort are too penitent to listen to evil solicitations, and at Adam's rebuke the troop disappears in confusion. Then Lucifer and his devils, armed for man's destruction, rush in to seize their victims. The fierce and final struggle between the powers of heaven and hell, for the dominion of earth, takes place; for the arch-fiend encounters Michael and his angels, sent to rescue the frail beings of clay, who, in terrified astonishment, witness the battle. It would be doing injustice to the poem not to give some extracts from this striking scene.

The haughty monarch of hell then reminds Michael of his first great rebellion against the Most High, and his success in dragging into ruin "the third part of heaven's host," (terza parte di stelle.) Vaunting these proofs of his might, he boldly threatens destruction to the throne of God himself: bidding the inhabitants of heaven flee from a place which can no longer afford them a refuge of safety!

The archangel is no longer the avenger; and he raises with pity the repentant sinners.

Adam and Eve, delivered from their foes, are comforted by the heavenly messenger, who assures them of forgiveness on condition of future obedience. With his promise we conclude our extracts.

We have occupied so much space in the analysis and extracts from this remarkable work, that little room is left for further observation. It is impossible to present all the beauties of the poem, and allowance must be made for showing them in another language; yet some idea may be afforded of the general character of the piece. The original abounds with striking passages that have of necessity been left unnoticed, strangely mingled with the tumid extravagances and heterogeneous conceits belonging to the age in which it was written. These faults, however, are but trifling in comparison with its merits; and the wonderful conception, the glorious plan, is not marred by them. When the superior personages appear on the scene, the inspiration of the poet is triumphant over the defects of his school; not a line of their language is disfigured by aught which the most fastidious of modern tastes could condemn. It is only in the management of inferior and of allegorical personages that the faults alluded to can be perceived; and even here the rich and noble genius of the poet has mastered many of his difficulties.

The author of Adam could hardly have anticipated, in the representation of his work on the stage, a success commensurate with its merits; since the trickery of scenic effect could but poorly indeed embody the creations of genius. Fancying an attempt to make them apparent to the senses of a rabble audience, we can scarcely wonder that the whole should have been stamped with ridicule. But any reader of the poem will concede that the sublime conception of Paradise Lost belongs to Andreini as the originator. He ascended with success "the highest heaven of invention;" and when he puts words into the mouth of Deity, and interprets the hymnings of angelic choirs, he shows himself equal to the task.

The extension of the reputation of this wonderful production would considerably increase our sense of obligation to Italian literature.

FÉNELON.[193]

Ladies and Gentlemen: It would be possible to fix a point of time in the reign of King Louis XIV. unequalled in brilliancy by any other in the eventful history of the French nation. Such a period would present to us the great monarch crowned with the glory of his early successes, unsullied as yet by the shame of his later weakness and degradation. A tableau of the court of Versailles would show us the throne surrounded by groups of men illustrious in every department of human greatness. To name a few only: military fame would find its representatives in Condé, Turenne, Luxembourg, Vauban, and Villars; poetry, in Malherbe, La Fontaine, and Boileau; the drama, in Racine, Corneille, and Molière; political science, in Mazarin, Colbert, and Louvois; philosophy, in Pascal and Descartes; eloquence, in Bourdaloue, Flechier, Massillon, and Bossuet; painting, in Poussin and Lesueur; archaeology, in Mabillon and Montfaucon; general literature, in La Rochefoucauld, La Bruyère, Balzac, and Madame de Sévigné. Yet among all the great men of that wonderful period there is not one, probably, who, if given a choice, would not willingly exchange his reputation with that of Fénelon, who in early life moved in that brilliant court as an obscure priest, and in the fulness of manhood was sent away from it into honorable exile.

I would it were in my power, ladies and gentlemen, to lay before you such a sketch of the life of Fénelon as would fully explain to you by what secret a Roman Catholic priest, who devoted himself so entirely to preaching and to proselytizing for his church, became popular to such an unwonted degree, and remains so to this day, not less in the Protestant world than among men of his own creed.

I have neither the time nor, I fear, the ability to do justice to so excellent a theme. I do hope, however, that my brief remarks may have the effect of so far engaging the curiosity of the younger portion of my hearers as to lead them to study Fénelon's life and writings. Nobody ever rose from the perusal of either without feeling an inclination to love himself less, and to extend a larger and warmer charity to his fellow-men, whatever their condition or their creed.

François de Salignac de la Mothe, Marquis of Fénelon, was born in the chateau of Fénelon in the year 1651, and came of distinguished lineage on the side of both parents. His early education was judicious, his father and mother training him in morals and religion both by word and example, and his able preceptor making it his aim to teach him the love of study for its own sake.

The child's brain was not developed at the expense of the rest of his body, and abundant daily exercise in the fresh open air united with regular and frugal habits to form a sound body for the dwelling of a noble and gifted soul.

His decided fondness for Greek and Latin literature made him a great reader, yet without effort or[614] constraint, and led gradually to the formation of that mixture of grace and melody in his style for which he stands preëminent among the greatest French writers.

He spent five years in Paris at the Seminary of St. Sulpice, and took orders at the age of twenty-four. His first impulse was to dedicate his life to the foreign missions; and he was prevented only by the influence of his family from coming to America and settling among the Indians in Canada.

A mission was provided for him in the heart of Paris, and there, while visiting the sick, instructing the ignorant and the young, comforting and relieving the poor, and exercising all the various duties of the Christian ministry, he acquired that knowledge of the human heart, and of the mode of touching and persuading it, that fitted him, no less than his long and patient devotion to books, for the work of improving his fellow-men. A new field of observation and benevolent labor was the institution known as "Les Nouvelles Catholiques," a seminary under royal patronage for the education of young ladies, chiefly recent converts to the church. The Abbé Fénelon presided for ten years over both the ladies in charge and their pupils, giving both the benefit of his learning, his refinement, his gentle and cheerful religious spirit, and his high-minded and enlightened devotion. To his knowledge of the heart of woman, of her weakness and her strength, gathered while in this position, we owe his earliest book, the Treatise on the Education of Girls, a work which made its author widely known, and procured for him in time the appointment of tutor to the grandson of Louis XIV.

In 1685, the king signed the revocation of the edict of Nantes. The effect of this measure was to reduce his Protestant subjects, amounting to about two millions, to the cruel alternative of abjuring their faith or quitting France for ever. Of the many that left, some found their way to the United States, and the descendants of the Huguenots have contributed their share to the prosperity and advancement of the land of liberty. The king undertook to bring about the conversion of those who remained, and, happily for the Protestants of Saintange and Annis, the missionary selected for them was the Abbé de Fénelon. Royal orders had been given that the missionary should be supported by a detachment of dragoons. The proffered assistance was gently but firmly declined. "Our ministry," said the abbé, "is one of harmony and peace. We are going to our brethren who are astray; we shall bring them back to the fold by charity alone. It is not by means of violence and constraint that conviction can be made to penetrate the soul." His reasoning prevailed, and he was allowed to depart alone. The stern Calvinists of Poitou soon came to look upon this new pastor with kindness and affection, and, in return, his influence saved them from further annoyance on the part of the civil authority.

In 1689, a happy event for the world of letters occurred in the appointment of Fénelon to be the tutor of Louis, Duke of Burgundy, the son of the dauphin. He applied himself to his new task with untiring and conscientious devotion, and the account of his manner of fulfilling it is exceedingly interesting. His first care was to study well the character and disposition of his pupil. The result of this investigation was any thing but encouraging. The Duke of Saint Simon, who was well acquainted with the young prince, states that[615] he was naturally stubborn, haughty, and unkind. He was endowed with strong passions, and fond of every sort of animal gratification. His temper was so violent that in his fits of rage it was dangerous to attempt to control him. He would tear and break whatever came to his hands, and be carried away by such outbursts of fury that his life seemed to be really in danger. He was fond of the pleasures of the table and of the chase, naturally cruel, and brimful of a pride that led him to look upon other men as objects of usefulness and amusement, rather than as beings equal to himself.

Such was the pupil confided to the care of Fénelon; and under his wise and gentle guidance the headstrong, selfish, and cruel boy became kind, generous, modest, and remarkable for perfect and unfailing self-control.

The besetting sin of the young prince was a perverseness of temper always hard to manage and ready, for the slightest cause, to break out into open rebellion, on which occasions no one had been able to control him. Fénelon's manner of correcting this fault is full of instruction. He avoided direct attacks and punishments, seeking, by gentle remonstrance and good-natured raillery, to lead the boy into being ashamed of his fault. When there was a prospect of being listened to, he would make use of simple maxims showing the folly and wickedness of angry passion, and explaining his remarks by familiar illustrations likely to be easily understood and remembered. Sometimes he yielded without remonstrance, avoiding all recourse to authority or personal influence unless he was well assured that it would prove successful. The little work known as Fénelon's Fables was composed piecemeal, each fable being called forth by some fault the prince had committed, or for the purpose of helping him to remember some moral point, and leading him gradually on in the system of improvements his tutor had adopted.

One day, when the prince had made all around him unhappy by indulging in repeated bursts of spleen and disobedience, Fénelon took a sheet of paper and wrote in his presence the following sketch, which we find among the fables:

It is easy to understand the effect of a lesson like this on a high-spirited but self-conceited boy. He sought to overawe those around him and finds out that he has made himself unmistakably ridiculous! The instructor who wishes to correct his pupil's faults will succeed oftener by wounding his vanity than he will by flattering it.

His fables at another time present in charming images the happiness of being good.

These fables gave a moral and practical meaning to the details of mythology which the prince was studying, and furnished him also with models of style. They speak to him and of him as one who is in time to be a king; but it will be observed that no traits of character are praised except those which it was desirable he should possess.

The main difficulty with the young prince still recurred—his impetuous outbreaks of temper, accompanied by the stubborn determination to make every body around him yield and allow him to have his way, however unreasonable. This dangerous condition of mind was always treated by Fénelon's advice in the same manner. The Duke de Beauvilliers, who was his governor; the Abbé de Fénelon, and his assistant tutor, the celebrated historian Fleury; even the officers of his household and his domestics, all treated him with proof not of apprehension but of humiliating compassion. When his ill-humor grew furiously excited, they kept aloof and avoided him as one who had lost the use of his reason by some sad distemper. If the fit held out, his books were taken from him, and instruction was refused him, as being altogether useless in the deplorable condition into which he had now fallen. Left alone, denied all sympathy, given time to cool down, made to feel that his rage was undignified and ineffectual, the boy soon grew weary, ashamed, and at length repentant. He would then sue for pardon, which was only granted after many promises on his honor that he would not behave so foolishly and wickedly again.

One of these promises of amendment, made in writing, has been preserved and it reads as follows:

This touching engagement upon[617] honor by a boy under ten years of age was made in the first year of Fénelon's charge over him. He had already begun to make some progress, in spite of a disposition the ugliness of which had been previously set down as incorrigible.

The tutor had determined to master his pupil's rudeness, as an indispensable condition of any improvement, moral or literary.

One day he had recourse to a stratagem that might present his conduct to him in a new light. The young duke stopped one morning to examine the tools of a carpenter, who had been summoned to do some work in his apartment. The man, who had learned his part from Fénelon, told him in the roughest manner possible to go about his business. The prince, little accustomed to hear such language, began to resent it; but was interrupted by the workman, who, raising his voice and trembling with rage from head to foot, screamed to him to get beyond his reach. "I am a man," cried he, "who, when my temper is roused, think nothing of breaking the head of any person that crosses me." The prince, frightened beyond measure, ran to his master to tell him that a crazy man had been allowed to come into the palace. "He is a poor laborer," said Fénelon coldly, "whose only fault is giving signs of violent anger." "But he is a bad man," cried the boy, "and must leave my apartment." "He is worthy of pity rather than punishment," added his tutor. "You are surprised at his being angry because you disturbed him at his work; what would you say now of a prince who beats his valet at the very time that he is trying to do him a service?"

On another occasion the young man, piqued by the tone of severity which his tutor had found it necessary to assume, answered him in the most arrogant manner, "I will not allow you, sir, to command me; I know what I am, and I know what you are." Fénelon answered not a word; for remonstrance or reproof would have been useless. He determined, however, to give his pupil a lesson he should not easily forget. For the rest of that day he did not speak to him, his sadness alone evincing his displeasure. On the following morning he entered the duke's chamber immediately after his being awakened. "I do not know, sir," said he to his pupil with cold and distant respect, "if you recollect what you told me yesterday, namely, that you knew who you are and who I am. It is my duty to make you understand that you know neither one nor the other. You fancy then, sir, that you are more than I. Some lackey may have told you so; but I hesitate not, as you force me to it, to tell you that I am far above you. There is no question here of birth, which adds nothing to your personal merit. You cannot pretend to surpass me in wisdom. You know nothing but what I have taught you, and that is nothing compared with what remains for you to learn. As to power, you have none whatever over me; but I have authority full and entire over you. The king and monseigneur the dauphin have told you so often enough. You may think that I consider it a great thing to hold the situation I fill near your person. Let me tell you that you are altogether mistaken. I have accepted it only to obey the king and to please monseigneur, not certainly for the painful advantage of being your preceptor. To convince you of all I have said, I am about to lead you to his majesty, and to beg him to give you some other tutor, who will meet, I hope, with more consoling success than I have."

This speech threw the prince into[618] the greatest consternation. "O my master!" he exclaimed, bursting into tears, "if you abandon me, what will become of me? Do not make the king my enemy for life. Forgive me for what I said yesterday, and I promise you never, never, to displease you again."

Fénelon did not yield easily, although on the following day he consented to be reconciled to his pupil.

His main dependence, however, in forming the character of the boy, was the sound religious principles which he never grew tired of instilling into his mind by word and example. He would at any moment interrupt literary instruction to explain some point of duty upon which his pupil might desire to converse. He taught him to look up to God, not with servile fear, but to love him; and to love to think and speak of him as the author of all that is beautiful in nature and in man. Fénelon gives us himself an instance of the empire of religion over his soul in a beautiful sketch which he wrote after his pupil's death. "One day," he says, "when he was in a very bad humor, and when he was seeking to conceal some act of disobedience, I asked him to tell me before God what he had done. 'Before God!' he exclaimed with great anger; 'why do you ask me "before God"? But since you do so ask me, I cannot deceive you; I therefore acknowledge my guilt.' He spoke thus, although he was at the moment frantic with rage. But religion had over him so much power that it forced from him the painful avowal."

It is difficult to record without emotion what Fénelon says further on of this noble youth, whom he came to love with paternal tenderness, and whose untimely death filled his heart with sorrow. "He would often tell me in our unrestrained conversations, 'I leave the Duke of Burgundy outside the door when I am with you, and I am nothing but little Louis.'" He closes the sketch by this splendid tribute to the change which had been wrought in his pupil's whole character: "I have never known a person whom it was more easy to tell of his own faults, or who would listen more readily to unpalatable truth." In proof of the excellent literary and scientific training of the prince, we find that the great Bossuet, after examining him for several hours, expressed himself satisfied and surprised at the young man's proficiency; and thus bore testimony to the ability and success of his tutor. Two works besides the Fables deserve to be mentioned as fruits of this course of education. One, Fénelon's Dialogues, in which he presents to his royal pupil the different personages of history, speaking their true sentiments, and making known the secret motives of their actions. The other is the far-famed prose-poem, The Adventures of Telemachus, Son of Ulysses, which has won for its author the glory of having produced the most perfectly-written book in the French language.

Little more remains to be said of the Duke of Burgundy. Fénelon labored long and faithfully to make him fit to ascend the throne of France; he lived to see this work, involving such immense future good or evil, completed, and completed to his entire satisfaction. By an early death the dear young prince, in whom such vast expectations were centred, was lost to the love of his master and of France. Had he lived to reign in place of the weak and dissolute Count d'Artois, afterward Louis XV., the page of history setting forth in letters of fire and blood the scenes of the destruction of the French monarchy, might perhaps have remained unwritten.

Fénelon had not been made bishop,[619] when he became acquainted with Madame de Guyon. He approved of the writings of this gifted woman as sound in the light of Catholic theology. He defended her character as free from the slightest ground of reproach, and avowed the opinion that she was guided by a spirit of goodness and truth. She was looked upon by her adversaries at the court as visionary in her piety, heretical in doctrine, and far from irreproachable in her conduct. Fénelon, now become Archbishop of Cambrai, was forced into a controversy in reference to her affairs, one side of which he conducted alone, while on the other there were ranged against him the great Bossuet, the French court, the king, the court of Rome, and, finally, the supreme pontiff himself.

The modern student of history is surprised to discover the loose courtiers of Louis XIV., both men and women, hotly engaged in a controversy on an abstract point of ascetic theology; to see the ungrateful king banishing from his presence the saviour of his grandson, and the most honest man in his court; to see Bossuet allowing his powerful mind to be used as a weapon for the persecution of Fénelon; to see Fénelon, in a position of so great difficulty and delicacy, always consistent, always conscientious, always refined, always eloquent, always pious, and yet speaking out boldly and bravely, without regard to consequences, what seemed to him to be right and true.

The controversy, in course of time, was narrowed down to the question whether the doctrine taught in a book of Fénelon's, entitled the Maxims of the Saints, was or was not the doctrine of the Roman Catholic Church. After a long investigation, the pope, as final judge in the matter, condemned the book, while extolling the personal virtues of the author. Without the slightest hesitancy, Fénelon bowed to the decision of the tribunal of final appeal, and condemned the book himself from the pulpit of his own cathedral. There was no mistaking his motive. He had shown clearly that he was beyond the influence of hope and fear, and that he humbled himself only because he truly believed now that he had been faulty, at least in expression. So noble an act of self-denial, humility, and obedience was attributed on all sides to its true source, namely, his sense of duty, and nothing else. Honest and upright dealing, according to the dictates of his conscience, proved the very best policy he could have followed in self-protection; for good and bad alike admired and applauded him all over the world. The book, abandoned by its author, ceased henceforth to be an object of interest, and Fénelon was the only one who gained any credit from a controversy in which good men and bad men had been strangely mixed up together, and fair means and foul were used in a fruitless endeavor to crush him.

The last years of Fénelon were passed in Cambrai, of which he was both archbishop and duke, and in which he was admired and beloved by all, whether rich or poor. Faithful in the discharge of every pastoral duty, he divided his time among the poor, the sick, the imprisoned, the young, and the ignorant, helping, relieving, instructing, consoling all. The rest of the day he spent among his books, or in the company of intellectual and virtuous friends. The poorest villagers feared not to approach and speak to one whose simplicity and gentleness they well understood, and to whose goodness of heart no one ever appealed in vain.

His peaceful diocese soon became the theatre of scenes of bloodshed and desolation, caused by that war[620] of succession during which the star of Louis XIV. began finally to pale before the rising glories of the Duke of Marlborough. Fénelon gave up his property and his palace itself for the relief and accommodation of the sick and the wounded. He distributed among the poor the grain and the fruits over which he had control, and ordered his steward to give food and lodging to all who needed it. When he was told that such liberality would absolutely ruin him, "God will help us," he replied; "his resources are infinite. Meanwhile let us give as long as we have any thing to give, and we shall have done our duty." His episcopal mansion was occupied by officers and soldiers as a hospital, his barns and outhouses were used as asylums by the peasantry who had fled before the troops of the allied army, and his courts and gardens were filled with the cattle the poor country people had driven in, protected by the influence of Fénelon's name.

So powerful was that name that the invading commanders spared all property belonging to the archbishop, and Marlborough even ordered a quantity of grain which had been taken at Chateau Cambresis, and which he had been informed was the property of the archbishop, to be placed on wagons and driven into the public square of Cambrai under an escort of British troops.

But in his fatherly kindness and attention to the wants of those around him, Fénelon did not cease to take a lively interest in the fortunes of the whole country. He could not witness the threatened downfall of his beloved France without the deepest feelings of sorrow. The danger of the nation was extreme. Louis was engaged in a ruinous war with a powerful and conquering enemy. He could not retire from the contest with honor, and he had neither funds nor credit to carry it on with success. In this desperate strait, the king declared that he would die at the head of his nobles, a brave resolution that could not, however, save the country. In this trying emergency the genius of Fénelon saw a solution better than that proposed by the king. It was bodied forth in a letter to the Duke de Chevreuse, and is probably the most striking production that ever came from his pen. He tells the duke that the nobles cannot save the king, that the danger is extreme, and that his true friends must advise him to turn for countenance and relief to the people. The nation is in a critical position. Let the nation be consulted. Let not France be taxed without her consent to carry on a war in which she feels no interest. The people have been badly governed. Let them be called upon to take part in their own government for the future. "There is danger," he grants, "in passing suddenly from unqualified dependence to an excess of liberty. Great caution will be necessary; but it is nevertheless certain that arbitrary authority will not save the country from ruin." "Despotism," he adds, "with plenty of means, is a government of prompt action; but when despotism becomes bankrupt, the first who abandon it to ruin are the venal men whom it has allowed to fatten on the blood of the people." The priest from whom these remarks are quoted is not Lamennais or Gioberti, but an archbishop of the time of Louis XIV. The whole letter reads like a prophecy, or like a history of what took place less than a century later. If Fénelon's advice had been acted upon, how gloriously would France have entered the first of nations upon the march of improvement. Religion and order would not have been made to seem enemies of the[621] people, and the names of Diderot and the Encyclopædia, of Robespierre and the Directory, might have remained unknown for ever!

We need not delay here further than to say that, while Fénelon looked into the heart of the people for the source of national strength, a succession of rapid events saved the king from the terrible alternative in which he was placed. The Emperor Joseph I. died, Marlborough fell into disfavor at home, Marshal Villars gained the victory of Denain, and the whole face of Europe was changed. A treaty of peace was signed at Utrecht in 1713.

Several of Fénelon's friends died in rapid succession, and his loving spirit was penetrated with grief at their loss. His death was hastened beyond doubt by the poignancy of his regret at these repeated afflictions. Why delay the sequel? His work was done, his views of life, his principles of duty to God, to one's country and to one's self, had been faithfully chronicled by his pen, and taught by the example of his serene and patient virtue. His hour was come, and in loving peace with all mankind, with words of faith on his lips, and the bright smile of Christian hope on his countenance, he breathed forth his pure spirit into the hands of his Maker. After his death, no funds were discovered belonging to him. They had been all distributed among the poor. He was buried without pomp in his church of Cambrai. During the Reign of Terror, the ancient tombs of that church were rifled, the leaden coffins were sent to the arsenal to be melted into bullets, and their contents thrown into the common burial ground. But when the invaders came to the bier of Fénelon, it was borne with decency and veneration into the city, and placed in a monument erected to his memory at a time when the sepulchres of emperors and kings were ruthlessly dismantled, and their ashes scattered pitilessly to the four winds of heaven.

Other great men of the age of Fénelon still live in history; few are admired more than he, and none is so much loved by men who upon other points are far from agreeing together. The wish expressed by one of his distinguished countrymen, that his memory might have the same advantage as his life, namely, that of making men love religion, has been fulfilled.

He wrote learnedly and eloquently in defence of his faith, and in refutation of the views of his opponents; and yet he avoids in all his works the extremes both of flattery and of harshness. Men of all religions recognize in him a friend, for all were embraced in his world-wide Christian charity; and yet they must bear with us, his fellow-Catholics, when we claim for our church the special honor of having made him the great and good man which all acknowledge him to have been. The earliest lessons he received came from the lips of devoted Catholic parents; and when his will was opened after his death, the first words read were the following emphatic expressions: "I declare that I wish to die in the arms of the Catholic, Apostolic, and Roman Church, my mother. God, who reads the heart, and will be my judge, knows that there has not been an instant of my life in which I have not cherished for her the submission and docility of a little child." A noble tribute this, and one which leads us to look not despondingly to the tree which is capable of producing such sound and genial fruit.

This transient reflection, ladies and gentlemen, presents itself naturally to the mind, and nothing is further from my thoughts than an attempt to enlist your hearts against your cool[622] judgment in favor of the Roman Catholic Church. The claim which that church puts forth to your attention is based officially by her on her divine right to the reverence of mankind. She has never refused to give man the history of her origin, and to submit to his earnest scrutiny the proofs of her divine commission. She claims to be the only institution established on this earth to teach man what is necessary that he may be saved, and asks and accepts no stinted or divided allegiance. She alleges distinctly that human reason is unable without assistance to find and embrace the true, and that the human will is unable without assistance to find and embrace the good. She undertakes to impart the highest truth and the highest good to all who take her for their guide and their mother. She has been more cordially hated, and more devotedly beloved, than any object that history in all its witnessing can tell of. She claims not only to be a teacher, but a teacher endowed with unerring authority, and offers as vouchers for that claim the clear promise of her divine Founder, to abide with her until the end of time, and the lives and deaths of innumerable men and women taught by her to live perfectly upon earth. She has never disguised the greatness of that sacrifice of self which must be made by every man who would enjoy the peace here and the immortality of happiness hereafter, which she pledges to her faithful children; but she promises, in the name of God, supernatural assistance for making that sacrifice in spite of its seeming terrors. She uses no efforts to gain popularity; her system moves slowly, and rarely in such form as to take advantage of the interests or aspirations of the day. She never aims to be found on the side of human passions. She hesitates not to condemn those who differ with her authorized teachings, and she intimates to every man who sets up an altar against her altar that he does God and his fellow-mortals no good service, either temporal or eternal.

Whatever religious symbolism has been offered in the world hitherto as a substitute for her apostolic creed, has been founded on the principle that man is fit to take into his own hands the management of the affairs of his own soul; but the Catholic Church tells man that his private judgment is sure to mislead him in matters of religion, in spite of lofty aspirations and purity of intention; that he is bound not only to render obedience to his God, but in the manner God requires it; and nevertheless that religious direction need not be arbitrary; that it no more violates the freedom of man's will than the strong hand of a parent violates the freedom of the little child whom it leads lovingly onward and prevents from falling weakly to the ground.

No system which presents to man effort and self-restraint in the present, and advantage and freedom in the future only, can flatter his love of ease and selfish enjoyment. He is thus, at intervals at least, impatient of order, though it is heaven's first law; of legislation, though it has for its object the greatest good of the greatest number; of society, though its proper aim is to make each a friend and a helper to all, and all friends and helpers to each; and of science, that teaches him the laws of nature and the sad effects of their violation. By the same spirit is man urged to resent and cast off the restraints imposed upon him by religion and the church. But in this case, and in the others the opposition comes not from reason; it is the uprising of selfish interest or passion, assuming to speak out for the whole man, and for all time.

Again, that which is spoken against[623] as the church is not the church; that which is spoken against as the belief, or practice, or requirement of the church, is hers perhaps in appearance, but in very truth it is not what she upholds, but what she reproves and opposes. There is a weird presentment bodied forth in English literature and called popery. It is certainly a figure of no amiable or attractive lineaments; it is worthy of the hatred of honest men. But it is not the Catholic Church. If the Catholic Church were the same thing as this ghost which goes by the name of popery, we should hate it too; for it deserves to be hated, and we are men possessing the same faculties as our neighbors who hate it. We do not hate the Catholic Church; we love her, and honor her as our mother, and so would our neighbors, if they saw her and knew her as we do.

Let us here understand the thing plainly. I uphold the doctrine and the practice of the Catholic Church; for I believe her to be the true church that the Son of God established on this earth, and ransomed at the price of his precious blood. But I can say for myself and for every Catholic who has been properly instructed in his religion, that we do not undertake to defend what has been done weakly or wickedly by men, even though they too called themselves Catholics.

I believe that light travels from east to west, and the faith which Judea gave to Rome, and Rome to Europe, and Europe to us, is the faith by which we are to be saved, if saved at all. But while thanking Europe for the true religion, I pray to my God that all the ancient feuds and heart-burnings which have distracted older countries in the name of religion may not be transplanted to this virgin soil.

Allow me to close my remarks, ladies and gentleman, with the heart-felt wish that we may all live faithful to our honest convictions, preach our religion by word and example, and force upon each other nothing but the endearing offices of fraternal charity.

DION AND THE SIBYLS.
A CLASSIC, CHRISTIAN NOVEL.

BY MILES GERALD KEON, COLONIAL SECRETARY, BERMUDA, AUTHOR OF "HARDING THE MONEY-SPINNER," ETC.

PART II.
CHAPTER I.

The die was cast, and Paulus went away plighted to an undertaking which appeared sufficiently arduous, and some of the chances of which were even full of horror.

The news of the arrangement spread through the palace of the Mamurras before he had well quitted Formiæ. From the palace it circulated through the town, from the town it reached the camp the same evening; and next day the surrounding country knew it. Carrier-pigeons [194] had borne to Rome a hint of the gayeties, the interest, and the splendor [624]which the simultaneous occurrence of the emperor's visit, and the collection of an army for real fighting purposes, (in fact, to repel the German invasion,) were likely to call forth in the old Latian town; and now the same aerial messengers apprised many a sated circus-goer in the capital that a very pretty novelty indeed would be added to the contests of gladiators and the battles of wild beasts.

The concourse pouring into and converging from all parts toward Formiæ, which had already been so extensive, increased, therefore, into an enormous concentric movement. Nothing can better show what a prodigious multitude was thus accidentally collected than the fact that, even at Rome, (which then contained four millions of inhabitants,) a diminution of pressure was perceptible, for the time, to those who remained. This change resembled what Londoners experience on the Derby day.

Paulus, that evening, having passed a considerable time with his mother and sister, (to whom he communicated the fact of his engagement without alarming them by explaining its peculiar horrors,) felt little inclined to sleep. When, therefore, the lanista Thellus, who had, as Claudius said he would invite him to do, brought back Benigna to Crispus's inn, was taking his leave of the Lady Aglais and of Agatha, Paulus said to him,

"Do not go soon; but come down into the garden and let us take a stroll. We may not often be able to converse with each other hereafter."

A beautiful starry and moonlit night looked down over Italy, as they sauntered in the fragrant garden, conversing a little and then relapsing into thoughtful silence.

"Well," returned Paulus, "my mother and sister have such need of my protection that I feel no levity about it myself. I confess that it is a grave business."

Suddenly two men approached them along two different gravel-walks in the garden, one dressed as a slave, the other in the uniform of a decurion, a legionary officer, slightly more important than a modern sergeant of the line in the English army.

The slave had one of the worst countenances, and the decurion one of the most honest, that Paulus in his very limited or Thellus in his immense experience had ever beheld. Paulus recognized the slave at once; it was that Lygdus who had endeavored to bring him to the ground by a side-sweep of Cneius Piso's sword, which this man, as the reader will remember, was carrying at the time.

The decurion gave Paulus a letter, directed in the same handwriting, folded in the same style, and its silk thread sealed with the same device of a frog, as a certain communication which he had once before received.

The moon shone high, and so calm was the night that it proved easy to read the bold characters.

"Velleius Paterculus, military tribune, salutes Paulus Lepidus Æmilius. Renounce this absurd engagement, which cannot concern you. It is yet possible, but will be too late to-morrow, to plead ignorance of what you were undertaking. Leave wretched slaves to their fate!—Vale."

Paulus, after reading this note, begged the decurion to wait, and, turning to Lygdus, asked his business.

The slave stated his name, and[625] said he was appointed to receive, dating from the day after the next, the provender which he understood Paulus to be desirous of furnishing for the use of the Sejan horse.

"But," pursued Paulus, "am I then forbidden to enter the stable myself, and make acquaintance with the horse I have to break?"

"Sir, I have orders," answered this Lygdus—who, as I think I have already mentioned, was destined, as the instrument of Cneius Piso and Plancina, some few years later, to be the cruel assassin of Germanicus—"I have orders always to admit you, and always to watch you."

"For that matter, most honored sir," answered Lygdus, "the rank of the person watched does not alter the eyes of the watcher. I could watch a Roman senator, or even a Roman Cæsar, if necessary."

"I will be security you could," said Thellus, whose great and almost diaphanous nostrils quivered as he spoke.

The decurion, meanwhile, had taken off his helmet, and the starry heavens were not more clear than his indignant, simple countenance.

"Decurion," said Paulus, "say to the esteemed Velleius Paterculus that I am very grateful to him; but what must be, must be."

"And what is that, noble sir?" answered the decurion, "in case my commanding officer should ask me for an explanation?"

"That I have given my word advertently, and will keep it faithfully," replied Paulus.

"Is this, noble sir," said the decurion, "what you mean by that which must be?"

"Only something unusual, excellent sir," said the decurion; "but not any thing confused or obscure. Permit me to add, that the whole camp knows the circumstances of this miserable undertaking, and wishes you well; and I feel in my single bosom the good wishes of the whole camp for your success."

"Well," replied Paulus, "if I survive the struggle with this creature, I mean to join the expedition of Germanicus Cæsar, and I will have my eye upon you. I should like to be your informant that you were promoted to a higher rank, and to call you the Centurion Longinus."

Thellus and Paulus, being now left again alone, resumed their walk up and down the laurel alley.

"I am not so conversant with horses," observed Thellus, "as I could for your sake at present wish to be. But all animals, I notice, are more quiet when blinded."

At this moment the branches of a cross-walk rustled, and a stately figure in the Greek læna (χλαῖνα) approached them.

"Who is this?" continued the new-comer, looking at Thellus. "I have[626] something to say which may concern your safety."

"Well," pursued the other, in a very low tone, "take this little pot of ointment; and two hours before you have to ride the Sejan horse, go into his stable, make friends with him, and rub his nostrils with the contents. He will be then muzzled, you know. You will find him afterward docile."

"My name is Charicles," replied the stranger hesitatingly, and still speaking almost in a whisper; "and I have the honor of numbering Dionysius of Athens among the best of my friends."

"My mother," returned Paulus, "would, I think, be glad to see you some day soon."

"I shall feel it an honor; but pray excuse me to her to-night," said Charicles. "Tiberius Cæsar knows nothing of my absence, and I had better return at once to Formiæ. I will visit you again."

"Not by any means," said Charicles; "it comes from a distant eastern land. It will merely make him sleepy. I have been more than an hour and a half handling the ingredients, and I can hardly keep awake myself. Forgive my hurry—farewell." And the stately Greek made an obeisance as he disappeared.

Paulus remained, holding the pot, which consisted of some kind of porcelain, in his hand, and looking at it, when Thellus exclaimed,

In a moment he had sprung through it and returned, dragging in his mighty grasp Lygdus the slave.

"I have but to tighten my fingers," cried Thellus, "and you will sleep so as not to awake in a hurry."

"Thellus," observed Paulus, "I am not depending either on this man's knowledge or on this man's ignorance. I have quite other hopes and other grounds of confidence. Let him go."

"Ah!" said Thellus, "I would like to have the chastising of you. But go, as this noble gentleman desires; go, then, as the young Roman knight bids you!"

He shook the reptile-headed, down-looking, and side-looking slave away, and the latter disappeared.

"O friend and noble sir!" said Thellus, "it nearly breaks my heart to see you thus bound hand and foot, and doomed to destruction."

So they parted, the gladiator returning to his vehicle, and Paulus retiring to his room, where, as he lay on his bed and listened to the plash of the fountain in the impluvium, he silently and calmly offered back to the great unknown God whom Dionysius worshipped the life which he, that unknown Deity, could alone have given.

CHAPTER II.

Next morning, before the family were out of their beds, Phylis the slave had returned from Monte Circello with the following note:

"Marcus Lepidus Æmilius hails the widow of his brave and valiant brother. Come with your children. The last of mine has, alas! died under the clemency of one man, and the liberality of another. The clement man is Augustus, the liberal man was Mæcenas. All that I now retain is yours; and yours shall be all I may be able to leave. Farewell."

But despite of this note, Paulus could not persuade his mother to depart from that neighborhood till after the trifling display of horsemanship, as he called it, which he had to afford for the amusement of the Roman world on the evening of the third day ensuing. A little ruffled at his failure to persuade the Lady Aglais to go away, he summoned their freedman Philip, and with him for a companion started on foot for Formiæ before noon, along a road as thronged at that moment and as animated as the road to Epsom is the eve of what Lord Palmerston has rather affectedly, and, as applied to an annual event, very incorrectly, called the Isthmian games of England.

Scarcely had he and Philip entered the southern gate, when they noticed a little crowd around some nurses, one of whom, apparently a Nubian, held the hand of a magnificently-attired child of any age between five and eight. At his side was an eastern-looking youth of about eighteen, whom the reader has met before. Thellus the gladiator was standing with folded arms on the outskirts of the suddenly-collected concourse. The child had dropped some toy, which a dog had seized in his mouth, and had thereby defaced. The dog was now a prisoner, held fast by the throat in a slave's hands.

"I care nothing for that," cried the child, who was purple with passion. "Strangle him, Lygdus."

And accordingly Lygdus tightened his grasp of the dog's throat till the animal's tongue was thrust forth; the grasp was yet longer maintained, and the dog was throttled dead.

"Quite; see," replied Lygdus, casting away upon the street the breathless carcass.

"Nice and neat as an execution," said a powerfully-built, dusky, middle-aged man, having a long, ruddy beard, streaked with gray, around whom were several slaves in Asiatic dress. This person also the reader has met before. "But," added he, "I am going up for my own trial, and I hope it will not be followed by another execution."

"I only hope it will" cried the interesting child. "What fun it would be to see a man strangled."

"He is the son of Germanicus and Agrippina; his name is Caius. You see, young as he is, he already wears the caligæ of the common soldiers, among whom he continually lives. It is his delight. They nickname him Caligula. Do you know, there are good chances he yet wears the purple, and succeeds Augustus, or at least Augustus's next heir, as emperor of the world."

Suddenly there were cries of "Make way." Lictors moved, making large room among the crowd. Sejanus appeared in the robes of a prætor; and Paulus and his friend Thellus found themselves borne along, like leaves in a stream, toward the back of the Mamurran palace, in a large room on the ground floor of which they presently beheld the big, dusky-colored man of fifty or thereabouts, with the long, ruddy, gray-streaked beard, standing before a sort of bar. Behind the bar, on a chair of state, like the curule chair of the senators, Augustus [628]was sitting. A crowd of famous persons, many of whom we have already had occasion to mention, stood behind him, and on either hand Livy, Lucius Varius, Haterius, Domitius Afer, Antistius Labio, Germanicus, and Tiberius Cæsar were there. In a row behind were Cneius Piso, Pontius Pilate, and the boy Herod Agrippa.

"And so," said Augustus, "you tell us you are the son of Herod the Great, as he is called; in other words, Herod the Idumæan; his son Alexander?"

"We have seen," said Paulus to Thellus, in a whisper, "the fate of a dog; we are now to learn that of a king, or a pretender to the dignity."

"Great and dread commander, such I am," answered the red-bearded, big, dark man.

"But," said Augustus, "the accredited rumor runs that Herod condemned his two sons, Aristobulus and Alexander, to death. Nay, I have the official report sent to me at the time by the prefect of Syria, and letters from Herod the Idumæan himself."

"Herod condemned them, but the executioner killed others instead," answered the Jew. "They escaped to Sidon."

"Them and they!" said Augustus; "you mean that others were executed instead of them?"

"You speak as though you had gone out of that person. You speak rather like a historian than like a sufferer and an actor. You are talking of yourself and your brother, yet you say THEY, not WE!"

"Pardon me," said Augustus; "I know the style of the east perfectly well. Solve me now another difficulty: I also well know Herod the Idumæan, many cases connected with whom were litigated before me, and decided by me. Now, I never knew a man who, having determined that any body was to die, took such methodical pains to carry that determination into effect. He dealt largely in executions; and if there was a person in the world, it was Herod, who saw with his own eyes that his intended executions should be realities."

"Mine was not," said the Jew, and a laugh arose in court. "All the Jews in Sidon know that I am Alexander, son of Herod; all those in Crete know it; all those in Melas know it; and when I landed at Dicearchia, all the Jews received me as their king; and you are not ignorant, great emperor, that thousands of my countrymen in Rome, the other day, carried me upon a royal litter through the streets, and clothed me in royal robes and ornaments, and received me, wherever I went, with shouts of welcome as Herod's son."

"And you have then," replied Augustus, after a pause, "been nurtured as a royal person is in the east?"

"I myself," returned Augustus, "have seen and known the son Alexander, as well as his father Herod; and though you are not unlike the son, yet you—show me your hands."

Augustus immediately ordered the room to be cleared; and it was afterward known that he had extorted a[629] confession of his imposture from this Alexander; and that, sparing his life, he condemned him to row one of the state galleys in chains for the rest of his days.

The eastern-looking youth, holding the hand of the child Caius Caligula, and followed by Pontius Pilate, waited for Augustus in a passage—through which Paulus and Thellus were now trying to make their way into the street.

When the emperor came out, observing that the youth desired to speak with him, he stopped, saying,

"This officer behind me (Pilate is his name) has been very obliging to us ever since our arrival. I wish, my sovereign, you would send him to Judea as procurator."

"He is too young," replied Augustus; "but I will put his name in my tablets. Perhaps, under my successor, he may obtain the office."

"What is it, orator?" asked Augustus. (Caligula displayed as a child a precocious volubility of speech, which procured him the epithet by which he was now addressed.)

"That man, that black Jew—who pretended to be my friend's uncle—won't you put him to death?"

"Externi sunt isti mores," replied Augustus, quoting Cicero; "that would be quite a foreign proceeding. The anger that sheds unnecessary blood belongs to the levity of the Asiatics, or the truculence of barbarians."

Meanwhile Paulus and Thellus, who had unavoidably overheard these scraps of conversation, emerged now once more into the street, and Thellus guided Paulus to the stables of Tiberius Cæsar, where they found Lygdus expecting the visit. He led them into a long range of buildings, and showed them, standing in a stall which had a door to itself, so contrived as to avoid the necessity of letting any other horses, when coming or going, pass him without some intervening protection, the famous Sejan steed. The walls were tapestried with leafy vine-boughs, and the stable seemed very cool, clean, and well kept.

The stature of the ominous horse, as we have had occasion already to mention, was unusually large; but the fineness of his form took away the idea of unwieldiness, and gave a guarantee of both power and speed. However, any person who had studied horses, and was learned in their points, (which to a great extent merely means learned in their anatomy,) would at a glance have condemned this one's head. It was, indeed, not lacking in physical elegance, although not lean enough; the forehead was very broad, but the eye was not sufficiently prominent nor mild in expression, and it shot forth a restless light; the muzzle and the ears, moreover, were coarse; the bones, from the eye down, were too concave, and the nostril appeared to be too thick. Something untrustworthy, and almost wicked, characterized the expression of the head altogether. The jaws were wide, and the neck was extraordinarily deep. The shoulders were not so flat or so thin as the Romans liked them to be; the girth round the heart was vast; the chest broad and full; the body barrel-shaped. The limbs were long, (which, says Captain Nolan, "is weakness, not power;") but then the bones were everywhere well covered with muscle, the hind-legs[630] being remarkably straight in the drop; in short, they promised an immense stride, when the animal should be urged to his fastest gallop.

"Now," said Paulus, after attentively examining these and a great many other points, which it would be too technical for us to detail, "I see he is not muzzled, but tied by the head, and I perceive a curious arrangement—that platform behind his manger, and raised somewhat higher than it. The object is to feed him thence, and approach him there, I suppose? Moreover, I observe you have pulleys in the roof and broad bands depending from them; do you then lift him off his legs when you groom him?"

Lygdus assented. Paulus, after looking attentively at the animal's hoofs, and forming an idea of the state of his feet, inquired,

Paulus went round, and stood some ten minutes in front of the horse on the raised platform behind the manger, then shook a double handful of corn down before him and watched him eat it. Satisfied at length with this scrutiny, he now made arrangements for Philip to remain constantly in the stable, even sleeping there at night, and quitting it only to accompany the horse when taken out for exercise; and he made it clearly understood that Philip should superintend the feeding and grooming of the animal till he should be led forth for Paulus to ride him at the appointed time. We have said nothing to explain why the youth did not ride him muzzled, as often and as long as possible, during the two days which were still left for preparation; the fact being that he proposed even now to do so; but found that, not having thought of stipulating for this as one of the conditions, when he had his interview with Tiberius, orders had been given to Lygdus that no person whatever was to mount the horse till the hour when Paulus was to attempt his subjugation, in presence of the court, camp, and people. Very much disappointed, and blaming his own want of foresight in not having extorted so important a right, Paulus now left the freedman "on duty" in the stables, Thellus volunteering to revisit him, and to bring plenty of provisions of all sorts, and thus to save the necessity of purveying for him from the distance of Crispus's inn. When our hero and the gladiator had retired, Philip began to make a couch of fresh and fragrant hay for himself on the platform behind the manger, muttering,

"But, if I sleep, it shall be with one eye open and the other not quite closed. If I find that scoundrel, for he looks a scoundrel, playing any tricks, I'll strangle him so surely as I have five fingers on each hand."

"Your young master, I fear," he said, "has not long to live; no one can ride this horse."

"Three circumstances," replied Philip, seating himself deliberately on a roll of hay, "are unknown to you. I will tell you them. The first is, that this is not at all a case for mere horsemanship, although it is not to be denied that horsemanship is necessary. Courage and wit are more needful than any bodily adroitness in reminding brutes that their master is man. That is the first circumstance. The second is, that my young master learnt his riding among the Ætolians, who are not matched in the world."

Lygdus drank a little, wiped the mouth of the flask with a vine-leaf, and tendered it once more to Philip, saying,

"The first and second of your remarks seem to me to be appropriate, although I think the Gaulish riders equal to the Ætolians. I should like to hear the third circumstance."

Philip sipped some of the wine, gave back the vessel to the slave, and proceeded,

"The third has relation to your phrase, 'I fear.' My master, Paulus Lepidus Æmilius, has been born and reared to fear death not over-much."

"Well," said Philip, "various things he fancies, and I fancy so too. Considering that all men must die, and can die only once, and that it has become somehow, I suppose, by practice and decree, as natural as to be born, and that we have been doing nothing for thousands of years but making way for each other in that manner, it would be an error to look upon death as the greatest evil. Why, man, I should go mad if that which none can avoid was the greatest evil that any can incur."

"Edepol!" exclaimed the slave again; "you are apparently right. Yet what can be conceived worse than death? You mean immense pain, long continuing; in which case a wise man would put an end to himself."

"Wise!" returned Philip; "but it would be useless to reason with such as you. You should have heard, as I have heard him, Dionysius the Athenian upon this topic. When you make such reflections, is it your big toe, for example, or your belly, or your elbow, or any part of your body, that makes them? You may put an end to your body, and we know what becomes of it. When it is no longer fit, as the young Athenian says, to be the house of that which thinks and reflects within it, this last departs; for the body, once dead, ceases to think or reflect, and as soon as the thinker does thus depart, the body rots.

"But that other thing which kept the body from rotting, that other thing which thinks and reflects, and which is conscious that it is always the same, that it always has been itself—that other thing which knows its own unalterable identity through all the changes of the body, from squalling childhood to stiff-kneed age—how can that other thing, which may easily depart out of the body and leave it to perish, depart out of itself? A thing may leave another thing; but how can any thing be left by itself? When this thing, says Dionysius, goes away from the body, the body always dies. It was, therefore, the body's life. But out of its own self this life cannot go (can any thing go out of itself?) and if it goes out of the body unbidden, what will it say to him who had put it therein when he asks, Sentinel, why have you quitted your post? Servant, why have you left your charge? What brings you hither? I am angry with you! What will this always conscious, always identical thing, then reply?"

"You frighten me," said Lygdus. "What, then, can be more feared by a reasonable man than death?"

"My young master, for example," replied Philip, "so long, be it always understood, as he is not his own murderer, would prefer to die in honor than to live in shame. His father, the brave Roman tribune, used to say to him as a boy, that a disgraced life was worse than a useless life, and a useless life worse than a noble death. But who comes hither?"

The interesting little child Caius Caligula, and the boy Herod Agrippa, entered the stable as Philip spoke.

"Oh! there is the big wild horse," cried the sweet infant, who had only just arrived at the use of his reason; "but where is the young man that is to be eaten? I want to tell him what will become of him, and then to watch his face."

"He is, I see, even, now coming back," said Philip sternly. He stood up as he spoke, and an instant afterward Paulus, who was attended by the slave Claudius, bearing a basket of provisions for old Philip, crossed the threshold.

"Ah!" said Caligula, "you are the person, are you not, who are to be first thrown off that horse, next to be danced upon by him, and finally to have your head crunched between his grinders, and that fine wavy hair of yours will not protect your head?"

"That is a graphic description," said Paulus; "but I trust it will not be realized."

Paulus seemed to experience some repugnance to converse with this child; but guessing him to belong to the imperial family, he answered with a calm smile,

"I will fix my eyes fast upon you," returned the child, "from the moment you mount."

"May they be blinded before they witness what they wish to behold!" muttered Philip.

During this short conversation, Lygdus noticed something white gleaming in a fold of Paulus's tunic at the side, and picked it, unperceived by any one, out of the species of pocket where it lay. Caligula, after scrutinizing Paulus's face, turned away, and ran rapidly up the stable, passing behind the horse.

He skipped and danced a few moments on the other side, gazing at the animal, and exclaiming, "Good horse! fine horse! beautiful horse!"

Lygdus immediately called out to him not to come back till he had closed the door of the box, the leaf of which was on the hither side, and could be flung to, and the slave proceeded to do this. But Caligula, with a sort of skipping run, still uttering his exclamations and looking sideways into the stall as he passed, had already begun to return, giving Sejanus's heels as wide an offing as the place allowed. A short, ferocious whinny, more like the cry of some wild beast than the neigh of a horse, was heard, and Sejanus lashed out his hind-legs.

Caligula would probably have crossed, beyond range of harm, the line of this acknowledgment which the brute was making to him, in return for his ejaculatory compliments, only for the very precaution which Lygdus had taken, and which actually furnished the animal with a projectile, and transmitted to a further distance, by means of the door-leaf, nearly the full force of the blow. As the door was swinging home, the powerful hoofs met it, and, shivering it from top to bottom, dashed it open again, and sent the outer edge of it and a large detached splinter against the middle of Caligula's forehead and face, from the hair down along the whole line of the nose; for, as we have remarked, his face happened to be turned sideways to receive the blow just when it was delivered. He fell insensible; but having been already in motion, the united effect of the two forces was to cast him beyond the reach of any further usage on the part of the Sejan steed. Lygdus immediately lifted him up, and he, with Herod Agrippa, carried Caligula into the open air. Paulus and Philip followed; but ascertaining[633] that the injury was superficial, they returned to the stable, where they were now left alone.

"I heard him tell you, my master," said Philip to Paulus, "that he would fasten his eyes upon you, when you mounted yonder brute; now, he will not open those eyes for a week, and whatever happens to you, he is not going to see it. He is not seriously hurt; he'll be as well as ever in ten days; but for the present his beauty is spoilt, and he's as blind as the dead."

Paulus now in a low tone related to the freedman, whose services would be necessary in the matter, the visit of Charicles, and the gift to him by that learned man of an unguent which, if rubbed into the horse's nostrils, would render him sleepy, and, therefore, quiet. The old servant expressed great wonder and admiration at such a device, and Paulus felt with his hand for the little porcelain pot where he remembered to have placed it. Needless to say, it was gone.

"Well," said the youth, after a few questions and answers had been exchanged, "I must even take my chance without it. Charicles, I hear, has just been summoned to Rome, so that I cannot get any more of the compound. Farewell; I must now return to Crispus's inn."

CHAPTER III.

The day when the singular struggle was to occur, the expectation of which had excited such curiosity, arose bright, breezeless, and sultry, and so continued till long past noon; but the sun was now sinking toward the Tyrrhenian Sea, and a cool, soft air had begun to blow as the hour approached when the nephew of the triumvir was to mount the horse Sejanus, in the presence of such a multitude as the fields of Formiæ had never before beheld, whether in times of peace or times of war.

At the distance of a few miles on every side, the fair vales and slopes of Italy presented the appearance of a deserted land, over which no sound was heard save the drowsy hum of insects, the occasional sough of the rising breeze in the tops of the woods, and, predominant over all, far and near, the piercing ring of the cicala, with its musical rise and fall and its measured intervals. The fire of the wayside forge lay under its ashes; all its anger taking rest, its hoarse roar asleep, till the breath of the bellows should once more awaken it to resistance and torment it into fury. All the labors of tillage were suspended; the plough wearied no team of oxen; little girls were watching the flocks and herds. Their fathers and mothers and brothers had all gone away since early morning, and would not return till night-fall. A lonely traveller from the south, whose horse had cast a shoe and fallen lame, had no alternative but to take off bridle and housings, leave them under a tree in charge of a little damsel five or six years old, turn his steed loose in a soft field of clover, and continue his own journey on foot along the silent highway, amid the silent land.

The seats of the temporary amphitheatre were all filled; while within and beneath them, standing, but standing on three several elevations, contrived by means of planks, (the rearmost being the highest,) were six ranks of soldiers from the camp; the two inner ranks consisting exclusively of Ælius Sejanus's prætorians. Immediately behind the centre of the amphitheatre, where Augustus with his court sat upon a strongly-built, lofty, and somewhat projecting wooden platform, canopied from the glare, a grove of tall and shady trees offered in their branches an accommodation[634] of which the fullest advantage had been taken by a vast miscellaneous multitude, chiefly youths and boys; but among them soldiers who had received a holiday, and had found no room for themselves in the amphitheatre, were also numerous, their costumes rendering them easily distinguishable. On each side of the large canopied platform of the emperor and the Cæsars, with their court, were several seats of honor lined with purple and scarlet cloths, and connected with the estrade in question by continuous pavilion roofs, but having their own benches. Here many ladies and some boys and girls sat. It is in one of these we are ourselves going to take post, invisible but watchful, unheard but hearing.

On the seat immediately in front of ours, and of course a little below it, is a group of three persons, attended by a slave. With these persons, and even with their slave, we have already made more or less acquaintance. One of them the doctors had forbidden to go forth; but he had come. He is a mere child; his pretty face is shockingly disfigured; both his eyes are closed and blacked; all the flesh round them is a discolored and contused mass, his head is bandaged, and every nerve in his countenance is twitching with the furious eagerness and curiosity of one whose organs of sight, if he could only see with them, would ravenously devour the spectacle which all the rest of that mighty multitude were to enjoy, and from which he alone was to be debarred. Amid the immense murmur of so many human voices, we have to listen with attention, in order to catch distinctly what the child says in his shrill treble tones.

"Now mark you, good Cneius Piso, and you, Herod Agrippa, I am as blind as a stone; and I have brought you here in no other character than as my eyes, my left and my right eye. If a single iota of what passes escapes me, may all the gods destroy you both, worse than any Roman or Jew was ever destroyed before! Has that beast of a horse (if it was mine, I'd tether it by all four legs to the ground, and make a squadron of cavalry back their horses against it, and kick it into shreds and little bits)—has that beast of a horse come forth yet?"

"Not yet, orator," answered Piso. "I see that your father, the illustrious Germanicus, has not taken his place in the emperor's pavilion; he is riding about yonder in the arena, and so is Tiberius Cæsar. I dare say they will prefer to remain on horseback; for they can thus see quite as well, while the scene continues to be enacted in this place, and if the Sejan horse should break away through the opening in the amphitheatre opposite to us, they could follow and still assist at the issue, whereas we could not.'

"But I want to see; I must see; I'll get on my pony too! Ah my sight! I could not ride blind! O that accursed horse!"

"Then," said Piso, "do you wish the youth to conquer the horse, or the horse his rider?"

"Oh! If I could only see! I ought not to have come! It is worse to be here, knowing what is to happen, and having it all close under my eyes, and not to see it, than if I was far away and without the temptations around me. It is the hell of Tantalus; I cannot, cannot bear it."

After a pause of impotent rage, he asked Piso was the crowd of spectators very large?

"It is the largest I ever beheld," answered Piso; "it would be impossible to count it, or to guess the number."

"I wish every one present was stone blind at this very moment," said the dear child.

"Understand me—only for the moment," hastily returned Caligula; "I would give them their sight again when I recovered my own." A pause. "Or even when to-day's show was over, perhaps."

While yet he spoke, the hum and murmur, which had been incessant, died rapidly away.

"The Sejan horse is being led into the arena; two men, as usual, hold two cavassons on opposite sides. He is muzzled; two other grooms are now slackening the muzzle, in order to get the bit well back between his teeth by pulling up the reins which are under the muzzle, as the horse opens his mouth.

"They have the bit properly placed now, and have quitted his head. Oh! what a spring! It has jerked the further cavasson-holder clean off his feet. O gods! he has lost the cavasson, and the other man must be destroyed. No, bravo! the fellow has regained the loop of his rein or thong, and hauls the beast handsomely back!"

"How can one man on either side," asked Caligula, "hold him? I have seen two on each side."

"I understand," replied Piso; but before he could finish his explanation or remark, or whatever it was designed to be, a sudden and impressive silence fell upon that vast assembly, and Piso stopped short.

"The rider has come forth," answered Piso, "and is walking toward the horse from the direction of the open space in front of us. By Jupiter! a splendid youth; it is not to be denied."

"How is he dressed? Has he his whip and stimuli (spurs)? He will not need such helps, I surmise."

"He has no spurs, and he carries nothing in his hands. He wears that foreign-looking head-gear, the broad-rimmed petasus, as a shade, no doubt, against the level rays of the sunset; for I see he is giving directions to the grooms, and they are contriving to bring the horse round with his head toward the west. Ah! he thus faces the opening; I dare say he will try to push the animal into the excitement of a grand rush, and thus weary him at the outset. In that case, we shall not see much of the business; he will be miles away over the country in a few minutes."

"You will find that such an injustice will not be allowed," answered the child. "We must not be cheated out of our rights."

"His tunic," continued Piso, "is belted tight, and I perceive that he wears some kind of greaves, which reach higher than the knee, that will protect him from the brute's teeth. Moreover, I notice a contrivance in the horse's housings to rest the feet—you might call them stapedæ; they seem to be made of plaited hide."

"I don't care for his greaves," returned the child; "the teeth may not wound him, but they will pull him off or make him lose his balance all the same. It is agreed, is it not, that, as soon as he is mounted, the muzzle is to be slipped off the horse?"

"Then the rest is certain," said the other. "How is it contrived, do you know?" added he.

"The muzzle consists of a mere roll of hide," replied Piso; "and it is those long reins alone which keep it folded, being passed in opposite directions[636] round the animal's nose; while therefore both the reins are pulled, or held tight, they bind the muzzle; but when one of them only is pulled, it opens the muzzle. Each groom has the same kind of double rein; and each, acting in concert, will set the beast free as soon as they receive the signal."

"The rider himself, when he is fairly seated; but Tiberius will tell him when to mount."

"He still wears that queer sword; I should have fancied it cumbersome to him. Afraid! I should say not. No sign of it.

At first, this dialogue was sustained in a whisper; but as the lull of all noise was again gradually replaced by that hoarse hum, which is blent out of a hundred thousand low-toned murmured words, Piso and the child Caligula raised their own voices, and the last exclamation of Piso was as loud as it was sudden.

"Why, yes," said Cneius Piso; "and something which I do not understand. That old freedman of the youth, together with Thellus the gladiator, have approached him, and Thellus holds in each hand a sort of truncheon about a yard or more long; the top of which for more than a foot is black; the rest is sheathed or plated in bronze; the black top of the truncheon is thick; the rest, which is sheathed in the metal, is much thinner. The freedman who is by Thellus's side holds a small horn lantern in one hand, and tenders with the other a pair of large woollen chirothecæ (gloves) to his young master, who is even now putting them on. As he puts on his gloves, he looks round the benches; he is looking our way now. What can he mean? He has the audacity to wave his hand, and smile, and nod in this direction!"

The slave whom we have mentioned as forming the fourth in this group was no other than Claudius, whose part Paulus was now performing.

"By your leave, most honored lords," said Claudius, "I think I am the person whom that valiant youth is saluting."

"Yes, my lord," returned Claudius; "and having caught sight of me, he beckoned to me, doubtless, to bid me have good courage."

"Well!" ejaculated Piso, "that is a good joke. I think it is you who ought to beckon to him to have good courage. He needs it more than you."

A moment after this remark, Cneius Piso suddenly turned to the child Caligula, and informed him that Tiberius was signing to him (Piso) to go down into the arena, and mount one of the spare horses; and, although unwillingly, he must go.

"And how shall I know what occurs?" cried the passionate, voluble boy. "It is like plucking out one of my eyes. Herod Agrippa here speaks Latin with such a dreadful, greasy accent, and so slowly; he is but learning the language."

Piso rose and said, "I have no choice but to obey; you have the slave Claudius with you; he not only speaks fluently, but I'll answer for it he will watch all the stages of the struggle with at least as much attention as any person in all this crowd will! His liberty, his wedding, and fifty thousand sesterces are at stake."

Saying this, he descended the steps of the narrow gangway which was[637] (with scores of similar stairs) the means contrived for reaching and quitting the higher seats in the temporary circus. A few moments afterward, he was seen in the arena riding by the side of Tiberius to and fro.

"Now, slave, remember your duty," cried the child Caligula; "let nothing escape your eyes or my ears. What next?"

"Those queer-looking staves, my lord, which the illustrious Cneius Piso has mentioned as being in the hands of Thellus, have passed into those of the young knight, who is to conquer the terrible brute."

"What? the two truncheons with black, thick ends, and the rest of their length sheathed in metal? do you say that the knight Paulus has taken them into his hands? What good can they do him?"

"Yes, my lord; he has now passed both of them into his left hand, and holds them by the thin ends. Thellus has withdrawn a few paces; the old freedman, Philip, remains still near the youth. Ha!"

"Tiberius Cæsar has signalled the arena to be cleared. O gods! we shall soon see the issue now. I care not for my freedom; I care for the safety of that brave young knight."

"I do not," replied Claudius, "observe any shrinking, my lord. It is I who shrink. He has drawn slowly near the horse in front, and stands about half a yard from his left shoulder. He is following Tiberius Cæsar with his eyes."

"The arena is now clear of all save on the one hand the two Cæsars and their retinues, who have taken their stand very near to us, just opposite to and beneath this platform, my lord; and on the other hand, the group around that horrible animal. Ah! me miserable! Tiberius Cæsar lifts his hand, and you hear the trumpet! That is the signal."

"I hear it! I hear it!" cried the child, in a sort of ecstasy. "What follows now? Has the knight Paulus mounted?"

"The horse trembles in every limb," said the slave; "his nostrils dilate and quiver, and show scarlet, as if on fire; and his eyes shoot forth a blood-red gleam, and he has stooped his head, and—"

"But the man, the man?" screamed Caius; "what of him? Has he not failed, I say—lost heart?"

The most profound stillness had succeeded to the hubbub of blended sounds which a moment previously filled the air.

A trumpet blew a shrill prolonged minor note, and the child, laying his hand upon Claudius's shoulder, and shaking him violently, cried to him to proceed with his descriptions; addressing to him again the query, "Has that young man mounted? And if so, in what style, with what success?"

Notwithstanding the despotic impatience with which the inquiries were urged, the slave Claudius did not at first reply; and the infant heard rapid, eager murmurs on all sides follow the trumpet blast, then a general burst of exclamations, which were instantly hushed.

"Pardon a momentary abstraction," replied Claudius. "While the trumpet was yet sounding, the young knight Paulus took off his hat quickly, and bowed toward Tiberius Cæsar and the emperor; and replacing his hat, he beckoned to the freedman Philip.[638] This last has approached him, and they are even now speaking together."

"Ha! ha!" interrupted the child; "then he has not mounted. He neither dares nor can he."

"Philip," pursued Claudius, "has opened the lantern; his young master is thrusting the staves toward the light; the ends have caught fire, in a dull degree, with some smoke accompanying the flame. He turns quickly away from the freedman, and holding the staves still in his left hand, and a little away, he approaches the horse; now he stands with his feet close together. Oh! he has sprung clean from the ground; he is in his seat. He has seized the bridle in his right hand, and carried it to his mouth; he takes it between his teeth. He is now relieving his left hand of one of those torches; he holds one in each hand, somewhat away from the body, nearly horizontal. The cavasson-holders at a distance are removing the muzzle, and the rider sends his feet firmly, yet I think not very far, through those rests which the illustrious Cneius Piso mentioned, those stapedæ of hide, the like of which I never saw before. I wonder they are not always used."

"Not less so than a statue," replied the slave; "excepting the eyes and nostrils, which last exhibit a tremulous movement, and show scarlet, like hollow leaves or thin shells on fire. The brute's concave head, from the scarlet nostril to the lurid eye, looks wicked and dire."

"Calm and heedful; the slight occasional breath of air from the east carries away to the front the slow flame, blent with a little smoke of those torches which he holds one in each hand."

"I suppose they are intended," said the child, "to compel the Sejan horse to keep his head straight. Thus your volunteer-substitute need not fear the beast's teeth. The issue seems then to be reduced to a trial of sheer horsemanship."

"And in such a trial, most honored sir," replied the slave, "I begin to have hopes. You should see the youth. The leading-reins are now loose. The muzzle is snatched away, and the contest has begun. Surely it seems one between a wild beast and a demigod."

"The horse, after a series of violent plunges, suddenly reared till he had nearly gained a perpendicular position upon his hind-legs, the fore-feet pawing the air. The rider, who seemed to be as little liable to fall as though he had been part of the animal, then quickly passed his right foot out of the far stapeda, and dropping the bridle from his teeth, slipped down on the hither side. Hark! did you hear the crash with which the fore-paws have come down? The steed seemed to be very near falling backward, but after a struggle of two or three seconds, recovered himself; the centre of his weight had not been carried rearward of the vertical line; and, O ye gods! just as you heard that ponderous thud with which he descended upon his fore-feet, the youth darted from the ground with a spring like his first, and he is now on the brute's back as before. He stoops to the horse's neck; he has caught the bridle in his teeth, and lifts that brave, clear face again. Listen to the multitude! Oh! how the euge, euge, thunders from[639] a hundred thousand sympathetic voices!"

"Ha! ha!" continued Claudius, transported out of himself. "I shall get my liberty to-day! Nor will my benefactor be injured. Ha! ha! The fell beast of a horse seems astonished. How he writhes his back, curving it like some monstrous catamount. And lo! now he leaps from the ground with all four feet at the same time! I never saw the like, except in animals of the cervine tribe. Ha! ha! leap away! Yes, stoop that ferocious-looking head, and shake it; and lash out with your death-dealing hoofs. Your master is upon you, in his chair of power, and you'll shake your head off before you dislodge him from it. It is not with the poor literary slave Claudius that you have to deal! Oh! what a paroxysm of plunges. I was frightened for you, then, brave young knight; but there you sit yet, calm and clear-faced. If I was frightened for you, you are not frightened for yourself."

"Oh! for a few minutes' sight!" said the child. "Has not the horse tried to twist his head round, and so to bring his teeth into play?"

"Even now he tries," replied Claudius; "but he is met on either side by the torch. The fiercest beast of the desert shrinks from fire. Prudent and fortunate device! Lo! the horse seems at last to have ascertained that he who has this day mounted him is worthy of his services; do you hear the tread of his hoofs, as he traces the circle of the arena, guided by those steady hands from which flames appear to flow. Faster and faster rushes the steed, always restrained and turned by the outer torch, which is brought near his head, while the inner is held further to the rear. His sides are flecked with foam. The pace grows too rapid for a short curve, and the steed is now guided straight for the western opening in the arena opposite to where we sit; while the light breeze from the east counteracts the current of air made by the animal's own career, and keeps the flare of those torches almost even. They are gone; and again hark! Is not that shout like the roar of waters on a storm-beaten shore, as a hundred thousand men proclaim the success of a generous and brave youth, who could face the chance of being torn limb from limb in order to give to a poor slave like me, condemned to a frightful death, his life and his liberty, a home and a future?"

"But surely," said the imperial child, "it is not over so soon. It is like a dream."

"I have tried to make you see what I saw," returned Claudius. "It was a wonderful struggle—the youth looked beautiful; and in the swift whirl, as you beheld the graceful and perfect rider, his hands apparently streaming with flames, and his face so calm and clear, you would have imagined that it was one of those beings whom the poets have feigned and sung, as having gifts superior to the gifts of ordinary mortals, who was delivering some terror-stricken land from a demon, from a cruel monster, and compelling ferocity, craft, uproar, and violence to bend to far higher forces, to man's cool courage and man's keen wit."

Augustus, in his later years, showed a decreasing relish for the bloodier sports of the arena; and, in deference to his taste, the next spectacles were, first a mere wrestling-match, and then a combat at the cestus, in which the effort was to display skill rather than inflict injury.

This contest was just over, and the sun, as if in wide-flowing garments of red and golden clouds, had sunk[640] level with the broad western opening of the amphitheatre, when the hum of voices was hushed once more, and Claudius was commanded in a whisper to resume his task of rendering the scene upon which the child's bodily eyes were temporarily closed, visible to his mind.

"I cannot with certainty discern," said the slave, "what occurs; there is such a vast heavenly shield of red light hanging opposite to us in the western sky. Against it, approaching at a walking pace toward the gap in the arena, along that avenue of chestnut trees in the country, I see a horseman. All eyes are turned in that direction. It is he; it is Paulus Lepidus Æmilius, returning on the Sejan steed; the animal is enveloped in sweat, and dust, and foam; and rather stoops the head which looked so fierce two hours ago; the rider has thrown away those torches, and now holds the reins low down on either side, a little in front of the beast's shoulder. His hat is gone, and his brown locks, as you see them against the sun, are so touched with the light that he seems to wear a head-gear of golden flames. Hark! again, as before, the people and the army shout to him. He is bowing to them on each side; and now, as he advances, what do I see?"

"How can I tell what you see, you dog? You are here for no other purpose than to tell me that."

"Oh! oh!" cried the other; "the branches of the trees have no doubt struck him. Is he pale? Does he look faint? Is he going to fall off?"

"No," said Claudius; "he has reined in the horse, which stands like a horse of stone in the middle of the arena. Tiberius and Germanicus have both ridden toward him, with their retinues of mounted officers behind them. They have halted some six yards from him. They are speaking to him. As they speak, he bows his head and smiles. A crowd of people on foot have broken into the arena. The grooms have drawn near, at a sign from Tiberius; they are cautiously approaching the Sejan beast; but this last shows no restiveness. They have slipped the muzzle round his nose, under the reins. The youth dismounts. I do not see him now; he has become mixed with the crowd, I think; yes, it must be so, for I miss him altogether."

Augustus now rose, and his rising was taken by the multitude as a signal that the entertainments of the amphitheatre for that evening had closed.

Half an hour more and the scene was left to its solitude; and where the cries and shouts of that mighty assemblage had mounted to the very heavens, there was no sound left except the humming of the insects and the rustling of the trees.

That night, in the large veranda or bower, which hung its arch of leaves and flowers over the landing of the Lady Aglais's apartments, at the Inn of the Hundredth Milestone, were assembled an exceedingly heterogeneous but mutually attached company, with every member of which the reader has made acquaintance. Paulus's mother, his young sister Agatha, Claudius, (no longer a slave, and now wearing the pileus,) Crispina, with her daughter Benigna, the betrothed of this slave Claudius, Thellus the gladiator, and Dionysius the Athenian, were there, and they all heard Paulus relate a very strange occurrence, with which he made them acquainted in the following terms:

"Mother," said he, "the most extraordinary incident connected with[641] this happy day remains to be told. I am sure that the great and mysterious Being who is expected by Dionysius here soon to descend upon earth, and to whom I offered my life, has protected me this day. He has surely protected me, and has received with favor my endeavor to rescue from brutal power an oppressed and innocent young couple. The most extraordinary incident connected with my undertaking, I say, is not yet known to you. Last night I could not sleep soundly. At last, long before daybreak, I rose, dressed myself, and, kneeling down, besought that Being who is to appear among us to remember that I was trying to please him by this enterprise, and that I was acting just as Dionysius and I had concluded it would be agreeable to this beneficent being. An inexpressible feeling of calmness and confidence arose in my heart as I rose from my knees. I then took my hat and went out of doors. I first strolled yonder, up and down that laurel walk in the garden, and afterward sauntered into the fields and wandered pretty far, but I observed not whither. Presently I began to feel that inclination to sleep which had deserted me in my bedroom; and, knowing the sun would soon rise, I chose a shady spot under a clump of trees, and, lying down, fell fast asleep immediately. I had no dream, but was waked by feeling a hand upon my forehead. Opening my eyes, I beheld a woman, very aged and venerable, but with a most beautiful countenance, despite her years, bending over me. Her countenance was solemn as the stars, and, I know not how, impressed me like the face of the heavens at midnight, when the air is clear and calm. Her hair was not gray, but white—white as milk. She wore a long, black mantle, the hood of which, like that of Agatha's ricinium, was brought over the head, but not further than the middle of the head, so that I could see, when I rose to my feet, (as I instantly did,) that her long flowing white locks were parted evenly and fell below the shoulder on each side. She held in her left hand a long staff, and her right was extended toward me as if bespeaking attention. She said to me in Greek these words: 'By means of fire you can subdue the ferocious beast.' She then laid the hand which was stretched forth upon my head for a second, drew the hood further over her head, and departed with swift steps, leaving me to gaze after her in amazement—an amazement which increased when I perceived that her words could be applied to the Sejan horse. It was those words, mother, and nothing else, which gave me the idea of employing the torches, which my good Thellus here afterward prepared for me out of some gladiatorial exercise-weapons which he possessed; and I may for certain say that, without the torches, I must have been destroyed by that horrible brute."

"You truly describe this incident as extraordinary, my son," said the Lady Aglais, after a pause.

"Paulus," said Dionysius, "you have seen the Sibyl. You must accompany me in a few days to Cumæ, where we will seek an interview with her, upon the subject concerning which all the Sibyls sing and prophesy—the general reparation of this disorder-tortured world."

MATTER AND SPIRIT IN THE LIGHT OF MODERN SCIENCE [196]

There is nothing more advantageous, and at the same time more dangerous; more beneficial to the cause of truth, and yet more apt to induce error, than the modern idea of studying man in nature alone; or rather, of scrutinizing its depths with the design of discovering all that concerns him.

Doubtless there were times when philosophy did not pay sufficient regard to the study of the physical sciences; when philosophers put themselves too far outside the physical world. Metaphysics were too full of abstractions, too much confined to the me and consciousness.

Some systems wished to dig an abyss between the world of matter and that of spirit, regarding the passage from the one to the other as impossible. Even the discoveries of Des Cartes in the realms of physical nature, as well as in the kingdom of his own consciousness, notwithstanding their importance and grandeur, only served to widen the abyss; for the Cartesian theory supposed the mind to be incapable of communicating with the exterior world save by a chain frequently broken—by a long and devious path. The preëstablished harmony of Leibnitz was the last term of the separation of these two worlds, which had no longer any thing in common even in their agreement, and only existed in juxtaposition without mutual action or reciprocal influence.

This was an excess of which metaphysics was at the same time the author and the victim; it deprived itself of a powerful element of investigation; it veiled one of the faces of nature; and closed the door to research and knowledge in one of the great domains of the world. Metaphysicians, in striving to obtain the exclusive and victorious reign of spirit, compromised its triumph.

Doubtless that which at the same time unites and separates the intellectual from the material world will never be perfectly understood. But it will always be necessary to throw light on both sides of the problem by comparing them without confounding them; to place both face to face without partiality or exclusion; the working of thought and of matter, and between the two the mysterious phenomenon of life which is their connecting link and term of similitude.

It could not be expected that philosophy should first and alone prepare the ground of this conciliation and comparison. The peculiarly speculative studies of metaphysicians would not naturally carry them to this point; and besides, the very elements necessary for this comparison were wanting to them.

It is, therefore, to the natural sciences, as they are called, that we must[643] owe the most of our knowledge and comprehension of the two worlds, which co-penetrate each other. Not that the sciences have preconceived the thought of this result, and formed a plan on the subject; for the science of the day, especially that which really deserves the name, has confined itself generally to impartial discoveries, and for premise and conclusion has taken merely the facts themselves. Notwithstanding evil examples, which would persuade a different course, it still perseveres, and on this account it deserves praise in its isolated labors and exclusive studies. It would not be difficult to cite the names of some of the most distinguished savants, who, impartially and without being preoccupied with conclusions, have enriched the domain of truth with most important and curious discoveries. But the occupation of the savant, which is not without merit and trouble, cannot satisfy mankind.

By a natural instinct man feels the want of synthesis; he is not content with mere phenomena. He wants to go further than analysis; he longs to generalize and draw consequences. He wishes to profit by past labor; he wants to know not only results but causes.

Here philosophy must again be called in to judge of and compare facts, to deduce consequences from, and erect systems upon them. If the spiritualist philosophers, quitting abstractions and leaving the solitude of consciousness, have by an enlightened change, which will be serviceable both to truth and to their own cause, begun to dig deeply into the scientific mine which is so rich and productive; on the other hand, the positivists and materialists, forced by the natural inclination of the human mind to draw conclusions and build theories, even after proclaiming the sovereign reign of matter, and after trying to remain in it alone; after attributing to it every property and every function; after making it the absolute foundation of their doctrine and teaching, have here admitted that an inferior supposes a superior order; there accepted final causes; elsewhere invoked the ideal or spoken of truths which are eternal; and in their desire to explain the phenomena of matter or the forms of life, they have been compelled to leave the region of purely material facts and to ascend to those metaphysical ideas which in theory they so strenuously reject.[197]

But although the human mind, placed in presence of problems, goes faster and further than science, yet it cannot do without its aid; it rightly seeks its assistance, and finds in it one of its most solid and safe foundations.

We have, therefore, deemed it interesting to indicate at what point the labors of the physicists have arrived, even by exhibiting their premature solutions. We think it useful to examine some of their conclusions, which have been deduced rather precipitately perhaps, but which, while treating only of bodies, concern more or less directly the sovereign questions of the soul and of the intelligence.

We must say that, in consequence of so many deep researches and fruitful experiments, the empire of the natural sciences has been so vastly extended that nothing in the future seems impossible of attainment, while most unexpected results, intoxicating, as it were, and turning the heads of savants, have seemed to furnish a justification of their defence of even the most rash and surprising theories.

There has been a regeneration of ideas regarding the material world; [644]analysis has probed to its lowest depths and let in the light of day. Men think they have discovered its mode of action and arrived at its very elements.

Two leading theories have been produced, both of which pretend to be based on the most minute verification of details and the most recent facts. If they are not absolutely irreconcilable, they present at least very different formulas.

The system which reduces every thing in matter to movements is as simple as it is curious. It exhibits at the same time a character of grandeur and of unity which is seductive. Matter in the universe, it says,[198] remains the same in quantity; it is neither created nor destroyed; its phenomena are merely transformations.

According to this system, the abstract notion of force does not exist. Force is a cause of motion; and the cause of motion is a motion itself. Physical phenomena, as heat, light, electricity, and magnetism, are certain kinds of motion, which beget each other. Heat is transformed into electricity and electricity into light. Transformations take place according to fixed rules, and are reduced to rigorously determined unities.

In another order of facts, cohesion, chemical affinity, and gravity, are equally the effects of communication of motion, since the phenomena which derive from them exist only by attraction—that is to say, by the movement of molecules and bodies toward each other.

The same rule holds good in the system of the universe; the heavenly as well as the terrestrial bodies have not in themselves that which attracts them to each other. Universal gravitation is only the expression of a result; it merely means that every thing happens as if bodies had the intrinsic property of attracting each other in the direct ratio of their quantity and the inverse ratio of their distance.

It is not this force or property; it is the ether which is the cause of attraction. The ether is composed of atoms which collide with each other and with neighboring bodies. It is everywhere diffused, forming a universal medium, and exercising a continual pressure on all the molecules in nature. The gravity of bodies is owing to the pressure of this medium. Their movement is, as it were, a transformation of the motions of ether. Thus, the ether, moving in every direction, and obeying no fixed pressure, produces material attraction without being subject to it; it gives to bodies their gravity, while it remains itself imponderable.[199]

It had been already physically demonstrated that sound and light were the result of undulations—that is, of motions; sonorous and luminous movements which have been measured and verified in all their modes. The nature of caloric movement has not yet been so completely understood; but the mechanical effects of heat have been established in the most precise manner. The identity [645]of heat and of mechanical labor has become a commonly received idea for several years past. Heat, which was formerly regarded as a material substance, is now considered as a mere mode of motion; it is by their repercussion that the molecules of bodies cause us to experience the sensation of heat; and the intensity of these repercussions determines the degrees of temperature. This heat, manifesting itself by different effects, produces now light or sounds, again mechanical labor.

The energy or the living force which molecules or bodies in motion possess, in a degree exactly known, is partially lost if these molecules produce a work, that is to say, if they displace a quantity of matter; but in that case the living force which they lose is stored up in the labor produced, and is reborn when the latter ceases to exist.

Just as the calorific and luminous fluids are no longer regarded as possessing a special substance and existence, so also the electric fluid, positive as well as negative, and the magnetic fluid, which is only one of its derivatives, are but opposite movements of matter. The electrical movement of imponderable matter, or ether, is not even a vibratory motion; it is a real current, a real transport which takes place in the conducting body; and it is so far of the same nature as the luminous motion that it has approximately the same velocity—that is to say, it travels seventy-five thousand leagues a second.

Now, all these motions of heat, all these motions of light and electricity, which correlative phenomena offer, are all reducible to the idea of mechanical labor. Produced by one labor, they reproduce another. Thus disappear from chemistry, as from the natural sciences, the forces called repulsive as well as those called attractive. The molecules no longer act at a distance; actions take place by contact, by the communication of movements. In the same way the pressure exercised by the ethereal atoms on the molecules of the sidereal bodies takes the place of the initial force or acquired velocity which astronomy regarded as the cause of their movements.

According to this sovereign unity, the physical world is composed of one single element. There are no simple bodies. Oxygen and hydrogen, like gold or platina, are composed only of atoms. There is no difference in material quality; properties vary according to the diversity of movements. Becoming grouped and interwoven, the atoms form the molecules, and the changes of these movements constitute for us the different phenomena, the mode of which depends on the masses and the velocities which are in play.

Consequently, ethereal atoms, elementary molecules, compound or chemical molecules, particles of gaseous bodies, liquids, solids—such is the hierarchy of phenomena.

Let us pause before this conclusion, the simplicity of which is not without grandeur, although the theory is absolute and hasty. Let us be allowed to interfere in the name of the notion of causality, in the name of that metaphysics to which the system itself, although taking its starting-point from facts alone, renders homage by its generalizations and by its synthesis. If it confined itself exclusively to its conclusion, that atom and movement form the supreme axiom of the universe, we should have downright materialism. The author avoids this absolute conclusion, which would[646] cause us, moreover, to go outside the limits of scientific research, and he admits that even in motion there are original causes which remain entirely unknown.

But this cannot suffice. Our mind sees this reserve and will not rest satisfied with it.

If the system merely gives to ethereal atoms the intrinsic force and primitive motion which it takes away from the molecules and bodies, it only postpones the difficulty and avoids the true solution. It merely admits an effect without assigning to it an origin or a reason of being. It does not indicate the primary cause of motion; it does not make known the prime mover, which neither facts nor reason can place in the atoms or in the phenomena.

Nor can the formation of worlds be explained by atoms and motion. The author [200] gives up facts, reality, and the logic of his own system when he supposes some of the chief primitive atoms forming the centre of a group for several others, and thus constituting a sphere. Then, after this operation in the universal mass, the molecular groups appear gifted with gravity and enter into that evolution which constitutes the admirable order of the universe.

We have no longer modern science arriving, by way of decomposition and analysis, at results as curious as they are incontestable. It is, in truth, but the renewal of an old system which goes as far back as ancient philosophy—to Leucippus, to Democritus, to Epicurus; a system without foundation or reality, which brings us to gross materialism, and gives us no rational or experimental explanation of phenomena.

For whence have these atoms come? Do you give them their reason of being by simply calling them primitive? Do they exist from all eternity, or have they created themselves? After being proclaimed indivisible points, they are, contrary to this principle of unity, made unequal and preponderating. Whence do they derive these contradictory, and at the same time indispensable characters, which enable them to perform their functions? Who has given them the first motion necessary for their meeting? Or, if they have been eternally in motion, does it not follow that the formations that are attributed to them must be also eternal? What causes them to produce ponderable molecules and to become heavy bodies while they are essentially imponderable and devoid of attraction?

As for us, a friend of truth, and believing that it can never be opposed to itself, having in its regard no fear or party prejudice, we are disposed to accept willingly the results given by scientific observation and experience, provided there be no disposition to draw conclusions from them which are not legitimate. We are far from disputing that matter is one in its grand simplicity, and that it is reducible to elements of one species; that phenomena of a single order, motion, produce all the effects of nature which we admire. The spiritualist philosophy will readily find in these atoms their first author, God, and in these movements God, the prime mover.

We also admit willingly that this theory holds good even in the domain of organized matter, and that, in the regular order of succession, it runs through all the kingdoms. We see nothing in this admission which contradicts directly our belief.

In fact, the system extends even to the order of living nature, and there it points out two things.

On the one hand, it indicates, as the[647] basis and chief constituent of living beings, the very materials of the inorganic world, the solid bodies, liquids, gases, which we find in all organizations, and especially in the human organization, the most complex of all; for this organization comprises fourteen of those elements which we call simple bodies, because we have not been able as yet to reduce them.

On the other hand, in animated nature itself there takes place a series of motions which succeed each other according to a determined order, with an especial character, yet not opposed to the laws of molecular mechanism; so that in the human body in motion heat is transformed into work and work into heat, according to the ordinary relation of calorics, and the human mover gives in labor the same proportion of heat produced as the other movers.[201]

Does this mean, continues the author of the system, that we have in this process all the elements of life? What is the cause which forms the first cell, the basis of living bodies? What deduces from it the developments of being? What limits and regulates its evolution? "Here we must suspend our judgment, or admit a special cause, the principle of which is peculiar to vital phenomena."

This cause, although its nature is unknown and undetermined, is manifested by movements, and may take, according to the same order of ideas, the rôle and name of vital force. This force is endowed with a peculiar activity, which transforms without creating, just as motion only transforms in virtue of anterior movements.

This doctrine, pushed to extremity, seems to infer that the phenomena of thought and volition are only pure movements, the result of physical or vital actions. But is not the human soul, the animating principle, thereby put in danger?

The author thinks not. "In the midst of material transformations," says he, "causes active by nature may intervene, and we have instanced some of them, in marking the nature and limits of such intervention. This is sufficient to leave the ground free to all the solutions of metaphysics."

We are more affirmative and precise. These causes, from the starting-point of the atom and movement, necessarily exist and act. In fact, if the atom and movement are the universe, outside the universe there must be and there is something superior to the atom and to motion—that which has given them birth; for we cannot suppose that the atom exists by itself, nor that motion is produced by itself. All that we see and conceive about atom and motion only gives us phenomenal relations and contingent results. Beyond this is the absolute. The observations and relations which experience offers us may be fruitful enough to render an account of the facts, to extend and enlighten our knowledge, to establish laws and attest actions. But let us not grow tired in repeating that these actions are not produced alone, and that these laws suppose an ordainer.

Especially when we endeavor to understand the nature of life, atoms and movement may come again into play; but the cause increases and is detached from the functions of beings; and the superiority of the effects more imperiously establishes the necessity of an author.

II.

The second theory admits only forces in nature, and places in these forces the principle of all that is produced. It also goes up to the atom, and considers it as equally indivisible and imponderable. It attributes to matter properties, so to speak, immanent which give it its power and action. Atoms, separated from each other in the bodies which they compose, and forming mere simple mathematical points, possess, when they are reunited in mass, a force of attraction which acts at a distance, and then reacts on them in order to produce all the sensible phenomena.

Several savants and certain spiritualist philosophers agree on this theory. Both take facts as the starting point in establishing their synthesis; the former build it on a foundation more exclusively physical; the latter give to their generalization a more philosophical basis.

M. Magy and M. Laugel, hardly overstepping the limits of the experimental world, follow the action of forces into their different modes and transformations.

This is what a learned Englishman, P. Bayma, establishes with precision.[204] According to him, the elements, or atoms, are indivisible points without material extent, and extension is not an essential property of matter.

According to this theory, the forces placed from the beginning in elements govern every thing in the world. Nature is under their control; matter obeys them, or is, rather, entirely a compound of forces. One of the partisans of this system [205] lays down these conclusions: 1st, the last element of matter is always an active, simple, and indivisible force like the soul itself; 2d, the properties of matter are only manifestations of this simple active force. Then, pushing the consequences of this notion of force further, he admits

A contemporary philosopher,[206] developing further the thesis of conciliation and relation between the two orders of existence, adds:

Such are the theories which, according to their supporters, are sustained by the most recent discoveries of science.

As for us, we admit that from a scientific stand-point there have been many new and curious observations collected; that the analysis of matter has exposed to view the most astonishing phenomena; that the material element has been almost apprehended, its depths investigated; that it has been stripped of extension as an essential property, its mode of action and constituting principle discovered; that it has been reduced to a unity as sovereign as it is marvellous; and we follow with the most lively interest these results of disinterested and impartial science. We go further; according as the plan gains in unity and grandeur, appearing at the same time more imposing and probable, it brings us nearer to Him who has conceived it, who has given it order and completion. The more of mystery we discover in the universe, the more we bow with admiration, but without astonishment, before the thought and will of the Sovereign who is the origin and reason of the existence of these wonders and of their laws.

But our reason cannot go beyond its limits, and the metaphysical consequences which some have attempted to draw from these phenomena, we have not up to the present been able to admit.

The theory which reduces all to force, which recognizes in bodies an intrinsic mode of acting, whether it divide these forces in the mass of matter, or cause them to mount up to the primitive element, to the atom, indivisible point, or monad, seems to us in every case to beg the question. What is in fact a force, and especially a force attributed to any object? It is undoubtedly neither a being, since it is joined to a first element, nor a substance, since it is considered as an attribute. It is only a manner of indicating an action, the cause of which is unknown. To say that matter acts because it bears in it the power of acting, is simply to say that it acts because it acts; to reply by asserting the fact itself which is in question. Therefore we have only one of those words, new or old, which may cause illusion for an instant, but which do not stand a serious analysis.

Moreover, to attempt to compare and assimilate matter and spirit by giving to both the name of force, and attributing to them the properties attached to this name, is merely to use a word without a definite meaning; for if they were both forces, they would be forces of entirely different, if not opposite action. And if we say that force, being half body and half spirit, is the link which unites them to each other, we create, merely to suit our purpose, a third being which is discovered nowhere, a mere phantasmagoria without reality, which the imagination itself is incapable of representing to us.

Finally, in the parallel and assimilation between body and soul, to reserve, with the power of thinking, preëminence to the mind because it is a simple and unique force, while the smallest body is a compound of these same simple forces, amounts to saying that a body could think if it were only decomposed and reduced to its simple elements, and to the unity of[650] force. There is such a difference in act, mode, and aim between what is called the force of resistance, attributed to bodies, and designated, we know not why, by the name of active force, and between the faculty of thinking, that no common appellation, no matter how specious it may be, can ever confound or identify them.

We would not be able to comprehend how the soul, considered as a monad or simple element, should have by this fact the faculty of thinking, and yet two or several monads united and forming a body would not possess the same power. Why, in the latter case, should there be absence of thought instead of a union of two or several thoughts, concordant or contrary? How could we say that, because there is an assemblage of forces, there is an impossibility of thinking, and that the part is capable of doing what the whole cannot do? It is useless to choose and isolate the most delicate and ethereal element in a body; we can never imagine the soul to be really one of its parts, no matter how pure that part may be.

The notion of force, for the soul as well as for the body, must be put among those appellations which explain nothing, and only serve to cloak our ignorance.

Science itself begins to renounce this name of force; and the first theory which we have exposed, that which recognizes only motions in matter combats the theory of forces with energy, and considers it as vain and illusory. It is not here, consequently, that we shall find the philosophical explanation of phenomena, nor the reconciliation between the two orders of spirit and matter.

The theory of motions rests on a more solid foundation; at least, it employs a word having a precise signification and resting on a real fact, motion. It is only by induction and reasoning that it ascends to ether and the atom. It has never seen either of them, although it affirms their existence. It makes a synthesis. It admits in the universe something else besides atoms and movement, since the thought which it expresses implies the idea of being, of substance and cause. It has seen motions, vibrations, radiations, currents, and it has concluded from them that there is something which moves, vibrates, radiates; thus it has mounted up to a second cause, to ether, to the atom. But this is not sufficient. If it has seen that there is no motion without an object which moves, logic compels it to acknowledge that there is no change without an agent, no movement without a mover; and if the atom exists and moves, this atom also has an origin, a reason of being, a principle from which it has received the gift of existence and the power of motion.

If an admirable plan embraces the universe, if a sovereign unity directs and governs all phenomena, there must be a cause for them. The plan appears more manifestly, and the cause shows itself more necessarily in the very simplicity of the work, in its grandeur in this double quality raised to a higher power.

If the world be, as it is acknowledged to be, the work of thought; if a general and supreme reason presides over the universe, this thought lives in a spirit, this reason belongs to a soul.[207] Can there be a thought without a thinking subject and being? A thought implies a thinking being; reason means a living intelligence; or it must mean nothing, and then there is no sense in words, no reality in things.

It is useless to object; the human [651]mind will have it so; it is the law of its conscience, it is the result of its profound conviction that it does not derive all from itself, and that nothing can produce nothing.

Now, can we say of the atom and motion combined, behold the universe? Yes, the mechanical universe, perhaps. But the mechanical universe is not self-sufficing; for we can always say, Who has made the atom? who has created motion? And then we have the right to propose another affirmation and to conclude: the notion of causality is the entire world—the physical, intellectual, and moral world.

This has been true from the very beginning of thought and the commencement of human reason. This has been true from the days of ancient philosophy, proclaiming through its greatest logician that whatever is in the effect ought to be found in the cause, that the cause must really exist before the effect, and that the perfection of all effects supposes the existence of a primary cause which contains them—a living, spiritual, and perfect cause, which cannot be produced by what is imperfect, inferior, material, or deprived of life, but which is and must be necessarily its generating principle and producing power.

III.

Thus the two systems of motions and of forces, brought before the metaphysical world, for they call themselves syntheses, fall short of the mark and do not reach the true principle. The one assigns no cause for the elements and phenomena which it represents. The other attributes to these same elements and phenomena, a word and a name which cannot be a cause. The former does not give, and does not pretend to give, a real explanation. The latter formulates an explanation, but presents nothing satisfactory.

It appears, however, that all the tendencies of modern science are toward the idea of unity in the universal system, toward a simplification and spiritualization in the plan; and the belief of some goes so far as to admit that this plan offers parallel lines more or less similar in both the material and the spiritual world. But here again the rock rises and the danger appears. In making bodies so like spirits, we run the risk of making the spiritual too much like the material, and, in both cases, by such confusion we almost touch on pantheism, the theory of which, consisting in the admission of but one substance, is equally dangerous whether this one substance be material or spiritual. We will allow matter, therefore, to raise itself toward unity, purify itself more and more, and disentangle its essence from its innumerable and marvellous combinations, provided that it be admitted that it possesses a real existence, that it is really matter, that it can never become spirit or thought, and that it is not its own force or cause or reason of being. What would be gained for it from a spiritualist point of view, to admit in matter an immediate power, to clothe it with intrinsic qualities which nothing either in ideas or facts manifests or demonstrates? No problem would be solved thereby, no mystery cleared up; it would be necessary to establish why and how the same substance, at the same time and alternately, feels and does not feel, wills and is inert, thinks and is devoid of intelligence, is immovable in the stone, awakes in the plant, and is organic in the animal, and finally creates and vivifies the genius of man.

There must be logic in the assertion that the essence of matter is[652] found in an atom or in a force, that it is inactive or endowed with movement, that there is in bodies unity or variety of substance, that the different kingdoms are united by greater affinities or separated by more marked distinctions; these properties, comparisons, and differences must have their logic and their reason of being, and do not derive the laws which govern them from a spontaneous or fortuitous formation.

Nothing, consequently, in the secondary explanations which are given to us, can satisfy our metaphysical wants. The mind of man will never stop at the mere properties of things or their effects. Its instinct of causality does not accept incomplete theories and theses which do not sound the depths. Casting aside all idea of confusion and of inexact comparison, the human mind wishes to rise higher; it wishes, in its admiration for order and the harmony of phenomena, to ascend to the very summit of being. Yes, it admits and recognizes the fact that every thing which exists has a single and sovereign cause, and this cause is itself the most spiritual of spiritual substances—God the creator and ordainer of worlds. Author of all things, God causes with the qualities which belong to him the different manifestations of nature; he acts on matter, possesses it, causes it to subsist, gives it the power of producing its phenomena, is its force, its order, its law; and thus, if we may say so, he animates the world, not indeed in the same manner as the human soul animates the body, because we cannot compare essences and actions so unlike each other, but with a certain superior and divine power of animation which produces the being, motion, and life of all that exists in the universe, moves or breathes, as the soul is the source and focus of the life of the body.

To destroy this supreme cause is to degrade at the same time the material and the intellectual world; it is to renounce the notion of perfection and of the absolute; it is to condemn, together with one of the mother-ideas, one of the axioms of the human mind, that logic which can never see aught complete or satisfactory in mere effects or phenomena; it is to attack one of the most beautiful faculties of the intelligence, of that intelligence which the contingent cannot content, which will not allow itself to be restrained by the mere limits of time and space, which, from the present which it studies, from facts which it investigates, and peculiarities which it admires, ascends to the infinite, to the all-powerful, to the Eternal.

Thus we consider that the most recent discoveries of science, in their rational and superior interpretation, lead us naturally to God, and we have at the same time the belief and the hope that materialism will be involuntarily stricken down, and will perish perhaps by the very hands of those who study and search after matter alone.

No doubt the considerations which might be actually drawn from the results obtained do not lead to definite theories nor do they offer any thing but premature conclusions. The majority of the savants, moreover, properly refuse to touch on the domain of the supernatural and metaphysical; they confine themselves to facts; some so veil their opinions and philosophical doctrines as even to cause us to doubt whether they follow the standard of spiritualism or of materialism. They do not arrogate to themselves either the right or the power of drawing conclusions; and[653] the synthesis which results from their experiments can only be a premature conjecture, more or less plausible.

But since their researches already give occasion to perceptions so simple and so grand, since they open horizons in the distance where light certainly exists, since there is from the stand-point of truth a serene and unalterable confidence in the final and definite results of modern discoveries, we may be permitted even now to describe them for the elevation and the encouragement of the mind, for the justification and the honor of human science, for the revindication of the grandeur and of the glory of God.

NAZARETH.

After a residence of two months in the holy city of Jerusalem, the writer of this sketch left the shrines of the Cross and the Tomb to visit the sacred localities of Palestine. Going northward, and passing by Jacob's well and Samaria, our party came to Jenin, on the borders of the plain of Esdrælon, where we encamped for the night; and on the next day, which was Thursday, April 5th, 1866, went to Jezreel, to the great fountain which springs from the base of the mountain of Gilboa, on which Saul and Jonathan were slain; then passed through Nain, where our Lord raised the widow's son, and Endor. Leaving Mount Thabor on our right, we came to the foot of the steep hill on the other side of which is Nazareth. After a wearisome ascent, in the middle of the afternoon, we saw the city of the annunciation at our feet.

Nazareth is in a valley about one mile long, running east and west, and only a quarter of a mile wide. Fifteen hills inclose this small space. The whole of this valley, not occupied by the houses, is filled with gardens, corn-fields, and small groves of olive and fig-trees. The houses are irregularly placed, and are evidently more comfortable than many others in the Holy Land. Being all constructed of white stone, they have a substantial appearance. But the streets cannot be praised. Irregular in their course, they are the filthiest we had anywhere seen. This wretched condition of the streets is the more noticeable because the people are superior to other dwellers in the land, and apparently more intelligent, well-fed, and housed. Several buildings were in the course of erection; and it seemed that the village was prospering. The houses stand on the lower slope of a hill about four hundred feet high, and on the adjacent ridges. About four thousand people make up the population, all Christians except seven hundred Mohammedans. Of the Christians, the schismatic Greeks number about one thousand, and the Roman Catholics and Greek Catholics have each about five hundred persons. There is an air of independence and relative comfort about all the people here which contrasts with the sad and desponding manners of the residents in other eastern places. Wherever Turks rule, cheerfulness is unknown.

On entering Nazareth, we rode to the further end of the village, and encamped[654] in a pleasant spot quite near the fountain of the Virgin, a place to which all travellers who remain in their tents resort, as it is usual to encamp in the vicinity of water. Besides this, the fountain is the best place to see the people of the village, it being the common place of resort, especially for women. This spring is the only one in the place; and for that reason it has many visitors. From early dawn until late in the afternoon, women of every age come here with jars or pitchers on their heads or shoulders. The streams of water are not copious, and there is often delay in obtaining the supply, especially in seasons of drought. While waiting here to fill their jars, the women gossip and chat, and thus each one hears the news of the day. Women of every rank go to the fountain for water—partly that they may not appear to be above their neighbors, and partly, it may be surmised, to hear what is going on. Little girls are trained to carry the water-jar on the head—for them, of course, the jar is small—and every person has a small pad or cushion on her head to support the jar and prevent injury. From this habit of so bearing these jars, all the women of Nazareth are straight and erect in their carriage, and have much grace and dignity of motion. Not only are they finely formed, but their faces are the most beautiful in Palestine; and there is a pleasing tradition that the Blessed Virgin Mary left the gift of beauty to the women of her city. Their dress is also graceful, consisting of large, short trowsers, a close-fitting jacket, and a long white veil which does not cover the face. For ornament they use a string of silver and gold coins around the head and chin, many of which are very heavy and valuable—uncomfortable decorations at the best, but showing the dowry of the wearer.

I thought that the water of the fountain of Nazareth was the best I had ever tasted; perhaps this was fancy, but certainly the water is most pure and excellent, and is renowned for those qualities. To this fountain, without doubt, the Blessed Virgin came hundreds of times, being trained like other children to bear the water-jar from early years. Here she talked with her neighbors, and lived in a manner undistinguished from other poor girls. And whoever will go to-day to that fountain in Nazareth, or to the one near the shrine of the Visitation in the hills of Judea, will see young women looking just as Mary did eighteen hundred years ago; for habits of life and dress have scarcely changed in the east during that long time. The water at Nazareth rises about eight or ten rods from the place where it is poured into the jars, being conveyed to the latter place in an aqueduct; and the schismatic Greek Christians have built a church at the spot where it issues from the ground, on account of an old tradition that the annunciation took place at the spring when the Blessed Virgin went there for water. There is this great advantage resulting from the error of the Greeks, that, on account of their belief in it, they leave the spot where the annunciation really took place in the quiet possession of the Catholics, the Franciscan monks being the custodians of the shrine.

Now let us walk to the most holy place, which is at the other end of the village, and some distance from our tents. The premises are extensive, and consist of large buildings, surrounded by a high wall. Passing through the gate, we come to a court, around which are the school-rooms, the pharmacy, the quarters of the superior and other monks; from this larger area we go to a smaller one immediately in front of the church[655] The church itself is about seventy feet square, and the roof is supported by four very heavy piers or square columns. These piers, and much of the walls, are covered with tapestry hangings, with embroidery and paintings; and the whole edifice, though not very large, has a fine, rich, and cheerful appearance, as if arranged for a perpetual festival. As we enter the church, immediately before us is a flight of fifteen very broad steps, leading down to the shrine. At the foot of these stairs is a vestibule, about twenty-five feet long by ten wide, and a low arch, opening in the middle of this space, admits to the holy place. There is a marble altar, and under the altar is a marble slab, four inches above the floor; it has the Jerusalem cross in the centre, with the Franciscan coat of arms on the right, and the sacred stigmata, or five wounds of the crucified Saviour, on the left. This marble marks the spot where the Blessed Virgin stood at the time of the annunciation. On the back wall, under the altar, is the inscription, "Verbum caro hic factum est," (Here the Word was made flesh,) the most wonderful and important inscription in the world. That at Bethlehem, where it is written that "Here, of the Virgin Mary, Jesus Christ was born," could never have been engraved but for the event commemorated in the words of the shrine at Nazareth. Above the altar is a picture well painted and old, but spoiled by the flat gold crowns which have been fastened to the canvas over the heads of the Blessed Virgin and the angel. Below the table of the altar, and over the marble slab, hang several silver lamps which burn continually. Immediately behind this altar and picture are another altar and picture, back to back with those of the shrine. The second altar has the inscription, "Hic erat subditus illis," (Here He was subject to them.) Behind these, and reached by a narrow rock-hewn stairway, is the kitchen of the Blessed Virgin, where the fireplace and chimney are shown.

As we come into the church by the chief entrance, a most cheerful and pleasant scene welcomes the pilgrim. The gay decorations, the many paintings, the statues and silver lamps, with other objects, make a contrast with the dreariness of the ride to Nazareth, which seems to the Christian like a glimpse of heaven. He raises his eyes, and sees the choir where the Franciscan monks chant their office. Here is an altar with a large statue of the Blessed Virgin and the Infant Jesus, surmounted by a canopy. There are two large organs in the choir, one at the right, the other at the left. This choir is raised about sixteen steps above the floor of the church, and is immediately over the most holy place, of which it may be said to form the roof. As the shrine is about fifteen steps below the level of the church floor, the distance between the spot of the annunciation and the choir above it is about thirty steps. It gives the idea of three churches—the first being the main building, the second that of the holy place, which is below, and the third that of the monks' choir, which is immediately over the shrine. As we look down the broad stair which leads to the shrine, we see that the walls are cased with marble and adorned with paintings. Before us is the holy place, to which the eye is at once drawn; but before we reach it, in the vestibule, on the right and left hand, stand beautiful marble altars, each with a painting over it. In the whole arrangement there is a dignity and propriety which strike the pilgrim most favorably, and he recognizes it as planned by men who had a vivid realization of the event which is the glory[656] of Nazareth. To the left of the altar of the shrine is the upper two thirds of a large granite column suspended from the roof, with a fragment of a marble column under it; though these are both of dark stone, and of nearly the same color and size, it is easy to note the difference in the material of which they are composed.

It was on Friday, April 6th, that I first said mass at the shrine of the annunciation. The interest of this spot is very great, even when compared with other places in Palestine; and I had looked forward, with great hope and expectation, to the day when I would be permitted to kneel and pray here. At last my wish was realized, and I offered the holy sacrifice on the very spot where the incarnation of God took place. By a concession of the holy see, the mass of the annunciation may be said on this altar nearly every day in the year; so that the pilgrim, coming at any season may have the consolation of being present at the same mass as is said on the 25th of March. Of course, every priest avails himself with eagerness of this privilege; and no words can express the emotion of his soul as, when reading the last gospel, in speaking the words et Verbum caro factum est, he kneels down on the very spot where that mystery took place, where the incarnation of God began. For it was to Nazareth that God sent his holy Archangel Gabriel:

After having prayed a long time, prostrate at the shrine, I sat down at the side of the broad flight of steps leading to the holy place, and meditated for an hour. Before me was the spot where all these things occurred, and where man's redemption was begun. It was easy to go back one thousand eight hundred years, and picture the scene. The lowly maiden in her humble home, engaged, it may have been, in the ordinary occupations of the day, or perchance resting for a time from them, and meditating on God, when suddenly the room was filled with light, and the angel appeared and delivered his august message. Then in the house which once stood here the child Jesus lived, and grew in favor with God and man. He ran about the humble but sacred home in his boyhood, and wandered among the hills that are so close around Nazareth. Many a time did he go with Mary to the fountain when she brought water for the use of the family. By her side he kept in his early years, as children are wont to cling to their mothers. When he had grown older, he helped Joseph in the work of carpentry, and went with him as he journeyed to the various places where he found work. No doubt the employment was humble, the tools rude and few; and it is reasonable to suppose that such work as a[657] humble carpenter might find among poor villagers or fishermen at the Lake of Tiberias was not of the most elegant and costly kind. Even to this day there is great simplicity and rudeness in all the mechanic arts, which is noticed by the traveller, and it must have been equally so in the country places in the days of our Saviour.

Thus for thirty years did Jesus dwell in Nazareth, undistinguished from others by any external appearance, and leading a hidden life of contemplation and communing with his heavenly Father.

When his ministry had begun, after his baptism in the Jordan and his temptation of forty days in the wilderness, he came to Nazareth, and went into the synagogue, according to his custom, and read out of the book which was handed to him the words of Isaias,

When they had rejected his teaching, he went to Capernaum, on the borders of the Sea of Galilee, fifteen miles east from Nazareth, and the people there were astonished at his doctrine and the miracles which he performed. Subsequently he visited Nazareth a second time, and was taunted by the people of the place, who regarded him as only one of their neighbors. They said, "Is not this the carpenter, the son of Mary, the brother of James and Joseph, and of Jude and Simon? are not also his sisters here with us? And they were scandalized in regard of him." The greater portion of our Lord's life, during the three following years, was passed in the neighborhood of the Lake of Tiberias, or near Jerusalem.

Nazareth has one or two other places of interest, yet they are of small note in comparison of the shrine of the annunciation. One of these is the place where stood the workshop of Joseph; a chapel is built here. Another is the rock called Mensa Christi, or Table of Christ, which is venerated as the place where our Lord often ate his food. It projects three feet above the ground, and is about twelve feet long and eight feet wide. A new church is over it.

The hill back of Nazareth is always ascended by travellers for the sake of the fine view which may be had there. The whole country for miles around is visible—Mount Hermon, Mount Carmel, the Mediterranean Sea, and the great plain of Esdrælon. Just around Nazareth the hills are rather bare; but everywhere else they are wooded, and sink down into green valleys. We see how the city lies off all the great routes of travel in former days, and is shut up by the hills, and thus separated (as the name Nazareth implies) from other places. Its isolated position, and the resulting obscurity, is the reason why it was unknown to ancient writers, and there is no mention made of it in the Old Testament. From the Gospel narrative we learn that the contemptuous inquiry was made "Can any good thing come out of Nazareth?" To this the Christian answers from the depth of his soul, Yes! all good cometh thence. The Child of Nazareth has passed from obscurity and a hidden life to a prominence which no description can adequately portray. He who was conceived of the Virgin Mary in this little village is our Lord and our God, and in him centre all[658] our hopes. He who condescended to be subject to Mary and Joseph in Nazareth, is the King of kings and Lord of lords, and now and for ever reigneth in the heaven which is his home.

THE YOUNG VERMONTERS.

CHAPTER XI.
PASTIMES AND PARTINGS.

In accordance with the teacher's announcement, the day following Michael's return was given up to rejoicings, and Mr. Blair invited the school to pass it at his place.

It was one of those golden days not so frequent in our autumnal season as to lose the charm of novelty, or the full sense of their value in redeeming its general sternness; and it seemed to the boys as if nature herself shared in the universal delight. The spacious ground encircling Mr. Blair's residence afforded ample scope for their pastimes, and their dinner was served under the trees in the yard.

To those who had known Michael Hennessy only as the thoughtless, frolicsome boy, it did not seem possible that a few short weeks could have wrought the change now apparent in him. The fiery trial through which he had passed accomplished the work of time upon his character, and he emerged from it purified and matured.

His face still wore the sunny smile that had made it a joy to all, but the light which lingered upon it was chastened and subdued. His manners still charmed by the warm, ingenuous frankness that made him the village pet, but their former reckless gayety was sobered by the spirit of piety, which had established its abode within his youthful heart from the moment when the blessed hand of adversity opened wide its portals, and prepared it to become thenceforth a chosen home of the celestial guest.

He was more than ever the favorite of the boys, and the leader in all their sports; but his devotion to study was more faithful, his attention to every religious duty more regular, and his conduct under all circumstances more exemplary than ever before.

Soon after his return, farmer Brown celebrated the event by inviting the school—without any exceptions this time—to spend another day at the farm, as the season for gathering nuts had arrived. Such a gay time as they had! whisking the deep beds of fallen leaves about in search for hidden treasures, and watching the squirrels gleaning in the path from which they had thrown off nature's covering for stray nuts, whose hiding places had thus been revealed.

The day passed delightfully, but not, like their former holidays, in unalloyed and careless pleasure. The thought would intrude upon its happiest moments, that their little band was soon to be broken up, and that this was to be the last occasion upon which they would all meet in the hey-day of boyish glee, to join in boyish pastimes.

For the change was now stealing upon them apace which presses closely on the footsteps of boyhood—and from which our "young Vermonters"[659] were not to be exempted—when one and another must pass from its arena, to enter upon a new stage of action and form new associations. When the dear old school-house, with all the memories that were to link it with the shifting scenes of each single life—to which it had been the starting-point in quest of knowledge—was to be exchanged for college halls, the office, the counter, or the farm, with all their excitements, laborious duties, and temptations, and their weary anxieties.

The next week after their visit to the farm, Frank Blair took his leave of home and friends to enter the naval school at B——. Not long after, George Wingate, Henry Howe, and Johnny Hart entered the College of the Holy Cross. The same week, Patrick Casey was appointed clerk in a railroad office, and Dennis Sullivan left to take his place as clerk in a wholesale establishment in Boston.

Who shall say what pangs all these changes, so easily related, and so much a matter of course in this changeful world, cost the young exiles now banished from the sheltering bosom of home, and standing for the first time face to face with the stern realities of life? The homesick looking back to the dear and peaceful past, the timid, shrinking glances into the dim vista of the dreaded future—the one bathed in all the effulgence of morning, the other bearing already upon its sombre wings foreshadowings of the night!

And who shall describe the loneliness of each home from which the brightest, warmest ray of sunshine had been stricken, when the school-boy with his "shining morning face" vanished from its precincts, to return no more for ever with the light of his young life upon his brow?

None but mothers can know the depth of the shadow that remains to them in the place of their mirthful boys. But take courage, ye mothers! Rest not in supine regrets and gentle memories, but betake yourselves with renewed energy and diligence to the use of the all-conquering weapon of prayer, for now more than ever do your darlings need its aid. Remember what the holy bishop said to the afflicted St. Monica in the olden time, "It cannot be that the child of so many tears should perish." Let your sons, in the midst of their temptations and trials, be shielded and sustained by the firm assurance that their mothers are constantly lifting up pure hands and fervent hearts to heaven in their behalf. So, following the example of that saintly mother, may you hope to gain that mother's reward. For it is true now as it was then, and will be unto the end of time, that, "They who sow in tears shall reap in joy!"

Michael remained at home, pursuing his studies diligently until the winter was far advanced, when his father was taken alarmingly ill, and he was obliged to relinquish them and devote himself to his care, and that of the family. He had long known that some trouble was weighing upon his father, and he was now made acquainted with it.

When Mr. Hennessy first came to M——, he rented a very pretty place just out of the village, to which they became so much attached that he finally purchased it, and had from time to time been able to make improvements and add little embellishments within and around the premises, besides meeting the payments as they fell due. Latterly, with failing health and an increasing family, he had been unable to do more than support his household comfortably, and two payments remained to be met; they were now both due, and his creditor threatened to foreclose the mortgage upon[660] the place, if they were not promptly paid.

Michael was deeply distressed when the state of their affairs was made known to him. The thought of losing their all, and the home they so dearly loved, the scene of so many tranquil joys, weighed heavily upon his young heart. He sought in fervent prayer the refuge of the Catholic, commending himself and all his dear ones anew to the protection of the Blessed Virgin Mother, and leaving all his troubles at her feet. Suddenly it flashed upon his remembrance that Mr. Blair had told him if he should ever need assistance or advice not to fail of applying to him, and that he should consider it a favor if he would do so. To him, therefore, he resolved to go at once, though it was not without much of the old apprehension of his sternness that he sought the office of that gentleman, mingled with uprisings of a pride that rebelled against asking favors from one who had formerly despised his people. For duty's sake, however, he mastered all these feelings, and was received with the utmost kindness. With a faltering voice he laid the whole case open to Mr. Blair, and concluded by saying, "Now, sir, you see the sum due on the place is not a large one, and if you feel disposed to advance it, I will guarantee the payment of interest and principal as soon as I can leave my father and get into a situation to earn it."

"I must seek a place as book-keeper or clerk in some establishment; and will do so without delay."

"I have," said Michael, blushing with bashful earnestness, "always indulged the hope that I might be able to study law; but this must now be relinquished," he added after a slight pause.

"Well, my young friend," said Mr. Blair kindly, "I will now tell you what I think had better be done. I will raise this money for you, and you may take your own time to pay it. I have no fears on that score. I will see that matters in relation to the home are put upon a safe footing without delay. You will take care of your father and the family until he is sufficiently recovered to spare you, and then you will enter my office as a student. I have felt very lonely since Frank went away, and will be pleased to have his best friend with me. Besides, you are an excellent and rapid penman; I need such a one in my business just now very much, and can afford to pay you liberally for your assistance. My old hands are getting too stiff to write much, and my business is increasing. If this proposal suits you, consider the matter settled for the present."

It need not be told how thankfully Michael accepted the offer, nor what fervent thanksgivings were poured from pious hearts in that home when the arrangement was made known.

Mr. Hennessy recovered rapidly when the pressure of adverse circumstances and the fears of impending calamity were removed; and Michael soon entered Mr. Blair's office as a student. Here his close attention to business, his application to study, and his fidelity to every duty, gained for him the highest esteem and confidence of his superior, who would often exclaim to himself, "Oh! why could not my boy have been such a one as this? With every obstacle removed from his path and every encouragement offered, why would he persist in casting all his advantages aside, to pursue a reckless career of folly?"

And indeed he heard little that was encouraging from Frank in his new[661] position. He was so homesick, discontented, and dissatisfied with everything as to unfit him for the studies and duties of the school, the discipline and restraints of which were insupportably irksome to him. But his father was only convinced that they were remedies the more necessary to a restless spirit which chafed so fiercely under them. His passion for mischief and fun continually drew the chains he hated more closely around him, and involved him daily in new difficulties. One circumstance alone—humanly speaking—prevented him from falling into utter ruin. He had formed an enthusiastic friendship for his sister Fanny's dearest friend, the eldest daughter of Mrs. Plimpton, Julia Plimpton—one of those gentle, lovely girls, who wield a controlling influence over such impetuous, restless characters. He was in correspondence with her, and to her he communicated all his troubles and his peevish, fretful repinings, in perfect confidence, receiving just the advice he needed from time to time to keep him from breaking rudely away from all restraint.

CHAPTER XII.
DEVELOPMENTS.

Two years elapsed without any material changes in the circle to which this narrative relates.

During this period, Miss Carlton, one of Miss Blair's best friends, near her own age, and a lady of intelligence and wealth, with strong philanthropic impulses, had set herself with great enthusiasm to gather a large number of poor French Catholic children, who would not attend the public schools, into a sort of boarding-school at her own cottage on the confines of the village. She solicited aid from Miss Blair in dressing her young wards suitably, and entered zealously into the task of educating them, as a necessary prelude to their conversion to Protestantism, which must inevitably follow. Miss Blair willingly assisted her with funds, and the use of her needle in preparing clothing; but could not be persuaded to go any further. Miss Carlton at length becoming vexed and irritated by the cool scepticism with which her efforts were regarded, insisted on knowing the reason.

"I am sure it is not want of benevolence," said she; "for I have known you too long and too well to doubt the kindness of your heart. Do tell me, then, why you will persist in looking upon my exertions with so much apathy?"

"Precisely because," said Miss Blair, laughing, "I once tried the experiment myself, under as much more promising auspices as the superior numbers and greater necessities of that class of children in a city could furnish. My failure was more grand than yours will be, because my operations were on a grander scale."

"Ah! there lies the mystery. I cannot tell you why; nor do I deny but you may benefit them so far as learning to read and write, and even some little smattering of further knowledge may go; but make Protestants of them? Never! When you think you have secured them by catching the unfledged brood and attaching them to the Protestant cage by food and favors, just one chirp from the mother-bird, and Presto! your flock is gone! If you will take the pains to follow, you will find them nestled under the parent wing and peeping out at you so contentedly and complacently! I know, for I have tried it; and am forced to laugh now when I think how provoked I was, and how puzzled to account for the mysterious, irrepressible, and apparently irresistible[662] power that majestic mother exercised. Since I came to this part of Vermont, my conviction of the futility of all such attempts has been confirmed. There have been great rejoicings among the Methodists and Baptists, at one time and another, over accessions to their numbers from the ancient ark; but let a priest appear in those localities and utter the rallying call of their church—away scamper the converts, and their Protestant confrères have seen the last of them!"

As Mrs. Blair had intimated during the colloquy with Mrs. Plimpton, her sister-in-law had become interested in the converts of M—— and in reading their books. She began listlessly, from a mere willingness to hear what could be said on that side, and to see fair play, perhaps unconsciously hoping to find some solution for that "mysterious power" which so puzzled her. But the investigation thus indolently opened soon awakened new ideas as to the importance of issues which involved eternity. From that moment nothing could exceed the fervent energy with which she followed up the subject, determined to know and follow the truth, if it was to be found on earth. Her labors resulted as all such labors honestly entered upon, diligently pursued, and governed by the spirit of justice, must inevitably result. She found herself safely sheltered under the wings of the gentle mother whose loving attractions had formerly astonished her ignorance. Her brother made no comments, but poor Mrs. Blair was utterly disgusted.

Meanwhile her favorite niece—because Frank's favorite and petted sister—Fanny was drawn by casually looking into the books which her aunt was studying so closely to take a lively interest in the same subject. But the reading of "prosy books of controversy," as she called them, was an effort quite beyond her patience, so she would seek the office occasionally and question Michael. He declined, as far as he could in conscience, to assist her in the matter, thinking that to do so would be in some sort a breach of the confidence reposed in him by her father.

At length one day, when he had been even more provokingly indifferent than usual, and pursued his writing diligently despite her questioning, she exclaimed,

"I never did see such a vexatious fellow as you are! I can't imagine what Frank could have seen in you to like so well. One might just as well talk to a stick; there's nothing interesting or sociable about you! I suppose you think you're going to keep me from being a Catholic by your hateful ways; but you won't, I can tell you. I can read, if you won't talk, only I do hate the trouble." And she departed, leaving him amused beyond measure at her vehemence.

She was engaged in a correspondence with Julia Plimpton, of the frequent and confidential nature in which girls of that age are wont to indulge, and of course opened her heart to her friend upon the subject which now most interested her. Their letters were soon filled with the discussion of religious questions, in which after a time Mrs. Plimpton joined, expressing her surprise that so much could be said in favor of a creed which she had always regarded as the height of absurdity, and the last stronghold of bigotry, superstition, and ignorance, in this progressive age.

At the stage of our narrative upon which this chapter opens, Mr. Hennessy was one day looking over the columns of the Boston Pilot—to which Mr. Sullivan was a subscriber—when his eye fell upon the following paragraph:

After consulting with Mrs. Hennessy, Michael, and Mr. Blair, he decided to start for Boston without delay.

The editor of the Pilot, when found, asked him many questions as to his place of residence in Ireland, the name of his wife, of the priest who married them, of his other family connections, and where he had lived since he came to America; all which being satisfactorily answered, the following letter was put into his hands to read:

After making arrangements to communicate with Tracy through the editor, who was to receive and forward drafts for him, Mr. Hennessy set out for home.

After a long consultation with his wife, Mr. Hennessy sought Mr. Blair, to whom he communicated the fact[664] that the Michael of our narrative was the son of his brother Michael; that their own baby died in a fit on the night of Bridget's death, and they adopted the little motherless one in its place, without saying any thing to their companions, but intending to inform his brother of the fact when they should meet. Subsequent events determined them to keep it still concealed; but now that Michael was the rightful heir to all this wealth, it must be revealed.

Mr. Blair urged that, as his brother left the property to him, it was just as well to make no revelation on the subject; but Mr. Hennessy insisted that his brother made that arrangement in ignorance of the existence of his own child, and it would not be right for him to take advantage of it, and, in fine, that he would have nothing to do with the property. It was far more painful for him to give up his claim upon Michael as his son, and he did not feel equal to doing it in person. He therefore begged Mr. Blair to communicate these facts to Michael for him.

That gentleman lost no time in fulfilling the commission, and Michael was of course overwhelmed with amazement. He hastened to assure his father that he would not consent to any release of claims on the score of family ties, and they both went into a council with Mr. Blair upon "the situation." Finally they determined that Michael should transfer all the money to his father, and, retaining the real estate in his own hands, go into the practice of law in San Francisco himself. He at first proposed to have the family go with him to that place; but they had lived so long in Vermont, and become so much attached to M——, that they preferred not to leave.

Before Michael set out for California, he had a long conversation with Mr. Blair, at the conclusion of which it was arranged that, after he had established himself in his new home, and opened an office there, he should come back, and if a certain young lady (who was about to become a Catholic in "spite of him") could be persuaded to accompany his return—as he had good reason to hope she would—his next journey to that far off land would not be a solitary one.

CHAPTER XIII.
CONCLUSION.

During the progress of these events, the health of George Wingate had been gradually failing, but so imperceptibly as to create no serious alarm; and he could not be prevailed upon to abandon his studies, or the hope that he would live to consecrate his young life to his God in holy orders, until it was near its close. Henry Howe and Johnny Hart devoted themselves tenderly to him, and watched his decline with the grief which under such circumstances always attends friendships created and cemented by religion. He began at length to fail so rapidly that his family were sent for, and he never returned to the home of his childhood, but sleeps in peace under the shadow of the "Holy Cross" which he so dearly loved.

His mantle seemed to have fallen upon his devoted friend, Johnny Hart, who in due course of time entered upon the vineyard from which his beloved companion had been withdrawn while the dews of the morning still lingered upon his head, and the labors of the day were hardly begun.

Soon after the death of George, his oldest sister, Mary, joined the Sisters of Charity.

In the same year, Henry Howe[665] took his father's place in the mercantile business, which was rapidly increasing in importance with the growth of the village, and Dennis Sullivan went into partnership with him.

After Michael reached San Francisco, he arranged his affairs, and opened an office in one of the best locations in the city, without delay. He found a home in James Tracy's house, and one of the best friends in that worthy man, who took a pride and interest in the son of his lamented friend scarcely less than that of a father.

Frank Blair became importunate in his solicitations for the hand of Julia Plimpton. Her mother steadfastly declining to consent until he should have established a character for sobriety and stability, he became exasperated, and abruptly left the navy. His disconsolate family could get no trace as to the course of his flight.

One day, as Michael Hennessy was passing down the street to his office, he observed a young man walking rapidly in advance of him, and, accidentally catching a side glimpse of his face, what was his astonishment to recognize Frank Blair.

"Rather answer that question on your own account!" replied the astonished Frank. "How in the world do you happen to be in San Francisco?"

"If I could have seen you as I passed through New York, you would have known all; but I could not find you, and had no time to spare for a long search," said Michael. "It is a long story; so come with me to the office, and you shall hear it."

When the friends were seated, Frank told Michael that he had left the navy without a discharge, and shipped as seaman on board a vessel bound for Panama; and that he supposed his friends were wild with anxiety about him.

Michael communicated the details relating to his own affairs, with which our readers are already acquainted. He then wrote to Mr. Blair the story of Frank's arrival in safety, and that if he had no objections Frank would study law with him in San Francisco. Upon receiving the letter, Mr. Blair obtained an honorable discharge for his son from the navy, and consented to his remaining with Michael. In the course of time he went into partnership with his friend—now his brother-in-law—who has become one of the most celebrated criminal lawyers in that city.

Two years after the marriage of Michael, Frank was permitted to claim the hand of Julia Plimpton. At the same time, Henry Howe was married to Mrs. Plimpton's youngest daughter, Mary, and her mother came to live with them.

Mrs. Plimpton's son Charles is a lawyer in Massachusetts, and it is said he is coming for Lucy Wingate soon.

The people of M——, having noticed the frequent visits of Dennis Sullivan and Patrick Casey at Mr. Hennessy's, and that two beautiful cottages are building on lots purchased by that gentleman each side of his own, have settled the question that two more weddings are soon to take place in M——, but have not yet "named the day."

READING HOMER.

THE WORKS OF GERALD GRIFFIN.[208]

Of the works of fiction in the English language of which the first half of this century has been so prolific, Ireland has contributed at least a fair proportionate share. Her writers in this department of literature are numerous, and their productions have been generally received with due favor on this side of the Atlantic as correct portraitures of the habits and manners of a people in whom we take so deep an interest, and whose very contradictions of character render them interesting studies for the curious and philosophic. Of so large a number four at least deserve special notice, standing, as they do, prominently in the front rank of Irish authors and exhibiting in a marked degree a pleasant diversity of talent and invention, as varied as the peculiar characteristics of the provinces to which they belong. Carleton, for example, was an Ulster-man, rugged and ungraceful, yet possessing a deep vein of caustic humor, while his figures are struck out as distinctly as if his pen had some of the power Of Michael Angelo's chisel; John Banim was the embodiment of Leinster propriety and stability; Lever is never so much at home as at the mess-table of the "Rangers," or when endangering the neck of his hero or heroine over a Galway fence; while through Gerald Griffin's pages flow, now gently as a meandering stream and [668]anon with the impetuosity of a mountain torrent, the poetry and passion of Munster. Still, in the strictest sense, none of these novelists can be considered national; yet all are true to Irish character. To those unacquainted with the radical difference of mind, temperament, and even physique, which is to be found in so comparatively small a country, this may seem paradoxical; but it is nevertheless true. Mickey Frees and Lowry Lovbys are plentiful enough in Ireland, but only in their respective sections; while Valentine McClutchy terrifies the northern tenant each recurring gala-day, and Banim's Paddy Flynn, to use the pithy remark of Sir Philip Crampton, "is hanged twice a year regularly in the south of Ireland."

If any of them be entitled to the term national, that honor should be awarded to Griffin, who in his Invasion, Duke of Monmouth, and some minor stories, has travelled out of his favorite province with some degree of success. But even in his wanderings in Wicklow, Taunton dene, and the wilds of Northumbria, we are constantly catching glimpses of the Shannon and Killarney. The reason of this is obvious. He aimed to be a strict and minute copyist of nature; and nature to him was bounded by the lovely scenery of Munster and the people with whom he had been in daily intercourse for almost the whole of his short life. His power of observation, thus limited, became intensified, and what he lost in breadth of view and amplitude of knowledge, he gained in the distinctness and fidelity of his pictures. Besides, the merits of the true novelist, like those of the painter, should never be estimated by the square of the canvas, but by his faithfulness, either to human figure, action, and circumstance, or to the embodiment of noble ideas. It is not so difficult as it may seem to call up imaginary kings and princes, noble lords and ladies, clothe them with all the gorgeous panoply so easily found in the pages of dear old Froissart, or in the latest book of fashions, and make them speak and act in the most approved manner of our modern romances, because few of us care to inquire into the correctness either of design or execution. Cervantes and Goldsmith painted the men and manners of their day with rare fidelity, and their works will be read by the learned and unlearned as long as the languages in which they wrote shall exist; and no one can doubt that two of the most popular authors of our time, Balzac and Dickens, no matter how inferior in some respects to the authors of Don Quixote and the Vicar of Wakefield, have truly held up to us panoramas of modern society in the two great cities of Europe. For Gerald Griffin we may not, perhaps, claim the universality of those great masters; but in purity of expression, truthfulness to nature, and delicacy of moral perception he is the equal of any of them.

There are some persons conversant with Irish character who maintain that its essential element is neither gayety nor combativeness, but melancholy, and sustain their apparently singular theory by reference to the national music and poetry. Griffin's writings would afford an additional argument in favor of this position. His genius was decidedly tragic, his muse sad and retrospective. His pauses to give us a glimpse of fireside enjoyment appear to be more as tributes to old home memories, than as arising from any natural desire to linger over the recollections of such tranquil scenes; and his snatches of humor and merriment seem thrown in artistically, not so much to relieve the sombre shading of his picture as to give its most prominent[669] figures greater depth and boldness. He also labored under the disadvantage of all tragic minds; for, though he never can be said to have ignored the "eternal fitness of things" in rewarding the good and punishing the wicked, we close many of his volumes with a feeling more akin to sorrow than rejoicing, and while admitting the righteousness of his judgments, we sigh to think how God's best gifts to man may be turned to his own destruction. It seems to be the law of tragedy that the bad men must be more men of action than the good, in order to produce the proper effect. They dress better, talk more persuasively, and display high mental and physical qualities which, say what we may, will generally provoke a certain sympathy for them, evil as may be their acts. This inherent defect Griffin labored to modify, if he could not entirely eradicate. His moral heroes are good enough in their way, but their virtues are of too negative a character. Kyrle Daly, in the Collegians, and young Kingsly, in the Duke of Monmouth, have all the qualities we could desire in a friend or brother; but while we honor and respect them, a something akin to sympathy is clandestinely stealing out to the proud and wilful Hardress Cregan, and even to the cool malignity of that unparalleled scoundrel, Colonel Kirke. O'Haedha, in the Invasion, is an exception. He is sui generis in Griffin's pantheon, being not only a man of pure morality and well up in the lore of his times, but he is also a chieftain governing wisely and firmly, a man of war as well as of love and peace, strong in his affections and hatreds, living, moving, and breathing like one who has a subtle brain, warm blood, and a powerful arm to enforce his authority. He is decidedly not only Griffin's grandest conception, but will stand in favorable comparison with any we can recall in historical romance.

The Collegians is Gerald Griffin's best known and most popular novel; and, when we consider the early age of the author at the time it was written, and the circumstances amid which it was composed, we are equally surprised at his knowledge of the springs of human action, and at the excellences of the book, both as regards correctness of style and completeness of plot. Though the working of some of the strongest passions of our nature is portrayed in it—love, hatred, revenge, ambition—there is nothing about them sensational or melodramatic; and though many different characters are introduced, and incidents necessarily occur in a short space of time, there is nothing hurried or disjointed, one character acting upon another and each event following and hinging on the one preceding so gracefully and naturally that the reader is borne along on an unbroken current, as it were, from cause to effect till he reaches the final catastrophe. It is related that a portion of this admirable book was written in court while the author, who had attained considerable proficiency as a short-hand writer in London, was engaged in reporting an important law case. During an interval in the proceedings, Griffin took out his manuscripts, and, as was his habit, when a moment of leisure presented itself, proceeded to continue his story, regardless of his surroundings. It happened that Daniel O'Connell was employed professionally in the suit, and not knowing the writer, and supposing him to be occupied transcribing his notes, looked over his shoulder to read the evidence; but finding that it was something very different from the dry question and answer of counsellor and witness, the great advocate[670] turned away in silent indifference. He little thought at the time that the quiet, industrious young reporter was Gerald Griffin, and that the work upon which he was so intently engaged was the Collegians—a work which, from the day of its publication, was ever the favorite solace of the hours of relaxation of that illustrious statesman.

The moral of the book, however, is its greatest merit. The character of Hardress Cregan is inimitably drawn. Young, gifted both in person and mind, with a disposition naturally inclined to good, but warped and misled by a fond, proud, worldly mother, and the example of a dissolute father and his associates; early left to his own guidance and the indulgence of his whims and fancies, he descends from the high position in which we find him at the opening chapter, through all the stages of crime—parental disobedience, ingratitude, deceit, debauchery, and finally murder. Through each step in guilt we can trace the cause of his ruin—moral cowardice, false pride, absence of self-control, alternating or uniting, but always with disastrous effect, until in the culminating scene, in which, torn by remorse and conscious guilt, he leaves his native shores a condemned felon and dies at sea, we feel that the punishment, no matter how severe, is but in strict accordance with our highest sense of retributive justice. Nor are the almost equally, though perhaps unconsciously, guilty parents forgotten. Like a just judge, Griffin not only punishes the actual perpetrator of crime, but metes out penalties to those whose duty it is to correct the excesses of youth, restrain their passions, and lead them by precept and example to the practice as well as the knowledge of good, and who neglect the sacred trust. What parent, after reading the Collegians, can contemplate without a shudder the pangs of the haughty mother and the utter hopelessness of her dissipated husband, when they found their only child, so tenderly nurtured and so thoroughly schooled, torn from their arms in chains, and dying the death of an outcast and a convict. Their punishment abided in their parental hearts, and the author goes no further. Many years ago, we casually overheard one of the most thoroughly read, as well as one of the most profound thinkers in America, say, upon being asked his opinion of the Collegians, that he considered it the best novel in the language; for, while it made you hate the crime, it did not take away your charity for the criminal; an opinion which we think will be concurred in by all who have attentively read the book and applied the moral it contains. Kyrle Daly is an antipode of his friend and fellow-student, Hardress Cregan. His filial reverence and moral rectitude are depicted in his every action, and his whole character is as beautiful and lovable as that of the other is dark and fraught with terrible warnings. Not that young Daly is presented as a model lackadaisical individual, by any means; but as a strong man of matured mind and deep feelings, true in friendship and trusting in love; yet withal guided by the dictates of his religion and directed by the authority and advice of his father and mother, a weakness, if it be one, we are sorry to say, not often indulged in at the present day.

Did the limits of our article permit, we might furnish many extracts from this remarkable novel in testimony of the high opinion of the merits found in its pages by so many distinguished scholars, but the Collegians is now so generally read that this is hardly necessary. We transcribe, however, the following brief[671] sketch of a morning on the Shannon, and a breakfast scene, as a specimen of the author's power of minute description of rural scenery and felicitous rendering of social life:

We cannot close this imperfect[673] sketch of the Collegians without commending the treatment of the humbler personages introduced, equally free as they are from that stilted phraseology and broad caricature which too often disgrace Irish novels and so-called Irish plays. Poor Eily O'Connor, in all her simple innocence and ignorance of the world, is a beautiful creation; and though travestied in three or four different forms on the stage, she still holds a lasting place in our affections. Her meeting with her discarded lover, Myles Murphy the mountaineer, presents us a scene of touching pathos such as only, we imagine, an Irish peasant could express in his native tongue:

Altogether different in design and scope is the Invasion, a historical novel intended to describe the institutions, manners, and ways of life of the ancient Irish, and it is much to be regretted that it is so little read by the descendants of that peculiar people, especially by those who turn aside from the difficulties of nomenclature presented by the actual history of Ireland. With the same motive that actuated Scott to present the otherwise unattractive and obscure facts of the early history of Britain in the fascinating garb of romance, our author, always deeply imbued with love of country and reverence for the past, sought in this book to give a complete picture of the public, social, and religious life of his ancestors as it was known or supposed to exist in the eighth century, before the repeated incursions of the Northmen had desolated their valleys, razed their[674] towns, and pillaged their churches and seats of learning. To most men of a fine imagination and poetic temperament like Griffin, the study of laws long disused and customs forgotten centuries ago, wrapt up as they were in a language almost unintelligible to modern scholars, would have presented insuperable difficulties; but to him it seems to have been a labor of love, and it is a source of lasting regret that his opportunities for research were not in proportion to his diligence. The invaluable records of Irish history and antiquities since brought to light through the labors of O'Curry, Pietrie, O'Donovan, and others, were then slumbering in the mouldy archives of Trinity College, or scattered in inaccessible places over England and the continent; nor are we aware that the author of the Invasion had such thorough knowledge of his native language as would enable him to decipher those ancient manuscripts, even had he the facility for so doing. The barbarous policy of the dominant power, which formerly not only sought to destroy the language of the conquered people by prohibiting its being taught in colleges, but made it penal to allow it to be spoken in the humbler country schools, was equally interested in keeping from the world at large the Irish people's records and book of laws, the evidences of their former glory and greatness and the muniments of their nationality; and even in this advanced age we owe mainly to local enterprise and private generosity whatever contributions to ancient Irish history we have been favored with for the last twenty years. The government of England is willing to spend annually tens of thousands of pounds sterling to facilitate the discovery of the sources of the Nile or to encourage the translation of the high-flown vagaries of East Indian poets; font it cannot afford, it appears, a miserable allowance to rescue from obscurity the annals of one of the most ancient and civilized nations of Europe; a nation, too, that has the misfortune to be called an integral portion of the British empire.

This necessarily limited knowledge of the epoch which he proposed to illustrate, while it in some degree unfortunately lessens the authority of the novel in an antiquarian point of view, does not impair its harmony of design, or weaken the moral and intellectual beauty of its entire composition; and even its technical defects are, to a great extent, corrected in the edition before us, by the insertion, in the form of an appendix, of the very valuable critical notes of the late Professor O'Curry. The principal figure in the book is O'Headha, (O'Hea,) a young chieftain born on the day of his father's death in battle. It describes the ceremonies of the marriage of his parents and of his own baptism, as introductory to his career. His education is supposed to be conducted at Mungharid (Mungret) Abbey, then famous for the number and rank of its scholars; and this gives the author an opportunity of describing the monastery, a description which may be taken as applying equally to the many similar institutions of piety and learning which at that time, and for centuries before, dotted the then happy island:

Arrived at manhood, the future chieftain is duly installed in office according to the prevailing customs of the sept, and henceforth we find him performing all the duties appertaining to his high position, including his attendance at the triennial assembly of Tara, à propos to which we have an elaborate and highly interesting account of that historical gathering of all the estates of the kingdoms into which the island was then divided. A romantic adventure, ending in a love scene, of course, brings him among the Hooded people, the last remnant of those who, rejecting the teachings of St. Patrick and his disciples, continued to practise the Druidical rites in seclusion; and, as a consequence, we find a detailed description of the objects and forms of that extinct species of idolatry. The invasion itself, the first descent of the Northmen on the coast, successfully repulsed by O'Hea's forces, naturally leads to a disquisition on the gloomy superstition and uncouth manners of those terrible barbarians. Thus we find grouped together, gracefully and artistically, the leading historical features of the period, the old superstitions and the beneficent fruits of the new faith, the faults and follies, virtues and graces of the christianized Celts, contrasted with the physical prowess and ferocious temperament of the hordes who were so soon to deluge with blood, not only Erin, but the adjacent isles and the greater part of the coasts of Europe. Strange to say, the Invasion is the only Irish historical novel ever written, and, as Augustin Thierry was induced to write his celebrated history of the [676]Norman Conquest of England by reading Scott's Ivanhoe, may we not hope that some present or future writer may be inspired by the Invasion to give us a detailed and intelligible account of the Danish wars in Ireland?

The Duke of Monmouth is also a historical novel, but more modern in its character and incidents. It is intended to describe the condition of the people of the rural districts in the west of England about the close of the seventeenth century; and the principal events upon which the story depends are the invasion of England by the ill-starred Duke of Monmouth, the illegitimate son of Charles II., during the reign of the latter's successor, the fatal battle of Sedgemoor, and the execution of the adventurer and his principal followers. The style is faultless, the prominent actors mostly taken from real life, though few are truthfully drawn. Still, we cannot but regret for the sake of poetical justice that Griffin chose this subject for a novel, from the fact that the truth of history compelled him to let the notorious Kirke, who figures so largely in his pages, go unwhipped of justice. The portrait of this infamous soldier, whose vices were proverbial, is thus briefly sketched:

Notwithstanding the fault referred to, the book is one that merits attention both as being the production of the author's more mature years and as furnishing us an insight into the modes of life, manner of living, and unreasonable preconceptions of politics and religion of the humbler classes of England at the period immediately preceding the downfall of the house of Stuart. The so-called reformation in that country, while it deprived the peasantry of all the attractions and consolations of true religion, as well as of the innocent sports and pastimes so much encouraged by the church, left nothing in their stead to lighten the heavy burden of labor save the sensual attractions of the ale-house, or the more invigorating, if more hazardous, luxury of rebellion. Deprived of the refuge always afforded by the eleemosynary institutions of the monks to the deserving needy and afflicted, the wants of the widow and the orphan were neglected, the poor became poorer and more discontented, and the nobles more haughty and overbearing. The reformers succeeded in unsettling the religious faith of the masses, as the wars of the Commonwealth destroyed their ideas of authority and obedience. Hence followed in rapid rotation the restoration of Charles II., the dethronement of James, the Scotch rebellions of 1715 and 1745, and many if not all the evils which have afflicted the people of Great Britain[677] up to the present time—evils which have become so glaring that a thousand acts of parliament cannot hide them, and distress, ignorance, and its attendant vices, so gross and general as to be beyond the cure of the poor-house and the penitentiary. Considered in the aggregate, England is one of the wealthiest countries in the world. Individually, her people are the poorest in Christendom; for she contains within her boundaries a larger percentage of paupers and those who live by crime of various degrees than any civilized country on the face of the globe.

It was while in this transition state, from "merrie" England in Catholic times to her present anomalous condition, that the Duke of Monmouth, relying on the ignorance and anti-Catholic prejudices of the rustic population, resolved to dispute the possession of the throne with James II., whose only fault, in the eyes of his enemies at that time, was his desire to concede some degree of toleration to his dissenting and Catholic subjects. Monmouth's miserable failure is a matter of history; but in this book we have likewise a glimpse of the feeling of the people who followed his standard, and which afterward led to the elevation of William of Orange, and of the sentiments which actuated the British portion of that prince's army in his subsequent wars in the sister island. The author also gives a very just idea of Monmouth and his subordinate rebels. The duke himself is represented as possessing all those exterior graces which are said to have distinguished the Stuarts, with more than all their vices and instability of character—false to his friends, cringing to his enemies, superstitious without faith, and ambitious without the courage or capacity to command success. Fletcher, his chief counsellor and best officer, is a keen, hard-headed, but passionate Covenanter, a theoretical republican of the Roundhead school engrafted on the antique; Lord Grey and Ferguson are simply respectable adventurers, equally destitute of honesty or brains, and worthy instruments in so desperate an enterprise. In comparison with those men, the devotion of young Fullarton to a hopeless cause becomes less blamable; and even the ultra loyalty of the old cavalier, Captain Kingsly, is respectable.

In addition to what we have before remarked of the design of this work, there is a feature in its composition which by some readers may be considered a grave defect. The interest which surrounds the heroine, Aquila Fullarton, from the very beginning of the tale deepens by degrees until it becomes painfully intense, and the scene between her and Kirke, wherein that monster perpetrates one of the greatest crimes known to humanity, and she in consequence loses her reason, though founded on well-authenticated facts, and described with all the delicacy of diction possible, is almost too horrible to receive mention. The necessarily gloomy pages of the story are occasionally enlivened by the introduction of two Irish characters—brothers—Morty and Shamus Delaney, who, like so many of their countrymen, then and since, have left home to seek their fortunes, and find themselves in Taunton on the eve of the stirring events related in the novel. Morty, being of a practical turn of mind, forthwith enlists in "Kirke's Lambs;" but Shamus, whose tastes are also pugnacious, but whose ambition is to wear epaulettes, takes service on the other side, and raises a company of ragamuffins not unlike that which shamed the redoubtable Falstaff at Coventry. There are many exquisite bits of humor scattered through Griffin's works, which might be quoted as evincing his keen appreciation of the[678] ludicrous; but we prefer to extract the following address of Captain Delaney to his command, for the benefit of our military readers who have neglected studying the articles of war. Shamus loquitur:

Of Griffin's minor works, included under the titles of Tales of the Munster Festivals and Tales of my Neighborhood, the Rivals, Barber of Bantry, and Shuil Dhuv are decidedly the most entertaining. The latter particularly, though irregular in composition, is a story evincing great dramatic power and knowledge of the human heart. The dark-eyed hero, if such he may be called, who gives the title to the tale, stands out before us in all the enormity of his guilt as distinctly as if he had been an actual acquaintance, and we venture to say that there are few who have read the book but have experienced that feeling. In this story, also, Griffin departs from his usual custom of avoiding personal description of his female characters, and gives us an elaborate picture of his heroine, which, whether it be drawn from life or the creation of his own imagination, calls up before us an image of surpassing loveliness.

Griffin's other tales, such as the Half-Sir, Card-Drawing, and Tracey's Ambition, have all much merit, and, though not so prolonged as those we have mentioned, exhibit in a greater or lesser degree the skilful hand and rich imagination of the author. The Christian Physiologist, comprising a series of beautiful tales intended to illustrate the use and abuse of the senses, is worthy a place near the writings of that friend of childhood, Canon Schmidt.

As a poet, Griffin is remarkable for the beauty of his delineations of natural scenery, his elevation of sentiment and purity of conception. His lyrics remind us of Moore, and are scarcely inferior to some of the best of that immortal bard's in feeling and choiceness of metaphor; but being somewhat deficient in rhythm, they have never found much favor in the drawing or concert-room, "A Place in thy Memory, Dearest," "My Mary of the Curling Hair," and one or two others excepted. Many of his poems were from time to time contributed to the London journals, while he was yet a literary drudge in that city; others are to be found interspersed in his[679] novels, and not a few were written to gratify his friends, and were first given to the public when his entire poetical works, as far as it was possible, were collected together in book-form, and now fill a large volume, not the least important of the present edition. We are not aware that he ever attempted an epic or any thing more extended than the beautiful ballad of Matt Hyland, of the merits of which we can only judge by the fragment which has been preserved, the original having been destroyed by the author immediately previous to his joining the order of Christian Brothers; nor do we think his ambition ever soared to higher flights than songs and short descriptive poems. The most meritorious of these, or, at least, the one which has obtained the greatest popularity, is the Sister of Charity, written on the occasion of a dear friend becoming a religious; and, though several gifted pens have been employed on the same subject, we know of none who has embodied so true an appreciation of the self-denial and entire devotion which mark that order—the boast and glory of all womanhood. Several of his best pieces, indeed, are written in the same devotional spirit, particularly the following verses, in illustration of a seal, representing a mariner on a tempestuous ocean who, reclining in his bark, fixes his eye on a distant star, with the motto—

Of his dramas but one remains to us, Gisippus, and enough dramatic ability is displayed in that to make us regret that Griffin abandoned writing for the stage so early in life. We are inclined to imagine that a young man, scarcely twenty years of age, who was capable of managing so successfully a subject that required the highest powers of Boccaccio, could in his maturer years have effected even greater things. However, we must console ourselves with the reflection that what has been lost to the drama, we have gained in the excellent works before us; and as the drama is necessarily limited to the few, the world is also the gainer by the change.

THE POPE AND THE COUNCIL, BY JANUS.
III.

Of all arguments brought forward by Janus to undermine what he would term the historical groundwork of papal supremacy, and the prerogatives exercised by the successors of St. Peter, none seem to have greater weight, or more forcibly convince his admirers, than the long narration on "Forgeries;" and hence throughout his work the "Isidorian fabrications" play a great rôle. Ostensibly these forgeries are developed at great length with a view of merely overthrowing and combating this "powerful coalition" of ultramontanism, but in reality the arguments deduced from these forgeries go far beyond this avowed intention of our authors.

Up to the ninth century no change had taken place in the constitution of the church, as they readily admit:

1st. In our first article (p. 330) we have already pointed out this illogical inconsistency of Janus, when assuming a lawful development of the constitution of the church in the first eight centuries; whereas he by no means defines what he understands by a lawful development of the divine constitution of the ancient church. How can he, therefore, decide that the Isidorian decretals wrought an entire and unlawful development of the rights and privileges of the primacy?

2d. If the picture of the organization of the ancient church is quietly, and as a matter of course, presented as one of divine origin,[209] we have no hesitation in declaring that picture a false one, and contrary to the most ancient history of the church. It cannot even claim apostolic origin in so comprehensive a meaning as Janus would have it. The different grades of the hierarchy, established between the primacy and episcopacy, is the result of a historical development, whereas divine institution can only be claimed for the primacy and episcopacy themselves.[210]

What difference is there between bishops as to power and jurisdiction over one another by divine right? If patriarchs, primates, and metropolitans have exercised certain prerogatives greater than those enjoyed by other bishops, will Janus tell us that this is owing to divine origin? How, then, will he account for the fact that no such distinction was universally acknowledged [211] until the third century in the east? nay more, that in the west there were no metropolitans before the latter half of the fourth century, if we except Africa, and even in this latter country many bishops were exempt, and directly subject to the see of Rome?[212]

It is a notorious fact, though Janus elsewhere so boldly denies it, that the bishops of Rome deputed other bishops as their representatives in many provinces, who by that very fact exercised [681]authority over other bishops, because to them the popes delegated the exercise of primatial prerogatives. Thus, the Bishop of Thessalonica is constituted, by the pope, Primate of Illyricum, and the Bishop of Arles, Primate of Gaul.

There are still many letters of the popes addressed to the bishops of Thessalonica as early as the fourth century, by Innocent I., Boniface I., Celestine I., and Sixtus III., wherein instructions are given concerning the exercise of the special power conferred on them.[213] Hence it came to pass that certain episcopal sees retained that high rank granted to their first incumbents, either as primates or metropolitans, after having acted in the beginning in the quality of apostolic legates. St. Leo the Great, in his letter to Anastasius of Thessalonica, says:

To grant to the Bishop of Rome the honor of being the "first patriarch," is nothing less than ignoring or setting aside numerous and indubitable facts long before the existence of the Isidorian decretals.[215] We should like to be informed by Janus and his abettors where the documents exist proving the rights of patriarchs as of divine institution? All canonists of any repute maintain that the preëminence of rank and jurisdiction accorded to patriarchs, primates, and metropolitans is not due to the episcopate by divine institution; but, on the contrary, all agree that this is a concession, whether express or tacit, on the part of the popes of Rome as successors of Peter, being admitted by them to a participation of their primatial prerogatives. Hence all are the representatives of the primacy, whenever they are appealed to as a higher tribunal, and as such can only lawfully hold this preëminence among their brother bishops as long as they do not come in conflict with the divinely established order in the church, which consists in the principle that the pope possesses, by divine ordinance, jurisdiction over the entire episcopate. Pope St. Leo the Great gives a beautiful portrait of this organization in the church very dissimilar from that of Janus.[216]

That "bold but non-natural" torturing of the seventeenth canon of [682]the Council of Chalcedon attributed to Nicolas I., is nothing else but a pure fiction on the part of Janus. The letter sent by the pope to the Emperor Michael III. is a document evincing the learning, sagacity, and prudence of Nicolas I., in that grave disturbance caused by Photius and corrupt courtiers against the lawful patriarch, Ignatius of Constantinople.

When the latter, for the conscientious discharge of his pastoral duty and vigilance toward a licentious court, had been violently deposed, and Photius, a relative of the emperor, put in his place, recourse was had to Rome to obtain sanction of these proceedings. The pope sent legates to Constantinople to investigate the matter laid before him; these in their turn, being partly misled, partly bribed, ratified all that had been done. Pope Nicolas, upon hearing this, excommunicated the legates and annulled the election of Photius. The latter, seconded by the intrigues of the court, protested against this act of the pope whose authority he had previously invoked. Hence, Nicolas I., in the above-mentioned letter, reasons by analogy that the seventeenth canon of the Council of Chalcedon, respecting appeals to primates or to the patriarch of Constantinople, was in a higher sense applicable to the Bishop of Rome.[218] It clearly follows from the canon in question [219] that it merely intended to regulate the several instances of appeal for clerics, and alluded to the special privilege of appealing to the Patriarch of Constantinople.[220]

In the present instance, however, is it not evident that the patriarch could not be his own judge, and, since a final decision was demanded, on whom did this right devolve, we may ask, if not on the Bishop of Rome? A similar and even more striking argument may be seen in the letter addressed by Nicolas I. to the Frankish king, Charles the Bald. Rothad, Bishop of Soissons, having been deposed by Hincmar, Archbishop of Rheims, appealed to Pope Nicolas, who, after examining, caused the bishop to be restored; and in his reasons for doing so sustains, first, the divine right of the chair of Peter to receive appeals and to act as supreme judge; and then goes on stating that, as the canon of Chalcedon granted the right of judging to the primates or to the see of Constantinople, in like manner also, and with much more reason, must the same rule be observed regarding the right of the see of Rome. If, therefore, adds the pope, Rothad of Soissons appealed to the chair of Peter conformably to the Synod of Sardica, this action was perfectly lawful, and there were many precedents for this in history; as, for example, the appeals made by St. Athanasius to Julius I. and St. John Chrysostom to Innocent I.[221] Here, then, the reader will judge of the historical fairness of our authors, when asserting that Pope Nicolas I., by torturing a single word against the sense of a whole code of law, "managed to give a turn to a canon of a general council."

Are we to believe, upon the sole word and authority of Janus, that the whole constitution of the church underwent a change by means of these Isidorian decretals, when so many men, distinguished for their learning and deep researches, have exploded this theory long ago advanced by the Magdeburg Centuriators? It is certainly nothing else than presumption and arrogance to disparage the knowledge and science [683]of so many eminent men,[222] who unanimously agree on the following points: 1. That the pseudo-Isidorian decretals were not written with a view of exalting the papal power, but rather that of the bishops. 2. That the contents of this collection are, for the most part, taken from ancient and genuine documents. 3. That the fictitious decretals contained therein are quite generally known, and even these imply nothing novel or contradictory to the then established discipline of the church. 4. It is certain that this collection was not compiled at Rome, and much less known or used by Pope Nicolas as a genuine document of binding force.

It will be necessary to support these points by a few and, we hope, unexceptionable arguments. Janus might have indeed spared himself the pains of such a minute and tedious disquisition on these Isidorian forgeries, as many [223] of similar disposition with himself made extensive use of this unauthorized collection of pseudo-Isidore, in order to show upon what grounds were based the principles of the present constitution of the church, and particularly that the prerogatives exercised by the Roman see rested on these forged documents. If the power of the Bishop of Rome had no other foundation but the Isidorian forgery, then indeed might we be obliged to join in the triumphant chorus of Janus and his abettors; but the question, not to be misplaced or adroitly shifted, is simply this: Did the prerogatives exercised by the popes need these forgeries to establish the lawfulness of their claims? It is to no purpose to conceal and cover up, as it were, the principle in question by tedious and showy digressions—whether these decretals were fictitious and whether they were used; but the whole problem to be solved is, Has the pseudo-Isidorian collection introduced or enforced an innovation in the ancient constitution of the church, as it was in vigor at that period, or were the principles enunciated by pseudo-Isidore conformable to the doctrine of the church and in accordance with the canons of former councils, or not? What does it matter whether one or another theologian, and even a pope, made use of these decretals, not doubting of their genuineness, and consequently deceived, provided nothing new and unwarranted by previous tradition was thereby acknowledged or enacted? If such a theologian as St. Thomas Aquinas was deceived as to a spurious passage of St. Cyril, and followed herein by Bellarmine, is that enough to condemn their whole system or to impeach their honesty?

We might by such a method of arguing overthrow the entire historical edifice of the first thousand years of the church, and begin to build up a new system on this tabula rasa with the aid of this hypercritical process of Janus and his school, and we scarcely doubt but that he himself would be in the worst plight.

It is certainly true that the author of the Isidorian decretals, as he himself avows in the preface, wished to give a complete code of ecclesiastical laws to the clergy, though for the greater part he insists on such points of discipline as were at that time greatly endangered and often neglected.

This should be effected, of course, by the right of appealing to Rome, and, consequently, making the pope the supreme judge of all the bishops and clergy, that is, of the entire church. These are the principles that worked their way and became dominant; and that they "revolutionized the whole constitution of the church, introducing a new system in place of the old on that point," our authors assert "there can be no controversy among candid historians." (P. 79.) With all deference to the historical erudition of our authors, we cannot refrain from interrogating history and assuring ourselves of the truth of these grave charges.

Having once granted that Christ intrusted Peter and his successors with the chief care of his flock—both pastors and people—it is impossible to suppose that in this supreme charge should not be included the right of hearing appeals and giving final decision; for where could this preëminence find any application, if the whole church be thus cut off from communicating with its head?

The Synod of Sardica had formally defined this right of hearing appeals in several of its canons, as our authors acknowledge, though their efforts to cancel this ancient testimony and to do away with the binding force of these canons are useless and unavailing; for the canons of the Council of Sardica [224] did nothing more than solemnly acknowledge what had been handed down from apostolic times, attesting the doctrine of the church as fully practised long before. We may be permitted to signalize two most remarkable and indubitable instances from history. Marcianus, Bishop of Arles, having espoused the heretical doctrine of Novatian, was denounced by Faustinus of Lyons, and other bishops, to the see of Rome; at the same time Faustinus also informed St. Cyprian, Bishop of Carthage, who, in his turn, begged Pope Stephen to terminate this affair by his power as supreme pastor of the church, requesting the deposition of Marcianus and the appointment of another in his place.[225] Another no less conspicuous proof we find in the fact of the two Spanish bishops, Basilides and Martial, in which case St. Cyprian [226] approved of the action of Pope Stephen, and saw no usurpation of power when the latter restored Basilides to his bishopric, and only regretted that by a false statement of facts the pope was misled and deceived.[227] Our argument becomes more conclusive from the following great event in the eastern church, where the jurisdiction in the greater causes (causæ majores) appears in most resplendent light. In the case of Athanasius, Archbishop of Alexandria, when the Eusebians,[228] supported by the weak and tyrannical Emperor Constantius, drove him from his episcopal see, we find, first, that a numerous assembly of Egyptian bishops who met at Alexandria appealed to Pope Julius I. After the Arian Synod of Antioch in 314, Gregory, a Cappadocian, was forced on the episcopal see of Athanasius, and the latter, with the Bishops Marcellus of Ancyra, Lucius of Adrianople, Asclepas of Gaza, Paul of Constantinople, and many others, fled to Rome, imploring the protection of Pope Julius, who caused a synod to be held in 343, at which a great number of eastern prelates from Thrace, Cœlésyria, Phœnicia, and Palestine attended. The case of St. Athanasius and his fellow-exiles was examined, and they were declared innocent of the charges brought against them, [685]and reinstated in their sees, from which only violence and force kept them for some time. Here, then, we have another argument for these high prerogatives exercised by the Bishop of Rome four years before the Synod of Sardica. Confront this fact with the following passage from our authors:

We have to deal with men of far too evasive minds, in the authors of this "contribution to ecclesiastical history," to limit ourselves to any one point of their argumentation. If, on the one hand, we adduce from history long before the existence of the Isidorian forgeries, the testimony of such great and holy popes as Innocent I.,[230] Zozimus,[231] Boniface I.,[232] Celestine I., Leo the Great,[233] Gelasius I.,[234] and even before, Julius I.,[235] (337 to 352,) who all claim, assert, and exercise the right of final decision as supreme judges for both east and west, from whom there is no appeal, and this, too, in all great and weighty matters, (graviora negotia,) as Pope Gelasius says; then we are told that this right rests only on the canons of Sardica, and that the "fathers gave the see of Rome the privilege of final decision." If, on the other hand, we show ourselves satisfied with so ancient and indubitable an authority as the great Synod of Sardica, why, then, does Janus resort to the simple expedient of declaring that the "Sardican canons were never received at all in the east"? Nor can his bon-mot, in styling greater causes (in which final decision is reserved to the Roman see) an "elastic term," supply the want of logic and historical accuracy. A slight acquaintance with the historical incidents connected with the Council of Sardica [236] will at once convince every unbiased mind that the opposition came from a party of reckless Eusebians, who withdrew from the synod when they could not attain their nefarious object, and repaired to Philippolis in order to crown their treacherous proceeding by excommunicating such holy and illustrious prelates as Athanasius and the aged Hosius, legate of Pope Julius, and even the pontiff himself, who remained steadfast in their defence of the Nicene doctrines. And such are the reasons, let it be observed, which cause Janus to say that the canons of Sardica were not at all received in the east. What can be a more convincing proof than their insertion into collections or codes of law compiled by official authority,[237] having been inserted not only in the Latin collection of Dionysius,[238] under the pontificate of Anastasius II., about the year 498, and later in the Spanish code called Liber Canonum, commonly attributed to Isidore of Seville, but also in the Greek collection of canons by John Scholasticus, and in the Nomocanon compiled by the same author, who died Patriarch of Constantinople in 578.[239]

From these premises we arrive at the following conclusions: 1st, that the right of appeal to Rome and her jurisdiction, in all greater causes, was taught and practised in the church at [686]least four centuries before the Isidorian decretals were known; 2d, that the jurisdiction of the pope as supreme judge of the whole church is triumphantly attested by historical documents of the same age; 3d, that the canons of Sardica acknowledged a divine right of the bishops of Rome—merely introducing a new form that affected the application and exercise of this right, from which, however, the popes could deviate for reasons of wise and prompt administration.[240]

In this connection we must briefly notice another charge made by Janus, namely, that on the fabrication of pseudo-Isidore,

In this maxim our authors discover the foundation of the edifice of papal infallibility already laid. If such be the case, let us inquire whether this maxim was not known before pseudo-Isidore. A synod of Rome held in 378, under Pope Damasus, declared in a letter to the Emperor Gratian [241] that it was sanctioned by ancient custom that the Bishop of Rome, since his case was not submitted to a general council, should answer for himself before the council of the emperor; but this was only to be understood in accusations of civil and political offences. The highest judicial authority in the church having been vested by Christ in Peter and his successors, their voice was the judgment from which there was no appeal; neither did any bishop or any assembly of bishops receive power over the head of the church. This principle, acknowledged by civil codes in temporal principalities, was likewise solemnly affirmed by the Roman synod in the year 501, which was called by King Theodoric to examine the complaints brought against Pope Symmachus, and to judge him accordingly. But behold the declaration of the assembled bishops, protesting that it belonged to the bishop of the apostolic chair of Peter to convene a synod; for it was a thing unheard of that the high-priest of the aforesaid see should be placed in judgment before his own subjects.[242] The bishops pronounced that he was innocent before men, and left all to the tribunal of God. An apology, written for this Roman synod by the Deacon Ennodius,[243] afterward Bishop of Pavia, declared that a council on the more important affairs could be assembled only by the pope, or at least must be confirmed by him. Another striking passage illustrating this principle is to be found in the letter of Avitus, Bishop of Vienne, addressed to the senators of the city of Rome in the name of the bishops of Gaul, as follows:

Janus likewise lets Pope Nicolas assert, on the strength of the Isidorian forgery, "that the Roman Church keeps the faith pure, and is free from every stain." (P. 80.) Now, who does not know that beautiful testimony of St. Irenæus, according to which "the whole church, that is, all the faithful, must be in union with this church, on account of its more powerful principality; in which communion the faithful of the whole world have preserved the tradition that was handed down by the apostles"?[245]

That the words in question employed by St. Irenæus, propter potentiorem principalitatem, are by no means capable of the construction as meaning greater antiquity, is clearly demonstrated by Dr. Döllinger.[246] St. Irenæus likewise concludes from the uninterrupted succession of bishops in the Church of Rome by saying, "When, therefore, you know the faith of this church, you have learned the faith of the others." St. Cyprian, too, uses the following expressive language, "He who does not preserve the unity of this church, how can he hold the faith?"[247]

We might multiply our references [249] on this point to exhibit the historical fabrications of Janus and his school; but we trust that all judicious and discriminating minds will have come to the conclusion, from the testimonies already adduced, that the pseudo-Isidorian principles have neither changed nor revolutionized the ancient constitution of the church, and that the papal prerogatives, at which our authors seem so very much incensed, did not stand in need of forgeries—least of all, of those that came from the "Isidorian workshop;" and we, at the same time, apprehend that they will have to go further back—perhaps to the apostolic fathers—to trace another history of the constitution of the church and the prerogatives claimed by the successors of St. Peter.

As to the materials from which these Isidorian decretals were formed, we may briefly state that they were ancient documents to which the author had access. In many instances he attributes some genuine letters of popes to others than their real authors, and many other spurious documents had already been inserted in private collections, as the brothers Ballerini have demonstrated most clearly by their profound researches. Sixteen pieces of this kind are enumerated by them.[250] According to the most ancient code, this collection of pseudo-Isidore is divided into three parts, as we find in the Codex Vaticanus, n. 630, recorded by Ballerini; and in more recent times,[251] this codex being brought into the library of Paris, Camus compared it again with four other manuscript codices.[252] Part I. comprises the fifty apostolic canons which were compiled about the time of the Council of Chalcedon, as is generally supposed; fifty-nine spurious letters of the first thirty popes, from Clement to Melchiades;[253] the introduction to the whole is taken partly from the old Spanish collection, which circulated under the name of St. Isidore, Bishop of Seville. Part II. gives, after a brief preface, the false act of donation by the Emperor Constantine;[254] [688]two introductory pieces, one taken from the Spanish code, the other from the Gallic code;[255] lastly, the acts of Greek, African, Gallic, and Spanish councils, as the Spanish code of the year 683 recorded them. In the third part we find another introduction copied from the Spanish collection, and then follow in order of time the decretals of the popes, from Sylvester (died 335) to Gregory II., (died 731.) Among these latter there are thirty-five forged letters and several false councils, though, let it be clearly understood, in many portions the contents of these forged decretals corresponded to genuine documents which the author extracted for this purpose.[256] Two councils are falsely attributed to Pope Symmachus. All these records of pseudo-Isidore cover the whole field of ecclesiastical discipline; they are partly dogmatical, directed against the errors of the Arians, Nestorians, and Monophysites; partly they contain moral precepts and exhortations; partly they refer to liturgy, giving the accompanying ceremonies to the administration of the sacraments; another no less conspicuous part is the enactments of papal decrees and canons of councils, regarding the protection of the clergy against arbitrary oppression, accusations, and depositions, the security of ecclesiastical property, the dignity and rights of the Roman Church, the appeals to the apostolic see, and the prerogatives of patriarchs, metropolitans, and bishops. From all this we can infer, that the object of the author in compiling this code was a very comprehensive one, and he drew quite copiously from the Scriptures, from the Roman pontifical book,[257] the historical books of Rufinus [258] and Cassiodorus, the author of the Historia Tripartita;[259] also from the writings of the Latin fathers, and from many collections or commentaries of Roman law. By a subsequent multiplying of copies, several changes and additions were made during the eleventh and twelfth centuries.[260]

Having already produced testimonies to prove that the principles—which are said to have "surely but gradually changed the ancient constitution of the church" by means of these Isidorian fictions—were known and acknowledged long before pseudo-Isidore, we have thereby made good our third point, and we can fully concur in the following conclusion of a learned historian, who says of the pseudo-Isidorian code:

That the Isidorian collection was not compiled at Rome, is admitted by all historians [261] and canonists of any standing;[262] nor did Janus dare to revive an antiquated and unfounded opinion of this import. However, we have to deal with another no less hazardous, nay, we might state at once, false assertion in the following lines:

In order to judge fairly of this whole question raised by Janus, and by others before him, we may be pardoned for premising that the collection of pseudo-Isidore became first known in Gaul about the middle of the ninth century. The most recent document which has been traced is the Synod of Paris, of 829, from which extracts are made. Other researches have led Ballerini [264] and others to suppose that the Synod of Aix-la-Chapelle, held in the year 836, was known to the author, since he dwells at great length on the rights of primates or apostolic vicars, which dignity was restored in France, or western Gaul, after a long interruption, in the year 844. Mention is first made of these decretals at the Synod of Chièssy,[265] in 857, so that the time of their compilation must certainly be assigned between these last-named dates of 845 and 847. We might arrive at a more precise time by the fact that a collection of Capitularies,[266] made by Benedict, levita or deacon of Mainz, between the years 840 and 847, contains entire passages identical with those in the pseudo-Isidorian code. The only explanation of this similarity is either to be sought in the fact that both collections come from the same author, or that the Capitularies of Benedict have copied from the Isidorian code; and in that issue, the latter must have been compiled before the year 847.[267] The correspondence between Pope Nicolas I. and Hincmar of Rheims attracted general attention to the pseudo-Isidorian collection, and in this way Pope Nicolas I. was first apprised of their existence, as is evident from his letter to the bishops of Gaul,[268] where he upholds the authority of the papal decretals in general, independently of their insertion in any collection. The pope mentions the sources from which the Roman Church took its ecclesiastical discipline, alluding to the codex of Dionysius. The objection usually brought forward, that the pope says that these decretals were preserved in the archives of the Roman Church, does not refer to the pseudo-Isidorian decretals, since there is only question of the authority to be attributed to those documents in general.[269] Hincmar, who had previously appealed to the pseudo-Isidorian collection, later rejected the authority of those decretals which seemed to condemn his own views and position in the affair with Hincmar, Bishop of Laon.[270] To leave no doubt on this head in the mind of the reader, we submit the very words of Nicolas I.:

A few lines further the same pope exhibits the inconsistency of Hincmar and other bishops, when acknowledging only such decretals as favor their own position, and rejecting others [690]merely because they were not found in the code known to themselves. The principle, as though the authority of a decree of the popes or a synod was not to be recognized unless it has been received into some code, is combated and the whole issue comes to this, whether such decrees are authentic and genuine. In fine, the pope in this epistle combines an extraordinary knowledge of the ancient canons with great force of logic and historical accuracy. Our conclusion is that Pope Nicolas I. has never appealed to the pseudo-Isidorian decretals, though he frequently had occasion to do so. This is admitted by the reformed preacher Blondel,[272] and by Blasco,[273] and, among other modern historians, by Dr. Döllinger, who remarks that Pope Nicolas I. "makes no use of the Isidorian collection, adduces none of its decretals, and it may be even doubted whether he had seen the work."[274] During the eleventh century only, the popes begin to quote from pseudo-Isidore. Here, then, we have given another specimen of the "historical fairness" and "canonical erudition" of Janus and associates; and if our authors imagined that it was enough to impose on their readers by the mass of "original authorities," they have indeed succeeded to some extent, and we have but one restriction to make, that is, that they cannot be saved from the charge of deliberate falsification. For, singularly enough, and much to the credit of the historical erudition of Janus, let it be remarked that there is always something in the authorities quoted bearing on the point under discussion. Who is there who does not see that Janus stamps himself as a falsifier of history, whenever he mutilates and distorts the contents of authorities quoted by him? In conclusion, we wish to allude to one more insidious passage of our authors, when they say,

Alas! Nothing easier than to claim this merit for such candid and impartial historians as the avowed champions of Lutheranism! Besides the doubts entertained by Hincmar and other bishops in the ninth century, a writer of the twelfth century, Peter Comestor,[275] called the genuineness of this collection in question. In the middle of the fifteenth century, the learned Cardinal Nicolas Cusanus [276] and such an eminent divine as John de Turrecremata [277] proved the fictitious character of the most ancient papal decretals contained in pseudo-Isidore; they were followed in these investigations by other eminent scholars, both in Germany and France, before the dawn of the sixteenth century, and hence no trophies on this field could have been won by the historians of Magdeburg!

If, notwithstanding all these elucidations, a certain Jesuit, Turrianus, wrote in defence of the pseudo-Isidorian decretals, we do not see how from this fact Janus concludes that the "Jesuit order were resolved to defend them." (P. 319.) Did not the illustrious Jesuit Bellarmine acknowledge the fictitious character of pseudo-Isidore? And yet our authors thus boldly continue as follows:

We are sorry to say that we have not been able to discover any such admission on the part of Cardinal Bellarmine; but on the contrary, when answering the objection of the Centuriators concerning the fictitious letters of the first thirty popes to Melchiades, we find the following clear view on this subject:

It was not precisely on the faith of the Isidorian collection or its compiler that Bellarmine used any of these documents; but he endeavored to demonstrate their authenticity according to the rules laid down by historical criticism. It is simply false that he made "copious use of the Isidorian fictions." None deserve greater credit for the clear and elaborate elucidation of this great question of pseudo-Isidore than the brothers Ballerini, who have supplied an immense material whence the eminent canonists and historians of our days have been enabled to weigh every thing carefully, and the result has been a glorious one to Catholic learning and science. The attempts which have been made for three hundred years, and more, to create a fictitious foundation for the present constitution of the Catholic Church, and to brand it with the specious appellation of forgery—these inglorious attempts, we say, have in our days been renewed by Janus and his deluded admirers. If Janus hoped to strengthen his position by a novel method, we dare assert his signal failure—indeed, our enemies have secured a poor and feeble leader. Should the present contribution produce further curiosity, and lead to more extended and serious researches on this subject, we are confident enough to express the hope that many unfounded prejudices will be thereby dispelled, and the triumph of ancient and present Catholic doctrine be hastened.[279]

THE SUPERSTITION OF UNBELIEF.

When an age has abandoned God, sensuality delivers it over, like Faust, to the devil, and he becomes its deity. Unbelief is everywhere followed by superstition. Where the gods are not, the demons reign, says a modern German poet. "We are ready to believe every thing when we believe nothing," remarks Chateaubriand. "We have augurs when we have no longer prophets; witchcraft when we have no longer religious ceremonies. When the temples of God are closed, the caves of the sorcerers are opened."

It is certainly a monstrous pairing when, with boasted enlightenment, fortune-telling, card-divining, and the other superstitions of darkness go hand in hand. But it is nevertheless an old and well-known fact-one constantly[692] demonstrated by human experience—that unbelief is invariably associated with the grossest superstition. A rapid glance at the history of peoples in all other essentials most widely differing from each other will readily prove this.

Beginning with the Hindoos, the oldest people on the earth, we find that A. W. Schlegel has already effectually refuted the theories of modern writers on religion by demonstrating to us a steady retrogression from the spiritual to the sensual, from belief to unbelief and superstition. Dubois, who had spent thirty years among the Brahmins, and studied their philosophy, traces the degrading superstition into which the Hindoos have lapsed to their having lost faith in the religion of their ancestors. Once their schools taught the maxim, Before earth, water, air, wind, fire, Brahma, Vishnu, Chieva, sun, and stars, there was the only and eternal God, who had sprung out of himself. These pure ideas of religion have long been abandoned for an atheistic materialism. A superstitious demonology, spirit-raising, sorcery, and magic have grown out of this unbelief, and the same people now adore Kapel, the serpent, and Gamda, the bird. They observe annually a feast in honor of Darhba, an ordinary weed, and offer up sacrifices to spade and pick. To kill a cow is by them considered a crime more heinous than matricide, and their philosophers esteem it a great piece of good luck, a sure passport to paradise, if they can catch hold of a cow by the tail instead of the head, when dying. "Modern materialism," observes Dr. Hæffner, comparing the unbelief of the Hindoos with our own, "has closely approached the abyss of Buddhism." Manifestations like Mormonism, or the spiritualism of New York, Paris, and Berlin, already suggest to us the religious and moral practices of the Hindoos, and we bid fair soon to reach their lowest and vilest forms—the Lamaism of Thibet and Ceylon. As in the opening of the present century, admiration of genius led men to adore the poetical genius of Schiller and Goethe, so, changing their idols, they will eventually worship those who have deified matter. The Buddhas of modern atheism can only be the materialistic notabilities of the day; and for this reason a humorous writer recommends Carl Vogt for Delai-Lama, he being not only a high scientific but a great political authority.

Passing from the east to the west, we find, and especially in Roman history, that the increase of superstition has steadily kept pace with the diminution of faith. The religious decadence of ancient Rome dates from the close of the Punic wars and the domestic commotions of the republic, at which period we first notice that strange hankering after what is obscure and mysterious in paganism, and which attained its zenith under the Cæsars. This remark applies, however, more to the cities than the country; for, from the days of Augustus down to those of the Antonines, the latter had not yet been so generally corrupted as the former. Sulla, the dictator—to cite a few examples—put the utmost confidence in a small image of Apollo, brought from Delphi, which he carried about on his person, and which he embraced publicly before his troops with a prayer for victory. Augustus, who allowed himself to be worshipped as a god in the provinces, regarded it as an evil omen to be handed the left shoe instead of the right when he rose in the morning. He neither set out on a journey after the Nundines nor undertook any thing of importance during the Nones. When one of his fleets had been lost at sea, he punished Neptune by excluding[693] his image from being carried in procession at the Circensian games.

After the doctrine of Polybius, that religion is nothing more than a tissue of lies and traditions, began to prevail at Rome, the phenomena which usually attend the decadence of a people became plainly apparent. Those who are familiar with the epidemic capers of the fanatics of that age, who jerked their heads and distorted their limbs while pretending to utter the will of the gods, will be reminded of that moral and religious degradation which has produced the same effects in all countries and times—effects distinctly visible among all Christian peoples into whose life the ancient heathenism still enters, or where false civilization once more tends to barbarism. The story of Alexander of Obonoteichos shows the extremes to which superstition may lead men. This audacious impostor buried in the temple of Apollo, at Chalcedon, but so that they could be easily found, a set of bronze tablets, promising that Esculapius and his father Apollo would shortly come to Obonoteichos. He also secreted an egg containing a small snake, and mounted the next day the altar in the market-place to proclaim as one inspired that Esculapius was about to appear. He produced the egg, broke its shell, and the people rejoiced over the god who had assumed the form of a serpent. The news of this miracle attracted immense crowds. A few days later, Alexander announced that the serpent-god had already reached maturity, and he exhibited himself to the public in a partially darkened room, dressed as a prophet, with a large tame serpent—secretly imported from Macedonia—so twisted around his waist that its head was out of sight, and its place supplied by a human head of paper, whence protruded a black tongue. This new serpent-god, Glykon, the youngest Epiphany of Esculapius, received the honors of temple and oracle service. Alexander became a highly respected prophet; Rutelia, a noble Roman, married his daughter, and the prefect Severian asked him for an oracle on taking the field against the king of the Parthians.

If we wish to see how the same impostures are reënacted in our own times, we need only read the accounts of certain evening amusements at the Tuileries. There sat one night the Emperor Napoleon III., the Empress Eugenie, the Duke de Montebello, and Home, the medium. On a table before them were paper, pens, and ink. Then appeared a spirit-hand, which picked up a pen, dipped it into the ink, and wrote the name of Napoleon I. in Napoleon's handwriting. The emperor prayed to be permitted to kiss the spirit-hand, which advanced to his lips, and then to those of Eugenie. This séance, and one of a similar kind at the Palais Royal, where the Red Prince, known for his hatred of the church, devoutly watched the ball which Home caused to move over a table, remind us involuntarily of the Jesus-contemning apostate Emperor Julian, as he followed Maximus, the Neo-Platonist, into a subterranean vault for the purpose of seeing Hecate, and looking credulously on when the former secretly set fire to a figure of Hecate, painted in combustible materials on the wall, and at the same time let fly a falcon with burning tow tied to his feet. Fuller information on this subject the curious may glean from the stories published in the French journals, of hands growing out of table-tops and sofa-cushions, which furnish the Paris élite with the only luxury of terror it seems still capable of enjoying; or they may consult the numerous patrons of the fashionable clairvoyants and physiognomists,[694] the Mesdames Villeneuve, of the Rue St. Denis, as well as the successors of Lenormand, the famous coffee-grounds seer, toward whom Napoleon I. felt himself irresistibly attracted, (though he sent the luckless Cassandra occasionally to prison,) and whom the Empress Josephine held in high esteem.

The eighteenth century furnishes some striking illustrations of our theory. An epidemic tendency to unbelief, like that which characterizes this century, is without precedent since the dawn of Christianity. Its fruits recall the worst abuses of the Manichæans and the Albigenses. We do not here allude to the thousands of innocent superstitions, which Grimm says are a sort of religion for minor domestic purposes, and may be met with in all ages, but to those more glaring ones which show how inseparable are an arrogant unbelief and the grossest superstition. Hobbes, who labored already in the seventeenth century to undermine the Christian religion, was so afraid of ghosts that he would not pass the night without candles. D'Alembert, the chief of the Encyclopædists, used to leave the table when thirteen sat down to it. The Marquis D'Argens was frightened out of his wits at the upsetting of a salt-cellar. Frederick II. had faith in astrology. At the court of his successor, General Bishopswerder imposed on the king by magic tricks, and his accomplice, Wöllner, who raised spirits by the agency of optic mirrors, became minister. The custodian of the National Library at Paris related to Count Portalis that some time previous to the great revolution books on fortune-telling and the black arts were in general demand. Oerstedt speaks of a man who paraded his atheism with great insolence, but whom nothing could have tempted to pass through a graveyard after dark. Napoleon I. dispatched, in 1812, a special messenger to Beyreuth, with instructions not to be lodged in the apartments which the "white woman" of the Hohenzollerns was reputed to haunt. In the same way we see by the side of this league of unbelieving philosophers spring up such superstitious sects as the Butlerians, whose head, Margaret Butler, with Justus Winter for God the Father, and George Oppenzoller for God the Son, represented herself to be the Holy Ghost.

The alleged miraculous cures on the grave of Paris, the Jansenist deacon, in the first, and the exorcisms of the devil by Gassner, in the second half of the eighteenth century, form another instructive chapter in the history of superstition. While the Archbishop of Vontimiglii, the Bishop of Sens, and other distinguished prelates, denounced the cures performed with the earth from the grave of Paris as a cheat, Montegon, the atheist, wrote three volumes to prove their authenticity. While the Archbishop of Prague and the papal chair, by a decree of the Congregation of Rites issued in October, 1777, condemned the miraculous pretensions of Gassner, Walter, Leitner, and other deistic physicians, upheld them. While the mountebank Cagliostro, who pretended to have learnt in Egypt the secret of generating magical powers from reflecting surfaces, was called to account at Rome, the Free-Masons of Holland made him visitator, and fêted him in their lodges. The unbelief of the eighteenth century reached at last its culminating point during the French revolution in the abolishment of the Supreme Being, though the rites of Mlle. Aubry or Mme. Momoro were as silly as the worship of the cotton plucked from Voltaire's robe de chambre. The names in the philosophical calendar remind us strongly of the[695] Hindoo worship of the spade and pick, and who knows but some super-enlightened atheist may be prepared to subscribe to the Brahminic dogma about the ox, an animal which has already played a prominent rôle at a red-republican festival? Burke's prediction has been fulfilled, "If we discard Christianity, a coarse, ruinous, degrading superstition will replace it."

This war against faith and every thing spiritual has continued into the nineteenth century, until once more gross materialism is found on every side. Already, during the fourth decade, the darkest superstition threatened to overwhelm the so-called intelligent world with the manifestations of magnetism. The campaign against the supernatural opened with the trial of the devil. As the Strasbourg Catholic satirically observed, the very day and hour had been fixed when it was required that he should establish his own existence by tangible proof. Disregarding the summons, the scamp was promptly declared in contumaciam outlawed and cashiered along with the entire host of unclean spirits. The same summary mode of treatment was pursued with the opposite side, and the same judgment was passed on the angels, cherubim, and seraphim. All were pronounced to be equally tasteless, scentless, inaudible, and imponderable, and declared to be mere creatures of the imagination. Their Lord and Master was next put on trial; at first very considerately with closed doors and in a secret inquisitorial manner. The results of the trial were put on record, and for a while imparted only to the initiated, who gradually divulged the news to the masses. At last the spirituality of our own soul was arraigned, and its activity explained as the result of a mere change of matter. The Beelzebub of ancient superstition was thus exorcised and expelled; but he soon returned to the house which the besom of criticism had cleaned, and brought back with him seven other evil spirits, so that nothing was gained by the proceeding. The age, having cut loose from the invisible, naturally plunged into a most abject dependence on the visible. As the negro races kneel before their fetiches, trees and serpents, so this century kneels before sleeping somnambulists, dancing and writing tables, and mixtures and nostrums from the apothecary shop.

Should civilization much longer continue on the present road, the most deplorable consequences must follow. As in all former times, so in this age unbelief has led where it always will lead—to superstition. Man, created for immortality, needs the wonderful, a future, and hope. When such a sceptical enlightenment as distinguishes modern philosophy has sapped the foundations of religion, its absence leaves in his thoughts and feelings an immeasurable void which invites the most dangerous phantoms of the brain. The moment man boldly declares, "I no longer believe in any thing," he is preparing to believe in all things. It is high time that so-called philosophy should again draw near to that religion which it has misunderstood, and which alone is capable of giving to the emotions of the heart a generous impulse and a safe direction.

REFORMATORIES FOR BOYS.—METTRAY.

It needs but a slight glance at the condition of things around us to discover, as a consequence of the criminal and most deplorable neglect of the moral education of a large proportion of our children, that if they be not already on the broad road to ruin, they give, at least, little hope of becoming useful members of society. This remark is intended chiefly, but not exclusively, for boys, whose constantly increasing lawlessness, connected with the steady growth of crime among us, cannot fail to awaken the most serious apprehensions in the mind of every attentive observer of passing events, while nothing adequate to the emergency is offered to check this growing evil; yet on the children of the present generation are based our hopes for the future of our country. Every one knows with what facility these young, fresh minds may be guided toward what is truly good; for, though the tendency of our human nature to the descending scale in morals as well as in physics is sufficiently evident, the one may be counteracted with almost as much certainty as the other, if judicious measures be early taken to give them a right direction. The writer has had much experience in the domestic training of boys, and yields the heartiest adhesion to the precept, "Train up a child in the way he should go; and when he is old, he will not depart from it." This training, however, is not by means of pampering animal appetites or self-will, but by inculcation of strict though gentle laws of obedience and self-denial. These habits once acquired, a solid basis is laid for good principles and conduct, and these can, I venture to say, always be fairly established within the first ten years of life, which have been justly pronounced the most important period of human existence, for they contain the germ from which the future character is formed. A profound thinker remarks, that "in the education of the family is concentrated the strength of the nation;" an observation which may well be applied to these United States, where the moral character of every individual, through our system of universal suffrage, assumes a certain weight, and thus, to a greater or less extent, influences the best interests of the whole country. We may here be permitted, in view of the immense importance of this education of early childhood, to suggest a hint of a strange inconsistency which is scarcely ever noticed in the systems of education adopted to prepare the fathers and mothers of our posterity for their respective callings. Everywhere, even where moral influences are neglected, means are provided for the preparation of boys for their career in life; yet, notwithstanding the multitudinous volumes of philanthropy expended upon "woman's sphere," "her rights," etc., etc., we have scarcely heard of a single well-directed effort, beyond the chances of the domestic circle, to educate young women in the supreme, the inexpressibly momentous knowledge of the vocation that must surely be the lot of nearly every one of them. They are destined to be mothers—to train up tender minds for time and for eternity! To them is confided the most precious of our earthly treasures; for what is untold gold but dust in comparison with the well-being[697] of our children? Why are they not imbued with the most profound respect for the dignity of motherhood, as well as instructed conscientiously in its practical duties and responsibilities?

When the mother's work is ill done, or, as is but too often the case, totally neglected, of what avail are the labors of the professor, but to make a bad man intellectually strong and more capable for the accomplishment of his evil designs? Who can predict the safety of the noblest structure if superimposed on a false or insecure foundation? Knowledge is a power equally available for good or evil purposes, according to the direction given by the moral force that applies it. May the Almighty disposer of events teach us even at this late day to learn wisdom from the experience of the past. If, for example, a single volume were prepared and placed among the closing studies of the course in girls' schools, embracing instructions in the duties of woman—as mistress of the family, as the wife, the mother, whose highest faculties are requisite in the early training of children—and if the whole were placed in so attractive a garb as to win their love and admiration for these womanly duties and perfections, might we not hope that many young and guileless minds would be gained from the mazes of folly ever ready to obscure their true instincts and affections? Craving pardon for this digression, we proceed to the primary object of this article.

This admirable institution, which has received the highest stamp of public approbation in the form of more than eighty kindred institutions that have adopted its rules and practice as their models, in France, Belgium, and other countries, was founded about thirty years since, by the venerable M. Demetz, at that time a distinguished magistrate, in union with a saintly man [280] whose honored remains repose in the neighboring cemetery. M. Demetz still lives to bless and guide this noble monument of his early wisdom and beneficence.

In the midst of a beautiful and highly cultivated rural district, the pretty village of Mettray is built in the form of a spacious hollow square, and consists of some twenty or thirty detached cottages of brick, symmetrically placed on two opposite sides of the quadrangle, each having pendent roofs to protect the walls. A circular basin of running water occupies the centre, and the open space is planted with fine shade-trees. Between each of the cottages there is a gallery about thirty feet wide, and roofed to protect from rain the plays of the inmates of the adjoining cottages. All are white and of two stories, chiefly covered with climbing vines and flowers.

The entrance is on the side opposite the fine church, which, with the school-house and grounds, fills that portion of the spacious quadrangle. On entering, between two houses of larger dimensions, (one being appropriated to the use of the director, the other to the normal school, in which the future teachers of Mettray are trained in their work,) the visitor is a little startled at the view of a large ship with all its spars and rigging, moored in the solid earth. This is intended for the instruction of boys who manifest a taste for the sea. The view of the whole is most pleasing. Every cottage bears an inscription on its front, which on inspection [698]makes known the interesting fact that each building is the donation of the individual lady or gentleman whose name is inscribed thereon, or of some benevolent association. Thus the expenses of building, usually so great as in many instances to render such a foundation hopeless, are here readily and piously assumed by various benefactors. The manifest advantages of these separate buildings, each adapted for the occupation of some thirty to thirty-five boys, will appear in the sequel. In the architecture,[281] all is of the simplest kind; for it is thought best not to awaken luxurious tastes or habits among a class destined to earn their living by the sweat of their brow. The boys are not crowded together in large masses, but enjoy a free and open circulation of air, conducive to health and energy; and the inmates of each cottage are under the permanent government of a director and sub-director, who are regarded as the fathers of the household, and live with them, eating, sleeping, etc., in the same house, and to whom the boys become devotedly attached, and they thus enjoy, so far as it is possible, the blessing of the family relations. Sisters also are there, in their separate apartments adjacent to the church, prepared to nurse the sick in the infirmary, and to give their invaluable influences and aid, especially to the little ones, on every proper occasion.

The village is adapted to receive seven hundred boys,[282] from seven or eight years of age and upward. The "colony," as it is termed, is chiefly agricultural, but many of the children, from various causes, being better adapted to indoor employments, are applied to trades, and in winter, when the farm work is interrupted, all the boys are employed in the shops, to acquire the art of manufacturing their own tools. In these shops, where, as we have said, the boys are permanently associated in separate families, they are taught to be tailors, shoemakers, carpenters, blacksmiths, agricultural instrument manufacturers—in short, any or every trade that may be made useful or profitable.

In the rear of the village are the farm buildings, the stables, cow-houses, etc. etc., with the gymnasium and a small pond of running water for bathing and swimming. Further on is the cemetery, with its alleys of cypress and well-kept gardens, (for gardening is a prominent branch of industry here;) and we may well imagine that nothing is neglected to beautify the surroundings of the honored tomb of their first benefactor, and of the lowly graves of the departed who were once their companions. Flowers—beautiful flowers—are strewed everywhere, and with their fragrance seem to hallow the sacred place.

Neither walls nor ditches nor any means of restraint or confinement are resorted to for the compulsory seclusion of these seven hundred juvenile culprits, who have all been adjudged as fit subjects for this penitentiary; yet escape is so rare as to be almost unknown. As we entered the square, the boys, ranging from seven or eight to twenty years of age, were enjoying their midday recreations—leaping, playing, laughing, or shouting at their pleasure. Within a few minutes, at the sound of a clarionet, their sports suddenly ceased, and a moment later, at a second call, they separated, each to join his "family" at its allotted ground, to prepare to march; and then a lively quick-step was heard. This was the signal of the band, composed[699] of their comrades most expert in music, who had meantime taken their post near the centre of the square, at which the various groups, joined by their two directors, filed off cheerily, each to its home. The musicians then laid aside their instruments and hastened after their companions. They partake of their frugal but wholesome and cheerful meals in the second story of their respective cottages, accompanied by their directors, and in the evening, when the last repast is ended, the tables are expertly suspended against the walls, and a single row of hammocks, which were laid aside after the same fashion before breakfast, are again placed in order for the night. The rooms are perfectly well ventilated, and there is a great gain in economy from this double arrangement. After each meal there is recreation, and the hour being past, music again recalls each family to the square, from which, to the sound of lively airs, they move off in high spirits to their various employments. Here goes a class of farmers, there are the gardeners, and further on, the carters, etc. etc., all on their way to the farm, while the lesser numbers of shoemakers, tailors, and others turn their steps in the direction of their various shops, and a goodly class wind their way to the school. Thus the children are accustomed to repair to their allotted labor as if on a holiday. Music salutes their departure, and its notes leave a joyous impression on the mind. The lower floors of the cottages are all occupied as workshops.

From this brief sketch may be inferred the regularity that prevails in the colony. Every thing is done to habituate the boys to a willing and cheerful performance of their duty. No harshness is permitted that might again chill these young hearts, that have once been abandoned to vice before they were capable of discrimination. The system of rewards is quite original, and serves its purpose admirably. For grave offences confinement in a cell is the only punishment found necessary. Lying is regarded as the worst of faults.

Within the narrow limits prescribed for this article it would be impossible to give any adequate account of an institution which, wherever it is known, is recognized as being equalled only by such others as most closely obey its spirit and maxims. Its founders have aimed, so far as possible, to restore and cultivate the family affections, prematurely shattered through vicious examples, by dividing, as we have seen, into groups this large mass of youthful humanity, and forming them into families under regulations tending to establish a sincere and lasting attachment among its members. In their respective cottages they live and work together, in the interchange of mutual kindness and regard, and are inspired with the idea that each, in a certain sense, is responsible for the good conduct, the respectability, the happiness, of his brothers. The ever-ready sympathy and motherly counsels of the sisters must not be forgotten. The directors at Mettray are, thus far, laymen; but in many other like institutions it has been found impossible to dispense with the aid of religious orders. In this country we should be obliged to have recourse to them for want of laymen possessed of the needful qualifications; for they must give their entire lives to the work.

The success achieved by this institution during its thirty years' existence in the entire reformation of the youths subjected to its wise and wholesome discipline, is unexampled. The statistical tables of France, unsurpassed in exactness, inform us that an average of 96.81% of the youth[700] brought up at Mettray are restored to society, thoroughly reformed, and continue to fulfil their parts in life as useful citizens. They are usually detained in the colony to the age of twenty-one, when suitable situations having been provided, according to the trade of each, they are allowed to depart. Still, a sort of guardianship is maintained for years over those within reach; and the young men who find employment among the neighboring farmers are expected to pass the Sundays at their old home; a privilege which they relish in the highest degree. Nearly half their number engage in agricultural work. Others enter the army or navy, in both of which several have attained honorable distinction. Many are married, and present good examples in domestic life. An honorary association has been formed, which affords additional incentives to good conduct after leaving Mettray. Two years of an irreproachable life entitles each who merits it to a diploma; and this secures him a membership.

It is really difficult to do justice to this admirable institution without being suspected of exaggeration. To understand the wonder-working power of the wisdom that pervades it, that transforms the juvenile criminal into a sober-minded, industrious, and devout man, it must be seen and closely scrutinized. Christian education has taken the place of the penal code, and the boy is "trained in the way he should go," on the firm basis of religious principles of faith and practice. The general expression beaming on every countenance, of cheerful confidence, even of the gentle and affectionate temper that prevails, affords an affecting contrast to that of the newly-arrived boy, fresh from the haunts of vice. His pale and haggard looks betray evil propensities, as well as wasted health. His little heart is already filled with hatred, restrained only by the fear that he betrays, either by attempts at a hypocritical humility or an impudent daring. Years pass on, and this incipient wild beast becomes benevolent, frank, and good.

Within a few years a kindred institution has grown up, adjoining the village, but skilfully concealed from the public gaze by thick shrubbery. This is the "Paternal Home," for the reformation of the disobedient sons of families in the higher walks of life. A close white wall, behind which trees and climbing vines appear, is pierced in the centre by an equally close door. A small bell-pull is touched, and the visitor enters a pretty court laid out with flowers and shrubs. Through this the home appears at the distance of a few paces. We enter a narrow hall, furnished with simple elegance. Doors on either side lead into small rooms, containing a bed, table, book-case, etc. Engravings representing some generous or noble action adorn the walls. As the youth becomes more docile and studious, a singing bird in a cage is given him for a companion; and, finally, he is permitted to occupy two rooms. During all this period, the boy is made to understand that he is the object of the tenderest affection of his family, who inflict the greatest pain upon their own feelings in subjecting him to this temporary punishment, which is solely for his own good. Professors attend him, and continue, without interruption, the collegiate course which has been interrupted, and he has the daily benefit of fresh air on foot, or on horseback, attended by a professor.

It must be understood that this sojourn at the Paternal Home is unknown to all but the family. M. Demetz alone is made acquainted with[701] his name.[283] To others who approach him, he is simply Mr. A——, B——, or C——. Gradually this isolation produces its effects—and the intractable spirit in this seclusion begins to meditate, to reflect, to examine himself—to condemn his former vices, and to love the studies that alleviate the weariness of solitude. Two or three months usually suffice to effect this favorable change. He finds relief in occupation, and as he carries on the course of the classes he has left, he begins to take an interest in competition. Let it not be imagined that this seclusion, though severe, is allowed to affect the health of the recluse. This would be entirely to misunderstand the parental foresight of the founder. The boys take long walks in the country, each in turn, as we have said, accompanied by a professor. They visit the neighboring farms, and sometimes enter a cottage on a visit of charity; practise gymnastics, or take lessons in fencing and when their conduct is unexceptionable, they are invited to dine with M. Demetz. If, after returning home, they are tempted to relapse into bad habits, they are sent back again, but to a more austere régime. Such is the effect produced by this system, at once tender and severe, that very often his former pupils request of M. Demetz the privilege of again passing a few days of calmness in peaceful retreat, or to finish some task that demands seclusion, at the Paternal Home. To them, the retreat where they were restored to a sense of duty is really a home of the heart, and the hand that raised them up is blessed as that of the father, who spared neither severity nor tenderness for their complete restoration. What wonder that he is the object of their devoted affection? Is there no American capable of imitating such a model?

THE FIRST ŒCUMENICAL COUNCIL OF THE VATICAN.
NUMBER SEVEN.

The preamble and first four chapters of the dogmatic constitution de Fide Catholica having been irrevocably disposed of in the public session held on Low-Sunday, are now before your readers and the world.

The withdrawal of the veil of secrecy from this portion of the schema has removed from the eyes of many, the scales of doubt and misgiving, blinded as they were by the repeated statements of certain newspaper correspondents; and as future decrees come to light, they will equally confound the pretensions of the false prophets, and amply reward the patient hope of the faithful.

The Vatican Council took a fresh start on the following Friday, April 29th. In the general congregation of that day, the fathers passed from faith to discipline, and began to discuss the reformed schema on the Little Catechism.

After the mass, which was said by [702]the Archbishop of Corfu, the council was addressed by Mgr. Wierzchleyski, Archbishop of Leopoli, in Galician Poland, who spoke in the name of the deputation on discipline, of which he is a distinguished member.

Speeches were afterward made by the Cardinal Archbishop of Bordeaux, Cardinal Rauscher of Vienna, and by the Bishops of Guastalla, Saluzzo, and St. Augustine, Florida.

The next morning, Saturday, the 30th, the discussion was resumed. The Archbishop of Avignon, and the Bishops of Luçon and Parma made some remarks on the general features of the schema. These prelates were followed by the distinguished Bishop Von Ketteler of Mayence, the Bishops of Plymouth and of Clifton in England, and the Bishop of Trèves in Germany; all of whom confined themselves to some particular points of the document. Bishop Von Ketteler, who belongs to a baronial family in Germany, before becoming a chief in the church militant, served his country with distinction as colonel in the German army. He must be at least six feet high, has quite a soldierly bearing, and is concise and to the point in his remarks. The last speaker was the Bishop of Seckau in Germany, a member of the deputation.

As the rules of the council authorize the members of the deputation to reply to the observations of the fathers at any stage of the discussion, the committee avail themselves of that privilege by making the final speech, which in ecclesiastical convocations, as well as in civil meetings, is generally the most telling one.

At the conclusion of the remarks by the Bishop of Seckau, the president declared that the debate on the Little Catechism was closed, and that the vote would be taken on the following Wednesday, on all the amendments proposed.

In the congregation of Wednesday, May 4th, the Bishop of Tyre and Sidon celebrated mass in the peculiar and impressive form of the Maronite rite. The president asked the prayers of the fathers for the venerable Bishop of Evreux in France, who died in his seventieth year, and survived only two days after returning home from the council.

Permission was granted to nine foreign bishops to return to their sees. Among them were the Bishops of Arichat and Charlottetown, in British America. The regular business commenced with a second speech by the Bishop of Seckau, who reviewed all the amendments proposed in the preceding congregation. The final vote was then taken on the Little Catechism as a whole. Each bishop voted viva voce. The term placet was used by the prelates who gave unqualified approbation to it; placet juxta modum by those who had some modification to propose, while assenting to its general features; and non placet by those who dissented from the measure. The total number of votes given was 591.

The Little Catechism, which has received no small share of public attention, now "lies over" till the final seal of approbation is stamped upon it at the next public session.

The general congregations were resumed on the 13th. After the usual religious exercises, leave of absence without the obligation of returning was granted to the following prelates:

The oral discussion then commenced on the great and fundamental question[703] de Romani Pontificis Primatu et Infallibilitate, which is comprised in a preamble and four chapters, and which forms the first part of the dogmatic constitution de Ecclesia Christi.

These four chapters had already passed through several manipulations before being submitted to oral discussion. First, the text had been distributed to the fathers, who in due course of time transmitted their observations upon it to the deputation de fide. These observations were then maturely examined by the members of the deputation, and a printed report of their views on them was sent to the residence of each bishop.

The Bishop of Poitiers, in the name of the deputation, opened the discussion with a lucid exposition and vindication of the substance and form of the text. With this lengthy and learned speech closed the congregation of the 13th.

Next day, the debate was resumed. The Venerable Constantine Patrizzi, Cardinal Vicar of Rome, and, with the exception of Cardinal Mattei, the oldest member of the Sacred College, commenced the discussion. He was followed by the Archbishop of San Francisco, United States; the Archbishop of Messina, Sicily; the Archbishop of Catania, Italy; the Bishop of Dijon, France; the Bishop of Vesprim, Hungary; the Bishop of Zamora, Spain, and the Bishop of Patti, kingdom of Naples.

On Tuesday, the 17th, Archbishop Dechamps, Primate of Belgium, addressed the fathers in the name of the deputation. Speeches were also delivered by the Bishops of St. Brieux, France; Santo Gallo, Switzerland, and of Rottenburg, Würtemberg. The president announced the death of the Bishop of Olinda, in Brazil, and recommended him to the prayers of the council.

Wednesday, the 18th. The Archbishop of Saragossa opened the discussion, representing the deputation. The other speakers in the congregation were all cardinals, namely, Cardinal Schwarzenberg, Archbishop of Prague, Bohemia; Cardinal Donnet, of Bordeaux, and Cardinal Rauscher, of Vienna.

Thursday, the 19th. Cardinal Cullen of Dublin was the first speaker, and was succeeded by the Cardinal Archbishop of Valladolid, Spain, and by the Greek-Melchite Patriarch of Antioch.

Friday, the 20th. The Primate of Hungary had the advantage of the opening speech. The venerable Dr. McHale came next. "The Lion of the fold of Juda," as he is called, looks as hale as a man of forty-five, though he is a bishop since 1825. The Archbishops of Corfu and Paris occupied the pulpit during the remainder of the session.

Saturday, the 21st. Bishop Leahy, of Cashel, reviewed some of the preceding speeches as a delegate of the deputation, and was followed by the Bishops of Strasburg, Forli, and Castellamare, Italy.

Intense and unwavering interest was manifested in each of the foregoing congregations, both on account of the grave character of the subjects under deliberation, and the eminent prelates that took part in the discussion. I wish that, together with the names, I were permitted to give also the living words which fell from the lips of these learned and eloquent prelates. They would prove to you that the Christian oratory of the fourth and fifth centuries is reëchoed in the nineteenth, and that it is confined to no nation, but extends over the length and breadth of the Catholic world.

The longest speech yet pronounced in the council was delivered by the Cardinal Archbishop of Dublin, who spoke for an hour and forty-two minutes. Its length was the more remarkable,[704] as Cardinal Cullen trusted to his memory, and illustrated his discourse by an abundance of facts and figures.

It is well known that all the bishops not only have the same faith, but speak the same language in council; and, with the exception of the orientals, and members of religious orders, they wear the same episcopal garb. Yet it is worthy of remark that, in spite of this uniformity in dress and language and outward mien, scarcely has a prelate opened his mouth from the pulpit when his nationality is at once discovered. He utters his shibboleth, which reveals him to his brethren as soon as Ephraim was betrayed to Galaad.

You will hear a bishop whisper to his neighbor, That speaker belongs to the Spanish family of nations. He hails either from the mother country or from one of her ancient colonies of South America, or Mexico, or Cuba. How does he know? He forms his judgment not merely from the little green tuft you see on the crown of the speaker's birettum or cap, but chiefly from his pronunciation. He will detect the Spaniard at once by his guttural sound of qui, and his lisping placet, besides many other peculiarities of utterance.

The Spaniards and their South American and Mexican cousins, though models of episcopal gravity, have not acquired the reputation in the council of being generally the best models of elocution. Their delivery is said to be sometimes indistinct, and their pronunciation so peculiar that, like the rose in the wilderness, they waste the odor of their wisdom on the desert air. Gems of thought fall, indeed, in profusion from their lips, but they escape occasionally in the too rapid current of words.

There are several bishops of Spanish origin, however, who have distinguished themselves alike by distinctness of utterance and by a remarkable fluency. Among others, I might mention the Bishop of Guamango, in Peru, and the Bishops of Havana, and S. Concezione, in Chili.

The next speaker is evidently an Italian. You know it from the musical sentences, which flow from his lips in such a smooth and measured strain that he almost appears to be reciting a select piece of Virgilian poetry. He might seem, were not his classical style so natural to him, to be aiming at making a good impression not only on your mind and heart, but also on your ear. Whenever the letter c is followed by e or i, he gives it the soft sound of ch, as in our English word cheerful; and he is careful to soften down every word which would sound harsh or grating. Sometimes, indeed, a prelate of another country will adopt for the nonce the Roman style of pronunciation; but nobody is deceived. Jacob's voice is recognized, though he tries to clothe his words in the form of his brother's.

It is almost impossible for an Italian bishop to make a speech without a formal introduction and peroration, either because of his respect for his hearers or for the great classical masters. He may protest he will be brief, but that word has a relative meaning. But it must be admitted that, for delicacy and refinement of thought, for fecundity of ideas, and clearness of exposition, some of the Italians have seldom been surpassed.

The prelate now before you, as you can tell at once, belongs to the Teutonic family. He is an Austrian, or Prussian, or Bavarian, or perhaps a Hungarian. The German pronounces g hard before e or i, contrary to the usual practice of Latin speakers. He makes sch soft before the same vowels, pronouncing, for instance, the word schema as if it were spelled[705] without a c. Hence the gravity of the English-speaking bishops is occasionally relaxed, on hearing schematis sound as if it were written shame it is.

The German is more tame in delivery than either the Italian or the Spaniard. His colder climate tends to subdue his gestures, as well as to moderate his sensibility. He is not so fond of dealing in compliments as the Italian speakers, but goes at once in medias res. He is generally short and precise, and more inclined to appeal to your head than to your heart. At the same time, religious and logical, the sublime superstructure of his faith is built upon the solid foundation of common sense.

If a French prelate were not known by his rabat, he would be easily distinguished by his utterance of Latin. He has a strong tendency to shorten the infinitive in the second conjugation, and to lay a particular stress on the last syllable. There is indeed no bishop in the council who is so readily recognized by his voice as the Frenchman. Every one can say to him what the Jews said to St. Peter: "Surely thou art one of them, for thy speech doth discover thee." But, like Peter, he has no reason to be ashamed of the discovery; for his speech is not less pleasant than peculiar. He is no exception to the cultivated taste of his countrymen. He is generally well understood, because he speaks distinctly, and listened to with pleasure, because to solid learning he unites an animated and a nervous style.

For obvious reasons, a continental writer would be the fittest person to pronounce a correct judgment on the style and Latinity of the English-speaking prelates of the council.

I will venture, however, an observation. Though the style of the American, English, and Irish prelates may have less claim to merit for polish and studied classical Latinity, their discourses will certainly compare favorably with those of their episcopal brethren from other parts in strength of argument, in clearness of expression, as well as in their telling effect upon their discriminating audience.

The bishops of these countries adopt what is called the parliamentary style. They are usually concise, and always practical. They are in earnest. They look and talk like men fresh from the battle-field of the world, who have formidable enemies to contend with, and come before the council well stocked with experimental knowledge. They content themselves with a brief statement of the measure they propose, and a summary of the reasons best calculated to support it, without occupying the council with elaborate disquisitions.

The number of English, Irish, and American bishops up to the present, who have delivered oral discourses before the Vatican Council is comparatively small. It must not, however, be inferred from this that the other prelates of these nations have all remained inactive spectators, for many of them have handed in written observations on the subjects under deliberation.

The following are the English-speaking fathers who, up to the present date, (June 2d,) have addressed the council:

Archbishops Spalding, Kenrick, and Purcell, and Bishops Whelan and Verot, United States; Archbishop Connolly, Nova Scotia; Archbishop Manning, and Bishops Ullathorne, Vaughan, Clifford, and Errington, England; Cardinal Cullen, and Bishops Leahy, McEvilly, and Keane, Ireland.

Three hundred years have elapsed since the close of the Council of Trent. Of the two hundred and seventy bishops who assisted at that council, only four were from the British Isles, of whom three were Irish and one English; and we think it doubtful if these three Irish bishops spoke the English language.

The Council of the Vatican has upward of one hundred and twenty English-speaking prelates, representing not only Great Britain and Ireland, but also the United States, British America, Oceanica, and the East Indies; and should the twentieth œcumenical council be called within the course of another century, judging from the past, it is not unlikely that the English tongue will then be what the Italian is to-day—the language of the majority.

Comparisons have been drawn between the Council of the Vatican and the United States Congress. Perhaps it would be easier to point out the lines of divergence than those of resemblance between these two deliberative bodies.

As to the relative ages of the members of the Council and the members of Congress, the former are decidedly in advance of the latter. I have taken the pains to refer to the Annuario Pontificio for 1870, which gives the age of nearly all the bishops of the Catholic world. From this book I learn that the oldest bishop in the council is in his eighty-fifth year, while the youngest bishop, the Vicar Apostolic of North Carolina, is thirty-five. The Archbishop of Lima, who was prevented by infirmities from coming to Rome, is the dean of the entire episcopacy, being now in his ninety-sixth year. Thus we see that both extremes of age meet on the American continent; North America having the youngest, and South America the oldest representative of the episcopal hierarchy.

Of the thousand bishops now in the church, fully three fourths are between the ages of fifty-five and ninety-six. The ages of the other fourth range between thirty-five and fifty-five. Scarcely half a dozen of these prelates are more advanced in years than the Holy Father, who yet exhibits more physical endurance and mental activity than any bishop ten years his junior.

So much for a comparison as to age. Next as to the speeches in both assemblies. The bishops embrace a wider field in their discourses than our senators. They are circumscribed by no limits of country. They make laws which bind the consciences of two hundred millions of souls—Europeans, Americans, Australians, Asiatics, and Africans; while Congress legislates for scarcely one fifth that number, and these confined within a portion of a single continent. Hence, in this single aspect of the case, the great ecclesiastical synod as far excels the Federal Congress of the United States as Congress itself surpasses the New York Legislature, or this latter the city council.

The speeches of the Vatican Council are usually much shorter than those delivered in Congress. The addresses of the fathers seldom exceed half an hour,[284] except those of the members of the deputations, whose remarks generally embrace a critical analysis of the questions before the council and a review of the amendments proposed by the bishops, usually occupying about the space of an hour. The reason for this brevity is obvious. No prelate [707]would wish to be guilty of the bad taste of occupying unnecessarily the precious time of his brother bishops. He is fully convinced, on ascending the pulpit, that every word he says will be carefully weighed in the balance by a discriminating body of judges, who are influenced only by sound logic, and not by plausible rhetoric.

Besides their brevity, perhaps I might also add that the speeches of the fathers are characterized by more personal independence, sincerity, and earnestness of tone, than those of our legislators in Washington, while it must be admitted that public opinion commonly attributes to the episcopal character a higher order of virtue. Yet, apart from this consideration, we may find a reason for this difference in the fact that our national representatives have more temptations to sin against singleness of purpose than the prelates of the council. Besides the members on the floor of the House and Senate, there are often well-filled galleries ready to hiss or to applaud, according to the prejudices of the day, and we know how human nature dreads the finger of scorn and loves the popular plaudits. There is a political party which must be sustained per fas et nefas, and though last, not least, there are dear constituents to be pleased.

The fathers of the council have no such temptations to withdraw them from the strict line of duty which conscience dictates. All their general congregations are so many secret sessions. There are no frowning or fawning galleries to allure or to intimidate. There is no party lash hanging over the bishops' heads; for they have no private measures to propose in behalf of their "constituents." Indeed, one of the rules of the council requires that every bill brought before it must necessarily affect the general interests of the church, and not the special wants of any particular diocese or country.

The consoling unanimity which marked the public session held on Low-Sunday, seems to have put an effectual quietus on the erratic correspondent of the London Times; for he no longer, like another Cassandra, utters his prophetic warnings to the council, since the fathers, on the occasion alluded to, by a single breath demolished all his previous predictions about the threatened rupture of the assemblage.

Directed, no doubt, to view every thing in Rome with distorted vision, this writer literally fulfilled his instructions. If he met bishops walking to St. Peter's, he would despise them as a contemptible set. Should they prefer to ride, they were, in his estimation, pampered prelates crushing poor pedestrians under their Juggernaut. Should a schema be approved by the bishops after a brief discussion, they were pronounced by our seer a packed jury, the obsequious slaves of the pope. If the discussion happened to be prolonged, he would solemnly announce to his readers the existence of an incipient schism among the fathers. The truth is, the gentleman could never ascend high enough to comprehend the true character of the bishops. He could not associate in his mind independence of thought and the fullest freedom of debate with a profound reverence for the Holy Father.

Upon every question, from the beginning of the council, there has been prolonged and animated discussion. A council necessarily supposes discussion ever since that of Jerusalem. Deprive an œcumenical synod of the privilege of debate, and you strip it at once of its true character and the bishops of their manhood. No stone was left unturned that the whole truth might be brought to light.

But if there has been "in dubiis libertas," there has been also "in necessariis unitas." There is no Colenso in the Council of the Vatican. With regard to doctrines of the Catholic faith already promulgated, there has not been a whisper of dissent. A bishop might as well attempt to pull down the immortal dome of Michael Angelo suspended over his head, as touch with profane hands a single stone of the glorious edifice of Catholic faith.

There has been also "in omnibus caritas." Never was more dignity manifest in any deliberative assembly. A single glance at the council in session, from one of the side galleries, would at once impress the beholder not only with the majesty of the spectacle, but also with the mutual respect which the members exhibit toward each other, and the patient attention with which the speakers are listened to, often under a trying ordeal of several hours' continuous session. As for violent scenes, there have been none, except in the imagination of some correspondents; nor bantering, nor personalities; nor collisions between the presidents and speakers. Since the commencement of the discussion on the present schema, upward of sixty fathers have already spoken, only one of whom was called to order—and he at the end of his discourse, because, in the judgment of the president, he had broached a subject foreign to the debate. In a word, there is learning without ostentation; difference of sentiment without animosity; respect without severity; liberty of discussion without the license of vituperation.

May 23d, the congregations were resumed. The opening speech was delivered by the Armenian Patriarch. The Bishops of Mayence, Angoulême, and Grenoble occupied the attention of the fathers during the remainder of the session.

On the following day, permanent leave of absence was granted to eight prelates, among whom were two Canadians, namely, the Bishop of St. Hyacinthe, and the coadjutor of Dr. Cooke, Bishop of Three Rivers, lately deceased. The council was then addressed by the Bishop of Sion, Switzerland, one of the deputation, and by the Bishops of Urgel, Spain, S. Concezione, Chili, and Guastalla, Italy.

In the congregation of the 25th, England and Ireland had the whole field to themselves, the only speakers being Archbishop Manning, and Bishops Clifford and McEvilly. Dr. Manning's reputation as an English speaker is established wherever the English language prevails. His Latin oration in the council, which was but three minutes shorter than that of his eminence of Dublin, exhibited the same energy of thought and the same discriminating choice of words which are so striking a feature of his public discourses. Dr. Manning has a commanding figure. His fleshless face is the personification of asceticism. His sunken eyes pierce you as well as his words. He has a high, well-developed forehead, which appears still more prominent on account of partial baldness. His favorite, almost his only gesture, is the darting of his forefinger in a sloping direction from his body, and which might seem awkward in others, but in him is quite natural, and gives a peculiar force to his expressions. His countenance, even in the heat of an argument, remains almost as unimpassioned as a statue. He knows admirably well how to employ to the best advantage his voice, as well as his words. When he wishes to gain a strong point, he rallies his choicest battalion of words,[709] to each of which he assigns the most effective position; then his voice, swelling with the occasion, imparts to them an energy and a power difficult to resist.

The next congregation, the sixtieth from the opening of the council, was held on the 28th, the speakers being the Bishops of Ratisbonne, St. Augustine, Csanad and Gran Varadin in Hungary, and Coutance in France. At the close, the president announced that the fathers henceforth would meet at half-past eight A.M. instead of nine.

The fathers assembled again on the 30th. The Archbishop of Baltimore delivered the opening speech, which lasted about fifty minutes. He spoke without the aid of manuscript, confiding in his faithful and tenacious memory. He was succeeded by the Bishops of Le Puy in France, Bâle in Switzerland, Sutri and Saluzzo, Italy, Constantina, Algiers, and the Vicar Apostolic of Quilon, on the coast of Malabar.

The following day, indefinite leave of absence was granted to Bishops Demers of Vancouver, and Hennessy of Dubuque, and the newly consecrated Bishop of Alton was permitted to remain at home. The Archbishop of Utrecht commenced the debate, being the first of the bishops of Holland that has addressed the council; the other speakers were the Latin Patriarch of Jerusalem, the Bishop of Trajanopolis, the Archbishop of Cincinnati, who spoke without notes, and the Archbishop of Halifax. The death of the saintly and apostolic Archbishop Odin, of New Orleans, was announced. The venerable prelate finished his course among his kindred near Lyons, on the auspicious festival of the Ascension.

The sixty-third general congregation was held on the 2d of June. The speakers were the Archbishop of Fogaras, Transylvania, Roumenian rite, and the Bishops of Moulins, Bosnia, Chartres and Tanes.

At the close of the session, the death of the Rt. Rev. Thomas Grant, Bishop of Southwark, England, was announced. Dr. Grant was born of English parents in Ligny, in the diocese of Arras, France, November 25th, 1816, and was promoted to the episcopal dignity June 22d, 1851. He was much esteemed by his English brethren in the episcopacy for his profound learning and solid judgment, as well as for his amiable disposition. He was one of the deputation on oriental rites.

Thus far, fourteen general congregations have been held on the four first chapters of the Dogmatic Constitution of the Church of Christ. Sixty-one fathers have already spoken on the general aspects of the question, leaving forty-nine prelates who have declared their intention to speak on the same subject. As soon as the draught of the schema in general has been sufficiently discussed, the debate will commence on each particular chapter.

As our readers would like, no doubt, to form a more intimate acquaintance with the venerable bishops now assembled in council, especially with those who play a more conspicuous part in its deliberations, we propose in the present number to give a brief sketch of a few of the twenty-four fathers who constitute the committee on faith.

It is quite unnecessary to our present purpose to speak of the two American prelates belonging to this deputation, namely, the Archbishops of Baltimore and San Francisco, who are well known in the United States, and whose learning, zeal, and piety are not only gratefully acknowledged at home, but fully appreciated here, as the merited honors conferred upon them testify.

We will commence with Aloysius, Cardinal Bilio, president of the deputation on faith, and one of the five presiding officers of the council. He was born May 25th, 1826, at Alexandria, the celebrated fortified town of Piedmont, which of late years has played so important a part in the history of northern Italy. His father was of a noble family. At the early age of fourteen the youth, already remarkable for great piety and a maturity of character beyond his years, asked to be admitted into the congregation of St. Paul, founded by the venerable Antonio Zaccaria. He was received as a student and postulant, and devoted himself to study with an earnestness which soon broke down his health, apparently never very strong. He was obliged to suspend his studies for several years. In fact, for a time it was thought his health never would rally. At last, however, he did recover, and at once returned to the purpose from which his mind and heart had never wandered. Having finished his course and received ordination, he was made in turn professor of Greek, of rhetoric, and of mental philosophy in the college of Parma, and afterward in the university of the same city.

It is the custom of the religious orders and congregations which devote themselves either entirely or in great part to teaching, first by a long and thorough course of study to prepare carefully their younger members for future labors in the professorial chair, and then in their early years of teaching to appoint them from one chair to another, through the whole cycle, perhaps. So Father Bilio was sent from Parma to Caravaggio, and then to Naples, occupying various chairs, and finally was made professor of theology and canon law in the Barnabite College at Rome. His professorships were for the world outside his congregation. Within it, his brethren recognized his high personal qualifications, and elected him to various offices in their congregation, until at length he was made assistant-general.

Rome could not fail to appreciate qualities and talents like those of this learned and exemplary, religious and able man. He was pressed into service in many of the departments for transacting religious affairs, and finally, June 23d, 1866, he was named cardinal. He presided over one of the sub-commissions of theologians, who studied out and prepared the draughts for the council, and he is, as was said in a former number, chairman of the special committee or deputation of twenty-four prelates to treat of all matters relating to faith.

With the single exception of Cardinal Bonaparte, Cardinal Bilio is the youngest member of the Sacred College.

France, the eldest daughter of the church, is represented in the deputation by Bishop Pie of Poitiers, and Archbishop Regnier of Cambrai.

Louis Francis Desiré Edward Pie was born at Pontgouin, in the diocese of Chartres, the 26th of September, 1815. Ordained priest in 1839, he exercised at first the functions of curate of the cathedral church of Chartres; and in 1845, the bishop of that diocese appointed him vicar-general, notwithstanding his comparative youth.

From that period, the young priest was ranked among the most distinguished preachers of France, and was heard with great success in different cities of that country. His panegyric of Joan of Arc, which he preached at Orleans, is one of his best discourses.

Named Bishop of Poitiers under the presidency, he took possession of his see in December, 1849. He was then only in his thirty-fourth year, an unusually early age for conferring the mitre in Europe.

Bishop Pie directed his eloquence and zeal on various occasions against two sorts of adversaries: those who sap the foundations of faith itself by reducing every thing to naturalism, both in religion and society; and those who attempt to weaken Catholicity by the ruin of the temporal power. Against the former the bishop issued three Synodal Instructions on the Principal Errors of the Present Time. Against the latter he wrote, three years before the last Italian revolution, his Synodal Instruction on Rome considered as the See of the Papacy, in which he ably refuted the sophistries of those who sought the demolition of the temporal power.

Those best acquainted with the Bishop of Poitiers say that his pulpit oratory is characterized by an authority, brilliancy, and force of argument worthy of St. Hilary, whose successor he is.

In personal appearance Bishop Pie is prepossessing. His round, full face without a wrinkle, and his auburn hair, make him seem much younger than he really is. Though stout, and even inclined to corpulency, he is quick and active in his movements.

He speaks with admiration of the late Bishop of Boston, with whom he studied at St. Sulpice, Paris. The Sulpician fathers have been accustomed to select as catechists in the parochial church some of their ablest and most promising students. To both seminarians a class was assigned, and the Bishop of Poitiers says that his American friend, afterward Bishop Fitzpatrick, always excelled in his position.

Emmanuel Garcia Gil, Archbishop of Saragossa, in Spain, was born in St. Salvador, March 14th, 1802.

Having completed his literary studies in his native city, he passed through his philosophical and theological course in the diocesan seminary of De Lugo. In 1825, he entered the order of St. Dominic, in which he made his religious profession November 1st, 1826.

He was ordained the following year, and immediately after the responsible position of professor of philosophy and theology in the convents of the order at De Lugo and Compostello was assigned to him.

Expelled in 1835 from Spain, with all the members of his order, he soon returned to his post at De Lugo, where for thirteen years he filled the chair of philosophy and divinity in the seminary of which he was successively director and vice-rector.

Having subsequently devoted himself to the more active pursuits of the ministry, he labored with great success in preaching the word of God, and in the administration of the sacraments.

Appointed to the see of Badajoz in December, 1853, he was consecrated in the city of De Lugo by the Archbishop of Compostello; and five years later, at the request of the Spanish government, he was transferred to the archiepiscopal see of Saragossa.

Among his fellow-members of the Committee on Faith, Mgr. Garcia Gil has the merited reputation of being profoundly conversant with the writings of his great master, the "Angel of the Schools," and hence is called among them the St. Thomas of the deputation.

Another prominent member of the committee is Mgr. Hassoun, Patriarch of Cilicia for the Armenians. He was born in Constantinople, June 13th, 1809, of Armenian parents. He passed through his elementary course in his native city, and completed his studies in Rome, where, in 1832, he obtained the degree of doctor of divinity. A few months later, having been ordained priest, and named apostolic missionary, he was sent to Smyrna, where he devoted himself to[712] the Armenian Christians of that city. Removed thence to Constantinople, Father Hassoun exercised the ministry in several churches, and filled the office of chancellor in the archiepiscopal palace. Chosen by the primate as vicar-general and visitor of the diocese and province, the young Armenian priest was unanimously elected by the assembly of his nation civil prefect of the Armenian church, in which office he was confirmed by the Ottoman Porte.

In 1842, he was appointed coadjutor to the Primate of Constantinople, with the right of succession; and on the death of the latter, in 1846, he was chosen to fill the vacant see.

On the 16th of September, 1866, the Armenian archbishops and bishops assembled in council proclaimed Mgr. Hassoun Patriarch of Cilicia, with the title of Anthony Peter IX. The holy see confirmed the nomination, and decided that in future the patriarchal see of Cilicia and the archi-primatial see of Constantinople, which hitherto were separate and independent, should form one patriarchate, under the title of Patriarchate of Cilicia, with residence at Constantinople.

By his exertions the episcopal hierarchy was reëstablished in 1850 in the ecclesiastical province of Constantinople, and a special see for the Armenians erected in Persia. He has succeeded in building in the Turkish capital, and endowing a seminary to serve for the whole ecclesiastical province. In 1843, Mgr. Hassoun founded the first female convent in the same capital; and we may well imagine the degree of pious audacity that was required to plant this colony of virgins in the midst of the sultan's seraglios. This institution is devoted to the education of young girls, and to the instruction of women abandoning schism. The convent has sixty nuns, who educate three hundred poor girls, besides some resident scholars.

The patriarch, by an imperial firman, is charged with all the civil and ecclesiastical affairs of the Armenians who are subjects of the Ottoman empire. He gratefully acknowledges the kind disposition always manifested toward him by the government of the Sublime Porte, which has extended to him every facility for carrying out the works of his ministry.

Victor Augustus Isidore Dechamps, one of the most prominent members of the deputation de fide, was born at Melle, Eastern Flanders, in the château of Scailmont, December 16th, 1810. His early education was intrusted to private tutors, under the eyes of his father, who was a laureate of the ancient University of Louvain. He afterward completed his studies of humanity and philosophy with his brother Adolph, who was successively Belgian minister of foreign affairs and minister of state.

In the national movement, from which sprung the independence of Belgium, the two brothers, though yet young, distinguished themselves as publicists during this glorious epoch of patriotism.

In 1832, M. Dechamps entered the seminary of Tournai, studied afterward in the Catholic university of Mechlin, and concluded his theological course at Louvain, where he was ordained priest, December, 1834, by Cardinal Sterckx.

Having soon after joined the Redemptorist congregation, Father Dechamps made his novitiate in 1835. Five years later, his career as a preacher began, and in this capacity he greatly distinguished himself.

After the death of Queen Louise of Belgium, in obedience to the express desire of that pious princess, he was charged with the religious instruction of the royal princes, and of the Princess[713] Charlotte. Rev. Father Dechamps was named Bishop of Namur, September, 1865. Two years later, he was transferred to the archdiocese of Mechlin, in which Brussels is included; and since the opening of the council he has been elevated by the holy see to the primacy of Belgium.

Monsgr. Dechamps has written several valuable works, the most important of which are: 1st. The Free Examination of the Truth of Faith; 2d. The Divinity of Jesus Christ; 3d. The Religious Question resolved by Facts; or, Certainty in Matters of Religion; 4th. Pius IX. and Contemporary Errors; 5th. The New Eve, or, Mother of Life, all of which have been translated into most of the languages of Europe.

The style of Archbishop Dechamps is calm, concise, and profound, blended with an attractive unction. His round and pleasing countenance bears upon it the stamp of intellect and energy. Like so many of his gifted countrymen, the prelate of Mechlin unites in his person the mental activity of the Frenchman with the solidity of the German.

John Baptist Simor, Archbishop of Strigonium and Primate of Hungary, was born August 24th, 1813, in the ancient Hungarian city of Fehervar, which is memorable in history as being the place where the kings of Hungary were formerly crowned and buried.

He pursued his philosophical course in the archiepiscopal lyceum of Magy-Szombat, and his course of theology in the University of Vienna, which honored him with the title of doctor of sacred theology. After the successful completion of his studies, he was ordained priest of the archdiocese of Strigonium in 1836.

Appointed, first, assistant pastor of a church in Pesth, Father Simor soon after received a professor's chair in the university of that city, and subsequently filled several responsible positions, both in the government of souls and in instructing the more advanced candidates for the ministry in a higher course of theology.

On the 29th of June, 1857, he was consecrated Bishop of Györ, and ten years later, on the demise of Cardinal Scilovszky, Bishop Simor was chosen to succeed that eminent prelate as Prince-Primate of Hungary and Archbishop of Strigonium.

Besides his ecclesiastical eminence, the Primate of Hungary has had distinguished state honors conferred on him. He is the first member of the king's privy council. By established law, the ceremony of crowning the king devolves exclusively on the primate. Otherwise the coronation is not considered legitimate. The Bishop of Veszprim crowns the queen. The present Emperor, Francis Joseph of Austria, received the crown of the kingdom of Hungary from the hands of Archbishop Simor, on the vigil of Pentecost, 1867, in the presence of an immense assembly of people from all parts of the kingdom. The primate is moreover ex-officio chief secretary and chancellor of the sovereign of Hungary. He is also first magistrate of the county or department of Strigonium. Hungary contains fifty-two of these departments, each presided over by a chief magistrate.

He has also a seat in the general assembly or parliament of Hungary, a privilege which is enjoyed in common with him by every Catholic bishop of the kingdom. Many other prerogatives were inherent in the primatial dignity till they were swept away by the revolution of 1848.

Monsgr. Simor informed us that the faithful of his diocese number a million of souls, comprising three distinct nationalities, Hungarians,[714] Sclaves, and Germans, who speak as many distinct languages.

The primate is consequently obliged, in the visitation of his diocese, to employ these three tongues. In corresponding with his clergy, whether Hungarian, Sclavonic, or German, he invariably uses Latin, of which he is a perfect master, and which, till a recent date, was the common language of the greater part of Hungary.

We add to the remarks of our correspondent the following items of information concerning the doings of the council since the date of his letter. Between June 2d and June 18th ten general congregations were held. The preface, and the first two chapters of the schema on the Roman Pontiff, were voted on and adopted; the discussion of the third chapter, was closed, and on the 15th of June the discussion of the fourth chapter, concerning the infallibility of the Roman Pontiff, was opened. At that date, seventy-four fathers had inscribed their names as intending to speak, and this number had been increased to one hundred at the general congregation of June 18th.

FOREIGN LITERARY NOTES.

Within the past six months the literary bulletins of France, England, and Germany are full of notices of new works on the subject of the Apostle St. Paul and his writings. One of the latest in England is by Dr. Arnold, who—Anglican as he is—takes direct issue with an opinion of the French rationalist Renan, which on its first appearance gave great gratification to the Protestant world. In his work on St. Paul, Renan said in his flippant way:

One of the most important events of the reign of Louis XIV., and, indeed, in the entire religious history of France, was the assembly of the clergy of France in the year 1682. Numerous works have been written and published concerning it, the best and most exhaustive of which are the two last. In 1868, M. Charles Gérin, a judge of the Civil Tribunal of the Seine, published his Recherches Historiques sur l'Assemblée du Clergé de France de 1682. The author brought to his task great learning, decided ability, and an industry that proved itself by the number of original documents from the public archives for the first time presented by him. The result of M. Gérin's labors was generally accepted in France as final. With[715] this verdict, however, Monseigneur Maret, Bishop of Sura, did not agree, and protested against it in his work, Du Concile et de la Paix religieuse, intimating therein that the documents cited in M. Gérin's book needed fresh revision and interpretation, which they should receive. This announcement was naturally accepted as signifying that a new work on the assembly of 1682 might be looked for. That was indeed its signification, and early in 1870 appeared an announcement of the publishers, Didier & Co., Paris, of a book entitled, L'Assemblée du Clergé de France de 1682 d'après des documents dont un grand nombre inconnus jusqu'à ce jour. Par l'Abbé Jules-Théodose Loyson, Docteur et Professeur en Sorbonne. 8vo, 530 pages. To this, Judge Gérin soon replied in his Une Nouvelle Apologie du Gallicanisme, Réponse à M. l'Abbé Loyson. Outside of the historical statements concerning the events attending the assembly of 1682, these works are, in fact, a rather animated polemical discussion of the questions of the temporal power and the papal infallibility.

When St. Patrick entered upon his great apostolic work in Ireland, he was careful not to offend the attachment borne by his converts to their ancient national traditions, the songs of their bards, and the laws by which they were governed. On the contrary, he advised Lacighaise, king of the country, to have reduced to writing all the ancient judicial decisions, and, with the aid of two other bishops, commenced the work himself. To the body of laws thus collected was given the title of Senchus Mor, (collection of ancient knowledge.) Written A.D. 440, this book served as the Irish code before the departure of the Romans, and was in legal force up to the period of the accession of James I., traces of its influence being to this day plainly visible. The most authentic manuscripts containing the Senchus Mor formerly belonged to an English literary amateur, and through the efforts of Edmund Burke were acquired by the English government. Their publication was commenced in 1852, and has been resumed, as we perceive by the following announcement: Ancient Laws of Ireland. Senchus Mor. Part II. Edited by W. Neilson Hancock, LL.D., and the Rev. Thaddeus O'Mahony. Dublin: Printed for Her Majesty's Stationery Office. 1870. 8vo.

Some curious information and revolting details concerning the continuation of the slave-trade in Africa are furnished in a work lately published at Paris, La Traite Orientale. The Mussulman still needs slaves and concubines, and three great slave marts still exist to supply them. These are the Island of Zanzibar, the southern portion of Egypt, and Arabia. At Zanzibar a healthy man sells for $42, while the women bring $80, and more, if good-looking.

During the past ten years the history, geography, and topography of the biblical countries have been studied with immense activity, and the best travellers and scholars of Germany, France, Italy, and England have contributed their offerings to the common fund of our knowledge concerning these most interesting regions. Successful research on the banks of the Euphrates and the Tigris, the Nile and the Jordan, not to speak of many other points, have all in turn confirmed the perfect veracity of the writers of the Old and of the New Testament. And to these, the broken walls, the palaces, the towers, and the sculptures of Babylon, of Nineveh, of Persepolis, of Jerusalem, and of Samaria, rising in testimony of the truth from the gathered ruins of ages, bear also their testimony. A learned German ecclesiastic, Dr. Gratz, uniting and fusing all the information on this subject, composed an admirable geographical history of oriental and occidental countries, with special reference to the biblical period. Dr. Allioli, the celebrated scriptural commentator, recommended the work of Dr. Gratz as marked by so much erudition and exactness that the readers of his commentary are recommended to it for information on all points touching biblical localities. An excellent French translation of Dr. Gratz's work has just been published: [716] Théâtre des Evénements racontés dans les divines Ecritures, ou l'ancien et le nouvel Orient étudié au point de vue de la Bible et de L'Eglise. 2 vols. 8vo.

Here are two new works on the Council of Trent: Histoire du Concile de Trente, par M. Baguenault de Puchesse; 1 vol. 8vo. Journal du Concile de Trente, rédigé par un secrétaire Vénitien présant aux sessions de 1562 à 1563. This Venetian secretary was Antonio Milledonne, attached to the embassy sent to the Council of Trent by the republic of Venice. To the diary of the secretary, which forms the body of the latter publication, are added several original documents of the period heretofore unpublished, among them a summary of the dispatches of the Venetian ambassadors to the council. M. Baschet, the editor, suggests that the publication of the French diplomatic dispatches relative to the council would be of the highest interest. These dispatches would certainly form one of the most curious literary monuments of the sixteenth century, and, in point of fact, the history of the latter period of the council cannot well be written without them.

Baron Hübner, formerly Austrian Ambassador at Paris and at Rome, and well known in the diplomatic and literary world, has just presented the fruit of many years' labor among the state archives of Paris, Vienna, Florence, Venice, Simancas, and the Vatican, in the shape of a work entitled Sixte Quint; 3 vols. 8vo. Written on an epoch already well investigated, and upon a life which has been the subject of many pens, Baron Hübner's life of Pope Sixtus V. is by far the most remarkable and the most trustworthy we have had. And yet it is not perhaps exact to call his work a life of Sixtus V. The author does not so style it, and takes up Cardinal Montalto at the conclave where he is elected pope. He scarcely refers retrospectively to the early years of his life, and pays not the slightest attention to the semi-fabulous stories which tradition has interwoven with the name of the great Sixtus. If he finds documentary evidence for any part of them, he gives it. If not, silence falls upon them. At the outset of his work he merely mentions the three great names connected with histories of Sixtus—Leti, Tempesti, and Ranke. But he merely mentions them, and in no case quotes them. As to more modern historians of Sixtus—Segretain and Dumesnil, for instance—he does not appear to have the slightest idea of their existence. Baron Hübner has written his work exclusively from original materials, and appears to have used them conscientiously and with excellent judgment.

For nearly ten months an animated historico-ecclesiastical discussion has been going on in France, which, according to the reports of literary journals, has passed the stage of "vive polémique," and reached that described as "la controverse passionée." The subject matter of the discussion is Pope Honorius. Father Gratry (of the Oratory) led off with a pamphlet entitled, Mgr. l'Evêque d'Orléans et Mgr. l'Archevêque de Malines, and gave the texts of three councils which condemned Honorius, and the confirmation of their sentence by Pope St. Leo II. To this came a reply by M. Chantrel, Le Pape Honorius, Première Lettre à M. l'Abbé Gratry, in which he presented an abridged text of the letters of Honorius and testimony in his favor. Archbishop Dechamps also answered Father Gratry in La Question d'Honorius, citing an interesting passage from St. Alphonse de Liguori. Then, in its numbers of the 10th and 25th January, and 10th February, Le Correspondant gave an extract from the fourth volume (not yet published) of the Histoire des Conciles, by Bishop Héfelé, in which the prelate-author is severe on Honorius. Father Colombier, on the contrary, defends the orthodoxy of the incriminated letters of Honorius in a series of articles published in the Etudes Religieuses, Historiques, et Littéraires. Dom Guéranger also treated the question in his Défense de l'Eglise Romaine contre les Erreurs du R. P. Gratry, published in the Revue du Monde Catholique. Then comes L'Univers with a letter from[717] M. Amédée de Margerie, Professor at Nancy, in defence of Honorius. We can merely enumerate other defenders of Honorius who have entered the lists. They are the Abbé Constantin, (Revue des Sciences Ecclesiastiques,) the editors of the Civilta Cattolica, Canon Lefebre, (Revue Catholique de Louvain,) Abbé Larroque, Abbé Bélet, Father Roque, and Father Ramière. The Avenir Catholique endeavors to demonstrate that Honorius wrote the letters in dispute not as pope, but as a simple doctor. M. Léon Gautier published a series of articles on the question of infallibility, the last of which is specially devoted to Honorius. These articles collected have lately been published by Palmé in a pamphlet, entitled L'Infaillibilité devant la Raison, la Foi et l'Histoire. Then comes a second letter from Bishop Dechamps, and, finally, the Bishop of Strasburg issues an energetic condemnation of the letters of Father Gratry.

The history of the city of Milan is, in Italian history, one of great importance; for it is the history of Lombardy, and of nearly all of the north of Italy. Of chronicles and histories of the great Lombard city there were many, but none so good in its day as the four large and beautiful volumes of the Chevalier Rosmini de Roveredo, which is now in its turn surpassed and superseded by the admirable work of Cusani, Storia di Milano, dall' origine ai nostri giorni. Vols. I. à V. à 8vo, Milano, 1861-1869.

Ricotti's great work on the history of the Piedmontese monarchy still approaches completion. The sixth volume, just out, brings the work down to the end of the seventeenth century. The Storia della Monarchia Piemontese is no mere dry record of dates; but presents an animated picture of the legal, intellectual, social, and artistic life of Piedmont at the different epochs of its existence.

Professor Ferdinando Ranalli's new work on the history of the fine arts, Storia delle Belle Arti in Italia, 3 vols., attracts much attention.

Professor Ciavarini, of Florence, has published an interesting work on the philosophy of Galileo, Della Filosofia del Galilei, and on his scientific method. The Italian press does not vomit forth the flood of yellow-covered literature with which some countries are afflicted; but the number of serious and meritorious works in history, literature, and science constantly published would surprise most persons who suppose that the Italian mind is at a stand-still.

Almost simultaneously in Germany and in England appear two works on the Epistles to the Corinthians by St. Clement of Rome. They are Clementis Romani ad Corinthios Epistola, by J. C. M. Laurent, published at Leipsic; and S. Clement of Rome: the Two Epistles to the Corinthians, a revised text with introduction and notes, by J. B. Lightfoot. They are mainly valuable for their discussion as to the merits of the texts of the various MSS.

The most interesting archæological discovery of our age, incomparable for its antiquity and its historic and philological interest, is unquestionably the one lately made by M. Clermont-Ganneau, dragoman of the consulate of France at Jerusalem. It is that of a Hebrew inscription of the year 896 before Christ, cut on a monolith by order of Mescha, King of Moab, a contemporary of the kings Joram and Josaphat. The stone on which the inscription is graven is in dimension three feet four inches by about two feet. The inscription itself is in thirty-four lines, each line containing from thirty-three to thirty-five letters. It is said that there is no known Hebrew monument comparable in antiquity with this. M. le Comte de Vogüé lately presented a memoir concerning it to the French Academy of Inscriptions and Belles-Lettres, which is now published by Baudry, Paris: La Stèle de Mesa, Roi de Moab, 896 avant Jésus Christ.

NEW PUBLICATIONS.

This book was probably suggested by Gates Ajar. It is an attempt to say something about the future state of the human race. In some respects the volume is more valuable than Miss Phelps's endeavor to convey an idea of the happiness of paradise. It is not so materialistic. Yet both works are very defective, because of the simple fact that neither of the authors know any thing of that which makes heaven to be heaven—the beatific vision. Their highest ideal is perfect intellectual contentment, with unimpeded exercise of our natural capacities and the companionship of our friends and our blessed Saviour. Yet it is encouraging to see that Protestants are writing such books as these. They are the expression of the deepest wants of the human soul. They prove that the Protestantism of to-day has failed to answer these wants. If we were not already perfectly convinced, they would convince us, that when the truth is adequately presented to these souls, they will gladly accept it.

Passages From the English Note-books Of Nathaniel Hawthorne. Boston: Fields, Osgood & Co. 1870. 2 vols.

One great charm of these two volumes lies in the fact that they were never written for publication. But we regret the omission of certain passages. The editor of the volumes thought it wise to withhold a portion of the notes which were afterward absorbed into one or another of the romances or papers in Our Old Home. Yet surely it would have been a pleasure to contrast the rough sketch contained in his notes with the elaborate and finely-finished picture which Mr. Hawthorne afterward presented to the public. The editor tells us that these cartoons were carefully finished even "at the first stroke." However, the volumes will always be valuable, because they give a clear insight of their author's character. If one writes his every-day impressions of places, persons, and events, he gives the world a picture of his mind. Thus when these series of notes are completed by the notes upon America and Italy, we shall be enabled to form a far truer estimate of this distinguished American writer than we could possibly do from those works which have given him a name in literature, both in his own country and in more critical and fastidious England.

Hidden Saints: Life of Sœur Marie. New York: D. & J. Sadlier & Co. 1870. Pp. 215.

In many respects this is a useful contribution to our Catholic literature. It tells the story of a workwoman who attained a very high degree of Christian perfection. In its matter, the book reminds one of Marie-Eustelle Harpain, but it does not greatly resemble it in its composition. A religious biography can do good in two ways. It can edify the readers with the history of remarkable piety and virtue. And it can also elevate and refine our minds, if it be written in pure and correct English. Unfortunately, this biography does not possess this character. Its very title is an example of a fault which is frequently seen throughout the volume. It is the "Life of Sœur Marie," not Sister Mary. When this good girl addresses her director, she does not say "Father," but it must be "Mon Père," and without the accent to which that word is lawfully entitled. Surely it is absurd affectation to ruin a beautiful thought and a good English sentence by mixing with it two or three French words. But this is not the only fault of the volume. It speaks of "promises of milk and water," an expression[719] which contains no definite idea. It informs us that Sister Mary "went straight to church." Who can tell whether the author intends to say that she went to church immediately or went there by the most direct way? Then, too, if this book be intended to form one of a series of biographies of persons who are not canonized, why call them "Hidden Saints"? The holy see has always wished us to be most careful in the use of this word. But these faults do not destroy the value of the book. They are only blemishes, and in a future edition we hope to find them completely removed.

Marion. A Tale of French Society under the Old Régime. Baltimore: Kelly, Piet & Co. 1870. Pp. 176.

Marion is a woman of "stiff figure, bony hands, bloodshot eyes, and innumerable wrinkles, always reminding one of stories about vampires and ghouls." (P. 4.) This sentence gives a fair idea of the style and literary value of this novel. It is filled with similar nonsensical and overdrawn descriptions. We must, therefore, beg leave to differ from the very modest opinion expressed in the preface, that the book has a character "which stamps it as one that the young may read with profit." On the contrary, it is a shame that such a story should be translated and allowed to live in another language than the one in which it was originally written. However, we will do it justice. There is one mark of common sense about the book. It is this—both the author and translator have concealed their names.

Thomas Francis Meagher. By Captain W. F. Lyons. New York: D. & J. Sadlier. 1870. Pp. 357.

We do not believe the sentiment which Shakespeare has put in the mouth of Mark Antony, that

It is not true that men delight in recalling the faults of their fellow-men; and especially do the dead claim our forgiveness and compassion. We are truly sorry, therefore, to find in this volume speeches which reflect no credit from a literary point of view upon General Meagher, and which, moreover, contain doctrines most clearly condemned by the Catholic Church. Out of respect to the many good qualities of Meagher, we wish to forget his faults. We would wish also to remember, and we wish his countrymen to remember, his manly virtues. But until the speech beginning on page 280 of this volume is omitted, we cannot recommend this book to the Catholic public, or consider it a worthy monument of Thomas Francis Meagher.

History of the Foundation Of the Order of the Visitation. Baltimore: Kelly, Piet & Co. 1870. Pp. 271.

Few books issued by Catholic publishers are more interesting and useful than this history of the Order of the Visitation. Besides the history of their foundation, it contains the lives of several members of the order; among them Mademoiselle De La Fayette, a relative of the general so distinguished in our war for independence. The book merits a wide circulation.

Mr. Dall was "the director of the scientific corps of the late Western Union Telegraph Expedition." His book is the result of great industry, and is highly creditable to him every way. Those who desire to know something worth knowing about this singular region will find this work very interesting. The writer says in his introduction that he "has specially endeavored to convey as much information as his scope would allow in regard to the native inhabitants, history, and resources of the country. This end," he adds, "has been kept[720] steadily in view, perhaps, at the risk of dulness." We think he has succeeded admirably, and have no fear whatever that any one capable of appreciating the book is likely to find it dull.

Paradise of the Earth. Translated from the French of Abbé Sanson by Rev. F. Ignatius Sisk. Baltimore: John Murphy & Co. New York: Catholic Publication Society. 1870. Pp. 528.

This book was originally written for religious, though we presume it is now intended to have a wider circulation. The means of finding happiness is treated under a two-fold head: First, Removal of obstacles; second, Practice of the solid virtues. The chapters which treat of the mortification of the passions are carefully written. Indeed, the author has wished to present the teaching of the saints and doctors of the church rather than his own opinions.

Loretto; or the Choice. By George H. Miles. New and enlarged edition. Baltimore: Kelly, Piet & Co. 1870. Pp. 371.

This story presents a very fair picture of Southern Catholic society. The characters in it are mostly well conceived. They are not impossible persons. Nothing extraordinary happens to any one of them. They speak in a natural manner. The plot, too, though simple, is very pleasingly developed, and the interest of the reader constantly maintained. For all these good qualities, so rare in modern works of fiction, the book deserves a hearty recommendation. But beyond all this, the story merits praise for the sound principles of morality which appear on every page, and which the author presents in a manner at once pleasing and truthful.

Devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus. By Secondo Franco, S.J. Baltimore: John Murphy & Co. 1870. Pp. 305.

This manual of devotion makes a very handsome appearance in its dress of blue and gold. Its object is to explain clearly the essence of the worship of the Sacred Heart. Yet this book is not in any sense a controversial work. It is written for devout Catholics. It will be of service to any one who wishes to gain a knowledge of the interior life of our Redeemer by studying his sacred heart. The book is filled with fervent sentences and devout aspirations, which will help the reader to become like Him "who was meek and humble of heart."

Beech Bluff: A Tale of the South. By Fannie Warner. Philadelphia. P. F. Cunningham.

In this volume we have what purports to be the experience of a Northern lady in the sunny South, during a three years' residence as governess in the State of Georgia. The tale, which is written in a pleasing and natural style, is entirely free from all sensational incidents, and has a strong under-current of sound practical Catholicity. It will be none the less acceptable to many as being descriptive of a phase of society which is now (happily, in some respects) "among the things that were."

Wonders of Architecture. Translated from the French of M. Lefevre. To which is added a chapter on English Architecture. By R. Donald, 1 vol. 12mo. New York: Charles Scribner & Co. 1870.

A beautiful little book, containing illustrations of some of the finest creations of the great architects of the world. It is both entertaining and instructive.

HEREDITARY GENIUS.[285]

Mr. Galton is what in these days is called a scientist, or cultivator of the physical sciences, whose pretension is to confine themselves strictly to the field of the sciences as distinguished from science; to assert nothing but positive facts and the laws of their production and operation, ascertained by careful observation and experiment, and induction therefrom. Their aim would seem to be to explain all the facts or phenomena of the universe by means of second causes, and to prove that man is properly classed with animals, or is only an animal developed or completed, not an animal transformed and specificated by a rational soul, which is defined by the church to be forma corporis.

Between the scientists and philosophers, or those who cultivate not the special sciences, but the science of the sciences, and determine the principles to which the several special sciences must be referred in order to have any scientific character or value, there is a long-standing quarrel, which grows fiercer and more embittered every day. We are far from pretending that the positivists or Comtists have mastered all the so-called special sciences; but they represent truly the aims and tendencies of the scientists, and of what by a strange misnomer is called philosophy; so-called, it would seem, because philosophy it is not. Philosophy is the science of principles, as say the Greeks, or of first principles, as say the Latins, and after them the modern Latinized nations. But Herbert Spencer, Stuart Mill, and the late Sir William Hamilton, the ablest representatives of philosophy as generally received by the English-speaking world, agree with the Comtists or positivists in rejecting first principles from the domain of science, and in relegating theology and metaphysics to the region of the unknown and the unknowable. Their labors consequently result, as Sir William Hamilton himself somewhere admits, in universal nescience, or, as we say, absolute nihilism or nullism.

This result is not accidental, but follows necessarily from what is called the Baconian method, which the scientists follow, and which is, in scholastic[722] language, concluding the universal from the particular. Now, in the logic we learned as a school-boy, and adhere to in our old age, this is simply impossible. To every valid argument it is necessary that one of the premises, called the major premise, be a universal principle. Yet the scientists discard the universal from their premises, and from two or more particulars, or particular facts, profess to draw a valid universal conclusion, as if any conclusion broader than the premises could be valid! The physico-theologians are so infatuated with the Baconian method that they attempt, from certain facts which they discover in the physical world, to conclude, by way of induction, the being and attributes of God, as if any thing concluded from particular facts could be any thing but a particular fact. Hence, the aforenamed authors, with Professor Huxley at their tail, as well as Kant in his Kritik der Reinen Vernunft, have proved as clearly and as conclusively as any thing can be proved that a causative force, or causality, cannot be concluded by way either of induction or of deduction from any empirical facts, or facts of which observation can take note. Yet the validity of every induction rests on the reality of the relation of cause and effect, and the fact that the cause actually produces the effect.

Yet our scientists pretend that they can, from the observation and analysis of facts, induce a law, and a law that will hold good beyond the particulars observed and analyzed. But they do not obtain any law at all; and the laws of nature, about which they talk so learnedly, are not laws, but simply facts. Bring a piece of wax to the fire and it melts, hence it is said to be a law that wax so brought in proximate relation with fire will melt; but this law is only the particular fact observed, and the facts to which you apply it are the identical facts from which you have obtained it. The investigation, in all cases where the scientists profess to seek the law, is simply an investigation to find out and establish the identity of the facts, and what they call the law is only the assertion of that identity, and never extends to facts not identical, or to dissimilar facts.

Take mathematics; as far as the scientist can admit mathematics, they are simply identical propositions piled on identical propositions, and the only difference between Newton and a plough-boy is, that Newton detects identity where the plough-boy does not. Take what is called the law of gravitation; it is nothing but the statement of a fact, or a class of facts observed, and the most that it tells us is, that if the facts are identical, they are identical—that is, they bear such and such relations to one another. But let your positivist attempt to explain transcendental mathematics, and he is all at sea, if he does not borrow from the ideal science or philosophy which he professes to discard. How will the geometrician explain his infinitely extended lines, or lines that may be infinitely extended? A line is made up of a succession of points, and therefore of parts, and nothing which is made up of parts is infinite. The line may be increased or diminished by the addition or subtraction of points, but the infinite cannot be either increased or diminished. Whence does the mind get this idea of infinity? The geometrician tells us the line may be infinitely extended—that is, it is infinitely possible; but it cannot be so unless there is an infinite ground on which it can be projected. An infinitely possible line can be asserted only by asserting the infinitely real, and therefore the mind, unless it had the intuition of the infinitely real, could not conceive of a line as capable[723] of infinite extension. Hence the ancients never assert either the infinitely possible or the infinite real. There is in all Gentile science, or Gentile philosophy, no conception of the infinite; there is only the conception of the indefinite.

This same reasoning disposes of the infinite divisibility of matter still taught in our text-books. The infinite divisibility of matter is an infinite absurdity; for it implies an infinity of parts or numbers, which is really a contradiction in terms. We know nothing that better illustrates the unsoundness of the method of the scientists. Here is a piece of matter. Can you not divide it into two equal parts? Certainly. Can you do the same by either of the halves? Yes. And by the quarters. Yes. And thus on ad infinitum? Where, then, is the absurdity? None as long as you deal with only finite quantities. The absurdity is in the fact that the infinite divisibility of matter implies an infinity of parts; and an infinity of parts, an infinity of numbers; and numbers and every series of numbers may be increased by addition, and diminished by subtraction. An infinite series is impossible.

The moment the scientists leave the domain of particulars or positive facts, and attempt to induce from them a law, their induction is of no value. Take geology. The geologist finds in that small portion of the globe which he has examined certain facts, from which he concludes that the globe is millions and millions of ages old. Is his conclusion scientific? Not at all. If the globe was in the beginning in a certain state, and if the structural and other changes which are now going on have been going on at the same rate from the beginning—neither of which suppositions is provable—then the conclusion is valid; not otherwise. Sir Charles Lyell, if we recollect aright, calculated that, at the present rate, it must have taken at least a hundred and fifty thousand years to form the delta of the Mississippi. Officers of the United States army have calculated that a little over four thousand years would suffice.

So of the antiquity of man on the globe. The scientist finds what he takes to be human bones in a cave along with the bones of certain long since extinct species of animals, and concludes that man was contemporary with the said extinct species of animals; therefore man existed on the globe many, nobody can say how many, thousand years ago. But two things render the conclusion uncertain. It is not certain from the fact that their bones are found together that man and these animals were contemporary; and the date when these animals became extinct, if extinct they are, is not ascertained nor ascertainable. They have discovered traces in Switzerland of lacustrian habitations; but these prove nothing, because history itself mentions "the dwellers on the lakes," and the oldest history accepted by the scientists is not many thousand years old. Sir Charles Lyell finds, or supposes he finds, stone knives and axes, or what he takes to be stone knives and axes, deeply embedded in the earth in the valley of a river, though at some distance from its present bed; and thence concludes the presence of man on the earth for a period wholly irreconcilable with the received biblical chronology. But supposing the facts to be as alleged, they do not prove any thing, because we cannot say what changes by floods or other causes have taken place in the soil of the locality, even during the period of authentic history. Others conclude from the same facts that men were primitively savages, or ignorant of the use of iron. But the[724] most they prove is that, at some unknown period, certain parts of Europe were inhabited by a people who used stone knives and axes; but whether because ignorant of iron, or because unable from their poverty or their distance from places where they were manufactured to procure similar iron utensils, they give us no information. Instances enough are recorded in history of the use of stone knives by a people who possessed knives made of iron. Because in our day some Indian tribes use bows and arrows, are we to conclude that fire-arms are unknown in our age of the world?

What the scientists offer as proof is seldom any proof at all. If an hypothesis they invent explains the known facts of a case, they assert it as proved, and therefore true. What fun would they not make of theologians and philosophers, if they reasoned as loosely as they do themselves? Before we can conclude an hypothesis is true because it explains the known facts in the case, we must prove, 1st, that there are and can be no facts in the case not known; and, 2d, that there is no other possible hypothesis on which they can be explained. We do not say the theories of the scientists with regard to the antiquity of the globe and of man on its surface, nor that any of the geological and astronomical hypotheses they set forth are absolutely false; we only say that their alleged facts and reasonings do not prove them. The few facts known might be placed in a very different light by the possibly unknown facts; and there are conceivable any number of other hypotheses which would equally well explain the facts that are known.

The book before us on Hereditary Genius admirably illustrates the insufficiency of the method and the defective logic of the scientists. Mr. Galton, its author, belongs to the school of which such men as Herbert Spencer, Darwin, Sir John Lubbock, and Professor Huxley are British chiefs, men who disdain to recognize a self-existent Creator, and who see no difficulty in supposing the universe self-evolved from nothing, or in tracing intelligence, will, generous affection, and heroic effort to the mechanical, chemical, and electrical arrangement and combination of the particles of brute matter. Mr. Galton has written his book, he says, p. 1, to show

Mr. Galton, with an air of the most perfect innocence in the world, places man in the category of plants and animals, and in principle simply reproduces for our instruction the Man-Plant, from which there is but a step to the Man-Machine of the cynical Lamettrie, the atheistical professor of mathematics in the university of Berlin, and friend of Frederick the Great. The attempt to prove it is a subtle attempt to prove, in the name of science, that the soul, if soul there be, is generated as well as the body, and that a man's natural abilities are derived through generation from his organization. The author from first to last gives no hint that his doctrine is at war with Christian theology, with the freedom of the human will, or man's moral responsibility for his conduct, or that it excludes all morality, all virtue, and all sin, and recognizes only physical good or evil. He[725] would no doubt reply to this that science is science, facts are facts, and he is under no obligation to consider what theological doctrines they do or do not contradict; for nothing can be true that contradicts science or is opposed to facts. That is opposed to actual facts, or that contradicts real science, conceded; for one truth can never contradict another. But the author is bound to consider whether a theory or hypothesis which contradicts the deepest and most cherished beliefs of mankind in all ages and nations, and in which is the key to universal history, is really science, or really is sustained by facts. The presumption, as say the lawyers, is against it, and for its acceptance it requires the clearest and the most irrefragable proofs, and we are not sure that even any proofs would be enough to overcome the presumptions against it, founded as they are on reasons as strong and as conclusive as it is in any case possible for the human mind to have. The assertion that man's natural abilities originate in his organization, and therefore that we may obtain a peculiar breed of men, as we can obtain a peculiar breed of dogs or horses, is revolting to the deepest convictions and the holiest and most irrepressible instincts of every man, except a scientist, and certainly can be reasonably received only on evidence that excludes the possibility of a rational doubt.

Mr. Galton proves, or attempts to prove, his theory by what he no doubt calls an appeal to facts. He takes from a biographical dictionary the names of a few hundreds of men, chiefly Englishmen, during the last two centuries, who have been distinguished as statesmen, lawyers, judges, divines, authors, etc., and finds that in a great majority of cases, as far as is known, they have sprung from families of more than average ability, and, in some cases, from families which have had some one or more members distinguished for several consecutive generations. This is really all the proof Mr. Galton brings to prove his thesis; and if he has not adduced more, it is fair to conclude that it is because no more was to be had.

But the evidence is far from being conclusive. Even if it be true that the majority of eminent men spring from families more or less distinguished, it does not necessarily follow that they derive their eminent abilities by inheritance; for in those same families, born of the same parents, we find other members whose abilities are in no way remarkable, and in no sense above the common level. In a family of half a dozen or a dozen members one will be distinguished and rise to eminence, while the others will remain very ordinary people. Of the Bonaparte family no member approaches in genius the first Napoleon, except the present emperor of the French. Why these marked differences in the children of the same blood, the same breed, the same parents and ancestors? If Mr. Galton explains the inferiority of the five or the eleven by considerations external or independent of race or breed, why may not the superiority of the one be explained by causes alike independent of breed? Why are the natural abilities of my brothers inferior to mine, since we are all born of the same parents? If a man's natural abilities are derived by inheritance from organization, why am I superior to them? Every day we meet occasion to ask similar questions. This fact proves that there are causes at work, on which man's eminence or want of eminence depends, of which Mr. Galton's theory takes no note, which escape the greatest scientists, and at best can be only conjectured. But conjecture is not science.

This is not all. As far as known, very eminent men have sprung from parents of very ordinary natural abilities, as of social position. The founders of dynasties and noble families have seldom had distinguished progenitors, and are usually not only the first but the greatest of their line. The present Sir Robert Peel cannot be named alongside of his really eminent father, nor the present Duke of Wellington be compared with his father, the Iron Duke. There is no greater name in history than that of St. Augustine, the eminent father and doctor of the church, a man beside whom in genius and depth, and greatness of mind as well as tenderness of heart, your Platos and Aristotles appear like men of only ordinary stature; yet, though his mother was eminent for her sanctity, his parents do not appear to have been gifted with any extraordinary mental power. Instances are not rare, especially among the saints, of great men who have, so to speak, sprung from nothing. Among the popes we may mention Sixtus Quintus, and Hildebrand, St. Gregory VII.; and among eminent churchmen we may mention St. Thomas of Canterbury, Cardinal Ximenes, and Cardinal Wolsey. The greatest and most gifted of our own statesmen have sprung from undistinguished parents, as Washington, the elder Adams, Jefferson, Madison, Jackson, Webster, Calhoun. Who dares pretend that every saint has had a saint for a father or mother; that every eminent theologian or philosopher has had any eminent theologian or philosopher for his father; or that every eminent artist, whether in painting, architecture, sculpture, or music, has been the son or grandson of an eminent artist?

Then, again, who can say how much of a great man's greatness is due to his natural abilities with which he was born, and how much is due to the force of example, to family tradition, to education, to his own application, and the concurrence of circumstances? It is in no man's power to tell, nor in any scientist's power to ascertain. It is a common remark that great men in general owe their greatness chiefly to their mothers, and that, in the great majority of cases known, eminent men have had gifted mothers. This, if a fact, is against Mr. Galton's theory; for the father, not the mother, transmits the hereditary character of the offspring, the hereditary qualities of the line, if the physiologists are to be believed. Hence nobility in all civilized nations follows the father, not the mother. The fact of great men owing their greatness more to the mother is explained by her greater influence in forming the mind, in moulding the character, in stimulating and directing the exercise of her son's faculties, than that of the father. It is as educator in the largest sense that the mother forms her son's character and influences his destiny. It is her womanly instincts, affection, and care and vigilance, her ready sympathy, her love, her tenderness, and power to inspire a noble ambition, kindle high and generous aspirations in the breast of her son, that do the work.

Even if it were uniformly true that great men have always descended from parents remarkable for their natural abilities, Mr. Galton's theory that genius is hereditary could not be concluded with scientific certainty. The hereditary transmission of genius might indeed seem probable; but, on the empirical principles of the scientists, it could not be asserted. All that could be asserted would be the relation of concomitance or of juxtaposition, not the relation of cause[727] and effect. The relation of cause and effect is not and cannot, as the scientists tell us, be empirically apprehended. How can they know that the genius of the son is derived hereditarily from the greatness of his progenitors? From the juxtaposition or concomitance of two facts empirically apprehended there is no possible logic by which it can be inferred that the one is the cause of the other. Hence, Mr. Herbert Spencer, Stuart Mill, Sir William Hamilton, Professor Huxley, and the positivists follow Hume, and relegate, as we said, causes to the region of the unknowable. In fact, the scientists, if they speak of the relation of cause and effect, mean by it only the relation of juxtaposition in the order of precedence and consequence. Hence, on their own principles, though the facts they assert and describe may be true, none of their conclusions from them, or hypotheses to explain them, have or can have any scientific validity. For, after all, there may be a real cause on which the facts depend, and which demands an entirely different explanation from the one which the scientists offer.

We refuse, therefore, to accept Mr. Galton's hypothesis that genius is hereditary, because the facts he adduces are not all the facts in the case, because there are facts which are not consistent with it, and because he does not show and cannot show that it is the only hypothesis possible for the explanation even of the facts which he alleges. Even his friendly and able reviewer, Dr. Meredith Clymer, concludes his admirable analysis by saying, "A larger induction is necessary before any final decision can be had on the merits of the question." This is the verdict of one of the most scientific minds in the United States, and it is the Scotch verdict, not proven. Yet Mr. Galton would have us accept his theory as science, and on its strength set aside the teachings of revelation and the universal beliefs of mankind. This is the way of all non-Christian scientists of the day, and it is because the church refuses to accept their unverified and unverifiable hypotheses, and condemns them for asserting them as true, that they accuse her of being hostile to modern science. They make certain investigations, ascertain certain facts, imagine certain hypotheses, which are nothing but conjectures, put them forth as science, and then demand that she accept them, and give up her faith so far as incompatible with them. A very reasonable demand indeed!

Press these proud scientists closely, and they will own that as yet their sciences are only tentative, that as yet they are not in a condition to prove absolutely their theories, or to verify their conjectures, but they are in hopes they soon will be. At present, science is only in its infancy, it has only just entered upon the true method of investigation; but it is every day making surprising progress, and there is no telling what marvellous conclusions it will soon arrive at. All this might pass, if it did not concern matters of life and death, heaven and hell. The questions involved are too serious to be sported with, too pressing to wait the slow and uncertain solutions of the tentative science which, during six thousand years, has really made no progress in solving them. The scientists retard science when they ask from it the solution, either affirmative or negative, of questions which confessedly lie not in its province, and dishonor and degrade it when they put forth as science their crude conjectures, or their unverified and unverifiable hypotheses. They, not we, are the real enemies of science, though it[728] would require a miracle to make them see it. Deluded mortals! they start with assumptions that exclude the very possibility of science, and then insist that what they assert or deny shall be accepted by theologians and philosophers as established with scientific certainty! Surely the apostle must have had them in mind when he said of certain men that, "esteeming themselves wise, they became fools."

Genius is not hereditary in Mr. Galton's sense, nor are a man's natural abilities derived by inheritance in the way he would have us believe; for both belong to the soul, not to the body; and the soul is created, not generated. Only the body is generated, and only in what is generated is there natural inheritance. All the facts Mr. Galton adduces we are prepared to admit; but we deny his explanation. We accept, with slight qualifications, his views as summed up by Dr. Clymer in the following passage:

We are far from pretending that all men are born with equal abilities, and that all souls are created with equal possibilities, or that every child comes into the world a genius in germ. We believe that all men are born with equal natural rights, and that all should be equal before the law, however various and unequal may be their acquired or adventitious rights; but that is all the equality we believe in. No special effort or training in the world, under the influence of the most favorable circumstances, can make every child a St. Augustine, a St. Thomas, a Bossuet, a Newton, a Leibnitz, a Julius Cæsar, a Wellington, a Napoleon. As one star differeth from another in glory, so does one soul differ from another in its capacities on earth as well as in its blessedness in heaven. Here we have no quarrel with Mr. Galton. We are by no means believers in the late Robert Owen's doctrine, that you can make all men equal if you will only surround them from birth with the same circumstances, and enable them to live in parallelograms.

We are prepared to go even farther, and to recognize that the distinction between noble and ignoble, gentle and simple, recognized in all ages and by all nations, is not wholly unfounded. There is as great a variety and as great an inequality in families as in individuals. Aristocracy is not a pure prejudice; and though it has no political privileges in this country, yet it exists here no less than elsewhere, and it is well for us that it does. No greater evil could befall any country than to have no distinguished families rising, generation after generation, above the common level; no born leaders of the people, who stand head and shoulders above the rest; and the great objection to democracy is, that it tends to bring all down to a general average, and to place the administration of public interests in the hands of a low mediocrity, as our American experience, in some measure, proves. The demand of the age for equality of conditions and possessions is most mischievous. If all were equally rich, all would be equally poor; and if all were at the top of society, society would have no bottom, and would be only a bottomless pit. If there were none devoted to learning, no strength and energy of character above the multitude, society would be without leaders, and would soon fall to pieces, as an army of privates without officers.

There is no doubt that there are noble lines, and the descendants of noble ancestors do, as a rule, though not invariably, surpass the descendants of plebeian or undistinguished lines. The Stanleys, for instance, have been distinguished in British history for at least fifteen generations. The present Earl Derby, the fifteenth earl of his house, is hardly inferior to his gifted father, and nobly sustains the honors of his house. We expect more from the child of a good family than from the child of a family of no account, and hold that birth is never to be decried or treated as a matter of no importance. But we count it so chiefly because it secures better[730] breeding, and subjection to higher, nobler, and purer formative influences, from the earliest moment. Example and family traditions are of immense reach in forming the character, and it is not a little to have constantly presented to the consideration of the child the distinguished ability, the eminent worth and noble deeds of a long line of illustrious ancestors, especially in an age and country where blood is highly esteemed, and the honorable pride of family is cultivated. The honor and esteem in which a family has been held for its dignity and worth through several generations is a capital, an outfit for the son, secures him, in starting, the advantage of less well-born competitors, and all the aid in advance of a high position and the good-will of the community. More is exacted of him than of them; he is early made to feel that noblesse oblige, and that failure would in his case be dishonor. He is thereby stimulated to greater effort to succeed.

Yet we deny not that there is something else than all this in blood. A man's genius belongs to his soul, and is no more inherited than the soul itself. But man is not all soul, any more than he is all body; body and soul are in close and mysterious relation, and in this life neither acts without the other. The man's natural abilities are psychical, not physical, and are not inherited, because the soul is created, not generated; but their external manifestation may depend, in a measure, on organization, and organization is inherited. Mr. Galton's facts may, then, be admitted without our being obliged to accept his theory. The brain is generally considered by physiologists as the organ of the mind, and it may be so, without implying that the brain secretes thought, will, affection, as the liver secretes bile, or the stomach secretes the gastric juice.

The soul is distinct from the body, and is its form, its life, or its vivifying and informing principle; yet it uses the body as the organ of its action. Hence, De Bonald defines man, an intelligence that serves himself by organs, not an intelligence served by organs, as Plato said. The activity is in the soul, not in the organs. The organ we call the eye does not see; the soul sees by means of the eye. So of the ear, the smell, the taste, the touch. We speak of the five senses; but we should speak more correctly if we spoke, not of five senses, but of five organs of sense; for the sense is psychical, and is one like the soul that senses through the organs. In like manner, the brain appears to be the organ of the mind, through which, together with the several nerves that centre in it, the mind performs its various operations of thinking, willing, reasoning, remembering, reflecting, etc. The nature of the relation of the soul, which is one, simple, and immaterial, with a material body with its various organs, nervous and ganglionic systems, is a mystery which we cannot explain. Yet we cannot doubt that there is a reciprocal action and reaction of the soul and body, or, at least, the bodily organs can and do offer, at times, an obstacle to the external action of the soul. I cannot by my will raise my arm, if it be paralyzed, though my psychical power to will to raise it is not thereby affected. If the organs of seeing and hearing, the eye and the ear, are injured or originally defective, my external sight and hearing are thereby injured or rendered defective; but not in other psychical relations, as evinced by the fact that when the physical defect is removed, or the physical injury is cured, the soul finds no difficulty in manifesting its ordinary power of seeing or hearing. So we may say of the other organs of sense, and of the body[731] generally, in so far as it is the organ of the soul, or used by the soul in its external display or manifestation of its powers.

No doubt the organization may be more or less favorable to this external display or manifestation, or that, under certain conditions, and to a certain extent, the organization is hereditary, or transmitted by natural generation. There may be transmitted from parents or ancestors a healthy or diseased, a normal or a more or less abnormal organization; and so far, and in this sense, genius may be hereditary, and a man's natural abilities may be derived by inheritance, as are the form and features; but only to this extent, and in this sense—that is, as to their external display or exercise; for a man may be truly eloquent in his soul, and even in writing, whose stammering tongue prevents him from displaying any eloquence in his speech. The organization does not deprive the soul of its powers. My power to will to raise my arm is not lessened by the fact that my arm is paralyzed. And in all ordinary cases, the soul is able, at least by the help of grace, freely given to all, to overcome a vicious temperament, control, in the moral order, a defective organization, and maintain her moral freedom and integrity. It has been proved that the deaf-mute can be taught to speak, and that idiots or natural-born fools can be so educated as to be able to exhibit no inconsiderable degree of intelligence.

We do not believe a word in Darwin's theory of natural selection; for all the facts on which he bases it admit of a different explanation, nor in its kindred theory of development or evolution of species. One of our own collaborators has amply refuted both theories, by showing that what these theories assume to be the development or evolution of new species, whether by natural selection or otherwise, is but a reversion to the original type and condition, in like manner as we have proved, over and over again, that the savage is the degenerate, not the primeval man. It is not improbable that your African negro is the degenerate descendant of a once over-civilized race, and that he owes his physical peculiarities to the fact that he has become subject, like the animal world, to the laws of nature, which are resisted and modified in their action by the superior races. We do not assert this as scientifically demonstrated, but as a theory which is far better sustained by well-known facts and incontrovertible principles than either the theory of development or of natural selection.

Yet the soul as forma corporis has an influence, we say not how much, on organization; and high intellectual and moral culture may modify it, and, other things being equal, render it in turn more favorable to the external manifestation of the inherent powers of the soul. This more favorable organization may be transmitted by natural generation from parents to children, and, if continued through several consecutive generations, it may give rise to noble families and to races superior to the average. Physical habits are transmissible by inheritance. This is not, as Darwin and Mr. Galton suppose, owing to natural selection, but to the original mental and moral culture become traditional in certain families and races, and to the voluntary efforts of the soul, as is evident from the fact that when the culture is neglected, and the voluntary efforts cease to be made, the superiority is lost, the organization becomes depraved, and the family or race runs out or drops into the ranks of the ignoble. The blood, however blue, will not of itself alone suffice to keep[732] up the superiority of the family or the race; nor will marriages, however judicious, through no matter how many consecutive generations, without the culture, keep up the nobility, as Mr. Galton would have us believe; for the superiority of the blood depends originally and continuously on the soul, its original endowments, and its peculiar training or culture through several generations.

It is in this same way we explain the origin and continuance of national characteristics and differences. Climate and geographical position count, no doubt, for something; but more in the direction they give to the national aims and culture than in their direct effects on bodily organization. It is not probable that the original tribes of Greece had any finer organic adaptation to literature and the arts than had the Scythian hordes from which they sprang; but their climate and geographical position turned their attention to cultivation of the beautiful, and the continual cultivation of the beautiful through several generations gave the Greeks an organization highly favorable to artistic creations. Then, again, Rome cultivated and excelled in the genius of law and jurisprudence. But under Christian faith and culture, the various nations of Europe became assimilated, and the peculiar national characteristics under Gentilism were in a measure obliterated. They also revive as the nations under Protestantism recede from Christianity and return to Gentilism, and are held in check only by the reminiscences of Catholicity, and by the mutual intercourse of nations kept up by trade and commerce, literature and the arts.

The facts alleged by Mr. Galton and his brother materialists are, therefore, explicable without impugning the doctrine of the simplicity and immateriality of the soul, and that the soul is created, not generated as is the body. They are perfectly explicable without supposing our natural abilities originate in or are the result of natural organization. They can be explained in perfect consistency with revelation, with the teachings of the church, and with the universal beliefs of mankind. Thus it would be supreme unreason to require us to reject the Gospel, or our holy religion, on the strength of the unverified and unverifiable hypotheses of the scientists, and degrade man, the lord of this lower creation, to the level of the beasts that perish. The quarrel we began by speaking of is in no sense a quarrel between faith and reason, or revelation and science; but simply a quarrel between what is certain by faith and reason on the one side, and the unverified and unverifiable hypotheses or conjectures of the so-called scientists on the other. We oppose none of the real facts which the scientists set forth; we oppose only their unsupported theories and unwarranted inductions. We conclude by reminding the scientists that others have studied nature as well as they, and are as familiar with its facts and as able to reason on them as they are, and yet have no difficulty in reconciling their science and their faith.

DION AND THE SIBYLS.
A CLASSIC, CHRISTIAN NOVEL.

BY MILES GERALD KEON, COLONIAL SECRETARY, BERMUDA, AUTHOR OF "HARDING THE MONEY-SPINNER," ETC.

CHAPTER IV.

Two days afterward, Dionysius the Athenian called at the inn, and informed Aglais, Paulus, and Agatha, that after the banquet in the Mamurran palace at Formiæ, that evening, there was to be a great gathering of the witty, the noble, the fashionable, and the wise, and that he was charged to invite Aglais and her two children as friends of his.

Aglais declined the honor for herself and her daughter, but said she wished Paulus to go with Dionysius. Paulus, therefore, laid aside the outlandish costume in which he had travelled from Thessaly, and dressed himself with care in the fashion suitable to a young Roman of equestrian rank. Dionysius remained to join the family in their repast, which was virtually what we should in modern times call the early dinner, after which the two friends mounted Dion's chariot, and proceeded toward Formiæ at an easy pace, along the smooth pavement of the "queen of roads."

During the drive they had a conversation which was, for good reasons, very interesting to Paulus.

"A most capricious course," said Dionysius, "is your suit or claim running. In seeking to recover your family estates you prudently avoid at first bringing the holder into a court of law; for the judges might shrink from voiding a title which not only arises out of an express gift of Augustus, but is identical with the title under which half the land of Italy has been held since the battle of Philippi. Instead of an immediate lawsuit, therefore, you try a direct appeal to Augustus, offering to show him that at the very time when your father's estate was taken away he had just rendered the same services for which, had he been willing to accept it, he would, like so many others, have had a right to be endowed with a new estate, taken from some member of the defeated party. But Augustus refers you back to the courts, where, for the two reasons mentioned, you fear the result. But two other reasons might be added for fearing it still more: first, the present holder is dreaded on account of his political power and his station; Tiberius is the man who, by marrying the daughter of Agrippa Vipsanius, has come into possession of your property; secondly, wealth is necessary for the success of such a suit; wealth he has, and wealth you have not. The courts present, consequently, but small hopes; yet you fail to get Augustus to decide your case himself.

"To a nicety," replied Paulus. "Had I interest at court, I should find justice there."

"In your case," said Dionysius, "interest at court would be equivalent to justice in the courts. As I took precisely this view of the business, and as Augustus has paid me such honor, and shown me such partiality[734] as few have found with him for many years, it occurred to me that if I threw my unclaimed and unexpected interest into the same scale wherein your just demands already lay—"

"Not so kind, nor so generous," replied Dionysius, "to my friend Paulus, as I saw Paulus show himself to be the day before yesterday to a stranger and a slave. But hear me out. No sooner did I tell Augustus that I had a favor to ask of him, than he placed his hand on my mouth, and said, 'I like to hear you talk; but mine has been too busy a life to permit me to draw forth by properly opposing you the full force of your own opinions—OR THE TRUTH. The truth in these matters (not your affair, Paulus, but philosophy) is the only truth which can interest a man about to die. You must state these views in the presence of young, vigorous, and not preoccupied intellects. If you hold your own as well against what they can allege as against my objections, submit to me afterward your petition. One thing at a time.' This and the like, with the indomitable whim and obstinate waywardness of age, he has continued to fling at me, whenever I have renewed the attempt to state your case; and I have done so five or six times. Titus Livy and Quintus Haterius, whom I have consulted, advise me to take literally and in the spirit of downright business this curious caprice. Now, do you know, to-night is appointed for a sort of arena-fight? All the gladiatorial intellects of the west are to be arrayed to crush the fantastic theories and pretty delusions of a Greek, an Athenian. All motives chain me, all pledges prevent me; moreover, honor and truth, to say nothing, my friend, of your own personal future, interdict me from flight."

"Ah!" said Dionysius; "you know not all that I mean. You and I have been differently reared, yet in the same spirit. However, as you said, when at the risk of your own life you stood between oppression and an innocent young couple, the great Being whom we both expect will be pleased with a willing effort after what is right.

"But here we are at the gates of Formiæ. How the palace of the Mamurras glitters! How these narrow streets flare with torches! We must go at a walk. Charioteer, let the litters pass first. Yes, my friend, in the painful position in which I shall be forced to stand to-night, (and I blush beforehand, knowing my incompetence, my ignorance, and the intrinsic difficulty of what I am expected to do,) your future fortunes and the rights of your family are by a strange caprice made dependent upon the success with which I may be able to defend ideas of general and unchangeable value, beauty, and truth; ideas which it debases a man not to have, and exalts him to entertain; ideas which were always dear to the greatest minds that have preceded us, and which are reflected in every calm and pure soul, as the stars in fair, sweet lakes, although the putrid, slimy pool, and the waters tossed with storms, and an atmosphere darkened with clouds, may forbid the image, by intercepting the heavenly light or defacing the earthly mirror."

While Dionysius thus informed Paulus of the singular and close connection which had arisen between the future prospects of his mother, his sister, and himself, as well as the establishment of their rights, and the success with which Dionysius might this night be able to make good his philosophical doctrines against the wits, the orators, and the sophists of the Augustan court, at the same moment Tiberius[735] was conversing upon the same subject with Domitius Afer and Antistius Labio in a room of the Mamurran palace.

"Just," said he, in continuation of a conversation previously commenced, "as if a person's claim to an estate could be rendered either better or worse by the style of his horsemanship!"

Here Domitius Afer laughed heartily, and showed his admiration of Cæsar's wit. Labio, a saturnine, laborious man, son of one of the assassins of Julius Cæsar, and author of numberless works, preserved a grim, unsmiling air, as he observed,

"A man may ride over an estate, and over all its hedges and ditches; but he must be no bad rider if he can jump his horse into a title to become its proprietor."

"Nevertheless, the infatuation of Augustus for the Greek friend of the claimant is such that if the Athenian acquits himself successfully to-night in the Mæcenas-like criticisms and Plato-like discussions which are, I suspect, to vary our entertainments, he will next suffer the golden-tongued youth to state the case of Paulus Lepidus Æmilius. The effect at which you must aim is to make a fool of the Athenian; and you are the men to do it. Refute every thing he says, ridicule him, cover him with confusion; make him the gibe of the whole court, the derision of the brilliant circle assembling here to-night. Put an end to his influence. We want no more mind-battles in Italy. I set dogs upon a dog. Arouse all your attention. Bend all your energies. Let the stranger retire from among us in disgrace."

That night, the most brilliant company which could then be culled out of the human race was assembled in the central impluvium of the Mamurran palace and its arcades. Lamps, hanging from the festoons of creeping plants which adorned and connected the porphyry pillars of the colonnades, mingled their gleam with the light of the moon and stars. The variety of rays, of shadows, and of coloring which were thus sprinkled over the flowers, the leaves, the walls and pillars, the faces, figures, and dresses, produced a scene which a painter could better render than words can. The central fountain was smitten into a sorcery of tints, as it shed into a large basin of green marble the drooping sheaf of waters, of which the materials were perpetually changing, and the form and outlines perfectly maintained, or instantly and perpetually renewed.

The Emperor, and the Cæsars, Tiberius and Germanicus, with the famous authors we have already more than once mentioned, Livy, and Lucius Varius, and Velleius Paterculus were present. Ælius Sejanus, the prefect of the Prætorians; Cneius Piso, the gambler; Plancina, his rich wife; Lucius Piso, his brother, governor of Rome; with many persons who then sparkled in the court orbits, but whose names have perished out of human memory; and Julia, the emperor's daughter, Tiberius's new wife; and Agrippina Vipsania, lately his wife; and Agrippina Julia, daughter of the former, sister of the latter, wife of Germanicus, and mother of Caligula; and Livia, the aged wife of Augustus himself, all appeared among the guests. Chairs and couches had been placed here and there. Augustus and the ladies we have mentioned were seated, some just within, others just without one of the arcades, between two of its columns, so that the moonlight fell upon some heads, the lamplight upon others; and a wayward, dubious mixture of both upon the golden tresses of Agrippina Julia, and of a beautiful young girl near her,[736] on whom Domitius Afer, the celebrated orator, was gazing with admiration. But she, when she at last observed his glance, fixed upon him such a look of combined scorn and amazement that the advocate winced and became livid. She was destined, one day, to be the subject of his fatal eloquence, and to appease by nothing less than her execution the vindictive vanity of the orator, because she had spurned the ambitious love of the man.

Tacitus alludes to the poor Claudia Pulchra's brief tale. Quintus Haterius, whose Shakespeare-like variety of mind and bewitching eloquence had, as Ben Jonson implies in a comparison already cited by us, few rivals, was seated not far from Augustus. Next sat Livy. Antistius Labio and his rival Domitius Afer, who now occupied the place and fame in the forum from which Haterius on account of his age had withdrawn, stood leaning against a pillar, each with his arms folded. Both these persons, as well as Livy and Haterius, wore the toga; Sejanus, the scarlet paludamentum. The other male guests—except Tiberius, whose dark purple robe was conspicuous, and Germanicus, who was dressed in the costume of a commander-in-chief—wore a species of large tunic, called lacerna, which (contrary to the taste of the emperor, and despite of his frequently expressed disapproval) had become fashionable. The story mentioned by Suetonius is well known. One day Augustus, seeing numbers of the people wearing the lacerna, asked indignantly, in a line of Virgil's, could these be Romans, "Romanos rerum dominos, GENTEMQUE TOGATAM," and ordered the ædiles to admit none but toga-wearers into either the forum or the circus. But this was many years before the evening with which we are now engaged.

Among the groups collected in the Mamurran palace were representatives of the three great arts, in mastering which the highest education of classic antiquity was exhausted; we mean the arts of politics, of public speaking, and of strategy—government, eloquence, and war. They were all represented, each of them had its proper image in the groups we have described. As those pursuits constituted the favorite intellectual sphere, and comprehended all the fields of ambition, to be eminent in any one of them was to succeed in life, and to be adopted into that class of society of which so many distinguished members were entertained in the Formian palace on the night at which our tale has arrived.

If a man excelled, like Julius Cæsar, in all the three arts named, he could revolutionize the world. The mechanic arts, the fine arts, philosophy, physical science, mathematics, attracted individual votaries indeed; but were neglected by the ambition of a few, as well as by the indolence of many.

The mention of physical studies recalls Strabo, the geographer, who was among the guests this evening at the palace.

Many others who were there we need not enumerate; but some will claim a word and a glance. When Dionysius arrived, and introduced Paulus to the aged knight, Mamurra, the company was already numerous. Mamurra patted Paulus on the shoulder, and said, although the other day in the road he had not at once recalled old times, he remembered Paulus's brave father very well at the battle of Philippi; and that he, Mamurra, had seen him and Agrippa Vipsanius together, rallying the wing which Mark Antony had broken, and that he himself had charged with the cavalry to help him. This speech[737] was very gracious, and our hero, who well knew it to be true, blushed with pride and pleasure. While the glow of this natural and honorable emotion was still coloring his young face, as he bowed to Mamurra, the latter took him by the arm, and said in a low voice,

"Come, let an old soldier present the son of a former comrade, whose life was honorable, and whose memory is glorious, to the master for whom they both fought with equal zeal, although unequal fortune."

Augustus returned Paulus's low salutation with a faint yet not unkindly smile, and then looked with a sort of sleepy steadiness at Tiberius, who heard Mamurra's words, and whose face was apparently flaming with a dark red rage. Near Tiberius, who now threw himself upon the cushions of a couch plated with gold, just opposite the chair which Augustus had selected, stood a tall, regular-featured, Brahmin-like man, in Asiatic dress, and next to this individual, Sejanus, with his usual air of supercilious composure, yet intent watchfulness.

The couch we have mentioned was long and large, and two ladies, one old, the other young, were already sitting at the further end of it. The first was Antonia, the mother of Germanicus, the second was Agrippina Julia, his wife. Just in front of them, upon a low stool, sat the son of the latter, Caius Caligula, with his eyes yet bandaged, as the reader will not be surprised to hear; while at his side, fidgeting with large, red, lubberly hands, stood a big, loutish, heavy-looking boy, who was considerably the senior of that dear child. This was no other than Claudius, the fourth of the Cæsarian dynasty, (or the fifth, if Julius Cæsar be accounted the first,) reserved, against his will, to mount the throne of the world amid panic and horror, that day when Caligula shall be hacked to pieces by Cassius Chærias, in the theatre of the palace at Rome.

Thus, three future rulers of mankind, destined to bear dire sceptres in dark and evil days, were around the white hairs of Augustus Cæsar to-night.

As Paulus stepped backward after Augustus's languid but not unkindly reception of him, Dionysius, who was just behind, moved quickly and gracefully out of his way, and Claudius, the big, loutish lad, being impelled thereto by the nature of him, shuffled forward so as to come in collision with Paulus.

"Monster!" exclaimed Antonia, ashamed of her son's awkwardness; "if I wanted to prove any one void of all mind, I would call him more stupid than you!"[286]

He now found himself in the immediate neighborhood of that eastern group which his young sister had described as presenting themselves one morning at the entrance of the bower in the inn garden, when she was there listening to the strange conversation of Plancina; we mean Queen Berenice and her daughter Herodias, and her son Herod Agrippa.

They all three fixed their gaze upon him with that unabashed, hardy manner peculiar to the family, and Paulus was beginning to feel uncomfortable in their vicinity and under their scrutiny, when Germanicus Cæsar approached, and complimenting him upon his brilliant exploit two evenings before, asked him whether he would like to join the expedition which was to start next day to drive the Germans from the north-east of Italy?

If he would, Germanicus offered to mount him splendidly, and keep him near his own person, and make him the bearer of orders to the generals; in modern phrase, give him a place on the staff. Paulus thanked the commander-in-chief briefly and respectfully, and asked to be allowed to wait till noon next day before giving a more definite answer than that he should rejoice to accept the gracious offer; his mother and sister had no protector except himself, and he should not like to leave them, without first hearing what they said. Germanicus assented.

During the short conversation of which this was the substance, Germanicus had moved slowly up the gravel-walk; and Paulus of course attended him, listening and answering, not sorry besides to put some space between himself and the unpleasant Jewish group. By the time they had finished speaking they had arrived opposite the couch where Tiberius, Antonia, and Agrippina were seated, with Germanicus's child, Caligula, as we have described, occupying a low stool in front of his mother Agrippina. Close by, leaning against a pillar, stood a youth in the uniform of a centurion who had a most determined, thoughtful countenance.

On the approach of Germanicus, he briskly quitted his lounging attitude to salute his commander.

"Young knight," said Germanicus to Paulus, "let me make you acquainted with as brave a youth, I think, as can be found in all the Roman legions; this is Cassius Chærias."

"Who, father," asked the shrill voice of the child Caligula, "is the brave youth, do you say?"

"Are you so brave?" persisted the impudent child, shoving up his bandage impatiently, and disclosing a truly disfigured and malicious little face.

"I can't see you, or what you are like. But I think I could make you afraid if I was emperor."

The man destined hereafter to deliver mankind from the boundless profligacy, the wicked oppression, and the insane, raging, incredible cruelties of which it was daily the miserable victim by killing Caligula the emperor, looked steadily at Caligula the child, and said not a word.

"I should like to feel your sword, whether it is heavy," pursued the child. "Give it me." And he started to his feet.

"It seems to me," said Augustus, looking round, and there was an instantaneous hush of general conversation as he did so; "that we have represented around us Europe, Asia, and Africa. Young Herod and his friends may count for Asia."

"You," added Augustus, addressing the tall, Brahmin-like man who stood near Tiberius, "come from Egypt, do you not?"

"Mighty emperor," returned the other in measured and sepulchral tones, "I come from the land where great Babylon once was the seat of empire."

"I am," replied the other, composedly eyeing his questioner, "Thrasyllus Magus—Thrasyllus, the student of the stars."

"Are you sure that you are not the god Hermes? and that you do not sometimes ride of nights, with your horse's hoofs wrapped in cloth?"

"Do you suppose," pursued Sejanus, still in a whisper, "that I had not every stable in Formiæ searched the night you played that trick on the road? I know my master Tiberius's taste for divination and the various deep things you practice. You, then, are the oracle who reveals to him the decrees of fate?"

The exchange of further remarks between these worthy men was here suspended; for Augustus again spoke amid general attention.

"I think," said he, "that we should all now be glad to hear Dionysius the Athenian." An eager hum of assent and approval arose from the jaded and sated, but inquisitive and critical society around.

"There are in your philosophy," continued Augustus, "two leading principles, my Athenian, in support of which I am both curious and anxious to hear you advance some solid and convincing reasons. You despise, as Cicero despised it, the notion of a plurality of gods. You affirm there is only one. You say that a god who could begin to be a god, or begin at all, can be no god; and that the true King of all kings, is the giver of whatever exists, and the recipient of nothing. That he is without a body, a pure and holy intelligence. That as every thing else is his work, there never were, and never will be, and never could be, any limits either of his power or of his knowledge. At the same time, you reject the notion, adopted in some Greek systems, that he is the soul of the visible universe, and this universe his body; affirming him to be antecedent to and independent of all things, and all other things to be absolutely dependent upon him.

"This, then," said Augustus, "is the first question upon which I wish to hear you; and the second is, whether that force or principle within each of us which thinks, reflects, reasons, and is conscious of itself, will perish at our death, or will live beyond it, and is of such a nature that it will never perish, as Plato, Xenophon, Cicero, and many other illustrious men and very great thinkers have so ardently contended."

"Ah!" said Dionysius, in a voice indescribably sweet and thrilling, while all turned their eyes toward him; "unless that God himself assist me, I shall be quite unequal to the task you impose upon me, Augustus. I am not worthy to treat the subject upon which you desire me to speak. You are aware that many learned persons in our Europe expect, and for a long time have expected, some divine being to appear one day among men. I see the able governor of Rome, Lucius Piso. None will accuse Piso of credulity, none suppose him a weaver of idle fancies, or a dreamer of gratuitous reveries. An able administrator, an accomplished man of the world, and, if he will pardon me, more inclined to be too sarcastic than too indulgent, he, nevertheless, despises not this expectation. Our learned friend Strabo, whom I see near me, will tell you moreover how it prevails, and has from immemorial times prevailed, in various and often perverted forms, yet with an underlying essence of permanent identity, among the innumerable nations which make some thirty languages resound through the immense expanses of Asia. But Domitius Afer desires to interrupt me."

"I do not discern how this ancient and mysterious expectation which floats vaguely through the traditions of all mankind, and in a more definite shape forms the groundwork for the whole religion of the Jewish nation, can be at all connected either with the immortality of the thinking principle inside of us, or with the question whether there is one supreme, absolute, and eternal God who made this universe."

"All I would have added," replied Dionysius, "in regard to that expectation was, that after the appearance of this universal benefactor, many sublime ideas which hitherto only the strongest intellects have entertained, will probably become familiar to the meanest—common to all.

"I pass to the two questions which Augustus desires to hear argued; and, first, let me collect the opinions of this brilliant company; I will then compare them with mine. What does Antistius Labio think?"

"I should have to invent a term to express my notion," said Labio. "I think all things are but emanations from, and return to, the same being. What might be called pantheism, if we coined a word from the language of your country, best explains, I fancy, the phenomena of the universe. Every thing is growth and decay; but as decay furnishes larger growth, every thing is growth at last and in the total sum."

"Each thing," replied Labio, "is under the control of its own nature, which evidently it cannot change, and every inferior thing besides is under the control of any superior thing with which it may come into relations. Thus what is active is superior as such to what is passive; it is more excellent and a higher force to act upon, or sway, or change, or move, or form, than to be acted upon, moved, or modified. The mind of an architect, for instance, is a higher force than the dead weight of the inert stones from which he builds a palace."

"Then you hold that some things have force, and that there are greater and smaller forces?" asked Dionysius.

"Which is more excellent," asked Dionysius, "a force which can move itself, or a force which, in order to exist, must be set in motion by another?"

"This last," said Labio, "is only the first prolonged; it is but a continuation, an effect."

"And an effect," pursued the Greek, "is inferior, as such, to what controls it; and inferior also in its very nature to that which requires no cause?"

"Now favor me with your attention," returned the Athenian; "I want you to extricate me from a dilemma. Either every thing which possesses force has received its force from something else; or there is something which possesses force, and which never received this force from any thing else, and which, therefore, has possessed it from all eternity. Which of these two alternatives do you select?"

Labio paused, and by this time the whole of that strangely mixed society was listening with the keenest relish and the most genuine interest to the conversation.

"I see whither you tend," replied Labio, "but I do not believe in that universal ruler and original mind, or first force, which you think to demonstrate. All things go in circles, and[741] serially. Every force which exists has been derived from some other; and each in its turn continues the movement, or communicates the impact."

"I beg Augustus," said the Athenian, "to mark and remember Labio's words. Every thing which has force has received its force from something else. Do you say every thing, Labio, without exception?"

"But not having, good Labio," replied the Athenian, "goes before receiving. I cannot, and you cannot, receive that which we have already. In order to say that we receive any thing, we must first be without it—must we not? The state of not having, I repeat, precedes the act of receiving. Does any person deny this? Does Labio?"

"Then," said the Athenian, "in maintaining that every thing which possesses force has received that force from something else, Labio necessarily maintains that every thing which possesses force was first without it. I therefore perceive there must have been a time when nothing possessed any force whatever. The very first thing which possessed any, received it; but whence? For, at that time, there was nothing to give it. What says Labio? Is pantheism silent?"

A momentary smile, like a passing gleam, lit up the faces of those around, as the Athenian, looking toward Domitius Afer, requested him the next to favor the company with his opinion upon the two momentous questions propounded by Augustus.

"I need not, like Labio, coin a term from the Greek," said Afer, "to describe my system. I am a materialist. I believe nothing save what my senses attest. They show me neither God nor soul; and I am determined never to accept any other criterion."

"Are you quite sure," asked Dionysius, "that you are thus determined? I should like to shake such a determination."

"You'll fail," replied Afer, smiling. "Which of your senses, then, has attested to you that very determination? Can you see, taste, smell, hear, or touch it? And yet you tell us you are sure of it. If so, you can believe in, and be sure of, something which has never been submitted to the criterion which alone you admit."

"A determination is not a thing," said Afer hastily, and with a little confusion.

"Was Julius Cæsar a thing?" persisted Dionysius; "because if you believe that Julius Cæsar existed, having heard of him and read of him, your senses of hearing and seeing do not attest to you in this case the existence of Julius Cæsar, but simply the affirmations of others that he has existed. My hearing attests to me that Strabo says he has been in Spain; and this, if there were no other reason, would satisfy me that Spain exists; yet it is Strabo whom I hear. I do not hear Spain."

Augustus clapped his hands gently, and laughed. Domitius Afer, with visible anger, exclaimed,

"I mean, that I will take nothing but upon proof. Prove that the soul is immortal; prove that one supreme God exists. Every thing which a reasonable man believes ought to be demonstrated."

"I hope," said Dionysius, "to prove those two truths to your satisfaction. But as you say that all we believe ought to be demonstrated, I will first offer you a demonstration, that it is[742] impossible to demonstrate every thing. To prove any proposition, you require a second; and to prove the second, in its turn, you require a third; and it is upon this third, if you admit it, that the demonstration of the first depends. But if you had fifty propositions, or any number, in the chain, what proves the last of them?"

"But," said the Greek, "either you come to a last, or you never come to a last. If you never come to a last proposition, you never finish your proof; you leave it uncompleted; it remains still no proof at all; you have not performed what you undertook. And if you do come to a final proposition, which is supported by no other, what supports it?"

There was a little start of pleasure in the company at the sudden and clear closes to which the Athenian was, each and every time, bringing what seemed likely to have grown into intricate and long disquisitions.

"My object, Augustus," pursued Dion, "was to show that we are all so made that we feel compelled to believe much more than we can prove. Otherwise, our knowledge would be confined within narrow limits indeed. He who knows no more than he can demonstrate, knows but little. May I now ask the distinguished orators, Montanus and Capito, for their theories respecting the questions which interest us so much to-night?"

Quintus Haterius prevented any answer to this appeal. "The eloquent and learned thinker," said he—"who will yet, I have no doubt, be the ornament of the Athenian Areopagus—has placed me, and, I think, many others near me, completely on his side, in what has hitherto passed. Young as he is, he has made us feel the masterful facility with which he is able to throw light upon errors placed where truth ought to stand. The operation is highly amusing; we could pass a long evening in watching it repeated against any number of antagonists. But come, Dionysius, reverse the process; take your own ground; maintain it; raise there your system like your castle; and let those assail it, if they please, whom your aggressive genius on the contrary turns to assail."

"Haterius is right," said Augustus. "I could assist at any number of these collisions; but they take a form which presents your mind to us, my Athenian, as a hunter and conqueror rather than a founder."

"But I am no founder," replied the youth, earnestly and modestly; "and I aspire to nothing of the kind. The fact is merely and simply this: After much study I have arrived at the conviction—first, that there is one absolutely perfect and eternal Being who governs the universe; and, next, that what thinks within each of us never will die. Since you desire to hear the reasons which have brought me to these conclusions, I cannot decline to state one or two of them at least—though this place, this occasion, and this dazzling company befit the subject far less, I fear, than if a few studious friends discussed it, sitting under the starry sky, on some quiet, unfrequented shore."

"Pardon me," said Dionysius, "Plato may speak for himself. You have him to read; why should I repeat him? Those who miss Plato's meaning in his own pages would miss it in my commentary."

Julia uttered a taunting laugh, as she glanced at her new husband Tiberius, whom she always treated with scorn.

"You remember, Augustus," Dionysius continued, "that a few minutes[743] ago, Antistius Labio, in answering one of my questions, stated that a force which could move itself was more excellent, as such, than one which required to be set in motion by another, as the mind of the architect, said he, is superior to the stones from which he builds a palace. Labio then very justly added, in reply to another question, that what was moved only by the force of something else possessed no proper force of its own, its force being but a continuation of the first, an effect of the impact. He finally assented, when I showed that it is impossible that every thing without exception which possesses force should have received it, because not having goes before receiving, and because this is only another mode of saying that every thing without exception was once devoid of force. If a particular being has received the force it possesses, that particular being must once have been without it; and if all beings without exception who possess force have received it, they likewise without exception must all, in the same manner, have first been without it, a supposed state during which no force at all existed anywhere. That any being should ever acquire force, when there was nowhere any force for it to acquire, would be an unsatisfactory philosophy."

"There has, perhaps, been," said Tiberius, "an eternal chain of these forces transmitting themselves onward."

"If," said the Athenian, "you admit the existence of any one being who possesses a force which he never received from another, that being is evidently eternal. But to say that a being has received its force, is to say that its force has had a beginning; and to say that any thing begins, is to say that once it was not. A chain of forces all received is, therefore, a chain of forces all begun—is it not? Now, if they have all begun, they have all had something prior to them. But nothing can be prior to what is eternal; such a chain or series, therefore, cannot itself be eternal."

"No link is eternal," said Tiberius; "but all the links of the chain together may surely be so."

The Athenian looked round with a smile at Tiberius, and said, "If all the forces which exist now, and all those which ever existed in the universe, without exception, have been received from something else, what is that something else beyond all the forces of the universe? They would all without exception have begun. To say this of them, is merely to say that they were all non-existent once; and this without exception. In other words, the whole chain, even with all its links taken together, is short of eternal. If so, it has been preceded either by blank nothing, or by some being who has a force not thus received, a force which is his own inherently and absolutely, as I maintain. Tell me of a chain, the top of which recedes beyond our ken, that the lowest link depends on the next to it, and this on the third, I understand you; but if I ask what suspends the whole chain, with all its links taken together, it is no answer to say that the links are so numerous and the chain is so long that it requires nothing but itself to keep it in suspension. The longer it is, the greater must be the necessity of the ultimate grasp, and the stronger must that grasp be; and observe, it must be truly ultimate, otherwise you have not solved the difficulty; nay, the suspending force must be distinct from and beyond the chain itself, or you do not account for the suspension. But I will put all this past a cavil. What I said respecting proofs to Domitius Afer, I say respecting[744] causes to Tiberius Cæsar. No one denies that various forces are operating in the universe. Now, of two things, one: Either there is a first force, acting and moving by its own freedom, which; being antecedent to all other forces, not only must be independent of them all, but can alone have produced them all; or else there is in the universe no force which has not some other antecedent to it. This last proposition is easily shown to be an absurdity; for to say that every force has a force antecedent to it, is the same as to say that all forces have another force antecedent to them; in other words, that, over and above all things of a given class, there is another thing of that class. Can there be more than the whole? Can there be another thing of a certain kind, beyond all things of that kind? Besides every force, is there yet another force? If any one is here who would say so, I wait to hear him."

"Then remark the conclusion," pursued Dionysius. "It is a self-contradiction to contend that there can be one thing more of a class than all things of that class; therefore there is not, and cannot be, a force antecedent to every force in the universe; therefore there is, and must be, in the universe, a force which is the first force, a force which has not and could not have any other antecedent to it. Now this force, being the first, could be controlled by no other; by its action every other must have been produced, and under its control every other must lie."

"Do not you contradict yourself?" inquired Afer; "you show there cannot be a force antecedent to all forces, and still you conclude that there is."

"There cannot," said Dionysius, "be a force antecedent to all forces, because this would be one more of a class beyond all of a class. But there may be the first of the class, before which no other was; and this is what I have demonstrated to exist. That first force is antecedent, not to all, but to all others; there you stop; there is none antecedent to Him. As he is the first force, all things must have come from him. He made and built this universe; it is his imperial palace. You have asked me to prove that one eternal and omnipotent God lives. I have now given you an argument which I am by no means afraid, in this, or any other assembly, to call a demonstration. And it is but one out of a great many."

A low murmur of spontaneous plaudits and frank assent ran round that luxurious, but highly cultivated, appreciative, and brilliant company; and one voice a little too loud was heard exclaiming,

All eyes turned in one direction, and Paulus, whose feelings of admiration and sympathy had thus betrayed him, blushed scarlet as he withdrew behind the stately form of Germanicus, who looked round at him smiling, half in amusement, half in kindness.

"How strangely must that stupendous Being," said Strabo, the geographer, "deem of a world which has come so completely to forget and ignore him!"

"Your reasoning," resumed Augustus, "differs much, as you said it would, from Plato's. Plato is too subtle for our Roman taste."

"So is he," said Dionysius, "too subtle, and, I think, too hesitating, for the taste of most men everywhere. I admire his genius, but I disclaim many of his theories, and am not a disciple of his school."

"I am dissatisfied with every[745] school," replied the future convert of St. Paul, blushing. "But I am quite certain that there is only one God, and that he is eternal and all-perfect.

"What I have said, I have said because I believe it; not in order to play at mental swords with these eloquent and gifted men, whom I honor. There is, if we would look for it, a reflection of this great Being in our minds like that of a star in water; but the water must be undisturbed, or the light wavers and is broken. We see many beings, greater and smaller. Now, who can doubt that, where there are greater and smaller, there must be a greatest? Each one of us is conscious and certain of three things: first, that he himself has not existed from all eternity; secondly, each of us feels that he did not make his own mind; and thirdly, that he could not make another mind. Now, the mind who made ours must be superior to any thing contained in what he thus made; therefore, although we can conceive a being of whose power, knowledge, and perfection we discern no possible limit, this very conception must be inferior to its object. There must exist outside of our mind some being greater still than the greatest of which we can form any intellectual idea, however boundless. The lead fused in a mould cannot be greater in its outlines than the mould which presents the form. Again, no person will contend that the sublime and the absurd are one and the same thing—that the terms are convertible. But yet, if an absolutely perfect and sovereign being did not exist, the conception which we form of such a being, instead of constituting the highest heaven of sublimity to which our thoughts can soar, would constitute the lowest depth of absurdity into which they could sink."

"Do you, then," said Afer, with a subtle smile, "introduce to us the novel doctrine, that whatever is sublime must therefore be true?"

"If I said yes," replied Dionysius, "and I am not a little tempted, you would succeed in drawing me aside into a very long and darkling road. But I have advanced nothing to that effect. My inference depended not on assuming that every thing which is sublime must be true, but on the supposition that nothing which is absurd could be sublime."

"Quite so," remarked Haterius; "and was there not another inference dormant in what you said?"

"There was," said Dionysius; "but it looks like subtilizing to wake it and give it wings; and, as I am a Greek, I fear—I—in short, I have tried to confine myself to the plainest and broadest reasonings."

"Fear not," said Germanicus; "learned Greece, you know, has conquered her fierce vanquishers."

Tiberius gnawed his under-lip; and the Lady Plancina, glancing at him and then at her husband Cneius Piso, who was listening attentive but ill at ease, exclaimed,

Germanicus threw back his head, smiled, and remarked, "To-morrow the legions are going forth to try against the Germans whether the Roman heart beats as of old; what was the further inference, Athenian?"

"Since there must," said Dion, "where greater and smaller beings exist, be a greatest, we can all try to form some conception of him. Now, this conception must fall short of his real greatness. Why? Because as I have demonstrated that this being is the first force, from which all others in the universe, including our minds, must have come, no idea contained in our minds can be greater than the very power which made those minds themselves. But, apart from this demonstration,[746] every one of us can say, a being may exist so great as to be incapable of non-existence. Such a being is conceivable; it is his non-existence which then, by the very supposition, is inconceivable. Now, if there be something the non-existence of which would be inconceivable, while of the being himself you possess a notion, thinking of him as, for example, and terming him, the first force, eternal, boundless—giver of all, recipient of naught—the certainty of his existence is established already for the heart; for that faculty which precedes demonstration in accepting truth—for remember I have shown, and I have proved, that we are so made as to be compelled to believe far more than any of us can ever demonstrate."

"This, then," said Augustus, "is the dim image of which you spoke; the reflection of the star in water?"

"Yes, emperor," replied Dionysius; "but not always dim; the deepest and the purest of all the lights which that water reflects. Often it reflects no image, however; and often it reflects but clouds and storms. To say you truly conceive a thing, is to say you are certain of it in the way you conceive it. If you conceive any thing to be certain, you possess the certainty of it. You may be certain that a thing is uncertain; in other words, you have arrived at a clear notion of its uncertainty. To conceive the contingency of an object, is to possess the positive idea that it is contingent. To conceive a necessary being, is to have the clear idea not simply that he is, but that he must be. He could not be conceived at all, he could not even be an object of thought, as both necessary and non-existent. All conceivable objects, except one, are conceived as either possible or actual. But that one alone is conceived as necessary, and, therefore, necessarily actual. Either a necessary being is not conceivable—and which of us, I should like to know, cannot sit down and indulge in the conception?—or, if he be so much as conceivable, then his reign is recognized, because far more than his existence is involved—I mean the impossibility of his non-existence."

"Are all the dreams," said Domitius Afer, "of a poet's imagination truths because they are conceptions?"

A few moments of silence followed, and Paulus Æmilius looked at his friend with an expression of terror which he had not exhibited in his own contest with the Sejan horse.

"When the poet," replied Dionysius, "imagines what might have been, he believes it might have been, and asks you to believe no more; but he would be shocked if you believed less; would be shocked if you told him he was depicting not that which had not been, for this he cheerfully professes, but that which could not ever be supposed. What I say here," added the Athenian, "belongs to a different and somewhat higher plane of thought. The impossibility to suppose non-existent an infinitely perfect being, who, on the other hand, is himself found not impossible to suppose, ought to bring home to the heart the fact that he lives. To be able, in the first place, to conceive him existing, and straightway thereafter to feel an utter inability to form even the conception of his non-existence, because it is only as the necessary being and first force that we can think of him at all, are a handwriting upon the porch of every human soul. He lives, I say it rejoicing, an eternal, necessary, and personal reality; the very conception of him would be an impossibility if his existence were not a fact; yes, and far more than a fact, a primeval truth and a primordial necessity."

As the Athenian thus spoke in a[747] clear and firm voice, which seemed to grow more musical the more it was raised and exerted, Augustus stood up and paced to and fro a few steps on the gravel walk of the impluvium, with his hands behind him and his eyes cast down. All who had been sitting rose at the same time, except Livia, Julia, Antonia, and the two Agrippinas.

"This," whispered Tiberius in Afer's ear, "is not much like failure, or derision, or disgrace for the Greek."

"My predecessor, Julius Cæsar," said Augustus at length, looking round as he stood still, "was the best astronomer and mathematician of his age—we have his calendar now to record it; the best engineer of his age—look at his bridge over the Rhine; the best orator, except one, to whom Rome perhaps ever listened; a most charming talker and companion on any subject; a very great and simple writer; as great a general probably as ever lived; a consummate politician; a keen, wary, swift, yet profound thinker at all times; a man whose intellect was one vast sphere of light; and yet I remember well in what anxiety and curiosity he lived respecting the power which governs the universe, and with what minute and even frivolous precautions he was forever trying to propitiate a good award for his various undertakings; how he muttered charms, whether he was ascending his chariot or descending, or mounting his horse or dismounting—in short, at every turn. Evidently it is not the brightest intellects, or the most perfectly educated, which are the most disposed to scout and scorn such ideas as we have just heard from Dionysius; it is precisely they who are prepared to ponder them the most."

"Julius Cæsar," said Tiberius, "thought, I suspect, pretty much as a great many others do, that this is a very dark, difficult subject; and that we cannot expect to come to any certain conclusions."

"Not to many conclusions," said Dionysius; "that much I fully grant. But two or three broad and general truths are attainable by means of reasonings as close, secure, and irresistible as any in geometry. One such proof—and pray do not forget that I said it was only one out of many—making clear the fact that a single eternal God reigns over all things, I have laid before Augustus and this company already. My last remarks, however, were not disputations, but were only intended to show how those conceptions—to tear which from the mind would be to tear the heat from fire and the rays from light—tend exactly to that conclusion which I had first established by a rigorous demonstration."

"Would not some call your inference from those conceptions themselves a demonstration also?" asked Germanicus.

"I think," replied the Athenian, "that all would so call it if we had but time to examine it thoroughly. There are three other complete lines of argument, however, each of them as interesting as a poem; but so abstruse that I will not travel along them. I will merely show the gates which open into these three ascents of the glorious mountain. It could, then, be demonstrated, first, that all things are objects of mind or of knowledge, somewhere; secondly, that all things undergo some action, or are objects of power, somewhere; thirdly, that all things are loved and cared for somewhere; and this as forming one whole work or production that is, in their relations with each other. Now, the knowledge, the power, and the love (or care) in question can belong only to that first force of whom I speak; and I distinctly affirm, Augustus,[748] that I believe I should be quite able, not to prove by probable reasons merely, but to demonstrate positively and absolutely, the existence of one omnipotent God, by three distinct arguments, starting from the three points I have here mentioned. Yet I pass by those golden gates with a wistful glance at them, and no more."

"It is the horn gates, you know," said Labio, smiling, "which open to the true dreams."

"Ah! poor Virgil!" said Augustus, first with a smile, and then with a long, heart-felt sigh. "I wish he could have heard you, my Athenian."

"The natures of things," said the Athenian, "and the number of individuals are known and counted somewhere; the attraction of physical things is weighed in a balance somewhere, and all things are maintained in their order by limits, and protected in their relations by a measured mark, somewhere. But as I have forbidden myself this vast and difficult field, I will turn elsewhere."

"Before you turn elsewhere," exclaimed Antistius Labio, "I would fain test by a single question the soundness of the principle from which you will draw no deductions; you say all things undergo some action. Does not this imply the actual presence of some force in or upon all things?"

"The force of cohesion," replied the Athenian; "and, moreover, the force of weight, which I take to be only the same force with wider intervals ordained for its operation."

A dead pause of an instant or two followed, and was broken by Herod Agrippa, who was a person bad indeed and odious, but of great acuteness and natural abilities, exclaiming "The Athenian reminds me of the number, weight, and measure of our holy books."

"You mentioned," observed Augustus, after musing a few seconds, "that the demonstration you gave us a while ago of a single eternal God was only one out of many. I do not want many more, nor several more; but one more, might gluttony ask of hospitality? We roam the halls of a great intellectual fortress and mental palace to-night, superior to the palace of the Mamurras."

"Has it such an impluvium, Augustus?" chuckled the old knight, caressing his white moustache.

"The impluvium," said Dionysius, "is that part of the palace where the light of heaven falls. But the palace, Augustus, I take to be the sublime theme; my poor mind is only its beggarly porter and ostiarius. Suppose, then, there were only two beings in all the universe, one more excellent than the other, which of them would have preceded the other?"

"If the inferior be the senior," pursued the Greek, "by so much as the superior afterward came to excel him, by so much that superior must have obtained his perfections from nothing whatever, from blank nonentity; because the inferior, by the very supposition, (ex hypothesi,) had them not to bestow."

"You speak justly, Augustus," said the Athenian. "Therefore the less perfect could never exist, if the more perfect had not first existed. The existence, then, of imperfect beings proves the prior existence of one all-perfect being, self-dependent, from[749] whom the endowments of the others must unquestionably have been derived."

"Growth is feeding," answered Dion; "growth is accretion, assimilation, condensation in one form of many scattered elements. Growth is possible, first, if we have a seed, that is, an organism capable, when fed, of filling out proportions defined beforehand; and, secondly, if we have the food by which it is sustained. But who defines the proportions? Who ordained the form? Who formed the seed? Who supplies the air, the light, the food? Would a seed grow of its own energy if not sown in fostering earth, or placed in fostering air and light—in short, if not fed by the proper natural juices? Would it grow if starved of air, earth, light—thrown back upon its sole self? Is not growth necessarily stimulated from without?"

"Growth is a complicated and manifold operation," said Augustus, "implying evidently a whole world previously set systematically in motion."

"Then that plant, at least, never came from a seed," said Dionysius. "Whence came it?"

"No," said Dionysius; "whatever the power which traced out beforehand the limits and proportions which the seed, by growing or feeding, is to fill; whatever the power which surrounds that seed, or other organism, with the manifold conditions for its development, that power must be something more perfect and excellent than the elements which it thus dispenses and controls; and the existence of these less perfect things would have been impossible, had not the other existed first. Thus, ascending the scale of beings, from the less to the more excellent, the simple fact that each exists, proves that a being superior to it must somewhere else be found, and that the superior was in existence first; until we reach that self-existent, all-perfect, eternal being whose life accounts for a universe which his power governs, and which without him would have been an impossibility.

"Without him imperfect things could never have obtained existence, and could not keep it for an instant; and without recognizing him they cannot be explained. This, Augustus, is the second demonstration for which you have asked me. I have just touched, in passing, the porches which led to three others. A sixth could be derived from the nature of free force. No force is real which is not free. The force of a ball flung through the air, is really the force of something else, not of the ball; a hand imparted it; that hand was moved by the mind. In the mind at last, and there alone, the force becomes real, because there alone it is free. All the forces of nature could be shown to be thus communicated, or derivative; and the question, where do they originate? would ultimately bring us to some mind, some intelligence. That intelligence is God."

"Could not all the forces of the[750] universe be blind and mechanical?" said Afer.

"If not free," persisted the Greek, "they are compulsory; if compulsory, who compels them? I say, God. You would have to say, nothing; which is very like having nothing to say."

A clamor of merriment followed this, and Dionysius had to wait until it subsided.

"I am only showing," he resumed, "where and how the proof could be found. A seventh demonstration can be derived from the moral law. To deny God, or to misdescribe him, would necessitate the denial of any difference between good and evil, between virtue and vice. It would be a little long, but very easy to establish this; far easier than it was to make intelligible the two proofs which I have already submitted to you. I have said enough, however. This brilliant assemblage perceives that the belief in one sovereign and omnipotent mind is not a vain reverie for which nothing substantial can be advanced; but a truth demonstrable, which neither human wit nor human wisdom can shake from its everlasting foundations."

"I wonder," said Strabo, "whether this being, of whose knowledge and power there are no limits, is also mild and compassionate."

"Pray favor me with your attention for a few moments. Love draws nigh to its object; hatred draws away from its object, which it never approaches except in order to destroy it. But the non-existent cannot be destroyed; therefore the non-existent never could draw hatred toward it. Hatred would say, those things are non-existent which I should hate, and which I would destroy if they existed; therefore let them continue non-existent. But this sovereign being is antecedent to all things; in his mind alone could they have had any existence before he created them. If, then, he drew near them, so to speak, approached them, called them out of nothing into his own palace, the palace of being, love alone could have led him. Therefore, by the most rigorous reasoning, it is evident that creation is inexplicable except as an act of love. It is more an act of love than even preservation and protection. This omnipotent being, then, must be love in perpetual action; love in universal action, boundless and everlasting love."

"This sublime being," pursued Dionysius, "is, and cannot but be, an infinite mind; he is boundless knowledge, boundless power, and boundless goodness. The mere continuance from day to day of this universe—"

"Why, were the most beneficent human being that ever lived," exclaimed he, "able by a word to cast the universe into destruction; were it in his power to say, at any moment of wrath or disappointment, that the sun should not rise on the morrow, mankind would fall into a chronic frensy of terror."

"If," cried a shrill voice—that of the child Caligula—"if the sun shines and one cannot see, it is no use! I know what I would do with the sun to-morrow morning, unless I recover the use of my eyes."

"I'd blow it out!" cried the dear boy, tearing off his bandage, stamping his feet, and turning toward his interrogator a face neither beautiful in feature nor mild in expression.

Augustus turned, after a short, brooding look at Caligula, to Haterius, and said,

"He has presented them like rocks of adamant," responded Haterius. "Dionysius has convinced me perfectly that the universe has been produced and is governed by the great being of whom he has so earnestly and so luminously spoken."

"Yet one word with you, young philosopher," said Antistius Labio, sending a glance all round the circle, and finally contemplating intently the broad, candid brow and kindly blue eyes of the Athenian; "one word! You remarked that you could prove all things to be cared for and loved somewhere. You afterward mentioned that the care or love in question could be exercised by none save the stupendous king-spirit whose existence, I confess, you almost persuade me to believe. But now solve me a difficulty. You have alluded to the moral law. You maintain, although this has not been a subject of our debate to-night, the immortality of our souls. Finally—none can forget it—you hinted that there could be no morality, no difference between right and wrong, virtue and vice, were there not one sovereign God. Does this mean, or does it not, that morality is that which pleases his eternal and therefore unchanging views?"

"Ah!" said Dionysius, "I perceive your drift. You land me amid real enigmas. But go on; I answer honestly—Yes."

"Then," pursued Labio, "if the ghost within us be immortal, it will be happy after death, provided it shall have pleased this being, and miserable should it have offended him."

"Now, Augustus," persisted Labio, "what would you think of the justice of a monarch who proclaimed rewards for conforming with his will, and punishments for thwarting it, but at the same time would not make it known what his will was, nor afford any protection to those who might be desirous of giving it effect?

"Can Dionysius of Athens or any body else tell us what are the special desires of this great being in our regard? Does he imagine that unlettered, mechanical, toiling men have either understandings or the leisure to arrive at the conclusions which his own splendid intellect has attained? Then why is there not some authoritative teacher sent down among men from heaven?"

"I speak roughly and plainly. I transfix him with his own principles. He is too honest not to feel the force of what I say. He cannot reply. Mark next: we live but a short while in this world; and if we be immortal, our state here is downright contemptible in importance compared with that which has to come; and yet he tells us that this contemptible point of time, this mere dot of existence, is to determine our lot for everlasting ages, and he that says this proclaims the being whose existence he certainly has demonstrated to be the very principle of love itself. Yet this being who will establish our destinies according as we please him, tells us not how to do it."

"Would not one imagine," said Strabo, "that the most particular instructions would be given to us how to regulate a conduct upon which so much depends?"

"Yes," observed Labio; "and not instructions alone, but instructors, to whom occasional reference would be always possible."

"You only echo thoughts long familiar to my mind. I cannot answer; I am not capable of solving these difficulties. Time is not completed. I think, like the Sibyls, that some special light is yet to come down from heaven."

Half an hour afterward, Dionysius, who had begged to be excused for that night from entering upon the second of the two doctrines which he had been challenged to sustain, was walking part of the way with Paulus toward the Inn of the Hundredth Milestone, along the fretwork of light which was shed upon the Appian Road by the moon and stars through the leaves of the chestnut-trees.

"I feel confident, Paulus," said he, "that Augustus will restore your family estates; and should you accept the liberal offer of Germanicus Cæsar, and depart upon this German expedition to-morrow morning, I will watch your interests while you are absent."

"I know it well, generous friend," replied the other youth; "and I do hope my mother will not object to my going. Only think, I may come back a military tribune! Only think!"

"Yes," said Dion, "and enter that great castle which glitters yonder in the moonlight as proprietor."

"That is an engagement," said the Athenian, "provided some day you will all pay me a return visit at Athens."

Thus they parted on the moonlit road, Dionysius returning to Formiæ, and Paulus walking onward with long, rapid strides.

OUR LADY OF LOURDES.

PART I.
INTRODUCTION.

The full and complete history of the remarkable apparition of Lourdes is now, for the first time, presented to the English-speaking Catholic public. Mr. Lawlor has given an abridgment of M. Lasserre's narrative, with some interesting additions from other sources, in his charming volume, Pilgrimages in the Pyrenees and Landes. A short sketch of the history of the events at Lourdes has also been given in the Irish Ecclesiastical Record, of Dublin. In this country the Ave Maria is now engaged in republishing Mr. Lawlor's sketch of the history. We trust our readers will thank us for placing before[753] them the full and authentic history of M. Lasserre, a work which has received the favorable notice of the most competent judges, and has been honored by a brief of felicitation from the Holy Father. The author, who was himself one of the subjects of the miraculous efficacy of the water of the fountain of Lourdes, has spared no pains to make his work perfectly satisfactory. The evidence, which he has collected and arranged with consummate care and skill, leaves nothing to be desired in respect to the proof of the reality and the supernatural character of the events related. The charm of his style, the subtle and powerful irony which he employs with so much effect against the sceptics who deny the possibility of any sort of supernatural incidents, and the vivacity of his descriptions, make his work extremely pleasant and profitable reading. Our devout Catholic readers will find great delight in perusing M. Lasserre's narrative; and others, although they may receive it with a smile of incredulity, and perhaps favor us with a few witticisms in respect to its contents, will find it to be, as the French sceptics have found it, a very tough subject for any thing like serious and reasonable refutation.—Editor of The Catholic World.

The little town of Lourdes is situated in the department of the Upper Pyrenees, at the entrance to the seven vales of Lavedan, and between the low hills that sink into the plain of Tarbes and the steeper ranges which grow into the Grande Montagne. Its houses, built irregularly on a natural terrace, are grouped, in almost absolute disorder, around the base of a rocky spur, on the summit of which the formidable castle sits like an eyrie. Along the base of the cliff, on the side opposite the town, the Gave dashes boisterously through groves of alder, ash, and poplar, and, pausing at numerous dykes, turns the equally sonorous machinery of several mills. The hum of the driving-wheels and the jar of the rattling stones mingle with the music of the winds and the splash of the rushing water.

The Gave is formed by several torrents from the upper valleys, which spring from the glaciers, whose spotless snow covers the barren sides of the Haute Montagne. The principal tributary comes from the cascade of Gavarnie, which falls from one of those peaks never scaled by man. Leaving on its right the town, the castle, and, with one exception, all the mills of Lourdes, the Gave hastens toward Pau, which it passes with all speed, to throw itself into the Adour, and thence into the sea.

In the neighborhood of Lourdes, the country which skirts the Gave is by turns wild and savage, and fair and smiling. Blooming meadows, cultivated fields, woodland, and barren cliffs are alternately presented to the gaze. Here are fertile plains and smiling landscapes, the highway of Pau, never without its wagons, horsemen, and pedestrian travellers; yonder, the giant mountains and their awful solitudes.

The castle of Lourdes, almost impregnable before the invention of artillery, was formerly the key of the Pyrenees. Tradition says that Charlemagne, warring with the infidels, was unable to carry this stronghold. Scarcely had he determined to raise the siege, when an eagle seated itself on the highest tower of the citadel, and let fall a large fish which it had caught up from some neighboring lake. Either because it happened on the day when the holy church prescribes abstinence from flesh-meat, or because the fish was at that time the[754] popular symbol of Christianity, the infidel commander, Mirat, saw in this fact a prodigy, and, demanding instruction, was converted to the true faith. This conversion was all that was necessary to bring his castle into the hands of Christendom. Nevertheless, the Saracen stipulated, as says the chronicler, "that in becoming the knight of Our Lady, the Mother of God, his lands, both for himself and his descendants, should be free from every worldly fief, and should belong to her alone."

The arms of the town still bear, in testimony of this extraordinary fact, the eagle and the fish. Lourdes carries, on a red field, three golden towers, pointed with sable, on a silver rock; the middle tower is higher than the others, and is surmounted by a black spread eagle, limbed with gold, holding in his beak a silver trout.

During the middle ages, the castle of Lourdes was an object of terror to the surrounding country. At one time in the name of the English, at another in that of the Counts of Bigorre, it was occupied by robber chieftains, who cared for little besides themselves, and who plundered the inhabitants of the plain for forty or fifty leagues around. They even had the audacity, it is said, to seize goods and men at the very gates of Montpellier, and then to retreat, like birds of prey, to their inaccessible abode.

In the eighteenth century, the castle of Lourdes became a state-prison. It was the Bastille of the Pyrenees. The revolution opened the gates of this prison to three or four persons, confined there by the arbitrary command of despotism, and in return peopled it with several hundred criminals of quite another description. A contemporary writer has copied from the jailer's record the offences for which the prisoners had been immured. Besides the name of each prisoner, the specifications of the crime are thus formulated: "Unpatriotic.—Refusing to give the kiss of peace to citizen N—— before the altar of our country.—Busybody.—Drunkard.—Indifferent about the revolution.—Hypocritical character, reserved in his opinions.—Lying character.—A peace-loving miser.—Indifferent toward the revolution," etc., etc.[287]

We may thus see what reason the revolution had to complain of the arbitrary conduct of kings, and also how it changed the frightful despotism of the monarchy into a reign of peace, toleration, and perfect liberty.

The empire still retained the fortress of Lourdes as a state-prison, and this character it kept until the return of the Bourbons. After the restoration, the terrible castle of the middle ages naturally became a place of less importance, garrisoned by a company of infantry.

II.

The tower still remains the key of the Pyrenees, but in a very different way from what it was formerly. Lourdes is at the junction of the roads to the various watering-places. In going to Barèges, to Saint-Sauveur, to Cauterets, to Bagnères-de-Bigorre, or from Cauterets or Pau to Luchon, in any case, one must pass through Lourdes. During the fashionable season, countless diligences, employed in the service of the baths, stop at the Hotel de la Poste. Generally they allow the travellers sufficient time to dine, to visit the castle, and to admire the country, before passing on.

Thus from the constant visits of bathers and tourists from all parts of Europe, this little town has been brought to quite an advanced state of civilization.

In 1858, the earliest date of our story, the Parisian journals were regularly received at Lourdes. The Revue des Deux-Mondes counted there many subscribers. The inns and cafés presented their guests with three numbers of the Siècle, that of the latest date and the two preceding ones. The bourgeoisie and clergy divided their patronage between the Journal des Débats, the Presse, Moniteur, Univers and Union.

Lourdes had a club, a printing-house, and a journal. The sous préfet was at Argelès; but the sorrow which the inhabitants of Lourdes showed for the absence of this functionary was tempered by the joy of possessing the Tribunal de première instance, that is, three judges, a president, a procureur impérial, and a deputy. Around this brilliant centre revolved as inferior satellites, a justice of the peace, a commissary of police, six constables, and seven gendarmes, one of whom was invested with the rank of corporal. Inside of the town we find a hospital and a prison; and circumstances sometimes come to pass, as we shall have occasion to state, in which independent spirits, nourished with the sound and humane doctrines of the Siècle, think that criminals should be put into the hospital and the sick into the jail. But these gentlemen of such extraordinary reasoning powers are not in exclusive possession at the bar of Lourdes and in the medical profession; men of great learning and high distinction are to be met—remarkable minds and impartial observers of facts—such as are not always to be found in more important cities.

Mountaineers are generally endowed with strong and practical good sense; and the people of this neighborhood, almost unmixed with foreign blood, excel in this respect. Scarcely one place in France could be cited where the schools are better attended than at Lourdes. There is hardly a boy who does not for several years go to lay-teachers or to the institution of the "Brothers;" hardly a little girl who does not complete the course of instruction at the school of the Sisters of Nevers. Far better taught than the mechanics of most of our cities, the people of Lourdes still preserve the simplicity of rural life. They have warm veins and southern heads, but upright hearts and a perfect morality. They are honest, religious, and not over-inclined to novelties.

Certain local institutions, dating back to forgotten times, contribute toward maintaining this happy state of things. The people of these regions, long before the pretended discoveries of modern progress, had learned and practised, under the shadow of the church, those ideas of union and prudence which have given rise to our mutual aid societies. Such associations have for centuries existed and worked at Lourdes. They date from the middle ages; they have survived the revolution, and philanthropists would long since have made them famous, if they had not drawn their vitality from religion, and if they were not called to-day, as in the fifteenth century, "confraternities."

On the death of a laborer the association pays the funeral expenses and accompanies the body to its resting-place.

The women are likewise divided Into similar religious associations. One of them, "the Congregation of Children of Mary," has a special character. It is also a society for mutual aid and encouragement, but in relation to spiritual things. To enter this congregation, although it is merely an association of persons living in the secular state, and not a religious society, a young person must give evidence that she possesses a well-tried steadiness of character. The young girls look forward to it for a long time before they reach the proper age for admission. The members of the congregation are bound never to put themselves in danger by frequenting worldly festivities where the religious spirit is lost, nor to adopt eccentric fashions, but to be exact in attending the meetings and instructions on Sunday. It is an honor to belong to this association, a disgrace to be excluded from it. And the amount of good which it has done in maintaining public morality and preparing good mothers of families, is truly incalculable. In many dioceses, confraternities have been founded on the same plan and after this model.

This part of the country has ever shown great devotion to the Blessed Virgin. Her sanctuaries are numerous throughout the Pyrenees from Piétat or Garaison to Bétharram. All the altars of the church of Lourdes have been dedicated under the invocation of the Mother of God.

III.

The railway did not pass through it; indeed, no one then dreamed that it ever would. A much more direct route seemed to be marked out in advance for the line through the Pyrenees.

The entire town and fortress are situated, as we have said, on the right bank of the Gave, which, prevented from going north by the rocky foundation of the castle, turns at a right angle to the west. An old bridge, built at some distance above the first houses communicates with the plains, meadows, forests, and mountains of the left bank.

On this side of the stream, below the bridge, and nearly opposite the castle, an aqueduct conducts much of the water of the Gave into a large canal. The latter rejoins the main stream at the distance of one kilometre below, after having passed along the base of the cliffs of Massabielle. The long island thus formed by the Gave and by the canal is a large and fertile meadow. In the neighborhood it is called l'Ile du Châlet, or more briefly, le Châlet. The mill of Sâvy is the only one on the left bank, and is built across the canal, thus serving as a bridge. This mill and le Châlet belong to a citizen of Lourdes, M. de Laffite. In 1858, as wild a place as could be found in the neighborhood of the thriving little town, which we have described, was at the foot of these cliffs of Massabielle, where the mill-race rejoins the Gave. A few paces from the junction, on the banks of the river, the steep rock is pierced at its base by three irregular excavations, fantastically arranged, and communicating[757] like the pores of a huge sponge. The singularity of these excavations renders them difficult to be described. The first and largest is on a level with the ground. It resembles a trader's booth, or a kiln roughly built, and cut vertically in two, thus forming a half dome. The entrance, formed into a distorted arch, is about four metres in height. The breadth of the grotto, a little less than its depth, is from twelve to fifteen metres. From this entrance the rocky roof lowers and narrows on the right and left.

Above and to the right of the spectator, are found two openings in the rock, which seem like adjoining caves. Seen from without, the principal one of these openings has an oval form, and is about the size of an ordinary house window or niche in a church wall. It pierces the rock above, and at a depth of two metres divides, descending on one side to the interior of the grotto and ascending on the other toward the outside of the rock, where its orifice forms the second cave of which we have spoken, which is of use to let in light upon the others. An eglantine growing from a cleft in the rock extends its long branches around the base of this orifice, in the form of a niche. At the foot of this system of caves, so easy to comprehend to one who looks upon it, but complicated enough for one who tries to give merely a word-sketch, the water of the canal rushes over a chaos of enormous stones to meet the Gave, a few steps farther on. The grotto, then, is close by the lower point of the Ile du Châlet, formed, as we have said, by the Gave and the canal. The caverns are called the Grotte de Massabielle, from the cliffs in which they are situated. "Massabielle" signifies in the patois of the place, "old cliffs." On the river banks, below, a steep and uncultivated slope, belonging to the commune, extends for some distance. Here the swineherds of Lourdes frequently bring their animals to feed. When a storm arises, these poor people shelter themselves in the grotto, as do likewise a few fishermen who cast their lines in the Gave. Like other caves of this kind, the rock is dry in ordinary weather, and slightly damp in times of rain. But this dampness and dripping of the rainy season can be noticed only on the right side of the entrance. This is the side on which the storms always beat, driven by the west wind; and the phenomena here take place which can be noticed on the honey-combed walls of stone houses, similarly exposed, and built with bad mortar. The left side and floor, however, are always as dry as the walls of a parlor. The accidental dampness of the west side even sets off the dryness of the other parts of the grotto.

Above this triple cavern the cliffs of Massabielle rise almost into peaks, draped with masses of ivy and boxwood, and folds of heather and moss. Tangled briers, hazel shoots, eglantines, and a few trees, whose branches the winds often break, have struck root in clefts of the rock, wherever the crumbling mountain has produced or the wings of the storm have borne a few handfuls of soil. The eternal Sower, whose invisible hand fills with stars and planets the immensity of space, who has drawn from nothing the ground which we tread, and its plants and animals, the Creator of the millions of men who people the earth, and the myriads of angels who dwell in heaven, this God, whose wealth and power know no bounds, takes care that no atom shall be lost in the vast regions of his handiwork. He leaves barren no spot which is capable of producing any thing. Throughout the extent of our[758] globe, countless germs float in the air, covering the earth with verdure, where there seemed before no chance of life for even a single herb, or tuft of moss. Thus, O Divine Sower! thy graces, like invisible but fruitful motes, float about and rest upon our souls. And, if we are barren, it is because we present hearts harder and more arid than the rocky and the beaten highway, or covered with tangled thorns that prevent the up-growing of thy heavenly seed.

IV.

It was requisite to the ensuing narrative to describe first the scene where its events took place. But it is of no less importance to point out in advance that profound moral truth, which is the starting-point from which this history begins, in the course of which, as we shall see, God manifested his power in a visible manner. These reflections will, moreover, delay only for an instant the commencement of our narrative.

Every one has noticed the striking contrasts presented by the various conditions of men who live on this earth, where wicked and good, rich and needy, are mingled together, and where a thin wall often separates the hovel from the palace. On one side are all the pleasures of life, softly arranged in the midst of rare delicacies, comfort, and the elegance of luxury; on the other, the horrors of want, cold, hunger, sickness, and all the sad train of human woes. For the former, adulation, joyous visits, charming friendships. For the latter, indifference, loneliness, and neglect. Whether it fears the importunity of his spoken or his mute appeals, or shrinks from the rebuke of his wretched nakedness, the world avoids the poor man, and makes its arrangements without regard to him. The rich form an exclusive circle, which they call "good society," and they regard as unworthy of serious attention the existence of those secondary but "indispensable" beings. When they hire the services of one of the latter—even when they are good people and accustomed to succor the needy—it is always in a patronizing way. They never use, in this case, the language and tone which they apply to one of their own kind. Except a few rare Christians, no one treats the poor man as an equal and a brother. Except the saint—alas! too rare in these days—who follows out the idea of looking upon the wretched as representing Christ! In the world, properly so called, the vast world, the poor are absolutely forsaken. Weighed down beneath the burden of toil and care, despised and abandoned, does it not seem as if they were cursed by their Maker? And, yet, it is just the contrary; they are the best beloved of the Father. While the world has been pronounced accursed by the infallible word of Christ, on the other hand, the poor, the suffering, the humble, are God's "good society." "Ye are my friends," he has said to them in his Gospel. He has done more; he has identified himself with them. "What you have done to the least of these, you have done also to me."

Moreover, when the Son of God came upon the earth, he chose to be born, and to live and die, among the poor, and to be a poor man. From the poor he selected his apostles and his principal disciples, the first-born of his church. And, in the long history of that same church, it is upon the poor that he lavishes his greatest spiritual favors. In every age, and with few exceptions, apparitions, visions, and particular revelations have been the privilege of those whom the world disdains. When, in his wisdom, God sees fit to manifest himself sensibly[759] to men, by these mysterious phenomena, he descends into the dwellings of his servants and particular friends. And mark why he prefers the houses of the poor and humble. Two thousand years have only served to verify that saying of the apostle, "The weak things of the world hath God chosen, that he may confound the strong." (1 Cor. i. 27.)

The facts which we are about to state will perhaps furnish further proof of this truth.

In 1858, the eleventh of February opened the week of profane rejoicing which from time immemorial has preceded the austerities of Lent. It was the Jeudi-Gras, or Thursday before Quinquagesima. The weather was cold and slightly overcast, but very calm. The clouds hung motionless in the heavens; there was no breeze abroad; and the atmosphere was perfectly still. At times a few drops of rain fell from the skies. This day is celebrated by special privilege in the diocese of Tarbes as the feast of the illustrious shepherdess of France, St. Genevieve.[288]

Eleven o'clock in the morning had already sounded from the church tower of Lourdes.

While all the neighborhood was preparing for the festivities, one family of poor people who lived as tenants of a miserable dwelling in the Rue des Petits-Fossés, had not even enough wood to cook their scanty dinner. The father, still a young man, was by trade a miller, and had for some time endeavored to run a little mill which he had leased on one of the streamlets that go to make up the Gave. But his business exacted advances, the people being accustomed to have their wheat ground on credit; and the poor miller had been forced to give the mill back to the firm, and his labor, instead of putting him in better circumstances, had only helped to throw him into utter poverty. Waiting for brighter days, he labored—not at his own place, for he had no property, not even a small garden—but at various places belonging to his neighbors, who employed him occasionally as a day laborer. His name was François Soubirous, and he was married to a faithful wife, Louise Castérot, who was a good Christian, and kept up his courage by loving sympathy. They had four children: two daughters, the elder of whom was fourteen years of age; and two boys, still quite young, the smaller being scarcely four years old.

For fifteen days only, had their older daughter, a puny child from infancy, lived with them. This is the little girl who is to play an important part in this narrative, and we have carefully studied all the details and particulars of her life. At the time of her birth, her mother, being ill, was unable to nurse the child, and she was consequently sent to the neighboring village of Bartrès. Here the infant remained after being weaned. Louise Soubirous, having become a mother for the second time, would have been kept at home by the care of two children and hindered from going out to daily service or to the fields, which, however, would not be the case if her care were limited to one. Accordingly the parents left their first-born at Bartrès. They paid for her support, sometimes in money, more often in kind, five francs a month.

When the little girl grew old enough to be useful, and the question arose as to bringing her home, the good peasants who had reared her found themselves attached to her, and, considering[760] her as one of their own, no longer charged her parents any thing, and employed her to tend their sheep. Thus she grew up in her adopted family, passing her days in solitude on the lonely hill-tops, where her humble flock grazed.

Of prayers she knew none except the rosary. Whether her foster-mother had recommended it to her, or whether it was the dictate of her pure and innocent heart, she kept up the hourly practice of reciting this prayer of the simple. Then she amused herself with those natural playthings which kind providence furnishes for the children of the poor, and with which they are more content than their richer cousins with costly toys. She played with the pebbles, piling up miniature castles, with the flowers which she culled on every side, with the water of the brooklet, where she launched and followed great fleets of leaf-boats; besides, she had her pets among the flock. "Of all my lambs," she said, "there is one that I prefer to all the rest." "And which is it?" asked somebody. "The one that I most love is the smallest one." And she delighted in fondling and caressing it. She herself was among children like her own darling in the flock. Although she was already fourteen years old, she seemed no more than eleven or twelve. Without being rendered infirm, she was subject to asthmatic affections, which at times caused her great pain. She bore her ills patiently and accepted her physical sufferings with that resignation which seems so difficult to the rich, but to the needy so very natural.

In this innocent and silent school the poor shepherdess learned that which the world knows not; the simplicity of soul which pleases the heart of God. Far from every impure influence, conversing with the Blessed Virgin Mary, passing her time in crowning her with prayers and telling her chaplet, this little maid preserved that absolute purity and baptismal innocence which the breath of the world so easily tarnishes, even in the best. Such was this childish soul, bright and calm as the unknown lakes which lie hidden among lofty mountains and silently reflect the splendors of heaven. "Blessed are the clean of heart," says the Gospel; "for they shall see God."

These great gifts are concealed treasures, and the humility which possesses them is often unconscious of their presence. The little girl of fourteen years charmed all who happened to approach her, and yet she was entirely unaware of it. She considered herself as the least and most backward of her age. Indeed, she did not know how to read or write. Moreover, she was an entire stranger to the French tongue, and knew only her own poor patois of the Pyrenees. She had never learned the catechism, and in this respect her ignorance was extraordinary. The Our Father, Hail Mary, Apostles' Creed, and Glory be to the Father, which make up the chaplet, constituted the sum of her religious knowledge. Hence it is unnecessary to add that she had not yet made her first communion. It was to prepare her for this, that the Soubirous determined to bring her home, in spite of their poverty, and send her to the catechetical instructions at Lourdes.

She had now been for two weeks under her father's roof. Alarmed by her asthma and her frail appearance, her mother watched over her with particular care. While the other children went barefoot in their sabots, (wooden shoes,) she was provided with stockings; and while her sister and brothers went freely out of doors, she was constantly employed in the house. The child, accustomed to the open air, would very gladly have gone out into it.

The day, then, was Jeudi-Gras, eleven o'clock had struck, and these poor people had no wood to cook their dinner.

"Go, and gather some sticks by the Gave or on the common," said the mother to Marie, her second daughter.

Here, as in many other places, the poor have a sort of customary right to glean the dried branches which the wind blows from the trees in the commune, and to the driftwood which the torrent leaves among the pebbles on its bank.

Marie put on her sabots. The eldest child, of whom we have been speaking, the little shepherdess of Bartrès, looked wistfully at her sister.

"Let me go, too?" she finally asked of her mother. "I will carry my little bundle of sticks."

"No," replied Louise Soubirous, "you have a cough, and you will catch more cold."

A little girl from a neighboring house, named Jeanne Abadie, about fifteen years of age, having come in during this conversation, was likewise preparing to go for wood. All joined in importuning, and the mother allowed herself to be persuaded.

The child at once covered her head with her kerchief, tied on one side, as is the custom among peasants of the south. This did not appear sufficient to her mother.

"Put on your capulet," said the latter. The capulet is a graceful garment worn by the dwellers in the Pyrenees. It is at once a hood and a mantle, made of very stout cloth, sometimes white as fleece, sometimes of a bright scarlet color; it covers the head and falls over the shoulders to the waist. In cold or stormy weather, the women use it to wrap their neck and arms, and, when the garment is too warm, they fold it up in a square and wear it as a cap upon their heads. The capulet of the little shepherdess of Bartrès was white.

VI.

The three children left the town, and crossing the bridge, reached the left bank of the Gave. They passed the mill of M. de Laffite and entered the Chalêt, gathering here and there sticks for their little fagots. They walked down the river's course, the delicate child following at some distance her stronger companions. Less fortunate than they, she had not yet found any thing, and her apron was empty, while her sister and Jeanne had begun to load themselves with twigs and chips.

Clad in a black gown, well worn and patched, her pale countenance inclosed in the fold of the capulet which fell over her shoulders, and her feet protected by a large pair of sabots, she wore an air of grace and rustic innocence which appealed more to the heart than to the senses. She was still quite small for her age. Although her childish features had been touched by the sun, they had not lost their natural delicacy. Her fine black hair scarcely appeared from beneath her kerchief. Her brow, open to the air, was free from any line or wrinkle. Under her arching eyebrows, her eyes of brown, in her softer than blue, had a deep and tranquil beauty whose clearness no evil passion had ever disturbed. Hers was the "single" eye of which the Gospel speaks. Her mouth, wonderfully expressive, revealed the habitual tenderness of her soul and pity for every kind of suffering. Her whole appearance, while it pleased, also possessed that extraordinary power of attraction exerted by lofty minds. And what was it that gave this secret power to a child so poor, so ignorant, clothed in tatters? It was[762] the greatest and rarest of possessions, the majesty of innocence.

We have not yet told her name. She had for her patron a great and holy doctor of the church, whose genius was especially sheltered under the protection of the Mother of God, the author of the Memorare, the illustrious St. Bernard. Following a fashion which has its charms, his great name, given to this humble peasant, had taken a childish and rustic form. The little maid bore a title as gracious and as pretty as herself. She was called Bernadette.

She followed her sister and companion through the fields that belong to the mill, and sought, but vainly, among the grass and shrubbery for some bits of wood to warm their family hearth. So Ruth or Noemi might have appeared, going to glean in the harvest-fields of Booz.

VII.

Straying in this manner, the three little girls reached the lower end of the Châlet opposite the triple cave, the grotto of Massabielle, which we have endeavored to describe. They were separated from it only by the mill-race, which bathes the foot of the cliffs, and whose current is usually very strong. To-day, however, the mill of Sâvy has stopped work, and the small quantity of water which leaks into the aqueduct makes but a slender stream, very easy to wade. The fallen branches of various trees lie thick among the rocks in this lonely and ordinarily inaccessible place. Rejoiced at this discovery, bustling and active as Martha, Jeanne and Marie took off their sabots, and in an instant were across the stream.

It was the month of February, and these mountain torrents, fresh from the glacial snows, are always icy cold.

Bernadette, less alert or less eager, tarrying behind, was still on the nearer side of the stream. It was a more serious undertaking for her to cross. She wore stockings, while Jeanne and Marie had only to take off their sabots, in order to wade. Even before the exclamation of her companions, she feared the cold of the water.

"Throw in a couple of large stones," she cried, "so that I may go over without getting wet."

The two little girls, already engaged in making up a pair of fagots, did not wish to lose time by turning from their task.

Bernadette resigned herself, and, seated on a large stone, began to do as she was bid.

It was about noon; the Angelus was about to sound from all the belfries of the Pyrenees.

VIII.

She was in the act of drawing off her first stocking, when she heard near her a shock like a blast of wind, bursting with irresistible force upon the fields. She thought it was a sudden storm, and instinctively looked behind her. To her great surprise, the poplars which border the Gave were perfectly motionless. Not even the slightest breeze stirred their boughs.

"I must be dreaming," she said, and, still thinking of the noise, she could not believe that she had heard it. She turned again to her stocking. At this instant the impetuous roar of this unknown wind was heard again. Bernadette raised her glance, and uttered, or would have uttered, a loud cry, but it died upon her lips. Her limbs trembled and gave way. Astounded by what she saw, and as if[763] shrinking from it, she fell upon her knees.

A vision of surpassing wonder was before her eyes. The child's story, the countless inquiries to which she has since been subjected by thousands of active and shrewd investigators, have brought out all the details, and enabled us to trace each line of the general appearance of that wonderful being who met at this moment the ravished glance of Bernadette.

IX.

Above the grotto, before which Marie and Jeanne, busily employed and bent toward the ground, were gathering sticks, in the rude niche formed by the rock, surrounded by a heavenly glory, stood a lady of matchless beauty.

The ineffable radiance which floated around her did not hurt the eyes, like the brightness of the sun. On the contrary, this aureole of soft and gentle light irresistibly attracted the glance, which it seemed to relieve and fill with pleasure. It was like the gleam of the morning-star. But there was nothing vague or misty about the apparition. It had not the shifting contour of a fantastic vision; it was a reality, a human body, which to the eye seemed palpable as our own flesh, and which resembled the figure of an ordinary human person in all respects, except that it was surrounded by a luminous halo, and was radiant with celestial beauty. The lady was of medium height. She looked very youthful, like one who had attained her twentieth year, without losing any of the tender delicacy of girlhood, which usually fades so soon. This beauty bore in her countenance the impress of everlasting durability. Moreover, in her features the heavenly lines blended, without disturbing their mutual harmony, the peculiar charms of the four seasons of human life. The innocent candor of the child, the spotless purity of the virgin, the calm tenderness of the loftiest maternity, a wisdom surpassing the lore of centuries, blended together without effacing each other, in this wonderful and youthful countenance. To whom shall we liken her in this sinful world, where the rays of beauty are scattered, broken, or discolored, and seldom reach us without some impure mixture? Every image, every comparison would only abase this unspeakable type. No majesty, no excellence, no simplicity here below could ever give us an idea whereby we might better understand it. It is not with the lamps of earth that we can light up the stars of heaven.

The regularity and ideal beauty of these features surpassed all description. It could only be said that their oval curve was of infinite grace, that the eyes were blue and of a tenderness that sank through the heart of the beholder to its very depths. The lips wore an expression of heavenly goodness and mildness. The brow was like the seat of the highest wisdom; that wisdom which combines universal knowledge with boundless virtue.

Her garments were of an unknown fabric, woven in the mysterious looms which serve to robe the lily of the valley; for they were white as the stainless mountain snows, and yet more splendid than the raiment of Solomon in all his glory. The vesture, long and trailing in chaste folds, revealed her virginal feet, which lightly pressed the broad branch of eglantine, and on each of which blossomed the golden mystical rose.

From her waist a sky-blue cincture, loosely tied, hung, in long bands, to the instep of her foot. Behind, and enveloping in its fulness her arms and shoulders, a white veil descended from her head to the hem of her robes.[764] No ring, no necklace, no diadem or gem; none of those ornaments were there that human vanity loves to parade. A chaplet, whose drops of milky white slid on a golden cord, hung from her hands, fervently clasped together. The beads glided through her fingers. Yet the lips of this Queen of Virgins remained motionless. Instead of reciting the rosary, she was, perhaps, listening to the eternal echo in her own heart of that first Ave! and the deep murmur of invocation ever rising from this earth of ours. Each bead was undoubtedly a shower of heavenly graces that fell upon souls like the liquid diamonds into the chalice of the flower.

She kept silence; but later, her own words and the miraculous facts which we shall have to record, were to attest that she was truly the Immaculate Virgin, the sinless and stainless among women, Mary, the Mother of God.

This wonderful apparition looked upon Bernadette, who, as we have seen, shrinking and speechless, had fallen upon her knees.

The child, in her first movement of fear, had instinctively seized her rosary; and, holding it in her hands, endeavored to make the sign of the cross. But she trembled so violently as to render this impossible. "Fear not," said Jesus to his disciples, when he came walking on the waves of the sea of Tiberias. The look and smile of the Blessed Virgin appeared to say the same thing to this frightened little shepherdess.

With a sweet, grave gesture, which seemed like a benediction to earth and heaven, she, as if to encourage the child, made the sign of the cross. And the hand of Bernadette, raised, as it were, by her hand who is called the Help of Christians, repeated the sacred sign.

The child felt no more fear. Astonished, charmed, scarcely trusting her senses, and wiping her eyes, whose glance was riveted by the heavenly vision, no longer knowing what to think, she humbly recited her rosary: "I believe in God"—"Hail, Mary! full of grace!"

When she had finished saying the last "Glory be to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Ghost," the bright Virgin suddenly disappeared, reëntering that eternal paradise, the dwelling of the Holy Trinity, whence she had come.

Bernadette felt like one who has suddenly fallen from a great height. She stared vacantly around. The Gave still flowed on, moaning over the pebbles and broken rocks; but the noise seemed to her more sorrowful than before; the waters themselves seemed more gloomy, the landscape and sunlight less bright than formerly. In front the cliffs of Massabielle extended, and beneath them her companions were still engaged in collecting the sticks of wood. Above the grotto were still the niche and the arch of eglantine; but nothing unusual appeared there; no trace remained of the celestial visitor. They were no longer the gate of heaven.

The scene which we have just related must have lasted for a quarter of an hour; not that Bernadette was conscious of the lapse of time; but it may be measured by the circumstance that she had been able to recite five decades of the rosary.

Completely restored to herself, Bernadette finished removing her shoes and stockings, and rejoined her companions. Absorbed by what she had seen, she did not dread the cold of the water. All her childish powers[765] were concentrated in recalling the facts of this strange apparition.

Jeanne and Marie had seen her fall upon her knees and betake herself to prayer; but as this, thank God, is not a rare occurrence with these mountaineers, and as they were occupied at their task, they had paid no further attention.

Bernadette was surprised at the perfect calmness which her sister and Jeanne evinced. They had just finished their work and, entering the grotto, began to play as if nothing extraordinary had happened.

They then noticed that she seemed disturbed and agitated. "No," they replied; "have you seen any thing?"

Was it that Bernadette feared to tell what filled her soul, for fear of profanation? Did she wish to enjoy it in silence? Or was she restrained by a bashful timidity? Nevertheless, she did obey that instinct which prompts humble souls to conceal as a treasure the special graces with which God favors them.

The little fagots were bound up. The three children began to retrace the road to Lourdes. But Bernadette could not conceal her trouble. On the way, Marie and Jeanne teased her, to find out what she had seen.

The little shepherdess yielded to their entreaties and their promise of eternal secrecy.

"I saw," she began, "something dressed in white." And she went on to describe her marvellous vision. "This is what I saw," said she in conclusion; "but do not, for the world, say anything about it."

Marie and Jeanne did not doubt a syllable. The soul in its first innocence is naturally believing. Doubt is not the besetting sin of childhood. And even were they disposed to be sceptical, the earnest accents of Bernadette, still agitated and full of what she had seen, would have irresistibly led them to believe. Marie and Jeanne did not doubt, but they were frightened. The children of the poor are naturally timid. Nor is it strange, since sufferings come to them from every side.

"It is, perhaps, something that will do us harm," said they. "Let us never go there again, Bernadette."

Scarcely had the confidants of the little shepherdess reached the house, when the secret fairly boiled over. Marie told it all to her mother. "What is all this stuff, Bernadette, that your sister has been telling me?" The little girl repeated her story. Marie Soubirous shrugged her shoulders.

"You have been deceived, child. It was nothing at all. You thought that you saw something, but you did not. This is all fancy and imagination."

This prohibition wounded Bernadette to the heart. For, ever since the apparition had vanished, she had felt the greatest desire to see it once more.

XI.

Two days, Friday and Saturday, passed. The extraordinary event was continually present to the mind of Bernadette, and became the absorbing topic of conversation with her sister Marie, with Jeanne, and a few other children. Bernadette still bore in her mind the memory of this heavenly[766] vision; and a passion—if one may use a word so profane to designate so pure a sentiment in a heart so innocent and girlish—a burning desire to see again this incomparable lady had taken possession of her soul. This name of "lady" was the one which they naturally used in their rustic language.

Whenever she was asked if this apparition resembled any one celebrated in the place for beauty, she shook her head and said sweetly, "Not at all. This does not give the faintest idea of her. She is of a beauty impossible to express."

She longed to see her once more. The other children were divided between fear and curiosity.

XII.

On Sunday morning, the sun rose brightly; the weather was beautiful. The open winter in the valleys of the Pyrenees frequently has days which equal spring.

On returning from mass, Bernadette begged Marie and Jeanne and two or three other children to insist with her mother and persuade her to take off the prohibition and permit them to return to the cliffs of Massabielle.

Bernadette answered that she was not afraid, for it had such a wonderfully kind face.

"At all events," replied the children, who, better taught than the poor shepherdess of Bartrès, knew something of the catechism—"at all events, we must throw some holy water at it. If it comes from the devil, it will go away. Say to it, 'If you come from God, approach! If you come from the devil, be off!'"

This is not the precise formula for exorcism; but these little theologians of Lourdes could not have reasoned better in this matter, if they had been doctors of the Sorbonne.

It was therefore decided, in this juvenile council, that one of them should carry the holy water. A certain feeling of apprehension had stolen over Bernadette on account of this talk. Nevertheless it only remained to obtain permission.

The children assembled after dinner to ask for it. The mother was still unwilling to remove the prohibition, alleging that the Gave ran close to the cliffs of Massabielle, and that there might be danger; that the hour for vespers was near at hand, and that they ought not to run the risk of being late; and that the whole story was pure childish prattle, etc. But every body knows what a regiment of children can do. All promised to be careful, to be quick, etc., and the matter ended by the mother's yielding.

The little band went to the church, and there prayed for some time. One of Bernadette's companions had provided a small bottle. It was now filled with holy water.

Suddenly the face of Bernadette appeared to be transfigured. Extraordinary emotion was manifested on her features, and her countenance seemed to shine with heavenly light.

With feet resting upon the rock, clad as formerly, the marvellous apparition again stood before her.

Alas! the vision of the other children was not miraculously cleared from the film which hides glorified bodies from our sight. The little girls saw nothing but the lonely rock and the[767] branches of eglantine, which descended to the foot of that mysterious niche, where Bernadette contemplated an unknown being. The features of Bernadette wore an expression that made it impossible to doubt that she really saw something. One of the children placed the bottle of holy water in her hands. Then, Bernadette, remembering what she had promised, arose and sprinkled the wonderful lady, who stood in the niche before her.

"If you come from God, approach!" said the little girl. And, at her words, the Blessed Virgin advanced close to the edge of the rock. She seemed to smile at the precautions of Bernadette, and, at the sacred name of God, her face shone even brighter than before.

"If you come from God, approach!" repeated Bernadette. But, seeing the heavenly goodness and love of her glorious visitor, she felt her heart sink when about to add, "If you come from the devil, go away!" These words, which had been dictated to her, seemed monstrous in the presence of this incomparable being; and they fled from her thoughts without mounting to her lips. She prostrated herself again, and continued to recite her rosary, to which the Blessed Virgin seemed to listen, telling also her own. At the end of her prayer, the apparition vanished.

XIII.

Returning to Lourdes, Bernadette was full of joy. She rehearsed in the secrecy of her heart these extraordinary scenes. Her companions felt a sort of terror in her presence. The transfiguration of the countenance of Bernadette had convinced them of the reality of the supernatural vision. And every thing that surpasses nature brings with it a sense of awe. "Let not the Lord speak to us lest we die," said the Jews of the Old Testament.

"We are afraid, Bernadette. Never go to that place again. Perhaps what you have seen will do us mischief." So said the timid companions of the little seer.

According to their promise, the children returned in time for vespers. When they were over, numbers of people came out to walk and enjoy the last rays of the sun, so delightful on these fine winter days. The story of the little girls was told among various groups of walkers, and passed from mouth to mouth. Thus it was that the rumor of these strange things began to spread in the town. The report, which at first had agitated only a humble band of children, increased like a tide-wave, and reached every fireside. Quarry-workers, (very numerous at this place,) tailors, laboring-men, peasants, servants, waiting-maids, and other poor people conversed about this matter, some believing, some denying, others openly scoffing at, and many exaggerating, the facts of this rumored apparition. With one or two exceptions, the bourgeoisie did not pay the least attention to all this talk. Strange to say, the father and mother of Bernadette, while they confided fully in her sincerity, regarded the apparition as an illusion.

"She is only a child," they said. "She thinks she has seen something; but she has seen nothing. It is only the imagination of a little girl." Nevertheless, the extraordinary precision of Bernadette's recital startled them. At times, won by the earnest accents of their daughter, they felt their incredulity shaken. And while they desired that she should not revisit the grotto, they did not dare to forbid her. She did not do so, however, until Thursday.

XIV.

During the first days of the week, several persons came to see the Soubirous, in order to question Bernadette. Her answers were brief and exact. She might be laboring under a delusion, but it was only necessary to see her to know that she was in good faith. Her perfect simplicity, her innocent age, her tone of earnestness, all contributed to give her words a force which carried conviction. All who visited her were entirely satisfied of her veracity, and persuaded that something extraordinary had happened at the cliffs of Massabielle.

The statement, nevertheless, of an ignorant little girl could not suffice to establish firmly an event so entirely out of the ordinary course of things. There must be other proofs besides the word of a child.

But what was this apparition, supposing it to have been real? Was it an angel of light, or a spirit from the abyss? Was it not some suffering soul, wandering and seeking prayers? Might it not have been so-and-so or so-and-so, who, but recently dead in the odor of sanctity, had appeared to manifest the glory of the life to come? Faith and superstition each proposed their hypotheses.

Did the mournful ceremonies of Ash-Wednesday help to incline a certain lady and a young girl of Lourdes to one of these solutions? Did they see in the shining whiteness of the garments which the apparition wore, some likeness to a shroud or some sign of a ghost? We know not. The young girl was named Antoinette Peyret, and was a member of the society of the Children of Mary; the other was Mme. Millet.[289]

"It is undoubtedly some soul from Purgatory, who implores us to have masses offered up for it." So they thought; and they went to see Bernadette.

"Ask this lady who she is, and what she wishes," said they. "Get her to explain it to you; or, if you cannot understand, let her put it in writing."

Bernadette, who felt a keen desire to return to the grotto, obtained from her parents a new permission; and the following morning, Thursday, February the 18th, about six o'clock, at daybreak, and after having heard mass at half-past five, she, together with Antoinette Peyret and Mme. Millet, turned her steps in the direction of the grotto.

XV.

The repairs in the mill of M. de Laffite had been completed, and the canal which moved the machinery had been opened to the current; so that it was impossible to reach the end of their journey by the old way of the Châlet. They were obliged to ascend the side of the Espélugues, choosing a steep path which led to the forest of Lourdes; then to descend by a break-neck route to the grotto, over crags, and the steep, loose soil of Massabielle.

In the face of these unforeseen difficulties, the two companions of Bernadette were somewhat dismayed. But she, on the contrary, even then trembled with an eager desire to reach their destination. It seemed as if an invisible power sustained and endowed her with unwonted energy. She, usually so frail and weak, felt at that moment stout and strong. Her steps became so rapid as they began the ascent, that Antoinette and Mme. Millet, though both were strong and in perfect health, had a good task to keep up with her. The asthma, which[769] usually hindered her from running, seemed to have left her for the time being. On reaching the summit, she was neither tired nor out of breath. Although her companions were perspiring and panting, her face was perfectly calm. She descended the cliffs, which she thus traversed for the first time, with the same ease and agility, feeling conscious that an invisible power guided and sustained her. Over these steep and sharp declivities, among slippery stones, hanging over the abyss, her step was as bold and firm as if walking upon the highway. Mme. Millet and Antoinette did not endeavor to follow at the same gait. They descended slowly, and with the precaution required by so perilous a way.

Consequently, Bernadette arrived at the grotto some minutes before them. She prostrated herself and began reciting her chaplet, earnestly regarding the niche, still empty and embowered by the entwining boughs of the eglantine.

Suddenly she uttered a cry. The well-known light of the aureole shone from the depths of the cave; she heard a voice calling her.

The wonderful apparition was again visible a few steps above her. The lovely Virgin turned toward the child her face lit up with eternal beauty, and with her hand beckoned her to approach.

At this moment, after surmounting a thousand and one difficulties, the two companions of Bernadette, Antoinette and Mme. Millet, reached the spot. They saw the features of the child transfigured with ecstasy. She heard and saw them.

Bernadette looked at the Blessed Virgin, invisible to all save herself. Then she turned toward her companions. "You may remain," she answered.

The two women knelt beside the child and lighted a blessed taper, which they had brought with them. It was, beyond doubt, the first time that such a light had ever shone in this savage place. This simple act, which seemed to inaugurate a sanctuary, had in itself a mysterious solemnity.

This visible sign of adoration, this humble flame lighted by two poor women, on the supposition that the apparition was divine, was never more to be extinguished but to brighten daily, and to grow with the lapse of years. The breath of incredulity was to exhaust itself against it in vain efforts. The storm of persecution was to arise; but this flame, lit by the devotion of the people, was to point for ever toward the throne of God. While these rustic hands lighted the first illumination in this strange grotto where a child was praying, the east had changed its color from gray to gold and purple, and the sun had begun to flood the world with light and to peep over the highest crest of the mountains.

Bernadette, in ecstasy, contemplated a cloudless beauty. "Tota pulchra es, amica mea, et macula non est in te:" Thou art all beautiful, my beloved, and there is no spot in thee.

"Go toward her, if she makes a sign. Go, ask her who she is, and why she comes here?... Is she a soul from purgatory that needs our prayers, or wishes us to have masses offered up for her?... Ask her to write on this paper what she desires. We are willing to do any thing she wishes—all that is needful for her rest."

The little seer took the paper, ink,[770] and paper, which were given her and advanced toward the apparition, whose maternal glance brightened on seeing her draw near. Nevertheless, at each step that Bernadette made, the apparition receded into the interior of the cave. The child lost sight of it for a moment, and it went under the arch of the lower grotto. There, just above her and much nearer at hand, she saw the Blessed Virgin shining in the opening of the niche.

Bernadette held in her hand the objects which had been given her; she stood on tiptoe to reach the height of the supernatural being. Her two companions advanced to hear, if possible, the conversation which was about to take place. But Bernadette, without turning, and as if obeying a gesture of the vision, signed to them not to approach. Abashed, they withdrew.

"My Lady," said the child, "if you have any thing to tell me, will you not please write what you wish?"

The heavenly Virgin smiled at this naïve request. Her lips parted and she spoke:

"What I have to tell you I do not need to write. Only do me the favor to come here every day for two weeks."

The Blessed Virgin smiled again and made a gesture of satisfaction, showing her full confidence in the word of this poor little peasant of fourteen years. She knew that the little shepherdess of Bartrès was pure as one of those little ones whose golden heads Jesus loved to caress, saying, "Of such is the kingdom of heaven."

"And I for my part promise to make you happy, not in this world, but in the next."

Following her glance, she noticed the eyes of the Blessed Virgin resting kindly and for some time on Antoinette Peyret, who was unmarried and a member of the Confraternity of the Children of Mary.

The latter was filled with pleasure by these words and always recalled them with joy.

"Ask," said they, "if she is willing to have us accompany you hither during the fortnight."

"They may come with you," answered the Blessed Virgin, "and also any other persons. I desire to see every body here."

Saying these words, she disappeared, leaving behind her that brilliant light with which she was surrounded, and which slowly melted away.

In this instance, as in others, the child noticed something which seemed a rule with regard to the aureole which always surrounded the Blessed Virgin.

"When the vision appears," said she, in her own language, "I see first the light and then the 'Lady;' when it disappears, the 'Lady' first vanishes and afterward the light."

THE "PARADISE LOST" OF ST. AVITUS.

The indebtedness of Milton to Andreini for the conception of Paradise Lost, is proved not only by internal evidence, but by the ascertained fact that the English poet was well acquainted with the work of the Italian. Another poet of merit, centuries before, had produced a noble work on the subject, with which we may suppose, from Milton's classical and theological learning, he was familiar, though no proof exists that he had read it. We refer to the three poems of St. Avitus, Bishop of Vienne, The Creation, Original Sin, and The Judgment of God, which form a triad, or a poem in three parts. Its resemblance to Paradise Lost, in general idea and in some important details, is very striking, and a curious fact in literature. These, with other works of the author, were published at the beginning of the sixteenth century, though written long before.

Alcimus Ecdicius Avitus, born about the middle of the fifth century, was of a senatorial family in Auvergne. He became bishop A.D. 490, dying in 525. His part in the church of Gaul was active and important, as he was chief among the orthodox bishops of the east and south of Gaul, and Vienne belonged to the Burgundian Arians. In the struggle to maintain the true faith against the Arians, St. Avitus had to contend not only against theological adversaries, but the civil power. In the year 499 he held a conference at Lyons with some Arian bishops, in the presence of King Gondebald; and he influenced King Sigismund to return to the true belief.

He was the most distinguished among all the Christian poets from the sixth to the eighth century, and only the obscurity of the age can account for the oblivion into which his works have fallen. It is true that his poetry abounds in labored comparisons and artificial antitheses; but in treating of sacred subjects he adheres to the scriptural simplicity, and though living much nearer to the days of paganism than Milton, has nothing like his mythological allusions and ornaments. He wrote a hundred letters on his own times, besides homilies and treatises. His six poems are in hexameter verse. They are, The Creation, (De Initio Mundi,) Original Sin, (De Originali Peccato,) The Judgment of God, (De Sententia Dei,) The Deluge, (De Diluvio Mundi,) The Passage of the Red Sea, (De Transitu Maris Rubri,) and In Praise of Virginity, (De Consolatoria Laude Castitatis, etc.) The first three constitute what may be called the Paradise Lost of St. Avitus.

In the Creation, the peculiar features of the descriptive poetry of the sixth century appear, resembling the school founded by the Abbé Delille; elaborate beyond good taste, dissecting and anatomizing in details. This is almost painfully shown in the account of the creation of man, in which the anatomical particulars are minute and scientific to the utter destruction of the picturesque. Then comes the description of paradise, which is in curious analogy to Milton's. We translate part of it:

The Nile, according to religious traditions, was one of the four rivers of paradise. In his description of its fertilizing inundation, St. Avitus paints, in a poetical figure, the view presented in after-years:

An analogous phenomenon—far more vast and terrible—the descent[773] of the waters of the upper firmament, and the overflow of earthly floods, is described by St. Avitus in his poem on The Deluge.

In the second part of the triad, Original Sin, the sacred traditions are implicitly followed; something is to be found of Andreini's conception of the prince of hell preserving in the demon the grandeur of the angel, carrying into the pit of evil the traces of a heavenly nature. The Satan of St. Avitus is not the devil of mere traditions, odious, hideous, malignant, with no elevation of feeling. He retains some traits of his first estate and a certain moral grandeur. Nevertheless the conception lacks the sublimity of Andreini's and Milton's, presenting none of those fierce conflicts of the soul, those appalling contrasts, which are so effective. It has, however, originality and energy, forcibly impressing the reader.

More elevated, impassioned, and complex are the feelings of Milton's Satan, more eloquent his expression; yet the simple energy, the menacing concentration of the arch-fiend painted by St. Avitus, has a powerful effect.

The third book exhibits the despair of Adam and Eve after the fall; the coming of the divine Judge; his sentence, and their expulsion from paradise. Where Milton represents Adam as giving way to indignation against Eve, St. Avitus causes him to rage against the Creator himself.

The scriptural simplicity of this passage, as found in the poem of St. Avitus, will be by many esteemed better than Milton's ornamentation.

The book ends with a prediction of the advent of Christ, who is to triumph over Satan. The leaving of paradise is touchingly described at the close of the poem.

A Dutch poet also—Joost Van Den Vondel—wrote a drama on the fall of man, before Andreini's. Among the personages are Lucifer and his attendant evil spirits, Gabriel, the King of Angels, Michael, Uriel, etc. Adam and Eve are attended in paradise by a chief guardian angel. The lyrics of the heavenly host have considerable poetic beauty.

THE WILLIAN GIRLS

Some persons have a natural enjoyment of tribulation. They take a real pleasure in raising their eyebrows lugubriously, holding their heads a little on one side with a sorrowful and resigned expression, and looking at the world through blue spectacles. They "always sigh in thanking God," and can find a cloud in the sunniest sky. You can never conquer such people on their own ground. If you have a slight pain in your little finger, they have an excruciating pain in their thumb; if you have caught your robe on a nail, theirs has been rent on a spike; if you have been wet in a shower, they have been soaked in a torrent. These persons have minor voices, make great use of chromatics in speaking, and their affections seem to be situated in the liver.

Mr. Christopher Willian had a taint of this "green and yellow melancholy" in his disposition, and his rapidly increasing family gave full scope for its development.

"If Eva were a boy, now," he sighed, "I could soon have some one to help me in the shop. But—nothing but girls!"

"Eva is a treasure!" Mrs. Willian answered stoutly. "I wouldn't exchange her for the best boy in the world."

"But girls are so expensive," the father objected, "and they can't earn any thing; that is, mine can't. I don't want a daughter of mine to leave my house till she marries."

"And there is no need of their doing any thing, my dear," the mother replied cheerfully. "We own our house, and your business is very[776] good. Then, when the mortgages are paid off on your building, the rent of the upper flats will make us quite independent. In three or four years we shall be out of the wood, all our pinching and toiling over."

Mrs. Willian was a thrifty, clear-headed, energetic woman; but, though she would not have owned it, she herself found the prospect appalling. As she sat there after her husband left her, she glanced out the chamber window and saw Dinah, the one servant of the house, putting out the washing, her accusing face looming darkly over the interminable lines of wet dry-goods. Oh! the strings to tie, the buttons to button, the hooks to hook! And here on her knees lay another candidate for such services, an unconscious little affliction of two weeks old! Oh! the rents and rips to mend, the darnings and makings over, the little faces to wash and locks to comb, the faults to chide, the teasings to bear, the questions to answer! She had just got a glimpse through the door of Eva with her hair in a snarl, and of Helen with soiled stockings on; she knew that Frances had tumbled downstairs and set her nose bleeding; she could hear Anne crying pathetically for mother to come and rock her to sleep, and she was almost sure that every thing was at sixes and sevens in the kitchen.

"But I will not lose my courage!" she exclaimed vehemently, and, in proof that she would not, burst into hysterical weeping.

The fifth girl grew apace, and after her came Josephine, and after Josephine came Jane.

"Mr. Willian is among the blessed," said the priest when this seventh daughter was carried to him for baptism. "Verily, he shall not be confounded when he shall speak to his enemies in the gate."

Others besides the priest had their jest concerning this regiment of girls. Tradesmen smiled when purchases were made for them, people laughed and counted when invitations were to be sent to them, neighbors went to their windows to see the Willian procession start for church. They became proverbial, especially with their father.

But as years passed, words of praise began to drop in among the jests. Mothers marvelled to see how early the Willian girls learned to sew and mend, how deftly they could use the broom and duster, what womanly ways the elder had toward the younger. These mothers reproachfully told their shiftless daughters what a dignified and careful maiden Miss Eva was, and how even Anne could put a room to rights after the smaller fry, and sing Jenny to sleep with a voice like a bobolink's. For all these children took to singing as naturally as birds do, and warbled before they could speak.

Nor were their happy hearts less valuable in the house than their helpful hands. Half the mother's load of care melted from her in the brightness of their faces, and the anxious cloud on Mr. Christopher Willian's brow lightened in spite of him whenever some gushing sprite, all laughter and kisses, ran to welcome him home. He was sometimes vexed on recollecting how he had been lured from a good grumble by their baby wiles. Indeed, he was not nearly so dissatisfied as he pretended to be. Such sweet and healthy affections as theirs were, which, never having been checked, flowed out in joyous innocence; such pure, unerring instincts, that needed no knowledge of baseness in order to shrink from its contact; such open hands for the poor, such tender hands for the afflicted; and, crowning all, such steadfast,[777] unassuming piety. Among the young ladies who, dressed to attract attention, promenaded the public streets, the Willian girls were never found; their father's house was the place where they made new acquaintances and entertained old ones. And what did they conceal from their parents? Nothing. Their hopes and plans and fears, their mistakes, their faults, all were freely told. And how pretty they were! Their father secretly made the most flowery comparisons when looking at them. He mentally challenged the dew-washed morning roses and violets to vie with their fresh faces around the breakfast table. When at evening they formed a ring of bloom around the piano, and sang for their parents, or for visitors, his private opinion was, that a choir of angels could not far excel them; and when the circle broke, like a wreath falling into flowers, and each went about some pretty employment, then Mr. Willian had not eyes enough with which to watch his seven girls. But once own to any such feeling, and there would be an end to his privilege of grumbling. He well knew what a chorus would assail his first grievance: "Why, papa, you said that we were—" etc.; or, "Now, Mr. Willian, do be consistent! With my own ears I have heard you say—" etc. So he wrapped the silver lining of his cloud inward, and showed them only the gray.

But one evening, for a wonder, he came home with a joyful face and no word of fault-finding. When Jenny, the youngest, ran to meet him, he gave her a toss nearly to the ceiling; he gave one of Fanny's curls a pull in passing her; he presented his wife with a bunch of late flowers, he praised every thing on the supper-table. Finally, when they were gathered in the evening, he told them the cause of this unusual hilarity. He had that day made the last payment on the building in which he had his shop, and now their weary economies were at an end.

"But don't imagine, you young witches, that all this is to go in finery," he said, giving the nearest one a pinch on the cheek. "The house here needs a little fitting up, and perhaps we will have a new piano. But I must begin now to lay by something. A man with such a load of girls on his shoulders has to think of the future."

They were too much accustomed to remarks like the last to be greatly disturbed by them, but this threw a momentary dampening. Then the silence was broken by Miss Eva's calm and musical voice: "The house needs to be painted and papered and furnished from basement to attic. It is very shabby."

Mr. Willian forgot to exclaim at the dimensions of this proposition when he looked in the fair face of his eldest daughter, and saw the serene grace with which she seated herself beside her mother, and smoothed down the folds of her dress. Eva was now twenty, calm, blonde, and stately.

"O papa!" cried Florence across the fireplace; "do buy a lovely landscape of Weber's we saw to-day. It is just what we want to put over the mantel-piece in the front parlor." Again the father looked, but said nothing.

Florence was a girl of artistic tastes, was frail and excitable, and had brilliant violet eyes and an unsteady scarlet in her cheeks.

"Now at last I can have a watch!" cried Frances in a ringing voice. "I've nearly got a curvature of the spine from looking round at the clock to see if I have practised long enough."

"My dear Fanny," interposed her mother, "we need a new set of china much more than you need a watch."

Frances was the romp of the family, a large girl of sixteen, with heaps of brown curls around a piquante face.

"I wish I had a little rosewood writing-desk and a pearl pen-handle," came in a clear, insinuating voice very high up the scale. Anne sat in a low chair, with her chin in her hand, her elbow on her knee, and her gaze fixed intently on the cornice of the room. But perceiving no notice taken of her remark, she lowered her glance, and gave her father a look out of the corners of her eyes, which thereby got the appearance of being nearly all whites.

Anne was fourteen years of age, and had a quiet way of doing as she pleased and getting all she wanted without seeming to try. Frances called her pussy-cat.

"O papa!" broke in Georgiana, "can't I have a pair of skates and learn to skate?"

Josephine sat in the shadow of her father's chair, and had two small wrinkles between her brows.

"Is there any thing else any one will have?" asked Mr. Willian with excessive politeness, after having caught breath. "Don't be bashful, I beg! It is a pity there are only seven of you, with your mother making eight. Possibly by putting a mortgage on the house, I may be able to gratify your wishes. Speak up—do!"

Ever so slight a cloud settled upon the gentleman's audience as he glanced over them, bowing suavely, and rubbing his hands with an appearance of great cordiality.

"Papa!" came in a little voice out of the shadow. Every one had forgotten Josephine.

She came out of her corner and stood by his side. "Papa, have you got the block insured?" she asked.

Her father colored suddenly as he put his arm about the child and drew her closer to him. "Here girls," he said, "is one who thinks of the means as well as the end. She never will ruin any one by her extravagance."

He spoke carelessly, but there was a slight stir of uneasiness perceptible beneath.

His wife looked at him with surprise. "Why, father, how happened you to let it run out?"

"I was so busy to-day I forgot all about it," he said almost pettishly. "The policy expired only yesterday. I'll see to it the first thing in the morning. Go and sing something, girls."

In the midst of the last soft strain Eva's hands paused on the keys, her sisters ceased singing, and her father and mother lifted their faces to listen; for a loud gamut of bells outside had run up the first stroke of the fire-alarm. At the last stroke, Mr. Willian started up and went into the entry for his hat. Not a word was said as he went out; but the girls gathered about their mother, and stood with the breath just hovering on their lips, counting the alarm over and over, hoping against hope. But, no; they had counted rightly at first. The loud clear strokes through that silence left no room for doubt.

"I can't bear the suspense, Eva," she said. "Get our bonnets, and we will go down-town. Don't cry, Josie! You children all stay here and say the rosary while we are gone. We will soon be back, and perhaps we shall bring good news."

Florence took her beads from her pocket, put her arm around the weeping Josie, and drew her down to her knees before their mother's chair. Mrs. Willian glanced back as the others knelt too, then shut the door, breathing a blessing on them. "If it should be God's will to spare us now," she said, "I shall be the happiest mother in the world."

It was not God's will to spare them, she soon found. As they turned the last corner and came in sight of Mr. Willian's building, they saw it the centre of a vast crowd, firemen, volunteer workers, and lookers-on. There was no appearance of fire in the lower stories, but smoke was gushing through all the interstices of the upper windows.

Mrs. Willian wrung her hands and turned away. "There go the savings and toil of a lifetime!" she said.

It was impossible for the firemen to work well at that height, and the flames were creeping to the air. In a few minutes the smoke reddened, a little tongue of flame crept through a crevice, broadened, and the fire burst forth. No effort could stay it. Leisurely descending from floor to floor, it carried all before it. A thread of smoke in a corner of the ceiling, a tiny flame, and soon the whole room would be an intolerable brightness with masses of falling flaming timbers.

At midnight the family were all at home again; Mr. Willian lying half-senseless upon a sofa, his wife and children ministering to him. In his frantic efforts to save something from the burning building, one of his arms had been broken by the falling bricks.

Those were sorrowful days that followed, verifying the proverb that it never rains but it pours. Josephine was taken ill the week after the fire; but she was sure to be well soon, they said. She was not very ill. There was a little cough, a little fever, and a great weakness. The girls thought not much of it. They were too much engaged, indeed, attending to their father, and doing an immense deal of mysterious outside business.

"If Eva were only a boy!" sighed the father weakly. "A boy of twenty could earn a good salary."

"Father," Eva began very decidedly, "a girl of twenty can earn a good salary. Let me tell you what your good-for-nothing daughters are going to do. We haven't been idle the fortnight past. I am to take immediate charge of a class in the N—— school, with a salary of five hundred dollars to begin with, and a yearly advance. I shall stay at home, by your leave, and nearly all my money will go toward the housekeeping expenses. Besides that, I have a music class of four. So much for me. I doubt if that wonderful son would[780] spare you more out of his earnings. Florence is to take a few more lessons in Indian-ink from Mr. Rudolf, and he says that in four or five weeks she will be able to earn ten dollars a week, painting photographs. Frances has got tatten and crochet-work to do for Blake Brothers, and they promise to pay her well. She does such work beautifully. Anne is to cut out paper bordering for Mr. Sales, who is building blocks upon blocks of houses. He says that he will keep her busy three months. Georgiana is to help mother about the house, and Dinah is going away. So now, father, you can lie on your sofa and rest, and your troublesome daughters will not let you starve."

Miss Eva ended with her cheeks very red, and her head very high in the air. But her pride softened immediately when she saw her father's quivering lips, that vainly attempted to speak.

"It is our turn now, dear papa," she said, kissing him; "and we are quite proud and eager to begin. You have cast your bread upon the waters in former times; now you must lie still and see it float back to you."

"What can I do?" asked a weak little voice from the arm-chair where Josie reclined.

"You can see which will get well the most quickly, you or papa," Mrs. Willian said, bending with tearful eyes to caress the child. In this careful little one she saw embodied all the unconfessed sadness and anxiety of the one despondent period of her life. Poor Josie was the scape-goat on whose frail shoulders had been laid her mother's doubts and fears, and her father's selfish complaining.

Success almost always attends brave and cheerful effort, and the Willian girls succeeded. Besides, they were heroines in their way, and every one was sympathizing and helpful to them. But for their father's depression, they would have been happier than ever before. At last they were of use, and not only of use, but necessary. They were no longer a burden tenderly but complainingly borne, but they bore the family cares and labors on their own young shoulders. What wonderful consultations they held, what plans they laid, what economies they practised! What latent administrative powers were developed at the hour of need, and what superlative managers they proved themselves to be! How elastic a little money could be made when smoothed out by such coaxing taper fingers, and shone upon by such bright and careful eyes! Besides, they could not see but that they lived as well as ever. Their breakfasts and dinners and suppers were as good, and their home was the same.

"Half the pleasure of wealth is in the consciousness of possessing it," said Florence philosophically. "Was it John Jacob Astor who said that all he had from his riches was food and lodging? Well, we have that. Of course it is a pity that papa's arm is still bad, though it gives him time to develop his capacity for novels. What! ascetical works are they? Yes; but I have seen novels too, papa. And here's a new one for you. Take it easy. Just lie there and make believe that you have become so rich that you have retired from business. Oh! what blocks of houses you have. What ships, what lands, what bank-stock! Isn't it weary to think what heaps of money you have to spend and give away. Don't let's think about it!"

"I came past the ruins of the fire to-day, papa," Eva said, seating herself by his sofa, and looking at him with her calm, sweet eyes. "At first I was so foolish as to shrink and turn[781] my head away, but the next moment I looked. And I thought, papa, that may be what has seemed to us a calamity may turn out a great blessing. We had built a good many hopes into that brick and mortar, and instead of the fire destroying, perhaps it has only purified them." Seeing that tears came into his eyes, she added hastily, "Fanny was with me, and, of course, took a grotesque view of the affair. She said that row of tall buildings, with ours gone, looked like somebody who had lost a front tooth."

Mr. Willian smiled faintly, but could answer nothing to their cheerful talk. Even while it comforted him, it made him feel bitterly ashamed of himself. Besides, he was very anxious about Josie.

It came upon them like a thunderbolt: Josie was dying! They could scarcely believe the doctor, or the evidence of their own senses. They hoped against hope. There was no definable disease; but the child was dying merely because, instead of having had a healthy, careless childhood, and time to learn gradually that life is not all joy and sunshine, her infant eyes had looked too early upon the cross of pain, and she had seen the shadow and felt the weight of it before she could understand its consolation.

"That'll make one less, papa," she said faintly, looking up with faded eyes as he bent over her.

The father's face sank to the pillow. Oh! what a bitter punishment for his selfish complainings, when his own child, in dying out of his arms, thought only that she was ridding him of a burden! He could scarcely find words in which to sob out his love, his regrets, his entreaties that her tender spirit might be spared at least long enough to witness his expiation. But even while he prayed it escaped him. He clasped only a frail waxen form that answered no kiss, uttered no more any childish, plaintive word.

How they missed the careful, pathetic little face! How often they became suddenly speechless when, in laying their plans—they found that they had unconsciously included Josie! But they worked on bravely in spite of pain—worked the better for it, indeed. And when in after-years, all happy and prosperous and with homes of their own, they talked over the past, and Mr. Willian told of the wonderful time when his daughters had made caryatides of themselves to support the edifice of his fallen fortunes, Josie was gratefully mentioned as the noblest helper there. "For it was by her means that the cornerstone of our new home was laid in heaven," he said.

RELIGION IN EDUCATION.

In every century there has arisen some question which, by reason of its intrinsic importance, or immediate influence on society, may be called the problem of the age. Our century, though differing in so many respects from all the others, is not, however, an exception to this seeming law of history. Not a few long-standing grievances have been righted, knotty political intricacies severed, and brilliant scientific triumphs achieved; yet important as was the emancipation of 1829 or the disestablishment of 1869, the laying of the transmarine cable, or the cutting of Suez, we believe with the Dublin Review that the great problem of our age is the adjustment of the oft-debated educational question. Much has been said, many editorials have been written, and pamphlets published on this subject. It has afforded a noble theme for such orators as Lacordaire, Montalembert, and Archbishop Hughes; and a trying task for the skill and practical wisdom of such eminent statesmen as Thiers, Lord Derby, and Gladstone. We know no better proof of the vital importance of education, than the active part thus taken in its discussion by men of every religious persuasion and political shade. In fact, few questions affect so directly the welfare and interests of the people; and assuredly in this country there is none of more moment as regards the well-being and permanence of our national institutions.

Two centuries ago, Leibnitz declared the proper training of youth to be "the foundation of human happiness;" in the last century, Washington called it the "pillar" of society; and in our own, Bishop Dupanloup assures us that it and it alone "forms the greatness of a nation, maintains its splendor, and prevents decay." But it may be argued that intellectual discipline without the coöperation of any religious element will produce these great and inestimable results. This we deny. Did polite literature, for instance, save the most refined nation of antiquity? Listen to the masters of the lyre bewailing the degradation of their countrymen, and sighing for a purer and loftier virtue than any their religion could inspire. Did the plastic arts? Phidias and Apelles will return the melancholy answer. The eloquence of the orator? The noblest appeals of duty, the most patriotic harangue or spirit-stirring philippic palled alike upon a degenerate race. The wisdom of the legislator? All the sagacity of Solon and Lycurgus could but retard the downfall of the country. In fine, did philosophy? Its schools were often sinks of immorality, and vice. A few great minds, indeed, rose above the absurd creations of mythology, and taught the precepts of natural morality; but, like the dragon-fly of the tropics, they flitted across the night of paganism, lights to themselves and mere ornaments of the surrounding darkness. No wonder that the Grecian states declined, that their last day soon "quivered on the dial of their doom," and that they went down into a night which never knew a morrow. The Romans once added to the speculative wisdom of the Greeks an almost heroic practice of all the natural virtues. Yet they, too, were swept by a torrent of vice into the common tomb of nations; and only a few broken columns remain to-day[783] to tell the traveller what was once the seat of a world-wide empire.

Separate religion, then, from education, as Mr. John Stuart Mill would fain do; banish it entirely from the class-room, and you will have taken the most effective means of insuring proximate dissoluteness and ultimate ruin. Even the author of Lothair recognizes that "without religion the world must soon become a scene of universal desolation." If, when children are asked how they are occupied in school, they cannot say with the Joas of Racine,

Intellectual culture, therefore, even in its highest perfection, can gain at best but an ephemeral triumph. It cannot perpetuate the civilization to which a people in the meridian of their greatness may attain; and it certainly has never raised a fallen empire, nor poured a quickening stream through the veins of a superannuated nation. This inefficiency can be accounted for only by the absence of that pure and sublime faith which commanded the respect of the hordes that poured from the north, to batter down the last remains of a gigantic fabric, as well as of that sublime moral code which tamed these rude nomads and raised them from a savage state to the loftiest heights of Christian civilization.

The term education is from the Latin e and duco, meaning literally to lead or draw out. Some writers have attempted to define it "the drawing out or development of the mental faculties." This may be a "scientific" view of head-culture; but as a definition of education, it is defective and very unphilosophical. Defective, because it embraces only a part; unphilosophical, because it substitutes the secondary for the essential. We maintain that instruction is but a branch of education, to which religion is as the parent stem. If we consult the masters of thought, and those who shape the destinies of nations, we shall be surprised to find how unanimously they hold moral training paramount to intellectual culture, and how strongly they insist on making the latter always subservient to the former. The better to substantiate our assertion against the cavillings of sceptics, we will give a few quotations, selecting only from Protestant authors. The end of education, according to Milton, "is to fit man to perform justly, skilfully, and magnanimously all the offices both public and private of peace and war." "The hard and valuable part of education," says Locke, "is virtue; this is the solid and substantial good which the teacher should never cease to inculcate till the young man places his strength, his glory, and his pleasure in it." "The educating of a young man," writes Lord Kames, "to behave well in society is of still greater importance than making him a Solomon in knowledge;" and "We shall never know," says Sir Walter Scott, "our real calling or destiny, unless we have taught ourselves to consider every thing else as moon-shine compared with the education of the heart." And Lord Derby: "Religion is not a thing apart from education, but is interwoven with its whole system; it is a principle which controls and regulates the whole mind and happiness of the people." And Guizot: "Popular education, to be truly good and socially useful, must be fundamentally religious."

Thus, then, the essential element of education—its pith and marrow, so to speak—is the religious element. To exclude it from the school-room is,[784] therefore, a crying injustice to the rising generation and a crime against society.

It is not one portion of the "triple man," but the whole—the physical, intellectual, and moral being—the body, the mind, the head—that must be cultivated and "brought up." Neglect any one part of man's nature, and you at once disturb the equilibrium of the whole, and produce disorder; educate the body at the expense of the mind and soul, and you will have only animated clay; educate the intelligence at the expense of the moral and religious feelings, and you but fearfully increase a man's power to effect evil. You store the arsenal of his mind with weapons to sap alike the altar and the throne, to carry on a war of extermination against every holy principle, against the welfare and the very existence of society.

Catiline, the polished patrician, was more dreaded by the Roman senate than the steel of his hired assassins. The French revolution, the most violent outbreak that ever convulsed society, was ushered in by a blaze of genius; but, like the high intelligence of the "archangel ruined," it brought desolation and death in its fiery track. Science without religion is more destructive than the sword in the hands of unprincipled men. "Talent if divorced from rectitude," says Channing, "will prove more of a demon than a god." It is these enlightened infidels that arrest the progress of true civilization and prepare those terrible catastrophes which deluge a country with blood. Who were the leaders in the work of destruction and wholesale butchery in the Reign of Terror? The nurslings of lyceums in which the chaotic principles of the "philosophers" were proclaimed as oracles of truth. Who are those turbulent revolutionists who now long to erect the guillotine by the Tuileries? And who are those secret conspirators and their myrmidon partisans who have sworn to unify Italy or lay it in ruins? Men who were taught to scout the idea of a God and rail at religion; to consider Christianity as a thing of the past and a legion of "isms" as the regenerators of the future; men who revel in wild chimeras by night, and seek to realize their mad dreams by day.

The frightful excesses to which irreligion directly leads so struck one of the most frantic revolutionists of 1793 that, yet dripping with blood, he mounted to the pediment of a temple and with a pencil wrote this memorable inscription, "The French nation recognizes the existence of a Supreme Being;" and a few hours before ascending the scaffold to suffer the just penalty of his enormities, he cried out to his countrymen, "The republic can only be established on the eternal bases of morality." Terrible confession wrung from a regicide in the most impious moment of history!

Robespierre proclaimed the truth. The only safety for a commonwealth, the only source of greatness and prosperity for a nation, as well as of tranquillity and happiness for the individual, is religion. When men reject its heavenly guidance, duty becomes as void of meaning to them as "honor" was to a well-known Shakespearean character, the most sacred obligations dwindle down into mere optional practices, and the moral code itself soon becomes little more than the bugbear of the weak-minded. "The safeguard of morality," says De Tocqueville, "is religion;" and he concludes a chapter of his American Republic with the following pertinent remark: "Religion is the companion of liberty in all its battles and triumphs; the cradle of its infancy, and the divine source of its claims; it is the safeguard of morality, and morality is the best[785] security of law as well as the surest pledge of freedom."

The philosophers of the eighteenth century, by their monstrous errors and shameless depravity, have shown but too clearly that science without religion

These vaunted esprits forts had entered the realms of learning and returned as conquerors laden with treasures; but instead of consecrating the spoil to the service of the true, the good, and the beautiful, they paid it as a votive tribute to the evil genius of license and disorder. The world then saw these very men to whom princes had offered the incense of adulation enthrone an impure goddess on the altar of the Most High, and fall prostrate before a public harlot.

If further proof were needed of the immoral tendency of science separated from religion, we could silently point to the nameless abominations of the Communists, Fourierists, and other such vile and degraded fraternities; we could dwell on the cold-blooded murders and frightful suicides that fill so many domestic hearths with grief and shame; the scarcely concealed corruption of public and professional men; the adroit peculation and wilful embezzlement of the public money; those monopolizing speculations and voluntary insolvencies so ruinous to the community at large; and, above all, those shocking atrocities so common in unbelieving countries—the legal dissolution of the matrimonial tie and the wanton tampering with life in its very bud. These humiliating facts are sufficient to convince any impartial mind that there can be no social virtue, no morality, no true and lasting greatness without religion.

Here we meet the question, When should these salutary doctrines be inculcated? As well might it be asked when the builder should lay the foundation of his edifice, or the farmer sow his field. If religious principles be not laid broad and deep in childhood, there is great danger that the superstructure will topple and fall. Youth has been called the seed-time of life; and experience as well as reason proves the same law to hold good in mental as in material husbandry; "What you sow that you shall reap." Men do not seek grapes from thorns, nor figs from thistles. Yet, by a strange inconsistency, some would expect virtuous youths from godless schools. But the order of nature cannot be reversed. Like generates like.

In childhood the mind is simple and docile; the soul, pure and candid; and the heart may easily be cast into any mould. It is of the highest importance for parents and educators to bear in mind that the first impressions are the last forgotten. The pious child may in after-life, in an evil hour, be led astray by the force of passion or bad example, but at least, when the fires of youth have cooled with advancing age, there is great probability that he will return again to virtue and piety. With great truth the poet has said,

One of the greatest thinkers of our age, thoroughly convinced of the paramount importance of early moral training, would have the air of the school-room, as it were, impregnated with religion. "It is necessary," says Guizot, "that natural education should be given and received in the midst of a religious atmosphere, and that religious impressions and religious observances should penetrate all its parts." It would, indeed, be well if those who advocate the exclusion of religion from our schools would read and maturely weigh these[786] words of the illustrious Protestant statesman and historian. A little further on occurs the following remarkable passage: "Religion is not a study or an exercise, to be restricted to a certain place and a certain hour; it is a faith and a law which ought to be felt everywhere, and which in this manner alone can exercise all its beneficent influence upon our minds and lives." In the same spirit Disraeli says, "Religion should be the rule of life, not a casual incidence." It is then absurd to devote six days of the week to the teaching of human learning, and trust to a hurried hour in the Sunday-school for the imparting of religious knowledge. By such a system, we may make expert shop-boys, first-rate accountants, shrewd and thriving "earth-worms," as Bishop Berkeley says; but it would be presumption to think of thus making good citizens, still less virtuous Christians.

To-day more than ever we need a thorough religious education. The enemies of Christianity are now making war upon its dogmas more generally and craftily than at any former period. Their attacks, for being wily and concealed, are all the more pernicious. The impious rage of a Voltaire, or the "solemn sneer" of a Gibbon, would be less dangerous than this insidious warfare. They disguise their designs under the appearance of devotion to progressive ideas, hatred of superstition and intolerance, all the better to instil the slow but deadly poison. By honeyed words, a studied candor, a dazzle of erudition, they have spread their "gossamer nets of seduction" over the world. The press teems with books and journals in which doctrines subversive of religion and morality are so elegantly set forth that the unguarded reader, like Roger in Ariosto, is very apt to be deceived by the fascination of false charms, and to mistake a most hideous and dangerous object for the very type of beauty. The serpent stealthily glides under the silken verdure of a polished style. Nothing is omitted. The passions are fed and the morbid sensibilities pandered to; firmness in the cause of truth or virtue is called obstinacy; and strength of soul, a refractory blindness. The bases of morality are sapped in the name of liberty; the discipline of the church, when not branded as sheer "mummery," is held up as hostile to personal freedom; and her dogmas with one or two exceptions are treated as opinions which may be received or rejected with like indifference.

Nor is this irreligious tendency confined to literary publications; it finds numerous and powerful advocates in men of scientific pursuits, who, like Belial in Milton, "strive to make the worse appear the better cause." The chemist has never found in his crucible that intangible something which men call spirit; so, in the name of science, he pronounces it a myth. The anatomist has dissected the human frame; but failing to meet the immaterial substance—the soul, he denies its existence. The physicist has weighed the conflicting theories of his predecessors in the scales of criticism; and finally decides that bodies are nothing more than the accidental assemblage of atoms, and rejects the very idea of a Creator. The geologist, after investigating the secrets of the earth, triumphantly tells us that he has accumulated an overwhelming mass of facts to refute the biblical cosmogony and thus subvert the authority of the inspired record. The astronomer flatters himself that he has discovered natural and necessary laws which do away with the necessity of admitting that a divine hand[787] once launched the heavenly bodies into space and still guides them in their courses; the ethnographer has studied the peculiarities of the races, he has met with widely-different conformations, and believes himself sufficiently authorized to deny the unity of the human family; in a word, they conclude that nothing exists but matter, that God is a myth, and the soul "the dream of a dream."

Thus do men attack these sacred truths which, in the words of Balmes, "cannot be shaken without greatly injuring and finally destroying the social edifice." What, then, must be done to save society from the perils that menace it—to stem the tide that bids fair to sweep away eventually even civilization itself? What is the remedy for the profligacy that disgraces some of our crowded centres, and the demoralization that is fast gangrening our rural districts? There is one, and we believe there is but one. Let the rising generation be "brought up" in a "religious atmosphere." If we Christianize our youth, we may be sure of having a virtuous and a virile people; for it is an ethical truth, that "the morals are but the outward forms of the inner life."

The Father of our country, then, was right, when he said, in his farewell address to the American nation, that religion and morality are the "props" of society and the "pillars" of the state. History tells in its every page that the decline and downfall of nations have ever been caused by immorality and irreligion.

Our national institutions, our prosperity and civilization depend for their permanence and perpetuity not so much on the culture of the arts, sciences, literature, or philosophy, as on the general diffusion of the salutary and vivifying principles of religion.

Let us then infuse good morals by the most powerful of all means, Christian education; let doctrine be taught simultaneously with science; let the class-room be impregnated with the sweet and life-giving aroma of Christianity, and we shall soon check the torrent of infidelity, avert impending evils, and prepare the golden age of our republic.

THE JOURNAL OF THE CAMPAIGN OF CLAUDE BLANCHARD,
COMMISSARY-GENERAL TO THE AUXILIARY TROOPS SENT TO AMERICA UNDER THE COMMAND OF LIEUTENANT-GENERAL THE COUNT DE ROCHAMBEAU. 1780-1783.

"I spent three years, in the capacity of commissary-general, with the body of troops which General Rochambeau brought to the assistance of the Americans. During the entire war, I wrote down every day, dating from our departure from Brest, both the events I witnessed, and those that were personal. This journal is not in very good order, and now that I have leisure, (Messidor, second year of the Republic,) I intend to copy it out clearly, without making any important change in either the style or[788] the matter. I wrote, however, merely for my own amusement, and for an occupation in idle moments."

Thus begins a manuscript, hitherto unpublished and entirely unknown, which appears worthy of being noticed and rescued from oblivion. The author of this journal, Commissary Blanchard, became later commissary-general, but was deprived of this position by the government of the Reign of Terror, whose persecutions at the time—the eve of the fall of Robespierre—ending generally in a sentence of death, he hid himself in Paris. Such is the leisure he speaks of in the passage cited above; leisure very short, however, and which he occupied in the manner indicated, by reviewing his notes of past times and collecting his personal reminiscences of the American expedition so dear to all who had taken part in it. Soon afterward he was restored to active service, and thought no more, in a career occupied with the wars of the period, of the manuscript which he had not intended for publicity, and which, after his death in 1803, remained forgotten among family papers, as so many other documents have which are still unknown. Compared with the works published on the same events which he writes of, this journal, now ninety years old, certainly has its own value and special interest. It is apparent from the first lines of the manuscript, quoted at the beginning of this article, that M. Blanchard wrote without special thought—merely for his own satisfaction, and prompted by the natural desire to note down whatever he saw, without any intention of composing a history or a book of memoirs. This is an excellent disposition for sincerity, and our epoch loves and prefers to all others these unstudied writings, when they refer, as they do in this case, to interesting periods of the past.

The author of this journal was forty years of age at the time of the American war. Though now completely forgotten, he attracted considerable attention in his day, and he figures in the "Biographies Universelles" of the beginning of the century. Born at Angers, on the 16th of May, 1742, and sprung from a distinguished family of that city, he appears, for the first time in 1762 in the war bureau, under the orders of one of his relations, M. Dubois, "Chief of the War Bureau and General Secretary of the Swiss and Grisons."[290] He was appointed commissary in 1768, and served in this capacity throughout the Corsican campaign, remaining on the island ten years. As commissary-general, in 1780 he accompanied General Rochambeau to America. In 1788, he was commissary at Arras, where the following year he was put in command of the national guard of the city; and soon afterward became, with Carnot, then unknown, its representative in the legislative assembly. Here M. Blanchard played a modest but active and useful part, and he, with Lacuée and Matthieu Dumas, formed the standing committee on military questions. Removed by the Committee of Public Safety, he afterward held the position of commissary-general successively to the army of Sambre-et-Meuse, to that of the interior, to the army of Holland, and finally to the Hotel des Invalides, where he died, leaving the reputation of an officer "remarkable for his talents and virtues."[291]

The First Consul, on hearing of his death, expressed deep regret, according to the testimony of General Lacuée. [789]Blanchard, although at the time but sixty years of age, was the oldest among the commissaries of the army.[292]

The journal of M. Blanchard will give a more correct idea of the character of the man, of his upright and honest nature, and of his strong and good sense. A few words are necessary, however, on the events of which we have to speak, and of the writers who have related them at first hand.

The violent struggle of the English colonies against the mother country began in 1775; Declaration of the Independence of the United States—the hundredth anniversary of which is near at hand—was made on the 4th of July, 1776. Soon afterward, when the Americans were hard pressed, France came to their aid, and the war with England opened with the fight at Ouessant on the 17th of June, 1778. It was at first a naval war which spread over the whole ocean. Subsequently, when the American cause was in a most critical condition, France, at the request of Congress, sent pecuniary assistance, and also a body of troops, who were placed under the chief command of General Washington.

This war, in which we acquired glory at sea, and which raised up our navy—this reappearance of the white flag in the new world, from which the seven years' war had excluded it [293]—the part taken by France in establishing the independence of the United States, and in founding a nation destined for so grand a future—are events of far more than ordinary importance, and which possess the same interest to-day as when they transpired. Nevertheless their details are, as a general thing, but imperfectly known; and particularly the campaign of the corps sent to America, which brought into close contact the soldiers of old France and the militia of the young republic, is in the larger histories usually summed up in a few lines.[294] This doubtless arises from the fact that no work of importance has treated this subject in a special manner. It is true that the little army commanded by General Rochambeau had few opportunities of distinguishing itself. But, although its active services were confined to a few important marches, and to the taking of York town, which was forced to surrender, together with a division of the English army, it gave the Americans no inconsiderable moral support, as well as effective assistance which was most opportune. The revolution which followed soon after, and the twenty-five years of war rendered glorious by so many famous campaigns, effaced the remembrance of the naval combat of Chesapeake Bay and the taking of Yorktown, and turned attention from military operations which are insignificant, if we consider the number of troops engaged, but important, if we look to the result. In fact, these battles between a few thousand men, decided the fate of one of the most powerful of modern nations as well as the future balance of the world.

It is not, however, because documents on the American campaign are wanting; on the contrary, they are numerous and interesting; our archives should possess intact the official reports; while individual reminiscences contained in a number of books published at different times, are valuable sources of information from which as yet nothing has been drawn. Four distinguished officers engaged [790]in this expedition among the French (not to mention American or English writers) have found pleasure in recalling the memory and narrating the incidents of what they considered the noblest or the dearest portion of their career; the Mémoires du Maréchal de Rochambeau, (1809,) the first source of information, give with clearness and precision, but without embellishment, a detailed account of the campaign which above all else has served to render his name illustrious. Next comes the Correspondance et Manuscrits du Général La Fayette, (1837,) although La Fayette took part in the war of independence as a volunteer and an American general, independent of the action of the royal forces. The Souvenirs du Comte de Ségur, (1835,) and those of Comte Matthieu Dumas, (1839,) young and brilliant aides-de-camp to General Rochambeau, also furnish some particulars about this campaign worthy of note. We must not forget the Mémoires du Duc de Lauzun, (1822,) colonel of a regiment in the expeditionary corps, and the Voyages dans l'Amérique Septentrionale de M. le Marquis de Chastellux, (1786,) major-general; this work, though full of description and of anecdote, is of only moderate ability; but the name of its author, a member of the Academy and a friend of Voltaire, gave it a certain degree of success at the time of its appearance, owing to curiosity and to circumstances.

After these works, which possess each a peculiar interest, and without pretending to the importance which they derive from the names of their distinguished authors, the journal of Commissary Blanchard (who is mentioned in all of them) deserves certainly an honorable place. It is remarkable for great exactness, variety of information, and a genial and pleasant tone. Moreover, as it is devoted solely to the American expedition, it is naturally more diffuse on this special subject than books which treat of an entire life.

I have copied this page because it shows to some extent the formation of the staff of an army corps of the last century, and also on account of the names which it gives. They are those of the very highest nobility of France, who threw themselves with enthusiasm into this expedition, which they called the "crusade of the eighteenth century."

Among the companions in arms of M. Blanchard, whose names often recur in his journal, many who were then young afterward became celebrated. Not to speak of two generals already distinguished, Rochambeau and La Fayette, and the Chevalier, later the Marquis, de Chastellux, known by his connection with the encyclopedists, and who died in 1788, the following are worthy of mention: Biron (the Duke de Lauzun) and Custine, two generals of the republic, who shared the same tragic fate; the Prince de Broglie, field-marshal in the army of the Rhine, indicted before the revolutionary tribunal, and executed in 1794; the Count de Dillon, general in 1792, falsely accused of treason, put to death by his troops, and to whom the Convention, in gratitude for his devotion, decreed the honors of the Pantheon; Pichegru, at that time only an artillery-man; the Viscount de Noailles, who, on the famous night of the fourth of August, was the first to propose the abolition of the feudal laws; (his military future promised to be brilliant when he died in consequence of a wound received in the expedition to San Domingo.) By the side of these men, whose careers were cut short by death, we find others whose lives were long and illustrious. Berthier, then an under-officer, destined to become marshal of France and minister of war, Prince of Wagram and Neufchâtel, etc. The Count de Ségur, general, diplomatist, historian, whose son, equally distinguished and still alive, is the author of the Campaign of 1812, that touching[792] recital of an eye-witness. Matthieu Dumas, a general, an able commissary and esteemed military writer, a peer of France in 1830; Aubert-Dubayet, an inferior officer in the expeditionary corps, minister of war under the republic.[296] The Duke de Damas, the faithful companion of the Bourbons during their exile; Charles de Lameth, equally brilliant in speech and in action, a member of the assembly, lieutenant-general in 1814, deputy, and peer of France. The Count de Vauban, aide-de-camp to the Count d'Artois, who fought in the army of Condé and of Quiberon; the Duke de Castries, who died in 1842, a peer of France, etc.

On the 9th of July 1780, after a voyage of sixty-nine days, America was signalled by the French squadron. Nevertheless, the disembarkment did not take place at Newport, Rhode Island, for some days after.

The daily business and special occupations of a commissary as well as the incidents of a campaign life, date from this day for M. Blanchard. In an army in active service, the position of a commissary affords him an opportunity, if he is so inclined, to carefully observe, if not military operations, at least the strange country to which the war has brought him. After his immediate duties, he should acquaint himself with its resources, and have relations with the population, be they friendly or otherwise, of every kind. Hence arises a great variety of impressions and remarks which we accordingly find in this journal.

A short time after landing, M. Blanchard was sent to the assembly in Boston, to ask the immediate assistance of the provincial troops in case of an attack upon Rhode Island by the English, which they anticipated. A German dragoon in the American service, with whom he was obliged to converse in Latin, acted as his guide. Boston, with its Presbyterian population descended from some of Cromwell's followers who had emigrated to America, was still the active head of the revolution. M. Blanchard met there some of the remarkable men connected with it: Dr. Cooper, John Adams, and Hancock. He describes the general appearance of the city which reminded him of Angers. He met among the inhabitants of Boston two who bore the same name as himself; they were the descendants of refugees driven from this country by the revocation of the edict of Nantes, and who in less than a century had become completely American.

The expedition to America lasted from July, 1780, to December, 1782, a period of two years and a half, and during that interval it seems to us that comparatively little was done. Certainly in those days they did not move so fast as now, and no one appeared to be in a hurry; it was reserved for our revolution to give a quickening impulse to the world.

The corps of five thousand men under General Rochambeau had, when they landed in America, no less than eight hundred on the sick-list; a frightful number, being nearly one fifth of the effective force. The length[793] of the voyage, and the bad quality of the food on shipboard, were the causes of this. We learn, however, from another statement of a similar kind made by M. Blanchard, that such a proportion on the sick-list after a sea voyage was by no means unusual. The first thing to be done was to restore the health of the army, and for that purpose it remained a whole year inactive at Rhode Island, if we except the sailing of an expedition with a party on board intended for land-service, which was the occasion of a naval engagement in Chesapeake Bay. Finally the army moved from its quarters to effect a junction with Washington and La Fayette, and, supported by the flotilla of M. de Grasse, commander of the squadron, who landed an additional body of three thousand men, they proceeded in concert to invest Yorktown, where Cornwallis, the English commander, was besieged, and not long after was forced to capitulate.[297] The small French army passed its second winter in America, in the State of Virginia, in the vicinity of Yorktown. In 1782, it returned northward, threatened New York, the last place of which the English held possession, and reëmbarked at the close of 1782.

Such is the framework to the descriptive reminiscences of M. Blanchard. Those two long marches from north to south, and again from south to north, gave him particular facilities for observing the country. Sometimes with the army, oftener alone, and going in advance to make preparations for the sick and the commissariat of the army—a double duty with which he was charged—he visited the chief cities of the United States, Philadelphia, Baltimore, Hartford, Fredericksburg, Williamsburg, Wilmington, Alexandria, Providence, etc. Philadelphia, then the seat of Congress, counted at that time thirty-five thousand inhabitants; it has now seven hundred thousand. Every village, every station passed through, is recorded and described by M. Blanchard; frequently they are but the small beginnings of what are now great and flourishing cities. These pictures of other times extracted from the note-book of a French officer, the rude attempts at agriculture, improvements then in their infancy, the plantations, as they then existed, and roads and public works just laid out but incomplete, present the contrast of what existed then with what is to be seen to-day, and give us an idea of the immense progress that has been made in the interval. There is also for the American reader a particular interest attached to the names given of several families with whom he merely lodged, or whose hospitality was pressed upon him, and whose great-grandchildren perhaps still reside in the same places.[298] When our troops marched on Yorktown, they traversed that portion of Virginia so often the scene of conflict in the late civil war; and in this recital, which seems to treat of times and events long since gone by, we meet with many names of localities common to both wars. There were, even at this time, indications of different tendencies on the part of the populations of the North and South, and the following extract from the journal makes allusion to this in very striking terms:

Expeditions sent out for provisions, wood, and forage; transports for the troops; difficulties arising from want of roads and bridges, and the depreciation of American paper money; remarks on the food, the furniture, the price of articles, the fuel, (they had great wood fires,) the quality of the soil and state of cultivation; frequent accidental meetings with refugees from the edict of Nantes, (not far from New York there was a village built entirely by refugees from Rochelle, called New Rochelle, which a number of our officers went to see;) such are the usual matters treated of in his journal, on which in a few words he frequently throws much light, and makes his journal interesting to those who take pleasure in such details. Agriculture and the aspects of nature are among the subjects that most occupied the attention of M. Blanchard: he does not omit to name the plants and shrubs, both such as reminded him of France, and such as were till then unknown to him. This life of movement and activity seemed to be his delight. On one occasion, he explored a large portion of the forest to find the most suitable place for cutting down winter fuel for the army, and superintended the work himself. "I love the woods," says he, "I was there in some sort alone, far from the world. I rode on horseback, and led the life of a man who dwelt upon his own estate." That expression of feeling recurs more than once in his journal, and mingles with some natural observations, like the following:

All the documents in reference to the war in America agree in stating that the relations of our troops with the army and population of the United States were excellent, and that the discipline of the auxiliary corps was admirable; every one in fact seems to have carried away the most favorable impressions of the expedition. The universal enthusiasm which gave rise in France to this expedition still lasted; the Americans were everywhere popular, and the new ideas which prepared the way for our revolution led our countrymen to look with interest and partiality on institutions, manners, and characteristics so different from ours. We find this bias, so general at the time, in the journal of M. Blanchard, but still without leading him into exaggeration, and with some of those slight criticisms that a regard to truth made necessary.

At that period, the American character, if well examined, foreshadowed all that it has become since; but the manners were still very different, and contrast singularly with those of Americans of to-day. M. Blanchard, brought into daily intercourse with their ancestors, says of them that they are "slow, distrustful, and wanting in decision of character." In another place he speaks of them as spending[795] a great portion of the day at table, even in the cities of the North.

Their morals were singularly pure, and it is on that basis that liberty grew to its present greatness. The journal speaks of but one woman in an important city, who was talked of for her levity of conduct, and she was a European. Here and there throughout the journal we find allusion to young American girls, already possessed of that liberty and that queenly dignity, founded on universal respect, which have continued there to be the privilege of their sex. Here are two charming illustrations of the manners of that period:

On another occasion, it is the daughter of the host who comes to keep company with M. Blanchard in the room assigned to him.

It was the period when our eighteenth century, disgusted with the corruption of the court of Louis XV. and the upper classes, indulged in dreams of a golden age, and a morality pure and unaffected. The Americans seemed to offer the realization of this day-dream; hence the success of their cause, and the universal enthusiasm in their favor throughout France.

The general morality of a people who boldly founded a republic in the face of the old monarchies of Europe, was naturally to Frenchmen of the old régime the most interesting spectacle in the new world. The journal abounds in this respect with facts and significant remarks written incidentally in the course of the narrative. I shall limit myself to a few quotations:

M. Blanchard remarks everywhere this equality in education, and a high standard of manners accompanied by dignity and elegant refinement. One day, having negotiated for the transport of some wood with a rich proprietor, a man of position in society, and brother of the celebrated American General Green, he saw him afterward come up driving his own wagons. He mentions the fact on his journal that evening, adding this exclamation, "Such are the customs of America!"

Here we recognize the language of the reign of Louis XVI., an echo of Jean-Jacques and Bernardin de Saint-Pierre.

We have theorized on equality, and often lulled ourselves with chimerical dreams regarding it; but we find that a hundred years ago the Americans had practically realized it by adopting as a basis the participation of all citizens in the benefits of instruction and education, and the respect paid to all honorable labor.

While the French corps was passing through the little town of Crampond, an American asked a very high indemnity for some depredations committed by the troops on his property. This claim was taken into consideration; but without waiting for a decision, the American carried his complaint before the judge of his district, who, according to law, could not refuse to send an officer to arrest the commander of the French troops. This officer, in accordance with the legal custom, put his hand, with many apologies, however, on the shoulder of General de Rochambeau, in the presence of the troops. All the officers present were indignant, and wished to interfere; but General de Rochambeau said he would submit to the laws of the country; and he was dismissed on giving bail. This anecdote, related by Rochambeau himself, and by La Fayette, in their memoirs, is also mentioned by M. Blanchard, with the additional circumstance that he (M. Blanchard) found himself, a few days after, quartered on the same officer of the law to whom the mission of arresting the French commander-in-chief had been intrusted.

What conclusion must we draw[797] from these facts? That it would seem that republican manners had been anterior in the United States to the constitution itself. The laws of Congress have only ratified, so to speak, that which already existed.

General Washington frequently appears in the recital of M. Blanchard, who sometimes had personal relations with him. Even at that time, in the eyes of all who knew him, the commander-in-chief of the American troops was a great man. No one doubted that this judgment of his contemporaries would be ratified by posterity. At the close of the first interview of our generals with Washington, M. Blanchard writes:

There is, I think, something to blame in this judgment, where there is evidently a tendency to personify a cause in a single man—a tendency so prevalent among us.

Here is a last quotation, in which we see the American general at a very critical period of his career:

As for General Rochambeau, wisely chosen by Louis XVI. himself to command this expedition undertaken under such peculiar circumstances, he made the French character appear in his own person in the noblest light. The Americans, before his arrival, imbued with English prejudices—prejudices often justified in the eighteenth century—against the light tone and reputed affectation of our young nobility, were prepared to find the French general (as several of them afterward confessed) a mere courtier, opposed to their ideas and customs, and with whom their relations would be constrained, in consequence of difference of character. They saw, on the contrary, a type of our old France, who seemed formed on the same model as their own leading men, loving justice, seeking good, worthy and dignified.

"He has served well in America," wrote our commissary, "and has given a favorable idea of our nation. They pictured to themselves a French fop, and they found a thoughtful and dignified gentleman. 'Your general is very self-possessed,' said an American who dined beside me, and who observed the moderation with which General Rochambeau responded to the numerous toasts proposed, and which were drunk as they went round by all present. He has given many other proofs of moderation and wisdom."

He had also his faults, and they are related with impartiality: a mistrustful character, unamiable manners, and an unpleasant temper, of which his officers often complained. Nevertheless, General Rochambeau remains on the whole a fine specimen of the old army.

If America and the Americans of the war of independence constitute the chief interest of this journal, whatever relates to the organization of our troops at that time, as well as to their spirit and military customs, is not the less deserving of attention.

In this "memento" of an expeditionary army corps, there naturally appear, in the course of the recital, the shortcomings of the past, and in contrast the progress since made—for instance, in the materiel and weapons of war. It was necessary, at that time, to erect the baking-houses in the neighborhood of the encampments; and when the army advanced, men[799] were sent to establish them ahead. But they did not march very rapidly in those days.

There was a certain want of discipline among our soldiers, and a carelessness on this point in the officers, which shock our modern ideas; and yet the army corps of General Rochambeau, which was composed of picked troops, was cited for its exemplary conduct at that period. The Marquis de Custine,[301] then colonel of a regiment, having allowed himself, in a fit of passion, to make use of intemperate language toward one of his officers, the latter committed suicide. The news spread at the moment of parade, when M. de Custine was hooted, insulted, and his life threatened by his soldiers. "Unless some officers had interfered, worse would have happened to him," says M. Blanchard. It does not appear that any punishment was inflicted for this serious insubordination. It would seem as if a disturbance of this kind did not cause much uneasiness to the commander-in-chief.

The distinctions between the officers were less marked than at present. The military spirit was not then what it has since become, and, in truth, war was a less serious matter at that time than it is now.

We might mention, also, the punishments of the past, and thus mark the changes that have since been made. A French soldier struck an officer with his sword. He attempted to kill himself afterward, but was taken, tried, and condemned to death. What kind of death? His hand was cut off, and he was then hanged. Some years have elapsed since 1789!

These soldiers of Rochambeau are of our race and blood. They are our great-grandfathers. Nevertheless, how widely the French army of that period, which is so near and so far at the same time, differs from our present army in its esprit, its conduct, and its habits!

We said in the beginning that the history of the French intervention had not been written by any contemporary historian. If one were to appear to-day who would treat fully this subject, hitherto so much neglected, we should have lost nothing by the delay. Indeed, after nearly a century of the greatest changes, the moment would doubtless be excellent to treat this important episode of our military and political history, and compose a work based on authentic documents, which would have at each step the interest of thrilling contrasts. The author would draw a parallel between the military organization of the expedition of 1781 and of one of the present day of equal importance. The means of action, the expenses, and the general way of doing things, the improvements of every kind, would be compared, and give rise to curious and useful observations. But above all, we would see in this retrospective view the dawning of a nation which has since developed to a degree which has no parallel, when we consider the shortness of the time. A century has not yet elapsed, and these three millions of rebellious English colonists have become the forty millions of Americans who hold so important a place in the world of to-day. Finally, the author would endeavor to depict the extraordinary part assigned to this nation toward whose foundation we contributed, and of which we might be truly called the god-parents. He would show its tendencies, its work, its future. Has not, in fact, the birth of the United States,[800] even to the dullest mind, become an historical fact of equal importance with the French Revolution? In an important document of recent date, (the diplomatic circular of M. de La Valette, of September 16th, 1866,) appear the following words, which deserve attention:

Some will say that the independence of the United States was a necessity, and that it would have been accomplished without any assistance from France. In the course of time, very likely. But if France had not come forward when she did, with men and money, we can readily believe that the new state would have fallen again, for some time to come, under the yoke of the mother country. As a consequence, the development of this people, which has been owing largely to the principles of the American constitution, would have been greatly retarded, and the United States would not be to-day at that point where we now behold her.

Be this as it may, it is curious to see the old French monarchy lending its aid to the birth of a society most opposed to its principles and traditions. This arises from the fact that all unite to aid a cause when its hour has come. However, Bourbon royalty, carried away by the national sentiment, performed then a wise and generous act of the highest importance, the remembrance of which will never be effaced on either side of the Atlantic.

THE EMIGRANT.

CHAPTER I.

"Willy, Willy darlin'! Rise, agra, rise; day is breakin', and ye've many a long mile afore ye this mornin'—and for many a mornin' after it."

As she spoke the last words the woman's voice trembled, and she hid her face in the bed-clothes to stifle the grief that was welling up in great sobbing waves from her breaking heart. As the sound of her voice broke in upon his slumbers, a man rose from the bed where he had thrown himself, half-dressed, a couple of hours before, and, not yet quite awakened to consciousness, he looked around the room in a bewildered way.

Then he sat down on the side of the bed, and covered his eyes with his hand, vainly endeavoring to hide the tears that half-blinded him.

A chair stood near the bedside, and the wife drew it toward her and sat down, laying her head upon his knee. Very softly and tenderly he stroked the dark hair two or three times, then, while a great sob convulsed his frame, he bent his own head till his lips touched her forehead. "Willy, Willy, don't you give way," she said passionately, looking up at him with sorrowful eyes; "keep a brave heart, asthore; it's often ye'll need it where ye're goin'."

With a desperate effort he checked his emotion, and smiled sadly, still tenderly smoothing her hair.

"Shure it's dreamin' I was, Mary," he said; "and the strangest dream! I[801] thought I was away in America, and walkin' in the purtiest greenwood your heart ever picthured. The birds were singin' and the daisies growin' as they wud be in heaven; the sky was as bright and as blue as our own. But through the middle of the land ran a great wide river, and it was between you and me. I didn't care for the beauty and greenness, Mary, when I hadn't you wid me; and although where you stood wasn't half so purty a spot as where I was, it seemed the most beautiful place in the world, because ye wur there. Ye were longin' to cross over to me, and the children pullin' at your gown and pintin' to me always. Some how, it seemed to me of a sudden that if I stretched out my hands to ye, ye might come; and I did it; and ye came without any fear of the wather, right through and across it, and I almost touched Katie with my hands, and felt her sweet breath on my cheek. But just as ye would have set your feet on the ground beside me, something came between us like a flash of fire, and ye were gone, all o' ye, and I held out my hands to the empty air. And then, thank God! I heard ye callin' 'Willy, Willy darlin',' and I saw yer own sweet face bendin' over me as I woke."

The wife put one arm around her husband's neck as he ceased speaking, and with the other smoothed back the masses of wavy brown hair that fell over his forehead, while she said in tones scarcely audible through her tears, "It's nothin', nothin', alanna; shure it's a sin to mind dreams at all; and ye know that it's often when we're throubled, we carry the throuble wid us into our sleep. It was all owin' to the talk we had before ye lay down of the weary, weary way ye were goin', and leavin' us behind. But we won't feel the time passin' till we'll be together again, and we'll all be as happy as the day is long. 'As happy as a queen;' do ye mind it, Willy, the song ye wur so fond of hearin' me sing when I was a colleen and you the blithest boy in the three parishes?"

"Do I mind it, acushla—do I mind it? Ah! well as I mind the merry voice, and the bright eye, and the light step that are gone for ever. God is good, Mary, God is good; but English tyrants are cruel, and Irish hearts are their meat and dhrink."

"God is good to us, Willie; better than we deserve. He's leadin' us to himself by hard and bitter ways; but he loves his own. He's takin' you to a land of plenty, where there'll be no hard landlords nor tithe proctors to make yer blood boil and yer eyes flash, and me and the little ones'll soon follow."

By this time two little girls had crept from a bed at the foot of the larger one; tiny things, scarcely more than babies, either of them, and they stood looking wonderingly up into the faces of their father and mother.

The elder of the two, dark-eyed and black-haired like her mother, seemed, as she nestled close to her parents, to take in some of the sorrow of the situation; but the younger, a beautiful blue-eyed, fair-haired little creature, buried her curly head in the bed-clothes, and began to play "peep" with all her heart.

"May be I'm foolish, Mary," said her husband as he watched the playful child, "and it's ashamed I ought to be, breakin' down when you're so brave; but you'll have the little ones to comfort ye, and I'll be all alone."

Then with an effort he arose, and busied himself in completing the arrangements of his dress, while his wife placed breakfast on the table. It was a very poor and scantily furnished room in which the little family sat down to take their last meal together, but it was exquisitely clean and neat. They had known comfort and prosperity,[802] and even in their poverty could be seen the traces of better days.

When William Leyden married Mary Sullivan, "the prettiest and sweetest girl in the village," they were unanimously voted the handsomest couple that ever left the parish church as man and wife. All the world seemed bright before them; they had youth, health, and strength, and sorrow and pain seemed things afar off from them then; and they loved one another. Smile, cynic! as cynics do—but love is the elixir of life, and without it any life is poor and incomplete.

For a time—a sweet, short, happy time—all went well. Then misfortunes began to gather, one by one.

First the crops failed, the cows died, and Leyden fell ill of a fever, and lay helpless for many months. Little by little their savings dwindled into insignificance, and to crown all, the landlord gave them notice to vacate their farm, for which he had been offered a higher rent.

There was but one hope and prospect for the future. Through many a sorrowful day and weary night the husband and wife endeavored to combat the alternative, but at last they could no longer deny that the only hope for days to come lay in a present parting.

So it had come to pass that Leyden was starting for America, leaving his wife and children partly to the care of a well-to-do brother of the former, partly to the resources she might be able to draw from fine sewing and embroidery, in both of which she was very skilful. Our story opens on the morning of his departure.

It did not take the sorrowful couple many minutes to finish their morning meal. As the hour for parting approached, each strove to assume a semblance of cheerfulness before the other, while each read in the other's eyes the sad denial.

Soon kind-hearted neighbors dropped in, one by one, to wish the traveller God-speed, and to take a sorrowful leave of the friend from whom poverty and misfortune had not estranged his more prosperous neighbors. For it is in adversity that the fidelity of the Irish character manifests itself, and proves by what deep and enduring ties heart clings to heart.

It was not long before the car that was to convey Leyden to the next town came rolling along the road. As he heard the sound of the wheels, he turned from the fire-place where he had been standing, and motioned to a young fellow near him to carry out the heavily-strapped box that contained all a thoughtful though straitened love could provide for his comfort.

As though respectful of their grief, the neighbors passed from the room and the husband and wife were left alone.

Very quickly but tenderly the man lifted each of the children from the floor, and kissed them several times.

Then he turned to where his wife stood, close to him, yet not touching him, as though she felt that a nearer presence would destroy her well-assumed calmness. He looked at her for an instant yearningly, then held her away from him for another, while she buried her face in her hands; then with a convulsive sob he flung both strong arms around her, and they wept together.

"God and his blessed mother and the angels guard ye, mavourneen," he said at last; "guard ye and keep every breath of evil away till I hold you again. The great sea seems wider than ever, darlin', and the comfort and the meetin' further and further away. You wur always dear to me, always the dearest; but I never thought it wud be so hard[803] to part wid ye till now. Mauria, Mauria, acushla machree."

No answer—no wail of anguish from her woman's lips; but her woman's heart grew cold as death, her head leaned more heavily upon his shoulder, the clasp of her arms about his neck grew tighter, then slowly relapsed; and placing her gently upon the bed, with one long, lingering look he left the house.

When Mary Leyden lifted her aching head from the pillow, kind, womanly hands and compassionate voices were near to soothe and comfort her; but her husband was far on his lonely journey.

CHAPTER II.

Swiftly the emigrant ship cut the blue waves, boldly her sails wooed the winds, and hearts that had been despondent at parting grew hopeful and buoyant as they neared the promised land.

Port at last; and, with a party of his countrymen, William Leyden sought the far West, and before many months had elapsed, the letters he dispatched to the loved ones at home contained not only assurance of his good fortune, but substantial tokens of the fact; and Mary wrote cheerfully and hopefully, ever looking forward to the time when they would be reunited.

For two years our brave Irishman struggled and toiled. Sometimes his heart would almost fail him when he thought of the ocean that intervened between him and his dearest treasures; but these sad thoughts were not familiar visitants, for unusual good fortune had attended his efforts. By the end of the second year he had cleared and planted several acres of rich, fruitful land, and the first flush of autumn saw the completion of as neat and compact a little dwelling as ever western pioneer could claim. Then went "home" the last letter, glowing with hope and promise, and sending wherewith to defray the expenses of wife and children, who were at length to rejoin him in the land where he had toiled for them so hard and so patiently.

"My heart is so light," Mary wrote to him; "my heart is so light that I can hardly feel myself walkin'; it seems to be flyin' I am all the time. And when I think of how soon I'll be near you, of how short the time till ye'll be foldin' yer arms about me, many and many's the time I'm cryin' for joy. Was there ever a happier woman? And Katie and Mamie haven't forgotten a line o' your face or a tone of your voice; ye'll not know them, Willy, they've grown so tall. My tears are all happy ones now, alanna; my prayers are all thankful ones, asthore machree."

How often Leyden read and reread this letter, its torn and ragged appearance might indicate, and as the intervening days sped by, each seemed longer than the last. Mary and the children were to come direct from New York with a party who also expected to meet friends in the West, and he felt quite easy as to their safety and companionship. But ever and anon, as the time drew near, he half reproached himself that he had not gone to meet them, a pleasure he had only foregone on account of his scanty resources.

At last they were in St. Louis—they would be with him in three days. How wearily those days dragged on. But the beautiful October morning dawned at last; a soft mist hung over the tree-tops, and the balmy breath of the Indian summer threw a subtle perfume over the thick forest and its wide stretch of meadow-land beyond.

It was fifteen miles to the nearest town, and fifteen more to the railway[804] station. The earliest dawn saw William Leyden up and impatient to be away. In company with one of his old neighbors, he took his place in the rough wagon that was to figure so prominently in the "hauling home." About eight o'clock they reached their first stopping-place, where Leyden's friend had some little business to transact that would detain him a short time in the town.

Not caring to accompany him, too restless to sit still in the public room of the tavern, the impatient husband and father wandered into the spacious yard behind the house. A young girl stood washing and wringing out clothes near the kitchen door. Mechanically he took in every feature of the place; the long, low bench over which she leaned; her happy, careless face; her bare, red arms and wrinkled hands; the white flutter of garments from the loosened line; the green grass, where here and there others lay bleaching; the broken pump and disused trough; two or three calves munching the scattered herbage; in the distance a wide, illimitable stretch of prairie.

As he stood watching her, the girl nodded smilingly and went on with her work. After a while she began to hum softly to herself. Leyden caught the sound, and listened. "What tune is that?" he asked eagerly. "Sing it loud."

"Shure I dunno," the girl answered. "I heard my grandmother sing it many's the time in the ould counthry, and I do be croonin' it over to mysel' sometimes here at my washin'."

"Have you the words of it a', colleen?" he inquired. "I'd give a dale to hear them again. 'Tis the song my own Mary likes best; and, thanks be to God! I'll hear her own sweet voice singin' it shortly. It's to meet her this mornin' I'm goin'—her and the childer, all the way from Ireland; but if ye have the words of it and will sing it for me, I'd like to hear it."

"Ayeh but you're the happy man, this day!" she replied. "I'm not much of a hand at singin', but I believe I have all the words, and I'm shure ye're welcome to hear them as well as I can give them."

With a preparatory cough and a modest little blush, the girl began in a timid voice the familiar melody. It was a sad, dirge-like air, as are so many of that sad, suffering land, "whose children weep in chains."

And yet it was not in itself a mournful song. Ever and anon the glad refrain broke forth exultingly and joyously from the monotone of the preceding notes.

Simple as were the words, they found a welcome in the heart of the listener; and unpretending as they seem written, they may find a like responsive echo in the heart of the Irish reader.

The next moment he saw his friend advancing toward him, and in another they had resumed their journey.

Not much was said on either side as they rode along. At intervals our hero's heart gave a great throb, almost painful in its joy, and once in a while he made some casual remark; but that was all.

As they neared their destination, they noticed an unusual stir and excitement in the vicinity; and as they approached the depot, they saw knots of men scattered at intervals, apparently engaged in discussing some event that had recently transpired.

"There must have been a fight hereabouts, Will," said his friend; "but as every minute will seem an hour to you now, we'll not stop to ask questions. The train has been in half an hour by this time. I wonder if Mary'll know ye with that great beard?"

Leyden had no time to answer him, for at that moment a man advanced from a crowd that blocked up the road in front of them, and, checking the horses, said quickly, "Can't drive any further. Way up yonder blocked with the wreck."

"What wreck?" exclaimed both men with a single voice. "Haven't heard about it?" he replied. "Down-train, this morning, met the up-train, behind time—collision—cars smashed—fifty or sixty killed—as many wounded—terrible accident—no fault anywhere, of course."

But he checked his volubility at sight of the white face that confronted him, and the strong, convulsive grasp that seized his hand. Then in a softened tone he said,

There was no answer; for William Leyden had sprung from the wagon, dashing like a lunatic through the group of men on the road-side, and in an instant had cleared the hundred yards between him and the station.

The crowd that stood upon the platform made way for him as he advanced; for they felt instinctively that he had come upon a melancholy quest, and the man whom he had clutched violently as he asked, "Where are the dead?" pointed to the inner room, where lay the mangled corpses of the victims.

Alas! in a few minutes after he had stepped across the threshold his eye fell upon the corpse of a fair-haired little girl, beside whom, one arm half thrown across the child, a woman lay, with a calm, holy expression on her dead face. Just at her crushed feet, which some merciful hand had covered, the body of another child was lying; but the black, wavy hair had been singed, and the white forehead burned and scarred, and the little hands were quite disfigured.

And they had left the dear old land for this! They had borne poverty and separation, and the weariness of waiting; through lingering days of anticipation they had traversed miles upon miles of dangerous ocean to be dashed, on the threshold of a new life, at the portal of realization, into the pitiless, fathomless abyss of eternity! Ah! no; rather to be gathered into the arms of a merciful God—to be folded close to his heart, for ever and ever. Truly his ways are not our ways, and who can understand them?

In a moment more the husband and father had sunk upon his knees[806] beside the lifeless group; but no words came from his lips save "Mauria, Mauria avourneen, acushla machree." Then he would pass his hands caressingly over the ghastly faces, pressing tenderly and often the little childish fingers in his own, and kissing the scarred and disfigured forehead.

He never knew who it was that bore him away from the dreadful spot; what hands prepared his loved ones for the grave, he never knew, and never asked to know. He only remembered waking momentarily from a stupor on that sad night, and seeing the benevolent face of the priest bending over him, and hearing something he was saying about Calvary and the cross, to which he replied half unconsciously, but with a feeling as though there were angels near him, "God's will be done."

NICOLAUS COPERNICUS.

The material for the biography of this remarkable man is not very abundant. More than a century after his death, Gassendi published a life of Copernicus in Latin; this life, however, was compiled from printed sources only. A German biography, by Westphal, appeared at Constance in 1822. In 1856, an anonymous author in Berlin wrote concerning Copernicus. Besides these we have essays by L. Prowe. Last of all, a life of Copernicus has appeared by Dr. Hipler; of which we purpose in this article to give a compendium.

There are nineteen folio volumes among the episcopal archives of Frauenburg, which contain the remnants of an uncommonly rich correspondence by Dantiscus, Bishop of Ermland, who was for a time the ambassador of Sigismond of Poland at the court of Charles V. Rich as this collection still remains, it is to be regretted that the greater part of it was carried off to Sweden by Gustavus Adolphus and his successors, to be there divided and scattered.

A portion of the fragments was collected and returned in 1833, upon a demand made by the Prussian government; another portion was subsequently discovered by Prowe in the library of the university of Upsal. Through the mediation of the Prussian minister of worship, this collection was put at the disposal of Dr. Hipler. In both collections, that of Frauenburg and that of Upsal, very interesting essays on Copernicus are contained. Of these Dr. Hipler has made good use, and thereby elucidated the history of the celebrated canon. According to Hipler's researches, the life of Copernicus may be summed up as follows:

Nicolaus Copernicus was born on the 19th of February, 1473, at Thorn. His father, "Niklas Copernigk," was a respectable merchant of extensive business relations. His mother Barbara was the daughter of Lucas Watzelrode, who left besides Barbara a son, also named Lucas, afterward Bishop of Ermland and the chief patron of his nephew Copernicus. It is probable, as Hipler shows, that after[807] receiving primary instruction in the excellent schools of his native town, Copernicus completed his third and fourth years' course in the high-school of Kulm. In the autumn of 1491, we find him matriculated at the university of Cracow, which was then famous for the remarkable ability of its professor of mathematics, Adalbert Blar, commonly known as Brudjewski.

It was in this university that the foundations were laid of the subsequent success of Copernicus in astronomy. He commented already on the writings of the great astronomers, Peurbach and Regiomonban; and he afterward declared that he was indebted for the principal part of his learning to the university of Cracow; a fact to be attributed, without doubt, to the superior instructions of Brudjewski.

At the expiration of four years, being then twenty-two, he returned to Prussia, where he obtained from his uncle, the bishop a canonry at Frauenburg in 1495. A statute of the chapter required that every canon who had not received a degree in theology, jurisprudence, or medicine, should before taking rank enter one of the chartered universities, and there during three years apply himself without interruption to one of the three afore-mentioned branches. Copernicus not being a graduate, went to Bologna in 1497, and there gave his attention to law. His choice of this branch of learning was determined by the circumstance of his being a member of the cathedral chapter, which naturally constituted the senate or council of the bishop, who in those days was also a temporal sovereign. We can easily conceive that the youthful canon would make special endeavors to excel in his department, that he might by the eminence of his knowledge be able to cast a veil, as it were, over his great youth. We know nothing further concerning his legal studies, but the skill with which as ambassador of the chapter and administrator of the diocese he defended, both orally and by writing, the privileges of the seignory of Ermland against the aggressions of the German order clearly proves that he had passed his three years in the study of law with great success.

At Bologna, his legal studies did not hinder him from perfecting his mathematical and astronomical acquirements. An efficient aid to him for this purpose was his intercourse with the learned Dominican, Maria of Ferrara. It seems that he first led Copernicus to doubt the truth of the system of Ptolemy. It is possible, also, that through him he became acquainted with Pythagorean and Platonic philosophy, and its theory regarding the motion of the earth. In 1499, Copernicus was still sojourning at Bologna, where he experienced the common misfortune of students, financial embarrassment. The maintenance of his brother Andrew, who had followed him to that city, occasioned him considerable expense; but he was finally rescued from his troubles by his uncle, the bishop. In 1500, we find him at Rome lecturing on mathematics before a large assembly of hearers. He returned to Frauenburg with the resolution, however, to revisit Italy at any cost. It was a cause of annoyance to him, as he himself discloses, that the motion of the great mechanism of the world, devised for our sake by the greatest and most orderly of artificers, had not been more clearly and satisfactorily explained. That he might enter upon this investigation with a greater prospect of success, he determined to learn Greek also; for the acquisition of which, Italy alone at that period afforded good opportunities. He therefore, in 1501, applied to the chapter for another leave of absence[808] for two years. At the same time his brother Andrew, who had become a canon, requested permission to enter upon the three years' course prescribed by a statute of the chapter.

Copernicus pledged himself, in case his brother's request was granted, to apply during his stay in Italy to the study of medicine also, that he might afterward act as physician to the chapter. The chapter had previously numbered among its members a practical physician, whose death had left in their midst a painful void. From this circumstance it is plain that Copernicus had not as yet received any of the higher orders; nor did he subsequently receive any; for the practice of medicine, including, as it necessarily did, dissecting and searing, constituted an irregularity which debarred from holy orders.

Moreover, Mauritius, Bishop of Ermland, wrote in 1531 that his chapter had but one priest among its members. Copernicus had probably received minor orders only; nor does he mention himself that he ever received any others.

In 1501, with the consent of the chapter, he went to Padua, began the study of medicine, made himself master of Greek, had frequent intercourse with Nicolaus Passara, and Nicolaus Vernia, of the Aristotelian school of philosophy, and, after graduating in medicine, returned to Frauenburg in 1505.

At the episcopal residence of Heilberg he served as private physician to his uncle, and took a lively interest in the extensive projects and undertakings of that prelate. One of these projects was the establishment of a high-school at Elbing. It failed, however, in consequence of the narrow prejudices of the people of that town, who were opposed to having many strangers in their midst The failure of this enterprise is much to be regretted; for without a doubt this institution would have afforded a fine field for the intellectual activity of the great astronomer. His life under these circumstances continued to be simply that of a physician and canonist. His monumental work on the revolutions of the heavenly bodies progressed in secret, according as the ailments of members of the chapter and the lawsuits of Ermland left him leisure for such occupation.

In his case, as in the case of so many others, modesty exhibits itself as the characteristic of genius and true greatness. After the death of his uncle, in 1512, Copernicus returned to Frauenburg, where the residence of the canons on the banks of the Haff, affording an unobstructed view, presented great facilities for astronomical observations. Here he continued to enjoy much popularity as a physician. It must, however, be admitted that a prescription and a regimen sanitatis which we have from him show that he possessed but the limited science of those times. Still he enjoyed the confidence of the people. His brother Andrew, who was afflicted with a species of leprosy, engaged much of his attention.

From 1512 to 1523, Fabian Tettinger was Bishop of Ermland. At his decease, Copernicus was chosen by the chapter as administrator. When he had filled this office for nearly one year, Mauritius Ferber became bishop, and administered the diocese from 1523 to 1537. This prelate, who also was an invalid, placed great reliance on the medical skill of the learned canon.

After his death, Copernicus was associated with three others on the list of candidates for the bishopric. But Dantiscus, Bishop of Kulm, the same who has left the valuable manuscripts for the biography of Copernicus, was nominated. The canon lived on terms[809] of the closest intimacy with this prelate.

At the very beginning of his administration, the new bishop was attacked by a dangerous illness; which, however, the skill of Copernicus succeeded so effectually in relieving, that the bishop was enabled to undertake a long journey as a special envoy. Copernicus rendered effective medical assistance to his friend also, and former classmate, Tiedemann Giese, who in 1538 had been appointed Bishop of Kulm. Tiedemann prevailed on him to dedicate his work on the revolutions of the heavenly bodies to Pope Paul III.; and in return, at the instance of Copernicus, composed a work, entitled Antilogicon, against the errors of Luther; a circumstance which is of decisive significance as regards the religious views of the great astronomer. They lived together thirty years on terms of the most intimate friendship. Duke Albrecht also summoned him to Königsberg to the sick-bed of one of his jurists, notwithstanding that Königsberg boasted several physicians of eminence.

In 1539, Joachim Rheticus, then twenty-six years of age, who had been for two years associated with Luther and Melancthon, came from Wittenberg to Frauenburg to place himself under the tuition of Copernicus. In a work which has not been preserved, he described the impression made on him by the astronomer. There is, however, another production from the same pen, Rhetici Narratio Prima, in which much is said about Copernicus, and which is, consequently, a valuable source of information for his biographer. Rheticus is full of admiration for his instructor. It was he who superintended the publication of the latter's famous work, which appeared at Nuremberg, in 1542. Rheticus repaired to that town expressly for this purpose.

But the last moments of the great scholar were drawing near. After an illness of six months, fortified with the rites of the church, he died on the 24th of May, 1543, yielding up his spirit to Him "in whom is all happiness and every good," as he expresses himself in the preface of his work, the first printed copy of which was placed in his hands on the day of his death.

Such is the miniature biography given by Dr. Hipler of the great reformer of astronomy. We would gladly have learned more about his political career, which Hipler only notices in passing. It is to be hoped that he will some day present us with a full-sized portrait of his great countryman.

Dr. Hipler has, however, succeeded in establishing, on documentary evidence, drawn from archives, the chronology of the life of Copernicus, which rested before on the unsustained authority of Gassendi. He has, likewise, exhibited in a clear light, and with that certainty which results only from the study of reliable sources, the education, teachers, friends, and offices of Copernicus, the origination of his system, and the attitude he assumed in regard to the Reformation.

We have seen that his attitude was decidedly unfriendly. Hence, it naturally occurred to his biographer to show how the reformers were affected toward Copernicus. Protestant writers generally indulge in the strange fancy that all the great minds of the period of the Reformation belong to their ranks; and it is almost a subject of surprise that Copernicus escaped an inscription on the monument raised to Luther, at Worms. No doubt, however, at Luther's feet would have been an uncomfortable place for the man of whom we read in Luther's Table-Talk: "People gave ear to an upstart astrologer, who strove to show that the earth revolves, not the heavens,[810] or the firmament, the sun and moon.... But such is now the state of things. Whoever wishes to appear clever, must devise some new system which of all systems is, of course, the very best. This fool wishes to reverse the entire science of astronomy. But sacred Scripture tells us that Joshua commanded the sun to stand still, and not the earth."

Later on, Melancthon wrote in a work entitled, De Initiis Doctrinæ Physicæ: "The eyes are witnesses that the heavens revolve in the space of twenty-four hours. But certain men, either from the love of novelty or to make a display of their ingenuity, have concluded that the earth moves, and they maintain that neither the eighth sphere nor the sun revolves. Now, although these clever dreamers find many ingenious things wherewith to recreate their minds, it is, nevertheless, a want of honesty and decency to assert such absurd notions publicly, and the example is pernicious. It is the part of a good mind to accept the truth as revealed by God, and to acquiesce in it."

Both reformers condemned the system of Copernicus, as opposed to the teaching of the sacred Scriptures.

How differently did Rome deal with the doctrine of Copernicus! From an entry made in the Codex Græcus, CLI., in the State Library of Munich, it appears that as early as 1533, Clement VII. had the learned Widmanstadt to explain the system to him in the gardens of the Vatican, and that he recompensed Widmanstadt for his services with the gift of the Greek work above mentioned. The entry in the book, setting forth these facts, was made by the hand of the recipient of the gift.

Paul III. accepted the dedication of the work of Copernicus. The sentence pronounced on Galileo by the Congregation of the Index was never ratified by the pope, and was actually afterward revoked. The Catholic Church has always ignored that extravagant notion of inspiration, so justly censured by Lessing, according to which the Bible is to be received as a text-book even of astronomy, geography, and other natural sciences.

The importance of the system of Copernicus cannot be over-rated. It was a bold and successful attempt to explain the mechanism of the world. According to his theory, the world was no longer to be considered the centre of the universe, but merely a wandering planet of an inferior order. Its rôle in the economy of the spheres seemed to be that of the lost sheep which the Good Shepherd came to find. The system of Copernicus contained also a caution against trusting over-much to those appearances which are made known to us by the senses, and against attending to the dead-letter of the Bible merely. Hence it was calculated to exert an influence in other departments of science, as well as in that of astronomy. At first it met with no sympathy. The inhabitants of Elbing, who had refused the university with which Lucas Watzelrode felt disposed to present them, were the first to exhibit a burlesque play directed against Copernicus. The people of Nuremberg had a medal struck, whereon were ironical inscriptions directed against him. Nevertheless, his discovery gradually won the recognition of the intelligent scientific world.

In searching the archives of Ermland, Dr. Hipler has met with two pictures, the one of Luther, the other of Copernicus—both from the pen of Dantiscus, the last spiritual superior of the latter—between which there exists so great a contrast that he has thought it worth while to give them to the public. As has been already observed, Dantiscus was at one time the ambassador of Sigismond of Poland[811] at the court of Charles V. He had travelled over nearly one half of the globe, had been at all the European courts, and also in Asia and Africa. He was a great admirer and patron of literary and scientific accomplishments, and he corresponded with many statesmen and men of learning, among whom were Wicel, Thomas Cranmer of Canterbury, Melancthon, Cochlæus, and others. In 1523, happening to be in the neighborhood of Wittenberg, a desire to see Luther, rather inordinate, as he himself acknowledges, took possession of him. Luther consented to see him. The following is Dantiscus's account of the interview: "We sat down and entered upon a conversation which lasted four hours. I found the man witty, learned, and fluent; but I also noticed that he uttered scarce any thing but sarcasm and invectives against the pope, the emperor, and several other princes. Were I to attempt to write it all down, the day would pass before I would have done. Luther's countenance resembles his books. His eyes are sharp, and sparkle with the weird fire to be noticed in lunatics. His manner of speaking is violent, and full of irony and ridicule. He dresses so as not to be distinguished from a courtier. He seems like a first-rate boon companion. So far as holiness of life is concerned, which some have attributed to him, he differs not at all from the rest of us. Haughtiness and vanity are very apparent in him; in abusing, slandering, and ridiculing he observes no moderation whatever." The comparison between Luther and Copernicus which then follows is indeed very instructive:

"It would be difficult to imagine a more decided contrast than exists between these two men, the dates of whose birth and death differ but by a few short years. For indeed, to say nothing of the striking dissimilarity in talents, disposition, and other particulars, what could be more unlike than the character and destiny of the great revolutions in the sphere of intellect which were originated by the gigantic powers of these men? On the one hand, we behold reason, through an excessively mystic tendency, enslaved to a blind faith—in fact, stifled; and faith itself, as a consequence, deprived of its foundation, lifeless and powerless. On the other hand, we behold reason in a wisely adjusted harmony with faith and science, triumphing over the dead-letter of the Bible, the deceiving testimony of sense, and every other illegitimate influence, and thereby imparting firmness to faith in the suprasensible, and in all real authority.

"On the one hand, we perceive the joyous acclaim with which the Reformation was at first hailed, and the general desertion, at the present day, of the principle of salvation by faith alone, a principle destructive of all church organization. On the other hand, we behold the universal recognition, at the present time, of the system of Copernicus, which, at its first appearance, was assailed with mockery, and branded with the title of revolutionary."

Dr. Hipler has plainly shown that Copernicus belongs to the Catholic ranks. The question now arises, Does he belong also to Germany? Politically, the bishopric of Ermland was in his time under Polish dominion. Nevertheless, to say nothing of the quiet, modest, and genial industry which Copernicus seems to have possessed as a German inheritance, it is certain that not only he, but also his mother, wrote letters in German; and a Greek inscription in a book belonging to his library shows that his name was pronounced Kópernik, with the German accent. Justly, therefore, does his statue occupy a place in the Walhalla of Ludwig I.

THE CHURCH BEYOND THE ROCKY MOUNTAINS.

The States and territories of the Pacific coast are, in many respects, "a land apart" from the rest of the Union. Separated from the other States by an immense tract of unsettled territory, no inconsiderable part of which must ever continue a desert, as well as by the great barrier of the Rocky Mountains, the western slope of that chain presents to the new-comer an aspect not less different from the shores of the Atlantic than the latter differ from the countries of Europe. The climate, with its semi-tropical division of wet and dry seasons, the evidently volcanic formation of its surface, the huge mountain chains, with all their accessories of valleys, precipices, torrents, and cataracts, which occupy most of its area, and the peculiar vegetation that covers its soil, all wear a foreign appearance to an Eastern visitor; and the people themselves, though forming an integral part of his own nation, are scarcely less strange to his eyes. Men of races hardly known on the eastern side of the Rocky Mountains meet him at every step; and not only do the different European and Asiatic races retain their national customs and characters much more tenaciously than the immigrant population of the Eastern States, but they have very considerably modified the character of their American fellow-settlers. The way in which California, and, to a considerable degree, Oregon, were settled was altogether different from the usual system of colonization which has added so many States to the Union, from Ohio to Nebraska, and from Mississippi and Texas to Minnesota. The journey to the Pacific coast before the completion of the Pacific Railroad involved as complete a separation from home associations, and as great a change from early habits, to an American, as does the voyage across the Atlantic to the European immigrant; and at its end he found himself in a country entirely different, both physically and socially, from all that he had been previously accustomed to. The influence of the old Spanish settlements, in which for years was to be found the only established society of the country, the mixture of men of all the European races on a footing of perfect equality in the pursuit of wealth, and the peculiarly adventurous and uncertain nature of mining life, which long formed the chief employment of the whole population, all tended to rub off the new-comers' national peculiarities and prejudices; and the result has been the growth of a well-marked national character among the few hundred thousand inhabitants of the Pacific coast.

Amid this cosmopolitan population the Catholic Church has taken firm root, and in no other part of the country does she reckon as large a proportion of the people within her fold, or exercise more influence over the public mind. She had preceded the march of American enterprise and the rush of gold-seekers on the shores of the Pacific; and when the pioneers of the new population pushed their way across the continent and descended the slope of the Sierra Nevada, they found her missions already established in California. While the American Republic was yet a thing of the future, and the west of the Alleghanies was still an almost untrodden wilderness, Catholic priests had already[813] begun to gather into the fold of Peter the tribes beyond the Rocky Mountains. In the early half of the eighteenth century, the Jesuit Reductions of Lower California were only less famous than those of Paraguay; and to the zeal of the Franciscans who succeeded the Jesuits in 1767, Upper California owes the introduction of Christianity and civilization. In 1769, or a few months more than one hundred years ago, Father Junipero Lerra, with a company of his Franciscan brethren and a few Mexican settlers, founded the mission of San Diego, the first settlement made by civilized men within what is now the State of California. Before that year, indeed, although the ports of Monterey and San Diego were well known to the Spanish navigators, no European had ever penetrated into the interior of California, and even the existence of the noble bay of San Francisco was unknown to the civilized world until it was discovered and named by the humble friars. The salvation of souls, the hope of making known to the Indians the doctrines of Catholicity, were the motives which inspired the Franciscans to undertake a task which had long been deemed impracticable by the Spanish court in spite of its anxiety to extend its dominions to the north of Mexico. To raise up the despised aborigines to the dignity of Christian men, to show them the road to eternal happiness in another life, and, as a means to that end, to promote their well-being in this world, such were the objects for whose attainment the devoted missionaries separated themselves from their native land and the society of civilized men, to spend their lives among savages, who often rewarded their devotion only by shedding their blood. The Indians of California are in every respect a much inferior race to the tribes on the east of the Rocky Mountains. Many of them went wholly naked, they had no towns or villages, and although the country abounded in game, they were indifferent hunters, and depended mainly for subsistence on wild berries, roots, and grasshoppers. In tribal organization they were little if at all superior to the Australian savages, and of religious worship or morality they had scarcely an idea. Many of the southern tribes, especially, were fierce and warlike, and belonged to a kindred race to the Apaches, who still set at defiance all the attempts of the United States government to dislodge them from Arizona. Such were the men from whom the Franciscans undertook to form a Christian community; and of their success in so doing, the history of California for over sixty years is an irrefragable witness.

In spite of occasional outbreaks of hostility on the part of the Indians, and the destruction by them of a mission, the whole of the region between the coast range and the ocean, as far north as the Bay of San Francisco, was studded with such establishments before the close of the century. Fifteen thousand converted Indians enjoyed under the mild sway of the Franciscans a degree of prosperity almost unparalleled in the history of their race. The missions, which were eighteen in number, differed in size and importance, but were all conducted on the same general plan. The church and the community buildings, including the residence of the fathers, the store-houses and workshops, formed the centre of a village of Indian huts, the inhabitants of which were daily summoned by the church bells to mass, as a prelude to their labors, and again in the evening called back to rest by the notes of the Angelus. Religious instruction was given to all on Sundays[814] and holidays, and to the newly converted and the children also. At other times during the day, the men worked at agricultural labor, or looked after the cattle belonging to the mission, and the unmarried women were employed at spinning, or some other labor suited to their strength, in a building specially provided for the purpose. The fathers, two or more of whom resided in each Reduction, were the rulers, the judges, the instructors, and the directors of work of their neophytes, who held all property in common. The white population was few in number, consisting mainly of small garrisons at different posts, intended to hold the wild Indians in awe, and some families of settlers who were chiefly engaged in stock-raising. The military commandant, who resided at Monterey, might be regarded as the governor of the country; but the fathers and their converts were entirely exempt from his jurisdiction, and were independent of all authority subordinate to the Spanish crown. The mission farms usually sufficed for the support of their inhabitants, but the external expenses of the communities were defrayed by a subsidy from the Spanish government and the "pious fund" of Spain, an association very similar to the Society for the Propagation of the Faith.

Such was the condition of California down to the end of the Spanish rule; and during the whole of that period, and for several years afterward, the missions continued to grow in numbers and prosperity. The payments of the government subsidy and the remittances from the pious fund became indeed very uncertain and irregular during the struggle of Mexico for independence; but the industrial condition of the missions was then such that they stood no longer in need of external aid, and indeed they were able to contribute largely to the support of the administration of the territory. The establishment of the Mexican Republic made for some years little change in the condition of the missions of California, and the services rendered by the fathers to civilization were more than once acknowledged by the Mexican Congress. But the mission property was too tempting a bait to the needy revolutionists who disputed for supreme power in that ill-starred country. In 1833, a decree of Congress deprived the Franciscans of all authority over the missions, and placed their property in the hands of lay administrators. The Indians were to receive certain portions of land, and some stock individually, and the rest was to be applied to the use of the state. The results were such as might be expected from the history of similar confiscation in foreign lands. The fruits of sixty years' patient toil were wasted during a few years of riotous plundering, in the name of state administration; the cattle belonging to the missions were stolen or killed; the churches and public works allowed to fall into ruin; the cultivation of the soil neglected; and the unfortunate Indians, deprived of their protectors, and handed over to the tender mercies of "liberal" officials, wandered away in thousands from their abodes, and either perished or relapsed into barbarism. The population of the missions in nine years dwindled from upward of thirty to little over four thousand Indians; and when their property was sold at auction in 1845, its value had fallen from several millions to a mere nothing. The native Spanish Californians, who clearly saw the fatal results of the overthrow of the missions to the prosperity of the country, made several attempts to restore them to their former condition, but in vain. The constant revolutions of which Mexico was the theatre effectually prevented such a restoration, and the fate of the[815] Indians was sealed by the political changes which shortly afterward threw the country into the hands of another race and another government. Under the American régime they have dwindled to less than one tenth of their former numbers, and, with the exception of a certain number of the converts of the Franciscans, who have adopted partially the usages of civilized life, and become amalgamated with the Spanish population, the whole race seems doomed to disappear from the land.

Serious, however, as was the blow which the church received from the overthrow of the Franciscan missions, she did not abandon her hold upon California. From the date of Father Lerra's arrival in the country, a small stream of Spanish or Mexican immigration had been flowing into it, and building up its "pueblos" near, but altogether distinct from, the mission establishments. The separation of the races was one of the points jealously attended to by the Franciscans, as essential to the success of their civilizing efforts among the Indians; and the Indian churches and Indian cemeteries, which still remain in several of the missions, at a short distance from the Spanish churches and Spanish burying-grounds, show how far this policy was carried out. The experience of centuries of mission work had taught the Franciscans that free intercourse between a civilized and an uncivilized race invariably leads to the demoralization of both, and much of their success must be ascribed to the care with which they kept their neophytes apart from the white settlements. The latter, at the time of the secularization, contained a population of some five or six thousand, and, including the half-civilized Indians who still remained around the missions, the whole Catholic population probably amounted to fifteen thousand at the epoch of the American conquest. For the benefit of this population, after the overthrow of the missions, the holy see established in 1840 the diocese of California, including the peninsula of Lower California within its boundaries.

Had Upper California continued a portion of the Mexican republic, there would have probably been little difference between its ecclesiastical history and that of Sonora or Chihuahua; but the American conquest, and still more the subsequent discovery of gold in the Sacramento River, entirely changed the face of affairs. The crowd of immigrants that flocked into the country was so great as to reduce the original population to comparative insignificance in a few months. A single year sufficed to quadruple the number of inhabitants, and two to increase it tenfold. The new population was indeed a strange one. American it was in its dominant political elements, but fully one half of it was made up of natives of other countries than the United States. Frenchmen, Spaniards, Italians, Germans, Scandinavians, Irish, English, Mexicans, South Americans, Indians, Kanakas, and Chinese all poured by thousands into the New Eldorado, which might with equal justice be styled the modern Babel. Seldom has so radical a change taken place in the population of a country in so short a time, and the church, if she did not wish to lose the territory she had conquered with so much toil, had to commence her mission work over again, and under entirely different circumstances from those under which the Franciscans had begun the work. A very large number of the new-comers were Catholics; but in the excitement of gold-seeking, the hold of religion on their minds had been seriously loosened, and a reckless[816] disregard of all social and moral restraint pervaded the whole population. To restore the sway of religion over minds that had forgotten it, to provide priests, churches, schools, and all the various institutions of Catholic charity, for thousands of her own children, and to make known her doctrines to a still larger number of those who did not belong to her fold, such was the task before the church in California, and to its accomplishment she addressed herself almost as soon as the first immigrants landed in San Francisco.

A frame church, the first in California, was erected in that city for the use of the Catholic miners in 1849, and, as the different "camps" sprang up through the State, other churches were rapidly built up in the more important centres of population. The following year, a new diocese was formed of the territory lately acquired by the United States, and its government intrusted to the Right Reverend Bishop (now Archbishop) Allemany, who was called to that office from his Dominican convent in Kentucky. The new bishop lost no time in hastening to his post, and began his arduous task with rare wisdom and energy. The ranks of the secular clergy were largely recruited from various countries; the Jesuits, who had long been engaged in evangelizing the Indians of Oregon, were installed in the old mission of Santa Clara; a branch of the Sisters of Notre Dame was established in the neighboring town of San José; and the Sisters of Charity took charge of an orphan asylum and hospital in San Francisco.

All this had been done before the close of 1853, or in the height of the excitement of the early colonization, an excitement such as it is hard for the sober dwellers of more settled communities to form any idea of. The population of California resembled an ill-disciplined army rather than a well-ordered community; the immense majority of its members had neither families, fixed abodes, nor permanent occupations, and were ready to rush anywhere at the slightest rumor of rich "diggings." The mines were the great centre of attraction to all, and, as the old ones were worked out or new ones discovered, the entire population moved from one part of the country to another. Towns were built up only to be abandoned in a few months, and even San Francisco itself, in spite of its unrivalled commercial position, more than once was nearly deserted by its inhabitants. Fortunes were made or lost in a few hours, not merely by a few bold speculators, but by every class of the people; and the wild excitements which now and then cause such commotion in Wall street, were constantly paralleled in every mining camp of California. The sudden acquisition of fortune was the hope of every man; and while men were thus uncertain about what position they might occupy on the morrow, few cared to settle down to the routine of domestic life. Except among the Spanish Californians, scarcely any families were to be found in the country, and the standard of morality was such as might be expected under the circumstances. Laws there were, indeed, but the authorities were utterly unable to enforce them, and bullies and duellists settled their quarrels with arms, even on the streets of San Francisco, unchecked by police interference. Murderers and robbers promenaded the towns unmolested, and the idea of official honesty, or of seeking redress for wrongs at the hands of the law, was deemed too absurd to be entertained by a sensible man. Vigilance committees, the last refuge of society seeking to save itself[817] from destruction, offered almost the only protection to persons and property that could be had in many districts. Bands of desperadoes, such as the "hounds" in San Francisco, and Joaquin's gang in the southern counties, openly set the law at defiance, and, in the fever of gold-seeking that pervaded the whole community, no force could be obtained to make it respected.

Such was the population of California when Bishop Allemany commenced his episcopal career; and the prospect of making religion flourish on such a soil was indeed such as might well dismay a fainter heart. Nevertheless he addressed himself to the task, and his toils were not unrewarded. Gradually but decidedly, the moral character of California began to improve, and the more glaring offences against public decency to grow rare. The rush of immigrants slackened in 1852, and something like settled society began to form among the older residents. Of the agents which helped to bring order out of the social chaos of "'49," none was more powerful than the influence of the Catholic Church. Most of the Protestant population had thrown off all allegiance to any sect, and this fact, while it contributed to make them to a great extent regardless of the rules of morality, had at least the good effect of banishing anti-Catholic prejudices from their minds. The church and her institutions were regarded with much respect by all classes in California, even at the time when the Know-Nothing movement was exciting such a storm of fanaticism in the Eastern States. Many Americans had married Catholic wives, or been long settled among the Spanish Californians; the history of the Franciscan missionaries was well known to all, and their devotedness appreciated by Catholics and Protestants alike. All these causes combined to give Catholicity considerable importance in the public opinion, and lent immense strength to her efforts in behalf of morality and religion. Catholic charities stood high in the public favor; the public hospital of San Francisco, after an experience of official management which swept away no small portion of the city property, was intrusted to the charge of the Sisters of Charity; Catholic schools for a long time shared in the public school funds; and Catholic asylums and orphanages were liberally aided by the public. Bishop Allemany was not slow in taking advantage of this favorable state of public feeling to provide his diocese with Catholic institutions. New churches were erected all over the State; schools established wherever it was practicable; and so great progress made generally that, in less than three years after his arrival in San Francisco, it became necessary to divide his diocese. The southern counties of the State, comprising most of the Spanish Californians among its inhabitants, were formed into the diocese of Monterey and Los Angeles in 1853. At the same time San Francisco was raised to the archiepiscopal rank. The membership of the Protestant churches of all denominations in the State was then almost nominal, scarcely amounting to two per cent of the population, while the Catholics formed at least thirty per cent. The public, as a general rule, regarded the Catholic Church as the church, and this feeling to a great extent still prevails.

For some years after the erection of the diocese of Monterey, there was little increase in the population of California; indeed, owing to the falling off in the yield of the precious metals, and the discovery of new mines in the neighboring territories,[818] there was at times a considerable decrease in its numbers; nevertheless, the number of Catholics continued to increase, owing partly to the large proportion of Irish among the later immigrants, and partly to the natural growth of the Catholic population, which was more settled than the rest of the community. A further division of the archdiocese of San Francisco was found necessary in 1861. The northern portion of the State, with the adjoining territories of Nevada and Utah, was formed into the Vicariate of Marysville, which was subsequently raised to the rank of a bishopric, with its see at Grass Valley.

Since that period no changes have been made in the episcopal divisions of California; but the second order of the clergy, the Catholic population, Catholic institutions, and Catholic churches have continued to grow in numbers. At present, the proportion of priests to the whole population is nearly three times greater in California than the average for the whole of the Union, being about one priest to every three thousand five hundred inhabitants; while throughout the United States the average does not exceed one to ten thousand. Nevertheless, owing to the extent of the country over which the population is scattered, and the very large proportion of Catholics in it, there is still a great want of more priests and churches, and it will doubtless be some years before it can be adequately supplied.

In no State of the Union have the religious orders taken deeper root or thriven better than in California. The Franciscans, the Dominicans, the Jesuits, the Vincentians, the Christian Brothers, the Sisters of Charity, of Mercy, of Notre Dame, of the Presentation, of the Sacred Heart, and of the order of St. Dominic, all have establishments within its boundaries.

The Franciscans, as we have seen, were the pioneers of Christianity in California, and, in spite of the oppression of the Mexican government, they have never abandoned the land. A number of them continued to attend to the spiritual wants of the population, both Spanish and Indian, after the control of the latter had been taken from them, and the order has shared in the growth of the church since the American conquest. Two of their former mission establishments are still in their hands, in the diocese of Monterey, in which they have also two schools.

The Vincentians have the only establishment they possess in California in the same diocese, where they opened a college some two and a half years ago, and have since conducted it with considerable success. Los Angeles City also possesses an orphan asylum and a hospital, under the management of the Sisters of Charity, and there are several convents of nuns in different parts of the diocese.

The Jesuits were the first missionaries of California, though the tyrannical suppression of their order, and the barbarous exile of its members from the dominions of the king of Spain, prevented them from extending their spiritual conquests beyond the peninsula of Lower California. It was not until after the American conquest that they were permitted to enter Upper California; but as soon as that event opened the country to them, their entry was not long delayed. In 1851, several fathers of the society, who had been previously engaged in the Indian missions of Oregon, arrived in California, and were put in possession of the old Franciscan Mission at Santa Clara,[819] about fifty miles south of San Francisco. There they founded a college, which at present ranks perhaps first among the institutions of learning on the Pacific coast, and is one of the largest houses of the order on the American continent. The crusade against the monastic orders, which had been inaugurated in Italy shortly before, proved highly profitable to California, as a large number of Italian Jesuits were thus obtained for Santa Clara. A second college was subsequently opened in San Francisco, which has attained an equal degree of prosperity with the older academy, and, in addition, the parishes of Santa Clara and San José are administered by the priests of the order. Altogether, the Jesuits number about thirty priests, and as many, or rather more, lay brothers in California. In the internal administration of the order, California is dependent on the provincial of Turin in Italy, whence most of its missionaries came, and has no connection with the provinces established in the Eastern States. It possesses a novitiate of its own at Santa Clara, and only requires a house of studies to have all the organization of a province complete in itself.

The Dominicans are also established in the archdiocese of San Francisco, where they have a convent at Benicia on the Sacramento River, besides furnishing pastors to several other parishes. The archbishop himself is a member of the order, which well maintains in California its reputation for learning and strictness of discipline. Several of the Californian Dominicans, including the archbishop, are natives of Spain, but the majority are Irish or Irish-Americans. The Dominican nuns also have a convent and academy at Benicia, which ranks deservedly high among the educational institutions of the State; and a free school in San Francisco, which affords instruction to several hundred children.

The Christian Brothers are, in point of time, the newest of the religious orders in California, having only come to the State some two years ago, at the invitation of Archbishop Allemany. Their system of education is eminently adapted to the requirements of her people, as is shown by the rapid success of their first college, which already numbers more than two hundred and twenty resident students. The marked success which has so far attended the efforts of the brothers gives every reason to believe that they (and it may be added, they alone) can solve the great problem of Catholic education in California, which is, how to provide Catholic common schools for the children of the working-classes. Those classes there, as everywhere else throughout the Union, form the bulk of the Catholic population, and desire to procure for their little ones the advantage of schooling. If possible, they wish to obtain it from Catholic sources; but if this cannot be, they will, there is ground to fear, avail themselves of the educational facilities offered by the State schools, even at the risk of their children's faith. As the number of these children must be reckoned by tens of thousands, the task of providing them with suitable education is no easy one; but the object and spirit of the order instituted by the venerable De La Salle, and the success which has attended its system of parochial schools in Missouri and other States, give good grounds to hope that it will prove equal to the work that lies before it in California, where the circumstances of the country are peculiarly favorable to the growth of Catholic institutions. Nowhere else has anti-Catholic bigotry less power in the government, or is public opinion more favorable[820] to the church; and though the infidel common-school system finds strong support in a numerous class, yet we believe that in no part of the Union can the battle for religious education be fought out under more favorable auspices. The urgent need that exists for Catholic schools at present, may be judged of from the fact that while the different colleges and boarding-schools under the management of the Jesuits, Franciscans, Christian Brothers, and Vincentians, provide education for about a thousand boys, the Catholic common schools throughout the State contain a number scarcely greater, or less than a tenth of their due proportion. Female education is better provided for in this respect. The Presentation and Dominican Sisters, and the Sisters of Charity and Mercy, have about four thousand pupils in their free schools in San Francisco, and there are also several similar establishments in different parts of the State; but even these are inadequate to the wants of the Catholic population, and in California, as in the Eastern States, the problem of how to provide schooling for the children of the poor is the most serious and difficult one that the church has to solve.

California, in proportion to its population, is rich in institutions for the relief of suffering and distress. The male and female orphan asylums in the dioceses of San Francisco, Grass Valley, and Monterey maintain about six hundred of these bereaved little ones. The Sisters of Mercy and Charity have each a general hospital under their charge in San Francisco, where the latter have also a foundling hospital. They have also a hospital in Los Angeles, and the Sisters of Mercy have a Magdalen asylum in San Francisco. Altogether, the number of religious, of both sexes, engaged in works of instruction or charity in California, approaches three hundred, and this in a population of little over half a million.

Reference has already been made to the variety of races that forms so peculiar a feature in the Californian population. It may not be amiss to devote a few words to each separately, especially with regard to their relations with the church.

As the original settlers of the country, the Spanish element deserves to be mentioned first, although no longer occupying the chief place in political or numerical importance. The Spanish Californians are mostly descended from a few families, chiefly Europeans, who settled in the country in the palmy days of the missions, and whose posterity have increased in the course of a century to a population of several thousand. The prevalence of a few family names among them is quite as remarkable as in certain districts of Ireland and Scotland, where a single sept name is borne by almost all the inhabitants of a parish or barony; and nearly all the more wealthy families are connected with one another by the ties of blood or marriage. As a general rule, they have less intermixture of Indian blood than the southern Mexicans, though such of the mission Indians as have survived the overthrow of their protectors regard themselves as Spaniards, and are so styled by the rest of the population. Some of these Indians occupy respectable positions in society, and one at least, Señor Dominguez, was a member of the convention which drew up the State constitution of California. The Spanish Californians are generally hospitable and generous, and, though imperfectly acquainted with the refinements of civilization, they display much of the old Spanish politeness in their dealings with each other and with strangers.[821] They retain the Spanish taste for music and dancing, and, we are sorry to say, for bull-fights and games of chance; in Los Angeles and the other southern counties, all the scenes of the life of Leon or Castile may still be witnessed. Cattle-raising forms their chief occupation, and in the management of stock they display a good deal of skill and energy; but their inexperience in the ways of modern life, and their ignorance of American law, have gradually deprived them of the ownership of most of the lands they held at the discovery of the gold "placers." Many of them sold their property at ridiculously low prices, others were deprived of them by the operation of the land tax, which was entirely new to their ideas; while the distaste for settled industry and the improvident habits engendered by their former mode of life unfitted them for competing in other pursuits with the enterprise of the new-comers. The generation which has grown up since the American conquest, however, displays a much greater spirit of enterprise than its fathers have shown, and promises to play a more important part in the country. Politically and socially, the Spanish Californians enjoy a good deal of consideration; some of them usually occupy seats in the State Legislature, and on the judicial bench; the Spanish language is used as well as the English in legal documents, and the acts of the Legislature; and one of the higher State offices is generally filled by a Spaniard.

There is also a considerable Spanish-American population, chiefly Mexicans and Chilenos, in the Pacific States. Most of them are engaged in mining or stock-raising; but a considerable number are engaged in business, in which several of them occupy prominent positions. The Chilenos are generally possessed of at least the rudiments of schooling, and are tolerably well organized for mutual aid; but the Mexicans, owing to the political condition of their country, are much behind them in both these respects. Altogether, the population of California of Spanish origin must number from forty to fifty thousand.

Closely connected with the Spanish population are the Portuguese, who, of late years, have begun to immigrate to California in considerable numbers, and now number several thousands there. The majority of them are engaged in farming or gardening. They are, as a class, sober, industrious, and peaceable. They are settled principally in the counties around the Bay of San Francisco, and very few of them are to be found in the city itself.

The American population, as it is customary in California to style the natives of the other States of the Union, has been drawn in not very unequal proportions from the North and South, and its character partakes of the peculiarities of both sections, with a general spirit of recklessness and profusion that is peculiarly its own. The public opinion of California is much more liberal and tolerant than that of the Eastern States, and it is rarely indeed that Catholics have to complain of any open display of offensive bigotry on the part of any influential portion of their fellow-citizens. On one occasion, about a year ago, a leading evening paper of San Francisco attempted to raise an anti-Catholic cry during the excitement of a political campaign; but the attempt met with such reprobation from all parties, that the proprietors found it expedient to apologize for it in the course of a day or two as best they could. The great foe of the church in California is not Protestantism, but unbelief; and although the latter is in[822] its nature as full of bitterness against her as the former, yet its champions find it necessary to assume liberality, even if they do not feel it, in obedience to public sentiment. Some of the Protestant sects are indeed outspoken in their bigotry, but their power is very trifling, as the entire Protestant church membership does not amount to five per cent of the population, and not one sixth of the whole people comes under the influence of any Protestant denomination whatsoever. The number of converts in California and Oregon is considerable, including several individuals of high political and literary eminence, and there are also many American Catholics, chiefly from Kentucky, Maryland, and Missouri, scattered through the State.

The Irish are the most numerous of the European nationalities represented in the Californian population, and enjoy a much greater degree of prosperity than their countrymen in any other State of the Union. A much larger proportion of their numbers are engaged in farming than is the case in the Eastern States, and the advantages arising from such an employment of their labor are evident to the dullest eye. Much of the cultivated land of the State is in their possession, and some of them are among its largest land-owners. The city population also enjoys a greater degree of comfort than the same class in New York or Boston. Three of the savings-banks of San Francisco, representing nearly half the capital of the entire number of such institutions in that city, are under Irish control, and Irishmen are also among the most successful merchants, bankers, and manufacturers of California. The late mayor of San Francisco, and an ex-governor of the State are Irishmen and Catholics, and three Irish-Americans in succession have filled the office of United States senator, one of whom still represents the State in Washington. We are not able to give the precise amount of the Irish population in California; but, including the children of Irish parents, it cannot be less than a fourth of the whole. It is needless to state that the immense majority of the Irish in California are Catholics, and that their zeal for every thing pertaining to religion forms a marked contrast to the indifference of their non-Catholic fellow-citizens.

The Germans come next to the Irish in importance, probably amounting to two thirds of their number. They are more blended with the rest of the population than in the Eastern States, and there is only one distinctively German settlement in California, namely, the town of Anaheim on the southern coast. About one fourth of them are Catholics, but they only possess one German church in the state, forming, in this respect, a strong contrast to their countrymen in the Mississippi Valley and on the Atlantic seaboard. Of the non-Catholic Germans, the Jews form a considerable and very wealthy portion, and preserve their distinctive national habits much more tenaciously than the rest of their countrymen. The synagogue Emmanuel in San Francisco is the most costly and elegant place of worship on the Pacific coast, while the German Protestants have scarcely a church in California, and indeed, few of them can be regarded as Christians in any sense.

The French population of California is very considerable, amounting to probably from ten to fifteen thousand, though, as comparatively few of its members become naturalized, it is not so easy to estimate its numbers. In itself it is more completely organized than any other class of the population, having its own benevolent societies,[823] hospitals, military companies, savings-banks, press, and other institutions, all distinctively French in their management. The Italians, who are nearly as numerous as the French, resemble them in the number of their national organizations; but they are not as well managed as those of the former. The Italians are engaged chiefly in trade, fishing, and gardening, in which pursuits they are industrious and usually prosperous. The French are engaged in almost every avocation. The Italians have a national church in San Francisco, and the French have a special pastor attached to one of the parochial churches of the city for their benefit.

The Sclavonians from Austria are also a numerous body; they usually are classed with the Italians, though possessing several associations of their own nationality. Nearly one half of them are schismatics; and the Russian government has lately established a schismatic church in San Francisco for their use and that of the few Russians residing there. It is even in contemplation to make that city the residence of the Bishop of Sitka, who has recently been transferred along with his flock to the allegiance of the United States, but who, nevertheless, still receives his orders from the Russian synod. It is a curious example of the way religious affairs are managed among the subjects of the czar, that the president of the Sclavonian Church Society is a German Lutheran, who fills the office of Russian consul, and on that account alone is considered sufficiently qualified to direct the spiritual concerns of his fellow-subjects.

The Chinese form a very large, and, in many respects, the strangest element in the population of the Pacific coast. They are spread through all its States and territories, and, according to the most reliable accounts, number at least a hundred thousand. Few of them have families, or ever intend to settle permanently in the country, but after a few years' toil as servants or laborers they almost invariably return to China. The immense majority of them are pagans or atheists, and they have several temples or joss-houses in different cities of California. A few Catholics, however, are to be found among them, and a small chapel has lately been opened in San Francisco for their special use. The morals of the pagan Chinese are of the most licentious kind, and slavery in its worst form exists among them in spite of the laws, their ignorance of the language acting as an effectual bar to their availing themselves of its safeguards to personal freedom. As in all other Chinese settlements, so in California, they have practically a government of their own, under the name of companies, the chief men of which exercise almost absolute authority over their countrymen, extending, it is believed, occasionally to the infliction of capital punishment. The white laboring classes are bitterly opposed to the Chinese, on account of the low rate of wages for which they work, and the belief that they are slaves of the companies; but nevertheless their numbers are steadily on the increase, and it is not impossible but they may eventually become the majority of the population of the entire Pacific slope.

The greater part of the preceding remarks are applicable mainly to California and the adjoining mining territories of Nevada, Montana, Idaho, and Arizona, which have been chiefly settled from it, and whose inhabitants partake of the character of its people. The State of Oregon and the adjoining territory of Washington number a population of nearly two hundred thousand, of an entirely different character from that of California.

While Catholic missionaries were the[824] first settlers in California, the colonization of Oregon was mainly effected under the direction of Methodist ministers and the auspices of the Methodist Church. Catholic priests, it is true, had preceded Methodism on its soil, and the present Archbishop of Portland and the Vicar-Apostolic of Vancouver had visited its Indian tribes in 1838; but the Methodist colonies, which arrived in the country a few years later, were deeply imbued with hatred to Catholicity, and a good deal of their intolerant spirit still remains among the people. The Jesuits have been, indeed, very successful in converting and civilizing the Indians; but the white population, with the exception of a few Canadian colonies and a not very large number of Catholics in the city of Portland and the mining districts of southern Oregon, is mainly under Methodist influence. Indeed, so high did anti-Catholic prejudice run among the first settlers of Oregon, that a Methodist conference seriously proposed to Mr. Lane, the first governor of the territory, to expel all Catholics from his jurisdiction by force, a proposition which it is scarcely needful to say he indignantly rejected. Of late years, however, the number of Catholics is on the increase, and with the greater facilities for settlement offered by the lines of railroads now in course of construction, their numbers will no doubt grow still faster in the future. Portland in Oregon is an archiepiscopal see, and Washington territory is a separate diocese, so that Catholic immigrants need not fear the want of religious aids in spite of the limited number of their fellow-worshippers in these northern districts of the Pacific coast.

Such, in brief, is the past history and the present state of the church beyond the Rocky Mountains; and a Catholic can hardly fail to find in them the brightest hopes for its future. Obstacles will have to be encountered, no doubt; fights be fought and sacrifices made; but the successes which Catholicity has already achieved, and the vantage-ground she now occupies in California, leave little reason to doubt of her final triumph. The soil, fertilized by the sweat and blood of the Franciscan missionaries, cannot prove a barren one; and no part of the Union gives promise of a richer harvest than that California which a few years ago was regarded throughout the world as the chosen abode of lawlessness and crime.

OUR LADY'S NATIVITY.

PLUTARCH.

The moral influence which Plutarch exerts over posterity is of a very peculiar kind. He has not, like Aristotle, laid down the law to an entire world for nearly two thousand years. He has not been deemed so perfect a master of style as Virgil or Cicero, who were the models, first of the Benedictines, and then of the prose writers and poets of the humanitarian school. His reputation pales by the side of the brilliant fame which the resurrected Plato enjoyed during the fifteenth century; and yet he has done what all these immortals, whose authority far surpasses in extent and duration that of his biographies, have failed to do. Among the revived ancient authors none has surpassed Plutarch in inspiring the moderns with the same keen appreciation of the classic characteristics, with the same love and enthusiasm for whatever is really or supposedly great in antiquity; and none has therefore contributed so much to the revelation of what we understand by the purely human in man's nature.

From the days of Macchiavelli and Charles V. down to the present, we rarely fail to meet with the name of Plutarch among those writers who have made an abiding impression on the youthful minds of prominent statesmen and warriors. In turning over the leaves of the biographies of our modern great, we are constantly reminded of the words which Schiller puts into the mouth of Carl Moor: "When I read of the great men in my Plutarch, I loath our ink-staining age." This sentiment has found an echo in every civilized land, and especially in France.

The first French translation of Plutarch's Parallels was welcomed by Montaigne with expressions of the liveliest joy. "We would have been swallowed up in ignorance," exclaims he, (essay ii. 4,) "if this book had not extricated us from the slough; thanks to Plutarch, we now dare to speak and write." Rabelais refreshes his soul with the Moralia. "There is," writes the translator Amyot to King Charles IX., "no better work next to holy writ." The "perennially young" Plutarch is the "breviary," the "conscience" of the century, and he remains until the beginning of the most modern time—as Madame Roland calls him—"the pasture of great souls," and the "fellow-companion of warriors." Condé had him read out aloud in his tent, and in the historical part of the books for a camp library which Napoleon Bonaparte ordered from the citoyen J. B. Soy, "homme de lettres," March, 1798, Plutarch stands first, and Tacitus, Thucydides, and Frederick II. last.

The home of Plutarch's admirers is, as we have already observed, France. Like all Latin races, the French delight to revel in pictures of ancient greatness; their historical imagination is governed by fantastic ideals of antiquity, especially of ancient Rome, and the fountain from which they drew, mediately and immediately, their inspiration, is Plutarch's Lives. Hence the exaggerated estimate of Plutarch's historical merits, against which modern criticism begins to protest with much vigor, is greatest in that country. Indeed, the principle upon which Plutarch has selected his historical authorities, and the manner in which he has used them, are decidedly open to objection. They are not chosen according to their scientific or critical[827] value, but according to their wealth of picturesque detail and psychologically remarkable characteristics. He follows a leading author, whose name he usually omits to state, and whose testimony he only compares with that of other writers when there is a conflict of authorities. The text is never cited. He reproduces the sense, but with that latitude which is natural to an imaginative mind endowed in an unusual degree with the gift of realizing the past. In the choice of his subject matter he follows the instincts of a historical portrait-painter. To describe campaigns, to analyze great political changes, is not his province. His acquaintance with the political and military systems of the ancient Greeks and Romans is very superficial, and he seems to care little for a more intimate knowledge of them. His main purpose is not the study of history, but that of the personal career of interesting individuals. "It is not histories we write," Plutarch tells us himself in his introduction to the life of Alexander the Great; "but life-pictures;" and for these, he maintains, some small trait, some apt expression, be it only a witticism, is often more available than the greatest military deeds, the most bloody victories, or the most splendid conquests.

In making this distinction, which Plutarch repeatedly acknowledges to be a rule with him, he forgets that he violates the natural connection, inasmuch as all historical personages are part and parcel of the time they live in; he forgets also that, thus treated, historical characters degenerate into ordinary mortals. But Plutarch does not aspire to the dignity of a historian; he simply claims to "paint souls;" and those readers who ignore this distinction have never comprehended him.

Some of the works which Plutarch was still able to consult are lost, and we depend, therefore, upon him for light on certain important periods of history. This has led many to regard him as a historical authority, to consider his biographical narratives as the main object of his writings, and to skip the moralizing comparisons of the parallel biographies which show that these portraits are to him nothing more than a means of illustrating his peculiar ethics by examples. This point is of great importance; for it proves the only view from which the literary character of Plutarch can be justly estimated.

Not only his narratives, but the judgments which he bases upon them, and the views of the world from which they spring, have left their mark on posterity, and this to an extent surprising even to the initiated. And here it behooves us to exercise still greater caution, a still greater distrust, than we entertain for his statements of fact. Plutarch stands as far removed from the times of the heroes upon whom he passes judgment, as we are from the characters of the Crusades. The full effects of this remoteness can only be estimated by those who have made Plutarch's age and the moral condition reflected in his non-historical writings their special study. "Plutarch's biographies," remarks a French scholar of this class, "are an explanatory appendix to his Moralia; both equally reflected a Greek provincialist's views of the world under the empire; the views of one who sought to console himself for the degradation and emptiness of the present by a romantic idealization of the real and imaginary grandeur of a former age." Plutarch is an out-and-out romancist, and to this must be mainly ascribed the influence he wields over a certain order of minds. The historical errors which we are so slowly correcting are due to this discovery. To show how little Plutarch was fit to play the part of interpreter to a period which had[828] already become remote antiquity in his day, we need only cast a single glance at the times in which he lived.

From Plutarch's own writings we glean nothing that is authentic in regard to his life. Rich as they no doubt are in interesting contributions to the moral and intellectual history of his times, they are barren as regards every thing relating to the author's biography. In truth, the biographer of the ancients is himself without a biography. We know, in the main, that he was born in Chæronea, about the time of Nero's visit to the Delphic temple; that he studied at Athens under the philosopher Ammonius; that he visited Greece, Egypt, and Italy as a peripatetic scholar. After having taught many years at Rome, he finally returned to his native place and commenced that prolific literary activity which he displayed in nearly all departments of ancient knowledge. In these labors the indefatigable student was rather assisted than retarded by his various public duties, first on the urban police, then as archon, and lastly as the high-priest of the Delphic Apollo.

The story that Plutarch was once the teacher of Trajan, and that the latter appointed him governor of Hellas and Illyricum, first told by Symkellas and Suidas, then repeated by John of Salisbury and the scholars of the Renaissance, is a silly Byzantine fable. The latter portion of Plutarch's life, as we learn from his confessions, passed in a retirement entirely inconsistent with the Byzantine story. The world within whose bounds the archon of Chæronea and priest of Apollo lived was a contracted one, and only romance could gild such an existence with the halo of departed glory.

Plutarch may be said to have done wonders. At a time when the old love of country and state had long died out, he, the philosopher, determinedly opposed the petty, baneless cosmopolitanism of his day. In a world which had long lost its ancient faith, and in which the Gospel of Christ had not yet attained the ascendency, the priest of the Delphic oracle battled undismayed for the old gods and against the anarchy of the renegade schools of philosophy. In both cases he is, however, himself, and more than he seems aware or is willing to concede, tainted by the prevailing scepticism, and it is this, in consequence, which colors his own views of the world with what we call romanticism.

Let us follow Plutarch for a moment on those two battle-fields of his polemics, and observe the distinctive features of the Moralia.

The warm appreciation which he displays for every thing that is great in humanity or history is surprising when we remember the incredible hollowness of the surroundings amidst which his heroes were drawn, and the society in which he lived, not as a soured misanthrope, but as a stirring official. The petty Chæronea was hardly the place to prepare the mind for the reception of great thoughts. The population of the municipality, though active and bustling, lived far from the great world. It had its share of orators, sophists, lecturers; it had party divisions to quicken the heart to love and hate; it had games to excite the passions and to stimulate ambition. But what were the questions which the people quarrelled about with all the readiness and vehemence proverbial of the Hellenic race? They were mainly where the best baths might be found; which party was most likely to triumph at the next dog or cock-fight; what kind of man the new official from Rome, or the next travelling sophist, would turn out to be; how such a one had made his fortune, or how Ismenodora,[829] the wealthy widow, could have espoused an obscure man? These were the principal topics which the Chæroneans of Plutarch's day discussed when they went to sleep at night, and resumed again on waking in the morning. And yet how dearly Plutarch loved this small, petty fatherland! How happy he appears to be that it should enjoy the golden peace which at last fell upon the world after the empire had put an end to the terrible civil wars! Under the iron rule of Rome all provinces once more breathed freely. Whatever imperialism meant at the capital, in the provinces it was still popular; and even under Domitian, as Suetonius assures us, the moderation and justice of the Cæsars was the theme of general praise. In contemporary Hellas, in the province of Achaia, the people appreciated these blessings, though they felt most painfully the loss of their former power and renown. Even the monuments of their ancient glory, which attracted annually crowds of strangers, became so many tombstones full of bitter memories, and the explanations of the garrulous guides must have sounded like reproaches in the ears of the degenerate race.

The policy which imperial Rome pursued toward the land from which she had received in the palmy days of her transition to a more refined culture the most admired models in science and art, and from which she obtained in the following centuries the best instructors, the most learned writers, and the most desirable nurses, was a strange compound of severe brutality and flattering caresses. When the great Germanicus, accompanied by a single lictor, reverentially entered the sacred precincts of Athens, and graciously listened to the vaunts of the rhetoricians on the splendor and glory of Greece, and when immediately afterward the brutal Piso descended on the city like a thunderbolt to remind the frightened provincials in a bullying manner that they were no longer Athenians, but the sweepings of nations, (conluvies nationum, Tac. Annal. iii. 54,) then this people learnt by abrupt changes how they stood in the regard of the Romans.

When the Greeks became the subjects of Rome, they were but too speedily taught what she meant by the "liberation of the oppressed." All the accustomed safeguards of the law were suspended at one sweep. No marriage contract, no negotiation, no purchase, no sale, between city and city, village and village, was binding unless ratified by special act of grace from Rome. All sources of prosperity, all public and private rights, passed into Roman hands. Nothing remained to the Greeks save the memory of their former prestige, and the old rivalry between the tribes and cities, which invariably burst out afresh whenever the emperor or one of his lieutenants favored one more than the other. So humiliating and painful were the results of this state of things, that even such a zealous local patriot as Plutarch advises the people, in his pocket oracle for embryo statesmen, to forget the unfortunate words Marathon, Platæa, and Eurymedon. And yet the same Plutarch is so thoroughly Bœotian, that he cannot prevail on himself to forgive the "father of history" the malicious candor with which he relates the bad conduct of the Thebans in the Persian war.

Chæronea, the home of Plutarch, ranked among the most favored cities of the empire, being a municipium, or free city, under the protectorate of Rome, but governed in accordance with its ancient laws by officers elected by the people. Plutarch gives us a very interesting picture of the local[830] administration. His political precepts, and his treatise on the part which it behooves an old man to play in the state, thoroughly enlighten us on all these points. The municipal officers, though merely honorary and unsalaried, were as much an object of contention as in former days when they were lucrative. The candidates were often obliged to make extraordinary exertions for popular support; they erected public edifices; endowed schools and temples; built libraries, aqueducts, baths; distributed bread, money, and cakes; got up games and feasts, and many wealthy men were thus ruined by their ambition. The benefits secured by public office were exemption from local taxation, precedence at the theatres and games, the erection of busts, statues, inscriptions, and pictures; and, after the expiration of office, perhaps promotion in the imperial service.

In addition to the expenses incident to such a canvass, the candidates, if not of low extraction and mean spirit, had to give up many prejudices which must have greatly hurt the pride of every true Greek. Plutarch fully explains in his political precepts what a patriot might expect in those days on entering the public service.

Even the officials of this free city were therefore only puppets, whose functions presented no temptation to the ambitious. All that was left to the local government were the inferior market and street police, the care of the local security and order, and a partial participation in the apportionment of the imperial taxes. But while there was nothing to stimulate the ambition of the Chæroneans, the system had a tendency to promote sycophancy. The subordinate officials entirely ceased to think and act independently, and applied to the emperor in person for directions on the veriest trifles, especially when the ruler seemed inclined to encourage this spirit of subserviency. Such an emperor was Trajan, admired by Pliny for his untiring activity, which led him to meddle with every thing. He took up his pen to defend the exchange of two soldiers, to decree the removal of a dead man's ashes, and to assign an athlete's reward. Pliny, his lieutenant, ruled Bithynia like an automaton. In Prusa, Nicodemia, Nicea, not a man, not a sesterce, not a stone, was suffered to change its place without the imperial sanction. The selection of a surveyor was made a question of state. The emperor seems finally to have found the work too much for him; for he writes on one occasion to his lieutenant: "Thou art on the spot, must know the situation, and shouldst determine accordingly." In the correspondence of these two men can be traced the corruption which gradually seized and overwhelmed rulers and ruled in the Roman empire on the inclined plane of a rapidly spreading super-civilization.

It is greatly to the honor of Plutarch that he condemns this mischievous tendency. He does not find fault with it for the political reasons which would lead us to oppose a paralyzing centralization, but for the[831] sake of the manly dignity, the moral self-respect, which should never be forgotten. "Let it suffice," exclaims he, "that our limbs are fettered; it is unnecessary to place our necks also in the halter."

We perceive here in the honest archon of Chæronea still something of the sturdy spirit of ancient Hellas. Not in vain had he read the history of his ancestors; in spite of the unpropitious times, he still holds what survives of their virtues worthy of preservation; and it is gratifying to find a man of this stamp serving an ungrateful public, while the conceited philosophers of his day regarded politics a contamination. Nor was it without a good influence upon the literary labors of Plutarch that he did not boast, with Lucan, to know "no state or country," but was content to contribute his share to a better state of things. Yet it is nevertheless easy to see that in such an atmosphere no state like the one for which Themistocles, Pericles, and Demosthenes had worked and striven on the field and the tribune—no country like that for which heroes had fought and bled at Marathon, Salamis, and Platæa—could hope to thrive. In this cramped, commonplace sphere, amidst the provincial gossip and the petty interests of such surroundings, the fierce passions which had once inspired parties, which in Rome had fired the hearts of the Gracchi and the other martyrs of the declining commonwealth, were altogether impossible. Here were only the citizens of a small provincial town, the descendants of an ancient and highly renowned nobility but of beggarly presence, the wards of a subjugated land. The enthusiasm with which the higher minds of such an era revelled in the reminiscences of departed greatness was perfectly natural; no less natural was the dim twilight in which its heroes appeared to eyes so little accustomed to discriminate. We can understand why such a profound impression should have been made by all that was foreign in the olden times, especially when the means to analyze, probe, and comprehend it were wholly wanting.

Plutarch's keen appreciation of all the qualities in which the ancients had the advantage over his own contemporaries reflects much credit upon him. Yet he is incapable of comprehending them individually, for there was nothing to correspond with them in the world he lived in. His ideas of state and freedom, of country and virtue among the ancients, are distorted, because in his time their meaning had partly been changed, and partly been lost. To Plutarch's susceptible mind, the heroes of Roman and Grecian history appeared like the effigies preserved in some ancestral hall. He experienced, however, something of the thrill of exultation which electrified Sallust, when he, a warm-hearted youth, first tasted the same sensation; but when he endeavors to communicate this feeling to the reader, he succeeds only in demonstrating his unfitness for the task. An historian, in our sense of the word, Plutarch, we know, does not aspire to be; he claims merely to "paint souls" and "to teach virtue," but even herein he fails. His men are no real personages, no flesh and blood beings, whom he makes step out from the frame of tradition, but puppets gaudily and incongruously arrayed in all kinds of odds and ends. He has never produced a single genre portrait, but merely supplied the raw materials; and these may be even more valuable than any artistically finished but misdrawn historical likeness would have been. This is, however, all that can be said in the behalf of Plutarch's creations, and when[832] we have followed him to his home and visited his mental laboratory, we perceive that it could not well have been otherwise. It is in this light that we have to depict to ourselves Plutarch in the character of the romancist of the ancient ideal of state and country. And when, in conclusion, we regard him further as the romancist of the ancient faith, he may be taken for the predecessor of the apostate Emperor Julian, whom David Strauss so admirably sketched twenty years ago as the romancist on the throne of the Cæsars.

And here also the priest of the Pythian Apollo was once more compelled to accommodate himself to the sad changes of his time. The priestess still sat on the tripod; the sacred fumes still rose out of the earth; the seeress was still beset by curious questioners, and the fountains of the oracle still continued to flow. But how different was the nature of the questions which the contemporaries of Plutarch addressed to the deity! Not war or peace between nation and nation, not rupture or alliance between state and state, as in former days, now demanded its solution. It was what should be eaten, drunk, sown, or harvested; what the deity thought of a nuptial, of the portion set apart for a son or daughter! Such were the things that tempted the curiosity of the oracle-seekers; and to answer them no longer in poetry, but in homely prose, had become the trivial duty of the sanctuary. And yet the magnificence of the gifts and endowments had of late rather increased than fallen off.

But not even Plutarch could disguise to himself the sad fact that the worship of the oracle had by no means kept pace with the progress of superstitious faith. Still, while the heathen deities had multiplied to an extent which led Pliny to declare that the gods in Olympus outnumbered the men on earth; while the number of secret and public sects steadily increased in the east and west; while all the abominations of a misdirected religious instinct in both worlds united as in one common sewer at Rome, when Tacitus said that among the rising sects the one prospered most which proclaimed not only a new god, but a new license for all who were oppressed and poor; while all this was going on, the higher classes of society, the flower of the intellect of the heathen world, had repudiated the superstitions of the masses, partly to deny the existence of the gods, and partly to adopt strange and exclusive mysteries.

Against both these illusions Plutarch protests in a whole series of works, and the manner in which he does it exhibits the best side of his character. "It is so sweet," he assures us, "to believe;" and we also readily believe him when he describes the feelings with which he witnesses the solemnities of divine worship.

He implores a pious and child-like reverence for the faith of his forefathers; it was these gods who have made Greece great, protected it in good and evil seasons; and those who will not pray to them from their inmost hearts, should at least suffer others to enjoy their peace of mind and happy simplicity. They should imitate the Egyptian priest, who, when too closely questioned by Herodotus, placed his finger upon his lips in mysterious silence. He thinks it shows little delicacy in the Stoics and Epicureans to attempt to represent the gods as merely another name for the elementary forces. Those who mistake fire, water, air, etc., for the gods, accept the sails, ropes, and anchor of a vessel for the pilot, the wholesome drug for the physician, and the threads of the web for the weaver.

"You destroy," says he to the Epicureans, "the foundations of society; you murder the holiest instincts of the human soul." To the Stoics he says,

But what of Plutarch's own orthodoxy? It is just what we might have expected from one who was too intelligent to believe the ancient myths and too much of an enthusiast calmly to test his religious heritage. Socrates was not remiss in offering up prayers and sacrifices; no Athenian goddess could rationally complain of him; he believed not only in a Daimonion, or Deity, but (if the Apology be genuine) also in a Son of God; yet he was an atheist. Plutarch's piety is no doubt more enthusiastic in a ratio to his lack of the Socratian keenness of intellect, but strictly considered he has no greater claims to the odor of orthodoxy. With him also the different gods resolve themselves into demons, and it is only in his heart that he knows the one true God—a tenet which has nothing in common with the cheerful anthropomorphism of the Hellenic national creed.

In brief, we discover in Plutarch's character the same inconsistencies which are peculiar to all men of his kind. He stands between two eras. He flies from an aged civilization, which holds him in the iron bonds of custom, to new views of a world which, even imperfect as they are, involuntarily master his reason, though they fail to satisfy his imagination and feelings. From the prose of every-day life he turns to the memory of the glories of his nation, and becomes their chronicler. Repulsed by the unbelief and degeneracy of his contemporaries, he seeks consolation in the poetical fables of the ancient faith, and becomes thus the panegyrist of antiquity. He is, however, unable to reproduce this antiquity in a pure state. He cannot entirely divest himself of all sympathy with those among whom he lives, and remains more than he will admit the child of his own day. Hence what he transmits to us is veiled in that solemn but indistinct semi-obscurity which we meet not only in the ancient temples, but in the heads of the romancists themselves.

THE MIRACLE OF ST. FRANCIS.

We are not telling a romance, but relating an occurrence exactly as its details proceeded from the mouth of the responsible narrator, who is an ox-driver. He who takes offence at the source, the stream, and the receptacle, that is to say, at the ox-driver, his story, and the recipient who is going to set it down in black and white, had better pass this by; for the thought that we were going to be read with prejudice would change the nimble pen we hold in our hand into an immovable petrifaction.

In a town of Andalusia that lifts its white walls under the sky that God created solely to canopy Spain, from the heights of Despeñaperros to the city that Guzman el Bueno defended, upon an elevation at the end of a long, solitary street, stands a convent, abandoned, as they all are, thanks to the progress of ruin. This convent is now, more properly than ever before, the last house of the place. Its massive portal faces the town, and its grounds reach back into the country. In these grounds there were formerly many palm-trees—the old people remember them—but only two remain, united like brothers. In this convent there were formerly many religious; now but one remains. The palms lean upon each other; the religious is supported by the charity of the faithful. He comes every Tuesday to say mass in the magnificent deserted church, which no longer possesses a bell to call worshippers.

No words can express the sentiments that are awakened by the sight of the venerable man, in this vast temple, offering the august sacrifice in silence and solitude. One cannot help fancying that the sacred precinct is filled with celestial spirits, in the midst of whom the celebrant only is visible. The church is of an immense height, and so peacefully cheerful that it would seem to have been built solely to resound to the sublime hymn of the Te Deum, and the no less sublime canticle of the Gloria.

The high altar, exquisitely carved in the most elaborate and lavish style of adornment, astonishes the sight with the multitude of flowers, fruits, garlands, and gilded heads of angels it displays with a profusion and lustre which prove that in its execution neither time nor labor were taken into account. What use is made of gold in our day? Or of time? Are they better employed? He who can show us that they are, will console us for the suppression of the convents. Until it is proved, we shall continue to mourn that noble choir, those sumptuous chapels, that splendid tabernacle, cold and empty as the incredulous heart.

Incredulity! Grand triumph of the material over the spiritual, of earth over heaven; of the apostate angel over the angel of light!

The small square that separates the convent from the street which leads to it is overgrown with grass, and in it, in their hours of rest, the drivers let their oxen loose.

Within the inclosure, in place of stairs, a slight terraced ascent, sustained at the sides by benches of stone mason-work, leads to the door of the[835] church. On the right is the chapel of the third order; the path to the left conducts to the principal entrance to the convent.

Reader, if you love the things of our ancient Spain, come hither. Here the church still stands; here still flourish, without care, the two palms; here is still a Franciscan friar who says mass in the unoccupied temple. Here are still found ox-drivers who tell tales, in which things humorous and pious are mingled with the good faith and wholesomeness of heart of the child that plays with the venerated gray hairs of its parent without a thought that in doing so it is wanting in filial respect. But hasten! for all these things will soon disappear, and we shall have to mourn over ruins—ruins to which the past, in reparation, will lend all its magic.

The third day of the week shone pure and gay, ignorant, doubtless, of the unlucky quality which men attribute to it, and very far from suspecting that its enemy—a foolish saying—would fain deprive it of the happiness of witnessing weddings and embarkations.[304]

On a Tuesday, then, that was as innocent of any hostile disposition as if it had been a Sunday, the lady who told us that which we are going to repeat, walked up the long street of San Francisco to the vacant convent to hear the weekly mass in which God himself would fill the abandoned temple with his most worthy presence. She arrived before the priest, and finding the church closed, sat down to wait upon one of the benches that sustain the terrace. The morning was cool enough to make the sunshine agreeable. In sight rose the two palms, like a pair of noble brothers, bearing together persecution and slight, without yielding or humiliating themselves. The oxen lying down within the inclosure ruminated measuredly, but with so little motion that the small birds passing poised themselves upon their horns. The efts, gazing at all with their intelligent eyes, glided along the walls in a garden of gilly-flowers and rose-colored caper-blooms. Light clouds, like smoke from a spotless sacrifice in honor of the Most High, floated across the enamel of the sky—if it is permitted to compare that with enamel with which no enamel that was ever made can compare. It was a morning to sweeten life, so entirely did it make one forget the narrow circles in which we fret our lives away, and in which living is a weariness.

Your Andalusian is never bashful. The sun may be eclipsed; but, in the lifetime of God, not the serenity of an Andalusian. Sultan Haroun Al-raschid might have spared himself the trouble of the disguises he employed when he mingled among his people without causing them the least diffidence, if he had ruled in Andalusia. Not that the people despise or cannot appreciate superiority; but they know how to lift the hat without dropping the head.

Therefore it happened that, although the lady was one of the principal persons of the place, and although there were other benches to sit on, that one appearing to them the pleasantest, on that one they sat down, without thought or care as to whether their talk would be overheard. In the northern provinces, where the people are entirely good, and as stupid as they are good, they think little and speak less; but in Andalusia thought flies, and words follow in chase. These people can go two days without eating or sleeping, and be little the worse for it; but remain two minutes silent,[836] they cannot. If they have no one to talk with, they sing.

"Man," said one to the other, "I can never see that chapel without thinking of my father, who was a brother of the third order, and used to bring me here with him to say the rosary, which the brothers recited every night at the Angelus."

"Christian! and what sort of man must your father have been? There are no stones out of that quarry nowadays."

"And how should there be? My father—heaven rest him!—used to say that the guillotine war of the French upset the cart. Men nowadays are a pack of idlers, with no more devotion than that of San Korro, the patron of drunkards. But to come back to what I was telling you—a thing his worship once told me, that happened in this very convent.

"All the people of the barrier used to send to the friars for assistance to enable them to die in a Christian fashion. In these times the majority go to the other world like dogs or Jews. Every night, therefore, one of the fathers remained up, so as to be ready in case his services should be wanted. Each kept watch in his turn. One night, when it was the turn of a priest named Father Mateo, who was well known and liked in the town, three men knocked and asked for a religious to succor a person who was at the point of death. The porter informed Father Mateo, who came down immediately. Hardly was the door of the convent closed after him, when they told him that, whether it pleased him or not, they were going to bandage his eyes. It pleased him as much as it would have pleased him to have his teeth pulled. There was nothing for it, however, but to drop his ears; for although he was young, and as tall as a foremast, with a good pair of fists to defend himself with, the others were men of brass, all armed. Besides, neither could his reverence neglect his ministry; and only God knew the intentions of those who had come for him.

"So he said to himself, 'Rome will have this matter to look after;' and let them blindfold him.

"No one can know what streets they made him walk; into this and out of that, till they came to a miserable den, and led him up a flight of stairs, pushed him into a room, and locked the door.

"He took off the bandage; it was as dark as a wolfs mouth, but in the direction of one corner of the room he heard a moan.

"'I am, sir,' answered the doleful voice of a woman; 'these wicked men are going to kill me as soon as my peace is made with God.'

"'Father, by the love of the Blessed Mother, by the dear blood of Christ, by the breasts that fed you, save me!'

"'How can I save thee, daughter? What can I do against three men that are armed?'

"Father Mateo begun to feel about, and, as God vouchsafed him deftness, to undo the knots of the cords that bound the poor creature's hands and feet; but they were hard, he could not see, and time flew as if a bull had been after it.

"The men were knocking at the door. 'Haven't you got through, father?' asked one of them.

"'Ea! don't be in a hurry!' said the father, who, though his will was good enough, could hit upon no means of saving the woman, who was trembling like a drop of quicksilver, and weeping like a fountain.

"A woman will think of an artifice if she has one foot in the grave, and it entered into this one's head to hide herself under Father Mateo's cloak. I have told you that the father was a man who couldn't stand in that door. 'I would prefer another means,' said his reverence; 'but, as there is no other, we must take this, and let the sun rise in Antequera.'[305]

"'I have ended,' answered Father Mateo, with as calm a voice as he could command.

"'Hush! Commend yourself to our Lord of the forsaken ones, and his will be done.'

"'Come,' said the men, 'be quick; we must blindfold you again.' And they tied on the bandage, locked the door, and all three descended into the street with the father in custody, for fear that he might take off the blind and know the place.

"They turned and turned again, as before, till they came to the street of San Francisco; then the rascals took to their heels, and disappeared so quickly that you would have thought they had been spirited away.

"The minute they were out of sight, Father Mateo said to the woman, 'Now, daughter, scatter dust, and find a hiding-place. No; don't thank me, but God, who has saved you; and don't stop; for when those brigands find the bird flown, they will come back and perhaps overtake me.'

"The woman ran, and the father in three strides planted himself inside of his convent.

"He went right away to the cell of the father guardian and told him all that had happened, adding that the men would surely come to the convent in search of him.

"The words were hardly out of his mouth when they heard a knocking at the door. The guardian went down and presented himself. 'Can I serve you in any thing, gentlemen?' he asked.

"'We have come,' answered one, 'for Father Mateo, who was out just now confessing a woman.'

"'What do you mean, you blackguards? brought a woman into the convent! So this is the way you take to injure Father Mateo's reputation, and cast scandal upon our order!'

"'But what?' asked the guardian, very indignant. 'What honorable motive could he have had in bringing a woman here at night?'

"'Didn't I tell you,' grumbled one, 'that the thing wasn't natural, but miraculous?'

"'Yes, yes,' said another; 'this is the doing of God or the devil—and not of the devil, for he wouldn't interfere to hinder his own work.'

"'In God's name go, evil tongues!' thundered the guardian; 'and take heed how you approach convents with bad designs, and lay snares, and invent calumnies against their peaceful dwellers, who, like Father Mateo,[838] sleep tranquilly in their cells; for our holy patron watches over us.'

"'You can't doubt now,' said the most timid of the three, 'that it was the very St. Francis himself who went with us to save that woman by a miracle.'

"'Father Mateo,' said the guardian when they had gone, 'they are terribly frightened, and have taken you for St. Francis. It is better so; for they are wicked men, and they are furious.'

"'They honor me too much,' answered the good man; 'but give me leave, your fathership, to depart at daybreak for a seaport, and from thence to America, before they have time to think better of it, and hang upon me this miracle of St. Francis.'"

THE FIRST ŒCUMENICAL COUNCIL OF THE VATICAN.
NUMBER EIGHT.

The proceedings of the Vatican Council have reached a stage that allows us to witness again its external splendor and imposing presence. Grand and most august as it certainly is, still every thing that strikes the eye fades away as one thinks of its sublime office, of its important, unlimited influence and effect. The nature of the subject it has just treated will necessarily make that influence overshadow all ages to come, and that effect cease to be felt only with the last shock of a world passing away.

The question that for more than a year has agitated all circles of society, that for the past three months has been a subject of exciting debate among the fathers of the council, could not have been of greater weight. It is one of those truths essential to the existence of the church, and had it not been practically acknowledged among the faithful throughout the world, Christianity, unless otherwise sustained by its Author, would have been an impossibility. The vital point examined was the essence of the union of the church, of the union of faith, to determine dogmatically in what it consists, who or what is the person or body that can so hold and teach the faith as to leave no doubt of any kind whatsoever regarding its absolute divine certainty.

Up to the present day the infallibility of an œcumenical council, or of the whole church dispersed throughout the world, has been recognized as the ultimate rule by all who lay claim to orthodoxy; but with that council, or with that church dispersed throughout the world, as a requisite—sine qua non—was the communion and consent of the sovereign pontiff. Where he was with the bishops, there was the faith; no matter how many bishops might meet together and decree, if Peter was not with them, there was no certainty of belief, no infallible guidance. Nay, their decrees were received only in so far as approved by him. Ubi Petrus, ibi ecclesia,[839] was the formula recognized by tradition. In a word, where Peter was, there was to be found infallible teaching; where Peter was not, there neither was the teaching infallible. None in the church ever thought of gainsaying this. But there came a time when the element all agreed hitherto to look on as essential began to be a subject of doubt and of discussion. Writers went so far as to say that the pope could be judged by the other body of teachers, the bishops; and this followed naturally from a mistrust in the unfailing orthodoxy of the sovereign pontiff. The greater phases of this movement are well known. The Council of Constance had hardly closed when the Council of Basle put in practice the principles broached by its predecessor, and deposed the reigning head of the church, putting in his stead Amadeus of Savoy with the title of Felix V. In the midst of this confusion, Eugenius IV. held the Council of Florence, in which the remarkable decree was published that declared the pope the vicar of Christ, the ruler of the flock, and the doctor of the universal church. Those of the French clergy who clung with tenacity to the principles of Basle, refused to receive this decree, under pretence of the unœcumenical character of the Council of Florence. The Jansenists availed themselves of the advantage this pretext gave them. Although eighty-five French bishops wrote in the year 1652 to Innocent X., according, they say, to the custom of the church, in order to obtain the condemnation of these heretics, the latter still held their ground, and were able to accuse the French assembly of 1682 of inconsistency, in attempting to force on them a decision of the pope, whom the assembly itself declared fallible. The celebrated Arnould taught that the refusal of its approbation to a papal decision on the part of one individual church was enough to make the truth of such a decision doubtful.

We shall try to give some idea of the importance of the question of papal infallibility by a parallel development of two opposite teachings, in a rapid sketch.

The cardinal principle of Gallicanism is the denial of the inerrancy of the sovereign pontiff in his solemn ruling in matters of faith and morals when teaching the whole church. Any one who attentively looks at the question must see the close connection of the primacy with the claim to unerring certainty in teaching. The domain of the church is in faith, in spirituals; temporals being secondary, and the subject of legislation only in so far as necessarily bound up with the former. The only reason why a teacher can lay claim to obedience is because he teaches the truth, and this is especially the case where faith and conscience are concerned. If the sovereign pontiff have not this faculty of teaching the truth without danger of error, then he cannot demand implicit submission. The church dispersed throughout the world, being infallible, cannot be taught by one who is capable of falling into error. The ordinances therefore and decrees of the pontiff, being intimately connected with faith, and issued on account of it, must follow the nature of the submission to his teaching. But as this latter, in the Gallican view, is not obligatory unless recognized as just by the whole church, so neither are the ordinances and decrees to be looked on as binding except under a like reservation. It follows from this, clearly and logically, that the supremacy of the pope can be called supreme only by an abuse of terms; consequently, 1st, the texts of canon law and of the fathers that teach a perfect supremacy are erroneous or[840] false, and have no foundation in tradition, which is the truth always, everywhere, and by every one held in the same way; 2d, the texts of Scripture that refer to Peter are to be restricted to him personally, or, when seeming to regard his successors, are to be interpreted in a sense not favorable to the idea of a perfect supremacy. The pope thus becomes amenable to the church; he is a divinely constituted centre, nothing more; the official representative of the bishops of the whole church dispersed throughout the world, which alone is the ultimate criterion of truth. He can, therefore, be judged by the bishops, be corrected by them, deposed by them, and his asserted right to reserve powers to himself to the prejudice of ordinaries, or to legislate for dioceses other than his own, is to be set aside. A species of radicalism is thus introduced into the church. The bishops themselves are not to be looked on as infallible judges of the faith of their flocks even, and the faithful themselves, or the people, become the ultimate judges of what is to be held as of faith. Instead of being taught, they teach; instead of being a locus theologicus, they become the ecclesia docens; and the teachers and rulers become the ruled and taught. As the people themselves are liable to be swayed by the influence and teaching of artful men, we have in consequence a weak and uncertain rule to go by; weak, because of the moral impossibility of knowing the sense of the whole church, for even the members of an œcumenical council might not exactly represent the faith of their individual churches; uncertain, because of the facility with which in past time the people of many individual churches have been led astray.

As we write, it seems as if we heard some indignant protest against what we have just said. We reply that we do not refer to individual opinions; many Gallicans refused to go the length of their principles; a sense of danger alarmed their piety and put them on their guard. For our part, we treat of the principles themselves, and deem perfectly consequent what we have asserted. It would be an easy matter to illustrate it with facts of the present as of the past; but it would be beyond our scope just now. Any student of history will have no difficulty in recalling the manner in which defections from the church have been brought about, and the errors of those who once seemed columns of the temple. The inadequacy of the Gallican rule is still further shown by its practical inconvenience. It is fortunate that in the early church it had no place whatsoever. Peter being then recognized as the head and teacher of the church, all controversies were referred to him, and by him they were settled. Petrus per os Leonis, per os Agathonis locutus est; so spoke the fathers of Chalcedon and of the Sixth Council. Suppose for a moment it had been otherwise; suppose, when the Pelagian heresy arose, it had been necessary to hear the voice of the whole church scattered over the earth—this being the rule—the whole church, not any one part, was to give the doctrine from which it was not lawful to depart. Zosimus was but one bishop; so, too, was Innocent I.; Augustin was only one learned man, and Prosper of Aquitaine, a Christian poet and polished scholar, but only one other father after all. Those who wrote with them bore witness each for his own particular church. What had become of the churches of Scythia, of Lybia, of Ethiopia, of Arabia? Who had penetrated into the Indies, or set sail for the islands of the sea, or reached the far-off coasts of the Sinenses? Who was to explain with accuracy to those distant[841] Christians the cunning dealing of Celestius and Pelagius, that had deceived the vigilance of the eastern fathers, and lay bare the hypocritical professions that had misled even Zosimus? Who was to bring back the opinion or belief of these isolated churches without danger of misunderstanding or misinterpretation? Those were not days when communication was easy. Weeks and months amid all kinds of dangers and uncertainty were required to reach even those places that lay near the shores of the Mediterranean. It was physically impossible to ascertain with unerring sureness the belief or condemnation of those far-off Christians; and as long as their assent was not given there was no adequate rule of faith. Consequently, there was no prompt or efficacious means of correcting error; the means at hand were of probable worth, therefore not sufficient to use against heresy, that could always appeal to the universal church dispersed throughout the world, and when condemned by those near, fly to the probable protection of those at a distance, without the least possibility of ever knowing the belief of those to whom they appealed. In the meanwhile, heresy crept into the flock, established itself there; for there was none to cast it forth; and the fold became tainted. Thus from age to age Christianity would have been a mass of error, the truth being obscured or suffocated by the weight of falsity from the want of a prompt practical means by which heresy could be detected and crushed at its birth. Happily no such state of things existed; the chair of Peter was the abode of truth; it was set up against error, and the quick ear and intuitive eye of Christ's vicar heard and saw the evil, and met it at the outset.

The doctrine which teaches the opposite of what we have been describing, and which is now of faith, clears up all difficulties, and comes to us in all the beauty and consistency that adorns truth. Jesus Christ has made Peter and his successors the foundation of the church. He has given to him, and to each of those who succeed him, of his own firmness, and strengthened his faith that it fail not, that he may confirm his brethren. In this office of confirming his brethren, Peter holds the place of Christ, and acts in his name. The gift he possesses, however, is not one of inspiration; but he is assisted and kept from erring in his judgment of what is contained in the revelation made by Christ to man. To arrive at a knowledge of what that revelation is, he seeks in his own church, and, according to the need, in the churches every where that he may know their traditions. The judgment he makes is infallible, and in promulgating it he lays down the tenets of faith for the whole church. Hence he becomes the immovable rock upon which the faithful are builded, he is the centre around which they revolve, the orb from which they receive the light of faith. Hence he has subject to him the minds of all, and the character of his primacy becomes more clear and fully evident. It is no longer a mere point of visible communion, but an active power placed by God to rule, with unfailing guidance in faith, and with a consequent spiritual intuitiveness, that makes him discern what is for the good of the church at large throughout the world. Hence all are bound to obey him in what regards the faith and teachings of Christ; who is with him, is with Christ; whosoever is against him, is against his Master. Hence, too, by a direct consequence, there can be no power set up against his; all the bishops of the church depend on him, receive their jurisdiction from him, and can exercise it[842] only at his word. What a sublime picture of unity, of order, and of strength! As an army in array the church advances to do battle against the foes of Christ, never more successful, never more glorious, than when her children, recognizing their dependence, and harkening to her voice, with one mind and with one heart follow the leadership of Peter. No wonder this spectacle struck the unbelieving mind with astonishment, or made the gifted writer of England burst forth into the glowing description so familiar to all!

The difference of opinion that existed among the bishops on the subject of the infallibility is known throughout the four quarters of the globe. What was the cause of it? If any one imagines that all who joined in opposing a definition from the outset were actuated by the same motives, he would certainly be wide of the mark. While the main point of the controversy was held by the ultramontanes without exception, and there was but the one question as to the formula to be used, the opposition, as they were generally called, taken all together, had no fixed principle of accord, save an agreement to disagree with the defining the doctrine as of faith. To analyze the constituent parts of this body we shall class them according to ideas.

First in conviction, in determination, and in influence were the Gallicans, properly so called, who held and taught the very opposite of the proposed dogma. They were mostly men who had been bred in this teaching, and who deeply reverenced the memories of those who held and taught it in past times. This class was not very numerous, though it grew larger in the course of the council by the accession of those whose examination of the question convinced them of the claim of Gallicanism to their adherence.

The second class comprised those who, believing the doctrine themselves, or at least, favoring it speculatively, did not think it capable of definition, not deeming the tradition of the church clear enough on this point.

A third class, the most numerous, regarded the definition as possible, but practically fraught with peril to the church, as impeding conversions, as exasperating to governments. For the sake of peace, and for the good of souls, they would not see it proclaimed as of faith.

All of these dissident prelates, we are bound to say, acted with conscientious conviction of the justice of the cause they defended. They were bound in conscience to declare their opinions, and to make them prevail by all lawful influence. If on one side or the other of this most important and vital question any went beyond the limits of moderation, or used means not dictated by prudence or charity, it is nothing more than might have been expected in so large a number of persons, of such varied character and education. Instead of being shocked at the little occurrences of this nature, we should rather be struck with admiration at the self-restraint and affability which were shown, despite the intensity of feeling and strength of conviction. In a word, that the Council of the Vatican did not break up months ago in disorder and irreconcilable enmity, is because it was God's work, and not man's; it was because charity ruled in it, in spite of defects, and not the passions that govern the political debates of men. The earnest desire all had of a mutual good understanding was evinced on occasion of the speech of a well-known cardinal, which, though not approved of by all, gave evidence[843] of a sincere desire for conciliation and agreement. The effect was remarkable; a thrill of pleasure went through the assembly, for the moment each one seemed to breathe freely, and to hail his words as harbingers of peace in the midst of excitement and anxiety.

It was shortly after this incident that the closure of the general discussion on the four chapters of the present constitution took place. The regulations provide for this contingency, making it lawful for ten prelates to petition for the closing of a discussion, the proposal being then put to the vote of all the fathers, and the majority deciding. In this case, a desire not to interfere with remarks which bishops, for conscientious reasons, proposed to make, kept this regulation in abeyance, and it was only after fifty-five speeches had been listened to, that one hundred and fifty bishops sent in a petition for closing, believing there would be ample time and opportunity for every one to speak and present amendments when the schema would be examined in detail. An overwhelming majority voted the closure. It seems difficult to understand how this could be found fault with. Had there been no further chance to speak, there would have been reason undoubtedly to claim hearing, or complain of not being heard. But, as has been seen since, there have been discussions on each part of the schema; and on the last chapter, regarding the doctrine of infallibility, one hundred and nine names were inscribed for speaking, of which number sixty-five spoke, the remainder by mutual consent abstaining from speaking; thus of their own accord putting a stop to a discussion in which it was morally impossible to say any thing new. It seems surely to be a strange assertion to say there has been any real infringement of the liberty of speech in the council, when there appears to have been so much of it that the members themselves grew weary of it.

While we are on this subject, we wish to speak a little more fully, as the freedom of the council has been publicly impugned in two works, published in Paris, against which the presidents and the fathers have thought proper formally to protest.

1st. The appointment of the congregation, the members of which were named by the sovereign pontiff, and who received or rejected the postulata, or propositions, to be presented to the council for discussion.

2d. The dogmatic deputation having been composed of those in favor of the definition, and the members having been put on it by management; moreover, this deputation exercised a controlling influence in the council.

3d. The interruption of those who were giving expression to their opinions, in the exercise of their right to speak.

We preface our brief reply to these objections by two quotations. One is from the letter of an apostate priest, A. Pichler, at present director of the imperial library at St. Petersburg, which was written by him in Rome last winter, and was published in the Presse of Vienna. In it he says, "It seems to us no council has ever been freer or more independent." The second quotation is from one of the two works referred to above—Ce qui se passe au Concile. At page 131 we read:

Apart from the spirit that animates the writer of the above, there is much in what he says, and we take him at his word. The Œcumenical Council of the Vatican has pronounced its irrevocable and infallible decree, declaring infallibility to be and to have been a prerogative of the sovereign pontiff, and that his decisions ex cathedra are irreformable of themselves, and not by virtue of the consent of the episcopacy. We therefore draw our deduction, and justify the sovereign pontiff, by these very words, in nominating the members of the congregation, and in conferring on it the ample powers it has. Secondly, we give him the praise of moderation, because he did not make a full use of the rights accorded him by the author of the citation we have given. Were we to follow this writer, we should have to accuse the pope of having in part neglected a grave duty toward the council, for he did not dictate its decrees. In the very beginning, he told the bishops he gave them the schemata, unapproved by him, to be studied, altered, or amended as they saw fit; and, in fact, when the decrees prepared previously by theologians were proposed by the congregation, they were recast and amended time and again, and were finally decided by a vote of the fathers, and approved by the pontiff without alteration. This is surely not dictation; dictation does not admit of reply or refusal, it takes away all liberty whatsoever. The sovereign pontiff then did not dictate the decrees.

Let us return to our triple objection. First, with regard to the congregation. In the early numbers of The Catholic World for the current year, an account of the composition of this body is given, as well as the reasons for its appointment. We refer our readers to the March number, in which it may be seen that, although possessed of sovereign powers over the church, defined as belonging to him, by the Council of Florence among others, there was no disposition to exercise coercion on the part of the pope, who, in controlling the action of the council in this way, was only making use of a right the whole church acknowledged. Moreover, the composition of this body was itself a guarantee of justice and zeal for the general welfare. That there were not named for it those who were known to be hostile to what has just been declared of faith, was nothing more than natural. Moreover, when these high ecclesiastics had admitted postulata, their work was over; the propositions passed into the control of the fathers, and were decided by vote.

The answer to the second objection is easier even. This deputation was elected by the fathers themselves; and as the large majority favored the teachings of Rome, they elected none who was opposed to them. As for the accusation of management, we must say that persons who understood well the tendencies of the prominent men of all parties, naturally, as happens in all such large bodies, directed the choice of candidates, and the final vote of the fathers settled the matter. It is hard to see how the rights of any were violated. This deputation, from the merit of those that composed it, could not be without great weight in the council; and when we consider that it was the choice of the large majority, and was in harmony with the views of the majority, it is not wonderful that it controlled to a great extent the votes of those composing the council.

The third objection is one that must be treated with great delicacy, for two reasons—because of the impossibility[845] of knowing all the circumstances, and because those who are accused are in a position that prevents them from justifying themselves. The presidents were named to act for the sovereign pontiff, to preserve due order, to see that the discussion was limited to the matter in hand, and to prevent any thing that might tend to disturb good order, or diminish respect for the authority and person of him they represented. If, in the discharge of their duty, they displeased those they addressed, this was to have been expected; if also they in any way did not observe the due mean, so hard to reach in every thing human, one should excuse, if needful, the defect, when especially the great merits, the distinguished services, the known virtue, and high position of these cardinals are taken into consideration.

And while we are on this subject of objections made against the council we may notice two others that especially regard the decree of the infallibility; they are, 1st. This decision destroys the constitution of the church, doing away with the apostolic college of bishops, and changing the order established by Christ; 2d. this decree is a theological conclusion; but theological conclusions are not of faith, and cannot be so declared.

These objections are formidable only in appearance. No one contends that each bishop when consecrated succeeds to all the privileges and powers of one of the apostles. The bishops, then, not having them in the beginning when consecrated by the apostles, were distinct from the apostles, the apostolic college remaining. When one apostle died, his death did not affect the powers of the church, which remained the same, the other apostles sufficing; so when two, three, or more died, still one remained. He had the same full powers given to each, with subordination to Peter as head of the church. Thus with one apostle and the episcopate the essence of ecclesiastical rule is preserved. When St. Peter died, he left a successor, being the only one of the twelve who did; for he was the only one who had a see. His successor received all his rights, the power of binding and loosing, of teaching and legislating. He was thus the one apostle living still in the world, and each successive pontiff has the same character—the sollicitudo omnium ecclesiarum is his—as it was Paul's, John's, and Peter's. The essence of the hierarchy is in this way preserved; the apostolic and episcopal elements are there, and the phraseology of Christianity keeps ever before us this idea; for the see of Peter is always known as the Sedes Apostolica. St. Peter Chrysologus speaks of St. Peter living and ruling in his successor—Beatus Petrus qui in successore suo et vivet et præsidet et præstat inquirentibus eam fidem. So far, then, from this definition destroying the character of the hierarchy, it asserts and vindicates it by declaring that the one apostle in the church has never lost his apostolic privilege of inerrancy, and that he is truly possessed of the full powers without diminution that belonged to the prince of the apostles.

To the second objection, regarding the nature of the definition, as being a theological conclusion, we reply, firstly, that what the Scripture, according to the received and now authentic interpretation of the church, taught, and what the practical acknowledgment of the faithful in all ages implied, cannot be called a theological conclusion; but must be regarded as being what it is—a directly revealed truth; secondly, a theological conclusion, though not of faith in itself, as being the deduction of reason, by[846] the superadded authoritative decision of the church can become of faith, as often as the denial of such conclusion affects the truth of that dogma from which it has been deduced. Such questions are fairly within the range of the church's arbitration; and when there is a doubt concerning the character of a conclusion, it is her province to decide whether it be or be not hurtful or beneficial to the truth of which she alone is the divinely constituted guardian. Examples in the past history of the councils of the church are not wanting; for our purpose, take the Sixth Council. The question of the two wills was a theological conclusion; no one ever spoke of the two wills before that epoch; the phrase does not occur in all previous theology or ecclesiastical history. We first hear of it in the east, where metaphysical studies flourished, and where intellectual pride had already brought about the Arian, Nestorian, and Eutychian heresies.

We have mentioned the fact of the closure of the discussion on the fourth chapter, by mutual consent of those whose names were inscribed to speak. This was immediately followed by voting. The first three chapters were soon gotten over; the fourth is the one that contains the doctrine on the infallibility, and it met with more opposition.

On Saturday, July 11th, was held the general congregation in which the details of this portion of the schema were up for approval or rejection. On this occasion the voting was by rising simply, and against the definition there were forty-seven votes.

On the 13th, another general congregation was called to vote, according to the regulations, on the whole schema, by name, with placet, or placet juxta modum, or non placet. The register, it appears, stands as follows: 451 placets, 62 placets juxta modum, and 88 non placets.

Some of these placets juxta modum recommended the insertion of words that would make the decree clearer and stronger. The schema was accordingly altered, and the amendments were retained in the general congregation held Saturday, July 16th.

On Sunday morning was distributed a monitum, by which the fathers were notified that the fourth public session would be held on Monday, July 18th, at nine o'clock.

The 18th of July will henceforth be a memorable day in the history of the church. It did not dawn, however, with the brilliancy usual at this season, or almost habitual with the grand fêtes of Pius IX. It rained much during the preceding night, and up to the time of the meeting of the session wayfarers were liable any time to be caught by fitful showers. The thought that, although a great and most beneficial act was to be done, still there were not a few of the fathers who thought otherwise than the majority in a matter about to be made binding on the conscience of all, was not calculated to heighten the external manifestation of cheerfulness, whatever feelings of thankfulness to Providence for the event was in the heart. As the interest was intense, there were not many, who deemed they could come, who were not present. At nine o'clock precisely, his eminence Cardinal Barili began a low mass, without chant. At the end of it, the small throne for the gospels was placed on the altar, and upon it the copy of the sacred Scriptures. In a few moments the sovereign pontiff entered, preceded by the senate and by the officers of his court, and, after kneeling a few moments at the prie-dieu, went to his throne in the apsis of the aula. The customary[847] prayers were recited by him; the litany of the saints was chanted, and the "Veni Creator Spiritus" intoned, the people present taking part; after which the Bishop of Fabriano ascended the pulpit and read the schema to be voted on, and finished with asking the fathers whether it pleased them. Monsignor Jacobini next, from the pulpit, called the name of each prelate assisting at the council. Five hundred and thirty-four answered placet, two replied non placet, and one hundred and six were absent, some because sick, the far greater number not wishing to vote favorably. As soon as the result was made known officially to Pius IX., who awaited it in silence, but with calmness, he arose and in a clear, distinct, and firm voice announced the fact of all, with the exception of two, having given a favorable vote, wherefore, he continued, by virtue of our apostolic authority, with the approval of the sacred council, we define, confirm, and approve the decrees and canons just read. Immediately there arose murmurs of approbation inside and outside the hall, the doors of which were surrounded by a large crowd, and, increasing from the impossibility those present experienced of repressing their feeling, it swelled into a burst of congratulation, and a Viva Pio Nono Papa infallibile. We shall not say any thing regarding the propriety of such proceedings in a church; but there are times when feeling is so powerful as to break through all ideas of conventionality. As soon as all were quiet, with unfaltering voice and excellent intonation the pope began the Te Deum. It was taken up alternately by the Sistine choir and those present. By an accident, at the Sanctus, Sanctus, Sanctus, the people got out, and took up the part of the Sistine choir, and kept it to the end, alternately with the bishops, and with a volume of sound that completely drowned the delicate notes of the papal singers, and which, if not as musical as their chant, was far more impressive. The session ended with the apostolic benediction from the holy father, accompanied by an indulgence for all assisting, in accordance with the custom of the church. Thus passed one of the most momentous and remarkable occasions the world has ever witnessed, a day henceforth memorable in the annals of the church and of mankind, the results of which the human mind is scarce capable of grasping.

FIRST DOGMATIC DECREE ON THE CHURCH OF CHRIST, PUBLISHED IN THE FOURTH SESSION OF THE HOLY ŒCUMENICAL COUNCIL OF THE VATICAN.

PIVS EPISCOPVS SERVVS SERVORVM DEI SACRO APPROBANTE CONCILIO AD PERPETVAM REI MEMORIAM.	PIUS, BISHOP, SERVANT OF THE SERVANTS OF GOD, WITH THE APPROBATION OF THE HOLY COUNCIL, FOR A PERPETUAL REMEMBRANCE HEREOF.
Pastor aeternus et episcopus animarum nostrarum, ut salutiferum redemptionis opus perenne redderet, sanctam aedificare Ecclesiam decrevit, in qua veluti in domo Dei viventis fideles omnes unius fidei et charitatis vinculo continerentur. Quapropter, priusquam clarificaretur, rogavit Patrem non pro Apostolis tantum, sed et pro eis, qui credituri erant per verbum eorum in ipsum, ut omnes unum essent, sicut ipse Filius et Pater unum sunt. Quemadmodum igitur Apostolos, quos sibi de mundo elegerat, misit, sicut ipse missus erat a Patre; ita in Ecclesia sua Pastores et Doctores usque ad consummationem saeculi esse voluit. Ut vero episcopatus ipse unus et indivisus esset, et per cohaerentes sibi invicem sacerdotes credentium multitudo universa in fidei et communionis unitate conservaretur, beatum Petrum caeteris Apostolis praeponens in ipso instituit perpetuum utriusque unitatis principium ac visibile fundamentum, super cuius fortitudinem aeternum exstrueretur templum, et Ecclesiae coelo inferenda sublimitas in huius fidei firmitate consurgeret.[306] Et quoniam portae inferi ad evertendam, si fieri posset, Ecclesiam contra eius fundamentum divinitus positum maiori in dies odio [849] undique insurgunt; Nos ad catholici gregis custodiam, incolumitatem, augmentum, necessarium esse iudicamus, sacro approbante Concilio, doctrinam de institutione, perpetuitate, ac natura sacri Apostolici primatus, in quo totius Ecclesiae vis ac soliditas consistit, cunctis fidelibus credendam et tenendam, secundum antiquam atque constantem universalis Ecclesiae fidem, proponere, atque contrarios, dominico gregi adeo perniciosos errores proscribere et condemnare.	The eternal Shepherd and Bishop of our souls, in order to render perpetual the saving work of his redemption, resolved to build the holy church, in which, as in the house of the living God, all the faithful should be united by the bond of the same faith and charity. For which reason, before he was glorified, he prayed the Father, not for the apostles alone, but also for those who, through their word, would believe in him, that they all might be one, as the Son himself and the Father are one. (John xvii. 1-20.) Wherefore, even as he sent the apostles, whom he had chosen to himself from the world as he had been sent by the father, so he willed that there should be pastors and teachers in his church even to the consummation of the world. Moreover, to the end that the episcopal body itself might be one and undivided, and that the entire multitude of believers might be preserved in oneness of faith and of communion, through priests cleaving mutually together, he placed the blessed Peter before the other apostles and established in him a perpetual principle of this two-fold unity, and a visible foundation on whose strength "the eternal temple might be built, and in whose firm faith the church might rise upward until her summit reach the heavens," (St. Leo the Great, Sermon iv. (or iii.) chapter 2, on Christmas.) Now, seeing that in order to overthrow, if possible, the church, the powers of hell on every side, and with a hatred which increases day by day, are assailing her foundation which was placed by God, we therefore, for the preservation, the safety, and the increase of the Catholic flock, and with the approbation of the sacred council, have judged it necessary to set forth the doctrine which, according to the ancient and constant faith of the universal church, all the faithful must believe and hold, touching the institution, the perpetuity, and the nature of the sacred apostolic primacy, in which stands the power and strength of the entire church; and to proscribe and condemn the contrary errors so hurtful to the flock of the Lord.
CAPUT I. DE APOSTOLICI PRIMATUS IN BEATO PETRO INSTITUTIONE.	CHAPTER I. OF THE INSTITUTION OF THE APOSTOLIC PRIMACY IN THE BLESSED PETER.
Docemus itaque et declaramus, iuxta Evangelii testimonia primatum iurisdictionis in universam Dei Ecclesiam immediate et directe beato Petro Apostolo promissum atque collatum a Christo Domino fuisse. Unum enim Simonem, cui iam pridem dixerat: Tu vocaberis Cephas,[307] postquam ille suam edidit confessionem inquiens: Tu es Christus, Filius Dei vivi, solemnibus hic verbis locutus est Dominus: Beatus es Simon Bar-Iona, quia caro et sanguis non revelavit tibi, sed Pater meus, qui in coelis est: et ego dico tibi, quia tu es Petrus, et super hanc petram aedificabo Ecclesiam meam, et portae inferi non praevalebunt adversus eam: et tibi dabo claves regni coelorum: et quodcumque ligaveris super terram, erit ligatum et in coelis: et quodcumque solveris super terram, erit solutum et in coelis.[308] Atque [850] uni Simoni Petro contulit Iesus post suam resurrectionem summi pastoris et rectoris iurisdictionem in totum suum ovile, dicens: Pasce agnos meos: Pasce oves meas.[310] Huic tam manifestae sacrarum Scripturarum doctrinae, ut ab Ecclesia catholica semper intellecta est, aperte opponuntur pravae eorum sententiae, qui constitutam a Christo Domino in sua Ecclesia regiminis formam pervertentes negant, solum Petrum prae caeteris Apostolis, sive seorsum singulis sive omnibus simul, vero proprioque iurisdictionis primatu fuisse a Christo instructum: aut qui affirmant eumdem primatum non immediate, directeque ipsi beato Petro, sed Ecclesiae, et per hanc illi, ut ipsius Ecclesiae ministro, delatum fuisse.	We teach, therefore, and declare that, according to the testimonies of the Gospel, the primacy of jurisdiction over the whole church of God was promised and given immediately and directly to blessed Peter, the apostle, by Christ our Lord. For it was to Simon alone, to whom he had already said, "Thou shalt be called Cephas,"[309] that, after he had professed his faith, "Thou art Christ, the Son of the living God," our Lord said, "Blessed art thou, Simon Bar-Jona; because flesh and blood hath not revealed it to thee, but my Father who is in heaven; and I say to thee, that thou art Peter, and upon this rock I will build my church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it; and I will give to thee the keys of the kingdom of heaven; and whatsoever thou shalt bind upon earth, it shall be bound also in heaven; and whatsoever thou shalt loose upon earth, it shall be loosed also in heaven."[311] And it was to Simon Peter alone that Jesus, after his resurrection, gave the jurisdiction of supreme shepherd and ruler over the whole of his fold, saying, "Feed my lambs;" "Feed my sheep."[312] To this doctrine so clearly set forth in the sacred Scriptures, as the Catholic Church has always understood it, are plainly opposed the perverse opinions of those who, distorting the form of government established in his church by Christ our Lord, deny that Peter alone above the other apostles, whether taken separately one by one or all together, was endowed by Christ with a true and real primacy of jurisdiction; or who assert that this primacy was not given immediately and directly to blessed Peter, but to the church, and through her to him, as to the agent of the church.
Si quis igitur dixerit, beatum Petrum Apostolum non esse a Christo Domino constitutum Apostolorum omnium principem et totius Ecclesiae militantis visibile caput; vel eumdem honoris tantum, non autem verae propriaeque iurisdictionis primatum ab eodem Domino nostro Iesu Christo directe et immediate accepisse; anathema sit.	If, therefore, any one shall say, that blessed Peter the Apostle was not appointed by Christ our Lord, the prince of all the apostles, and the visible head of the whole church militant; or, that he received directly and immediately from our Lord Jesus Christ only the primacy of honor, and not that of true and real jurisdiction; let him be anathema.
CAPUT II. DE PERPETUITATE PRIMATUS BEATI PETRI IN ROMANIS PONTIFICIBUS.	CHAPTER II. OF THE PERPETUITY OF THE PRIMACY OF PETER IN THE ROMAN PONTIFFS.
Quod autem in beato Apostolo Petro princeps pastorum et pastor magnus ovium Dominus Christus Iesus in perpetuam salutem ac perenne bonum Ecclesiae instituit, id eodem auctore in Ecclesia, quae fundata super petram ad finem saeculorum usque firma stabit, iugiter durare necesse est. Nulli [851] sane dubium, imo saeculis omnibus notum est, quod sanctus beatissimusque Petrus, Apostolorum princeps et caput, fideique columna et Ecclesiae catholicae fundamentum, a Domino nostro Iesu Christo, Salvatore humani generis ac Redemptore, claves regni accepit: qui ad hoc usque tempus et semper in suis successoribus, episcopis sanctae Romanae Sedis, ab ipso fundatae, eiusque consecratae sanguine, vivit et praesidet et iudicium exercet.[313] Unde quicumque in hac Cathedra Petro succedit, is secundum Christi ipsius institutionem primatum Petri in universam Ecclesiam obtinet. Manet ergo dispositio veritatis, et beatus Petrus in accepta fortitudine petrae perseverans suscepta Ecclesiae gubernacula non reliquit.[314] Hac de causa ad Romanam Ecclesiam propter potentiorem principalitatem necesse semper fuit omnem convenire Ecclesiam, hoc est, eos, qui sunt undique fideles, ut in ea Sede, e qua venerandae communionis iura in omnes dimanant, tamquam membra in capite consociata, in unam corporis compagem coalescerent.[315]	What the prince of pastors and the great shepherd of the sheep, our Lord Jesus Christ, established in the person of the blessed apostle Peter for the perpetual welfare and lasting good of the church, the same through his power must needs last for ever in that church, which is founded upon the rock, and will stand firm till the end of time. And indeed it is well known, as it has been in all ages, that the holy and most blessed Peter, prince and head of the apostles, pillar of the faith and foundation of the Catholic Church, who received from our Lord Jesus Christ, the Saviour and Redeemer of mankind, the keys of the kingdom of heaven, to this present time and at all times lives and presides and pronounces judgment in the person of his successors, the bishops of the holy Roman see, which was founded by him, and consecrated by his blood.[316] So that whoever succeeds Peter in this chair, holds, according to Christ's own institution, the primacy of Peter over the whole church. What, therefore, was once established by him who is the truth, still remains, and blessed Peter, retaining the strength of the rock, which has been given to him, has never left the helm of the church originally intrusted to him.[317] For this reason it was always necessary for every other church, that is, the faithful of all countries, to have recourse to the Roman Church on account of its superior headship, in order that being joined, as members to their head, with this see, from which the rights of religious communion flow unto all, they might be knitted into the unity of one body.[318]
Si quis ergo dixerit, non esse ex ipsius Christi Domini institutione seu iure divino, ut beatus Petrus in primatu super universam Ecclesiam habeat perpetuos successores; aut Romanum Pontificem non esse beati Petri in eodem primatu successorem; anathema sit.	If, therefore, any one shall say, that it is not by the institution of Christ our Lord himself, or by divine right, that blessed Peter has perpetual successors in the primacy over the whole church; or, that the Roman pontiff is not the successor of blessed Peter in this primacy; let him be anathema.
[852] CAPUT III. DE VI ET RATIONE PRIMATUS ROMANI PONTIFICIS.	CHAPTER III. OF THE POWER AND NATURE OF THE PRIMACY OF THE ROMAN PONTIFF.
Quapropter apertis innixi sacrarum litterarum testimoniis et inhaerentes tum Praedecessorum Nostrorum Romanorum Pontificum, tum Conciliorum generalium disertis, perspicuisque decretis, innovamus oecumenici Concilii Florentini definitionem, qua credendum ab omnibus Christi fidelibus est, sanctam Apostolicam Sedem, et Romanum Pontificem in universum orbem tenere primatum, et ipsum Pontificem Romanum successorem esse beati Petri principis Apostolorum, et verum Christi Vicarium, totiusque Ecclesiae caput, et omnium Christianorum patrem ac doctorem existere; et ipsi in beato Petro pascendi, regendi et gubernandi universalem Ecclesiam a Domino nostro Iesu Christo plenam potestatem traditam esse; quemadmodum etiam in gestis oecumenicorum Conciliorum et sacris canonibus continetur.	Wherefore, resting upon the clear testimonies of holy writ, and following the full and explicit decrees of our predecessors the Roman pontiffs, and of general councils, we renew the definition of the œcumenical council of Florence, according to which all the faithful of Christ must believe that the holy apostolic see and the Roman pontiff hold the primacy over the whole world, and that the Roman pontiff is the successor of blessed Peter the prince of the apostles, and the true vicar of Christ, and is the head of the whole church, and the father and teacher of all Christians; and that to him, in the blessed Peter, was given by our Lord Jesus Christ full power of feeding, ruling, and governing the universal church; as is also set forth in the acts of the œcumenical councils, and in the sacred canons.
Docemus proinde et declaramus, Ecclesiam Romanam disponente Domino super omnes alias ordinariae potestatis obtinere principatum, et hanc Romani Pontificis iurisdictionis potestatem, quae vere episcopalis est, immediatam esse: erga quam cuiuscumque ritus et dignitatis, pastores atque fideles, tam seorsum singuli quam simul omnes, officio hierarchicae subordinationis, veraeque obedientiae obstringuntur, non solum in rebus, quae ad fidem et mores, sed etiam in iis, quae ad disciplinam et regimen Ecclesiae, per totum orbem diffusae pertinent; ita, ut custodita cum Romano Pontifice tam communionis, quam eiusdem fidei professionis unitate, Ecclesia Christi sit unus grex sub uno summo pastore. Haec est catholicae veritatis doctrina, a qua [853] deviare salva fide atque salute nemo potest.	Wherefore, we teach and declare that the Roman Church, under divine providence, possesses a headship of ordinary power over all other churches, and that this power of jurisdiction of the Roman pontiff, which is truly episcopal, is immediate, toward which the pastors and faithful of whatever rite and dignity, whether singly or all together, are bound by the duty of hierarchical subordination and of true obedience, not only in things which appertain to faith and morals, but likewise in those things which concern the discipline and government of the church spread throughout the world, so that being united with the Roman pontiff, both in communion and in profession of the same faith, the church of Christ may be one fold under one chief shepherd. This is the doctrine of Catholic truth, from which no one can depart without loss of faith and salvation.
Tantum autem abest, ut haec Summi Pontificis potestas officiat ordinariae ac immediatae illi episcopali iurisdictionis potestati, qua Episcopi, qui positi a Spiritu Sancto in Apostolorum locum successerunt, tamquam veri Pastores assignatos sibi greges, singuli singulos, pascunt et regunt, ut eadem a supremo et universali Pastore asseratur, roboretur ac vindicetur, secundum illud sancti Gregorii Magni: Meus honor est honor universalis Ecclesiae. Meus honor est fratrum meorum solidus vigor. Tum ego vere honoratus sum, cum singulis quibusque honor debitus non negatur.[319]	So far, nevertheless, is this power of the supreme pontiff from trenching on that ordinary power of episcopal jurisdiction by which the bishops, who have been instituted by the Holy Ghost and have succeeded in the place of the apostles, like true shepherds, feed and rule the flocks assigned to them, each one his own; that, on the contrary, this their power is asserted, strengthened, and vindicated by the supreme and universal pastor; as St. Gregory the Great saith: My honor is the honor of the universal church; my honor is the solid strength of my brethren; then am I truly honored when to each one of them the honor due is not denied. (St. Gregory Great ad Eulogius, Epist. 30.)
Porro ex suprema ilia Romani Pontificis potestate gubernandi universam Ecclesiam ius eidem esse consequitur, in huius sui muneris exercitio libere communicandi cum pastoribus et gregibus totius Ecclesiae, ut iidem ab ipso in via salutis doceri ac regi possint. Quare damnamus ac reprobamus illorum sententias, qui hanc supremi capitis cum pastoribus et gregibus communicationem licite impediri posse dicunt, aut eamdem reddunt saeculari potestati obnoxiam, ita ut contendant, quae ab Apostolica Sede vel eius auctoritate ad regimen Ecclesiae constituuntur, vim ac valorem non habere, nisi potestatis saecularis placito confirmentur. Et quoniam divino Apostolici primatus iure Romanus Pontifex universae Ecclesiae praeest, docemus etiam et declaramus, eum esse iudicem supremum fidelium,[320] et in omnibus causis ad examen ecclesiasticum spectantibus [854] ad ipsius posse iudicium recurri;[321] Sedis vero Apostolicae, cuius auctoritate maior non est, iudicium a nemine fore retractandum, neque cuiquam de eius licere iudicare iudicio.[322] Quare a recto veritatis tramite aberrant, qui affirmant, licere ab iudiciis Romanorum Pontificum ad oecumenicum Concilium tamquam ad auctoritatem Romano Pontifice superiorem appellare.	Moreover, from that supreme authority of the Roman pontiff to govern the universal church, there follows to him the right, in the exercise of this his office, of freely communicating with the pastors and flocks of the whole church, that they may be taught and guided by him in the way of salvation. Wherefore, we condemn and reprobate the opinions of those, who say that this communication of the supreme head with the pastors and flocks can be lawfully hindered, or who make it subject to the secular power, maintaining that the things which are decreed by the apostolic see or under its authority for the government of the church, have no force or value unless they are confirmed by the approval of the secular power. And since, by the divine right of apostolic primacy, the Roman pontiff presides over the universal churches, we also teach and declare that he is the supreme judge of the faithful, (Pius VI. Brief Super Soliditate,) and that in all causes calling for ecclesiastical trial, recourse may be had to his judgment, (Second Council of Lyons;) but the decision of the apostolic see, above which there is no higher authority, cannot be reconsidered by any one, nor is it lawful to any one to sit in judgment on his judgment. (Nicholas I. epist. ad Michaelem Imperatorem.) Wherefore, they wander away from the right path of truth who assert that it is lawful to appeal from the judgments of the Roman pontiffs to an œcumenical council, as if to an authority superior to the Roman pontiff.
Si quis itaque dixerit, Romanum Pontificem habere tantummodo officium inspectionis vel directionis, non autem plenam et supremam potestatem iurisdictionis in universam Ecclesiam, non solum in rebus, quae ad fidem et mores, sed etiam in iis, quae ad disciplinam et regimen Ecclesiae per totum orbem diffusae pertinent; aut eum habere tantum potiores partes, non vero totam plenitudinem huius supremae potestatis; aut hanc eius potestatem non esse ordinariam et immediatam sive in omnes ac singulas ecclesias sive in omnes et singulos pastores et fideles; anathema sit.	Therefore, if any one shall say that the Roman pontiff holds only the charge of inspection or direction, and not full and supreme power of jurisdiction over the entire church, not only in things which pertain to faith and morals, but also in those which pertain to the discipline and government of the church spread throughout the whole world; or, that he possesses only the chief part and not the entire plenitude of this supreme power; or, that this his power is not ordinary and immediate, both as regards all and each of the churches, and all and each of the pastors and faithful; let him be anathema.
CAPUT IV. DE ROMANI PONTIFICIS INFALLIBILI MAGISTERIO.	CHAPTER IV. OF THE INFALLIBLE AUTHORITY OF THE ROMAN PONTIFF IN TEACHING.
Ipso autem Apostolico primatu, quem Romanus Pontifex tamquam Petri principis Apostolorum successor in universam Ecclesiam obtinet, supremam quoque magisterii potestatem comprehendi, haec Sancta Sedes semper tenuit, perpetuus Ecclesiae usus comprobat, ipsaque oecumenica Concilia, ea imprimis, in quibus Oriens [855] cum Occidente in fidei charitatisque unionem conveniebat, declaraverunt. Patres enim Concilii Constantinopolitani quarti, maiorum vestigiis inhaerentes, hanc solemnem ediderunt professionem: Prima salus est, rectae fidei regulam custodire. Et quia non potest Domini nostri Iesu Christi praetermitti sententia dicentis: Tu es Petrus, et super hanc petram aedificabo Ecclesiam meam, haec, quae dicta sunt, rerum probantur effectibus, quia in Sede Apostolica immaculata est semper catholica reservata religio, et sancta celebrata doctrina. Ab huius ergo fide et doctrina separari minime cupientes, speramus, ut in una communione, quam Sedes Apostolica praedicat, esse mereamur, in qua est integra et vera Christianae religionis soliditas.[323] Approbante vero Lugdunenis Concilio secundo, Graeci professi sunt: Sanctam Romanam Ecclesiam summum et plenum primatum et principatum super universam Ecclesiam catholicam obtinere, quem se ab ipso Domino in beato Petro Apostolorum principe sive vertice, cuius Romanus Pontifex est successor, cum potestatis plenitudine recepisse veraciter et humiliter recognoscit; et sicut prae caeteris tenetur fidei veritatem defendere, sic et, si quae de fide subortae fuerint quaestiones, suo debent iudicio definiri. Florentinum denique Concilium definivit: Pontificem Romanum, verum Christi Vicarium, totiusque Ecclesiae caput et omnium Christianorum patrem ac doctorem existere; et ipsi in beato Petro pascendi, regendi ac gubernandi universalem Ecclesiam a Domino nostro Iesu Christo plenam potestatem traditam esse.	This holy see has ever held—the unbroken custom of the church doth prove—and the œcumenical councils, those especially in which the east joined with the west, in union of faith and of charity, have declared that in this apostolic primacy, which the Roman pontiff holds over the universal church, as successor of Peter the prince of the apostles, there is also contained the supreme power of authoritative teaching. Thus the fathers of the fourth council of Constantinople, following in the footsteps of their predecessors, put forth this solemn profession: "The first law of salvation is to keep the rule of true faith. And whereas the words of our Lord Jesus Christ cannot be passed by, who said: Thou art Peter, and upon this rock I will build my church, (Matt. xvi. 18,) these words, which he spake, are proved true by facts; for in the apostolic see, the Catholic religion has ever been preserved unspotted, and the holy doctrine has been announced. Therefore wishing never to be separated from the faith and teaching of this see, we hope to be worthy to abide in that one communion which the apostolic see preaches, in which is the full and true firmness of the Christian religion." [Formula of St. Hormisdas Pope, as proposed by Hadrian II. to the fathers of the eighth general Council, (Constantinop. IV.,) and subscribed by them.] So too, the Greeks, with the approval of the second council of Lyons, professed, that the holy Roman Church holds over the universal Catholic Church, a supreme and full primacy and headship, which she truthfully and humbly acknowledges that she received, with fulness of power, from the Lord himself in blessed Peter, the prince or head of the apostles, of whom the Roman pontiff is the successor; and as she, beyond the others, is bound to defend the truth of the faith, so, if any questions arise concerning faith, they should be decided by her judgment. And finally, the council of Florence defined that the Roman pontiff is true vicar of Christ, and the head of the whole church, and the father and teacher of all Christians, and that to him, in the blessed Peter, was given by our Lord Jesus Christ full power of feeding and ruling and governing the universal church. (John xxi. 15-17.)
[856] Huic pastorali muneri ut satisfacerent, Praedecessores Nostri indefessam semper operam dederunt, ut salutaris Christi doctrina apud omnes terrae populos propagaretur, parique cura vigilarunt, ut, ubi recepta esset, sincera et pura conservaretur. Quocirca totius orbis Antistites, nunc singuli, nunc in Synodis congregati, longam ecclesiarum consuetudinem et antiquae regulae formam sequentes, ea praesertim pericula, quae in negotiis fidei emergebant, ad hanc Sedem Apostolicam retulerunt, ut ibi potissimum resarcirentur damna fidei, ubi fides non potest sentire defectum.[324] Romani autem Pontifices, prout temporum et rerum conditio suadebat, nunc convocatis oecumenicis Conciliis aut explorata Ecclesiae per orbem dispersae sententia, nunc per Synodos particulares, nunc aliis, quae divina suppeditabat providentia, adhibitis auxiliis, ea tenenda definiverunt, quae sacris Scripturis et apostolicis Traditionibus consentanea, Deo adiutore, cognoverant. Neque enim Petri successoribus Spiritus Sanctus promissus est, ut eo revelante novam doctrinam patefacerent, sed ut eo assistente traditam per Apostolos revelationem seu fidei depositum sancte custodirent et fideliter exponerent. Quorum quidem apostolicam doctrinam omnes venerabiles Patres amplexi et sancti Doctores orthodoxi venerati atque secuti sunt; plenissime scientes, hanc sancti Petri Sedem ab omni semper errore illibatam permanere, secundum Domini Salvatoris nostri divinam pollicitationem discipulorum suorum principi factam: Ego rogavi pro te, ut non deficiat fides tua, et tu aliquando conversus confirma fratres tuos.	In order to fulfil this pastoral charge, our predecessors have ever labored unweariedly to spread the saving doctrine of Christ among all the nations of the earth, and with equal care have watched to preserve it pure and unchanged where it had been received. Wherefore the bishops of the whole world, sometimes singly, sometimes assembled in synods, following the long established custom of the churches, (S. Cyril, Alex. ad S. Cœlest. Pap.,) and the form of ancient rule, (St. Innocent I. to councils of Carthage and Milevi,) referred to this apostolic see those dangers especially which arose in matters of faith, in order that injuries to faith might best be healed there where the faith could never fail. (St. Bernard ep. 190.) And the Roman pontiffs, weighing the condition of times and circumstances, sometimes calling together general councils, or asking the judgment of the church scattered through the world, sometimes consulting particular synods, sometimes using such other aids as divine providence supplied, defined that those doctrines should be held, which, by the aid of God, they knew to be conformable to the holy Scriptures, and the apostolic traditions. For the Holy Ghost is not promised to the successors of Peter, that they may make known a new doctrine revealed by him, but that, through his assistance, they may sacredly guard, and faithfully set forth the revelation delivered by the apostles, that is, the deposit of faith. And this their apostolic teaching, all the venerable fathers have embraced, and the holy orthodox doctors have revered and followed, knowing most certainly that this see of St. Peter ever remains free from all error, according to the divine promise of our Lord and Saviour made to the prince of the apostles: I have prayed for thee, that thy faith fail not, and thou, being once converted, confirm thy brethren. (Conf. St. Agatho, Ep. ad Imp. a Conc. Œcum. VI. approbat.)
[857] Hoc igitur veritatis et fidei numquam deficientis charisma Petro eiusque in hac Cathedra successoribus divinitus collatum est, ut excelso suo munere in omnium salutem fungerentur, ut universus Christi grex per eos ab erroris venenosa esca aversus, coelestis doctrinae pabulo nutriretur, ut sublata schismatis occasione Ecclesia tota una conservaretur atque suo fundamento innixa firma adversus inferi portas consisteret.	Therefore, this gift of truth, and of faith which fails not, was divinely bestowed on Peter and his successors in this chair, that they should exercise their high office for the salvation of all, that through them the universal flock of Christ should be turned away from the poisonous food of error, and should be nourished with the food of heavenly doctrine, and that, the occasion of schism being removed, the entire church should be preserved one, and, planted on her foundation, should stand firm against the gates of hell.
At vero cum hac ipsa aetate, qua salutifera Apostolici muneris efficacia vel maxime requiritur, non pauci inveniantur, qui illius auctoritati obtrectant; necessarium omnino esse censemus, praerogativam, quam unigenitus Dei Filius cum summo pastorali officio coniungere dignatus est, solemniter asserere.	Nevertheless, since in this present age, when the saving efficacy of the apostolic office is exceedingly needed, there are not a few who carp at its authority; we judge it altogether necessary to solemnly declare the prerogative, which the only begotten Son of God has deigned to unite to the supreme pastoral office.
Itaque Nos traditioni a fidei Christianae exordio perceptae fideliter inhaerendo, ad Dei Salvatoris nostri gloriam religionis Catholicae exaltationem et Christianorum populorum salutem, sacro approbante Concilio, docemus et divinitus revelatum dogma esse definimus: Romanum Pontificem, cum ex Cathedra loquitur, id est, cum omnium Christianorum Pastoris et Doctoris munere fungens, pro suprema sua Apostolica auctoritate doctrinam de fide vel moribus ab universa Ecclesia tenendam definit, per assistentiam divinam, ipsi in beato Petro promissam, ea infallibilitate pollere, qua divinus Redemptor Ecclesiam suam in definienda doctrina de fide vel moribus instructam esse voluit; ideoque eiusmodi Romani Pontificis definitiones ex sese, non autem ex consensu Ecclesiae, irreformabiles esse.	Wherefore, faithfully adhering to the tradition handed down from the commencement of the Christian faith, for the glory of God our Saviour, the exaltation of the Catholic religion, and the salvation of Christian peoples, with the approbation of the sacred council, we teach and define it to be a doctrine divinely revealed: that when the Roman pontiff speaks ex cathedra, that is, when in the exercise of his office of pastor and teacher of all Christians, and in virtue of his supreme apostolical authority, he defines that a doctrine of faith or morals is to be held by the universal church, he possesses, through the divine assistance promised to him in the blessed Peter, that infallibility with which the divine Redeemer willed his church to be endowed, in defining a doctrine of faith or morals; and therefore that such definitions of the Roman pontiff are irreformable of themselves, and not by force of the consent of the church thereto.
[858] Si quis autem huic Nostrae definitioni contradicere, quod Deus avertat, praesumpserit; anathema sit.	And if any one shall presume, which God forbid, to contradict this our definition; let him be anathema.
Datum Romae, in publica Sessione in Vaticana Basilica solemniter celebrata, anno Incarnationis Dominicae millesimo octingentesimo septuagesimo, die decima octava Iulii. Pontificatus Nostri anno vigesimo quinto	Given in Rome, in the Public Session, solemnly celebrated in the Vatican Basilica, in the year of the Incarnation of our Lord one thousand eight hundred and seventy, on the eighteenth day of July; in the twenty-fifth year of our Pontificate.
Ita est Iosephus Episcopus S. Hippolyti Secretarius Concilii Vaticani.	Ita est. Joseph, Bishop of St. Polten, Secretary of the Council of the Vatican.

NEW PUBLICATIONS.

Life of T. Théophane Vénard, Martyr in Tonquin. Translated from the French by Lady Herbert. London: Burns, Oates & Co. 1870. Pp. 215. For sale by the Catholic Publication Society, 9 Warren Street, New York.

China is the land of modern martyrdom. She continues the work of Nero and Diocletian. Within a few days the newspapers have contained a brief account of the latest massacre. These persecutions have been constant since her soil first drank the blood of a Catholic missionary. Incited by their pagan priests, secretly encouraged by government officials, and sustained by the approbation of the mandarins, the ignorant and barbarous mobs of China are only too ready for the murder of those whom they term "Foreign Devils." Throughout the world there is at least partial toleration for the teacher of the Christian religion; in China there is only certain death. Father Vénard, then, went to China with the hope and expectation of martyrdom. This was tempered, indeed, by the thought that he was unworthy of this singular grace, but still it was the constant thought of his life. In early childhood it was his delight to read the "Annals of the Propagation of the Faith" with his dear sister Mélanie; and once, when he had scarcely reached his ninth year, he was heard to exclaim, "And I too will go to Tonquin; and I too will be a martyr!" Those childish lips were speaking a prophecy. Let twenty-two years pass away, and the little French lad will be found in a wooden cage, the prisoner of barbarians, and awaiting sentence of death. Sweet bird of paradise that he was, it is not strange that even a pagan mob should be touched by his misfortunes. He hears the crowd about his prison saying, "What a pretty boy that European is!" "He is gay and bright, as if he were going to a feast!" "He is come to our country to do us good." "Certainly he can't have done any thing wrong." But in China, as in more civilized nations, popular sympathy has little influence over the authorities who administer the government. Doubtless there was some law to be vindicated, and so, on February 3d, 1860, at the age of thirty-one, Father Vénard was beheaded. His execution was not remarkable for any great tortures, though it was cruel enough. But this was due to an unskilful headsman and a dull sword; and as these accidents are frequent in the execution of our criminals, it would be[859] unjust to make it a reproach to those who caused the death of the young martyr. But his life does not require the heroic endurance of tortures to make it interesting. He wins our love simply because he was so full of love himself. He was a tender and affectionate son, a warm and devoted brother, an unfailing friend. Perhaps the greatest of his sacrifices was made when he left the sister to whom he was so warmly attached that he might labor among the heathen. It may have been a more glorious triumph for the martyr to renounce his idolized relatives than to meet death bravely. We cannot, therefore, see the appropriateness of Lady Herbert's remark, that Vénard "was no ascetic saint, trembling at every manifestation of human or natural feeling." If he did not tremble at human affections, at least he knew how to renounce them; indeed, he saw that perfection could only be gained by their renunciation. But as Lady Herbert's sentence reads, it conveys a reproach to the ascetics. We might imagine that "an ascetic saint trembling at every manifestation of human or natural feeling" was something greatly to be deplored. But when we remember that St. Aloysius was so careful in this matter that he would not raise his eyes to look upon his own mother, we may very fairly question the wisdom of Lady Herbert's insinuation. She has evidently used the word ascetic in a Protestant sense; deriving it from the word similar in sound, but totally different in meaning—acetic. It would be very difficult to assign exactly the part which human affections play in Christian perfection. Perhaps there is no rule which will apply to all. The lives of the saints show that they have looked upon it in very different lights. Some have completely broken all family ties; others have cherished and sanctified the love borne to their relations. It is only fair, then, to conclude that God has directed these souls in different ways. If F. Vénard yields up his life for Christ and the Catholic faith, we will not quarrel with him when he calls his sister "part of his very life," or tells her that she is his "second self." Yet such language could not come from St. Aloysius, or St. Francis Borgia, or St. Ignatius. Their piety was cast in a more austere mould. But coming from this dear martyr of Tonquin, these words do not seem inappropriate. No one would wish them changed. They are the expression of his innocent and childish disposition. They prove our hero, though a priest and a man of thirty, to be the worthy companion of gentle St. Agnes. Of all the martyrs none have resembled her more closely than this heroic priest; all that imagination has painted her will be found in the reality of Father Vénard's life.

Notes on the Physiology and Pathology of the Nervous System. With reference to Clinical Medicine. By Meredith Clymer, M.D., University Pennsylvania; Fellow of the College of Physicians, Philadelphia. D. Appleton & Co. Pp. 53.

This brochure fulfils the promise of its learned author in the introduction, in which he "proposes to summarize the recent investigations into the physiology and pathology of the nervous system which have a bearing on clinical medicine."

The labor has been faithfully and skilfully performed, and the history of the scleroses of the brain and spinal cord is carefully collected from the English, German, and French—collated, compared, and analyzed. The summary is one of the utmost importance to physicians, and is interesting to men of general knowledge capable of appreciating this class of subjects.

It is difficult to over-estimate the value to science and society of the investigations and studies into the physiology and pathology of the nervous centres which are being conducted all over the world. Among the students of these interesting subjects Dr. Clymer ranks high as an observer, and chief in this country as annalist and critic. He holds a position in the world of medicine analogous to that held by Brownson in the domain of philosophy and theology, and his services are of inestimable value in correcting the hasty, crude, and ill-advised speculations of[860] men who have neither acquired knowledge nor powers of original observation and reflection.

It is obviously out of place to pursue the subject in its medical aspects in this place, but we commend the pamphlet to physicians, scientists, and jurists, and also to theologians.

From this class of works they can learn the basis on which medicine rests as a science, and the essential immorality of all forms of quackery.

Out of the Past. (Critical and Literary Papers.) By Parke Godwin. New York: G. P. Putnam & Sons. 1870.

This is a collection of nineteen articles written for different magazines—principally for the Democratic Review and Putnam's Monthly—at various periods from 1839 to 1856. The experiment of publishing in book form an author's fugitive essays is seldom successful. True, it was so in the cases of Carlyle and Macaulay. How far Mr. Godwin may resemble them in this respect remains to be seen. Should any reviewer come to the treatment of this book strong in the Vicar of Wakefield's celebrated canon of criticism—that the picture would have been better if the painter had taken more pains—he will find himself disarmed by Mr. Godwin's prefatory apology, that these essays "are more imperfect than they would have been with a larger leisure at my command." The subjects are generally interesting, and their treatment instructive. The style of these essays is excellent, and their author's opinions and criticisms on literature and art generally of a healthy tone. We cannot precisely agree with Mr. Godwin when he credits a certain work of Dutch art (p. 375) with the inspiration of patriotism, but are glad to see with his eyes that Thackeray

A Compendium of the History of the Catholic Church. By Rev. Theodore Noethen. Baltimore: John Murphy & Co. 1870. Pp. 587.

A hasty glance through the contents of this work seems to justify these conclusions: The chief merit of the book is its numerous anecdotes. These illustrate the particular customs and dangers of Christians in different nations and centuries. Compendiums usually fatigue the mind with dates and uninteresting details. Father Noethen has carefully avoided this fault. He leads us into the homes and by the hearth-side of the Catholics of former times. Nothing can be more useful than this. History cannot be learned until we imagine ourselves living at that very time and taking our part in the scenes which are described. So the words of a martyr, or a sentence from a letter, or a pious custom will often throw more light upon history than whole pages of detailed facts and speculations. In regard to those more delicate questions which every writer of a church history must solve in some way, Father Noethen appears to have acted with great discretion. We were particularly pleased with the remarks concerning Origen. In this work that illustrious hero of the early church is given the praise which he has so long deserved, but which has been so long denied him. By an oversight, however, there is one unfortunate sentence in this book. It speaks of Constantine as "convening a general council." Without doubt this expression is incorrect; the Christian emperors aided the meeting of œcumenical councils; they never convened them. That power was always reserved to the sovereign pontiff alone. But apart from this clerical error the book is very praiseworthy, and will do good both to Catholics and to Protestants.

FOOTNOTES:

[1] De l'Avenir du Protestantisme et du Catholicisme. Par M. l'Abbé F. Martin. Paris: Tobra et Haton. 1869. 8vo, pp. 608.

[2] Cicero, Legg. ii. 23.

[3] Plutarch in Pompey. Seneca, Epis. 64.

[4] Mother of Caligula, and grandmother of Nero, by her daughter Agrippina Julia.

[5] To produce a gladiator in the arena was to edit him.

[6] Pliny, Epis. iii. 21.

[7] Mary Queen of Scots and her Accusers. Embracing a Narrative of Events from the Death of James V., in 1542, until the Death of the Regent Murray, in 1570. By John Hosack, Barrister-at law. William Blackwood & Sons, Edinburgh and London. 1869.

Histoire de Marie Stuart. Par Jules Gauthier. Vol. i. Paris. 1869.

[8] This translation, which first appeared in the Democratic Magazine thirty years ago, is now republished at the request of the author, G. J. G.

[9] By the late Otto George Mayer, student of the Congregation of St. Paul.

[10] Instead of these three lines we sometimes find the following:

Fac me cruce custodiri,
Morte Christi præmuniri,
Confoveri gratia.

The former version of the Latin is followed in the Greek, the latter in the English translation.

[11] The Origin and Development of Religious Belief. By S. Baring-Gould, M.A., author of Curious Myths of the Middle Ages, The Silver Store, etc. Part I. Heathenism and Mosaism. New York: D. Appleton & Co., 90, 92, and 94 Grand street. 1870.

[12] "And some indeed he gave to be apostles, and some prophets and others evangelists, and others pastors and teachers."

"That we may not now be CHILDREN, tossed to and fro, and carried about with every wind of doctrine, in the wickedness of men, in craftiness by which they lie in wait to deceive." (St. Paul to the Ephesians, iv. 11, 14.)

[13] The Christian World. The Bible in the Schools. February, 1870. New York: Bible House.

[14] We desire to call attention to another point which could not be discussed in the foregoing article, and to which we can at present only allude in the briefest manner. Large sums of money have been granted by legislatures to universities and colleges which are controlled by the clergy of different Protestant denominations, in which they teach their religious opinions without restraint, and which they make, as far as they can, training-schools for their theological seminaries. Now, if the outcry against any grant of public funds to schools in which the Catholic religion is taught is taken up and sustained by Protestants, it follows that they must advocate the total secularization of all institutions, without exception, which enjoy any state subsidies, and, if they wish to keep control of religious instruction in any of the above-mentioned colleges, must refund to the state every thing which they now possess by grant from the state, and give up all claim to receive any further endowments. Catholics would never disendow or despoil these Protestant institutions, even if they had full power to do it; but if the party of infidelity ever gains, by the help of Protestants, full sway over our legislation, the latter may prepare themselves for a wholesale spoliation.

[15] New Englander, January, 1870. Article entitled, "Moral Results of the Romish System."

Handbuch der vergleichenden Statistik. Leipzig. 1868.

Historisch-politische Blätter. Neuntes Heft, Munich. 1867. Article entitled, "Allgemeine und confessionelle Statistik in Preussen."

[16] Including kingdom of Saxony, Brunswick, Hanover, Mecklenburg-Schwerin, Saxe-Weimar-Eisenach, Saxe-Altenburg, Hesse, and Bremen.

[17] Including Schleswig-Holstein.

[18] Saxony, Brunswick, Hanover, Mecklenburg-Schwerin, Saxe-Weimar-Eisenach, Saxe-Altenburg, Hesse, and the city of Bremen.

[19] We have studiously avoided entering on the specific subjects of the debate among the fathers. So far as they have come to our knowledge, we are of course not allowed to speak of them, at least at present. But we trust we shall not be held as violating any confidence when we repeat a statement made to us on the best authority. Many of the fathers of the Vatican Council seem well acquainted with our Second Plenary Council of Baltimore. More than once it was referred to with special commendation as having thoroughly seized the character of this modern age in which we live. And the desire was expressed that its special regulations on one or two points for the church in the United States could be made universal laws for the whole church.

[20] When it shall have been established with the evidence required by the Congregation of Rites that it has pleased God to work two miracles, of the first class, after the death of this venerable servant, through his intercession, a decree may be issued stating that fact, and allowing his beatification. When two other miracles of the same class shall have been proved with the same certainty to have occurred, after his beatification, the blessed servant of God may be canonized and enrolled among the saints of the church.

[21] Chiesa e Stato: Rapsodie di C. Cantù, dalla Rivista Universale. Corretto e riveduto dall' Autore. 1867. 8vo, pp. 94.

[22] Suetonius, Aug. 39. The forum, where gladiators had often bled, was becoming less and less used for that purpose.

[23] It is well known that Trajan exhibited shows in which ten thousand gladiators fought, but this monstrous development of cruelty came long after our date.

[24] A school of gladiators. Suet Jul. 26; Aug. 42; Tacit. Hist. ii. 88.

[25] This German expedition took the same direction as that of the Austrian armies which endeavored to dislodge Bonaparte from the siege of Mantua, and came pouring down both sides of Lake Guarda.

[26] Cic. Fam. xiii. 59; Dion. iii. 22; Cæsar. Bell. Cir. iii. 20.

[27] The malignant innkeepers mentioned by Horace, "Sat. lib. 1, Sat. 5," kept a low class of houses in comparison with this notable hostelry.

[28] Pliny, Ep. x. 14, 121.

[29] Cic. Qu. Fr. ii. 14; Plautus, Pœn. v. 1, 22, 2, 92; Cist. 2, 1, 27.

[30] Libertus, freedman of such or such a family; libertinus, freedman in general, or son of one.

[31] Zothecula, a small apartment, one side of which was formed by a curtain. Pliny, Epis. ii. 17; v. 6. Suetonius, Claud. 10.

[32] Flutes, etc. Juvenal v. 121; xi. 137.

[33] Something in this language may seem out of keeping. I would therefore remind the reader that the most learned, accomplished, studious, and highly-cultivated minds among the Romans were very frequently found in the class of slaves and freedmen.

[34] A question that used to be urged as a test of fitness for membership, and an affirmative answer required. The custom has now become obsolete.

[35] The evening star.

[36] The Prose Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson, New and revised edition. Boston: Fields, Osgood & Co. 1870. 2 vols. 16mo.

[37] Mary Stuart. Her Guilt or Innocence. An Inquiry into the Secret History of her Times. By Alexander McNeel Caird. Edinburgh: Adam & Charles Black. 1869.

[38] Bothwell: A Poem in Six Parts. By W. Edmonstoune Aytoun, D.C.L. Author of Lays of the Scottish Cavaliers, Bon Gaultier's Ballads, etc. Boston: Ticknor & Fields.

[39] Mr. Froude, by "reactionary," means that he was not a disciple of John Knox; by "dangerous," that he was a man who would defend his religion.

[40] The said undertakers shall not devise or lease any part of their lands at will, but shall make certain estates for years, for life, in tail or in fee simple.—Art. 12th, charter of A.D. 1613.

[41] "In the number of farms, from one to five acres, the decrease has been 24,147; from five to fifteen acres, 27,379; from fifteen to thirty acres, 4274; while of farms above thirty acres, the increase has been 3670. Seventy thousand occupiers with their families, numbering about three hundred thousand, were rooted out of the land. In Leinster, the decrease in the number of holdings not exceeding one acre, as compared with the decrease of 1847, was 3749; above one and not exceeding five, was 4026; of five and not exceeding fifteen, was 2546; of fifteen to thirty, 391; making a total of 10,617. In Munster, the decrease in the holdings under thirty acres is stated at 18,814; the increase over thirty acres, 1399. In Ulster, the decrease was 1502; the increase, 1134. In Connaught, where the labor of extermination was least, the clearance has been most extensive. There in particular the roots of holders of the soil were never planted deep beneath the surface, and consequently were exposed to every exterminator's hand. There were in 1847, 35,634 holders of from one to five acres. In the following year there were less by 9703; there were 76,707 holders of from five to fifteen acres, less in one year by 12,891; those of from fifteen to thirty acres were reduced by 2121; a total depopulation of 26,499 holders of land, exclusive of their families, was effected in Connaught in one year."—Captain Larcom's report for 1848, as quoted in Mitchel's Last Conquest of Ireland, (Perhaps.) Dublin, 1861.

[42] The productiveness of the land when properly tilled is four times greater than when under pasture.

[43] Among those who yielded to his fatal and seductive influence was Fra Bartolomeo Coni, guardian of the monastery of Verona, who afterward became a heretic.

[44] Letters in Sir Henry Ellis's Collec.

[45] Letter of Lascelles to Earl Shrewsbury.

[46] Stratford.

[47] Wotton Reliq. (Sir Henry Wotton, once secretary to Raleigh.)

[48] Ellis Collec.

[49] Howell.

[50] Hardwicke State Papers.

[51] Letter of John Porry in Ellis Col.

[52] History of England from the Fall of Wolsey to the Death of Elizabeth. By James Anthony Froude, late Fellow of Exeter College, Oxford. 12 vols. New York: Charles Scribner & Co.

[53] See Edinburgh Review for January and October, 1858.

[54] Mr. Froude's reference for this citation is Knox's History of the Reformation, which is somewhat too general. The reader is advised to look for it in vol. ii. p. 382.

[55] We regret that we have not room for the short discourse Knox made to Murray on the occasion of their parting.

[56] The reader may see at p. 376, vol. viii., where he tells of the murder of Darnley, how effectually Mr. Froude cites his own invention as an historical fact: "So at last came Sunday, eleven months exactly from the day of Ritzio's murder; and Mary Stuart's words, that she would never rest until that dark business was revenged, were about to be fulfilled."

[57] His style is never so sparkling with bright enjoyment as when recounting some insult or outrage to Mary Stuart.

[58] "The moon was clear and full." "The queen with incredible animosity was mounted en croup behind Sir Arthur Erskine, upon a beautiful English double gelding," "the king on a courser of Naples;" and "then away, away—past Restalriug, past Arthur's Seat, across the bridge and across the field of Musselburgh, past Seton, past Prestonpans, fast as their horses could speed;" "six in all—their majesties, Erskine, Traquair, and a chamberer of the queen." "In two hours the heavy gates of Dunbar had closed behind them, and Mary Stuart was safe."

[59] His name was Randall—not Randolph, as he was, and is, usually called.

[60] Greek, we may observe, was to the Romans of that age about as familiar as, and far more necessary than, French is to us. It was the vehicle of all philosophy, and the condition of all higher education. The fashionable Romans used Greek phrases in conversation through vanity.

[61] Juvenal, vi. 61.

[62] See Dublin Review for January.

[63] Rev. Dr. Scheeben in his pamphlet. Part iii.

[64] The negative account given in pp. 63-69 as the "ancient constitution of the church" takes nothing from our argument.

[65] London edition, 1840, vol. ii. pp. 204, 220.

[66] H. E. v. 24, 25.

[67] H. E. v. 22.

[68] Hæret. fab., ii. 8, edit. Mansi, tom. i. p. 1003 sqq.

[69] Adv. Prax. i.

[70] Epiph. Hæres. 42.

[71] Socrat. H. E. ii. 15.

[72] See Philipps's Compend. of Can. Law, vol. i. p. 45.

[73] Galland, Bibl. t. viii. p. 569 sq.

[74] See Ballerini, De Antiq. Collect. and Biblioth. Juris-Can. tom. ii.

[75] Died 536 A.D.

[76] Migne, Patrol. tom. 84, gives this collection.

[77] Denziger's Enchiridion, p. 29.

[78] See Denziger, p. 47.

[79] In the Augsburg Gazette, and in a separate pamphlet since issued.

[80] See Döllinger's History of the Church, vol. ii. sect. iii. p. 221.

[81] Denzig. Enchir. p. 48.

[82] Athanas. Apol. ad Constant. n. 31. Le Quien, Oriens Christian. tom. ii. p. 642.

[83] Vol. ii. pp. 29, 35 sq.

[84] H. E. 8. edit. Vales. tom. ii. p. 70, ch. 415.

[85] H. E. ii. 15.

[86] Cæl. Symbol. ad Zosim. Mansi, tom. iv. pp. 325, 370.

[87] August. Serm. 132, n. 10.

[88] Ep. ad. Leon. 98, c. i. iv. Ball. edit. Harduin, tom. ii. pp. 655-660.

[89] Ep. 104, ad. Marc. c. iii.

[90] (Vigil. Epist. ad Univ. Eccles. apud Mansi, tom. ix. pp. 50-61.)

[91] Or petition, libellus.

[92] Mansi, tom. ix. p. 62.

[93] See Dölling. Ch. H. vol. ii. pp. 204, 205.

[94] He died 1524. Agnes Strickland's Lives of the Queens of England, vol. v. 143.

[95] Cardinal Bembo, Secretary of Leo X. and Librarian of St. Mark's, Venice; author of various pieces in Latin and Italian. Born 1470. Died 1547.

[96] Cardinal Sadolet, Bishop of Carpentras, Secretary of Leo X.; author of several works in Latin prose and verse. Born 1477. Died 1547.

[97] Lingard's History of England, A.D. 1531.

[98] Froude, History of England from the Fall of Wolsey to the Death of Elizabeth. Vol. vi. 88.

[99] Lingard, vol. iv. appendix, note 8, 3. Poli Defensio, fol. 77, 78.

[100] Pole to Prioli. Epist. vol. 1. p. 446.

[101] December 20, 1536. Froude, iii. 187.

[102] Lingard, v. 45.

[103] Froude vi. 333.

[104] Miss Strickland's Lives, v. 208.

[105] Epist. Reg. Pol. vol. iii. pp. 37-39.

[106] April, 1539.

[107] May 27, 1541. (33 Henry VIII.)

[108] Pole to the Cardinal of Burgos. Epist. iii. 36, 76.

[109] Vol. i. p. 402.

[110] Life of Pole. London, 1767, i. 354.

[111] Conc. Trident. Sessio VI.

[112] Flanagan, History of the Church in England, vol. ii. 122, 127-8.

[113] See Lingard, vol. v. 198.

[114] February 6th, 1554.

[115] Mason to Queen Mary, October 5th, 1554.

[116] Froude, vol. vi. 395 and 517.

[117] Phillips's Life of Pole, vol. ii. 172, note.

[118] Lingard, vol. v. 224.

[119] March 23d, 1555.

[120] Hist. Ref. vol. ii. p. 156.

[121] Vita Poli, fol. 33.

[122] Poli Epist. Phillips's Life, vol. ii. p. 222.

[123] The number of persons put to death in Queen Mary's reign was, as stated above, not over 400. From the year 1641 to 1659, 826,000 persons perished, were exiled or sold as slaves in Ireland, through the religious persecution of the English Protestant government. (O'Reilly's Memorials, p. 345.)

[124] Lingard, v. 254. Phillips, ii. 256-7. Froude, vi. 477, 481.

[125] Greenwich. March 30th, 1558.

[126] "Without straining too far the license of imagination, we may believe that the disease which was destroying him was chiefly a broken heart." (Froude, vi. 526.)

[127] History of England, vol. vi. 531.

[128] Vol. ii.

[129] The skins of young calves are so named by New-England dairy-men.

[130] We could not say the human nature is divine, nor could we say the human nature is God, or vice versa; but we can only predicate the concrete terms of the concrete. The metaphysical reason is, that the foundation of this interchange of names and properties of both natures lies in their being both concrete in the subsistence of the Word. If we consider them abstractly, they are separate, and consequently cannot interchange attributes.

[131] St. John, ch. xvii., passim.

[132] The idea comprehends other conditions which it is not necessary to unfold now.

[133] "Dico Deum primaria intentione, qua voluit se creaturis communicare, voluisse mysterium Incarnationis et Christum Dominum ut esset caput et finis divinorum operum sub ipso Deo." (Suarez, De Incarnatione, Disp. v. sect. ii.)

[134] Suarez, Ubicum.

[135] Prov. ch. viii.

[136] St. Paul Colos. ch. v. 16.

[137] De Civit. Dei, lib. xv. cxxiii.

[138] M. Souvestre's note to this passage is, "En Bretagne, aux yeux des paysans, la corpulence est une grande beauté; c'est un signe de distinction, de richesse, de loisir," etc.

[139] See Catholic World, Nos. 45 and 46.

[140] Is lix. 21.

[141] Conc. Later. IV. c. 1. Firmiter.

[142] Sap. viii. 1.

[143] Cf. Hebr. iv. 13.

[144] Rom. i. 20.

[145] Hebr. i. 1, 2.

[146] 1 Cor. ii. 9.

[147] Conc. Trid. Sess. IV. Decr. de Can. Script.

[148] Hebr. xi. 1.

[149] Marc. xvi. 20.

[150] 2 Petr. i. 19.

[151] Syn. Araus. II. can. 7.

[152] Is. xi. 12.

[153] Ioan. i. 17.

[154] 1 Cor. ii. 7, 8, 10.

[155] Matth. xi. 25.

[156] 2 Cor. v. 6, 7.

[157] Conc. Lat. V. Bulla Apostolici regiminis.

[158] Coloss. ii. 8.

[159] Vinc. Lir. Common, n. 28.

[160] Suetonius, Pliny, and Seneca all attest the currency of this and similar jokes against Tiberius during his very lifetime.

[161] See State Papers concerning the Irish Church in the Time of Queen Elizabeth, etc. By W. Maziere Brady, D.D. London: Longmans. 1868. Page 90.

[162] Ibid. page 92.

[163] Ibid. page 91.

[164] Frey Luis de Sonsa, in the History of the Dominican Order in Portugal, relates this legend. The legend of the Infant Saviour coming to play with a child has been embodied in the poetry of many languages, especially the German.

[165] Now Bishop of Exeter. He was the author of an ingenious but whimsical essay, styled, "The Education of the World," in Essays and Reviews, where he parcelled out the elements of our present civilization among different nations of antiquity. He almost seems to have thought that Turner owed his knowledge of painting, in some vague way, to Zeuxis and Parrhasius.

[166] To give Calvin his due, he was only for chopping off the head of Servetus. He called eagerly for his blood; but he was willing to temper justice with so much mercy as lies in substituting the axe for the fagot.

[167] Professor Jowett, Essays and Reviews, ninth ed. p. 377. This essay contains several jokes, which to us seem rather out of place. "Even the Greek Plato," says the professor, (p. 390,) "would have 'coldly furnished forth' the words of 'eternal life.'" The reader will remember the words of Shakespeare,

"The funeral baked meats
Did coldly furnish forth the marriage tables,"

meaning (as is shown by the preceding words, Thrift, thrift, Horatio!) that the marriage had followed so close upon the funeral that the pasties which had been hot at the one came up cold at the other. The new turn given by Mr. Jowett to his original has, we admit, a very humorous effect; but we cannot help thinking that he has been unseasonably witty.

[168] Hor. Bk. ii. Sat. 5. Both birth and virtue, without money, are more worthless than seaweed.

[169] De Eccl. Milit. lib. iii. cap. 2.

[170] De Rom. Pontif. lib. iii. capp. 2, 3, 5.

[171] Theol. Wirceburg. tom. i. De Princip. Direct. n. 190.

[172] De Rom. Pontif. lib. iv. cap. 5. edit. Venet. 1 vol. p. 779.

[173] The Authority of Doctrinal Decisions. By Dr. Ward. Pp. 50, 51.

[174] The Galaxy. December, 1869, to June, 1870.

[175] Lothair. By the Right Honorable B. Disraeli. Pp. 218. D. Appleton & Co. 1870.

[176] The Invitation Heeded; or, Reasons for a Return to Catholic Unity. By James Kent Stone, late President of Kenyon College, Gambier, Ohio, and of Hobart College, Geneva, New York; and S. T. D. 1 vol. 12mo, pp. 340. New York: The Catholic Publication Society, 9 Warren street. 1870.

[177] History of England from the Fall of Wolsey to the Death of Elizabeth. By James Anthony Froude, late Fellow of Exeter College, Oxford. 12 vols. New York: Charles Scribner & Co.

[178] See Catholic World for June, 1870.

[179] In all his volumes Mr. Froude cites Buchanan by name but once.

[180] Mary Queen of Scots and her Accusers. By John Hosack, Barrister at Law. Edinburgh. 1869.

[181] He had previously denounced his sovereign from the pulpit as an incorrigible idolatress and an enemy whose death would be a public blessing. Randolph writes to Cecil February, 1564, "They pray that God will either turn her heart or send her a short life;" adding, "of what charity or spirit this proceedeth, I leave to be discussed by the great divines." And yet we must not hastily condemn Knox, although a man fifty-eight years of age, of indiscriminate sourness and severity to all young women. He was at that very time paying his addresses to a girl of sixteen.

[182] "The attempt to make one's self the interpreter of the secret sentiments of historical personages is always dangerous and frequently ridiculous."

[183] See "Calendar of the State Papers relating to Scotland, preserved in the State Paper Department of Her Majesty's Public Record Office. 2 vols. quarto. London, 1858."

Copy in Astor Library. This calendar gives the date and abstract of the contents of each document. There is no record of any letter of Randolph to Cecil of Oct. 5th, 1565, but there is one of Oct. 4th.

[184] A copy of this rare poem in the original Italian may be found in the Astor Library.

[185]

"These puissant legions, whose exile
Hath emptied heaven."

Paradise Lost, Book i.

[186]

"Into our room of bliss thus high advanced
Creatures of other mould."

Par. Lost, Book iv.

[187] See Paradise Lost, Book ix. line 705.

[188]

"Shall that be shut to man which to the beast
Is open?"

Paradise Lost, B. ix.

[189]

"Or is it envy? and can envy dwell
In heavenly breasts?"

Paradise Lost, B. ix.

[190]

"Henceforth to speculations high and deep
I turned my thoughts; and with capacious mind
Considered all things visible in heaven
Or earth."

Paradise Lost, B. ix.

[191]

"Eve. O me! lassa ch'io sento
Un gelido tremor vagar per l'osa
Che mi fa graccio il core.

Serpent. E la parte mortal che già incomincia
A languir, sendo dal divin gravata,
Che sovra le tue chiome
In potenza sovrasta."

[192] See Paradise Lost, Book iv. line 940.

[193] A Lecture delivered before the Young Men's Christian Association of Boston, by the late Rev. Dr. Cummings, pastor of St. Stephen's Church, New York.

[194] It was some fifty years before, at the siege of Modena, that the first recorded instance, so far as I am aware, occurred of making the pigeon a letter-carrier.

[195] I am aware of an apparent anachronism here of some four or five years, according to Dio, Tacitus, Suetonius, and others; but Caligula was, I think, a few years older than these authors represent; for Josephus furnishes a somewhat different calendar from theirs.

[196] La Physique Moderne. Essai sur l'Unité des Phénomènes Naturels. Par Emile Saigey. Paris: Germer-Baillière. 1867.

Les Problèmes de la Nature—les Problèmes de la Vie. Par Laugel. Paris. 1867.

De la Science et de la Nature. Essai de Philosophie première. Par Magy. 1867.

Eléments de Mécanique Moléculaire. Par le P. Bayma.

Physique Moléculaire. Par l'Abbé Moigno. 1868.

Revue des Deux Mondes: la Nature et la Physiologie idéaliste. Par Ch. Lévêque. 15 Janvier, 1857.

Le Spiritualisme Français au dix neuvième siècle. Par P. Janet. 15 Mai, 1868.

[197] See for further details: Recueil des Rapports sur les Progrès des Lettres et des Sciences; la Philosophie en France au dix-neuvième siècle. Par Felix Ravaisson. Revue des Cours Littéraires, No. 24; art. by M. E. Beaussire.

[198] This system has been formulated with great talent by M. Emile Saigey, who advocated it, first in several very remarkable articles in the Revue des Deux Mondes; and afterward in his book, La Physique Moderne. Essai sur l'Unité des Phénomènes Naturels.

[199] The swiftness of molecules and the vibratory motion of ethereal atoms are astonishing, and surpass all imagination. The former, measuring two thousand metres, give eight millions of collisions in a second; while the latter, within the same space, produce every second several hundreds of millions more of undulations.

[200] M. Saigey.

[201] According to the very curious experiments of M. Hirn, the unity of heat or caloric in man, as well as in inorganic matter, corresponds to four hundred and twenty-five unities of mechanical labor—that is to say, to four hundred and twenty-five kilogrammes raised one metre high. Man gives in work twelve per cent of the heat produced, which is almost equal to the labor of our most perfect machines.

[202] Revue des Deux Mondes, 15 Mai, 1863.

[203] Ibid. 15 Janvier, 1867.

[204] Elements de Mécanique Moléculaire.

[205] M. Magy, De la Science, etc.

[206] Ch. Lévêque, Revue des Deux Mondes, 15 Janvier, 1867.

[207] Ch. Lévêque, Revue des Deux Mondes, 15 Janvier, 1867.

[208] The Life and Works of Gerald Griffin. 10 vols. 12mo. New York: D. & J. Sadlier & Co.

[209] P. 69.

[210] Thomassin, Vet. et Nov. Eccl. Disc. l. i. capp. vii. xlv.

[211] See Canon vi. Council of Nice in 325, which recognizes the patriarchal rights of Antioch and Alexandria, in the east, introduced by ancient custom. (τὰ ἀρχαῖα ἔθη.)

[212] Schelestrate, Eccl. Afric. sub prim. Carthag. Thomass. l. c. c. xx. n. 8.

[213] Constant. Ep. Rom. Pontif. Inn. I. ep. 13. Bonif. I. ep. 4. Coelest. I. ep. 3. Sixt. III. ep. 10.

[214] "Vices enim nostras ita tuæ credidimus caritati, ut in partem sis vocatus sollicitudinis, non in plenitudinem potestatis." Ep. 14. ad Anast. Thessal. edit. Ball. tom. i.

[215] The name of patriarch is first mentioned in the Council of Chalcedon, Act 3, where Pope St. Leo is thus addressed: "Sanctissimo et universali Archiepiscopo et Patriarchæ magnæ Romæ." (Labbe, Col. tom. iv.)

[216] Leo M. ep. 14, cap. 11.

[217] "Quum omnium par esset electio, uni tamen datum est, ut cæteris præemineret."

[218] Mansi, xv. col. 202.

[219] Cf. canon ix. of the same council.

[220] That is, in the East. Pithœus, Codex Canon. Vetus, p. 102, (edit. Paris.)

[221] Mansi. l. c. p. 688.

[222] Thomassin, Ballerini, Devoti, Walter, Philipps, Schulte, Döllinger, Blondel, Luden, Schönemann, the last three Protestants, all of whom, says Janus, betray a very imperfect "knowledge of the decretals." (P. 78.)

[223] Launoy, Arnould, Febronius, Baluze, De Marca.

[224] Held A.D. 447.

[225] Epist. 47.

[226] See Epist. 45, ad Antonian.

[227] Döllinger, Church Histor. vol. i. pp. 260, 261, 262.

[228] Named after the ambitious Bishop Eusebius of Nicomedia, an ardent follower of Arius.

[229] P. 66.

[230] Apud Constant. Epist. Rom. Pontif. Epist. 37, ad Felic. col. 910.

[231] Epist. I. ad Episc. Gall. col. 938.

[232] Epist. ad Episc. Illyr. col. 1038.

[233] Epist. ad Episc. Vienn. Prov. (Baller Opp. tom. i. col. 634.)

[234] Epist. ad Episc. Dardan. (Hardouin Concil. tom. ii. col. 909.)

[235] Epist. ad Euseb. col. 385, ap. Const.

[236] Döllinger, Hist. of the Church, vol. ii. pp. 103, 109.

[237] The code of Dionysius presented by R. Hadrian to Charlemagne, known hence in Gaul as the Codex Hadrianeus.

[238] Biblioth. Jur. Canon. tom. i. p. 97-180. Fr. Pithœus, Codex Canon. Eccl. Rom. Vet. pp. 119, 120, can. iii. vii. (edit. Paris.)

[239] Biblioth. Jur. Canon. tom. ii. pp. 499, 603.

[240] Döllinger, Hist. of the Church, vol. ii. p. 229, gives several remarkable instances of such exceptions.

[241] Concil. Rom. ad Gratian. Imperat. cap. 11.

[242] Mansi, tom. viii. p. 247.

[243] Libell, Apologet. Ennod. apud Mansi, tom. vii. p. 271.

[244] Epist. ad Senator. Urbis Rom. ann. 502. Mansi, viii. col. 293.

[245] "In qua (Eccl. Rom.) ab his qui sunt undique conservata est ea, quæ est ab apostolis traditio." Adv. Hær. l. iii. c. 3.

[246] Hist. vol. i. p. 257. If "potentior principalitas" signified only greater antiquity, how could the church of Rome claim preëminence above the churches of Antioch and Ephesus?

[247] "Hanc Ecclesiæ unitatem qui non tenet, tenere se fidem credit?" De Unit. Eccl. p. 349. (Edit. Wir.)

St. August, in his 43d epist., says of the church of Rome, "Semper viguit apostolicæ cathedræ principatus."

[248] Epist. cxvii. ad Renat. Presbyt. Rom.

[249] The very words of pseudo-Isidore on the purity of the "faith of Rome" are literally transcribed from the epistle of Pope Agatho to the Emperor Constantine in the year 680. (Mansi, tom. xi. col. 239.)

[250] De Antiquis Collect, pars iii. capp. iv. Gallandi, Sylloge. tom. i. p. 528 sqq.

[251] About 1809, under Napoleon.

[252] Notices et Extraits des Manuscr. de la Biblioth. Nation. tom. vi. p. 265 sqq.

[253] Died 313.

[254] Which was already known from its being inserted in former collections.

[255] Known in the fifth century. (Quesnel's edit.)

[256] Blondel. Prolegom. cap. 12. Blascus, De Collect. Canon. Isid. Mercat. cap. ii. Gallandi, tom. ii. p. 100.

[257] Muratori's edit. tom. iii. pars i. Rer. Italic. Script.

[258] Rufinus translated nine books of Eusebius, to which he added two more.

[259] Edit. Ven. 2 vol.

[260] Blondel, Proleg. cap. 18.

[261] See Alzog's Hist. vol. i. § 186.

[262] Philipps, Compend. of Canon Law, vol. i. p. 52.

[263] The italics are our own.

[264] Ball. Part. iii. cap. 6. n. 13. Galland, t. i. p. 540.

[265] Mansi. tom. xv. col. 127.

[266] Laws of the empire of Charlemagne, divided into Capitula or chapters.

[267] Baller. de Canon. Collect. p. iii. cap. cit.

[268] Epist. 42. ad Univ. Episc. Gall. in the year 865. (Mansi, xv. col. 695.)

[269] Mansi, xv. col. 693, et sqq.

[270] Epist. ad Hinc. Laudun. tom. ii. (edit. Sirmondi,) Paris.

[271] "Sancta Romana Ecclesia conservans, nobis quoque custodienda mandavit, et penesse in suis archivis, et vetustis rite monumentis recondita veneratur." (l. c. col. 694.)

[272] Prolegom. cap. 19.

[273] De Collect. Isid. cap. 4.

[274] Ch. Hist. vol. iii. p. 202.

[275] Blasc. De Collect. Canon. Isidor. (Galland Syllog. tom. ii. c. v. p. 30.)

[276] De Concordia Cath. lib. iii. cap. 2.

[277] Summa Eccl. lib. ii. cap. 101.

[278] De Rom. Pontif. lib. ii. cap. xiv.

[279] The English translation of Dr. Hergenröther's complete and masterly refutation of Janus, which we reviewed some time since in the original German, is announced in the English papers as nearly ready, and will be for sale at the office of this magazine as soon as it is issued.—Ed. Catholic World.

[280] Viscount Bretiznières de Courteilles.

[281] The church only is handsomely decorated.

[282] Insubordinate female children are confided by the government to the care of the Sisters of the Good Shepherd, in their vast establishment at Angers, where they are subject to rules similar to those at Mettray, and with at least an equal success.

[283] The chapel is so constructed that, though each individual is in full view of the altar and the priests, not one of the recluses can have even a glimpse of another. Two brothers once passed some time in this house, and neither was aware of the proximity of the other.

[284] The speeches on the Primacy and Infallibility of the Roman Pontiff have exceeded in length those delivered on the preceding subjects, their average duration having been forty-three minutes up to the present date, June 2d.

[285] 1. Hereditary Genius, its Laws and its Consequences. By Francis Galton, F.R.S., etc. New York: D. Appleton & Co. 1870. 8vo, pp. 390. 2. Hereditary Genius. An Analytical Review. From the Journal of Psychological Medicine, April, 1870. New York: D. Appleton & Co. 1870. 8vo, pp. 19.

[286] "Mater Antonia portentum eum hominis dictabat; nec absolutum à naturâ, sed tantum inchoatum; ac si quem socordiæ argueret, stultiorem aiebat filio suo Claudio." Sueton. in Claud. s. 3.

[287] Bascle de Lagrèze, Conseiller à la Cour Impérial de Pau, Chronique de la Ville et du Chateau de Lourdes.

[288] The Ordo of the diocese of Tarbes for 1858, Feb. 12, contains the rubric, Sanctæ Genovefæ, (Proprium Tarbense.)

[289] These two persons are still living. Unless the contrary be expressly stated, all those named in the course of this work are still alive, and can be questioned. We would urge our readers to examine and verify all our assertions.—The Author.

[290] Thus designated in the royal almanacs from 1762 to 1768. His successor in the office of general secretary to the "Swiss Grisons" was the Abbé Barthélemy, author of Le Jeune Anacharsis.

[291] These expressions are copied from the letter of General Berruyer, "Gouverneur des Invalides," announcing to the minister the death of the commissary.

[292] Claude Blanchard had a son who was himself a commissary, and who died recently, at the age of ninety, at La Flèche, (Sarthe.) The writer of this review is a great-grandson of Claude Blanchard.

[293] The treaty of Paris (1763) had deprived France of Canada and Louisiana.

[294] The only contemporary history is the Abbé de Longchamp's Histoire de la Dernière Guerre, in three volumes.

[295] This first expedition comprised five thousand men; it was followed a year afterward, by a second corps of three thousand, brought from the West-Indies, but which remained only a short time in America. They were commanded by MM. de Saint-Simon and d'Autichamp.

[296] Duportail, camp-marshal, who was minister of war for some time toward the end of 1790, went through the American campaign as a volunteer in the service of the United States.

[297] Cornwallis, a skilful general, though unfortunate on this occasion, was highly esteemed by Napoleon I.

[298] "We quartered with the Americans, but we asked nothing from them but shelter. Each officer brought with him his provisions and cooking utensils, his bed and bedding, and we occasioned no expense whatever to our hosts. I had for my use two wagons or covered conveyances drawn by good horses, and I had all I stood in need of."

[299] Does not this remark, written in the darkest period of the Reign of Terror, and under danger of death, indicate the most profound convictions? A very tragical equality! and one that brought M. Blanchard and the royal family together under circumstances deserving of notice. On the 10th of August, when Louis XVI. and his family sought refuge in the hall of the Legislative Assembly, they were kept with their suite for many hours in a small apartment, and when the dauphin, who afterward perished in the Temple, was in danger of being stifled with heat, he was let down from the chamber into the hall, and received upon the knees of Deputy Blanchard, who held him there for a long time.

[300] The preliminaries of this peace, which recognized the existence of a new nation, were signed the 10th of January, 1783. M. Blanchard received the news the following March at Porto-Cabello, New Spain, where the fleet which had brought our troops with a view to an expedition against the English Antilles, was lying at this moment. "The assurance of this peace caused me great joy, both because I am a citizen, and because I saw in it the termination of my anxieties in regard to my family. The news was received with enthusiastic joy by all, with the exception of some few ambitious men who thought only of themselves and their own fortunes."

[301] What has become of the journal of M. de Custine, of which the manuscript of M. Blanchard makes mention in the following passage? "To-day, M. de Custine, who has just been travelling into the interior of America, showed me his journal and the result of his observations, which appear to me wise and liberal." We have found no other trace of the Memoirs of General de Custine on the campaign in America.

[302] "Thou art the casket where the jewel lay."—George Herbert.

[303] ἣ Παρθένος. LXX. The Virgin, not a Virgin; which is also more in accordance with the Hebrew and the Latin.

[304] Martes ni te cases, ni te embarques. "Tuesday, neither marry nor embark."—Spanish saying.

[305] Y salga el sol por Antequera. A common saying, equivalent to, And let the sky fall; let the consequences be what they may.

[306] S. Leo M. serm. iv. (al. iii.) cap. 2. in diem Natalis sui.

[307] Joan. i. 42.

[308] Matth. xvi. 16-19.

[309] John i. 42.

[310] Joan. xxi. 15-17.

[311] Matthew xvi. 16-19.

[312] John xxi. 15-17.

[313] Cf. Ephesini Concilii Act. iii.

[314] S. Leo M. Serm. iii. (al. ii.) cap. 3.

[315] S. Iren. Adv. Hær. I. iii. c. 3. Ep. Conc. Aquilei 2. 381, inter epp. S. Ambros. ep. xi.

[316] Council of Eph. sess. iii. St. Peter Chrys. Ep. ad Eutych.

[317] S. Leo, Serm. iii. chap. iii.

[318] St. Irenæus against Heresies, book iii. chap. 3. Epist. of Council of Aquileia, 381, to Gratian, chap. 4. of Pius VI. Brief Super Soliditate.

[319] Ep. ad Eulog. Alexandrin. I. viii. ep. xxx.

[320] Pii P. VI. Breve Super Soliditate, d. 28. Nov. 1786.

[321] Concil. Œcum. Lugdun. II.

[322] Ep. Nicolai I. ad Michaelem Imperatorem.

[323] Ex formula S. Hormisdae Papae, prout ab Hadriano II. Patribus Concilii Oecumenici VIII., Constantinopolitani IV., proposita et ab iisdem subscripta est.

[324] Cf. S. Bern. Epist. 190.

PROTESTANT.	PR. CT.	ROMAN CATHOLIC.	PR. CT.
Brandenburg	12	Austria (Upper and Lower)	29.3
Hanover	9.6	Bohemia	16.3
Pomerania	10	Baden	16.2
Prussia	6.7	Bavaria	22.5
Saxony	15.9	Carinthia	11.7
Würtemberg	16.4	Carniola	45
		Moravia	15.1
		Posen	6.8
		Rhineland	3.4
		Salzburg	29.6
		Styria	30.6
		Trieste, Gorz, etc.	9.9
		Tyrol and Vorarlberg	6
Average	11.7	Average	18.6

PROTESTANT.	PR. CT.	CATHOLIC.	PR. CT.
Saxon Prussia	10	Austrian Silesia	13.8
Brunswick	18.9
Mecklenburg-Schwerin	20.7
Saxe-Weimar-Eisenach	15.6
Saxe Altenburg	16.9
Hesse	17.2
Bremen	7.2

PROTESTANT.	POPULATION IN MILLIONS.	PR. CT.
Brandenburg	2.62	12
Pomerania	1.44	10
Prussia	3.01	9
Saxony (province)	2.04	10
	9.11	10.2

CATHOLIC.	POPULATION IN MILLIONS.	PR. CT.
Austria (Upper and Lower)	2.47	29.3
Bohemia	5.11	16.3
Carinthia	.34	45
Carniola	.47	11.7
Moravia	1.99	15.1
Posen	1.52	6.8
Rhineland	3.35	3.4
Austrian Silesia	.49	13.8
Salzburg	.15	29.6
Styria	1.09	30.6
Trieste, etc.	.56	9.9
Tyrol	.88	6
Hungary	10.68	6
Galicia	5.10	8
Dalmatia	.44	5
Croatia	.95	5.5
Lombardy and Venice	5.55	5.1
	41.14	10.3

	PR. CT.	POPULATION IN MILLIONS.
Protestant	10.2	9.11
Würtemberg	16.4	1.75
Smaller German States [16]	14.8	6.40
	12.5	17.26

	PR. CT.	POPULATION IN MILLIONS.
Catholic	10.3	41.14
Bavaria	22.5	4.81
Baden	16.2	1.43
	11.7	47.38

	ROMANISTS.		ILLEGITIMATE.
Hungary	52	per cent.	6	per cent.
Galicia	44	"	8	"
Bukowina	9	"	9	"
Dalmatia	81	"	5	"
Militärgrenze	42	"	1.4	"
Croatia, etc.	82	"	5.5	"
Transylvania	11	"	7	"
Average	46	"	6	"

	Catholics.		Protestants.		Jews & Schismatic Greeks.
	POP. IN THOUS'DS.	PR CT.	POP. IN THOUS'DS.	PR CT.	POP. IN THOUS'DS.	PR CT.
Hungary	5965	61	2349	24	1449	15
Galicia	4150	90	31	1	449	9
Bukowina	43	10	none	0	381	90
Dalmatia	338	81	none	0	77	19
Militärgrenze	454	43	20	2	587	55
Croatia, etc.	721	85	none	0	130	15
Transylvania	775	40	510	27	637	33
Total	12,446	65	2910	15	3760	20

	AMONG PROTESTANTS.		AMONG CATHOLICS.
	Pop. in thous'ds.	pr. ct.	Pop. in thous'ds.	pr. ct.
Brandenburg	2509	12.05	66	8.40
Silesia	1704	12.03	1756	10.07
Saxony	1903	10.35	130	6.05
Pomerania	1401	10.35	15	9.31
Prussia	2137	9.67	815	7.45
Posen	502	7.06	950	6.82
Westphalia	740	4.18	907	3.35
Rhineland	826	3.35	2494	3.67
Total	11,722	10.01	7123	6.4

"1828	13,698,029
1837	12,222,872
1842	12,054,000
1846	12,164,000
1850	10,942,000
1861	16,000,000
1864	15,752,807"

1822	11,661,865
1832	11,158,264
1846	12,162,872
1857	15,464,340
1860	15,673,536

	LEGITIMATE.	ILLEGITIMATE.
1858	516,118	30,040
1859	525,243	31,080
1860	541,231	32,222
1861	577,484	34,125
1862	573,646	33,416
1863	565,144	32,997
1864	586,993	34,458
1865	581,686	33,227

	PR. CT.	PROT. POP. IN MILL'S.	CATH. POP. IN MILL'S.
Holland	4.0	2.01	1.23
Italy	5.1	.33	23.90
Spain	5.5	.12	15.55
Switzerland	5.5	1.48	1.02
Catholics in Prussia	6.5	—	7.20
England and Wales	6.5	19.00	1.20
France	7.2	.77	34.93
Belgium	7.2	.02	4.97
Sweden and Norway	9.6	5.81	—
Protestants in Prussia	10.0	11.74	—
Scotland	10.1	3.00	.16
Denmark	11	2.73	—
Austria	11.1	3.45	26.73
German States	14.8	5.88	.52
Würtemberg	16.4	1.20	.53
Mean Protestants	8.3	57.54	117.94
Mean Catholics	7.4

PROTESTANT COUNTRIES.	ROMAN CATHOLIC COUNTRIES.
Norway,	Austria,
Sweden,	Austria,
Saxony,	Austria,
Denmark,	Austria,
Hanover,	Austria,

CITY.	PR. CT.	COUNTRY.	PR. CT.
London	4.2	Nottingham	8.9
Liverpool	4.9	York, N. R.	8.9
Birmingham	4.7	Salop	9.8
Manchester	6.7	Westmoreland	9.7
Sheffield	5.8	Norfolk	10.7
Leeds	6.4	Cumberland	11.4
The rate for all England is 6.5.

1863	881,342
1864	859,663
1865	878,952
Average	873,319

Protestant	9.5
Catholic	7.9

Rate in all France	7.2
Rate in cities	11.4
Rate in the country	4.4

Ireland	19 homicides to the million.
France	31 homicides to the million.
England	4 homicides to the million.

	ENGLAND.	FRANCE.
Convictions of murder and attempts	1½	12
Convictions of infanticide in various degrees	5	10

	CONVICTIONS AND SENTENCES TO DEATH.	EXECUTIONS.
1864. France	9	5
1867. England and Wales	27	10
1867. Ireland	3	0

EUROPE.
Austria and Tyrol,	10
Bohemia and Moravia,	5
Illyria and Dalmatia,	13
Hungary and Gallicia,	20
Belgium,	6
France,	84
Germany, North Confederation,	10
Germany, South Confederation,	9
England,	14
Ireland,	20
Scotland,	2
Greece,	5
Holland,	4
Lombardy,	3
Venice,	8
Naples, Kingdom of,	65
Sicily and Malta,	13
Sardinia, Kingdom of,	25
Tuscany and Modena,	19
States of the Church, including cardinals, and also all the bishops from sees in those portions seized by Victor Emmanuel,	143
Portugal,	2
Switzerland,	8
Spain,	41
Turkey in Europe,	12
Russia, an administrator of a diocese who has escaped,	1
ASIA.
China and Japan,	15
Hindostan and Cochin China, etc.,	18
Persia,	1
Turkey in Asia,	49
AFRICA.
Algeria,	3
Canary Islands and the Azores,	3
Egypt and Tunis,	3
Senegambia,	1
Southern Africa,	4
OCEANICA.
Australia and the Islands of the Pacific Ocean,	14
AMERICA.
Dominion of Canada, and other British Provinces of North America,	16
United States,	49
Mexico,	10
Guatemala,	4
West Indies,	5
New Granada,	4
Ecuador,	4
Guyana,	1
Venezuela,	2
Peru,	3
Brazil,	6
Bolivia,	2
Argentine Republic,	5
Chili,	3

Latin Rite,	706
Greek Rite,	3
Greek Bulgarian,	1
Greek Melchite,	10
Greek Roumenian,	2
Greek Ruthenian,	1
Armenian,	21
Chaldean,	10
Syrian,	7
Maronite,	4
Coptic,	1
	766

Holdings valued at	£10	7 years' rent.
Holdings valued at	£10 to £50	5 years' rent.
Holdings valued at	£50 to £100	3 years' rent.
Holdings valued at	£100 and upward	2 years' rent.

THE CATHOLIC WORLD.

RELIGIOUS LIBERTY.[1] LAST ARTICLE.

DION AND THE SIBYLS. A CLASSIC, CHRISTIAN NOVEL.

DEDICATION.

INTRODUCTION.

CHAPTER I.

CHAPTER II.

MARY QUEEN OF SCOTS.[7]

STABAT MATER.

THE BRIGAND'S GOD-CHILD. A LEGEND OF SPAIN.

MOLECULAR MECHANICS.

THE HOLY-WEEK OF 1869 IN HAVANA. PALM-SUNDAY. THE TENEBRÆ. MAUNDY-THURSDAY.

PALM-SUNDAY.

THE TENEBRÆ.

MAUNDY-THURSDAY.

GOULD'S ORIGIN AND DEVELOPMENT OF RELIGIOUS BELIEF.[11]

PLANGE FILIA SION.

UNTYING GORDIAN KNOTS.

X.

XI.

XII.

XIII.

XIV.

XV.

XVI.

XVII.

THE IRON MASK.

THE SCHOOL QUESTION.[13]

THE NEW ENGLANDER ON THE "MORAL RESULTS OF THE ROMISH SYSTEM."[15]

TO THE RAINBOW.

THE FIRST ŒCUMENICAL COUNCIL OF THE VATICAN. NO. THREE.

FOREIGN LITERARY NOTES.

NEW PUBLICATIONS.

CHURCH AND STATE.[21]

DION AND THE SIBYLS. A CLASSIC, CHRISTIAN NOVEL.

CHAPTER III.

CHAPTER IV.

CHAPTER V.

CHAPTER VI.

CHAPTER VII.

A MAY CAROL.

SIR JOHN MAUNDEVILLE.

HOME SCENES IN NEW ENGLAND.

CHAPTER I. MY AUNT AND THE CATECHISM.

CHAPTER II. WHAT OUR NEIGHBORS THOUGHT OF IT.

CHAPTER III. THE OPINION OF THE SEWING-CIRCLE.

CHAPTER IV. WHAT HAPPENED AT THE DONATION-PARTY.

CHAPTER V. REMINISCENCES OF THE PAST.

SONNET. TO ITALY.

IRELAND'S MISSION.

MARY.

EMERSON'S PROSE WORKS.[36]

THE HOLY-WEEK OF 1869 IN HAVANA. GOOD-FRIDAY. HOLY-SATURDAY. EASTER-SUNDAY.

GOOD-FRIDAY.

HOLY-SATURDAY.

EASTER-SUNDAY.

THORNS. HOMAGE TO THE CROSS, GOOD-FRIDAY, 1870.

MARY STUART.

THE RICCIO MURDER.

THE MURDER OF DARNLEY.

ELIZABETH'S GUILTY KNOWLEDGE.

BOTHWELL CARRIES OFF THE QUEEN.

A BRIDEMAID'S STORY.

EXULTENT SION FILIÆ.

MR. GLADSTONE AND THE IRISH FARMERS.

THE ASSOCIATION FOR BEFRIENDING CHILDREN.

FRA BERNARDINO OCHINO.

OLD BOOKS.

I.

II.

III.

IV.

THE VATICAN COUNCIL. NUMBER FOUR.

NEW PUBLICATIONS.

MR. FROUDE'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND.[52]

MARY STUART.

THE MURDER OF RICCIO.

DION AND THE SIBYLS. A CLASSIC, CHRISTIAN NOVEL.

CHAPTER VIII.

CHAPTER IX.

RELIGIOUS LIBERTY.[1]
LAST ARTICLE.

DION AND THE SIBYLS.
A CLASSIC, CHRISTIAN NOVEL.

THE BRIGAND'S GOD-CHILD.
A LEGEND OF SPAIN.

THE HOLY-WEEK OF 1869 IN HAVANA.
PALM-SUNDAY. THE TENEBRÆ. MAUNDY-THURSDAY.

THE FIRST ŒCUMENICAL COUNCIL OF THE VATICAN.
NO. THREE.

DION AND THE SIBYLS.
A CLASSIC, CHRISTIAN NOVEL.

CHAPTER I.
MY AUNT AND THE CATECHISM.

CHAPTER II.
WHAT OUR NEIGHBORS THOUGHT OF IT.

CHAPTER III.
THE OPINION OF THE SEWING-CIRCLE.

CHAPTER IV.
WHAT HAPPENED AT THE DONATION-PARTY.

CHAPTER V.
REMINISCENCES OF THE PAST.

SONNET.
TO ITALY.

THE HOLY-WEEK OF 1869 IN HAVANA.
GOOD-FRIDAY. HOLY-SATURDAY. EASTER-SUNDAY.

THORNS.
HOMAGE TO THE CROSS, GOOD-FRIDAY, 1870.

THE VATICAN COUNCIL.
NUMBER FOUR.

DION AND THE SIBYLS.
A CLASSIC, CHRISTIAN NOVEL.

CHAPTER I.
DUTY AND TEMPTATION.

CHAPTER II.
RURAL PLEASURES.

CHAPTER III.
THE TEMPTER AND HIS VICTIMS.

CHAPTER IV.
THE CONSEQUENCES.

CHAPTER V.
AN OUTSIDE GLIMPSE.

CATHOLICITY AND PANTHEISM.
NUMBER NINE.
UNION BETWEEN THE INFINITE AND THE FINITE—CONTINUED.

BRITTANY: ITS PEOPLE AND ITS POEMS.
SECOND ARTICLE.

LINES.
FROM THE LATIN OF THEODULPHUS, BISHOP OF ORLEANS, A.D. 820.

THE FIRST ŒCUMENICAL COUNCIL OF THE VATICAN.
NUMBER FIVE.

A DOGMATIC DECREE ON CATHOLIC FAITH.
CONFIRMED AND PROMULGATED IN THE THIRD PUBLIC SESSION OF THE VATICAN COUNCIL, HELD IN ST. PETER'S, ROME, ON LOW-SUNDAY, APRIL 24, 1870.

DION AND THE SIBYLS.
A CLASSIC, CHRISTIAN NOVEL.

THE POPE AND THE COUNCIL, BY JANUS.
II.

CHAPTER VI.
A NEW ADVENTURE.

CHAPTER VII.
AN UNWELCOME INTRUDER.

CHAPTER VIII.
MISFORTUNE AND GRIEF.

CHAPTER IX.
AFFLICTED AND CONSOLED.

CHAPTER X.
THE DYING PENITENT'S DISCLOSURE.

THE FIRST ŒCUMENICAL COUNCIL OF THE VATICAN.
NUMBER SIX.

MR. FROUDE'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND.[177]
SECOND ARTICLE.

II.
HE AND SHE.

III.
BIPEDS WITH FEATHERS.

IV.
A DIAMOND-WASHING.

V.
A MISS IS AS GOOD AS A MILE.

VI.
HOMESICK.

DION AND THE SIBYLS.
A CLASSIC, CHRISTIAN NOVEL.

PART II.
CHAPTER I.

MATTER AND SPIRIT IN THE LIGHT OF MODERN SCIENCE [196]